Lanark: a life in 4 books by Alasdair Gray

(how can I put it?) like to strike a blow for the good old vertebrate Divine Image, get in touch with me will you?”
    There were tears in his eyes. Lanark went quickly out, feeling embarrassed.
    The corridor was still in darkness. He turned left and moved toward the staircase, counting doors. The third one did not open into a bathroom but into a luxurious, brilliantly lit bedroom. On the quilt of the double bed moved a huge knot of limbs with the heads of Frankie, Toal and Sludden sticking out. Lanark slammed the door and clapped his hands over his eyes but the image of what he had seen stayed inside the lids: a knot of limbs with three crazily vacant faces, and Sludden’s mouth opening and shutting as if eating something. He hurried to the stairs and ran down them to the cloakroom. He was looking for his coat among the heap on the table when a slurred voice said, “I feel we’ve never really understood each other.”
    Gloopy stood grinning emptily in the doorway. His legs were together and his arms pressed to his sides, his oiled grey hair and silver jacket glistened wetly. He took a few steps nearer, walking as if his thighs were glued together, then fell forward onto the floor with a sodden slap. He lay in the posture in which he had stood, except that his face was tilted so far back that it grinned blindly at the ceiling. Without moving his limbs he suddenly slid an inch or two toward Lanark along the polished floorboards, and then the light went out.
    The darkness and silence were so complete that for a moment Lanark was deafened by the noise of his own breathing. Then he heard Gloopy say, “People ought to be nice to one another. Why can’t you and I—”
    The words were cut short by a chilling draught which blew up suddenly from the floor bringing with it a salt stench like rotting weeds. Lanark felt he was on the lip of a horrible pit. He grew dizzy and crouched to the floor, afraid to move his feet and terrified of falling down. He squatted in the darkness like this for a very long time.
    At last he saw light from the hall shining through the doorway. A bulky figure appeared in it, grunted and switched the light on. It was Provost Dodd. Lanark stood up, feeling sick and foolish, and said, “Gloopy. He’s disappeared. Gloopy’s disappeared!”
    The Provost stared about the room as if Lanark were not in it and muttered, “No great loss, I would have thought.”
    Lanark was filled with the conviction that every footstep in that room might land in an invisible trap. He managed to move to the door without running. The Provost said, “Wait.”
    Lanark stepped into the hall before turning to him. The Provost pushed out his lower lip, frowned down at his shoes, then said, “You came with a girl. She had black hair and wore a black sweater and her skirt was … I forget the colour.”
    “Black.”
    “Quite so. Do you know where she is?”
    “No.”
    The Provost stared at him for a while then turned away, saying heavily, “Anyway, it’s all the same. It’s all the same.”
    Lanark hurried out, slamming the door hard behind him.

Rima
    There was fog outside. The light from the windows saturated it so that the mansion seemed wrapped in a cocoon of milky light, but outside the cocoon Lanark walked in total obscurity and only found his way down the drive by the crunch of gravel underfoot and the touch of rimy leaves on his hands and face.
    On the pavement it was possible to steer through the murk by the glow of the street lamp ahead. The clammy air made his footsteps resound loudly but after five minutes he decided that what seemed like echoes were the footsteps of someone behind. His back prickled apprehensively. He stood against a hedge and waited. The other footsteps hesitated, then came boldly on. In the fog’s cloudy dimness a shadow appeared and developed an unusual density of black, then the slim black figure of Rima passed by giving him only the flicker of a glance. He hurried after her crying gladly,