Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [262]
“Yes. We could have done anything we liked together. But you ran away to a dragon-bitch.”
“But good came of it!” said Lanark eagerly. “She didn’t stay a dragon long and we have a son now. He’s very tall and healthy for his age, and seems intelligent too, and may be quite a kind person when he grows up.”
She still stared at his face as if trying to read it. He looked away, saying uncomfortably, “Don’t worry about me. I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
When he looked back she had gone and Martha stood there offering a glass and saying, “I mixed this one. It doesn’t taste very nice but it’s strong. Please, sir, will it soon be time for me to dance with you?”
“Why do you girls keep replacing each other?” said Lanark moodily, “I’ve had no time to know any of you yet.”
“We think a lot of new friends can have more fun together than a pair of old friends.”
“So when will you leave me?”
“Maybe I’ll stay with you. Tonight,” said Martha, looking at him unsmilingly.
“Maybe!” said Lanark sceptically, and drank.
At first the taste was sickly sweet and then so appallingly bitter that he gulped it hastily. Somewhere he could hear Powys saying “… wants the council to ban the manufacture of footwear, because the earth, you see, is like the body of a mother, and direct contact with her keeps us healthy and sane. He says the recent increase in warfare and crime is caused by composition rubber shoe soles which insulate us from the cthonic current and leave us a prey to the lunar current. Once I would have laughed, of course, but modern science is reinstating so much that we regarded as superstition. It seems that hedgehogs really do suck the teats of cows….”
Lanark was lying outspread on cushions upon the lowest floor of all. Someone had removed his shoes and his feet gently explored the softer parts of a silk-clad body. His cheek lay on another one, each hand was snug between a pair of canvas-covered thighs and someone caressed his neck. The sounds of the gallery and orchestra were subdued and distant but he could hear two people talking high above his head.
“It’s nice to see women combining to make a man feel famous.”
“Drivel. They’re making him a sot.”
“I believe he comes from a region where coitus is often reached through stupefaction.”
“And just as often missed.”
“I hate these voices,” said Lanark. There was whispering and he was gently raised and helped forward. A door closed somewhere and all noises stopped.
He said loudly “I am walking … along a corridor.”
Someone whispered, “Open your eyes.”
“No. Touch tells me you are near me but eyes talk about the space between.”
Another door closed and he lay down among whispers like falling leaves and felt his clothes removed. Someone whispered “Look!” and he opened his eyes long enough to meet a thin-lipped small smiling mouth in a glade of dark hair. Softly, sadly, he revisited the hills and hollows of a familiar landscape, the sides of his limbs brushing sweet abundances with surprisingly hard tips, his endings paddling in the pleats of a wet wound which opened into a boggy cave where little moans bloomed like violets in the blackness. There were dank odours and even a whiff of dung. Losing his way he lay on his back feeling that he too was a landscape, a dull flat one surrounding a tower sticking up into a dark and heavy sky. In the darkness above he felt people climbing off and onto his tower and swinging there with rhythmical gasps or shrieks. He hoped they were enjoying themselves and was glad of the company, and he kissed and caressed to show this; then everything turned over and he was the heavy sky pressing the tower into the land below, yet he felt increasingly lost, knowing the tower could stand for hours and never fire a gun. Someone whispered, “Won’t you give yourself?”
“I can’t. Half my strength is locked in fear and hatred.”
“Why?”
“I don’t remember.