by Neil M. Gunn
I’m reluctant to begin, and indeed after the last sentence I went down and did a bit of washing-up because I spotted Aunt Phemie going over to the steading. A woman from the farm cottages comes every morning to help clean and tidy up. As I was looking out of the scullery window on the field of ripening grain, I saw the wind on the grain, a fitful wandering wind. I watched it as I stood there drying a pan. I felt that the house behind me was empty, that I was alone, and there came the old old sensation of liberation which permits you to smile to yourself and think what you like. Do you know what I mean—that curious enlargement of freedom, with a something of secrecy and gaiety about it? Talk about a vague pantheism if you like; I don’t give a hoot. For my toes wanted to race my heart-beats. Suddenly I remembered long ago when the need to race came—and I couldn’t move. Let me tell you about it.
I must have been about sixteen at the time (nearly a whole decade ago!). I had had ’flu—our High School had been devastated by it—and I was recovering at home. I hadn’t really been very bad, for illness never troubled me much. We had a terribly strict Maths. master, too, and that wasn’t my best subject by more than a bit. In fact I had rather enjoyed my illness and one day had gone for a walk up through the little birch wood. It’s really a long straggly wood, the narrow path slanting up it, so that you can stop here and there and look out of it. When you’re very young that’s an adventurous experience. One of my earliest memories is the surprise of thus looking out of it and seeing the little valley (we called it the Hallow) down below. I saw our cattle and I saw sheep and the stone ruins, and then all at once I saw my father. He was doing something to a fencing post. I cannot tell you how strange it was for me to see my father working there and him not to know I was looking away down at him. My elder sister must have been with me I suppose, but I don’t remember her at that moment. I wanted to cry to my father, but I couldn’t. He was alone and somehow there was a strangeness about his being all alone. Anyway—for I mustn’t go on like this—I knew that wood. Birches must grow in my blood! Behold me then at the ripe age of sixteen coming down (not going up) through this wood. It is a still February day, one of those days when the earth, having been busy with the furies and changes of the elements, takes a rest. And all at once, Ranald, I realise that spring is coming. It is at hand. The birches know and are waiting. It is in the quality of the daylight, a grey soft light. I look far up into the sky and the blue is milky. Then I become aware of the birds, chaffinches, tits, the rousing song of a wren, a thrush singing away along the wood. But I don’t think of them much, because of this expectancy of the spring itself that is about me, this quiet waiting that the singing hardly affects. There is no-one in the Hallow. The stone ruins, grey with age and lichen, are quietly still. You don’t think of them as ruins because spring, so infinitely older, is near. You are aware that everything has its own secret awakening. I am only one thing, and I had better go quietly. But oh what a gladness and (I can’t find the word) gratitude is in my heart. I am bursting with this knowledge and love of each thing and yet am inwardly stilled. For I mustn’t make a noise. I go down the wood and distinctly get the faint fragrance of the approaching spring. It is an earthy fragrance, with a touch of burning wood or heather in it. I am trying to be exact. But it is a fragrance—and I know a few—that nothing else ever quite equals. No other scent quickens like this. Bear with me—for I hesitate—if I say that it quickens in a timeless, immortal way.
As I go to the house, I see snowdrops. But I don’t bend and sniff them—memory of honey in the sun-warmed white scent—as I did going out. I walk past them, tall and unbending. I don’t want to talk to anyone so I avoid the back door and enter by the front. Instead of going up to my bedroom, however, I quietly turn the knob of the front sitting-room—our parlour. And then a queer thing happens—I don’t close the door behind me. The impulse to leave it open is too strong. In a moment—the same instant—I know why. I mustn’t shut out what has been accompanying or following me. I mean the spring. I go and sit in the big armchair. There is no fire on. The room looks chilly and deserted, unused. I am distinctly aware of this, but it doesn’t matter. In fact in some strange way—as if it were a strange place—it is right. Even the smell of furniture polish. I sit there waiting, slumped in the chair. Then I begin to feel it drawing near. Panic touches me. I must get up and break what’s holding me and get away before it comes to the door, but I cannot move. The expectancy and the panic increase. An ancient fear is in the panic and yet what’s coming is a tallness of light. I know it can come and stand in the door and look at me. Beyond that I cannot know anything, I dare not. I try to break this tension or it will become unbearable, and I assure myself of phantasy. But I cannot move. At last I do, and see my legs and tuck them under me. They had looked as if they were not my legs. But this forced effort doesn’t do any good. Perhaps I don’t want it to. I cannot tell (not even now). Yet it is certain that I got up, trembling, my heart not far from my mouth, not hurrying, holding myself, and went through the open door—just in time.
What had I expected? Do you imagine that there is a symbolism in all this only too easy to understand in the case of a young girl? Sort of love phantasy? Like a dream, where the wish for fulfilment is hardly even screened? It may be so. And if so, taking the way it happened, I think it was rather lovely. I shouldn’t mind its being like that, I mean. Bless you, it wouldn’t need many touches to make it a classical story! Therefore if I say that it wasn’t quite like that, believe me it is not because of any desire to suppress or otherwise act the cunning censor.
There was no imagined Figure of Spring. Male or female. That was not it at all. It was the something in time before the Figure; in the way, say, that primitive folk first thought a mountain had a spirit. They did not in their minds give the spirit a human shape or really any other shape. I know this quite certainly. As it were, they did not dare! They might make something or accept some odd thing they found near the mountain as a sign of the spirit. But it wasn’t the spirit itself, and certainly not its shape. Any more than an old boot found lying about would be to us the shape of the person who had worn it. But we have seen persons. No-one has seen the spirit; not even as in a glass darkly, for we only fancy—or dread—we might glimpse it so. I have had one or two very interesting talks with Aunt Phemie about this. It fascinates me, and Aunt Phemie does her best because she thinks I am trying to clean up my unfortunate mind. She is right there (though I have a cunning idea about it all which I don’t tell her). In fact I know that she has been looking up Freud on Dreams. The thick volume has shifted its place in the small collection of books from her teaching days. Some years ago, when here on a leave, I had gone through a lot of it. What I really wanted to find out—I had heard so much know-all talk about it—was what certain things one dreams about really mean. As far as I could see almost every natural object in a dream is a sex symbol. I remember Julie once telling a remarkable dream she had, rather like a De Quincey marvel—and later I overheard the male comment: My God, isn’t she sex-ridden! So I satisfied myself that I should never tell my most innocent dreams to anyone. However, I had told a curious dream to Aunt Phemie.
But I’m not going to discuss Freud now. As it happens I did not dislike the man himself as he came through his pages—though I remember being shaken when he said that a hated enemy was as indispensable to his emotional life as an intimate friend. So let it be clear that I really know little about psychology or psychoanalysis. When in uniform, I heard a few lectures, but they were puerile. I am merely trying to be honest, and perhaps if I am honest enough I may give my horrid self away to myself!
Now for Aunt Phemie helpfully quoting Freud. She turned up the actual words in the book and read that from the analysis of dreams we are encouraged to expect a knowledge of the archaic inheritance of man, a knowledge of psychical things in him that are innate. I think that is very wonderful of Freud, and it’s his use of a word like “encouraged” that sort of makes you like him! Psychical things that are innate. So you don’t as it
were have to learn them. They come to you—as spring came to me!
Haven’t I been cunning, leading you up the garden path to that? But we’re not at the top of the garden yet. Oh dear, I’m excited. I feel utterly exhausted, but with my mind going like Aunt Phemie’s clock with the pendulum off… .
I relaxed—but am now at it again. I seem to have bogged everything up with all these words. But what I am trying to tell you, Ranald, is very simple. It’s as simple as this: when I went out just now for a walk and looked at things about me—hedge, field of grain, trees, the light on them—a tired old skin fell softly from me and I was fresh and new. You know how after a sea bathe in summer your skin does actually feel new? Only, this is your mind itself, the psychical thing; this is suddenly you yourself; and it is delightful and infinitely natural. You walk along and all the horrid things have sloughed from you. You smile at the chaffinch as he skips upon the air. Everyone at some time in his life has experienced this. You know that. You know it’s true. You know it’s innate. And you know that we have conspired to murder it.
I am not being excessive. I am only aware all in a dreadful moment that I have failed to tell you. I suddenly feel desolated about that, and if I went out now, the earth and the growing things would not know me as I should not know them.
It’s not easy to know them in this way; it’s only as simple as daylight. It needs a lot of re-learning. You have got to get back, to get back into your own mind; though at once I see that that is what it is only when you think about it. Actually what happens is that you step forward into it. It’s as if what is far back in your mind, like a memory, is actually forward in the happening, and you step into it now. That must sound terribly confused. Yet suddenly there is a glimmer, and I see Hamish’s face, and I hear his sudden laughter. Nae bother! I wonder—I wonder—if it’s something like this he means by time! Oh, if so, then it’s revelation. Past, future, and present in the one step. In an instant I realise what art could mean for us. I don’t mean art that just represents or copies things. Art that does that stops. I see it now. It’s frozen. Oh dear, it is something in your mind that has died and is stuffed.
My hand is getting shaky but I mustn’t stop. If only I could write! My head hates this awful labour. Like that endless talking that went on about the meaning of time and society and dialectics. I see Julie put her palms to her ears and scream. No wonder. The scream of one who is being murdered. O God, I see it now. She shouldn’t have been there? Nimble-witted but without depth, said the horrible Know-all. But I can’t say any more. I’ll vomit if I do.
I’m trembling like one who has been running for dear life. Perhaps I have.
6
Ranald dear, I have a lovely private job on hand. The thought of it gives me the greatest pleasure and it’s secret even from Aunt Phemie. These letters must appear dreadfully gloomy, but I’ll hide them, and some day perhaps we’ll be able to read them together and laugh. The thought of it keeps me going; is like a dance, a healthy country dance. Life will be like that one day. I am quite sure of it. The little letters I do send you now are like that. So they are not really a deception;just a cry to you to come up out of the city on the plain. And the thought that you may be coming soon for even four days! What fresh eggs Aunt Phemie will stuff into you! I chortle. Ran, Ran, hurry up!
Meantime I shall get on with my job, not merely by helping to clean house for you—we have your room all ready already—but also (my private job) to clean up, to brush away, the shadow from the fields and trees and all the land up to the Wood (the Dark Wood, I call it now) and on across the moor to the burn and perhaps even down to the gorge of the birches. For the murder of that poor old man did cast a shadow. It did affect me pretty much, Ranald. It’s this business of hallucinations. I don’t have them badly at all, in the sense that I am perfectly well aware I have them. Every normal person has them in some degree. I know deep in my own mind that I am not really neurotic, and should any psychiatrist smile at that as my private delusion, I’m not giving a hoot! But I do know that I am somehow highly sensitised. Now and then I get the dreadful frightening feeling that I may be pushed over a border line. Lest something like that should happen—it won’t! I’ll fight like seven cats!—I may as well tell you a little first about what these hallucinations are. Just enough to help clear up the shadow, for I want it out of my own mind, of course, just as much as off the land. I want the house and the land and myself to be ready for you. And Ranald dear, whatever happens to me, always remember that I can never tell you what you have meant to me at this time. When I say I’ll fight like seven cats it’s because I know I have you at my back. And it’s not only myself I’ll fight for. But I cannot tell you about that yet. I cannot even write it. Not yet. It’s my ultimate secret.
About the hallucinations (how I do wander off! My field of associations has more trees than the Dark Wood). The simplest and most troublesome, though I have now almost perfected the trick of defeating them, are what are technically known (with thanks to Aunt Phemie) as hypnogogic hallucinations. You must have had them yourself sometimes as a little boy. They occur in the interval before going to sleep. Have you never seen frightful faces then? They form against the dark with an appalling clarity. You must have, even if you have forgotten, though you won’t have, if there was one that kept coming back. In fact when Aunt Phemie and I were talking about it, I remembered quite a lot and advanced this notion on my own about children who are frightened of the dark and need at least a light: they either feel fear coming upon them out of the unknown—up the stairs or along the corridor or even from the air above them—a thousand times stronger than I felt the sweet panic of the spring—or they see a face.
However, I mustn’t wander again (though all the same when you sometimes called me scatter-brain you did not know how often I was wilfully so!). All I can be sure about—apart from the spring—are my own faces. They are a little larger, I should say, than life-size. But their distinctness is absolutely overwhelming. I pick out two at random, a man and a woman. I have never seen them in life to my knowledge. The woman’s face is in profile. It is tragic but drained, almost with the effect of lying over against something. The plastic intensity is just terrific, though there is no intensity in the expression. The man’s face—I first feel it forming in the darkness and coming up; I know it’s coming; then I begin to see it. Swirls of the darkness, like dark bands, obscure parts of it, moving across it, but ever clearing. It’s coming right up: chin with long dark hairs, hardly a beard, the cheek bones, the whole moulded face, eyes—I struggle from it, open and shut my eyes, move my head, speak to myself. …
Let us forget it. And lo! suddenly I realise that what I really wanted to mention is the schoolmaster’s face. Does this mean that the unconscious in me has all the time been busy on its dream-trick of getting the concealed wish through? I wouldn’t put it past it!
What wish, you ask? Why, my wish that you shouldn’t be worried over that first long thistledown letter. (Your implied criticism or fear has stuck!) You see, I merely happened to have had, the night before writing you, a hypnogogic hallucination of that face. The following day it was quite strong—if I cared to fix on it. I knew it was there, but that’s nothing. Most of the time it wasn’t. I probably dramatised it a little, just to cheer you up a bit! Do you forgive me? Let me be honest and say there was real horror in each eye being a ball of thistledown. Why, I don’t know.
There is horror in it yet. That part was new, like a horrid revelation. Though again what it revealed I don’t know. Anyway, that’s all it was. The next point is that the face must have been suggested to my mind by the face of the policeman whom I had actually seen earlier in the village when I was there with Aunt Phemie. The policeman’s face is not exactly like the one in the hallucination, but near enough to be instantly recognised. Now is all that morbid business cleared up? Splendid! I feel charged with energy, like a good housewife on a bout of cleaning. A veritable spring-cleaning. Hurrah! I’m off to clean up the shadow.
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So I set off.
It had been misty in the morning and we wondered if the weather was breaking, but just after midday the sun won through. Marvellous its coming, white with the victory of delight, and, in a moment, intimate and friendly on the hands, warm as a kitten. A distant spot glistened reddish-gold like foxes in a stir. I wander up by the little ravine. Greyface, the young horse, comes trotting along, head up. I have nothing for him and explain how forgetful I am. I manage to give his neck a friendly clap, but his head is hard and strong. Though I no longer have any fear of him, I don’t quite like him following behind. Away you go! Thundering he goes, and I know so well what he feels (outracing his own mind) that—I was going to say I race with him, but that’s not at all what happens. And then I saw the birch tree. I don’t know how I missed it before, probably because nearly all the trees in the ravine are old elms (seen from the other side of the valley, they wander up the sloping fields like the world’s legendary serpent). This birch was nearly as huge as an elm. And old, too. His silver skin was all cracked. Oddly enough, he seemed to have no symmetry; an ungainly growth, with branches pushed out like an idiot-giant’s arms. But then, as I looked, the marvellous balance, the subtle self-compensating arrangements, were really very wonderful. It takes nature to do a thing like this, to produce the refinement of symmetry in the apparently asymmetrical. So I went close up and began to explore the trunk. What a world! The silver-grey skin that had burst and curled over, firm to the fingers as metal; the crumbling within the cracks, where the inner bark is already turning back to soil; the remarkable formations of lichen, here like dry blistered greenish paint, there fringed and frozen like miniature Arctic forests. Within this world, so vast on its own scale, I watch an alert spider going, with abrupt stops, about his sinister business. I slip out of myself into this new vastness. And then my hand, by accident or on its own, comes flat against the tree, and suddenly, with an effect of astonishing surprise, I find that the trunk is warm! No wonder, of course, because I have put my hand on the side that is towards the sun. All the same, I have had the surprise of the warmth of life—and the delight.