M/F

by Anthony Burgess

  These may not, of course, be the actual questions that were asked, but there were certainly many questions, to each of which the questioner usually knew the answer, which was his reason for asking. I made a score of about 80 per cent. And then, to my unease, the questions began to change into riddles. A giggling plump desirable young matron asked:

  – What can you not hold more than a minute, though it is lighter than a feather?

  That was an easy one. Then a lined old woman said:

  – A drawing-room with many chairs and a clown dancing in the middle.

  A drawn tubercular youth:

  – It’s locked up inside you, and yet they can steal it from you.

  The breath grew sour in my mouth, and my heart pumped hard. Perhaps I needed food. The headache was frightful. Then someone said, and I could not see him clearly:

  – White bird featherless

  Flew from paradise,

  Pitched on the castle wall;

  Along came Lord Landless,

  Took it up handless,

  And rode away horseless to the King’s

  white hall.

  – Sun, yes, I said. But how do you know about snow?

  And then a scholarlylooking man, in a widebrimmed hat and a selfpropel wheelchair, spoke in a tongue I had not expected to hear in the Caribbean:

  – I have a jelyf of godes sonde,

  Withouten fyt it can stonde.

  It can smytyn and hath not honde.

  Ryde yourself quat it may be.

  – Too easy, I said. Too obscene for this mixed assembly. I am now going to take the hat round.

  I snatched, smiling acknowledgement of unasked permission, a cap from a schoolboy’s head. Some of the crowd began to disperse quickly. But a sudden creature stood out, crying Wait!, and I was appalled. Was this distortive headache, sun, hunger? It was the lion face of some grotesque ultimate leprosy, framed in an ironically indulged piebald mane. The body was small and twisted but undeniably human. The arms seemed to yearn forward in an arc to engage the ground as paws. The cheap blue suit was well pressed for a holiday, the collar clean, the tie patterned with dogroses. The creature called in a muffled bark, as though its mouth were furred with carney:

  – Answer if you can!

  I didn’t want to answer, though I didn’t know why. I countercalled:

  – Today’s show is over. Try tomorrow.

  But the crowd desisted from its dispersing and cried that I should answer. The creature put up a foreleg arm for silence and then propounded its riddle:

  – Throatdoor, tongueback, nose and teeth

  Spell a heavenblack hell beneath.

  Engage warily, young men,

  Lest it prove a lion’s den.

  – I know the answer, I said, but I may be arrested for uttering a public obscenity. It’s the counterpart of that jelyf riddle. No, no, the show’s over. Your contributions, please. My brain may be crammed but my pockets are empty. Give please of your bounty to a poor stranger in your midst.

  The lionman shambled off, giving nothing. From what was left of the crowd I collected – in small change save for a whole dollar bill from the jelyf scholar – seven Castitan dollars sixty-five, the Castitan dollar, because of its derivation from the old British demi-pound, being worth somewhat more than its American cousin. Having answered so many questions I felt entitled to ask one of my own: the reader will know what it was. The jelyf man gave me a courteous and prompt response. His accent, I now noticed, was French or Creole. His left hand was gloved in good leather. I thanked him and went off to find a cheap hotel.

  7

  There was a telephone on the little stand by the main door, and a pretty young girl in a short dress – variegated amethyst and bullock’s heart fruit – kept saying into it:

  – One one three. One one three. Mr R. J. Wilkinson.

  And then she looked at me as though she’d met me before and didn’t like me much. I didn’t care. I walked up to the desk with my new razor and three new handkerchiefs. I explained my lack of further luggage, and the proprietress tutted in sympathy. The things that go on in New York. The Indies far safer. She drew in her lips till they disappeared, at the same time shaking her head. She was a mocha-coloured woman with purplish hair that a white swathe cut like a road, and she was dressed in a kebaya. Three dollars a night did not seem excessive.

  – Your name here in the book. Your passport.

  Her hotel was called the Batavia, so I took it that she must be from Indonesia, or rather the old Dutch East Indies. One Indies as good as another. Signing, I saw on her desk a near-empty pack of Dji Sam Soe cigarettes, clove-flavoured, made in Surabaya. I suppressed, as with two tough cerebral thumbs, my rage at the loss of my Sinjantin. I growled:

  – New York.

  – Yes, yes, terrible.

  The little lobby was a warm crammed drinking lounge hung, for some reason, with quite ordinary Malaccan workbaskets. Large grey lizards scuttled on the walls, dodging behind pictures of sailing vessels, and they made lipsmacking noises. Some men were playing cards and one, blinking in total inattention, was being humorously berated for cheating. A lone drinker probed his cheek with his tongue, one eye closed, the other on an East Indies looking calendar whose picture showing a young brown couple kissing on the lips while a shocked conservative elder in the background half averted his eyes. Her eyes? I can’t remember. There was a pleasant smell of cinnamon and camphorwood. A large open door led out to a garden in which a girl shook stiff sheets and a boy cleaned a well by stirring the water with a stick. Some unseen tyro was plonking a sort of lute unhandily – C d F A. It seemed a good place to be in.

  I carried my key up the stairs to Number 8, belching on the spiced fish stew I’d eaten in a sleepy restaurant. The window, which was open, so that a sea breeze danced the nylon curtain, looked on to Tholepin Street, which was cheerfully noisy. There was a cobbler’s shop, a goldsmith’s, a fortuneteller’s. A ramshackle cinema was showing The Day After the Day After Tomorrow. The seawall lay beyond. Gulls freewheeled. Charming. So was the simple room, air its main furnishing. Water? I went on to the corridor and found a rudimentary washroom – a mere stone floor and a couple of faucets. I washed my shirt with a bar of coarse blue soap, but first, with a hand as cup, I washed down the six aspirins I had bought. The lump on my head was subsiding, but the pain still thrust and beat. I shaved blind, soaping my beard with the naked bar. I would wait to do what I wanted to do, had to do, till tomorrow. Meanwhile, rest. I hung my shirt on the one wire hanger in the breeze, then got between the rough clean sheets. The Day After the Day After Tomorrow, said the after-image of the cinema’s poster. No, definitely tomorrow. Early.

  I could not at first sleep. I lay on my side, taking in for the first time the little bedside cupboard. What was in it? A chamberpot, a Gideon Bible? I opened it and saw a book far too small for a bible. The cover was at an angle like a roof – a sizeable bookmark in there. The bookmark was a heavy bright professional referee’s whistle, and the book itself a rulebook for association football. A player is offside if he is nearer the opponents’ goal-line than is the ball unless there are two opponents between him and the goal-line or unless the ball was last played by an opponent. Very sedative stuff. An absentminded visiting referee had slept here, then. Absentminded or finally disgusted with what the game had become – a pretext for head-crushing or bottle-throwing, the referee’s rulings disregarded. I must hand the book and the whistle in downstairs. But, no. It was a handsome whistle and I would keep it. It had the comforting feel that all rounded metal solidities possess. I put the little barrel to my forehead: it cooled and soothed. It had a long neckloop of durable twine. I hung it round my neck like a talisman. It seemed to send me to sleep.

  I dreamt about my sister, who had become very young and tiny, more of a daughter. I carried her under my arm like a kitten through the streets of New York, but, as I had to make several purchases – vague things that were seen only as bulky parcels – she became a nuisa
nce: there was no room for her under either arm. I threw her into the East River and she turned into a fish. It was a silly meaningless dream.

  I awoke without pain to catch the swift sunset. Something small and hard tapped my chest as I got up. I started, then I remembered what it was. I was hungry. My shirt was dry. When I went downstairs I found the bar-lobby empty, except for the proprietress. She was smoking a Dji Sam Soe and cloves mingled with the cinnamon and camphorwood. She looked up from copying things from a small book into a big book and said:

  – How long will you be staying?

  – Oh, I said, I thought of leaving – oh, the day after the day after tomorrow.

  She did not seem to catch the silly reference. She said something that sounded like too late.

  – Why too late?

  – Tulat is what I said. The day after the day after tomorrow the skilled workman will carry a burden over his shoulder on a stick with another stick over the other shoulder to support it.

  – I beg your pardon?

  – An example, she said, smiling now, I was once given at school to show how many words the English language requires to say very simple things. In my language, called Bahasa, we need three words only.

  – Oh?

  – Tulat tukang tuil. Tulat: too late the day after, etcetera. Tuil: too ill to carry, etcetera, etcetera. Perhaps you will remember the words that way.

  – But I’ve no intention of ever having any need to –

  – What has intention to do with it?

  There was no reply to that. She gathered up her books and then, as if she’d just thought of this softener of what may have sounded like a rebuke to my brash youth, said:

  – Dr Gonzi invites you to have dinner with him. Any time from six thirty on, he says. At the Pepeghelju.

  – Who’s Dr Gonzi, how does he know I’m here, why does he invite me, where’s the –

  – Such a lot of questions. The Pepeghelju is near, off Tholepin Street. Dr Gonzi met you, he says, earlier today. He was here for a drink. He was impressed, or some such thing. It is what is called here uspijtelijtet. He will be hurt if you do not go. It would be unkind to hurt Dr Gonzi.

  She nodded and went to the little office behind her counter. She opened the door and acrid smoke, like asthma mixture, puffed out, and there was the talk and clink of quiet drinking. She went in and shut the door.

  So. I went out on to Tholepin Street, smelling for garlic and hot oil. Shops, cinema, shops, shops. Which was Dr Gonzi, then? The jelyf scholar? It could hardly be that – But it might be anybody. Walking, I heard the squawk of what sounded like a parrot from a dark sidestreet: Kraaaaaaarkh, and then, in the sounds of New South Wales, Ellow, Cocky. Ah, wait: Pepeghelju ought to mean parrot, ought it not? So I went down the street and came to a discreet smell of frying fish, and there indeed was the restaurant. It was a small open yard with half a dozen tables, glassed candles on them, and bushes in tubs. There was a covered kitchen with a swing-door. A cage hung from a kind of gallows, with a droll-eyed red-and-blue parrot clinging to the wires. The sea whished just beyond. And there at a table alone sat the, as I should have expected, lionman. There was a well-punished bottle of Claidheamh whisky before him. Seeing me, he tossed off a glassful then unsteadily rose.

  – Dr Gonzi?

  – Surprise in your tone, as though the higher academic honours are to be considered incompatible with with – Never mind. Good of you to come. You did well today. You have funds of totally useless knowledge. I like that.

  – You’re not then a doctor of medicine, sir?

  We sat, I very uneasy. His face looked ghastly in the candlelight. Scratch Cocky, ahahahaha. Kraaaaaarkh. There were no other customers.

  – Of philosophy. Real philosophy. The consolations of, much overrated. Boethius. Metaphysics, an out-of-date and disregarded study. I have written on Bishop Berkeley. Call me an idealist. You may, knowing so many useless things, be acquainted with my edition of Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher.

  The voice still had that muted resonance of earlier in the day, though the whisky sharpened the consonants. I said:

  – That kind of philosophy doesn’t really appeal to me. I mean, I think the outside world exists.

  – Think, you say think. A rather Berkeleyan position. Shall we now get down to thinking we are eating something?

  He snapped his clawfingers. The parrot responded with monstrous hilarity, and then a little moustached Creole in a white coat came out. Dr Gonzi said:

  – Leave it to me. Bisque, I think, followed by an illusion of grilled flying-fish with stuffed peppers. Will you think, that is drink, whisky?

  – With pleasure.

  – Think. You think that I took up this idealist stance probably because I don’t want, can’t bear, an outside world which contains this sad mask and this ludicrous body. So much illusion, better that way. Yes? The reality is the soul. Sexual appetite an illusion like all the other appetites, the reflection of my face in others’ eyes the work of a trick mirror. The children are not really frightened, their psyches are unagitated. I know what you’re thinking. But tonight I don’t care.

  – No, no, really. I mean, I’m so wrapped up in the deficiencies of my own body. The fluxes, the pains, disease. I mean, no.

  – Disease can be made romantic, sexually alluring. This you must know. Ugliness is defined in terms of beauty, is it not? But when, by a genetic freak, one is made to seem to pass out of one’s own kingdom, when no normal aesthetic standard can be made to apply – Do I make myself clear? Do I? Have some whisky.

  A claw grasped the bottle and the candlelit gold belched as it swam into my glass. He said:

  – Only by entry into myth can reconciliation be effected. Do you understand? I have waited a long time for one such as you to come along. Does what I am saying at all make sense to you?

  – Not really, not yet.

  The waiter brought the bisque, upon which brandy floated. He ignited our plates with a taper he lit from our candle. Dr Gonzi looked across at me over the brief hellfire. I was very disturbed but didn’t yet know what precisely about.

  – A good illusion of goodness, yes?

  There was no doubt that the bisque was good: hot, heartening, delicate. I said:

  – He was always going on about tar water, wasn’t he? About the supposed goodness of tar water.

  – That was nonsense. There’s nothing in tar water.

  He seemed to brood on tar water, spooning in his soup. Then he said:

  – Centaurs and that sort of thing. And, of course, Pan, the great god. Panic.

  – What do you mean when you say you’ve waited a long time? For someone like me, I mean?

  – A certain combination of mad talent and guilt. Yes, guilt. You answered all those questions so sadly. Ah, here come the flying-fish. Sad, sad, their play in the blown spume ended. Bedded down with peppers, stuffed. Could a stuffed pepper ever enter into the dream of a flying-fish? Man, man, the great sad unifier of disparates. Another bottle of this, yes?

  He was drunk and growing drunker. But he ate his fish with great eagerness, fussily blowing out odd small bones from farting lips. He seemed to be trying to demonstrate that, in spite of appearances, he was no carnivore. I too ate my fish, which was overdry. The peppers were stuffed with rice cooked in fishstock. The whisky was deliciously smooth, and I said so.

  – Ah well, we must pamper ourselves tonight. No dyspeptic rotgut, gutrot. Tonight is a special night. As I said, I’ve been waiting a long time.

  – You still haven’t told me what you mean.

  Aaaaaaargh. Cockycockycockycockycocky.

  – You knew the answer to the riddle I asked, but you wouldn’t give the answer.

  – Well, no. It was so obvious, wasn’t it?

  – I have one riddle to which only I know the answer.

  – You mean the riddle of life or something like that?

  – Life is no riddle. Why are we here? To suffer, no more. But why do we suffer? Ah, that’s mo
re interesting. Hamlet’s question, of course, and we all know Hamlet’s answer. I too, like Hamlet, keep putting off the bodkin. The devil we know, and so on. But we must think of the prince as well set-up, though a little puffy. Mad, but alluring. Good my lord, dear my lord. Look at me, though, look.

  – You said something about centaurs.

  – Yes yes yes, Hyperion to a satyr. And yesterday I was offered money, do you know that, money, to be gaped at. The circus is in town. Money, by a man called Dunkel. So this has to be the end.

  – I don’t think I quite understand.

  – The end, the end, Ende, fin, konyets. Damn it, boy, the end can only be the end, can’t it, yes?

  He had finished his fish and peppers and now began to hiccup violently. He drank off half a tumbler of whisky, while the parrot made crooning noises of what sounded like commiseration. The hiccups, fuelled by the whisky, became fiercer, and the lionface, as if in heraldry, turned green. The parrot listened with care, its head on one side, and then tried out sotto voce those noises which were probably new to him. Dr Gonzi got up and began to stagger out.

  – I must. The indig.

  I felt desperately sorry for him and he must, sick as he was, have known it. The indig, indeed. He lurched away into the darkness beyond the candles, off, I presumed, to be ill in the street. Should I follow him? Would he come back? There was the matter of the bill, a heavy one surely with its two bottles of whisky. I waited, sipping in apprehension still not clearly defined, while the parrot tried out a hiccup ineptly then abandoned the phonic project in a highpitched mating-call scream. I could have done with a cigarette.