Starbook (38 page)

'Oh my mother, save me, I'm drowning, I'm drowning!'

And he didn't hear her at all, for he had caught a spark of dangerous fire, and he found himself on a crest of such shining relentless ecstasy that it seemed he was possessed of a living fire, and every movement he made was like touching a live spark of screaming joy that could not be put out, like being touched in a raw place with sparkling tongues of an immortal burning; and it got worse and more unbearable till it was the core of his being that was the beautiful burning and the feeling; and he too went past a point and went over.

Neither of them could stop moving now, stop racing towards their doom, their disaster and their redemption; and she gasped and her mouth opened wide and she cried out long and silently; and his mouth was open wide, uttering no sound, but screaming in a high pitch. And then there was a long silence, and a sudden long stillness, as if they had been both momentarily transformed into statues of grotesque and sublime pleasure. And then a long terrible double cry was heard that resounded in the depths of the river and up in the heights of the sky, a long-sustained much delayed much desired cry of creation, and then a single burst of light, bright beyond measure, as at the birth of a significant star.

There was rejoicing in all the high places. They had made love once, but that once was enough. Each changed the other's world and the story of the earth changed too in that once.

Nothing could undo what would happen, what would continue to happen because of that once. Their love had, at last, after centuries of missed opportunities, finally found its great moment. And their love in a future time would last a lifetime and an eternity for having finally connected on this earth, where such a possibility is all too rare.

Yes, there was rejoicing in all the high places.

A
s night fell, the maiden said:

'I always thought you were not real. I always thought you were something strange, like a dream, a white horse in a dream. I always thought you were something brought to life by a miraculous touch. Not entirely human. You appeared like a being created by my father's magic art. Now I have to see you as a human being, and love you as a man. To me you will always be something unique, something more than just a human being. Maybe before all this and after all this you are just my dream.'

'I am a dream and not a dream; I am real and not real,' said the prince.

'There is only one thing left though.'

'What?'

'How do you give me your shadow?'

'I have given you my shadow because I have given you my death and my love.'

'But you have not told me a story.'

'That's because we have lived it.'

'And the best dream?'

'You have dreamt it.'

Afterwards came the changes. It all happened so fast that their lives passed from the greatest happiness to the greatest despair in what seemed like a lightning flash of unreal time. But the moments in which they were happy, even delirious, were themselves a lifetime, an eternity. These moments were deep enough to last in the memory that never fades, till they were to meet again and live the lives of two lovers whose time to be happy and to be together at last arrives on earth, or somewhere else more suitable ... And these future lives would not be much worth telling a story about because of the simple pleasure and harmony of their togetherness, their happiness.

But that night, by the river, as they stared naked at one another in the afterglow of their shattering pleasure, they probably sensed that their magic moment was over, that such unnatural joy was not meant to last. They probably sensed that their sublime consummation was a brief gift from heaven as a promise for a future renewal, and a consolation for what was to come.

They had been followed. And as they lingered in the starburst of their love-making by the river, they were set upon by the Mamba and his followers, bearing flaming torches, leaping out from the undergrowth ...

In confusion and horror, the two lovers fled into the forest, holding hands. The maiden, unable to keep up the fury of the pace, demanded that her lover make his own escape and that he should return for her later, when times were more auspicious. The new pupil, in the chaos of the moment, in furious whispers, told her of the gaps in the forest, and the right one to choose when seeking for him should he be successful in his escape or should she not hear from him. Then he made off into the darkness of the forest.

The new pupil, in his haste, in the chaos, in the trap sprung by the audacious fates, chose the wrong gap between trees, a gap fiery with the dark light of an agonising destiny; and he appeared in his village at the moment when, their plan hatched and ready to be born, Chief Okadu and the usurping elders had decided, should he return, to have the prince either killed, or delivered up to the white spirits to be carried off into the sea of oblivion.

In his nakedness the prince, guided by an intuition, did not go back to the palace when he managed to find his way back to the village. He hung around in the dark, waiting near the village shrine for anyone who might happen past. A woman late returning from the market saw him crouching and heeded his call. From her he learnt about the changes that had happened in his absence. Stripping off a layer of cloth, the woman covered the prince's nakedness and led him, under the protection of darkness, to her humble family abode, where the prince could collect his thoughts and fortify himself with food, and where he could meditate and pray. What he had learnt, what he found out, was indeed momentous. The world had spun out of its axis. Celestial night had fallen over the land.

When he arrived back home, his father was no longer there. Only his laughter now ruled as an echo in the kingdom.

His father, it was said, had simply vanished on a white wind, and had left all his laws and his legacy in his laughter.

No one witnessed the disappearance of his father.

And then even the laughter could no longer be heard in the growing wastes of the land.

The elders were now rulers of the kingdom.

And when they heard of the return of the prince they immediately denounced him as a fraud and decreed that if caught he should be killed ...

There was a dead new silence in the kingdom without the laughter of the king.

Some say that it was with this silence that the real fall of the kingdom began ...

Somehow the spies of the new dispensation got wind of the prince's hiding place in the abode of the market woman. They learnt of his presence there not long after he had arrived. Fortunately the prince was informed that they were coming for him and he cut short his prayers and began his final sojourn away from the land. His exile began in the midst of his prayers, his exile from the kingdom.

For the second time that fateful day the prince had to flee; and unfortunately he fled, in the dark, on the margins of the forest, right into the trap of the white spirits. He was caught, chained, gagged with a metallic contraption, and bundled off on a long trek across the savannah to a waiting ship where, in its hold, he found a thousand others. Those who were caught and chained together were from different tribes and nations and spoke different languages and could not communicate with one another except through gestures, through agony, through thought. And thus began the great trial and the great suffering of the race. Those who didn't perish under the lash, who were not thrown overboard, who didn't die in the crush and torture in the hold, those who made the crossing, all manner of men and women and children, they were sold, they worked the fields and the earth of alien lives; and they took with them a new destiny, the spirit of freedom, the colour of justice, and the mystery of music and art to a new world. The prince was sustained only by the laughter of the king that sounded all over the universe, beyond the power and the evils of men.

But that is only one side of the story. On the fateful day when the Mamba pursued the two lovers, the maiden managed to escape, and made it back home, where she appeared in a state of near-deranged nakedness.

What followed is unclear. In the book among the stars one reads with the spirit and interprets through memory; and there is much that is vague when the spirit is not perfect.

The masters of the tribe decreed that the tribe commence one of its seasonal migrations, to escape the cycle of doom that had been hovering like a thundercloud over their lives. They also declared the Mamba an outlaw and banished him, too late, from their midst. The maiden bore her child; and having awaited for many moons the return of her loved one, she left home one night and went seeking him. She too went through the fated gap of an agonising destiny, was captured by the white spirits, and suffered the sea crossing which should never be forgotten in the forgetfulness of men and women.

When she disappeared, the tribe of artists lost its soul. Then one night, through the same fated gap in the forest, which had widened beyond measure, the white spirits came, and descended on the unsuspecting tribe. It might never have happened if it were not for the activities of the Mamba and his followers.

They had become marauders in the forest, and the Mamba's chief obsession was to find and kill the pupil who had so humiliated him.

Often the Mamba and his followers raided villages, and plundered and pillaged the surrounding countryside. Often they would return to the edge of their old village and look on at the preparations the tribe made for their migration. They looked on, and wept at their banishment ...

But it was the Mamba and his followers who attracted the attention of the spies of the white spirits, who followed them one night and saw a village without fortifications. That night the white spirits fell on the tribe and carried away its strong and its young. They destroyed the village and scattered its inhabitants among the hills. Those that were caught were gagged and bound and sent across the seas; many of them perished in the crossing; those that made it over, in their suffering, spread an unconquerable spirit in the new land; because their spirit, from ancient times, had always been strong.

What was left of the tribe of artists regrouped, and changed location, guided by their dwindling masters. They moved on, they grieved. After the destruction there was a scattering of the tribe, its dream, its people and its art. They became etiolated, and slowly vanished in the mists of time. Then there was silence ...

... and it was only after a century, on several other continents, that their fire was kindled again, in different forms ...

But in the old land, after the silence of their ways, only standing stones and mysterious sculptures that endure the wrath of time's decay remain in enigmatic places in the forest, among wild plants and trees that have grown over their old habitation. Their shrine turned to dust and returned to the air. Their gods returned to the deepest realms of dreams.

The elders ruled for a while in the kingdom of the prince, and in the absence of the king. They ruled with unwisdom, and much dissension broke out amongst them, and the people distrusted and undermined them, and one by one they fell to each other's blades at night, or to secretly administered poisons by day. Their children were mostly lost to a terrible lassitude, others to a madness that took the form of incurable fits of fiendish laughter; and they laughed themselves into early graves. Then the gaps began to devour the kingdom. And then the full force of the white wind descended on them and wiped out great areas of the past, and wiped out memory, and dissolved many traditions. And then the white spirits came and the land lost the spring of its ways. Forgetfulness followed and new ways grew over the oblivion of the old ways. And those that came after were not heirs to those that went before, because of the great gaps, and the onslaught of the white wind that almost created a desert out of a flowering land.