Lanark: a life in 4 books (10 page)

“But why, why, why should we suffer that pit and blackness and pressure, why should we even try to be human if we are going to die? If you die your pain and struggle have been useless!”

“I take a less gloomy view. A good life means fighting to be human under growing difficulties. A lot of young folk know this and fight very hard, but after a few years life gets easier for them and they think they’ve become completely human when they’ve only stopped trying. I stopped trying, but my life was so full of strenuous routines that I wouldn’t have noticed had it not been for my disease. My whole professional life was a diseased and grandiose attack on my humanity. It is an achievement to know now that I am simply a wounded and dying man. Who can be more regal than a dying man?” His languid voice had become a very faint murmur.

“Sir!” said Lanark fervently. “I hope you will not die!”

The man smiled and murmured, “Thank you, my boy.”

A moment later sweat suddenly glittered on the visible parts of him. He clawed the coverlet with both hands and sat upright saying in a harsh commanding voice, “And now I feel very cold and more than a little afraid!”

The lamp went out. Lanark leaped onto the polished floor, slipped, fell and scrambled to the man’s side. Some pearly light from the window passed over the body half sprawling from the covers, the head and neck hanging off the mattress and an arm trailing on the floor. A dark stain was spreading on the bandage where the rubber tube had been wrenched out. Lanark ran to his bed, grabbed the radio and flicked the switch; he said, “Get Dr. Munro! Get me Dr. Munro!”

A small clear voice said, “Who is speaking, please?”

“I’m called Lanark.”

“Dr. Lanark?”

“No! No! I’m a patient, but a man is dying!”

“Dying naturally?”

“Yes, dying, dying!”

He heard the voice say, “Will Dr. Munro report quickly to Dr. Lanark, a man is dying naturally; I repeat, a man is dying naturally.”

A minute later the ward lights went on.

Lanark sat on the bed staring at his neighbour, who looked crudely and insultingly dead. His mouth hung open and it was now obvious that his sockets were eyeless. By the hand on the floor a tiny puddle was spreading from the nozzle of the rubber tube. Dr. Munro came in and walked briskly to the bedside. He lifted the arm, felt the pulse, hoisted the body farther onto the mattress, then turned off a tap on the suspended bottle. He looked at Lanark sitting on the edge of his bed in a white nightshirt and said, “Shouldn’t you cover yourself up?”

“No. I shouldn’t.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“Yes.”

“Did he recognize himself?”

“Yes. What are you going to do with him?”

“Bury him. Strange, isn’t it. We can find a practical use for any number of dead monsters, but a mere man can only be burned or shovelled into the ground.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Get into bed, Lanark.”

“I want to see out the window.”

“Why?”

“I feel enclosed.”

“Can you walk there?”

“Of course I can walk there.”

The doctor opened a locker beside the bed, took out dressing gown and slippers and handed them to Lanark, who put them on and walked to the window, ignoring a feeling of floating above the floor. He was surprised to find the corridor hardly longer than the room he had left: to right and left it ended in a blank wall with a circular door closed by a red curtain. Lanark hesitated before the slats of the blind until Dr. Munro appeared at his side and placed a hand on a green cord hanging from the top. He said, “I’ll raise the blind, Lanark, but first I want you to repeat certain words.”

“What words?”

“If I lose my way I will shut my eyes and turn my head.”

“If I lose my way I will shut my eyes and turn my head.”

Munro raised the blind.

It was a view of mistily moving distances with the sun shining through them. Snowy ranges of cloud divided snowy ranges of mountain and silvery skies lay so near to sparkling oceans that they were hard to tell apart. The institute seemed drifting toward the sun between the precipices of a canyon and he peered forward and down, trying to catch sight of the bottom, but when the mist below the window thinned and parted he saw a dark violet space containing stars and a sickle moon. Feeling dizzy he looked back at the sun for reassurance, for though dimmed by haze it shone solidly in the centre of the scene, illuminating and uniting it; but now he wondered if the sun was maybe far overhead and this a reflection in the sea, or perhaps it was behind him and he was seeing it mirrored in a glacier among the mountains in front. Nothing was visible now but sunlight and milky cloud with a single peak rising from it. Streams like silver threads poured through gullies in the lower slopes and white lines of waterfalls fell from cliff tops into the clouds. He saw this peak was not a simple cone but a cluster of summits with valleys between them. One valley was full of lakes and pasture, another was shaggy with forests, through a third lay a golden-green ocean with a sun setting behind it. The act of seeing became an act of flight. He raised his eyes to the horizon but above the level lines of every sea and plain lay islands, mountains, storm clouds, cities, and setting or ascending suns. He tried to escape this recession by staring at a village on a little hill in a shaft of morning light. A cloud passed overhead and he only saw the village by the light sparkling on windows and roofs, then the sparkles shifted and drifted sideways like snowflakes into silvery blueness where they circled like gulls above a steamship, then changed colour and became black specks circling like aeroplanes in a flashing red glow above a bombed city. So Lanark clapped a hand over his eyes, turned round and returned soberly to the room.

The body of his neighbour, swathed in blankets, was wheeled past on a stretcher by a male nurse. Lanark put the slippers and gown in the locker, climbed into bed and pulled the covers to his chin. Dr. Munro had lowered the blind and gone to the locker beside the dead man’s bed. He took out a pistol and stood examining it thoughtfully. He said, “This is why he died, you know. He wore it on the way down.”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Still, he came head first, which not many do.”

“Where is this institute?”

“We occupy a system of galleries under a mountain with several peaks and several cities on top. I believe you come from one of these cities.”

“Under a mountain?”

“Yes. That screen isn’t a window. It shows images caught by a reflector on one of the peaks. This ward has one because patients of your kind sometimes do feel enclosed. If I showed that view to other patients they would curl up like watch-springs.”

“How deep down are we?”

“I don’t know. I’m a doctor, not a geologist.”

Lanark had received more than he could consciously absorb. He fell asleep.

CHAPTER 8.

Doctors

He wakened next morning feeling tired and sick, but the nurses brought a bland omelette which restored vitality. On a chair by the bed they laid clothes with the same soft glazed texture as the food: underwear, socks, shirt, dark trousers, a pullover and a white coat. They said, “You’re joining us today, Bushybrows.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a doctor now. I hope you aren’t going to bully us poor nurses.”

“I am not a doctor!”

“Oh, don’t refuse! The ones who refuse at first always bully us worst.”

When they left Lanark arose and dressed in all but the coat. He found shoes of suède-like stuff below the bed. He put them on, entered the corridor, lifted the blind and saw a white flagpole in the middle of a warm, sunlit terrace of level grass. Children ran about playing anarchic ballgames and on the far edge two older boys sat on a bench gazing across a great valley, the valley-floor covered by roofs made prickly by smokestacks. On the right a river meandered among fields and slag bings, then the city hid it though the course was marked by skeletal cranes marching to the left. Beyond the city was a bleak ridge of land, heather-green and creased by watercourses, and the summits of mountains appeared behind that like a line of broken teeth. This view filled Lanark with such unexpected delight that his eyes moistened. He returned and lay down on the bed, wondering why.

“Anyway,” he told himself, “I’ll go there.”

Munro came through an arch and Lanark sat up to face him saying, “Before you speak, I want to assure you I will not be a doctor.”

“I see. How do you intend to pass the time while you stay here?”

“I don’t want to stay. I want to leave.”

Munro flushed suddenly red and pointed to the window. Outside it grey waves were rising and falling against a great cliff with mist on the summit.

“Yes, leave! Leave!” he said in a controlled voice, “I’ll take you to an emergency exit. It will let you out at the mountain foot, and after that you can find your own way through the world. Men used to find homes like that, leaving the safe oasis or familiar cave and crossing wildernesses to make houses in unknown lands. Of course these men knew things you don’t. They could plant crops, kill animals, endure pains that would deprive you of your wits. But you can read and write and argue, and if you go far enough you may find people who appreciate that, if they talk the same language.”

“But a minute ago I saw a habitable city out there!”

“And have you never heard how fast and far light travels? And how masses warp it and surfaces reflect it and atmospheres refract it? You have seen a city and think it in the future, a place to reach by travelling an hour or day or year, but existence is helical and that city could be centuries ahead. And what if it lies in the past? History is full of men who saw cities, and went to them, and found them shrunk to villages or destroyed centuries before or not built yet. And the last sort were the luckiest.”

“But I recognized this city! I’ve been there!”

“Ah, then it lies in the past. You’ll never find it now.”

Lanark looked miserably at the floor. The view had given him dreams of a gracious, sunlit life. He said, “Are there no civilized places I can reach from here?”

Munro had regained his mandarin calm and sat down beside the bed. “Yes, several. But they won’t take you without a companion.”

“Why?”

“Health regulations. When people leave without a companion their diseases return after a while.”

“Am I the only healthy individual who wants to leave this place?”

“One woman doctor hates her work so much that she’ll leave with anyone, but take care. Entering another world with someone is a form of wedding, and this woman will hate any world she lands in.”

Lanark groaned and said, “What can I do, Dr. Munro?”

Munro said cheerfully, “That is your first sensible question Lanark, so stop worrying and listen. You can look for a companion among three classes of people: the doctors, the nurses and the patients. Not many doctors want to leave, but when they do, it is with a colleague. Nurses leave more often, with men they thoroughly trust, and doctors have proverbial advantages where they are concerned. But the biggest class are the patients, and you can only know them by working on them.”

“I’m not qualified to work on anybody.”

“And were you not nearly a dragon? And are you not cured? The only qualification for treating a disease is to survive it, and right now seventeen patients are crushing themselves under belligerent armour without one reasonable soul to care for them. Don’t be afraid! You need see nobody whose problem is not a form of your own.”

They sat in silence until Lanark stood up and put the white coat on. Munro smiled and produced a hospital radio saying, “This is yours. You know how to make contact through it, so I’ll show how it contacts you.”

He flicked the switch and said to the mesh, “Send a signal to Dr. Lanark in ten seconds, please. There’s no message, so don’t repeat it.”

He dropped the radio into Lanark’s pocket. A moment later two resonant chords from there said
plin-plong
.

“When you hear that, your patient is near a crisis or a colleague needs help. If you need help yourself, or lose your way in the corridors, or want a lullaby to soothe you to sleep, speak to the operator and you’ll be connected to someone suitable. Now get your books and we’ll go to your new apartment.” Lanark hesitated. He said, “Has it a window?”

“As far as I know this is the only room with a viewing screen of that kind.”

“I prefer to sleep here, Dr. Munro.”

Munro sighed slightly. “Doctors don’t usually sleep in a patients’ ward, but certainly this is the smallest and least required. All right, leave the books. I’ll show you something of the institute’s scope then we’ll visit Ozenfant, your head of department.”

They went through an arch to one of the circular doorways. The curtain of red pleated plastic slid apart for them and closed behind.

The corridors of the institute were very different from the rooms they connected. Lanark followed Munro down a low curving tunnel with hot gusts of wind shoving at his back, his ears numbed by a clamour of voices, footsteps, bells going
plin-plong
and a dull rhythmic roaring. The tunnel was six feet high and circular in section with a flat track at the bottom just wide enough for the wheels of a stretcher. The light kept brightening and dulling in a way that hurt the eyes; dazzling golden brightness slid along the walls with each warm blast and was followed by fading orange dimness in the ensuing cold. The tunnel slanted into another tunnel and grew twice as large, then into another and grew twice as large again. The noise, brightness and windpower increased. Lanark and Munro travelled swiftly but doctors and nurses with trolleys and stretchers kept overtaking and whizzing past them on either side. Nobody was moving against the wind. With an effort Lanark came beside Munro and asked about this, but though he yelled aloud his voice reached his ears as a remote squeaking and the reply was inaudible; yet amid the roaring and gongings he could hear distinct fragments of speech spoken by nobody in the vicinity: