Songs of Enchantment (33 page)

Authors: Ben Okri

BOOK: Songs of Enchantment

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It was at this point that he fell silent. He had talked himself into slowly noticing his own condition. Maybe he
suddenly realised that the fabulous weight had left his head and that Madame Koto’s monumental form was no longer sitting on him. Maybe he noticed for the first time how light he felt. He had been talking semi-exultantly while me and mum had remained silent, merely staring at him. It was his turn to stare at us. The silence in the room widened and became quite unnerving. Dad was suddenly uneasy and an unhappy expression appeared on his face as he looked around our room, his eyes watering. I couldn’t enter his spirit but I knew that he was seeing the true wretchedness of our condition with new eyes. He made us see it more poignantly. He looked at the floor, bare and rough and pitted. He looked at the centre table and the bed and my mat. He looked at the grim walls and the ceiling with all its holes. He stared at mum’s bony face with its hollow shadows of forbearance, and then he stared at me. He was very miserable at what he saw. I think that, for a while, in the midst of his agonies and exultations, he had thought that the hard world was really a place of fables and magic lights. There were no magic lights in our room and even the candle-flame seemed quite famished. We had not eaten decently for many weeks. Mum didn’t cry that night, but her silence was deeper than tears. And while dad stared at our abode, at the bald facts of our lives, and at the narrow spaces we had been living in all this time, mum retired to bed with the heavy sigh of one for whom it had all been foretold.

I watched dad’s incomprehension. His misery was as deep as his exultation had been high. I could almost feel him thinking that to see anew is not enough. We must also create our new lives, everyday, with will and light and love. The endlessness of effort unto death frightened him because he was probably a man who would like a single great act, a heroic act, to be sufficient – for ever and ever. I suppose he was overwhelmed by the conundrum of living always while alive. He sat in his three-legged chair with the look of a man who had been cheated of his most precious possession. He had re-entered the kingdom of sight, but had lost the other
enchanted kingdom of which he was sole ruler and defender. He had lost his magic servants, his invisible wives, and the splendid lights of that world. He had lost them all, and had found us, lean, famished, and patiently awaiting his return from his forest of dreams. While he dreamt, while he was blind, we suffered. I had never seen him look so defenceless, or so ashamed.

5
T
HE
I
NVISIBLE
R
ADIANCE

D
AD’S SHAME WAS
so pungent that I crept out of the room and went and sat on the cement platform at the housefront. The night was still and the air was alive with white enchantments. The dead man was still stirring, refusing to die. Reprisals were on their way. I was not afraid. The inhabitants of the area were asleep, and dreaming about the dead carpenter. And the moonlight, mysterious and benevolent, cast a revelatory spell over the sleeping world.

My spirit-companions had tried to scare me from life by making me more susceptible to the darker phases of things, and by making reality appear more monstrous and grotesque. But so far, they had failed. And they had failed because they had forgotten that for the living life is a story and a song, but for the dead life is a dream. I had been living the story, the song, and the dream.

While I sat there on the cement platform, within the magic circle of the moon’s enchantment, breathing in the mysteries of that diaphanous air, I suddenly became aware of the brilliant manifestation of a hidden personage next to me. My skin fairly bristled at the proximity of the manifestation. When I turned my head I nearly fainted at the sight of Ade sitting beside me on the platform. He was splendid in a white suit that the moonlight made almost effulgent. An unnatural serenity shone from him in the form of silver lights, as
if he were aglow in a tremulous mirror. His airy presence made me quiver.

‘What is the message you promised to tell me?’ I asked.

‘Has my father been buried?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

He was silent. It was a silence that was capable of inducing madness, or profound understanding.

‘Things are never what they seem,’ he said after a while.

‘What do you mean?’

He shrugged, and was silent. Then:

‘The five-headed spirit is still coming for you.’

‘I am not afraid,’ I said.

He looked at me out of cryptic eyes.

‘Your spirit-companions said to tell you that after the rainbows, there will be the riots. After the riots will come the butterflies. And after the butterflies, the flood.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

It was my turn to be silent. I may have been thinking, or I may have suddenly gone beyond the mirror. The wondrous moods of the land of spirits bloomed in me.

‘Tell me something that will help me,’ I said.

He stared at me again with glowing eyes. His stare concentrated my spirit.

‘One great thought can change the dreams of the world.’

‘I think I know that one already. Tell me another.’

An imperceptible smile rose to his face.

‘One great action, lived out all the way to the sea, can change the history of the world.’

‘Tell me another.’

He went into his deep silence. Then he flashed me a smile so heavenly and so radiant that all the anxieties in me dissolved.

‘LOOK!’ he said, pointing.

I looked, and saw them again. I saw them in the revelations
of moonlight. I saw their hidden and glorious radiance. I stared in trembling wonder at the mighty procession of wise spirits from all the ages, from eras past and eras to come. I watched the glorious stream of hierophants and invisible masters with their caravans of eternal delights, their floating pyramids of wisdom, their palaces of joy, their windows of infinity, their mirrors of lovely visions, their dragons of justice, their lions of the divine, their unicorns of mystery, their crowns of love-won illumination, their diamond sceptres and golden staffs, their hieratic standards and their shining thyrsi of magic ecstasy. I gazed at the royal and serene spirits from higher realms that restore balances. They were continuing their majestic procession to the great meeting-place in the mind and dreams of the world. They were moving temporarily from their adventures of infinity to our earthly realm which for centuries has cried out for more vision, more transformation, and the birth of a new cycle of world justice.

‘Where are they going?’ I asked.

‘To the heart of the world.’

‘To do what?’

‘To make the world feel.’

‘Feel what?’

‘Feel more, think more, live more.’

‘More what?’

‘More love, I suppose.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

I was silent. Then I said:

‘Tell me something else that will help me.’

‘Like what?’

‘Anything.’

It was his turn to pause. Then, in a transfigured voice, he said:

‘LISTEN!’

I listened hard, and heard nothing. But when I listened without trying to listen, I heard them. I heard the angelic
music and the gentle riddles of the Blessed Souls that dad had alluded to in his exultant fever of naming. I heard them in the eternal spaces within me and I heard them in the moonlight. Their voices were a sublime chorus, a concert of enigmas. I listened to the purity of a girl’s voice as she began a riddle which the others answered, one after another, in layers, completing the circle of enchantment. The girl began, singing:

‘How does love create immortality?’

And the others replied:

‘Love creates mystery.’

‘And mystery creates thought.’

‘Thought creates action.’

‘And action creates a life.’

‘The essence of your life is your gospel.’

‘And your gospel is your light.’

‘Your light is your immortality.’

‘And so love creates immortality.’

As I listened to their songs my soul soared in the joy of angels, and I briefly re-connected the eternal playfulness of our mysterious inheritance. Then me and Ade began to play spirit-games, the games of enigmas and riddles and jokes that we enjoyed so much in the land of origins. Ade brought the luminosity and wonderful lights of that world with him, and its beatific grace soothed me as I sat there in the raw world of our ghetto. And he, smiling like the moon, told jokes that made us roll over in laughter. And I laughed in such deep happiness because it was a long time since I had played the sweet and innocent spirit-games of the mind. And as I rolled about in laughter, mum emerged at the housefront and saw me. She stared at me silently, pondering the moon on my face.

‘Who are you laughing with?’ she asked with terror in her voice.

‘No one,’ I replied, sweetly.

She looked around. Ade was gone. The procession of spirits had disappeared. The voices of the Blessed Souls were
silent. The wind was cold. The air shimmered with the dreams of the living and the dead. And the forest was sleeping badly, the trees were wondering which of them would become ghosts tomorrow.

Mum looked around, and saw nothing. She saw nothing but the ordinary poverty of our area. She came towards me, and I was tempted to run away; but I allowed her unhappiness and her warmth to encompass me. She lifted me up closer to the moon, and put me down again. Then, taking my hand, she led me into our room, where dad sat in humility and silence.

Mum laid out the mat, and slept on the floor. Dad stayed on his chair. And I drifted in and out of sleep on the bed, listening to the whispers of the Blessed Souls that dwell in the heavens hidden behind our ordinary lives.

Maybe one day we will see the mountains ahead of us. Maybe one day we will see the seven mountains of our mysterious destiny. Maybe one day we will see that beyond our chaos there could always be a new sunlight, and serenity.

March 1992

London – Trinity College, Cambridge

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