An external sound made him look up. The minister stood on the sunlit path beyond the shadow of the porch watching him in an interested way. His buttoned-up black figure was as Thaw remembered, but smaller, and the face more kindly. He said, “They tell me you are not well.”
“I’m a lot better this morning, thanks.”
The minister stepped into the porch and looked at a drawing. “And who is this fellow?”
“Moses on Sinai.”
“What a wild wee man he looks among all that rock and thunder. So you are illustrating the bible.”
Thaw spoke tonelessly to keep the note of pride out of his voice. “No. I’m illustrating a lecture I’m to give to the school debating society. It’s called ‘A Personal View of History.’ The pictures will be enlarged onto a screen by epedaiescope.”
“And what place has Moses in your view of history?”
“He’s the first lawyer.”
The minister laughed and said, “In a sense, yes, no doubt, Duncan; but then again, in a sense, no. What’s this you are reading?” He picked up a thin book with a glossy cover.
“Professor Hoyle’s lectures on continuous creation.”
The minister sat down on a chair with his hands on the umbrella handle and his chin resting on his hands. “And what does Professor Hoyle tell us about the creation?”
“Well, most astronomers think all the material in the universe was once compressed in a single gigantic atom, which exploded, and all the stars and galaxies in the universe are bits of that old atom. You know that all the galaxies in the universe are rushing away from each other, don’t you?”
“I have heard rumours to that effect.”
“It’s more than rumour, Dr. McPhedron, it’s proved fact. Well, Professor Hoyle thinks all the material of the universe is made out of hydrogen, because the hydrogen atom is the simplest form of atom, and he thinks hydrogen atoms are continually coming into existence in the increasing spaces between the stars and forming new stars and galaxies and things.”
“Dear me, is that not miraculous! And you believe it?”
“Well, it isn’t definitely proved yet, but I like it better than the other theory. It’s more optimistic.”
“Why?”
“Well, if the first theory is true then one day the stars will burn out and the universe will be nothing but empty space and cold black lumps of rock. But if Professor Hoyle is right there will always be new stars to replace the dead ones.”
The minister said politely, “I am fortunate to be rescued from a dying universe at the moment of finding myself menaced by it.”
When Thaw had worked out what the minister meant he felt oppressed and angry. He said “Dr. McPhedron, you talk and— and smile as if everything I say is stupid. What do you believe in that makes you superior? Is it God?”
The minister said gravely, “I believe in God.”
“And that he’s good? And made everything? And loves what he made?”
“I believe those things too.”
“Well, why did he make baby cuckoos so that they can only live by killing baby thrushes? Where’s the love in that? Why did he make beasts that can only live by killing other beasts? Why did he give us appetites that we can only satisfy by hurting each other?”
The minister grinned and said, “Dear me. God himself might be afraid to sit an examination like this. However, I’ll do my best. You talk, Duncan, as if I believed that the world as it is is the work of God. That is not true. The world was made by God, and made beautiful. God gave it to man to look after and keep beautiful, and man gave it to the Devil. Since then the world has been the Devil’s province, and an annexe of Hell, and everyone born into it is damned. We have either to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow or steal it from our neighbours. In either case we live in a state of anxiety, and the more intelligent we are the more we feel our damnation and the more anxious we become. You, Duncan, are intelligent. Mibby you’ve been searching the world for a sign of God’s existence. If so, you have found nothing but evidence of his absence, or less, for the spirit ruling the material world is callous and malignant. The only proof that our Creator is good lies in our dissatisfaction with the world (for if the God of nature had made us the life of nature would suit us) and in the works and words of Jesus Christ, someone you may have read of. Has Christ a place in your view of history?”
“Yes,” said Thaw boldly. “I regard him as the first man to make a religion of the equal worth of each individual.”
“I’m glad you present him as something so respectable, but he’s more than that. He is the way, the truth and the life. To find God you must believe Christ
was
God and discard every other knowledge as useless and vain. Then you must pray for grace.”
Thaw shifted several times uncomfortably during this speech, for it embarrassed him; also, he was finding it hard to keep his eyes open. After a half minute of silence he realized a question was expected and said, “What’s grace?”
“The Kingdom of Heaven in your own heart. The sure knowledge that you are no longer damned. Freedom from anxiety. God does not send it to all believers, and to few believers for very long.”
“Do you mean that even if I become a Christian I can never be sure of … of …”
“Salvation. Dear me, no. God is not a reasonable man like your grocer or bank manager, giving an ounce of salvation for an ounce of belief. You can’t bargain with him. He offers no guarantee. I see I am boring you, Duncan, and I’m sorry for it, though I’ve said nothing that almost every Scotsman did not take for granted from the time of John Knox till two or three generations back, when folk started believing the world could be improved.”
Thaw held his head between his hands feeling depressed and dull. The minister’s answer was more thorough than he had expected and he felt trapped by it. Though certain there were many sound counter arguments, the only one he could think of was “What about the cuckoos?”
The minister looked puzzled.
“Why did God make cuckoos so that they have to live by killing thrushes? Did they give the world to the Devil too? Or did the thrushes?”
The minister got up and said, “The life of brute beasts, Duncan, is so different from ours that strong feelings for them are bound to be vanity and self-deception. Even your father the atheist would agree with me in that. I understand you will be here a week or two. Mibby we can discuss these matters another time. Meanwhile, I hope you have better health.”
“Thank you,” said Thaw. He pretended to scribble on a piece of paper till the minister had gone then folded his arms on the edge of the table and laid his head on them. He was very tired but if he lost consciousness for a moment the beast of suffocation might pounce on his chest, so he tried to rest without actually sleeping. This was difficult. He got up, collected his things and went slowly to bed.
That afternoon his memory of what is was like to be well faded and hope of improvement faded with it. The only imaginable future was a repetition of a present which had shrunk to a tiny painful act, a painful breath drawn again and again from an ocean of breath. No longer companioning erotic fancies (which, like the pills, had got useless through overuse) the sluggish resolute life of the garden grated on him as it grated on the soil feeding it. He felt the natural world stretching out from each wall of the hotel in great tracts of lumpy earth and rock coated thickly with
life
, a stuff whose parts renewed themselves by eating each other. Two or three hundred miles to the south was a groove in the earth with a gathering of stone and metal in it−Glasgow. In Glasgow he had been aided a little by a feeling that among many people someone might hear and help if he screamed loudly enough. But among these mountains screaming was useless; his pain was as irrelevant as the pain of the thrush starved out by the cuckoo, the snail crushed by the thrush. He started screaming but stopped at once. He tried to think but his thoughts were trapped by the minister’s speech. How could the world be justified except as punishment? Punishment for what?
That evening Miss Maclaglan phoned for a doctor. He entered Thaw’s room and sat by the bed, a not quite middle-aged man in plus fours with a black moustache and squarish head sunk so far into his shoulders that he seemed unable to move it independently of his body. He took Thaw’s pulse and temperature, asked how long he had been like this and grunted sombrely. Miss Maclaglan brought a pan of boiling water with a small metal cage clipped inside it. He took glass and metal parts from the cage, fitted them together into a hypodermic syringe, filled this from a rubber-capped bottle then asked Thaw to pull up his pyjama sleeve. Thaw stared at a corner of the ceiling, trying to think of nothing but a crack in it. He felt the muscle of his upper arm wiped with something cold and then the needle running in. The steel point breaking through layers of tissue set his teeth on edge. There was a faint ache as the muscle swelled with pumped-in fluid, then the needle was withdrawn and an amazing thing started to happen. There spread through his body from the arm, but this time unsustained by thought, the tingling liberating flood he had only been able to make erotically. Each nerve, muscle, joint and limb relaxed, his lungs expanded with sufficient air, he sneezed twice and lay back feeling altogether comfortable and well. There was no sense of asthma waiting to return. He could not believe he would ever be unwell again. He looked out into the sun-warm garden. An overgrown rosebush beside the pond had put out white blossoms, and the black dot of a bee moved over one. Surely the bee was enjoying itself? Surely the bush grew because it liked to grow? Everything in the garden seemed to have grown to its appropriate height and now rested a moment, preserved in the amber light of the evening sun. The garden looked
healthy
. Thaw turned with servile gratitude to the ordinary depressed-looking man who had made this change in things. The doctor was examining books and drawings on the bedside table and frowning slightly. He said, “Any better?”. “Yes, thanks. Thanks a lot. I’m a lot better. I can sleep now.”
“Mm. I suppose you know that your kind of asthma is partly a psychological illness.”
“Yes.”
“You do a lot of reading, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you abuse yourself?”
“Certainly, if I’ve been stupid in public.”
“No no. I mean, do you masturbate?”
Thaw’s face went red. He stared down at the quilt.
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Four or five times a week.”
“Mm. That’s quite often. It’s not widely agreed upon yet, but there is evidence that nervous diseases are aggravated by masturbation. The inmates of lunatic asylums, for instance, masturbate very often indeed. I would try to cut it out if I were you.”
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
“Here’s a bottle of isoprenaline tablets. If you get bad again, break one in two and let half dissolve under your tongue. I think you’ll find it’ll help.”
Thaw was left feeling faintly worried, but fell asleep almost at once.
He woke late at night and worse than ever. The isoprenaline tablets had no effect and the image of June Haig occurred to him, potent and burning like a hot poker in the blood of his stomach. He thought, ‘If only I think things about her it will be all right. I don’t need to masturbate.’ He thought things about her and masturbated ten minutes later. The beast of suffocation pounced at once. He clenched his fists against his chest and dragged breath into it with a gargling sound. Fear became panic and broke his mind into a string of gibbering half-thoughts that would not form: I can’t you are I won’t it does it will drowning no no no no drowning in no no no no air I can’t you are it does….
A thundering hum filled his brain. He was about to faint when a sudden thought formed complete—
If I deserve this it is good
—and around the thought his mind began exultingly to reassemble. He grinned into the bulb of the bedside lamp. He was in pain, but not afraid. Breathing hoarsely, he took a notebook and pen from the bedside table and wrote in big shapeless words:
Lord God you exist you exist my punishment proves it. My punishment is not more than I can bear what I suffer is just already the pain is less because I know it is just I won ‘t ever do that thing again, it will be a hard fight but with your help I am able for it I won’t ever do that thing again
.
Next day he did it three times. Miss Maclaglan sent a telegram to his mother, who came north by bus the day after. She stood by the bed and smiled sadly down at him. “So you’re not too well, son.”
He smiled back.
“Ach,” she said, “You’re a poor auld man. Get a bit better and I’ll stay on with you awhile. It’ll be an excuse for me to have a holiday too.”
He was moved to a big low-ceilinged room with two beds in it. One was his, and Ruth and his mother shared the other.
That night when the lights were out Ruth said, “Sing to us, Mummy. It’s a long time since you sang to us.”
Mrs. Thaw sang some lullabies and sentimental lowland songs:
Ca ‘the Yowes, Hush
-
a
-
baw Birdie, This is No’ My Plaid
. She had once won certificates at musical festivals with her singing, but now she only managed the high notes by singing them very softly, almost in a whisper. She tried to sing
Bonnie
George Campbell
, which starts with a loud wild lamenting note, but her voice cracked and went tuneless and she stopped and laughed: “Ach, it’s beyond me now. I’m getting an auld woman.”
“No! you’re not!” Thaw and Ruth shouted together. Her words alarmed them. She said, “I think we should try to sleep.” He lay against his pillows breathing heavily. When he coughed Mrs. Thaw said hopefully, “That’s right son, bring it up,” and afterward, “There now, that’s better, isn’t it?”
But he had brought up hardly anything, and nothing was better, and the sense of her lying awake attending to the pains in his chest made them harder to bear. He tried to be as still as possible, keeping the small lumps in his gullet until the silence from the other bed made him think she was asleep, but as soon as he coughed, however stealthily, the creak of a mattress told him she was awake and listening.