Lanark: a life in 4 books (59 page)

It was hard to see anything of the cavern except that the ceiling was a foot or two above their heads. Ritchie-Smollet said, “What tremendous energy these Victorian chaps had. They hollowed this place out as a burial vault when the ground upstairs was filled up. A later age put it to a more pedestrian use, and it still is a remarkably handy short cut…. Please ask any questions you like.”

“Who are you?”

“A Christian. Or I try to be. I suppose you’d like to know my precise church, but I don’t think the sect is all that important, do you? Christ, Buddha, Amon-Ra and Confucius had a great deal in common. Actually I’m a Presbyterian but I work with believers of every continent and colour.”

Lanark felt too tired to speak. They had left the ice and were climbing a flagged passage under an arching roof. Ritchie-Smollet said, “Mind you, I’m opposed to human sacrifice: unless it’s voluntary, as in the case of Christ. Did you have a nice journey?”

“No.”

“Never mind. You’re still sound in wind and limb and you can be sure of a hearty welcome. You’ll be offered a seat on the committee, of course. Sludden was definite about that and so was I. My experience of institute and council affairs is rather out of date—things were less tense in my time. We were delighted when we heard you had chosen to join us.”

“I’ve chosen to join nobody. I know nothing about committee work and Sludden is no friend of mine.”

“Now, now, don’t get impatient. A wash and a clean bed will work wonders. I suspect you’re more exhausted than you think.”

The pale square of light appeared ahead and enlarged to a doorway. It opened into the foot of a metal staircase. Lanark and Rima climbed slowly and painfully in watery green light. Ritchie-Smollet came patiently behind, humming to himself. After many minutes they emerged into a narrow, dark, stone-built chamber with marble plaques on three walls and large wrought-iron gates in the fourth. These swung easily outward, and they stepped onto a gravel path beneath a huge black sky. Lanark saw he was on a hilltop among the obelisks of a familiar cemetery.

CHAPTER 35.

Cathedral

After they had gone a little way Lanark stopped and declared, “This isn’t Unthank!”

“You are mistaken. It is.”

They looked down a slope of pinnacled monuments onto a squat black cathedral. The floodlit spire held a gilt weathercock above the level of their eyes, but Lanark was more perplexed by the view beyond. He remembered a stone-built city of dark tenements and ornate public buildings, a city with a square street plan and electric tramcars. Rumours from the council corridors had made him expect much the same place, only darker and more derelict, but below a starless sky this city was coldly blazing. Slim poles as tall as the spire cast white light upon the lanes and looping bridges of another vast motorway. On each side shone glass and concrete towers over twenty floors high with lights on top to warn off aeroplanes. Yet this was Unthank, though the old streets between towers and motor-lanes had a half-erased look, and blank gables stood behind spaces cleared for carparks. After a pause Lanark said, “And Unthank is dying?”

“Dying? Oh I doubt it. The population has shrunk since they scrapped the Q39 project, but there’s been a tremendous building boom.”

“But if a place is losing people and industry how can it afford new buildings?”

“Ah, I know too little about chronology to say. I feel that what happens between
hearts
matters more than these big public ways of swapping energy. You tell me, no doubt, that this is a conservative attitude. On the other hand, radicals are the only people who’ll work with me. Odd, isn’t it?”

Lanark said irritably, “You seem to understand my questions, but your answers make no sense to me.”

“That’s typical of life, isn’t it? But as long as you’ve a good heart and keep trying there’s no need to despair.
Wer immer
streband sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen
. Oh, you’ll be a great deal of use to us.”

Rima suddenly leaned on a stone and said quietly, without bitterness, “I can’t go on.”

Lanark, alarmed, clasped her waist though it worried him to be clasping two people instead of one.

Ritchie-Smollet said softly, “A giddy spell?” “No, my back hurts and I … I can hardly think.”

“In my missionary phase I took a medical degree. Give me your pulse.”

He held her wrist in one hand, beat time with the other, then said, “Eighty-two. Considering your condition that’s quite good. Could you manage down to that building? A sleep is what you need most, but I’d better examine you first to make sure everything’s in order.”

He pointed to the cathedral. Rima stared at it. Lanark murmured, “Could we join hands and carry her?”

Rima pushed herself upright and said, “No, give me your arm. I’ll walk.”

The clergyman led them down dim weedy paths past the porticoes of mausoleums cut into the hillside. Gleams of light from below lit corners of inscriptions to the splendid dead:

“… His victorious campaign …”
“….. whose unselfish devotion …..”
“… revered by his students …”
“….. esteemed by his colleagues …..”
“… beloved by all …”

They crossed a flat space and walked along a cobbled lane. Ritchie-Smollet said, “A tributary of the river once flowed under here.”

Lanark saw that a low wall beside him was the parapet of a bridge and looked over onto a steeply embanked road. Cars sped up this to the motorway but there seemed to be a barrier: after slowing and stopping they turned and came back again. A tiny distinct throbbing in the air worked on the eardrum like the point of a drill on a tooth.

“What’s that noise?”

“There appears to be a pile-up at the intersection: a burst transporter, one of these huge dangerous God-the-Father jobs. The council ought to ban them. The city looks like being sealed off for quite a while. However, we’ve adequate food stocks. Come through here, it’s a short cut.”

The parapet had given way to a wall screened by bushes. Ritchie-Smollet parted two of these uncovering a hole into brighter air. Lanark helped Rima through. They were in the grounds of the cathedral where gravestones lay flat like a pavement. Vans and private cars stood on them against the surrounding wall, and Rima sank down on the step of a mobile crane. Ritchie-Smollet thrust hands into trouser pockets and stared ahead with a small satisfied smile.

“There she stands!” he said. “Our centre of government once again.”

Lanark looked at the cathedral. At first the floodlit spire seemed too solid for the flat black shape upholding it, a shape cut through by rows of dim yellow windows; then his eye made out the tower, roofs and buttresses of a sturdy Gothic ark, the sculpted waterspouts broken and rubbed by weather and the hammers of old iconoclasts.

“What do you mean, centre of government? Unthank has a city chambers.”

“Ah, yes, we use it nowadays for property deals. Quite a lot of work is done there, but the
real
legislators come here. I know you’re keen to meet them but first you’ll have to sleep. I speak as a doctor now, not as a minister of the gospel, so you mustn’t argue with me.”

They walked over inscriptions more laconic than in the higher cemetery.

“William Skinner: 5½ feet North × 2¼ West.”

“Harry Fleming, his wife Minnie, their son George, their daughter Amy: 6 feet West × 2½ North.”

They reached a side entrance and crossed a shallow porch into the cathedral.

A long-haired young man wearing blue overalls sat reading a book on a lidded stone font near the door. He glanced up and said, “Where have you been, Arthur? Polyphemus is going berserk. He thinks he’s discovered something.”

“I’m in a hurry, Jack,” said Ritchie-Smollet crisply. “These people need rest and attention. Will anywhere be clear for a while? I mean really clear?”

“Nothing scheduled for the arts lab.”

“Then get blankets and pillows into it and clean sheets, really clean sheets, and make up a bed.”

“Yes but” —the youth laid down his book and slid to the floor—“what will I tell Polyphemus?”

“Tell him politics is not man’s chief end.”

The youth hurried off between rows of rush-bottomed chairs covering the great flagged floor. The cathedral seemed vaster inside than out. The central pillars upholding the tower hid what lay beyond, but organ tones and blurred hymnal voices indicated a service there. At the same time the hard beat of wilder music sounded from somewhere below. Ritchie-Smollet said, “Not a bad God kennel, is it? The October Terminus are having a gig in the crypt. Some people don’t approve of that, but I tell them that at the Reformation the building was used by three congregations simultaneously and in my father’s house are many mansions. Do you need the lavatory?”

“No,” muttered Rima, who had sunk into a chair. “No, no, no, no.”

“Come on, then. Not far now.”

They moved slowly down a side aisle and Lanark had time to notice that the cathedral had clearly been used in several ways since its foundation. Torn flags hung overhead; against the walls stood ornate memorials to soldiers killed while invading remote continents. Before the arches under the tower they turned left and went down some steps, then right and descended others into a small chapel. An orange light hung in the stone-ribbed ceiling but the stone was whitewashed and the effect was restful. The air was warmed and scented by paraffin heaters in the corners; a stack of plastic mattresses against a wall nearly touched the ceiling. Three of these were laid edge to edge and Jack was making a bed on the middle one. Rima lay down on it when he finished and Lanark helped remove her coat. “Don’t go to sleep yet—I’ll be back in a jiff,” said Ritchie-Smollet and went out. Jack adjusted the wicks of the heaters and followed him. Lanark shed his own coat and sat with Rima’s head on his lap. He was weary but couldn’t relax because his clothes felt sticky and foul. He fingered the matted beard on his cheeks and chin and touched the thinning hair on his scalp. Clearly he had grown older. He looked down at Rima, whose eyes were closed. Her hair was black once more, and apart from the big belly her whole figure seemed slighter than in the council corridors. A small insulted frown between the brows suggested an angry little girl, but her lips had the beautiful repose of a mature, contented woman of thirty or forty. He gazed and gazed but couldn’t decide her age at all. She sighed and murmured, “Where’s Sludden?”

He overcame a pang of anger and said gently, “I don’t know, Rima.”

“You’re nice to me, Lanark. I’ll always trust you.”

Ritchie-Smollet and Jack brought basins of hot water, towels, clean nightshirts, and went out again. Rima lay on the towels while Lanark sponged and dried her, taking special care of the great belly, which looked more normal naked than clothed. She slid between the sheets and Ritchie-Smollet returned with a black leather case. He knelt by the bed and took out thermometer, stethoscope and sterilized gloves in a transparent envelope. He slipped the thermometer below Rima’s armpit and was tearing the envelope when she opened her eyes and said sharply, “Turn round Lanark.”

“Why?”

“If you don’t turn round I won’t let him touch me.”

Lanark turned round and walked to the far side of a pillar, his feet cold on the bare stone. He stopped and stared at the ceiling. The arching ribs came together in carved knops, and one showed a pair of tiny snakes twining across the brow of a very cheerful skull in the middle of a wreath of roses. Nearby on the vault someone had scribbled in pencil:

GOD = LOVE = MONEY = SHIT
.

“Well, that seems all right,” said Ritchie-Smollet loudly. Lanark turned and saw him repacking the case. “The little fellow seems the correct way up and round and so forth. If she insists on having it here I suppose we can manage.”

“
Here
?” said Lanark, startled.

“Not in hospital, I mean. Anyway, I’ll leave you to some well-earned rest.”

He went out, pulling a red curtain across the door. Rima murmured, “Get in behind me.”

He obeyed and she pressed her freezing soles greedily to his shins, but her back was familiar and cosy and soon they grew warm and slept.

He wakened among whispering and rustling. Chains of bright spots flowed zigzag over the dark vault and pillars and crowded floor. They were cast by a silver-faceted globe revolving where the orange lamp had hung, and now the only steady light shone on the steps to the entrance. These were the breadth of the wall. Young men in overalls were arranging electrical machines on them which sometimes filled the chapel with huge hoarse sighs. Three older men sat on the lower steps holding instruments joined by wires to the machinery, and a fourth was setting up a percussion kit with B
ROWN’S
L
UGWORM
C
ASANOVAS
printed on the big drum. Lanark saw he was part of an audience: the whole floor was paved with mattresses and covered with people squatting shoulder to shoulder. Beside him a delicate girl in a silver sari was leaning on a hairy, bare-chested man in a sheepskin waistcoat. Just in front a girl in the tartan trews and scarlet mess jacket of a highland regiment was whispering to a man with the braided hair, headband and fringed buckskin of an Indian squaw. People from every culture and century seemed gathered here in silk, canvas, fur, feathers, wool, gauze, nylon and leather. Hair was frizzed out like the African, crewcut like the Roman, piled high like Pompadour, straightened like the Sphinx or rippled over the shoulders like periwigs. There was every kind of ornament and an amount of nakedness. Lanark looked unsuccessfully for his clothes. He felt he had rested a long time but Rima was still sleeping, so he decided not to move. Other couples were reclining at length and even caressing in the shelter of sleeping bags.

There was applause and a small gloomy man with a heavy moustache stood with a microphone on the steps. He said, “Glad to be back, folks, in legendary Unthank where I’ve had so many legendary experiences. I’m going to lead off with a new thing, it bombed them in Troy and Trebizond, it sank like stone-cold turkey in Atlantis, let’s see what happens here. ‘Domestic Man.’”