Murray Red Star Over Hebrides

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7392077-4-8
Verlag: Taproot Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

Even as he grew up on the edge of Lewis, the vastness of Russia never felt too distant for Donald S Murray. Its great literary traditions were often discussed in his home village, while the political unrest and religious fervour that marked its past and present were occassionally reflected in his life on the island. Inspired by the Russian canon, the songs, verse and stories contained within these pages draw upon the experiences of his youth, shifting continually between myth and history, the absurd and moving, the satirical and everyday. Its extraordinary and diverse narratives underline the truth of its opening line: 'I can see these islands mirror Russia.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Murray, Donald S

Leseproben

Leningrad 1960

Kenneth felt more weedlike than ever, as if he were a blur of green and blue about to be chopped by the giant sickles looming above his head. The shade of his face had much in common with the flags that seemed to hang everywhere too. His nervousness grew even greater as a dancing girl – the one introduced to him earlier as Nuriya – approached him behind the stage, her smile wide and gleaming.

‘Can I touch?’ she whispered, stretching out her hand.

‘Uh … of course.’

‘This is beautiful.’ She fingered his plaid. ‘Tell me. Is everything in the West as beautiful as this?’

He trembled, only too aware that the girl suited that particular adjective far more than his Mackenzie tartan. There was her long dark hair, high cheekbones, wide brown eyes, bright and exotic clothes. Dressed in what he had been told was a Tatar dancing costume, she wore a black pillar box hat studded with pearls, a veil draping down her back, a tight crimson bodice emphasising the curve of her breasts.

‘Not everything …’ he muttered.

‘No?’

‘But the place I come from is …’ he said, thinking of the hills, bays and beaches near his home. His memory of their presence seemed unreal as he stood waiting to sing in the Gorky Theatre in Leningrad with its huge banner of Khrushchev’s face hanging from the ceiling, the words, Life has become better, life is more joyful printed – or so he had been told – below.

‘And where is that?’

‘Harris. It’s an island off the coast.’

But he never had the chance to tell her exactly where it was. He was interrupted by Dmitri, a broad, burly man with a dark moustache and a Marx pin in the lapel of his jacket.

‘It is nearly your turn, Kenneth.’

Kenneth nodded, his mouth drying as it always did before a performance. He was listening to the Master of Ceremonies talk in English, speaking of how much their former leader, Comrade Lenin, had loved music. In his younger days, apparently, he used to sing ‘The Internationale’ while his sister, Olga, played piano. During the dark days of the civil war, he had always asked, ‘What are the young people singing? Let me know what songs they are choosing.’

‘It is clear from all this that Comrade Lenin knew the importance of music, how it is a touchstone for us all. It is for this reason that we, the Central Soviet of this fine city bearing his name, decided to initiate the Lenin People’s Award for Music. One of its first winners is a young man from the islands off the coast of Scotland, a singer of a language – Scottish Gaelic – that the reactionary bourgeois elements in that country have long attempted to repress and silence. My fellow comrades, I present to you Kenneth Mackenzie …’

He flexed his fingers before stepping on stage. Pausing at its centre, he was still as he gazed into the lights, silent until the applause died away. When he spoke, his voice faded to a whisper.

‘This is a song about something that is a long way from you here in Leningrad. The power of the sea. Ladies and gentlemen, ‘An Ataireachd Ard’.’

It was only after the music entered nerve and muscle that he began to sing.

‘An ataireachd bhuan,

Cluinn fuaim na h-ataireachd ard …’

His eyes scanned the audience as the notes eased out, loud and strong. He had watched them since his arrival at the theatre—those men with dark suits, soft felt hats; their wives red-cheeked and overweight. Wrapped in thick coats, their clothes offered no crack or crevice for the Russian winter to peek its way through. With the exception of a few members of the military, an Astrakhan hat or two, it was easy to pretend they were a congregation of the Free Church back home—except that their like would never have stepped into a hall, not to listen to Kenneth and his devil’s gift of song. Such a notion would have been unthinkable to them.

The Russians, however, took to him with enthusiasm. This was no threatening agent of the West, but instead, a pale, fragile youth with tortoise-shell glasses, a tight knot of fair curls. He looked more angel than capitalist demon with that wing of tartan on his shoulder, white knees braving the theatre’s cold.

‘Now my first song was about the ocean. My next is about one of the vessels that travel on it. Called ‘Bratach Bana’, it tells a simple story, of the sighting of a tall, white-sailed ship on the horizon …’

He heard their hands and feet beat to the rhythm of the music, the entire hall sailing on its flow. The words of Antonio, his music teacher during his year in Glasgow, came into his head. Quoting Goethe, he had declared, ‘Such is the price the gods exact for song, to become what we sing.’ He knew exactly what that meant. He had become purely a voice, escaping the awkwardness that plagued the rest of him whenever a pretty girl came near, made speechless even by her mere existence.

‘My last song is about a dark period in our history. It tells of how the people of the islands were cleared from their land and taken on tall ships – just like the ‘Bratach Bana’ – into exile in Canada. It was a place they hated. They called it the ‘choille gruamach’—the gloomy forest, a land where snow and ice made the soil hard and impenetrable for much of the year. One of our Gaelic poets, Iain MacGhille-eathain, composed this song about his years there, his longing for the land he had left.

‘Gu bheil mi am onrachd ‘sa choille ghruamaich

Mo smaointean luaineach, cha tog mi fonn …’

‘Perfection is our only duty,’ one of the Russians had told him, ‘It is what we all must aim for.’ And he touched it with his voice that night, knowing that his audience was with him, aware, too, of the ovation they would reward him with at the song’s end. When that came, he would leave the stage reluctantly, returning a short while later for the inevitable encore …

‘Well done, Kenneth.’ A man from Finland shook his hand almost as vigorously as he had pumped his accordion earlier that evening. ‘That was excellent.’

‘Congratulations. Our ambassador was right. You have an excellent voice.’

‘Well done.’

‘It is good to know that the thaw has finally come. Even at this time of year. Your voice heralds a new Russian spring. A new time of peace between our countries.’

‘Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful.’

Even the policeman who stood near the stage doorway joined in, slapping his shoulder. Kenneth smiled thinly in response, aware that such words were usually meat and drink to him. Praise. Pats on the back. The clasp of fingers. They allowed him to escape his shyness, his sense of being lost within the world. Yet that night, he felt more awkward and clumsy than ever. Looking round for Nuriya, he discovered that she was one of those performing on stage. A Tatar dance. With others around her, she twirled and reeled to the music, moving under bridges shaped by the arms and smiles of young men and women, all dressed in similar clothes. They sank to their knees and then rose, shouted and clapped their hands before dropping to their knees once more. One girl crossed her legs and kicked.

And then just as Kenneth thought they were finished, Nuriya stepped out. Her hands were placed firmly on her hips, thumbs tucked at her back. She moved towards the floor. Squatting, her legs kicked out again and again, shifting in time to the speed of the rhythm.

‘Yyyyyiiiiyyyaaaaa!’

He admired her grace and energy, how in her own way she had done what Goethe had spoken about, becoming one with song. For once, he felt he had come across someone who was very much like him. The spirit of his islands merging with the spirit of the steppes or Volga or wherever on earth she came from. She had become the dance, her breasts, legs, thighs as much part of the flow of music as the musicians who played behind her.

He waited until she finished, wrapping his arms around her, rejoicing in her applause.

‘Nuriya. That was wonderful.’

‘No. No. Not good. You were excellent, Kenneth. I was …’

‘Nuriya. That isn’t true. You were amazing.’

‘No. No. That song you sung. It was wonderful. So true. So sad.’

He allowed her to escape his hold, sensing that she wanted to talk. He saw once again her dark brown eyes, scarlet lips, her breasts heaving.

‘That song you sang. It told about my people, the Tatars. How they were taken by Stalin from their homes in the Crimea. How they were scattered all over, sent to our – how you say – gloomy forests in the east. And many were killed. Many. Many.’

He drew away, alarmed by her words.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your words. They spoke to me about my people. The Tatars. How they were...