Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [38]
“What is the catalyst?”
“A very important specialist who comes to lingering cases when other treatments have failed. The catalyst provokes very rapid deterioration. Why are you reluctant?”
“Because I am afraid!” cried Lanark passionately, “You want to mix me with someone else’s despair, and I hate despair! I want to be free, and freedom is freedom from other people!” Ozenfant smiled and nodded. He said “A very dragonish sentiment! But you are no longer a dragon. It is time you learned a different sentiment.”
After a while the smile left Ozenfant’s face, leaving it startlingly impassive. He let go the tapestry, went to the carpenter’s bench and picked up a fretsaw.
He said sharply, “You feel I am pressing you and you dislike it. Do what you please. But since I myself have work to do I will be glad if you waste no more of my time.”
He bent over the guitar. Lanark stared frustratedly at the corner of the tapestry. It depicted a stately woman labelled Correctio Conversio standing on a crowned and sprawling young man labelled Tarquinius. At last he pulled this aside, stepped through the door and went down the corridor beyond.
CHAPTER 9.
A Dragon
Lanark was not a tall man but he had to bend knees and neck to pass comfortably down the corridor. The differences between bright and dull, warm and cool were slight here and the voices were like whispers in a seashell: “Lilac and laburnum …. marble and honey …. the recipe is separation ….”
The corridor ended in a steel surface with a mesh in the centre.
He said glumly, “Please open. I’m called Lanark.”
The door said, “Dr. Lanark?”
“Yes yes, Dr. Lanark.”
A circular section swung inward on a hinge. He climbed through, raised his head, banged it on the ceiling and sat down suddenly on a stool beside the table. The door closed silently leaving no mark in the wall.
For more than a minute he sat biting his thumb knuckle and trying not to yell to be let out, for the observation lens had not prepared him for the cramped smallness of the chamber and the solid vastness of the monster. The tabletop was a few inches above the floor and from the crest on the silver head to the bronze hooves on the silver feet the patient was nearly eight feet long. The chamber was a perfect hemisphere nine feet across and half as high, and though he pressed his shoulders against the curve of the ceiling it forced him to lean forward over the gleaming stomach, from which icy air beat upward into his face. Soft light came from the milk-coloured floor and walls and there were no shadows. Lanark felt he was crouching in a tiny arctic igloo, but here the warmth came from the walls and the cold from the body of his companion. The hand at the end of the human arm was clenching and unclenching, and this was a comfort, and he liked the wings folded along the dragon’s sides, each long bronze feather tipped with the spectrum of rich colour that is got by heating copper. He leaned over and looked into the gaping beak and was hit in the face by a welcome gush of warmth, but he saw only darkness. A voice said, “What have you brought this time? Bagpipes?”
The question had a hollow, impersonal tone as if transmitted through a machine too clumsy for the music of ordinary speech, yet he seemed to recognize the fierce energy beating through it.
“I’m not a musician. I’m called Lanark.”
“What filthy tricks do you play on the sick?”
“I’ve been told to talk to you. I don’t know what to say.”
He was no longer afraid and sat with elbows on knees, holding his head between his hands. After a while he cleared his throat and said, “Talk, I suppose, is a way of defending and attacking, but I don’t need to defend myself. I don’t want to attack you.”
“How kind!”
“Are you Rima?”
“I’m done with names. Names are nothing but collars men tie round your neck to drag you where they like.”
Again he could think of nothing to say. A remote faint thudding noise occupied the silence until the voice said, “Who was Rima?