The three men listened in silence. In his mind Akuebue was flicking his fingers and saying: I now understand why Ezeulu has taken such a sudden liking for him. Their thoughts are brothers. But Ezeulu was actually hearing Nwodika’s opinion of the white man for the first time and glowing with justification. Only he concealed his satisfaction, for once he had taken a stand on any matter he did not want to appear eager for others’ support; it was not his concern but theirs.
‘So my brothers,’ continued Nwodika’s son, ‘that was how your brother came to work for the white man. At first he put me to weed his compound, but after one year he called me and said that my handiwork was good and took me to work inside his house. He asked me my name and I told him my name was Nwabueze; but he could not call it so he said he would call me Johnu.’ This brought a smile to his face, but it was short-lived. ‘I know that some people at home have been spreading the story that I cook for the white man. Your brother does not see even the smoke from his fire; I just put things in order in his house. You know the white man is not like us; if he puts this plate here he will be angry if you have it there. So I go round every day and see that everything is in its right place. But I can tell you that I do not aim to die a servant. My eye is on starting a small trade in tobacco as soon as I have collected a little money. People from other places are gathering much wealth in this trade and in the trade for cloth. People from Elumelu, Aninta, Umuofia, Mbaino, they control the great new market. They decide what goes on in it. Is there one Umuaro man among the wealthy people here? Not one. Sometimes I feel shame when others ask me where I come from. We have no share in the market; we have no share in the white man’s office; we have no share anywhere. That was why I rejoiced when the white man called me the other day and told me that there was a wise man in my village and that his name was Ezeulu. I told him yes. He asked if he was still alive and I said yes. He said: Go with the Head Messenger and tell him that I have a few questions I want to ask him about the custom of his people because I know he is a wise man. I said to myself: This is our chance to bring our clan in front of the white man. I did not know that it would turn out like this.’ He bent his head forward and looked at the ground in sorrow.
‘It is not your fault,’ said Akuebue. ‘Things are always like that. Our eye sees something; we take a stone and aim at it. But the stone rarely succeeds like the eye in hitting the mark.’
‘I blame myself,’ said Nwodika’s son sadly.
‘You are a suspicious one,’ said Ezeulu. The others had gone to pass the night at the place of Nwodika’s son leaving Akuebue and Ezeulu in the small guardroom.
‘I stand for a man dying when his chi says so.’
‘But this man is not a poisoner although he comes from Umunneora.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Akuebue, shaking his head. ‘Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a bellyache.’
‘No. But I tell you Nwodika’s son has a straight mind towards me. I can smell a poisoner as clearly as I can a leper.’
Akuebue still shook his head. Ezeulu could just make out the movement in the weak light of the palm-oil lamp.
‘Did you not watch him when you brought up the question of the blood-tie?’ Ezeulu continued. ‘If he had had an evil thought you would have seen it in the middle of his forehead. No, the man is not dangerous. Rather he acts like a man of olden times, when people liked themselves. Today there are too many wise people; and it is not good wisdom they have but the kind that blackens the nose.’
‘How does a man get any sleep with all these mosquitoes?’ asked Akuebue, waving his fly-whisk wildly around.
‘You have not seen them yet; wait till we have blown this lamp out. I was meaning to ask Nwodika’s son to get me a bunch of arigbe leaves to try and smoke them out. But your coming took everything off my mind. Last night they almost carved us up.’ He too waved his horse-tail. ‘Did you say your people were all well?’ he asked, trying to shift the conversation from himself.
‘They were all quiet,’ replied Akuebue, yawning with head thrown backwards.
‘What was Udenkwo’s story? You know you did not have the chance to tell me all of it.’
‘That is so,’ said Akuebue with revived interest. ‘If I told you I was happy with Udenkwo I would be deceiving myself. She is my daughter but I can tell you she takes entirely after her mother. I have told her many times that a woman who carries her head on a rigid neck as if she is carrying a pot of water will never live for long with any husband. I have not heard my in-law’s story but from what Udenkwo told me I can say that the cause of the quarrel was very small. My in-law was told to bring a cock for sacrifice. When he got home he pointed at one cock and told the children to catch it and tie it up for him. It turned out to be Udenkwo’s cock and she started a quarrel. This is what she told me. I asked her did she want her husband to go to the market for a cock when his wives kept fowls. She said: Why should it always be my cock; what about the other wife, or did the spirits say they only ate Udenkwo’s chicken? I said to her: How many times has he taken your cock and how is a man to know which cock belongs to who? She did not answer. All that she knew was that whenever my in-law wanted a cock for a sacrifice he remembered her.’
‘That was all?’
‘That was all.’
Ezeulu smiled. ‘One would think our in-law made a sacrifice every market.’
‘Exactly what I told her. But as I said Udenkwo is like her mother. Her real anger was that my in-law did not put his forehead on the ground to beg her.’
Ezeulu did not speak immediately. He seemed to be reconsidering the matter.
‘Every man has his own way of ruling his household,’ he said at last. ‘What I do myself if I need something like that is to call one of my wives and say to her: I need such and such a thing for a sacrifice, go and get it for me. I know I can take it but I ask her to go and bring it herself. I never forget what my father told his friend when I was a boy. He said: In our custom a man is not expected to go down on his knees and knock his forehead on the ground to his wife to ask her forgiveness or beg a favour. But, a wise man knows that between him and his wife there may arise the need for him to say to her in secret: “I beg you.” When such a thing happens nobody else must know it, and that woman if she has any sense will never boast about it or even open her mouth and speak of it. If she does it the earth on which the man brought himself low will destroy her entirely. That was what my father told his friend who held that a man was never wrong in his own house. I have never forgotten those words of my father’s. My wife’s cock belongs to me because the owner of a person is also owner of whatever that person has. But there are more ways than one of killing a dog.’
‘That is true,’ Akuebue admitted. ‘But such words should be kept for the ears of my in-law. As for my daughter I do not want her to go on thinking that whenever her husband says yah! to her she must tie her little baby on her back, take the older one by the hand and return to me. My mother did not behave like that. Udenkwo learnt it from her mother, my wife, and she is going to pass it on to her children, for when mother-cow is cropping giant grass her calves watch her mouth.’
It was on his fourth day in Okperi that Ezeulu received a sudden summons to see Mr Clarke. He followed the messenger who brought the order to the corridor of the white man’s office. There were many other people there, some of them sitting on a long bench and the rest on the cement floor. The messenger left Ezeulu in the corridor and went into an adjoining room where many people worked at various tables for the white man. Ezeulu saw the messenger through a window as he talked to a man who seemed to be the leader of all these workers. The messenger pointed in his direction and the other man followed with his eye and saw Ezeulu. But he only nodded and continued to write in his big book. When he finished what he was writing he opened a connecting door and disappeared into another room. He did not stay long there; when he came out again he beckoned at Ezeulu, and showed him into the white man’s presence. He too was writing,
but with his left hand. The first thought that came to Ezeulu on seeing him was to wonder whether any black man could ever achieve the same mastery over book as to write it with the left hand.
‘Your name is Ezeulu?’ asked the interpreter after the white man had spoken.
This repeated insult was nearly too much for Ezeulu but he managed to keep calm.
‘Did you not hear me? The white man wants to know if your name is Ezeulu.’
‘Tell the white man to go and ask his father and his mother their names.’
There followed an exchange between the white man and his interpreter. The white man frowned his face and then smiled and explained something to the interpreter who then told Ezeulu that there was no insult in the question. ‘It is the way the white man does his own things.’ The white man watched Ezeulu with something like amusement on his face. When the interpreter finished he tightened up his face and began again. He rebuked Ezeulu for showing disrespect for the orders of the government and warned him that if he showed such disrespect again he would be very severely punished.
‘Tell him,’ said Ezeulu, ‘that I am still waiting to hear his message.’ But this was not interpreted. The white man waved his hand angrily and raised his voice. Ezeulu did not need to be told that the white man said he did not want to be interrupted again. After that he calmed down and spoke about the benefits of the British Administration. Clarke had not wanted to deliver this lecture which he would have called complacent if somebody else had spoken it. But he could not help himself. Confronted with the proud inattention of this fetish priest whom they were about to do a great favour by elevating him above his fellows and who, instead of gratitude, returned scorn, Clarke did not know what else to say. The more he spoke the more he became angry.
In the end thanks to his considerable self-discipline and the breathing space afforded by talking through an interpreter Clarke was able to rally and rescue himself. Then he made the proposal to Ezeulu.
The expression on the priest’s face did not change when the news was broken to him. He remained silent. Clarke knew it would take a little time for the proposal to strike him with its full weight.
‘Well, are you accepting the offer or not?’ Clarke glowed with the I-know-this-will-knock-you-over feeling of a benefactor.
‘Tell the white man that Ezeulu will not be anybody’s chief, except Ulu.’
‘What!’ shouted Clarke. ‘Is the fellow mad?’
‘I tink so sah,’ said the interpreter.
‘In that case he goes back to prison.’ Clarke was now really angry. What cheek! A witch-doctor making a fool of the British Administration in public!
Chapter Fifteen
Ezeulu’s reputation at Government Hill had suffered a sharp decline when the first day passed and the second and the third and still no news came that Captain Winterbottom had died. Now it rose again in a different way with his refusal to be a white man’s chief. Such an action had no parallel anywhere in Igboland. It might be thought foolish for a man to spit out a morsel which fortune had placed in his mouth but in certain circumstances such a man compelled respect.
Ezeulu himself was full of satisfaction at the way things had gone. He had settled his little score with the white man and could forget him for the moment. But it was not easy to forget and as he went over the events of the past few days he almost persuaded himself that the white man, Wintabota, had meant well but that his good intentions had been frustrated in action by all the intermediaries like the Head Messenger and this ill-mannered, young white pup. After all, he reminded himself, it was Wintabota who a few years ago proclaimed him a man of truth from all the witnesses of Okperi and Umuaro. It was he also who later advised him to send one of his sons to learn the wisdom of his race. All this would suggest that the white man had goodwill towards Ezeulu. But what was the value of the goodwill which brought him to this shame and indignity? The wife who had seen the emptiness of life had cried: Let my husband hate me as long as he provides yams for me every afternoon.
In any case, Ezeulu said to himself, Wintabota must answer for the actions of his messengers. A man might pick his way with the utmost care through a crowded market but find that the hem of his cloth had upset and broken another’s wares; in such a case the man, not his cloth, was held to repair the damage.
But in spite of all this Ezeulu’s dominant feeling was that more or less he was now even with the white man. He had not yet said the last word to him, but for the moment his real struggle was with his own people and the white man was, without knowing it, his ally. The longer he was kept in Okperi the greater his grievance and his resources for the fight.
At first few people in Umuaro believed the story that Ezeulu had rejected the white man’s offer to be a Warrant Chief. How could he refuse the very thing he had been planning and scheming for all these years, his enemies asked? But Akuebue and others undertook to spread the story to every quarter of Umuaro and very soon it was known also in all the neighbouring villages.
Nwaka of Umunneora treated the story with contempt. When he could no longer disbelieve it he explained it away.
‘The man is as proud as a lunatic,’ he said. ‘This proves what I have always told people, that he inherited his mother’s madness.’
Like every other thing Nwaka said from malice this one had its foundation in truth. Ezeulu’s mother, Nwanyieke, had indeed suffered from severe but spasmodic attacks of madness. It was said that had her husband not been such a powerful man with herbs she might have raved continuously.
But despite Nwaka and other implacable enemies of Ezeulu the number of people who were beginning to think that he had been used very badly grew every day in Umuaro. More and more people began to visit him at Okperi; on one day alone he received nine visitors, some of whom brought him yams and other presents.
Two weeks after he was first admitted into the Nkisa Mission Hospital Captain Winterbottom had recovered sufficiently for Tony Clarke to be allowed to see him – for five minutes. Dr Savage stood at the door with a pocket watch.
He was incredibly white, almost a smiling corpse.
‘How’s life with you?’ he asked.
Clarke could hardly wait to answer. He rushed in with the story of Ezeulu’s refusal to be chief as though he wanted to extract an answer before Winterbottom’s mouth was closed for ever.
‘Leave him inside until he learns to co-operate with the Administration.’
‘I did say you were not to talk,’ said Dr Savage, coming quickly between them wearing a false smile. Captain Winterbottom had shut his eyes and was already looking worse. Tony Clarke felt guilty and left immediately but with a big weight taken off his mind. On his way back to Government Hill he thought with admiration of the facility with which Captain Winterbottom even in sickness could hit on the right word. Refusing to co-operate with the Administration.
After Ezeulu’s refusal to be chief Clarke had made one more attempt through the Chief Clerk to persuade him to change his mind, and had failed. The situation thus became quite intolerable. Should he keep the man in prison or set him loose? If he let him go the reputation of the Administration would sag to the ground especially in Umuaro where things were only now beginning to look up after a long period of hostility to the Administration and Christianity. According to what Clarke had read Umuaro had put up more resistance to change than any other clan in the whole province. Their first school was only a year or so old and a tottering Christian mission had been set up after a series of failures. What would be the effect on such a district of the triumphant return of a witch-doctor who had defied the Administration?
But Clarke was not the person to lock a man up without fully satisfying his own conscience that justice had not only been done but appeared to have been done. Now that he had been given the answer his earlier scruples sounded a little silly; but they had been very real. What had worried him was this: if he kept the fellow in jail what would he say was his offence? What would he put down in the log? For making an ass of the Admini
stration? For refusing to be a chief? This apparently small point vexed Clarke like a fly at siesta. He realized it was insignificant but that did not help matters; if anything it made them worse. He could not just clap an old man (yes, a very old man) into jail without reasonable explanation. All very silly really, he thought, now that Winterbottom had given him the answer. The moral of all this was that if older coasters like Winterbottom were no wiser than younger ones they at least had finesse, and this was not to be dismissed lightly.
*
Captain Winterbottom had a setback in his recovery and for another fortnight no one was allowed to see him. Among the servants and African staff on Government Hill the rumour spread first that he was insane and then that he was paralysed. Ezeulu’s reputation continued to rise with these rumours. Now that the cause of his imprisonment was generally known it was impossible not to have sympathy for him. He had done no harm to the white man and could justifiably hold up his ofo against him. In that position whatever Ezeulu did in retaliation was not only justified, it was bound by its merit to have potency. John Nwodika explained that Ezeulu was like a puff-adder which never struck until it had first unlocked its seven deadly fangs one after the other. If while it did this its tormentor did not have the good sense to run for its life it would have only itself to blame. Ezeulu had given enough warning to the white man during the four markets he had been locked in prison. So he could not be blamed if he now hit back by destroying his enemy’s sense or killing one side of his body leaving the other side to squirm in half life, which was worse than total death.