M/F

by Anthony Burgess

  After a few minutes I went out on to the street. It was very dark and totally empty except for Dr Gonzi. There was a sort of warehouse built of bubblestone, big and empty, and he was leaning against its wall. His being sick, if he had been sick, had not impaired his drunkenness. He was indeed drunker than before, to judge from what he had in his hand. He was pointing a small automatic at me. I pretended not to see it. I said:

  – Feeling better? Good. Look, there’s this question of paying the bill. I would have left money myself, but I haven’t –

  – Yes yes. There may be a hell, you see. The old Hamlet problem. If I kill you now and give myself up to the police, there’s a fair chance that I may hang. This is a great country for hanging, you know. I’m quite prepared to plead guilty to murder.

  It’s astonishing how calmly one can take these things. I said:

  – Motive, motive.

  – Motive? The desire to commit evil, the best motive in the world. But I recognize the need for a certain demented fairness. Let me go out in a kind of mythic blaze.

  All the time he spoke I was looking for dark angles of escape. There was an alleyway there, just beyond the warehouse, but it might be a cul de sac. The parrot broke into a florid cadenza of whistles. Whistle. I said:

  – Fairness? You’re talking of fair play?

  – In my condemned cell there will be time for true penitence. Then the instant purgatory of the noose. There remains, however, room for reasonable Hamlet doubt. A play of uncertainty. I shall ask you my ultimate riddle. If you can’t answer, then I shoot you. If you can, then I shoot myself. I think I can promise both of us that you won’t be able to answer.

  – You’re mad, of course.

  – Drunk, not mad. But have I not every right in the world to be furioso? Mr Dark wanted me, Mr Dark can have me. Dunkel. Are you ready?

  – This is just not possible.

  – Think that it is. Listen carefully.

  And then, the gun pointing steadily at my sternum, he came out with his stupid riddle:

  – Move and my own self enclose

  A land above the deeper snows.

  – That’s more of a word-puzzle than a true riddle, I protested, bringing my right hand up to my chest.

  – But you can’t solve it?

  – Of course I can. It’s stupidly obvious. But I won’t give you the answer.

  I was astonished at myself saying that. Why why why? It was clear that he meant everything he’d said, and I could save myself so easily, but I wouldn’t or couldn’t. My head throbbed.

  – Then it is with the deepest regret –

  At that moment the parrot, which was only about fifty yards away, fulfilled William James’s doctrine about plateaux of learning and began to hiccup in earsplitting triumph. I wrenched the whistle out of my shirt, breaking two buttons, shoved it in my mouth like a kid’s dummy and blew. The double noise confused Dr Gonzi, who put his gunless paw to his eyes as though blinded by sudden headlamps. I ran into the alley, still shrieking. Dr Gonzi recovered and fired. The air winced in wow-wow waves at the crack. Too much noise altogether: in a mad way I regretted contributing to it. The parrot was laughing rather mechanically. I whistled and whistled, keeping to the wall of the alley. He again fired, following. In the alley’s confines the noise was a whole brief movement for percussion. There was no sense of anybody in that street, or behind the backdoors of the alleys which had, for I desperately tested three, no outer handles, conceiving an interest in the noise: everybody seemed out, celebrating Senta Euphorbia. I ran on, all I could do. I paused an instant, pumping in a chestful of air which I then spent on a fortissimo blast. Dr Gonzi fired crack wow-wow-wow-wow and then stupidly called:

  – Come back, damn you.

  The alley was not deadended: it entered a cobbled street with empty market stalls. It was slippery underfoot and had a strong fish-smell. I blasted again and this time was answered: a police-whistle I took it to be. It and mine started a dialogue. Then I paused and panted. Dr Gonzi had stopped firing. Perhaps he had gone back to the Pepeghelju to pay the bill. I didn’t need the police, then. The whistle that had answered mine was joined by another; a forlorn duet probed for the whereabouts of my signal. It came from the searoad, so I walked the other way. A siren started up: a patrol-car had been parked somewhere near, then, now activated. Running police-feet were approaching my rear, and the patrol-car, a spinning yellow light on its roof, turned a corner to meet me, and, meeting me, braked.

  8

  – Don’t give us that, the inspector said. You picked a very bad one there, boy. Dr Gonzi, eh? That’s a laugh. Why not make it the Holy Ghost or, while your hand’s in, the President himself?

  He clanged the base of his metal desk with his boot, a way he had of emphasizing strong points. He was a wellfed man with clever brown eyes which, alone of the police eyes there, were unshod with dark glasses. The constables who’d picked me up flanked him, standing easy, and they were quick to let their lower faces collapse in obsequious laughter. One of the two patrolmen, downing a quick coke, spluttered. The inspector looked steelily at both. They saluted, crestfallen, and the nonsplutterer said:

  – Muwvijemu.

  – That’s right, move off. And deal with drunks on the spot. This isn’t a toper’s dosshouse.

  – All I tell you is the truth, I said. Dr Gonzi shot at me. That’s why I whistled. Three times. He shot, I mean.

  – Oh, my God, Dr Gonzi as killer. How about telling us where you put the gun? How about showing us your weapon permit?

  – Would I be such a bloody fool as to call the police if it was me who was doing the shooting?

  – I’ve heard that sort of question before. We’re not such bloody fools either.

  The inspector inspected the referee’s whistle, turning it over and over in his fingers as though rolling a cigarette. He said:

  – It’s got a name on it. Engraved. W. Pozoblanco. Are you W. Pozoblanco? Think carefully before you answer.

  – I’ve already told you my name.

  – So you admit to having stolen this whistle from W. Pozoblanco?

  – I admit nothing except what I’ve already said.

  – You’re a foreigner, said the inspector ungrudgingly. There are things you may not understand going on here.

  I eased my bottom on the cane chair. The office was clean and simple, as if to disavow the dirtiness that was evidently going on, in a complex montage of allomorphs, in the cells and interrogation rooms behind the plastic strip curtain. There was the noise of a man retching and someone shouting, as if to tell him under pain of new violence to get it all up. Others, more distant, sang what seemed to be a hymn, solemnly not drunkenly. A stick cracked rhythmically on a tabletop, an accompaniment to threatening monosyllables. Whiffs of faecal effluvia stole in shyly. I said:

  – Do you think I could have a cigarette?

  – Certainly, certainly. Any particular kind? Opium-tainted Turkish? Powdered peyotl? Asthma mixture?

  That last was a shrewd shot. I was breathing with some difficulty: the lungful of air I kept seeking eluded my grasp by something less than an inch. I said:

  – A Sinjantin for preference.

  – Sorry, sir, out of stock, said the straightfaced inspector. The constable mouths grinned; the blank black eyes rebuked the mirth like law itself. The inspector said:

  – We don’t like guns here, you see, not in the hands of ordinary citizens, especially when they’re strangers. Why don’t you speak the truth?

  I spoke the truth. Like all truth it sounded untruthful. The inspector said:

  – As for this memory stuff in the market, visitors here aren’t allowed to do paid work without a permit that has to be applied for in advance. So that’s more trouble you’re in.

  – I didn’t know. Nobody told me the law.

  – Nobody tells anybody the law. The law assumes that everyone knows the law.

  – I’m sorry.

  The inspector looked again at the things that h
ad been taken from my pockets. He said:

  – Castitan dollars, illegally earned. We’ll have to keep those. This cutting you have here seems to be about a dirty book. Why do you have it?

  It was the Seee review of Yumyum Carlotta’s novel. I said:

  – I once met the author.

  – You did, eh? Things are looking pretty black all round, aren’t they?

  – I don’t see why.

  The inspector at once became animated, though strangely impartially, as though I’d merely fed him a dramatic cueline. He uncoiled up, making the chairfeet on the linoleum briskly squeal, then, well upstage of the constables, who turned into caryatid proscenium columns, he loped up and down, his hands clasped behind him.

  – You don’t see why, eh, you don’t see why? Oh, I could show you why well enough, why indeed, why why why, by the living heavens I could icsplijcari, if you know our native word, that why for you, my friend, and leave you without a single why left in your alphabet. What do you think of that, eh? Why why why, indeed.

  He strode down centre, back to his desk and, handheels pressing it hard, nearbare arms very taut, he frowned from a great height down at the clipping from Seee. He said:

  – Too much Chinese going on, for one thing. What have you got to do with the Chinese?

  Strange he should say that. I answered:

  – It’s been proposed that I marry a certain Miss Ang. That, in a sense, is what I’m running away from.

  – Ah, and she’d be tied up, would she, with Miss Tu Kang and those Chinese cigarettes you said you wanted?

  – Sinjantin. Korean, not Chinese. And the lady at the Batavia Hotel (and how the hell am I going to pay my bill there, incidentally, since you took my bit of money away?) smokes a brand called Dji Sam Soe.

  – Tu kang sin jan tin jee sam soo. Building up, isn’t it?

  There was no answer to that, but something newly disturbed me. Was it a sense of being dragged east, towards Miss Ang, despite all my efforts to go my own way? I didn’t have time to pursue this, because a sergeant strode in, followed by two new constables. The sergeant did not wear dark glasses though, with such tired eyes, as though from an excess of recent deskwork, and so many elephantine folds around them, though the face was otherwise long and ascetic, he would have looked better with dark glasses. Were they a privilege of constables, a compensation for low pay, or a curtain on the callow humanity whose expunging went with higher rank? The sergeant spoke British English and was familiar with his inspector. Without saluting he said:

  – Acted on the signal as ordered. Nothing going on up there, Jack. Fireworks, I should think.

  – Premature petards, eh? No festive noises till Saturday says the regulation. Still, boys will be boys.

  The inspector looked at me as if I were one of the boys covered by the indulgence. The sergeant looked too, looked away uninterested, then doubletook and said:

  – So it’s him, is it? You, is it? In trouble again, is that it? Having a go at a respected poor unfortunate citizen that can’t hit back and anyway is calm asleep in his bed now, is that what it is this time?

  I was astonished, but not so much as I might have been. There was this problem of getting enough air in, and there was the renewal of the throb in the head, and there was a general sense of the laws of probability being in a state of suspension on this ridiculous island. Still, I gasped:

  – This is. Totally. I don’t know. You and you don’t. Know me. Is this. What they. Call a frameup?

  – What name did he give? the sergeant asked. The inspector told him from his notepad. The sergeant said:

  – Llew was the name he gave me last night. He was very particular about the spelling and how to say it. Something like Clew or Tlew, a lot of foreign nonsense. Got his full name written down at Marple Street. That’s where he was brought in.

  – Who was. Brought in? What is the name. Of.

  – Brought in what for? the inspector asked.

  – Calling up at a girl in an open window. Excuse was he thought she was on the game. Calling up how about it and what about a bit of the old. And gestures.

  The sergeant demonstrated a couple of these gestures. The inspector said:

  – Where’s he from, what’s he on here?

  – Up there with the Circus. And another thing is how did it manage to get in, what with the regulations? Animals and that. Subversive foreigners. Clowns and suchlike. Called himself the Cowardly King of the Beasts. Beasts is right. Thought he could rope in Dr Gonzi as a freak is my interpretation. My interpretation is Dr Gonzi gets rightly nasty and then this one gets wrongly nasty back. In my view of things it’s no way to behave.

  – That’s not, I said, fair. It was another man. Dr Gonzi was depressed. Suicidal. In a killing mood.

  – About this whistle, said the inspector, dangling it.

  – A Mr Dark, I said. No, wait – a Mr Dunkel.

  – There you are, the sergeant said, well-satisfied. It’s this Dunkel who’s the manager. My interpretation or recommendation is you shove him in for a bit and get Dunkel to take him home. Taking his time, that is. He knows Dunkel all right, you see. That proves who he is I would say, a matter of deduction or inference.

  – Right, the inspector said and, to me, with professional cold quiet: Grow up, boy. Lying to the police won’t do. This is a respectable community and we know how to deal with the disrespectful. Take him away.

  He turned to an in-tray, with a show of disgust and preoccupation. The two constables flexed themselves, as if coming to life again after long enchantment, and began to flick and prod me towards the plastic strip curtain. The sergeant said, in a new mood:

  – Old Ferguson was ratty tonight, Jack.

  – Tantalic and yttria?

  That’s what it sounded like. I was flicked past dark cages where men groaned and one laughed bitterly. One of the constables barked a name like Fengoose. A bald man in only underpants came from his den chewing, keys adangle from his nowaist. He handed me a big tatty card which I thought, for a mad instant, was a menu. But I saw, as I was slammed into solitary under a low wattage bulb, that it was a list of capital offences. The odour of the cell was a subtle attar of universal indignity, distilled from the relief-to-despair hidrotic spectrum with the additives of incontinent bladders and bowels, concentrated into a single drop that disinfectants had lavishly diluted. I lay on the bunk’s hairy blanket and tried to breathe. Thank God, I was soon able to make that final inch, claw in the chestful without which I would die, and feel relief wipe out everything. I read the list with a smile. It was a long one, ranging from (but I may have misremembered) antipedobaptism to the illegal importation of zumbooruks. Incest was there in the middle – I remember that very clearly – but the copulation of first cousins was not to be regarded as incest: that was a different sort of crime and would be taken care of in a subcapital category.

  I had shed apprehension and even surprise. I was rather curious to see what was going to happen next. Nothing happened for a long time, in which I read through the offence card twice. I had a memory from a great way back of a young man in levis carrying a wreath, and this for some reason triggered me into considering that a death-list might be considered a menu after all. A wide range of dishes to satisfy a culturally imposed desire for death, a kind of taught hunger, and each dish a full, nay an ultimate, meal. Nonsense, and a sign that my mind was wandering off into sleep. I thrust sleep back and concentrated on the pain in my skull: I had to be alert, I did not wish to miss anything. One moment of inattention, and that inspector out there would be performing a ceremony of marriage between myself and Miss Ang.

  I st rted awake to the celldoor’s being unlocked by, if that was his name, Fengoose. As though I’d chosen my meal, he took the bill of fare (farewell rather, oh very clever) away, and handed me over to a new constable who was, I took it, to escort me to a qualified freedom. He was much bandaged, as if he had been engaged in riot-quelling. He gave me the conventional push with a plaster-of-paris glov
e, and then I was blinking in the brightness of the outer office.

  – Elaterite.

  – Elastic bitumen.

  The inspector and the man stopped talking. The man was grim, presumably Dunkel, and was smoking a cigar rank as a twitchfire. I was most curious to see how he would react: That’s not the bloody boy, what’s going on here? But he thought he knew me all right. I wasn’t going to protest my real identity: I wanted to get out of there and have some natural curiosity satisfied. He was in a white tuxedo with black floppy tie, about fifty, his piebald hair brushed forward to disguise recession. He wore clear-paned glasses as thick as bottle-bases. He said:

  – I’ll leave what has to be said to your mother. Come on.

  – Very well. Sorry if I’ve been a nuisance.

  – Nuisance. I’ll say you’re a nuisance.

  His accent was neutral, a kind of plastic. What was all this about a mother? The inspector made a weary gesture at my few pathetic pocket-contents, inviting me to sweep them back in again. I nodded, no more. He even let me keep the Castitan dollars. Then Dunkel nodded at the inspector and went out, I following meekly. I made a final headturn to see the inspector shaking his head in a sort of professional gesture of sadness. But yet what the hell was I really supposed to have done wrong?

  Dunkel’s car was a white Harrap Inca. With a syntax of cigar-puff and head-jerk he motioned me into the back. The upholstery was black-and-white ponyskin. A nice vehicle: the circus must be doing well. He drove down Strèta Rijal with skill, dodging revellers in the middle of the road who sang songs slow enough to be holy. The street looked pretty with its coloured lights and pennants. Public statuary – scrollholding administrators, an early Victorian brooder in tophat who looked like a poet, the odd bearded blessing archbishop – was lit from below, and strings of fairy bulbs made plum-orchards out of the balsamodendra and fustics. Dunkel drove on south, saying nothing but sighing occasionally. I tried: