Wilson Harris - Companions of the Day and Night

“I am much better now.”

“Agoraphobia?” asked the youth. “I know of people who suffer from exposure to open places. To sea and land. A constriction, a helplessness, assails them.”

“I suffer from …” he was about to say “gravity” but stifled the complaint. Fall into surf of deafness, fall into surf of blindness. Was there an insuperable element between man and man, an unbridgeable chasm between culture and culture? Erection without door? Chasm without erection? “May I see.?” He took an article from the young man’s hand in his desire to touch and be touched, to feel, to know. Had seen it before but now saw it again as if he had not seen it before and as though a new religious feeling (and response on his part) arose from it. He touched the exquisite self-deceiving brazier, ran his finger around the wide-brimmed self-evasive hat, wide-brimmed distillation of fire that addressed him now of all things like a sun of mist, an expan sive halo. “You have thinned it out”, he could not help crying in his astonishment, “into an expansion of the thorn of the gods. Brazier. Halo. Technology.”

“Easter,” said the youth. He looked insolent and yet sad. “A halo always appears upon the fire-eater’s head at this time of the year. It’s the trademark of Easter and”, he added, “of Christmas too.”

The Idiot held it up. Easter Christ. Easter technology. Christmas Christ. Christmas technology. He could not help laughing a little at himself. The young salesman smiled too, irrepressible humour, lips thin as bone, human shell, indistinct echo/halo of blood.

“This wrinkle,” the Idiot said as if he addressed both sun and surf, “why this? Why a wrinkle? Christ has no wrinkles.”

“You will find many wrinkles on the old, old fire-god Huehueteotl,” the young man said stubbornly. “The old, old fire-god is older than the oldest priest or nun who may ever have lived in history.”

“Hueheuteotl. Christ. I do not see the connection. A halo in the context of Huehueteotl’s brazier perhaps. A wrinkle never.” The Idiot was on the defensive, defensive fall into brow of clown, wave of misgiving, controversial brow, self-divided prison. Earth.

“This halo is a wave,” cried the youth as though he were shouting a newspaper headline of disaster at air or sea, or advertising a new play, a new heady paradise, a new film, a new expression. “Can’t you hear me?”

“I hear nothing. I am going deaf. I am falling.”

“Fire and wave together. Wrinkled youth. Wrinkled soul. Way of the Newborn. Can’t you see me?”

“I see nothing,” said the Idiot. “I am going blind. I am falling. Nothing except economies of nakedness. The rat-race of love.”

“Nakedness,” the young man was outraged. “How can he be naked when he wears these?” He was pointing to flattened bullets the Idiot had overlooked that dangled from Christ’s head like earspools painted deep, painted red, opaque manufacture of blood beneath grey-haired thinning haloes. Technology of fire. Technology of water. Animism of blind, deaf Capital. Earth.

It was a deafening commodity for an unconfessed tycoon, innocent falling tycoon, to buy or sell on the Way of the Cross and an indistinct uproar, an indistinct clamour, assailed him now. A wildness had been secreted in his deafness, in the jingle of his coins, which matched the indistinct murmur of millions crying “Merde, Mardie” as he bought his pre-Columbian/post-Columbian cloven god. A wildness had been secreted in the clash of haloes (fire-eater/fire-saviour) shouting “Merde, Mardie”, indistinct shouts, jingle of coins, he coiled around his head in the mint of suns as he bought his sacrified cloven Christ. Deaf. Blind. He had banked … he had purchased … how many million shouts, gold shouts, bronze shouts?

“Am I unwell — well — well?” Just an echo of a voice in the sun, in the wind, in the elements. Deep. High. Indescribable cleavage. The suffering creation of the gods.

*

Idiot Nameless retired against the pyramid of the sun. The echo of a voice “I” had come out of the ground as out of bone and blood he banked in a wave of gods. Banked floods (surf or sea of emotion), banked shores (wave of obsessions). Which was inner strand, which outer chasm or precipice?

He ascended, eyes riveted, nailed to the steps leading up to the top of the pyramid of the sun. How many human hearts he wondered had been plucked from bodies there to feed the dying light of the sun and create an obsession with royal sculptures, echoing stone?

As though what remained in the wake of ex-heart, disengaged heart — in the wake of ultimate sacrifice — were a cloak to be worn by the high priest of the sun as he intoned his lament “Merde, Mardie” and sought shelter against the night, the rain of night.

It was time to take stock of others as hollow bodies and shelters into which one fell. Hollow newspaper into which one fell, newsworthy sacrifice, wrinkled skin, FIRING SQUAD OF RAIN. Headline. Heartline. STOCKMARKET SHELTER, CITY RAINS. Deadline, CANVAS REQUIRED, SACRIFICE REQUIRED.

For centuries it seemed to him now he had been ascending, descending, sliding, falling into rain inch by inch, into shelters of paint, shelters of stone. Sacrificed paint. Sacrificed stone. Lament for the dying sun. This was the altar of his malaise, Idiot shelter, Idiot fascination, fall into the sculptures of the greatest men (upon whom? from whom? times rained).

Fall into the skin of emperors, admirals, conquistadores , kings at the corner of a street, Great Ladies, Beatrice, Joanna, centre of a square, Way of the Dead, as though these were his sacrificed bodies and he (Fool, Clown) were high priest of the elements after all. High priest of stone rain. Rain Emperor. HIGH PRIEST OF STONE RAIN

The Idiot fell from the precipice of the sun into imperial mist , atmosphere, cloak of emperor, rain that drenched him upon his pedestal in a nameless city. He was alone up there, beached, abandoned, in the middle of his great fall, great square. Carved, illustrious rain. Disengaged heart, hollow cloak, absent sun within which the Fool secreted himself now.

Idiot spark in stone emperor upon his pedestal above the square of a city whose name he had forgotten. The traffic of a great metropolis rolled beneath him, moved in the rain, sometimes seemed to stop at the heart of night, sometimes to edge its way forward. Mexico City? Madrid? Paris? London? New York?. Where was it? The Stone Emperor Rain had forgotten, had forgotten his own name, his own voice, his own city. In his sacrificed spaces (mosaic of cities) the fallen Idiot spark blown across landscapes nestled now, spark buried in rain, spark buried in stone.

Would spark run by undreamt-of degrees into the emperor’s hand? Would spark lift the rain god’s imperial hand to inscribe with a finger another eyelid of sun, another eyelid of dawn within nameless cities the emperor had forgotten?

Emperor Rain — half mist, half stone on his high stage — had forgotten where he stood. The traffic edged its way around him, past him, sparked edge he reflected as it reflected him, sparked chasm he glimpsed as it glimpsed him in a mutual pool upon which the rain dashed its rivets of stars. The Fool’s eyes were flattened in the emperor’s night head. The pools on the ground looked flattened too within the starred rain as if to ponder a distinction between the nature of seeing (the nature of something glimpsed) and the nature of passivity (the nature of something reflected ).

In the degree that a genuine transaction of vision (rather than reflection) informed the high priest (fallen high priest) the Fool had riveted it there as water rivets fire; as water wears naked fire and fire wears the hollow disengaged heart of rain into which it bites and burns to make day out of night. The idiot friction of naked fire, naked water, naked day, naked night, within each other’s self-contradictory hollow pool, hollow flame was the movement of an eye, the movement of being glimpsed by each other across ages, across reflected passive galaxies, across reflected passive technologies, across reflected passive cultures.