Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [36]
“He looks unhappy.”
“Yes, he takes his work too seriously. He is Roman Catholic and the only people he cures are Quakers and Anglicans. Have you a religion, Lanark?”
“No.”
“You see a cure is more likely when doctor and patient have something in common. How would you describe yourself?”
“I can’t.”
Ozenfant laughed. “Of course you can’t! I asked foolishly. The lemon cannot taste bitterness, it only drinks the rain. Munro, describe Lanark to me.”
“Obstinate and suspicious,” said Munro. “He has intelligence, but keeps it narrow.”
“Good. I have a patient for him. Also obstinate, also suspicious, with a cleverness which only reinforces a deep, deep, immeasurably deep despair.”
Ozenfant said to the microphone, “Show chamber one, and let us see the patient from above.”
A gleaming silver dragon appeared between a folded pair of brazen wings. A stout arm ending in seven brazen claws lay along one wing, a slender soft human arm along the other. “You see the wings? Only unusually desperate cases have wings, though they cannot use them. Yet this one brings such reckless energy to her despair that I have sometimes hoped. She is unmusical, but I, a musician, have stooped to speech therapy and spoken to her like a vulgar critic, and she exasperated me so much that I decided to give her to the catalyst. We will give her to Lanark instead.”
A radio said plin-plong. Ozenfant took one from a waistcoat pocket and turned the switch. A voice announced that patient twelve was turning salamander.
Ozenfant said to the microphone, “Quick! Chamber twelve.”
Chamber twelve was obscured by white vapours streaming and whirling from the dragon’s beak, which suddenly snapped shut. Radiant beams shot from the domes in the head, the figure seemed to be writhing. Ozenfrant cried, “No light, please! We will observe by heat alone.”
There was immediate blackness on which Lanark’s dazzled eyes projected stars and circles before adjusting to it. He could hear Munro’s quick dry breathing on one side and Ozenfant breathing through his mouth on the other. He said, “What’s happening?”
Ozenfant said, “Brilliant light pours from all his organs—it would blind us. Soon you will see him by his heat.” A moment later Lanark was startled to feel Ozenfant murmuring into his ear.
“The heat made by a body should move easily through it, overflowing the pores, penis, anus, eyes, lips, limbs and fingertips in acts of generosity and self-preservation. But many people are afraid of the cold and try to keep more heat than they give, they stop the heat from leaving though an organ or limb, and the stopped heat forges the surface into hard insulating armour. What part of you went dragon?”
“A hand and arm.”
“Did you ever touch them with your proper hand?”
“Yes. They felt cold.”
“Quite. No heat was getting out. But no heat was getting in! And since men feel the heat they receive more than the heat they create the armour makes the remaining human parts feel colder. So do they strip it off? Seldom. Like nations losing unjust wars they convert more and more of themselves into armour when they should surrender or retreat. So someone may start by limiting only his affections or lust or intelligence, and eventually heart, genitals, brain, hands and skin are crusted over. He does nothing but talk and feed, giving and taking through a single hole; then the mouth shuts, the heat has no outlet, it increases inside him until … watch, you will see.” The blackness they sat in had been dense and total but a crooked thread of scarlet light appeared on it. This twitched and grew at both ends until it outlined the erect shape of a dragon with legs astride, arms outstretched, the hands thrusting against darkness, the great head moving from side to side. Lanark had a weird feeling that the beast stood before him in the room. There was nothing but blackness to compare it with, and it seemed vast.