In Praise of Savagery. Warwick Cairns

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СКАЧАТЬ is a reason that it feels like this.

      At moments of intense significance and at moments of great physical risk, the brain pulls in all of its resources and processing-power, and crams more observations and more reactions into a fraction of a second than it would normally make use of in a duration many, many times longer. It does this the better to react quickly and effectively, and so to cope with whatever challenges or opportunities it faces.

      The result of all of this is that we experience moments that, for good or ill, are more intensely lived, and in which time appears to slow down, or even, on occasion, to stop.

      And just as this time dilation exists, so also, I believe, there exists its opposite, which you might, I suppose, call time diminution, if you were to use the same rules of construction. Time diminution, or what you will, is an experience in which large tracts and expanses of time just pass you by, just vanish away unmarked and unnoticed, except when you look back later and think, was that it?, or, where did it all go?

      From the end of the talk in the house in the cul-de-sac in Harlow New Town to my next contact with the man, and the visit to his flat in Tite Street, was two years, more or less.

      They were two years in which, in one sense, much happened, but in which, in another, the main thing that happened was the passing away of time.

      When the meeting had ended, the people there gathered up their coats, and those who drove got out their car-keys, while for those who did not, minicabs and the cars of parents arrived outside. But when he had finished his talk, and when the evening had begun to break up, I went up to him and asked him more questions about his life and times, and we carried on talking even as others were leaving around us, until, at last, there were no other guests left, and the owner of the house was standing there, as if to say, well, haven’t you got a home to go to? The man took a scrap of paper from his pocket and wrote his address on it and handed it to me.

      ‘If you go on this trip,’ he said, ‘do write and let me know how you get on.’

      And then it was outside into the night air.

      I applied, but did not get a place.

      I also applied for academic scholarships overseas, but did not get them, either.

      In the meantime, there was banking to be done, and banking examinations, which I was required to study for.

      Months passed in which I undertook two correspondence courses with something called the Rapid Results College. One was in Law Relating to Banking and the other in Economics. In Economics I learnt—the only thing I remember from it now—that if a bank lends money that doesn’t exist, and which hasn’t been minted or printed, or made or planned, it can actually cause that money to come into being, and so increase the money supply.

      This is something of a paradox, on a number of levels, in the way that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is in physics. One of the main levels upon which it is a paradox is that it is, according to the experts, clearly and demonstrably true; and yet, at the exact same time, it has the ability to seem to me to be the most complete and utter nonsense.

      At some point during that time I reapplied for the overseas scheme and this time was offered a place. It was to be a trip to America, involving trail-building in the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, and also drilling wells for water on a Sioux Indian reservation on the edge of the Badlands in South Dakota.

      I still had the scrap of paper Wilfred Thesiger had given me.

      I wrote and told him about it.

      About a week later a cream-coloured envelope arrived on my doormat.

      Inside was a cheque for £300, drawn on a London private bank; and with the cheque was a three-word letter, written in blue-black fountain-pen on embossed headed notepaper.

      It said, ‘Don’t tell others.’

The Clinic

      The doctor had my notes on the desk in front of him, in a buff card file.

      ‘You understand,’ he said, removing the stethoscope from around his neck and placing it on the desk beside the file, ‘that before I can give you the result of your test I am required to offer you counselling. This is our standard procedure. It doesn’t presuppose a positive result, or indeed a negative one.’

      The clinic was in Charlotte Street, in the West End of London.

      I had come to be there as the result of a conversation with a friend, who, as a student, had spent a year doing voluntary work for a telephone advice line.

      ‘You did what?’ he’d said, aghast, ‘With who? You want to get yourself checked out, mate. You could have anything, you know, absolutely anything.’

      And then, over the next hour or so, he’d told me in great detail about the counselling work he’d done, and how, in particu lar, I should watch out for any swelling or discomfort in my armpits.

      ‘It always starts there, you know.’

      And, indeed, now that he mentioned it, it did feel somewhat uncomfortable there. I’d put it down to it being a warm day and my wearing a slightly tight shirt with rough seams. But the more I thought about it, the more noticeable the feeling became.

      ‘Now,’ said the doctor, ‘a few questions for you. Are you an intravenous drug user?’

      ‘Do I look like one?’

      ‘You’d be surprised.’

      ‘I’ve never even been drunk.’

      ‘Fine. I’ll take that as a “no”, then. And have you ever had a blood transfusion?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘So tell me, in your own words, why you think you might have placed yourself at risk of contracting this virus.’

      ‘I was on an Indian reservation.’

      ‘Go on …’

      ‘In America, and they had this thing called the Sun Dance, and I got invited to it by the man whose land we were working on, and he said it was something of an honour, because they didn’t normally let white people go along.’

      ‘So. You went to a dance. With a man. And then …?’

      ‘Well, they hold it in a circle, the Sun Dance, and they have a big sort of maypole thing in the centre, with cords coming down from it. The dance goes on for three days, and when we arrived it was at the beginning of the third day, and the dancers looked not quite there, if you know what I mean. Stripped to the waist, and sort of swaying backwards and forwards, and their eyes not quite focused—or focused beyond what they were looking at. And there was this constant drumming, three men sitting side by side, beating these big drums for all they were worth, and singing these strange guttural songs, and then the dancers all smoked a pipe that had burning sage in it, and they went off into a sort of tent thing, which was a sweat-lodge, like a sauna, with hot coals inside—and it was well over a hundred degrees outside, too, so you could only imagine the heat inside.’

      ‘Did you СКАЧАТЬ