Well, the place would continue languidly to run in his absence. A home, after all, for Antonio, Manuel and Tetuani. They were good boys really, despite their kif and buggery, as honest as could be reasonably expected in a Moroccan ambience. A sufficiency of farinaceous meals in the kitchen, a doss down wherever it was convenient to lay the night's mattresses, the odd sly nip, though haram for Tetuani, from the bottles behind the bar. With their master away they would all sleep on his floorbed, covered with sheepskins. On his return they would still be there tiredly sweeping and frying, though reporting no profit with triumphant teeth, since no profit was better than a loss.
A beefy voice announced through static an impending descent to O'Hare Airport. There Enderby must find an aircraft that would take him to Indiana. There he was to be picked up by some minion of Toplady, who was possibly a debased descendant of the author of Rock of Ages, and be driven to a Holiday Inn, though not for a holiday. Having seen on Spanish television a film with Bing Crosby about the pioneering of this hotel chain, Enderby had an image of a large shack of decayed wood with snow swirling about it. But this was autumn, or the fall, and, the weather of Indiana being equable, there would probably be no snow.
A silly asthenic corn queen came round collecting headsets. The neighbour of Enderby gave his up and then turned to Enderby as if, he relieved of the responsibility of using it, the two of them could settle to an urgent colloquy necessarily deferred. "This your first visit?" he said.
"To where?"
"To the States."
"Well, yes, though not, I assure you, for lack of previous invitations. I should have gone to New York to become a professor for a time. A consequence of The Wreck of the Deutschland* you know. It was a question of one or the other. So I chose this. More creative than Creative Writing, if you see what I mean."
*See The Clockwork Testament.
"Is that right?"
"More or less. A blasphemous cinematic adaptation of a great mystical poem, and I was involved, though in a way unwittingly. I didn't intend it should turn out the way it did."
"Is that right?"
"Very much so." Enderby had not been speaking English for a long time. It struck him that he was speaking it now as from a book. He must do something about making it more colloquial. "Putting the boot in," he said. "The Nazis shagging coifed nuns. Violence and violation. Too much of that around."
"You can say that again."
"Too much of that around."
This man did not, as might be expected from even an enforced companionship of several hours, assist Enderby on his entrance to a strange land. He was quick to get away with no valediction. Enderby was on his own. O'Hare Airport seemed very large. The immigration officials seemed to let everyone in, even Americans, very grudgingly and only after looking up every name in a big book like a variorum edition of something. But Enderby was eventually permitted to have his luggage examined with great thoroughness. The examiner of luggage was a hard man in outdoor middle age.
"What's this?"
"A kind of denture adhesive or tooth glue. A Spanish product. For affixing dentures to the gums or, in the case of the upper prosthesis, to the hard palate."
"What?"
Enderby was roughly prevented from demonstrating. The stomach tablets came under closer scrutiny. The customs officer took samples of each in little vials.
"For dyspepsia," Enderby said, and demonstrated the sonic aspects of the condition.
"You mean you got a bad stomach?"
"Only after eating. The food on the plane was bloody awful. They warm everything up, as you know."
"Why," the officer asked with great earnestness, "are you entering the United States?"
"To work in what you people call a theater."
"You an actor?"
"I am a poet. I am Enderby the poet."
"What?"
"If you want proof," Enderby said, coldly pointing to his messed up shirts, "there are my poems."
The officer picked up the book with the tips of his fingers. He opened it. "Don't make much sense to me," he said.
"Every man to his trade. What you're doing with people's luggage doesn't make much sense to, ah, myself. So there we are."
"Listen, fella," the man said quietly but rudely, "I got my job to do, right?"
"And I mine."
"There might be narcotics in those things you got there for your stomach, right?"
"Not right. I never touch them. Seen too much of the effects. But I thought we were talking about poetry." The people behind Enderby were looking at their watches and muttering for Chrissake, as in an American novel. Enderby was growlingly let go. He walked long and in some pain through several miles of airport building. Twinges in the left calf, cholesterol buildup. There were a lot of irritable people, also shops and restaurants. He saw many copies of his own mug on sale. When he came to the place where it said INDIANAPOLIS he was exhausted. He would have given anything for a mug, CHICAGO MY KIND OF or not, of very strong tea. He compromised with a couple or so capsules of Estomag, chewing them vigorously. An eager shifty thin little man in jeans and a dirty singlet came up to him and said: "Hi." He had a shock of wirewool hair but was not Hamitic. Nor Japhetic either. "Mike Silversmith," he said.
"How did you know it was. Recognition, I mean."
"You opened that bag to take out that stuff that's all round your mouth. There's a book in it with your name on."
This was not the kind of assumption that Enderby liked. People with names like Gomez or Krumpacker could conceivably be comforting their journeys with the Collected Poems. Conceivably, only just. Enderby wiped his mouth with his hand. "The composer," he said.
"Right." He sat without invitation next to Enderby. "I got these cassettes in my bag here already. They'll knock you. 'To be or not to be in love with you'. Then there's 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow'. "
"And Tomorrow," added Enderby. "It's three times. But it's me who's doing the words." Colloquial was coming nicely back to him. Anger was paying its first visit. He had thought it might be like this.
"You and Shakespeare," Silversmith said. " 'To be or not to be in love with you'. You take it from there. But you hear the tune first."
"How about the words I've written already and which, presumably, you've seen. Already," he added.
"Never get in the charts with them."
They were summoned aboard by a man in a powder blue blazer.
"What," asked Enderby with care, "kind of an orchestra do you propose?" A black child clinging to its necessarily black mother's hand looked up at him. They were shuffling aboard. Silversmith was in front of Enderby. "Viols," proposed Enderby, "recorders, cornetts, tabors. Authenticity."
But Silversmith was addressing the imbecilic stewardess as honey. He knew her, he had come this way before. Or perhaps not. Enderby was obliged to sit next to Silversmith and then to put on a headset attached to a Japanese cassette recorder which Silversmith eagerly took from a scuffed bag. "Listen," Silversmith said. Enderby heard a voice, Silversmith's from the sound of it, scrannelling perverted words from Hamlet while a guitar thrummed chords.
"To be or not to be
In love with you,
To spend my entire life
Hand in glove with you."
Then the voice, having no more words, lahed and booped on to the end, which was the same as the beginning. Enderby carefully fastened his seatbelt. He as carefully freed his ears of the noise and the foam rubber. Silversmith said: