The Waiting Room

by Wilson Harris

  And yet it was not simply this: not merely the loss of control she now began to suffer—the loss of individual elements and powers. It was the repudiation of everything she once thought she knew or had created for herself—the repudiation of every basis and pattern of one-sided reference—the eclipse she had invoked (eclipse of her judgment this time, not his), counter-thrust of the void.

  Susan fished for the glasses which she had laid aside an hour or two ago. She wanted to cover the singular nakedness of her eyes. It was a grotesque confession: the plunge she had made into a unique theatre of rehearsal, explosive rehearsal, had set up a displacement of fluid bodies akin to vortices of memory she had not fully anticipated. The ebony spectacles she donned once again—in the light of his sudden thrust at her, mesmerism of nakedness, naked bone, naked brow—gleamed with skeletal surfaces upon which the faintest lightnings of time ran and still glowed out of the storm of the heart….

  Ran and still glowed within the black sky and the black sea. The frame of the sky was as black as the pool of the sea. Susan moved—inclined her head a little and listened to the sudden disconcerting impact of silence—savage as a blow in itself—which had fallen all at once upon her in the waiting room. Where in Christ’s name was he? The storm raged but the void of distance, the joint spectacle of inner and outer sensation, became so enormous it translated the language of action into species of metamorphosis. Species of fiction and freedom whose blood ran into the storm which now possessed an unearthly stillness: macrocosmic outlines they were—naked breast, naked bone—whose reduction to lightning filaments of memory broke the coarse spell and clamour of the senses as well as the psychological rigidity and ultimatum of space.

  The sea and the sky became his spectacles as well as hers within which a new intercourse of the gods began, involving and dismantling every former blockade of vision. He indeed had instinctively seen her in this overwhelming but transcendental light—the buried light of the muse—and she (within the mutual shadow of eclipse) had seen him in the selfsame circuit of conviction—the light of a god. It was this which drew him to her in the very beginning—the lightning of breath—the faintest shudder of her lips, a kind of crackling, even wooden, darkness issuing from her mouth which made the reflection of her skin—neck and cheek—glow like a shade which was neither the coal of breath nor the fire of spirit.

  And it was as if in that original and indelible beginning—in the heartless crumb and melting-pot of the world—that he sought to grapple with her still and constrain her to a function of demand she resisted now with all the fury on earth at her command. Now and within the ancient spiral of her breath (half-curse, half-prayer) he discerned afresh the drapery of the past through which he sought to exercise the ritual of brute force upon her and she the stroke of bestial eclipse upon him.

  The extraordinary fascination allied to curious terror of the ancient storm sprang from a peculiar helplessness, an order of helplessness which matched, like instantaneous stroke and flare, the involuntary conversion and obliteration of every role, fixture and preconception within himself. For even as she lay beneath him (or appeared to lie beneath him) in lightning upheaval and distress—he could not yet bring himself to believe that it was he who had inflicted this explosive burden upon her. And in fact he knew he was as helpless as she and in process of being informed by her about himself as if she were his most intimate victim or soul and companion in debauchery, whose visualization of the spectacle of the past made him feel he had no alternative but to shrink in ultimate horror from himself.

  She it was who sought to address him and inform him of another which was, after all, no one but himself yet whom he still could not recall…. It was she indeed whose design it was to spare him nothing of the incredible role he had played. Drunk. Lurched into the room.

  Incredible because the very conception of himself in such a void of memory seemed a compulsion to endorse the worst suspicions of himself he could entertain, chronic and violent assumption of himself in all eternity—bewildering pre-judgment as well as post-judgment of one’s own unfamiliar conduct. What principle was there, after all, he asked himself, which would take inevitable ascendancy over one—in the absence of one’s self-possession or grip or control—but the exercise of debauchery, degeneracy of conduct?

  He was utterly convinced of the degradation and hopelessness of ultimate exposure which now lay before him, when there began to flash into view the very recklessness of grace, species of grace, blood of the elements, rage for beauty beyond every mould of refinement he had once assiduously cultivated that now lay shattered on the floor.

  Drunk. Lurched into the room. THE VERY RECKLESS SPECIES OF GRACE. His countenance grew now almost black with astonishment at its own revelation of the beauty of freedom residing at the very heart of the storm: he felt himself part of the wildest glow upon the spectacles of air and water, like an incalculable and neutral maternal vessel of all the ages within whom and which an indestructible wave of emotion broke his chain (as well as hers)—shattered his role (as well as hers) of indispensable ruling function they shared and worshipped—broke in some uncertain degree the grip of such an assumption and ushered him with a magnanimity and authority he fleetingly glimpsed into her void of colour—their void of the crowd of instinct—broken mould of cruel refinement—sheer precipice of action upon the timeless thrust and crest of which he ran like a white fire, whiter than snow. Or rather she it was who sped before him in the waiting room upon each black wave….

  SUSAN DREW HIS FINGERTIPS ACROSS THE GLASS OF HER EYES to erase the trail of hallucination, cloven ground of the sea, within each stricken ornament on the floor, fractured member and crew. INCREDIBLE THAT IN THE MIDST OF AN EXPLOSION—EXPLOSION OF PREMISES—such involuntary remorse and tenderness (on his part as well as hers) became the cradle of fantasy, paint of restoration, instinct for depth and survival: uncanny depth, living distance, joints of catastrophe, the mesmerism of being fractured and remaining whole. She drew closer to him now, it seemed, than ever before, to substantiate an economic and viable truth or unity within a supreme fiction, annihilation: food of the gods: morsels of divinity. Mill of the gods whose trail—common (or was it uncommon?) ground, iota of landscape and skyscape—evoked now the living grain of reality. She began to recall, in limitless, ambivalent detail, all over again, the feud with him she had endured….

  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” n
eed 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

  The Operation

  The 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 sens
ibility 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 Becalmed. 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 commotion 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).