by Ben Okri
A Note on the Form
THE FOLLOWING TALES are properly ‘stokus’. A stoku is an amalgam of short story and haiku. It is story as it inclines towards a flash of a moment, insight, vision or paradox.
Its origin is mysterious, its purpose is revelation, its form compact, its subject infinite. Its nature is enigma as it finds tentative form in fiction, like the figure materialising from a cloud, or a being emerging from a vaporous block of marble.
By means of the stoku, that which was unknown reveals, in the medium of words, a translated existence. Thus worlds unknown can come into being in a lightning flash from the darkness of the mind.
Stokus are serendipities, caught in the air, reverse lightning.
I offer them humbly as tales found on the shore, in enchanted dawns.
Belonging
I HAD GONE into a house by accident or maybe not. Originally I was searching for Margaret House, a mansion block. Anyway I went into this flat and the man of the house took me for his in-law, whom he had never met, or had met once before, a long time ago. He began saying things to me confidentially, telling me how he disapproved of some acquaintance, and how we should do this that or other, and how my wife did or didn’t do what she was supposed to do, and he bared his heart and said many intimate things.
I watched him. When the misunderstanding began I tried to correct his error, but he seemed so keen to believe who I was and he was so absent-minded and yet single-minded in his rattling on that I didn’t get a moment to correct his mistaking me for someone else.
Besides, I found I rather began to enjoy it. I enjoyed being someone else. It was fascinating. It was quite a delight suddenly finding myself part of a ready-made family, finding myself belonging. The thrill of belonging was wonderful.
The flat was cluttered with items of a rich family life. It was obviously a large extended family. The man who was addressing me was making food for a feast, adding ingredients for a cake, mixing condiments for a sauce, and it all smelt good. The enveloping party and family mood quite intoxicated me.
I began to think that maybe I was the man he took me for. And that if he saw me as another then maybe I was that other. Maybe I’d just woken from a dream into a reality in which I was who he thought I was, and that my old identity belonged to the dream. But as I toyed with this notion there was a growing sense in me that any minute the real person that was expected would turn up. Or, if not, that the wife of the real person would turn up, and would not recognise me.
The fear increased in me. Any minute now I would be unmasked. What would I do then? I felt awful. I dreaded it. I hadn’t got myself into this deliberately. I hadn’t even spoken a word during the whole time I was in that room, being mistaken for someone else. I wanted to belong. I wanted to belong there. A sentence of unmasking, like death, hung over me. I waited, and listened to the man of the house talking, as time ticked away, bringing closer my inevitable disgrace.
Before I had strayed into that flat I had been going to meet a relation, my last living relation. It was, it seemed, the last stop for me in the world. I had nowhere else to go. Now I had this family, with food and a festival atmosphere promised. And yet …
And then, as I stood there, the door behind me opened. A black, Arabic, pockmarked, elderly gentleman came into the room, and I knew instantly that this was the man I had been mistaken for. He had the quiet and unmistakable authority of being who he was, the real in-law. And my first shock was that I looked nothing like him at all. I was younger, fresher, better-looking. I had vigour and freedom. I wasn’t trapped by tradition. I was lithe. I could go any which way. I had many futures open to me. This man seemed weighed down. There was an air about him of one whose roads were closed, whose future was determined, whose roles were fixed. He was, in the worst sense of the word, middle-aged; with no freedom, even to think independent thoughts. All this I sensed in a flash, but realised fully only afterwards. But I was profoundly shocked to have been mistaken for this man.
At the very moment the in-law entered the flat, the man of the house, who’d mistaken me in the first place, looked up, saw the real in-law, and knew him to be the one. I think he recognised him. How unobservant can people be! Anyway, at that instant he turned to me and, in outrage, said:
‘And who are you?’
I think events swam before my eyes after that. My unmasking was very public. Suddenly people appeared from thin air, and were told in loud voices about my impersonation of the in-law. There were vigorous comments and curses and stares of amazement. People glared at me as though I were a monstrous criminal. Women regarded me darkly from behind veils. I feared for my life. Soon I was out in the street, surrounded by a crowd, by the community of an extended family. I was holding out a map and was saying:
‘It was a mistake. I was looking for Margaret House, or Margaret Court.’
During the whole commotion I saw the name of the place I’d been looking for on the next building. I bore their outrage and their loud comments silently. Then after a while I set off for the building next door, my original destination. But the man of the house, who’d mistaken me for the in-law, said:
‘Don’t go there. You don’t want to go there.’
Then I looked towards Margaret House. I looked at the grounds. I saw people milling about, in aimless circles. They twitched, moved listlessly, or erratically. They were dark forms, in dark overcoats, and their bodies were all shadows, as if they were in Hades. They moved as if they had invisible lead weights on their feet. They seemed to have no sense of anything. The courtyard was of concrete, but their collective presence made it look dark and sinister and touched with unpredictable danger. There was the merest hint that they were mad …
I started to go in that direction, but, after the man of the house spoke, I stopped. I could feel the disturbed wind from the people milling about in an evil shade, in the courtyard of Margaret House. Then I changed direction, and went back towards the crowd, then out to the street, towards a life of my own.
The
Mysterious
Anxiety of
Them and
Us
WE WERE IN the magnificent grounds of our mysterious host. A feast had been laid out in the open air. There were many of us present. Some were already seated and some were standing behind those seated. In a way there were too many of us for the food served, or it felt like that.
There was a moment when it seemed that everyone would rush at the food and we’d have to be barbaric and eat with our hands, fighting over the feast laid out on the lovely tables. The moment of tension lasted a long time.
Our host did nothing, and said nothing. No one was sure what to do. Insurrection brooded in the wind. Then something strange happened. Those who were at table served themselves, and began eating. We ate calmly. My wife was sitting next to me. The food was wonderful.
We ate with some awareness of those behind us, who were not eating, and who did not move. They merely watched us eating.
Did we who were eating feel guilty? It was a complex feeling. There is no way of resolving it as such. Those who were at table, ate. That’s it. That’s all.
We ate a while. Then the people behind us began to murmur. One of them, in a low voice, said:
‘The first person who offers us some food will receive …’
I was tempted to offer them some food. But how could I? Where would I start? The situation was impossible. If you turned around, you would see them all. Then your situation would be polarised. It would be you and them. But it was never that way to begin with. We were all at the feast. It’s just that you were at the table, and you began to eat. They weren’t at table, and they didn’t eat. They did nothing. They didn’t even come over, take a plate, and serve themselves. No one told them to just stand there watching us eat. They did it to themselves.
So to turn around and offer them food would automatically be to see them, and treat them as inferior. When in fact they behaved in a manner that made things turn out that way.
And so
we continued to eat, and ignored the murmurs. Soon we had finished eating. We were satisfied, and took up the invitation to explore other parts of the estate. There was still plenty of food left, as it happened.
My wife and I were almost the last to leave the table. As we got up, I looked behind us. I was surprised to see only three people there. Was that all? They had seemed like more, like a crowd. Maybe there had been more of them, but they’d drifted off, given up, or died.
While we had been eating it had often occurred to me that there was nothing to stop them from sticking knives into our backs.
My wife and I filed out with the others, towards the gardens, in the sumptuous grounds of that magnificent estate.
It had been a dreamy day of rich sunlight.
The Clock
IT TOOK PLACE in the Bois du Boulogne, on a sombre moonlit night. We stood in a clearing among the chestnut trees. We were all in eighteenth-century costume.
The moment arrived. The duellists stood opposite one another, with their pistols primed. Then the most unlikely thing happened. The man whose second I was, whom I partly knew, suddenly cried out. He pointed at something in the midriff of his enemy. We looked to see what troubled him. We saw a large, round, shining clock about his enemy’s waist. He wore it like the buckle of a belt. The numbers were black against the luminous dial.
My acquaintance was mesmerised by the clock. He was transfixed by it. He kept pointing. Then he began gibbering. The clock had somehow poisoned his mind. I said:
‘For God’s sake, old chap. It’s only a clock.’
‘Look at it!’ he whispered. ‘It’s fiendish!’
‘Take your mind off it,’ I said.
‘That’s impossible! It’s an abomination!’
His enemy stood impassively with his second. They gazed at us. My acquaintance fell apart before my eyes. He was utterly unable to rid his mind of the clock. I hadn’t wanted the damn duel anyway. I had no idea what its cause had been, and was never told. It remained a secret between the two enemies. I had got roped into it by honour, false friendship, and favours I owed. Damn the favours one owes. They lead one into other people’s hell.
There was nothing anyone could do. My acquaintance had succumbed to an appalling paralysis. His enemy had been patient. Night darkened, and then dawn slowly appeared. His enemy had waited many hours for my acquaintance to recover. He waited silently, like a monument, a stone statue of some disdainful Roman god.
My acquaintance, however, became less than human with the agonising passing of time. Shivering, muttering about the infernal nature of the clock, my acquaintance had a mental breakdown as dawn broke. Eventually we had to carry him from the middle of the clearing to the waiting coach. It had been understood that there would be only one coach, the loser being presumed to have been killed.
We had to take the coach. The enemy was magnanimous. He was silent. He was as implacable as a marble figure on a plinth at night in a strange city. He and his allies simply stood there in the gathering dawn, with the luminous clock brilliant about his solar plexus.
My acquaintance never recovered. We took him to a hospital. Then his hallucinations began. Then his madness.
I visited him often. Whenever he saw me he asked about the clock. I was evasive in my answers. Then I stopped going to see him. He was infecting me with his instability. It doesn’t take much, does it, to unhinge a man. Especially if, in a clearing, at night, under a moonlit sky, a mind can’t unfix itself from a symbol.
Now I go through life not fixing my mind on anything, or anyone. There is a sort of freedom in this.
Music for a
Ruined
City
1
I HAVE BEEN wandering around in a bombed-out city. I have seen devastated streets, broken bridges, flattened houses. The glass fronts of shops were all smashed, their goods looted. The commercial district was a mass of rubble. I saw piano shops with mangled instruments. Everything was in chaos.
I saw unforgettable things. I saw a community stoned to death in their sleep. This happened on the top of a multi-storeyed building. They were asleep in their white tents and people of a different sect came with rocks and stoned them to death while they dreamt.
2
Then there was that lovely building where a crowd of mourners were gathered outside. An Arabian bishop was on the floor, weeping. When he got up he held out a piece of yellow-coloured glass, and pointed. On the floor about him were blue and green and yellow fragments. Then all became clear. It was a Christian church. The whole church front had been made sublime with stained glass depicting images of the saints and cameos from the New Testament. The church was in ruins, the stained glass shattered. It was only when I was shown a picture of how beautiful it used to be that I realised the magnitude of the damage.
3
It was a city under occupation. The white presence was resented by the people. Nothing worked. I had gone to a makeshift government office with an insider. Two white men were in front of me. We were all supposed to be searched and had to leave our passports and be given tokens. The two white men went through and weren’t searched and didn’t have to leave their passports. When I went past, however, the officials pounced on me. Somewhat irritated, I threw my passport on the table. To the smirking official, I said:
‘You complain about being in a state of occupation and yet you waive your rules for your occupiers. But you treat me like I’m a criminal. One rule for those who bomb you, another rule for the rest. Hypocrites!’
I took my token and left. I was annoyed, but my annoyance freed me from illusion.
4
And yet I could not detach myself from the destruction wrought on this ancient city. Its famous museum had been plundered of its timeless artefacts, its libraries robbed of priceless books and manuscripts. Districts were terrorised by newly unleashed gangs. There was an uprising of religious sects. Homes were raided. People were set upon, and massacred. A culture was in free fall, in meltdown, descending into inferno. There was anarchy and hopelessness everywhere. And yet I glimpsed a certain resilience in the people, a stoical fatalism.
5
These are journeys in the hyper-realism of a suffering city. Wherever I go, I see veiled mothers in black, wailing. They cry out the stories of their dead children, or their missing husbands.
6
But somewhere in this tragic city an orchestra strikes up. A performance of music begins. Strains of a classical air seep out from the fabulous concert hall, one of the few buildings untouched by the seven-day bombardment. No one knows who the people are within. They listen to music that enchants and cleanses the spaces of suffering. There time stands suspended, and a pure joy percolates out from the orchestra, out and up, in a spiral, to the sky and the stars. This is a music alien to all around it, to the bombed-out city, but casting a spell, changing what it touches. Such beauty can be a denial and an affront to all this tragedy.
But to hear Mozart in a bombed city: how much more beautiful it sounds, as if it were composed to somehow soothe the ruins, to promise a wiser future rising from the rubble.
7
I go on wandering among the broken columns, witnessing the faces of mute grief, with Mozart in my heart, like ice over a wound.
The Unseen
Kingdom
1
THERE IS A fair, which takes place in the south of France, where books are treated like roses. Writers are rarely invited to attend.
Books are displayed on long tables, with their pages open, and with crushed flowers on their open pages. The books scent the air with gentle dreams. There is indeed a mysterious mood about the place, a dawn-coloured enchantment, on account of the open books.
The lady who runs the fair wears a silk scarf and is a lady of great devotion and tenderness. She is much loved in the community of booksellers and publishers. She goes about unobtrusively, wandering among the stalls as between paths in a delightful garden of many-coloured flowers. She is responsible for the books, th
e attendances, the display of rare illuminated manuscripts, and she does it all with exquisite taste.
The main focus of interest this season are the Lewis Carroll books. There are many items being shown for the first time. It is a charming collection of manuscripts, photographs and pages of correspondence. One of his family’s descendants is attending, to lend an extra quaintness to the festival.
This year, also, an immaculate fraud has been perpetrated. A delicate scandal scents this rarefied air of books. No one talks about it openly. It is there, floating about in the charmed mood, and only the lady who organises the fair appears not to know about this delicious scandal. It seems that a writer has been rigged into winning the prestigious festival prize with forged nomination letters. It seems this forgery has put everyone under suspicion. A secret investigation is launched. All the publishers co-operate.
It is a lovely fair, and my first time attending. The lounge is beautiful, the restaurant restful, and browsing through the exhibition of books proved to be one of the most magical experiences I’ve had.
I gazed into books that took me away to distant kingdoms where I was instantly happy. In the world of these special books there is no stress, only a kind of peace, and a freedom, and a sense of having been redeemed into a weightless condition of pure beauty. The imagination renews the world like dawn does.
And yet this whispering scandal grows. Someone here, amidst all these flowers, has ruined the innocence of our faces. In this labyrinth of beauty, under a clear sky, there is someone whose face is not what it seems.
I linger among the pages of distant realms. Books from all over the universe are here. The tethered balloons are all outside. Most of us have come here in usual modes of transportation, but this year balloons borne aloft are the most favoured way.
2