by Ben Okri
Book 3
1
He was alone. He had seldom felt so alone. And when he had recovered sufficiently from his surprise at his guide’s silent departure, he found that he was standing before the great gate of the city.
He must have passed through the gate several times already, but he was only aware of it now for the first time. It was such an imposing gate, rising high into the clouds, fashioned of gold and diamond and flashing steel. It was a gate so mighty that it seemed designed for colossal beings. He wondered how he’d had the nerve to pass through it several times without noticing.
Now that he was aware of the gate, he found himself unable to move. Surmounted by a giant dragon with fiery eyes and metal claws and fantastic wings as wide as the rooftop of a house, the gate was truly terrifying. But the terror of the gate was also beautiful. Its beauty made the terror worse.
Along the grilles, the metal bands and on the niches were figures wrought in red gold, figures of ancient heroes, of monsters, heads bristling with a network of spikes and snakes. All the figures stared at him menacingly.
The gate seemed so alive with intent that he wasn’t sure what to do. He felt that he had no right to pass through. He felt that he needed permission. And yet the gate was wide open, and there was no one in sight.
2
As he studied the harmonic monstrosity of the gate, he became conscious of an iron scroll high up in the air, clasped in one of the paws of the winged dragon. The metal scroll had embossed figures of a shark, a dolphin, a lion, an eagle, the sphinx, the phoenix, the eagle, and the griffin. It also had strange deep-water creatures with seven eyes.
At the top of the scroll was the bronze sculpting of a lamp. The lamp shone in the darkness, spreading light and yet creating no shadows.
On the scroll itself were words inscribed in a language he couldn’t decipher, the motto of the gate. He tried hard to read the words, to understand their prescription, but the longer he looked at the words the more things seemed to dissolve and change around him till he felt sure that the gate itself was a living thing, a monster in iron. More than that, he felt certain that the gate was moving, that it was bearing down on him.
3
He couldn’t move. Magnetised by the words, he was also unable to think. The gargoyles and the lapis lazuli snakes seemed to writhe and hiss. The giant dragon seemed to breathe out an invisible devouring fire. Its fabulous wings appeared to stir.
Then, to his horror, the open spaces of the gate, through which he should pass, began to howl.
The wind bristled with enigmas and hints, with warnings whispered round his head. A strange heat blasted his eyes.
The open spaces of the gate were more terrifying than the gate itself. And more terrifying than the space were the undeciphered words.
He knew that if he couldn’t decipher the words he would never be able to enter the city. He knew he would earn the right to pass into that strange domain only if he could also solve the riddle of the gate. And he knew that, like the bridge and the crossing of the abyss, the longer it took him the greater was his peril. Only this time he had no guide to explain to him the full nature of his impending doom.
4
He had been standing before the gate, in a condition of mounting fear, when he realised that just above his gaze was an equestrian figure bearing aloft a mighty axe. The axe was poised right above his head. It occurred to him to move backwards, or step sideways, but he couldn’t.
His panic grew worse. He started to quiver. He felt something strange all around him; he felt presences and vague forms encompassing him, pressing down on him in the darkness.
Unable to master his incomprehension, unable to breathe, unable to think, he started to tremble. It seemed that the whole world was trembling with him.
A grey mist covered his eyes. His whole being was atremble now with an uncontrollable horror at once beautiful and humbling. He was all dissolved within. He felt like a child abandoned on the highest peak of a mountain, or on the edge of an endless sea, or in a deep night with no illumination anywhere in the universe. Tears poured down his face and he wept like a child, trembling without knowing why, and quivering under the mystery of the wind blowing through the negative spaces of the great gate.
5
The more he trembled, the purer the lamp shone, and the clearer the words became. It was as if the words were a law he had known all his life, a pitiless law which when forgotten creates its own punishment. And the punishment was that of complete abandonment, till the condition of the words was reached. Then it would be no longer necessary to know what the words were, because the person waiting at the gate would have become the words, would have incarnated them.
He was becoming the words as he trembled in his emptiness. A moment before he felt certain that the horseman’s axe was going to split his skull in two, a moment before the dreadful empty space completely invaded his mind, and before the vague forms pounced on him in their numinous threat, he felt himself falling. But this time, he fell to the ground. He jumped back up as soon as he touched the cold marble of the road.
When he looked about him, he was astonished to find that the gate had vanished. In its place was a voice. It was the voice of a child, a little boy. And the boy, with a strange coldness, said:
‘I am your new guide. I am sent to lead you to the square.’
The boy too was invisible. Still possessed by the spirit of trembling, in a state of complete humility and gratitude, he followed his new guide through the mysterious gate of the city.
6
He saw the city now as he had never seen it before. He didn’t see the things of the city; he saw the things that weren’t there. It was the trembling that caused this new sensitivity. He saw how alive the invisible spaces were. He saw the light concealed in the darkness. And he heard the silence. It was cool on his ears. He went into the city, treading carefully, alive to the spaces, aware of everything, aware as only the very scared or the very humble can be. His new guide was silent, and explained nothing.
He walked through the city of sensitive stone, and even the silence of his child-guide helped him to understand that the city was also aware of him. The city was listening. He could hear its attentiveness.
The streets shone in the dark. He sensed that though the streets were made of marble they were paved with the beauty that only the wisest people can create from suffering. The suffering was there in the beauty of everything. It was there in the infinite care of the city’s planning, in its clarity.
Everywhere the city’s nominal origins were visible. Many houses were shaped like coral reefs. Many buildings seemed to be made into something fluid. And there were underwater plants over the houses. Fountains spouted water at regular intervals. It was a city of stone and fire, but its true inspiration was water.
The buildings were both hard and gentle. Even the defensive parapets and the strategic battlements were meant to deceive. He felt that the solid facades, the strong lines, the massive abodes, the square-shaped clusters of rooftops, imposing on the outside, hid tenderness and gardens on the inside.
It was a place that understood that the good things should be visible, but the best things should be hidden.
7
Suddenly, he saw the city as a vast network of thoughts. Courts were places where people went to study the laws, not places of judgement. The library, which he took to be one building, but which he later discovered was practically the whole city, was a place where people went to record their thoughts, their dreams, their intuitions, their ideas, their memories, and their prophecies. They also went there to increase the wisdom of the race. Books were not borrowed. Books were composed there, and deposited.
The universities were places for self-perfection, places for the highest education in life. Everyone taught everyone else. All were teachers, all were students. The sages listened more than they talked; and when they talked it was to ask questions that would engage endless generations in profound and perpetual disc
overy.
The universities and the academies were also places where people sat and meditated and absorbed knowledge from the silence. Research was a permanent activity, and all were researchers and appliers of the fruits of research. The purpose was to discover the hidden unifying laws of all things, to deepen the spirit, to make more profound the sensitivities of the individual to the universe, and to become more creative.
Love was the most important subject in the universities. Entire faculties were devoted to the art of living. The civilisation was dedicated to a simple goal, the perfection of the spirit and the mastery of life.
8
A fragrance of eternity lingered over everything, like the aroma of flowers in spring. The fragrance didn’t come from the buildings, the churches, the ordered streets, the ochre skyline of rooftops, or from the concealed gardens. The fragrance was a part of the spaces: it was as if the city was continuously freshened by breezes from the arbours of a hidden god.
9
He was surprised to know, in a flash, without being told, that banks were places where people deposited or withdrew thoughts of well-being, thoughts of wealth, thoughts of serenity. When people were ill they went to their banks. When healthy, they went to the hospitals.
The hospitals were places of laughter, amusement, and recreation. They were houses of joy. The doctors and nurses were masters of the art of humour, and they all had to be artists of one kind or another.
It was a unique feature of the place, but the hospitals had their facades painted by the great masters of art. They were some of the most beautiful and harmonious buildings in the city. Merely looking at them lifted the spirits.
The masters of the land believed that sickness should be cured before it became sickness. The healthy were therefore presumed sick. Healing was always needed, and was considered a necessary part of daily life. Healing was always accompanied by the gentlest music. When healing was required the sick ones lingered in the presence of great paintings, and sat in wards where masterpieces of healing composition played just below the level of hearing. Outdoor activity, sculpting, story-telling, poetry, and laughter were the most preferred forms of treatment. Contemplation of the sea and of the people’s origins and of their destiny was considered the greatest cure for sickness before it became sickness.
The inhabitants of that land, who were the hardest workers in the universe, were seldom ill. When they were ill at all, it was in order to regenerate their dreams and visions.
They went to the hospitals to improve their art of breathing. They went for stillness. They went there to remember their beginnings and to keep in mind their ever-elusive destination. Hospitals were places where the laws of the universe were applied. Individuals, mostly, healed themselves. The art of self-healing was the fourth most important aspect of their education.
10
He understood all this in flashes as he passed the incomprehensible buildings and read the indecipherable signs. He began to suspect that somehow, without trying, he understood more than he was aware. And through all this his child-guide remained silent.
He passed shops, where people exchanged the fruits of their talents, rather than sold goods for money. The concept of money was alien to the city. The only form of money it had consisted in the quality of thoughts, ideas, and possibilities. With a fine idea a house could be purchased. With a brilliant thought rooftops could be restored. Useful new ways of seeing things, imparted possibilities, could be exchanged for acres of land. The currencies of the civilisation were invisible, and had to do with values. There was no hunger in the city. The only hunger there was existed in the city’s dream for a sublime future.
As he noticed and sensed these things he wondered about the kind of suffering that inspired this unending quest for the highest, this loving vigilance, this near-perfection of justice. It seemed to him that it must be a suffering which keeps renewing itself in the soul, which refuses to be forgotten, a suffering which demands to be continually turned into gold.
The thought somehow frightened him. He knew that the inhabitants were not inhuman. He knew that they had perfected the art of invisibility, and could not be seen by him. But he began to wonder if they were gods, or if as a people they were becoming almost divine, through careful spiritual and social evolution. The possibility of a whole people approaching, in their humanity, the condition of divinity, scared and astonished him. The thought that suffering could give people insights into the intersection of life and eternity filled him with amazement.
11
Stopping to breathe a moment, he tried to recover from the wonderful notions with which the city assaulted him.
He came to the piazza of festivities. Even at night he could hear all the celebrations of the distant ages that the stones and fountains and silent buildings gave out in their dreaming. He wandered through the piazza’s memories of pageants and histories and festivals. The piazza, in its silence, seemed always to be in a carnival mood, seemed always to be laughing.
In the city everything remembers, and freely yields its memories like certain flowers in moonlight.
12
A delighted mood blossomed in him as he passed the glittering arcades and marketplaces where the Invisibles from all over the world came to buy and sell ideas. Here they traded in philosophies, inspirations, intuitions, prophecies, paradoxes, riddles, enigmas, visions, and dreams. Enigmas were their trinkets, philosophies their jewelleries, paradoxes their silver, clarity their measure, inspiration their gold, prophecy their language, vision their play, and dreams their standard.
The season’s fashion was for paradoxes, and the marketplace, even at night, was abuzz with fresh-minted paradoxes and ancient riddles from the farthest corners of the world. The air was scented with them. Enigmas twinkled over the arcade roofs, with shining eyes, like owls at play. Paradoxes flew about in the emporiums, like birds of joy. Riddles danced in the dark places, like blissful fireflies. Beautiful lights thrilled in his spirit. He quivered in a sparkling sense of a renewed childhood. For the first time since his arrival, he smiled.
13
He had passed the marts and the marketplaces of ideas, and was still smiling, when he saw an elongated glow in the distance moving towards him. Because of the glow he noticed the peculiarly ancient and velvet quality of the night.
The air was very warm and it smelt of old stones. It smelt also of marble, of the serenity that comes after centuries of turbulence, and curiously, also, of fragrant earth. He sensed that a divine mother ruled the night of the city. Her warm presence was both protective and enduring.
He seemed to float through the warm air. Thrilling to the melody of enigmas, he was nonetheless troubled by the approaching glow. It was like an omen. As the glow in the distance came closer he was able to distinguish four shining lamps in the air, moving without support, borne aloft and floating along with a stately majesty. There was something ceremonial about the way the lamps glided through the air, shedding a bright light which cast no shadows.
Then he heard the solemn music of the lute. The quiet tones dispelled the darkness with their ritual sounds. The music was sad and funereal. As he listened a tragic mood came over him, followed by a plaintive breeze which made him quiver. It was as if he had sensed the symmetry of fate.
The elongated glow became a litter. Lying flat on the decorated litter, as if dead, was a woman dressed in white and gold. Her horizontal form dazzled in the night. It dazzled with sequins and sparkling jewellery. A resplendent triangle of light hung just above her head. Wrapped around her, as if made from the breeze, was a muslin cloth. She had flowers round her flowing hair, flowers between her breasts, and about her legs. She was very beautiful, like a lost angel, and a great unhappiness made her beauty shine. An amazing light shone all about her. She looked like a princess being borne off to her nocturnal bridegroom, or to her gilded resting place among the fragrant marble of a royal tomb.
He heard light funereal singing in front of her, accompanying the paradoxical
ly joyful lutes. She was on the litter, floating in the air, with nothing bearing her aloft, except the night and the fateful breeze. The sweetly mournful music changed the air around and resounded gently off the listening stones and the ancient houses.
Filled with curiosity, he broke off from his invisible guide and followed the floating litter. He stared with fascination at the first visible being he had seen since his disembarkation.
As he stared with wide-eyed amazement, the woman suddenly opened her eyes. When she saw him she screamed piercingly into the night. The footfalls around her hurried on, and she glided more speedily through the air. The music sped on too. And the singing remained faithful to its solemnity.
He ran after her. She was sitting up now on the litter of gold brocade and rich green velvet. Flowers poured down her face like tears. She stared at him with terror and sadness in her eyes. When he got close enough to her he said:
‘Where are they taking you?’
She seemed surprised that he had spoken. He asked the question again. This time she heard him clearly, and a sigh escaped her lips. Then with a sad voice, she cried:
‘I am going where I can see people, and where people can see me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I am going where there is some illusion,’ she cried again.
He was puzzled.
‘Too much beauty is bad for the soul,’ she said. ‘I want illusion. I want some ugliness. I want some suffering. I want to be visible.’