Lanark: a life in 4 books (64 page)

Lanark shook his head dumbly then whispered, “I must get out of here.”

“Yes, I think you should,” said Rima. “Look for a job. You need one.”

He went to the entrance and turned, hoping for a look of friendship or recognition, but her face was so full of stony pain that he could only shake his head.

“Goodbye Dad,” said Alexander casually. Lanark waved to him, hesitated, then left.

CHAPTER 38.

Greater Unthank

The shadowy nave seemed vast and empty till he neared the door and saw Jack sitting on the font. Lanark meant to pass him with a slight nod but Jack was watching with such a frank stare that he stopped and said tensely, “Could you please direct me to a labour exchange?”

“They’re not called labour exchanges now, they’re called job centres,” said Jack, springing down. “I’ll take you to one.”

“Can Ritchie-Smollet spare you?”

“Maybe not, but I can spare him. I change bosses when I like.”

Jack led him through the cathedral grounds to a bus stop on the edge of the square. Lanark said, “I can’t afford a bus fare.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got cash. What do you want at a job centre?”

“An unskilled job doing something useful exactly the way I’m told.”

“Not many jobs like that in Unthank nowadays. Except in cleansing, perhaps. And cleansing workers have to be young and healthy.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Past the halfway mark, at least.”

Lanark looked down at the prominent veins on the back of his hands and muttered after a while, “No dragonhide, anyway.”

“What did you say?”

“I may not be young but I don’t have dragonhide.”

“Of course you don’t. We aren’t living in the dark ages.”

Lanark felt like the victim of a sudden horrible accident. He thought, ‘Over halfway through life and what have I achieved? What have I made? Only a son, and he was mostly his mother’s work. Who have I ever helped? Nobody but Rima, and I’ve only helped her out of messes she’d have missed if she had been with someone else. All I have is a wife and child. I must make them a home, a secure comfortable home.’

As if answering the thought a bus crossed a corner of the square with a painting on the side of a mother and child. Printed over it were the words
A HOME IS MONEY. MONEY IS
TIME. BUY TIME FOR YOUR FAMILY FROM THE
QUANTUM CHRONOLOGICAL. (THEY’LL LOVE YOU
FOR IT.)

“I need a lot of money,” said Lanark. “If I can’t get work I’ll have to beg from the security people.”

“The name’s changed,” said Jack. “They’re called social stability now. And they don’t give money, they give three-in-one.”

“What’s that?”

“A special kind of bread. It nourishes and tranquillizes and stops your feeling cold, which is useful if you’re homeless. But I don’t think you should eat any.”

“Why?”

“A little does no harm, but after a while it damages the intelligence. Of course the unemployment problem would be a catastrophe without it. Here comes our bus.”

“This
is
Hell,” said Lanark.

“There are worse hells,” said Jack.

The bus was painted to look like a block of Enigma de Filets Congalés. On the side it said
NOW EVERYONE CAN
TASTE THE RICH HUMAN GOODNESS IN FROZEN
SECRETS, THE FOOD OF PRESIDENTS
.

Jack led Lanark to a seat on the top deck and brought out a cigarette packet labelled
POISON
. He said, “Like one?”

“No thanks,” said Lanark and stared as Jack lit a white cylinder with
DON’T SMOKE THIS
printed along it.

“Yes, they’re dangerous,” said Jack, inhaling. “That’s why the council insisted on the warning.”

“Why doesn’t it stop them being made?”

“Half the population is hooked on them,” said Jack. “And the council gets half the money spent on them. They’re an Algolagnics product. There are less dangerous drugs, of course, but they wouldn’t be so profitable if they were legalized.”

A bus going the other way carried a sentence past the window:
QUICK MONEY IS TIME IN YOUR POCKET—BUY
MONEY FASTER FROM THE QUANTUM EXPONENTIAL
.

Jack said, “You were being sarcastic—weren’t you?—when you asked if Ritchie-Smollet could spare me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind. Yes, he depends on me, does old Smollet. So does Sludden. I choose my bosses carefully.
That
bloke was my boss once.”

Jack pointed through the window at a tattered poster covering the end of a derelict tenement. It showed a friendly-looking man behind a desk with telephones on it. The words below said
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A FACTORY SITE, A FACTORY OR A LABOUR FORCE? PHONE 777-7777 AND
SPEAK TO TOM TALLENTYRE, CHAIRMAN OF THE
WORK FOR UNTHANK BOARD
.

“Tallentyre was a very big man after they scrapped the Q39 project,” said Jack. “In fact he was provost for a while. But Sludden did for him in the end. Sludden pointed out that the posters were put up in parts of Unthank where the unemployed lived, and folk with power to start new factories didn’t live in Unthank anyway. So the action shifted to Sludden and Smollet, and so did I. I enjoy being where the action is. That’s why I’m with you, just now.”

“Why are you with me?”

“You aren’t what you pretend, are you? I agree with Gow. You’re some sort of agent or investigator. Why ask about cleansing and social stability when you work for Ozenfant and carry a council passport?”

“I don’t work for Ozenfant. And what use is a council passport to me?”

“It could get you a very well-paid job.”

“I want that!” said Lanark excitedly. “How do I get one? I want that!”

“Ask the employment centre to put you on the professional register,” said Jack sulkily. He seemed disappointed.

Lanark looked out of the window, feeling more hopeful. The bus was passing busy new shops whose fronts spread along whole blocks and showed brightly packaged food and drugs and records and clothes. He noticed many restaurants with oriental names and many kinds of gambling shops. In some he glimpsed people sitting with bags and baskets at counters, apparently gambling for food. The gaps left by demolished buildings were crammed with parked cars and surrounded by fences with wild threats scrawled on them in bright paint.
CRAZY MAC KILLS
, they said and
MAD TOAD RULES
, and
THE WEE MALCIES ARE COMING,
but they didn’t distract from the larger message of the posters. These showed pictures of family life, sex, food and money, and their words were more puzzling.

BOOST YOUR THERMS WITH NULLITY GREEN—BAG
HER IN YOUR BLOCKAL BLOOPER-MARKET
.

GRIND YOUR SPECTACLES WITH METAL TEA, THE
SEX CHAMP ON THE CHILIASM
.

THE SWEETEST DREAMERS INHALE BLUE FUME,
THE POISON WITH THE WARNING
.

WISE BUYERS ARE THE BEST SEXERS—BUY HER A
LONG LIFE, AN EASY DEATH FROM QUANTUM
PROVIDENTIAL. (SHE’LL LOVE YOU FOR IT.)

Lanark said, “What a lot of instructions.”

“Don’t you like advertisements?”

“No.”

“The city would look pretty dead without them—they add to the action. Read that.”

Jack pointed to a small poster on the bus window which said:

ADVERTISING OVERSTIMULATES,
MISINFORMS,
CORRUPTS
.

If
you
feel this, send your name and address to the Council Advertising Commission and receive your free booklet explaining why we can’t do without it.

They got off the bus in a large square Lanark knew well, though it was brighter and busier than he remembered. He gazed at the statues on their massive Victorian pedestals and reflected that he had seen them before he saw Rima. The square was still enclosed by ornate stone buildings except where he and Jack stood before a glass wall of shining doors. Above this great horizontal strips of concrete and glass alternated to a height of twenty or thirty floors. Jack said, “The job centre.” “It’s big.”

“All the central job centres are housed here, and it’s the central centre of stability and surroundings too. I’ll leave you now, right?”

Lanark felt he was reliving something which had happened once before, perhaps with Gloopy. He said awkwardly, “I’m sorry I’m not what you thought—not a man of action, I mean.” Jack shrugged and said, “Not your fault. I’ll give you a bit of advice—”

He was interrupted by sudden siren blasts and a rattling like thin thunder. The traffic halted round the square. Pedestrians stood staring as an open truck sped past full of khaki-clad men wearing black berets and holding guns. It had caterpillar treads of a sort Lanark had seen rolling slowly over rough ground in films, but Qn the smooth road it raced so swiftly that it was past as soon as recognized.

“The army!” cried Jack with a smile of pure appetite. “Now we’ll see some action. Hoi! Hoi! Hoi!”

He ran along the pavement shouting and waving to a taxi in the resuming traffic. It came to the kerb and he leaped in. Lanark watched it turn a corner, then stood awhile feeling sickened and uneasy. He was thinking about Alex, Rima and the soldiers. He had never seen armed soldiers in a street before. At last he turned and entered the building.

To a uniformed man in the entrance hall he said, “I’m looking for work.”

“Where do you live?”

“The cathedral.”

“The cathedral’s in the fifth district. Take lift eleven to floor twenty.”

The lift was like a metal wardrobe and packed with poorly dressed people. When Lanark got out he had another feeling of entering the past. He saw a dingy expanse tiled with grey rubber and covered by men of all ages crowded together on benches. A counter divided into cubicles by partitions ran along one wall, and the cubicle facing the lift contained a chair and a sign saying
INQUIRIES
. As Lanark walked toward this he felt the air of the place resisting him like transparent jelly. The men on the benches had a statuesque, entranced look as though congealed there. All movement was exhausting—it would have been equally tiring to go back. He reached the chair, slumped onto it and sat, upright but dozing, until someone seemed to be shouting at him. He opened his eyes and said thickly, “I … am not … an animal.”

An old clerk with bristling eyebrows behind the counter said, “Then you ought to be on the professional register.”

“Eh? … How?”

“Go down to the second floor.”

Lanark got back to the lift and only wakened properly inside it. He wondered if all offices in that building had the same deadening influence.

But the second floor was different. It was covered by a soft green carpet. Low easy chairs clustered round glass tables with magazines on them, but nobody was waiting. There were no counters. Men and women too elegant to be thought of as clerks chatted to clients across widely spaced desks divided from each other by stands of potted plants. A girl receptionist showed him to the desk of a slightly older woman. She pushed a packet labelled blue fume toward him, saying, “Please sit down. Do you inhale this particular poison?”

“No thank you.”

“How very wise. Tell me about yourself.”

He talked for a while. She opened her eyes wide and said, “You’ve actually worked with Ozenfant? How exciting! Tell me, what kind of man is he? In private life, I mean.”

“He overeats and he’s a bad musician.”

The woman chuckled as if he had said something clever and shocking, then said, “I’m going to leave you for a moment. I’ve just had rather a good idea.”

She came back saying, “We’re in luck—Mr. Gilchrist can see you right away.”

As they walked between the other desks she murmured, “Strictly between ourselves, I think Mr. Gilchrist is very keen to meet you. So is Mr. Pettigrew, though he doesn’t show it, of course. You’ll enjoy Mr. Pettigrew, he’s a
tremendous
cynic.” She led him to a door but didn’t follow him through.

Lanark entered an office with two desks and a secretary typing at a table in the corner. A tall bald man sat telephoning on the edge of the nearest desk. He smiled at Lanark and pointed to an easy chair, saying, “He must be suffering from
folie de grandeur
. Provosts are buffers between us and the voters; they aren’t supposed to
do
things. But nobody wants a riot, of course.”

At the desk behind him a stout man leaned back smoking a pipe. Lanark sat looking through the window at the floodlit roof of a building across the square. A dome at one end had a glittering wind-vane shaped like a galleon. The tall man put the receiver down, saying, “That’s that. My name is Gilchrist—I’m very pleased to meet you.”

They shook hands and Lanark saw the council mark on Gilchrist’s brow. They sat down in chairs beside a coffee table and Gilchrist said, “We want coffee, I think. Black or white, Lanark? See to that, Miss Maheen. I hear you are looking for professional employment, Lanark.”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve no definite idea of the kind of work you want.”

“Correct. I’m more concerned about the salary.”

“Would you like to work here?”

Lanark looked round the room. The secretary was attending to an electric percolator on top of a filing cabinet. The man behind the other desk had a large, dolorous, clownish face and winked at Lanark with no change of expression. Lanark said, “I’m very willing to consider it.”

“Good. You mentioned salary. Unluckily salaries are a vexed question with us. It’s impossible to pay a monthly or yearly sum when we can’t even measure the minutes and hours. Until the council sends us the decimal clocks it’s been promising for so long Unthank is virtually part of the intercalendrical zone. At present the city is kept going by force of habit. Not by rules, not by plans, but by habit. Nobody can rule with an elastic tape measure, can they?”

Lanark shook his head impatiently and said, “I’ve a family to feed. What can you offer me?”