by Patrick Guinness, Ithell Colquhoun, Peter Owen, Allen Saddler
A wailing sound that sprang from some tubular instrument not hitherto used now entered upon the drone of the music; and I could hear, too, a thudding undertone as of drums, with, rarely, a subdued clash of cymbals. The Anchorite approached me and raised my shoulders, pressing a vessel of some scorching viscous liquid to my lips. Already more than half-bemused, I had no choice but to drink – it seemed as though fluid fire were pouring down my throat and through any veins. The taste was not merely of burning, but recalled with augmented intensity the tang of both unguent and fume.
The Anchorite lifted me up – whether or no it was illusion I cannot tell, but the pull of gravity appeared to have lost some of its hold over me and I weighed almost nothing – and set me upon the image. I embraced the armless torso, finding an unlooked-for excitement in the pressure of its frigid moulding. I laid my mouth to its stoney lips, and a tongue, icy as an adder’s, seemed to dart from between them to meet mine.
I sensed the figure of my Uncle towering behind me, taller than the statue. Selecting a pliable wand from a bundle lying beside it, he began to whip me, while the music increased, clashing more harshly, drumming more insistently, wailing more stridently. I could feel a mounting frenzy in the now-invisible spectators; I could hear their shuffling movements, sombre breathing and stifled cries as their circle slowly dosed in. Every lash sent a shudder of delight through me; I saw that my flanks were speckled with blood, yet I felt no pain from the strokes, only a stinging unbearable titillation. Clouds of unknown colour and texture were racing past me, wild corruscations of light, shape and hue; then at a stroke keener than the rest and a final eruption of music, an icy jet coursed through me to my furthest limbs and I fell insensible.
I awoke next morning as from a profound sleep, but fully clothed. Memories of the night flooding in upon me, I examined myself for some sign that I had been victim of more than delusion. But there was no sign nor symptom; drug, delirium, wounds, rape, all had left me unscathed.
Yet I did not doubt that I had in fact been used by my Uncle for one of his experiments, even though it might have been conducted in the sphere of hallucination. And what had he gained from it? Not my jewels: they rested languidly in their accustomed places, all their stones intact The thought occurred to me that by my swoon at the climax of the orgy I might unintentionally have thwarted him; that perhaps what he needed was my knowledge of the moment, which, had I possessed it, he could by his subtle arts have filched from me.
Looking about me, I saw that I was not in my own room, but reclining upon a couch in what I now recognised as the ante-room to my Uncle’s library.
‘Between mutability’s teeth let us make our dwelling,
And let her savour us slowly in her contemplative way.’
– Rilke.
To the left, an immense archway reared itself; and shaking off my drowsiness, I got to my feet and wandered towards it. Above, four painted archetypal panels were set into the wall and connected with a scroll, carved and dimly-gilt, bearing this legend: ‘The All-Wise Doorkeeper, or a Four-fold Figure, exhibiting analytically to all who enter this Museum the Mosaico-Hermetic Science of Things above and Things below.’ I entered a long corridor, from which I could view a series of chambers containing each a sort of emblematic tableau.
Before these began, one was presented with a panorama of heathery landscape still shrouded in the misty grey of morning, and featureless but for an extensive mere. There was little to hold the eye; yet I could not take my gaze from it; and a remote voice issued as it were from the shining water, softly proclaiming it ‘The Silver Morn.’ Something made me remember the Anchorite; but if this voice were indeed his, it had become greatly etherealised. The sounds were not repeated, and their spell gradually fading, I passed on to the exhibits proper.
The Book of Lambspring was still in my mind, and remembering its first engraved plate, I recognised that this corresponded with the first chamber; in fact, that the chamber was nothing less than a three-dimensional translation of the engraving. For the entire room, divided from the corridor by a huge pane of glass, formed a tank in which two gigantic fish of the carp family, one incandescent red, the other phosphoric blue, their snouts connected by an all-but-impalpable thread, were swimming languidly round one another in a tireless dance. The water-level reached about two-thirds of the way up the pane, and distant boats sailed across its surface, making voyages to and from the serene landscape that glowed beyond. Suddenly in the sky there appeared, as if inscribed by a lightning-flash, the gnomic words: ‘Be warned and understand truly, that two fishes are swimming in our sea.’ As I passed on, I saw all fifteen plates ultimately thus given a solid counterpart; and I noticed that many dealt with some aspect of duality.
After this, the compartments changed in character; for it seemed as though my Uncle, hypnotised by the symbolic suits of the Taro, had gathered under their four main categories almost every conceivable object; or rather, that in an attempt to classify specimens of such objects, he had well-nigh lost himself in their diversity. For instance, in the compartment devoted to ‘Wands’ he had assembled and preserved every imaginable species of leafy branch; and not these only, but also everything that might possibly be called a ‘wand’, from an axle to a divining-rod; many varieties of walking-sticks also, pencils, brushes, feathers, hair, wings, bones and even portions of furniture, table-legs, carved pilasters, frames.
Under ‘Swords’ he had collected innumerable objeots of metal, weapons of course in great variety, tools and pieces of machinery, though never complete machines – spokes, hat-pins, and indeed anything of a piercing or cutting nature.
In the section for ‘Cups’ was a most heterogeneous collection of vessels in every kind of material, especially in glass or the more precious metals; but not only these, for almost anything that could hold or contain anything else was here included: cases, boxes, boats in great numbers; flowers, too, of approximately cup-like shape; diagrams and models of anatomical structures; craters, lake-bed formations, marine shells.
According to my Uncle’s morphological studies, crazy if you will, though ardently pursued, there were heaped together under ‘Discs’ not only everything even roughly disc-shaped, including thousands of coins in many different materials and of all sizes and periods; but seemingly everything that he could lay hands on of a flat and extended form. It was before this compartment that I paused; not that it was intrinsically more interesting than its predecessors, for each of them had at first glance given me the impression of an ill-assorted junk-shop, very different from the exquisitely-finished tableaux that brought Lambspring to life; but partly, I suppose, because I had almost traversed the corridor and was nearing the final item in the display. For now, my mind attuned to my Uncle’s uncouth approach, I perceived a relationship between the many examples of Disc he had collected and the Trump Major known as the ‘Wheel’. There had been several volumes in the library treating of Taro symbolism, and from these I had gleaned enough to recognise certain correspondences. My eyes focussed themselves with special intensity upon a dart-board that had once been highly-coloured, and I picked it out of its chaotic heap and began to dust it. Soon I made out letters spaced at wide intervals round the edge of its surface – four letters only, spelling the word ‘rota’; and though I could hardly explain in words what they conveyed to me, I felt a sensation of ineffable relief. I knew that this simple word held release, both for my sisters and for myself.
The final tableau now presented itself to me; it was the same empty moorland scene as the first, but lacking the mere, and now bathed in the most triumphant sunset glow. The sinking sun was not to be seen, for a gigantic throne rose into the west, superimposing its metallic weight on a good quarter of the sky. The same voice I had heard before, but richer in timbre, extolled ‘The Golden Eve’.
I had come to the end of the far-stretching corridor, and, still carrying the board, I opened a door and found myself in the garden. I set the disc bowling like a hoop in the direction of Troubh,
and with a sensation of exultant reliance on fate taken at the spin, I let it go. I watched it swiftly gaining momentum down a gentle incline, and knew it would reach its destination. After that, my sisters and half-brother must read its message as I had done, and find in it their freedom.
When I returned to my own apartments, I came upon a rill of pellucid water, not more than ten inches wide, sliding with scarcely a sound over the moss-green carpet of my bed-room. It bubbled up from beneath the wainscot by the window, and flowed diagonally across the floor to disappear under the doorway. I could not find a trace of it in the passage outside, where I suppose it lost itself in the shadows. Making for itself a bed in the pile of the carpet, it seemed no deeper than this, which it filled level with an invisible brink. A few delicatestemmed flowers like columbines, fritillaries or autumn crocus appeared growing from the carpet near the water, but they looked so fragile that I did not try to pluck them.
I was surprised though not alarmed by this phenomenon, which lasted upwards of half-an-hour and then vanished, leaving the carpet quite dry. I could not explain it, but felt it as a symptom of consolation.
‘Yo soy la mata inflamada,
Ardiendo sin ser quemada
Ni con aquel fuego tocada
Que a los otros tocara.’
– Spanish Song.
It was not only consolation which was brought me by the mysterious rill, but something stronger – a deep conviction that I must get away. I kept to my room all day, the resolve growing in density and form. Finally, at a late hour, I opened my door and peeped into the passage. All was still, and lightless except for the glass of an uncurtained window at the end of the landing.
I halted outside the door of my Uncle’s study; there was no sign of an occupant, but I felt certain that he was there within, waiting. As I have said, I habitually wore jewellery – several heavy bracelets and rings, a triple chain forming a collar, a watch, a big brooch, ear-rings. These I began to tear off; I flung them all down on my Uncle’s threshold, their metallic crash and tinkle echoing through the entranced house. One of the rings rolled away under his door. Then I fled down the passage; and as I turned at the head of the stairway, I caught a last glimpse over my shoulder of the faintly-glimmering heap. The stones gathered within themselves all the light there was in the corridor, and sent it forth again in a muted and reptilian ray.
When I arrived at the massive castellated gatehouse once more, I became aware of the Anchorite’s vigilant figure half-hidden at an upper window, but I knew that nothing now could hold me back. I darted towards the square of the archway, but to pass through this, I found that I had to enter the cage of glazed compartments which make up a swing-door; though this was no ordinary swing-door. It contained more than the usual four compartments; and then it was used as a kind of roulette – my sisters were placed one in each section, and all had to run round inside so long as the pivot went on turning.
We were dressed in carnival costume, or ballet-dresses perhaps; and it was my section which remained standing opposite the entrance when the pivot ceased to swing. Rohan was waiting outside.
‘You again!’ he exclaimed resentfully. ‘Why can’t I have someone else for a change,’ he grumbled casting a longing eye towards one of my twin-sisters, a fluffy-haired brunette, dressed in blue silk, lace petticoats and pink bows, who was standing on her points in the compartment next after mine.
I murmured something about fate, intended as an apology; and Rohan picked me up and slung me over his back like a goose. I felt as if I were being held by the neck in a fox’s jaws, but I suppose he did not quite do that.
We started up the road, and soon passed a small red house with what seemed like a one-storeyed outhouse built against it. Along the slanting roof of this a game-bird was suspended face downwards.
‘Look at the pheasant!’ I cried, by way of diverting him.
And indeed, it was worth looking at. It was very large, very red and bright; and the scales on its neck hardly seemed like feathers, they were so huge, separate and metallic in colour. The tail was long, with a white plume running down each side to the tip. I wondered if the bird were quite dead.
Rohan was interested. He turned it over on its back, stretching it out on a bank of sloping grass. Then we saw that it was not a pheasant. It was as big as a woman, and seemed to have a woman’s face, though this was difficult to determine because the whole head was covered with an opaque membrane the colour of some ripe citrous fruit. Beneath this lay the impression of wide cheek-bones, profound sockets and a beak like an eagle’s. We could discern that the beak was open, for its sharpness made the brilliant yellow membrane almost transparent. The veil covered the creature’s wing-shoulders, and fell on the breast, which was divided in the centre, like that of a woman or a bird of prey. I felt that bat-like hands were folded below; and lower still glowed the vivid plumage we had seen before, copper-green and copper-red.
The eagle lay perfectly still, scarcely breathing and apparently asleep. A voice from the air around seemed to tell me to leave it undisturbed, and that one day it would awake from its creative trance.
Immediately I had left the penumbra of my Uncle’s park the air, as yet scarcely touched by morning, came to my throat with a fresher draught, and environned me with a more translucid grey. I ran on now with little sense of direction, borne forward by early breezes that seemed to me the very breath of liberty, and so buoyant that they might have been blowing directly off the sea. I had not shed my clothes with my jewels; yet racing along, my feet barely touching the moss of the woodland ride, I had the sensation of being naked and immersed in some bracing element, as though nothing came between my skin and the soft yet potent air.
When I regained the main island it was still very early; and fastening the coracle to the mole from which I had set forth, I made my way to the big deserted house. Ever since my mother had left it, and had ceased to live with my father, I had heard nothing of how he was; and I now began to wonder: How is he managing alone? He never used to be much good at making arrangements for himself. I decided to visit him.
It was only just light when I penetrated the house and mounted to the top-floor; my father had barely finished his bath, and when I called to him he came out immediately into the passage, without dressing, to meet me. This was most unusual for him, as he had never been addicted to nudism.
‘How are you?’ I cried.
‘Very well indeed,’ he answered. He seemed delighted to see me and we hugged and kissed. I then suggested as tactfully as I could that he might put on some clothes; and this he did, without apparent embarrassment, as we descended the staircase to the lower floors. He remarked on the amount of jewellery I was wearing; and glancing down suddenly at my gleaming wrists and fingers, I was forced to admit that indeed, for a morning toilette, it was perhaps rather much. I saw, too, with astonishment, that what I now wore appeared to be the very trinkets which I had cast from me at my Uncle’s threshold.
Suddenly the forlorn aspect of the house seemed to strike my father – the carpetless stairs, the uncurtained windows, the bare wood of the floors. He looked about him uneasily as we approached the main hall, and seemed, for the first time since his family’s absence, to be taking in his surroundings.
‘He does not know he is dead,’ I thought. ‘Shall I have to tell him?’
But this was not necessary.
‘Where are the furnishings?’ he asked. ‘Why all this emptiness?’
‘Don’t you realise, father,’ I replied gently, pressing his arm with a closer touch, ‘that we are no longer living here?’
I paused, then turned for some response; but my father had vanished, utterly melted away, leaving only his old green suit hanging over my arm.
I went into the conservatory-room that led off the rear of the entrance-hall. It was circular with much glass, some white, some tinted with various colours, and was now empty but for the built-in seat running round below the windows. Outside, the encroaching leaves of the garden-sh
rubs were visible. I waited here for a few minutes perfectly quiet; but my father did not return. Only in the atmosphere of the room there seemed to linger a faint distillation, but whether of sound or colour I could not tell.
I left the conservatory, let myself out of the front door and made towards one of the side-entrances to Che garden. Here the vegetation had become tropical, recalling that of the antipodes; leaves like open umbrellas swayed above my head and showers of warm drops fell through the air. The very light seemed to have passed through a filter of foliage, and the exit was clogged with unaccustomed tepid luxuriance.
There was a low earthy rampart surrounding the garden and the soil of this had grown volcanic, as it did from time to time – at least, so I gathered from some passers-by in the lane outside. Warm fountains the colour of port-wine were jetting through the earth, fertilising it to this abundant growth.
Following the lane, I reached the top of an incline from which I could see the mountainy country to the east; and towards this I set my profile. The region was far, but even as I looked its pencilled summits were touched by the first auroral glow.
PETER OWEN LTD
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Peter Owen books are distributed in the USA by Independent
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First published by Peter Owen Ltd 1961
© Ithell Colquhoun 1961
Introduction © Eric Ratcliffe 2003
This ebook edition 2014