The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (190 page)

And then, all at once she was beside him, her inscrutable little head staring up at him. Her perfect mouth quivering as though she wished to be kissed.

‘You have been so quiet and so patient,’ she said. ‘It is almost as though you were alive. I have brought your toys, you see. I haven’t forgotten anything. Look, Titus… look at the floor. It is covered with rusty chains. Look at the coloured roots … and see … O Titus, see the foliage of the trees. Was Gormenghast forest ever so green as these bright branches?’

Titus tried to rise to his feet, but a sickness lay over his heart like a weight.

She lifted her head again as a creature might do as it harkened. But the voice was no longer merely husky; it was grit …

‘Let in the night,’ she cried, in this new voice.

And so the viridian died and the moon came into its own, and a hundred forest creatures crept up to the walls of the Black House, forgetting the horrible colours that had so recently appalled them.

And yet there was a quality about this lunar scene which was more terrible than ever. They were no longer figures in a play. There was no longer any artifice. The stage had vanished. They were no longer actors in a drama of strange light. They were themselves.

‘This is what we planned for you darling! The light no man can alter. Sit still. Why is your face so drawn? Why is it melting? After all, you’ve got your surprise to come. The secret’s on its way. What’s that?’

‘A message, madam, from the look-out tree.’

‘What does he want? Speak up at once!’

‘A great beggar with a group behind him.’

‘What of it?’

‘We thought …’

‘Leave me!’

The break in Cheeta’s monologue had brought Titus to his feet. What had she said to him, that his fear should be redoubled? That terror; not of Cheeta herself nor of any human being, but of doubt. The
doubt
of his own existence; for where was he? Alone. That’s where he was. Alone with nothing to touch. Even the flint from the tall tower was lost. What was there left to guide him? What did Cheeta mean when she said, ‘It is almost as though you were alive’? What did she mean when she said, ‘I have brought you toys to play with’? What was it that was breaking through the walls of his mind? She had said he was melting. What of the owls? And the purring of the cats? The white cats.

Whatever may have happened to his world one thing was sure: mixed with his homesickness was something else: the beginning beneath his ribs of a conflagration. Whether or not his home was true or false, existent or nonexistent, there was no time for metaphysics. ‘Let them tell me later,’ he thought to himself, ‘whether I am dead or not; sane or not; now is the time for action.’ Action. Yes, but what form should it take? He could jump from his throne, but what good would that be? There she was below him, but he no longer wished to see her. It seemed she had some power when he looked at her; some power to weaken and confuse him.

Yet he must not forget that this party was in his honour. Were the symbols that cluttered the floor of the Black House supposed to be a happy reminder of his home, or were the owls and throne and the tin crown there to taunt him?

Here he stood like a dummy while his limbs ached for action. He was no longer dizzy. He waited for the moment to advance into the heart of it all, and to do something, good or bad. As long as it was
something
.

But the expression in her eyes was no longer glazed with a deceptive love. The veil had been lifted or drawn aside, and malice, unequivocal and naked, had taken its place. For she hated him so; and hated him all the more when she realized that he was not so easily made to suffer. Yet superficially all had gone well for her. The young man was obviously in a state of grievous bewilderment, for all the affectation of his stance and the contemptuous tilt of his head. He was thus through fear. But the fear was not great enough yet to break him. Nor was it meant to. That was to come, and in assurance of this, she all but lost herself for the moment in a deadly orgy of anticipation. For it was soon to happen: and all Cheeta could do was to clench her tiny hands together at her breast.

A spasm caught hold of her face and for an instant she was no longer Cheeta, the invincible, the impeccable; the exquisite midget, but something foul. The twitch or spasm, short as had been its duration, had fixed itself so fiercely that long after her face had returned to normal it was there … that beastly image … as vivid as ever. What had taken a split moment now spread itself so that it seemed to Titus that her face had been there forever; with that extraordinary contortion of her facial muscles which turned a gelid beauty into something fiendish. Something almost ludicrous.

But what no one expected, least of all Titus or Cheeta herself, was that it should be on the ludicrous and not the terrifying that Titus should fix his attention.

Added to this there was another element that tipped the balance in favour of all that can become uncontrolled; for the spectacle of the sprite with her face turned up to his awoke the image of a dog sitting back on its haunches, waiting to be fed.

The icy Cheeta and the face that she unwittingly let loose were so at variance as to be comic. Horribly, inappropriately comic.

Such a sensation can become too powerful for the human body. It is as easy to control as a sliding avalanche. It takes a sacrosanct convention and snaps it in half as though it were a stick. It lifts up some holy relic and throws it at the sun. It is laughter. Laughter when it stamps its feet; when it sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter with the pips of Eden in it.

Out of his fear and apprehension something green and incredibly young took hold of Titus and sidled across his entrails. It shot up to the breast-bone: it radiated into separate turnings: it converged again, and, capsizing through him in an icy heat, cartwheeled through his loins, only to climb again, leaving no inch of his weakening body unaffected. Titus was half away. But his face was rigid and he made no sound: not a catch of the breath or a tilt of the lip. There was no penultimate stage of choking, or a visible fight for composure. It came with extraordinary suddenness, the release of pressure: and he made no effort once he had started to laugh, to check himself. He heard his voice soar clean out of register. He followed it. He yelled to and fro to himself as though he were two people calling to one another across a valley. In another moment, in a seismic access, he tore the stuffed owls from their perch. He dropped them to the ground. He could hold them no longer. He gripped his sides with his hands and staggered back into the throne.

Opening one eye as his body ached with a fresh gale of uncontrollable laughter he saw her face before him, and on that instant he was no longer the great belly-roarer: the cracker of goblets, the eye-streaming, arm-dangling, cataleptic wreck of a thing half over the throne, and all but crazed with the delirium of another world: he was suddenly turned to stone, for in her face he read pure evil.

Yet listen to the sweetness of her voice. The words like leaves, are fluttering from the tree. The eyes can no longer pretend. Only the tongue. She fixed him with her black eyes.

‘Did you hear that?’ she said.

Titus never having seen such an expression of loathing on any woman’s face before, answered in a voice as flat as wasteland.

‘Did I hear what?’

‘Someone laughing,’ she said. ‘I would have thought it would have wakened you.’

‘I heard the laughter too,’ said another voice. ‘But
he
was asleep.’

‘Yes,’ said another. ‘Asleep in the throne.’

‘What? Titus Groan, Lord of the Tracts, and heir to Gormenghast?’

‘The same. A heavy sleeper!’

‘See how he stares at us!’

‘He is bewildered.’

‘He needs his mother!’

‘Of course, of course!’

‘How lucky he is!’

‘Why so?

‘Because she’s on her way.’

‘Red hair, white cats, ’n all?’

‘Exactly.’

Cheeta, furious, had had to change her plans. Just as she was about to bring on the phantoms, and by so doing, derange once and for all the boy’s bewildered mind.

And so, with a sweet smile to those at her side, she began again to create an atmosphere most conducive to madness.

It was at this moment that, without knowing what he was doing, he picked up the flimsy throne with both hands and dashed it to the ground. The silence was palpable.

At last there came a voice. It was not hers.

‘He came to us when he was lost, poor child. Lost, or so he thought. But he was no more lost than a homester on the wing. He searches for his home but he has never left it, for this is Gormenghast. It is all about him.’

‘No!’ cried Titus. ‘No!’

‘See how he cries. He is upset, poor thing. He does not realize how much we love him.’

A hundred voices, like an incantation, repeated the words … ‘how much we love him.’

‘He thinks that to move about is to change places. He does not realize that he is treading water.’

And the voices echoed … ‘treading water.’

Then Cheeta’s voice again.

‘Yet this is our farewell. A farewell from his old self to his new. How splendid! To tear one’s throne up by the roots, and fling it to the floor. What was it after all but a symbol? We have too many symbols. We wade in symbols. We are sick of them. It is a pity about your brain.’

Titus wheeled upon her. ‘My brain,’ he cried, ‘what’s wrong with my brain?’

‘It is on the turn,’ said Cheeta.

‘Yes, yes,’ came the chorus from the shadows. ‘That’s what has happened. His brain is on the turn!’

And then the authoritative voice rose again beyond the juniper fire.

‘His head is no longer anything but an emblem. His heart is a cypher. He is a mere token. But we love him, don’t we?’

‘Oh yes, we love him, don’t we?’ came the chorus.

‘But he’s so confused. He thinks he’s lost his home.’

‘… and his sister, Fuchsia.’

‘… and the Doctor.’

‘… and his mother.’

At this moment, hard upon the mention of his mother’s name, Titus, turning a deathly colour, sprang outward from the debris.

It might have been Cheeta: but it was not. She had made a sign, and in making it she had moved back a little to obtain a clearer view of the entrance to the forgotten room. Who it was that suffered the agonizing jab in the region of the heart will never be known; but that ornate gentleman collapsed upon the pave-stones of the aisle receiving, as though he were a scapegoat, the fury which Titus, at that moment, would gladly have meted out to all.

Panting, the sweat glistening on his face he suddenly found himself gripped by the elbow. Two men, one on either side, held him. Struggling to free himself he saw, as though through the haze of his anger, that they were the same tall, smooth, ubiquitous helmeted figures who had trailed him for so long.

They backed him up the steps to where the throne once stood, when suddenly, as he struggled and tossed his head, he saw for an instant something in the corner of his eye that caused his heart to stop beating. The helmeted figures loosened their grip upon his arms.

Something was emerging from the forgotten room. Something of great bulk and swathing. It moved with exaggerated grandeur, trailing a length of dusty, moth-eaten fustian, and over all else was spattered the constellations of ubiquitous bird-lime. The shoulders of her once black gown were like white mounds, and upon these mounds were perched every kind of bird. As for the phantom’s hair (a most unnatural red), even this was a perch for little birds.

As the Lady moved on with a prodigious authority, one of the birds fell off her shoulder, and broke as it hit the floor.

Again the laughter. The horrible laughter. It sounded like the mirth of hell, hot and derisive.

Were there a ‘Gormenghast’, then surely this mockery of his mother must humble and torture him, reminding him of his Abdication, and of all the ritual he so loved and loathed. If, on the other hand there were no such place, and the whole thing a concoction of his mind, then, mortified by this exposure of his secret love, the boy would surely break.

‘Where is he? Where is my son?’ came the voice of the voluminous impostor. It was slow and thick as gravel. ‘Where is my only son?’

The creature adjusted its shawl with a twitch.

‘Come here my love and be punished. It is I. Your mother. Gertrude of Gormenghast.’

Titus was able to see in a flash that the monster was leading another travesty into the half-light. At that excruciating moment, Cheeta heard what Titus also heard; a shrill whistling. It was not that the sound of the whistle in itself puzzled her, but the fact that there should be anyone at all
beyond
the walls. It was not part of her plan.

Although he could not at first recall the meaning of the whistle, yet Titus felt some kind of remote affinity with the whistler. While this had been going on, there was at the same instant much else to be seen.

What of the monstrous insult to his mother? As far as
that
was concerned, his passion for revenge burned fiercely.