Anthills of the Savannah

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
THINGS
FALL
APART
ANCHOR BOOKS
A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC. New York
First Anchor Books Edition, 1994 Copyright © 1959 by
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York. This edition is
published by arrangement with Reed Consumer Books. The author
and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission from Aigboje
Higo and Heinemann
Educational Books, Ltd., to reproduce the Glossary on page 211.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
by .—1st Anchor Books ed.
p. cm.
1. Nigeria—Race relations—Fiction, 1. Igbo (African people)—
Fiction. 3. Men—Nigeria—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9387.9.A3T5 1994 823—dc20 94-13429 CIP
ISBN 0-385-47454-7 ‘ Book design by Susan Yuran
www.anchorbooks.com Printed in the United States of America…
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear
the falconer; Things Fall Apart ; the center 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 honor 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, on 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 neighbors 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 neighbor 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 Irom
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 neighbor 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 honor 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 colorful 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 neighbors 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
neighboring 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 ainger
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 neighbors. 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 neighboring 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 honor 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.
Qkonkwo 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 neighbors. 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 1 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 – I”; “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 neighbors go out with their ax to cut down virgin
forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labor
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
neighbors 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 center of the group. He addressed Nwakibie, calling him
“Our father.”
“Nna ayi,” he said. “1 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 favor. But let us drink the wine first.”
Everybody thanked Okonkwo and the neighbors 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 center, 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 mustache 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
smoldering earth by making rings of thick sisal leaves around
them. But by the end of the day the sisal rings were burned dry and
gray. 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 sympathized
with their neighbors 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. 1 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 or 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 minimize 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 neighbors 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 emphasize 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
neighbor. We live in peace with our fellows to honor 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 neighbors 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 neighbors 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 cock-
crow 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 gray 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 flavor 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 favorite story where
the ant holds his court in splendor 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 diety. 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 honor 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 shriveled
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 neighboring 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 reveled 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 Umuofta 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 neighbors. 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
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 center 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 center to the
other side and pointed at whomever he wanted to fight. They
danced back to the center 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 neighboring 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 color of the vast, hungry swarm.
Many people went out with baskets trying to catch them, but the
elders counseled 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 neighboring 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 center 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 ax 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 recognize
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 favorite 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 an 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 plaintain 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 valor
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 Umuofla.”
“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 centered 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 centered 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 lüs 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 neighbors.
“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 center 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 inquire
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 neighbors 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 realized for the first time that the
child had died on the same market-day as it had been born. The
neighbors 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 neighbors 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.
“1 have told you to let her alone. 1 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 neighbors 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. Neighbors 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 neighbors 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
anough. 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
molded 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-colored 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 inlaws anything. I
owe them no yams. 1 owe them no cocoyams. 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 neighbors 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 neighbors, 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 the 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 neighborhood 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 saltpeter 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 Ekwefl’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. ‘1 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 honor 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-
traveled 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 oj you.
“At last the party arrived in the sky and their hosts were very
happy to see them. Tortoise stood up in his many-colored 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 neighborhood. 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. “1 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 farther and farther 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 realize,
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 water-pots 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 vigor 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 realized 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 center 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 realize 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. “1 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. “1 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 neighborhood 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
neighborhood. 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
water-pots 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 neighbors. 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 neighboring 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 realized 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 neighbor. “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:
“1 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, “1 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 center, 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 odor 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 center 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 center 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
offense 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 offense on the land and must be
destroyed. And if the clan did not exact punishment for an offense
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 Irom 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 vigor 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
center 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 gray
beard and gnashed his teeth. Then he began to speak, quietly and
deliberately, picking his words with great care:
“It is Okonkwo that 1 primarily wish to speak to,” he began. “But I
want all of you to note what 1 am going to say. I am an old man
and you are all children. 1 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. “1 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 neighbor. 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 traveled 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 color 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 1 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. “1 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 ihe 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.
“1 am one of them,” replied Nwoye.
“How is your father?” Obierika asked, not knowing what else to
say.
“1 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 sim 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 enrs 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 color 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 lelt 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 buill 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 neighboring 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 behavior? 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 smoldering 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 fairy-
tales 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 ostracize 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
ostracize the Christians. Okonkwo ground his teeth in disgust.
That night a bell-man 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 water-pots 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 bell-
man 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 bell-man, 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 lor 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 1 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 center 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-colored 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 lo 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
neighboring 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 laborers 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
recognizable. 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 clamoring 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 favor.
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
quarreled 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 honor
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 ol
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 neighboring 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 behavior at the meeting of the
leaders ol 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, 1 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 lümself. 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 valor. 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 offense 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.
ndicbie: 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the
large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers 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 honors 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.