James Kelman - If it is your life

I had stuff at home but it was for emergencies only; basics, old stuff. Even socks. My parents would loan me money, just give me it. If I asked. I would not ask. I would just sell something or else the pawnshop. They would laugh. Mum would be glad it was nothing worse. I would not tell them.

Except my essays and the books, library books, and where would I get them again.

I was at the top of the lane, and stopped. It was the second time I had reached here. I turned to stare back along, silence all the way, just nothing. I had to retrace my steps again. I did not want to, not again. But I had to. Although nothing would be there. My backpack was gone and the guy that took it, and the woman, if ever there was a woman, or just my ears playing tricks.

What else, but I just had to, just go back along the lane, that was all I could do because what if I saw it, it might be waiting for me right at the very end, I might see its shape, just sitting there waiting for me. How could I have missed it! How ever could I have missed it? It would be the strangest strangest experience ever and I would just get it up onto my shoulders and rush fast to get home, oh jeesoh, jeesoh, I so wanted home.

At this stage, when things appeared to be running smoothly, his transgression surprised me. Upon reflection it was no more and no less than I should have anticipated. His life may have been seen as one to emulate, to strive after or towards, but it was far from commendable. I knew that. He had not lived a perfect life. My friends respected him; young men like ourselves. It is safe to say that.

A companion of ours, a musician, did not survive though his existence exhausted itself in a similar way. When we three were together and smiling on how things had been, partly it was relief that we had survived at all. None among us pretended, none among us was the hypocrite.

In the ordinary ethical sense we had not lived just lives but nor had we pretensions toward the religious or theological sense of other existences, nor of existences yet to come. For myself I had no intentions of accepting a second existence. I grew weary of Lives to Come, a Life to Come, that Life to Come. As with our former friend I was one of many, content that those who follow should wield the baton.

Universals do not exist. There is no ethic, no code of morality, no moral sense at the inner depth of our being. From an early period I too was aware that the sensibility is unaffected by the violence or abuses perpetrated by one on another, even if the one is close to us. Yet I was perceived as ruthless. So too was our former friend. But did he fully understand what ruthlessness might amount to? Perhaps he did. When his grandfather died he rowed the boat that carried his ashes. His father and younger brother were seated at the stern. His younger brother unscrewed the receptacle and emptied the ashes midway across. His father could have stopped him. The following is hearsay, that he too could have stopped him.

I was not an artist and not a schoolteacher, I had never been a schoolteacher. People thought I was. That was a peculiar misjudgement. ‘Misjudgement’ was the word.

I was observing, even as I thought in this self-conscious, deliberately reflective manner, and the subject of my observation was the world about me. Here beyond the window, far below at ground level the rubbish piled high and overflowing although the rubbish men had come two days ago. What the hell had they been doing? All they did was stand there gabbing and sharing a smoke. Probably a joint; they pretended it was tobacco in case the rubbish police were spying from windows. I wanted to shout at them. It made me angry. Was that the way to do a job? Okay if it was a middle-class rural piece of suburbia but this was a slum man, a slum, s l u bloody m. Ordinary working-class people, these were brothers and sisters. We dont shit on them for heaven sake. So no wonder I got angry, living round here. It was just important. I thought so anyway, if no one else did. Lindsey did. Lindsey was shocked; truly she was. This was her first time in the city and the idea of bringing a baby up in such a place, my God. Where do the children go to play?

The same place they went when I was a kid.

Oh dont give me that, she said.

Give you what? I wasnt giving her a thing. It was true. All I did was tell her. If she chose to not believe me or to be annoyed by it, or be irritated; whatever, it was up to her. She accused me of being lev — lev — lev something. What the hell was the word! Levaticus? That was the name of a biblical character. Leviticus. She couldnt have accused me of being a biblical character? Or could she? It depended on her mood.

But it was no laughing matter.

People did not believe in laughs and she was no different. Neither was I. Laughs laugh laughter. I didnt believe in laughs either. That is why I returned to Glasgow, when any sane individual would have remained elsewhere, excluding Scotland obviously, if one might distinguish between the two, as most folk do.

The backcourts, backstreets, back alleys, the shadowy lanes nearby the river, derelict warehouses with caved-in roofs, broken glass and old iron, and weeds, and people; people who might be anything, dangerous, anything. That is where the children played, so what was new in that? Kids survive.

It wasnt my decision. I would have stayed south. I kept that to myself. Lindsey would have jumped down me throat, be entitled to jump down me throat.

Hoh hum.

Black soot ingrained brick buildings.

Black soot ingrained brick buildings, sandstone bricks, forming a rectangle. For every two entrance ways there was a midden containing three large metal containers inside of which piled black polybags full of rubbish and shite, shite. The containers should have been emptied weekly. They were not.

I would to have drawn them.

I adjusted the stub of charcoal between my fingers, my pinkie and ringfinger ached. The charcoal was finished and these two were the fingers that had the most work to do, thankless work. I should have thrown the stub away. If I hadnt paused to perform the adjustment the ache in my fingers would have gone unnoticed. A proper artist wouldnt have noticed. He would have been too engrossed. I was not a proper artist. I engaged in pastimes; this was one such.

When was soot anything other than black? It was always black. Soot was soot. No wonder I was having the difficulty. How do you draw soot you do not draw soot, who could draw soot, no one could do it, ever do it, they would never succeed.

Wait. Soot could be brown, soot could be purple. Soot need not be black, black grey. How do real artists manage? They just plunge in and try, they do not ask first; what colour is such and such; they just jumped in and did what it was, in front of their eyes, their eyes, theirs and nobody else, it lay in front of their eyes. What lay in front of their eyes? Whatever, what it was, whatever it was, and if it was green it was green, and why should it not be green, if soot is green it is green, fucking green!

I looked at the drawing, then out the window. A pigeon. One of the tenements lay derelict and a commune of pigeons had taken over the top flat. One landed exactly then, wings barely flapping. They flew in and out the broken windows, lined the juncture of the roof and on the chimneypots, digging their beaks into the moss-covered slates. Imagine worms on the roof. And hopeless-looking birds, but not in flight. The bigger the bird the more graceful it was, leaving aside pelicans. What was the wee fat bird that nests on these break-neck cliffs overlooking the sea? Not terns.

That was you getting old when your memory went. My uncle said it. Once the memory goes it becomes a downward spiral. They fly ten thousand miles without a break. Wee fat birds that the old St Kildans used to eat. These men climbed up incredible cliff faces in their bare feet because maybe only their big toe could find a grip. They had feet like shovels, with webbed toes, evolved from a thousand years of climbing. More. When had the first humans come to the island? Probably chased there five thousand years ago, same period as the Skara Brae settlers in Orkney.