I
was at the bar when a bustling
movement sounded behind me, and the
staff stared; and I turned and stared,
for I saw in the doorway, blocking the
sunlight that poured in around them, the
strangest people I had ever seen.
The sunlight, of course, made them blobs
of darkness, so that all I could really see
were short, squat people with immense
shoulders, dressed in cardboard-coloured
jackets with crude embroidery sewn into
them; and immense men, vague in the
dazzling darkness, but with bare arms
like carved and polished wood; and when
I walked amongst them my face was level
with their shoulders, and their benign
voices drifted down towards me from
their great height.
The only English word they spoke was
‘beer’ then they drifted into a distant
corner; and they may have been ghosts
or resting demons for all the disturbance
they caused.*.
I sat alone, bewildered. I felt that these
people, somehow, had something to do
with me and my endeavours as an amateur
writer, but how, I couldn’t think. So I
called – inside my head, you understand
- for my Guru to advise me, and in a
moment he strolled from the bar with
coff ee and cakes on a tray.
‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘I put them on
your bill.’
‘Who are they!’ I demanded. ‘Why are
they so big?’
My Guru, I should mention, is not a real
customer of the hotel, but an immortal
chip of reality endowed with all
knowledge concerning creative writing,
and who is my helper and my friend.
‘I didn’t create them,’ he told me. ‘You
did. Your recent children’s novels had trite
characters. You know, pleasant child is
tormented by unpleasant child.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
I poured coff ee for us and looked at the
cakes.
‘These people,’ said my Guru, ‘come
from very deep down –’
‘Eh?’ I had visions of Hell.
‘– inside you; because in that depth you
know that your ideas were lax; and these
people are your opportunity to give your
imagination a shake. Speak to them.’
‘Speak to them?’
In the distant corner of the hotel I could
hardly see them, so vague were they amid
the brittle sunlight and soft shadows.
‘What do I do, again?’ I asked.
‘Make them interesting and unusual –
unlike your latest eff orts.’
I slurped a spine-straightening coff ee
and headed cornerwards.
They looked at me as I paused beside
them. They were just as grotesquely broad,
and mightily tall, as when I fi rst saw them;
then the biggest one cried:, ‘Sir! Sit!’ And
with one fi st he lifted a small one up out
of its chair. (I say it, because I couldn’t tell
male from female.)
But I sat, for his smile was welcoming;
and all the smiles were welcoming as if
they knew me; and one said ‘Sir’ in echo
of his friend, and another said ‘Sir’, until
each was repeating ‘Sir’, and their voices
were soft like smoke; and the fi rst one
who had been lifted out of his seat, began
conducting with small movements of his
hand, so that ‘Sir, Sir, Sir, Sir,’ was a chorusof cheerful near-silence; and I couldn’t
help responding with a fl icker of applause.
And they laughed And their laughter was
the laughter of butterfl ies.
And I said: ‘What do you do?’
And all their heads tilted; then they
looked at one another, and echoed again
‘Do? Do? Do? Do?’ with the little one
conducting, and this time their song rose
in a sweetness that was startling arising
from such strength, until the sweetness
brought tears to my eyes, and I laughed
and cried and applauded; and they
applauded, their applause becoming a
phantom drum-roll full of distant rhythms
and lingering thunder and sharp near-
silent cracks of lightning that scarcely
disturbed the molecules of the air.
‘Is this what you do?’ I cried. ‘You sing?
Is this all?’
‘All?’ cried a female voice from a face as
square as a rock; and as mouths opened
to create a chorus of ‘All’, she trilled: ‘All is
everything! We do everything. Singing is
All! Sir, you know this! for you created us
out of All that is your writing!’
And they gathered close around me,
touching my shoulders, touching my
hair, and ladies among them (I suppose)
touching my cheek; and such cadences
of ‘Singing is All!’ murmured around me
and so thrilled me that I began to realise
the beauty and limitless knowing of these
strange people; and I also realised that- outrageously odd as they were, and so
far beyond my understanding – I realised
that they were part of me, created out of
my seeking in the endless dimensions of
creative writing.
And I also realised that laxness in
my writing was a backwards step; like
writing to a formula because it works,
and discovering nothing; failing in the
adventure that is creativity.
And I wanted to weep again; and the
fi ngers touching my shoulders and my
hair and my cheek withdrew, and sunlight
dazzled me, and I was alone in that distant
corner of the hotel.
Use it or lose it
* Ignore Use It Or Lose It. You will have noticed
the asterisk near the beginning of this tale; it
is to remind me to tell you the strange fact
that this part of the story was a real event that
happened to me just three days ago. HSTales of my GURU by Hugh Scott
This month the mystery mentor shakes Hugh out of his laxness
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Their benign
voices drifted down
towards me from
their great height