Wilson Harris - The Waiting Room

The extraordinary fascination allied to curious terror of the ancient storm sprang from a peculiar helplessness, an order of helplessness which matched, like instantaneous stroke and flare, the involuntary conversion and obliteration of every role, fixture and preconception within himself. For even as she lay beneath him (or appeared to lie beneath him) in lightning upheaval and distress — he could not yet bring himself to believe that it was he who had inflicted this explosive burden upon her. And in fact he knew he was as helpless as she and in process of being informed by her about himself as if she were his most intimate victim or soul and companion in debauchery, whose visualization of the spectacle of the past made him feel he had no alternative but to shrink in ultimate horror from himself.

She it was who sought to address him and inform him of another which was, after all, no one but himself yet whom he still could not recall…. It was she indeed whose design it was to spare him nothing of the incredible role he had played. Drunk. Lurched into the room.

Incredible because the very conception of himself in such a void of memory seemed a compulsion to endorse the worst suspicions of himself he could entertain, chronic and violent assumption of himself in all eternity — bewildering pre-judgment as well as post-judgment of one’s own unfamiliar conduct. What principle was there, after all, he asked himself, which would take inevitable ascendancy over one — in the absence of one’s self-possession or grip or control — but the exercise of debauchery, degeneracy of conduct?

He was utterly convinced of the degradation and hopelessness of ultimate exposure which now lay before him, when there began to flash into view the very recklessness of grace, species of grace, blood of the elements, rage for beauty beyond every mould of refinement he had once assiduously cultivated that now lay shattered on the floor.

Drunk. Lurched into the room. THE VERY RECKLESS SPECIES OF GRACE. His countenance grew now almost black with astonishment at its own revelation of the beauty of freedom residing at the very heart of the storm: he felt himself part of the wildest glow upon the spectacles of air and water, like an incalculable and neutral maternal vessel of all the ages within whom and which an indestructible wave of emotion broke his chain (as well as hers) — shattered his role (as well as hers) of indispensable ruling function they shared and worshipped— broke in some uncertain degree the grip of such an assumption and ushered him with a magnanimity and authority he fleetingly glimpsed into her void of colour — their void of the crowd of instinct — broken mould of cruel refinement — sheer precipice of action upon the timeless thrust and crest of which he ran like a white fire, whiter than snow. Or rather she it was who sped before him in the waiting room upon each black wave….

SUSAN DREW HIS FINGERTIPS ACROSS THE GLASS OF HER EYES to erase the trail of hallucination, cloven ground of the sea, within each stricken ornament on the floor, fractured member and crew. INCREDIBLE THAT IN THE MIDST OF AN EXPLOSION — EXPLOSION OF PREMISES — such involuntary remorse and tenderness (on his part as well as hers) became the cradle of fantasy, paint of restoration, instinct for depth and survival: uncanny depth, living distance, joints of catastrophe, the mesmerism of being fractured and remaining whole. She drew closer to him now, it seemed, than ever before, to substantiate an economic and viable truth or unity within a supreme fiction, annihilation: food of the gods: morsels of divinity. Mill of the gods whose trail — common (or was it uncommon?) ground, iota of landscape and skyscape — evoked now the living grain of reality. She began to recall, in limitless, ambivalent detail, all over again, the feud with him she had endured….

The antique shop which stood at the corner of Memoir Street belonged to her but he too had invested capital in it. Then bitten by the sun, fever of restlessness, they arranged for a mortgage. Wild goose chase. Atlantic. Atlantis. He was a rolling stone, as she then was…. Across the “broken” landscape of the years he seemed now — more than ever — part and parcel of each burning prick once again in her eye. Prick of curiosity, foundation, feather and stone. Doctor and lover rolled into one, half-instrument, half-captain. Voyage of convalescence he instigated and supported after her first (or was it her last?) operation.

And indeed from first to last — between his masked crew of spliced assumptions and hers — they appeared equally to smile (as if they tolerated each other’s lust or love) and snarl like jealous agents and conspirators whose pilot trade and industry, jigsaw of the affections — even when supported by apparent community of interests — still aroused fierce reflections of ideal control or function and, in consequence, bred a continuous cycle of self-contempt, dread of — hostility towards — the other. They were similar in this blind and moody sculpture of reaction, friction and masthead, axe and chip.

And within the ancient vessel and metropolis of the storm, flying crumb, they appeared locked in a paradoxical struggle for the unbroken life-blood of freedom: commanding gulf (blunt features, levers and lovers) — servile gulf (submissive features, lovers and levers) — contractual gulf (show window, charm, fashion, mime, execution…).

This was the bewildering and continuous duel of powers — fetish of beauty — in which they were involved: the enormous irrationality of unruled (or unruling) sensibility and the “broken” need and obsession for a logic of crippled reassurance, absolute power, even if that meant the shattered and shattering appearances of a tyranny of the damned.

“Broken” masthead of execution. Unwinking eye, winking light….

“Broken” masthead of love. Technical illumination of the soul, primitive darkness of the body….

“Broken” snapshot of consciousness. SHE LAY WITHIN HIS OPERATING THEATRE. Doctor and lover rolled into one. He approached her, pistol in hand, dealer in menaces and self-deceptions whose object it was to sell her to the highest bidder — shatter her, riddle her, grind her — lens as well as drum, eye of crystal and crunch of bone, deck of reality. Ship of illusion. And she appeared to submit to him — to his craft of fire and nature — in order to unfurl a new sail and conviction: she drew him in, held him up, thicket of storm, as if he were her eternal sculpture of overcoming fear, and she his eternal flag and quarry — LADY OF THE BEASTS.

The sensation she recalled was pain, aftermath of living excision, of unconscious event, post-anaesthetic, post-soporific — waking pain (instinct with its own dreaming or dreamless iconography) — acute confrontation between buried past and revival in the present. He had operated upon her eyes: her lips moved addressing “him” as if he were the man in question — one Dr. Sage. Sage to Sibyl. Wizard to witch. Master to mistress. Fiend to bitch. Instrument. Susan …. In the ricochet and echo of dreams — momentum, career, medium of arousal as well as extinction, operating theatre as well as waiting room — he appeared to her armed with unseemly pistol and knife. The stone of the sun flashed, assaulted her, ripped the veil, altered the curtains of attention, texture of station and flight. It was as if the cloven world she truly saw in the remote distance, far beneath the blind of names, assumptions, letters of invocation, self-created skies or roof of constellation, god’s hair or flesh, was at first entirely masked, snowbound. Snowbound, masked and still studded with crystal self-deception, eyes or hollows of clarity. For all she knew she may have been flung back into an early premature dawn, ancient of suns. Like a vain flag unfurled as one flew north over a winter landscape which slept after the cruel fantasy of the tropics, relative seal or glare. Stricken blind. Iceball or eyeball. In which she felt the incongruous root of memory — green stem or leaf. Incongruous marriage of sensations — spiked heel, pool…. It was the spell of uncanny investiture, the archaic compulsion — apparent bewilderment — of the soul — rib of male and female — needle of doctor and patient, joystick … pilot … space …. The blazing abstract scarof instrumental day now slowly faded into darkness, thiefof night or creation, whomshe loved and hated in turnwith all the violence of separate convictions ….