IAIN CRICHTON SMITH (1928-) Biographical Note A Scottish poet, translator, playwright, novelist and short-story writer, he was bom on the island of Lewis, in 1928, Educated at Aberdeen University, he worked as a schoolteacher in Clydebank (1955-1977), and then he became a full-time writer. He writes in English and Gaelic and is a notable translator of his own, as well as of other modem Scottish Gaelic poetry, such as that of Sorely Mac Lean. The Gaelic temper, language and the Scottish landscape and people figure proeminently in his work. His finest novel, Consider the Lilies (1968), is a moving account of the Highlands Clearences; a sequence of poems, “Shall Gaelic Die?”, expresses his intimate concern for the survival of the Gaelic language. His work contains social criticism, particularly of contemporary urban life, but he writes best on the themes of ‘language, exile, ageing and death.” He has published two selections of poems: Selected Poems 1955-80 (1981), and Selected Poems (1985). His latest novél, In the Middle of the Wood, was published by Gallancz and his latest book of poems, A Life, by Carcanel. This short story was published in “Stand” magazine and was included in 1988 in the collection Best Short Stories from Stand Magazine, edited by L. Tracy, J. Silkin and J. Wardles, a Methuen Paperback, Methuen ‘London Ltd. eke : The Dying (1) When the breathing got worse he went into the adjacent “room and got the copy of Dante, All that night and the night before he had been watching the dying though he didn’t know it was a “dying. The gray hairs ‘around the head seemed to panic like the — needle of a compass and the eyes, sometimes open ‘and sometimes. 108shut, seemed to be looking at him all the time. He had never seen a dying before. ‘he breathlessness seemed a bit like asthma or bad bronchitis, ascending sometimes into a kind of whistling like a train leaving a station. ‘The voice when it spoke was irritable and petulant. It wanted water, lots of water, milk, lots of milk, anything to quench | the thirst and even then he didn’t know it was a dying. The tongue seemed very cold as he fed it the milk. It was cold and almost stiff. Once near midnight he saw the cheeks suddenly flare up and become swollen so that the eyes could hardly look over them. When a mirror was required to be brought she looked at it, moving her head restlessly this way and that. He knew that the swelling was a portent of some kind, a message from the outer darkness, an omen. (2) Outside, it was snowing. steadily, the complex flakes weaving an unintelligible pattern. If he were to put the light out then that other light, as alien as that from a dead planet, the light of the moon itself, would enter the room, a sick glare, an almost abstract light. It would light the pages of the Dante, which he needed now more than ever, it would cast over the poetry its hollow glare. (3).He opened the pages but they did not mean anything at all since all the time he was looking at the face. The dying person was slipping away from him. He was absorbed in her dying and he did not ‘understand what was happening. Dying was such an extraordinary thing, such’ a private affair. Sometimes he stretched ‘out his hand and she clutched it and he felt as if he were in a boat and she ‘were in the: dark water around it. And all the time the breathing was faster and faster as if something wanted to be away. _ ‘The brow was cold but the mouth still wanted water. The body was restlessly turning, now on one side, now on the other. It was” ‘steadily weakening. Something was at it, and it was weakening, A) In Thy Will is My Peace....'The words from Dante swam iito his mind. They seemed td swim out of the snow ‘which was teeming beyond the window. He imagined the universe of Dante “109 Scanned with CamScannerfelt cold and Whe a watch Uhe clock said five in the moming, He ee ls We light was beyinning to azure the windaw, The street mii Spy Of people and traffic, ‘Vhere was no one alwe sn th ba himeelt The lamps cast then plate over the street. They bronded over them own haloes all night. (5) When he looked again the whistling, was changyny, to a rattling, He held the cold hands in tn, locking, them, ‘Mhe head fell hack on the pillow, the mouth yaping, wide like the mouth of a handed fish, the eyes staring, irretrievably beyond him, The one- barred electric fire hummed in 4 corner of the room, a deep and raw red, His copy of Dante fell from his hand and lay on top of the red woolen up atthe side of the bed, stained with milk and soup. He reemed to be on a space ship hanging upside down and secing coming towards him another space ship, shaped like a medieval helmet in all that azure, On board the space ship there was at least one man encased in a black rubber suit, but he could not see the face, The man was busy cither with the rope which he would fling to him or with a gun which he might fire at him. ‘The figure seemed squat and alien like that of an Eskimo, (6) And all the while the window azured and the body was like a log, the mouth twisted where all the breath had left it. It lolled on one side of the pillow. Death was not dignified. A dead face showed the pain of its dying, what it had struggled through to become a log. He thought, weeping, this is the itretrievable center where there is no foliage and no metaphor. At this time, Poetry is powerless. The body looked up at him, blank as a stone, with a twisted mouth. It belonged to no one that he nad ever known. (7) The copy of Dante seemed to have fallen into an abyss. It was lying on the red rug. as if in a fire. Yet he himselt was so cold, and numb, Suddenly, he began to be. shaken by. tremors, though his face remained cold and without movement. ‘The alien azure light was growing steadily, mixed with the white glare of the snow. The 110 Scanned with CamScannery st window awas not a human landscape. Th i utside the window was no landscape body on thi was hot human bed was not hu es ®) 1 tears started to seep slowly from his eyes In ars sta f fi E ; ing a small golden watch which he had hand he ee holding wicking : up. He couldn't even hee picked up. He tou 4 ie mechanism, small and golden. He held it its ticking. It eee ha moment the tears, came, in the white ahd wp ‘ re. Through the tears he saw the watch and beyond it the by af Dante lying on the red rug and beyond that, again, the log which secmed unchanging though it would change, since everything : a And he knew that he himself would change although he could not think of it at that moment. He knew that he would change and the log would change and it was this which more than anything made him ery, to think of what the log had been once, a sutfcring body, a git! growing up and marrying and bearing children. It was so strange that the log had once worn dresses chequered like a draughtshoard, that it had called him into dinner, that it had been sleepless at nights thinking of the future. (10) So strange it was, so irretrievable that he was shaken as if by an earthquake — of pathos and pity. He could not bring himself to look at the Dante, he could only stare at the log as if expecting that it would move or speak but it did not. It was concerned only ~ itself. The twisted mouth as if still gasping for air made no promises and no concessions, : _ (II) Slowly as he sat there he was aware of a hammering coming from outside the window and aware also of blue lightning - flickering across the room. He had forgotten about the workshop. He walked over to the window and saw men with helmets bending over pure white flame, The blue flashes were cold and queer: “y came from another world, At the same time be he unintelligi ble shoutings from the people involved in “v4 visored head turning to look behind it. Beyon Wtsharp azure of the morning. And in front of it he saw the drifting, flakes of snow. He looked down at the Dante with his brursed face and felt the hammer blows slamming the lines together making a universe, holding a world together where people shouted out of a blue light. And he hammer seemed to be beating, the log into a ¥ase, into marble, into flowers made of bluc rock, iato the hardest of metaphors. Scanned with CamScanner