Listen to the Voice

by Iain Crichton Smith

  ‘A laudable life time’s work,’ said Donny.

  Allan laughed, a high falsetto laugh and added,

  ‘Or you might have the whole family smoking, including your granny and grandfather, if any. Children, naturally, should start young.’

  The grass leaned at an angle in the drive of the wind.

  ‘We could have played jazz,’ said William, ‘if I had brought my record player. Portable, naturally. Not to be plugged in to any rock. We could have listened to Ella Fitzgerald accompanied by her friend Louis Armstrong who sings atrociously, incidentally.’

  ‘Or, on the other hand, we could have played Scottish Dance Music each day. “The Hen’s March to the Midden” would not be unsuitable. I remember,’ he continued reflectively, keeping his arms hooked in his lapels, ‘I remember hearing that famous work or opus. It was many years ago. Ah, those happy days. When hens were hens and middens were middens. Not easy now to get a midden of quality. A genuine first class midden as midden.’

  ‘The midden in itself,’ said William. He continued, ‘The thing in itself is an interesting question. I visualise Hegel in a German plane dropping silver paper to confuse the radar of the British philosophical school, and flying past, unharmed, unshot, uncorrupted.’

  ‘I once read some Hegel,’ said Allan proudly, ‘and also Karl Marx.’

  Donny made a face at a cow.

  They made their way across the island and came to a pillbox used in the Second World War.

  ‘Sieg Heil,’ said William.

  ‘Ve vill destroy zese English svine,’ said Donny.

  ‘Up periscope,’ said Allan.

  The island was very bare, no sign of habitation to be seen, just rocks and grass.

  ‘Boom, boom, boom,’ said Donny, imitating radio music. ‘The Hunting of the Bismarck. Boom, boom, boom. It was a cold blustery day, and the telegraphist was sitting at his telegraph thinking of his wife and four children back in Yorkshire. Tap, tap, tap. Sir, Bismarck has blown the Hood out of the water. Unfair, really, sir. Bismarck carries too strong plating. Boom, boom, boom. Calm voice: “I think it’ll have to be Force L, wouldn’t you say, commander?” And now the hunt is on, boom, boom, boom, grey mist, Atlantic approaches, Bismarck captain speaks: “I vill not return, herr lieutenant. And I vill not tolerate insubordination.” Boom, boom, boom.’

  William looked at the pillbox, resting his right elbow on it.

  ‘I wonder what they were defending,’ he mused.

  ‘The undying right to insert Celtic footnotes,’ said Donny.

  Allan said,

  ‘I was reading a book about Stalingrad. You’ve got to hand it to these slab-faced Russians.’

  The wind patrolled the silence. The green grass leaned all one way. There were speedboats out in the water plunging and rising, prows high.

  ‘Oh well, let us proceed, let us explore,’ said William. As they were walking along they came to a seagull’s ravaged body, the skull delicate and fragile, lying among some yellow flowers. The carcass had been gnawed, probably by rats. Its white purity in the cold wind was startling. Its death was one kind of death, thought William with a shudder. Suddenly he placed the seagull’s fragile skull on top of a hillock, and they began to throw stones at it. Donny stood upright, one hand clutching a stone, the other still in his lapel.

  ‘Have I been successful?’ he asked, after he had thrown the stone.

  Allan went over. ‘No,’ he said shortly and took up position. In a frenzy, William threw stone after stone, but missed. It was Allan who finally knocked the seagull’s skull from the knoll.

  ‘All these years, like David, watching the sheep,’ he admitted modestly.

  They walked on and came to the edge of the water on the far side of the island. They were confronted by a seething waste, tumbled rocks, a long gloomy beach, a desert of blue and white ridged waves, a manic wilderness. As they stared into the hostile sea they saw a boat being rowed past by a man with a long white beard who sat in it very upright as if carved from stone. It was very strange and eerie because the man didn’t turn his head at all and didn’t seem to have noticed them. Donny broke the silence with,

  ‘Ossian, I presume.’

  ‘Or Columba,’ said Allan.

  ‘Once,’ said Allan, ‘I was entertaining two friends.’

  ‘Ladies,’ they both shouted.

  ‘Let that be as it may,’ said Allan, ‘and may it be as it may. I, after the fourth whisky, looked out the window and there, to my astonishment, was a blanket, white with a border of black stripes, waving about in the air. I need not say that I was alarmed; nor did I draw the attention of the two people I was entertaining to it; nor did they notice it. At first, naturally, I thought it was the D.Ts. But better counsels prevailed, and I thereupon came to the conclusion that it must be the woman above engaged in some domestic activity which entailed the hanging of a blanket out of her window.’

  ‘It was,’ said Donny, ‘the flag of the Scottish Republic, a blanket with …’ He stopped as the bearded man rowed back the way he had come. They watched the white hair stirred in the cold wind and the man with his upright stance.

  ‘The horrible man,’ said William suddenly.

  ‘The thing in itself,’ said Donny.

  ‘Scotland the Brave,’ said Allan, cleaning his glasses carefully. ‘I remember now,’ said Donny. ‘I saw these two green branches on a tree and, full of leaves, they were dancing about in a breeze just outside my window. I didn’t pay any attention to them at first and then I saw that they were like two duellists butting at each other and then withdrawing, like, say scorpions or snakes, upright, as if boxing. Such venom,’ he concluded, ‘in the green day.’

  He added, ‘Another time I was coming home from a dance in a condition of advanced merriment and I was crossing the square, all yellow, as you will know. Thus I came upon a policeman whom I had often seen in sunny daylight. He asked me what I was doing, looking at the shop window, and I returned a short if suitable answer, whereupon he, and his buddy who materialised out of the yellow light like a fairy with a diced cap, rushed me expeditiously up a close and beat me furiously with what is known in the trade as a rubber truncheon. It was,’ he concluded, ‘an eye opener.’

  ‘Once,’ said William, ‘I saw a horse and it could think. It was looking at me in a calculating way. I got out of there. It was in a field on a cold day.’

  They stared in silence at the spray, shivering.

  ‘There is a man who is supposed to live in a cave,’ said William at last. ‘It must be an odd existence.’

  ‘Mussels,’ said Donny.

  ‘Whelks,’ said Allan.

  ‘All locked up for the night,’ said William.

  After a pause he said,

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s got to be faced.’

  ‘What?’ said the others.

  ‘This wilderness. Seas, rocks, animosity, ferocity. These waves all hating us, gnashing their white teeth.’

  ‘I think,’ said Allan, ‘we should do a Socrates.’

  ‘Meaning?’ said Donny.

  ‘Meaning nothing. Irony is not enough any more.’

  ‘It’s the inhumanness,’ said William, almost in a whisper, feeling what he could not say, that for the waves they themselves didn’t matter at all, any more than the whelks or the mussels.

  Donny stood facing the water, his hands at his lapels. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, guests, hangers-on, attendants, servants, serfs, and tribesmen, I have a few words to say about a revered member of our banking profession: well-known bowler, bridge-player, account-keeper, not to mention the husband of a blushing bride who looks as good as new after clearing her fiftieth hurdle.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Allan. ‘He’s right you know, Willie.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He faces it. He faces the chaos. Without dreams, without chaos. Only without chaos is it possible to survive. The plant does not fight itself, neither the tiger nor the platy
pus.’

  ‘You mean that that speech orders the waves,’ said William. ‘Let me think.’

  After a while he said,

  If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

  absent thee from felicity awhile

  and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

  to tell my story.

  ‘They have their purpose and their eyes are bright with it. Keats.’

  ‘Meaning?’ said Allan.

  ‘Meaning vanity. If there were no vanity there would be nothing. The flowers and the women all drawing attention to themselves. The signals. Have you not known, have you not seen, all the people around you, each with his own purpose staring out of his eyes and proclaiming “I am.” “I am the most important. Look at me.” “I must not be trifled with.”? Have you not known it, have you not seen it, have you not been terrified by it? That each feels himself as important as you, that intelligence weakens, that the unkillable survive, the ones who don’t think?’

  A seagull swooped out of the stormy black and landed on a rock with yellow splayed claws, turning its head rapidly this way and that as if deliberating.

  ‘Then,’ said Donny, ‘vanity prevails.’

  ‘Without vanity we are nothing,’ said William, ‘without the sense of triumph.’

  ‘And we have to pay for it with pomp,’ said Allan. ‘Out of the savage sea the perfected ennui.’

  ‘From the amoeba to the cravat,’ said Donny. The wind blew about them: it was like being at the end of the world, the crazy jigsaw of rocks, the sea solid in its strata, the massive power of its onrush, the spray rising high in the sky.

  ‘Where action ends thought begins,’ said William, almost in a whisper. ‘Out of the water to the dais. And yet it is unbearable.’

  ‘We rely on the toilers of the night,’ said Donny.

  ‘Is there anything one can say to the sea,’ said Allan, ‘apart from watch it?’

  They looked at it but their hatred was not so great as its, not so indifferent. It was without mercy because it did not know of them. It was the world before man.

  ‘Imagine it,’ said William, ‘out of this, all that we have.’

  ‘And us,’ said Donny, no longer clowning.

  ‘To watch it,’ said Allan. After a while he said,

  ‘It would be fair if we threw stones at it too.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the other two, beginning to throw stones at the white teeth, but they sank without trace and could hardly be seen against the spray which ascended like a crazy ladder.

  There was no ship to be seen at all, only the weird rowing boat that had passed twice with the white bearded man in it.

  They turned away from it, frightened.

  As they were leaving, Allan said,

  ‘There is nothing more beautiful than a woman when her long legs are seen, tanned and lovely, as she drinks her whisky or vodka as the case may be.’

  They bowed their heads. ‘You have found the answer, Ο spectacled sage of the west. Except that the battle there too is continuous.’

  ‘Except that everywhere the battle is continuous,’ said William. ‘Even in the least suspected places. But you are right nevertheless.’

  They took one last look at the sea. In the smoky spray they seemed to see a fish woman, cold and yet incredibly ardent, arising with merciless scales.

  ‘I knew a girl once,’ said Allan. ‘We slept on the sofa in her sitting room.’

  ‘Both of you?’ said the others.

  There was a reverent silence.

  ‘I knew a girl once,’ said William. ‘I remember her gloved hands on the steering wheel, and the dashboard light was green.’

  Their clothes stirred in the breeze. Their flapping collars stung their cheeks. They passed the place where the dead seagull was.

  ‘We will bury it,’ said Allan. ‘It’s only fair.’

  ‘No,’ said William, ‘it would be artificial.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Donny. ‘Motion carried, seconded, transformed and retransformed in some order.’

  They saw a rat. It looked at them with small beady eyes and scurried out of sight.

  ‘Look,’ said William. A cormorant dived from a rock into the seething water. They watched for it to emerge and then it did so like a wheel turning. Also, they saw three seals racing alongside each other at full speed, sleek heads and parts of the body above the surface.

  ‘They say it is the fastest fish in the sea,’ said William.

  ‘They say seals turn into women,’ said Allan, polishing his glasses. They watched the speedboats drilling through the water. The town with its spires, halls, houses, pubs, rose from the edge of the sea, holding out against the wind. It was what there was of it. Nothing that was not unintelligible could be said about it.

  Napoleon and I

  I TELL YOU WHAT IT IS. I sit here night after night and he sits there night. In that chair opposite me. The two of us. I’m eighty years old and he’s eighty-four. And that’s what we do, we sit and think. I’ll tell you what I sit and think about. I sit and think, I wish I had married someone else, that is what I think about.

  And he thinks the same. I know he does. Though he doesn’t say anything or at least much. Though I don’t say much either. We have nothing to say: we have run out of conversation. That’s what we’ve done. I look at his mouth and it’s moving. But most of the time he’s not speaking. I don’t love him. I don’t know what love is. I thought once I knew what love was. I thought it was something to do with being together for ever. I really thought that. Now I know that it’s not that. At least it’s not that, whatever else it is. We do not speak to each other.

  He smokes a pipe sometimes and his mouth moves. He is like a cartoon. I used to read the papers and I used to see cartoons in them but now I don’t read the papers at all. I don’t read anything. Nor does he. Not even the sports pages though he once told me, no, more than once, he told me that he used to be a great footballer, ‘When I used to go down the wing,’ he would say. ‘What wing?’ I would say, and he would smile gently as if I were an idiot. ‘When I used to go down the wing,’ he would say. But now he doesn’t go down any wing. He’s even given up the tomato plants. And he imagines he’s Napoleon. It’s because of that film he says. There were red squares of soldiers in it. He sits in his chair as if he’s Napoleon, and he says things to me in French though I don’t know French and he doesn’t know French. He prefers Napoleon to his tomato plants. He sits in his chair, his legs spread apart, and he thinks about winning Waterloo. I think he’s mad. He must be, mustn’t he? Sometimes he will look up and say ‘Josephine’, the one word ‘Josephine’, and the only work he ever did was in a distillery. Napoleon never worked in a distillery. I am sure that never happened. He’s a comedian really. He sits there dreaming about Napoleon and sometimes he goes out and examines the ground to see if it’s wet, if his cavalry will be all right. He kneels down and studies the ground and then he sits and puffs at his pipe and he goes and takes a pair of binoculars and he studies the landscape. I never thought he was Napoleon when I married him. I just said I do. Nor did he. I used to give him his sandwiches in a box when he went to work and he just took them in those days. I don’t think he ever asked for wine. Now he thinks the world has mistreated him, and he wants an empire. Still they do say they need something when they retire. The only thing is, he’s been retired for twenty years or maybe fifteen. He came home one day and he put his sandwich box on the table and he said, ‘I’m retired’ (that was in the days when we spoke to each other) and I said, ‘I know that.’ And he went and looked after his tomato plants. In those days he also loved the cat and was tender to his tomato plants. Now we no longer have a cat. We don’t even have a tortoise. One day, the day he stopped speaking to me, he said, ‘I’ve been hard done by. Life has done badly by me.’ And he didn’t say anything else. I think it was five o’clock on our clock that day, the 25th of March it would have been, or maybe the 26th.

  Actually he looks stupid in that
hat and that coat. Anyone would in the twentieth century.

  I on the other hand spend most of my time making pictures with shells. I make a picture of a woman who has wings and who flies about in the sky and below her there is a man who looks like a prince and he is riding through a forest. The winged woman also has a cooker. I find it odd that she should have a cooker but there it is, why shouldn’t she have a cooker if she wants to, I always say. On the TV everyone says, ‘I always say’, and then they have a cup of tea. At the most dramatic moments. And then I see him sitting opposite me in his Napoleon’s coat and I think we are on TV. Sometimes I almost say that. But then I realize that we aren’t speaking since we have nothing to speak about and I don’t say anything. I don’t even wash his coat for him.

  In any case, how has he been hard done by? He married me, didn’t he? I have given him the best years of my life. I have washed, scrubbed, cooked, slaved for him, and I have made sandwiches for him to put in his tin box every day. The same box.

  And our children have gone away and they never came back. He used to say it was because of me, I say it’s because of him. Who would want Napoleon for a father and anyway Napoleon didn’t spend his time looking after tomato plants, though he doesn’t do that now. He writes despatches which he gives to the milkman. He writes things like ‘Tell Soult he must bring up another five divisions. Touty sweet.’ And the milkman looks at the despatches and then he looks at me and then I give him the money for the week’s milk. He is actually a very understanding milkman.

  The fact that he wears a white coat is neither here nor there. Nothing is either here or there.

  And sometimes he will have forgotten that the day before he asked for five divisions, and he broods, and he writes ‘Please change the whole educational system of France. It is not just. And please get me a new sandwich box.’

  He is really an unusual man. And I loved him once. I loved him when he was an ordinary man and when he would keep up an ordinary conversation when he would tell me what had happened at the distillery that day, though nothing much ever happened. Nothing serious. Nothing funny either. It was a very quiet distillery, and the whisky was made without trouble. Maybe it’s because he left the distillery that he feels like Napoleon. And he changed the chair too. He wanted a bigger chair so that he could watch the army manoeuvres in the living-room and yet have enough room for the TV-set and the fridge. It’s very hard living with a man who believes that there is an army next to the fridge. But I think that’s because he imagines Napoleon in Russia, that’s why he wants something cold. And on days when Napoleon is in Russia he puts on extra clothes and he wants plenty of meat in the fridge. The reason for that I think is that the meat is supposed to be dead French soldiers.