Palace of the Peacock (Faber Editions) by Wilson Harris

Author:Wilson Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

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.

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