Palace of the Peacock (7 page)

Vigilance could not make up his bemused mind whether it was Wishrop climbing there or another version of Jennings’ engine in the stream. He shrank from the image of his hallucination that was more radical and disruptive of all material conviction than anything he had ever dreamt to see. The precipitous cliffs were of volcanic myth and substance he dreamed far older than the river’s bed and stream. He seemed to sense and experience its congealment and its ancient flow as if he waded with webbed and impossible half-spidery feet in the ceaseless boiling current of creation. His immateriality and mysterious substantiality made him dance and tremble with fear a little as Wishrop danced. It was incredible that one had survived. He saw into the depths of the deathless stream where the Arawak woman pointed. A flock of ducks flew, their wings pointed like stars. They were skeletons fixed from ancient geological time unmoving as a plateau. The sudden whirr of their wings awoke him as they flew living and wild
across the river. The Arawak woman laughed. Vigilance drew himself up like a spider in a tree. He stood over an archway and gate in the rock through which swarmed and streamed a herd of tapirs, creatures half-donkey and half-cow. They were seething with fear as they ploughed into the river.

“Look – chased by the folk,” Donne said. He spoke from the bow of a skeleton craft Vigilance discerned in the stream of the rock. “Look one has been wounded and is dying. We are close as hell to the huntsman of the folk.” His deathless image and look made the Arawak woman smile. Vigilance winced a little and rubbed his eyes where he climbed and clung to the cliff wondering at the childish repetitive boat and prison of life. What an enormous spiritual distance and inner bleeding substance lay between himself and that crust and shell he had once thought he inhabited. He could hardly believe it. He tried to convey across the span and gulf of dead and dying ages and myth the endless pursuit on which Donne was engaged.

“Rubbish,” Donne said. “That herd is a good sign. The folk are not so far away. We can catch up and repair our fortunes. They’ll lead us home safely and we’ll cultivate our fields and our wives.” He spoke out of a desire to hearten himself and the crew. The truth was he no longer felt himself in the land of the living though the traumatic spider of the sun crawled up and down his arms and his neck and punctured his sides of rock.

Vigilance was sensible to the fantasy of his wound and alive, the sole responsible survivor save for the Arawak woman who clung with him to the wall of rock. He dreamed she had kept her promise, her stepmotherly promise, and had saved him from drowning. Donne’s boat had righted itself, he dreamed, in the volcanic stream and rock and the crew were all there save Wishrop’s spider and transubstantiation: wheel and web, sunlight, starlight, all wishful substance violating and altering and annihilating shape and matter and invoking eternity only and space and musical filament and design. It
was this spider and wheel of baptism – infinite and expanding – on which he found himself pinned and bent to the revolutions of life – that made his perception of a prodigal vessel and distance still possible. Darkness fell and the banks were too steep for the crew to land. The river had grown smooth and this was a great good fortune. The stream sang darkly and the stars and harmony of space turned into images of light.

*

The sun rose on the third day of their setting out from Mariella. The cliffs appeared to rise higher still on both hands and the river seemed to stretch endlessly and for ever onward. The water was as smooth as a child’s mirror and newborn countenance.

Nevertheless the crew were downcast and dejected. They had forgotten the miraculous escape they had had and recalled only fear and anxiety and horror and peril. This was hard-hearted nature they contemplated without thinking they may have already suffered it and endured it and re-lived it. Rather it seemed to them only too clear that the past would always catch up with them – when they least expected it – like a legion of devils. There was no simple bargain and treaty possible save unconditional surrender to what they knew not. Call it spirit, call it life, call it the end of all they had once treasured and embraced in blindness and ignorance and obstinacy they knew. They were the pursuers and now they had become the pursued. Indeed it looked the utmost inextricable confusion to determine where they were and what they were, whether they had made any step whatever towards a better relationship – amongst themselves and within themselves – or whether it was all a fantastic chimera.

They stared hopelessly into the air up the high walls and precipice that hung over their head – an ancient familiar house and structure – and as hopelessly into the bright future and sun that streamed. It was all one impossible burden and deterrent they could neither return to nor escape.

They felt themselves broken and finished in the endless nightmare and they slouched and nodded in the stream. Vigilance alone preserved the vessel straight ahead, steering with spider arm and engine. The water grew still and quiet and clear as heaven. The Arawak woman pointed. A dense flock of parrots wheeled and flew and a feather settled on Vigilance’s cheek with a breath of life. They wheeled closer and nearer until he saw the white fire of feathers – around their baiting eye, giving them a wise inquisitive expression and look – and the green fire on their bubbling wing as they rose from the stream and the cliff and the sun.

Vigilance had been wounded by a nameless shaft from the enormous unpredictable battlements he dreamed he stormed – cliff and sun and rock and river all set with their ceaseless pursuing trap as if he were the most precious remarkable game in all the world. Nevertheless he was the one most alive and truly aware of everything. He saw differently and felt differently to the way the herd slept in the innocent stream of death. All blind lust and obfuscation had been banished from his mind. Indeed the living life that ran within him was a unique and grotesque privilege and coincidence because of the extraordinary depth and range he now possessed. Vision and idea mingled into a sensitive carnival that turned the crew into the fearful herd where he clung with his eye of compassion to his precarious and dizzy vertical hold and perched on the stream of the cliff. The light of space changed, impinging upon his eyeball and lid numerous grains of sound and motion that were the suns and moons of all space and time. The fowls of the air danced and wheeled on invisible lines that stretched taut between the ages of light and snapped every now and then into lightning executions of dreaming men when each instant ghost repaired the wires again in the form of an inquisitive hanging eye and bird.

The feather on his face pricked him like a little stab of fear as though he had not yet become reconciled to his
understanding
. He felt himself drawn again into the endless flight that
had laid siege to the ambivalent wall of heaven and every spidery mis-step he made turned into an intricate horror of space and a falling coincidence and wing. The parrots wheeled and flew around his head on the cliff and the Arawak woman pointed again to a close silver ring that girdled one flying foot. Vigilance rubbed his eye in vain. It was strange but there it was.

“That bird got a ring on he foot,” said daSilva, opening one sudden leering dreaming eye, his face all puffed and unnatural in awkward sleep. One could see he was
struggling
with all the might of his mind to recall something. “I sure-sure I see that bird long ago, sure as dead.” He stared fixedly at the creature and shook his head.

“In the London Zoo,” Cameron jeered and snored. “Is there you see it and now it fly all the way to Brazil with its pretty ring on its foot to look at you and me. We is a sight for sore eyes. But is where this ring you seeing? I can’t see no ring on no bird foot. Is how many ring and vulture you counting in the sky?” He laughed a little, unable however to hide his fear of the beak of death that had been born in his sleep.

“I never been to London or to a zoo,” daSilva yawned lugubriously. “And I didn’t tell you nothing about vulture. Is parrot Ah seeing and one got a ring on she foot. O God you think I blind or what? How you can’t see it I don’t know. You mean is another dream Ah dreaming?” He turned wooden and still, speaking almost to himself in the lapping whispers water made against the boat when the wind blew. “Ah been dreaming far far back before anybody know he born. Is how a man can dream so far back before he know he born?” He looked at Cameron with conviction and enquiry in his eye.

“Because you is a big fool,” Cameron cried. “A fool of fools. Look at you. You face like a real dead man own. I hungry.” He tried to laugh and his tongue was black. “I going nail and drop one of them vulture bird sure as
stones….” The novel idea seemed to wake nearly all of the crew from boredom and they stared in encouragement as Cameron felt in the bottom for a rock.

“I is a fool yes, a foolish dead man,” daSilva puffed, “but I seeing me parrot. Is no vulture bird….”

“What in heaven name really preying on you sight and mind, Boy?” Cameron suddenly became curious. “I only seeing vulture bird. Where the parrot what eating you?”

“Ah telling you Ah dream the boat sink with all of we,” daSilva said speaking to himself as if he had forgotten Cameron’s presence. “Ah drowned dead and Ah float. All of we expose and float….”

“Is vulture bird you really feeling and seeing,” shouted Cameron. His voice was a croak in the air. DaSilva continued – a man grown deaf and blind with sleep – “Ah dream Ah get another chance to live me life over from the very start. Live me life over from the very start, you hear?” He paused and the thought sank back into the stream. “The impossible start to happen. Ah lose me own image and time like if I forget is where me sex really start….”

“Fool, stop it,” Cameron hissed.

“Don’t pick at me,” daSilva said. “The impossible start happen I tell you. Water start dream, rock and stone start dream, tree trunk and tree root dreaming, bird and beast dreaming….”

“You is a menagerie and a jungle of a fool,” Cameron’s black tongue laughed and twisted.

“Everything Ah tell you dreaming long before the creation I know of begin. Everything turning different, changing into everything else Ah tell you. Nothing at all really was there. That is”, he grew confused “that is nothing I know of all me life to be something …” He stopped at a dead loss for words open mouthed and astonished as if he had been assaulted by the madness and innocence of the stream.

“Tek a batty fool like you to dream that,” said Cameron. “A batty fool like you …”

“Is a funny-funny dream,” daSilva said slowly, recovering himself a little. “To dream all this …” he pointed at the wall of cliff behind him – “deh pon you back like nothing, like air standing up….”

“You got a strong-strong back,” Cameron croaked and his hands brushed the water with beak and wings.

“Is true,” daSilva sulked. His mind grew suddenly startled and punctured as the stream. “I know is who bird now,” he gasped and shouted. “I remember clear.” He pointed at the parrot and the silver ring with such swamping eagerness and enthusiasm the words drowned on his lips … “Is me … is mine …”

The crew rippled and laughed like water so loud and long that Donne awoke to their merriment.

“What? what is it?” he said.

“Laugh good,” daSilva warned. “You going laugh good again like a guest at me true marriage and wedding feast….”

“Must be in heaven,” Cameron croaked and roared in Donne’s ear.

“Is me lady bird,” daSilva insisted. “It must be fly away from she for a morning outing. Them people ain’t deh far,” he cried in a burst of inspiration. “The lil bird tekking a morning outing … I know it. Last year when Ah been with she in the Mission Ah feed it meself often. It used to eat from me lip. Tame Ah tell you. Is me mistress bird.” He whistled.

“It’s good news then,” said Donne. “Yesterday we
witnessed
the huntsman’s promissory wound and today daSilva’s promissory ring….” he laughed. “The folk are close at hand to save us.” He did not believe a word he said in his heart and he added a warning note – “Of course you chaps mustn’t bank on anything too much. A bird like that can fly a hundred miles in an hour. Still we must hope for the best.” He smiled stiffly, waving his hand darkly to greet the air.

“I feed it often from me lip,” daSilva said whistling loud. “Me pretty lady bird. She and me was one flesh. I going
many she this time. Ah tell you. Look she leg slender. Slender like … like …” he stared unseeingly … “a branch …” he was uncertain.

“Like poison,” said Cameron.

“Slender branch,” said daSilva as if he was drunk. “And she taste sweet. Me mistress breasts like sweet cocerite. She got sweet-sweet honey lip too. And she hair long and black like midnight feathers. Ah kiss she eyes fast and thick till she nearly dead in me hand….”

“What a vulture of a bird you are,” Cameron grinned in derision. “You never speak a truer word than when you say you got everything mix up in you head….” He had hardly stopped speaking when he flung a stone and bird past
Jennings’
head. Aimlessly. The crew gave a sudden answering cry. The stone had cut air and flesh and it fell. But on fluttering upon the water it recovered itself instantly and wings flashed and soared. The whole flock rose in swelling protest higher and higher until all dwindled in the sky at the top of the wall.

“Miss,” Cameron cried.

“You wounded it,” Donne said quietly. “We have given ourselves away as their huntsman gave them away. O never mind I’m sure I’m talking nonsense. I can’t see a thing.”

“I used to feed it from me lip,” daSilva whimpered.

“O shut up,” Cameron waved. “What do you mean – give ourselves away?” he asked.

“O well,” said Donne speaking without conviction, “the bird may return bleeding with a mark upon it. The folk may take it in their heart to start hunting us. We can never outwit them now. Our strength is gone. Three of our best men finished. No ammunition. Nothing remaining. Everything overboard. We can only throw imaginary stones in the air to frighten and alarm ourselves and make imaginary rings in the water….”