Jonestown

by Wilson Harris

  So perhaps light-year comedy in theatres of archetypal time brings characters into play which are vessels of simultaneous age and youth. A Jest! Think of the grey-bearded children in the banqueting hall. But on this occasion it was an omen of mystical terror, cloth of hair and flesh, unravelling attire that I scarcely relished. Would I disappear, would I vanish soon, as Mr Mageye and the Prisoner of Devil’s Isle had done? Yet I enjoyed (if ‘enjoyment’ was the term) a curious lightness as if Mr Mageye were raining cards upon me which he had kept up the sleeves of his robe as he discarded his dress. They fell on the Skin of the Predator that I had spread upon the Ship of Bread.

  At last the crumbling yet resuscitated Ship – crumbling, salvaged Ship – arrived beneath an apparition of Roraima, as the great Rock of ages may have been geological aeons ago, when Roraima pulsed and rolled in space in the form of a giant waterfall, a giant card of transience and transition and appearance from Mr Mageye’s deck. Transience and solidity are interchangeable features in the Carnival gamble of resources which we need to approach with sacramental identity and care … I felt the necessity to measure such sacrament by leaping into space myself (as if I had fallen out of God’s pack of cards) but was held in check by my desire to secure a fortune for Marie’s Child …

  From the hills around the Apparition of Roraima I saw the natives of this Sky-region descending. They moved at a slightly awkward pace attuned to the lame who voyage upon the comedy of light. Light-year feet tend to stumble upon nursery ladders in space.

  Was this the Sky-river which Deacon had entered in his travels in 1954? I felt awkward myself as my feet and limbs aged into unpredictable youth and vice versa in a counterpoint of concordance and dissonance. I turned the riddle of age once again around in my mind. When I sailed back to Albuoystown from Jonestown I had assumed the age of nine (rightfully mine it seemed in 1939) except that two fingers were missing from one hand. And that was a signal few – if any (except Mr Mageye) – perceived as the mystically changed age of the body when it revisits the past in numinous character and truth. One slips into elusive frames akin to a deck of cards raining in space when one revisits the past.

  A deck of cards (celestial mathematics Deacon would have said) fall apparently randomly, haphazardly, upon the Skin of the Predator in Memory theatre. My body is amongst them now, old, young. The Ship of Bread is amongst them now. Eclipses appear within the Sky of the past (Eclipses of Memory) which one revisits and sees through historic blinds or curtains: such Eclipses have immediacy in the Dark of the Mind, the Mind of Memory, the Mind of history. Memorial stars appear over the cradles of humanity and arch in the neighbourhood of Eclipse. Such curvatures of light were apparently non-existent in the past to the Eye of history.

  When the alterations in specialities of time, in the bristling life of the Predator that one touches in oneself, through oneself, beyond oneself, appear negligible, as negligible as a smashed, ghostly finger that one brings from the future into the past, one is (I am) inclined to dismiss or underestimate one’s trespass in space in the body of dreams and the scars that remain after every encounter with life in space. Such encounters slip from dream-memory but are revisited upon us in the fierce games that we play on Earth, games that sometimes shatter us into a revelation of inner, textual bodies, outer, textual bodies, inner tongues, outer tongues. But one misreads – in the flat, mechanical word – the intensity and the extensity of the Game, the Game of resurrection within and beyond the Grave of space. That is my Play of staggered yet orchestrated imageries …

  Every misreading on my part stirs the Breath of the Predator into the pulse of another random fall from a deck of cards. In addition to a ghostly, sliced hand (that may attempt to sort the cards I receive) I suddenly find incalculable time imprinted on the gaol of flesh, the youth of flesh that I treasure. Imprinted on my Mask! On Deacon’s Mask when he fought as an Eagle-knight, an Eagle-angel, with the Titan Tiger Jonah! And still one may seek to deny an orchestration of self-confessional, self-judgemental imageries and their inevitable counterpoint but changing roles of appointment with the Predator whose claws are visible everywhere in a wounded universe. The epic repentance of the Predator takes us beyond the framed and flat word into the Virgin-archetype and the rhetoric of intercourse with reality shorn of violence in the illimitable (however apparently black-out) music of counterpointed universes into which we may leap.

  Giant rocks and waterfalls and precipices on the Virgin deck of space intermingle with the Predator’s random, chastened pulse. Such is the riddle of my Play (my Play, Deacon’s Play, Mr Mageye’s Play?) in its Virgin transgression of frames of terror.

  I turned at last to confront the Apparition of Roraima in geological time. I felt the scars of rock and waterfall and fossil grain in my bones and upon my skin in their eclipsed encounters with apparently inhospitable space, inhospitable grave.

  Diamonds and gold seemed to bubble at my fingertips as I reached into the inhospitable grave of Roraima in its long and dangerous sojourn through geological ages to acquire a perch, an Eagle’s fierce perch, within and upon the watershed between the floodwaters of the Amazon and the torrential rapids of the Orinoco.

  On the Eagle’s beak I saw a glistening network of Scorpions that seemed to aid me – within eclipses of Memory – in the acquisition of gold from the rock of ages, the waterfalls of ages in great Roraima.

  Extraordinary plants and flowers shone with teeth and brilliant flowering, repetitive lips in the Shadow of the Scorpion Constellation … Yet when I reached again nothing was there. Nothing itself was a fossil apparition in space. Much depended on the apparently random fall of the deck – its corresponding imprints upon oneself – if one were to reach into time past in the present relived moment for an incalculable storage of wealth that had evolved and accumulated. The hazards and dangers varied with apparently random imprints that made time past accessible in tangible form when one rifled secret hoards in fire and rock and water and space.

  I had clearly no apparitional key – in this instance – to secure a fortune in apparitional diamonds and gold from apparitional Roraima. Were I to return in a hundred years or a million years I would then perhaps be able to trespass into fire and rock as if I had arisen from the Grave. I would have conversed with life in the universe for the necessary key. Or perhaps I would fail again, be driven to retreat again, and return again through eclipses of Memory theatre …

  Scylla and Charybdis were Clashing Rocks but there were Swimming Rocks in Roraima or fossils imprinted with Vegetable gold that I tried again to reach but it seemed to reside on the sickbed of the Predator and within some unfathomable music or orchestration of the powers of Love within the Virgin …

  I knew I could not seize the Vegetable gold but my mind and heart were light in my ageing body …

  It was then that I was seized by the natives I had seen upon the hillsides. They were masked judges and I was unable to tell who they were. Their slightly halting, awkward pace made me wonder whether they were as old or young as I, lame or leaping as I.

  It was a consolation to dwell upon such thoughts. Surely they would question me and let me leave. But they seized me roughly and bore me up a hillside towards a cliff-top above the Waterfall.

  When we arrived they took the Skin of the Predator from me and spread it on a table.

  ‘We caught you red-handed,’ they said, ‘with your hands in the Roraima till, Deacon.’

  I wanted to laugh as if their utterance was a joke but I knew it was no joke. I flung out my hands from my body.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I tried to reach into what I saw. There was something there. It seemed at one stage to nestle in my fingertips but it melted, one assumes, for there was nothing there though I swear there was something. It was like a sunset and a sunrise within the breaking, crumbling Void of the universe. They are nothing, but when they harden yet run within volcanic space they become a black river of gold.’

  I tried to brazen out my predicament in the light of
the severity of their veiled faces, veiled eyes, unsmiling, bitter lips.

  ‘Liar,’ they cried in unison. They seized me and pushed their fists into my pockets. I felt their fists opening like roses or crabs and in an instant they came forth with gold and diamonds that were strewn on the Predator’s Skin into neat piles and heaps.

  ‘Liar,’ they repeated. ‘Where did you get this?’

  I was utterly astonished and unable to reply.

  ‘Soon you will tell us, Deacon, that you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and that you sold this in your infancy, infant unconsciousness, for a fortune.’

  ‘Mockery is not proof,’ I cried. ‘I tell you there was nothing there. You have framed me.’

  ‘We have framed you?’ They spoke with fury and deliberation.

  ‘Well you must have done so,’ I cried. ‘For there was nothing there. And I am not Deacon.’

  ‘Ah! we were waiting for that. We knew you would deny it all.’

  ‘Deny what?’

  ‘Deny that we have caught you at the scene of the crime. You couldn’t keep away, could you, Deacon?’

  Where and what I wondered was the scene of the crime? I stroked the Skin of the Predator. In the dying afternoon light it shone with disturbing beauty. There were idyllic portions in the Skin where sheep and lambs seemed to graze and birds flew. There were portions that gleamed with swords and shields and armour. There were portions that appeared to invoke the launching of ships, the arrival of Cortés and Pizarro in ancient America.

  ‘Where is the scene of the crime?’ I demanded.

  ‘You are a cunning devil, Deacon. You would distract our attention from the fact that we assisted you to garner a fortune from Mount Roraima forty years ago.’

  ‘I know Deacon was here forty years ago,’ I agreed. ‘But I am not Deacon. He was seeking a fortune for Marie’s Child through whom he intended to rule his people. It was a kind of folkloric contract with the stars. They were savannah people. Up to all sorts of tricks and bargains. But Deacon was marked out from the day he was found in the savannahs and adopted by the entire community. A fallen angel! I know all this. I know that he fulfilled, in the eyes of the peasantry, some expectation of leadership if not kingship. He was pretty ruthless. His betrothal to Marie, for instance, was a national event. A small nation, needless to say! But does size matter? Does the size of Bonampak or Rome or Jerusalem or Bethlehem or Tula matter upon a deck of raining cards in which a kingdom or a hamlet may become the eye of a storm? The truth is I suffered from partial amnesia and severe trauma after the Jonestown holocaust. I slowly began unravelling the trauma as I made my way through Limbo Land to New Amsterdam, where I was well enough to begin my Dream-book and to sail in the company of Mr Mageye.’

  ‘What are you up to, Deacon? Do you think you can deceive us again? What Dream-book?’

  ‘Please,’ I asked. ‘Come to the point. Tell me why you have arrested me and what this trial is all about.’

  ‘You live in and out of your Dream-book, Deacon,’ they said with a harsh voice and humour like keys grating in prison locks. ‘Well it’s time to come out and stay there.’ They were mocking me I knew.

  But there was more to it than the bite of mockery. There was a long and incredible pause in which Silence entered my voice as I confessed.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘come out, it’s true, on the other side of Dream, the other side where Dread stands. The trial. The judgement. On the other side of Dream. Not the other side of the grave. On the other side of Dream one lives, one is beyond all “beyonds” within a measure of measureless counterpoint between all extremities.’

  My judges remained severe, unrelenting. Even as my Skeleton-twin had rebuffed me, but I knew now that rebuff and severity were part and parcel of extremity. How else would the immensity of counterpoint between all places, all extremities, prevail if one’s judges were less than severe?

  ‘We tell you straight,’ my judges cried. ‘Forty years ago, Deacon, we helped you to gain a fortune.’

  ‘I have no fortune. I am poor.’

  They ignored my remark.

  ‘We helped you to gain a fortune,’ they insisted. ‘Roraima is the mother of Scorpions. The dread and fourth Virgin …’

  ‘On the other side of Dream,’ I confessed. ‘There she teaches me that Love can scarcely be borne, it is so infinite. It is Compassion, yet beyond all riddles and expectations of Compassion.’

  ‘We do not know what she teaches you, Deacon – you who claim to have fallen from the stars – but she taught us that without inoculation with the venom of the Scorpion you would be unable to climb the Rock …’

  ‘A misreading of the Scorpion Constellation,’ I said. ‘On the other side of Dream Roraima, the dread mother of Compassion, heals Mankind with and through all creatures in whose obscurity of soul repentance is the farthermost evolution Mind – despite its addiction to cruelty – may begin to contemplate …’

  My judges were smiling now at the Fool I was.

  ‘We see you do recall the folklore of your region. So much for your plea of amnesia.’

  I was stung into protest. ‘I never said I had forgotten everything. Partial amnesia. I had not forgotten pain, mental pain, and this was enough to keep me going and to give me the impetus to put myself in the shoes of the people of Jonestown on the Day of the Dead in a Play of extremities that sought to come abreast of their and my predicament. They were alive in me. So was Deacon in a variety of particularity. And Jonah …’

  I stopped for an instant under the veiled gaze and unsmiling lips of my judges.

  ‘Deacon,’ I said, ‘was the father of Marie’s Child. This I knew, this I remembered. But – here’s the rub in eclipses of Memory that I had to endure – I suffered a void or a blank as to what actually happened to their Child, what illness. Child mortality throughout this century and past generations has been high in the Guyanas! Malaria is a species of predator. The building of Jonestown I knew was a kind of memorial for Deacon. But even there the circumstances grew vague for me after the holocaust. How to blend a memorial to a Child with the inferno! On the other side of Dream perhaps where I now stand … Jonestown was a memorial for me too when we started building … A memorial to my mother and the beggars and children she cared for in Albuoys-town. Once again how to blend a memorial dedicated to care with hell or the inferno. On the other side of Dream where we may arrive in the life of the Imagination … So you see there were eclipses and gaps in Memory theatre that I sought to fill within an original enterprise back into time yet forwards in changing dimensionalities of past time. I am not Deacon. Can you see?’

  ‘You are Deacon. We won’t be deceived again. We helped you …’

  ‘How did you help me? How did you help Deacon?’

  ‘We helped you by arranging for an Arawak Doctor or shaman to inoculate you with the venom of the Scorpion. Roraima is infested with scorpions. It is also a garden of rare treasures, exquisite plants, leaves, exquisite fossils of the soul of living landscapes. You were at liberty then to climb the great Rock, or mother of the Guyanas, to climb with scorpions riding on your back, on your limbs, at your throat. You were immune to their bite. Immune to pain. Their bite was nothing. It was as if you reached into and climbed Nothing. You climbed the greatest living fossil Apparition that takes us back to the rock of ages. You rifled it. You secured all you could carry. You secreted gold in your mouth, in the crevices of your body, everywhere. We helped you and we warned you.’

  ‘Warned me?’

  ‘We warned you, Deacon, that inoculation with the venom of the Scorpion forbids intercourse with women, with your Virgin wife Marie, it forbids your touching an infant in the cradle. It’s the curse of El Doradonne Midas secreted in Roraima …’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I cried to heaven. ‘I remember now. I see now through Deacon’s blind eyes in the Play on the other side of Dream. He forgot the shaman’s warning. I remember. I see through his blind eyes in the Play. The Play’s the thing, the real worl
d beyond all real worlds. That is the innermost, outermost, vocation of trial and judgement in fiction. Or else fiction is dead. One must re-imagine death as a live fossil apparition. Imagination Dead Imagine. Deacon returned on the day that the Child was born, he lifted it into his arms. He felt himself superior to all curses. And the infant stiffened in his arms. A stone leaf grew where its face was, the face of the Child at the edge of Roraima. I saw it yet I did not see it in the exquisite garden of treasures, the most precious treasure of which is the soul of living landscapes which we abuse at the drop of a hat. Nemesis Hat! How can I bear it? How can I bear such knowledge in the Play? On the other side of Dream where a measureless counterpoint exists between all extremities …’ My eyes were light but I was weeping.

  ‘When the news of the death of the Child,’ said my judges, ‘seeped through to the waiting populace they turned upon you with a vengeance. They sought to tear you limb from limb, Deacon. You had become their Prisoner. But you escaped with the Titan’s (Jonah’s) help. He was able to bar them out. He was an American! We warned you but you forgot or ignored the curse.’ They stared at me with a veiled but savage humour. ‘Did you suffer another Eclipse of Memory, Deacon, when you lost the Child and were driven from your wife? You hid in the Shadow of a great Cat that covered the sun. Rich folklore, Deacon, but you won’t deceive us again. We have brought you out. Out into broad daylight in the setting sun …’

  ‘I am not Deacon,’ I cried for the last time in the Play.

  ‘Who then is to be tried and judged? If not Deacon, who? Does no one claim the part? Is everyone innocent, no one guilty or responsible?’

  I was still. I was a mere Colonial. Not an Imperialist. My limbs had aged nevertheless under the burden of Eclipses of Memory. Are Colonials the only potential creators of the genius of Memory theatre? I was weak but I had gained the other side of the Dream.

  ‘Who then are we to judge?’

  ‘Judge me,’ I said at last. ‘I am here before you. I have nothing. I am poor. Judge me. It is no accident.’