That Was a Shiver, and Other Stories. James Kelman
People die, they drop off; they fall away. One minute ye’re all there, the next ye’re gone. Where did ye go? One day ye notice: Where’s Hughie? I havenay seen Hughie for a while. He’s deid. Hughie? Aye. Hughie’s deid? Fuck sake. That was a blow but Hughie, drapping deid like that. Standing outside the supermarket and ower he went. Talking best mates me and him. The rest of us keep going. Me anyway. The wife too. She liked Hughie. He made her laugh. He had that knack.
Naybody can plan simplicity. It doesnay matter how hard ye try. As hard as ye like. She feels the same, the wife. I telled her, They’re just young people I says. They’re no that young says she, with all their dancing and jiggling about, all shaking this and that, breasts and bollocks, shouting and bawling. That’s just physicalities I says. Their breathing too I says, that is a physicality, listen a minute and ye’ll hear. It’s laboured; their breathing’s laboured.
I noticed that. That was weird. I found it creepy. Jigs and polkas. I used to like jigs and polkas, she said, the wife, and she shook her head at me in that auld way she used to do, looking to see who else was there, if anybody was and if they were were they listening. People listen. She hated that, she was a very private person, just honest privacy for honest stuff. Some want privacy for shady stuff. That wasnay her. She just hated nosy people. I didnay see anybody listening but that didnay mean they werenay. They might have been. Maybe they were there, maybe they were listening, and looking. People do that. People close to ye as well, wherever they are, ghosts flitting about. Ye keep quiet, thinking about other stuff, how it used to be when people were all there, like whoever, the wife, Hughie, my maw and da – except him, forget him, waste of fucking space my da, wherever he is, wherever he was: wherever he went; fuck knows where he went, cowardly bastard. Ye think of that ‘life is plural’ crap. It doesnay work for all ages, not like with generations. Ye are aye in a zoo. Folk like us. Other yins are invisible. If that suits them then fuck them, that is their choice. Zoos and invisibility. I prefer weans anyway, they dont see ye, too engrossed in their own physicalities – ye could even say spiritualities because of how they are in their own head, their own mind; in their own mind in their own body. And it makes ye shiver. Me anyway. The way they dont see anybody. Is that courage? Am I seeing courage? Or stupidity? Are they just deaf, dumb and blind, and without a brain? Ye could be standing there and they would barge their way past. They knock ye ower. I kept out the road. No the wife. Sterner stuff. Ye worried about her. She was never there. No when ye needed her. Where did she go? She disappeared. How come? It was creepy.
Plus the stuff needing to get done. Who did that? I didnay. She did, she just went away and that was that, she did it. Whatever. If it needed doing. I didnay notice. I should have but I didnay. It was like I had forgotten how. I just seemed to go about, and then what, mishaps. Shapes dotted about.
Ye try jigs and polkas. Not on yer tod; ye wouldnay manage that. We all need partners. Me too. Mates. Mine was Hughie Morrison. Hughie died. I miss him. All ye see is them stoating about, through the door in they come, breasts and bollocks, there ye are and ower ye go. Okay but keep it to yourself. Ye want to pretend. Dont. It cannay be helped so it doesnay matter. If it cannay be helped it cannay be helped. Ye keep it to yerself. Yourself, myself, us alone. Nay whispering. I hate that whispering. Whose are the voices, all the voices. Inside my mind it is like tattooed. I was doomed but naybody telled me. On I ploughed. In a golden glaze. I think of that. Golden glaze? What does it mean except it is good. We say these things. What are they? Do they have a meaning? Ye think of a nice malt. I do anyway. Slàinte mhath. People think we know but we dont. The weans understand that. They dont hear us mouthing. Yellow cocoon. What is that? In a yellow cocoon. Is that death? Golden glaze, yellow cocoon. Golden glaze good, yellow cocoon bad.
We dont need no intoxication, talking about my g g generation. The weans make their own, skipping to Maloo, wherever that is. They will dance and they will sing. Balls stoat. So do people. Some are doomed to fail. I saw young ones in the statuesque position. Eastern idols. They reminded me of that: one boy and one lassie. Two in one. So wrapped roundabout one another they were inside as well as out. Snakes and tails, a snake swallowing its own tail. The boy might be up the lassie, her wriggling and him pushing. She would know, the wife. She would look and say, Oh I know what he’s meaning. He is meaning us, that is like me and him. That was us two. Talking me and him, me and him isnay plural, no a woman and a man; we are two separates coming the gether. Oh my, ye see them in shorts and short skirts. See their arms: folded stiffly. Why would that be? Balletic. That was them, that was their attitude. Boys and lassies the gether, that was them; that was them dancing, it was their dance.
I apologise. We are all individuals. An individual is a one and only. We do our handstands and cartwheels but this does not carry us, does not lift us o’er, soaring. We stay on the outside.
That was how they danced. They put on their show. They did that then disappeared. Weans do that. That is what they do. Dont rely on weans. They leave too. Ye sit there and that is you; ye look for the wife, where is she? ye dont see her. Hughie? Where’s Hughie? Next is the weans. In they come through the door, that is what they do, not knowing the ground is hallowed. It is ours. We make it hallowed. We put ourselves into it. Our spirits and all everything and the rest that goes between us. Everything that is and has gone, that went between us.
In seeing them we reach the courage and it is maybe our courage. We dont fool them so not wurselves either. Not anybody. We are not trying to fool anybody. Me too. I would never, not myself. There isnay a tomorrow, what ye mean by tomorrow, there isnay one. It might be high up and you looking down. If this is what ye believe. Gardens of Eden and garlands of leaves. Grapes. Where are the beautiful maidens? Hughie used to say that. Where are the beautiful maidens? There they are there, look at them dance look at them sing. The wife too, laughing, how she laughed, she had that laugh and I try to reach it, so if I find it, if I do, I think I will.
CLINGING ON
It occurred to me I was awake. From here was difficult. I had to remind myself that the ‘that’ was absent and its significance, its significance, the ‘absence’ or non-existence, or negation, and to piece together, or distinguish the several parts. In normal, or regular – I speak of the day-to-day – discourse or communication the sentence would have written as two part comprising two clauses: ‘It occurred to me that I was awake.’ A writer of prose might well have used a ‘that’ and therefore lost the meaning for the second clause ‘that I was awake’ slips into a past, or simply different, time zone. Whereas a poet might have written, or expressed the sentence separated by line-spacing, thus:
It occurred to me
I was awake.
Finer prose-writers are wary of making use of the poet’s devices. They do so, but cautiously. What is clearer now is the separation between the two clauses is not just ambiguous but offers a minimum two meanings and these may be conjoined principal statements: ‘It occurred to me’ and ‘I was awake’. And might be expressed, or written, ‘It occurred to me (I was awake).’ The difficulty is the use of brackets suggesting a banality which amounts not to tautology but, upon examination, of one statement the other may be found. Nought can occur if one is asleep. If the act of occurrence has occurred then certainly one is awake.
Following this I can express it thus: ‘I was awake; this realisation had taken hold of me’ and, the corollary, that I might be expressed as a sentence; if so the use of the term ‘might’ is the key to the evaporation of the space between us (me and reality). From here it follows that I may or may not be so expressed. I was aware of that. Oh God.
THIS HAS NO
TITLE
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