The Carp Castle

by MacDonald Harris

  There is a stir in the salon. Moira seems to smile, a thing she has never done before in a séance, or perhaps it is only a strange firmness at the corners of her lips.

  “The worship of the phallus is very old. Its image is to be found in antiquity in the oldest strivings known to art, in the caves of our primitive ancestors. We have banished it from our sight, because we fear its power and its cruelty. But it lives in our secret minds, and it is transformed into sword and fire. Only a few short years ago, millions died in anguish because of its perverted power. The mission of the Guild of Love is not to hide the phallus, or suppress it, but to show it forth to the world in all its glory.”

  Romer does not turn to Eliza. They both sit looking straight ahead. His hand creeps out slowly and seeks hers, and their fingers intertwine again. To Moira’s smile, they return expressions of deadly seriousness.

  “The phallus is not a weapon, it is a caress. Those who misuse it must be taught to use it in love. The violence, hatred, and lust that course in the veins of men must be turned to balm and perfume. And further, dear friends and children, beloved ones, when I speak of phallus I do not speak of something that belongs only in the world of man. Its gentle curve, its vitality, its nourishing veins, are exactly mirrored in the body of woman, hidden even from her eyes, sculpted from empty space, a space that waits to be filled with its companion from the outer world. The two are foot and stocking, water and cup, root and earth, Yin and Yang, the sword of Vishnu and the cup of Shiva. Without the other, each is meaningless and vain.”

  Aunt Madge Foxthorn is almost invisible in the shadows behind Moira. Her face shows nothing at all. It is exactly as it always is, reproving, but only for those who feel it in their hearts to seek reproof. Her egg is directed generally toward the audience, not toward any individual in particular.

  “And now, beloved ones, dear children, from the shape of man I must turn and speak to you of the shape of the earth. You have been taught this by your teachers, but they were blind and unenlightened, lost in the errors of their books. What the astronomers have seen in their telescopes is the reflection of their own ignorance. The earth is not a ball such as children play with. It is far more wonderful than that. The earth hangs in space as a vast symbol of love. It is heart-shaped, the bottom hangs down in a point, and at the top there is a vale, a shallow round vortex, where the spirit of the Cosmos swirls around an Ultimate Center. But there is peace there, calm, it is the spirit that swirls and not the air, which is as still and balmy as an Italian summer day at dawn.”

  She turns and points with a regal dignity to the banner behind her. Where the curving meridians converge at the top, there is a spot like sunlight. “The magnetic field of the Cosmos draws the warmth of the world to this primal point, just as the magnetic power of love draws the warmth of the world to the primal points of the human body. Magnetism, warmth, and love are only three names for the same thing.”

  The audience sits hushed. There is not a sound. Outside in the sky the engines thrum softly.

  She touches the heart on the banner with her fingertips, gently, as though in a caress. “Beloved children, you may tell me that there is an explorer, whose name is Peary, who has traveled to the peak of the earth and not found this place. He is a sham and a fraud. He has boasted and lied, out of his false phallic pride. And the geographers, the scholars in the universities, have not themselves beheld the shape of the earth with their eyes; they have drawn their pictures of it from their mathematical formulas. Children and beloved ones, a ball is easy to concoct. But no one can concoct the true shape of the earth. It comes from Cosmic magnetism, and its curves are part of a divine plan. That plan is revealed, not to the mathematician, but to the true seeker and visionary.

  “Beloved ones, Gioconda has always existed, it has existed from the beginning of time, but all the learned astronomers and the scholars of the universities have turned a blind eye to it. No one has known of its existence until the day of my revelation, my True Vision, when I beheld it in my inner eye. Since that day I have called up this Vision many times, until I was intimate with its every detail. But it is not only in this Vision, beloved friends, that I have seen it.

  “I … have … been … to … Gioconda.”

  She speaks these words slowly and distinctly, leaving each one to tremble in the air before she goes on to the next. “I have traveled there in my Astral Body, I have set foot in its meadows and breathed its perfumed air, and I returned in that same hour to my place on the earth, guided by the Silver Cord. And all of you shall travel there with me, not in your Astral Bodies but in your ordinary bodies of flesh which you are wearing at this moment. There we shall find, not a frozen waste of ice, but a garden for our delectation, with running streams, flowers, and dells.”

  Günther sits in his seat like a statue. A slight moisture has formed at the corners of his mouth.

  “My children, beloved friends, you are all orphans. I know this because I know everything that is to be known about you. When you were admitted to the Guild of Love, it was because I saw in an instant of Vision that you had no mothers or fathers, that you wandered alone on the face of the earth. But that is not the only reason that each of you has become one of our number. You may have noticed that there are no children in the Guild of Love. That is because we shall make our own children in Gioconda. It is for this too that each of you has been selected.”

  She pauses again, but there is no sound in the salon, only a kind of electricity that prickles in the air.

  “Some of you are tall, some short, so that those who follow will be of perfect proportions. That is only to speak of the physical body. The same is true of the mind, the soul, and the Astral Body. All of your qualities must mingle to produce the ideal spirit, the spirit of the future, the embodiment of love, not greed and violence.”

  She smiles on them now, a genuine smile, the first that many of them have seen. “For those of you who are already lovers, I bless your union.” Romer and Eliza, sitting with gleaming faces, cannot imagine anybody who is meant except themselves. “Those of you who are not lovers will become lovers. There will be no marrying or giving in marriage. Everything will be free. Love will be free. There is only one Atman, one great breath that pervades us all. Each spirit in each instant will do only what it wishes to do and is drawn to do. Some of you may try on the garments of fantasy and dream, others may be drawn to the care of the young. Our offspring we shall cherish with care and love, so that they may grow to be strong, wise, and good. In their turn they will share their love with one another, so that their descendants will shine in every limb. Gioconda will be the land of the happy, the good, and the loving, where all the fruits of the earth are our reward. There is a Sanscrit word that means “All loves all.” Everything loves everything at once. It is suvumana. Beloved friends, the world is emptiness and yearning. The world should be fullness and love. This plenitude is now within our grasp. This great airship, a thing from the world, a thing of factories and the violence of tools, carries us through the sky toward the Bliss of Man. I say unto you all, suvumana! All love all! Tomorrow we set foot in Gioconda!”

  The golden shaft of the Trump appears in the gloom before Moira’s hands. It rises slowly like the hand of a clock, and the five haunting notes fall from it into the air. The brazen voice rings strangely from the aluminum walls. The unresolved A, heard for the last time, seems less a question than the cry of a desire near at hand. Romer knows now why there are five notes, with variations. It is because of the five letters in the Word.

  The letters grow dim and the lights come on in the salon. The Trump has disappeared and Moira is nowhere to be seen. This time, no one can come forward to ask her questions. Aunt Madge Foxthorn is rolling up the banner.

  *

  Romer leads Eliza down the stairway to the lower deck. Below on the landing, one corridor leads to the smoking room, another to the crew’s quarters. The aluminum corridors are barely wide enough for two people to pass. There are bare light bulbs
in the ceiling, protected by little fencers’ masks of wire.

  They turn around and go back the other way, to a door with a sign “No Admission – Eintreten Verboten.” They looked into this door briefly once before, on the flight from Frankfurt to London. They open it and enter.

  When they shut the door behind them they see a row of small lamps along a catwalk that stretches before them into the gloomy distance. They are in the vast belly of the dirigible with the gas-bags looming overhead. The thin skin of the airship, painted silver, is slightly translucent to the midnight sun; through it penetrates an opaline light with tinges of blood. Even though it is summer, drafts of icy air swirl around them and ripple their clothing.

  They start cautiously down the catwalk, Romer ahead and towing Eliza after him. The thrum of the engines is louder here, a baritone that pulses in waves, making a kind of wah-wah effect. Romer has the impression that he can hear the hiss of air sliding over the skin of the dirigible, but that is unlikely in this din. The girders under their feet are widely spaced; if they fell from the catwalk they would plunge through the thin fabric of the dirigible, like clowns breaking through a ring of paper, and fall into the sea below.

  “Romer, I think she meant us.”

  “Us? Oh, the lovers.”

  “I’m sure she did.”

  “I can’t think of anybody else she could be referring to.”

  “But what did she mean?”

  He is distracted, trying to keep his footing on the narrow aluminum rail and see where he is going in the gloom. “She meant that we’re lovers, that’s all. It’s quite simple. She’s known about us from the beginning.”

  “I think she meant that, while everybody else will have free love in Gioconda, we’ll just have each other. Romer, do you really believe there is such a place?”

  “No, I don’t. Or yes I do. I don’t know what to believe. I believed it when I was in the séance. Now a part of me believes it and another part doesn’t. Watch your step here.”

  “Romer, we’ve got to believe.”

  “I think it was meant metaphorically. Something nice is going to happen to us, but it may not be a balmy garden at the North Pole.”

  “You never have believed in Moira as much as I have.”

  “So you’re always saying, but it isn’t true. I have my own way of believing in things.”

  “With your mind, not your heart.”

  “No, I’ve just got a different kind of a heart from you. A trained heart. It’s a heart that’s got its reasons. Old Pascal talked about this in his Pansies.”

  “His what?”

  That’s what philosophy students call them. His Pensées. The heart-reasons aren’t the same reasons as the mind, but they’re still reasons. I can believe something with my heart-reason, but I’m still free not to believe it with my mind-reason. There may be a balmy garden. If so, I’ll enjoy it with all my heart. If not, my mind will tell me that it told me so.”

  “Where are we going, Romer? We must be almost at the end of the dirigible.”

  “No, we’ve only gone through a part of it. It’s immense.” He stops, uncertain. “You’d think that in a thing this gigantic there would be some place where we could be alone.”

  “We’re alone now.”

  “You know what I mean. Try to be helpful.”

  “What do you think will happen in Gioconda?”

  “You mean if there is one?”

  “There is one, Romer.”

  “All the things will happen that she says, I imagine.”

  “I hope it isn’t free love. Imagine kissing one of those Frieze boys. Or old Joshua Main. Ugh.”

  “Do you remember when we saw Aunt Madge Foxthorn in the park? And she was sunning her bosom? And she said we all had to prepare ourselves for Gioconda? Maybe I’ll have to make love to her.”

  “Oh, Romer. Don’t. I’m afraid of her. That bulge in her head. She’s always looking at me. I’m sure she knows everything I’m thinking.”

  “So does Moira.”

  “Yes, but Moira only sees my good thoughts. Aunt Madge Foxthorn sees my bad thoughts.”

  “In the séance, Moira said that all the nasty things are part of us too. She says we’re free to do exactly as we please.”

  “Only when we get to Gioconda. But you don’t believe in free love, do you?” she queries him anxiously.

  “I might have a fling at one of the Lake Sisters. If I could get them apart.”

  “You’re always joking. Can’t you take anything seriously? Romer, do you love me?”

  “What a question! It’s a noise that women make. I’ve never known how to answer it.”

  “I didn’t know you’d had so many opportunities.”

  “I mean in the abstract. Nobody has ever asked me before.”

  “But do you?”

  “But what the hell!” he bursts out exasperated.

  “I just want to be sure that when we get to Gioconda you’re still the same Romer that chased me through the woods in Germany.”

  He grips her arm. “I am right now.”

  “Oh Romer.”

  They come to a set of steps that they haven’t noticed before, leading up into the gloom overhead. It isn’t a stairway; it’s more like a fire escape, a thin aluminum ladder perforated with holes. There seems to be a small lamp at the top of it, far over their heads. There is a fuzzy ball of light up there.

  “Are you game?”

  “Where does it go?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to a place where we can be alone.”

  She looks at him wistfully, torn between fear and lust. But it is clear that lust is gaining. He takes her hand.

  “Come on. Follow me. One step at a time.”

  He starts cautiously up the ladder in a four-step technique: one hand, then one foot, then the other hand, then the other foot. He can sense Eliza below him; occasionally her hand brushes his foot. Even though he is climbing with muscular effort, he has the impression that the two of them are rising upward through the working of some invisible machinery powered by the hum that buzzes in their ears. Beams and girders go by, pierced with holes like the ladder they are climbing. They are pushing their way up the narrow space between two bulging curtains that smell of gutta-percha: the gas-bags full of hydrogen. Romer knows that the linen bags are lined with goldbeater’s skin, made of the intestines of oxen pounded thin with mallets. The two layers are glued together with that jungle-smelling stuff. When he touches one, it feels like the distended stomach of a great cow.

  At the top there is another catwalk that runs along just under the curving skull of the dirigible. It doesn’t seem like a very promising path to pursue, but they follow it for a while. Below them the gas-bags creep by one after the other, nudging sleepily against the girders. The dirigible is not the sleek and perfect silver cigar that people imagine who see it from the outside; instead it’s a hollow cave with a row of gas-bags holding it up from the inside, fastened to it with strings like childrens’ balloons. Romer is looking, not very optimistically, for some sort of room, chamber, or platform. He thinks that never in all the history of romance have lovers sought their bower in so strange a place. The girders and beams pierced with holes, the mysterious bags, the ladders leading to unknown places, give the impression of a vast metaphysical prison invented by some mad Piranesi of a previous century. To escape, he thinks, would require an effort of the mind, not of the muscles and senses.

  A little way down the upper catwalk he stops, and she bumps into him and stops too. They stand pressed together, breathless and cold. Romer thinks, as well as he can in his state of lust. In the dim light below them he can see what might be taken for an elephant at sleep. The large dun-colored back sways slowly from the motion of the dirigible; ripples pass over the surface. The bag is so large that the top of it is for all purposes flat.

  He is still holding Eliza’s hand. He urges her with a silent gesture and, like two suicides, they fall forward in their Lovers’ Leap. When they strike the
bag it yields to their weight like an enormous soft sofa. Romer is afraid they will sink into it and be stifled, then the springy integument rises and pushes them to the surface. To put down a hand or a foot is to have it embraced by a substance which pushes it back up only lightly. It is impossible to stand or to sit. They lie locked in each other’s arms. Removing their clothing is not as difficult as he imagined. In a certain sense they might be supported in mid-air by magnetism or the force of thought. There is nothing solid either below them or above them. They float in hydrogen, the lightest of gases. His pants slip off and then his shirt; he is not sure whether he or Eliza is on top because they are constantly rolling about in the embrace of this soft affectionate monster. He knows that she is unclothed because he can feel her bare back. When he pries their two bodies apart for an instant he catches a glimpse of her breast. It is speckled like some marvelous fish. With a moan she clutches him back to her again.

  The gas-bag, he thinks now, has the consistency of one of those nets that circus acrobats fall into, in which they can clamber about only inefficiently like trapped insects. Romer imagines making love with Eliza in a safety net. It takes very little imagination to do this, for when he closes his eyes he is doing this. Eliza gives little cries of ecstasy like a mouse. The cries come in two syllables so they may be his name but she doesn’t articulate clearly.

  The air is cold. Their backs are cold, their fronts are warm. They are two spirits locked together, yet at the same time the pair of them, a single being like those two half-shells of Plato, are held in the embrace of the lover-balloon which caresses them at every point. Romer is aware of the jungle odor of the gutta-percha, and of the hum of the engines like the purr of some soft protective beast. It is not a time to think, yet Romer is afflicted with the strangeness of it. A part of him spurts warmly and vigorously into Eliza’s phallus-shaped hollow, and another part of him reflects that this moment, like all other moments, is the only moment there is, that the past is a glimmer and the future only a delusion. Like the beech tree in the German forest, the humming gas-bag has become the perception that holds his existence frozen in time. All the more reason to grasp this instant, to savor it to the fullest, and to understand it in its last detail, since it is to be his only existence and has to stand for all the other instants that don’t exist.