The Complete Enderby (76 page)

‘No!’

‘I can see what you’re looking at,’ she said. ‘That sonnet about the Reformation.’ She knew the bloody book so well, it seemed such a pity. The television film showed a whining GI, cap tucked in epaulette, whining: ‘Can’t we talk this thing over, Mary?’

‘Oh, all right then,’ Enderby said wearily. And he turned his nozzle, with some slight muscular effort, on to the page. ‘See,’ he said. ‘I’m doing my best. But nothing will come. It stands to reason nothing will come.
Stand
, blast you, is the operative word.’

And then, Luther throwing, but it was an inkpot, they showed you the inkstained wall in Wittenburg, Enderby threw the book, which fluttered vogelwise, towards her. Instinctively she shot at it. He had known, somehow, she would. He strode, heavily naked,
balls
aswing, weapon pointing, through the smoke and the echo of noise. And yet God has not said a word. She aimed straight at him, saying, ‘If you think you’re going to be a fucking martyr for art –’

‘Said that already,’ Enderby said, and he grasped her wrist at the very instant of her firing vaguely at the ceiling. The noise and smell were surely excessive. He had that damned gun now, a dainty hot little engine. She clawed at his buttocks as he went to the window partly open for the heat. Threw the bloody thing out. ‘There,’ he said. Luther, he remembered for some reason, had married a nun. Christ’s lily and beast of the waste wood. This girl now beat at him with teeny fists. Enderby had had a good supper. He saw the two of them in the little mirror above a bookshelf devoted to psychology deeply Jewish and anguished. He had his glasses on, he observed, would not indeed have been able to observe otherwise, otherwise, of course, naked. He gave her a push somewhere around the midriff. She ended up crying on a
pouffe
.

‘Bastard bastard.’

Enderby took off his glasses and placed them carefully on top of the television set which, well into the noise of impending victory, he clicked off. ‘You and your bloody guns,’ he said. ‘Get you into a bloody mediaeval monastery full of great ballocky monks, that would teach you. Flabby, indeed. Blubber, for Christ’s sake. Silenus, Falstaff.’ This was for his own benefit. ‘Think of those, blast you.’ His heart seemed to be pumping away very healthily. Noise of impending victory. Not with a whimper but … ‘Blaming me, indeed. Blaming poor dead Hopkins. As though I held the nuns down for them.’

‘Go away. Get away from me.’

‘I live here,’ Enderby said. ‘Sort of.’ And then he pulled, two-handed, at the hems. Cry, clutching heaven by the. That was just to get a rhyme with
Thames
. Rhine refused them Thames would ruin them. Francis Thompson a far inferior poet. Hopkins appeared an instant, open-mouthed, clearly seen moaning at another’s sin, though in the dark of the confessional. ‘You did it,’ Enderby said. ‘So fagged, so fashed, indeed. Get away for a bit, can’t you?’ Hopkins became a pale daguerrotype, then was washed completely out. The skirt was elasticated at the waist and pulled down with little
difficulty
. In joy, Enderby saw the tops of stockings, suspenders, peach knickers.

‘You filthy fucking –’

‘Oh, this is all too American,’ Enderby said. ‘Sex and violence. What angel of regeneration sent you here?’ For there was no question of mumbling and begging now.
Enderbius triumphans, exultans
.

THIS THIRD HEART
attack, if that was what it had really been, did not seem to be really all that bad – a mere sketch to remind him of its shape. But he knew its shape intimately already, that of a Spenglerian parabola. Yet another interpretation seemed, as he sat in the toilet and excreted as quietly as he could, there being a guest in the apartment, possible, though he was fain to reject it. An inner hand showing in delicate deadly gesture the impending chop or noose. He was glad in a way that she had taken possession of the circular bed, no room for him, since bed was a place where people frequently died, sometimes in their sleep. She lay naked on her back, telling, say ten-twenty with her arms and seven-thirty with her legs, her delicate snoring indicating that it was a fine February night and all was well. She had left her home in Poughkeepsie, it appeared, and was obviously welcome to stay here with Enderby so long as she did not go out to buy another gun. She at least knew his work. Anyway, there was no question of thinking in terms of a nice long future. These heart attacks had been as good to Enderby as a
like
and
you know
harangue from one of his students. But he did not really want the chop to come tonight and in his sleep. He fancied doing some more vigorous death-dodging in the light. There was this to be said for New York: it was not dull.

Wiped and having flushed, Enderby went out to the kitchen to
make
tea. There would be a hell of a row tomorrow, today that was, when that dusky bitch Priscilla came to do the chores (How come an educated man like you live in such Gadarene filth? She was, after all, a Bible scholar); but there always was a hell of a row. This time there would probably be something about fornication and Cozbi as well as dirt. Enderby ate pensively a little cold left-over stew while he waited for the water to boil: quite delicious, really. He seemed to have lost a fair amount of protein in the last few hours, perhaps cholesterol too. When the tea had sufficiently brewed or drawn (five bags only; not overtempt providence) and had been sharply sweetened and embrowned, he took it into the living-room. He piled
pouffe
on
pouffe
to make himself comfortable in order to watch for the dawn to come up. He switched on the television set, which gave him a silly film apt for these small hours. It was a college musical of the thirties (
How come that such a scholar/Can put up with such a squalor?/Just gimme hafe a dollar/And I’ll make it spick and span, man
. There was a coincidence!) but it was made piquant with girls in peach-looking camiknicks with metallic hairdos. Enderby did some random leafing through the slim volumes she had brought for him to defile. God, what a genius, etc. The film, with interludes of advertising suspiciously cheap albums of popular music, went harmlessly on while he sipped his tea and browsed.

You went that way as you always said you would,

Contending over the cheerful cups that good

Was in the here-and-now, in, in fact, the cheerful

Cups and not in some remotish sphere full

Of twangling saints, the-pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die

Of Engels as much as angels, whereupon I …

He could not well remember having written that. Besides, the type was blurring. He saw without surprise that the film had changed to one, in very good colour too, about Augustine and Pelagius. Thank God. The thing had been at last artistically dealt with. No need after all for him to worry about finding an appropriate poetic form.

35. (Say) Exterior Day A Road

(A man is vigorously whipping his donkey, which brays in great pain. His wife comes along to tell him to desist.)

(
he continues beating
)

(
he beats her till she bleeds
)

36. The Same Two Shot

(Pelagius and Obtrincius are watching. The noise and the cries are pitiable.)

37. Resume 35

(
The man Fabricius has now turned to his son who, having apparently intervened to save his mother from the vicious blows, is bloody and bowed. The mother weeps bloodily. The ass looks on, sore but impassive, also bloody.)

38. Resume 36

(
He moves out of the shot and into:
)

39. Two Shot: Man and Pelagius

(
Sketching a blessing, Pelagius moves out of shot
)

Sweet reason, my ass.

40. Exterior Day Rome: A Scene of Unbridled Revelry

(
LS of a sort of carnival. Instruments of the fifth century
AD
are blaring and thumping, while unbridled revellers frisk about, kissing and drinking and lifting kirtles
.)

41. The Same Group Shot

(
A group of gorgers are greasily fingering smoking haunches and swine-shanks, stuffing it in, occasionally vomiting it out.)

(They all look, in the same direction, open mouths exhibiting half-chewed greasy protein.)

42. Their Pov: Pelagius

(He stands with pilgrim’s staff, looking with calm sorrow.)

It coarsens the soul and harms the body.

(
Noise of lavish vomiting
)

There, you see what I mean.

43. Pelagius’s Pov

(
The gorgers look somewhat abashed, but a bold fat bald one speaks up baldly and boldly
.)

44. Resume 42

45. A Group of Fornicators

(
Mitred bishops, bearded, venerable, lusty, look up from clipping their well-favoured whores. They look at each other, frown.)