Earthly powers by Anthony Burgess

Author:Anthony Burgess
Language: pt
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Social Science, Gay men, Fiction, Literary, European, Gay, Welsh, Cardinals, Older gay men, Authors, Non-Classifiable, Miracles, Older men, Gay Studies, English, Criticism, Irish, England, General, Literary Criticism, Scottish, Biography & Autobiography, Literature - Classics, Religious
ISBN: 9780671414900
Publisher: New York, N.Y. : Simon and Schuster, c1980.
Published: 1980-03-14T19:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 44

"It is." Carlo said, "a kind of blasphemy. I don't see why the Muslims allow it."

"There aren't any Muslims here," I said. "Only Jews."

"How would they like it to be called the Garden of Jehovah?" He meant the hotel where I was living on Sunset Boulevard. It had once been the residence of Alla Nazimova the film actress, as I explained to him, hence the name, the aitch being a legitimate addition for people who thought of Mohammed's God as an aspect of Oriental decor, like sherbet. "That swimming pool out there," Carlo said, "reminds me of something."

"It's the shape of the Black Sea. Alla Nazimova came from Yalta." Carlo shook his head, rightly, at the madness of the place. It was a long way from Washington, whose madness, being political, was excusable. He lowered himself with care to a chair of moulded cane as though he thought it might be an illusion. The hotel was divided into bungalows, and the bungalows into apartments. In the apartment next to mine was a former New Yorker humorist who laughed bitterly most of the night. I was earning fifteen hundred dollars a week to write scripts as slowly as possible. They turned out films fast here, but off the set there was a great quality of indolence. Carlo opened his briefcase, which bore in stamped gold the keys and tiara of Vatican City, and pulled out what seemed at first Hollywood-conditioned sight to be the longest film script ever written.

"No," I said. "It's not possible." And then I had it in my hands and I saw what it was.

"Don't read it now," Carlo said. "Wait till you have plenty of leisure. This is the result of many long years of work and discussion. It's finished in one sense, in another sense it's a mere draught of shameful simplicity. The thing to do is to sow the ideas widely. Then when the time comes for turning the ideas into action the world of the believer will be ready." I saw the title page: The True Reformation--A Blueprint for the Reorganisation of Institutional Christianity with Some Notes on Techniques of Affiliation with Related Faiths. "My own typing," Carlo said. "It could not be entrusted to any of our stenographers in Washington. They would blab, and there must be no blabbing. I must not be associated with it, nor must any of those who worked on it. It's highly secret."

"And yet you bring it to me?"

"You're different. You have nobody to blab to. Or rather it will not be worth your while to blab." He seemed to have taken a fancy to the word. "Blabbing about religion is not in your province. What is there to drink?" He knew what there was to drink, for the bottles were all set out on the little bar, but few of the labels meant much to him. Southern Comfort, Old Grandad, Malone's Sour Mash. I had taken to native American beverages. There was now, of course, no Prohibition: all those deaths in vain, including Raffaele's.

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