M/F

by Anthony Burgess

  – Fucking strong bitch she is, man. You hold her down so I can get him in. And then like I do the fucking same for you, man. Ah, but no, you wouldn’t, because you’re a –

  – This, I said, is my sister.

  Catherine heaved him off with strength I should have thought impossible in so flabby a sweeteater. She had to be unencumbered in order to stagger over to Che Guevara’s wall and look from one to the other of us openmouthed, in the same rhythm and roughly the same tempo as Llew had used for the tenderer aspect of his assault. Her nightdress had, because of gravity, readjusted itself from the waist down, but she had, in her consternation, neglected to resist gravity above the waist, and her big nipples looked at some point between Llew and myself. What sort of a cruelly tasteless and heavyhanded joke was this? The same man appearing twice in her room synchronically: it was too much. She tried to say that she thought she thought something.

  – You thought he was me?

  – Thought thought –

  – I’m sorry, I said. I suppose I could have mentioned that this thing here exists, existed. And in the same town at the same time. But I had other things on my mind.

  – What do you mean? Llew asked, buttoning up. I don’t like the sound of that thing, man. If you’re trying your fucking insults again –

  He was drunk but, as he had demonstrated, not incapable. He sat on the edge of the bed with his risor muscles out of control, however, and even that involuntary smirk was not easily excusable.

  – Thing, I repeated. Mindless animal. Coming up here to rape my sister.

  – She told me to come up, man. I was just coming out of that fucking place opposite, pissed but as good as fucking gold, and there she is leaning out of the window saying to come in and go to bed. So I come in and go to fucking bed but she lets on not to fucking like it, man. There’s a word for her and you know what it is, man.

  – What were you doing round here anyway?

  – Thought thought –

  – Yes, all right, you thought it was me out there with a skinful. You’re out of this. This is between him and me.

  – Well, Llew said, it’s your fault, isn’t it, for being like an imitation? I’d come into town to go to the fucking movies, this dirty sex film called The Day After, and then I go into this hotel where the woman running it thinks I’m you, which is a laugh, just to have a drink, see, before it starts, man, and then there’s this fag with dirty words on his shirt comes in and he thinks I’m you too. A laugh it was, I’ll say it was.

  – Chandeleur?

  – All like printed dirt all over his shirt. Anyway, he says –

  Possibly Chandeleur had changed to something secular, but it would be typical of Llew to see even the words of holy mystics as dirty.

  – He says let’s go off together in this other fucker’s boat, see, because he can’t look at him any more without wanting to spew. Well, it was a laugh and I said yes yes, thinking all the time about me not knowing you were a fag, man, because you didn’t look like one last night.

  – What do you mean, me a fag?

  – Thought, thought it was –

  – She’ll get it fucking out in a minute. Well, he was going on about my lovely body, meaning yours, and he knew I, meaning you that is, liked him though you let on not to and all that crap. But then we go off and have some drinks and all the time I’m speaking like you, man, big words and all and a fucking plum in the meathole. And then he starts crying and says he loves this other one really and he loves me too and let’s all three of us go off and leave this crappy kip, but somebody in one of these like beercaffs says nobody can leave, man, because of this law they bring in on account of somebody trying to blow this fucker’s brains out.

  – I want to be, Catherine said clearly, sick.

  – You go and do that, I said. Catherine tottered towards her door, hoisting her straps at last, though sick, to hide her bosom from the view of nobody.

  – So we go to this place here where his pal said he’d be and there he is, fucking stoned, man. And the one waiting on says to me, Wine all right? but we weren’t drinking wine, we were on this white rum, and then it was a laugh again, so I got it you must be round here somewhere. But this one here I just took to be on the old job, no connection with you, and certainly not your sister, no, no, not a fucking idea of that. Anyway, that like explains everything, right right, so I’ll go. We ought to get thinking sometime of when we can get off and do this great act together.

  He rose from the bed, smiling voluntarily. Really, I supposed, he had by his standards nothing to reproach himself with. A girl in a nightdress at a window, telling him to come in. I said:

  – And the other two?

  – Those? Fags, man, but then you’re a fag, right? No offence though with you, man. You’ve got to be different seeing we’re alike.

  – I’m not a fag.

  – Have it such ways as you want. They ended up all over each other as though each one was a fucking big chunk of ice cream to the other, and they won’t go.

  – Won’t go?

  – Won’t go. They’re there. The one that runs it says he’s going to get the fuzzpigs to them.

  Catherine was on the floor below, evidently trying to be sick though without success. She called, in the voice of one spectacularly dying:

  – Emmy, Emmy, Miss Emmett.

  I had forgotten that Miss Emmett, if awoken and told, with Catherine assuming a great act of shivering and hysteria, would be less reasonable than I about this business. I said:

  – If the police are coming round here you’d better get home or whatever you call it. I don’t want any more trouble.

  – That’s all right. My mam knows there’s been a bit of the old mistaken identity. I didn’t tell her the whole lot with fucking stupid Dunkel bringing you instead of me in the car, because this is too like precious, if you see what I mean, I mean me and you being really the same, not just like like, I mean, and going to do this big miracle fucking thing together. A pity this one knows, big fat ugly bitch as she is –

  – My sister. Look, you’d better get –

  I could hear Catherine down at ground level now, thwarted of being sick and so groaning louder than before.

  – That’s all right. You can get her to keep quiet about it, threaten her with a sock on the puss and that, and anyway we’ll be right away from here soon, two buddies making the big zooma zooma. What I was saying was the pigs call Dunkel’s office in this hotel he’s in and say to keep me out of town because there’s enough trouble without me adding to it and they reckon they see me on Indiarubber Street with a high explosive in the old famble wamble, and all the time I was laying on the bed in the old –

  – Indovinella Street. That’s this street. It was beef, not high explosive. Look, you’d better get out of –

  There was a kind of ill-coordinated quadruped on the stairs.

  – Just going. This street? That explains it, then. And they said I was supposed to say it was beef and it looked like beef but they weren’t taking any fucking chances, man. Anyway, my mam said I could go to the movies, in the car too, and it’s not all that late. I parked it by the hotel where I met the dirt-shirt one, so I’ll get round to it. Sorry about tonight, but you can see how it was. I mean, her being your sister and you my pal. But I didn’t get him in, so that’s all right, man.

  Him, indeed: a dwarf accomplice. It was not all right, far from it. Miss Emmett came in first, her blear eyes fast clearing, and Catherine was behind her. Miss Emmett registered expected shock, though prepared. The likeness was so good that it was me she went for first, but Catherine put her right. What I didn’t like was the snipping noise of those scissors. She had them in her hand though anchored to her waist, and their opening and shutting jaws went ee ah ee ah. Llew said:

  – Who’s this one? Look, lady, I meant no fucking harm, see. Asked me in she did. So what did I do? You’d have done the same if you were me.

  – This, I said, in cool introduction, is Miss Emmett
. You could call her my sister’s lady companion. She’s devoted to my sister, as you can tell.

  Then I stood back to watch. I had done all I reasonably could for Llew, asking him to leave before the advent of avenging Miss Emmett, not having even hinted to him that I was not disposed to show a brother’s blind rage and hence he was lucky. And so on. Catherine stood back too, though with a vindictive sneer that looked wholly sexual and was as good as a participation in what now proceeded. Miss Emmett was vocally incoherent, but her scissors were, was, incisively articulate.

  – Filf. Toag. Gretchit gillon.

  Bogart seemed interested in her technique, but Che’s violent mouth and eyes were above nonpolitical acts of violence. Llew cried:

  – Keep her off. You’re supposed to be my pal. Tell the fucking bitch to stop it. You’re my buddy, aren’t you?

  – No.

  He backed to the rear or garden window, thrusting both hands out to the weapon that jawed ee ah ee ah. Miss Emmett snipped at a finger and drew blood. Llew howled and took in the tiny flow with the wide scared eyes of a haemophiliac. Miss Emmett clackclacked at his crotch, thus bringing into the same area of action the three dual forms: scissors, trousers, ballocks. Llew yelled:

  – She’s fucking mad, man.

  He mounted the narrow windowledge with his bottom, his intention being to kick out at her with both feet. She did a swift tailor’s job on his left trouser leg. He howled for the injury to the material, madly identifying it with the flesh underneath. Miss Emmett now turned the weapon into a genuine singular. The jaws snapped to silence, she grasped the pointed unified duo by the waist or pivot, the surprised eyes of the thumb and finger holes peering from her tight fist. She stabbed and stabbed at anything of Llew that offered. Llew was going to go out by the window, the only way: treetop there, jump for it. He pulled up the sash, howling and clumsy. Miss Emmett started minimally at the influx of cool air, and the cups of the brassière filled with the breeze and danced. Miss Emmett daggered his back, not too deeply. He turned towards her, cursing and pushing, bringing me too into his curse:

  – Fucking ow ow swine bastard get her ow ow ow fucking off my fucking ow ow.

  She went for his eyes, and instinct, so often wrong, told him these were more vital than his balance. His hands weaving at head level, he seemed to sink into a chairback that wasn’t there. He went out, howling loudly now, head first, backwards, into the upper air of the garden. I had the curious momentary conviction that that would really be the end of him, the artist who maintains his own creation just erasing him from the pattern between window and ground. No Llew after this, dead or alive. Miss Emmett stepped back, panting, saying:

  – It was. Like. Seeing. His father. Again.

  If she wanted to be Mrs Alving, then the departed actor would do well enough for Oswald. What she meant was not my father in the incestuous attempt but in fear of the scissors. But no time now to think of that. I remembered life was not a cartoon, and that there was something solid down there, dead or alive. I pushed Catherine aside and ran downstairs. As I clattered breathily, hoping to God that asthma would not return, I had a sudden realization, which I should have had before, of what Gonzi had meant that morning. But that would have to wait.

  14

  – Before this happened, I said or think I said, certainly no more than a quarter of an hour later, it was just a matter of the delay being a bit of a nuisance. Now, of course, it’s very urgent that you get out of Castita.

  Catherine had a dressing-gown on now, an unseductive dark brown cerement associable with up-patients in state hospitals, constellated with the souvenirs of old meals.

  – I can’t take it in I can’t take it in I can’t –

  – Never mind about that now. Think of what to do. Insist that the police take this business with the utmost seriousness.

  – But they mustn’t be told must they mustn’t be –

  – That. That. That in your hands.

  She was not disposed, despite my gravity, to take the business seriously herself. She was still bobbing up and down in the wake of the other matter. She looked at the shaking piece of paper again, already grubby although it had been in her hands less than two minutes, and said:

  – They’ll laugh they’ll laugh they’ll. Oh, and I’m so ill. It’s not possible, none of it’s possible, I can’t believe –

  – You’re the only one who can bloody well go. Got that? I can’t go, can I, and she certainly can’t go.

  Miss Emmett was chewing sugarlump after sugarlump from a red square box of sugarlumps. She was upright in her armchair here in the sittingroom, eyes smiling on inner cinema images of an old person proud of violence, triumphant in prescience, jammed together by a mad director. When not taking a new lump from the box on the table beside her, her fingers stroked the scissors in her lap like a cold thin cat. I called her name but she didn’t respond. I flicked my thumb and finger before her eyes and she jumped to posthypnotic attention.

  – Yes yes yes.

  – Listen, Miss Emmett, listen.

  – Yes yes yes.

  – Get this absolutely clear. You did the right thing. Have you got that? The right thing. Assault may legally and morally be met by counterassault. But we daren’t tell the police. The police just won’t understand. And if they do understand it won’t be for a hell of a long time. The police here are not very intelligent, and today, tonight, they’re very very jumpy. Have you got that, Miss Emmett?

  – She hasn’t got it, Catherine said. Not got it. I haven’t got it. Nobody’s got it. Oh God God God. She’s not very well. I’m not very. Nobody’s very.

  – She was well enough up there doing what she did.

  – This is the this is the. Reaction. Oh God God, I think I’ll have to be sick again.

  – Yes yes yes.

  – What do you mean, again?

  – Try again, I mean. If at first you. Oh God God God God, you have messed things up for us, haven’t you? Everything was all right before you came along.

  – Ah, shut up.

  – He shouldn’t have done it, Miss Emmett said clearly. It’s in the blood, though. Driven to it by something in the blood.

  – Oh God God, I wish I could be sick.

  – That’s right, I said to Miss Emmett. You go on thinking that. It was Miles and you went for Miles with your scissors and Miles fell out of the window. And then Miles ran away and you won’t see Miles again.

  – Ran for miles. Yes yes yes.

  – You did the right thing. But now it’s all over and there’s no need to mention it again. Miles has gone back where he came from. You’ve scissored Miles out of the film. No more Miles.

  – I can’t go while she’s like this, Catherine said. You can see that. You can see that I can’t. Go while she’s.

  – The bad Miles, Miss Emmett said. But I didn’t get the good Miles.

  – There was only one, I said loudly. I’m not Miles, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m somebody quite different.

  – While she’s like this.

  – Go in the morning then. First thing in the morning. Then the planes will be able to start flying again.

  – There but for the grace of God go I, recited Catherine, closing her eyes. To New Zealand. Oh, it’s mad it’s mad it’s. They’ll laugh, I tell you. Laugh ha ha ha ha.

  – Stop it. Stop it. Give Miss Emmett a couple of sleeping pills and get her to bed. Give yourself a couple of sleeping pills and – Is that clear? Am I making myself clear? Am I succeeding in making myself –

  I took a few calmative deep breaths: the asthma, thank God, was not obstructing the process. Then I said:

  – I’ll be round here tomorrow as soon as I can.

  And then I left. There was little I had been able to find in the house in the way of disguise materials, so I went along the back streets as a limping young man with dark glasses (from Llew’s breast pocket) and a bad faceache (handkerchief held to it). There seemed to be no police around and very few nigh
t walkers. A woman peeped out of a doorway and said to me:

  – Fac fijki fijki?

  I ignored her and went on to the Batavia Hotel, where some upper lights were still on. There were two or three cars parked outside it, and several more on Tholepin Street. The cinema was dark and shut, the show long over. I was late then, very late, but I could always say, if need be, that I went for a cup of coffee somewhere. I took out Llew’s keys and their obscene attachment and then I forgot the make of the car. Fuck it, man. Llew’s voice came back with clarity: A Cyrano fucking convertible. Me, I’m her fucking chauffeur. And there it was: creamy, fender-dented, longnosed, SKX 224. I got in and shed toothache and dark glasses. I started her up and schooled my right hand in the feel and position of the controls. Then I drove off carefully. I had a lot to think about. But I couldn’t for the life of me see any other way out of the problem than this.

  I had not been surprised to find Llew dead. Other men falling backwards from a third-storey window would probably have limped off with bruises or, at most, have lain with a broken limb or head till the ambulance came. But Llew had with total efficiency cracked the back of his skull on the ruins of a birdbath – irony there – and, as a garnish, gashed a brachial artery on what looked like a smashed wine carboy. There was no accident but also no murder, unless you could regard the great sustentive creator as a murderer. He had made a mistake, he had repeated himself, and he had at last found time and opportunity to erase the error. Indeed, the fact of that error had only been brought to his notice by the chance collocation of myself and my ghastly likeness. But what the shamed artist could not now do was to pulverize the various extensions of that liquidated identity; he had to leave that to others, another, me. There was the body itself and the image on other retinas of its path through the world. There was the mother.

  My fear of the coming of the police to the Yo Ho Me Lads, a possible report to them from somebody of the noise in the house opposite, the interest of the police in the presence of a disruptive force in that region of the street – these had prevented me from doing what is so often done in murder stories of the more lurid kind. I was sensible enough to know that to bury a body is not easy and it takes much time. Even to drag it to the middle of that dark overgrown garden and cover it, as in a token Greek burial, with earth and leaves and branches could have been dangerous in its aftermath, my entering the house with earthy arms and sweat on me. Well well, doing a bit of midnight gardening, eh? I’m a bit of a gardener myself, let’s examine your handiwork. And to tell the police the innocent truth – No, the truth would never do here. I had already tried the truth with the Castitan police, and they had put me in a cell with a menu of capital crimes.