The Wanting Seed

by Anthony Burgess

  Aaaargh.

  'That makes two in twenty minutes,' said Mavis. 'You'd better come inside.'

  'It's the contractions,' said Shonny with something like glee. 'It'll be some time tonight, praise the Lord.'

  'A bit of a twinge,' said Beatrice-Joanna. 'Not much. Just a bit, that's all.'

  'Right,' bubbled Shonny eagerly. 'The first thing you've got to have is an enema. Soap and water. You'll see to that, will you, Mavis? And she'd better have a good warm bath. Right. Thank the Lord we've plenty of hot water.' He rushed them into the house, leaving Bessie to suffer in loneliness, and started opening and slamming drawers. 'The ligatures,' he cried. 'I've got to make the ligatures.'

  'There's plenty of time,' said Mavis. 'She's a human being, you know, not a beast of the field.'

  'That's why I've got to make the ligatures,' blustered Shonny. 'Good God, woman, do you want her just to bite it off, like a she-cat?' He found linen thread and, singing a hymn in Panceltic, twisted ten-inch lengths for tying the umbilical cord, knotting them at the ends. Meanwhile Beatrice-Joanna was taken upstairs to the bathroom, and the hot-water pipes of the house sang full-throatedly, creaking and straining like a ship under way.

  The pains grew more frequent. Shonny prepared the bed in the heated outhouse, spreading brown paper across its middle and smoothing a drawsheet over, singing all the time. The crops had failed and a faithful sow was dying, but a new life was preparing to thumb its nose - in the gesture once known as 'fat bacon' - at the forces of sterility. Suddenly, unbidden, two strange names - bearded names they seemed somehow - came into Shonny's head: Zondek and Aschheim. Who were they now? He remembered: they were the ancient devisers of a pregnancy test. A few drops of pregnant woman's urine would send a baby mouse speeding to sexual maturity. He had read that, reading up the duties which he was now beginning to perform. His heart, for some reason, lifted in tremendous elation. Of course, there was the big secret - all life was one, all life was one. But no time to think about that now.

  Dymphna and Llewelyn came home from school. 'What's the matter, Dad? What's going on, Dad? What are you doing, Dad?'

  'Your aunt's time is come. Don't bother me now. Go and play somewhere. No, wait, go and stay with poor old Bessie. Hold her trotter, poor old girl.'

  Beatrice-Joanna now wanted to lie down. The amnion had ruptured in a rush, the amniotic waters had escaped. 'On your left side, girl,' ordered Shonny. 'Is it hurting? Poor old lady.' The pains were, in fact, growing much worse; Beatrice-Joanna began to hold her breath and to bear down strenuously. Shonny knotted a long towel to the bed-head, urging, 'Pull on that, girl. Pull hard. God bless you, it won't be long now.' Beatrice-Joanna pulled, groaning. 'Mavis,' said Shonny, 'this is going to be a longish job. Fetch me in a couple of bottles of plum wine and a glass.'

  'There are only a couple of bottles left.'

  'Fetch them in just the same like a good girl. There, there, my beauty,' he said to Beatrice-Joanna. 'You pull away there, bless you.' He checked that the old-fashioned swaddling clothes - knitted by the two sisters in the long winter evenings - were warming on the radiator. He had sterilized his ligatures; a pair of scissors was boiling in a pan; a tin bath shone on the floor; cotton wool waited to be teased into pledgets; there was a bolster-slip for a binder - all, in fact, was ready. 'God bless you, my dear,' he said to his wife as she reappeared with the bottles. 'This is going to be a great day.'

  It was certainly a long day. For nearly two hours Beatrice-Joanna struggled muscularly. She cried with the pains, and Shonny, swigging his plum wine and shouting encouragement, watched and waited, sweating as much as she. 'If only,' he muttered, 'we had an anaesthetic of some kind or another. Here, girl,' he said boldly, 'drink some of this,' and he proffered his bottle. But Mavis dragged his hand back.

  'Look,' she cried. 'It's coming !'

  Beatrice-Joanna shrieked. The head was being born: it had finished its difficult journey at last, leaving behind the bony tunnel of the pelvic girdle, pushing through the sheath to the air of a world that, now indifferent, would soon be hostile. After a brief pause the child's body pushed itself out. 'Perfect,' said Shonny, his eyes shining, wiping the child's shut eyes with a moist pledget, delicate and loving in his movements. The newborn yelled to greet the world. 'Lovely,' said Shonny. Then, when the pulse in the umbilical cord began to stop, he took two of his ligatures and skilfully made his ties, tight, tighter, tightest, forming two frontiers with a no-man's-land in the middle. Here, careful with his sterilized scissors, he snipped. The new bit of life, full of savagely gulped air, was now on its own. 'A boy,' said Mavis.

  'A boy? So it is,' said Shonny. Free of its mother, it had ceased to be merely a thing. Shonny turned to watch for the thrust of the placenta while Mavis wrapped the child in a shawl and laid it, him, in a box by the radiator; the bath could come later. 'Good God,' said Shonny, watching. Beatrice-Joanna cried out, but not so loud as before. 'Another one,' called Shonny in awe. 'Twins, by God. A litter, by the Lord Jesus.'

  Seven

  'OUT, you,' said the warder.

  'And about time,' blustered Tristram, getting up from his bunk. 'About bloody time, you nasty thing. Give me something to eat, blast you, before I go.'

  'Not you,' said the warder with relish. 'Him.' He pointed. 'You'll be with us a long time yet, Mister Dirty. It's him as has got to be released.'

  The Blessed Ambrose Bayley, shaken by the warder, blinked and goggled his way out of the perpetual presence of God that had set in at the end of January. He was very weak.

  'Traitor,' snarled Tristram. 'Stool-pigeon. Telling lies about me, that's what you've been doing. Buying your shameful freedom with lies.' To the warder he said, hopefully, his eyes fierce and large, 'Are you sure you haven't made a mistake? Are you quite sure it isn't me?'

  'Him,' pointed the warder. 'Not you. Him. You're not a -' He squinted at the paper in his hand. '_ Not a minister of the cloth, whatever that means, are you now? All them have to be released. But foul-mouths like you have to go on being here. Right?'

  'It's flagrant bloody injustice,' yelled Tristram, 'that's what it is.' He fell on his knees before the warder, clasping his hands in prayer and hunching his shoulders as if he had just broken his neck. 'Please let me out instead of him. He's past it. He thinks he's dead already, burnt at the stake. He thinks he's well on the road to canonization. He just doesn't know what's going on. Please.'

  'Him,' pointed the warder. 'His name's on this bit of paper. See - A. T. Bayley. You, Mister Swearer, have got to stay here. We'll find another pal for you, don't worry. Come on, old man,' he said gently to the Blessed Ambrose. 'You've got to get out there and report for orders to some bloke in Lambeth who's going to tell you what to do. Come on, now.' And he shook him somewhat roughly.

  'Let me have his rations,' begged Tristram, still on his knees. 'That's the least you can do, damn and blast your eyes. I'm bloody starving, blast it, man.'

  'We're all starving,' snarled the warder, 'and some of us have to work and not just lounge about all day. We're all trying to live on these here nuts and a couple of drops of this here synthelac, and they reckon those can't last much longer, things being the way they are. Do come on,' he said, shaking away at the Blessed Ambrose. But the Blessed Ambrose lay bright-eyed in a holy trance, hardly moving.

  'Food,' grumbled Tristram, getting up with difficulty. 'Food, food, food.'

  'I'll give you food,' scolded the warder, not meaning that at all. 'I'll send in one of these man-eaters as have been picked up, that's what I'll do. That's who your new cell-pal will be, one of those. He'll have your liver out, that he will, and cook it and eat it.'

  'Cooked or raw,' moaned Tristram, 'makes no difference. Give it me, give it me.'

  'Aaargh, you,' sneered the warder in disgust. 'Come on now, old man,' he said to the Blessed Ambrose in growing disquiet. 'Get up now, like a good fellow. You're going out. Out, out, out,' he went like a dog.

  The Blessed Ambrose rose very shakily, leaning on the war
der. 'Quia peccavi nimis,' he wavered in a senile voice. Then he collapsed clumsily. The warder said, 'You look to me to be in a pretty bad way, you do that.' He hunkered, frowning over him as if he were a stopped-up drain. 'Quoniam adhuc,' mumbled out of the Blessed Ambrose, supine on the flags.

  Tristram, thinking he saw his chance, fell on to the warder, like, as he thought, a tower. The two rolled and panted all over the Blessed Ambrose. 'You would, would you, Mister Nasty?' growled the warder. The Blessed Ambrose Bayley moaned as the Blessed Margaret Clitheroe must, pressed by hundredweights, have, at York in 1586, moaned. 'You've done for yourself good and proper now,' gasped the warder, kneeling on Tristram and pounding him with his two fists. 'You've asked for this, you have, Mister Treacherous. You'll never get out of here alive, that you won't.' He cracked him on the mouth viciously, breaking his dentures. 'You've had this coming a long time, you have.' Tristram lay still, breathing desperately. The warder began, still panting, to drag the Blessed Ambrose Bayley to freedom. 'Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,' went this unfrocked man, banging his own chest thrice.

  Eight

  'GLORY be to God,' ejaculated Shonny. 'Mavis, come and see who's here. Llewelyn, Dymphna. Quick, quick, the lot of you.' For who should have walked into the house but Father Shackel, seedsman by trade who, many months before, had been taken off by lipsticked brutal greyboys. Father Shackel was in his early forties, with a very round cropped head, pronounced exophthalmia, and chronic rhinitis caused by a one-sided bulge on the septum. His ever-open mouth and wide eyes gave him a look of William Blake seeing fairies. He raised his right hand now in blessing.

  'You're very thin,' said Mavis.

  'Did you get tortured?' asked Llewelyn and Dymphna.

  'When did they let you out?' cried Shonny.

  'What I'd like most of all,' said Father Shackel, 'is a drink of something.' His speech was muffled and denasalized, as with an everlasting cold.

  'There's a tiny drop of plum wine,' said Shonny, 'left over from the labour and the celebration of the end of the labour.' He rushed to get it.

  'Labour? What labour is he talking about?' asked Father Shackel, sitting down.

  'My sister,' said Mavis. 'She had twins the other day. You have a christening job to do, Father.'

  'Thank you, Shonny.' Father Shackel took the halffilled glass. 'Well,' he said, having sipped, 'there are some queer things going on, aren't there?'

  'When did they let you out?' Shonny asked again.

  'Three days ago. Since then I've been in Liverpool. Incredible, but the whole hierarchy's at large - archbishops, bishops, the lot. We can drop the disguise now. We can even wear clerical dress if we wish to.'

  'We don't seem to get any news,' said Mavis. 'Just talk, talk, talk these days - exhortation, propaganda-but we hear rumours, don't we, Shonny?'

  'Cannibalism,' said Shonny. 'Human sacrifice. We hear about those things.'

  'This is very good wine,' said Father Shackel. 'I suppose one of these days we'll be seeing the ban taken off viticulture.'

  'What's viticulture, Dad?' asked Llewelyn. 'Is it the same as human sacrifice?'

  'You two,' said Shonny, 'can go back to holding poor old Bessie's trotter. Kiss Father Shackel's hands before you go.'

  'Father Shackel's trotters,' giggled Dymphna.

  'Enough of that now,' warned Shonny, 'or you'll be receiving a clout on the earhole for yourself.'

  'Bessie's a long time dying,' grumbled Llewelyn with youth's heartlessness. 'Come on, Dymph.' They kissed Father Shackel's hands and went chattering out.

  'The position isn't at all clear yet,' said Father Shackel. 'All we know is that everybody's getting very scared. You can always tell. The Pope, apparently, is back in Rome. I saw the Archbishop of Liverpool with my own eyes. He's been working, you know, poor man, as a bricklayer. Anyway, we kept the light going through the dark times. That's what's meant by a Church. It's something to be proud of.'

  'And now what's going to happen?' asked Mavis.

  'We're to return to our priestly duties. We're to celebrate mass again - openly, legally.'

  'Glory be to God,' said Shonny.

  'Oh, don't think the State's at all concerned with the glory of God,' said Father Shackel. 'The State's scared of forces it doesn't understand, that's alL The leaders of the State are suffering from an accession of superstitious fear, that's what it is. They've done no good with their police, so now it's the priests they call on. There aren't any churches now, so we have to go up and down our allotted areas, feeding them all God instead of the law. Oh, it's all very clever. I suppose sublimation is the big word: don't eat your neighbour, eat God instead. We're being used, that's what it is. But in another sense, of course, we're using. We're right down to essential function now - the sacramental function. That's one thing we've learnt: the Church can take in any heresy or unorthodoxy - including your harmless belief in the Second Coming - so long as it holds fast to essential function.' He chuckled. 'A surprising number of policemen are being eaten, I gather. God works in a mysterious way. Epicene flesh seems to have the greater succulence.'

  'How horrible,' grimaced Mavis.

  'Oh yes, it's horrible,' grinned Father Shackel. 'Look, I haven't much time: I've got to get to Accrington tonight and I may have to walk: the buses don't seem to be running. Have you got the communion wafers?'

  'Some of them,' said Shonny. 'The kids, God forgive them, found the packet and started eating them, blasphemous little heathens. They'd have wolfed the lot if I hadn't caught them.'

  'A little job of baptism before you go,' said Mavis.

  'Oh, yes.' Father Shackel was led to the outhouse where Beatrice-Joanna lay with her twins. She looked thin but rosy. The twins slept. Shonny said:

  'And after the rites for the new-born, how about the rites for the dying?'.

  'This,' said Mavis, introducing, 'is Father Shackel.'

  'I'm not dying, am I?' said Beatrice-Joanna in alarm. 'I feel fine. Hungry, though.'

  'It's poor old Bessie that's dying, poor old lady,' said Shonny. 'I claim the same rights for her as for any Christian soul.'

  'A pig doesn't have a soul,' said Mavis.

  'Twins, eh?' said Father Shackel. 'Congratulations. Both are boys, are they? And what names have you chosen for them?'

  'Tristram for one,' said Beatrice-Joanna promptly. 'And Derek for the other.'

  'Can you give me water?' asked Father Shackel of Mavis. 'And also a little salt?'

  Llewelyn and Dymphna came panting in. 'Dad,' cried Llewelyn, 'Dad. It's about Bessie.'

  'Gone at last, has she?' said Shonny. 'Poor faithful old girl. Uncomforted by the last rites, God have mercy on her.'

  'She's not dead,' cried Dymphna. 'She's eating.'

  'Eating?' Shonny stared.

  'She's standing up and eating,' said Llewelyn. 'We found some eggs in the henhouse and gave her those.'

  'Eggs? Eggs? Is everybody going mad, including myself?'

  'And those biscuits,' said Dymphna. 'Those round white ones in the cupboard. We couldn't find anything else.'

  Father Shackel laughed. He sat on the edge of Beatrice-Joanna's bed in order to have his laugh out. He laughed at the mixture of feelings on Shonny's face. 'Never mind,' he said at last, grinning imbecilically. 'I'll find some bread on the road to Accrington. There's bound to be bread somewhere.'

  Nine

  TRISTRAM'S new cell-mate was a massive Nigerian called Charlie Linklater. He was a friendly talkative man, with a mouth so large that it was a wonder he was able to attain any precision in his enunciation of the English vowel-sounds. Tristram tried frequently to count his teeth, which were his own and flashed often as in pride of the fact, and the total he arrived at seemed always in excess of the statutory thirty-two. This worried him. Charlie Linklater was serving an indefinite sentence for an indefinite crime that, as far as Tristram could make out, involved multiple progeniture along with beatingup of greyboys, flavoured with committing a nuisance in the vestibule of Governmen
t Building and eating meat when drunk. 'A nice little rest in here,' he said, 'won't do me no harm.' His voice was rich crimsonpurple. Tristram felt thinner and weaker than ever in this polished blue-black meaty presence. 'They talk about meat-eating,' said Charlie Linklater in his lazy way, relaxed on his bunk, 'but they don't know the first thing about it, boy. Why, a good ten years ago I was keeping company with the wife of a man from Kaduna, same as myself. His name was George Daniel, and he was a meter-reader by trade. Well, he comes back unexpected and catches us at it. What could we do but give him the old hatchet? You'd do the same, boy. Well, there we have this body - a good thirteen stone if he was a pound. What could we do but get the old stewpot going? Took us a week, that did, eating all the time. We buried the bones and nobody one bit the wiser. That was a big meal, brother, and a real good eat.' He sighed, smacked his huge lips, and even belched in appreciative recollection.

  'I've got to get out of here,' said Tristram. 'There's food in the outside world, isn't there? Food.' He drooled, shaking the bars but feebly. 'I've got to eat, got to.'

  'Well,' said Charlie Linklater, 'for myself there's no hurry right away to get out. One or two people are looking for me with the old hatchet and I reckon I'm as well off here as anywhere. For a little while, anyhow. But I'd be happy to oblige in any way I could to get you out of here. Not that I don't like your company, you being a well-behaved and educated man and with good manners. But if it would oblige you to get out, then I'm the boy to assist you, boy.'

  When the warder came along to shove the midday nutrition tablets and water between the bars, Tristram was interested to see that he carried a truncheon. 'Any nonsense from you,' said the warder, 'and you'll get a fine big crack with this gentleman'-he brandished it-'on the soft part of your skull, Mister Bloody-minded. So watch out, that's what I say.'