The Testament of Gideon Mack

by James Robertson

  I looked around. Not a sound from anyone. I could not see Macmurray in the rows of faces. He did not reveal himself, either by word or by action.

  ‘Well, if that’s settled, I’m not going to say much more about Catherine. She wouldn’t have wanted it. She was a good friend, a good teacher, and she believed neither in God nor ghosts nor fairies, but in people.

  ‘She went to Mexico when she was a young woman, in the early 1960s. The Mexicans have a day they call el Dìa de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Again, it’s not spooky, it’s not morbid. It’s a day of celebration. It’s a mixture of Indian tradition and the Christianity that the Spanish brought to Mexico. Nowadays it’s celebrated on All Saints’ Day, the first of November. The Spanish moved it to this date in the Christian calendar to try to get rid of the native elements, but they failed. Maybe, like Catherine, the Indians found it hard to believe in saints, so they kept some of their own traditions going. The same thing happened here in Scotland with Hallowe’en, the end of the old Celtic year, but that’s another story.

  ‘What the Mexicans do on this day is honour their dead. They go and say hello to them, make them feel that they are not forgotten. They take them their favourite things – flowers, food, drinks, toys, photographs. They have picnics next to the graves of their loved ones and play music, sing songs, talk to them and talk about them. Sometimes they argue with them. There are sweets made in the shape of skeletons and skulls, and special bread with a toy skeleton baked inside it. If you’re the one that bites the skeleton it’s considered good luck. The Day of the Dead is not a sad or sorrowful day, it’s a happy one. In a way, what the living people are saying is, we’re not afraid of death, we accept that death is part of life, we accept that we are part of something much bigger than us.

  ‘You get variations on this tradition throughout Central America. In Guatemala they make huge kites from bamboo and crêpe paper and fly them above the graves. The kites are a kind of line of communication between the living and the dead. Between earth and heaven if you like, or between the present and the past. Catherine was interested in the symbolism of that too.

  ‘Something along those lines is what she wanted to happen today, and that’s what we’re going to try to make happen. Some of you might feel uncomfortable with this, but we have some young people from the Academy here, who I want to help me to fulfil Catherine’s wishes.’

  There had been, since my challenge to Macmurray, occasional sounds of disquiet, the shuffling of feet and creaking of pew-backs, a few mutterings and whisperings. I had warned Macmurray off, but I was surprised that nobody else was rising to protest. I had forgotten, of course, the overwhelming weight that bears down on most people who enter a church – the weight of years of learning not to disrupt, not to object, not to speak out against authority. As for Macmurray, I realised that, regardless of my pre-emptive strike, he might have decided to say nothing at all. He was not a popular man, and would not want to be seen as a Pharisee. Nor was he a fool: if he had come to observe, to take notes, to be a witness against me, then the further out of line I stepped without intervention from him, the better as far as he was concerned.

  I was past caring about him. I asked the children to come up to the front of the kirk. I explained that in Mexico marigolds were the flowers most commonly used to decorate graves on the Day of the Dead, but Catherine had disliked their smell, which was why I had got her roses and chrysanthemums instead. There were a dozen kites. I handed out eleven and kept one for myself. They were not as big as Guatemalan ones, I said, but they would be fine for Monimaskit. There were also a number of drums, tambourines and rattles, some skeleton masks and some rolled up coloured paper streamers. I distributed all of these and lined the percussionists up behind the coffin.

  We were almost ready to go. I said I was going to play some music. They might recognise the tune, but what mattered wasn’t the tune but the mood. I told them a little about Mexican mariachi, its Spanish, African and Indian influences, its blend of traditional and modern instruments and its comic, often subversive lyrics. Catherine, I said, must have been making a joke when she chose this song, ‘La Cucaracha’, and this particular version of it, for her funeral. I read out some of the Spanish words, and how they roughly translated: La cucaracha, la cucaracha, Ya no puede caminar; Porque no tiene, porque le falta, Marijuana que fumar: the cockroach can no longer walk, because she doesn’t have, because she lacks, some marijuana to smoke. Ya murio la cucaracha, Ya la llevan a enterrar, Entre cuatro zopilotes Y un raton de sacristan: the cockroach just died, and they carried her off to bury her, among four buzzards and the minister’s mouse. And then I asked them to listen.

  The kirk has a sound system, operated from a panel behind the pulpit. I’d already set up the CD Catherine had specified, with the volume turned up high. I walked over and hit the play button. ‘La Cucaracha’ is a daft, happy, easy tune. Even if you’ve never heard it before, you know it in seconds. And the mariachi sound – the trumpets and violins along with the five-stringed vihuela and the driving bass rhythm of the guitarrón, the wild shouts, laughs and whoops of the musicians – is such an outburst of life that you would have to have a very hard heart not to be uplifted by its mood. It sounded totally exotic in the Old Kirk, and totally joyous.

  After a couple of verses I paused the machine. I would play it again, I said, and to the sound of the cockroach’s song Catherine would be taken from the church down to the grave, and the rest of us would follow. And from the waiting percussionists I wanted as much drumming and rattling and tambourine-bashing as possible. They were not to be embarrassed, but to take their cue from the song. I wanted laughter and chatter. Catherine would have loathed a staid, sombre funeral. When we were outside, I would tell those who were holding kites what they were to do.

  I restarted the crazy happiness of ‘La Cucaracha’. The men from the undertakers in their black suits and white shirts didn’t even blink. In their trade they must learn early not to baulk at the unconventional, whether in a church or anywhere else. They wheeled the coffin to the door, loaded it into the back of the hearse, and the car slowly drove the fifty or so yards down the red-gravelled lane to the grave. Behind came my troop of celebrants. The children didn’t need much encouragement to make a noise. The song infected them, and soon there was a competition going to see who could make the most racket. A couple of lads wearing masks began to dance in time to the ragged beat being put out by their companions. There were a few shrill imitations of the Mexican cries on the recording. With the yellow and red kites being held like gaudy birds waiting for release, the procession did begin to sound and look, if not Mexican, certainly not Scottish. We were losing our reserve. Even some of the adults were smiling, pointing, swaying, taking jaunty wee half-steps. Others, on the other hand, looked on stonily, like Edinburgh ratepayers forced to attend some avant-garde Fringe performance involving naked flesh. But even these followed the coffin. In the lobby, I stopped to pick up the last box of items for distribution at the grave.

  We formed a large circle all around the open lair. Nobody, as far as I could see, had stalked off in disgust. Like those worthy Edinburgh bodies, they doubtless didn’t want to miss anything that might affront them still further. Yet nothing had been particularly outrageous or offensive. It just wasn’t what was expected.

  The coffin was moved on to struts placed across the grave, and straps were passed under it. Usually there are cords attached to the coffin for relatives or friends to hold as the coffin is lowered, but all the weight is really taken by the straps. The undertakers and gravediggers would handle these. When the funeral director had asked me about cord-holders, I’d said, ‘There’s to be only one. If you can supply one strong cord attached to the coffin, that will be sufficient.’

  From the open door of the kirk came further mariachi tunes as the CD played on. Meanwhile, I organised the children. ‘Percussionists,’ I said, ‘keep percussing. Kite-flyers, come with me. Can we have some adults too, please, to help get the
se kites into the air?’

  A wave of unease went round the crowd. I could see some folk wanting to join in, others holding them back with their disapproval. I led the eleven children with kites away from the crowd. Elsie was a foot away from me. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself, Gideon,’ I heard her say. I ignored her. ‘Come on,’ I said to the people around her. ‘If you don’t want to do it for me, or for Catherine, do it for the kids. Help them to get their kites flying.’

  A couple of younger men that I didn’t know broke away, and they were followed by another. They teamed up with different children, and soon we had two, three, four, half a dozen kites sailing in the breeze, their long tails stretching and snaking. I glanced at the crowd. A kite is a wonderful thing: if there is a kite in the air people can’t help looking at it, and if they look at it they can’t help willing it to stay up. All eyes were on us as we hoisted another, and another, and another. The children unwound the strings and spread themselves out so that the kites wouldn’t get tangled up. Some of them began to make them dive and leap in the air. I heard laughter and even a cheer from the crowd by the grave. As each kite went up the drums and tambourines and rattles banged and shook in a welcoming fanfare. I hadn’t planned that: the children had intuitively entered into the spirit of the occasion. In another minute we had all the kites, including mine, flying high above the graves of the Old Kirk.

  I asked the children to come back in among the crowd and to pass the strings of the kites to anybody who wanted a shot. Then I walked back to the head of the grave and, with the help of one of the gravediggers, tied the handle of my kite to the cord attached to Catherine’s coffin. I let it go, the cord went taut, held. Catherine, the one and only cord-holder, was now also the twelfth kite-flyer.

  I said, ‘We’re ready now to let Catherine down into the ground.’

  The men stepped forward. Four of them took the strain on the straps while a fifth slid the struts away. Then, with the kite-string rubbing lightly against the edge of the grave, but with the kite still bravely dancing above us, the coffin was lowered.

  I had a sheet of Blu-tack with me, and I handed it to the children with streamers and asked them to stick them to the great family stone and two smaller ones that bore upon them the names of three previous generations of Craigies. At ground level the breeze wasn’t strong enough to make the streamers really stream, but they rustled and flapped a little. I put the flowers around the stones too, and I took from my box the selection of sweets that I’d bought from Jim Currie and spread them out on the nearest flat stone. There were toffees, wine gums and other sweets, but the main item was a whole box of Skull Crushers, strawberry and cream flavoured chocolates shaped like skulls, bad for the teeth and stomach no doubt, but perfect for my present purpose. I invited the children, and then everybody else, to help themselves. I ate a skull myself. The children didn’t need much persuading, but most of the adults in the crowd stayed where they were.

  Then I was aware of a movement among them, of people parting to let through a silver-haired man in a three-piece suit. He approached the flat gravestone, and the kids gathered round it felt his presence and stood back. With a sly smile on his face Finlay Stewart reached out his long white fingers, delicately extracted a skull from the box and popped it in his mouth. He gave me a look of intense boyish satisfaction and slipped back into the crowd again.

  I had the last two items in my pocket: a miniature of Islay malt whisky and the plug of cannabis I’d taken from Catherine’s house. I held them up for all to see. ‘Catherine,’ I said, ‘enjoyed a dram. It was one of the things that kept her going. She appreciated a good malt, but she also hated waste, which is why she’s only getting a miniature just now.’ I dropped the bottle into the grave. ‘And she also enjoyed a smoke. It was illegal but it gave her relief from the pain she suffered. Wherever she’s gone, she won’t be in pain any more, and there won’t be any laws against marijuana, so she can take this with her too.’ I dropped it in. ‘For the rest of you, there will be tea and coffee and sandwiches in the church hall, and there is also some whisky for those who would like to raise a glass to Catherine. You kite-flyers and musicians will have to go back to school fairly soon. Your teachers will no doubt tell you when it’s time to go. Meanwhile, you’re welcome to join us in the hall, or to stay out here. Please take the kites and instruments and masks away with you. They’re yours to keep and share with your friends. Use them again. And remember, whenever you’re near this place, what went on here today. Have you enjoyed yourselves?’

  A thin chorus of assent went up. They still weren’t sure if this was allowed.

  ‘That’s what Catherine Craigie wanted,’ I said. ‘You were never taught by her, most of you probably never met her, but I hope you’ll always remember her name. Maybe, even today, she was trying to teach us something.

  ‘Friends, there is no benediction, no blessing that I can give you. That is not what this is about. I said I would bury Catherine and I have buried her. And now there is something else I must do. I never got to speak to her about the astonishing things that have happened to me in the last couple of weeks. She wouldn’t have believed me if I had. But the time has come for me to speak of these things. If you wish to hear, come with me to the church hall and I will tell you what happened to me in those days when you thought I was drowned in the river.

  ‘I said back there in the church that Catherine didn’t believe in ghosts or fairies or God. Neither did I until two weeks ago. No, I did not believe in God. I did not believe that there was any life but this life, any world but this world. But in this I was wrong. I believe now that there is another world beyond ours, a world beyond death, the strangeness and wonderfulness of which we can only guess at. How do I know this? I know it because for those three days I was missing, I had a glimpse of that world. I walked and talked with somebody from that world. I walked and talked with the Devil, and if you come with me to the hall I will tell you about him.’

  And as I was speaking, and as I raised my voice to tell them this, and as I raised my eyes above their looks of puzzlement and incredulity, I saw him again: my Devil, walking among the gravestones in his black trousers and black polo-shirt. I saw him standing over by the far wall, watching our proceedings. He moved so smoothly along the wall he might have been gliding. I strained to see if that was indeed the case, and I saw his feet, and they were wearing my old boots. And I saw him smile at me and half-raise a hand in a wave. I waved back, but a second later he was gone, and I saw him no more. And then I myself was moving, not gliding but hurrying as fast as my limp would allow me, towards the church hall on the other side of the kirk, with the press and din of the crowd at my heels, and one voice rising above that commotion, the voice of Peter Macmurray, calling me a blasphemer and a false shepherd, an atheist and a hypocrite, denouncing me to my flock and crying down on my head the vengeance of the Lord, and I knew that like Lorna he was right, but right in such a wrong way, and I limped on to the hall so that I could get ahead of him and of them all, so that I could get on to the platform at the far end, where I could tell them what had happened to me and why I could no longer be their minister.

  XLIII

  I do not need to write here what I said. I have already written it. I told them everything that I have recorded here. I mean everything. I told them about the Stone, how it had appeared to me back at the start of the year, and how I had known it was a sign but had had no idea what it meant. I told them that I had never, since the day I first came to Monimaskit in the hope of being chosen as the new minister – from long before that, in fact, before even I was a student of Divinity at Edinburgh – I had never believed in the existence of God. I was sorry to confess this to them now, but I had to tell the truth. The hall was thick with silence. Tea, coffee, whisky, sandwiches, cakes, nothing was touched. I looked out on a sea of gazing, uncomprehending faces. Now that the moment had arrived, I felt liberated and full of hope, and yet also, before those faces, strangely powerless.

 
I told them next what had happened when I fell into the Black Jaws, about being rescued by the man in the cave, how he had tended and fed me, and how I had come to know that he was none other than the person sometimes called Satan. The Devil. I described what he looked like. I said I had just seen him in the graveyard, but he had disappeared. I told how my leg had been broken, and how he had mended it with his finger of fire. There was laughter, snorts of disgust. Somebody said, ‘You’re drunk, man.’ Another voice said, ‘Aye, or he’s been smoking that stuff he put in her grave.’ No, I told them, I was completely sober. My head had never been clearer. I had seen the Devil’s power but I had ended up neither fearing nor hating him, but pitying and loving him. Were we not told to love the sinner but hate the sin? Who could be a greater sinner than that fallen angel? None of us was without sin. I, their minister, was a sinner. I used to say, as a joke, that being a minister didn’t make you a bad person. Being a sinner didn’t make you a bad person either. We had all sinned. ‘What have you done then?’ a voice called. ‘Apart from lying and cheating, what sins have you committed?’ I took a deep breath and answered. It was all over now anyway. I had coveted my neighbour’s wife, I said. Worse than that, I had made love to her. My best friend’s wife. Even while I was mourning my own dead wife, whom I had not loved enough, I had had sex with Elsie Moffat in my own bedroom in the manse, in the very bed where my wife and I had slept. I saw Elsie below me turn white, shake her head, put her fists to her temples, I heard her shouting, ‘No, no, no.’ I saw John beside her, yelling, swearing at me, calling me a liar, sick, insane. He started towards me, but Elsie held him back. She began to drag him from the hall. He saw some of the children from the school, I saw them, their gaping mouths, he could not attack me, and now it was John that was leading Elsie from the hall. I shouted after them that I was sorry, but I had to tell the truth. The crowd swelled and ebbed below me. Disbelief, mockery. I saw Amelia coming to the front, shouting at me to stop, to get down off the platform and leave with her. ‘You’re ill,’ she said. She turned to the crowd. ‘Can’t you see he’s ill?’ I denied it. I’m not ill, I said, I’m not insane. Everything I was telling them was the absolute truth. I told how I had walked for hours down the tunnel, how I had come upon the hatch beyond which was the boiling hell of the earth’s core. I told of the conversations I’d had with the Devil. It was he who had put the Stone in Keldo Woods. He watched us from the windows of the other world, he knew everything we did, and God watched too. But where was God? The Devil hadn’t seen him. God had gone missing. The Devil was tired, he was sick of what he was supposed to do, he was like you and me, a being without purpose, without hope. Everything had gone wrong with the grand design, the plan. There was no plan any more. That was what I had learned in my three days with the Devil. There was no plan. There was no redemption, no salvation, no system of debts and payments. But there was another life. There was more to come. That was why I could no longer remain as minister of Monimaskit. I had to find out more about what was to come and to do that I had to go away. I had to go and meet with the Devil again.