Take painting of self-portrait descent into the First Day by the fire-eater which I began to read in the dying light of the sun. It was stacked into other canvases and sculptures against the broken wall by which we stood. It may have fallen straight out of his wide-brimmed night, brazier of night, to break into sparks that assembled themselves into Montezuma sailing on a canal sunken now under Avenida Reforma. Bread of fire upon the waters of tradition. Sunken waters a long time ago. A long night of history ago before the canals of Tenochtitlan were sealed by the streets, the pavements of the city, the very pavement on which we now stood.
The fire-eater’s sunset seeped through twentieth-century cement and fell upon an ancient stream upon which the Emperor sailed. It was another self-portrait, vast head into which the stream ran. The sun flared, vanished into that forge or head. Then re-appeared like newly aroused fire, newly aroused flood to sprinkle my Fool’s crown.
Thus it was we shared a mutual body of sacrifice arching back across centuries of Christ and Montezuma, conquistadores and emperors, in the name of the dying sun.
Thus it was we awoke with a deep conviction of sailing in space towards the port of love, the port of dawn within the vitals of eclipsed majesty.
THE SECOND DAY (The Door of the Virgin)
The Idiot put his hand on her eyes. They felt sharp. Fine prick of her lashes. Made of bone. Easter sculpture for sale. “Yes,” said the fire-eater with an air of gloom. “Painted, sculpted with precision. Look at those lines. A marvel. Flesh-within-flesh, ghost-within-ghost.” He continued advertising his wares in a singsong voice like a priest chanting. “She’s worth her weight in gold.”
A landscape of times nestled beneath the Idiot’s fingers that smarted now as if they had been burnt by a spark far back in the torch of the day, a pinprick of blood, a pinprick of paint, a pinprick of bone.
“Unfinished,” said the fire-eater apologetically. “Sorry about that.”
Indeed the bones of the virgin were unfinished, the paint not yet dry and the Idiot felt smeared, unclean. As if he had descended by the skin of his teeth into an ageless material hollow, the marks of which he carried on his hands as she (the virgin) bore it in her eyes.
Preparations for Easter were now in full swing. Models were on parade of Christ and his disciples. Temporary and makeshift perhaps. It did not matter. The cathedrals were already stacked to the brim with golden, silver treasures.
The sensation he had had of descending into stream or forge was a disease that seemed part and parcel of the constitution of nature itself (baptism by the elements, coercion of spaces) as far back as he could remember. The impression would grow from within that some strange place he encountered was in fact strangely familiar (as if he had been there before, had been dipped into it before) or — even more alarming — that some familiar place he had come to was wholly strange, he had never been addressed by it before.
He would arrive at the end of a road that branched in two directions — science and art (the science of a map, on one hand, the architecture or styles of subjective arrangement on the other) and would find himself afflicted by a sensation that both branches of the road and the very place on which he stood were unknown to him; one branch led into a hole in the ground, into untapped resources of energy or untapped resources of extinguished time, the other into a cloak or body sacrificed to the sun, into the end of time itself or the genesis all over again of light …
Then with an effort of concentration he would roll up the scene again around him into a stable element he recalled now like the back of his hand. But stable as it was he could not banish the accumulative taste of what had been occurring across a lifetime now of passion of the senses — if passion it was — taste or feeling or passionate immersion in a line of paint, wood, earth, stone as the threshold of vulnerable, glorious flesh-and-blood — in her eyes (the fire-eater’s virgin), on his tongue (the fire-eater’s tongue), in his fingertips (Idiot fingertips).
He walked into them and they into him as into blind rooms of mysterious community in which science and art were two sides of nameless potentialities reflected/glimpsed that made the shape of each body, each room already subtly different to what one thought it was.
An Easter procession was approaching. “If you join them,” said the fire-eater smiling at the Fool, “they will take you to a church in which the carving of Christ hanging over the altar is mine, my handiwork.” He spoke with pride then shrugged. “As for her,” he pointed to the virgin, “they (the church) commissioned her of me but they rejected her in the end. Poor fools,” he spoke with a touch of rage. “Perhaps you would care … She’s worth her weight in gold. And another thing you will find her …”
“Find her …?”
“My model, sir. The woman who posed for this. She’s my artist’s model. The best in these parts. She’s there now. In the procession. Look …”
But before he could look the procession had moved hotly upon him and the Idiot was swept into a stream, an eye floated here, a face rose up there, a coat, a cap, swept into a flood of features that drew him to the Door of the Absent Virgin as the church was called.
Once inside he saw the Christ of which the fire-eater had spoken blazing in the air that was so hot now, so close, he felt faint. He recalled, as he began to melt into the ground, as he knelt on the ground, the pride with which the fire-eater had spoken. It was, beyond a shadow of doubt, a majestic self-portrait. Yet it spoke of a vulnerable god, of his rage, his desire for a rejected goddess, an absent goddess.
It spoke of an all-consuming spring, fascinated fires of youth, the intense spring of man when the arm of a goddess, her leg, her face, enmeshes him. And the chain of fire within him/within her confirms all that is intimate, all that is unbearable, within his reach, beyond his reach. His presence. Her absence. Worth her weight in gold. He felt crushed. The Fool felt crushed. Crushed by that blaze, that fury in the sky. Except for a spark. Spark of blood. Spark of paint. Pigmentation of man. Was it taste or tastelessness to be born of a woman, baked in an oven? The fire-eater’s rage was the Idiot’s spark, the fire-eater’s rage the mystery of love, the fire-eater’s all-consuming humanity the mystery of hate.
The afternoon began to grow dark, to grow susceptible to his spark as if the blaze of Christ above, high in the church, had become a torch in the Idiot’s hand at the bottom of the world to illumine again the vessel of an emperor. And that illumination, that reflection were a door through which to descend still further beneath imperial shadow into rejected abysses, rejected goddesses, sacrificed priestess under the floor of the church. Long, long ago when her flesh was the bread of spring.
Hollow brimming flesh. The Idiot looked up (or was it down?) at the fire-eater’s beard which was suddenly black, kissed by a balloon that rose above the altar into the church.
He turned his head to the procession to see who was responsible. A child. His balloon. He was paying it out like a kite from a ball of twine in his hand and his face was wrinkled with pleasure, the enormity of pleasure a child sees in the incongruity of making contact with the gods.
There she was. Almost on the heels of the child — huntress and hunted — yes — unmistakably — there she was. The woman of whom the artist had spoken when he said “Look”. He perceived her now. She saw him now.
Perhaps it was a state of mind, quiescence, flotation after a hectic age of light. He could see now why the fire-eater needed her as the reflection of his need.
He could see now why he needed her. It was as if they were flowing together across a pool, a black-bearded pool towards an inimitable spark of tenderness. And it was with gratitude he rose to his feet, called to her, held her. Wandered the streets together. It was past midnight when they came up to his room in Gravity Hotel; two figures/survivors from a long vanished age it seemed. He switched on the light. She was still there, solid as gold. High cheekbones, dark skin, dark hair, pencilled in space that broke her solidity and gave him hope. Hope of subsistence, hope for a future. Penetration of goddess. Penetration of paradise.