“Weting I been de eat all afternoon?” asked the driver. “I no fit understand this kind sleep. Na true say I no sleep last night, but that no be first time I been do um.” Everyone agreed that sleep was a most unreasonable phenomenon.
After two or three minutes of general conversation on this subject the driver once more proceeded on his way with the promise and determination to try his best. As for Obi, sleep had fled from his eyes as soon as the driver had pulled up. His mind cleared immediately as if the sun had risen and dried the dew that had settled on it.
The traders burst into song again, this time there was nothing bawdy about it. Obi knew the refrain, he tried to translate it into English, and for the first time its real meaning dawned on him.
“An in-law went to see his in-law
Oyiemu—o
His in-law seized him and killed him
Oyiemu—o
Bring a canoe, bring a paddle
Oyiemu—o
The paddle speaks English
Oyiemu—o.”
On the face of it there was no kind of logic or meaning in the song. But as Obi turned it round and round in his mind, he was struck by the wealth of association that even such a mediocre song could have. First of all it was unheard of for a man to seize his in-law and kill him. To the Ibo mind it was the height of treachery. Did not the elders say that a man’s in-law was his chi, his personal god? Set against this was another great betrayal; a paddle that begins suddenly to talk in a language which its master, the fisherman, does not understand. In short, then, thought Obi, the burden of the song was “the world turned upside down.” He was pleased with his exegesis and began to search in his mind for other songs that could be given the same treatment. But the song of the traders was now so loud and spicy that he could not concentrate on his thinking.
Nowadays going to England has become as commonplace as going down to the village green. But five years ago it was different. Obi’s return to his village was almost a festival. A “pleasure” car was waiting at Onitsha to convey him in proper state to Umuofia, some fifty miles away. But before they set out he had a few minutes to look round the great Onitsha market.
The first thing that claimed his attention was an open jeep which blared out local music from a set of loudspeakers. Two men in the car swayed to the music as did many others in the crowd that had gathered round it. Obi was wondering what it was all about when the music suddenly stopped. One of the men held up a bottle for all to see. It contained Long Life Mixture, he said, and began to tell the crowd all about it. Or rather he told them a few things about it, for it was impossible to enumerate all its wonderful virtues. The other man brought out a sheaf of handbills and distributed them to the crowd, most of whom appeared to be illiterate. “This paper will speak to you about Long Life Mixture,” he announced. It was quite clear that if there was something on paper about it, then it must be true. Obi secured one of the bills and read the list of diseases. The first three were: “Rheumatism, Yellow feaver, dogbight.”
On the other side of the road, close to the waterfront, a row of women sat selling garri from big white enamel bowls. A beggar appeared. He must have been well known because many people called him by name. Perhaps he was a little mad too. His name was One Way. He had an enamel basin and began a tour of the row. The women beat out a rhythm with empty cigarette cups and One Way danced along the row, receiving a handful of garri in his basin from each of them in turn. When he got to the end of the row he had received enough garri for two heavy meals.
Bands of music-makers went out two miles on the Umuofia—Onitsha road to await Obi’s arrival. There were at least five different groups, if one excludes the brass band of the C.M.S. School Umuofia. It looked as if the entire village was celebrating a feast. Those who were not waiting along the road, elderly people especially, were already arriving in large numbers at Mr. Okonkwo’s compound.
The only trouble was that it might rain. In fact, many people half wished it would rain heavily so as to show Isaac Okonkwo that Christianity had made him blind. He was the only man who failed to see that on an occasion such as this he should take palm-wine, a cock, and a little money to the chief rainmaker in Umuofia.
“He is not the only Christian we have seen,” said one of the men. “But it is like the palm-wine we drink. Some people can drink it and remain wise. Others lose all their senses.”
“Very true, very true,” said another. “When a new saying gets to the land of empty men they lose their heads over it.”
At that very moment Isaac Okonkwo was having an argument about rainmaking with one of the old men who had come to rejoice with him.
“Perhaps you will also tell me that some men cannot send thunder to their enemies?” asked the old man.
Mr. Okonkwo told him that to believe such a thing was to chew the cud of foolishness. It was putting one’s head into a cooking pot.
“What Satan has accomplished in this world of ours is indeed great,” he said. “For it is he alone that can put such abominable thought into men’s stomachs.”
The old man waited patiently for him to finish and said:
“You are not a stranger in Umuofia. You have heard our elders say that thunder cannot kill a son or daughter of Umuofia. Do you know anyone either now or in the past who was so killed?”
Okonkwo had to admit that he knew of no such person. “But that is the work of God,” he said.
“It is the work of our forefathers,” said the old man. “They built a powerful medicine to protect themselves from thunder, and not only themselves, but all their descendants forever.”
“Very true,” said another man. “Anyone who denies it does so in vain. Let him go and ask Nwokeke how he was hit by thunder last year. All his skin peeled off like snake slough, but he was not killed.”
“Why was he hit at all?” asked Okonkwo. “He should not have been hit at all.”
“That is a matter between him and his chi. But you must know that he was hit in Mbaino and not at home. Perhaps the thunder, seeing him at Mbaino, called him an Mbaino man at first.”
Four years in England had filled Obi with a longing to be back in Umuofia. This feeling was sometimes so strong that he found himself feeling ashamed of studying English for his degree. He spoke Ibo whenever he had the least opportunity of doing so. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to find another Ibo-speaking student in a London bus. But when he had to speak in English with a Nigerian student from another tribe he lowered his voice. It was humiliating to have to speak to one’s countryman in a foreign language, especially in the presence of the proud owners of that language. They would naturally assume that one had no language of one’s own. He wished they were here today to see. Let them come to Umuofia now and listen to the talk of men who made a great art of conversation. Let them come and see men and women and children who knew how to live, whose joy of life had not yet been killed by those who claimed to teach other nations how to live.
There were hundreds of people at Obi’s reception. For one thing, the entire staff and pupils of the C.M.S. Central School Umuofia were there and their brass band had just finished playing “Old Calabar.” They had also played an old evangelical tune which in Obi’s schooldays Protestant schoolchildren had sung to anti-Catholic words, especially on Empire Day, when Protestants and Catholics competed in athletics.
“Otasili osukwu Onyenkuzi Fada
E misisi ya oli awo-o.”
Which translated into English is as follows:
“Palm-fruit eater, Roman Catholic teacher,
His missus a devourer of toads.”
After the first four hundred handshakes and hundred embraces, Obi was able to sit down for a while with his father’s older kinsmen in the big parlor. There were not enough chairs for all of them to sit on, so that many sat on their goatskins spread on the floor. It did not make much difference whether one sat on a chair or on the floor because even those who sat on chairs spread their goatskins on them first.
??
?The white man’s country must be very distant indeed,” suggested one of the men. Everyone knew it was very distant, but they wanted to hear it again from the mouth of their young kinsman.
“It is not something that can be told,” said Obi. “It took the white man’s ship sixteen days—four market weeks—to do the journey.”
“Think of that,” said one of the men to the others. “Four market weeks. And not in a canoe, but a white man’s ship that runs on water as a snake runs on grass.”
“Sometimes for a whole market week there is no land to be seen,” said Obi. “No land in front, behind, to the right, and to the left. Only water.”
“Think of that,” said the man to the others. “No land for one whole market week. In our folk stories a man gets to the land of spirits when he has passed seven rivers, seven forests, and seven hills. Without doubt you have visited the land of spirits.”
“Indeed you have, my child,” said another old man. “Azik,” he called, meaning Isaac, “bring us a kola nut to break for this child’s return.”
“This is a Christian house,” replied Obi’s father.
“A Christian house where kola nut is not eaten?” sneered the man.
“Kola nut is eaten here,” replied Mr. Okonkwo, “but not sacrificed to idols.”
“Who talked about sacrifice? Here is a little child returned from wrestling in the spirit world and you sit there blabbing about Christian house and idols, talking like a man whose palm-wine has gone into his nose.” He hissed in disgust, took up his goat skin, and went to sit outside.
“This is not a day for quarrels,” said another old man. “I shall bring a kola nut.” He took his goatskin bag which he had hung from his chair and began to search its depths. As he searched things knocked against one another in it—his drinking horn, his snuff bottle, and a spoon. “And we shall break it in the Christian way,” he said as he fished out a kola nut.
“Do not trouble yourself, Ogbuefi Odogwu,” said Okonkwo to him. “I am not refusing to place a kola nut before you. What I say is that it will not be used as a heathen sacrifice in my house.” He went into an inner room and soon returned with three kola nuts in a saucer. Ogbuefi Odogwu insisted on adding his kola nut to the number.
“Obi, show the kola nut round,” said his father. Obi had already stood up to do so, being the youngest man in the room. When everyone had seen he placed the saucer before Ogbuefi Odogwu, who was the eldest. He was not a Christian, but he knew one or two things about Christianity. Like many others in Umuofia, he went to church once a year at harvest. His only criticism of the Christian service was that the congregation was denied the right to reply to the sermon. One of the things he liked particularly and understood was: “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.”
“As a man comes into this world,” he often said, “so will he go out of it. When a titled man dies, his anklets of title are cut so that he will return as he came. The Christians are right when they say that as it was in the beginning it will be in the end.”
He took the saucer, drew up his knees together to form a table, and placed the saucer there. He raised his two hands, palms facing upwards, and said: “Bless this kola nut so that when we eat it it will be good in our body in the name of Jesu Kristi. As it was in the beginning it will be at the end. Amen.” Everyone replied Amen and cheered old Odogwu on his performance. Even Okonkwo could not help joining in the cheers.
“You should become a Christian,” he suggested.
“Yes, if you will agree to make me a pastor,” said Odogwu.
Everyone laughed again. Then the conversation veered round again to Obi. Matthew Ogbonna, who had been a carpenter in Onitsha and was consequently a man of the world, said they should all thank God that Obi had not brought home a white wife.
“White wife?” asked one of the men. To him it was rather farfetched.
“Yes. I have seen it with my two eyes,” said Matthew.
“Yes,” said Obi. “Many black men who go to the white man’s country marry their women.”
“You hear?” asked Matthew. “I tell you I have seen it with my own two eyes in Onitsha. The woman even had two children. But what happened in the end? She left those children and went back to her country. That is why I say a black man who marries a white woman wastes his time. Her stay with him is like the stay of the moon in the sky. When the time comes she will go.”
“Very true,” said another man who had also traveled. “It is not her going away that matters. It is her turning the man’s face away from his kinsmen while she stays.”
“I am happy that you returned home safe,” said Matthew to Obi.
“He is a son of Iguedo,” said old Odogwu. “There are nine villages in Umuofia, but Iguedo is Iguedo. We have our faults, but we are not empty men who become white when they see white, and black when they see black.”
Obi’s heart glowed with pride within him.
“He is the grandson of Ogbuefi Okonkwo who faced the white man single-handed and died in the fight. Stand up!”
Obi stood up obediently.
“Remark him,” said Odogwu. “He is Ogbuefi Okonkwo come back. He is Okonkwo kpom-kwem, exact, perfect.”
Obi’s father cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Dead men do not come back,” he said.
“I tell you this is Okonkwo. As it was in the beginning so it will be in the end. That is what your religion tells us.”
“It does not tell you that dead men return.”
“Iguedo breeds great men,” said Odogwu, changing the subject. “When I was young I knew of them—Okonkwo, Ezeudu, Obierika, Okolo, Nwosu.” He counted them off with his right fingers against the left. “And many others, as many as grains of sand. Among their fathers we hear of Ndu, Nwosisi, Ikedi, Obika, and his brother Iweka—all giants. These men were great in their day. Today greatness has changed its tune. Titles are no longer great, neither are barns or large numbers of wives and children. Greatness is now in the things of the white man. And so we too have changed our tune. We are the first in all the nine villages to send our son to the white man’s land. Greatness has belonged to Iguedo from ancient times. It is not made by man. You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize. Who ever planted an iroko tree—the greatest tree in the forest? You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there, so it is with greatness in men.”
CHAPTER SIX
Obi’s homecoming was not in the end the happy event he had dreamt of. The reason was his mother. She had grown so old and frail in four years that he could hardly believe it. He had heard of her long periods of illness, but he had not thought of it quite this way. Now that all the visitors had gone away and she came and hugged him and put her arms round his neck, for the second time tears rose in his eyes. Henceforth he wore her sadness round his neck like a necklace of stone.
His father too was all bones, although he did not look nearly as bad as his mother. It was clear to Obi that they did not have enough good food to eat. It was scandalous, he thought, that after nearly thirty years’ service in the church his father should retire on a salary of two pounds a month, a good slice of which went back to the same church by way of class fees and other contributions. And he had his two last children at school, each paying school fees and church fees.
Obi and his father sat up for a long time after the others had gone to bed, in the oblong room which gave on to the outside through a large central door and two windows. This room was called pieze in Christian houses. The door and windows were shut to discourage neighbors who would have continued to stream in to see Obi—some of them for the fourth time that day.
There was a hurricane lamp beside the chair on which Obi’s father sat. It was his lamp. He washed the globe himself, he would not trust anybody to do it. The lamp itself was older than Obi.
The walls of the pieze had recently been given a new coat of chalk. Obi had
not had a moment until now to look round for such loving tributes. The floor had also been rubbed; but what with the countless feet that had trod on it that day it was already needing another rubbing with red earth and water.
His father broke the silence at length.
“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.”
“What is that, Father?” asked Obi.
“Sometimes fear came upon me that I might not be spared to see your return.”
“Why? You seem as strong as ever.”
Obi’s father ignored the false compliment, pursuing his own train of thought. “Tomorrow we shall all worship at church. The pastor has agreed to make it a special service for you.”
“But is it necessary, Father? Is it not enough that we pray together here as we prayed this night?”
“It is necessary,” said his father. “It is good to pray at home but better to pray in God’s house.”
Obi thought: “What would happen if I stood up and said to him: ‘Father, I no longer believe in your God’?” He knew it was impossible for him to do it, but he just wondered what would happen if he did. He often wondered like that. A few weeks ago in London he had wondered what would have happened if he had stood up and shouted to the smooth M.P. lecturing to African students on the Central African Federation: “Go away, you are all bloody hypocrites!” It was not quite the same thing, though. His father believed fervently in God; the smooth M.P. was just a bloody hypocrite.
“Did you have time to read your Bible while you were there?”
There was nothing for it but to tell a lie. Sometimes a lie was kinder than the truth. Obi knew why the question had been asked. He had read his verses so badly at prayers that evening.
“Sometimes,” he replied, “but it was the Bible written in the English language.”
“Yes,” said his father. “I see.”
There was a long pause in which Obi remembered with shame how he had stumbled through his portions as a child. In the first verse he had pronounced ugwu as mountain when it should be circumcision. Four or five voices had promptly corrected him, the first to register being his youngest sister, Eunice, who was eleven and in Standard Four.