by Ben Okri
CHAPTER TWENTY–EIGHT
Among masters, in the dark, sometimes extraordinary things happen. They are signs of passing degeneracy. Some miraculous occurrences have to be purged. They give rise to tales of wonder that blind pilgrims on the path to the true enchantment. They give rise to tales of great feats that distract travellers from their humble quest, diverting them into a desire for amazing deeds, amazing transformations, visitations, magic.
Among masters, manifestations which lead to stories are impure. The quest is for simplicity, a peace beyond the earth, a quiet glimpse of heaven, an intuition in which, in a lightning flash, all things are made clear. Understanding is a pure glass of water. All great truths have no taste. Hints of sweetness are coloured by the need for amazement.
Among masters, astonishment is suspect. A fall, a lowering, desire for that which shines, are signs of falling standards. Soon afterwards people lose their way. No pilgrim must abide too long with miraculous occurrences on the path. Deceptions have the greatest charm to the eye.
The tribe had long been the home of myths and fantastic dreams. Too much myth, an excess of magic, and the road to heaven is undone. What amazes the eye blinds the soul to its true goal. The masters of the tribe should have known this and should have known to beware the fatal allure of the need for the astonishing. When humanity is amazed, the inward gaze of heaven is diminished.
In those times, when across the savannahs and in the wild forests tribes danced to an excess of gods and killed and sacrificed one another and were led astray by false babblings from oracles false with priests who were steeped in the mysteries of the stupidity of man and woman; in those times, a clear light seemed to come from the austere images of the tribe of artists. The old masters of the earliest times were wiser; they wielded a purer knowledge of the way. But blockheads, the greedy, the weak, the power-seekers too fall upon the path and through degeneracy join, unknown, the council; and impurities poison a purer way for ever. And no master-gardeners emerge to purify the garden of these fatal weeds of the mind that one day will lead to the garden's destruction.
CHAPTER TWENTY–NINE
But among masters of the time marvellous things happen. Sometimes, at the council meeting, in the silence, a spirit would appear, and would speak in an incomprehensible tongue, and tell, very briefly, a tale of woe and wonder upon the earth. Sometimes a being not of this world would manifest, and in silence would speak of innumerable worlds in the vastness of space where living beings dwelt in a surprising variety of forms. Sometimes a trio of such interstellar beings, radiant in lights of gold and blue, with eyes of shining stones, and bodies wholly transparent, would tell the masters of the ways of their civilisations, and how they came to an end. They would tell of how they now wander the universe, seeking a familiar air and space in which to leave their tale as a guide and warning to those of future ages who sow destruction in their quest for an all-conquering power over all they survey.
Sometimes, amid the expectant silence of the masters in the depth of mysteries that cannot be told to the uninitiated, an emblematic animal, a mysterious unicorn, would appear; and would gaze upon them with pitiful eyes, and would whisper, in silence, a formula in the air, for the regeneration of the race of man and woman ... But the masters, too used to the passive witnessing of astonishments, did not grasp all the details of this simplest of formulations; and so, without any sense of loss, lost one of the greatest secrets that nature had to tell them.
It would seem that those who fall prey to astonishments always believe that more and ever more will be manifest to them, and, oddly enough, cease to believe in what the astonishing can tell them. And so those who love stories most learn the least from them, but devour them in the endless fertility, when one true tale listened to with the mind of awakening is enough to lead one to the path of gold and simplicity ...
And so only one of the masters grasped the formulation; and the one kept it to himself, and nourished it as one nourishes a deep love that must be kept secret from the jealous eyes of the world.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Among masters, birds have appeared from the empty air; words have been spoken in the dark, from no mouth but the mouth of the unusual; white forms, singing on the wind, have paid visits; kings have appeared, requesting help for their dying kingdoms; children have manifested, begging aid for the loss of their parents; girls have materialised, crying for a change to the traditional ways that crush their lives before they are born and to their dying days.
Among masters, victims being sacrificed have appeared, swearing vengeance on their tribes for their cruel practices; a succession of beings, spirits, the dead and dying have made themselves present and screamed about the evils in the land, the wickedness of their tribal ways, the madness of their kings, the stupidity of elders for allowing manifold monstrosities to pass for tradition.
Apparitions have streamed thus among the masters, bearing witness to a vast land crying out for a purging, a mighty retribution, a dreadful curse of fire and suffering that will sweep the land of its centuries of superstition, vileness, injustice, murders, oppression, tyranny, infanticide, cruelty in wars, horrible rituals, amid so much that was good, joyful, hospitable and loving. These forms came, and lingered, in the midst of masters.
And not only witnesses, but simple presences too. Feathers suspended on wings of light. A child praying on the moon. A fabled creature from another land. A fairy with wands of blue. A white hat. A painting of rare beauty turning in the air. A sonnet whispered by the wind. The beginnings of a tale of chivalry. A knight in broken armour. A bearded man with a shining magic sword. A radiant book whose words streamed out into the illuminated air. Even a castle seen in miniature. All these appeared in the midst of the masters of the council, and created in them the habit of silence, and an unwillingness to interpret that which must be unseen in order to be seen.
And thus such things turn into tales of wonder that so beguile them from the true nature of their function.
CHAPTER THIRTY–ONE
Among the masters, many wonders no longer become stories, for so many have been seen ...
And now, they have this dream told them in the dark, by one who was unknown. And it was a time of incomprehensible ennui in the turning days of the last years of enchantment under the old sun. For a new sun, harsh and strange, was rising from an uncompassed sky.
At the next meeting, while the world changed, there was silence too among the masters of the council. Till one spoke, suddenly, saying:
'I too had the same dream, but in my dream the children of the heron did not return, and the white birds did not do very much, and anyway it was not a heron but a golden eagle and it recovered from its sickness by the powers of heaven, and became a great bird at last and made great contributions to the race of birds.'
This addition to the silence prepared a mood strange and pregnant. Dreams never dwell alone. The silence was unused to this addition. Another voice grumpily spoke.
'In my dream all the tribes returned to the father in heaven; and then a great new history began on earth.'
Briefly, but damage was done. The mood was undone. There was a new expectation. Who else had found the same current from which this fountain sprang? Briefly, the wind blew. There were hooting noises in the distant dark. All around the forest brooded, and in it forms unseen were alive, and they too were having their meetings. But here, among the masters, another voice:
'I had the same dream too. But it wasn't an eagle, it was a sunbird. And the children scattered in the world did not return home. They did not remember their mother. And many of them were ashamed that the dying bird on the riverbank was thought of as their mother, and they denied her. Some of her children even mocked her and laughed at her in their new lands. And the golden sunbird, with the help of heaven and by its own great powers of healing, made itself well in the course of time, and became a great bird among birds. And one day, in the distant future, she became the saviour of the race of birds on earth.'
Another silence. Then an older voice, old and no longer quite here. A surprise, for many thought the voice had come from the ancestors. And it spoke, with obvious boredom.
'All this talk about birds, when something terrible is happening which we cannot see.'
That ended the dreams, for a while, and returned them to incomprehension and a listlessness that, with the heat, weighed on them like an oppressive enchantment.
CHAPTER THIRTY–TWO
And so it was too with the maiden. She was cloudy-headed, and became unpredictable. She began thus to frighten her mother, who began to hint that maybe it was time for her to marry. But to her father she was normal. He said:
'Her destiny is being born in her, poor girl, and her life is fighting against it. And so her body suffers these changes, like water suffers the changing lights of the sky.'
'You always talk in riddles about perfectly simple things, my love,' said her mother to her father. 'She is pregnant with a need to be pregnant. That is all. It is time to consider her marriage, and find acceptable suitors from the poor specimens around.'
Her father laughed, but said nothing.
And the maiden, changed by the tragic resonances of the sculpture that had so broken her life, walked among the clouds, neither on earth nor in heaven. She was perplexed by feelings swelling and raging in her belly and her heart. She was waiting for a god to speak to her, or for a special bird to bring her a flower, and free her from the dark joy of unknowing.
Part Three
CHAPTER THIRTY–THREE
Every land and every tribe is guided by its secret necessity, its most essential truth. And even when a people lose their way, or sink in degeneracy, or fall off the face of the earth, what lingers of them, or what is left of them somewhere, is this mysterious essential truth, this secret necessity. It is like a dream had in many variations but never remembered, but always familiar. It is like a homeland forgotten but reinhabited again by the same people, a love lost and found again without being recognised a second time.
But sometimes a people forget who they are, and lose their secret necessity, and start, slowly, to become strangers to themselves without knowing it. And then they dream up rituals, and fall into rites, and deeds, and enter into wars, and perform sundry acts upon the stage of the earth to forget their forgetting, or to try to remember or redefine, or find who they were, and now should be. Such ventures are doomed. A skin shed is a skin shed. A loss is a loss.
They say we were meant to lose something in order to find that which is truer. And that which we find may well be that which we have lost but which is found on a different day, when we have changed. And that which we have lost and found differently may well now be the magic stone with which we can, in greater readiness, continue our unending journey.
But to forget that which we are and not know it is an accursed thing. And this creeps upon a people in a hundred ways, like the numerous ways that darkness steals across the skies of bright lands. And then one day invaders appear on the horizon, bearing false mirrors – and a tribe, a people, disappear into captivity, and are forgotten on the face of the earth but for a few mysterious standing stones dreaming in moss in a forest, unseen for centuries, till a lost child comes upon them. And then an enigma is found, stones without a history, without a story, except the one which is to be glimpsed in dreaming fragments, in the great book of life among the stars.
CHAPTER THIRTY–FOUR
How to tell the story of the tribe of artists that are my ancestors from the fragments that are gleaned from the sights seen in touching stones, or among the enigma of the stars ...
How the tribe used to live invisibly, like the heron, always on the move, but always perfectly still when fishing for inspiration that will be revealed in their art ...
How they always used to change location, when needed, like fugitives, because they never wanted to be part of external corrupting structures, only wanting to contribute purely to the spiritual and artistic life of the land. To be free. Free to be truthful to their dreams and visions, and to the warning and guidance that came to them through the mysterious agencies of art and life ...
How to tell that this need so permeated their life that it also permeated their ways of loving ...
CHAPTER THIRTY–FIVE
And so it was that when the maiden's mother decided it was time for her to marry, suitors were invited into her life. And they wooed her with art. For that was the way of the tribe. With art a maiden is wooed and charmed. The suitors would begin to create works of art to win a maiden's heart.
It was often one of the busiest times of the year when numerous suitors competed in art for the hand of a woman. The sounds of carving, of drumming, of shaping could be heard all around the square. Sacrifices at the shrine multiplied. Young men, vigorous and intense, could be seen in groups as they worked for the suitors they supported. Gossip bred and sweetened the ears and hair-dressing hours of the women. They talked of little else but the suitors, their families, rumours of their past, recent or ancient scandals, and the appropriate or inappropriate behaviour of the maiden, or her family.
It was always a time of great creativity and festivity. Relations and friends of the maiden were wooed too, indirectly, with gifts from the suitors. Impromptu dances, sudden performances, improvised songs were directed at the maiden in surprising moments. It was the best time in a girl's life.
The whole tribe centred its attentions on the girl to be married. Her behaviour was scrutinised, and her worth was assessed not only by the quantity and frenzy and height of artistic excellence inspired by her among her suitors (and this counted very high indeed), but most especially by the charm and nobility of her conduct, her innocence, her humility, her grace, and her seeming to be unaffected by all that attention. For the tribe also wanted to fall in love with the maiden who was being wooed. If her conduct is exemplary and enchanting she inspires the whole tribe to greater excellence. Then the harvests are rich, the art of the people reaches new heights of innovation and brilliance, the old feel rejuvenated, the women feel younger, and the men dream of unique glories. In short, every aspect of life is touched and enriched, as if by the special favours of a goddess.
CHAPTER THIRTY–SIX
It was the time of year when the art of the tribe was most colourful. Reds and yellows, flashes of gold, dazzling blues and deep bright greens filled the air and caught the eyes everywhere. The suitors would often create great totems either celebrating the potency of the lineage of the maiden being wooed, or displaying the majesty of their own family. They might create carvings large and daring, showing the face of a warrior from three angles at once; or the statue of a goddess so pure in its beauty that people fell in love with the art more than the girl it was made for. Suitors from rich families made bronze casts, and sometimes, in cases of rare astonishment, they made statues in gold.
Every once in a while, miraculous art is created, and enters legend, and afterwards children are told they were born in the year that so-and-so was married, the year that a great work of art was made.
One such year was the year the maiden's father wooed and won her mother. The suitors were numerous, for the maiden's mother was of exceptional beauty and grace. She came from the family of one of the great chiefs of the tribe, one of the true masters. The suitors were not only numerous, they were also of the highest calibre. Many of them were reputed to be among the greatest artists of the land. Some were princes from distant places, who heard of the legend of the maidens mother's beauty and charms. Men who were artists, warriors, courtiers, princes, wealthy merchants came from sundry lands. Rumours of her desirability spread far; and every day brought new suitors on horseback, on camels, with rich entourage, and paid musicians, and praise-singers. It was an astonishing time for the tribe. Fame had visited the tribe again because it had a beautiful daughter that all the world wanted to marry.
The maiden's mother had conducted herself impeccably. She had carried herself with simplicity, grace and a b
ecoming shyness. This enchanted all the suitors and inspired them to the highest peaks of artistic and spiritual endeavour. That year of the maiden's mother's marriage did more for the tribe than a decade of its harvests and its art. Money poured in; artworks were bought in great quantities; trade multiplied; and stories, songs and epics abounded.
It was a time of legend, and the wise ones knew it. Whoever won her hand would have to be truly exceptional, and would instantly enter the legends of the land and would bask in lifelong fame. It was the right time to make a great name, for those who tell stories would be singing about it long after the tribe had vanished from the earth.
