Earthly Powers Read Online Free PDF Page B

humorous. Short story stuff."
           "Indeed," I said. With sadness I saw it as (indeed) short story stuff. If these had still been my writing days I would have itched to go off with that little seed of fiction, abandoning the party, knowing that what I was to invent would be far more entertaining and, in a sense, truer than the impending reality. "Does this Mr er—"
           "Sciberras."
           "Does he know me? My work, I mean."
           "I don't think so. You know what these people are like."
           "A job for the British Council."
           "How right you are. No lady guests, by the way. Except John's girl friend. I hope that's in order."
           "Why what how—"
           "Your Geoffrey said something about giants of literature meeting and no damned nonsense about sexual symmetry."
           "But this is absurd. Also insolent. I would never make such a stipulation. This you know."
           "I'm inclined to agree with your Geoffrey. All you bachelors. I discovered there was a Mrs Sciberras, but it's the poet's mother. She speaks only Maltese and prefers to watch television anyway. So that's all right."
           "I'll have a word with that damned Geoffrey."
           "Oh, don't spoil your evening." She wrinkled and took my arm and urged me in. In the mould-smelling downstairs salon the two other writers were on their feet, drinking. Dawson Wignall O. M. decided we had met before, which we hadn't, and came for me with a hand out at shoulder level, the other hand tremoloing an iced whisky like a little bell (I tintinnabulate for you/A birthday wish that's warm and true).
           "What?" he laughed. "Eh?" Question tags, not questions: British upper-class greetings often sound like confirmations of something. I gave him hearty congratulations without specifying on what, and he said, with mock-embarrassed mock seriousness, "Well—you know." Then he was all laughter again, a round duck-down-headed hamster-toothed children's book illustration of a benign humanoid who held the office John Dryden had once held. Sciberras, the Maltese poet, was introduced to me, or it may have been the other way round. I was given a sturdy gin and tonic in a rummer almost too heavy for me to hold. I got in first at Sciberras with many happy returns and he must forgive my not knowing his work, I hadn't had time yet to start trying to learn Maltese.
           "Ah, but I write in Italian too," he shouted conversationally. "You must start to learn Italian."
           "Then," the Poet Laureate said, with a tartness that made me want to like him, "he could read Dante as well as you."
           "I know some Italian," I said. "Indeed, we once had Italians in the family."
           "I know," Dawson Wignall said somewhat irritably. "Of course I know." Meaning that we great public men had no secrets from each other.
           "I was saying that to him," I said. "Mr Scribble er ass here."
           "And I was saying what I said to him too," Dawson Wignall said.
           "Yes yes," I said. "I understand—a 'mot'." Sciberras looked from one to the other of us, sipping a cold drink as if it were a hot one. "A 'mot'," I repeated, straight at him. "The French word for a word. But perhaps you write also in French."
           "In Maltese and in Italian," Sciberras said more loudly, as if I had not clearly understood him the first time. "Only good night in Malta do we say in French. The French were not here long. The Maltese people made the French to go."
           "Yes," I said. "So your archbishop told me. The Maltese people got rid of the French. One of my mother's ancestors just missed being one of the French that the Maltese got rid of, by the way. He was got rid of very nastily by the Mamelukes. In Egypt. The same expedition." I saw Geoffrey down a whisky mac in one draught and then give me an exaggerated wink. I stared coldly back. God knew how much