Wilson Harris - Black Marsden - A Tabula Rasa Comedy

In his diary of infinity Goodrich had been constructing for many years a diagram to symbolize his existences on earth through intensities of love and hate. For one lived many lives, died many deaths through others. There was a renascence or flowering, or a deeper accent of eclipse upon buried personalities — actors in a tabula rasa drama — in every encounter one enjoyed or endured. Something died. Something was born. Each element of participation carried within it new and undreamt-of senses or constellations.

Goodrich knew the Dean Bridge quite well and loved the view when he looked into the valley. Nothing perverse. He had no intention of leaping there himself. Nor was he morbidly held by past suicides, poor guardian angels roped to poorer unguarded devils sentenced by fate. Yet he was intuitively aware of enigmatic squares of suspended darkness and lights knitted into the pawn of himself (the knight, bishop, king, child of dreams in himself) — his own voluntary and involuntary chessboard.

As he looked over the bridge with the occasional rumble of a vehicle in his back he saw not ruined man, doomed men dropping below but a curious self-portrait of himself aged five standing (or drawn) within one of those squares of light or darkness, suspended dark sentence, suspended light arena of judgement. It was a traumatic target, traumatic suspension, naïve, enigmatic grieving child with the head of lost and found men on his shoulders, lost and found self-judge, lost and found self-judged.

He was five when his stepfather Rigby vanished in the heartland of Brazil. Vanished into a square of Bastard Sky or Creek as Harp’s father Hornby had vanished. No wonder, Goodrich mused, when he met Harp they had taken to one another like a house on fire, like lost brothers and the shadow of a curious host spectre enveloped them. They were drawn to each other upon the same square as it were — tabula rasa slate inserted into the globe.

The strength of coincidence now seemed a property of bias. Biased property one was inclined to say. Hornby and Rigby Ltd. Goodrich could not help marvelling in himself as he stared into the distant Water of Leith. Life was stranger than property. His stepfather Rigby had vanished in Brazil the very year, the very day Hornby and Hornby had established a pattern of legend in the Arctic. It was a judgement and equally acquittal of intuitive spaces knitted into the globe. It was an intimate parallel, Pole and Equator.

Rigby was a temperamental Scot who had made or lost fortunes in a year or a day. When he was down-and-out he knew how to scrape the bottom of the barrel. He knew how to make ends meet. (It was a lesson Goodrich’s mother had never forgotten when hard times descended upon them and Rigby vanished.) When he was well off he knew how to spend magnanimously, wholeheartedly. He made loyal friends and bitter enemies. On his disappearance it was rumoured there was more to his death than met the eye. Rumour had it he had killed a man in self-defence, killed one of his Brazilian mates, and that the rest had turned on him, crazed by the jungle, tried him, sentenced him and hanged him. A crude and bitter tale. A tale that was consistent nevertheless with a man or a god who lived extremes, extreme existences on earth.

A tale that grew into a legend until it eclipsed all reasonable fact. But what are or were reasonable facts? Had Rigby quarrelled with his mates? Had he left them? Had he plunged towards the Orinoco or the Amazon? Had he advanced alone into the depths of the Bush? Advanced into a pawn of the elements, claustrophobic fire, claustrophobic noons, suns, claustrophobic waterfalls, precipices of sunset, tropics of night? …

A lorry passed on the Dean Bridge. And Goodrich lit a cigarette. He smoked rarely. Stubbed it out. It tasted like a rag….

On the book of Sky and Creek he now drew and sketched himself afresh aged five. In that sketch or square he uprooted the rain, the snow, uprooted the Equator, uprooted the Poles. Space age five.

“What I am sketching,” Goodrich addressed his spectre of infinity in the sleeve of earth, roped to the sky of his mind, “is a kind of cartoon I suppose. Forgive me for taking such liberties, O Spectre. I am sure there are multiplications of laughter in the workshop of the gods, divine cartoons of absurd bliss.

“Now take me at age five. That age is out there now. There are other ages, of course, I could sketch of the child in one’s heart or head. But the one I am now looking at is square five into which my stepfather vanished when I was five years old. Harp’s father too. Rigby and Hornby Ltd. What an establishment or property of consciousness. Muse of adventure.

“So that while it is pointless denying the sentence of the muse written into the elements, snow, ice, fire, water — while it is pointless denying this, it is justifiable, on the other hand, to dream of acquittal through a phenomenon or family tree, Brother Snow, Brother Fire. In the comedy of an interfused reading of the elements a capacity for genesis is born or reborn within us: a capacity to re-sensitize our base relations, Brother Cruelty, Brother Hate — to re-sensitize our biased globe into moveable squares within and beyond every avalanche of greed or despair: re-sensitize phenomenon fire through caveats of ice, phenomenon snow through caveats of fire, to re-sensitize the phenomenon of the Equator within each crystal flower at the Poles….”

“Damn you!” A raucous quavering shout came. “Damn you.” A car ground to a halt. Goodrich leapt. “Are you mad?” cried the voice. “What in heaven’s name are you at? How could you … how could you step back like that off the pavement on to the road?” The driver was furious.

“I am sorry,” said Goodrich. The voice barked afresh, angry eyes glared afresh. Then the car moved on, a brisk trail of inquisitive vehicles followed, vanished over the bridge and left Goodrich stunned, desolate. He had earned the rebuke. His spectre of infinity collapsed at his feet and lay in ruins like a beautiful imaginary pack of cards strewn everywhere; knights and kings and bishops, spades, diamonds, hearts, clubs all on their backside on the road.

He could have been lying there now himself. Imagine that. Run over by that car. He had indeed absentmindedly stepped back on to the road. It was true. If he had been run over would he have had a flashing moment of respite to square the circle upon Sky and Creek? Square Zero? Uprooted end? Uprooted globe?

Clothed in despondency he began to make his way slowly now along the pavement towards the bus stop hidden in a couple of trees at the end of the bridge. Then came the unearthly sound of bagpipes which made him forget himself, stop, listen. Did it rise from the old Dean village? Or did it ascend from far below in the Water of Leith? Or did it come from the city borne across the distance? The thread of music addressed him — thrilled him — immensely plaintive — conjuring up a fire music, a water music. And the fallen bishops, knights, kings, spades, hearts, heads, clubs were singing in space through Harp parallel elements….

The wind blew a straggling portrait of leaves towards him. A taxi was approaching.

“Taxi. Taxi.”

He was whirled over the bridge to the dying chorus of Harp’s unearthly bagpipes.

Goodrich had not been in contact with his visitors for some days after the narrow shave he had had on the Dean Bridge but descending from the rock garden in the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens he came almost face to face with Jennifer. She did not appear to see him. Had she deliberately looked through him and ignored him as they passed each other, or was it a genuine distraction which possessed her and made her blind to him at that moment?

His invisibility was embarrassing. He wondered whether he had offended her that morning when she came into the sitting-room in her beauty pack. He had spoken tactlessly perhaps and left the room rather unceremoniously.