"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?"
"Look, did you put her up to this? Who are you, anyway?"
"Ah, something going on there too, eh? This is Jim Bister from Washington. I saw you in Tangier, remember? Surrounded by all those bitsy booful brown boys."
"Are you tight?"
"Not more than usual, old boy. Look, seriously. I was asked by my editor to get you to say something about this nun business."
"What nun business? What editor? Who are you, anyway?" He was perhaps going too far in asking that last question again, but he objected to this assumption that British expatriates in America ought to be matey with each other, saying in the shit and so forth at the drop of a hat.
"I've said who I am. I thought you'd remember. I suppose you were half-pissed that time in Tangier. My newspaper is the Evening Banner, London if you've forgotten, what with your brandy and pederasty, and my editor wants to know what you-"
"What did you say then about pederasty? I thought I caught something about pederasty. Because if I did, by Jesus I'll be down there in Washington and I'll-"
"I didn't. Couldn't pronounce it even if I knew it. It's about this nun business in Ashton-under-Lyne, if you know where that is."
"You've got that wrong. It's here."
"No, that's a different one, old man. This one in Ashton-under-Lyne-that's in the North of England, Lancashire, in case you don't know-is manslaughter. Nunslaughter. Maybe murder. Haven't you heard?"
"What the hell's it to do with me anyway? Look, I distinctly heard you say pederasty-"
"Oh, balls to pederasty. Be serious for once. These kids who did it said they'd seen your film, the Deutschland thing. So now everybody's having a go at that. And one of the kids-"
"It's not mine, do you hear, and in any case no work of art has ever yet been responsible for-"
"Ah, call it a work of art, do you? That's interesting. And you'd call the book they made it from a work of art too, would you? Because one of the kids said he'd read the book as well as seen the film and it might have been the book that put the idea into his head. Any comments?"
"It's not a book, it's a poem. And I don't believe that it would be possible for a poem to-In any case, I think he's lying."
"They've been reading it out in court. I've got some bits here. May have got a bit garbled over the telex, of course. Anyway, there's this: 'From life's dawn it is drawn down, Abel is Cain's brother and breasts they have sucked the same.' Apparently that started him dreaming at night. And there's something about 'the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his lovescape crucified.' Very showy type of writing, I must say. They're talking about the danger to susceptible young minds and banning it from the Ashton-under-Lyne bookshops."
"I shouldn't imagine there's one bloody copy there. This is bloody ridiculous, of course. They're talking of banning the collected poems of a great English poet? A Jesuit priest, as well? God bloody almighty, they must all be out of their fucking minds."
"There's this nun dead, anyhow. What are you going to do about it?"
"Me? I'm not going to do anything. Ask the buggers who made the film. They'll say what I say-that once you start admitting that a work of art can cause people to start committing crimes, then you're lost. Nothing's safe. Not even Shakespeare. Not even the Bible. Though the Bible's a lot of bloodthirsty balderdash that ought to be kept out of people's hands."
"Can I quote you, old man?"
"You can do what the hell you like. Pederasty, indeed. I've got a naked girl in here now. Does that sound like pederasty, you stupid insulting bastard?" And he rang off, snorting. He went back, snorting, to his whisky and pouffe. The girl was not there. "Where are you?" he cried. "You and your bloody Jesus-was-a-woman nonsense. Do you know what they've done now? Do you know what they're trying to do to one of the greatest mystical poets that English poetry has ever known? Where are you?"
She was in his bedroom, he found to no surprise, lying on the circular bed, though still with her worker's pants on. "Shall I take these off?" she said. Enderby, whisky bottle in hand, sat down heavily on a rattan chair not too far from the bed and looked at her, jaw dropped. He said:
"Why?"
"To lay me. That's what you want, isn't it? You don't get much of a chance, do you, you being old and ugly and a bit fat. Well, anyway, you can if you want."
"Is this," asked Enderby carefully, "how you work for this bloody blasphemous Jesus of yours?"
"I've got to have an A."
Enderby started noisily to cry. The girl, startled, got off the bed. She went out. Enderby continued crying, interrupting,the spasm only to swig at the bottle. He heard her, presumably now sweatered again and clutching her cassette nonsense that was partially stuffed with his woolly voice, leaving the apartment swiftly on sneakered feet. Then she, as it were, threw in her face for him to look at now that her body had gone-a lost face with drowned hair of no particular colour, green eyes set wide apart like an animal's, a cheese-paring nose, a wide American mouth that was a false promise of generosity, the face of a girl who wanted an A. Enderby went on weeping and, while it went on, was presented intellectually with several bloody good reasons for weeping: his own decay, the daily nightmare of many parcels (too many cigarette lighters that wouldn't work, too many old bills, unanswered letters, empty gin bottles, single socks, physical organs, hairs in the nose and ears), everyone's desperate longing for a final refrigerated simplicity. He saw very clearly the creature that was weeping-a kind of Blake sylph, a desperately innocent observer buried under the burden of extension, in which dyspepsia and sore gums were hardly distinguishable from past sins and follies, the great bloody muckheap of multiplicity (make that the name of the conurbation in which I live) from which he wanted to escape but couldn't. I've got to have an A. The sheer horrible innocence of it. Who the hell didn't feel he'd got to have an A?
It was still only eleven-thirty. He went to the bathroom and, mixing shaving cream with tears not yet dried, he shaved. He shaved bloodily and, in the manner of ageing men, left patches of stubble here and there. Then he shambled over to the desk and conjured St. Augustine.
He strode in out of Africa, wearing a
Tattered royal robe of orchard moonlight
Smelling of stolen apples but otherwise
Ready to scorch, a punishing sun, saying:
Where is this man of the northern sea, let me