Wilson Harris - The Angel at the Gate

Mother Diver’s shawl of curative doubt (as Mary perceived it) enveloped Sebastian and he shifted slightly in bed beside her, uncertain of Father Inequality that gnawed into his frame and made him a lesser mortal than other men, or of Father Equality that raised him in Mother Diver’s arms into a hidden star amongst light years in the womb of space.

The intricacies of that shawl became clearer to Mary as the taut wave of shadow in the room also lifted the room and the house in Dolphin Street until they sailed backwards in time — one human, diminutive light-year back—1981 to 1980.

Now she and diminutive Sebastian were standing on the pavement outside the great supermarket whose goods she had “previously” inspected in “future time”. The sensation of having travelled backwards from 1981 (that lay in the future) into now (1980) that lay in the present reminded her of the slicing logic of John’s scissors in Paradise Park only “yesterday” or “the day before yesterday” that lay in the “future”; another measure of eccentric circuit around the years; reminded her also of Sukey Tawdrey’s eyes falling out of her head to become strangely wider perhaps, more open, in backward glance. That was Mary’s glance now, the strange width, the curious openness of apparently lost yet apparently regained eye for parallel times. It was all symptomatic of crisis — a world crisis — that raises the kingdom of mothers and daughters.

The rain had ceased and the pavement in front of the supermarket glistened like an urban mirage of a stream through that eye. The sun shone bright through a flattened beach of cloud, rainbow iris of sky in the head of space spoke of oceanic distances, the light on the pavement spoke of openness of perception to the curvature of the earth.

The supermarket lay halfway between a church spire at one corner and a subway station at another, sunken in the pavement under one’s feet. This was the religious beat not only of policemen and pedestrians but of an old woman draped, it would seem, in all her possessions, pots, pans, a bag with clothes, and an intricate array of small tins that glistened now in oceanic sun like scales or circular feathers.

Mary’s return to the “now” of 1980 within eyes she possessed that had slipped forwards and backwards across the centuries made her see the old woman as she never had before. Was she (that old woman) resurrection of crisis, was she Mother Diver? How could Mary have passed her in the street so often and not really have seen her? Mary had gone to Paradise Park whereas Jenny was here (was she not?) under a shawl patrolling the pavement between church spire and subway or underground tunnel.

Now — for the first time that she could recall coming face to face with Mother Bleak Freedom, Bleak Necessity — Mary’s wide-opened eyes were focused on the scales and circular feathers of aroused terror of existence. Each scale or feather was a glittering envelope and Mary wondered about secretions of egg or foetus but these — if they existed in some artificial form — were overcast by shawl of “curative doubt”. What was clear were slivers of subsistence that had been deposited in each scale or envelope or feather. Particles of cheese resembled doubtful gold. Fragments of sardine resembled the colour of inflated money. Grains of sugar resembled precious yet valueless metal. Crumbs of bread resembled alchemies of failed substance. A sliver of green vegetable resembled oil. Such slices or minute hands of the clock of uncertain wealth were the old woman’s irreducible morsels of eternity, and as she patrolled the pavement and stopped in front of the supermarket, she conducted endless conversations with a million spectres that clung to each morsel. Passers-by ignored her or took her for granted but Mary was held as never before. How could anyone not see who she was — from what depths she had come from the revolving past into the uncertain present?

Some spectres to which she spoke arose from areas of famine around the globe. “Now, now, children,” the old woman said in a soothing voice across the sea to invisible presences. Invisible, Mary knew, but with Sukey Tawdrey’s cousinly/sisterly eyes in her head, she (Mary) dreamt that she saw across the seas what Mother Diver saw as she placed her lips to Sebastian’s unconscious lips in bed beside her as to suffering, hungry spirit, genius of famine. The rain had largely washed away from the pavement a drunk man’s vomit. The stain that remained was the colour of gold to buy food for millions. Sebastian slept like drunk, humanitarian rich and diminutive skeleton in Mother Diver’s cupboard of a shawl, so that pots and pans were able to embrace him. She kissed him with her divided lips. It was a holiday from purest loathing, a holy day or mixture of degraded attachment and incorrigible affection.

Some of the spectres that clung to Mother Diver arose from areas of redundancy to address her on her beat from church spire to underground. The old woman stood quite close to Sebastian now, and Mary could hear her talking to a respectable saleswoman who had lost her job that afternoon.

“We were told”, the saleswoman was saying, “to keep our stocks low, Mother Diver.”

“You should have known then…” Mother Diver said to the saleswoman. “I’ve been keeping my stocks full….”

“We didn’t see”, the saleswoman confessed, “that we were being taken over….”

“By me,” said Mother Diver. “By me. Imagine that.”

“We didn’t realize until today the shop was being cleared for someone to take over….”

“Me,” said old Mother Diver. “Me. Imagine that.”

She stared at Sebastian as the respectable saleswoman vanished. A couple of police officers were advancing along the pavement. Or were they descending the church spire? Mother Diver comprehended Sebastian’s fear, and placed her body upon his until he vanished into the pavement. She then called to the policemen, distracted them from their beat, and allowed Sebastian to fly with the speed he had acquired. In actual fact, he was entitled to the drug, on this occasion, by legitimate intercourse with a chemist secreted in Mother Diver’s shawl, prescription from a GP, but a sudden irrational fear of the heights of the law inserted into the spire had caught him and made him unaccountably guilty.

The extraordinary powers of Mother Diver were clear in the riddle of her behaviour. On the face of things, it looked comic that she should absorb the saleswoman’s possessions, that her stocks should be full, the saleswoman’s reduced or exhausted. But this was so absurd, it ceased to be comic. It lay outside of the reach of conventional comedy. Was it tragic then that Mother Diver was rich — however dubiously wealthy — whereas the other, the respectable saleswoman, was destitute? But that was too outrageous to be tragic. It lay beyond the reach of conventional tragedy. Then there was the notion of genius of famine and the gold of the drunk man staining the pavement to feed millions. And here — in loathsome territory — one came closer perhaps to Mother Diver’s terrifying judgement of love that had occasioned guilt in Sebastian under the spire of the law. Guilt? Or was it something else, some nameless emotion?

Comedy? No. A kind of unsmiling humour, yes.

Tragedy? No. A kind of eccentric nemesis, yes.

Guilt? No. Not guilt. Except in response to bleak love.

Mother Diver’s arts of the “kingdom of mothers” possessed no classification, purest loathing yet incorrigible affection for desperate humanity….

An odd vibration shook the world, the timbers of the ship in Dolphin Street. Mary felt an indescribable cosmic tenderness she could not fathom. She turned to Sebastian and made love as if Stella had indeed vanished from their bed. Yet Mother Bleak Love was there and had moved the world a faint inch or two into curative doubt of all conventional classifications to absorb the shock of a wave, the shock of compassion.*