Listen to the Voice

by Iain Crichton Smith

‘Well, have you any other suggestions as to the format? We are always open to …’

  ‘I thought I might discuss my ideas with a student perhaps if you …’

  ‘Uh huh, have you anyone in mind?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I have. His name is Mallow, Steven Mallow. I could provide you with his address if you …’

  ‘That would be fine. We could get in touch with him. You would wish to discuss this issue with him, is that right?’

  ‘That is right,’ said the Professor picking up and laying down a copy of Catullus’s poems which were lying near the phone.

  Steven Mallow was the student who had defended him at the lecture. Not that he knew much about him except that in one examination he had gained one mark by defining Grimm’s Law.

  ‘I can take it then that you will be at the studio for five,’ said Burrow. ‘We usually provide some food before you go on and then of course you have to be made up. But don’t worry about that. Our girls are very expert.’

  ‘Fine,’ said the Professor, ‘if that’s all … How long would we be on for?’

  ‘Oh I think we could give you fifteen or twenty minutes. Is that fair? Does that sound ok to you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine as far as I am concerned.’

  ‘Good then. We will see you at five. Ask for me personally please. Nigel Burrow.’

  Professor MacDuff put down the phone. As he looked into the darkening garden he could see the statue of the Greek boxer, arms raised in front of him, pale and trembling in the twilight.

  Another short time and I shall be leaving the university, he thought. And he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be alone without anything to do. He had no hobbies at all. He did not play golf, he did not play bowls, he wasn’t a committee man. He would grow old on his own, that was inevitable and terrifying. But as he stood there the line from Tennyson came into his mind, ‘Old age hath yet his honour and his toil’, and he was vaguely comforted by the words and their sound. They seemed to be a guarantee of something, they seemed to provide a music which he could confront the imminent chaos with. He picked up the Catullus and gazed at it absently. Behind him he could see flashes of light from the TV but no sound and he went back and switched it off completely. After some time he prepared himself for bed. As he lay down he watched the cold white moon marbling the sky, a persistent chill scrutiny, an eye of light. Forgetting, once again he stretched out his arm as if to embrace his wife and then withdrew it remembering. Turning over on his side he went to sleep.

  THREE

  Professor MacDuff arrived at the studio at five o’clock precisely and after inquiring at the desk about where he should go was met by Burrow who took him up to a room on the table of which there were salads wrapped in cellophane and a selection of whiskies and beer and sherry. He refused anything to drink and sat down. He felt tense as he had never taken part in a broadcast before although Burrow tried to put him at his ease. With Burrow was a man called Russell who was perhaps the producer.

  ‘I should like to say,’ said Burrow, ‘that we won’t discuss the subject beforehand in case you might say during the programme, “As we were mentioning before we came onto the air!” That looks bad.’

  ‘I understand,’ said the Professor looking dispiritedly at the salad and convinced that he would not be able to do more than nibble at it.

  ‘As a matter of fact once you get started,’ said Russell, ‘you will forget the cameras are there and will only be concerned with what you are saying. Isn’t that so, Nigel?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Burrow. The professor suddenly had the idea that in a short while they would forget his name and even the programme in which he was taking part and that the only reason he was there was not that he should provide information or discuss fundamental things but that he should fill up a space. Pursuing his thought aloud he said:

  ‘Have you ever thought that producers of programmes and editors of newspapers must continue with their work because there is a space which must be filled every day? Have you ever had that feeling?’

  He looked at Russell who seemed not quite to understand the question.

  ‘I’ve never actually thought of it in those terms,’ he said, ‘but I suppose it’s true in a way. Certainly we’re often pressed for time.’

  This wasn’t at all what the Professor had meant: in fact when he tried to say what he meant he wasn’t sure that he could express it. It was something to do with the fact that newspapers and programmes had been originated and that since they had been originated they must proceed by the force of inertia. There was another theory he had about the relationship between space and time as far as news was concerned but he couldn’t clarify the thought. The clock showed five past five and at that moment Mallow entered wearing a blue polo-necked jersey and tight green jeans and carrying a folder with papers.

  ‘Hi,’ he said raising his arm in salute. ‘The communicators are together I see.’ He laid his folder on the table and sat down.

  ‘I think perhaps we should have something to eat now,’ said Burrow. ‘It isn’t much but it’s the best the canteen can do.’

  They all began to remove the cellophane wrappings from the paper plates to reveal chicken and lettuce and beetroot and so on.

  The Professor made vague dabs at it. His cuisine, what with the Chinese food, hadn’t been very spectacular recently. His stomach was tied in knots as it always was before an important occasion, especially one where he would have to expend emotion. He drew in his breath and expelled it slowly knowing that the more tense he was the better he would perform provided that the tension didn’t reach too high a pitch. There was silence for a while till Russell said, ‘I suppose Nigel has told you that you’ll have to be made up. But don’t worry, it won’t take long.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mallow. ‘We don’t get handbags do we,’ and he laughed. Russell who looked as if he had often heard the joke smiled palely. For a moment MacDuff wondered if Mallow had been on television before. Dearest Mary, he said to the shade of his dead wife, please help me, it is all for you. He tried to forget where he was by thinking of his wife, sometimes seeing her with her head bent over a book and at other times pruning the roses beside the Greek statue in the garden. The curve of her back was ineffably painful to him.

  The conversation around him blossomed and concerned itself with the chess tournament which was at that moment taking place in Russia.

  The usual banalities were exchanged though MacDuff was surprised to notice that Mallow apparently didn’t care much for chess. It wasn’t the ‘game for the working classes,’ he said at one stage. You wouldn’t see working men play it in pubs. It was too ‘intellectual’. MacDuff didn’t take much part in the conversation: he was thinking deeply and he was also rather nervous. To use such an instrument …

  Eventually Burrow rose from the table and said that if they followed him to the make-up room … He glanced at his watch and added that he wasn’t trying to hurry them but …

  So they went into the make-up room and it didn’t take very long for a young girl to dab at MacDuff’s cheeks. Then they were sitting on chairs on a platform, himself and Burrow and Mallow. Burrow was in the middle.

  MacDuff thought to himself, I must appear very natural, not at all crazy. I musn’t move my hands or my legs, I must show conviction.

  They were ready. There were some preliminaries and then the programme was stopped and Burrow told them that what they had just said wouldn’t go out but they were really ready now.

  Burrow: ‘Tonight we have with us on Matters of Moment a Professor of English, Professor MacDuff’ (he nodded towards MacDuff who moved his lips silently and nodded), ‘and Stephen Mallow, a student of English in his class. Recently Professor MacDuff has been doing an analysis of comics with his students and this we hear has been causing some friction. Professor MacDuff however believes that comics have a useful part to play and those of us who had to study Shakespeare and Anglo-Saxon are I am sure wondering what he will say. First of all I sh
ould like to ask Mr Mallow if he was surprised when the Professor began to give lectures on the comics. Mr Mallow?’

  Mallow: ‘Not really. Perhaps I was surprised that Professor MacDuff should … But no I can’t say I was surprised. After all lots of people read the comics, far more than read Shakespeare.’

  Burrow: ‘Do you mean then that you would approve of Bingo rather than Brahms?’

  Mallow: ‘If that is what people want. Yes.’

  Burrow: ‘I see. You would approve of lectures on Bingo?’

  Mallow: ‘Why not? What you have to understand is that most people don’t read Shakespeare because they like him. They’ve been conned into reading him. Most people don’t really like Brahms. They prefer to sit down by the fireside and read a good thriller. Or even a comic. You find spontaneous humour in a comic. It’s not easy to write a good comic. You need technique.’

  Burrow: ‘I see. What would you say to that, Professor MacDuff?’

  MacDuff: ‘As a matter of fact I have brought along with me some poems which I found in a magazine, I think it is a minor magazine but the people in it, the poets, are well known, so I am told. I should like to read one of these poems. It is called ‘Bus’. It reads as follows:

  Last bzz

  Izz

  drizzly

  missed.

  Here is another poem:

  Mamba

  adder

  boa constrictor

  pricked her

  mam

  ba

  anaconda

  python.

  The book from which this is taken, the magazine I mean, is called Azure Blues. The blurb reads:

  ‘Simmons (that is the poet who wrote these verses) undoubtedly shows in this book a feeling for urban nuances which by linguistic modes he imposes on the reader. His poems in their simplicity and bizarre menace are a projection into the future.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ said Burrow, ‘are you approving or disapproving …?’

  ‘I was wondering whether Mr Mallow,’ said the Professor, ‘thought that these were good poems.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mallow, ‘they seem to me to be attempting something new. They seem to me to have a certain avant-garde feeling …’

  ‘I was wondering,’ said MacDuff, ‘whether in fact the working classes would find them interesting. You see,’ said the Professor, ‘I think in fact they’re a load of crap.’

  There was a long silence in the course of which Professor MacDuff regarded with satisfaction and merciless tranquillity the expressions which crossed Burrow’s face ranging from bewilderment to fear and the appearance of being hunted. He looked at that moment as if he wanted to leave the box in which he was sitting and certainly, thought MacDuff, he would have brought the programme to an end if MacDuff hadn’t insisted on its being sent out live.

  Eventually Burrow said out of his bemusement, ‘I thought Professor MacDuff that you were in fact …’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said the Professor, ‘I have also brought along with me some lines from a poet whom I admire very much. His name is Shakespeare. The speech is from Hamlet. I should like to read it. It begins as follows:

  ‘“To be or not to be that is the question.” He is of course discussing suicide. It goes on,

  Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

  the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

  or to take arms against a sea of troubles

  and by opposing end them.’

  ‘I am quite sure that the working men will recognise in these lines some of the difficulties that obsess us all.’

  Mallow was signalling frantically.

  ‘The fact is,’ said the Professor, ‘that the greater writers, the great composers, have all written about ordinary people. They were people who suffered. Shall I tell you what is wrong with people like Mallow and his kind? Envy. Pure envy. Why are they envious? They are envious because they cannot write like Shakespeare or like Sophocles or like Tolstoy. Do you think for a single moment that I could conceivably be interested in comics? Do you think for a moment that I look down on the working man? Do you think the great writers have looked down on the working man? Listen to a quotation from the comics. These sounds. “Aargh.” “Yoops.” They are like the sounds we would make when we came out of the slime. Aren’t they? Shall I tell you something? It is the people who write the comics who look down on the working man. They are saying, “This is what the working man is like. This is what he prefers. He can’t do any better than this. Give him any rubbish.” And people like Mallow are the sort who try to deprive him of his heritage. Does he want us to go back to the slime?’

  Burrow: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I thought that you were defending the comics, that you were lecturing on them because you …’

  MacDuff: ‘Exactly. And why did I do that? I did that so that I would end up here. So that I would get an audience. Why did you want me here? Shall I tell you? I’ll tell you the reason why you invited me here. You don’t really give a damn one way or the other. You’re not really interested in this at all are you? You put me on the box because you thought I was going to be sensational, didn’t you? That I would be entertaining. What the hell do you care about culture or about anything else? What do you care about all those people who have died in order to produce a poem or a symphony? You don’t give a damn, do you? What can your friend Mallow say? He doesn’t know enough about literature or about anything else to answer me. Does he even know enough about the comics? Does he know when the comic first started? Of course he doesn’t. He’s just a shallow nincompoop.’

  Burrow: ‘Well, Mr Mallow?’

  Mallow: ‘I was just about to say that this trick is what one would expect of one who is trying to defend the elite and élitism. What has Professor MacDuff ever done except to stay in his ivory tower? Can he tell us if he has in fact gone out to the people? Can he tell us that he is not defending the rotting bastions of capitalism and that in order to do that he must defend the élitism of Shakespeare and the rest?’

  MacDuff: ‘You asked me whether I have done anything for the working man. Yes, shall I tell you what I’ve done for the working man? I’ve spent fifty years reading books and lecturing on them. I have spent fifty years trying to separate the false from the true. I have spent fifty years trying to nurse in people’s minds that love of excellence which prevents us from being animals. You may call it an ivory tower if you like. I say that I’ve been protecting your civilisation, the civilisation of all men. I’ve been trying to keep us all from being yahoos. I’m not saying that I did it alone. But I helped to do it. I’m proud of doing it. Listen to this. This is Hamlet again speaking to Horatio his friend. Hamlet is concerned about his honour and he says:

  Absent thee from felicity awhile

  and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

  to tell my story.

  Listen to this line:

  The still sad music of humanity.

  I could go on all night. When did Mallow or any of his kind ever write anything like that? Is that élitism? Shall I tell you about Mr Mallow and the rest of them? They think they know everything and they know nothing. Michelangelo and the other great painters didn’t think it odd or wrong to be apprentices to painters lesser than themselves. This is the first generation we have had who think they have nothing to learn. I shall challenge Mr Mallow now. I shall ask him who wrote some great lines that I will quote. And to be perfectly fair if he can’t answer these questions—since I am sure he cannot—I further challenge him to produce his alternatives.’

  Burrow: ‘Mr Mallow?’

  Mallow: ‘I haven’t been a professor in an ivory tower for fifty years so I haven’t got the Professor’s useless learning. It would be easy for me to ask him …’

  MacDuff: ‘Please let him ask me to identify any lines that he can produce that the listeners will be able to call great. For after all I believe in the audience out there. I believe they want the best. I don’t believe they
are content with bingo and dominoes or whatever Mr Mallow wants them to play. I don’t believe they want to read comics. I don’t believe they want to be like everyone else. Even on this medium which tries to make them so I still believe with Blake and all the great writers in their potential and their individuality. I believe that they can tell which writers will set down their joys and their sufferings. I believe that they can love the best and the excellent. I do not believe in the “working man”. I believe in individual men. And I say that people like our friend here are practical illiterates who wouldn’t know a line of poetry if it hit them between the eyes. Our universities are full of them. But they have to make the choice whether they want to go back to the world of the comics with their grunts or forward to the best that man has ever thought. I shall be retiring after this programme is over. I am not ashamed of my lifetime’s work and I want to be clear about this. I’m not ashamed of my ivory tower if that is what you call it. I have been in the firing line and a much more complex one than most. It’s true I haven’t fought in wars with bullets but this is another war, and I am suggesting that those great writers as in any other war should not have died in vain. Listen:

  The woods are lovely dark and deep.

  But I have promises to keep

  and miles to go before I sleep.

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  I don’t give a damn for this medium. And I recognise that I have to use a medium which I despise in order to say the things I have to say. I regret that I had to use subterfuge in order to get on it at all. But someone has to say the things I have said. I’m not ashamed of my life. I have done what I set out to do. And I shall continue doing it too.

  ‘And I should like to say this to you. Always try to tell the best from the trashy. You’d try to do it when you’re shopping, wouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t you do it for your minds? The mind surely is as important as the body. I’m not waiting for our friend to sum up. I’m leaving now. I’m leaving because I’m not going to allow them to package all this up very neatly. I say, to hell with their medium. I can step out of the box any time.’