by Ben Okri
He launched into a torrential philippic on politics, poverty, drought, history – and the flies plagued him, hanging on his every word, buzzing round his ears, mocking his eyelids. The curious censorship of Madame Koto’s powers was such that when dad stopped blustering, the flies stopped pestering him, and the spiders stopped digging their way into my brain. But dad didn’t stop for very long. When, however, he fell silent for a while, I found I had suffered tremendously for his courage. Mosquitoes, bugs, mean little insects, beetles with thorn-like pincers had all bitten me and made a meal of my flesh. Even the wooden chair managed to lacerate me. The vicious insects that exist only in the crack of vision had punished me mercilessly for the politically blasphemous things dad had been saying.
By now the darkness had gained complete dominion over the bar. I could barely make out dad’s head, with the low flame burning around it like a crown of fire. There was a long silence. Dad was waiting for a response from his audience. They said nothing. And so dad resumed his speech, with renewed vigour.
‘We are all fighting to be born, fighting to have our souls sit correctly in our bodies. So why don’t you sensible people vote for me, eh, instead of wasting your votes on a party that keeps oppressing us. Believe me, to be born, to stay alive, and to turn into a destiny is a long and great struggle.’
And then, with the truly dramatic enthusiasm of a street salesman, he shouted:
‘Let us liberate our future, now!’
I heard the women cheering outside. Inside, the darkness dissolved the forms and mixed everything up, scrambling shadow and substance; and the bar – awash with the brackish waves – became a completely different terrain. The tables began moving like animals, the chairs shifted position, the wind re-organised spaces and objects, blowing the silence of the forest into our midst. After a long while of struggling against the current of disorientation, I heard dad speak.
‘Someone has been knocking me at the back of my head. My hat has disappeared. The darkness has eaten the meat.’
‘There’s no one here apart from me and you,’ I said.
There was a pause.
‘How do you know?’
I wasn’t sure. But I felt something stirring at the doorway, an inexplicable transfiguration. Then the wind whipped swirls of leaves past the curtain, and I beheld a towering luminous form.
‘How do you know?’ dad asked again.
The luminous form dimmed, and became a solid shadow.
‘Madame Koto is watching us,’ I said.
‘Where is she?’
‘At the door.’
‘That’s not Madame Koto,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a horse.’
Then suddenly the horse snorted and burst out with a startling sustained whinnying cry. Tossing its great white head, snorting, it trotted into the bar and filled the place with its moonlight and its horror and its quivering flesh. Dad staggered back in the dark and fell over a chair. I didn’t move. The horse stood in the middle of the bar, its pungent animal smell making its presence massive. Its eyes shone. It was completely still, an apparition that rooted us with its great size and its horsehair stench.
‘Put on the light!’ dad bellowed.
I slid from the chair and crawled under the table. I hit my head against something, and dad cried out. I couldn’t see. Everywhere I looked there were discs of yellow light. A hand grabbed me in the dark; I kicked upwards, and at a far corner of the bar dad cried out again as if I had struck him. The hand let go and I scrambled over the shadows, through the dense smell of the horse’s skin, and managed to make it to the backyard door. Outside, two women with green body paint on their faces sat in front of a fire with the curious serenity of people who are asleep. I touched one of the women and the second one cried out. Butterflies rose from the bushes and grew brighter as they ascended into the sky, as if the darkness increased their illumination. The first woman turned her sleepwalking eyes to me and said:
‘What happened to the meat I gave your father?’
‘The darkness ate it.’
The second woman laughed without moving her face.
‘Do you want some more?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Have some.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘You don’t like us.’
‘I don’t know you.’
The second woman laughed again. Dad began calling me from the bar.
‘The horse is inside,’ I told the women.
‘Inside where?’
‘The bar.’
‘What horse?’ the second one asked.
‘The white horse.’
‘What does it want?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want light.’
‘Light?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of light?’
‘Light for the bar. My father is with the horse.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I don’t know.’
The second woman got up and turned the animal roasting on the spit above the fire. When she stood up I saw something her body had been concealing from me. At first I thought it was a sack. Then I saw its lovely legs, its small and delicate head, its open eyes twinkling like jewels in the fire-light, and when I realised that I was looking at the corpse of a white antelope everything changed in my head. Suddenly I noticed that the first woman had one eye in the middle of her forehead. The second woman had the legs of a furry animal. I backed away slowly.
‘Have some meat,’ she said gently. ‘It will make you wise.’
‘No, thank you,’ I said, backing away and trying not to reveal my panic.
The second woman came over and gave me a black plate loaded with sweet-smelling meat. I took the plate and went into the bar and put the light on, and found dad asleep. The horse had vanished. Not even its wildsmell lingered. But sitting in a chair where the counter used to be, smoking a pipe, with yellow sunglasses on his face, a piece of kolanut clamped between his teeth, was the blind old man. He looked up at me, his eyes changing beneath the glasses.
‘Put out the light,’ he commanded.
‘Why?’
‘Your father and I are talking.’
‘About what?’
‘Politics.’
‘Where is the horse?’
‘It turned into a dragonfly and disappeared into my mouth.’
‘You swallowed the horse?’
‘Yes, and I will swallow you too if you don’t put out the light.’
I didn’t believe him about the horse, so I went to the barfront and looked for myself. The horse wasn’t there. All over the place, on poles, on strips of wire, were banners and flags of the Party. The Masquerade seemed to have grown mightier with the darkness. Its head was so high up I couldn’t see its jackal eyes. The cleaver in its left hand shone with the silvery rays of moonlight on metal. The big red flag was indistinguishable from the night. The Masquerade now had five feet, all of them belonging to different animals, to bulls, elephants, antelopes, and it had one human foot so monstrous that it could only have come from a cyclops. Hurrying back into the bar, I found dad sitting in the exact position he had been when he was talking to the gathered people. There was a plate of meat on the table in front of him. In his upright glass of palm-wine was a dead wall-gecko. When I recovered from my astonishment, he said:
‘I have been dreaming that I was talking rubbish to seven statues who sat around me, drinking palm-wine.’
‘What were you talking about?’
‘Politics, and philosophy.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Then I had a white hat.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t green?’
‘No, it was white.’
I paused.
‘Then what happened?’
‘I knocked over my glass. The driver came in and began to snore. Your mother warned me about the meat. I talked till someone started ba
nging on my head as if it were a drum: I turned round and saw no one there. They started playing loud music in my dream and I had to shout to be heard. And then something strange happened.’
‘What?’
‘You had spiders in your hair. I pulled them out and the statues ate them. Your mother was covered in jewels and she was dancing in the forest with white antelopes surrounding her. I called her, and you answered. The dream changed and a white horse trotted into the bar and started talking to me.’
‘What did it say?’
‘It talked for a long time.’
‘What did it say?’
‘You won’t understand.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘It said I was talking nonsense about politics. It said people need magic more than they need food. I laughed. The horse said people don’t know what they want; and that people must be kept ignorant. Give them food, give them promises. Without promises people go mad and they revolt. The horse said that the only way people listen is if you fill their lives with signs and omens. People only understand fear. Death doesn’t frighten them any more. Not many people really want to be born, the horse said. Not many people can handle the fire and ice of being born. The responsibility is too much for most human beings. It turns them to ash. It freezes their blood. It confuses them. They wouldn’t know what to do with power. They would use it to burn down the houses of their enemies. Stronger people should use their power for them. But first the people must be afraid.’
Dad was silent. I didn’t think I should press him on, so I listened to him thinking. Then he jerked up his head as if he had suddenly remembered the rest of the monologue. He continued.
‘The horse said that once the people are afraid you can make them do anything. Fear is at the heart of power. Fear is a black stone in the brain. When the lights come on the black stone turns into a diamond. Keep the lights off. Never allow the lights to come on, the horse said. Never allow the lights to come on in the minds of the people. Or you have chaos. They start to ask too many questions. Then you have confusion. Too many voices. Irresponsibility. Too many theories and ideas. Ignorance. The many diseases of freedom. Greed. Madness. Everything upside down. Customs destroyed. Strange new useless inventions. You mustn’t have too many suns on the earth; too much light will burn the trees, destroy the air, kill the night – and the night is the secret mother of power, sister of the earth, one of the gods of the universe. The horse ended by saying: Keep the light off, stop fighting us, and don’t come here to talk rubbish.’
Dad was silent again. He stared at me.
‘Then what happened?’ I asked.
‘You came in with meat on a plate and you put the light on. When the light came on, you vanished. Then I saw the blind old man in the chair over there. He was smoking a pipe. Butterflies lifted out of the pipe when he lit the tobacco. Then I realised he was not smoking tobacco but butterflies. And they were alive. I told him to put out the pipe. He did.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He got up and left. And then you came in just now.’
Amazed by what he had told me, I didn’t know what to do. So I ran into his arms and he caught me and lifted me on to his shoulder. Then he put me down. He got up from the chair, saying:
‘I’ve had a lot of strange palm-wine to drink.’
‘Let’s go home,’ I said.
‘What about your mother?’
‘She is waiting for us.’
Dad looked round the bar and shook his head, as if to re-align himself with reality. Then he took my hand and led me out. The darkness was solid around the Masquerade. I looked back and saw the two women. They were still in front of the fire. The forest was silent. As we turned into the street, the lights went off in the bar. Dad laughed.
‘I’ve been talking to myself all evening. Rehearsing.’
He laughed again.
‘An eloquent spirit entered me today. All the things you’ve been reading to me from those books kept flashing and changing in my head. One day I will learn to read,’ he said.
I listened to the darkness growing. Then dad spoke again:
‘The mind of man is bigger than the sky. All of us together somehow invent this world. I don’t understand how we can agree about anything. There is a bit of madness in politics.’
He paused, breathed deeply, put his arm round my neck, fondled my hair, lifted his head to the sky, and said, in a voice quivering with mystery:
‘But, my son, I think we have the WHOLE UNIVERSE inside us when we are joyful and full of life.’
I felt happy listening to dad talk. His words were bright in the darkness and they helped me see my way over the pits and stones and treacherous things of the road. His words helped me then, especially as my eyes hurt and seemed to burn the colour of a heated yellow from having seen the world for a single moment through the eyes of the Masquerade. I was happy listening to dad because his words cooled my spirit. It was balm over my eyes. And the silence of the forest, with the moon hanging over it, no longer frightened me so much. And for a brief deep moment I was radiant with joy because I had discovered that without trying, and wholly at random, I could also enter my father’s most extraordinary dreams.
15
THE PERFUMED ABYSS
WHEN WE GOT home there was a hurricane lamp on the table. It gave off a wonderful moon-glow in the room. All our possessions were illuminated and even their poor condition was touched with the benediction of bright light. Mum was sitting on dad’s chair, staring straight ahead of her. The light bared her lean neck and made the bones of her face more prominent with shadows. She didn’t move when we entered. But she turned her eyes on dad, then on me. Dad said:
‘I don’t like that light. It spreads ghosts everywhere. I want candles.’
Mum blew out the lamp. Waves of darkness washed me backwards, my head reeling. Dad stumbled, and cursed. Mum lit three candles and passed our food. While we ate, mum watched us. When we finished she cleared the table and went to the backyard. I went with her. There was no one around. Our neighbours had locked their doors early and put out their lights. The moon was strange that night. It was yellowish and had been bitten in a jagged half by another planet. I told mum about it and she looked at the moon and said:
‘The sun and the moon are quarrelling. There is going to be trouble.’
When we got back to the room we found dad ensconced on the bed. He had a determined look on his face. Mum didn’t acknowledge his determination and I saw a dangerous mood gathering in dad’s spirit. The room was fiery with his desire. He was brusque with me, ordering me to lay out my mat and get some sleep immediately. Mum lit a mosquito coil and dad spoke angrily to me about not helping my mother with household chores. In a tone of stern command he wanted me from that day on to wash the plates, cook the food, buy household items from the market, clean the room, wash all the clothes, in short to make sure that mum never had to lift a finger. He worked himself into a displaced rage and pursued me round the room with his boots, threatening to knock my head off, hoping, it seemed to me, that his rage would encourage mum to come between us.
Mum was sitting on the floor, in a corner, with her knees brought up to her breasts, her eyes shut, her face shadowed with an impenetrable sad bloom. Dad caught me, made two feeble attempts at hitting me, gave up, and went back to the bed. I lay on the mat, watching the lighted coil, while dad tossed and grumbled, while mum sat on the floor, her outline like a dwarf’s, silent in the dark, spreading her bloom over the air, forcing something new to secure the foundations of our lives. Dad tossed. And kicked. He abused me. He cursed Madame Koto. He muttered something about the obligation between husbands and wives. He grumbled about money and politics. He sucked his teeth in uncontainable frustration, and then he got up and lit a cigarette, his head restless. He inhaled with a lustful noisy violence, and exhaled with the sigh of an angry beast. He got up and paced the room, dispersing the forces mum was concentrating around us.
As I lay on the mat, w
atching them, there came from the compound front the deranged twang of a shattered musical instrument, a guitar, or an accordion. Dad stopped pacing, his head cocked. There was a long silence. Then he sat in his chair. The mosquito-coil smoke circled his head. I watched the smoke turning blue round his head and then suddenly we heard a long deep cry from the forest. It was a cry so extended that it couldn’t have been maintained by a single breath. And then it stopped. And then another wail replaced it, deep, unfathomable, communicating a grief beyond description. It was a wail without anger or rage. The frightful sound seemed to emerge from the earth itself, so profound was its sustained song of inconsolation. The wind carried the lament to all of our hearts and when it stopped mum said:
‘Azaro, shut the door!’
‘Leave that door open!’ dad ordered, in a voice that had forgotten about desire.
And all at once voices spouted from the earth, voices and songs of such sweetness that they could only have emerged from an abyss perfumed with roses. They were the voices of the incandescent women of the forest, whose songs burned brightest with the funereal accents of a dying moon. The songs brought heat-bursts on the air. As we listened it became harder to breath, for the melodies pulled at our insides, scorching the depths of our spirits with the flaming proclamations of the deep. The melodies, in the voices of repentant witches, became so piercing that they began to hurt, they began to grate and tear at our entrails, and everywhere I felt a concentration of restlessness. The air became dense. The songs became so beatific – rising from the earth with the anguish of animals dying, of spirits leaving the earth for ever, of hopes expiring in the birdsongs of the deep forests – that there opened in the room the vision of a field devoured by fire, with the flowers roasting, and people melting in their sleep of fear. The field vanished, but the songs became ugly in their sweetness. They became the opposite of music, with their gnashings and their harsh accents of horror and hell. The room was hot, the mat was damp, smoke blew in and overpowered us with its smell of forbidden things burning. The smoke was red and peppery, chafing the lining of our throats, cutting off our voices as we choked in silence.
