Songs of Enchantment

by Ben Okri

  When we passed out through the narrow door the women began arguing again. In the new room we saw an orderly queue of women, all surrounded with the grave aura of people who had travelled vast distances to have their problems heard, people who had been waiting with great patience all their lives and who were waiting patiently now. They had brought food with them. They eyed us with profound indifference. We went past them into a smaller room potent with ritual smells, the smells of power, of the earth liberated by rain, of a mighty woman, of gold and perfume, of childlessness, sweat, eunuchs, virgins and pitchers. A great white veil divided the room. Beyond the veil seven candles were aflame. Two men were fanning a leviathan figure on a regal chair. Young girls were combing and plaiting the hair of this figure. We heard water being poured. Ritual chants reigned in rooms behind rooms. Somewhere a sheep was being slaughtered, a man screamed as if branded, a child wailed, women laughed. Everywhere I looked shadows were changing places.

  The bandaged woman retreated without a word. The darkness in the outer room where we stood became thicker. I noticed the stained-glass windows and the kaolin-painted floor. When dad coughed the leviathan figure made a sign. The white veil was drawn aside. One of the men motioned us to approach. We waded through the dense air of legends.

  Madame Koto, like an ageless matriarch, was sitting on an ornate chair, with the seven red candles surrounding her. She had a yellow mantilla on her shoulders. She had grown so enormous that the large chair barely contained her bulk. She wore a deep blue lace blouse and volumes of lace wrappers. She had acquired gargantuan space. As the evening darkened, her presence increased. Power stank from her liquid and almost regal movements. Behind her, in a large golden cage, was a shimmering peacock.

  The men went on fanning her in slow motion, as if the fan of giant eagle feathers were very heavy, as if they were working monstrous bellows. She studied us in silence and then, with a light gesture of her fat arms, dismissed the men. Drawing up the sleeves of her blouse, she revealed the beauty of her skin, which was the mahogany blue of the forest at night. Her face was large, her eyes big with deep secrets, and her features – serene like the bronze sculptings of ancient queens – defied memory. She neither registered nor betrayed any conceivable expression – as if nothing in the world could stir the great mass of her spirit. I had not seen her in a long time and she looked abnormally resplendent. Her face burned with health. The jewels round her neck bathed her in ghostly lights.

  ‘I know why you have come to see me,’ she said to dad, while looking at me.

  Her voice was unrecognisable, deep with the tones of a bull. She cleared her throat.

  ‘You have stopped coming to my bar,’ she now said, addressing me directly.

  ‘You have been growing in our room,’ I replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you the nightwind?’ I asked.

  ‘Shut up,’ said dad, pinching me.

  I fell silent. Madame Koto stared at us.

  ‘Both of you have caused me a lot of trouble in the past.’

  Dad began to fidget. Madame Koto didn’t say anything for a while. Her silence made me sweat. Then she motioned for me to approach her. I did. She held my hand. Her palms were hot. I started to shiver.

  ‘I am dying,’ she said eventually.

  I was astonished.

  ‘What is killing you?’ I asked.

  Several thoughts, like dark winds, blew across her face.

  ‘The children in my womb,’ she said. Then after a moment, she added: ‘And high living. Money. Power. Responsibility. My own success is pressing me down.’

  ‘What about my mother?’

  She smiled and let go of my hand. I went back to dad. He put a protective arm on my shoulder, tilting me in the direction of his peculiar madness. Madame Koto made her reply to dad.

  ‘I will let your wife go on one condition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want your son to come and sit in my bar again till I give birth.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Same reason as before. He is a strange child and has good luck.’

  Dad shook his head vigorously.

  ‘But you are not a good person,’ he said.

  Before he could unburden himself of a torrent of recriminations, Madame Koto interrupted him with an imperceptible movement of her arm.

  ‘You don’t have to agree with my politics,’ she said. ‘I just want your son to come to my bar as he used to. If you don’t make trouble for me, I won’t make trouble for you. I am not well. I am dying and maybe your son is the only person who can help me.’

  Dad was confused.

  ‘Go home and you will find your wife waiting for you. Don’t say anything about your quarrel. She is working with me for as long as she likes. But from now on I want your son to come and sit in my bar any time he wants.’

  Dad thought about her proposal. I followed the confusion in his spirit. I pulled his hand and he leant over to me and I whispered mum’s words into his ear.

  ‘All things are linked,’ I said.

  Dad remained like that for a moment, leaning over, thinking about what I had said. Then, slowly, he straightened. He nodded his agreement to Madame Koto’s condition. When she made another cryptic movement of her arm, the men fanning her returned. The bandaged woman came and led us through the maze of corridors and rooms. I saw mum fleetingly in one of the mirrors above a door. She was decked in gold-braided clothes. I turned round swiftly, and saw only darkness behind me.

  12

  THE FORE-RUNNER

  AS WE NEARED home we saw a woman sitting on our doorstep. I thought it was mum, and I ran over, and discovered it was only a beggar. She was very old and had a dirty veil covering her crushed and bitter face. As we went past her into the room she lifted up her veil, revealing her poisonous eyes, and held out a green bowl.

  ‘I heard you are a good man,’ she said, in a rattling voice.

  Dad instructed me to give her some of our food. I dished a modest portion of the food that the good spirit had made for us. The old beggarwoman ate it all quickly and asked for more. Dad nodded. Three times she asked and three times we complied. When she had eaten her fill, and nearly all our food, she stretched out on our doorstep, and fell asleep. Dad told me not to shut the door. The beggarwoman’s filthy clothes stank unbearably and she snored like a monster all through the night.

  ‘What if she comes in when we are asleep?’ I asked.

  ‘We are protected,’ dad said. ‘Nothing evil will cross that door.’

  He sat up all night waiting for mum to return. He was very anxious and kept pacing. Every sound outside made him jump towards the door. After much fretting and wearing himself out with anxiety he went and had a bath, combed his hair and dressed up in his best clothes in anticipation of mum’s return. All through the night the wind whistled above our rooftop. The old beggarwoman at our doorstep kept groaning and twisting. Then deep in the night she started to sing. Dad went out and gave her a covercloth and a pillow. The woman didn’t thank him. When dad got back in the woman started grumbling loudly about all those who had beds, who had rooms, and who allowed old people to sleep at their doorsteps. Dad was afraid of some sort of superstitious retribution. He got very worried and asked me if we should invite her in. His eyes were big with fright. He didn’t wait for my reply; he brought the woman in, and I noticed how sharp and bitter her eyes were in the candlelight. Her hands were bony and they kept shaking. Dad offered her the bed, but she refused. She said she would sleep on the floor. I brought out my mat. I sat and watched the beggarwoman – old and skinny, her fetid smells overpowering the room – as she slept not far from me. I tried to stay up and keep an eye on her as dad dozed off in his chair. Then I nodded and found myself in a classroom. The other students were cattle-egrets, sunbirds, an elephant, a giraffe and a goat. Our teacher was a tortoise. The class went on for a long time. I got bored with the teacher’s drone. We were being taught about the history of the world backwards, from the end
of time to the forgotten original dream. I looked up and saw branches with red fruits. The fruits fell, turned into flowers, and wounded me when they landed on my head. I tried to escape from the flowers, but I ran into the arms of the goat. It began to kiss me. I kicked the goat and the beggarwoman cried out. I opened my eyes and found a heavy form over me. I fought to get out from under the form. I couldn’t breathe. Then I heard harsh laughter in my ears and smelt rotting teeth and I struggled fiercely and threw the form off.

  ‘You have sweet blood,’ the form said in the dark.

  I lit a candle. Dad was snoring on his three-legged chair. The beggarwoman had gone. I went and looked outside. The compound was empty. Up in the sky, I saw a star falling. I went back in and woke dad up.

  ‘The woman has gone,’ I said.

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘The beggarwoman.’

  He turned his head away. Then, craning his neck towards me, he said:

  ‘You mean Helen?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The old woman.’

  ‘There wasn’t an old woman. Go to sleep,’ he said in an exasperated voice. I left him alone. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall. I heard the house breathing. Dad lifted his head suddenly and asked:

  ‘Has your mother returned?’

  ‘No.’

  He went back to sleep again. I stayed up, watching the room, till dawn broke. All through that time I was struck by how free our air had become. Madame Koto’s presence did not enter our nightspace. The strange wind didn’t battle with dad’s spirit. I heard the birds of sunlight singing when I fell asleep.

  13

  AN INDIRECT MIRACLE

  PLAYING ALONG OUR street the next day, I saw my friend Ade rolling a bicycle wheel. I started towards him and he turned and ran. I pursued him into the forest and caught him near a well. I held him tight. He was breathing very hard, he was wheezing and gasping. I said:

  ‘Why are you running away from me?’

  He was silent. He hung his head low. He looked pale and lean. His eyes were heavy and dull. His face was unanimated and he looked like a child who was being starved. I knew about his illness, his spirit-child epilepsy. I also knew he was implacably willing himself out of life. I had heard about the numerous ritual treatments he had undergone in the hands of herbalists, all of them trying, and failing, to break his resolve to die.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I asked.

  ‘They say I am all right now,’ he replied.

  ‘So why are you running?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  We stood there in the forest, in silence. He didn’t move. Nothing in him moved towards me. I watched him for a long time and felt him already entering the world of spirits and I left him standing there in the forest and went back home.

  I sat on the platform of our housefront and saw the future invade our street. The invasion took place silently. No one noticed. That day dad returned early from work. He brought with him the odour of raw fish. He had a little bag on his back.

  ‘Has your mother come back?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked very sad and I followed him to our room. The door was wide open. The room was different. Someone was asleep on the bed.

  ‘It’s that beggarwoman,’ I said.

  The woman turned over. I sat on the little centre table. Dad faced his chair towards the bed, and sat down. Rocking the chair back and forth, nodding rhythmically, a sublime smile lit up his face. Mum lay asleep on the bed as if she had never left. Her things were all in their normal places. The cupboard groaned with food. There were sacks of garri everywhere. Basins, crammed with stockfish and dried meat and peppers and onions, were stacked up next to the cupboard. We sat and watched mum sleeping, full of wonder at how she had re-entered our lives so silently. We didn’t wake her up and we didn’t move. We stared at her sleeping form as if she were a miracle. After an hour of silence dad, in a low voice, said:

  ‘I went to work today and carried twenty-seven bags of garri, twenty bags of fish, and ten bags of cement. Then I went to the river with a friend. I threw his net into the water and caught twelve fishes. Our life is changing for the better.’

  Mum slept easily, breathing gently, her face serene, her skin lovely. Dad couldn’t take his eyes off her. He sent me to buy some ogogoro and he made libations, in a whisper, to our ancestors. He prayed for another hour. When he finished, he said:

  ‘Your mother needs rest. We have been bad to her. Look at how lean you are and she has been gone only seven days. From now on we will be good to your mother, you hear?’

  I nodded. Dad slept on his chair again, with a beautiful smile on his face. The room felt new that night.

  BOOK TWO

  1

  THE INVASION BY THE FUTURE

  THEY SAY THAT when strange times are coming the world takes on the aspects of a dream. They always say this with hindsight.

  Mum slept for two days. While she had been away, while she slept, the future had been pressing down on us. Without knowing it our lives had slipped into a new dark stream of terrible ancient legends. Dad seemed unaware of it all. Under the enchantment of mum’s mysterious return he made attempts at living an exemplary life. He went to work early, came back early, fetched water for everyone, washed all our clothes and cleaned the house. He even prepared our food. He was a dreadful cook. He would sit in the kitchen, surrounded by the bemused women of the compound, and try to light a fire. Instead he almost set the whole place alight. Using firewood which was still damp, pouring kerosine on the wood when a little strip of rolled paper would do, he plunged the entire compound into the pungent smoke of his ineptitude. The women, delighted at the novelty of dad in the kitchen, gathered and watched him from a distance, passing hilarious running commentaries on his disastrous attempts at cooking. But dad persisted, and managed to burn everything he prepared, and succeeded in over-salting the stew, the yam and the beans. He ate in excellent spirits. I hardly ate at all. He didn’t notice. He didn’t notice anything except mum’s presence on the bed.

  The day after mum returned we heard that thugs of the Party of the Rich had killed a man at the other end of our street. There were retaliations that afternoon. The street boiled with an old rage. My head swelled with visions. The sun seemed to burn the earth with an inexplicable fury. Everywhere I looked I saw unoccupied spaces filling out with new beings. The street had been invaded by alien presences. Everywhere seemed crowded in a way I couldn’t fathom. Strange people had been moving into our area without our knowledge. Houses suddenly appeared in previously empty spaces. New tenants rented the rooms. We didn’t know who the new people were.

  While all this was happening the trees were being felled every day in the forest. We heard the stumps screaming in the evenings. The word went round that the spirits of the forest had turned vengeful. No one was supposed to go there at night. A curfew reigned over its dwindling terrain. Sometimes we heard wild irregular drumming and banshee wailing and the animistic clashing of machetes among the trees. And sometimes we heard female voices singing sweetly in its darkness. There were stories that a beautiful maiden of the trees had been luring people into her indigo abyss. The people were never seen again. The forest became dangerous. It became another country, a place of spectral heavings, sighs, susurrant arguments as of a council of spirit elders, a place with fleeting visions of silver elephants and white antelopes, a place where elusive lions coughed – a bazaar of the dead. And because the forest gradually became alien to us, because we feared the bristling potency of its new empty spaces, we all became a little twisted.

  We grew more suspicious of one another. Everyone began to suspect their neighbours of being witches and wizards. People no longer shared their food, no longer left their doors open, no longer had parties, no longer smiled at one another. Things we couldn’t explain turned swiftly into superstition. Children died mysteriously. The rain brought typhoid, and malaria snatched off many people. Nebulous imputations abounded.

  Our minds tu
rned strange. A woman in our street went to the market in the morning and returned in the evening wailing that spirits were taking over the place. She claimed that mighty spirits were occupying the area from the garage to the market, from the spot where the rally was to be held right up to the beginning of our street. She said that some of the spirits had diamond spears, some held aloft books that quivered with emerald lights, and one of them, a child, bore a golden tablet of rock on which had been inscribed certain forgotten laws of life. She couldn’t remember what the laws were. She said many of the spirits were great kings and seers and healers and leaders. None of them seemed happy. No one believed her.

  For a whole day the woman tramped the streets telling of what she had witnessed. She said the spirits had white cars and lived in flaming yellow houses and that they were converging in the air, watching us. She said that when one of the spirits noticed that she could see them it blew a white wind at her that knocked away her hawker’s basin. The woman went everywhere, telling her tale, warning us that something terrible was going to happen. She talked of floods, of fire, of hot winds, dying children, people going blind, the blind recovering their sight, lame people flying around on machines, women levitating and men dancing on the moon. The inhabitants of our area came to the conclusion that the woman had wandered off into the country of madness. That evening her voice ceased altogether. People said that she had joined the maiden of the trees. That night we heard two female voices singing in the forest. They wounded us with the beauty of their song.