Palace of the Peacock

by Wilson Harris

  She was lucky too to find the protection of the Vigilance family for her child whose father no one had ever seen. The name the child bore was little-known in those parts. Her husband bore her no malice and wished her son to take his name as a final safeguard. This she resisted. She felt it would do no good – the name Carroll was as innocuous and distant a name as any she could choose. She did not wish to attract upon her head and the head of her new family the hoax of sin in an implacable future. Vigilance could not remember ever addressing his stepbrother as anything else but Carroll. In fact this habit of using the surname was the curious custom amongst most families in the enormous dreaming forest who dreaded mislaying and losing each other. After a time everybody believed Carroll’s name was a true one. It were as if they had a long and a short memory at one and the same time so that while they forgot the name Carroll’s mother had borne (as one is inclined to forget maiden names) they helped to invent and forge a name for her son which established distant ties they only dimly dreamt of. Carroll was one burning memory and substance for his mother and another dimmer incestuous substance and myth for his uncertain and unknown father folk. He had become a relative ghost for all as all ultimately became a ghost for everyone.

  It was a strange and confusing tradition beyond words. Vigilance saw that Schomburgh had been overwhelmed in some unnatural way that fractured his vision and burdened him with a sense of fantasy and hoax. It was the darkest narcissism that strove with him and fought against accepting Carroll’s name as Carroll, against relinquishing paternity to some one who was still untouched by and unknown to the spirit of guilt. He wished to give the boy his own name but the desire frightened and killed him. No one knew and understood better than a mother what a name involved. It was the music of her undying sacrifice to make and save the world. Sometimes he accepted and grew enamoured of the thought that Carroll was his nephew and nothing else. Often times he lived in the flight of mortal gloom and fear Carroll was nothing to him at all, a bastard memory from a bastard hellish tribe and succession and encounter. Who and what was Carroll? Schomburgh had glimpsed, Vigilance knew with an inborn genius and primitive eye, the living and the dead folk, the embodiment of hate and love, the ambiguity of everyone and no one. He had recognized his true son, nameless out of shame and yet named with a new distant name by a muse and mother to make others equally nameless out of mythical shame and a name, and to forge for their descendants new mythical far-flung relationships out of their nameless shame and fear.

  Vigilance read this material hoax and saw deeper than Schomburgh to the indestructible element. It was a simple lesson for him since he was born to discern and reflect everything without the conscious effort of speech.

  His eyes were brighter than ever after their fit of crying. The past returned to him like pure fictions of rock he had never wearied spying upon since childhood. Sometimes they stood in columns, or they embraced each other in groups, or in couples, or they stood solitary and alone.

  Donne was the only one in their midst who carried on his sleeve the affectation of a rich first name. Rich it seemed – because none of his servants appeared at first to have the power to address him other than obsequiously. The manner of the crew could change, however, one sensed, into familiarity and contempt. It was on their lips already to declare that their labouring distress and dream was the sole tradition of living men.

  He had come from a town on the coast they knew to found and settle, be baptized again, as well as to baptize, a new colony. He was careless of first name and title alike they saw. All were economic names to command and choose from (as one chose to order one’s labouring folk around). All were signs of address from a past dead investment and history with its vague pioneering memories that were more their burden than his.

  They knew he had once dreamt of ruling them with a rod of iron and with a ration of rum. His design was so brutal and clear that one wondered how one could be so cheap to work for him. There was nothing he appeared to have that commended him. Save the nameless kinship of spirit older (though he did not yet apprehend it) than every material mask and label and economic form and solipsism. Vigilance had seen clear into the bowels of this nameless kinship and identity Donne had once thought he had abused as he wished, and in one stroke it had liberated him from death and adversity.

  He recalled as he bowed that his father had built a new house after the second marriage. The three-roomed cabin – his first home – remained; a stone’s throw away stood the new rough-hewn spacious five-roomed cottage into which the family had moved.

  It was natural to Vigilance to perceive what was going on wherever he lived. He was always there when his parents spoke, or he always seemed to see something through a half-open door or window or crack. It was a habit of fortune he possessed, ingrained and accidental as all remarkable coincidences are.

  The new house was a year old, and his father was away that afternoon for a couple of days on a wood-cutting mission. The rest of the family were busy far afield outdoors.

  Carroll and his mother had just come in. He saw them in the next room through an open door. They were so flustered-looking and inwardly disturbed that they had no eyes for him.

  “She lose the baby, she lose me baby, she lose she baby,” Carroll was crying to his mother, all his shyness and charm fractured and gone. Vigilance knew instantly they were speaking of his sister; she happened to be a couple of years younger than Carroll who had just attained his seventeenth birthday.

  “O love,” Carroll’s mother cried to him. “Is lucky,” she nearly bit her lips, broken in their emotion. “No, no, not lucky. I wrong. But I mean is just as well. Think what your stepfather would say.” She wrung her hands.

  “I can marry her. She’s not my blood-sister,” Carroll spoke glumly and half-dementedly.

  “No, no,” his mother cried. “She too young to marry. I going take care of her.” She smoothed Carroll’s unhappy brow. He jerked away a little. “Why, why?” he cried. “Why?”

  “You got to travel and see the world,” his mother said sadly, looking at him as if she dared not touch him again. “You don’t know what is a wife feeling yet. You don’t know anything. You got to make your fortune. Look,” she wrung her hands again, “from the day you born to me I see you were different. You were a problem. I feel as if you was not even me child. A strange funny child in me hands. As if you didn’t belong to me at all, at all. If you stay here is only trouble going come under this roof. And you stepfather is a good kind man I love,” she suddenly grew quiet and spoke softly. Then she cried – “Mek yourself into a man and then come back. Is a different story then.”

  Carroll’s eyes flashed and he moved further away from her still – “I is not as soft as I look. I can live and work hard. I can mek me way to the ends of the earth. I born to go far.” He was boasting and still sad. “Like you don’t know me at all.”

  His mother was sadder still. “Is best you go‚” she said. Her lips were torn and they looked burnt with the sun.

  “I don’t want to leave she‚” Carroll cried. “I can tek she with me and tek care of she and she tek care of me.” He cried to her louder than ever.

  “Your stepfather would forbid it‚” his mother said passionately.

  “I can carry she and look after she‚” Carroll said sullenly.

  “You think life so simple?” his mother pleaded with him. “You got to earn you fortune, lad. Sometimes is the saddest labour in the world.”

  “You mean if I mek a million dollar and come back I can claim she as me wife?” Carroll said.

  “If you mek a million dollar you think you can fool the living and bring the dead alive?” His mother spoke strangely. “Is not money make me flesh and fortune.”

  “I can mek it all up to she. She suffer bad-bad. She had a fall. We did plan to run and marry soon as she start to show big. She was a child yet.” His voice broke.

  “Everything going be all right‚” his mother tried to soothe him. “Everything going be right as r
ain. Right as a song. Make you fortune and come back.” She spoke sadly as if she knew his fortune was the despair of mere flesh and blood.

  “We been playing a year ago,” Carroll said musingly. “Suddenly we lose we way in the trees. We think we never find home. We started hugging, a frighten sweet-sweet feeling like if I truly come home. I wasn’t a stranger no more. She cry a little and she laugh like if she was home at last. And she kiss me after it all happen….”

  “How you know she was with baby?” his mother asked after a long silence.

  “One day I hear a heart, clear-clear … I wanted to tell somebody. But I was afraid even to tell you. Until today when she fall and she cry in she pain I was so afraid …” he cried and his voice sounded like hers. “Did you hear anything?” he said a little wildly, looking out of the window. “Was a terrible fall. You hear anything?”

  “Impossible,” his mother rebuked him. “You couldn’t have heard that infant heart beating so small and long ago … three or four months ago….”

  “I hear it,” Carroll insisted and his voice fell and broke into two again.

  His mother smiled as if she had forgotten him. “Maybe is true,” she said, “I hear it too.” She rubbed herself gently on her belly.

  “You‚” Carroll shot at her.

  “Yes‚” she caught herself. His eyes probed hers deep. She spoke like one seeking forgiveness. “I am with child for your stepfather too‚” she expressed herself awkwardly. Her voice broke into two like his. “My first child under his roof after so long and I getting old….”

  Carroll nodded his head dumbly. “Is the child as old as…?” he choked with alarm and fear.

  “Yes‚” she nodded.

  “A boy or a girl?” he asked foolishly.

  “Was a boy‚” she said. “I saw.” They were at cross purposes. “If you go and come back you will find the child,” she sighed.

  “His child borning and mine dead,” he spoke passionately, forgetting to whom he spoke.

  “No,” his mother said sharply. “Is all one in the long run. You can make peace between us….”

  “And go?” he demanded. He was crying. Suddenly he knew he did not want the child in her to live. A heart-rending spasm overwhelmed him, all ancestral hate and fear and jealousy.

  “You are my child always,” his mother spoke softly. Her lips twisted again. “You must live and go. Is your own will if you stay to rot and die since you will start to imagine foolish things. Go I tell you.” She spoke softly again.

  Carroll ran out of the house blindly towards the cabin in the woods where Tiny, the Vigilance sister, lay. She looked old and sad lying there he thought, wrinkled in his imagination. He saw her as an old woman in the future, wrinkled and wise, the memory of her mythical incestuous child come again – living and strong as life. It was as if he came to his spiritual mother at last, and the effect of his child’s death had sealed and saved the maternal pregnancy and womb beyond all jealousy and fear and doubt.

  Carroll’s mother looked up suddenly with a sense of unexplored and inexplicable joy. She was startled when she saw Vigilance. “You here?” she cried. “How long you been listening?”

  Vigilance nodded dumbly. He did not know what to say. He knew that the child she carried for his father would live, and bear the eyes of the living and the dead. He felt drawn towards it as towards a child of his own.

  “You are free to go too, and this time take him with you for ever when you go,” his stepmother addressed him with a curious blessing smile.

  VIII

  We stood on the frontiers of the known world, and on the selfsame threshold of the unknown.

  Schomburgh was dead. He had died peacefully in his hammock and in his sleep.

  The old crumpled Arawak woman had advised us the evening of the day before where to stop and camp for the night. It was too late she said (Schomburgh interpreting) to venture into the nameless rapids that seethed and boiled before us.

  We buried Schomburgh at the foot of the broken water whose agitation was witness of the forces that lay ahead.

  Carroll was dead. Schomburgh was dead. One death, a cross for father and son. They had been ghosts to each other in the limited way a man grasped reality. Schomburgh often inhabited Carroll’s shoes running from and towards his love the day it was born and had died. Carroll often listened, almost worshipping the hoax of death and age and sin in Schomburgh’s boots, like a child prematurely stricken and old with the passage of mortal conception and thought. It had been an enormous endless growing pain and fantasy – rich with the wealth of unexplored possibilities – all over and done with and secure. They had sown and won a great liberal fortune for the whole world though the full fruitage and inheritance lay yet in the future and time.

  Everyone paid silent tribute in the breakfastless empty morning. None dared to say anything yet knowing their common speech was the debased coinage and currency of the dreaming folk. Silence seemed golden now and superior to the universal mask and ironic disavowal of principle in the nameless indestructible soul. The broken speech of the crew died awhile on their lips though in their affections they still heard themselves speak in the old manner of distortion and debasement. It was the inevitable and unconscious universe of art and life that still harassed and troubled them.

  DaSilva broke the golden silence and expressed his misgivings aloud. “Is how much further we got to go?” He spoke to himself, forgetting his destination and turning helplessly to the old Arawak woman. There was no interpreter now Schomburgh had gone. A wrench had uprooted the instrument of communication he had always trusted in himself. And yet he knew it was a mortal relief to face the truth which lay farther and deeper than he dreamed. This deathblow of enlightenment robbed him of a facile faith and of a simple translation and memory almost.

  “Is how much farther we got to go?” he cried in his helpless dull way. “The Buck woman can’t speak a word.”

  Donne started unrolling his plan quickly. The country ahead was mysterious and little known he said. A long series of dangerous rapids marked the map in his hands. The neighbouring country was mountainous and crude, the trails secret and hidden. One day had passed since they left Mariella. And today – the second of the allotted seven before them – had started with an omen of good fortune, strange and shattering as it seemed. They were on the threshold of the folk. They must cling to that knowledge since – he had never seen it so clear before – it was all they had.

  He felt the clearest keenest perception of their need and security. Remember – he said – when they entered the world ahead – the world of the second day – they had passed the door of inner perception like a bird of spirit breaking the shell of the sky which had been the only conscious world all knew. In the death of their comrades, the cross of father-and-son, Donne said pedantically and sorrowfully, they had started on the way to overcoming a sacred convention of evil proprietorship and gain.

  The crew drew around as he turned to practical issues in hand. “Today we will reach here,” he pointed to a little indentation where he proposed to camp next. “Tomorrow …” his voice droned on and on.

  “One shear pin snap in that water and all gone,” Jennings sang out. He was frowning. He pushed his way until he stood face to face with Donne. “All this is a lot of balls,” he said.

  “You can stay here if you wish,” Donne said calmly. “I will drive the motor, Vigilance will bow and Wishrop – on whom I feel I can lean more than ever – will steer. The three of us alone will go if need be, come what may. And as a matter-of-fact the daSilvas and Cameron are still with us I believe? We can do with their help.” He turned to the crew. They nodded a little.

  Jennings was partly taken aback. “O, you want to leave me here, you do?” he shouted.

  “Matter entirely for you,” said Donne.

  Jennings laughed. Fine lines of sweat – customary to him – stood out again. His laugh resounded like a trumpet. Clearly – it came like a revelation – whatever the beads on his b
row – he was without fear. A stubborn nameless streak rose and sweated him into a man who wanted a fight. Irritation and resentment boiled within him against all authority and responsibility. He saw too clearly and harshly the strength of his mechanical arm and position and the farce and guile and deception he had always experienced. The knowledge burned him and invigorated him at the same time with the honey of justification and leisure and laziness in palate and nostril. He was as good as any man he knew. “You can’t fool me no more,” he said. “All of you bastards – high and mighty alike. If I come with all you is of me own sweet will. You can’t fool me no more.” His voice brayed like a resurrection trumpet over the dead.

  “Who want to fool you?” said Cameron. His heart was suddenly beating fast and loud. A shaft of nameless misery had entered and wounded him. He had never felt this sensation before. Jennings loomed upon him now with a terrifying jeer and gibe on his lips.

  “Who want to fool you?” Cameron cried again. He listened closely to his own voice. It was the voice of dread: the voice of dread at the thought that nothing existed to fool and terrorize anybody unless one chose to imagine one was bewitched and a fool all one’s life. The terrible sound and vision struck him a blow, sharp and keen and intimate as a knife bursting into a drum. The ground felt that it opened bringing to ruin years of his pride and conceit.

  “Who want to fool you?” Cameron shouted in rage and indignation. He wished desperately the oracular grave under his feet would close for ever and disappear and he could cherish once again his old pagan desire and ambition. It struck him like an acute dismemberment and loss and injustice.