The Complete Enderby (63 page)

Heartburn was slow in coming this morning, which made Enderby, stickler for routine, uneasy. He noted also with rueful pride that, despite the emission of the night, he was bearing before him as he left the kitchen, where he had eaten as well as cooked, a sizeable horizontal ithyphallus lazily swinging towards the vertical. Something to do perhaps with excessive protein intake. He took it to a dirty
towel
in the bathroom, called those Puerto Rican bitches back from that dream, then gave it them all. The street was littered with them. The pimpled lout, astonished and fearful, ran round the corner. This meant that Enderby would have to drive the car away himself. He at once sold it for a trifling sum to a grey-haired black man who shuffled out of an open doorway, evening newspaper in his hand, and made his getaway, naked, on foot. Then dyspepsia struck, he took his black drops, released a savoury gale from as far down as the very caecum, and was ready for work, his own work, not the pseudo-work he would have to do in the afternoon with pseudo-students. For that he must shave, dress, wash, probably in that order. Take the subway, as they called it. Brave mean streets full of black and brown menace.

Enderby, still naked, sat at his landlady’s desk in the bedroom. It was a small apartment, there was no study. He supposed he was lucky to have gotten (very American touch there:
gotten
) an apartment at all at the rent he was able, the salary not being overlarge, to pay. His landlady, a rabid ideological man-hater, had addressed one letter to him from her digs in Bayswater, confirming that he pay the black woman Priscilla to come and clean for him every Saturday, thus maintaining a continuity of her services useful for when his landlady should return to New York. Enderby was not sure what sex she thought he, Enderby, had, since there was a reference to not trying to flush sanitary pads down the toilet. The title
professor
, which she rightly addressed him by, was common, as the old grammars would put it. Perhaps she had read his poems and found a rich femininity in them; perhaps some kind man in the English Department had represented Enderby as an ageing but progressive spinster to her when she sought to let her apartment. Anyway, he had answered the letter promptly on his own portable typewriter, signing with a delicate hand, assuring her that sanitary pads would go out with the garbage and that Priscilla was being promptly paid and not over-worked (lazy black bitch, thought Enderby, but evidently illiterate and not likely to blow the sex gaff in letter or transatlantic cable). So there it was. On the other hand, his landlady might learn in London from librarians or in communications from members of the Californian religiolesbic sorority that Enderby was really a (
sounded suspiciously like the voice of an MCP to me, toothless too, a TMCP, what little game are you playing, dear?
). But it was probably too late for her to do anything
about
it now. Couldn’t evict him on grounds of his sex. The United Nations, conveniently here in New York, would, through an appropriate department, have something very sharp to say about that. So there it was, then. Enderby got down to work.

Back in Morocco, as previously in England, Enderby was used to working in the toilet, piling up drafts and even fair copies in the never-used bath. Here it would not do, since the bath-taps dripped and the toilet-seat was (probably by some previous Jewish-mother tenant who wished to discourage solitary pleasures among her menfolk) subtly notched. It was ungrateful to the bottom. Neither was there a writing table low enough. Nor would Priscilla understand. This eccentric country was great on conformity. Enderby now wrote at the desk that had produced so many androphobic mistress pieces. What he was writing was a long poem about St Augustine and Pelagius, trying to sort out for himself and a couple of score readers the whole worrying business of predestination and free will. He read through what he had so far written, scratching and grunting, naked, a horrible White Owl cigar in his mouth.

He came out of the misty island, Morgan,

Man of the sea, demure in monk’s sackcloth,

Taking the long way to Rome, expecting –

Expecting what? Oh, holiness quintessentialized,

Holiness whole, the wholesome wholemeal of,

Holiness as meat and drink and air, in the

Chaste thrusts of marital love holiness, and

Sanctitas sanctitas even snaking up from

Cloacae and sewers, sanctitas the effluvium

From his Holiness’s arsehole.

Perhaps that was going a bit too far. Enderby poised a ball-point, dove, retracted. No, it was the right touch really. Let the
arsehole
stay. Americans preferred
asshole
for some reason. This then very British. But why not? Pelagius was British. Keep
arsehole
in.

On the long road

Trudging, dust, birdsong, dirty villages,

Stops on the way at monasteries (weeviled bread,

Eisel wine), always this thought:
Sanctitas
.

What dost seek in Rome, brother? The home

Of holiness, to lodge awhile in the

Sanctuary of sanctity, my brothers, for here

Peter died, seeing before he died

The pagan world inverted to sanctitas, and

The very flagged soil is rich with the bonemeal

Of the martyrs. And the brothers would

Look at each other, each thinking, some saying:

Here cometh one that only islands breed.

What can flourish in that Ultima Thule save

Holiness, a bare garment for the wind to

Sing through? And not Favonius either but

Sour Boreas from the pole. Not the grape,

Not garlic not the olive, not the strong sun

Tickling the manhood in a man, be he

Monk or friar or dean or

Burly bishop, big ballocks swinging like twin censers.

Only holiness. God help him, God bless him for

We look upon British innocence.

And the British innocent, hurtful of no man,

Fond of dogs, a cat-stroker,

Trudged on south – vine, olive, garlic,

Brown tits jogging while brown feet

Danced in the grapepress and the

Baaark ballifoll gorstafick

That last was inner Enderby demanding the stool. He took his poem with him thither, frowning, sat reading.

Monstrous aphrodisiac danced in the heavens

Prrrrrrp faaaark

Wheep

Till at length he came to the outer suburbs and

Fell on his knees
O sancta urbs sancta sancta

Meaning sancta suburbs and

Plomp

Enderby wiped himself with slow care and marched back, frowning, reading. As he reached the telephone on the bed table the telephone rang, so that he was able to pick it up at once, thus disconcerting the voice on the other end, which had not expected such promptitude.

‘Oh. Mr Enderby?’ It was a woman’s voice, being higher than a man’s. American female voices lacked feminine timbre as known in the south of vine and garlic, were just higher because of accident of larynx being smaller.

‘Professor Enderby speaking.’

‘Oh, hi. This is the Sperr Lansing Show. We wondered if you –’

‘What? Who? What is this?’

‘The Sperr Lansing Show. A talk show. Television.
The
talk show. Channel Fif –’

‘Ah, I see,’ Enderby said, with British heartiness. ‘I’ve seen it, I think. She left it here, you see. Extra on the rent.’

‘Who? What?’

‘Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. A television. She’s a great one for her rights. Ah yes, I’ve seen it a few times. A sort of thin man with a fat jackal. Both leer a good deal, but one supposes they have to.’

‘No, no, you have the wrong show there, professor.’ The title now seemed pretentious, also absurd, as when someone in a film is addressed as
professor
. ‘What you mean is the Cannon Dickson Show. That’s mostly show business personalities. The Sperr Lansing Show is, well,
different
.’

‘I didn’t really mean to insist, ha ha,’ Enderby said, ‘on the title of professor. Fancy dress, you know. A lot of nonsense really. And I really must apologize for …’ He was going to say
for being naked
: it was all this damned visual stuff. ‘For my innocence. I mean my ignorance.’

‘I guess I ought to introduce myself – we’ve already been talking for such a long time. I’m Midge Tauchnitz.’

‘Enderby,’ Enderby said. ‘Sorry, that was … So, eh? “The strong spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame.” I suppose that’s where he got it from.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Anyway, thank you for calling.’

‘No, it doesn’t go out live. Nothing these days goes out live.’

‘I promise to watch it at the earliest opportunity. Thank you very much for suggesting …’

‘No, no, we want you to appear on it. We record at seven so you’d have to be here about six.’

‘Why?’ Enderby said in honest surprise. ‘For God’s sake why?’

‘Oh, makeup and so on. It’s on West 46th Street, between Fifth and …’

‘No, no, no. Why me?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Me.’

‘Oh.’ The voice became teasing and girlish. ‘Oh, come now, professor, that’s playing it too cool. It’s the movie.
The Deutschland
.’

‘Ah. But I only wrote the – I mean, it was only my idea. That’s what it says, anyway. Why don’t you ask one of the others, the ones who really made it?’

‘Well,’ she said candidly. ‘We tried to get hold of Bob Ponte, the script-writer but he’s in Honolulu writing a script, and Mr Schaumwein is in Rome, and Millennium suggested we get on to you. So I phoned the university and they gave us your –’

‘Hopkins,’ Enderby said, in gloomy play. ‘Did you try Hopkins?’

‘No luck there either. Nobody knows where he is.’

‘In the eschatological sense, I should think it’s pretty certain that –’

‘Pardon me?’

‘But in the other it’s no wonder. 1844 to 89,’ he twinkled.

‘Oh, I’ll write that down. But it doesn’t sound like a New York number –’

‘No no no no no. A little joke. He’s dead, you see.’

‘Gee, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. But you’re okay? I mean, you’ll be there?’

‘If you really want me. But I still don’t see –’

‘You don’t? You don’t read the newspapers?’

‘Never. And again never. A load of frivolity and lies. They’ve been attacking it, have they?’

‘No. Some boys have been attacking some nuns. In Manhattanville. I’m shocked you didn’t know. I assumed –’

‘Nuns are always being attacked. Their purity is an affront to the dirty world.’

‘Remember that. Remember to say that. But the point is that they said they wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t seen the movie. That’s why we’re –’

‘I see. I see. Always blame art, eh? Not original sin but art. I’ll have my say, never fear.’

‘You have the address?’

‘You ignore art as so much unnecessary garbage or you blame it for your own crimes. That’s the way of it. I’ll get the bastards, all of them. I’m not having this sort of nonsense, do you hear?’ There was silence at the other end. ‘You never take art for what it is – beauty, ultimate meaning, form for its own sake, self-subsisting, oh no. It’s always got to be either sneered at or attacked as evil. I’ll have my bloody say. What’s the name of the show again?’ But she had rung off, silly bitch.

Enderby went snorting back to his poem. The stupid bastards.

But wherever he went in Rome, it was always the same –

Sin sin sin, no sanctity, the whole unholy

Grammar of sin, syntax, accidence, sin’s

Entire lexicon set before him, sin.

Peacocks in the streets, gold dribbled over