The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

He knew in the darkness of his heart’s blood that he must not climb down. In the face of peril, in the presence of officialdom, age-old and vile, with its scarlet hands, and its hunched shoulders, he must not climb down. He must cling to his dizzy crag until, trembling but triumphant in the enormous knowledge of his victory, he stood once more upon solid ground, secure in the knowledge that as a creature of different clay he had not sold his birthright out of terror.

But he could not move. His face had gone white as the paper on the desk. His brow was sticky with sweat and he was heavy with a ghastly tiredness. To cling to his crag was enough. He had not the courage to stare into the dark red eyes that, with the lids narrowed across them, were fixed upon his face. He had not the courage to do this. He stared over the man’s shoulder, and then he closed his eyes. To refuse to say he was sorry was all that his courage could stand.

And then, all at once he felt himself to be standing at a strange angle, and opening his eyes he saw the rows of desks begin to circle in formation through the air and then a far voice shouted as though from miles away as he fell heavily to the floor in a dead faint.

FORTY-EIGHT

‘I am having the most moving time, Alfred. I said I am having the most moving time – are you listening or not? O it’s too galling the way a woman can be courted so splendidly, so nobly by her lover, only to find that her own brother is about as interested as a fly upon the wall. Alfred, I said a fly upon a wall!’

‘Flesh of my flesh,’ said the Doctor after a pause (he had been lost in rumination) ‘what is it that you want to know?’

‘Know,’ answered Irma, with superb scorn. ‘Why should I want to know anything?’

Her fingers smoothed the back of her iron-grey hair, and then of a sudden, pounced upon the bun at the nape of her neck where they fiddled with an uncanny dexterity. It might have been supposed that her long nervous fingers had an eye apiece so effortlessly did they flicker to and fro across the contours of the hirsute knob.

‘I was not asking you a question, Alfred. I sometimes have thoughts of my own. I sometimes make statements. I know you think very little of my intellect. But not everyone is like you – I can assure you. You can have no idea, Alfred, of what is being done to me. I am being drawn out. I am finding treasures in myself. I am like a rich mine, Alfred. I know it, I know it. And I have brains I haven’t even used yet.’

‘Conversation with you, Irma’, said her brother, ‘is peculiarly difficult. You leave no loops, dear one, at the end of your sentences, nothing to help your loving brother, nothing for his ever willing, ever eager, ever shining hook. I always have to start afresh, sweet trout. I have to work my passage. But I will try again. Now, you were saying …?’

‘O Alfred. Just for one moment, do something to please me. Talk normally. I am so tired of your way of saying things with all its figures of eight.’

‘Figures of speech! speech! speech!’ cried the Doctor, rising to his feet and wringing his hands, ‘why do you always say figure of eight? O bless my soul, what is the matter with my nerves? Yes, of course I’ll do something to please you. What shall it be?’

But Irma was in tears, her head buried in a soft grey cushion. At last she raised it and taking off her dark glasses, ‘It’s too much,’ she sobbed. ‘When even one’s brother snaps one up. I did trust you!’ she shouted, ‘and now you’re letting me down too. I only wanted your advice.’

‘Who has let you down?’ said the Doctor sharply. ‘Not the Headmaster …?’

Irma dabbed her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief the size of a playing card.

‘It’s because I told him his neck was dirty, the dear, sweet lord …’

‘Lord!’ cried Prunesquallor, ‘you don’t call him that, do you?’

‘Of course not, Alfred … only to myself … after all he is my lord, isn’t he?’

‘If you say so,’ said her brother, passing his hand across his brow. ‘I suppose he could be anything.’

‘O he is. He is. He’s anything – or rather, Alfred, he’s everything.’

‘But you have shamed him, and he feels wounded – proud and wounded, is that it, Irma, my dear?’

‘Yes, O yes. It is that exactly. But what can I do? What can I do?’

The doctor placed the tips of his fingers together.

‘You are experiencing already, my dear Irma,’ he said, ‘the stuff of marriage. And so is he. Be patient, sweet flower. Learn all you can. Use what tact God gave you, and remember your mistakes and what led up to them. Say nothing about his neck. You can only make things worse. His resentment will fade. His wound will heal in time. If you love him, then simply love him and never fuss about what’s dead and gone. After all you love him in spite of all your faults, not his. Other people’s faults can be fascinating. One’s own are dreary. Be quiet for a bit. Don’t talk too much and can’t you walk a little less like a buoy in a swell?’