Tales of Freedom Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Ben Okri

  Title Page

  The Comic Destiny

  Book One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Book Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Book Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Book Four

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Beyond

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  A Note on the Form

  Belonging

  Chapter One

  The Mysterious Anxiety of Them and Us

  Chapter One

  The Clock

  Chapter One

  Music for a Ruined City

  Chapter One

  The Unseen Kingdom

  Chapter One

  The Racial Colourist

  Chapter One

  The Black Russian

  Chapter One

  Wild Bulls

  Chapter One

  The Legendary Sedgewick

  Chapter One

  The Golden Inferno

  Chapter One

  The Secret Castle

  Chapter One

  The War Healer

  Chapter One

  The Message

  Chapter One

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Ben Okri has published 9 novels, including The Famished Road, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded the OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore. He is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. He was born in Nigeria and lives in London.

  Also by Ben Okri

  Fiction

  Flowers and Shadows

  The Landscapes Within

  Incidents at the Shrine

  Stars of the New Curfew

  The Famished Road

  Songs of Enchantment

  Astonishing the Gods

  Dangerous Love

  Infinite Riches

  In Arcadia

  Starbook

  Non-Fiction

  Birds of Heaven

  A Way of Being Free

  Poetry

  An African Elegy

  Mental Fight

  The Comic

  Destiny

  Book One

  One

  OLD MAN AND Old Woman sat in the forest. Pinprop sat at their feet. They were in a clearing. They listened to footsteps running in their direction, and to a siren wailing in the distance. After a while the footsteps receded.

  Old Man and Old Woman were silent. They sat behind a table. Pinprop sat in front. Every now and again Pinprop looked to the left and then to the right. He put his ear to the ground. He grinned.

  Suddenly, Old Man, with dignity, said:

  ‘YES.’

  Old Woman looked at him. Then she too said:

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a long silence. Not even the wind could be heard. Old Man kicked Pinprop beneath the table and, sternly, said:

  ‘Pinprop!’

  Pinprop sat up straight and came to his senses.

  ‘Oh, sir,’ he said. ‘Definitely yes. Indeed, sir. A big yes.’

  ‘Good. Good,’ Old Man said.

  Two

  PINPROP LEAPT UP from his cross-legged position as if inspired. He paced up and down the clearing, in front of the table. He stopped, and laughed. Then he performed a dance step, turned grim, and laughed again. Without turning to face the old couple, he said:

  ‘As we were saying. We have indeed found the spot, and the spot has indeed found us. We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.’

  ‘You mean we have not yet arrived?’ said Old Woman, with a tone of indignation.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ replied Pinprop. ‘But only tentatively.’

  ‘What!’ Old Woman cried.

  ‘It’s like this,’ said Pinprop reassuringly. ‘Every time a goose lays an egg it implies many more eggs to be laid. Every time a trap catches a mouse there is an intimation of many more mice to be caught. The final destination of the goose is when it can become an egg; and with the trap it is when it ends up as a mouse.’

  ‘Yes,’ Old Woman said. ‘That makes a lot of sense. Go on.’

  Pinprop resumed pacing. He appeared slightly confused.

  ‘I’m glad it makes sense.’

  ‘Well, go on.’

  ‘Well, em, where was I?’

  ‘The mouse becomes a trap,’ Old Woman said, irritated.

  ‘Yes. Where was I before that?’

  ‘You were here, you fool,’ Old Man snapped.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Pinprop. ‘How easily I forget. Well, now that we have arrived temporarily, we must pay our tributes to where we are.’

  Three

  PINPROP BECAME SILENT. Then he looked around wildly. There was a touch of terror on his face.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

  ‘Pinprop, will you stop this,’ Old Woman said, exasperated. ‘You were just going to tell us that.’

  ‘No, madam,’ replied Pinprop. ‘I was simply going to remind us what brought us here.’

  ‘And what is that?’ Old Woman asked, with some interest.

  ‘Well, em, do you want me to be honest?’

  ‘No, definitely not, Pinprop,’ Old Man said, ‘You know how much we hate honesty.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Well?’ pressed Old Woman.

  ‘Well then,’ said Pinprop blithely, ‘we came here because we were looking for somewhere else to go.’

  ‘That is disconcertingly too near the truth,’ said Old Man.

  ‘Well then, we came here because we were tired.’

  ‘Still too near the truth.’

  ‘We came in search of violence?’

  ‘Too near.’

  ‘Looking for a place to die?’

  ‘PINPROP!!!’ Old Man cried.

  ‘Forgive me, sir. It simply slipped out.’

  ‘Well then, rectify it.’

  ‘Definitely, sir.’

  ‘Don’t use that word “definite”.’

  ‘Why not, sir?’

  ‘Blasphemy!’

  ‘Alright, sir.’

  ‘Then why?’ asked Old Woman. ‘Why? Why? Why, Pinprop?�
��

  ‘Yes, why? Emmmm. Can I be verbose about it?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Old Man.

  ‘Ugliness,’ began Pinprop, ‘and the cruelty of myth. The excessive stench of putrefying bodies. Too much blood and tiredness, and iron in the throat. Small places turning septic, and large spaces tumbling into confusion. And people becoming hell. And hunger bloating too many bellies. Tiredness and tiredness and chaos. And fear, Sir, limitless fear.’

  ‘You should be hanged, Pinprop,’ snarled Old Man.

  ‘Too much neurosis and disease and new diseases.’

  ‘You should be flagellated, Pinprop,’ snarled Old Woman.

  ‘And the shrinking of cages till we can no longer fly.’

  ‘You should be served for dinner,’ Old Man cried.

  ‘And squabbles and lies and terror. Self-destruction and the wilful destruction of other people. And sickness, sir, sickness in the throat and stomach and food and streets and faces and the air …’

  Cutting through his iteration, Old Man and Old Woman shouted as one:

  ‘The chain, Pinprop, the chain of iron and blood.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Pinprop, a little chastened. ‘I forgot. I got carried away.’

  With a noticeable change in their voices, and still speaking as one:

  ‘Yes, Pinprop, you got carried away.’

  ‘What?’ he enquired, puzzled.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Oh, indeed, yes,’ said Pinprop, relieved. ‘Yes very very much. A fat yes to everything.’

  He laughed. He seemed pleased with himself. He did a dance step.

  ‘Yes, Pinprop. Yes,’ they both said, with a decidedly sinister tone.

  Four

  THEN, QUITE SUDDENLY, Old Man and Old Woman kicked away their chairs and tossed aside the table. And while Pinprop danced unsuspectingly they grabbed him and, with surprising ease, lifted him up and carried him off into the woods. They dumped him on the ground with a thud. Pinprop wailed and laughed wildly at the same time, while they chained him. Then, wheezing and coughing, Old Man and Old Woman returned to the clearing.

  Breathing heavily, Old Man said:

  ‘That was a job well done.’

  ‘A satisfactory achievement,’ Old Woman replied.

  ‘A major victory, considering our ages.’

  ‘Let us not talk about age.’

  ‘I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Do you think we were a bit too hard on him?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Old Man, with dignity.

  ‘That’s wonderful.’

  They picked up the chairs, put the table back in its former place, and resumed their seats.

  ‘Now all we can do is wait,’ Old Woman said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the boredom?’

  ‘Oh, that. Let’s enjoy that as well.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘Yes to all that.’

  ‘Yes to everything.’

  ‘And to nothing.’

  Five

  THERE WAS A brief silence. Then Old Man and Old Woman began to reminisce, to speak as if the other weren’t there. They spoke aloud, to themselves, in that clearing, in the forest, beneath an indeterminate sky. They spoke alternately, as if they were in a dream, or a trance, or a ritual. Old Woman spoke first.

  ‘I remember all those signs on the trees on our way here …’

  Then Old Man spoke:

  ‘I forget to remember but I certainly recollect the skeletons that strange tribe built their houses with …’

  Old Woman, interrupting, said:

  ‘And I remember that the signs formed an interminable sentence. If you miss out a tree or get to the wrong one first the whole sentence gets jumbled up.’

  Old Man continued the thread of his reminiscences:

  ‘The skeletons were polished and left intact. The bones were decorated. The hollows in the skulls were stuffed with amusing artefacts. The tribe thought it had finally arrived and then one night in history the owners of the skeletons turned up and began to remove their bones and skulls. The buildings collapsed, and only the artefacts remained.’

  Old Woman, increasingly mesmerised by her reminiscence, spoke with some urgency:

  ‘I remember that I had to keep rearranging the sentences in my head. At first they seemed like nonsense, a pointless word puzzle. I was fascinated with this elaborate rubbish till I realised that I was in fact reading the story of my life that had been scattered all over the place.’

  They were each lost in their separate monologues. They picked up the thread of their reminiscences as if they were sleep-walkers in an obscure theatre of the mind. With increasing intensity, Old Man continued:

  ‘The strange tribe had built an unhealthy routine around the skeletons. They didn’t realise that the skeletons were alive and subversive. And so their routines became hellish and the people became afflicted with diseases that only a final destruction could cure. I mean, it was funny and sad to see them living their daily lives, trying to unwind the intricate confusion of so many threads forever entangled. It was even funnier when …’

  And Old Woman, in the voice of a bizarre tropical bird, swooped down into her extended act of memory.

  ‘I was horrified but I laughed and said to Pinprop “There must be a place out there”. And whenever I could I either tore down the signs or rewrote them. It was ugly seeing intimate details of my life on those trees, things like when I had my first period and all the satisfaction I derived from inflicting revenge on someone who had insulted me in some small way. It was all so banal. I rewrote them, indeed I did. And …’

  Plunging deeper into his mood, Old Man said:

  ‘… a man came along and saw his skeleton embedded in the body of a building. He struggled so hard to get it out that he extricated the skeleton but ended up part of the building himself. Afterwards the building became empty because they thought it was spooked and for several centuries the man was howling away in an empty house with no-one around to be terrified. And …’

  Old Woman laughed lightly to herself at her memories.

  ‘… I thought it was funny myself that I had rewritten the last sign I saw that said “And I was lost”. I simply made it read: “And I took up a room in a hotel and lived there ever after.” I like happy endings, you see.’

  Then she turned serious.

  ‘No-one can blame me for being angry, therefore, when Pinprop came back and told me that we were lost. I asked him how he knew and the fool said: “Well, em, I read it on a tree”.’

  Six

  AT THAT MOMENT Pinprop began howling from the woods. He howled like one in a nightmare.

  ‘And boredom, sir and madam,’ he cried. ‘What shall we do about hunger? What are we to do about violence, I ask you?’

  ‘Tell the fool to shut up,’ snapped Old Man.

  ‘Shut up, Pinprop!’ Old Woman barked.

  ‘But if I shut up, sir, who would hear me?’

  ‘No-one wants to hear you, Pinprop,’ Old Man said.

  ‘Then I shall speak to myself.’

  ‘Then we shall listen,’ replied Old Man.

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ came the obstinate Pinprop. ‘I am bored. I am tired. I shall sing a song. I am afraid of being bored so I shall make love instead. I shall make love to these chains and I shall do it so much that the chains will float and we will all have to swim.’

  ‘Empty threats, Pinprop.’

  ‘Tell him to shut up. I don’t want to be accidentally impregnated by a eunuch.’

  ‘Surely, you’re too old for that.’

  ‘I shall outdo the rainstorms, sir,’ Pinprop shouted. ‘Who knows what clouds are anyway?’

  ‘Shut up, Pinprop.’

  ‘I was merely expressing a fantasy.’

  ‘Your fantasy makes us sick,’ said Old Woman.

  ‘I was merely trying to nauseate you into freeing me from these rusted chains,’ cried Pinprop, beating the chains on the ground.

  ‘You’d better relea
se him.’

  ‘And what will be his price for freedom?’ Old Man asked, wearily.

  ‘Obedience,’ said Old Woman.

  Seven

  OLD MAN GOT up reluctantly. He trundled into the woods, and soon returned with Pinprop trailing behind him, limply. Old Man sat in his chair. Pinprop took up his customary position in front of the table. The sky had darkened a little over the clearing.

  ‘Now we shall have some peace,’ Old Woman said.

  ‘I was trying to forget something,’ muttered Old Man, ‘but instead I remembered.’

  ‘I was trying to remember something,’ mumbled Old Woman, ‘but now I’ve forgotten.’

  Pinprop, almost in a whisper, said:

  ‘A bloated NO to all this, and a monstrous NO to all that iron.’

  The sky improved. Then Old Man, with dignity, said:

  ‘Now for some boredom.’

  Old Woman, also with dignity:

  ‘Now for some lies.’

  ‘And now,’ said Pinprop, ‘that we have arrived at a temporary destination …’

  ‘A proper yes,’ said Old Man.

  ‘A resonant yes,’ said Old Woman.

  ‘… I may as well remember for myself …’ Pinprop continued.

  ‘The vote is taken,’ Old Man said.

  ‘And silence wins,’ Old Woman said.

  ‘… that there are many sad people …’ Pinprop went on.

  ‘A deafening victory for silence,’ said Old Woman.

  ‘A violent victory for silence,’ said Old Man.

  ‘… who would never arrive …’ said Pinprop.

  ‘Because silence stands for lies,’ Old Woman said.

  ‘And lies stand for victory,’ Old Man said.

  ‘… because there is nowhere to arrive at …’ continued Pinprop.

  ‘And victory stands for banality.’

  ‘And banality represents happiness.’

  ‘… and travelling is the only place there is …’ said Pinprop.

  ‘Look well, therefore, at the trap,’ intoned Old Man.

  ‘And regard carefully the mouse,’ cried Old Woman.

  ‘… and arriving is the best cliché to feed to skeletons,’ concluded Pinprop.

  ‘A resounding yes to arrivals,’ bellowed the old man.

  ‘A sonorous yes to escapes,’ crowed the old woman.

  There was a brief silence. Old Man and Old Woman looked sternly at Pinprop. Old Woman kicked him beneath the table. Pinprop giggled. Then he stopped. Then, in a demonic whisper, he said: