Listen to the Voice

by Iain Crichton Smith

  ‘Well, well,’ he’d say to the blank Italian sky, ‘there is nothing here but troubles.’

  He would then see a group of people standing beside a house that had fallen to the ground.

  One of the women would say, ‘My mother and father are in there dead. And what I want to know is, what is the government going to do about it?’

  ‘I am from the government myself,’ Murdo would say. ‘And here are two hundred pounds for you.’

  ‘Two hundred pounds isn’t enough,’ the woman would say, ‘to compensate for all the love I felt for my father and mother. I would require five hundred pounds at least. But I’ll take the two hundred pounds just now.’

  ‘Right,’ Murdo would say and he would run away, his red cloak streaming down his back and from his shoulders as if they were the wings of an angel or a devil.

  He would hear sweet voices floating from the gondolas and his heart would be at peace.

  When he would wake from his Italian dream the man beside him would be wiping his nose.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Murdo would say to him, ‘for what I said to you before.’

  But the man wouldn’t answer him.

  After Murdo had resigned from the bank he sent the man a letter saying,

  I had nothing against your nose. But I’m certain that if you hope to get on in the world you must stop wiping your nose. Napoleon didn’t wipe his nose continually. Or William Wallace. I’m sorry to tell you this but I’m only doing it for your own good.

  Yours sincerely,

  MURDO MACRAE

  What was Murdo like? Well, he was about five feet ten inches in height, thin, pale-faced (like the clerk he once had been) and blue-eyed. He shaved himself every morning at half-past eight, sometimes listening to the radio and sometimes whistling in a monotonous melancholy manner. He often cut himself with his razor blade and for this reason he bought sticks of styptic which he could never find and which, after being dipped in water, became soggy. He ate very little food and this worried Janet. He had a theory that too much food made his brain feel heavy, and that this was particularly the case with meat and soup, though not with fish. At nine o’clock he would go and sit at his desk, open the notebook in which he had been trying to write and look at it. He would then take out of his pocket the green pen which he had once found on the road near the house and chew it for a long while, still looking down at the paper. Now and again he would get up from his chair and walk about the room, stopping to study a purple bucket in the corner. He had a strong affection for this bucket: he thought that some day it would yield him some extraordinary vision.

  Then he would go back to his chair and sit down again.

  He would sometimes think that there was a crown on his head and that he was king of a country which did not yet exist but which would some day emerge with its own constitution. In this country poets and novelists, painters and ballet dancers, musicians and singers would be the most respected citizens. He would think to himself:

  How did other writers work? It is said that Schiller (was it Schiller?) would keep a rotten apple in his desk and that he would take it out every morning, and its corrupt smell would arouse his imagination.

  For this reason Murdo got an apple, and kept it in his desk till it was rotten, but one day Janet found it and threw it out. And some bird or other ate it.

  After some time he might leave the house altogether and go for a walk.

  No matter how cold the day was he never wore a coat.

  One morning he was walking down the main street when he met the manager of the bank, a man called Maxwell. Maxwell always carried a rolled umbrella even if the day was perfectly fine with no sign of rain. He also wore thick black glasses.

  ‘Imphm,’ he said to Murdo.

  ‘Good morning,’ Murdo said.

  ‘Imphm,’ said Maxwell.

  At last he recognised Murdo and he said to him, looking at him sideways all the time in a furtive manner:

  ‘I’m sorry you felt you had to leave the bank. We needed you.’

  ‘Imphm,’ said Murdo.

  ‘It’s not easy to get work nowadays,’ said Maxwell. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Imphm,’ said Murdo.

  He was afraid that if he told Maxwell that he didn’t do anything, was in fact totally idle though committed to a blank sheet of paper, that Maxwell would fall dead in the road.

  At last he said, ‘I’m looking after my grandfather. There is no one in the house but myself and him and his old dog which he had in the Great War.’

  ‘An old dog?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Murdo. ‘An old dog. He’s very fond of my grandfather. He saved his life at Passchendaele. He picked him up between his teeth and took him back to the British lines after he had been very badly nay almost fatally wounded. Nay. He laid him down at the feet of a first lieutenant called Griffiths. From Ilfracombe.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Maxwell, ‘well, well.’ Murdo was gazing directly at a point between Woolworths and the Italian café and Maxwell was gazing at a point between Lows and Templetons, and they stood like that for a long while in the cold morning. At last Maxwell said, ‘I must go to the office. I’m glad I met you. Imphm.’

  And he went away. Murdo looked after him in a vague negligent manner and then went into Woolworths.

  He weighed himself and found that he was ten stone two pounds.

  He walked from counter to counter. He picked up a book about vampires, glanced at it and then went up to a girl in a yellow dress who was paring her nails. On her breast the name Lily was written.

  ‘Lily,’ said he, ‘have you any tins of Arragum? Lily. It’s a kind of paint,’ he added trying to be helpful.

  ‘Arragum?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Murdo. ‘It’s for windows and doors and tables. It’s used a lot in places where there is great cold and sometimes much rain. The Eskimos use it a great deal.’

  ‘Arragum?’ she said. ‘I don’t think that …’

  ‘Well,’ said Murdo, ‘maybe it’s called Arragul, I’m not sure. I saw it advertised in the Observer Colour Supplement.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said, and she went and got another girl in the same yellow uniform as her own, except that instead of Lily the name Mary was written on the breast.

  ‘Arragum?’ said Mary. ‘I never heard of that.’

  ‘Well,’ said Murdo, ‘it doesn’t matter. You can’t have everything in the shop. But it just occurred to me that as I was passing anyway …’

  ‘What was that name again?’ said Mary, taking a pencil from her breast pocket.

  ‘Arragum,’ said Murdo. ‘A-R-R-A-G-U-M. I think the Queen uses it.

  ‘Well, we can try and get it,’ said Mary.

  ‘All right,’ said Murdo. ‘I think there’ll be a big demand for it after that article.’

  And with that he left.

  He was thinking of his grandfather and the dog that looked after him, and this imagined world became real to him. The dog was large and had gentle brown eyes and he would lie there on the rug in front of the fire gazing at his slightly damaged grandfather, who was thinking of Passchendaele and the Somme and the early sun glittering on the early bayonets. O those early days, those days of untarnished youth.

  I could have gone to Vietnam myself, said Murdo, but I was too lazy. I didn’t do anything about it, I stayed where I was in the bank reading about it in the papers. I did not set my breast against battle, no indeed. And why didn’t I? Who knows the answer to that question? Because I believe in nothing, said Murdo to himself.

  He saw a Pakistani a little ahead of him but did not go to speak to him.

  For what could I say to him? He has come from another world, he belongs to another civilisation. I myself come from the civilisation of TV. He walked up the road and sat on a bench. After a while the town fool called Donnie came and sat beside him. He was carrying a brown paper parcel from which there came the smell of salt herring.

  ‘Fine day,’ said Donnie, his eyes blinking rap
idly. ‘Fine day.’

  He was wearing a long brown dirty coat which trailed to his ankles. The smell of salt herring was in Murdo’s nostrils.

  ‘A fine day,’ said Donnie again.

  After a while he said, ‘I don’t suppose you could give me a penny. A penny so I can buy sweets.’

  ‘No understand,’ said Murdo. ‘No understand. Me German. Tourist.’

  The fool turned his head away slowly and gazed towards the farther shore, his large head like a cannon ball, his body like a dull rusty gun. His dirty brown hair streamed down the collar of his coat.

  At last he turned to Murdo and said, ‘I was wondering if you could spare a shilling for a man in poor circumstances.’

  Murdo rose rapidly from his seat, and said, ‘Me German. Me no understand your money. Me without pity. Have done enough for shrinking pound already. What fought war for, what sent Panzer divisions into civilised treasuries of the West for, if required to prop up currency now? Regard this as paradox of our time.’ And he went away thinking of the fool.

  He stood for a long time watching the children play in an adjacent park and then went slowly home.

  A Letter to the Prime Minister

  I am of the opinion that there is a strong conspiracy afoot to undermine this country of ours.

  Why do people sit watching TV all the time? I am convinced that there are certain rays which come out of the TV set and that these rays are causing people to lose their commitment to the pure things of life.

  Did you ever consider the possibility that John Logie Baird was a Communist?

  Do you really believe that there is no connection between the rise of TV and the rise of Communism in the Western world?

  Who controls TV? Let me ask you that. Let me put that question to you in all sincerity.

  And if the Russians attacked this country what would our people be doing? I think they would continue to sit and watch the TV.

  AND THEY WOULD NOT BELIEVE IT WAS AN ATTACK BY THE RUSSIANS AT ALL. THEY WOULD THINK IT WAS A TV DOCUMENTARY.

  Did this ever occur to you?

  And as well as that there are many people who do not believe that you yourself exist at all. They believe that you have been assembled on TV.

  If this is false please answer this letter at once and establish your identity.

  With great respect.

  Murdo Macrae

  I nearly signed my letter PRO PUBLICO BONO but there has been such a decline in the use of the Latin language that I could not do so. And what is the cause of that? Is it not the TV.

  Now and again Murdo would go and visit his father whose health was rather poor and who lived by himself since the death of his wife. His father would be sitting by the fire on the cold winter’s day and Murdo would think of the days when his father had been fit and strong and how when he himself was young his father would take him out fishing.

  And now all he had was his pension and a moderately warm hearth. He wouldn’t go and live with Murdo and Janet not because he didn’t like them but because he didn’t want to leave his own house.

  Sometimes he would speak of Libya where he had fought in the war.

  ‘There was this fellow from Newcastle beside me,’ he would say, ‘when we were in the trenches, and he was always saying that he wanted a quick death. Well, that happened right enough. One evening I looked down at him (he was beside me, you see) and he had no head. A shell had taken his head off. It was like a football.’

  ‘Well, well, imagine that,’ his visitors would say. ‘Isn’t that funny. Well well. Think of that, no head on him.’

  ‘Ay, ay, that’s the way it was,’ Murdo’s father would say. ‘He had no head. The head was beside me in the sand there like a football.’ And Murdo would see the naked head on the sand, the head without thought or imagination.

  ‘And how are you today?’ Murdo would say as he went into the house.

  ‘Oh, no complaints, no complaints,’ his father would answer. There would often be an open tin of Spam on the table.

  ‘Is there anything to be done?’

  ‘No, nothing, nothing at all.’

  When Murdo was young, his father would carry him on his shoulders and show him off to people and he would buy for him chocolate sweets in the shape of cats or dogs.

  And he would teach him how to fish on red sunset evenings.

  Murdo would sweep the floor or dry the dishes of which the sink was full. And his father would say to him, ‘You don’t need to do that. I’ll do that myself.’

  And at last Murdo would sit in front of the fire and his father would tell him a story.

  ‘One time,’ he said, ‘we were in Libya and there was a man there from the islands and he was always reading the Bible. I don’t know whether he was frightened or what. Anyway he was always reading the Bible any chance that he had. He knew it from end to end, I would think.

  ‘Well, he once told me this story. One night, he told me, there was a great sandstorm and the sand was thick about the desert, so thick he said that he couldn’t see hardly a yard in front of him, and he was afraid that the Germans would suddenly come out of the middle of it with their guns. Well, he said he was waiting there ready with his own gun and he was looking into the middle of the sandstorm with a handkerchief over his mouth. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know whether you’ll believe this or not but about three in the morning out of the middle of the sandstorm there came this man with a beard and in a long white gown. He was like an Arab and some were saying that many of the Arabs were on the side of the Germans. Anyway,” he said, “I raised my gun and I fired at this fellow in the long white gown. But he came straight on and there were no marks at all in his breast where I had hit him at point-blank range and he came right on in his long white gown and he went straight through me. He was smiling all the time and he went straight through me. Isn’t that funny?”

  ‘Think of that now,’ said his father to Murdo. ‘Eh? But he was a bit queer that same fellow right enough.’

  These were the kinds of stories that Murdo’s father would tell Murdo as they sat in front of the fire on a cold winter’s day while now and again Murdo’s father would light and relight his pipe. Nearly all his stories were about the war.

  And Murdo would look out of the window and he would see the movements of the grass under the cold wind, and the world outside so dark and dull and sometimes stormy.

  And he would think of his mother in her long blue apron with the red flowers on it as she walked about the house while his father would be quietly reading the paper. And he himself would be playing on the floor with a train which his father had bought for him.

  What had his father been doing in Libya anyway disguised as a soldier? What good had his soldiership done for him, now as he sat by the fire and the wind blew coldly and endlessly round his house.

  His father didn’t know that Murdo was unemployed: he thought of him with pride as a clerk in a well-known and well-trusted bank.

  Once his father had said to him, ‘Do you know something? Your mother always said that you should have been a minister. Did you know that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that,’ said Murdo, astonished by the absurdity of the statement.

  ‘Ay,’ said his father, ‘she used to say that. She used to say that often to me. “Murdo should be a minister,” she would say. “One day Murdo will be a minister. You mark my words. He’s got the face of a minister.”’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Murdo, ‘well, well.’

  And he would look into the red glowing fire as if he was seeing a pulpit there and he would hear himself saying, ‘In the immortal words of our theologian De Sade …’

  After a time he would get to his feet and he would say, ‘I’ll come again next week. Look after yourself.’

  And his father would say, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll do that all right.’

  And Murdo would leave the house and look at the snow and test the thin roof of ice over the pools with the toe of his shoe delicately and ele
gantly as if he were thinking of some new ballet, and he would think of his father in Libya and his dead mother and Maxwell walking up and down the winter landscape with a rolled umbrella in his hand.

  * * *

  Here is another story that Murdo told little Colin:

  In a country far away (he said), there once lived a little mouse and this mouse used to go to her work every day. She would sit at a desk and write in a big book. She even wore glasses. When her work in the office was over she would take the bus home and then she would make her tea and look at the TV and put her feet up on the sofa.

  At eight o’clock at night she would make her supper, wash the dishes and watch the TV again. And after that she would go to bed.

  At eight o’clock in the morning she would get up, listen to the radio for a little while, wash herself, eat her breakfast and then she would go to the office again. And she did this every day from Monday to Friday.

  Sometimes on Friday night after the week’s work was over she would have a party for the other mice in the neighbourhood, and they would eat a lot of cheese.

  Well, one day, about twelve o’clock, she came out of the office and she took a walk down to a big quiet river that was quite near the place where she worked and she was eating her dinner on the bank of the river—a piece of bread and cheese—when she saw a large white swan swimming in the water. The swan was very beautiful and as white as snow and it had a large red beak which now and again it dipped into the water as if it was drinking. Now and again it would glance towards the bank of the river and stare as if it was seeing the mouse, but of course it couldn’t have, as the mouse was so small.

  That swan seems to have a very easy life of it, said the mouse to herself. All it does all day is swim about in the water and look at its own reflection and eat and drink. No wonder it looks so beautiful and clean. It doesn’t have to cook its dinner or its supper or its breakfast; it doesn’t have to wash and dry dishes; it doesn’t have to sweep the floor; and it doesn’t have to get up in the morning. That swan must be very happy.

  And the swan looked so queenly, so calm, swimming in the river like a great white picture. And the mouse said to herself, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could lead the same sort of life? I too would be like a queen.