The Age of Magic

by Ben Okri

  ‘I bet you do,’ Sam said. ‘Everyone wants to be free; and the freer they are the more unfree they become.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ said Jute.

  ‘The freest person I ever saw,’ said Sam, ‘was a madman in the streets of Accra. He could do anything he wanted. He pissed on oranges in the marketplace. He insulted everybody. He said anything he liked. But I didn’t envy him one bit. Freedom is harder to handle than power, more existential than love. Too much freedom is spoiling us. It’s the most overrated…’

  ‘We’re not talking about freedom, we’re talking about will,’ said Jute, bluntly. ‘Let’s eat, shall we…?’

  They began eating, and while they ate and drank they all looked at Lao, waiting for him to announce the quality that was greater than will.

  They all waited, except Mistletoe. She went on drawing, stopping long enough, now and then, to fork up a piece of sea-bass. She knew Lao’s perversity, and had come to understand the reasoning behind it. They had talked about it often in the long conversations they had in bed in the mornings. In those conversations all aspects of life were their inspiration. They had talked about how, in the heat of a discussion, when people are pressing you to answer a question, it is often better not to do so. In the middle of a passionate debate people tend not to hear what is being said, and they have an inclination to disagree. Lao felt it was better if people could hear what was being said indirectly, for the deepest hearing happens long after the listening, and listening often awakens resistance.

  ‘It’s easier to be clever than to listen,’ Lao said on one of those mornings.

  ‘It took me more than a decade to hear something my father told me,’ Mistletoe replied.

  ‘It can take a lifetime.’

  ‘We really hear long after we have heard. We hear best in recollection.’

  ‘The best hearing is when the original words are resurrected in another experience, echoing through time…’ Mistletoe went on quietly drawing, thinking about this with a smile.

  ‘You still haven’t answered,’ Sam said to Lao at last. ‘Come on. What is the quality that’s greater than will?’

  ‘Yes, you’ve had long enough to think of something. I’ve nearly finished my steak,’ said Propr.

  They were clearly frustrated by Lao’s silence. Mistletoe, smiling still, knew that Lao was allowing the mood to thicken, increasing everyone’s annoyance, the better to turn the mystery. People are surprisingly impervious, Lao often contended, and strategies of cunning simplicity are required to make them hear.

  While they waited, he sat silently. Then Jim, finishing his wienerschnitzel, said:

  ‘Lao needs a lifetime to come up with something. Sadly, we can’t wait that long.’

  ‘I don’t need any time at all,’ Lao retorted. ‘What I want to say can be said in one word. It can even be demonstrated. In fact, the demonstration has already begun; this journey to Arcadia is the demonstration, and what will endure of it will be the proof.’ He smiled cheekily. ‘But my actual verbal answer will be given to an apparently unrelated question while you are all looking the other way.’

  ‘You’re just perverse,’ said Jim.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Lao.

  ‘You’re infuriating,’ said Husk.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’re a tease,’ said Riley.

  Lao shrugged.

  ‘You haven’t got an answer, you’re just bluffing,’ said Propr.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  ‘Don’t indulge him,’ said Jim. ‘Ignore him. And ignore the other one too.’

  ‘Who’s the other one?’ asked Lao. ‘Oh, I know.’

  ‘Who?’ said Husk. And then, ‘Oh, yes, I know too.’

  ‘We all know,’ said Propr.

  ‘Can you please not mention that name?’ said Jute. ‘I want to sleep tonight.’

  ‘I think we have invested that name with too much power,’ said Lao. An uneasy silence fell over them. ‘More than that,’ Lao went on in the silence, ‘we’ve somehow created him, and now we’re becoming the victims of our own creation.’

  ‘He’s real enough,’ said Jim solemnly. ‘He’s the one who assembled us for this journey.’

  ‘Have you met him?’ asked Lao.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any physical proof that he exists?’

  ‘You have as much proof as any of us – the notes, messages, communications…’

  ‘They’re not proof.’

  ‘I’ve seen him,’ said Jute. ‘In glimpses.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the journey, in mirrors, here and there.’

  ‘Figments of your imagination.’

  ‘I’ve had glimpses of him too,’ said Husk.

  ‘Me too,’ said Riley.

  ‘Me too,’ said Sam.

  ‘I still say we’ve made him up,’ said Lao.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Jim.

  ‘You know,’ ventured Lao. ‘He’s a group entity.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jute.

  ‘Something spectral that a group of people create among themselves.’

  ‘How do they do it?’ asked Riley in a tiny voice.

  ‘With their minds,’ said Lao. ‘He’s a creation of our minds.’

  They waited for him to go on.

  ‘Explain!’ said Propr.

  ‘There’s nothing to explain,’ said Lao.

  ‘I don’t like where this conversation is going,’ said Jute.

  ‘No, you’re wrong’ said Jim. ‘He’s real. He’s not something created by our minds. If it weren’t for him we wouldn’t be on this journey. He’s the guiding figure of our adventure.’

  ‘He is a creation of our minds,’ repeated Lao. ‘The sooner we admit it, the better. Besides, a creation of the group mind can be more powerful than an actual person.’

  ‘Powerful how?’ said Riley.

  ‘And in a good way or a bad way?’ Propr added.

  ‘It depends on the group. If our underlying dynamic is evil, the force we create will be evil. If it’s good, the force will be benign,’ said Lao.

  ‘Are you making this up?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Don’t listen,’ Jim said. ‘Don’t let him spook you with all that mind stuff. The person we’re talking about is real.’

  ‘I’m easy about it all anyway,’ said Lao. ‘Everyone must live in accordance with their own light or darkness.’

  A shadow seemed to fall over them and those still eating picked at their food a little disconsolately. They listened to the whisperings of the mountain wind. Then, one by one, they went up to their rooms.

  Book 4

  A Little Night Magic

  1

  Lao and Mistletoe did not feel like sleeping just yet. Being in a new town was a call to adventure. They stayed in their room long enough to change into more informal clothes. Then they stole out of the hotel to find what entertainment the small town offered.

  They walked down the road that ran alongside the lake. The mountain loomed in the dark, unseen. Bright clusters of towns, rising tier upon tier, dazzled from the other side of the lake. To their right was the distant Klewenalp.

  As they walked they heard music. It seemed to come from the lake. Lao, thinking about the lake and the mountain, said:

  ‘A lake’s mystery depends upon her surroundings.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If a lake is surrounded by forest…’

  ‘It takes on the quality of a fairy tale.’

  ‘But if it’s at the foot of a mountain…’

  ‘It becomes sublime.’

  They walked on in silence. They found, without knowing when, that they had turned off the road and wandered towards the town. The essence of pine was carried from the mountain on the swift wind. Elegant houses, of wood and stone, appeared dimly in the faint light. They had read that the mountains had given rise to legends of dragons and giants, gho
sts and witches and even meerkats. Something of those legends scented the air as they wandered through the quiet streets, following their intuition.

  Everything they saw was wrapped in the mystery of first encounters. They stared at gardens and school buildings, at darkened restaurants and shop-windows and little parks. They knew they were not seeing what was there but only the strangeness and the general beauty of the new place. They had often talked about this in the past, in fact they had abbreviated it to a formula: to see something once you need to see it thrice. But they also felt that first seeing had something special about it and they tried to be attentive to the revelations and misunderstandings of first encounters, with books, people and places.

  They walked through the dream-like streets of the town, aware that they were idealising it. Quaint buildings, like dolls’ houses, were simplified by their gaze. A fairy tale mood accompanied them through the sleeping town. The night invested everything with a quality from another realm. The strangeness made them alert.

  They passed a dimly lit blue and yellow post office, wooden chalets and stone houses. A clock tower stood mute in the centre of a street. They couldn’t read the time on its face. The statue of a boy interrupted them. It seemed as if everything was stripped of its original intention and now stood in the dark, like signposts in a world of dreams.

  Lao was gliding through a world he knew before birth. Mistletoe was in a lucid dream. The wind was gentle, the air pure and lovely to breathe. Each breath felt like a purification.

  Things which we experience for the first time and which delight us are glimpses of Eden, Lao thought. The beauty of first encounters is so fleeting. The wise wait for time to recast its spell before returning to those encounters again.

  ‘We’re not coming back here for a long time, if ever,’ he said aloud.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I feel it.’

  ‘Then we should really take it in while we’re here.’

  ‘But can we?’

  ‘We can try.’

  ‘The first time will be the best, though,’ said Lao.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mistletoe said. ‘There’s wisdom in repetition, in going to the same place often, seeing the same painting again and again, re-reading a much loved book.’

  ‘Most people would say repetition is boring.’

  ‘The young maybe.’

  ‘We’re young,’ Lao laughed briefly. ‘I think the first seeing, the first mis-reading is the truest.’

  ‘Why? You didn’t think so before. You used to say thrice is once.’

  ‘I still do. But I think something of our deeper selves lives in the magic of first encounters. We try later to recapture that first enchantment, but only rare experiences reawaken it.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll awaken the magic of this walk in a future journey.’

  ‘I suppose that’s what a classic is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A work that has the spring of eternal freshness within it. It manages to be new each time you encounter it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mistletoe said. ‘But some time needs to pass for the magic to be renewed.’

  With wonder and breath-held silence, they went through the streets as if they were tiptoeing through the room of a sleeping child. They would have liked to get lost in the town, lost in its mood, because reality is the greatest misunderstanding of them all.

  2

  Mistletoe had a sudden uncertain premonition. She was about to say something about Malasso when Lao pointed to the lights of a pub in the middle of a lane.

  They stepped into its roar like waking from a dream. Loud drunken conversations crowded the smoky air and a rock anthem thundered from the jukebox. Dark walls were plastered with fading posters of dancing girls, music concerts, and festivals. The place smelled of spilt beer.

  Faces turned as Lao and Mistletoe walked in. Lao felt the gazes returning him to the world of colour, as if the air was suddenly charged. Amid the smoke he felt the weight of a mute judgement. It was as if their presence in the pub had contravened some unspoken law.

  Lao and Mistletoe stopped and looked round, assessing the quality of the mood, feeling for its dangers. For a long moment, in spite of the anthemic roar from the jukebox, silence seemed to prevail.

  Deciding that what one decrees from within is what the world sees in you, and at that moment happening to see himself as a prince from an infinite kingdom, Lao regained the integrity of his being. He cast a protective spell around Mistletoe, as she cast one around him.

  So they strode into the depths of the pub like enchanters, altering reality by altering themselves. All at once they seemed like regulars who had been away for a long time. They went to the counter and ordered two pints of the local beer and looked around, as if they were curious about the new faces they saw leaning against the walls, standing in clusters, darkening the ceiling with smoke.

  3

  Lao engaged one of the bartenders in conversation. He asked about the copper tankards that were ranged on shelves along the walls according to their sizes. Etched on the side of some was the figure of a goat-footed man, on others a noble stag. The barman told him that every year, on midsummer nights, they had drinking competitions in the open air. The winner, in addition to their prize, got to drink from a tankard. It was a tradition that went back a thousand years. But this year the winner had been a complete unknown; and when he won he had disappeared back to where he came from without drinking from the winner’s tankard or collecting his prize, like a figure from a fairy tale.

  ‘What was the prize?’ Lao asked.

  The barman gave an obscene leer.

  ‘It’s a secret. Only the mayor knows.’

  The publican had to go and serve someone. Mistletoe and Lao drank their beer in silence, leaning against the counter.

  The pub had changed its mind about them.

  4

  They soon discovered a pool table at the back of the pub. On the walls there were dusty swords, ancient poignards, muskets, an armorial shield, and the stuffed head of a stag with branching antlers.

  To their surprise, among the players they saw their driver, Bruno the Second. He was coming to the end of a game with one of the bulky denizens of the establishment. Bruno was not surprised to see them.

  ‘I knew you two would turn up here sooner or later,’ he said.

  He seemed different from the fresh-faced young man who had driven them from Basel station to their hotel. He seemed more himself.

  ‘I’m glad you came. We’re not having a very good game. This man is a lazy player – don’t worry, he doesn’t speak English. Would you like to play? A bet would be nice, don’t you think?’

  Lao was immediately interested. He liked the occasional gamble, though he hadn’t played pool in years and was very rusty. But he was fond of it, the sociability it called for, the concentration it demanded, the precision it required. It was a game of courage and canniness, risk and rhythm, intuition and intelligence. He enjoyed its theatricality. Being upset when beaten and generous in victory were part of its pleasures. The game offered him scope to express both his villainy and his heroism.

  Bruno dispatched his mediocre challenger, invigorated by the new arrivals. With a cocky air he racked up the balls and chalked his cue stick. He and Lao agreed on a bet, just big enough to compel concentration.

  ‘I’m at a disadvantage,’ Lao said.

  ‘How?’ asked Bruno. ‘Because you’re black?’

  Lao looked at him and smiled. It had been said with warmth, with innocence even. That made all the difference.

  ‘No,’ Lao said. ‘Because my woman is here. There is more pressure on me.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Can’t afford to lose, eh?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘It’s easier to lose if you have to win.’

  Lao shrugged. He had been lying. He knew he could lose a thousand times and Mistletoe would put it in context with a phrase. She made herself invisible to Lao. The pressure was on Bruno
, but Bruno didn’t know it.

  5

  Bruno won the break. The game progressed, and the crowd of on-lookers grew. They brought their murmurs, their side bets, and their cigarette smoke. Bruno played to the limit of his limitation.

  He talked while he played. Lao liked him the more he listened.

  ‘All my life I have wanted to be a doctor. I have one more year to go. I want to go to Africa, to help the poor and the sick. I am doing two other jobs besides being your driver. My father was an engineer. Now he’s retired. He worked in Africa. Maybe you know him. My mother is a teacher. It’s because of her I speak English. Is my English good?’

  Lao nodded.

  ‘Thank you. I was born near Basel, but all my life I have dreamt of going to Africa. I don’t know why. All my school-mates used to read books about America or mountain climbers or racing-car drivers, but I read everything I could about Africa. Isn’t that strange? I have never been there, but I feel in a way African. Can I say that?’

  Lao shrugged again.

  ‘Why not?’ he said encouragingly.

  Bruno paused in his play. He had been playing formidably well. He gave Lao a long thoughtful look. Then he said:

  ‘This feeling I have for Africa is one of the greatest mysteries of my life.’

  Lao wasn’t sure what to say, so he stayed silent. He had met people with a nostalgia for Africa. Most of them had never been to the continent, but said they had Africa in their souls. Some of them spoke of Africa as a place they had known; it was a place in them older than memory. Reincarnation was a subject Lao seldom discussed. To know something means needing no explanation and having no need to explain to others. Life is coloured by such knowledge. To know one thing is to know many others. To know is to be silent. Lao never spoke of such things. Instead, he played. Bruno had lost a shot, and it was Lao’s turn.

  6

  Having not played the game for a while, Lao had no sense of his limitations. To his mild surprise he potted balls he would normally have missed even before he’d played them. In the past, faced with such shots, he would fear that he couldn’t pocket the ball. More often than not, it worked out as he feared.