The Red Door

by Iain Crichton Smith

  The sun was almost intolerably hot and he didn’t know where he was going. He heard off and on Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with fragments of the French National Anthem interrupted by a steely cavalry charge. He had a vision of a soldier climbing the Heights of Abraham in a bloody battle which lasted for five days to the sound of trumpets provided by Louis Armstrong, and placing at the top, instead of a Union Jack, a stone handbag. Night with its million stars never descended: it was always day and there were no clouds, only a sun which hammered on a steel anvil like a giant at the opening of a film.

  ‘Do you love me?’ a voice was saying. The face from which the words issued changed continually. It was like a face from a spy story, made from liquorice, deceptive, and bearing like a lamp its brilliant smile. Sometimes it said, ‘Do yer luv me?’ Sometimes it said, ‘Love me?’ Sometimes there was a body standing by a car dressed in a dazzling white vest and white pants. He imagined it was autumn, everything was so brown, and there were hazel nuts on the trees, and a river with dark water which made the sound of crossed telephone conversations. At other times he thought it was winter and there was a wolf waiting for him while he put flowers in a skull-shaped basket and snowflakes steadily fell.

  Sometimes he thought that in front of him there was an enormous mirror, and he saw a saint all in green escaping through a church window. He took off his jacket by a mirage, and rested his shirt-sleeved arms in it. As the day swirled around him he saw what he had come to see and had been seeing for years, and had been trying to escape from. It sat in the middle of the desert, a chair and table, and on the table a clock and a packet of cigarettes. The clock made of black wood had a white face. On the table was an exercise book and pen. He sat down in the chair and picked up the pen and began to write. The vultures flapped angrily round him as if they had been cheated. He wrote in block capitals: WHAT ONE SEES IS WHAT ONE IS. He looked at this for a long time and then began to write: ‘He plodded steadily on through the desert.’

  The Return

  The house seemed solid in the wind and the rain, the gathering darkness. He was returning from the country of advertisements to this simple place in the autumn. His clothes were old and worn and he looked like a scarecrow. Inside him was the sour taste of insults received, of swine guzzling, of his mouth at the trough. Over and over he kept saying to himself the speech he had prepared, the part he would play; he would arrange his humble hands, his body like an arched bow.

  In the stormy autumn day he could see no one, not his brother, not his father. The land too looked strange and dark and foreign. He did not feel as if he was going home. He felt rather as if he were about to endure a sentence passed on him by a judge whom he did not know. He remembered large illuminated shops, prostitutes, people as bright as robins going home with Christmas presents. Nailed to the slatted bench, he would see their legs, their trousers, their skirts, his own broken boots like windows. He had left those lights to enter the storm which was always there, swirling about the bowed cottages, the battered plants. He walked on, his speech tolling in his head. There were no hens in the yard, there were no cattle or sheep to be seen. The land looked old and brown and there were no trees anywhere.

  He went up to the scarred door and knocked without thinking. There was no answer. He opened the door and entered. There was an old chair in front of him at an angle to an old dresser. He looked at the chair, wondering what it was doing there in that particular space. That wasn’t where it used to be. It was gaunt and tall and wooden, with no cushion or softness of cloth about it. The dark and white air moved about it. He looked at the dresser with the tiers of plates rising about it.

  After a while he went up to his own room. The toys were still there, disarranged as if the storm had got at them. There were old fairy stories among them. Westerns. He sat down amongst them, the trail of days without consciousness. A rocking horse swayed dustily when he touched it. He turned away from the mirror.

  He began to repeat his speech to himself. ‘I was young and foolish, I did not know. I wished to make money and find fame.’ His unshaven face stubbled like a cornfield moved slightly as he spoke through the gaps in his teeth. He was practising his role. Outside the windows the moon rose like a balloon at a feast, frail, stormily trailing from a loop of cloud. The wind howled in the chimney: the rain lashed the windows. He could not bear to look at the road.

  ‘No,’ he thought, ‘I shan’t go back there. It’s too late.’ And at that moment he changed his role. He began to speak with his father’s voice. ‘You can’t leave. We have work to do. We have something to build up.’ Frenziedly he began to tidy the room, to arrange the toys. He went through the whole house like a storm, tidying, arranging, dusting. He arranged the photographs, chairs, tables, flicked away spiders’ webs. Scrubbed. He found a lamp and lit it. He felt as if he were holding a fort against a siege by the darkness. He moved about the house, the light in his hand. He washed and cleaned himself.

  After a long time he sat down at the table and took out the Bible and began to read it. He read it aloud as if there were some people listening to him; he took pride in his reading. The room was clean and lit. Everything was shaped and new and clear. Beyond the house the wind and the rain raged and the moon veered drunkenly about the sky. Eventually, however, the wind died down and the moon steadied, shining with a hard marbly light like a big white stone.

  When he had read the passage from the Bible he went upstairs to bed, walking with a stately, heavy, dignified stride, solid and diminished. He hadn’t been able to find a calendar but he would find one. He lay beneath the sheet which shone white in the darkness. He stretched out his legs. The moon made the whole floor appear white and hard as if it were made of stone. The rocking horse with its small beady eyes was still. He padded across the room and pulled the curtains aside. There was no one on the road. In the far distance he could hear the voice of the stream and see the white shapeless boulders. He walked back to the bed exactly like his father. He fell asleep quite quickly.

  The End

  Starving and in rags he came out of the dark cave and, dazzled, confronted the sea from whose blueness and greenness the light bounded. He gazed with lacklustre eyes at the seaweed which swayed languidly to and fro in the water, smelling the tart brine and the hot stink of flowers in the very hot day. He scrambled upwards among the large boulders and the tall thistles towards the road and as he did so he saw the seagulls lying dead all around him. With worn boots he began to kick them away down into the sea below. There were hundreds of them, dirty and covered with dust. Further up he came on a dead rabbit and various dead birds. He looked at them all without comprehension, merely walking over them and kicking them aside. There was dust on the thistles, on the thyme, on the pink weeds which looked like foxgloves, on the marigolds. He climbed steadily, puffing angrily. He hadn’t eaten for a long time and not even the whelks he had found at the beginning had sustained him much. He was ready to give up: his body knew it. He was ready to go back there. And that was what he was doing. But the dead seagulls and the other birds disturbed him. And the silence. There were no bird sounds at all and when he got on to the road there were no cars. The only sound to be heard was that of the sea and an underground river. Otherwise nothing at all. It was very strange.

  No cars at all passed him in either direction as he made his way towards the town. However, he came on many stationary cars. Some were parked in lay-bys, drivers and passengers lying back in their seats as if asleep. Some seemed to have stopped in the middle of the road: some looked as if they had crashed. One had its roof open and when he looked inside he saw bloody heads as if something had been at them. He couldn’t understand any of it. His boots left clear marks in the dust which lay everywhere, even on the trees and the berries which grew at the side of the road. He plodded steadily on. And all the time he was frightened by the silence. There were no insect sounds, no ordinary hummings of the day.

  Still it was better than the darkness of the cave, waiting for people to come
after him in the middle of the night with torches. With needles. And worse than needles. With their strange busy voices, high like the voices of birds. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? He walked on through the dust. More stationary abandoned cars, motor-cycles, bicycles, dead people on the roads. And the dazzling white stone ahead of him. On a day without sound, without scent. He touched his face: it was bearded. He felt unwashed and sweaty. He missed the music too: they used to let him have his transistor. More dead rabbits, dead people, dead birds. More dust.

  Till finally he came to the large notice which said WELCOME TO . . . He couldn’t make out the name of the town because it was covered with dust. He made his way past the first hotel into the town. And then for the first time he met them – the rats. The place seethed with them. They were like waves of grey water. And it was as if they were waiting for him. He sensed an intelligence hostile to him, a bright glittering intelligence. A knot of them crouched around him, they seemed to have no fear. He picked up a large stone and broke the back of one of them. They immediately savaged it. And then they moved back a little, watching him, an obscene vibrant circle. They seemed very patient, enigmatic, almost humorous. He cleared a space and picked up more stones angrily as if he were being hemmed in, but they drew back as if they sensed that they had plenty of time. Now he could see skeletons everywhere, skeletons of dogs, skeletons of people. He walked past the shops among the seething rats, gathering round him but not attacking. Sometimes he would lash out with a worn boot and one of them would give a high-pitched scream like a child.

  He passed the bookshop with all the books in the window. The door was open and there were rats inside the shop. Some were sitting round the books looking out at him with that extraordinary quizzical look, whiskers quivering. The shop floor was a tangle of gnawed magazines and newspapers. He walked past the newsagent’s to the jeweller’s. Here the shop window, hung with necklaces and watches, was empty of rats. The rats approached him on the street and he screamed and kicked at them in a frenzy of hatred, or threw stones. More and more cars with skeletons at the wheels. More and more skeletons at shop counters, wire baskets at their sides. A cart with a skeleton of a horse. He looked up towards the roof of the church. Were there rats stationed there, waiting?

  He came to a grocer’s. In the window he saw fruits of various kinds, and tins of food. The door of this place was shut too and the rats hadn’t got in. He stopped at the door. The rats were all around him in a ring but not advancing. He rushed at them screaming and mouthing curses, foaming at the mouth. Again they retreated in a seething wave of grey, and this gave him enough time to get through the door, except that two of the rats managed to get in. He looked frantically round the shop and found a big window pole with which he chased them, determined to destroy them. He set out after them screaming. He hated them with a terrible hatred. Nothing less would satisfy him than that he should smash them into pulp. They jumped frantically about but he was so enraged, so clear in his mind, that he caught them one after the other and beat them into a slimy mess. When he had finished he stood panting at the counter. When he looked out the window the other rats were perched on the outside, still looking in at him. They had watched it all and they were waiting.

  He found a tin opener and opened cans. So long as it was food he didn’t care what food it was. He ate potato salad, peaches, steak, mince, indiscriminately. He found beer cans and twisted the tops free and drank. He found a bottle of wine and drank most of it. He poured the wine down his throat watching the rats who seemed to be watching him with keen interest. He made faces at them, he shouted and cursed them, he beat on the plate glass windows with his bare hands. But they didn’t go away. Eventually he left the shop: there was somewhere he had to get to. He took the window pole with him and bottles and cans. He started throwing the bottles and cans at the rats while at the same time he began to dance and sing songs. He wasn’t scared of them now. He went after them. He thrust the hook of the window pole at them. He kicked them with his boots. And slowly they retreated.

  Something told him he must get away from there. Before the night came. He didn’t want to be there when it was dark. For then he wouldn’t be able to see the rats, and their eyes might shine, green and remorseless. He plodded on through the dust, the rats watching him warily, some with lips retracted. Soon, shouting and screaming and cursing, he had left them behind and he made his way out into the country beyond the town. Still the dead cars and the dead people and the dead birds and the dead animals. As he approached the woods, he saw the dead stoats and the dead hares and the dead foxes. The trees themselves were draped with dead birds. And as he walked through the damp green wood there was still the same silence. Not ominous, just empty. And the same dust everywhere. But above him the sky was clear and blue and the air warm. And he could hear the murmur of hidden streams.

  Drunkenly he muttered to himself, singing snatches of songs, as he at last saw the large white house and approached it. From that distance he could see the chairs and what appeared to be people sitting in them on the lawn. He began to run drunkenly. And as he ran he waved. He expected them to be coming towards him, dark-uniformed, and this time he would welcome them. He reached the lawn and saw that it was skeletons sitting in the chairs. Damp books lay beside them covered with dust. He began rushing about from window to window and through the windows he could see the wards and the machinery and the dead bodies. He could see the straitjackets.

  He went to the door and began to bang on it, the heavy wooden door. He tried to turn the handle but it was heavy. He began to bang again and again. In a few hours it would be dark and the stars would come out. And he didn’t want to be left outside. He wished now that they had found him with their torches when he ran away. He banged and banged on the door monotonously. He began to feel small phantom teeth in his feet but when he looked down there was nothing there at all. He sank down in front of the large wooden door, weeping. And as he wept and hammered alternately the shadows began to fall, and a breeze stirred the pages of the books and the skeletons swayed slightly to and fro, rocking.

  Journeying Westwards

  At first it was all right, everything was clear and fine and autumnal. As he drove westward he nearly stopped to admire the trees at the side of the loch. There they were, the oaks, the sycamores, the ash and the copper beech, with their leaves bronze and gold and green and red, perfectly still in a motionless air, burning steadily with their latest flare of the year. The loch itself was so still that they were reflected in it as a perfect solid double of their reality, massive as rocks, so that it was difficult to know what was reality and what was reflection. In fact he couldn’t recall seeing a day so still and so clear as if he had found himself by some accident at a point in time between growth and death, between the permanent and the transitory. So that he wanted to stay and watch the trees and the loch, but it was three o’clock and he had to drive on.

  And all the way it was like that, twisting roads and boulders and autumn trees in their final flare and all reflected in the loch which never seemed to end. Here and there were houses but in general these trees expended their glamour and colour on the air and stone, but not on the eyes of any human being, bending over the road, seeming to gaze into the water.

  Steadily he drove westwards, feeling restless, but stopping at half past five at a hotel for some food and drink. It stood at the side of the road and was the only one open in the small town, all the rest being closed after the end of the season. The tourists with their talk of boats and wearing their red shirts like sails were all away. The shutters would come down, the shops would all be shut on Sundays and the locals would be unable to buy anything, the infinite interrogations about local towers and castles would end till the bright tinkle of the tills in the spring just about the time of the swallows and Easter.

  There was hardly anyone in the hotel but himself and a humpbacked maid who told him to wait in the lounge. He sat down on a grey collapsing armchair and looked about him. The furniture seemed
to have been thrown together without order. There was an old black wooden chest, two chairs with green and grey cloth over them, and one coloured a faded red. A few Reader’s Digests were lying about on a sideboard, and reflected in an old mottled mirror. Surprisingly in the middle of it, like a new house among slums, was a modernistic TV set.

  Eventually the maid called him in to dinner. He ate the pork without much interest and then had peach melba. When he had finished he bought only one whisky because he thought he’d better drive safely, though his nerves screamed for more. When he left the hotel it was after six. As the church bells hammered at him he put his foot on the accelerator and headed west passing a group of girls on their way to church, all of them appearing to be wearing pink caps and carrying pink hymn books. The small town, like the trees and the loch, looked calm. The Triumph hummed steadily on but he passed little traffic. As time passed he began to drive between moors on which white sheep grazed and on which rested huge white boulders. The streams seemed to have dried up after the dry summer. Once he passed a caravan and sitting on the green verge beside it on a chair a woman in red slacks painting. She did not stir as he roared past. And all the time the landscape grew rockier and rockier.

  Gradually, as he drove on, the darkness began to come down, at first only a slight haze and then more thickly. To his left a moon, autumnal red, began to climb the sky. A rabbit ran across the road and he avoided it by a hairsbreadth. Once a hare lolloped ahead of him for about two hundred yards before leaving the road as if it had been dazed by his lights. Eventually it dashed off to the side of the road and disappeared. Once he saw a weasel and once an owl wafted slowly in front of his windscreen. He had still a long way to go and already he found himself in this world of nocturnal animals. But at least they were company for now the darkness was steadily coming down and he was following the white lines of the road which seemed to continue indefinitely. To make things worse a white fog was swirling about, probably caused by a mixture of frost and warm air. It was moving vaguely at the sides of the road and worse in some places than in others. At times he could see the road quite clearly, at others it was foggy and grey.