The Carnival Trilogy (39 page)

What does one mean by ‘last missionaries’ within the long Day of the twentieth century? Had there not been
last
governors,
last
governor-generals
, etc., etc., of Spanish empires within the long Day of the nineteenth century? No one had
truly visualized what the ‘last’ meant. The
last
was as much an ironic statistic as the
first
in the archives of chameleon politics. Would there come a moment when a chameleon newspaper would carry a vast headline,
THE LAST CHILD STARVES TO DEATH. STARVATION ENDS. THE LAST BATTLE FOUGHT. WAR ENDS
.

I knew it appeared absurd. And yet within such
absurdities
may lie a reflection of terrifying truth. Unless one visualizes the impossible last descendant in the lineage of the tormented in every sphere one cannot do justice to the masses who have perished without a trace of self-recognition of their ancestry of spirit … In the
last
tormented may lie the fullest, truest, everlasting poignancy of the changed or changing heart of Man within the kingdom of heaven. For the last tormented suggests (or should suggest) something more than a harrowing transition from pain (the ancestral pain of the last child who starves to death) to a museum cradle, a museum refinement, a museum skeleton, a museum bone. For if one were to settle
absolutely
for the pains of starvation –
absolutely
for a museum refinement or
sublimation
of starvation when starvation seems a thing of the past – then one would have imprisoned oneself in one or the other false eternity and eclipsed the genuine mystery of parallel thresholds into sustaining otherness, parallel pain and release from pain, by which the architect in the City of God animates a gulf, an abyss, yet a crossing between the lack of food, on one hand, the meaningless bounty of food, on the other …

I stopped and reconsidered the enigma of parallels, ‘pain’ in parallel with ‘release from pain’, ‘lack of food’ in parallel with ‘bounty’. The mystery of the abyss lay between such parallels. And it was as if one saw horizontals and verticals in a numinous light. ‘Parallels’ signified ‘depths’. One saw a vertical column or bar or shaft descending from each parallel on either side of the abyss. Take ‘pain’, giant pain in the world, giant ghost of pain, giant parallel. The vertical column
that descended from ‘pain’ possessed a series of imprints one above the other. Each descending imprint subtly, almost imperceptibly, altered the imprint of ‘pain’ above. Thus giant ‘pain’, giant ‘parallel’ that seemed eternal on its side of the abyss, underwent a series of accumulating, almost
imperceptible
, transformations in depth.

Likewise ‘release from pain’ possessed its vertical shaft or column which in its layered or descending series of imprints possessed a curious echoic or vibrating spectre of gravity akin to the genesis of the conscience of the abyss. The column vibrated as if to a distant seismic eruption. Then it was still. So still I was able to read –
Conscience
is
a
blend
of
hunger
and
ecstasy
and
pain;
and
therefore
there
is
no
release
from
abysmal
torment
except
…

‘Except what?’ I asked. ‘What reconciliation of opposites lies in the abyss?’

There came a moment in the stillness of conscience when the two columns descending from parallels ‘pain’ and ‘release from pain’ appeared to ‘sound’, to ‘utter’, to reflect a music of joint-resource so incredible one may only describe it as the
inimitable
ground of Being …

Not simply a reconciliation of opposites. Such a formula was too uncreative or mechanical. Not just a mechanics of psyche. But a gathering up of all that had been experienced in every condition of existence, an accumulation of
apparently
imperceptible change into true change, in which
nothing
was lost and everything possessed an inimitable difference akin to joy … I knew then albeit still with dread what I had sensed earlier in relinquishing one or other false eternity locked in an assumption of absolute parallels.

Giant ‘pain’ was real but it was not an absolute condition of time or timelessness. ‘Release from pain’ was an illusion until it became a joint-witness in yielding itself to a whole concert or design composed of paradoxical levels of altered imprint in depth, paradoxical architectural incarnation of the beauty of creative conscience.

Inimitable architecture of the City of God one touches but never seizes is a resource I dreamt, through which one gathers vicariously (one becomes a vicar of truth) all parallels and columns of experience in what is yet other than every net or entrapment of the senses, what is graspable sensation yet ungraspable solid music …

In the same token if one were to settle for the last missionaries on earth as a broken-backed Atlas (the
desolation
of love, the adventure of love unfulfilled) on one hand, a museum church or statistic of endeavour on the other, then one would have forfeited entirely the quantum mystery of parallel desolations through which the architect in the City of God animates a gulf, an abyss, yet a crossing between adventure unfulfilled and the visualization of love as the supreme creative power that holds the long, traveller’s day and the long, traveller’s night together within every envelope of soul or frailty of flesh and blood …

In this way – by seizing upon the mystery of quantum, parallel lives, parallel formations – I found it possible to pull the last missionaries back into my canvases of imagination, sculptures, shapes with which I animated allegorical
presences
in the original Greek sense of speaking otherwise, presenting others in diverse shapes of myself, other selves within as much as without oneself. Penelope and Ross re-emerged from the margins of nothingness into which they had almost vanished. The depletions of spiritual memory, the curious fast of memory that I endured, strengthened in a paradoxical way the open, broken yet flowering seed of visualized presences within me, before me. As though the hollow materialistic age or day within which I lived revealed itself as possessing – in its uttermost cavities of renascent, cross-cultural myth, uttermost reaches of emptiness –
unsuspected
room for original sensation, unsuspected and
piercing
ironies of spirit that nailed one into the congregation of all one’s characters and even into the shoes of the king of thieves. One is obsessed by every being one visualizes
whether apparently evil or apparently good. One bears the wounds of the past into the future and the present. One is oneself and other than oneself … It was thus that I limped, as though nailed upon an Imaginary walking tree in
stained-glass
window that I painted, into the presence of the last missionaries on earth in the post-Christendom Cathedral and refectory that I was building.

I heard Penelope speak plainly but her voice seemed changed by the acoustic of spiritual being, the acoustic of hollow, echoing being, and this gave daemonic absurdity yet revelation to her utterance.

‘Three of us are here instead of two, Anselm. My two husbands and me! That is the beauty of breaking bread so late in this twentieth-century Day. Shadows acquire
substance
as the twentieth century draws to a close. Substance acquires new shadow. Ross is my second husband. Simon, my first, died in 1944 in the Normandy campaign. He was my epic lover, my epic soldier.’ Her lips crinkled a little with a trace of self-mockery and she whispered almost under her breath – ‘I shall tell you later about some of the terrible things he did to me despite the many decorations he wore on his chest. But that’s for another moment, another painted moment. Not now. Poor Simon!’ She paused for a fraction of an instant then spoke up loudly again – ‘Ross is my good angel. We got married in 1946. That very year we left England to work in South America. First in Brazil. Then we came to the Potaro in 1948, two of us ostensibly,
but
we
hid
Simon
in
ourselves.

‘A wise precaution, for had we declared that all three of us were solidly there (Simon’s shadow was quite solid, believe me!) on the banks of the river of space, why – think of it – everyone would have said we had come to South America, the three of us, not to be missionaries but to live in sin. One woman and her two husbands! Imagine the pain and the scandal of love.’ Penelope was laughing and Ross and I and Simon (with the king of thieves inserted between us upon a
slab of gold that floated in space) could not help laughing too. Laughter echoes sometimes on the lips of solid grief and frail men and women within the feast day music of the gods whether ancient Greek or ancient pre-Columbian allegory.

We were now within the refectory and had taken our places at a great dining table.

‘Look,’ Penelope said, ‘I have been slaving at a coat for many a month, many a year, in this day or century. A coat that is woven of the fabric of sunset, the stillness, the transience of flame. A coat that is as much a tapestry of the world, as of fire and water, to fit the shoulder of a hill, or the body of rock in a Waterfall. A coat that sometimes looks like a beggar’s divine rags! A coat that is woven of every long rift in the cloudy blue of space that precedes the suspended fall of night. The coat of Wisdom when impermanence is
well-nigh
graspable beauty. This has been my task since Ross died in 1981 and I in 1982.
You
painted me into the Day of my age, the cathedral of stained-glass window sunset, as if the needle with which I work and sew were a match. The match of sunset. And because of the impermanence of darkness and light the match of sunrise as well. The coat never fits Ross or Simon perfectly. I must tell you all this, Anselm. For it is the way you appear to see us. The coat never quite fits. Always a sleeve of element or a fluid stitch that’s out of joint.’ She moved as she spoke and I saw the faint but indelible colour of bruises on the soft, bright flesh of her arm as she lifted it away from the side of her body. The gesture appeared to tighten a close-fitting garment upon her breasts.

‘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.