M/F

by Anthony Burgess

  Aderyn the Bird Queen seemed to have had her good eye clawed at, though the blood that trickled from near the tear duct was minimal. She said:

  – He’s not to go. Not yet if ever. Mothers have their rights. We have things to say to each other.

  – Your son is a married man now, Dr Fonanta smiled from his wheelchair. He must go where he wishes to go, and that is where his bride goes.

  – Married indeed, cried Miss Emmett as she had cried before. I won’t have them married. A filthy trick behind my back, that’s what it was and is. I’ll have the police in.

  I felt very strange–weak though not ill, sinner and martyr, in and out of danger. Dr Fonanta said very gently:

  – We won’t talk about the police, Miss Emmett. Not the police. Let’s leave the police out of things.

  She was quiet then. I said:

  – I’m getting out of here, mam. With Catherine. I’ve played your fucking game, see, and I’ve like had enough. We’re going a long way away. There’s the money, see, we’re all right for money, she’s got plenty, see. You agreed to it all, mam. By letting us get married in the first place you agreed. Like to us living our own life, see.

  – Yes, Aderyn said very tiredly. But there’s something still to be settled, bachgen. I’m not satisfied yet.

  – What is it you want, mam? Haven’t you had enough out of me?

  – You and me together, boy bach. Just for a little while.

  Dr Fonanta shrugged himself brokenly, saying:

  – Only reasonable. Umberto will drive Catherine and Miss Emmett into town. Your stay here has been short, Miss Emmett, but not uneventful.

  – Marriage, indeed. While I lie there out like a light with my horrible dreams.

  – You, my boy, will, I take it, find your own transportation later. Go with your mother, then. It must be the last time for some time, I think.

  – And if I say no, mam?

  – It’s not possible for you to say no, bach.

  No, it wasn’t. She led me back towards the big top, while Miss Emmett called:

  – Keep away from her, do you hear? Marriage, indeed.

  I think, looking back, I knew pretty well what was going to happen, though it may be a matter of wisdom after the event, long after. But how else, accepting the logic of the entire complex, could things now transpire except through this silent walk to the ring where her only magic lay, through what happened there and what I was prepared to have happen? The working lights were on still, and a couple of clowns argued metatheology over the last flatness of the champagne. The mammals had gone to their rest, but the birds were awake and preening. Aderyn said to the clowns:

  – There is a thing my boy and I must rehearse here.

  – Finsen is as unsound on that point as Onagros was. Onagros was, as I’ve perhaps said too often, a very tame ass. Eh, eh? Yes, dear lady, yes. Just going.

  This zany still had nose and big flapperfeet on. He left with his colleague, who was German and knew all about Strauss and the Romantic School: part of his costume was a pair of exaggeratedly patched levis. I said:

  – Plenty of intellectual life in this fucking circus, mam. Dr Fonanta sets the pattern like. And then there’s you and your passage from fucking pure to fucking applied horny theology.

  – You come now out into the open, boy. Your bolt is shot. What have you done with my son?

  – Your son is going through a passage, mam. A married man now, see. And growing up in other ways too.

  – You, Aderyn said, are Miles Faber. That girl is your sister. You have committed the most deadly sin, and it must be only to cover up the twin of that sin, which is murder.

  She had dropped the Welshiness but was ready now for the hwyl of the small town Calvinistic Methodist preacher.

  – Fucking nonsense, mam, and you know it.

  – My son did many wrong things and was often threatened in town after town. I feared for him here and asked the police to keep watch on him and apologized also for any wrong he might already have done. And the police said my son had given the name of Miles Faber.

  – And isn’t it right sometimes to give a false name? And if I gave the surname of the girl I loved it was because the name was like a tune in my fucking brain, mam.

  – This will not do, none of it. I can guess at what must have happened, although I am fearful of guessing. I would rather you were my son, alive and well and now married into a good family. You have lived a bad life, if you are truly my son, but I have loved you through it. And your start was so good. Good from the very day of your birth, which was the best of days, being no other than Nadolig. But they do say the Big Black Jesus too was born on that day, so he may have fought with the White One above your cradle and scratched you deep before he was sent raging off. If you are my son, if if if –

  Clichés: my head reeled, etc. From the whole junkshop of old iron that was hurled at me I caught in midair a rusty poker and prepared to hurl it back. I said:

  – If is a right word, mam. I might talk about if you are my mother. I might talk about a matter of adoption and long years of pretence. For it came out when you said about my father not being really my father only the other day. You were coming close to truth but not close enough, for it was yourself you meant, not him.

  If all this sounds histrionic, remember that it took place in a circus ring and that the participants were naturally exhibitionistic and one of them was Welsh and the other pretending to be. Aderyn’s response to my words was of a violence appropriate to crude entertainment. She staggered against her cage of hunters to say:

  – Who has been talking to you, boy? Is it Dr Fonanta?

  – Dr Fonanta was with me and my bride-to-be earlier today, yes, but he said nothing of this. I’ve been thinking a bit, mam, see, thinking. But as you mention Dr Fonanta, which isn’t his right name, of that I’m fucking sure, I’ll bet he had something to do with you getting me in the first place, when you were already a mature like woman with a husband that you left or a fancy man would be more fucking like it, and no kids of your own and wanting a kid. And that’s about it, see, I fucking reckon.

  – And whose son are you then, if you’re not mine, if you are my son that is, Llew that is –

  She was becoming nicely confused all the time things were becoming horribly clear to me, twincest, and me the older by an hour or so, and environment a great deal more important than heredity. I said:

  – That’s not important. What is important is me being a man with a wife and a life beginning and not the son of particular parents. But I’ll say something about the name, oh yes, the name, mam –

  – You’re not him, I can tell all the time you’re not, what with the voice and the hands and the words you’re using –

  – The name, mam. Would it have been Noel for Christmas turned back to become Leon, a sort of a lion, or Nowell like in The First Nowell which goes back to give you Llew and there’s the no cut out which I’m going to get from you loud and clear as from now, but very unconvincing, mam, and Llewelyn and Leon are the same name really and Llewelyn Llewelyn will do very nicely for the boy, yes yes yes, mam?

  – No. No. No.

  She almost propelled the cage towards the exit with the desperateness of her leaning on it for support.

  – Just the word I’d said I’d get from you. And the same word is the last word from me to you, a word of what they call rejection. For I’m going off now, mam.

  She took in a few calming breaths, deeply, professionally, right from the diaphragm. She was still in her ring robe and her false hair and her henna makeup. Impressive, no doubt, very. She said:

  – Love is love, bachgen, even if sometimes it is only another word for possession. Sit down on that chair, bach, just for a minute before you go.

  I had known, of course, that the scene couldn’t end with my waving a fierce hand and walking off, no echoing like a final band chord. She needed more than words, and perhaps I needed it too. I sat down on one of the chairs left over from the wedd
ing party. I waited. She said:

  – All those things are not important, you’re right there. But it is important to me to know whether my son is sitting down here before me, even though he is a changed son who talks of going off for ever.

  – Marriage was my idea, mam, but a marriage as soon as possible was yours. Mistrust. Mistrust is a bad thing in a mother.

  – I could ask if you remembered Alwyn Probert in Cardiff who went to sea and fell overboard. I could ask about the Misses Hogan who sold syrup of figs from a big bottle in the corner shop. I could ask many things about our past life together. But one thing will suffice and it will prove all.

  – Proof and love. It won’t do, mam. I can see you’re going to put me through some kind of fucking fiery furnace to see whether I’m the loved thing you know is leaving you anyway. Your senses and your reason ought to be enough. This is really the end.

  – If you are not my boy then I shall start looking for my boy. But you will be punished first.

  With that she opened the cage of hawks and, with her admirable skill, warbled them out in order – merloun, gerfalcon, falcon gentle, falcon of the rock, falcon peregrine, bastard, sacre, lanner, merlin, hobby, goshawk, tiercel, sparrowhawk, kestrel. The lovely creatures, with their frowning eyes that meant no enmity and their cruel flukes that would tear without malice, in a multiple whisper of wings soared, towered, looked down for the familiar castered perch that was not there, and were kept on the wing, circling, circling, soothed into the empty action by a new warbling from their mistress’s throat. Aderyn opened the other cage and, rather like a housewife looking for the right package in a kitchen cupboard, searched with her hurt eyes and her gentle hand for the bird she wanted. Her wrist emerged with a snowy cockatoo that cocked its head at me as though, which was true, there were to be relations between us, though it would only be a relationship of a man and a machine. The hawks whirred above, a ring concentric to a ring. I said:

  – This will be a riddle, won’t it, mam? And the riddle will have come straight out of Dr Fonanta’s Book of Versified Riddles available only to the trade, whatever the trade is. I’ve been learning a lot, see, mam.

  – You remember the night in Norman, Oklahoma, she said, stroking the cockatoo’s feathers. There was a kind of jeering professor, you remember, who laughed when some of the birds did not do well. They were nervous and it was an audience with very little sympathy in it, remember. So I had him up on the stage – you were there, you saw from the wings – and this riddle was asked him. And the consequence of him getting it wrong was that he was made very frightened and thought his eyes would be pecked out. If you are my son, you will know the answer. If you are not my son, you will be punished for your crimes, and one of these crimes is the crime of pretence.

  – You’re mad, mam, I said, putting my right hand in my, Llew’sjacket pocket. If they all wanted a game they could have a game.

  But she was coaxing the cockatoo with whispered cue-words. She said:

  – Come now. Who was the who was the.

  The bird preened, cocked, cleared its throat and squawked its riddle:

  Who was the final final, say,

  That was put back but had his day?

  The Fonanta touch was in it. Stalling, I said:

  – An owl should be asking, an owl.

  For I remembered that dream in the Algonquin bedroom. But she said:

  – An owl could say Who? Imagine an owl is saying it. And God help you now, boy, for the hawks are hovering.

  The horror was that there were two answers, both perfectly valid. But two answers would not do. I could not get the riddle wrong but I could never, with such a riddle-mistress, get it right either. I said:

  – I never properly heard, mam, whether he said God or the Devil. Because a dog has his day, and if you’ve had your day you’ve lived.

  – Choose.

  I chose, and I made the wrong choice. She cried out a strange word and the hunters swooped. The eyes the eyes. It was once common training to teach hawks to tear out the eyes of sheep. I fought off the whirring snapping phalanx with my left hand and with my right I brought my talisman from Llew’s pocket. If they wanted a game they could have a game, complete with referee’s whistle. I fumbled the silver cylinder to my lips and pierced a swathe through the whirling snappers with a great clean blast. I blasted and blasted and they were maddened and confused. The talking birds in their cage were confused into a response of maniacal multiple recitation, and the effect was, a segment of my brain was just about able to admit, not unlike Sib Legeru. I blasted, and the hawks knew they had to attack what my poor twin, my extrapolated id really perhaps, had Shakespeareanly called jellies, human ones, but none where that maddening shriek obstructed their right of attack. I blasted away still, and I knew that my right answer was not to the riddle but to the fear I should be feeling. In my panic of a childhood dream I should be calling Mam mam I’m frightened take them away mam. She would have known then: she would have called off the bogeybirds. But now she was fighting for her own eyes, though some of the lesser hawks had found a target in the cockatoo. He, squawking Had his day had his day, found his way back to his caged companions and safety, and Aderyn faced the entire army. It was she who cried Stop it stop them Llew Llew, and compassion drew my lips away. The birds woke from their violent trance and would have, in rational sobriety, turned on me who had tormented them, but she warbled desperately and rallied and called them to a flock and then to a caged flock and I said:

  – I couldn’t be a little boy again, mam. It’s all different from now on.

  As I left (and my first task must be to get Llew’s passport from her handbag in the trailer and destroy it without reading it) she called for me to come back, but she seemed pretty sure it was her son she was calling, or the boy she called her son. She would be all right. She would get over it. In a day or so she would be talking of the consolation of her art, such as it was.

  19

  The Sunday bells were jubilant all over the capital, but nearby, perhaps in some heretic chapel or other tolerated pocket of dissent, a single bell tolled and tolled. That would do for Llew, wherever his body was. I had spent the remainder of the night in the attic of the house on Indovinella Street, dead asleep, undisturbed by Catherine and Miss Emmett, who kept vigil among their packed bags and must have been off in a taxi shortly after dawn. It was probably the noise of the banging front door that woke me and, after curiously painful micturition, sent me downstairs to find a note in the livingroom, a key holding it from the Caribbean wind that freshened from the window: Give to Cunsummatu & Son Agent on Habis Road. Nothing else.

  I was not surprised to find that the body of Llew had disappeared from the outhouse. I would rest in the obscurity of Dr Fonanta’s purpose while taking his power for granted. A revelation of sorts would come. Meanwhile I transported, under the joyous chaos of the bells, the works of Sib Legeru, or most of them, into the livingroom, more appropriate than the outhouse. I was astonished to find that he had composed music as well as created literature and pictures. There was an orchestral score headed Sinfonietta with parts for such instruments as chimburu blocks and Tibetan nosehorn. I could not at that time read music, though I have learnt very thoroughly since, and I was not able to judge of the work’s merit, but I did not doubt it was great. There were no signs of any sculpture, but some boxes, most of them too heavy to handle, probably had stone and metal groups and figurines in them. But, for the time being, there was enough to be getting on with in the canvases and typescripts and notebooks.

  I was struck, reading some elegiac hexameters over a mug of tea with no sugar, by the sudden problem of how to get these things to America. I still had no money but I could wire for some and thus pay for airfreighting. But the danger of hijacking was considerable at that time – men with guns and much hair suddenly emerging from among docile air passengers and demanding that the plane be diverted from its true course and be flown to such places as Havana. The purpose of the hijacking wa
s never really clear, but I think it was a kind of protest, like my own yummy campus affair. No no no, shut that out, for the time being anyway. Memo: Ask Fonanta. If a hijacked plane crash had killed my father, planes in general were not good for Sib Legeru. It seemed to me that the best thing to do was to convey the better part of his work tenderly in the Zagadka II, if those faggots would agree. I took time off from my reading to cross over to the Yo Ho Me Lads to see if at least drunken Aspinwall was there. He was, with a nearly full bottle of Azzopardi’s special white rum in front of him. Safe then till, say, tomorrow. He called:

  – Bastard’s gone off again. Screw him. Have drink.

  – Later. Order another bottle.

  – Manuel Manuel Manuel!

  I left, well satisfied, and was crossing the road when the shining monster of Dr Fonanta drove up, Umberto at the wheel affecting not to recognize me. Dr Fonanta was, in cloak and wide hat, very much the jelyf man; his baldness was chiefly for Manhattan. But he came into the house on his crutches, sat in the livingroom, beamed, then screwed his nose at the sight of the works of his artistic superior.

  – Well, I said.

  – Well meaning Llew. That poor boy is wiped out of the world now. There was never a more unnecessary birth than his, so no regrets. Umberto carried him off in a sack during the night, very Verdian. Verdi. That music you have there doesn’t make sense. You can’t have five crotchets in a bar when the time signature is three-four. A lot of nonsense. Look – that bassoon part goes down to F-sharp below the stave. Impossible.

  – You know it all, don’t you?

  – And don’t start talking about freedom of expression. The bassoonist is not free to play that F-sharp. Except of course in the mind in the mind in the mind. Berkeleyen, Gonzian, a lot of nonsense.

  – You knew Gonzi well, did you?