Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [212]
“Oh,” said Lanark.
“I don’t want a boy.”
“Then I do.”
“Why?”
“So that one of us will welcome it, whoever comes.”
“You must always put me in the wrong, mustn’t you?”
“Sorry.”
She returned to bed, scowled, ground her teeth and worked hard for a while, holding his hand tight; then she relaxed and cried desperately, “Tell her to stop this pain in my back!”
“Things must get worse before they get better,” said the nurse soothingly. She was drinking tea from a thermos flask.
“Ha!” snarled Rima. She thrust Lanark’s hand away, clenched her fists outside the covers and started working again, sweating hard. For a long time spells of fretful repose were followed by spells of silent, urgent, determined labour.
At last she raised her knees high, spread them wide and said sharply, “What’s happening?”
The nurse folded back the covers. Lanark leaned against the wall by the bed foot and stared into the red widening gash between Rima’s thighs. She gasped and cried, “My back! My back! What’s happening?”
“He’s coming. I can see the face,” said Lanark, for in the depth of the gash he seemed to see a squeezed-thin face emerging, six inches high and less than half an inch wide, the nose thin as a string and ending in an absurd little flap, the eyes on each side sunk in vertical creases. The mouth was a tight-pursed hole and the nurse kept sticking her finger in it, presumably to help it breathe. Then the mouth opened into an oval with something flat inside, and the oval grew and filled the whole gash, and the flatness was a dome coming out, and the dome was a head gripped by the nurse’s hand. Then the universe seemed to go slow and silent. In slow silence a small, pale-lavender, enraged little person was lifted up, dragging after him a meaty cable. He had a penis, and his elbows and knees were bent, and his fists and eyes clenched tight, and his aghast mouth was yelling a soundless scream of fury. Rima, whose face seemed to have been scrubbed by a storm, turned on him a slow smile of loving recognition. The small person flushed red, opened an eye, then another, and after some hiccups his scream wavered out into angry sound. The universe returned to the usual speed. The nurse gave the baby to Rima and told Lanark sternly, “Go and get two soup plates from the kitchen.”
“Why?”
“Do what you’re told.”
He ran along by the arches hearing sounds of a service from the cathedral floor. A remote ministerial voice was chanting, “My buird thou hast hanselled in face o’ my faes; thou drookest my heid wi’ ile, my bicker is fou an’ skailin….” Jack sat in the kitchen listening to Ritchie-Smollet, who was leaning on a table. “I would have advised more caution, but we’ve burned our boats and must abide the issue. Ah, Lanark! How are things with you?”
“Fine. Can I have two soup plates, please?”
“Congratulations! Boy or girl? How’s the mother?” asked Ritchie-Smollet, handing over plates from a pile.
“Thank you. A boy. She seems all right.”
“One has become two: the first and best miracle of all, eh? I hope you’ll allow me the privilege of christening the little chap.”
“I’ll mention it to his mother but she isn’t religious,” said Lanark going to the door.
“Are you sure of that? Never mind. Come back when you can and we’ll drink their health. I believe we’ve some cooking sherry in the larder.”
The cubicle seemed full of women. Rima suckled the baby, Frankie poured water from a kettle into a basin, the nurse seized the plates and said, “That’s fine, you can go now.”
“But—”
“We can hardly move as it is, there’s no room for you.”
He watched his son enviously for a moment then went slowly away, but not toward the kitchen, for he didn’t want company. He suddenly wanted to use himself vigorously, to run fast or climb high. He found a spiral stair near the organ loft and climbed quickly to another open walkway under the stars. It led through a chilling wind to another little door. He opened this and entered a large,