I saw the dove’s addiction to propaganda and to war enlarged into immutable plague, immutable silent discord, deaf mute of silence. I saw the tiger’s susceptibility to false knowledge enlarged into immutable flame, silent discord, deaf mute of the sun. I could not hear or fathom its roar, its blaze. I turned to Ghost across the years and understood at last the cautions that had been threaded into his enigmatic and muffled tongue. He had been telling me of the silence and the deafness that would encompass my age if I failed to sound the origins of spirit. AND THEN WHEN ALL SEEMED LOST — WHEN I HAD SURRENDERED MYSELF TO TOTAL SILENCE — I REMEMBERED THE REVISIONARY FAUST THAT MY GRANDFATHER HAD WRITTEN AND THAT I HAD SCANNED WITH REDBREAST EYE AS MY MOTHER TYPED. I had been possessed of an eye, it seemed, that shone in her breasts, an ear that flowered in the tunnel of her body. I had swum within turbulences and reflected oceans of space. Not oceans now but bombed woods in this recurring dream with its whisper of temptation aloft in the trees at the heart of a chorus singing ‘Stone Cold Dead In The Market’. Singing ‘seize the species, seize the kingdoms of the earth, grab, plunder, possess.’ It was then — as if there had been a clap of thunder in the grave — that my deafness vanished and I heard the bustle, the movement, the traffic of the kingdoms of the earth. All mine, mine to seize. I had been tempted by a whisper in the trees in my mother’s body to ‘seize the species, seize the kingdoms of the earth’ and had responded instantaneously. Those kingdoms took the form in my dream of quantum, psychical glass, psyche’s glass tigers, psyche’s glass seals, psyche’s glass unicorn (and all the other creatures that had loped or swum into my room) in the building blocks of the universe. I reached out to seize them and I heard the bustle, the movement, the traffic of time, as they slipped from my grasp.
I felt a complex guilt, a complex shame. And yet I was grateful, grateful to someone or something (whoever, whatever, had tempted me). I was glad that I had responded, that I had succumbed, that I had attempted to seize the kingdoms of earth and space. Yes, I had succumbed to the temptation but had also seen through the veil of the moment into the roots of life with which I moved with all creatures that one seeks to seize, the roots of strangest whispering transparency that is the seed of the listening heart in every self-confessional fabric of the birth of truth, the birth of creative conscience.
Was I glad, was I sorry, that the kingdoms of space had slipped from my grasp? I was glad. I was sorry. And within the nexus of such ambivalence almost forgot the whispering Shadow of temptation to which I had succumbed until I stepped with Faust into it, into that now bristling, telephonic Shadow. A telephone was ringing in my mother’s heart or ear into which the creatures of glass had swum or run before they vanished into a whisper of music. I heard it distinctly whereas before I had heard nothing. I heard the clamour of church bells in the sacred wood. I heard them so mysteriously, so potently, it was as if a flock of mighty bell birds flew from down under and encircled the globe. It was so insistent, so wonderful, that I was seduced by another curious and strange bell at the end of a long fishing rodwhich Faust held over my grandfather’s creek in the sacred wood.
‘Faust,’ my grandfather had written (I scanned the page with an eye in my mother’s breasts), ‘is the comedian of the kingdom bell. The fisherman-bell is the kingdom bell. The fisherman-king is the comedian of the machine. Pay attention please.’ THE TEXT CONTINUED: Robin Redbreast’s revised foetus, glass bird, flew in his mother’s cinematic body and alighted on Faust’s fisherman-rod. It (the cinematic foetus, tiny bird) settled on the rod, sidled along it with numb claws until it gained a foothold, a claw-hold, on Faust’s kingdom bell. It fluttered its numb feathers and danced on the bell like kingdom come. The fisherman-rod swayed as it danced. The line descending from the rod dipped sharply in the water as if it had been bitten by a fish. The swaying and the motion were enough to awaken a multiple ripple on Robin’s mother’s belly. But the kingdom bell on the fisherman-rod did not make a sound. ‘It’s not ringing,’ Robin protested, ‘it should have rung to say that the fish in the water is biting …’
‘You mean,’ said Faust wryly, ‘that you, glass Robin Redbreast bird, are dancing on my kingdom bell.’ He stared into Robin’s eyes.
Robin felt numb. It was as if his claws were seized by violent cramp even as they danced. They danced on the bell but felt nothing. Why did they feel nothing? Why had he not known the instant he touched the bell that it was devoid of a clapper and a tongue, that it was a simulated bell not a real bell? Why had he said ‘a fish in the water is biting’ when he knew (or should have known) the commotion came from his active perch or dance?
The answer lay in the riddle of touch, the riddle of the dance. It lay in the riddle of Faust’s implicit dialogue between creatures, between hypothetical fish and numb foetus in the body of humanity.
‘Note,’ said Faust to Robin, ‘in giving you claws, foetal claws, like a bird’s, or a crab’s, I enhance the ironies of the circus and the machine, I am true to fashion, true to obsessional creed and animal destiny in a harshly competitive age
‘And what about spiritual destiny?’ asked Robin. He felt heavy all of a sudden. ‘Do we not lame or cripple animal destiny in equating it with human and competitive slaughter?’
‘Tut, tut,’ said Faust. ‘Toot, toot, heigh-ho nonny and all that! So much for spiritual destiny.’ But his eyes were glued to Robin’s, fiendishly glued, spectacularly glued, and yet there was a crinkle of humour, even pitiful/pitiless understanding, at the edge of his lips.
Robin wanted to protest but he was mesmerized by Faust’s extraordinary sophistication, irreverence and candour.
It was as if the cinematic atmosphere they shared crept into his blood and endorsed his lameness of mind and spirit even as he danced. Faust called the bell at the end of his rod his kingdom or dancing bell because without making a sound it spoke of a labyrinth of patent or invented process — patented flesh, patented bone — between hypothetical creature and cinematic humanity dancing in ballrooms of heaven rounded like great, clapper bells, dancing in space, in tune with the fabric or womb of mother earth but insensible to deprivation.
Faust was the master of new-born ironies and abortive spirit. His kingdom bell spoke of simulated dialogue between hypothetical God and hypothetical Man. It spoke of the bleak conversion (bleak exploitation) of deprivation into puppetries unconscious of hollow being.
Robin sought to protest again. ‘There is life and death, death and life, and somewhere in that ambivalent mixture lies the spark of innermost recall of the value of spirit …’ But Faust brushed him aside: ‘Quite understandably,’ he said, ‘you assumed that when the line shook under my kingdom bell that it was life biting, that life had taken the bait or the hook. Hypothetical life Robin! Remember that.’
‘I was wrong,’ Robin acknowledged.
‘Hypothetical life,’ Faust repeated. ‘Such is the measure of progress. We advance through spheres of deprivation by which we gain tools — have you forgotten the bristling noise of the telephone when you were able to hear?’
‘I remember the secret music,’ Robin was able to say though his tongue ached like Ghost’s.
‘We advance through spheres of deprivation through which we simulate the life of species. Take it a step further, Robin. Put your faith in material progress. Accept me as some kind of prodigious immortal. And then I will make you into my immortal prodigy, my born/unborn prodigy in the bottled but cinematic sphere of a woman’s body. Your mother’s body! Invent the mother. Invent the child. Let me touch you and begin the process.’