The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [377]
At last they stopped for a little while where a stone cherub squatted upon the rim of a granite bird-bath. To their left they could see the lighted windows of the long reception room. But they could not see that in the midst of a rapt audience the Doctor was raising his silver hammer as though to put all to the test. They could not know that by a supernatural effort of the will, and the martialling of all his deductive faculties, and the freeing of an irrational flair, the Doctor had come to the kind of decision more usually associated with composers than with scientists – and was now on the brink of success or failure.
The ‘body’ had, to aid the physician in his exhaustive search for the cause of the paralysis, been stripped of all clothing save the mortar-board.
What happened next was something which, however much the stories varied afterwards – for it seemed that every professor present was able to note some minor detail hidden from the rest – was yet consistent in the main. The speed at which it happened was phenomenal, and it must be assumed that the microscopic elaborations of the incident which were to be the main subject of conversation for so long a while afterwards, were no more or less than inventions which were supposed to redound to the advantage of the teller, in some way or other – possibly through the reflected glory which they all felt at having been there at all. However this may be, what was agreed upon by all was that the Doctor, his shirt sleeves rolled well back, rose suddenly on his toes, and lifting his silver hammer into the air, where it flashed with candle-light, let it fall, as it were with a kind of controlled, yet effortless downstroke, upon the nether regions of the spinal column. As the hammer struck, the Doctor leapt back and stood with his arms spread out to his sides, his fingers rigid as he saw before him the instantaneous convulsion of the patient. This gentleman writhing like an expiring eel leapt suddenly high into the air, and on landing upon his feet, was seen to streak across the room and out of the bay windows and over the moonlit lawn at a speed that challenged the credulity of all witnesses.
And those who, standing grouped about the Doctor, had seen the transformation and the remarkable athleticism that followed so swiftly upon it, were not the only ones to be startled by the spectacle.
In the garden, among the livid blotches and the cold wells of shadow a voice was saying …
‘It is not meet, Irma my dearest, that on this night, this first night, we should tire our hearts … no, no, it is not meet, sweet bride.’
‘Bride?’ cried Irma, flashing her teeth and tossing her head. ‘O Master, not yet … surely!’
Bellgrove frowned like God considering the state of the world on the Third Day. A knowing smile played across his old mouth but it appeared to have lost its way among the wrinkles.
‘Quite so, my delicious helm. Once more you keep me on my course, and for that I revere you, Irma … not bride, it is true, but …’
The old man had jerked like a recoiling firearm, and Irma with him, for she was in his gown-swathed arms. Turning her startled eyes from his she followed his gaze and on the instant clung to him in a desperate embrace, for all at once they saw before them, naked in the dazzling rays of the moon, a flying figure which for all the shortness of the legs, was covering the ground with the speed of a hare. The tassel of the inky mortar-board, sole claim to decency, streamed away behind like a donkey’s tail.
No sooner had Irma and the headmaster caught sight of the apparition, than it had reached the high orchard wall of the garden. How it ever climbed the wall was never discovered. It simply went up it, its shadow swarming alongside, and the last that was ever seen of Mr Throd, the one-time member of Mr Bellgrove’s staff, was a lunar flash of buttocks where the high wall propped the sky.
THIRTY-SEVEN
There were at least