Free The Carnival Trilogy by Wilson Harris Page B

uncertainties that become the cousins of god in reflecting their curiosity about the wounds of heaven that revive a concept of innocence, the wounds of hell by which we glorify the individual in traditions of conquest.
    “Wholeness releases partiality to confront itself in others as a necessary threshold into the rebirth and the unity of Mankind beyond the rhetoric of salvation, beyond the rhetoric of damnation. Wholeness is a third dimension in which every mask suffers the kinship of exchange, the kinship of glory, the kinship of humiliation. At least,” he smiled across at me half-commandingly, half-apologetically, “that is what I think.”
    Czar Johnny (half-masked by the future in Carnival generation’s embalmed Lenin) shuffled along with the globe on his back, a globe or an immense crate of sugar. The particular aisle in the gutted (as it seemed to me) Market ship along which he moved was rather narrow and the shoppers or crew over which he ruled pulled aside, as they saw him coming, into areas between the stalls. Thus he made his way inch by inch, foot by foot, through the population of Carnival limbo.
    One Lady Charlotte, however, stood her ground.
    “Charlotte?” I turned to Masters. “Have I not heard that name before?”
    “Flip back to the Alms House scene in Carnival,” said Masters. “There’s mention of Charlotte. Bartleby’s second wife.”
    “Ah yes! I remember. She stripped him of his property in the heat of their romance.”
    “A cunning bitch. She’s dressed in rich cloth today, unlike poor Alice. And her shoes glitter. Ready to dance you would think. But no! she stands abusing Johnny as if she’s chained or riveted to the ground. Her pride won’t let her stir.”
    “It’s infra dig, isn’t it, for her to go aside into the crush and the throng of perspiring infernal bodies between the stalls?”
    “Her sons were educated at the College next to the Alms House, then they studied law at Harvard and in London. She knows her rights, that’s clear,” Masters conceded.
    “What is she saying to the czar?”
    “She’s telling him the folk in the Market have every right to stand in the aisle and buy their fruit and fish. She’s telling him he should back off and use another path away from the people’s stalls. She says she’ll stand where she is until kingdom come or until she’s through with her purchases.”
    Flatfoot glowered. He slowly lowered the globe on his back until he had deposited it like a great boulder in the middle of the narrow people’s aisle. “You cunning bitch,” he cried with venom, almost taking the words, I thought, out of Masters’ shadow of a mouth. “Don’t be hasty, don’t abuse the Lady Bartleby ,HE SAYS.”
    I was astonished at the sudden caution that had arrived upon Flatfoot’s tongue, as if he were repeating an aside or an injunction he had received from an unseen companion. I played the scene back in my mind and listened intently. “You cunning bitch! Don’t be hasty, don’t abuse the Lady Bartleby, Johnny ,HE SAYS.”
    Yes, there was no doubt about it. I had overlooked but caught Johnny in the replayed utterance of the unseen companion.
    “Who is HE?” I wondered.
    “Johnny’s an idiot giant, he hears voices,” Masters half-laughed but I was conscious again of their mysterious global kinship, as mysterious, in a sense, as the cousinship to Sir Thomas who, I suddenly saw, out of the corner of my eye, had his eye fixed upon the czar of New Forest.
    I almost swore I saw Masters’ shadow-lips moving in that mirroring eye.
    “Lady Bartleby I asking you polite to stir you ass and to move out of me way. Lady Bartleby I telling you …” He began to roar like thunder. Then he stopped. He was listening to someone invisible whose lightning caution he repeated: “Be careful, Johnny, be careful what you say, HE SAYS.”
    Charlotte grew icy. She was angry. She ignored him. But despite her anger – as is the way of dreams – she smiled; her ageing