The Clockwork Testament (Or: Enderby 's End) Read online

  And so on. When it was finished it made, Enderby thought, a very nice little script. It could be seen also as the tribute of one poet to another. People would see the film and then go and read the poem. They would see the poem as superior art to the film. He sent the script off to Mr. Schaumwein at Chisel Productions. He eventually received a brief letter from Martin Droeshout saying that a lot of it was very flowery, but that was put down to Enderby's being a poet, which claim of Enderby had been substantiated by researchers. However, they were going ahead, updating so as to make Germany Nazi, and making the nun Gertrude a former love of Father Hopkins, both of them coming to realisation that it was God they really loved but they would keep in touch. This meant rewrite men, as Enderby would realise, but Enderby's name would appear among the credits.

  Enderby's name did indeed eventually appear among the credits: Developed out of an idea of. Also he was invited to London to see a preview of The Wreck of the Deutschland (they couldn't think of a better title, any of them; there wasn't a better title). He was pretty shocked by a lot of it, especially the flashbacks, and it was nearly all flashbacks, the only present-tense reality being the Deutschland on its way to be ground to bits on the Kentish Knock (which, somebody else at the preview said, to ecstatic laughter, sounded a little like a rural sexual aberration). For instance, Hopkins, who had been given quite arbitrarily the new name Tom, eventually Father Tom, was Irish, and the tall nun was played by a Swede, though that was really all right. These two had a great pink sexual encounter, but before either of them took vows, so that, Enderby supposed, was all right too. There were some overexplicit scenes of the nuns being violated by teen-age storm troopers. The tall nun Gertrude herself tore off her Franciscan habit to make bandages during the storm scenes, so that her end, in a posture of crucifixion on the Kentish Knock, was as near nude as that of her Master. There was also an ambiguous moment when, storms bugling, though somewhat subdued, Death's fame in the background, she cried orgasmatically: "Oh Christ, Christ, come quickly"-Hopkins' own words, so one could hardly complain. On the whole, not a bad film, with Hopkins getting two seconds worth of solo credit: Based on the poem by. As was to be expected, it got a very restrictive showing rating, nobody under eighteen. "Things have come to a pretty pass," said Mr. Schaumwein in a television interview, "when a religious film is no longer regarded as good family viewing."

  So there it was then, except for complaints from the reactionary and puritanical, though not, as far as Enderby could tell, from Hopkins' fellow-Jesuits. The Month, which had originally refused the poem itself, made amends by finding the film adult and serious. "Mr. Schaumwein very sensibly has eschewed the temptation to translate Hopkins' confused grammar and neologistic tortuosities into corresponding visual obscurities." Enderby's association, however small, with a great demotic medium led to his being considered worthy by the University of Manhattan of being invited to come as a visiting professor for an academic year. The man who sent the invitation, the Chairman of the English Department, Alvin Kosciusko, said that Enderby's poems were not unknown there in the United States. Whatever anybody thought of them, there was no doubt that they were genuine Creative Writing. Enderby was therefore cordially invited to come and pass on some of his Creative Writing skill to Creative Writing students. His penchant for old-fashioned and traditional forms might act as a useful corrective to the cult of free form, which, though still rightly flourishing, had led to some excesses. One postgraduate student had received a prize for a poem that turned out to be a passage from a vice-presidential speech copied out in reverse and then seasoned with mandatory obscenities. He had protested that it was as much Creative Writing as any of the shit that had been awarded prizes in previous years. Anyway, the whole business of giving prizes was reactionary. Subsidies were what was required.

  TWO

  Naked as the day he was born though much hairier, Enderby prepared himself breakfast. One of the things he approved of about New York-a city otherwise dirty, rude, violent, and full of foreigners and mad people-was the wide variety of dyspeptic foods on sale in the supermarkets. In his view, if you did not get dyspepsia while or after eating, you had been cheated of essential nourishment. As for dealing with the dyspepsia, he had never in his life seen so many palliatives for it available-Stums and Windkill and Eupep and (magnificent proleptic onomatopoesis, the work of some high-paid Madison Avenue genius, sincerely admired by Enderby) Aaaarp. And so on. But the best of all he had discovered in a small shop specialising in Oriental medicines (sent thither by a Chinese waiter)-a powerful black viscidity that oozed sinisterly from a tube to bring wind up from Tartarean depths. When he went to buy it, the shopkeeper would, in his earthy Chinese manner, designate it with a remarkable phonic mime of the substance at work. Better than Aaaarp but not easily representable in any conventional alphabet. Enderby would nod kindly, pay, take, bid good day, go.

  Enderby had become, so far as use of the culinary resources of the kitchen (at night the cockroaches' playground) were concerned, one hundred per cent Americanised. He would whip up a thick milk shake in the mixer, thaw then burn frozen waffles in the toaster, make soggy leopardine pancakes with Aunt Jemima's buckwheat pancake mixture (Aunt Jemima herself was on the packet, a comely Negress rejoicing in her bandanna'd servitude), fry Oscar Mayer fat little sausages. His nakedness would be fat-splashed, but the fat easily washed off, unlike with clothes. And he would make tea, though not altogether in the American manner-five bags in a pint mug with alabama gilded onto it, boiling water, a long stewing, very sweet condensed milk added. He would eat his breakfast with H.P. steak sauce on one side of the plate, maple syrup on the other. The Americans went in for synchronic sweet and savoury, a sign of their salvation, unlike the timid Latin races. He would end his meal with a healthy slice of Sara Lee orange cream cake, drink another pint of tea, then, after his black Chinese draught, be alertly ready for work. A man-sized breakfast, as they said. There was never need for much lunch-some canned corned-beef hash with a couple of fried eggs, say, and a pint of tea. A slice of banana cake. And then, this being America, a cup of coffee.

  Heartburn was slow in coming this morning, which made Enderby, stickler for routine, uneasy. He noted also with rueful pride that, despite the emission of the night, he was bearing before him as he left the kitchen, where he had eaten as well as cooked, a sizeable horizontal ithyphallus lazily swinging towards the vertical. Something to do perhaps with excessive protein intake. He took it to a dirty towel in the bathroom, called those Puerto Rican bitches back from that dream, then gave it them all. The street was littered with them. The pimpled lout, astonished and fearful, ran round the corner. This meant that Enderby would have to drive the car away himself. He at once sold it for a trifling sum to a grey-haired black man who shuffled out of an open doorway, evening newspaper in his hand, and made his getaway, naked, on foot. Then dyspepsia struck, he took his black drops, released a savoury gale from as far down as the very caecum, and was ready for work, his own work, not the pseudo-work he would have to do in the afternoon with pseudo-students. For that he must shave, dress, wash, probably in that order. Take the subway, as they called it. Brave mean streets full of black and brown menace.

  Enderby, still naked, sat at his landlady's desk in the bedroom. It was a small apartment, there was no study. He supposed he was lucky to have gotten (very American touch there: gotten) an apartment at all at the rent he was able, the salary not being overlarge, to pay. His landlady, a rabid ideological man-hater, had addressed one letter to him from her digs in Bayswater, confirming that he pay the black woman Priscilla to come and clean for him every Saturday, thus maintaining a continuity of her services useful for when his landlady should return to New York. Enderby was not sure what sex she thought he, Enderby, had, since there was a reference to not trying to flush sanitary pads down the toilet. The title professor, which she rightly addressed him by, was common, as the old grammars would put it. Perhaps she had read his poems and found a rich femininity in them; perhaps
some kind man in the English Department had represented Enderby as an ageing but progressive spinster to her when she sought to let her apartment. Anyway, he had answered the letter promptly on his own portable typewriter, signing with a delicate hand, assuring her that sanitary pads would go out with the garbage and that Priscilla was being promptly paid and not overworked (lazy black insolent bitch, thought Enderby, but evidently illiterate and not likely to blow the sex gaff in letter or transatlantic cable). So there it was. On the other hand, his landlady might learn in London from librarians or in communications from members of the Californian religiolesbic sorority that Enderby was really a (sounded suspiciously like the voice of an MCP to me, toothless too, a TMCP, what little game are you playing, dear?). But it was probably too late for her to do anything about it now. Couldn't evict him on grounds of his sex. The United Nations, conveniently here in New York, would, through an appropriate department, have something very sharp to say about that. So there it was, then. Enderby got down to work.

  Back in Morocco, as previously in England, Enderby was used to working in the toilet, piling up drafts and even fair copies in the never-used bath. Here it would not do, since the bath taps dripped and the toilet seat was (probably by some previous Jewish-mother tenant who wished to discourage solitary pleasures among her menfolk) subtly notched. It was ungrateful to the bottom. Neither was there a writing table low enough. Nor would Priscilla understand. This eccentric country was great on conformity. Enderby now wrote at the desk that had produced so many androphobic mistresspieces. What he was writing was a long poem about St. Augustine and Pelagius, trying to sort out for himself and a couple of score readers the whole worrying business of predestination and free will. He read through what he had so far written, scratching and grunting, naked, a horrible White Owl cigar in his mouth.

  He came out of the misty island, Morgan,

  Man of the sea, demure in monk's sackcloth,

  Taking the long way to Rome, expecting-

  Expecting what? Oh, holiness quintessentialised,

  Holiness whole, the wholesome wholemeal of,

  Holiness as meat and drink and air, in the

  Chaste thrusts of marital love holiness, and

  Sanctitas sanctitas even snaking up from

  Cloacae and sewers, sanctitas the effluvium

  From His Holiness's arsehole.

  Perhaps that was going a bit too far. Enderby poised a ballpoint, dove, retracted. No, it was the right touch really. Let the arsehole stay. Americans preferred asshole for some reason. This then very British. But why not? Pelagius was British. Keep arsehole in.

  On the long road

  Trudging, dust, birdsong, dirty villages,

  Stops on the way at monasteries (weeviled bread,

  Eisel wine), always this thought: Sanctitas.

  What dost seek in Rome, brother? The home

  Of holiness, to lodge awhile in the

  Sanctuary of sanctity, my brothers, for here

  Peter died, seeing before he died

  The pagan world inverted to sanctitas, and

  The very flagged soil is rich with the bonemeal

  Of the martyrs. And the brothers would

  Look at each other, each thinking, some saying:

  Here cometh one that only islands breed.

  What can flourish in that Ultima Thule save

  Holiness, a bare garment for the wind to

  Sing through? And not Favonius either but

  Sour Boreas from the pole. Not the grape,

  Not garlic not the olive, not the strong sun

  Tickling the manhood in a man, be he

  Monk or friar or dean or

  Burly bishop, big ballocks swinging like twin censers.

  Only holiness. God help him, God bless him for

  We look upon British innocence.

  And the British innocent, hurtful of no man,

  Fond of dogs, a cat-stroker,

  Trudged on south-vine, olive, garlic,

  Brown tits jogging while brown feet

  Danced in the grapepress and the

  Baaark ballifoll goristafick

  That last was inner Enderby demanding the stool. He took his poem with him thither, frowning, sat reading.

  Monstrous aphrodisiac danced in the heavens

  Prrrrrrp faaaark

  Wheep

  Till at length he came to the outer suburbs and

  Fell on his knees O sancta urbs sancta sancta

  Meaning sancta suburbs and

  Plomp

  Enderby wiped himself with slow care and marched back, frowning, reading. As he reached the telephone on the bed table the telephone rang, so that he was able to pick it up at once, thus disconcerting the voice on the other end, which had not expected such promptitude.

  "Oh. Mr. Enderby?" It was a woman's voice, being higher than a man's. American female voices lacked feminine timbre as known in the south of vine and garlic, were just higher because of accident of larynx being smaller.

  "Professor Enderby speaking."

  "Oh, hi. This is the Sperr Lansing Show. We wondered if you-"

  "What? Who? What is this?"

  "The Sperr Lansing Show. A talk show. Television. The talk show. Channel Fif-"

  "Ah, I see," Enderby said, with British heartiness. "I've seen it, I think. She left it here, you see. Extra on the rent."

  "Who? What?"

  "Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. A television. She's a great one for her rights. Ah yes, I've seen it a few times. A sort of thin man with a fat jackal. Both leer a good deal, but one supposes they have to."

  "No, no, you have the wrong show there, professor." The title now seemed pretentious, also absurd, as when someone in a film is addressed as professor. "What you mean is the Cannon Dickson Show. That's mostly show-business personalities. The Sperr Lansing Show is, well, different."

  "I didn't really mean to insist, ha ha," Enderby said, "on the title of professor. Fancy dress, you know. A lot of nonsense really. And I really must apologise for-" He was going to say for being naked: it was all this damned visual stuff. "For my innocence. I mean my ignorance."

  "I guess I ought to introduce myself, as we've already been talking for such a long time. I'm Midge Tauchnitz."

  "Enderby," Enderby said. "Sorry, that was-So, eh? 'The strong spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame.' I suppose that's where he got it from."

  "Pardon me?"

  "Anyway, thank you for calling."

  "No, it doesn't go out live. Nothing these days goes out live."

  "I promise to watch it at the earliest opportunity. Thank you very much for suggesting-"

  "No, no, we want you to appear on it. We record at seven, so you'd have to be here about six."

  "Why?" Enderby said in honest surprise. "For God's sake why?"

  "Oh, make-up and so on. It's on West 46th Street, between Fifth and-"

  "No, no, no. Why me?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "Me."

  "Oh." The voice became teasing and girlish. "Oh, come now, professor, that's playing it too cool. It's the movie. The Deutschland."

  "Ah. But I only wrote the-I mean, it was only my idea. That's what it says, anyway. Why don't you ask one of the others, the ones who really made it?"

  "Well," she said candidly. "We tried to get hold of Bob Ponte, the script writer, but he's in Honolulu writing a script, and Mr. Schaumwein is in Rome, and Millennium suggested we get on to you. So I phoned the university and they gave us your-"

  "Hopkins," Enderby said, in gloomy play. "Did you try Hopkins?"

  "No luck there either. Nobody knows where he is."

  "In the eschatological sense, I should think it's pretty certain that-"

  "Pardon me?"

  "But in the other it's no wonder. 1844 to 89," he twinkled.

  "Oh, I'll write that down. But it doesn't sound like a New York number-"

  "No no no no no. A little joke. He's dead, you see."

  "Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't kn
ow. But you're okay? I mean, you'll be there?"

  "If you really want me. But I still don't see-"

  "You don't? You don't read the newspapers?"

  "Never. And again never. A load of frivolity and lies. They've been attacking it, have they?"

  "No. Some boys have been attacking some nuns. In Manhattanville. I'm shocked you didn't know. I assumed-"

  "Nuns are always being attacked. Their purity is an affront to the dirty world."

  "Remember that. Remember to say that. But the point is that they said they wouldn't have done it if they hadn't seen the movie. That's why we're-"

  "I see. I see. Always blame art, eh? Not original sin but art. I'll have my say, never fear."

  "You have the address?"

  "Ybu ignore art as so much unnecessary garbage or you blame it for your own crimes. That's the way of it. I'll get the bastards, all of them. I'm not having this sort of nonsense, do you hear?" There was silence at the other end. "You never take art for what it is-beauty, ultimate meaning, form for its own sake, self-subsisting, oh no. It's always got to be either sneered at or attacked as evil. I'll have my bloody say. What's the name of the show again?" But she had rung off, silly bitch.

  Enderby went snorting back to his poem. The stupid bastards.

  But wherever he went in Rome, it was always the same-

  Sin sin sin, no sanctity, the whole unholy

  Grammar of sin, syntax, accidence, sin's

  Entire lexicon set before him, sin.

  Peacocks in the streets, gold dribbled over

  In dark rooms, vomiting after

  Banquets of ostrich bowels stuffed with saffron,

  Minced pikeflesh and pounded larkbrain,

  Served with a sauce headily fetid, and pocula

  Of wine mixed with adder's blood to promote

  Lust lust and again.

  Pederasty, podorasty, sodomy, bestiality,

  Degrees of family ripped apart like