The Serpent

by Neil M. Gunn

  But he would not give in to him any longer. He would stare him back in the eye. He would make him speak, make him say the irrevocable word.

  Go back to Glasgow. Or start a business elsewhere. But no – not elsewhere in the country. The childish simplicity of his mind when he had asked Dougal if he would not like to go back to the country! Enough to make one grovel.

  God, this sleeplessness!

  Up in the morning. Breakfast, and there was his father in the bed with his graven face. That face that looked at him and lifted. That pursuing face. That expressionless, blinded face, with the life behind it coming only to the boundary of the skin, to the eye.

  He ignored it, and at evening did not tell of things in the indirect respectful way that had been established. What his father wanted to know he could ask.

  His mother, uneasy, tried to cover up the situation, with a show of naturalness. Let her!

  ‘When are you starting the harvest?’ she asked, though she knew already.

  ‘Monday,’ he answered shortly.

  He saw his father’s hand grip above the quilt. It looked ungainly at the end of the gaunt wrist bones.

  ‘Is that a way to answer your mother?’ The voice, so long silent, came like a blow.

  Tom paid no attention.

  ‘Answer me!’ The voice behind a whip.

  Tom pushed his plate from him, got up and walked out.

  He would not eat there again. Bedamned if he would.

  When he returned late that night, he found a glass of milk and a buttered oatcake by his bedside. He tried to eat the oatcake but it stuck in his throat. He drank the milk.

  In the morning, he took the oatcake with him in his pocket and did not go into the kitchen for breakfast. Around one o’clock his mother appeared. ‘Aren’t you coming in to your dinner, Tom?’

  ‘No.’ He did not turn round to look at her.

  His mother brought him food, potato soup in a small milk pail, with a couple of whole potatoes and a knuckle of meat from a lean bone in the midst of it, oatcake and a spoon.

  When he thought she was going to talk, he frowned intolerantly. As she turned away, he saw her look up towards the road. She would keep guard over the public decencies!

  His brain was not working very well; it was tried, and could not be bothered hunting an immediate decision. There was no particular hurry. He was not running away all at once, not before he had said and done a few things.

  As he went down to the barn to inspect some harvesting gear, including the scythe which needed resetting, he saw his father standing on the little path by the corner of the oat field. He looked taller than in ordinary life, and somehow appeared to be there by a miracle. As if suddenly he was there!

  But Tom knew why he was looking at the field of grain so silently and so fixedly. It was ripe enough for cutting to have started that day.

  In the dusk of the evening while Tom was still in this state of mind, Alec and two or three of the lads came drifting into the shop. They were very early and Alec said, ‘Hallo, I see the bicycles are out?’ as if they had intended going a run. Tom replied that they would be in shortly, and Alec said it didn’t greatly matter for it would be dark soon now anyway.

  While they were talking, William Bulbreac appeared in the door and in an instant Tom knew that Alec had staged his master ‘argument’.

  ‘Ha, so here you all are in the academy of learning,’ William greeted them in a dry but not unpleasant voice.

  Tom looked at him, but did not answer, waiting for what might be the business purpose of the visit.

  Against this silence, William entered, crooking his hazel staff over his arm. ‘You don’t happen to have a round-headed five-eighths bolt?’

  ‘I believe I have,’ said Tom, turning to the back wall.

  ‘Yes,’ said William, looking about him, ‘so this is where you congregate for the new learning?’

  ‘Do you feel like joining us yourself?’ asked Alec in a hearty off-taking voice, a pleasant smile on his face.

  ‘In what branch of knowledge do you think you could instruct me?’ inquired William, still looking about him.

  ‘Oh, you’d wonder,’ replied Alec, with a sideways nod. ‘You’d wonder.’

  ‘I have no doubt,’ said William. ‘I have no doubt.’

  ‘Is this what you want?’ asked Tom, quietly concerned with his business.

  ‘I believe that’s it. I believe it’s the very thing. Yes. And how much is that?’

  ‘One penny,’ said Tom.

  ‘A whole penny,’ declared William. ‘Well, I wonder if I have that large sum,’ and from his trousers pocket he took a dark leather purse.

  Alec winked to his friend Ian Fraser. William, glancing up, caught them before they could wipe the knowing smile away.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tom, taking the penny.

  ‘So this is where you are taught manners and all good things,’ declared William evenly but getting in his reference to their wink.

  ‘What’s wrong with our manners?’ Alec asked.

  ‘That you know best yourselves,’ answered William. ‘And if all I hear is true, you would be advised as young men to mend them.’

  ‘That’s going a bit too far,’ declared Alec, shifting to his other foot. ‘I don’t like to be accused of something without being told what it is.’ He sounded a bit hurt.

  ‘Do I need to tell you?’ inquired William.

  ‘Certainly,’ answered Alec. ‘How are we to know if we’re not told? That surely would be a miracle.’

  The word miracle came through the surface talk, stood out with all its biblical implications. William’s face, with its short dark-brown beard, concentrated on Alec’s. ‘And do you not believe in miracles?’

  ‘That’s not the point. The point is you expected me to perform a miracle.’

  ‘I? You to perform a miracle?’

  ‘Yes. You said I should know a thing without being told.’

  ‘Young man,’ said William solemnly, ‘this is not a matter for trifling, not a matter for the use of slyness and deceit. You think I do not see what is going on in your mind. I see it, and it is not a pleasant thing.’

  ‘I won’t take that,’ said Alec, ‘from you or from anyone. I have said nothing that anyone could object to. I did not say one word against you or against anything. I don’t mind a fair thing, but –’ Alec’s voice was rising. He half turned away, restless on his feet.

  ‘You have said nothing, have you? To how many men and young men have you said nothing? Do you think I have not been told of your impious questionings and blasphemy? Do you think the whole countryside is not aware of the kind of talk that goes on here? Do you not think it is my duty as an elder of God’s church to search out the evil and destroy it from our midst by showing you the perilous errors of your ways? Will you tell me all that is nothing?’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ mumbled Alec.

  ‘The point! Young man, I know your father, and your mother. I know the parents of you all. They are respectable and godly folk. Have you not even concern for their good name, if you have none for your own immortal souls? Would you not only take the road to hell, but also at the same time bring grief and shame and sorrow upon them?’

  Alec still managed a small toss to his head, but he had no words. His face was flushed, his body awkward.

  Tom had gone back to the drawer from which he had taken the bolt and now, having checked its contents, he closed it. He opened and examined the next two drawers. The clinking sound of the small bits of metal as he raked them over thoughtfully with his fingers became an extreme annoyance to William, whose voice hardened in anger, and rose, and pointedly included Tom in its denunciation. But not until William had wheeled and addressed him personally did Tom face round.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked coolly.

  ‘Do you deny it?’ cried William.

  ‘Deny what?’

  ‘Do you deny that you make a mock of God’s holy Word in this shop? Do yo
u deny it?’

  ‘Certainly,’ answered Tom. ‘But if you mean do I question the logic of certain matters as related in the Bible, then I do.’

  ‘You! You stand there and say you do? You!’

  ‘Yes, me,’ said Tom.

  ‘You question the logic? The logic! You set yourself up to question the logic of the inspired word of God?’

  ‘I doubt if it’s the inspired word of God.’

  ‘You doubt?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not. In certain respects I feel sure it’s not.’

  William glared upon him as upon a strange and ominous viper. His voice had already gone husky in consternation. As he glared, his head nodded slowly, the eyes hardened, and a faint ‘Yes’ hissed in his mouth.

  The other four lads were stiff as ramrods.

  ‘In certain respects,’ echoed William, the meaningless words sounding like a preliminary to some dark and devastating rite.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Tom. ‘In certain respects I consider the whole account of the creation, the whole Pentateuch, as a Jewish tribal story, self-contradictory in parts and in other parts fairly foul.’

  ‘Foul!’ William, who was normally a voluble man and distinguished as a fluent elder in prayer, could do little more than breathe the word. Clearly he had never anticipated anything so terrible, so terrifying, as this, and even yet could hardly believe his ears.

  ‘By the Scriptures, nearly all the Kings of Judah were a lecherous blood-thirsty lot, and if they were living now you wouldn’t allow them inside your church door. And that’s the truth,’ said Tom, in whom the quiver of excitement was now rising, for he knew why William had come and it angered him bitterly.

  ‘Are you speaking of Solomon and David and –’

  ‘Yes, the whole lot,’ cried Tom. ‘Butchery and treachery and idolatry wherever you look. Even Solomon, who had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, murdered his brother Adonias because he asked for one of them. Or Ehud, who hid his sword under his cloak and went into the king, saying God had given him an urgent message for him. And when the king stood up to receive the message, Ehud drove his sword into his belly and God approved the act. Or David, who ravished the wife of Uriah and then had her husband slain, this David whom the Scriptures praise!’

  ‘David!’

  ‘Yes, David. Look at his life. Mixed up with evil men and burdened with debt. Didn’t he sack the house of Nabal, the king’s servant, and a week later marry the widow? Didn’t he offer himself to Achish, the king’s enemy, and then spread fire and blood over the land of those who were the allies of Achish, sparing neither sex nor age? No sooner is he on the throne than he gets himself new concubines. And these concubines are not enough, but he must also take Bathsheba from her husband and then foully slay the husband. And it’s from this Bathsheba, this adulterous woman, that, according to the biblical account, Christ himself is descended. That was David – a man we are told, after God’s own heart –’

  ‘Silence!’ roared William. ‘Silence! – you blasphemer. Have you no fear that the Almighty will strike you dead where you stand, stiffen you to one of your own boards, as He stiffened Lot’s wife on the plain before the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which He destroyed with fire and brimstone?’

  ‘Why did God turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, merely because she looked back? Why did the two daughters of Lot then make their own father drunk and commit incest with him, when they had the whole town of Zoar to take men from? And the way the two angels behaved before the town was destroyed, and the way Lot offered to make prostitutes of his own daughters –’

  ‘Silence, I say!’

  ‘It’s all very well shouting ’Silence’. But can you answer?’

  William answered. William thundered. But no sooner had he made one of his biblical allusions – and it was impossible for him to proceed far without doing so – than Tom took him up. Tom’s voice was louder than he knew. It rose piercing and intolerant. Now that the issue was joined beyond redemption, he hit out, not blindly, but with the will, the desire, to pierce and destroy.

  They went through the Old Testament like a furious whirlwind, Tom picking up Abraham and his wife Sarah in Egypt, Moses married to an idolater’s daughter and writing his books (‘how? on what? – and beyond the Jordan when we are told he never crossed the Jordan!’), the just man Jacob (‘who deceived his father Isaac and robbed Laban, his father-in-law!’), the Hebrews and the Midianites, the harlot Rahab (‘ay, but who is descended from her through incest and adultery?’), Joshua and the sun and moon that stood still in the middle of the day (‘why the moon in the middle of the day?’), Jonah and the belly of the whale (‘do you know how far it was from Joppa to Nineveh? – four hundred miles! four hundred!’).

  They shouted together, Tom trying to pin William to that which he had already overleapt and proceeded beyond in his righteous wrath, one now with his human wrath.

  Alec stood in a hypnotic bliss transcending anything he had hitherto experienced.

  Boys came down the green and gathered gaping round the door. Elderly passers-by paused and drew near.

  Backwards, in loops and circles, whirled the combatants, the thundering Goliath, and the pale-faced piercing David, until they landed in the garden of Eden.

  ‘The tree of the knowledge of good and evil!’ cried Tom. ‘Why should God want to keep knowledge from man? Why? …’

  ‘… of good and evil, so that man would know good from evil, and choose the good and repel the evil – repel the evil. Do you hear me? Repel the evil – repel the evil from your evil heart, you …’

  ‘But He didn’t! He didn’t want to give them the chance! And without …’

  ‘… and not nurse it like a viper. But you have chosen the evil, and I say unto you that God’s hand will come in its wrath and smite you, as it smote …’

  ‘And without the knowledge of good and evil, what would man be? He would be no higher than the brute beast. Why is it a brute beast? – because it still cannot tell good from evil. If God …’

  ‘… And the Devil took the shape of a serpent, for the Devil can take any shape, even your shape – even your shape, you impious blasphemer, and the Devil spoke to them saying, ‘Ye shall not surely die’, but we know that at that moment not only did evil enter their hearts, but death, death …’

  ‘But it doesn’t say it was the Devil. The account says it was a serpent, a ‘beast of the field’, and who ever heard a serpent speak? Did you? Did you ever hear a serpent speak?’ cried Tom in shrill mockery.

  But William was now not listening to Tom. He was preaching the wrath of God and damnation upon the sinner. Approaching his climax, he rose to visionary and prophetic heights: ‘For I see the serpent within you, I see its evil coils twisting in your body and in your brain, and I see that you have delivered yourself to the serpent, and I say unto you that if you do not repent, and cast yourself down into the ashes of abasement and humility, and pray to the Almighty to be delivered of the slime and horror of the serpent, I say unto you, and it will come to pass, that you will be devoured of the serpent and your final end will be the eternal torment and punishment of the damned.’

  Folk knew William, and sometimes one or other might smile behind his back, for they felt in their hearts that William wanted to be an important man yet had not within him that sure authority of body and spirit which is recognised in silence by all men. But now William had risen to the height of prophecy which moved them in the secret and fearful places, and they were silent in a deep stillness. Through this stillness went a sudden shiver of movement.

  Tom, apprehending the effect that had been created, with eyes blazing on William, shouted: ‘I can look after myself. I’m not afraid of your Jewish tribal God or of any mythical serpent. “Almighty!” you cry. You do not even know the meaning of the word. If you did, you would know that there are things even the Almighty cannot do.’

  A movement went through those at the door.

  ‘What things?’ asked William, a
lmost in a small voice now, waiting for the final blasphemy as a man might wait at an execution.

  But Tom was far beyond metaphysical consideration of absolute opposites and cried, ‘He couldn’t do what even you could do. You can commit suicide. God the all-mighty can’t.’

  There was a shuffling of feet in the doorway. Tom turned and saw his father before him.

  The grey face, the grey beard, the blazing eyes, the silent pursuing face – it had come at last. The power of the father created in the image of God. The tribal power, the unearthly power. Each felt it, and Tom could not move.

  The father gazed upon his son with a fixity of expression more terrible than all words. In silence he groped for William’s staff. He took a slow step nearer to his son, and, in the short pause that followed, the intention of chastisement gathered in a concentration horrible to behold. Then the hand with the staff went up, not quickly, but with deliberation. It rose, until it rose high above his head, then all in a moment the stiffness of the arm slackened, the stick fell, bouncing off Tom’s chest, the arm wavered down, the body sagged, and with a deep soft grunt it collapsed upon itself, pitching forward slightly before Tom’s feet.

  No-one moved for what appeared a long time. Then William was on his knees. ‘Adam?’ But Adam did not answer. William stretched him out. The unwinking eyes stared upward, glittering. There was no breath in the mouth. No movement in the heart.

  Through the door came Tom’s mother. She gave a wild look at her son and saw the outstretched body. In a moment she knew her husband was dead and, crouching by his side, her head falling low over him and lifting, she let out a high keening cry.

  ‘We’ll carry him down,’ said William gravely to those about him.

  ‘Will I go – for the doctor?’ muttered Alec in a low desperate voice.

  ‘Go,’ commanded William.

  They carried the body out, and the mother, weeping and keening, ran before them. It was growing dark. Alec took one of the two bicycles which were now leaning against the outside wall. Those who had hired them did not venture in to pay, and Tom was left standing alone in the shop.