Lanark

by Alasdair Gray

“But Duncan, I … I … I have an ugly birthmark down my side.”

  He shook his head impatiently. “Surface discolourations aren’t important.” He gave a slight, helpless laugh and added, “You ought to do it, to make us equal again. I stripped naked in front of you just now, in words.”

  “Oh, Duncan!”

  She gave him an affectionate pitying smile and sighed.

  “All right, Duncan.”

  They walked on.

  “Good. When? Next week?”

  “No, the week after. I’m very busy just now.”

  “Monday?”

  “No. Well … Friday.”

  “Good. About seven?”

  “Yes.”

  “And should I keep reminding you till then?”

  “No, I … I really will remember, Duncan.”

  “Good.”

  At the garden gate she tilted up her mouth. He brushed his cheek on hers and murmured, “We’re not mature enough for mouths. Mine hardens when I touch you with it. Please hold me.”

  They clasped, and her ear against his cheek made a point of tingling excitement. He began breathing deeply. She whispered, “Are you happy, Duncan?”

  “Aye.”

  A car stopped at the kerb. Glancing sideways they saw the profile of the professor sitting immobile behind the wheel. They broke apart, laughing.

  The enlarged landscape would show Blackhill, Riddrie, the Campsie Fells, the Cathkin Braes and crowds from both sides mixing around the locks in the middle. Over 105 square feet of canvas he wove, unwove and rewove a net of blue, grey and brown guidelines. He was contemplating them glumly one night when McAlpin entered and said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I wish the shapes weren’t so restless.”

  “A landscape seen simultaneously from above and below and containing north, east and south can hardly be peaceful. Especially if there’s a war in it.”

  “True, but I’m making a point of rest in the middle foreground: Marjory, looking at us.”

  “What expression will she have?”

  “Her usual expression. I hope you remember she’s posing tomorrow. I don’t want interruptions.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be left to yourselves. What exactly do you expect from tomorrow evening? You seem to be building a lot on it.”

  “I expect an evening of good sound work. I’ll be glad to get more but I’m not hoping for it so I can’t be disappointed. I love the slight gawkiness in her. She doesn’t seem to feel she has breasts and that emphasizes them. She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. Mind you, she could dress to show it more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her clothes are a bit schoolgirlish, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t think that.”

  “You don’t? I see.”

  “My grapes are not sour, you foxy plutocrat.”

  “Sour gra—? Why, you shabby socialist!”

  They laughed at each other.

  Next morning he prepared his drawing board, brought in a bottle of wine and carefully set the fire so that it would flare at the touch of a match; but he was restless and went to school for the coffee break. In the refectory he met Janet Weir and asked if she had seen Marjory.

  “No, Duncan. She’s not at school today.”

  “Did she—yesterday, I mean—look a bit tired and ill?”

  “I don’t think so, Duncan.”

  He returned to the studio and at half-past six lit the fire and sat by it trying to read. The doorbell rang at ten to eight. Making an effort not to run he strolled down and casually turned the knob. It took him two or three seconds to see that the girl on the mat was Janet. She said, “Duncan, Marjory sent me to say she’s terribly sorry. She was working very hard last night and isn’t feeling very well.”

  After a moment Thaw said heavily, “Tell her I’m not surprised,” and closed the door. He went upstairs and uncorked the wine, intending to drink himself silly, but after one glass he felt so dull that he spread his mattress and slept.

  There was a sound of wind and of seagulls squabbling above the park. He woke in a square of sunlight and saw blue air and white clouds through the window. Turning his back to it he curled tightly into the mattress and deliberately remembered his friendship with Marjory from the time she first passed him on the stairs to the evening before. It seemed such a history of insult that he bit his fingers with rage and at the end his eyes were warm with tears. He grew calmer by moving onto the dais of the lecture theatre and talking in a quiet, distinct voice.

  “… an art school without classes or examinations where life drawing, morbid anatomy, tools, material and information are free to whoever wants them. I am ready to lay these plans before the director and the board of governors, but without your loyalty I can do nothing.”

  Her face was in the cheering crowd which parted to let him through. He noticed her with a slight nod, having more important things to think about. A Labour administration made him Secretary of State for Scotland, and arising in the House of Commons he announced his plan for a separate Scottish parliament: “It is plain that the vaster the social unit, the less possible is true democracy.”

  A stunned silence was broken by the Prime Minister denouncing him as a renegade. Thaw strode from the chamber and an amazing thing happened. All seventy-one Scottish MPs—Labour, Liberal and Tory—rose and followed him. On the terrace above the Thames he was turning to address them when McAlpin came in and said, “Hullo. Having a long lie?”

  “She didn’t come.”

  “The bitch! Listen, it’s a glorious day, come out sketching with me.”

  “I don’t feel like moving.”

  “Make yourself. You’ll be better for it.”

  “I can’t.”

  McAlpin stretched paper on a drawing board. Thaw said abruptly, “I’ve finished with her.”

  “Very wise.”

  “But I haven’t worked out how to say ‘Goodbye.’”

  “Don’t bother. Just don’t say ‘Hello’ again.”

  “No. I must be definite.”

  “It’s useless brooding, Duncan. The light will have gone in three or four hours. Come out sketching.”

  “No.”

  McAlpin left, and after the civil war Thaw became head of the reconstruction committee. Fountains splashed and trees grew where the demolished banks had stood. Backcourts were given benches and open-air draughtboards for the old, paddling ponds and sand pits for infants, communal non-profit making launderettes for housewives. Pleasure boats with small orchestras sailed down the canal from Riddrie to the Clyde islands. Marjory read his name in newspapers, heard his voice on the wireless, saw his face in cinemas; he surrounded her, he was shaping her world, yet she could not touch him. Then he dozed and dreamed of a fearful twilit country dripping with rain. He was trying to escape from it with a little girl who insulted and betrayed him. She grew tall and sat wearing jewellery on a throne in a dark ancient house. She had sent her club-footed butler to catch him. Tiny Thaw fled from room to room, slamming doors behind him, but the slow limping sound drew nearer all the time. He came at last to a cupboard with no way out and clutched the doorknob, trying to hold it shut. Freezing water swirled up his legs.

  He woke in darkness with half the bedding on the floor. Three stars shone through the window and geese sang discordantly from the pond. Pulling the blankets round him, he eased his breathing with an ephedrine pill and imagined her a slave in a luxurious brothel where he tortured her into making shameless love to him. The second time he masturbated she changed into June Haig, the third time became a boy. Disgusted with himself he stared at the ceiling till dawn, then fell asleep again. It was Sunday, and that afternoon other students came and made coffee, painted and gossiped. Thaw lay pretending to read but actually composing farewell speeches for Marjory, speeches amused, pathetic, stoical, coldly insulting and madly violent. In the evening Macbeth arrived. The art school had expelled him for drunkenness and he sagged into a chair saying,<
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  “Wha’s wrong wi Duncan? Why’s he curled up like that?”

  “Shh. He’s breaking with Marjory,” murmured McAlpin.

  “Why’re you breaking, Duncan? Can you not get your hole, is ’at it! Will she not give you your hole?”

  “No. Partly, mibby. I don’t know.”

  “Listen to me, Duncan. Listen. Listen. Holes don’t matter. I’ve had my hole regular since I was seventeen, just because Molly wouldnae look at me don’t think I’ve gone without my hole. I go to Bath Street. I get it twice, three times, four times a week and it doesnae matter that much.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Marjory is a nice girl. You stick to her, hole or no hole.”

  “She isn’t kind to me,” said Thaw from under the blankets.

  “I admit that is depressing. I admit that no hole, with no kindness on top of it, can be depressing.”

  On Monday he went to an school and met Marjory on the steps. His mind had split with her so completely that the pretty smiling girl before him was as confusing as a resurrection.

  “Hello, Duncan! I’m sorry about Friday. Janet told you why, didn’t she?”

  “She told me, yes.”

  “There’s a choir practice after lunch today. Are you going to the refectory?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Her smile was so direct and bright that his face had to reflect it, but in the refectory he sat beside her and Janet Weir without talking and drew on the tabletop. Marjory said, “Janet and I are going to the opera tonight, Duncan.”

  “Good.”

  “We haven’t booked seats, we’re going to queue for the balcony.”

  “Good.”

  Janet went to get cigarettes. Marjory said, “Aitken isn’t coming−he hates opera. But you like it, Duncan, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  She moved nearer. “Duncan, you know I’ll pose for you whenever you like.”

  “Marjory, we must stop this.” He drew a dark shadow under an eye, pressing hard on the pencil and saying, “We’ll be better rid of each other.”

  He glanced sideways. Her quiet profile seemed to examine the drawing. Janet returned saying, “No Gauloise! I wish they’d sell us Gauloise.”

  Thaw said, “There’s no satisfaction in the present way of things.”

  “Shall we go over to the choir, Duncan?” Marjory asked.

  As they crossed the street she said, “I’m sorry, Duncan.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I spent the weekend getting used to leaving you and now I’m used to it.”

  They paused at the door of the theatre where the choir rehearsed. He said, “So there’s nothing to be done.”

  “I see. Oh, Duncan, I’m sorry you’ve liked me so much. And Duncan, I’m sorry I haven’t—”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry,” he said, taking her hands and leaning his brow on hers. “Don’t be sorry! You gave me friendship, and for a long time I was grateful.”

  “But Duncan, can’t we still be friends? Not now, perhaps, but later?”

  They put their cheeks together and he murmured, “Later, mibby, when I have a real girlfriend I can … perhaps….” “Yes. Then.”

  She clasped his waist and he caressed her easily, moving his mouth into the soft nook between her neck and shoulder. Janet and two friends went past saying, “Oho!” “Aha!” “Hurry up, you’re late.”

  He wondered why his mouth and hands had never done these things before. More footsteps sounded along the corridor and they separated.

  “I’m leaving the choir,” he said. “So go through that door, and goodbye.”

  She smiled and went quickly through the door. He set out briskly for the studio, meaning to start work at once. Their parting had been so kind that for three minutes he was almost happy, but as time and space widened between them resentment developed. Along Sauchiehall Street the glances of passers-bymade him notice he was chanting aloud, “If you exist let mekill her, if you exist let me kill her.”

  At the studio he saw nothing in his picture but a tangle of ugly lines. He sat and stared at them till it was dark.

  CHAPTER 26.

  Chaos

  He waited a long time next morning for an impulse to get out of bed, and at last crawled to the larder, and to the lavatory, and back to bed again. He lay like a corpse, his brain rotten with resentful dreams. He tortured her in sexual fantasies, and revised and enlarged the farewell speeches he had failed to make when parting, and minutely remembered and resented every moment they had passed together. He wondered why his thoughts were so full of a girl who had given him so little. The aching emotions gradually became muscular tightness, his limited movement a way of saving breath. He kept wanting her to enter the dark, dusty, muddled room, switch on the light and glance round it, smiling. His own face would stay hard and immobile but she would remove her coat, give a small pat to the back of her hair and start to clean up. She would make a warm drink, sit by the mattress and hold the cup for him to sip like a child. With a sardonic smile he would submit to this but at last he would take her hands and press them to where she could feel the heart knocking on his ribs. They would lean against each other. The sweat would go from his brow, the tension from his body and he would sleep. He was afraid of sleep now and sat as rigid as possible to keep it away.

  One day during the summer holidays McAlpin, who was painting in a corner, said, “I know advice is always useless but wouldn’t you feel better if you got up and tackled your picture?”

  “It’s ludicrous to think anyone in Glasgow will ever paint a good picture.”

  “You should go home, Duncan.”

  “Afraid to move.”

  Later McAlpin went out and returned with Ruth. Thaw stared at her fearfully for she often called his illness a disgusting way of grabbing attention. She asked kindly, “How are you, old Duncan?” and gently helped him to dress and led him downstairs to a taxi. As they sped homeward she spoke of her training college in Aberdeen. She had been a year there, her intelligent bright bounciness had no aggression in it and he sensed he need never fear her again. Mr. Thaw had laid the table for tea. As they sat round it Ruth said “I like Aberdeen, I’ve got so many boyfriends! I go swimming with Harry Docherty, who was the Scottish Junior Breaststroke Champion, and I go dancing with Joe Stewart, and I go to parties with anybody—anybody I like, I mean. The girls at college think I’m a scarlet woman but I think they’re daft. Most of them have only one boyfriend and talk about nothing but marriage. I’m not going to marry for four or five years, and there’s safety in numbers, I say.”

  “Quite right,” said Mr. Thaw. “Don’t commit yourself to another human being until you’re able to be independent. You’re young, enjoy yourself.”

  “On Sunday I go for walks with Tony Gow, who’s a medical student. You’d like him, Duncan. He knows all about animals and flowers and folk songs. He’s not much use in the back row of a cinema but he’s really interesting. Our walks haven’t been much fun lately because of this new rabbit disease the farmers are spreading. All along the country roads you find these poor dying rabbits, gasping for breath with their eyes bulging out. Tony takes them by the hind legs and brains them on the ground. I can’t do it. I know it’s the kind thing to do but I can’t even look. Tony—”

  Thaw screamed, “Stop!”

  After a moment Mr. Thaw said, “Go to bed son. I’ll get the doctor.”

  The doctor ordered rest and new kinds of pill. Thaw sat in bed, unable to concentrate on reading but willing to argue.

  “I wish I was a duck.”

  “What?”

  “I wish I was a duck on Alexandra Park pond. I could swim, and fly, and walk, and have three wives, and everything I wanted. But I’m a man. I have a mind, and three library tickets, and everything I want is impossible.”

  “My God, what are you saying? What’s this I’ve fathered? Look at penicillin and the national health service, look at all these books and pictures you’re so keen on! And you want to be a bird!”

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nbsp; “Look at Belsen!” cried Thaw. “And Nagasaki, and the Russians in Hungary and Yanks in South America and French in Algeria and the British bombing Egypt without declaring war on her! Half the folk on this planet die of malnutrition before they’re thirty, we’ll be twice as many before the century ends, and the only governments with the skill and power to make a decent home of the world are plundering their neighbours and planning to atom bomb each other. We cooperate in millions when it comes to killing, but when it comes to generous, beautiful actions we work in tens and hundreds.”

  Mr. Thaw rubbed the side of his face and said, “You’ve read more books than me. How long have there been men in the world?”

  “About three hundred thousand years.”

  “How long have we had cities?”

  “About six thousand years.”

  “And how long have there been governments with worldwide powers? I know the answer to that one. Hardly more than a century.”

  “Well?”

  “Duncan, modern history is just beginning. Give us another couple of centuries and we’ll build a real civilization! Don’t worry, son, others want it beside yourself. There’s not a country in the world where folk aren’t striving and searching. Don’t be fooled by the politicians. It isn’t the loud men on platforms but the obscure toilers who change things. And if a few damned power cliques start an atomic war in the next ten or twenty years, humanity will survive. We may take centuries to breed out the effects of radiation, but ordinary folk will do it and start the steep upward climb once more.”

  “Yah, I’m sick of ordinary people’s ability to eat muck and survive. Animals are nobler. A fierce animal will die fighting against insults to its nature, and a meek one will starve to death under them. Only human beings have the hideous versatility to adapt to lovelessness and live and live and live while being exploited and abused by their own kind. I read an essay by a little girl in a book about children in wartime. Her house had been bombed. She wrote,’ I am nothing and nobody. My cat was stuck to the wall. I tried to pull her off but they threw my cat away.’ Worse things have happened to children every day for the last quarter million years. No kindly future will ever repair a past as vile as ours, and even if we do achieve a worldwide democratic socialist state it won’t last. Nothing decent lasts. All that lasts is this mess of fighting and pain and I object to it! I object! I object!”