For this reason, but also because he did not himself approve of such excess of zeal, the bishop had written a firm letter to Goodcountry. He had also replied to Ezidemili’s petition assuring him that the catechist would not interfere with the python but at the same time praying that the day would not be far when the priest and all his people would turn away from the worship of snakes and idols to the true religion.
This letter from the big, white priest far away reinforced the view which had been gaining ground that the best way to deal with the white man was to have a few people like Moses Unachukwu around who knew what the white man knew. As a result many people – some of them very important – began to send their children to school. Even Nwaka sent a son – the one who seemed least likely among his children to become a good farmer.
Mr Goodcountry not knowing the full story of the deviousness of the heathen mind behind the growth of his school and church put it down to his effective evangelization which, in a way, it was – a vindication of his work against his bishop’s policy of appeasement. He wrote a report on the amazing success of the Gospel in Umuaro for the West African Church Magazine, although, as was the custom in such reports, he allowed the credit to go to the Holy Spirit.
Now Mr Goodcountry saw in the present crisis over the New Yam Feast an opportunity for fruitful intervention. He had planned his church’s harvest service for the second Sunday in November the proceeds from which would go into the fund for building a place of worship more worthy of God and of Umuaro. His plan was quite simple. The New Yam Feast was the attempt of the misguided heathen to show gratitude to God, the giver of all good things. This was God’s hour to save them from their error which was now threatening to ruin them. They must be told that if they made their thank-offering to God they could harvest their crops without fear of Ulu.
‘So we can tell our heathen brethren to bring their one yam to church instead of giving it to Ulu?’ asked a new member of Good-country’s church committee.
‘That is what I say. But not just one yam. Let them bring as many as they wish according to the benefits they received this year from Almighty God. And not only yams, any crop whatsoever or livestock or money. Anything.’
The man who had asked the question did not seem satisfied. He kept scratching his head.
‘Do you still not understand?’
‘I understand but I was thinking how we could tell them to bring more than one yam. You see, our custom, or rather their custom, is to take just one yam to Ulu.’
Moses Unachukwu, who had since returned to full favour with Goodcountry, saved the day. ‘If Ulu who is a false god can eat one yam the living God who owns the whole world should be entitled to eat more than one.’
So the news spread that anyone who did not want to wait and see all his harvest ruined could take his offering to the god of the Christians who claimed to have power of protection from the anger of Ulu. Such a story at other times might have been treated with laughter. But there was no more laughter left in the people.
Chapter Nineteen
The first serious sufferers from the postponement of the harvest were the family of Ogbuefi Amalu who had died in the rainy season from aru-mmo. Amalu was a man of substance and, in normal times, the rites of second burial and funeral feast would have followed two or three days after his death. But it was a bad death which killed a man in the time of famine. Amalu himself knew it and was prepared. Before he died he had called his first son, Aneto, and given him directions for the burial feast.
‘I would have said: Do it a day or two after I have been put into the earth. But this is ugani; I cannot ask you to arrange my burial feast with your saliva. I must wait until there are yams again.’ He spoke with great difficulty, struggling with every breath. Aneto was down on both knees beside the bamboo bed and strained to catch the whispers which were barely audible over the noisy breathing coming from the cavity of the sick man’s chest. The many coatings of camwood which had been rubbed on it had caked and cracked like red earth in the dry season. ‘But you must not delay it beyond four moons from my death. And do not forget, I want you to slaughter a bull.’
There was a story told of a young man in another clan who was so pestered by trouble that he decided to consult an oracle. The reason, he was told, was that his dead father wanted him to sacrifice a goat to him. The young man said to the oracle: ‘Ask my father if he left as much as a fowl for me.’ Ogbuefi Amalu was not like that man. Everyone knew he was worth four hundred bulls and that he had not asked his son for more than was justly due.
In anticipation of the New Yam Festival Aneto and his brothers and kinsmen had chosen the day for Amalu’s second burial and announced it to all Umuaro and to all their relations and in-laws in the neighbouring clans.
What were they to do now? Should they persist with their plan and give Amalu a poor man’s burial feast without yams and risk his ire on their heads or should they put it off beyond the time that Amalu had appointed and again risk his anger? The second choice seemed the better and the less dangerous one. But to be quite sure Aneto went to afa, to put the alternatives to his father.
When he got to the oracle he found that there were not two alternatives but only one. He dared not ask his father whether he would accept a poor man’s funeral; rather he asked whether he could delay the rites until there were yams in Umuaro. Amalu said no. He had already stood too long in the rain and sun and could not bear it one day longer. A poor man might wander outside for years while his kinsmen scraped their meagre resources together; that was his penalty for lack of success in his life. But a great man who had toiled through two titles must be called indoors by those for whom he had toiled and for whom he left his riches.
Aneto called a kindred meeting and told them what his father had said. No one was surprised. ‘Who would blame Amalu?’ they asked. ‘Has he not stood outside long enough?’ No, the fault was Ezeulu’s. He had seen to it that Amalu’s kinsmen would waste their substance in buying yams from neighbouring clans when their own crop lay locked in the soil. Many of these neighbouring people were already growing fat out of Umuaro’s misfortune. Every Nkwo market they brought new yams to Umuaro and sold them like anklets of ivory. At first only men without title, women and children ate these foreign yams. But as the famine grew more harsh and stringent someone pointed out that there was nothing in the custom of Umuaro forbidding a man of title from eating new yams grown on foreign earth; and in any case who was there when they were dug out to swear that they were new yams? This made people laugh with one side of their face. But if there was any man of title who took this advice and ate these yams he made sure that no one saw him. What many of them did do was to harvest the yams planted around their homestead to feed their wives and children. From ancient usage it had always been possible for a man to dig up a few homestead yams in times of severe famine. But today it was not just a few yams and, what was more, the homestead area crept farther and farther afield as the days passed.
The plight of Umuaro lay more heavily on Ezeulu and his family than other people knew. In the Chief Priest’s compound nobody could think of indulging in the many old and new evasions which allowed others to eat an occasional new yam be it local or foreign. Because they were more prosperous than most families they had a larger stock of old yams. But these had long shrivelled into tasteless fibre. Before cooking they had to be beaten with a heavy pestle to separate the wiry strands. Soon even these were finished.
But the heaviest load was on Ezeulu’s mind. He was used to loneliness. As Chief Priest he had often walked alone in front of Umuaro. But without looking back he had always been able to hear their flute and song which shook the earth because it came from a multitude of voices and the stamping of countless feet. There had been moments when the voices were divided as in the land dispute with Okperi. But never until now had he known them to die away altogether. Few people came to his hut now and those who came said nothing. Ezeulu wanted to hear what Umuaro was saying but nobody offered to tell and
he would not make anyone think he was curious. So with every passing day Umuaro became more and more an alien silence – the kind of silence which burnt a man’s inside like the blue, quiet, razor-edge flame of burning palmnut shells. Ezeulu writhed in the pain which grew and grew until he wanted to get outside his compound or even into the Nkwo market place and shout at Umuaro.
Because no one came near enough to him to see his anguish – and if they had seen it they would not have understood – they imagined that he sat in his hut gloating over the distress of Umuaro. But although he would not for any reason now see the present trend reversed he carried more punishment and more suffering than all his fellows. What troubled him most – and he alone seemed to be aware of it at present – was that the punishment was not for now alone but for all time. It would afflict Umuaro like an ogulu-aro disease which counts a year and returns to its victim. Beneath all anger in his mind lay a deeper compassion for Umuaro, the clan which long, long ago when lizards were in ones and twos chose his ancestor to carry their deity and go before them challenging every obstacle and confronting every danger on their behalf.
Perhaps if the silence in which Ezeulu was trapped had been complete he would have got used to it in time. But it had cracks through which now and again a teasing driblet of news managed to reach him: this had the effect of deepening the silence, like a pebble thrown in a cave.
Today Akuebue threw such a pebble. He was the only man among Ezeulu’s friends and kinsmen who still came now and again to see him. But when he came he sat in silence or spoke about unimportant things. Today, however, he could not but touch on a new development in the crisis which troubled him. Perhaps Akuebue was the only man in Umuaro who knew that Ezeulu was not deliberately punishing the six villages. He knew that the Chief Priest was helpless; that a thing greater than nte had been caught in nte’s trap. So whenever he came to visit Ezeulu he kept clear of the things nearest to their thoughts because they were past talking. But today he could not keep silence over the present move of the Christians to reap the harvest of Umuaro.
‘It troubles me,’ he said, ‘because it looks like the saying of our ancestors that when brothers fight to death a stranger inherits their father’s estate.’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ Ezeulu opened both palms towards his friend. ‘If any man in Umuaro forgets himself so far as to join them let him carry on.’
Akuebue shook his head in despair.
As soon as he left Ezeulu called Oduche and asked him if it was true that his people were offering sanctuary to those who wished to escape the vengeance of Ulu. Oduche said he did not understand.
‘You do not understand? Are your people saying to Umuaro that if anyone brings his sacrifice to your shrine he will be safe to harvest his yams? Now do you understand?’
‘Yes. Our teacher told them so.’
‘Your teacher told them so? Did you report it to me?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
Silence.
‘I said why did you not report it to me?’
For a long time father and son looked steadily at each other in silence. When Ezeulu spoke again his tone was calm and full of grief.
‘Do you remember, Oduche, what I told you when I sent you among those people?’
Oduche shifted his eyes to the big toe of his right foot which he placed a little forward.
‘Since you have become dumb let me remind you. I called you as a father calls his son and told you to go and be my eye and ear among those people. I did not send Obika or Edogo; I did not send Nwafo, your mother’s son. I called you by name and you came here – in this obi – and I sent you to see and hear for me. I did not know at that time that I was sending a goat’s skull. Go away, go back to your mother’s hut. I have no spirit for talking now. When I am ready to talk I shall tell you what I think. Go away and rejoice that your father cannot count on you. I say, go away from here, lizard that ruined his mother’s funeral.’
Oduche went out at the brink of tears. Ezeulu felt a slight touch of comfort.
At last another new moon came and he ate the twelfth yam. The next morning he sent word to his assistants to announce that the New Yam Feast would be eaten in twenty-eight days.
Throughout that day the drums beat in Amalu’s compound because the funeral feast was tomorrow. The sound reached every village in Umuaro to remind them; not that anyone needed reminding at such a time when men were as hungry as locusts.
In the night Ezeulu dreamt one of those strange dreams which were more than ordinary dreams. When he woke up everything stood out with the detail and clarity of daylight, like the one he had dreamt in Okperi.
He was sitting in his obi. From the sound of the voices the mourners seemed to be passing behind his compound, beyond the tall, red walls. This worried him a good deal because there was no path there. Who were these people then who made a path behind his compound? He told himself that he must go out and challenge them because it was said that unless a man wrestled with those who walked behind his compound the path never closed. But he lacked resolution and stood where he was. Meanwhile the voices and the drums and the flutes grew louder. They sang the song with which a man was carried to the bush for burial:
Look! a python
Look! a python
Yes, it lies across the way.
As usual the song came in different waves like gusts of storm following on each other’s heels. The mourners in front sang a little ahead of those in the middle near the corpse and these were again ahead of those at the rear. The drums came with this last wave.
Ezeulu raised his voice to summon his family to join him in challenging the trespassers but his compound was deserted. His irresolution turned into alarm. He ran into Matefi’s hut but all he saw were the ashes of a long-dead fire. He rushed out and ran into Ugoye’s hut calling her and her children but her hut was already falling in and a few blades of green grass had sprouted on the thatch. He was running towards Obika’s hut when a new voice behind the compound brought him to a sudden halt. The noise of the burial party had since disappeared in the distance. But beside the sorrow of the solitary voice that now wailed after them they might have been returning with a bride. The sweet agony of the solitary singer settled like dew on the head.
I was born when lizards were in ones and twos
A child of Idemili. The difficult tear-drops
Of Sky’s first weeping drew my spots. Being
Sky-born I walked the earth with royal gait
And mourners saw me coiled across their path.
But of late
A strange bell
Has been ringing a song of desolation:
Leave your yams and cocoyams
And come to school.
And I must scuttle away in haste
When children in play or in earnest cry:
Look! a Christian is on the way.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…
The singer’s sudden, demented laughter filled Ezeulu’s compound and he woke up. In spite of the cold harmattan he was sweating. But he felt an enormous relief to be awake and know that it had been a dream. The blind alarm and the life-and-death urgency fell away from it at the threshold of waking. But a vague fear remained because the voice of the python had ended as the voice of Ezeulu’s mother when she was seized with madness. Nwanyi Okperi, as they called her in Umuaro, had been a great singer in her youth, making songs for her village as easily as some people talked. In later life when her madness came on her these old songs and others she might have made forced themselves out in eccentric spurts through the cracks in her mind. Ezeulu in his childhood lived in fear of these moments when his mother’s feet were put in stocks, at the new moon.
The passage of Ogbazulobodo at that moment helped in establishing Ezeulu in the present. Perhaps it was the effect of the dream, but in all his life he had never heard a night spirit pass with this fury. It was like a legion of runners each covered from neck to ankle with strings of rattling ekpi
li. It came from the direction of the ilo and disappeared towards Nkwo. It must have seen signs of light in someone’s compound for it seemed to stop and cry: Ewo okuo! Ewo okuo! The offender whoever it was must have quickly put out the light, and the pacified spirit continued its flight and soon disappeared in the night.
Ezeulu wondered why it had not saluted him when it passed near his compound. Or perhaps it did before he woke up.
After the dream and the commotion of Ogbazulobodo’s passage he tried in vain to sleep again. Then they began to fire the cannon in Amalu’s place. Ezeulu counted nine claps separated by the beating of ekwe. By that time sleep had completely left his eyes. He got up and groped for the latch of his carved door and opened it. Then he took his matchet and his bottle of snuff from the head of the bed and groped his way to the outer room. There he felt the dry chill of the harmattan. Fortunately the fire had not died from the two big ukwa logs. He stoked it and produced a small flame.
No other person in the village could carry the ogbazulobodo as well as Obika. Whenever somebody else tried there was a big difference: either the speed was too slow or the words stuck in his throat. For the power of ike-agwu-ani, great though it was, could not change a crawling millipede into an antelope nor a dumb man into an orator. That was why in spite of the great grievance which Amalu’s family nursed against Ezeulu and his family Aneto still came to beg Obika to run as ogbazulobodo on the night before his father’s second burial.
‘I do not want to say no to you,’ said Obika after Aneto had spoken, ‘but this is not something a man can do when his body is not all his. Since yesterday I have been having a little fever.’
‘I do not know what it is but everybody you see nowadays sounds like a broken pot,’ said Aneto.