The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  ‘Noman,’ said the figure with a sigh. ‘Alone was. Noman came, killed my sheep, killed my good sheep, ate them. Lucky I caught. Ate them.’

  ‘What?’ said Mr Trill. ‘Did Noman eat your sheep? Was that why you . . . ?’

  ‘Alone was, shepherd, harming noman. My lovely sheep. Ate them.’

  ‘But,’ said Mr Trill, ‘that is not . . . ’

  ‘Got them . . . Ate.’ The giant licked his lips as if he felt blood on them.

  ‘Cheated me. Said name Noman.’ His dead eye turned towards Trill, a waste circle.

  And Mr Trill had a vision. Inside the cave the quick intelligence of Ulysses searched lithely, seized on the stick, grew an eye, liquid, smart, Mediterranean, put out the other savage eye, and blazed afresh as with the sharp vision of a fierce dedication to survival.

  It was the new blue eye of the Mediterranean, European, scientific, piercing, single, egotistical.

  ‘My sheep, lovely sheep,’ said the pastoral giant. ‘Killed them. Noman spoke. Lonely. His voice echoed.’

  The massive hands had left Mr Trill’s arm and they flapped about in the mist like grey claws, extinct, searching.

  ‘Felt for them. Threw stones. Heard them falling in the water. Laughed at me.’ He stopped as if he were listening to the laughter coming out of the darkness, echoing from all directions. ‘Noman, noman, noman,’ said the laughter. And that was what it was, thought Mr Trill, it was the laughter of Noman, the new Noman, the interchangeable Noman, the schemer who would survive, the nameless one, eternal salesman of the new moving world. Where Noman went no flowers grew but around the ancient giant there was a solid shadow, a place of ancient songs and foliage.

  ‘Noman,’ said the mouth. ‘Talker. Little man. Mouth always going. Speaking. Took sheep away.’

  The long sharp stick hissed through his eye and he was blundering about on the headland where the wind howled, the wind of his own land, dear to him, now blind, unseen. The sound of the wind was like the music of strings, singing about the lonely land, while Ulysses headed for the cities, devious, a blue eel.

  ‘Noman,’ sighed the giant. ‘Cheated me. Caught him eating sheep. Ate the little men. Eye put out. Alone. Shouted Noman. Noman came. Noman didn’t come.’ He floundered about in the dead branches of language, puzzled, blundering, ‘Noman didn’t come, went on in ship. Noman came, of own people. Laughed. All laughed. Noman laughed. Every man laughed. Own people laughed. Brothers, sisters laughed. Noman laughed, laughter everywhere.’

  And Mr Trill heard the laughter coming from all directions, thousands and thousands of little distinct laughters blending into one huge laughter as if like the sun on the Mediterranean the world was a bowl of sunny laughter. And through it moved Ulysses, a thin whip of survival, heading for his island, his mind ticking ceaselessly like a bomb, an infection returning home.

  Laughter everywhere, the ironic laughter of the whole world, echoing Noman, the sea and the rocks laughing, as little Noman flourished his flag and the sails filled, and the sea waited, laughing ceaselessly. In the centre of the laughter was little vain Noman on whom the joke was as much as on the stranded giant, lost among his vast woolly sheep.

  ‘Alone was,’ said the giant with the words like pebbles in his throat. ‘Night and day the same. Eye bandaged, people about me. “Who?” they said. “Noman,” I said. And they laughed. Eye throbbed. Pain everywhere. In plain, on hills. Nothing seen.’

  Tenderly Mr Trill touched the giant’s arm. The monster sighed as if pleased. His vast blind head nodded in the air above, searching.

  Mr Trill saw them all in their tribes, in the caves, huddled together, their sheep about them. The sun rose, the sun set, day after day: darkness came down, darkness dispersed. The fields were white, then black. Still they huddled together, rose in the morning, then tended their sheep.

  Then Noman came. The island was seen by a new eye, a quick moving eye that investigated advantages, positions, vegetation, food. It moved about the island seeking to use it, falling now here, now there, like a torch, powerful and shining. It did not hear the music of the island, the antique tune that the wind made, had made for century after century. It was a famished restless eye that would not cease moving till death came. It did not see the antique heavy settled figures.

  Noman was a stranger on the island, but it was as if it belonged to him, as if its politics were his, as if its future belonged to him. The sharp unjaded salesman seized on all things on the island as a woman picks up and adores her own dear ornaments, which are hers alone, which tell who she is. It is her house, every corner, every cranny, every little china figure. So the island was to Noman, for Noman was no man. He was the little figure lost in eternity but determined that eternity should echo with his mind.

  ‘Noman,’ came the voice out of the mist. And the huge stones fell into the water and beside the boat there was the thick darkness that not even Noman could illuminate. Though the rigging might hum, the darkness would always follow the ship like a stain, and no sunlight would ever darken it.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Mr Trill over and over.

  ‘Name Sorry?’ said the giant.

  ‘No, name Trill, but sorry sorry.’

  The giant gazed blankly down, among the thickets of language, a lost head. It sighed as if the words were painful to it, like the stick that it remembered, the sharp burning stick that hissed about its once serene ring.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Mr Trill, ‘most sorry.’

  The craggy head lowered and sighed among the mist.

  ‘It is Noman that caused it,’ thought Mr Trill. And it seemed to him that he had been given a tremendous revelation, so huge that he could hardly grasp it, as he could not grasp the grey giant who was so helpless beside him. The physical was manoeuvred by the mental, the body was guided by the mind. The headlands, ancient with music, surrendered to the intelligence. Ulysses was the blue sharp quick Mediterranean eel.

  ‘Alone,’ said the giant. And its voice echoed in the greyness.

  ‘Alone.’

  It bent its head down over Mr Trill as if seeking, and then with the same sigh, as if it had smelt from him, as well, the betrayals of civilisation, turned away, and blundered off like a big sad dog into the mist.

  Mr Trill stood behind the lectern and made his last speech.

  ‘There have been many changes since I came to this school. I would like to think that in the early days the influence of the Roman and Greek traditions was very strong but now all that has gone. In the old days we wore gowns but now hardly anyone wears a gown. I remember Mr Mason who taught history. He used to mark three hundred exercises a week. He was a man devoted to his studies, a true Roman. Sometimes I think that it wasn’t Octavius who won at all but Mark Antony and that he brought Cleopatra to Rome: but I have only thought this in more recent times.

  ‘I have been very happy here on the whole. My greatest delight was when some pupil or other came to me and asked me the meaning of the words in a poem, but that, I regret to say, was in my early career. However all is not yet lost and we pass the torch on to the young who will, we hope, keep it alight. As I stand here behind this lectern I feel I am only saying au revoir, not goodbye. The dead are always with us though we may sometimes forget that. A school is not a building, it is a communion of the living and the dead. Have we not added our tiny stone to the cairn that is perpetually being built? My father was a classics master as I am and he passed down his tradition to me. My mother . . . ’ And here Mr Trill paused but didn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘I know that on days like these it is traditionally the case that we tell jokes. But I feel in too sombre a mood to tell jokes. For I see every day the barbarians approaching more and more closely to the walls.’ And here he looked directly into the eyes of the headmaster. ‘I see our traditions dying, discipline being eroded day after day. Is it our fault? Is it the fault of society? Who knows? Is it the treason of the clerks? I remember when I came here first the headmaster told me, “You must never sit dow
n when you are teaching. How can a man teach well when he is sitting down?” I have never forgotten his words and I have always obeyed them. For when you sit down you begin to grow lazy, and laziness is our enemy. Laziness and despair. I have never despaired. In spite of everything I have always kept in front of me the example of the Romans, people like Brutus and Cato. For how can we live unless we have great exemplars to sustain us?

  ‘I remember many years ago there was a boy in this school and he couldn’t pass his Latin which he needed for getting into university. I spent my intervals and free periods teaching him. And he managed to pass after all, he managed to get into university. But what did he do when he got there? He started to drink and go out at nights instead of attending to his studies and the next I heard of him he was working as a conductor on the buses. At times like these one feels that there is no point in going on. But there is a point in going on. It is a struggle which must be renewed every day, and we must not fail the generations, though it is true it seems to me that the earlier generations were the most mature and the most hardworking. There is a responsibility on us all, that is why we become teachers in the first place. I could never imagine myself as other than a teacher.’

  At the back of the room he could see the table laden with cakes and tea and it reminded him that his mother had once served in a school canteen before she had married his father. Again he was about to say something about her but refrained.

  ‘I often used to think about those teachers who left the school. What happened to them? They went out into the great wide world but what happened to them after that? Did they disappear from human view? No, they did not. Their work lies here and also in the hands of those who work and teach and turn lathes in the furthest corners of the earth. Perhaps even there our work is remembered, over the whole world. In some steaming jungle, on some ship or other, in an office, in the furthest east, perhaps our words and our instructions are still remembered. That is what I think, and that is my faith.

  ‘But do not forget that civilisation is thin and fragile, that the barbarians are always beating at the gates, and we must be the guardians and the watchers, sentries at our posts as even Socrates was. As long as we exist perhaps night won’t fall.

  ‘When I came here first the pupils wore school uniform. Now they don’t. These little things are significant, though some may not think so. When you think about it every little thing is significant. It is the addition of the little things that make up the quality of a civilisation, and a school too is part of civilisation, and is a leader and keeper of that civilisation.

  ‘My name is Trill, as you know, and on the whole I am an insignificant man. But I am the guardian of the works of men more significant than me. I am the casket for their works and their teachings and so I become significant. And the same is true of all of us. When I come into the room I am not just Mr Trill, I am Vergil and Homer as well. This, when you think of it, is a great honour. Of course in the tenor of my life I have done some petty things, perhaps to some of you. I may even have argued about the peg on which my coat was hung, but nevertheless beyond and behind all this I am the guardian of the best minds of the ages. Isn’t that a frightening responsibility? Sometimes, as you know, children will almost break our hearts because they do not seem to be listening to what we have to say to them. But in the end we shall prevail because that is what we must do, there is no alternative. There were times when I didn’t feel like coming to school in the mornings and some of you may have felt the same yourselves. But I came just the same because every minute counts.

  ‘I had this sense of urgency as if it had been left to me to save the souls of our younger generation. Was that, do you think, egotism or pride? Perhaps it was. So, before I leave, I wish to say to you that we must have this urgency. I know that many pupils used to laugh at me and say, “There is Mr Trill again, rushing along the corridor with his book open in front of him.” But why did I do that? It was because I did not wish to waste a minute, for the battle is continually around us. Sometimes its sound is muted by the concerns of the day, but don’t believe that it isn’t there and that many people don’t live and die in that battle. It too has its victims and its victors. It too has its flags and its cohorts and its generals. I was never one of the generals, I would have described myself as a corporal or even a standard bearer. But that didn’t bother me. The only thing that bothered me was, Will I be found at my post? Will I be a watchman?

  ‘And that is the final message that I would like to leave with you. We must do what we can the best we can. Nobody can ask any more from us.’

  The speech ended to prolonged applause. However, though Mr Trill didn’t hear them, there were criticisms. Morgan the Geography teacher for instance said,

  ‘One would think he was Julius Caesar or Hannibal the way he talked. Everyone knows that he had no time for the dimwits, and these are the real test after all. He was lucky to have had the best of it. Coffee, Miss Scott?’ He shook his hair back boyishly as he always did and Miss Scott said, ‘Tea for me, Mr Morgan. I thought you knew that.’

  During the brief meal the teachers talked about inflation, pay, bad pupils, shortage of accommodation, marks. Finally Mr Trill was left alone. When most of the teachers had left after saying goodbye to him, he himself slipped out. He walked along the empty corridors which the cleaners had already washed. His feet echoed with a hollow sound and it seemed to him that he was young again in that place which he had for so long inhabited. Voices returned to him from the dead, gowns rustled, the walls were clean and new again. He stood at the main door, pausing a moment before shutting it. Then he pulled the great ring of the handle behind him. As he walked across the playground it was as if he was dizzily coming into the world again, about to scream like a child which has just been born. He descended the steps and waited for the cars to pass. Then he crossed the road and went home to his lodgings.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Mr Trill as the figure emerged from the mist about him. But it did not answer, as it shyly gazed across the dark water.

  Mr Trill felt a strange awe and ardour as if he were in the presence of a famous, almost divine man such as he had never seen in his life before. Head bowed, as if it were a monk, the figure studied the river with its fathomless modest eyes.

  ‘I think,’ said Mr Trill, ‘I think you are Vergil himself.’ And he went down on his knees as if to a god. The dark water, the swirling mist, were about the two of them as they met in the faded light.

  ‘I think,’ said Mr Trill, ‘by your silence and your modesty that you are Vergil himself. I wish to tell you, I wish to tell you,’ he stammered, ‘that I think you are the greatest of all poets.’

  ‘Sunt lacrimae rerum mentem mortalia tangunt,’ he said, ‘I think that is the greatest line of poetry that was ever written.

  ‘The tears of things,’ said Mr Trill as he gazed at the figure with love and respect.

  ‘That is all past,’ said Vergil. ‘That is all over now. My work was inadequate. In comparison with divine Homer my work was nothing.’

  ‘But the pity,’ said Mr Trill, ‘the pity, the divine pity.’

  ‘That too is over,’ said Vergil. ‘My trouble was that I could never write narrative. I should never have written of Rome. I was never a public poet. Better for me to have written of my farm. I should never have written of great events. What were politics to me?’

  Gazing sadly across the waters he said, ‘I should have destroyed all my verse. It was not good enough. I did not have the divine sunniness of Homer and his good temper. The best I could do were set pieces. I substituted style for content. I was a decadent. All I wished was to be a private person.’

  ‘Did you not then get pleasure from writing?’ said Mr Trill.

  ‘Pleasure? It was the greatest labour that one can conceive of. Words slipped away from me. I could not keep them together. I was alone, polishing and polishing, refining and refining. How tired I was of Aeneas. Was he perhaps myself? If he wasn’t myself who else could he be? Relig
ious, correct, boring, what did I have to do with him? As one of your own poets has written, the task made a stone of my heart, I was tired of him. How is the founding of a country worth a lost love? How? I betrayed myself. Is Rome worth one broken heart? Tell me that. That is the question that has tormented me. Is the great task, the great hero, worth the lives of the innumerable dead?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Mr Trill.

  ‘But is it? Think of it. Aeneas has to found Rome and what was Rome? Think of what it became, the games at which human beings were thrown to the lions while the emperors and the mob cheered in their bronze and their rags. Was that worth the death of one woman, one soul? How could I have written the words, “But meanwhile Aeneas the True longed to allay her grief and dispel her sufferings with kind words”?

  ‘I tell you, I grew tired of him. He should have forgotten about Rome. What was his duty but a terrible blindness? What are all our duties in the end but that? I betrayed myself as a poet. What were these boring battles to me when I wished to write about the human heart? What is history but the deaths that we need not share? That is why I wished the Aeneid to be burned because in it I had been false to myself. Do you understand? It wasn’t the labour that I regretted nor was it the technical revision that I needed another three years for. Not at all. It was the central question that perplexed me and that I couldn’t solve. On the one hand there is the founding of a great nation, which I believe in, yes, to a certain extent I believed in it, for after all what else was there to believe in? But I was seduced by the human and I understood that a great nation is built over the bones of men and women. Night after night I heard their cries as if they were trying to get in. My heart trembled and shook with their cries and their pain and their tumult. How could I write poems, how could I? How could I fashion lines in the midst of all that pain? Tell me that, whoever you are. Here at least however I have some peace. I do not wish to speak of my poems again, they shriek at me with their bleeding roots.’