Starbook

by Ben Okri

  Like women admiring new clothes in the marketplace, or like women admiring the fruits of a rich season, so the tribe clustered round like children and admired the new works which traders brought from the wider world. Knives with uniquely designed handles, figurines made of fired clay, reliquary figures of unknown ancestors, items sculpted from rocks, drawings on scrolls, handwritten manuscripts from prosperous kingdoms, paintings on parchment, vivid colours on absorbent wood, seeds of strange fruits, skulls of strange animals, objects that were magical because they were strange and beautiful in themselves, in their forms, in the ideas that spoke out from their shapes: these created a great and lasting excitement in the tribe. And they were part of the vital life of its continued creativity.

  So freely did they adapt, absorb, transform and combine the ideas and possibilities in these artworks and objects that they encountered. They absorbed them, and acknowledged them; for, to the tribe, acknowledging was a high expression of gratitude that made higher creativity possible. The gods of creativity, they believed, frowned greatly on unacknowledged absorptions; and the punishment for this was future barrenness in art.

  It was against all this that the Mamba, in his blind obsession, found himself pitted. Not only that; but also against the great commerce done by the purchase of their works by traders, by outsiders. And not only that either; but against the presence of the other suitors for the hand of the maiden.

  Soon the Mamba found himself isolated, and he didn't know it. He was outside the current of his people, and no one told him. In some tribes silence is the highest form of both condemnation and adoration. But the silences are different. A madman shouts out obscenities from dawn to dusk, and the tribe is silent. The madman becomes madder, and one day is heard from no more. There is a kind of silence that swallows up the personality and spirit of one who talks too much.

  CHAPTER SIXTY–FOUR

  The maiden's father had picked up the rumours and the whispers not from the mouths of people, not from friends and associates, not from relations, but from hints that the tribe was so expert at sending. Songs that he heard in the marketplace, with certain references and certain sly images, and he knew that his illustrious house was being referred to; indirectly, of course. Works of art seen, sculptures near the shrine noticed, certain words in conversations overheard, and an intolerable suggestiveness in certain glances, lingering too long, with an insolence previously unthinkable, and the speech unspoken wasn't hard to hear. The unsaid things thundered for being said in a hundred other ways except through speech. And so when he acted, when he had the maiden sent away, not in secrecy but in daylight, so that everyone could see and therefore not see, he acted in the highest spirit.

  With his wife, at night, when they talked deep into the hours of the dwindling stars, they often said things like: One does not become a woman just by getting older. One does not become a human being just by being born. To become what one is takes a long time, and no time at all. Those who use only their brains cannot get to the mysterious depth of things. Now will not be like this for ever. Now is not what people think it is: there is a now that has gone, there is a now that is going, and there is a now that will be, but which is already here – and they are all in the same now. People see only that which has gone, and which is no more. They never see that which is already here, but invisible.

  Man and wife; these manner of things they spoke to one another, into the hours of the dwindling stars and the gently brightening heavens. And they spoke these things incidentally, in relation to something else, something more concrete, like what to do about their daughter.

  Her disappearance from the community increased her reputation and her stature amongst the suitors, and fuelled innumerable rumours about her. As rumour takes the place of fact, filling an absence, it allowed people to be creative in the monstrosities that they could imagine and invent. There was talk that the maiden was unwell, that she had gone mad, that she had contracted a fatal disease, that the gods had sent dreadful omens regarding her fate. They whispered that she had disappeared because she had been impregnated by the horned animal that had copulated with her. They speculated about the nature of the man-beast that she would give birth to, and wondered if it would ever be allowed to roam about the shrine in broad daylight. They surmised that the pressure and expectation of having to create a new work to fulfil her healing had perhaps cracked her sanity. Or wondered whether she had crumbled under the strain of the relentless wooing by the suitors. Some said that she had gone away to be fortified. And as there is always an element of chance in the accumulation of rumours, so there is an element of truth in something that is collectively whispered for long enough, even if that truth is allegorical, or even symbolic. For there were those who suggested that she might have gone away to be spiritually strengthened, to be magnified.

  In fact, she had been taken to the cave of awakening, in the hills of the gods. In that cave her real life began. She was buried alive, left for days, allowed to die, and was then raised ...

  It was in the cave that she began to dream of a dying prince.

  CHAPTER SIXTY–FIVE

  About initiations we ought to be silent. They are often sacred and private events. What rituals are wrought there belong to the initiated and should not be bared to the irrelevant scrutiny of a curious and sensation-seeking world. People destroy the power of initiations when they reveal them to outsiders and to those who are not undergoing such rites. Noble initiations ought to have great silence and a ring of fire around them, so that the initiated may undergo the rites of their transformations in the power of that intense space. Initiations within are silent and unseen; so it should be for those who make the ritual changes from darkness to light, from boys to men, from girls to women, from chrysalis to butterfly. Wisdom ought to guide these processes of the liberating being.

  About the maiden's initiation, though I saw it in the book of life, I shall be silent, in my revealing kind of way. I shall conceal by revealing. She passed through it with great pain, difficulty and suffering. She dwelt alone for seven days in the cave of transformations. She was buried alive for many nights. She gave birth to herself in her death and emerged from the earth in a disordered, disorientated state. She ate nothing but herbs and water. She dwelt among the rocks and awaited the goddess. She recited the prayers of light that had been given her till she broke down and wept a whole day. Then she felt like dying and lay down on a white rock to die in the blazing sun, with her lips all broken and her mind quite cracked. And a blaze of light encompassed her and in the light there was a bird and she followed the bird into the heavens and wandered in halls of pure white glory. Then she saw a prince waiting for her at the door of golden splendour, and he reached out his hand and she held it, and together they entered the chamber of angels. And they were silent there among the angels and they were both one and happy and perfect in their bliss beyond the wildest dreams of mortals. And they dwelt there in perfect love and harmony for an eternity; and then time tugged at her and she found herself alone, listening to the whispers of the goddess in the hall of the Holy. She listened a long time to whispers that were not words but beyond words; and then a flash of red light fell upon her and she awoke and found herself in the cave, alone, with girls who had changed into women singing outside, calling her to come out of the cave to be a woman now and give birth to a new world.

  CHAPTER SIXTY–SIX

  Eventually she emerged, and after much encouragement and coaxing she danced as a new woman and was taught the rituals of birth. Her blood broke then and ran down her legs and they celebrated her as a woman who with blood bears the weight and fire-wisdom of the world, 'who with blood sacrifices her life to make the world beautiful and rich with meaning, and who with blood continues the entry into the world of sleeping souls waiting to emerge into history and time, and who with blood bears legend and myths.

  And she danced, and ate, and was fed rich food with the new women. And she learnt proverbs, silence, legends of the land, the histo
ries of the tribes, the sagas of families, the ways of woman that overcome and dissolve the often stubborn and short-sighted ways of men. And she was taught to see men as allies in the universe created by God for them both to make noble the future of the race and the earth. And she was taught the art of indirection, the science of herbs, the marvels of decoration, the place of agreement and disagreement and the ways to accomplish things. And she was taught that wisdom is better than force, grace greater than power, love greater than hate, that bitterness and food do not mix, that a pure heart is more beautiful than a pure sky, that discord is the enemy of prosperity, and she was taught a thousand other things which will be forgotten and then remembered and passed on from generation to generation, longer than the hills ...

  She danced, grew, learnt, unlearnt, changed and didn't change, with the other new women. She had no idea what her initiation had made her become. Her face in the mirror of the lakes in the hills looked strange to her. She had acquired a new face, with a new look in her eyes. She feared her new self, feared its new secret power and knowledge, and kept it hidden for a long time.

  CHAPTER SIXTY–SEVEN

  She went to the hills a girl, and emerged from the cave profound, and yet sweeter, more innocent, and more mysterious than ever. She was also more odd. Initiations only make you more and deeply what you truly are. There are, in truth, no changes. And even the greatest experiences or revelations do not change a life. They only reveal what was deeply and truly there, in the depths of the personality. They only unveil the true self. They only make people become what they really were all along. When people say 'This or that experience changed my life' they only mean that 'this or that' pushed forward their true selves, brought forth their true nature. We never change. From youth to adulthood, from frivolity to seriousness, under the impact of significant experiences we only become what we really are, for good or ill. That is why when people say they have changed it does not, as they think, mean that they have necessarily changed for the better.

  But initiations are different: if they are noble, they change you into the becoming of your true self, that you may better see yourself as you are in the mirror, and thereby begin further unveiling. For all initiation is unveiling, self-revealing.

  The maiden descended from the hills in her new mystery.

  The world she left was not the same.

  She saw it differently.

  She saw things she had not seen before. She heard things she had not heard before. She did things she would never have done before.

  And yet had she changed?

  CHAPTER SIXTY–EIGHT

  In accordance with tradition the tribe welcomed the maiden back from her initiation with songs and dances reserved for heroes and heroines. They embraced her back into its heart. They treated her as a special being, creating an arch of palm fronds for her to walk under, as if she were a priestess returning from the shrine of prophecies with good omens for the world.

  CHAPTER SIXTY–NINE

  And it was when she returned from her initiation that, under a trance, a sudden inspiration, she created an inexplicable sculpture of a dying prince. She had not long returned when she began haunting her father's workshop, wandering amongst the sleeping wood and the unsummoned spirits. Soon she was seen frequenting the forests, searching for something which she claimed could not be sought, but only received. One day, in her obsession and her wandering open-minded state, she encountered an old man who sat on air, his eyes piercing, his face young. He had a gentle smile on his face. She said nothing to him and he merely stared through her and she wandered past him, seeking that which can only be received. Then in the silence she heard someone say:

  'What you seek is the foundation.'

  She was not puzzled by this voice, but went straight home, and the next day found the perfect piece of wood near the shrine, as if it had been placed there for her. The wood shone with the light and mystery of dawn. And she took it home and slept near it and then one day, in the middle of her duties, unaware of all things, she saw the dream of love in the wood and surrendered to it completely. She asked no questions, brought no answers, forgot all techniques, discarded all craft, abandoned her heart, left behind her mind, ceased to be a maiden, a woman, or even human, became blind and refused speech and, in complete emptiness, like one without beginning or end, she received what emerged from her dreaming in wood.

  And when it was finished she displayed the sculpture of a dying prince in front of the shrine.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  No one understood it. The work, beautiful and rough, rich in pathos and yet touched with humour, caused consternation in the tribe. But it caused more problems in her. The work bothered her. She had no idea where it came from, or what had made her create it. The work perplexed her, and she pondered it often, and stared at it whenever she could without being noticed, and she peered into it as into a prophetic mirror. Baffled by the mystery of her own creation, she began to fall in love with it. She fell in love, not with the art, or the beauty, or the work; she fell in love with the hint of the prince she had created. She fell in love with the mysterious possibility of the figure lying languidly in the charmed wood of her inspiration.

  She fell in love with the image, the tranquil sadness of the dying youth; and she became secretly obsessed with it. Her secret obsession began to affect her sanity; the mystery of the work began to unhinge her. And she began to seek one who was like the sculpture, and she found no one to rival the intriguing beauty of the work she had made. She searched for such a one in all the faces that she met. Then she entertained the hope, which was awoken in a dream she had, that the figure in wood might wake from his death-slumber in wood and stand before her fresh as a flower nearly touched with dew.

  It was an odd dream, extremely vivid and rich in colour, in which the dying prince slowly stretched his limbs as blood returned to his pale cheeks, and sat up, and then turned to her, and spoke with a silent voice so familiar that it made her shiver with a precious delight. The dying prince stared at her a long time with his doe-like eyes of liquid sadness. His lips were gently red and hinted at the softness of rose petals. And his nose was gentle too, but his jaws had a quiet strength. He stared at her and didn't speak. He was silent and he stared and he wasn't thinking, just staring, not even moving, but his eyes seemed the centre of the universe, and his breathing the centre of an intolerable tenderness that was like an ache which she could not locate, and from which she could not escape. He made her want to weep for some unstated tragic condition about the world, some great universal injustice, some unbearable crime committed against a complete innocent. Not one thought emerged from his stillness, or his presence. Just the tranquil stare that looked upon her as at a profound mystery. The tender intensity of his gaze touched her very deeply, to her core, where she was not just a girl or a woman but a living being of pure love. And then suddenly, but slowly, the dying prince lay down again and assumed his dying repose, and returned to his condition of a work of art in wood.

  She had this dream several times and every time she awoke she was disconsolate. Not a word had he ever uttered to her. And till he spoke, she felt she could not speak; his awakening from his imprisonment in wood was the miracle that could free her voice in her dreams. But as he could not speak, neither could she.

  The maiden carried a strange secret around with her in her waking hours: she wanted the prince to waken from wood into flesh, and for him to speak, so that she could learn to love.

  Her work held her prisoner too. She could not be free till the prince could be. And so her return from the hills, and the creation of the work of art which should have healed her and made her stronger in spirit, made her more ill, more susceptible to impossible fancies and fantasies.

  She fell ill from an inability of life to be as fascinating or as mysterious as art.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY–ONE

  The tribe was troubled by her artistic offering. They had expected from her a healing image. They had expected an image of be
auty. They had expected a work potent with the greatness of her inheritance, her distinguished lineage, her freedom, her unique personality, and the myth from which her oddness gained resonance. They had hoped from her that which will be as an oracle from a new generation, a mirror into the broken rhythms of the times, some kind of work that would disentangle the enigmas that seemed to so imprison the tribe. They hoped, as the first daughter of the new generation, that with her new and uncontaminated eyes she would show them that which they could not see, the fate pressing on them, invisible but palpable as a tragic premonition.