Earthly Powers (62 page)

       "No right as either one. You always said we have free will and the right to choose what we do."

       "Yes, and we have the right to stop a man choosing to harm himself. We have that right and I used that right. What was the thing you said?"

       "It was you," Domenico spoke accusingly, "who said I must go home to see my father die and take care of all arrangements. There was important Church business for you and Raffaele had to stay in Chicago to be murdered by Al Capone."

       "That is not a good thing to say. Speak sensibly."

       "All this is true. I had to see my father die and then settle things for my mother. You talked a lot about my duty as a son."

       "What is this singular possessiveness? Our father, our mother. It was not my fault if I could not be there. You did all our duties for us, very good, thank you, a good son and a good brother and all the rest of it. What has this to do with anything?"

       "I had to go through documents, burn some, burn most of them, keep some, read all. Mother left it to me, she wanted no part of it, leave me to my grief she said, but she didn't seem to grieve much. That is a different story. My story now is that I found this old certificato di adozione." Carlo's sudden alertness was like a stick cracking over a knee. He said with little voice: "No, tu." I had never seen Carlo, nor, I think, could anyone ever have, so suddenly shrunken and naked. He, the formidable, always full of surprises, had met a surprise of such monumental gravity that its nugget weighed more than his whole arsenal of faith and learning and superhuman confidence to deal with the world. The two kept to Italian, not Milanese.

       Carlo said, "You have it? Mother has it? It is still there?"

       "It was one of the things burned. She said it should have been burned long ago. She did not know it was still among the family documents. She said you must never never be told. She was very disturbed that I had seen it."

       "Rightly so rightly so, you were bound to tell me sometime even if you had to wait a hundred years. You waited ten years. More. But you were bound to tell me. She was right to be disturbed." The humorist next door was laughing again. Carlo beat the wall with terribly earnest fists. The humorist gave a feeble horselaugh and then was silent, probably off to bed.

       Domenico said, "I told you because I was angry. No man can be angrier than when he is put into that state. I could not otherwise have said it. So now we forget all about it. There are rights you do not have. But you're still my elder brother."

       "What is known? Who am I?" A terrifying question, the question of Oedipus.

       Domenico said, "You're Carlo Campanati. The certificate of adoption says your parents are unknown. Mother said that it all happened that time when Italy was taking Ethiopia. The man was in the army and he did not come back. The woman was on the estate for the pressing of the grapes. She had you and then she went off. My father, our father, had a dream of some kind. He woke from the dream and then he called in the advocate for the papers of adoption. He said you had to be of the family. It was a time, Mother said, when the doctors said it would not be wise to have more children, she had had a difficult time with Raffaele. But of course she had no difficult time with myself. Mother said you were a gift from God."

       Carlo groaned terribly. I ventured to say, in English, "I can see nothing to worry about in all this. Why such knowledge should be withheld. Why such knowledge should cause unhappiness."

       "You knew your mother," Carlo groaned. "All men know their mothers, even Jesus Christ. Not to know your mother. Not to know your father is not so important. This is a very profound shock."

       "You were destined perhaps," Domenico said with characteristic stupidity, "to choose your mother, which not many men can do. I mean your mother the Church. But our mother is still your mother."

       "It's not the same," went Carlo hollowly. "I did not issue from her womb. I am not flesh of her flesh. I will worry now hopelessly about my real mother, whom I can never know. Your two children know their mother, that's all that matters for them. And you come to me with your sinful doubts about your paternity, as if that mattered. I have no mother," and he groaned again.

       "The Church," Domenico said, "the Church. You have your mother the Church."

       "The truth is good," I said comfortingly and vaguely, "whatever the truth is. It is good," I clarified, "to know the truth. You are what you are, you are not changed. Your gifts? They come from God, and the parental channel of their transmission is of no importance."

       "Kenneth is right there," Domenico said. "It's like my own gifts. Neither my father nor my mother had them. They come from the unknown. I won't say God, because I'm not sure about God. Talent or genius is a great mystery."

       "What do you mean," Carlo asked, "not sure about God?" He had raised his muzzle at the noise of a straying sheep, sick collie dog though he was. "Tonight seems to be dedicated to your not being sure about anything. Except about my having no mother. What do you mean, not sure?"

       "Talk to the mafiosi about God," Domenico said boldly. "They run the labour at the studios. They say who shall be in my orchestra and who not. You drag me from a bed where I only commit fornication, but these people kill. Why is it all the Catholics are bad men, tell me that? It's six months since I went to mass. I'll work out things for myself. Your mother not mine."

       Carlo nodded. "You wouldn't say this if I were really your elder brother."

       "I've known it for over ten years," Domenico said.

       "Yes, but it's tonight you really know it. Tonight you say it. Go on, go away. I'll see you tomorrow."

       "You won't see me tomorrow. I'm recording music all day. If the mafiosi allow me. Now I think I'll go back to what you interrupted." He insolently left without a goodnight.

       Carlo said, "That bottle is finished. What other whisky do you have?"

       "Scotch, you mean. White Label, Haig, Claymore—"

       "Very good. It is many many years since I did this." He took a beer glass, half filled it with Claymore and looked at me tragically before drinking. "You must join me," he said. "A man cannot drink alone." The Studebaker could be heard zooming off from the Black Sea. "Well, let him. Let him be damned. Let the devils of pride and lust and stupidity devour him. He was always a fool. Come, drink with me."

       "Vodka," I said. I did not propose to be incapable the next morning, I had a script conference at ten. In the icebox I kept a number of used liquor bottles filled with water. I went to it and chose a chill quart Kavkaz. Then I sat with Carlo, ready out of companionship to slur and dribble, grimacing with simulated distaste of raw spirit as I sipped the cool blessed and neutral.

       Carlo took an hour to get through the Claymore. He said nothing for half of that time, though he made noises of self-pity and occasionally barked dialectal curses. Then he said, "Is it true what Domenico suspects?"

       "This," I said, "is the confessional. Is that clearly understood?" He did not understand for a moment, but then he did and nodded.

       "Sealed," he said. "Sealed, sealed."

       "It's possible for someone to commit a sin out of love. If my sister sinned it was for Domenico's sake. Do you see that? She put her soul in jeopardy to protect his selfesteem. Remember, though, that you'd told Domenico that it was always the woman who was barren. One of the stupidities of the Old Testament. Hortense was driven to it. There's nothing to repent. Does she now go to hell?"

       "Hortense," he said with care, "will not go to hell. If she goes to hell then that is where I would wish to be. I love Hortense. She is too good for that idiot who used to be a brother."

       "Tell me," I said, "how do you get on? I mean, with your vow of abstinence.

       I mean, love. Eros not agape."

       "I get on," he said in his innocence, "as you get on. You found love with chastity, the best kind. And you lost it. I did my best. The evil in the world, the evil. I have nobody. Even Christ had John. I suffer," he said, "from the pangs of lust. I'm a man like any other man, except perhaps you. Some men find chastity easy. I do not. I wonder sometimes whether when the time comes it will not be wise to permit marriage to the priesthood. Better than to burn, take bromides, quinine, bark at the flesh to get into its kennel."

       "When what time comes?"

       "When the Church is remade." Then Carlo got down seriously to his drinking. On the broaching of the dimple Haig he began to curse and spit blasphemies. Like Luther he seemed to see the devil in the corner of the living room, though he did not, in the absence of an inkwell, waste good whisky on him. The devil assumed the guise of a large rat, whose sleek fur and bright teeth Carlo admired extravagantly in various languages, including, I think, Aramaic. In the tones of an upper-class Englishman he said, "For the moment you are in the ascendancy, old boy, what, rather. I see your large clean fangs grinning at my temporary failure. Salut, mon prince, votre bloody altesse. You and I are alike in not possessing a mater, old boy. Even God forced himself into a filial situation. But will prevails, don't you know. There is never any failure of the will. We are what we make ourselves, old chap. Let's see you now as a serpent, your first disguise. Very good, that's really a most remarkable cobra hood, old fellow. I've never been much afraid of snakes, don't you know. The colonial experience, so to say, mon brave. But you bore me rather, you tire me somewhat. A little shut-eye is indicated, wouldn't you say? Rather."

       It was certainly time. Carlo finished what he had in his glass, then he threw the glass in the corner. It did not break. Then he nodded at me quite soberly and went off to bed, sketching a blessing. He was soon roaring. He was up before me next morning; indeed, the aroma of the coffee he was brewing was what woke me. He remembered everything, especially his new stoical loneliness.

CHAPTER 46

King Arthur and Sir Bedivere stowed the Holy Grail safely under the rubble of the ruined chapel in the forest, and with it the rusting spear that had pierced Christ's side. Then they rode wearily to the hill where the remnant of their ragged army was gathered for the last battle. The sky boiled and seethed in eastward-driven coils of cloud, and the banner of the dragon fluttered, tattered, fingers in feeble marameo at the approaching enemy. Arthur spoke to his troops, and his weariness was evident from the slackness of his vocal cords, but the wind carried his words as far as the boys in the rear with what was left of the baggage train, and all listened hopelessly to his words. "We who are redeemed through Christ's blood, we who glorified the civilising skills of the Roman with the good news from Galilee, we the ancient Celts to whom was vouchsafed the living faith to bear among the folk of the dark north, we face now annihilation at the hands of a ruthless and Godless enemy. Yet, though we die, the faith can in no wise perish. Our blood will smoke to the sun and it shall be as incense to the Father of all things. From the soil we nourish with our blood a new race of Christians shall arise. Be of good cheer, for the faith cannot die. Men, do your duty, as the Blessed One did his. Cannot you now hear the noise of the approaching Saxon hordes, merciless, pagan, feeders on the flesh and blood of Christian men? Face them without fear, sustained by the vision of the divine cross, hopeful of heaven. Christ died and rose and may not die again. Fare we forth to battle in faith and duty. Trumpeter, sound the charge." And with a main voice the wretched torn army raised its spears and gave praise to God and King Arthur.

       Al Birnbaum liked none of this. Nor did Joe Svenson. Since they did not like it, neither did Chuck Gottlieb, nor Dick Rothenstein, nor Ed Kingfish. We sat together at a script conference in Al Birnbaum's office. We sat about a great beautiful empty mahogany desk disfigured only by coffee beakers. On the walls were signed photographs of great stars, all however contractual slaves to the studio, and their disdainful smirks were the celestial counterpart of the weary disappointment of the Ashkenazim and the Nordic pout of Joe Svenson. "I told you," I said, "I wasn't going to have any of that Lancelot and Guinevere nonsense. This is what the legend is really all about." They could not see anything in the legend, the children of the Diaspora, the lapsed Lutheran from Minnesota.

       Al Birnbaum said, "A lot of Sunday school stuff." What did he know about Sunday schools? "Too much jabber about religion. We want a human story. This King Arthur sounds like a preacher."

       "Just what I was going to say, Al," Ed Kingfish said.

       "When is this all supposed to be going on?" Joe Svenson asked. "Shakespeare's time?"

       "A lot earlier than Shakespeare," I said. "Earlier even than the Middle Ages. This is the beginning of the Dark Ages. About five hundred years after Christ. Celtic Christianity fighting for its life against the Anglo-Saxons. The AngloSaxons," I explained, "are what you'd call the British. But the British are really Celts. King Arthur's the last of the Celtic rulers of Britain. Then it was the Anglo-Saxons." Nobody seemed to understand that. Celts schmelts, they didn't want education, they wanted a human story.

       Dick Rothenstein said, "I've run all the King Arthur movies I could get a hold of. It's not like what you say, Ken. It's this guy, sir something, and he goes off with the queen, and then King Arthur says, sir whosis, you fucked my wife."

       "Did they say luck in those days?" Joe Svenson asked.

       "It's a very old word," I said. "Anglo-Saxon. Cognate with the German ficken. The same word, I should think, in Yiddish." This piece of speculation did me no good. All looked at me warily and with even less confidence than before. Al Birnbaum fanned cigar smoke away with my treatment, all it was good for. "My contract finishes in a fortnight," I said.