Starbook

by Ben Okri

  The princes brought their artisans, the griots prepared their epics, the warriors honed their skills, the artists perfected their creations, some in secrecy, others with great publicity. They were mostly of noble, great, or celebrated stock. All, except one, who was an orphan, whom no one had noticed. He lived with his uncle, a master bronze-caster. He had never been remarked as an artist of any note or stature. But he had grown wise in the service of his uncle, and he had been initiated into the mysteries on account of his profound interest in the causes of things.

  His sense of humour could have made him famous in the tribe if he had been inclined to be known. But years of watching, growing deep in the hidden knowledge, years of smiling to himself and studying profoundly the secrets of his art had inclined him to a sublime invisibility, and a sublime nonchalance.

  He might have been a prince born into unfortunate circumstances; but he was an outsider who was more deeply inside the centre of life and art than any of the age, and no one knew it, least of all himself. He made himself a suitor on the simplest grounds of love, a quiet love that had grown and been sustained for many years. For as long as he had been aware he had always been in love with the maiden's mother, had grown deep in this secret love, and had developed with it into a man of rich and hidden character. The love had been one of the primary motivations and inspirations of his life. The love had given him the reasons to learn the ways and causes of things, to study the laws of nature and personality and power, and to master his chosen art.

  Through his love for her he was open to a higher love that led him into the ancient mysteries brought with the caravans from the masters whose original homeland had sunk into the oblivion of the sea. Time, his condition and this dual love had enriched him and made of him what the most noble birth could not do: they made him a true man among men, who saw where others didn't, who intuited what others couldn't, who dreamt what others wouldn't, who questioned what others felt they shouldn't, who ascended to realms that others didn't suspect existed, and who knew what others didn't even know that there was to know.

  Nobility of birth couldn't confer on a man nobility of soul; that is attained only by one who strives for the highest, in the lightest of ways, with humour of spirit, and a guiding sense of invisibility being best. How do such people come to be? Love has its ways of civilising souls that may have been destined for servility. In the maiden's father stood a free man and a true prince amongst beings, who had fashioned himself out of the dust that he had found and a love that had led him to the stars over the stars that can be seen.

  And this love he bore was his qualification for becoming a suitor when all around him told him that he was mad for harbouring such a wish or dream or hope. How could a simple man, unknown to his peers, without a shadow in his land, compete with such a magnificent gathering of names? But this he did; and simply, as was his way.

  And while others created extravagant and wonderful works, great masquerades, giant bronzes, stone statues, rapturous dances, tremendous epics, to capture the maiden's mother's heart, he did the simplest and most astonishing thing of all. He made a sculpture of pure air and sunlight, a work that all could see and not see, that induced a great dreaming in the whole tribe, a deep enchantment and silence, that stilled the minds of masters and children, and made the women weep for beauty. The sculpture was composed of the material of love itself. It was revealed in the open air, above the shrine.

  The other suitors claimed they couldn't see it, that it was a fraud, a vile sorcery masquerading as art. But everyone else could see it, and they fell under its spell. The maiden's mother adored it and spent most of her day sitting in front of the shrine, gazing up at this work of the magnificent soul, with an expression on her face that only lovers lost in profound adoration have. She couldn't get enough of the enchantment, and she declared that she wanted to spend the rest of eternity with the man who had made such a dream. It was the only time that she broke out of her pattern of behaviour and acted as if possessed by a force greater than her. Along with the whole tribe, and the entourage of the dignitaries, she, in fact, became quite obsessed with this mysterious new work. Her parents too fell under its enchantment, though they doubted the suitability of their daughter's rash declaration.

  'We ought to know more about this suitor,' they said.

  'All we need to know,' she replied, 'is the quality of his dream. Look, everyone has fallen in love with his soul. I don't care if he is a beggar. That is the man I want to marry.'

  'But what if he is mad?'

  'Then it is a madness that pleases me,' she replied pertly.

  'You have not even met him and look at what his work is doing to you. Can't you see? You are behaving as if a spell has been cast on you. How will you be if you live with him?'

  'Happy, and mad, for the rest of my life.'

  'But what he has done is unheard of. He has changed the nature of our way. If we allow this to go on happening he will destroy our tribe.'

  'Or he may save it from dying.'

  'Are we dying, my daughter? Are we not thriving as a tribe? Look around you.'

  'Dying things appear to thrive. Without new dreams we will surely die.'

  'Maybe they are right, my daughter, when they say that this man has used sorcery on us.'

  'It is not sorcery, my dear parents, but a new kind of wine for the spirit, a new art. If it is sorcery then it is the sorcery of art. I have never heard of its kind before. This man is rare, and he will be my husband. I will have no other.'

  'You will bear his strange children.'

  'They will be unique. They will bring you pride and joy.'

  'You will have a strange fate because of him.'

  'All fates are strange. I welcome an unusual life. Maybe they will sing of us in future stories because I married this sorcerer you speak of.'

  'What is unknown may bring unknown suffering.'

  'There is no protection against the future, except love, wisdom and hope. My love will be my guide.'

  'Then so it must be.'

  'But only with your blessings, my parents.'

  'So it must be. Let us prepare for a new story in our lives.'

  And so it was. The work of the unknown suitor not only broke the pattern of the maiden's mother's behaviour, it altered something in the air. It was the first time that a work of art had induced a communal experience akin to witnessing a miracle from the gods, a sense of wonder, a brush against the unfathomable. There was a bright fear in the wonder. It was the first time that the tribe had been presented with a work entirely new to its tradition, something that had never been done before, which changed its history and possibilities. For the work not only transformed its art, it transformed the way the tribe saw itself. It renewed the vision of the tribe and opened up, for ever, its destiny, and made its destiny new again.

  Suddenly the tribe felt that its future was not determined by its past. The tribe felt, overnight, that its future could now go any number of ways. Before, it had only one future, and that was related to the past. Now it had many futures. It was freed from the past. And it was even free of any of the futures it chose. For the sense of an ongoing freedom was inherent in the magic of the work of the unknown suitor. Like a door that is never open, and never closed. Like a door to heaven that opens both ways. This freedom was new. The work made people dream again that they were not what they thought they were, but more. It made them feel they shared in heavenly glories and power.

  This was the first time that the masters had been presented with an invisible sculpture that could be seen by all, a dream, an art of the incommensurable, composed of elements beyond the human hand, borrowing from the divine. The hand of God had been drawn into artistic creation.

  There was no competition. The general astonishment, the happy dreams of the people, and even signs from the oracles, were unanimous. The outsider, unknown, prone to invisibility, with a hidden sense of humour and a curious detachment that concealed great compassion, slight of figure and strange of ey
es, without appearing to try, and in apparent silence amid the famous and great names with their entourages and their big noises and their tremendous public and critical acclaim; amid all this, the unlikely one had come through. And the tribe, in many ways which it was too proud to admit, would never be the same again.

  The marriage was a quiet one, though the tribe was ecstatic in its celebrations. And quietly they slipped, the two of them, into being man and wife, as if they had spent many invisible centuries rehearsing for it. His distinction had been earned by astonishment, hers by tradition. Together they grew, laughed, thrived and prospered, and bore an only child, the maiden of this tale.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  In contrast to her mother the maiden was awkward, strange, unpredictable, dreamy, moody, alien. Someone said she looked like a beetle, and that she had beetle eyes. Some said that she looked like a mask, a carving; one that was used to frighten off unwanted spirits. Some said she looked like a spirit herself, one that frightened off human beings. The more charitable said she was just plain, and odd, and that girls like her, as with certain birds, change as they get older, and become very beautiful indeed. They said that you could never tell with her type whether her face would settle into a new harmony of surprising beauty, but that, given who her parents were, it was best to assume that, in due course, she would amaze. But most people did not see her so.

  'She is not beautiful, but she is so aloof,' they said.

  'She is not pretty, the men do not flock after her, but she behaves as if she were too good for marriage,' the other girls said.

  'As if she will not spread her legs when the time comes.'

  'As if she won't get fat before she knows it.'

  'As if she won't need us when the men let her down.'

  'As if she wouldn't cry blood on the day she has to push her hild out into the world.'

  'As if blood will not drip down her legs when she is walking o proudly to the river.'

  'Drip down her legs and shame her.'

  'As if her beauty won't fade.'

  'And she still hasn't made the work we are all waiting for.'

  'And she won't smile and has only useless girls as friends.'

  'I pity her parents such a useless daughter.'

  'Such an ugly daughter.'

  'Such a mad daughter.'

  'Such a lonely person, who none of us wants to know.'

  'I pity her too.'

  'I don't pity her. She deserves to be lonely. She thinks she is better than everyone, I can't see why.'

  'She is not like her mother, who is loved by everyone.'

  'Her mother is a flower, the daughter an insect.'

  'How come such a beautiful woman gives birth to such an odd-looking creature.'

  'If she were a man I would say that daughter is not his child.'

  'Life is full of strange things.'

  And so it was. The mother was the delight of the tribe, with an irreproachable reputation, like a princess who hasn't put a foot wrong in her standing with the people. But her daughter was different.

  Her face was composed of odd angles, and her eyes were unusual and saw too much. There was something disturbing and critical about the cool intelligence in her eyes. She had big eyes, a little watery, and they caught the light and gathered to themselves a mood both dreamy and uncanny, as if she were a witch, or had unusual powers of second sight, or could see the future in any face she glanced at and didn't much like the future that she saw in them.

  She was not graceful, or elegant. In fact, she was clumsy, as if all her fingers were thumbs, as if her feet were of lead and each faced in an opposite direction, or as if she had two left feet. She spoke little, sang much to herself, and was born with a perception of the world so unique as to make her fearsome since she was a little girl. For most of her life something about her spirit intimidated people, and yet she was on the small side.

  In herself she would not have drawn such illustrious suitors, but as the daughter of legend she was of the greatest interest. Her suitors were not of the myth-making range as her mother's had been, but they were illustrious enough for the tribe to tell stories about in the years to come. The best of the tribe had come forward to earn the hand of the maiden who was as well known for her mysterious nature as for her celebrated parentage.

  The artistic competition for her hand turned out to be unique. The most gifted of the tribe, driven to heights of inventiveness in order to win the respect of the master-artist that was her father, surpassed themselves in artistic endeavour.

  CHAPTER THIRTY–EIGHT

  And all this time the tribe still expected from the maiden an artwork for her own healing. And all this time the great tragic work that had so affected all, still worked on all. And all this time an ennui deep as centuries still drove deep despair into the roots of the people's hearts.

  All was not well. Forebodings danced in the forests. The shadow of unmentionable events stalked their dreams. Omens brooding with undeciphered significations appeared amongst the great and the small. Turtles trapped in ropes were found on the far side of the riverbank. A bird shorn of its feathers jumped about insanely beneath an iroko tree. A herd of beautiful antelopes was found dying of a mysterious disease. The seasons were losing their rhythms. It was hoped that the season of the maiden's wooing might prove auspicious, and change the fortunes of the land.

  But the maiden couldn't care. They wooed her with songs, and competed for her love with their different sculptures, their varied works of art, and she gazed on their best efforts with a tender indifference: she saw no art amongst them, only artefacts. She looked upon all the works of her suitors with a neutral eye and a gentle distracted smile. What was she dreaming of? Where was her mind? What images engendering immeasurable moods moved about in her spirit? She saw nothing but the mediocrity of her suitors, mediocrity masked by energy. Their works made her long for some incommensurable mood, some quality of being that only love or the highest art could bring about or satisfy. And this longing became, slowly, almost an insane desire for freedom, a lust for transcendence. She longed for an elusive something that would make her not a modern woman, or an antique, a traditional woman, but a transcendent woman. Her longing was for an impossible triangulation, distilled into the image of an eagle earthbound all its days, master of the terrestrial realm, but increasingly plagued with dreams of flight, dreams in which it was flying intermittently.

  Then the image got stronger. The eagle, in its sleep, was flying short distances. This was the mood of the maiden's spirit. She dreamt as an earthbound eagle (which thought of itself as a hen), she dreamt of soaring, of the open air, of the clouds beneath, of the land beneath the clouds, and of the clear heavens above, with all its brittle stars.

  The works of the suitors, their artefacts, masks, masquerades, songs, little epics, their extraordinary dances, their bronzes, their giant sculpted goddesses, these works were indeed flattering, charming, impressive. But where everyone was delighted by these works, she was cool. She was unmoved by all the noise and fame attending the works that would have swept many a virgin off her feet.

  She had been raised in magic, in true mastery. Early in life, she had been dipped in the mysteries. Legend and myth had attended her most ordinary existence. Her eyes were charged with starlight. Her mind had been formed in the forge of the most enlightened laboratory of the tribe. The vanities of beauty, the art of the woman-spirit, the charms of the mother-way, the obscure puzzles of the female silence, had been fed her with her mother's milk. Art was the language with which she read the world. When she looked out at the world, she saw all as art – the trees, the faces, the owl, the rat, all figurations and casual arrangements. All life she gazed on with the intensity of the art mind. This was the silent inheritance of her father. She saw the heart of things without trying. She knew that true excellence, true mastery, comes once or twice in a lifetime, almost never in a generation, and she was not disappointed at seeing nothing from her suitors resembling the true. She exp
ected nothing. Where would it come from? The true can only come from the true, from the hidden. This she had intuited from her father. She awaited her surprise from the margins. Till then she endured her wooings, and suffered her changes and her yearning for something unknown but coming.