“I will, and I’ll reach the top before you do. This path was made by sensible people who knew which way was the quickest.”
“You go that way then,” said Alexander and rushed straight down into the hollow.
Lanark walked up the path at an easy pace. The air was fresh and the sun warm. He thought how good it was to have a holiday. The only sound was the Wheep! Wheep! of a distant moorbird, the only cloud a faint white smudge in the blueness over the hilltop. In the hollow on his left he sometimes saw Alexander scrambling over a ridge and thought tolerantly, ‘Silly of him, but he’ll learn from experience.’ He was wondering sadly about Alexander’s life with Rima when the path became a ladder of sandy toeholes kicked in the steepening turf. From here the summit seemed a great green dome, and staring up at it Lanark saw an amazing sight. Up the left-hand curve, silhouetted against the sky, a small human figure was quickly climbing. Lanark sighed with pleasure, halted and looked away into the blue. He said, “Thank you!” and for a moment glimpsed the ghost of a man scribbling in a bed littered with papers. Lanark smiled and said, “No, old Nastler, it isn’t you I thank, but the cause of the ground which grew us all. I have never given you much thought, Mr. cause, for you don’t repay that kind of effort, and on the whole I have found your world bearable rather than good. But in spite of me and the sensible path, Sandy is reaching the summit all by himself in the sunlight; he is up there enjoying the whole great globe that you gave him, so I love you now. I am so content that I don’t care when contentment ends. I don’t care what absurdity, failure, death I am moving toward. Even when your world has lapsed into black nothing, it will have made sense because Sandy once enjoyed it in the sunlight. I am not speaking for mankind. If the poorest orphan in creation has reason to curse you, then everything high and decent in you should go to Hell. Yes! Go to Hell, go to Hell, go to Hell as often as there are vicitms in your universe. But I am not a victim. This is my best moment. Speaking purely as a private person, I admit you to the kingdom of Heaven, and this admission is final, and I will not revoke it.”
Near the top of the slope he began to grow breathless. The turf of the summit was broken by low gnarls of rock. The concrete triangulation pillar stood on one and Alexander was using it as a backrest. He had the air of man sprawling on a comfortable sofa in his own house and seemed not to see Lanark at first, then patted invitingly the rock beside him, and when Lanark sat down he leaned against him and they looked a long time at the view. In spite of their height the sea was only a soft dark line on the horizon. The land up to it was wide low hills given over to pasture, and there were strips of windbreak wood with half-reaped fields of grain in the valleys between. Lanark and Alexander faced a steep side of the hill which sloped straight down to a red-roofed town with crooked streets and a small ancient palace. This had round towers with conical roofs and a walled garden open to the public. Many figures were moving between the bright bushes and flowerbeds, and there was a full car-park outside. Alexander said, “It would be nice to go down there.”
“Yes.”
“But Mum might worry.”
“Yes, we must go back.”
They sat a little longer and when the sun was three-quarters across the sky they arose and descended to the moor by a path which led round a small loch. Two men with thick moustaches, one carrying a rifle, came up the path and nodded to Lanark as they passed. The rifle man said, “Will I shoot the delegate?” and the other laughed and said, “No, no, we mustn’t kill our delegate.”
Shortly after, Alexander said, “Some jokes make me tremble with fear.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It can’t be helped. Are you really a delegate?”
Lanark had been pleased by the recognition but said firmly, “Not now. I’m on holiday just now.”
The loch was embanked as a reservoir on one side and on the grass of the embankment a dead seagull lay with outspread wings. Alexander was fascinated and Lanark picked it up. They looked at the yellow beak with the raspberry spot under the tip, the pure grey back and snowy breast which seemed unmarked. Alexander said, “Should we bury it?”
“That would be difficult without tools. We could build a cairn over it.”
They collected stones from the shingle of the lochside and heaped them over the glossy feathers of the unmarked body. Alexander said, “What happens to it now?”
“It rots and insects eat it. There are a lot of red ants around here; they’ll pick it to a skeleton quite fast. Skeletons are interesting things.”
“Could we come back for it tomorrow?”
“No, it probably needs several weeks to reach the skeleton stage.”
“Then say a prayer.”
“You told me you didn’t believe in God.”
“I don’t, but a prayer must be said. Put your hands like this and shut your eyes.”
They stood on each side of the knee-high cairn and Lanark shut his eyes.
“You begin by saying Dear God.”
“Dear God,” said Lanark, “we are sorry this gull died, especially as it looks young and healthy (apart from being dead). Let there be many young, living gulls to enjoy the speed and freshness this one missed; and give us all enough happiness and courage to die without feeling cheated; moreover …” He hesitated. A voice whispered, “Say amen.”
“Amen.”
Something cold stung his cheeks. He opened his eyes and saw the sky dark with torn, onrushing clouds. He was alone with nothing at his feet but a scatter of stones with old bones and feathers between them. He said “Sandy?” and looked around. There was nothing human on the moor. The light was fading from two or three sunset streaks in the clouds to the west. The heather was crested with sleet; the wind whipped more of it into his face.
“Sandy!” he screamed, starting to run. “Sandy! Sandy! Alexander!”
He plunged across the heather, tripped and fell into darkness. He wrestled awhile with something entangling, then realized it was blankets and sat up.
He was in a square room with cement floor and tiled walls like a public lavatory. It seemed large, perhaps because the only furniture was a lavatory pan in one corner without seat or handle to flush it. He lay in the diagonally opposite corner on part of the floor raised a foot above the rest and covered with red linoleum. The door of the place had a metal surface, and he knew it was locked. He had a headache and felt filthy and was sure something dreadful had happened. He pulled the blankets around him and huddled up, biting the thumb knuckle and trying to think. His main feeling was of filth, disorder and loss. He had lost someone or something, a secret document, a parent, or his self-respect. The past seemed a muddle of memories without sequence, like a confused pile of old photographs. To sort them out he tried recalling his life from the start.
First he had been a child, then a schoolboy, then his mother died. He became a student, tried to work as a painter and became very ill. He hung uselessly round cafés for a time, then took a job in an institute. He got mixed up with a woman there, lost the job, then went to live in a badly governed place where his son was born. The woman and child left him, and for no very clear reason he had been sent on a mission to some sort of assembly. This had been hard at first, then easy, because he was suddenly a famous man with important papers in his briefcase. Women loved him. He had been granted an unexpected holiday with Sandy, then something cold had stung his cheek—
His thoughts recoiled from that point like fingers from a scalding plate, but he forced them back to it and gradually more recent, more depressing memories came to him.
CHAPTER 42.
Catastrophe
There had been a sky dark with onrushing clouds. He had been alone with some scattered rocks, old bones and feathers at his feet and had looked round saying “Sandy?” but there was nobody else on the moor and the light was fading from two or three sunset streaks in the clouds to the west. He had run across the heather screaming Alexander’s name and tripped and fallen into darkness. He had wrestled a while with somethi
ng entangling, then realized it was a downy quilt, flung it aside and sat up.
He was in bed in a darkened room with a headache and a feeling of terrible loss. He was sure he had come here with people who had been kind to him, but who were they? Where had they gone? His hand found and flicked the switch of a bedlight. The room was a dormitory with a pair of beds to each wall and dressing tables between them loaded with female cosmetics. The walls had coloured posters of male singers on them and notices saying things like JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE PARANOID DON’T THINK THEY AREN’T PLOTTING AGAINST YOU. His clothes were scattered about the floor. He groaned, rubbed his head, got up and quickly dressed. He felt that something very good had happened recently. It may not have been love, but it had left him ready for love. Delight had opened him, prepared him for someone who wasn’t there. He was anguished by the absence of someone to hold and whisper to affectionately, someone to hold him and speak lovingly back. He left the room and hurried along a dark corridor toward a sound of music and voices behind a door. He pushed the door open and stood blinking in the light. The voices stopped then someone shouted, “Look out! Here he comes again!” and a huge explosion of laughter went up.
The gallery was emptier than he remembered. Most people lay on cushions on the lowest floor and he hurried through them looking left and right. He remembered meeting a thin-lipped smiling little mouth in a glade of dark hair and cried to a laughing mouth among dark hair, “Is it you? Were you with me?”
“When?”
“In the bedroom?”
“Oh, no, not me! Wasn’t it Helga? The woman dancing up there?”
He rushed onto the dance floor, crying, “Are you Helga? Were you with me in the bedroom?”
“Sir,” said Timon Kodac, who was dancing with her, “this lady is my wife.”
Laughter came from every side though nobody else was dancing and the only player was a saxophonist. The rest of the orchestra sat with girls on cushions round the floor and he suddenly saw Libby very clearly. She leaned against the drummer, a middle-aged man with horn-rimmed glasses. Her gracefully plump young body yearned toward him, little ripples flowed up it, thrusting her shoulder into his armpit, a breast against his side. Lanark hurried over and said, “Libby, please, was it—was it you, please?”
“Nyuck!” she said with a disgusted grimace. “Certainly not!”
“It’s all sliding away from me,” wept Lanark, covering his eyes.
“Sliding into the past, further and further. It was lovely, and now it has turned to jeering.”
A hand seized his arm and a voice said, “Take a grip of yourself.”
“Don’t let go,” said Lanark opening his eyes. He saw a small, lean, young-looking man with crew-cut hair, black sweater, slacks and sandshoes.
The man said, “You’re being bloody embarrassing. I know what you need. Come with me.”
Lanark let himself be led up to the top floor, which was completely empty. He said, “Who are you?”
“Think a bit.”
The voice sounded familiar. Lanark peered closely and saw deep little creases at the corners of the eyes and mouth which showed that this smooth, pale, ironical face belonged to quite an old man.
He said, “You can’t be Gloopy.”
“Why not?”
“Gloopy, you’ve changed. You’ve improved.”
“Can’t say the same for you.”
“Gloopy, I’m lonely. Lost and lonely.”
“I’ll help you out. Sit there.”
Lanark sat at a table. Gloopy went to the nearest bar and returned with a tall glass. He said, “There you are. A rainbow.” Lanark gulped it and said, “I thought you were operating as a lift, Gloopy.”
“Doesn’t do to stay too long at the same thing. What is it you want? Sex, is it?”
“No, no, not just sex, something more gentle and ordinary.” Gloopy frowned and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. He said, “You’ll have to spell it out more definite than that. Think carefully. Male or female? How old? What posture?”
“I want a woman who knew and liked me a long time ago and still likes me. I want her to take me in her arms easily, casually, as if it was a simple thing to do. She’ll find me cold and unresponsive at first, I’ve lived too long alone, you see, but she mustn’t be put off by that. We’ll sleep together calmly all night, and then I’ll lose my fear of her and toward morning I’ll wake with an erection and she’ll caress me and we’ll make love without worry or fuss. And spend all day in bed, eating, reading and cuddling happily, making love if we feel like it and not bothered by each other.”
“I see. You want a mother figure.”
“No!” yelled Lanark. “I don’t want a mother figure, or a sister figure, or a wife figure, I want a woman, an attractive woman who likes me more than any other man in the world yet doesn’t pester me!”
“I can probably fix you up with something like that,” said Gloopy. “So stop shouting. I’ll give you one more drink, and then we visit your rooms in Olympia. All types of attractive bints in Olympia.”
“My rooms? Olympia?”
“Olympia is the delegates’ repose village. Didn’t they tell you?”
“Are you a pimp, Gloopy?” said Lanark, gulping another white rainbow.
“Yeah. One of the best in the business. There’s a great need for us in times like these.”
“Times like what, Gloopy?”
“Don’t you read the glossies? Don’t you watch the talk shows?
Ours is an era of crumbling social values. This is the age of alienation and non-communication. The old morals and manners are passing away and the new lot haven’t come in yet. Result is, men and women can’t talk about what they want from each other. In an old-fashioned flower culture like Tahiti a girl would wear a pink hibiscus blossom behind her left ear, which meant, I got a good boyfriend but I’d like to have two. So the boys understood her, see? The European aristocracy used to have a very sophisticated sex language using fans, snuffboxes and monocles. But nowdays people are so desperate for lack of a language that they’ve taken to advertising in newspapers. You know the kind of thing! Forty-three-year-old wealthy but balding accountant whose hobby is astronomy would like to meet one-legged attractive not necessarily intelligent girl who wouldn ‘t mind spanking him with a view to forming a lifelong attachment. That’s just not good enough. Too much room for accident. What society needs is me, a sensitive trustworthy middleman with wide connections and access to a good Tunc-Quidative-Cortexin-Cluster-Computer.’’
“Smattera fact, Gloop,” said Lanark shyly, “sometimes I am a … a … a …”
“Yeah?”
“a … a … an imaginary sadist.”
“Yeah?”
“Not a damaging sadist. Namaginary one. So from standpoint of occasional perverse frolic it would help matters if lady nquestion, along with the other points numerated, which are the ’sential points, make no mistake about that, these other points I numerated are the ’sential ones … where was?”
“Perverse frolic.”
“Good. I’d like her not to be namaginary masochist, because I want to give her imaginary pain, not imaginary pleasure.”
“Yeah. Defeat whole purpose.”
“So I require namaginary weaker sadist than myself.”
“Yeah, difficult, but I might just manage to swing it. Come on, then.”
Gloopy steered him through the dozen Quantum-Cortexin security men who remained outside the gallery and opened a door beside the doors of the lifts. They walked down a paved path between lawns and trees with Chinese lanterns in them. Lanark said, “I thought we were very high up, Gloop.”
“Only on the inside. The stadium is built in an old dock basin, you see. The river’s down here, Narky boy.”
They passed a wharf where small pleasure boats were gently rocking and came to a smooth sheet of water with lamps along the far shore. Lanark stopped and pointed dramatically to the long reflections of the lights in the dark water.
“Gloop!” he cried. “Poem. Listen. ’Magine these lights stars, right? Here goes. Twilit lake, sleek as clean steel—”
“This is a river and it’s nearly dawn, Narky boy.”
“Doninerrupt. You’re not a cricit, Gloop, you’re a chamberlain, like Munro. Know Munro, no? Nindividual who delivers folk from one chamber to nother. Listen. Twilit lake, sleek as clean steel, each star a shining spear in your deep. Pottery. I have been twitted, in my time, with solidity, Gloop. Dull solid man of few words, me. But pottery is lukring in these dethps, Gloop!” said Lanark, thumping his chest. He thumped too hard and started coughing.
“Lean on me, Nark,” said Gloopy.
Lanark leaned on him and they came to a footbridge which crossed the water in one slender white span to a shining arrangement of glass cubes and lantern-hung trees on the other shore. “Olympia,” said Gloopy.
“Nice,” said Lanark. In the middle of the bridge he stopped again saying, “No fireworks now, so we have waterworks, yes? It’s urgent that I piss.”
He did so between two railings and was disappointed to see his urine jet two feet forward and then fall straight down.
“When I was a small-bellied boy!” he cried, “tumbling ninepin over the dolly mixture daisies, my piss had an arc of thirteen feet. A greybeard now, belly flabby from abuse of drink, I cannot squirt past my reflection. Piss. A word which sounds like what it means. A rare word.”
“Police,” muttered Gloopy.
“No, Gloop, you are wrong. Police does not sound like what it means. It is too like polite, please and nice.”
Gloopy was running down the slope of the bridge toward the village. When he reached the shore he turned his head for a moment and yelled, “All right, officers! Just a perverse frolic!” Lanark saw two policemen advancing toward him. He zipped up his trousers and hurried after Gloopy. As he reached the shore two men stepped onto the bridge and stood blocking the way. They wore black suits. One held out a hand and said in a dull voice, “Pass please.”
“I can’t, you’re blocking the way.”
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