My Year in No Man's Bay (30 page)
If he had to ride cross-country, then it should be by bus, and not because he was accustomed to that from his tours. In Plato's
Critias
there is mention of the melancholy, who should be sent on a journey by ship to lift their spirits, if possible when the sea is turbulent, so that the atoms in their bodies will be shaken up and can find a healthier arrangement. This effect, and an even better one, could be achieved by a long bus trip, preferably on winding mountainous roads.
Critias
there is mention of the melancholy, who should be sent on a journey by ship to lift their spirits, if possible when the sea is turbulent, so that the atoms in their bodies will be shaken up and can find a healthier arrangement. This effect, and an even better one, could be achieved by a long bus trip, preferably on winding mountainous roads.
An additional factor for the singer was that on the road this way, always in a window seat, either way in front or way in back, drawing the curtain, even in his own tour bus, only to sleep, he could sink into himself, down to a point of complete tranquillity, and at the same time see himself as connected with the surroundings outside, of which he, without even having to turn his head once, could also keep a large portion in sight through the front or rear windshield.
Here, too, he could not tolerate any music, let alone a television above
the driver's head, as had become common elsewhere on cross-country trips. In that sense Scotland was probably too backward, for on this trip from the beginning there was only the landscape outside, seen through untinted glass, and the humming of the engine. The stormy wind, gusting and subsiding, seemed subdued in the rocking interior space. There was plenty of room.
the driver's head, as had become common elsewhere on cross-country trips. In that sense Scotland was probably too backward, for on this trip from the beginning there was only the landscape outside, seen through untinted glass, and the humming of the engine. The stormy wind, gusting and subsiding, seemed subdued in the rocking interior space. There was plenty of room.
The singer sat, together with one or two other passengers, on the east side, where the windows received the least rain, and from looking out he soon felt warm, although down below rain was blowing in through a crack, and instead of dribbling and trickling, swelled up with foam, blackish, as from a moor. And right past Inverness, on the suspension bridge over the firth, at the sight of the strangely curving, rounded waves down below, on closer inspection seals, he felt as if he had been cast among the animals, and spouted water, tumbled, let himself drift as one of them.
He was alert and feeling irrepressible. An element of pain, an openness, had to be added, and the song would come, he thought.
And then he thought nothing more during the entire trip. Although, besides him, no one on the Highland Terrier was looking at anything in particular, it was as if he were looking in consort with someone else, or as if he were following someone else's eyes. The region, rolling off into the distance, was so bare that Mongolia came to mind, a place to which his travels had never taken him. The hero of
The 39 Steps
was fleeing through rain-drizzled rounded mountains, chained by handcuffs to an unknown woman, who was stumbling along behind him. A pheasant fluttered into the air and with its heavy body promptly thudded to the ground in the storm, as if shot down. In moments of clearing you could see, farther off in the North Sea, dusky oil-drilling platforms, like temples. And a year ago on the square in front of the bus station in Cairo there had been a sleeping place for the sparrows just as the night before in Inverness, in a single scraggly, mangy cypress there, and each time, approaching his Nile Hotel by a roundabout route, he had gone toward that shrill racket the birds made as they battled for a spot, audible above the roar of the entire city, so that at least he had something to orient himself by amid the African, or Arab, or whatever chaos. And the one old woman on the bus made him think of his mother, as did so many old crones in the country, although his mother was neither from
the country nor a crone, and had not even been present at his first major performance. Whereas his father, who to this day, when his radio in the retirement home went even a week without playing something by his son, would comment that it had been a long time since they had heard anything by him, his mother had been concerned even back then, with his sporadic singing engagements at suburban summer festivals and graduations from Ville d'Avray to Courbevoie, that he was constantly being heard from.
The 39 Steps
was fleeing through rain-drizzled rounded mountains, chained by handcuffs to an unknown woman, who was stumbling along behind him. A pheasant fluttered into the air and with its heavy body promptly thudded to the ground in the storm, as if shot down. In moments of clearing you could see, farther off in the North Sea, dusky oil-drilling platforms, like temples. And a year ago on the square in front of the bus station in Cairo there had been a sleeping place for the sparrows just as the night before in Inverness, in a single scraggly, mangy cypress there, and each time, approaching his Nile Hotel by a roundabout route, he had gone toward that shrill racket the birds made as they battled for a spot, audible above the roar of the entire city, so that at least he had something to orient himself by amid the African, or Arab, or whatever chaos. And the one old woman on the bus made him think of his mother, as did so many old crones in the country, although his mother was neither from
the country nor a crone, and had not even been present at his first major performance. Whereas his father, who to this day, when his radio in the retirement home went even a week without playing something by his son, would comment that it had been a long time since they had heard anything by him, his mother had been concerned even back then, with his sporadic singing engagements at suburban summer festivals and graduations from Ville d'Avray to Courbevoie, that he was constantly being heard from.
At the sight of the stepped terraces in the craggy landscape, he felt in his own body the jerks with which aeons ago the glacier had withdrawn from there until it was gone from that areaâthat was how low the Scottish mountains were. All that had taken place unobserved. But someone must have observed it, with eyes that could still be felt? With what eyes? “I'm searching for the face you had before the world was made,” was a line in one of his songs.
Perhaps the singer was also lost in thought during the trip, brooding, bad-tempered, more than anyone else. But that was nothing compared to the moment when he was in song, as another might be in the picture. This being in song was very rare, rarer than a poem. Being in song was the original condition for him.
In the storm a sheep dashing across a pasture now, its damp fleece flying behind it like a coat.
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n Dornoch, where the singer was the only passenger to get off, it was almost dark again. The gulls, for whom it was a struggle to fly forward, toward land, appeared black against the sky. The rain had stopped, but the storm from the west would blow all night. The cloud in the band of light left by the setting sun had the shape of a deeply frayed, broad-branched cedar, which, uprooted, came gusting through the air and then disappeared as if in a puff of smoke.
n Dornoch, where the singer was the only passenger to get off, it was almost dark again. The gulls, for whom it was a struggle to fly forward, toward land, appeared black against the sky. The rain had stopped, but the storm from the west would blow all night. The cloud in the band of light left by the setting sun had the shape of a deeply frayed, broad-branched cedar, which, uprooted, came gusting through the air and then disappeared as if in a puff of smoke.
He gave up the idea of continuing his hike today, indeed forgot any plan for the time being. Here in Dornoch the singer felt as though he was already on his way. Was this a seaside resort? a town? a farm village? Except for him there was no one out on the street. Yet in the squat houses and the yards with storm walls he heard heavy steps, echoing, as if on the planks of a boat.
He stood still and watched for the moment when the now-clear firmament would reveal the glitter of the first star. He even knew the approximate spot. And again, as each time previously, in Archaia Nemea in Greece, on Mission Street in San Francisco, he must have blinked at the decisive moment. For there Venus was now, gleaming as always against the horizon, blue-black like a lining.
Below, almost out in the dunes, in the glow of the last streetlight, in front of a flat-fronted wooden house, the figure of a young woman appeared, who, out of breath, as if she had run toward him, invited the singer to spend the night in her house; the hotels in Dornoch were all closed during the winter. He could tell immediately that she did not recognize him, and accepted. He merely said he wanted to stay out until midnight, set down his backpack on her doorstep, and let her give him a key.
Then he made his way, up dune and down, to the North Sea, which came crashing up to the crown of the farthest dune; at first he felt as though he did not belong there, as with every ocean.
He went down into a crouch. Everywhere along the shore little seaweed fires were burning at regular intervals, with not a person in sight, crackling and sparking, intended as light signals out to the high sea. In the glow of such a flame the singer examined a plant sunk into the sand, around which a miniature dune had formed. A single kinked leaf still poked out, lance-shaped, rotated by some storm gusts almost around itself and snapped back into a resting position in between, whereupon the sand around it showed very delicate patterns of the quarter, half, and whole circles it had described, like a wind clock, with the seaweed frond as its hand.
Who in the world needed another song, his song, a new song?
The singer fell into a sort of brooding, trying to picture to himself those who stood between him and his audienceâthe record company executives, the booking agents, the copyright holders. No, he could not picture them, they offered no imageâso repulsive were they to him. He was not a businessperson, would never be one, and thus everything he had done since youth and had intended for his own people belonged to these others, who were not his people. They held the rights, and he was the supplier. Accordingly they were convinced, nowadays more and more, that they were the ones creating the event and its heroes. What had one
of them said, the one to whom he had “supplied” his biggest song, around which he had been circling for months in a chaos of words and notes and which he had written down in a moment without sound, between fear of death and joy? “Let's see what I can make of this!” Jettison the middlemen, the singer brooded. But how? It's the system, and any other, no matter how different, is still the same. Act as if nothing were wrong. Those people between my creations and the world don't exist. They aren't there. With a snap of the fingers I make them disappear. I decide: everything I have done up to now and will do from now on belongs to me and no one else.
of them said, the one to whom he had “supplied” his biggest song, around which he had been circling for months in a chaos of words and notes and which he had written down in a moment without sound, between fear of death and joy? “Let's see what I can make of this!” Jettison the middlemen, the singer brooded. But how? It's the system, and any other, no matter how different, is still the same. Act as if nothing were wrong. Those people between my creations and the world don't exist. They aren't there. With a snap of the fingers I make them disappear. I decide: everything I have done up to now and will do from now on belongs to me and no one else.
And he could say what a song was: “In it the most distant streets flow into each other.” With this line he leapt to his feet and shouted or murmured names into the dark surf, as at the end of a concert he announced the names of his backup singers or band: “Orpheus in the Upperworld! The fish, rain worms, and snakes lamenting the Buddha's death. Moses piecing together the Tablets of the Law. John Lennon, Liverpool. Van Morrison, Dublin. Blind Lemon Jefferson. John Fogarty. Lao-tzu. Blaise Pascal. Baruch Spinoza, who sang that human wisdom consists not in thinking about death but in living! Marsyas pulling off Apollo's skin!”
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n the way back, again beneath the village streetlights, a storm gust was so powerful that in a series of puddles the rainwater jumped from one to the other, and so on in this way as far as the horizon. And now he had the desired wind in his face, in which it looked more than usual as though balls were rolling in his armpits as he walked.
n the way back, again beneath the village streetlights, a storm gust was so powerful that in a series of puddles the rainwater jumped from one to the other, and so on in this way as far as the horizon. And now he had the desired wind in his face, in which it looked more than usual as though balls were rolling in his armpits as he walked.
From the dark building at a distance from the others, tall and narrow, an old folks' home, came angry groans. At the same time the Pleiades sparkled above, initially all seven stars crowded together in a little heap, from which then each emerged separately, glance after glance. And here in Dornoch he also listened for the birds' sleeping place: too late; the sparrows, wherever they might be, were silent.
When he had walked around the night-dark church, which stood in the middle of a grassy area, inside the church the stone sarcophagus of the crusader, who lay with legs crossed and his dog beside him, the street was suddenly thronged with local residents, leaving a choir rehearsal.
No matter which way one of them went, the same snatches of song could be heard from all directions, and if one of them launched into a new song, another singer over there, already out of sight, would promptly join in, and he wondered why he had never had a singer as a friend, except someone he did not really know, from afar, and why, when he was put in a chorus, he always sang out of tune. But whenever stars were gathered to sing together for some cause, didn't they necessarily produce cacophony, starting off wrong, one too soon, one too late, each with a different version of the lyrics?
No matter which way one of them went, the same snatches of song could be heard from all directions, and if one of them launched into a new song, another singer over there, already out of sight, would promptly join in, and he wondered why he had never had a singer as a friend, except someone he did not really know, from afar, and why, when he was put in a chorus, he always sang out of tune. But whenever stars were gathered to sing together for some cause, didn't they necessarily produce cacophony, starting off wrong, one too soon, one too late, each with a different version of the lyrics?
Following those choir members who formed the only small group, he found his way to the village pub, where everyone shook hands with him as if he were an old acquaintance. A drunk, already more falling down than just swaying, was playing pool, and made each shot with hairline precision. Above the wooden floorboards, which had been cleared, with tables and benches pushed to the sides, a tape was fiddling a square dance, to which no one was dancing, and the singer, for whom his ancestors had been looking for the longest timeâ“Where in the world can he be now?”âsaw himself finally discovered: “Ah, so there he is!”
Outside, a few bars on the Jew's harp brought air into his lungs. The song felt so close, and then again so unattainable, that it frightened him. He had been away from population centers and the news only a couple of days, and already they did not exist anymore, or at most in casual thoughts, detached, never serious.
In his northern Scottish lodgings all was sleep-still, only a couple of lamps to light his way. For what had looked at first like a cottage, the corridor was unusually long, as the room was spacious, the ceiling high.
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t was deepest night when the singer, whom even a lightning strike would not have awakened, was shaken out of his sleep by a child crying. It did not stop, and he got up, put on his ankle-length raincoat, and made his way through the house until he came upon the crying child, alternating between the highest and the lowest notes, in a crib on casters, which, being pushed back and forth by the young woman, added its own screeching and creaking.
t was deepest night when the singer, whom even a lightning strike would not have awakened, was shaken out of his sleep by a child crying. It did not stop, and he got up, put on his ankle-length raincoat, and made his way through the house until he came upon the crying child, alternating between the highest and the lowest notes, in a crib on casters, which, being pushed back and forth by the young woman, added its own screeching and creaking.
The singer asked the mother whether she would mind if he tried to quiet the child, too, and she gave him permission. With his hands on
the headboard, he did nothing but, without moving it, give the bed tiny shoves, invisible to a third party, at first unevenly but with all his strength; all one could hear was a series of sounds consisting merely of rustling and scraping, which, now longer, now shorter, insinuated itself into the bawling and, when that first paused, could become regular, rhythmic, and articulate, like a piece of music. To make the child keep on listening and at the same time calm down, this sound had to hit the right moment with each note, and the whole time he had before his eyes the billy goat in a burning barn who had not followed him out into the open until he had seized his horns in his hands and neither pulled nor pushed but done almost nothing, yet with the utmost patience and attentiveness!
the headboard, he did nothing but, without moving it, give the bed tiny shoves, invisible to a third party, at first unevenly but with all his strength; all one could hear was a series of sounds consisting merely of rustling and scraping, which, now longer, now shorter, insinuated itself into the bawling and, when that first paused, could become regular, rhythmic, and articulate, like a piece of music. To make the child keep on listening and at the same time calm down, this sound had to hit the right moment with each note, and the whole time he had before his eyes the billy goat in a burning barn who had not followed him out into the open until he had seized his horns in his hands and neither pulled nor pushed but done almost nothing, yet with the utmost patience and attentiveness!
When the infant had finally sighed himself back to sleep, the mother was long since asleep, and the singer, too, soothed by his own lullaby, sank, the minute he was back in his guest bed and had closed his eyes, into the sleep of a newborn. He lay there with his face close to the window, again amazingly wide for a cottage in the dunes, through which the winter constellations shone all together into his dreams, and thus themselves were already the dream. Orion, the Hare, Castor and Pollux, broad-thighed Cassiopeia, the veil of Berenice, and then as yet undiscovered ones called Weymoor, the Headless Woman, Iron Gate, La Grande Arche, and finally the morning star alone moved through his innermost being with the slowness of the universe and penetrated it. Such a caress the singer had never experienced before.
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