Listen to the Voice

by Iain Crichton Smith

  And at that precise moment he did. He walked off down the steps, and after a long time onto the street, which was sunny and warm. He walked briskly along, meditating on how he should word his letter of resignation. He thought about his wife and felt her closer to him than ever before. She had worn out her days on Greek scholarship, practising the discrimination without which we are animals, he thought. There can be no doubt that whatever happens, we are right, he said to himself. The signs glittered all round him, the signs of supermarkets and cinemas. He felt happy and free and gay, as if new creative life had been given to him. Already he could hear the ’phone ringing or its meaningful silence. It was necessary to shed that load, to go to Spain at last …

  By Their Fruits

  MY CANADIAN UNCLE told me, ‘Today we are going to see John Smith. I’ll tell you a story about him. When he was nineteen years old, and coming to Canada, the minister met him and he said to him (you see, John had been working at the Glasgow shipyards before that) the minister said to him, “And I hear you’ve been working on a Sunday,” and John said to him, “I hear you work on a Sunday yourself.” So when John was leaving to come to Canada the minister wouldn’t speak to him. Imagine that. He was nineteen years old, the minister didn’t know whether he would ever see him again. Now the fact is that John has never been to church since he came to Canada.’

  My uncle was eighty-six years old. He had been allowed to drive, I think, during the duration of our holiday with him, and he took full advantage of the concession.

  ‘They said to me,’ he told us, ‘you keep out of Vancouver, you can drive around your home area, old timer. Drive around White Rock.’

  Every morning he took the white Plymouth from the garage, put on his glasses carefully and set off with us for a drive of hundreds of miles, perhaps to Hell’s Gate or Fraser River. His wife was dead: in the garden he had planted a velvety red rose in remembrance of her, and he watered it devoutly every day.

  Once in Vancouver we came to a red light which we drove through, while a woman who was permitted to cross in her car stared at him, her mouth opening and shutting like that of a fish.

  ‘These women drivers,’ he said contemptuously, as he drove negligently onwards.

  Every summer he took the plane home to Lewis. ‘What I do,’ he said, ‘I leave this lamp on so that people think I am here.’ One summer Donalda and I searched Loch Lomondside for the house in which his wife had been born but we couldn’t find it.

  ‘She was an orphan, you know, and the way we met was like this. She went to London on service and decided she would emigrate to Australia, but then changed her mind when she saw an advertisement showing British Columbia and its fruit. I was going to Australia myself with another fellow, but he dropped out so I emigrated to Canada instead. One night at a Scottish Evening in Vancouver I saw her coming in the door wearing a yellow dress. I knew at that moment that that was the girl for me, so I asked her for a dance, and that was how it happened.’

  He fixed his eye on the road.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you can drive a few miles over the limit. You’re allowed to do that.’ His big craggy face was tanned like a Red Indian’s. It was like an image you would see on a totem pole.

  John Smith lived in a house which was not as luxurious as my uncle’s. He had a limp, and immediately my uncle came in he began to banter with him.

  ‘Here he is,’ he said to his wife, ‘the Widows’ Delight.’ My uncle smiled. ‘Listen,’ he said to me, after he had introduced me. ‘This fellow believes that we come from monkeys,’ and he smiled again largely and slightly contemptuously.

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Smith, stretching his leg out on the sofa where he was sitting. His wife said nothing but watched the two of them. She was a large woman with a flat white face.

  ‘It may be true of you,’ said my uncle, ‘but it’s not true of me. I’m not descended from a monkey, that’s for sure. No, sir. You’ll be saying next that we have tails.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Smith, ‘if you read the books you’ll see that we have the remains of tails. And I’ll tell you something else, what use is your appendix to you, tell me that.’

  ‘My appendix,’ said my uncle, ‘what are you talking about? What’s my appendix got to do with it?’ And he winked at me in a conspiratorial manner as if to say, Listen to that hogwash.

  ‘It’s like this,’ said Smith, who was a small intense man. ‘Your appendix is no use to you. It’s part of what you were as an ape. That’s what the books tell you. You could lose your appendix and nothing would happen to you. You don’t need it. That’s been proved.’ His wife smiled at Donalda and at me as if to say, They go on like this all the time but below it all they like each other.

  ‘A lot of baloney,’ said my uncle, ‘that’s what it is, a lot of baloney. When did you ever see a man turning into a monkey?’

  ‘It’s the other way round,’ said Smith tolerantly. ‘Anyway the time involved is too great. Millions of years, millions and millions of years.’

  ‘Baloney,’ said my uncle again. ‘You read too many books, that’s what’s wrong with you. You’d be better looking after your garden. His garden is a mess,’ he said, turning to me. ‘Never seen anything like it. All he does is read and read.’

  ‘And all you do is grow cherries and give them to widows,’ said Smith chortling. ‘Did you know that,’ he said to me, ‘he’s surrounded by widows. They come from everywhere: they’re like the bees. And he grows cherries and gives them baskets of them. Did you see the contraption he’s got to keep the crows away from the cherry trees?’ And he laughed.

  Donalda and I looked at each other. My uncle had a wire which he strung out through the window of the kitchen and on it hung a lot of cans and a big hat and when he saw any crows approaching he pulled at the wire and the cans set up a jangling noise.

  ‘They’re like the Free Church ministers, them crows,’ said Smith, ‘you can’t keep them away from the cherries.’

  My uncle once told us a story. ‘When I came here first I used to drive a cab and I used to take a lot of them ministers around to conferences. And, do you know, they never invited me into any of their houses once? They would leave me sitting in the cab to freeze. That’s right enough.’

  ‘All that baloney about monkeys,’ said my uncle again. ‘That’s because he’s got hair on his chest. Mind you, he does look a bit like a monkey,’ he said to me judiciously.

  Smith got angry. ‘You’re an ignorant man,’ he said. ‘Just because you were on the Fire Brigade you think you know everything. Do you know what he reads?’ he said to me. ‘He reads the Fishing News and the Scottish Magazine. He never read a book in his life. You wouldn’t understand Darwin,’ he said to my uncle, ‘not in a million years.’

  ‘And who’s Darwin when he’s at home?’ said my uncle.

  ‘Darwin?’ Smith spluttered. ‘Darwin is the man who wrote The Origin of Species. You’re really ignorant. If you kept away from the widows you would know these things.’

  ‘Do you think the widows are descended from the apes?’ said my uncle innocently.

  ‘Of course they are, and so are you.’ Smith was dancing up and down with rage in spite of his limp.

  ‘I never heard such hogwash,’ said my uncle. ‘Tell me something then. Do you swing from the trees in your garden instead of digging?’ And he went off into a roar of laughter.

  ‘Oh, what’s the use of talking to you,’ said Smith, ‘no use at all. You’re ignorant.’

  And so the debate went on, though deep down we could see there was a real affection between the two men. When we were going home in the car my uncle would suddenly burst into a roar of laughter and say, ‘Descended from the apes. Do you think Smith looks like an ape? Eh?’ And he would laugh again. ‘Mind you, where he comes from on the island they could be apes. Sure.’ And he laughed delightedly again.

  He was really rather boyish. He was always saying ‘By golly’, in a tone of wonder.

  ‘D
id you know,’ he told us once, ‘there’s a woman here who comes from the island and her son-in-law is an ambassador. If you go to their house you’ll find that the children have a room of their own with a billiard table and a television and everything else. And she sits there and makes scones as we used to do in the old days. You’d think she was back in Lewis. And when the kids come in, she says, “How much money did you spend today? Did you buy Seven Up?” And if they spent more than they should have, she gives them hell. And I once saw a millionaire in her house. Sure. He was walking along the corridor with a towel round him, he had been for a bathe, and that was all he was wearing. “That’s a millionaire,” she said to me. “That fellow?” I said. “Yes, that’s right,” she said. And he looked just like you or me. He said “Hi” to me as he passed. And there was water dripping all over the floor and all he was wearing was a towel.’

  He had bought himself a cine camera and the last time he had been home to the islands he had taken some photographs. He showed us them one night and we saw figures of old women in black, churches, rocks, peat cutters, all flashing past at what seemed a hundred miles an hour. ‘There’s something dang wrong with that camera,’ he muttered. Donalda and I could hardly keep from laughing.

  All the time we stayed with him—which was three weeks—he wouldn’t let us pay for anything. ‘I won’t be long for this world,’ he would say, ‘so I might as well spend my money.’ And we fed on salmon and cherries and the best of steaks. And sometimes we would sit out in the garden wearing green peaked caps and watching the crows as they hovered around the cherry trees.

  ‘When my wife was taken to hospital,’ he said, ‘I went to the doctor and I said to him, “No drugs. No drugs,” I said to him. We never had a quarrel in our lives, do you know that? She was a great gardener. When we went out fishing on Sunday she would say, “Stop the car,” and I would stop, though I drove very fast in them days, and it was a little flower she had seen at the side of the road.’ He smiled nostalgically.

  ‘This is my country now, you understand. I go back to the old country, but it’s not the same. I’ve been to see the people who grew up with me, but they’re all in the cemeteries. Sure. There was a schoolmaster we had and he used to go into a rage and whip us on the bare legs with a belt. Girls and boys, it was the same to him. But there’s no one left now. Canada is my country now.’ And he would look out the window at the men in red helmets who were repairing the road in front of his house.

  The days were monotonously sunny. There was no sign of rain or storm. It was like being in the Garden of Eden, guiltless and without questions.

  The night before we left many of the widows visited him, as did Smith and his wife. The widows brought scones, cakes, and buns, and made the coffee while he sat in the middle of the living room like a king on a throne.

  One widow said, ‘You know what Torquil here said to my husband when he was building our house. He said to him, “I used to go duck shooting here when I came here first. It was a swamp.”’

  ‘And so it was,’ said Torquil, laughing.

  ‘He used to tell us, “The men here die young. The women live for ever. What they do is sell their houses and then they buy apartments in Vancouver.”’

  Another of the widows said to me, ‘I saw one of your Highland singers on the tv. He had lovely knees.’ All the other widows laughed. ‘Lovely knees,’ she repeated. And then she asked me if I knew the words of ‘Loch Lomond’.

  ‘Iain doesn’t like that song,’ said my uncle, largely. ‘The fact is he despises them songs.’ They gazed at me in wonderment. ‘Iain doesn’t like Burns either. But I’ll tell you something about Burns. They say he had a lot of illegitimate children, but that was a lie put out by the Catholics.’ He spoke with amazing confidence, and I saw Smith looking at him.

  ‘I went home to Lewis,’ said one of the women. ‘The shop girls were very rude. I couldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said my uncle.

  ‘As true as I’m sitting here,’ said the woman.

  Another one said, ‘You’ve got lovely cherries this year.’

  ‘Sure,’ said my uncle, ‘they’re like the apples in the Garden of Eden.’

  Smith suddenly pounced. He had been sitting on the edge of the company, brooding for a long time.

  ‘It doesn’t say that in the Bible at all.’

  ‘What?’ said my uncle, ‘of course it says that.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Smith, ‘not at all. It doesn’t mention the fruit at all.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said my uncle, ‘it says about apples as clear as anything. Do you know,’ he said, turning to the widows, ‘I read the Bible every year from end to end. I know the names of all the tribes of Israel. The gipsies, you know, were one of the tribes of Israel.’

  ‘It doesn’t say that at all,’ said Smith, ‘not at all. You read your Bible and it doesn’t say it was an apple. It doesn’t name the fruit at all.’

  ‘What does it matter?’ said one of the widows.

  ‘We all know it was a woman who ate the fruit,’ said my uncle magisterially.

  ‘It might even have been a widow,’ said one of the women. And the others laughed, but Smith didn’t laugh. He was muttering to himself, ‘It doesn’t mention the fruit at all.’

  ‘Next thing you’ll be saying it was a pair of monkeys in the Garden of Eden,’ said my uncle. ‘You’ll be saying it was the apes who ate the apple.’ And he laughed so hard that I thought he was going to have apoplexy.

  ‘Do you have a Bible here?’ said Smith apologetically.

  ‘I can’t find it just now,’ said my uncle.

  I myself couldn’t remember what it said in Genesis. My uncle started on a story about how once he had seen a black bear and it was eating berries in Alaska. ‘They’re very fast, you know,’ he said. ‘You’d think they would be slow but by golly they’re not. By golly they’re not.’

  Some of the widows asked us if we were enjoying our holiday and we said, ‘Yes, very much.’

  ‘That’s because Torquil is driving them about,’ said one of the widows. ‘He’s a demon driver, did you know that? His wife used to shout at him and she was the only person he would ever slow down for.’

  What did I think of Canada, I asked myself. There were no noises there, no creakings as from an old house. The indifferent level light fell on it. It was like the Garden of Eden uninfected by history. It was without evil. Smith was still muttering to himself. His wife was smiling.

  ‘My friend here,’ said my uncle largely, ‘believes in the apes, you know. He thinks that we’re all apes, every one of us.’

  The women in their fine dresses and ornaments all laughed. Who could be further from apes than they were?

  ‘Apes don’t make as good scones as this,’ said my uncle. ‘Do you think apes make scones?’ he asked Smith.

  Smith scowled at him. He was looking around the room as if searching for a Bible.

  ‘But there’s one thing about John here,’ said my uncle, ‘by golly he’s got principles. Yes by golly, he has.’

  As the evening progressed we did sing ‘Loch Lomond’, ‘… where me and my true love will never meet again on the bonny banks of Loch Lomond.’

  I saw tears in my uncle’s eyes.

  ‘Mary was from Loch Lomondside,’ said my uncle, ‘but I couldn’t find the house she was brought up in. She was an orphan, you know. Iain and I went there in the car but we couldn’t find the house.’ There was a silence.

  ‘The only person he would ever obey was Mary,’ said one of the widows.

  ‘Gosh, that’s right,’ said my uncle. And then, it seemed quite irrelevantly, ‘When I came here first we used to teach Gaelic to the Red Indians. Out of the Bible. And they taught us some Indian, but I’ve forgotten the words now. They spoke Gaelic as you would find it in the Old Testament. Of course some men used to marry squaws and take them home to Lewis. They would smoke pipes, you know.’

  Smith was still staring at him resentfu
lly.

  At about one in the morning they all left. The night was mild and the women seemed to float about the garden in their dresses. My uncle filled baskets of cherries for them in the bright moonlight.

  ‘That’s the same moon as shines over Lewis,’ he said. ‘The moon of the ripening of the barley.’

  They were like ghosts in the yellow light, the golden light. I thought of early prospectors prospecting for gold in the Yukon.

  ‘You mark my words, you’re wrong about that,’ said my uncle to Smith as he pressed a basket of cherries on him. They all drove off to a chorus of farewells from myself and Donalda.

  * * *

  After they had gone, I looked up Genesis. Smith was right enough. It doesn’t mention the particular fruit.

  At the airport my uncle shook us by the hand briefly and turned away and drove off. I knew why he had done that. I imagined him driving to an empty house. Actually I never saw him again. He died the following year from an embolism. He dropped dead quickly in one of the bathrooms of a big hospital in Vancouver. He firmly believed that he would meet Mary again when he died.

  The plane rose into the sky. Shadows were lying like sheaves of black corn on the Canadian earth which was not ours. It was still the same mild changeless weather. I hoped he wouldn’t look up the Bible when he arrived home for he prided himself on his knowledge of it, and it was true that he read it from end to end in the course of a year. Even the tribes he memorized. And in the fly leaf of the big Bible were the names of his family and ancestors, all those who had passed it on to him.

  I recalled the men in red helmets working in front of the house. He would drive in carefully. Then he would back into the garage and take off his glasses and walk into the house. Sometimes one could see grass snakes at the door sleeping in the sun, and Donalda had been quite frightened of them. One day my uncle had hung one of them round his neck like a necklace. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘it’s quite harmless. Sure. Nothing to fear from them at all.’ At that moment the camera in my mind stopped with that image. The snake was round his throat like a green necklace, a green innocent Canadian ornament.