Bodices in the unholy dance. And he said,
And Morgan said, whom the scholarly called Pelagius:
Why do ye this, my brothers and sisters?
Are ye not saved by Christ, are ye not
Sanctified by his sacrifice, oh why why why?
(Being British and innocent) and
What was the name of that show again? Art blamed as always. Art was neutral, neither teaching nor provoking, a static shimmer, he would tell the bastards. What was it again? And then he thought about this present poem (a draft of course, very much a draft) and wondered: is it perhaps not didactic? But how about The Wreck of the Deutschland? Hopkins was always having a go at the English, and the Welsh too, for not rushing to be converted back (the marvellous milk was Walsingham Way, once) to Catholicism. But somehow Hopkins was of the devil's party without knowing it (better remember not to say that on this Live Lancing Show, that was the name, something like it anyway, people were stupid, picked you up literally on that sort of thing): it was a kind of paganism with him-lush-kept plush-capped sloe, indeed-with God tacked on. The our-King-back-oh-upon-English-souls stuff was merely structural, something to bring the poem to an end. But how about this?
No, he decided. He was not preaching. Who the hell was he to preach? Out of the Church at sixteen, never been to mass in forty years. This was merely an imaginative inquiry into free will and predestination. Somewhat comforted, he read on, scratching, the White Owl, self-doused, relighted, hooting out foul smoke.
They said to him cheerfully, looking up
From picking a peahen bone or kissing the
Nipple or nates of son, daughter, sister,
Brother, aunt, ewe, teg: Why, stranger,
Hast not heard the good news? That Christ
Took away the burden of our sins on his
Back broad to bear, and as we are saved
Through him it matters little what we do?
Since we are saved once for all, our being
Saved will not be impaired or cancelled by
Our present pleasures (which we propose to
Renew tomorrow after a suitable and well-needed
Rest). Alleluia alleluia to the Lord for he has
Led us to two paradises, one to come and the other
Here and now. Alleluia. And they fell to again,
To nipple or nates or fish baked with datemince,
Alleluia. And Morgan cried to the sky:
How long O Lord wilt thou permit these
Transgressions against thy holiness?
Strike them strike them as thou once didst
The salty cities of the plain, as through
Phinehas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron
Thou didst strike down the traitor Zimri
And his foul whore of the Moabite temples Cozbi.
Strike strike. But the Lord did nothing.
Here came the difficulties. This whole business of free will and predestination and original sin had to be done very dramatically. And yet there had to be a bit of sermonising. How the hell? Enderby, who was not at present wearing his spectacles (ridiculous when one was otherwise naked, anyway he only needed them for distance really), gazing vaguely about the bedroom for an answer found none forthcoming. The bookshelves of his landlady sternly turned the backs, spines rather, of their contents towards him: not our business, we are concerned with the real issues of life, meaning women downtrodden by men, the economic oppression of the blacks, counter-culture, coming revolt, Reich, Fanon, third world. Then Enderby, squinting, could hardly believe what he saw. At the bedroom door a woman, girl, female anyway. Covering his genitals with his poem he said:
"What the devil? Who let you? Get out."
"But I have an appointment with you at ten. It's ten after now. It was arranged. I'll, wait in the-Unless-I mean, I didn't expect-"
She had not yet gone. Enderby, pumping strongly at the White Owl as if it would thus make him an enveloping cloud, turned his back to her, covered his bottom with his poem, then found his dressing gown (Rawcliffe's really, bequeathed to him with his other effects) on a chair behind a rattan settee and near to the air conditioner. He clothed himself in it. She was still there and talking.
"I mean, I don't mind if you don't-"
"I do mind," Enderby said. And he flapped towards her on bare feet but in his gown. "What is all this anyway?"
"For Jesus."
"For who, for Christ's sake?" He was close to her now and saw that she was a nice little thing he supposed she could be called, with nicely sculpted little tits under a black sweater stained with, as he supposed, Coke and Pepsi and hamburger fat (good food was what these poor kids needed), long American legs in patched worker's pants. Strange how one never bothered to take in the face here in America, the face didn't matter except on films, one never remembered the face, and all the voices were the same. And then: "They shouldn't have let you in, you know, just like that. You're supposed to be screened or something, and then they ring me up and ask if it's all right."
"But he knows me, the man downstairs. He knows I'm one of your students."
"Oh, are you?" said Enderby. "I didn't quite-Yes," peering at her, "I suppose you could be. We'd better go into the sitting room or whatever they call it." And he pushed past her into the corridor to lead the way.
The room where he was supposed to live (e.g., watch television, play protest songs on his landlady's record player, look out of the window down on the street at acts of violence) was furnished mostly with barbaric nonsense-drums and shields and spears and very ill-woven garish rugs-and you were supposed to sit on pouffes. Enderby waved this girl to a pouffe with one hand and with the other indicated the television set, saying, puffing out White Owl smoke, "I'm to be on that thing there."
"Oh."
"The Blowpipe Show or something. Can't think of the name offhand. What did you say your name was?"
"Oh, you know. Lydia Tietjens." And, as he sat on a neighbouring pouffe, she gave him a playful push, as at his rather nice eccentric foreign silliness.
"Ah yes, of course. Ford Madox Ford. Met him once. He had terrible halitosis, you know. Stood in his way. The Establishment rejected him. And it was because he'd had the guts to fight and get gassed, while the rest of the bastards stayed at home. I say, you're not recording that, are you?" For, he now saw, she had a small Japanese cassette machine and was holding it towards him, rather like a sideswoman with offertory box.
"Just getting a level." And then, after some whirring and clicking, Enderby heard an unfamiliar voice say: rest of the bastards stayed at home i say youre not rec.
"What did you say it was for?"
"For Jesus. Our magazine. Women for Jesus. You know."
"Why just women for Jesus? I thought anyone could join." And Enderby looked with fascination at the Xeroxed thing she brought out of what looked like a British respirator haversack-their magazine, typewritten, as he could see from the last page, with no margin justifying, and the front page just showing the name jesus and a crude portrait of a beardless though plentifully haired messiah.
"But that's not him."
"Right. Not him. What proof is there that it was a him?"
Enderby breathed hard a few times and said: "Would you like what we English call elevenses? Cakes and tea and things? I could cook you a steak if you liked. Or, wait, I have some stew left over from yesterday. It wouldn't take a minute to heat it up." That was the trouble with all of them, poor kids. Half-starved, seeing visions, poisoned with Cokes and hamburgers.
THREE
"Do you believe in God?" she asked, a steak sandwich in one paw and the cassette thing in the other.
"Is that tea strong enough for you?" Enderby asked. "It doesn't look potable to me. One bag indeed. Gnat piss," he added. And then: "Oh, God. Well, believing is neither here nor there, you know. I believe in God and so what? I don't believe in God and so what again? It doesn't affect his own position, does it?"
"Why do you say his?" she hizze
d.
"Her, then. It. Doesn't matter really. A matter of tradition and convention and so on. Needs a new pronoun. Let's invent one, unique, just for-himherit. Ah, that's it, then. Nominative heshir. Accusative himrit. Genitive hiserits."
"But you're still putting the masculine first. The heshit bit's all right, though. Appropriate."
"I don't mind what goes first," Enderby said. "Would you like something by Sara Lee? Please yourself then. All right. Shehit Herimit. Herisits. It doesn't affect herisits position whether I believe or not."
"But what happens when you die?"
"You're finished with," Enderby said promptly. "Done for. And even if you weren't-well, you die then, gasp your last, then you're sort of wandering, free of your body. You wander around and then you come into contact with a sort of big thing. What is this big thing? God, if you like. What's it, or shehit, like? I would say," Enderby said thoughtfully, "like a big symphony, the page of the score of infinite length, the number of instruments infinite but all bound into one big unity. This big symphony plays itself for ever and ever. And who listens to it? It listens to itself. Enjoys itself for ever and ever and ever. It doesn't give a bugger whether you hear it or not."
"Like masturbation."
"I thought it would come to that. I thought you'd have to bring sex into it sooner or later. Anyway, a kind of infinite Ninth Symphony. God as Eternal Beauty. God as Truth? Nonsense. God as Goodness. That means shehit has to be in some sort of ethical relationship with beings that are notGod. But God is removed, cut off, self-subsistent, not giving a damn."
"But that's horrible. I couldn't live with a God like that."
"You don't have to. Anyway, what have you or anybody else got to do with it? God doesn't have to be what people want shehit to be. I'm fed up with God," Enderby said, "so let's get on to something else." And at once he got up painfully and noisily to find the whisky bottle, this being about the time for. "I haven't got any glasses," he said. "Not clean ones, anyway. You'll have to have it from the bottle."
"I don't want any." She didn't want her tea either. Quite right: gnat piss. Enderby got down again. "If there's no life after death," she said, "why does it matter about doing good in this world? I mean, if there's no reward or punishment in the next."
"That's terrible," Enderby sneered. "Doing things because of what you're bloody well going to get out of it." He took some whisky and did a conventional shudder. It raged briefly through the inner streets and then was transmuted into benevolent warmth in the citadel. Enderby smiled on the girl kindly and offered the bottle. She took it, raised it like a trumpet to the heavens, sucked in a millilitre or so. "And, while we're at it," he said, "let's decide what we mean by good."
"You decide. It's you who are being interviewed."
"Well, there are some stupid bastards who can't understand how the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp could go home after torturing Jews all day and then weep tears of joy at a Schubert symphony on the radio. They say: here's a man dedicated to evil capable of enjoying the good. But what the imbecilic sods don't realise is that there are two kinds of good-one is neutral, outside ethics, purely aesthetic. You get it in music or in a sunset if you like that sort of thing or in a grilled steak or in an apple. If God's good, if God exists that is, God's probably good in that way. As I said." He sipped from the bottle she had handed back. "Before."
"Or sex. Sex is as good whether-I mean, you don't have to be in what they used to call a state of grace to enjoy it."
"That's good," Enderby said warmly. "That's right. Though you're still going on about sex. You mean lesbian sex, of course, in your case. Not that I have anything against it, naturally, except that I'm not permitted to experience it. The world's getting narrower all the time. All little sects doing what they call their own thing."
"Why do you keep showing your balls all the time?" she said boldly. "Don't you have underpants or anything?"
Enderby flushed very deeply all over. "I had no intention," he said. "I can assure you. What I mean is, I'll put something on. I was not trying to provoke-I apologise," he said, going off back to the bedroom. He came out again wearing nondescript trousers, something from an old suit, and a not overclean striped shirt. Also slippers. He said, "There." The hypocritical little bitch had been at the bottle in his brief absence. He could tell that from her slight slur. She said:
"Evil."
"Who? Oh, evil." And he sat down again. "Evil is the destructive urge. Not to be confused with mere wrong. Wrong is what the government doesn't like. Sometimes a thing can be wrong and evil at the same time-murder, for instance. But then it can be right to murder. Like you people going round killing the Vietnamese and so on. Evil called right."
"It wasn't right. Nobody said it was right."
"The government did. Get this straight. Right and wrong are fluid and interchangeable. What's right one day can be wrong the next. And vice versa. It's right to like the Chinese now. Before you started playing Ping-pong with them it was wrong. A lot of evil nonsense. What you kids need is some good food (there you are, see: good in non-ethical sense) and an idea of what good and evil are about."
"Well, go on, tell us."
"Nobody," said Enderby, having taken a swig, "has any clear idea about good. Oh, giving money to the poor perhaps. Helping old ladies across the street. That sort of thing. Evil's different. Everybody knows evil. Brought up to it, you see. Original sin."
"I don't believe in original sin." She was taking the bottle quite manfully now. "We're free."
Enderby looked on her bitterly, also sweating. It was really too hot to wear anything indoors. Damned unchangeable central heating, controlled by some cold sadist somewhere in the basement. Bitterly because she'd hit on the damned problem that he had to present in the poem. She ought to go away now and let him get on with it. Still, his duty. One of his students. He was being paid. Those brown bastards in whose hands he had left La Belle Mer would be shovelling it all from till to pocket. Bad year we had, señor. Had to near shut up bloody shop. He said carefully:
"Well, yes. Freeish. Wir sind ein wenig frei. Wagner wrote that. Gave it to Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger." And then: "No, to hell with it. Wholly free. Totally free to choose between good and evil. The other things don't matter-I mean free to drink a quart of whisky without vomiting and so on. Free to touch one's forehead with one's foot. And so forth."
"I can do that," she said. The latter. Doing it. That was the whisky, God help the ill-nourished child.
"But," Enderby said, ignoring the acrobatics. She didn't seem to be bothering to use her cassette thing any more. Never mind. "But we're disposed to do evil rather than good. History is the record of that. Given the choice, we're inclined to do the bad thing. That's all it means. We have to make a strong effort to do the good thing."
"Examples of evil," she said.
"Oh," said Enderby. "Killing for the sake of doing it. Torturing for pleasure-it always is that, though, isn't it? Defacing a work of art. Farting during a performance of a late Beethoven quartet. That must be evil because it's not wrong. I mean, there's no law against it."
"We believe," she said, sitting up seriously, checking the cassette machine and holding it out, "that a time will come when evil will be no more. She'll come again, and that will be the end of evil."
"Who's she?"
"Jesus, of course."
Enderby breathed deeply several times. "Look," he said. "If you get rid of evil you get rid of choice. You've got to have things to choose between, and that means good and evil. If you don't choose, you're not human any more. You're something else. Or you're dead."
"You're sweating just terribly," she said. "There's no need to wear all that. Don't you have swimming trunks?"
"I don't swim," Enderby said.
"It is hot," she said. And she began to remove her Coke-and-hamburger-stained sweater. Enderby gulped and gulped. He said:
"This is, you must admit, somewhat irregular. I mean, the professor and student rela
tionship and all that sort of thing."
"You exhibited yourself. That's somewhat irregular too." By now she had taken off the sweater. She was, he supposed, decently dressed by beach standards, but there was a curious erotic difference between the two kinds of top worn. This was austere enough-no frills or representations of black hands feeling for the nipples. Still, it was undress. Beach dress was not that. He said:
"An interesting question when you come to think of it. If somebody's lying naked on the beach it's not erotic. Naked on the bed is different. Even more different on the floor."
"The first one's functional," she said. "Like for a surgical operation. Nakedness is only erotic when it's obviously not for anything else."
"You're quite a clever girl," Enderby said. "What kind of marks have I been giving you?"
"Two C's. But I couldn't do the sestina. Very old-fashioned. And the other one was free verse. But you said it was really hexameters."
"People often go into hexameters when they try to write free verse," Enderby said. "Walt Whitman, for instance."
"I have to get A's. I just have to." And then: "It is hot."
"Would you like some ice in that? I can get you some ice."
"Have you a cold Coke?"
"There you go again, with your bloody Cokes and 7-Ups and so on. It's uncivilised," Enderby raged. "I'll get you some ice." He went into the kitchen and looked at it gloomily. It was a bit dirty, really, the sink piled high. He didn't know how to use the washing-up machine. He crunched out ice cubes by pulling a lever. Ice cubes went tumbling into dirty water and old fat. He cleaned them on a dishrag. Then he put them into the GEORGIA tea mug and took them in. He gulped. He said: "That's going too far, you know." Topless waitresses, topless students. And then: "I forgot to wash a glass for you. Scatch on the racks," he added, desperately facetious. He went back to the kitchen and at once the kitchen telephone rang.
"Enderby?" It was an English voice, male.
"Professor Enderby, yes."
"Well, you're really in the shit now, aren't you, old boy?"
The Clockwork Testament (Or: Enderby 's End) Page 3