Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [263]
“How would you like to show it?”
“I would like to … I can’t say. You’d be disgusted.”
“Tell us.”
“I would like … I can’t tell you. You would laugh.”
“Risk it.”
“I want you to hate and fear me too, but be unable to escape. I want you captured and bound, and waiting helplessly in perfect dread for the slash of my whip, the touch of my branding iron. And then, at the climax of your terror, what enters you is simply naked me—ah! You would have … to … be … de … lighted. Then.”
The land and foundation melted and he was thrusting, biting, grunting and clutching among squealing jelly meats like a carnivorous pig with fingers. Later on, feeling expended, he lay again in kindness gently rooting in soft clefts, rocking and drifting on smoothness, afloat and basking in softness. He clasped a waist, his penis nestled between two gentle mounds and he was filled with kind nowhere.
He was knee-deep in a cold quick little burn gurgling over big rounded stones, some black, some grey, some speckled like oatmeal. He was tugging some of the stones out and carefully flinging them onto the bank a yard or two upstream where Alexander, about ten years old, very brown, and wearing red underpants, was building a dam with them. The hot sun on Lanark’s neck, the chill water round his legs, the ache in his back and shoulders suggested he had been doing this for a long time. He hauled out an extra large black and dripping boulder, heaved it into the heather, then climbed up and lay flat on his back beside it, breathing hard. He closed his eyes against the profound blue and the dazzle came hot dark red through his lids. He could hear the water and the click of stones. Alexander said, “This water keeps getting through.”
“Plug the holes with moss and gravelly stuff.”
“I don’t believe in God, you know,” said Alexander.
Lanark blinked sideways and watched him wrenching clods from the bank. He said, “Oh?”
“He doesn’t exist. Grampa told me.”
“Which Grampa? Everyone has two.”
“The one who fought in France in the first war. Give me a lot of that moss.”
Without sitting up Lanark plucked handfuls from a dank mossy cushion nearby and chucked them lazily over. Alexander said, “The first war was the most interesting, I think, even though it had no Hitler or atomic bombs. You see, it mostly happened in one place, and it killed more soldiers than the second war.” “Wars are only interesting because they show how stupid we can be.”
“Say that son of thing as much as you like,” said Alexander amiably, “but it won’t change me. Anyway, Grampa says there isn’t a God. People invented him.”
“They invented motorcars too, and there are motorcars.”
“That’s nothing but words…. Shall we go for a walk? I can show you Rima, if you like.”
Lanark sighed and said, “All right, Sandy.”
He stood up while Alexander climbed out of the burn. Their clothes lay on a flat rock and they had to shake small red ants off them before dressing. Alexander said, “Of course my real name is Alexander.”
“What does Rima call you?”
“Alex, but my real name is Alexander.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“Good.”
They walked down the burn to a place where it vanished into a dip in the moor. Lanark saw it fall from his feet down a reddish rock into a pool at the head of a deep glen full of bushes and trees, mostly birch, rowan and small oaks. A couple, partly screened by the roots of a fallen mountain ash, lay on some grass beside the pool. The woman seemed asleep and Lanark saw more of the man, who was reading a newspaper. He said, “That isn’t Sludden.”
“No, that’s Kirkwood. We don’t see Sludden nowadays.”
“Why not?”
“Sludden became too dependent.”
“Kirkwood isn’t?”
“Not yet.”
“Sandy, do you think Rima would like to see me?”
Alexander looked uncertainly into the glen, then pointed the other way saying, “Wouldn’t you like to walk with me to the top of that hill?”
“Yes. I would.”
They turned and walked uphill toward a distant green summit. Alexander flung himself down for a rest at the top of the first slope and did the same thing halfway up the next. Soon he was resting for two minutes