Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [65]
“Aye, he promised,” said several voices. “He bet a pound.”
“He’s got to pay.”
“I don’t believe the donkey is a hundred,” said Thaw.
“Ye think ye’re awful clever, don’t ye?” a thin girl shouted venomously and sarcastic voices cried, “Oh, Mammy, Mammy, I’m an awful smart wee boy.”
“Why does the smart wee boy no’ believe the donkey’s a hundred?”
“Because I read it in an ENCYCLOPAEDIA,” said Thaw, for though he was still unable to read he had once pleased his parents by saying encyclopaedia without being specially taught and the word had peculiar qualities for him. Pronounced in the service of his lie it had an immediate effect. Someone at the edge of the crowd jumped into the air, clapped hands above head and cried, “Oh, the big word! The big word!” and the mob exploded into laughter and mockery. Waving flags and blowing whistles, they raved and stamped around the frightened stone-still Thaw until his lips trembled and a drop of water spilled from his left eye.
“Look!” they yelled. “He’s greeting!” “Crybaby! Crybaby!”
“Cowardy custard, stick yer nose in the mustard!” “Riddrie pup with yer tail tied up!” “Awa’ hame and tell yer mammy!” Thaw was blinded by red rage and screamed, “Buggers! Ye damned buggers!” and started running down the darkening street. He heard the clattering feet of pursuers and Peely Wally laugh like a cock-crow and Boab roar, “Let him go! Leave him alone!”
He turned a corner and ran down a street past staring children and men who paid no attention, through a small park with a pond and the sound of splashing water, then down a rutted lane, going slower because they weren’t following now, with longer intervals between his sobs. He sat down on a chunk of masonry and swallowed air until his heart beat more calmly.
There was empty ground in front of him with the shadows of tenements stretching a long way across it. Colours had become distinctions of grey and close-mouths’ black rectangles in tenement walls. The sky was covered with blue-grey cloud, but currents of wind had opened channels through this and he could see through the channels into a green sunset air above. Down the broadest of these flew five swans on their way to a lower stretch of the canal or to a pond in the city parks.
Thaw started back the way he had come, sniffing and wiping tears from his nose. In the small dim park only the splashing of water was distinct. It was night in the streets. He was glad to see no children or grown people or any of the adolescent groups who usually gather by street corners at nightfall. Black lampposts stood at wide intervals on either kerb. The tenement windows were black like holes in a face. Twice he saw wardens cross the end of some street ahead, silent helmeted men examining blinded windows for illegal chinks of light. The dark, similar streets seemed endlessly to open out of each other until he despaired of getting home and sat on the kerb with his face in his hands and girned aloud. He fell into a dwam in which he felt only the hard kerb under his backside and awoke suddenly with a hushing sound in his ears. For a second this seemed like his mother singing to him then he recognized the noise of waterfalls. The sky had cleared and a startling moon had risen. Though not full there was enough of it to light the canal embankment across the road, and the gate, and the cinder path. He went gladly and fearfully to the gate and climbed the path with the hushing growing in his ears to the full thunder of the falling stream. Several trembling stars were reflected in the dark water below.
As he stepped off the bridge Thaw seemed to hear the moon yell at him. It was the siren. Its ululations came eerily across the rooftops to menace him, the only life. He ran down the path between the nettles and through the gate and past the dark allotments. The siren swooned into silence and a little later (Thaw had never heard this before) there was a dull iron noise, gron-gron-gron-gron, and dark shapes passed above him. Later there were abrupt thuddings as if giant fists were battering a metal ceiling over