Anthony Burgess: The Clockwork Testament (Or: Enderby 's End)

"Or sex. Sex is as good whether-I mean, you don't have to be in what they used to call a state of grace to enjoy it."

"That's good," Enderby said warmly. "That's right. Though you're still going on about sex. You mean lesbian sex, of course, in your case. Not that I have anything against it, naturally, except that I'm not permitted to experience it. The world's getting narrower all the time. All little sects doing what they call their own thing."

"Why do you keep showing your balls all the time?" she said boldly. "Don't you have underpants or anything?"

Enderby flushed very deeply all over. "I had no intention," he said. "I can assure you. What I mean is, I'll put something on. I was not trying to provoke-I apologise," he said, going off back to the bedroom. He came out again wearing nondescript trousers, something from an old suit, and a not overclean striped shirt. Also slippers. He said, "There." The hypocritical little bitch had been at the bottle in his brief absence. He could tell that from her slight slur. She said:

"Evil."

"Who? Oh, evil." And he sat down again. "Evil is the destructive urge. Not to be confused with mere wrong. Wrong is what the government doesn't like. Sometimes a thing can be wrong and evil at the same time-murder, for instance. But then it can be right to murder. Like you people going round killing the Vietnamese and so on. Evil called right."

"It wasn't right. Nobody said it was right."

"The government did. Get this straight. Right and wrong are fluid and interchangeable. What's right one day can be wrong the next. And vice versa. It's right to like the Chinese now. Before you started playing Ping-pong with them it was wrong. A lot of evil nonsense. What you kids need is some good food (there you are, see: good in non-ethical sense) and an idea of what good and evil are about."

"Well, go on, tell us."

"Nobody," said Enderby, having taken a swig, "has any clear idea about good. Oh, giving money to the poor perhaps. Helping old ladies across the street. That sort of thing. Evil's different. Everybody knows evil. Brought up to it, you see. Original sin."

"I don't believe in original sin." She was taking the bottle quite manfully now. "We're free."

Enderby looked on her bitterly, also sweating. It was really too hot to wear anything indoors. Damned unchangeable central heating, controlled by some cold sadist somewhere in the basement. Bitterly because she'd hit on the damned problem that he had to present in the poem. She ought to go away now and let him get on with it. Still, his duty. One of his students. He was being paid. Those brown bastards in whose hands he had left La Belle Mer would be shovelling it all from till to pocket. Bad year we had, señor. Had to near shut up bloody shop. He said carefully:

"Well, yes. Freeish. Wir sind ein wenig frei . Wagner wrote that. Gave it to Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger ." And then: "No, to hell with it. Wholly free. Totally free to choose between good and evil. The other things don't matter-I mean free to drink a quart of whisky without vomiting and so on. Free to touch one's forehead with one's foot. And so forth."

"I can do that," she said. The latter. Doing it. That was the whisky, God help the ill-nourished child.

"But," Enderby said, ignoring the acrobatics. She didn't seem to be bothering to use her cassette thing any more. Never mind. "But we're disposed to do evil rather than good. History is the record of that. Given the choice, we're inclined to do the bad thing. That's all it means. We have to make a strong effort to do the good thing."

"Examples of evil," she said.

"Oh," said Enderby. "Killing for the sake of doing it. Torturing for pleasure-it always is that, though, isn't it? Defacing a work of art. Farting during a performance of a late Beethoven quartet. That must be evil because it's not wrong. I mean, there's no law against it."

"We believe," she said, sitting up seriously, checking the cassette machine and holding it out, "that a time will come when evil will be no more. She'll come again, and that will be the end of evil."

"Who's she ?"

"Jesus, of course."

Enderby breathed deeply several times. "Look," he said. "If you get rid of evil you get rid of choice. You've got to have things to choose between, and that means good and evil. If you don't choose, you're not human any more. You're something else. Or you're dead."

"You're sweating just terribly," she said. "There's no need to wear all that. Don't you have swimming trunks?"

"I don't swim," Enderby said.

"It is hot," she said. And she began to remove her Coke-and-hamburger-stained sweater. Enderby gulped and gulped. He said:

"This is, you must admit, somewhat irregular. I mean, the professor and student relationship and all that sort of thing."

"You exhibited yourself. That's somewhat irregular too." By now she had taken off the sweater. She was, he supposed, decently dressed by beach standards, but there was a curious erotic difference between the two kinds of top worn. This was austere enough-no frills or representations of black hands feeling for the nipples. Still, it was undress . Beach dress was not that. He said:

"An interesting question when you come to think of it. If somebody's lying naked on the beach it's not erotic. Naked on the bed is different. Even more different on the floor."

"The first one's functional," she said. "Like for a surgical operation. Nakedness is only erotic when it's obviously not for anything else."

"You're quite a clever girl," Enderby said. "What kind of marks have I been giving you?"

"Two C's. But I couldn't do the sestina. Very old-fashioned. And the other one was free verse. But you said it was really hexameters."

"People often go into hexameters when they try to write free verse," Enderby said. "Walt Whitman, for instance."

"I have to get A's. I just have to." And then: "It is hot."

"Would you like some ice in that? I can get you some ice."

"Have you a cold Coke?"

"There you go again, with your bloody Cokes and 7-Ups and so on. It's uncivilised," Enderby raged. "I'll get you some ice." He went into the kitchen and looked at it gloomily. It was a bit dirty, really, the sink piled high. He didn't know how to use the washing-up machine. He crunched out ice cubes by pulling a lever. Ice cubes went tumbling into dirty water and old fat. He cleaned them on a dishrag. Then he put them into the GEORGIA tea mug and took them in. He gulped. He said: "That's going too far, you know." Topless waitresses, topless students. And then: "I forgot to wash a glass for you. Scatch on the racks," he added, desperately facetious. He went back to the kitchen and at once the kitchen telephone rang.

"Enderby?" It was an English voice, male.

"Professor Enderby, yes."

"Well, you're really in the shit now, aren't you, old boy?"

"Look, did you put her up to this? Who are you, anyway?"

"Ah, something going on there too, eh? This is Jim Bister from Washington. I saw you in Tangier, remember? Surrounded by all those bitsy booful brown boys."

"Are you tight?"

"Not more than usual, old boy. Look, seriously. I was asked by my editor to get you to say something about this nun business."

"What nun business? What editor? Who are you, anyway?" He was perhaps going too far in asking that last question again, but he objected to this assumption that British expatriates in America ought to be matey with each other, saying in the shit and so forth at the drop of a hat.

"I've said who I am. I thought you'd remember. I suppose you were half-pissed that time in Tangier. My newspaper is the Evening Banner, London if you've forgotten, what with your brandy and pederasty, and my editor wants to know what you-"

"What did you say then about pederasty? I thought I caught something about pederasty. Because if I did, by Jesus I'll be down there in Washington and I'll-"