The Freedom Artist

by Ben Okri

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you know what I am talking about then?’

  ‘I know you better than you know yourself.’

  The boy gazed at the dark blur around the edges of the world. They filled him with awe.

  ‘Are they demons?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are they the old gods?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it the beginning of the abyss?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I heard that was just outside the great wall of the world.’

  ‘No, it isn’t that.’

  ‘Then I know what it is,’ said the boy, with a sunken voice.

  The colossus said nothing. With great strides he returned Mirababa to the beautiful garden by the banks of the river. Then without a word he left. He became a vast shadow retreating over the waters. The boy saw the three shadows drifting away together.

  He no longer felt at ease by the river, in the garden. He went back the way he had come. He went past the lilies and the roses and the fragrance of honeysuckle. He listened to the voices of children among the flowers. He feared for them.

  With a heavy heart he climbed back down the never-ending ladder. He went down past the stars and found himself again in the forest, by the lake. The moon was still in the middle of the lake.

  He was not the boy that he had been. He had seen something that had changed his life forever. He had seen something he should not have seen.

  Book 2

  1

  The three old bards came for Mirababa in the depths of the long night. They found him broken in spirit. The light in his eyes was dull. He was weak in body, unable to stand. They paid no attention to his condition and asked no questions about what he had experienced.

  The initiation of a new myth-maker was the most sacred duty the bards had to perform. It often resulted in the death of the initiate. The boy was only broken in spirit. His death would have been more fitting.

  They bore his limp form to the shrine-house at the top of the ancient mountain. The ancestors had come from the mountain with the first prophecies and the first myths inscribed on the brightness of their faces.

  The boy was borne to the temple on the crest of the mountain. This was also the highest mountain remaining after the ancient lands sank beneath the oceans. Only this peak remained. There were seven levels to climb before the boy could be taken to the temple.

  In the temple there was a stone slab. When the stone slab was moved aside a stone ladder was revealed which led deep down into the bowels of the pyramid-shaped mountain. In the bowels of the mountain, in a subterranean crypt, there was a room. In the middle of the rough room, lit by a single lamp, there was a sarcophagus. Mirababa was placed in the sarcophagus. He stared at them blankly as they laid him in the stone sarcophagus.

  He didn’t speak as they covered the sarcophagus with a heavy stone. It was like he had died before his death. The stone plunged him into darkness. He heard them leave. He heard the stone slab being dragged back into place. Mirababa was alone in the bowels of the mountain, in a stone coffin.

  2

  A few days later Karnak went back to the bookshop. He was haunted by the feeling that the girl knew more than she had said. When he got there he found that the shop had vanished. In its place was a florist that specialised in flowers for graves.

  Karnak went in and found the place full of vases on tables and on the floor. He saw fuchsias in earthenware jars and black roses in blue urns. A big woman with a huge face sat at a table with a yellow mug of tea before her. She stared at him with hostile eyes.

  ‘Where’s the bookshop that used to be here?’ Karnak asked.

  ‘I don’t know about such things. I sell flowers, that’s all. Flowers for graves. Have you any dead ones you want flowers for?’

  He looked round the shop. There were pink geraniums and violet roses, ochre lilies and aquamarine orchids, in rich profusion everywhere. There were yellow flowers in little pots all along the shelves. The shelves looked solid and betrayed no sign of hasty construction. The heavy fragrance of flowers made him drowsy.

  He sensed at once that he wasn’t going to get any information from the formidable-looking woman. He decided he would buy a pot of flowers and get answers from her indirectly.

  ‘Can I buy a pot?’

  ‘You can buy all of them if you want. They’re flowers for the dead, and the dead will thank you for them. Which ones do you want?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘I’ll choose for you.’

  The woman got up and waddled over to a shelf. She picked out a small pot of violet roses. When she handed the pot to him, she said:

  ‘I wouldn’t go around asking questions if I were you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Could get you into trouble.’

  ‘How long has the shop been here?’

  ‘The flower shop has been here since the beginning of time. You can have the flowers for free. Just don’t come back.’

  She gently edged him to the door. He went back into the street holding the flowerpot. He walked around the area in circles till he was dizzy. He found a bench below some beech trees and sat down, putting the flowerpot next to him, not knowing what to think. His thoughts still went round in circles.

  After a while he became aware that children were playing football not far from him. He watched them absent-mindedly. One of the boys kicked the ball, missed the goal, and the ball rolled towards Karnak. The boy ran over to collect it. He looked at Karnak for a moment longer than necessary.

  ‘You look like a picture sitting on that bench with your flowerpot,’ the boy said.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind of a picture?’

  ‘A sad picture.’

  ‘Sad?’

  ‘But that’s good,’ the boy said. ‘My father says sad is good, happy is bad.’

  ‘Why does he say that?’

  ‘I don’t normally talk to strangers. But because you’re sad I don’t mind talking to you.’

  ‘That’s kind of you.’

  ‘I like sad people.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My father says there’s hope for someone who’s sad.’

  ‘Why does he say that?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s strange, I guess.’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  The other children called out to him. He waved at them.

  ‘All the happy people we used to know have disappeared.’

  ‘Where have they gone?’

  ‘I don’t know. The sad people are still here. Maybe that’s why sad is good.’

  ‘You’re a funny child.’

  ‘I don’t know about funny. Anyway, I must be going. I’m holding up the game.’

  The boy didn’t leave immediately. Karnak noticed the pale quality of his face and the mark of sorrow on his brow and the calm light in his eyes. The boy ran back to the others. Karnak watched them at their game, struck by the joyless nature of their play. It was as if they were not really children, as if they had never known childhood. The joyless way they played depressed him a little. He thought it time to leave.

  He got up to go and picked up the flowerpot. He saw that the roses had withered and died.

  3

  In the stone sarcophagus, Mirababa breathed steadily, trying not to move. In the darkness, he tried to remember instructions he had been given. He couldn’t remember any. He could not think why he was here in the stone coffin.

  He told himself to be still as the heat grew. Fear rose in him and roared in his veins. The darkness crowded him and the need to move overwhelmed him and panic welled up in him.

  ‘They have not put me here to kill me,’ he thought. ‘They know what they are doing.’

  Then, with alarm, he thought:

  ‘They have put me here to kill me. They do not know what they are doing. I am the sacrifice for the death of the old bard.
I am the sacrifice!’

  Suddenly he remembered many things. He remembered moments from the stories his grandfather read to him. He remembered tales he had overheard.

  He did not move. He thought:

  ‘Darkness is the same within or without. I will shut my eyes. My own darkness is familiar to me.’

  He shut his eyes. The darkness was the same, but at least it was his own. Then he thought:

  ‘Reality is all the same. I was at the edge of the lake, with the moon in the middle of it. A girl came out of the lake. I climbed a ladder. I was borne by a colossus. I saw the form that our people fear most. Maybe…’

  But he didn’t dare finish the thought. He thought another thought:

  ‘Maybe I can be where I want to be. Maybe I am wherever I want to be. If I chose not to be here then I am not here.’

  He decided to test this notion.

  ‘First I must go back to the lake. I did not learn the lesson of the lake with the moon in the middle of it. What was the lesson? What was the first question I did not ask?’

  As he thought these thoughts he noticed the heat lessen around him.

  ‘Maybe I am supposed to die.’

  The thought frightened him.

  ‘That’s it! I’m supposed to die. Then I must die.’

  He tried to will his death, but couldn’t. The willing made the coffin hotter. He felt the rough stone all about him in the tight space.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of here. How can I get out of here while still being here? What is the question?’

  He opened his eyes. The darkness was the same. He shut his eyes again. He kept his breathing slow. He was beginning to sweat. Sweating slowed down time.

  Then, not knowing what he was doing but doing it anyway, without thinking, he rose out of himself. He wanted to return to the lake in the forest. To his amazement he found that he had risen out of the stone sarcophagus. He was outside it and inside it at the same time. He hovered above it in a moment of exhilaration and terror.

  Then he fell back into himself in the dark.

  4

  It was a source of annoyance to the Hierarchy that the magnificent idea had failed. Most of those brought in for not screaming in their sleep were, upon examination, found to be innocent. This meant that those who were dangerous to the state because they did not wail in their sleep had somehow realised they were under surveillance. This meant that the dangerous ones were mimicking the screams of the ordinary citizens.

  The problem now was how to distinguish those who were truly screaming in their sleep from those who were pretending. Many solutions were put forward. For instance, random checks were suggested. Also proposed were night raids to see if people were really in bed asleep or if they were up to criminal activity and pretending to scream to cover it up. This was rejected as too intrusive. Someone suggested a machine that could detect fake screamers. But the range of sleep-screaming was so extensive that this was judged impractical. Besides it would cost too much. They set up a subcommittee to look into unobtrusive ways of identifying those who did not seem to be what they were.

  Meanwhile, arrests were stepped up. Sudden searches in public places were instituted. Devices for listening in on every activity of the citizen were mobilised.

  The wailings grew louder and longer every night and began to encroach on the dawn.

  5

  Sometimes, in the middle of the day, someone would break down and begin screaming. It could be on a busy street or in a crowded market. A man in his car with his wife and children had burst into tears while he was driving. He had pulled in at the side of the road and wailed uncontrollably. A woman buying lingerie in a shop had suddenly doubled up and begun screaming inconsolably. These isolated acts went unnoticed at first.

  But then in the middle of an important board meeting the chairman had broken down and started sobbing. At a gathering of the world’s financiers one of the sages of industry had begun laughing and the laughter had turned into wailing. At a parade before military generals and commanders a celebrated hero had begun to shout and howl as if possessed. He had to be led away, amidst universal bafflement. At a school, in a classroom, a teacher began howling and jabbering. At a meeting of Heads of State one of them began screaming and wailing. Something unprecedented was going on in the world.

  For a long time these outbreaks went unreported and were generally covered up. Swift explanations were given for the unexpected departure of public figures from a rostrum, or for the sudden disappearance of politicians during an election campaign.

  Young girls were seen exploding in grief. Grown men in pubs, drinking contentedly a moment before, would fall into shouting and wailing. Doctors at operating tables yielded inexplicably to fits of lamentation and howling. Even pilots, in mid-flight, had to be removed from duty because an excess of unhappiness and howling had come upon them.

  This new wailing plague crept upon the world, from one continent to another, till it became a universal contagion. No one knew its cause. No one could propose its cure. The newspapers were silent about it, even when the managing editors, during editorial meetings, found tears pouring down their hardened faces, for no visible reason.

  ☆

  He began to think of Amalantis. He found it hard to think of her. To bring her to mind was to suffer intensely.

  He always used to wonder why she had chosen him. She had so many people in the world to choose from and she had chosen him. He had always felt, in some way, quite unworthy of her. One day he raised the subject, and she laughed.

  She was like that. She never concealed anything about herself, but there was always something mysterious about her. He had never met anyone who had such a feeling for the suffering of people. Once they were going for a walk to her mother’s place. An old man ahead of them fell down and began gasping for air. She went and sat beside him, talking to him gently. Then she laid his head on her lap, while waiting for help to arrive. The old man died in her lap, with the most peaceful smile on his face. Amalantis accompanied his body to the mortuary and came every day to talk to his body. At his funeral she was there. And for a month after his burial she still went to his grave and spoke to it, as if he were still alive.

  ‘But why do you do that?’ Karnak asked her. ‘He’s gone now. He doesn’t need anything any more.’

  ’Doesn’t he?’ she said. ‘The dead need our love as much as the living.’

  When she said things like that she scared him a little.

  6

  At first it was assumed that the weeping contagion was caused by the dangerous ones, the terrorists of words. It was even suspected that the world’s water had been poisoned. Extensive chemical tests proved nothing.

  Curiously enough, during the wailing contagion no words appeared on walls. Nothing new was painted on doors, billboards or streets. No leaflets blew in the wind bearing new words designed to cause unrest. The silence of the question-askers increased the suspicion of the authorities that they were the cause of the new emotional plague.

  Then, in another stroke of genius, the Hierarchy came up with a temporary solution to the atmosphere of grief pervading the world. A season of festivals was decreed.

  It began with the great carnival of state.

  7

  Karnak noticed the change in the air one day as he went about his mission of finding the question-askers. He had been awaiting a summons from the Work Generation Centre for employment, a summons that never came.

  He was at the market, buying oranges, when a vegetable seller nearby burst into tears. He wept loudly and passionately and threw himself on the ground. His carrots and spinach were scattered all about him. As he wailed he gasped for air. Not long afterwards the butcher fell to screaming and had to be restrained. The police descended on the scene and began dispersing people. Then one of the policemen, the fiercest of the lot, started weeping and howling. He wept like a grief-stricken child and was quickly hustled away.

  The people around looked on with pale eyes. When the yo
ung lover looked closely at them he saw they were in a state worse than shock. They were enervated, half-asleep, exhausted. He noticed their deathly pallor, their lack of animation or interest in anything. It was as if being alive were too immense an effort.

  Karnak left the market. He didn’t want to get hauled in with those who were being beaten and taken away by the police. As he was hurrying away, he saw a woman with two children burst into tears. She screamed and cried pitifully. Further on down the street a beautiful young girl started weeping as if she had heard of the death of her mother. The police swiftly took her away.

  He did not know where to go. Wherever he went grief and wailing burst out all around him. He went down a street and heard sudden cries from inside a jeweller’s shop. He saw bank managers being bundled away by the police, wracked with sobs as they were carried into waiting vans.

  As he went through one of the banking districts a middle-aged banker threw himself from a third storey window. In the same district a woman lawyer threw herself from a bridge.

  That night the howling was intolerable. To prevent himself hearing it, Karnak began to wail too, at the top of his voice, with all his lungs, like a wounded animal.

  8

  The carnival was unleashed on the world one fine Saturday morning. Floats carrying giant laughing figures paraded down the streets. Clowns and jugglers, acrobats and stand-up comics, television personalities and musicians performed on open platforms, in parks, and on the back of moving trucks, often accompanied by a host of dancing girls.

  Music pounded from loudspeakers in public squares. There were events in community centres. The parks were filled with food vendors, sweet-sellers, Chinese dragons, African masquerades, celebrated singers, and fakirs. There were parades, aerial displays, and free drinks everywhere.

  Sheepishly, the populace ventured out to watch pharaohs on large floats, cowboys and Indians, and public shamans. They witnessed the Samba, the Charleston, the Foxtrot, and Russian folk dances. Their competing music crowded the air. The carnival was a source of surprise to people. They were unused to anything of that nature. It had been a long time since there had been any celebration in the cities and hamlets. They poured down the streets to watch the floats. They watched folk singers from all over the world. They saw girls costumed as giant butterflies. They saw men clothed as gods and heroes. They watched as if they were witnessing a foreign invasion.