Lanark: a life in 4 books (4 page)

“But surely she’ll come back?”

“Her? She won’t come back. Nobody comes back who disappears when the lights go out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was standing at the sink washing dishes when the lights went out. I knew it wasn’t a power cut because I could see the streetlights through the window, and right away I thought, ‘SusySomebody’s disappearing,’ and then I thought, Oh, what if it’s me?’ My heart was thumping like a drum, though I don’t know why I should be scared. I get so tired and my back is so sore that I often feel I’d be glad to disappear. Anyway, the lights went on again, so I went and had a look in your bedroom. I
thought
you were out but you might have come back without letting me know and it might have happened to you.”

Lanark said uneasily, “Why should I disappear?”

“I’ve told you already I don’t know why folk disappear.”

“If I had been in the bedroom and … and disappeared, how would you have known?”

“Oh, there’s usually a sign. My last lodger left a hell of a mess, bedclothes all over the room, the wardrobe on its side, half the plaster out of the ceiling—I haven’t been able to let that room since. And his screams! They were awful. But I knew you wouldn’t go like that, Lanark. You’re the quiet type. Anyway, you hadn’t been in so I crossed the landing. The door was open so I stuck my head in and shouted ‘Susy!’ I was always friendly with her even if she was a tart and didn’t look after the kids. Sweets, sweets, sweets, that was all she fed them on, and look at the result. Open your mouth!” she commanded the smallest girl, who obediently opened her mouth to show, on the top and bottom gums, a row of little brown points with gaps between them.

“Look at that! Hardly older than a baby and without a sound tooth in her head.”

“What happened then?” said Lanark.

“I shouted ‘Susy!’ and the kids yelled to me that their mammy had disappeared. Isn’t that so?”

She glared at the children, who nodded vigorously.

“Well, Lanark, that house is a bloody midden. It’s like a pigsty. I couldn’t leave them in it, could I? I brought them here and washed them and put them to bed and now I’m washing their clothes. But you’d better look out if I’m going to see to you!” she told the children fiercely. “I’m not soft like your mammy!” They grinned at her and the youngest giggled.

Mrs. Fleck leaned over the bed and groaned as she tucked the blankets round them. She said, “Oh Lanark I hate bloody kids.”

Lanark shook his fist at the children and pulled such grotesquely threatening faces that they shouted with laughter, then he went back to his bedroom.

It was a high-ceilinged corridor of a room with the door at one end and a curtainless window at the other. A chair, camp bed and wardrobe stood against one wall, the wallpaper and linoleum were brown, there was no carpet, and only a small rucksack on top of the wardrobe suggested the place was used. Lanark took off his jacket and coat together, hung them on a hook behind the door, then lay on the bed with his hands behind his head. Weariness would eventually make him undress and get between the sheets, but he had a disease which made sleep unpleasant and he usually tried to postpone it by thinking of recent events.

There were the disappearances. The lights had gone out and the mother of three children had vanished. Lanark knew the woman well. She had been a friendly dirty attractive woman who often brought strange men to her house. He could think of no reason why she should vanish. He dismissed that matter and thought of the Elite. He would never again go there to sit on the balcony for now he had acquaintances who expected his company. This was not a wholly pleasant thought. The Sludden clique lacked dignity. Surely it was nobler to sit outside it, watching the sky and waiting for the light? Then he recalled how often he had sat on the balcony pretending to watch the sky but really wishing to sit in the warmth talking to the sexual-looking well-dressed women. “Admit!” he told himself, “You watched the sky because you were too cowardly to know people.”

He remembered Rima, who sat with the group but seemed aloof from it. He thought, ‘I must get to know her. Ach, why did the damned dawn come when I might have arranged to take her home?’

He thought of Sludden. Like Rima, Sludden seemed aloof from the emotions around him. Though loved by three women he was faithful to one, and Lanark thought this rather fine. Furthermore, Sludden had ideas about life and had suggested something to do. Lanark did not wish to be an artist but he felt increasingly the need to do some kind of work, and a writer needed only pen and paper to begin. Also he knew something about writing, for when wandering the city he had visited public libraries and read enough stories to know there were two kinds. One kind was a sort of written cinema, with plenty of action and hardly any thought. The other kind was about clever unhappy people, often authors themselves, who thought a lot but didn’t do very much. Lanark supposed a good author was more likely to write the second kind of book. He thought, ‘Sludden said I should write to express myself. I suppose I could do it in a story about who I am and why I have decided to write a story. But there’s a difficulty.’

He became restless and started walking up and down the room.

This restlessness happened whenever his thoughts blundered on the question of who he was. “What does it matter who I am?” he asked aloud. “Why should I care why I came here?” He went to the window and pressed his brow to the glass, hoping the cold pressure would banish that problem. It did the opposite. The window overlooked a district of empty tenements, and he saw nothing through it but the black silhouette of his face and the bedroom reflected dimly behind. He remembered another window with only a reflection in it. Distaste and annoyance flooded him and some sexual fantasies about Rima.

Suddenly he went to the wardrobe and opened the single deep drawer at the foot. It was empty but for brown paper lining the bottom. He took the paper, folded it into neat rectangles and by careful tearing along the creases produced a sheaf of about twenty sheets. Removing the drawer he stood it on end beside the chair and laid the paper on top, then took a pen from the jacket pocket, sat down and wrote in small precise letters on the first page:

The first thing I remember is

After a few more words he scored out what he had written and started again. He did this four times, each time remembering an earlier event than the one he described. At last he found a beginning and wrote steadily until he had filled thirteen pages, but rereading them he noticed half the words had no definite meanings, having been added to make the sentences sound better than they were. He scored these words out and copied the rest onto the remaining pages with whatever improvements occurred to him. And then, completely tired for the first time since he came to that place, he undressed to his underwear, slid between the sheets and fell into a profound sleep.

CHAPTER 3.

Manuscript

The first thing I remember is a thumping sound, then either I opened my eyes or the light went on for I saw I was in the corner of an old railway compartment. The sound and the blackness outside the window suggested the train was going through a tunnel. My legs were cramped but I felt very careless and happy. I stood up and walked about and was shocked to see my reflection in the carriage window. My head was big and clumsy with thick hair and eyebrows and an ordinary face, but I could not remember seeing it before. I decided to find what other people were on this train.

A cold wind blew along the corridor from the direction of the engine. I walked into it, looking through the windows of the compartments. They were empty. The wind at the end of the corridor was so strong that I had to grip the loose rubbery stuff on the walls of the doorway which usually leads to the next carriage. I could not go farther, for the entrance opened on a dark surface of wooden planks rocking from side to side. It was the back of a goods truck. I returned along the corridor with the wind at my back and recognized my own compartment by the open door. The compartments beyond were empty and the far entrance opened onto a metal tank of the kind used for transporting oil. So I returned to my compartment and noticed, as I shut the door behind me, a small rucksack on the rack above the corner seat. This made me wary. Since waking up I had felt wonderfully free and comfortable. I had been pleased to see I was alone and amused to find the carriage coupled in a goods train, but the knapsack frightened me. I knew it was mine and held something nasty but I was reluctant to throw it through the window. So I took it cautiously down, telling myself there was nobody looking and I need not be bound by what I discovered.

I first looked in the two outside pockets and found safe things, a shaving kit in a plastic envelope, some socks and a magnetic compass which didn’t work. I opened the top of the knapsack and found a rolled-up black raincoat, dirty underwear and a suit of pyjamas. Underneath was a folded map and a wallet stuffed with papers so I opened the window, dropped them out and pulled the window shut. Feeling safe again, I repacked the knapsack and returned it to the rack and then (for the rucksack business suggested this) searched my pockets. They all held some grit and tiny seashells. I also found a handkerchief, pen, key and pocket diary. I threw the key and diary after the wallet and map. After that the train tooted its whistle and came out of the tunnel.

It ran along a viaduct among the roofs of a city. Rainclouds covered the sky and the day was so dull that lamps were lit in the streets. They were broad streets, and crossed at right angles, and were lined with big stone buildings. I saw very few people and no traffic. Beyond the rooftops were rows of cranes with metal hulls among them. The train travelled toward these and crossed a bridge over the river. It was a broad river with stone embankments, cracked khaki-coloured mud on the bottom and a narrow black stream trickling zigzag down the middle. This worried me. I felt, and still feel, that a river should be more than this. I looked down into a yard where two hulls stood. They were metal cylinders with rusty domes on top, and a rattle of machinery inside suggested they were being worked on. The train entered another tunnel, slowed down, came out into a marshalling yard and stopped. Through the windows on either side I saw lines of goods trucks with railway signals sticking out of them. The sky was darker now.

I sat for a while in my warm corner, not wanting to leave it for the bad weather outside. Then the light went out, so I shouldered the knapsack, went into the corridor, opened a door and jumped to the ground. I stood between two lines of trucks. Thin rain was falling, so I put down the knapsack and unpacked my coat. As I put it on I saw a man in black overalls and peaked cap come toward me looking closely at the trucks of the train and pencilling in a notebook as he passed each one. He stopped beside me, marked his book and asked if I had just arrived. I said I had. He said, “They needn’t have provided a whole carriage for one passenger. They could have brought you in the guard’s van.”

I asked what time it was. He said, “We don’t bother much with time now. The sky is lighter than normal but that sort of light is too chancy to be useful.”

I asked if he knew where I could go. He said someone was coming who usually helped with that sort of thing then went on along the train.

A small figure ran toward us and passed the railwayman without a look. He stopped beside me and stared up with a feeble ingratiating smile. He had a weak-chinned handsome face and greasy hair sloping wavily back to a paltry wisp of curl on the nape of his neck. He wore a maroon bow tie, a jacket with maroon lapels which came down to his knees, tight black trousers and maroon suède shoes. His accent was soft and whined on the vowels. He said, “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

I said yes.

“I’ve come to help you. You can call me Gloopy. You don’t have a name yet, I suppose. Is anybody with you?”

I said no.

“I’ll take a look, just to be on the safe side. Give me a hitch up, will you?”

He insisted on entering every compartment and looking under the seats. And he giggled when I helped him down and said I was very strong. Then he offered to carry my knapsack but I shouldered it and asked if he would tell me where I could spend the night. He said, “Of course! That’s why I’m here! I’ll take you to my boardinghouse, we’ve got a spare room.” I said a boardinghouse was no use, I had no money.

“Of course you’ve no money! We’ll leave your knapsack in my boardinghouse and then we’ll go to the security place and they’ll
give
you money.”

We emerged from among the trucks and crossed some railway lines. The city lights glittered between a pair of black hills ahead of us. It was dark now and raining heavily and my guide turned up the sodden collar of his fancy jacket. He was far worse dressed for this weather than I was. I asked who paid him to meet people and he said in a hurt voice, “Nobody pays me. I do this job because I like people. I believe in friendship. People ought to be nice to one another.” I pitied him. I knew it was wrong to dislike people for their appearance and way of speaking but I disliked him very much. I explained that I wanted to collect the money before I did anything else. He said slyly, “If I take you to the security place first, will you promise to come to my boardinghouse after?” I told him I promised nothing and walked fast to get away. He trotted behind shouting, “All right! All right! I never said I wouldn’t take you to the security place, did I?”

We continued side by side till the way grew narrow then he walked in front. The path went down a steep embankment between the two hills which seemed to be rubbish dumps. Where it twisted sharply I sometimes walked forward and found myself wading in what felt like ashes and rotten cloth. We crossed the dry bed of an old canal and reached the end of a street. The city did not seem a thriving place. Groups of adolescents or old men stood in occasional close mouths, but many closes were empty and unlit. The only shops not boarded up were small stores selling newspapers, sweets, cigarettes and contraceptives. After a while we came to a large square with tramcars clanging around it. The street lamps only lit the lowest storeys of the surrounding buildings but these looked very big and ornamental, and people sheltered between pillars on their façades. Some soot-black statues were arranged round a central pillar whose top I couldn’t see in the black sky. In spite of the wet a man stood on a high part of the pillar’s pedestal and spoke to an angry crowd. We passed through the edge of the crowd and I saw the speaker was an anxiously smiling man with a clergyman’s collar and bruised brow. His words were drowned by jeering.