The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (173 page)

To those ignorant of extreme poverty and of its degradations; of pursuit and the attendant horrors; of the crazed extremes of love and hate; for those ignorant of such, there was no cause to suffer such a place. It was enough for the great city to know and to have heard of it by echo or by rumour and to maintain a tacit silence as dreadful as it was accepted. Whether it was through shame or fear or a determination to ignore, or even to disbelieve what they knew to be true, it was, for whatever reason, an unheard-of thing for the outrageous place to be mentioned by those who, being less desperate, were able to live out their lives in either of the two great cities that faced one another across the river.

And so the halls and tunnels of the cold sub-river life where it throbbed beneath the angry water were, to the populace on the opposing banks, in the nature of a bad dream, both too bizarre to be taken seriously, yet horrid enough to speculate upon, only to recoil, only to speculate again, and recoil again, and tear the clinging cobwebs from the brain.

What were the thoughts of those who lived and slept in the fastness beneath the water? Were these thieves and broken poets, these fugitives affected by some stigma; were they jealous or afraid of the world? How had they all foregathered in this crepuscular region? What had they so much in common that they needed each other’s presences? Nothing but hope. Hope like a wavering marsh-light: hope like a pale sun: hope like a floating leaf.

All at once and very close a harsh and unexpected noise of metal being sharpened was in horrid contrast to the soft drip … drip … drip … of water from above.

Far away there was an angry sound that broke into fragments that echoed for a while in hollow dungeons.

Somewhere, someone was adjusting the shutter of a lantern so that for a little while a shaft of light played erratically to and fro across the darkness, picking out groups of figures at varying distances, groups like hummocks of varying sizes, some pyramidal, some irregular, each with a life and shape of its own.

Before the door of the lantern was finally fastened the thread of light had come to rest upon a group of them. For a long while they had been silent; beneath the light the colour of a bruise. It hung above them, casting the kind of glow that suggested crime. Even the kindest smile appeared ghastly.

Mr Crabcalf lay upon a trestle bed, his brow creased with hours of semi-thought: his flat and speculative face was directed at the dark yet glistening ceiling where the moisture collected and hung in beads that grew and grew like fruit, and fell, when water-ripe, to the ground.

What did he see among the overhead shadows? Some, in his place, must surely have seen battle or the great jaws of carnivores or landscapes of infinite mystery and invention complete with bridges and deep chasms, forests and craters. But Crabcalf saw none of these. He saw nothing in the shadows but great profiles of himself, one after the other.

He lay quietly, his arms outside the thick red blanket that covered him. To his left sat Slingshott on the edge of a crate, his knees drawn up to his chin, his long jaw resting on his kneecap. He wore a woollen cap, and like Mr Crabcalf had lapsed for the while into silence.

At the foot of the bed, crouched like a condor over its young, was Carrow cooking a meal over a stove, and stirring what looked like a mass of horrible green fibre in a wide-necked pot. As he stirred he whistled between his teeth. The sound of this meditative occupation could be heard for a minute or two, echoing faintly in far quarters before a hundred other sounds slid back to hush it.

Mr Crabcalf was propped up, not against pillows or a bolster of straw, but by books; and every book was the same book with its dark grey spine. There at his back, banked up like a wall of bricks, were the so-called ‘remainders’ of an epic, long ago written, long ago forgotten, except by its author, for his lifework lay at his shoulder blades.

Out of the five hundred copies printed thirty years ago by a publisher long since bankrupt, only twelve copies had been sold.

Around his bed, three hundred identical volumes were erected … like walls or ramparts, protecting him from – what? There was also a cache beneath the bed that gathered dust and silver-fish.

He lay with his past beside him, beneath him, and at his head: his past, five hundred times repeated, covered with dust and silver-fish. His head, like Jacob’s on the famous stone, rested against the volumes of lost breath. The ladder from his miserable bed reached up to heaven. But there were no angels.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ said Crabcalf in a deep voice (a voice so very much more impressive than anything it ever had to say). ‘I have seen some pretty revolting things in my time, but the meal that you are preparing, Mr Carrow, is the most nauseating affair that I ever remember.’

Mr Carrow hardly troubled to look up. It was all part of the day. There would have been something missing if Crabcalf had forgotten to insult his crouching and angular friend, who went on stirring the contents of a copper bowl.

‘How many of us have you killed in your time, I wonder?’ muttered Crabcalf, allowing his head to fall back on the pillow of books, so that a little whiff of dust rose into the lamplight, new heavens being formed, new constellations, as the motes wavered.

‘Eh? Eh? How many have you sent to their deathbeds through hapless poisoning?’

Even Crabcalf was apt to become tired of his own heavy banter, and he shut his eyes. Carrow as usual made no answer. But Crabcalf was content. Even more than most he felt a great need for companionship, and he spoke only to prove to himself that his friendships were real.

Carrow knew all about this, and from time to time he turned his hawk-like features towards the one-time poet and lifted the dry corner of his lipless mouth in a dry smile. This arid salutation meant much to Crabcalf. It was part of the day.

‘O, Carrow,’ murmured the recumbent Crabcalf, ‘your desiccation is like juice to me. I love you better than a ship’s biscuit. You have no green emotions. You are dry, my dear Carrow: so dry, you pucker me. Never desert me, old friend.’

Carrow turned his eyes to the bed, but never ceased in his stirring of the grey broth.

‘You are talkative today,’ he said. ‘Don’t overdo it.’

The third of the trio, Slingshott, rose to his feet.

‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, addressing the space halfway between Carrow and Crabcalf, ‘but speaking for myself I’m hand in hand with grief.’

‘You always are,’ said Crabcalf. ‘At this time of day. And so am I. It is the eternal problem. Is one to be hungry, or is one to eat old Carrow’s gruel?’

‘No, no, I’m not talking about food,’ said Slingshott. ‘It’s worse than that. You see, I lost my wife. I left her behind.
Was
I wrong?’ He lifted his face to the dripping ceiling. No one answered.

‘When I escaped from the merciless mines,’ he said, folding his arms. ‘When the days and the nights were salt, and my lips were cracked and split with it, and the taste of that vile chemical was like knives in my mouth and a white death more terrible than any darkness of the spirit … when … I escaped I swore …’

‘That whatever happened you would never again complain of anything whatever, for nothing could be as terrible as the mines,’ said Crabcalf.

‘Why, how do you know all this? Who has been …?’

‘We have all heard it many times before. You tell us too often,’ said Carrow.

‘It is always in my head, and I forget.’

‘But you escaped. Why fret about your deliverance?’

‘I am so happy that they cannot take me. O never let them take me to the salt mines. There was a time when I collected eggs: and butterflies … and moths …’

‘I am growing hungry,’ said Crabcalf.

‘I used to dread the nights I spent alone: but after a while, when for various reasons I was forced to quit the house, and had to spend my evenings with the others, I looked back upon those solitary evenings as times of excitement. It has always been my longing to be alone again and drink the silence.’

‘I wouldn’t care to live
alone
in this place,’ said Crabcalf.

‘It’s not a nice place, that is very true,’ said Slingshott, ‘but I have been living here for twelve years and it is my only home.’

‘Home,’ said Carrow. ‘What does that mean? I have heard the word somewhere. Wait … it is coming back …’ He had ceased to stir the bowl. ‘Yes, it is coming back …’ (His voice was sharp and crisp.)

‘Well, let’s have it then,’ said Crabcalf.

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Carrow. ‘Home is a room dappled with firelight: there are pictures and books. And when the rain sighs, and the acorns fall, there are patterns of leaves against the drawn curtains. Home is where I was safe. Home is what I fled from. Who mentioned home? Who mentioned home?’

The tight-lipped Carrow, who prided himself on his control and who loathed emotionalism, sprang to his feet in a fury of self-disgust, and stumbling away, upset the grey soup so that it spread itself sluggishly beneath Crabcaf’s bed.

This disturbance caused two passers-by to stop and stare. They had heard Carrow’s outburst.

One of the two men cocked his scorbutic head on one side like a bird and then nudged his companion with such zest as to fracture one of the smaller ribs.

‘You have hurt me bad, you have,’ growled his comrade.

‘Forget it!’ said his irritating friend. He turned his gaze to where Crabcalf and Slingshott sat with frowns like birds’ nests on their brows.

Slingshott got to his feet and took a few paces towards the newcomers. Then he lifted his face to the dark ceiling.

‘When I escaped from the merciless mines,’ he said, ‘when the days and the nights were salt, and my lips were cracked and split with it and the taste of that damn chemical …’

‘Yes, old man, we know all about that,’ said Crabcalf. ‘Sit down and keep quiet. Now let me ask these two gentlemen whether they are interested in literature.’

The taller of the two, a long-limbed, crop-headed man with a grass-green handkerchief, rose to tip-toe.

‘Interested!’ he cried. ‘I’m practically literature myself. But surely you know that? After all, my family is not exactly devoid of lustre. We are patrons, as you know, of the arts, and have been so for hundreds of years. In fact, it is doubtful whether the literature of our time could come into being without the inspired guidance of the Foux-Foux family. Think of the great works that would never have been born without the patronage of my grandfather. Think of the works of Morzch in general, and of his masterpiece “Pssss” in particular: and think how my mother nursed him back out of chaos to the limpid vision of …’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said a voice. ‘You and your family make me sick.’

It was Crabcalf who, surrounded and walled in by the hundreds of unsold copies of his ill-fated novel, felt that he if anyone should be the judge not only of literature, but of all that went on behind the sordid scenes.

‘Foux-Foux indeed,’ he continued. ‘Why you and your family are nothing but jackals of art.’

‘Well really,’ said Foux-Foux. ‘That’s hardly fair, you know. We cannot all be creative, but the Foux-Foux family have always …’

‘Who’s your friend?’ said Crabcalf, interrupting. ‘Is he a jackal too? Never mind. Carrow has flown. He helped me in his day to kill emotion. But now he vanishes on an up-draught of the stuff. He has failed me. I need a cynic for a friend, old man. A cynic to steady me. Sit down, indeed. Is your friend a Foux-Foux too? I soften, as you see. I can’t make enemies: not for long. It is only when I look at my books that I get angry. After all, that’s where my heart’s blood is. But who reads them? Who cares about them? Answer me that!’

Slingshott rose to his feet, as though it were he who had been addressed.

‘I left my wife behind,’ he said. ‘On the fringe of the ice-cap. Did I do right?’ He brought his heel down to the wet brick floor with a click and a spurt of spray.

But as no one was watching him his posture faded out. He turned and addressed the author.

‘Shall I continue with the broth?’ he said.

‘Yes, if that’s what it is,’ said Crabcalf. ‘By all means do. As for you, gentlemen, join us … eat with us … suffer acute bellyache with us … and then, if needs be, die with us as friends.’

At that very moment, with Crabcalf about to expand … Carrow gone … Slingshott about to dilate upon the salt mines, and Foux-Foux on the point of withdrawing a long eating-knife from his belt, and his friend about to stir what was left of the sluggish grey fibre in the pot … at that very moment there was a pause, a silence, and in the pregnant heart of that silence another sound could be heard, the quick muffled fly-away thudding of hounds’ feet.

The sound came from the black and hollow land that spread to the south in a honeycomb of under-river masonry: the sound grew louder.

‘Here they come again,’ said Crabcalf. ‘What dandy boys they are, and no mistake.’

The others made no reply, but remained motionless, waiting for the appearance of the hounds.

‘It is later than I thought,’ said Foux-Foux … ‘but look, look …’

But there was nothing to see. It was only the shifting of a long shadow and a glimmer across the saturated bricks. The hounds were still a league or more away.