The Wanting Seed

by Anthony Burgess

  'No, please, don't,' she begged. It was no good; she couldn't bear his touch. She struggled. 'I'm not feeling at all well,' she said. 'I'm upset.' She began to snivel. He desisted.

  'Oh, well,' he said. 'Oh, very well.' He bit at his left little finger-nail. with his plastic teeth, standing by the window, awkward. 'I'm sorry I did that. I just didn't think.' She gathered the paper plates from the table and shot them into the firehole in the wall. 'Ah, hell,' he said with sudden violence. 'They've turned normal decent sex into a crime. And you don't want it any more. Just as well, I suppose,' He sighed. 'I can see that I'll have to join the volunteer geldings if I even want to keep my job.'

  At that moment Beatrice-Joanna had a sharp revisitation of a sensation that, just for a blinding second, had buffeted her cortex when lying under Derek on that crumpled fever-bed. A sort of eucharistic moment of high-pitched trumpets and a crack of light like that (so it is said) seen at the instant of severing the optic nerve. And a tiny voice, peculiarly penetrating, squealing, 'Yes yes yes.' If everybody was talking about being careful, perhaps she'd better be careful, too. Not all that careful, of course. Only careful enough for Tristram not to know. Contraceptive devices had been known to fail. She said: 'I'm sorry, darling. I didn't mean that.' She put her arms round his neck. 'Now, if you like.' If only it could be done under an anaesthetic. Still, it wouldn't last long.

  Tristram kissed her hungrily. 'I'll take the tablets,' he said, 'not you.' Ever since the birth of Roger - on the admittedly and blessedly few occasions of his seeking his conjugal rights - he had always insisted on taking the precautions himself. For he had not really wanted Roger. 'I'll take three,' he said. 'Just to be on the safe side.' The tiny voice within had a miniature chuckle at that.

  Thirteen

  BEATRICE-JOANNA and Tristram, preoccupied in their several ways, did not see and hear the Prime Minister's announcement on television. But in millions of other homes - generally on the bedroom ceiling, there being insufficient space elsewhere - the stereoscopic image of the pouched, bulbous, classical scholar's face of the Right Hon. Robert Starling glowed and scolded like a fretful lamp. It spoke of the desperate dangers that England, that the English-Speaking Union, that the great globe itself would soon be running into unless certain strong repressive measures were, albeit regretfully, taken. This was war. War against irresponsibility, against those elements that were sabotaging - and such sabotage was clearly intolerable - the engines of state, against the wholesale flouting of reasonable and liberal laws, especially that law which, for the community's good, sought to limit the growth of population. All over the planet, said the luminous face with gravity, the leaders of state would be speaking-tonight or tomorrow - in similar urgent terms to their various peoples; the whole world was declaring war on itself. The severest punishments for continued irresponsibility (hurting the punishers more than the punished, it was implied); planetary survival dependent on the balance of population and a scientifically calculated minimal food supply; tighten belts; win through; evil things they would be fighting; pull together; long live the King.

  Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram also missed some exciting stereoscopic film-shots of the summary settling of the strike at the National Synthelac Works - the police, nicknamed greyboys, using truncheons and carbines, laughing the while; a splash of chromatic brains on the camera lens.

  They also missed a later announcement about the formation of a corps called the Population Police, its proposed Metropolitan Commissioner well-known to them both - brother, betrayer, lover.

  Part Two

  One

  AN eight-hour shift system operated in all the State Utilities. But the schools and colleges split the day (every day, vacations being staggered) into four shifts of six hours each. Nearly two months after the opening of the Interphase, Tristram Foxe sat at midnight breakfast (shift starting at one) with a full summer moon slanting in. He was trying to eat a sort of paper cereal moistened with synthelac, and - though hungry at all hours these days, the rations having been cut considerably - he found it very difficult to spoon down the wet fibrous horror: it was somehow like having to eat one's words. As he munched an endless mouthful, the synthetic voice of the Daily Newsdisc (23.00 edition) squealed like a cartoon mouse, what time the organ itself wheeled slow and shiny black on the wall-spindle. '. . . Unprecedently low herring catches, explicable only in terms of inexplicable failure to breed, Ministry of Pisciculture reports -' Tristram reached out his left hand and switched off. Birth control among fish, eh? Tristram reeled an instant in a sudden race-memory - a sort of round fiat fish overlapping the plate, crisp brown with a sharpish sauce. But all fish caught these days were crunched up by machines, converted into manure or mashed into the all-purpose nutrition-block (to be served as soup, cutlets, bread or pudding) which the Ministry of Natural Food issued as the main part of the weekly ration.

  The living-room now being emptied of the manic voice and its ghastly journalese, Tristram could hear more clearly his wife being sick in the bathroom. Poor girl, she was regularly sick on rising these days. Perhaps it was the food. Enough to make anyone sick. He got up from the table and looked in on her. She was pale and tired-looking, limp as though the vomiting had wrung her out. 'I should go to the hospital if I were you,' he said kindly. 'See what's the matter.'

  'I'm all right.'

  'You don't seem all right to me.' He turned over his wrist microradio; the watch-face on the back said past twelve-thirty. 'I must fly.' He kissed her damp forehead. 'Look after yourself, dear. Do go and see somebody at the hospital.'

  'It's nothing. Just a tummy upset.' And indeed she began, as if for his benefit, to look much better.

  Tristram left (just a tummy upset) and joined the group waiting at the lift. Old Mr Earthrowl, Phipps, Arthur Spragg, Miss Runting - race-blocks like nutrition-blocks: Europe, Africa, Asia mashed together, salted by Polynesia - off to their jobs in the ministries and the national factories; Allsopp and the bearded Abazoff, Darking and Hamidun, Mrs Gow whose husband had been taken off three weeks before - ready for the shift that would end two hours later than Tristram's own. Mr Earthrowl was saying, in a wavering ancient voice, 'It's not right at all, the way I see it, having these coppers watching you all the time. Wasn't like that in my young days. If you wanted a smoke in the lavatory you went for a smoke, and no questions asked. But not now, oh, no. Breathing down your neck, these coppers are, all the time. Not right, way I look at it.' He continued his grumbling, the bearded Abazoff nodding the while, as they got into the lift - an old man, harmless and not very bright, driver of a large screw into the back of the television cabinet that, in endless multiplication, crawled towards and past him on a conveyor-belt. In the lift, Tristram said quietly to Mrs Gow:

  'Any news?'

  She looked up at him, a long-faced woman of forty-odd, her skin dry and smoked like that of a gipsy. 'Not a word. It's my belief that they've shot him. Shot him,' she suddenly cried aloud. Fellow-passengers pretended not to hear.

  'Nonsense.' Tristram patted her thin arm. 'He didn't commit any real crime. He'll be back soon, you'll see.'

  'It was his own fault,' said Mrs Gow. 'Drinking that there ale. Shooting his mouth off. I always told him he'd go too far one of these days.'

  'There, there,' said Tristram, continuing to pat. The truth was that Gow hadn't technically shot his mouth off at all; he'd merely rasped a brief rude noise at a knot of policemen outside one of the rougher drinking-shops, somewhere off Guthrie Road. He'd been carted off amid great hilarity, and no more had been seen of him. It was best to keep off alc these days, best to leave alc to the greyboys.

  4 [?] 3 [?] 2 [?] 1 - G. Tristram shuffled out of the lift. Moonshot plummy night waited outside in the packed street. And in the vestibule were members of the Poppol or Population Police - black uniform, cap with shiny peak, badge and collar-dogs ashine with a bursting bomb which proved, on closer inspection, to be a breaking egg. Unarmed, less given to summary violence than the greyboys, smart, polite, t
hey were mostly a credit to their commissioner. Tristram, joining the I-had-not-thought-death-had-undone-so-many workward crowd, uttered the word 'brother' aloud to the night-running Channel and its silver sky. The term had taken on purely pejorative connotations for him, which was not fair on poor inoffensive George, eldest of the three, hard at work on an agricultural station near Springfield, Ohio. George had recently sent one of his rare letters, dully factual about experiments with new fertilizers, puzzled about a strange wheat-blight seeping east through Iowa, lllinois and Indiana. Good solid old George.

  Tristram entered the good solid old skyscraper which was the South London (Channel) Unitary School (Boys) Division Four. The Delta Shift was streaming out, and one of Joscelyne's three deputies, an open-mouthed grey-coxcombed man named Cory, stood in the great vestibule, watching. The Alpha Shift darted and needled into lifts, up stairs, down corridors. Tristram's first lesson was on the second floor - Elementary Historical Geography for the twentieth stream of the First Form. The artificial voice counted: '- Eighteen-seventeen -' Was it only his imagination, or was that creation of the National Syntheglot Corporation sterner, more iron-like, than it used to be?' '- Three-two-one.' He was late. He shot up in a staff-lift and panted into the classroom. One had to be careful these days.

  Fifty-odd boys of various colour-mixtures greeted him in a single polite 'Good morning'. Morning, eh? Night sat firmly on outside; the moon, great and frightening female symbol, sat over the night. Tristram said:

  'Homework. Homework on your desks, please.' The tinkle of metal fasteners as the boys undid their satchels, then the flap of exercise-books, the rustle as they turned to the page where they had drawn their map of the world. Tristram strolled round, hands clasped behind, cursorily examining. The great crowded globe on Mercator's Projection, the two great empires - Enspun (English-Speaking Union) and Ruspun (Russian-Speaking Union) - crudely copied by lolling tonguetip-protruding boys. The Annexe Islands for population overflow, still building on the major oceans. A peaceful world that had forgotten the arts of self-destruction, peaceful and worried. 'Careless,' said Tristram, his forefinger on Cottam's drawing. 'You've put Australia too far south. You've forgotten to put in Ireland.' 'Sir,' said Cottam. And here was a boy-Hynard-who had not done his homework, a scared-looking boy, dark moons under his eyes. 'What,' asked Tristram, 'is the meaning of this?'

  'I wasn't able to, sir,' said Hynard, his lower lip shaking. 'They moved me to the Hostel, sir. I hadn't time, sir.'

  'Oh. The Hostel.' This was something new, an institution for orphans, temporary and permanent. 'What happened?'

  'They took them away, sir, my dad and mum. They said they'd done wrong.'

  'What had they done?'

  The boy hung his head. An awareness of crime, not taboo, kept him red and silent. Tristram said, kindly:

  'Your mother has just had a baby, is that it?'

  'Going to,' mumbled the boy. 'They took them away. They had to pack everything up. And then they took me to the Hostel.'

  A great anger suffused Tristram. It was (and he realized this with shame) really a factitious anger, a pedantic anger. He saw himself in the Principal's office, ranting: 'The State regards the education of these children as important, which presumably means that they regard homework as important, and here the State comes sticking in its ugly hypocritical snout and stops one of my pupils from doing his homework. For Dogsake let's know where we stand.' The weak fretfulness of a man invoking principle. He knew, of course, what the answer would be: first things first, the first thing being survival. He sighed, patted the boy's head, then went back to the front of the class. 'This morning,' he said, 'we're going to draw a map of the Sahara Reclamation Area. Take out your pencils.' Morning indeed. Night, that sea of school ink, flowed strongly away outside.

  Two

  BEATRICE-JOANNA sat writing a letter. She wrote in pencil, unhandily through desuetude, using the paper-saving logograms she had learned at school. Two months, and she had seen both nothing and too much of Derek. Too much of the public television image - Derek as black-uniformed reasonably exhorting Commissioner of the Population Police; nothing of Derek the lover, wearing a more becoming uniform of nakedness and desire. There was no censorship of letters, and she felt she could write freely. She wrote: 'Darling, I suppose I ought to be proud of the great name you're making for yourself, and you certainly look lovely in your new clothes. But I can't help wishing things were as they were before, when we could lie together loving each other, and not a care in the world except making sure that nobody knew what was going on between us. I refuse to believe that those lovely times are over. I miss you so much. I miss your arms around me and your lips on mine and -' She deleted this ampersand; some things were too precious to give to cold logograms. '- and your lips on mine. Oh, darling, sometimes I wake in the night or afternoon or morning or whenever it is we go to bed, according to the shift he's working, and want to cry out with desire for you.' She crammed her left fist in her mouth as if to stifle such a cry. 'Oh, dearest one, I love you, love you, love you. I long for your arms around me and your lips -' She saw that she had already said that, so she crossed it out; but the crossing-out made it appear that she had thought better of wanting his arms, lips and so on. She shrugged and went on. 'Couldn't you get in touch with me somehow? I know it's too risky for you to write to me, as Tristram would be sure to see the letter in the block letter-rack, but surely you could somehow give me a sign to show you still love me? And you do still love me, don't you, dearest?' He could send her a token. In the old days, the days of Shakespeare and steam radio, lovers had sent their mistresses flowers. Now, of course, what flowers there were were all rendered esculent. He could send a packet of dehydrated cowslip broth, but that would mean cutting into his meagre rations. She longed for something romantic and daring, some big heretical gesture. In inspiration she wrote, 'When next you are on the telly please, if you love me still, bring in some special word, just for me. Bring in the word "love" or the word "desire". Then I'll know that you go on loving me as I go on loving you. There is no news, life goes on as it always does, very dull and dreary.' That was a lie: there was, she thought, a very definite item of news, but that had to be kept to herself. The straight line within her, the eternal and life-giving lance, wanted to say 'Rejoice', but the circle counselled caution; more than that, it span in a selfmade breeze of apprehension. She refused to worry; things would work out all right. She signed the letter, 'Your eternally adoring Beatrice-Joanna.'

  She addressed the letter to Commissioner D. Foxe, Population Police HQ, Infertility Building, Brighton, London, feeling a slight tremor as she wrote 'Infertility', that word which contained its opposite. She added in big bold logograms 'PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL'. Then she went on the long vertical journey to the post-box by Earnshaw Mansions. It was a lovely July night, high moon riding, stars, earth-satellites wheeling, a night for love. Five young greyboys, lit by a streetlamp, were laughingly beating up a bewildered-looking old man who appeared, from his lack of response to the slaps and truncheonings, anaesthetized by ale. He seemed also, a Neronian Nazarene set upon by tittering lions, to be singing a hymn. 'You ought to be ashamed,' rebuked Beatrice-Joanna fiercely, 'downright ashamed. A poor old man like that.'

  'You mind your own business,' said one of the grey policemen peevishly. 'Woman.' he added with scorn. Their victim was allowed to crawl away, still singing. Very much a woman, minding her own business, socially and biologically, she shrugged and posted her letter.

  Three

  A LETTER for Tristram in the staff-room letter-rack, a letter from his sister Emma. It was four-thirty, hour of the half-hour luncheon break, but the bell had still to go. Dawn was coming up deliciously over the sea far beneath the staff-room window. Tristram fingered the letter with its garish Chinese stamp, its superscription Air Mail in ideograms and Cyrillic, smiling at yet another example of family telepathy. It was always happening like this - a letter from George in the West followed a day or so after by on
e from Emma in the East. Neither of them, significantly, ever wrote to Derek. Tristram read, still smiling, standing among his colleagues: '. . . The work goes on. I flew last week from Chengkiang to Hingi to Changchai to Tuyun to Shihtsien - exhausting. It's still almost standing room only here, but really frightening measures are being taken by the Central Government since the recent change in policy began. A mass execution of offenders against the Increase in Family laws took place in Chungking only ten days ago. This seemed to a lot of us to be going too far -' Typical of her, that understatement; Tristram caught an image of her prim forty-five-year-old face, the thin prim lips saying it.'-But it does seem to be having a salutary effect on some who, despite everything, still cherish as a life's ambition becoming an honourable ancestor to be worshipped by a milling mound of progeny. Such people are likely to become ancestors sooner than they expect. Curiously, ironically, there looks like being something of a famine in Fukien Province where the rice-crops - for some reason unknown - have failed . . .' Tristram frowned and wondered. George's report about the wheat-blight, the news about herring catches, now this. There awoke in him a faint nagging suspicion about something, he couldn't tell what.

  'And how,' said a young mincing niggling voice, 'is our dear Tristram today?' It was Geoffrey Wiltshire, the new head of the Social Studies Department, literally a blue-eyed boy, so fair as almost to look white-headed. Tristram, who was trying not to hate him too much, gave a lemony smile and said, 'Well.'

  'I tuned in to your Sixth Form lesson,' said Wiltshire. 'I know you won't mind my saying this, my dear dear Tristram.' He brought a whiff of perfume and two sets of twittering lashes close to his colleague. 'Saying that, in effect, you were teaching something you should not have been teaching.'

  'I don't recollect.' Tristram tried to master his breathing.

  'I, on the other hand, recollect rather perfectly. You said something like this: art, you said, cannot flourish in a society like ours, because, you seemed to say, art is the product of - I think this is the term you used - paternlty lust. Wait,' he said, 'wait,' to Tristram's open mouth. 'You also said that the materials of the arts were, in effect, fertility symbols. Now, apart from the fact, my still dear Tristram, apart from the fact that one is at a complete loss to know how exacdy this fits into the syllabus, you were quite gratuitously - and you can't deny this-quite gratuitously teaching something which is, however you look at it, to say the least heretical.' The bell rang for luncheon. Wiltshire put his arm round Tristram as they' all processed to the staff dininghall.