In Darkness

The wind

It is the wind again, the malignant and boiling air that climbs from the ocean to pull and tear at the trees, which tugs a person left and right and allows no rest, for even in the moments between gusts you might lean this way or that in anticipation of the unseen hand that waits for its moment, which observes no rhythm and which although I have been assured carries no tidings good or ill blows against the windows and doors with what must be malice, with what can only be evil intent, for why else would it bang and crash so, why else would it torture me to the point I hide under these eaves, a prisoner bound by the air itself, bound by something so insubstantial I can move it without thinking and yet so large and unyielding to my desires that I am nothing but a mote carried upon its dark and violent current.

Sam believes me to be losing my mind for expressing such fears, a broken old woman barking at the clouds like a maddened dog, for what is there to be scared of, he says, when we have such solid walls around us and within those walls so many fine distractions such as books and food and the comfort of each other, and I accept these things to be true, I accept them to be real, but what power do they have over the unknowable desires of the capricious wind?

Look into your heart, look into the very depths of it and there you will see this fear, the same fear I speak of, and even though you are good at hiding it, even though you plan and prepare and decide things and go out into the world to effect change, to create a more just world or at least a world that is more just for you, even so it lurks there, a small dark eel of a thought worming its way through your heart in the middle of the night, biting on your flesh, whispering to you in the turbulent currents of eternity that none of this thrashing and cursing and striving which consumes every waking hour of your life will amount to anything but a passing eddy, forgotten and subsumed almost as soon as it is born.

I address all of this to Sam. He shakes his head, the corners of his mouth curling into a smile. He has heard these things before. The wind hammers at the shutters and I crouch in my chair against the pain which sits right up high behind my ribs, a pain that moves in sympathy with the wind, the ache which brews this bitter humour. How well it pairs with the strong tea and heavy sky.

We are cocooned here, Sam and I, an island within an island, a bubble of light and oxygen caught among the hills as though by accident, clinging to the steep earth above the bay and sheltered from the worst of the southerlies by the dark peak of Mattheson, a granite escarpment a thousand metres tall which pins the village after which it is named here against the earth, tethering us against the storms. 

From here, perched in the oculus, I stare down at the torn beaches and wild ginger forests of the Lingering Land, I watch the changing moods of the sea, I await the rare breaks in the clouds for the light of the sun, I recite the prayers of Simeon and tense my shoulders against the tempest. This land, says Sam, is a birthright and a gift, but it feels more to me like a land of giants and ghosts, a land forgotten. Why else would it be called lingering? I ask him, and then before he can reply, standing there with his mouth slightly ajar and a furrow on his brow I answer for him, because, I say, it is no more than the sour smell of something long since dead. Sam huffs at that and stalks out of the room, rumbling off to another corner of the house while I chew over my empty thoughts, quietly regretting being so short with him, for while the Gods and their machines have left yet here we remain, so much driftwood, a skeletal reminder of the past, well not as skeletal as all that I think, we are well fed after all. We must rebuild, they say, we must create a new earth, they being the true believers, they being still attached to a destiny that has forsaken us to wallow in the echoes of greatness, those shifting and uncertain memories of the dusty patriciate.

You must abandon such thoughts, says Sam as he bustles in again, offering me a blanket, perhaps hoping that by warming me he might also soften my mood, You must, he says, return to the here and now where there is much to be done, where there is a harvest to gather and a town to shepard away from its squabbling and its ignorance, and I know only too well what he is talking about, the religious stupidity that our people wear like divine armour against hope, an indulgence of morons and angels alike, the foolish, belittled saints who bind their arms around it, who cling to an untiring love of mystery and divinity and fate and everything that cannot be seen in the light of day and which, therefore, loves nothing more than this perpetual twilight given to us by the diminished sun. 

We are a half-people, I say, hovering in the twilight, clinging to the superstitions of an absurd tradition. 

But, says Sam, are these superstitions any different from your hatred of the wind, which you cling to in spite of all we know, that you call names and curse even though you are quite aware it is not a person, that it has no intelligence? I mutter something uncharitable about exactly who has no intelligence, and I scowl in his direction but have to admit he has the truth of it, and I admit that none of us can live here without giving in sometimes to our fears nor without feeling the oppressive weight of being forgotten by God.

The storm outside is passing, or more accurately it is lessening to a dull roar, the rain easing as the sky shifts to a lighter shade of grey. We call this weather, this post-storm calming, a raiceen, a name stolen from a stranger’s tongue, a rounded word burnished dark and smooth by time and much loved here in Matheson where such weather is a common occurrence in the early evenings. The exact and specific qualities of the raiceens are much discussed in the dim halls of the citizenry, particularly as evening descends and people gather about their tables to fondly catalogue the endless variations of wind that asail us with the unceasing evil of the devil himself, and despite their righteousness the idiots seem besotted with this evil, through long acquaintance perhaps or maybe just out of the belief that their stubborn resistance to such an unseen force makes them special, chosen by their departed God to endure.

Like the twisted rosemary trees that line the coast they are permanently bent away from the wind, raiceen and bulcharen alike, the latter being an abject misery of swirling air and rain which can fling a grown man far into the air. In Matheson the entire world tilts at an acute angle, swept into the valley under the granite cliffs of our mountain, swept into the grey hills, the penitent, holy detritus of our people, gathered up and trapped here between sky and stone.

The heavens darken again, though not this time due to the weather but the leaving of the sun, or at least the departure of the bright smear above the cloud cover which passes for a sun hearabouts, it’s lacklustre disc now also obscured by the bulk of the mountain which spreads its  dark blanket over the farms and homesteads below, tucking them in for the night, bringing them under its stony wing as I watch, listening to the sounds of our industry and searching the damp smell of the air for portents of the night ahead. Sam settles himself into his chair with a book and a cup of tea, holding his own vigil, knowing that I will be here for hours yet, knowing the cold will settle on my shoulders and the pain claw its way into my back and shoulders as I chew over the days both in front of us and behind. Such is my habit, and so such is his. An easy accommodation we have reached over decades here on this hill.

The council is meeting in the morning to discuss the messenger, a coiffured man who arrived two days ago now on a private transport, full of self-importance and the well-practised disdain for our community that comes from being a citizen of the capital, such beliefs being an important part of their costume, cut and shaped to a high style over many years in order to distinguish such men from such as us, and it does not escape my attention that among the younger members of the patriciate there is a distinct inclination to mimic this posture, to don the mien of the capital in their interactions with the older members of the council, and by that I mean primarily myself, being the oldest among them and the least fashionable by far.

I had thought my part in such affairs finished, but we must decide on our response to this messenger’s concerning missive and so I have been called to attend the meeting being considered wise after a fashion, although perhaps in possession of the kind of wisdom that it is safe to ignore most of the time but which it is good form to have someone speak nonetheless, a sort of stolid weight against which the balance of popular opinion can be judged. Your voice is important, Sam reminds me, it carries real weight within the council’s deliberations, yes, I reply, they call me fat while they deliberately ignore me and he utters a small laugh, lowers his book into his lap and stares down at the hills and sea with that smile still creasing his face, perhaps the only thing I still love in this place, this irascible and decent man.

I dwell now upon the message itself and I wonder what it will mean for our people for, as much as I might moan about them they still belong to me in the way that family belongs, beyond love they have become a natural extension of myself, they are limbs and digits and toenails and hair of a place that is also me, a body both politic and corporate, the amalgamation of genetic information and gossip that forms any small town. The message itself was direct, but without any explanation, and so the deliberations have taken on an aspect of divination, of trying to gauge, if you’ll excuse the allusion, which way the wind is blowing which if anyone was to ask me I would suggest it is blowing from the west, and that is both literally true and, in this case, a good indicator of where the most recent orders originate, for to the west of Matheson lies the regional hub of Selkirk and relations between their people and ours have never been good. It would be only natural to perceive this latest directive as part of a plot to undermine us, to cast suspicion on our council and entangle us in mysteries when we should more properly be concerned with the harvest.

But perhaps that is too easy. I do not know how the Selkirk council would have the sort of influence required to make the capital act in such a way, to demand the impossible, to whip the already beaten provinces bloodier and yet here we are, clinging to our rock in desperation, the rock which rises above the deep ocean and casts upon it a shadow, just as the capital casts fear upon the souls of Matheson.