by Ben Okri
‘Husk, I’m sorry I brought up that name,’ she said. ‘You hadn’t finished your speech.’
‘Yes, speech! Speech!’
‘Shut up everyone, and let’s hear the birthday girl,’ said Jim.
Silence followed. The waitress came to take orders but was asked by Jim to come back in five minutes.
‘I didn’t get a chance to say what my Arcadia might be,’ said Husk.
This provoked a chorus of voices.
‘Yes, you did.’
‘No, she didn’t.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I want to change mine.’
‘You can’t change it.’
‘Let Husk speak!’
The voices fell silent.
‘My private Arcadia,’ said Husk, ‘would be finding a perfect moment and living in it forever.’
‘That was Faust’s deal with Mephistopheles,’ said Lao.
‘What?’
‘That if he experienced the perfect…’
‘Don’t say any more. I want to change my Arcadia.’
‘You only get one more wish, so let’s hear it,’ said Jim.
Husk thought for a moment. Jim filled everyone’s glass with wine. Then Husk, in a bright clear voice, said:
‘I would like to make every moment special when I’m living it and beautiful when I remember it. I have grown too serious as I’ve got older. I seem to make my own misery. I can’t seem to help it. When I was a girl it felt like I was in paradise all the time…’
‘You must have been a naughty girl,’ said Jim.
‘And I was always happy. I had the knack. I was happy whenever I wanted to be. It was as easy as stepping through a door. Then one day I lost it. I lost the knack. Something happened and I still don’t know what it was. I became grim and got worse as the years passed. It’s only now that I remember how happy I used to be. Only now do I remember that I had this ability. It was the only real talent I ever had, and I lost it before I got started.’
‘And it’s been a chequered journey ever since,’ Jim said.
The silence that followed did two things. It gave everyone time to drink in Husk’s words. And it made them aware that Jim was changing before their eyes.
13
The waitress had come round a third time and finally taken their orders. They had all been drinking steadily. The freshness of the air and their increasing relaxation loosened their tongues and they passed from subject to subject, sometimes arguing, often talking at cross-purposes. Lao may have been thinking about the conversation with Jim on the coach; or he may simply have been responding to the tone of Jim’s voice as he talked about the progress of the film so far; but everyone was a little taken aback when Lao said:
‘The trouble with you, Jim, is that you use too much will.’
‘And you,’ replied Jim, entering the spirit of the joust, ‘believe too little in the will.’
‘For me the will is the engine.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘The driver, not the engine, should be in charge of the car.’
‘The car is only as good as the engine.’
‘But the engine shouldn’t be in the driving seat. The car is only as good as the driver.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘You believe too much in the will.’
‘You’re just lazy.’
‘I’m not lazy. It’s just that there are forces other than the will for accomplishing great things.’
‘I don’t agree. Will is the thing. What have you got against the will?’
‘Nothing. It’s a matter of the right thing in the right place. There’s no doubt that the will gets things done; but it can just as well get the wrong thing done, in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, at any cost. My point is that will is blind. It is like a machine. You can point it in any direction and it will go to the ends of the earth. Getting things done – any old thing – is not in itself desirable. Getting great things done – beautiful things – that is an ideal.’
‘Give me an example.’
Lao paused, drank some of his red wine, then said:
‘Let’s say you have the idea to start a business. You think about it, shape the idea in your mind, make plans, and then you put the plans into action. You do something about it. Raising the money, finding an office, hiring staff, selling your product – all require will, constant will, but will only in the service of a clear practical vision. Otherwise the will might be in the service of a bad idea, or a good idea at the wrong time, and the result will not be success, but failure and bankruptcy. Will is an important partner, but a junior partner. With you it’s the boss.’
‘I disagree with you completely,’ said Jim, turning his reddening face on Lao and then looking challengingly round the table.
Struck by the tone of Jim’s voice, Mistletoe stopped her drawing and stared at him. She noticed how he had changed. She began a new portrait of him, the emerging lines following what the change suggested. The others were also struck by the bold new tone of his voice and leaned forward and listened to him anxiously. Only Lao remained calm.
Jim said:
‘The will built nations, empires, civilisations. Every human achievement is founded on will. It is the quality that distinguishes human beings from animals…’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Lao. ‘Mules and dogs, and horses in a race, have will…’
Jim rushed on in a kind of frenzy.
‘Will is the basis of discipline, and without discipline nothing of any note is done. Our heroes are people of will: Napoleon and his forced marches that collapsed time, Alexander the Great and his astonishing feats of endurance, Picasso and his phenomenal energy, Churchill and his indomitable spirit…’
‘All of them men,’ said Jute.
‘Wherever you see will at work the true steel in mankind is at the helm,’ Jim went on. He paused and gathered in all the faces in a sweeping glance.
‘Will distinguishes those who can from those who can’t. It is the single factor by which a man or woman’, and here he gave Jute a pointed look, ‘can rise to fame in their field of endeavour. All those who have climbed high cite the will as their climbing rope.’
‘I wonder if that’s true…’ ventured Propr.
‘Of course it is,’ said Jim, with an expansive gesture of his hand. ‘Desire alone never got anything done. Wishing is for the indolent. All this talk of visualisation and meditation – well, I’ve tried it all, and it doesn’t work.’
‘You were half-hearted, that’s why,’ said Husk. ‘You probably didn’t believe it would work anyway.’
‘Not correct. I visualised till my eyes fell out, but the job went to the best prepared and the keenest.’
‘There is a quotation of Ignatius Loyola you might find useful,’ Sam said. ‘He suggests that we use the things of God as if earthly means do not exist, and use earthly means as if God does not exist. I’m not sure if I quoted that right.’
Jim stared at Sam as if he had made a contribution of charming irrelevance. Then he shook his head and went on as if he had not been interrupted.
‘The will is the right hand of the master. Seven years of willing transformed Van Gogh from a dissatisfied banker…’
‘To a suicide,’ said Propr.
‘To a great artist. Beethoven’s will was legendary, triumphing over the abyss and deafness. Where there’s a will there’s a way, the saying goes; and it is true. The will is akin to the power of the Demiurge. It makes worlds. It is the force that turns dreams into realities. It hews on earth castles in the air. Take the will out of the human story and we’d still be in the caves, without fire.’
‘Fire was not discovered by will,’ said Sam, ‘but by chance.’
‘How do you know?’ replied Jim, turning fiery eyes on Sam. ‘It takes will to rub two sticks together to make a flame. Will in man is a force that can make even the heavens tremble.’
‘The first thing that tyrants do to their people,’ said Jute in a calm, plai
n voice, ‘is try to break their will.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Jim, not quite seeing the point of the comment. ‘Intelligence is useless without will. That is why people can see what needs to be done but, lacking will, they let evil flourish. They allow menacing weeds to ruin the garden that is their nation. Even reason itself requires will. The reasoning of Newton is different from that of Propr.’
‘There is nothing wrong with my powers of reasoning.’
‘No, but you are not Newton. He reasoned with a tempered will. To think beyond the common range, till thought borders on genius, requires reason multiplied by the power of will. But lazy thinking predominates in our world. It takes will to think clearly.’
‘You are making will into a god,’ said Propr. ‘It’s a kind of idolatry.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. But you show me a civilising quality and I will show you how the will holds it up like the Doric columns of a Greek temple.’
‘Okay, what about love?’ offered Riley.
‘Love? Love is sustained by the will when, as is inevitable, it passes the early magic stages.’
Riley looked around, and grinned.
‘You may smile, but there is a lull in the progression of all natural things. But will can take over till the rhythm of progression reasserts itself.’
Riley looked puzzled.
‘Thus a poem begins well and dries out; a novel starts with a blaze and dwindles into inconsequence; love begins in bliss and soon hits the banks of disenchantment. But only will sees a way. Only will keeps things on track till affection blooms again.’
‘You can’t will love!’ cried Husk, indignantly.
‘No, but with will a less glamorous, but more steady love – the love on which all lasting marriages are based – takes over.’
‘Still, you can’t will it,’ said Husk, in a Galileo sotto voce.
14
Throughout the exchanges Lao had been silent and kept his eyes on Jim. He wore his ironic smile. While Jim was speaking Lao found his mind wandering back to the conversation in the coach but he refused to come to any conclusions. He would just listen.
Jim helped himself to wine and drank half the glass. There were murmurs round the table about the time their food was taking. Jim took a deep breath, tousled what was left of his hair, and returned to the charge.
‘I should elaborate a bit more. The novel never gets written without will. It remains a beautiful idea to be bandied about at dinner parties. A film never gets made with mantras and meditation. Hard graft, the march of a thousand miles, and the willingness to sacrifice almost everything is what gets a film to the big screen. The will is the most direct translation of the life-force into deed. When you hear it said by a great artist that my life is in those works or I wrote it with my blood, you know that an exchange, a kind of Faustian pact, has been effected. Life-force for life work. The will is life-force.’
Lao smiled. His intuition had been right. Jim looked at him expectantly, but Lao stayed silent, and Jim continued.
‘When the true life’s work is done a man is fit for nothing but tending his garden and awaiting the flower of his death.’
‘We’re getting morbid tonight,’ said Propr.
‘Not really,’ replied Jim, ‘I’m just trying to show why the failures of those who have made great efforts move us so much.’
‘Yes, they tried, made great efforts, but death defeated them,’ said Sam. ‘There is heroism in that too.’
Mistletoe had been following the general tenor of the conversation with her left ear, as it were, while she was drawing Jim. Without a pause, quietly, she said:
‘The gods would rather we use our life than squander it.’
Everyone stared at her, unsure whether she was speaking to them, but Jim took it as a sign of concurrence and was encouraged to go on.
‘As I was saying, those who perish in the struggle to turn their dreams into reality are more admirable than those who live and die without giving a sign that they were ever alive. One of the greatest legacies we can leave future generations is the knowledge that we fought the beautiful fight, played the game, bore arms. And if we are defeated by the bastards, crushed by mediocrity and the cliques that rule the world, then our defeat will spur on future generations. Behind most great men and women are defeated ancestors.’
Jim stared thoughtfully ahead, a lost look on his face. For a moment he seemed to have lost his point. He sipped some wine and began to speak again, as if thinking aloud.
‘It’s the will that pulls us up. Dante composed The Divine Comedy with a magnificent will that transcended calumny and exile. A baby wakens into life with a cry, its first breath is an act of will.’
‘Not an act of will,’ interrupted Sam. ‘But of necessity…’
‘Necessity is will,’ said Jim, his voice rising. ‘And will is at the beginning. Goethe wrote that in the beginning was the deed. And I add that the deed was willed.’
‘I’d say inspired,’ said Husk.
‘Or dreamt into being,’ said Mistletoe, from the depths of her drawing.
A ripple of silence followed. Outside, the wind was blowing. They were sitting round a table in an empty restaurant in Switzerland and it seemed to them dreamlike. A shiver passed through them, communicated from person to person.
‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ said Jim.
Husk crossed herself and Sam looked at her curiously as if seeing her for the first time.
‘Notice,’ said Jim, ‘how much is made of God’s will in the Lord’s Prayer. It’s just as true with the human will. Here, on earth, our will does the doing.’
‘Is that even grammatical?’ asked Propr, manipulating his moustache into a question mark.
‘Let’s leave grammar out of it for the moment,’ said Jim turning his solemn face from Propr and settling his gaze on Lao. ‘My friend, you malign the will when you represent it as a junior partner, an engine, a machine, a cold and efficient thing, like the Prussian army. Take the will away from mankind and we have only a sleeping potential for civilisation. Will is the potential in action. If men and women don’t get out of bed in the morning…’
‘It’s going to the loo that gets me out of bed in the morning,’ sniggered Sam.
‘Will you let me finish!’ snapped Jim. ‘You’re ruining my rhythm.’
‘Don’t mind me,’ said Sam, his face paling. ‘You’re clearly on a roll.’
‘God knows why the food is taking so long,’ said Jute.
‘As I was saying, if people don’t get out of bed in the morning…’
‘On the right side or the left…’ said Propr.
With a certain magnificence, Jim ignored the interruption.
‘There would be no electricity, no cars, no services, no industry, no culture…’
‘Most poets work in bed, don’t they…?’ put in Sam.
‘No houses, no aeroplanes, no food, no society. They would just be a people with no sense of their potential. A people we could justly call primitive…’
‘I’m starving. Do you think the kitchen has forgotten us?’ said Husk.
‘Would you call them primitive because they don’t get out of bed in the morning or because they do?’ asked Propr.
‘And do they have beds?’ added Sam.
‘These questions are irrelevant,’ said Jim. ‘But when a civilisation loses its will, as I think ours has, or when its will is corrupted, as with Rome, then the Barbarians will overcome it and give rise to new civilisations with the force of their will. You can interrupt me as much as you want, but the truth remains. In culture, industry, science, or warfare, will rules, will conquers, will overcomes. Pass the wine, somebody, for my will has run dry.’
15
They all laughed nervously. But when the laughter subsided they looked at him in silence. They were also struck by a change in him. He had always been a mild-mannered man, but now a demonic force seemed to have quite banished the mildness. A curious power radiated from him.
Only Lao seemed bemused. He waited a moment before speaking.
16
During that moment Jim underwent another subtle metamorphosis. A brooding air settled around him like a black cape. His eyes became haunted. He had deployed a lot of will in expounding upon the will, and he was drained but defiant. He appeared to be staring with vacant intensity at black holes in the air.
‘That was a Faustian hymn, with some echoes of the Nuremberg rally,’ said Lao quietly.
There were gasps of shock around the table. Jim only shrugged.
‘It was a hymn to the will, an encomium, and taken to its logical conclusion could lead us to some pretty unpalatable places,’ Lao went on into the expectant silence. ‘It is interesting that, in the bible, individual will was the cause of man’s fall.’
Lao paused. His voice got quieter and yet each word spoken was clear as the sound of a bell across the lake.
‘There is something higher and more powerful than will. It is more fundamental as a civilising force. It contains will, but is greater. And it is indestructible.’
At that moment the waitress, helped by kitchen staff, brought in their various dishes. The aroma of sautéed potatoes, fried chicken, lightly grilled sirloin steak, filled the air. There was a general silence as each person received their food; silence, except for the moving of cutlery and glasses to make space for the salads, the fries, the oblong plates of wienerschnitzel, and the round plates on which lay steamed trout and sea-bass, their skins intact, their eyes glazed. When the waitress retreated, having filled their glasses with wine, they turned to Lao. But it was Propr who gave voice to the general expectation.
‘Well, what is it? It’s not a cheap answer like love, is it?’
‘What’s wrong with love?’ said Husk.
‘Nothing,’ replied Propr. ‘Only I’m fed up with it being the answer to everything. If that’s the answer I think I’ll explode.’
‘Me too,’ said Sam. ‘What is this mysterious quality that is greater than will then? It’s not freedom, is it?’
‘I like freedom,’ piped in Riley unexpectedly.
