The Wanting Seed

by Anthony Burgess

  'The bitch,' said Tristram. 'The bastard.' He didn't know which one to turn on more. 'She never said. She never said a word about his going to the flat. But it all fies up now. Yes, I begin to see. I met him coming out. About two months ago.'

  'Ah.' The captain nodded again. 'There was never any real proof of anything, though, do you see. In a court of law, when there used to be courts of law, all this would not be real. evidence of misconduct. Your brother may have visited your flat regularly because he was fond of his nephew. He would not, of course, visit when you were there, knowing you had no love for him, nor, for that matter, he for you. And your wife would not want to mention his visits, do you see, for fear of your becoming angry. And when your child died, two months ago if I remember rightly, these visits ceased. Of course, the visits may have ceased for a quite different reason, namely his elevation to the post he now holds.'

  'You know a lot, don't you?' said Tristram bitterly.

  'I have to know a lot,' said the captain. 'But, do you see, suspicion is not knowledge. Now I come to something important that I really know about your wife and your brother. Your wife has been writing to your brother. She has written what, in the old days, was known as a love-letter. Just one, no more, but, of course, very incriminating. She wrote the letter yesterday. In it she says how much she misses your brother and, inevitably, how much she loves him. There is a certain amount of erotic detail also - not too much, but a certain amount. It was foolish of her to write the letter, but it was even more foolish of your brother not to destroy the letter as soon as he'd read it.'

  'So,' said Tristram growling, 'you saw it, did you? The faithless bitch,' he added. And then, 'That explains everything. I knew I couldn't have made a mistake. I knew it. The deceiving treacherous little -' He meant both of them.

  'Unfortunately,' said the captain, 'you only have my word for this business of the letter. Your wife will deny everything, i should imagine. But she will be waiting for your brother Derek's next little talk on the television, for in that next little talk she has requested a hidden message to herself. She has requested that he introduce somehow the word "love" or the word "desire". A pretty idea,' commented the captain. 'I take it, however, that you will not find it necessary to wait for that sort of confirmation. It may never occur, do you see. In any case, those two words, both or either, could occur quite naturally in a television talk of a patriotic nature (all television talks are patriotic now, are they not?). He could say something about love of country or everybody's desire, do you see, to do their bit to end the present emergency, such as it is. The point is, I take it, that you'll want to act almost at once.'

  'Yes,' said Tristram. 'At once. She can leave. She can go. She can get out. I never want to see her again. She can have her child. She can have it wherever she likes. I shan't stop her.'

  'You mean to say,' said the captain in awe, 'that your wife is pregnant?'

  'It's not me,' said Tristram. 'I know that. I swear it's not me. It's Derek. The swine Derek.' He bashed the table and made the glasses dance to their own tune. 'Cuckolded,' he said, as in some sniggering Elizabethan play, 'by my own brother.'

  The captain smoothed his rusty moustache with his left little finger, now one wing, now the other. 'I see,' he said. 'Officially, I have no knowledge of this. There is no proof, do you see, that you are not responsible. There is, as you yourself must admit, a possibility that the childif the child is ever born, which, officially, of course, it must not be - that the child is yours. What I mean is, how, officially, does anybody know that you're telling the truth?'

  Tristram looked narrowly at him. 'Do you believe me?'

  'What I believe is neither here nor there,' said the captain. 'But you must admit that pinning this business on the Commissioner of the Population Police is going to be met with, do you see, incredulity. A liaison with a woman is a different matter. That is, for your high-placed brother, wickedness and foolishness. But to impregnate his inamorata - that would be a glorious kind of head-swimming idiocy too imbecilic to be true. Do you see? Do you see?' It was the first time he had used this tag as a genuine question.

  'I'll get him,' vowed Tristram. 'Never fear, I'll get him, the swine.'

  'We'll have another drink on that,' said the captain. The black waiter was near, banging his metal tray against his slightly flexed knee, humming tunelessly to the tinny drum-beat. The captain finger-snapped. 'Two more doubles,' he ordered.

  'They're equally guilty,' said Tristram. 'What worse betrayal could there be than this? Betrayal by wife. Betrayal by brother. Oh, Dog, Dog, Dog.' He clapped his hands on his eyes and cheeks, shutting out the betraying world but letting his mouth tremble at it.

  'He's the really guilty one,' said the captain. 'He's betrayed more than his brother. He's betrayed the State and his high position in the State. He's committed the foulest of crimes and the most stupid of crimes, do you see. Get him first, get him. Your wife has been merely a woman, and women haven't much sense of responsibility. He's the one, he. Get him.' The drinks came, funeral purple in colour.

  'To think,' moaned Tristram, 'that I gave her love, trust - all that a man can give.' He sipped his alc and fruit-juice.

  'To hell with that, do you see,' said the captain impatiently. 'You're the only one who can get him. What can I do, eh, in my position? Even if I'd kept that letter, even if I'd kept it, don't you think he would have known? Don't you think he'd get some of the thugs on to me? He's a dangerous man.'

  'What can I do?' said Tristram tearfully. 'He's in a very high position.' This new glass was full of the stuff of snivelling. 'Taking advantage of his position, that's what he's been doing, to betray his own brother.' His mouth crumbling, wet oozed round his contact lenses. But, suddenly cracking his fist hard on the table, 'The bitch,' he exploded, showing his lower set. 'Wait till I see her, just wait.'

  'Yes, yes, yes, that can indeed wait, do you see. Look, get him first, as I tell you. He's changed his flat, he's at 2095 Winthrop Mansions. Get him there, do him in, teach him a lesson. He lives alone, do you see.'

  'Kill him, you mean?' said Tristram in wonder. 'Kill?'

  'Crime passionel, they used to call it. Your wife can be made to confess, sooner or later, do you see. Get him, do him in.'

  Tristram gleamed with unsteady suspicion. 'How far can I trust you?' he said. 'I'm not going to be used, I'm not going to be made to do somebody else's dirty work, do you see.' That tag was bound to infect him. 'You've said things about my wife. How do I know it's right, how do I know it's true? You've got no proof, you've shown me no proof.' He pushed his empty glass to the centre of the table. 'You keep your dirty drink, trying to make me drunk.' He started, with some small difficulty, to rise. 'I'm going home to have it out with my wife, that's what I'm going to do. Then we'll see. But I'm not doing any of your dirty work for you. I don't trust one of you, and that's flat. Plotting, that's what it is.'

  'So you're still unconvinced,' said the captain. He began to feel in one of his tunic side-pockets.

  'Yes, plotting. Struggle for power within the party-characteristic of the Interphase. Historian, that's what I am. I should have been Head of the Social Studies Department, if that homo swine hadn't -'

  'All right, all right,' said the captain.

  'Betrayed,' said Tristram dramatically. 'Betrayed by homos.'

  'If you go on like this,' said the captain, 'you'll get yourself arrested.'

  'That's all you people can do, arrest people. Arrested development, ha ha.' And then, 'Betrayed.'

  'Very well,' said the captain. 'If you want proof, here it is.' And he took a letter out of his pocket and held it up.

  'Give it me,' said Tristram, clawing. 'Let me see it.'

  'No,' said the captain. 'If you don't trust me, why should I trust you?'

  'So,' said Tristram. 'So she did write to him. A filthy love letter. Wait till I see her. Wait till I see both of them.' He clanked an uncounted handful of septs and florins on to the table and, unseeing and very unsteady, beg
an to leave.

  'Him first,' said the captain. But Tristram was weaving his way out, blindly firm of purpose. The captain made a tragi-comic face and put the letter back in his pocket. It was a letter from an old friend, one Dick Turnbull, on holiday in the Schwarzwald. People didn't look these days, didn't listen, didn't remember. Still, that other letter did exist. Captain Loosley had quite definitely seen it on the Metropolitan Commissioner's desk. And, unfortunately, the Metropolitan Commissioner had - before sweeping it and other private correspondence, some of it abusive, into the hellhole in the wall-seen that he'd seen it.

  Six

  SAND-HOPPERS, mermaids' purses, sea gooseberries, cuttle bones, wrasse, blenny and bullhead, tern, gannet and herring gull. Beatrice-Joanna took a last breath of the sea and then went to the State Provisions Store (Rossiter Avenue branch) at the foot of the mountain of Spurgin Building. The rations had been cut yet again with neither warning nor apology from the twin ministries responsible. Beatrice-Joanna received and paid for two blocks of brown vegetable dehydrate (legumin), a large white tin of synthelac, compressed sheets of cereal, a blue bottle of 'nuts' or nutrition units. Unlike the other women shoppers, however, Beatrice-Joanna did not indulge in whines and threats (though these were muffled, there having been a small quickly quelled shoppers' riot three days before, the door today flanked by greyboys); she felt full of the sea, as of some huge satisfying round dish of wobbly blue-green marbled meat. She wondered vaguely, leaving the shop, what meat had tasted like. Her mouth recollected only the salt of live human skin in a purely amatory context - lobes, fingers, lips. 'He's my meat,' sang the song about adorable Fred. That, she supposed, was what was meant by the term sublimation.

  It was thus in a full street, engaged in an innocent housewife's task, that she was suddenly confronted with the loud accusations of her husband. 'There you are,' he called, swaying with ale. He semaphored wildly at her, his feet seemingly glued to the pavement outside the entrance to the flats which made up the greater part of Spurgin Building. 'Caught in the act, eh? Caught coming back from it.' Many passers-by became interested. 'Pretending to go and do the shopping, eh? I know all, so you needn't pretend.' He ignored her string-bag of meagre groceries. 'I've been told everything, the lot.' He teetered, with balancing arms, as though on a high window-ledge. The little life inside Beatrice-Joanna shuddered as if threatened. 'Tristram,' she began to scold bravely, 'you've been on the alc again. Now get inside at once and into that lift -' 'Betrayed,' wailed Tristram. 'Going to have a baby. By my own blasted brother. Bitch, bitch. Well, have it. Go on, get out and have it. They all know, everybody knows.' Some passers-by tutted. 'Tristram,' said Beatrice-Joanna with spread lips. 'Don't call me Tristram,' said Tristram, as though that were not his name. 'Deceiving bitch.' 'Get inside,' ordered Beatrice-Joanna. 'There's been a mistake. This is not a public matter.' 'Isn't it?' said Tristram. 'Isn't it just? Go on, get out.' The whole crowded street, the sky, had become his own betrayed home, a cell of suffering. Beatrice-Joanna firmly tried to enter Spurgin Building. Tristram tried to prevent her with arms weaving like cilia.

  Then noise could be heard coming from Froude Place. It was a procession of rough-looking men in overalls, loud with confused cries of disaffection. 'You see,' said Tristram triumphantly. 'Everybody knows.' They all wore the crown and the NSW of the National Synthefabrik Works. Some carried banners of grievancepieces of synthetic cloth tacked on to broom-handles, hastily cut bits of card on slender laths. The only true inscription was the logogram STRK; for the rest, there were crude drawings of human skeletons. 'It's all over between us,' said Tristram. 'You stupid idiot,' said Beatrice-Joanna, 'get inside. We don't want to be involved in this.' A wild-eyed workers' leader stood on the plinth of a street lamp, hugging the pillar with his left arm. 'Brothers,' he called, 'brothers. If they want a fair day's work they've got to bloody well feed us proper.'

  'Hang old Jackson,' wavered an elderly worker. 'String him up.'

  'Shove him in a stewpot,' called a Mongol with comic strabismus.

  'Don't be a fool,' said Beatrice-Joanna in disquiet. 'I'm getting out of this if you're not.' She pushed Tristram violently out of her way. Her provisions went flying and Tristram himself staggered and fell. He began to cry. 'How could you, how could you, with my own brother?' She went grimly into Spurgin Building, leaving him to his sonata of reproach. Tristram got up from the pavement with difficulty, clutching the tin of synthelac. 'You stop shoving,' said a woman. 'Nowt to do with me. I want to get home.'

  'They can threaten,' said the leader, 'till they're bloody well blue in the face. We have our rights and they can't take them away, and the withholding of labour's a lawful right in case of just grievance, and they can't bloody well deny it.' Roars. Tristram found him-self wound round, stirred into the crowd of workers. A schoolgirl, also caught in it, began to cry. 'You do well to do that,' nodded a youngish man with pimples and a bad shave. 'Starved, the bloody lot of us, that's about it.' The cross-eyed Mongol turned to give Tristram his full face. A fly had settled on his porous nose; his eyes were well set for looking at it. He watched it fly away, wondering, as though it symbolized liberation. 'My name,' he said to Tristram, 'is Joe Blacklock.' Then, satisfied, he turned back to listening to his leader. The leader called, himself unfortunately plump as a table bird, 'Let them listen to the crying-out of the empty guts of the workers.' Roars. 'Solidarity,' yelled this solid man. More roars. Tristram was crushed, pushed. Then two greyboys from the State Provisions Store (Rossiter Avenue branch) appeared, armed only with truncheons. Manly-looking, they began vigorously to belabour. There was a great cry of pain and anger as they jerked at the right arm of the lamp-clutching leader. The leader flailed and protested. One of the police went down, crunched under boots. Blood appeared from nowhere on somebody's face, an earnest of earnest. 'Aaaaargh,' gargled the man next to Tristram. 'Do the bastards in.' The schoolgirl shrieked. 'Let her get out,' cried soberer Tristram. 'For Dogsake clear a way there.' The crushing crowd came on. The still upright greyboy was now at bay against the freestone wall of Spurgin Building. He cracked, his panting mouth open, at skulls and faces. An upper set was spewed out by someone, a Cheshire Cat grin in the air for an instant. Then whistles shrilled hollowly. 'More of the bastards,' throated a voice in Tristram's neck-nape. 'Make a bloody dash for it.' 'Solidarity,' cried the lost leader from somewhere among fists. The sirens of police cars rose and fell in glissandi of dismal tritones. The crowd tongued out in all directions like fire or stone-dinged water. The schoolgirl needled across the street with spider-legs, escaped into an alley. Tristram was still clutching, like a baby, the white tin of synthelac. Greyboys now held the street, some tough and stupid, others sweetly prettily smiling, all with carbines at the ready. An officer with two bright bars on each shoulder strutted, whistle in mouth like a baby's dummy, hand on holster. At each end of the street were crowds, watching. Placards and banners shifted to and fro uncertainly above shoulders, already looking sheepish and forlorn. There were black vans waiting, side-doors open, lorries with tail-boards down. A sergeant yelped something. There was a jostling at one place, the vexillae advanced. The whistled shining inspector unholstered his pistol. He peeped one silver blast, and a carbine spat at the air. 'Get the sods,' called a worker in torn overalls. A tentative thrust of a phalanx of crushed men gained momentum speedily, and a greyboy went down shrieking. The whistle now pierced like toothache. Carbines opened out frankly, and shot whined like puppies from the walls. 'Hands up,' ordered the inspector, whistle out of his mouth. Some workers were down, gaping and bleeding in the sun. 'Get 'em all in,' yelped the sergeant. 'Room for everyone, the little beauties.' Tristram dropped his tin of synthelac. 'Watch that one there,' cried the officer. 'Home-made bomb.'

  'I'm not one of these,' Tristram tried to explain, hands clasped over his head. 'I was just going home. I'm a teacher. I object strongly. Take your dirty hands off.' 'Right,' said a bulky greyboy obligingly, and carbinebutted him fairly in the gut. Tristram sent out a delica
te fountain of the purple juice that had diluted the alc. 'In.' He was prodded to a black lorry, his nasopharynx smarting with the taste of the brief vomit. 'My brother,' he protested. 'Commissioner of the Poppoppoppop -' He couldn't stop popping. 'My wife's in there, let me at least speak to my wife.' 'In.' He fell up the rungs of the swinging tail-board. 'Speeeeak tub mah wahf,' mocked a worker's voice. 'Haw haw.' The lorry was full of sweat and desperate breathing, as though all inside had been kindly rescued from some killing crosscountry run. The tail-board clinked up with merry music of chains, a tarpaulin curtain came down. The workers cheered at the total darkness, and one or two squeaked in girly voices, 'Stop it, I'll tell my rna' and 'Oh, you are awful, Arthur.' An earnest breathing bulk next to Tristram said, 'They don't take it seriously, that's the trouble with a lot of these here. Let the side down, that's what they do.' A hollow voice with slack Northern vowels ventured a pleasantry: 'Would anybody lahk a fried egg samwidge?' 'Look,' almost wept Tristram to the odorous dark, 'I was just going in to have it out with my wife, that's all. It was nothing to do with me. It's unfair.' The serious voice at his side said, 'Course it's unfair. They never have been fair to the working man.' Another, hostile to Tristram's accent, growled, 'Shut it, see. We know your type. Watching you, I am,' which was manifestly impossible. Meanwhile, they roared along in convoy, as they could tell, and there was a sense of streets full of happy unarrested people. Tristram wanted to blubber. 'I take it,' said a new voice, 'that you don't want to associate yourself with our struggle, is that it, friend? The intellectuals have never been on the side of the workers. Sometimes they've let on to be, but only for purposes of betrayal.' Tm the one who's been betrayed,' cried Tristram. 'Betray his arse,' said someone. 'Treason of clerks,' came a bored voice. A harmonica began to play.