A Book of Death and Fish (20 page)
Read A Book of Death and Fish Online
Authors: Ian Stephen
Another letter, fat in the envelope. Pale blue squares on flecked off-white with red ink, weak now. It’s difficult not to change the phrasing, just reproduce the handwritten words, in type.
My dear Peter,
I’ve handed in my notice. Don’t get anxious. It’s nothing final. The city of Köln will give me a year’s leave of absence. As a lecturer in literature I am a civil servant with terms of employment that includes the chance to take a sabbatical. It is also a time to think. I do not know if I really want to be a teacher, for life. I have the feeling that my own research in literature is not complete. To be specific, I feel that your Ms Austen has been accepted as a feminist icon without careful scrutiny of the work. Her status is secure in Germany as well as in Great Britain (I know not to say England) but I do not think enough attention has been paid to the study of how she achieves her results. I think she uses language the way a careful surgeon might use a scalpel. I must confess I have never witnessed an operation. I also think of my father working at a drawing board. There is a delicate balance, achieved by a system of suspended weights. There is a need for precision. I think also of my father’s way of lifting his glasses and rubbing his eyebows.
Do you think that a careful author is a bit like an architect? She imagines buildings and gardens and draws them but the reader has her own pictures in her mind. Jane Austen draws and describes to provide a clear perception of the people who move in the buildings she has created – the structures she has imagined. But then there is something in her tone of voice. It is as if she can step aside and rub her glasses and let her characters say what they must say.
Your mother is very kind to invite me again but of course I worry about being a German person in Britain. It is not so many years and people still remember what it was like in the war. I think most families have lost someone.
I have enough savings to rent a room and this will also be good for my spoken English. But I do hope Peter that we will be able to spend time together. I hope we can spend long enough to know how our friendship might develop. What it is and what it might become.
Yes, history is certainly complex but our generation knows all too well there are some black and white issues. The generation of my mother and father kept their heads down and so the Nazis knew they would not be challenged.
I have to stop writing now. Please know I am thinking of you Peter. Please write and cheer me up,
Love, Gabriele
The olaid always says she wants it in black and white. That goes for an estimate from the plumber or a politician’s promise. I got the chance she never had, nor her husband either. I went to the college of knowledge and found that truth seems to come between the lines of different accounts. Something in Gabriele’s letter set me thinking. I always seem to be returning to the years when we settled back on the Island. That’s when I really got into history, in reaction to a guy who said it was just another subject to tick off on the score sheet. Maybe that reaction was part of the cynical bastard’s intention.
None of you have any interest in history. I know this. Please don’t bother to argue. It’s unlikely to be a problem. You are all here because you wish to pass Higher History at the best grade possible. Some of you will need the grade so you will be accepted for a university or college course. Your reasons for being in this class are not really my main concern. I can help you to achieve the passes you are capable of but only if we understand one another.
Some of you are diligent workers, some of you are lazy. You are all capable of achieving a good pass in Higher Grade History if you pay attention and are willing to put in a moderate amount of work into learning and arranging some information. I will be showing you some techniques for passing this exam. I will attempt to minimise the amount of time necessary to achieve a good result. With your agreement, ladies and gentlemen of the fifth year, we will start now.
When I write on the board, it will be necessary for you to take notes. Let’s take the example of the French Revolution.
Please copy this.
Standard Introduction Number One
• The Revolution which took place in France in 1789 had several underlying causes. A strong case can be made out for ……… being the main cause.
(Select any one of the Causes and insert in the blank.)
Causes of the French Revolution – see handout A.
Change of Argument Number One
• However, many other causes also played a significant role.
(List remaining causes from handout A. Take care not to repeat the one previously chosen as the main cause.)
Conclusion Number One
• In balance it would appear that ……… was the fundamental cause.
(Choose one cause at your own discretion. If possible, give a sensible reason for your choice.)
The more intelligent of you here may be aware that it would be a little repetitive if the examiner had to read through twenty-eight identical answers. Therefore in the following weeks I will be providing you with Standard Introductions Two to Four; Changes of Argument Two to Four and a choice of four phrases to introduce your conclusion. We will then move on to apply the same approach to such questions as Constitutional Reform in Britain and the Causes of the First World War.
When we are approaching the Higher Prelims in January, I will be providing you with assessments of the probability of each particular topic occurring as a question, based on the frequency of its appearance in the past five years. We cannot of course be absolutely certain of all but a few questions appearing. Therefore I am sure you will agree it is prudent to cover a few eventualities.
Now, can I have four volunteers to distribute these handouts?
He was always dressed like a bank manager. Decent dark suit but not at all flashy. Shone shoes and slicked hair. That’s back in fashion again (some histories do seem to go in cycles) but they call it gel now. He moved
quietly about the room. Never seemed either slow or in a hurry. It was like the cove had Brylcreem under his shoes as well and he was gliding. I don’t remember him losing the rag or shouting or anything. He’d have been good in wartime. Great organisational skills and he was an effective communicator.
In 1972 we wrote how the incident at Sarajevo was only the spark which caused the inevitable conflagration of the First World War. The war would probably have happened without it, unless you chose another cause to front the list, if you forgot that one, under pressure. So all these boys from Griomsiadair or Rügen would have gone away to war anyway. Archduke or not. Maybe.
The timing mattered a bit though. If the spark had come from the late race to carve up what was left of Africa, maybe the war would have started later. Finished later. So it might not have been in the early hours of the 1st of January 1919 when the Lewis boys were coming home. The Naval contingent channelled on to His Majesty’s Yacht
Iolaire
. And it wouldn’t have been the exact combination of contributory causes which had her strike the Beasts of Holm. And my grandfather wouldn’t have been lost, a cable or two from the home island shore.
He wasn’t the only one who could have taken the helm that night. Most of the uniformed passengers would have recognised the lee shore. And he wasn’t the only one who failed to arrive for the big New Year homecoming. A change of clothes would have been waiting on a chair, in Griomsiadair or Garyvard, Aird Point, Aird Uig, Bays of Harris. Over two hundred changes of clothes put away again when the news came through. So even the next generation didn’t speak of it.
Not for a long time. And my olman never did, not in detail, at least not to me. He wrote it down though. Can’t say for sure when. Have a feeling it couldn’t have been that long before he died. He was a good talker but he never wrote verse. Only that one poem titled
Iolaire
. It didn’t rhyme but it had to be metrical. That degree of feeling needs a form.
So that’s history. Causes of this, causes of that. People’s pasts. Some memories you can substantiate, others you can’t. The olman’s stories. Andra’s. Told often enough to become set pieces. Vernacular but formal.
Convincing yourself the Second World War was all about what you managed to cook and eat in tricky circumstances. But if he’d been given a bit more time, my olman might have told us how he’d at last squared up to the death of his own father. He’d written it down for himself. Another brave one. This piece of writing was not in the drawer in the weaving shed. It was in Ruaraidh’s house. I never thought the brothers had very much in common but maybe that was my olman trying to share something. Ruaraidh gave it back to me, when it looked like I might be settling into the Coastguard Service.
HM YACHT
IOLAIRE
(formerly
AMALTHEA
)
Wrecked on The Beasts of Holm, Approaches to Stornoway,
1st January, 1919: 205 lives lost
‘The tide now, rising or falling?’
‘I think she’s rising.’
‘Aye, well, that’s it then.’
Conglomerate backs
exposed then awash
with the pulse of each
individual surf.
The night of the killing wind.
Sure as shrapnel.
The grounded decking
now shedding
sailors like waters.
Numbered reservists;
Hands and ABs;
a Petty Officer;
Cooper 2nd Class;
Signalman; Gunner.
Slipping or jumping.
The shivering souls
are now the same rank.
Sometimes engaging
hard shoals.
Sometimes sliding
a way through
a choking gap
of troubled mudflats.
One man jumped
from the wreck to the surf,
towing a light line.
He was knocked back under
the pretty counter.
He’d have to find breath
and come in on a wave.
The few on the shore
dragged him and his rope,
hauled on a heavy one,
a thick hemp hawser,
ship to shore. But
‘…all who tried did not manage to hold on.’
1
The sodden lifeline
stretching out from
broached iron.
Bitter hands held
these three strands.
Late carts spilling
useless apparatus
on stony fields.
Three shapes hanging
on stretching tendons
to an arrow-shaft from
a broken-backed yacht
with the name of an eagle.
Two slipped to seas.
One held through dark
swept by spray and
the timed light
of irrelevant Arnish.
All the dials
around an island
seized at sunrise.
And soon the lot
was offered for sale:
pukka Burma teak;
Admiralty brass;
unrecovered sons.
1
From a witness at the Court of Inquiry
We only went as far as the Causes of the First World War at Higher level. Causes of the Second World War – that was a sixth-year job. In our fifth year, when we were schooled in arranging causes of events, Kurt Waldheim replaced U Thant as Secretary-General of the UN. Which body of course has prevented all subsequent wars with a few minor exceptions, for example, Korea, Aden, Vietnam, Uganda and Ireland. (Random sample from a definitive list we never got, of wars since 1945, not run off from a master stencil to paper sweet with the smell of solvent, from a Gestetner machine.)
The Waldheim cove is another guy who had one hell of a yarn to tell. But he was never mentioned in our history class. He’s another one who had to tell his own story so often it became quite tidy. Kurt had been a corporal in the Austrian army. Thus he was drafted by the Nazis. There were no choices. He’d become a lieutenant, wounded on the Eastern Front. So he was back home early, he said. Often. As long as he was Secretary-General of the United Nations, he could get away with that. But once he stood for power, at home, he was in trouble.
It so happened that some of the facts were trapped in written records by an obsessive Nazi bureaucracy. He said he was just another soldier following orders. He kept buoyant, afloat on his own story for long enough. But his time was coming. His signature was on too many orders, carrying out too many deportations, or worse.
One more of these letters – handwritten in that ink on that paper, but I’ve typed it up.
My very dear Peter,
Thank you for your last long letter. For me too, the visit was something big. Too short. Our relationship is something different now. Your typing is getting very good. Perhaps I can employ you to type my thesis. It is going to be a lot of work but it looks as if it may be accepted towards a Masters. They do not yet call a degree a Mistress of Literature (or Letters) even though my subject might well be a close look at the language used by ‘The Mistress Of Irony’. So maybe you will be my sexy secretary and sit on my knee. My body is back to being bony again, so it might not be comfortable. No, I have not gone back to smoking. I have joined the rowing club. We meet every other day, after school. We are all quite serious. Perhaps that is what you would expect.
I like the way you describe your schooling. Your teachers. The history you were taught and the history you were not. I’m glad you didn’t try to steal the Stone of Destiny back when you were twelve years old. We should make a film about it in the style of
Whisky Galore
.
You did make me laugh when you said how you found your strict lady schoolteachers sexy. Very, very British. I did not know the Scots were like that too – I thought only English public schoolboys. But I will make you a promise now, Peter MacAulay. You will never persuade me to dress up for you in any way. You must take me as I am or not at all. But so far I
must say you do seem to be just a little excited by a bare naked woman. Even if she is not blonde and does not have big breasts like in the
Carry On
films. Do you think I could pass a test on British culture? Have you thought about corresponding with a French woman? I think they like dressing up a bit more.
But I hope you don’t dare. Will you teach me to catch fish if I teach you to sail? Can we make a handshake on that. Very British again. See – I am learning.
To be more serious, your letter reminded me of a schoolteacher, here in Germany. He is probably still alive. He might even still be teaching. I hope not. I cannot write like Ms Austen but I will try to describe him.
This man always wore a brown tracksuit. It had a metal zip and tight cuffs. It looked like wool or cotton, something like that, from an older time, not nylon. Already everyone was wearing modern materials, polyester and strong colours, blues or reds. This tracksuit reminded me of something I’d seen before, in films. You could not be certain of the time exactly. He wore it every season, every year. Perhaps he had many suits, all the same, like a uniform. All teachers were expected to help at Sports Day. When he stood beside the older pupils you realised how small he was. He seemed to be very fit for his age, with a build like my own. I’m not exactly fat now but you know I was very thin when I was younger. Then I grew up so fast and became tall and awkward. He had hair like a crew-cut in old American films.
He introduced himself as Maskulinski. The word for masculine is a bit different in German -
Maskulinum
- and you would say
männlich
for ‘manly’. So it wasn’t so obvious at first. But he told us, when we were doing Latin, we would realise what his name really meant.
The boys would get him talking about motorbikes. That was a guaranteed break from genes and chromosomes. A machine would last if it was well maintained. That meant you needed a system, a schedule with nothing left to chance. Lubrication was the most important element so metal would not wear against metal. He kept saying, ‘
Ich und meine Maschine.
’ It was hard not to giggle. Even at our age, it was obvious. What do you say – a penis-extension? But he could not see that himself.
He said, if you could dismantle and reassemble a machine, it could be immortal. Some parts would wear out but you could seek replacements. If you could not find the parts but were strong in your resolve, you could make them. Usually you only needed access to a lathe.
Did we know that the speed of nearly 280 kilometres per hour, on a 500cc BMW in 1937, set a world record that stood for fourteen years? He was very proud of this as if he had built the bike or driven it himself. Did we know that the shaft-drive system was so successful in difficult conditions that these machines could continue operating in the desert. Even the harsh North African desert. These were great days for German industry.
He must have said that so often that the figures became ingrained, the way you might remember a telephone number. The way I’ve heard you quote the weight of a salmon caught by a lady on the River Tay. You could tell me her name and the river. Maybe even the date, as well as the pounds and ounces. We could see him out, a few kilometres ride from the town, if the weather was good. He would gather samples, plants and flowers. So we would watch him go past. We could see the shining chrome and black leather of the BMW. It was an old model, with polished badges. He wore high motorcycle boots but he carried a selection of flowers and grasses tied to the rack behind him.
He taught geography as well as biology. He would describe constellations and say they could be seen as bodies relating to each other. He’d pick someone with a brown jersey – the Earth. If you wore a red top you would have to represent the sun. Whoever was left, wearing a contrasting colour – they would be the moon of course. He’d have you out in front of the class and arrange you, pulling you about so your relative positions would relate to the seasons. He would be passionate, arranging and explaining. He would hold tight to your jersey.
When we did genetics, everything would happen between black, longhaired rabbits and white short-haired ones. So, with black people, negative attributes were dominant, he said. It was a long-term process but good white attributes would disappear. Think of all that tight curly hair, girls, he would say. And he would turn up his nose, make a bad face.
We would pretend to be confused and say how we could not see what was wrong with tight curly hair. Think of Art Garfunkel, we would say, quite cute sir, don’t you think? And why exactly were black attributes negative? I do not quite understand, sir. Can you explain?
He would reply that we girls were to be careful. And it was not only black people. We were not to get involved with any Turkish men. Turks were only interested in one-night stands. It was not worth it. We would ruin our lives.
We asked him if he had been a soldier. Yes, he replied. But he would not give us any details. I think I heard him say once that it was the strong men in slight frames who survived.
When I think of him in the classroom I still shiver. And I can still see him now, on Sports Day, in that old brown tracksuit. But he was a different man when you saw him out on that beautiful bike, with its quiet and controlled roar. He would be riding like a king or queen, down the roads beside the farms with his floral arrangement, like a passenger, behind him.
Well, Peter, that was a surprise for me. All these words coming out. I hope I can still fit this letter in the envelope. It will have to go surface. But I am happy with our trade. Please write another of your strange letters. I like them.
Hugs and kisses, Gabriele
