Читать книгу Growing Up In The West - John Muir - Страница 26

EIGHTEEN

Und die findigen Tiere merken es schon dass wir nicht sehr verlässlich zu Haus sind in der gedeuteten Welt.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

WHEN HE WAS twelve Mansie had had a curious experience. It took up only a few minutes, but afterwards it seemed to have filled the whole of that summer afternoon, and to have coloured not only the hours which followed, but the preceding hour as well, which became a mysterious time of preparation whose warnings he had not heeded.

‘That strange afternoon’ was how he thought of it, and the strangeness had begun with the class being dismissed after the dinner hour. Some state event had just been published, an important event, for it had to do with the royal family, yet human and touching, for it might have happened in any ordinary household; and this perhaps was what had made the teacher’s voice, for all its reverence, sound almost confidential when he asked the class to give three cheers. Yet there had been something unreal in the teacher’s elation, and although the class were glad to get such an unlooked-for holiday, and felt grateful to the royal family, the three cheers had a hypocritical ring. Afterwards Mansie’s companions had decided to spend the afternoon in town, and he had taken the road alone. In the bright afternoon sun the road looked unusually deserted; on the fields the men and women seemed more active than usual, as though they had just begun the day’s work, a day in which time had been displaced in some curious way, making everything both too early and too late. So even the wild flowers along the roadside were unfamiliar, as though they had sprung up that moment, supplanting the ones that should have been there. Still, this was the road he had always taken, and so he went on.

It was in the little sunken field sloping down to the burn that it happened. There were generally several horses in this field, and he had always passed them without thinking. This day, however – it may have been because of the displacement of everything, for the shifting of time had subtly redistributed the objects scattered over space as well – there was only one horse, a young dark chestnut with a white star on its brow. Mansie had almost reached the footbridge over the burn before he saw it, for it was standing half-hidden in a clump of bushes. They caught sight of each other at the same moment, and Mansie stopped as though a hand had been laid on his forehead: into his mind came instantaneously, as a final statement of something, the words: ‘A boy and a horse.’ For out of the bushes the horse looked at him with a scrutiny so devouring and yet remote that it seemed to isolate him, to enclose him completely in the moment and in himself, making him a boy without a name standing in a field; yet this instantaneous act of recognition came from a creature so strange to him that he felt some unimaginable disaster must break in if he did not tear his eyes away. This feeling was so strong that his body seemed to grow hollow. Then slowly the stone dyke by which he had stopped grew up, wavered, and steadied itself; he put out his hand to it, the stones were rough and warm, and this gave him courage to stand his ground a little longer. But now as he gazed on at the horse, which still stared steadily and fiercely at him, he seemed on the point of falling into another abyss, not of terror this time, but of pure strangeness. For unimaginable things radiated from the horse’s eyes; it seemed to be looking at him from another world which lay like a hidden kingdom round it, and in that world it might be anything; and a phrase from a school book, ‘the kingly judge,’ came into his mind. And how could be tell what it might do to him? It might trample him to death or lift him up by its teeth and bear him away to that other world. He took to his heels and did not feel safe until he was at the other side of the footbridge, with the burn behind him.

At the time Mansie was not of course aware of all those feelings; he was merely filled with terror of something very strange, and felt – though this perhaps was a deliberate fancy – that if he had waited a moment longer the horse might have carried out its sentence on him. But when, several months later, he happened to look at a portrait of John Knox in The Scots Worthies, the long face, still more elongated by the wiry, animal-looking beard, transported him to that field again, and he felt afraid of the eyes gazing out at him from the flat smooth page. And one day in Glasgow many years later he caught sight of a plaster statue in a shop window and suddenly felt dizzy, standing on the hot pavement; and although a tramcar clanked past, throwing sharp beams from its windows into the dark window of the shop, he again felt transported to that distant hot still field, and the sound made by a message-boy running past echoed in his ears like the sound of his own feet on the little footbridge. Strange! he had clean forgotten that afternoon. In a little he saw that there were two names outlined in rough relief at the foot of the plaster cast: ‘Moses’ and in smaller letters ‘Michelangelo’. Michelangelo was a great man; the Reverend John often mentioned him in his sermons. Queer how solid the beard looked, just as solid as the head, all of a piece like the head of some strange animal, and the two funny little horns on the forehead were like blunt pricked ears. Uncanny, the thoughts that must have been in the mind of the fellow who made that thing. And yet the Reverend John thought a lot of him, so he must have been a Christian; all the same one simply couldn’t think of a Christian bringing out a thing like that. Almost frightening! And later, when he picked up Gulliver’s Travels one evening in Brand’s lodgings, the book fell open at a very queer picture, ‘The King of the Hou—’ something or other, it was called, and it showed a horse sitting on a throne with a crowd of naked shivering people before it. Mansie could not take his eyes off it. The horse’s front hoofs drooped clumsily and helplessly from the legs outstretched like iron bars; but the massive haunches, too heavy for the frail throne on which they rested, were powerful and majestic in spite of the curly and somewhat mean legs in which they ended. A queer picture; if he hadn’t been ashamed of exposing his ignorance he would have asked Brand about it. And later still, when the Reverend John gave a sermon on the Pharaohs, there rose in Mansie’s mind, a little obscenely, a picture of those powerful wrinkled haunches and that long, austere and somewhat stupid skull, so hard that it seemed to be made of granite rather than bone. If that were set on a throne of justice, by gum you would have to sit up! Not much friendliness about justice of that kind. Made a fellow shiver when he thought of it. Seemed to take all the stuffing out of a fellow.

The autumn holiday had come; Tom did not yet show the hoped-for improvement; so there was no possibility of Mansie’s getting away for the week-end. But on Sunday, as Tom said that he intended to remain in the house, Mansie resolved to take a walk in the country. As he shaved he went over in his mind all his acquaintances; every single one of them away, he decided bitterly; of course one could hardly expect them to stay in Glasgow simply because— But still it rather let a fellow down. In morose resignation he took the tramcar to Killermont, pleased that there should be hardly anyone in it but himself; yes, they were all away at Rothesay or Dunoon or Helensburgh, and it was right that the other passengers in the tramcar should look ashamed and furtive; all except the conductor, of course, who had a right to be there. Still, the fellow showed his contempt for them a little too plainly when he shouted jokes from one end of the almost empty tramcar to the other, as if only he and the driver were there. Like these Glasgow keelies.

But when, having walked through Bearsden, Mansie turned into the footpath over the gentle hilly grasslands leading to Strathblane, his spirits began to rise; perhaps after all he would meet some solitary rambler from the Clarion Scouts; somebody would be sure to be on the road. He would have a rest when he came to Craigallion. But when he approached the gate leading into the field where the pretty little sylvan loch lay among its half-ring of trees, he stopped short, for a young horse was standing behind the gate watching him. Everything grew still and bright, the long grasses by the roadside became quite motionless, and the wooden bars of the gate looked all at once so solid that no effort could ever prevail against them; they ran smoothly from side to side of the gate like a goal which one might touch, but never pass. No, he could never go through that gate. And suddenly, staring at the chestnut horse standing behind it Mansie thought, and it was as though an oracle or a Pharaoh had spoken: ‘Tom will die.’ The shock of the thought made him feel a little dizzy; he looked across at the bald crown of Dumgoyne: it was very bare, he had never realised before that it was so bare. So far away too, and this gate and this horse were so near. Why was one thing in one place and another in another? A complete riddle, the way things were scattered about on the face of the earth, hills and houses and rocks and gates and horses. Why shouldn’t the hill be here and the gate and the horse somewhere else, in some peaceful distant place? And what was a hill anyway? A clumsy big thing without conceivable use to anybody. Yes, it was ridiculous that a horse should be standing beside a gate. Things were just dumped down anywhere and anyhow; you had literally to pick your way among them, to walk round them and be very careful even then, for you couldn’t even be sure that they would stay in the same place; lots of them moved, and some of them rushed about at a great speed, tramcars and things like that, and at times, in spite of all the space in the world, they banged straight into one another. If a horse like that were to let fly at you with its hind hoofs you would just curl up.

With a rush of relief he realised that he need not go through that field, need not pass through that gate, for the road he was standing on would take him by a roundabout way to Strathblane: you could get to places after all if you made up your mind! And as he walked on, not once turning his head to look back at the horse, he felt as though he had circumvented Fate and perhaps done Tom a good turn he would never know of. But presently the refrain returned again: ‘Tom will die. Tom will die.’ It was outrageous to be pursued by such thoughts; besides they didn’t seem to be his at all, they didn’t seem real. They were like something you read about; why, maybe this was what people meant by poetry? And once more he felt relieved, for poetry wasn’t real life; it was imagination. Yet it was strange this had never happened to him before, there was something dashed funny about it, and he tentatively tried the words over again; they didn’t commit him to anything. ‘Tom will die. Tom will die’: the refrain beat on, filling his ears as he walked on slowly amid the brightness and silence. Then quite unexpectedly the hills trembled and dissolved; tears were running down his cheeks. Yes, he knew it now! Tom would die! And he gave himself over to his grief, seized upon it as though it were a precious draught he had long been waiting for and must drink to the end lest it might never return again; and he let the tears flow and when they showed signs of stopping started them afresh with the hypnotic beat of the refrain: ‘Tom will die. Tom will die.’ What was he doing? It was almost like an act of treachery to his brother! Yet his tears were not real tears, they didn’t count, they didn’t mean that Tom would really die. What on earth could they mean?

The fit passed. He washed his face in a little wayside stream, washed it shamelessly and matter-of-factly as one might wash one’s hands after a dirty but necessary job. Yet when he thought of Tom now everything seemed more hopeful. He felt better, and he was convinced that Tom was better too, that Tom had at last improved, perhaps since that morning.

Turning the corner he came upon a pale milky-faced little man in rusty blue serge, who was bending over some weeds by the wayside. It was Geordie Henderson, and when he looked up and nodded Mansie was almost sorry for once to meet someone he knew. A nice fellow Geordie, of course, a kind soul in spite of the way he liked to talk about frogs and the survival of the fittest and the freezing-out of the whole human race in a few million years. Still Mansie’s heart sank when he saw the soft pale milky face, a face so pervasively milky that even the blue of the eyes had the opaqueness of soap-suds. And pitilessly ignoring Geordie’s welcoming look he walked on with a curt ‘Nice day.’ Everything seemed to be scattered in confusion again like boulders on a vast plain. That dashed horse! And Henderson with his invertebrates and his amoebas and his protoplasm! What use were such words to a fellow? And Geordie’s milkiness seemed to shrivel into small dry grains, like the new kind of milk that was sold in tins: dried milk, they called it. That was all Henderson was, just dried milk.

And Mansie remembered a Sunday ramble with Geordie. In the middle of a field where cows were grazing they had come upon a huge rock six feet high. The rock looked funny enough there in all conscience, but when Geordie began to talk learnedly of how it could have got there, that was surely making too great a song about it. The rock had been carried there, Geordie decided, by an ice block that slid across Europe at the end of a glacial period. That was science, of course, and Mansie had listened respectfully, but at the same time he couldn’t help thinking: All very well to blether about this rock, but, when it comes to the point, how did anything get where it is? And on the top of this recollection he remembered the feelings he had had when his father removed from the farm in the island to the one near Blackness. Yes, he had felt just the same then looking at the new countryside – though he had clean forgotten about it: that everything was a little out of position, that things needn’t have been as they were at all. The sea needn’t have swept in just there, the hills needn’t have been just that shape; and the same with the farmhouses: they were set down just anywhere, and one of them was planted in a position that it made you uncomfortable even to look at: it was about two-thirds up the side of a hill, when of course it should have been either at the top or the bottom. But then he had got accustomed to all those things, and in time it seemed quite natural that they should be as they were and where they were. They seemed at last even to have a sort of plan; yet if he were to go back now and look at them again he would find that that was pure fancy. Still it was a dashed uncomfortable thought. Made a fellow wonder where he was.

Terrible to think too of those millions of years stretching in front, for what with things moving about as they did and even taking different shapes (according to Geordie), how on earth could a fellow know where he was? Even those historical Johnnies that they taught you about at school, Cromwell and Henry the Eighth and Napoleon and so on, would never be able to stick to their places for good; they would all have to shift, no matter how hard they fought against it. In a million years they might be anywhere, out of history altogether maybe, for how could the schools go on teaching history as far back as that? Everything on the earth now would be forgotten, things changed so fast. Maybe even Christianity would be forgotten, perhaps even Christ Himself, or at least He might become one of those nature myths Geordie was always blethering about. Even that was possible. And then there were earthquakes to be taken into account; always something else when you thought you had provided for everything. Suppose Palestine were to subside and be covered by the sea? That was quite possible. And he saw on the sunken reef of Calvary a luminous Cross covered with jewelled sea creatures and glimmering phosphorescently in dark blue waters. A phrase he had heard somewhere, ‘sea gods’, came into his mind. Would Christ become a sea god then instead of a nature myth? And he saw fleets of submarines circling round the silver-dripping Cross, fleets filled with strange-faced pilgrims from a distant age: worshippers of the amphibious god. Queer thoughts that came into a fellow’s head. Well, he wouldn’t like to be the last Johnny left to be frozen out. At the thought he almost felt inclined to turn back and seek Geordie’s company.

When he reached the tea-room in Strathblane he was glad to find the tables crowded, glad that he had to sit down at a table where two young men were eating. And when he ventured a ‘Lovely day’ he was grateful that the two young men said something friendly in return, for he had a sense of having come back from such a vast and watery distance that the very look on his face, the very air he carried with him, might well scare any decent fellow. He basked in the friendly over-crowded atmosphere of the tea-room, drank in like an immaterial refreshment the jokes flying about, almost reverently masticated the thick floury buttered scones, as though they were friendly and helpful substances humbly offering themselves to him, voluntarily sacrificing themselves to prove that the earth was a great and kindly living thing and not a plain of boulders and rocks.

Comforted, he went out into the garden, sat down in a deck-chair, and lit a cigarette. For a long time he lay in a dense cloud of animal comfort, his mind blank. The crystalline evening light fell in a calm and frozen cataract on the little garden, the thick rhododendron leaves rose into it rigid and shining, the roses gleamed lustrously as though wet with spray. Steadily the slanting cataract fell, but on the uplands to the east, on the high level fields, its fall quickened to a race of light, a wind of pale fire flying over the sward, which it turned golden as it ran onwards to the invisible walls and roofs of Glasgow. There too it would bring radiance and peace, and even if there were some house of sickness or pain there, it too would be drowned in that serenity; the little stubborn point of pain must dissolve in shame amid such peace. It was like paradise. All this talk about natural selection and protoplasm didn’t seem very real now. Dried milk. He got up, said good night to the waitress, and set out.

He climbed the slope to the gate of the field in which lay the little loch. He looked up; he could scarcely believe his eyes: that dashed horse was at this gate now! Could he never get away from it? He walked straight up to the gate; he looked for a moment deep into the white star in the middle of the horse’s brow; it was remote and pure as a planet in the sky, and it gave him a queasy feeling at the pit of his stomach. Then he lifted his walking-stick and said in a quivering voice: ‘Get out, damn you! Get out of this!’ He swung his stick, the horse tossed its head, shied, turned round, and, flinging up its hind hoofs, slowly trotted away. Mansie climbed over the gate with his legs trembling. The horse was not far enough away yet for his taste, so he picked up a stone and walked towards it. ‘Get out!’ he shouted again, making to fling the stone, but now the horse finally cantered away quite casually without looking at him. Mansie felt very tired; yet he walked on rapidly without looking to right or left, took his way mechanically through gates and down lanes and round corners, until he found himself at Killermont, where a lighted tramcar was waiting. This business of Tom’s might turn out to be serious, he kept thinking. Have to see whether anything can be done. Maybe a specialist should be called in. He longed for Wednesday, so that he might talk with Helen about it, for he saw in a flash that she alone could help him. He hurried home almost in a panic. But Tom was neither better nor worse. He had had a quiet day.