The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  When the two of them were alone, the King would repeat his plea to Esmeralda that she set him free.

  —Everyone wants to get me off the throne. And I myself wish for nothing more than to leave it.

  —Nonsense, said Esmeralda.

  But the Mole King was not mistaken. There was a rumor around the castle that the old King had been poisoned by some of the councillors. And it was precisely those councillors who exchanged cunning glances during meetings and came together to plot in the concealed nooks and crannies of the castle.

  One morning, when the King was on his way to the Council Hall, masked men ambushed him and dragged him down into the castle dungeons. He was left there while the leader of the plotters declared himself King. He had garnered support among the soldiers, and anyone who protested this turn of events was sent to the dungeons. Queen Esmeralda hid with the servant woman who took care of her lynx. The woman was responsible for tending the vegetable gardens, and she lived in a small cottage at the far end of the park. Esmeralda spent the whole day there, and with the help of the servant woman she and the lynx were able to escape when night fell. She sought refuge in the great woods, but did not want to go too far away from the castle before she could find out what had happened to her husband.

  The King’s enemies had no idea that they had put him in just the sort of place he had so long been yearning for: a dark, secluded space with an earthen floor. To them, the name Mole King held no other meaning than a certain similarity of appearance. Therefore, there was great surprise when a guard opened the door after a day and a night, and found only a large mound of earth and a hole.

  Soldiers and hounds were sent out to search the area. “He can’t have gotten far, being lame and half-blind,” they reckoned.

  But when Esmeralda was reached by a message from the servant woman and learned how the King had disappeared, she smiled and said:

  —They’ll never find him.

  And Esmeralda ran through the trees, and her lynx followed. She wandered the deep woods, filled with joy. The lynx caught hares and pheasants for her which she cooked over an open fire. She swam through water lilies in dark, silent lakes. Now and again, she climbed a tall tree to see if there was a town nearby. But all she saw was woods and lakes and mountains, and she was content.

  One evening, she was standing by a brook, combing a small branch through the long hair she had just washed. She sat down on a rock to let her hair dry, running her toes through the lynx’s pelt, and she thought: “I’m sitting naked in the woods and nobody can see me.” Over and over again, she thought this. She said it aloud, and for every time she did, she felt happier and happier. And she realized that you can’t be free until nobody sees you.

  The Mole King dug his way forth with great effort. He hadn’t been digging in a long time, and his arms were not as strong as they used to be. His whole body had grown weaker. He felt that the time aboveground had turned him into an old man. But his digging was not aimless. He had carefully taken his bearings beforehand. He was heading toward the hill and the oak where he had found such peace. Even before he reached the wall, he was welcomed by the roots of the tree. He followed them to their center and curled up in their embrace. Once again, he felt the drowsiness. His blood flowed slower, his pulse relaxed, his thoughts started to dissolve, lose their shape, move beyond his grasp. He knew he would not wake from hibernation this time.

  The Mole King dreamed. He heard the dead whisper warm, friendly words. One of the voices sounded like his old nursemaid who had rocked him in the tower room. The sap pulsated through the roots of the tree. He thought he felt the silent mouth of a mole kissing him—or was it Esmeralda in her moleskin cloak?

  To the people in the castle and in the land, the King remained missing. All the soldiers could find was a row of unusually large molehills. The new King ruled the country with an iron fist. He soon executed the councillors who had supported him through the coup. After some time, a war broke out that lasted for many years, laying all the land to waste.

  (1959– ) was born in Nigeria and came to England as a small child, where he attended school until his parents went back to Nigeria just as the Nigerian Civil War began. He returned to London in 1978 and studied at Essex University with a grant from the Nigerian government, but when funding ran out shortly afterward, he became homeless. He soon published his first two novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), and then his first story collections, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1986). His third novel, The Famished Road (1991), won the Booker Prize and quickly achieved the status of a contemporary classic. The Famished Road tells the story of Azaro, a spirit child, whose tale continues with Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). “What the Tapster Saw” appeared in Stars of the New Curfew and shows the influence of Amos Tutuola on Okri’s work, an influence present in the unbridled mingling of myth and reality, dream and waking, death and life.

  WHAT THE TAPSTER SAW

  Ben Okri

  THERE WAS ONCE an excellent tapster who enjoyed climbing palm trees as much as the tapping of their wines. One night he dreamt that while tapping for palm wine he fell from the tree and died. He was so troubled by the dream that late as it was he went to visit his friend, Tabasco, who was a renowned herbalist. But that night Tabasco was too busy to pay much attention to what the tapster was saying. Harassed by the demands of his many wives, the herbalist kept chewing bundles of alligator pepper seeds and dousing his mouth with palm wine. When the tapster was about to leave, the herbalist drew him aside and, with curious irrelevance, said:

  “I used to know a hunter who, one day while hunting, saw a strange antelope. He followed the antelope till it came to an anthill. To his surprise the antelope turned into a woman and then disappeared. The hunter waited near the anthill for the woman to reappear. He fell asleep and when he woke up the ground was full of red water. He looked up and found himself surrounded by nine spirits. He went mad, of course. It took me three weeks to recover after I went inside his head to cure him. A little of his madness entered me. Tomorrow if you bring me three turtles and a big lobe of Lola nut I will do something about your dream. But tonight I am very busy.”

  The tapster agreed and, disappointed, went back home and drank his way through a gourd of palm wine. He managed to forget his dream by the time he fell asleep.

  In the morning, he gathered his ropes and magic potions, tied three empty gourds to his bicycle, and rode out into the forest to begin his day’s work. He had been riding for some time when he came to a signboard which read: DELTA OIL COMPANY: THIS AREA IS BEING DRILLED. TRESPASSERS IN DANGER. The tapster stared at the signboard without comprehension. Farther along he noticed a strange cluster of palm trees. He rode through thick cobwebs in order to reach them. The smell of their red-green bark intoxicated him. He immediately tied his magic potions to one of the tree trunks, brought out his rope, and proceeded to climb. Pressing his feet on both sides of the tree, switching the rope high up the rough rungs of the bark, he pulled himself up rapidly, till his chest began to ache. The morning sun, striking him with an oblique glare, blinded him. As the golden lights exploded in his eyes the branches of the palm tree receded from him. It was the first time he had fallen in thirty years.

  When he woke up he was surprised that he felt no pain. He even had the curious feeling that the fall had done him some good. He felt unbelievably light and airy. He walked through spangles of glittering cobwebs without the faintest idea of where he was going. Fireflies darted into his nose and ears and reemerged from his eyes with their lights undimmed. He walked for a long time. Then he saw another signboard which read: DELTA OIL COMPANY: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Around him were earth mounds, gravestones, a single palm tree, and flickering mangrove roots. He made a mark on the tree trunk. Suddenly it became a fully festered wound. As he passed the twisting roots, troubled by the whitish ichors of the wou
nd, they clasped him round the ankles. They held him down and tickled him. When he began to laugh they let him go.

  He came to a river whose water was viscous and didn’t seem to move. Near the river there was a borehole. Three turtles lazed on the edge of the borehole, watching him. One of the turtles had Tabasco’s face. The tapster was about to say something when a multicolored snake emerged from the borehole and slithered past him. When the snake slid into the river the color of the water changed, and it became transparent and luminous. The snake’s skin burned with a roseate flame. While the tapster looked on a voice behind him said:

  “Don’t turn round.”

  The tapster stayed still. The three turtles gazed at him with eyes of glass. Then the turtle that had Tabasco’s face urinated in the tapster’s direction. The turtle seemed to enjoy the act. The ecstasy on its face made it look positively fiendish. The tapster laughed and a heavy object hit him on the head from behind. He turned round swiftly and saw nothing. He laughed again and was whacked even harder. He felt the substance of his being dissolve. The river seemed to heave during the long silence which followed.

  “Where am I?” the tapster asked.

  There was another silence. The snake, glittering, slid back out of the river. When the snake passed him it lifted its head and spat at him. The snake went on into the borehole, dazzling with the colors of the sun. The tapster began to tremble. After the trembling ceased a curious serenity spread through him. When he looked around he saw that he had multiplied. He was not sure whether it was his mind or his body which flowed in and out of him.

  “Where am I?”

  The voice did not answer. Then he heard footsteps moving away. He could not even sleep, for he heard other voices talking over him, talking about him, as if he were not there.

  In that world the sun did not set, nor did it rise. It was a single unmoving eye. In the evenings the sun was like a large crystal. In the mornings it was incandescent. The tapster was never allowed to shut his eyes. After a day’s wandering, when he lay by the borehole, hallucinating about palm wine, a foul-smelling creature would come and stuff his eyes with cobwebs. This made his eyes itch and seemed a curious preparation for a vision. When the tapster tried to sleep, with his eyes open, he saw the world he knew revolving in red lights. He saw women going to the distant marketplaces, followed by sounds which they didn’t hear. He saw that the signboards of the world were getting bigger. He saw the employees of the oil company as they tried to level the forests. When he was hungry another creature, which he couldn’t see, would come and feed him a mess of pulped chameleons, millipedes, and bark. When he was thirsty the creature gave him a leaking calabash of green liquid. And then later at night another creature, which smelt of rotting agapanthus, crept above him, copulated with him, and left him the grotesque eggs of their nights together.

  Then one day he dared to count the eggs. They were seven. He screamed. The river heaved. The snake stuck its head out from the borehole and the laughter of death roared from the sun. The laughter found him, crashed on him, shook him, and left large empty spaces in his head.

  That night he fled. Everything fled with him. Then, after a while, he stopped. He abused the place, its terrible inhabitants, its unchanging landscape. Unable to escape, he cursed it ferociously. He was rewarded with several knocks. Then, as the eggs tormented him with the grating noises within them, as if a horrible birth were cranking away inside their monstrous shapes, he learned patience. He learned to watch the sky, and he saw that it wasn’t so different from the skies of his drunkenness. He learned not to listen to the birth groaning within the eggs. He also learned that when he kept still everything else around him reflected his stillness.

  * * *

  —

  And then, on another day, the voice came to him and said:

  “Everything in your world has endless counterparts in other worlds. There is no shape, no madness, no ecstasy or revolution which does not have its shadow somewhere else. I could tell you stories which would drive you mad. You humans are so slow—you walk two thousand years behind yourselves.”

  The voice was soon gone.

  Another voice said to him:

  “You have been dead for two days. Wake up.”

  A creature came and stuffed his eyes with cobwebs. His eyes itched again and he saw that the wars were not yet over. Bombs which had not detonated for freak reasons, and which had lain hidden in farms, suddenly exploded. And some of those who lived as if the original war was over were blown up while they struggled with poverty. He saw the collapse of bridges that were being repaired. He saw roads that spanned wild tracts of forests and malarial swamps, creeks without names, hills without measurements. He saw the mouth of the roads lined with human skeletons, victims of mindless accidents. He saw dogs that followed people up and down the bushpaths and brooding night-tracks. As soon as the dogs vanished they turned into ghommids that swallowed up lonely and unfortified travellers.

  Then he saw the unsuccessful attempts to level the forest area and drill for oil. He saw the witch doctors that had been brought in to drive away the spirits from the forest. They also tried to prevent the torrential rains from falling and attempted to delay the setting of the sun. When all this failed the company hired an expatriate who flew in with explosives left over from the last war. The tapster saw the expatriate plant dynamite round the forest area. After the explosion the tapster saw a thick pall of green smoke. When the smoke cleared the tapster watched a weird spewing up of oil and animal limbs from the ground. The site was eventually abandoned. Agapanthus grew there like blood on a battlefield.

  The tapster saw people being shot in coups, in secret executions, in armed robberies. He noticed that those who died were felled by bullets which had their names on them. When his eyes stopped itching the tapster wandered beneath the copper bursts of the sky. He noticed that there were no birds around. Streamers of cobweb membranes weaved over the wounded palm tree.

  * * *

  —

  And then one day, fired by memories of ancient heroes, he pursued a course into the borehole. In the strange environment he saw the multicolored snake twisted round a soapstone image. He saw alligators in a lake of bubbling green water. He saw an old man who had died in a sitting position while reading a bible upside down. Everything seemed on fire, but there was no smoke. Thick slimes of oil seeped down the walls. Roseate flames burned everywhere without consuming anything. He heard a noise behind him. He turned and a creature forced a plate containing a messy substance of food into his hands. The creature then indicated that he should eat. The multicolored snake uncoiled itself from the soapstone image. While the tapster ate the snake slid over and began to tell him bad jokes. The snake told him stories of how they hang black men in quiet western towns across the great seas, and of how it was possible to strip the skin off a baby without it uttering a sound. The snake laughed. Partly because the snake looked so ridiculous, the tapster laughed as well. Several sharp whacks, as from a steel edge, drummed on his head, and put him out for what could have been eons of time.

  When he recovered he traced his way out of the place. As he passed the man who had died reading the bible upside down he saw that the man looked exactly like him. He fled from the borehole.

  His impatience reached new proportions. He counted the rocks on the ground. He counted the cobwebs, the colors of the sun, the heavings of the river. He counted the number of times the wind blew. He told himself stories. But he found that whatever he told himself that was subversive was simultaneously censored by the knocks. He counted the knocks: He grew used to them.

  Then the voice came to him again. It sounded more brutal than usual. The voice said:

  “Do you like it here?”

  “No.”

  The tapster waited for a knock. It didn’t arrive.

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wh
at’s stopping you?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  The voice was silent.

  Another voice said:

  “You have been dead for three days.”

  The tapster, who had seen the sky and earth from many angles, who knew the secrets of wine, had learned the most important lesson. He listened without thinking.

  “If you want to leave,” the voice said, “we will have to beat you out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you humans only understand pain.”

  “We don’t.”

  There was another pause. He waited for a knock. It came. His thoughts floated around like cobwebs on the wind. The tapster stayed like that, still, through the purple phases of the sun. After a long while the voice said:

  “Here are some thoughts to replace the ones that have been knocked away. Do you want to hear them?”

  “Yes.”

  The voice coughed and began:

  “Even the good things in life eventually poison you. There are three kinds of sounds, two kinds of shadows, one gourd for every cracked head, and seven boreholes for those that climb too high. There is an acid in the feel of things. There is a fire which does not burn, but which dissolves the flesh like common salt. The bigger mouth eats the smaller head. The wind blows back to us what we have blown away. There are several ways to burn in your own fire. There is a particular sound which indicates trouble is coming. And your thoughts are merely the footsteps of you tramping round the disaster area of your own mind.”

  “Thank you,” the tapster said.

  The voice left. The tapster fell asleep.

  When he woke up he saw the three turtles lazing again at the edge of the borehole. The turtle with Tabasco’s face had on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a stethoscope round his neck. The turtles broke a kola nut, divided it amongst themselves, and discussed gravely like scholars without a test. The multicolored snake came out of the borehole and made for the river. It paused when it neared the turtles. The tapster was fascinated by its opal eyes.