Palace of the Peacock

by Wilson Harris

  “Is a funny-funny dream,” daSilva said slowly, recovering himself a little. “To dream all this …” he pointed at the wall of cliff behind him – “deh pon you back like nothing, like air standing up….”

  “You got a strong-strong back,” Cameron croaked and his hands brushed the water with beak and wings.

  “Is true,” daSilva sulked. His mind grew suddenly startled and punctured as the stream. “I know is who bird now,” he gasped and shouted. “I remember clear.” He pointed at the parrot and the silver ring with such swamping eagerness and enthusiasm the words drowned on his lips … “Is me … is mine …”

  The crew rippled and laughed like water so loud and long that Donne awoke to their merriment.

  “What? what is it?” he said.

  “Laugh good,” daSilva warned. “You going laugh good again like a guest at me true marriage and wedding feast….”

  “Must be in heaven,” Cameron croaked and roared in Donne’s ear.

  “Is me lady bird,” daSilva insisted. “It must be fly away from she for a morning outing. Them people ain’t deh far,” he cried in a burst of inspiration. “The lil bird tekking a morning outing … I know it. Last year when Ah been with she in the Mission Ah feed it meself often. It used to eat from me lip. Tame Ah tell you. Is me mistress bird.” He whistled.

  “It’s good news then,” said Donne. “Yesterday we witnessed the huntsman’s promissory wound and today daSilva’s promissory ring….” he laughed. “The folk are close at hand to save us.” He did not believe a word he said in his heart and he added a warning note – “Of course you chaps mustn’t bank on anything too much. A bird like that can fly a hundred miles in an hour. Still we must hope for the best.” He smiled stiffly, waving his hand darkly to greet the air.

  “I feed it often from me lip,” daSilva said whistling loud. “Me pretty lady bird. She and me was one flesh. I going many she this time. Ah tell you. Look she leg slender. Slender like … like …” he stared unseeingly … “a branch …” he was uncertain.

  “Like poison,” said Cameron.

  “Slender branch,” said daSilva as if he was drunk. “And she taste sweet. Me mistress breasts like sweet cocerite. She got sweet-sweet honey lip too. And she hair long and black like midnight feathers. Ah kiss she eyes fast and thick till she nearly dead in me hand….”

  “What a vulture of a bird you are,” Cameron grinned in derision. “You never speak a truer word than when you say you got everything mix up in you head….” He had hardly stopped speaking when he flung a stone and bird past Jennings’ head. Aimlessly. The crew gave a sudden answering cry. The stone had cut air and flesh and it fell. But on fluttering upon the water it recovered itself instantly and wings flashed and soared. The whole flock rose in swelling protest higher and higher until all dwindled in the sky at the top of the wall.

  “Miss,” Cameron cried.

  “You wounded it,” Donne said quietly. “We have given ourselves away as their huntsman gave them away. O never mind I’m sure I’m talking nonsense. I can’t see a thing.”

  “I used to feed it from me lip,” daSilva whimpered.

  “O shut up,” Cameron waved. “What do you mean – give ourselves away?” he asked.

  “O well,” said Donne speaking without conviction, “the bird may return bleeding with a mark upon it. The folk may take it in their heart to start hunting us. We can never outwit them now. Our strength is gone. Three of our best men finished. No ammunition. Nothing remaining. Everything overboard. We can only throw imaginary stones in the air to frighten and alarm ourselves and make imaginary rings in the water….”

  “Better we stop and turn back,” said Jennings sombrely.

  “Impossible. Where can we land? If we turn back we’re lost. How can we run the rapids in our condition? We do need help more than ever to locate a safe ground trail if we succeed in escaping these walls….” he waved his hands at the cliff. “O it’s a hellish business and trial and responsibility I never foresaw. If one of us –” he stared at them with a glassy eye – “gets across he’ll carry the mark of a beast or a bird I tell you. It’s a wounding dream and task….” he began to ramble and rave. “Let’s hope there’ll be someone there to meet us and heal us in the end whatever we are. It’s all that counts….”

  “Ah used to feed she with me lip,” daSilva said.

  “O shut up,” Cameron cried. “Who cares?”

  “Why did you pelt it?” daSilva cried.

  “Wait you going on like if is you I pelt. Aw shut up, I hungry.”

  “I ask you why you pelt the ring of me flesh….”

  “O Christ, shut up,” said Cameron. “I didn’t pelt you. I didn’t see no precious ring. You is bewitched … that’s what….”

  DaSilva muttered wildly – “I tell you when you pelt she you pelt me. Is one flesh, me flesh, you flesh, one flesh. She come to save me, to save all of we. You murderer! what else is you but a plain vile murderer? She ain’t no witch….” His face was mad.

  “Who say she is a witch …” Cameron began to protest.

  DaSilva jumped. Cameron’s hands flashed. For the first time in his life he missed. The truth was he had no footing in the water: he groaned and fell, his face grinning and splashing surprise. The crew were dumb. They bore him up unwittingly. He was dead and his blood ran and encircled their hand.

  DaSilva shook like a leaf. The knife and blade fell from his fingers as flesh from bone turning dean and silver in the stream.

  “O God,” said Donne in voiceless surprise and horror as at himself. “What have you done daSilva to a brother friend?”

  DaSilva did not hear and understand. He too was deaf and dumb. He saw Cameron in the stream and in the sky where their joint flesh had flown and darted above the fantasy of their carnal death. He looked around foolishly, telling himself Cameron had attacked him in some idle and faithless fashion. It all seemed blind and empty now like the air and stream that jostled them.

  The Arawak woman pointed and Vigilance, straining his mind from the volcanic precipice where he clung, looked and saw the blue ring of pentecostal fire in God’s eye as it wheeled around him above the dreaming memory and prison of life until it melted where neither wound nor witch stood.

  IX

  The Arawak woman rolled like a ball on the cliff, clinging to tree and stone and Vigilance was able to follow. The river crept far beneath them, and above them – beyond the wall they were climbing – lay safety and freedom. Vigilance knew that every step he made was a miracle of survival. It was incredible he had escaped after the wreck of the boat and succeeded in climbing so far and high. Millions of years had passed he knew until now he felt bruised and wounded beyond words and his limbs had crawled and still flew. He had slept in a cradle of branches and in a cave overlooking the chasm of time. However strange it was the fact remained he was living after all. The memory of the conventional crew was a dead eccentric belief that still continued to haunt him every now and then whenever he thought he had fallen and died in the primitive moments of a universal emptiness and fear.

  The fantasy of the fourth day dawned – the fourth day of creation – since they had all set out from Mariella. From his godlike perch he discerned the image of the musing boat in which they had come. They had found a cave the previous nightfall and they had stretched their limbs until morning.

  It was a close fit lying there – too close for ease and normal sleep – and everyone stirred when Vigilance moved. They could not help turning their dull eye upon the vessel they had managed to anchor at their ghostly side in the stream and it was as if they sought a long lost friend and soul. Everyone stirred and woke, all except Cameron. He was dead with a stab wound in his back. In their enormous fatigue the night and day before they had kept him at their side as they would an idol and companion.

  They hurriedly abandoned him in the cliff, turning the room in which they had slept into his grave alone, and were soon travelling fast in the river when Jennings deliberately shut of
f the engine and the boat swung in the stream, lodging its bow in a fresh hollow of stone.

  “Ah got an idea,” he announced. He spoke with hopeless obstinacy. His face was no longer the same as before: it had changed into a dream, the dream of an unnatural unshaven dead man’s beard and growth. The cheeks were hollow as the caves in the wall and the blackness of his skin had grown lighter and greyer into an older drier mask and presence lying within. The lust and soul of rebellion had been killed abruptly in a manner that left him suddenly empty. He felt now only the loss of an opposition and true adversary within himself. His eyes had lost all rude fire and in their blindness and loneliness they spun deeper than nature’s darkness and light. It was the strangest abstract face Vigilance had ever seen – the abstraction of a shell afloat over a propeller and a machine with the consistency of a duty rather than of a desire and a spirit. Indeed it reminded him of a coconut shell he had once observed beached against the river; someone had brought it a long way from its natural grave on the seacoast and deposited it here dry and desiccated and foreign in the midst of the river’s stone and vegetation. He had held the husk in his hand and it had given a dry brittle harp’s cry of relief, mummified and mystical and Egyptian, melting at the same time into an inner dust that crumbled to an ancient door of life.

  It was the oldest soulless expression of self-surrender he had ever seen – the dutiful mask of resurrection and the engineer of death.

  “Ah got an idea,” said Jennings again. His voice was meaningless. “Let we look for the hole where the wild tapir pass through the cliff. Was when? Yesterday? Or day before yesterday? Let we pass through the same door to the land … This is dead man river … We can’t stay here any more….”

  DaSilva shook his head. “Ah dream you done dead already Jennings,” he tried to crack a joke. “And the hole close up for good for you a million year ago. You is a prehistoric animal.” His chest brayed foolishly. “Where Cameron?” he asked.

  No one replied.

  “Where Cameron?” he asked again. A sickly smile that reflected everyone’s condemnation wrinkled his lips. “Ah dream Cameron dead too,” he confessed, “and yet he swim and float next to me trying to hug and kiss me. Is he pull me down. Is a sight to feel a drowning man clinging to you,” he pleaded and confessed. “I had to stab at he to mek he loose me. And still he hold on. Don’t mind how ugly you find it …” he shuddered and hiccoughed in a sentimental bloated fashion of goodwill … “is still the dream of love floating everywhere … I forgive he … even if he mek me dream bad that a bewitched whore killed us both … grabbed hold us in the water … pulled us down …” He spoke with the blind innocence of a clown floundering in the blank of memory in the shattering of his life.

  Jennings turned his abstract face towards him indifferently as if he knew another version. “Yes is common knowledge you kill poor Cameron daSilva. Is common knowledge in the world you encourage he to mek this trip and that you quarrel stupid-stupid with he in the end. Nobody know the reason ’cept was jealousy or love. Is he probe at me till he enrage me to lef’ the shit I been living in. I was always a stay-at-home not like wutless Cammy.” A grotesque tear opened his cheek.

  DaSilva chuckled gaining a flash of an old rumour of fellowship in winning this ugly tear and response – “He butt me like if he was mad. I dive and pull away from he … But I didn’t mean to hurt he. Not Cammy. How could I ever hurt Cammy? Was me last memory and hope of happiness in this world. I remember feeling surprised that I had seconds of drowning life and fight lef’ in me while poor Cammy was bewildered and dead and didn’t feel a thing….”

  “You believe a drown-man skin got no feeling in it and can’t make out friend or foe pon his back?” Jennings mumbled his rhetorical senseless question and his face cracked open a little more. He knew it was all invention, da Silva’s erratic memory and story, all the crude prevarication and sentiment of life they debated and that it was pointless and pretentious for one dead man (which was the only feeling he felt inside himself) to address another on non-existent spiritual and emotional facts. No one could truly discern a reason and a motive and a distinction in anything. It was as bad as talking of two sexes and of blind love all in the same breath in his wife’s mother’s sitting-room. The old harridan! she had helped to drive him from his hell and his home. The shock of memory and of a duty to fight to rescue himself drove him again to address himself to the thought of another frightful revolution and escape he had to engineer however soulless and devastating the thought of a living return to the world was.

  “If we find the door where the wild tapir pass we can land and live….” He spoke without conviction and with dread at the thought of embarking again for a place he hardly relished and knew. It was better to stay just where he was and crumble inwardly he said like a man who had come back to his shell of nothingness and functional beginning again.

  “What tapir?” mocked daSilva. “I tell you I remember no tapir. You recall any?” He turned in a foolish mocking way to his twin brother.

  Vigilance was startled. He had forgotten this particular twin and brother. He recalled seeing him last with Donne tracking the old woman in the Mission while the other one remained with Cameron at the campfire. He had completely forgotten him until now when he saw him in the mirror of the dreaming soul again – an artifice of flight that had been summoned rather than a living man and way of escape. His reflection was the frailest shadow of a former self. His bones were splinters and points Vigilance saw and his flesh was newspaper, drab, wet until the lines and markings had run fantastically together. His hair stood flat on his brow like ink. He nodded precariously and one marvelled how he preserved his appearance without disintegrating into soggy lumps and patches when the wind blew and rocked the pins of his bones a little. He shook his head again but not a word blew from his lips. DaSilva stared at the apparition his brother presented as a man would stare at a reporter who had returned from the grave with no news whatsoever of a living return.

  Now he knew for the first true time the fetishes he and his companions had embraced. They were bound together in wishful substance and in the very enormity of a dreaming enmity and opposition and self-destruction. Remove all this or weaken its appearance and its cruelty and they were finished. So Donne had died in the death of Wishrop; Jennings’ primitive abstraction and slackening will was a reflection of the death of Cameron, Schomburgh had died with Carroll. And daSilva saw with dread his own sogging fool’s life on the threshold of the ultimate stab of discredit like one who had adventured and lived on scraps of vulgar intention and detection and rumour that passed for the arrest of spiritual myth and the rediscovery of a new life in the folk.

  Vigilance dreamed and felt all this; he recognized the total exhaustion of his companions like his own superstitious life and limbs. And he rested against the wall and cliff of heaven as against an indestructible mirror and soul in which he saw the blind dream of creation crumble as it was re-enacted.

  BOOK FOUR

  PALING OF ANCESTORS

  This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

  Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his

  hallows.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  X

  The daSilva twin and scarecrow of death had vanished in the dawn of the fifth day. Donne rubbed his eyes in astonishment. He did not feel inclined to search every cave and indentation in the wall, and after a lusty shout and halloo brought no reply, he decided to set out again and go on. Furthermore Vigilance and the old Arawak woman had also disappeared. Donne rubbed his eyes again wondering whether on leaving Cameron in the cave the previous day he had lost count of the living crew as well. An idea flashed upon him and he scanned the smooth cliff as if he followed a reflection. He saw nothing, however. And a wave of hopelessness enveloped him: everyone in the vessel was crumbling into a door into the sun through which one perceived nothing standing – the mirror of absolute nothingness.

  An abstraction grew around him – nothing e
lse – the ruling abstraction of himself which he saw reflected nowhere. He was a ruler of men and a ruler of nothing. The sun rose into the blinding wall and river before him filling the stream and water with melting gold. He dipped his hand in but nothing was there.

  He felt it was certainly better to move than remain where he was, and he started the engine, pointing the boat up-river for the fifth morning and time. Jennings’ wrist was aching and swollen. Donne sent him to serve as look-out at the bow while daSilva remained between them, in the middle, smiling foolishly at nothing.

  The river was calm as the day before, innocent and golden as a dream. The boat ran smoothly until the stream seemed to froth and bubble a little against it. A change was at hand in the sky of water everyone sensed and knew. The vessel seemed to hasten and the river grew black, painted with streaks of a foaming white. The noise of a thunderous waterfall began to dawn on their ear above the voice of their engine. They saw in the distance at last a thread of silver lightning that expanded and grew into a veil of smoke. They drew as near as they could and stopped under the cloud. Right and left grew the universal wall of cliff they knew, and before them the highest waterfall they had ever seen moved and still stood upon the escarpment. They were plainly astonished at the immaculate bridal veil falling motionlessly from the river’s tall brink. The cliffs appeared to box and imprison the waterfall. A light curious fern grew out of the stone, and pearls were burning and smoking from the greenest brightest dwarfs and trees they remembered.

  Steps and balconies had been nailed with abandon from bottom to top making hazardous ladders against the universal walls. These were wreathed in misty arms blowing from the waterfall.

  Donne looked at the engine and felt its work was finished. They needed only their bare hands and feet now to climb the wall. He unscrewed it from its hold and wedged it at the foot of the stairway. Jennings and daSilva assisted him also in hauling the boat out of the water and upon a flat stone. In a couple of months it would start to rot in the sun like a drowned man’s hulk in the abstraction of a day and an age. As he bade goodbye to it – as to another faithful companion – he knew there was some meaning in his farewell sadness, something that had duration and value beyond the years of apparent desertion and death, but it baffled him and slipped away from him. All he knew was the misty sense of devastating thoroughness, completion and endless compassion – so far-reaching and distant and all-embracing and still remote, it amounted to nothingness again.