‘I read in your paper yesterday,’ said Murdo, ‘that a car was hit by another one on Bruce Street. Do you think that was predestined since the beginning of the world?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Robert curtly, thinking that he was being got at. Murdo felt his head sore again, as often happened to him nowadays.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
And again,
‘But it does matter. Once I was looking at a triangle which was drawn on a piece of paper and it looked so clean and beautiful. And I saw a fly walking across it, across the paper on which the triangle was drawn, and I didn’t know where the fly was going. But the triangle was motionless in its own world, in its own space. That was on a summer’s day when I was in school. But I forget the year,’ he said to Robert.
‘I have to go,’ said Robert. ‘I have something to do.’
‘Have you?’ said Murdo.
The only people left at the table now were himself and his wife.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it didn’t take you long to send them away with all your questions. What are you trying to do?’
‘Why did you lie to me?’ said Murdo. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to this pub?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Janet.
‘You knew I would find out,’ said Murdo. ‘That’s why you did it.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Janet.
We are like animals right enough, said Murdo to himself. We don’t know why we do the things we do.
And he saw his wife like a fox walking across the white mountain.
‘Come on home,’ he said.
She rose and put on her coat.
‘Where’s your own coat?’ she asked Murdo.
‘I left it at home,’ said Murdo.
They left the bar and walked home down the street and Murdo put his arm round her.
He felt the warmth of her body on that cold winter’s night and his bones trembled.
Then he began to laugh.
‘Whist drives,’ he said looking up at the sky with its millions of stars. And he made little leaps shouting ‘Whist drives’ at intervals.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ said Janet.
He pulled her towards him.
‘Do you see that mountain?’ he asked her. ‘That white mountain. Do you see it?’ She was like a ghost glimmering out of the darkness.
‘Ben Dorain,’ he said laughing.
‘I see it,’ said Janet. ‘What about it?’
‘Nothing about it,’ said Murdo, looking at the mountain, his warm head beside hers.
The white mountain was shining out of the darkness.
The tears came to his eyes and he felt them on his cheeks.
‘You’re crying,’ she accused him.
‘No I’m not,’ he said.
She turned towards him and gazed into his eyes.
‘Everything will be all right,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure of it.’ And he looked into her eyes. ‘Yes,’ he repeated.
She tightened her arm round him as if she was frightened that he was going to melt like the snow.
‘Come on home,’ she said to him in a frightened voice.
‘I won’t leave you,’ he said, ‘though your coat is green.’
They walked home quietly together except that now and again Murdo would make another of his leaps shouting ‘Whist drives’ at the moon that was so bare and bright in the sky above the white mountain.
One morning Murdo put on a red rubber nose such as clowns wear or small children at Hallowe’en and went downtown to get the morning papers. Norman Macleod’s wife met him at the door of the shop and he said to her:
‘It’s a fine morning.’
‘Yes,’ said she, looking at him slightly askance, since he was wearing a red rubber nose.
‘But it is not as beautiful a morning as it was yesterday,’ Murdo said seriously. ‘Not at all as good as yesterday morning. No indeed.’
‘You’re right there,’ said Norman Macleod’s wife, looking at his nose. Murdo pretended that he didn’t notice her amazed stare.
‘You’re right there indeed,’ said Murdo. ‘I myself am of the opinion that it is not so warm this morning as it was yesterday morning,’ glancing at the snow which glittered back at him from the roadside.
‘Without doubt, without doubt,’ said the wife of Norman Macleod.
‘For,’ Murdo pursued relentlessly, ‘the clouds were whiter yesterday than they are today,’ drawing nearer to Mrs Macleod and putting his red rubber nose quite close to her face.
‘For,’ said Murdo, ‘when I got up from my bed this morning I nearly went back into it again, a thing that I did not think of doing yesterday. But in spite of that I put one leg before the other as we all have to do in this life at some time or other, indeed at all times, and I decided that I would come for the newspapers, for what can we do without them? What indeed?’
‘You’re right,’ said Mrs Macleod, shifting slightly away from him.
‘Yes,’ said Murdo, ‘in these days especially one must put one leg in front of the other. When the light comes out of the darkness we go in search of the Daily Record, those sublime pages that tell us about the murders that have been committed in caravans in the south.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Macleod in a voice that was becoming more and more inaudible as she moved further and further away from the red rubber nose.
‘I myself often think,’ said Murdo, ‘how uninteresting my life would be without the Daily Record. That occurs to me often. Often. And often I think what would we do without neighbours? Their warmth, their love … These thoughts often occur to me, I may tell you.’
‘I suppose …’ muttered Mrs Macleod, her grip tightening on the newspaper she had in her hand as if she was thinking of using it as a weapon.
‘For,’ said Murdo intently, ‘do you yourself not think that the warmth of the morning is like the warmth we derive from our neighbours. The sun shines on everything and so does the warmth of neighbours. There is a lot wrong with each one of us, we are all flawed in some way but our neighbours forgive us for they say to themselves, “Not one of us is perfect, not one of us is without flaw, so how therefore can we say that others are flawed.” These are the thoughts that often occur to me anyway,’ said Murdo. ‘And I don’t think I’m wrong.’
‘I’m sure you’re …’ said Mrs Macleod trying to back steadily away while Murdo fixed her closely with his red rubber nose as if he were a demented seagull standing among the snow.
‘Give me,’ said Murdo, ‘one neighbour and I will move the world.’ He considered this for a long time, turning his nose this way and that, the only bright colour that was to be seen on the street. Mrs Macleod wanted desperately to leave but she couldn’t move her feet and she didn’t know what to say.
Murdo went closer to her.
‘I am of the opinion,’ he said, ‘to tell the truth and without concealing anything from any man or woman, white or black, whoever they are and whatever their colour of skin, I am of the opinion without regard to anyone’s politics or religion, for no one can accuse me of being biased, that yesterday morning was as beautiful a morning as we have had for many years. I’m not saying that there don’t exist people who would deny that, and who would come to me if they liked with armfuls of records going back to the seventeenth century and before, that would prove that I was wrong, and even naive in that statement, but in spite of that I still hold to my opinion as I am sure you would under the same circumstances, for I have never thought of you as a coward. Oh I know that there are people who will maintain that neither the summers nor the winters that we endure now are as beautiful and unspotted as the summers and winters of their various childhoods but I would say humbly to these people that they are wrong. they are wrong,’ he shouted, pushing his nose as close to Mrs Macleod’s nose as it could go.
‘THEY ARE WRONG,’ he repeated in a loud vehement voice. ‘As wrong as people can be. I know in my bon
es that they are wrong. Totally wrong. Totally.’ He sighed heavily and then continued:
‘As well as that I know that there are professors who would oppose me on this matter. But I know that they are wrong as well. Though I have nothing against professors. Not at all, not at all.
‘But I’m keeping you back. I shouldn’t have done that. I know that you’re busy, that you work without cease, without cease. Lack of consideration, that’s what I suffer from, I admit it freely. But I wished to tell you how much more beautiful than this morning yesterday morning was. And I’m glad that you agree with me in my opinion. I am so glad. So glad. It is not often that I feel such gladness. But I know that you wish to go home. I am so glad to have met you.’
Mrs Macleod half walked, half ran, away, looking behind her now and then as if trying to verify that he did indeed have a red rubber nose. Murdo raised his hand to her in royal salute and then went into the shop, having first removed his rubber nose, and bought a newspaper. On his way home he would kick a lump of ice now and again with his boot.
‘Drama,’ he said to himself. ‘Nothing but drama and catharsis. One must look for it even when there is snow on the ground.’
He arrived at a wall and opened out the paper and began to read it, glancing now and again at the white mountain.
He read one page and then threw the paper away from him, but after a while he picked it up and laid it flat on a large piece of ice.
The headlines of the paper said in large black type:
I STILL LOVE HIM THOUGH HE KILLED FOR ME
Murdo found an old boot in the ditch and laid it on top of this headline so that passers-by could read it and then went on his way whistling.
One night Murdo was on his way home with a half-bottle of whisky in his hand. He looked up at the sky that was trembling with stars and he began to shout to a group of them that were brighter than the rest:
‘Lewis,’
and then
‘Skye’
and finally
‘Betelgeuse.’
He looked down at his shoes that were yellow in the light of the moon and he said,
‘I’m drunk. Murdo is drunk. There is whisky on his shoes. On his shoes there is whisky.’
He then sat down on the road and took off his shoes and raised them towards the moon:
‘Here is Murdo. There are Murdo’s shoes. They are yellow. Murdo’s shoes are yellow.’
‘O world,’ he said, ‘how yellow Murdo’s shoes are. Ah, Lewis, ah, Skye, ah, Betelgeuse.’
He thought of small yellow men with small yellow shoes drinking on Betelgeuse and he had compassion for them as they sat on the road with a half-bottle of whisky in the hand of each one.
‘Ah,’ said he, ‘do you see the white mountain even on Betelgeuse? Do you have in your hands yellow pencils and are you writing on yellow paper a story about a clerk who left his work in an office on Betelgeuse?’
And the tears came to his eyes.
‘Is there a split,’ he said, ‘between the soul and the body even on Betelgeuse? Is there on that illustrious star a woman like Mrs Macleod, of that ilk?’
And he began to laugh in harmony with the trembling of the stars which also seemed to laugh.
He looked at the sky and he shouted,
‘Conscience.’
‘Soul.’
‘MacBrayne’s boats.’
He looked down at his shoes again.
‘Leather,’ he said.
‘Nails,’ he said.
‘Shoemaker,’ he said.
‘A shoemaker was born just for me,’ he said and he felt pity for the shoes and the shoemaker, a little yellow man with little yellow nails in his mouth.
‘Why,’ he shouted to Betelgeuse, ‘did you put skin on my bones, a worm in my head?’
And he felt the yellow worm in his head like a thin stream of whisky the colour of the moon.
‘Existentialism,’ he shouted to the moon.
‘A lavatory of diamonds.’
‘Plato in a thatched house.’
‘Mist.’
He stood up and began to sing under the millions of stars a verse of a song he had composed.
‘The Isle of Mull
has no grief or sorrow,
It is so green,
and will be here tomorrow.’
And he thought of his father and mother and they were like a pair of people who moved in and out of a Dutch clock, yellow and fat with fat red cheeks.
‘And,’ he said, in a mimicking voice, ‘is it from Betelgeuse that you are yourself? When did you come home and when are you going away again?’—the age-old Highland questions.
‘I was reared,’ he said, ‘when I was young and soft. When I grew a little older I thought that I myself was creating the morning and the evening. And at that moment I grew old. The mountains were like fangs in my mind.’
The stars winked at him and he winked back at them and he thought that there was a yellow crown on his head, a sharp yellow crown.
‘Without me,’ he said, ‘sick as I am from angst and diarrhoea, you would not be there at all. Are you listening to me? Without me there would be darkness among all the planets.’
He lifted the half-bottle of whisky and he began to drink.
‘Your health,’ he said. ‘Your good health.’
He reached his own house and he saw a ray of yellow light coming out from under the door.
‘Like an arrow,’ he said.
‘Like a knife,’ he said.
‘Like a pen,’ he said.
and
‘Like a spade,’ he said.
and finally,
‘16 Murchison Street,’ he said, ‘with the green walls.’
‘We are all,’ he said, ‘of a mortal company. Of a proud company,’ said he swaying from side to side, the key in his hand.
‘Drunkards of the universe,’ he said.
‘Glory be to the yellow universe,’ he said in the yellow light.
He tried to fit his key in the door but couldn’t.
‘It is not fated,’ he said, ‘it is not fated that I shall open the door of 16 Murchison Street. The universe is against it.’
He thought of the key as a soul that could not enter its proper body.
‘Lewis,’ he said to Betelgeuse.
‘Skye,’ he said.
And finally as if he had climbed a high mountain,
‘Tiree.’
And he fell asleep, the key in his hand and the yellow closed door in front of him and a heavy snore coming from him in that cold calm yellow night.
Murdo’s Letter to the Poet Dante
Dear Friend,
Can you please tell me when and how you began to write first, and what magazines you sent your first poems to? And what was the animal you saw in the middle of the wood?
For myself, I see this white mountain all the time, day and night. With snow on it.
And in the room next to me there is a table and chairs as like each other as pictures in a mirror. Anyway I hope you will answer my letter for I am trying to write a story about a clerk.
And I don’t know how to start.
With much respect and a stamp so that you can answer my letter.
Yours sincerely,
MURDO MACRAE
PS. You did very well, my friend, with that poem the Inferno. But what would you have done without Virgil? I think we all need a friend.
Murdo was (as they say) good with children and this is one of the stories he told to his nephew Colin who was six years old at the time:
There was a lad once (said Murdo), and he was seventeen years old. Well, one day he thought that he would leave home where he lived with his father and mother. It was a beautiful autumn day and he saw many strange sights on his way. In the place where he was, there were many trees and the yellow leaves were falling to the ground and they were all so beautiful and sad. But the most wonderful thing of all was that wherever he went—and the day very calm and now and again a fox running through
the wood and red berries still on some of the trees—he would see his father’s face and his mother’s face. Wasn’t that strange? Just as if he was in a land of mirrors. In the leaves, in the ground, he would see these faces. This amazed and astonished him. And he didn’t know what to do about it. Once in a leaf he saw his house with the door and the windows and his mother standing in the doorway in a blue gown. And once in another leaf he saw his father bending down with a spade, digging.
Well this went on for a long time but at last he didn’t see the pictures of his father and mother at all. And then he came to a small village and every man in the village was hitting big stones with hammers, every one of them. When he asked them the name of the village no one would tell him. In fact they wouldn’t speak to him at all. But they just kept hammering away at the stones with their hammers. This was the only sound that could be heard in the village. Think of it, this was all they did all day and every day. And they never spoke to anyone. And he didn’t know why they were doing this. He asked them a lot of times why they were hammering the stones but they wouldn’t answer him. This astonished him and he himself sat on a stone in his blue dusty suit but they pretended not to see him.
At last he grew tired of sitting down and he went over and looked at one of the men and what he was doing. And he saw that this man was cutting names of people in the stone on which he was working. Murdo didn’t recognise any of the names and he was just going to go away when he looked very sharply indeed and he saw that the man was cutting his own name in the stone.
Well, this made Murdo very puzzled and frightened him too, and before he knew what he was doing he was running away from that place till he reached a wood which was very quiet. Not even the voice of a bird was to be heard, and it was very dark there. However, there were some nuts on the trees and he began to eat them. He wandered through this wood for a long time till at last he saw ahead of him a high mountain white with snow though it was still autumn. He stood and stared at this mountain for some time.
Well, just as he was standing there who should he see but a beautiful girl in a green dress just beside him. She had long yellow hair like gold and she said to Murdo in a quiet voice:
Listen to the Voice Page 25