Lanark: a life in 4 books (14 page)

“My own experience supports your view rather than the author’s,” said Lanark cautiously, “but remember he says ‘for the most part, at least where I was.’ Frankly, if I felt there were no such places and we could never reach them, I wouldn’t be reading to you.”

“Then read something else.”

“Here is a story about a small boy called Oor Wullie, and it is told in pictures. The first picture shows him coming with his father out of the front door, which is separated from the pavement by a single step. His hair is brushed and his boots are shining. His mother looks after them and says,’ Since it’s Sunday, ye can tak Wullie a walk before dinner, but see he doesnae dirty his good claes, Paw.’ His father, who is tall and thin with a flat cap, says, ‘Leave it tae me, Maw!’ Wullie is thinking, ‘Crivens! Some fun this walk is going to be!’ In the next picture they’re walking beside a fence made of upright pieces of timber joined edge to edge. I can’t read what Wullie is saying because the words have been scored out with crayon, but his father—”

“Is this meant to be entertaining?”

“I wish you could see the pictures. They have a humorous, homely look which is very comforting.”

“Have you no
other
book?”

“Only one.”

He opened
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
and read:

“It began on a summer morning in July. The sun up early in
the morning mist, and the pavements already steaming a little
from the heavy dew. The air in the streets was stale and lifeless.
It had been an exhausting month of intense heat, rainless skies,
and warm, dust-laden winds.

Bailey walked into Minny’s hash-house, leaving Old Sam
asleep in the Packard. Bailey was feeling lousy. Hard liquor
and heat don’t mix. His mouth felt like a birdcage and his eyes
were gritty….”

He read for a long time. Once or twice he asked, “Are you enjoying this?” and she said, “Go on.”

At last she interrupted with a harsh rattle of laughter. “Oh, yes, I like this book! Crazy hopes of a glamorous, rich, colourful life and then abduction, rape, slavery. That book, at least, is true.”

“It is not true. It is a male sex fantasy.”

“And life for most women is just that, a performance in a male sex fantasy. The stupid ones don’t notice, they’ve been trained for it since they were babies, so they’re happy. And of course the writer of that book made things obvious by speeding them up. What happens to the Blandish girl in a few weeks takes a lifetime for the rest of us.”

“I deny that,” said Lanark fiercely. “I deny that life is more of a trap for women than men. I know that most women have to work at home because people grow in them, but working at home is more like freedom than working in offices and factories; furthermore—”

His voice raised an echo which competed with the words. To end the sentence audibly he began shouting and caused a deafening explosion which took minutes to fade. Afterward he sat scowling at the air before him until the voice said, “Just go on reading.”

CHAPTER 10.

Explosions

He visited her chamber twice a day and read aloud there, only stopping when he was hoarse. He soon lost count of the times he had read
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
. Once, to have a different story to tell his patient, he watched a cowboy film in the staff club cinema, but mention of it threw her into a cold violent rage. She only believed in repetitious accounts of brutal men and humiliated women and thought anything else was deliberate mockery. Lanark left her chamber each time with a sore throat and a determination not to return, and had there been anywhere to go but the staff club he might have stayed away. The soft, brightly lit rooms with their warm air and comfortable furniture made him feel oppressively enclosed. The members were polite and friendly but talked as if there was nothing important outside the club, and Lanark was afraid of coming to believe them. At other times he suspected that his own ungraciousness made him dislike gracious people. He spent most of his free time on his bed in the ward. The window was no longer enjoyable for it had begun giving views of small rooms with worried people in them. Once he thought he glimpsed Mrs. Fleck, his old landlady, tucking the children into the kitchen bed. After that he preferred watching the lights move mysteriously between the slats of the half-shut blind and listening idly to the radio. He noticed that the requests for doctors were increasingly varied by a different kind of message.

“Attention, please note! Attention, please note! The expansion committee announces that after the hundred and eightieth all twittering is to be treated as a sign of hopelessness.”

“Attention, please note! Attention, please note! The expansion committee announces that after the hundred and eightieth the sink will take no more softs. All helpless softs will be funnelled into the compression sluices under the main wards.”

But none of this urgency showed in the staff club unless it was displayed through increased jollity at mealtimes. People sat at tables smiling and talking loudly in groups of four. Ozenfant’s booming laughter sounded among them; he was always to be seen there wearing a light suit, talking hard and eating hugely. Only three people sat quiet and alone: himself, Monsignor Noakes, and a big, strikingly sullen girl wearing khaki overalls who ate almost as much as Ozenfant.

One evening Lanark had entered the restaurant and seated himself when Ozenfant sat down beside him saying cheerfully, “Twice today, at breakfast and at lunch, I beckon you to my table and you do not notice. And so”—he passed a hand down the yellow curve of his waistcoat—“the mountain comes to Mahomet. I want to tell you I am pleased, very pleased indeed.”

“Why?”

“I am a busy man, even at mealtimes I am working, so I have only had time to observe closely two of your sessions, but believe me, you do well.”

“You’re wrong, I do badly. She’s freezing, I don’t warm her and everything I talk about increases her pain.”

“Well, of course you are treating an impossible case, a case I would have judged hopeless had you not needed someone to practise on. But you have employed a tact, a tolerance, a patience which I never expected from a novice. So now I want you to withdraw from this case and start on someone more important.”

Lanark leaned forward over the table and said, “You mean those hours of reading that bloody book were
for nothing?
”

“No, no, no, my dear fellow, they have been very valuable; they have shown me the sort of doctor you are and the kind of patient you should treat. There are layers of stolid endurance in you which make you a perfect buffer for these tragic intelligent females whose imagination exceeds their strength. We have just such a patient in chamber thirty-nine who would, if cured, be a delightful addition to our staff, and her head and limbs are unarmoured. If you still wish to visit chamber one you can do so, but I want you to spend most of your time in chamber thirty-nine.”

“What if my first patient gets well and wants to leave with me? Do I simply abandon the second?”

Ozenfant made an impatient gesture. “Those are the scruples of a novice. Patient one will not get well, and you have no reason to leave. Suppose you did leave, and reached (which is unlikely) a more sunlit continent, how would you earn your bread? By picking up litter in the public parks?”

Lanark said in a low voice, “I shall visit my first patient, and nobody else, until she doesn’t want me.”

Ozenfant drummed his fingers on the tablecloth. His expression was blank. He said, “Dr. Lanark, what will you do when you have failed to reclaim your Eurydice?”

“I am too ignorant to understand your jokes, Professor Ozenfant,” said Lanark, rising and walking away.

He was angry and upset and felt that his patient’s rage against life would be a consolation. Instead of going to bed he entered the lift and said, “Ozenfant’s studio.”

“Professor Ozenfant is recording just now. If I were you I wouldn’t disturb him.”

Lanark seemed to recognize the voice. He said, “Is it you, Gloopy?”

The lift said, “No. Only part of me.”

“Which part?”

“The voice and feelings and sense of responsibility. I don’t know what they’ve done with the rest.”

This was said with a stoical dignity which filled Lanark with pity. He laid his hand against the lukewarm wall and said humbly, “I’m sorry!”

“Why? People need me now. I’m never alone and I hear all kinds of interesting things. You’d be amazed at what happens in a lift between floors. Why, yesterday—”

Lanark said quickly, “I’m very glad. Will you take me to Ozenfant’s studio?”

“But he’s recording.”

“He can’t be, I’ve just left him in the restaurant.”

“Don’t you know that heads of departments can feed and work at the same time? And he gets really poisonous when his music’s interrupted.”

“Take me to the studio, Gloopy.”

“All right, but I warned you.”

The door slid open and Lanark heard the complicated squealing of a string quartet playing very badly. He pulled the tapestry aside, went in and struck a hanging microphone with his shoulder. He was confronted by four music stands with people behind them. A gaunt woman in a red velvet gown was grappling a cello. Three men in tailcoats, white waistcoats and bow ties scraped on a viola and fiddles. One of them was Ozenfant.

He silenced the others with a hoarse cry and marched toward Lanark, fiddle under elbow and bow clutched in the right hand like a riding crop. When his face was an inch from Lanark’s he stopped and whispered, “Of course you knew I was recording?”

“Yes.”

Ozenfant began speaking in a quiet voice which grew steadily to a deafening yell: “Dr. Lanark, you have been allowed very special privileges. You use a public ward as a private apartment. You employ my name in lifts and they take you everywhere direct. You ignore my advice, disdain my friendship, sneer at my food and now! Now you deliberately ruin the recording of an immortal harmony which might save the souls of thousands! What other insults do you plan to heap on me?”

Lanark said, “Your anger is misplaced. You have bullied me into trying to cure a difficult patient and now you try to stop me reaching her. If you don’t want to see me you should contact the engineers. Get them to fix that door in my ward so I can go back through it, and we need never meet again.”

Ozenfant’s rage-swollen features relaxed into astonishment. He said faintly, “You want the current of the whole institute thrown into reverse for
that?
”

He wiped his face with his handkerchief and turned away, saying wearily, “Get out of here.”

Lanark quickly lifted the tapestry and stooped into the corridor.

He crouched in the ignition chamber feeling too discouraged to pick up the book where he had left it. He stared at the slim human arm, noticing silver freckles above the elbow and wondering if they had been there before. He tried to hold the moving hand but it clenched into a fist.

The voice said, “Yes I’m unprotected there. Why not use force?”

“Rima!”

“I’m not your Rima. Go on reading.”

“I’m sick of that book. Couldn’t you talk to me? You must be lonely. I know I am.”

There was no answer. He said, “Tell me about the world before you came here.”

“It was like this.”

“It was not.”

“Take care! You’re afraid of the past. If I told what I know you would go mad.”

“Sinister hints don’t frighten me now. I don’t care about the past and future, I want nothing but some ordinary friendly words.”

“Oh, I know you, Thaw, I know all about you, the hysterical child, the eager adolescent, the mad rapist, the wise old daddy, oh, I’ve suffered all your tricks and know how hollow they are so don’t weep! Don’t dare to weep. Grief is the rottenest trick of all.”

Lanark was too disturbed to feel the tears on his face. He said, “You don’t know me. I’m not called Thaw. I’ve been none of these things. I’m something commonplace that keeps getting hurt.”

“So am I but I have courage, the courage not to care and clutch. Go away!
Can’t you see what’s happening?
”

From shoulder to wrist her arm was spotted with silver blots and stars. Lanark had a horrible feeling that each of his words had caused one. He whispered, “Dr. Lanark wants out.” The panel swung open and he climbed through.

Someone had raised the blind in the ward and he looked out on a dingy plaster wall with brickwork showing through big cracks in it. For a moment he turned giddy and almost fell, then remembered he had left the staff club without eating. It seemed the one comfort he could get was the institute’s nasty, invigorating food, so he returned to the restaurant. It was nearly empty but Ozenfant sat at his usual table talking intensely with two other professors. Lanark went to a table in the farthest corner and was approached by a waitress. He said,

“Have you anything brown, dry and crumbly?”

“No sir, but we’ve something pink, moist and crumbly.”

“I’ll have a quarter of a plateful, please.”

He had begun to eat when a hard, slightly hesitant voice said,“Can I sit here?”

He looked up and saw the big girl in the khaki overalls. She stood with hands in pockets staring at him fiercely. With a sense of relief he said, “Oh, yes.”

She sat opposite. Her face had straight clear handsome lines like a Greek statue, though the chin was heavy and forward-jutting. She did not hold her fine shoulders erect but slumped and hunched them forward. Her brown hair was twisted loosely into a thick plait which hung over her left breast. Her fingers stroked it with short quick movements. She said abruptly, “Do you hate this place too?”

“Yes.”

“What do you hate most?”

Lanark considered. “The manners of the staff. I know they have to be professional to keep things clean and orderly, but even their jokes and smiles seem to have professional reasons.