Lanark Read Online Free PDF Page B

place, did I?”
    We continued side by side till the way grew narrow then he walked in front. The path went down a steep embankment between the two hills which seemed to be rubbish dumps. Where it twisted sharply I sometimes walked forward and found myself wading in what felt like ashes and rotten cloth. We crossed the dry bed of an old canal and reached the end of a street. The city did not seem a thriving place. Groups of adolescents or old men stood in occasional close mouths, but many closes were empty and unlit. The only shops not boarded up were small stores selling newspapers, sweets, cigarettes and contraceptives. After a while we came to a large square with tramcars clanging around it. The street lamps only lit the lowest storeys of the surrounding buildings but these looked very big and ornamental, and people sheltered between pillars on their façades. Some soot-black statues were arranged round a central pillar whose top I couldn’t see in the black sky. In spite of the wet a man stood on a high part of the pillar’s pedestal and spoke to an angry crowd. We passed through the edge of the crowd and I saw the speaker was an anxiously smiling man with a clergyman’s collar and bruised brow. His words were drowned by jeering.
    A street leaving the square was blocked with long wooden huts joined by covered passageways. The lit windows of these huts had a cheery look when compared with the black windows in the solider buildings. Gloopy brought me onto a porch with a sign over it saying SOCIAL SECURITY—WELFARE DIVISION . He said, “Here it is, then.”
    I thanked him. He kicked his heels and said, “What I want to know is, are you even going to try and be friendly? I don’t mind coming in and waiting for you, but it’s a hell of a long wait and if you’re going to be nasty I don’t think I’ll bother.” I said he shouldn’t wait. He said sorrowfully, “All right, all right. I was only trying to help. You don’t know what it feels like to have no friends in a big city. And I could have introduced you to some very interesting people—businessmen, and artists, and girls. I’ve some lovely high-class girls in my boarding-house.”
    He eyed me coyly. I said goodnight and turned but he grabbed my arm and gabbled into my ear. “You’re right, girls are no use, girls are cows, and even if you don’t like me I’ve got men friends, military gentlemen—”
    I pulled myself free and stepped into the hut. He didn’t follow.
    It was not a big hut but it was very long and most of the floor was covered by people crowded together on benches. There was a counter partitioned into cubicles along one wall, and the cubicle near the door had a seat in it and a sign saying ENQUIRIES . I stepped in and sat down. After a very long time an old man with bristling eyebrows arrived behind the counter and said, “Yes?”
    I explained that I had just arrived and had no money.
    “Have you means of identifying yourself?”
    I said I had none.
    “Are you sure? Have you searched your pockets thoroughly?” I said I had.
    “What are your professional qualifications and experience?” I could not remember. He sighed and brought from below the counter a yellow card and a worn, coverless telephone directory saying, “We can’t give you a number before you’ve been medically examined, but we can give you a name.”
    He flicked through the directory pages in a random way, and I saw each page had many names scored out in red ink. He said, “Agerimzoo? Ardeer? How about Blenheim. Or Brown.” I was shocked at this and told him that I knew my name. He stared at me, not believing. My tongue felt for a word or syllable from a time earlier than the train compartment, and for a moment I thought I remembered a short word starting with Th or Gr but it escaped me. The earliest name I could remember had been printed under a brown photograph of spires and trees on a hilltop on the compartment wall. I had seen it as I took down the knapsack. I