If it is your life

by James Kelman

  I had been trudging for a half an hour.

  Life was unfair. It sounded childish saying it. Even the weather. It was as if the fates decreed it. And it was you. So you were the centre of the universe!

  Celia believed that except it applied to everybody. We were all the centre of the universe. How did she work that out! It was almost beautiful but in a silly way. I challenged her on it. If it was a point to do with philosophy surely it was incoherent because if you think about Copernicus. She said it was a proper philosophical argument. But it was not, it was from religion and religion was naive. Most of it was or else just political like dad said, people getting power.

  It was heavier rain than a drizzle. Had it been like this a while? Maybe. I was away thinking about things.

  It happened to me. I could be walking someplace and forget where I was. I was so into my thoughts. I was not unique. Everybody is so none at all. Therefore why do we need the word? In the religions Celia respected all people were unique. But how could that be? Surely it meant the opposite of unique? Otherwise what does unique mean? It becomes worthless. ‘Unique’. What do we mean by ‘unique’?

  That was Rob: ‘what do we mean?’ Everything was ‘what do we mean?’ I liked that. He was a real philosopher. He said he was not but he was. The way he worked out stuff put the other academics to shame. That was my opinion and I was not the only one.

  Not Celia. If she had known more she would have had more respect. She thought she knew about philosophy but really she did not. I smiled at the things she said. Secretly she thought she was the true philosopher. She did! Maybe she was. Except in one sense, the one sense.

  Even thinking about weather, what an odd concept. Changeability. Rain on your head. Imagine rain on your head. I stopped walking and looked upwards. You think of the weather and you think of God. Rain exists so must our Heavenly Father. How childish can you get. Religion is a childish thing.

  Not quite childish. What? It did seem hard to believe. There is nothing wrong with ‘hard to believe’. More like immature. People are entitled to find it so. And no wonder. Miracles! The worst aspect of ‘miracles’ was how it gave you the one individual. Miracles did not exist for everybody. That is what made it so childish. Catholics went to Lourdes and got cured of incurable diseases. Only them. God only did it for them. Oh it is a miracle for you and you alone! Not the chosen people but the chosen person. It was not conceited, it was nonsensical nonsense.

  Absurd was the word. How could people think God would do it for them and them alone, it was just so childish. Childishly boastful. Oh I am cured. I had an incurable disease but God cured me. It is a miracle and He has performed it for me alone!

  Why not everyone in the world who had the same disease? As though God would distinguish the one individual. Why? Because you prayed! That was so conceited. God listens to one person’s prayers. Surely everybody who had the disease would pray for a cure? Unless they were not Christians. But others would have the same; an equivalent. Muslims would have an equivalent, and Jews, and other religions.

  I am cured I am cursed. You only put in an ‘s’.

  The backpack was quite heavy and I kept having to shrug it up my shoulders. It was because I had brought so much home with me. A subconscious manoeuvre in case I did not return. Yet I brought the essays with me so I was as indecisive as usual. In a comedy programme on television the character shook his fist at the sky! I am warning you God, just dont you mess with me. Rain, sleet or snow. Dont you send that to torment me! Just who do you think you are?

  I went online and saw the original script, and the original line was ‘Who the hell do You think You are!’ But the television station would not keep it in. The producer or whoever said they had to take it out. Because it was talking to God. Even ‘fuck’ would have been preferable. Not so much preferable, but acceptable, they would have allowed it, the BBC.

  But ‘hell’! How could you refer to God as in ‘Who the hell do You think You are?’ It was too much for them, as if it would have been too much for God.

  The very idea of God worrying about something like that, it was stupid. And also conceited, just so arrogant and in a male sense too, very very male, I could see that, and Jean-Paul Sartre: Rob recommended him. He was very difficult but worth it.

  But this rain; and needing a piss I did need a piss, really, I did. Why had I not gone, so stupid, when I had the chance. A little thing but out of little things.

  Thinking about sex. That was you, you got paid back with a punishment. Needing a pee was a punishment for thinking about sex. The explanation was straightforward. If you started going hard then soft then hard then soft no wonder you needed a piss. It was not a punishment. It was just natural, your body and bladder in a critical condition.

  No point getting annoyed. Or depressed. More like depressed. The way stuff happens to one individual. Who else does it happen to!

  Nobody.

  Not quite true. Things do happen to other people. Me too. Some that happened recently were incredible. This was one more, one more I had to handle. I would handle.

  Drizzle was not rain, it was like a sprinkling thing God threw down to help out the vegetables and plant-life, to give animals a drink.

  Why was I talking about God all the time, given I was an atheist – agnostic at the very least.

  Animals were out twenty-four hours a day, they did not have houses to go to and shops or cafés and even if there were shops and cafés they had no dough, they were completely rooked and could not pay for anything. That was me. Not quite rooked but nearly. Imagine being completely rooked! Not a sou, a penny or a cent. Nothing. What was fair about that? That was just so unfair. That was how unfair life was. No wonder people wondered. Some had fortunes, others had nothing. You did not have to be a communist to see that. I was not a communist and I could see it. Others did not. Celia only looked when I said it. Her family was not rich in her own estimation but actually they were loaded. Her mother was a doctor and her father was in business. Imagine saying that to my father: ‘Honestly dad, her family is really not rich at all.’ He would burst out laughing. What about mum, mum would just gawk, but she would smile too.

  It was a different world. Down there people were rich. You did not know they were rich except eventually you came to realize it. An older student in Celia’s tutorial group was an aristocrat or else maybe a cousin to one. Can you be a cousin to an aristocrat and not be one yourself? She and Celia were friends. When the aristocrat visited they had lunch in a local bar. Celia went too, just to see. He was tall and skinny and hardly spoke but he smiled at people and was not standoffish. He worked in ‘the City’ which meant ‘stocks and shares and the movement of capital’.

  Strange to think how this morning I was there and now I was here. Since it was after midnight it was not today but yesterday.

  My parents did not have a big house but I still had a room and could coorie in for a few days; nobody to bother me; I could get on with the essays and just take it easy. I was quite looking forward to it. Maybe even I would stay in and not go out, not even bother seeing Eric or anybody for a beer. I quite sometimes liked essays.

  At least I could relax.

  Jees I was bursting and would have to find a place soon or else.

  In my recollection this part of the city was hopeless. Even if there was a club bouncers were on the door, and they did not let people use the toilets; you had to buy something and be a customer otherwise ‘eff off’. It was too late for bars. And the problem too was over-21. Bouncers picked me out. But it was illegal, so it was not their fault; only annoying if they let other people through and they were the same age. It happened with Celia all the time. It was females, they got away with it. Bouncers just let them in. Then if you did it outside and got caught. It was a real problem. But that was it and across the street was a lane. I walked over and along.

  People did not like this area. Even rapes against males. Males raping males. There had been an outbreak of that. Not just young males. One
had been in his forties. Imagine a guy of forty being raped! What did that mean? Who ever would do that? That had to be a monster.

  I did not like the look of this lane. Some lighting but not much, so dark and shadowy, but that was good for the police.

  The usual bins and old rubbish stuff. People just dumped things. You were scared to look down at where you were walking. Shit was the best of it. Then a spot that was better and I was able to unsling the backpack, just taking the opportunity, and what a relief to balance it on the ground a minute. You do not realize how heavy it is until you take it off and lurch a couple of strides. The straps would have left imprints on my shoulders.

  Nearer into the wall jees I was bursting. My boots crunching on glass, then another noise. I heard another noise. A real noise, sounding like a woman and she was moaning. That is what it sounded like: ‘oh no oh no oh no, no, no, no, oh no oh no.’ Muffled and not too close. I waited a moment but it came again. Not a scream but moaning. I finished the piss and stepped aside, facing in that direction, staying still and listening hard. By this time my eyes were accustomed to the dark. A shape appeared and it was a man walking, heading this way along the centre of the lane; not too fast, coming along towards me. I started walking, acting normally, just keeping going, not hesitating and not too slow either, so not intimidated by him. But not to intimidate him either. Just not anything. He was approaching now he really was and he really had seen me. A thick-set man, older, oh fuck really heavy-looking too like a mafia gangster or something you could imagine him, and on he came. I would not confront him. How could I? Not here anyhow. Did I even know for sure it was him? I did not. He might just have been a guy, just out strolling. Maybe he had seen something suspicious or if he heard her moaning. Maybe that was it and he just went up the lane to find out and here he was. On he walked down the centre of the lane, the crunching noise of his feet on the ground. Then he had passed. I wanted to look round to see him, to make sure he was not doing something behind my back. The way he had passed was like he had not even seen me. That was the way he acted, like he had not even noticed me. Even I was irrelevant. Maybe he thought that. Some older guys are like that, really arrogant the way they dismiss you. I kept on, walking in the opposite direction. I had to, that was what I thought. What else could I have done? It would have seemed completely strange. I could not look back. I would not tempt anything, although what could have happened? Nothing. No sound except my own. I would have heard, if somebody had been sneaking up. I would not have backed down. I had been in some bad situations in the past. I would not have backed down. I was not timid and nobody would have accused me of it, and not a coward, but not foolhardy and not silly brave. That was just stupid and helped no one. I was counting as I went, all to fifteen, and nothing, no woman, nothing. Maybe it was my ears. Ears play tricks. It was in all the books, your ears. Maybe they had. I was alert for anything yet nothing was there, all along the lane there was nothing. It was just dark.

  Unless something had happened to shut her up. Ahead now was the end of the lane. On either side were weeds and a stack of rubbish bags. It was a place where bodies were found, you saw it all the time; the guy sneaking along with his girlfriend, looking for a safe place for sex and suddenly there is a foot and it is a leg twisted in the undergrowth. Call the police. Coldblooded murder. That was television. But such things did happen. Maybe not much but definitely some of the time, they did. Most murders were in the home and the murderers that did it were known to the victim. It was not strangers you had to worry about it was the next of kin, the person that stood to inherit, if you were rich or even if it was insurance and if you were just an ordinary person and oh my God almighty the backpack, what kind of a fool I was such a fool, back along immediately, but just a fool, just fast walking. It had gone. Maybe not. I checked roundabout and everywhere, everywhere and everywhere all along, the edge of the building, I could not believe what kind of a fool. I was a very very stupid guy, very very stupid, just naive and so stupid and just a total naive idiot. Could ever I have been so daft! Never. Never ever. Never in my whole life.

  Sometimes if you were dead, only if you were dead. People said that. I thought it myself.

  Objects do not move by themselves, they do not walk, backpacks do not walk.

  I was not a headless chicken. My essays and everything else, books from the library.

  Anyway, I could calm down and just look, look for things, anything, calmly. Sometimes they get put to the side, if somebody sees it, a lost article, if somebody finds it, they put it at the side of the road, or like a glove or a scarf, they hang it on a railing so the person who has lost it can find it, so they retrace their steps and then they see the lost article.

  I hunted around. Horrible bastard, dirty evil, just a horrible, horrible horrible. He would have been long gone. Probably someplace checking the contents, sorting through it all, maybe dumping stuff along the way, because it was just clothes and a lot of them were unwashed, and just old tee-shirts and stuff. That is what he would think. But some were good; especially the tee-shirts. It was not all crap, though maybe that was how he would see it, crooked coward. He would not bother about the books, or anything, essay notes, just dump it, they were not of value. There was nothing of value. What did he expect to find a bag of money! thousands of pound notes stuffed into plastic bags! People watch too much television, all these detective programmes. They go about seeing themselves involved in mystery dramas, the earphones in and the music playing, their music, people choose their own music, they do not choose the best songs, the ones that they like the very best, they choose the ones they see as soundtracks to their own sweaty lives. Pathetic. You saw them walking along the street, and even their voices, you heard their voices.

  Unless it was for my benefit. If the woman was in it with the man and that was why she moaned like she had. Because that woman moaned I swear to God she really did. Really, she did. If so it was the very last time, never ever would I ever fall for such a thing again if ever it was a woman and she was in trouble, it would never ever happen again, that was me now, just finished. Imagine a woman and she did that moaning so people would be tricked.

  I had stuff at home but it was for emergencies only; basics, old stuff. Even socks. My parents would loan me money, just give me it. If I asked. I would not ask. I would just sell something or else the pawnshop. They would laugh. Mum would be glad it was nothing worse. I would not tell them.

  Except my essays and the books, library books, and where would I get them again.

  I was at the top of the lane, and stopped. It was the second time I had reached here. I turned to stare back along, silence all the way, just nothing. I had to retrace my steps again. I did not want to, not again. But I had to. Although nothing would be there. My backpack was gone and the guy that took it, and the woman, if ever there was a woman, or just my ears playing tricks.

  What else, but I just had to, just go back along the lane, that was all I could do because what if I saw it, it might be waiting for me right at the very end, I might see its shape, just sitting there waiting for me. How could I have missed it! How ever could I have missed it? It would be the strangest strangest experience ever and I would just get it up onto my shoulders and rush fast to get home, oh jeesoh, jeesoh, I so wanted home.

  The Later Transgression

  At this stage, when things appeared to be running smoothly, his transgression surprised me. Upon reflection it was no more and no less than I should have anticipated. His life may have been seen as one to emulate, to strive after or towards, but it was far from commendable. I knew that. He had not lived a perfect life. My friends respected him; young men like ourselves. It is safe to say that.

  A companion of ours, a musician, did not survive though his existence exhausted itself in a similar way. When we three were together and smiling on how things had been, partly it was relief that we had survived at all. None among us pretended, none among us was the hypocrite.

  In the ordinary ethical sense we had n
ot lived just lives but nor had we pretensions toward the religious or theological sense of other existences, nor of existences yet to come. For myself I had no intentions of accepting a second existence. I grew weary of Lives to Come, a Life to Come, that Life to Come. As with our former friend I was one of many, content that those who follow should wield the baton.

  Universals do not exist. There is no ethic, no code of morality, no moral sense at the inner depth of our being. From an early period I too was aware that the sensibility is unaffected by the violence or abuses perpetrated by one on another, even if the one is close to us. Yet I was perceived as ruthless. So too was our former friend. But did he fully understand what ruthlessness might amount to? Perhaps he did. When his grandfather died he rowed the boat that carried his ashes. His father and younger brother were seated at the stern. His younger brother unscrewed the receptacle and emptied the ashes midway across. His father could have stopped him. The following is hearsay, that he too could have stopped him.

  Ingrained

  I was not an artist and not a schoolteacher, I had never been a schoolteacher. People thought I was. That was a peculiar misjudgement. ‘Misjudgement’ was the word.

  I was observing, even as I thought in this self-conscious, deliberately reflective manner, and the subject of my observation was the world about me. Here beyond the window, far below at ground level the rubbish piled high and overflowing although the rubbish men had come two days ago. What the hell had they been doing? All they did was stand there gabbing and sharing a smoke. Probably a joint; they pretended it was tobacco in case the rubbish police were spying from windows. I wanted to shout at them. It made me angry. Was that the way to do a job? Okay if it was a middle-class rural piece of suburbia but this was a slum man, a slum, s l u bloody m. Ordinary working-class people, these were brothers and sisters. We dont shit on them for heaven sake. So no wonder I got angry, living round here. It was just important. I thought so anyway, if no one else did. Lindsey did. Lindsey was shocked; truly she was. This was her first time in the city and the idea of bringing a baby up in such a place, my God. Where do the children go to play?