That Was a Shiver, and Other Stories. James Kelman
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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
THE STATE OF
ELIXIRISM
Near the hut where I slept that night there was a brick-built barn. A tap fixed into the wall supplied drinking water. I drank then washed, collected a certain bag of possessions and departed swiftly, hoofing it along a narrow winding road banked by thick bushes and occasional small woods designed that the mansions and castles of superior persons be concealed from the gaze of the yokelled minionry of whom I was one, yea yea yea; three times wit’ the yea. A bird whistled. I answered the call. My answer went unheeded. Unheeded! Hey Mister Bird, why dont you fuck yourself! I looked to find this culprit with a view to killing it stone dead, and partaking of breakfast, instead discovering a lane. One cannot eat a lane and I was fucking hungry man I was fucking hungry. Pulling out the feathers, one pulls out the feathers. The hunger affects one. Such that pain, more of a discomfort, the stomach kind of – that like – what kind of pain is that? ach well who knows, one walks, though the road be weary. Down this lane and beyond a cluster of white-washed cottages a sudden flash signified a mirror, positioned that drivers might identify danger before exiting the blind-spot driveway. I was blinded a moment and blundered into a ditch
even blundering, what an act! I blundered. So human, so human. I am a human he screamed, prior to choking on his tongue, mistaking it for a slab of ox liver
where I spied a bottle of strong cider. A spectacular but by no means extraordinary turn of events: I once found two bottles of a not-inferior fortified wine.
But strong cider?
Nice.
I