That Was a Shiver, and Other Stories

by James Kelman

  Stopped in my tracks. That’s the song. Dont try to think what we all say. It doesnay work anyway. People die, they drop off; they fall away. One minute ye’re all there, the next ye’re gone. Where did ye go? One day ye notice: Where’s Hughie? I havenay seen Hughie for a while. He’s deid. Hughie? Aye. Hughie’s deid? Fuck sake. That was a blow but Hughie, drapping deid like that. Standing outside the supermarket and ower he went. Talking best mates me and him. The rest of us keep going. Me anyway. The wife too. She liked Hughie. He made her laugh. He had that knack.

  Naybody can plan simplicity. It doesnay matter how hard ye try. As hard as ye like. She feels the same, the wife. I telled her, They’re just young people I says. They’re no that young says she, with all their dancing and jiggling about, all shaking this and that, breasts and bollocks, shouting and bawling. That’s just physicalities I says. Their breathing too I says, that is a physicality, listen a minute and ye’ll hear. It’s laboured; their breathing’s laboured. I noticed that. That was weird. I found it creepy. Jigs and polkas. I used to like jigs and polkas, she said, the wife, and she shook her head at me in that auld way she used to do, looking to see who else was there, if anybody was and if they were were they listening. People listen. She hated that, she was a very private person, just honest privacy for honest stuff. Some want privacy for shady stuff. That wasnay her. She just hated nosy people. I didnay see anybody listening but that didnay mean they werenay. They might have been. Maybe they were there, maybe they were listening, and looking. People do that. People close to ye as well, wherever they are, ghosts flitting about. Ye keep quiet, thinking about other stuff, how it used to be when people were all there, like whoever, the wife, Hughie, my maw and da – except him, forget him, waste of fucking space my da, wherever he is, wherever he was: wherever he went; fuck knows where he went, cowardly bastard. Ye think of that ‘life is plural’ crap. It doesnay work for all ages, not like with generations. Ye are aye in a zoo. Folk like us. Other yins are invisible. If that suits them then fuck them, that is their choice. Zoos and invisibility. I prefer weans anyway, they dont see ye, too engrossed in their own physicalities – ye could even say spiritualities because of how they are in their own head, their own mind; in their own mind in their own body. And it makes ye shiver. Me anyway. The way they dont see anybody. Is that courage? Am I seeing courage? Or stupidity? Are they just deaf, dumb and blind, and without a brain? Ye could be standing there and they would barge their way past. They knock ye ower. I kept out the road. No the wife. Sterner stuff. Ye worried about her. She was never there. No when ye needed her. Where did she go? She disappeared. How come? It was creepy.

  Plus the stuff needing to get done. Who did that? I didnay. She did, she just went away and that was that, she did it. Whatever. If it needed doing. I didnay notice. I should have but I didnay. It was like I had forgotten how. I just seemed to go about, and then what, mishaps. Shapes dotted about.

  Ye try jigs and polkas. Not on yer tod; ye wouldnay manage that. We all need partners. Me too. Mates. Mine was Hughie Morrison. Hughie died. I miss him. All ye see is them stoating about, through the door in they come, breasts and bollocks, there ye are and ower ye go. Okay but keep it to yourself. Ye want to pretend. Dont. It cannay be helped so it doesnay matter. If it cannay be helped it cannay be helped. Ye keep it to yerself. Yourself, myself, us alone. Nay whispering. I hate that whispering. Whose are the voices, all the voices. Inside my mind it is like tattooed. I was doomed but naybody telled me. On I ploughed. In a golden glaze. I think of that. Golden glaze? What does it mean except it is good. We say these things. What are they? Do they have a meaning? Ye think of a nice malt. I do anyway. Slàinte mhath. People think we know but we dont. The weans understand that. They dont hear us mouthing. Yellow cocoon. What is that? In a yellow cocoon. Is that death? Golden glaze, yellow cocoon. Golden glaze good, yellow cocoon bad.

  We dont need no intoxication, talking about my g g generation. The weans make their own, skipping to Maloo, wherever that is. They will dance and they will sing. Balls stoat. So do people. Some are doomed to fail. I saw young ones in the statuesque position. Eastern idols. They reminded me of that: one boy and one lassie. Two in one. So wrapped roundabout one another they were inside as well as out. Snakes and tails, a snake swallowing its own tail. The boy might be up the lassie, her wriggling and him pushing. She would know, the wife. She would look and say, Oh I know what he’s meaning. He is meaning us, that is like me and him. That was us two. Talking me and him, me and him isnay plural, no a woman and a man; we are two separates coming the gether. Oh my, ye see them in shorts and short skirts. See their arms: folded stiffly. Why would that be? Balletic. That was them, that was their attitude. Boys and lassies the gether, that was them; that was them dancing, it was their dance.

  I apologise. We are all individuals. An individual is a one and only. We do our handstands and cartwheels but this does not carry us, does not lift us o’er, soaring. We stay on the outside.

  That was how they danced. They put on their show. They did that then disappeared. Weans do that. That is what they do. Dont rely on weans. They leave too. Ye sit there and that is you; ye look for the wife, where is she? ye dont see her. Hughie? Where’s Hughie? Next is the weans. In they come through the door, that is what they do, not knowing the ground is hallowed. It is ours. We make it hallowed. We put ourselves into it. Our spirits and all everything and the rest that goes between us. Everything that is and has gone, that went between us.

  In seeing them we reach the courage and it is maybe our courage. We dont fool them so not wurselves either. Not anybody. We are not trying to fool anybody. Me too. I would never, not myself. There isnay a tomorrow, what ye mean by tomorrow, there isnay one. It might be high up and you looking down. If this is what ye believe. Gardens of Eden and garlands of leaves. Grapes. Where are the beautiful maidens? Hughie used to say that. Where are the beautiful maidens? There they are there, look at them dance look at them sing. The wife too, laughing, how she laughed, she had that laugh and I try to reach it, so if I find it, if I do, I think I will.

  CLINGING ON

  It occurred to me I was awake. From here was difficult. I had to remind myself that the ‘that’ was absent and its significance, its significance, the ‘absence’ or non-existence, or negation, and to piece together, or distinguish the several parts. In normal, or regular – I speak of the day-to-day – discourse or communication the sentence would have written as two part comprising two clauses: ‘It occurred to me that I was awake.’ A writer of prose might well have used a ‘that’ and therefore lost the meaning for the second clause ‘that I was awake’ slips into a past, or simply different, time zone. Whereas a poet might have written, or expressed the sentence separated by line-spacing, thus:

  It occurred to me

  I was awake.

  Finer prose-writers are wary of making use of the poet’s devices. They do so, but cautiously. What is clearer now is the separation between the two clauses is not just ambiguous but offers a minimum two meanings and these may be conjoined principal statements: ‘It occurred to me’ and ‘I was awake’. And might be expressed, or written, ‘It occurred to me (I was awake).’ The difficulty is the use of brackets suggesting a banality which amounts not to tautology but, upon examination, of one statement the other may be found. Nought can occur if one is asleep. If the act of occurrence has occurred then certainly one is awake.

  Following this I can express it thus: ‘I was awake; this realisation had taken hold of me’ and, the corollary, that I might be expressed as a sentence; if so the use of the term ‘might’ is the key to the evaporation of the space between us (me and reality). From here it follows that I may or may not be so expressed. I was aware of that. Oh God.

  THIS HAS NO

  TITLE

  What is escape is not so much escape as the unplanned. My life had reached a point, deteriorated to the point, been arrested prior to this, this point, utter disintegration. The desire for death is desire and desire is activ
ity. I had avoided it in other words, where escape is not avoidance, and was looking for a why, why why why.

  Get a grip of your emotions!

  This was a scream. Sitting on a bus too, my god, a bus, I was on an actual bus journey. Other people dont have these problems. How do I know! Can I get inside their head, their brain, their fuck sake what

  Everybody does. In one way or another they do. The whole of humanity. I was sitting there, returning home, on a bus, the bus, my bus, and the wife was waiting. Where had I been!

  We can only return. I knew that. I had no desires, expected none, was over the worst, all of it. Equilibrium obtained, he said with relish. Having returned, returning. Before returning one has to have returned.

  What did she think what would she say?

  But what did I see was the real question. Okay, it was nighttime; nighttime is the righttime. Were it daytime, oh god things would have been visible. As it was, no. Immaterial reality. God with a capital letter. Not even the moon. Fucking nothing. Inside the bus was different. I preferred inside. Persons are good. I watched the woman in front, the back of her head, neck, and shoulders; her hair straggling over her red coat. Long dark hairs, unbrushed, although she couldnt, couldnt have brushed them, had she wanted, she would not have been able to brush them, tidying them so to speak. I could have, could have straightened them, reached to her. But she would not have wanted me to do that. I would have done it for her. Women are, and we, we males

  My wife sometimes

  forget it.

  Others avoid touching, personal data concerning ‘the body’; bodies, bodily functionings, meat and blood and bones; one exercises the cleaver, the chopper, to do with bodies, I never minded that; others may. I was always good, having the liking, for people’s bodies and could always touch them and would have been good in that type of job. Instead it wasnt, was not to be.

  I hated stores most of all. Stores. I was always too cold, too cold. Or hot. I was hot too! I was. Discomfort, discomforted. Why was that? Discomfited. That was stores for you. And you didnt see persons you liked. Just persons you had to see and if women came down from the office they always went in to see the storesclerk. We used to smile and be friendly and they smiled back but they never stopped to say hullo: hullo. I envied them walking about, women from the office, and girls, their shapes; girls have shapes, taking their messages to people, I would have taken a message, in itself this would have been the message, its delivery; give it to me, I shall take it, execute the charge. I would have liked such a position.

  The way of the world. Had I been female I would have found more suitable employment.

  Women’s positions suited me better. Women are good at touching. But I was born a male. We are born into the world and the few choices we have are determined by that.

  The busdriver was angry. I would have driven the bus better. I dont think he was good. He pressed too easily on the brake pedal and people were hurled this way and that. Elderly people too, and their bodies, fragility, wrists and joints and so easily damaged, bruised limbs, the limbs of elderly people, bone diseases. This man was not simply pressing the pedal he was kicking and booting it. No wonder the passengers didnt like him. And they didnt, they certainly did not like this man. Perhaps too he was racist and was annoyed because persons foreign to him were on the bus; many foreign persons, and languages. Their homes were damaged.

  I think of places and not countries. Countries are for rich people, their determination, the freedom to accumulate, building their moats and defence arsenals.

  Then the man coming along the aisle, a big heavy fellow, he sat down next to me. I knew he would. I had made the space. He noticed I had and nearly smiled, just how he looked around the eyes like it was almost a smile and hoped I would notice it. A recognition of the other’s humanity. There would be this between us. Otherwise he would not have smiled, not as an outer expression; but I was very conscious of his large body, a squeezing-in, squeezing-in. He was a plump man.

  Had this been a revolutionary situation.

  People dump their bags and their coats on the spare seat next to them to stop folk sitting down, in case their bodies ‘touch’. I make space for them. I like to see them there and think alongside with them. They make thoughts go in a different way. So we are in the world together. But why are they so large, the fleshiness, so all fleshy? When our first child was a baby she had rolls of blubber on the upper thighs. I cleaned the diahorrea, sluicing between the rolls, how red the skin, how sore it must have been yet she bore it in wonder.

  The big guy resembled a murdered victim. One knows the signs, one comes to recognise them. His profile was strange. He looked around when he sat down, almost timidly. He was used to being watched. Persons stared. He knew this also. Were he to glance without warning, rabbits in headlights, staring, transfixed. They would have been. Had he glanced round he would have seen such persons, had he been quick, these fellow travellers.

  We journey not as one.

  A human being who sits beside me, looks at the same things and sees them so that for one split second we might experience the same thoughts. Then if the whole bus, if everybody, all sitting there, if something happens outside to interrupt everybody in their own thoughts to suddenly look at the same thing, and see it, for that split second.

  I was wrong to say he resembled a murdered victim. I jumped to conclusion. My wife rightly pilloried me for this.

  There are times I believed myself on the wrong bus, as if it were the wrong country. Maybe I stepped on a bus in a different dimension. In this dimension no one arrives at a destination, round and round I go until then I am dumped back where I started, legs wobbly and my mind, wherever it has been.

  At least I could look at them, listen to them, see their faces. Persons in their own dreams. Those dreams about one another.

  Important issues arise from that. We have to consider them. We have to. Me too. Even though tired, I was tired, very very, so tired. A true and authentic exhaustion. Although I once believed this kind of exhaustion begins from the intellect and must begin from the intellect. But perhaps not, this one anyway; it doesnt.

  We can have this case and that case and this one had laid me out. I didnt think I could rise from the seat. Perhaps the big heavy fellow would help. But was it my stop? Outside the night was a block of black paint without a single shard of light, not one. He could hold my arm and pull me up out my seat. But could I ask him. Yes. Of course I could. I would. He was staring away to the front of the bus, watching the driver. The driver was a sorry individual and all knew that he was. I was sorry for persons like him; typically I pitied them. But not this night; this was not a typical night. I wished the busdriver would stop behaving so badly. If

  It applies to the mind, if the mind

  conditional thoughts

  Such is physical. I was unable to move. It wasnt the brain telling me something it was my body. Brains do not talk. Bodies do not listen. My brain was powerless. It was part of my body and could not be otherwise. I asked my daughter ‘where does the thinking take place?’ She said, ‘Everywhere.’

  Ethereality. In political or campaigning work the condition has a name, we call it burn-out. It is a good word for a bad condition. It stops us and we can no longer, can no longer

  So that even people and persons of whom we may wish not

  I can say we, and I am glad I said we. We call it burn-out. Ones who speak about burn-out with personal authority know more is meant than mind and body. This is because we embrace the emotional and what in older terminology is called ‘the passions’. So it isnt just mind and body.

  What are the passions? What else but the qualities of humanity. Who are we and what are we. We persons are human beings. Such are our qualities, we are the summation. Yet they may leave us. The qualities of humanity identify

  This big guy, I mean, for example. It had become difficult for me to move. I considered moving. His left thigh jammed me down, to get out the seat how to get out the seat, if it was m
y stop I could not get out the seat and would be my stop, and to press the button, reaching the button, I would press the button.

  The qualities of humanity identify us and one difficult truth is how those too might disappear. Not forever. Not necessarily. It is true that for some persons they do. They never return, they are wrecks. We see them beached.

  The woman sitting in front of myself past her stop. I knew she was. This was an effect of the long dark hair that I so loved to brush, straggling the collar of her red coat. I would offer support. I would lean to her and whisper not to worry, come the terminus and I would be there for her. I would never abandon her. It is the expectation of humanity. I never would abandon her, nor indeed the big fellow.

  Persons are vessels, having emptied, become washed-up. They are unable to lift themselves, raise themselves to dry out. The sap in the body evaporates, breath dying, their very breath.

  Persons dragging themselves across the sand toward the river and that quick flow of water, getting themselves close enough that the pull of the current might operate on them too, and why not, why not. I saw them cross the sand. They attempt this and I was glad to see it. I call this ‘activity’. We watch the healthy, fit and strong. We notice their limbs threshing, tongues lolling. That is not healthy. Persons gasping, indicative of what is to come, the want of oxygen, them requiring more, a wee bit more, a wee wee bit. Those within the current pull, pull. Ahead is the sea, if only they can drag themselves, moving, and so forward, moving forward, to drag themselves, if they can. But there is the lack, it is our lack, that weariness, overwhelming, it is, enveloping us, how can we move, be expected to move, we are always expected to move and we cannot cannot do it. We cannot move. Even us, if we are returning. And that was me, supposedly, on this bus and the bridge over the river. The woman in the red coat and the long dark hair. If this is returning. I dont think it is. I wouldnt think we can return. Perhaps never. Water is infinite and so are we. Only we become stranded. Fit and healthy, mind and body, missing something, for between these two is an absence and it is this absence which we cannot name, cannot name if I could but I could not and it was this, this is where it began. I was without it, and knew that I was, and without it there is nothing.