Songs of the Cicada

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 465, 21 May 1948, Page 22

Songs of the Cicada

By

R.

HUTCHINS

-_- HE cicada was on the wall a few feet away from him. It had come suddenly with a dry crackle of its wings. Its presence crystallised the mood of the summer afternoon. The loud insistent bursts of song from its right green body on the grey stone filled the prison yard with summer, The wall stretched away from the corner in a looming dazzling grey down the length of the yard. Prisoners in their white moleskin trousers and the drooping white hats were sprawled or sitting in haphazard groups along the wall. Above them rose the stones. Around them rose the prison, sprawled on to the dry ground like a massive dozing monster. The scene was blurred through his heat-tired eyes. In his ears the song of the cicada was a numbing pulse of noise, a roaring, trilling staccato, insisting, dominating, hypnotic. The cicada singing summer into his ears, his brain, his mind, summer singing into his body and limbs -summer singing all around through

ns? prison air, through prison stone. The ‘cicada on the wall. Grey stone and a song, a dream of summer. He was drifting away in the dream, drifting back to the smallest kernel of his mind, letting the time of day, of months, of years, pass by in summer sweetness. Only vaguely did the yard, the prisoners, and the grey stone drift across his awareness. Only from a lethargy of restfulness could he perceive the wall, the cicada, and Quinn’s head below it, a white blur of hat with the formless dark of his face below. Quinn’s head with the céntre of. noise above it. It was a unity, somehow. He felt he should grasp after some tired thought that expressed the unity before him, Perhaps it was Quinn’s brain up there, pulsing out on grey stone. Perhaps that dark shadow below the hat was a ghastly empty skull, and Quinn was dead down there, and living on the stone above. Perhaps there was no such thing as Quinn: Perhaps-suddenly, a movement of Quinn’s head broke through the drowsiness, and summer and cicada and stone rushed in where sleep had been.

E looked at Quinn. The eyes across from his were open wide in the dark shadow of the hat. Eyes with wrinkles and rough lines around, in a face of 30 years. Quinn’s face was a prisoner’s face. Its lines and shapes and colours were prison things. Looking at Quinn, he thought, how could ‘you tell he was a prisoner? Here in the heat of a prison summer, with Quinn in prison clothes you couldn’t miss seeing those prison things in his face before you. But on the outside, in the freedom of the streets, would they see the same? He thought that would be harder, perhaps impossible. What clue to look for: in Quinn’s face to show it was of prison? Funny, that, he’d read in a digest from the prison library that there was no such thing as a criminal face-but something had to be a clue, the digest had said, and that was in men’s minds. He could see that, now he came to think of it, in Quinn. He remembered he’d been on ‘remand with Quinn, their

cases came up at the same time. And in those days of waiting men liked to convince themselves and the others in the remand yard of their innocence. He remembered that even then Quinn had given him a clue as to his crime-mind. Quinn had been up and was waiting for sentence. They’d got him on 27 charges of burglary. The beak had warned him that be was eligible for the act. Quinn only needed to break again and he’d be an habitual. That had upset him. It*was’ his third time up and he was scared it would happen again. He remembered seeing Quinn huddled up in the wintry gloom of the remand yard, sheltering

from the misty rain in his crumpled grey suit. Somehow they had got talking. They had -seen each other at the court and in the yard, and Quinn seemed to want to talk. He remembered now how Quinn had told him all about his record. Three times up for burglary, the last time with a list of 27 charges. He had done a six-months, and a year for the first two and he was scared he’d get three years this time, He got it, too, after a month in the rain and cold of the remand yard, * * * UINN had told him how even when he’d just been out of the Mount only for a couple of weeks, he had started it all over again. All his good promises to himself, to the Chief, and to God, wouldn’t keep him from it. He got a job at Westfield and was dragging down over eight quid a week. So it wasn’t the money; he admitted that himself. And Quinn had told him how one Saturday night, just after his tea, he began thinking of ratting a place. He couldn’t get the thought out of his mind. So he decided to go to the pictures to forget it. For a while when he was shaving and getting ready he had forgotten it. But it came again. All‘the way in on the tram he had fought against it. And the pictures wiped it out altogether so that Quinn was like the rest sitting in the dark, their minds alive only to the luminous screen. But on the way home to his room, Quinn said, he felt it again. More and more. So much that he would be looking at the shops passing by, picking the easy ones, planning the harder ones. When the tram stopped right outside a suburban dairy he had said that he nearly got out to look the place over, to peer into the shadows at the back, to discover the best way in. Somehow the had made it back to the room all right, but the thing was there, like a dream flooding through him, a . rising tide flooding him to crime. And Sunday would be worse. He promised himself not to do anything. But he soon found himself on a tram to a suburb where he knew it would start all over again. Wandering up and down the quiet street he would be looking the shops over. Sémething would make him pick on one. And then there was no turning back. That night he would do it. And he wouldn’t rest until he had. Then in the day that followed he would fight it again, threatening himself with his new guilt. But again and again. At Westfield by day, a burglar by night. And the stuff he took-a radio, some cutlery, an electric iron, or some handy money. All small stuff really; but a lot of it, Prowling around at night he would mount up the entries, Until sooner or later he would get caught. And funny thing, Quinn had always got caught on the job. The -hree times they had grabbed him he had done something so stupid, so obvious, that they couldn’t help but get him. Last time he had been trying to ram a hole in a three-ply door in a shop, when there was a lock right beside him! Making a row the neighbours heard when he could have quietly forced the lock, instead. Re * * E remembered how stupid he had thought it was for Quinn to do that, But now, six months later he could. see that it would happen again, too. He began to realise that he could see some reason in it all. Ever since he had read a series of articles in one of the digests from the library about psychology he’d been trying to figure out what it all meant. In the summer heat, words, ideas

and phrases that he had hung on to| from the locked-in hours of the cell and the magazines-ideas came back in the warmth of the afternoon. There was something about people doing things because they had to, because of-the word eluded him, and then he remem-bered-because of compulsion. Because they had to. They did things because they were compelled to-that was what Quinn did — he remembered now that Quinn had said himself that he had to do it. Even when he knew that there was the Mount again, he still had to do it. This new association pleased himQuinn connected with some idea on psychology. The discovery warmed him. He repeated it over in his mind and again and again to ensure its strength and warmth. The comfort was real, the words Quinn and compulsion repeating, chanting in his mind. The comfort was real, almost a reprieve. But how did it figure out with himself-or the others? He tried to recall some of the words, some of the ideas from the digest. It was vague; confusing. But out of the bewilderment arose the magical thoughtQuinn was a criminal and they had explained him. He himself. was a criminal and they would explain him too. Perhaps not now, or in years, but sometime, someday, they would find out why he* was bound to his crime as Quinn was. If they can figure out the world, and the stars, and everything, they'll learn about crime too. And then they would all be free. Quinn:and himself, and Williams down the wall, and Smithy over there in the’ corner-all these men under the high stone walls would be free. Men here in prison and in crime would be free! he thought. O God, what sweet thought is this! He could hear the song of the cicada singing in his head. The tears of childhood were rising in his throat. The ecstasy of freedom, the lifting of his burden, the winging of his soul, the joy of this boundless hope. All these men under the stone walls were free! He was giving them their freedom — prison was no more! Take your freedom, men-he wanted to shout it out. No more crime, no more shame, guilt gone from the world for ever. Was this the Love of God? Was this religion in his godless mind? Quinn’s head in front of him, the same as it was a few. moments before-but blurred now with a happiness so strong and strange, a joy from God Himself. And the warmth of the summer sun, warmer now, and the triumph of the cicada’s song, strong as the trumpets of heaven, repeating in mounting chorus the rise of the furthest happiness. Louder, shriller, sings the cicada, each burst a mighty chord of sound. The shimmering crystal of sound, the cicada on the wall, vibrating through stone and: air and mind. Quinn’s hand moved. slowly, poised above the green and shining body.