Some people appeared at the junction of the main footpath and the approaches to Ezeulu’s compound. He jerked his head forward, but the men passed.
Ezeulu came finally to the conclusion that unless his son was at fault he would go in person to Okperi and report the white man to his master. His thoughts were stopped by the sudden appearance of Obika and Edogo. Behind them came a third whom he soon recognized as Ofoedu. Ezeulu could never get used to this worthless young man who trailed after his son like a vulture after a corpse. He was filled with anger which was so great that it also engulfed his son.
‘What was the cause of the whipping?’ he asked Edogo, ignoring the other two. Obika’s mother and all the others in the compound had now hastened into Ezeulu’s obi.
‘They were late for work.’
‘Why were you late?’
‘I have not come home to answer anybody’s questions,’ Obika shouted.
‘You may answer or not as you please. But let me tell you that this is only the beginning of what palm wine will bring to you. The death that will kill a man begins as an appetite.’
Obika and Ofoedu walked out.
Chapter Nine
Edogo’s homestead was built against one of the four sides of his father’s compound so that they shared one wall between them. It was a very small homestead with two huts, one for Edogo and the other for his wife, Amoge. It was built deliberately small for, like the compounds of many first sons, it was no more than a temporary home where the man waited until he could inherit his father’s place.
Of late another small compound had been built on the other side of Ezeulu’s for his second son, Obika. But it was not quite as small as Edogo’s. It also had two huts, one for Obika and the other for the bride who was soon to come.
As one approached Ezeulu’s compound off the main village pathway Edogo’s place stood on the left and Obika’s on the right.
When Obika walked away with his friend, Edogo returned to the shade of the ogbu tree in front of his compound to resume work on the door he was carving. It was nearly finished and after it he would leave carving for a while and face his farm work. He envied master craftsmen like Agwuegbo whose farms were cultivated for them by their apprentices and customers.
As he carved his mind kept wandering to his wife’s hut from where the cry of their only child was reaching him. He was their second child, the first having died after three months. The one that died had brought sickness with him into the world; a ridge ran down the middle of his head. But the second, Amechi, had been different. At his birth he had seemed so full of life. Then at about the sixth month he had changed overnight. He stopped sucking his mother’s breast and his skin took the complexion of withering cocoyam leaves. Some people said perhaps Amoge’s milk had gone bitter. She was asked to squirt some of it into a bowl to see if it would kill an ant. But the little ant which was dropped into it stayed alive; so the fault was not with the milk.
Edogo’s mind was in pain over the child. Some people were already saying that perhaps he was none other than the first one. But Edogo and Amoge never talked about it; the woman especially was afraid. Since utterance had power to change fear into a living truth they dared not speak before they had to.
In her hut Amoge sat on a low stool, her crying child set on the angle of her two feet which she had brought together to touch at the heels. After a while she lifted her feet and child together on to another spot leaving behind on the floor a round patch of watery, green excrement. She looked round the room but did not seem to find what she wanted. Then she called: Nwanku! Nwanku! Nwanku! A wiry, black dog rushed in from outside and made straight for the excrement which disappeared with four or five noisy flicks of its tongue. Then it sat down with its tail wagging on the floor. Amoge moved her feet and child once again but this time all that was left behind was a tiny green drop. Nwanku did not consider it big enough to justify getting up; it merely stretched its neck and took it up with the corner of the tongue and sat up again to wait. But the child had finished and the dog was soon trying without success to catch a fly between its jaws.
Edogo’s thoughts refused to stay on the door he was carving. Once again he put down the hammer and changed the chisel from his left hand to the right. The child had now stopped crying and Edogo’s thoughts wandered to the recent exchange of words between his father and brother. The trouble with Ezeulu was that he could never see something and take his eyes away from it. Everybody agreed that Obika’s friendship with Ofoedu would not bring about any good, but Obika was no longer a child and if he refused to listen to advice he should be left alone. That was what their father could never learn. He must go on treating his grown children like little boys, and if they ever said no there was a big quarrel. This was why the older his children grew the more he seemed to dislike them. Edogo remembered how much his father had liked him when he was a boy and how with the passage of years he had transferred his affection first to Obika and then to Oduche and Nwafo. Thinking of it now Edogo could not actually remember that their father had ever shown much affection for Oduche. He seemed to have lingered too long on Obika (who of all his sons resembled him most in appearance) and then by-passed Oduche for Nwafo. What would happen if the old man had another son tomorrow? Would Nwafo then begin to lose favour in his eyes? Perhaps. Or was there more to it than that? Was there something in the boy which told their father that at last a successor to the priesthood had come? Some people said Nwafo was in every way an image of Ezeulu’s father. Actually Edogo would feel greatly relieved if on the death of their father the diviner’s string of beads fell in favour of Nwafo. ‘I do not want to be Chief Priest,’ he heard himself saying aloud. He looked round instinctively to see if anyone had been near enough to have heard him. ‘As for Obika,’ he thought, ‘things like the priesthood did not come near his mind.’ Which left only Oduche and Nwafo. But as Ezeulu had turned Oduche over to the new religion he could no longer be counted. A strange thought seized Edogo now. Could it be that their father had deliberately sent Oduche to the religion of the white man so as to disqualify him for the priesthood of Ulu? He put down the chisel with which he was absentmindedly straightening the intersecting lines on the iroko door. That would explain it! The priesthood would then fall on his youngest and favourite son. The reason which Ezeulu gave for his strange decision had never convinced anyone. If as he said he merely wanted one of his sons to be his eye and ear at this new assembly why did he not send Nwafo who was close to his thoughts? No, that was not the reason. The priest wanted to have a hand in the choice of his successor. It was what anyone who knew Ezeulu would expect him to do. But was he not presuming too much? The choice of a priest lay with the deity. Was it likely that he would let the old priest force his hand. Although Edogo and Obika did not seem attracted to the office that would not prevent the deity from choosing either of them or even Oduche, out of spite. Edogo’s thinking now became confused. If Ulu should choose him to be Chief Priest what would he do? This thought had never worried him before because he had always taken it for granted that Ulu would not want him. But the way he saw things now there was no certainty about that. Would he be happy if the diviner’s beads fell in his favour? He could not say. Perhaps the only sure happiness it would give him was the knowledge that his father’s partiality for his younger sons had been frustrated by the deity himself. From Ani-Mmo where dead men went Ezeulu would look up and see the ruin of all his plans.
Edogo was surprised by this depth of ill-will for his father and relented somewhat. He remembered what his mother used to say when she was alive, that Ezeulu’s only fault was that he expected everyone – his wives, his kinsmen, his children, his friends and even his enemies – to think and act like himself. Anyone who dared to say no to him was an enemy. He forgot the saying of the elders that if a man sought for a companion who acted entirely like himself he would live in solitude.
Ezeulu was sitting at the same spot long after his quarrel with Obika. His back was set against the wall and his gaze on
the approaches to his compound. Now and again he seemed to study the household shrine standing against the low threshold wall in front of him. On his left there was a long mud-seat with goatskins spread on it. The eaves on that part of the hut were cut back so that Ezeulu could watch the sky for the new moon. In the daytime light came into the hut mostly from that part. Nwafo squatted on the mud-seat, facing his father. At the other end of the room, on Ezeulu’s right, stood his low bamboo bed; beside it a fire of ukwa logs smouldered.
Without changing his fixed gaze Ezeulu began suddenly to talk to Nwafo.
‘A man does not speak a lie to his son,’ he said. ‘Remember that always. To say My father told me is to swear the greatest oath. You are only a little boy, but I was no older when my father began to confide in me. Do you hear what I am saying?’
Nwafo said yes.
‘You see what has happened to your brother. In a few days his bride will come and he will no longer be called a child. When strangers see him they will no longer ask Whose son is he? but Who is he? Of his wife they will no longer say Whose daughter? but Whose wife? Do you understand me?’ Nwafo saw that his face was beginning to shine with sweat. Someone was coming towards the hut and he stopped talking.
‘Who is that?’ Ezeulu screwed up his eyes in an effort to see. Nwafo jumped down from the mud-seat and came to the centre of the hut to see.
‘It is Ogbuefi Akuebue.’
Akuebue was one of the very few men in Umuaro whose words gained entrance into Ezeulu’s ear. The two men were in the same age group. As he drew near he raised his voice and asked: ‘Is the owner of this house still alive?’
‘Who is this man?’ asked Ezeulu. ‘Did they not say that you died two markets come next Afo?’
‘Perhaps you do not know that everyone in your age group has long died. Or are you waiting for mushrooms to sprout from your head before you know that your time is over?’ Akuebue was now inside the hut but he still maintained the posture he had assumed to pass under the low eaves – the right hand supported above the knee and the body bent at the waist. Without rising to his full height he shook hands with the Chief Priest. Then he spread his goatskin on the floor near the mud-seat and sat down.
‘How are your people?’
‘They are quiet.’ This was always how Akuebue answered about his family. It amused Nwafo greatly. He had an image in his mind of this man’s wives and children sitting quietly with their hands between their laps.
‘And yours?’ he asked Ezeulu.
‘Nobody has died.’
‘Do they say that Obika was whipped by the white man?’
Ezeulu opened both palms to the sky and said nothing.
‘What did they say was his offence?’
‘My friend, let us talk about other things. There was a time when a happening such as this would have given me a fever; but that time has passed. Nothing is anything to me any more. Go and ask your mother to bring me a kolanut, Nwafo.’
‘She was saying this morning that her kolanuts were finished.’
‘Go and ask Matefi then.’
‘Must you worry about kolanuts every time? I am not a stranger.’
‘I was not taught that kolanut was the food of strangers,’ said Ezeulu. ‘And besides do not our people say that he is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger? But I know what you are afraid of; they tell me you have lost all your teeth.’ As he said this he reached for a lump of white clay in a four-sided wooden bowl shaped like the head of a lizard and rolled it on the floor towards Akuebue who picked it up and drew four upright lines with it on the floor. Then he painted the big toe of his right foot and rolled the chalk back to Ezeulu and he put it away again in the wooden bowl.
Nwafo was soon back with a kolanut in another bowl.
‘Show it to Akuebue,’ said his father.
‘I have seen it,’ replied Akuebue.
‘Then break it.’
‘No. The king’s kolanut returns to his hands.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Indeed I say so.’
Ezeulu took the bowl from Nwafo and set it down between his legs. Then he picked up the kolanut in his right hand and offered a prayer. He jerked the hand forward as he said each sentence, his palm open upwards and the thumb holding down the kolanut on the four fingers.
‘Ogbuefi Akuebue, may you live, and all your people. I too will live with all my people. But life alone is not enough. May we have the things with which to live it well. For there is a kind of slow and weary life which is worse than death.’
‘You speak the truth.’
‘May good confront the man on top and the man below. But let him who is jealous of another’s position choke with his envy.’
‘So be it.’
‘May good come to the land of Igbo and to the country of the riverain folk.’
Then he broke the kolanut by pressing it between his palms and threw all the lobes into the bowl on the floor.
‘O o-o o-o o o-o,’ he whistled. ‘Look what has happened here. The spirits want to eat.’
Akuebue craned his neck to see. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six. Indeed they want to eat.’
Ezeulu picked up one lobe and threw it outside. Then he picked up another one and put it into his mouth. Nwafo came forward, took the bowl from the floor and served Akuebue. For a short while neither man spoke, only the sound of kolanut as it was crushed between the teeth broke the silence.
‘It is strange the way kolanuts behave,’ said Ezeulu after he had swallowed twice. ‘I do not remember when I last saw one with six lobes.’
‘It is indeed very rare, and you only see it when you are not looking for it. Even five is not common. Some years ago I had to buy four or five basketfuls of kolanuts before I could find one with five lobes for a sacrifice. Nwafo, go to your mother’s hut and bring me a big calabash of cold water… This type of heat is not empty-handed.’
‘I think there is water in the sky,’ said Ezeulu. ‘It is the heat before rain.’ As he said this he rose three-quarters erect and walked a few steps to his bamboo bed and took from it his goatskin bag. This bag was sewn together with great cunning; it looked as though the goat which lived in it had been pulled out as one might pull out a snail from its shell. It had four short legs and the tail was intact. Ezeulu took the bag to his seat and began to search arm-deep for his bottle of snuff. When he found it he put it down on the floor and began to look for the small ivory spoon. He soon found that also, and he put the bag away beside him. He took up the little white bottle again, held it up to see how much snuff there was left and then tapped it on his kneecap. He opened the bottle and tipped a little of the content into his left palm.
‘Give me a little of that thing to clear my head,’ said Akuebue who had just drunk his water.
‘Come and get it,’ replied Ezeulu. ‘You do not expect me to provide the snuff and also the walking around, to give you a wife and find you a mat to sleep on.’
Akuebue rose half-erect with his right hand on the knee and the left palm opened towards Ezeulu. ‘I will not dispute with you,’ he said. ‘You have the yam and you have the knife.’
Ezeulu transferred two spoonfuls of the snuff from his own palm into Akuebue’s and then brought out some more from the bottle for himself.
‘It is good snuff,’ said Akuebue. One of his nostrils carried brown traces of the powder. He took another small heap from his cupped left hand on to his right thumbnail and guided it to the other nostril, throwing his head back and sniffing three or four times. Then he had traces on both nostrils. Ezeulu used the ivory spoon instead of his thumbnail.
‘I do not buy my snuff in the market,’ said Ezeulu; ‘that is why.’
Edogo came in dangling a calabash of palm wine from a short rope tied round its neck. He saluted Akuebue and his father and set down the calabash.
‘I did not know that you had palm wine,’ said Ezeulu.
‘It has just been sent by the owner of the door I am carving.’
‘And why do you bring it in the presence of this my friend who took over the stomach of all his dead relatives?’
‘But I have not heard Edogo say it was meant for you.’ He turned to Edogo and asked: ‘Or did you say so?’ Edogo laughed and said it was meant for two of them.
Akuebue brought out a big cow’s horn from his bag and hit it thrice on the floor. Then he rubbed its edges with his palm to remove dirt. Ezeulu brought out his horn from the bag beside him and held it for Edogo to fill. When he had served him he took the calabash to Akuebue and also filled his horn. Before they drank Ezeulu and Akuebue tipped a little on to the floor and muttered a barely audible invitation to their fathers.
‘My body is full of aches,’ said Ezeulu, ‘and I do not think that palm wine is good for me yet.’
‘I can tell you it is not,’ said Akuebue who had gulped down the first horn and screwed up his face as though waiting for a sound inside his head to tell him whether it was good wine or not.
Edogo took his father’s horn from him and filled himself a measure. Oduche came in then, saluted his father and Akuebue and sat down with Nwafo on the mud-seat. Since he joined the white man’s religion he always wore a loincloth of towelling material instead of the thin strip of cloth between the legs. Edogo filled the horn again and offered him but he did not drink. ‘What about you, Nwafo?’ asked Edogo. He also said no.
‘When is it you are going to Okperi?’ Ezeulu asked.
‘The day after tomorrow.’
‘For how long?’
‘They say for two markets.’
Ezeulu seemed to be turning this over in his mind.