‘You were caught in the same net that the huntsman used in bundling the Predator away …’
‘Why did he not kill him, make an end of him? Would not that have solved everything, Mr Mageye?’
‘Ah! Francisco, have you forgotten that in desiring the Predator’s end you were compulsively drawn to him …?’
‘Me? Was I?’
‘Yes, you! You were fascinated by his magnetic charm and terrifying beauty. Try to remember. A beauty that you compared — do you now remember? — to the marbled hide of the globe seen from the Moon. Indeed the Predator has no qualms in wearing the elements of earth and sky on his back. It’s not so astonishing. You, Francisco — and I for that matter — wear shoes of leather, the occasional fur hat, the occasional skin of a creature. Though nowadays conscience pricks.’
‘Are you suggesting,’ I cried, ‘that the Predator and I are equal prey — or shared prey (an odd way to put it) — in the huntsman’s net?’ I stopped and considered as Mr Mageye riveted his glance upon me. An odd kind of broken, uneasy conversation we had been having … ‘I remember,’ I said slowly, ‘that in desiring his end my heart grew faint as though his end could prove to be mine as well.’
Mr Mageye smiled as though to hearten me afresh in my fear of self-induced closure within the magnetic compass of the Predator.
Then he cried: ‘Surely you know, Francisco, that there are no endings to a Dream-book of creation animated by music …’
‘I know nothing. Not a damned thing.’
Mr Mageye suddenly grew grave. ‘I understand your pain, Francisco,’ he said. ‘But consider. Here’s the crux of the net. Crux — I can hear you saying — is an odd word to associate with a fluid net. There is no ending, no closure, to the text of the prey in which you reside, the text of the Predator that you abhor and admire. Mind you! I am guessing in the dark. For there’s a hidden text of elusive differentiations in Predator and prey that lies behind all “beginnings” and beyond all “endings”. That is one awkward way of putting it. But I must be honest. Those hidden texts may never — I would say will never — be absolutely translated. They are wilderness music. They infuse an uncharted realm, a mysterious density, into every chart of the Word. They infuse immense curiosity and vitality as well in empowering the vulnerable prey (such as ourselves) to seek for endless translations in time of differentiations within ourselves between prey and Predator.’
‘What am I to make of the huntsman’s intervention when he threw his net and saved my life?’
‘Spared the life of the Predator as well! Each creature tends to prey on another.’
‘Where then lies the difference between me and …?’
Mr Mageye held up his hand. ‘The difference lies in prayer.’ Prayer? I was stunned but I understood. I understood the jest or pun.
‘Unspoken prayer matches hidden texts. One prays that one is free to offer one’s body to another in sacramental love. One prays for such freedom.’
‘And the Predator?’
‘The Predator draws blood, the blood of lust. The Predator sometimes seems invincible. The prey knows he is vulnerable and even when he prides himself on being unscathed in the huntsman’s net his blood nourishes the sun. All this is susceptible to extremity as we saw in the late Mayan world when men’s hearts were literally presented to the sun. Hidden texts teach us to breach such frames, such literality … The ghost of the prey in ourselves, the vulnerable prey, that we offer to the sun, is an unfathomable inspiration of grace, hidden grace in all subject creatures, that transcends frame or literality or predatory coherence or plot. But may I remind you, Francisco! Dream-books are translations of the untranslatable. It is a vocation that may well take us through and beyond the stars into life’s blood on other planets.’
‘Why did not the huntsman intervene and save the people of Jonestown?’
Mr Mageye riveted his glance upon me again.
‘Come, come, Francisco,’ he said. ‘You know — you must know in all that you have confided to me in your Dream-book — how odd, how varied, divine intervention in human affairs is. It’s not easy to read the signals, to respond to the warnings. Our minds are often closed …’
‘Was mine closed?’
‘Of course it was. Habit dies hard. I speak of myself as well. Educators such as myself need to be re-educated …’
‘But … But …’
‘I know, Francisco. I am in your Dream-book and I know that your mind cracked a little in Jonestown. Your mind-set that is! But consider how charged and peculiar was your apprehension of intervention. You were driven to weigh and assess the shot that killed Jones in the nick of time, your own phantom hand on the gun, the pain of self-confession, self-accusation, numbness, numbness that erupts from one’s wounds, one’s traumatization that is built unwittingly into past weaponries, future weaponries, technologies … Yes, it’s all there in your Dream-book and still you are challenged to consider and reconsider the ground of experience.’ He was laughing all at once but I could scarcely fathom his humour. Was he laughing with me, at me, with himself, at himself? ‘Intervention by the divine cannot be entirely divorced from laughter at oneself, one’s refusal sometimes to read the signs until it is too late or almost too late.’ His expression was grave, half Sphinx-like again. I was aware of his lightning shifts of mood.
‘Take your own case again, Francisco. The gun that Deacon fired seemed to flash into your mind as if it had been built out of the concretion of your own trauma, your own numbness. There’s a warning from which civilization recoils! Perhaps it is unable to read the signs! It refuses to countenance its own predicament in the light of technologies that are — at a certain level — an extension of the trauma of an age: a trauma that is building a void into sensibility. New technologies should bring into play profound and new literacies of the Imagination. They are sprung in part from ourselves, our defects, our deprivations however novel they seem. They may appear to be our slaves, our servants, but as in the Virgin’s El Doradonne cradle (do you remember?) — the play in the hospital — they are already becoming toys for the privileged wealthy, or well-to-do areas of civilization, privileged nurseries, toys that we are unable to translate into the genuine service of humanity. The signs are there, the necessity for a different comprehension of the language of reality. The signs of intervention, the intervention of divine furies, are all there, but are we responding? Will our response come too late? Will it ever come?’
Mr Mageye had stopped but his glance was still riveted upon me. Suddenly I wondered if it was he, my beloved teacher, or whether it was an extraordinary eye in the Camera beside him. Had his apparition frozen into a parallel spectre of technology? Was I witnessing a species of dual technology, apparition and frozen spectre?
Was this an intervention in my Dream-book to be weighed and sifted in returning to Jonestown in Memory theatre?
I recalled the Day of the Dead when I lay on my pillow of stone and arose at nightfall in the bushes. I recalled my half self-accusatory, half self-confessional response to Deacon’s intervention and to the Virgin’s intervention in moments that seemed my last on Earth.
I knew then how ill-equipped I was to fathom intervention through the masks of fallen angels and Gods and Virgins (all of whom themselves are surrogates of an unfathomable Creator), through hidden texts that I needed to consider and reconsider again and again and to match with unspoken prayer …