by Ben Okri
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Ben Okri
Dedication
Title Page
I
Book One
One: The Little Room
Two: The Leopard
Three: Disappearance
Four: Circling
Five: Prelude to Trouble
Six: Dialogue with my Dead Friend
Seven: The Arrest
Eight: The Gathering Wrath of Women
Nine: The Imprisoned Tyger
Ten: The Fantastic Ravings of Madame Koto
Eleven: Seeds of Mutiny
Twelve: Birth of a Three-Day Legend
Thirteen: Hidden View of the Governor-General
Fourteen: Distorting the Rage
Fifteen: The Re-Emergence of an Old Deity
Sixteen: Dad Dissolves into Seven Selves
Seventeen: Madame Koto and the Shadows
Eighteen: A Dream of Hope
Nineteen: Dad Summons his Ancestors, and Fails
Twenty: Dad Summons a Dreaded Deity
Twenty-One: A Public Confession
Twenty-Two: The Vacant Tyger
Twenty-Three: Homecoming of the Heroes
Twenty-Four: Dialogue with the Photographer
Twenty-Five: Destroying the Veil
Twenty-Six: The Silence of the Tyger
Book Two
One: Circling Spirit (1)
Two: Circling Spirit (2)
Three: An Incomplete Ascension
Four: The Unaccountable Passion of Mothers
Five: The Old Woman’s Circular Narrative
Six: A Curious Interchange
Seven: The Battle of Rewritten Histories
Eight: Exposing the Earth
Nine: Birth of the Heat
Ten: Wrath of the Wandering Spirit
Eleven: Burning the Future
Twelve: The Secret of the Heatwave
Thirteen: Dolores Mundi
Fourteen: Invisible Books
Book Three
One: The Shrine in the Labyrinth
Two: An Ambiguous old Woman
Three: Dialogue with an Unhappy Maiden
Four: The Vanished Rock
Five: A Silent Coda
Book Four
One: An Angel Redeems our Suffering in Advance
Two: ‘The Instinct in Paradise’
Three: A Beauty Bordering on Terror
Four: End of An Enchantment
II
Book Five
One: The Story of the Rain Queen
Two: How Mum Paid for my Careless Words
Three: Vigilance
Four: Ghosts of Narratives Past
Five: The Black Rock of Enigmas
Six: A Secret Chain of Dream Worlds
Seven: Where does a Birth Begin?
Eight: The Last Feast
Nine: The Wind Whispers Insurrective Words on the Air
Ten: A River of Contending Dreams
Eleven: Contending Dreams (2): God of the Insects
Twelve: Contending Dreams (3): Good Disguised as Bad
Thirteen: The Angel and the Shrine
Fourteen: Resilient Ash
Fifteen: The Ambush of Reality
III
Book Six
One: Draw a Deep Breath for a New Song
Two: Call of the Political Rally
Three: The Dead Carpenter
Four: The Great Rally
Five: Shadow Beings in all the Empty Spaces
Six: The Insurrective Laughter of the Dead
Seven: The Silence of Tigers
Eight: The Dance of the Dead
Nine: The Forgotten Power of Laughter
Ten: The Rally Turns into a Fantastical Riot
Eleven: Adventures into Chaos
Twelve: The Procession of Higher Beings
Thirteen: Night of Wondrous Transformations
Fourteen: A Sympathetic Invasion
IV
Book Seven
One: I Flailed My Way into a Cool Terrain
Two: I Enter the Realm where Thoughts are Voices
Three: Assassination of a Rain Queen
Four: A Cooling Wind
V
Book Eight
One: Earthing Evil
Two: The Disintegration of Myth
Three: The Yellow Growth
Four: New Rumours Change Reality
Five: Dad Hears Lovely Melodies
Six: The Curious Stigmata
Seven: ‘Who is Crying?’
Eight: The Blind Old Man’s Piety
Nine: The Rewritten Riot
Ten: Living in a Paradox
Eleven: Turning Death into Power
Twelve: The Mysterious Funeral (1)
Thirteen: The Mysterious Funeral (2)
Fourteen: The Power of the Dead
Fifteen: ‘They have Taken her Heart!’
Sixteen: Death is Cultural
Seventeen: Old Trees are Impossible to Replace
Eighteen: The Beautification
Nineteen: The Procession
Twenty: Behind the Veil
Twenty-One: An Omen
Twenty-Two: Half a Ton of Concrete
Twenty-Three: Gun Salutes
Twenty-Four: We did not Weep
Twenty-Five: Celebrations for a Legend
Twenty-Six: Lingering in the Shadows
Twenty-Seven: When I Cried out the Pain Eased
Twenty-Eight: As if they had all Just Lost their Mothers
Twenty-Nine: A Little Night Music
Thirty: Softened Faces
Thirty-One: Time Quickens
Thirty-Two
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
In the chaotic world of his African village, the spirit-child Azaro still watches the tumultous and tender lives of the Living; of his father who has been imprisoned for a crime he did not commit and of his mother who battles for justice. This final chapter in Azaro’s adventures is a explosive and haunting climax to this masterful trilogy.
About the Author
Ben Okri has published nine novels, including Infinite Riches, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded the OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore. He is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. He was born in Nigeria and lives in London.
ALSO BY BEN OKRI
Fiction
Flowers and Shadows
The Landscapes Within
Incidents at the Shrine
Stars of the New Curfew
The Famished Road
Songs of Enchantment
Astonishing the Gods
Dangerous Love
In Arcadia
Starbook
Non-fiction
Birds of Heaven
A Way of Being Free
Poetry
An African Elegy
Mental Flight
To my beloved Mother
Grace Okri
1936–1996
Now that serenely
You rest on high
Forgive your son
Who couldn’t say goodbye
But Death was a tyrant
On the rich land
And you had written
Enigmas in my hand
The more they try
To press you down
The more beautiful
G
rows your crown
And now that you
Are as a spiritual dove
Dwell forever
In our eternal love
Infinite Riches
Ben Okri
‘Infinite riches in a little room’
Christopher Marlowe
I
BOOK ONE
ONE
The little room
‘WHO CAN BE certain where the end begins?’ said Dad, shortly before he was arrested for the murder of the carpenter.
‘Time is growing,’ he added. ‘And our suffering is growing too. When will our suffering bear fruit? One great thought can alter the future of the world. One revelation. One dream. But who will dream that dream? And who will make it real?’
TWO
The leopard
WHILE THE WHOLE community dreamt of the dead carpenter, Dad sat in our darkened room, talking deep into the night.
I listened to him, with dread in my heart, as he spoke words which heated up the air of the room. With blazing eyes, almost without purpose, he said: ‘Some people who are born don’t want to live. Others who are dead don’t want to die. Azaro, are you awake?’
I was surprised by the question.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
He carried on, as if I hadn’t said anything.
‘My son, sometimes we find ourselves living in the dreams of the dead. Who knows the destination of a dream? How many worlds do we live in at the same time? When we sleep do we wake up in another world, in another time? When we sleep in that other world do we wake up here, in this world? Is history the converging dreams of many millions of people, living and dead? Have I just died and am I now living in another zone? Are we asleep all the time? When we wake, is it to one level above the deep sleep of our days? Do we wake when we die? My son, I feel as if I have just died and yet I have never felt more awake.’
He stopped again. His speech frightened me. Something incredible must have happened to him in the forest when he was burying the dead carpenter. It was as if he had burst out of a tight space which had been confining his raging spirit.
Then, in a sleepwalking voice, he suddenly cried out:
‘I have never felt more awake, but I see a leopard coming towards me. Am I a leopard? Is the leopard my dream? Look!’ he said, with an illuminated anguish in his voice, ‘The room is becoming brighter!’
THREE
Disappearance
I LOOKED WITH widened eyes. My heart was still. The room was flooded with a subdued green intensity. The smell of herbaceous earth overwhelmed my senses. The forest darkness compacted into corners of the room. And, condensing beside Dad, as if the green were alive, its own light, contracting into an unmistakable form – was the leopard.
It was old. Its eyes were like blue jewels. And it sat peacefully at Dad’s feet. The leopard was phosphorescent, spreading no shadows, as if it had come to the end of its dreaming.
Then something odd occurred to me.
‘Are you awake, Dad?’ I asked.
The light of the great animal flickered. Dad was silent. I asked the question again, louder. Mum turned on the bed. For an instant the room darkened again. Then the green radiance glowed, filling out the place. I got up from my mat. As I neared Dad, the leopard’s illumination dimmed. I stopped, and whispered hard into his ear.
‘ARE YOU AWAKE, DAD?’
‘WHAT?’ he cried, jumping up suddenly, plunging the room into night.
The leopard was gone. I stayed silent for a moment.
Then, as if he had woken into sleep, Dad brushed past me, muttering something about seeing things for the first time. He went out of the room. For a moment I was confused. Then I went out after him, ran to the housefront, and looked both ways. Dad wasn’t anywhere. I went to the backyard, but he wasn’t there either. I hurried to the street again, ran one way, then another. It was very strange, and the thought scared me, but it seemed as if Dad simply stepped out of our door, and out of reality. I went back to the room and waited for him. While I waited it occurred to me that Dad had been talking from his sleep. I had entered another of his dreams.
FOUR
Circling
I WAS RESTLESS. I waited a long time in the dark. I lay on the bed. Then I rose out of myself, and began circling. I circled in and out of the dreams of the community. Circled in the dreams of spirit-children who keep coming back to the same place, trying to break the chains of history. Circled in the dreams of the dead carpenter, who grew bigger in his coffin, till his swelling body split his wooden encasement.
As I circled, I saw that the dead carpenter had left his grave without moving the mighty rock that was above him. He had white flowers all over his body. He went from place to place, stirring the spirits of the dead. He wandered from one sleeper’s house to another. Rattling their roofs. Trying to get into their lives. Trying to manifest himself to them in some way.
The dead carpenter knocked on people’s doors. Banged on their windows. Grimaced into the blind faces of dreamers. Held long conversations with sensitive children. Roamed around the kitchens clattering the cooking utensils. Out in the open air, he glowed in the dark. Soon he drifted up into the sky, and hung in mid-space, threatening pestilence until his murderers had confessed their crime. Until he had been properly buried. He stirred revolt in the universal air of dreams.
I went on circling. Mum turned again on the bed. She was dreaming about the time, many years on, when she would be serenaded by a man who sold cement. Her dream changed. She found herself with her mother, who had been dead for twenty years and was now living on another continent, near the silver mountains. In the dream she stood with her mother beneath an Elysian sky. Together they stared at the faces of great women sculpted on the rocks by nature.
Then, I saw someone staggering down our street, with a bucket on his head. The man’s face was completely wrapped in cloth, except for the eyes. When the wind blew against our window, our room was invaded by a bad smell. A reminder of our wretched condition, in which we live instantaneously with all the consequences of our actions.
After some time, I lay down again, and resumed circling. Twenty miles away, the future rulers of the nation slept in peace. They dreamt of power. They dreamt of bottomless coffers to steal from. Houses in every famous city. Concubines in every major town. Power removing them from the consequences of their own actions, which we suffered in advance. And suffered for long afterwards.
Meanwhile, the man with the bucket was shouting incoherent abuse as he staggered past the houses. The smell of his bucket altered our dreams. After he went past, we heard a loud cry, and then silence.
Twenty miles away, in a richer part of the city, on mattresses that would be transformed into palatial beds, the future rulers of the nation breathed easily. They were reliving their ascension, their victories. Numbering their enemies. They were dreaming their nation-destroying policies in advance. Tribal dreams of domination that would ignite civil war.
Thirty miles away, the English Governor-General, who hated being photographed, was dreaming about his colonial rule. In his dream he was destroying all the documents. Burning all the evidence. Shredding history. As I lingered in the Governor-General’s dream a wave of darkness washed me to an island, across the ocean, where many of our troubles began, and on whose roads, in a future life, I would wander and suffer and find a new kind of light.
I wasn’t long in that world when someone appeared at our door, stinking of a crude perfume made from the bitter aloes of the desert. I stopped circling. I descended into my body, woke up, and saw Dad. He was freshly bathed and looked thoroughly scrubbed. He also stank of carbolic. Wrinkles were deep on his forehead. His eyes bulged. A candle was alight on the centre table.
Dad was in his chair, silent, as if he hadn’t moved. He smoked serenely. He didn’t look at me. His thoughts were very intense. When he finished smoking, he put out the candle. Then, without a word, he got into bed with Mum, and fell into a profound slumber.
FIV
E
Prelude to trouble
DAD WAS STILL asleep when we woke up in the morning. His perfume chastened us, and hung densely in the room. The perfume was so appalling that it drove Mum out hawking much earlier than usual.
Mum was dressed like a prophetess that morning, as if she were cleansing the day in advance. She wore a white smock, white beads, white kerchief and a fish-patterned wrapper. She made food for us, and left Dad’s breakfast covered on the table. She ate with me, but did not speak. Her face was shadowed as if her spirit were conserving its energies for the trials ahead.
After we had eaten, she got her basins of oranges, mosquito coils and soap. She prayed at the door, and then begged me not to wander far from home. She went out into the early sunlight. I listened as she advertised her wares in a new singing voice. Advertised them to a people who were too poor to buy oil for their lamps.
She went down the street, in the direction opposite Madame Koto’s bar. Breaking the settled crust of the sleeping earth with her antiquated sandals. Walking innocently through all the rumours gathering. She was beginning her day as she would end it. Seeking elusive things. Calling out to people who weren’t listening. Soaking in the dust and murmurs of the road.
Meanwhile, Dad was deep in the last decent sleep he would have for a long time. He slept soundly, gathering his secret strengths. While he grew heavier on the bed, our door was wide open for trouble to come and pay us a lengthy visit.
SIX
Dialogue with my dead friend
MUM LEFT AND I waited patiently for Dad to wake up. But Dad snored noisily. I got tired of waiting. I went out into the street and encountered the new cycle. It had begun at night and was now real.
There were loud cries from Madame Koto’s bar. It was as if many women had fallen into trances and were possessed. The street was crowded with neighbours and new people with odd faces. Soon I pieced together what was happening. People were talking about the old leopard they had glimpsed in the forest. Its breathing was poor and its growling was hoarse. People had gone hunting for the leopard with dane guns and machetes, but hadn’t found it. On their way back they had come upon the enormous figure of Madame Koto, rolling on the ground, raving.
