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. “I thought you were going into the shrine with Chielo,” he mocked.
Ekwefi did not answer. Tears of gratitude filled her eyes. She knew her daughter was safe.
“Go home and sleep,” said Okonkwo. “I shall wait here.”
“I shall wait too. It is almost dawn. The first cock has crowed.”
As they stood there together, Ekwefi’s mind went back to the days when they were young. She had married Anene because Okonkwo was too poor then to marry. Two years after her marriage to Anene she could bear it no longer and she ran away to Okonkwo. It had been early in the morning. The moon was shining. She was going to the stream to fetch water. Okonkwo’s house was on the way to the stream. She went in and knocked at his door and he came out. Even in those days he was not a man of many words. He just carried her into his bed and in the darkness began to feel around her waist for the loose end of her cloth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On the following morning the entire 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 waterpots and remembered that they were going to fetch water for Obierika’s wife. She went back to the hut and brought her pot.
“Have you slept enough?” asked her mother.
“Yes,” she replied. “Let us go.”
“Not before you have had your breakfast,” said Ekwefi. And she went into her hut to warm the vegetable soup she had cooked last night.
“We shall be going,” said Nwoye’s mother. “I will tell Obierika’s wife that you are coming later.” And so they all went to help Obierika’s wife—Nwoye’s mother with her four children and Ojiugo with her two.
As they trooped through Okonkwo’s obi he asked: “Who will prepare my afternoon meal?”
“I shall return to do it,” said Ojiugo.
Okonkwo was also feeling tired, and sleepy, for although nobody else knew it, he had not slept at all last night. He had felt very anxious but did not show it. When Ekwefi had followed the priestess, he had allowed what he regarded as a reasonable and manly interval to pass and then gone with his machete to the shrine, where he thought they must be. It was only when he had got there that it had occurred to him that the priestess might have chosen to go round the villages first. Okonkwo had returned home and sat waiting. When he thought he had waited long enough he again returned to the shrine. But the Hills and the Caves were as silent as death. It was only on his fourth trip that he had found Ekwefi, and by then he had become gravely worried.
Obierika’s compound was as busy as an anthill. Temporary cooking tripods were erected on every available space by bringing together three blocks of sun-dried earth and making a fire in their midst. Cooking pots went up and down the tripods, and foo-foo was pounded in a hundred wooden mortars. Some of the women cooked the yams and the cassava, and others prepared vegetable soup. Young men pounded the foo-foo or split firewood. The children made endless trips to the stream.
Three young men helped Obierika to slaughter the two goats with which the soup was made. They were very fat goats, but the fattest of all was tethered to a peg near the wall of the compound. It 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 walk
ed 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 achu 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:
“I hope our in-laws will bring many pots of wine. Although they come from a village that is known for being closefisted, they ought to know that Akueke is the bride for a king.”
“They dare not bring fewer than thirty pots,” said Okonkwo. “I shall tell them my mind if they do.”
At that moment Obierika’s son, Maduka, led out the giant goat from the inner compound, for his father’s relatives to see. They all admired it and said that that was the way things should be done. The goat was then led back to the inner compound.
Very soon after, the in-laws began to arrive. Young men and boys in single file, each carrying a pot of wine, came first. Obierika’s relatives counted the pots as they came. Twenty, twenty-five. There was a long break, and the hosts looked at each other as if to say, “I told you.” Then more pots came. Thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five. The hosts nodded in approval and seemed to say, “Now they are behaving like men.” Altogether there were fifty pots of wine. After the pot-bearers came Ibe, the suitor, and the elders of his family. They sat in a half-moon, thus completing a circle with their hosts. The pots of wine stood in their midst. Then the bride, her mother and half a dozen other women and girls emerged from the inner compound, and went round the circle shaking hands with all. The bride’s mother led the way, followed by the bride and the other women. The married women wore their best cloths and the girls wore red and black waist-beads and anklets of brass.
When the women retired, Obierika presented kola nuts to his in-laws. His eldest brother broke the first one. “Life to all of us,” he said as he broke it. “And let there be friendship between your family and ours.”
The crowd answered: “Ee-e-e!”
“We are giving you our daughter today. She will be a good wife to you. She will bear you nine sons like the mother of our town.”
“Ee-e-e!”
The oldest man in the camp of the visitors replied: “It will be good for you and it will be good for us.”
“Ee-e-a!”
“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. Diim! Diim! Diim! 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 waili
ng 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 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.