The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

‘I think you said, “your so-called Gormenghast”. God damn you for that phrase. For you to say it! You! For you to be a thing of disbelief! You! You’ve been a kind of God to me. A rough-hewn God. I hated you at times, but mostly I loved you. I have told you of my home; of my family; of our ritual; of my childhood; of the flood; of Fuchsia, of Steerpike and how I killed him; of my escape. Do you think I have invented it all? Do you think I have been deceiving you? You have failed me. Let me go!’

‘What are you waiting for,’ said Muzzlehatch, turning his back on the boy. His heart was pounding.

Titus stamped his foot with anger, but he did not move away. A moment later, the Black Rose began to give at the knees, but Muzzlehatch was in time to catch her up in his powerful arms, as though she were a tattered doll.

They had come to an open space, and stopped where the shadows ended.

‘Do you see that cloud?’ said Muzzlehatch, in a curiously loud voice. ‘The one like a curled-up cat. No, there, you chicken, beyond that green dome. Can’t you see it? With the moon on its back.’

‘What about it?’ said Titus in an irritable whisper.

‘That is your direction,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Make for it. Then on and beyond for a month’s march, and you will be in comparative freedom. Freedom from the swarms of pilotless planes: freedom from bureaucracy: freedom from the police. And freedom of movement. It is largely unexplored. They are ill-equipped. No squadron for the water, sea, or sky. It is as it should be. A region where no one can remember who is in power. But there are forests like the Garden of Eden where you can lie on your belly and write bad verse. There will be nymphs for your ravishing, and flutes for your delectation. A land where youths lean backwards in their tracks, and piss the moon, as though to put it out.’

‘I am tired of your words,’ said Titus.

‘I use them as a kind of lattice-work,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘They hide me away from me … let alone from you. Words can be tiresome as a swarm of insects. They can prick and buzz! Words can be no more than a series of farts; or on the other hand they can be adamantine, obdurate, inviolable, stone upon stone. Rather like your “so-called Gormenghast” (you notice that I use the same phrase again. The phrase that makes you cross?). For although you have learned, it seems, the art of making enemies (and this is indeed good for the soul), yet you are blind, deaf, and dumb when it comes to another language. Stark: dry: unequivocal: and cryptic: a thing of crusts and water. If you ask for flattery … Remember this in your travels. Now go … for God’s sake … GO!’

Titus lifted his eyes to his companion. Then he took three steps towards him. The scar on his cheekbone shone like silk in the moonlight.

‘Mr Muzzlehatch,’ he said.

‘What is it boy?’

‘I grieve for you.’

‘Grieve for this broken creature,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘She is the weak of the world.’

Out of the silence came the far-away voice of the Black Rose. ‘Linen,’ it cried in a voice both peevish and beautiful. ‘Linen … white linen.’

‘She is as hot as fever can make her,’ muttered Muzzlehatch. ‘It is like holding embers in my arms. But there is Juno for a refuge, and a cat for your bearing; and beyond, to the world’s end.

‘The sleeping cat,’ he muttered with a catch in his throat, ‘did you ever see it … my little civet? They silenced him with all the rest. He moved like a wave of the sea. Next to my wolves, I loved him, Titus child. You have never seen such eyes.’

‘Hit me,’ cried Titus, ‘I’ve been a dog to you.’

‘Globules to that!’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘It’s time the Black Rose was in Juno’s hands.’

‘Ah, Juno; give her my love,’ said Titus.

‘Why?’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘You’ve only just retracted it! That’s no way to treat a lady. By hell it ain’t. Giving your love; taking your love; secreting it; exposing it … as though it were a game of hide and seek.’

‘But you have been in love with her yourself and have lost her. And now you are returning to her again.’

‘True,’ said Muzzlehatch. ‘Touché, indeed. She has, after all, a haze about her. She is an orchard … a golden thing is Juno. Generous as the milky way, or the source of a great river. What would you say? Is she not wonderful?’

Titus turned his head quickly to the sky.

‘Wonderful? She must have been.’

‘Must she?’ said Muzzlehatch.

There was a curious silence, and in this silence a cloud began to pass over the moon. It was not a large cloud so that there was little time to waste, and in the half-darkness the two friends moved away from one another, and began to hurry into the darkness as though they needed it, one in the direction of Juno’s home, the Black Rose in his arms, and the other moving rapidly to the north.