Black Marsden

Acknowledgements are due to authors and publishers as follows: Oliver and Boyd Ltd for quotations from
The
Scottish
Tradition
in
Literature
by Kurt Wittig; The Clarendon Press for
quotations
from
John
Knox
by Jasper Ridley; The Bodley Head Ltd for quotations from
Haunting
Edinburgh
by Flora Grierson; Penguin Books Ltd for quotations from
The
Legend
of
John
Hornby
by George Whalley; Faber and Faber Ltd for quotations from
Writings
from
the
‘Philokalia’
on
Prayer
of
the
Heart
translated
by E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer; Cassell and Co Ltd for adaption of a quotation from
Highland
Days
by John Gordon.

I came upon him in a corner of the ruined Dunfermline Abbey of Fife like a curious frozen bundle that may have been blown across seas and landscapes to lodge here at my feet. On the journeys I had made through Fife last year I had been aware of the harlequin cloak of the seasons spread far and wide into strange intimacies and dissolving spaces. For example I had looked down upon the sea from another ruined abbey at Culross; I recalled evenings bridled by early lights along the Firth of Forth; all this seemed at times sunken into a transparent film or subaqueous world. The ancient palaces and corridors I visited were an extraordinary and naive cradle of kings woven
nevertheless
into complex, sometimes implacable legend. This
combination
of naive and complex features was true of kings whether in pre-Columbian America or pre-Renaissance Scotland or Europe. The idea obsessed me and I found myself at liberty to trace its contours around the globe since winning a fortune from the Football Pools.

A half-frozen spectre of a man it was who appeared now at my feet in a corner of the winter Dunfermline Abbey. His beard was savage and black and icy and consistent with a wildness of nature that literally pierced me as our eyes met. It was an
uncanny
twist or stab from within myself as if I
knew
him though I had not seen him before.

I had hardly dwelt properly upon this when the knives in his eyes turned into quills. Something to do with the glinting threads of light that laced the Abbey in the winter afternoon. It was self-surrender, I thought, rather than self-conquest which had been inscribed there upon a living mask. I had read of magicians who slept in ice or snow. It was this aspect of strange immunity to the elements and strange immersion in the elements—half-pathetic and sorrowful, half-ecstatic and joyful—that became now a kind of vivid black humour, deepset and unique as a late dazzle of sun.

I leant forward and addressed him. Smoke rose from my lips. He shuddered a little. “Are you all right?” I said. I felt awkward and unfree. He sensed my embarrassment as well as fascination and grimaced with pain to intimate to me that my inner frame corresponded with his shuddering stiffness as though one disability sparked the other.

“All right,” he replied. “All right.”

We were curiously united within a human mist or ground of shared predicament. He looked doubled-up and spectral; no longer did he glint with knives and quills but his bent back had turned into a harp and I had been metamorphosed into a kind of rib or spring stretched by the deepest pull of fascination towards a condition of marvel.

*

This was the beginning of my curious and ambivalent
friendship
with Doctor Black Marsden—Clown or Conjurer or
Hypnotist
Extraordinary. As if that winter afternoon the strangest invisible Gorgon or Muse, ancient as the face of the globe, had turned her head towards us and fascinated us beyond words. I was in process of projecting from within myself upon him—as he simultaneously projected his mysterious frame of
associations
upon me—an assortment of instruments ranging from a knife to a harp.

It was an uncanny idea (I felt myself stricken to the bone by the disease which I had already characterized to myself as ‘condition of marvel’—my conscription by the fortunes of history into a patron of the arts): uncanny to dream that a Gorgon or Muse, ancient as the face of the globe, had long fascinated us—without our being aware of it—and bound us into conserving and fleshing within ourselves the ritual skeletons of civilizations (walking knives or bent harps).

The Gorgon or Muse, Doctor Marsden said, was the
open-ended
mystery of beauty—flesh into stone or vice versa.

The Walking Knife, Doctor Marsden said, was both straight and twisted as love or death.

The Walking Harp, Doctor Marsden said, was an essential ruined cage within ourselves/cradle of music/vibrating
touchstone
….

So he spoke and I listened.

A month or two later with Spring his words began to blossom and take shape. He had accepted my invitation to return with me to my house in Edinburgh (and stay as long as he liked) the afternoon I had stumbled upon him in a corner of the ancient Dunfermline Abbey….

The first to arrive was the beautiful Gorgon of Marsden’s open-ended circus of reality. Marsden had dug her up from some appalling dive in London where her life-blood and talent were draining away. Knife (another poor gifted devil in need of succour) would follow in due course. Then Harp (a bewildered musician rusting in a garret). They all needed shoes and hose and meat and potatoes. Marsden laughed cheerfully. Then became grave. And gentle. “It is no accident we met,” he said. “I am a doctor of the soul and you are a patron of the arts. A rare combination.”

There was a pause and a gust of wind shook the window-panes of the house. Then he introduced the Gorgon who had sailed into my sitting-room and deposited her spring coat. “Filthy,” said Marsden pointing to the coat which seemed quite stunning and fashionable to me. “Now take the dress she is wearing—the more one sees the less one sees. Her name is
MORE-AND-LESS
.” He laughed again. “You wouldn’t believe what an infinite labour of love it is.” He stroked her dress. “Seamless my boy. Half-
an-inch
here. Then half of that half again making a quarter. Then half again of that quarter making one-eighth. Then
one-sixteenth.
Then one-thirty-secondth. Ad infinitum. God knows how old the thing is and why it doesn’t fall to pieces on her back.”

The beautiful Gorgon smiled and said, “You’re such a joker, Mardie. It’s a new outfit as well you know. Bless you for the cash.”

“Don’t bless me,” said Doctor Marsden. “Bless him, your patron and host.” As he spoke he snapped his fingers. I felt a curious thrill or shock strike the back of my neck and
unaccountable
laughter welled in my throat. Then a hypnotic bulb switched on and off in my skull like variegated lights in a
television
studio. “It takes lots of divine money to put on a show.” As Doctor Marsden’s hypnotic voice rose and faded the bulb switched on again. I now saw the beautiful Gorgon plain as a fashion plate wired to a guillotine in a glossy magazine studio. A long dress fitted her like a tube.
The
bulb
switched
off.
I felt now that if I unscrewed the top or head from that revolutionary French fashion plate and looked down into the dark tube or garment she wore at the light of her soul within, I would, in fact, be seized by the open-ended mystery of beauty which revealed and concealed all its intricate parts
ad
infinitum.
So that the woman within was rendered invisible and her charms became a light at the end of the longest tunnel on earth through which one’s senses ran like sand or sea or blood.

Black Marsden was staring at me intently. I felt myself on the verge of collapse—thrilled to bits as the newspapers say. Like someone who was part of a gigantic hourglass or sea of faces around the globe hypnotized to the brink of love or fear, desert or ocean, mimic creation of catastrophe. “You flaked out,” said Marsden enigmatically, “in the middle of a scene. As you were tipped into the tunnel.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “What tunnel?”

“Ah,” said Marsden, “the tunnel of civilization. O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark. It’s part of the jargon of the trade. The commerce of love. Gorgon.”

“Where is she?” I cried. “Where has she gone?”

“I sent her off on another shopping spree,” said Marsden briskly. “But she’ll be back never fear. She’s our skylight to eternity.” He gave his croaking laugh.