Read Online An End to Autumn by Iain Crichton Smith - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Iain Crichton Smith
Ads: Link
timidly the human face, lost in a world that it does not understand. How easy really it had all been, and how few understood how much it had cost him to sit where he was now sitting. And yet if one did not believe in religion was it any worse than going to a performance in a theatre, a willing surrender of disbelief? Or, if one considered the whole thing as a routine act, like having a weekly injection, why could one not bear it with a smile?
It seemed to him that when the minister entered, dignified in his black robes and carrying a bible in his hand, he was paying special attention to him, as if he were a hero who had done something magnificent and unique: and when he preached his sermon which was about the Parable of the Talents he felt that it was he himself, talented and sensitive, who was being referred to.
When the psalms were sung, he found himself back again in the world of his childhood, a word of settled order, which on the whole it had been. Nor was it the psalms alone that recalled that world. It was also the smell of varnish from the seats, the slight coughs of members of the congregation, the colour of the psalm books themselves. He thought of the world of the Bible as a secure aesthetic world, with shepherds watching their sheep on patches of sunny green, boats floating in water, stars shining in the sky, staffs and beards, skies of eternal blue above brown deserts. Yet at the same time he did not believe that this world represented any form of immortality, nor was the church itself anything other than a building of stone built by mortal hands. Nor did he believe that anyone had ever risen from the dead, nor in miraculous interventions. None of these was a truth to him, they were simply beautiful images, poetic and colourful, a vanished primitive world.
But he believed that his mother rested secure in that world. Her faith was simple, though it seemed to have little to do with her daily living. For instance at that moment she might be thinking, for all he knew, that she had won some sort of triumph over Vera, and this triumph perhaps was making her singing sweeter. Life was terrible, it was a truly terrible thing, and its issues beyond our understanding, for deeper even than religion was the terror and glory of the human mind. How could one live at all with people? How did people ever manage to live together, tugging and pulling, shouting silently, “I am, I am, listen to me, I am here. Pay attention to me. Love me without return, gratuitously, with utter constancy.”
When the service was over he walked among the congregation, was shaken hands with by the minister who recognised him (for he had a daughter in the school) and whose smile was as benignant as the sun. He introduced his mother to a friend of his who taught at the school and was an elder of the church, and in the after-service bustle felt about him a warmth which might have been false and meretricious, but was welcome just the same. It was clear to him that his mother was happy to be at his side: after all he was her son and he had a recognised place in the community. The desert was blossoming like the rose, he was showing charity and kindness, he was being what he ought to be, a man who loved his mother and who showed it before the world. He was successful in his own small way.
Side by side they walked to the car, their shoes rustling the gravel, while near them lay the graveyard with its tombs ordered and clean in the morning light. He could see flowers here and there, vases, open stone bibles, the glitter of granite from the gravestones, he could even hear a late autumnal bird twittering from the churchyard. How silent and pure that world was, the world of the dead, with its iron railings and mostly ancient stone. How clearly it told in its very dumbness of the continuity of life even in death, of ancestries that perpetuated themselves through centuries, for to this place the living came with their flowers and in turn others would bring
It seemed to him that when the minister entered, dignified in his black robes and carrying a bible in his hand, he was paying special attention to him, as if he were a hero who had done something magnificent and unique: and when he preached his sermon which was about the Parable of the Talents he felt that it was he himself, talented and sensitive, who was being referred to.
When the psalms were sung, he found himself back again in the world of his childhood, a word of settled order, which on the whole it had been. Nor was it the psalms alone that recalled that world. It was also the smell of varnish from the seats, the slight coughs of members of the congregation, the colour of the psalm books themselves. He thought of the world of the Bible as a secure aesthetic world, with shepherds watching their sheep on patches of sunny green, boats floating in water, stars shining in the sky, staffs and beards, skies of eternal blue above brown deserts. Yet at the same time he did not believe that this world represented any form of immortality, nor was the church itself anything other than a building of stone built by mortal hands. Nor did he believe that anyone had ever risen from the dead, nor in miraculous interventions. None of these was a truth to him, they were simply beautiful images, poetic and colourful, a vanished primitive world.
But he believed that his mother rested secure in that world. Her faith was simple, though it seemed to have little to do with her daily living. For instance at that moment she might be thinking, for all he knew, that she had won some sort of triumph over Vera, and this triumph perhaps was making her singing sweeter. Life was terrible, it was a truly terrible thing, and its issues beyond our understanding, for deeper even than religion was the terror and glory of the human mind. How could one live at all with people? How did people ever manage to live together, tugging and pulling, shouting silently, “I am, I am, listen to me, I am here. Pay attention to me. Love me without return, gratuitously, with utter constancy.”
When the service was over he walked among the congregation, was shaken hands with by the minister who recognised him (for he had a daughter in the school) and whose smile was as benignant as the sun. He introduced his mother to a friend of his who taught at the school and was an elder of the church, and in the after-service bustle felt about him a warmth which might have been false and meretricious, but was welcome just the same. It was clear to him that his mother was happy to be at his side: after all he was her son and he had a recognised place in the community. The desert was blossoming like the rose, he was showing charity and kindness, he was being what he ought to be, a man who loved his mother and who showed it before the world. He was successful in his own small way.
Side by side they walked to the car, their shoes rustling the gravel, while near them lay the graveyard with its tombs ordered and clean in the morning light. He could see flowers here and there, vases, open stone bibles, the glitter of granite from the gravestones, he could even hear a late autumnal bird twittering from the churchyard. How silent and pure that world was, the world of the dead, with its iron railings and mostly ancient stone. How clearly it told in its very dumbness of the continuity of life even in death, of ancestries that perpetuated themselves through centuries, for to this place the living came with their flowers and in turn others would bring
Similar Books
