Lanark

by Alasdair Gray

  “Yes. And this?”

  “The Cave Artist. Moses on Sinai. Greek Civilization. Roman Imperialism. The Sermon on the Mount. Vandals. The Cathedral City. John Knox preaching to Mary Queen of Scots. The Factory City. The—”

  Mr. Tulloch suddenly sat back and Thaw grinned at the air before him and shuffled the pictures back into the half-emptied folder. Mr. Tulloch was saying, “… take them at intervals of five years, so you see we really have no room for you. Your work, however, is very promising. Yes. Perhaps something in the illustrative line. Have you tried McLellan the publisher?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Oh, yes, ha, ha, well of course the business is overcrowded just now…. Have you tried Blockcrafts, Bath Street? Well, try them. Ask for Mr. Grant and say I sent you….” They stood up together. “Apart from that, you see, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Yes,” said Thaw. “Thankyou very much.”

  He smiled and wondered if the smile looked bitter. It felt bitter. Mr. Tulloch conducted him to the head of the staircase and gave him a tired smile and an unexpectedly firm handshake. “Goodbye. I’m sorry,” he said.

  Thaw hurried into the drab street, feeling cheapened and defeated. He remembered with an odd pang that Mr. Tulloch had not once asked about his father.

  A week later Thaw and his father saw the headmaster of Whitehill School, a white-moustached man who regarded them kindly from behind his desk. He said “Duncan, Mr. Thaw, has very strong imaginative powers. And undoubted talent. And his own way of seeing things, unfortunately.” He smiled. “I say unfortunately because this makes it hard for plodding mediocrities like you and me to help him. You agree?”

  Mr. Thaw laughed and said, “Oh, I agree all right. However, we must do our best.”

  “However, we must do our best. Now I think Duncan would be happiest in some job without too much responsibility, a job that would leave him plenty of spare time to develop his talents as he pleases. I see him as a librarian. He’s good with books. I see him as a librarian in some small highland town like Oban or Fort William. What do you think, Mr. Thaw?” “I think, Mr. McEwan, it is a very satisfactory idea. But is it a possibility?”

  “I think so. To enter the library service two higher and two lower certificates are required. Duncan’s higher art and english and lower history are guaranteed. The maths results aren’t out yet. How do you think he did?”

  Mr. Thaw said, “Well, Duncan?”

  As the firm responsible voices passed his future gravely backward and forward between them Thaw sank into a fatalistic doze. It took him a moment to notice he was expected to speak. He said, “I’ve failed in maths.”

  “Why are you sure?”

  “To pass I need full marks for everything I wrote, and what I wrote was mostly nonsense.”

  “Why does someone of your intelligence write nonsense after four years of study?”

  “Laziness, I suppose.”

  The headmaster raised his eyebrows. “Indeed? The problem is, would you continue to be so lazy if your father was prepared to allow you another year at school?”

  Mr. Thaw said, “In other words, Duncan, will you study for a certificate in lower maths if Mr. McEwan allows you another year at school?”

  As Thaw considered this a grin began upon his face. He tried to suppress it and failed. The headmaster smiled and said to Mr. Thaw, “He’s thinking of all the reading and painting he’ll be able to do with practically no supervision at all. Is that not so, Duncan?”

  Thaw said, “And mibby I’ll be able to go to evening classes at the art school.”

  The headmaster struck the desk with his hand and leaned over it. “Yes!” he said seriously. “A year of freedom! But it has to be bought. The price is not high, but are you prepared to pay it? Do you faithfully promise your father to study and master your trigonometry and algebra and geometry? Do you promise to attend your mathematic lessons, not only in body but in spirit?”

  Thaw hung his head and muttered, “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, good. Mr. Thaw, I think you have an assurance you can depend upon.”

  Next day Thaw met the mathematics teacher as he crossed the hall. She looked at him brightly and said, “What happened to you, Thaw?”

  He was puzzled. She smiled and said, “Haven’t you been going around telling people you’d failed in maths?”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “Well, the official results have just been published. You’ve passed. Congratulations.”

  Thaw stared at her in horror.

  Later that week he walked into the white marble entrance of the Mitchell Library. He had often come to this place to see facsimiles of Blake’s prophetic books, and as a plump man in a brass-buttoned coat led him upstairs the air of scholastic calm and polite attention produced a lightening of the spirit. It might not be a bad thing to work in this place. He was conducted to a door at the end of a corridor with chequered marble floor and low white vaulted ceiling. The room within was thickly carpeted, with a vase of flowers on the marble mantelpiece and another on a desk at the window. A small old man behind the desk was reading a document. He said in a clogged voice, “Mr. Thaw? Pleaze take a zeat. I’ll be able to attend to you in a minute.”

  Thaw sat uneasily. The man had a hole in the right side of his face where the cheek should have been and most of the face was twisted toward it. His right eye had been pulled out of line with the left and the eyeball was so exposed that when he blinked, which was often, the eyelid could not cover it. He laid the document down and said, “Zo you want to become a librarian.”

  The muscles working his tongue moved awkwardly and beads of saliva kept bouncing from it onto the desk. Thaw watched them in fascination, nodding and making quiescent sounds when these seemed appropriate.

  “… … hourz nezezzarily ztaggered. You will work two eveningz per week till half pazt eight, but theze will be compenzated for by morningz off. You will be eczpected to attend night glazzez on two other eveningz.”

  “To learn what?” said Thaw, with effort.

  “Bookkeeping and cataloguing. There are zeveral zyztems of cataloguing, each a world in itzelf. Each year you will zit an eczamination and be promoted accordingly, and within five yearz you zhould qualify for a zertificate qualifying you to aczept the pozt of zenior librarian anywhere in the United Kingdom.” “Oh. Oh, good,” said Thaw feebly.

  “Yez, it iz good. Very good. But I’m afraid you can’t ztart for another zicz weeks. Only the head librarian can employ you and he’s viziting the You Ezz Ay juzt now. But he’ll be back in zicz weekz, and you’ll zertainly be able to ztart then.”

  As Thaw left the building a change came upon him. It was as if several pounds had been added to his weight, and his heart had begun beating more sluggishly, and the air had thickened in his lungs. His thoughts also became heavy and thick. At home over tea he told his father about the interview. Mr. Thaw sighed with relief.

  “Thank God for that!” he said.

  “Yes. Yes, thank God. Thank God. Yes, indeed, let us give thanks to God.”

  “Duncan, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Things are as finely arranged as they can be in a world of this sort. Praise be to the Maker and Upholder of all things. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Ye—”

  “Stop! You’re talking like a madman! If you won’t state the matter honestly then keep your mouth shut!”

  Duncan shut his mouth. After a few minutes Mr. Thaw said on a note of pleading, “Tell me the matter, Duncan.”

  “I had a wish to be an artist. Was that not mad of me? I had this work of art I wanted to make, don’t ask me what it was, I don’t know; something epic, mibby, with the variety of facts and the clarity of fancies and all of it seen in pictures with a queer morbid intense colour of their own, mibby a gigantic mural or illustrated book or even a film. I didn’t know what it would have been, but I knew how to get ready to make it. I had to read poetry and hear music and study philosophy and write a
nd draw and paint. I had to learn how things and people felt and were made and behaved and how the human body worked and its appearance and proportions in different situations. In fact, I had to eat the bloody moon!”

  “Duncan, remember what your headmaster said! In four years you can be head librarian in some small country town and then you can make yourself an artist. Surely a real artist could wait four years?”

  “I don’t know if he could. I know that none ever did. People in Scotland have a queer idea of the arts. They think you can be an artist in your spare time, though nobody expects you to be a spare-time dustman, engineer, lawyer or brain surgeon. As for this library in a quiet country place, it sounds hellishly like Heaven, or a thousand pounds in the bank, or a cottage with roses round the door, or the other imaginary carrots that human donkeys are shown to entice them into all kinds of nasty muck.”

  Mr. Thaw rested his elbows on the table and held his head in his hands. After a while he said, “Duncan, what do you want me to do? I want to help you. I’m your father, even though you’ve been haranguing me as if I was a social system. If I was a millionaire I’d gladly support ye in idleness while you developed your talents, but I’m a costing and bonus clerk, and fifty-seven years old, and my duty is to make you self-supporting. Show me an alternative to the library service and I’ll help you toward it.”

  Tears slid down Thaw’s immobile face. He said harshly, “I can’t. There’s no alternative. I have no choice but to cooperate with my damnation.”

  “Stop being melodramatic.”

  “Am I melodramatic? I’m saying what I believe as succinctly as I can.”

  They finished the meal in silence. Then Mr. Thaw said, “Duncan, go to the art school tonight. Join the evening classes.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve six weeks before you start work for the libraries. Use them for what you like doing most.”

  “I see. Get a taste of that life before I give it up for good. No thanks.“

  “Duncan, join the evening classes.”

  “No thanks.”

  That evening he waited in a corridor of the art school outside the registrar’s office in a queue of other applicants. When his turn came he entered a spacious room and started walking toward a desk at the far end, conscious of pictorial and statuesque objects on either side. The man at the desk looked up as he approached. He had a large, spectacled face and a wide mouth with amused corners. He spoke drawlingly, with an expensive English dialect. “Good evening. What can I do for you?”

  Thaw sat down and pushed onto the desk a filled in application form. The registrar looked at it and said, “I see you want to go to life classes, ah, Thaw. How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Still at school?”

  “I’ve just left it.”

  “I’m afraid you’re rather young for life drawing. You’ll have to convince us that your studies are sufficiently advanced to fit you for it.”

  “I’ve some work here.”

  Thaw pushed his folder onto the desk. The registrar looked through it examining each picture carefully. He said, “Are the mounted ones part of a series?”

  “They illustrate a lecture I once gave.”

  The registrar put a few pictures aside and looked at them again. He said, “Don’t you think you should join us as a day student?” “My father can’t afford it.”

  “We could arrange a grant from the Corporation, you know. What are you intending to do?”

  “Join the library service.”

  “Do you like the idea?”

  “It seems the only thing possible.”

  “Honestly, I think you would be wasted in the library service. This is remarkable work. Quite remarkable. I take it you would prefer to come to the art school as a full-time day student?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your address is on this form, of course…. What school did you go to?”

  “Whitehill Senior Secondary.”

  “Have you a telephone?”

  “No.”

  “Has your father’s place of work a telephone?”

  “Yes. Garngash nine-three-one-three.”

  “Well, Thaw, I’ll be seeing you again. I’ll keep this work if I may. I want to show it to the director.”

  Thaw shut the door behind him. He had entered the building in an exhausted mood and had maintained through the interview a colourless, almost listless manner. Now he eyed the corridor outside with an excited speculation. It was lined with salt-white casts of renaissance nobility and nude and broken gods and goddesses. A door among these opened and a hectic little group of girls marched out and surrounded him for a moment with swinging skirts and hair, scent, chatter, thighs in coloured slacks and the sweet alien abundances of breasts. “….. charcoal charcoal charcoal always charcoal…..” “… Did you see the way he posed the model? …”

  “….. Wee Davie gives me the horrors….”

  He ran down a staircase, through the entrance hall and into the street. Too elated to wait for the tram he walked home by a route which took in Sauchiehall Street, Cathedral Square and the canal bank. He saw himself at the school of art, a respected artist among artists: prominent, admired, desired. He entered corridors of glamorous girls who fell silent, gazing at him and whispering together behind their hands. He pretended not to notice but if his look fell upon one she blushed or turned pale. He soared into dreams of elaborate adventure all dimly associated with art but culminating in a fancy that culminated all his daydreams. There was a great hall lit by chandeliers and floored with marble and with a vast staircase at the end rising into the dark of a starless sky. On each side of the hall stood all the women he had loved or who had loved him, all the men they had loved and married, everyone superbly evil, virtuous, wise, famous and beautiful and all magnificently dressed. Then he himself, alone and in ordinary clothes, walked down the centre of the hall and started unhurriedly climbing the staircase toward some huge and ultimate menace at the top. This menace overhung all humanity but only he was fit to encounter it, although it was an encounter from which he would not return. He climbed to a tragic crescendo in which organs, solo voices and orchestras blended in a lament which combined the most impressive effects of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and Puccini.

  He got home after dark. Mr. Thaw said, “What kept you?” “I walked back.”

  “Did they let you join the life class?”

  “I’m not sure. The registrar asked me a lot of questions. He thought I should join the day school. I told him it was impossible. He asked for your office telephone number.”

  Thaw spoke expressionlessly. Mr. Thaw said, “Well, well.”

  They ate supper in silence.

  Mr. Thaw came home next day slightly earlier than usual and slightly breathless. He sat facing Thaw across the living-room hearth rug and said, “He phoned me this morning— Peel, the registrar, I mean. He asked me if I could call and see him. I’d been talking over this business with Joe McVean, and Joe said, ‘Duncan, you take the afternoon off. I’ll manage fine here myself.’ So I went and saw Peel there and then.” Mr. Thaw brought out his pipe and pouch and began filling one from the other.

  “You seem to have made an impression on that man. He said your work was unusually good. He said it was rare for the art school authorities to persuade someone to join. It had only happened once in the last ten years. He said the director agreed with him that you would be wasted as a librarian, and that you could get a grant from the Corporation of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. I said to him,’ Mr. Peel, I know nothing about art. I do not appreciate my son’s work. However, I can vouch for his sincerity, and I accept your opinion as an expert when you vouch for his ability. But tell me one thing: what prospects has he when he finishes this four-year course of yours?’ “Well, he hummed and hawed a bit at that, then told me that for someone of your talent there might well be a chance of teaching in the art school when you had qualified. ‘However,’ he said, ‘the boy will be unhappy anywher
e else, Mr. Thaw. Let him decide himself what to do when the four years are up. Don’t rush him into a job he’ll hate at this stage.’ I said I would think it over and tell him tomorrow. I went straight from the art school to Whitehill and saw your headmaster. Do you know what I found? Peel had phoned him and had a talk with him. McEwan said to me, ‘Mr. Thaw, that man is better equipped to decide Duncan’s future than you or I.’ So I phoned the art school and said you could join.”

  “Thanks,” said Thaw, and left the room. A minute later Mr. Thaw came to him in the front bedroom, kneeling by the bed with his face pushed into the coverlet. Indrawn moans came from his muffled face and his back shuddered spasmodically. Mr. Thaw said in a puzzled voice, “What’s wrong, Duncan? Don’t you want to go to the art school? Aren’t you glad?”

  “Yes. Very glad.”

  “Then why are ye greeting?”

  Thaw stood up and dried his face with a handkerchief.

  “I don’t know. Relief, mibby.”

  Mr. Thaw patted his son affectionately under the chin with his clenched fist. “Cheer up!” he said. “And if you don’t make another Picasso of yourself, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll knock your block off so I will.”

  One hot afternoon Thaw and Coulter came down a woodland path veined by tree roots and freckled with sunlight. Birds called in the green shadows above them. Coulter was talking about work. “At first the novelty made it not too bad. It was different from school, and you were getting paid, and you felt a man; you know, getting up and intae your clothes at seven, pulling at the day’s first fag while your mother fried your breakfast, then down the road to the tram with your wee packet of sandwiches and sitting in your overalls with the other workers, crowding in at the gate and clocking on and then intae the machine shop—’ Hullo,’ ‘Hullo, here it goes again,’ ‘You’re fuckin’ right it does ‘—and then the thumping and banging and feeling of danger—”

  “Danger?” said Thaw.

  “There’s a bit of danger. You’ll be battering away at something when the folk nearby start shouting. You wonder who they’re yelling at this time, and they yell louder and it strikes you, ‘Christ, what if it’s me?’ and you turn and there’s a ten-ton girder swinging toward you on the overhead crane.”