Читать книгу The Green Hills Far Away - James William Barke - Страница 5

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Shortly after this I was in the company of a young American novelist who shared my world outlook. He had, to his own amazement, been awarded one of those prizes eccentric American millionaires bequeath or donate on the most eccentric conditions. One of the conditions of this prize was that the winner must spend it in Europe or Asia and was compelled to live furth of the U.S.A. for some year or eighteen months.

My American friend had got stuck in London and was bored to death with the English. They were too phlegmatic for his dynamic temperament.

He sensed at once that I was not English. What was I then? My speech was not Irish.

I confessed I was Scottish. Alas, this conveyed little or nothing. I was different from the English. I was (it seemed) more vital, more direct, more considerate, and a darn sight less polite. Was this characteristic of the Scots?

I asked him to tell me what the name Scotland conveyed to him. He ruminated for quite a time. I tried to help him out. Had he ever heard of Loch Lomond? He shook his head. Glasgow? Well yes: he had heard of Glasgow but had never quite thought of it as being in Scotland. Now, when he came to think it over, he rather thought it must be.

No ... he had rather thought of Scotland as a grim, barren, poverty-stricken country—a very small insignificant part of Britain sparsely populated by fierce, ill-educated, and mean peasants. Didn’t they wear kilts or something?

And bagpipes, I interrupted—what about them?

But no: he had never heard of bagpipes.

“You see I was educated—that’s what they called it—in Chicago. Pretty soon I was trying to earn a few dimes. Yea—any darn thing.”

Sometimes between dime earning, starving and looking for a place to sleep, he read an odd book. Even if there had been any books on Scotland lying around he wouldn’t have been interested (American publishers take care that the American public won’t have any chance of getting the low-down on Scotland.) He was interested in politics and economics and world affairs and religion and philosophy. He was sorry. But I knew how it was.

Anyway: what the hell! He was clearing out of England before he choked with moral asthma. He was heading for Paris, Berlin, Moscow. I knew how it was. He was mighty glad for having met a real guy from Scotland. If he’d any time on his way back from Moscow or Berlin he’d look in on Loch Lomond. What the hell! Maybe Berlin wouldn’t be so hot when he hadn’t German. He liked the way I spoke English. Maybe he’d come up with me and spend the rest of his vacation with those Clyde engineers and shipyard workers: he could do with meeting some real guys. Yea: he knew Hampstead wasn’t London. But you never knew what an Englishman was thinking.

Our mutual friend was a brilliant linguist: he bore a grand Scots name, had been born in U.S.A., educated in China, finishing off in Berlin and Paris. He strongly advised the American prize-winning novelist not to miss Scotland. If he were compelled to stay all his life in one city he believed he’d choose Glasgow. The countryside around it was the finest in the world.

But we had other things to discuss: The New Deal, Father Coughlin, Mike Gold, Theodore Dreiser, dos Passos, Langston Hughes ...