Starbook

by Ben Okri

  'Our daughter is not like that. She has her mother's spirit, but in a different form. She was given to us to teach us how a different way can also arrive in the kingdom of the blessed. Anyway, what have we to lose? If she turns out all right, she will be a gift to the world. If she doesn't she will have lived an interesting life, because of the rich creed of the tribe. Already she has seen enough and learnt enough to have plenty to think about for a whole lifetime. Already, anywhere else in the world, she would stand out as a special person. She knows more than she knows. I do not fear for her.'

  The mother laughed and staring deep into her husband's eyes of mystery, she said:

  'And what of all these rumours?'

  It was now her husband's turn to laugh.

  'We both know who is behind them. We both know why. Rumours can destroy only that which is not true and deep. Rumours are like rats that eat away at the foundations of a house. If the foundations are not strong the house will fall anyway, without the rats. These things can work for our ends. We must let them come and go. People are seen to be greater if they survive the lies told about them. Out of shame the world gives more stature to those it has maligned, but only if the maligned ones turn out to be worth their weight in gold. The integrity of our daughter will turn these rumours into great praise, into songs of legend, one day. Those who tear down a good name will be forced to build a palace for their future fame.'

  'You trust your daughter so much.'

  'And so do you. She has your special nature, but she is a strange gift.'

  'I know,' the mother said, 'and that is why I am so hard on her. I love her too much and so I let her wander and dream her youth away. These may well be the best days, her purest days, under this difficult sun. I want it to last. I want her to forever live in these happy times when she doesn't know how happy she is. I want her not to pay any attention to the suitors, or worry about the healing work expected of her, or be troubled by the instinct of love growing in her, or be stirred by the whispers of the gods in her being. I want her always to wander by the river and to talk to snails and to laugh suddenly because happiness shakes in her like the midnight touch of a lover. I want her never to walk on broken glass, or to wake up in the dark, or to see the world turn into a cage, or to see the open road narrow and become a tiny path, or to see monsters everywhere, or to become full of doubt and fear, to become suspicious of those she loves, and to see evil in the good things in her life. I don't want her to drown in sadness, or to no longer see the sky with gladness. I don't want her to forget what love means, and to learn to hate her life because of all the troubles that living brings. But all I can do is prepare her in her youth, for all the troubles, and a love of truth. All I can do is show her a mirror in which she can see her future self, and be surprised by it, and rebel against it, and in rebelling take such twists and turns that will lead her to the right way. We will be gone by then. And she will look back and see these days again as magic days and not gone, but waiting. And she will find us inside her, smiling, growing in her rebelling, flowering in her realisation. And we will be in the best fruits of her life, her best deeds. One has to use such cunning ways to make the future yield the best fruits. But for now, I must show her the art of delays; show her, without showing her, how to make time a yielder, a teacher, a friend, a guide, an alchemist, a magician, a transformer, by the ways of delaying – one of our ancient ways which the new generations are forgetting. Now I must be the wicked mother, and bring swift unwanted changes into the sleeping life of our daughter. Why is this always the mother's task, my husband?'

  And they both laughed deep into the night at the mysteries of these things.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  On the wonderful day that the maiden was supposed to obey the injunction of the voice by the river, to keep her solemn promise to the mysterious voice heard in the riverwind; on the day that was supposed to be the most fateful, the most beautiful of her life, when the gods would show her favours she could hardly dream about; on the day that she had anticipated deeply but wouldn't allow herself to think about, and her anticipation made her quivery and nervous and full of joy at the slightest thing, so that sometimes she felt that some vital part of her being would suddenly ascend from her body in a daze of unequalled ecstasy; on that day her mother called her with a different voice, a terrible voice, a hard, harsh and earthy voice, and told her, quite brutally, that she was being taken away, immediately, on a journey.

  The maiden was given no time to think about it and virtually no time to pack. She had to leave as she was. Something very urgent had come up, and for her absolute good she had to go.

  'But mama,' cried the maiden, 'do I have to go now?'

  'Yes, my dear, absolutely.'

  'But I have barely woken up from sleep.'

  'All the better. You must think then that you are dreaming.'

  'Do I have to go this moment, now?' the maiden asked, incredulously.

  'Yes, now, as you are. We should be leaving now as we are talking.'

  'But does papa know about this?'

  'Absolutely, of course.'

  'What does he say?'

  'It is his instruction, it is his will. I am merely carrying out his orders.'

  'But why?'

  'There is no time to explain. Take what you need now, the fewer things the better. Take them now or you will regret not paying attention later.'

  In a state of complete confusion, her mind in disarray, her world seeming to collapse and dissolve about her, she quickly, in a daze, as in a dream, gathered together the items of clothes and other ordinary but invaluable things she would need. She was on the verge of tears, but she was too confused to weep. Her mind swirled, the notion of the end of things, the end of the world, swooped down on her. She didn't know what to think or feel. She was distressed beyond bearing at leaving so suddenly and breaking her promise to the god of the river who had favoured her with speech. This filled her with immeasurable sadness and a sense of panic. What would the god do? Would the god be angry with her for disobedience? Whom should she most obey, the voice of a god or the commandments of her parents? The maiden was in turmoil as she threw sundry items together into a bundle. How could she get word to the river to say she was being taken away so suddenly, against her will and desire? And if she got word to the river would the god listen to anyone else but her? And the messenger, how could they speak to the god when the god had chosen to speak to her alone? Could she – should she – explain all this to her mother? But there was no time, for time was collapsing all about her. Things were vanishing. She could not find half the clothes and items she sought. The walls, the house, the village, were vanishing before her gaze. Her life was disappearing. What was happening to her?

  And her mother, thinking the daughter looked perplexed because of the suddenness of her departure, as well as the mysterious nature of her journey, began to speak to her a mother's words:

  'My child,' she said, as she hurried her through the tying of her bundle, 'this life of ours is a strange story that only the gods can read.'

  Time became very swift. It was as if she were in a dream and her life, was being altered by a god. The maiden, listening and not listening to her mother, felt as if a god were wafting her into a changed course. She felt as if she were being lifted out of one life and being placed in another. She felt, oddly, as if she were being obscurely assisted, as if propelled through time and space and destiny. It all felt strange. Suddenly she was under the sky. Then the village passed her by. Faces gazed at her, smiling. Then she found herself in her father's workshop. She was kneeling. He was pouring out a libation and invoking the gods, the ancestors and the masters. He was asking them to protect and enlighten his daughter on this journey that she was undertaking into womanhood and into the mysteries. The prayers had a powerful effect on her; they cast an astonishing enchantment on her mind. Spirits appeared before her gaze, and her mind faded a little, and the world passed her. The artworks bristling with prophecy and power dazzled her sp
ellbound mind. The road led up to the hills. Soon her mother was beside her again, then she disappeared, then reappeared. She walked on the earth and then was borne along in a dream. The sun beat down with sharp rays like the swords of warriors. The heat and the sharp rays sent her mind revolving. For a long time, beyond the earth, above the river, high into the hills which she had never heard about, whose grottoes abounded with legends, she went, walking on light feet, listening to the wind, and to the eagles and sunbirds and the white-winged birds that flew over her head with softly whirring wings like the noises that precede the voice of prophecy in the oracles and the shrines.

  She was led into a world beyond her dreams, into valleys of stone and wild green plant, rocks with faces like old masters gazing into this world from another one, vultures perched on high outcrops, strange animals that rustled across their paths. How long had they been walking, been borne along, by dreams, by insubstantial forms? Were they going to the world's end, to the domain of alien beings, to the home of spirits? Was she being taken on a ritual sacrifice, for some unknown reason? She had heard stories such as these often. A maiden is taken away because the god has chosen her to be sacrificed to avert a disaster fatal to the tribe. Did I come in peace and willingness? the maiden asked herself, and couldn't answer. She was so mesmerised. She felt as if she were going to her death, in order that the world could be renewed. She was the god's choice for the renewal of the world and the averting of catastrophe. She could feel now how she was borne along by a power greater than her. She dreaded it all, and yet was calm in her terror.

  She loved the world she was leaving, she now discovered. And she realised that she had not looked at it enough. The hills were beautiful, rugged, harsh and mysterious. Here the spirits dwelt, she thought. They are the rocks. The hills were gods. The sky was clear, and bright, like shining bronze and gold, and profoundly blue, as if heaven's depth had lowered itself closer to the earth. The air was clear. She could smell all the fragrances of all the herbs and plants she loved. The place she walked on was old; old stories of tribes that had long vanished into dreams told themselves to her feet. And she saw bearded magi and young children, burdened and pregnant women, warriors and their stones, laughing fathers, and sons that must rebel in order to become men. She saw them in her walking state, vanished tribes, gone into the rocks, lingering in the invisible dreams in the air. She felt the blood of wars and ritual sacrifices.

  She knew at once that she had lived and yet had not glimpsed what life was, and she gave a cry, and the enchantment tightened tenderly about her mind, and her mother appeared at her side and began speaking.

  CHAPTER SIXTY–ONE

  'My child, my child, be still, and be comforted in your heart,' her mother said. 'This is what a woman's life is like. Constant change. No here, and now. What is stable in this world? Nothing. Everything is changing, running away. One day a girl, proud as a goddess, confused as a millipede counting its legs, and the next day a woman, a mother, too busy, a little mad, and quite helpless, and yet powerful. Changes in the body. Changes in the world. Every day the earth has been taken away from under your feet. The man who loved you yesterday, is he the same man today? One day you are loved, the next day love is a stranger. One day your mother is here, the next day she is dead, gone to join the ancestors. Who knows anything? All is like the wind, changing like water. Things disappear. And so a woman must learn to be still, to make things stay, to make things remain, to inspire things to come back, even when they go. A woman must learn to charm life to keep returning that which has gone. The woman learns the art of making time be still. Of stretching time out. Making time wait, linger. You make time live in your house, while history is being made. You keep time under your pillow, with your dreams. You make time a great power. And how do you do this? That you must learn yourself. But I tell you why. Because everything goes, beauty, earthly power, fortune, happiness, clans, tribes, empires, everything goes away, disappears. But you can make them disappear slower; you can make them wait longer; you can charm them to stay for one more day; and if you do this day after day, then you can manage a modest eternity. And even things that go, you can charm their presence here, their fragrance, their spirit. If their spirit is here then they are here too, and soon their form will return in another way. These are women's things, these are women's ways; but not all women know them, my daughter, only those in whom the ancient wisdom of women is alive, who have been taught, who have been initiated into the mysteries of the great mother ...'

  CHAPTER SIXTY–TWO

  These words were meant to distract the maiden. They were meant to prepare her. The ancient ones believed, as I do now, that a person has to hear a thing three times in order to hear it once. The words her mother spoke to her between hills, under the changing brilliance of the sky, with the jagged rocks underfoot that snagged them as they walked, the words were a ploy, a bridge between distances, between home and the unknown.

  Did the maiden hear a single word her mother said? No, not a word. Not with her normal ears. Did her mother think that her daughter had heard a word she had said? No, not a word. But she knew that her daughter's spirit had heard the spirit of her words. That she knew. The spirit of the words had gone into her daughter through unusual channels, and will wait in her like an unsuspected pregnancy; and one day it 'will give birth to unexpected understanding. The maiden's mother had long mastered the art of planting the spirit of words in people. She knew that people resist words themselves, because they hear them. But the spirit of words can't be resisted because it is not heard, or is heard by deeper, invisible ears. Not many people knew the art of the spirit of words; and to know this art one ought first to know the art of the spirit of things; indeed, the art of the spirit. This art was one of those that the maiden's mother specialised in, as she wove in and out of her daughter's consciousness, and as she travelled the feet-tearing distances over the rough hills and across streams to the unfathomed place of initiations.

  The maiden did not hear anything, as she staggered along in her semi-sleepwalking way over rocks and on brutal stones. When her mind was not blank, or full of foreboding, or bedazzled and bewitched by the merciless sunlight, she was thinking only of the tragic loss of not keeping her promise with the divine voice at the river. And she was certain that she would suffer and be punished for her failure to keep the appointed hour with her destiny. It was only much later she would learn that there are many destinies. And that we fail to keep our appointed hour with one destiny in order to fulfil another. There are many alternative destinies waiting in the wings of our failures.

  These future notions would not have consoled the maiden. As she stumbled along the harsh paths in the ascending hills, crushed by the sun, obliterated by the sky, made raw by the earth, her mind worn down by an intolerable exhaustion that shaded into hallucination, she thought mainly of the voice and the river that she had left behind for ever.

  CHAPTER SIXTY–THREE

  Meanwhile the Mamba, not knowing the effects that his plans had wrought, not knowing of the disappearance of the maiden, kept up his malicious campaign. He began to speak out about unknown foreigners invading their lives. He went about this with such an obsessed state of mind that he forgot how open the tribe was to outsiders. In fact the tribe relied on the continual flow of outsiders into its life. They brought trade, and goods, and they brought artworks and artefacts from distant kingdoms and principalities. Without them the tribe would have no idea what the rest of the world was doing artistically. It would be isolated from the visible currents of art and dreams.

  The tribe thrived on its sense of wonder. And there were few things it found to wonder at more than a new bronze sculpture from an unknown race, or a carving, or a new form, or shape, or way of representing what was familiar or unfamiliar. They loved nothing more than to be amazed by that which they did not understand.

  It was essential to their pleasure and appreciation that they did not (at first) understand the art that came their way from the mysterious
trade routes of the world. For the tribe, to understand was not to see. To understand too quickly was a failure. It was a blinding. Understanding stopped them from seeing, and looking. Even when they understood, they sought that within a significant work which they did not and could not understand: this they held up as its central and most secret feature. And when this point of mystery moved, or changed, as it does through time and under the new light of unexpected events, they also changed the centrality of the work's mystery.