The Carnival Trilogy (43 page)

He spoke with deceptive clarity and ease but within it I sensed a rhythm that troubled me deeply. It was as if he were cloaking one voice in another (antiphon or discourse of
ancestral
tongues), speaking deceptively
through
me, within me, with a shadow-tongue or incantatory rhythm that reminded me of myself (the way I spoke) even as it seemed to breach all complacency in the given self. Was this incalculable rhythm the art of confession between priest and supplicant? Did its origins – the origins of the confessional – lie in such theatre overshadowed by a Presence?

Of one thing I was sure. This was no enchantment, no spell. It was intensely human, intensely real. It possessed its
humour
. The emphasis on ‘business’ for instance reminded me of Haroldian and Protean comedy as they aped the marketplace of God! Harold was, I perceived – in gratitude to me for listening, for playing the part of divine ape or priest to whom he confessed – seeking to give his utterance both luminous self-mockery and practical detail. It was my listening ear
imbued with the mystery of the singing ape I was (and he was) that encouraged him to speak the intimate poetry of his fate – and of matters he had long suppressed and hidden in himself – within a context that revealed his need of me, of the living dreamer, his need through me, my frail imaginative quest for the City of God, of redemption by the
overshadowing
Presence I had glimpsed as intricately woven into ‘living absences’, into the arts, into the sciences, into architectures, Waterfall, rainfall, riverfall.

‘They were twins‚’ he said at last, ‘women of the estate, the estate of nature, in which one buys or plunders the beauty of the world. The slave-Roses. Believe me! I saw it all when it seemed so late, too late. Perhaps it’s never too late, Anselm. That’s why we need one another. But it seemed desperately late for me when I learnt you were the child of …
my
child …’ He stopped. Unable to speak. Then continued – ‘The first Rose I bought … She left me. She said I was a mean bastard. And then some seven or eight years later when I was dying (I had less than a couple of months to live though I did not know it) the other Rose came. She slept with me. No word of meanness. She said I was generous. I paid her handsomely. And then she turned on me. Six weeks to the first night we slept together she knew she was pregnant. She turned on me.
What
is
meanness,
what
is
generosity,
when
one
buys
or
sells
souls?
I did not listen for I was transported by the news that she was pregnant, that at last I had hunted and cornered the wild beauty of the world, that she was
mine
,
a pregnant vessel, pregnant with my child, my first child. Rose said: your first child?
Not
your
first
child.
Your
first
child
has
lived
in
your
house
for
eight
years
and
you
have
been
blind
to
it.
Your
first
child
was
my
sister’s
child.
Remember
her?
You
bought
her
too.
She was staring at me. She knew, I swear, my days were numbered. Less than two weeks to live.
You
cannot
seize,
or
buy,
or
conquer,
the
wild
beauty
of
nature,
Harold.
I
have
been
waiting
to
tell
you
this
for
a
long
time.
My
twin-sister
has
been
waiting
for
eight
years.
You
were
blind
to
your
first
child.
You
shall
never
see
your
last.
They
have
inherited
the
thorn
and
the
knife.’

It was then with deadly certainty and sensitivity that I knew he was speaking the truth. His confession was true, heartrendingly true. And I remembered the gate of Home and the masked king in it upon whom I had come, the leaf that had bruised my brow: I saw it flutter again in the corridor of space. I saw the flight of the thorn into Proteus’s brow in the gate, I saw its shadow all over again upon Harold’s in the corridor. I had secured Rose’s line of sight in the gate. I had helped her instinctively, involuntarily: as though she (Rose) symbolized a palatial twin-body,
twinleaf
, twin-petal, twin-flesh, twin-thorn, in which lay my involuntary shadow, the involuntary shadow of the carnival heir in
his
suit, masked suitor, unconscious suitor.

His
suit rather than
mine
as if I were other than an incestuous lodger in Nature and lover of mother Rose, as if I were another newborn, confessional medium (however prone still to conflict), unborn, newborn, gestating stranger in her and myself.

As much as to say that his suit was both an unfinished garment upon all species in the body of nature
and
a spiritual contest, a spiritual repudiation of the abuse of mother nature that I sustained in others, shared with others through and beyond myself.

Thus it was I had instinctively, unconsciously, raised my hand against the beggar in the gate of Home, against Proteus’s masked king
and
all over again once more against Harold this time, Harold the masked proprietor of flesh and blood.

Raised my hand within a train of habit, involuntary, apparently incestuous habit; raised my hand within
involuntary
apparently stranger compulsion. Raised my
twin-hand
within a medium of passion, a medium of animus, the biting animus of mother nature ingrained into one’s blood that one directs against every abuser and exploiter.

Raised my hand to strike and kill:
not
so:
not to kill:
to
bless
my
returned
father,
returned
to
me
from
the
kingdom
of
the
Dead.

How had it happened, when had it started, such
unconscious
arbitration and change within the suit of tradition, mysterious suit, mysterious Presence overshadowing the corridor of space? I could not say but I knew that in the twin-scales of nature lay a complex balance I would need to ravel/unravel/ravel between creation and violence, art and revenge. A difficult task but a true however precarious beginning had been made with others, through others …

What was remarkable about all this, I dreamt, was that in my sudden apprehension of an unconscious alteration within the hand of nature and spirit I felt pain, great pain,
knew
the terrifying pain in the desire to kill another, knew this now as I had never felt it before; yet in that very instant was held by a dialectic of confessional spirit that addressed me as the Presence appeared to speak –

‘Nature breaks into mysterious selfhood, breaks into what is itself yet other than itself. The twin-blow that Nature delivers through you, Anselm, may turn into art, into
self-confessional
art. May illumine afresh Penelope’s garment or tapestry of tradition. May illumine afresh your relationship to Ross. Ross is another suitor whom South American/English Penelope has named her “good angel” in seeking a key to repudiate the charisma of Simon’s ascendancy over them.’ The voice ceased.

Harold had now begun to fade within the corridor of space. I cried to him before he vanished – ‘The other child.’ I cried, ‘the other Rose’s child, twin-Rose’s child,
your
last child – my half-brother, my cousin – can you tell me of him? Who is he? Where is he? Born long after me yet he seems now my twin, my hand in his, his in mine

Harold was half-visible now, half-invisible now. I saw his remorse. He knelt at my feet. ‘Proteus will tell you or show you. I cannot. I cannot.’ He held his head in his hands then looked up into the Presence overshadowing us both. He had
confessed. I had confessed. Had I confessed to Presence or Priest? The candle flickered and the flame went out. But a new match flared, the sudden lease of a new day upon the third bank of the river of space.

The task of perceiving the other in his (or her) authenticity, or of identifying the essential ‘configuration’ of a given culture, is more difficult in the twentieth century than it was in earlier epochs‚… the most obvious reason being the interpenetration of multiple modes of thought and discourse that has attended the swift expansion and intensification of international relations on every level of human activity throughout the world. To know… just which vocabulary supplies the governing value references…; to discern which grafts are likely to be rejected and which, by contrast, are fit to be accommodated in some form or another – these and the like are questions of major significance …

from
The
Future
of
the
Law
in
a
Multicultural
World,
Adda B. Bozeman (Princeton University Press, 1971)

The sun was rising now: a new sobering lease of light, a new sobering homecoming day of the law conferred I dreamt by invisible Priest or Presence (invisible paradox because
glimmeringly
perceived) within the corridor of the third bank of the river of space.

The early morning radio was playing in the corridor: a marvellous invention. Conversation floated in space and time, present space and time, past space and time, re-voiced spaces, retraced echoes, within the archives of Alicia’s live fossil museum.

‘Confessional fabric of a universal homecoming when everybody talks to everybody on the airwaves,’ Proteus’s echoing radio voice was saying as I listened, criss-crossing stations, antiphonal voices within voices (rooted in or mimicking the Voice of Presence) beneath the crucifixion, the resurrection of the sun.

‘Let me warn you of the trial you shall face further along this airwave corridor when you shall be called to answer for the deeds of your brother

‘Who is my brother?’

There was no immediate answer. Proteus’s radio voice appeared to fade, to crackle into muffled gunfire, then to resume its ancient pitch within the corridor of space, the corridor of Home – ‘It’s a new, old newsgathering day, newsgathering confessional day of the homecoming of a carnival king (of whom everyone dreams) and the private and public anguish this occasions, the private and public business it brings, the daemons and furies we need to grasp, analyse, within a procession of events, natural events,
man-made
events. All this will emerge in the trial. A trial that
started within Alicia on the day of your father’s death. To put a rough date on it! When does one’s trial truly commence? The day your father died a black Syrian magus, a ghostly merchant, appeared on the doorstep of the palace of the Rose. This was 1920. He offered Alicia a piece of sculpture which now stands, Anselm, in the corridor beside you. She paid him in tea, myrrh, gold and Demerara sugar. He bowed and accepted the precious gifts in return for a work of art that gave its purchaser a taste of ancient Greece in the modern world – in modern Palestine from whence he came – modern India, modern Asia, the modern United States, everywhere, the rebirth of refugee art seeking a home in the City of God, refugee kings seeking a new post-colonial home in the wake of the fall of many regimes, refugee family of Man. The sculpture was painted black, and when she asked its name or title he said
black
Agamemnon.
She was startled. She took it inside, touched it, kissed it. Impulse, pure impulse! Alicia was a creature of immense practicality yet unpredictable impulse. Would you believe it?
She
hid
it
away
after
that,
she
locked
it
away
from
the
sun
in
a
dusty
cupboard.
I transported it into the corridor …’

‘I had forgotten but I remember as you speak,’ I said. ‘I always wondered

‘She bought it and hid it away the day your father died.’

‘But why?’

I was startled to hear my voice played back, playing back in the Dream. A child’s ageing voice. Or was it an ageing cradled echo of the stranger, the everlasting stranger one is despite every homecoming?

I scanned the sculpture of black Agamemnon. It appeared to recline in space as in a Waterfall, Waterfall river or bath of space, with Canaima’s knife in its ribs. It wore the Alicia cap. It was a member of Canaima’s team. No sign of a thorn this time. Just the knife! It was a private and startling piece, naked yet reticent.

‘Why did she hide it away?’

‘She touched the knife and felt that
her
hand, Rose’s hand, was in yours, in Canaima’s. It was the reverse of what had happened before when
your
hand had been an involuntary extension of Rose’s. So you see it belonged in the
self-reversible
parallels, the ravelled/unravelled tapestry of a multi-faceted king in dual suitors and triple queens that we have been playing. Every unconscious suitor who repudiates our expectation of the safe return of the carnival king, who kills in the name of the law, the law of love (did not Harold purchase hate instead of love?) is involved in a pattern of unconscious sacrifice in a violent and a terrorist age. Not unconscious suit or suitor this time who raises his hand in involuntary but protective love for abused mother nature but unconscious sacrifice that becomes an instinctive,
redemptive
base in a conflict-ridden age, a base upon which the family of the Alician state resurrects the slain king (saddled with charges of the abuse of the world) – a slain king who is akin to a slain God – resurrects him through daemons and furies of poetic justice, poetic dynasty, poetic law.’

As he spoke I felt a glimmering understanding … a glimmering apprehension of the trial to come and its bearing on ‘daemons and furies’. Had not Canaima warned me in his complex dance on the first bank of the river of space that I would need to grasp and reinterpret the nature of the ‘furies’?

Proteus’s inner broadcast had subsided a little but it suddenly increased in volume – ‘Your Aunt Alicia was the most faithful of wives, the most loyal of women. And then she realized
you
had changed everything. She had paid the price demanded of Rose to have you. She had aided and abetted Rose in the punishment inflicted on your father. She had sworn to keep your identity a secret. The bond with the twin-Roses had become a contract – an agreement – to secure revenge in the end. And when the Syrian magus appeared on her doorstep she was impelled to face the full implications of
your
ascendancy over her (the legacy of responsibility you
would be summoned to unravel sooner or later) and Rose’s judgement upon her dead husband.

‘Her private contract, her private bond, became a thread into the mystery of the law. How guilty was she? Should she have broken her word? What is the law of love? What is the law of revenge? Where lies the medium of sacrifice within love and revenge? How do dynasties rise and fall, fall and rise, with the murder, the assassination of kings?’

There was a sudden hiatus within the airwaves, hiatus or subtle abyss, as the ancient/modern broadcast within my living Dream ceased. I was drawn into the complicated homecoming of human surrogates of divinity through the gateway of a piece of sculpture that had appeared on my aunt’s doorstep when I was a child. I felt the shadowy weight of self-reversible merchants and magi around the globe. It was as if the collective unit of piratical bodies (ancient Ithacan and post-war modern) in equation with the king of thieves – that I had sensed on the second bank of the river of space – had now become paradoxical merchants and magi. My aunt had paid them, those paradoxical and self-reversible magi, in tea, myrrh, gold, sugar, as if to give their trade an Imaginary sacred seal to redeem, she hoped, the revenge implications built into her contract with Rose.

In this context of self-reversible sculpture it was not the magi who brought gifts but the Alician family of state who gave of its possessions to glimpse an involvement with a core of Being, a core of metamorphosis, in which Penelope’s unfinished garment of Presence and tradition
overshadowing
the globe – snatched from her by the king of thieves – had materialized into a shape, a form, a sculpted body that had arrived, it seemed, from the margins of the world.

Not from great centres or establishments but from an obscure and marginal village in Palestine that possessed a thread of blood with ancient, long-forgotten family histories in Greece and upon Calvary.

It was as if I had been deluged by a Waterfall of Dream in
Agamemnon’s bath. I swam in the corridor of space into the charisma of the political family of Man, the complicated family of Man everywhere, divided in its allegiances out of necessity, fate, freedom. I struggled to find my footing and knew – as if I had been stabbed all over again by Canaima’s hand within myself – why Alicia had apparently run from herself, why – despite her courage – she had pushed the black Agamemnon into a dusty grave or bin.

Even now in the revived murmuring echoing voices that had resumed their inner chorus within me on the airwaves, living chorus, long dead chorus, historical personages, mythical personages, speaking from the archives of
chameleon
space (staid spatial accents, sharp accents, lyrical accents, gentle tones, ringing spatial tones, grave accents, etc., etc.) I felt fear and uncertainty in facing black
Agamemnon
again as the long Day of the twentieth century drew to a close.

Blackness was but a mask. Strip it away and one was left with features of blood on one’s doorstep.

Did I not
hear
features of sacrifice on the airwaves in the voice of a great American president? One hears with the eyes of Dream, sees with the ears of Dream. I could not be sure. Sacrificial voices are faceless until the burden is shared through one and other, man and woman. ‘Politics is
choosing
between the inherited blunders of Adam and Eve.’ President Kennedy spoke again – I assumed it was he in Proteus’s genesis radio play – Adam and Eve at the Berlin Wall, homecoming Adam, Dallas. I dreamt I heard a sudden scramble of voices in the Fall, inherited blunders, the
Waterfall
, live rock-voices, a funeral procession, followed by deathly stillness. The drought of history! Assassination. Home after Troy’s Berlin, Troy’s Cuba, Troy’s latent Vietnam, criss-crossing radio tragedies past, present and future. ‘Humanity weds every great fallen commander or ruler,’ said Proteus, ‘within a tapestry of voices, the news, displaced quotations, memorable utterances.’

I touched the knife in Agamemnon’s body. I touched the thorn of the queen Rose my mother in Alicia’s hand. A president’s inherited wounds? A king’s inherited wounds? ‘Will the legacy of an American president, the legacy of uncrowned Martin Luther King (“I have a Dream”) turn by degrees in the sacrificial medium of an age into the root of futuristic American theatre, uncrowned Irish kings, uncrowned black kings? Or – to put it differently – will the blood of sacrifice, of martyrdom, witness for a universal and protective sovereignty within tragic republics around the globe that yearn in the dynastic pigment of the unconscious for the regeneration of saving kingship, saving queenship?’

I was unable to reply except by raising another question. ‘Does there lie in the assassination of the Mahatma Gandhi a charisma of loss that fertilizes the seed of new sorrowing dynasties in Asia, a Nehru, sorrowing dynasty, a Bhutto, sorrowing dynasty, the rise of future, peasant ruling families from the soil of the “untouchables” whose champion Gandhi was?’

‘The homecoming play, political, religious,’ said the
airwave
voice of Proteus, ‘was Alicia’s dream of unconscious sacrifice lifting and surfacing into shared consciousness within cross-cultural, self-reversible, parallel existences. Within her own family she had experienced many sorrows, slavery, emancipation, grief, poverty, passion, the
scaffolding
of ruin, the pains of mortal and immortal humanity, every pattern of hunger one could name, the hunger of deprivation, the hunger of the rich, and all of this imbued her with a sense of bleak but real hope, a sense of
transfigured
bodies and ghosts, that led her to anticipate the
need
– a great abiding need – for a carnival procession in which
all
shades, all illuminations, all losses, all gains, deprivations, miseries, glories, may enter into a self-confessional treaty with democracy
and
sovereignty.

‘What she feared, Anselm, was that the sculpture of black Agamemnon on her doorstep was a premature manifestation
of an evolution of creativity and of a reformation of the heart:
premature
because
of
a
refusal
to
judge
the
self,
to
judge
one’s
frailty,
and
to
entertain
dualities,
trinities,
quadruple
associations
through
which
impossible
stature,
impossible
divinity
of 
charac
ter
,
may
still
come
into
the
theatre
of
history
when
such
“impossibility”
is
shared
by
many
actors,
broken
into
mutual
parts
, into mutual lives, shared lives, shared difficulties, shared obscurities, shared illuminations, shared
compassion
.’

I understood. Yes, I knew now clearly why she ran from herself, why she looked into me as an extension of herself, extensive living dreamer and carnival heir retracing his footsteps in hers into a theatre of law, shared trial, the trial of the self. I was on trial, Alicia was on trial, Canaima, Rose, Proteus, Harold were on trial. Nameless others. The judge was on trial. The natures of art and science, man-made order, nature-made furies or daemons, were on trial. If I were not convinced they were all on trial I would have run away from myself into the dust of history and abandoned any hope whatsoever of comprehension of the core of Being, the core of metamorphosis.