The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

The Doctor had himself noticed that she was spending more and more time upon her toilette, although it had at all times proved one of her most absorbing occupations; a paradox to the Doctor’s mind which delighted him, for his sister was, even in his fraternal eyes, cruelly laden with the family features. As she approached her chair to the left of the fire, Steerpike removed his hand from her elbow, and, shifting back the Doctor’s chair with his foot while Prunesquallor was drawing the blinds, pulled forward the sofa into a more favourable position in front of the fire.

‘They don’t meet – I said “They don’t meet”,’ said Irma Prunesquallor, pouring out the coffee.

How she could see anything at all, let alone whether they met or not, through her dark glasses was a mystery.

Dr Prunesquallor, already on his way back to his chair, on the padded arms of which his coffee was balancing, stopped and folded his hands at his chin.

‘To what are you alluding, my dear? Are you speaking of a brace of spirits? ha ha ha! – twin souls searching for consummation, each in the other? Ha ha! ha ha ha! Or are you making reference to matters more terrestrial? Enlighten me, my love.’

‘Nonsense,’ said his sister. ‘Look at the curtains, I said: “Look at the curtains”.’

Dr Prunesquallor swung about.

‘To me,’ he said, ‘they look exactly like curtains. In fact, they are curtains. Both of them. A curtain on the left, my love, and a curtain on the right. Ha ha! I’m absolutely certain they are!’

Irma, hoping that Steerpike was looking at her, laid down her coffee-cup.

‘What happens in the middle, I said; what happens right down the middle?’ Her pointed nose warmed, for she sensed victory.

‘There is a great yearning one for the other. A fissure of impalpable night divides them, Irma, my dear sister, there is a lacuna.’

‘Then kill it,’ said Irma, and sank back into her chair. She glanced at Steerpike, but he had apparently taken no notice of the conversation and she was disappointed. He was leaning back into one corner of the couch, his legs crossed, his hands curled around the coffee-cup as though to feel its warmth, and his eyes were peering into the fire. He was evidently far away.

When the Doctor had joined the curtains together with great deliberation and stood back to assure himself that the Night was satisfactorily excluded from the room, he seated himself, but no sooner had he done so than there was a jangling at the door-bell which continued until the cook had scraped the pastry from his hands, removed his apron and made his way to the front door.

Two female voices were speaking at the same time.

‘Only for a moment, only for a moment,’ they said. ‘Just passing – On our way home – Only for a moment – Tell him we won’t stay – No, of course not; we won’t stay. Of course not. Oh no – Yes, yes. Just a twinkling – only a twinkling.’

But for the fact that it would have been impossible for one voice to wedge so many words into so short a space of time and to speak so many of them simultaneously, it would have been difficult to believe that it was not the voice of a single individual, so continuous and uniform appeared the flat colour of the sound.

Prunesquallor cast up his hands to the ceiling and behind the convex lenses of his spectacles his eyes revolved in their orbits.

The voices that Steerpike now heard in the passage were unfamiliar to his quick ear. Since he had been with the Prunesquallors he had taken advantage of all his spare time and had, he thought, run to earth all the main figures of Gormenghast. There were few secrets hidden from him, for he had that scavenger like faculty of acquiring unashamedly and from an infinite variety of sources, snatches of knowledge which he kept neatly at the back of his brain and used to his own advantage as opportunity offered.

When the twins, Cora and Clarice, entered the room together, he wondered whether the red wine had gone to his head. He had neither seen them before nor anything like them. They were dressed in their inevitable purple.

Dr Prunesquallor bowed elegantly. ‘Your Ladyships,’ he said, ‘we are more than honoured. We are really very much more than honoured, ha ha ha!’ He whinnied his appreciation. ‘Come right along, my dear ladies, come right the way in, Irma, my dear, we have been doubly lucky in our privileges. Why “doubly” you say to yourself, why “doubly”? Because, O sister, they have both come, ha ha ha! Very much so, very much so.’

Prunesquallor, who knew from experience that only a fraction of what anyone said ever entered the brains of the twins, permitted himself a good deal of latitude in his conversation, mixing with a certain sycophancy remarks for his own amusement which could never have been made to persons more astute than the twins.

Irma had come forward, her iliac crest reflecting a streak of light.

‘Very charmed, your Ladyships; I said “very, very charmed”.’

She attempted to curtsey, but her dress was too tight.