Listen to the Voice

by Iain Crichton Smith

  ‘I go to quite a lot of things at the Festival,’ said Lorna. ‘But there’s so much. It’s impossible to see it all.’

  I envied her for that. To be able to see all the drama that one wanted to watch, to hear all the music that one wished to hear, and to see films and read books, that would have been my ideal life. But of course it was impossible.

  ‘It’s quite often the case,’ she said, ‘that people who come from the city settle down happily in the country.’ She was referring to my wife.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dougie, ‘she settled down happily here. I don’t know whether she missed Edinburgh at all.’

  ‘A little,’ I said. ‘She missed it a little. Especially in the spring.’

  ‘I should like to stay here all the time,’ said Lorna sipping her vodka.

  I discounted what she said. They all spoke like this when they came home for their annual holiday but they would have been driven out of their minds by boredom if they stayed for more than a month and especially if they remained during the winter.

  So much of language is lying, polite lying but still lying. The difference between men and animals is that men lie, animals don’t. This thought came to me quite clearly as I listened to her bubbling on.

  There were so many definitions about the difference between men and animals but this one came to me quite effortlessly. Man is the animal who lies. I sipped my whisky meditatively till Dougie suddenly said, ‘The hermit was in today. He was getting his provisions.’

  ‘Hermit?’ said Lorna looking up.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dougie, ‘didn’t I tell you we have a hermit? No one speaks of anything else here these days.’

  He went over and refilled our glasses, all except Edward’s, who said that he was quite happy. One could never tell what he was thinking. He let his wife do all the talking and sat quietly listening. One couldn’t imagine him saying or doing anything rash. One could however quite easily imagine him in a coldly computerised ship absorbed in instruments.

  ‘Isn’t that interesting?’ Lorna said to him. ‘A hermit. Imagine that. And, tell me, does he stay entirely by himself?’

  ‘He does,’ said Dougie, ‘in one of those huts the R.A.F. used to have. And he doesn’t speak to anyone. He had the same routine today,’ he said, turning to me. ‘He took a piece of paper out of his pocket with the messages written on it but he didn’t speak. Funny thing, the people are turning against him. The children were shouting after him after he got on his bicycle.’ As he was speaking Dougie’s voice was becoming slurred and lazy.

  ‘I can imagine it,’ I said.

  ‘And another odd thing. Stork’s wife went in front of him in the queue, though she had no right to. But you know her. And he just accepted it. I wondered what he would do. He just smiled but didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Is he dumb or something that he doesn’t speak?’ Lorna asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Dougie. ‘He’s not at all dumb. He just doesn’t want to speak at all.’

  ‘That’s really odd, isn’t it, Edward,’ said Lorna. One couldn’t imagine her not speaking.

  ‘It is,’ said Edward.

  ‘Still,’ said Dougie, ‘if he’s got the money I’m not going to refuse him his provisions.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ said Dougie, as if he had detected some hint of argumentativeness in my voice.

  ‘It’s just,’ I said, ‘that he doesn’t seem to care for the village. He belongs to it and he doesn’t belong to it. He’s a villager and he isn’t.’

  ‘Well,’ Dougie answered, ‘he’s a man anyway. He’s a human being.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘it depends on how you define a man.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Dougie again.

  ‘Well,’ I persisted, as if driven by an inner compulsion, ‘a man is someone who lives in society. He can’t be said to live in society.’

  ‘That’s true in a way,’ said Lorna as if thinking deeply and trying to follow what we were saying. Her husband was taking it all in, his hand round his glass which had still quite a lot of whisky in it.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dougie, ‘but you’re not going to say that because he doesn’t bother with the village I shouldn’t sell him provisions.’

  ‘And there’s another thing,’ I said. And I told them about Kenneth John and what the Clamhan had told me.

  Lorna looked at me in astonishment or pretended astonishment. ‘Well, there seems to be goings on without doubt. And where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said and then speaking to Edward, ‘He used to be in the Merchant Navy, you know, in his youth. He was all over the world. Hong Kong, Valparaiso, the lot. He’s well over seventy now and he just went and left his wife like that. He took the bus and he wouldn’t speak to anyone and he went off to town and no one’s heard of him since.’

  ‘Isn’t that extraordinary?’ said Lorna, finishing her vodka. ‘Isn’t that quite extraordinary?’ Her husband agreed that it was.

  ‘You say he was over seventy?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he left his wife. He had apparently been saying that he should be like the hermit, fancy free. Of course he never really settled down.’

  ‘More of us should do that,’ said Dougie jokingly as he refilled the glasses again, including mine. ‘More of us should do that. Leave our wives, I mean. A lot of people want to do that.’

  ‘Do you want to do that?’ said Lorna to her husband.

  ‘No, I’m quite happy. In any case, I’m in the Navy already.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something though,’ said Dougie whose voice was becoming even more slurred and his face redder. ‘It’s a question of principle, isn’t it? I mean if the hermit—whoever he is—wants provisions from me I’m bound to sell them to him. Else why was I fighting the Germans, tell me that.’

  ‘That’s a point,’ said Lorna brightly, looking from me to him as if she were watching a tennis match.

  Dougie repeated what he had said.

  ‘After all, we’re living in a democracy, aren’t we? At least, that’s what they call it.’

  Democracy, I thought. Is cancer a democracy? Cancer is what destroys the unity of the cells, the Greek polis. Maybe the hermit was a cancer. Was that what he was?

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘if a lot of people start to leave their wives because of him that will be something else again. You won’t find the women talking about democracy.’

  Dougie was about to say something, I felt sure, about women not being democratic anyway but then looking at Lorna he stopped himself in time and merely remarked, ‘Well, all I can say is what did I fight the Germans for? I’ll tell you,’ he went on forcefully, ‘I fought the Germans so that hermits can buy their groceries at my shop even if they don’t want to speak to me. That’s why I fought the Germans.’

  ‘And quite right too,’ said Lorna as if to a child. ‘Quite right too. Though on the other hand Charles has some right on his side as well. Still it was odd about that old man.’

  ‘It was,’ I agreed. ‘It was very odd.’

  I was looking out of the window at the moon which was rising bright and stunningly clear above the sea. Pure lovely moon, pure merciless moon. There was a long pause in the conversation which no one seemed to wish to break. I felt comfortable and yet at the same time I was restless. Soon I would have to leave. That is what is so odd about lonely people, they want to be alone and yet they do not want to be alone. There were times when I needed solitude like food and drink and other times when I couldn’t bear it.

  The fact was I didn’t particularly care for Lorna or Edward. They seemed to me to be artificial superficial people who could not see and did not wish to see anything profound. They were made uncomfortable by deep discussion. I was much more interested in Dougie than I was in them, though he was being rather incoherent about the Germans.

  Suddenly he said, looking at me in what he imagined must be an affectionate roguish
manner, ‘I hear that you’re getting your milk every morning.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s true. I thought I’d buy fresh milk every morning.’

  ‘And very nice too,’ said Dougie as if he were back in his wartime barracks again and using the sort of language he might have spoken then. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting her in the corn,’ he said. ‘Still, every man to his own taste.’

  ‘And who is this?’ said Lorna, looking at me almost roguishly. ‘I detect something.’

  ‘Oh, you can detect something all right,’ said Dougie. ‘She’s a stunner. Mind you, she’s pretty young.’ And he laughed. I was angry but remained smooth on the surface.

  ‘There is nothing in it,’ I said, ‘but a pure business transaction.’

  ‘Ah, you old rogue,’ said Dougie again. ‘There’s depths to Charles that you wouldn’t believe,’ he told the others, going over to pour himself another whisky. ‘She’s a stunner. A real hum dinger.’

  This went on for some time till finally around eleven o’clock I said I would have to go.

  ‘You don’t have to go yet,’ said Dougie. ‘The night’s still young.’ In the old days I would have left even earlier when my wife was alive and in fact there was really no reason why I should be leaving at eleven o’clock as I could stay in bed as long as I wished. Nevertheless I wanted to leave. The pressure of words without meaning was beginning to tire me. And also I was wondering if other people were saying or hinting what Dougie was saying and hinting. With him it was just words and not for a moment did he believe that there was any truth in what he was saying but other people in the village might be less charitable. The trouble was that though as far as I was concerned nothing had happened, the desire was there, and this was what prevented me from being angrier.

  The moon above the sea which I could see so clearly through the large window reminded me of her, the circles of light on the water. Great white breast of the moon, lovely unattainable Diana, stunningly lovely.

  I insisted on leaving. At the door Dougie said that I must not be offended by his chatter as it was all a joke. He seemed suddenly drunk and pathetic while behind him stood his brother so cool and remote and collected.

  Perhaps, I thought, the village does this to us. It doesn’t present us with enough challenges, it allows us to run to seed.

  Astoundingly, Lorna put her face up to be kissed and as my eyes approached it, it looked grained and rutted like a close-up picture of the moon. There was a smell of stale perfume from her and altogether she reminded me of a string bag such as one might carry home from a shop. Edward’s clasp was cool and faint. They were still standing at the door when I left. I wondered what they would say about me in my absence. Poor Charles, Dougie might say, he’s getting old and narrow-minded. Imagine saying all that about the hermit! But I knew that Dougie was serious about democracy and the Germans, he was fair and straight and kind. Maybe, I thought vaguely, I shall come up against him. Perhaps he too is my enemy. Or rather perhaps I am his enemy. I waved and then they went into the house and the square of light closed.

  And I began my walk home.

  As I walked along I thought of myself as a tramp without destiny, without purpose. I had worn my best suit to visit Dougie as I always did on a Friday but nevertheless I thought of myself as a tramp. The fact was that since my wife died I had had trouble even with maintaining my clothes in a reasonable condition, quite apart from my trouble with cooking. I couldn’t be bothered with darning my socks and often I just threw them away when they were holed and bought new ones. A lot of my jackets had buttons missing and I couldn’t be bothered sewing new ones on. And this was really absurd since I had all the time in the world but at the same time I couldn’t spare the time to sew buttons on jackets or darn my socks. I could hardly be bothered making food for myself.

  As I walked along I could see the hermit’s hut in the distance. Perhaps he was now sleeping quietly and peacefully while I was walking along the road to my lonely house, restless, yet not wishing to go back to it. The sky above was bright with moonlight. Even the Greeks, it occurred to me, must have had trouble with their cooking and their clothes. But of course nothing of that was mentioned in their philosophy. They seemed so wholly concerned with the merciless mind, like the moon that raced between the clouds, remote and hard, and so goldenly unlike the stones which Murdo took home for his house. Imagine what it must be like to compose a house of moons.

  And as I walked along thinking of the hermit and his hut and the planes rising from it into the night sky on their unimaginable missions, black planes headed for their destiny of dumbness and silence, I heard above the noise of the running stream another sound. It was the sound of dancing. I halted and listened. Every Friday night the young people would dance to the music of the accordion at the end of the road. They had been doing this for generation after generation—at first it had been the melodeon—and they were doing it tonight. The wheel circled, night was an affair of whiteness and perfume, the ring of erotic flesh. And I myself in the past had sometimes joined in the dance. And many of the girls with whom I had danced had now become old and flabby and fat and had varicose veins. But now if I were to enter that circle they would all withdraw from me as if I were a ghost and the accordion player would stop playing and there would be a dead silence. But in the old days it hadn’t been like that. In the light of the autumn moon the world appeared brave and brilliant, the future lay before us all, our feet derived strength from the earth as we danced and we were young. There was no disease in the world, no sorrow, nothing but certainty. The dance was the symbol of eternity which repeated itself endlessly. Now it was merely a nostalgic charm. But perhaps that was the image I should have been seeking for, the image of the dance, not the image of silence and dumbness. If only one could live forever in the world of the dance, if only we had the luck. But, no, I didn’t even dance very well and now I wouldn’t be able to dance at all. Time had slowed me down, made my body stiff. I would find it undignified to dance. I would be too aware of those forces which were like a high wind trying to break up the dance. How could one be so innocent again? How could one have the fierce animal eye that gazed at the moon and tried to stare it down?

  And as I walked along I thought that if I had a bomb I would destroy this village where my idealism had died. Here my heart which had burned with fervour had turned to ashes. It was all the fault of the village and its people. They too easily had lost their vision of the dance and because of that I had lost it too. The dance to them was frivolous, it was a stage in their lives which had to be transcended so that they could settle down and raise families and cultivate their land. But what, I thought, if the dance itself is the centre of the world? For in the dance we do not consider what other people may be thinking about us, we are not looking for hidden meanings in their conversations. In the dance we put out our hand and we grasp another hand and the two hands are mortal and warm. We are all together in the dance creating together whatever our souls and minds are like, an image of harmony. In the centre of the dance there is no fear, no horror. There are no skulls staring at us from the centre of the dance and no cries of pain are heard.

  And these thoughts and wishes brought me to the house and to my own door. I have to say at this point, if I have not said it already, that when I go out I always leave the door unlocked: there is no history of stealing in the village. I switched on the light and there sitting in my chair was my wife. She had always sat there and for a moment in my slightly drunk state I didn’t find it wholly odd that she should be there. She always used to sit by the fire knitting or sewing in that very chair with the blue cover on it.

  Then the whole world turned over again and it wasn’t my wife, it was Janet.

  I looked at her in amazement, almost buckling at the knees. She had clearly been waiting there patiently for me in the chair by the unlit fire, her legs crossed perhaps as they were now.

  ‘My parents think I’m at the dance,’ she said.

  I looked from he
r to the window and then I walked over and drew the curtains. What would happen to me if anyone saw her there. She was wearing a white dress and her long black hair flowed down behind her back.

  ‘I haven’t much time,’ she said.

  I went over to the cupboard and poured myself a whisky.

  ‘Would you like one?’ I asked.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said.

  I now knew why she had come. With my whisky in my hand I walked over to the bureau in the corner of the room and took out my money. I didn’t care how much I was giving her and I poured the notes in her lap. It was the two hundred pounds for the red suite, that was what she wanted. She counted the money carefully and put it in her handbag which lay on the floor beside the chair.

  I drank the whisky quickly and she said: ‘Where do we go?’

  I put the glass down on the table, my lips dry. It was impossible that she should be there and yet she was there in her white dress with the pure glow of youth on her face.

  I went into the bedroom and she followed me, shining palely in the darkness. I drew the curtains in this room too, shutting out the light of the moon, though I could still hear the dancing.

  I undressed and climbed into bed. My legs seemed scrawnier than usual, my skin unhealthy looking. She stood over at the dressing table looking briefly in the mirror in front of which my wife had used to sit in the mornings and at night. This was the bed the two of us had shared for so many years.

  She climbed into bed and her flesh felt cool and marbly. I put my arms around her in the darkness. The desert had blossomed with water.

  ‘I haven’t got much time,’ she whispered again.

  She had come out of the darkness for two hundred pounds for a red suite, for its cheap rays. I had plenty of money. I didn’t grudge that. I grudged the torment of my soul that had led to this.

  It took only fifteen minutes, that was all. When it was over she got up and dressed again in front of the mirror. There was a comb there which she used: in it were still a few grey hairs. I looked at her while she was dressing. She was like a fish, lively and cool. She seemed to have forgotten about me. After a while she was completely dressed again, this child, this cool child.