A Fragment – Part 1
Hello again to you who followed previous posts and welcome to newcomers. Last post was nearly 3 years ago. Since then the world looks very different.
I restart my blog with a story I finished a few weeks ago.
The night the cockerel got down from the steeple and walked into my bedroom I well remember. It had been pouring cats and dogs all night. The river was lashing the bridge and the little donkey dragging a cart full of logs stopped to listen to the swirling music. Tom also stopped, in fact he had no choice as he was sitting on the logs, but he also enjoyed the liquid arpeggios. I had known Tom at school and knew of his love of music.
He lived on a farm and used to climb the hill and play the bagpipes to the crows and the blackbirds. When they came to shoot the rabbits that failed to get to their burrows in time and then were hung bleeding at the nose over the five-barred gate Tom would stand under the sycamore tree playing a lament. It is a mystery to me why he should end up logging as he was as fond of trees as he was of rabbits.
It was when he arrived in India that his music was appreciated. Men from the hills journeyed to the frontier carrying their mothers piggy-back to hear Tom’s pibrochs. You will now appreciate that Tom had several sides to his personality. He preferred to focus on two or three things at a time. That’s why I think he had such phenomenal powers of concentration.
Slaughtered rabbits needed a lament and a sycamore tree; crows, blackbirds and bagpipes belong together. The women dancing and the mountains listening gave joy to the pipes. The weather-cock must have heard the lilting strains on the turning air when it still was a lord on the steeple.
Barish was in the kitchen making bread when a mouse ran over her foot. It was still evening but she knew a storm was coming. After all barish means rain in an Indian language and her mother was from India. Her father, son of a whiskey distiller, grew up in the Highlands. Barish was born in the Midlands and taught pre-school children from the Black country. Tom supplied her with wood for her log fire and that is how they got to be friendly.
She also got to know Jasper who was much more a man of the world. He was an expert in agriculture and its up-to date developments. As in many of us Barish had two modes switching in her, one a sunlit hilltop with flowers and flying cloudlets, joyful, the other on a chair listening, trying to understand the way the world is, its unknowableness, hand on cheek. Tom sparked the one, Jasper called up the other.
She loved her job while waiting for a change that a word from Tom might bring until Tom was a postcard from India. Jasper shaped, however, her serious mode, more bookish than songful. Study, opening to new perspectives, the academic world which can both awaken and unsettle were Jasper’s gift. History, literature, art, science, no longer empty words were to be looked at in the light of day. Barish chose Anthropology, the study of the human being, Though not quite knowing its range and depth, she was captivated.
Jasper admired her quick response to the new life he had introduced her to and continued to give support and show the way. When she acquired a degree in anthropology and was ready to use it, Jasper suggested they get married. A hill-walk by herself seemed to approve. His guidance would always be there.
Things change. The unforeseen emerges. Stepping stones that helped to cross a stream get washed away. Yesterday’s remark seems different today and can bode ill for tomorrow. Barish saw that Jasper showed a character and range of feelings that had been hiding. When they had differences he must have his way.
He also had a streak of cruelty. She found out that he and his pals enjoyed unearthing badgers from their den for their dogs to ravage and kill. Questioning and pleading by Barish brought an indifferent smile. The future for both became overshadowed and with no easy way forward. The memory of Tom surged from to time then continuously in the mind of Barish. Jasper’s departure to visit a farm for two nights was the chance for his wife to pack a case and leave. but where to go?
Go east, Go west. Go west and become President or a Hollywood star. Go east and become holy and wise. Barish was drawn east, I guess, because of Tom and the tug of her Indian mother. At that time, few women ventured abroad alone, the gateways of the world had not yet opened for them as later for their children and grandchildren. Now almost everyone is on the move, driven by Opportunity Survival, Climate, Fear and the Unnameable.
Before her departure Barish had not moved 50 miles from her home. Now every dawn is new, every nightfall a question. New faces have to be read, new journeys have to be imagined and then the first step made. In Europe there were still familiarities, churches, inns, museums, meals, pigeons and bits of English. Her sea voyage from Greece to Haifa crossed a cultural line. Its thrillingness pierced her.
