I Am Lazarus (Peter Owen Modern Classic) (12 page)

A few yards away, in a hollow of the downward slope, was a dilapidated wooden shack. At first I thought it must be some old boat-shed or deserted fisherman's hut. The half-ruined place, apparently only held together by roughly nailed boards and wire and patched with beaten-out tins, seemed much too ramshackle to be inhabited. But then I saw signs of occupancy: a heap of fresh potato peelings thrown outside the door, a few indescribably sordid rags hanging from the crazy posts of what had once been a fence.

I stood there in the wind for a minute, resting and getting my breath after the climb. And as I was wondering how any human being could be so unfortunate or so degraded as to live in such
squalor, five or six children appeared and clustered together staring out to sea: they were, like the hovel, indescribably squalid, almost naked, hideous with neglect. They pointed towards the sea where the gannets on this side of the point were diving much closer in, with folded wings hurtling like bolts through the air, to strike the water one after the other in jets of spray. I could not hear much of what the children were saying, but it seemed from certain words and from their gestures that they expected the birds to come near. I waited to see what would happen. We all gazed at the gannets which were now no longer diving or searching the waves but planing portentously towards us with infrequent wing strokes. And sure enough I was presently half-deafened by a storm of harsh cries immediately overhead. Long black-tipped wings hid the sun, shadowing everything; only the cold round eyes and the fierce beaks glittered. And hardly had the flock sighted the children than they seemed to be menacing them, screaming headlong towards them in horrid haste. I shouted some sort of warning, urging the children to run into the house. They took no notice. I saw their looks full of excitement and anticipation, but without any amazement. They seemed to be taking part in a procedure well known to them. Already the gannets were swooping upon one of them, the smallest of the group, whom two of the others dragged along by her sticklike arms. And it was beyond all possibility of doubt that this miserable little creature was the victim among them, already dedicated to the birds. Not terror alone gave such a shocking blankness to her lifted face, darkened by two great holes, bloodied pits from which the eyes had already been torn. I shouted again and began running with an idea of beating the gannets off with my hands; but then I must have stumbled and fallen heavily. I must have been stunned by the fall on the jagged rock, for when I got up the cliff was silent and lonely, the wind had died down, and the sun was sinking behind sullen bars of cloud edged with fire.

How did all this atrocious cruelty ever get into the world, that's what I often wonder. No one created it, no one invoked it: and no saint, no genius, no dictator, no millionaire, no, not God's son himself, is able to drive it out.

THE PICTURE

T
HE
sun was shining the afternoon I went for the picture. Of course there wasn't anything very remarkable about that because the sun does shine more here in the winter than it does at home. But that afternoon it shone as if the winter had almost come to an end; as if the very next day, perhaps, might be the first day of spring.

How hard winter is to bear in a foreign country, even when there is sunshine. The cold mornings open their eyes to glare at you one after another, like hostile strangers. Everything will be easier when the spring comes, I used to say to myself whenever I was confronted with one of those difficult situations or problems which are certain to arise so often in a strange environment.

Walking along the street on this day that I'm talking about I was happy to feel the spring close at hand. The town, which generally has rather a drab appearance, for once looked quite gay. Flags were blowing over some of the buildings, there was a breezy seaside liveliness in the air, flocks of gulls with bright scarlet legs and beaks followed some laughing girls who threw them the remains of the lunch they had been eating in the public gardens.

The pleasure which I got from seeing these things added itself to the pleasure I felt about the picture I was going to fetch from the shop. It was a week since I had taken it there to be framed, and all through the week I had been thinking how happy I should be when the time came to hang it up on the wall, an ally in the alien territory of my room.

The old man to whom the shop belonged had promised to have the picture framed ready for me to-day. As I went along I remembered with gratitude his aspect of a benevolent gnome and the kindly way he had interested himself in the picture and advised me about the most suitable style of frame. Since I've travelled so far afield I've learned to be cautious; I know that it doesn't do to attach one's hopes to anybody or to indulge in what's called wishful thinking, but in this case I felt safe enough; I felt sure the old man would not disappoint me.

The shop was on the shady side of the street, and when I crossed over from the other pavement where I'd been walking I was surprised at the difference in temperature between the shade and the sun. The inside of the shop felt really chilly, and it was dark as well, so that for the first few moments after I'd come through the door I thought the place was quite empty. Tradesmen in this part of the world have a habit of leaving their shops unattended if business is slack, and there's usually a hand-bell on the counter which a customer rings as he comes in to attract attention. It wasn't until after I'd rung the bell, which in this case was an uncommon one made of glass, that I saw there was somebody already in the shop. A man of medium height, rather thin, wearing a long coat like an ulster and a nondescript hat, was standing with his back towards me, apparently studying some prints fastened to a tall screen near the door. I can't attempt to explain the impression I got then, an impression that was absolutely illogical and contradicted by the man's very attitude as he stood, turned away from me and bending forward slightly as if straining his eyes in the dim light to examine the pictures before him: the impression that he was, if not actually watching me, at any rate acutely conscious of my arrival.

It's not exactly agreeable to feel that a stranger has got you under observation, particularly if you happen to be a long way from home in a place where things frequently turn out quite different from what they appear. My optimistic mood began to evaporate, I was disappointed, too, because the person who answered the bell was not the old man whom I'd been expecting and upon whom, for some reason, I seemed to have pinned my faith, but a dark-haired girl in a red dress whom I'd never seen before. As she came in I looked at the man near the door, supposing that he would be attended to first since he had arrived before me. But he did not turn or change his position in any way, nor did the girl even glance at him. There seemed to be some understanding between them; obviously the man was not in the shop as an ordinary customer, and this was somehow disturbing to me although anticipation of seeing the picture was uppermost in my mind.

The girl asked what I wanted, and, as soon as I had told her, she
began to look at the labels on a number of brown paper packages that were leaning against the wall. Again I'm unable to explain the feeling which came over me while she was searching, the conviction that she was not looking seriously, that she did not really expect to find my picture among all those brown paper parcels. If only the old man would come I'm sure he would be able to find it at once, I thought. But he did not appear and I felt myself helpless. The situation already seemed to have developed beyond my control. I was oppressed by an intuition, hard to put into words, that the true meaning of what was happening was in some way hidden from me: and yet I dreaded the moment when it would become clear.

The girl, after going through the wrapped pictures in an aimless way, picked one out, as it seemed to me, quite at random, and laid it on the counter. This will be yours, she said, apparently expecting me to accept it without further inquiry.

But it's got someone clse's name written on it, I said, pointing at a word pencilled on the brown paper so indistinctly that I couldn't make out what it was but which contained far more letters than there are in my two names put together.

For the first time she gave me a faint smile. That's easily put right, she said. She took a piece of india-rubber out of her pocket and quickly erased the writing on the parcel. There you are, she said, pushing it. towards me and moving away as if the whole business had been satisfactorily cleared up.

Wait a minute, I called after her. I must make sure that I've got the right one. I hurriedly started to undo the parcel, but the string was so securely tied that it took me some seconds to get it open. Just as I expected, it was not my picture inside, but an inane nursery print of a frog in a top hat. I pulled the paper back over the wretched thing. The mere sight of it was exasperating, and I remember feeling surprised at the sad tone in which I exclaimed, Of course this isn't mine. Why didn't my voice sound indignant?

The girl, who had just opened the door between the shop and a room at the back, looked at me with a blank face. The old man knows all about my picture, I said. Won't you please ask him to come here and speak to me? She didn't answer. I was afraid she
was going to refuse. But then, still without speaking, she went out and shut the door between us.

Now I remembered uneasily the man behind me whose presence I had forgotten during the last few seconds. I glanced round casually, not wishing to give the impression that I felt any interest in him. At first I thought he must have gone away; but then I saw that he had merely moved to a darker corner where he was standing in exactly the same pose as before although, in such deep shadow, he could not possibly have distinguished a single detail of the pictures at which he seemed to be peering. So he really is watching me, passed through my head. And suddenly it occurred to me that it would be wise for me to leave the shop, immediately, without troubling any further about the picture.

I had actually taken a step towards the street door when the old man appeared from the inner room. At once I turned to him with relief, confident that he would be able to put everything right. I've come for my picture, I said to him. You remember. The picture you advised me about. It was to be ready to-day.

Picture? Picture? he repeated in an unexpectedly querulous voice, at the same time glancing impatiently from side to side as he came up to me. What picture? There are hundreds of pictures here.

I was so disconcerted that for a minute I simply stared at him. Then it began to dawn on me that the thing which has so often happened to me in this country had happened again, that I had made a mistake, that I had fallen into the trap of accepting as real an appearance that was merely a sham, a booby trap, a malicious trick. The old man was very near me and I could, see his teeth yellow and broken and bad like rat's teeth under his ragged moustache, and his vindictive red-rimmed eyes gummy with rheum. How could I ever have thought he had a benevolent face? What a fool I was to be so easily taken in.

But you must remember my picture, I pleaded, not yet quite able, in spite of everything, to despair. Speaking with a contemptible note of propitiation I began to describe our previous interview, recalling what had been said on that occasion. The old man waited unwillingly. I could not tell whether he was even listening to me
as he stood, glancing about, and thrusting a long black pencil in and out of a tuft of straggly hair just above his ear.

Yes, yes, he interrupted irritably in the end, and going once more to the door of the other room where I could now see an apprentice in a white apron at work at a table.

Perhaps it's in there, my precious picture, I thought. I no longer had the least trace of confidence in the old shopkeeper. I felt convinced, just as I had with the girl, that he had no intention of finding the picture, would not so much as look for it, even if he were not, as seemed only too probable, actually hiding it from me. If only I could go in and look round for myself perhaps I should see it somewhere, I was thinking, when he rudely shut the door in my face.

So strong was my desire for the picture that I think I might have tried to force my way into the room to hunt for it. And that in spite of the fact that I knew I ought to leave the shop at once, at that very moment, that I had stayed too long already. I think I would have chanced everything if the old man had not opened the door a crack just then and whispered, Perhaps you would be able to describe the picture to me? His face was close, much too close to mine, and I saw his mouth with its disgusting rat's teeth twisting into an indescribably sly and venomous sneer, while at the very same instant the man in the shop behind me, whose face I had not seen, uttered a sound that could only have been a suppressed laugh. Yes, they were both laughing. And I had no doubt about who was the victim of their cruel joke. The girl and the apprentice in the white apron were certainly having a good laugh, too, at my expense although I couldn't see or hear either of them from where I was standing.

I stumbled out of the place somehow. I was so humiliated, so disappointed, that I hardly knew what I was doing and turned in the wrong direction when I got into the street. The sun had stopped shining now, a dismal wind blew the dust in eddies presaging rain.

How terribly long and hard the winters seem when one is far from home.

ALL KINDS OF GRIEF SHALL ARRIVE

T
HINGS
turn out so strangely and unexpectedly in one's life. If anybody had told me a few years back that people would be coming to me for information about the authorities I shouldn't have been able to help laughing. When one's a free agent nothing seems more fantastically improbable than the idea of being entangled with officialdom. Stories about those who get involved with the authorities don't seem to have a personal application at all; if anything, they strengthen one's sense of immunity. Those sort of things may happen to other people, I used to think; but not to me. I was inclined then to adopt a superior, slightly pitying, slightly contemptuous attitude towards unluckier individuals as if they had only themselves to blame for their troubles. In those days I hadn't yet learnt that the authorities are really not concerned with a person's motives or his private character or even with his public behaviour, and that somebody quite blameless (as we think) may easily become deeply implicated simply through a slight oversight or perhaps a technical error only due to a lack of information which is certainly not his fault.