Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [192]
Lanark nodded, went to the girl and knelt beside her. Rima gave a little hysterical giggle. “Aren’t you forgetting? You’ve done that already.”
But the grief of the girl before him made him ignore the one behind. He held her shoulders and said urgently, “I’m here, Rima! It’s all right. I’m here!”
She paid no attention. The upright Rima walked past him, saying coldly, “Stop living in the past.”
“But I can’t leave a bit of you sitting on the road like this.” “All right, drag her along. I suppose helpless women make you feel strong and superior, but you’ll find her a bore eventually.”
Her voice throbbed with such scorn, helplessness and humour that it drew him to his feet. Since the crouching Rima seemed unable to notice him he followed the moving one.
They joined hands and silently travelled a great distance. Nothing was visible but the pallor of the mist, nothing audible but the sighing sea. The cold air stung their faces; shoulder, elbow and fingers grew sorely cramped and burning, especially in mid-gradient when one was straining downhill to drag the other steeply up. They passed into a stupor in which they knew nothing but the pain in their arms and the ache of their feet on the road. Sometimes they entered a real sleep from which they were wakened by a pang of vertigo as one or the other wandered onto the line. These pangs, as strong as electric shocks, at last conditioned them into sleepwalking straight forward because Lanark had been unconscious for a long time when something cut him hard on the knee. He blinked and saw a huge tilted shape in the whiteness ahead. He brought out the torch and shone it down. His knee had struck the rim of a rusty iron wheel, flat on its side and blocking the roadway. He helped Rima onto it, led the way along one of the spokes, climbed over the hub and shone the torch at the shape overhanging them. He expected to see something heavily industrial, like the tower above a derelict mine shaft, so the object confused him. It was made of timber bound with iron into a shape like a tub cut away on one side. Rima said, “It’s a chariot.”
“But there’s room inside for twenty or thirty men! What beasts could ever pull it? The head of that bolt is bigger than my head.”
“Maybe you’ve shrunk.”
“And it’s ancient—look at the rust! Yet it’s lying on top of a modern road. We’ll have to walk round.”
He jumped down between the chariot and the severed wheel and sank to his knees in dry sand. Rima landed near him, dropped her rucksack and flopped beside it, saying, “Goodnight.” “You can’t sleep here.”
“Tell me when you find somewhere better.”
He hesitated but the narrow space shielded them from the cold air and the sand was very soft. He dropped his own rucksack and lay beside Rima, saying, “Rest your head on my arm.” “Thanks. I will.”
They wriggled to make the sand fit their bodies and lay still for a while. Lanark said, “Last night I lay on a goosefeather bed with the sheets turned down so bravely. Tonight I’ll sleep in a cold open field along with the raggle-taggle gypsy.”
“What’s that?”
“A song I remember. Are you sorry we left the institute?” “I’m too exhausted to feel sorry about anything.”
A little later her voice seemed to reach him from a distance. “I’m glad I’m exhausted. I couldn’t sleep here if I wasn’t exhausted.”
He was wakened by musical whirring which came from far away, passed overhead and faded into silence. Rima stirred and sat up, spilling sand from her shoulders, then stretched her arms and yawned. “Ooyah, how fat and sticky and stale I feel.”
“Fat?”
“Yes, my stomach’s swollen.”
“It must be wind. You’d better eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Could you drink hot coffee? There’s a flask of it in your rucksack.”
“Oh, I could drink that, yes.”
She unbuckled the rucksack, put her hand in and drew out, with a disgusted look, the red thermos flask which tinkled and shed a stream of brown droplets. She tossed it away and began brushing sand from her hair with her hands.