by Ben Okri
The insurgent voices in me grew worse. I wrenched myself up and the moon became obscured and I heard the mighty hoofs of the Masquerade stalking me. I ran and fetched some stones and threw them at the Masquerade and I hit its eyes three times, and three times I heard the blind old man cry out in the backyard.
The red haze tightened round me, scorching my flesh with itches. Unable to bear it any longer I cried out for mum. After a while the moon was clear again in the deep sky, and I heard footsteps approach, and I saw mum surrounded by a blinding glow. Her eyes were serene as if she were conscious of her own sleep-walking. She stretched out a bony hand towards my head, and for a moment I was afraid. She did it with a bizarre stillness, as if she were possessed by a secret powerful goddess. Fortified by light and wind, she said in the voice of one returning from a distant dream:
‘No one will hurt my only son!’
And with a new cry mum seized the red haze around me. With a quick movement of her wrists she gathered it together and held it like a hoop, and dispatched it into the air. I watched the red hoop spinning like a strange disc: red into blue, it vanished slowly into the dark sky. And then I felt the cooling clarity of the moon and wind. When I looked around, mum was gone. I saw nothing except the white horse, its head held up, regarding me with surprised intelligent eyes; and the Jackal-headed Masquerade, its two ram horns askew, its eyes of the blind old man glaring at me in puzzlement and fury.
I was standing there in the calm field of moonlight, confused about where I was and what had happened, when I felt a concussive light in my head, a white searing agony, brief and strangely beautiful. In the horrible brilliance of that moment it seemed I crossed a threshold, a time boundary, adventuring into chaos and sunlight. Still spinning, I was startled by voices behind me. And when I turned round it was suddenly broad daylight. The afternoon sun was burning on the surviving bushes. The streets were populated with people I had never seen. Cars went up and down the perplexing criss-cross of roads, blasting their horns. Bicyclists jingled their bells. Hawkers went past me, smiling, singing out the items of their trade. A lorry shot past, raising dust from the untarred street. Children were playing games in raised voices. A water-tanker drove into the yard of the house next door and sold water to the house-owner. I noticed the aluminium tank in front of the house and a signboard which belonged to a tailor. Then Ade came up to me, his face long and lean, his eyes mischievous.
‘What has happened?’ I asked.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the chaotic grouping of bungalows and zinc abodes.
‘Look at what?’ I asked.
‘The forest has disappeared,’ he said, smiling in an irritating, almost patronising manner.
‘Where has it gone?’
‘You are a fool,’ he replied.
‘Why?’
‘Things have changed.’
I looked around again. There was no white horse, no Masquerade, no Madame Koto’s bar, no forest; just a dry dust-saturated ghetto with sand-coloured houses, unfinished buildings, the signboards of a hundred small professionals everywhere, naked children playing, and flat-breasted women wandering the streets. The wind was hot, the sun unbearable, the smells of rotten eggs and open gutters terrible in the nostrils, the sky a burnished expanse of yellow heat. Ade hit me playfully on the head and went down the street, chuckling. Then, suddenly, the growling blast of a car-horn sounded behind me, freezing my heart, darkening my sight. I jumped, landed heavily, and fell. When I got up it was night again, with the red and green bulbs shining in Madame Koto’s bar, and the voices of the women scorching the forest air. Bewildered, I turned and saw the white horse regarding me. It seemed quite pleased with itself, as if it had carried out an insinuated threat. A sharp pain roamed my head, and I realised I had been kicked. Without thinking, I ran into the bar. I screamed, and fought my way through the squat men with toad eyes and women whose perfumes masked their wickedness. I rushed to the backyard, trampling over the blind old man who was smoking a pipe, and jumped into the arms of my mother, into her protective serenity. She stood with magical grace in the moonlight. Her eyes were dazzling. She had the sweet scents of crushed herbs about her. She held me tight and, after a brief silence, said:
‘It’s time for us to go home. Trouble has become our neighbour.’
She said her goodbyes to the other women, took her basket and white shawl, and carried me safely across the street swarming with the ghosts of golden-eagles, and sunbirds, and one-eyed goats, and chickens without feathers. She bore me safely past the mouth of the forest, where the women were singing again in angelic waves, lulling me towards sleep.
But as we neared home I saw over mum’s shoulder the sight which was to bring terror into our lives. The Masquerade was stirring, its jackal head tossing, as if animated by a vengeful demon. I heard the anguished howls raised from its elongated mouth by the wind which was blowing new horrors into our living spaces and dividing time for us, for ever.
10
DARK NEW AGE OF ENCHANTMENTS
THAT NIGHT WE heard the stampeding hooves of an old bull. We heard the jackal howls and the wild neighing of horses.
Dad sat up most of the night staring at us, not speaking, studying me and mum as if we were conspirators who were going to kill him as soon as he fell asleep. His demented concentration unnerved me. Mum remained serene. She laid out our food. Dad struggled with his frustration. He refused to eat. I ate all his share of the food and he sat hunched in his chair, snarling at me. Mum cleared the table with the ghost of a smile on her face.
Dad didn’t sleep that night. Mum lay on the bed and I stayed on the mat, and I heard dad grumbling obsessively, twisting his great body, creaking his neck, freeing trapped energies along his spine. That was when we first heard the bull bellowing, the horse neighing, the jackal howling, the night-runners pounding the earth, the drums thundering, the machetes clashing, the dogs barking, and a woman wailing three houses away from us. The wail was sliced in half at the same time that all the dogs stopped barking. I heard dad stamping towards the door. Mum said:
‘Be careful. They are very powerful, you know.’
‘They don’t call me Black Tyger for nothing,’ dad boasted, and swept out of the room.
He came running back in a moment later, panting heavily. I lit a candle. Dad looked perplexed. Standing at the doorway, he had a terrified expression in his eyes.
‘Put out the light, or they will come here next,’ mum said, calmly.
I blew out the candle and found myself circling in a moonlit space and I saw the Jackal-headed Masquerade riding the white horse, swiping the air with its silver machete, the white flag fluttering in its grasp, its jackal mouth slavering, its eyes red. The white horse galloped furiously in the night-spaces, through the forest. The Masquerade slaughtered the trees, felling them, cutting down invisible enemies that cried out and were silent. And when the jackal eyes saw me and the horse turned and rode towards me, shaking its great head, I screamed – and mum lifted me from the mat and made me lie down with her. Dad sat still, dazed, more afraid than I had ever seen him, his eyes wide open, his neck stiff. The air in the room was heavy, as if there were no longer any boundaries between the world outside and our private lives.
The next day we heard that seven dogs were found beheaded in our area. Five people had been killed. We saw the corpses of three women in white robes with jewels round their necks. Their rigid bodies were borne by some of the men of the street, borne into the forest. The men never returned.
Mum’s spirit became darker. Dad grew more fearless as the day wore on. It rained all afternoon. The people of the area were too scared to spread rumours, because a new force had seized control of our spaces. For three days during which it rained, and the street flooded, we stayed in, hungry and silent, our spirits raw and beaten. The voices were temporarily silenced in the forest. And there were no heroic acts of resistance to give us the hope of ever sleeping peacefully again at night for as long as we were poor and defenceless
.
11
THE MASQUERADE’S KINGDOM
ON THE FOURTH day dad’s spirit, daring the dread of the new season, soared in our room, and that night he spoke to us with the voice of a child. We didn’t understand him. Mum had become smaller, her powers had curiously diminished. She no longer disappeared at night. It was dad’s voice, speaking from his dreams, which gave us hope.
The next day I went to Madame Koto’s bar. Apart from us, no one had yet seen her and people had begun to entertain doubts as to whether she had ever really existed. The Masquerade towered at her barfront, its eyes had become more human, more tyrannical, its face more vicious. It had acquired another pair of horns. Its wooden legs had become the feet of an ibex. We noticed with alarm that gore dripped from the machete which it clasped in one hand like a conquering and ruthless god. In the other hand the whiteness of the flag had been stained with red. The white horse was nowhere to be seen.
The celebrations in the bar that afternoon reached dark bacchanalian proportions. When I went in every available space was crowded. There were numerous crates of beer on the floor, kegs of palm-wine on the tables, yellow banners on the ceiling, enlarged photographs of the Party leader on the walls. There were even pictures of Madame Koto everywhere, her eyes piercing, her face big. She held a mighty key in one hand. There were four men in traditional robes fanning her.
Men and women were dancing and talking excitedly about their victory. I didn’t understand. The bar filled out to bursting point, people slipped in secretly through the back door, roast meat was passed round on white trays, drinks were opened, and toasts were made to a new era of power. It wasn’t until I began to recognise faces from the market, sellers of charms, women who burned their days hawking cheap provisions under the dehydrating sun, carpenters without work, fishermen without nets, tailors without clothes to sew, neighbours along the street, it wasn’t until I recognised them that I understood the nature of their victory. The new powers were winning converts. People who had opposed them – those whose lives had been shrivelled by their night fears, women who had borne too many children, men who had no money and no hopes left, whose children had died of under-nourishment – had all joined the Party, had all accepted Madame Koto’s invisible patronage.
Their numbers were swelling, and their celebrations drew more people, drew those whose hunger had been defeated by the promise of wealth and instant protection, drew those who didn’t want to suffer and wait for justice any more. The new converts celebrated the most vigorously, for it seemed they had been homeless all their lives and had now found a home, had been denied the comfortable life and had now found a Utopia, had been alone and were now amongst many.
Their celebrations were louder than the music. The drunken initiates spilled out from the bar into the street, dancing with palm-wine in their glasses. They danced round the Jackal-headed Masquerade as if they had found an acceptable god who understood their hunger.
Wearing shirts and blouses imprinted with the logo of the Party, the new converts chanted the songs of their faith, weaving and staggering, intoxicated with their initiation, possessed by the awesome spirit of the Masquerade. The faces of the converts – our neighbours and fellow sufferers – had changed. Their faces had changed with their initiation, with the acceptance of their new uniforms, with the meat they ate, with the palm-wine they drank. Their faces had become more brutal and more indifferent, it seemed. Their eyes were harder, as if they had seen a new kingdom of reality. Their eyes resembled Madame Koto’s in their ferocious, imposing disdain.
They mocked the crowds of street people outside. They laughed at their wretchedness. The gathered inhabitants of the area stood confused by the rowdy celebrations of the converts. The inhabitants looked ragged, powerless, trapped in bitterness. They looked small, doomed, their faces pinched, their hair dust-coloured, their skin pale. Madame Koto’s invisible presence had seeped into their lives, sucked away their dreams, sapped their vitality. They stood defenceless against wind and rain, unprotected from hunger, vulnerable to the bulls of the night, the curfew-making of political thugs, the thundering drums, the caterwauling of the totemic political Masquerade.
Mesmerised by the stomping and chanting of the converts, I saw that other celebrations had begun. They had begun all over the city, all over the country, in small villages, in new ghettoes, along the streets and highways. The forthcoming elections had already been forewon. Fear and strange noises had swept the souls of the country, and those who didn’t have anywhere to hide were naked.
Standing there, I saw it all in a sudden swooping flash. The flash blew open the spaces in my mind. My spirit rose in height and I found myself in the mind of the Masquerade. I saw the world through its eyes. I surveyed its extensive, universal kingdom of fear. Dread for those who oppose, protection for supporters, nightmares for the silent. I saw far across the lands, into the heart of nations whose heartbeats had accelerated and had been taken over by the powers of fear. All those who didn’t support would lose their jobs, be thrown out of their houses for mysterious reasons, would come home to find that their houses had moved, and their wives or husbands deserted to better pastures. I saw through the terrible eyes of the Masquerade and I realised that it was merely one of a thousand universal manifestations: each land has its own kind of Masquerade, some more refined than others, the principle the same. I saw that its kingdom was under the aegis of a banished god, a fallen semi-deity, ageless, raising the pitch of the heartbeat of nations, preventing them from being born, or being regenerated. For in the chaos of nations and historical periods, in their inability to be born, lie power and wealth for the supporters of the Masquerade. And in being born, in becoming what they can become, in their fullness and regeneration, in transforming into great nations, mature entities, creating power for all, in all this, the powerful are deprived of more power. Through the Masquerade’s eyes I understood that there is a war always going on in our night-spaces, a battle between those who become more powerful because of the millions who refuse to be born, refuse to be, and those who are, who have been born, who carry on becoming, and who bring the dreams of a possible paradise and an incremental light to the earth.
The Masquerade’s kingdom is a mighty one, its armies can never wholly be defeated. They are part of the world for ever. They make the other, wiser, forces necessary. They make it more crucial for the great good dreamers and the slow secret realisers of great dreams to be stronger, to hold fast to the difficult light and to transcend themselves and become the legendary hidden heroes who transform the destiny of peoples and nations for the better.
The supporters of the Masquerade’s way are themselves unknowing agents of higher gods of light, who understand the pressure and secret constancy and earth-nourishing silence that creates the diamonds of the universe. But I also realised that if the people of the world saw things from the Masquerade’s unconquerable eyes they too would be dancing their support, celebrating their initiation, under the noonday sun, their fears banished, their enemies outnumbered.
12
LAUGHTER IN THE KINGDOM
AND AS I stood there, seeing the world through the Masquerade’s eyes, an excruciating horror coursed through me. Revolving in the sky, high up above the people, I found myself looking down on the perforated zinc rooftops. My head was swirling, there was fire in my brain, and acids in my spirit. Evil whisperings flooded my mind. Horrible incantations of ritual power were breathed into the Jackal’s head by the blind old man, sorcerer of manifestations. Weighed down with hideous spells, I realised with the greatest terror I have ever known that I had entered the universal mind of evil things, numinous things, the thoroughfares of indescribable forces that were spreading their empires over the air and night-spaces of the world. I had entered the Masquerade’s mind, I was trapped, and didn’t know how to get out.
The Masquerade’s head was a mighty house. It was not one mind, but many; a confluence of minds. I wandered in its consciousness and found a labyrinthine king
dom. I saw its pyramids, its cities, its castles, its great palaces, its seas and rivers. I saw its moats and marshlands, its architectural wonders, its splendid dungeons and torture-chambers, its vast armies and police networks, its slaves, cabals, mind-engineers, spirit-distorters, reality-manufacturers, history-twisters, truth-inventers, soul-transplanters, dream-destroyers, courage-grinders, love-corrupters, hope-crushers, sleep-eaters, hunger-producers, money-farmers. I saw its great universities, its infernal libraries, its arid museums, its numberless colleges of spies, its control centres, its government-creating agencies, its heresiarchs, its unbelievably beautiful gardens and radiant plants, and astonishing canals, its numerous orchestras for the production of poisonous music, its cunningly seductive art, its spirit-mangling paintings, its negation-breeding poetry, and I even read some of its brain-scrambling books, written in the most hypnotising calligraphic hand. What shocked me more than anything else was the uncanny sense of order in the kingdom. There was no chaos, no confusion, no alternatives, no dialectic, no disturbances. It was almost peaceful, almost – paradisial. It was a strange kind of utopia. The wind was serene, the sunlight blessed, the water brilliant, the grass pure, the earth fertile. There were no dreams in the air, there was no tension, no poverty, no yearnings, no hunger. And there was, mostly, silence. Many minds flowed into the kingdom of the Masquerade. They flowed there from all over the world. They also flowed outwards. I could see the waves spreading to all nations. I saw the invisible Masquerades of the western world, saw their worshippers of order, money, desire, power, and world domination. I saw the great white Masquerades of the eastern nights, the goddesses who ate children in desert towns, the gods who ate their offspring in machines and secret wars. I saw the diverse goddesses of fear and nightmares, who were worshipped with the blood of dissenters, worshipped in dreams. I saw the powers of the Kingdom, how it manufactures reality, how it produces events which will become history, how it creates memory, and silence, and forgetfulness, how it keeps its supporters perpetually young and vigorous, how it protects them, seals their lives with legality.
