Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess Read Free Book Online

told him, "to the population explosion and so on. Cans of Mensch in the supermarkets." Sciberras was still bewildered. "Kosher for those who want it. Nothing in Leviticus or Deuteronomy against it, is there? Or Munch, perhaps. Or Manch, even. But that sounds like canned Manchurian." He was disclosing a talent submerged in a nobler vocation. "Or a whole line of dressed meats presided over by Ann Thropp. Like Sara Lee, you know," he said to Sciberras, who did not know. I noticed that the two young people of the party took only vegetables. This would not, of course, be Wignall putting them off; this would be an aspect of their lifestyle, as it was called. The girl Janie, who was on my left, said: "You're the Great Writer, aren't you? What do you write?"
           "I'm retired now. Very old, as you can see."
           "What sort of things did you write when you did write?" She had quite clean fingernails and a slight venerean strabismus, rather like—No. Wait.
           "Novels, plays, short stories. Some of the stories were filmed. Did you ever see Fitful Fever or Down Came a Blackbird? Or Duet or Terzetto?" No to all those, and I couldn't really blame her. "Do you like reading?"
           "I like Hermann Hesse."
           "Good God," I said, surprised. "There's hope for us all. I knew Hesse."
           "You knew him?" Her jaw dropped, showing half-chewed greens. She goggled and then cried across the table, "Johnny. He knew Hermann Hesse."
           "Who did?" He had his own family-size bottle of Coca-Cola to help the greens down.
           "Him here. Mr er—"
           I was not quite all things to all men, but I had plenty to offer: for the Catholics a potential saint as good as in the family; for the young a much overrated German novelist of my acquaintance. And there was always my own work for those who cared for that sort of thing.
           "Hesse is great," John Ovington pronounced.
           "You've read him in German?" asked cunning Wignall.
           "He's above language," John Ovington pronounced.
           "There I must respectfully beg to differ," said Wignall. "No writer is above language. Writers are language. Each is his own language." I was impressed to hear a slight tremor of what I took to be vocational conviction.
           "It's the ideas," the boy told us. "They count, not the words."
           "And how about Shakespeare's ideas? Damn it, Shakespeare had no ideas worth talking about." Trembling more, rightly.
           "Perhaps that's why we don't read him." The boy swigged straight from his family-size bottle.
           "Dig is what you used to say, dear," wrinkled his mother.
           "Following," said his father, smilingly chewing, "the behest of the bard himself. 'Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear to dig the dust enclosed here.'" He looked round for approval and got a sort of grin from me. Sciberras looked blankly from face to talking face, eating heartily though.
           "A dead scene," the boy said. He made the gesture of being willing to pass his bottle across to Janie, but she shook her locks at him.
           "A dead shakescene," smiled his father. Wignall's jowls shook as he prepared unguestly reproof, outrage, disgust, something, so I got in quickly with, addressing Sciberras out of politeness: "He was a nice rather unhappy old man when I saw him last. It must be all of fifteen years ago. In Lausanne or Geneva or somewhere. He was as old then as I am now. He didn't seem to care much for his work any more. He wondered if he'd done the right thing in getting out of Germany and concentrating on fake orientalism and higher games."
           "What higher games?" Janie asked and, simultaneously, John pronounced, "I'm quite sure he didn't say fake."
           "Das Glasperlenspiel," I said, "for which he got the Nobel. And no, he didn't say fake, he said ersatz."
           "This cannot be so," Sciberras