by Ben Okri
The king stared deeply into the bold intimidated eyes of the soothsayer.
'Did I tell you anything else?'
'That's all you told me, your majesty.'
The king thanked the brave soothsayer, weighed him down with many gifts, and gave him a horse to bear him back to his home.
Then the king sent out emissaries all over the kingdom to find the tribe of artists. They travelled the length and breadth of the land. They went deep into the interior, to villages near shallow creeks, to the remotest communities, to peoples who lived on the hillsides, among the ritual caves. They went to the water people, to the desert people, to the savannah people, and to the people of the towns and villages. The emissaries went to the people of the masquerades, to the wandering tribes and shepherds, and to those who lived on the caravan routes and those who travelled extensively because they bought and traded goods throughout the land. But they could not find the people they sought. No one could find the tribe of artists. No one knew where they were, or who they were. The strangest thing was that all over the land, amongst most peoples, the most beautiful artefacts, medals, sculptures, shields and bronze works and golden jewels could be found and when the people were asked how they got them they said the objects came from the tribe of artists. They were objects bought in exchange for goods, services, food, clothes, or they were commissioned. But they couldn't say how, or where, or when. The objects had just mysteriously appeared in their lives when they were needed.
All this was very puzzling. And it began to appear as if the tribe of artists had designed their lives so they wouldn't be found. They would be present, they would create and share their work and enrich the life of the land but they would be invisible. They would be unseen. They would dwell as if in a separate realm.
The king sent messengers and servants everywhere and promised rich rewards for anyone who could find the tribe of artists. And the servants and messengers scattered all over the kingdom, and put out word of important commissions for works of art, and sent out announcements of competitions to find the best artists in the land. And many beautiful works were commissioned and executed, and many came forth and entered the competitions, but no one came from the tribe of artists. They remained as elusive as ever.
It began to seem as if they didn't exist, and had never existed. They seemed a rumour, an invention. It was as if the tribe of artists were a dream, a legend that the land needed and invented to explain its own creativity; or as if the tribe of artists were one of the legends, one of the many dreams of a vanished people in the kingdom, a people who had ceased to exist, a people who had disappeared and evaporated into the moods and stories of the land, a people who once were, but are no more. A people who live only in dreams.
News of the quest for this mysterious tribe filtered through to the gathered crowds, and they lived in hope that the tribe would be found so that the prince could be restored to life and health. No one from the vast crowds had ever heard of or known anything about the tribe of artists. But with the news of the quest the people hoped they would be found. So it was with great sadness that the people received the news that they could not be found and, worse, that the tribe did not exist. It was a sadness that brought a cruel poignancy to their grief and their vigil, and filled them with a hopelessness they never had before.
Their hopelessness contaminated the air of the village and the palace. It engulfed the atmosphere with an intolerable gloom. The gloom was so dense, so without music, or joy, or buoyancy, that it began to spread a sort of pestilence and many of the gathered crowds fell ill and died, and cattle died, and people of the village came down with a malaise and a deathly lethargy of spirit. A dreadful melancholy drifted about everywhere. The crops drooped. The children became pale and stopped laughing. And no birds were seen in the air. A great joylessness reigned. The crowds, in their pestilential malaise and gloom, were becoming fatal to the atmosphere and to the village and the palace. And all because the tribe of artists could not be found, and did not exist.
However when this fact was told to the king, it was reported that he merely laughed, hard and long, as if it were the strangest joke he had heard in a long time.
CHAPTER NINE
But they kept on pouring in, men and women, boys and girls who had run away from their homes just to be part of the single most wonderful and the saddest phenomenon taking place in their lifetime.
They kept pouring in, spirits and inexplicable beings, animals on leashes, elephants, dogs, cats, goats, horses, camels, donkeys; they came in all forms, and they descended on the village, and nearly destroyed it with their grief, their sorrow, and their desire to be together in so mysterious a moment of shared sympathy.
The fame of the dying prince threatened the very life of the village. The entire environs were overrun. The farms were occupied. The villagers soon found themselves hemmed in by the crush of these pilgrims and visitors, these crowds of well-wishers. The villagers soon found themselves unable to function. The kingdom slowly ground to a halt; its activities began to fall silent; too many people had abandoned their posts to come and express their sorrow, as at a great shrine.
The elders called emergency meetings and eventually put it to the king that the people must be turned away, or the kingdom would be destroyed by this unnatural sorrow. They maintained that the crowds must be sent back to their homes, and that life should return to normal in all spheres of the kingdom. They suggested that the people should be told a fiction: that the prince was recovering and desired them all to return to their lives; that all the healers had made it clear this was the best way they could help the prince get better, otherwise he would die. This cold fiction, softened somewhat by elaborate praise and gratitude for their devotion and love, was the formula proposed for getting people back to their homes, their ordinary lives. The idea was to make their returning home the true sacrifice that could help their dying prince.
The king listened to the elders dreamily. Apart from listening he did nothing. The elders discerned a silent laughter in his response, and took it as their mandate to act.
The elders made the necessary public announcements; they sent out respected figures to mingle with the people and spread the word; they made known the invented wishes of the prince.
The people did not believe the elders, nor did they trust the announcements, nor were they seduced by the expressed praise or gratitude. But in their own discussions, the people arrived at the same conclusion. They realised that they were having a deleterious effect on the village, and that they might be bringing the life of the kingdom to a halt. They knew they had to return to their normal lives. The time of enchanted sorrowing was over. The magic moment of a shared universal sadness was gone.
They desired, however, to know the true condition of the prince; and the elders, through their intermediaries, promised the most extensive announcements of the prince's health as it became known to them.
Slowly, unwillingly, the crowds dispersed. Most of them returned to their homes. Many of them didn't, and founded new villages and towns near the village of the dying prince. These were enclaves of outcasts, those who longed for escape, for new beginnings, those who had never felt at home in their homes.
Unwillingly they all dispersed. They were not the same people that they had been. Sweet sorrowing had changed them. Life in the kingdom was never the same again. It was as though a rocky hillside had been sprinkled with marigolds and mayflowers.
And so the prince, who lay in silence, never knew the effect that his dying had on the world. He remained innocent of his own fame and without any knowledge of the transformation that his condition effected in the people.
CHAPTER TEN
Then on a day without a name, on a day outside time, the prince in his dying dreamt about the maiden. She came to him, and said:
'Why are you dying?'
'Because of all the evils in the kingdom,' he said.
'What will make you better again?'
'If all the evils go away.'
'W
ill you take the evils away?' she asked him in a gentle voice.
'Yes,' he replied.
'Will you suffer the evils in yourself, to cleanse the kingdom?'
'Yes.'
'It shall be so. You shall be well again.'
'But there is one more reason why I am ill,' he said.
'What?' she asked.
'Because of you. Because I am in love with you. And I want to see you again. I am dying also because I love you and I can't see you.'
'To see me again your suffering will be great, and your happiness will be greater. For I am your destiny.'
'What must I do?'
'What you must do.'
'Is that all?' he asked, surprised.
'Yes. And whatever befalls you, never forget who you are and all will be well with you and the kingdom.'
'Who am I?'
'You are a simple man. You are loved. You are the son of a king who laughs. You are a prince.'
'And who are you?'
'I am your greatest love, and your destiny, and you are mine.'
'Will we be happy together?'
'In life and for eternity.'
'Then I am recovered. I am well. I am no longer ill. I take the evils unto myself, and I will earn you as my destiny.'
'Do what you must do. Even if it seems wrong. It will be well. For you are guided, my love, my prince.'
And then the maiden was gone from his dream. In the morning he miraculously recovered from death and opened his eyes. He lay there on his bed, feeling as though his life had altered course, as though someone had switched round his life, or given him a different consciousness, a different mind.
He felt as though he were someone other than he was, that another higher oddly illuminated being had been implanted in his old self. He felt more alive and more awake and more aware than he had ever felt in his life. The new illumination in his head was almost unbearable. The new clarity of his consciousness was almost intolerable. So clear and sharp and fresh was his mind that he simply didn't know what to do with himself. It was a clarity, an aliveness, that bordered on madness. He felt he would go mad for the sheer brilliance and limpidity of his new consciousness following his recovery from death. Whatever he gazed upon was clear to him. Whatever he thought about was wholly transparent to him. He had in him a new kind of light that pierced everything. And all life, all conundrums, all the difficulties, all the problems became clear and simple. And he saw now quite clearly the purpose behind everything. He saw the meaning in all things. And as open to him was the mystery of the wall he gazed at and the farthest star and all the space that wasn't space that was in between. He seemed to understand all, to know all things, not because he knew them, but because of this substituted consciousness in him that was a pure light that knew all things simply and without words.
He lay there, in his chamber, on his bed, where he had gone from the world for a long time; and he simply lay with his eyes open and his mind in perfect tranquillity, roaming realms of wonder, with a gentle smile on his face, a smile that would now always be a permanent part of his face, along with a knowing, aware twinkle in his eye, even in the greatest suffering.
And his father, the king, came into the chamber and found his son awake, awakened, and quite new, like a newborn thing, with a smile on his face as if he had achieved some unexpected feat without knowing how; and the king was very happy. The king was so happy that he declared there be a feast that should last seven days throughout the whole kingdom. There was great joy and feasting throughout the land and happiness swept through the kingdom at the news that the prince had been restored to life. It was as if all the people had been given a new life, as if everyone had been changed, as if all had been given a new beginning, as though all had been restored again to a state of enchantment that they never had, but which was familiar.
This happiness lasted seven days; and, like a rich rainfall, the happiness sank into the spirit of the people, and lay there in the underground rivers of their joyfulness, while life returned to normal.
And that day, when the king came into his son's chamber and found him alive, and smiling, he roared with a strange new laughter from dawn to dusk; and all over the kingdom the liberated laughter of the king echoed in the hearts of his people, and in the underground rivers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The prince's recovery was swift and wonderful. And his dying had changed him profoundly. As if he too had found an eternal reason for smiling at all life, he understood more the nature of his father's great laughter. He knew more clearly what he wanted. He knew more clearly who he was. He had seen his end, had travelled his road to its vanishing over the inevitable abyss, and had seen where all stories come from, and where they go.
In his death he had witnessed his life in advance, had lived it all, lived it through, suffered it, endured it, wept for it, and had been granted the mercy of having forgotten it while still remembering it as a distant melody that is heard just a few moments before it is played. All this was clear to him. He had done it all in advance, in death. Now his body had to catch up with what his spirit had already gone beyond, transcended. To those who have been awoken from a true death, this is a peculiar grace, and a unique burden. They are unsurprised a moment before the big events of their lives. They live a constant, accentuated déjà vu.
And so the prince stayed in bed and listened to the world he had been absent from. He asked how long he'd been away and all the king told him was:
'Long enough for things to be at the right time for you, my son, to play your part in the scheme of things in the kingdom.'
'But how long is that?' the prince asked.
'Long enough for legend to be formed, for myth to grow, and for the land to be changed.'
'But how long is that in moons or tides?'
'Long enough for the people to no longer think of it in moons or tides, but in stories.'
'That long?'
'Not long, but concentrated.'
'What do you mean, father?'
'It can't be measured in time, but in enchantments. Be content with this answer, and as soon as you are strong enough to get around, go and thank the women of the village, and all the courtiers, and the men too, thank them for all their prayers while you were ill. The people showed you more love than can be told in stories, but now that you are well they would not want to show it. Great events bring out great unsuspected feelings in people that they would be too shy to acknowledge. Thank them simply, then go about your life in a normal way, as if nothing has happened. This way you will reassure the people, and they will be normal, and stability will return to the kingdom.'
'But father, does normal mean not doing anything?'
'It means being your true self.'
'My true self?'
'Yes.'
'However I am?'
'Yes.'
'Whatever I have become, because of what dying has done to me?'
'Whatever you have become.'
'For good or ill?'
'For good or ill.'
'And this will be fine?'
'It will be fine. It will allow the people to be what they truly are. It will give them the freedom to grow, and not be afraid. They will trust your truth.'
'Thank you, father, for telling me this. Often one does not know if one has the right to be what one is.'
'It takes a long time, my son, to know what one is, and to be one's true self. Dying, I think, has quickened it for you.'
'Something has quickened for me. And I hope it is for the best.'
'It is for the best. A blessed providence watches over these things as a master-gardener watches over the flowers and fruits of the orchard. There is no quickening that is not attended to with the greatest care and love.'