In Arcadia

by Ben Okri

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  To You

  Introduction to the new edition

  The books we least expect from a writer can often be the most revealing.

  It can be said that writers are most like themselves when they are most unlike themselves. No writer tries to be unlike themselves, of course, but every now and again an unusual inspiration shows an unexpected aspect of one’s spirit.

  This novel begins with an angry tone which becomes progres­sively lighter as some kind of epiphany is reached. It was meant as a journey from despair to liberation. Writing a book changes the ideas you had about it before you began. This book changed as I wrote it.

  Sometimes a lived experience gives one the contours of a story. Radically altering the experience, but retaining the form, can yield something surprising. One of the frissons of the roman à clef is the speculation it engenders. A man once confronted me at a train station with the mistaken idea that one of the characters in the novel was actually his wife. The truth is that the characters in the novel are entirely fictitious. This elastic percep­tion of char­ac­ter has interesting implications for works of the imagi­nation.

  Many of my themes are here in this novel in oblique ways. I wanted to try for something new, in a tone new to me, which had its origins in a short story I wrote about London many years ago.

  All the characters think they are on a particular journey, when in fact they are on another, more mysterious, one. That is how it is for all of us, I suspect. The journey alters with the living and the telling.

  I wanted to come at something known from an unknown angle, like looking at oneself from the point of view of the stars, telescope inverted. We never write the book we think we are writ­ing. We never read the book we think we are reading. All is changed by the angle, the consciousness, and the rereading.

  Little Venice, London

  August 2014

  In this book I use the outer facts of a real journey as a vehicle for fictional characters.

  The characters in this novel therefore, bear no resemblance whatsoever to any living people or individuals. They are imaginary creations.

  The journey is real, but the people are invented.

  Part 1

  Book 1

  1

  In our different ways, we were all on the verge of nervous breakdowns when the message came through. We were to follow inscriptions that would lead to treasures hidden in Arcadia. Of course, it wasn’t as simple and straightforward as all that. Things rarely are. They proceed in roundabout ways, as if through a constantly changing labyrinth. The message came obliquely, in broken bits, like shards of rare porcelain.

  We were, in our different ways, still hoping for something to turn up and save us from the abyss. Some scrap of luck, a miracle, a piece of good fortune, a new kind of bible that would straighten out the awful miserable mess of our lives.

  We were all shipwrecks and derelicts on the ruined shores of the city. All wretches clinging on to sanity’s last nerve. We were doomed and hopeless, full of fear and failure, and we were masquerading our failures with a certain amount of public dignity when, out of the blue – out of the dark, more like it – came the summons.

  It was an intriguing project, a television film about a place we’d never heard of, a place called Arcadia, a place that’s supposed to be loaded with classical allusion, but one we didn’t give a damn about. All we wanted was to work again, to be on the road again, away from all the problems, all the failures, all the messed-up relationships. We just wanted to get away from our miserable attempts at propping up falling lives, away from the dehydrating boredom of the daily round in this inferno that we call the modern world. We were just glad of anything, and if it meant going to some place called Arcadia, then so be it. We’d go to the end of the earth with an ill-fated Columbus or Sinbad if we had to. Just getting away and doing something vaguely like real work was enough.

  And so we got the summons. It came first from a guy called Malasso, an evil-sounding name if ever there was one. But names don’t matter till afterwards. He was supposed to be our contact man. He was supposed to co-ordinate the whole adventure.

  There it was. We had a contact man, whom no one had ever seen, or ever heard of before. And yet he was our co-ordinator, and only he knew the routes. The job seemed simple: conduct a few interviews, take a few shots of foreign places, allow a few strangers to travel with us, ask no questions, follow the inscriptions, submit to strange encounters on the way, arrive at Arcadia, film a few goddamn goats and sheep, let the strangers sort out the treasure, keep our nose out of their business, stick to the job, and when the shooting’s done, come back home, and get paid.

  It sounded simple enough: a straightforward journey, fringed with film glamour, paid hotel bills, good food, free trains, and money at the end of it. What business did we have with the other murky stuff tagging along? They were funding our escape, and escape’s what it was all about. When everything is said and done, given the anxiety and stress, the nightmare in which we stewed, escape is what it was all about. We would have escaped from life if we’d had the courage, but we were all cowards, and so we stuck around and wallowed in our own bile.

  We had all lost something, and lost it a long time ago, and didn’t stand any chance of finding it again. We lost it somewhere before childhood began. Maybe our parents lost it for us, maybe we never had it, but we sure as hell didn’t feel that we could ever find it again, not in this world or the next. And so the only thing for us was the journey, the escape, the way out, the fake adventures, the phoney illuminations, the exaggerated and desperate joys. That’s why we did it, that and getting paid. But there are some things on earth that one shouldn’t see, or get paid for, or witness, or do, or suffer, or discover about oneself. We went too far, beyond the rim of things. And maybe we would have stewed in hell till the end of time, as we deserved, if it hadn’t been for two things – that crazy girl who fell in love with one of us, and those damned inscriptions.

  2

  But I jump ahead of myself. Always been jumpy that way, can’t help it. Never had a reason for serenity. Been jumpy since I popped out of my mother’s womb. I guess it’s the heat of the world that makes me so nervy. I’ve been feeling that heat as long as I can remember.

  Anyway, I’ve got to tell you how it happened, how the eight of us got together, got summoned, got deceived, got used, and got put through so much hell just because we were in hell already. I suppose that’s the way it always is. Contrary to the law of magnetism, like attracts like. Maybe unlike attracts unlike too; and maybe, even worse, even truer, the unlikely attracts the unlikely.

  How did it all start, that’s what I keep asking myself? As far as I can make out it began with someone having the crankiest notion, in our cynical times, that we should make a film about a journey to Arcadia, to a place of rural tranquillity, a sort of Garden of Eden, our lost universal childhood.

  Why anyone would want to make a barmy film like that is beyond me. Who cares if we have lost our childhood, or whether we have lost our way? Who gives a chicken’s fart about the Garden of Eden and rural tranquillity and improbable things like that? No one thinks about that stuff any more. No one believes in it. All we care about is the next pay packet, the next meal, the next gratification, the next party, the next football match, the next sensation.

  But there you have it. Folks are going out of their minds, falling apart, hanging out in the fag end of the long centuries. We’ve lost all our beliefs, our innocence, we’ve forgotten that we were ever children, we don’t care any more, we loathe ourselves, and resent our ne
ighbours, we’re eaten up with jealousy and malice, gorged with sin, choking with rage, gasping with failure, and then some feeble-brained idealist has to go and cook up this notion of a film journey to Arcadia.

  They think they can sell the blasted notion to television. Someone’s paying for it, so why should I care? That’s the way the world is these days. We all do things we don’t believe in, and we do them passably well. In fact, when you come to think of it, how can you do something if you believe in it – especially in these times when a fine hypocrisy is absolutely essential to success? The less you believe in something the better you can do it seems to me the perfect axiom of the times in which we live.

  That’s the way it is. If you believe in something your very belief renders you unqualified to do it. Your earnestness will come across. Your passion will show. Your enthusiasm will make everyone nervous. And your naïveté will irritate. Which means that you will become suspect. Which means that you will be prone to disillusionment. Which means that you will not be able to sustain your belief in the face of all the piranha fish which nibble away at your idea and your faith, till only the skeleton of your dream is left. Which means that you have to become a fanatic, or a fool, a joke, an embarrassment. The world – which is to say the powers that be – would listen to your ardent ideas with a stiff smile on its face, then put up impossible obstacles, watch you finally give up your cherished idea, having mangled it beyond recognition, and after you slope away in profound discouragement it will take up your idea, dust it down, give it a new spin, and hand it over to someone who doesn’t believe in it at all.

  That’s the world. Take it from me. I’ve been chewed over, had my ideas stolen and changed, had my best dreams mangled and mashed up, I’ve had power work me over and twist me round. I’ve supped most of my life on the bitter dregs of disillusionment, and now I’m a child of my times. My heart is ash. My feelings are frozen. My eyes are dead. My thoughts are cold. Nothing stirs in me. Nothing surprises me. I expect the worst. Human beings stink. That’s a fact. And so when some idealist comes along with some sentimental notion about finding ourselves again and tranquillity I sort of get murderous. They make me edgy; they get on my nerves. To my mind no one’s got the right to be happy, or to smile about anything. And I can’t stand those who go about as if everything was just fine, as if life was a holiday, a dream, a theme park, when, to all intelligent people who have lived and experienced the real stuff of living, when to those of us cursed with true sensibility, betrayed every day by the injustices of the world, life is clearly akin to a long spell in prison, a long illness with no remission, a nightmare, a hellhole, a freak show, a ship of hypocrites, a house of opportunists, a landscape of fools.

  But that’s all by the wayside now. The main thing is that here is a job. It makes me jittery but, being a child of my age – which is to say a perfect hypocrite – I heed the summons. The brief is simple. We are to make a programme and I am to present it. I am to be the frontperson.

  The message comes through: meet the rest of the crew at a certain house in the North of London, on a certain day, at a certain time. Naturally, I am late. To be early signifies keenness and keenness, in our age, is not to be trusted. Also, I am a little drunk. Also, I am in a foul mood. I think I just about loathe everything in life. I scowl at children, swear at pretty women, curse the sky, shout at the young, shoulder the old. In a strange sort of way this makes me happy; it makes me free. My loathing gives me pleasure; it makes me safe. It is the truest thing about me.

  I therefore have a few more drinks at a couple of pubs on the way and by the time I arrive I am in a stinking funk, a perfect peach of a foul mood. I’m in a splendid state to see the worst in everything. And what is more, I enjoy this acidic perception, this delicious jaundice. The mind never works so well as when it means to see everything so ill. A nasty frame of mind has something almost artistic about it. True refinement requires the delicate veiling of malice. I think I’m one of the most refined people I know.

  And so, beautifully primed, I swagger in to the meeting.

  3

  They were all there, gloomy in their failures. What a crew! One look at them and the heart revives. The sea writhes with sinking ships. What a joy to behold, all six of them, all clinging on by their broken fingernails to the rotten beams of hope. All sad cases. First there was Jim, squat and fat and balding. He is the director, the director in the last chance saloon. Hadn’t directed a film or indeed anything in at least seven years. God knows how he got this job. Incompetent beyond description. Responsible for the worst films on earth, or in hell. I’ve always said that when the devil wants to punish film critics he makes them watch Jim’s entire cannon. From beginning to end. Every day. Every night. Without remission. That’s hell. And that’s Jim for you. It must be a joke. A setup. Can’t explain it otherwise.

  Then there’s Propr. The sound man. Totally unsound. Practically deaf, tone deaf, that is. Has all the equipment. Complete fanatic about noise. Goes crazy about the slightest sound ten miles away, but spends all his time listening to garbage. Thin, wiry, gobble-eyed, scrawny-necked sound fanatic. Hasn’t worked on a film for five years. Been working with sheep up in the North somewhere, on an allotment. Worst sound man ever. Was voted the worst sound man three times, three years consecutively, by the Academy. Was eventually thrown out, but folks kicked up a fuss on account of his long service to the industry and he was let back in. Often seen at the Academy bar, propping up a drink on his moustache. Hence the name. No one ever talks to him. He’s the only sound man who creates no echoes. There are people who are invisible. That is they are so insignificant that no one notices them. This guy Propr is inaudible. If he hollers no one hears him. Perfect for the job. A joke, a divine joke. He’s the sound man, dragged out of the backwaters. Marvellous.

  And for researcher and general organiser we have Husk. She’s thin, nervy, sour, grim, prim, rat-eyed, and almost admirable. Except that she’s obsessed. With money. With losing weight. With flies. She’s obsessed with being obsessed. She’s mad, of course, but Jim has a thing about her. Jim’s sweet on her in some way, so, of course, here she is, on the team. She’s worked on a film recently. Like yesterday. She’s always working. On complete rubbish, of course. All the dead-end television shows. All the trial runs that never have a future. Anything. If there’s a camera involved, and it might accidentally project something onto a television screen, then you can be sure that Husk will want to be involved. All the most menial tasks. The drudgery tasks. The dead-beat jobs. You’ve got to admire her. There’s something heroic about her stupidity. If it weren’t for those rat-like eyes of hers, I’d quite fancy her, if only for her obsession and for the stink of failure that floats about her like a faded perfume. On some people failure is positively an aphrodisiac.

  When I’m in this mood I exaggerate, I distort; but we never tell the truth so much as when we exaggerate and distort. When I’m in this mood I do everyone an injustice, I assassinate their characters, I lie, I twist things, and what is more I enjoy it. We tell the truth more when we’re telling lies than when we’re telling the truth. I don’t trust people when they say they are telling the truth. But it’s possible to tell lies, and to let truth smuggle itself in. Everyone, in shadow, has the vices we ascribe to them. All perception is superstitious. All perception is false. All perception is true.

  How many of the crew have I mentioned now? Three. Three more to go. I’ll hurry through them. First, there’s Riley, the assistant cameraman, actually a woman, actually a man-girl. Strangest creature I every saw. Don’t quite know how to describe her. Small, wiry, full of a mad squirrel-like amphetamine-driven panic-charged vaguely neurotic energy. Nice eyes. I hate to admit it, but nice eyes. I like them. I adore them. Charming, sweet, pretty eyes. Can’t make out how a weirdo gets to have such nice eyes. Nice smile too, when she finds it. Sort of knocks your eyeballs and your cynicism sideways when she smiles. The mind reels, like being kissed by the person you most secretly fancy, and you think: w
ow, where did that smile come from? Cranky energy. The sort of energy that some orphans have. Compensating wildly, of course. For something or other. More energy than sense. Dane. The most un-Danish person I ever met. Scatty, boyish, like an urchin, like one of those street kids out of Fagin’s gang in Oliver Twist. But not as likeable. Too scatty, smiles too much, when the mood takes her. People who smile too much make me nervous. Something mad about it. Only the mad smile like that. The mad, or the stupid, or the chronically insecure. Only a fool wants everyone to like them. Only a fool wants to please everyone. Only the mad think they can do both. She makes me nervous. Hasn’t worked in film or TV for ages. Therefore desperate. Anxious to please. Can’t stand those who are anxious to please. They should be flogged. Have some sense flogged into them. Who do they want to please anyway? They want to please those who will devour them, or who will never notice them, or who despise them precisely because of their efforts to please. Who wants to please the arseholes that run and ruin the world? The bosses, the chiefs, the directors, the head of this corporation or that business, who gives a toss, it’s all egotism and emptiness anyway, and only perverts go out of their way to try and please them. So there’s her. Trying too hard. Smiling herself sort of stupid. I avoid her completely, and snarl when she says hello.

  Next, there’s the first cameraman. Talkative. How he talks. His mother must have taken a vow of silence during the nine months of pregnancy. Now he’s inflicting vengeance on the world. God spare our ears. Can’t figure out why those who talk the most have the least to say. There are certain faulty village taps in Africa that never stop running. They wear out the stone beneath them on which the villagers rest their buckets. The stones are hollowed within weeks. The first cameraman is like that. He hollows you out with his ceaseless flow of words. They call him Sam. God knows why he’s got such a simple name. He’d drive you to suicide or murder with his talk. Some people eat to live, others live to eat. Sam lives to talk, and talks to live. That’s why he’s so thin. Talks away everything, his money, his intelligence, his energy, his relationships, his mind… He’s the first person who made me realise that you can talk away your vital powers, that to talk too much is to drain yourself. Those that the gods want to render stupid they first make talkative. That’s the way it is. This verbal insanity drains people around him, for there is something of the vacuum cleaner effect about listening to someone who never stops talking. They seem to dissipate your vital powers too. They dull the mind, dampen the spirits, and leave you somewhat comatose, like a hare caught in a headlight. There is a sort of hallucination induced by listening politely to someone who goes on for ever. Politeness is a kind of perversity, and overly polite people deserve what they get. But apart from this unfortunate propensity, an absolute curse in a cameraman, Sam is pleasant enough, which is to say his imbecility is charming, God knows why. He’s like one of those insane babies that nature protects with a sweet nature and filthy rich parents. He has the blessed nitrogen of enthusiasm, unforgivable in any other occupation but that of a cameraman, a job that borders on the absurd anyway – risking a life to capture ephemera – that only a holy fool or, better still, an unholy fool, lifts it into something worthwhile. And Sam would spend a month in a sewer to capture an image. He would sleep in a marshland to bring home a good shot. In fact, the more asinine the project, the more punishment involved, the more humiliation, the more enthusiastic Sam becomes. There is more than a whiff of medieval penance in his immersions. Which is why it is so puzzling that he’s taken on a tame job like this. No bogs here. No coal mines. No sewers. No mountain crags. Just a straightforward train journey to some forgotten place in Greece. Then I remember his mouth. He has alienated just about every film-maker in town. Driven a few quite mad. Folks flee him. No one will employ him because he bores crews silly. Hasn’t done proper work for years. Still a young man. But looks old. Talking too much has aged him. Someone should lock him up in a Trappist monastery. We’re stuck with him for three weeks. Unless he undergoes a conversion. Or falls in love. With a perfect listener.