‘No, no, they’re safe enough here,’ said Charlie Syson. ‘You must keep them. I’m getting old. If I took them, who knows what might happen to them when I die. I have no children, you understand.’
‘But take something,’ said the librarian. ‘Take something – seeing you’re so interested. What about an unusual pen? A Biro it was called. Or I believe we could find a real old pen with ink in a bottle if we looked in the basement cupboards.’ A pen and ink arrived for Syson and he opened the visitors’ book. There were other signings on this page. Amongst a list of names he noticed many symbols – flowers, birds, beetles, animals and trees. These were the signs of the oldest visitors who had almost forgotten how to write their names.
Charlie Syson turned over a leaf and signed boldly on a smooth, new page. Something told him this was the last time he would write his name on a good piece of paper again.
‘And if you don’t mind putting your occupation too,’ said the librarian politely. Beside his name Syson wrote: READER (ext.).
‘What does ext. stand for?’ asked the librarian. ‘Is it a foreign degree or an honorary term?’
‘Not a degree,’ Syson replied, ‘and certainly no honour. Ext. stands for extinct.’
‘Why, Mr Syson, we are all readers here!’ she exclaimed. All around her, as if to confirm this, the green and blue lines flickered from every screen, while pulsing red and green dots and a rainbow of reflections streamed from distant corners of the room. There was a throbbing, a ticking, a humming of smooth-running instruments.
‘I can add “a reader of the paper pages of books”, if the meaning isn’t clear,’ the visitor said, ‘or even “the good-smelling pages of books”.’
‘No, that’s all right,’ said the librarian quickly. ‘We understand perfectly what you mean.’
At the same time, when Charlie Syson took his eyes from the machines he realized that the handling of paper and ancient books here had created a warmer feeling towards himself. It was not that they were hard on him, not critical. He was to be treated as a child, regressed beyond cure. But a child – even one with a total lack of adjustment –must still be cherished, set right and kept going for years and years in the better world.
It was nearly closing time and the two young assistants opened the heavy, outer door. As their visitor stepped into the street a strong wind struck him. While he was momentarily sent staggering it came to him as a pleasant shock that nobody so far had managed to tidy and control this particular part of the planet. A few old scraps of paper flew towards his feet like birds towards a bird-lover. He picked one up as it brushed his ankle. It appeared to be torn from an ancient ‘thank you’ letter, but the paper was tough, good quality stuff such as he’d described not long before. Moreover, it was inscribed in very clear pen and ink. ‘It may be some time, but I will come again,’ the scrap of sentence confidently predicted. Charlie Syson held it up and waved.
From the doorway the neat librarians waved back, before fastening the door firmly upon the dust and grit, the peel and paper, the petals, fluff and feathers of the runaway natural world.
Choirmaster
ONE DAY, OUT of the blue, it came to Sam, the choirmaster, that God must be very tired of people constantly flopping to the ground and begging for this and that. Rows of men, women and children on their knees – whispering, imploring, pleading, whether in song or prayer. What way was that to ask for anything? God, it was said, was all-powerful and could do anything on earth or in heaven. Heaven was an unknown quantity, of course. But, looking around the earth, people could see things had gone badly, drastically wrong. Drought and famine had ravished some lands more ferociously than others. The sickening stench of death rose from the hot earth, and from the baked mud of the riverbanks. Birth and death arrived suddenly together. Scarcely was there time to dispose of the afterbirth than the burial cloths were unwound. Gone were the days when any choir could sing cheerfully of the good seed being sown and scattered regularly by men and watered just as punctually by God. The eyes of all those in this land dried up in their sockets while staring at the terrible, brazen sky. At each dawn all the vessels in the place were brought out – the jugs, the pitchers, basins and baths in order to catch every drop of the miraculous, God-given liquid when it fell. No water fell. No water had fallen for weeks and months. Obviously, as the old choirmaster now believed, God must be weary of the bent knee and the humble, bowed head. Perhaps it was bold, abusive songs and outraged shouts He was hoping for, not the quiet, muttered prayer and the thanks which would make the lesser gods shrivel with shame. Was it not possible that God wished to be commanded for a change, not cajoled at all?
Sam had always been a lusty shouter himself. He had formed his choir as he travelled, and as he travelled continually, he gathered together a huge company of men, women and children from the remoter parts of the world. He picked his singers from the desperate and hungry, from the ill and even the dying, from people too weak to work and from some who had been almost beaten to the ground by servitude. He therefore knew that wherever they went in the world, his choir would be singing to companions in suffering; and so, whatever else it sounded like, whatever words or music were used – the song must ring true. His singers understood this, and if they were forced to compete with tornadoes, the pounding of huge waves, claps of thunder, the last rumblings of earthquake – the more they tried to rise to Sam’s demands. It was true they had their own demands, but never for anything petty. Depending on what piece of land they were passing through, the men asked for what they imagined were the simple rights of every man. They demanded work, water, bread, decent huts and medicine. Occasionally they might pray to God for death. The women asked for all these as well as care and comfort for their children. Occasionally they might ask for fewer babies and sometimes even for more, as long as they still had milk to give them.
As time went on some desperate people asked if it were possible that God might be a little deaf on account of His great age. Perhaps He was no music-lover, in spite of some talk of angelic choirs. Then the choirmaster saw that he would have his work cut out, teaching, explaining, reprimanding and generally dealing with the strong emotions of his singers.
‘Look,’ he said one day to his hungry and unhappy crowd. ‘Please, if you can possibly help it, don’t cry when you’re begging for anything. Begging’s bad enough, but begging and crying must make God feel really mean. Do you want Him to feel mean?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said a blind old man with fly-encrusted sores around his eyes and down his legs. His feet were bound in grey bandages and he leant on a stick. It was true he was on his last legs, yet might still live for a day or so.
‘No, I don’t think I do,’ said a gaunt-faced, middle-aged woman with four small children behind her, two others clutching at her cloak, and a bulge-eyed baby in her arms. ‘They are all beautiful,’ she said, indicating each child with a nod of her head, ‘but will I have the strength to love and feed them all?’
It was true that hundreds of people in the huge choir had hardly enough strength to raise their voices. A few could do nothing but lie on the ground and wait for death for themselves and their children. This would often come quickly. But a decent burial took strength from the living and many died in the doing of it.
Not everyone in the choir agreed with Sam’s method of singing loudly all the time with scarcely a break.
‘Hadn’t we better stop and listen once in a while?’ asked one old-fashioned believer. ‘Wasn’t there something about a still, small voice?’
‘Yes, I’ve heard that, but I’ve always been against the idea,’ said the choirmaster. ‘As long as we’ve got the strength, we’re here to sing, not to listen. Sure, people want to join my choir for all kinds of reasons. They tell me they’ve got great voices, clear voices, that they can reach the highest notes and the lowest. And, naturally, people like that have ambitions to be the star singer. Or maybe they’ve no voice at all, but just want to get away from a plaguing family back home. Whate
ver they’ve come for, what help are they to a company like ours, especially if they’re interested in small voices? Isn’t it hard enough to get people to stand up straight and open their mouths?’
Yet for a time the old choirmaster did think of adding to his singers. And it was not only here that he looked. There were plenty of good voices back in his own country to which he returned for a short time. Many there had joined in processions and stood on platforms, for one cause or another. Groups with banners gathered outside hospitals, colleges and churches. Some he brought back to his choir, whether they had fine voices or not. He needed to make up for all he had lost through sickness or death. But he himself changed a great deal as he grew older. He had seen so much of horror, pain and misery in the land that the idea of singing songs of love or thanks for anything on earth seemed out of the question. Nowadays, outrage towards heaven was what he looked for in his singers – anything that gave force and fury to the human voice, his only rule being that they sing with chests out and heads flung back. Always they must be defiant, never suppliant.
Sam would have liked the suffering creatures of the earth to be heard in his choir – birds and animals as well as men. For he believed that many creatures might find more protection there than those outside who suffered the cruelty of human beings – the trap-setters, the cage-builders and the money-makers behind the bleeding hell of the slaughterhouses. Yet, on second thoughts, he decided to stick only to humans and allowed them to sing exactly as they pleased, whether in fear, pain, fury or sorrow. As long as they made a loud enough noise they might curse or weep as much as they liked. There was, he told them, no one God to cry to – or, if only one, he had obviously been created by all races of men, in all ages of Time, and out of every belief that had ever been attempted on earth. The choirmaster again reminded his singers that thanksgiving must sometimes be very tough on God. No doubt He might rather be bullied a bit, scolded, and even openly threatened for a change.
The choirmaster was growing old and tired. These days he was often hard put to vary the singing to every catastrophe. They came so thick and fast there was hardly time to draw breath before the next shattered the community; the flood and famine, dust and drought, disease and death, and all followed by endless questions: ‘Why, why, why?’ Then the hopeless non-answers. Finally silence.
But the old man kept on with his training. Above all, it was essential to teach his choir the loud and soft notes in the human voice. They had to sing as loud as possible to be heard through the landslides and earthquakes, or simply to alert the desperate inhabitants of lonely places that help was on the way. It also took great skill to teach them to change from the loudest possible crescendo to a sound so quiet that the cry of an infant or even the whisper of a dying child might be located under some mountain of rubble.
By this time the outrage choir was pretty well established, but one day the choirmaster – ever on the look out for likely singers – picked up another possible member. His company was passing a forest one evening when a young man appeared out of the darkness between two trees. The trees were tall, their broad jungle-leaves casting great shadows around the newcomer, giving the impression that he was delicate. This was an illusion. He was thin but sturdy with strong, muscular legs and large, workman’s hands. He had the unusual attraction of a darkish brown skin and clear, blue eyes. It was hard to tell whether he came from the north, the south, the east or the west.
‘I heard you coming a long way off,’ he said. ‘What sort of procession is it?’
‘No procession at all,’ Sam answered. ‘This is a choir, and monstrously hard work it is too, dealing with an unruly crowd like this. But I’m not grumbling because that’s exactly what I want them to be – unruly and complaining!’
‘What are they complaining about?’ the young man asked.
‘Complaining’s a poor word. I was wrong to use it,’ replied the choirmaster. ‘They’re not girning or whingeing about some paltry thing, some petty grudge. Those who still have strength are shouting to high heaven about the hopelessness of this earth – the thirst, the hunger, the pain, the misery. Some are still singing quite sweetly, of course. Most are cursing.’
‘Lord, but it must be a tough job leading a choir like that!’ exclaimed the stranger.
‘It certainly is. But one day I might get them to sing properly as well as shout. I confess it was I who worked them up. But still, it is supposed to be a choir, not only a furious rabble.’
‘May I join your choir?’ the young man asked.
‘It all depends on the voice,’ said the choirmaster.
‘A tenor,’ the other replied.
‘Then I doubt if I can take you on,’ said Sam. ‘Tenors tend to sing about sweetness, peace, love, harmony and the rest of it. All the things this world is almost totally lacking in. Myself, I believed in all that once. Not now, of course.’
‘And I can sing solos,’ the young man went on, as if not having heard the last remark.
‘Sorry, but I never allow solo singing,’ said the choirmaster firmly. ‘Soloists always become vain, no matter how modest they seem to be at the start. They tend to be temperamental too, and before you know where you are, they’re acting like spoilt children. There is this terrific silence whenever a tenor solo gets up to sing – you must have noticed that yourself – as if he were a prince or god or some such being. People can even fall in love with tenors before the last note’s out. It all plays havoc with a well-trained choir, and this is a well-trained choir! Once they’ve settled down you’ll hear them sing. And I’ve worked so hard with them. A good choir is my one real aim in life. As in every art it’s a case of balance and gravity, if you like. We can’t afford too much emotion.’
‘Nevertheless, you need a hell of a lot of emotion to sing well,’ said the young man. ‘To put anything across at all – that’s a lifetime’s work. Anyway, you’re certainly putting it over. There’s no doubt it will reach this Almighty Person you’re singing to.’
‘You mean He has huge, listening ears as well as everything else?’
‘Possibly,’ said the other. ‘I’ve never thought about His different parts.’
‘Wherever He is, I seldom think about Him nowadays,’ said the old choirmaster. ‘He has allowed such fearful things to happen here. I can hardly bring myself to look up at all, far less utter a respectful word. I think I’d choke if I did. Yet I can still manage to train a good choir. Imagine that!’
‘You’re probably best to choke and have done with it,’ the newcomer replied. ‘And I like people who speak their minds. Myself, I’m not so fond of the meek as I was sometimes thought to be when I was young.’
‘You certainly still look young enough to me!’ exclaimed the choirmaster.
‘No, no, I can scarcely remember what that was like. I think I never was really young at all.’
‘Well, I’ll let you join us for a bit,’ said the older man, ‘and we can judge what kind of voice you have. Naturally, I can’t promise anything right now. A great many people have wanted to join, but the moment they find it’s not a church outing with picnic included, they fall away at once.’
‘I’ve no interest in church choirs myself, nor Sunday School picnics, for that matter,’ the young man assured him.
So it turned out that this newcomer was allowed to practise with the rest. But the choirmaster knew he was taking a big risk. The choir itself was never too pleased with his rare, haphazard choice of new members. Moreover, it was no longer as straightforward as in the old days when the choirmaster had been full of optimism and simple belief. Nowadays any new recruits he chose for his choir were strangely mixed. Either they would show too little anger in their voices – falling back into the old, placating tone, or else they allowed out-of-hand fury to spoil the rhythm and tempo of the song.
Yet the old choirmaster didn’t hurry his new member into song. He allowed him to find his feet before he even opened his mouth. The young man was simply encouraged to walk along with the choir
for a while, not singing, but just chatting with them, finding out how much strength they could still summon up for practice, hearing how they could still manage to sing in harmony even while often hating one another’s guts. Some would confess how deeply they resented what they’d heard of other choirs in the cities of the world – choirs used to all the perks of wealthy companies – applause that went on for hours with endless flower-throwing, plus banquets and bouquets and beautiful women. Many, in fact, were bitter that they’d ever met up with the old choirmaster who, for reasons of his own, had, early on, gathered them into this company where they now suffered the humiliation of becoming a crowd of travelling beggars under a one-time raving idealist who could offer no food, no water, no medicine and no comfort of any kind, while gradually letting his own hopes and beliefs peter out as the arid, blazing days went on. Sometimes he appeared unsteady on his feet as the starving inhabitants of each village pressed around him, trying to claw pity from his heart. Often, at night, he would wonder what would become of him if pity ever deserted him.
As for the choir, the reasons for their present suffering gradually became clear. Long ago, when Sam took over, he had forced them to sing – no, not merely to sing but to shout – loud and triumphantly about the Love of God. Love! The scorn, the fury, the disappointment and bitterness in their singing gradually grew to a raucous crescendo as they realized what they had walked into, unawares. And now, even the old choirmaster was disintegrating before their eyes.
‘So he’s seen no more of this enormous love than we have!’ they cried. ‘This old man’s taken us through deadly heat and freezing cold with nowhere to camp – through forests and deserts, all of us hungry and filthy as pariah dogs. He thinks we’ll follow for the rest of our lives, like fools. Let’s sing something different, so furiously blasphemous it will frighten the life out of him. Then we can run back to our homes, if there’s still a home to run to. But where will our children be now? Will our husbands and wives have left long ago? They will curse us for leaving, then curse us for coming back! What a fix the old one has got us into! May he be damned!’
The Man Who Wanted to Smell Books Page 34