The Complete Enderby (25 page)

They arrived late for the film première. The cinema was in an obscure street somewhere off the Viale Aventino, and the taxi-driver had difficulty in finding it. He at first denied, in the manner of taxi-drivers, the existence of what he himself did not know existed, until Enderby waved a ticket of invitation in his moustached face. The façade of the cinema rather let down the rest of Rome, thought Enderby, as he helped Vesta out of the cab.

Sculpturally and architecturally, the rest of Rome was rubbishy, yet rubbishy on a baroque and hypnotic scale, like the delusions of grandeur of some gibbering G.P.I. patient. But here was authentic fleapit, from the look of it, epitome of every bughouse that Enderby had, as a child, queued outside on Saturday afternoons, sticky paw clutching twopence, filthy-jerseyed other children clinging to him aromatically lest they lose him in the scrimmage of entrance, Enderby being the only one of their lot who could read. The old silent film had, Enderby reflected, been, in one facet, an extension of literature. He said now to Vesta, ‘This is one of those places where you go in with a blouse and come out with a jumper.’ He tweaked her elbow jocularly, but she looked queenily blank. ‘Blouse?’ she said. ‘I’m not wearing a blouse.’ She was, in fact, wearing black silk from her Roman-lady
couturière
, sleeveless, the back
décolleté
, the skirt slim, tails of mink dripping from her shoulders against the night’s cool. Enderby was in white tuxedo, black silk in breast pocket to match tie. But it looked as though he needn’t have taken so much trouble: there were no adoring crowds, no gleaming stars’ mouths of coral and ivory in maniacal abandon to the flashbulbs, no jostle of Cadillacs and Bentleys. There were a few decent Fiats, unattended, evidently owner-driven; a painted banner across the deplorable rococo façade said, in the midst of cheap coloured bulbs, L’ANIMAL BINATO. The man who took their cards of invitation chewed something morosely and his lantern-jaw was ill-shaven. It let down Vesta as much as it let down Rome. Little, of course, thought Enderby, could let down Enderby.

They were flashlamped to their seats. Enderby felt torn cheap plush beneath him and smelt a strong citrus tang through the dark. Orange, too, bloodless orange, was the light which warmed the
worn
stage curtains. These now, as if they had been waiting only for Enderby and his wife, parted to the noise of loud cinema music, banal, conventionally sinister. Enderby peered through the dark: there did not, by the feel and sound of things, seem to be a very large audience. The screen said L’ANIMAL BINATO and followed this with jerkily dissolved frames of the names of the conspirators: Alberto Formica; Giorgio Farfalla; Maria Vacca; A. F. Corvo; P. Ranocchio; Giacomo Capra; Beatrice Pappagallo; R. Coniglio; Giovanni Chiocciola; Gina Gatto. Rawcliffe’s name appeared near the end, Italianized to, as far as Enderby could tell, something like Raucliffo. ‘Serve him right,’ thought Enderby, and told Vesta so. She said shhhhh. The film began.

Night, very much night, with tortured cypresses lit by lightning. Thunder (Vesta dug her nails into Enderby’s hand). Tempestuous wind. Camera tracks to steps of terrace, handsome woman standing thereon, much of Italian bosom exposed to lightning. She raises arms, cornily, to stormy heavens in a crash of thunder. Camera swings up towards sky. Another stock shot of lightning cracking cloud like a teacup. Thunder (Vesta’s nails). New camera angle shows a something speeding down the firmament, a white flashing something. Cut to wooden effigy of cow, lightning-lit. Handsome bosomed woman seen walking through tempest, statelily, towards wooden cow. Lightning shows her doing something obscure, pulling some lever or other, then creaking music accompanies shot of wooden cow opening, two hollow half-cows, woman climbing into upright half, cow closing up, woman imprisoned in cow. Cut to white bull, snorting against the thunder, tearing down the sky, bull-lust from heaven.

‘You know,’ said Enderby with wonder, ‘this is really an astonishing coincidence.’

‘Shhhhh,’ said Vesta. Enderby, his eyes now accustomed to the dark, looked round to find the cinema half-empty, but next to him was a huge man, jowled and bag-eyed in lightning from the screen, a cigar burning towards his fingers, already asleep and snoring slightly.

Day. Ruritanian palace, moustached handsome king in late middle age conferring with deferential bearded (false-bearded) counsellors. Fanfare. Palaver is ended. One counsellor stays behind,
ingratiating
Iago-type, to talk to the king. The king’s eyes cornily cloud with suspicion. Odd Italian words that Enderby can understand snap out from the sound-track: queen, cow, Dedalo. Dedalo ordered to be brought in. Cut to Dedalo’s workshop. Dedalo and Icaro, Dedalo’s crisp-haired son, are building aeroplanes. Dedalo very old skinny man. Summoned by servant, he pulls down shirt-sleeves, dons jacket period 1860, follows down labyrinthine corridors, a kind old man with clever eyes and deep face-furrows. He enters royal presence. Long unintelligible Italian colloquy with much eloquent arm-waving. Dedalo struck on aged face by angry king. Iago-type goes off, bowing, oily, leaving royal face in royal hands. Dedalo hauled off for torture.

Enderby now began to feel an emotion other than wonder; his stomach heaved and pricked with apprehension: this was more than coincidence. ‘Don’t you think,’ he said to Vesta, ‘this is just a little too much like my poem? Don’t you think –’

‘Shhhhh,’ she said. The snoring man next to Enderby said, in his sleep, ‘
Tace
.’ Enderby, reminded of the sleep-talking Raucliffo, said, ‘
Tace
your arse.’ And to Vesta, ‘This is just like
The Pet Beast
.’ He then remembered that she hadn’t yet read it, had not, in fact, yet shown any desire to read it. He grimly watched the screen, the further unwinding of Raucliffo’s infamy.

Day. Pregnant queen in exile, sitting in mean cottage with old crone. Colloquy. Labour-pains. Then dissolve to shot of doctor galloping in from afar. He enters cottage. From bedroom door come bellowing noises. He enters bedroom. Close-up of doctor’s face. Horror, incredulity, nausea, syncope. Close-up, with foul discord of what doctor sees: head of bull-calf on child’s body.

‘That’s mine,’ said Enderby. ‘It’s mine, I tell you. If I find that blasted Rawcliffe –’

‘It’s nobody’s,’ said Vesta. ‘It’s just a myth. Even I know that.’

‘
Tace
,’ snored Enderby’s pone.

Calf-child, in montage series, grows to bull-man, hideous, muscular, fire-breathing, gigantic. Having stolen piece of raw meat from kitchen, bull-man makes discovery of carnivorous nature. Kills old crone and eats her. Tries to kill mother, too, but mother escapes, falls over cliff screaming but uneaten. Good clean fun. Bull-man totters, tall as ten houses, to capital city, leaving bone-trail behind.
Cut
to palace gardens where Princess Ariadne, with sizeable bosom-show, is playing ball with giggling bosom-showing alleged maidens. Close-up of beast drooling through thicket. Screams, scatter, Ariadne carried off on beast’s back. Beast, drooling, carries her, screaming, to cellars of metropolitan museum. Shots of priceless pictures, rare books, stately sculptures, sounds of great music as bull-man bellows his-its way to hide-out deep beneath eternal monuments of culture. Ariadne shows more bosom, screams more loudly. Bull-man does not, however, wish to eat her, not yet anyway.

Enderby clenched his fists tight, their knuckles gleaming in the light that flashed, intermittently, from the screen.

Dénouement. Alpine-Italian hero, Mussolini-headed, crashes into deep cellars, wanders through dark, hears bull-bellow and princess-scream, finds monster and victim, shoots, finds bullets of no avail as bull-man is, on sire’s side, thing from outer space. Ariadne escapes, screaming, showing allowable limit of Roman bosom, as howling chest-beating beast advances on hero. Hero, like Count Belisarius, has pepper-bag. He hurls its contents, temporarily blinding beast. To sneezes-bellows-howls, hero escapes. Lo, a prodigy: Dedalo and Icaro in flying-machine some decades ahead of its time drop bomb on metropolitan museum. Howls of dying bull-man, crash of statuary, flap and rustle of books caught alight, Mona Lisa with burnt-out smile, harp-strings pinging as they crack. Death of culture, death of the past, a rational future, embracing lovers. Dedalo and Icaro have engine-trouble. They crash in sea, against glorious sunrise. Heavenly voices. End.

‘If,’ trembled Enderby, ‘I could lay my hands on that bloody Rawcliffe –’

‘Stop it, do you hear?’ said Vesta very sharply indeed. ‘I can’t take you anywhere, can I? Nothing satisfies you, nothing. I thought it was quite a nice little horror film, and all you can do is to say that it’s been stolen from you. Are you getting delusions of grandeur or something?’

‘I tell you,’ said Enderby, with angry patience, ‘that that bastard Rawcliffe –’ The house-lights, all sick sweet orange, came gently up, disclosing applauding people crying
bravo, brava
, and
bravi
, as for the Pope’s whole family. The fat man next to Enderby, now radiantly awake, lighted his long-gone-out cigar and then openly
laughed
at Enderby’s clenched fists. Enderby prepared twelve obscene English words as a ground-row (variations and embellishments to follow), but, like a blow on the occiput, it suddenly came to him that he had had enough of words, obscene or otherwise. He smiled with fierce saccharinity on Vesta and said, so that she searched his whole face for sarcasm, ‘Shall we be going now, dear?’

Late at night, thought Enderby, meant in England after the shutting of the pubs. Here there were no pubs to shut, so it was not yet late. He and Vesta picked up a horse-cab or
carrozza
or whatever it was called on the Via Marmorata, and this clopped along by the side of the Tiber while Enderby fed sedative words to his wife, saying, ‘I’m honestly going to make an effort, really I am. My maturity’s been much delayed, as you realize. I’m really terribly grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I promise to try to grow up, and I know you’ll help me there as you’ve helped me in everything else. That film tonight has convinced me that I’ve got to make a real effort to live in public.’ Vesta, beautiful in the June Roman aromatic night, her hair stirred but gently by the bland wind of their passage, gave him a wary look but said nothing. ‘What I mean is,’ said Enderby, ‘that it’s no use living in the lavatory on a tiny income. You were quite right to insist on spending all my capital. I’ve got to
earn
a place in the world; I’ve got to come to terms with the public and give the public, within reason, what it wants. I mean, how many people would want to read
The Pet Beast
? A couple of hundred at the outside, whereas this film will be seen by millions. I see, I see it all.’ He reminded himself of the main protagonist of a drink-cure advertisement in
Old Moore’s Almanac
: the medicine cunningly mixed with the drunkard’s tea; the immediate result – the drunkard’s raising a hand to heaven, wife hanging, sobbing with relief, round his neck. Too much ham altogether. Vesta, still with the wary look, said:

‘I hope you mean what you say. I don’t mean about the film; I mean about trying to be a bit more
normal
. There’s a lot in life that you’ve missed, isn’t there?’ She gave him her hand as a cool
token
. ‘Oh, I know it must sound a little pretentious, but I feel that I’ve got a duty to you; not the ordinary duty of a wife to a husband, but a bigger one. I’ve been entrusted with the care of a great poet.’ The horse should, rightly, have neighed; massed trumpets should have brayed from the Isola Tiberina.

‘And you were quite right,’ said Enderby, ‘to bring me to Rome. I see that too. The Eternal City.’ He was almost enjoying this. ‘Symbol of public life, symbol of spiritual regeneration. But,’ he said, slyly, ‘when are we going back? I’m so anxious,’ he said, ‘to go back, so we can
really
start our life together. I long,’ he said, ‘to be with you in our own home, just the two of us. Let’s,’ he said, bouncing suddenly with schoolboy eagerness, ‘go back tomorrow. It should be possible to get a couple of seats on some plane or other, shouldn’t it? Oh, do let’s go back.’

She withdrew her hand from his, and Enderby had a pang of fear, not unlike heartburn, that perhaps she was seeing through this performance. But she said:

‘Well, no, we can’t go back. Not just yet. Not for a week or so, anyway. You see, I have something arranged. It was meant to be a surprise, really, but now I’d better tell you. I thought it would be a good idea for us to be married, here in Rome, married properly. I don’t mean a nuptial mass or anything, of course, but just the plain ceremony.’

‘Oh,’ gleamed Enderby, swallowing bolus after bolus of anger and nausea, ‘what a very good idea!’

‘And there’s a very good priest, Father Agnello I believe his name is, and he’ll be coming to see you tomorrow. I met him yesterday at Princess Vittoria Corombona’s.’ She trilled the name with relish, dearly loving a title.

False Enderby breathed hard with the effort of pushing True Enderby back into the cupboard. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘was a priest doing in a dress-shop?’

‘Oh, silly,’ smiled Vesta. ‘Princess Vittoria Corombona doesn’t run a dress-shop. She does film-gossip for
Fem
. Father Agnello is very intellectual. He’s spent a lot of time in the United States and he speaks English perfectly. Strangely enough, he’s read one of your poems – the blasphemous one about the Virgin Mary – and he’s very anxious to have a couple of good long talks with you. Then, of course, he’ll hear your confession.’

‘Well,’ smiled Enderby, ‘it’s good to know that everything’s being taken care of. It’s such a relief. I am really, you know, most grateful.’ He squeezed her hand as they turned into the Via Nazionale: lights, lights; the Snack Bar Americano; the Bank of the Holy Spirit; shop after shop after shop; the air terminal, alight and busy; the hotel. The fat horse clomped to a ragged halt and snorted, not specifically at Enderby. The driver swore that his taxi-meter was wrong, a mechanical fault hard to repair, it showed too little. Enderby would not argue. He gave five hundred lire more than the clocked amount, saying ‘Sod you too’ to the driver. Rome; how he loved Rome!