Wilson Harris - The Carnival Trilogy

‘Continue, continue,’ Alicia cried. ‘Or everything will vanish. The Dream will vanish …’

‘As a real child I sometimes came upon real Dream-beggars in Camp Street. They never vanish. Always yellowish dark faces, dreadful haunted faces. Couldn’t eat a thing when I got home.’

‘I thought I had prepared a welcoming meal for you, Anselm,’ Alicia said coldly. ‘Fit for the carnival heir …’ Again I felt she was pushing me, tempting me. Then she continued so softly it was my turn to listen hard — ‘There are times when we have had to do with a crumb, a blessed crumb.’ She seemed to be relishing the flavour or thought of a ‘blessed crumb’ and the sumptuous banquet almost disappeared into a hole in the Dream.

The great clock in the colonial mansion was striking twelve. And this pulled me up alive out of the hole into which I had almost slipped. But the danger remained. I felt I must say something. ‘It’s good to fast at times, Aunt Alicia. Good for the sculptor’s interior and the painter’s heart. Spiritual fasting is the seed of creation. In that seed within the earth one breaks bread — one’s fingers are roots to break bread — with living trees and living rocks. If we cease to fast in spirit, God forbid! the seed will lose its magical space, its inner space in the body of the mind …’

I stopped with a gnawing sensation, a gnawing torment, and recalled the hole into which everything had appeared to slip but a moment ago and how it resembled the sculpture within the self (the inner hollow or fast that is the seed of art). Resembled as well the steep face of the abyss upon which the masked king or beggar had clung to illumine the profoundest distinction between the creative hollow of the fast (the ‘poor in spirit’) and the pit or hole of bottomless greed. They resembled each other but were subtly, complexly, miraculously different … I would have lost my Dream-footing entirely but for a tall vase on a small table close to where Alicia was sitting. I needed her strength at this time. A river wound its way up the vase through and beyond the hole of greed into which I had almost slipped. It wound its way through pages of etched manuscript upon it that were illustrated with hunting parties, naked game, naked meat. Antique river of blood. Antique pit. Yes, I remembered clearly now. It was one of Alicia’s prized possessions. She used to say to me — ‘It’s my pit, not as deep perhaps as the one you fear but a way of communicating with divided worlds, a way of crossing the river and still speaking to generations who think me dead. Speaking to you , Anselm.

‘My advice now is concentrate on the banquet you have rejected. Then perhaps I may be able to help you read the crumb of the Word.’

I perceived the wisdom in what she was saying and concentrated upon the duck on its plate of gold. The broken wings suddenly began to stir. The naked bird flew towards the guarded pit of my stomach. Then on realizing I had no intention of eating it it flew up into the ceiling of the great hall. It hesitated just beneath the smoky timbers then settled there and imprinted its wings in gold. In that instant of Dream in which I was a child I yet remembered Canaima’s lightning knife which I flung as a man in early middle age into the sky when Inspector Robot and I ascended god-rock. I remembered the future. The strangest epic licence of Dream … ‘Is memory a medium of epic slaughter, epic hunt, through which to sculpt or paint golden futures one has already made extinct or is it the seed of past, mutilated being, hunted being, one recalls, which acquires new branches, new wings, new life?’

The duck had settled on the ceiling of the hall and I turned the focus of my concentration upon the other dishes on the table but the faintness within me now was such that I knew I needed sustenance.

‘Fasten your mind, your intelligence, your soul, upon the crumb of the Word.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘a crumb or a crust of bread will suffice.’

And so across the intervening, criss-crossing years in the tapestry of Memory within the long Day of the twentieth century I was back where I began with a mere crust, a mere crumb. The entire hall, the entire scene, began to glow: well-dressed crumb, well-dressed Word at the heart of bread through which ran the antique river of blood upon Aunt Alicia’s vase; antique river of the hunt that one needed to cross from death to life, from death to death.

‘Never take the pit for granted, Anselm,’ Alicia was saying, ‘it takes many forms. Never take life for granted, or heaven, or hell, or death. Hell has its pitiful game one pursues forever and forever until one is gorged by extinction, heaven but bread, and death … Death can become the tautology of the hunted soul, death is death is death, whereas life is the breaking of a mould into divinity’s morsel.

‘When I died in 1929, Anselm, I broke the mould, I broke through a crust, a crumb. Bread and water from the river of the hunt was my diet. And I crossed the pit. I floated upon a crumb into the strangest library in which I was a portion in the Word of Bread. I read myself there in others who hunted with Cleopatra and were hunted by Caesar, hunted with Dido of ruined Carthage and were hunted by Aeneas of ruined Troy, still others seduced by brute desire, brute game, nameless El Dorados. Well-dressed queens and kings at the heart of sacred ruin, re-awakening souls upon their plate of gold.’ She turned all at once and spoke with almost irrational absurdity, irrational humour. ‘You know how I love royal pageants, grand clothes, Anselm.’ She was laughing now. Her voice was music.

I caught a glimpse of marvellous books within the heart of bread through and beyond the meat of brute desire; marvellous dresses spun from a crumb of delicate craft and labour evolving across the river through and beyond all ruined, sacred fabric, ruined industrial fabric (ghost towns, the colonization of a civilization by ghosts), the ruined fabric of War (the governorship of a civilization by field marshalls), ruined fabric of passion (proprietorship of flesh and blood) …

Alicia stood on the other bank of the river or pit that ran through the banqueting hall. ‘I am glad you broke your fast and drew me back from nothingness, Anselm. A gulf stands between us. But still we can converse. Such a pity if your book of dreams had hardened into a blind banquet, if you had succumbed to temptation and a welcoming feast that was poison. No chance then to continue retracing your steps. No chance to meet Harold. I know you detested him as a child. I know you loved Proteus. But you cannot go forward and back without them both. Harold has a confession to make. Proteus gave you a glimpse of the mountaineer of God, Harold (I know it’s difficult to believe) will bring you a glimpse of the priest of God. He and Proteus understood each other when they were alive.’ She stopped for she saw the incredulity on my face. She was laughing now with a grain of sadness upon her lips. ‘I know, Anselm. I know how you feel. Proteus (you forgave him as a child because you loved him even when you dreamt of killing him) was a drunkard, a bit of a wastrel. He could have made life so much easier for you and for all of us. He made a small fortune in the diamond fields but spent it all. Harold was a womaniser. I know. I was his wife. Write it all down, Anselm . The seed of true bread, true mountaineer, true priest, lies in the apparent ruin of many a career once we accept the grace we are given to see it, grace to climb, grace to ascend and descend the ruined scaffolding of our lives.

‘And you have made a beginning. You have glimpsed the marvellous seed of Bread, you are still to pursue your glimpse of the terrifying (however curiously ecstatic) thorn of the Rose.’