The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  5

  The following day I talked to the postman. He had brought me an airmail letter from my brother in New Zealand and a catalogue from Athena. Athena is a firm which sells reproductions of paintings by post and I already had quite a lot of these, some by Van Gogh, some by Dali and some by Breughel. My favourite painters are in fact Vermeer and Breughel: I admire Vermeer for the cold mathematical clarity of his paintings and Breughel for the strange spawning fertility of his. Sometimes I myself try to paint but the paintings I have done are vicious and aggressive and inhabited by small murderous animals in an atmosphere of intense silence as of a desert.

  The postman is called Hunchbacked John and he takes his time delivering the mail, sometimes stopping here and there for a cup of tea and telling everybody who he’s got letters for. He knows of course when there is a letter from the Income Tax people but he is also adept at knowing all other official notifications even when there are no clues on the outside of the envelope. Season after season: spring, summer, autumn, and winter, Hunchbacked John whose gaze is not much above the level of the ground drives fiercely forward on his errands.

  I accepted the thin blue letter from him and the catalogue and then asked him if he ever delivered any letters to the hermit.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘he never gets any letters. None. From anywhere.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ I said. Had he seen him?

  ‘Saw him once,’ he said. ‘He was sitting in front of the door mending an old coat.’

  ‘How had he looked?’

  ‘He looked very contented. He didn’t speak to me. I said, “Hello, it’s a fine day”, but he didn’t answer. He just carried on sewing his coat. I think he must have been mending it or putting on a button.’

  ‘And he never got any letters?’

  ‘No, none at all. He doesn’t expect any. I can tell. I can tell the ones who get letters. Some people in this village never get any letters, others get a lot of letters. Some people don’t expect any letters. The hermit doesn’t. You can see by his eyes.’

  ‘By his eyes?’

  ‘Yes, by his eyes. He’s a man who has given up expecting any letters.’

  For some reason the words so baldly spoken depressed me. What must it be like to expect nothing, not even letters? I myself looked out for the mail every day. Sometimes I would stand at the window watching Hunchbacked John making his way along the road and wondering if he was going to come up the path to my house. Other times I would stand at the door of the kitchen and look down the lobby. I would wait for the letter box to click and then I would watch the white letter drifting on to the mat, like manna from heaven. I would walk down the lobby watching the letter which might after all be an agent for a complete transformation of my life, the letter innocent and packed with joy, or menace. Every day, once a day, I am like a small child waiting to see what Santa Claus has placed for him on the Christmas Tree. Maybe somewhere in the vast world a being known or unknown has decided to write to me, to me alone, with news of the greatest importance. This letter has perhaps travelled the whole world by boat or plane and then finally arrived on this mat in this particular lobby. What magic has taken place? What news lies inside that white square? How could one exist without that opening to the universe? How could one live without that possibility of renewal or resurrection?

  I said to him, ‘Why don’t you . . . ’

  ‘Why don’t I what?’

  ‘Why don’t you pretend you have a letter for him and then you could . . . ’

  ‘Why should I do that?’ he interrupted bluntly before I had finished.

  ‘Well, you could go to the door and you could see inside his house and see what he does with himself.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t do that.’ And then for good measure, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that.’

  His literal mind repeated the phrases as if he were an old rusty bell.

  ‘Of course not,’ I sighed. ‘But think . . . ’

  ‘No, I couldn’t do that.’ And he slowly raised his eyes towards me like a gun being swivelled upwards and a light of intelligence dawned in his eyes as if he were to say, ‘Yes, I know you. I understand you completely.’ But he didn’t say anything except, ‘I know the ones who will never get letters. The hermit will never get a letter. He has given up. He has given everything up.’ What a desolate phrase. I wondered if Hunchbacked John himself ever got any letters, trudging on as he did through all the seasons of the year delivering other people’s mail. Looking down at the ground he would see the stones and the changing seasons but he would never receive a letter of his own. It would be like a bank teller perpetually counting other people’s money.

  How strange the world is and how many different kinds of people there are! Before him we had a postman who rode a bicycle. He was a young boy and he was so careless that if no one was at home he would place the letter under a stone at the door. Another time, because he hadn’t closed his bag properly, about twenty letters were blown away on the wind, some of them never recovered. Another time we had a very religious postman but the less said about him the better.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I must be on my way.’ I hadn’t offered him tea though perhaps that was what he wanted. Not that I particularly wanted to read my brother’s letter which was usually nothing more than a statement that he was still alive: he never had any news of the slightest interest to me.

  ‘Well, cheerio just now then,’ I said and watched him steadily plodding away with his sturdy limited literal mind and his crooked body. No, of course he wouldn’t have the imagination or the daring to do what I had suggested. And yet it would have been interesting. If I had been the postman I would have done it. Such a little white lie. But then much might have been discovered.

  Perhaps for instance the hermit’s house was full of books like my own. Or perhaps there was nothing at all there, not even furniture. Just the fire and perhaps one table and one chair like those in a meagre painting of Van Gogh’s. He too had been a kind of hermit. That was why I liked his work so much, though not as well as I liked Breughel’s or Vermeer’s. The truth was that I too was like the hermit but without his extreme daring. At least I spoke a language and he didn’t. Even that night on the moor I was conscious of the language of the birds which they speak among themselves. Perhaps he wasn’t even conscious of that. For everything and everyone has a language except perhaps for the stones which Murdo brings home on his wheelbarrow. Even the sea has a language. Even a violin. Everything has a language but only human beings have learned to hide and not reveal their world with their language. But to have a language and choose not to use it, what a terrible decision that must be! What a terrible burden that must be, to act like a stone and be a human being! What bitter strength it must take to sustain that. What power or immense disgust. Or perhaps what holiness, as if one were talking to God and human language was seen as a slimy repulsiveness, like an old fish quivering in one’s hand, like a rotten old jellyfish, phosphorescent and rotting.

  6

  There is in the village a girl called Janet. She is about eighteen years old, with long black hair, a diamond-pale face, and a marvellous bum. Every morning, cool in her morning suit, she passes my house on her way to the school where she is some sort of clerk though her spelling, according to the new headmaster, is not so good. But what does she need to be a good speller for, with that cool infuriating body, those legs, that bum?

  It was a day of steady rain, drip drip, the hole appeared in the ground. The minister was speaking into the high wind, his cloak flapping about him. I could hear carried on the wind, but vaguely, as if they were the last gasps from a dying mouth, words like ‘resurrection’ and ‘eternity’; but I was watching the coffin. We approached after a while that deep narrow hole and each took a tassel and lowered the coffin, hexagonal like a bee’s hive, into the earth, into the hole. We lowered it slowly. The wreaths, few and small, were laid near the hole.

  And coming home the first person I saw was Ja
net, her lovely alive body, eel of the day. And it was then that that sickness struck me, ridiculous object of sixty years old. The young girl was a banner, unconscious and engraved, against the stupidity of death. In bed at night I thought of her and I dreamed of that hole in the ground and above it, flourishing like a young tree with buds in its branches, Janet’s young body, potent with fruit and blossom.

  Every morning she passes my house in the early dew, sometimes wearing her yellow dress with its yellow collar, trim and young and cool. Who cares if she can spell or is educated? I create a picture of an Einsteinean mind being put to rout by the movement of a girl’s leg or foot, by the motion of her bum. It is a plague that I suffer from, O I know it, I’m old enough to know that, but I’m not old enough to cure myself of it. Where is the remedy for it after all? Mary was never as beautiful as Janet, not even in her youth. Her face always had a serious expression as if she were concerned with some deep problem that she could never solve. Janet’s face has no deep problem imprinted on it. It has grown like a blossom, it is itself, it is not concerned with the meaning of the universe, it is as natural as a leaf in the sky. Its coolness is that of the diamond, its perfection its own. I know that I am speaking words without meaning but I cannot stop myself. Language is running away with me because language cannot explain what I feel, because a young girl’s perfection is beyond language, because her perfume unconscious and fertile is what language cannot embrace. There are mornings so perfect that language cannot express their perfection since the mornings are so new and our language is so corrupted by evil and distortion and double meanings and used ancient stained blasphemies. To know these mornings is to be young again. O if only I could . . . just once . . . in my youth . . . those legs, those eyes . . . that face. The sickness is delirious and intolerable. It can have no cure. It must only be endured. I have often thought of this. Life and mathematics are different from each other. Problems in mathematics are soluble since mathematics is only a game after all. Problems are insoluble in life since life is more than a game. One can often find no solution to them. The reason why we look for solutions is because we confuse mathematics with life. And that is the worst of all confusions. It is also the confusion that when a problem is spoken it is halfway to being solved. Hermit, wherever you are just now, have you solved your problems because you refuse to speak them? No, all you have done is to take all these problems on your back, since you know there is no solution. Your silence perhaps is the most honourable stance of all. You at least are not a ridiculous old man writing his silly lyrics to a young girl. At least you have saved yourself from that.

  7

  The day I came home unexpectedly from school and she was cradling the violin on her breast like a child . . . That is the image I shall always keep with me. For she couldn’t speak Gaelic. And people would sometimes come to the house and speak Gaelic and she couldn’t understand them. And her English sounded foreign among all these people. An alien with a violin which she couldn’t bring herself to play and which remained silent in that room since no one could appreciate her music. Once a man from the village came to the house and asked if she would play the violin at a local dance. He thought he was doing her a favour bringing her into the middle of things. Her violin – at a village dance. I nearly laughed out loud. The meeting of two worlds in absurdity. Naturally she wouldn’t play. She was too shy to. And so the whirligig of time brings in its revenges, its mockeries, its echoes. She had no language at all to speak to them, not even the language of music. For they were used to the melodeon glittering in the moonlight in the open air at the end of the road not in fact far from the hermit’s home. Their music was not the music of excellence and rigour, it was the music of abandoned gaiety, amateurish music. But she had been trained in a harder tougher more silent school, where the music was squeezed out of the soul and was not an emanation of the body. And often at night as the sun goes down I hear her voice crying with pain. Sometimes I feel that I am going out of my mind.

  I opened my brother’s letter from New Zealand. He wrote:

  I hope you are well. We are all well here. I hope you got the photos I sent you recently: Anne in bathing costume with myself and the kids on the beach. Colin is getting to be a great rugby player. I could send you some newspapers but I suppose you wouldn’t like them. They are all full of rugby and I don’t think that would interest you. Still, if it would, say the word. The weather here is as good as usual. It’s not very unlike the weather in the Old Country. Anne is always asking about you. Do you remember the time we went off fishing and left her and Mary together? Ever since then she asks for you a lot. I suppose you are still reading as much as ever. I don’t find much time for reading myself. We are thinking of going to Australia for our holiday later on. Why don’t you come out here yourself sometime? You’d be very welcome as you know and we could show you the sights. There’s plenty of room in the house. But I suppose you won’t come. The plane wouldn’t take long to bring you out. The children would like to see their uncle of whom we talk so much. Flora is doing well at school, you would be proud of her. I think she might end up as a teacher some day. She gets good grades in her subjects and she’s also good at sport. She was chosen for her hockey team and she had a part in the school play at the end of term. She reads a lot too, like you. You would like her. Well, if you do want the newspapers let me know. But as I say they’re mostly about rugby. And if you want to come out you have only to say the word.

  Hermit, where are you sleeping tonight. On your stone with your rope about your middle like an ancient monk lying down in the light of the moon?

  And Janet, where are you sleeping? In your murderous innocence, also in the light of the moon, not the marble moon of the Greeks but the moon of romance, a moon that transforms you into a princess in a fairy story with a knife between your thighs. Or a poisonous rose.

  While the whole village sleeps, the only sound the barking of a dog; the village with its ills and joys, with its closed rancours and its open happinesses, with its ancient sorrows and its lethal struggles, eels everywhere squirming and writhing in that sea of moonlight.

  8

  I determined to do it and I did it. At three in the morning I got up from my bed and set off to the hermit’s hut. Of course I didn’t want anyone to see me and that was why I waited till then. The village was not like the city, it would not have people walking about it at that time. People went to bed late – about midnight – but you wouldn’t see them again till the late morning. I had never been about at night in the village before, or rather so early in the day. The place was so quiet sleeping under the moonlight. I went along the road: once a cat ran from one side to the other but I saw nothing else and all I heard was the sound of the stream which flowed quietly along to the sea. I didn’t know what I was going to see; surely the hermit would be asleep. And in any case his door would be locked. I didn’t know why I thought this but I did. I myself have never locked the door but for some reason I was sure that he would lock his. At the place where the huts were it was said that there once used to be a ghost. Once a young man from the village was coming home from the town and he said he saw it. It was walking towards him and its face was green. He arrived at his parents’ house in a state of shock. He was home on leave at the time. Shortly afterwards he went away and his ship was blown up in the Pacific and he was drowned. But I wasn’t afraid of ghosts and have in fact never believed in them. I didn’t even believe in the young man’s story.

  It was strange to be up and about at that hour in the morning. It almost gave one a feeling of power as if one held the destiny of the village in one’s hands, in one’s mind. People are so helpless when they are asleep, so defenceless. I felt like a burglar creeping about the night. What treasure was I seeking, what golden hoard? I kept on the grass verge of the road as if it was necessary for me to make as little noise as possible. I wondered what I would say if I met anyone. Perhaps I might say that I couldn’t sleep. And that was true. I didn’t sleep well. After my wif
e died I didn’t sleep for a month though I took sleeping pills every night. Still, it was unlikely that I would meet anyone.

  The village itself looked strange in the moonlight as if it had been painted in yellow. I hated yellow. It reminded me of sickness and of old faces and of autumn and of the neon lights of the city. I felt as if I myself were coloured a sickly yellow, as if I were suffering from some sickness such as jaundice.

  Eventually I reached the hut and slowly went up to it. As I have said I didn’t know what I was doing. I peered through the window but there was complete darkness. I put my ear to the door as if I were a doctor sounding someone’s chest, someone who was dying of an incurable disease. As I did so I saw in the light of the moon that there were names and drawings on the door. The drawings were of naked women and of Cupids and hearts with arrows stuck in them. I tried to imagine those airmen going up into the sky in their planes, all rushing out from the hut and setting off into the blue sky at the time of the Battle of Britain. Of course none of them had done that at all. I was only remembering old films. And on the door too someone had carved the name of Vera Lynn. It was strange to think of the hermit lying in such a hut, as if at any moment he might take wings and set off into the sky, masked and helmeted. Into that freedom, that false freedom. Per ardua ad astra. Beyond that hut I could see the Standing Stones shadowy in the moonlight, ancient and undecipherable. The tinny hut looked like an accordion, yellow and black. I wondered whether the hermit was lying there asleep in a bed or on the floor in a blanket. I nearly knocked on the door as if I wanted to ask him a question though I didn’t know what I should ask him. Perhaps I should ask him, What is the meaning of the world?