Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [55]
There was a brief, unexpectedly noisy fanfare of trumpets.
Lanark said irritably, “I know that. I want to learn what I did before I came to Unthank.”
“You reached Unthank through water, which is outwith the jurisdiction of the council. Do you wish to consult an oracle?” “Of course, if that will help.”
The cool white plastic of the little radio went red hot. Lanark dropped it on the coverlet, Rima screamed, he brushed it with his sleeve to the floor, it exploded with a loud bang.
The space round the bed was dim with blue smoke which hurt the eyes. Rima lay staring at him. He pulled his scorched fingers from his mouth and asked if she was all right, but the detonation had numbed his eardrums. Her reply was remote and interrupted by a distant voice saying Help help, can nobody hear me?
Rima asked who was there and a moment after the voice spoke directly into his ear. It was sexless and eager but on an odd unemphatic note, as if its words could never be printed between quotation marks.
It said I am glad you called.
Lanark shook his head very hard then said firmly, “Could you tell me about my past, please? Starting with childhood?”
The voice said I’m very keen on this kind of work but you’ll have to give me a clue. Have you anything belonging to that past?
“Nothing.”
No clothes, for instance?
“My clothes were dissolved on the way here.”
Had you nothing insoluble in the pockets?
“There was only … wait a minute.”
Lanark remembered Munro’s taking the pistol from the drawer in his dead neighbour’s locker. He opened his own drawer and looked in. Most of the space was filled with food but in a corner he found a tiny fluted cockle and a quartz pebble with grey and cream veins through it. He said, “I’ve found a seashell and a stone.”
Hold one in each hand. Yes, I can see the way backward now. You were called Thaw. Will I start the story when you’re five or fifteen or ten?
“Five, please.”
Lanark lay down comfortably and the oracle, in the voice of a precocious child, said Duncan Thaw made a blue line along the top of a paper and a brown line at the bottom. He drew a giant running along the brown line with a captured princess, but as he couldn’t draw the princess beautiful enough he made the giant carry a sack. The princess was inside it. His father—
“Excuse me,” said Lanark. “That’s a very abrupt beginning. Could you not start by telling me something of the geographical and social surroundings?”
After a moment of silence the voice said in a dry academic voice The river Clyde enters the Irish Sea low down among Britain’s back hair of islands and peninsula. Before widening to a firth it flows through Glasgow, the sort of industrial city where most people live nowadays but nobody imagines living. Apart from the cathedral, the university gatehouse and a gawky medieval clocktower it was almost all put up in this and the last century—
“I’m sorry to interrupt again,” said Lanark, “but how do you know this? Who are you anyway?”
A voice to help you see yourself.
“But I’ve heard too many of these voices. None of them belonged to liars, even Sludden and Ozenfant told a lot of truth, but only the truth which suited their plans. What plans have you? What bits will you leave out?”
The voice said mournfully I’ve no plans at all. The only things I’ll try to leave out are the repetitions, and I’ll probably fail.