The Wanting Seed [1962, 1996, 2015] by Anthony Burgess

Author:Anthony Burgess [Burgess, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 823.914 [DDC], PZ4.B953 [LCC]
Publisher: W. W. Norton [1st US ed hc, pbk reissue ed, ebook]
Published: 1961-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Nine

TRISTRAM’S new cell-mate was a massive Nigerian called Charlie Linklater. He was a friendly talkative man, with a mouth so large that it was a wonder he was able to attain any precision in his enunciation of the English vowel-sounds. Tristram tried frequently to count his teeth, which were his own and flashed often as in pride of the fact, and the total he arrived at seemed always in excess of the statutory thirty-two. This worried him. Charlie Linklater was serving an indefinite sentence for an indefinite crime that, as far as Tristram could make out, involved multiple progeniture along with beatingup of greyboys, flavoured with committing a nuisance in the vestibule of Government Building and eating meat when drunk. ‘A nice little rest in here,’ he said, ‘won’t do me no harm.’ His voice was rich crimsonpurple. Tristram felt thinner and weaker than ever in this polished blue-black meaty presence. ‘They talk about meat-eating,’ said Charlie Linklater in his lazy way, relaxed on his bunk, ‘but they don’t know the first thing about it, boy. Why, a good ten years ago I was keeping company with the wife of a man from Kaduna, same as myself. His name was George Daniel, and he was a meter-reader by trade. Well, he comes back unexpected and catches us at it. What could we do but give him the old hatchet? You’d do the same, boy. Well, there we have this body – a good thirteen stone if he was a pound. What could we do but get the old stewpot going? Took us a week, that did, eating all the time. We buried the bones and nobody one bit the wiser. That was a big meal, brother, and a real good eat.’ He sighed, smacked his huge lips, and even belched in appreciative recollection.

‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ said Tristram. ‘There’s food in the outside world, isn’t there? Food.’ He drooled, shaking the bars but feebly. ‘I’ve got to eat, got to.’

‘Well,’ said Charlie Linklater, ‘for myself there’s no hurry right away to get out. One or two people are looking for me with the old hatchet and I reckon I’m as well off here as anywhere. For a little while, anyhow. But I’d be happy to oblige in any way I could to get you out of here. Not that I don’t like your company, you being a well-behaved and educated man and with good manners. But if it would oblige you to get out, then I’m the boy to assist you, boy.’

When the warder came along to shove the midday nutrition tablets and water between the bars, Tristram was interested to see that he carried a truncheon. ‘Any nonsense from you,’ said the warder, ‘and you’ll get a fine big crack with this gentleman’–he brandished it–‘on the soft part of your skull, Mister Bloody-minded. So watch out, that’s what I say.’

‘That black stick of his will come in very nice,’ said Charlie Linklater. ‘The way he speaks to you is not very good-mannered,’ he added.

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