Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [181]
The first wave is no shock but the beach shelves steeply and the next, which is large and sudden, slaps his chest, floats him off his legs and knocks him backward onto the sliding pebbles in two or three feet of water. He rises spluttering, the shirt sticking and rasping on his skin. Laughing with rage he pulls it off and wades out against the sea shouting, “You can’t get rid of me!” He bows his head into the slapping waves, struggles through them with his arms and finds he is rising higher and higher out of the water. His feet are on a submerged ridge, he is waist deep when he reaches the end and steps forward onto fluid. He wallows under, gasping and tumbling over and over in salt sting, knowing nothing but the need not to breathe. A humming drumming fills his brain, in panic he opens eyes and glimpses green glimmers through salt sting. And when at last, like fingernails losing clutch on too narrow a ledge, he, tumbling, yells out last dregs of breath and has to breathe, there flows in upon him, not pain, but annihilating sweetness.
CHAPTER 31.
Nan
Lanark opened his eyes and looked thoughtfully round the ward. The window was covered again by the Venetian blind and a bed in one corner was hidden by screens. Rima sat beside him eating figs from a brown paper bag. He said, “That was very unsatisfying. I can respect a man who commits suicide after killing someone (it’s clearly the right thing to do) but not a man who drowns himself for a fantasy. Why did the oracle not make clear which of these happened?”
Rima said, “What are you talking about?”
“The oracle’s account of my life before Unthank. He’s just finished it.”
Rima said firmly, “In the first place that oracle was a woman, not a man. In the second place her story was about me. You were so bored that you fell asleep and obviously dreamed something else.”
He opened his mouth to argue but she popped a fig in, saying, “It’s a pity you didn’t stay awake because she told me a lot about you. You were a funny, embarrassing, not very sexy boy who kept chasing me when I was nineteen. I had the sense to marry someone else.”
“And you!” cried Lanark, angrily swallowing, “were a frigid cock-teasing virgin who kept shoving me off with one hand and dragging me back with the other. I killed someone because I couldn’t get you.”
“We must have been listening to different oracles. I’m sure you imagined all that. Is there anything else to eat?”
“No. We used it all up.”
With a clattering of purposeful feet a stretcher was pushed into the ward among a crowd of doctors and nurses. Munro marched in front; technicians followed dragging cylinders and apparatus. They went behind the screens in the corner and nothing could be heard but low hissing and some phrases which seemed to have drifted from the corridors.
“… the conceived conceiving in mid conception …”
“….. inglorious Milton, guiltless Cromwell …..”
“Why inglorious? Why not guilty?”
“She came naked. That helped.”
Munro came over and stood at the bed’s foot regarding them gravely. He said, “I’ve arranged a meeting with Lord Monboddo three hours from now to authorize your departure from the institute. I had meant you to wait here till then but we’ve had an unexpected delivery of human beings. They’re in good condition, but feeble, and will die if someone puts them off their food. A nurse is bringing your clothes. You can dress and wait in the staff club.”
“No need,” said Lanark. “We wouldn’t spread our opinions in a case like this.”
Munro asked Rima, “Do you agree?”
“Of course, but I’d like to see the staff club.”
“If I can trust you I’d like you to stay here. This is a lonely ward and company would help the woman feel at home.”
Rima said brightly, “I’ll be delighted to help you, Dr. Munro, but will you do something for us? Get Monsignor Noakes to send more of his lovely food. It will be easy to not mention food when we have some.”
Munro walked away saying grimly, “I promise nothing, but I’ll do what I can.”
Lanark stared at her and said, “You are unscrupulous!”
She asked in a hurt voice, “Aren’t you glad