Listen to the Voice

by Iain Crichton Smith

  Then it happened. One of our group—a student I think—had been pushed towards the middle of the road. It wasn’t his fault. It was simply the pressure of the crowd. A policeman came up to him—one of the ones who had been directing the traffic.

  It’s a funny thing about policemen. Usually you don’t notice them at all. You don’t somehow think of them as people with emotions. They are there to look calm and controlled and placid and that is what they do. That is what they are paid for. They walk in such a deliberate manner as if they have an understanding with time.

  Anyway this policeman came up to him and began to tell him to move back. Now I can understand that some of the policemen must have been harassed. The day was warm—even hot—and there were a lot of people and perhaps they didn’t quite know what to do. Furthermore it can’t be very comfortable for a policeman to walk about in cloth of such thick texture on a hot day. This was quite a young policeman. I looked at his face and in a surprised flash I realised something. This policeman wasn’t being merely tired and harassed, he actually appeared to hate this student. It was in his eyes and also in his teeth which I saw for a moment bared as he hissed out a command. It startled me coming out of that fine day. He pushed the student ahead of him roughly: the student pushed him back, (I saw his blue untidy scarf). Then the policeman twisted the student’s arm behind his back, and shouted, upon which another policeman came running up: it was like the natural order being over-turned. The student’s face was white with pain: whistles were being sounded: the crowd was milling aimlessly around. I saw some milk spilled on the pavement beside me and bits of glass. Then I saw Fiona pushing her way through the crowd. I could hardly recognise her. Her face was pale and set. I tried to follow her but I lost her. I climbed up on the top steps to see. She went up to the policeman and hit him on the back of the head with her handbag. Then she was seized by another policeman. By this time a black van had driven up. She and the student were bundled inside. The door was locked. The van was driven away.

  I stood there watching. The young policeman faced the crowd. He was almost grinning. I heard him shouting but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. It was as if he hated us. The crowd began to move away until I stood on the steps alone. It wasn’t the steps of the Municipal Chambers at all: it was the steps of the Art Gallery. There are ten: I counted. The young policeman was at the bottom looking up, his legs wide apart, while the crowd drifted away. I looked down at him. There was a book in my hand. My flannel trousers swayed slightly in the breeze. I felt thin, even though I was angry. I nearly threw the book at him but he looked and was stronger than me. He did not seem to be standing on the soles of his feet but rather on his toes. I could see his face under the diced cap. It was of a high red complexion: his shoulders were wide and he had the free composure of the fit. His lips appeared petulant and cruel. He stood as if grinning at me for a while—I had the strangest sensation as if he was daring me to attack him—then with an arrogance which was entirely unlike that of a policeman he turned and began as if in parody to pace up and down with a slow deliberate tread.

  I left that place and began to walk, not knowing where I was headed for. Eventually I found myself at the iron gates of the university. I walked past the sacrist in his navy-blue uniform with the yellow facings, up the flagged road and into the library. The ivy was very green and grassy, the library very cool. I sat down at a table to rest my feet. In an alcove the logic professor was leaning down close over a book so that his face almost seemed to touch it. I watched him for a while, then suddenly realised that he was asleep. I looked at the dead-white cool busts scattered round the library. I laid my sweating hands on the cool table. I was surrounded by rows and rows of books, but I had no desire to read them. After I had sufficiently rested I got up and went out, carefully closing the door after me. Then I walked down the flagged path. The sacrist was no longer to be seen and the sliding window at the enquiry office was shut. I walked back into town over the rough tarry stones and went home. Then I sat down at the window and thought. Eventually I dipped my pen into the ink and began to write. That is what I could do.

  But I shall have to think.

  Your loving son,

  Kenneth

  Today I went to the courtroom. It was 11 in the morning and I was allowed to enter among the few spectators. I sat down on one of the varnished benches, feeling the hot sun warm on my shoulder. There was a big clock which I could see through the window. The atmosphere in the courtroom was very cool and quiet, as in a church, but on the seat at the front of the adjoining benches sat that policeman, his cap beside him on the seat, his hair brilliant and black and cropped, the back of his neck scrubbed and red. Sometimes he looked round as if he were waiting to arrest one of us but none of us was making a noise. He didn’t seem to recognise me. Why should he?

  At 11 o’clock the clerk—or whoever he is—came in and we all stood up. Then the judge, a small old man, walked rather unsteadily to his raised seat. He wore a hearing-aid. Imagine it! It was like something out of Dickens. It’s perfectly true! Then Fiona and the student were led in. She did not look at me, though she was looking towards me. It was strange how that was: yet she appeared calm, though pale. The student was thin, dark-haired, with dark rings under his eyes. He didn’t look as if he had slept and he answered questions in a low voice. I noticed that one of his turn-ups was turned down: I found this endearing and pitiful. His tie was also slightly askew. He kept feeling in his pocket as if he were hunting for something—perhaps his cigarette case—but all these things are taken away from prisoners.

  The first witness called was the policeman. (I now noticed that there was another policeman beside him: I hadn’t noticed before.) My policeman walked up to the witness box and stood there for a moment before reading his statement in a heavy placid self-satisfied tone. But before he began to read, the judge suddenly turned to Fiona and said:

  ‘I hear your father is a lawyer and that you refused his services. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at her for a moment as if there was something he didn’t understand, then said to the policeman:

  ‘Carry on, constable.’

  I thought that was a very old-world word. The policeman had hardly begun when the judge said: ‘Could you please speak a little louder?’

  The policeman glanced at him, I thought, with a curious masked contempt, but raised his voice as he had been ordered, the judge meanwhile cupping his hand over his right ear, and leaning towards him. Fiona was staring right through me and through the window asking nothing of me but existing in a world of her own which was also a real world for she did not look like a statue or a coin: she looked what she was, pale and weak. I wondered what sort of night she had spent and sensed that she was frightened. I thought of how my own stomach turns over when I am frightened and how the sweat prickles my hands.

  ‘… then the accused’—looking briefly at the student—‘began to rain blows on me.’

  ‘That is not true.’ I had stood up. It was my voice. I had said, ‘That is not true’ because it was not true but I had not said it as one interrupts a lecturer who is demonstrating a theorem and who has made an error. I had said it as if I were throwing a stone. It was curious how the policeman continued as if he had not heard me: it was the judge who stopped him. The judge was old, but he had heard me. Fiona was looking at me, as if she was seeing me for the first time. Beyond the hearing-aid, the judge’s mind was feeling towards me.

  I said, ‘It is not true. He was not raining blows at him.’ I was appealing to the judge but at the same time I had the strangest feeling as if I was happy though I was frightened. It was like having the sweetness and terrible coldness of ice cream on your teeth at the same time. The policeman had stopped speaking, and was standing as if he didn’t know what to do.

  The old judge’s eyes moved slightly. It was as if he was puzzled by something for a shadow passed across the redness—as you can see a crow at sunset—I have seen that look often
in the eyes of the old, the shock of the unexpected and the strange. I thought he was going to fine or imprison me, and I began:

  ‘It is untrue because I was there. The witness was doing no harm. I was watching him. He was pushed into the middle of the road.’

  I now knew what had happened. I had spoken these words not because of the bomb but because of Fiona. I knew now what she meant by being on the side of life. She had asked nothing of me. She had stood there in her pallor and her weakness and had made no demands. Therefore I had offered her myself. It was like the amethyst at her breast exploding into a new bomb, which in turn exploded within me, the bomb of truth. It is not preaching I want, but vision!

  Therefore, there was the old judge leaning between us with his hearing aid and the policeman with his neat diced evil cap laid beside him. There was the smell of varnish and the court which was like a church. The sun exploded through the window, drunkenly. It flashed on the judge’s head, leaped through the glass of water, and shone on Fiona’s face which was smiling and dizzy. It swayed the wall diagonally towards the policeman, scything him in two, it made the varnish into a stifling musk, and punched me between the eyes exploding light in my head. The prison fell in like a pack of cards. I looked up. The floor swayed like a deck beneath me. The sun was rising over the sea. There was the noise of a train and coloured flowers. Above me was George’s face. And Fiona was standing beside him. The floor steadied. I was calm, so calm. I had never been so calm. Now I write out of this calmness, Fiona and I. George has gone and we are alone. We send you this letter, Fiona and I.

  Your loving son,

  Kenneth

  The Old Woman, the Baby and Terry

  THE FACT WAS that the old woman wanted to live. All her faculties, her energies, were shrunken down to that desire. She drew everything into herself so that she could live, survive. It was obscene, it was a naked obscenity.

  ‘Do you know what she’s doing now?’ said Harry to his wife Eileen. ‘She keeps every cent. She hoards her pension, she’s taken to hiding her money in the pillow slips, under blankets. She reminds me of someone, I can’t think who.’

  ‘But what can we do?’ said Eileen, who was expecting a baby.

  Harry worked with a Youth Organization. He earned £7,000 a year. There was one member of the organization called Terry MacCallum who, he thought, was insane. Terry had tried to rape one of the girls on the snooker table one night. He was a psychopath. Yet Harry wanted to save him. He hated it when he felt that a case was hopeless.

  ‘She won’t even pay for a newspaper,’ said Harry.

  ‘I know,’ said Eileen. ‘This morning I found her taking the cigarette stubs from the bucket.’

  The child jumped in her womb. She loved Harry more than ever: he was patient and kind. But he grew paler every day: his work was so demanding and Terry MacCallum was so mad and selfish.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone like him,’ said Harry. ‘His selfishness is a talent, a genius. It’s diamond hard, it shines. I should get rid of him, I know that. Also he’s drunk a lot of the time. He said to me yesterday, I don’t care for anyone. I’m a bastard, you know that. I’m a scrounger, I hate everyone.’

  Harry couldn’t understand Terry. Everything that was done for him he accepted and then kicked you in the teeth. He was a monster. He haunted his dreams.

  The child kicked in Eileen’s womb. She wanted it badly. She had a hunger for it. She wanted it to suck her breasts, she wanted it to crawl about the room, she wanted it to make her alive again.

  And all the time the old lady hoarded her banknotes. One day Eileen mentioned to her that they needed bread but she ignored hints of any kind. She even hoarded the bread down the sides of her chair. She tried to borrow money from Eileen. She sang to herself. She gathered her arms around herself, she was like a plant that wouldn’t die. Eileen shuddered when she looked at her. She thought that she was sucking her life from her but not like the baby. The baby throve, it milked her, it grew and grew. She was like a balloon, she thrust herself forward like a ship. Her body was like a ship’s prow.

  ‘I tried talking to him,’ said Harry. ‘I can’t talk to him at all. He doesn’t understand. I can’t communicate. He admits everything, he thinks that the world should look after him. He wants everything, he has never grown up. I have never in my life met such selfishness. If he feels sexy he thinks that a woman should put out for him immediately. If he feels hungry he thinks that other people should feed him. I am kind to him but he hates me. What can you do with those who don’t see? Is there a penance for people like that? What do you do with those who can’t understand?’

  The baby moved blindly in her womb, instinctively, strategically. She said to Harry, ‘I’m frightened. Today I thought that the ferns were gathering round the house, that they wanted to eat me. I think we should cut the ferns down.’

  ‘Not in your condition,’ said Harry. He looked thin, besieged.

  The old lady said, ‘I don’t know why you married him. He doesn’t make much money, does he? Why doesn’t he move to the city? He could make more money there.’ She hid a tea bag in her purse. And a biscuit.

  The child moved in the womb. It was a single mouth that sucked. Blood, milk, it sucked. It grew to be like its mother. It sang a song of pure selfishness. It had stalks like fern. The stars at night sucked dew from the earth. The sun dried the soil. Harry had the beak of a seagull.

  ‘Last night he wouldn’t get off the snooker table,’ said Harry. ‘There are others who want to play, I said to him. This is my snooker table, he said. It isn’t, I said. It is, he said. You try and take it off me. And then he said, Lend me five pounds. No, I said. Why, he said. Because you’re selfish, I said. I’m not, he said. I’m a nice fellow, everyone says so. I’ve got a great sense of humour. What do you do with someone like that? I can’t get through to him at all. And yet I must.’

  ‘What for?’ said Eileen.

  ‘I just have to.’

  ‘You never will,’ said Eileen.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just because. Nature is like that. I don’t want the child.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know what I mean. Nature is like that. I don’t want the child.’

  Harry had nightmares. He was on an operating table. A doctor was introducing leeches into his veins. The operating table was actually for playing snooker on. It had a green velvet surface. He played with a baby’s small head for a ball.

  The ferns closed in. In the ferns she might find pound notes. She began to eat bits of coal, stones, crusts. She gnawed at them hungrily. The old lady wouldn’t sleep at night. She took to locking her door. What if something happened? They would have to break the door down.

  The baby sucked and sucked. Its strategies were imperative. It was like a bee sucking at a flower with frantic hairy legs, its head buried in the blossom, its legs working.

  Terry stole some money after the disco. He insisted it was his.

  ‘You lied to me,’ said Harry.

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘You said you were at home. I phoned your parents. They said you were out. You lied to me.’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘But can’t you see you said one thing and it wasn’t the truth. Can you not see that you lied?’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake are you mad. You did lie. What do you think a lie is? Can’t you see it?’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘You’ll have to go.’

  The old lady had a pile of tea-bags, quarter pounds of butter, cheese, in a bag under the bed.

  ‘You owe me,’ she said to Eileen. ‘For all those years you owe me. I saw in the paper today that it takes ten thousand pounds to rear a child. You owe me ten thousand pounds. It said that in the paper.’

  ‘You haven’t paid for that paper,’ said Eileen. ‘I’ve tried my best, don’t you understand? How can you be so thick?’

  ‘You owe me ten thousand pounds,’ said the old
lady in the same monotonous grudging voice. ‘It said in the paper. I read it.’

  ‘You are taking my beauty away from me,’ said Eileen to the baby. ‘You are sucking me dry. You are a leech. You are Dracula. You have blood on your lips. And you don’t care.’

  She carried the globe in front of her. It had teeth painted all over it.

  Harry became thinner and thinner. I must make Terry understand, he kept saying. He must be made to understand, he has never in his whole life given anything to anyone. I won’t let him go till I have made him understand. It would be too easy to get rid of him.

  Put him out, said Eileen, abort him.

  What did you say?

  Abort him.

  You said abort. I’m frightened.

  * * *

  ‘Can’t you see,’ said Eileen. ‘That’s what it is. People feed and feed. Cows feed on grass, grass feeds on bones, bones feed on other bones. It’s a system. The whole world is like a mouth. Blake was wrong. It’s not a green and pleasant land at all. The rivers are mouths. The sun is the biggest mouth of all.’

  ‘Are you all right, Eileen?’

  ‘Oh hold me,’ said Harry.

  And they clung together in the night. But Eileen said, ‘Look at the ceiling. Do you see it? It’s a spider.’ It hung like a black pendant. A moth swam towards the light from the darkness outside. The spider was a patient engineer. Suddenly Eileen stood on top of the bed and ripped the web apart. Bastard, she said. Go and find something else to do. The spider had chubby fists. It was a motheaten pendant.

  Terry the psychopath smiled and smiled. He bubbled with laughter.

  ‘Give me,’ he said to his mother, ‘ten pounds of my birthday money in advance.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? You were going to give it to me anyway.’