The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  Not that some of the other pupils were not sharp-eyed and malicious enough to see what was happening. They all said that old Trill was in love with Thelma and teased her with their knowledge. And Thelma was in one way proud and in another embarrassed. For it could not be said that Mr Trill was handsome nor that his teaching though enthusiastic was interesting. Her own interests were in romantic books and horoscopes. Mr Trill, whose knowledge of classics was devoted and pure, would have been horrified if he had known the quality of the magazines that she devoured every weekend and how firmly she believed that the stars controlled her every action. If in fact she had been in love with Mr Trill she would have searched her horoscopes for signs and omens, she would have asked her aunt to read her tea leaves for her, she would have seen the whole world as an open book trembling with apparitions. The slightest action such as breaking a cup would have been prodigal of supernatural signals and her diary would have been as important to her as Vergil was to him. But Mr Trill remained in ignorance of that world of possible commotions and storms, pullings of hair and jealousies, for to Mr Trill the universe was an ordered place which now and again throbbed with lines from the great poets who had never felt in their whole lives despairs and terrors but had been inspired to their highest flights by the gods themselves.

  Was it perhaps that Mr Trill, sensing that his youth was leaving him, committed all his feelings to that one girl representative to him of all youth, or was it that he was truly in love? Who can tell? It is certain that if she had been ill he would have been able – if he had been asked – to wait patiently at her bedside for hours and days on end. But as for her days of health what could he do during them? She was certainly pretty with her fair pigtail, her pale face with very blue eyes, her long slender neck, her blue blazer and her blue skirt. She was like a ship that is ready to leave harbour and enter the mist that shrouds all youth when it sets off on its journey. How he would have protected her in his imagination from that hollow journey from which he could see great suffering and difficulties springing, similar in fact to the ones that he had endured himself.

  If he had only known her as she really was, her hurried glances at unfinished homework, her concern with hockey, her wish that one day she would have a pretty house, nice clothes and crystal vases, and her total attention to the banalities emitted by disc jockeys in the early hours of the morning before she went to school. If he had only seen her mind that was totally ordinary, and realised that never once did she think of Vergil after she had finished her set work for the day and that she panicked totally when she was faced by a difficult problem in mathematics. If he had seen her when she was dressing for a school dance pirouetting in front of the long mirror in the corridor. If he had seen her when she was quarrelling with her younger brother at breakfast every morning while she grabbed at the last minute the thin slice of toast that was her only sustenance at that time of day since she was looking after her figure. If he had seen her mind which was a storehouse of miscellaneous information and feelings, like an antique shop which is cluttered with all sorts of goods leaning crazily against each other, mirrors, mattresses, wardrobes, pillows and hundreds of other articles which have settled there as naturally as snow.

  But he did not see this, he only saw her in his classroom when the sun shone through the window on to her hair, making it radiant and pure, flawless and perfect. If he had seen the treachery of which she was capable, the tantrums, the jealousies, but, no, he saw none of these.

  Sometimes he tried to catch her eye, but she always looked away. Was it perhaps that she had not seen him? Was it that she was dreaming some impossible dream of youth? Was it, dreadful thought, that she did not really like him? But at least he could test that by marking her jotter, by being close to her, by, most daring action of all, sitting beside her at the same desk.

  And soon she would be leaving the school altogether, soon she would be setting out on her temporal voyage after her eternity of dreaming, and he would never see her again. The days were passing and the end of the session was approaching. How his heart beat as if it wished to squeeze a value out of every passing moment. Soon the last bell would toll and she would walk out of the gates with her school bag over her shoulder, over her arm, among all the other ex-prefects and ordinary scholars. Soon she would enter the summer after her spring. And for these months, these weeks, these days, the desks glittered as if with a supernatural radiance, and Mr Trill spent himself on poetry and rhetoric. The days passed, the bells rang, the hours were devoured. Soon the school would be a dark place again without illumination. My youth, my youth, is going, thought Mr Trill.

  And then one fatal day he passed by design the room which the senior girls were allowed to use during their free time. Perhaps he thought that he would catch a glimpse of her whom he loved through the half-open door. In front of him he could see the cracked mirror in which the girls studied their own reflections, and there standing in front of it was another girl, not Thelma, but someone else. Who? What was her name? Muriel? And Muriel, with coat flying about her as if it were a gown was parading in front of the mirror and saying,

  ‘And now Thelma my dearest love, carus cara carum, will you please tell me what Vergil meant by these famous words which he once spoke when having a solitary pee in Italy. Will you please tell me that, my dearest Thelma?’

  He couldn’t see her face in the mirror because the glass was cracked and she for the same reason could not see him. Her capped head flashed and flickered, and her gown swung and floated. And from behind her, though he could see no one, he heard the happy clear laughter of Thelma, as if she were delighted with the performance which spotty-faced Muriel was giving. He stood transfixed. He . . . He could not go in, he would not give them that pleasure, he was too proud, too dignified for that. But if ever a heart . . . if ever a heart was broken it was his. Dazed he stood, the pain piercing his soul, and listened to the happy laughter as if it were coming to him from the depths of hell itself, from that inferno in which Vergil and Dante had travelled. His legs shook, his face was on fire. What a fool he had been, what an old fool. To think that he had ever credited that girl with any delicacy of feeling, to think that he had thought she would walk with him through these shining pages, so resonant with power and pathos. No, it was impossible. Never again, never, never again. Never again would he give his heart to anyone in order to endure such mockery. Muriel disported herself in front of the cracked mirror of that poky room and there just outside it, a frail eavesdropper, Mr Trill died.

  And thus it was that when the pupils came to say goodbye to him he wasn’t available: he had as he had written on the board been asked to take part in an urgent meeting. In fact he was standing alone in the library watching them leave the school for the last time, now and again turning back to look, and waving their scarves in the air, as they entered the street on which people talked and walked, and passed the shops in which the transactions of the world were carried out. Mr Trill hardened his heart forever and put on his Roman shield, while at the same time he read that poem of Catullus in which he says goodbye to his brother and which ends,

  Et in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

  In his wanderings, still carrying his case as if he were a clerk in a dimly lit office, Mr Trill had come to the banks of the river again but at a different point from that at which he had landed. It flowed sluggishly along through the pervading mist and beyond it Mr Trill could see the vague mass of the castle about which he had previously been told. It seemed to him that he could hear from the thin mist the baying of hounds.

  ‘Strange,’ said a voice from behind him and when Mr Trill turned round in a startled manner he saw a little man with a wrinkled puzzled brow who was gazing at him with dull eyes.

  ‘No one knows what goes on in there,’ said the man. ‘I’ve often stood here and wondered. Some people go into that castle and they never come out again. I’ve seen it happening.’ And he nodded his head wisely two or three times.

  ‘That’s odd,’ said
Mr Trill.

  ‘It is indeed,’ said the little man speaking rapidly like one who wishes to convince his audience of an important idea.

  ‘I have a natural turn of curiosity myself, my wife often used to speak to me about it, and I have often stood here wondering what is going on over there. I have seen people being ferried across to the castle and for a moment when they land the hounds seem to stop barking and there is silence but the people never come back. Not once have I seen any of them returning.’

  Mr Trill found it hard to place the man’s accent; it was as if he was pretending to be more educated than he really was. His mind, attracted by puzzles – every morning in the staff-room he had been in the habit of filling in a newspaper crossword – brooded vaguely on the castle. Was there some secret connected with it? Did some terrible fate belong to it, some obscene tortures? Was there even in Hades a group of people who managed the shadowy territory as if it were a real empire.

  And if so who were these people and why were they never seen?

  ‘Some people say,’ said the little man as if he had understood Mr Trill’s thought, ‘that men’s brains are taken out of their heads and stored in the cellars there.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Trill shivering.

  ‘But most of us just want to stay here,’ said the little man sadly. ‘We suffered enough while we were on earth.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Mr Trill. ‘I can understand that and one could be happy enough in this place – even in this place.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said the little man. ‘However, perhaps you are different. Perhaps you are an adventurer and wish to see what is going on on the other side.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Mr Trill. ‘I have suffered enough too and in any case there is more than enough here to puzzle me without looking for more.’

  ‘Every man to his nature,’ said the little man. ‘For myself I have always been of an inquisitive nature and I spend a lot of my time here on the bank of the river thinking and wondering what is happening in the castle. But that is the way I am,’ he said proudly. ‘Not everyone is like that.’

  He brooded for a moment and continued, ‘Anyway, I’m not important. I was never important. There were millions like me when I was alive. But I always had this curiosity. When my fellow workmen were content to accept orders I would wonder if they were the right orders, do you understand me, and why they were being given. And many times I thought I could have done a better job myself.’

  ‘I can appreciate that,’ said Mr Trill absently.

  ‘You are saying that but you are not listening to me much,’ said the little man in a resigned voice. ‘I understand that and I’m used to it. No one ever listened to me. I used to sit and people would talk around me and it was as if I wasn’t there. This place now is full of gods and goddesses. But have you ever thought how hard it is for people like me to get up in the morning?’ And he fixed Mr Trill with his dull eyes. ‘There is nothing ahead of them, no glory, nothing like that. All they have is their work. Famous people have great events to look forward to. They have parties, and they get invited to dinners, but nothing like that ever happened to me. Our wives despise us because nothing important happens to them through us. And women like to be noticed, they like to dress up, to speak to important people.’

  As he spoke the man seemed to become smaller and smaller, almost diminishing to the size of a dwarf, and Mr Trill thought that even his colour was changing as if from white to brown or even black. His brow too was wreathed with wrinkles which looked like tiny snakes.

  ‘I can tell that you once were a man of importance,’ said the little man. ‘It’s in the way you walk, the way you speak. But I never had any power. Sometimes when the day was stormy I didn’t want to get up from my bed. I had to force myself to put my feet on the floor. My sons and daughters despised me, for I wasn’t famous in any way. No one saluted me when I passed them on the street. In shops I was served last because even the shop assistants knew that I wasn’t important. And if I tried to kick up a row they wouldn’t listen to me, they ignored me as if I wasn’t there. And sometimes I could hardly hear my own voice. Policemen pushed me aside and charged me with offences because I had no one to protect me. They would rough me up and then let me free and not even apologise. That happened to me once, it was a case of mistaken identity but the cops just said, “Don’t you show your face here again, you little bastard.” “And what about my scars,” I said, “what about my black eye.” “Your black arse more like. Clear off or we’ll mark you for life.” But of course they don’t do that, they use rubber truncheons so they don’t mark you. Why, even my wife didn’t meet me off the ferry because she was ashamed of me. No one loved me all the days of my life. Can you understand what I’m telling you?’ said the little man, who had almost become a hunchback in the dim light. ‘All I saw of the world was my bench and my tools. And if I had an idea someone else would take the credit for it. Oh, they spoke nice to you but they took the credit just the same. If I told a joke I always got the story wrong because of nervousness and no one could get the point of it. I was always flustered and I spoke too fast and so no one bothered with me. Even you aren’t listening to me properly. You are saying to yourself, Why doesn’t this fellow stop speaking? What is he on about? But I have thoughts of my own too and I’m not stupid. I was a good carpenter in my day, I have my certificate. There are a lot of the young ones now who don’t have a certificate and couldn’t care less, but I cared. I liked to make a piece of good furniture. Understand me? Are you listening? I took pride in my work but the others don’t do that. Why I’ve seen them putting nails, would you believe it, in mahogany instead of joints. And have you seen their tables and their chairs? A dog wouldn’t sit on them. And they talk and people listen to them, that’s what I can’t understand. They don’t care about anything but they are listened to just the same. Even my wife didn’t listen to me. Perhaps you’ve never had that experience. Perhaps you were never married. You don’t look as if you were married. Oh, I notice things and I said to myself, as soon as I saw you, I don’t think this fellow is married.

  ‘Even my children laughed at me and because I was so small they would beat me up to get money for the gambling machines. When they grew up and were earning a wage they never gave me any of it; they would say, “We didn’t ask to be born.” They expected their food and lodging as if they had a right to it. And what about me I used to say to them, “Do you think I wasn’t born?” They blamed me for their lives, for bringing them into the world. I was tortured by them, they made fun of me, they imitated me.

  ‘My children and my wife despised me. What was there for me? Many a time I thought of killing myself but the good God has told us not to do that. And anyway I never had the courage. Do you know what the difference between the rich and the poor is? I’ve thought about it a lot and even more since I came here. The rich have a future, do you understand me, and the poor don’t have a future. There was a star I used to watch in the sky in the morning before I went to work. It might have been Venus, I don’t know. It was as sharp as a thorn. I used to hate that star and yet I looked for it every morning when I got out of my bed.

  ‘Even when I died my family scrambled for the few things that I had. Do you know that they broke the joint of my finger to get my ring. See, I can show it to you.’

  And he showed Mr Trill his broken finger as if it were a trophy. ‘And they bought the cheapest coffin they could find. I knew about good wood and I knew it was cheap. But they didn’t care. And how many were at my funeral? I can tell you. Six. My wife didn’t come. She pretended she was too sick. Imagine that.

  ‘Every day that passed was like every other day, except that some days if I had nerve enough I got drunk. But then my wife would shout and scream at me and say to me, “How do you expect me to pay for the hairdresser if you’re going to be as drunk as a pig?” You tell me that. She was like a knife in my side. She didn’t just want food and shelter. She wanted honour, she wanted people to look up to her. Why
did I live at all, that is what I wish to ask?’

  And the small man gazed up at Mr Trill with the large liquid eyes of a dog and Mr Trill could find no answer to his question.

  ‘I thought so,’ said the little man, ‘I thought so. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you at all. I don’t blame anyone at all. This is how it is.’

  And before Mr Trill could speak he had faded into the mist so that after a moment it was as if he had never been there at all, as if he were only an emanation of the mist, while behind him the castle glowered in the dimness, the castle whose purpose was obscure, and from whose environs hounds howled now and again, as if they themselves were questioning, with their wet snouts, the mist around them.

  There was a blind blundering about him and Mr Trill recoiled as a gigantic figure loomed out of the mist, like a wrecked yet moving ship.

  ‘Aargh,’ said the mouth of the figure, and its words were strangled in its throat.

  ‘I,’ said Mr Trill about to run still clutching his case. ‘I . . . ’

  ‘Aargh,’ said the figure searching for him and laying a hand on his arm. The massive head leaned down towards him, in the middle of it a scorched single dead eye, piteously dead.

  It was like the huge idiot that Mr Trill had often seen, in the town where he taught, in his vast flapping coat standing in the middle of the road and directing the traffic while sometimes the policemen looked on benevolently and sometimes drew him kindly away on to the safe pavement.

  ‘You?’ said the figure, lightly touching his arm.

  ‘Mr Trill,’ said Mr Trill in an agitated voice.

  ‘Trill,’ echoed the huge mouth. ‘Trill.’

  The word was like a big stone in its jaw.

  ‘Noman?’ said the figure, ‘No man?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Trill, ‘not no man.’ Surely this giant was not still searching for the nimble Ulysses even in the depths of Hades. ‘Not Noman,’ said Mr Trill thinking of the painting by Turner where Ulysses stood high on his ship, his arms spread triumphantly in victory while he waved his flag and around the ship sailors like dead souls milled, and on the left there was the darkness which the raw sun had not yet illuminated.