The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

One by one the invited parties were handed their invitations, and there was not a single professor who could withhold either a gasp or grunt of surprise or a twitch of the eyebrow.

Some were so stupefied that they were forced to sit down on the steps for a short while until their pulse rate slackened.

Shred and Shrivell tapped their teeth with the gilded edges of their cards, and were already making guesses at the psychological implications.

Fluke, his wide lipless mouth disgorging endless formations of dense and cumulous smoke, was gradually allowing a giant grin to spread itself across his gaunt face.

Flannelcat was embarrassingly excited, and was already trying to rub a thumb-mark from the corner of his card, which he had every intention of framing.

Bellgrove had his great prophet’s jaw hanging wide.

There were sixteen invitations altogether. The entire staff of the Leather Room had been invited.

They had arrived, these invitation cards, at a time when Perch-Prism had been the only master present in the Common-room and he had taken over the responsibility of delivering them personally to the others.

Suddenly Opus Fluke’s long leather mouth opened like a horse’s and a howl of insensitive laughter reverberated through the sun-blotched place.

A score of mortar-boards swivelled.

‘Really!’ said the sharp, precise voice of Perch-Prism. ‘Really, my dear Fluke! What a way to receive an invitation from a lady! Come, come.’

But Fluke could hear nothing. The idea of being invited to a party by Irma Prunesquallor had somehow broken through to the most sensitized area of his diaphragm, and he yelled and yelled again until he was breathless. As he panted hoarsely to a standstill, he did not even look about him: he was still in his own world of amusement; but he did hold the Invitation Card up before his wet and pebbly eyes once more, only to open his wide mouth again in a fresh spasm; but there was no laughter left in him.

Perch-Prism’s pug-baby features expressed a certain condescension, as though he understood how Mr Fluke felt, but was nevertheless surprised and mildly irritated by the coarseness in his colleague’s make-up.

It was Perch-Prism’s saving grace that in spite of his old-maidishness, his clipped and irritatingly academic delivery and his general aura of omniscience, yet he had a strongly developed sense of the ridiculous and was often forced to laugh when his brain and pride wished otherwise.

‘And the Headmaster,’ he said, turning to the noble figure at his side, whose jaw still hung open like the mouth of a sepulchre, ‘what does he think, I wonder? What does our Headmaster think about it all?’

Bellgrove came to with a start. He looked about him with the melancholy grandeur of a sick lion. Then he found his mouth was open, so he closed it gradually, for he would not have them think that he would hurry himself for anyone.

He turned his vacant lion’s eye to Perch-Prism, who stood there perkily looking up at him and tapping his shiny invitation card against his polished thumbnail.

‘My dear Perch-Prism,’ said Bellgrove, ‘why on earth should you be interested in my reaction to what is, after all, not a very extraordinary thing in my life? It is possible, you know,’ he continued laboriously, ‘it is just possible that when I was a younger man I received more invitations to various kinds of functions than you have ever received, or can ever hope to receive, during the course of your life.’

‘But exactly!’ said Perch-Prism. ‘And that is why we want his opinion. That is why our Headmaster alone can help us. What could be more enlightening than to have it straight from the horse’s mouth?’

For neatness’ sake he could not help wishing that he were addressing Opus Fluke, for Bellgrove’s mouth, though hardly hyper-human, was nothing like a horse’s.

‘Prism,’ he said, ‘compared with me you are a young man. But you are not so young as to be ignorant of the elements of decent conduct. Be good enough in your puff-adder attitude to life to find room for one delicacy at least; and that is to address me, if you must, in a manner less calculated to offend. I will not be talked across. My staff must realize this from the outset. I will not be the third person singular. I am old, I admit it. But I am nevertheless here. Here,’ he roared; ‘and standing on the selfsame pavement with you, Master ’Prism; and I exist, by hell! in my full conversational and vocative rights.’

He coughed and shook his leonine head. ‘Change your idiom, my young friend, or change your tense, and lend me a handkerchief to put over my head – these sunbeams are giving me a headache.’ Perch-Prism produced a blue silk handkerchief at once and draped it over the peeved and noble head.