Страница 16 из 29
"Yeah. I guess it had to be somebody's idea. Everything is kind of built on the idea of some unknown guy. You seen the figures in this week's Variety? Sex and violence, always the answer. But the guy that wrote the book was not like the guy I played in the movie. No, sir. The original Father Hopkins was a fag."
"A priest a fag?" the bartender said. "You don't say."
"There are priests fags," O'Do
"Listen," Enderby said, "Gerard Manley Hopkins was not a homosexual. At least not consciously. Certainly not actively. Sublimation into the love of Christ perhaps. A theory, no more. A possibility. Of no religious or literary interest, of course. A love of male beauty. The Bugler's First Communion and The Loss of the Eurydice and Hairy Ploughman. Admiration for it. 'Every inch a tar, of the best we boast our sailors are.' 'Hard as hurdle arms, with a broth of goldish flue.' What's wrong with that, for Christ's sake?"
"Broth of goldfish my ass," O'Do
"He'll come in here, Mr. O'Do
"Show?" Enderby said. "Are you by any chance on the-" He consulted the tear-off from his pocket. "Live Lancing Show?"
"Hey, that's good. Sperr would like that. Not that it's live, old boy, old boy. Nothing's live, not any more." And then: "You British?"
"I've said already that I-"
"You a fag? Okay okay. That's not what I was going to ask. What I was going to ask was-What was I going to ask?" he asked the bartender.
"Search me, Mr. O'Do
"I know. Something about a bugle boy. What was that about a bugugle boy?"
"The Bugler's First Communion?"
"That's it, I guess. Now this proves that he was a fag. You British? Yeah yeah, asked that already. That means you know the town of Oxford, where the college is, right? It was my father."
"What?"
"Got that balled up, I guess. Big army barracks there. Cow cow cow something."
"Cowley?"
"Right, you'd know that, being British. Another scatch on the-"
"Sorry, Mr. O'Do
"Okay okay, gotta be with old Can Dix. Sending a limousine."
"Who? What?"
"Sending a car around. This talk show."
"I," Enderby said, "am on the other one, the Spurling one. What," he said with apprehension, "are you going to tell them?"
"Listen, old boy old boy, not finished, had I, right? Right. It was my mother's father. British, with an Irish mother. Sent him off to be good Catholic. Right? One hell of a row, father was Protestant."
"Yes," Enderby said. " 'Born, he tells me, of Irish / Mother to an English sire (he / Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will).' "
"Not finished, had I, right?"
"Sorry."
"No need to be sorry. Never regret anything, my what the hell do you call it slogan, right? Went over to Ireland with my mother's father's mother, he was my mother's father, you see that?"
"Right."
"Married Irish, the British all got smothered up. Well, that was his story."
"What was his story?"
"Had him down there in what do you call it presbyt presbyt, his red pants off of him and gave him, you know, the stick. Met him again in Dublin when he was some sort of professor, reminded him of it. Made him very sick. Very sick already."
"Oh God," Enderby said.
O now well work that sealing sacred ointment!
O for now charms, arms, what bans off bad
And locks love ever in a lad!
Let me though see no more of him, and not disappointment
Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift…
"I can't believe it," Enderby said. "I won't." He had intimations of a renewal of quasi-lethal pains ready to shoot from chest to clavicle to arm. No, he wouldn't have it. He frightened the promise away with a quick draught of gin. "So," he said. "You're going to tell them all about it?"
"Not that," O'Do
"What a filthy unspeakable world," Enderby said. "What defilement, what horror."
"You can say that again. Ah, Josh. It is Josh? Sure it's Josh. How are things, Josh? How's the kids and the missus? The old trouble-and-strife, our British friend here would say." His Cockney was tolerable. "A cap of Sara Lee and dahn wiv yer rahnd the ahzes."
"Getting married next month," this Josh said unrelatedly. He looked Armenian to Enderby, hairy and with an ovine profile.
"Is that right, is that really right, well I sure am happy for you, Josh. Our friend here," O'Do
"Is that right?" Josh said. "We'd best be on our way, Mr. O'Do
"Say that story isn't true," Enderby begged. "It can't be true."
"My granddaddy swore it was true. He always remembered the name. We had a Mrs. Hopkins who cleaned for us. He had nothing against priests, he said. He was a real believer all his life."
Though this child's drift / Seems by a divine doom cha
"The car's waiting, Mr. O'Do
"And he saw it wasn't real sexual excitement. Not like he'd seen in the barracks. It was all tied up with-Well, his hands were shaking with the joy of it, you know." Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead. Too huge, my dear. "Come on, Josh, let's go. He was only a kid but he saw that." He nodded very soberly. "So I had to do the part, I guess." O'Do
The ways leading to the television place on 46th Street were warming up nicely with the threat of violence. Violence in itself is not bad, ladies and gentlemen. In a poem you would be entitled to exploit the fortuitous co