The Black Halo (53 page)

And then one fatal day he passed by design the room which the senior girls were allowed to use during their free time. Perhaps he thought that he would catch a glimpse of her whom he loved
through the half-open door. In front of him he could see the cracked mirror in which the girls studied their own reflections, and there standing in front of it was another girl, not Thelma, but
someone else. Who? What was her name? Muriel? And Muriel, with coat flying about her as if it were a gown was parading in front of the mirror and saying,

‘And now Thelma my dearest love,
carus cara carum
, will you please tell me what Vergil meant by these famous words which he once spoke when having a solitary pee in Italy. Will
you please tell me that, my dearest Thelma?’

He couldn’t see her face in the mirror because the glass was cracked and she for the same reason could not see him. Her capped head flashed and flickered, and her gown swung and floated.
And from behind her, though he could see no one, he heard the happy clear laughter of Thelma, as if she were delighted with the performance which spotty-faced Muriel was giving. He stood
transfixed. He . . . He could not go in, he would not give them that pleasure, he was too proud, too dignified for that. But if ever a heart . . . if ever a heart was broken it was his. Dazed he
stood, the pain piercing his soul, and listened to the happy laughter as if it were coming to him from the depths of hell itself, from that inferno in which Vergil and Dante had travelled. His legs
shook, his face was on fire. What a fool he had been, what an old fool. To think that he had ever credited that girl with any delicacy of feeling, to think that he had thought she would walk with
him through these shining pages, so resonant with power and pathos. No, it was impossible. Never again, never, never again. Never again would he give his heart to anyone in order to endure such
mockery. Muriel disported herself in front of the cracked mirror of that poky room and there just outside it, a frail eavesdropper, Mr Trill died.

And thus it was that when the pupils came to say goodbye to him he wasn’t available: he had as he had written on the board been asked to take part in an urgent meeting. In fact he was
standing alone in the library watching them leave the school for the last time, now and again turning back to look, and waving their scarves in the air, as they entered the street on which people
talked and walked, and passed the shops in which the transactions of the world were carried out. Mr Trill hardened his heart forever and put on his Roman shield, while at the same time he read that
poem of Catullus in which he says goodbye to his brother and which ends,

Et in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

In his wanderings, still carrying his case as if he were a clerk in a dimly lit office, Mr Trill had come to the banks of the river again but at a different point from that at
which he had landed. It flowed sluggishly along through the pervading mist and beyond it Mr Trill could see the vague mass of the castle about which he had previously been told. It seemed to him
that he could hear from the thin mist the baying of hounds.

‘Strange,’ said a voice from behind him and when Mr Trill turned round in a startled manner he saw a little man with a wrinkled puzzled brow who was gazing at him with dull eyes.

‘No one knows what goes on in there,’ said the man. ‘I’ve often stood here and wondered. Some people go into that castle and they never come out again. I’ve seen it
happening.’ And he nodded his head wisely two or three times.

‘That’s odd,’ said Mr Trill.

‘It is indeed,’ said the little man speaking rapidly like one who wishes to convince his audience of an important idea.

‘I have a natural turn of curiosity myself, my wife often used to speak to me about it, and I have often stood here wondering what is going on over there. I have seen people being ferried
across to the castle and for a moment when they land the hounds seem to stop barking and there is silence but the people never come back. Not once have I seen any of them returning.’

Mr Trill found it hard to place the man’s accent; it was as if he was pretending to be more educated than he really was. His mind, attracted by puzzles – every morning in the
staff-room he had been in the habit of filling in a newspaper crossword – brooded vaguely on the castle. Was there some secret connected with it? Did some terrible fate belong to it, some
obscene tortures? Was there even in Hades a group of people who managed the shadowy territory as if it were a real empire.

And if so who were these people and why were they never seen?

‘Some people say,’ said the little man as if he had understood Mr Trill’s thought, ‘that men’s brains are taken out of their heads and stored in the cellars
there.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr Trill shivering.

‘But most of us just want to stay here,’ said the little man sadly. ‘We suffered enough while we were on earth.’

‘That’s true,’ said Mr Trill. ‘I can understand that and one could be happy enough in this place – even in this place.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said the little man. ‘However, perhaps you are different. Perhaps you are an adventurer and wish to see what is going on on the other side.’

‘Not me,’ said Mr Trill. ‘I have suffered enough too and in any case there is more than enough here to puzzle me without looking for more.’

‘Every man to his nature,’ said the little man. ‘For myself I have always been of an inquisitive nature and I spend a lot of my time here on the bank of the river thinking and
wondering what is happening in the castle. But that is the way I am,’ he said proudly. ‘Not everyone is like that.’

He brooded for a moment and continued, ‘Anyway, I’m not important. I was never important. There were millions like me when I was alive. But I always had this curiosity. When my
fellow workmen were content to accept orders I would wonder if they were the right orders, do you understand me, and why they were being given. And many times I thought I could have done a better
job myself.’

‘I can appreciate that,’ said Mr Trill absently.

‘You are saying that but you are not listening to me much,’ said the little man in a resigned voice. ‘I understand that and I’m used to it. No one ever listened to me. I
used to sit and people would talk around me and it was as if I wasn’t there. This place now is full of gods and goddesses. But have you ever thought how hard it is for people like me to get
up in the morning?’ And he fixed Mr Trill with his dull eyes. ‘There is nothing ahead of them, no glory, nothing like that. All they have is their work. Famous people have great events
to look forward to. They have parties, and they get invited to dinners, but nothing like that ever happened to me. Our wives despise us because nothing important happens to them through us. And
women like to be noticed, they like to dress up, to speak to important people.’

As he spoke the man seemed to become smaller and smaller, almost diminishing to the size of a dwarf, and Mr Trill thought that even his colour was changing as if from white to brown or even
black. His brow too was wreathed with wrinkles which looked like tiny snakes.

‘I can tell that you once were a man of importance,’ said the little man. ‘It’s in the way you walk, the way you speak. But I never had any power. Sometimes when the day
was stormy I didn’t want to get up from my bed. I had to force myself to put my feet on the floor. My sons and daughters despised me, for I wasn’t famous in any way. No one saluted me
when I passed them on the street. In shops I was served last because even the shop assistants knew that I wasn’t important. And if I tried to kick up a row they wouldn’t listen to me,
they ignored me as if I wasn’t there. And sometimes I could hardly hear my own voice. Policemen pushed me aside and charged me with offences because I had no one to protect me. They would
rough me up and then let me free and not even apologise. That happened to me once, it was a case of mistaken identity but the cops just said, “Don’t you show your face here again, you
little bastard.” “And what about my scars,” I said, “what about my black eye.” “Your black arse more like. Clear off or we’ll mark you for life.” But
of course they don’t do that, they use rubber truncheons so they don’t mark you. Why, even my wife didn’t meet me off the ferry because she was ashamed of me. No one loved me all
the days of my life. Can you understand what I’m telling you?’ said the little man, who had almost become a hunchback in the dim light. ‘All I saw of the world was my bench and my
tools. And if I had an idea someone else would take the credit for it. Oh, they spoke nice to you but they took the credit just the same. If I told a joke I always got the story wrong because of
nervousness and no one could get the point of it. I was always flustered and I spoke too fast and so no one bothered with me. Even you aren’t listening to me properly. You are saying to
yourself, Why doesn’t this fellow stop speaking? What is he on about? But I have thoughts of my own too and I’m not stupid. I was a good carpenter in my day, I have my certificate.
There are a lot of the young ones now who don’t have a certificate and couldn’t care less, but I cared. I liked to make a piece of good furniture. Understand me? Are you listening? I
took pride in my work but the others don’t do that. Why I’ve seen them putting nails, would you believe it, in mahogany instead of joints. And have you seen their tables and their
chairs? A dog wouldn’t sit on them. And they talk and people listen to them, that’s what I can’t understand. They don’t care about anything but they are listened to just the
same. Even my wife didn’t listen to me. Perhaps you’ve never had that experience. Perhaps you were never married. You don’t look as if you were married. Oh, I notice things and I
said to myself, as soon as I saw you, I don’t think this fellow is married.

‘Even my children laughed at me and because I was so small they would beat me up to get money for the gambling machines. When they grew up and were earning a wage they never gave me any of
it; they would say, “We didn’t ask to be born.” They expected their food and lodging as if they had a right to it. And what about me I used to say to them, “Do you think I
wasn’t born?” They blamed me for their lives, for bringing them into the world. I was tortured by them, they made fun of me, they imitated me.

‘My children and my wife despised me. What was there for me? Many a time I thought of killing myself but the good God has told us not to do that. And anyway I never had the courage. Do you
know what the difference between the rich and the poor is? I’ve thought about it a lot and even more since I came here. The rich have a future, do you understand me, and the poor don’t
have a future. There was a star I used to watch in the sky in the morning before I went to work. It might have been Venus, I don’t know. It was as sharp as a thorn. I used to hate that star
and yet I looked for it every morning when I got out of my bed.

‘Even when I died my family scrambled for the few things that I had. Do you know that they broke the joint of my finger to get my ring. See, I can show it to you.’

And he showed Mr Trill his broken finger as if it were a trophy. ‘And they bought the cheapest coffin they could find. I knew about good wood and I knew it was cheap. But they didn’t
care. And how many were at my funeral? I can tell you. Six. My wife didn’t come. She pretended she was too sick. Imagine that.

‘Every day that passed was like every other day, except that some days if I had nerve enough I got drunk. But then my wife would shout and scream at me and say to me, “How do you
expect me to pay for the hairdresser if you’re going to be as drunk as a pig?” You tell me that. She was like a knife in my side. She didn’t just want food and shelter. She wanted
honour, she wanted people to look up to her. Why did I live at all, that is what I wish to ask?’

And the small man gazed up at Mr Trill with the large liquid eyes of a dog and Mr Trill could find no answer to his question.

‘I thought so,’ said the little man, ‘I thought so. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you at all. I don’t blame anyone at all. This is how it is.’

And before Mr Trill could speak he had faded into the mist so that after a moment it was as if he had never been there at all, as if he were only an emanation of the mist, while behind him the
castle glowered in the dimness, the castle whose purpose was obscure, and from whose environs hounds howled now and again, as if they themselves were questioning, with their wet snouts, the mist
around them.

There was a blind blundering about him and Mr Trill recoiled as a gigantic figure loomed out of the mist, like a wrecked yet moving ship.

‘Aargh,’ said the mouth of the figure, and its words were strangled in its throat.

‘I,’ said Mr Trill about to run still clutching his case. ‘I . . . ’

‘Aargh,’ said the figure searching for him and laying a hand on his arm. The massive head leaned down towards him, in the middle of it a scorched single dead eye, piteously dead.

It was like the huge idiot that Mr Trill had often seen, in the town where he taught, in his vast flapping coat standing in the middle of the road and directing the traffic while sometimes the
policemen looked on benevolently and sometimes drew him kindly away on to the safe pavement.

‘You?’ said the figure, lightly touching his arm.

‘Mr Trill,’ said Mr Trill in an agitated voice.

‘Trill,’ echoed the huge mouth. ‘Trill.’

The word was like a big stone in its jaw.

‘Noman?’ said the figure, ‘No man?’

‘No,’ said Mr Trill, ‘not no man.’ Surely this giant was not still searching for the nimble Ulysses even in the depths of Hades. ‘Not Noman,’ said Mr Trill
thinking of the painting by Turner where Ulysses stood high on his ship, his arms spread triumphantly in victory while he waved his flag and around the ship sailors like dead souls milled, and on
the left there was the darkness which the raw sun had not yet illuminated.

‘Noman,’ said the figure with a sigh. ‘Alone was. Noman came, killed my sheep, killed my good sheep, ate them. Lucky I caught. Ate them.’

‘What?’ said Mr Trill. ‘Did Noman eat your sheep? Was that why you . . . ?’