Wilson Harris - The Carnival Trilogy

‘You mean,’ said Faust wryly, ‘that you, glass Robin Redbreast bird, are dancing on my kingdom bell.’ He stared into Robin’s eyes.

Robin felt numb. It was as if his claws were seized by violent cramp even as they danced. They danced on the bell but felt nothing. Why did they feel nothing? Why had he not known the instant he touched the bell that it was devoid of a clapper and a tongue, that it was a simulated bell not a real bell? Why had he said ‘a fish in the water is biting’ when he knew (or should have known) the commotion came from his active perch or dance?

The answer lay in the riddle of touch , the riddle of the dance. It lay in the riddle of Faust’s implicit dialogue between creatures, between hypothetical fish and numb foetus in the body of humanity.

‘Note,’ said Faust to Robin, ‘in giving you claws, foetal claws, like a bird’s, or a crab’s, I enhance the ironies of the circus and the machine, I am true to fashion, true to obsessional creed and animal destiny in a harshly competitive age

‘And what about spiritual destiny?’ asked Robin. He felt heavy all of a sudden. ‘Do we not lame or cripple animal destiny in equating it with human and competitive slaughter?’

‘Tut, tut,’ said Faust. ‘Toot, toot, heigh-ho nonny and all that! So much for spiritual destiny.’ But his eyes were glued to Robin’s, fiendishly glued, spectacularly glued, and yet there was a crinkle of humour, even pitiful/pitiless understanding, at the edge of his lips.

Robin wanted to protest but he was mesmerized by Faust’s extraordinary sophistication, irreverence and candour.

It was as if the cinematic atmosphere they shared crept into his blood and endorsed his lameness of mind and spirit even as he danced. Faust called the bell at the end of his rod his kingdom or dancing bell because without making a sound it spoke of a labyrinth of patent or invented process — patented flesh, patented bone — between hypothetical creature and cinematic humanity dancing in ballrooms of heaven rounded like great, clapper bells, dancing in space, in tune with the fabric or womb of mother earth but insensible to deprivation.

Faust was the master of new-born ironies and abortive spirit. His kingdom bell spoke of simulated dialogue between hypothetical God and hypothetical Man. It spoke of the bleak conversion (bleak exploitation) of deprivation into puppetries unconscious of hollow being.

Robin sought to protest again. ‘There is life and death, death and life, and somewhere in that ambivalent mixture lies the spark of innermost recall of the value of spirit …’ But Faust brushed him aside: ‘Quite understandably,’ he said, ‘you assumed that when the line shook under my kingdom bell that it was life biting, that life had taken the bait or the hook. Hypothetical life Robin! Remember that.’

‘I was wrong,’ Robin acknowledged.

‘Hypothetical life,’ Faust repeated. ‘Such is the measure of progress. We advance through spheres of deprivation by which we gain tools — have you forgotten the bristling noise of the telephone when you were able to hear?’

‘I remember the secret music,’ Robin was able to say though his tongue ached like Ghost’s.

‘We advance through spheres of deprivation through which we simulate the life of species. Take it a step further, Robin. Put your faith in material progress. Accept me as some kind of prodigious immortal. And then I will make you into my immortal prodigy, my born/unborn prodigy in the bottled but cinematic sphere of a woman’s body. Your mother’s body! Invent the mother. Invent the child. Let me touch you and begin the process.’

‘No!’ said Robin. He felt uncertain, bewildered, even vaguely outraged. He took refuge in attack — ‘Let ME touch you.’ He was uncertain of the distinction between touching Faust himself and being touched by Faust himself … MY GRANDFATHER’S BOOK FADED INTO THE REALITY OF IMMORTAL DREAM. I WAS DREAMING. Immortal dream? Had I succumbed to Faust’s temptation ? Could I touch him without being subject to his influence, his charisma? Had I involuntarily accepted the temptation he posed to sustain his immortality and to become immortal dream writer myself? What are the origins of dreams? Are dreams the relic of temptation surviving in the psyche to assume immortality? If so the burden and the ecstasy of dreams had to be revised, ravelled, unravelled, penetrated, probed, rehearsed into infinity in order to make a profound distinction between a true resurrection ( a true resurrection )and the strings of prodigious dogma in populations. They resembled one another, they ran in parallel with one another (material prodigy resembled the body of the soul even as cinematic foetus resembled the innermost recall of the conception of life) but they were not the same. LIKE YET UNLIKE FORCES.

I reached out and touched Faust and felt suddenly caught in the nexus of like yet unlike forces, caught and bedevilled by an age that gestated at the edge of a chasm, the chasm of marvels, the chasm of insensible creed in the circus of the machine.

I felt devoid of sensation as I touched him. He felt warm at first, warm as the drug of material progress, but I knew he was bitterly cold, bitterly calculating, stuffed to the eyeballs with terrifying comedy. All of a sudden I screamed. It was wholly spontaneous but nothing could have been more calculated to take him by surprise. I should have been laughing my immortal head off at his immortal joke — he seemed to imply — not screaming … He had failed somewhere in the demonology of the circus to ‘grab me’ as I hopped on his kingdom bell and I knew in my heart of hearts the resurrectionary or revolutionary body was subtly alive however apparently eclipsed within the glamour and the sophistications of the comedian of the machine.

Whereas before I had been delivered from deafness by a clap of thunder in the cradle or the grave — when I sought to seize the psychical glass animals of space that were manifestations of the immanence of God’s kingdoms — now in the circus of the machine, on the circus of the kingdom bell, I was delivered from numbness of spirit, and from seizure by Faust, with a cry I gave from the heart, a cry so poignant, so real, it drew me into the web, into the flesh, the imperilled substance, of all ecstatic and sorrowing creatures. Was this the origin of mental pain woven into the very substance and moment of rich rejoicing? Caught yet instinctively liberated feature. Caught yet spiritually liberated song.

I HAD BEEN CAUGHT YET IMPLICITLY LIBERATED FROM CINEMATIC CHARISMA, CINEMATIC ECLIPSE OF INNERMOST SELF-REFLECTION.

‘The mystery of deprivation!’ said Faust at last. As if with a gesture he sought to enlighten me, to prove he was on my side after all. On the side of liberation.

‘I am on your side once you read me properly. With a literate imagination Robin!’ He was laughing. I could not be sure. Was he laughing or was he mocking a world that was singularly ill-equipped to read its spheres of deprivation or its proclivity to temptation?

‘To enter my Kingdom Bell is to see from the other side of thunder the earlier temptation to which you succumbed. I say ‘earlier’ but does one know what comes first, what is early, what is late? Does one hear before one cries ? Is it a simultaneous arousal within veil after veil of rehearsed temptation, rehearsed sensation, secreted in memory?

‘You succumbed to temptation and reached out to seize the glass unicorn, the glass tigers, etc. They vanished but you came alive then to the reflected thunder of all things, to the noises of space and time. At last you could hear, make distinctions, dwell in your mother’s voice and her laughter. Now you yourself have been caught by me yet implicitly liberated in giving voice to a spirit through and beyond yourself … At last you know that you cry, that tears are as true as song. Have I not helped you in the very moment that I threatened your soul? For remember within true voice and true hearing lies an arch of simulated being upon which we build our architectures and institutions. There in due course you will come upon Skull and the bridge to Skull.