M/F

by Anthony Burgess

  – She’s astonishing.

  – She’s a fucking old bitch.

  – But she’s wonderful.

  – Ought to be, man. Birds birds birds all her fucking life. Me, I’ve no gift, see.

  I saw, I had seen already.

  – Try living with her is what I fucking say.

  The talking birds now gave a more extended demonstration of their skill. In turn they perched on the right wrist of their mistress, each to form an item in a sort of ornianthology of familiar quotations. A starling, in Hamlet black appropriately, started off:

  – To be or not to be that is that is the kwaaaark question.

  – That one, Llew said, will get its little fucking botbot smacked later on.

  – Here and now, a mynah went over and over again without rebuke. A parakeet contradicted with:

  – Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

  Another mynah, uninformed about Auden’s later self-excisions, cried, to applause:

  – We must love one another or die.

  – A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a hahahahahahahahaha rage.

  – She’ll be in a fucking temper when it’s all over, man. I’m going off to get bleeding pissed.

  – How does it end?

  – One lot keeps on changing places with the other lot to music. Like a dance, man. And then the mynahs and the rest sing Abide with me and the others, bloody bad tempers they have too as you’d know if you got near them, fly around in like a cross formation.

  – You’re kidding.

  – Make them do anything. You’ve no fucking idea.

  A falsetto mynah cried:

  – Oh mummy dear what is that stuff that looks like strawberry jam? A gruff starling responded:

  – Hush hush my child it’s only dad run over by a tram.

  – Not very enlightening, I said.

  – You’ve got to remember they’re only birds, man.

  We got outside while a parakeet was doing something it was charitable to think of as coming from Finnegans Wake. I said:

  – Not on form perhaps tonight?

  – They’re not getting the response, man. Need a more educated audience than this fucking lot. Why, in the States once – Norman, Oklahoma, I think it was – she had one man up from the audience answering questions the birds fucking asked him, and if he got the answer wrong they’d all fly on to him like to peck his fucking jellies out.

  – Incredible.

  We stood outside the tent under the moon looking at each other. I didn’t like him any better, even though some of his mother’s glamour had now rubbed on to him. The disguise just made him look like a parody of myself in disguise. But he had to have some virtue; nobody could really be as horrible as that. I said:

  – You admire her really, don’t you?

  – Who? Her? She comes to kiss me goodnight, me at my age, man, and she stinks of all those birds. Look, you’re my pal now. We’re buddies, aren’t we? We have to be buddies because we’re the same. That stands to reason, man.

  – No, it does not. We look alike, that’s all. It’s a lusus naturae. A freak.

  – Are you calling me a fucking freak?

  – No, but both together we are. I’m going now. I’ve things to do tomorrow, and then I’ve got to get away.

  – That’s right, go off and leave me when you could be my pal. We could go into town now and get drunk, like buddies. I don’t give a shit what she says or does. We can go into town in the car. I’ve got money. The one I was in bed with screwing this morning when the old bitch thought it was me watching the procession and it was really you, a laugh that is but nobody to share it with except you and that’s one reason why you’ve got to be my buddy, I took the odd buckeroo or three out of her bag when she went into the toilet to put the thing in, you know, the gissum stopper, forget its proper fucking name, man.

  From the big top came applause and better music than In a Monastery Garden – the finale of Respighi’s Gli Uccelli, I think – so I took it Aderyn’s act was over.

  – You’re a bit of a rat, aren’t you?

  – Who? Me? A rat? If I’m a rat you’re a fucking rat too. That stands to reason if we’re like the same.

  – We’re not the same.

  – All right, we argue that out over a fucking drink. The old bitch will be coming out now looking for her darling sonny bunny and stopping him getting his what they call lawful pleasure. So we’ll get in the car and off now, man, yes?

  He jingled his keys. Attached to their ring was a miniature plastic representation of a male sexual apparatus. I said, starting to walk towards the main road:

  – I’ve got to go to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.

  There were three doubledecker buses waiting, evidently to accommodate the circus audience. From the festal bray of the band, which suggested the heraldic posing of animals and insincere teeth and cordial armwaves of mahouts and whip-men, it was clear that that audience would soon be flooding out. I walked rapidly. Llew walked rapidly with me, panting:

  – What do you mean, busy? You and me have got to sort out this worldshaking act, man. Llew the Free. No Chain Can Fucking Bind Him.

  – I’m getting a boat to –

  I stopped just in time. But the mere act of beginning the statement clarified my decision for me. There were plenty of boats in the harbour. There must be somebody who would start me on the searoad back to America and a little money and Hidalgo or Manzanillo and the writing of my play. First, though, tomorrow morning, Sib Legeru. That jelyf scholar had told me where he was. Llew said:

  – A boat to where, man? I’ll come with you, we’ll go to fucking gether, we’ll do this act independent like of this fucking shambles of elephant shit and birds. One of them nipped me, do you know that, only the other day. See, I’ll show you the mark. Eyases, they are, see, always more fucking badtempered than the caught ones.

  – Go home, I said. Get back to your mother. Keep out of trouble. If it hadn’t been for you the police wouldn’t have grilled me as they did.

  – What do you mean by that? If it hadn’t been for you the old bitch wouldn’t have been on to me about going into town without permission to get pissed or fucked. All you are is an imitation of me, man, so keep off that pigshit about things being my fault.

  We were not yet quite at the bus-stop. I halted and looked at him. I said:

  – Get this straight. You’re an affront and an insult. You’re a filthy joke played on me, me, me by stupid nature. You’re a nothing that happens to have my face. If you crumbled to dust now and got blown away by the wind, nothing would be lost. Do you get that, you wretched filthytongued parody of a human being? I’m leaving tomorrow, and one of my reasons is to get as far away as I can from you. I’ll convince myself, if I can, that this has all been a nasty dream.

  Llew trembled with rage and selfpity. His moustache, cut from his own backhair and fixed with the gloy his mother used for her presscutting book, was a little askew. I had to get away before it was dislodged completely. He said, dithering:

  – Right right, bastard, it all depends on who was born first, doesn’t it, that’s what it fucking depends on, right right? So you say when you were born and then we’ll soon know who’s imitating fucking who, right, man?

  I experienced a small internal dithering of my own at this. I feared irrationally that he might pull his passpoort out and triumphantly wave a proof, backed by the might of the State, that our identity was total. Miles Faber, also known as Something Llewelyn. Date of birth: December 24th, 19— I said:

  – Saying’s no good. We need documentary proof. And I can’t give you that and I’m not going to take you where it is. Anyway, this is a lot of nonsense. I’m getting on that bus now.

  The audience was streaming over the green. Cars were starting up. I moved quickly and Llew, wheezing like an old man, moved quickly with me. He cried, as I climbed on:

  – I’ll find out where you are, you bastard. I’ll bring my fucking proof. I’
ll not have any swine telling me I’m only a fucking imitation.

  – You won’t. Find me, that is. I’m going tomorrow.

  – Swine, swine, bastard, why won’t you be my pal? Why can’t we be buddies, like I want?

  I had my windowseat. Passengers were crowding on now, pleased with their evening. There was high praise of the Bird Queen. Her son stood at the stop, abandoned, his hands stuck deep in my jacket pockets. I checked that I had transferred all my belongings. The whistle was cold. Had I whistled this wraith into being? A wraith was a simulacrum that portended death, was it not? Nonsense. As he stood there, seeming to whine to himself, his moustache became completely detached and began to drift in the seawind circularly towards the ground. Some passengers began to laugh. Or was I his wraith? Nonsense. The bus moved. He still stood there, whining something. Then he took his right hand out of my pocket and waved it shyly. He still wanted us to be pals, buddies, man. We sped towards the town and lost him. I willed my loss of him to be total, even in retrospect. He never existed. Then, as we passed the Magus Emporium, an uneasy recollection of one of Professor Keteki’s lectures came up like the taste of an old meal. Shelley. Was it Prometheus Unbound? Llew the Fucking Free, nonsense. The lines were:

  The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,

  Met his own image walking in the garden.

  That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

  For know there are two worlds of life and death –

  What came after? And why did he meet his own image? I couldn’t remember. Not that it mattered much. I was desperately tired and my head ached. Moreover, the wound had started bleeding again: there was a trickle by my left ear. The woman next to me saw it and tut-tutted, as though the blood were an obscenity. Like that non-existent Llew. But it was with Llew’s handkerchief – gissum-stiff – that I wiped the blood away.

  10

  And the following morning, when I awoke – late, as I could tell from the quality of the light – after a totally unhaunted sleep as heavy as syrup, his clothes waited for me on the chair like Llew himself. The trousers were (was, Llew would probably say: trousers was a dual word in his dialect, like ballocks as a parson or term of abuse) of the creaseless kind that one does not lay down folded: I had seated them on the chair on their bottom with the legs dangling to the floor. The chairback wore the jacket like a film actress of the ’thirties. What a fool I had been to bring anything of his into a life that determined to vapourize his memory, unperson him. And I could not afford to buy other clothes, not yet: everything pointed to my capitulation to the lawyers. The shirt was my own, and I had handkerchiefs. That defiled one, defiling, of Llew’s I had left on the bus deck. I didn’t have to admit Llew’s more intimate contact.

  Tiredly I gave myself a dry shave sitting on the bed with my eyes closed, closed eyes being better than a shaving mirror: you learn at once the razor skill of the blind. I peered out on to the corridor, found it empty, so ran naked into the washroom for a shower. Dressed and welshcombed, I pocketed my luggage and went downstairs. The lobby was empty except for the proprietress, who was exhaling the smoke of Surabaya cloves behind her counter. I said:

  – I’ll be checking out.

  I put all my paper money down in a single fistful drawn from my trouser pocket. Yumyum Carlotta was among it and, before I extricated her and stowed her in my breast pocket, the proprietress saw her and said:

  – Strange. That is one of the words I mentioned to you yesterday. You will need no tricks for remembering it.

  I did not understand. She gave me my passport. She said:

  – You will be going to the Dwumu for the miracle?

  – Miracle?

  – Mijregulu in their language. In mine, mu’jizat. It is their superstition to expect a miracle at this season. One small boy this morning was shouting round the streets that the mijregulu had happened and happened to him only. He had been to the dawn mijsa with his mother and taken the bread which, in their superstitious way – but perhaps you are yourself of that faith. The boy swore that in his mouth he had felt a small hairless animal, very small he said, crawling around and heard it through his head bones cry in a little baby’s voice. And then he had swallowed it. This is, to me, cannibal work. But perhaps you are yourself of that faith.

  – Well, in a vestigial sort of –

  – As this was not a mijregulu puwblijgu or public miracle it was ignored. For a mijregulu puwblijgu they have to have blood flowing from impossible sources. Well, but an hour ago, while you were still I suppose sleeping, the blood began to flow. Not from the statue of their Senta Euphorbia, as most expected, but from the pipit or little zab of an infant Isa, Jesus would be your name I think, held in his mother’s arms. This is distasteful. The blood is, they say, still trickling. It is being collected in teacups. They have called no chemical analyst to take a sample. It is all distasteful, I fear.

  – From his –?

  – Exactly. I hope you enjoyed your stay here.

  To get to where I had been told to go, which was Indovinella Street, I had to pass through Fortescue Square. There stood the great mosquy Dwumu under the hot Catholic repressive blue of the forenoon. It had a skin of gold which peeled in places and thus looked like the foil on a mouse-gnawed wrapped biscuit, especially as the stone beneath was the colour of rich baking. The square was crammed, chiefly with blackclad women singing a hymn. The police band accompanied, augmented by the mufti ensemble of yesterday’s procession. The hymn went something like:

  Sengwi d’Iijsuw,

  Leve mij, leve mij.*

  Up and down the wide stone steps of many treads people went and came, into and out of the ornate arched doorway, carrying tiny vessels lightly as they mounted and entered – eggcups, pill-bottles, one hopeful woman with a jug – and bearing them with foot-watching care as they left. One small boy had a Coco-Coho bottle with a drop or two of the precious blood in it, which he kept squinting at through the bottlemouth like a rare captured insect.

  Sengwi ridimturi,

  Suwcu d’sentitet,

  Leve mij–

  There was a sudden unholy effect of discordant parody as the police band started on a new tune while the mufti one kept on with the old. The new tune was secular and martial,† like a national anthem, which was what it turned out to be. For sailing into the square, preceded, flanked and followed by a goggled uniformed motorcycle escort, came an open car with the state flag on its bonnet. The President himself, come to see the mijregulu and, giving it a presidential blessing, draw into himself and his office some of its numinosity. Fat, beaming, cleverlooking, capped, braided, medalled, in spotless navaltype white, he stood up to accept the subdued homage of his people, who did not immediately (and he seemed, in his cleverness, to nod a kind of appreciation of this) forget God because Caesar had arrived. He got out of the car with his aides and bowed his head humbly at the ringed blessing of the baroque cleric who came down the Dwumu steps to greet him. I pushed through the crowd towards Indovinella Street. To hell with order, ecclesiastical and civil. To hell with miracles. Miracles? But miracles subverted order, did they not? Nonsense, no: they confirmed it: they kept the people on their knees. But you’re for the irrational, which is what miracles are. No no no, the irrational confirms the rational as night proclaims day. Let me get between the day and night into the world of, oh, eclipses.

  On the periphery of the crowd I saw Dr Gonzi. He nodded at me as pleasantly as that grim leprous mask would allow. He wore a dirty black cloak and a matching sombrero. I would have moved on, willing to forget his drunken madness of the night before, but he clawed my sleeve and said:

  – You have nothing more to fear. I’ve found another instrument. I did little in the philosophy of politics though I have always accepted the notion of the contract.

  – Look, I have to get to –

  – Yes, I too must be in a hurry. A matter of unphilosophical practicalities.

  I could smell whisky on his breath and it was not a stale smell. He was then perha
ps habitually a drunkard. He said:

  – Hobbes is good on the contract, read Hobbes. I shall play the same game with the appropriate authorities. They may in concert be able to work out the answer, though I doubt it. Singly not one of them has your peculiar gift. It may still be your responsibility to encompass my end. Do you take my meaning? I sent the silly thing to headquarters, but they will have filed it among the other missives of madmen. I didn’t, of course, sign it. Not signing it, as you will recognize, is the whole point of the enterprise.

  – You’ll forgive me now if I –

  – Look after yourself, boy. The pleasures of the world are not less acute for being phenomenal. I look forward to different ones. Meeting the bishop, for instance.

  – The bish—?

  But he went off through the crowd, his torso forward, claws forward as to engage the ground, a failed lion. The crowd courteously let him through. He apparently carried no vessel, but he was going to see the mijregulu. I was going to see something very different.

  I found Indovinella Street after inquiries of sceptics who preferred their shops to the bloody zab of the infant Isa. It was a cobbled street, steepish, with one or two old-fashioned taverns and dwellinghouses with walled gardens. These houses were thin but, in compensation, high – four or five storeys. In one of them were the disregarded works I had come so far, and with so much effort and, yes, pain, to see. The jelyf man had not been able to give me the name or number of the house. There had, he thought, been a wooden sign outside it, but it had been long wrenched away, by idle boys or a poor family in need of fuel. He had paid one visit, many years before, but had not liked what he had seen. The key to the house had hung on a nail in a tobacconist’s shop and was probably still hanging, oxidizing. He had recommended that I not pay the place a visit: I would surely see not refined art but sickening madness.