‘How many Ezeulus do you know?’ asked the corporal irritably.
‘How many Ezeulus do I know?’ repeated the man after him. ‘I don’t know any Ezeulus.’
‘Why did you ask me which Ezeulu if you don’t know any?’
‘Why did I ask you—’
‘Shut up! Bloody fool!’ shouted the policeman in English.
‘I say I don’t know any Ezeulu. I am a stranger here.’
Two other people they stopped spoke in more or less the same fashion. One of them even said that the only Ezeulu he knew was a man of Umuofia, a whole day’s journey in the direction of the sunrise.
The two policemen were not in the least surprised. The only way to make people talk was by frightening them. But they had been warned by the European officer against using violence and threats and in particular they were not to use the handcuffs unless the fellow resisted. This was why they had shown so much restraint. But now they were convinced that unless they did something drastic they might wander around Umuaro till sunset without finding Ezeulu’s house. So they slapped the next man they saw when he tried to be evasive. To drive the point home they also showed him the handcuffs. This brought the desired result. He asked the men to follow him. He took them to the approaches of the compound they were looking for and pointed at it.
‘It is not our custom,’ he told the policemen, ‘to show our neighbour’s creditors the way to his hut. So I cannot enter with you.’ This was a reasonable request and the policemen released him. He ran away as fast as he could so that the inmates of the compound might not catch as much as a glimpse of his escaping back.
The policemen marched into the hut and found an old woman chewing her toothless gums. She peered at them in obvious fright and did not seem to understand any of the questions they put to her. She did not even seem to remember her own name.
Fortunately a little boy came in at that moment with a small piece of potsherd to take burning coals to his mother for making a fire. It was this boy who took the men around the bend of the footpath to Ezeulu’s compound. As soon as he went out with them the old woman picked up her stick and hobbled over at an amazing speed to his mother’s hut to report his behaviour. Then she returned to her hut – much more slowly, curved behind her straight stick. Her name was Nwanyieke, a childless widow. Soon after she got back she heard the boy, Obielue, crying.
Meanwhile the policemen arrived at Ezeulu’s hut. They were then no longer in the mood for playing. They spoke sharply, baring all their weapons at once.
‘Which one of you is called Ezeulu?’ asked the corporal.
‘Which Ezeulu?’ asked Edogo.
‘Don’t ask me which Ezeulu again or I shall slap okro seeds out of your mouth. I say who is called Ezeulu here?’
‘And I say which Ezeulu? Or don’t you know who you are looking for?’ The four other men in the hut said nothing. Women and children thronged the door leading from the hut into the inner compound. There was fear and anxiety in the faces.
‘All right,’ said the corporal in English. ‘Jus now you go sabby which Ezeulu. Gi me dat ting.’ This last sentence was directed to his companion who immediately produced the handcuffs from his pocket.
In the eyes of the villager handcuffs or iga were the most deadly of the white man’s weapons. The sight of a fighting man reduced to impotence and helplessness with an iron lock was the final humiliation. It was a treatment given only to violent lunatics.
So when the fierce-looking policeman showed his handcuffs and moved towards Edogo with them Akuebue came forward as the elder in the house and spoke reasonably. He appealed to the policemen not to be angry with Edogo. ‘He only spoke as a young man would. As you know, the language of young men is always pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation.’ He told them that Ezeulu and his son had set out for Okperi early in the morning to answer the white man’s call. The policemen looked at each other. They had indeed met a man with another who looked like his son. They remembered them because they were the first people they had met going in the opposite direction but also because the man and his son looked very distinguished.
‘What does he look like?’ asked the corporal.
‘He is as tall as an iroko tree and his skin is white like the sun. In his youth he was called Nwa-anyanwu.’
‘And his son?’
‘Like him. No difference.’
The two policemen conferred in the white man’s tongue to the great admiration of the villagers.
‘Sometine na dat two porson we cross for road,’ said the corporal.
‘Sometine na dem,’ said his companion. ‘But we no go return back jus like dat. All dis waka wey we waka come here no fit go for nating.’
The corporal thought about it. The other continued:
‘Sometine na lie dem de lie. I no wan make dem put trouble for we head.’
The corporal still thought about it. He was convinced that the men spoke the truth but it was necessary to frighten them a little, if only to coax a sizeable ‘kola’ out of them. He addressed them in Ibo:
‘We think that you may be telling us a lie and so we must make quite sure otherwise the white man will punish us. What we shall do then is to take two of you – handcuffed – to Okperi. If we find Ezeulu there we shall set you free; if not…’ He completed with a sideways movement of the head which spoke more clearly than words. ‘Which two shall we take?’
The others conferred anxiously and Akuebue spoke again begging the representatives of ‘gorment’ to believe their story. ‘What would be the wisdom of deceiving messengers of the white man?’ he asked. ‘Where shall we run afterwards? If you go back to Okperi and Ezeulu is not there you can come back and take not two but all of us.’
The corporal thought about it and agreed. ‘But we cannot come and go for nothing. When a masked spirit visits you you have to appease its footprints with presents. The white man is the masked spirit of today.’
‘Very true,’ said Akuebue, ‘the masked spirit of our day is the white man and his messengers.’
Ezeulu’s head wife was asked to prepare yam pottage with chicken for the two men. When it was ready they ate and drank palm wine. Then they rested awhile and prepared to go. Akuebue thanked them for their visit and told them that if they had met the owner of the house at home he would have given them more hospitality. Anyhow would they accept this small ‘kola’ on his behalf?’ He placed two live cocks before them and Edogo placed beside the cocks a wooden bowl containing two shillings. The corporal thanked them but at the same time repeated his warning that if it turned out that they had been telling lies about Ezeulu, ‘gorment’ would make them see their ears with their own eyes.
The sudden collapse of Captain Winterbottom on the very day he sent policemen to arrest the Chief Priest of Umuaro was clearly quite significant. The first man to point the connection was John Nwodika, Second Steward to Captain Winterbottom himself. He said it was just as he feared; the priest had hit him with a potent charm. In spite of everything then, power still resided in its accustomed place.
‘Did I not say so?’ he asked the other servants after their master had been removed to hospital. ‘Was it for nothing I refused to follow the policemen? I told them that the Chief Priest of Umuaro is not a soup you can lick in a hurry.’ His voice carried a note of pride. ‘Our master thinks that because he is a white man our medicine cannot touch him.’ He switched over to English for the benefit of Clarke’s steward who came in just then and who did not speak Ibo.
‘I use to tellam say blackman juju no be someting wey man fit take play. But when I tellam na so so laugh im de laugh. When he finish laugh he call me John and I say Massa. He say You too talk bush talk. I tellam say O-o, one day go be one day. You no see now?’
The story of Ezeulu’s magical powers spread through Government Hill hand in hand with the story of Captain Winterbottom’s mysterious collapse. When Mr Clarke returned from hospital his steward asked how the big master was. He shook his head and said:
‘He’s pretty bad, I’m afraid.’
‘Sorry sah,’ said the steward, looking very worried. ‘Dey say na dat bad juju man for yonda wey…’
‘Go and get my bath ready, will you?’ Clarke was so exhausted that he was in no mood for stewards’ chit-chat. So he lost the opportunity of hearing the reason for the Captain’s illness which was circulating not just through Government Hill but very soon throughout Okperi. It was only two days later that Wright told him about it.
Other servants on Government Hill were waiting in his kitchen to hear the latest news from his steward. He went to get ready the bath and whispered to them that there was no hope, that Clarke had told him he was afraid.
Later in the evening Clarke and Wade drove to the hospital again. They did not see the patient or the doctor; but Sister Warner told them there was no change. For the first time since it all started Tony Clarke felt anxious. They drove back in silence.
There was a Court Messenger outside his bungalow when he got home.
‘’Deven sah,’ said the man.
‘Good evening,’ replied Clarke.
‘De witch-doctor from Umuaro don come.’ There was fear in his voice as though he was reporting the arrival of smallpox in the village.
‘I beg your pardon.’
The man gave more details and it was only then that Clarke understood he was talking about Ezeulu.
‘Lock him up in the guardroom till morning.’ Clarke made to enter the bungalow.
‘Massa say make I putam for gaddaloom?’
‘That’s what I said,’ shouted Clarke. ‘Are you deaf?’
‘No be say I deaf sah but…’
‘Get out!’
The messenger sent people to sweep the guardroom and spread a new mat in it so that it might be taken for a guest-room. Then he went to Ezeulu who had been sitting in the Courtroom with Obika since their arrival and spoke nicely to him.
‘The big white man is sick but the other one says welcome to you,’ he said. ‘He says it is dark now and he will see you in the morning.’
Ezeulu said nothing to him. He followed him into the dark guardroom and sat on the mat. Obika also sat down. Ezeulu brought out his snuff bottle.
‘We shall send a lamp to you,’ said the messenger.
Soon afterwards John Nwodika came in with his wife who had a small load on her head. She set it down and it proved to be an enormous mound of pounded cassava and a bowl of bitter-leaf soup. John Nwodika made a ball of foofoo, dipped it in the soup and swallowed to show that there was no poison in it. Ezeulu thanked him and his wife (who turned out to be the daughter of his friend in Umuagu) but refused to eat.
‘Food is not my care now,’ he said.
‘Pray, eat a little – just one ball,’ said the son of Nwodika. But the old man would not be persuaded.
‘Obika will eat for both of us.’
‘A fowl does not eat into the belly of a goat,’ said the other, but the old man still refused.
The messenger came in again with a palm-oil lamp and Ezeulu thanked him.
Corporal Matthew Nweke who had gone to Umuaro with another policeman returned to find his wives weeping quietly and a large crowd in his one-room lodging. He was alarmed, his mind going to his little son who had measles. He rushed to the mat where he lay and touched him; he was wide awake.
‘What is the matter?’ he asked then.
No one spoke. The corporal who was called ‘Couple’ then turned to one of the policemen in the room and put the question specifically to him. The man cleared his voice and told him that they did not expect to see him and his companion back alive, especially when the man he had gone to arrest arrived on his own. ‘Couple’ wanted to explain how they had crossed each other but the man did not let him. He pressed on with a full account of all that had happened since morning and ended with the latest news from Nkisa Hospital to the effect that Captain Winterbottom would not see the dawn.
At that point John Nwodika came in.
‘But you were not well in the morning?’ asked Couple.
‘That is what I have come to tell you. The illness was a warning from the Chief Priest. I am happy I listened to it; otherwise we would be telling another story now.’ John then told them how the Chief Priest knew all about Winterbottom’s sickness before anyone told him about it.
‘What did he say?’ asked one or two people together.
‘He said: If he is ill he will also be well. I don’t know what he meant, but it seemed to me that there was mockery in his voice.’
At first ‘Couple’ Matthew Nweke was not too worried. He had a strong personal protection which a great dibia in his village made for him during his last leave. But as he heard more and more about Ezeulu his faith in his safety began to weaken. In the end he held a quick consultation with the policeman who had accompanied him to Umuaro and they decided that to be on the safe side they should go and see a local dibia straight away. It was past ten o’clock at night when they arrived at the man’s house. He was called throughout the village The Bow that shoots at the Sky.
As soon as they came in he told them the object of their mission. ‘You have done right to come straight to me because you indeed walked into the mouth of a leopard. But there is something bigger than a leopard. That is why I say welcome to you because you have reached the final refuge.’ He told them that they must not eat anything which they had taken from Umuaro. They must bring the two cocks and the money for sacrifice which they would carry and deposit on the highway. For what they had already eaten he gave them a preparation to drink and also to mix into their bath water.
Chapter Fourteen
As he ate the pounded cassava and bitter-leaf soup Obika watched his father with the tail of his eye and caught a certain restlessness in him. He knew it would be useless asking him questions in his present mood. Even at the best of times Ezeulu only spoke when he wanted to and not when people asked him.
He got up and made towards the narrow door, then seemed to change his mind or else to remember something he should have taken with him. He came back to his goatskin bag and searched for his snuff bottle. When he found it he made towards the door again and this time went outside saying from the doorway that he was going to urinate.
He had resolved that as long as he was in Okperi he would never look for the new moon. But the eye is very greedy and will steal a look at something its owner has no wish to see. So as Ezeulu urinated outside the guardroom his eyes looked for the new moon. But the sky had an unfamiliar face. It was impossible to put one’s finger anywhere on it and say that the moon would come out there. A momentary alarm struck Ezeulu but on thinking again he saw no cause for alarm. Why should the sky of Okperi be familiar to him? Every land had its own sky; it was as it should be.
That night Ezeulu saw in a dream a big assembly of Umuaro elders, the same people he had spoken to a few days earlier. But instead of himself it was his grandfather who rose up to speak to them. They refused to listen. They shouted together: He shall not speak; we will not listen to him. The Chief Priest raised his voice and pleaded with them to listen but they refused saying that they must bale the water while it was still only ankle-deep. ‘Why should we rely on him to tell us the season of the year?’ asked Nwaka. ‘Is there anybody here who cannot see the moon in his own compound? And anyhow what is the power of Ulu today? He saved our fathers from the warriors of Abam but he cannot save us from the white man. Let us drive him away as our neighbours of Aninta drove out and burnt Ogba when he left what he was called to do and did other things, when he turned round to kill the people of Aninta instead of their enemies.’ Then the people seized the Chief Priest who had changed from Ezeulu’s grandfather to himself and began to push him from one group to another. Some spat on his face and called him the priest of a dead god.
Ezeulu woke up with a start as though he had fallen from a great height.
‘What is it?’ asked Obika in the darkness.
‘Nothing. Did I say anything?’
‘Yo
u were quarrelling with someone and saying you would see who would drive the other away.’
‘I think there must be spiders on the rafters.’
He was now sitting up on his mat. What he had just seen was not a dream but a vision. It had all taken place not in the halflight of a dream but in the clarity of the middle day. His grandfather whom he had known with the eyes of a child had emerged again very clearly across a whole lifetime in which his image had grown weak and indistinct.
Ezeulu took out his ground tobacco and put a little in each nostril to help his thinking. Now that Obika was asleep again he felt free to consider things by himself. He thought once more of his fruitless, albeit cursory, search for the door of the new moon. So even in his mother’s village which he used to visit regularly as a boy and a young man and which next to Umuaro he knew better than any village – even here he was something of a stranger! It gave him a feeling of loss which was both painful and pleasant. He had temporarily lost his status as Chief Priest which was painful; but after eighteen years it was a relief to be without it for a while. Away from Ulu he felt like a child whose stern parent had gone on a journey. But his greatest pleasure came from the thought of his revenge which had suddenly formed in his mind as he had sat listening to Nwaka in the market place.
These thoughts were a deliberate diversion. At the end of them Ezeulu had steadied himself from his dizzy nightmare. Now he looked at it again more closely and one thing stood out. His quarrel with the white man was insignificant beside the matter he must settle with his own people. For years he had been warning Umuaro not to allow a few jealous men to lead them into the bush. But they had stopped both ears with fingers. They had gone on taking one dangerous step after another and now they had gone too far. They had taken away too much for the owner not to notice. Now the fight must take place, for until a man wrestles with one of those who make a path across his homestead the others will not stop. Ezeulu’s muscles tingled for the fight. Let the white man detain him not for one day but one year so that his deity not seeing him in his place would ask Umuaro questions.