"Mervyn Peake - Ghormenghast 01 - Titus Groan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Peake Mervyn)

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THE HALL OF THE BRIGHT CARVINGS




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Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have
displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the
circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They
sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the
castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves
thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy
with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the
seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of
all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a
mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At
night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
Very little communication passed between the denizens of these outer quarters and those
who lived _within_ the walls, save when, on the first June morning of each year, the entire
population of the clay dwellings had sanction to enter the Grounds in order to display the wooden
carvings on which they had been working during the year. These carvings, blazoned in strange
colour, were generally of animals or figures and were treated in a highly stylized manner peculiar
to themselves. The competition among them to display the finest object of the year was bitter and
rabid. Their sole passion was directed, once their days of love had guttered, on the production of
this wooden sculpture, and among the muddle of huts at the foot of the outer wall, existed a score
of creative craftsmen whose position as leading carvers gave them pride of place among the
shadows.
At one point _within_ the Outer Wall, a few feet from the earth, the great stones of which
the wall itself was constructed, jutted forward in the form of a massive shelf stretching from
east to west for about two hundred to three hundred feet. These protruding stones were painted
white, and it was upon this shelf that on the first morning of June the carvings were ranged every
year for judgement by the Earl of Groan. Those works judged to be the most consummate, and there
were never more than three chosen, were subsequently relegated to the Hall of the Bright Carvings.
Standing immobile throughout the day, these vivid objects, with their fantastic shadows on
the wall behind them shifting and elongating hour by hour with the sun's rotation, exuded a kind
of darkness for all their colour. The air between them was turgid with contempt and jealousy. The
craftsmen stood about like beggars, their families clustered in silent groups. They were uncouth
and prematurely aged. All radiance gone.
The carvings that were left unselected were burned the same evening in the courtyard below
Lord Groan's western balcony, and it was customary for him to stand there at the time of the
burning and to bow his head silently as if in pain, and then as a gong beat thrice from within,
the three carvings to escape the flames would be brought forth in the moonlight. They were stood
upon the balustrade of the balcony in full view of the crowd below, and the Earl of Groan would