Starbook (5 page)

The prince awoke the next day a different person, but he didn't know how he was different. He felt he had developed an extra faculty, another head, or that his eyes saw things he had never seen or noticed before, as if on loan from the spirits. The world was new to him, and yet ancient and familiar. He understood more things than he had lived; and his being seemed to bristle with the knowledge of countless lives. He seemed to carry within him the wisdom of countless multitudes, a thousand forms of dying, a million ways of living, and an understanding of the simplicity of all things. He felt possessed of the simple certainty that the many ways led to one place, that the many forms were one formless harmony, the thousand histories were all one moment, one breath, one story, and that all suffering, all flesh, all living was just one astonishing tale of illusion in a dream in which the boundaries seemed fixed in the body but limitless beyond the body.

The prince felt himself both light as a bird, free as a dream, and troubled by this shining knowledge that burned in him like a tragedy about to be revealed in the dark by lightning flash.

He told no one of his new condition, but all the women looked upon his face with love, with secret knowledge in the glint of their eyes, with a smile on their faces, as if they were thinking of making love to him in public, there and then, if only decorum would allow it.

In short, he had become beautiful to women in an inexplicable way, a way that had nothing to do with his face, but with a light that shone from him which women felt so powerfully in all their secret places and which made their eyes linger on him. He had that effect too on spirits. Even objects seemed to fall in love with him and fall under his unknowing spell ...

On the third day of his peculiar enlightenment he found himself at his hiding place, on the riverbank, waiting for the maiden to appear. He dimly remembered what it was he sought. He waited now because he had fallen into the condition of waiting for a long-forgotten manifestation. He had almost forgotten when he began waiting. The thing he remembered most was that setting out, finding his place among the reeds, looking out over the river and its shore, and dwelling in shining anticipation for some kind of mystery to appear, were among the most delicious moments of his life. It was for him like going from one dream to another.

It was the first light of day, and the river that never sleeps seemed, in that dawning, to shine, flow and quiver with a beautiful light he had never seen before. How golden and brown and great the river was that morning. White birds, cranes, herons, sunbirds, played on its shores. The prince watched the proud solitary heron as, like an actor on a stage with a majestically melancholic monologue, it strolled to a lonely eminence and brooded nonchalantly over the water. The prince was very fond of herons. He loved their ability to be great and small, visible and invisible, majestic and minor, tall and insignificant. The heron could conceal its own magnificence and appear to be a raggedy creature not worthy of being noticed. It was a royal creature that understood that to survive in the world you must not overly dazzle out your brilliance, otherwise you wouldn't catch true fish, and you would be hunted for your beauty. Only a truly beautiful creature could so conceal its own beauty for a higher purpose.

The prince watched the way the heron walked. With long thin legs it walked with such stealth, such lightness, such humility, as if it didn't want to make the slightest sound, as if it didn't want to displace even the air, as if it didn't want to have any effect at all on reality. It seemed, therefore, not to walk on the ground, but to tread just above it, with a tentativeness that was almost tender. Such a gentle, humble, wise, patient bird. And yet while affecting perfect uninterest in anything at all in the universe, how swiftly, how indirectly it strikes with its beak into the water and, unaffectedly, gobbles down a fish it has so casually caught. And yet what magnificence, what majesty, what grace and power, what a flashing slow white miracle that mesmerises the gaze when it flies low above the water, as if not flying, as if, in fact, almost unable to fly. And yet how it flies – flies with such economy of energy, using all the support of the wind, barely needing to stir its marvellous and awkward wings.

The prince loved the heron so much that he stared at it a long time in a dreaming sort of contemplation. And the heron, so sensitive, so intuitive, knew that it was being watched, and adjusted its body ever so slightly so as to achieve a condition totally lacking in visual interest, designed to bore the eyes, so that the looker might be induced to find something else to look at. But the prince knew this subtle trick of the heron, and wasn't going to be fooled.

And, in love, and fascination with a creature of marvels that didn't want to be noticed so that it could go about its business of making the miraculous ordinary, the prince kept his enraptured but awakened and vigilant gaze on that most cunning of birds. The heron was a test of his concentration, his ability to maintain interest in that which deliberately oozes boredom, deliberately emanates plainness, in order to be successfully invisible, and within that condition, wonderfully happy. The heron was a challenge to the prince. He couldn't take his eyes off this bird that had now made itself so bedraggled, so devoid of interest and stimulation; and yet he had to keep his eyes open with great effort.

He kept his gaze fixed on the heron even when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a most extraordinary form materialising from the air, or emerging from the earth. The prince was so mesmerised by this double vision that he had the greatest difficulty keeping his eyes on the heron. For, it seemed, the more boring and plain and unappealing to the eye the heron made itself, the harder and purer the prince's concentration had to be. And the purer the prince's concentration was on the heron, the more marvellous was the thing that was forming on the shoreline, out of the corner of his eye. Then, before he knew it, he began to hear things. This was such a severe test for him.

He heard voices, guttural, unreal, thin, reedy, comical, loud, savage, unnatural voices. He heard thunderous drum-rolls and tinkling bells and rattled cowries and cowhorns blaring and rattles shaking and seashells cascading and above, beneath and within the instruments, voices singing, hollering, wailing, in notes piercing and deep, as if a whole world was coming into being out of the myth and mysteries of the river. And while all this was happening, while the shoreline was populating with figures, the prince kept his tender gaze on the white heron. It was truly an epic battle of attention.

The prince felt himself being torn in two, between an overwhelming interest in the magnificent spectacle unfolding on the shore and a complete loyalty and undying fascination with the mysterious heron that stood so humbly, so undrama-tically in a quiet, barely noticeable section of the shore, standing on decaying reeds, partially concealed by the dreary patch of faded bushes around. And yet, what an unequal contest. How could the poor-looking unmajestic bedraggled heron compete with the epic spectacle which had bloomed with all power on the riverbank? For it seemed that in wavering between the wretched-looking heron and the mighty spectacle, the heron vanished just a little more from reality.

The more attention the prince paid to the great spectacle the more the heron was effaced from the world. It became smaller, it shrank, it became more unattractive and uglier the more the spectacle revealed itself in its wonderful glory. For the spectacle was glorious, was grand, was, indeed, almost monstrous, and fearful. The prince saw, as if in the horror of a dream, the appearance, on the riverbank, of a most fantastic masquerade.

It shone and blazed in rich colours of red and yellows, with black toes, white feet, purple legs, and glittering, flaming materials of orange and gold, of red and violet and green. It was as gigantic as a big tree. The masquerade, with its enormous presence, its branches of fire and flashing lightning, black smoke billowing from its vents, was like the figure of a terrible deity. It was more terrifying than death itself was fabled to be. And it had seven heads.

So mighty was this masquerade that its shadow alone stretched halfway across the river. Its seven heads blocked out the sun. All about its person were things too horrible to behold. For, when the prince paid closer attention, out of the corner of his eye, to the items bristling on the ferocious body of this gigantic masquerade, he saw the writhing forms of dead babies, he saw disembodied heads dangling from golden ropes with their eyes wide open, their tongues sticking out, pulling agonised faces. He saw limbs of bodies, twitching and alive; feet that kicked and wriggled their toes; fingers that flicked and stuck out and writhed; eyes that stared every which way with wonder and horror at what they saw; nostrils still breathing; lips still jabbering; and hearts that pumped blood interminably, blood that flowed down the horrid raffia and vegetation dress of the grim masquerade.

And the masquerade, mighty as an iroko tree, began dancing like a monster set free from an eternal slavery. It danced a dreadful terrifying dance. It waved its trunk-like arms in the air, in vile exultation. Every step it took made the earth shake and the kingdom tremble. Every time it jumped the land quaked, the riverbed cracked. With its ferocious dance the river heaved as if a storm had been unleashed at the bottom of the world, as if creation itself was being broken down and destroyed and split asunder ...

And all this time the prince struggled to keep his devoted attention fixed on the insignificant-seeming heron.

But it was a difficult struggle, and the heron began to pale into insubstantiality as the masquerade became more awesome, and as its dance began to break down the real world.

And when the masquerade began its utterances, a cacophonic tribe of voices speaking from all over its vast and mighty body, the heron practically dwindled to a point, a dirty white spot, still kept alive by the sheer strength of an unintentional will. The masquerade, now so gigantic that it dwarfed the highest trees around, started to utter intolerable incantations, vile and practical prophecies; and the prince was mesmerised by the dreaded poetry of the fearsome figure. It was a poetry that accompanied its destructive dance. And the poetry, the incantations, was so powerful, so monstrous, that it made the dance more violent. The words unleashed great evil forces in the air of the kingdom. The poetry, when uttered, turned dark and murky in the air, and turned into nightmare forms that populated the riverbank and began to devour everything. The ugly forms that formed from the poetry uttered by the horrid figure remained connected to it through pulsing umbilical cords. And what the forms devoured fed the masquerade's gargantuan appetite.

'Eat, eat, eat the world
Conquer, conquer, conquer the world
Rule, rule, rule the world
I am the king, the king of the world.

Blood, blood, blood in the world
Death, death, death in the world
Enslave, enslave, enslave the world
I am the king, the king of the world.

Take, take, take the world
Destroy, destroy, destroy the world
Hate, hate, hate the world
I am the king, the king of the world.
Unmake, unmake, unmake the world
Evil, evil, evil in the world
Darkness, darkness, darkness in the world
I am the happy happy king of the world.

Dance, dance, dance away this dream
Drink, drink, drink away this stream
Swallow, swallow, swallow the sun
Then I, the king, will be the only one.
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha; Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!'

And as the masquerade laughed its ugly laughter, the prince noticed that its dance, grown more ferocious, was actually beginning to destroy the world. Its dance began to break the kingdom's foundations. The land split open and all over, from far away and near by, the prince heard the cries of people falling into a gaping chasm that appeared under their feet. He heard huts and abodes collapsing, he heard voices screaming in an interminable fall, he heard trees crashing down and the forests shrieking.

And the prince momentarily fell into a dream in which the heron stood clear, upright, majestic and bright. The heron stood in the middle of a space full of noble bronze figures; and among the figures was the maiden that he had been waiting for. He knew at once that she came from a family of bronze-casters, sculptors, a tribe of artists, a hidden race that lived away from all other peoples and tribes, so that they could listen to the oracles in the air and create forms in bronze and stone that warned of things to come, or things that haven't been done, or of disturbances to the realm, prophecies and revelations, or just forms that give a secret joy to some unknown self within. Such was the tribe she came from, a tribe that knew and kept the ancient secrets of bronze-casting, of divination through art, of healing through created forms, of the mysteries of creation. They were an underground tribe, who lived and created invisibly, not disdaining others, but knowing that the only way they could serve the land was to live their own way, with their own freedom, following their own magical and fluid laws, guided by constant intuitions and directives of the spirit, in accordance with the needs of the times. Such was the way of the maiden and her people.

He knew now that he was extremely fortunate to have seen her at all the first time, and now he would have to persevere and be very lucky if he was ever going to see her again, and to inspire her love, and win her heart. For he had seen her, and dreamt of her, but she had never seen him, and didn't know that he even existed ...

And all the while, in the dream, the prince saw the radiant beauty of the heron, shining like a diamond in a dying world. And all of a sudden the prince heard a mighty tumult, the wailing and the crashing, and woke from his dream and saw the masquerade in its destruction of the world. At that moment the prince had the absurd notion that the destruction of the world was somehow delayed by keeping his attention on the heron, who, at that moment, had disappeared to a speck.

And only when the masquerade began devouring the trees, eating up the shore, and drinking up the water of the river, drinking it dry, leaving only a deep chasm of a dry riverbed full of skeletons, only when the masquerade had eaten up the bushes, was breathing in all the air, and had begun to break off the sun and to devour it, bringing on night, only when the prince saw the body of the masquerade grow bigger and bigger till it was almost greater than the earth itself, and only when the masquerade was about to devour the prince himself, because of too much attention the prince had paid to it, only then did the prince remember the heron again.

And the prince noticed that the heron had made a very minute movement, the tiniest, subtlest movement. And this movement, small though it was, proved enough for the reality, the mystery and the true luminous hidden magnificence of the heron to be revealed again. And when the prince regained his loyal gaze on the heron, seeing it as a radiant thing in a dying space, the prime living thing in a dead world, only then did the masquerade begin to diminish.

But first the masquerade howled, it raged, it thundered, it leaked blood from all over its vast trunk, and blood and liverish fluids filled the hollow world and flowed into the riverbed and the river became a river of blood. And the sun shone out from all parts of the masquerade. And air leaked from its vents. And the heron became clear and white and stood tall and unveiled, in its unfolding, its true hieratic splendour. And then it pressed up gently its feet, and outstretched, with barely an effort, its wings. And like a king of space, a king of light, it flew above the blood-red river, and in its flight it changed all things. Its humble majesty restored a new attention to the world.

And the masquerade tried to swat the heron, and to snatch it with its thousand hands and devour it with its seven heads. But the masquerade got all mixed up and so confused that it began a war against itself as it became self-entangled trying to kill the white heron sailing along nonchalantly, unaware, it seemed, that anything out of the ordinary was going on.

The prince was fascinated. The heron didn't notice, or didn't seem to see, or register the existence of, the masquerade. And in its not-knowing it caused the greatest damage of all. For the masquerade, wielding its thousand swords, spears, bows and arrows and lethal instruments of war, had unleashed a mighty battle against itself. It had cut off some of its own heads in its attempts to slay the heron; it had blinded itself with its poisoned spears; and had, eventually, pierced its own heart, in the most ferocious battle ever witnessed by human eyes.

What a battle it was, this self-battle of the masquerade. The clash of mighty armies never produced more cries, more anguish, more tragedy, more blood, more agony, or more drama and destruction than the battle of the masquerade against itself, against its many selves. And then, with a sigh that released all the air of the world back into the spaces, the masquerade fell slowly into the blood-filled river. And the sun, freed from its mouth as it drowned, changed and purified the water.

The sun rose in majesty from the far side of the red river, and its light restored the world to itself.

And in the distance, herald of a new dawn, soared the heron, flying gently as a breeze, borne aloft by the gentlest light.

The prince bade it farewell with tears in his eyes.

And still the maiden did not appear.