TWENTY

Seen from above Titus must have appeared very small as he ran on and on. Seen from above, it could also be realized how isolated in the wide world was the arena with its bright circumference of crystal buildings: how bizarre and ingenious it was, and how unrelated it was to the bone-white, cave-pocked, barren mountains, the fever-swamps and jungles to the south, the thirsty lands, the hungry cities, and the tracts beyond of the wolf and the outlaw.

It was when Titus was within a hundred yards of the olive palace, and as the princes of maintenance turned or paused in their work to stare at the ragged youth, that a gun boomed, and for a few minutes there was a complete silence, for everyone stopped talking and the engines were shut off in every craft.

This gun-boom had come just in time, for had it been delayed a moment longer Titus must surely have been grabbed and questioned. Two men, halted in their tracks by the detonation, drew back their lips from their teeth and scowled with frustration, their hands halted in mid-air.

On every side of him were faces; faces for the most part turned towards him. Malignant faces, speculative faces, empty faces, ingenuous faces – faces of all kinds. It was quite obvious that he would never pass unnoticed. From being lost and obscure he was the focus of attention. Now, as they posed at every angle, as stiff as scarecrows caught in the full flight of living, their halfway gestures frozen – now was his time to escape.

He had no idea of the significance which was presumably attached to the firing of the cannon. As it was he was served well by his own ignorance and with a pounding heart he ran like a deer, dodging this way and that way through the crowd until he came to the most majestic of the palaces. Racing up the shallow glass pavements and into the weird and lucent gloom of the great halls, it was not long before he had left the custom-shackled hierophants behind him. It is true that there was a great number of persons scattered about the floor of the building who stared at Titus whenever he came into their range of vision. They could not turn their heads to follow him, nor even their eyes because the cannon had boomed, but when he passed across their vision they knew at once he was not one of them and that he had no right to be in the olive palace. And then as he ran on and on the cannon boomed again and at once Titus knew that the world was after him, for the air became torn with cries and counter-cries, and suddenly four men turned a corner of the long glass corridor, their reflections in the glazed floor as detailed and as crisp as their true selves.

‘There he goes,’ cried a voice. ‘There go the rags!’ But when they reached the spot where Titus had halted for a moment they found he was indeed gone and all they had to stare at were the closed doors of a lift shaft.

Titus, who had found himself cornered, had turned to the vast, purring, topaz-studded lift not knowing exactly what it was. That its elegant jaws should have been open and ready was his salvation. He sprang inside and the gates, drawing themselves together, closed as though they ran through butter.

The interior of the lift was like an underwater grotto, filled with subdued lights. Something hazy and voluptuous seemed to hover in the air. But Titus was in no mood for subtleties. He was a fugitive. And then he saw that wavering in his underwater world were rows of ivory buttons, each button carved into some flower, face, or skull.

He could hear the sound of footsteps running and angry voices outside the door and he jabbed indiscriminately among the buttons, and immediately soaring through floor after floor in a whirl of steel the lift all at once inhaled its own speed and the doors slid open of their own accord.

How quiet it was and cool. There was no furniture, only a single palm tree growing out of the floor. A small red parrot sat on one of the upper branches and pecked itself. When it saw Titus it cocked its head on one side and then with great rapidity it kept repeating, ‘Bloody corker told me so!’ This phrase was reiterated a dozen times at least before the bird continued pecking at its wing.

There were four doors in this cool upper hall. Three led to corridors but the last one, when Titus opened it, let in the sky. There, before and slightly below him, lay spread the roof.