The Red Door (55 page)
Authors: Iain Crichton Smith
The usual banalities were exchanged though MacDuff was surprised to notice that Mallow apparently didn’t care much for chess. It wasn’t the ‘game for the working
classes’, he said at one stage. You wouldn’t see working men play it in pubs. It was too ‘intellectual’. MacDuff didn’t take much part in the conversation: he was
thinking deeply and he was also rather nervous. To use such an instrument . . .
Eventually Burrow rose from the table and said that if they followed him to the make-up room . . . He glanced at his watch and added that he wasn’t trying to hurry them but . . .
So they went into the make-up room and it didn’t take very long for a young girl to dab at MacDuff’s cheeks. Then they were sitting on chairs on a platform, himself and Burrow and
Mallow. Burrow was in the middle.
MacDuff thought to himself, I must appear very natural, not at all crazy. I musn’t move my hands or my legs, I must show conviction.
They were ready. There were some preliminaries and then the programme was stopped and Burrow told them that what they had just said wouldn’t go out but they were
really
ready
now.
BURROW | | ‘Tonight we have with us on |
MALLOW | | ‘Not really. Perhaps I was surprised that Professor MacDuff should . . . But no I can’t say I was surprised. After all lots of people read the comics, far more than read Shakespeare.’ |
BURROW | | ‘Do you mean then that you would approve of Bingo rather than Brahms?’ |
MALLOW | | ‘If that is what people want. Yes.’ |
BURROW | | ‘I see. You would approve of lectures on Bingo?’ |
MALLOW | | ‘Why not? What you have to understand is that most people don’t read Shakespeare because they like him. They’ve been conned into reading him. Most people don’t really like Brahms. They prefer to sit down by the fireside and read a good thriller. Or even a comic. You find spontaneous humour in a comic. It’s not easy to write a good comic. You need technique.’ |
BURROW | | ‘I see. What would you say to that, Professor MacDuff?’ |
MACDUFF | | ‘As a matter of fact I have brought along with me some poems which I found in a magazine. I think it is a minor magazine but the people in it, the poets, are well known, so I am told. I should like to read one of these poems. It is called “Bus”. It reads as follows: |
| | Last bzz Izz drizzly missed. |
| | | Here is another poem: |
| | | Mamba adder boa constrictor pricked her mam ba anaconda python. |
| | | The book from which this is taken, the magazine I mean, is called |
| | | Simmons [that is the poet who wrote these verses] undoubtedly shows in this book a feeling for urban nuances which by linguistic modes he imposes on the reader. His poems in their simplicity and bizarre menace are a projection into the future.’ |
‘I’m not quite sure,’ said Burrow, ‘are you approving or disapproving . . . ?’
‘I was wondering whether Mr Mallow,’ said the Professor, ‘thought that these were good poems.’
‘Well,’ said Mallow, ‘they seem to me to be attempting something new. They seem to me to have a certain avant-garde feeling . . . ’
‘I was wondering,’ said MacDuff, ‘whether in fact the working classes would find them interesting. You see,’ said the Professor, ‘I think in fact they’re a
load of crap.’
There was a long silence in the course of which Professor MacDuff regarded with satisfaction and merciless tranquillity the expressions which crossed Burrow’s face ranging from
bewilderment to fear and the appearance of being hunted. He looked at that moment as if he wanted to leave the box in which he was sitting and certainly, thought MacDuff, he would have brought the
programme to an end if MacDuff hadn’t insisted on its being sent out live.
Eventually Burrow said out of his bemusement, ‘I thought Professor MacDuff that you were in fact . . . ’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said the Professor, ‘I have also brought along with me some lines from a poet whom I admire very much. His name is Shakespeare. The speech is from
Hamlet
. I should like to read it. It begins as follows:
‘ “To be or not to be that is the question.” He is of course discussing suicide. It goes on,
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.
‘I am quite sure that the working men will recognise in these lines some of the difficulties that obsess us all.’ Mallow was signalling frantically.
‘The fact is,’ said the Professor, ‘that the greater writers, the great composers, have all written about ordinary people. They were people who suffered. Shall I tell you what
is wrong with people like Mallow and his kind? Envy. Pure envy. Why are they envious? They are envious because they cannot write like Shakespeare or like Sophocles or like Tolstoy. Do you think for
a single moment that I could conceivably be interested in comics? Do you think for a moment that I look down on the working man? Do you think the great writers have looked down on the working man?
Listen to a quotation from the comics. These sounds: “Aargh,” “Yoops.” They are like the sounds we would make when we came out of the slime. Aren’t they? Shall I tell
you something? It is the people who write the comics who look down on the working man. They are saying, “This is what the working man is like. This is what he prefers. He can’t do any
better than this. Give him any rubbish.” And people like Mallow are the sort who try to deprive him of his heritage. Does he want us to go back to the slime?’
BURROW | | ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I thought that you were defending the comics, that you were lecturing on them because you . . . ’ |
MACDUFF | | ‘Exactly. And why did I do that? I did that so that I would end up here. So that I would get an audience. Why did you want me here? Shall I tell you? I’ll tell you the reason why you invited me here. You don’t really give a damn one way or the other. You’re not really interested in this at all, are you? You put me on the box because you thought I was going to be sensational, didn’t you? That I would be entertaining. What the hell do you care about culture or about anything else? What do you care about all those people who have died in order to produce a poem or a symphony? You don’t give a damn, do you? What can your friend Mallow say? He doesn’t know enough about literature or about anything else to answer me. Does he even know enough about the comics? Does he know when the comic first started? Of course he doesn’t. He’s just a shallow nincompoop.’ |
BURROW | | ‘Well, Mr Mallow?’ |
MALLOW | | ‘I was just about to say that this trick is what one would expect of one who is trying to defend the élite and élitism. What has Professor MacDuff ever done except to stay in his ivory tower? Can he tell us if he has in fact gone out to the people? Can he tell us that he is not defending the rotting bastions of capitalism and that in order to do that he must defend the élitism of Shakespeare and the rest?’ |
MACDUFF | | ‘You asked me whether I have done anything for the working man. Yes, shall I tell you what I’ve done for the working man? I’ve spent fifty years reading books and lecturing on them. I have spent fifty years trying to separate the false from the true. I have spent fifty years trying to nurse in people’s minds that love of excellence which prevents us from being animals. You may call it an ivory tower if you like. I say that I’ve been protecting your civilisation, the civilisation of all men. I’ve been trying to keep us all from being yahoos. I’m not saying that I did it alone. But I helped to do it. I’m proud of doing it. Listen to this. This is Hamlet again speaking to Horatio his friend. Hamlet is concerned about his honour and he says: |
| | | Absent thee from felicity awhile and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story. Listen to this line: The still sad music of humanity. |
| | | ‘I could go on all night. When did Mallow or any of his kind ever write anything like that? Is that élitism? Shall I tell you about Mr Mallow and the rest of them? They think they know everything and they know nothing. Michelangelo and the other great painters didn’t think it odd or wrong to be apprentices to painters lesser than themselves. This is the first generation we have had who think they have nothing to learn. I shall challenge Mr Mallow now. I shall ask him who wrote some great lines that I will quote. And to be perfectly fair if he can’t answer these questions – since I am sure he cannot – I further challenge him to produce his alternatives.’ |
BURROW | | ‘Mr Mallow?’ |
MALLOW | | ‘I haven’t been a professor in an ivory tower for fifty years so I haven’t got the Professor’s useless learning. It would be easy for me to ask him . . . ’ |
MACDUFF | | ‘Please let him ask me to identify any lines that he can produce that the listeners will be able to call great. For after all I believe in the audience out there. I believe they want the best. I don’t believe they are content with bingo and dominoes or whatever Mr Mallow wants them to play. I don’t believe they want to read comics. I don’t believe they want to be like everyone else. Even on this medium which tries to make them so I still believe with Blake and all the great writers in their potential and their individuality. I believe that they can tell which writers will set down their joys and their sufferings. I believe that they can love the best and the excellent. I do not believe in the “working man” I believe in individual men. And I say that people like our friend here are practical illiterates who wouldn’t know a line of poetry if it hit them between the eyes. Our universities are full of them. But they have to make the choice whether they want to go back to the world of the comics with their grunts or forward to the best that man has ever thought. I shall be retiring after this programme is over. I am not ashamed of my lifetime’s work and I want to be clear about this. I’m not ashamed of my ivory tower if that is what you call it. I have been in the firing line and a much more complex one than most. It’s true I haven’t fought in wars with bullets but this is another war, and I am suggesting that those great writers as in any other war should not have died in vain. Listen: |
| | | The woods are lovely dark and deep. But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep. |
| | | I don’t give a damn for this medium. And I recognise that I have to use a medium which I despise in order to say the things I have to say. I regret that I had to use subterfuge in order to get on it at all. But someone has to say the things I have said. I’m not ashamed of my life. I have done what I set out to do. And I shall continue doing it too. |
| | | ‘And I should like to say this to you. Always try to tell the best from the trashy. You’d try to do it when you’re shopping, wouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t you do it for your minds? The mind surely is as important as the body. I’m not waiting for our friend to sum up. I’m leaving now. I’m leaving because I’m not going to allow them to package all this up very neatly. I say, to hell with their medium. I can step out of the box any time.’ |
And at that precise moment he did. He walked off down the steps, and after a long time onto the street, which was sunny and warm. He walked briskly along, meditating on how he
should word his letter of resignation. He thought about his wife and felt her closer to him than ever before. She had worn out her days on Greek scholarship, practising the discrimination without
which we are animals, he thought. There can be no doubt that whatever happens, we are right, he said to himself. The signs glittered all round him, the signs of supermarkets and cinemas. He felt
happy and free and gay, as if new creative life had been given to him. Already he could hear the phone ringing or its meaningful silence. It was necessary to shed that load, to go to Spain at last
. . .