by Ben Okri
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The maiden listened to the work going on in all the spheres of the workshop. She saw the glow of the blazing forge in the distance and the glimmering brilliance of gold flowing into future forms. She heard the steady sound of a head taking shape from the trunk of a dead tree. And she listened to the murmur of her father at his magic work-bench, invoking new forms into being as he worked a living face out of stone.
All over the workshop the spirits were busy. Their hands were everywhere. They went past in silence. They never spoke. They never crashed into anything, or put a foot wrong, never fell, never broke a thing, never ruined a sculpture, and they continually went to her father for further instructions, if their previous task was completed. For they ended a task with the same tranquillity as they began a new one, never tired, never elated, beginning and ending in the same spirit, as if these two phases were the same, or as if they were engaged in one long epic work in which beginning and ending were merely pauses.
How clear, how noble, how magical the spirits were during the magic hour of work, the unforgettable hours of her youth, among mysteries, in her father's dream. She saw them so clearly, and to her mind no further proof was needed. All the whispers and rumours were true. It seemed possible that her father was the invisible master of the great sculpture that had so troubled her. It seemed possible that he was the master of the most magical and subversive sculptures that had perplexed and astonished the people and made the tribe change its location three times in the last twenty years because of the hint of disasters to come. It was possible that her father worked with spirits, that they found the rare and special materials, that they sometimes brought these rare materials from the land of spirits and other times from lands across the great seas where pink humans dwelt in silver cages. It was possible that her father made these spirits work for him in secret at all hours of the day. What else could explain the genius and strangeness of the man? Where did his extraordinary notions and productivity come from, if not from the spirits? She always meant to ask him about this. And on this day, in her sleep, she remembered to do so. And so, waking gently, stirring on the bench, and noticing the spirits vanish into the dark spaces with her awakening and yet carrying on her intention in the face of no evidence, and also risking the wrath of having interrupted her father's profound concentration, she said:
'Father, is it true that you use spirits to do your work?'
There was a long silence as the silence spoke in the workshop. What did the silence say? The silence said: Child, you should not ask questions till you know the answers. Child, questions can never be answered. Child, questions do not ask the questions you really want to ask. Child, ask questions in silence if you want answers in sound. Child, questions disturb the order of things. Child, questions destabilise the world. Child, questions bring answers that would trouble you for ever. Child, questions change the world. Child, questions bring answers we wish we had not brought forth. Do you know what you are doing asking questions, child? Terrors hide in questions, and the end of your happy days, the beginning of the days of knowledge, and the sadness that comes with it, till the day of light, long in the distance, after much suffering is overcome. Child, it is too late to be silent now, and to prolong your happiness, in the years of enchantment, when all was well in the dark groves of childhood, where dreams are as real as rivers.
All these things the silence said, as the maiden listened to the cobwebs increasing in the dark, and the lizards scuttling among the thinking forms of stone heads. Many years passed before the silence was over. Many dreams. She had been raped by a slave-master across the seas; repeatedly, she endured it, at noon, when the house slept. She had borne three children to two slave-masters. She had run away one night and had walked six hundred miles to join a colony of freed slaves. She had grown old telling stories of her magical childhood to incredulous children. She was dying by candlelight. She was with the ancestors, at peace, and joyful at the mysterious understanding of the rich meaning and purpose of her life's suffering and forgotten beauty, before the silence passed and she heard her father, in gentle sonority, answer the question she thought she had asked.
'Do you see spirits?" he said.
The maiden had awoken now. She heard time's gentle flight in the silence; its wings brushed past her face, ageing her tenderly, beginning her long and silent bloom. She could not see the spirits; she could never see the spirits this way, though she was sure they were there.
'I see them when I sleep,' she replied.
'In your dreams?'
There was a mocking smile in her father's interrogation.
Not mocking. Amused. An amused smile in his voice. Are you ready for revelation, child? the air seemed to say after he had spoken.
'Yes, I think in my dreams.'
'So you dream of spirits?'
'Yes, I think so, but they are real, and they are usually here, working for you.'
'But in your dreams.'
'Yes, father, in my dreams, I think so, but they are real.'
'But you are dreaming them.'
'Yes, father.'
'So you are responsible for them.'
'No, father.'
'Why not?'
'Because, father, in the dreams it is you who command them, it is you who they obey.'
'Do I create your dream?'
The father was smiling broadly now in the question. Are you ready to be enlightened, child? the silence seemed to say.
'I don't know, father.'
'You mean you suspect I can do it if I want?'
'It seems to me, my dear father, that you can do anything.'
A profound silence descended on the maiden, like a mantle of calm. A cooling sensation. Did the world change a little? She felt so, but didn't know how, as if an inaudible vowel had altered the spaces in the workshop and transported her across time to a place where only magi lived, among ancient mysteries. Her father suddenly seemed gently transfigured, as if on the verge of becoming invisible, as if he were a work of art himself, whose meaning ever eludes, and which is not seen by most even when looked at intensely by all.
'Your questions and all the questions you will ever ask were answered before you were born, my child. All you have to do is remember, or return.'
'But, my father, you confuse me. How can it be?'
'We of our tribe create out of dreams but we make in broad daylight. Our works have more meaning and more truth than we realise at the time, but it is not meaning or truth that we seek.'
'What do we seek?'
'We seek to serve that which directs us to create. Hence we are somewhat indifferent to what we create, since it serves a purpose higher than we understand. The person who creates is not important, only what they create, what they make. Those who are the best servants of the higher powers have more servants to help them do the work. That is why some have the power of ten while others have only their own power, which is, in the long run, the power of nothing, of dust, of oblivion. Through our works must shine not the power of the person, but the power of the power. True fame should belong to the power which guides us in the dark.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The father stopped; the maiden had found herself somewhere else. She had been listening to another lesson which was being spoken to her while her father was speaking. It was only through the transported distraction of her father's words that she could hear the other secret words. It was as though her father's voice were a sort of a bridge to another realm, where the real learning is done, a realm of universal knowledge, where masters whisper secrets into the ears of their unknowing pupils as if into the petals of flowers. And when her father stopped, her lesson seemed over. A bizarre joy encompassed her heart. Had she heard a word of what her father said? Only later, much later, in another land, in the fragrance of honeysuckle, on one of the few days of her adult life when she knew true happiness, did she hear what her father said, and more; but she heard it only because she repeated it, as if she were saying it
from her own power, to her child, who would one day change the world, invisibly, through the secret power of art.
Deeply her father breathed; deeply the maiden listened. She was back now in the workshop, among shadows, and iroko heads dreaming only of war, and wall geckos scuttling, and cobwebs gathering dust, and eyes that look but do not see, and faces that will carry into the future the only living traces of a tribe vanished from the earth for ever.
She was back now, and listening. Her father did not speak a while. Then he spoke in disconnected fragments, as if repeating words whispered in his mind, words destined for the ears of his daughter, and through his daughter destined for those in the wide world, through time, for whom they would have significance at the special moment that they are encountered. The father, as if in a dream, said:
'We are listeners at the oracle. Some listen, but do not hear. Some hear, but do not listen. Those who hear are touched and changed.'
Then he said:
'Free to be truthful to their dreams.'
Then:
'How they live invisibly.'
Then:
'After the suffering, gold.'
Then:
'When they don't notice, best work is done.'
Then:
'Obscure life of a master.'
Then:
'When they see you hide again.'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
And as he spoke, as if he were somewhere else, but also somehow here, the maiden fell under the spell of the strange fragments. They seemed to join, dance and separate in her mind. They seemed also to be words spoken not just by her father but also by the spirits she could no longer see, and by the stone heads and the bronze busts and the figures brooding and breeding in the nocturnal spaces of the workshop.
And the fragments became words crystallised from stars and dreams. She listened as her life changed.
'We do not see what we judge.'
'Conditions change.'
'Now is not now.'
'The winners have lost.'
'Life is a masquerade. What we are seeing is not what is happening.'
'There is a shadow over all victories.'
'It is not here that life is lived. Only where it is felt.'
'All are dreams.'
'It rises and it falls.'
'Only in light can truth be found.'
'Real condition of things do not show.'
'To die is not all.'
'Plant there, reap here.'
'Seek the light that comes from the rose and the cross and the stars and the vanished kingdom under the sea.'
'Prosperity and poverty are not what they seem.'
'Beyond is where it really begins.'
'Slaves are masters in heaven.'
'Whatever happens it is getting better.'
'Then all will be one.'
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The fragments had become whispers now which the maiden barely heard. And then there was a long silence. They say that sorcerers can transport your spirit to distant lands to dwell in dark caves or in the fabulous palace of a nonexistent king, while leaving your body behind. These fragments from her father had transported the maiden to many places that would appear to her as dreams. And now, in the silence, she was unsure of the world in which she found herself. She was uncertain even of her father's existence.
She was puzzled. Questions she hadn't asked, and would ask in the years to come, were being answered. Fathers have their way of initiating their children into the long, mysterious journey ahead.
There was a sigh and a smile from the maiden's father in the dark. But was he there? Had he gone? Had he left the sigh and smile behind? The maiden, seeing nothing, waited. She waited for things to be clearer. But the silence seemed to say: Child, nothing gets clearer here, only there. The clearer, the more unclear. Nothing is completed here, only there. Here is incompleteness. Fragments. Unfinished things.
What else was being said? The maiden listened. Then, from out of the dark, with no one there to have uttered them, came the words:
'And still they were haunted by the work.'
And nothing more.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The maiden found herself alone in the workshop, with only the rich mood of her father lingering in the air. Maybe he had never been there. The maiden got up from the chair and made her way home. As she walked down the forest path she breathed in the dark fragrance of the flowers.
There was something in her that was still unwell. But whatever it was had been deepened, not altered. Yes, she was still haunted by that sculpture. And enigmas grew about her heart, and made strange her simple life.
Time became precious, and new; as if it were over, gone, and all she had was the fragrance of a life vanished for ever in a fading dream.
Part Two
CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE
Meanwhile the tribes expectation of the work of art the maiden would create to heal the sickness of her spirit continued to press on her. Many were the enquiries directed at her and her father about this self-healing work. It became the subject of rumours, gossip and conversations. It was not unknown for two people to meet in the forest and for one to say:
'Is there any news yet of the work our maiden is supposed to be doing?'
The other might reply:
'No news yet. They say she broods, but does not breed.'
'This is what I heard too. I heard that she wanders about the place talking to herself, looking at the sky, and that she becomes stranger every day. And yet nothing comes from her. Not a dream in wood or stone. An illness that does not produce an art is a bad illness indeed. I fear for her family.'
'In this you are right,' the other would say. 'But it is not surprising. After all, her father is the strangest man in the tribe. Has anyone ever seen his shadow? Do they not say that he works among demons? Was he not seen on the moon some time ago, dancing with spirits who never visit the earth? Does anyone know where he goes to most of the year? Is he amongst us, or does he work for kings, with sorcery? Is he a man like us, or a spy from a strange land of ghosts? Have you ever heard him laugh? And do we know his hand? Do we know his works? Some say he was the one responsible for the sculpture that nearly drove our people mad, the one that has now poisoned the mind of his daughter! Maybe his art is a curse, maybe he curses us; and we all know how powerful he is on the secret council of the tribe! One word from him and we will all have to move from where we are, and change our location, like cattle on the hills. No, I am not surprised that the maiden behaves in a mad manner. Lions with blood in their eyes do not give birth to roosters.'
And these two people might laugh, and the forest would echo their laughter.
'But it is not good for the tribe when there are illnesses and no art.'
'When there are sicknesses that are not fruitful.'
'When there is madness and no magic.'
'When the spirit has troubles, but does not sing.'
'It means that the wells of the tribe become poisoned.'
'The river becomes polluted.'
'The crops give a bad harvest.'
'And the fruits lose their sweetness.'
