Almanach for the Year 2013

Almanach_sklad.indd 1 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Almanach_sklad.indd 2 2013-04-04 10:48:18 A Be tween- Almanach for the Year 2013

Editor: Tomasz Wiśniewski Co-editors: David Malcolm, Żaneta Nalewajk, Monika Szuba

Gdańsk MMXIII

Almanach_sklad.indd 3 2013-04-04 10:48:18 A Between Almanach for the Year 2013

Editor: Tomasz Wiśniewski Co-editors: David Malcolm, Żaneta Nalewajk, Monika Szuba

Advisory Board: H. Porter Abbott (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA), Enoch Brater (University of Michigan, USA), David Constantine (Oxford, UK), S.E. Gontarski (Florida State University, USA), Jerzy Jarniewicz (University of Łódź, Poland), Antoni Libera (Warsaw, Poland)

Honorary Patrons: The Dean of the Faculty of Languages of the University of Gdańsk, prof UG, dr hab Andrzej Ceynowa The Dean of Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw, prof. dr hab Zbigniew Greń The Mayor of Sopot, Dr Jacek Karnowski

The BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY team: Marta Aleksandrowicz-Wojtyna, Marzena Cho- jnowska, Agnieszka Kochanowska, Bartosz Lutostański, Jolanta Mańska, Marta No- wicka, Kaja Polachowska, Aleksandra Słyszewska, Aleksandra Pamela Szlachetko, Ola Wachacz, Miłosz Wojtyna, Roksana Zgierska

BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY gratefully acknowledges financial support from the following: The University of Gdańsk, The City of Sopot, The Marshall of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, Kąpielisko Morskie Sopot

BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY cooperates with: Bookarnia Book Store (Sopot), the literary quarterly Tekstualia (Warsaw), the literary bimonthly Topos (Sopot), Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sopotu (Sopot), Teatr Wybrzeże (Gdańsk, Sopot), Młody Byron Café (Sopot), the Polish Cultural Institute (London), Un Gusto a Miel Art Foundation (Sopot)

Copyright: The Between Almanach concept is the copyright of Tomasz Wiśniewski. The copyright for individual parts of the Almanach remains with the authors, 2013 Typeset by: Maciej Goldfarth Printed by: Pracownia, Gdańsk, Poland ISBN 978-83-64088-13-1

First published MMXIII by Wydawnictwo MASKI, ul. Myśliwska 22a/48, 80-126 Gdańsk, Poland www.wydawnictwomaski.pl

Almanach_sklad.indd 4 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Table of Contents

The Collage of Quotations: A Game – Żaneta Nalewajk, David Malcolm, Tomasz Wiśniewski 9

TELLING STORIES: ONE Graham Swift – On Swiftness and Slowness 15 Antoni Libera – from Godot’s Shadow (translated by Agnieszka Kołakowska) 17 Derek Attridge – Introduction to J. M. Coetzee 25

DAVID CONSTANTINE Monika Szuba – Seeing into the Heart of Life: On David Constantine 29 Connectedness – David Constantine Interviewed by Monika Szuba 31 David Constantine – Watching for Dolphins, Told one of the goldfish wouldn’t last the night… 33 David Constantine – A Few Belongings and Particulars 35

POETRY: ONE Justyna Bargielska – An Adventure, It shoots, shoots though is a butterfly, A project to change all the photo frames (translated by Katarzyna Szuster) 41 Jerzy Jarniewicz – Catalogue, Covering Your Traces, A Simple Love Poem (translated by David Malcolm) 43 Alan Riach – At Sandwick, from Passages from India: Kolkata 46

TELLING STORIES: TWO Zina Rohan – A Clean Bill of Health 53 David Malcolm – The Wizard Laird of Skene 62

POETRY: TWO Krzysztof Kuczkowski – Conway Twill Asks Cole Wilson about His Origins, A Song about Conway Twill (translated by David Malcolm) 77 David Kennedy – The Lime Blossom Tree, Cézanne at Les Trois Sautets 79

CONVERSATIONS ON THEATRE: JACQUES LECOQ, COMPLICITE AND BEYOND Simon Murray – Jacques Lecoq and the Paris School, 1983–2013: Fragments of a Retrospective 85 Beautiful Masks, or “That’s What I Know I’m Good at” – Fay Lecoq Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 90 Theatre Is Something Very Simple, Very Simple – Jos Houben Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 99

Almanach_sklad.indd 5 2013-04-04 10:48:18 The Instinctiveness and Liveness of a Child – Marcello Magni Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 110 Jon McKenna – How I Met Simon McBurney 117 Work in Transition – Douglas Rintoul Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 120 Boxing, Poetry and Theatre – Jon McKenna Interviewed by Tomasz Wiśniewski 124

POETRY: THREE Kazimierz Nowosielski – Name, Traces, From a Dream (translated by Georgia Scott and David Malcolm) 129 Michael Edwards – Where, Window 7 131

ON LITERATURE AND THEATRE

ON POETRY Derek Attridge – The Sonnet Refashioned: Muldoon’s Maggot 137 Jean Ward – Instead of a Review: On True Friendship by Christopher Ricks 139

ON THEATRE Paul Allain – Ways of Hearing 145 Katarzyna Ojrzyńska – Complicite’s Devised Theatre – A Practical Approach 159

ON SAMUEL BECKETT Enoch Brater – Where Now, Who Now, When Now? Beckett Criticism Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 175 S. E. Gontarski – Back to the Beckett Text 176 H. Porter Abbott – Thoughts for Going Back to the Beckett Text 177 Bartosz Lutostański – “I Say”: The Post-war Fiction of Gombrowicz and Beckett: A Short Introduction 181

ON TOM STOPPARD Anna Suwalska-Kołecka – Ripae ulterioris amore – on the Poet and Poetry in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love 189 Joanna Kokot – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the Unreality of Words 202

ON JOHN BERGER Monika Szuba – Berger’s Sketchbook 217 Miłosz Wojtyna – Narrative Embodiment: Absence-Presence in John Berger 222

WHERE WE COME FROM Andrzej Zgorzelski – Twenty-five Years of the Gdańsk–Lublin School of English Literary Studies 231

CONTRIBUTORS 245

Almanach_sklad.indd 6 2013-04-04 10:48:18 The Between Almanach for the Year manach offers less immediately 2013 proudly echoes in its title practical fare, but the editors hope it Kasper Straube’s Almanach Cracov- may equally offer solace in dark iense ad Annum 1474 (1473), the days. Straube, like others since, had oldest surviving piece of Polish print- to fight for the money to print. Did he ing. Straube was a wandering Bavar- steal the type he used? If so, history ian printer who plied his trade in has surely forgiven him. He went on Kraków between 1473 and 1476. His to print works by Juan de Torquema- Almanach contains much useful in- da (not Tomás the Inquisitor but his formation: Church holidays, astro- uncle) and St Augustine of Hippo, nomical data, and medical counsel and a text on usury and ecclesiastical (especially on bloodletting). Our Al- curses.

Almanach_sklad.indd 7 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Almanach_sklad.indd 8 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Żaneta Nalewajk, David Malcolm, Tomasz Wiśniewski The Collage of Quotations: A Game

“… let me tell you… about…” (Graham Swift, Waterland, 1983)

“Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns – and even convictions”. (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899)

“Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium”.

(W. B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”, 1927)

“There is an impression abroad that literary folk are fast readers. Wine tasters are not heavy drinkers. Literary people read slowly because they sample the complex dimensions and flavors of words and phrases. They strive for totality not lineal- ity. They are well aware that the words on the page have to be decanted with the utmost skill. Those who imagine they read only for ‘content’ are illusioned”. (Marshall McLuhan, Verbi, Voco, Visual Exploration, 1967)

“We live in times of an interregnum – a kingless, a queenless time. Change has come: something is dying; something new is being born. The old ways of oper- ating effectively do not work any more; the new ones do not work yet. The critics fall silent; no one knows any longer what art is and what it is not. The only measures of value are clicks on the screen and numbers of copies sold. No one speaks of a vision of the future; we do not know where we’re escaping from or where we’re running to”. (Zygmunt Bauman, an interview, 2013)

Almanach_sklad.indd 9 2013-04-04 10:48:18 10 · Żaneta Nalewajk, David Malcolm, Tomasz Wiśniewski

“Time that is intolerant Of the brave and the innocent, And indifferent in a week To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives Everyone by whom it lives; Pardons cowardice, conceit, Lays its honours at their feet.

Time that with this strange excuse Pardoned Kipling and his views, And will pardon Paul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well”. (W. H. Auden, “In Memoriam W. B. Yeats”, 1940)

“Writing-reading, presenting-looking – these are the only ways of becoming aware of life”. (Sławomir Mrożek)

“We have an incredibly large number of problems with opening the theatre, but the company’s muscles are also incredibly resilient. I myself, and maybe anyone else in my position, would be finished – if it weren’t for that saving support that a tested and trained company gives so freely. We have no home, we have no kitchen, we don’t have our own work space, but who cares! We’ll have them later. A home, and a stage, and a kitchen, and money”. (A letter from Juliusz Osterwa to Stefan Żeromski written in Vilnius on 27 August 1925)

“Theatre is a kind of space in which a special kind of energy is released. A book’s space, for example, is completely different. A book is published and really nothing happens. The characters do not take on any external shape; their image stays in the reader’s mind until the moment when someone tries to make a film or a play based on the book. But a play in the theatre is really the text locked up in the book, but granted an energy able to exceed its limits, to mul- tiply its creative possibilities. People who give a performance offer up their energy to give external life to the characters, to create the sets, the music. And that way something real is created, something that exists for a while, and then vanishes, goes back into the book”. (Roland Topor)

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“Not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge”. (Edgar Allan Poe, The Power of Words, 1850)

“For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie. All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded”. (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1928)

„Denn schnell und spurlos geht des Mimen Kunst, Die wunderbare, an dem Sinn vorüber…”

“For quickly and without trace, the actor’s art, that wonderful art, passes by our senses”. (Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein, 1798)

Keywords:

WRITING WELL, BYZANTIUM, TO BE RECORDED knowledge theater reading COMPARE, COLLABORATE, IMAGINE

Almanach_sklad.indd 11 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Almanach_sklad.indd 12 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Telling Stories: One

Almanach_sklad.indd 13 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Almanach_sklad.indd 14 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Graham Swift On Swiftness and Slowness

I share my name with an aerobatic can write or how quickly you can do bird that can whiz across a whole it. Quite a few novelists, I suspect, summer sky in seconds. A swift is so even carry in their heads the notion equipped for speed that it can scarce- of the one, all-sufficient and perfect ly cope with being stationary. I once novel they might write which would came across an unlucky young spec- render all further effort redundant. imen that had somehow grounded It’s only because this ideal and sin- itself on a lawn and, with its minus- gular novel is unattainable that they cule legs and long encumbering have to keep writing another, then wings, couldn’t regain the air. I lifted another. it on the perch of my finger and it was It can be dismaying, all the same, for gone in a flash. a novelist to compare the slowness But I am a novelist, so I also know of the writing with the speed of the about slowness. Novels, in my expe- reading. Novels are read in a matter rience, are slow in coming and once of days, even hours. A writer may la- I’ve begun them I know that I have bour for a week, or weeks, over a par- years rather than months of work ticular passage which will have its ahead of me. This doesn’t worry me. effect on a reader in an instant – I like the slow pace of novel writing, and that effect may be subliminal the feeling that I have employment or barely noticed. The vibrations of for a long period. I don’t crave the thought and feeling that a single sen- quick result that will only leave me tence in its context may release in with the problem of what to do next. a reader may be too rapid for meas- All novelists must form their person- urement. “It leapt off the page” is al pacts with the slowness of their what we say of a happy reading expe- craft. There are some who demand of rience. themselves a “rate of production”, Yet we generally think of reading as for whom it’s a matter of pride to an innately slow activity – hardly an complete, say, a book every year, but “activity” at all. We do it statically, I think most novelists, after writing in a chair or in a bed. We do it “in their first two or three novels, take our own time”, and we can take our philosophical stock of the fact that in time over it. We apparently control an average lifetime they will produce the tempo, but a novel can also take a finite and not so large number of us involuntarily out of normal time novels and that the point of being and allow us to inhabit a strange zone a novelist is not to see how many you that’s not strictly temporal. The chief

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spur to reading may be that we want obeying its own permissive laws of to know what happens next, but it narrative physics. My new novel, would be a poor and unsatisfying Wish You Were Here, has at one level novel that merely hurried us forward a time span of just a few crucial days, in this way. A good novel is like though much of it is more hour by a welcome pause in the flow of our hour. There are episodes that occur existence. A great novel is for ever in the same time that it takes the revisitable. Readers may sometimes reader to read them. At another level count pages as they read, but I don’t it spans whole lives and takes in think they look at their watches to more than one generation. see how time is slipping away. As a form the novel has this won- That, in fact, is the position of the derful elasticity and unrestricted ve- sceptical non-reader who says, locity, yet it is also unrushed and “I have no time to read”, who deems unrushing. However much actual the pace of life no longer able to ac- time a reader brings to it, it is entire- commodate the apparently laggardly ly amenable and co-operative. It will process of reading. We have devel- always be patiently there. oped a wealth of technologies which I’m not disheartened by the thought are supposed to save us time for lei- that what takes me years to write surely pursuits, but for some this has may occupy a reader for just hours. only made such pursuits seem pon- To have made, perhaps, a benign in- derous and archaic. “Saving time” trusion into someone else’s life for has made us slaves to speed. even such a short duration seems to A good novel should satisfy on both me quite an act of communication, counts. Its immediate verbal impact and if that communication becomes can be faster, more complex and sub- for the reader not just a means of tle than any mouse-clicked effect on passing those hours, but a time-sus- a screen. But the total, absorbed ex- pending experience that stays with perience of a novel actually removes them and may even be renewed, then us from the tyranny of our sense of that’s as much as any novelist can time. It’s like a little life within life, hope for.

Almanach_sklad.indd 16 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Antoni Libera Godot’s Shadow

Prologue over the Atlantic a physicist or a mathematician; I was drawn by the world of numbers and I couldn’t sleep. The Laker plane abstract theories, by the mysteries glided smoothly, its movement im- of matter and the universe. But this, perceptible, through the blackness too, came to nothing: my grades in over the Atlantic, invisible some- science at school were far too low for where below. The New World and me to attempt to go down that path. Kennedy airport were far behind, I took the route of the humanities and now it was approaching its des- and chose literature as my field. But tiny: Gatwick airport. It was mid-De- here, too, my achievements had been cember 1977 and I was 28 years old. meagre. Why couldn’t I sleep? I was born and raised in post-war The plane was almost empty. I had Poland, ruined by the war and now a row of seats to stretch out on; occupied by Soviet communism. Life I had extra pillows, blankets, ther- in it was depraving and soul-destroy- mal socks, earplugs and velvet eye ing. The world I lived in was a web of shades; I had no turbulence and fictions, spun from lies and myths, relative quiet. But my sleeplessness and when you opened your eyes and was of a different sort from that recognised it for what it was, you caused by being in a vibrating steel found yourself confronted by brutal, box ten thousand metres over the naked force. You were powerless earth. I couldn’t sleep because I was against it. And if, knowing this, you obsessively taking stock of my life, made no attempt to escape (for there and the balance wouldn’t come out was no legal emigration then), you even remotely positive. Under all the resigned yourself to a life of vegeta- main headings – the grand ones like tion, absurdity and constant humilia- Destiny, Fatherland, Fulfilment, God tion. Life in People’s Poland, in real – showed zero, or even a debit. There socialism, was the life of a scurrying was nothing there that I could ac- rat, schizophrenic, nasty, brutish and cept, let alone feel proud of. poor. But I couldn’t find it in me to I had once wanted to be a musician break the ties that bound me to it; – a pianist or a composer, or at least I hadn’t the courage to burn my a conductor. I’d had to accept the bridges. I continued to thrash around fact that I would never be any of in that bog, stagnating, fruitlessly those things because I lacked the tal- flailing about, with a growing burden ent. Later I’d dreamed of becoming of complexes and diminishing hope

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that a change for the better would third fatherland, cunt, finances, art ever come. and nature, heart and conscience, But history, politics and the regime, health, housing, conditions, God and however dreadful and however in- man, so many disasters”. sistent in imposing their hateful The sketch with this ironic vignette presence, can’t usurp all areas of life. is by Beckett. I had translated it into There is the private sphere: people, Polish a while ago and had had enor- emotions, expectations, the irrepress- mous fun doing it. Now, unexpected- ible hope of happiness, dreams, de- ly, I saw myself reflected in it, as in sires, the ties of friendship. Yet here, a distorting mirror. too, I could find no comfort or satis- The thought led to others. Beckett faction; there was nothing there that was a master of mockery and irony, seemed worthwhile. I was crippled, especially directed at himself. From in a way: internally torn and con- his earliest writings he had made fun fused, artificial, bloodless and cold. of his own tendency to gloominess Irony and paradox, mockery and and pessimism. The protagonist of doubt were my element; I was the his early novels and stories, clearly eternal joker, the clown. What joy a self-portrait, is called Belacqua – can such a creature expect in life, after the Florentine lute-maker in and what hope that someone would the Divine Comedy, a man known for accept me the way I was? Only God, his gloomy and phlegmatic nature. perhaps, could do that – if I believed For these sins – and especially for in Him. his tardiness in the matter of pen- As I was indulging with masochistic ance – Dante, viewing him with relish in this séance of despair and a measure of sympathy, though tinged self-flagellation, I was suddenly re- with irony, consigned him to the an- minded of a grotesque little sketch techamber of Purgatory. Before a sin- that depicted a very similar scene: ner embarked on the path of Purga- A silent figure stands at the open tory, he was consigned to this ante- window of a flat on the seventh or chamber for a period of time equal to eighth floor, taking stock of his life the span of his life. Life being a gift before leaping to his death. His in- from God, pessimism and joyless- ternal struggles are represented by ness were grievous sins; the punish- a dialogue between two bureaucrats, ment, appropriately, was another full each of whom represents one side dose of apathy and gloom. After two of the scales of justice: for the leap lifetimes spent in this way, the sinner (the prosecutor) and against (the de- was cured: he abandoned his previ- fense). The arguments for and against ous nature and embraced joy. are drawn from the prospective sui- Beckett also makes fun of the whin- cide’s book of life, which contains er’s characteristic tendency to harp every detail of his existence – all the on the most depressing aspects of his facts as well as all his words and life. In their testimony, the prospec- thoughts. The prosecutor’s conclu- tive suicide’s friends stress that he sion is as follows: “Work, family, had always tended to exaggerate the

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bad things, dwelling at length on fail- to meet a number of interesting peo- ures and problems, while belittling ple. And after university I’d achieved or even ignoring the good ones. For independence: I was earning my own instance, his ex-wife recalls that of living. It was a modest life but I was their whole marriage he remembered free, unhampered by mundane wor- mainly those (few and brief) times ries and considerations of family, when she was indisposed, which dis- job, career. Most of my time was my turbed the pattern of their love life, own, and this was the most one could but “on the subject of their happi- hope for in a system where you were ness… the first fifteen minutes of a prisoner. Even my trip to the West their wedding night… not one word”. was in many respects quite different His mother declares that he would from the standard experiences of erase from his memory the rare mo- most Poles. I’d gone to America on ments of happiness granted their un- a comfortable fellowship, and had fortunate family but would dwell lov- been allowed to work as well. I’d ingly on the misfortunes, which were earned enough to live on for almost countless, as if they were precious two years back in Poland, or to buy relics: “not a joy, they were few, that a really good car. But I didn’t want was not irrevocably dissolved, as by to go back. I didn’t care about cars. a corrosive. Not a tear was known to I’d rather spend my savings on fall in our family, and God knows a longer stay in the West. I was flying they did in torrents, that was not to London because I had somewhere caught up and piously preserved in to stay there – a room in my cousin’s that inexhaustible reservoir of sor- Jasia’s house in Belsize Park. row, with the date, the hour and the None of this made me feel any better occasion”. And a schoolfriend re- about myself. The list of reasons for ports a similarly one-sided approach contentment, supposed to demonstrate to history lessons: “Of our national the disingenuousness of my com- epos he remembered only the calam- plaints, did not convince me; it was ities, which did not prevent him from false consolation, I decided, a way of winning a minor scholarship in the comforting myself – a typical de- subject”. fensive mechanism. I dismissed it. Was I not guilty of something very Nevertheless, I broke off my séance similar? In the circumstances, which of masochism and doubt, for my were admittedly far from favoura- thoughts had wandered in a quite ble, I had had more good luck than different direction. bad. My path so far had been fairly Beckett. The man and his work. If smooth. There had been no calami- there was a seed of something posi- ties, not even failures of any impor- tive in my life – something truly tance. I did well in my studies; I had worthwhile that I had done, some friends. On the whole people liked genuinely good choice that I had me. Raised as I’d been among the in- made – then it had to be the fact that telligentsia, among writers, histori- from among the many voices I heard ans, critics, I’d had the opportunity around me I had chosen his and con-

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centrated on it, had made the effort to the music is different. But above all understand his work, had been able there’s a new atmosphere at home, to expound it to others, had become, entirely unlike any I’d known be- in time, his follower and pupil. This fore. My parents come home from choice had been independent of any- work in a good mood, looking lively one’s opinion; it reposed on no voice and cheerful; friends drop by much of authority, no institution, no collec- more often; long, intense conversa- tive judgement. It was entirely my tions take place deep into the night. own; it flowed from what I felt and Foreigners visit, speaking English from what Beckett’s work gave me. or French; there are Western books But what exactly was it? And when and newspapers, foreign cigarettes did it begin? and wines. There are my father’s first trips beyond the Iron Curtain, the homecomings, the presents. Excite- Godot at the Modern The- ment. Hope! atre Until, at the beginning of the new school year, a new, poisonous wind It wouldn’t be quite true to say that starts to blow. The authorities close that was when it began; it’s hard to down a journal – a small but well- believe it happened at all. But it did. -known bastion of (relatively) free It is 1957. That memorable golden speech; a student demonstration autumn. For over a year, ever since against this, in front of the Polytech- the famous speech at the Party rally nic, is dispersed. There are arrests in the square – the speech where and beatings; a lot of people are hurt. much was said about the wrongs that And suddenly the festive mood is had been done and the mistakes that gone. The adult conversations I over- had been made, and solemn promis- hear – though I still don’t understand es made that such things would never much of what is being said – are full happen again – the whole country of mysterious and disturbing expres- has been gripped by a strange, fes- sions like “the return of the new” or tive mood. I am eight years old, in “clamping down”, or “finita la com- second grade, and I don’t understand media”, said with a bitter laugh, and any of it. Most of my attention is ab- especially the enigmatic “waiting for sorbed by stamp collecting: the tech- Godot”. I hear this last phrase more nique of unsticking them, the ways often than the others, until it seems of arranging them in my albums, du- like a leitmotif, or a sort of incan- plicates, swaps. But I can’t help no- tation. An incantation that sounds ticing the changes around me. For ominous somehow, like “waiting for instance, there’s less red: fewer flags, the scaffold”. It’s intriguing, but in placards and posters. The streets a horrible, slightly creepy way. seem more colourful, the people on Finally I can bear it no longer and them freer and somehow more cheer- ask. Oh, no, it’s nothing, they say; ful. There are new radio programmes, it’s just the title of a play people are with a different tone to them. Even talking about now. It’s being staged

Almanach_sklad.indd 20 2013-04-04 10:48:18 Godot’s shadow · 21

everywhere, all over the world. It’s a trip into space. And you can’t help on here too, at the Modern Theatre. thinking about it, because hardly “But what does it mean?” I insist. a month goes by before the first liv- “Who, or what, is Godot?” ing creature is sent into space: the “It’s someone, or something, that isn’t dog Laika. “Man’s best friend”, he’s there. Someone who was supposed always called in the papers. Exact- to come but never came. Something ly: a friend. Loyal, trusting, faithful. that was supposed to happen but “Faithful as a dog”, we even say. And never did, and probably never will”. this is the fate we’ve reserved for our “You mean the end of the world?” loyal friend? We look after him, pet “No, no, nothing like that”. This as- him, earn his trust, and then we shut surance is accompanied by an indul- him up in a capsule and send him off gent smile. “Absolutely not. If you into the vast unknown? The dog, af- want to know any more, you’ll have to ter dozens or even hundreds of trial wait until we manage to get tickets. runs, thinks, or rather senses, that it Then we can tell you all about it. But won’t last long; that his confinement for now it’s sold out”. in this nasty little box, stuffy and I sense that this answer is somehow dark (surely there’s no light inside, evasive. It explains hardly anything; why would there be?) will shortly it puts things off until later. But what end, and that soon, very soon, these can I do? Grown-ups are like that. good, kind people, his masters, will If for some reason they don’t want to open the hatch and pick him up, tell you something, then nothing on stroke him and cuddle him, give him earth will make them. his favourite titbits as a reward. But In any case, it’s not that important. they don’t. Hours pass, then days, Vastly more important is the fact that and nothing happens. Just silence. a satellite has just been launched Silence (what noise could there be? into space for the first time. Admit- the Sputnik doesn’t have an engine) tedly by the despised Soviets, but and darkness. The food runs out, the in this case it doesn’t matter: an oxygen comes to an end and then the achievement like that, a step beyond world – not even with a whimper. the Earth, belongs to humanity; it One Sunday the phone rings. It’s Mr. opens the way to the stars, to other Jerzy Kreczmar, a good friend of my worlds, worlds that people have parents’, once a teacher and a lectur- dreamed about since the beginning er in logic, now a distinguished thea- of time. Maybe we’ll finally find out tre director, an illustrious figure in what’s up there above our heads. Polish theatre and the director of the Does anyone live there? Is the sky re- Waiting for Godot now playing at the ally blue, the way it looks on a fine, Modern Theatre. The play has had clear day, or is it black and empty, a successful run of over ten months like a starless night? Frightening to and his staging has met with unani- imagine that endless emptiness; mous enthusiasm and praise. Mr. frightening, too, to think that one Kreczmar apologises for not having might never come back from such invited them earlier and for doing so

Almanach_sklad.indd 21 2013-04-04 10:48:18 22 · Antoni Libera

now at the last minute: his invitation “It’s hard to say”, I mumble. “I don’t is for that night. But that’s how it is, really know myself. Maybe that dog the tickets are sold out weeks in ad- they sent into space?” vance and even he, as director, has “You’re scared of a dog in space?”, a very limited number of seats at his my father says, trying to make a joke disposal. So would my parents like to of it. go to the theatre tonight? “Not of the dog. I’m just scared if Of course they would; unthinkable to he’ll come back”. miss such an opportunity! “All right”, says my mother, scenting “You’ll just have to stay at home by an opportunity for self-sacrifice, “I’ll yourself”, they say coolly when I ob- stay with him. You go”, she says to ject to this plan. “You’re not a baby my father, “and take someone else in any longer. You can read a book or my place”. listen to the radio. And you can go to But my father seems to have different bed later than usual if you like, and plans. He shuts himself up in his wait up for us. And then, as a reward, study, talks to someone on the phone you’ll find out all about Godot and and then announces curtly that I am who he is”. coming with them. But the name Godot immediately “Oh, wonderful!”, cries my mother in brings to mind the unsolved mystery, outraged tones, “just what he needs! and it occurs to me that this might What an extraordinary idea! It’s not be my chance to obtain an answer a play for children, especially high- firsthand – directly from the stage, -strung and neurotic ones”. by watching the play. And I’d finally “For children probably not”, concedes get to see real theatre, to experience my father, attempting to pacify her, for myself the magic I’ve heard so “but for neurotic ones it might be much about. Of course I know what just the thing”. theatre is, I’ve been to the theatre Her objections make no difference. before, but only to children’s shows: It’s decided: I’m going. puppet shows, stories about goblins The theatre is full to bursting, every and dwarves, Little Red Riding Hood. seat taken, people standing in the Adult theatre is supposed to be some- side aisles. Mr. Kreczmar tells something different, something amazing! one to bring a chair for me and set it When will another opportunity like up in the aisle next to my parents’ this come along? row. My mother leaps at this new op- “I won’t stay at home by myself”, portunity for self-sacrifice: she will I announce firmly. “I don’t feel well. sit there, she decides, while I sit next I’m scared”. to my father in a proper seat in the “Scared?” Astonishment, incredulity stalls. and horror vie for dominance in my The lights dim. A gong sounds and parents’ voices. It’s true that I have the curtain rises. never before displayed tendencies I’m astonished from the very begin- of this kind. “And what exactly is it ning. I thought serious theatre, adult you’re so scared of?” theatre, was something serious, with

Almanach_sklad.indd 22 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Godot’s shadow · 23

“romantic” characters: kings, queens, pity them. For what can be sadder great lords and ladies – real heroes, than unfulfilled hope, especially and all of them speaking in rhymed a hope nurtured for so long? verse. But this – what’s this? A pair But there’s another difference, and of clowns! Slapstick and crude gags. it’s this that makes the biggest im- A circus. One clown is sad and pa- pression on me: the Messenger Boy thetic, the other is cleverer. And who brings the news that Godot can’t there’s another pair, one fat, one thin, make it that day. It’s not only his a master and his servant. You can tell costume – a white shepherd’s cloak, they’re clowns from their costumes, a hat like a sombrero and a pair of which are made of brightly coloured sandals that look very familiar material in checks of one kind or an- (I have a pair just like them!) – that other and are either too big or too distinguishes him from a circus fig- small. All the stupid clown’s clothes ure; above all there is the fact that are too big for him, while the clever his role is played by a child. At the one’s are all too small. And then their circus you might see dwarves, whom hats – like something Charlie Chap- we call lilliputians, but never chil- lin would wear. And their shoes! dren; at least I’ve never seen any. Pointy and too big, or white and high- But here, on stage, is a boy – a boy -heeled. And their names: Didi, Gogo, my own age! Yes, definitely my age; Pozzo. Like names of circus clowns! you can tell things like that. There are differences, though. Cir- Which means that I could play him cus clowns, apart from just clowning, too! What a pity the theatre – or rath- usually do tricks of some sort: they er, Mr. Kreczmar – didn’t pick me for juggle, walk on their hands or turn the role. He could have done: he somersaults. But these two don’t knows my parents, he’s a neighbour. seem to have any such talents. Their What a wonderful adventure it would clown acts are hopeless, at best awk- have been! Getting to know the ac- ward and incompetent. And another tors, going to rehearsals (getting off thing: circus clowns are rarely sad; school!), coming out on stage, hear- most of the time they’re cheerful. But ing the applause, taking our bows. these two are sad almost all the time. But that’s not all. The Messenger Even when they lose their balance or Boy could influence the action; he fall over, which makes them either could change the story! Godot can’t ridiculously happy or ridiculously come because there’s no such char- frightened, the emotion they inspire acter in the play, but at the end of most is pity. We’re sorry for them; the play he could send the Boy with they seem such a wretched, hopeless a different message: that he wouldn’t pair. And at the end, when it turns come the following day, but would out that they’ve waited all this time like them to come to him. The Mes- in vain, that the mysterious Godot senger Boy’s key lines could be just has cried off once again and wants slightly altered: “Mr. Godot told me them to go on waiting, we’re more to tell you that… he can’t come, but than just sorry for them: we really he would like you to come to his

Almanach_sklad.indd 23 2013-04-04 10:48:19 24 · Antoni Libera

house. Let’s go! Follow me, gentle- things are easier to bear if you’re men! I’ll take you there”. prepared for something worse rather Wouldn’t that be a much better ending? than expecting something better. Es- On the way home I confide this idea. pecially if you’re prepared for the We’re riding in an old tram that worst”. shudders and shakes. The rest of the trip home passes in “It would be a nicer one”, my fa- silence. ther replies, with emphasis. “But it After a light late supper, my father wouldn’t be true”. turns on the radio and listens to “But why wouldn’t it? All you have to Radio Free Europe. After “Facts” do is write it that way. And then act it there’s a newsflash. that way”. The Soviet Press Agency TASS re- “It would be false”. My father comes ports that the dog Laika was humane- to the defence of the author. “The ly put to sleep according to plan – play reflects real life; that’s what real they put something in his last meal in life is like”. space. Then, on his return to earth, “I wish you wouldn’t poison his he burnt up along with the satellite. mind”, my mother objects. “That “Too beautiful to be true”, my father kind of philosophy makes you want comments. to give up on life”. “What do you mean? What’s beauti- My father is unconvinced. ful?” says my mother. “Think what “Not necessarily”, he says. “Some- you’re saying!” times it makes you stronger. Lots of “That he was put to sleep”.

Translated by Agnieszka Kolakowska

Almanach_sklad.indd 24 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Derek Attridge Introduction to J. M. Coetzee

Faced with the almost insuperable African origin, and so particularly challenge of introducing J. M. Co- appropriate this evening: the praise etzee, I fell to wondering how he poem. The praise poet is a repre- would manage such an undertaking. sentative of the wider community He would probably, I thought, sub- who, on ceremonial occasions, lists ject the genre of the introduction to the achievements and abilities of demanding sceptical scrutiny – since the object of his praise. Thus, were it’s been a mark of all his writing, his I a praise singer, I might have spoken fiction, his criticism, even his inter- as follows: views, that it refuses to take for granted the habitual, and often lazy, as- Fortunate is the nation of Australia, sumptions that govern the way we for it is the abode of J. M. Coetzee; think and speak. Fortunate is the nation of South Afri- He would, perhaps, point out that ca, for it was the land of J. M. Co- one purpose an introduction of this etzee’s youth and maturity; kind does not serve is to introduce. Fortunate are we to be about to hear I don’t suppose anyone in this huge the words of J. M. Coetzee from work audience came along thinking, “I’ve in progress. never heard of this J. M. Coetzee, but For the words of J. M. Coetzee are like what the hell, it’ll pass the time”? polished gems, some smooth, some So the introduction doesn’t intro- sharp, some dark, some dazzling. duce. What does it do? There are at The books written by J. M. Coetzee least two other genres with which it are great in number: nine novels, shares many of its features. five collections of critical essays, First, the warm-up act, whose job is three translations from Afrikaans and to warm up the audience from the Dutch, and five which defy categori- chilly state in which they arrived to zation. one of glowing readiness to appreci- Many are the honours that have been ate the main act, to give the speaker heaped upon the shoulders of J. M. time to get used to the venue, to in- Coetzee for these books; crease the anticipation of the audi- These are some of the prizes his ence, and to provide an inferior per- works have received: James Tait Black, formance guaranteed to make the Geoffrey Faber, CNA (three times); star shine all the more brightly. Booker (twice); Irish Times Interna- The other genre which has much in tional Fiction, Prix Femina Étranger, common with the introduction is of Commonwealth Writers, Jerusalem;

Almanach_sklad.indd 25 2013-04-04 10:48:19 26 · Derek Attridge

The land of his birth has honoured traps our routine uses of language him with its highest honour, the Or- can lay, always willing to investigate der of Mapungubwe (gold); the untrodden path; and they are ev- He has been knighted in the Nether- ident, too, in his patient and atten- lands, where he is a Companion of tive dealings with those who engage the Order of the Dutch Lion; seriously with his work, whether And Sweden has spoken for the world general readers, students – or even in naming him Nobel Laureate for academics. Global fame has had no Literature. effect that I can tell on these qualities, though it must have sorely tried But an introduction can also express his patience. He hasn’t joined the the personal feelings of the introduc- international media circus since er, and I will seize this opportunity to being awarded the Nobel Prize, in- say how much, over the twenty or so stead choosing very carefully among years I’ve known him, I’ve admired the vast numbers of invitations he John Coetzee’s integrity, honesty and must receive. Which is why we generosity – qualities that he shares should be especially grateful to him, with the writer whose importance to and to his partner Dorothy Driver, him he has often acknowledged, for being willing to make the long Samuel Beckett. These qualities are journey from Adelaide to be with us evident in his writing, always alert tonight. to the claims of the excluded and the powerless, always attentive to the Please welcome J. M. Coetzee.

Delivered on 24 June 2011 at the Univer- sity of York

Almanach_sklad.indd 26 2013-04-04 10:48:19 David Constantine

Almanach_sklad.indd 27 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Almanach_sklad.indd 28 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Monika Szuba Seeing into the Heart of Life: On David Constantine

David Constantine belongs to the the predominant feature of Constan- same generation as Seamus Heaney, tine’s poems. but in many ways he shares more Constantine frequently undertakes with Robert Graves. In his writing he universal matters, yet he is also deep- travels freely between genres: he is ly rooted in history: war experience is an author of several collections of a strong presence in his texts, both the poems, four short story collections, Second World War, at the end of which a biography, a novel as well as aca- he was born, and the Great War (his demic articles. He is also an outstand- grandfather took part and dies in the ing translator: he has been translat- Battle of the Somme). Both have left ing German and French poets (Frie- a trace in his poems. The First War drich Hölderlin, Wolfgang Goethe, exists in a series of poems dedicated Heinrich Kleist and Bertolt Brecht, to the memory of his grandfather. The Henri Michaux and Philippe Jac- importance of memory, seeping to the cottet) among others. In 1996 he inside, connecting blood and tissue, is was awarded European Poetry Trans- highlighted in the lines from “The lation Prize for translating Friedrich Prayer to Ghosts”, from the collection Hölderlin, and in 2003 European Po- Nine Fathom Deep (2009): etry Translation Prize for Hans Mag- “Cross through the thin skin and en- nus Enzenberger’s Lighter than Air: ter the thin blood Moral Poems. From 2001 until 2012 Of memory, thicken it, be a reminder he was also a co-editor of Modern Of how to remember” Poetry in Translation together with Helen Constantine. Constantine’s poetry celebrates quo- Forged on the crossroads of Hellenic tidian matters, yet at the same time it and Christian cultures, Constantine’s stresses the elusiveness of experi- poems are pervaded with biblical ence. The discreet seeing in the heart and mythological allusions. Ancient of life, looking in the essence of Greece intertwines with the modern things, brings out and illuminates the one embodied by the sea and islands intersection of beings. The duality of – the motif of water permeating the existence is a recurrent motif in Con- poems, creates a windy, salty climate, stantine’s poems: mundaneness and suggesting liquidity. It is this flu- escapism, spirituality and sensuality, idity, this fluctuality which remains corporeality and metaphysics, being

Almanach_sklad.indd 29 2013-04-04 10:48:19 30 · Monika Szuba

and nothingness, dream and reality. lar rhymes, and ellipses. The fluctu- This outstretched, wide-reaching as- ation equally marks the form: elegies pect of betweenness of the worlds intertwine with love poems, poems of illuminates the states in-between, mourning merge with poems imbued suggesting duality – not a split exist- with sensuality. At times this elusive, ence, a fissure, but rather a fluid, loose structure yields to more regular permeating penetration of spheres, forms, like in A Poetry Primer (2004), like the ghosts or other transcend- a sequence of Meredithian sonnets. ent beings inhabiting so many of his This unusual ability to link tradition poems. with innovation undoubtedly makes This fluidity is present at the struc- Constantine a major poet worth seri- tural level of Constantine’s poems ous recognition outside the borders dominated by enjambements, irregu- of the English language.

Almanach_sklad.indd 30 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Connectedness – David Constantine Interviewed by Monika Szuba

Monika Szuba: Many writers care- a good deal of literary criticism and fully avoid answering the questions quite a few essays and pieces of about their inspirations but perhaps memoir. All that is not like fiction or you could say who has influenced (or poetry but is, I hope, in a different maybe still influences) your writing? mode and genre, still my own voice. David Constantine: The main tra- MSz: Apart from writing poetry and dition of British poetry is, I should fiction, you have also translated say, earthly, concrete, local, attentive works of poetry. How much does the to particulars. And that is the kind of work of a poet and a translator of po- poetry I try to write. Among my best etry differ? loved poets are the Romantics, John DC: I have learned a lot for my own Clare, Thomas Hardy and Edward language – how to handle English – Thomas. But Robert Graves – for the by translating, in particular, Hölder- Muse – and D. H. Lawrence affected lin and Brecht. You see what your me powerfully too. own language can do and might be MSz: How does writing poetry begin? made to do by coming at it through What is an impulse for you to start the foreign. writing? MSz: Together with Helen Constan- DC: I can only write poetry four or tine you have been the editor of the five times a year and I hardly ever Third Series of Modern Poetry in know why. It is a shift in mood or Translation (2002–2012), a magazine condition. Then for a few days I can. founded in 1965 by Ted Hughes and The actual start is an image, a tone of Daniel Weissbort (initially it served voice, a particular – even wordless – to introduce English-speakers to po- rhythm. etry from behind the Iron Curtain), MSz: You have been writing differ- which promotes translating lesser ent genres: poetry, fiction, essay. How known poetry in different languages, much does employing these forms reaching across the frontiers. What differ? Are you looking for different would you say is the role of transla- voices, aiming at a different effect in tion in contemporary world? each of them? DC: Vitally important, I should say. DC: Short stories are no more bidda- We think of MPT as a voice of the In- ble (by me) than poems are and the ternational Republic of Letters. We start of one is much the same as in are a forum for the free exchange of the case of a poem – an image, voic- goods across the frontiers of time and es, a particular tone. I have written space. In that sense MPT is a utopia

Almanach_sklad.indd 31 2013-04-04 10:48:19 32 · Connectedness � David Constantine interviewed by Monika Szuba

and translation is a utopian act: it of- liveliness, connectedness than is fers understanding and is the strong usually possible in the world of poli- opponent of any totalitarian or funda- tics and social practicalities. Poetry mentalist mindset. People translate gives a charge of energy which, with poetry for no financial gain – for the luck and self-engagement, may be love of it and for the good it does. The converted into living in that every- value of that activity in a world of day reality. And in the state we – in financiers and chief executives help- the UK, at least – are in now, poetry, ing themselves to unearned millions literature, the arts altogether, are the is obvious. Extra Parliamentary Opposition: fre- MSz: What place do poets have in er, disinterested, more imaginative, present reality? essentially more hopeful, than any of DC: See above on translation. Poetry our political parties who are stuck, it – rather than the poets themselves – seems, forever in ways of thinking is a space in which writer and reader (the market) which, if let, will undo may enjoy more autonomy, freedom, us all.

Internet interview, 20 February 2012

Almanach_sklad.indd 32 2013-04-04 10:48:19 David Constantine Poems

Watching for Dolphins

In the summer months on every crossing to Piraeus One noticed that certain passengers soon rose From seats in the packed saloon and with serious Looks and no acknowledgement of a common purpose Passed forward through the small door into the bows To watch for dolphins. One saw them lose

Every other wish. Even the lovers Turned their desires on the sea, and a fat man Hung with equipment to photograph the occasion Stared like a saint, through sad bi-focals; others, Hopeless themselves, looked to the children for they Would see dolphins if anyone would. Day after day

Or on their last opportunity all gazed Undecided whether a flat calm were favourable Or a sea the sun and the wind between them raised To a likeness of dolphins. Were gulls a sign, that fell Screeching from the sky or over an unremarkable place Sat in a silent school? Every face

After its character implored the sea. All, unaccustomed, wanted epiphany, Praying the sky would clang and the abused Aegean Reverberate with cymbal, gong and drum. We could not imagine more prayer, and had they then On the waves, on the climax of our longing come

Smiling, snub-nosed, domed like satyrs, oh We should have laughed and lifted the children up Stranger to stranger, pointing how with a leap They left their element, three or four times, centred On grace, and heavily and warm re-entered, Looping the keel. We should have felt them go

Almanach_sklad.indd 33 2013-04-04 10:48:19 34 · David Constantine

Further and further into the deep parts. But soon We were among the great tankers, under their chains In black water. We had not seen the dolphins But woke, blinking. Eyes cast down With no admission of disappointment the company Dispersed and prepared to land in the city.

Written in November 1980 First published in 1983

Told one of the goldfish wouldn’t last the night…

Told one of the goldfish wouldn’t last the night He hid his eyes under a fierce scowl And went outside on the flags and rode his bike Round and round, round and round

But it did no good and he brought the fact back in Heading for his bedroom and his secret stash of chocolate But his mother got under his scowl and halted him Till he showed her his eyes and that was that.

So much sorrow there is in a not-quite-five-year-old They know so much already and suspect the rest Already they are beyond being consoled They watch, they have seen it signed and witnessed

That all living creatures have one thing in common: They die. Creatures as intricate and various As a worm, a swallow, a cat, a water-scorpion Baby and grown-up, all of them, all of us

Die. So when in her arms her child became a well And the waters of sorrow that are under the earth broke through For a golden fish she was inconsolable Grieving that his grief was right, just, true.

Written in June 2011

Almanach_sklad.indd 34 2013-04-04 10:48:19 David Constantine A Few Belongings and Particulars

I wrote my first poem when I was fif- and Bertolt Brecht. I wrote a doctoral teen, a love-poem that rhymed and thesis on Friedrich Hölderlin, and for scanned. It was a very bad poem, but thirty years I taught German Litera- it did at least indicate at the outset ture, whenever possible in a com- my allegiance to Eros and my respect parativist fashion, connecting it with for poetic form and so also for poetic English and French and with the tradition. Over the next four or five Classical tradition. I began translat- years I became, essentially, the per- ing Hölderlin, Goethe and Brecht. son I am now; so that looking back I think of myself as very English and to that period of my life I feel no very European. disconnection. What drives me now, Since the early 1960s I have been in- already drove me then. To this proc- tensely preoccupied with poetry and ess of becoming (which ends only have tried to write it; but that did not when life does) my reading of certain entail, in any very pressing way, the poets powerfully contributed. First desire to publish what I wrote. At were Wilfred Owen, D. H. Lawrence least, I was in no hurry. I made slow and Robert Graves; soon after them progress in writing. I found my own came John Donne, the Romantics, way very gradually by reading, and Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas; and in conversation and correspondence as source and bedrock, with the lan- with one or two close friends. In guage itself, like anyone else be- a sense, always concerned with po- ginning to write in English, I had etry, always bent on getting better Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shake- at it, I was biding my time. And I’m speare. I lost none of those writers glad of that now. Most of what I wrote along the way. I know them better, before I began to be published did love them more, prize them differ- matter – but only to me, it helped ently at every re-reading. They make me learn. Today such a relationship a major part of my feeling of connect- between writing poems and getting edness with the person I was becom- them published may be unusual. ing around 1960. Often nowadays, perhaps chiefly be- That line is a very English line. But cause of the increase in creative writ- I read French and German at Univer- ing courses at colleges and universi- sity, got to know and love the poetry ties, publication is taken to be the of Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rim- validation of writing, that by which baud, Guillaume Apollinaire; Johann the writing is proved to be good. But Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine really, there is little correlation be-

Almanach_sklad.indd 35 2013-04-04 10:48:19 36 · David Constantine

tween talent and publication. A glance of the southern metropolis. One of at literary history teaches us that; his earliest anthologies of Bloodaxe and any poet who needs chastening poets had the title Poetry with an might look back over past volumes of Edge. That British-local polemical even the most reputable poetry mag- intention has, over the years, become azines: go back thirty or forty years, less important than the larger ambi- the names of many contributors will tion to promote good poetry from be quite unknown to you. In truth, any age and from any place. Really, corroboration is hard to come by in Bloodaxe Books have become the poetry. It is much if from time to time defining publishers of poetry in the a poet feels valued (and accordingly United Kingdom, in two important encouraged) by people whose opin- ways. First, they give the fairest and ion she or he trusts; but even that, most comprehensive representation though gratifying, cannot amount to of the poetry actually being written proof. At the heart of poetry is, nec- here – by men and women equally, essarily and rightly, the belief that by poets of very different social and life will always exceed your ability ethnic backgrounds, in all manner of to say it. “Fail better” (Beckett’s voices. And secondly, extending from phrase) is the best you can hope for. that first achievement, by going Given that, the only corroboration abroad in space and time, through there can be is not of success but of much of Europe, to the USA, to Clas- your honestly trying, and of your fail- sical Greece and Rome, to India, ing better. I acknowledge that and Chile, China, Korea… (the list goes am even glad of it. Poetry really is on and on), Astley has demonstrated a zone in which the by now nearly just how various and abundant poet- ubiquitous language and criteria of ry is, and in presenting it to a wide assessment, quantification and rank- readership he has become not just the ing do not apply. purveyor of that variety and abun- I first had poems in magazines in dance but also a maker, an enlarger, the early 1970s, but did not publish of taste. His three great anthologies, a volume until 1980 and then be- Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being cause, by great good fortune, I was Human, have sold in many thou- living in the North East, and poems sands of copies. Profits from them go of mine appeared in the Newcastle to funding those items on his list – magazine Stand, and were noticed by translations, for one thing – which he Neil Astley just as he founded Blood thinks valuable but which he could axe Books and was actively looking not afford to publish without that in- for poets to begin his list. I was house subvention. It is the so-called among his three or four first, and “small publishers”, and Bloodaxe have been with him ever since. chief among them, who have done Bloodaxe Books takes its name from most for poetry in Britain during the Eric Bloodaxe, a legendary king of last thirty years: encouraging its writ- Northumbria, and Neil Astley intend- ers and translators, widening and ed- ed it combatively, against the culture ucating its readership.

Almanach_sklad.indd 36 2013-04-04 10:48:19 A Few Belongings and Particulars · 37

Bloodaxe Books are one indicator, celebrated in the Games and vividly through poetry, of what Britain now, apparent on the streets of most of our at home and in its dealings with cities. Not that any poet encompass- abroad, is like. Another, through sta- es in herself or himself that variety. tistics, is last year’s Census, whose That would not be possible; nor, results, for England and Wales, are I think, would it even be a desirable just being published. There are some aim. Poets writing in Britain today interesting revelations: people living are freer than they have ever been to here but born elsewhere now amount express themselves in their own voic- to 13% of the population (7.5 miles. There is a greater legal freedom lion); in 2001, the “white British” to be yourself, the law protects you made up 87% of the population, now in that identity. And with that funda- that figure is 80%; in twenty-four mental and enabling freedom comes of London’s thirty-two boroughs they the confidence to speak as your iden- are less than 50% (in Newham only tity prompts you to speak. Even the 16.7%); the number of people call- Queen no longer speaks the Queen’s ing themselves Christians has fallen English as strictly as she once did by 11%, to just 59% ; other religions (old recordings prove it), and with – Muslim, Hindu and Sikh especial- the very welcome demise of Received ly – have all increased; and of those Pronunciation there has come an having no religion the number has acceptance of, and delight in, all risen by 83% (to more than 14 mil- sorts of dialects and vernaculars. The lion, a quarter of the population of BBC, once the stronghold of RP, has England and Wales). And so on. Brit- for a long time been a public meeting ain has become, in Louis MacNeice’s place of many local accents. British phrase, “incorrigibly plural” – also English itself is only one variety, and very mixed: the number of people by no means the dominant one, among of mixed race has doubled over the many varieties of English, spoken by last ten years, to 2.2% of the popula- many millions, world-wide. tion; almost 12% of households now I doubt if even a great novelist – include members of different ethnic a Dickens, a Zola – could compre- groups. The opening ceremony of hend and present the hectic and this year’s Olympic Games, and the thriving mixed plurality of Britain Games themselves and the Paralym- now. So much in a small island! But pics, were an extraordinarily suc- anyone writing here today in what- cessful celebration of Britain’s diver- ever genre writes in the context, and sity and mixing. Well over three hun- open to the influences, of the felt and dred languages are spoken at home statistically proven cultural mix and in London today, each one of which flux. The line I traced earlier for my has its own culture, and its own tra- own beginnings was all British, white dition of stories, songs and poems. and male – some of the great poets of The poetry now being written in the the canon. But if I look at my reading UK comes of the vast and mixed plu- now, ask whose work I love, who rality documented in the Census, helps me in the love and the craft of

Almanach_sklad.indd 37 2013-04-04 10:48:19 38 · David Constantine

poetry, many would be women, and cal and personal truth – because many, women and men, have come to I could never write one single line me in the two or three foreign lan- of poetry any other way. I could nev- guages I can read and, with my grati- er address poetically, in any public tude, through translators from all fashion, the vast plural mix of the four quarters of the globe and across UK proven in the Census; but when the frontiers of the centuries also. For I read the cast list of the Nativity nine years (2003–2012), with my wife Play at my granddaughter’s primary Helen, I edited Modern Poetry in school those national facts and fig- Translation, which privilege gave us ures become palpable to me and both the freedom of the International make the grounds for a possible poem Republic of Letters, a colossal gift (the grounds, at least). The Angels and inspiration. were played by Afsana, Olivia and Robert Graves said, and I agree, that Tayibah; the Shepherds were Usman, poetry is “the profession of private Suhaib, Val, Kyan, Ameera, Zahra and truth”. I’d add to his words John Sumreen; and among the Choir and Keats’s: “I never wrote one single Star Dancers were Bilal, Areeba, Aar- Line of Poetry with the least Shadow if, Jennifer, Jayness, Thanjida, Srot, of Public thought”. Those are both Freddie, François, Tuaha, Elsie Mae, statements of conscience, to which Bertie, Gustavo, Imani and Tanya. I subscribe. Telling the truth in po- Making a poem, you convert the lo- etry without trimming it in any way cal, personal and accidental into the to public taste or favour is a matter of figurative. It will not become a poem integrity; but to me, at least, in my unless you do; but without those ele- own practice, those statements apply ments you cannot, in my experience, more as fact – simple existential fact even begin. I’ve always made my own – than as moral imperative. I share myths out of the real, concrete, close- the credo asserted or implied by at-hand things I know best or have Graves and Keats because, in prac- experienced most intensely. And per- tice, it determines what I can and haps because of that I have always, cannot do in poetry every bit as much and without pride or regret, felt my- as what I ought and ought not to do. self to be rather solitary and marginal I can only write out of my private among British poets; and that feeling truth, and if I paid any heed whatso- increases year by year, in part as the ever to what people (the public) frames of reference of younger poets thought of the result, I should not be change with the national flux and able to write at all. I obey William mixing described above. I say “with- Blake’s injunction to “Labour well out pride or regret” and I mean it. the Minute Particulars” – that is, at- There is nothing I could have done or tend to the real details of my own lo- could now do about it.

31 December 2012

Almanach_sklad.indd 38 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Poetry: One

Almanach_sklad.indd 39 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Almanach_sklad.indd 40 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Justyna Bargielska Poems

An adventure

Was the Big Bang only about sex? A generic mistake, a tremor due to other tremors? Oh, captain, you wouldn’t like to swim in the scalding basin of this poem, and having entered its harbor, you wouldn’t go to bed with any girl lurking for you in its slimy alleys. Let the choir confirm the energetic audit: here a clock has no hands. A snake has a hand instead of a head, but it curls up in a ball. Girls of fatal proportions throw those balls from heights into the night. Written 2004 Published 2009

It shoots, shoots though is a butterfly

– Excuse me, it’s my middle and after all, I have something there – she said before she left. They hadn’t seen such a dignified and fat naked woman on such a narrow cornice for a long time.

And what was it about? Maybe about that pot actually, in which division into kingdoms disappears. Maybe about the hall, where first children trained but which after dusk women entered and the wind started to move the curtain in reverse, to itself.

She stood there and watched if they were watching her but they weren’t. And maybe a row of coats only understood her a little, maybe clay, when it dried out, turned on her its kind-hearted, dead eye. Written and published 2009

Almanach_sklad.indd 41 2013-04-04 10:48:19 42 · Justyna Bargielska

A project to change all the photo frames

On a long summer day lawnmowers can work from dusk to dawn. You can wake and fall asleep by their whirr, by the story you don’t understand, but one day you have to face that phenomenon. And then, farewell, marvelous world, where an anise candy is luscious just for its content of the letter s.

Since then, you’ve carried your ration yourself, without taking turns, for with who. You see butterflies or rainbows appearing out of the blue for what they really are – harbingers of a sudden death, yours or your own for many generations on all possible sides.

Written and published 2009 Translated by Katarzyna Szuster

Almanach_sklad.indd 42 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Jerzy Jarniewicz Poems

Catalogue

She, you hear, doesn’t hear. Listens – on her head headphones. Of signs not a trace, only things remain, unbearably connected to dumb singularity: pen drive, mobile, hairdryer with diffuser. A tawdry catalogue, a prosthesis of order.

She, you see, doesn’t see. Looks – at the fast landscape unfolding out the window: post-Soviet tank, viaduct, Skierniewice cemetery. He could take her by the hand, but by taking – he knows, for how could it! – he’ll fix nothing. Not stop the train. He could reach for traces. Efface the spoor. Tear off the funereal t-shirt.

Really: it was at her place? On a trip? In someone else’s mirror? In the props room, laptop, lip gloss, nail clippers, and not a sign behind? Loses coordinates. It will not come, the sentence, or come together on his tongue. Doesn’t hear. 2009

Almanach_sklad.indd 43 2013-04-04 10:48:19 44 · Jerzy Jarniewicz

Covering your traces

he went out to come at dawn

when the day had begun and it was all over

the car stood relatively motionless in the window’s frame

I alternately closed left eye right shifting your shadow

from the wall to the door frame and back

my hand was like lead but the sweater worked like central heating

for no reason your astra began to cry for help

in an unacceptable tone of voice at this inhuman hour

he came here for nothing he made a mistake

you couldn’t have meant it seriously 2000

Almanach_sklad.indd 44 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Poems · 45

A simple love poem

We threw off our clothes and began to make love so revolutionary that the seat of the national bank shook, the stock exchange hit bottom, and dealers howled from the fire that ate their bowels and wallets.

We got into each other so utterly that the walls fell of the overfilled correctional facilities, and out came avengers with baseball bats, and went to the ministry of internal order. Police shock-troops scattered, abandoning shields, helmets and notebooks, all that was left was a black polonaise.

You mounted me so defiant that investors began in panic to pack their bags and went back home on cut-price planes, carrying off slapdash Sasnal canvasses, all they got from their Vistula mission (a ten-fold rise in price in just five years).

I swallowed you up like an anarchist, until in ruins lay the gothic galleries of Tesco and Carrefour, and into the walls melted the armoured ATMs: PKO BP, Pekao SA, Lukas Bank, Citibank, Amerbank, Millennium, Bank Silesia, WBK, Alior, Inteligo, Deutsche Bank, BPH, Multi Bank, Fortis Bank, ING and Post Bank.

I love you. Our naked bodies haunt Europe like an unfledged unguilty communism. 2009

Translated by David Malcolm

Almanach_sklad.indd 45 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Alan Riach Poems

At Sandwick (Whalsay, Shetland)

Sitting at a table looking out, beyond the houses, the land is low and gently curved in the lower field ahead and the little isolated clouds of sheep scuttle past in the bar of green between grey walls. Or else, on the yellower grass on the far field, small off-white puffs of weight and wool, they slow and stand still.

You would not wish to idealise. The isolated houses hold what households hold: warmth, ironies, affections, bitternesses, pain. But what is happening in the air – the sounds and peculiar silences that breathe with the scale of the sea, beyond headlands – occupies your listening as it comes to you. It approaches across the shapeliness of fields,

the specific echo-chambers of inhabited settlements. A gull glides in and over, lifting, above; a car drifts by like an ambling animal, slowly. And as I lift my eyes from the page to let the space out there soak in, the horizon cuts clean, above the roofs of houses, above the further low grassed hills. The gull has gone. Clouds have lifted. The clear air fills

with the far stretch of sea, a distant arm of island now seen coming in from the right, from north-west to south-east, sitting on the grey curving slab of the sea, sup- ported, as if moving and still at the same time, neither peaceful nor distracted. Trace the pen in, from the right to the left, rising to a low peak, masted: Bressay,

then a long slope rising to a rounded lower summit, then a sharper, slow, long slope down to a line, hardly there yet solid, dark, leading gently then accelerating up to the headlands and cliffs

Almanach_sklad.indd 46 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Poems · 47

of Noss. You can take a boat between them, but from here, it’s a single shade of colour to the end, two sets of cliffs, one rising over the other, and the grass flowing up to them, up to the left,

carrying the eye on, over the edge. Above, the sky has been one vast encyclo- pedia of clouds: a perfect grille of stratus, drifting in line, at the same pace towards the east (crossing my view from the right) while the cirrus and strato-cumulus come down from the left (from the west) but now as I write the whole huge bank of grey has lowered itself from the roof and filled the sky

till it lifts nothing: bird, cloud or island-shapes in distance, all become obscure. A young woman with a child in a pushchair is walking past silently on the path by the road between me and the long stretch of sea. Then thin seams of white and blue lean in from the west, across the horizon. Before it has its chance to fill with horizontal tones of grey, green currents of light

make the single darker rocky island, in front of the islands far away, stand out as if black. It is low but peaked and small and uninhabited. Out there, the sound of water and rock will be as perpetual as it has ever been, and nothing can be heard from here, in this room. What you see, what you do hear, what these few hours or

days or minutes, lifetimes, generations, help to measure with is just this form and substance, presence, weight; shadow, colour, sound, how technically slow we are, against these innumerate, unnumberable tides. Fewer seabirds now inhabit the air and the cliffs than there were in my landlady’s youth, she says, and the ban on whitefish fish- ing has hurt,

and will change the whole human island, the school provision, households, homes. If every human economy balances itself as it can, it does so for a measure of the time required for grantedness to become knowable, and then to be able to speak, without rancour or need, of that which these things may support.

24/25 March 2004

Almanach_sklad.indd 47 2013-04-04 10:48:19 48 · Alan Riach

from Passages from India: Three Poems

“The illness and the cure, like a force of nature; life and death, the rain that gave hope, that flooded and drowned too; the pleasure and the pain”. – Paul Theroux, A Dead Hand

[…]

III: Kolkata

Howrah Bridge – moving, seen through traffic between buildings, above people – people on the pavements and crossing the roads, in crowds and crowds, people in the buildings, passing through doorways, entering, leaving, every building now this taxi drives me past, and above, in the windows, moving, and above the buildings, the bridge, moving, and beyond the traffic, buses, people, packed with people, and inches from the taxi window, the sides of buses, scarred and dented, moving in the constant noise of horns and shouting, talking, moving, rising over the people and the traffic and the buildings, the bridge rising into the dust and mist and brown and grey polluted air come down to rest on its highest structures, them rising into it, it meeting them, folding into them, inhumanly high and intimate, Howrah Bridge – So the taxi takes me through the streets and the maze of routes, the labyrinth, these canyons of Kolkata, till we come to the great whirlpool, the gulf of the circular roads around the central railway staton. And now the bridge is close, looming. The traffic stops at the lights and all the engines are switched off as the crowds pour off the pavements, over the roads, to the other sides, torrential surge of movement, sensitized as people are, but caught among and moving along these huge, irreversible tides. And now to cross, the bridge takes us on and into its structure.

Almanach_sklad.indd 48 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Poems · 49

The current drives us all along its span. For a minute or two or three, perhaps, the vast tranquil shape of the river below is seen in the twilight of pink, ochre, delicate grey, and I roll the window down as the January air rolls in, cool and suddenly clean, and the ships along the river can be seen in their separate places, moving or at anchor in the commerce of their cargoes and the purpose of their destinations. – And then it’s over, we’re over, and the curve round the road takes us back, to return, crossing once again, back through the city, back to where we came from. Howrah Bridge behind us and the river far below. January 2012

Almanach_sklad.indd 49 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Almanach_sklad.indd 50 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Telling Stories: Two

Almanach_sklad.indd 51 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Almanach_sklad.indd 52 2013-04-04 10:48:19 Zina Rohan A Clean Bill of Health

They took his blood tests in the usual assistant will give you a diet sheet manner when Peter Parker was three when you leave. You will naturally days old. Twenty-four hours later, see to it that your daughter never with the results returned, his mother smokes. You will endeavour to keep and father were beside themselves her away from industrial pollutants. with relief. Their son would have You will value regular exercise. If a clean birth certificate. The first you will forgive me for saying so, hurdle had been crossed without Mr er um”, a stumble. “Smith”. On the other side of the ward the cur- “Mr Smith, it might not be such a bad tains had been drawn, for dignity, idea if you too were to begin to value around Mrs Smith’s bed. Still guey it now. But when the chips are down, with placental residue Veronica slept as in this case they clearly are ac- unsuspecting in her cot at the foot of cording to the read-out in your hand, the bed while Mrs Smith wailed and what has been programmed into an Mr Smith railed. Between them lay individual’s genes cannot be re- the paper on which their daughter’s -programmed. At least not yet. Not as future lay shredded. Who would em- things currently stand, if you get my ploy her? Who would give her life in- meaning. It is true that there are one surance? Who would ever invite her or two conditions which are becom- to walk with him down the aisle? ing susceptible to therapy but these Pausing to allow the distraught par- are caused by a single faulty gene ents a few moments to pull them- which I’m afraid to say...” selves together Dr Spears attempted Mr Smith was indeed an impatient consolation which, it has to be ac- sort. “But science is moving on”. knowledged, he did not do well. “All the time, Mr Smith, all the time”. “I find people tend to fall into one “So by the time my Veronica is in her of two groups”, he said. “Those who teens, they might have found a cure”. recognise that one has to accept what “By the time your Veronica is in her fate has given them and those who teens they may well have located ex- are foolish enough to try to fight it”. actly which are the rogue genes on Having identified this couple as her map. As to a cure, as you put it, belonging to the second group, Dr I very much doubt…” Spears continued. “There is of course “But you can’t know that”. much that can be done in the circum- “You are absolutely right, Mr Smith”, stances. Diet will be important. My said Dr Spears with the greatest

Almanach_sklad.indd 53 2013-04-04 10:48:19 54 · Zina Rohan

satisfaction. “In this profession we surfaces for objects which, if reached know, as no one else does, that what when her back was turned, might is known today for certain becomes cause harm. All this care saw Peter replaced tomorrow by something else Parker unscathed into nursery school. that is known for certain. To that ex- Meanwhile, work was in progress. By tent, if you wish, there is hope. But the time Peter Parker and Veronica if I were you I wouldn’t bank on it. Smith were ready to leave primary Finding out what can go wrong and school scientists at the Institutes of putting it right are not by any means Health in New York announced that the same thing. Oh no. So as I say, the remaining genes on the human when the chips are down… keep off genome had been located and their the chips! Ha!” various functions described, their A week on Mr and Mrs Parker con- DNA sequenced; two years later col- tinued to reflect on their good for- leagues at the Pasteur Institute in tune. Here he was, their own new- Paris published a lengthy paper com- born thing, cosily tucked under his prehensible only to each other and cellular blanket at home, white cot- to a few other competing specialists. ton mittens on his flailing paws, still The broad conclusions of their re- too young perhaps to be quite rosy, search were, however, laid before the still too small to resemble anyone in British public in a television docu- particular, but already officially pro- mentary bordering on the accurate nounced a success. How might it which suggested that every ailment have felt, they mused, had they been that had a genetic component ought, told that, on the contrary, there was in principle, to be curable. a flaw in his design? Mr and Mrs Parker watched the doc- Peter grew chubby, squalling at times umentary with Peter, because sci- immeasurably but making up for it ence on television was educational. with uninterrupted half hours of good It was also salutory because there but humour. He swallowed most of his for the grace of God and don’t let him food and only occasionally spewed forget it. They sent out for cheese and it back. His mother quickly learned tomato pizzas with extra anchovies, not to offer him mashed banana or black forest gateau and a free bottle steamed fish. When his nose ran so of coca cola to have for their supper did the noses of the Parker parents while they watched. “Just think”, who bought extra tissues and mar- said Mrs Parker, munching. “If Pe- velled that nature can invent such ter’s tests had come out different, we variations on the theme of a single vi- wouldn’t have been enjoying this piz- rus. As his limbs filled out and came za, would we?” She had befriended increasingly under his control, he Mrs Smith and Veronica at the well- spent minutes at a time passing a red baby clinic when the children were plastic rattle from his left hand to his small and had been told of the low right and back again. Eventually he cholesterol meals the Smith family was on the move and Mrs Parker was would all have to endure in perpetu- forced to inspect all her shelves and ity for the sake of the girl’s continua-

Almanach_sklad.indd 54 2013-04-04 10:48:19 A Clean Bill of Health · 55

tion. “Mind you, since they’re saying onto virtue. Indeed, some of them here that they’ll be able to cure eve- had been heard to say that it was no rything now, p’raps she can soon eat longer possible to speak of vice or what she likes”. virtue at all, for these were words of “Don’t you believe it”, said Mr Park- judgment. And people could only be er darkly, and having a clear head. judged for what they had chosen to “Ought. That’s what the guy said. do. Mrs Smith remembered the vicar Ought. Doesn’t mean can”. of her childhood Sundays and won- But as Mr Smith had earlier ob- dered if he was still alive and wheth- served, science moves on. By the er he would now look back on his time the two children had arrived life’s work as so much wasted breath. at puberty they were required by law Then she bravely bared her forearm. to offer themselves for further testing Meanwhile her acquaintance, Mrs for it had become possible to discern Parker, was also preparing to bare not only which individuals were la- hers. Mr Parker was reading the trade tent criminals, but also what was to magazine he’d brought with him be- be their crime. cause you always had to wait in these Mrs Smith sat in the crowded waiting places. But Mrs Parker was thinking, room of one of the portacabin clinics they were getting through the people set up in haste and on government at a rate, considering. Of course, if money in supermarket carparks and it was your job, if all you did all lay-bys throughout the land. She day was take blood, you’d have to quailed at the options that rose be- get good at it, get competent, fast, or fore her mind. What if her daughter they’d have your job off you and give should be certified wicked? What it to someone else. You couldn’t be if she herself or her husband were wasting people’s time. Not with eve- found, at this late date, to be unsuit- ryone here, as they were, queuing. ed to society? After so many blame- There were so many tests they had to less years, could it be that they must get done these days. It seemed like pack their bags and slink away, con- yesterday they’d all been here for demned to pre-emptive incarcera- the AIDS one, and got through that no tion? She feared it might be so, for problem, and so they should. All the Veronica’s meals were as lean, her Parkers, all the Smiths too. exercise regime as stringent as ever. She nodded at Mrs Smith and rolled Every day from five to seven the her eyes to show she too thought Smiths meditated to prevent stress. they’d all been waiting long enough. They did all that had been advised Lots of people still to go. Mrs Smith and so far the demon infarct had was looking trim. Must be the low fat been kept at bay. But when the pro- diet that did it. Mr Smith wasn’t look- fessors had discovered that bad being so trim and he could have done haviour was also written in the blood with it. Maybe he slipped out some- they had not on this occasion pub- times and bought himself the odd lished factsheets describing the sim- kebab when his daughter wasn’t there ple steps that might be taken to cling to complain she wanted some too,

Almanach_sklad.indd 55 2013-04-04 10:48:19 56 · Zina Rohan

poor mite, with the disease waiting running with secrets, all your past in her blood, tapping its fingers and and all your future as well. And no counting off the days. Not that she wonder it was so quick if all they did was a mite any longer. More a young was jab your finger. lady. Funny that. Boys and girls. At the same age they didn’t look it. Dr Spears had aged, for not only sci- There was Peter, six foot tall but still ence moves on. But he smiled at the all elbows and grubby nails while Parkers, all three, hoping they too the Smiths’ Veronica looked ready might derive delight from the unrav- for some young man to sweep her off elling of new certainties. What is ca- her feet. If one would, given what pable of being known it is surely bet- people knew. ter to know. “I wonder they don’t get the tubes “I want a second opinion”. mixed up”, she said to her husband “In what sense, Mr er-um…?” or her son. “Parker”. “Why’s that, then?” said Mr Parker “In what sense, Mr Parker?” and turned a page. “In the sense that there must be “They can’t”, rebuked Peter. “Every- some mistake”. thing’s got to match. Date of birth, “And why is that?” blood type, all the other tests there’ve “That is because it doesn’t make been. The computer would spot it if sense. I am fine and always have they fed in the wrong results”. been. No sign of naughty business”. The things they teach them, thought Dr Spears looked at his screen. “As Mrs Parker, these days. indeed one would expect”. Then the Parkers were called into the “My wife too”. booth. They sat themselves in a row “Quite so”. at the table with their sleeves rolled “Then how come our boy, whose up but the girl in the green uniform genes must come from the two of us, smiled. “Things have moved on”, should turn out to be, according to she said. “You’ll be glad to know”. your…” She laid their right hands flat on the “First of all, Mr Parker, I shouldn’t piece of paper towel spread before have to remind you that your son’s them and then moved from one to the genetic make-up is the product not next and lifted each middle finger, only of the genes provided by you jabbed a small blade into the fleshy and your good wife, but also of the pad, squeezed a globule of blood out genes of your respective parents. Do onto a slide, slipped the slide into you see”. a tube and slotted each tube, with its “Aha! Got you there! Our parents, printed label, click, into its place in I happen to know, were law-abiding. the slowly moving conveyor belt be- Never in any trouble, any of them”. hind her. There’s a secret in each one Mr Parker jutted his chin. of those, thought Mrs Parker sucking “Er-um. If you will excuse my saying her sore finger, for all they look iden- so, sir, but that isn’t actually the same tical. A life story in a dot of blood, thing”.

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“How so?” elaborate on Mrs Parker’s theme. As “He means, dad, that they mightn’t’ve so often when he had to put into got caught”. words unmistakeable options no one “Um, thank you. Precisely so. But wished to hear, he directed his opin- of course there is another factor we ions to the wall at a diagonal point might bear in mind”. high above his left eye. “Yes. You “Which is?” see. Mrs Parker has hit the nail. Fair- “Well, your son here... I say, do ex- ly and squarely. On its head”. Briefly cuse me for talking about you as if Dr Spears rubbed his own. The sci- you weren’t here, young man…” ence didn’t purturb him but the pa- “Feel free. They do it all the time”. tients never failed to. “Let me lay the “Your son here might represent what position before you. We have to ad- we could call a new direction”. mit that we do not yet know which at- “New direction? What sort of new di- tributes natural selection favours. On rection?” the face of it, we might assume that “Random mutation, dad”. violence and deceit must win out be- Mr Parker stared at Dr Spears, then cause we know that all life is engaged climbed from his chair. “Are you in a never-ending battle to the finish, calling my son a random mutation? preferably someone else’s. In the Have you seen his latest school re- struggle between species the devel- port?” opment of long teeth in a predator But with the passing of time Dr Spears may have given rise to longer legs in had grown accustomed to moments its prey. But in the struggle between of alarm. His voice grew unctuous. individuals within a species, the “It cannot be anything but excellent, struggle for the best mate, it may be I feel sure. The young man has al- that nature allowed what we might ready given me an indication of his call goodness to prevail as a devious intelligence, at least”. alternative to badness. Badness looks Since girlhood Mrs Parker had known sexy but goodness may help to raise that one always goes to the doctor in the next generation and nothing pairs. One to get het up, the other to counts but that. However”, and Dr ask the sensible questions. It was her Spears knuckled his eyes, “this must moment to speak. “There’s nothing remain speculation because we have wrong with random mutation, dear. If lived so long with the rules and reg- someone hadn’t started the random ulations that we have invented, it is mutations we’d still be in the trees”. impossible to strip away what we She looked at Dr Spears for encour- think we have come to know. Above agement, but he was on the edge of all, you should consider yourselves his chair and silent. “The question fortunate. There are, believe you me, really is, dear, what’s natural selec- societies elsewhere and, needless to tion going to do about it?” say, people within this one, who will Dr Spears breathed out a dry whis- say, looking at the information we tle through a puckered pinhole in have in front of us about your son”, his pursed lips. Gathered himself to pointing at his screen, “and I won’t

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mince my words for you wouldn’t know what it’s doing or why. Well, wish that would you, that natural now we have learned more. We have selection is best nipped in the bud, learned that there is no part even of so to speak, either by”, he slashed the conscious mind within our con- a finger across his throat, “or”, he scious control. As it were. You may chopped a vertical palm edge down “want” until you are proverbially over his groin. “Luckily, we live in blue in the face not to be a rapist a different world”. but the “you” who is apparently do- The Parkers faced him across his ing this wanting is nothing more than desk without words. The desk, Peter a social construct. Why do you not noticed, had on it two ring marks want to be a rapist, Master Parker? from staining coffee mugs. Or per- Answer me that? It might after all, be haps tea. He sat forward, elbows on diverting as an occupation, for you. knees, his interlinked fingers a chin- It may well be that you would be do- prop. “But”, he said, “Dr Spears”, ing what your mutated genes most he said, in perfectly even tones, un- need. But you retreat from this. Why? der the circumstances. “I don’t want Because you think raping people is to be a rapist”. wrong. Why do you think so? Be- Dr Spears hoped he seemed compas- cause you have been told so by other sionate. After all this time he thought and older people who have been sim- he could reconstruct the emotion on ilarly instructed, who in their turn his features. Yet he could not quite and so on and so on. Now, don’t get conceal a momentary irritation, so me wrong. If I had a daughter, which that when he spoke that too was as it happens I do not, but if I had, heard. “The trouble with the younger and if I discovered that you had in- generation is that you’ve all been terfered with her against her will brought up to want so much. You sit I should probably shoot you, slowly. there and you say, ‘I don’t want to be Why would I do that? Certainly not a rapist’. I daresay you don’t, or if because someone once told me that I may put it more correctly, I dare- what you had done was a crime, or say you imagine you don’t. For who even, God help us, a sin. On the oth- are you, Master Parker, to be so cer- er hand, if I heard that you had at- tain that you know what you want? tacked someone else’s daughter, some- Now you will tell me, in that impa- one I do not know, someone in whose tient way you youngsters have, that daughter I have no interest, I might you know your own mind. But I must join the choir of voices calling for ask you to recall that long before you your punishment. Now there, I be- were born there was a great man, lieve, I would be doing what I have mistaken in many ways, possibly in been taught to do. And that is where most but a great man nonetheless, your problem lies. Mrs Parker”, Dr who pointed out to us that there is Spears turned to her. “The question a large part of our minds, the un- before us today is not what will natu- conscious, over which we have no ral selection do. It’s what will your control. Far from that. We don’t even neighbours do once the lists are pub-

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lished as the government insists they Peter Parker pulled his father’s arm. must be”. His face was haggard, years on him. “What can we do?” “Come on, dad. Let’s go home and “I’m afraid I don’t know. They say, in pack. Mum can find a monastery in their wisdom and charity, that those the Yellow Pages. Whatever the guy with a predisposition to theft should says, I, me”, he banged his chest, be, where possible, raised and then “do not want to be a rapist. If I have maintained in circumstances where to spend the rest of my life making temptation and need will be kept to mead, then I will”. a minimum, for remember, a predis- In the doorway Mrs Parker stopped position to something does not mean and looked back. “Do you believe in the individual must inevitably com- God, Dr Spears?” mit the deed. Now that we recog- “Inconceivable, Mrs Parker. But nise that no one can be said to be en- monasteries have always served tirely responsible for what he does, a purpose”. yet so long as we continue to disap- The car park round the portacabins prove of certain acts, then we have was thronging with people, like the no choice but to separate the people crowds a moment before the start of we have identified as being at risk the monthly January sales, like stu- from the circumstances that might dents at the university looking for trigger their predisposition. Some their names on the exam results. Tri- might argue, indeed some do, that umph, dejection, disbelief. Sideways for their own protection all females glances from the triumphant at the should be kept off the streets. But in others. Sideways steps. Arms pulled times of economic stringency it’s tight to the body, children clasped not thought practicable at present. If more tightly by the hand. Handbags I were you, I’d send Peter to a mon- snapped fast and pressed close. Only astery. A closed order for preference. those with radiant smiles, among For good”. them Veronica Smith with the time But Mr Parker was on his feet, wav- bomb still ticking inside her, had li- ing his trade magazine. “But you’ve cence to celebrate. But as they made just said that in fact Peter might nev- off to do so they all took note of the er do… it. So putting him away would others scuttling away. be like locking a man in prison sim- ply because he looks as if he might Mr Parker loaded Peter’s bags into smash a window, but there it is, the the car, meagre luggage for a lifetime next day, the next week, the next year. but they’d been advised to take the Still there. Not smashed. You don’t minimum. lock a man up for looking as if he Mrs Parker was cooking a last fami- might do something”. ly supper. She’d baked a Victoria Dr Spears shrugged. “It’s been known. sponge with chocolate icing and However, while there’s no scientific hundreds and thousands on the top basis to loitering with intent, in Pe- which, in the seclusion of his home, ter’s case…” Peter could still admit was his fa-

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vourite. She was mashing potatoes. ven’s. I’m afraid they may close up The gravy was ready. The roast siz- for the night”. zling. She couldn’t imagine that she “Good heavens. Holy orders, eh? would never make a meal for him Well, we’ll be running that way. Drop again, and him such a rewarding eat- him off if you like”. er. She wondered whether the monks It didn’t seem the best way to take had taken the test or whether they leave of your only son, in a streaming were exempt because they were all lay-by, handing him over to stran- locked up anyway. She wondered gers. But he was handing him over to whether she would ever be allowed to strangers as it was and there was no see Peter again and whether she point the boy catching his death would keep his room exactly as it was while they waited. To tell the truth, as a shrine, or redecorate it and let it. the sooner the whole sorry business She wondered what to tell her mother was over with the better it’d be. Mr who was coming to stay that evening. Parker was one of those who turns to They hadn’t had the heart to put her leave before the train has pulled off. Hadn’t known what to say, as away from the platform. Always been a matter of fact. bad at goodbyes. Peter was flicking through channels “What d’you reckon, son?” on the remote. Peter shrugged. It made no odds. After the meal he helped his mother They moved his luggage from the wash up and let her hug him. He disabled car. said, “Say hallo to Gran”. He threw “Will you write?” the dog’s ball for him in the garden, “If they let me”. then took off his muddy shoes and The woman felt tears gather in the put on clean ones for the journey. back of her throat. She was no be- His life was over and he couldn’t liever but the thought of such a young even feel people would admire him a boy committing himself so soon to for doing the right thing because it God touched her somewhere. As he no longer existed. But he would got in the car she sensed an urgency know, he thought. Doctors or no in him. doctors. “Goodbye then, dad”, through the It was a fine night as they drove but window. the road was long. Then it began to “Oh, Peter”. And they were gone. rain. Eventually the car slewed to the He leant back in the warm of the left with a puncture. Mr Parker pulled travelling vehicle and listened desul- out his mobile phone and called the torily to the vacuous exchanges of the AA. While they shivered in the car, unknown couple, inclined to doze, waiting, another car pulled up with wishing he was already there, hoping a man and a woman in it. The man never to arrive. Then it seemed to wound down his window. “Hallo, him the car was stopping. Between there. Are you in trouble?” the rivulets of rain on the glass he “Got ourselves a puncture, haven’t saw a low building. we. I was taking my lad to St Ste- “Are we here already?”

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The man turned and laughed. “No, of your height? That’s right. That’s it. you’ve a while still to go. This is the I must say, I’m glad you’re with her. station. My wife’s just dropping me off. I’ve never liked the idea of her travel- Why don’t you hop in the front where ling alone at night, but what could be there’s more leg room for a young man better than a young monk?”

Written 1998

Almanach_sklad.indd 61 2013-04-04 10:48:19 David Malcolm The Wizard Laird of Skene

Fan I wis last in Aleppo, a man tellt at wye. Maybe we shude, but we din- me o a fowk that bade in the high nae. We write in southern, and that’s hills of the Lebanon, a fowk that, he the way of it. The trick would be to do said, hid not just the richt tae lie tae it better than they do. Tae dee it bet- the furriner, but, indeed, hid a duty ter than they dee. tae dee it. I think the Druse they wir So, I’ll write about the Laird in Eng- cried. I thocht o them the last night. lish (but there will be other tongues A coorse fowk, you say? I dinna think at play as well, of necessity). so. Soonds juist aboot richt tae me. The auld Laird (I cannae stop maself, But last night… there was ane o they ye see – I fear this will be a maca- buddies fae Edinburgh, a eager to ronic tale – but life is like that) was gaither up the wisdom o das Volk. I’d an eccentric buddy. His lady had seen them at work betimes in mony died years before in Edinburgh, or lands, aifter le dernier mot authèn- some ill-tricket fowk maintained, had tique du peuple. Aye, I thocht, they’ll left him in high disdain and headed be deein it tae the black fowk in off to France. From what I know of America someday, just you wait. him and his son, that’s entirely cred- Weill, this mannie wis quizzing the ible. So the old Laird was left with lads fae the fairms. He wanted athin: a young son, a pale harsh-looking sangs, stories, legends. An then he lad, pinched-faced, and with brown got on to the Laird. Weill, the lads did eyes that stared when they weren’t me proud. With niver a glance at me, cast down at the ground. He was auld Dod launched intae a fine spiell. brought up by aunts in Glasgow, and A the guid yins wir there: the shadow, they thrashed order into him. Even at the ride ower the loch, braking the his wildest, he always folded his Contessa’s hairt. Aye weill, that yin clothes neatly on the chair at night, wis half-true. They kennt the truth, and put his watch carefully on the fitivir that is, wid hurt ower much. night stand, if there was one, and on I staggert oot intae the nicht. The lift the window sill if there wasn’t. The wis as black as the Contessa’s hair, lassies would laugh at him for that, an the stars as shairp as thon jewels but they found he was site bit fiercer she wore. A fox barkit on the hill ay- in bed, sometimes a touch more than ont the loch. An I cam hame to the they wanted. And God forbid you cottage he bocht me. should file one of his books, or crease And now I’m thinking - why am I try- a page. Aye. When he was thirteen, ing to write in Scots? We dinnae wricht the old Laird betook himself to the

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city. He wasn’t unhappy with what oor destination – ladies and gentle- he found. The lad was handsome, men, mesdames monsieurs, meine Da- could read, did read, wrote a fair men und Herren, señoras y señors! – hand, and had a devil of a charm. was the Continent. The old ladies didna thrash him now, but speillt him consumingly. Any- They told such tales of us. They tell way, it was back to the Mearns, and them still. Or at least they tell them the big dark house with its blin waas, of him. I do not figure largely, if at with its wide, cauld acres. all, in any man’s tale of the Wizard I mind the carriage coming in. I was Laird of Skene. There is much about in the street doing messages for my Robert Muir, and damned little of mither, who served up at the big David Shaw, the mute nameless bag- house, but didna live in. I mind the man, an anonymous witness. But pale face in the window and the eyes I am the one who tells the story now. staring out, takin it a in. I think he Where are the others? I can shape it saw me then though he never spoke how I care to. I could even make my- of it, but there was maybe a wee flash self a hero – of sorts. A hero of sorts. of intelligence atween us, even then. A hero of outcomes. I like to think so, or am I just an old But they did, and they do, tell such man telling tales worse than auld Dod stories. He went to Rome to study the in the bar? dark arts at a Jesuit college. The dev- He was a one, a young hellion, aye il himself was the instructor, dressed, running ower the land, talking tae of course, as a humble priest. The fairmers, poachers, tinkers, inebriates, cost of instruction – a noble fee – snake charmers, modesty men, bum was to be the soul of the last scholar boys, honest wives, bonny lassies, and out of class on the last day of term. some plain yins in a. The Laird knew When that last day came, there was, well that he couldna hold him on the indeed, much jostling and jousting land. Nor did he want to. So needs among the international fraternity, must he be sent abroad. And for that sated with devilish instruction, and a companion, a manservant, a bag when the last bell went there was carrier, was necessary. Why the Laird a wild rush for the door. Our hero chose me, I will nivir ken. He had though, his mind perhaps on a bold but nodded twice to me in my hail signorina, or a sonnet, or the struc- life, as far as I mind, once to tell me ture of a crystal, or perhaps out of tae get the hell’s way out of his, and gentlemanly disdain, did not leap in the interview for the post was not, with the Gadarene mob, but coolly shall we say, exhaustive. But then packed his scholar’s leather satchel, I found that my mither was packing and ambled insouciant to the door. my few things in a thick blanket with “Ah hiv ye!”, crowed the Dark Lord a leather strap, and holding me at (transformed to a black hairy shape airms’ length wi tears in her een. We with spider arms and speaking broad set off on the stage to Aiberdeen, me Scots in place of douce and suave on the outside, himself within, and Italian).

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“No, no”, cries our man, raising falling foul thereby of Jews and Mos- a finger. “There’s ay lad ahint me”. lems alike. He went to Antioch to He points and sure enough the devil read holy works, and that’s why Scot- sees a figure slipping along, follow- land remains to this day a vassal of ing the Scotsman, trying to sneak out the English. without paying his dues. He could speak the tongues of men “Pasa por favor”, calls the Devil, in – double Dutch and Sephardic, the fine Jesuitical Spanish, grabs the lad jargon of the Ma’min and conversa- behind ours, and vanishes with an el- tional Sard. He talked with warriors dritch screech, banging of windows, from the Hittite dead, and made and whiffs of sulphur. bones dance in the Bekaa Valley. He But imagine the Prince of Darkness’s wrote a neat hand in Spanish, said rage when he gets to Hell and finds prayers in Greek, and could order the Laird has tricked him. All he has the best food in any inn or hotel the is our man’s shadow. length and breadth of fair France. Though from that day on, the Wizard When the shaven headed Polish Laird of Skene was a man with no magnates came to Skene, lost from shadow, nor could his shape be clear- their boat, fleeing the anger of the ly seen in mirrors, windows or water, great Tsarina, he took them to the big and he limped somewhat in the left house, entertained them in the grand foot where the devil had torn off the manner, and put them on their way to last tissues, the nebulous integu- Leith the next day. But the Russian ments, binding shadow to man. he would never speak, except to The other stories they tell! They’d fill curse, for once a mad captain of Cos- a box. How he cheated an old Jew sacks cheated him of a fine carpet, money-lender of his whistle. How he somewhere on the uncouth border fought on both sides at Malplaquet. between the Ottomans and the Ro- How he met the ghost of the mighty manovs. The Russians anyway, be- Hannibal with his elephant, and cause they had made their own trade spoke to him in Carthaginian. How with darkness, were the only people he visited the Sublime Porte in Con- he met that could outdrink him. But stantinople, disputed with Sabbatai the Jews he loved and talked to them Zevi, and persuaded the Sultan and in their own tongue, for they had much his vizir to raise a Jewish-Turkish secret lore and beautiful women. army to fight for Scotland’s indepen- How he won a fortune and lost it at dence, he, of course, to be the first the cards in one night in a brothel off king of a free Scotland, and the one the Haymarket in London, all be- who would bring the twelve tribes to- cause his eye was distracted by gether out of the diaspora, summon- a child prostitute whom he spent his ing them home to the place of the lost last sovereigns to save, that night tribe, the wandering semitic Scots. sleeping rough in a kennel in Seven But how he was struck by fire from Dials, where he caught the pox that heaven on the waterfront at Salonika cost him his nose, so that for years he and converted to the Orthodox faith, wore a plaster one made by the best

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surgeons to the King. How he wrote from a flask and giggled. They rode a great epic poem of Scotland’s glo- across the ice on the Loch of Skene, ries, and gave it away once in a bitter and when the poor traveller knew rage – it would not win Scotia’s free- that they had done so, he went all dom back - for a jug of coarse red over pale, took the megrims and fell wine. How he danced at the great down in a dead faint. Doge of Venice’s ball dressed as a woman, and fought a duel with Aye well, it’s grand to know it was a one-eyed German cavalry officer that exciting. It was wild enough, who called him a catamite and a po- dear readers, even if it wasn’t quite etaster. He slew the cavalryman, after- as lurid and fiery. If it was the devil wards saying that his lusts were one that led him on, promising all and thing, but he’d hear no one impugn delivering so damned little… I know his numbers. How, while staying at not – and I would, I believe, know, a French count’s chateau in the broad would I not? Would I not? lands of the Loire, he seduced one The truth was more prosaic. We did by one the Count’s four daughters, not head to Rome. We were protes- assiduously slipping from bedcham- tant Scots, children of a righteous ber to bedchamber, like a mad wee reformation, nae papist gewgaws for beastie knowing nought but his own us, and so we made our way to Hei- driving lusts, leaving them each delberg by the Rhine, there to pursue pregnant, and the children being giv- knowledge. I did not begrudge it him en up for adoption to good families – that it was for him. I was happy to becoming, in their due time, Danton, be in a new world, full of new things. Charlotte Corday, Wolfe Tone, and I kept his shoes and linens clean, the great Napoleon (the terror of the and learnt much German and met English) himself. And how he fell many couthy folk that way. I also had deep enamoured of one great lady in time for leisure, to read a few books, Grenada, but she threw him over, and to talk to educated men and women, renouncing love he became a recluse and to broaden my knowledge of the in Skene, but once again fell victim world, which we both found at first to Venus, only to have her, too, reject was sorely lacking. But from the out, him, whereupon he fell into despair the Laird was a driven man. It was as and rode straight to his black lord if you put him on the continent and in hell. Where now he sits, a carbon he rushed toward everything to con- simulacrum of the rosy bouncy man sume it, a man himself on fire, hug- he was. ging all to his brands. He studied Oh aye, and he once found a traveller medicine and theology, the classics lost in a blind snow storm and offered and philosophy, and history also, but him a ride in his coach. But the poor the mathematics he had no time for. man looking out the window saw that He was at his books from the start. the reins were held by a black hairy If he had a curse, and I’ve thought wild beast, auld Nick himself, whilst about this long, it was emulation. He the Wizard laird swigged fiery liquors must be the best. It was his disabling

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sin. None should match him. He must me think so. I was there to bring him bow to no one. It drove him to hours a book he had forgotten, but I made of perfecting his German and his no move toward him, as he shuffled French, to nights spent pouring over the floor of the long closed corridor, books of abstruse (and, at times, halt- dragging himself slowly towards the ing) wisdom, to days spent at the locked doors. fencing school till his body shook it He spoke to himself, I think, in was that fatigued, to other nights a tongue I did not know. spent drinking and whoring, for he One story they tell is true though. We must show he was best in all the had done with the university, with humane accomplishments. When we Heidelberg and the broad Rhine. For first arrived, we were in truth little three years we had dandered round but raw northern provincial upstarts, Europe. The auld Laird’s letters of from the edges of the civilized world, credit were worthy, and, in truth, our clothes as rough as out tongues. most days we spent damned little. We were made to feel so. We changed A new town, modest lodgings by the that. river or the castle wall, or above an I do not think he sold his soul to the inn, clean beds, good ale, bright devil. I have never seen the devil, tawny wine, a pretty pot girl, and and though I believe in hell, for that then the castle library, the churches, I have seen, the devil as a body, sights of note, the local notabilities. a corporeal presence… well, in him He watched, he looked, he harkened, I doubt. The devil is within us how- he learned. He scribbled in his note- ever. Of that am surer. It is what books. Then when the fit took him, drives us to the wickedness and folly we’d off to a spa or a resort town, for that is our human nature. the quality, the fashionable folk, and But perhaps I’m too mundane – as cards and dancing and snatching servants should be, I suppose. For young girls in narrow corridors and I once saw him walking in the clois- slipping a hand up their dresses, and ters of the colegium magnum, in sum- whispering lewdnesses in their ears. mer, a heavy summer’s day of rain I joined in all this. The mistress clouds and black heat. The lilac doubtless had a pretty maid, and hung heavy and damp in the court- some mistresses, baulked of the mas- yard and the fountain was still. He ter (for even he could not pleasure did not see me, or did not care to. His all) settled for the man. I have seen face was pale. He had come from one great ladies shed off their dresses for of the dark staircases. His foot drag me, and I have woken on satin pil- ged a little as it had started to do now lows to have raisins in honey dripped when he was most tired. He was mut- on my warm belly. tering to himself. I had a sense, but But I digress. We were in Switzerland no more than that, that there was by a broad lake among great moun- someone on the staircase, but I could tains. He had just finished some work not move to make sure. Something of which he was vaunting, sovereign about the set of the shadows made proud. He did not tell me what. But it

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was done. We were lucky at cards a stale cup of ale in front of him. He that night and won steadily, as if was then only at the beginning of a dark hand were guiding them. He his fame, a name of possible note- was passing witty and charming. The -to-come, someone who promised bon ton gathered round to wonder. well: a volume of pastoral pieces in Hand after hand went the laird’s way. a late neoclassical style, with some The night was clear outside, a dash brooding over transience, all in reg- of gleaming moon, heavy bushes, ular trimeters, fully rhymed. This warm air, the still lake beyond the night he was in despair. He looked lawn, the mountains touched with up at us as we entered, and his eyes a white light. He had made a pack were round with incipient tears. But of money, when the German officer he waved us over with our flagon of became cross. The laird had magi- country wine. cally snatched a higher hand from His story was a sad one, but not un- a sure loss. It was inevitable. Hard known. He had scraped together words were passed. Older men looked money for a trip to Europe, hoping pained; younger ones could scarce- that the high mountains, the new ly hold their excitement. The ladies sights, would bring inspiration. Or breathed hard. They fought on the even, he confided, the utter depth of lawn between the steps and the lake his ambition, he might meet with shore. White shirts, the crack of sword a patron, someone moneyed in need blades, the grunting of the fencers. It of immortality. His wife had scrimped was all over, and the German officer and gone without; his children ate was on his back and blood was drip- crusts and thinly larded scraps. And ping through the long slash down his now there had come a letter from that sword arm. My master stood back shabby house in Highgate that his watching quizzically. Once he even eldest daughter, the pippin of his op- glanced questioningly at his hand tics, was consumptive and in need of that still awhile held the long white care. There was no money. sword. The laird offered him a handsome The German would live, for now at sum, but the poet would have none of least. Though duelling was not loved it. No, he needed to publish some- by the authorities, if there were no fa- thing fine, something that would sell tality, and circumstances clear, then well, and not just for today, but the they turned a blind eye. So we had morrow also. money, we had the admiration of the “Ah, well”, he said slowly. “There’s mob of gentry there, we had earlier not much to be done, I daresay. You that evening rogered the girl who are looking bright and pecker. Why?” made the beds at the hotel, and we The laird told him, eyes agleam: the had braved a burly coarse-hearted vil- evening, the game, the quarrel. And lain. We hired horses and trotted out of late, I have completed something of the town on the moon-silvered road. fine, I hope at least. At the inn by the lakeside, the mid- “And that would be?”, asked the dle-aged poet sat, head in hands, poet.

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“Some verses” was the cautious reply. Nothing till he woke me, and the pain And you will show them me. in my head. Aye, that I shall, sir. What could we do? Pursue the man Out of his leather pouch he pulled and take the manuscript back by a sheaf of papers. force? He was already in Geneva, He woke me late the next morning, the thing was copied, he was posting his face pale, eyes staring. My head home. Or he had headed for Kon- was sore. stanz and then Munich. There were “Davy, for Christ’s sake, man. Where a dozen ways back to London. We are the poems?” asked, but there was no trace of him. I knew them. They’re right well He had vanished in the air. known now. But I knew them then. Then we traveled, and good fortune Before. I saw one quoted the other followed the laird. He was asked to day in an Aberdeen newspaper. They help catalogue the books in a grand were said to start a new kind of sen- library in Messina, to assist with the sibility – wild, passionate, full of editing of an edition of the Norman deep emotions, dark, but rich, and poet Charles Bompard. We learnt touched with genius. They made the Italian there. And the braw signori- poet a lot of money over the years. nas were cheerie, there among the His daughter got well. He became palms and the blue sea. The book Poet Laureate. came to nothing; the Paris editors “The poems, man. Where are they?” withdrew their offer. Then we must We rode hell for leather to the inn, take ship to Aleppo, for an English our eyes bleary against the dawn. He milord was desirous of collecting was, of course, gone already. The some Greek antiquities, he wrote, Laird walked the edge of the cheerily and there was one piece, a falcon, splashing lake and wept in rage. that he knew to be there that was I remember he showed the man his worth a king’s ransom. The local poems. They ordered some more wine, pacha would allow us but a few mud- red this time, harsh village stuff. dy chipped pieces and the falcon was They drank and poured over the man- brass, but the laird sold it on to a rich uscripts. The poet nodded, counted Welshman with more money than out on his fingers. Yes, yes, these sense, so we did not lose on the trip. would do. These are the real thing. He could not rest. He must be doing. It was early morning and the sky had One girl was not enough; there must gone white. Everything was still out- be three, four. One debauch in the side. Perhaps I fell asleep. He shook stews of Salonica was insufficient. me to go. Do I remember at the door There was always another toper wit- him turning round and with a grand tily beckoning him on. We must have wave of the hand say Take them, adventures. We traveled up country take them all? I remember our hors- in the Balkans to join the Turkish es moving slowly through the dawn army that was facing off the Russian. back to the town. I don’t remember We saw action in the drab hills by lying down in my broom closet room. a muddy river. I killed my man, and

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felt sick after. The brown river was In France we met Madame la Comt- full of pale swollen corpses. There esse. We were never the same there- were many blackened steadings. I saw after. hell there. I saw folks impaled in We haunted the salons listening to their fundaments with sharp stakes the fine talk. Paris was a grand city, and hoisted up against the sky for but dear. The ladies were of the most birds to pick at. With a decoration refined, but with a sparkle to their from the Sublime Porte in his pouch, eyes that promised much. The Laird he traveled west, across the moun- was lucky at cards; we had a sweep tains of northern Italy where we al- of rooms in a tall tenement in the Rue most froze (no Hannibal, no ele- de Nevers. phants) to the broad plains of France One night, in winter it was, as cauld and then over the snowy Pyrenees, as charity, with snow dusting the where we rid a village of wolves that cobbles and the house gables, the were plaguing their flocks. The fine longest night of the year, we fore- beasts, with grand silver pelts, run- gathered with a gay company in the ning free amidst the snow and the chambers of the Marquis of Ram- blue sky, we turned to shabby hides. bouillet, a bright young sprig with Later we learned it was their own dogs much acquaintance among the bien- run crazy that harried the sheep. We pensants of the Parisian day. They were lied to. We passed over the rude were all mixed up – young aristos rocks of Spain, and stayed two years who had developed consciences, in Granada. He was happiest there. beautiful young creatures fresh from The drive to do something, anything, convent schools in tow after wizend- lessened. We had a house with ed elderly roués who were interested a courtyard and a fountain. I cultivat- in knowing what way the wind might ed flowers. He read Spanish verse. He be blowing, a philosophe or two with paid court to a handsome widow lady the glow of great ideas about him, in- who owned an olive plantation and tense young lawyers from the prov- a large empty house. Then a passing inces with the look of a Cromwell or, Frenchman, a suave gentlemen with failing that, a martyr about them, a douce, mayhap overdouce, manner, raddled old ladies who were a hell of told him of Paris and the grand world a sight smarter than any of the oth- there, of philosophers and great art ers. If I’d been a betting man (that and literature, of the spirit of the age, I am not) I would have taken sail for of radical thoughts, the rights of man. London right away and laid odds in Here… you are vegetating in a desert. a fancy gaming house that the whole France, Paris, that is the world. What thing was well ripe for ricorsa. And have you DONE, monsieur? Tell me. they’d have given me them then. Come to France, and live. He laughed There was wine, there was conversa- into his wine. And when I thought of tion, there were cards. The candles it, I too said to myself Good fortune? flared high. The fires roared. And Only in this tiny courtyard built then she walked in. She was beauti- against the outside world. ful. I cannot capture it all, that shim-

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mering, unstable motion that was hers. Oh, but it was a wild spring. They The air around her was never still. You went everywhere together. There was could never catch the quicksilver light no discretion any more. The theatre, that came off of her. Her hair was grand dinners, shopping for glorious black. She wore a dark blue dress that fripperies – the money always to left her shoulders bare. Her eyes hand – and when the weather got fin- burned like the fire and the jewels that er, a ride in the parc, a stroll in the laced her neck. Madame la Comtesse. jardin. Cards, music, slumming, with “Ah ha, le beau Écossais. I have her bravoes to guard their back. She heard of monsieur. You are witty, you could as well end up in his bed as he are charming, you write – they say – in hers. fine poems. You are lucky at cards. She was beautiful and a great lady. And the ladies too, I hear. Will you I took chocolate up to her one morn- walk a while with me?” ing when the winter still held the city They were a handsome couple. The and the light was gray as loss. She lay Laird had become dark in the south. by his side in the bed, the covers He held himself like a soldier. His high and rumpled, and reeking of brown eyes matched hers in their lust, and smiled at me. “Mon deux- fierceness. His limp was scarcely ième bon chevalier. Sans reproche. noticeable, or if noticed, only added Un vrai gentilhomme”. some charm, some mystery to his But it was never enough, never appearance. Oh, and he talked well. enough for him. I saw it coming. Not Languages we could do. He never one great lady, but a sluttish barmaid tried for a perfect accent, realizing when she could not see him. He loved long since that the jolt of foreignness the thrill, and the city accommodat- (of the right kind), oh, how it could ed, the thrill of slipping down a dark win the ear. After all, did we not know lane, of being lost and meeting a pair this already as Scots. of bright eyes, and for a moment step- I only wondered how soon they would ping into… well, what? The daimon? be making the two-backed beast to- The ecstasy? Grace? Damnation? gether in her husband’s bed. He wrote her his most lovely poem. That very night, darkest of the year. I’m never sure if her English was up For decency’s sake, she left early, to it. But I knew it was good. Of and he glinted and charmed through course, he misplaced it somehow and another hour of the soirée. We mar it came to other hands. Like those ched through the dark streets of the Swiss ones, you can read it with an- city, the links flaring in a cold wind other name appended. It’s even sung, off the river, blowing whirls of snow I’m told, and a German musician round our hats. Down a dark close mannie has set it to a fine tune. a door opened a crack, and he was in it, a thin shadow against the lamp Oh I have wept by the sea of Marmora, light. I made my way back to the Rue And walked the Cyprus shore, de Nevers, and paid off the linkmen And woken once in Venice, and went to bed. But lady you give more.

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For when the candles gutter the door she vanished into the great And the gamblers fold their cards, city. We never saw her again. Your eyes, your step, your smile, your He woke me with his crying that heart, night, when he returned having been Leave the dawn in shards. told that Madame had left Paris, left and left no word. We were left to drag And then lying with sluts was not out what was left of time. enough. I knew what he was about by the gleam in his eye and the hectic So fareweill tae cities grand, cheeks, and the marks on his back. Fareweill thon glitterin’ land You cannot keep things like that from Whaur Europe’s towers prick the your manservant. snaws I met my lady in her morning room. An’ whaur dark Donau flows. The sunlight glanced off rooftops and filled the bare room, with its polished I’ve sojourned by those golden towers, floor, its wee table, its lovely dark pi- And Turkey’s mountains red, ano. I bowed low and whispered in But belle France an’ a’ her flowers her ear, and she knew and she came They left my heart a shred. with me, shrouded in deepest black. There was a back entrance, for I had Ahm dyin’, Egypt, dyin’ scouted it. We paid a coin to a leer- My hauns haud nought but dross. ing grotesque and he pointed to the Nae livin’, only lyin’. servants’ stairs that wound up four Naethin’ noo but loss. floors, dark and close. The door was Naethin’ noo but loss. set at a crack, and we were sudden in a small servant’s room adjoining He met a snippet of a girl in London a larger one. I slid a bracket for latterly, many long years later. He a candle aside and we could spy into liked her well enough, and she him. the room beyond. I barely had to Well situated she was, a good match. look. The noises were all I needed. But in the end, she declared he’d He was dressed in the tightest of cor- done nothing, he just wasn’t impor- sets, his skirts full, and his eyes all tant enough. She compared him to kohl. He wore a splendid black wig the old poet from the Swiss lake. He of hair piled high. He was on his went pale, wrote the poem that night, knees before one tough bravo and left it at her home the next morning, slurped at his member. The other and we were on the road north come with his britches round his ankles afternoon. That one was made into was making to hoist him. I think my a grand song too. She had the decen- lady had a full view – the skirts cy to leave his name on it. raised, the body bent over, the gasps His father died. A letter reached him and grunts. The reek o’ it a’. on the Lido. He stood still a moment, She pulled her hood even closer over bowed, and handed it to me with not her face. “Assez”, she whispered. a word. The big house in Skene stood I went with her down the stairs. At empty for five years. We trauchled

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round the cities of the South. Some- I was not in the slightest abashed, one told him of the Americas, Brazil, and I shouted back. the Argentine, and that the Span- “And I saved us all. I saved all that iards would be chased out soon. It was fine. You… you, in your folly… was grand horizon for a likely fellow. would have spent it all. It’s where In the end we packed and trudged you can never touch it now”. north. He looked at me for a second. I felt the eyes on me. Then he screamed It was one of those last nights when out a fierce laugh. we rode over the lake. We were both “It! Ye mad divil, Davy. May ye rot in wild by then, savage, and knew that yer Calvinist hell for that”. we’d come to an end of sorts. Amer- I did not dignify that with a re- ica beckoned. He would have the sponse. Let him rave, I thought. coach harnessed and we would ride Right is right. Calvinism has damn out in the night, along the straight all to do with it. (An’ ony wye, in ma dark road beneath the hill along the dreams, it’s the toors of high Byzan- lochan. We must have been a fearful tium I see.) to see, the two horses crashing over It was then, turning on that bit road the road, the coach jarring from side that runs by the Foresterhill, that we to side, the two of us wrapped in came on him. He was a young gentle- cloaks twisting wildly behind us in man, a university fellow from Edin- the wind, the lantern I carried swing- burgh. That I learned later. Then he ing madly, lighting now this now that, was just a figure in black in the snow here the flash of face, an edge of the whirls. He’d been visiting his aunt, coach, there the wall of darkness, auld Bella Jordan, near Cairncry, and a tree branch. this was him lost, taken the wrong That last night it was cold as the turning back five miles, and wander- charity of the Scots. The snow had ing like a lost soul, and like never to been falling for three days and a dark be found. I don’t know that he’d have freeze had held the land in its grip for died in the snow, but he was walking longer. The horses nostrils steamed in the wrong direction, for sure. He fire as we turned out of the stable was lucky, whatever he thought, and yard. The carriage wheels flung up he knew it later. the new snow. The Master pulled the team up. The He laughed like a wild man, and coach skidded a bit, but the horses I hooted along with him too. The cold and he knew their work. We stayed wind stung my face and I pulled my upright. scarf over my mouth. We had to yell “What in the name o’ God are ye at each other. dein’ oot here in this smoor?”, the “I know what happened… that Master called. time… in Paris!”, he shrieked. “Lost”, he called back. “In the name “What?”, I hollered back. of Christ, can you not help me?” “I… know… about the Contessa. It “I would help you in the name o’ Mi- was you.” thras, sir, Dionysus, or the Laird o’

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Hell himself. Hiv nae fear. Climb, sir. let out a great whinny. I see us to this And here”, he said reaching beneath day. The moon whipped on by the his cloak and pulling out a silver storm clouds, the wild snow, our lan- flask, “here, this may be of help. But tern flaring, the puir wee man in the only a wee drop. Ye’ll be fell caul”. coach, and two black lunatics driving. The stranger swung up into the coach. The Master, the Laird, pulled the He paused. I could see his white beasts’ heads round, and went careen- young face in the light of my lan- ing down the bank off the road. I held tern. Goodness, we must have looked on tight, oh tight, man. We fair flew a sight! His eyes were wide with ap- into the darkness. prehension. When the puir man realized we’d “Dinna fear”, said the Master. “It’s ridden straight over the lochan, he but some whisky, and a good malt fainted right away. The snow had too. It’s no elixir of the divil. We’re blawn east for a bit and the sky was nae that far gone. No yet. Todavía no! clear. He looked back over the water. No estamos de la muerte!” Then he just dropped. We picked He laughed, the door swing to with him up, poured the last of the malt a bang, he pulled on the reins. The down his throat, and laughed fit to lead horse, the black mare rose up, burst. unco, high, up on her hind legs, and But it was all real.

Written 2010

Almanach_sklad.indd 73 2013-04-04 10:48:20 Almanach_sklad.indd 74 2013-04-04 10:48:20 Poetry: Two

Almanach_sklad.indd 75 2013-04-04 10:48:20 Almanach_sklad.indd 76 2013-04-04 10:48:20 Krzysztof Kuczkowski Poems

Conway Twill Asks Cole Wilson About His Origins

Calcareous rocks, pines, wisps of fragrance low over

the earth and his pathetic questions thrown into the vacuum of the gorges and

the rocky passes, written in the black eyes of the wild water,

raised up in the boney beaks of crows,

turning lazily from the saddles and the girths to – shining in the sun –

the rifles, stopping for a brief moment on the horse’s coat,

from where sudden shiverings of the skin shake them off onto the road that was really never

a road, only became one for a moment and right away was overgrown

with pan-pipes of grass and the crests of lizards.

Conway Twil had no notion why he was going on and on.

Cole Wilson didn’t know why he shot his companion in the back of his head.

It’s good to know in the end each of them went his own way.

Conway Twil with an ounce of lead in his skull was more taciturn,

Cole Wilson could calmly at last seek his own death

not thinking of whether he was a German or an Austrian. Written May 2005 Published 2006

Almanach_sklad.indd 77 2013-04-04 10:48:20 78 · Krzysztof Kuczkowski

A Song about Conway Twill