The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  ‘Sure,’ said my uncle, ‘they’re like the apples in the Garden of Eden.’

  Smith suddenly pounced. He had been sitting on the edge of the company, brooding for a long time.

  ‘It doesn’t say that in the Bible at all.’

  ‘What?’ said my uncle. ‘Of course it says that.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Smith, ‘not at all. It doesn’t mention the fruit at all.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said my uncle, ‘it says about apples as clear as anything. Do you know,’ he said, turning to the widows, ‘I read the Bible every year from end to end. I know the names of all the tribes of Israel. The gipsies, you know, were one of the tribes of Israel.’

  ‘It doesn’t say that at all,’ said Smith, ‘not at all. You read your Bible and it doesn’t say it was an apple. It doesn’t name the fruit at all.’

  ‘What does it matter?’ said one of the widows.

  ‘We all know it was a woman who ate the fruit,’ said my uncle magisterially.

  ‘It might even have been a widow,’ said one of the women. And the others laughed, but Smith didn’t laugh. He was muttering to himself, ‘It doesn’t mention the fruit at all.’

  ‘Next thing you’ll be saying it was a pair of monkeys in the Garden of Eden,’ said my uncle. ‘You’ll be saying it was the apes who ate the apple.’ And he laughed so hard that I thought he was going to have apoplexy.

  ‘Do you have a Bible here?’ said Smith apologetically.

  ‘I can’t find it just now,’ said my uncle.

  I myself couldn’t remember what it said in Genesis. My uncle started on a story about how once he had seen a black bear and it was eating berries in Alaska. ‘They’re very fast, you know,’ he said. ‘You’d think they would be slow but by golly they’re not. By golly they’re not.’

  Some of the widows asked us if we were enjoying our holiday and we said, ‘Yes, very much.’

  ‘That’s because Torquil is driving them about,’ said one of the widows. ‘He’s a demon driver, did you know that? His wife used to shout at him and she was the only person he would ever slow down for.’

  What did I think of Canada, I asked myself. There were no noises there, no creakings as from an old house. The indifferent level light fell on it. It was like the Garden of Eden uninfected by history. It was without evil. Smith was still muttering to himself. His wife was smiling.

  ‘My friend here,’ said my uncle largely, ‘believes in the apes, you know. He thinks that we’re all apes, every one of us.’

  The women in their fine dresses and ornaments all laughed. Who could be further from apes than they were?

  ‘Apes don’t make as good scones as this,’ said my uncle. ‘Do you think apes make scones?’ he asked Smith.

  Smith scowled at him. He was looking around the room as if searching for a Bible.

  ‘But there’s one thing about John here,’ said my uncle, ‘by golly he’s got principles. Yes by golly, he has.’

  As the evening progressed we did sing ‘Loch Lomond’,

  ‘ . . . where me and my true love will never meet again on the bonny banks of Loch Lomond.’

  I saw tears in my uncle’s eyes.

  ‘Mary was from Loch Lomondside,’ said my uncle, ‘but I couldn’t find the house she was brought up in. She was an orphan, you know. Iain and I went there in the car but we couldn’t find the house.’ There was a silence.

  ‘The only person he would ever obey was Mary,’ said one of the widows.

  ‘Gosh, that’s right,’ said my uncle. And then, it seemed quite irrelevantly, ‘When I came here first we used to teach Gaelic to the Red Indians. Out of the Bible. And they taught us some Indian, but I’ve forgotten the words now. They spoke Gaelic as you would find it in the Old Testament. Of course some men used to marry squaws and take them home to Lewis. They would smoke pipes, you know.’

  Smith was still staring at him resentfully.

  At about one in the morning they all left. The night was mild and the women seemed to float about the garden in their dresses. My uncle filled baskets of cherries for them in the bright moonlight.

  ‘That’s the same moon as shines over Lewis,’ he said. ‘The moon of the ripening of the barley.’

  They were like ghosts in the yellow light, the golden light. I thought of early prospectors prospecting for gold in the Yukon.

  ‘You mark my words, you’re wrong about that,’ said my uncle to Smith as he pressed a basket of cherries on him. They all drove off to a chorus of farewells from myself and Donalda.

  After they had gone, I looked up Genesis. Smith was right enough. It doesn’t mention the particular fruit.

  At the airport my uncle shook us by the hand briefly and turned away and drove off. I knew why he had done that. I imagined him driving to an empty house. Actually I never saw him again. He died the following year from an embolism. He dropped dead quickly in one of the bathrooms of a big hospital in Vancouver. He firmly believed that he would meet Mary again when he died.

  The plane rose into the sky. Shadows were lying like sheaves of black corn on the Canadian earth which was not ours. It was still the same mild changeless weather. I hoped he wouldn’t look up the Bible when he arrived home for he prided himself on his knowledge of it, and it was true that he read it from end to end in the course of a year. Even the tribes he memorised. And in the fly leaf of the big Bible were the names of his family and ancestors, all those who had passed it on to him.

  I recalled the men in red helmets working in front of the house. He would drive in carefully. Then he would back into the garage and take off his glasses and walk into the house. Sometimes one could see grass snakes at the door sleeping in the sun, and Donalda had been quite frightened of them. One day my uncle had hung one of them round his neck like a necklace. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘it’s quite harmless. Sure. Nothing to fear from them at all.’ At that moment the camera in my mind stopped with that image. The snake was round his throat like a green necklace, a green innocent Canadian ornament.

  Mac an t-Sronaich

  The student saw Mac an t-Sronaich crouched by the fire at the far end of the cave.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mac an t-Sronaich, ‘I am going to kill you.’

  The student, who studied divinity and who had been on his way across the moor after a long journey, was frightened. Mac an t-Sronaich was wild-looking, had matted hair and a long nose. There had been stories of the murders he had committed and so far he had not been caught. He moved from cave to cave on the desolate moor and lived, it was said, partly on human and partly on animal flesh. After being sentenced for a crime on the mainland he had escaped and had sworn eternal enmity against society. The student trembled. He was tall and strong but looked pale.

  ‘I am going to kill you,’ said Mac an t-Sronaich, ‘because there is nothing else for it. You’ve seen my cave. You will tell others.’

  His red gibbering face glared from the smoke. He piled wood on the fire. He looked like a devil which had once haunted the student’s dreams. God knew how he existed.

  ‘Also I could do with some of your clothes. My own are in rags.’ And he studied the student carefully.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ thought the student, ‘I can’t. I have travelled from Edinburgh, from the divinity college there, and here I am on this moor in the grip of a madman.’

  He knew that Mac an t-Sronaich was a madman, though he talked rationally enough. How could one live like this and not be a madman? He knew that if he tried to run Mac an t-Sronaich would outrun him, at least the way he felt at the moment. And in any case it had been late evening when he had crossed the landscape of rocks and grass. Mac an t-Sronaich’s eyes would be keener than his: they would find him in the dark.

  Mac an t-Sronaich came and sat beside him, his big hooked nose prominent in his red face. The student recoiled from the smell which had something of fish in it, something of sweat, and something else unnameable. He looked strong as a bull, his flesh peering from among his rags li
ke a moon through clouds. He wished to talk before he killed him. But then lonely men did wish to talk. The murderer was starved of conversation as he was often of food.

  ‘Why should I not kill you?’ said Mac an t-Sronaich. ‘Tell me that.’

  The student was paralysed with fear. He couldn’t speak. It was like seeing a cat coming home triumphantly with a mouse between its teeth. Mice lived in such a world and so did cats. When they were eating they always looked around them in case they too were being stalked. The student had never imagined a world like this. To be killed like a mouse. To face that natural brutality.

  ‘I see you are well-dressed,’ said Mac an t-Sronaich, as if he were taking part in an ordinary conversation. ‘No one has accused you of a crime and condemned you. Do you know what it is like to live here? The snow, the rain. The search for food. The traps. I have even eaten wild cat. Did you know that? Have you ever seen a wild cat? It’s a terrible animal.’

  The student couldn’t think of a reason why Mac an t-Sronaich couldn’t kill him if he wanted. Mac an t-Sronaich was studying his flesh as if tasting its sweetness in advance. He had heard of cases where human bodies were hung up like the carcasses of pigs.

  ‘The Bible,’ he muttered, trembling.

  ‘The Bible,’ said Mac an t-Sronaich, snorting contemptuously. And he made a sudden grab for the student’s bag. He removed the sandwiches of bread and cheese and began to wolf them ravenously. He lived on the edge of the world. Sometimes he might approach a village at night and kill a hen or a cockerel. Once he had even managed to drag a dead sheep away into the darkness. He was the murderer who lived on the circumference of lights and warmth.

  The student could actually foresee Mac an t-Sronaich leaping at him. He could feel his hands on his throat, he could smell his stink. His own body flowed like water. He wished more than anything to be back in the warm room in the college listening to a lecture. The world of glosses, analysis, seemed far away. His books stood up in front of him. The voice of the lecturer droned like a bee.

  Should he get down on his knees to pray for mercy? Should he plead for his life like a slave? And yet some pride made him not do it. What was the origin of that pride? And what was the origin of the idea that God had betrayed him? He had followed in His footsteps and now here he was in a smoke-filled cave like hell on the edge of a moor. It was crazy. It was beyond reality, logic. And then on the other hand he had nothing to bribe Mac an t-Sronaich with, no money. He had spent his last money on his journey home. Even now his parents would be waiting for him - his father was also a minister - in the halo of the lamp. And here he was in this cave face to face with a madman. The light of the fire made disturbing enigmatic patterns on the walls of the cave. An insane gibberish. And yet Mac an t-Sronaich sounded so reasonable.

  ‘Don’t think you can run away,’ said Mac an t-Sronaich. ‘I can run very fast. I’ve had to. You are my prey,’ he said. And when he heard the word “prey” the student again had a clear image of a cat and a mouse. He felt his whole body naked and vulnerable as if his clothes had been peeled from his skin. For this, he thought, I have followed the teaching of the Lord, for this I have been peaceable, tried to be without sin, though that is not possible, formed myself in His pattern. I have never drunk alcohol, never smoked. I have remained a virgin till the time for marriage comes. He saw his father’s head bent over the big Bible inscribed with the names of his own father and mother. He himself sat upright in his pew gazing up at his father every Sunday. The face was bell-cheeked, red, healthy.

  ‘I see you’re a student,’ said Mac an t-Sronaich at last. ‘You have books in your bag.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said the student, trying to keep his voice under control. He felt that his teeth were chattering in his head. He was aware of his bones, of his flesh, of the blood pouring through his body. Indeed the place looked like the product of a man’s fever, monstrous, dreamlike. He pinched himself in the stomach to find if it was a dream or reality. It was more like a dream that he had once had, a dream of a place from which he could not escape, with a white figure confronting him, smiling. And behind the white figure was his bearded father. For some reason he was dressed in a butcher’s smock.

  Let me die, he thought, let my heart give way. I can feel it beating heavily. But I don’t wish to be killed in the smoke and the dark.

  ‘I’ve thought about things a lot,’ said Mac an t-Sronaich. Incredibly, he was now smoking a pipe. ‘To kill or be killed, that is the rule of the universe. You can see it everywhere. Sometimes we kill by the mind, sometimes by the body.’ He puffed out chains of smoke which were lost in the half darkness. ‘You live off me with your nice clothes. At one time I never thought I would kill anyone. The idea would have been abhorrent to me. But I did. For money and food. On this very moor. It didn’t bother me as much as I had expected. Not at all. After all, what use was the man to the world: there are so many people alive. What use are you? Does it matter whether you live or die? The victory goes to the strong. That’s what your Christ didn’t understand. He poisoned the world, made us all into pale-faced women.’ And he spat on to the floor. ‘But I am not a woman. I see the deer in the summer-time fighting each other, locking antlers, and they die like that, locked together. Men attack each other too. I know you are frightened but you needn’t be. It won’t last long, I promise you. And you have knowledge, you see, you have knowledge of my cave. I can’t let you go away with that. When I killed that first man he evacuated everything in his body. What a stink! But then when you look at a dead body it is like a log. It has no light in it. You see I’m on the edge of things here. But I hear things. Sometimes at night I listen at windows to the quarrels between husband and wife, quarrels to the death. I have seen children who are eaten up with desire of possessions. I have heard businessmen (you find businessmen too in villages) making false deals in the darkness. I have listened outside these cages. It is as if they are inhabited by animals. That’s where I get my entertainment from. I’ve eaten food in their kitchens while they are in their beds. I’ve crept in and out of their houses. And I have thought to myself, at least I am more honest than they. Do you understand?’

  The student didn’t answer. The murderer puffed at his pipe. It was like being at a ceilidh in a village, two men talking together contentedly. Why, the murderer might suddenly burst into song.

  ‘And then again,’ the murderer continued, ‘people marry and when they do so they are no longer what they were. They are frightened. They sit by the fire and wonder what will happen to them when their partner dies. But I have outfaced a wild cat. Have you seen a wild cat?’ The words poured from him in a torrent: his red cheeks glowed in the twilight. ‘A cornered wild cat. And all I had was my bare hands.’ He pointed at scars on the right one. ‘I killed it as it was standing on end and its teeth were bared. That was an adventure. When people marry they no longer have adventures. There are the children at first and they have to be protected, and when the children leave there is the fear of loneliness. Have you ever thought that all we do is based on fear? I fear no one. Not even death itself. I’ve often been close to death here with fever and cold. I’ve seen a rabbit in the mouth of a weasel, which is thin as a string. I’m not afraid of death. Don’t you be afraid of death either,’ he said, almost gently.

  His voice seemed to lull the student. And he thought, Why should I die? This is injustice. I didn’t harm this man. Never. And he felt again the unfairness of the universe. And perhaps it was then that he forsook his God. In that smoke-filled cave his eyes were stung.

  But the implacable Mac an t-Sronaich talked on. It was as if he hadn’t seen a human being for twenty years. He was like Robinson Crusoe who has found a ship with a sailor on it.

  ‘And the mornings,’ he was saying, ‘you cannot imagine what they are like. The sun, the dews, the flowers. The sweetness. Why, there have been times when I rolled in the dew like a hare. I have been so filled with joy. Have you ever felt such joy?’ Only in the Lord, thought the student, onl
y in His worn body yellow as parchment. Only in the psalms, in the holiness of a church, its peace and stillness. Only then. That was joy.

  Mac an t-Sronaich tapped his pipe casually. ‘I don’t suppose you have any tobacco,’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said the student, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t smoke.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I can always steal some. People here often leave their doors open. It’s amazing. They don’t wish to admit that I can destroy their way of life. They want to hang on to it. They don’t like to admit that I am different from them, that I can live without them.’

  Suddenly the student was filled with anger. Why should this man kill me, he thought. I have never thought about it all till tonight.

  Well, yes, I did hear of him. My mother especially warned me about him. She would say, Take your milk and go to sleep or Mac an t-Sronaich will get you. So Mac an t-Sronaich must really be quite old. The anger poured through the student’s body like wine. Who does this murderer think he is? That he can rampage about this moor and kill anyone he likes. He looked around the twilit cave for a log but could see nothing he could use as a weapon. He felt his muscles tense. After all, he was not weak. He had thrown the javelin at the sports. He was in good shape, he had never drunk or smoked. Now he would have to fight for his life.

  Better now while this holy anger possessed him before it drained away. Later, his body might be like water again.

  He stood up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Mac an t-Sronaich.

  ‘I am going away,’ said the student.

  ‘So that is what you are at?’ Mac an t-Sronaich carefully tamped the fire in his pipe and advanced. It looked as if he had been doing this for years, advancing through the smoke with his red cheeks glowing.

  ‘I cannot let you go,’ he said to the student. ‘You know that.’ His beard was long and tangled, the muscles on his arms were huge. He put out his arms slowly. His eyes were on fire in the dark. The student stepped back. And then they were grappling with each other in the smoke that tingled and sparked.