The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [286]
His companion, a younger man, with long, hollow cheeks, cocked his head as though it were the breech of a gun. Then he raised his eyebrow as much as to say, ‘Carry on …’ but the old man remained silent. Then the young man raised his voice as though he were raising the dead, for it was a singularly flat and colourless affair …
‘How do you mean, sir, that you can’t agree?’
‘I just can’t,’ said the old man, bending forward, his hands gripped before him, ‘that’s all.’
The young man righted his head and dropped his eyebrow.
‘But I haven’t said anything yet: we’ve only just met, you know.’
‘You may be right,’ replied the old man, stroking his beard. ‘You may very well be right; I can’t say.’
‘But I tell you I haven’t spoken!’ The colourless voice was raised, and the young man’s eyes made a tremendous effort to flash; but either the tinder was wet or the updraught insufficient, for they remained peculiarly sparkless.
‘I haven’t spoken,’ he repeated.
‘Oh, that!’ said the old man. ‘I don’t need to depend on that.’ He gave a low, horribly knowledgeable laugh. ‘I can’t agree, that’s all. With your face, for instance. It’s wrong – like everything else. Life is so simple when you see it that way – ha, ha, ha, ha!’ The low, intestinal enjoyment which he got out of his attitude to life was frightful to the young man, who, ignoring his own nature, his melancholy, ineffectual face, his white voice, his lightless eyes, became angry.
‘And I don’t agree with you!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t agree with the way you bend your ghastly old knacker’s-yard of a body at such an absurd angle. I don’t agree with the way your white beard hangs from your chin like dirty seaweed … I don’t agree with your broken teeth … I …’
The old man was delighted; his stomach laughter cackled on and on … ‘But nor do I, young man,’ he wheezed … ‘nor do I. I don’t agree with it, either. You see, I don’t even agree that I’m here; and even if I did I wouldn’t agree that I ought to be. The whole thing is ridiculously simple.’
‘You’re being cynical!’ cried the young man; ‘So you are!’
‘Oh no,’ said the old man with short legs, ‘I don’t believe in being anything. If only people would stop trying to be things! What can they be, after all, beyond what they already are – or would be if I believed that they were anything?’
‘Vile! vile! VILE!’ shouted the young man with hollow cheeks. His thwarted passions had found vent after thirty years of indecision. ‘Surely we have long enough in the grave, you old beast, in which to be nothing – in which to be cold and finished with! Must life be like that, too? No, no! let us burn!’ he cried. ‘Let us burn our blood away in life’s high bonfire!’
But the old philosopher replied: ‘The grave, young man, is not what you imagine. You insult the dead, young man. With every reckless word, you smirch a tomb, deface a sepulchre, disturb with clumsy boots the humble death-mound. For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless. Have you not seen them coming over the hills at dusk, the angels of eternity? Have you not?’
‘No,’ said the young man, ‘I haven’t!’
The bearded figure leaned even further forward and fixed the young man with his gaze.
‘What! you have never seen the angels of eternity, with their wings as big as blankets?’
‘No,’ said the young man. ‘And I don’t want to.’
‘To the ignorant nothing is profound,’ said the bearded ancient. ‘You called me a cynic. How can I be? I am nothing. The greater contains the less. But this I will tell you: though the Castle is a barren image – though green trees, bursting with life, are in reality bursting for lack of it – when the April lamb is realized to be nothing more nor less than a lamb in April – when these things are known and accepted, then, oh, it is then’ – he was stroking his beard very fast by this time – ‘that you are on the borderland of Death’s amazing kingdom, where everything moves twice as fast, and the colours are twice as bright, and love is twice as gorgeous, and sin is twice as spicy. Who but