The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [570]
There was no computing the weight and speed of Muzzlehatch as he crushed the ‘Mantis’ to the slippery ground. The victim’s face had been lifted so that the jaw, the clavicles, the shoulder blades and five ribs were the first to go down like dead sticks in a storm.
And yet he made no sound, this devil, this ‘Mantis’, this Mr Veil. Crushed and prostrate, he rose again, and to Titus’ horror it seemed as though the features of his face had all changed places.
It could also be seen that there was damage to his limbs. In trying to move away he was forced to trail a broken leg which followed him like something tied to his hip: a length of driftwood. All he could do was to hop away from Muzzlehatch with that assortment of features clustered upon his neck like a horrible nest.
But he did not go far. Titus, Muzzlehatch and the great awestruck audience realized suddenly that the knives were still in his hands, and that his hands and arms alone had escaped the destruction. There, in his fists, they sparkled.
But he could no longer see his enemies. His face had capsized. Yet his brain had not been damaged.
‘Black Rose!’ he cried into the dreadful silence. ‘Take your last look at me,’ and he plunged the two knives, through the ribs, in the region of his heart. He left them there, withdrawing his hands from the hilts.
Out of the silence that followed, the horrible sound of his laughter began to grow, and as it grew in volume, the blood poured out the quicker, until there came the moment when, with a final convulsion of his long bones, he fell upon his dislocated, meaningless face, twitched for the last time, and died.
SIXTY-TWO
Titus got to his feet and turned to Muzzlehatch. He saw at once by the distant look in his friend’s eye that he was in no talking mood. He seemed to have forgotten the long shattered man at his feet, and to be brooding on some other matter. When Black Rose came stumbling up, her hands clasped, he took no notice of her. She turned to Titus.
At once, Titus drew back. Not because she repelled him, for even in the drawn and sunken condition she was in, she was still beautiful. But now, she had no option but to arouse pity: she could not help it. It was a beauty to beware of. Her enormous eyes so often big with fear were now big with hope … and Titus knew that he must get away. He could see at once that she was predatory. She did not know it, but she was.
‘She goes through hell,’ muttered Titus. ‘She wades in it, and the thicker and deeper it is, the more I long to escape. Grief can be boring.’ Titus was immediately sickened by his own words. They tasted foul on the tongue.
He turned to her and was held again by the gaping tragedy of her eyes. Whatever she said could be nothing but mere corroboration. It could merely repeat or embroider the reality of her eloquent eyes. The trembling of her hands, and the wetness of her cheekbones. These and other signs were redundant. He knew that were he to let fall the smallest seed of kindness, then that seed would inevitably grow into some kind of weird relationship. A smile might set the avalanche moving.
‘I can’t, I can’t,’ he thought. ‘I can’t sustain her. I can’t comfort her. I can’t love her. Her suffering is far too clear to see. There is no veil across it: no mystery: no romance. Nothing but a factual pain, like the pain of a nagging tooth.’
Again he turned his eyes to her as though to verify what he had been thinking, and at once he was ashamed.
She had become emptied. Pain had emptied her. There was nothing left. What could he do?
He turned to Muzzlehatch: there was something about him that baffled the boy. For the first time it seemed as though his friend had a weakness: some vulnerable spot. Somebody or something had searched it out. As Titus watched, and as Black Rose stood with her eyes fixed upon him, Muzzlehatch turned to the great crowd.
He had heard without knowing it the first murmur, and he now became aware