Wilson Harris - Palace of the Peacock

It was strange to wake to the world the first morning he had died he told himself a little foolishly. Donne was standing on the threshold staring blind and mad. DaSilva smiled crookedly because he felt that Donne thought he was dead. He knew better and he stretched out his hand. Donne mumbled to him like a man saying a prayer….

“It is better to be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord …” he mumbled foolishly. He stepped over the eloquent arms that reached to him in a fixation of greeting. DaSilva was dead he knew. He entered the corridor over the dead body and stood himself at strict attention by the lion door. He had stopped a little to wonder whether he was wrong in his knowledge and belief and the force that had divided them from each other — and mangled them beyond all earthly hope and recognition — was the wind of rumour and superstition, and the truth was they had all come home at last to the compassion of the nameless unflinching folk.

It was the seventh day from Mariella. And the creation of the windows of the universe was finished. Vigilance stood at the top of the sky he had gained at last following the muse of love, and I looked over his dreaming shoulder into the savannahs that reached far away into the morning everywhere. The sun rolled in the grasses waving in the wind and grew on the solitary tree. It was a vast impression and canvas of nature wherein everything looked perfect and yet at the same time unfinished and insubstantial. One had an intuitive feeling that the savannahs — though empty — were crowded. A metaphysical outline dwelt everywhere filling in blocks where spaces stood and without this one would never have perceived the curious statement of completion and perfection. The work was truly finished but no one would have known it or seen it or followed it without a trusting kinship and contagion.

The eye and window through which I looked stood now in the dreaming forehead at the top of the cliff in the sky. The grave demeanour of cattle and sheep roamed everywhere in the future of distance, lurking in pencils and images of cloud and sun and leaf. Horsemen — graven signs of man and beast — stood at attention melting and constant like water running on a pane of glass. The sun grew higher still and the fluid light turned and became a musical passage — a dark corridor and summons and call in the network of the day. We stood there — our eye and shoulder profound and retiring — feeling for the shadow of our feet on the ground. The light rolled and burned into quicksilver and hair shining in the window of my eye until it darkened. I found the courage to make my first blind wooden step. Like the step of the tree in the distance. My feet were truly alive I realized, as were my dreaming shoulder and eye; as far flung and distant from me as a man in fever thinks his thumb to be removed from his fingers; far away as heaven’s hand. It was a new sensation and alien body and experience encompassing the ends of the earth. I had started to walk at last — after a long infancy and dreaming death — in the midst of mutilation and chaos that had no real power to overcome me. Rather I felt it was the unique window through which I now looked that supported the life of nature and gave it a full and invisible meaning and perfection in the way I knew my hands and feet were formed and supported at this instant.

I had never before looked on the blinding world in this trusting manner — through an eye I shared only with the soul, the soul and mother of the universe. Across the crowded creation of the invisible savannahs the newborn wind of spirit blew the sun making light of everything curious hands and feet, neck, shoulder, forehead, material twin shutter and eye. They drifted, half-finished sketches in the air, until they were filled suddenly from within to become living and alive. I saw the tree in the distance wave its arms and walk when I looked at it through the spiritual eye of the soul. First it shed its leaves sudden and swift as if the gust of the wind that blew had ripped it almost bare. The bark and wood turned to lightning flesh and the sun which had been suspended from its head rippled and broke into stars that stood where the shattered leaves had been in the living wake of the storm. The enormous starry dress it now wore spread itself all around into a full majestic gown from which emerged the intimate column of a musing neck, face and hands, and twinkling feet. The stars became peacocks’ eyes, and the great tree of flesh and blood swirled into another stream that sparkled with divine feathers where the neck and the hands and the feet had been nailed.

This was the palace of the universe and the windows of the soul looked out and in. The living eyes in the crested head were free to observe the twinkling stars and eyes and windows on the rest of the body and the wings. Every cruel mark and stripe and ladder had vanished. I saw a face at one of the other constructions and windows from my observation tower. It was the face of one of the crew that had died. Carroll, I said, nudging my shoulder, as one would address an oracle for confirmation. Carroll was whistling. A solemn and beautiful cry — unlike a whistle I reflected — deeper and mature. Nevertheless his lips were framed to whistle and I could only explain the difference by assuming the sound from his lips was changed when it struck the window and issued into the world. It was an organ cry almost and yet quite different I reflected again. It seemed to break and mend itself always — tremulous, forlorn, distant, triumphant, the echo of sound so pure and outlined in space it broke again into a mass of music. It was the cry of the peacock and yet I reflected far different. I stared at the whistling lips and wondered if the change was in me or in them. I had never witnessed and heard such sad and such glorious music. I saw a movement and flutter at another window in the corner of my eye like a feather. It was Schomburgh’s white head. He too was listening rapt and intent. And I knew now that the music was not an hallucination. He listened too, like me. I saw he was free to listen and to hear at last without fearing a hoax. He stood at his window and I stood at mine, transported beyond the memory of words.

The dark notes rose everywhere, so dark, so sombre, they broke into a fountain — light as the rainbow — sparkling and immaterial as invisible sources and echoes. The savannahs grew lonely as the sea and broke again into a wave and forest. Tall trees with black marching boots and feet were clad in the spurs and sharp wings of a butterfly. They flew and vanished in the sky with a sound that was terrible and wonderful; it was sorrowful and it was mystical. It spoke with the inner longing of woman and the deep mastery of man. Frail and nervous and yet strong and grounded. And it seemed to me as I listened I had understood that no living ear on earth can truly understand the fortune of love and the art of victory over death without mixing blind joy and sadness and the sense of being lost with the nearness of being found. Carroll whistled to all who had lost love in the world. This was his humorous whimsical sadness.

I was suddenly aware of other faces at other windows in the Palace of the Peacock. And it seemed to me that Carroll’s music changed in the same instant. I nudged the oracle of my dreaming shoulder. The change and variation I thought I detected in the harmony were outward and unreal and illusory: they were induced by the limits and apprehensions in the listening mind of men, and by their wish and need in the world to provide a material nexus to bind the spirit of the universe.

It was this tragic bond I perceived now — as I had felt and heard the earlier distress of love. I listened again intently to the curious distant echo and dragging chain of response outside my window. Indeed this was a unique frame I well knew now to construct the events of all appearance and tragedy into the vain prison they were, a child’s game of a besieged and a besieging race who felt themselves driven to seek themselves — first, outcast and miserable twins of fate — second, heroic and warlike brothers — third, conquerors and invaders of all mankind. In reality the territory they overwhelmed and abandoned had always been theirs to rule and take.