Dangerous Love (47 page)

‘And fantasies are a mirror.'

‘A shield.'

‘A blindfold.'

‘It's hard to see people for what they are; and maybe to love them for what they are.'

‘I know. To love simply is a gift. Ifeyiwa had that gift, and is now dead.'

‘Tell me about her.'

‘I can't, I can't, it's too painful.'

‘Did I tell you about the policeman who seized my motorcycle?'

‘No.'

‘I was on my way to work. He stopped me. I discovered I had left my licence and insurance at home. He asked for a fifty Naira bribe if I wanted back my bike.'

‘Did you give it to him?'

‘Of course not. After two hours arguing he left me have my machine. He said they pay them badly. He's got five children and a wife to feed. He's all right.'

‘Yes. It's hard for people. That's all.'

This provoked Keme into an uncharacteristic outburst.

‘That's true. You know, Omovo, we are a betrayed generation, a generation of burdens. We will be the inheritors of bad faith and the cost of all the waste and the corruption. We have to sort out the mess our parents made of the country, the opportunities we missed, the oil boom that they pocketed. The old guard have to go, they have to die, before we can be born. Their sins are too many and I'm not sure that we are ready for the task. But we have to correct their failures before we can move forward with confidence. We have to be ninjas to survive and then we have to make our contribution to fulfil the destiny of Africa. Do we stand a chance, eh?'

‘I don't know,' Omovo said. ‘We keep running away from our problems. It's hard.'

‘But do we have a choice?'

‘No.'

‘We have to do our best.'

‘Better than our best.'

‘Yes. We have to surprise the world.'

‘Surprise ourselves.'

‘Alter our destinies. Or we're finished.'

‘We won't get started.'

‘We'll just be victims forever.'

‘And we have a lot.'

‘A lot to give.'

‘You're a rebel,' Keme said. ‘A silent revolutionary.'

‘I don't know. But I've been thinking. Responsibility is active. Vigilant. Action becomes character and character becomes destiny. I did a lot of thinking when I went away. It seems that the moment you see something is wrong you have a responsibility.'

‘I agree.'

‘Either you speak out or you keep quiet.'

‘True. I prefer to speak. But journalism doesn't completely satisfy that. I've been thinking too. It's occurred to me that we have to be wiser than our parents. We need time.'

There was a pause. Omovo said: ‘When I was in B– I had this idea about the Moment. Every moment. A way of living. Of being. Then I wasted the opportunity by thinking about it. I thought the sublimity away. I was on the verge of a revelation that could change my life. But I lost it somehow.'

‘You haven't. It's there. Somewhere.'

‘I hope so.'

‘It is. Where will it go?'

‘I have this dream.'

‘What?'

‘I dream of becoming a life-artist.'

‘I'm going to become the Head of State.'

Omovo stopped and looked at Keme intently. ‘You probably will. I'll support you. If you don't become a tyrant, that is. If you do, I will oppose you to the end.'

Keme laughed. They went on.

‘What are you doing this evening?' Omovo asked.

‘I'm going to a party for a change. A naming ceremony.'

‘I'm going to the park.'

‘That park?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm not coming.'

‘Come on.'

‘Okay. But I'll wait for you outside. I'll watch the gate.'

‘Did I ever tell you about the poem Okur sent?'

‘No'

‘Do you want to hear it?'

‘Yes. Is it long?'

‘No.'

‘Then let's hear it.'

And as they went down the wild roads, with noises all about them, with fumes in the air, soldiers bustling everywhere, bright colours dimmed by the fall of evening, Omovo read out his brother's poem:

When I was a little boy

Down the expansive beach I used to roam

Searching for strange corals

And bright pebbles

But I found sketches on the sand

While voices in the wind

Chanted the code of secret ways

Through the boundless seas.

Keme said he liked it.

I

Then after a while, gazing wretchedly at the ring Ifeyiwa had given him, Omovo said:

‘Maybe she was the love of my life, maybe she was the girl I was born to be with. But our destinies got mixed up somehow and now I have lost her forever. I suppose I'm doomed now in some way because she's not here.'

‘If she really loved you, wherever she is she will make sure you're not doomed, but blessed,' said Keme.

That night they went to the park. Keme waited behind. Omovo, with his mother's good-luck chain round his neck, passed through the gate. The park was emptying. All those who wanted a bit of fresh air, who wanted peace, who wanted some order in their country, were going home for the night. He passed lovers, families, worshippers at new-fangled churches in their white soutanes. The darkness was benign. The branches weaved overhead and the leaves rustled. The knotted tree trunks were like the faces of old men who have lived terrible lives. The surf, unseen, beat on the shore and made the land tremble. There was a large moon in the clear sky. He could hear the wind in the flowers.

He crossed the wooden bridges, made his way past the trees, and wandered along the shoreline that glittered under the moon. He had brought the coral with him, the beautiful coral that was eaten away at the centre, like an imperfect heart. As he wandered along the shore, the wind blowing him on, he fancied that he heard the voices of the drowned, the voices of those who never made the crossing, the ghostly whisper of revenants from the forest and the Atlantic, all those who dwell in seasons of unreclaimed time.

He sat on the shore and watched the tumbling white waves. He watched the waves surging forward, spreading white foam at his feet. The water drew the sand from underneath him. He stayed firm. He watched the waves beat back on the shore the sacrificial items that the hungry populace had thrown out into the Atlantic, the items meant to appease angry gods, the packets of candles, the soft drink cans, offered with prayers. The waves beat them back, along with debris and flotsam.

Under the invasion of an impulse, he got up and flung the coral out into the mighty waters. If the Atlantic received its own it gave no sign.

He got up, dusted the back of his trousers, and made his way into the darkened parkland. He felt he was leaving a part of himself behind forever. Deep in the darkness, amongst the trees, he felt there were ghosts everywhere. The ghosts of tigers and eagles, the ghosts of bewildered young girls. They no longer frightened him. But as he walked amongst the trees, trying to find his way back to the gate, the voice of someone calling him made him start. He stumbled over an exposed root and fell. He stayed down. He felt the wind on his head. His heart beat softly upon the earth. He felt the heart of the earth beating softly beneath him. He heard a voice calling him from the Atlantic. And as he listened he also heard the hornblasts of a motorcycle. He got up and saw the headlights, switched on twice. As he got up he noticed a mask of ebony on the ground near him. He picked it up and followed the silver fingers of the moonlight. An owl stared down at him, from a tree, winking as if to welcome him into a new cycle.

Shuddering, as if he felt a wind from the future, intimations of the difficult seasons that lay ahead, he picked his way through the familiar darkness. He didn't know just how difficult were the cycles that lay ahead. He listened to the wind in the flowers.

We hope you enjoyed this book.

Head of Zeus are proud to be reissuing a collection of Ben Okri's best works alongside his brand new novel,
The Age of Magic
:

Dangerous Love

In Arcadia

Astonishing the Gods

A Way of Being Free

Ben talks about the collection
here
.

For an exclusive preview
The Age of Magic,
read on or click
here
.

~

Author's Note on
Dangerous Love

Ben Okri

More books by Ben Okri

An invitation from the publisher

It is for me a conjunction no less than magical that these five books are coming out together. The four reissues were first published in the nineties and in the early years of this century. They were all published within a few years, in one house, under the aegis of Anthony Cheetham, and are being re-published now, in a cluster, in another house, under Anthony's aegis. There is a kind of synchronous harmony to this, a kind of perfect circularity that is both satisfying and auspicious.

As a body of work, the four books link with each another in an unusual way. Each explores, from a different angle, the themes that are central to my writing. They are about the nature of reality, storytelling, enchantment, history, art and love. In each of these books I attempt something different.
Astonishing The Gods
is a short novel, written in a mode of enchantment, a kind of fable about visibility and invisibility, about ideals and ideas, and about the poetry of being. It was a major departure in my writing at the time it was written and remains one of my favourites.
A Way of Being Free
is a favourite with many of my readers, a book of semi-poetic essays on art, politics, storytelling, and creativity. I had been writing these private and public meditations since the eighties. They have been widely referenced and still remain much quoted online.

In 1996,
The Landscapes Within
, a novel written when I was in my twenties, was transfigured into
Dangerous Love
. This is a story about love and art, but also about the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War – corruption, a lost generation, and a search for an artistic language with which to express the true nature of reality. It is a kind of twin to The Famished Road and many readers think it more accessible.

And then in 2002 came
In Arcadia
, a novel unlike any I had written till then, exploring the anomie of our times, travel, the quest for a salve for the anxious spirit of our age. It is also about television and the shadow of power.

Four different books radiating from an unmistakeable core. Readers who only think of me as the author of
The Famished Road
have a pleasant surprise coming. The four books look at poverty and the quest for happiness. They look at beauty and ugliness. They deal with the world of the real and the world of the fabulous. They look at Africa and they look at Europe.

What unites them all is an abiding sense of the mystery of life and the magical nature of storytelling. My writings are enchantments, even when they deal with difficult realities; because for me it is not the realities that define us, but the consciousness with which we experience and face them.

The Age of Magic
is the novel leading the procession into the world. For more than twelve years these four books have dwelt tenderly in the underworld. That their reincarnation is heralded by the birth of a new novel is entirely fitting.
The Age of Magic
is my first novel in seven years. That these five books are published by Head of Zeus is cause for celebration, cause for contemplating, with a sense of wonder, the nature of fate, and what charming bounties it promises.

Ben Okri

July 2014

Read on for a preview of

‘The Age of Magic has begun.
Unveil your eyes.'

Eight weary film-makers, travelling from Paris to Basel, arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three days and two nights, the travellers will find themselves drawn in to the mystery of the mountain reflected in the lake. One by one, they will be disturbed, enlightened, and transformed, each in a different way.