The Testament of Gideon Mack

by James Robertson

  I didn’t know how far away that other light was, but I assumed that this was the route my host used, so I hirpled on. The exercise was good – I’d been immobile for too long. I kept peering to right and left in search of other exits, and I saw numerous recesses and crannies that might have been further tunnels – and in retrospect probably were – but they showed no sign of light. I carried on the way I was going. I tried to count my paces but after several thousand I gave up. For a long while I walked on the level, then the tunnel began to slope downhill. It got steeper and steeper. I wondered if I could have missed some turning, because this didn’t seem likely to lead me to the outside world. I was heading down into the bowels of the earth. Hours, I guessed, must have passed since I’d set out. The only thing that kept me going forward was the light, which was growing stronger all the while, a deep orange-red glow like the sun at dawn or at dusk. And there was something else – a thudding, pounding noise like the engine of a huge ship. It was like the noise the Black Jaws made, and I began to think I had come by some roundabout way back towards the chasm, and that perhaps it really was sunrise or sunset. I broke into the nearest thing I could manage to a run, and the light grew still brighter. The temperature rose rapidly too – a dry heat like the blast from an oven when you open the door, except that there was no air movement. Soon I was sweating profusely and having to shield my eyes with my hand because of the glare. And then without warning my route was blocked. Before me was a solid wall of rock, behind me the tunnel I had come down. And below me, right at my feet, was the source of the light and of the engine-like noise.

  It was a huge, bulging hatch made of some material that was like rock but was not rock, that was like iron but was not iron. It was smooth in some places and pitted and bumpy in others. It seemed to be fixed in some way to the rock floor, but round its edges were cracks and holes, and it was through these that the intense light poured. I felt, if I looked directly at it, that it would burn my eyes in their sockets. The hatch, if that’s what it was, seemed to move with the terrible pounding that was coming from below. Balancing on my stronger leg I stretched out my recently repaired one and gingerly let the toe of its trainer rest for a moment on the top. The vibration nearly shook the teeth from my mouth. What incalculable energy was at work down there, what monstrous furnace was driving that deafening rhythm and throwing out that level of heat and light? I felt that I was standing over the molten heart of the earth itself, and some words came to me, words I must have read in some long-forgotten book: ‘the abyss beneath, where all is fiery and yet dark – a solitary hell, without suffering or sin’. A poem? A sermon? I don’t know.* I thought of the river rushing through the Black Jaws and that if I could divert it down there and somehow open that hatch I might douse the heat and see in. But I knew that even all that raging madness of water would vanish in a hiss of steam the second it arrived.

  I could not bear to stay there a moment longer. I turned and fled, panting and scrambling my way back up the tunnel, which stretched ahead of me now without any inviting light, since the glow of the fire by the pool was too feeble to reach anything like as far as I had come – a long, dark, stony passage back to what now seemed both a refuge and a prison.

  Hours and hours I walked and stumbled. My feet in the unaccustomed trainers grew great blisters, my right leg trailed and my left leg ached with the extra effort demanded of it. I think I was on the point of collapse when I began to perceive a dim glow ahead of me. Another few hundred yards made it certain: I was back in the cave. I staggered out from the tunnel and over to the settee, and threw myself upon it. I was almost weeping with exhaustion.

  From the vicinity of the fire I heard the familiar smooth, soft voice. ‘Well, did you find what you were looking for?’

  I couldn’t answer. He understood this. He brought me a mug of cold water and I drank it, this time without hesitation. He sat down on one of the iron chairs and waited for me to recover.

  ‘I found something,’ I said eventually.

  ‘Oh, what was that?’

  ‘I found a door,’ I said.

  ‘A door?’ He was supercilious again, smug in whatever knowledge he had. ‘Is that what you were looking for, a door? A way out?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I told you, there is only one way out for you, and that is by the river. This door, though, I’m intrigued. Did you open it?’

  ‘I did not,’ I said. ‘It was a door into hell.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘You’re still trading in stereotypes, Gideon. Next you’ll be telling me you heard screams.’

  ‘Is that where you go?’ I said. ‘Down there? To hell?’

  ‘I don’t know where you’ve been,’ he said, ‘but it wasn’t to hell. Ask your mother about hell. She knows about it.’

  Neither of us said anything. There seemed no point in starting that argument again. I started another instead.

  ‘You took my boots.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect you to be going anywhere. Actually, I did, I knew exactly what you would do. They’re very comfortable, your boots. How did you find my shoes?’

  I ignored this. I said I wanted my boots back. This is what I was reduced to: asking the Devil if I could have my boots back. Of course I could have them, he said. Did I want them now? He stood up and bent down where I could not see what he was doing. ‘No,’ I said, ‘not over there. Take them off here, where I can see you.’

  He gave a long sigh. ‘Still looking for evidence, Gideon? O ye of little faith! Still looking for goat’s hooves?’ He walked over and sat on the end of the settee, untied the laces and pulled off my boots. He wasn’t wearing socks. ‘Look, two perfectly formed feet. Satisfied? No, probably not. Of course I can do goat’s hooves. I can do pig’s fucking trotters if I choose. I can do anything. But I choose not to.’ He leaned back, and I shifted to make room for him, just as I had earlier. ‘Do you want a drink?’ he said. ‘Let’s have a drink. Let’s not fight any more, Gideon.’

  He fetched the black bottle, uncorked it and took a swig. He passed the bottle to me and I did the same. We sat together on the settee, staring at the fire, and the bottle went back and forth between us. We might have been old pals. We might have been you and me, Bill, sharing a drink just as we’re doing now.

  ‘So is the legend true?’ I asked him after a while. Meaning the legend of the Black Jaws, the one we used in your show. He knew what I was talking about almost before I said it. He was so in tune with me, in fact, that I felt I hardly needed to voice my thoughts at all.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a legend. Can a legend be true?’

  ‘Did you buy her soul?’ I said. ‘The way Menteith says you did, with a deed made up and signed in her blood?’

  He shook his head at me: what a ludicrous question. I couldn’t stop myself asking more, though. ‘Did you keep her as a slave? Where is she now? Is she still here? Is that where you go to? Was it her that dragged all this stuff here?’

  ‘Gideon,’ he said, ‘you’re becoming overexcited. It’s a legend. It’s a metaphor.’

  I thought of the cold, sucking feeling of his hand withdrawing from my thigh.

  ‘So when you were fixing my leg, was that a metaphor too? Or was something else going on? Did you take my soul?’

  He drank some more whisky. ‘Don’t be absurd. Your soul doesn’t live in your leg. What on earth did they teach you at New College? Do you think I keep souls lined up somewhere in demijohns? Do you think that’s them over there? Fucksake, what a paltry collection after all this time.’ He jumped up and began to open bottles and jars and show me the contents. ‘Look – salt, pepper, oil, vinegar. Not a soul in sight. Oh, but you’ve probably already checked, eh?’

  He might have said this in a mocking way, but it didn’t sound like that. It sounded forgiving, like he just wanted to tell me he knew.

  I said, ‘Earlier, before I went off, you said there were reasons for me to go back. My mother, you said. But what else d
id you mean?’

  ‘Isn’t she reason enough?’ He came and sat down again. ‘All right, what are you going to do about Elsie? What about Lorna? What about all the lies and denials in your life? What about life, eh? What about that stone in the woods?’

  I shouldn’t have been surprised any more, should I? He knew everything. Why would he not have known about the Stone?

  (At this point Bill asked me about Elsie and about the Stone. I got him to stop the tape and told him what he needed to know. I didn’t go into detail about Elsie: I simply said that she and John and I were old friends and that we needed to work some things out. He accepted this, although he looked sceptical. He wanted to know who Lorna was too. I told him, and he said he’d met her once. ‘Are you…?’ he asked. ‘No, Bill,’ I said. ‘We are not.’

  The Stone interested him more. He asked me why I hadn’t mentioned it to him before, and I said I’d almost told him once, but then I’d got to a place where I didn’t think anyone would believe me about it. ‘And now?’ he said. ‘Now it’s all different,’ I said. ‘The Stone’s only part of it. It was a game. The Stone doesn’t matter much any more.’ Then we carried on recording.)

  GM: Why wouldn’t the Devil have known about the Stone? He knew everything. He was smiling at me now, inclining his head, inviting me to come to the right conclusion.

  I said, ‘It was you, wasn’t it? You put it there.’

  He nodded. ‘I get so bored, Gideon. I have to do something to keep myself amused. I wanted to see what would happen. I like playing with people’s minds. Crop circles, ghosts, poltergeists, UFOs, alien abductions. People need these things. If they didn’t exist they’d invent them, if you see what I mean. So, yes, I put the stone there. I found it aesthetically satisfying, apart from anything else. Kind of Andy Goldsworthy. But by and large it’s been something of a failure. You’re the only person who’s noticed it.’

  ‘You mean, it wasn’t for me?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not specifically. Don’t look so disappointed. You make of these things what you will. I knew you went running in those woods, but other people go there too. Nobody else has paid it the slightest attention. They don’t seem to care about their surroundings. At least you noticed it. But I suppose if you hadn’t wanted to, you wouldn’t have seen it either.’

  ‘But I didn’t want to see it,’ I protested. ‘It was just there.’

  ‘Yeah, well. It’s that old chestnut, isn’t it? Is the stone there if nobody sees it? Just because it’s there one day, will it be there the next? It wasn’t always there, was it? What would old Davie Hume have made of that, I wonder.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’

  ‘At least you’re asking the question. But maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it’s a metaphor. Or maybe I’m just fucking with your head.’

  We both started laughing. ‘I used to have conversations like this with John Moffat,’ I said, ‘when we were students. We could go for hours.’

  ‘We can do that,’ he said.

  I came back to the Stone. ‘Why doesn’t it come out on film? I took pictures but they didn’t come out.’

  ‘Who can say, Gideon? Faulty film, perhaps?’

  I was beginning to feel drunk. I know this sounds bizarre, but I was enjoying myself. I was alone with him, away from all my parish responsibilities, all my personal ones, away from the insanity of the occupation of Iraq and Muslim suicide bombers and American fundamentalists and the AIDS epidemic in Africa and whatever petty arguments were going on in the Parliaments in Edinburgh and London – absent from it all. It was me and the Devil, and we were having a drink and a crack together. And it occurred to me, for the first time, that everybody must think I was dead. Effectively, I was dead. I wasn’t there any more. And that felt amazing, fantastic. And I was no longer afraid, not of the situation, not of death, not of him. I felt that we knew each other.

  ‘Where’s God in all of this?’ I said.

  ‘Now that is a good question,’ said the Devil.

  ‘Maybe you are God,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’re God, and this is one big test.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  ‘You wouldn’t tell me if you were, would you?’

  ‘I’d probably want to hear what you had to say for yourself first.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with God. He’s always one step ahead.’

  ‘What would you say to me if I were God?’

  I thought about this for a while. The Devil passed me the bottle meantime.

  ‘I’d say I was sick of apologising for you. I’m sick of the bloody mess. Something like that.’

  ‘You’d blame me for it?’

  ‘Well, ultimately, who else is there to blame?’

  ‘Then you don’t blame me? I mean, me the Devil. If that’s who I am.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t blame you. You’re just doing what you do. What do you do?’

  ‘That’s another good question,’ the Devil said. ‘I used to have a purpose. We both had a purpose, God and me. Now? I just go from one window to another and stare out. Or stare in. Sometimes I do a few conjuring-tricks, push a button here, pull a lever there. But my heart’s not in it. Basically, I don’t do anything any more. I despair, if you want the honest truth. I mean, the world doesn’t need me. It’s going to hell on a handcart, if you’ll excuse the cliché, without any assistance from me.’

  ‘And does God feel the same?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably. I feel sorry for him actually. What’s in this for him? If things are going well, people forget about him. They unchain the swings, turn the churches into casinos and mock anybody who still believes in him. He’s a very easy target. And who does he get left with? Fanatics and maniacs of every faith and every persuasion, who want to kill the heretics and blow themselves to pieces in his name. I feel sorry for God, I do. I mean, what a thankless fucking job. It must be like running the National Health Service when nobody believes in it any more. What are you looking like that for?’

  I must have been frowning. The alcohol was making it hard for me to concentrate. ‘I’m trying to work out,’ I said, ‘if you are God, what my response to that should be.’

  He gave a long chuckle. ‘No more games, Gideon, okay? I’m not playing games. Like you, I’m sick of them. Do you think God would spend his time in a place like this? Okay, well, actually he might. He might like the solitude. The fact is, I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him for a long time.’

  I found I was struggling to keep my eyes open. The Devil’s voice carried on in my ear.

  ‘Maybe he’s had enough. I keep thinking we’re bound to run into one another again but it doesn’t happen. I reckon he’s gone, Gideon. Taken early retirement. Packed up, pissed off, vamoosed, vanished, desaparecido. I think he’s done a runner. And you know what? I don’t blame him. I don’t blame him at all.’

  ‘I have to go to sleep now,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you do,’ he said. ‘How’s your leg?’

  ‘Sore,’ I said. ‘Not from what you did. From what I did. How long was I away?’

  ‘A long, long time,’ the Devil said. ‘I thought you were never coming back.’

  I wanted to stretch out but I didn’t want to push him off the end of the settee. He read my mind, or at least the movement of my feet. He leaned over behind me and gently eased me forward. In a moment we were lying slotted together again.

  ‘Sleep well,’ he said. ‘You’re going to miss me, Gideon, you know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. I need to go back.’

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ he said.

  He came and went through the night, if it was the night, just as he had before, but often when I woke, or half-woke, he was there against my back. Nothing happened between us, Bill, I swear it. Nothing sexual, I mean. We were like soldiers camping out under the stars. Comrades. I felt a great comfort in his presence. And I did dream. I had three dreams that were of the utmost clarity.

  In the first dream he and
I were walking in the hills. I don’t know where, Scottish hills somewhere. It was summer. We were just wandering. I had the most intense feeling of happiness. We saw a couple of people, a man and a woman, coming along the path behind us. It was obvious that they’d seen us, because they weren’t that far away. He said, ‘Let’s give them something to think about.’ So we hid, but we didn’t really hide, we just waited. And they came up to where we were, and although we were just standing there they couldn’t see us. They were looking around, confused, wondering where we were. We were laughing, and they couldn’t hear us either. I felt like a magician. That’s all I remember of that dream.

  The second dream was about my father. I didn’t see him but I know it was about him. There was a street with all the buildings in ruins. Dust and rubble everywhere. Men standing around in army uniforms. There was a wooden trap-door under some of the rubble, and they cleared a space around it and opened the door. There was a lot of shouting and an explosion. Then my father, or me, it was like it was both of us, went down some stone steps. It was very dark and very hot. As our eyes adapted to the dark we could see shapes. The shapes were bodies, and bits of bodies. Women and children and men piled up in the corners, and arms and legs and lumps of flesh lying everywhere. Horrible. But the worst thing was the silence. There was no sound at all, no groaning or crying, nobody moving. Just utter silence.

  WW: Gideon, the tape’s about to run out.

  GM: It’s okay. Stop it. There’s not much more to tell.

  That is where the tape finishes. The rest I knew I would remember without having to record it. I didn’t, in the end, tell Bill the third dream. He did prompt me, but I said I’d changed my mind, it wasn’t important. The third dream was about Elsie and Jenny. I was in bed with Elsie. We were just lying sleeping together, the way Jenny and I used to lie. And she said to me, ‘Is this it?’ And I said, ‘Is it what?’ And she said, ‘Just this. Is this all there is?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And she turned to kiss me, and it wasn’t Elsie, it was Jenny, and a huge wave of sadness rolled over me. If I was deliriously happy walking in the hills with the Devil, this was the opposite. Happiness missed. I knew the sadness was because of some fault in me, but I didn’t know what the fault was. It was as if there was something I didn’t have, a part missing.