Paul recognized the music. It was the last movement of the Fifth Symphony of Sibelius. He suddenly felt drunkenly confident: the Finnish bottled ale was not so mild after all. ‘You’ve sent me away nearly naked,’ he said. ‘Toothless, wifeless—ah, never mind. I don’t even know what I am any more—sexually, I mean. Still, Shakespeare’s sexual orientation is far from clear. And then there was Socrates. I’m going back to an antique-shop, but somebody’s got to conserve the good of the past, before your Americanism and America’s Russianism make plastic of the world. There’s a lot of summer in front of me yet. Listen to that music of a little country.’ The movement had arrived at the recapitulation of the swinging heavy horn-figure in thirds, a noble tune singing over it. ‘You’ll learn about freedom from us yet,’ he said, and felt a doubt as soon as he’d said it.
‘Freedom,’ sneered Karamzin.
‘Freedom,’ mused Zverkov. ‘Whatever it is.’
The movement came to an end: sharp chords for the entire orchestra set in wide spaces of silence. ‘Whatever it is,’ agreed Paul.
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 by Anthony Burgess
Copyright renewed 1991 by Anthony Burgess
First American edition 1964
First published as a Norton paperback 1978; reissued 1996, 2013
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burgess, Anthony, 1917–1993.
Honey for the bears / Anthony Burgess.
pages ; cm.
ISBN 978-0-393-34638-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-393-34675-6 (e-book)
1. Antique dealers—Fiction. 2. Soviet Union—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6052.U638H65 2013
823'.914—dc23
2013015072
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Honey for the Bears Page 24