Starbook (13 page)

'We do not see what we judge.'

'Conditions change.'

'Now is not now.'

'The winners have lost.'

'Life is a masquerade. What we are seeing is not what is happening.'

'There is a shadow over all victories.'

'It is not here that life is lived. Only where it is felt.'

'All are dreams.'

'It rises and it falls.'

'Only in light can truth be found.'

'Real condition of things do not show.'

'To die is not all.'

'Plant there, reap here.'

'Seek the light that comes from the rose and the cross and the stars and the vanished kingdom under the sea.'

'Prosperity and poverty are not what they seem.'

'Beyond is where it really begins.'

'Slaves are masters in heaven.'

'Whatever happens it is getting better.'

'Then all will be one.'

The fragments had become whispers now which the maiden barely heard. And then there was a long silence. They say that sorcerers can transport your spirit to distant lands to dwell in dark caves or in the fabulous palace of a nonexistent king, while leaving your body behind. These fragments from her father had transported the maiden to many places that would appear to her as dreams. And now, in the silence, she was unsure of the world in which she found herself. She was uncertain even of her father's existence.

She was puzzled. Questions she hadn't asked, and would ask in the years to come, were being answered. Fathers have their way of initiating their children into the long, mysterious journey ahead.

There was a sigh and a smile from the maiden's father in the dark. But was he there? Had he gone? Had he left the sigh and smile behind? The maiden, seeing nothing, waited. She waited for things to be clearer. But the silence seemed to say: Child, nothing gets clearer here, only there. The clearer, the more unclear. Nothing is completed here, only there. Here is incompleteness. Fragments. Unfinished things.

What else was being said? The maiden listened. Then, from out of the dark, with no one there to have uttered them, came the words:

'And still they were haunted by the work.'

And nothing more.

The maiden found herself alone in the workshop, with only the rich mood of her father lingering in the air. Maybe he had never been there. The maiden got up from the chair and made her way home. As she walked down the forest path she breathed in the dark fragrance of the flowers.

There was something in her that was still unwell. But whatever it was had been deepened, not altered. Yes, she was still haunted by that sculpture. And enigmas grew about her heart, and made strange her simple life.

Time became precious, and new; as if it were over, gone, and all she had was the fragrance of a life vanished for ever in a fading dream.

Meanwhile the tribes expectation of the work of art the maiden would create to heal the sickness of her spirit continued to press on her. Many were the enquiries directed at her and her father about this self-healing work. It became the subject of rumours, gossip and conversations. It was not unknown for two people to meet in the forest and for one to say:

'Is there any news yet of the work our maiden is supposed to be doing?'

The other might reply:

'No news yet. They say she broods, but does not breed.'

'This is what I heard too. I heard that she wanders about the place talking to herself, looking at the sky, and that she becomes stranger every day. And yet nothing comes from her. Not a dream in wood or stone. An illness that does not produce an art is a bad illness indeed. I fear for her family.'

'In this you are right,' the other would say. 'But it is not surprising. After all, her father is the strangest man in the tribe. Has anyone ever seen his shadow? Do they not say that he works among demons? Was he not seen on the moon some time ago, dancing with spirits who never visit the earth? Does anyone know where he goes to most of the year? Is he amongst us, or does he work for kings, with sorcery? Is he a man like us, or a spy from a strange land of ghosts? Have you ever heard him laugh? And do we know his hand? Do we know his works? Some say he was the one responsible for the sculpture that nearly drove our people mad, the one that has now poisoned the mind of his daughter! Maybe his art is a curse, maybe he curses us; and we all know how powerful he is on the secret council of the tribe! One word from him and we will all have to move from where we are, and change our location, like cattle on the hills. No, I am not surprised that the maiden behaves in a mad manner. Lions with blood in their eyes do not give birth to roosters.'

And these two people might laugh, and the forest would echo their laughter.

'But it is not good for the tribe when there are illnesses and no art.'

'When there are sicknesses that are not fruitful.'

'When there is madness and no magic.'

'When the spirit has troubles, but does not sing.'

'It means that the wells of the tribe become poisoned.'

'The river becomes polluted.'

'The crops give a bad harvest.'

'And the fruits lose their sweetness.'

'One person's sickness without a song makes the whole tribe sick.'

'One person's illness that doesn't give meaning makes the whole tribe ill.'

'One person's madness without a making makes the whole tribe mad.'

'Soon she will infect our dreams.'

'Soon she will make us sick just looking at her,'

'Her failure to heal herself will be catching.'

'The children will get new diseases because of her shadow.'

'The young girls will become infertile because of her bad example.'

'And the daughter of one of our most powerful masters will become an abomination and a curse unto us.'

'The problems of powerful people destroy the land.'

'We must destroy them first before they destroy us.'

'If they don't clear up their own troubles.'

'And give us an art that makes the air good again to breathe.'

'The air is not good now.'

'Because of that maiden.'

'She should create something, before we all die.'

'Or we will have to kill her.'

'Or have her banished from the tribe.'

'Sent into the hills.'

'To join the mad.'

'And all those who are infertile in art.'

'Unable to heal themselves.'

'And heal the tribe.'

'The tribe will not perish because one person is unable to dream.'

'Better if she is not seen.'

'Better if she becomes invisible.'

'And no longer reminds us of what we fear.'

'And what is coming near.'

'The end of our days.'

'And our dreaming ways.'

'Our art and our song.'

'That have lasted long.'

'Our dreams, our freedom.'

'Better than any kingdom.'

'Our vision.'

'Our mission.'

'We will protect them all.'

'That sick maiden will not create our fall.'

And so the two strangers will part. And they would spread their unease through the tribe, as others were doing. And slowly this unease, this gathering expectation worked on her too, and made her malaise worse.

A
nd so some time before the maiden's life was changed by the encounter at the river, after she had recovered a little from the sleeplessness brought on by her glimpse of the great tragic sculpture, the maiden again found herself overcome with a strange agonised boredom, a peculiar malaise, and a giddy longing in her body.

It was as if about this time some significant event should be happening to her, but wasn't. Her body was full of a ripe rich expectation of an experience beyond her comprehension. Her heart would burst into bizarre palpitations, as if any moment someone she longed for all her life would suddenly appear and take her away to a land of dream.

She became jumpy. She peered into every stranger's face, hoping to recognise someone whom she had never seen, or someone seen too long ago. She waited for a voice, a touch that would wake her into the true enchanted dream of her life.

She fell into a condition akin to stupidity, wandering about in a state of shining and pitiful innocence, a wide-eyed waiting.

In an odd way the same thing was happening to the tribe. It existed in a state of wide-eyed waiting, expecting something momentous to happen without warning. An ennui and restlessness descended on the tribe, like a fatal ailment; a resignation, a boredom, a sense of fatality crept over everything. This was apparent in the listless way that the artisans worked at their masks and carvings, the drowsy manner in which the women wended their ways to the river, the slow atmosphere that hung over the children at play, and the dense breezes bringing heat, forgetfulness, and a sleepwalking quality by day. The tribe also seemed mysteriously to empty out, to become hollowed, and diminished. The sculptures and masks and carvings, the masquerades awaiting their motion and their accoutrement and their spirit possession, hung about the village square empty of power, and drained of significance. Some mysterious thing seemed to be devouring the spirit of the tribe. Some mysterious thing seemed to be devouring the heart and soul of the entire land, for the tribe was the secret heart of the land.

This new deadly air was never more visible than at the secret council meetings of the hidden masters of the tribe. They met infrequently, but at regular intervals. They convened always in the dead of night. They came without candles or any illumination, and they always wore masks so as not to be recognised by other members, either through their voices or by their faces. Only certain signs and passwords, certain vowel sounds, certain handshakes at the gate of enigmas permitted them entry into the long room of power.

They were chosen anonymously, because of indirect wisdom shown, authority and personal spiritual power made evident in their art; or in a deed accomplished that bordered on the miraculous and which could be repeated, with acceptable variation, as a sign of mastery. Only those who could command spirits, who could make a flower manifest out of empty air, who could enter the dreams of multitudes, who could foresee the future, who had attained a degree of illumination in the great secret mysteries of the tribe, who had battled with evil, who were masters of their art, and who had attained to a sublime impersonality, an inspired indifference and a cosmic sense of humour, only such as these were accepted, initiated, and admitted as hidden masters of the tribe. Their powers were many and unstated, fluid and invented, in line with the artistic and spiritual needs of the tribe and of the times. It was they who had to go into the seeds of things and read what the future was bringing, or to interpret what the present was saying, or to listen at the oracles of the people's art. It was they who had to attune to the gods, to the ancestors, and to the great heavens, to learn, to avert disasters, to combat evil in the place where it is born, and to replenish the dreams and the breathing of the people. If the quality of masters fell, the tribe was in peril. It had happened before, when an era of low-calibre and brash individuals dominated the council and nearly destroyed the foundations of the tribe. An important lesson was learnt: a people are only as great or as strong as the quality of the secret masters who guide them on their journey through time to their destiny. And this was never so clear as when a people were confronted with a crisis. But there are different sorts of crises: there are visible ones and there are invisible ones. Of the two the invisible crises are the hardest to deal with, and they present the greatest threat to the survival of the people.

It is from invisible dangers that a people most perish. A danger without a name, or a form; a danger that cannot be seen; a danger without a face; a danger that enters a land and destroys it before anyone knows it is there. Then afterwards only a few standing stones, broken shards in the sands and mysterious skulls rolling in the wind give any sign that a vigorous tribe once lived in fertility and joy in a place grown over with trees or made barren by encroaching dust.

To see invisible dangers before they bring destruction is one of the greatest gifts the wise can have. To have their warnings heeded is the good fortune of a people. To believe how that which cannot be seen can bring about the end is the blessing of the heart. Civilisations have not been so fortunate; history is written with their bones and their disappearance.

It was with such a danger, one that didn't seem a danger but a mere malaise, that the tribe and the land as a whole were now confronted, and didn't know it. But the secret masters gathering in anonymity from their diverse places sensed something they didn't know they were sensing.

They arrived like ghosts at an appointed hour of the dark. Masters are known by their deeds. They all arrived in silence, without a murmur. Even the old didn't rustle the dark. Degeneracy would come soon and devastate the core of the land, but before then the old clarity and vigour still reigned. Before the age of dust, masters were masters still. Just before the fall, some last splendour survived even in that atmosphere of the last days when the dark and the fireflies fell under the spell of a doom that had crept into the secret heart of the land.

At the last meeting they had sat, these masters, in complete silence, with nothing to say about anything. They drank their harsh alcohol in silence, and chewed their kola nuts and their kaoline as if in a trance. The rituals at the beginning of the proceedings had been listless and seemed irrelevant for the first time in years. Nothing to say. Nothing seen. Nothing thought. Just silence like a poison drunk in the dark. Then at the earliest signs of dawn they all rose and dissipated like shadows back to their homes.

The last time poisoned the next. They had the new habit as malaise. Now, they sat in silence. Old age, wisdom, the vigour of the mature years, time lived in prophecies, skins soaked and cracked in legends, eyes drained by enchantments, hearts that have dwelt in evil as much as in great good, minds that have known what wickedness is, mouths that have lied politically about oracles and distorted the messages of the gods, bones that have worked to the good of the tribe even as they have bent and twisted with prevailing winds, now all these faculties, blended into one spirit of the council at the tribe's heart, were silent, dumb, unable to function. Some sickness had befallen the oracle itself. The well of divinations was poisoned. Slowly, not knowing how, the gods were abandoning a people. Some master twist of fortune was in play.

History, brought down from the heights where the scale of evils past outweighs the good that had been done, history was delivering some strange verdict on the land – a parable, a symbol, a message to future ages, different in meaning when lived through than when examined in the perspective of time. And it was among the council that the enigma of history was first manifest, and no one could read the signs, or interpret the parable that they were living through. Does the feather feel the death of the sun?

Silence, and nothing to say. The masters sat, staring at one another's dark space in the dark. Thinking about nothing. Vacancy in their midst. The desert had arrived in the midst of the forest. Scattered remains of bronze busts emerging from the earth will tell a tale no one can hear. It started here. In the dark.

Then suddenly, as if an invisible point of light had penetrated the mud walls and illuminated an essential spot, an unknown voice among the masters began to speak. The voice recounted a dream they had been having persistently, which they persistently forgot. At last, now, it was remembered.

It was a dream about a golden heron lost in its own dream. Beautiful white birds descended on the heron and tore off all its feathers and broke its wings and left it dying on the riverbank where it lay sick for ninety-nine years, sick and dying, but not dead. The birds had also fallen on the nest of the heron and carried off many of its children and many died on the seas and many others were borne off and scattered about the world in horrible conditions, and they did not know one another any more, and forgot that they were all children of the golden heron.

In the dream the children suffered and grew and changed and married in these different lands, while the mother heron lay sick and dying by the river and on the dry sands. The children of the heron that were not carried away were not the same any more, they became sick too, and spent most of their time fighting one another, and dying.

And then one day the birds in the world woke up to the realisation that they were all descended from the same bird in heaven and were all related to the dying heron and they realised that if the heron was dying, they were dying too.

The voice telling of the dream fell silent at this point and did not speak again for the rest of the council meeting. The other masters had listened with an air both listless and interested. And they listened to the silence too. And they had nothing to say, no interpretations to offer. They were just content with the mood of malaise that had so infected all aspects of the life of that dream-enclosed tribe. And when dawn hinted from the edges of the sky, the council members returned in silence to their masked lives.