As the film which Going sees is busy with a townscape in which appear buildings, presumably designed and built by Halvard Solness, I am watching another townscape, not at all Norwegian in character. Indeed, I know it to be Canada, and Canada in winter, which is just as bleak as Norway can ever be. My town has the real Canadian look, for there is not a building to be seen that is earlier than 1860 and few so old; it lacks the dignity, the coherence, the sense of importance that even modest European towns manage to convey. Yet it is not without its pretensions, straggling and spotty as it is. There are substantial houses, built as if to endure forever, houses for bankers and well-to-do merchants, and several of these houses are marked by a strong but aesthetically deplorable signature; it is a front window – obviously a parlour window – shaped like a horseshoe. As the camera moves about this Canadian town, which I judge to have about twenty thousand inhabitants, it pauses for a more than passing look at a large and I must say hideous church, built to the greater glory of a grouchy Victorian God. This church is the background to the opening titles. There is no music but the howling of a January wind, which is music of a melancholy kind.
At once we cut – how I am catching the film vocabulary as I watch these things – to a young man who is walking with some difficulty through the night and into the face of the wind, along one of the streets in which large and substantial houses stand side by side with one-storey dwellings, humble and chilly to the eye, that are clad in lumpy whitish stucco, like the droppings of large birds. This is apparently what would have been called a “good district,” though not as good as the district further up the river which borders and defines the town. At the end of the nineteenth century this town has pretensions, but has not fully attained them. The wind is not so fierce that the young man needs to struggle so. I know that it is reluctance to do what lies before him that makes him walk with such uncertainty. But he must achieve his purpose, or he will not be able to face those who have sent him here.
He stops in front of one of the houses with a horseshoe front window. This is the one. He goes to the front door, which is at the side, up a few steps, and twists the handle of the bell. He can hear its iron clatter echoing in what sounds like an empty house. He rings until he knows that ringing is useless, then he knocks, and knocks again, and is at last hammering on the dark door. But no one answers.
(2)
RESOLUTE, EVEN if unhappy in his resolve, he trudges through the deep snow to the horseshoe window. He shades his eyes and peers inside. Nothing but blackness. And then –
I jump, and I know that the film-maker, whoever he is, has meant me to jump. The young man’s face is almost against the glass, and suddenly there is another face on the other side, nose to nose with his own. A frightening face, for it is framed in lank dark hair; its haggard, wild eyes and hook nose rise above a straggling beard. I know a little about classic films, and it is so like the face of the Russian actor Nikolai Cherkasov, in Ivan the Terrible, that I wonder if there has been some muddle, some mixing of films. Does the face mean to be frightening? A hand is just visible in which a large carving-knife gleams. The young man is frightened out of his wits, but he stands fast, and for the first time since the film began a voice is heard, and it is his.
“Mr. McOmish! Mr. McOmish, it’s Gil! Your son-in-law. Will you let me in? I must talk with you.”
The face continues to stare, but slowly another hand comes into sight, and it beckons; the hand that holds the knife gestures toward the front door. The young man, shaken but determined, trudges back through the snow, and after a pause the door is opened, and the owner of the face, and the knife, may be seen at full length. He wears a nightshirt and a long, shabby brown dressing-gown. His large, scrawny feet are bare.
“You come from the women, I suppose,” says Mr. McOmish and allows Gil to follow him into the dark house, and into the fitfully moonlit front parlour. The cold there is not the blustery cold of outdoors, but a stuffy, still cold that smells of mice. There is not a stick of furniture, but Mr. McOmish disappears into a back room and after a time returns with two kitchen chairs. Then another journey into the darkness and he brings back a coal-oil lamp, and places it on the floor. He gestures to the young man to sit down.
“Well?” he says.
“I hope you understand that I come as a neutral person, and not as somebody who wants to take sides,” says the young man. “But there is some business to be done, and Mrs. McOmish and the girls have asked me to talk with you, and get you to sign a few papers, so that everything can be put in legal form. As I am the only other man in the family,” he adds.
“Is that a fact?” says Mr. McOmish. “What about that tribe of Dutch uncles and Dutch brothers? Are they dead, all of a sudden? You, a mere son-in-law, the only man in the family?”
“I suppose they mean in the direct family. Your family.” And then he stops in confusion, knowing how tactlessly he has spoken.
“Man in my family,” says Mr. McOmish with a disagreeable smile. “The only man left in the family; is that what they say?”
“Well, something like that,” says the young man.
“You know I never thought of you as belonging to the family,” says Mr. McOmish. “I never completely recognized you as part of my family.”
“But I did marry Malvina,” says the young man. “I would have thought – ”
“Yes, I suppose you would,” says Mr. McOmish. “But it isn’t as easy as that. I never thought you were fit for one of my daughters. It was a sneaking kind of marriage. Wasn’t it?”
“Mr. McOmish, I wish you would put that knife down.”
“Do you wish that? Well, my wee man, I’ll put it down. What did you think I meant to do with it? I was just cutting some kindling for the fire when I heard you creeping around outside. I can do wonders with a knife, you know. Or don’t you know? I cut kindling by shaving a stick of cedar till it’s like a feather – all beautiful curls, and all precisely the same width and length. Precisely. But if my knife makes you uneasy I’ll put it right here on the floor, you see. Handy in case I want it for anything.”
“Thank you.”
“No thanks needed. None whatever. No need to be grateful. Not a particle. But I can see you have ideas about my knife. Haven’t you?”
“Oh no. None at all.”
“Don’t lie to me, Gil. She told you I took after her with this knife, didn’t she? Did she tell you how she squawked and shrieked for her old sister, and pleaded with me not to slit her yellow neck? I guess she left that out, when she told you the story.”
“I’d rather not go into that, Mr. McOmish. I want to be as neutral as possible. I’m just here to ask you to sign some papers. That’s all I’m after.”
“And you thought it would be easy, did you? Just catch the old man when he’s in one of his quiet moods and get his name on a few papers. Gil, you know, you’re a simpleton. All you Old Country fellers are simpletons. That’s why I didn’t want you to marry Vina. Only man in the family! Fiddlesticks! Virgie has an army of Dutch brothers, why didn’t one of them come? Eh? Because they’ve ratted on her, that’s why. So it has to be you. I’ve always despised you Old Country fellers. Stuck-up, know-it-all fellers, every one of you. You know what we say here? ‘You can always tell an Englishman, but you can’t tell him much.’ Doesn’t apply to the Scotch, of course. An entirely different breed of dog, the Scotch.”
“I’ve told you often, Mr. McOmish, I’m not really English. I’m Welsh.”
“A poor excuse. What are these papers? I’m a bankrupt, I know it. Been through all that, pestered and questioned by fellers I wouldn’t say How-d’ye-do to in the ordinary way. What papers have you got?”
“Well, if you’ll let me explain – Mrs. McOmish and the girls – ”
“And old Cynthia Boutell, I’ll bet.”
“Mrs. Boutell has been with Mrs. McOmish for a few days, certainly.”
“Do you want me to tell you something, Gil? Something you’re too simple to have found out fo
r yourself, I’ll bet. Cynthia Boutell is an interfering, nose-poking, mischief-making old Bee Eye Tee See Aitch. That’s a word I’d never use against a woman except under great provocation. But I use it of Cynthia Boutell. All my life I’ve been against swearing and foul language. But there it is. No other word for her. And you won’t hear me use it again.”
“That’s very delicate of you, Mr. McOmish. But of course these papers have nothing to do with Mrs. Boutell – ”
“Gil, anything that’s within twenty-five miles of Cynthia Boutell has something to do with her, because that’s how she is. I suppose these papers make over the house to Virgie?”
“The house she and the girls are in at present. It’s all that’s left, I’m afraid.”
“Are you afraid, Gil? I’d be afraid if I was in your shoes. Afraid they’d let me in for supporting the whole boiling of ’em.”
“No, no, Mr. McOmish. The girls have their jobs, you know. They’ll take care of their mother. But the house – I’m sure you see that she has a claim on the house.”
“Is that what the lawyers say?”
“Yes. Everything’s gone, you know. Even this house – ”
“Oh, I know that. When they come to get me in the morning it’ll be the last I’ll see of this house. Or any of the fine houses I’ve built in this town. Except I suppose I’ll see ’em from the outside. So Virgie wants that rotten little bungalow made over to her, does she?”
“She must have somewhere to live, Mr. McOmish, and it seems to be all that’s left. You know what the lawyers said: you are separated but not divorced.”
“No, Gil, nothing of the kind. A marriage is a solemn oath, boy. Nothing can dissolve it. Virgie and I have our differences, but, mutual hatred apart, she’s my wife just as sure as she was the day we were wedded. Even at the worst – and this isn’t the worst, not by a long chalk – she’s my wife. Tell her that. Remind her of that. If she thinks any of this money stuff, or that pow-wow in court has dissolved our marriage, she doesn’t know law. And I do.”
“Then you’ll sign, Mr. McOmish?”
“Boy, you don’t know what you ask. It isn’t the house, the dear Lord knows. I wouldn’t claim such a jerry-built old razee as that for my own. I’ve built better hen-houses than that, in my young days. But signing isn’t the house. It’s my life, Gil. My life.”
“Mr. McOmish, can I get you anything? You look poorly. Is there any water back there?”
Mr. McOmish is gasping.
“I am poorly, Gil. But I don’t want water. I must have some of my medicine.”
“No, please, Mr. McOmish!”
But Mr. McOmish has risen to his feet and now he is gasping loudly, like a horse with the heaves. The young man is terrified of what he sees, as the older one grows ashy-white. He struggles toward the kitchen, and Gil follows him with the lamp, desperate but quite unable to think of anything he can do to meet this crisis. In the kitchen, on a table, lies a neat package, and Mr. McOmish makes for it with a certainty of purpose that shows he is not so near collapse as he appears.
In the package is a phial and a hypodermic syringe; with the skill of long practice Mr. McOmish fills it full. He drops his miserable brown bathrobe to the ground and lifts his nightshirt up to his neck; but as it bunches up so that he cannot properly see what he is doing, he pulls it over his head and stands in the kitchen, in the half-light, stark naked.
Stark indeed, for he is so thin that his ribs show and his hip-bones protrude. He looks like one of Grünewald’s horrifying Christs; that is something I know, and that the film-maker certainly knew, but which Mr. McOmish and Gil do not know. His diaphragm is covered with tiny spots of dried blood, and looks like nothing so much as a pincushion. He stabs the needle into his flesh with a little whimper, and pushes the plunger home slowly. He withdraws the needle, and wipes it carefully on the fallen nightshirt.
“These needles getting dull. Have to rasp them up,” he says, in a far-away voice, as if to himself. “Help me dress, Gil; can’t stand here bare-naked. Glory, it’s cold.”
Indeed it is cold. Gil helps Mr. McOmish to put his gown and his robe back on, and assists him into the parlour, to one of the kitchen chairs. Gil sets the lamp on the floor, and takes the opportunity to put his overcoat back on.
“Do you feel well enough to sign now?” he says.
“Give me a few minutes, so the medicine can work. No hurry. Not a particle. I want to talk. There aren’t many I can talk to, but I’m going to talk to you, boy. You’ve got to know what’s what. You think I’m an old devil, don’t you? That’s what my daughters call me. The Old Devil. Don’t dispute it. Isn’t that what Vina calls me? Eh?”
Gil does not reply.
“See? You daren’t deny it. In a court of law, you couldn’t deny it. Their mother taught them that. Virgie has turned my own flesh and blood against me, to call me an Old Devil. Do you know how I got to be an Old Devil?”
Gil shakes his head.
“Well, you’d better know that they’re right. I am an Old Devil, now, and when I was young I was a Young Devil, which is a totally different thing. I wouldn’t give a York shilling for any feller that hadn’t some devil in him. I’ve always had plenty of devil, and I came by it honestly. Do you know how I come to be here? Here with you? Sitting on this poorly made chair?”
Gil shakes his head again. Mr. McOmish is amazingly recovered, and is sitting up quite straight on the wretched chair. His eyes glow and his voice is resonant in its nineteenth-century Ontario speech – sharp, clear, Scottish with a Yankee twang and now and then a whisper of Irish. He gestures, jabbing a forefinger at Gil, extended from a hand that is plainly that of a superior craftsman, a strong, skilful, big hand with knotty knuckles and strong black hair on the phalanges. On this skeletonic wreck of a man the hands, like the head, are still impressive.
As Mr. McOmish speaks the pictures leave the parlour and show me what he is talking about. But his voice explains them. I believe movie people call this Voice Over. It is illustrated narrative, and Mr. McOmish’s tale is gripping.
As for poor Gil, he is slumped, in so far as a strong young man can slump, on his comfortless wooden chair. He cannot escape the narrative of Mr. McOmish, his father-in-law and a self-confessed Old Devil.
(3)
“LONG AGO and far away,” says Mr. McOmish, and Gil can hardly believe this bardic introduction to what surely cannot be a heroic tale, “my people, my ancestors – yes, I’ll call them ancestors because there’s no reason in the world why only big people should have ancestors and people like me have none and be robbed of our past – lived in Scotland, right up in the northernmost part of the West. They were farmers. Crofters, they called them, and a lot of them were shepherds, as well. Had been since Noah saw the waters subside, I’d reckon. But for some consarned legal reason, that nobody ever wholly understood, the local big man took the land and what do you suppose he did that for? To turn it into moors where he could pasture his sheep, that’s why. And that was when this country needed settlers. It was a hundred and fifty years ago, or more. Probably more because I don’t know exactly. So the local big man heeded the call given to him by an even bigger man – Lord Selkirk, he was, and very kindly assisted the people off the farms to go to the New World, as they called it then, to make their fortunes. There were fortunes everywhere in the New World, for the taking. And off they went, crowded into a sailing-ship.”
I see the crofters and shepherds, with their bundles, being rowed out to the ship, which is certainly small enough. They are clothed in homespun, and are the colour of the earth. The very earth of Scotland is being moved to the New World. The children are rosy, but the faces of their fathers and mothers are already brown and marked with hard work. The clothes they wear are not picturesque Highland dress. Not a kilt is to be seen. But they wear the blue bonnet, and their cloaks are plaids, sure enough, not in the tartans of a later date, but in dark browns and black-and-grey checks. A sober people, dark and thrawn as their own soil.
I see something else. This is an indoor scene, in what is doubtless the Big House of the district, though it looks meagre enough, and there sits the laird on one side of a table and on the other is a man who looks like a lawyer, and whose speech shows him to be an Englishman. The laird signs a paper – he is not a ready hand with the pen – and the lawyer pushes over to him a bag which chinks as it moves on the table. I know that in the bag there is a guinea for every crofter the laird has cajoled or bullied into the ship; a guinea for every woman. Nothing at all for the children, who do not count. There are far more than thirty pieces of silver in that bag, but the laird, though he is a truly religious man, never thinks it is the price of betrayal. These are pieces of gold, and his reward for assisting his country to people the new lands to the West.
“Do you have any idea where those poor wretches were headed for, Gil? It was a terrible place, in swamp land north of Lake St. Clair, called Baldoon, after Selkirk’s place in Scotland, and they were invited, oh so genteelly, to take up farms. What could they have farmed? Not sheep, unless the sheep grew webbed feet and turned to a diet of reeds and grass that was as sharp as knives. And cold! Scotch cold is like a cold linseed poultice all over you from head to foot; but this cold was like being slashed every quarter of an inch of your body with sharp razors.”
And indeed the screen shows me something of that cold place and I can sense the raw chill, spirit as I am.
“But there were some of those Scotchmen who had the devil in them, and they saw half the shipload die in the first winter of cold and starvation and even phthisis, but mostly of misery and exile, and they made up their minds to get out. There must be something better than Baldoon, even in this God-forsaken country, they thought. So when spring came, they set out to walk – to walk, mind you – south-east. Not knowing south as anything but a portion of the compass. Not knowing what there was in the south, except that it had to be a better land for sheep than Baldoon. So they walked, and they walked, and men carried bundles of a hundred and fifty pounds weight, and women carried children who were too little to walk, and they lived on God knows what-oatmeal, I suppose, and what roots they could find that weren’t evil to the taste – and those that didn’t die on the way made it. And my great-grandfather made it, and I had the tale from him. Often and often.