Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [282]
Lanark stood up and wrung his hands. He cried out, “I am useless. I should never have come here, I did no good to anyone, not to Sandy, Rima or anyone. I need to go home.”
“Home?” said Monboddo, raising an eyebrow.
“Unthank. It may be bad but the badness is obvious, not gilded with lies like here.”
“You are severe. But I will help you. Open the bolthole, Miss Thing.”
There was a grey woollen rug in front of the desk. Miss Thing knelt and pulled it back, uncovering a round steel plate sunk in the linoleum. She put a thumb and forefinger into two small openings at the centre and lifted it easily out, though it was two feet across and four inches thick. “The way home,” said Monboddo. “Look inside. You will recognize the interior of a familiar aircraft.”
He stood up and rested, hands in pockets, on a corner of the desk. Lanark stooped and stared for a long time into the round hole. There was a cavity under it lined with blue silk. Monboddo said, “You do not trust me. But you will climb inside because you are too reckless to linger. Am I right?”
“You’re wrong,” said Lanark, sighing. “I will climb inside because I’m too tired to linger.”
He stepped into the cavity, sat down and straightened his legs. The space lengthened and narrowed to fit him. He lay staring up at a circle of cream-coloured ceiling surrounded by blackness. He heard Monboddo murmur “Bon voyage,” and a round black shape slid sideways across the circle of ceiling and eclipsed it with a low clang. Then the space he lay in dropped.
The drop was a long down-rushing swoop stopped by a jarring jerk. Then came another drop. With an indrawn scream he knew he was going down the great gullet again. The tiny office, the great round table, Provan, Greater Unthank, Alexander, cathedral, Rima, Zone, council corridors, institute had been a brief rest from the horror of endless falling. Monboddo had tricked him back into it. He screamed with hatred. He pissed with panic. He writhed and his face came out into a rush of milky mist. He was plunging downward in the bird-machine. The panic changed. He was the mind of this bird, an old bird in poor repair. Each wingstroke tore out feathers he needed for landing and the land was far below. He kept falling as far as he dared, then levelling in a thrash of pinions which thinned and flew back like darts. His bald breast and sides were freezing in the fall. The misty air thinned to black and the black map of a city lay below, the streets dotted lines of light. Bits of the map were on fire. A big red flower of flame drew him down to it. He saw a flaming glass tower, a square of statues, engines and seething heads; he heard roaring and sirens, tried to level and crashed sideways on cracking wings through sparks, heat and choking smoke where a great dim column swung at him, missed, swung away and swung back like a mace to strike him down.
He woke, sore and bandaged, in bed with a tube running into his arm. He lay there dreaming and dozing and hardly thinking at all. He assumed he was in the institute again but the ward had windows with darkness outside them, and the beds were packed together with hardly a foot of space between. The patients were all very old. All cleaning and some nursing was done by those fit enough to walk, for there was a very small staff. The light fittings were peculiar. Electric globes hung from the ceiling by slim rods which were parallel to each other but slanted toward a corner of the ward. When a nurse took the tube from his arm and changed the bandages he said, “Is the hospital sloping?”
“So you’ve found your tongue at last.”
“Is the hospital sloping?”
“If that was all, we’d be laughing.”
The meals were mainly beans and this pleased him, though he couldn’t remember why. The doctor was a hurried, haggard, unshaven man in a dirty smock. He said, “Have you any friends, old man?”
“I used to have.”
“Where can we contact them?”
“They used to hang around the cathedral.”
“Were you one of Smollet’s mob?”
“I knew Ritchie-Smollet, yes. I knew Sludden too.”
“Best not to mention that, Sludden