Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [219]
They got off the bus in a large square Lanark knew well, though it was brighter and busier than he remembered. He gazed at the statues on their massive Victorian pedestals and reflected that he had seen them before he saw Rima. The square was still enclosed by ornate stone buildings except where he and Jack stood before a glass wall of shining doors. Above this great horizontal strips of concrete and glass alternated to a height of twenty or thirty floors. Jack said, “The job centre.” “It’s big.”
“All the central job centres are housed here, and it’s the central centre of stability and surroundings too. I’ll leave you now, right?”
Lanark felt he was reliving something which had happened once before, perhaps with Gloopy. He said awkwardly, “I’m sorry I’m not what you thought—not a man of action, I mean.” Jack shrugged and said, “Not your fault. I’ll give you a bit of advice—”
He was interrupted by sudden siren blasts and a rattling like thin thunder. The traffic halted round the square. Pedestrians stood staring as an open truck sped past full of khaki-clad men wearing black berets and holding guns. It had caterpillar treads of a sort Lanark had seen rolling slowly over rough ground in films, but Qn the smooth road it raced so swiftly that it was past as soon as recognized.
“The army!” cried Jack with a smile of pure appetite. “Now we’ll see some action. Hoi! Hoi! Hoi!”
He ran along the pavement shouting and waving to a taxi in the resuming traffic. It came to the kerb and he leaped in. Lanark watched it turn a corner, then stood awhile feeling sickened and uneasy. He was thinking about Alex, Rima and the soldiers. He had never seen armed soldiers in a street before. At last he turned and entered the building.
To a uniformed man in the entrance hall he said, “I’m looking for work.”
“Where do you live?”
“The cathedral.”
“The cathedral’s in the fifth district. Take lift eleven to floor twenty.”
The lift was like a metal wardrobe and packed with poorly dressed people. When Lanark got out he had another feeling of entering the past. He saw a dingy expanse tiled with grey rubber and covered by men of all ages crowded together on benches. A counter divided into cubicles by partitions ran along one wall, and the cubicle facing the lift contained a chair and a sign saying INQUIRIES. As Lanark walked toward this he felt the air of the place resisting him like transparent jelly. The men on the benches had a statuesque, entranced look as though congealed there. All movement was exhausting—it would have been equally tiring to go back. He reached the chair, slumped onto it and sat, upright but dozing, until someone seemed to be shouting at him. He opened his eyes and said thickly, “I … am not … an animal.”
An old clerk with bristling eyebrows behind the counter said, “Then you ought to be on the professional register.”
“Eh? … How?”
“Go down to the second floor.”
Lanark got back to the lift and only wakened properly inside it. He wondered if all offices in that building had the same deadening influence.
But the second floor was different. It was covered by a soft green carpet. Low easy chairs clustered round glass tables with magazines on them, but nobody was waiting. There were no counters. Men and women too elegant to be thought of as clerks chatted to clients across widely spaced desks divided from each other by stands of potted plants. A girl receptionist showed him to the desk of a slightly older woman. She pushed a packet labelled blue fume toward him, saying, “Please sit down. Do you inhale this particular poison?”
“No thank you.”
“How very wise. Tell me about yourself.”
He talked for a while. She opened her eyes wide and said, “You’ve actually worked with Ozenfant? How exciting! Tell me, what kind of man is he? In private life, I mean.”
“He overeats and he’s a bad musician.”
The woman chuckled as if he had said something clever and shocking, then said, “I’m going to leave you for a moment. I’ve just had rather a good idea.”
She came back saying, “We’re in luck—Mr. Gilchrist can see you right away.”
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