The Angel at the Gate (Faber Finds) by Wilson Harris

and uncertainty about the state of the world, its wealth, its poverty.
    Shadow of curative doubt was one of the shawls Mother Diver wore to give substance to eccentric insistence on freedom of choice, and to imply unwittingly perhaps that no fact or feature compelled her to pander to self-indulgent daughter or son; her genuine cares therefore were strangely solemn love, even supernatural resolution —on one hand—against nature as brute law and—on the other—a brooding uncertainty about the metaphysical quality of qualities that creates just competition (the justice of intelligent and true competition) as superior in Mother Blood to Thieves’ Manifesto, dreaded Communist Manifesto. Even so, in pursuit of “quality of qualities”, a metaphysic of curative doubt—planted in carnival, diseased quantities for sale in the marketplace/supermarket of history—made Mary wonder at distinctions hidden but resident in Mother Blood, Mother Dread. Could theft by the rich from the poor, by the poor from the rich, possess a metaphysical justification? Was the theft of fire from the gods justified? Were the gods truly rich or truly poor sons of space, Jupiter, Saturn, and others?
    Mother Diver’s shawl of curative doubt (as Mary perceived it) enveloped Sebastian and he shifted slightly in bed beside her, uncertain of Father Inequality that gnawed into his frame and made him a lesser mortal than other men, or of Father Equality that raised him in Mother Diver’s arms into a hidden star amongst light years in the womb of space.
    The intricacies of that shawl became clearer to Mary as the taut wave of shadow in the room also lifted the room and the house in Dolphin Street until they sailed backwards in time—one human, diminutive light-year back—1981 to 1980.
    Now she and diminutive Sebastian were standing on the pavement outside the great supermarket whose goods she had “previously” inspected in “future time”. The sensation of having travelled backwards from 1981 (that lay in the future) into now (1980) that lay in the present reminded her of the slicing logic of John’s scissors in Paradise Park only “yesterday” or “the day before yesterday” that lay in the “future”; another measure of eccentric circuit around the years; reminded her also of Sukey Tawdrey’s eyes falling out of her head to become strangely wider perhaps, more open, in backward glance. That was Mary’s glance now, the strange width, the curious openness of apparently lost yet apparently regained eye for parallel times. It was all symptomatic of crisis—a world crisis—that raises the kingdom of mothers and daughters.
    The rain had ceased and the pavement in front of the supermarket glistened like an urban mirage of a stream through that eye. The sun shone bright through a flattened beach of cloud, rainbow iris of sky in the head of space spoke of oceanic distances, the light on the pavement spoke of openness of perception to the curvature of the earth.
    The supermarket lay halfway between a church spire at one corner and a subway station at another, sunken in the pavement under one’s feet. This was the religious beat not only of policemen and pedestrians but of an old woman draped, it would seem, in all her possessions, pots, pans, a bag with clothes, and an intricate array of small tins that glistened now in oceanic sun like scales or circular feathers.
    Mary’s return to the “now” of 1980 within eyes she possessed that had slipped forwards and backwards across the centuries made her see the old woman as she never had before. Was she (that old woman) resurrection of crisis, was she Mother Diver? How could Mary have passed her in the street so often and not really have seen her? Mary had gone to Paradise Park whereas Jenny was here (was she not?) under a shawl patrolling the pavement between church spire and subway or underground tunnel.
    Now—for the first time that she could recall coming face to face with Mother Bleak Freedom,