Authors: Wilson Harris
The antique shop which stood at the corner of Memoir Street belonged to her but he too had invested capital in it. Then bitten by the sun, fever of restlessness, they arranged for a mortgage. Wild goose chase. Atlantic. Atlantis. He was a rolling stone, as she then was…. Across the “broken” landscape of the years he seemed now—more than ever—part and parcel of each burning prick once again in her eye. Prick of curiosity, foundation, feather and stone.
Doctor
and
lover
rolled
into
one,
half-instrument
, half-captain. Voyage of convalescence he
instigated
and supported after her first (or was it her last?) operation.
And indeed from first to last—between his masked crew of spliced assumptions and hers—they appeared equally to smile (as if they tolerated each other’s lust or love) and snarl like jealous agents and conspirators whose pilot trade and industry, jigsaw of the affections—even when supported by apparent community of interests—still aroused fierce reflections of ideal control or
function
and, in consequence, bred a continuous cycle of
self-contempt
, dread of—hostility towards—the other. They were similar in this blind and moody sculpture of reaction, friction and masthead, axe and chip.
And within the ancient vessel and metropolis of the storm, flying crumb, they appeared locked in a
paradoxical
struggle for the unbroken life-blood of freedom:
commanding
gulf (blunt features, levers and lovers)—servile gulf (submissive features, lovers and levers)—contractual gulf (show window, charm, fashion, mime, execution…).
This was the bewildering and continuous duel of powers—fetish of beauty—in which they were involved: the enormous irrationality of unruled (or unruling)
sensibility
and the “broken” need and obsession for a logic of crippled reassurance, absolute power, even if that meant the shattered and shattering appearances of a tyranny of the damned.
“Broken”
masthead
of
execution.
Unwinking eye, winking light….
“Broken”
masthead
of
love.
Technical illumination of the soul, primitive darkness of the body….
“Broken”
snapshot
of
consciousness.
SHE LAY WITHIN HIS OPERATING THEATRE
. Doctor and lover rolled into one. He approached her, pistol in hand, dealer in menaces and self-deceptions whose object it was to sell her to the
highest
bidder—shatter her, riddle her, grind her—lens as well as drum, eye of crystal and crunch of bone, deck of reality. Ship of illusion. And she appeared to submit to him—to his craft of fire and nature—in order to unfurl a new sail and conviction: she drew him in, held him up, thicket of storm, as if he were her eternal sculpture of overcoming fear, and she his eternal flag and quarry—
LADY OF THE BEASTS
.
FIVE
T
he sensation she recalled was
pain,
aftermath of living excision, of unconscious event, post-anaesthetic,
post-soporific
—waking pain (instinct with its own dreaming or dreamless iconography)—acute confrontation between
buried
past and
revival
in the present. He had operated upon her eyes: her lips moved addressing “him” as if he were the man in question—one Dr. Sage. Sage to Sibyl. Wizard to witch. Master to mistress. Fiend to bitch. Instrument.
Susan
…. In the ricochet and echo of dreams—
momentum
, career, medium of arousal as well as extinction, operating theatre as well as waiting room—he appeared to her armed with unseemly pistol and knife. The stone of the sun flashed, assaulted her, ripped the veil, altered the curtains of attention, texture of station and flight. It was as if the cloven world she truly saw in the remote distance, far beneath the blind of names, assumptions, letters of invocation, self-created skies or roof of constellation, god’s hair or flesh, was at first entirely masked,
snowbound
. Snowbound, masked and still studded with crystal self-deception, eyes or hollows of clarity. For all she knew she may have been flung back into an early premature dawn, ancient of suns. Like a vain flag unfurled as one flew north over a winter landscape which slept after the cruel fantasy of the tropics, relative seal or glare.
Stricken
blind.
Iceball or eyeball. In which she felt the incongruous root of memory—green stem or leaf. Incongruous
marriage
of sensations—spiked heel, pool…. It was the spell of uncanny investiture, the archaic compulsion—apparent bewilderment—of the soul—rib of male and female—needle of doctor and patient, joystick … pilot … space ….
The
blazing
abstract
scar
of
instrumental
day
now
slowly
faded
into
darkness
,
thief
of
night
or
creation,
whom
she
loved
and
hated
in
turn
with
all
the
violence
of
separate
convictions
….
SLOWLY FADED
…. And yet the waking “dying” pain—invoked out of the blissful operation of “living”
unconsciousness
to assume the proportions of a phantom globe, airless retina and property—so possessed and
overshadowed
her it seemed she stood now on an acute
threshold
of the cavern of reality which in itself would never succumb to distraction or disorder (or to
attraction
and order, technical fury, absolute mould, apple of one’s eye) within its own unpredictable room, unearthly function, blaze….
No wonder as the seal of light was torn, the ornamental atmosphere and curtain rent, that the very tatters and
figments
of recollection … preconception … seemed to wave and float within and above an essential
bareness
of
conception,
glimpsed—for the first incredible time—but this, too, in its inner conviction of reality, was slowly descending into the abstract blaze of solid darkness—immensity of frail distinction.
It was this distinctive night …
light
… the most curious awareness of self-deception, if self-deception it was, bordering as it did upon the black sail of reality—which cast a dying illumination upon a once familiar (now unfamiliar) series of landscape carved by the axe of the sea, rolling marble of ocean, knife-line of the rivers—iodine and grain of earth. Dying wound of illumination and yet the strange thing was that there emerged a frailty of convertible properties like a healing thread … design … which seemed to endure and outlast every shattered bone or region, stone or age, buried frontier or condition. How (the question arose) to accept such a scale of “dying” colours which seemed to obliterate all its former visionary purposes or motives and, in fact, to subsist upon the
uprooted
nail or canvas with which it bled and suffered…. It was as if one could point brush, fire palette, rifle carpet, flag, banner, curtain into the blurred shot of place—accumulations of flame and light so brilliant one learnt afresh the “blindness” of the sun; or plaster of cement that one greyed and entered a realm of mists like disconcerting rain, neither landfall nor waterfall but a ghostly mint—treasure—
mirage
of
extinguished
one
—existential of the
rain bow
….
NEITHER LANDFALL NOR WATERFALL
…
but
teardrop
… existential of the rainbow—black sail upon which or against which one no longer appeared to fly … only to burrow, crawl…. In fact not even burrow, crawl, but cling … indistinct well, spectral wave, current, emotion. Drawn (was it up or down gravity’s blind face?) … held upon the fixed coil and station of the whirlpool … lip … blur … vacancy or eye … window-pane or ledge upon which, as one stood momentarily still within the fastness of space, the globule of the universe trembled and ran. Incredible that such an ancient feature—wellspring, singular tear—survived like indestructible evanescence, fragility, body of feeling whose medium or intangible vessel of premises was always in process of being
refurbished
or reclaimed within an imperceptible
borderline
…. Was it north or south, east or west, into which (or out of which) one broke and flew?
The uncertainty of shape or direction—ancient vessel, model of creation, ark or covenant—sprang out of an
immaterial
conviction,
so residual and deeply entrenched (in spite of every
material
overlapping and formal protest to the contrary) that it acted like a hidden spur as well as naked pole, a dynamic and static concretion to which one surrendered oneself as to a “black” pilot, weathered
masthead
, phantom of flesh within but beyond the sound of flesh, the echo of self-regard, song of the sirens…. One embraced and was held in turn by this “deaf” mast to which one was truly bound and secured within the
elements
of distraction, paradoxical structure of liberation, and within a certain undefinable radius of which—acute coherence and conversion of the soul—lay the choirs of vision—sheer tenacity (even profane curiosity) of the “awakened” eye within the latent
crash
and operation of darkness, sheer relative
beam,
heavy and light, gravity as well as ironic weightlessness….
Out of this crash of darkness began to emerge one’s “light” craft … billow of the senses: lightning spar … canvas of surf unfurled … in the very teeth … grinding fury, thunder of engines … sea. How to reconcile mouth of the void with technical sail—eye of salvation with lifeline of fury? One was grateful—in the midst of
everything
—that one had submitted oneself to be nailed to negative anthropomorphic crew (eclipse of sight—or was it sound?) within which one was freed from the
self-indulgent
tune and frame of disaster. Film upon one’s eye. The shock of seeing one’s
helplessness,
in all proliferation, outlined and displayed as never before turned the
submergence
of reality into steadfast captain and ancient member … crew.
ANCIENT MEMBER—CREW
…. What a violent
contradiction
of terms (fate and choice—vocation of
unbridgeable
consciousness) one relied upon for levels of support …. Or was it
stunned
erection, reflex of
unconsciousness,
to which one was truly (and unfathomably) bent and related as to a vanished spirit which still witnessed for
community
?
These were the two faces—appearing never to
compensate
but to cancel each other—whose confrontation, nevertheless, involved the birth or issue of operative pilot,
soul
… darkening climax…. Was this the ideal emergency and commission of fear—one desired above all persons and things—to prompt reaction within the vulgar senses towards uniform restraint, constraint,
half-blissful
stupor? Or was it an abstract precipitation—pure fact—omission—vacancy—which sustained and provided every
composition
of duress and sensibility with
unpredictable
relief
?
…
It was as if … moving upon a calm sea or under a calm sky—upon which or within which choice and fate seemed identical—one grew into one’s vessel and crew of self-deception. Mushroom. Umbrella.
Madonna
of
the
Be
calmed
.
In a field of glass no longer dark but resplendent ….
The
loam
of
the
earth
was
slipping
from
her
—
Madonna
of
the
Plough
of
the
Sea
—supremely captive, supremely
becalmed
, stroked by the tiller of the sun…. the sword of the void … the spit of her own clear element…. Spit …. Snarl….
Something
fled
…
vanished
…. Wildcat of earthen fury or cultivation of elemental spirit? Involuntary sail of consciousness or voluntary ground of unconsciousness—to uphold her, after all, in total perspective … cruel grace … relief?
Madonna
of
the
Sword
and
the
Sun.
SOMETHING FLED. VANISHED
. Wildcat of earthen fury or cultivation of elemental seas and spirits?
Blatant … or instinctive … relationship?
Feminine instrument (investiture and sheath) or
masculine
paint (community of blood)?
Faces of re-creation, multiform puncture or nebulous brute each thought helplessly (or sought mindlessly) to skin … slay … domesticate … harness … appoint … scratch—patch—captain and shroud of their world.
SOMETHING FLED
: headlong plunge, thread of weight ….
The
elements
were
stitched
into
streaming
harness
of
commo
tion
or
commanding
shock
of
station.
THE OPERATION WITHIN AND WITHOUT MASTHEAD HAD BEEN TECHNICALLY SUCCESSFUL
—and naked pupil—eye of the sword—razor—thrust and severance,
cross-section
, waiting room—had come alive—primitive sun and reflection—deaf shield, animal mirror … perception of a dying scale which became the essential flash of new faculties within pregnant eye (which was “his” doing, after all) and crumbling pupil (which was
her
conviction, after all, of the unwilling threshold and conversion of the
dramatis
personae
of the universe).
THE OPERATION HAD BEEN TECHNICALLY SUCCESSFUL
—and though the progress one face made towards the other (slice of darkness towards pinpoint of light)
appeared
like a voyage of immaterial consolidation, it was equally consistent with a focus of flitting or submerged, even subservient, members of one body sometimes dense and reflective, streaming glass; sometimes bordering upon native crowd and crouch—the brute soul of solipsis: and if indeed “he” (the scaffolding of illusion she erected) appeared now to be in process of freeing her within a melting body, spiriting her towards him across a void of conception, deck, seal, lip of the abyss—it was because her fluttering breath became his flag of recension within capital and hieroglyph of flesh.
And his fluttering breath in turn—so curiously and
indissolubly
nailed to hers—could not fail to signal the community of herself in another raining and moving light of infinite sharpness allied to flight and dispersal, a crumpled knife or ball of flesh, a rag to be worn for its ultimate edge and frailty of condition. And this—in the very act of its being discarded, consigned to the domestic rubbish heap, as it were—served to wipe the monument of her eyes …
clean
…. Misconception of god … man …
beast.
It was a whisper, half-prayer, half-curse, which crossed her lips like fracture or paint. Blessing invoked as well as omen recalled.
How
had
she
once
tricked
herself
into
believing
that
he
had
been
nothing
from
the
very
beginning
but
her
tool
and
plaything?
TOOL
. She shuddered with the gesture of one coveted and disrobed by an artist of death whom she had created at the heart of obsession: as if she had so habituated
herself
to manipulating him to mechanical perfection, erosive design—technical spirit, blood—that it was she who
became
addicted to his ground of nothingness—derelict machinery and salvage of response … serial puppet. Ironical master, passive mistress. Unseen hand shaped by and shaping the grind of the elements. Craft of possession and dispossession.
It
seemed
now
the pregnant compass, waiting room, she occupied—strewn by the ruined poles and messengers of love—had been freed and inscribed by him, after all, within and upon accumulative agency (material of destiny) so that, in clinging to him as to a bank of emotion, she grew to wait upon him—as upon the mill of god—for the denigration of all
impoverishment
and force—even if he were still her heraldic
plaything
…
swine
… signal load: and thus became the cargo and crew of what he was—minutiae of dense participation (representative divinity), terrifying oracle—degenerate snout and transcendental grain, heart of wood supporting him, since it discerned itself to be part and parcel of every involuntary member of his singing frame in a deaf
universe
.