Infinite Riches Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Ben Okri

  Dedication

  Title Page

  I

  Book One

  One: The Little Room

  Two: The Leopard

  Three: Disappearance

  Four: Circling

  Five: Prelude to Trouble

  Six: Dialogue with my Dead Friend

  Seven: The Arrest

  Eight: The Gathering Wrath of Women

  Nine: The Imprisoned Tyger

  Ten: The Fantastic Ravings of Madame Koto

  Eleven: Seeds of Mutiny

  Twelve: Birth of a Three-Day Legend

  Thirteen: Hidden View of the Governor-General

  Fourteen: Distorting the Rage

  Fifteen: The Re-Emergence of an Old Deity

  Sixteen: Dad Dissolves into Seven Selves

  Seventeen: Madame Koto and the Shadows

  Eighteen: A Dream of Hope

  Nineteen: Dad Summons his Ancestors, and Fails

  Twenty: Dad Summons a Dreaded Deity

  Twenty-One: A Public Confession

  Twenty-Two: The Vacant Tyger

  Twenty-Three: Homecoming of the Heroes

  Twenty-Four: Dialogue with the Photographer

  Twenty-Five: Destroying the Veil

  Twenty-Six: The Silence of the Tyger

  Book Two

  One: Circling Spirit (1)

  Two: Circling Spirit (2)

  Three: An Incomplete Ascension

  Four: The Unaccountable Passion of Mothers

  Five: The Old Woman’s Circular Narrative

  Six: A Curious Interchange

  Seven: The Battle of Rewritten Histories

  Eight: Exposing the Earth

  Nine: Birth of the Heat

  Ten: Wrath of the Wandering Spirit

  Eleven: Burning the Future

  Twelve: The Secret of the Heatwave

  Thirteen: Dolores Mundi

  Fourteen: Invisible Books

  Book Three

  One: The Shrine in the Labyrinth

  Two: An Ambiguous old Woman

  Three: Dialogue with an Unhappy Maiden

  Four: The Vanished Rock

  Five: A Silent Coda

  Book Four

  One: An Angel Redeems our Suffering in Advance

  Two: ‘The Instinct in Paradise’

  Three: A Beauty Bordering on Terror

  Four: End of An Enchantment

  II

  Book Five

  One: The Story of the Rain Queen

  Two: How Mum Paid for my Careless Words

  Three: Vigilance

  Four: Ghosts of Narratives Past

  Five: The Black Rock of Enigmas

  Six: A Secret Chain of Dream Worlds

  Seven: Where does a Birth Begin?

  Eight: The Last Feast

  Nine: The Wind Whispers Insurrective Words on the Air

  Ten: A River of Contending Dreams

  Eleven: Contending Dreams (2): God of the Insects

  Twelve: Contending Dreams (3): Good Disguised as Bad

  Thirteen: The Angel and the Shrine

  Fourteen: Resilient Ash

  Fifteen: The Ambush of Reality

  III

  Book Six

  One: Draw a Deep Breath for a New Song

  Two: Call of the Political Rally

  Three: The Dead Carpenter

  Four: The Great Rally

  Five: Shadow Beings in all the Empty Spaces

  Six: The Insurrective Laughter of the Dead

  Seven: The Silence of Tigers

  Eight: The Dance of the Dead

  Nine: The Forgotten Power of Laughter

  Ten: The Rally Turns into a Fantastical Riot

  Eleven: Adventures into Chaos

  Twelve: The Procession of Higher Beings

  Thirteen: Night of Wondrous Transformations

  Fourteen: A Sympathetic Invasion

  IV

  Book Seven

  One: I Flailed My Way into a Cool Terrain

  Two: I Enter the Realm where Thoughts are Voices

  Three: Assassination of a Rain Queen

  Four: A Cooling Wind

  V

  Book Eight

  One: Earthing Evil

  Two: The Disintegration of Myth

  Three: The Yellow Growth

  Four: New Rumours Change Reality

  Five: Dad Hears Lovely Melodies

  Six: The Curious Stigmata

  Seven: ‘Who is Crying?’

  Eight: The Blind Old Man’s Piety

  Nine: The Rewritten Riot

  Ten: Living in a Paradox

  Eleven: Turning Death into Power

  Twelve: The Mysterious Funeral (1)

  Thirteen: The Mysterious Funeral (2)

  Fourteen: The Power of the Dead

  Fifteen: ‘They have Taken her Heart!’

  Sixteen: Death is Cultural

  Seventeen: Old Trees are Impossible to Replace

  Eighteen: The Beautification

  Nineteen: The Procession

  Twenty: Behind the Veil

  Twenty-One: An Omen

  Twenty-Two: Half a Ton of Concrete

  Twenty-Three: Gun Salutes

  Twenty-Four: We did not Weep

  Twenty-Five: Celebrations for a Legend

  Twenty-Six: Lingering in the Shadows

  Twenty-Seven: When I Cried out the Pain Eased

  Twenty-Eight: As if they had all Just Lost their Mothers

  Twenty-Nine: A Little Night Music

  Thirty: Softened Faces

  Thirty-One: Time Quickens

  Thirty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  In the chaotic world of his African village, the spirit-child Azaro still watches the tumultous and tender lives of the Living; of his father who has been imprisoned for a crime he did not commit and of his mother who battles for justice. This final chapter in Azaro’s adventures is a explosive and haunting climax to this masterful trilogy.

  About the Author

  Ben Okri has published nine novels, including Infinite Riches, 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

  In Arcadia

  Starbook

  Non-fiction

  Birds of Heaven

  A Way of Being Free

  Poetry

  An African Elegy

  Mental Flight

  To my beloved Mother

  Grace Okri

  1936–1996

  Now that serenely

  You rest on high

  Forgive your son

  Who couldn’t say goodbye

  But Death was a tyrant

  On the rich land

  And you had written

  Enigmas in my hand

  The more they try

  To press you down

  The more beautiful

  G
rows your crown

  And now that you

  Are as a spiritual dove

  Dwell forever

  In our eternal love

  Infinite Riches

  Ben Okri

  ‘Infinite riches in a little room’

  Christopher Marlowe

  I

  BOOK ONE

  ONE

  The little room

  ‘WHO CAN BE certain where the end begins?’ said Dad, shortly before he was arrested for the murder of the carpenter.

  ‘Time is growing,’ he added. ‘And our suffering is growing too. When will our suffering bear fruit? One great thought can alter the future of the world. One revelation. One dream. But who will dream that dream? And who will make it real?’

  TWO

  The leopard

  WHILE THE WHOLE community dreamt of the dead carpenter, Dad sat in our darkened room, talking deep into the night.

  I listened to him, with dread in my heart, as he spoke words which heated up the air of the room. With blazing eyes, almost without purpose, he said: ‘Some people who are born don’t want to live. Others who are dead don’t want to die. Azaro, are you awake?’

  I was surprised by the question.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  He carried on, as if I hadn’t said anything.

  ‘My son, sometimes we find ourselves living in the dreams of the dead. Who knows the destination of a dream? How many worlds do we live in at the same time? When we sleep do we wake up in another world, in another time? When we sleep in that other world do we wake up here, in this world? Is history the converging dreams of many millions of people, living and dead? Have I just died and am I now living in another zone? Are we asleep all the time? When we wake, is it to one level above the deep sleep of our days? Do we wake when we die? My son, I feel as if I have just died and yet I have never felt more awake.’

  He stopped again. His speech frightened me. Something incredible must have happened to him in the forest when he was burying the dead carpenter. It was as if he had burst out of a tight space which had been confining his raging spirit.

  Then, in a sleepwalking voice, he suddenly cried out:

  ‘I have never felt more awake, but I see a leopard coming towards me. Am I a leopard? Is the leopard my dream? Look!’ he said, with an illuminated anguish in his voice, ‘The room is becoming brighter!’

  THREE

  Disappearance

  I LOOKED WITH widened eyes. My heart was still. The room was flooded with a subdued green intensity. The smell of herbaceous earth overwhelmed my senses. The forest darkness compacted into corners of the room. And, condensing beside Dad, as if the green were alive, its own light, contracting into an unmistakable form – was the leopard.

  It was old. Its eyes were like blue jewels. And it sat peacefully at Dad’s feet. The leopard was phosphorescent, spreading no shadows, as if it had come to the end of its dreaming.

  Then something odd occurred to me.

  ‘Are you awake, Dad?’ I asked.

  The light of the great animal flickered. Dad was silent. I asked the question again, louder. Mum turned on the bed. For an instant the room darkened again. Then the green radiance glowed, filling out the place. I got up from my mat. As I neared Dad, the leopard’s illumination dimmed. I stopped, and whispered hard into his ear.

  ‘ARE YOU AWAKE, DAD?’

  ‘WHAT?’ he cried, jumping up suddenly, plunging the room into night.

  The leopard was gone. I stayed silent for a moment.

  Then, as if he had woken into sleep, Dad brushed past me, muttering something about seeing things for the first time. He went out of the room. For a moment I was confused. Then I went out after him, ran to the housefront, and looked both ways. Dad wasn’t anywhere. I went to the backyard, but he wasn’t there either. I hurried to the street again, ran one way, then another. It was very strange, and the thought scared me, but it seemed as if Dad simply stepped out of our door, and out of reality. I went back to the room and waited for him. While I waited it occurred to me that Dad had been talking from his sleep. I had entered another of his dreams.

  FOUR

  Circling

  I WAS RESTLESS. I waited a long time in the dark. I lay on the bed. Then I rose out of myself, and began circling. I circled in and out of the dreams of the community. Circled in the dreams of spirit-children who keep coming back to the same place, trying to break the chains of history. Circled in the dreams of the dead carpenter, who grew bigger in his coffin, till his swelling body split his wooden encasement.

  As I circled, I saw that the dead carpenter had left his grave without moving the mighty rock that was above him. He had white flowers all over his body. He went from place to place, stirring the spirits of the dead. He wandered from one sleeper’s house to another. Rattling their roofs. Trying to get into their lives. Trying to manifest himself to them in some way.

  The dead carpenter knocked on people’s doors. Banged on their windows. Grimaced into the blind faces of dreamers. Held long conversations with sensitive children. Roamed around the kitchens clattering the cooking utensils. Out in the open air, he glowed in the dark. Soon he drifted up into the sky, and hung in mid-space, threatening pestilence until his murderers had confessed their crime. Until he had been properly buried. He stirred revolt in the universal air of dreams.

  I went on circling. Mum turned again on the bed. She was dreaming about the time, many years on, when she would be serenaded by a man who sold cement. Her dream changed. She found herself with her mother, who had been dead for twenty years and was now living on another continent, near the silver mountains. In the dream she stood with her mother beneath an Elysian sky. Together they stared at the faces of great women sculpted on the rocks by nature.

  Then, I saw someone staggering down our street, with a bucket on his head. The man’s face was completely wrapped in cloth, except for the eyes. When the wind blew against our window, our room was invaded by a bad smell. A reminder of our wretched condition, in which we live instantaneously with all the consequences of our actions.

  After some time, I lay down again, and resumed circling. Twenty miles away, the future rulers of the nation slept in peace. They dreamt of power. They dreamt of bottomless coffers to steal from. Houses in every famous city. Concubines in every major town. Power removing them from the consequences of their own actions, which we suffered in advance. And suffered for long afterwards.

  Meanwhile, the man with the bucket was shouting incoherent abuse as he staggered past the houses. The smell of his bucket altered our dreams. After he went past, we heard a loud cry, and then silence.

  Twenty miles away, in a richer part of the city, on mattresses that would be transformed into palatial beds, the future rulers of the nation breathed easily. They were reliving their ascension, their victories. Numbering their enemies. They were dreaming their nation-destroying policies in advance. Tribal dreams of domination that would ignite civil war.

  Thirty miles away, the English Governor-General, who hated being photographed, was dreaming about his colonial rule. In his dream he was destroying all the documents. Burning all the evidence. Shredding history. As I lingered in the Governor-General’s dream a wave of darkness washed me to an island, across the ocean, where many of our troubles began, and on whose roads, in a future life, I would wander and suffer and find a new kind of light.

  I wasn’t long in that world when someone appeared at our door, stinking of a crude perfume made from the bitter aloes of the desert. I stopped circling. I descended into my body, woke up, and saw Dad. He was freshly bathed and looked thoroughly scrubbed. He also stank of carbolic. Wrinkles were deep on his forehead. His eyes bulged. A candle was alight on the centre table.

  Dad was in his chair, silent, as if he hadn’t moved. He smoked serenely. He didn’t look at me. His thoughts were very intense. When he finished smoking, he put out the candle. Then, without a word, he got into bed with Mum, and fell into a profound slumber.

  FIV
E

  Prelude to trouble

  DAD WAS STILL asleep when we woke up in the morning. His perfume chastened us, and hung densely in the room. The perfume was so appalling that it drove Mum out hawking much earlier than usual.

  Mum was dressed like a prophetess that morning, as if she were cleansing the day in advance. She wore a white smock, white beads, white kerchief and a fish-patterned wrapper. She made food for us, and left Dad’s breakfast covered on the table. She ate with me, but did not speak. Her face was shadowed as if her spirit were conserving its energies for the trials ahead.

  After we had eaten, she got her basins of oranges, mosquito coils and soap. She prayed at the door, and then begged me not to wander far from home. She went out into the early sunlight. I listened as she advertised her wares in a new singing voice. Advertised them to a people who were too poor to buy oil for their lamps.

  She went down the street, in the direction opposite Madame Koto’s bar. Breaking the settled crust of the sleeping earth with her antiquated sandals. Walking innocently through all the rumours gathering. She was beginning her day as she would end it. Seeking elusive things. Calling out to people who weren’t listening. Soaking in the dust and murmurs of the road.

  Meanwhile, Dad was deep in the last decent sleep he would have for a long time. He slept soundly, gathering his secret strengths. While he grew heavier on the bed, our door was wide open for trouble to come and pay us a lengthy visit.

  SIX

  Dialogue with my dead friend

  MUM LEFT AND I waited patiently for Dad to wake up. But Dad snored noisily. I got tired of waiting. I went out into the street and encountered the new cycle. It had begun at night and was now real.

  There were loud cries from Madame Koto’s bar. It was as if many women had fallen into trances and were possessed. The street was crowded with neighbours and new people with odd faces. Soon I pieced together what was happening. People were talking about the old leopard they had glimpsed in the forest. Its breathing was poor and its growling was hoarse. People had gone hunting for the leopard with dane guns and machetes, but hadn’t found it. On their way back they had come upon the enormous figure of Madame Koto, rolling on the ground, raving.