Lanark

by Alasdair Gray

The neon lights in the ceiling went out and a blurred image shone inside the screen, seemingly a knight in gothic armour lying on the slab of a tomb. The image grew distinct and more like a prehistoric lizard on a steel table. The hide was black, the knobbly joints had pink and purple quills on them, a bush of purple spines hid the genitals and a double row of spikes down the back supported the body about nine inches above the table. The head was neckless, chinless, and grew up from the collarbone into a gaping beak like the beak of a vast cuckoo. The face had no other real features, though a couple of blank domes stuck out like parodies of eyeballs. Munro said, “The mouth is open.”

  Ozenfant said, “Yes, but the air trembles above it. Soon it shuts, and then boom!”

  “When was he delivered?”

  “Nine months, nine days, twenty-two hours ago. He arrived nearly as you see him, nothing human but the hands, throat and sternum mastoid. He seemed to like jazz, for he clutched the remnant of a saxophone, so I said, ‘He is musical, I will treat him myself.’ Unluckily I know nothing of jazz. I tried him with Debussy (who sometimes works in these cases) then I tried the nineteenth-century romantics. I pounded him with Wagner, overwhelmed him with Brahms, beguiled him with Mendelssohn. Results: negative. In despair I recede further and further, and who works in the end? Scarlatti. Each time I played The Cortege his human parts blushed as pink and soft as a baby’s bottom.”

  Ozenfant closed his eyes and kissed his fingertips to the ceiling. “Well, matters remain thus till six hours ago when he goes wholly dragon in five minutes. Perhaps I do not play the clavichord well? Who else in this wretched institute would have tried?”

  Munro said, “You assume he blushed pink with pleasure. It may have been rage. Maybe he disliked Scarlatti. You should have asked.”

  “I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart.”

  Lanark moved impatiently. Light from the screen showed Ozenfant’s mouth so fixed in a smile that it seemed expressionless, while the eyebrows kept moving in exaggerated expressions of thoughtfulness, astonishment or woe. Ozenfant said, “Lanark is bored by these technicalities. I will show him more patients.”

  He spoke to the microphone and a sequence of dragons on steel tables appeared on the screen. Some had glossy hides, some were plated like tortoises, some were scaled like fish and crocodiles. Most had quills, spines or spikes and some were hugely horned and antlered, but all were made monstrous by a detail, a human foot or ear or breast sticking through the dinosaur armour. A doctor sat on the edge of one table and studied a chessboard balanced on a dragonish stomach. Ozenfant said, “That is McWham, who is also unmusical. He treats the dryly rational cases; he teaches them chess and plays interminable games. He thinks that if anyone defeats him their armour will fall off, but so far he has been too clever for them. Do you play any games, Lanark?”

  “No.”

  In another chamber a thin priest with intensely miserable eyes sat with his ear close to a dragonish beak.

  “That is Monsignor Noakes, our only faith healer. We used to have lots of them: Lutherans, Jews, Atheists, Muslims, and others with names I forget. Nowdays all the hardened religious cases have to be treated by poor Noakes. Luckily we don’t get many.”

  “He looks unhappy.”

  “Yes, he takes his work too seriously. He is Roman Catholic and the only people he cures are Quakers and Anglicans. Have you a religion, Lanark?”

  “No.”

  “You see a cure is more likely when doctor and patient have something in common. How would you describe yourself?”

  “I can’t.”

  Ozenfant laughed. “Of course you can’t! I asked foolishly. The lemon cannot taste bitterness, it only drinks the rain. Munro, describe Lanark to me.”

  “Obstinate and suspicious,” said Munro. “He has intelligence, but keeps it narrow.”

  “Good. I have a patient for him. Also obstinate, also suspicious, with a cleverness which only reinforces a deep, deep, immeasurably deep despair.”

  Ozenfant said to the microphone, “Show chamber one, and let us see the patient from above.”

  A gleaming silver dragon appeared between a folded pair of brazen wings. A stout arm ending in seven brazen claws lay along one wing, a slender soft human arm along the other. “You see the wings? Only unusually desperate cases have wings, though they cannot use them. Yet this one brings such reckless energy to her despair that I have sometimes hoped. She is unmusical, but I, a musician, have stooped to speech therapy and spoken to her like a vulgar critic, and she exasperated me so much that I decided to give her to the catalyst. We will give her to Lanark instead.”

  A radio said plin-plong. Ozenfant took one from a waistcoat pocket and turned the switch. A voice announced that patient twelve was turning salamander.

  Ozenfant said to the microphone, “Quick! Chamber twelve.”

  Chamber twelve was obscured by white vapours streaming and whirling from the dragon’s beak, which suddenly snapped shut. Radiant beams shot from the domes in the head, the figure seemed to be writhing. Ozenfrant cried, “No light, please! We will observe by heat alone.”

  There was immediate blackness on which Lanark’s dazzled eyes projected stars and circles before adjusting to it. He could hear Munro’s quick dry breathing on one side and Ozenfant breathing through his mouth on the other. He said, “What’s happening?”

  Ozenfant said, “Brilliant light pours from all his organs—it would blind us. Soon you will see him by his heat.” A moment later Lanark was startled to feel Ozenfant murmuring into his ear.

  “The heat made by a body should move easily through it, overflowing the pores, penis, anus, eyes, lips, limbs and fingertips in acts of generosity and self-preservation. But many people are afraid of the cold and try to keep more heat than they give, they stop the heat from leaving though an organ or limb, and the stopped heat forges the surface into hard insulating armour. What part of you went dragon?”

  “A hand and arm.”

  “Did you ever touch them with your proper hand?”

  “Yes. They felt cold.”

  “Quite. No heat was getting out. But no heat was getting in! And since men feel the heat they receive more than the heat they create the armour makes the remaining human parts feel colder. So do they strip it off? Seldom. Like nations losing unjust wars they convert more and more of themselves into armour when they should surrender or retreat. So someone may start by limiting only his affections or lust or intelligence, and eventually heart, genitals, brain, hands and skin are crusted over. He does nothing but talk and feed, giving and taking through a single hole; then the mouth shuts, the heat has no outlet, it increases inside him until … watch, you will see.” The blackness they sat in had been dense and total but a crooked thread of scarlet light appeared on it. This twitched and grew at both ends until it outlined the erect shape of a dragon with legs astride, arms outstretched, the hands thrusting against darkness, the great head moving from side to side. Lanark had a weird feeling that the beast stood before him in the room. There was nothing but blackness to compare it with, and it seemed vast. Its gestures may have been caused by pain but they looked threatening and triumphant. Inside the black head two stars appeared where eyes should be, then the whole body was covered with white and golden stars. Lanark felt the great gothic shape towering miles above him, a galaxy shaped like a man. Then the figure became one blot of gold which expanded into a blinding globe. There was a crash of thunder and for a moment the room became very hot. The floor heaved and the lights went on.

  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! Soun
ds 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—”