Wilson Harris - The Tree of the Sun

“She’s telling us of the evolution of serenity….”

“Is that all? What’s serenity?” cried a voice from the audience.

“Creation’s news,” Julia said. “The sea, the land.”

Great-aunt stood by the carriage. In the corner of her eye she could see, through the open door, the tip of an envelope, in a pocket of the interior, in which Julia had deposited her first letter to Francis.

It was addressed to Francis.

It was written to a variety of spectral audiences whose questions sprang from her own needs.

It reposed, in that pocket of the interior, like a part of herself which travelled towards another turbulence of selves until each page or line began to dance before her eyes.

“What fun,” she thought. “What fun, Francis. We shall enjoy ourselves on our trip.”

She closed her eyes.

“You must rest Mr Cortez,” said the nurse again. “Sleep.”

Francis strained his eyes into the misty harbour to catch a glimpse of the ship. An icy grief blinded his sight. Julia reached up and touched his face as if it were her father’s eyes in the old clown of a coffin in Zemi.

“You once told me”, she said, “that you were descended from the stars.” He could see she was amused.

Touched his eyes again with the gift of laughter until there broke from him a murmur that swelled across the stage, the murmur of waves. And for the first time he saw the sea as he had never seen it before laughing with him, through him, through its wrinkled orchestra of a mask in which he put his foot like a curious crab with an evolved baton, half-shuddering, half-awed, sea music, knee-deep in the mystery of a clown’s tears, father time’s tears.

The captain and the nurse had returned.

“Time to go,” said Julia, as if she were ready to release the hand of the clock built into the pier. “Do you hear it tapping on the drum of earth, wood, stone, shell, metal, silver, gold? It’s music. It’s incredible music.”

Francis found himself unable to move. His half-human, half-crab, body had retreated up the beach. He was transported, astonished, drawn upon a horizon that witnessed for the greatest success as the evolution of music began to pour along the stage. And then in the midst of his delight and torment, as he stood there broken into two, half of him hanging back, half of him intent on going forward with her, her living questions swarmed into the faces of the audience that pressed upon him from every angle of the globe. And that was his first cue to break his shell and to fly or press towards her as she moved on to the ship; the applause mounted to a crescendo as though to magnify a chorus of advances and retreats, advancing, retreating, heart and sight, free and unfree body and mind, free and unfree spirit and shell. And even as they set foot or wing on the deck a distance remained within that sea of eyes and faces, that sought to follow them, as if the sculpture of the ship he had failed to see before, as he strained his eyes into the misty harbour, had been caught in the wake of itself, in a ground of applause.

Some strange tracery or pattern resided there beside the pier, on the beach of the theatre, under his very eyes, under his nose. Lines of reality. Were they speaking bow and stern, voices of wheel and paddle and tiller, sun tree? Hand of the clock that eased itself into a command of the elements as if to outline responsive anatomy and feet that danced on water.

The fascination was so compelling that before they knew it they too had been caught afresh in the backward sweep of that human sea with its outlines of theatres, plays, orchestras, like beacons of yesterday’s and tomorrow’s passions.

Francis lay in Julia’s arms which were outstretched from the strangest living nothingness into the strangest living otherness.

And then the prow of the great ship began to move forward, the water surged and swelled and a chorus of voices, the chorus of incarnation or human orchestra, filled the air with presences.

“Away,” cried the voices, “away, away, away.” The ship moved on and outward into the sun.