Читать книгу That Was a Shiver, and Other Stories - James Kelman - Страница 11

THIS HAS NO

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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 activity. 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.

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 - 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 my 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.

The big fellow was self-conscious. I was aware of his flesh. I smiled. Do you mind, I have something to say.

Pardon? he said.

Look around, look at the faces and bodies, the intelligences. I see elderly folk spin like tops.

I dont know what you’re talking about, he said.

Are you sure about that?

The man frowned. I smiled. Listen to me, I said, individuals who suffer or grasp fully the nature of burn-out rarely commit murder and do you know why?

But that word ‘rarely’ is wrong, completely wrong. I mean never, never never never, never never ever ever ever do they commit murder for that understanding implies a unity of the qualities, and murder cannot surmount unity, it can never do that. For that is to end, that is inserting an end, that is putting an end to it and how can that be, it cannot be because unity because unity, including the end.

People must only be destroyed.

The big guy, the heavy fellow, the man sitting next to me; I smiled because I knew it already. He would rise from beside me and I would touch the coldness his absence would bring. I did. He struggled along the aisle. He did not look back. He must have wondered what I was doing, was I following? He may have been fearful. When I communicate thus the lieges are so.

I see faces in profile. I look at them. Human beings. I might shiver. Certainly one shivers. In their own dreams, uniquely singular dreams, inhuman dreams, as anything uniquely singular must be. They stagger along.

The bus stops. The big fellow. The busdriver allows him an extra five seconds: one, two, three, four, five. He alights safely.

This returning, to have returned, one more time, picking oneself up, up off the floor, a remnant of strength, continuing the struggle, enduring. That was him. Every day of his life, picking himself up and staggering along; lifting himself up, easing himself along. His wife at the door: ‘You made it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well done.’

Movement alone, ourselves alone. Support is rarely forthcoming. Those closest to us are ill-equipped. They know nothing of escape. Yet each of us has the need.

always returning, attempting to, dragging ourselves. What is our condition? We cannot recognise our condition.

First the understanding. Unplanned events relax us. Moments of calm are vital. The calm allows us to remain in the prime, the prime, and to recognise what it means, if this be a moment. We use the bus. We travel to a destination. A bus is community.

Persons escape to a destination. They hold out their hands. They do not smile. They cannot be distinguished easily. They were in and they were out. I could be amongst them. And our collective head! nodding, aware that we are.

I had to turn my own head, I was needing to cry out. It was a need I could not perform. Needs have a requirement, implementation. This need I could not implement, which to me was a sign, just like the head-nodding was a sign. I saw it in others. I say ‘head’, thinking of the back of the head but is it the chin? the effort in holding aloft the head, the skull. Skulls are heavy. We hold them aloft, we succeed for as long as we live. I saw the head of the woman in front, how it too nodded, it too. It disturbed the hairs on the back of her neck causing their collision.

Hairs that collide.

Life is a function of that, that success, that we can hold up our heads. And what we discover is banality.

The poor busdriver and his stupidity. Persons know it. Individuals do not hide from the truth. Some shield the truth. If it is not an easy truth. Persons have no desire to realise this truth. It is a difficult reality. They shield it from others. And those who recognise their condition for what it is they will not lead people toward an understanding lest they themselves suffer. This happens, it is their expectation. It is too late. Already it has happened. Already they have suffered. Understanding derives from that. We talk about truth being conditional, but more precisely, it derives from a condition.

I saw out the window now. I stopped it. I do not like staring. I looked around me, seeing persons in their various stages, and their agitation. The woman in the red coat whose lips moved. I looked and saw and I know that they moved, her eyelids flickering. Was she praying? What was in her mind? The words of a song? Part song of a song? She had heard me speak to the man. There is a phrase ‘nineteen to the dozen’. Was she about to bite a fingernail? If so whose? Hands come reaching.

One fingernail. A hand reaches from below. It could have been mine.

Who could stop such a hand?

My jaw ached; I had been smiling. That sense of futility. We persons, and doing our best. I, therefore, was glad to be on this bus, to be returning alongside them,

and then