Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [46]
“Why? People need me now. I’m never alone and I hear all kinds of interesting things. You’d be amazed at what happens in a lift between floors. Why, yesterday—”
Lanark said quickly, “I’m very glad. Will you take me to Ozenfant’s studio?”
“But he’s recording.”
“He can’t be, I’ve just left him in the restaurant.”
“Don’t you know that heads of departments can feed and work at the same time? And he gets really poisonous when his music’s interrupted.”
“Take me to the studio, Gloopy.”
“All right, but I warned you.”
The door slid open and Lanark heard the complicated squealing of a string quartet playing very badly. He pulled the tapestry aside, went in and struck a hanging microphone with his shoulder. He was confronted by four music stands with people behind them. A gaunt woman in a red velvet gown was grappling a cello. Three men in tailcoats, white waistcoats and bow ties scraped on a viola and fiddles. One of them was Ozenfant.
He silenced the others with a hoarse cry and marched toward Lanark, fiddle under elbow and bow clutched in the right hand like a riding crop. When his face was an inch from Lanark’s he stopped and whispered, “Of course you knew I was recording?”
“Yes.”
Ozenfant began speaking in a quiet voice which grew steadily to a deafening yell: “Dr. Lanark, you have been allowed very special privileges. You use a public ward as a private apartment. You employ my name in lifts and they take you everywhere direct. You ignore my advice, disdain my friendship, sneer at my food and now! Now you deliberately ruin the recording of an immortal harmony which might save the souls of thousands! What other insults do you plan to heap on me?”
Lanark said, “Your anger is misplaced. You have bullied me into trying to cure a difficult patient and now you try to stop me reaching her. If you don’t want to see me you should contact the engineers. Get them to fix that door in my ward so I can go back through it, and we need never meet again.”
Ozenfant’s rage-swollen features relaxed into astonishment. He said faintly, “You want the current of the whole institute thrown into reverse for that?”
He wiped his face with his handkerchief and turned away, saying wearily, “Get out of here.”
Lanark quickly lifted the tapestry and stooped into the corridor.
He crouched in the ignition chamber feeling too discouraged to pick up the book where he had left it. He stared at the slim human arm, noticing silver freckles above the elbow and wondering if they had been there before. He tried to hold the moving hand but it clenched into a fist.
The voice said, “Yes I’m unprotected there. Why not use force?”
“Rima!”
“I’m not your Rima. Go on reading.”
“I’m sick of that book. Couldn’t you talk to me? You must be lonely. I know I am.”
There was no answer. He said, “Tell me about the world before you came here.”
“It was like this.”
“It was not.”
“Take care! You’re afraid of the past. If I told what I know you would go mad.”
“Sinister hints don’t frighten me now. I don’t care about the past and future, I want nothing but some ordinary friendly words.”
“Oh, I know you, Thaw, I know all about you, the hysterical child, the eager adolescent, the mad rapist, the wise old daddy, oh, I’ve suffered all your tricks and know how hollow they are so don’t weep! Don’t dare to weep. Grief is the rottenest trick of all.”
Lanark was too disturbed to feel the tears on his face. He said, “You don’t know me. I’m not called Thaw. I’ve been none of these things. I’m something commonplace that keeps getting hurt.”
“So am I but I have courage, the courage not to care and clutch. Go away! Can’t you see what’s happening?”
From shoulder to wrist her arm was spotted with silver blots and stars. Lanark had a horrible feeling that each of his words had caused one. He whispered, “Dr. Lanark wants out.” The panel swung open and he climbed through.
Someone had raised the blind in the ward and he looked out on a dingy plaster wall with brickwork showing through big cracks in it. For a moment he turned giddy and almost fell,