Napoleon Symphony

by Anthony Burgess

  “You didn’t do well there,” she smiled with a tinge of young woman’s malice. “It was all set up for you, you know, and he tore up the dedication. You know who I mean, I think. Still,” she now smiled, her gold-flued arms apparently insensitive to the untimely winter, though it seemed more reasonable or seasonable to regard all this as some mere transitory tramontana, some boreal thrust, yet it was most unfortunate for the poor dear roses, “the more appropriate for being what you said it is. Heartening without content—the phrase is, though I truncate it a little, all yours.”

  “I had no skill in art,” he shivered, “except that particular one.”

  “An art highly wasteful of its materials.” She smiled still, and there was now a quality of near-finality about it, what time her countenance performed, so it had to be possible for him to think, a coda consisting in a sequence of appearances of the once known and the abandoned or abandoning. “Scarcely breathes that bliss,” There was a quite certain incoherence now. “Now yields you with some sighs.” A propos of what all this now was was not at all apparent. “Our explanation.”

  It was with an undoubted sensation of a, to look for no better word, detachment from what was, or certainly had been, a crowd of categories that had set about, punctuated, though not exclusively animated, the modes of being which had constituted what he had always habitually conceived of as, though not necessarily expressed as, interpretative of his own essence, that he now tried to give out, to “sing,” not with the explicit vocality that might, on other planes, be predicated as of the primary necessity of the action or utterance (both terms could be regarded as apt: where, after all, does one draw the line?), but rather with the energy of sheer intent, in the manner of a distinctly spiritual thrust, the, as it were, melodic counterpart of what he had always seen his function to be, exclusively his, very much (because of the undoubted difficulty of separating out that same function and the before-mentioned essence) himself as he, though not he alone, very far from it, to do him justice, saw himself. But, so it dawned upon him in the giving out, there might be a means, and he thought there probably was, of conveying, of indeed distilling, into the particular fluidity of the form, more than the heart or essence of the function. After all, was there not, had there not been, a succession of actions that could look, and not in vain, to the sonorous panels of some great harmonious triptych or (and why on earth not?) even tetraptych for their generalized, though not too much so, harmonic and contrapuntal (though he shuddered at the connotations of fugue, fuga, until he saw how it might be construed less as a fleeing than as a kind of structured and multiple flying, intransitive or the other thing) expression. How not to generalize, though: there was the rub.

  But in the generalized pouring forth, very loud or quite its opposite, the polarity of terms no longer seeming to apply in this sphere, an unvocal vocality not being at all out of the order of things as they now presented themselves, or rather as he was presented to himself through them, though it might be more applicable, the one true and entirely lovely thing, it did not appear in the least to be a diminution, but rather an augmentation, the augmentation (more properly to articulize), altogether very fine and grand and with trumpets, since to become not one’s own essence (it had to be essence, since existing was now altogether out of it) but the one big final identification with the essential essence, so to put it, of which his own had to be accounted, in this unique retrospect, as a mere and very finite aspect, was of a glory, a dayspring to his former dimness, a crimson-cresseted east, entirely and satisfactorily enthroned and crowned, most quite definitely not to be gainsaid. Thus to become the thing was, and he could not forbear to flaw the great melodic surge with a momentary chuckle at the vulgarism, ever so much “one in the ear” for the intransigent, but undeniably a talented intransigent, who had balked so at the regretful necessity of that “taking off” that time (but stay: was not the locution bardic?) and at everything that had followed on after that, the sweetness of the orange in his hands of the true aromatic and zestful glory, in spite of it and so on, but of course ce petit meinherr had known, in his own way, and notwithstanding a disability that would not have gained him even the rank of plain soldat, all about the nature (the essence again!) of this particular glory, even though—and here was the deucedly queer thing—he evidently didn’t go in at all much for that species of commodity. Thou mastering me. The chuckle, which had now become hard to control, went well enough with the music.

  “Sir Hudson Lowe,” smiled Dr. Arnott, “has consented to give his consent, but I see you already hard at it. A bit premature, wouldn’t you say? A bit irregular, without the rest of your confrères present?” And he gestured toward the open corpse, in which Dr. Antommarchi was busily excavating. “It was the imperial wish,” cried Dr. Antommarchi, “that an autopsy be conducted. It is in the imperial will, or in a codicil thereto, and there is nothing that your Sir Lowe can do to prevent it. Much, I know, as he would wish to. The costal cartilages,” he said, in a tone more impersonal and professional, “are to a large degree ossified.”

  “No, no, you miss my point,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “My point was to emphasize the entire willingness of Sir gubernatorial Hudson to have such an er operation conducted. Dr. Shortt and Dr. Mitchell will corroborate, I have no doubt.” And he gestured toward them.

  “Most willingly,” willed willingly Dr. Mitchell.

  “But his willingness is quite irrelevant and impertinent,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. And then, more quietly, clinically: “This left pleural cavity is, as you see, filled with a citrous-colored fluid.”

  “That what you foreign fellows call it, eh?” said Dr. Shortt, peering in. “Bit of a stink, I’d say.”

  “It smells, if of anything,” cried Dr. Antommarchi, “of violets.”

  “Ah, very good,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “Very wholesome, is that it? A corpse in the very pink of health, what?” And he gestured towards the superior lobe of the lung.

  “Tubercles,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “Seminato di tubercoli”

  “Oh, everybody has those,” Dr. Shortt shortly snorted. “The main point is, as my colleague there,” and he gestured towards him, “is implying or has already implied, that nobody can be blamed for anything, eh? That everybody’s in the clear.”

  “I do not doubt,” cried Dr. Antommarchi, looking at the right costal pleural sac, “that there will be evidence found of foul play.”

  “Not if it can possibly be avoided,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “We will make every effort to avoid that.”

  “That Irish doctor spoke of neglect and persecution on the part of your Sir Lowe to the House of Lords in London,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “And look what happened to him—court-martialed.” Several bronchial ganglia were enlarged, degenerate, in suppuration.

  “Oh, hardly to the House of Lords, not directly,” munched Dr. Mitchell.

  “An Irishman, note,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “Not trustworthy, of course. All on the side of this one here.” He gestured to the him that was now it. “A lot of Irish in his army. That man MacDonald, for instance, with some ridiculous title.” And he gestured toward the right hand that had presumably bestowed it.

  “A French Scot, I’d thought,” said Dr. Shortt. “Joined the Irish Legion, though. And where are they all now, eh?”

  “That friend of his, forget his name, reported him in good health and scrimshanking. Malingering, you understand,” said Dr. Mitchell.

  “Lies, lies, lies,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “You all know all too well of the conspiracy of hate. Your hateful Sir Lowe. The pericardium is in a normal state, but the heart, you observe, is fatty.”

  “He was generally fat, wasn’t he?” sniffed Dr. Shortt. “It was remarked on, his fatness, as soon as he got here.”

  “No,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “A morbidity induced by the manner of life imposed on him by—And gaseous matter, not fat.”

  “You ought not to speak in that manner of the Governor of the Colony,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “Your attitude however m
ay, I suppose, be excused in a foreigner of your sort. By,” he smilingly added, “a foreigner of your sort. You shouldn’t really be here, anyway. The prisoner’s dead and gone, and you should be at least, ha, gone.”

  “Distension of the peritoneum, a great quantity of gas. A soft, transparent and fluid transudation,” Dr. Antommarchi said, making it sound rather poetical. Then he cried aloud: “I speak as a friend, a lover, a worshipper, and a man of science.”

  “Don’t go well together, those,” said Dr. Shortt, shaking his head as at a proposed supper menu. “Ah, let’s have a look at that stomach, shall we? A good close look.”

  “There, you see,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “A certain engorgement that must be construed as cirrhotic.”

  “Nothing to do with anybody here,” smiled Dr. Arnott. He gestured towards the peritoneal membrane, which was of a very beautiful though now purely morphological normality. “As for the stomach, gentlemen—ahhh. You know what we’re after first, of course,” he smiled.

  “I know all too well,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. And he almost seemed to make the gesture, with cupping hands, of trying to hide what he knew all too well they were after.

  “A bit of a stink there,” ça pued Dr. Shortt.

  “The acridity and fetidity of the odor,” now mumbled Dr. Antommarchi, “are self-evident and I do not attempt to mitigate them. Though to a more sympathetic, a more loving olfactory system—”

  “No violets, certainly,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “Rather violent if anything. Come now, you know what we want. Let’s have a good look at it.”

  “With every breath in my body I protest,” protested Dr. Antommarchi. “I protest at what you are lyingly proposing to find, or rather not to find, on the treacherous instructions of the archfiend Sir Lowe.”

  “Do try and get the name right,” counterprotested Dr. Mitchell. “The sir bit goes with the first name. But you foreigners will insist upon having it your own way.”

  “A look at it,” smiled Dr. Arnott, looking smilingly. So there it was then: to Dr. Antommarchi the imperial liver; to the British medicals the general’s, or general, liver. The liver. And they had a damned good look at the liver. “The situation is,” cried Dr. Antommarchi, “and I will record it immediately in my notebook and request, nay demand, your countersignatures of confirmation, as follows.” And he pronounced in Corsican pomposity, writing with a pencil: “The imperial liver, infected with chronic hepatitis, was intimately joined to the diaphragm on its convex surface. The adhesion—firm, cellular, very long-established—extended along the said surface all the way.” And then, fixing them with fierce glowing Corsican eyes, “Hepatitis. Look at the abnormal enlargement, engorgement, elephantine hypertrophy. Now then, perfidious, I have you.”

  “Oooooh,” smiled Dr. Arnott, like a little girl confronting her Christmas doll, and with a raised tone of little-girl ecstasy, “what a perfectly lovely liver. So normal, so unenlarged.” And he gestured. The other two perfidious Albionites cooed in chorus, “Oooooh.” A beautiful liver. A healthy liver. Not a bit, not to make a song and dance of it, enlarged. Dr. Antommarchi made a song and dance, and the others watched him. Then Dr. Antommarchi seized hold of the liver, as to auction it at a reserve appropriate to its enlargement, and said:

  “At it. Look. At. It look.”

  “What we have always been chiefly concerned about,” smiled Dr. Arnott, “is the stomach. Look at it, gentlemen,” gesturing. “Clearly cancerous. Could one possibly have, in one’s wildest dreams as a first-term student, any possible doubt as to the impossibility of its being anything other than cancerous?”

  Most certainly (Dr. Antommarchi called on pre-Christian Corsican gods) cancerous, in a severely cancerous condition, there was no possibility of a reasonable clinician’s entertaining the least possible doubt about that. Most clearly and patently, most classically cancerous.

  “I know you all, I know your tricks,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “I know that you know that the Emperor’s father died of a cancerous condition of the stomach, I know that you know that such things can be hereditary, but I know too that there is no cancerous condition here, it is the liver, the liver, he is dead of the liver, oh Castor and Pollux, the treachery, the lies, the cancer of perfidy.”

  “So,” smiled Dr. Arnott, “we may sum up our autoptic findings to this effect: to wit, that the stomach is perforated by a hole large enough to admit a finger but adhering to the liver in such a manner as to effect a blockage of the perforation. Death due to a cancerous ulcer of the stomach, the same stomach (ha, I apologize: there is clearly no other stomach under postmortal examination) exhibiting signs of lesions about to become cancerous. Agreed?”

  Agreed, agreed.

  “Not agreed,” fandangoed Dr. Antommarchi, screaming, “not and never to be agreed. Oh, the perfidy, oh the shame of the treacherous misrepresentation—”

  “Wait,” suddenly said Dr. Shortt. “I would say, you know, that that liver is after all abnormally enlarged.” Drs. Arnott and Mitchell gave him the tribute of twenty seconds of staggering disbelief.

  “Siding with him, are you?” smiled Dr. Arnott. “Going along with this Dr. Antimony or Dr. Antibody here?”

  “No, no. On an independent view of it, I’d say that it was certainly abnormally enlarged. Nothing to do with what he says. Trust the judgment of my own—”

  “It’s a beautifully normal liver,” smiled Dr. Arnott, “and you said so yourself. And this Dr. Antinomian here heard you say it, didn’t you, my friend and colleague?”

  “Treachery treachery treach—”

  “I think,” smiled Dr. Arnott, “that the Governor, that Sir Hudson Lowe, on behalf, remember, of Lord Bathurst back in London, would agree that there is no enlargement of the liver. Three to two, gentlemen.”

  “I’m surprised,” sniffed Dr. Mitchell, “that you, Shortt, should be willing to go along with—Well, after all, certain loyalties, the claims of undoubted decencies. Damn it, man, whose side are you on?”

  “He is on,” cried Dr. Antommarchi, “the side of truth, the side of our great and good dead king and master.”

  “I wouldn’t agree with that last bit,” scowled Dr. Shortt. “Truth, if you like, but not the rest of the rigamarole. And if having truth means having to have all that, then I’m not too sure how I stand. Look,” he said to his fellow-perfidalbionites, “I’m not too sure either that I give a damn about Sir Hudson Lowe and that fool Bathurst back in London. No one’s going to send me to the guillotine for having the courage of the conviction of my own eyesight. I say it’s enlarged—”

  “Abnormally, you said.” Dr. Arnott smiled at him.

  “Whatever that means—”

  “Whatever enlarged means,” twitched Dr. Mitchell. “Look, Shortt, do you know what the average size of a liver is?”

  “I’ve seen enough livers in my time to know that this one is damnably enlarged. Sorry, don’t want any trouble, as you know, but there it is, damn it.”

  “I heard that,” cried Dr. Antommarchi, “about the guillotine. Have courage, man. His lovers and worshippers will be praying for you if that day should come.”

  “We don’t have the guillotine in England,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “We’re civilized there. It was just a figure of speech. Nobody’s going to send anyone to the guillotine. Except,” he said, but his smile showed that this was no time for threats and insults and so on to this Dr. Auntie Margery here. “Now then,” brisk, smiling, gesturing, “a cancerous condition of the stomach. Right, Shortt? Accept that as the cause of his taking off?”

  “That liver’s damnably enlarged. Funny thing I didn’t notice it before. Very well, death through cancerous ulcer, I’ll sign that, but I want that put in about the enlarged liver.”

  “Oh, I don’t think we’re going to have that,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “We’ll leave out the liver. An irrelevance, really.”

  “I’m having the liver in,” snorted Shortt. “And I want it noted that Sir Hudson Lowe has suppressed the enlargement bit. And I
don’t care a damn.”

  “Friend to the truth and the cause,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “For my part, I will be no party. I will sign nothing.”

  “Couldn’t be better,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “Damned if I know really how you got into all this. It was his mother sent you, wasn’t it? Along with those two damned snuffling priests. Madam Mayor or Mare or whatever they call her.”

  “Look,” sourly said Dr. Shortt. “I don’t want you breathing garlic and ami de la verité all over me. It’ll sound as if I’m in on some damned foreign conspiracy. I go my own way, follow my own ocular testimony, so keep your garlicky breath out of it, do you understand?”

  “I stand alone,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “Treachery, always treach.”

  “Oh, do shut up,” smiled Dr. Arnott. “Can’t you let the poor devil lie in peace?” And he gestured to the corpse, hacked open like a haggis. “Sew him up and have him made to look pretty. He won’t keep long.”

  “It’s a good face, you have to admit,” admitted Dr. Shortt. “It’s what I’d call a noble face. Compare it with Lowe’s face, for instance. No damned comparison.”

  “Friend,” cried Dr. Antommarchi. “The magic is working even from the shades of death.” But Dr. Shortt looked at him in proper Britannic disgust, stupid hysterical foreigner.

  Sir Hud abated none of the fierce sternness of his inveterate antagonism in the face he raised to the heavens. “He was my foe,” he declared in an heroic voice, “and the foe of all mankind. He was the eternal enemy, but now he has passed away from the eyes of men. The forces of good have prevailed, and though no true heart may prate of forgiveness, yet what heart is this day so obdurate that it will not soften, yea, and liquefy to a brief dew-dropping of generous tears? Damned he is, damned he must be, the endless flames of perdition enfold him, but at the same time he reposes in the bosom of a just God, who knoweth better than any of us how the souls of the wicked shall justly be disposed. He is dead, which none may deny; he is buried, which none may deny either; he is gone from us, which the most skeptical must be ready to admit. Nevertheless, we must show true British generosity. His tombstone shall not bear the legend of imperial pretension, but nor neither shall it be inscribed with true and veracious, though in the circumstances ungenerous, accounts of his evil villainy and damnable dastardliness. Nay, blank it shall be; blank shall it rest; and the sun and the wind and the generous rain shall attest to the end of time to its blankness. So let us dry our eyes and pronounce Amen to that.” And he spurred his charger and rode off, whither no man was much inclined to inquire.