Lanark: a life in 4 books (12 page)

It took a while to see things clearly. The thunder had ended, but throughout the apartment instruments were jangling and thrumming in sympathy. Lanark noticed Munro still sitting beside him. There was sweat on his brow and he was industriously polishing his spectacles with a handkerchief. The blank screen was cracked from side to side but the microphone hung neatly under it. Ozenfant stood at a distance examining a fiddle. “See!” he cried. “The Α-string has snapped. Yet some assert that a Stradivarius is without a soul.”

Munro said, “I am no judge of salamanders, but that vibration seemed abnormally strong.”

“Indeed yes. There were over a million megatherms in that small blast.”

“Surely not!”

“Certainly. I will prove it.”

Ozenfant produced his radio and said, “Ozenfant will speak with engineer Johnson…. Johnson, hello, you have received our salamander; what is he worth? … Oh, I see. Anyway, he cracked my viewing lens, so replace it soon, please.”

Ozenfant pocketed the radio and said briskly, “Not quite a million megatherms, but it will suffice for a month or two.” He bent and hoisted up a harp which had fallen on its side. Lanark said sharply, “That heat is used?”

“Of course. Somehow we must warm ourselves.”

“That is atrocious!”

“Why?”

Lanark started stammering then forced himself to speak slowly. “I knew people deteriorate. That is dismal but not surprising. But for cheerful healthy folk to profit by it is atrocious!”

“What would you prefer? A world with a cesspool under it where the helplessly corrupt would fall and fester eternally? That is a very old-fashioned model of the universe.”

“And very poor housekeeping,” said Munro, standing up. “We could cure nobody if we did not utilize our failures. I must go now. Lanark, your department and mine have different staff clubs but if you ever leave the institute we will meet again. Professor Ozenfant is your adviser now, so good luck, and try not to be violent.”

Lanark was so keen to learn if the last remark was a joke that he stared hard into Munro’s calm benign face and let his hand be gravely shaken without saying a word. Ozenfant murmured, “Excellent advice.”

He uncovered a door and Munro went through it.

Ozenfant returned to the centre of the room chuckling and rubbing his hands. He said, “You noticed the sweat on his brow? He did not like what he saw; he is a rigorist, Lanark. He cannot sympathize with our disease.”

“What is a rigorist?”

“One who bargains with his heat. Rigorists do not hold their heat in, they give it away, but only in exchange for fresh supplies. They are very dependable people, and when they go bad they crumble into crystals essential for making communication circuits, but when you and I went bad we took a different path. That is why an exploding salamander exalts us. We feel in our bowels the rightness of such nemesis. You were exalted, were you not?”

“I was excited, and I regret it.”

“Your regret serves no purpose. And now perhaps you wish to meet your patient.”

Ozenfant lifted the corner of another tapestry, uncovered a low circular door and said, “Her chamber is through here.” “But what have I to do?”

“Since you are only able to talk, you must talk.”

“What about?”

“I cannot say. A good doctor does not carry a remedy to his patient, he lets the patient teach him what the remedy is. I drove someone salamander today because I understood my cure better than my invalid. I often make these mistakes because I know I am very wise. You know you are ignorant, which should be an advantage.”

Lanark stood with his hands in his pockets, biting his lower lip and tapping the floor with one foot. Ozenfant said, “If you do not go to her I will certainly send the catalyst.”

“What is the catalyst?”

“A very important specialist who comes to lingering cases when other treatments have failed. The catalyst provokes very rapid deterioration. Why are you reluctant?”

“Because I am afraid!” cried Lanark passionately, “You want to mix me with someone else’s despair, and I hate despair! I want to be free, and freedom is freedom from other people!” Ozenfant smiled and nodded. He said “A very dragonish sentiment! But you are no longer a dragon. It is time you learned a different sentiment.”

After a while the smile left Ozenfant’s face, leaving it startlingly impassive. He let go the tapestry, went to the carpenter’s bench and picked up a fretsaw.

He said sharply, “You feel I am pressing you and you dislike it. Do what you please. But since I myself have work to do I will be glad if you waste no more of my time.”

He bent over the guitar. Lanark stared frustratedly at the corner of the tapestry. It depicted a stately woman labelled
Correctio
Conversio
standing on a crowned and sprawling young man labelled
Tarquinius
. At last he pulled this aside, stepped through the door and went down the corridor beyond.

CHAPTER 9.

A Dragon

Lanark was not a tall man but he had to bend knees and neck to pass comfortably down the corridor. The differences between bright and dull, warm and cool were slight here and the voices were like whispers in a seashell: “Lilac and laburnum …. marble and honey …. the recipe is separation ….”

The corridor ended in a steel surface with a mesh in the centre.

He said glumly, “Please open. I’m called Lanark.”

The door said, “Dr. Lanark?”

“Yes yes, Dr. Lanark.”

A circular section swung inward on a hinge. He climbed through, raised his head, banged it on the ceiling and sat down suddenly on a stool beside the table. The door closed silently leaving no mark in the wall.

For more than a minute he sat biting his thumb knuckle and trying not to yell to be let out, for the observation lens had not prepared him for the cramped smallness of the chamber and the solid vastness of the monster. The tabletop was a few inches above the floor and from the crest on the silver head to the bronze hooves on the silver feet the patient was nearly eight feet long. The chamber was a perfect hemisphere nine feet across and half as high, and though he pressed his shoulders against the curve of the ceiling it forced him to lean forward over the gleaming stomach, from which icy air beat upward into his face. Soft light came from the milk-coloured floor and walls and there were no shadows. Lanark felt he was crouching in a tiny arctic igloo, but here the warmth came from the walls and the cold from the body of his companion. The hand at the end of the human arm was clenching and unclenching, and this was a comfort, and he liked the wings folded along the dragon’s sides, each long bronze feather tipped with the spectrum of rich colour that is got by heating copper. He leaned over and looked into the gaping beak and was hit in the face by a welcome gush of warmth, but he saw only darkness. A voice said, “What have you brought this time? Bagpipes?”

The question had a hollow, impersonal tone as if transmitted through a machine too clumsy for the music of ordinary speech, yet he seemed to recognize the fierce energy beating through it.

“I’m not a musician. I’m called Lanark.”

“What filthy tricks do you play on the sick?”

“I’ve been told to talk to you. I don’t know what to say.”

He was no longer afraid and sat with elbows on knees, holding his head between his hands. After a while he cleared his throat and said, “Talk, I suppose, is a way of defending and attacking, but I don’t need to defend myself. I don’t want to attack you.”

“How kind!”

“Are you Rima?”

“I’m done with names. Names are nothing but collars men tie round your neck to drag you where they like.”

Again he could think of nothing to say. A remote faint thudding noise occupied the silence until the voice said, “Who was Rima?”

“A girl I used to like. She tried to like me too, a little.”

“Then she wasn’t me.”

“You have beautiful wings.”

“I wish they were spikes, then I wouldn’t need to talk jaggedly to bastards like you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Don’t pretend you’re not like the others. Your technique will be different but you’ll hurt me too. I’m helpless in this freezing coffin so why not begin?”

“Ozenfant didn’t hurt you.”

“Do you think these noises made me happy? Ballet music! Sounds of women flying and floating in moonlight like swans and clouds, women leaping from men’s hands like flames from candles, women disdaining whole glittering audiences of czars and emperors. Yes, the liar talked, he left nothing to my imagination. He said
I
could have done these things once. Open your heart to my music,’ he said. ‘Weep passionately.’ He could not reach my skin so he raped my ears, like you.”

“I haven’t raped your ears.”

“Then why shout?”

“I haven’t shouted!”

“Don’t get hysterical.”

“I’m
not
hysterical.”

“You certainly aren’t calm.”

Lanark bellowed, “How can I be calm when …” and was deafened by the reverberation around the narrow dome. He folded his arms and waited grimly. The uproar faded out as a faint ringing with perhaps (he wasn’t sure) an echo of laughter in it. Eventually he said in a low voice, “Should I leave?”

She murmured something.

“I didn’t hear that.”

“You could tell me who you are.”

“I’m over five and half feet tall and weigh about ten stone. My eyes are brown, hair black, and I forget the blood group. I used to be older than twenty but now I’m older than thirty. I’ve been called a crustacean, and too serious, but recently I was described by a dependable man as shrewd, obstinate and adequately intelligent. I was a writer once and now I’m a doctor, but I was advised to become these, I never wanted it. I’ve never wanted anything long. Except freedom.”

There was a metallic rattle of laughter. Lanark said, “Yes, it’s a comic word. We’re all forced to define it in ways that make no sense to other people. But for me freedom is …” He thought for a while.

“… life in a city near the sea or near the mountains where the sun shines for an average of half the day. My house would have a living room, big kitchen, bathroom and one bedroom for each of the family, and my work would be so engrossing that while I did it I would neither notice nor care if I was happy or sad. Perhaps I would be an official who kept useful services working properly. Or a designer of houses and roads for the city where I lived. When I grew old I would buy a cottage on an island or among the mountains—”

“Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!” said the voice on a low throb of rage. “Dirty bastards giving me a killer for a doctor!”

The blood boomed in Lanark’s eardrums and his scalp prickled. A wave of terror passed over him in which he struggled to get up, then a wave of rage in which he sat, leaned forward and whispered, “You have no right to despise my bad actions without liking my better ones.”

“Tell me about these, were they many? Were they pretty?” He cried, “Dr. Lanark is ready to leave!”

A circular panel opened on the other side of the chamber. He stepped carefully across the body and paused with one foot on each side of it, his shoulders against the height of the dome.

“Goodbye!” he said with a conscious cruelty which startled him. He stared down at the clenching and unclenching hand for a while, then asked humbly, “Are you very sore?”

“I’m freezing. I knew you would leave.”

“Talking doesn’t help. What can I say that won’t annoy you?”

After a moment she spoke in a voice he just managed to hear.

“You could read to me.”

“Then I will. Next time I’ll bring books.”

“You won’t come back.”

Lanark climbed out through the opening into a tunnel where he could stand erect. He leaned into the chamber and said cheerfully, “I’ll surprise you. I’ll be quicker than you think.” The panel closed as he turned away.

At the end of the corridor a red curtain admitted him to a passage between a large window and a row of arches. Through the arches he recognized, with a sense of homecoming, the five beds of his own ward. It seemed strange that the silver dragon had been so near him since his arrival. He went to his locker, lifted the books and hurried back to the curtain. From the other side it had slid open at the touch of a finger, he knew it was a paper-thin membrane with no locking device, and yet he couldn’t open it; and though he stood back and ran his shoulder into it several times it only quivered and rumbled like a struck drum. He was about to kick it in a fit of bad temper when he noticed the view from the window. He was looking down on a quiet street with a skin of frost over it and a three-storey red sandstone tenement on the far side. The windows glinted cleanly in early morning sunlight; smoke from a few chimney-pots flowed upward into a pale winter sky. A boy of six or seven with a dark blue raincoat, woollen helmet and schoolbag came down some steps from a close and turned left along the pavement. Directly opposite Lanark a thin woman with a tired face appeared between the curtains of a bay window. She stood watching the boy, who turned and waved to her as he reached the street corner and banged the side of his head into a lamppost. Lanark felt inside himself the shock, then amusement, which showed on the mother’s face. The boy went round the corner, rubbing his ear mournfully. The woman turned and looked straight across at Lanark, then lifted a hand to her mouth in a startled puzzled way. He wanted to wave to her as the boy had waved, to open the window and shout something comforting, but a milk cart pulled by a brown horse came along the street, and when he looked back from it the bay window was empty.

This vision hit Lanark poignantly. He lowered the blind to prevent a new scene from replacing it and wandered into the ward feeling very tired. It seemed many days since he had been there, though the clock showed it was not three hours. He put the books and white coat on the chair, slid his shoes off and lay on the bed, intending to rest for ten or fifteen minutes.

He was wakened by the radio saying
plin-plong, plin-plong,
pin-plong
. He reached across, took it from the coat pocket and switched it on. Ozenfant said, “My dear fellow, sleep is not enough, sometimes you must eat. Come to the staff club. Leave the white coat behind. Evening is a time for mirth and gaiety.”