The Red Door (63 page)

It must be said that, when sober, Red Roderick was a very kind man, fond of his children and picking them up on his shoulders and showing them off to people and saying how much they weighed and
how clever and strong they were, though in fact none of them was any of these things, for they were in fact skinny and underweight and tending to have blotches and spots on their faces and necks.
In those moments he would say that he was content with his life and that no one had better children or better land than he had. When he was sunny-tempered he was the life and soul of the village
and up to all sorts of mischief, singing songs happily in a very loud and melodious voice which revealed great depth of feeling. That was why it seemed so strange when he got drunk. His whole
character would change and he would grow violent and morose and snarl at anyone near him, especially the weakest and most inoffensive people.

One thing that we noticed was that he seemed very jealous of his father-in-law who had, as I have said, a reputation in the village for feats of strength. It was said that he had once pulled a
cart loaded with peat out of a deep muddy rut many years before when he was in his prime, but now that he was ageing and wifeless he lived on more failingly from day to day, since after all what
else is there to do but that?

Red Roderick in his drunken bouts would say that it was time the ‘old devil’ died so that he might inherit something through his wife, since there were no other relations alive. Red
Roderick would brood about his inheritance and sometimes when he was drunk he would go past his father-in-law’s house and shout insults at him. He brooded and grew angry, the more so since
his father-in-law’s land was richer than his own and better looked after, and also there were a number of sheep and cows which he coveted. I sometimes think that this must have been how
things were in the days of the Old Testament, though it doesn’t mention that people in those days drank heavily unless perhaps in Sodom and Gomorrah.

His whole mind was set on his inheritance mainly because he regretted marrying the old man’s daughter who, in his opinion, had brought him nothing but a brood of children whom in his
drunken moments he despised and punished for offences that they had never even committed. Yet, as I said, in his sunny moments there was no one as gay and popular as he was, full of fine
interesting stories and inventions.

However, I am coming to my story. One day he went to town in the morning (which was unusual for him) and came home in the afternoon on the bus, very drunk indeed. This was in fact the first time
he had been drunk during the day, as it were, in the village, and we all thought that this was rather ominous, especially as he began by prowling around his own house like a tiger, sending one of
his children spinning with a blow to the face in full sight of the village. The trouble was that all the villagers were frightened of him since none of them was as strong as he was in those moments
of madness.

After he had paced about outside his house for a while shouting and throwing things, he seemed to make up his mind and went down to the byre from which he emerged with a scythe. At first I
thought – since I was his neighbour – that he was going to scythe the corn but this was not at all what was in his mind. No, he set off with the scythe in his hand towards his
father-in-law’s house. I remember as he walked along that the scythe glittered in his hand as if it was made of glass. When he got to the house he shouted out to the old man that it was time
he came out and fought like a man, if he was as great as people said he had been in the past. There was, apart from his voice, a great silence all over the village which drowsed in the sun as he
made his challenge. The day in fact was so calm that there was an atmosphere as if one was in church, and it seemed that he was disturbing it in exactly the same way as a shouting lunatic might do
who entered a church during a service.

One or two people said that someone should go for a policeman but no one in fact did. In any case looking back on it now I think that in a strange shameful way we were looking forward to the
result of the challenge as if it would be a break in an endless routine. Nevertheless there was something really frightening and irresponsible about Red Roderick that day as if all the poison that
seethed about his system had emerged to the surface as cloudy dregs will float upwards to the surface of bad liquor. Strangely enough – in response to the shouting, as in a Western –
the old man did come out and he too had a scythe. He advanced towards Roderick, his eyes glittering with venom and hatred as if he too shared in the madness which was shattering the silence of the
day. Then they began to fight.

As Red Roderick was drunk perhaps the advantage given him by relative youth was to a certain extent cancelled. There was however no doubt that he wished to kill the old man, so enraged was he,
so frustrated by the life that tortured him. As they swung their scythes towards each other ponderously, it looked at first as if they could do little harm, and indeed it was odd to see them, as if
each was trying to cut corn. However, after some time – while the face of the old man gradually grew more demoniac in a renewal of his youth – he succeeded at last in cutting his
son-in-law’s left leg so that he fell to the ground, his wife running towards him like an old hen, her skirts trailing the ground like broken wings.

But that was not what I meant to tell since the fight in itself, though unpleasant, was not evil. No, as I stood in the ring with the others, excited and horrified, I saw on the edge of the ring
young William with his paint-brush and canvas and easel painting the fight. He was sitting comfortably on a chair which he had taken with him and there was no expression on his face at all but a
cold clear intensity which bothered me. It seemed in a strange way as if we were asleep. As the scythes swung to and fro, as the faces of the antagonists became more and more contorted in the fury
of battle, as their cheeks were suffused with blood and rage, and their teeth were drawn back in a snarl, he sat there painting the battle, nor at any time did he make any attempt to pull his chair
back from the arena where they were engaged.

I cannot explain to you the feelings that seethed through me as I watched him. One feeling was partly admiration that he should be able to concentrate with such intensity that he didn’t
seem able to notice the danger he was in. The other feeling was one of the most bitter disgust as if I were watching a gaze that had gone beyond the human and which was as indifferent to the
outcome as a hawk’s might be. You may think I was wrong in what I did next. I deliberately came up behind him and upset the chair so that he fell down head over heels in the middle of a
brush-stroke. He turned on me such a gaze of blind fury that I was reminded of a rat which had once leaped at me from a river bank, and he would have struck me but that I pinioned his arms behind
his back. I would have beaten him if his mother hadn’t come and taken him away, still snarling and weeping tears of rage. In spite of my almost religious fear at that moment, I tore the
painting into small pieces and scattered them about the earth. Some people have since said that what I wanted to do was to protect the good name of the village but I must in all honesty say that
that was not in my mind when I pushed the chair over. All that was in my mind was fury and disgust that this painter should have watched this fight with such cold concentration that he seemed to
think that the fight had been set up for him to paint, much as a house exists or an old wall.

It is true that after this no one would speak to our wonderful painter; we felt in him a presence more disturbing that that of Red Roderick who did after all recover. So disturbed were we by the
incident that we would not even retain the happy paintings he had once painted and which we had bought from him, those of the snow and the harvest, but tore them up and threw them on the dung heap.
When he grew up the boy left the village and never returned. I do not know whether or not he has continued as a painter. I must say however that I have never regretted what I did that day and
indeed I admire myself for having had the courage to do it when I remember that light, brooding with thunder, and see again in my mind’s eye the varying expressions of lust and happiness on
the faces of our villagers, many of whom are in their better moments decent and law-abiding men. But in any case it may be that what I was worried about was seeing the expression on my own face.
Perhaps that was all it really was. And yet perhaps it wasn’t that alone.

There once came to our village – or rather to the outskirts of our village – a hermit from somewhere in the south. He was a fairly stocky man with an unshaven face
and intense blue eyes, and he wore a long ragged coat which he tied with a belt. He built himself a tin hut with a tall narrow chimney near the road, and he stayed there by himself. As is often the
case with men who live mysteriously on their own, romantic stories grew up about him. The favourite one was that he was of a good family but had been crossed in love in his youth and had ever since
then avoided the company of people, especially women. With the greatest certainty the villagers would tell this story, for which there was not the slightest evidence, to strangers who visited the
place, and, almost without realising that what they were relating was a fiction, would embroider the essential fable with the most elaborate details such as that he was a scientist or a writer or
even a singer. Since in all the time that I saw him he never sang a single song this seemed strange but then they could have argued that he had given up singing as well, as a gesture of contempt
and defiance. He did visit the village shop and he bought his groceries in it though he would never speak more than was necessary. He rode a bicycle and when he passed along the village street he
looked like a chimney sweep with his dirty belted black coat which seemed as if it had been dipped for a long time in soot. He stayed by himself in the hut most of the time except when he took
walks across the moors and no one knew how he passed the time except that perhaps he might be reading. The strange thing was that as far as we knew he never drank. There was no drink to be had in
the village and he never went to the town, so he didn’t have any unless he made it himself.

We were curious about him when he first came but after a while most of us grew to accept him. For myself, I couldn’t live like that but then everybody is different from everybody else and
he seemed to be able to live on his own, an ability which is not given to many men. We often tried to question him in an oblique manner, but he wouldn’t speak to us and made an excuse to get
away again, even though we might waylay him in the shop. The children tried to see inside his hut but he chased them away so ferociously that they never returned. Clearly, all he wanted was to be
left alone. It is true that sometimes he might be seen fishing from a rock but usually in an isolated place where no one was likely to talk to him.

At last, as I said, we accepted him as part of the landscape in which we all lived but gradually we came to realise that he was a disturbance to the village, though he was in no sense a
nuisance. What I mean by disturbance is that the very fact of his existence was a kind of insult to us all. Or perhaps insult is not the right word. The fact is that human beings are made in such a
way that anyone who lives differently from themselves, even though he does not seek to influence them in any way, is a challenge and a cross. Stories are composed about such a person in order to
make him comprehensible. There was, as I have said, no reason at all to believe that the man was avenging himself on the world because of an emotional wound but that was the only way in which the
villagers could make sense of his mode of existence. For no matter how much such a person wishes to withdraw, he cannot, since after all he exists. Why else do we envy people who have done us no
harm? Why do we envy a man for being outstanding in a job which we may even despise? There is no doubt that we all suffer from being human.

Let me say, first of all, that I never found out anything about this man. He might have been intelligent or stupid, I couldn’t tell. He might have been a plumber or a physicist, I never
found out. And neither did anyone else. He might have been a great scholar or a dunce. No one knew. Certainly he seemed competent enough. He looked after himself pretty well. He was never ill all
the time he stayed near the village. He bought a reasonable amount of food and seemed able to cook it. He never at any time asked for any help. It is true also that he could fish, for one of the
villagers saw him from a distance and said that he knew perfectly well what he was doing. Naturally he never went to church.

But, as I have said, the very fact of his existence was a disturbance since one cannot hope not to exist if one is alive. In the long winter nights, in the long summer days, we knew that he was
there. We didn’t think of him as judging us. He was simply there and that was enough. Let me explain to you what I mean.

There lived in our village an old married couple who had been happily married for a very long time. At least they had never quarrelled openly and had seemed to exist in harmony. Now about two
years after this hermit came to live near our village we noticed that the husband, a large bearded fellow, began to insult his wife and to say that he wished he had never got married. This was
indeed very odd since his wife had been a good wife. She had reared his children who were now married and away from the island. She had looked after the land with him and had carried peats home in
the summer. She had cooked his meals and kept his house neat and tidy and now when she was ready to reap the rewards of her good useful life her husband began to grow restless and to say that he
had missed a great deal in his life. He began to treat her abominably and would as I have said insult her in public. Then he would ask for forgiveness and go to church on Sunday.

It was noticed that he would go and stand near the hermit’s hut and stare at it unblinkingly for a whole morning or afternoon as if he was wondering what the hermit was doing. But he never
actually tried to enter the hut. Once he tried to speak to the hermit in the shop but the hermit pushed by him and cycled away. The old man stared after him with great wistfulness.