The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [288]
Conversely, with the glassy face, it was all that an eye could do to keep from sliding off it.
As for the third visage, it was neither maddeningly slippery, nor rough with broken ravines and clinging ground weed. To traverse it with a sweep of the eye was as impossible as to move gradually across the glazed face.
It was a case of slow wading. The face was wet. It was always wet. It was a face seen under water. And so for an eye to take an innocent run across these three, there lay ahead this strange ordeal, by rock and undergrowth, by slippery ice and by a patient paddling.
Behind them on the red wall their shadows lay, about half as big again as the professors themselves.
The glassy one (Professor Spiregrain) bent his head over the body of his dead master. His face seemed to be lit from within by a murky light. There was nothing spiritual about its lambency. The hard glass nose was long and exceptionally sharp. To have said he was well shaved would give no idea of a surface that no hair could penetrate, any more than a glacier could sprout grass.
Following his example, Professor Throd lowered his head likewise: its features were blurred into the main mass of the head. Eyes, nose and mouth were mere irregularities beneath the moisture.
As for the third professor, Splint, when he, following the example of his colleagues, bent his head over the candle-lit corpse, it was as though a rocky and barbarous landscape had suddenly changed its angle in space. Had a cloud of snakes and parrots been flung out thereby on to the candle-bright sheets of the death-bed, it would have seemed natural enough.
It was not long before Spiregrain, Throd and the jungle-headed Mr Splint became tried of bending mutely over their master, who was, in any case, no pleasant sight even for the most zealous of disciples, and they straightened themselves.
The small red room had become oppressive. The candle was getting very low in the brandy bottle. The fairy in the buttercup over the mantelpiece smirked in the flickering light, and it was time to go.
There was nothing they could do. Their master was dead.
Said Throd of the wet face: ‘It is grief’s gravy, Spiregrain.’
Said Spiregrain of the slippery head: ‘You are too crude, my friend. Have you no poetry in you? It is Death’s icicle impales him now.’
‘Nonsense,’ whispered Splint, in a fierce, surly voice. He was really very gentle, in spite of his tropical face – but he became angry when he felt his more brilliant colleagues were simply indulging themselves. ‘Nonsense. Neither icicle nor gravy it was. Straightforward fire, it was. Cruel enough, in all faith. But …’ and his eyes became wild with a kind of sudden excitement more in keeping with his visage than they had been for years … ‘but look you! He’s the one who wouldn’t believe in pain, you know – he didn’t acknowledge fire. And now he’s dead I’ll tell you something … (He is dead, isn’t he?)’ …
Splint turned his eyes quickly to the stiff figure below him. It would be a dreadful thing if the old man was listening all the time. The other two bent over also. There could be no doubt about it, although the candlelight flickering over the fire-bitten face gave an uncanny semblance of movement to the features. Professor Splint pulled a sheet over the corpse’s head before he turned to his companions.
‘What is it?’ said Spiregrain. ‘Be quick!’ His glass nose sliced the gloomy air as he turned his head quickly to the rugged Splint.
‘It’s this, Spiregrain. It’s this,’ said Splint, his eyes still on fire. He scratched at his jaw with a gravelly sound and took a step back from the bed. Then he held up his arms. ‘Listen, my friends. When I fell down those nine steps three weeks ago, and pretended that I felt no pain, I confess to you now that I was in agony. And now! And now that he is dead I glory in my confession, for I am afraid of him no more; and I tell you – I tell