In Arcadia

by Ben Okri

  It came as a surprise to all of them, however, considering how sarcastic, how distant, how distrustful she seemed, when Jute spoke next. She waited for a suitable pause, for the long silence after Sam had spoken. It would be just her way – to wait for a long silence, and to speak as if throwing a gentle grenade into a tea party. For she concealed within her apparent slowness of manner a sly sense of the subversive, of the angular, of always coming in from the blind side, out of the wing, beyond the periphery of the eyeballs, inflicting damage before her presence was registered, and retreating just as fast into the shadows, as dangerous and as insouciant as ever. And so, with cadenced and cool intensity, she spoke, saying:

  ‘I like work. I think work is everything. I think work is Arcadia. Too many people hate work, they want it all easy, they want it all for free. I think that to have work to do, work that you like doing, is a good thing. I grew up knowing how empty is a life without work. When my father was laid off that’s when he became inhuman. That’s when he became a monster. We’ve always worked. Humanity is a working principle, a work-in-progress. Work is where I sing. I like being involved with things, with people. It’s not fashionable to say this, I know, but even love is work. And if you don’t put work into love then it fails, it falls apart. People want things all soft and easy. They want love to work out without working at it. They want life to work out without working for it. I don’t know if I’m a seeker or not, a dreamer or not, but I don’t understand anything that’s mystical. I understand things that mean something to people, things that can help them, things that bring them together, things that make them work with one another. I don’t understand miracles. I don’t understand magic. I don’t understand dreams. And maybe I’m a contradiction. But I understand Sam’s yearning. It’s something I get only when I’m working. I stop and think ‘Am I missing out on life, am I missing the real picture, is there another kind of life I can be living, is there another better way of being me, Jute, is there more to life than running up and down these corridors and arguing about budgets?’ But then I go back to work, and carry on, and find some kind of satisfaction in it. But if I’m honest I’d say that there are more and more moments in which I begin to feel that there is something beyond work. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a workaholic or anything. I like a drink as much as the next person. I love my holidays and I think travelling and visiting other countries and seeing other people’s traditions and way of life is a wonderful thing. I really love it. Me and my mates, we get a lot of travelling done. But at the end of the day it comes back to work, because if it wasn’t there I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I wouldn’t know what to do with time. I hate being idle, not doing anything, being bone lazy, leeching off other people. I also think we should be careful about seeking. Sometimes the best thing is right there in front of you, right there in your life, and you’re not seeing it. Then you lose it. Sometimes the best thing is right there in your land, in your patch, and too much seeking can take you all round the world and make you miss out on life. I think life is quite simple, really. And I like life simple. Too much fretting and worrying oneself about things is a waste of time. Simple pleasures, that’s what matters. And appreciating what you’ve got, the friends you have, the love you have, the health you have, and the job too. And so, for me, if I have an Arcadia, it would have to be something simple, something that’s there, that’s here, and something that I can never lose. But I can’t say what that thing would be right now, and I won’t be pretentious about it.’

  16

  And just as suddenly as she began, she ended. And ended on a note, typical of Jute, calculated to set proceedings on an awkward edge. No one speaking after her would want to fall into the accusation of pretentiousness, and so everyone would be aware of the underlined censoriousness of her contribution. That was Jute’s way. To function as censor of excess sensibility, to be a corrective, to keep things balanced, to make sure everyone balanced the book of their actions, speech, gestures. And then to give a good account, without mystification. More than a bureaucrat, she was the steadier of people.

  A long difficult silence followed her speech. Cutlery tinkled, wine gurgled in glasses, water was drunk, food was devoured. The evening darkened, the lights brightened. Happy voices rose drunkenly and fell all around. Paris was in bloom. Paris was showing off its charms. Paris was weaving on the gentle breeze, softening thoughts, fluorescing desires, waking the slumbering youthfulness of its visitors, freeing restraints, liberating knotted libidos, bringing to life what was crabby, seducing an imagined elegant way of being out of the stiffening attitudes of revellers. And Paris listened and waited at the table, with an amused and faintly condescending expression on its face, as the silence drew out between the crew members at dinner.

  Time wove its spell around the impatient Paris. Those who hadn’t spoken yet felt the pressure to speak, or they might afterwards find themselves making the speeches they hadn’t made way into the night, into their sleep, and throughout the next day, making the unspoken speeches endlessly.

  To everyone’s surprise Jim spoke next. He spoke as he had never spoken before. He spoke as one under the spell of an idea expanding in his being and changing his inner terrain. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the attentions of the bemused city, sitting in their midst, beautiful and easily bored, eyeing the festivities of the heart where a Helen is always stirring. Whatever it was, Jim spoke as if quietly touched by something mysterious, enigmatic. His voice lowered, till it was almost a whisper, and everyone strained to listen. And the invisible Paris signalled that the universal hum of the festivities be lowered a little so he could hear.

  17

  In an enigmatic whisper, rising now musically, now lyrically, Jim began, saying:

  ‘There are many kinds of gurus. In India a guru is that which awakens. And so it can be a person, a book, an object. A child can be a guru. Anything can be a guru which awakens you, which opens up enlightenment in you. I begin with this because to me the most important thing is not that which does the awakening, but the awakening itself. But we must praise and acknowledge that which helped the awakening. And so I want to praise and thank all of you tonight, for in everything you have said so far you have all been gurus, awakeners. This journey too is a guru, and the Arcadian notion, so very different from the previous ideals that have clustered round the idea of Arcadia, is a wonderful guru. For, as Lao will tell you, and it was his idea to begin with, though he is being very modest about it in his typical masking kind of way, as Lao will tell you, Arcadia has always been associated with the pastoral. Whereas our notion of Arcadia, which unfolds and becomes more mysterious every day, is something to do with a quality of enchantment, a sense of a lost inner paradise, a way of being which belongs more to the future than to the past. The true Arcadian notion belongs to the future of humankind; we haven’t realised it yet. We haven’t discovered it yet. And Virgil’s idea of it, as Lao points out frequently in our private discussions, is very much an early intuition of the full human possibilities of the Arcadian dream. I have often wondered whether this notion of a lost inner or outer paradise is something to do with the past or a premonition or a dream of something yet to come, a thing of the future, as yet unmade. So we on this journey are trying to redefine Arcadia, using the past notions of it as a guide, a beacon. We are transforming the dream. I say this now to offer a few pointers to all the crew, to Sam in his search for the most beautiful and clear images, to Propr who, in spite of his disbelief, must find the right sounds, and to Lao himself who silently threatens us all with absolutely no contribution to this discussion – that Arcadia may be in the future, it may be ahead of us. Our lost childhood, our lost golden age may be ahead of us too, to be rediscovered by all mankind, in a higher condition. And so it is both a deeply private thing, a private quest for meaning and happiness, and a deeply public thing, a universal need for harmony, balance, and enlightenment. Speaking personally, for I should declare my hand, I am like Lao here, and in complete agreement
with him. We all need something. We may have been born complete but we lost something along the way. That thing can be found again, better. I am a professional man. My professional life hasn’t been the most successful in the world. My hair is falling out. But as I feel myself nearing the grave, I feel it more than ever necessary to make my peace with failure, with this earth, with life, with death, with fear, with limitations, with illusions, and with the universe. Our Arcadian ideal has something in it by which I can make this peace. In other words, I want to learn how to die better, in the hope that, for the days left to me on this earth, I may learn how to live better. Now can someone pass me the asparagus, please, I haven’t had my share yet.’

  18

  Gentle laughter sounded all around as Jim concluded his speech. And when the laughter subsided, thoughtfulness and silence prevailed. Jim’s words had moved everyone, had touched them in surprising ways. Husk suddenly began to weep. She wept with her face upturned, and a smile on her face. She wept silently, the way lovers do when they feel too deeply the love that overwhelms them and when they can find no words to express it. Propr was more thoughtful than he had been in a long time; and his moustache rendered his thoughtfulness comic. Sam stared straight ahead, in an ascending straight line that led to the constellation of Orion. Riley, unused to such philosophising over dinner, having spent her most profound moments, it seemed, in nightclubs and on beaches, in fleeting gropes with perfect strangers in far distant lands, sat in a state of curious possession, as though listening to strains of music she had never heard before, or had heard before but which made no sense to her, but which were beginning to reveal some peculiar inner beauty that puzzled her.

  Mistletoe had a smile on her lips, a radiant and enchanted smile that so delighted the invisible Paris. It was her smile of eternal happiness, of gratitude for having lived so close to the edge of personal disasters and miserable decisions and come through them and found art as companion and solace, and a great friend in Lao. For these reasons happiness came easily to her, and when it did she was like a little star, a tender sun, beaming with undisguised beneficence. It was a smile that irritated Lao often, for reasons he could never fathom. But when he caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eyes it enchanted him too and revealed to him more than he could bear of the beauty of her spirit, and the kindness of her soul. But Lao was not aware of it then. He had listened to Jim’s speech with a slight frown on his forehead, with a mildly sarcastic masking of his sympathy, and with grimly impassive eyes. He had eaten little, drunk much, and was determined not to speak. Jute, whose face was also of granite severity, when even at her most sympathetic, said:

  ‘Jim, what you said was very moving. I wish I could feel it too. Maybe I will, as the journey progresses.’

  19

  More silence followed. The breeze had mellowed. The mood of a Chagall painting faintly flavoured the air. Circus folk had joined the acrobats on the festive street. Passers-by had given money to the busker, and he renewed his Mozartian fluting, weaving the most teasing enchantments through the air. Prancing young men and beautiful young women charmed the eyes. Old men and women, re-inventing their youthful selves, with slightly perplexed looks on their faces, moved through the flowing throng. And Husk, who had stopped weeping, and had just gulped half a glass of red wine, said:

  ‘If I have an Arcadia I would say it is love.’

  She paused. Her hard and tough and tight-lipped face suddenly crumpled and became distorted as she attempted to continue.

  ‘I just want… I just want… forgive me, I’m not usually… usually… like this… I never show anything… never… But I just want my love… my love… I want my love back…’

  And she got up, and fled from the table, in strange grief and broken-hearted anguish. She ran into the gaiety and cheerfulness of the Parisian evening. It was a gaiety that is indifferent to the misery of the heart-broken, because the invisible Paris, though young and beautiful, though eternally enchanting, prefers those who are happy in love, much prefers the company of the cheerful. His eyes are too fixed on the scenes of human celebrations and fiestas to notice the battles and woundings of the heart. And some think the invisible Paris heartless for that reason, but it’s just that he is the eternal personification of the spirit of youth, who prefers beauty to all else, and happiness to misery. He follows what charms his eyes.

  Husk was unnoticed by Paris as she stumbled through the crowds. Most of the crew members, led by Jim, ran to find Husk to console her.

  She was eventually spotted wandering down a side street, alone, surrounded by tender blue shadows. But she was not weeping any more. And when they came upon her she smiled. Her hard eyes were harder in her smiling. She said:

  ‘I didn’t mean to spoil that wonderful discussion. Forget that this happened. I was just following a lovely white cat. Someone had painted her tail blue. Oh, you all came after me. How kind you all are. Let’s go back to our discussion. I’ll behave from now on.’

  20

  And silently they led her back to the restaurant.

  The invisible Paris had left their table because the magic circle had been broken.

  With the serious and comic visage of a drunken Cerberus, a scaled-down Cerberus with a misbegotten moustache, Propr sat guarding the food and wine. Propr was fairly drunk now, and half stood when they returned. And when all were seated again it soon became clear that the Arcadian charm they had unknowingly woven about them, because of talking about it, had vanished, blown away by the gentle breezes.

  The charm hovered over another circle three streets away where friends were half way through a delightful dinner, outside a celebrated restaurant. Poets, novelists, film-makers, and critics, they briefly touched on the merits and demerits of a recent translation of Virgil’s Eclogues. They tore it apart, then passed on to the subject of a sensational new film, without being touched by the Arcadian magic drifting about them in the breeze.

  The invisible Paris, who hates disasters, scenes, misery, cheerlessness, funerals, break-ups, divorces, arguments, bad taste and bawdy jokes, had also flown away from the film crew’s table. Upon their return none of them attempted to take up the broken discussion. They all sat around gloomily staring at the plates of partially devoured food, with an absence of enchantment in the air.

  The magic had gone. Nothing more now could be drawn out of the Arcadian dream. The ideal would not reveal itself where there is no magic, where there is no sense of communion and good cheer.

  And so the breeze changed. The flautist quietly crept away. The acrobats somersaulted into the dark. Harlequin vanished into his element. Some gypsy girls lingered, and pursued, here and there, in plaintive tones, the coins of sympathy. Jim called for the bill. Lao stared at a silvery light that was hovering in the breeze. He was not aware of what he was looking at. Mistletoe was relieved that she didn’t have to speak or to elucidate her private Arcadia. Riley was pleased too, because in spite of having heard the word so many times, she didn’t have the faintest idea what it referred to, or what it meant. All she could think about was swimming in the blue seas of summer.

  The bill was paid, and in silence the crew made their way back to the hotel. They went to their various lonelinesses and dreams. They went to their shabby little rooms that were still redolent of the cheap sprays that disguised previous encounters.

  21

  They went from little Arcadias to large ones; from a train-driver’s humble garden to the vast cultivated acres of a king.

  But before that they had a day off. They were entering the spirit of the journey. Away from their homes, from their moorings, from the familiar, they were becoming more alive, more vulnerable, and in some ways more open.

  They had slept and dreamed, each in their different ways. And each had woken to a day peculiar to them. Lao and Mistletoe had woken early and wandered the streets of Paris at dawn. The smell of the city at that hour was so new to them. They watched the road sweeps at work. They watched the waiters bringing chairs
out to pavements and smelled the fresh coffee rising from the cafés. They watched the early risers and the dawn workers, people of all races, as they hurried on to their workplaces. They seemed so different from the early risers back home, and even the sight of them here held a certain charm.

  The city was waking slowly. The armed gendarmes outside the Élysée palace paced up and down, fully armed, and stared at them with mild suspicion as they went past twice, looking for a good café where they could have a nice breakfast. They found one, and Mistletoe chatted to the tall waiter, asking about news of the city. They were the first customers of the day. All about them chairs were still upside down on the tables.

  Lao sat passively, staring into the pages of Virgil’s Eclogues. He was staring beyond the words, beyond the abstract marks on the old cream pages, into something beyond the words, the reality that lurked behind them, but not in them. He was thinking what a magic operation writing is, what a symbolic, a signic activity it is, how it is so secretly based on the interpretation of signs, the translation of signs into a mental reality, an inner reality, an inner world. He was thinking how much the words create the worlds within, and the worlds within enrich the world without. Reading too is a magic operation, a translation, an act of mental creation, or miscreation. An interpretation. A connection. All reading, he felt as he stared into the labyrinth of the pages, is the challenge of magnifying what is silent in the text. It is reading with an inner magnifying glass. Reading what is there and not there. Reading the margins, the gaps, the spaces between the lines and between the words. Reading the punctuation, the ellipses. The invisible words too. Or else, reading is passive. And so reading is a hymn to the challenge of the imagination and the intelligence, humanity, and sensitivity of the one who reads. They make the world within the words greater or smaller. But the artist shapes and compresses and hides the signs that spring from their coiled places, and makes them capable of such magnification when the reading mind is open to them and meets them with commensurate creativity. Reading well is as creative and as rare and as rewarding as writing well. And Lao felt that the world was much like that too. Life, the world, society, reality, history is a sprung text that we endlessly learn how to read better. Experience is a living text written in our immortal memories that we endlessly learn how to read better. Some signs are harder to read, and we need to learn more to be able to understand them. Some texts dwell in disguise, and we misread them, or don’t see them at all. And others live in quiet hiding, among the simplest things, and yet they are connected to the most profound things of all. How alive and how free and how enlightened one must be to be able to read the texts of living and the text of books, Lao was thinking, ruefully, as he stared into the pages.