Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess Page A

I'm tired of having only an audience of one for my poems."
           "Ah. I see. So you're letting that come between us. I've tried to place them, you know that. I've shown you the letters of rejection. But they all say you must keep on writing."
           "Jack Ketteridge, that pal of Ezra Pound's. He's been given an old handpress. By someone both loving and generous."
           "I'd give you an old handpress if I had one. I'd give you anything."
           "I don't mean that, silly. I don't want a handpress. I want to be printed, not to print. Ketteridge is calling his little enterprise the Svastica Press. Apparently the svastica is a Hindu sun symbol. It means good luck too. He'll do my volume for twenty pounds. Two hundred copies. That's cheap, I think."
           "So that's what all the sulks were about. I never give you anything. And you know I can't give you twenty pounds. Why don't you ask your father?"
           "I prefer to go," Val said, "to those who say they love me. And I don't mean what my father calls love, which is just possession and bossiness."
           "I'll get the money. Somehow. An advance on royalties, perhaps. Though I'm not really ready to start the next novel, the one I've told you about, the modern Abelard and Eloise—"
           "I know, the man who has his pillocks blown off at Suvla Bay. I know too that you don't like taking money in advance. You've told me often enough about it making you resent doing the work when you've spent the money and thus doing it badly. I know, I know, Ken. You needn't bother. I just want you to know my motives, that's all."
           My heart sank, the water bubbled cheerfully. Faith. Faithfulness. I had stemmed the thought at the very moment of unwinding the can of corned beef: what right had I to expect fidelity if I was myself withdrawing it? Superstition was already replacing faith. And here it was coming now, my punishment. Men are right to be superstitious. I said nothing for the moment, keeping my back to Val, making tea, weak tea because I was near the end of the packet of Lipton's Victory Blend. At length I said, in what in my fiction in those days ("And in your later days too, dear" Geoffrey) I would have termed a strangled voice: "Who is it?"
           "I want you to understand me properly, Ken. Do turn round and look me in the eye. I want money, not for myself, but for what I think's important. Oh, I may be stupid thinking it's important, but it's all I have."
           "You have me." I looked into the pot to see how the tea was drawing. "Had me."
           "This is different, Ken, you old stupid, you know it's different. Anything for art. Bernard Shaw said something about it's right to starve your wife and children for the sake of art, art comes first."
           "No, no, it doesn't." I poured two cups of tea and put canned milk and grey wartime sugar on the table. "Love first, faith, I mean fidelity. Who is it? I want to know who it is."
           "You won't know him. He comes into the shop, he has an account. A great seeker of first editions of Huysmans. He knew Wilde, or so he says. Older than you, of course."
           "And richer. Prostitute," I then said. "Whoring. You don't know what love is."
           "Oh yes I do. It's eating corned beef stew, or not eating it, and then getting cramps in a single bed and smelling the ghost of onions at dawn. Sounds a bit like Blast, doesn't it? That Rhapsody on a Windy Night man. Well," and he cocked his head at me whorishly, "do you fancy a bit of a farewell tumble, dearie?"
           "Why do you do this? Why?"
           "Perhaps," he said solemnly, "it's to make you turn against me. That tea looks awful. Warm cat piss. One thing anyway. No more Saturday afternoon tumbles and the odd night with the onions. My dear father and mother have known nothing, guessed nothing. Caution, Ken, is it right to be so cautious? Well, no more caution. After