Starbook

by Ben Okri

  Everyone thought he was going to die. He didn't eat. He didn't speak. And he barely stirred from his bed. He seemed unconscious for a long time and when he appeared to be awake he stared at the ceiling or at the sky for long hours without seeming to see anything. They said that his soul had fled from the home of his body and that his eyes longed for some place beyond the sky. He saw no one, recognised no one, not even the king.

  They brought people to see him in his chamber, friends, beautiful young princesses whom he had been thought to favour, relations, and comedians. He stared through the friends, was deaf to the entreaties of beauty, and did not so much as register the performances of the funniest people in the kingdom. They brought musicians, who played rousing tunes, with rich rhythmed drumbeats that seduced the feet and fingers to joy and dancing, but he did not so much as betray the slightest pulse of rapture. The musicians played the most tender and bewitching melodies, laced with sadness and poignant sorrow, music so moving that palace officials reported that they saw dogs weeping, but not a tear appeared in the eyes of the prince, nor did a muscle move on his impassive face that had surrendered to the greater melodies of dying.

  The king didn't laugh as he used to, and wandered thoughtfully and gloomily through the corridors of the palace. The king was never known to be affected by anything under the sun, be it great disaster, defeat in battles, the death of his children, triumphs in statecraft, prosperity in the land, periods of unexpected happiness, sudden invasions; he would laugh uproariously at crises or victories, setbacks or accomplishments. However, this indomitable king was mysteriously subdued by the inexplicable sickness of his fragile son. The king had never really expected the prince to last long in this world; and had always reconciled himself to the omens that the prince was doomed to early death, being one of the precious visitors that the gods sent down to dwell for a while among the living, to spy on their hearts, and report on their deeds.

  The king had expected him to die in childhood, but the prince survived perilous fevers, melancholies, moods, disappearances, and became an adolescent. Then the king expected that early youth would claim the prince unexpectedly, one morning, without warning. But the prince not only thrived but grew strong, and took on challenging tasks, and worked on the farms like the ordinary people of the land. The king found much to laugh at, but none more than the quiet defiance of death that his son had shown every day. And when the prince began to take such a profound interest in the deeper matters of life and the kingdom, the king was delighted, and all things conspired to make him laugh at the mystery of things, for laughter was his way of breathing, of thinking and nonthinking. He had been laughing at life since he was young. But behind his laughter lay a deep and grave soul that saw deeply into the heart of mysteries.

  The king pondered much on the strange sickness of his son, and he ruled the kingdom with a slightly abstracted air. His wives found him a trifle mentally preoccupied and his advisers refrained from breaking into his long silences and vacant stares. The king would come and sit for long periods in the prince's chamber and watch his sleeping son. He remembered how, on the day his son was born, the diviners had said the alignment of the stars was especially auspicious and yet enigmatic. It was as if, they said, the heavens couldn't make up their mind whether they were announcing a great occasion or a strange event. There were enigmas among the stars. A white horse was said to have appeared in the village square with a golden horn in the middle of its forehead. A great cry was heard from the oracle and a message was brought to the king which said:

  'That which is best will be lost so that that which is greatest can be found.'

  The shrines were swarmed by white birds and a rare animal caught in a net was seen staring out with calm eyes near the palace. Some say it was a white tiger. Seven meteors, falling stars, were seen at dusk; and a bright burst of golden light flashed in the middle of the night and alarmed the wise ones of the kingdom. But all around the palace musicians were playing and women were singing their praises and prayers for the newborn prince. The king remembered how favoured his son had been at birth with the love of the people, especially the women. They had an instinct about the prince even before his arrival, as his coming had been whispered to them in their dreams, by their inscrutable goddesses.

  The king, listening now to musicians playing gentle airs outside the chamber, reminisced about his own youth, and about the prince's mother, whom he loved and still loved above all others in the world; and thoughts of her filled him with a sweet sorrow that made him laugh tenderly to himself. When she was dying the queen had said to the king:

  'This son of ours will need great support on the other side if he is going to fulfil his destiny. I will give him all the support and strength he needs. Tell him to think of me when he is in trouble and I will move heaven to help him. As for you, my love, I am always in your heart, I am your happiness, and so always laugh and never dwell in sorrow about anything. We have been great companions on the path together, and we know the glories of the mountaintop, so be joyful, and be a great king and an even greater man. We will be in dreams together.'

  But more characteristic of her were her words:

  'My dear,' she said, with a smile, 'the day's harvest has been done. Maybe I'll cook you something special. You'd like that, wouldn't you,' she whispered, and then she was gone.

  The king didn't like to think about the death of his wife. Not because of the infinite sadness, but because he didn't believe she was gone. He laughed often because she was there, here, in the palace, all over the kingdom. She had simply taken on a vaster personality and grown in space and time.

  But in his son, sleeping or dying of a malaise without a name, the king found much by which to be troubled. So many prophecies hung on the life of his son. If he dies before a certain age, the kingdom will perish. If the sun doesn't rise from the river at the death of a monster, the prince will perish. If the land doesn't give up its evils and load them in chains on the back of the prince, the kingdom will perish. If the prince is not lost and does not return, the kingdom will perish. If those who are made slaves in the land of white spirits never become free, the kingdom will perish. If the white spirits do not become human beings and purge the world of the evils they have unleashed, the world will perish. If the prince does not fulfil his obscure destiny no one will fulfil their simple destiny, and the land will perish. So many prophecies. If the king stops laughing hope will vanish from the kingdom, and the people will perish. So many responsibilities.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The king loved to watch over sleeping beings. Often he wandered the kingdom at night, watching over his sleeping subjects. He went to the quarters of his guardsmen and watched them sleep in their turn. He loved watching sleeping mothers and their children. He derived much strength from being the protector of those who slept, so defenceless, in his realm. The good and the bad all slept in the same way, under the mercy of immense forces, under the mercy of the ultimate mysteries. Sleeping women in their huts. Sleeping farmers. Sleeping wizards and witches, sleeping magicians, sleeping musicians, sleeping thieves, sleeping traitors, spies, servants, palm-wine tappers, sleeping hunters and fishermen, sleeping children, sleeping babies breathing deeply half the vital air in the world, sleeping men on the verge of death breathing out wisps of the last miracles of life, sleeping women on the edge of death breathing in dreams of their children's futures full of tragedies and gains, sleeping herbalists, sleeping dogs in the village square, sleeping horses that snort suddenly and rear, sleeping lions that can be watched from afar, sleeping flies and sleeping insects, forests sleeping in the dark and breathing out pure energies that balance the earth, sleeping flowers tender and soft, sleeping clouds that wander aloft. The king loved them all. But he loved none more than his sleeping son, who was dying beneath his helpless gaze.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  At dawn the king sent abroad for the greatest herbalists that the world had spawned. They arrived in great numbers, with great personalities,
with contradictory notions; and they treated the prince with many potions, subjected him to diverse incantations, baths, massages, midnight exposures to special spirits evoked in the sacred forest, but nothing they did helped him get better.

  The herbalists changed his diet, altered his sleeping position, drew out sinister objects that had been mysteriously projected into his body – nails, the black tooth of an ageing dog, the claw of a vulture; they twisted the poor prince into contortions, they bent and knotted him, to force out the evil spirits lodged in him; and they prescribed a course of spirit-flogging, which was roundly rejected by the king.

  The herbalists made the prince walk backwards in precisely delineated circles, to perplex the evil occupants in him; and they bared him to the harsh rays of the noonday sun and the dim rays of the invisible nocturnal planets, to puzzle and punish his elusive occupants. The herbalists even found their way into his dreams and attempted to do battle with the shadow forms that lurked in the prince's mind; but all they succeeded in doing was making his nightmares worse, and exacerbating his illness, till it became so bad that the prince couldn't even speak.

  Some muttered in the court that the prince was being murdered by superstition.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The prince hovered between life and death for many moons. The people of the kingdom heard that their beloved prince was dying and they came in their multitudes to the palace. The women swarmed there in their hundreds. They brought their children with them. They left their farms, their marketplaces, their homes, and they came and sat in silence outside the palace, and kept vigil. They brought lamps which they kept alight all night, and all day, as if the light of the lamps somehow sustained the life of their much-loved prince.

  The women brought a splendid variety of food and they made aromatic dishes of great delicacy and had them sent to the palace for the delectation of the prince. And all night, in sundry tongues, in sweet passionate murmurs, they prayed to the gods for the life of the prince. It was reported that the days of their prayers scented the kingdom lightly with the fragrance of roses, and that never did a gentler breeze blow in the land, nor was there such a subdued air over the rivers and forests and mountains of the kingdom.

  Men came too, from great distances; they came to pay homage and to show their support for the king in the dark hours of the prince's illness. Famous warriors had set aside their weapons for a brief season, calling a short truce in their wars so as to join in vigil outside the palace. Their rough and brooding mood was made tender by the subdued air of the women murmuring in prayer and entreaty. Nimble dancers, celebrated wrestlers, notorious robbers, legendary criminals, priests of obscure religions, diviners of the forests, shepherds, farmers, hunters, acrobats, magicians, and wandering bards who were called griots, all travelled great and small distances to the palace. They all delegated their important engagements and those that could brought their work with them. The hunters brought gifts of fabulous game they had caught in the abundant forests. The priests led prayers and offered sacrifices for the purification of the land. The dancers performed their mighty dances which were reputed to have powers of healing, powers of regeneration, powers of realigning the broken axis of the world. The wondrous drummers beat out astonishing rhythms on their talking drums, their healing drums, their wailing drums, and their drums of reinvigoration, rhythms that shook the land and retuned the nerves and altered the heartbeat of the kingdom, rhythms that communicated to the spirits and summoned the ancestors in the farthest reaches of the invisible realms of dreams and higher deeds where they reside and where they watch their descendants through a veil thinner than the morning mist and yet farther than remote stars. The celebrated wrestlers staged wrestling contests on the fields outside the village gates; and the children and assembled lamenters watched the ritual contest between the hero of the kingdom's soul and the dreaded illness that threatened to snatch it away

  In silence the assembled ones watched the epic contest between the champion of the prince's life and the champion of death. They were formidable adversaries, and the battle swayed back and forth, sometimes the champion of death appearing to have the upper hand, almost strangling and breaking the back of the champion of the prince's life. And suddenly the audience would cry out, and wail, and shout encouragements, and the champion of the prince's life would recover, and the audience would sigh loudly in relief. This wrestling match went on, day after day, with no clear winner in sight. It followed the course of the prince's illness, ebbing and flowing, rising and falling with what dribbled out about the condition of the prince. On days when he was in a coma the champion of death strode the field alone, boastful and arrogant, cocksure and proud, defiant and challenging all comers, and daring the beaten horizontal form of the champion of the prince's life to rise up and continue the fight. And the audience booed and hissed and threw ritual objects at the vile figure of the champion of death as he bestrode the stage with his terrifying mien, his huge ugly mask. When the news came through that the prince had stirred from his coma, the champion of the prince's life, with minute movements, in ritual slowness, as if transformed and energised by sleep, rose dramatically from the earth. With courage and unsuspected cunning he resumed a new and ferocious battle with the champion of death, to the rousing and cheering of the reinvig-orated audience, whose spirits were swept aloft by the electrifying rhythms of the fortifying drums.

  During a lull in the wrestling match the acrobats came on and performed extraordinary feats of juggling, tumbling, balancing, and walking on ropes in the air. They delighted the crowds with their agility and their dignity. The somersaulters amazed with wonderful turns and twists of their bodies, and they performed their feats with a sad and sober air, a ritual air, for it was all meant to empower the spirit of the prince as he fought for life in his dreams. And after the acrobats came the wandering griots.

  One after another, in the sombre darkness that fell over the village, these mysterious story-tellers held the crowds and took their minds on fabulous journeys through forests and through the ages, in songs and with powerful dances, with incantations and bewildering impersonations. The audiences gasped as the griots, in their renderings, turned into golden tigers before their eyes, or changed into monsters, or spoke with seven voices echoing out of deep resonating chests. Suddenly the griots changed into giant birds and flew among the women, spreading silent panic, frozen horror, while still narrating their electrifying epics. The griots held the crowds in states of terrifying enchantment as they unfolded and embodied tales of miracles and battles with demons and tales of journeys that tribal heroes made to bring back the secret of immortality.

  The notorious robbers and the legendary criminals that came to the great vigil prowled among the audiences with their acolytes and for once used their skills to make sure no crimes were committed and no thefts took place as they all kept vigil for the prince. It seemed the mere presence of these famed figures of crime was enough to deter wrongdoing, much more so than the presence of innumerable soldiers or legally empowered protectors of the realm. No one noticed this, of course, except the people; and no one really asks the opinion of the people, for if they did they might learn that there was a special role for criminals in the land, a role to do with the prevention of crime, as like knows like. And the reputation of the criminals did much to give the vigil a unique air of safety and authenticity, such as the king and the guards alone could not have commanded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The magicians charmed the children, and delighted the women, as they made objects disappear, swallowed swords to the hilt, made birds fly out of perfect white eggs and caused water to spout out of dry stones held in their hands. The magicians too, in making dead birds suddenly spring to life, in turning wood into cats that leapt into dark freedom, in chanting swords to transform into long stalks with luminous roses, also performed ritual enrichments which charged the air of the palace with a special strength of healing.

  The priests led the vast motley gather
ing in strange prayers and stranger rites; and the magnetic force of the crowd kept on working its attraction throughout the kingdom. Spirits appeared at night among the yellow lanterns and conversed in odd languages with women and men, who understood perfectly well what they said. Spirits spoke to the children and told them stories so vivid that they never forgot them all their lives, stories they would pass on to their children, and which are still being whispered to this day under moonlit skies, in sundry villages, where one credulous child still listens with wide open eyes to tales that the spirits told their ancestors long ago during the vigil for a famous prince. And spirits wandered through the palace, listening to rumours, conspiracies, gossip, plots, lies, confessions and secrets; listening and saying nothing, knowing what was to come; listening, and passing through, like spies for the future.