“We can try, anyway,” said the ganger.
The site manager pointed at me, said, “This can’t be done!” and chuckled. I saw he had asked me along so that my terror of the ride would emphasize his understanding and control, and make it easier for him to persuade the head ganger to attempt the impossible.
Later I was in a big crowded shed among the workmen’s huts. Men were queuing in long lines before little booths fixed to the walls, booths containing oxygen masks. They were preparing to work in the thin air of the second summit by breathing deeply from these. Signs above the booths said that more than six minutes’ oxygenation was bad for the health. I suspected that the whole business was bad for the health, a mere management trick to make the men believe their needs were being attended to. Having no intention of working on the second summit I went next door into a bleaker, emptier shed which was the restaurant. The only food was sandwiches in white polystyrene trays covered with transparent plastic. I knew the white bread of the sandwiches was as flavourless and un-nourishing as the polystyrene, but being hungry I chose an egg sandwich and a ham sandwich, and my mouth watered, anticipating with some glee the taste of the fillings. Since we had no better food we got great satisfaction from whatever flavour it contained.
As I lifted my sandwiches I was greeted by an old workman wearing spectacles and a dirty raincoat. He also was not going to work on the second summit. He said, “I’m getting a bit old for these impossible jobs. Mind you, I’ve nothing to complain about.”
He pointed to a plastic table-top on which someone had scratched the words: I own nothing, I owe nothing. He said, “That’s me too, yes. I can only manage the odd day’s work now and then but I like to hang around the site and listen to the lads when they come back in the evenings. You hear a lot of different views of life if you keep your ears open. I hope I’m not boring you?”
THE DOMINO GAME
TWO BIG MEN CALLED A AND B are discussing how to cut up a territory which is in contest between them. Their organization, their cunning, their success are about equal. The contest, if continued, will so weaken them that both will fall prey to X, a much bigger man who has hitherto held aloof. This is partly because he is doing very well in a distant territory where he has destroyed or absorbed every other competitor, and partly because he knows A and B will unite against him if he tries to destroy or absorb either. Their problem is that the disputed territory cannot usefully be cut in two. For geographical, religious and linguistic reasons, splitting it will more than wipe out the profit to be got by taking it over. Yet they cannot leave it alone. The disputed ground is occupied by small independent people who mostly want to stay small and independent, but some of the richer among them also want, with foreign help, to grow bigger at the expense of their neighbours. If A or B do not offer this help X will regard it as a sign of weakness and move into the territory himself. Of course, if A and B combined forces they could easily run the whole territory for the profit of both, but when B suggests this A says, “Combine under who?”
And the subject is dropped
The discussion is a long one. They exhaust themselves trying to find a solution to the problem. At last A sighs and says, ‘”Why can’t we decide it by playing a game of dominoes? Winner take all.” B laughs and says, “Why not? The winner will be a hell of a lot richer, the loser won’t be one penny the poorer.”
They relax by discussing the idea.
Neither has played dominoes since childhood and they suspect it is mainly a game of chance. A suggests that if there is any skill in it they had better play snakes-and-ladders, to equalize their chances. B disagrees. Snakes-and-ladders in played with dice, and dice, like card games, are associated with nervous tension, cheating, social ruin, knife fights and suicide. Dominoes is a game with friendly, jocular associations which harmonize better with the whole idea. They should play it in the dining-car of a train running through splendid scenery. They will invite X along as a guest and witness. It is essential that he sees they are good friends who trust each other before the game, and also during it, but especially after it. Yes, after it especially, X must see that although the game ends in a great acquisition by the winner, the loser is not sullen, humiliated, and keen for an ally who will assist him in a counter-attack. X must also see that the winner will not be made so greedy by his gains that he will do a deal with X to cut up the loser between them. And of course, the loser must see this too.
“What a surprise for old X if we settled it that way!” says B, chuckling. “He might even learn something from us.”
“Yes!” says A, “if we did it that way we would be starting a new era in civilization. However –” and he shrugs. “– while I trust you, B, I certainly can’t trust C, D and E.” These are members of A’s organization. One of them, though nobody can yet say which, will replace him when he falls sick or retires.
“I know exactly what you mean,” says B, who also has ambitious men under him, “We’ll just have to combine forces.”
“Combine under who?” asks A. “Will you agree to settle that by a domino game?”
And they both laugh heartily. Each knows now the other will not serve under him. They also know that an organization cannot work with two heads.
So their contest continues to spread frustration and anxiety among their employees, poverty and fear among small independent people. It will continue until one of them is so weak that he accepts X as his ally, thereby winning a victory which will leave him, too, in the power of X. This future, which they see very clearly, pleases neither of them, but they have four consolations.
1 They are not young, the years seem to flash past them faster and faster, they will soon have to leave what they sense is an increasingly dangerous world.
2 Though not young, their conspicuous place in a well-reported contest makes them feel young.
3 They have private fortunes which the contest increases.
4 A contest which profits them is only natural.
EDISON’S TRACTATUS
PERHAPS YOU KNOW that musclemen – hard men who want to be extra strong – have a habit of eating big feeds of steak and chips, and the minute the last mouthful is swallowed they heave big weights, or run great distances, or work machines that let them do both at the same time. This converts all the food in their guts into muscle without an ounce of additional fat. When a dedicated muscleman overeats, sheer strength is the only outcome.
There was once a man who trained that way to strengthen his brain. Not only after but during big feeds he would read very deep books – trigonometry, accountancy, divinity, that class of subject – and think about them fiercely and continually till he felt hungry again. He grew so brainy that before you said a word to him he guessed the sort of thing you meant to say and quoted Jesus or Euclid or Shakespeare who had said it better. This destroyed his social life but at first he didn’t care.
One day he was sitting in a restaurant reading Edison’s Tractatus and beasting into his third plate of steak and chips when he noticed a young woman across the table from him eating the same stuff. She had cut it into small bits and was forking them steadily into her mouth with one hand while writing just as steadily with the other. She wrote in red ink on a block of the squared paper scientists use for charts and diagrams, but she was writing words as clear as print, words so neat and regular that he could not stop staring at them although they were illegible from where he sat being upside down. He noticed that the woman, though not a small woman, was neat and regular in a way that suggested a school mistress. He could not imagine what she would say if she spoke to him and the strangeness of this put him in a confusion through which at last he heard his voice ask if she would please pass the salt cellar, which was as close to him as to her.
The woman glanced at the salt cellar – at him – smiled – put her fork down and said, “What will I most dislike about you if I let that request lead to intimate friendship?”
He hesitated then said frankly, “My breadth of knowledge. I talk
better about more things than anyone else. Nobody likes me for it.”
She nodded and said, “What do you know about the interface between pre-Columbian Aztec pottery, Chinese obstetrics during the Ming dynasty and the redrawing of constituency boundaries in the Lothian Region subsequent to the last general election?”
He said, “They are perfect examples of inter-disciplinary cross-sterilization. When William Blake said that The dog starved at his master’s gate predicts the ruin of the state he was stating a political fact. The writer who traced a North American hurricane back to a butterfly stamping on a leaf in a tropical rain forest was reasoning mathematically. The absurd interface you posit is (like most post-modernist and post-constructionalist concepts) a sort of mental afterbirth. Are you writing about it?”
“No but you can reach for the salt cellar yourself,” she said and went on writing. The man felt a pang of unintelligent grief. He tried to quench it with manly anger.
“Tell me just one thing!” he said sternly. “If we had conversed intimately what would I have most disliked about you?”
“My depth of sympathy,” she answered with a patient sigh. “No matter how loud-mouthed, boastful and dismissive you grew I would realize you could never be different.”
“O thank God you never passed me that salt cellar!” he cried.
And continued reading Edison’s Tractatus but could no longer concentrate.
EPILOGUE TO EDISON’S TRACTATUS
In 1960 I went on holiday to Ireland with Andrew Sykes, a tough small stocky man with a thick thatch of white hair and a face like a boxer’s. Like myself he dressed comfortably rather than smartly. We had met when he was a mature student at Glasgow University and I a very callow one just out of Glasgow Art School. We were from the working class who had benefited when two post-war governments (Labour and Tory) agreed that all who qualified for professional educations might have them whether or not they or their parents could pay. Andrew, who had been a sergeant with the British army in India, eventually won a doctorate through a paper on trade unions in the building industry, getting his knowledge by the unacademic ploy of working as a navvy. His army experience and a course in economics had also given him insights into the workings of our officer and financial class. He took malicious glee in gossiping to me about the insider trading by which this minority manipulate the rest. My notion of Britain had been formed at the end of the Second World War when our government announced the coming of a fairer society and the creation of social welfare for all. I had thought Britain was now mainly managed by folk who had mastered difficult processes through training and experience. Andrew explained that, as often today as in the past, most British civil service and business chiefs had stepped into senior positions because they had been to three or four expensive boarding schools and a couple of universities in the English east midlands: institutions where exams mattered less than their parents’ wealth and friends they had made. He persuaded me that Britain was not (as most of our politicians and publicity networks claimed) a democracy, but an aristocracy.
I thought Andrew disliked this unfair system since he was entering a profession through a socialist act of parliament. On our Irish holiday (we were guests of his friends Greta and David Hodgins at Nenagh in Tipperary) I was surprised to find he hated almost any group who wanted to change the dominant system. He even hated the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He forgave me for being a member but we could not discuss it. The only political hope we shared was a wish for a Scottish self-government. I enjoyed what I saw of Ireland but enjoyed his company less than I had expected. His hobbies were wrestling and judo. He told me that body builders convert steak into muscle by a course of weight-lifting immediately after a meal. I will say more about him because he gave me more than the first sentence of “Edison’s Tractatus”.
He became Strathclyde University’s first Professor of Sociology in 1967, retired in 1989, died in 1991. His closest relatives were aunts with whom he lodged in a Glasgow tenement until they died long before he did. His job gave him prestige and colleagues. His holidays with the Hodgins in Tipperary gave him a family whose children regarded him as an uncle, a community which treated him as an equal. From a Labour Party member he became a xenophobic Tory. In the university staff club he once aimed a judo kick at a black visitor who was quietly minding his own business. Since his special study was trade unions in the 1980s he became a salaried advisor of the British government, telling Margaret Thatcher how to weaken them. He took self-conscious glee in the bowler hat, tailor-made striped trousers, black jacket and waistcoat he acquired for visits to Downing Street. I fear he did a lot of harm but not to me. From 1961 to 1974 he was my only steady patron. He bought paintings and lent money when I was in need, usually taking a drawing as repayment. He lent me money as if it was an ordinary, unimportant action, leaving my self-respect undamaged. I cannot type so he got his secretaries to type my poems, plays and first novel onto wax stencils from which (in days when photocopying was hugely expensive) they printed all the copies I needed without charge. In 1974 he arranged for the Collins Gallery of Strathclyde University to give the largest retrospective show my pictures have ever had, getting a Glasgow Lord Provost to open it.
Yet in his last fifteen years I hardly saw him at all, maybe because I no longer supported a family so had less need to borrow. After his retirement he became a recluse and solitary drinker, his only human contacts being a cleaning lady and a weekly phone call from Greta Hodgins in Ireland. I felt sad and guilty when he died. He had given me much more than I had ever given him.
I will now list other ingredients which went into “Edison’s Tractatus”.
1 In the 1960s I heard that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus was a very brainy book. I thought it might not be too brainy for me but never got hold of a copy.
2 I am too shy and pessimistic to start conversations with strangers but when public transport or an eating house places me beside an attractive one I sometimes fantasize about talking to them. This habit led to my first television play and a novel which is still in print. In 1982 I worked with Liz Lochead, Jim Kelman and Tom Leonard on a review called The Pie of Damocles. I scribbled a sketch in which a young woman at a café asks a depressed young man to pass her the sugar bowl and he insists on discussing what this might lead to before refusing. My friends did not think it funny. I discarded it.
3 I started hearing the word interface in the 1970s. It seemed to be used by people erecting a barrier round their work practice while talking across it. The barrier made the job they had mastered feel safer but conversation across it sometimes made new work, as forensic medicine had developed from the interface between policing and doctoring. My facetious attitude to new words led me to link activities between which no interface was possible – the gap between Aztec pottery and Chinese obstetrics, for instance, seemed unbridgeable. Around the same time I heard a lecturer amuse a university audience by referring to something as “an example of interdisciplinary cross-sterilization”.
4 For several years I have been perplexed by the adjective post-modern, especially when applied to my own writing, but have now decided it is an academic substitute for contemporary or fashionable. Its prefix honestly announces it as a specimen of intellectual afterbirth, a fact I only noticed when I reread my brainy character saying so.
5 A few years ago I heard that a scientist had shown how a butterfly stamping on a leaf in a tropical rain forest might precipitate a hurricane in North America. This may or may not be true.
6 In the first months of 1994 I conducted a creative writing class at St Andrews University. Going home by train to Glasgow I sat opposite a young woman who was writing in red ink on a block of graph paper. I could not read her words but they were shaped with unusual clearness and regularity. She was slightly bigger than average, neatly dressed and with no apparent make-up or anything to catch the eye. I felt a strong prejudice in her favour, believing, perhaps wrongly, that she was unusually intelligent. I suddenly wanted to put her in
a story exactly as she appeared. She sometimes exchanged words with a young man but their conversation did not interest me.
I broke my journey home at Markinch to visit Malcolm Hood in Glenrothes Hospital. Two years earlier he had been paralysed by a cerebral stroke: his brain was in full working order but his body could give no sign of it. He was now able to speak and move a little. On this visit I read him a story from Somerville and Ross’s Experiences of an Irish R.M. and occasional comments and snorts of laughter showed his enjoyment. When students at Glasgow Art School forty years before we had often read aloud to each other from amusing authors. My favourites were Max Beerbohm and Rabelais, Malcolm’s were Dickens and Patrick Campbell. Campbell – an Anglo-Irish humorist not much read now – probably gave us our first taste of Blarney, which I define as the employment of an Irish idiom to make an unlikely story more convincing. The Somerville and Ross tale was full of it.
When I boarded a homeward-bound train at Markinch “Edison’s Tractatus” was germinating. I scribbled most of it in a notebook before reaching Glasgow, and as I did so imagined an Irish voice saying it, an Irish voice deliberately constructing an improbable tale. That is why I gave it an improbable title. Were I to read it aloud I would do so in my Scottish voice, but when writing “Edison’s Tractatus” the sentences moved to a second-hand Irish lilt.
7 This lilt must come from more than a fortnight in Tipperary thirty-five years ago and from renewed pleasure in the Blarney of Somerville and Ross. Flann O’Brien’s writings are an ingredient because, though Joyce, Synge and O’Casey use Blarney on occasions, O’Brien is the only Irish genius whose work is Blarney throughout. In the previous six months I had also read with pleasure “This Fella I Knew”, a short story by my friend Bernard MacLaverty who never talks Blarney and hardly ever writes it. This one story is an exception. It appears in his anthology, Walking the Dog, published in 1994.
Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 Page 27