Wilson Harris - The Carnival Trilogy

‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘always a discrepancy. And as a consequence I unravel the work I have done, unstitch everything, and start all over again from the very beginning whenever that was. I unravel my Day and start all over again. Who knows, the coat may at last fit Ross perfectly — or Simon (who can say) — and then,’ she paused with a triumphant smile, ‘I shall be an emancipated woman in heaven. Ageless sunset and sunrise woman for all I know. A status of Wisdom, a status of elemental Wisdom, not easily achievable on earth! The perfect fit, the perfect marriage between light and darkness, Night and Day. No divorce, no separation from the obscure beauty one loves best out of many ephemeral lights with which or whom one may have slept in anticipation of dawn.

‘And he — the husband or lover whom the coat fits — may then vanquish the king of thieves forever. Not so! I am joking. You know that, Anselm, don’t you? Seriously joking or is it joking seriously? Creation’s a curious and a serious comedy, and divine comedy (as I see it) is more genuinely disturbing than tragedy. For in divinity’s shadow arises the daemon of freedom that rends the human imagination with a sense of lost paradise, a sense of miraculously regained entry into paradise … As I said, I was joking when I spoke of my husband or lover — whom the coat may fit — as the one who would vanquish the king of thieves. Not so! For the king of thieves is a reformed character in the City of God. And though I also spoke of heaven a moment or two ago I perceive certain distinctions in your city. It’s a city of inner regeneration, the inner and slowly changing heart, is it not? Not to be confused with a complacent outer paradise or state of prosperity.

‘So even my perfect coat may be an approximation when measured in other inner, unsuspected lights. All tradition is an approximation … It may prove a garment that the king of thieves pulls away from me, within his reformation, to cover the rags of a hollow materialism. Thus I may find myself in the company of three men, rather than two, on my pilgrimage. Ross, Simon, and the thief I call king, who turned his face away from Christ and was to pursue his lost paradise in many incarnations across the centuries into this very Day. He possessed an even older line of descent that you bring to light in your Imaginary Theatre, don’t you, Anselm? And perhaps even four — in the company of four — if I include you. But I am not sure. You may have other plans for yourself.

‘Are you satisfied with your Imaginary paintings, sculptures, etc.? Are you satisfied with your subversive creation? The enigma of love! Tell me. Are you satisfied?’

I was astonished. Penelope was weeping. Her tears broke into my heart, such gentle tears yet such a shocking revelation of the enigma of love. ‘It’s not only the enigma of love,’ I declared, as I tried to comfort her, ‘It’s the enigma of creation. Do you not see that I am as vulnerable as you? I have pulled you back from the margins of nothingness but it’s as if you too have pulled me, have drawn me, into your tapestry and canvas within (I am not sure), across (I am not sure) an abyss.’

Suddenly I felt a stab, the stab of parallel ages. ‘You may remember your suitors in another age. Another Penelope! Suitors, lovers, call them by any name. The truth is your husband may have returned from the Trojan war to vanquish your suitors. But you remained central to every canvas. You were Wisdom, feminine Wisdom. You pulled him there across the seas into the loom that you wove, unravelled, stitched … And who were the suitors in your elaborate design? Thieves! They hoped to gain your hand in marriage and to rob you of everything you possessed. As far as they were concerned you were little more than a black slave on a new world/old world auction block.

‘They (the suitors) are — in my Imaginary Cathedral — a collective equation across the long Night of the centuries to the king of thieves with whom you say you now travel.

‘A collective parallel to one of the thieves beside Christ — our king of thieves in my Imaginary Theatre — who turned his face away from paradise.

‘Fate crucified that collective, your suitors, when Ulysses returned, when Ulysses was drawn into the loom that you wove. But fate, in the shape of your all-conquering design, never entirely vanquished them. For they were to descend from the pagan rafters of their woven cross and set alight new wars, new slave raids, new piracies in the long day, or is it the long night, of the centuries.

‘The distinction between being vanquished and returning again stronger than ever to man the bastions of trade and industry is one we know only too well as the twentieth century draws to a close across the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean.

‘As a consequence — in drawing you out of the margins of nothingness into visualized being — I needed to bridge the centuries-long Night, the Night of ancient Greece into North African desert Night where Simon, your first and jealous husband, fought in Montgomery’s army, the Night of Spain into the Night of South America where the reincarnated thief ransacked the gold of the Incas. As for Ross — good angel he is, yes, but his curious missionary guilt resides in the fact that he (like all of us, like me and my relatives) may have one foot in one camp — the epic camp — and the other in another camp — the camp of reformed thieves; half-thief of love, of your love, half-epic Ulyssean beggar in the gates of Home is his fate, my fate too, the fate of my relatives who scraped to make ends meet. It is this shared burden, in the light of the abyss, which requires us to unclothe self-reversible perspectives within a civilization we take for granted, self-reversible pride into responsibility as we ponder our predicament.

‘I needed a dark comedy of blind warriors and suitors, half-epic guilt, half-theft of love. You are an emancipated queen, an emancipated centre, around whom and which your husbands, your lovers, and the thief — the thief who stole the coat you made — revolve on the second bank of the river of space. Who comes first, who comes last? In this late cycle of cosmic Capital are there not rich, desirable slave women (enslaved to systems of money) with a dozen suitors, divorced husbands and lovers, rich, desirable slave men (enslaved to the Stock Market) with two dozen mistresses, all fighting, arguing, over fortunes that have been made or spent by this or that besieged spouse they loved, loathed, envied?

‘It is true you Penelope — as inimitable twentieth-century spouse of missionary endeavour whose vocation lay in a foreign and a starved continent — know in your heart of hearts that a genuine choice is necessary. A true sacrament, a true marriage, is necessary. That is the purpose of the loom, the coat of tradition.

‘But how can you discover the chosen one unless you weave unsuspected variations upon the pain and ecstasy of freedom? How can you know what true sacrament is unless you find the key that the king of thieves let slip from a pocket in the coat that he snatched from you as you stood under the pagan rafters of every cross?’

I was startled by the sudden question that came upon my lips like an inspiration. ‘Did you really put that key there, Penelope, in the loom of tradition without knowing you had done so — the coat of tradition that never quite seems to fit the globe? And as a consequence we travel, we all travel, in search of … of what?’

Penelope hesitated. As if the words I had spoken had been on her lips as well. We were so close I felt I could seize her breath. She was searching into the depths of hollow yet brimming religious impulse by which she was led to travel into foreign lands, the lands of the living, the lands of the dying.