by Ben Okri
TWENTY-TWO
The vacant Tyger
TWELVE MILES AWAY, in another police station, Dad answered all the questions of his interrogators with an unconquerable silence. His silence was such that they felt he had truly gone mad, or that they had overdone their torture. His silence was unnatural. It wasn’t self-willed, wasn’t determined and had no intensity. It was a sort of neutral emptiness, as if his head were entirely devoid of thought, his eyes empty of emotion, as if he were locked in the hermetic space of a spell or curse.
The policemen were suddenly afraid of him and sought ways to get him off their hands. His vacancy had become a weight, a nightmare responsibility. He stared at them as if he had no soul. He seemed a complete vegetable of a man, staring at them with vacuous, almost enchanted eyes, or maybe even mad eyes.
The policemen could have coped with his death, and put it down to suicide. They could have coped with massive wounds, and called them self-inflicted. But how could they cope with madness, emptiness, the absence of soul or animation in the eyes, the limbless serenity of an insane baby, the stillness of a hypnotized chicken, the immobility of a hallucinating snake? They couldn’t very well say that he willed himself into becoming a zombie. They couldn’t say that he tore his soul from inside him and hurled it against the prison walls. And they didn’t dare goad answers out of him now, for his vacant stare suggested an awesome godlike power uncontrolled by fear or desire. And who has the courage or the equal madness to beat an insane man to death?
So the policemen left Dad standing at the Information Desk, unchained, free. But he stood there, staring at the walls, at the policemen, at the ceiling, with an equal vacancy, as if things had become pure signs, and as if he were just another sign in the universe where everything flared or blazed, was more itself or less, according to the secret will of its ascendancy.
TWENTY-THREE
Homecoming of the heroes
AND WHEN THE lawyer, the Photographer and the eight ragged women burst into the police station, demanding the release of an innocent man who had not even been charged, the police were only too glad to get rid of Dad. Though not without the lengthy formality of questions to be answered, forms to sign, addresses taken, superiors consulted. Dad meanwhile was returned to the crowded cell. He had stared at his rescuers with such empty eyes that Mum cried out that the police had stolen her husband’s vigorous brain.
The lawyer told Mum to hold back her anger. The Photographer flashed his camera. And the policemen, though they didn’t betray it, sweating into the coarse material of their colonial uniforms, were glad to be rid of Dad, to be rid of his silence of a great river at night which couldn’t be seen, his stillness of a mountain range in a deep darkness which was the weight and size of an unnamed premonition in the brain. They were glad to be rid of his queer ravings, his undaunted body with the inexplicable gold ash on his skin, the diamond powder rimming his eyes, and the phosphorus of his rock-like face. And as soon as all the formalities were completed, the policemen released him to the clamorous women, and quickly bolted the door behind them.
The women’s joy at their triumph was not as complete as it could have been. Neither was the reunion between Mum and Dad. After Mum had thrown herself at Dad outside the police station, after she wept with gratitude at seeing her husband again, she slowly became acquainted with the fact that Dad didn’t seem to recognize her. He stared at her with a stupid sort of longing, a vacant unfocused gratitude, as if his gratitude also included, with equal weight, the dust on the ground and the flies in the air, the birdshit on the statues and the dust-covered trees that no longer bore fruit.
‘What have they done to my husband!’ Mum kept shrieking, as she tried to reanimate his eyes, and get Dad to recognize her.
But Dad’s eyes retained their serene vacant compassion. He wholly submitted himself, or seemed to have no choice whether he did submit, to their excited buffeting, to their leading him one way and then another, to their many voices of conflicting advice. Some said take him to the hospital. Others said return him to the police station and ask them to give you back your real husband. The lawyer offered his services to sue for police brutality. The Photographer offered to expose the scandal to all the newspapers. One woman suggested they go to a herbalist. And another recommended that he be rushed to his village. At that moment, the hint of a smile appeared on Dad’s face.
Mum saw the smile, and immediately took charge of the situation. Holding on to Dad as if he were a defenceless child, ill and broken of bone, she led the way home.
As they set off, the lawyer gave Mum his business card in case she wanted to bring charges against the police. The Photographer took a picture of that moment. And the eight women caught a bus to our place, talking rowdily about all the things that could be done about Dad’s condition. The Photographer frowned in a curious fashion through all their disagreements.
Dad sat in the bus silently, his face impassive except for the faint lingering smile. He was limp, and his fingers twitched occasionally. His eyes deepened in their emptiness, and the emptiness was made freakish by the gold dust inflaming the corners of his eyes.
They talked about Dad as if he wasn’t there. And, in truth, he wasn’t there. He was in the midst of his sufferance of a manifestation. The brightness was still burning at the root of his tongue. His thoughts were stilled. And the world was turning in a fire which fixed his gaze at an equal distance, a distance without focus.
When they all disembarked at the main road near our street, the women were still disagreeing. The Photographer marvelled at how nothing had changed since he left. Dad lagged behind. He stared at everything. He kept wandering away from the street to examine the dried fishes and black-eyed beans and shoelaces and candles sold at the stalls. He studied the mud huts and zinc abodes with their rusted rooftops. He kept looking into buckets of water as into magic mirrors. And he kept peering into people’s faces, as if to determine the precise location of their secret fire. He frequently had to be restrained and led on by Mum. He seemed to have lost all sense of discrimination. He took a democratic interest in everything, as if he perceived no essential difference between wood or worm, metal or paint, between human beings and wells.
Mum found his silence and his absence of focus rather trying. She kept talking to him, asking him questions about his imprisonment. But he looked at her emptily and then looked away. He remained silent.
As they neared our house, the people of the street began to recognize Dad. A great cry of jubilation rang around the houses, and the news was passed from mouth to mouth. People stopped what they were doing and rushed at him. The cry of his homecoming preceded his advance. Children ran to him, singing out his nickname. Soon the whole weary group were besieged by the people of the street. Voices hailed Dad, calling him a hero. A hundred hands touched him, felt him, embraced him, drawing his spirit back into the community, reminding him of who he was, earthing him in his vacancy, threading his legend in songs of homecoming. But Dad stared at the many faces crushed by poverty, faces with intense or resigned eyes, faces of the thousand shapes of suffering, all of them bearing the unalterable stamp of a single condition – he stared at them all and gave no response to their enthusiastic welcome. He even seemed quite annoyed. His brow lowered in passive hostility.
As Dad neared our house the crowd around him thickened. The children pulled his shirt, and he glared at them with wide open eyes that did not frighten them. And when quite suddenly the excitement mounted, and the men of the street hoisted him up in the air, lifting him on their shoulders, bearing him home in a conquering hero’s welcome, singing songs with his communal name, something odd happened to Dad. It may have been a panic brought on by his sudden elevation. It may even have been that, in raising him up high, they upset his impassivity. He immediately began to kick and struggle, till the men bearing him had to throw him down.
When he hit the ground with his face, rolling on his wounded arms, on which no wounds showed, he jumped up and pounced on the m
en who had been celebrating him. He punched one of them, knocking him out. He kicked another, and sent him reeling. He caught the barber round the waist, and hurled him rather spitefully on the hard earth. Then the eight women, the Photographer and all the people of the street backed away from him, wondering what they had done wrong. They were puzzled at his violent response to their triumphant welcome. On their faces jubilation was mixed with bewilderment.
Then, with the ferocious single-mindedness of a lustful soldier, Dad strode towards Mum. He seemed so like a barbarian on a battlefield that Mum fled. Dad pursued her round the crowd which kept shifting and scattering at his insane advance. He chased after Mum relentlessly, his face unemotional, his eyes calm, and she bolted towards the main road as if a blood-crazed murderer were after her.
Terrified by Dad’s zomboid vacancy, she was fleeing and screaming when a powerful voice, part thunderous, part demonic, made her stop, as if paralysed. Then, to our astonishment, Dad swooped down on her and roughly bundled her on his shoulder, in an act rather crudely proclaiming her the true returning hero.
With his face sweating and impassive he came up the street, and the crowds surged round him again hailing Mum in sweet songs, embellishing her legend of a woman who brought the city to its knees and defied the might of the administration and freed innocent prisoners from the dark holes of injustice. The seven women joined the triumphal procession, and sang loudly of a new era of women’s liberty. The Photographer recorded it all with his famous camera, darting amongst the singing procession and taking pictures from his unique angles. The children too sang and called out Mum’s communal nicknames in their excited high-pitched voices.
And I heard them, and ran out from our room, out into the street, into the sunlight and dust, and saw Mum high up on Dad’s mighty shoulder, her face bright and scared, her figure lean and broken, her eyes intense, shining with new knowledge. Dad was striding along, ahead of the procession, curiously smaller, strangely bigger, his face swollen, his eyes clear. I ran towards them, with joy surging in my lonely heart, but Dad pushed on, not acknowledging my bursting joy, mistaking me, it seemed, for one of the many children racing around him.
He saw me but his eyes didn’t change. It was only when Mum demanded to be lowered, when she jumped down and knelt on the ground and embraced me tightly and lifted me up, turning and laughing and fondling my hair, weeping on my face, calling my one hundred and one names of a spirit-child who needs many names to feel real and wanted, that Dad bent his mighty frame and touched my face with his bristly cheek. Then he raised me up high into the benevolent smile of the gods. And afterwards he led the procession to our little room, where I had been crying for three days, sleeping amongst ghosts and shadows, circling the spirit of my parents through the stories of their absence.
TWENTY-FOUR
Dialogue with the Photographer
THE CROWDS OF people who came to welcome Dad back from prison brought their smells and anxieties and celebration into our little room. Mum bustled about and tried to make everyone comfortable. She organized folding chairs and bought drinks on credit. The crowd also brought with them the air of a chaotic fiesta. The seven women, in clashing voices and elliptical languages, gave us fantastical renditions of their adventures, their battles with policemen, gigantic European hounds, disorientated monkeys, spirits wearing wristwatches, and all the demons of the quivering roads. At the same time, in a hundred voices, each interrupting with an important nuance or missed detail, the inhabitants of our street related the incredible scenes of Madame Koto’s ravings and the confessions of the two delirious murderers.
Voices were loud, faces were animated, misunderstandings abounded, laughter circulated, and chaos – a great lover of crowds – made itself at home among so many languages, so many hearts, drinking happily from the wine of celebration. The bustle of bodies, and the waving of hands sent shadows flying round our room like maddened birds. Dad sat in the midst of it all, smoking a cigarette on his three-legged chair, his face inturned as if he were alone in a dark space.
He was very silent and he stared through everyone. It wasn’t long before the guests began to refer to him as if he were invisible. I sat watching him, frightened by his transformation, and by his silence. It was as if a river had swept through his mind, washing away all signs of identity. He did not respond to the homecoming festivities. He did not rage. He was not exultant and feverish in his desire to entertain. He was absent. He was like a man who had witnessed a terror greater than anything he had seen on earth. His deep ghostly silence made all the celebrations in his honour seem hollow and a little frivolous.
There were voices all around him. People talked about the disappearance of the dead carpenter’s coffin. Children with dazed faces occasionally mentioned Dad’s fighting name in their games. The seven women argued about what to do next. Some suggested the formation of an organization, a nationwide society of ordinary women to rival the one that the elite women had swiftly created. One of the women referred to the elite society as vampires who had made a national spotlight for themselves out of the energies of the suffering women of the streets.
The celebration went on for hours. Mum strove to keep it vibrant. She bustled in the kitchen and hurried to the traders and haggled with them and bought more drinks on credit. Tired as she was, she would come into the room, see the celebrations flagging a little, and would move from one group to another, infusing their discussions with fresh vigour. She made sure everyone was happy: she went up and down the little room, initiating a cycle of songs and mediating between quarrelling factions. She did all this with an unusual charge of energy.
But Mum’s initial enthusiasm gave way to exhaustion. Forcing herself to be the living spirit of the party, her gestures became slightly manic and her face strained, her smile enervated. A dark light burned around her, the light that exhaustion gives when one still has to give out energy. The fact is that the three days away, her adventures, her resilience, and the successful outcome of her campaign had quickened the growth of Mum’s spirit, and deepened her powers.
And while Dad sat sunken in the silence of a new childhood, as if he were in a world of shadows without objects, his eyes registering nothing, a thin smile fixed on his mouth, as if he were indulging in a hidden pleasure, Mum glowed with a dark exhausted animistic light. Her voice was high, her neck taut, her body tense, her shadow sharp, her eyes raw, and her presence lacerating. Her voice took on a brittle authority. When the crowd had eaten and drunk us into a long list of credits, when they had thoroughly imprinted their anxieties and quirky passions on the walls, and drained our vitality, till we hung about in our own room listless and half-asleep, Mum could bear it no longer and began roughly ordering people to leave. Her transformation amazed us. She thanked everyone for coming, but proceeded, without sentimentality, to hustle the drunken guests out of the room. Her forthrightness was extremely effective. People started to leave. They left unwillingly, thanking Mum for her wonderful hospitality. Receiving these tributes with a brusque graciousness, she ushered them out nonetheless. One by one, in ragged drunken groups, still continuing their interminable songs and disagreements, they reluctantly staggered out of the house.
While there were still some people who hadn’t been dislodged, inventing legends in their happy drunkenness, the Photographer, who was not yet ready to leave, and who had been sitting on the floor silently next to Dad’s chair, looked over at me and flashed me a mischievous smile. Then he got up and came over.
‘You do remember me, don’t you?’ he said.
‘How can I forget you?’ I replied.
He smiled happily.
‘Your parents have become famous. Did the rats come back?’
‘What rats?’
‘The rats that used to eat your food before you did, remember?’
I found myself staring at him with Dad’s impassivity. The Photographer was as crickety as ever, with his quick jerky movements, his sad humorous face and vaguely paranoid eyes. There was
also something about him that wasn’t there before. A slight oiliness had crept over his manners, as if a good deal of his time had been spent in obliging people he didn’t like.
From across the room I heard Mum apologizing to the seven women for her roughness, thanking them for their great support, and asking them to stay the night if they wanted. They didn’t. They were anxious to return to their homes, to their husbands and children. I heard them swear oaths of eternal friendship and allegiance, vowing to create their society for the liberation of ordinary women. Mum saw them to the street and she was out for a long time while the Photographer kept pestering me with questions about whether the thugs and political spies who were after him had returned during the time he had been away. He asked about women whom he had been passively interested in; some had moved away from the area, and some had vanished into the forest to join the nocturnal choir of Elysian voices, but I didn’t tell him so. He asked me questions about neighbours, about his landlord, and if any rival photographers had appeared in the area to fill the vacancy his absence had created. I didn’t answer many of his questions at all and I didn’t reply to his queries for a while because I was watching Dad, who sat rocking his three-legged chair, with the vacant smile still on his mouth, and a dissolved expression in his dead eyes. Dad’s transformation was curiously magnetic. He seemed to spread a bizarre contemplative somnolence over the room, making my eyes droopy.
‘So what on earth has been happening here since I left?’ the Photographer asked, with some exasperation.
‘Many, many things,’ I said.
‘Like what?’
‘Madame Koto is pregnant with spirit-children.’
