The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [518]
Titus was about to thank this Muzzlehatch, but on gazing at the craggy face he saw that his thanks would find no answer, and it was Muzzlehatch himself who volunteered the information that he considered Titus to be a soft and rancid egg if he imagined that he, Muzzlehatch, had ever lifted a finger to help anyone in his life, let alone a bunch of rags out of the river.
If he had helped Titus it was only to amuse himself and to pass the time, for life can be a bore without action, which in its turn can be a bore without danger.
‘Besides,’ he continued, gazing over Titus’ shoulder at a distant baboon, ‘I dislike the police. I dislike their feet. I dislike that whiff of leather, oil and fur, camphor and blood. I dislike officials, who are nothing, my dear boy, but the pip-headed, trash-bellied putrid scrannel of earth. Out of darkness it is born.’
‘What is?’ said Titus.
‘There is no point in erecting a structure,’ said Muzzlehatch, taking no notice of Titus’ question, ‘unless someone else pulls it down. There is no value in a rule until it is broken. There is nothing in life unless there is death at the back of it. Death, dear boy, leaning over the edge of the world and grinning like a boneyard.’
He swung his gaze from the distant baboon and pulled back the antlers of the mottled stag until the creature’s head pointed at the sky. Then he stared at Titus.
‘Don’t burden me with gratitude, dear boy. I have no time for –’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Titus. ‘I will never thank you.’
‘Then go,’ said Muzzlehatch.
The blood ran into Titus’ face and his eyes shone.
‘Who do you think you are talking to?’ he whispered.
Muzzlehatch looked up sharply. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘who am I talking to? Your eyes blaze like the eyes of a beggar – or of a lord.’
‘Why not?’ said Titus. ‘That is what I am.’
FIFTEEN
He made his way back through the tunnel and across the quadrangle and so out of the grounds until he came to a spider’s web of tortuous lanes, and walking on and on, found himself at last upon a wide stone highway.
From there he saw the river far below and smoke rising in rosy plumes from countless chimneys.
But Titus turned his back on the vista and, as he climbed, two long cars, side by side, flashed by without a sound. There could have been no more than an inch of space between them as they sped.
At the back of the cars, one in each, and very upright, sat two dark, bejewelled, deep-bosomed women who had no eyes for the flying landscape but smiled at each other with unhealthy concentration.
Far behind in the wake of the cars and farther with every passing moment, a small ugly black dog with its legs far too short for its body, tore with a ridiculous concentration of purpose down the centre of the long winding road.
As Titus climbed and as the trees closed in on either side, he wondered at a change that had come over him. The remorse that had filled him lately with so black a cloud had spent itself and there was a ripple in his blood and a spring in his step. He knew himself to be a deserter; a traitor to his birthright, the ‘shame’ of Gormenghast. He knew how he had wounded the castle, wounded the very stones of his home; wounded his mother … all this he knew in his head, but it did not affect him.
He could only see now the truth of it – that he could never turn back the pages.
He was Lord Titus, Seventy-Seventh Lord of Gormenghast, but he was also a limb of life, a sprig, an adventurer, ready for love or hate: ready to use his wits in a foreign world; ready for anything.
This was what lay beyond those far horizons. This was the pith of it. New cities and new mountains; new rivers and new creatures. New men and new women.
But then a shadow came over his face. How was it that they were so self-sufficient, those women in their cars, or Muzzlehatch with his zoo – having no knowledge of Gormenghast, which was of course the heart of everything?
He climbed on, his shadow climbing