Starbook (4 page)

Not long after the king left, the prince awoke. And he remembered the maiden. And, without eating, taking only the swiftest bath and some water to drink and a few fruits, he hurried off into the forest to his hiding place beside the river.

The world had changed. The air was cooler. The shimmer on the water was more muted. The prince waited in a state bordering on illness. He waited in a mildly hallucinated condition and he drifted off and thought he saw the king above him, staring at him. He thought he saw the king by the river, gazing into the water at scenes of the future unfolding before him.

Then seven maidens appeared from out of the river, attired in splendid white robes. Three of them had musical instruments he had never seen before, of shining metal, gleaming like polished silver in the sun. The maidens, with hands linked, danced on the surface of the river, laughing and singing. Then as they danced they rose in the air, like a ring of diamonds, a circle of angels, and then they came back down again, and landed on the shore.

There was one among them who was the most beautiful, who was the princess of them all. She had eyes that shone like moonlight. She had a face that was clear in its beauty and happy sadness, skin that was smooth, and she walked elegantly. The other maidens clustered about her and made a seat for her of flowers they picked from the shores of the river. She lay languidly on the bed of flowers. Then one of the maidens struck up an instrument and they all began playing the most haunting music. The princess among them began to sing:

'Who knows why we wait,

For love comes to us like gentle fate.

It hides along the river of time

And gives off the fragrance of thyme.

To love is to suffer is what they say;

But to suffer sweetly is better than to decay.

This life is not a river under the sky.

Many things must happen, who knows why.'

And so she sang and when she came to the end she began to hum and the others hummed and giggled and soon silence fell over them as the light made their beauty shine so brightly by the river. They were silent as they stared into the air. Then the princess among them said:

'Oh, but we are so happy today, and all is well in the kingdom, and so let us prophesy a little under this gentle breeze.'

'O yes,' cried one, 'let us prophesy a little.'

'Who shall begin?'

'You will?' the maidens said in chorus to the princess.

'All right,' she replied.

She picked up a white flower, spun its stalk between her palms, and sent it whirling into the air, and it turned, spinning, and sailed away in the breeze, down the river. Then she began, saying:

'I speak backwards and forwards and sideways and inside out, and always speak the truth. There will be a marriage between a prince and an outcast, a prince and a slave, and a magic line will be conceived. The prince will become a slave before his son is born. There will be sweetness made out of the blood and suffering of men and women. Music will come from their bones, which the whole world will dance to, and fall in love through. Suffering like a curse will fall on the land. The sea will swallow up thousands of the men of the soil. There will be darkness over its sky for two hundred years. Then light will return. The world will be upside down. White will be black, and black white. Good will be evil, and evil good. And stones will give off more love than the hearts of men. And freedom will be in chains for a thousand thousand moons. And women will curse the day they were born and men will long for death to come. And the ways of God will work through all this, making all things better. Out of fire comes the purest gold. Only the flesh dies, but nothing grows old. Songs of fishes that taste the flesh of men, songs of chains that bind the flesh of men, songs of the whip and the cane, sweetness from such pain, beauty from such horror, immortality from the terror. Such are the ways of gods in stone, of spirit in bone, of love in the dust, of magic in rust. Love by the river, lightning in the heart, time will quiver, man and magic will never part.'

Then silence in the breeze. Then music in the empty air. Then a circle of maidens dancing in an opposite direction in the bright spaces, the world aglow with the vaporous brilliance of their white robes. A voice singing from the other shore. The king measuring out the good and evil in the land with his strides in the dark. Someone weeping in the forest, weeping and weeping as if the sorrows in the world were too much even for the trees and the earth to bear. And a single flower spinning in the breeze, and falling on the face of the prince as he waited, drifting in an enchanted illness.

He was not so much awoken by the flower as that he became aware that the day had darkened. It seemed as if he had been waiting by the river all his life. The maiden he sought did not appear. He stole back home, without hearing the great weeping in the forest, without noticing the eyes that followed him in the darkness of the woods.

When he re-entered the village the light was different; a rich blue colour seemed to touch the world everywhere. He wandered to the farms, and saw the women at their work, their children straddling their backs, held securely with broad strips of cloth. He watched the women harvesting the crops. He watched them in the cornfields, the yam fields and the cassava fields. He watched them separate pineapple fruits from their thick green stalks. He saw all the women as his mother. He had no mother. His mother had died early, when he was still a child. He knew her only by stories, by myths and royal legends. And by sighs.

For the first time, he became aware how hard the women worked. He went up to some of them and engaged them in conversation while they worked. They woke early, before dawn, prepared food for the family, swept their yards, cleaned the house, bathed, went to the river to wash clothes, went to the market miles away, returned home, prepared the afternoon meal, washed the utensils, then went to the distant farms again, then to the market to trade. They often came back with heavy bundles on their heads. Then, making several journeys there and back, they fetched water from the wells. They prepared dinner. They attended the meetings of women. Back home they discussed family matters with their husbands and relations. They took part in the social and communal business of the village, and made their contributions to looking after the sick. Then they slept very late at night. They were usually the last ones to sleep in the whole family, and the first to rise. In addition they bore several children, tended them, told them stories, taught them the traditions and legends of the tribe. They supported their husbands in all major undertakings, and were the pillars on which the village, indeed the kingdom rested.

'But you must be slaves!' the prince cried when he learnt how hard the women worked.

The women were offended.

'We are not slaves! We are freeborn women. We are the mothers of the kingdom, upholders of tradition. Without us nothing will work in the land. We are half of the kingdom. Do you not think we are proud of it? The children and all the men depend on us. This is a great thing. We have talked enough and must now return to our work.'

The prince left them and wandered back to the palace, and sought out the elders and the custodians. When they gathered, under the watchful eye of the king, he said:

'If I am to be future king I want to know about the lives of our women. How do we treat our women? Why do they work so hard, from dawn to dusk? And what do we do for them in return?'

The king began laughing again. The elders, taking his cue, laughed with him, but not as enthusiastically as before. They were becoming increasingly troubled by the persistent questioning of the young prince. Never before had any royal asked so many fundamental questions about the kingdom and how it was governed.

'Answer the prince!' bellowed the king, as he shook in laughter.

'We treat our women very well,' replied the chief custodian. 'They have no complaints.'

The prince was astonished at this reply. And before they knew it, he was gone, he had vanished, and returned, not long after, leading a group of women, old and young, into the chamber of elders. As before, soldiers and guards were in commotion; there was shouting. An elder cried:

'You can't bring women into the hall of the custodians!'

But it was too late; the prince had ushered them into the presence of the king. And under his questioning emerged a strange life led by women, one he had never suspected but which seemed so terrifying a burdensome yoke to him that he kept looking around in consternation. Then he gazed about him in utter surprise that everyone thought the lives of women so normal, especially the women themselves, who seemed to make light of what seemed to him so intolerable.

The prince felt he was under a spell, under an enchanted misunderstanding, or that he had come from a different world, as he listened to the catalogue of duties and functions. In a flash he heard them, for the first time. Marriage at an early age. Circumcision. Having children while still being almost children themselves. The lifelong unremitting chores, in illness or in health. Impossible tasks fulfilled every day. Little sleep. And no representation in the council of elders for all their extensive labours. They bore the death of children or husbands, in addition to all their labours, and carried on. They lived through wars and famines, and carried on. They aged quickly, seemed insufficiently loved, had no holidays, but worked and worked at one thing or another, and then died. And were replaced by another wife. And so on. There seemed no end to the catalogue.

The prince was dazed. Did he live in the same space as other people? Had he been in a dream? The king watched him as he listened to the women. Tears formed in the prince's eyes. These were all his mothers, his sisters, his companions, these women. The elders made fun of the women as they spoke of their duties. The elders teased the women about how much they exaggerated, how much they enjoyed their responsibilities, and the power it gave them to have the world so dependent on their diligence. The women laughed and said women had all the power and the leisure. The chief custodian said:

'But, your royal highness, the women have not told you of their benefits. They have special festivals, feast days, cults, mysteries and rituals. They are the ones who choose, in secret;, the superior custodians. Don't let them deceive you into thinking that they have no power. Nothing happens in the land that doesn't have their spiritual approval. More than that, they are the secret movers of the kingdom. Men rule by day, women rule by night. Men perform deeds in public, women undo them in private. Men make history, women make legend. Legend lasts longer. Men conquer bodies, women conquer hearts. Hearts feel longer. Men think, women dream. Dreams create the future. Men fight, women bring light. Men think they rule the world, but find the world has turned to water. Women understand that water. Men make laws, women make ways. Men build, women make the building live. Men know death, but women know life. If men make mistakes thousands die, if women make mistakes a whole tribe perishes. The folly of men ends in fighting, the folly of women leads to death. The folly of men is a stupid thing, the folly of women is of historical significance. Men can be stupid and the world will not fall down; but if women are stupid the world comes to an end. The responsibility for women to be wise is truly great. The greatness of a people is a tribute to the wisdom of its women. If a kingdom is hopeless it is because its women are foolish. Show me a kingdom, a village that is collapsing and you will find that its women have been slack. The strength of women is the backbone of the land. God help us if women should fall into lazy ways and get foolish thoughts in their heads and forget their ancient greatness, their powerful responsibilities, for then the kingdom will turn to dust and be scattered to the four winds. A kingdom cannot afford its women to lose themselves, to lose their vision, and have nothing significant to do, and forget how their ancestors held up the world. Sometimes I see visions of a world gone mad because women have abandoned their shrines and lost the wisdom of their goddesses and become wild and too free. Such a world as I saw was a world without sense, without belief, a world of suicides and despair, folly and madness. Such a world is a world already cursed by the departure of the gods. An empty world. So, your royal highness, there are two sides to this. Much labour on the one hand, great invisible power and blessings on the other. It is women who bring happiness to this world, through their mysteries.'

There was a great silence when the custodian finished. Then, in the silence, the king made a sign. The prince declared himself.

'I want to know about the nature and mystery of women, of mothers,' he said, in a gentle voice.

The king roared with laughter. But the women regarded the prince in silence and looked at one another significantly. The elders and custodians laughed too; and all the way down the corridors, throughout the palace, the servants, the cooks, the handmaidens all laughed because of the echo of the king laughing.

And soon the whole palace and kingdom and forests and rivers were laughing too. But the prince did not laugh, for he was serious. He wanted to share in the suffering of women, their beauty and their secret majesty. Their grace. Their hidden humiliations. And because of his interest he was the first and only man ever to be initiated into the mysteries of women, the nature of mothers, the great cults of the goddesses. The initiation took place that night, in his sleep, in his dreams, in a place where women do their greatest work, deep in the secret consciousness of men and the world. They initiated the prince with the help and the intervention of the spirit of his mother, who was most powerful in the highest court of women, where she carried out great advocacy for the life of her son with the weavers of destiny, and the wonderful angels of fate.

That night the prince asked to be told about his mother, whom he never knew. The king told him about her till he fell asleep and all the rest that he wanted to know he learnt in his dreams; for a goddess came to him in his sleep and took him to the realm of the dead and showed him that his mother was not there. The prince saw many people he did not recognise, people who had recently arrived. He saw a few people who told him they were from his kingdom and that they had died suddenly or of diseases or had been poisoned or murdered. This place of the dead was like that of the living, only it seemed to have no depth and no time. It was not a place, as such, but a realm like life, only that the voices were more real than the bodies.

Then the prince realised that the dead were like people in a dream, but it was a dream they couldn't wake up from, a dream that was like real life. The prince was marvelling at this discovery when the goddess took him to another realm and showed him the book of life, and in the book he saw the life of his mother, and she seemed to come alive and he spoke to her and listened to her a long time in the most blissful experience of his life.

Then he fell into a deeper sleep in which his mother disappeared and in which the women initiated his spirit in their mysteries. He left his room in a sleepwalking state and wandered to a secret shrine near the river and figures in white clothes buried him in the earth, leaving space for him to breathe, and performed rituals over his buried body. Then, still in a sleepwalking state, newly born, newly bathed in the river, and anointed with potent oils and blood and the juices of nocturnal herbs, and having been made to recite certain oaths, and permitted to dwell in the presence of the radiant great mother of all things, the prince returned to his bed and continued the fabulous sleep of his initiation.