Free Lanark by Alasdair Gray Page B

excitement which was certainly not fear. When the lips had fully formed they parted and spoke, and just as a single intense ray can dazzle an eye without lighting a room, so this voice pierced the ear without sounding loud. It pierced so painfully that he could not understand the syllables as they were spoken, but had to remember them when they stopped. The mouth had said, “I am the way out.”
    Lanark said, “What do you mean?”
    The lips pressed together in a line which seemed ruled on the stone and moved swiftly to the ground, crossing the projections of the base as simply as the shadow of a gull passes over a waterfall. It sped over the snow, then stopped and opened into an oval pit in front of his feet. The edges of the lips were shaded lightly on the snow but curved steeply down to the projecting tips of the perfect teeth. From the blackness between these rose a cold wind with the salty odour of rotting seaweed, then a hot one with an odour like roasting meat. Lanark shuddered with dread and giddiness. He remembered the mouth in Gay’s hand which had nothing behind it but a cold man being nasty to people in a dark room. He said, “Where will you take me?”
    The mouth closed and became dim at the corners. He saw it was fading and would leave him on a hilltop in a city more sterile and lonely than anything a pit could hold. He shouted, “Stop! I’ll come!”
    The mouth grew distinct again. He asked humbly, “How should I come?”
    It replied. When the sound stopped hurting his ears he found it had said “Naked, and head first.”
    It was hard to remove the coat and jacket because his side had grown thorns which pierced the cloth. He ripped them free and threw them down, then looked at the mouth which lay patiently open. He rubbed his face with the good hand and said, “I’m afraid to go head first. I’m going to lower myself backwards and hang by the hands, and if I’m too scared to let go I will consider it a kindness if you let me hang till I drop.”
    He stared at the mouth but no part of it moved. He sat on the rags of the coat and removed his shoes. Fear was making him slow, he grew terrified of its stopping him altogether so he went to the mouth without undressing further. The hot breath alternating with the cold one had melted the surrounding snow into a margin of firm moist gravel. Moving fast to avoid thinking, he sat with his legs in the mouth, gripped the teeth opposite and slid down until he hung from them. Since the right arm was longer than the left he hung by that alone, buffeted by hot roast and cold rot blasts and waiting for the hand to weary and loosen. It didn’t. His claws gripped a big incisor as if screwed to it, and when he tried to loosen them the muscles of the whole limb began to contract and lift him toward the oval of dark sky between the teeth. In a moment his head and shoulders would have come through them, but he yelled, “Shut! Bite shut!”
    Blackness closed over him with a clash and he fell.
    But not far. The cavity below the mouth narrowed to a gullet down which he slithered and bumped at decreasing speed as his clothing and thorny arm began catching on the sides. The sides began to tighten and loosen, heating as they tightened, cooling as they loosened, and the descent became a series of freezing drops from one scalding grip to another. The pressure and heat grew greater and gripped him longer until he punched and kicked against it. He was dropped at once but only fell a few feet, and the next hold was so sickeningly tight that he could not move his arms and legs at all. He opened his mouth to scream and a mixture of wool and cloth squeezed into it, for the pressure had dragged vest, shirt and jersey over his face. He was suffocating. He urinated. The great grip stopped, he slid downward, the garments slid upward, freeing mouth and nose, and then the sides contracted and crushed him harder than ever. Most senses abandoned him now. Thought and memory, stench, heat and