The Complete Enderby (64 page)

In dark rooms, vomiting after

Banquets of ostrich bowels stuffed with saffron,

Minced pikeflesh and pounded larkbrain,

Served with a sauce headily fetid, and pocula

Of wine mixed with adder’s blood to promote

Lust lust and again.

Pederasty, podorasty, sodomy, bestiality,

Degrees of family ripped apart like

Bodices in the unholy dance. And he said,

And Morgan said, whom the scholarly called Pelagius:

Why do ye this, my brothers and sisters?

Are ye not saved by Christ, are ye not

Sanctified by his sacrifice, oh why why why?

(Being British and innocent) and

What was the name of that show again? Art blamed as always. Art was neutral, neither teaching nor provoking, a static shimmer, he would tell the bastards. What was it again? And then he thought about this present poem (a draft of course, very much a draft) and wondered:
is it perhaps not didactic?
But how about
The Wreck of the Deutschland?
Hopkins was always having a go at the English, and the Welsh too, for not rushing to be converted back (the marvellous milk was Walsingham Way, once) to Catholicism. But somehow Hopkins was of the devil’s party without knowing it (better remember not to say that on this Live Lancing Show, that was the name, something like it anyway), people were stupid, picked you up literally on that sort of thing. It was a kind of paganism with him: lush-kept plush-capped sloe, indeed, with God tacked on. The our-king-back-oh-upon-English-souls stuff was merely structural, something to bring the poem to an end. But how about this?

No, he decided. He was not preaching. Who the hell was he to preach? Out of the Church at sixteen, never been to mass in forty years. This was merely an imaginative inquiry into free will and predestination. Somewhat comforted, he read on, scratching, the White Owl, self-doused, re-lighted, hooting out foul smoke.

They said to him cheerfully, looking up

From picking a peahen bone or kissing the

Nipple or nates of son, daughter, sister,

Brother, aunt, ewe, teg: Why, stranger,

Hast not heard the good news? That Christ

Took away the burden of our sins on his

Back broad to bear, and as we are saved

Through him it matters little what we do?

Since we are saved once for all, our being

Saved will not be impaired or cancelled by

Our present pleasures (which we propose to

Renew tomorrow after a suitable and well-needed

Rest). Alleluia alleluia to the Lord for he has

Led us to two paradises, one to come and the other

Here and now. Alleluia. And they fell to again,

To nipple or nates or fish baked with datemince,

Alleluia. And Morgan cried to the sky:

How long O Lord wilt thou permit these

Transgressions against thy holiness?

Strike them strike them as thou once didst

The salty cities of the plain, as through

Phinehas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron

Thou didst strike down the traitor Zimri

And his foul whore of the Moabite temples Cozbi.

Strike strike. But the Lord did nothing.

Here came the difficulties. This whole business of free will and predestination and original sin had to be done very dramatically. And yet there had to be a bit of sermonizing. How the hell? Enderby, who was not at present wearing his spectacles (ridiculous when one was otherwise naked, anyway he only needed them for distance really), gazing vaguely about the bedroom for an answer found none forthcoming. The bookshelves of his landlady sternly turned the backs, spines rather, of their contents towards him: not our business, we are concerned with the
real
issues of life, meaning women down-trodden by men, the economic oppression of the blacks, counter-culture, coming revolt, Reich, Fanon, third world. Then Enderby, squinting, could hardly believe what he saw. At the bedroom door a woman, girl, female anyway. Covering his genitals with his poem he said:

‘What the devil? Who let you? Get out.’

‘But I have an appointment with you at ten. It’s ten after now. It was arranged. I’ll wait in the – Unless – I mean, I didn’t expect –’

She had not yet gone. Enderby, pumping vigorously at White Owl as if it would thus make him an enveloping cloud, turned his back to her, covered his bottom with his poem, then found his dressing-gown (Rawcliffe’s really, bequeathed to him with his other effects) on a chair behind a rattan settee and near to the air-conditioner. He clothed himself in it. She was still there and talking.

‘I mean, I don’t mind if you don’t –’

‘I do mind,’ Enderby said. And he flapped towards her on bare feet but in his gown. ‘What is all this anyway?’

‘For
Jesus
.’

‘For
who
, for Christ’s sake?’ He was close to her now and saw that she was a nice little thing he supposed she could be called,
with
nicely sculpted little tits under a black sweater stained with, as he supposed, coke and pepsi and hamburger fat (
good food
was what these poor kids needed), long American legs in patched worker’s pants. Strange how one never bothered to take in the face here in America, the face didn’t matter except on films, one never remembered the face, and all the voices were the same. And then: ‘They shouldn’t have let you in, you know, just like that. You’re supposed to be screened or something, and then they ring me up and ask me if it’s all right.’

‘But he knows me, the man downstairs. He knows I’m one of your students.’

‘Oh, are you?’ said Enderby. ‘I didn’t quite – Yes,’ peering at her, ‘I suppose you could be. We’d better go into the sitting-room or whatever they call it.’ And he pushed past her into the corridor to lead the way.

The room where he was supposed to
live
, that is, watch television, play protest songs on his landlady’s record-player, look out of the window down on the street at acts of violence, was furnished mostly with barbaric nonsense – drums and shields and spears and very ill-woven garish rugs – and you were supposed to sit on
pouffes
. Enderby waved this girl to a
pouffe
with one hand and with the other indicated the television set, saying, puffing out White Owl smoke, ‘I’m to be on that thing there.’

‘Oh.’

‘The Blowpipe Show or something. Can’t think of the name offhand. What did you say your name was?’

‘Oh,
you know
. Lydia Tietjens.’ And, as he sat on a neighbouring
pouffe
, she gave him a playful push, as at his rather nice eccentric foreign silliness.

‘Ah yes, of course. Ford Madox Ford. Met him once. He had terrible halitosis, you know. Stood in his way. The Establishment rejected him. And it was because he’d had the guts to fight and get gassed, while the rest of the bastards stayed at home. I say, you’re not recording that, are you?’ For, he now saw, she had a small Japanese cassette machine and was holding it towards him, rather like a sideswoman with offertory-box.

‘Just getting a level.’ And then, after some whirring and clicking, Enderby heard an unfamiliar voice say:
rest of the bastards stayed at home I say you’re not rec
.

‘What did you say it was for?’

‘For
Jesus
. Our magazine. Women for Jesus.
You know
.’

‘Why just women for Jesus? I thought anyone could join.’ And Enderby looked with fascination at the xeroxed thing she brought out of what looked like a British respirator haversack –
their
magazine, typewritten, as he could see from the last page, with no margin justifying, and the front page just showing the name JESUS and a crude portrait of a beardless though plentifully haired messiah.

‘But that’s not him.’

‘Right. Not
him
. What proof is there that it was a
him
?’

Enderby breathed hard a few times and said: ‘Would you like what we English call elevenses? Cakes and tea and things? I could cook you a steak if you liked. Or, wait, I have some stew left over from yesterday. It wouldn’t take a minute to heat it up.’ That was the trouble with all of them, poor kids. Half-starved, seeing visions, poisoned with cokes and hamburgers.

‘DO YOU BELIEVE
in God?’ she asked, a steak sandwich in one paw and the cassette thing in the other.

‘Is that tea strong enough for you?’ Enderby asked. ‘It doesn’t look potable to me. One bag indeed. Gnat piss,’ he added. And then: ‘Oh, God. Well, believing is neither here nor there, you know. I believe in God and so what? I don’t believe in God and so what again? It doesn’t affect his own position, does it?’

‘Why do you say
his
?’ she hissed.

‘Her, then. It. Doesn’t matter really. A matter of tradition and convention and so on. Needs a new pronoun. Let’s invent one, unique, just for himherit. Ah, that’s it, then. Nominative
heshit
. Accusative
himrit
. Genitive
hiserits
.’

‘But you’re still putting the masculine first. The
heshit
bit’s all right, though. Appropriate.’

‘I don’t mind what goes first,’ Enderby said. ‘Would you like something by Sara Lee? Please yourself then. All right.
Shehit. Herimit. Herisits
. It doesn’t affect herisits position whether I believe or not.’

‘But what happens when you die?’

‘You’re finished with,’ Enderby said promptly. ‘Done for. And even if you weren’t – well, you die then, gasp your last, then you’re sort of wandering, free of your body. You wander around and then you come into contact with a sort of big thing. What is this big thing? God, if you like. What’s it, or shehit, like? I would say,’ Enderby said thoughtfully, ‘like a big symphony, the page of the score of infinite length, the number of instruments infinite but all bound into one big unity. This big symphony plays itself for ever and ever. And who listens to it? It listens to itself. Enjoys itself for ever and ever and ever. It doesn’t give a bugger whether you hear it or not.’

‘Like masturbation.’

‘I thought it would come to that. I thought you’d have to bring sex into it sooner or later. Anyway, a kind of infinite Ninth Symphony. God as Eternal Beauty. God as Truth? Nonsense. God as Goodness. That means shehit has to be in some sort of ethical relationship with beings that are notGod. But God is removed, cut off, self-subsistent, not giving a damn.’

‘But that’s horrible. I couldn’t live with a God like that.’

‘You don’t have to. Anyway, what have you or anybody else got to do with it? God doesn’t have to be what people want shehit to be. I’m fed up with God,’ Enderby said, ‘so let’s get on to something else.’ And at once he got up painfully and noisily to find the whisky bottle, this being about the time for. ‘I haven’t got any glasses,’ he said. ‘Not clean ones, anyway. You’ll have to have it from the bottle.’

‘I don’t want any.’ She didn’t want her tea either. Quite right: gnat piss. Enderby got down again. ‘If there’s no life after death,’ she said, ‘why does it matter about doing good in this world? I mean, if there’s no reward or punishment in the next.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Enderby sneered. ‘Doing things because of what you’re bloody well going to get out of it.’ He took some whisky and did a conventional shudder. It raged briefly through the inner streets and then was transmuted into benevolent warmth in the
citadel
. Enderby smiled on the girl kindly and offered the bottle. She took it, raised it like a trumpet to the heavens, sucked in a millilitre or so. ‘And, while we’re at it,’ he said, ‘let’s decide what we mean by good.’

‘You decide. It’s you who are being interviewed.’

‘Well, there are some stupid bastards who can’t understand how the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp could go home after torturing Jews all day and then weep tears of joy at a Schubert symphony on the radio. They say: here’s a man dedicated to evil capable of enjoying the good. But what the imbecilic sods don’t realize is that there are two kinds of good – one is neutral, outside ethics, purely aesthetic. You get it in music or in a sunset if you like that sort of thing or in a grilled steak or in an apple. If God’s good, if God exists that is, God’s probably good in that way. As I said.’ He sipped from the bottle she had handed back. ‘Before.’