Wilson Harris - The Carnival Trilogy

I felt silences within that hollow despite the sound of the traffic. Not only recovered heart but recovered ear encompassed those silences. Silent music. How did one respond to silent music? There it was. Seen music, unheard music. Recovered eye. Recovered ear. Recovered heart. Sight, sound, memory etched themselves into silences replete with harmony: etched themselves through recovered being yet ran upon the fine branches of trees that the dead king perceived as the bus moved, stopped, moved again in the vicinity of Kensington Gardens.

In the winter light that seemed to echo with intimate yet far-away vistas arching through Waterfall Oracle, I felt the imprint of black fire, black tone, numinous wonderful shadow. That imprint or sensation was so acute, so deep , Masters was caught by the Carnival mask of Lazarus, mind of Lazarus in his mind , as the heart of Weyl stood in his heart. Yes, mind, heart, shadow! Imprint of fire, shadow, was the mind of Lazarus in his mind to attune him to ivories of sensation, russets, and other alphabets of the elements within every hollow epitaph of memory, every hollow grave.

Winter lapsed into the carpet of autumn leaves under the bole of a tree that the bus was passing. The trampled leaves appeared to smoke with an arousal of spirit, trampled greenness, trampled yellow paint, in the hollow depression of time and place from which one arises to discourse with silent music within the roar of a great city …

The factory seemed different to Masters’ Carnival Lazarus’ eyes in this actual day of arousal of spirit; different from how it had appeared to him during night shift. Yet night shift had seemed to him but manufactured day, susceptible, at the same time, to blazing stars and constellations.

In the winter day the factory was susceptible to artificial noon. The lights were still on as at night but they were different, he perceived again, from the illuminations he recalled when he blacked out. They were deceptively natural, less glaring. Why should night glare and day time industry under the same manufactured stars be deceptively natural sky or cave of illumination in this late twentieth-century age?

The walls of the factory seemed sharper somehow, greyer somehow, to Masters’ Lazarus’ eyes. They seemed composed of slices and excavations, raw material blood that was white or grey not red, sliced pallor of noon, real noon (whatever that was), artificial noon (whatever that was).

It was this elusive distinction between noon as universal artifice and sliced bread of reality that sobered the Carnival dead king Masters — if he needed sobering at all — and drew him to perceive how close his shadow was to all industrial revolutions, ghost towns, ghost factories, ghost cradles, all hollows, all realms, within the emotion of transplanted arousal of spirit.

Double arousal. Transplant. Resurrection.

It was a liberation yet a burden, transplant/resurrection. He perceived the sadness of a world that was resourceful yet deprived, he perceived the roots of aching memory, the cave, the nursery fable that the dead bring on their backs to be patented anew in Santa Claus commercials, the study, the skin transplants of Christmas, the masks, the oddest commotion in aroused blood, the humour of lust, as workers idled a little and contemplated their coming holiday.

It was the objectivity of Lazarus-spirit, yes, but in the reanimation of mystical organs, it evoked vistas of shocking illusion, shocking power to be all things to all men, power to deceive the corruptible with the corruption of magic. “Oh mind of Lazarus,” said Masters, “what a temptation it is: to see through all things, all peoples, to rule with the power of the grave.”

He looked across the apparently real, the apparently artificial light of noon and waved to one of the West Indians he had come to see. He had cultivated a good accord with the two operators of Madame Guillotine but was astonished — despite his insight into the powers he now possessed — when Jackson, the older operator, rushed across tempestuously to greet him, to seize his magnetic Lazarus hand, and to shake it staunchly with a great demonstration of affection. Affection? No, something else. It was awe, I dreamt. Expectation of wonders. “I sorry James ain’t here to greet you, Everyman,” Jackson cried, “he had a narrow shave. Lucky devil! He swears your magic did the trick, that you pulled him back from the pit.”

“Me?” Masters felt his misgivings were being confirmed. “What did I do?” He smiled secretly, self-mockingly, with sudden pleasure that enormous as his powers appeared to be he was helpless in this instant and could not see into Jackson’s mind and read the tale of James whom he (Masters) — it would seem — had pulled back from the pit. Jackson was having a late tea break close to noon and he drew Masters to a table. “You gave him some damn frozen bubble to wear on his chest, remember?”

Masters had forgotten. “Did I?” then he remembered. “Something from Waterfall Oracle, shaped like a horse?”

“Horse, yes, he was driving home on the highway and dropped off into a doze at the wheel. When he wake he was in a kind of ravine, at the bottom of an embankment. The car lay on its back.”

“Good god,” said Masters. “I see it, yes I do.”

“Not a scratch. Sound as an unbroken egg. He was clutching the bubble horse. It had saved him. He remembered the dream he had had the moment he fell asleep. You were there, it was a river, you were a huge bubbling horse under the car. The rapids of history. He was about to topple into a pit. But you kept the car on your back. He saw your face through the windshield. You broke the fall, you broke the rapids. You let the car down softly though it had overturned. You saved him. What a Christmas gift!”

“A dream,” Masters murmured. “Just a dream. I am no magician.”

Jackson chuckled. “Ask James for his wife and he would consent, Everyman. The way he talk when I see him last night! He find religion in a dream. It was real. He would fall down now and worship you, Masters, more than he love Madame Guillotine who fill his pay-packet when the week end. And that say a hell of a lot.”

Masters could not help smiling again and this partially broke the gloom that encrusted him, encrusted his mind, the mind of Lazarus. “Tell James,” he said softly, “to remember he’s no puppet.”

Jackson was puzzled. “Puppet? What do you mean?”

Masters did not reply. What did he mean I wondered? James is a bloody puppet, I said to myself. Did he not …

Jackson waved at a tea lady. “Coffee or tea, Everyman?”

“Coffee, please, milk, sugar.”

If the world knew that Lazarus had returned to the Carnival of history and was eating a prosaic biscuit with Jackson, coffee, milk, sugar, millions of puppets rich and poor, fat and thin, would vote for him. Vote for him, yes, but not because of the genius of love or resurrection. No, through fear. A vote of fear. Puppets of fear. Yes, fear! Fear of the bomb, fear of the grave, perverse hope that he was the ultimate weapon, he would lift the sentence of death from them and they would bounce back, he would lift the sentence of death, if not war or famine or starvation from mankind.

“Masters, what did you mean when you said I must tell James to remember he’s no puppet?”

Masters started. He glanced at me where I stood in the shadow of dream protesting that the cyclist who ran into my father was … He had forgotten what he had said to Jackson. He touched his mask and remembered. “Ah yes,” he said at last, “I meant that James may have been saved by my gift but he had to give something of himself in return. There are two — indeed three and four and many more — sides to the bubble of resurrection.”