When the two friends first set out to join their age group they walked in silence. Obika felt an emptiness on top as if his head had been numbed by a whole night’s fall of dew. But the walking was already doing him some good; the feeling was returning that the head belonged to him.
After one more turning on the narrow, ancient footpath they saw, a little distance ahead of them, a vast opening which was the beginning of the new road. It opened like day after a thick night.
‘What do you think of that thing Maduka gave us?’ asked Ofoedu. This was the first mention either of them made to the incident of the previous day. Obika did not reply. He merely produced a sound which lay half-way between a sigh of relief and a groan.
‘It was not naked palm wine,’ said Ofoedu. ‘They put some potent herbs in it. When I think of it now we were very foolish to have followed such a dangerous man to his own house. Do you remember that he did not drink even one hornful.’
Obika still said nothing.
‘I shall not pay the ego-neli to him.’
‘Were you thinking at any time that you would pay?’ Obika looked surprised. ‘I regard anything we said yesterday as words spoken in honour of palm wine.’
They were now on the portion of the new road that had been built. It made one feel lost like a grain of maize in an empty goatskin bag. Obika changed his matchet from the left hand to the right and his hoe from right to left. The feeling of openness and exposure made him alert.
As the new road did not point in the direction of a stream or a market Ofoedu and Obika did not encounter many villagers, only a few women now and again carrying heavy loads of firewood.
‘What is that I am hearing?’ asked Obika. They were now approaching the old, ragged egbu tree from which the night spirits called Onyekulum began their journey loaded with song and gossip in the carefree season after the harvest.
‘I was just about to ask you. It sounds like a funeral song.’
As they drew nearer to the work site there was no longer any doubt. It was indeed the dirge with which a corpse was taken into the burial forest:
Look! a python!
Look! a python!
Yes, it lies across the way.
The two men recognized it now and also recognized the singers as men of their age group. They burst out laughing together. Someone had given the ancient song a new and irreverent twist and changed it into a half familiar, half strange and hilarious work song. Ofoedu was certain that he saw the hand of Nweke Ukpaka in it, it was the kind of malicious humour he had.
The approach of Obika and his friend brought about a sudden change among the workers. Their singing stopped and with it the sound of scores of matchets cutting together into tree-trunks. Those who bent forward with hoes to level the cleared parts stopped and straightened up, their feet still planted wide apart, covered with red earth.
Nweke Ukpaka raised his voice and shouted: ‘Kwo Kwo Kwo Kwo Kwo!’ All the men replied: ‘Kwooooh oh!’ and everyone burst out laughing at this imitation of women acknowledging a present.
Mr Wright’s irritation mounted dangerously. He clutched the whip in his right hand more firmly and planted the other hand menacingly on his hip. His white helmet made him look even more squat than he was. Moses Unachukwu was talking excitedly to him, but he did not seem to be listening. He stared unwaveringly at the two approaching late-comers and his eyes seemed to Moses to get smaller and smaller. The others wondered what was going to happen. Although the white man always carried a whip he had rarely used it; and when he had done he had appeared to be half joking. But this morning he must have got out of bed from the left side. His face smoked with anger.
Noticing the man’s posture Obika put more swagger into his walk. This brought more laughter from the men. He made to pass Mr Wright who, unable to control his anger any more, lashed out violently with his whip. It flashed again and this time caught Obika around the ear, and stung him into fury. He dropped his matchet and hoe and charged. But Moses Unachukwu had thrown himself between the two men. At the same time Mr Wright’s two assistants jumped in quickly and held Obika while he gave him half a dozen more lashes on his bare back. He did not struggle at all; he only shivered like the sacrificial ram which must take in silence the blows of funeral dancers before its throat is cut. Ofoedu trembled also, but for once in his life he saw a fight pass before him and could do nothing but look on.
‘Are you mad to attack a white man?’ screamed Moses Unachukwu in sheer amazement. ‘I have heard that not one person in your father’s house has a right head.’
‘What do you have in mind when you say that?’ asked a man from Obika’s village who had smelt in Unachukwu’s statement the hostility between Umuachala and Umunneora.
The crowd which had hitherto watched in silence now broke hurriedly into the quarrel and before long loud threats were uttered on all sides and at least one person wagged his finger in another’s face. It seemed so much easier to deal with an old quarrel than with a new, unprecedented incident.
‘Shut up you black monkeys and get down to work!’ Mr Wright had a grating voice but one that carried far. Truce was immediately established. He turned to Unachukwu and said: ‘Tell them I shall not tolerate any more slackness.’
Unachukwu translated.
‘Tell them this bloody work must be finished by June.’
‘The white man says that unless you finish this work in time you will know the kind of man he is.’
‘No more lateness.’
‘Pardin?’
‘Pardon what? Can’t you understand plain, simple English? I said there will be no more late-coming.’
‘Oho. He says everybody must work hard and stop all this shit-eating.’
‘I have one question I want the white man to answer.’ This was Nweke Ukpaka.
‘What’s that?’
Unachukwu hesitated and scratched his head. ‘Dat man wan axe master queshon.’
‘No questions.’
‘Yessah.’ He turned to Nweke. ‘The white man says he did not leave his house this morning to come and answer your questions.’
The crowd grumbled. Wright shouted that if they did not immediately set to work they would be seriously dealt with. There was no need to translate this; it was quite clear.
The matchets began to sound again on tree-trunks and those who worked with hoes bent down once more. But as they worked they arranged a meeting.
Nothing came of it. The first disagreement was over the presence of Moses Unachukwu. Many people – largely from Umuachala village – saw no reason why a man of another age group should sit in on their deliberations. Others pointed out that this was a special meeting to discuss the white man and for that reason it would be foolish to exclude the only kinsman who knew the ways of these white people. At this point Ofoedu stood up and, to everyone’s surprise, joined those who wanted Moses to stay.
‘But my reason is different,’ he added. ‘I want him to say before us all what he said before the white man about Obika’s family. I want him also to say before us all whether it is true that he incited the white man to whip our comrade. When he has given us these answers he may go away. You ask me why he should go away? I shall tell you. This is a meeting of Otakagu age group. He belongs to Akakanma. And let me remind you all, but especially those who are murmuring and interrupting me, that he also belongs to the white man’s religion. But I do not want to talk about that now. All I say is that Unachukwu should answer the questions I have asked, and after that he may go and take with him all his knowledge of the white man’s ways. We have all heard stories of how he came by this knowledge. We have heard that when he left Umuaro he went to cook like a woman in the white man’s kitchen and lick his plates…’
The rest of Ofoedu’s speech was drowned in the tumult that broke out. It was just like Ofoedu, many people were saying, to open his mouth and let out his words alive without giving them as much as a bite with his teeth. Others said he had spoken the truth. Anyhow, it took a very long time to e
stablish peace again. Moses Unachukwu was saying something but no one heard, until the tumult had spent itself. By then his voice had gone hoarse.
‘If you ask me to go away I shall do so at once.’
‘Do not go!’
‘We permit you to stay!’
‘But if I go away it will not be due to the barking of that mad dog. If there were any shame left in the world how could that beast of the bush who could not give his father a second burial stand up before you and pass shit through his mouth…’
‘It is enough!’
‘We have not come here to abuse ourselves!’
When the discussion began again someone suggested that they should go to the elders of Umuaro and tell them that they could no longer work on the white man’s road. But as speaker after speaker revealed the implications of such a step it lost all support. Moses told them that the white man would reply by taking all their leaders to prison at Okperi.
‘You all know how friendly we are with Okperi. Do you think that any Umuaro man who goes to prison there will come back alive? But that apart, do you forget that this is the moon of planting? Do you want to grow this year’s crops in the prison house in a land where your fathers owe a cow? I speak as your elder brother. I have travelled in Olu and I have travelled in Igbo, and I can tell you that there is no escape from the white man. He has come. When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. The white man is like that. Before any of you here was old enough to tie a cloth between the legs I saw with my own eyes what the white man did to Abame. Then I knew there was no escape. As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs. I know that as I say it now it passes by your ears, but it will happen. The white man has power which comes from the true God and it burns like fire. This is the God about Whom we preach every eighth day…’
Unachukwu’s opponents were now shouting that this was a meeting of an age group, that they had not assembled to join with him in chewing the seed of foolishness which they called their new religion.
‘We are talking about the white man’s road,’ said a voice above the others.
‘Yes, we are talking about the white man’s road. But when the roof and walls of a house fall in, the ceiling is not left standing. The white man, the new religion, the soldiers, the new road – they are all part of the same thing. The white man has a gun, a matchet, a bow and carries fire in his mouth. He does not fight with one weapon alone.’
Nweke Ukpaka spoke next. ‘What a man does not know is greater than he. Those of us who want Unachukwu to go away forget that none of us can say come in the white man’s language. We should listen to his advice. If we go to our elders and tell them that we shall no longer work on the white man’s road, what do we expect them to do? Will our fathers take up hoes and matchets and go out to work themselves while we sit at home? I know that many of us want to fight the white man. But only a foolish man can go after a leopard with his bare hands. The white man is like hot soup and we must take him slowly-slowly from the edges of the bowl. Umuaro was here before the white man came from his own land to seek us out. We did not ask him to visit us; he is neither our kinsman nor our in-law. We did not steal his goat or his fowl; we did not take his land or his wife. In no way whatever have we done him wrong. And yet he has come to make trouble for us. All we know is that our ofo is held high between us and him. The stranger will not kill his host with his visit; when he goes may he not go with a swollen back. I know that the white man does not wish Umuaro well. That is why we must hold our ofo by him and give him no cause to say that we did this or failed to do that. For if we give him cause he will rejoice. Why? Because the very house he has been seeking ways of pulling down will have caught fire of its own will. For this reason we shall go on working on his road; and when we finish we shall ask him if he has more work for us. But in dealing with a man who thinks you a fool it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace. This white man thinks we are foolish; so we shall ask him one question. This was the question I had wanted to ask him this morning but he would not listen. We have a saying that a man may refuse to do what is asked of him but may not refuse to be asked, but it seems the white man does not have that kind of saying where he comes from. Anyhow the question which we shall beg Unachukwu to ask him is why we are not paid for working on his road. I have heard that throughout Olu and Igbo, wherever people do this kind of work the white man pays them. Why should our own be different?’
Ukpaka was a persuasive speaker and after him nobody else rose to speak. And the only decision of the meeting was then taken. The Otakagu age group asked Unachukwu to find out, at a well-chosen moment when it was safe to approach the white man, why he had not given them any money for working on his road.
‘I shall carry your message to him,’ said Unachukwu.
‘That message is not complete,’ said Nwoye Udora. ‘It is not enough to ask him why we are not paid. He knows why and we know why. He knows that in Okperi those who do this kind of work are paid. Therefore the question you should ask him is this: Others are paid for this work; why are we not paid? Or is our own different? It is important to ask whether our own is different.’
This was agreed and the meeting broke up.
‘Your words were very good,’ someone said to Nwoye Udora as they left the market place. ‘Perhaps the white man will tell us whether we killed his father or his mother.’
Ezeulu was not as broken down as his young wife had feared. True he had pains in his feet and thighs and his spittle had a bitter taste. But he had forestalled the worst effects of his exertion by having his body rubbed with a light ointment of camwood as soon as he returned home and by ensuring that a log fire burned beside his low bamboo bed all night. There was no medicine equal to camwood and fire. Very soon the priest would rise as sound as newly fired clay.
If anyone had told Ezeulu about his younger wife’s concern he would have laughed. It showed how little of a man his wives knew especially when, like Ugoye, they were no older than the man’s first children. If Ugoye had known her husband in his earliest years as priest she might have realized that the exhaustion he felt after the festival had nothing to do with advancing age. Had it been that Ezeulu would not have yielded to it. His daughters made light of the wife’s concern because they were wiser, being his daughters. They knew that this was a necessary conclusion to the festival. It was part of the sacrifice. For who could trample the sins and abominations of all Umuaro into the dust and not bleed in the feet? Not even a priest as powerful as Ezeulu could hope to do that.
The story that the white man had whipped Obika spread through the villages while the age group held its meeting under the shade of ogbu trees in the market place. The story was brought home to Ezeulu’s compound by Edogo’s wife who was returning from the bush with a bundle of firewood on her head. Ezeulu was wakened from sleep by Obika’s mother and sister weeping. He threw off the mat with which he had covered himself and sprang to his feet, his mind having run immediately to death. But then he heard Edogo’s wife talking, which would not happen if anyone had died. He sat down on the edge of his bed and, raising his voice, called Edogo’s wife. She immediately came into the obi followed by her husband who had been carving an iroko door for the compound of a titled man when his wife returned.
‘What are you saying?’ Ezeulu asked Amoge. She repeated the story she had heard.
‘Whip?’ he asked, unable to understand. ‘But what offence did he commit?’
‘Those who told the story did not say.’
Ezeulu screwed his face in thought. ‘I think he was late in going. But the white man would not whip a grown man who is also my son for that. He would be asked to pay a fine to his age group for being late; he would not be whipped. Or perhaps he hit the white man first…’
Edogo was touched by the distress which his father felt but tried to c
onceal. It ought to have made him jealous of his younger brother but did not.
‘I think I shall go to Nkwo where they are meeting,’ said Edogo. ‘I cannot yet find meaning in this story.’ He returned to his hut, took his matchet and made to go out.
His father who was still trying to understand how it could have happened called after him. When he came back into his obi Ezeulu advised him not to be rash.
‘From what I know of your brother he is likely to have struck the first blow. Especially as he was drunk when he left home.’ There was already a change in his tone, and Edogo nearly smiled.
He set out again, wearing only his work cloth – a long, thin strip passed between the legs and secured around the waist, with one end dangling in front and the other behind.
Obika’s mother came out of the compound sniffling and drawing the back of her fist across her eyes.
‘Where is that one going?’ asked Ezeulu. ‘I see that those who will fight the white man are lining up.’ He laughed as Matefi turned round to hear what he was saying. ‘Go back to your hut, woman!’ Edogo had now reached the main footpath and turned left.
Ezeulu now sat down on the iroko panel with his back against the wall so that he could see the approaches to his compound. His mind raced up and down in different directions trying vainly to make sense of the whipping story. Now he was thinking about the white man who did it. Ezeulu had seen him and heard his voice when he spoke to the elders of Umuaro about the new road. When the story had first spread that a white man was coming to talk to the elders Ezeulu had thought it would be his friend, Wintabota, the Destroyer of Guns. He had been greatly disappointed when he saw it was another white man. Wintabota was tall and erect and carried himself like a great man. His voice sounded like thunder. This other man was short and thick, as hairy as a monkey. He spoke in a queer way without opening his mouth. Ezeulu thought he must be some kind of manual labourer in the service of Wintabota.