Let me say at this point that I was faced with a particularly interesting scientific problem. I wished naturally to be merely an observer in the experiment I was conducting and for this reason I couldn’t interfere on either side. However, I walked along with the youngsters towards the hut. When we arrived the adults had not yet reached it, and we waited outside the hut in a group. There was a number of boys and girls and many of them were very angry. They felt that they were defending not only a hut but a principle. They felt that the time had come when they must stand up for themselves against the rigid ideology which was demanding the destruction of their hut. My hut had in fact become a symbol.
We waited therefore and saw in complete silence the adults approaching. There was a large number of them and they carried axes and spades. They stopped when they saw us and the two groups faced each other in the fine sunshine. They were led, as one could see very quickly, by the fiery minister. This was indeed a clash or crash of wills that the prophet had foreseen. The minister came forward and said, ‘Are you going to allow us to pull down peacefully this habitation of the devil?’
One of the boys who was home from university and whose name was John Maclean said, ‘No, we’re not. You have no right to pull the hut down. It doesn’t belong to you.’ He was studying, as I remember, to be a lawyer. I said nothing but remained an interested spectator. What was I expecting? That there would be an intervention from heaven?
The minister said no more but walked steadily forward with an axe in his hand. Now this posed another interesting problem. No one had ever laid hands on a minister before, certainly not in a country village. If anyone did, would there indeed be an intervention from heaven? The minister, small and energetic, advanced towards the hut. The group of youngsters interposed themselves. He pushed among them while one or two of the girls, their nerve breaking, rushed to the other side to join their fathers, who were waiting grimly to see the result of the minister’s lone attack. I think they too were wondering what the youths would do. In his tight black cloth the minister moved steadily forward, axe in hand.
The youths were watching and wondering what I should do but I did nothing. How could I? After all I was a scientist engaged in an experiment. Some of them were clearly speculating on what would happen to them when their parents, many of them large and undeniably fierce, got them home again. In the sunshine the minister advanced. One could see from the expression on his face that for him this hut really was an abomination created by the devil, that its destruction had been ordered by the Most High, that he, the servant of God attired in his sober black, was going to accomplish that destruction. Interestingly enough I saw that among the adults was Buckie the builder placidly awaiting the destruction of the work of his own hands. Did I however glimpse for one moment a twitch of doubt on his face, a fear that he perhaps too was present at a personal surrender? I knew all the invaders, every single one of them, placid, hard-working men, good neighbours, heavy moral men, all bent on destroying my green hut which was at the same time both Catholic and demonic and perhaps life-enhancing. It was odd that such a construction should have caused such violent passions. But I had not met a man like this minister before. When he had finally arrived next to the youths he said in a slightly shrill voice (perhaps even he was nervous?), ‘I have come here to lay this abomination to the ground. Shall any of you dare touch the servant of the Lord?’ Quivering he raised his head, his moustache bristling. There was a long silence. It was clearly a moment permeated with significance. Were the young going to establish their independence once and for all? Or were they going to surrender? The village would never be the same again after this confrontation, no matter what happened.
The men waited. The minister pushed. And he slipped on the ground. I am not sure how it happened – maybe he slipped on a stone, or maybe he had done it with the unconscious deliberation and immense labyrinthine cunning that the service of the Lord had taught him. Anyway as if this had been what they waiting for, the men pushed forward in a perfect fury (would these sons of theirs defy their elders as represented by the minister?), impatiently pushed their sons and daughters aside and with axes held high hacked away at the hut. Thus in Old Testament days must men such as this have hacked to pieces the wooden gods of their enemies, coloured and magical and savage. Thus they splintered and broke my hut. Before they were finished the youngsters had left, giving me a last look of contempt. I was the fallen champion, the uncommitted one. I who had apparently been on the side of youth against the rigid structures of religion, had surrendered. When the men had accomplished their destruction, their penetration of the bastion of immorality, they too turned away from me as if in embarrassment that I had witnessed such an orgy, almost sexual in its force and rhythm. Without speaking to me they left.
After they had all gone, leaving an axe or two behind, I stood there beside my ruined hut, the shell which had been ripped open and torn. Not even the Bacchanalians had been so fierce and ruthless. Thinking hard, I poked among the fragments. Above me the sky was blue and enigmatic. No prophecy emerged from its perfect surface. I remembered the words,
