Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [264]
“The sun won’t hang around the sky forever, Sandy. And it bores me, sitting still so often.”
“It bores me walking all the time.”
“Well, I’ll go on at a slow steady pace and you catch up with me when you like,” said Lanark, standing up.
“Yah!” cried Alexander on a strong whining note. “You must be right all the time, mustn’t you? You won’t leave anyone in peace, will you? You have to spoil everything, haven’t you?” Lanark lost his temper, thrust his face toward Alexander’s and hissed, “You hate visiting the country, don’t you?”
“Have I been howling and whining like this all the time? If I hated the country I would have been, wouldn’t I?”
“Stand up.”
“No. You’ll hit me.”
“I certainly will not. Stand up!”
Alexander stood up, looking worried. Lanark went behind him, gripped his body under the armpits and with a strong heave managed to sit him on his shoulders. Staggering slightly he set off through a plantation of tiny fir trees. A minute later Alexander said, “You can put me down now.”
Lanark plodded on up the slope.
“I said you can put me down. I can walk now.”
“Not till … we leave … these trees.”
The weight at first had been so heavy that Lanark told himself he would only walk ten paces, but after that he went another ten, and then another, and now he thought happily, ‘I could carry him forever by taking ten steps at a time.’ But he put him down at the far side of the plantation and rested on the heather while Alexander hurried ahead. Eventually Lanark followed and overtook him on a ridge where heather and coarse brown grass gave place to a carpet of turf. The land here dipped into a hollow then rose to the steep cone of the summit. Alexander said, “You see that white thing on top?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a triangle point.”
“A triangulation point.”
“That’s right, a triangule point. Come on.”
Alexander started straight toward the summit. Lanark said, “Stop Sandy, that’s the difficult way. We’ll take this path to the right.”
“The straight way in the shortest, I can see it is.”
“But it’s the steepest too. This path keeps to the high ground, it will save a lot of effort.”
“You go that way then.”
“I will, and I’ll reach the top before you do. This path was made by sensible people who knew which way was the quickest.”
“You go that way then,” said Alexander and rushed straight down into the hollow.
Lanark walked up the path at an easy pace. The air was fresh and the sun warm. He thought how good it was to have a holiday. The only sound was the Wheep! Wheep! of a distant moorbird, the only cloud a faint white smudge in the blueness over the hilltop. In the hollow on his left he sometimes saw Alexander scrambling over a ridge and thought tolerantly, ‘Silly of him, but he’ll learn from experience.’ He was wondering sadly about Alexander’s life with Rima when the path became a ladder of sandy toeholes kicked in the steepening turf. From here the summit seemed a great green dome, and staring up at it Lanark saw an amazing sight. Up the left-hand curve, silhouetted against the sky, a small human figure was quickly climbing. Lanark sighed with pleasure, halted and looked away into the blue. He said, “Thank you!” and for a moment glimpsed the ghost of a man scribbling in a bed littered with papers. Lanark smiled and said, “No, old Nastler, it isn’t you I thank, but the cause of the ground which grew us all. I have never given you much thought, Mr. cause, for you don’t repay that kind of effort, and on the whole I have found your world bearable rather than good. But in spite of me and the sensible path, Sandy is reaching the summit all by himself in the sunlight; he is up there enjoying the whole great globe that you gave him, so I love you now. I am so content that I don’t care when contentment ends. I don’t care what absurdity, failure, death I am moving toward. Even when your world has lapsed into black nothing, it will have made sense because Sandy once enjoyed it in the sunlight. I am not speaking for mankind.