H(A)PPY
Page 15
PAIN!!!
PAIN!!!
PAIN!!!
‘ . . . un . . . un . . . understand your words,’ I stutter. ‘They fluctuate.’
He gazes at me, smiling.
‘I can’t . . . ’ I pant, speaking his language now, ‘I can’t . . . ’
I feel my denial transforming into an affirmation on my tongue –
PAIN!!!
So I close my eyes. I call on the resonance. I hear it sounding in the Latin hymn the crowd below are singing: ‘Wash the guilt from our polluted lips . . . ’ I hum. The Stranger hums with me, but his frequency is lower. As he sings, as I sing –
PAIN!!!
– I watch tiny, green spirals of equations peeling from the walls around me –
‘The Fibonacci numbers are a perfect pattern of numbers that can be translated into pitches . . . they can be found in seashells, solar systems, architecture and plants. They can be found in the human body . . . ’ my Stream idly muses.
Then it adds,
‘Ultra-high frequencies simulate enhanced fractal growth in plants and encourage stem dilation for increased fertiliser absorption . . . ’
And finally: ‘The ratios of neighbouring Fibonacci numbers, when drawn, show a spiral like that inside a conch shell. Equal Tuning creates a circle – something closed – not something open like a spiral . . . ’
As the Stream sighs into silence I watch –
PAIN!!!
PAIN!!!
PAIN!!!
PAIN!!!
PAIN!!!
as the numbers thicken and expand and forge themselves, organically, into an ornate hanging vine. Their lushness clings on to me and gently supports me like a precious fruit. Their stems and their leaves encase me and cradle me. They crawl up on to the scaffolding and affix themselves to The Stranger’s feet. He starts, yanks off his boots and jumps back. With my broken hands finally released, the plant lowers me – inch by glorious inch – rustling and creaking, on to the floor below. But the greening does not stop here. The vine continues to grow and expand. It spreads over the altar, it teems across the walls, it clings on to the windows. It clambers over the pews, it stops the mouths of the singers and lifts their bodies to the rafters. Its luxuriance – its lushness – becomes increasingly dense and fibrous. It hisses and twitters. This is the jungle of words. This is the wilderness. This is cruel nature: the sustainer, the destroyer. Soon I cannot move. My feet are sealed to the floor by suckers. Tendrils slide over my body. I try to sing, but I cannot hear the resonance.
I am sweating. This jungle is so . . . so dense – so unanswerable – it is asphyxiating . . . the green tendrils – indestructible, unassailable – slither up my arms, into the cracks between my ruined fingers.
I am rased. I am demolished. I am devoured.
But still – still – I am a voice – a small voice – telling the story of my abrogation. This is nothing, I tell myself, nothing but my own narrative – my own words – and words, surely – I tell myself – are sustained by gaps – by brief interludes – by inhalations.
Do not panic.
Do not panic.
Keep telling the story of yourself. As long as you tell it, Mira A, you cannot be obliterated. Words are souls, are they not?
I create the shapes in my mind, and as I form them the spaces appear ahead of me: the breath of hope fills the aisle. The words of the story shake themselves out. The tendrils release me. I am set free to move forward, into white balloons of air that float in front of me – surrounded by life – but consisting of sacrifice – the space of forgiveness. I am claimed by hope, I step into The Unknown. My earthbound spirit is purified. I seek others’ hearts as I walk through the Green Cathedral, towards the entrance. I will keep moving forward, so long as there are words, and I watch them dancing ahead of me, towards the giant door. I am standing at the door and I say
push! push! push!
With each inhale, the exhale.
The giant door swings open.
What lies beyond The Cathedral? I squint out into the darkness. I sense a small commotion, a panting, I feel warm breath on my broken hands. And I hear hooves sounding on the marble floors. Roe bucks. A small herd of them, then more of them and still more of them – a giant herd – moving past me, into The Cathedral; first at a stately walk – nervous, uncertain – and then at a slow trot, then finally a canter.
Above me – in the distance – I hear something shifting. It is the bell – the bell of The Cathedral, inhaling before it sounds. And in that moment, in that inhalation, I see everything teeming into whiteness. In the breath before sound. In the innocence before words. In the hush of possibility.
The bell rings.
The sound engulfs me.
I am obliterated.
I am found.
Where are we? I ask, stirring.
It is dark here. Everything hurts. My body hurts. My mouth is dry. The air around me feels – feels burned.
‘Do not worry,’ a voice says. I know that voice. It is him – it is Savannah. I peer down through the greasy blear towards his feet. They are bare. The ground is full of broken glass and dirt.
‘Have we reached The Unknown?’ I ask, quaking. It is . . . it is painful here. I glance around me, horrified. How might I describe this place? What words might I use?
Savannah is collecting tiny shards of wood. He has ripped up part of his rough coat.
‘I will make splints for your fingers,’ he tells me.
In the distance I hear screams and gunfire. My stomach contracts. What is this feeling?
Hunger?
Everything aches.
‘Will my body reject the clamps?’ I wonder.
‘Give me your hand,’ he says, not answering.
I give him my hand. He takes it, gingerly. The fingers are crushed and bloody.
I feel pain.
How might I describe this place?
How might I describe this feeling?
This strangeness?
This fearfulness?
This filth?
This confusion?
This mystery?
This hopefulness?
‘Do not try.’ He smiles, as if reading my thoughts. ‘There is no need.’
I smile back at him. I inhale. I exhale.
Of course. But of course. I softly embrace silence.
Special thanks to Tania Barker for her beautiful artworks, Lindsay Nash for her sterling design input, Anna Argenio for her skill and fortitude, and Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson for their seminal, scholarly and utterly engrossing Paraguay Reader (Duke University Press Books, 2012).
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Copyright © Nicola Barker 2017
Cover image © Stefan Towler
Book design by Lindsay Nash
Nicola Barker has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Extract here from ‘Image caption’, in The Paraguay Reader, Peter Lambert, Andrew Nickson, eds., p. 173 image caption. Extract here from ‘Introduction: Profession of Faith’, also in The Paraguay Reader, pp. 186–187. Copyright, 2013, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Republished by permission of the copyright holder. www.dukeupress.edu. Extracts here, here and here from I the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos, translated by Helen Lane. Reproduced with permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. Extracts her
e, here, here and here from Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians by Pierre Clastres, translated by Paul Auster. Reproduced with permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. Extracts here, here and here reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Beneficiaries of the Estate of Gerald Durrell. Copyright © Gerald Durrell 1956.
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First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann in 2017
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ISBN 9781785151149