Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [249]
“What happens to Sandy?” said Lanark coldly.
“Who’s Sandy?”
“My son.”
The conjuror stared and said, “You have no son.”
“I have a son called Alexander who was born in the cathedral.”
The conjuror, looking confused, grubbed among the papers on his bed and at last held one up, saying, “Impossible, look here. This is a summary of the nine or ten chapters I haven’t written yet. If you read it you’ll see there’s no time for Rima to have a baby in the cathedral. She goes away too quickly with Sludden.”
“When you reach the cathedral,” said Lanark coldly, “you’ll describe her having a son more quickly still.”
The conjuror looked unhappy. He said, “I’m sorry. Yes, I see the ending becomes unusually bitter for you. A child. How old is he?”
“I don’t know. Your time goes too fast for me to estimate.”
After a silence the conjuror said querulously, “I can’t change my overall plan now. Why should I be kinder than my century? The millions of Children who’ve been vilely murdered this Century is—don’t hit me!” Lanark had only tensed his muscles but the conjuror slid down the bed and pulled the covers over his head; they subsided until they lay perfectly flat on the mattress. Lanark sighed and dropped his race into his hand. A little voice in the air said, “Promise not to be violent.” Lanark snorted contemptuously. The bedclothes swelled up in a man-shaped lump but the conjuror did not emerge. A muffled voice under the clothes said, “I didn’t need to play that trick. In a single sentence I could have made you my most obsequious admirer, but the reader would have turned against both of us…. I wish I could make you like death a little more. It’s a great preserver. Without it the loveliest things change slowly into farce, as you will discover if you insist on having much more life. But I refuse to discuss family matters with you. Take them to Monboddo. Please go away.”
“Soon after I came here,” said Lanark, lifting the briefcase and standing up, “I said talking to you was a waste of time. Was I wrong?”
He walked to the door and heard mumbling under the bedclothes. He said, “What?”
“… know a black man called Multan …”
“I’ve heard his name. Why?”
“… might be useful. Sudden idea. Probably not.”
Lanark walked round the painting of the chestnut tree, opened the door and went out.13
INDEX OF PLAGIARISMS
There are three kinds of literary theft in this book:
BLOCK PLAGIARISM, where someone else’s work is printed as a distinct typographical unit, IMBEDDED PLAGIARISM, where stolen words are concealed within the body of the narrative; and DIFFUSE PLAGIARISM, where scenery, characters, actions or novel ideas have been been stolen without the original words describing them. To save space these win be referred to hereafter Block-plag, Implag, and Difplag.
ANON.
Chap. 29, para. 2. The couplet ends a verse on a monument now stan ding beside a pedestrian lane under a flyover of an intersection of the Monkland Motorway and Cathedral Street, Glasgow.
ANON.
Chap. 30, para. 12. Blockplag of inscription on cairn on moor beside the String Road near Black-waterfoot on Isle of Arran, Firth of Clyde.
ANON.
Chap. 43. Ozenfant’s speech. Blockplag of first stanza of Middle English epic poem Gawain and the Green Knight, omitting 3rd and 4th lines, “The tyke that the trammels of treason there wrought/Was tried for his treachery, the truest on earth” (the translation is also anonymous):
BLACK ANGUS
See Macneacail, Aonghas.
BLAKE, WILLIAM
Chap. 19, para. 1. Implag of poem “The Clod and the Pebble” from Songs of Experience.
Chap. 35, last paragraph. Implag. Ritchie-Smollet quotes “The Little Vagabond” from Songs of Experience.
BORGES, JORGE LUIS
Chap. 43, Ozenfant’s speech. Blockplag from short essay “The Barbarian and the City.”
BOYCE, CHRISTOPHER
Chap. 38, para. 16. The encounter between the “sharp red convertible” and the motorcyclists is an Implag from the short story “Shooting Script.”
BROWN, GEORGE DOUGLAS
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