Si­mon Lee

From the Gates of Ak­sum, the lat­est work by lo­cal his­to­ri­an and pub­lish­er Jer­ry Besson, com­bines the pas­sions and in­ter­ests of a life­time in a cre­ole epic of trop­i­cal ro­co­co grace and gar­gan­tu­an reach.

Ak­sum reach­es back be­yond an­tiq­ui­ty to the "an­te­dilu­vian" pe­ri­od; it me­an­ders through the myths of Ju­daeo-Chris­tian­i­ty, bounc­ing Moses and King Solomon en route, pass­es through the Tem­ple in Jerusalem, heads deep in­to Africa and Prester John's king­dom to back­track to Ethiopia, Eu­rope of the Cru­sades, 11th-cen­tu­ry Brit­tany and then across the At­lantic to Haiti, St Lu­cia, Trinidad and Venezuela of the late 18th and ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry.

The book's catholic tem­po­ral span is matched by a true coscomel of gen­res (his­toric fan­ta­sy, thriller, quest) and themes: math­e­mat­i­cal meta­physics and hu­man­i­ty's fas­ci­na­tion with the in­fi­nite; the cre­oli­sa­tion of En­light­en­ment con­cepts; the role of both the church and Freema­son­ry in shap­ing ear­ly cre­ole so­ci­eties; the lib­er­a­tion of the New World from the Old, and the eter­nal search for the truth and wis­dom which will re­deem hu­man­i­ty.

As if this wasn't enough (and read­ing this 445-pager is rem­i­nis­cent of the 15-course break­fasts downed by ear­ly planters) there's all the usu­al and un­usu­al stuff about the hu­man con­di­tion and its va­garies we'd ex­pect from a nov­el half its length.

As a rough guide to where read­ing Ak­sum will take you, think In­di­ana Jones meets Ale­jo Car­pen­tier, CLR James of Black Ja­cobins vin­tage, Mal­o­ry's Morte D'Arthur and Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez at his baroque best.

By now you may be over­whelmed, but Besson, while de­light­ing in teas­ing his read­ers at times, is not an un­re­lent­ing au­thor and every­thing in his mag­nus opus is crys­tallised both sym­bol­i­cal­ly and nar­ra­tive­ly in the cen­tral icon of the myth­i­cal poly­he­dron, around which the plot is con­struct­ed and ul­ti­mate­ly un­rav­elled.

The poly­he­dron, "a crys­tal-like ob­ject...formed from tcham...a gold­en glass found in the cen­tre of me­te­ors," em­bod­ies "the keys to the com­pre­hen­sion of an in­fin­i­ty of in­fini­ties," dis­plac­ing both the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, from the dis­cours­es of re­demp­tion and fu­ture.

Its pur­pose is "to pro­vide a cos­mic in­tel­li­gence which in a far-off fu­ture aid­ed by the sci­en­tif­ic achieve­ments of that time pro­vide the mech­a­nisms for shap­ing a com­mon hu­man­i­ty and the ul­ti­mate goal of man's des­tiny...to be in har­mo­ny with the Name of God."

We know from his ear­li­er for­ay in­to fic­tion (The Voice in the Govi) that Besson is ca­pa­ble of cre­at­ing un­for­get­table char­ac­ters, and Ak­sum comes with its own cast of mys­tics, men­di­cants, poi­son­ers, cheva­liers, cru­saders, con­spir­a­tors, kab­bal­ists, Freema­sons, re­pub­li­cans, rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and many more.

But not since the nov­els of Ale­jo Car­pen­tier (no­tably In the King­dom of This World and Ex­plo­sion in a Cathe­dral) has a Caribbean nov­el­ist res­ur­rect­ed so many his­tor­i­cal fig­ures and giv­en them a sec­ond life.

Along­side the fic­tion­al hero­ic fa­ther and son de Gur­vands, cre­oles of Bre­ton ex­trac­tion, the pa­pal spy Fr Mag­neval, am­bi­tious Cre­ole Freema­son Vin­cent Patrice, and the ethe­re­al Eu­ro­pean Prince Idel­fon­so, we're in­tro­duced to Fran­cis­co de Mi­ran­da and Si­mon Bo­li­var (he­roes of South Amer­i­can lib­er­a­tion), Vic­tor Hugues, Black Ja­cobin scourge of the Caribbean, Julien Fe­don leader of the first Grena­di­an Rev­o­lu­tion and lead­ing play­ers in Trinidad's colo­nial his­to­ry: Span­ish Gov­er­nor Cha­con and the British Thomas Pic­ton and Sir Ralph Aber­crom­by.

With the grandiose de­sign of trans­port­ing the poly­he­dron from its hid­den refuge in a Bre­ton chateau to a place in the New World on the same ten de­grees north lat­i­tude as its orig­i­nal hid­ing place in Ak­sum, we see that Besson has es­tab­lished Trinidad as the site of a new leg­end: "This is­land wore the ha­lo of leg­end, where prodi­gious events might take place, if, it in­deed be­came the ax­is mun­di, the next navel of the world, for an­oth­er 2,300 years."

How­ev­er, there's an am­bi­gu­i­ty about Besson's his­tor­i­cal Trinidad, which fore­shad­ows the prob­lems we're fac­ing to­day. Prince Idel­fon­so may ide­alise La Tri­nite: "Sure­ly one of the 'For­tu­nate Isles,' as told by Ptole­my. Utopia, the ide­al and imag­i­nary na­tion. Lit­er­al­ly like no oth­er place. Pardes, par­adise, the an­cient nar­ra­tive re-told by Thomas More of Par­adise Lost, and of John Mil­ton, long lost, now re­gained. A Place in wait­ing, sure­ly, on the wheel of his­to­ry."

But jux­ta­posed with this ro­man­ti­cism is the re­al­i­ty of ear­ly 19th-cen­tu­ry an­ar­chic and law­less Trinidad, which sounds en­tire­ly fa­mil­iar: "Every­body a law un­to them­selves. Every­body with their own laws; Span­ish law, French law, Re­pub­li­can law, Catholic law, Eng­lish law; for every sea­son a law. There has nev­er been a colony with so many lawyers."

Idel­fon­so's ad­mo­ni­tion close to the con­clu­sion, rings just as true of Trinidad in 2013: "This fair land, La Tri­nite, must not be Par­adise Lost. John Mil­ton must not have the last word. Lu­cifer's hordes must be for­ev­er chained...La Tri­nite must not be­come Pan­dae­mo­ni­um, the High Cap­i­tal of Sa­tan, the cap­i­tal of Hell!"

Lo­cal­ly we may now have to re­vise our es­ti­ma­tion of Ger­ard "Jer­ry" Besson. His pas­sion for his­to­ry and folk­lore, which has been at the ax­is of Paria Pub­lish­ing, has meta­mor­phosed in­to some­thing rich and strange, an his­tor­i­cal imag­i­nary of a for­ma­tive era in the de­vel­op­ment of the mod­ern Caribbean.

Oc­ca­sion­al­ly his ro­co­co florid­i­ty be­comes ex­ces­sive ("Black in­to grey, slimy streaks of mud­dy sand bur­bled up the hot breath of the man­grove's rot, held hostage gi­gan­tic Ama­zon­ian drift­wood, ex­posed ma­rooned flot­sam, en­ter­tained di­verse crus­taceans, co­matose al­gae, evap­o­rat­ing Por­tuguese men-of-war, tufts of sullen metal­lic green sea­weed, and was pock­marked, be­neath the ham­mer of noon, with in­nu­mer­able holes of var­i­ous sizes from which mil­lions of crabs sought egress in a fren­zy for sur­vival be­neath the watch­ful shad­ows of swift, low-fly­ing egrets."). Yet the ex­u­ber­ance and hy­per­bole of the lan­guage match the der­ring-do of the cloak-and-dag­ger ac­tion.

From the Gates of Ak­sum can vi­ably claim a place in the emerg­ing Caribbean canon as a Cre­ole epic. Its can­vas is vast; its cast of char­ac­ters drawn from many his­to­ries; its episodes and events of both hero­ic and de­spi­ca­ble pro­por­tions. Iron­i­cal­ly Ak­sum gives the lie to a No­bel lau­re­ate of these parts and long-es­tab­lished el­der of the Caribbean canon, who once caus­ti­cal­ly com­ment­ed that noth­ing had ever hap­pened in the Caribbean.

Besson will do a read­ing from the book on Oc­to­ber 19 at Pa­per Based Book­store, The Nor­mandie, Nook Av­enue, St Ann's.