by Ben Okri
In the past, before a game began, Lao always knew whether he would win or lose. Often, leaning towards a lazy fatalism, he knew deep down that he would lose; but he would play for fun, and lose anyway. Then he would feel bad. The bad feeling, stored away for the next game, made him feel he would lose again.
Then sometimes when he won it was in spite of himself. When he thought about it, though, he realised that when he won it was usually because he was absorbed in the game, engaged but detached, and that natural flow made him victorious. He found that he could determine the outcome from one moment to another if he danced with the nature of his opponent’s game, playing as if in a dream.
7
In the past, Lao estimated his chance of victory or defeat on how well his opponent played. But he sometimes found that he was victorious even when his opponent was many times better than him. And when he thought about it, he came to the conclusion that there are three levels of skill: the actual, the real, and the amplified. The actual skill is the game as one plays it normally: it is apparent. The real skill emerges in the negative spaces of the game: it is one’s potential. Amplified skill, superior to the others, is akin to perpetual inspiration. It is when a player is possessed by a higher force. To have all three levels consistently high is what makes a master. But genius plays the infinite game.
Then there is the game of reality, and the reality of the game.
These were some nebulous fruits of Lao’s meditations on his victories and defeats.
8
For the first time in his life, inspired by an Arcadia growing in him, Lao played with no sense of limitation. He played with an enchanted freedom. It was as though he had left behind all his complicated baggage. It was curious that the new bud of tranquillity in him had found something so ordinary as a game of pool to reveal its powers.
He went round the green baize table, potting balls leisurely, inspired by the click of contact. He didn’t soar, or experience an epiphany; he was no different from normal. He was just more himself than normal. He felt himself to be a truer Lao; and some mysterious picture he had of himself was clearer.
As he played he was dimly aware of the faces watching them, of the smell of beer, and the pop song on the jukebox. With clean shots he potted a blue ball, then a red, then a yellow. The balls dropped into the pocket with a maternal sound.
For a moment he was aware also of the mountains around them. He glimpsed the dream that lurked in the heart of reality. He felt both in the present and eternal. For a moment, he was his fact and his fantasy. He had already decided the outcome of the game, and was merely toying with the route by which to get there.
By then, the atmosphere in the pub was electric, presided over by the stag’s head. Bruno kept twirling his cue stick between his palms. Lao kept on winning. Mistletoe noticed the unusual gleam in one of his eyes and included it in the sketch she had been making of the two of them. She had never drawn people playing pool before, and this was a unique opportunity. She drew the faces round the table, hinted at the smoky atmosphere; even the stag’s head found a place in her drawing.
While pondering a shot Lao found himself staring at that head. He had a sudden vision of a magnificent stag high on a rock in the dark mountain. His mind wandered for a second. When he took the shot he missed the pocket and found he had lost his Arcadian mood. He began to play badly. He lost game after game. Then Bruno, prancing round the table, put the balls away with a vengeance, and caught up with him in the scores.
It occurred to Lao that, on the whole, people don’t change. He hadn’t changed. He had the same bad habits of mind. We are like layers of rock, he thought, and our true self is covered over with strata of experience, habit, education, ideology. The true person is in there, somewhere. Can it be awoken? I was once a magnificent stag high up on the mountaintop. Can I be that stag again?
This thought came as a shock to Lao, but he didn’t have time to think it through. The game was coming to an end and he was losing. To make matters worse, Bruno had him snookered.
9
At that moment Lao also had a premonition of Malasso. He sensed his presence in the night, and it made him shiver. Then it occurred to him, as he got ready to take the shot from his snookered position, that a tincture of evil aids excellence. The evil faces from history rose up in his mind. He allowed them to summon a force of opposition in him. From the air he stole the power of heroes. He succeeded in his shot, and played with a new concentration. A gem-like toughness compacted itself in him.
It was at this point that Bruno made his gravest error. He sidled across to Mistletoe and gave her drawing his intense concentration.
‘What is this?’ he asked, charmingly. ‘Ah, such a beautiful drawing! You are making art as we play? You make your friend look too serious, no? I like the stuffed stag. Very realistic. You have beauty and talent, yes?’
Bruno continued in this way in a friendly voice just as Lao was contemplating a difficult shot. It was a ricochet blue into the middle pocket from an awkward angle. Lao frowned. It seemed the attention Bruno was paying Mistletoe was working.
But Bruno did not know that between some people exists the original Enochian language, the ability to speak to each other in spirit. He did not know what had been forged between these two people, forged through time, gnosis, and their mutual commitment to the highest things in life.
Bruno did not know that Mistletoe saw through him and thought it shabby that he was playing Iago to Lao’s concentration.
She did something curious. She included Bruno in the sketch, placed him in a net of rough lines, and on his back she heaped rocks and around him she drew the dark women of mythology, Lilith, the lamia, the medusa.
Bruno, noticing that Lao was fighting his distraction, leant towards Mistletoe again.
‘A beautiful artist and a beautiful woman…’ he murmured.
But when he looked at the drawing again, he froze.
Mistletoe, in a soft voice, said, ‘I think a lesson is called for.’
Lao may or may not have heard. But he smiled. Reaching for an obscure evil in him, and converting it into skill, the ricochet was executed, and the ball returned to its home. The rest of the shots followed from an amplified clarity of spirit. The balls sank into the pockets smoothly.
He returned the cue to its stand. He shook Bruno’s hand, collected his winnings and, with a nod to Mistletoe, went past the crowd, to the outer chamber of the pub.
On his way out the barman called him over.
‘You are like the man in the drinking competition,’ he said.
Lao shrugged. The barman touched him affectionately on the shoulder.
‘This is a strange town,’ he said confidentially.
‘Is it safe?’ Lao asked.
‘Yes, of course. But interesting things happen here.’
‘Like what?’
‘People see things.’
‘I’ll be careful.’
‘Would you like to drink from a tankard to celebrate?’
‘Another time, perhaps.’
The barman gave him a knowing smile. It half occurred to Lao that the town was enchanted, but he shook the thought from his mind, and went out into the dark.
10
Not long afterwards Mistletoe joined him. Not one word was said about the game.
They wandered in silence into the midsummer night and made their way back up the lane. They passed the quaint buildings that were like giant dolls’ houses and they thought about fairy tales, trolls, and wizards guarding treasures. Dreams floated past them in the dark.
Reality can be altered by the mind, Lao thought. All it takes is the right magic, the right attitude. Whoever knows this secret never fails.
They turned into the road and saw in the dark ahead of them a playground. The seesaw was tilted heavenward, and the swing twisted lightly. Mistletoe noticed how curious the playground was when there were no children and when only the night played there, along with silent forms.
In the
distance they saw a bridge, faintly lit. It looked as if it went from darkness to nowhere. They walked towards it, without purpose, drawn by the fairy tales lingering in the air. Beyond were lights that changed, that summoned.
The darkness was alive with intangible forms. They came to a little woodland and Lao stopped walking. There were ideas that had come to him during the game that he wanted to think about. He couldn’t quite remember what they were.
He stood still and gazed at the stars in the sky. They seemed to move. He wanted to go beyond thought. He wanted things to settle in him and find their place. He also wanted to let go of old ways of being.
But Mistletoe wanted the dark. While Lao gazed at Ursa Minor, she wandered on alone, towards the bridge.
She went soundlessly past the fragrance of honeysuckle. She went into the substance of night, till her own substance was dissolved in it.
Lao stood there near the woodland, not thinking. He felt himself returning to some primal condition and lost all sense of who he was, or what he was. He was not thinking but listening to intimate whisperings. He was listening to the music of flowers. He felt he had entered an invisible temple that drifts through time. He could feel the earth revolving.
He was not aware that Mistletoe had gone.
11
Mistletoe had wandered into her own eternity. In the darkness she found freedom from her body and from endless watching eyes. When she was under the bridge she looked back and saw only the blackness of night but was not afraid. She walked into the marmorial darkness.
As she passed beneath the darkness of the bridge she passed into her own legendary world. She saw a huge white horse in a field of blue flowers. Then the horse disappeared.
She came to a field. In the middle of the field was a circus. The music of pipes and strings and drums pervaded the warm summer night. Performers were rehearsing in the artificial moonlight that poured from an opalescent globe. The dancers did their stretches, the jugglers practised with their seven balls, and knife throwers slung their knives at revolving targets.
Women in red and yellow outfits rode on unicycles, balancing a stack of books on their heads. Women in golden dresses stood on the backs of horses, white birds on their outstretched hands.
Under the glow of a Chinese lantern a girl wrapped in the universal flag of imagination wielded a starry wand. With the wand she turned a furry fruit into a rabbit, the rabbit into a bird, the bird into an angel, the angel into a star, and she sent the star into the sky, where it twinkled merrily. Mistletoe smiled at the girl as she went past. The girl looked at her, puzzled.
Mistletoe watched a harlequin execute somersaults through hoops of coloured lights. A black girl dressed like a Valkyrie flew around in the air and swooped down through a triangle of fire, singing.
Nearby there was a blue tent with the sign of the pentagram. The door flap opened and a magician with milk-white eyes came out. The magician wore a white suit and a black top hat, and carried a cane whose upper section had two entwined snakes. But the magician, turning around, became a beautiful woman in a blue suit with a pentagram wand. She danced over to Mistletoe, and said:
‘We thought you’d never show up.’
12
Mistletoe, surprised that she had been expected, felt the heat of an inexplicable fire above her head.
The magician in the blue suit with the different back led Mistletoe to the centre of the field. Then she clapped her hands together three times, and said:
‘Hey, daughters of Pan, guess who’s here.’
The harlequin stopped somersaulting, and landed in perfect balletic balance. The conjuror allowed a dove to circle the air untransformed. The girls riding the horses leapt down, and the flying black girl dropped gracefully into their midst. Soon the jugglers, knife throwers, unicyclists and dancers had all gathered round in a circle. They stared and then, as if in sudden recognition, one of them cried:
‘It’s Mistletoe!’
‘It’s our Mistletoe!’ said another.
‘We thought we’d never see you again.’
‘We thought you’d forgotten us.’
Then they clustered round her, welcoming their sister back to their enchanted world.
‘Perform for us!’ the conjuror cried.
‘But what shall I do?’ Mistletoe asked.
The innocence of the question made them laugh. Mistletoe still looked perplexed. Then the magician touched her on the head with the pentagram wand and Mistletoe remembered what her special talent was in that world.
A large white canvas stood before her. The conjuror gave Mistletoe her wand. Without thinking, as if she had been doing this all her life, Mistletoe began drawing figures on the magic canvas. The figures, as if emerging from mirrors, fell out of the canvas and became real. She drew a white horse and it galloped round the field. She sketched a flute and gave it to the black girl. She drew bottles of champagne and passed them round. She inscribed the outlines of a book, and someone asked what it was called.
‘You suggest,’ Mistletoe said.
‘Astonishing the gods,’ the magician replied.
Mistletoe wrote out the title, and gave it to her. The daughters of Pan applauded. Then Mistletoe wrote the words: MUST GO NOW. And they all said, ‘No! Stay with us!’
Mistletoe wrote on the canvas: I LOVE YOU ALL.
‘We love you too,’ they replied.
Then she wrote: ARCADIA.
And they clapped their hands, and said, ‘We’ll see you there!’
Mistletoe stopped drawing and returned the wand to the conjuror. The circus folk gathered round and hugged her. They led her to the edge of the field of blue flowers and the magician tapped her on the head with the pentagram wand.
Mistletoe found herself beneath the bridge, where it was darkest. An illusive melody in her head accompanied her past the fragrance of honeysuckle, when she regained her substance from the riches of the night.
13
He had been searching for her up and down the street. He had ventured towards the bridge but thought it unlikely that she had gone into its darkness. He had been beginning to be frantic, fearing he had somehow lost her forever. Then he decided to be still, and to wait. But his anger and his fear remained.
He was standing where she had left him, and he still appeared to be gazing at the stars. But his profile communicated to her a sense of estrangement.
Upon seeing him she knew he had been worried. She wanted to tell him how much she needed a little renewal. I have to keep overcoming myself in order to love more fully, she thought, as she drew closer to him. How can I not breathe the secret hour if it will enrich me?
Lao stood in the shadow of the woodland, and turned his head slightly in her direction, and she knew that he was still upset. But a woman should have her mysteries, Mistletoe thought, and they should be mysterious even to herself. As she got near him she sensed his conflicting emotions. Loving or eviling, she thought. Which would win?
From experience she knew that any gesture she made might worsen his mood. She gave him a severe little smile. Then she went past him quietly. She went on down the street. The architect of the dark had redesigned all the houses with night-substance.
Most places look better and truer at night, she thought. She came to a solitary street lamp. Finding herself in the centre of the light, she turned and saw Lao walking towards her. He had a contemplative look.
She went on into the darkness, and waited for him, with a question in her mind. When he stood in the ghostly pool of light, alone in a theatre of night, she began speaking to him. She reminded him of something he had written a long time ago. He had written that in dreams the mind is the stage, and the play staged upon it is our drama, already scripted in the book of life.
As he listened a shiver ran through him.
‘If that’s the case,’ continued Mistletoe, ‘then the people in our dreams are all us. The places are us. The meaning is us too. We are the message, and we can change the dream. We can alter the scr
ipt.’
She paused. Disturbed by an intimation whose source is dream-like, he stood rooted in the theatre of light.
‘You said if we can’t change the beginning we can change the end. If we can’t change the end we can change the middle while dreaming and so change the meaning of the end. But something bothers me.’
Lao stayed silent. He was struck by the way the night altered the tone of her voice and the implication of her words.
‘If the stage is us, and all the people in the dream are us, and the dream is our drama, why are we watching?’
‘Because we’re the audience too,’ said Lao, seduced by the game.
‘Why do we need an audience then?’
‘Because we learn by doing and remembering what we do. There’s a watcher in us keeping an eye on the dream-drama in our minds. We don’t know who that watcher is.’
Lao paused for a moment. He was dissatisfied with his answer and conscious of her silence. He made another attempt.
‘We only play one role in life. We’re either the participant or the spectator. In dreams we’re both at the same time. Maybe this speeds up our understanding. The participant experiences more. The spectator sees more. The participant is sometimes wrong: they experience only their own point of view. The spectator is also wrong sometimes: they don’t have responsibility, they can witness without risking anything, learn without suffering. But the two together – taking part and watching – maybe that’s what produces the true history of our lives.’
He paused again. Mistletoe had moved a little closer to him.
‘You’re saying that dreams are our rehearsal for life,’ said Mistletoe.
‘Like private plays.’
‘So plays we see in real theatres are private dreams shown in public?’