Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [243]
The tall blond girl came round the edge of the painting wiping her brush on her apron. She said defiantly, “I’ve finished the tree. Can I leave now?”
The author leaned back on his pillows and said sweetly, “Of course, Marion. Leave when you like.”
“I need money. I’m hungry.”
“Why don’t you go to the kitchen? I believe there’s some cold chicken in the fridge, and I’m sure Pat won’t mind you making yourself a snack.”
“I don’t want a snack, I want a meal with a friend in a restaurant. And I want to go to a film afterward, or to a pub, or to a hairdresser if I feel like it. I’m sorry, but I want money.”
“Of course you do, and you’ve earned it. How much do I owe?”
“Five hours today at fifty pence an hour is two pounds fifty. With yesterday and the day before and the day before is ten pounds, isn’t it?”
“I’ve a poor head for arithmetic but you’re probably right,” said the author, taking coins from under a pillow and giving them to her. “This is all I have just now, nearly two pounds. Come back tomorrow and I’ll see if I can manage a little extra.” The girl scowled at the coins in her hand and then at the author. He was puffing medicinal spray into his mouth from a tiny hand-pump. She went abruptly behind the painting again and they heard the door slam.
“A strange girl,” murmured the author, sighing. “I do my best to help her but it isn’t easy.”
Lanark had been sitting with his head propped on his hands. He said, “You say you are creating me.”
“I am.”
“Then how can I have experiences you don’t know about?
You were surprised when I told you what I saw from the aircraft.”
“The answer to that is unusually interesting; please attend closely. When Lanark is finished (I am calling the work after you) it will be roughly two hundred thousand words and forty chapters long, and divided into books three, one, two and four.”
“Why not one, two, three and four?”
“I want Lanark to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another. It’s an old device. Homer, Vergil, Milton and Scott Fitzgerald used it.2 There will also be a prologue before book one, an interlude in the centre, and an epilogue two or three chapters before the end.”
“I thought epilogues came after the end.”
“Usually, but mine is too important to go there. Though not essential to the plot it provides some comic distraction at a moment when the narrative sorely needs it. And it lets me utter some fine sentiments which I could hardly trust to a mere character. And it contains critical notes which will save research scholars years of toil. In fact my epilogue is so essential that I am working on it with nearly a quarter of the book still unwritten. I am working on it here, just now, in this conversation. But you have had to reach this room by passing through several chapters I haven’t clearly imagined yet, so you know details of the story which I don’t. Of course I know the broad general outline. That was planned years ago and mustn’t be changed. You have come here from my city of destruction, which is rather like Glasgow, to plead before some sort of world parliament in an ideal city based on Edinburgh, or London, or perhaps Paris if I can wangle a grant from the Scottish Arts Council3 to go there. Tell me, when you were landing this morning, did you see the Eiffel Tower? Or Big Ben? Or a rock with a castle on it?”
“No. Provan is very like—”
“Stop! Don’t tell me. My fictions often anticipate the experiences they’re based upon, but no author should rely on that sort of thing.”
Lanark was so agitated that he stood and walked to the window to sort out his thoughts. The author struck him as a slippery person but too vain and garrulous to be impressive. He went back to the bed and said, “How will my story end?”
“Catastrophically. The Thaw narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is enclosed by your narrative which shows civilization collapsing for the same reason.”
“Listen,” said Lanark. “I never tried to be a delegate. I never wanted anything but some sunlight, some love, some very ordinary happiness. And every moment I have been thwarted