Starbook

by Ben Okri

  CHAPTER FORTY–NINE

  In the forest there are the seeds of trees that lie in the earth for a very long time and seem to be doing nothing. There are plants that are very small and over many years they appear not to grow at all. The sages say that there are some prayers that take a thousand years to be answered; some say such a period of time is less than a moment in the mind of God. There are times when a people take a long time to hear what is being told them, a long time to respond to a provocation, a long time before they are roused to go to war. There are people who take a long time before they acknowledge the greatness of someone amongst them, a long time before mourning the death of a king, a long time before they fall in love. There are plants that never seem to flower or blossom, and then one day, to everyone's surprise, they bloom with astonishing splendour. There are plants that never seem to grow or change, and then one day, to the keen observer, they reveal a shining new leaf, and then, afterwards, they grow at a surprising rate. There are people who never smile, never play, and then, one day, they are like someone new, as if a benign sun has risen in their hearts. Different reasons for these things. They say the gods delay the revelation of our destiny, till it is upon us and the revelation and the living of it are one. They say that about the deep matters of life the rash hurry, but the wise, guided by an instinct beyond reason, choose to delay. Sometimes delay is fear. Sometimes delay is weakness. Sometimes delay is uncertainty. Sometimes delay is prophecy. Sometimes delay is awaiting a sign, the right moment, an alignment, a harmony in the heart with the heart's star in heaven.

  The maiden kept delaying her wedding, her marriage, her choice of suitor, because deep in her heart she knew that the person she truly loved had not yet entered her life.

  The more her suitors clamoured and threatened, the more she was possessed by the spirit of delay. She became fertile in the invention of new conditions, trials, contests and qualifications. She invented new doubts. She inclined one way then swung to another. She said she could not see any one of the suitors for all the suitors: they were like a forest, and she could not see a single tree. She wanted them to give her breathing space. She wanted to see not their actions, their deeds, but their shadows. She asked each of the suitors to bring her their shadow, so she could see what their spirits were really like. This became a famous riddle. The suitors were perplexed. They did not know how to detach their shadows from themselves. The suitors went about the place consulting witchdoctors, herbalists, wizards, sages, wise old women, witches, but no one could tell them how to separate their shadow from their bodies and give it as an object to the maiden. This problem kept them occupied for a long time.

  All over the village, along the great trading routes, among the masters of the tribe, and even in the realm of the spirits this problem of how to give someone your shadow caused much discussion, amusement, and thought.

  No one had the answer. But everyone talked about it. The conundrum soon reached the ears of the new pupil. He told his father, the king, about it; and his father, roaring with laughter that made many seeds in the forest suddenly burst into life, and made many barren women become pregnant, and many pregnant women suddenly give birth, and many rivers overflow their banks, and rain fall in dry places, said:

  'My son, the answer is as simple as giving someone your love.'

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Not all things glimpsed in a dream are clear. All dreams retain an enigma. Not all events glimpsed in the great book of life among the stars are clear. Only while dreaming does the dream make sense. When one awakes, that which made sense suddenly becomes strange, tinged with mystery. When one dreams one beholds a complete picture; when one awakes one finds a few fragments in one's hand of what was a glorious vision. With these fragments one tries to recreate, or suggest, a beauty that is lost when one returns from the stars.

  The gaps in the forest began to change; the prince, at first, did not understand the nature of this change. On one of his fateful visits home to the palace the prince noticed that it was an unusually blue dawn. The forest sparkled with silver and with mists that gave off a roseate and golden hue. Cobwebs, with droplets of dew, sparkled like little necklaces of diamonds. It was a dawn in which the trees and the animals, the plants and the birds were stirring from a beautiful dream. And their dream was the bluish colour of the world at dawn. The prince, as he sought the gap that would take him home, felt that he was entering a world he had never seen before. The gods and the spirits shone out from the haze of gold and blue, the roseate hue, and rays of pure sunlight like the magic swords of heaven piercing the enchanted forest. The prince stopped to retain the wonder of that moment. Then he found a tree that he had never noticed before. It was a tree like any other, except that its trunk was pure and fresh like the face of a pretty young girl and it had clean green leaves like broad green hands and it had buds on its branches like the joined palms of children at prayer. The prince sat under the tree, rested on its trunk, and was borne off to sleep. But it was not a normal sleep, nor was it a long one. And during that sleep many things happened to him that he would only remember in fragments of dreams over the many years in the suffering to come. He dreamt the beginning of all things, and their end. He dreamt all the stories of humanity. He dreamt of the answer to the greatest question, told him by a being in space unlimited inside a kingdom of silence. All that he was, all that he would be; all that was, all that would be; and the solution to death; the answer of immortality; he dreamt them all in a brief moment of sleep. Then he awoke refreshed and found himself in a different place. The tree was in flower. The birds had awoken and were singing. Nine maidens in white drifted past him smiling. The forest was gone. The gap he sought stood before him like a ring of enchanted fire. He stepped into the fire and found himself on the other side, near the river of his village. He was full of questions. He made for the palace, and summoned the elders. He knew his time was running out. He had little time left before his life would change for ever. And everything he did, or would do, would hasten time's swiftness. He had to live swiftly, to do what remained for him to do, and yet act as if he had all the time in the world, which he did have.

  CHAPTER FIFTY–ONE

  Sometimes an innovation repeated becomes a tradition. This one took place in the presence of the king and the royal bards who recorded what they witnessed in their future songs and legends. The prince, as if in the grip of a poetic vision, under the spell of a sublime rhythm, wanted all slaves freed and returned home to their tribes. He wanted the elders and the rich and the chieftains to share their wealth and their food with the poor. He wanted to know how big the world was, and what the people on the other side of the world looked like. He wanted to find out if they knew things his people didn't know, to link hands with them. He wanted to know why the elders hadn't taken sufficient interest in the rest of the world. He had visions, he said, that all people were children of the stars; and he wanted to meet all his sisters and brothers of the earth. He wanted to know if there were better ways of living, of governing, of improving the life of his people.

  The elders were silent as the prince spoke; but the king, when he heard the avalanche of questions, laughed and laughed, as if there were nothing runnier than seeking knowledge about the wide world and its varied people. He laughed as if his son's quest for extensive knowledge were a wonderful joke. The son sensed a disquieting wisdom in his father's laughter, but he was not deterred, in fact he felt oddly encouraged.

  'Nothing is as it seems, my son,' said his father, in between his bursts of laughter. 'Everything goes into reverse. What is up is down, what is down is up.'

  The prince asked as many questions as the rising sun asks the sleeping earth. That day, in legend, became known as the Day of the Great Questions; and in the future it would become a tradition, a day in which people would ask one another the important questions of life, and attempt to answer them in song, in meditation, or in art. The bards exaggerate when they sing that the prince asked questions that lasted seven days; but th
ey speak the truth when they sing that after that day the prince never asked the elders another question ever again.

  The elders were concerned about his new desire for knowledge about distant people across the sea. They feared that new knowledge would render them irrelevant.

  'If he wants to know so much about the world why don't we give him to the white spirits,' one of them muttered, 'then he can find out all the knowledge he wants.'

  If they had not been so inward-looking things might have been very different when the white wind blew ...

  CHAPTER FIFTY–TWO

  Now that the prince had sufficiently recovered, now that the prince was home for a brief visit, now that the prince was enlightened enough to hear without ears, and to see without his eyes, the king, his father, decided to spend some sublime time alone with his son, to talk to and listen to him, and to impart what little he knew of the mysteries of things, of kingship. And while the son slept he spoke over the sleeping form, knowing he was speaking into ears that would hear without resistance, into ears that would hear purely, and into a mind that would remember nothing of what was said except its pure spirit. The prince would act from this knowledge that deep down he would have made his own.

  And so in silence, the king said:

  'There are barbarians of the high as much as there are barbarians of the low. There are barbarians of the nobility and barbarians of the chieftaincy. There are barbarians of the intelligent too, my son. Don't let the clever words or the brilliant mind of anyone blind you to the fact that they can also be stupid. There are more intelligent people who are imbeciles than imbeciles who are wise. Intelligence is a form of blindness; it prevents people from seeing the truth. People value their mental power too much even as it increases their fundamental errors. Trust more someone who has simplicity of spirit, goodness of soul, a fearless heart and an enquiring mind. Beware of people who use the word "I" too much. Beware of people who trust only what they have seen, or heard, or touched, or smelt; they are limited people and are easy to deceive and corrupt; for whatever they are is founded on the limitation of their senses. People's convictions don't amount to much. People's passions don't amount to much. Do not fear sorcerers or those who conjure for the devil. So long as you do not believe in it evil cannot harm you. And fear is the greatest and most powerful form of belief. So do not fear anything. There is only one true cure for fear, my son, and that is knowledge. Knowledge of the true ancient way of the tried and tested mysteries that was brought down to us from our ancestors. Keep to the path that has led to your light and all else will follow. Notice the higher comedy in most things. You have your own way, but ever have a place in your heart for humour.

  'All power is but the shadow of true power.' I have heard of a man who grieved because he thought he had conquered the world; he had nothing more to do. He could have conquered himself. Afterwards all the lands he conquered turned to dust. Only fragments of stories remained. He could have found heaven in a single thought. His is one of the greatest comedies in the human story. There are kings who do not know what they are kings for. A human being ought to know what they are human for. It is a strange blindness to live a life, roaming the earth, without understanding why. There is no tragedy greater than a god that does not know itself. There is no greater comedy than a human being who looks at their reflection in a calm river and sees a complete stranger that is them.

  'We have three bodies in one. Only one of them endures. But nothing perishes. Everything remembers. All time is here. Don't worry yourself with passing sufferings, fashions, ideas, notions, conceits, disasters, failures. All are illusions. Maintain a sublime detachment from all things, and the greatest love will shine through you. Be silent. Be still. Sometimes our minds are our worst enemies. Do not hold preferences too strongly. Be guided by that clear voice within. Drink the cup of suffering that life gives you when it does. Pass through the narrow space. Do not cling to any fixed ideas of who or what you are. You are more than whatever you think in simplicity. Being a prince is nothing compared to a man or woman who has discovered that deep down in them there are gods. Humility makes you great. Who can destroy the air or the invisible thing that makes the universe real? Be as nothing; be everything. Do not fear loss. Nothing is lost on the way that is not found among the stars. A way has been shown for you to reach me when you need to; and the wisest of the universe are here for you in that clear voice within. All the guidance you will ever need is within you, as part of your own mysterious nature. All human beings are princes and princesses, but only very few know their kingdom.

  'Throughout your life you will slowly acquire a family of people from all over the world. We have many families. Remember to stop when you have ripened. Call forth what you need only when you need it. Live simply. Carry with you only your shadow, and surrender that in the light. Be light, in spirit and deeds. Don't be above people. Lower yourself without being low. Have dignity without showing it. Be a prince without displaying it. Let your wisdom be invisible to the eyes of men and women. Rule as if the people are ruling themselves. When power is needed, summon and use it. When war is needed then rise and go to war in the highest way, and win in the quickest way, and use it to create better conditions for all. Many things are forgivable if you are truly extending the good in the world. Do not try to be perfect, but only to get better. And don't carry any of my advice in your head. Forget it all. What you need to guide you is in you. Your light is your guide and your power. You have already awoken it and all you have to do is to keep it alive, whatever life brings you. As you know now, you are a child of the stars and all the universe is your home. But the centre of the circle is the home of your home. Dwell there ever, in your heart. And you will transcend death. Then your life will never be a failure or a success, a tragedy or a comedy. It will be immeasurable.'

  CHAPTER FIFTY–THREE

  The prince slept profoundly through the magic hour when his father gazed in silence over his sleeping form. And the prince had dreams of great beauty, which he could not remember, but which had a deep impact on his being, and on his life. Afterwards he found himself both a deeper and a lighter person; he dwelt more naturally in the beautiful silences in the air and he found that he smiled more, that within him grew the mood of an everlasting laughter. He also discovered, a little later, that he could control his visibility. He could be visible or become invisible by choice, by will, using a knowledge, a technique, that was whispered to him in a dream. Afterwards, during his great suffering, which coincided with the years of his great enlightenment, many techniques, many methods, many laws, and a clear elucidation of the way, were whispered to him in dreams. Much later he realised that seeds of the truth were being planted in his sleep and sometimes in the vast moments when he dwelt in contemplation of the wonderful silences in the air. Often he would perceive himself in the centre of a golden circle, and this much later during the worst years of his slavery. He found then that dwelling in the centre of that golden circle transcended the agony of slavery. Beyond the flesh burning in great suffering he knew the sublime fire that was itself an illumination in the throne at the brilliant black centre of the golden circle of light.

  Sometimes, in the village of artists, running an errand or taking a rest under a tree in the forest, he would pass through a blue gap in the world and arrive at the torments of his enslavement in an alien land. His bride was gone. His child was gone. He had survived the monstrous crossing of the sea of evil, where slaves lay chained ankle to ankle, wrist to wrist, in the coffin of the hold, in the ship, on the waves of an empire's dream of power. He had arrived in a new land that was rich with blood and guilt and hope. He had survived the lash. He had survived the degradation. He had survived being less than a man, or a dog, or an insect, or a beast. He had survived the loss of his love, his kingdom, his home, his earth. He had survived being forced into a marriage with a wife that was not his wife but the mistress of his owner. He found himself listening, in odd tranquillity, as his owner made love all night to h
is wife that was not his wife. And he listened on many other nights too, gazing at the stars, dwelling in the sublime fire in the centre of the golden circle. And he knew then as now that it was an odd fate indeed to live through such suffering while being blessed with such illumination. If he were to sum up the paradox of his being, in those moments in the forest, under the tree where he rested, and passed into the blue gaps, and saw distant revelations, he would say it was this: How do you survive the worst with the highest? What is the music of this paradox? What is its song? And can you show anyone its shadow, so they can see the spirit of such a conjunction of the sublime and the horror? And yet, for all time, in the present and future story, the prince found within him the unquenchable mood of an immeasurable laughter. And all this was born on the night when, unknown to him, a father gazed with love on the form of his sleeping son.