The farthest away of these buildings, in other words those that fanned out in a glittering arc on the opposite side of the arena, were, to Titus’ gaze, no larger than stamps, thorns, nails, acorns, or tiny crystals, save for one gigantic edifice out-topping all the rest, which was like an azure match-box on its end.
EIGHTEEN
Had Titus come across a world of dragons he could hardly have been more amazed than by these fantasies of glass and metal; and he turned himself about more than once as though it were possible to catch a last glimpse of the tortuous, poverty-stricken town he had left behind him, but the district of Muzzlehatch was hidden away by a fold in the hills and the ruins of Gormenghast were afloat in a haze of time and space.
And yet, though his eyes shone with the thrill of his discovery, he suffered at the same time a pang of resentment – a resentment that this alien realm should be able to exist in a world that appeared to have no reference to his home and which seemed, in fact, supremely self-sufficient. A region that had never heard of Fuchsia and her death, nor of her father, the melancholy earl, nor of his mother the countess with her strange liquid whistle that brought wild birds to her from distant spinneys.
Were they coeval; were they simultaneous? These worlds; these realms – could they
When the storm came down upon these crystal structures, and the sky was black with rain, what of Gormenghast? Was Gormenghast dry? And when the thunder growled in his ancient home was there never any echo hereabouts?
What of the rivers? Were they separate? Was there no tributary, even, to feel its way into another world?
Where lay the long horizons? Where throbbed the frontiers? O terrible division! The near and the far. The night and the day. The yes and the no.
A VOICE. ‘O Titus, can’t you remember?’
TITUS. ‘I can remember everything except …’
VOICE. ‘Except …?’
TITUS. ‘Except the way.’
VOICE. The way where?’
TITUS. ‘The way home.’
VOICE. ‘Home?’
TITUS. ‘Home. Home where the dust gathers and the legends are. But I have lost my bearings.’
VOICE. ‘You have the sun and the North Star.’
TITUS. ‘But is it the same sun? And are the stars the stars of Gormenghast?’
He looked up and was surprised to find himself alone. His hands were cold with sweat, and the dread of being lost and having no proof of his own identity filled him with a sudden stabbing terror.
He looked about him at this sheer and foreign land, and then, all in a breath, something fled across the sky. It made no sound other than the slither of a finger across a slate, though it seemed to have passed as close as a scythe.
By now it was settling, a speck of crimson on the far side of the marble desert where the furthest mansions glinted. It had seemed to have no wings but an incredible purpose and beauty, like a stiletto or a needle, and as Titus fixed his eyes upon the building in whose shadow it lay, he thought he could see not one, but a swarm.
And this was so. Not only was there already quite a fleet of fish-shaped, needle-shaped, knife-shaped, shark-shaped, splinter-shaped devices, but all kinds of land-machines of curious design.
NINETEEN
Before him lay stretched the grey marble, a thousand acres of it, with its margins filled with the reflections of the mansions.
To walk alone across it, in view of all the distant windows, terraces, and roof-gardens was to proclaim arrogance, naked and culpable. But this is what he did, and when he had been walking for some while a small green dart detached itself from the planes on the far side of the arena and sped towards him, its glass-green belly skimming the marble, and an instant later it was upon him, only to veer at the last moment and sing away into the stratosphere, only to plunge, only to circle Titus’ head in narrowing gyres, only to return like a whippet of the air to the black mansion.
Bewildered, startled as he was, Titus began to laugh, though his laughter was not altogether without a touch of hysteria.
This exquisite beast of the air; this wingless swallow; this aerial leopard; this fish of the water-sky; this threader of moonbeams; this dandy of the dawn; this metal play-boy; this wanderer in black spaces; this flash in the night; this drinker of its own speed; this godlike child of a diseased brain – what did it do?
What did it do but act like any other petty snooper, prying upon man and child, sucking information as a bat sucks blood; amoral; mindless; sent out on empty missions, acting as its maker would act, its narrow-headed maker – so that its beauty was a thing on its own, beautiful only because its function shapes it so; and having no heart it becomes fatuous – a fatuous reflection of a fatuous concept – so that it is incongruous, or gobbles incongruity to such an outlandish degree that laughter is the only way out.
