The Meeting on the Glasgow Bridge of Sighs

Some are prepared to take others to task for vain words spoken in oaths and promises, but they will not take to task what hearts have scorned. 

When a local politician decided one day to walk the bridge over the Molendinar Burn to visit a buried relative in the Glasgow Necropolis, then did the homeless and beggars suddenly surround him, and among them a woman with a bulbous nose who came forward and spoke to him thus:

“Behold, here is a wealthy politician off to cry over the dead! And you hope the people learn from you, and acquire faith in your policies. But for them to believe fully in you, one thing is still needful. You must first of all convince us homeless! Here before you are a fine selection, and verily, an opportunity to speak to us with more than one forelock to tug! The poor can you not help, and the unemployed to find work? And you who have enough investments to manage and live comfortably off, couldn’t you also give a little of yourself, rather than from that of the taxpayer? This, I think, would be the right method to have us homeless respect you!"

And the politician stopped, looking askance at the melee confronting him before answering her indirectly. “When this woman has the roses taken from her nose, then there goes her spirit. And when one gives the blind eyes, they’ll likely see too many bad things happening around them. So that in the end there are nothing but curses for the healer. And he, who makes the lame man run, inflicts upon him the greatest injury. For hardly will he run, when his problems run with him. Fortunately for you and your companions I am no healer. And yet I will give you some of my time and perhaps you might teach me something.”

“My nose is but a small thing since I am among some who are eyeless in Glasgow, and earless, legless, and some who are without speech or even a brain, thanks to the alcohol” Rose nose replied. “And I have seen worse things, and things so hideous, that I should neither like to speak of them, but nor should I remain silent about some of them. Namely people who lack everything. And there are others that have too much of one thing. Men such as yourself who are little more than a big eye, a big mouth, a big belly, or something else big. A vagrant inside, I call such men.”

The politician, used to such insults, and well equipped with an arsenal of his own, then answers “I have come out of my solitude, and not for some time have I passed over this bridge, and I cannot trust my eyes, and I’m looking again and again, and I’m thinking, this is quite a mouth! A mouth as big as an elephant’s! If I look more attentively, and actually there moves under the mouth something pitiably small and poor and slim. And in truth this immense mouth is perched on a small thin stalk, the stalk, however, is a woman! A blind person could recognise this envious countenance, coming from this bloated nose hovering over this stalk. I hear that this big mouth is not only a woman, but a great woman, a genius. But I never believe those who speak of great people, and I hold to my belief that you are a reversible cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing.”

When the politician had spoken thus about the bulbous nosed homeless woman to those for whom the woman seemed to be the mouthpiece and advocate, he proceeded to walk forward.

The woman then said “Verily, my friends, he walks among us as though we are the fragments and limbs of human beings! So terrible are we to his eyes, we are like broken up bodies, scattered about, as though on a butchering battle ground.  His eyes search for something to spy on and flee from the present to somewhere nice, and all he sees are the same fragments and limbs and fearful chances, as he sees before us!”

“Ah, my friends, this is my sorry lot that I meet with unbearable trouble; and I should not know how to live, unless I were not a harbinger of bright things to come,” said he.

“A harbinger, a manipulator, a decider, a bright future in himself, and a bridge to the future, and alas, also as it were a cripple on this bridge, all that is our politician, lightning’s favourite conductor!” said she. “And who is he to us? What shall he be called by us?"

“You are like all crowds who give themselves questions in order to make answers.” was his reply.

“Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A rich harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a healed one? Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good one? Or an evil one?” some others suddenly ask, as though hungry children at the breakfast table. 

“I walk among people as though fragments of the future: that future which I contemplate on your behalf.” he replied, taken aback by all these clamouring questions. “And it is through my politicising and aspiration that I compose into unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance, whatever comes my way.” he replied, and continuing, “And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, and riddle-reader, and redeemer of good chance!”

“Is that what you do, dear politician. Redeem past mistakes, and then to transform every "mistake" into "thus I will to have it my way!" she retorts. “Is that redemption?”

“So is an emancipator and joy-bringer called. I’m teaching you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: my aspirations are still prisoner to my imperfections.”

“A willing aspirer” she retorts. “Is nothing more than someone teeth-gnashing in lonesome tribulation, impotent towards what must be done. Aspiration is a malicious spectator of all that is past. It cannot break time and time's desire for change.”

“So is the stone which cannot be re-rolled and called anew.”

The discussion between the two had the homeless crowd in a bit of a daze, and they looked at their red-nosed companion with as much wonder as contempt. Who is she to be in conversation with Mr Importance here? And her language! Awful.

“And thus does your type of aspiration roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and take revenge on whoever does not have it, let alone like it, and with rage and ill-humour thrown in” says she.

I’ll play on with your game a little more and have me some fun, the politician thought. “Thus, does hopelessness become a torturer. And then the suffering takes its revenge, because it is always remembered and cannot be reversed. The damage is done.”

“But watch that the damage is revenge itself.  A great folly dwells in our will to live, which becomes a curse upon all humanity, and that this folly has a great spirit which never dies!” says she.

“The spirit of revenge it seems my friends, has hitherto been our best confrontation; and where there is suffering, there is always a penalty.” The politician quickly responds.  

"Everything perishes; therefore, everything deserves to perish, including you dear politician! And this itself is justice, the law of time, that it must devour all its players.”

"Morally are things ordered according to justice and penalty. Oh, where is there deliverance from the flux of things and from the existence of suffering? Said he. “Thus do the miserable like you rose nose lady do preach.”

"Can there be deliverance when there is no justice? Alas, time does not rewind itself, and we here, looking at you with mocking eyes, with no idea of what time really does. And thus does our madness preach.”

Says he. "No deed can be annihilated: how can it be undone without judgment? This is eternal to the existence of tragedy itself, and sadly tragedy recurs eternally in deed and in reaction to it!”

“Unless one has an overpowering will deliverable to tragedy, and then there is no such thing as judgment, merely pained contemplation” says she.

“But how does it speak thus? And when does this take place? Is the will unharnessed from its own folly? And has your will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and the teeth-grinding, which you well disguise in your arguments?” he replies.

But at this point in his discourse the politician pauses for some seconds and was looking at his audience, as though they were in a dim light, their figures wraith like, and he looked like a person in great alarm. With terror in his eyes did he gaze on his unwilling disciples; his glances pierced as with arrows their thoughts and after-thoughts. But after a few more silent seconds he laughed, and he said in a quiet manner: “"It is difficult to live like this, because silence makes it difficult to search for a good word or two."

And with that the politician continued his walk across the bridge, his homeless audience parting. However, the red nosed woman, after she heard the politician laugh, looked at him with curiosity, and slowly she asked: “But why do you speak differently to us than to your valued constituents?”

To which the politician answered: "What is there to be wondered at! With the homeless one might as well speak in a homeless way!" And with that he strode on, the eyes of his questioners trailing after him.

Now the politician, a former lawyer, had so far in his work completely masked his true disorder, and his fellow politicians and staff always presumed him well, when in fact he was quite otherwise. He had not been back in his office for very long after this encounter with the bulbous nosed woman, before his masked derangement became discernible to those around him. A clerk had asked him to peruse a document she was about to pass on to the appropriate department, and suddenly his impetuous arrogance and malevolent disposition exploded in an instant. And so began a violent rant so devastating that he was quickly apprehended and taken to a small room for him to quieten down. But he would not, and after the right protocols had been followed, he was admitted to a private hospital nearby. Almost from the moment of his confinement he became tranquil and orderly, mimicking his old and respected working mood he conducted at the office, occasionally remonstrating on the injustice of his confinement.

A visiting psychiatrist consulted with the politician on a number of occasions over his time as a patient, and each time she found him lucid and articulate and indeed quite calm. The politician spoke well of the treatment he had received, from the carers and staff under whose care he was placed, for they were most kind and respectful: he also expressed himself as particularly fortunate in being under this psychiatrist’s care, bestowing many handsome compliments on her skill in treating his disorder, and how cautious she was in diagnosing the symptoms of insanity. As a politician he conducts his duties with the utmost diligence and professionalism and it is impossible for insanity to get in the way.

When he was asked to explain certain aspects of his conduct, and particularly some extravagant opinions concerning certain persons and circumstances, he disclaimed all knowledge of such things, and he felt himself hurt, and that he was the victim of unknown prejudices. He displayed equal subtlety on the occasions he was visited, although by protracting the conversation he let slip particular statements, enough to satisfy the psychiatrist that the politician was a mad-man. And when the psychiatrist’s report of him was made, not long after, he was transferred from the private hospital to a mental hospital, where he constantly expressed frustration and anger at the indignity of it all. This mental hospital, which he had formerly commended for its service to the community, had now become the subject of his severest admonitions.

And when his family visited him, he insisted that he was being treated with extreme cruelty, that he is nearly starved, and eaten up by vermin of horrible descriptions. The psychiatrist, in her absence, was the subject of the vilest abuse, although to her face his behaviour was courteous and respectful. Four months had elapsed since the politician’s admission to the mental hospital, before he began pressing the authorities to review his case, and to find him another psychiatrist who would be reasonable when assessing his mental health. After some time and after many meetings, including one on a grassy bank beside the Molendinar Burn, he was assured by the hospital authorities that he was indeed a proper inmate for the asylum. And on being told this he poured forth his usual torrent of abuse before quietening down and talking in the most incoherent manner. He insisted on the truth of his situation which has denied him of his liberties and he breathed vengeance against his family and friends. And then he became so outrageous that it was necessary to have him strictly confined and put under heavy sedation, for his behaviour was too much to bear, even in the games room.