Monument Maker, page 40
“And then I saw a man in terrible suffering, hung by one leg, head downward, to a high tree. And I heard the voice:-
‘Look! This is a man who saw Truth. Suffering awaits the man on earth, who finds the way to eternity and to the understanding of the Endless.
‘He is still a man, but he already knows much of what is inaccessible even to Gods. And the incommeasurableness [yes, he really uses this word] of the small and the great in his soul constitutes his pain and his Golgotha.
‘In his own soul appears the gallows on which he hangs in suffering, feeling that he is indeed inverted.
‘He chose this way himself.
‘For this he went over a long road from trial to trial, from initiation to initiation, through failures and falls.
‘And now he has found Truth and knows himself.
‘He knows that it is he who stands before an altar with magic symbols, and reaches from earth to heaven; that he also walks on a dusty road under a scorching sun to a precipice where a crocodile awaits him; that he dwells with his mate in paradise under the shadow of a blessing genius; that he is chained to a black cube under the shadow of deceit; that he stands as a victor for a moment in an illusionary chariot drawn by sphinxes; and that with a lantern in bright sunshine, he seeks for Truth in a desert.
‘Now he has found her.’”
Now, in this booklet, and it may have been a variant or a rejected copy or a misprint, but in this booklet the author had shuffled the order of the cards. The book ends with The Hanged Man. Death and then Justice precede it. So what? the young kid protested, and pulled a cynical face. So you read some nonsense in a book that chimed with you, congratulations, we’ve all been there. You asked me about the work of the Januists, I replied. I told you I had to finish the tour, I had to go into hiding, I had to discover a book, did I not? I’ll give you that, the young boy admitted. But there was one other thing I had to find before our next working, our great experiment in time, could take place. A photograph, the boy recalled. That’s right, I continued. And there it was. Slotted into the book, in between the pages for The Hanged Man, there was a photograph, a head-and-shoulders shot of a man, a black-and-white portrait. In that moment I saw who I would become.
Who was it? the man with the radiant tattoo demanded. Tell us, man! It was Mariella’s husband. It was the Januist. It was the film-maker.
Well, what did he look like? Unremarkable, archetypal, in one sense, though in his ordinariness, his uniformity, I want to say, there was something uncanny, in the perfect symmetry of his face there was something ungodly and perfect, not beautiful, not handsome necessarily, but something that had been mastered, something that felt like the end of the line, like a man whose children would inevitably start to degenerate, like a specimen at the tip of a strange outlying branch that flowered for the last time before bringing the branch down completely, there was something cold and savage in the parting of his hair, an unearthly radiance to his white skin, he looked like he could have been a banker, an accountant, in one sense, his look was calculated, in other words.
He is wearing a white shirt, a black tie and black blazer jacket. He isn’t looking at the camera; rather he is looking beyond it, to the side of it, not at the person taking the picture but at someone or something else, a third presence, on the other side, a presence which is not himself. What about his eyes, the young boy asked me, tell us about his eyes. His eyes, I replied, his eyes, let me tell you about his eyes. His eyes are the eyes of a high diver.
I looked at the photo some more and as I did I became aware of the dead, behind me, by this point my constant companions, in a line, their arms on each other’s shoulders, like the forced march of the blind, a line that stretched off through the room, through the walls, through the air itself, a line that might as well have wound up in eternity, if it’s possible for anything to wind up there, boys with missing ears and black holes for eyes and with torn thighs and feetless, feetless boys, what a sight, damaged boys, boys with holes in their bodies where the light shone through, boys with half-eaten faces, boys with blackened torsos and with limbless chests, and I looked back at the photograph, at a face that I described as looking like the end of the line, and I confronted Mariella, she was in the bedroom, I stood there like the dead, like my own dead self, like the beggar in the square, I held the picture of her husband up in front of me in silence, she came up close, so close that I thought she might kiss the photograph, it’s my husband, she said, where did you find him, not where did you find it, as you might say regarding a photograph, and I had the image of her husband trapped between the pages of a book, his perfectly symmetrical face pressed like a flower, and a tear ran down her face and she held her head in her hands and I felt the violence with which I had confronted her with the past, with her own past this time, not my own, but all the time I was starting to see, coming to realise how it would be, what my role in all of this would become.
She described her husband, she began to describe him using the kind of extravagant words I had taught her, words that made everything seem impossible, magical.
We sat in the conservatory as the rain fell on the glass roof. Mariella smoked cigarette after cigarette. She sat on the couch with her legs pulled up under her. As the evening came in she appeared as a simple silhouette, a black bird, its damp body drying in the heat. He was stupendous, she said, literate, magnanimous in his vision. He was a sophisticate, a seeker, a gazer into time and space. He had given his all for his art, literally, he had given himself up to it. Imagine an art that would vanquish the artist completely, she marvelled. And I don’t mean these nincompoops, these fancy-pants, these dope smokers (her language was confused, partly my fault, I confess) who claim to have removed the artist from the process of creation, these crap-eaters are trapped in theory, are lost to ideas, these tosspots (sorry) have never come close to being torn apart in the matrix of their own creation, to being dismembered by their own practice and yes practice is a shite word, that is why so many artists are using it, but for Donald (she used his name for the first time, a Donald, I thought, I wasn’t prepared for that) the idea of practice was a sick joke, a fallacy, a misdirection, there was no practice, this was not a rehearsal, there were no repeats, no turning back, he intended to sacrifice himself in order to create a conduit, an autobahn, a superhighway, between the past and the future, one that could be accessed via (via is a Roman road, after all, and another one of mine) a work of art that was constantly, inevitably, calibrated (mine) to now, in other words a work of art that held the moment in perfect equilibrium (mine too, obviously), so much so that both past and future were implicit (mine) in it, indeed the art was the perfect admixture (mine) of them both so that the moment was not so much interrogated (mine), because interrogation, just like dialogue, is the terrain of the lesser artist, the shit-stirrer, the domain of the masturbatory stain (mine too, I’m afraid), this was no more interrogation than it was analysis than it was critique than it was running commentary, all these wretched excuses for going nowhere, these asswipes (mine too, ha ha), this was not so much interrogation as revelation, but what happened, I interrupted her, where did he go, is he in there somewhere, in his art, and is his art located somewhere specific, is he in another time, is he trapped in a loop, is he dead or alive, and she brought up a god, a particular god, do you recall the god whose body was scattered across time, she asked me, and although I was sceptical I said, yes, I know which one you mean, but in reality I was confused, Jesus’s body is, after all, arguably, across all time, though intact, still, perhaps, and then of course there is Osiris who was torn into pieces and whose cock could not be found, Osiris was the god of the dead and resurrection but wasn’t Christ also, I was confused but still, despite my doubts, I shrugged and said, yes, I know the one, I understand, though I was far from understanding, and she said, well, okay, now you understand, but think about it, she said, if he is across all time he is immanent in all of it, am I right, and I went to say, I taught you that word, I taught you all of these words, what is your own understanding of them, but instead, again, I nodded, I stood by the window, in the dark, as the rain came down, in my mask, and I nodded, yes, I said, though my voice was muffled, yes, you would be right, and then she said, so there’s a power there, there’s a power that we can make use of, am I right, yes, I said, in my muffled voice, yes, I said, in my mask, but how, she said, that is the question, but how, I tried, she said, I admit I tried, these awful creatures, these amoebas, these jellyfish, these subaqueous specimens that lie with their faces to the wall, these canvases that I compared to numinous nets, this is all that remains of my own experiments, my own attempts to tap into the stream that Donald gave his art and life to (Donald, I thought again, Donald, you don’t expect a god named Donald), a mockery, in other words, mere ectoplasm, comic-book shite, she said, and that’s when I told her about the dead, I have to tell you, I said, I have to tell you about the dead, they are coming back, I said, and I compared myself to a lighthouse or to a mayday signal, to a distress call was what I meant, and I told her that even as I had kept up the pretence of our psychic sideshows, of our live communication with the dearly departed, that the dead, truly, had started to materialise and that even now, as I stood by the window in the rain, if I were to look over my shoulder, through the glass, stretched out, floating high in the air, as far as the eye could see, I would see the dead, lined up, miraculously suspended, luminous in the sky over Athens, an endless chain of them snaking far across the horizon, and with that Mariella broke into tears, don’t you see, she said, don’t you see, but I still didn’t see, it’s all true, she said, I believed in you from the moment I saw you in the park, she said, I knew you were special, I knew you had the power, I never doubted you, it’s you, it’s you, she repeated, you’ve come back to me, don’t you see, you are the fulfilment of the Januist dream, look, she said, look, and she held up the photograph of Donald in front of her and his eyes met mine, don’t you see, she said, he left you his face.
Back in the courtyard, in the prison, in the years of the war, I sat with the Scotsman with the tanned arsehole, in the shade of a sand-coloured wall, and we talked about all the things we would do with a new face, how the world would open up for us like never before. Think about it, he marvelled, the women you could have. What would stop you? You could wear a bow tie and go down to the club and pick them up. You could stand there like fucking Casanova, one hand in your pocket. Or what about going to Africa? I mean, the world would be your fucking oyster, you’d be out there, trading with natives, dining with chiefs, him giving you as many women as you could handle and then you come back, you’re society’s darling, you write your memoirs and you go off and live on a fucking island. Easy. Basically, with a new face, you live and you learn but the difference is, once you’ve learned, you get to start all over again. Two shots at this life. It’s only fair, if you think about it. You start off unprepared, you’re at a disadvantage. He rolled a spitball in his mouth, puckering his lips, and launched it through the air. Then he nodded at his own wisdom. It’s only fair, he said. A man should be allowed two faces. Minimum allowance. Three, okay, I wouldn’t say no, but then you’re getting out of hand, then you’ll go chopping and changing your whole life, you’d be with a different woman every day of the week. A second roll of the dice, that’s all I’m asking. One face to make all your mistakes with and one to make up for it.
All around us men stood in silence, emaciated, half-starved, their gums swollen, their faces already used up for who knows what.
And what about a career criminal, the palsied Scotsman continued, think about it, dedicating the first half of your life to embezzlement and armed robbery, to rape and destruction, and then bingo, face-swap, ride off into the sunset. But you’d have to know you were due a new face, that God had one lined up for you, and of course this relies on everyone else not knowing and especially on everyone else not getting one too at some point otherwise it would be chaos, everyone would be watching everyone else, seeing what they were up to, what plans they had, what they intended to get away with using their old face. Two-faced, that’s what they say, isn’t it, duplicitous. Still, a new face is one thing, he continued, your old body is something else, you’re still left to drag it around in the wake of your mug regardless. I’d be swanning around like a movie star with a brand-new coupon and I’d be lucky to squeeze a pellet out my old tanned arse at the same time. Still, I’d go back home, I’d go back home all the same, show up looking like laldy, no one suspecting a fucking thing, fire into my wife’s sister, fucking do the rounds, new boy in town, my wife would fall for me all over again, I’m willing to bet, even with a new face. It’s me, I’d say, but only months later after she thought I was dead, and I was the new man in her life. I came back for you, I’d tell her. Can you imagine that? That’s reincarnation right there. Dropping the bomb, know what I mean? Still, as long as God isn’t handing out any new pricks my love life is scunnered. Barring any miracles, it’s gonna be strictly fondling and looking for me from here on out but fuck it, new faces, new cocks, why not? One day they’ll be able to sew a new cock on you, that I believe, and that day we’ll all be dancing.
I came back, I told him, I came back, eventually, with a brand-new face. But it worked out completely differently.
I know a surgeon, Mariella told me, an experimental surgeon, a secret operative, you understand, a refugee, in hiding, let’s say, and I knew that she meant a Nazi, a Nazi surgeon, a human experimenter. The Nazis are experimenting on humans? the old Scot exploded. The dogs! Yes, they’re experimenting on humans, I informed him. They’ve systematically murdered whole sections of the population, women, children, Gypsies, intellectuals, political radicals, the handicapped and the simple-minded and most of all the Jews. The poor Jews, I said. What about the Jews? the Scot asked me. All gone, I said, six million of them, gone. It’s not possible! the Scotsman burst. I mean, I’m not the biggest fan of them myself but shipping six million of them to heaven, well, that would put a strain even on God’s resources.
They call it the Shoah, I told him, they call it the Holocaust. They call it Auschwitz and Treblinka and Buchenwald. Doctors inject phenol into the hearts of children in their surgeries in Auschwitz. They make lampshades and soap from their remains. They expose prisoners to experimental diseases. Jews are rounded up and murdered in their millions by gassing. The Nazis have industrialised murder. The extermination camps have become the pyramids of the twentieth century, I informed him. Without them, it would be impossible to read it correctly.
And these are the bastards that you go to for your new face? he asked me. In that case I spit on new faces. Yes, I said, I went to them for a second chance or, more properly, for a third life. This is damnable, he said. I no longer remembered my old face, I continued. I looked in the mirror and felt nothing, a lack, perhaps, but not for a particular configuration of features, not for my old face, which had disappeared along with my ID.
We had nothing to go on, not even the most basic foundation. I would attempt to draw my old face, from memory, but there was nothing left, all of my sketches looked like children’s drawings, with triangular noses and round eyes and mouths and a squiggle of hair. My face had gone back to where it had come from, which is the mind of God, and He had forgotten it all over again. God never forgets, the Scot protested. No, I replied, God only remembers once, the rest is down to us humans. That means the gates of heaven themselves were raised by men, the Scot exploded, it’s ridiculous. Heaven, I believe, is located somewhere in human memory, I told him. Of course, I continued, there was only one outcome to my story. I could choose to ignore it, or I could choose to take my place. Both seemed, somehow, like an incredible violence. I could live out my days as a man in a mask and a monster in the bedroom or I could adopt a new face, that of Mariella’s husband, Donald.
Of course, by doing this, I became part of the Januist experiment. By doing this I made it come true. Or was it that it came true without any volition from me whatsoever? Had everything been set in place by Donald during his original working, had he really succeeded in scattering himself across time through his art and now here he was, in reception of my body, his face restored to him once again?
And you have to think about possession: would a new face take control, would it take over completely, would I be myself any more? Would I become Donald? Or would we share characteristics, would we become some macabre Siamese twin with two personalities warring it out in one body?
Why did I do it? you ask me. Why? Because it offered itself to me, so unequivocally? But it’s more than that; it’s because I came to understand the nature of my existence, the precise arc of my life, let’s say, and the responsibility of my incarnation. It was to lead the dead back home, my friend, it was to rescue all of the disappeared, and for that I needed the face of a dead man come back to life, the face of an ex-corpse.
