by Ben Okri
‘I have ambitions that perhaps you won’t understand,’ said the detective, sipping his hot water. ‘Besides, there are things better than ambition.’
‘How can you stand to drink that tasteless stuff?’
‘It’s not tasteless at all. It restores me to the fundamental simplicity of the world.’
‘The world seems to be anything but simple. Take this case for example. What on earth was going on?’
‘It wouldn’t make sense if I explained it.’
‘Try me.’
‘It was a multiverse murder.’
‘What on earth is that? Speak plain English, man!’
‘It was a murder that happened in many universes.’
‘You must be mad.’
‘In one universe the murder hadn’t happened yet. In another, it had. Each time we apprehended him, we multiplied…’
‘Okay, that’s enough of that. If I hear any more I might start to have crackpot ideas myself. Just tell me this. Why the canal?’
‘I realised it when I learnt the victim was seen in the café reading a cat.’
‘Reading a cat?’
‘The policeman who saw him was dyslexic. His condition was extreme. He saw visually what he read. About one per cent of dyslexics have this syndrome.’
‘What was the cat he was reading?’
‘It was a book. The book gave me the second clue. The rest unravelled itself.’
‘Out with it, man. You are tying me up in riddles. What was the book?’
‘Schrodinger’s Cat.’
‘Schrodinger’s what?’
‘He had bought the book that morning and was seen reading it in the café after he had been murdered. Unless we were dealing with apparitions, there could only be one solution.’
The superintendent looked red-faced and exasperated.
‘I had to somehow get all the universes in which the murder was multiplying to converge. I had to create what physicists call an event convergence.’
‘What on earth is that?’ bellowed the superintendent, by now a swollen image of himself.
‘It is the one event, the one thing, that will fix time. In quantum mechanics, it is conjectured that the universe only comes into existence when we perceive it. I surmised that perhaps the body of the victim would only be found when we find it. The crime did not exist till the body was found.’
‘And the body was in the bin bags?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How did you know?’
‘One of the watchers outside the woman’s house had seen the murder suspect cutting up a chicken.’
‘It was a chicken.’
‘It was a chicken because the watcher had seen a chicken.’
‘Do you mean to say…’
‘Yes.’
The superintendent paused for a long moment.
‘But why was he trying to kill you?’
‘He wasn’t really. We have to understand that this man was taking a cosmic gamble. He never really had any intention of killing anybody. He was overcome with rage, with jealousy, with a kind of love madness. In that state it occurred to him that maybe if he killed the man in one universe the man would still be alive in another. Somewhere along the line he forgot what universe he was in. In short, he lost his reason.’
‘You mean he went mad?’
‘Depends on what you think madness is.’
‘Continue.’
‘In one of those universes it occurred to him that if he could stop me before I could find the body then he would never be caught and the murder would to all accounts be forever speculative.’
‘Why wasn’t I told all this at the time?’
‘You were at your cricket match, sir.’
‘A terrible game. We were mauled.’
‘Sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘Still, you could have sent me a message.’
‘It was a delicate matter.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I had to arrive at the body before his bullet arrived in me.’
There was a long pause.
‘Detective Draper, you look terrible,’ the superintendent said. ‘When was the last time you had some sun?’
‘Can’t remember, sir.’
‘Get some sun. I want that shoulder working when you get back. Take a holiday, Detective Draper.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the detective said, with a wry smile. ‘I think I might. While the world is still here.’
The Story in the Next Room
We were in the big room. Next door, in the small room, was a young lady. She had been by herself for a long time.
‘Why don’t we ask her to tell us a story?’ someone said.
‘Why would she want to tell a story?’ I said.
‘Just ask her.’
‘Why should I ask her?’
‘Go on.’
I went next door and knocked. I thought I heard her say come in. I went in and saw her sitting on the bed. She was young and fair-skinned and had full fluffy hair. For a moment I found it hard to speak. She looked at me and said nothing. I said:
‘Would you come next door and tell us a story?’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
I knew why not. She was shy. She had the shyness of youth. It was a shyness that was also an affectation.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘What would it cost you?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why not.’
‘Come on.’
I saw it now as a challenge. I didn’t need to. They had asked me to ask her, and now I wanted to see if I could get her to do it. I pleaded with her. She wouldn’t budge.
I became aware that they were watching us through the little pane of glass. I could see their faces crowded into the square pane, watching to see if I would succeed.
She kept looking at me. I could see that her shyness wouldn’t let her do it, but I kept asking her anyway. At last she said:
‘I won’t come and tell a story, but I’ll do this.’
Then she took off her top. I tried not to look. They were fresh and small.
‘Come next door and tell us a story. We’d like that. What would a story cost you anyway?’
‘I just can’t,’ she said.
She regarded me with grey-blue eyes. The faces were still pressed close to the semi-frosted glass. I pleaded with her once more, but she was looking down at the black top in her lap.
‘I wish I could, but I can’t,’ she said, still looking down.
Maybe I shouldn’t go on pleading with her, I thought. She doesn’t want to tell a story. It’s not easy telling a story. Most people would do anything rather than tell a story. Maybe I should leave her alone.
But now she was staring at me. It seemed like a challenge. I didn’t move, but nor did she.
‘Why don’t you tell me a story,’ she said.
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
She gestured to the faces pressed to the glass, and they all came in. They sat on the bed.
‘He’s going to tell us a story,’ she said.
I hadn’t noticed when she put her top back on. They were all looking at me. It was quite frightening. They looked as if they were going to devour me. I had to tell them a story. I took a deep breath.
‘One day,’ I said, ‘I walked out my front door, and saw a tiger…’
The Overtaker
We were travelling through forests of iroko and baobab, over wooden bridges, on pitted tarmac roads. We had seen the wreckage of many accidents. Dad was driving.
We drove through the night, across the country. Owls swooped at us, illuminated by the headlights. Sinister goats watched us. A solitary woman, a bundle on her head, appeared in our headlights, and vanished into darkness.
Dad drove through the night and into the dawn. On the second day of our journey a Peugeot sped past us, blasting its horn.
‘The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,’ Dad quot
ed.
Then we heard a thunderclap. Five minutes later we saw that the Peugeot was joined in a twisted embrace with a minibus. The Peugeot was mangled, its windscreen smashed and spiked with blood, its wheels still turning.
A woman wailed beneath the wreckage. A crowd had gathered, uttering low lamentations. Where had they emerged from? There was nothing but thick forest all around. Were they grief that had turned into human form?
Women struggled down from the back of the minibus, covered in blood and shards of broken glass.
Two men were on the ground, twitching. Their faces were damaged beyond recognition. Their arms and legs didn’t look right. Two others were dead in the front seat of the Peugeot. It was impossible to extricate them from the wreckage.
Red dust hung like a cloud over the scene. The smell of blood mingling with the odour of gasoline was heavy in the torpid air.
The driver of the minibus was not one of the dead. The survivors of the accident kept asking for him, but he could not be found. His assistant, who was really a boy, threw himself on the ground, and wailed for his dead master.
‘Where’s the driver?’ I heard people shout, but all the assistant did was wail.
It was a terrible crash and it made a great impression on me, like being struck by the lightning of life. I wandered among the dead bodies and stared with horror at the smashed vehicles.
The assistant began howling. A woman with blood dripping down her forehead kept walking round and round in a circle, muttering something to herself. The assistant kept saying it was impossible that his master was dead.
‘What did he look like?’ asked strangers who were trying to wrench open the driver’s door.
No one could get any sense out of the assistant. At last he sat by the roadside, covered in dust. Someone poured a bottle of water on his head. With blank eyes he said we would recognise the driver by a scar running down his cheek, from his ear to his mouth.
‘He was the greatest driver in Africa!’ the assistant kept saying. ‘He was the fastest! He was the best!’
‘But where is he?’ the strangers asked. ‘There is no one in the driver’s seat.’
The assistant stared at them blankly.
‘You think you will find him there? You think you will find him? He has strong juju. You won’t find him!’
‘But we must find him,’ the strangers said.
The assistant didn’t seem to hear them.
‘We used to call him the overtaker! He could overtake anything! Now my master, my great master, is dead!’
There was much wailing. Wounded mothers with their wounded children were prostrate in the dust.
There was the stench of blood evaporating on hot crumpled metal. Seeking relief from the wailing, I wandered away from the smash.
The air was hot, the dust red, and the aroma of the forest was sticky. The road glimmered with heat. I listened to long drawn out bird calls.
I got to a makeshift wooden bridge. A man was sitting on its edge, his leg swinging in the air, nearly touching the metal-grey water.
The bridge had been worn down by heavy-haulage lorries and no repairs. Its railing had long been damaged by cars and lorries that had plunged over in thoughtless haste. There were rotting vehicles and jutting boulders in the river. The boulders were like the backs of prehistoric animals asleep in the sun.
The man sitting on the edge was looking at the corpses of cars and at the clear swiftly flowing water. He was smoking a pipe. It did not smell like tobacco. It smelt like burning flesh. There was something serene about the man which disturbed me. I was beginning to turn back when he said:
‘Boy, come here.’
I did not move.
‘I said come here!’
Still I did not move.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said with a smile.
Something was not right about his smile.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, with a dry throat. ‘There was an accident.’
‘So you walked away from an accident?’
‘No.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you know anything?’
I didn’t know what to say. He drew on his pipe, but blew out no smoke. The sun was harsh, but he did not sweat. The heat did not touch him. The wind that came from the forest brought no coolness. I began to leave, when he said:
‘It’s good to look at the water.’
His words made me look. The river rushed over rocks and wrecked cars.
‘It’s good to sit on a bridge and smoke a pipe.’
His voice made me want to sit on the edge and be closer to the water.
‘It’s good to take things easy and go gently.’
I was bewitched by the simplicity of his words. I was mesmerised by the silence. Then he turned his face to me. There was something not quite right about his face.
‘Who is your father?’
‘He’s a lawyer.’
‘Where is he going?’
‘He’s driving us home?’
‘What home?’
‘Our home in the city.’
‘Is there a home in the city?’
I didn’t understand what he was getting at. I stayed silent. After a while he smiled again. The smile did not brighten his face.
‘Come here,’ he said.
I went closer.
‘Give your father this message,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘Tell him to go slowly. To take things easy. These roads are lonely and want blood.’
He paused.
‘Home is wherever you are happy.’
He looked at me with strange eyes.
‘Tell your father what I just told you.’
I didn’t move. Something about his face held me.
‘Go away now!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Go back to your father!’
I was rooted.
‘Leave this bridge now! Don’t stare into the water!’
I was unable to move.
‘Leave now before I change my mind,’ he said, smiling again.
His smile frightened me and I turned and stumbled and nearly fell through the wide gap in the railings. I stopped myself and ran and fell and got up again, my head spinning.
I ran all the way back into the arms of my father, jabbering about a message I was supposed to give him. The women gave me water to drink.
We stayed there till the wounded were borne off to the nearest hospital. About the dead not much could be done.
As we pulled away I gave Dad the message. We passed the bridge but there was no one there.
The boulders in the river were smooth in the sun.
Raft
It was crowded in the raft. It was a small raft but the man had said it would carry us to Greece. Half way across, it began listing.
There were too many of us on the raft. Many of us sat on the edge. Many families were hunched in the middle where it sagged. The water was rough and many of us threw up.
There were women with babies, men with wives, families with bundles. The sea was rough. Sometimes the wave lifted us high and dashed us back down and a cry would rise from the men and women. Sometimes the raft would spin and there was nothing we could do but pray, or howl.
There were two life jackets. When the raft got too full and the sea got too rough we would see that someone had fallen off. We would try to get hold of them and give them a life jacket.
We were half way across the diamond-blue sea when someone cried:
‘The water is above our ankles!’
Then we saw that the raft was leaking. We didn’t have anything to bale the water out. Someone was using a small Evian bottle to bale out the water. The water kept rising.
Babies were crying. Women were wailing. The men were shouting. Overhead white birds were keening.
The waves were rough. We were crowded in the raft and the raft was leaking. Soon the water was at our knees and we were sliding into the sea.
We were sat on the edg
e leaning back. Many of us were sick because we could not swim. The land was still far away. There was no horizon and no land to be seen. A yacht sailed by on the edge of the blue sea.
The raft was sinking. The women were wailing. We were crowded in water rising up to our waists. There were men in the water clinging to the raft and wearing life jackets. There was no space on the raft. The women and children were in the sea, and the sea was in the raft.
We had run out of prayers. Our feet were no longer in the raft but in the sea.
Then there was a whirling sucking sound.
The Secret History of a Door
When Newgate Prison was torn down its brick and metal were scattered all over London. The scaffold on which people were hanged was burned. It was said that the cries of innocent victims could be heard in the crackling smoke from that blood-soaked wood.
Nobody knew what to do with one of the strangest things in that infamous prison. No one knew what to do with the door. It was an imposing door of solid metal. It had rectangular holes, like little windows. It bristled with metal studs, and had a huge bolt.
It was said that when criminals were led into the prison they maintained their bravado till they beheld this door. It has been claimed that the door was cursed with the power to freeze the hearts of evil men.
In front of the door the innocent experience a sense of lightness, and after it has been bolted behind them the sound of the clanging metal brings them a welcome, if brief, benediction.
But to murderers, child-molesters, and corrupt politicians the door represents hell itself. When the bolts are shot behind them darkness falls over their lives.
For over a hundred years the door has looked upon all manner of men and women. It has absorbed all the permutations of evil that can sprout and fester in the cancerous hearts of man. The door has grown solid with evil, muted with grief, heavy with sin.
Theosophists believe that objects absorb the emotions of lives in close proximity to them. This door, which could not be burned and could not be broken apart, became the most terrifying testimony of the depths to which the human heart can sink. When Newgate Prison was destroyed no one knew what to do with this great metal door which was its heart.
2
The door was forgotten in a heap somewhere in the city. Where it lay strange things blossomed. It became the gateway through which the spirits of executed criminals could, for a time, return to the world that had left them behind. They roamed the city, brooding on vengeance.
