— Mr. Swaminathan, you said in the street that memory is a primitive weapon.
— My dear chap, memory is not a place but a racing function of neural cells giving off dismal rhythms at less than ten microvolts, which are driven into by the high-pitched ring of hammer on chisel into marble. What did you say your occupation was before the er —?
— I was a humanist.
— I didn’t mean your politics. And in any case, which humans? Which section of humanity were you for? The weak or the strong? Quick, two seconds to answer. One, two. You’re a square peg in a round hole aren’t you?
The conversation cannot take the form of the hammering because during the hammering there is no conversation, and during the conversation, if it occurred, there was no hammering. Without a recording engineer no chemistry of identity can put those two elements together in time. The pressure of the forearm on the vertical marble slab is difficult to estimate accurately. Either it prevents the chisel from penetrating beneath the slab, or it is too loose to hold the slab to the wall. Either the conversation has partially occurred, the beginning for instance, the remainder being suppressed, selected, manipulated, transformed, schematised, because inunderstood. Or the conversation has wholly occurred, and been wholly manipulated, transformed, schematised, because inunderstood. The marble slab breaks into three large pieces, two of which fall crashing to the floor. A corollary to that is that the conversation has wholly occurred and that Mr. Swaminathan is mad. The gazebo is fully visible on the lawn, to the right of the coast of foliage around the house. The new pavilion is hidden in the trees. A second corollary is that the conversation has wholly occurred and is wholly sane but beyond the grasp of sick white reasoning. A pigeon lands on the parapet of the lower terrace roof above the entrance colonnade and shifts from one leg to another. A second pigeon lands a half metre or so away on the same parapet and waddles cautiously with an occasional bold side-hop, up to the first pigeon, who flies to the curlicew top of a jar on the parapet, followed after a pause by the second pigeon in a flutter. There is not enough room for two on the curlicew top of the concrete jar and the first pigeon takes off, swoops down towards the green crocodile and then veers upwards suddenly and close past the window, to land presumably on the roof immediately above. The second pigeon flies across the crocodile below and into a tall pine-tree.
Mr. Swaminathan stands hugely in the dusty bathroom, swaying from one foot to another. With one sweep of the hand he wipes the pink marble off the wall to the right of the window. At the gentle pressure of his outspread hand the wall crumbles down in a cloud of dust. The dust fills the head, bombarding the cells that run riot, emit helium particles until the leaden head disintegrates to bismuth, lead, thallium, polonium, bismuth, emanation 222, radium, thorium, uranium, on and on, in a hundred and sixty microseconds, or three million two hundred and thirty one thousand six hundred and forty two years one hundred and seventy three days point nine.
— You know very well that that is not how it occurred. Look around you, does this resemble what you know of prehistory?
— It is pitch-black. There is no mind to perceive it.
— You are perceiving it now, by special licence.
— Ah, but I have a blind spot. It’s not my fault, it’s due to non-existence.
— Don’t boast. We haven’t built you up yet. There will be a period of initiation. You must learn to participate you know. Nothing less than symbiosis will do, a participation so effective that it cannot be imagined, for it is not only pre-logical but pre-mythical and anterior to all collective representations. Now then, merge.
— I suppose you’re marking time really.
— Time, what’s that?
— Time for the black and white image to percolate. We can always add the colours later, as they crop up.
— White? If you can see any white about you’re already hopelessly corrupt. I said anterior to collective representations. Nothing less than symbiosis will do, between the totemic group and the totem. Now then, merge.
— It’s pitch-black.
— That’s better.
— But great white penguins are waddling in. No. They’re crocodiles, white bellied, up on their hind legs, they fill the whole corridor, help, help.
— There you go again with your sick talk. I said anterior to collective representations. What did you say you were, a physicist? You must know very well that the development of phenomena is correlative to that of consciousness. And that therefore the prehistory of the earth as described by modern science was not only never seen, it never occurred.
— But carbon 14 –
— There you go, assuming that the behaviour of particles remained unchanged over aeons. All you’re entitled to assume is that phenomena would have been as now described if they had been seen by people with the same kind of perception as man has evolved only quite recently. A mere few hundred years.
— Help, help! The crocodiles! They’re slimy. They’re crowding in down the corridor on their hind legs. I’m strangling one. I’m strangling the second. I’m strangling the third. The fourth. I’m strangling the fifth. After five is numberlessness. They go into the collective genitive. They crowd in, help, help.
— Merge, you fool, merge.
— Help!
— All right, if you must have your crude symbols and your schematisations, there’s only one way out. You see these cabins along the corridor. They’re for changing. We’ll shepherd the crocodiles into them. That’s it. One by one. You see, they’re quite gentle really.
— The floor’s wet.
— Well of course, this is an indoor swimming-bath. Now you listen to me, there are three floors, we’re in the basement. Above us, people slide in to the swimming-pool from the same level. Above that, there is a gallery, and they dive in. Down here however, we have to go in through these round glass portholes. They’re like submarine escape-hatches, only you can swim straight across the two membranes and up through the water. The process is known as osmosis. It’s quite a long way up, so take a very deep breath, now, come along, don’t be afraid, in you go, merge, in you fool, go on or I’ll have to push you.
— No! No! No!
The ceiling is pink and veined in white, and a long way away. The wall ahead is pink above a glossy and pale orange door. To the immediate right, very close to the eyes is a wall of pink veined marble. The veins are enormous, they leap out like a white network made to catch floating eyes. The wall is not very high, half a metre perhaps or a little more, edged by a two centimetre mud-coloured band where the marble has been removed. To the immediate left, very close to the eyes, is another wall of pink veined marble, half a metre high or a little more, also edged with a mud-coloured band where the marble has been removed. Beyond this low wall, some way away, is a high pink marble wall, joining the pink marble ceiling. Inside the head is a hammer striking at a chisel. The wall beyond the low wall to the right is mud-coloured, with some of the pink stripped off, the frontier between the pink and the mud being straight and vertical half way up the wall, then zig-zagging to the ceiling. The straightness of the line to the floor is an item of returning knowledge, for it cannot be wholly seen from this position. The body lies in the sunken marble bath. Inside the head a hammer is striking at a chisel.