"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
Chide him, let me do more if
His heresy merits it, what is his heresy?
And a hand-rubbing priest, olive-skinned,
Garlic-breathed, looked up at the
Great African solar face to whine:
If it please you, the heresy is evidently a
Heresy but there is as yet no name for it.
And Augustine said: All things must have a name,
Otherwise, Proteus-like, they slither and slide
From the grasp. A thing does not
Exist until it has a name. Name it
After this sea-man, call it after
Pelagius. And lo the heresy existed.
What could be written sometime, Enderby suddenly thought, was a saga of a man's teeth-the Odontiad. The idea came to him because of this image of the African bishop and saint and chider, whose thirty-two wholesome and gleaming teeth he clearly saw, flashing like two ivory blades (an upper teeth and a lower teeth) as he gnashed out condemnatory silver Latin. The Odontiad-a poetic record of dental decay in thirty-two books. The idea excited him so much that he felt an untimely and certainly unearned gust of hunger. He sharply down-sir-downed his growling stomach and went on with his work.
Pelagius appeared, north-pale, cool as one of
Britain's summers, to say, in British Latin:
Christ redeemed us from the general sin, from
The Adamic inheritance, the sour apple
Stuck in the throat (and underneath his solar
Hide Augustine blushed). And thus, my lord,
Man was set free, no longer bounden
In sin's bond. He is free to choose
To sin or not to sin, he is in no wise
Predisposed, it is all a matter of
Human choice. And by his own effort, yea,
His own effort only, not some matter of God's
Grace arbitrarily and capriciously
Bestowed, he may reach heaven, he may indeed
Make his heaven. He is free to do so.
Do you deny his freedom? Do you deny
That God's incredible benison was to
Make man free, if he wished, to offend him?
That no greater love is conceivable
Than to leave the creature free to hate
The creator and come to love the hard way
But always (mark this mark this) by his own
Will by his own free will?
Cool Britain thus spoke, a land where indeed a
Man groans not for the grace of rain, where
He can sow and reap, a green land, where
The God of unpredictable Africa is
A strange God
It was no use. He ached with hunger. He went rumbling to the kitchen and looked at his untidy store cupboards. Soon he sat down to a new-rinsed dish of yesterday's stew reheated (chuck steak, onions, carrots, spuds, well-spiced with Lea and Perrin's and a generous drop or so of chili sauce) while there sang on the stove in deep though tepid fat a whole bag of ready-cut crinkled potato pieces and, in another pan, slices of spongy canned meat called Mensch or Munch or something. The kettle was on for tea.
To his surprise, Enderby felt, while sitting calm, relaxed, and in mildly pleasant anticipation of good things to come, a sudden spasm that was not quite dyspepsia. An obscene pain struck in the breastbone, then climbed with some difficulty into the left clavicle and, from there, cascaded like a handful of heavy money down the left upper arm. He was appalled, outraged, what had he done to deserve-He caught an image of Henry James's face for some reason, similarly appalled though in a manner somehow patrician. Then nausea, sweating, and very cruel pain took over entirely. What the hell did one do now? The dish of half-eaten stew did not tell him, except not to finish it. What was that about the something-or-other distinguished thing? Ah yes, death. He was going to die. That was what it was.
He staggered moaning and cursing about the unfairness to the living room (dying room?). Death. It was very important to know what he was dying of. Was this what was called a heart attack? He sat on a comfortless chair and saw pain dripping onto the floor from his forehead. His shirt was soaked. It was so bloody hot. Breathing was very difficult. He tried to stop breathing, but his body, ill as it was, was not going to have that. Forced to take in a sharp lungful, he found the pain receding. Not death then. Not yet. A warning only. There was a statutory number of heart attacks before the ultimate, was there not? What he was being warned against he did not know. Smoking? Masturbation? Poetry?
He smelt smoke. Ah, was that also a symptom, a dysfunctioning of the olfactory system or something? But no, it was the damned food he had left sizzling. He tottered back into the kitchen and turned everything off. Didn't feel much like eating now.