The Carnival Trilogy

by Wilson Harris

  I felt a complex guilt, a complex shame. And yet I was grateful, grateful to someone or something (whoever, whatever, had tempted me). I was glad that I had responded, that I had succumbed, that I had attempted to seize the kingdoms of earth and space. Yes, I had succumbed to the temptation but had also seen through the veil of the moment into the roots of life with which I moved with all creatures that one seeks to seize, the roots of strangest whispering transparency that is the seed of the listening heart in every self-confessional fabric of the birth of truth, the birth of creative conscience.

  Was I glad, was I sorry, that the kingdoms of space had slipped from my grasp? I was glad. I was sorry. And within the nexus of such ambivalence almost forgot the whispering Shadow of temptation to which I had succumbed until I stepped with Faust into it, into that now bristling, telephonic Shadow. A telephone was ringing in my mother’s heart or ear into which the creatures of glass had swum or run before they vanished into a whisper of music. I heard it distinctly whereas before I had heard nothing. I heard the clamour of church bells in the sacred wood. I heard them so mysteriously, so potently, it was as if a flock of mighty bell birds flew from down under and encircled the globe. It was so insistent, so wonderful, that I was seduced by another curious and strange bell at the end of a long fishing rod which Faust held over my grandfather’s creek in the sacred wood.

  ‘Faust,’ my grandfather had written (I scanned the page with an eye in my mother’s breasts), ‘is the comedian of the kingdom bell. The fisherman-bell is the kingdom bell. The fisherman-king is the comedian of the machine. Pay attention please.’ THE TEXT CONTINUED: Robin Redbreast’s revised foetus, glass bird, flew in his mother’s cinematic body and alighted on Faust’s fisherman-rod. It (the cinematic foetus, tiny bird) settled on the rod, sidled along it with numb claws until it gained a foothold, a claw-hold, on Faust’s kingdom bell. It fluttered its numb feathers and danced on the bell like kingdom come. The fisherman-rod swayed as it danced. The line descending from the rod dipped sharply in the water as if it had been bitten by a fish. The swaying and the motion were enough to awaken a multiple ripple on Robin’s mother’s belly. But the kingdom bell on the fisherman-rod did not make a sound. ‘It’s not ringing,’ Robin protested, ‘it should have rung to say that the fish in the water is biting …’

  ‘You mean,’ said Faust wryly, ‘that you, glass Robin Redbreast bird, are dancing on my kingdom bell.’ He stared into Robin’s eyes.

  Robin felt numb. It was as if his claws were seized by violent cramp even as they danced. They danced on the bell but felt nothing. Why did they feel nothing? Why had he not known the instant he touched the bell that it was devoid of a clapper and a tongue, that it was a simulated bell not a real bell? Why had he said ‘a fish in the water is biting’ when he knew (or should have known) the commotion came from his active perch or dance?

  The answer lay in the riddle of touch, the riddle of the dance. It lay in the riddle of Faust’s implicit dialogue between creatures, between hypothetical fish and numb foetus in the body of humanity.

  ‘Note,’ said Faust to Robin, ‘in giving you claws, foetal claws, like a bird’s, or a crab’s, I enhance the ironies of the circus and the machine, I am true to fashion, true to obsessional creed and animal destiny in a harshly competitive age

  ‘And what about spiritual destiny?’ asked Robin. He felt heavy all of a sudden. ‘Do we not lame or cripple animal destiny in equating it with human and competitive slaughter?’

  ‘Tut, tut,’ said Faust. ‘Toot, toot, heigh-ho nonny and all that! So much for spiritual destiny.’ But his eyes were glued to Robin’s, fiendishly glued, spectacularly glued, and yet there was a crinkle of humour, even pitiful/pitiless understanding, at the edge of his lips.

  Robin wanted to protest but he was mesmerized by Faust’s extraordinary sophistication, irreverence and candour.

  It was as if the cinematic atmosphere they shared crept into his blood and endorsed his lameness of mind and spirit even as he danced. Faust called the bell at the end of his rod his kingdom or dancing bell because without making a sound it spoke of a labyrinth of patent or invented process – patented flesh, patented bone – between hypothetical creature and cinematic humanity dancing in ballrooms of heaven rounded like great, clapper bells, dancing in space, in tune with the fabric or womb of mother earth but insensible to deprivation.

  Faust was the master of new-born ironies and abortive spirit. His kingdom bell spoke of simulated dialogue between hypothetical God and hypothetical Man. It spoke of the bleak conversion (bleak exploitation) of deprivation into puppetries unconscious of hollow being.

  Robin sought to protest again. ‘There is life and death, death and life, and somewhere in that ambivalent mixture lies the spark of innermost recall of the value of spirit …’ But Faust brushed him aside: ‘Quite understandably,’ he said, ‘you assumed that when the line shook under my kingdom bell that it was life biting, that life had taken the bait or the hook. Hypothetical life Robin! Remember that.’

  ‘I was wrong,’ Robin acknowledged.

  ‘Hypothetical life,’ Faust repeated. ‘Such is the measure of progress. We advance through spheres of deprivation by which we gain tools – have you forgotten the bristling noise of the telephone when you were able to hear?’

  ‘I remember the secret music,’ Robin was able to say though his tongue ached like Ghost’s.

  ‘We advance through spheres of deprivation through which we simulate the life of species. Take it a step further, Robin. Put your faith in material progress. Accept me as some kind of prodigious immortal. And then I will make you into my immortal prodigy, my born/unborn prodigy in the bottled but cinematic sphere of a woman’s body. Your mother’s body! Invent the mother. Invent the child. Let me touch you and begin the process.’

  ‘No!’ said Robin. He felt uncertain, bewildered, even vaguely outraged. He took refuge in attack – ‘Let ME touch you.’ He was uncertain of the distinction between touching Faust himself and being touched by Faust himself … MY GRANDFATHER’S BOOK FADED INTO THE REALITY OF IMMORTAL DREAM. I WAS DREAMING. Immortal dream? Had I succumbed to Faust’s temptation? Could I touch him without being subject to his influence, his charisma? Had I involuntarily accepted the temptation he posed to sustain his immortality and to become immortal dream writer myself? What are the origins of dreams? Are dreams the relic of temptation surviving in the psyche to assume immortality? If so the burden and the ecstasy of dreams had to be revised, ravelled, unravelled, penetrated, probed, rehearsed into infinity in order to make a profound distinction between a true resurrection (a true resurrection) and the strings of prodigious dogma in populations. They resembled one another, they ran in parallel with one another (material prodigy resembled the body of the soul even as cinematic foetus resembled the innermost recall of the conception of life) but they were not the same. LIKE YET UNLIKE FORCES.

  I reached out and touched Faust and felt suddenly caught in the nexus of like yet unlike forces, caught and bedevilled by an age that gestated at the edge of a chasm, the chasm of marvels, the chasm of insensible creed in the circus of the machine.

  I felt devoid of sensation as I touched him. He felt warm at first, warm as the drug of material progress, but I knew he was bitterly cold, bitterly calculating, stuffed to the eyeballs with terrifying comedy. All of a sudden I screamed. It was wholly spontaneous but nothing could have been more calculated to take him by surprise. I should have been laughing my immortal head off at his immortal joke – he seemed to imply – not screaming … He had failed somewhere in the demonology of the circus to ‘grab me’ as I hopped on his kingdom bell and I knew in my heart of hearts the resurrectionary or revolutionary body was subtly alive however apparently eclipsed within the glamour and the sophistications of the comedian of the machine.

  Whereas before I had been delivered from deafness by a clap of thunder in the cradle or the grave – when I sought to seize the psychical glass animals of space that were manifestations of the immane
nce of God’s kingdoms – now in the circus of the machine, on the circus of the kingdom bell, I was delivered from numbness of spirit, and from seizure by Faust, with a cry I gave from the heart, a cry so poignant, so real, it drew me into the web, into the flesh, the imperilled substance, of all ecstatic and sorrowing creatures. Was this the origin of mental pain woven into the very substance and moment of rich rejoicing? Caught yet instinctively liberated feature. Caught yet spiritually liberated song.

  I HAD BEEN CAUGHT YET IMPLICITLY LIBERATED FROM CINEMATIC CHARISMA, CINEMATIC ECLIPSE OF INNERMOST SELF-REFLECTION.

  ‘The mystery of deprivation!’ said Faust at last. As if with a gesture he sought to enlighten me, to prove he was on my side after all. On the side of liberation.

  ‘I am on your side once you read me properly. With a literate imagination Robin!’ He was laughing. I could not be sure. Was he laughing or was he mocking a world that was singularly ill-equipped to read its spheres of deprivation or its proclivity to temptation?

  ‘To enter my Kingdom Bell is to see from the other side of thunder the earlier temptation to which you succumbed. I say ‘earlier’ but does one know what comes first, what is early, what is late? Does one hear before one cries? Is it a simultaneous arousal within veil after veil of rehearsed temptation, rehearsed sensation, secreted in memory?

  ‘You succumbed to temptation and reached out to seize the glass unicorn, the glass tigers, etc. They vanished but you came alive then to the reflected thunder of all things, to the noises of space and time. At last you could hear, make distinctions, dwell in your mother’s voice and her laughter. Now you yourself have been caught by me yet implicitly liberated in giving voice to a spirit through and beyond yourself … At last you know that you cry, that tears are as true as song. Have I not helped you in the very moment that I threatened your soul? For remember within true voice and true hearing lies an arch of simulated being upon which we build our architectures and institutions. There in due course you will come upon Skull and the bridge to Skull.

  ‘At the heart of the void of the machine lies a revolutionary spirit that exposes one’s zest for life within the fruits of temptation. That revolutionary spirit exalts us, yet chastens us, makes us see our deprivations (whether deafness or numbness or whatever) through a mysterious glass or composite of opposites reflecting seizure and liberation, invention and creation, the animate and the inanimate, the living and the dead, the mortal and the immortal.

  ‘I am the comedian of the void in the machine … the void in you. I am the script within the machine.’

  ‘And my voice?’ I asked rudely, ‘is that in your script?’

  It was a taunting question to put to a human machine or to a person embodying immortal dynamo replete with implacable marvel and terrible skill, terrible dialectic, but Faust to my astonishment replied, ‘Your voice is revolutionary spirit, Robin. I am glad of this, believe me! I too can rejoice.’ Was he mourning with me or laughing at me or had he been moved in spite of himself by considerations of the mystery of deprivation and its bearing on caught yet liberated senses of the imagination, the mystery of deprivation through which we unlock multi-faceted thresholds, landscapes, doors into being?

  FOUR

  Some Reflections in 1985 on the Great Strike of the Animal Bands in the Magic Wood in the Year 1948. Ghost is at my Elbow as I Write in the Chapel Perilous of the Sea. He is the Spectre or Character of Time Unravelling Centuries and Decades.

  *

  THE MYSTERY OF DEPRIVATION. A key phrase in this fictional autobiography of (or is it by?) a drowned man. W. H. insists mystery is a divine comedy with an edge or positive direction to the movement of consciousness above the authorial fury of conflicting powers and the chaos of the world. Mystery is a stairway that takes me up yet back four decades in the comedy of time to the year 1948. I was three years old then. It was the year of the great strike in the sacred or magic wood. Memory’s building blocks under the sea (or upon a wave of land) are composed of reversible glass senses reflecting patterns of intimate sensation – no, patterns of temptation – to which one succumbs. I would never have acquired a literate ear, or literate responses to distinctive voices and sounds – literate self-criticism as well about my deficiencies of understanding in every nexus of intricate being – if I had not been tempted by a stroke of light to seize the kingdoms of space that sped before me in inmost animal and spiritual particles and waves of sound. I would never have given voice to creation if I had not been tempted by the comedian of the machine to become an immortal dream-body upon frontiers of simulated blood and real blood.

  I laugh at myself now in 1985 in the light of the composite fruit of temptation that stains the mirror of my lips. Glass kisses glass at the bottom of the sea where fish roam in one’s hair like beautiful birds. My mother kissed me on the bed of the sea in the chapel perilous and said to a friend, ‘Miriam and I thought Robin was deaf, you know, but suddenly he reached out and held my breasts, he heard my voice, the noises in the street, everything, the telephone ringing in the room. It was funny. He began to speak as if he were conversing with someone at the other end of the line. A prodigy! He cried …’

  She was right. I screamed and woke. After that speech came naturally. It was born out of an extremity, yes, extremity, Robin’s extremity, Redbreast Democratic Glass and multi-reflecting organ of the deprived senses. Yes, speech is born of extremity. It runs close to despair, demagoguery and authoritarian command, all functions of deprivation: deprivation or deprivations Aunt Miriam tended to call illiteracies of the heart and mind. I have never forgotten the phrase she used. It laps around me in the rain, in the water, in streams where one misreads time’s face.

  Aunt Miriam was right in that we soon forget how strange and mysterious are our capacities, hearing extremity, listening extremity, speaking extremity, touching extremity, seeing extremity, knowing extremity; and that those capacities or extremities may never have come into being except through a dream-life that is steeped in temptations – pre-natal temptations as well as child-temptations – sexual temptations as well as lust-for-power temptations – to which we succumbed. Succumbed yes to the vitality of sensation but recoiled in converting the shadow of temptation into a source of original, self-confessing being in creation.

  I remember the terror of the animal bands when they faced the repetitive fall of the Bomb in the shape of perverse manna and Skull-bread. They erupted in the magic wood in 1948. First came the band of the Tiresias Tigers. They were followed by other bands that included the Unicorns and the Horses of the Sea. It was a strike of international significance. It invoked a bullish mood (whatever that meant) in that sugar cane shares rocketed and fell, rocketed again with stone cold dead in the market. Rice shares became animalcule balloons and bullets. Oil shares battled coal. Diamond and gold investments laced the bullet’s horns. That a Tiger could stand on a platform (or a tall sheep or Red Riding Hood or Sister George the Bald Horse) toss a drum or a claw to the winds, and thereby cause millions of ammunition and dollars to roll up the creek, or roll down the creek, was a measure of economic illiteracy and of the deprivations of simulated cities of Skull.

  ‘BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, DOOM, DOOM, DOOM, all the time,’ my mother said. ‘Enough to drive you mad!’

  Aunt Miriam – despite her misgivings, her sense of spiritual malaise – was more generous. ‘It’s all in a good cause,’ she said. And pondered the uncertainty of good causes. ‘Bang, Drum, Strike, to keep the evil spirits at bay.’

  ‘What evil spirits?’

  ‘Shame on you, Alice. You should know. The legacies of war. The legacies of fear and corruption. Malnutrition. It’s a strike to win grain.’

  My mother looked dubious, even doleful. ‘Corruption,’ she said. ‘Grain,’ she said. ‘Vile bodies.’

  Aunt Miriam was nonplussed. She could not tell whether Alice was saying ‘corruption is vile’ or ‘grain is vile’ or ‘the strike of the animal bands is vile’.

  ‘I tell you, Miriam,’ Alice co
ntinued, ‘it’s the terror of the void. That’s the twentieth century.’

  ‘You mean the terror of angry and confused spirit,’ Aunt Miriam said and tried to look absurdly reasonable though she was scared. ‘The animal bands are dancing like nemesis below in the street. What a sea of faces. I hate crowds.’

  A change had occurred in the element of Sleep. The privileged and fashionable strikers and bangers, privileged bands and dancers who preyed upon – or were able to exploit – the illiteracy of the economic imagination and move grain around the globe to starving peoples were dissatisfied with themselves and their entanglement in systems they both supported (profited from) and loathed (or bled in the name of the good cause). They swung around in the book of Sleep into rebellious subversives inciting masses. I sailed upon a tide of popular art, street animal dancers, street animal rebels, street animal poems of protest. Their simulation of an industrial and cultural strike seemed suddenly real. The comedian of the circus who pulled the strings and profited from each calculation of unrest had misjudged the chaos in the magic wood. Time’s countenance darkened into a mirror of involuntary feud on the stairway backwards and upwards, forwards and downwards, upon which I dreamt I climbed.