^.^ this is the book i supposed to finish last 2 weeks but i only started to read it this week.. haha.. procrastination has become apart of my flesh :O anyway, determine to finish this for the second time tonight.. wish me luck ^.^
p/s : no copyright infringement intended
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
First published in
1959
(One of the first
African novels written in English to receive global critical acclaim)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things Fall Apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
--W. B. Yeats,
"The Second Coming"
CHAPTER ONE
Okonkwo was well known throughout
the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal
achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village
by throwing Amalinze the
Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten,
from Umuofia to Mbaino. He was called the Cat because his back would never
touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old
men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a
spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.
The drums beat and the flutes sang
and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but
Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood
out on their arms, o\sn their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them
stretching to breaking point. In the end Okonkwo threw the Cat.
That was many years ago, twenty
years or more, and during this time Okonkwo's fame had grown like a bush-fire
in the harmattan. He was tall and huge, and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose
gave him a very severe look. He breathed heavily, and it was said that, when he
slept, his wives and children in their houses could hear him breathe. When he
walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs,
as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite
often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his
words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful
men. He had had no patience with his father.
Unoka, for that was his father's
name, had died ten years ago. In his day he was lazy and improvident and was
quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow. If any money came his way, and it
seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palm-wine, called round his
neighbours and made merry. He always said that whenever he saw a dead man's
mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one's lifetime. Unoka was,
of course, a debtor, and he owed every neighbour some money, from a few cowries
to quite substantial amounts.
He was tall but very thin and had a
slight stoop. He wore a haggard and mournful look except when he was drinking
or playing on his flute. He was very good on his flute, and his happiest
moments were the two or three moons after the harvest when the village
musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the fireplace. Unoka would
play with them, his face beaming with blessedness and peace. Sometimes another
village would ask Unoka's band and their dancing egwugwu to come and stay with
them and teach them their tunes. They would go to such hosts for as long as
three or four markets, making music and feasting. Unoka loved the good hire and
the good fellowship, and he loved this season of the year, when the rains had
stopped and the sun rose every morning with dazzling beauty. And it was not too
hot either, because the cold and dry harmattan wind was blowing down from the
north. Some years the harmattan was very severe and a dense haze hung on the
atmosphere. Old men and children would then sit round log fires, warming their
bodies. Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites that returned with the
dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to them. He would
remember his own childhood, how he had often wandered around looking for a kite
sailing leisurely against the blue sky. As soon as he found one he would sing
with his whole being, welcoming it back from its long, long journey, and asking
it if it had brought home any lengths of cloth.
That was years ago, when he was
young. Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure. He was poor and his wife and
children had barely enough to eat. People laughed at him because he was a
loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid
back. But Unoka was such a man that he always succeeded in borrowing more, and
piling up his debts.
One day a neighbour called Okoye
came in to see him. He was reclining on a mud bed in his hut playing on the
flute. He immediately rose and shook hands with Okoye, who then unrolled the
goatskin which he carried under his arm, and sat down. Unoka went into an inner
room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some
alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk.
"I have kola," he
announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his guest.
"Thank you. He who brings kola
brings life. But I think you ought to break it," replied Okoye, passing
back the disc.
"No, it is for you, I
think," and they argued like this for a few moments before Unoka accepted
the honour of breaking the kola. Okoye, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew
some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.
As he broke the kola, Unoka prayed
to their ancestors for life and health, and for protection against their
enemies. When they had eaten they talked about many things: about the heavy
rains which were drowning the yams, about the next ancestral feast and about
the impending war with the village of Mbaino. Unoka was never happy when it
came to wars. He was in fact a coward and could not bear the sight of blood.
And so he changed the subject and talked about music, and his face beamed. He
could hear in his mind's ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the
ekwe and the udu and the ogene, and he could hear his own flute weaving in and
out of them, decorating them with a colourful and plaintive tune. The total
effect was gay and brisk, but if one picked out the flute as it went up and
down and then broke up into short snatches, one saw that there was sorrow and
grief there.
Okoye was also a musician. He played
on the ogene. But he was not a failure like Unoka. He had a large barn full of
yams and he had three wives. And now he was going to take the Idemili title,
the third highest in the land. It was a very expensive ceremony and he was
gathering all his resources together. That was in fact the reason why he had
come to see Unoka. He cleared his throat and began: "Thank you for the
kola. You may have heard of the title I intend to take shortly."
Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye
said the next half a dozen sentences in proverbs. Among the Ibo the art of
conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which
words are eaten. Okoye was a great talker and he spoke for a long time,
skirting round the subject and then hitting it finally. In short, he was asking
Unoka to return the two hundred cowries he had borrowed from him more than two
years before. As soon as Unoka understood what his friend was driving at, he
burst out laughing. He laughed loud and long and his voice rang out clear as
the ogene, and tears stood in his eyes. His visitor was amazed, and sat
speechless. At the end, Unoka was able to give an answer between fresh
outbursts of mirth.
"Look at that wall," he
said, pointing at the far wall of his hut, which was rubbed with red earth so
that it shone. "Look at those lines of chalk," and Okoye saw groups
of short perpendicular lines drawn in chalk. There were five groups, and the
smallest group had ten lines. Unoka had a sense of the dramatic and so he
allowed a pause, in which he took a pinch of snuff and sneezed noisily, and
then he continued: "Each group there represents a debt to someone, and
each stroke is one hundred cowries. You see, I owe that man a thousand cowries.
But he has not come to wake me up in the morning for it. I shall pay you, but
not today. Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it
shines on those who kneel under them. I shall pay my big debts first." And
he took another pinch of snuff, as if that was paying the big debts first.
Okoye rolled his goatskin and departed.
When Unoka died he had taken no
title at all and he was heavily in debt. Any wonder then that his son Okonkwo
was ashamed of him? Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according
to his worth and not according to the worth of his father. Okonkwo was clearly
cut out for great things. He was still young but he had won fame as the
greatest wrestler in the nine villages. He was a wealthy farmer and had two
barns full of yams, and had just married his third wife. To crown it all he had
taken two titles and had shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars. And
so although Okonkwo was still young, he was already one of the greatest men of
his time. Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As
the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings. Okonkwo
had clearly washed his hands and so he ate with kings and elders. And that was
how he came to look after the doomed lad who was sacrificed to the village of
Umuofia by their neighbours to avoid war and bloodshed. The ill-fated lad was
called Ikemefuna.
CHAPTER TWO
Okonkwo had just
blown out the palm-oil lamp and stretched himself on his bamboo bed when he
heard the ogene of the town crier piercing the still night air. Gome, gome,
gome, gome, boomed the hollow metal. Then the crier gave his message, and at
the end of it beat his instrument again. And this was the message. Every man of
Umuofia was asked to gather at the market place tomorrow morning. Okonkwo
wondered what was amiss, for he knew certainly that something was amiss. He had
discerned a clear overtone of tragedy in the crier's voice, and even now he
could still hear it as it grew dimmer and dimmer in the distance.
The night was very quiet. It was
always quiet except on moonlight nights. Darkness held a vague terror for these
people, even the bravest among them. Children were warned not to whistle at
night for fear of evil spirits. Dangerous animals became even more sinister and
uncanny in the dark. A snake was never called by its name at night, because it
would hear. It was called a string. And so on this particular night as the
crier's voice was gradually swallowed up in the distance, silence returned to
the world, a vibrant silence made more intense by the universal trill of a
million million forest insects.
On a moonlight night it would be
different. The happy voices of children playing in open fields would then be
heard. And perhaps those not so young would be playing in pairs in less open
places, and old men and women would remember their youth. As the Ibo say:
"When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk."
But this particular night was dark
and silent. And in all the nine villages of Umuofia a town crier with his ogene
asked every man to be present tomorrow morning. Okonkwo on his bamboo bed tried
to figure out the nature of the emergency - war with a neighbouring clan? That
seemed the most likely reason, and he was not afraid of war. He was a man of
action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood. In
Umuofia's latest war he was the first to bring home a human head. That was his
fifth head and he was not an old man yet. On great occasions such as the
funeral of a village celebrity he drank his palm-wine from his first human
head.
In the morning the market place was
full. There must have been about ten thousand men there, all talking in low
voices. At last Ogbuefi Ezeugo stood up in the midst of them and bellowed four
times, "Umuofia kwenu," and on each occasion he faced a different
direction and seemed to push the air with a clenched fist. And ten thousand men
answered "Yaa!" each time. Then there was perfect silence. Ogbuefi
Ezeugo was a powerful orator and was always chosen to speak on such occasions.
He moved his hand over his white head and stroked his white beard. He then
adjusted his cloth, which was passed under his right arm-pit and tied above his
left shoulder.
"Umuofia kwenu," he bellowed
a fifth time, and the crowd yelled in answer. And then suddenly like one
possessed he shot out his left hand and pointed in the direction of Mbaino, and
said through gleaming white teeth firmly clenched: "Those sons of wild
animals have dared to murder a daughter of Umuofia." He threw his head
down and gnashed his teeth, and allowed a murmur of suppressed anger to sweep
the crowd. When he began again, the anger on his face was gone, and in its
place a sort of smile hovered, more terrible and more sinister than the anger.
And in a clear unemotional voice he told Umuofia how their daughter had gone to
market at Mbaino and had been killed. That woman, said Ezeugo, was the wife of
Ogbuefi Udo, and he pointed to a man who sat near him with a bowed head. The crowd
then shouted with anger and thirst for blood.
Many others spoke, and at the end it
was decided to follow the normal course of action. An ultimatum was immediately
dispatched to Mbaino asking them to choose between war - on the one hand, and
on the other the offer of a young man and a virgin as compensation.
Umuofia was feared by all its
neighbours. It was powerful in war and in magic, and its priests and medicine
men were feared in all the surrounding country. Its most potent war-medicine
was as old as the clan itself. Nobody knew how old. But on one point there was
general agreement--the active principle in that medicine had been an old woman
with one leg. In fact, the medicine itself was called agadi-nwayi, or old
woman. It had its shrine in the centre of Umuofia, in a cleared spot. And if
anybody was so foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see
the old woman hopping about.
And so the neighbouring clans who
naturally knew of these things feared Umuofia, and would not go to war against
it without first trying a peaceful settlement. And in fairness to Umuofia it
should be recorded that it never went to war unless its case was clear and just
and was accepted as such by its Oracle - the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves.
And there were indeed occasions when the Oracle had forbidden Umuofia to wage a
war. If the clan had disobeyed the Oracle they would surely have been beaten,
because their dreaded agadi-nwayi would never fight what the Ibo call a fight
of blame.
But the war that now threatened was
a just war. Even the enemy clan knew that. And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia
arrived at Mbaino as the proud and imperious emissary of war, he was treated
with great honour and respect, and two days later he returned home with a lad
of fifteen and a young virgin. The lad's name was Ikemefuna, whose sad story is
still told in Umuofia unto this day.
The elders, or ndichie, met to hear
a report of Okonkwo's mission. At the end they decided, as everybody knew they
would, that the girl should go to Ogbuefi Udo to replace his murdered wife. As
for the boy, he belonged to the clan as a whole, and there was no hurry to
decide his fate. Okonkwo was, therefore, asked on behalf of the clan to look
after him in the interim. And so for three years Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo's
household.
Okonkwo ruled his household with a
heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his
fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo
was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of
failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil
and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of
nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than
these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of
himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. Even as a little boy
he had resented his father's failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered
how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala.
That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name
for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title. And so Okonkwo
was ruled by one passion - to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved.
One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.
During the planting season Okonkwo
worked daily on his farms from cock-crow until the chickens went to roost. He
was a very strong man and rarely felt fatigue. But his wives and young children
were not as strong, and so they suffered. But they dared not complain openly.
Okonkwo's first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old but was already causing
his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was how
it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant nagging and
beating. And so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth.
Okonkwo's prosperity was visible in
his household. He had a large compound enclosed by a thick wall of red earth.
His own hut, or obi, stood immediately behind the only gate in the red walls.
Each of his three wives had her own hut, which together formed a half moon
behind the obi. The barn was built against one end of the red walls, and long
stacks of yam stood out prosperously in it. At the opposite end of the compound
was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment to her hut for
the hens. Near the barn was a small house, the "medicine house" or
shrine where Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal god and of his
ancestral spirits. He worshipped them with sacrifices of kola nut, food and
palm-wine, and offered prayers to them on behalf of himself, his three wives
and eight children.
So when the daughter of Umuofia was
killed in Mbaino, Ikemefuna came into Okonkwo's household. When Okonkwo brought
him home that day he called his most senior wife and handed him over to her.
"He belongs to the clan,"
he told her. "So look after him."
"Is he staying long with
us?" she asked.
"Do what you are told,
woman," Okonkwo thundered, and stammered. "When did you become one of
the ndichie of Umuofia?"
And so Nwoye's mother took Ikemefuna
to her hut and asked no more questions.
As for the boy himself, he was
terribly afraid. He could not understand what was happening to him or what he
had done. How could he know that his father had taken a hand in killing a
daughter of Umuofia? All he knew was that a few men had arrived at their house,
conversing with his father in low tones, and at the end he had been taken out
and handed over to a stranger. His mother had wept bitterly, but he had been
too surprised to weep. And so the stranger had brought him, and a girl, a long,
long way from home, through lonely forest paths. He did not know who the girl
was, and he never saw her again.
CHAPTER THREE
Okonkwo did not have
the start in life which many young men usually had. He did not inherit a barn
from his father. There was no barn to inherit. The story was told in Umuofia,
of how his father, Unoka, had gone to consult the Oracle of the Hills and the
Caves to find out why he always had a miserable harvest.
The Oracle was called Agbala, and
people came from far and near to consult it. They came when misfortune dogged
their steps or when they had a dispute with their neighbours. They came to
discover what the future held for them or to consult the spirits of their
departed fathers.
The way into the shrine was a round
hole at the side of a hill, just a little bigger than the round opening into a
henhouse. Worshippers and those who came to seek knowledge from the god crawled
on their belly through the hole and found themselves in a dark, endless space
in the presence of Agbala. No one had ever beheld Agbala, except his priestess.
But no one who had ever crawled into his awful shrine had come out without the
fear of his power. His priestess stood by the sacred fire which she built in
the heart of the cave and proclaimed the will of the god. The fire did not burn
with a flame. The glowing logs only served to light up vaguely the dark figure
of the priestess.
Sometimes a man came to consult the
spirit of his dead father or relative. It was said that when such a spirit
appeared, the man saw it vaguely in the darkness, but never heard its voice.
Some people even said that they had heard the spirits flying and flapping their
wings against the roof of the cave.
Many years ago when Okonkwo was
still a boy his father, Unoka, had gone to consult Agbala. The priestess in
those days was a woman called Chika. She was full of the power of her god, and
she was greatly feared. Unoka stood before her and began his story.
"Every year," he said
sadly, "before I put any crop in the earth, I sacrifice a cock to Ani, the
owner of all land. It is the law of our fathers. I also kill a cock at the
shrine of Ifejioku, the god of yams. I clear the bush and set fire to it when
it is dry. I sow the yams when the first rain has fallen, and stake them when
the young tendrils appear. I weed" -- "Hold your peace!"
screamed the priestess, her voice terrible as it echoed through the dark void.
"You have offended neither the gods nor your fathers. And when a man is at
peace with his gods and his ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad
according to the strength of his arm. You, Unoka, are known in all the clan for
the weakness of your machete and your hoe. When your neighbours go out with
their axe to cut down virgin forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that
take no labour to clear. They cross seven rivers to make their farms,- you stay
at home and offer sacrifices to a reluctant soil. Go home and work like a
man."
Unoka was an ill-fated man. He had a
bad chi or personal god, and evil fortune followed him to the grave, or rather
to his death, for he had no grave. He died of the swelling which was an
abomination to the earth goddess. When a man was afflicted with swelling in the
stomach and the limbs he was not allowed to die in the house. He was carried to
the Evil Forest and left there to die. There was the story of a very stubborn
man who staggered back to his house and had to be carried again to the forest
and tied to a tree. The sickness was an abomination to the earth, and so the victim
could not be buried in her bowels. He died and rotted away above the earth, and
was not given the first or the second burial. Such was Unoka's fate. When they
carried him away, he took with him his flute.
With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo
did not have the start in life which many young men had. He neither inherited a
barn nor a title, nor even a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages,
he had begun even in his father's lifetime to lay the foundations of a
prosperous future. It was slow and painful. But he threw himself into it like
one possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's
contemptible life and shameful death.
There was a wealthy man in Okonkwo's
village who had three huge barns, nine wives and thirty children. His name was
Nwakibie and he had taken the highest but one title which a man could take in
the clan. It was for this man that Okonkwo worked to earn his first seed yams.
He took a pot of palm-wine and a
cock to Nwakibie. Two elderly neighbours were sent for, and Nwakibie's two
grown-up sons were also present in his obi. He presented a kola nut and an
alligator pepper, which were passed round for all to see and then returned to
him. He broke the nut saying: We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a
good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have
what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one
says no to the other, let his wing break."
After the kola nut had been eaten
Okonkwo brought his palm-wine from the corner of the hut where it had been
placed and stood it in the centre of the group. He addressed Nwakibie, calling
him "Our father."
"Nna ayi," he said.
"I have brought you this little kola. As our people say, a man who pays
respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness. I have come to pay
you my respects and also to ask a favour. But let us drink the wine
first."
Everybody thanked Okonkwo and the
neighbours brought out their drinking horns from the goatskin bags they
carried. Nwakibie brought down his own horn, which was fastened to the rafters.
The younger of his sons, who was also the youngest man in the group, moved to
the centre, raised the pot on his left knee and began to pour out the wine. The
first cup went to Okonkwo, who must taste his wine before anyone else. Then the
group drank, beginning with the eldest man. When everyone had drunk two or
three horns, Nwakibie sent for his wives. Some of them were not at home and
only four came in.
"Is Anasi not in?" he
asked them. They said she was coming. Anasi was the first wife and the others
could not drink before her, and so they stood waiting.
Anasi was a middle-aged woman, tall
and strongly built. There was authority in her bearing and she looked every
inch the ruler of the womenfolk in a large and prosperous family. She wore the
anklet of her husband's titles, which the first wife alone could wear.
She walked up to her husband and
accepted the horn from him. She then went down on one knee, drank a little and
handed back the horn. She rose, called him by his name and went back to her
hut. The other wives drank in the same way, in their proper order, and went
away.
The men then continued their
drinking and talking. Ogbuefi Idigo was talking about the palm-wine tapper,
Obiako, who suddenly gave up his trade.
"There must be something behind
it," he said, wiping the foam of wine from his moustache with the back of
his left hand. "There must be a reason for it. A toad does not run in the
daytime for nothing."
"Some people say the Oracle
warned him that he would fall off a palm tree and kill himself," said
Akukalia.
"Obiako has always been a
strange one," said Nwakibie. "I have heard that many years ago, when
his father had not been dead very long, he had gone to consult the Oracle. The
Oracle said to him, 'Your dead father wants you to sacrifice a goat to him.' Do
you know what he told the Oracle? He said, 'Ask my dead father if he ever had a
fowl when he was alive.' Everybody laughed heartily except Okonkwo, who laughed
uneasily because, as the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry
bones are mentioned in a proverb. Okonkwo remembered his own father.
At last the young man who was
pouring out the wine held up half a horn of the thick, white dregs and said,
"What we are eating is finished."
"We have seen it," the
others replied. "Who will drink the dregs?" he asked. "Whoever
has a job in hand," said Idigo, looking at Nwakibie's elder son Igwelo
with a malicious twinkle in his eye.
Everybody agreed that Igwelo should
drink the dregs. He accepted the half-full horn from his brother and drank it.
As Idigo had said, Igwelo had a job in hand because he had married his first
wife a month or two before. The thick dregs of palm-wine were supposed to be
good for men who were going in to their wives.
After the wine had been drunk
Okonkwo laid his difficulties before Nwakibie.
"I have come to you for
help," he said. "Perhaps you can already guess what it is. I have
cleared a farm but have no yams to sow. I know what it is to ask a man to trust
another with his yams, especially these days when young men are afraid of hard
work. I am not afraid of work. The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree
to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did. I began to fend
for myself at an age when most people still suck at their mothers' breasts. If
you give me some yam seeds I shall not fail you."
Nwakibie cleared his throat.
"It pleases me to see a young man like you these days when our youth has
gone so soft. Many young men have come to me to ask for yams but I have refused
because I knew they would just dump them in the earth and leave them to be
choked by weeds. When I say no to them they think I am hard hearted. But it is
not so. Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without
missing, he has learned to fly without perching. I have learned to be stingy
with my yams. But I can trust you. I know it as I look at you. As our fathers
said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look. I shall give you twice four hundred
yams. Go ahead and prepare your farm."
Okonkwo thanked him again and again
and went home feeling happy. He knew that Nwakibie would not refuse him, but he
had not expected he would be so generous. He had not hoped to get more than
four hundred seeds. He would now have to make a bigger farm. He hoped to get
another four hundred yams from one of his father's friends at Isiuzo.
Share-cropping was a very slow way
of building up a barn of one's own. After all the toil one only got a third of
the harvest. But for a young man whose father had no yams, there was no other
way. And what made it worse in Okonkwo's case was that he had to support his
mother and two sisters from his meagre harvest. And supporting his mother also
meant supporting his father. She could not be expected to cook and eat while
her husband starved. And so at a very early age when he was striving
desperately to build a barn through share-cropping Okonkwo was also fending for
his father's house. It was like pouring grains of corn into a bag full of
holes. His mother and sisters worked hard enough, but they grew women's crops,
like coco-yams, beans and cassava. Yam, the king of crops, was a man's crop.
The year that Okonkwo took eight
hundred seed-yams from Nwakibie was the worst year in living memory. Nothing
happened at its proper time,- it was either too early or too late. It seemed as
if the world had gone mad. The first rains were late, and, when they came,
lasted only a brief moment. The blazing sun returned, more fierce than it had
ever been known, and scorched all the green that had appeared with the rains.
The earth burned like hot coals and roasted all the yams that had been sown.
Like all good farmers, Okonkwo had begun to sow with the first rains. He had
sown four hundred seeds when the rains dried up and the heat returned. He
watched the sky all day for signs of rain clouds and lay awake all night. In
the morning he went back to his farm and saw the withering tendrils. He had
tried to protect them from the smouldering earth by making rings of thick sisal
leaves around them. But by the end of the day the sisal rings were burned dry
and grey. He changed them every day, and prayed that the rain might fall in the
night. But the drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams were killed.
Some farmers had not planted their
yams yet. They were the lazy easy-going ones who always put off clearing their
farms as long as they could. This year they were the wise ones. They
sympathised with their neighbours with much shaking of the head, but inwardly
they were happy for what they took to be their own foresight.
Okonkwo planted what was left of his
seed-yams when the rains finally returned. He had one consolation. The yams he
had sown before the drought were his own, the harvest of the previous year. He
still had the eight hundred from Nwakibie and the four hundred from his
father's friend. So he would make a fresh start.
But the year had gone mad. Rain fell
as it had never fallen before. For days and nights together it poured down in
violent torrents, and washed away the yam heaps. Trees were uprooted and deep
gorges appeared everywhere. Then the rain became less violent. But it went from
day to day without a pause. The spell of sunshine which always came in the
middle of the wet season did not appear. The yams put on luxuriant green
leaves, but every farmer knew that without sunshine the tubers would not grow.
That year the harvest was sad, like
a funeral, and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams.
One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged himself.
Okonkwo remembered that tragic year
with a cold shiver throughout the rest of his life. It always surprised him
when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair. He
knew that he was a fierce fighter, but that year-had been enough to break the
heart of a lion.
"Since I survived that
year," he always said, "I shall survive anything." He put it
down to his inflexible will.
His father, Unoka, who was then an
ailing man, had said to him during that terrible harvest month: "Do not
despair. I know you will not despair.
You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure
because such failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more
bitter when a man fails alone."
Unoka was like that in his last
days. His love of talk had grown with age and sickness. It tried Okonkwo's
patience beyond words.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Looking at a
king's mouth," said an old man, "one would think he never sucked at
his mother's breast." He was talking about Okonkwo, who had risen so
suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of the clan.
The old man bore no ill will towards Okonkwo. Indeed he respected him for his
industry and success. But he was struck, as most people were, by Okonkwo's
brusqueness in dealing with less successful men. Only a week ago a man had
contradicted him at a kindred meeting which they held to discuss the next
ancestral feast. Without looking at the man Okonkwo had said: "This meeting
is for men." The man who had contradicted him had no titles. That was why
he had called him a woman. Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's spirit.
Everybody at the kindred meeting
took sides with Osugo when Okonkwo called him a woman. The oldest man present
said sternly that those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a
benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble. Okonkwo said he was sorry for
what he had said, and the meeting continued.
But it was really not true that
Okonkwo's palm-kernels had been cracked for him by a benevolent spirit. He had
cracked them himself. Anyone who knew his grim struggle against poverty and
misfortune could not say he had been lucky. If ever a man deserved his success,
that man was Okonkwo. At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest
wrestler in all the land. That was not luck. At the most one could say that his
chi or personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man
says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly, so his chi
agreed. And not only his chi but his clan too, because it judged a man by the
work of his hands. That was why Okonkwo had been Chosen by the nine villages to
carry a message of war to their enemies unless they agreed to give up a young
man and a virgin to atone for the murder of Udo's wife. And such was the deep
fear that their enemies had for Umuofia that they treated Okonkwo like a king
and brought him a virgin who was given to Udo as wife, and the lad Ikemefuna.
The elders of the clan had decided
that Ikemefuna should be in Okonkwo's care for a while. But no one thought It
would be as long as three years. They seemed to forget all about him as soon as
they had taken the decision.
At first Ikemefuna was very much
afraid. Once or twice he tried to run away, but he did not know where to begin.
He thought of his mother and his three-year-old sister and wept bitterly.
Nwoye's mother was very kind to him and treated him as one of her own children.
But all he said was: "When shall I go home?" When Okonkwo heard that
he would not eat any food he came into the hut with a big stick in his hand and
stood over him while he swallowed his yams, trembling. A few moments later he
went behind the hut and began to vomit painfully. Nwoye's mother went to him
and placed her hands on his chest and on his back. He was ill for three market
weeks, and when he recovered he seemed to have overcome his great fear and
sadness.
He was by nature a very lively boy
and he gradually became popular in Okonkwo's household, especially with the
children. Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, who was two years younger, became quite
inseparable from him because he seemed to know everything. He could fashion out
flutes from bamboo stems and even from the elephant grass. He knew the names of
all the birds and could set clever traps for the little bush rodents. And he
knew which trees made the strongest bows.
Even Okonkwo himself became very
fond of the boy - inwardly of course. Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly,
unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of
weakness,-the only thing worth demonstrating was strength. He therefore treated
Ikemefuna as he treated everybody else - with a heavy hand. But there was no
doubt that he liked the boy. Sometimes when he went to big village meetings or
communal ancestral feasts he allowed Ikemefuna to accompany him, like a son,
carrying his stool and his goatskin bag. And, indeed, Ikemefuna called him
father.
Ikemefuna came to Umuofia at the end
of the carefree season between harvest and planting. In fact he recovered from
his illness only a few days before the Week of Peace began. And that was also
the year Okonkwo broke the peace, and was punished, as was the custom, by
Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess.
Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable
anger by his youngest wife, who went to plait her hair at her friend's house
and did not return early enough to cook the afternoon meal. Okonkwo did not
know at first that she was not at home. After waiting in vain for her dish he
went to her hut to see what she was doing. There was nobody in the hut and the
fireplace was cold.
"Where is Ojiugo?" he
asked his second wife, who came out of her hut to draw water from a gigantic
pot in the shade of a small tree in the middle of the compound.
"She has gone to plait her
hair."
Okonkwo bit his lips as anger welled
up within him.
"Where are her children? Did
she take them?" he asked with unusual coolness and restraint.
"They are here," answered
his first wife, Nwoye's mother. Okonkwo bent down and looked into her hut.
Ojiugo's children were eating with the children of his first wife.
"Did she ask you to feed them
before she went?"
"Yes," lied Nwoye's
mother, trying to minimise Ojiugo's thoughtlessness.
Okonkwo knew she was not speaking
the truth. He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo's return. And when she
returned he beat her very heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was
the Week of Peace. His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him
that it was the sacred week.
But Okonkwo was not the man to stop
beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess.
Okonkwo's neighbours heard his wife
crying and sent their voices over the compound walls to ask what was the
matter. Some of them came over to see for themselves. It was unheard of to beat
somebody during the sacred week.
Before it was dusk Ezeani, who was
the priest of the earth goddess, Ani, called on Okonkwo in his obi. Okonkwo
brought out kola nut and placed it before the priest, "Take away your kola
nut. I shall not eat in the house of a man who has no respect for our gods and
ancestors."
Okonkwo tried to explain to him what
his wife had done, but Ezeani seemed to pay no attention. He held a short staff
in his hand which he brought down on the floor to emphasise his points.
"Listen to me," he said
when Okonkwo had spoken. "You are not a stranger in Umuofia. You know as
well as I do that our forefathers ordained that before we plant any crops in
the earth we should observe a week in which a man does not say a harsh word to
his neighbour. We live in peace with our fellows to honour our great goddess of
the earth without whose blessing our crops will not grow. You have committed a
great evil." He brought down his staff heavily on the floor. "Your
wife was at fault, but even if you came into your obi and found her lover on
top of her, you would still have committed a great evil to beat her." His
staff came down again. "The evil you have done can ruin the whole clan.
The earth goddess whom you have insulted may refuse to give us her increase,
and we shall all perish." His tone now changed from anger to command.
"You will bring to the shrine of Ani tomorrow one she-goat, one hen, a
length of cloth and a hundred cowries." He rose and left the hut.
Okonkwo did as the priest said. He
also took with him a pot of palm-wine. Inwardly, he was repentant. But he was
not the man to go about telling his neighbours that he was in error. And so
people said he had no respect for the gods of the clan. His enemies said his
good fortune had gone to his head. They called him the little bird nza who so
far forgot himself after a heavy meal that he challenged his chi.
No work was done during the Week of
Peace. People called on their neighbours and drank palm-wine. This year they
talked of nothing else but the nso-ani which Okonkwo had committed. It was the
first time for many years that a man had broken the sacred peace. Even the
oldest men could only remember one or two other occasions somewhere in the dim
past.
Ogbuefi Ezeudu, who was the oldest
man in the village, was telling two other men who came to visit him that the
punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan.
"It has not always been
so," he said. "My father told me that he had been told that in the
past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village
until he died. But after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the
peace which it was meant to preserve."
"Somebody told me
yesterday," said one of the younger men, "that in some clans it is an
abomination for a man to die during the Week of Peace."
"It is indeed true," said
Ogbuefi Ezeudu. "They have that custom in Obodoani. If a man dies at this
time he is not buried but cast into the Evil Forest. It is a bad custom which
these people observe because they lack understanding. They throw away large
numbers of men and women without burial. And what is the result? Their clan is
full of the evil spirits of these unburied dead, hungry to do harm to the
living."
After the Week of Peace every man
and his family began to clear the bush to make new farms. The cut bush was left
to dry and fire was then set to it. As the smoke rose into the sky kites
appeared from different directions and hovered over the burning field in silent
valediction. The rainy season was approaching when they would go away until the
dry season returned.
Okonkwo spent the next few days
preparing his seed-yams. He looked at each yam carefully to see whether it was
good for sowing. Sometimes he decided that a yam was too big to be sown as one
seed and he split it deftly along its length with his sharp knife. His eldest
son, Nwoye, and Ikemefuna helped him by fetching the yams in long baskets from
the barn and in counting the prepared seeds in groups of four hundred.
Sometimes Okonkwo gave them a few yams each to prepare. But he always found
fault with their effort, and he said so with much threatening.
"Do you think you are cutting
up yams for cooking?" he asked Nwoye. "If you split another yam of
this size, I shall break your jaw. You think you are still a child. I began to
own a farm at your age. And you," he said to Ikemefuna, "do you not
grow yams where you come from?"
Inwardly Okonkwo knew that the boys
were still too young to understand fully the difficult art of preparing
seed-yams. But he thought that one could not begin too early. Yam stood for
manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another
was a very great man indeed. Okonkwo wanted his son to be a great farmer and a
great man. He would stamp out the disquieting signs of laziness which he
thought he already saw in him.
"I will not have a son who
cannot hold up his head in the gathering of the clan. I would sooner strangle
him with my own hands. And if you stand staring at me like that," he
swore, "Amadiora will break your head for you!"
Some days later, when the land had
been moistened by two or three heavy rains, Okonkwo and his family went to the
farm with baskets of seed-yams, their hoes and machetes, and the planting
began. They made single mounds of earth in straight lines all over the field
and sowed the yams in them.
Yam, the king of crops, was a very
exacting king. For three or four moons it demanded hard work and constant
attention from cockcrow till the chickens went back to roost. The young
tendrils were protected from earth-heat with rings of sisal leaves. As the
rains became heavier the women planted maize, melons and beans between the yam
mounds. The yams were then staked, first with little sticks and later with tall
and big tree branches. The women weeded the farm three times at definite
periods in the life of the yams, neither early nor late.
And now the rains had really come,
so heavy and persistent that even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to
be able to intervene. He could not stop the rain now, just as he would not
attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger to
his own health. The personal dynamism required to counter the forces of these
extremes of weather would be far too great for the human frame.
And so nature was not interfered
with in the middle of the rainy season. Sometimes it poured down in such thick
sheets of water that earth and sky seemed merged in one grey wetness. It was
then uncertain whether the low rumbling of Amadiora's thunder came from above
or below. At such times, in each of the countless thatched huts of Umuofia,
children sat around their mother's cooking fire telling stories, or with their
father in his obi warming themselves from a log fire, roasting and eating
maize. It was a brief resting period between the exacting and arduous planting
season and the equally exacting but light-hearted month of harvests.
Ikemefuna had begun to feel like a
member of Okonkwo's family. He still thought about his mother and his
three-year-old sister, and he had moments of sadness and depression But he and
Nwoye had become so deeply attached to each other that such moments became less
frequent and less poignant. Ikemefuna had an endless stock of folk tales. Even
those which Nwoye knew already were told with a new freshness and the local
flavour of a different clan. Nwoye remembered this period very vividly till the
end of his life. He even remembered how he had laughed when Ikemefuna told him
that the proper name for a corn cob with only a few scattered grains was
eze-agadi-nwayi, or the teeth of an old woman. Nwoye's mind had gone
immediately to Nwayieke, who lived near the udala tree. She had about three
teeth and was always smoking her pipe.
Gradually the rains became lighter
and less frequent, and earth and sky once again became separate. The rain fell
in thin, slanting showers through sunshine and quiet breeze. Children no longer
stayed indoors but ran about singing: "The rain is falling, the sun is
shining, Alone Nnadi is cooking and eating."
Nwoye always wondered who Nnadi was
and why he should live all by himself, cooking and eating. In the end he
decided that Nnadi must live in that land of Ikemefuna's favourite story where
the ant holds his court in splendour and the sands dance forever.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Feast of the New
Yam was approaching and Umuofia was in a festival mood. It was an occasion for
giving thanks to Ani, the earth goddess and the source of all fertility. Ani
played a greater part in the life of the people than any other deity. She was
the ultimate judge of morality and conduct. And what was more, she was in close
communion with the departed fathers of the clan whose bodies had been committed
to earth.
The Feast of the New Yam was held
every year before the harvest began, to honour the earth goddess and the
ancestral spirits of the clan. New yams could not be eaten until some had first
been offered to these powers. Men and women, young and old, looked forward to
the New Yam Festival because it began the season of plenty--the new year. On
the last night before the festival, yams of the old year were all disposed of
by those who still had them. The new year must begin with tasty, fresh yams and
not the shrivelled and fibrous crop of the previous year. All cooking pots,
calabashes and wooden bowls were thoroughly washed, especially the wooden
mortar in which yam was pounded. Yam foo-foo and vegetable soup was the chief
food in the celebration. So much of it was cooked that, no matter how heavily
the family ate or how many friends and relatives they invited from neighbouring
villages, there was always a large quantity of food left over at the end of the
day. The story was always told of a wealthy man who set before his guests a
mound of foo-foo so high that those who sat on one side could not see what was
happening on the other, and it was not until late in the evening that one of
them saw for the first time his in-law who had arrived during the course of the
meal and had fallen to on the opposite side. It was only then that they
exchanged greetings and shook hands over what was left of the food.
The New Yam Festival was thus an
occasion for joy throughout Umuofia. And every man whose arm was strong, as the
Ibo people say, was expected to invite large numbers of guests from far and
wide. Okonkwo always asked his wives' relations, and since he now had three
wives his guests would make a fairly big crowd.
But somehow Okonkwo could never
become as enthusiastic over feasts as most people. He was a good eater and he
could drink one or two fairly big gourds of palm-wine. But he was always
uncomfortable sitting around for days waiting for a feast or getting over it.
He would be very much happier working on his farm.
The festival was now only three days
away. Okonkwo's wives had scrubbed the walls and the huts with red earth until
they reflected light. They had then drawn patterns on them in white, yellow and
dark green. They then set about painting themselves with cam wood and drawing
beautiful black patterns on their stomachs and on their backs. The children
were also decorated, especially their hair, which was shaved in beautiful
patterns. The three women talked excitedly about the relations who had been
invited, and the children revelled in the thought of being spoiled by these
visitors from the motherland. Ikemefuna was equally excited. The New Yam
Festival seemed to him to be a much bigger event here than in his own village,
a place which was already becoming remote and vague in his imagination.
And then the storm burst. Okonkwo,
who had been walking about aimlessly in his compound in suppressed anger,
suddenly found an outlet.
"Who killed this banana
tree?" he asked.
A hush fell on the compound
immediately.
"Who killed this tree? Or are
you all deaf and dumb?"
As a matter of fact the tree was
very much alive. Okonkwo's second wife had merely cut a few leaves off it to
wrap some food, and she said so. Without further argument Okonkwo gave her a
sound beating and left her and her only daughter weeping. Neither of the other
wives dared to interfere beyond an occasional and tentative, "It is
enough, Okonkwo," pleaded from a reasonable distance.
His anger thus satisfied, Okonkwo
decided to go out hunting. He had an old rusty gun made by a clever blacksmith
who had come to live in Umuofia long ago. But although Okonkwo was a great man
whose prowess was universally acknowledged, he was not a hunter. In fact he had
not killed a rat with his gun. And so when he called Ikemefuna to fetch his
gun, the wife who had just been beaten murmured something about guns that never
shot. Unfortunately for her Okonkwo heard it and ran madly into his room for
the loaded gun, ran out again and aimed at her as she clambered over the dwarf
wall of the barn. He pressed the trigger and there was a loud report
accompanied by the wail of his wives and children. He threw down the gun and
jumped into the barn and there lay the woman, very much shaken and frightened
but quite unhurt. He heaved a heavy sigh and went away with the gun.
In spite of this incident the New
Yam Festival was celebrated with great joy in Okonkwo's household. Early that
morning as he offered a sacrifice of new yam and palm oil to his ancestors he
asked them to protect him, his children and their mothers in the new year.
As the day wore on his in-laws
arrived from three surrounding villages, and each party brought with them a
huge pot of palm-wine. And there was eating and drinking till night, when
Okonkwo's in-laws began to leave for their homes The second day of the new year
was the day of the great wrestling match between Okonkwo's village and their
neighbours. It was difficult to say which the people enjoyed more, the feasting
and fellowship of the first day or the wrestling Contest of the second. But
there was one woman who had no doubt whatever in her mind. She was Okonkwo's
second wife Ekwefi, whom he nearly shot. There was no festival in all the
seasons of the year which gave her as much pleasure as the wrestling match.
Many years ago when she was the village beauty Okonkwo had won her heart by
throwing the Cat in the greatest contest within living memory. She did not
marry him then because he was too poor to pay her bride-price. But a few years
later she ran away from her husband and came to live with Okonkwo. All this
happened many years ago. Now Ekwefi was a woman of forty-five who had suffered
a great deal in her time. But her love of wrestling contests was still as
strong as it was thirty years ago.
It was not yet noon on the second
day of the New Yam Festival. Ekwefi and her only daughter, Ezinma, sat near the
fireplace waiting for the water in the pot to boil. The fowl Ekwefi had just
killed was in the wooden mortar. The water began to boil, and in one deft
movement she lifted the pot from the fire and poured the boiling water over the
fowl. She put back the empty pot on the circular pad in the corner, and looked
at her palms, which were black with soot. Ezinma was always surprised that her
mother could lift a pot from the fire with her bare hands.
"Ekwefi," she said,
"is it true that when people are grown up, fire does not burn them?"
Ezinma, unlike most children, called her mother by her name.
"Yes," replied Ekwefi, too
busy to argue. Her daughter was only ten years old but she was wiser than her
years.
"But Nwoye's mother dropped her
pot of hot soup the other day and it broke on the floor."
Ekwefi turned the hen over in the
mortar and began to pluck the feathers.
"Ekwefi," said Ezinma, who
had joined in plucking the feathers, "my eyelid is twitching."
"It means you are going to
cry," said her mother.
"No," Ezinma said,
"it is this eyelid, the top one."
"That means you will see
something."
"What will I see?" she
asked.
"How can I know?" Ekwefi
wanted her to work it out herself.
"Oho," said Ezinma at
last. "I know what it is--the wrestling match."
At last the hen was plucked clean.
Ekwefi tried to pull out the horny beak but it was too hard. She turned round
on her low stool and put the beak in the fire for a few moments. She pulled
again and it came off.
"Ekwefi!" a voice called
from one of the other huts. It was Nwoye's mother, Okonkwo's first wife.
"Is that me?" Ekwefi
called back. That was the way people answered calls from outside. They never
answered yes for fear it might be an evil spirit calling.
"Will you give Ezinma some fire
to bring to me?" Her own children and Ikemefuna had gone to the stream.
Ekwefi put a few live coals into a
piece of broken pot and Ezinma carried it across the clean swept compound to
Nwoye's mother.
"Thank you, Nma," she
said. She was peeling new yams, and in a basket beside her were green
vegetables and beans.
"Let me make the fire for
you," Ezinma offered.
"Thank you, Ezigbo," she said.
She often called her Ezigbo, which means "the good one."
Ezinma went outside and brought some
sticks from a huge bundle of firewood. She broke them into little pieces across
the sole of her foot and began to build a fire, blowing it with her breath.
"You will blow your eyes
out," said Nwoye's mother, looking up from the yams she was peeling.
"Use the fan." She stood up and pulled out the fan which was fastened
into one of the rafters. As soon as she got up, the troublesome nanny goat,
which had been dutifully eating yam peelings, dug her teeth into the real
thing, scooped out two mouthfuls and fled from the hut to chew the cud in the
goats' shed. Nwoye's mother swore at her and settled down again to her peeling.
Ezinma's fire was now sending up thick clouds of smoke. She went on fanning it
until it burst into flames. Nwoye's mother thanked her and she went back to her
mother's hut.
Just then the distant beating of
drums began to reach them. It came from the direction of the ilo, the village
playground. Every village had its own ilo which was as old as the village
itself and where all the great ceremonies and dances took place. The drums beat
the unmistakable wrestling dance - quick, light and gay, and it came floating
on the wind.
Okonkwo cleared his throat and moved
his feet to the beat of the drums. It filled him with fire as it had always
done from his youth. He trembled with the desire to conquer and subdue. It was
like the desire for woman.
"We shall be late for the
wrestling," said Ezinma to her mother.
"They will not begin until the
sun goes down."
"But they are beating the
drums."
"Yes. The drums begin at noon
but the wrestling waits until the sun begins to sink. Go and see if your father
has brought out yams for the afternoon."
"He has. Nwoye's mother is
already cooking."
"Go and bring our own, then. We
must cook quickly or we shall be late for the wrestling."
Ezinma ran in the direction of the
barn and brought back two yams from the dwarf wall.
Ekwefi peeled the yams quickly. The
troublesome nanny-goat sniffed about, eating the peelings. She cut the yams
into small pieces and began to prepare a pottage, using some of the chicken.
At that moment they heard someone
crying just outside their compound. It was very much like Obiageli, Nwoye's
sister.
"Is that not Obiageli
weeping?" Ekwefi called across the yard to Nwoye's mother.
"Yes," she replied.
"She must have broken her waterpot."
The weeping was now quite close and
soon the children filed in, carrying on their heads various sizes of pots
suitable to their years. Ikemefuna came first with the biggest pot, closely
followed by Nwoye and his two younger brothers. Obiageli brought up the rear,
her face streaming with tears. In her hand was the cloth pad on which the pot
should have rested on her head.
"What happened?" her
mother asked, and Obiageli told her mournful story. Her mother consoled her and
promised to buy her another pot.
Nwoye's younger brothers were about
to tell their mother the true story of the accident when Ikemefuna looked at
them sternly and they held their peace. The fact was that Obiageli had been
making inyanga with her pot. She had balanced it on her head, folded her arms
in front of her and began to sway her waist like a grown-up young lady. When
the pot fell down and broke she burst out laughing. She only began to weep when
they got near the iroko tree outside their compound.
The drums were still beating,
persistent and unchanging. Their sound was no longer a separate thing from the
living village. It was like the pulsation of its heart. It throbbed in the air,
in the sunshine, and even in the trees, and filled the village with excitement.
Ekwefi ladled her husband's share of
the pottage into a bowl and covered it. Ezinma took it to him in his obi.
Okonkwo was sitting on a goatskin
already eating his first wife's meal. Obiageli, who had brought it from her
mother's hut, sat on the floor waiting for him to finish. Ezinma placed her
mother's dish before him and sat with Obiageli.
"Sit like a woman!"
Okonkwo shouted at her. Ezinma brought her two legs together and stretched them
in front of her.
"Father, will you go to see the
wrestling?" Ezinma asked after a suitable interval.
"Yes," he answered.
"Will you go?"
"Yes." And after a pause
she said: "Can I bring your chair for you?"
"No, that is a boy's job."
Okonkwo was specially fond of Ezinma. She looked very much like her mother, who
was once the village beauty. But his fondness only showed on very rare
occasions.
"Obiageli broke her pot
today," Ezinma said.
"Yes, she has told me about
it," Okonkwo said between mouthfuls.
"Father," said Obiageli,
"people should not talk when they are eating or pepper may go down the
wrong way."
"That is very true. Do you hear
that, Ezinma? You are older than Obiageli but she has more sense."
He uncovered his second wife's dish
and began to eat from it. Obiageli took the first dish and returned to her
mother's hut. And then Nkechi came in, bringing the third dish. Nkechi was the
daughter of Okonkwo's third wife.
In the distance the drums continued
to beat.
CHAPTER Six
The whole village
turned out on the ilo, men, women and children. They stood round in a huge
circle leaving the centre of the playground free. The elders and grandees of
the village sat on their own stools brought there by their young sons or
slaves. Okonkwo was among them. All others stood except those who came early
enough to secure places on the few stands which had been built by placing
smooth logs on forked pillars.
The wrestlers were not there yet and
the drummers held the field. They too sat just in front of the huge circle of
spectators, facing the elders. Behind them was the big and ancient silk-cotton
tree which was sacred. Spirits of good children lived in that tree waiting to
be born. On ordinary days young women who desired children came to sit under
its shade.
There were seven drums and they were
arranged according to their sizes in a long wooden basket. Three men beat them
with sticks, working feverishly from one drum to another. They were possessed
by the spirit of the drums.
The young men who kept order on
these occasions dashed about, consulting among themselves and with the leaders
of the two wrestling teams, who were still outside the circle, behind the
crowd. Once in a while two young men carrying palm fronds ran round the circle
and kept the crowd back by beating the ground in front of them or, if they were
stubborn, their legs and feet.
At last the two teams danced into
the circle and the crowd roared and clapped. The drums rose to a frenzy. The
people surged forward. The young men who kept order flew around, waving their
palm fronds. Old men nodded to the beat of the drums and remembered the days
when they wrestled to its intoxicating rhythm.
The contest began with boys of
fifteen or sixteen. There were only three such boys in each team. They were not
the real wrestlers,-they merely set the scene. Within a short time the first
two bouts were over. But the third created a big sensation even among the
elders who did not usually show their excitement so openly. It was as quick as
the other two, perhaps even quicker. But very few people had ever seen that
kind of wrestling before. As soon as the two boys closed in, one of them did
something which no one could describe because it had been as quick as a flash.
And the other boy was flat on his back. The crowd roared and clapped and for a
while drowned the frenzied drums. Okonkwo sprang to his feet and quickly sat
down again. Three young men from the victorious boy's team ran forward, carried
him shoulder high and danced through the cheering crowd. Everybody soon knew
who the boy was. His name was Maduka, the son of Obierika.
The drummers stopped for a brief
rest before the real matches. Their bodies shone with sweat, and they took up
fans and began to fan themselves. They also drank water from small pots and ate
kola nuts. They became ordinary human beings again, talking and laughing among
themselves and with others who stood near them. The air, which had been
stretched taut with excitement, relaxed again. It was as if water had been
poured on the tightened skin of a drum. Many people looked around, perhaps for
the first time, and saw those who stood or sat next to them.
"I did not know it was
you," Ekwefi said to the woman who had stood shoulder to shoulder with her
since the beginning of the matches.
"I do not blame you," said
the woman. "I have never seen such a large crowd of people. Is it true
that Okonkwo nearly killed you with his gun?"
"It is true indeed, my dear
friend. I cannot yet find a mouth with which to tell the story."
"Your chi is very much awake,
my friend. And how is my daughter, Ezinma?"
"She has been very well for
some time now. Perhaps she has come to stay."
"I think she has. How old is
she now?"
"She is about ten years
old."
"I think she will stay. They
usually stay if they do not die before the age of six."
"I pray she stays," said
Ekwefi with a heavy sigh.
The woman with whom she talked was
called Chielo. She was the priestess of Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and the
Caves. In ordinary life Chielo was a widow with two children. She was very
friendly with Ekwefi and they shared a common shed in the market. She was
particularly fond of Ekwefi's only daughter, Ezinma, whom she called "my
daughter." Quite often she bought beancakes and gave Ekwefi some to take
home to Ezinma. Anyone seeing Chielo in ordinary life would hardly believe she
was the same person who prophesied when the spirit of Agbala was upon her.
The drummers took up their sticks
and the air shivered and grew tense like a tightened bow.
The two teams were ranged facing
each other across the clear space. A young man from one team danced across the
centre to the other side and pointed at whomever he wanted to fight. They
danced back to the centre together and then closed in.
There were twelve men on each side
and the challenge went from one side to the other. Two judges walked around the
wrestlers and when they thought they were equally matched, stopped them. Five
matches ended in this way. But the really exciting moments were when a man was
thrown. The huge voice of the crowd then rose to the sky and in every
direction. It was even heard in the surrounding villages.
The last match was between the
leaders of the teams. They were among the best wrestlers in all the nine
villages. The crowd wondered who would throw the other this year. Some said
Okafo was the better man, others said he was not the equal of Ikezue. Last year
neither of them had thrown the other even though the judges had allowed the
contest to go on longer than was the custom. They had the same style and one
saw the other's plans beforehand. It might happen again this year.
Dusk was already approaching when
their contest began. The drums went mad and the crowds also. They surged
forward as the two young men danced into the circle. The palm fronds were
helpless in keeping them back.
Ikezue held out his right hand.
Okafo seized it, and they closed in. It was a fierce contest. Ikezue strove to
dig in his right heel behind Okafo so as to pitch him backwards in the clever
ege style. But the one knew what the other was thinking. The crowd had
surrounded and swallowed up the drummers, whose frantic rhythm was no longer a
mere disembodied sound but the very heartbeat of the people.
The wrestlers were now almost still
in each other's grip. The muscles on their arms and their thighs and on their
backs stood out and twitched. It looked like an equal match. The two judges
were already moving forward to separate them when Ikezue, now desperate, went
down quickly on one knee in an attempt to fling his man backwards over his
head. It was a sad miscalculation. Quick as the lightning of Amadiora, Okafo
raised his right leg and swung it over his rival's head. The crowd burst into a
thunderous roar. Okafo was swept off his feet by his supporters and carried
home shoulder high. They sang his praise and the young women clapped their
hands: "Who will wrestle for our village?
Okafo will wrestle for our village.
Has he thrown a hundred men?
He has thrown four hundred men. Has
he thrown a hundred Cats?
He has thrown four hundred Cats.
Then send him word to fight for us."
CHAPTER SEVEN
For three years
Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo's household and the elders of Umuofia seemed to have
forgotten about him. He grew rapidly like a yam tendril in the rainy season,
and was full of the sap of life. He had become wholly absorbed into his new
family. He was like an elder brother to Nwoye, and from the very first seemed
to have kindled a new fire in the younger boy. He made him feel grown-up, and
they no longer spent the evenings in his mother's hut while she cooked, but now
sat with Okonkwo in his obi, or watched him as he tapped his palm tree for the
evening wine. Nothing pleased Nwoye now more than to be sent for by his mother
or another of his father's wives to do one of those difficult and masculine
tasks in the home, like splitting wood, or pounding food. On receiving such a
message through a younger brother or sister, Nwoye would feign annoyance and
grumble aloud about women and their troubles.
Okonkwo was inwardly pleased at his
son's development, and he knew it was due to Ikemefuna. He wanted Nwoye to grow
into a tough young man capable of ruling his father's household when he was
dead and gone to join the ancestors.
He wanted him to be a prosperous
man, having enough in his barn to feed the ancestors with regular sacrifices.
And so he was always happy when he heard him grumbling about women. That showed
that in time he would be able to control his women-folk. No matter how
prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and
especially his women) he was not really a man. He was like the man in the song
who had ten and one wives and not enough soup for his foo-foo.
So Okonkwo encouraged the boys to
sit with him in his obi, and he told them stories of the land--masculine
stories of violence and bloodshed. Nwoye knew that it was right to be masculine
and to be violent, but somehow he still preferred the stories that his mother
used to tell, and which she no doubt still told to her younger
children--stories of the tortoise and his wily ways, and of the bird
eneke-nti-oba who challenged the whole world to a wrestling contest and was
finally thrown by the cat. He remembered the story she often told of the
quarrel between Earth and Sky long ago, and how Sky withheld rain for seven
years, until crops withered and the dead could not be buried because the hoes
broke on the stony Earth. At last Vulture was sent to plead with Sky, and to
soften his heart with a song of the suffering of the sons of men. Whenever
Nwoye's mother sang this song he felt carried away to the distant scene in the
sky where Vulture, Earth's emissary, sang for mercy. At last Sky was moved to
pity, and he gave to Vulture rain wrapped in leaves of coco-yam. But as he flew
home his long talon pierced the leaves and the rain fell as it had never fallen
before. And so heavily did it rain on Vulture that he did not return to deliver
his message but flew to a distant land, from where he had espied a fire. And
when he got there he found it was a man making a sacrifice. He warmed himself
in the fire and ate the entrails.
That was the kind of story that
Nwoye loved. But he now knew that they were for foolish women and children, and
he knew that his father wanted him to be a man. And so he feigned that he no
longer cared for women's stories. And when he did this he saw that his father
was pleased, and no longer rebuked him or beat him. So Nwoye and Ikemefuna
would listen to Okonkwo's stories about tribal wars, or how, years ago, he had
stalked his victim, overpowered him and obtained his first human head. And as
he told them of the past they sat in darkness or the dim glow of logs, waiting
for the women to finish their cooking. When they finished, each brought her
bowl of foo-foo and bowl of soup to her husband. An oil lamp was lit and
Okonkwo tasted from each bowl, and then passed two shares to Nwoye and
Ikemefuna.
In this way the moons and the
seasons passed. And then the locusts came. It had not happened for many a long
year. The elders said locusts came once in a generation, reappeared every year
for seven years and then disappeared for another lifetime. They went back to
their caves in a distant land, where they were guarded by a race of stunted
men. And then after another lifetime these men opened the caves again and the
locusts came to Umuofia.
They came in the cold harmattan
season after the harvests had been gathered, and ate up all the wild grass in
the fields.
Okonkwo and the two boys were
working on the red outer walls of the compound. This was one of the lighter
tasks of the after-harvest season. A new cover of thick palm branches and palm
leaves was set on the walls to protect them from the next rainy season. Okonkwo
worked on the outside of the wall and the boys worked from within. There were
little holes from one side to the other in the upper levels of the wall, and
through these Okonkwo passed the rope, or tie-tie, to the boys and they passed
it round the wooden stays and then back to him,- and in this way the cover was
strengthened on the wall.
The women had gone to the bush to
collect firewood, and the little children to visit their playmates in the
neighbouring compounds. The harmattan was in the air and seemed to distill a
hazy feeling of sleep on the world. Okonkwo and the boys worked in complete
silence, which was only broken when a new palm frond was lifted on to the wall
or when a busy hen moved dry leaves about in her ceaseless search for food.
And then quite suddenly a shadow
fell on the world, and the sun seemed hidden behind a thick cloud. Okonkwo
looked up from his work and wondered if it was going to rain at such an
unlikely time of the year. But almost immediately a shout of joy broke out in
all directions, and Umuofia, which had dozed in the noon-day haze, broke into
life and activity.
"Locusts are descending,"
was joyfully chanted everywhere, and men, women and children left their work or
their play and ran into the open to see the unfamiliar sight. The locusts had
not come for many, many years, and only the old people had seen them before.
At first, a fairly small swarm came.
They were the harbingers sent to survey the land. And then appeared on the
horizon a slowly-moving mass like a boundless sheet of black cloud drifting
towards Umuofia. Soon it covered half the sky, and the solid mass was now
broken by tiny eyes of light like shining star dust. It was a tremendous sight,
full of power and beauty.
Everyone was now about, talking
excitedly and praying that the locusts should camp in Umuofia for the night.
For although locusts had not visited Umuofia for many years, everybody knew by
instinct that they were very good to eat. And at last the locusts did descend.
They settled on every tree and on every blade of grass, they settled on the
roofs and covered the bare ground. Mighty tree branches broke away under them,
and the whole country became the brown-earth colour of the vast, hungry swarm.
Many people went out with baskets
trying to catch them, but the elders counselled patience till nightfall. And
they were right. The locusts settled in the bushes for the night and their
wings became wet with dew. Then all Umuofia turned out in spite of the cold
harmattan, and everyone filled his bags and pots with locusts. The next morning
they were roasted in clay pots and then spread in the sun until they became dry
and brittle. And for many days this rare food was eaten with solid palm-oil.
Okonkwo sat in his obi crunching
happily with Ikemefuna and Nwoye, and drinking palm-wine copiously, when
Ogbuefi Ezeudu came in. Ezeudu was the oldest man in this quarter of Umuofia.
He had been a great and fearless warrior in his time, and was now accorded
great respect in all the clan. He refused to join in the meal, and asked
Okonkwo to have a word with him outside. And so they walked out together, the
old man supporting himself with his stick. When they were out of earshot, he
said to Okonkwo: "That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his
death." Okonkwo was surprised, and was about to say something when the old
man continued: "Yes, Umuofia has decided to kill him. The Oracle of the
Hills and the Caves has pronounced it. They will take him outside Umuofia as is
the custom, and kill him there. But I want you to have nothing to do with it.
He calls you his father."
The next day a group of elders from
all the nine villages of Umuofia came to Okonkwo's house early in the morning,
and before they began to speak in low tones Nwoye and Ikemefuna were sent out.
They did not stay very long, but when they went away Okonkwo sat still for a
very long time supporting his chin in his palms. Later in the day he called Ikemefuna
and told him that he was to be taken home the next day. Nwoye overheard it and
burst into tears, whereupon his father beat him heavily. As for Ikemefuna, he
was at a loss. His own home had gradually become very faint and distant. He
still missed his mother and his sister and would be very glad to see them. But
somehow he knew he was not going to see them. He remembered once when men had
talked in low tones with his father, and it seemed now as if it was happening
all over again.
Later, Nwoye went to his mother's
hut and told her that Ikemefuna was going home. She immediately dropped her
pestle with which she was grinding pepper, folded her arms across her breast
and sighed, "Poor child."
The next day, the men returned with
a pot of wine. They were all fully dressed as if they were going to a big clan
meeting or to pay a visit to a neighbouring village. They passed their cloths
under the right arm-pit, and hung their goatskin bags and sheathed machetes
over their left shoulders. Okonkwo got ready quickly and the party set out with
Ikemefuna carrying the pot of wine. A deathly silence descended on Okonkwo's
compound. Even the very little children seemed to know. Throughout that day
Nwoye sat in his mother's hut and tears stood in his eyes.
At the beginning of their journey
the men of Umuofia talked and laughed about the locusts, about their women, and
about some effeminate men who had refused to come with them. But as they drew
near to the outskirts of Umuofia silence fell upon them too.
The sun rose slowly to the centre of
the sky, and the dry, sandy footway began to throw up the heat that lay buried
in it. Some birds chirruped in the forests around. The men trod dry leaves on
the sand. All else was silent. Then from the distance came the faint beating of
the ekwe. It rose and faded with the wind--a peaceful dance from a distant
clan.
"It is an ozo dance," the
men said among themselves. But no one was sure where it was coming from. Some
said Ezimili, others Abame or Aninta. They argued for a short while and fell
into silence again, and the elusive dance rose and fell with the wind.
Somewhere a man was taking one of the titles of his clan, with music and
dancing and a great feast.
The footway had now become a narrow
line in the heart of the forest. The short trees and sparse undergrowth which
surrounded the men's village began to give way to giant trees and climbers
which perhaps had stood from the beginning of things, untouched by the axe and
the bush-fire. The sun breaking through their leaves and branches threw a
pattern of light and shade on the sandy footway.
Ikemefuna heard a whisper close
behind him and turned round sharply. The man who had whispered now called out
aloud, urging the others to hurry up.
"We still have a long way to
go," he said. Then he and another man went before Ikemefuna and set a
faster pace.
Thus the men of Umuofia pursued
their way, armed with sheathed machetes, and Ikemefuna, carrying a pot of
palm-wine on his head, walked in their midst. Although he had felt uneasy at
first, he was not afraid now. Okonkwo walked behind him. He could hardly
imagine that Okonkwo was not his real father. He had never been fond of his
real father, and at the end of three years he had become very distant indeed.
But his mother and his three-year-old sister... of course she would not be
three now, but six. Would he recognise her now? She must have grown quite big.
How his mother would weep for joy, and thank Okonkwo for having looked after
him so well and for bringing him back. She would want to hear everything that
had happened to him in all these years. Could he remember them all? He would
tell her about Nwoye and his mother, and about the locusts... Then quite
suddenly a thought came upon him. His mother might be dead. He tried in vain to
force the thought out of his mind. Then he tried to settle the matter the way
he used to settle such matters when he was a little boy. He still remembered
the song: Eze elina, elina!
Sala
Eze ilikwa ya
Ikwaba akwa ogholi
Ebe Danda nechi eze Ebe
Uzuzu nete egwu Sala
He sang it in his mind, and walked
to its beat. If the song ended on his right foot, his mother was alive. If it
ended on his left, she was dead. No, not dead, but ill. It ended on the right.
She was alive and well. He sang the song again, and it ended on the left. But
the second time did not count. The first voice gets to Chukwu, or God's house.
That was a favourite saying of children. Ikemefuna felt like a child once more.
It must be the thought of going home to his mother.
One of the men behind him cleared
his throat. Ikemefuna looked back, and the man growled at him to go on and not
stand looking back. The way he said it sent cold fear down Ikemefuna's back.
His hands trembled vaguely on the black pot he carried. Why had Okonkwo withdrawn
to the rear? Ikemefuna felt his legs melting under him. And he was afraid to
look back.
As the man who had cleared his
throat drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow.
The pot fell and broke in the sand. He heard Ikemefuna cry, "My father,
they have killed me!" as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew
his machete and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak.
As soon as his father walked in,
that night, Nwoye knew that Ikemefuna had been killed, and something seemed to
give way inside him, like the snapping of a tightened bow. He did not cry. He
just hung limp. He had had the same kind of feeling not long ago, during the
last harvest season. Every child loved the harvest season. Those who were big
enough to carry even a few yams in a tiny basket went with grown-ups to the
farm. And if they could not help in digging up the yams, they could gather
firewood together for roasting the ones that would be eaten there on the farm.
This roasted yam soaked in red palm-oil and eaten in the open farm was sweeter
than any meal at home. It was after such a day at the farm during the last
harvest that Nwoye had felt for the first time a snapping inside him like the
one he now felt. They were returning home with baskets of yams from a distant
farm across the stream when they heard the voice of an infant crying in the
thick forest. A sudden hush had fallen on the women, who had been talking, and
they had quickened their steps. Nwoye had heard that twins were put in earthenware
pots and thrown away in the forest, but he had never yet come across them. A
vague chill had descended on him and his head had seemed to swell, like a
solitary walker at night who passes an evil spirit on the way. Then something
had given way inside him. It descended on him again, this feeling, when his
father walked in that night after killing Ikemefuna.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Okonkwo did not taste
any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna. He drank palm-wine from
morning till night, and his eyes were red and fierce like the eyes of a rat
when it was caught by the tail and dashed against the floor. He called his son,
Nwoye, to sit with him in his obi. But the boy was afraid of him and slipped
out of the hut as soon as he noticed him dozing.
He did not sleep at night. He tried
not to think about Ikemefuna,-but the more he tried the more he thought about
him. Once he got up from bed and walked about his compound. But he was so weak
that his legs could hardly carry him. He felt like a drunken giant walking with
the limbs of a mosquito. Now and then a cold shiver descended on his head and
spread down his body.
On the third day he asked his second
wife, Ekwefi, to roast plantains for him. She prepared it the way he
liked--with slices of oil-bean and fish.
"You have not eaten for two
days," said his daughter Ezinma when she brought the food to him. "So
you must finish this." She sat down and stretched her legs in front of
her. Okonkwo ate the food absent-mindedly. 'She should have been a boy,' he
thought as he looked at his ten-year-old daughter. He passed her a piece of
fish.
"Go and bring me some cold
water," he said. Ezinma rushed out of the hut, chewing the fish, and soon
returned with a bowl of cool water from the earthen pot in her mother's hut.
Okonkwo took the bowl from her and
gulped the water down. He ate a few more pieces of plantain and pushed the dish
aside.
"Bring me my bag," he
asked, and Ezinma brought his goatskin bag from the far end of the hut. He
searched in it for his snuff-bottle. It was a deep bag and took almost the
whole length of his arm. It contained other things apart from his snuff-bottle.
There was a drinking horn in it, and also a drinking gourd, and they knocked
against each other as he searched. When he brought out the snuff-bottle he
tapped it a few times against his knee-cap before taking out some snuff on the
palm of his left hand. Then he remembered that he had not taken out his
snuff-spoon. He searched his bag again and brought out a small, flat, ivory
spoon, with which he carried the brown snuff to his nostrils.
Ezinma took the dish in one hand and
the empty water bowl in the other and went back to her mother's hut. "She
should have been a boy," Okonkwo said to himself again. His mind went back
to Ikemefuna and he shivered. If only he could find some work to do he would be
able to forget. But it was the season of rest between the harvest and the next
planting season. The only work that men did at this time was covering the walls
of their compound with new palm fronds. And Okonkwo had already done that. He
had finished it on the very day the locusts came, when he had worked on one
side of the wall and Ikemefuna and Nwoye on the other.
"When did you become a
shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked himself, "you, who are known in
all the nine villages for your valour in war? How can a man who has killed five
men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number?
Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed."
He sprang to his feet, hung his
goatskin bag on his shoulder and went to visit his friend, Obierika.
Obierika was sitting outside under
the shade of an orange tree making thatches from leaves of the raffia-palm. He
exchanged greetings with Okonkwo and led the way into his obi.
"I was coming over to see you
as soon as I finished that thatch," he said, rubbing off the grains of
sand that clung to his thighs.
"Is it well?" Okonkwo
asked.
"Yes," replied Obierika.
"My daughter's suitor is coming today and I hope we will clinch the matter
of the bride-price. I want you to be there."
Just then Obierika's son, Maduka,
came into the obi from outside, greeted Okonkwo and turned towards the
compound, "Come and shake hands with me," Okonkwo said to the lad.
"Your wrestling the other day gave me much happiness." The boy
smiled, shook hands with Okonkwo and went into the compound.
"He will do great things,"
Okonkwo said. "If I had a son like him I should be happy. I am worried
about Nwoye. A bowl of pounded yams can throw him in a wrestling match. His two
younger brothers are more promising. But I can tell you, Obierika, that my
children do not resemble me. Where are the young suckers that will grow when
the old banana tree dies? If Ezinma had been a boy I would have been happier.
She has the right spirit."
"You worry yourself for
nothing," said Obierika. "The children are still very young."
"Nwoye is old enough to
impregnate a woman. At his age I was already fending for myself. No, my friend,
he is not too young. A chick that will grow into a cock can be spotted the very
day it hatches. I have done my best to make Nwoye grow into a man, but there is
too much of his mother in him."
"Too much of his
grandfather," Obierika thought, but he did not say it. The same thought
also came to Okonkwo's mind. But he had long learned how to lay that ghost.
Whenever the thought of his father's weakness and failure troubled him he
expelled it by thinking about his own strength and success. And so he did now.
His mind went to his latest show of manliness.
"I cannot understand why you refused
to come with us to kill that boy," he asked Obierika.
"Because I did not want
to," Obierika replied sharply. "I had something better to do."
"You sound as if you question
the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die."
"I do not. Why should I? But
the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision."
"But someone had to do it. If
we were all afraid of blood, it would not be done. And what do you think the
Oracle would do then?"
"You know very well, Okonkwo,
that I am not afraid of blood and if anyone tells you that I am, he is telling
a lie. And let me tell you one thing, my friend. If I were you I would have
stayed at home. What you have done will not please the Earth. It is the kind of
action for which the goddess wipes out whole families."
"The Earth cannot punish me for
obeying her messenger," Okonkwo said. "A child's fingers are not
scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm."
"That is true," Obierika
agreed. "But if the Oracle said that my son should be killed I would
neither dispute it nor be the one to do it."
They would have gone on arguing had
Ofoedu not come in just then. It was clear from his twinkling eyes that he had
important news. But it would be impolite to rush him. Obierika offered him a
lobe of the kola nut he had broken with Okonkwo. Ofoedu ate slowly and talked
about the locusts. When he finished his kola nut he said: "The things that
happen these days are very strange."
"What has happened?" asked
Okonkwo.
"Do you know Ogbuefi
Ndulue?" Ofoedu asked.
"Ogbuefi Ndulue of Ire
village," Okonkwo and Obierika said together.
"He died this morning,"
said Ofoedu.
"That is not strange. He was
the oldest man in Ire," said Obierika.
"You are right," Ofoedu
agreed. "But you ought to ask why the drum has not beaten to tell Umuofia
of his death."
"Why?" asked Obierika and
Okonkwo together.
"That is the strange part of
it. You know his first wife who walks with a stick?"
"Yes. She is called
Ozoemena."
"That is so," said Ofoedu.
"Ozoemena was, as you know, too old to attend Ndulue during his illness.
His younger wives did that. When he died this morning, one of these women went
to Ozoemena's hut and told her. She rose from her mat, took her stick and
walked over to the obi. She knelt on her knees and hands at the threshold and
called her husband, who was laid on a mat. 'Ogbuefi Ndulue,' she called, three
times, and went back to her hut. When the youngest wife went to call her again
to be present at the washing of the body, she found her lying on the mat,
dead."
"That is very strange,
indeed," said Okonkwo. "They will put off Ndulue's funeral until his
wife has been buried."
"That is why the drum has not
been beaten to tell Umuofia."
"It was always said that Ndulue
and Ozoemena had one mind," said Obierika. "I remember when I was a
young boy there was a song about them. He could not do anything without telling
her."
"I did not know that,"
said Okonkwo. "I thought he was a strong man in his youth."
"He was indeed," said
Ofoedu.
Okonkwo shook his head doubtfully.
"He led Umuofia to war in those
days," said Obierika.
Okonkwo was beginning to feel like
his old self again. All that he required was something to occupy his mind. If
he had killed Ikemefuna during the busy planting season or harvesting it would
not have been so bad, his mind would have been centred on his work. Okonkwo was
not a man of thought but of action. But in absence of work, talking was the
next best.
Soon after Ofoedu left, Okonkwo took
up his goatskin bag to go.
"I must go home to tap my palm
trees for the afternoon," he said.
"Who taps your tall trees for
you?" asked Obierika.
"Umezulike," replied
Okonkwo.
"Sometimes I wish I had not
taken the ozo title," said Obierika. "It wounds my heart to see these
young men killing palm trees in the name of tapping."
"It is so indeed," Okonkwo
agreed. "But the law of the land must be obeyed."
"I don't know how we got that
law," said Obierika. "In many other clans a man of title is not
forbidden to climb the palm tree. Here we say he cannot climb the tall tree but
he can tap the short ones standing on the ground. It is like Dimaragana, who
would not lend his knife for cutting up dogmeat because the dog was taboo to
him, but offered to use his teeth."
"I think it is good that our
clan holds the ozo title in high esteem," said Okonkwo. "In those
other clans you speak of, ozo is so low that every beggar takes it."
"I was only speaking in
jest," said Obierika. "In Abame and Aninta the title is worth less
than two cowries. Every man wears the thread of title on his ankle, and does
not lose it even if he steals."
"They have indeed soiled the
name of ozo," said Okonkwo as he rose to go.
"It will not be very long now
before my in-laws come," said Obierika.
"I shall return very soon,"
said Okonkwo, looking at the position of the sun.
There were seven men in Obierika's
hut when Okonkwo returned. The suitor was a young man of about twenty-five, and
with him were his father and uncle. On Obierika's side were his two elder
brothers and Maduka, his sixteen-year-old son.
"Ask Akueke's mother to send us
some kola nuts," said Obierika to his son. Maduka vanished into the
compound like lightning. The conversation at once centred on him, and everybody
agreed that he was as sharp as a razor.
"I sometimes think he is too
sharp," said Obierika, somewhat indulgently. "He hardly ever walks.
He is always in a hurry. If you are sending him on an errand he flies away
before he has heard half of the message."
"You were very much like that
yourself," said his eldest brother. "As our people say, 'When
mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth.' Maduka has been
watching your mouth."
As he was speaking the boy returned,
followed by Akueke, his half-sister, carrying a wooden dish with three kola
nuts and alligator pepper. She gave the dish to her father's eldest brother and
then shook hands, very shyly, with her suitor and his relatives. She was about
sixteen and just ripe for marriage. Her suitor and his relatives surveyed her
young body with expert eyes as if to assure themselves that she was beautiful
and ripe.
She wore a coiffure which was done
up into a crest in the middle of the head. Cam wood was rubbed lightly into her
skin, and all over her body were black patterns drawn with uli. She wore a
black necklace which hung down in three coils just above her full, succulent
breasts. On her arms were red and yellow bangles, and on her waist four or five
rows of jigida, or waist beads.
When she had shaken hands, or rather
held out her hand to be shaken, she returned to her mother's hut to help with
the cooking.
"Remove your jigida
first," her mother warned as she moved near the fireplace to bring the
pestle resting against the wall. "Every day I tell you that jigida and
fire are not friends. But you will never hear. You grew your ears for
decoration, not for hearing. One of these days your jigida will catch fire on
your waist, and then you will know."
Akueke moved to the other end of the
hut and began to remove the waist-beads. It had to be done slowly and
carefully, taking each string separately, else it would break and the thousand
tiny rings would have to be strung together again. She rubbed each string
downwards with her palms until it passed the buttocks and slipped down to the
floor around her feet.
The men in the obi had already begun
to drink the palm-wine which Akueke's suitor had brought. It was a very good
wine and powerful, for in spite of the palm fruit hung across the mouth of the
pot to restrain the lively liquor, white foam rose and spilled over.
"That wine is the work of a
good tapper," said Okonkwo.
The young suitor, whose name was
Ibe, smiled broadly and said to his father: "Do you hear that?" He
then said to the others: "He will never admit that I am a good
tapper."
"He tapped three of my best
palm trees to death," said his father, Ukegbu.
"That was about five years
ago," said Ibe, who had begun to pour out the wine, "before I learned
how to tap." He filled the first horn and gave to his father. Then he
poured out for the others. Okonkwo brought out his big horn from the goatskin
bag, blew into it to remove any dust that might be there, and gave it to Ibe to
fill.
As the men drank, they talked about
everything except the thing for which they had gathered. It was only after the
pot had been emptied that the suitor's father cleared his voice and announced
the object of their visit.
Obierika then presented to him a
small bundle of short broomsticks. Ukegbu counted them. "They are
thirty?" he asked. Obierika nodded in agreement.
"We are at last getting
somewhere," Ukegbu said, and then turning to his brother and his son he
said: "Let us go out and whisper together." The three rose and went
outside. When they returned Ukegbu handed the bundle of sticks back to
Obierika. He counted them,- instead of thirty there were now only fifteen. He
passed them over to his eldest brother, Machi, who also counted them and said:
"We had not thought to go below thirty. But as the dog said, 'If I fall
down for you and you fall down for me, it is play'. Marriage should be a play
and not a fight so we are falling down again." He then added ten sticks to
the fifteen and gave the bundle to Ukegbu.
In this way Akuke's bride-price was
finally settled at twenty bags of cowries. It was already dusk when the two
parties came to this agreement.
"Go and tell Akueke's mother
that we have finished," Obierika said to his son, Maduka. Almost
immediately the women came in with a big bowl of foo-foo. Obierika's second
wife followed with a pot of soup, and Maduka brought in a pot of palm-wine.
As the men ate and drank palm-wine
they talked about the customs of their neighbours.
"It was only this
morning," said Obierika, "that Okonkwo and I were talking about Abame
and Aninta, where titled men climb trees and pound foo-foo for their
wives."
"All their customs are
upside-down. They do not decide bride-price as we do, with sticks. They haggle
and bargain as if they were buying a goat or a cow in the market."
"That is very bad," said
Obierika's eldest brother. "But what is good in one place is bad in
another place. In Umunso they do not bargain at all, not even with broomsticks.
The suitor just goes on bringing bags of cowries until his in-laws tell him to
stop. It is a bad custom because it always leads to a quarrel."
"The world is large," said
Okonkwo. "I have even heard that in some tribes a man's children belong to
his wife and her family."
"That cannot be," said
Machi. "You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when
they are making the children."
"It is like the story of white
men who, they say, are white like this piece of chalk," said Obierika. He
held up a piece of chalk, which every man kept in his obi and with which his
guests drew lines on the floor before they ate kola nuts. "And these white
men, they say, have no toes."
"And have you never seen
them?" asked Machi.
"Have you?" asked
Obierika.
"One of them passes here
frequently," said Machi. "His name is Amadi."
Those who knew Amadi laughed. He was
a leper, and the polite name for leprosy was "the white skin."
CHAPTER NINE
For the first time in
three nights, Okonkwo slept. He woke up once in the middle of the night and his
mind went back to the past three days without making him feel uneasy. He began
to wonder why he had felt uneasy at all. It was like a man wondering in broad
daylight why a dream had appeared so terrible to him at night. He stretched
himself and scratched his thigh where a mosquito had bitten him as he slept.
Another one was wailing near his right ear. He slapped the ear and hoped he had
killed it. Why do they always go for one's ears? When he was a child his mother
had told him a story about it. But it was as silly as all women's stories.
Mosquito, she had said, had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the
floor in uncontrollable laughter. "How much longer do you think you will
live?" she asked. "You are already a skeleton." Mosquito went
away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still
alive.
Okonkwo turned on his side and went
back to sleep. He was roused in the morning by someone banging on his door.
"Who is that?" he growled.
He knew it must be Ekwefi.
Of his three wives Ekwefi was the
only one who would have the audacity to bang on his door.
"Ezinma is dying," came
her voice, and all the tragedy and sorrow of her life were packed in those
words.
Okonkwo sprang from his bed, pushed
back the bolt on his door and ran into Ekwefi's hut.
Ezinma lay shivering on a mat beside
a huge fire that her mother had kept burning all night.
"It is iba," said Okonkwo
as he took his machete and went into the bush to collect the leaves and grasses
and barks of trees that went into making the medicine for iba.
Ekwefi knelt beside the sick child,
occasionally feeling with her palm the wet, burning forehead.
Ezinma was an only child and the
centre of her mother's world. Very often it was Ezinma who decided what food
her mother should prepare. Ekwefi even gave her such delicacies as eggs, which
children were rarely allowed to eat because such food tempted them to steal.
One day as Ezinma was eating an egg Okonkwo had come in unexpectedly from his
hut. He was greatly shocked and swore to beat Ekwefi if she dared to give the
child eggs again. But it was impossible to refuse Ezinma anything. After her
father's rebuke she developed an even keener appetite for eggs. And she enjoyed
above all the secrecy in which she now ate them. Her mother always took her
into their bedroom and shut the door.
Ezinma did not call her mother Nne
like all children. She called her by her name, Ekwefi, as her father and other
grownup people did. The relationship between them was not only that of mother
and child. There was something in it like the companionship of equals, which
was strengthened by such little conspiracies as eating eggs in the bedroom.
Ekwefi had suffered a good deal in
her life. She had borne ten children and nine of them had died in infancy,
usually before the age of three. As she buried one child after another her
sorrow gave way to despair and then to grim resignation. The birth of her
children, which should be a woman's crowning glory, became for Ekwefi mere
physical agony devoid of promise. The naming ceremony after seven market weeks
became an empty ritual. Her deepening despair found expression in the names she
gave her children. One of them was a pathetic cry, Onwumbiko--
"Death, I implore you."
But Death took no notice,- Onwumbiko died in his fifteenth month. The next
child was a girl, Ozoemena--
"May it not happen again."
She died in her eleventh month, and two others after her. Ekwefi then became
defiant and called her next child Onwuma--
"Death may please
himself." And he did.
After the death of Ekwefi's second
child, Okonkwo had gone to a medicine man, who was also a diviner of the Afa
Oracle, to enquire what was amiss. This man told him that the child was an
ogbanje, one of those wicked children who, when they died, entered their
mothers' wombs to be born again.
"When your wife becomes
pregnant again," he said, "let her not sleep in her hut. Let her go
and stay with her people. In that way she will elude her wicked tormentor and
break its evil cycle of birth and death."
Ekwefi did as she was asked. As soon
as she became pregnant she went to live with her old mother in another village.
It was there that her third child was born and circumcised on the eighth day.
She did not return to Okonkwo's
compound until three days before the naming ceremony. The child was called
Onwumbiko.
Onwumbiko was not given proper
burial when he died. Okonkwo had called in another medicine man who was famous
in the clan for his great knowledge about ogbanje children. His name was
Okagbue Uyanwa. Okagbue was a very striking figure, tall, with a full beard and
a bald head. He was light in complexion and his eyes were red and fiery. He
always gnashed his teeth as he listened to those who came to consult him. He
asked Okonkwo a few questions about the dead child. All the neighbours and
relations who had come to mourn gathered round them.
"On what market-day was it
born?" he asked.
"Oye," replied Okonkwo.
"And it died this
morning?"
Okonkwo said yes, and only then
realised for the first time that the child had died on the same market-day as
it had been born. The neighbours and relations also saw the coincidence and
said among themselves that it was very significant.
"Where do you sleep with your
wife, in your obi or in her own hut?" asked the medicine man.
"In her hut."
"In future call her into your
obi."
The medicine man then ordered that
there should be no mourning for the dead child. He brought out a sharp razor
from the goatskin bag slung from his left shoulder and began to mutilate the
child. Then he took it away to bury in the Evil Forest, holding it by the ankle
and dragging it on the ground behind him. After such treatment it would think
twice before coming again, unless it was one of the stubborn ones who returned,
carrying the stamp of their mutilation--a missing finger or perhaps a dark line
where the medicine man's razor had cut them.
By the time Onwumbiko died Ekwefi
had become a very bitter woman. Her husband's first wife had already had three
sons, all strong and healthy. When she had borne her third son in succession,
Okonkwo had slaughtered a goat for her, as was the custom. Ekwefi had nothing
but good wishes for her. But she had grown so bitter about her own chi that she
could not rejoice with others over their good fortune. And so, on the day that
Nwoye's mother celebrated the birth of her three sons with feasting and music,
Ekwefi was the only person in the happy company who went about with a cloud on
her brow. Her husband's wife took this for malevolence, as husbands' wives were
wont to. How could she know that Ekwefi's bitterness did not flow outwards to
others but inwards into her own soul,- that she did not blame others for their
good fortune but her own evil chi who denied her any?
At last Ezinma was born, and
although ailing she seemed determined to live. At first Ekwefi accepted her, as
she had accepted others--with listless resignation. But when she lived on to
her fourth, fifth and sixth years, love returned once more to her mother, and,
with love, anxiety. She determined to nurse her child to health, and she put
all her being into it. She was rewarded by occasional spells of health during
which Ezinma bubbled with energy like fresh palm-wine. At such times she seemed
beyond danger. But all of a sudden she would go down again. Everybody knew she
was an ogbanje. These sudden bouts of sickness and health were typical of her kind.
But she had lived so long that perhaps she had decided to stay. Some of them
did become tired of their evil rounds of birth and death, or took pity on their
mothers, and stayed. Ekwefi believed deep inside her that Ezinma had come to
stay. She believed because it was that faith alone that gave her own life any
kind of meaning. And this faith had been strengthened when a year or so ago a
medicine man had dug up Ezinma's iyi-uwa. Everyone knew then that she would
live because her bond with the world of ogbanje had been broken. Ekwefi was
reassured. But such was her anxiety for her daughter that she could not rid
herself completely of her fear. And although she believed that the iyi-uwa
which had been dug up was genuine, she could not ignore the fact that some
really evil children sometimes misled people into digging up a specious one.
But Ezinma's iyi-uwa had looked real
enough. It was a smooth pebble wrapped in a dirty rag. The man who dug it up
was the same Okagbue who was famous in all the clan for his knowledge in these
matters. Ezinma had not wanted to cooperate with him at first. But that was
only to be expected. No ogbanje would yield her secrets easily, and most of
them never did because they died too young - before they could be asked
questions.
"Where did you bury your
iyi-uwa?" Okagbue had asked Ezinma. She was nine then and was just
recovering from a serious illness.
"What is iyi-uwa?" she
asked in return.
"You know what it is. You
buried it in the ground somewhere so that you can die and return again to
torment your mother."
Ezinma looked at her mother, whose
eyes, sad and pleading, were fixed on her.
"Answer the question at
once," roared Okonkwo, who stood beside her. All the family were there and
some of the neighbours too.
"Leave her to me," the
medicine man told Okonkwo in a cool, confident voice. He turned again to
Ezinma. "Where did you bury your iyi-uwa?"
"Where they bury
children," she replied, and the quiet spectators murmured to themselves.
"Come along then and show me
the spot," said the medicine man.
The crowd set out with Ezinma
leading the way and Okagbue following closely behind her. Okonkwo came next and
Ekwefi followed him. When she came to the main road, Ezinma turned left as if
she was going to the stream.
"But you said it was where they
bury children?" asked the medicine man.
"No," said Ezinma, whose
feeling of importance was manifest in her sprightly walk. She sometimes broke
into a run and stopped again suddenly. The crowd followed her silently. Women
and children returning from the stream with pots of water on their heads
wondered what was happening until they saw Okagbue and guessed that it must be
something to do with ogbanje. And they all knew Ekwefi and her daughter very
well.
When she got to the big udala tree Ezinma
turned left into the bush, and the crowd followed her. Because of her size she
made her way through trees and creepers more quickly than her followers. The
bush was alive with the tread of feet on dry leaves and sticks and the moving
aside of tree branches. Ezinma went deeper and deeper and the crowd went with
her. Then she suddenly turned round and began to walk back to the road.
Everybody stood to let her pass and then filed after her.
"If you bring us all this way
for nothing I shall beat sense into you," Okonkwo threatened.
"I have told you to let her alone. I know how to deal with them," said
Okagbue.
Ezinma led the way back to the road,
looked left and right and turned right. And so they arrived home again.
"Where did you bury your
iyi-uwa?" asked Okagbue when Ezinma finally stopped outside her father's
obi. Okagbue's voice was unchanged. It was quiet and confident.
"It is near that orange
tree," Ezinma said.
"And why did you not say so,
you wicked daughter of Akalogoli?" Okonkwo swore furiously. The medicine
man ignored him.
"Come and show me the exact
spot," he said quietly to Ezinma.
"It is here," she said
when they got to the tree.
"Point at the spot with your
finger," said Okagbue.
"It is here," said Ezinma
touching the ground with her finger. Okonkwo stood by, rumbling like thunder in
the rainy season.
"Bring me a hoe," said
Okagbue.
'When Ekwefi brought the hoe, he had
already put aside his goatskin bag and his big cloth and was in his underwear,
a long and thin strip of cloth wound round the waist like a belt and then
passed between the legs to be fastened to the belt behind. He immediately set
to work digging a pit where Ezinma had indicated. The neighbours sat around
watching the pit becoming deeper and deeper. The dark top soil soon gave way to
the bright red earth with which women scrubbed the floors and walls of huts.
Okagbue worked tirelessly and in silence, his back shining with perspiration.
Okonkwo stood by the pit. He asked Okagbue to come up and rest while he took a hand.
But Okagbue said he was not tired yet.
Ekwefi went into her hut to cook
yams. Her husband had brought out more yams than usual because the medicine man
had to be fed. Ezinma went with her and helped in preparing the vegetables.
"There is too much green
vegetable," she said.
"Don't you see the pot is full
of yams?" Ekwefi asked. "And you know how leaves become smaller after
cooking."
"Yes," said Ezinma,
"that was why the snake-lizard killed his mother."
"Very true," said Ekwefi.
"He gave his mother seven
baskets of vegetables to cook and in the end there were only three. And so he
killed her," said Ezinma.
"That is not the end of the
story."
"Oho," said Ezinma.
"I remember now. He brought another seven baskets and cooked them himself.
And there were again only three. So he killed himself too."
Outside the obi Okagbue and Okonkwo
were digging the pit to find where Ezinma had buried her iyi-uwa. Neighbours
sat around, watching. The pit was now so deep that they no longer saw the
digger. They only saw the red earth he threw up mounting higher and higher.
Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, stood near the edge of the pit because he wanted to take
in all that happened.
Okagbue had again taken over the
digging from Okonkwo. He worked, as usual, in silence. The neighbours and
Okonkwo's wives were now talking. The children had lost interest and were
playing.
Suddenly Okagbue sprang to the
surface with the agility of a leopard.
"It is very near now," he
said. "I have felt it."
There was immediate excitement and
those who were sitting jumped to their feet.
"Call your wife and
child," he said to Okonkwo. But Ekwefi and Ezinma had heard the noise and
run out to see what it was.
Okagbue went back into the pit,
which was now surrounded by spectators. After a few more hoe-fuls of earth he
struck the iyi-uwa. He raised it carefully with the hoe and threw it to the
surface. Some women ran away in fear when it was thrown. But they soon returned
and everyone was gazing at the rag from a reasonable distance. Okagbue emerged
and without saying a word or even looking at the spectators he went to his
goatskin bag, took out two leaves and began to chew them. When he had swallowed
them, he took up the rag with his left hand and began to untie it. And then the
smooth, shiny pebble fell out. He picked it up.
"Is this yours?" he asked
Ezinma.
"Yes," she replied. All
the women shouted with joy because Ekwefi's troubles were at last ended.
All this had happened more than a
year ago and Ezinma had not been ill since. And then suddenly she had begun to
shiver in the night. Ekwefi brought her to the fireplace, spread her mat on the
floor and built a fire. But she had got worse and worse. As she knelt by her,
feeling with her palm the wet, burning forehead, she prayed a thousand times.
Although her husband's wives were saying that it was nothing more than iba, she
did not hear them.
Okonkwo returned from the bush
carrying on his left shoulder a large bundle of grasses and leaves, roots and
barks of medicinal trees and shrubs. He went into Ekwefi's hut, put down his
load and sat down.
"Get me a pot," he said,
"and leave the child alone."
Ekwefi went to bring the pot and
Okonkwo selected the best from his bundle, in their due proportions, and cut
them up. He put them in the pot and Ekwefi poured in some water.
"Is that enough?" she
asked when she had poured in about half of the water in the bowl.
"A little more... I said a
little. Are you deaf?" Okonkwo roared at her.
She set the pot on the fire and
Okonkwo took up his machete to return to his obi.
"You must watch the pot
carefully," he said as he went, "and don't allow it to boil over. If
it does its power will be gone." He went away to his hut and Ekwefi began
to tend the medicine pot almost as if it was itself a sick child. Her eyes went
constantly from Ezinma to the boiling pot and back to Ezinma.
Okonkwo returned when he felt the
medicine had cooked long enough. He looked it over and said it was done.
"Bring me a low stool for
Ezinma," he said, "and a thick mat."
He took down the pot from the fire
and placed it in front of the stool. He then roused Ezinma and placed her on
the stool, astride the steaming pot. The thick mat was thrown over both. Ezinma
struggled to escape from the choking and overpowering steam, but she was held
down. She started to cry.
When the mat was at last removed she
was drenched in perspiration. Ekwefi mopped her with a piece of cloth and she
lay down on a dry mat and was soon asleep.
CHAPTER TEN
Large crowds began to
gather on the village ilo as soon as the edge had worn off the sun's heat and
it was no longer painful on the body. Most communal ceremonies took place at
that time of the day, so that even when it was said that a ceremony would begin
"after the midday meal" everyone understood that it would begin a
long time later, when the sun's heat had softened.
It was clear from the way the crowd
stood or sat that the ceremony was for men. There were many women, but they
looked on from the fringe like outsiders. The titled men and elders sat on
their stools waiting for the trials to begin. In front of them was a row of
stools on which nobody sat. There were nine of them. Two little groups of
people stood at a respectable distance beyond the stools. They faced the
elders. There were three men in one group and three men and one woman in the
other. The woman was Mgbafo and the three men with her were her brothers. In
the other group were her husband, Uzowulu, and his relatives. Mgbafo and her
brothers were as still as statues into whose faces the artist has moulded
defiance. Uzowulu and his relative, on the other hand, were whispering
together. It looked like whispering, but they were really talking at the top of
their voices. Everybody in the crowd was talking. It was like the market. From
a distance the noise was a deep rumble carried by the wind.
An iron gong sounded, setting up a
wave of expectation in the crowd. Everyone looked in the direction of the
egwugwu house. Gome, gome, gome, gome went the gong, and a powerful flute blew
a high-pitched blast. Then came the voices of the egwugwu, guttural and
awesome. The wave struck the women and children and there was a backward
stampede. But it was momentary. They were already far enough where they stood
and there was room for running away if any of them should go towards them.
The drum sounded again and the flute
blew. The house was now a pandemonium of quavering voices: Am oyim de de de de!
filled the air as the spirits of the ancestors, just emerged from the earth,
greeted themselves in their esoteric language. The egwugwu house into which
they emerged faced the forest, away from the crowd, who saw only its back with
the many-coloured patterns and drawings done by specially chosen women at
regular intervals. These women never saw the inside of the hut. No woman ever
did. They scrubbed and painted the outside walls under the supervision of men.
If they imagined what was inside, they kept their imagination to themselves. No
woman ever asked questions about the most powerful and the most secret cult in the
clan.
Am oyim de de de de! flew around the
dark, closed hut like tongues of fire. The ancestral spirits of the clan were
abroad.
The metal gong beat continuously now
and the flute, shrill and powerful, floated on the chaos.
And then the egwugwu appeared. The
women and children sent up a great shout and took to their heels. It was
instinctive. A woman fled as soon as an egwugwu came in sight. And when, as on
that day, nine of the greatest masked spirits in the clan came out together it
was a terrifying spectacle. Even Mgbafo took to her heels and had to be
restrained by her brothers.
Each of the nine egwugwu represented
a village of the clan. Their leader was called Evil Forest. Smoke poured out of
his head.
The nine villages of Umuofia had
grown out of the nine sons of the first father of the clan. Evil Forest
represented the village of Umueru, or the children of Eru, who was the eldest
of the nine sons.
"Umuofia kwenu!" shouted
the leading egwugwu, pushing the air with his raffia arms. The elders of the
clan replied, "Yaa!"
"Umuofia kwenu!"
"Yaa!"
"Umuofia kwenu!"
"Yaa!"
Evil Forest then thrust the pointed
end of his rattling staff into the earth. And it began to shake and rattle,
like something agitating with a metallic life. He took the first of the empty
stools and the eight other egwugwu began to sit in order of seniority after
him.
Okonkwo's wives, and perhaps other
women as well, might have noticed that the second egwugwu had the springy walk
of Okonkwo. And they might also have noticed that Okonkwo was not among the
titled men and elders who sat behind the row of egwugwu. But if they thought
these things they kept them within themselves. The egwugwu with the springy
walk was one of the dead fathers of the clan. He looked terrible with the
smoked raffia "body, a huge wooden face painted white except for the round
hollow eyes and the charred teeth that were as big as a man's fingers. On his
head were two powerful horns.
When all the egwugwu had sat down
and the sound of the many tiny bells and rattles on their bodies had subsided,
Evil Forest addressed the two groups of people facing them.
"Uzowulu's body, I salute
you," he said. Spirits always addressed humans as "bodies."
Uzowulu bent down and touched the earth with his right hand as a sign of
submission.
"Our father, my hand has
touched the ground," he said.
"Uzowulu's body, do you know
me?" asked the spirit.
"How can I know you, father?
You are beyond our knowledge."
Evil Forest then turned to the other
group and addressed the eldest of the three brothers.
"The body of Odukwe, I greet
you," he said, and Odukwe bent down and touched the earth. The hearing
then began.
Uzowulu stepped forward and
presented his case.
"That woman standing there is
my wife, Mgbafo. I married her with my money and my yams. I do not owe my
in-laws anything. I owe them no yams. I
owe them no coco-yams. One morning three of them came to my house, beat
me up and took my wife and children away. This happened in the rainy season. I
have waited in vain for my wife to return. At last I went to my in-laws and
said to them, 'You have taken back your sister. I did not send her away. You
yourselves took her. The law of the clan is that you should return her
bride-price.' But my wife's brothers said they had nothing to tell me. So I
have brought the matter to the fathers of the clan. My case is finished. I
salute you."
"Your words are good,"
said the leader of the ecjwucjwu. "Let us hear Odukwe. His words may also
be good."
Odukwe was short and thickset. He
stepped forward, saluted the spirits and began his story.
"My in-law has told you that we
went to his house, beat him up and took our sister and her children away. All
that is true. He told you that he came to take back her bride-price and we
refused to give it him. That also is true. My in-law, Uzowulu, is a beast. My
sister lived with him for nine years. During those years no single day passed
in the sky without his beating the woman. We have tried to settle their
quarrels time without number and on each occasion Uzowulu was guilty--
"It is a lie!" Uzowulu
shouted.
"Two years ago," continued
Odukwe, "when she was pregnant, he beat her until she miscarried."
"It is a lie. She miscarried
after she had gone to sleep with her lover."
"Uzowulu's body, I salute
you," said Evil Forest, silencing him. "What kind of lover sleeps
with a pregnant woman?" There was a loud murmur of approbation from the
crowd. Odukwe continued: "Last year when my sister was recovering from an
illness, he beat her again so that if the neighbours had not gone in to save
her she would have been killed. We heard of it, and did as you have been told.
The law of Umuofia is that if a woman runs away from her husband her bride-price
is returned. But in this case she ran away to save her life. Her two children
belong to Uzowulu. We do not dispute it, but they are too young to leave their
mother. If, in the other hand, Uzowulu should recover from his madness and come
in the proper way to beg his wife to return she will do so on the understanding
that if he ever beats her again we shall cut off his genitals for him."
The crowd roared with laughter. Evil
Forest rose to his feet and order was immediately restored. A steady cloud of
smoke rose from his head. He sat down again and called two witnesses. They were
both Uzowulu's neighbours, and they agreed about the beating. Evil Forest then
stood up, pulled out his staff and thrust it into the earth again. He ran a few
steps in the direction of the women,- they all fled in terror, only to return
to their places almost immediately. The nine egwugwu then went away to consult
together in their house. They were silent for a long time. Then the metal gong
sounded and the flute was blown. The egwugwu had emerged once again from their
underground home. They saluted one another and then reappeared on the ilo.
"Umuofia kwenu!" roared
Evil Forest, facing the elders and grandees of the clan.
"Yaa!" replied the
thunderous crowd,- then silence descended from the sky and swallowed the noise.
Evil Forest began to speak and all
the while he spoke everyone was silent. The eight other egwugwu were as still
as statues.
"We have heard both sides of
the case," said Evil Forest. "Our duty is not to blame this man or to
praise that, but to settle the dispute." He turned to Uzowulu's group and
allowed a short pause.
"Uzowulu's body, I salute
you," he said.
"Our father, my hand has
touched the ground," replied Uzowulu, touching the earth.
"Uzowulu's body, do you know
me?"
"How can I know you, father?
You are beyond our knowledge," Uzowulu replied.
"I am Evil Forest. I kill a man
on the day that his life is sweetest to him."
"That is true," replied
Uzowulu.
"Go to your in-laws with a pot
of wine and beg your wife to return to you. It is not bravery when a man fights
with a woman." He turned to Odukwe, and allowed a brief pause.
"Odukwe's body, I greet
you," he said.
"My hand is on the
ground," replied Okukwe.
"Do you know me?"
"No man can know you,"
replied Odukwe.
"I am Evil Forest, I am
Dry-meat-that-fills-the-mouth, I am Fire-that-burns-without-faggots. If your
in-law brings wine to you, let your sister go with him. I salute you." He
pulled his staff from the hard earth and thrust it back.
"Umuofia kwenu!" he
roared, and the crowd answered.
"I don't know why such a trifle
should come before, then said one elder to another.
"Don't you know what kind of
man Uzowulu is? He will not listen to any other decision," replied the
other.
As they spoke two other groups of
people had replaced the first before the egwugwu, and a great land case began.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The night was
impenetrably dark. The moon had been rising later and later every night until
now it was seen only at dawn. And whenever the moon forsook evening and rose at
cock-crow the nights were as black as charcoal.
Ezinma and her mother sat on a mat
on the floor after their supper of yam foo-foo and bitter-leaf soup. A palm-oil
lamp gave out yellowish light. Without it, it would have been impossible to
eat,-one could not have known where one's mouth was in the darkness of that
night. There was an oil lamp in all the four huts on Okonkwo's compound, and
each hut seen from the others looked like a soft eye of yellow half-light set
in the solid massiveness of night.
The world was silent except for the
shrill cry of insects, which was part of the night, and the sound of wooden
mortar and pestle as Nwayieke pounded her foo-foo. Nwayieke lived four
compounds away, and she was notorious for her late cooking. Every woman in the
neighbourhood knew the sound of Nwayieke's mortar and pestle. It was also part
of the night.
Okonkwo had eaten from his wives'
dishes and was now reclining with his back against the wall. He searched his
bag and brought out his snuff-bottle. He turned it on to his left palm, but
nothing came out. He hit the bottle against his knee to shake up the tobacco.
That was always the trouble with Okeke's snuff. It very quickly went damp, and
there was too much saltpetre in it. Okonkwo had not bought snuff from him for a
long time. Idigo was the man who knew how to grind good snuff. But he had
recently fallen ill.
Low voices, broken now and again by
singing, reached Okonkwo from his wives' huts as each woman and her children
told folk stories. Ekwefi and her daughter, Ezinma, sat on a mat on the floor.
It was Ekwefi's turn to tell a story.
"Once upon a time," she
began, "all the birds were invited to a feast in the sky. They were very
happy and began to prepare themselves for the great day. They painted their
bodies with red cam wood and drew beautiful patterns on them with uli.
"Tortoise saw all these
preparations and soon discovered what it all meant. Nothing that happened in
the world of the animals ever escaped his notice,- he was full of cunning. As
soon as he heard of the great feast in the sky his throat began to itch at the
very thought. There was a famine in those days and Tortoise had not eaten a
good meal for two moons. His body rattled like a piece of dry stick in his
empty shell. So he began to plan how he would go to the sky."
"But he had no wings,"
said Ezinma.
"Be patient," replied her
mother. "That is the story. Tortoise had no wings, but he went to the
birds and asked to be allowed to go with them.
"'We know you too well,' said
the birds when they had heard him. 'You are full of cunning and you are
ungrateful. If we allow you to come with us you will soon begin your mischief.'
"'You do not know me,' said
Tortoise. 'I am a changed man. I have
learned that a man who makes trouble for others is also making it for himself.'
"Tortoise had a sweet tongue,
and within a short time all the birds agreed that he was a changed man, and
they each gave him a feather, with which he made two wings.
"At last the great day came and
Tortoise was the first to arrive at the meeting place. When all the birds had
gathered together, they set off in a body. Tortoise was very happy and voluble
as he flew among the birds, and he was soon chosen as the man to speak for the
party because he was a great orator.
"There is one important thing
which we must not forget,' he said as they flew on their way. 'When people are
invited to a great feast like this, they take new names for the occasion. Our
hosts in the sky will expect us to honour this age-old custom.'
"None of the birds had heard of
this custom but they knew that Tortoise, in spite of his failings in other
directions, was a widely-travelled man who knew the customs of different
peoples. And so they each took a new name. When they had all taken, Tortoise
also took one. He was to be called 'All of you'.
"At last the party arrived in
the sky and their hosts were very happy to see them. Tortoise stood up in his
many-coloured plumage and thanked them for their invitation. His speech was so
eloquent that all the birds were glad they had brought him, and nodded their
heads in approval of all he said. Their hosts took him as the king of the
birds, especially as he looked somewhat different from the others.
"After kola nuts had been
presented and eaten, the people of the sky set before their guests the most
delectable dishes Tortoise had even seen or dreamed of. The soup was brought
out hot from the fire and in the very pot in which it had been cooked. It was
full of meat and fish. Tortoise began to sniff aloud. There was pounded yam and
also yam pottage cooked with palm-oil and fresh fish. There were also pots of
palm-wine. When everything had been set before the guests, one of the people of
the sky came forward and tasted a little from each pot. He then invited the
birds to eat. But Tortoise jumped to his feet and asked: Tor whom have you
prepared this feast?'
"'For all of you,' replied the
man.
"Tortoise turned to the birds
and said: 'You remember that my name is All of you. The custom here is to serve
the spokesman first and the others later. They will serve you when I have
eaten.'
"He began to eat and the birds
grumbled angrily. The people of the sky thought it must be their custom to
leave all the food for their king. And so Tortoise ate the best part of the
food and then drank two pots of palm-wine, so that he was full of food and
drink and his body filled out in his shell.
"The birds gathered round to
eat what was left and to peck at the bones he had thrown all about the floor.
Some of them were too angry to eat. They chose to fly home on an empty stomach.
But before they left each took back the feather he had lent to Tortoise. And
there he stood in his hard shell full of food and wine but without any wings to
fly home. He asked the birds to take a message for his wife, but they all
refused. In the end Parrot, who had felt more angry than the others, suddenly
changed his mind and agreed to take the message.
"Tell my wife,' said Tortoise,
'to bring out all the soft things in my house and cover the compound with them
so that I can jump down from the sky without very great danger.'
"Parrot promised to deliver the
message, and then flew away. But when he reached Tortoise's house he told his
wife to bring out all the hard things in the house. And so she brought out her
husband's hoes, machetes, spears, guns and even his cannon. Tortoise looked
down from the sky and saw his wife bringing things out, but it was too far to
see what they were. When all seemed ready he let himself go. He fell and fell
and fell until he began to fear that he would never stop falling. And then like
the sound of his cannon he crashed on the compound." ';,; "Did he
die?" asked Ezinma.
"No," replied Ekwefi.
"His shell broke into pieces. But there was a great medicine man in the neighbourhood.
Tortoise's wife sent for him and he gathered all the bits of shell and stuck
them together. That is why Tortoise's shell is not smooth."
"There is no song in the
story," Ezinma pointed out.
"No," said Ekwefi.
"I shall think of another one with
a song. But it is your turn now."
"Once upon a time," Ezinma
began, "Tortoise and Cat went to wrestle against Yams--no, that is not the
beginning. Once upon a time there was a great famine in the land of animals.
Everybody was lean except Cat, who was fat and whose body shone as if oil was
rubbed on it..."
She broke off because at that very
moment a loud and high-pitched voice broke the outer silence of the night. It
was Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, prophesying. There was nothing new in
that. Once in a while Chielo was possessed by the spirit of her god and she
began to prophesy. But tonight she was addressing her prophecy and greetings to
Okonkwo, and so everyone in his family listened. The folk stories stopped.
"Agbala do-o-o-o! Agbala
ekeneo-o-o-o-o," came the voice like a sharp knife cutting through the
night. "Okonkwo! Agbala ekme gio-o-o-o! Agbala cholu ifu ada ya
Ezinmao-o-o-oi"
At the mention of Ezinma's name
Ekwefi jerked her head sharply like an animal that had sniffed death in the
air. Her heart jumped painfully within her.
The priestess had now reached
Okonkwo's compound and was talking with him outside his hut. She was saying
again and again that Agbala wanted to see his daughter, Ezinma. Okonkwo pleaded
with her to come back in the morning because Ezinma was now asleep. But Chielo
ignored what he was trying to say and went on shouting that Agbala wanted to
see his daughter. Her voice was as clear as metal, and Okonkwo's women and
children heard from their huts all that she said. Okonkwo was still pleading
that the girl had been ill of late and was asleep. Ekwefi quickly took her to
their bedroom and placed her on their high bamboo bed.
The priestess screamed.
"Beware, Okonkwo!" she warned. "Beware of exchanging words with
Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!"
She walked through Okonkwo's hut
into the circular compound and went straight toward Ekwefi's hut. Okonkwo came
after her.
"Ekwefi," she called,
"Agbala greets you. Where is my daughter, Ezinma? Agbala wants to see
her."
Ekwefi came out from her hut
carrying her oil lamp in her left hand. There was a light wind blowing, so she
cupped her right hand to shelter the flame. Nwoye's mother, also carrying an
oil lamp, emerged from her hut. The children stood in the darkness outside
their hut watching the strange event. Okonkwo's youngest wife also came out and
joined the others.
"Where does Agbala want to see
her?" Ekwefi asked.
"Where else but in his house in
the hills and the caves?" replied the priestess.
"I will come with you,
too," Ekwefi said firmly.
"Tufia-al" the priestess
cursed, her voice cracking like the angry bark of thunder in the dry season.
"How dare you, woman, to go before the mighty Agbala of your own accord?
Beware, woman, lest he strike you in his anger. Bring me my daughter."
Ekwefi went into her hut and came
out again with Ezinma.
"Come, my daughter," said
the priestess. "I shall carry you on my back. A baby on its mother's back
does not know that the way is long."
Ezinma began to cry. She was used to
Chielo calling her "my daughter." But it was a different Chielo she
now saw in the yellow half-light.
"Don't cry, my daughter,"
said the priestess, "lest Agbala be angry with you."
"Don't cry," said Ekwefi,
"she will bring you back very soon. I shall give you some fish to
eat." She went into the hut again and brought down the smoke-black basket
in which she kept her dried fish and other ingredients for cooking soup. She
broke a piece in two and gave it to Ezinma, who clung to her.
"Don't be afraid," said
Ekwefi, stroking her head, which was shaved in places, leaving a regular
pattern of hair. They went outside again. The priestess bent down on one knee
and Ezinma climbed on her back, her left palm closed on her fish and her eyes
gleaming with tears.
"Agbala do-o-o-o! Agbala
ekeneo-o-o-o!..." Chielo began once again to chant greetings to her god.
She turned round sharply and walked through Okonkwo's hut, bending very low at
the eaves. Ezinma was crying loudly now, calling on her mother. The two voices
disappeared into the thick darkness.
A strange and sudden weakness
descended on Ekwefi as she stood gazing in the direction of the voices like a
hen whose only chick has been carried away by a kite. Ezinma's voice soon faded
away and only Chielo was heard moving further and further into the distance.
"Why do you stand there as
though she had been kidnapped?" asked Okonkwo as he went back to his hut.
"She will bring her back
soon," Nwoye's mother said.
But Ekwefi did not hear these
consolations. She stood for a while, and then, all of a sudden, made up her
mind. She hurried through Okonkwo's hut and went outside. "Where are you
going?" he asked.
"I am following Chielo,"
she replied and disappeared in the darkness. Okonkwo cleared his throat, and brought
out his snuff-bottle from the goatskin bag by his side.
The priestess' voice was already
growing faint in the distance. Ekwefi hurried to the main footpath and turned
left in the direction of the voice. Her eyes were useless to her in the
darkness. But she picked her way easily on the sandy footpath hedged on either
side by branches and damp leaves. She began to run, holding her breasts with
her hands to stop them flapping noisily against her body. She hit her left foot
against an outcropped root, and terror seized her. It was an ill omen. She ran
faster. But Chielo's voice was still a long way away. Had she been running too?
How could she go so fast with Ezinma on her back? Although the night was cool,
Ekwefi was beginning to feel hot from her running. She continually ran into the
luxuriant weeds and creepers that walled in the path. Once she tripped up and
fell. Only then did she realise, with a start, that Chielo had stopped her
chanting. Her heart beat violently and she stood still. Then Chielo's renewed
outburst came from only a few paces ahead. But Ekwefi could not see her. She
shut her eyes for a while and opened them again in an effort to see. But it was
useless. She could not see beyond her nose.
There were no stars in the sky
because there was a rain-cloud. Fireflies went about with their tiny green
lamps, which only made the darkness more profound. Between Chielo's outbursts
the night was alive with the shrill tremor of forest insects woven into the
darkness.
"Agbala do-o-o-o!... Agbala ekeneo-o-o-o!..."
Ekwefi trudged behind, neither getting too near nor keeping too far back. She
thought they must be going towards the sacred cave. Now that she walked slowly
she had time to think. What would she do when they got to the cave? She would
not dare to enter. She would wait at the mouth, all alone in that fearful
place. She thought of all the terrors of the night. She remembered that night,
long ago, when she had seen Ogbu-agali-odu, one of those evil essences loosed
upon the world by the potent "medicines" which the tribe had made in
the distant past against its enemies but had now forgotten how to control.
Ekwefi had been returning from the stream with her mother on a dark night like
this when they saw its glow as it flew in their direction. They had thrown down
their waterpots and lain by the roadside expecting the sinister light to
descend on them and kill them. That was the only time Ekwefi ever saw
Ogbu-agali-odu. But although it had happened so long ago, her blood still ran
cold whenever she remembered that night.
The priestess' voice came at longer
intervals now, but its vigour was undiminished. The air was cool and damp with
dew. Ezinma sneezed. Ekwefi muttered, "Life to you." At the same time
the priestess also said, "Life to you, my daughter."
Ezinma's voice from the darkness
warmed her mother's heart. She trudged slowly along.
And then the priestess screamed.
"Somebody is walking behind me!" she said. "Whether you are
spirit or man, may Agbala shave your head with a blunt razor! May he twist your
neck until you see your heels!"
Ekwefi stood rooted to the spot. One
mind said to her: "Woman, go home before Agbala does you harm." But
she could not. She stood until Chielo had increased the distance between them
and she began to follow again. She had already walked so long that she began to
feel a slight numbness in the limbs and in the head. Then it occurred to her
that they could not have been heading for the cave. They must have bypassed it
long ago,- they must be going towards Umuachi, the farthest village in the
clan. Chielo's voice now came after long intervals.
It seemed to Ekwefi that the night
had become a little lighter. The cloud had lifted and a few stars were out. The
moon must be preparing to rise, its sullenness over. When the moon rose late in
the night, people said it was refusing food, as a sullen husband refuses his
wife's food when they have quarrelled.
"Agbala do-o-o-o! Umuachi!
Agbala ekene unuo-o-ol" It was just as Ekwefi had thought. The priestess
was now saluting the village of Umuachi. It was unbelievable, the distance they
had covered. As they emerged into the open village from the narrow forest track
the darkness was softened and it became possible to see the vague shape of
trees. Ekwefi screwed her eyes up in an effort to see her daughter and the
priestess, but whenever she thought she saw their shape it immediately
dissolved like a melting lump of darkness. She walked numbly along.
Chielo's voice was now rising
continuously, as when she first set out. Ekwefi had a feeling of spacious
openness, and she guessed they must be on the village ilo, or playground. And
she realised too with something like a jerk that Chielo was no longer moving
forward. She was, in fact, returning. Ekwefi quickly moved away from her line of
retreat. Chielo passed by, and they began to go back the way they had come.
It was a long and weary journey and
Ekwefi felt like a sleepwalker most of the way. The moon was definitely rising,
and although it had not yet appeared on the sky its light had already melted
down the darkness. Ekwefi could now discern the figure of the priestess and her
burden. She slowed down her pace so as to increase the distance between them.
She was afraid of what might happen if Chielo suddenly turned round and saw
her.
She had prayed for the moon to rise.
But now she found the half-light of the incipient moon more terrifying than
darkness. The world was now peopled with vague, fantastic figures that
dissolved under her steady gaze and then formed again in new shapes. At one
stage Ekwefi was so afraid that she nearly called out to Chielo for
companionship and human sympathy. What she had seen was the shape of a man
climbing a palm tree, his head pointing to the earth and his legs skywards. But
at that very moment Chielo's voice rose again in her possessed chanting, and
Ekwefi recoiled, because there was no humanity there. It was not the same
Chielo who sat with her in the market and sometimes bought beancakes for
Ezinma, whom she called her daughter. It was a different woman--the priestess
of Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and Caves. Ekwefi trudged along between two
fears. The sound of her benumbed steps seemed to come from some other person
walking behind her. Her arms were folded across her bare breasts. Dew fell
heavily and the air was cold. She could no longer think, not even about the
terrors of night. She just jogged along in a half-sleep, only waking to full
life when Chielo sang.
At last they took a turning and
began to head for the caves. From then on, Chielo never ceased in her chanting.
She greeted her god in a multitude of names--the owner of the future, the
messenger of earth, the god who cut a man down when his life was sweetest to
him. Ekwefi was also awakened and her benumbed fears revived.
The moon was now up and she could
see Chielo and Ezinma clearly. How a woman could carry a child of that size so
easily and for so long was a miracle. But Ekwefi was not thinking about that.
Chielo was not a woman that night.
"Agbala do-o-o-o! Agbala
ekeneo-o-o-o! Chi negbu madu ubosi ndu ya nato ya uto daluo-o-o!..."
Ekwefi could already see the hills
looming in the moonlight. They formed a circular ring with a break at one point
through which the foot-track led to the centre of the circle.
As soon as the priestess stepped
into this ring of hills her voice was not only doubled in strength but was
thrown back on all sides. It was indeed the shrine of a great god. Ekwefi
picked her way carefully and quietly. She was already beginning to doubt the
wisdom of her coming. Nothing would happen to Ezinma, she thought. And if
anything happened to her could she stop it? She would not dare to enter the
underground caves. Her coming was quite useless, she thought.
As these things went through her
mind she did not realise how close they were to the cave mouth. And so when the
priestess with Ezinma on her back disappeared through a hole hardly big enough
to pass a hen, Ekwefi broke into a run as though to stop them. As she stood
gazing at the circular darkness which had swallowed them, tears gushed from her
eyes, and she swore within her that if she heard Ezinma cry she would rush into
the cave to defend her against all the gods in the world. She would die with
her.
Having sworn that oath, she sat down
on a stony ledge and waited. Her fear had vanished. She could hear the
priestess' voice, all its metal taken out of it by the vast emptiness of the
cave. She buried her face in her lap and waited.
She did not know how long she
waited. It must have been a very long time. Her back was turned on the footpath
that led out of the hills. She must have heard a noise behind her and turned
round sharply. A man stood there with a machete in his hand. Ekwefi uttered a
scream and sprang to her feet.
"Don't be foolish," said
Okonkwo's voice. "I thought you
were going into the shrine with Chielo," he mocked.
Ekwefi did not answer. Tears of
gratitude filled her eyes. She knew her daughter was safe.
"Go home and sleep," said
Okonkwo. "I shall wait here."
"I shall wait too. It is almost
dawn. The first cock has crowed."
As they stood there together,
Ekwefi's mind went back to the days when they were young. She had married Anene
because Okonkwo was too poor then to marry. Two years after her marriage to
Anene she could bear it no longer and she ran away to Okonkwo. It had been
early in the morning. The moon was shining. She was going to the stream to
fetch water. Okonkwo's house was on the way to the stream. She went in and
knocked at his door and he came out. Even in those days he was not a man of many
words. He just carried her into his bed and in the darkness began to feel
around her waist for the loose end of her cloth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On the following
morning the entire neighbourhood wore a festive air because Okonkwo's friend,
Obierika, was celebrating his daughter's uri. It was the day on which her
suitor (having already paid the greater part of her bride-price) would bring
palm-wine not only to her parents and immediate relatives but to the wide and
extensive group of kinsmen called umunna. Everybody had been invited--men,
women and children. But it was really a woman's ceremony and the central
figures were the bride and her mother.
As soon as day broke, breakfast was
hastily eaten and women and children began to gather at Obierika's compound to
help the bride's mother in her difficult but happy task of cooking for a whole
village.
Okonkwo's family was astir like any
other family in the neighbourhood. Nwoye's mother and Okonkwo's youngest wife
were ready to set out for Obierika's compound with all their children. Nwoye's
mother carried a basket of coco-yams, a cake of salt and smoked fish which she
would present to Obierika's wife. Okonkwo's youngest wife, Ojiugo, also had a
basket of plantains and coco-yams and a small pot of palm-oil. Their children
carried pots of water.
Ekwefi was tired and sleepy from the
exhausting experiences of the previous night. It was not very long since they
had returned. The priestess, with Ezinma sleeping on her back, had crawled out
of the shrine on her belly like a snake. She had not as much as looked at
Okonkwo and Ekwefi or shown any surprise at finding them at the mouth of the
cave. She looked straight ahead of her and walked back to the village. Okonkwo
and his wife followed at a respectful distance. They thought the priestess
might be going to her house, but she went to Okonkwo's compound, passed through
his obi and into Ekwefi's hut and walked into her bedroom. She placed Ezinma
carefully on the bed and went away without saying a word to anybody.
Ezinma was still sleeping when
everyone else was astir, and Ekwefi asked Nwoye's mother and Ojiugo to explain
to Obierika's wife that she would be late. She had got ready her basket of
coco-yams and fish, but she must wait for Ezinma to wake.
"You need some sleep
yourself," said Nwoye's mother. "You look very tired."
As they spoke Ezinma emerged from
the hut, rubbing her eyes and stretching her spare frame. She saw the other
children with their waterpots and remembered that they were going to fetch
water for Obierika's wife. She went back to the hut and brought her pot.
"Have you slept enough?"
asked her mother.
"Yes," she replied.
"Let us go."
"Not before you have had your
breakfast," said Ekwefi. And she went into her hut to warm the vegetable
soup she had cooked last night.
"We shall be going," said
Nwoye's mother. "I will tell Obierika's wife that you are coming
later." And so they all went to help Obierika's wife--Nwoye's mother with
her four children and Ojiugo with her two.
As they trooped through Okonkwo's
obi he asked: "Who will prepare my afternoon meal?"
"I shall return to do it,"
said Ojiugo.
Okonkwo was also feeling tired, and
sleepy, for although nobody else knew it, he had not slept at all last night.
He had felt very anxious but did not show it. When Ekwefi had followed the
priestess, he had allowed what he regarded as a reasonable and manly interval
to pass and then gone with his machete to the shrine, where he thought they
must be. It was only when he had got there that it had occurred to him that the
priestess might have chosen to go round the villages first. Okonkwo had
returned home and sat waiting. When he thought he had waited long enough he
again returned to the shrine. But the Hills and the Caves were as silent as
death. It was only on his fourth trip that he had found Ekwefi, and by then he
had become gravely worried.
Obierika's compound was as busy as
an anthill. Temporary cooking tripods were erected on every available space by
bringing together three blocks of sun-dried earth and making a fire in their
midst. Cooking pots went up and down the tripods and foo-foo was pounded in a
hundred wooden mortars Some of the women cooked the yams and the cassava, and
others prepared vegetable soup. Young men pounded the foo-foo or split firewood.
The children made endless trips to the stream.
Three young men helped Obierika to
slaughter the two goats with which the soup was made. They were very fat goats,
but the fattest of all was tethered to a peg near the wall of the compound and
was as big as a small cow. Obierika had sent one of his relatives all the way
to Umuike to buy that goat. It was the one he would present alive to his
in-laws.
"The market of Umuike is a
wonderful place," said the young man Who had been sent by Obierika to buy
the giant goat "There are so many people on it that if you threw up a
grain of sand it would not find a way to fall to earth again."
"It is the result of a great
medicine," said Obierika. "The people of Umuike wanted their market
to grow and swallow up the markets of their neighbours. So they made a powerful
medicine. Every market day, before the first cock-crow, this medicine stands on
the market ground in the shape of an old woman with a fan. With this magic fan
she beckons to the market all the neighbouring clans. She beckons in front of
her and behind her, to her right and to her left."
"And so everybody comes,"
said another man, "honest men and thieves. They can steal your cloth from
off your waist in that market."
"Yes" said Obierika.
"I warned Nwankwo to keep a sharp eye and a sharp ear. There was once a
man who went to sell a goat. He led it on a thick rope which he tied round his
wrist. But as he walked through the market he realised that people were
pointing at him as they do to a madman. He could not understand it until he
looked back and saw that what he led at the end of the tether was not a goat
but a heavy log of wood."
"Do you think a thief can do
that kind of thing single-handed?" asked Nwankwo.
"No," said Obierika.
"They use medicine."
When they had cut the goats' throats
and collected the blood in a bowl, they held them over an open fire to burn off
the hair, and the smell of burning hair blended with the smell of cooking. Then
they washed them and cut them up for the women who prepared the soup.
All this anthill activity was going
smoothly when a sudden interruption came. It was a cry in the distance: oji odu
aru ijiji-o-o! (The one that uses its tail to drive flies away!). Every woman
immediately abandoned whatever she was doing and rushed out in the direction of
the cry.
"We cannot all rush out like
that, leaving what we are cooking to burn in the fire," shouted Chielo,
the priestess. "Three or four of us should stay behind."
"It is true," said another
woman. "We will allow three or four women to stay behind."
Five women stayed behind to look
after the cooking-pots, and all the rest rushed away to see the cow that had
been let loose. When they saw it they drove it back to its owner, who at once
paid the heavy fine which the village imposed on anyone whose cow was let loose
on his neighbors' crops. When the women had exacted the penalty they checked
among themselves to see if any woman had failed to come out when the cry had
been raised.
"Where is Mgbogo?" asked
one of them.
"She is ill in bed," said
Mgbogo's next-door neighbour. "She has iba."
"The only other person is
Udenkwo," said another woman, "and her child is not twenty-eight days
yet."
Those women whom Obierika's wife had
not asked to help her with the cooking returned to their homes, and the rest
went back, in a body, to Obierika's compound.
"Whose cow was it?" asked
the women who had been allowed to stay behind.
"It was my husband's,"
said Ezelagbo. "One of the young children had opened the gate of the
cow-shed."
Early in the afternoon the first two
pots of palm-wine arrived from Obierika's in-laws. They were duly presented to
the women, who drank a cup or two each, to help them in their cooking. Some of
it also went to the bride and her attendant maidens, who were putting the last
delicate touches of razor to her coiffure and cam wood on her smooth skin.
When the heat of the sun began to
soften, Obierika's son, Maduka, took a long broom and swept the ground in front
of his father's obi. And as if they had been waiting for that, Obierika's
relatives and friends began to arrive, every man with his goatskin bag hung on
one shoulder and a rolled goatskin mat under his arm. Some of them were
accompanied by their sons bearing carved wooden stools. Okonkwo was one of
them. They sat in a half-circle and began to talk of many things. It would not
be long before the suitors came.
Okonkwo brought out his snuff-bottle
and offered it to Ogbuefi Ezenwa, who sat next to him. Ezenwa took it, tapped
it on his kneecap, rubbed his left palm on his body to dry it before tipping a
little snuff into it. His actions were deliberate, and he spoke as he performed
them: "I hope our in-laws will
bring many pots of wine. Although they come from a village that is known for
being closefisted, they ought to know that Akueke is the bride for a
king."
"They dare not bring fewer than
thirty pots," said Okonkwo. "I shall tell them my mind if they
do."
At that moment Obierika's son,
Maduka, led out the giant goat from the inner compound, for his father's relatives
to see. They all admired it and said that that was the way things should be
done. The goat was then led back to the inner compound.
Very soon after, the in-laws began
to arrive. Young men and boys in single file, each carrying a pot of wine, came
first. Obierika's relatives counted the pots as they came. Twenty, twenty-five.
There was a long break, and the hosts looked at each other as if to say,
"I told you." Then more pots
came. Thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five. The hosts nodded in approval and
seemed to say, "Now they are behaving like men." Altogether there
were fifty pots of wine. After the pot-bearers came Ibe, the suitor, and the
elders of his family. They sat in a half-moon, thus completing a circle with
their hosts. The pots of wine stood in their midst. Then the bride, her mother
and half a dozen other women and girls emerged from the inner compound, and
went round the circle shaking hands with all. The bride's mother led the way,
followed by the bride and the other women. The married women wore their best
cloths and the girls wore red and black waist-beads and anklets of brass.
When the women retired, Obierika
presented kola nuts to his in-laws. His eldest brother broke the first one.
"Life to all of us," he said as he broke it. "And let there be
friendship between your family and ours."
The crowd answered-.
"Ee-e-e!"
"We are giving you our daughter
today. She will be a good wife to you. She will bear you nine sons like the
mother of our town."
" Ee-e-e!"
The oldest man in the camp of the
visitors replied: "It will be good for you and it will be good for
us."
" Ee-e-e!"
"This is not the first time my
people have come to marry your daughter. My mother was one of you."
" Ee-e-e!"
"And this will not be the last,
because you understand us and we understand you. You are a great family."
" Ee-e-e!"
"Prosperous men and great
warriors." He looked in the direction of Okonkwo. "Your daughter will
bear us sons like you.
" Ee-e-e!"
The kola was eaten and the drinking
of palm-wine began. Groups of four or five men sat round with a pot in their
midst. As the evening wore on, food was presented to the guests. There were
huge bowls of foo-foo and steaming pots of soup. There were also pots of yam
pottage. It was a great feast.
As night fell, burning torches were
set on wooden tripods and the young men raised a song. The elders sat in a big
circle and the singers went round singing each man's praise as they came before
him. They had something to say for every man. Some were great farmers, some
were orators who spoke for the clan. Okonkwo was the greatest wrestler and
warrior alive. When they had gone round the circle they settled down in the
centre, and girls came from the inner compound to dance. At first the bride was
not among them. But when she finally appeared holding a cock in her right hand,
a loud cheer rose from the crowd. All the other dancers made way for her. She
presented the cock to the musicians and began to dance. Her brass anklets
rattled as she danced and her body gleamed with cam wood in the soft yellow
light. The musicians with their wood, clay and metal instruments went from song
to song. And they were all gay. They sang the latest song in the village:
" If I hold her hand She says, 'Don't touch!' If I hold her foot She says,
'Don't touch!'
But when I hold her waist-beads she
pretends not to know."
The night was already far spent when
the guests rose to go, taking their bride home to spend seven market weeks with
her suitor's family. They sang songs as they went, and on their way they paid
short courtesy visits to prominent men like Okonkwo, before they finally left
for their village. Okonkwo made a present of two cocks to them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Go-di-di-go-go-di-go.
Di-go-go-di-go. It was the ekwe talking to the clan. One of the things every
man learned was the language of the hollowed-out wooden instrument. Dum! Dum!
Dum! boomed the cannon at intervals.
The first cock had not crowed, and
Umuofia was still swallowed up in sleep and silence when the ekwe began to talk,
and the cannon shattered the silence. Men stirred on their bamboo beds and
listened anxiously. Somebody was dead. The cannon seemed to rend the sky.
Di-go-go-di-go-di-di-go-go floated in the message-laden night air. The faint
and distant wailing of women settled like a sediment of sorrow on the earth.
Now and again a full-chested lamentation rose above the wailing whenever a man
came into the place of death. He raised his voice once or twice in manly sorrow
and then sat down with the other men listening to the endless wailing of the
women and the esoteric language of the ekwe. Now and again the cannon boomed.
The wailing of the women would not be heard beyond the village, but the ekwe
carried the news to all the nine villages and even beyond. It began by naming
the clan: Umuofia obodo dike! "the land of the brave." Umuofia obodo
dike! Umuofia obodo dike! It said this over and over again, and as it dwelt on
it, anxiety mounted in every heart that heaved on a bamboo bed that night. Then
it went nearer and named the village: "Iguedo of the yellow
grinding-stone!" It was Okonkwo's village. Again and again Iguedo was
called and men waited breathlessly in all the nine villages. At last the man
was named and people sighed "E-u-u, Ezeudu is dead." A cold shiver
ran down Okonkwo's back as he remembered the last time the old man had visited
him. "That boy calls you father," he had said. "Bear no hand in
his death."
Ezeudu was a great man, and so all
the clan was at his funeral. The ancient drums of death beat, guns and cannon
were fired, and men dashed about in frenzy, cutting down every tree or animal
they saw, jumping over walls and dancing on the roof. It was a warrior's
funeral, and from morning till night warriors came and went in their age
groups. They all wore smoked raffia skirts and their bodies were painted with
chalk and charcoal. Now and again an ancestral spirit or egwugwu appeared from
the underworld, speaking in a tremulous, unearthly voice and completely covered
in raffia. Some of them were very violent, and there had been a mad rush for
shelter earlier in the day when one appeared with a sharp machete and was only
prevented from doing serious harm by two men who restrained him with the help
of a strong rope tied round his waist. Sometimes he turned round and chased
after those men, and they ran for their lives. But they always returned to the
long rope he trailed behind. He sang, in a terrifying voice, that Ekwensu, or
Evil Spirit, had entered his eye.
But the most dreaded of all was yet
to come. He was always alone and was shaped like a coffin. A sickly odour hung
in the air wherever he went, and flies went with him. Even the greatest
medicine men took shelter when he was near. Many years ago another egwugwu had
dared to stand his ground before him and had been transfixed to the spot for
two days. This one had only one hand and it carried a basket full of water.
But some of the egwugwu were quite
harmless. One of them was so old and infirm that he leaned heavily on a stick.
He walked unsteadily to the place where the corpse was laid, gazed at it a
while and went away again--to the underworld.
The land of the living was not far
removed from the domain of the ancestors. There was coming and going between
them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man
was very close to the ancestors. A man's life from birth to death was a series
of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
Ezeudu had been the oldest man in
his village, and at his death there were only three men in the whole clan who
were older, and four or five others in his own age group. Whenever one of these
ancient men appeared in the crowd to dance unsteadily the funeral steps of the
tribe, younger men gave way and the tumult subsided.
It was a great funeral, such as
befitted a noble warrior. As the evening drew near, the shouting and the firing
of guns, the beating of drums and the brandishing and clanging of machetes
increased.
Ezeudu had taken three titles in his
life. It was a rare achievement. There were only four titles in the clan, and
only one or two men in any generation ever achieved the fourth and highest.
When they did, they became the lords of the land. Because he had taken titles,
Ezeudu was to be buried after dark with only a glowing brand to light the
sacred ceremony.
But before this quiet and final
rite, the tumult increased tenfold. Drums beat violently and men leaped up and
down in frenzy. Guns were fired on all sides and sparks flew out as machetes
clanged together in warriors' salutes. The air was full of dust and the smell
of gunpowder. It was then that the one-handed spirit came, carrying a basket
full of water. People made way for him on all sides and the noise subsided.
Even the smell of gunpowder was swallowed in the sickly smell that now filled
the air. He danced a few steps to the funeral drums and then went to see the
corpse.
"Ezeudu!" he called in his
guttural voice. "If you had been poor in your last life I would have asked
you to be rich when you come again. But you were rich. If you had been a
coward, I would have asked you to bring courage. But you were a fearless
warrior. If you had died young, I would have asked you to get life. But you
lived long. So I shall ask you to come again the way you came before. If your
death was the death of nature, go in peace. But if a man caused it, do not
allow him a moment's rest." He danced a few more steps and went away. The
drums and the dancing began again and reached fever-heat. Darkness was around
the corner, and the burial was near. Guns fired the last salute and the cannon
rent the sky. And then from the centre of the delirious fury came a cry of
agony and shouts of horror. It was as if a spell had been cast. All was silent.
In the centre of the crowd a boy lay in a pool of blood. It was the dead man's
sixteen-year-old son, who with his brothers and half-brothers had been dancing
the traditional farewell to their father. Okonkwo's gun had exploded and a
piece of iron had pierced the boy's heart.
The confusion that followed was
without parallel in the tradition of Umuofia. Violent deaths were frequent, but
nothing like this had ever happened.
The only course open to Okonkwo was
to flee from the clan. It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a
clansman, and a man who committed it must flee from the land. The crime was of
two kinds, male and female. Okonkwo had committed the female, because it had
been inadvertent. He could return to the clan after seven years.
That night he collected his most
valuable belongings into head-loads. His wives wept bitterly and their children
wept with them without knowing why. Obierika and half a dozen other friends
came to help and to console him. They each made nine or ten trips carrying
Okonkwo's yams to store in Obierika's barn. And before the cock crowed Okonkwo
and his family were fleeing to his motherland. It was a little village called
Mbanta, just beyond the borders of Mbaino.
As soon as the day broke, a large
crowd of men from Ezeudu's quarter stormed Okonkwo's compound, dressed in garbs
of war. They set fire to his houses, demolished his red walls, killed his
animals and destroyed his barn. It was the justice of the earth goddess, and
they were merely her messengers. They had no hatred in their hearts against
Okonkwo. His greatest friend, Obierika, was among them. They were merely
cleansing the land which Okonkwo had polluted with the blood of a clansman.
Obierika was a man who thought about
things. When the will of the goddess had been done, he sat down in his obi and
mourned his friend's calamity. Why should a man suffer so grievously for an
offence he had committed inadvertently? But although he thought for a long time
he found no answer. He was merely led into greater complexities. He remembered
his wife's twin children, whom he had thrown away. What crime had they
committed? The Earth had decreed that they were an offence on the land and must
be destroyed. And if the clan did not exact punishment for an offence against
the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the
offender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it soiled the others.
PART TWO
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Okonkwo was well
received by his mother's kinsmen in Mbanta. The old man who received him was
his mother's younger brother, who was now the eldest surviving member of that
family. His name was Uchendu, and it was he who had received Okonkwo's mother
twenty and ten years before when she had been brought home from Umuofia to be
buried with her people. Okonkwo was only a boy then and Uchendu still
remembered him crying the traditional farewell: "Mother, mother, mother is
going."
That was many years ago. Today
Okonkwo was not bringing his mother home to be buried with her people. He was
taking his family of three wives and their children to seek refuge in his
motherland. As soon as Uchendu saw him with his sad and weary company he
guessed what had happened, and asked no questions. It was not until the
following day that Okonkwo told him the full story. The old man listened silently
to the end and then said with some relief: "It is a female ochu." And
he arranged the requisite rites and sacrifices.
Okonkwo was given a plot of ground
on which to build his compound, and two or three pieces of land on which to
farm during the coming planting season. With the help of his mother's kinsmen
he built himself an obi and three huts for his wives. He then installed his
personal god and the symbols of his departed fathers. Each of Uchendu's five
sons contributed three hundred seed-yams to enable their cousin to plant a
farm, for as soon as the first rain came farming would begin.
At last the rain came. It was sudden
and tremendous. For two or three moons the sun had been gathering strength till
it seemed to breathe a breath of fire on the earth. All the grass had long been
scorched brown, and the sands felt like live coals to the feet. Evergreen trees
wore a dusty coat of brown. The birds were silenced in the forests, and the
world lay panting under the live, vibrating heat. And then came the clap of
thunder. It was an angry, metallic and thirsty clap, unlike the deep and liquid
rumbling of the rainy season. A mighty wind arose and filled the air with dust.
Palm trees swayed as the wind combed
their leaves into flying crests like strange and fantastic coiffure.
When the rain finally came, it was
in large, solid drops of frozen water which the people called "the nuts of
the water of heaven." They were hard and painful on the body as they fell,
yet young people ran about happily picking up the cold nuts and throwing them
into their mouths to melt.
The earth quickly came to life and
the birds in the forests fluttered around and chirped merrily. A vague scent of
life and green vegetation was diffused in the air. As the rain began to fall
more soberly and in smaller liquid drops, children sought for shelter, and all
were happy, refreshed and thankful.
Okonkwo and his family worked very
hard to plant a new farm. But it was like beginning life anew without the
vigour and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.
Work no longer had for him the pleasure it used to have, and when there was no
work to do he sat in a silent half-sleep.
His life had been ruled by a great
passion--to become one of the lords of the clan. That had been his life-spring.
And he had all but achieved it. Then everything had been broken. He had been
cast out of his clan like a fish onto a dry, sandy beach, panting. Clearly his
personal god or chi was not made for great things. A man could not rise beyond
the destiny of his chi. The saying of the elders was not true--that if a man
said yea his chi also affirmed. Here was a man whose chi said nay despite his
own affirmation.
The old man, Uchendu, saw clearly
that Okonkwo had yielded to despair and he was greatly troubled. He would speak
to him after the isa-ifi ceremony.
The youngest of Uchendu's five sons,
Amikwu, was marrying a new wife. The bride-price had been paid and all but the
last ceremony had been performed. Amikwu and his people had taken palm-wine to
the bride's kinsmen about two moons before Okonkwo's arrival in Mbanta. And so
it was time for the final ceremony of confession.
The daughters of the family were all
there, some of them having come a long way from their homes in distant
villages. Uchendu's eldest daughter had come from Obodo, nearly half a day's
journey away. The daughters of Uehuiona were also there. It was a full
gathering of umuada, in the same way as they would meet if a death occurred.
There were twenty-two of them.
They sat in a big circle on the
ground and the young bride in the centre with a hen in her right hand. Uchendu
before her, holding the ancestral staff of the family. The men stood outside
the circle, watching. Their wives also. It was evening and the sun was setting.
Uchendu's eldest daughter, Njide, asked her, "Remember that if you do not
answer truthfully you will suffer or even die at childbirth," she began.
"How man men have lain with you since my brother first expressed his
desire to marry you?"
"None," she answered
simply.
"Answer truthfully," urged
the other women. "None?" asked Njide.
"None," she answered.
"Swear on this staff of my
fathers," said Uchendu.
"I swear," said the bride.
Uchendu took the hen from her, slit
its throat with a sharp knife and allowed some of the blood to fall on the
ancestral staff.
From that day Amikwu took the young
bride and she became his wife. The daughters of the clan did not return to
their homes immediately but spent two more days with their kinsmen.
On the second day Uchendu called
together his sons and daughters and his nephew, Okonkwo. The men brought their
goatskin mats, with which they sat on the floor, and the women sat on a sisal
mat spread on a raised bank of earth. Uchendu pulled gently at his grey beard
and gnashed his teeth. Then he began to speak, quietly and deliberately,
picking his words with great care: "It is Okonkwo that I primarily wish to
speak to," he began. "But I want all of you to note what I am going
to say. I am an old man and you are all children. I know more about the world than any of you. If
there is any one among you who thinks he knows more let him speak up." He
paused, but no one spoke.
"Why is Okonkwo with us today?
This is not his clan. We are only his mother's kinsmen. He does not belong here.
He is an exile, condemned for seven years to live in a strange land. And so he
is bowed with grief. But there is just one question I would like to ask him.
Can you tell me, Okonkwo, why it is that one of the commonest names we give our
children is Nneka, or "Mother is Supreme?" We all know that a man is
the head of the family and his wives do his bidding. A child belongs to its
father and his family and not to its mother and her family. A man belongs to
his fatherland and not to his motherland. And yet we say Nneka -'Mother is
Supreme.' Why is that?"
There was silence. "I want Okonkwo to answer me," said
Uchendu.
"I do not know the
answer," Okonkwo replied.
"You do not know the answer? So
you see that you are a child. You have many wives and many children--more
children than I have. You are a great man in your clan. But you are still a
child, my child. Listen to me and I shall tell you. But there is one more
question I shall ask you. Why is it that when a woman dies she is taken home to
be buried with her own kinsmen? She is not buried with her husband's kinsmen.
Why is that? Your mother was brought home to me and buried with my people. Why
was that?"
Okonkwo shook his head.
"He does not know that
either," said Uchendu, "and yet he is full of sorrow because he has
come to live in his motherland for a few years." He laughed a mirthless
laughter, and turned to his sons and daughters. "What about you? Can you
answer my question?"
They all shook their heads.
"Then listen to me," he
said and cleared his throat. "It's true that a child belongs to its
father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's
hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet.
But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your
mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. And that is why we say
that mother is supreme. Is it right that you, Okonkwo, should bring to your
mother a heavy face and refuse to be comforted? Be careful or you may displease
the dead. Your duty is to comfort your wives and children and take them back to
your fatherland after seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down
and kill you they will all die in exile." He paused for a long while.
"These are now your kinsmen." He waved at his sons and daughters.
"You think you are the greatest
sufferer in the world? Do you know that men are sometimes banished for life? Do
you know that men sometimes lose all their yams and even their children? I had
six wives once. I have none now except that young girl who knows not her right
from her left. Do you know how many children I have buried--children I begot in
my youth and strength? Twenty-two. I did not hang myself, and I am still alive.
If you think you are the greatest sufferer in the world ask my daughter,
Akueni, how many twins she has borne and thrown away. Have you not heard the
song they sing when a woman dies?
"'For whom is it well, for whom
is it well? There is no one for whom it is well.'
"I have no more to say to you."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was in the second
year of Okonkwo's exile that his friend, Obierika, came to visit him.
He brought with him two young men,
each of them carrying a heavy bag on his head. Okonkwo helped them put down
their loads. It was clear that the bags were full of cowries.
Okonkwo was very happy to receive
his friend. His wives and children were very happy too, and so were his cousins
and their wives when he sent for them and told them who his guest was.
"You must take him to salute
our father," said one of the cousins.
"Yes," replied Okonkwo.
"We are going directly." But before they went he whispered something
to his first wife. She nodded, and soon the children were chasing one of their
cocks.
Uchendu had been told by one of his
grandchildren that three strangers had come to Okonkwo's house. He was
therefore waiting to receive them. He held out his hands to them when they came
into his obi, and after they had shaken hands he asked Okonkwo who they were.
"This is Obierika, my great
friend. I have already spoken to you about him."
"Yes," said the old man,
turning to Obierika. "My son has told me about you, and I am happy you
have come to see us. I knew your father, Iweka. He was a great man. He had many
friends here and came to see them quite often. Those were good days when a man
had friends in distant clans. Your generation does not know that. You stay at
home, afraid of your next-door neighbour. Even a man's motherland is strange to
him nowadays." He looked at Okonkwo. "I am an old man and I like to
talk. That is all I am good for now." He got up painfully, went into an
inner room and came back with a kola nut.
"Who are the young men with
you?" he asked as he sat down again on his goatskin. Okonkwo told him.
"Ah," he said.
"Welcome, my sons." He presented the kola nut to them, and when they
had seen it and thanked him, he broke it and they ate.
"Go into that room," he
said to Okonkwo, pointing with his finger. "You will find a pot of wine
there."
Okonkwo brought the wine and they
began to drink. It was a day old, and very strong.
"Yes," said Uchendu after
a long silence. "People travelled more in those days. There is not a
single clan in these parts that I do not know very well. Aninta, Umuazu,
Ikeocha, Elumelu, Abame--I know them all."
"Have you heard," asked
Obierika, "that Abame is no more?"
"How is that?" asked
Uchendu and Okonkwo together.
"Abame has been wiped
out," said Obierika. "It is a strange and terrible story. If I had
not seen the few survivors with my own eyes and heard their story with my own
ears, I would not have believed. Was it not on an Eke day that they fled into
Umuofia?" he asked his two companions, and they nodded their heads.
"Three moons ago," said
Obierika, "on an Eke market day a little band of fugitives came into our
town. Most of them were sons of our land whose mothers had been buried with us.
But there were some too who came because they had friends in our town, and
others who could think of nowhere else open to escape. And so they fled into
Umuofia with a woeful story." He drank his palm-wine, and Okonkwo filled
his horn again. He continued: "During the last planting season a white man
had appeared in their clan."
"An albino," suggested
Okonkwo.
"He was not an albino. He was
quite different." He sipped his wine. "And he was riding an iron
horse. The first people who saw him ran away, but he stood beckoning to them.
In the end the fearless ones went near and even touched him. The elders
consulted their Oracle and it told them that the strange man would break their
clan and spread destruction among them." Obierika again drank a little of
his wine. "And so they killed the white man and tied his iron horse to
their sacred tree because it looked as if it would run away to call the man's
friends. I forgot to tell you another thing which the Oracle said. It said that
other white men were on their way. They were locusts, it said, and that first
man was their harbinger sent to explore the terrain. And so they killed
him."
"What did the white man say
before they killed him?" asked Uchendu.
"He said nothing,"
answered one of Obierika's companions.
"He said something, only they
did not understand him," said Obierika. "He seemed to speak through
his nose."
"One of the men told me,"
said Obierika's other companion, "that he repeated over and over again a
word that resembled Mbaino. Perhaps he had been going to Mbaino and had lost
his way."
"Anyway," resumed
Obierika, "they killed him and tied up his iron horse. This was before the
planting season began. For a long time nothing happened. The rains had come and
yams had been sown. The iron horse was still tied to the sacred silk-cotton
tree. And then one morning three white men led by a band of ordinary men like
us came to the clan. They saw the iron horse and went away again. Most of the
men and women of Abame had gone to their farms. Only a few of them saw these
white men and their followers. For many market weeks nothing else happened.
They have a big market in Abame on every other Afo day and, as you know, the
whole clan gathers there. That was the day it happened. The three white men and
a very large number of other men surrounded the market. They must have used a
powerful medicine to make themselves invisible until the market was full. And
they began to shoot. Everybody was killed, except the old and the sick who were
at home and a handful of men and women whose chi were wide awake and brought
them out of that market." He paused.
"Their clan is now completely
empty. Even the sacred fish in their mysterious lake have fled and the lake has
turned the colour of blood. A great evil has come upon their land as the Oracle
had warned."
There was a long silence. Uchendu
ground his teeth together audibly. Then he burst out: "Never kill a man
who says nothing. Those men of Abame were fools. What did they know about the
man?" He ground his teeth again and told a story to illustrate his point.
"Mother Kite once sent her daughter to bring food. She went, and brought
back a duckling. 'You have done very well,' said Mother Kite to her daughter,
'but tell me, what did the mother of this duckling say when you swooped and
carried its child away?'
'It said nothing,' replied the young
kite. 'It just walked away.'
'You must return the duckling,' said
Mother Kite. 'There is something ominous behind the silence.' And so Daughter
Kite returned the duckling and took a chick instead. 'What did the mother of
this chick do?' asked the old kite. 'It cried and raved and cursed me,' said
the young kite. 'Then we can eat the chick,' said her mother. 'There is nothing
to fear from someone who shouts.' Those men of Abame were fools."
"They were fools," said
Okonkwo after a pause. "They had been warned that danger was ahead. They
should have armed themselves with their guns and their machetes even when they
went to market."
"They have paid for their
foolishness," said Obierika, "But I am greatly afraid. We have heard
stories about white men who made the powerful guns and the strong drinks and
took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were
true."
"There is no story that is not
true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among
one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not
think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their
way to a land where everybody is like them?"
Okonkwo's first wife soon finished
her cooking and set before their guests a big meal of pounded yams and
bitter-leaf soup. Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, brought in a pot of sweet wine tapped from
the raffia palm.
"You are a big man now,"
Obierika said to Nwoye. "Your friend Anene asked me to greet you."
"Is he well?" asked Nwoye.
"We are all well," said
Obierika.
Ezinma brought them a bowl of water
with which to wash their hands. After that they began to eat and to drink the
wine.
"When did you set out from
home?" asked Okonkwo.
"We had meant to set out from
my house before cockcrow," said Obierika. "But Nweke did not appear
until it was quite light. Never make an early morning appointment with a man
who has just married a new wife." They all laughed.
"Has Nweke married a
wife?" asked Okonkwo.
"He has married Okadigbo's
second daughter," said Obierika.
"That is very good," said
Okonkwo. "I do not blame you for not hearing the cock crow."
When they had eaten, Obierika
pointed at the two heavy bags.
"That is the money from your
yams," he said. "I sold the big ones as soon as you left. Later on I
sold some of the seed-yams and gave out others to sharecroppers. I shall do
that every year until you return. But I thought you would need the money now
and so I brought it. Who knows what may happen tomorrow? Perhaps green men will
come to our clan and shoot us."
"God will not permit it,"
said Okonkwo. "I do not know how to
thank you."
"I can tell you," said
Obierika. "Kill one of your sons for me.
"That will not be enough,"
said Okonkwo.
"Then kill yourself," said
Obierika.
"Forgive me," said
Okonkwo, smiling. "I shall not talk about thanking you any more."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When nearly two years
later Obierika paid another visit to his friend in exile the circumstances were
less happy. The missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built their church
there, won a handful of converts and were already sending evangelists to the
surrounding towns and villages. That was a source of great sorrow to the
leaders of the clan, but many of them believed that the strange faith and the
white man's god would not last. None of his converts was a man whose word was
heeded in the assembly of the people. None of them was a man of title. They
were mostly the kind of people that were called efulefu, worthless, empty men.
The imagery of an efulefu in the language of the clan was a man who sold his
machete and wore the sheath to battle. Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, called
the converts the excrement of the clan, and the new faith was a mad dog that
had come to eat it up.
What moved Obierika to visit Okonkwo
was the sudden appearance of the latter's son, Nwoye, among the missionaries in
Umuofia.
"What are you doing here?"
Obierika had asked when after many difficulties the missionaries had allowed
him to speak to the boy.
"I am one of them," replied Nwoye.
"How is your father?"
Obierika asked, not knowing what else to say.
"I don't know. He is not my father," said
Nwoye, unhappily.
And so Obierika went to Mbanta to
see his friend. And he found that Okonkwo did not wish to speak about Nwoye. It
was only from Nwoye's mother that he heard scraps of the story.
The arrival of the missionaries had
caused a considerable stir in the village of Mbanta. There were six of them and
one was a white man. Every man and woman came out to see the white man. Stories
about these strange men had grown since one of them had been killed in Abame
and his iron horse tied to the sacred silk-cotton tree. And so everybody came
to see the white man. It was the time of the year when everybody was at home.
The harvest was over.
When they had all gathered, the
white man began to speak to them. He spoke through an interpreter who was an
Ibo man, though his dialect was different and harsh to the ears of Mbanta. Many
people laughed at his dialect and the way he used words strangely. Instead of
saying "myself" he always said "my buttocks." But he was a
man of commanding presence and the clansmen listened to him. He said he was one
of them, they could see from his colour and his language. The other four black
men were also their brothers, although one of them did not speak Ibo. The white
man was also their brother because they were all sons of God. And he told them
about this new God, the Creator of all the world and all the men and women. He
told them that they worshipped false gods, gods of wood and stone. A deep
murmur went through the crowd when he said this. He told them that the true God
lived on high and that all men when they died went before Him for judgment.
Evil men and all the heathen who in their blindness bowed to wood and stone
were thrown into a fire that burned like palm-oil. But good men who worshipped
the true God lived forever in His happy kingdom.
"We have been sent by this
great God to ask you to leave your wicked ways and false gods and turn to Him
so that you may be saved when you die," he said.
"Your buttocks understand our
language," said someone light-heartedly and the crowd laughed.
"What did he say?" the
white man asked his interpreter. But before he could answer, another man asked
a question: "Where is the white man's horse?" he asked. The Ibo
evangelists consulted among themselves and decided that the man probably meant
bicycle. They told the white man and he smiled benevolently.
"Tell them," he said,
"that I shall bring many iron horses when we have settled down among them.
Some of them will even ride the iron horse themselves." This was
interpreted to them but very few of them heard. They were talking excitedly
among themselves because the white man had said he was going to live among
them. They had not thought about that.
At this point an old man said he had
a question. "Which is this god of yours," he asked, "the goddess
of the earth, the god of the sky, Amadiora or the thunderbolt, or what?"
The interpreter spoke to the white
man and he immediately gave his answer. "All the gods you have named are
not gods at all. They are gods of deceit who tell you to kill your fellows and
destroy innocent children. There is only one true God and He has the earth, the
sky, you and me and all of us."
"If we leave our gods and
follow your god," asked another man, "who will protect us from the
anger of our neglected gods and ancestors?"
"Your gods are not alive and
cannot do you any harm," replied the white man. "They are pieces of
wood and stone."
When this was interpreted to the men
of Mbanta they broke into derisive laughter. These men must be mad, they said
to themselves. How else could they say that Ani and Amadiora were harmless? And
Idemili and Ogwugwu too? And some of them began to go away.
Then the missionaries burst into
song. It was one of those gay and rollicking tunes of evangelism which had the
power of plucking at silent and dusty chords in the heart of an Ibo man. The
interpreter explained each verse to the audience, some of whom now stood
enthralled. It was a story of brothers who lived in darkness and in fear,
ignorant of the love of God. It told of one sheep out on the hills, away from
the gates of God and from the tender shepherd's care.
After the singing the interpreter
spoke about the Son of God whose name was Jesu Kristi. Okonkwo, who only stayed
in the hope that it might come to chasing the men out of the village or
whipping them, now said "You told us with your own mouth that there was
only one god. Now you talk about his son. He must have a wife, then." The
crowd agreed.
"I did not say He had a
wife," said the interpreter, somewhat lamely.
"Your buttocks said he had a
son," said the joker. "So he must have a wife and all of them must
have buttocks."
The missionary ignored him and went
on to talk about the Holy Trinity. At the end of it Okonkwo was fully convinced
that the man was mad. He shrugged his shoulders and went away to tap his
afternoon palm-wine.
But there was a young lad who had
been captivated. His name was Nwoye, Okonkwo's first son. It was not the mad
logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the
poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about
brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and
persistent question that haunted his young soul--the question of the twins
crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a
relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn
were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting
earth. Nwoye's callow mind was greatly puzzled.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The missionaries
spent their first four or five nights in the marketplace, and went into the
village in the morning to preach the gospel. They asked who the king of the
village was, but the villagers told them that there was no king. "We have
men of high title and the chief priests and the elders," they said.
It was not very easy getting the men
of high title and the elders together after the excitement of the first day.
But the arrivees persevered, and in the end they were received by them They
asked for a plot of land to build on, An evil forest was where the clan buried
all those who died of the really evil diseases, like leprosy and smallpox. It
was also the dumping ground for highly potent fetishes of great medicine men
when they died. An evil forest was, therefore, alive with sinister forces and
powers of darkness. It was such a forest that, the rulers of Mbanta gave to the
missionaries. They did not really want them near to the clan, and so they made
them that offer which nobody in his right senses would accept.
"They want a piece of land to
build their shrine," said Uchendu to his peers when they consulted among
themselves. "We shall give them a piece of land." He paused, and
there was a murmur of surprise and disagreement. "Let us give them a
portion of the Evil Forest. They boast about victory over death. Let us give
them a real battlefield in which to show their victory." They laughed and
agreed, and sent for the missionaries, whom they had asked to leave them for a
while so that they might "whisper together." They offered them as
much of the Evil Forest as they cared to take. And to their greatest amazement
the missionaries thanked them and burst into song.
"They do not understand,"
said some of the elders. "But they will understand when they go to their
plot of land tomorrow morning." And they dispersed.
The next morning the crazy men
actually began to clear a part of the forest and to build their house. The
inhabitants of Mbanta expected them all to be dead within four days. The first
day passed and the second and third and fourth, and none of them died. Everyone
was puzzled. And then it became known that the white man's fetish had
unbelievable power. It was said that he wore glasses on his eyes so that he
could see and talk to evil spirits. Not long after, he won his first three
converts.
Although Nwoye had been attracted to
the new faith from the very first day, he kept it secret. He dared not go too
near the missionaries for fear of his father. But whenever they came to preach
in the open marketplace or the village play ground, Nwoye was there. And he was
already beginning to know some of the simple stories they told.
"We have now built a
church," said Mr. Kiaga, the interpreter, who was now in charge of the
infant congregation. The white man had gone back to Umuofia, where he built his
headquarters and from where he paid regular visits to Mr. Kiaga's congregation
at Mbanta.
"We have now built a
church," said Mr. Kiaga, "and we want you all to come in every
seventh day to worship the true God."
On the following Sunday, Nwoye
passed and repassed the little red-earth and thatch building without summoning
enough courage to enter. He heard the voice of singing and although it came
from a handful of men it was loud and confident. Their church stood on a
circular clearing that looked like the open mouth of the Evil Forest. Was it
waiting to snap its teeth together? After passing and re-passing by the church,
Nwoye returned home.
It was well known among the people
of Mbanta that their gods and ancestors were sometimes long-suffering and would
deliberately allow a man to go on defying them. But even in such cases they set
their limit at seven market weeks or twenty-eight days. Beyond that limit no
man was suffered to go. And so excitement mounted in the village as the seventh
week approached since the impudent missionaries built their church in the Evil
Forest. The villagers were so certain about the doom that awaited these men
that one or two converts thought it wise to suspend their allegiance to the new
faith.
At last the day came by which all
the missionaries should have died. But they were still alive, building a new
red-earth and thatch house for their teacher, Mr. Kiaga. That week they won a
handful more converts. And for the first time they had a woman. Her name was
Nneka, the wife of Amadi, who was a prosperous farmer. She was very heavy with
child.
Nneka had had four previous
pregnancies and child-births. But each time she had borne twins, and they had
been immediately thrown away. Her husband and his family were already becoming
highly critical of such a woman and were not unduly perturbed when they found
she had fled to join the Christians. It was a good riddance.
One morning Okonkwo's cousin,
Amikwu, was passing by the church on his way from the neighbouring village,
when he saw Nwoye among the Christians. He was greatly surprised, and when he
got home he went straight to Okonkwo's hut and told him what he had seen. The
women began to talk excitedly, but Okonkwo sat unmoved.
It was late afternoon before Nwoye
returned. He went into the obi and saluted his father, but he did not answer.
Nwoye turned round to walk into the inner compound when his father, suddenly
overcome with fury, sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck.
"Where have you been?" he
stammered.
Nwoye struggled to free himself from
the choking grip.
"Answer me," roared
Okonkwo, "before I kill you!" He seized a heavy stick that lay on the
dwarf wall and hit him two or three savage blows.
"Answer me!" he roared
again. Nwoye stood looking at him and did not say a word. The women were
screaming outside, afraid to go in.
"Leave that boy at once!" said
a voice in the outer compound. It was Okonkwo's uncle, Uchendu. "Are you
mad?"
Okonkwo did not answer. But he left
hold of Nwoye, who walked away and never returned.
He went back to the church and told
Mr. Kiaga that he had decided to go to Umuofia where the white missionary had
set up a school to teach young Christians to read and write.
Mr. Kiaga's joy was very great.
"Blessed is he who forsakes his father and his mother for my sake,"
he intoned. "Those that hear my words are my father and my mother."
Nwoye did not fully understand. But
he was happy to leave his father. He would return later to his mother and his
brothers and sisters and convert them to the new faith.
As Okonkwo sat in his hut that
night, gazing into a log fire, he thought over the matter. A sudden fury rose
within him and he felt a strong desire to take up his machete, go to the church
and wipe out the entire vile and miscreant gang. But on further thought he told
himself that Nwoye was not worth fighting for. Why, he cried in his heart,
should he, Okonkwo, of all people, be cursed with such a son? He saw clearly in
it the finger of his personal god or chi. For how else could he explain his
great misfortune and exile and now his despicable son's behaviour? Now that he
had time to think of it, his son's crime stood out in its stark enormity. To
abandon the gods of one's father and go about with a lot of effeminate men
clucking like old hens was the very depth of abomination. Suppose when he died
all his male children decided to follow Nwoye's steps and abandon their
ancestors? Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible
prospect, like the prospect of annihilation. He saw himself and his fathers
crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice
and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while
praying to the white man's god. If such a thing were ever to happen, he,
Okonkwo, would wipe them off the face of the earth.
Okonkwo was popularly called the
"Roaring Flame." As he looked into the log fire he recalled the name.
He was a flaming fire. How then could he have begotten a son like Nwoye,
degenerate and effeminate? Perhaps he was not his son. No! he could not be. His
wife had played him false. He would teach her! But Nwoye resembled his
grandfather, Unoka, who was Okonkwo's father. He pushed the thought out of his
mind. He, Okonkwo, was called a flaming fire. How could he have begotten a
woman for a son? At Nwoye's age Okonkwo had already become famous throughout
Umuofia for his wrestling and his fearlessness.
He sighed heavily, and as if in
sympathy the smouldering log also sighed. And immediately Okonkwo's eyes were
opened and he saw the whole matter clearly. Living fire begets cold, impotent
ash. He sighed again, deeply.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The young church in
Mbanta had a few crises early in its life. At first the clan had assumed that
it would not survive. But it had gone on living and gradually becoming
stronger. The clan was worried, but not overmuch. If a gang of efulefu decided
to live in the Evil Forest it was their own affair. When one came to think of
it, the Evil Forest was a fit home for such undesirable people. It was true
they were rescuing twins from the bush, but they never brought them into the
village. As far as the villagers were concerned, the twins still remained where
they had been thrown away. Surely the earth goddess would not visit the sins of
the missionaries on the innocent villagers?
But on one occasion the missionaries
had tried to over step the bounds. Three converts had gone into the village and
boasted openly that all the gods were dead and impotent and that they were
prepared to defy them by burning all their shrines.
"Go and burn your mothers'
genitals," said one of the priests. The men were seized and beaten until
they streamed with blood. After that nothing happened for a long time between
the church and the clan.
But stories were already gaining
ground that the white man had not only brought a religion but also a
government. It was said that they had built a place of judgment in Umuofia to
protect the followers of their religion. It was even said that they had hanged
one man who killed a missionary.
Although such stories were now often
told they looked like fairytales in Mbanta and did not as yet affect the
relationship between the new church and the clan. There was no question of
killing a missionary here, for Mr. Kiaga, despite his madness, was quite
harmless. As for his converts, no one could kill them without having to flee from
the clan, for in spite of their worthlessness they still belonged to the clan.
And so nobody gave serious thought to the stories about the white man's
government or the consequences of killing the Christians. If they became more
troublesome than they already were they would simply be driven out of the clan.
And the little church was at that
moment too deeply absorbed in its own troubles to annoy the clan. It all began
over the question of admitting outcasts.
These outcasts, or osu, seeing that
the new religion welcomed twins and such abominations, thought that it was
possible that they would also be received. And so one Sunday two of them went
into the church. There was an immediate stir, but so great was the work the new
religion had done among the converts that they did not immediately leave the
church when the outcasts came in. Those who found themselves nearest to them
merely moved to another seat. It was a miracle. But it only lasted till the end
of the service. The whole church raised a protest and was about to drive these
people out, when Mr. Kiaga stopped them and began to explain.
"Before God," he said,
"there is no slave or free. We are all children of God and we must receive
these our brothers."
"You do not understand,"
said one of the converts. "What will the heathen say of us when they hear
that we receive osu into our midst? They will laugh."
"Let them laugh," said Mr.
Kiaga. "God will laugh at them on the judgment day. Why do the nations
rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing? He that sitteth in the heavens shall
laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision."
"You do not understand,"
the convert maintained. "You are our teacher, and you can teach us the
things of the new faith. But this is a matter which we know." And he told
him what an osu was.
He was a person dedicated to a god,
a thing set apart--a taboo for ever, and his children after him. He could
neither marry nor be married by the free-born. He was in fact an outcast,
living in a special area of the village, close to the Great Shrine. Wherever he
went he carried with him the mark of his forbidden caste--long, tangled and
dirty hair. A razor was taboo to him. An osu could not attend an assembly of
the free-born, and they, in turn, could not shelter under his roof. He could
not take any of the four titles of the clan, and when he died he was buried by
his kind in the Evil Forest. How could such a man be a follower of Christ?
"He needs Christ more than you
and I," said Mr. Kiaga.
"Then I shall go back to the
clan," said the convert. And he went. Mr. Kiaga stood firm, and it was his
firmness that saved the young church. The wavering converts drew inspiration
and confidence from his unshakable faith. He ordered the outcasts to shave off
their long, tangled hair. At first they were afraid they might die.
"Unless you shave off the mark
of your heathen belief I will not admit you into the church," said Mr.
Kiaga. "You fear that you will die. Why should that be? How are you
different from other men who shave their hair? The same God created you and
them. But they have cast you out like lepers. It is against the will of God,
who has promised everlasting life to all who believe in His holy name. The
heathen say you will die if you do this or that, and you are afraid. They also
said I would die if I built my church on this ground. Am I dead? They said I
would die if I took care of twins. I am still alive. The heathen speak nothing
but falsehood. Only the word of our God is true."
The two outcasts shaved off their
hair, and soon they were the strongest adherents of the new faith. And what was
more, nearly all the osu in Mbanta followed their example. It was in fact one
of them who in his zeal brought the church into serious conflict with the clan
a year later by killing the sacred python, the emanation of the god of water.
The royal python was the most
revered animal in Mbanta and all the surrounding clans. It was addressed as
"Our Father," and was allowed to go wherever it chose, even into
people's beds. It ate rats in the house and sometimes swallowed hens' eggs. If
a clansman killed a royal python accidentally, he made sacrifices of atonement
and performed an expensive burial ceremony such as was done for a great man. No
punishment was prescribed for a man who killed the python knowingly. Nobody
thought that such a thing could ever happen.
Perhaps it never did happen. That
was the way the clan at first looked at it. No one had actually seen the man do
it. The story had arisen among the Christians themselves.
But, all the same, the rulers and elders
of Mbanta assembled to decide on their action. Many of them spoke at great
length and in fury. The spirit of wars was upon them. Okonkwo, who had begun to
play a part in the affairs of his motherland, said that until the abominable
gang was chased out of the village with whips there would be no peace.
But there were many others who saw
the situation differently, and it was their counsel that prevailed in the end.
"It is not our custom to fight
for our gods," said one of them. "Let us not presume to do so now. If
a man kills the sacred python in the secrecy of his hut, the matter lies
between him and the god. We did not see it. If we put ourselves between the god
and his victim we may receive blows intended for the offender. When a man
blasphemes, what do we do? Do we go and stop his mouth? No. We put our fingers
into our ears to stop us hearing. That is a wise action."
"Let us not reason like
cowards," said Okonkwo. "If a man comes into my hut and defecates on
the floor, what do I do? Do I shut my eyes? No! I take a stick and break his
head That is what a man does. These people are daily pouring filth over us, and
Okeke says we should pretend not to see." Okonkwo made a sound full of
disgust. This was a womanly clan, he thought. Such a thing could never happen
in his fatherland, Umuofia.
"Okonkwo has spoken the
truth," said another man. "We should do something. But let us
ostracise these men. We would then not be held accountable for their
abominations."
Everybody in the assembly spoke, and
in the end it was decided to ostracise the Christians. Okonkwo ground his teeth
in disgust.
That night a bellman went through
the length and breadth of Mbanta proclaiming that the adherents of the new
faith were thenceforth excluded from the life and privileges of the clan.
The Christians had grown in number
and were now a small community of men, women and children, self-assured and
confident. Mr. Brown, the white missionary, paid regular visits to them.
"When I think that it is only eighteen months since the Seed was first
sown among you," he said, "I marvel at what the Lord hath
wrought."
It was Wednesday in Holy Week and
Mr. Kiaga had asked the women to bring red earth and white chalk and water to
scrub the church for Easter, and the women had formed themselves into three
groups for this purpose. They set out early that morning, some of them with
their waterpots to the stream, another group with hoes and baskets to the
village earth pit, and the others to the chalk quarry.
Mr. Kiaga was praying in the church
when he heard the women talking excitedly. He rounded off his prayer and went
to see what it was all about. The women had come to the church with empty
waterpots. They said that some young men had chased them away from the stream
with whips. Soon after, the women who had gone for red earth returned with
empty baskets. Some of them had been heavily whipped. The chalk women also
returned to tell a similar story.
"What does it all mean?"
asked Mr. Kiaga, who was greatly perplexed.
"The village has outlawed us,"
said one of the women. "The bellman announced it last night. But it is not
our custom to debar anyone from the stream or the quarry."
Another woman said, "They want
to ruin us. They will not allow us into the markets. They have said so."
Mr. Kiaga was going to send into the
village for his men-converts when he saw them coming on their own. Of course
they had all heard the bellman, but they had never in all their lives heard of
women being debarred from the stream.
"Come along," they said to
the women. "We will go with you to meet those cowards." Some of them
had big sticks and some even machetes.
But Mr. Kiaga restrained them. He
wanted first to know why they had been outlawed.
"They say that Okoli killed the
sacred python," said one man.
"It is false," said
another. "Okoli told me himself that it was false."
Okoli was not there to answer. He
had fallen ill on the previous night. Before the day was over he was dead. His
death showed that the gods were still able to fight their own battles. The clan
saw no reason then for molesting the Christians.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The last big rains of
the year were falling. It was the time for treading red earth with which to
build walls. It was not done earlier because the rains were too heavy and would
have washed away the heap of trodden earth, and it could not be done later
because harvesting would soon set in, and after that the dry season.
It was going to be Okonkwo's last
harvest in Mbanta. The seven wasted and weary years were at last dragging to a
close. Although he had prospered in his motherland Okonkwo knew that he would
have prospered even more in Umuofia, in the land of his fathers where men were
bold and warlike. In these seven years he would have climbed to the utmost
heights. And so he regretted every day of his exile. His mother's kinsmen had
been very kind to him, and he was grateful. But that did not alter the facts.
He had called the first child born to him in exile Nneka--
"Mother is Supreme"--out
of politeness to his mother's kinsmen. But two years later when a son was born
he called him Nwofia--
"Begotten in the
Wilderness."
As soon as he entered his last year
in exile Okonkwo sent money to Obierika to build him two huts in his old
compound where he and his family would live until he built more huts and the
outside wall of his compound. He could not ask another man to build his own obi
for him, nor the walls of his compound. Those things a man built for himself or
inherited from his father.
As the last heavy rains of the year
began to fall, Obierika sent word that the two huts had been built and Okonkwo
began to prepare for his return, after the rains. He would have liked to return
earlier and build his compound that year before the rains stopped, but in doing
so he would have taken something from the full penalty of seven years. And that
could not be. So he waited impatiently for the dry season to come.
It came slowly. The rain became
lighter and lighter until it fell in slanting showers. Sometimes the sun shone
through the rain and a light breeze blew. It was a gay and airy kind of rain.
The rainbow began to appear, and sometimes two rainbows, like a mother and her
daughter, the one young and beautiful, and the other an old and faint shadow.
The rainbow was called the python of the sky.
Okonkwo called his three wives and
told them to get things together for a great feast. "I must thank my
mother's kinsmen before I go," he said.
Ekwefi still had some cassava left
on her farm from the previous year. Neither of the other wives had. It was not
that they had been lazy, but that they had many children to feed. It was
therefore understood that Ekwefi would provide cassava for the feast. Nwoye's
mother and Ojiugo would provide the other things like smoked fish, palm-oil and
pepper for the soup. Okonkwo would take care of meat and yams.
Ekwefi rose early on the following
morning and went to her farm with her daughter, Ezinma, and Ojiugo's daughter,
Obiageli, to harvest cassava tubers. Each of them carried a long cane basket, a
machete for cutting down the soft cassava stem, and a little hoe for digging
out the tuber. Fortunately, a light rain had fallen during the night and the
soil would not be very hard.
"It will not take us long to
harvest as much as we like," said Ekwefi.
"But the leaves will be
wet," said Ezinma. Her basket was balanced on her head, and her arms
folded across her breasts. She felt cold. "I dislike cold water dropping
on my back. We should have waited for the sun to rise and dry the leaves."
Obiageli called her "Salt"
because she said that she disliked water. "Are you afraid you may
dissolve?"
The harvesting was easy, as Ekwefi
had said. Ezinma shook every tree violently with a long stick before she bent
down to cut the stem and dig out the tuber. Sometimes it was not necessary to
dig. They just pulled the stump, and earth rose, roots snapped below, and the
tuber was pulled out.
When they had harvested a sizable
heap they carried it down in two trips to the stream, where every woman had a
shallow well for fermenting her cassava.
"It should be ready in four
days or even three," said Obiageli. "They are young tubers."
"They are not all that
young," said Ekwefi. "I planted the farm nearly two years ago. It is
a poor soil and that is why the tubers are so small."
Okonkwo never did things by halves.
When his wife Ekwefi protested that two goats were sufficient for the feast he
told her that it was not her affair.
"I am calling a feast because I
have the wherewithal. I cannot live on the bank of a river and wash my hands
with spittle. My mother's people have been good to me and I must show my
gratitude."
And so three goats were slaughtered
and a number of fowls. It was like a wedding feast. There was foo-foo and yam
pottage, egusi soup and bitter-leaf soup and pots and pots of palm-wine.
All the umunna were invited to the
feast, all the descendants of Okolo, who had lived about two hundred years
before. The oldest member of this extensive family was Okonkwo's uncle,
Uchendu. The kola nut was given him to break, and he prayed to the ancestors.
He asked them for health and children. "We do not ask for wealth because
he that has health and children will also have wealth. We do not pray to have
more money but to have more kinsmen. We are better than animals because we have
kinsmen. An animal rubs its itching flank against a tree, a man asks his
kinsman to scratch him." He prayed especially for Okonkwo and his family.
He then broke the kola nut and threw one of the lobes on the ground for the
ancestors.
As the broken kola nuts were passed
round, Okonkwo's wives and children and those who came to help them with the
cooking began to bring out the food. His sons brought out the pots of
palm-wine. There was so much food and drink that many kinsmen whistled in
surprise. When all was laid out, Okonkwo rose to speak.
"I beg you to accept this
little kola," he said. "It is not to pay you back for all you did for
me in these seven years. A child cannot pay for its mother's milk. I have only
called you together because it is good for kinsmen to meet."
Yam pottage was served first because
it was lighter than foo-foo and because yam always came first. Then the foo-foo
was served. Some kinsmen ate it with egusi soup and others with bitter-leaf
soup. The meat was then shared so that every member of the umunna had a
portion. Every man rose in order of years and took a share. Even the few
kinsmen who had not been able to come had their shares taken out for them in
due term.
As the palm-wine was drunk one of
the oldest members of the umunna rose to thank Okonkwo: "If I say that we
did not expect such a big feast I will be suggesting that we did not know how
openhanded our son, Okonkwo, is. We all know him, and we expected a big feast.
But it turned out to be even bigger than we expected. Thank you. May all you
took out return again tenfold. It is good in these days when the younger
generation consider themselves wiser than their sires to see a man doing things
in the grand, old way. A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to
save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather
together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man
can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen
to do so. You may ask why I am saying all this. I say it because I fear for the
younger generation, for you people." He waved his arm where most of the
young men sat. "As for me, I have only a short while to live, and so have
Uchendu and Unachukwu and Emefo. But I fear for you young people because you do
not understand how strong is the bond of kinship. You do not know what it is to
speak with one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has
settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers. He can
curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like a hunter's dog that
suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you, I fear for the
clan." He turned again to Okonkwo and said, "Thank you for calling us
together."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Seven years was a
long time to be away from one's clan. A man's place was not always there,
waiting for him. As soon as he left, someone else rose and filled it. The clan
was like a lizard, if it lost its tail it soon grew another.
Okonkwo knew these things. He knew
that he had lost his place among the nine masked spirits who administered
justice in the clan. He had lost the chance to lead his warlike clan against
the new religion, which, he was told, had gained ground. He had lost the years
in which he might have taken the highest titles in the clan. But some of these
losses were not irreparable. He was determined that his return should be marked
by his people. He would return with a flourish, and regain the seven wasted
years.
Even in his first year in exile he
had begun to plan for his return. The first thing he would do would be to
rebuild his compound on a more magnificent scale. He would build a bigger barn
than he had had before and he would build huts for two new wives. Then he would
show his wealth by initiating his sons into the ozo society. Only the really
great men in the clan were able to do this. Okonkwo saw clearly the high esteem
in which he would be held, and he saw himself taking the highest title in the
land.
As the years of exile passed one by
one it seemed to him that his chi might now be making amends for the past
disaster. His yams grew abundantly, not only in his motherland but also in
Umuofia, where his friend gave them out year by year to sharecroppers.
Then the tragedy of his first son
had occurred. At first it appeared as if it might prove too great for his
spirit. But it was a resilient spirit, and in the end Okonkwo overcame his
sorrow. He had five other sons and he would bring them up in the way of the
clan.
He sent for the five sons and they came
and sat in his obi. The youngest of them was four years old.
"You have all seen the great
abomination of your brother. Now he is no longer my son or your brother. I will
only have a son who is a man, who will hold his head up among my people. If any
one of you prefers to be a woman, let him follow Nwoye now while I am alive so
that I can curse him. If you turn against me when I am dead I will visit you
and break your neck."
Okonkwo was very lucky in his
daughters. He never stopped regretting that Ezinma was a girl. Of all his
children she alone understood his every mood. A bond of sympathy had grown
between them as the years had passed.
Ezinma grew up in her father's exile
and became one of the most beautiful girls in Mbanta. She was called Crystal of
Beauty, as her mother had been called in her youth. The young ailing girl who
had caused her mother so much heartache had been transformed, almost overnight,
into a healthy, buoyant maiden. She had, it was true, her moments of depression
when she would snap at everybody like an angry dog. These moods descended on
her suddenly and for no apparent reason. But they were very rare and
short-lived. As long as they lasted, she could bear no other person but her
father.
Many young men and prosperous
middle-aged men of Mbanta came to marry her. But she refused them all, because
her father had called her one evening and said to her: "There are many
good and prosperous people here, but I shall be happy if you marry in Umuofia
when we return home."
That was all he had said. But Ezinma
had seen clearly all the thought and hidden meaning behind the few words. And
she had agreed.
"Your half-sister, Obiageli,
will not understand me," Okonkwo said. "But you can explain to
her."
Although they were almost the same
age, Ezinma wielded a strong influence over her half-sister. She explained to
her why they should not marry yet, and she agreed also. And so the two of them
refused every offer of marriage in Mbanta.
"I wish she were a boy,"
Okonkwo thought within himself. She understood things so perfectly. Who else
among his children could have read his thoughts so well? With two beautiful
grown-up daughters his return to Umuofia would attract considerable attention.
His future sons-in-law would be men of authority in the clan. The poor and
unknown would not dare to come forth.
Umuofia had indeed changed during
the seven years Okonkwo had been in exile. The church had come and led many
astray. Not only the low-born and the outcast but sometimes a worthy man had
joined it. Such a man was Ogbuefi Ugonna, who had taken two titles, and who
like a madman had cut the anklet of his titles and cast it away to join the
Christians. The white missionary was very proud of him and he was one of the
first men in Umuofia to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, or Holy Feast
as it was called in Ibo. Ogbuefi Ugonna had thought of the Feast in terms of
eating and drinking, only more holy than the village variety. He had therefore
put his drinking-horn into his goatskin bag for the occasion.
But apart from the church, the white
men had also brought a government. They had built a court where the District
Commissioner judged cases in ignorance. He had court messengers who brought men
to him for trial. Many of these messengers came from Umuru on the bank of the
Great River, where the white men first came many years before and where they
had built the centre of their religion and trade and government. These court
messengers were greatly hated in Umuofia because they were foreigners and also
arrogant and high-handed. They were called kotma, and because of their
ash-coloured shorts they earned the additional name of Ashy Buttocks. They
guarded the prison, which was full of men who had offended against the white
man's law. Some of these prisoners had thrown away their twins and some had
molested the Christians. They were beaten in the prison by the kotma and made
to work every morning clearing the government compound and fetching wood for
the white Commissioner and the court messengers. Some of these prisoners were
men of title who should be above such mean occupation. They were grieved by the
indignity and mourned for their neglected farms. As they cut grass in the
morning the younger men sang in time with the strokes of their machetes:
"Kotma of the ashy buttocks, He is fit to be a slave. The white man has no
sense, He is fit to be a slave."
The court messengers did not like to
be called Ashy-Buttocks, and they beat the men. But the song spread in Umuofia.
Okonkwo's head was bowed in sadness
as Obierika told him these things.
"Perhaps I have been away too
long," Okonkwo said, almost to himself. "But I cannot understand
these things you tell me. What is it that has happened to our people? Why have
they lost the power to fight?"
"Have you not heard how the
white man wiped out Abame?" asked Obierika.
"I have heard," said
Okonkwo. "But I have also heard that Abame people were weak and foolish.
Why did they not fight back? Had they no guns and machetes? We would be cowards
to compare ourselves with the men of Abame. Their fathers had never dared to
stand before our ancestors. We must fight these men and drive them from the
land."
"It is already too late,"
said Obierika sadly. "Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of
the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his
government. If we should try to drive out the white men in Umuofia we should
find it easy. There are only two of them. But what of our own people who are
following their way and have been given power? They would go to Umuru and bring
the soldiers, and we would be like Abame." He paused for a long time and
then said: "I told you on my last visit to Mbanta how they hanged
Aneto."
"What has happened to that
piece of land in dispute?" asked Okonkwo.
"The white man's court has
decided that it should belong to Nnama's family, who had given much money to
the white man's messengers and interpreter."
"Does the white man understand
our custom about land?"
"How can he when he does not
even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad, and our own
brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How
do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The
white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We
were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our
brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the
things that held us together and we have fallen apart."
"How did they get hold of Ancto
to hang him?" asked Okonkwo.
"When he killed Oduche in the
fight over the land, he fled to Aninta to escape the wrath of the earth. This
was about eight days after the fight, because Oduche had not died immediately
from his wounds. It was on the seventh day that he died. But everybody knew
that he was going to die and Aneto got his belongings together in readiness to
flee. But the Christians had told the white man about the accident, and he sent
his kotma to catch Aneto. He was imprisoned with all the leaders of his family.
In the end Oduche died and Aneto was taken to Umuru and hanged. The other
people were released, but even now they have not found the mouth with which to
tell of their suffering."
The two men sat in silence for a
long while afterwards.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There were many men
and women in Umuofia who did not feel as strongly as Okonkwo about the new
dispensation. The white man had indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he had
also built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became
things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia.
And even in the matter of religion
there was a growing feeling that there might be something in it after all,
something vaguely akin to method in the overwhelming madness.
This growing feeling was due to Mr.
Brown, the white missionary, who was very firm in restraining his flock from
provoking the wrath of the clan. One member in particular was very difficult to
restrain. His name was Enoch and his father was the priest of the snake cult.
The story went around that Enoch had killed and eaten the sacred python, and
that his father had cursed him.
Mr. Brown preached against such
excess of zeal. Everything was possible, he told his energetic flock, but
everything was not expedient. And so Mr. Brown came to be respected even by the
clan, because he trod softly on its faith. He made friends with some of the
great men of the clan and on one of his frequent visits to the neighbouring
villages he had been presented with a carved elephant tusk, which was a sign of
dignity and rank. One of the great men in that village was called Akunna and he
had given one of his sons to be taught the white man's knowledge in Mr. Brown's
school.
Whenever Mr. Brown went to that
village he spent long hours with Akunna in his obi talking through an
interpreter about religion. Neither of them succeeded in converting the other
but they learned more about their different beliefs.
"You say that there is one
supreme God who made heaven and earth," said Akunna on one of Mr. Brown's
visits. "We also believe in Him and call Him Chukwu. He made all the world
and the other gods."
"There are no other gods,"
said Mr. Brown. "Chukwu is the only God and all others are false. You
carve a piece of wood--like that one" (he pointed at the rafters from
which Akunna's carved Ikenga hung), "and you call it a god. But it is
still a piece of wood."
"Yes," said Akunna.
"It is indeed a piece of wood. The tree from which it came was made by
Chukwu, as indeed all minor gods were. But He made them for His messengers so
that we could approach Him through them. It is like yourself. You are the head
of your church."
"No," protested Mr. Brown.
"The head of my church is God Himself."
"I know," said Akunna,
"but there must be a head in this world among men. Somebody like yourself
must be the head here."
"The head of my church in that
sense is in England."
"That is exactly what I am
saying. The head of your church is in your country. He has sent you here as his
messenger. And you have also appointed your own messengers and servants. Or let
me take another example, the District Commissioner. He is sent by your
king."
"They have a queen," said
the interpreter on his own account.
"Your queen sends her
messenger, the District Commissioner. He finds that he cannot do the work alone
and so he appoints kotma to help him. It is the same with God, or Chukwu. He
appoints the smaller gods to help Him because His work is too great for one
person."
"You should not think of Him as
a person," said Mr. Brown. "It is because you do so that you imagine
He must need helpers. And the worst thing about it is that you give all the
worship to the false gods you have created."
"That is not so. We make
sacrifices to the little gods, but when they fail and there is no one else to
turn to we go to Chukwu. It is right to do so. We approach a great man through
his servants. But when his servants fail to help us, then we go to the last
source of hope. We appear to pay greater attention to the little gods but that
is not so. We worry them more because we are afraid to worry their Master. Our
fathers knew that Chukwu was the Overlord and that is why many of them gave
their children the name Chukwuka--
"Chukwu is Supreme."
"You said one interesting
thing," said Mr. Brown. "You are afraid of Chukwu. In my religion
Chukwu is a loving Father and need not be feared by those who do His
will."
"But we must fear Him when we
are not doing His will," said Akunna. "And who is to tell His will?
It is too great to be known."
In this way Mr. Brown learned a good
deal about the religion of the clan and he came to the conclusion that a
frontal attack on it would not succeed. And so he built a school and a little
hospital in Umuofia. He went from family to family begging people to send their
children to his school. But at first they only sent their slaves or sometimes
their lazy children. Mr. Brown begged and argued and prophesied. He said that
the leaders of the land in the future would be men and women who had learned to
read and write. If Umuofia failed to send her children to the school, strangers
would come from other places to rule them. They could already see that
happening in the Native Court, where the D. C. was surrounded by strangers who
spoke his tongue. Most of these strangers came from the distant town of Umuru
on the bank of the Great River where the white man first went.
In the end Mr. Brown's arguments
began to have an effect. More people came to learn in his school, and he
encouraged them with gifts of singlets and towels. They were not all young,
these people who came to learn. Some of them were thirty years old or more.
They worked on their farms in the morning and went to school in the afternoon.
And it was not long before the people began to say that the white man's medicine
was quick in working. Mr. Brown's school produced quick results. A few months
in it were enough to make one a court messenger or even a court clerk. Those
who stayed longer became teachers,- and from Umuofia labourers went forth into
the Lord's vineyard. New churches were established in the surrounding villages
and a few schools with them. From the very beginning religion and education
went hand in hand. Mr. Brown's mission grew from strength to strength, and
because of its link with the new administration it earned a new social
prestige. But Mr. Brown himself was breaking down in health. At first he
ignored the warning signs. But in the end he had to leave his flock, sad and
broken.
It was in the first rainy season
after Okonkwo's return to Umuofia that Mr. Brown left for home. As soon as he
had learned of Okonkwo's return five months earlier, the missionary had
immediately paid him a visit. He had just sent Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, who was
now called Isaac, to the new training college for teachers in Umuru. And he had
hoped that Okonkwo would be happy to hear of it. But Okonkwo had driven him
away with the threat that if he came into his compound again, he would be
carried out of it.
Okonkwo's return to his native land
was not as memorable as he had wished. It was true his two beautiful daughters
aroused great interest among suitors and marriage negotiations were soon in
progress, but, beyond that, Umuofia did not appear to have taken any special
notice of the warrior's return. The clan had undergone such profound change
during his exile that it was barely recognisable. The new religion and
government and the trading stores were very much in the people's eyes and
minds. There were still many who saw these new institutions as evil, but even
they talked and thought about little else, and certainly not about Okonkwo's
return.
And it was the wrong year too. If
Okonkwo had immediately initiated his two sons into the ozo society as he had
planned he would have caused a stir. But the initiation rite was performed once
in three years in Umuofia, and he had to wait for nearly two years for the next
round of ceremonies.
Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it
was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking
up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so
unaccountably become soft like women.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mr. Brown's successor
was the Reverend James Smith, and he was a different kind of man. He condemned
openly Mr. Brown's policy of compromise and accommodation. He saw things as
black and white. And black was evil. He saw the world as a battlefield in which
the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness.
He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He
believed in slaying the prophets of Baal.
Mr. Smith was greatly distressed by
the ignorance which many of his flock showed even in such things as the Trinity
and the Sacraments. It only showed that they were seeds sown on a rocky soil.
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the
kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the
importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's
holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamouring for signs was a folly of
everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life--to drive
the crowd away from His church.
Within a few weeks of his arrival in
Umuofia Mr. Smith suspended a young woman from the church for pouring new wine
into old bottles. This woman had allowed her heathen husband to mutilate her
dead child. The child had been declared an ogbanje, plaguing its mother by
dying and entering her womb to be born again. Four times this child had run its
evil round. And so it was mutilated to discourage it from returning.
Mr. Smith was filled with wrath when
he heard of this. He disbelieved the story which even some of the most faithful
confirmed, the story of really evil children who were not deterred by
mutilation, but came back with all the scars. He replied that such stories were
spread in the world by the Devil to lead men astray. Those who believed such
stories were unworthy of the Lord's table.
There was a saying in Umuofia that
as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him. Mr. Smith danced a furious
step and so the drums went mad. The over-zealous converts who had smarted under
Mr. Brown's restraining hand now flourished in full favour. One of them was
Enoch, the son of the snake-priest who was believed to have killed and eaten
the sacred python. Enoch's devotion to the new faith had seemed so much greater
than Mr. Brown's that the villagers called him the outsider who wept louder
than the bereaved.
Enoch was short and slight of build,
and always seemed in great haste. His feet were short and broad, and when he
stood or walked his heels came together and his feet opened outwards as if they
had quarrelled and meant to go in different directions. Such was the excessive
energy bottled up in Enoch's small body that it was always erupting in quarrels
and fights. On Sundays he always imagined that the sermon was preached for the
benefit of his enemies. And if he happened to sit near one of them he would
occasionally turn to give him a meaningful look, as if to say, "I told you
so." It was Enoch who touched off the great conflict between church and
clan in Umuofia which had been gathering since Mr. Brown left.
It happened during the annual
ceremony which was held in honour of the earth deity. At such times the ancestors
of the clan who had been committed to Mother Earth at their death emerged again
as egwugwu through tiny ant-holes.
One of the greatest crimes a man
could commit was to unmask an egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which
might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the uninitiated. And this was
what Enoch did.
The annual worship of the earth
goddess fell on a Sunday, and the masked spirits were abroad. The Christian
women who had been to church could not therefore go home. Some of their men had
gone out to beg the egwugwu to retire for a short while for the women to pass.
They agreed and were already retiring, when Enoch boasted aloud that they would
not dare to touch a Christian. Whereupon they all came back and one of them
gave Enoch a good stroke of the cane, which was always carried. Enoch fell on
him and tore off his mask. The other egwugwu immediately surrounded their
desecrated companion, to shield him from the profane gaze of women and
children, and led him away. Enoch had killed an ancestral spirit, and Umuofia
was thrown into confusion.
That night the Mother of the Spirits
walked the length and breadth of the clan, weeping for her murdered son. It was
a terrible night. Not even the oldest man in Umuofia had ever heard such a strange
and fearful sound, and it was never to be heard again. It seemed as if the very
soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming-- its own death.
On the next day all the masked
egwugwu of Umuofia assembled in the marketplace. They came from all the
quarters of the clan and even from the neighbouring villages. The dreaded
Otakagu came from Imo, and Ekwensu, dangling a white cock, arrived from Uli. It
was a terrible gathering. The eerie voices of countless spirits, the bells that
clattered behind some of them, and the clash of machetes as they ran forwards
and backwards and saluted one another, sent tremors of fear into every heart.
For the first time in living memory the sacred bull-roarer was heard in broad
daylight.
From the marketplace the furious
band made for Enoch's compound. Some of the elders of the clan went with them,
wearing heavy protections of charms and amulets. These were men whose arms were
strong in ogwu, or medicine. As for the ordinary men and women, they listened
from the safety of their huts.
The leaders of the Christians had
met together at Mr. Smith's parsonage on the previous night. As they
deliberated they could hear the Mother of Spirits wailing for her son. The
chilling sound affected Mr. Smith, and for the first time he seemed to be
afraid.
"What are they planning to
do?" he asked. No one knew, because such a thing had never happened
before. Mr. Smith would have sent for the District Commissioner and his court
messengers, but they had gone on tour on the previous day.
"One thing is clear," said
Mr. Smith. "We cannot offer physical resistance to them. Our strength lies
in the Lord." They knelt down together and prayed to God for delivery.
"O Lord, save Thy people,"
cried Mr. Smith.
"And bless Thine
inheritance," replied the men.
They decided that Enoch should be
hidden in the parsonage for a day or two. Enoch himself was greatly
disappointed when he heard this, for he had hoped that a holy war was
imminent,- and there were a few other Christians who thought like him. But
wisdom prevailed in the camp of the faithful and many lives were thus saved.
The band of egwugwu moved like a
furious whirlwind to Enoch's compound and with machete and fire reduced it to a
desolate heap. And from there they made for the church, intoxicated with
destruction.
Mr. Smith was in his church when he
heard the masked spirits coming. He walked quietly to the door which commanded
the approach to the church compound, and stood there. But when the first three
or four egwugwu appeared on the church compound he nearly bolted. He overcame
this impulse and instead of running away he went down the two steps that led up
to the church and walked towards the approaching spirits.
They surged forward, and a long
stretch of the bamboo fence with which the church compound was surrounded gave
way before them. Discordant bells clanged, machetes clashed and the air was
full of dust and weird sounds. Mr. Smith heard a sound of footsteps behind him.
He turned round and saw Okeke, his interpreter.
Okeke had not been on the best of
terms with his master since he had strongly condemned Enoch's behaviour at the
meeting of the leaders of the church during the night. Okeke had gone as far as
to say that Enoch should not be hidden in the parsonage, because he would only
draw the wrath of the clan on the pastor. Mr. Smith had rebuked him in very
strong language, and had not sought his advice that morning. But now, as he
came up and stood by him confronting the angry spirits, Mr. Smith looked at him
and smiled. It was a wan smile, but there was deep gratitude there.
For a brief moment the onrush of the
egwugwu was checked by the unexpected composure of the two men. But it was only
a momentary check, like the tense silence between blasts of thunder. The second
onrush was greater than the first. It swallowed up the two men. Then an
unmistakable voice rose above the tumult and there was immediate silence. Space
was made around the two men, and Ajofia began to speak.
Ajofia was the leading egwugwu of
Umuofia. He was the head and spokesman of the nine ancestors who administered
justice in the clan. His voice was unmistakable and so he was able to bring
immediate peace to the agitated spirits. He then addressed Mr. Smith, and as he
spoke clouds of smoke rose from his head.
"The body of the white man, I
salute you," he said, using the language in which immortals spoke to men.
"The body of the white man, do
you know me?" he asked.
Mr. Smith looked at his interpreter,
but Okeke, who was a native of distant Umuru, was also at a loss.
Ajofia laughed in his guttural
voice. It was like the laugh of rusty metal. "They are strangers," he
said, "and they are ignorant. But let that pass." He turned round to
his comrades and saluted them, calling them the fathers of Umuofia. He dug his
rattling spear into the ground and it shook with metallic life. Then he turned
once more to the missionary and his interpreter.
"Tell the white man that we
will not do him any harm," he said to the interpreter. "Tell him to
go back to his house and leave us alone. We liked his brother who was with us
before. He was foolish, but we liked him, and for his sake we shall not harm
his brother. But this shrine which he built must be destroyed. We shall no
longer allow it in our midst. It has bred untold abominations and we have come
to put an end to it." He turned to his comrades. "Fathers of Umuofia,
I salute you." and they replied with one guttural voice. He turned again
to the missionary. "You can stay with us if you like our ways. You can
worship your own god. It is good that a man should worship the gods and the
spirits of his fathers. Go back to your house so that you may not be hurt. Our
anger is great but we have held it down so that we can talk to you."
Mr. Smith said to his interpreter:
"Tell them to go away from here. This is the house of God and I will not
live to see it desecrated."
Okeke interpreted wisely to the
spirits and leaders of Umuofia: "The white man says he is happy you have
come to him with your grievances, like friends. He will be happy if you leave
the matter in his hands."
"We cannot leave the matter in
his hands because he does not understand our customs, just as we do not
understand his. We say he is foolish because he does not know our ways, and
perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his. Let him go
away."
Mr. Smith stood his ground. But he
could not save his church. When the egwugwu went away the red-earth church
which Mr. Brown had built was a pile of earth and ashes. And for the moment the
spirit of the clan was pacified.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
For the first time in
many years Okonkwo had a feeling that was akin to happiness. The times which
had altered so unaccountably during his exile seemed to be coming round again.
The clan which had turned false on him appeared to be making amends.
He had spoken violently to his
clansmen when they had met in the marketplace to decide on their action. And
they had listened to him with respect. It was like the good old days again,
when a warrior was a warrior. Although they had not agreed to kill the
missionary or drive away the Christians, they had agreed to do something
substantial. And they had done it. Okonkwo was almost happy again.
For two days after the destruction
of the church, nothing happened. Every man in Umuofia went about armed with a
gun or a machete. They would not be caught unawares, like the men of Abame.
Then the District Commissioner
returned from his tour. Mr. Smith went immediately to him and they had a long
discussion. The men of Umuofia did not take any notice of this, and if they
did, they thought it was not important. The missionary often went to see his
brother white man. There was nothing strange in that.
Three days later the District
Commissioner sent his sweet-tongued messenger to the leaders of Umuofia asking
them to meet him in his headquarters. That also was not strange. He often asked
them to hold such palavers, as he called them. Okonkwo was among the six
leaders he invited.
Okonkwo warned the others to be
fully armed. "An Umuofia man does not refuse a call," he said.
"He may refuse to do what he is asked, he does not refuse to be asked. But
the times have changed, and we must be fully prepared."
And so the six men went to see the
District Commissioner, armed with their machetes. They did not carry guns, for
that would be unseemly. They were led into the courthouse where the District
Commissioner sat. He received them politely. They unslung their goatskin bags
and their sheathed machetes, put them on the floor, and sat down.
"I have asked you to
come," began the Commissioner, "because of what happened during my
absence. I have been told a few things but I cannot believe them until I have
heard your own side. Let us talk about it like friends and find a way of
ensuring that it does not happen again."
Ogbuefi Ekwueme rose to his feet and
began to tell the story.
"Wait a minute," said the
Commissioner. "I want to bring in my men so that they too can hear your
grievances and take warning. Many of them come from distant places and although
they speak your tongue they are ignorant of your customs. James! Go and bring
in the men." His interpreter left the courtroom and soon returned with
twelve men. They sat together with the men of Umuofia, and Ogbuefi Ekwueme
began to tell the story of how Enoch murdered an egwugwu.
It happened so quickly that the six
men did not see it coming. There was only a brief scuffle, too brief even to
allow the drawing of a sheathed machete. The six men were handcuffed and led
into the guardroom.
"We shall not do you any
harm," said the District Commissioner to them later, "if only you
agree to cooperate with us. We have brought a peaceful administration to you
and your people so that you may be happy. If any man ill-treats you we shall
come to your rescue. But we will not allow you to ill-treat others. We have a
court of law where we judge cases and administer justice just as it is done in
my own country under a great queen. I have brought you here because you joined
together to molest others, to burn people's houses and their place of worship.
That must not happen in the dominion of our queen, the most powerful ruler in
the world. I have decided that you will pay a fine of two hundred bags of
cowries. You will be released as soon as you agree to this and undertake to
collect that fine from your people. What do you say to that?"
The six men remained sullen and
silent and the Commissioner left them for a while. He told the court
messengers, when he left the guardroom, to treat the men with respect because
they were the leaders of Umuofia. They said, "Yes sir," and saluted.
As soon as the District Commissioner
left, the head messenger, who was also the prisoners' barber, took down his
razor and shaved off all the hair on the men's heads. They were still
handcuffed, and they just sat and moped.
"Who is the chief among
you?" the court messengers asked in jest. "We see that every pauper
wears the anklet of title in Umuofia. Does it cost as much as ten
cowries?"
The six men ate nothing throughout
that day and the next. They were not even given any water to drink, and they
could not go out to urinate or go into the bush when they were pressed. At
night the messengers came in to taunt them and to knock their shaven heads together.
Even when the men were left alone
they found no words to speak to one another. It was only on the third day, when
they could no longer bear the hunger and the insults, that they began to talk
about giving in.
"We should have killed the
white man if you had listened to me," Okonkwo snarled.
"We could have been in Umuru
now waiting to be hanged," someone said to him.
"Who wants to kill the white
man?" asked a messenger who had just rushed in. Nobody spoke.
"You are not satisfied with
your crime, but you must kill the white man on top of it." He carried a
strong stick, and he hit each man a few blows on the head and back. Okonkwo was
choked with hate.
As soon as the six men were locked
up, court messengers went into Umuofia to tell the people that their leaders
would not be released unless they paid a fine of two hundred and fifty bags of
cowries.
"Unless you pay the fine
immediately," said their headman, "we will take your leaders to Umuru
before the big white man, and hang them."
This story spread quickly through
the villages, and was added to as it went. Some said that the men had already
been taken to Umuru and would be hanged on the following day. Some said that
their families would also be hanged. Others said that soldiers were already on
their way to shoot the people of Umuofia as they had done in Abame.
It was the time of the full moon.
But that night the voice of children was not heard. The village ilo where they
always gathered for a moon-play was empty. The women of Iguedo did not meet in
their secret enclosure to learn a new dance to be displayed later to the
village. Young men who were always abroad in the moonlight kept their huts that
night. Their manly voices were not heard on the village paths as they went to
visit their friends and lovers. Umuofia was like a startled animal with ears
erect, sniffing the silent, ominous air and not knowing which way to run.
The silence was broken by the
village crier beating his sonorous ogene. He called every man in Umuofia, from
the Akakanma age group upwards, to a meeting in the marketplace after the
morning meal. He went from one end of the village to the other and walked all
its breadth. He did not leave out any of the main footpaths.
Okonkwo's compound was like a
deserted homestead. It was as if cold water had been poured on it. His family
was all there, but everyone spoke in whispers. His daughter Ezinma had broken
her twenty-eight day visit to the family of her future husband, and returned
home when she heard that her father had been imprisoned, and was going to be
hanged. As soon as she got home she went to Obierika to ask what the men of
Umuofia were going to do about it. But Obierika had not been home since
morning. His wives thought he had gone to a secret meeting. Ezinma was
satisfied that something was being done.
On the morning after the village
crier's appeal the men of Umuofia met in the marketplace and decided to collect
without delay two hundred and fifty bags of cowries to appease the white man.
They did not know that fifty bags would go to the court messengers, who had
increased the fine for that purpose.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Okonkwo and his
fellow prisoners were set free as soon as the fine was paid. The District
Commissioner spoke to them again about the great queen, and about peace and
good government. But the men did not listen. They just sat and looked at him
and at his interpreter. In the end they were given back their bags and sheathed
machetes and told to go home. They rose and left the courthouse. They neither
spoke to anyone nor among themselves. The courthouse, like the church, was
built a little way outside the village. The footpath that linked them was a
very busy one because it also led to the stream, beyond the court. It was open
and sandy. Footpaths were open and sandy in the dry season. But when the rains
came the bush grew thick on either side and closed in on the path. It was now
dry season. As they made their way to the village the six men met women and
children going to the stream with their waterpots. But the men wore such heavy
and fearsome looks that the women and children did not say "nno" or
"welcome" to them, but edged out of the way to let them pass. In the
village little groups of men joined them until they became a sizable company.
They walked silently. As each of the six men got to his compound, he turned in,
taking some of the crowd with him. The village was astir in a silent,
suppressed way.
Ezinma had prepared some food for
her father as soon as news spread that the six men would be released. She took
it to him in his obi. He ate absent-mindedly. He had no appetite, he only ate
to please her. His male relations and friends had gathered in his obi, and
Obierika was urging him to eat. Nobody else spoke, but they noticed the long
stripes on Okonkwo's back where the warder's whip had cut into his flesh.
The village crier was abroad again
in the night. He beat his iron gong and announced that another meeting would be
held in the morning. Everyone knew that Umuofia was at last going to speak its
mind about the things that were happening.
Okonkwo slept very little that
night. The bitterness in his heart was now mixed with a kind of childlike
excitement, before he had gone to bed he had brought down his war dress, which
he had not touched since his return from exile. He had shaken out his smoked
raffia skirt and examined his tall feather head-gear and his shield. They were
all satisfactory, he had thought.
As he lay on his bamboo bed he
thought about the treatment he had received in the white man's court, and he
swore vengeance. If Umuofia decided on war, all would be well. But If they
chose to be cowards he would go out and avenge all himself. He thought about
wars in the past. The noblest, he thought, was the war against Isike.
In those days Okudo was still alive.
Okudo sang a war song in a way that no other man could. He was not a fighter,
but his voice turned every man into a lion.
"Worthy men are no more,"
Okonkwo sighed as he remembered those days. "Isike will never forget how
we slaughtered them in that war. We killed twelve of their men and they killed
only two of ours. Before the end of the fourth market week they were suing for
peace. Those were days when men were men."
As he thought of these things he
heard the sound of the iron gong in the distance. He listened carefully, and
could just hear the crier's voice. But it was very faint. He turned on his bed
and his back hurt him. He ground his teeth. The crier was drawing nearer and
nearer until he passed by Okonkwo's compound.
"The greatest obstacle in
Umuofia," Okonkwo thought bitterly, "is that coward, Egonwanne. His
sweet tongue can change fire into cold ash. When he speaks he moves our men to
impotence. If they had ignored his womanish wisdom five years ago, we would not
have come to this." He ground his teeth. "Tomorrow he will tell them
that our fathers never fought a 'war of blame.' If they listen to him I shall
leave them and plan my own revenge."
The crier's voice had once more
become faint, and the distance had taken the harsh edge off his iron gong.
Okonkwo turned from one side to the other and derived a kind of pleasure from
the pain his back gave him. "Let Egonwanne talk about a 'war of blame'
tomorrow and I shall show him my back and head." He ground his teeth.
The marketplace began to fill as
soon as the sun rose. Obierika was waiting in his obi when Okonkwo came along
and called him. He hung his goatskin bag and his sheathed machete on his
shoulder and went out to join him. Obierika's hut was close to the road and he
saw every man who passed to the marketplace. He had exchanged greetings with
many who had already passed that morning.
When Okonkwo and Obierika got to the
meeting place there were already so many people that if one threw up a grain of
sand it would not find its way to the earth again. And many more people were
coming from every quarter of the nine villages. It warmed Okonkwo's heart to
see such strength of numbers. But he was looking for one man in particular, the
man whose tongue he dreaded and despised so much.
"Can you see him?" he
asked Obierika.
"Who?"
"Egonwanne," he said, his
eyes roving from one corner of the huge marketplace to the other. Most of the
men sat on wooden stools they had brought with them.
"No," said Obierika,
casting his eyes over the crowd. "Yes, there he is, under the silk-cotton
tree. Are you afraid he would convince us not to fight?"
"Afraid? I do not care what he
does to you. I despise him and those who listen to him. I shall fight alone if
I choose."
They spoke at the top of their voices
because everybody was talking, and it was like the sound of a great market.
"I shall wait till he has
spoken," Okonkwo thought. "Then I shall speak."
"But how do you know he will
speak against war?" Obierika asked after a while.
"Because I know he is a
coward," said Okonkwo. Obierika did not hear the rest of what he said
because at that moment somebody touched his shoulder from behind and he turned
round to shake hands and exchange greetings with five or six friends. Okonkwo
did not turn round even though he knew the voices. He was in no mood to
exchange greetings. But one of the men touched him and asked about the people
of his compound.
"They are well," he
replied without interest.
The first man to speak to Umuofia
that morning was Okika, one of the six who had been imprisoned. Okika was a
great man and an orator. But he did not have the booming voice which a first
speaker must use to establish silence in the assembly of the clan. Onyeka had
such a voice, and so he was asked to salute Umuofia before Okika began to
speak.
"Umuofia kwenu!" he
bellowed, raising his left arm and pushing the air with his open hand.
"Yaa!" roared Umuofia.
"Umuofia kwenu!" he
bellowed again, and again and again, facing a new direction each time. And the
crowd answered, "Yaa!"
There was immediate silence as
though cold water had been poured on a roaring flame.
Okika sprang to his feet and also
saluted his clansmen four times. Then he began to speak: "You all know why
we are here, when we ought to be building our barns or mending our huts, when
we should be putting our compounds in order. My father used to say to me:
'Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is
after its life." When I saw you all pouring into this meeting from all the
quarters of our clan so early in the morning, I knew that something was after
our life." He paused for a brief moment and then began again: "All
our gods are weeping. Idemili is weeping, Ogwugwu is weeping, Agbala is
weeping, and all the others. Our dead fathers are weeping because of the
shameful sacrilege they are suffering and the abomination we have all seen with
our eyes." He stopped again to steady his trembling voice.
"This is a great gathering. No
clan can boast of greater numbers or greater valour. But are we all here? I ask
you: Are all the sons of Umuofia with us here?" A deep murmur swept
through the crowd.
"They are not," he said.
"They have broken the clan and gone their several ways. We who are here
this morning have remained true to our fathers, but our brothers have deserted
us and joined a stranger to soil their fatherland. If we fight the stranger we
shall hit our brothers and perhaps shed the blood of a clansman. But we must do
it. Our fathers never dreamed of such a thing, they never killed their
brothers. But a white man never came to them. So we must do what our fathers
would never have done. Eneke the bird was asked why he was always on the wing
and he replied: 'Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I
have learned to fly without perching on a twig.' We must root out this evil.
And if our brothers take the side of evil we must root them out too. And we
must do it now. We must bale this water now that it is only ankle-deep..."
At this point there was a sudden
stir in the crowd and every eye was turned in one direction. There was a sharp
bend in the road that led from the marketplace to the white man's court, and to
the stream beyond it. And so no one had seen the approach of the five court
messengers until they had come round the bend, a few paces from the edge of the
crowd. Okonkwo was sitting at the edge.
He sprang to his feet as soon as he
saw who it was. He confronted the head messenger, trembling with hate, unable
to utter a word. The man was fearless and stood his ground, his four men lined
up behind him.
In that brief moment the world
seemed to stand still, waiting. There was utter silence. The men of Umuofia
were merged into the mute backcloth of trees and giant creepers, waiting.
The spell was broken by the head
messenger. "Let me pass!" he ordered.
"What do you want here?"
"The white man whose power you
know too well has ordered this meeting to stop."
In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete.
The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless. Okonkwo's machete
descended twice and the man's head lay beside his uniformed body.
The waiting backcloth jumped into
tumultuous life and the meeting was stopped. Okonkwo stood looking at the dead
man. He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the
other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action. He
discerned fright in that tumult. He heard voices asking: "Why did he do
it?"
He wiped his machete on the sand and
went away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
When the district
commissioner arrived at Okonkwo's compound at the head of an armed band of
soldiers and court messengers he found a small crowd of men sitting wearily in
the obi. He commanded them to come outside, and they obeyed without a murmur.
"Which among you is called Okonkwo?"
he asked through his interpreter.
"He is not here," replied
Obierika.
"Where is he?"
"He is not here!"
The Commissioner became angry and
red in the face. He warned the men that unless they produced Okonkwo forthwith
he would lock them all up. The men murmured among themselves, and Obierika
spoke again.
"We can take you where he is,
and perhaps your men will help us."
The Commissioner did not understand
what Obierika meant when he said, "Perhaps your men will help us."
One of the most infuriating habits of these people was their love of
superfluous words, he thought.
Obierika with five or six others led
the way. The Commissioner and his men followed their firearms held at the
ready. He had warned Obierika that if he and his men played any monkey tricks
they would be shot. And so they went.
There was a small bush behind
Okonkwo's compound. The only opening into this bush from the compound was a
little round hole in the red-earth wall through which fowls went in and out in
their endless search for food. The hole would not let a man through. It was to
this bush that Obierika led the Commissioner and his men. They skirted round
the compound, keeping close to the wall. The only sound they made was with
their feet as they crushed dry leaves.
Then they came to the tree from
which Okonkwo's body was dangling, and they stopped dead.
"Perhaps your men can help us
bring him down and bury him," said Obierika. "We have sent for
strangers from another village to do it for us, but they may be a long time coming."
The District Commissioner changed
instantaneously. The resolute administrator in him gave way to the student of
primitive customs.
"Why can't you take him down
yourselves?" he asked.
"It is against our
custom," said one of the men. "It is an abomination for a man to take
his own life. It is an offence against the Earth, and a man who commits it will
not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch
it. That is why we ask your people to bring him down, because you are
strangers."
"Will you bury him like any
other man?" asked the Commissioner.
"We cannot bury him. Only
strangers can. We shall pay your men to do it. When he has been buried we will
then do our duty by him. We shall make sacrifices to cleanse the desecrated
land."
Obierika, who had been gazing
steadily at his friend's dangling body, turned suddenly to the District
Commissioner and said ferociously: "That man was one of the greatest men
in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself and now he will be buried like a
dog..." He could not say any more. His voice trembled and choked his
words.
"Shut up!" shouted one of
the messengers, quite unnecessarily.
"Take down the body," the
Commissioner ordered his chief messenger, "and bring it and all these
people to the court."
"Yes, sah," the messenger
said, saluting.
The Commissioner went away, taking
three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had
toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a
number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never
attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such
attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he
planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he
thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of
this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting
reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole
chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to
include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the
title of the book, after much thought:
The Pacification of
the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
A GLOSSARY OF IBO WORDS AND PHRASES
agadi-nwayi: old woman.
Agbala: woman; also used of a man
who has taken no title.
Chi: personal god.
efukfu: worthless man.
egwugwu: a masquerader who
impersonates one of the ancestral spirits of the village.
ekwe: a musical instrument; a type
of drum made from wood.
eneke-nti-oba: a kind of bird.
eze-agadi-nwayi: the teeth of an old
woman.
iba: fever.
ilo: the village green, where
assemblies for sports, discussions, etc., take place.
inyanga: showing off, bragging.
isa-ifi: a ceremony. If a wife had
been separated from her husband for some time and were then to be re-united
with him, this ceremony would be held to ascertain that she had not been
unfaithful to him during the time of their separation.
iyi-uwa: a special kind of stone
which forms the link between an ogbanje and the spirit world. Only if the
iyi-uwa were discovered and destroyed would the child not die.
jigida: a string of waist beads.
kotma: court messenger. The word is
not of Ibo origin but is a corruption of "court messenger."
kwenu: a shout of approval and
greeting.
ndichie: elders.
nna ayi: our father.
nno: welcome.
nso-ani: a religious offence of a
kind abhorred by everyone, literally earth's taboo.
nza: a very small bird.
obi: the large living quarters of
the head of the family.
obodo dike: the land of the brave.
ochu: murder or manslaughter.
ogbanje: a changeling,- a child who
repeatedly dies and returns to its mother to be reborn. It is almost impossible
to bring up an ogbanje child without it dying, unless its iyi-uwa is first
found and destroyed.
ogene: a musical instrument; a kind
of gong.
oji odu achu-ijiji-o: (cow i. e.,
the one that uses its tail to drive flies away).
osu: outcast. Having been dedicated
to a god, the osu was taboo and was not allowed to mix with the freeborn in any
way.
Oye: the name of one of the four
market days.
ozo: the name of one of the titles
or ranks.
tufia: a curse or oath.
udu: a musical instrument; a type of
drum made from pottery.
uli: a dye used by women for drawing
patterns on the skin.
umuada: a family gathering of
daughters, for which the female kinsfolk return to their village of origin.
umunna-: a wide group of kinsmen
(the masculine form of the word umuada).
Uri: part of the betrothal ceremony
when the dowry is paid.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chinua Achebe was
born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of
the first centres of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a
graduate of University College, Ibadan.
His early career in radio ended
abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in
Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. He was appointed
Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began
lecturing widely abroad.
From 1972 to 1976, and again in 1987
to 1988, Mr. Achebe was Professor of English at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, and also for one year at the University of Connecticut,
Storrs.
Cited in the London Sunday Times as
one of the "1,000 Makers of the Twentieth Century" for defining
"a modern African literature that was truly African" and thereby
making "a major contribution to world literature," has published
novels, short stories, essays, and children's books. His volume of poetry,
Christmas in Biafra, written during the Biafran War, was the joint winner of
the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God is winner of
the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a
finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize in England.
Mr. Achebe has received numerous
honours from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as more than twenty
honorary doctorates from universities in England, Scotland, the United States,
Canada, and Nigeria. He is also the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for
intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award.
At present, Mr. Achebe lives with
his wife in Annandale, New York, where they both teach at Bard College. They
have four children.
ALSO BY CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the
Savannah
Arrow of God
Girls at War and
Other Stories
A Man of the People
No Longer at Ease
Nonfiction:
Hopes and
Impediments: Selected Essays
The Trouble With
Nigeria
Poetry:
Beware Soul Brother
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
