Tutuola does not waste any time exploring or elaborating on the offence itself. The offender/protagonist/narrator states the case simply and bluntly in those two short sentences on page one, gives an equally brief and precise background to it, and proceeds to spend the rest of the book on the punishment he undergoes in atonement for his offence and then a fairly brief coda on his restoration.
This disposition of emphases might appear somewhat uneven to the “modern” reader brought up on lengthy psychological interpretations of guilt. But Tutuola belongs primarily to humanity’s earlier tradition which could say simply: “Thou shalt not commit murder,” without necessarily having to explore what motivations might lurk in murky prenatal experience! But he also knows perhaps instinctively what the moderns are all about and so makes a gesture to them in this seemingly harmless piece of family background:
But when my father noticed that I could not do any work more than to drink, he engaged an expert palm-wine tapster for me; he had no other work more than to tap palm-wine every day.3
Again, Tutuola has packed into a simple and brief statement a huge social and ethical proposition: A man who will not work can only stay alive if he can somehow commandeer to his own use the labour of other people either by becoming a common thief or a slave-owner. Thanks to the affluence of a father (he “was the richest man in our town”), who is willing to indulge his son’s outrageous appetite, the Drinkard is enabled to buy a slave and to press him into a daily round of exploitative and socially useless work. The point is therefore made quite clearly—lest we be tempted to dismiss the Drinkard’s love of palm-wine as a personal drinking problem—that refusal to work cannot be a simple “self-regarding act” but is a social and moral offence of colossal consequence.
Tutuola’s moral universe is one in which work and play in their numerous variations complement each other. The good life, he seems to say, is that in which business and pleasure, striving and repose, giving and receiving, suffering and enjoyment, punishment and reprieve, poverty and wealth, have their place, their time and their measure. We give work and struggle; and in the end we take rest and fulfilment.
Nothing in all this is particularly original. What is so very impressive is Tutuola’s inventiveness in creating new and unexpected circumstances for the unfolding of the theme. For example, to make the point that those whose personal circumstance shields them from the necessity to work are really unfortunate and deprived and must do something to remedy their lack, Tutuola creates the rather dramatic and mysterious, and in the end quite terrible, personage, the Invisible Pawn, otherwise known as Give and Take, who comes to the Drinkard out of the night and tells how he has always heard the word “poor” without really knowing it and asks for help in order to make its acquaintance. Simbi, a character in Tutuola’s later book, has, like the Drinkard, a much too easy childhood and deals with it herself by going out in search of hardship. The Drinkard has too much appetite and too little wisdom to recognize his predicament unaided and has to be forced into dealing with it. I think that one should make the point here that Tutuola’s conception of poverty as creative experience is very different from the view which gave rise in the past to the profession of poverty in certain religions or in societies where the poor are encouraged to make a living out of the mendicant’s bowl. I suspect that Tutuola would consider these manifestations as gross and mistaken. For he is concerned not with poverty as an alternative way of life nor with affluence as necessarily evil. The creative potential of poverty in his vision is really no more than its ability to expose to the world of work those who might otherwise escape its rigours. The romantic fad of patched and dirty jeans among the young of affluent societies today which fakes poverty rather painlessly would not seem to fall into Tutuola’s scheme either.
Even a moderately careful reading of The Palm-Wine Drinkard reveals a number of instances where Tutuola, by consistently placing work and play in close sequence, appears quite clearly to be making a point.
In the episode of the Three Good Creatures we see how music relieves the Drinkard and his wife of the curse of their half-bodied baby. They have just danced non-stop for five days and find themselves unexpectedly rid of their intolerable burden. But right away they also realise that after the dance the life of struggle must be resumed and its details attended to:
Then after we had left these creatures and our half-bodied baby, we started a fresh journey … But we were penniless … then I thought within myself how could we get money for our food etc.4
And so the poet/drinkard who has just sung a lofty panegyric to the three personifications of music, and danced for five days without pausing even to eat, now suddenly becomes a practical man again concerned with money and “food etc.” He carves a paddle, turns himself into a canoe and his wife into a boatman. At the end of the first day they have garnered seven pounds, five shillings and three pence from ferrying passengers across the river. (One small point here: the reformed, or rather reforming, Drinkard is a magician and from time to time does exploit his supernatural powers, but he always has to combine this ability with honest-to-God work. So although he can turn himself into a canoe, he still needs to carve a real paddle!)
If this episode were the only instance in the book where Tutuola makes the point of restoring the ascendancy of work after a binge, one would probably not be justified in attaching particular significance to it, striking though it certainly is. But we do find Tutuola returning again and again to the same motif. In fact, later in the book there is another “special occasion” involving Drum, Dance and Song again. This time the merriment is to celebrate the deliverance of the Red People from an ancient curse and the founding of their new city. On this occasion even Drum, Dance and Song surpass themselves. Such is the power of their music that “people who had been dead for hundreds of years rose up and came to witness”:
The whole people of the new town, the whole people that rose up from the grave, animals, snakes, Spirits and other nameless creatures …5
join in the merriment. The cosmic upheaval unleashed by the three primogenitors of music is only quelled and natural order restored after they have been banished permanently from the world so that only the memory of their visit remains with mankind. Quite clearly the primal force of their presence has proved too strong for the maintenance of the world’s work. Immediately after their gigantic display and banishment Tutuola switches abruptly and dramatically to the theme of work to clinch the point:
So when these three fellows (Drum, Song and Dance) disappeared, the people of the new town went back to their houses … After I had spent a year with my wife in this new town, I became a rich man. Then I hired many labourers to clear bush for me and it was cleared up to three miles square … then I planted the seeds and grain.6
One could give other examples of Tutuola’s juxtaposition of work and play in The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Indeed, it becomes possible, I believe, to see the proper balance between them as a fundamental law of Tutuola’s world, and the consequences of its infringement as the central meaning of the book.
In addition to the primary balance between work and play in the grand design of The Palm-Wine Drinkard we notice also a subordinate or secondary system of interior balance between particularly harsh sectors of the Drinkard’s ordeal and recuperative periods of rest. Compared to the sectors of hardship the periods of respite are few and brief—suggesting a deficit of rest which is however fully justified by the Drinkard’s previous life of indolent frivolity. But though brief and sporadic these intervening episodes of rest/play manage to stand out in arresting prominence, as in the episodes of the White Tree, Wraith Island and Wrong Town. Of these the White Tree yields the richest harvest of interpretation and I should like to examine it a little closely.
The episode of the White Tree occurs immediately after the Drinkard and his wife have endured at the hands of the sadistic inhabitants of Unreturnable-heaven’s Town the most savage torture of the entire journey. It thus seems quite appropriate that afte
r such suffering the travellers should now enjoy their most elaborate rest. But the ease and luxury they do encounter in the White Tree surpass all expectations. Free food and drink in a cabaret atmosphere and a gambling casino are among the amenities of this European-style haven of conspicuous consumption. Predictably the Drinkard very quickly relapses into his old addictions:
I began to lavish all the drinks as I had been a great palm-wine drinkard in my town before I left.7
And naturally also he loses the will for the quest, so that when Faithful Mother tells him that it is time to resume his journey, he begs to be permitted to stay in the Tree for ever. When she tells him that this is impossible, he makes a second plea—for her to accompany them to the end of the journey. Again she says no. Totally disconsolate the Drinkard then contemplates a third possibility: death. But even that escape is also impossible for him or his wife because they have already sold their death.
I think that what Tutuola is saying here is very important for an understanding of the meaning of the story. The three ways in which the pilgrim might seek to evade the rigours of a dangerous quest are taken up in turn and rejected: he may not prolong the interlude of rest and enjoyment at the inn; he may not be assisted to arrive at his destination without the trouble of travelling; he may not opt out of the struggle through premature death.
As the Drinkard and his wife resume their journey there is even an oblique suggestion that their recent interlude in the White Tree has been of the insubstantial nature of a dream:
… it was just as if a person slept in his or her room, but when he woke up, he found himself or herself inside a big bush.8
If we accept this suggestion the implication may well be that play, though a necessary restorative, is not only a temporary but even an illusory escape from the reality of waking life, which is work with its attendant pain and suffering.
The Drinkard’s fault, as we said earlier, is that he attempted to subvert the order of things and put play in the place of work. He does this because he has an appetite which knows no limit or boundary. His punishment is exact and appropriate. He is launched on a quest in which he is obliged to wage adequate struggle to compensate for his previous idleness. While he is undergoing this learning process he is shown many positive examples from other people of what his own life should have been. We have already referred to the visit made to him one night by Give and Take. Then there is the example of Death himself at work in his garden; and there is the king of Wraith Island, who neglects to invite the smallest creature in his kingdom to join in communal work and is compelled to offer apologies to the little fellow for the slight.
But perhaps the most striking object lesson for the Drinkard is the terrible son born from his wife’s swollen thumb. Although the Drinkard may not know or acknowledge it, this child is like a distorting mirror reflecting his father’s image in even less flattering proportions. He is really Palm-Wine Drinkard Junior, in other words. He has the same insatiable appetite, the same lack of self-control and moderation, the same readiness to victimize and enslave others. He is of course an altogether nastier person than his father, but the essential ingredients of character are the same.
There is a secondary theme which runs beside that of work and play and finally meets and merges with it. This is what I shall call the theme of boundaries. A few incidents in the novel will elucidate this.
As the Drinkard and his wife leave Wraith Island we see the friendly inhabitants come out and accompany them to the frontier, and then stop. And we are told quite explicitly by the Drinkard that
… if it was in their power they would have led us to our destination, but they were forbidden to touch another creature’s land or bush.9
Similarly, at the end of the sojourn in the White Tree the travellers, disinclined, as we have seen, to resume their arduous quest, ask Faithful Mother to lead them to the end of the journey: “But she told us that she could not do such a request because she must not go beyond their boundary.”10
There are numerous other instances in the book where boundaries play a decisive role in the plot. For instance, a monster may be pursuing the travellers furiously and then suddenly and unexpectedly stop at some frontier such as a road. And we have a variant of the same basic prohibition in the case of Give and Take, who “could not do anything in the day time”—thus observing a boundary erected in time rather than space. And finally the Drinkard is to learn on setting foot at last on Dead’s Town that “it was forbidden for alives to come to the Dead’s Town”11—an example of what we might perhaps call an existential boundary!
What all this means is that here in this most unlikely of places, this jungle where everything seems possible and lawlessness might have seemed quite natural, there is yet a law of jurisdiction which sets a limit to the activity of even the most unpredictable of its rampaging demons. Because no monster however powerful is allowed a free run of the place, anarchy is held—precariously, but held—at bay, so that a traveller who perseveres can progress from one completed task to the domain of another and in the end achieve progressively the creative, moral purpose in the extraordinary but by no means arbitrary universe of Tutuola’s story.
This law of boundaries operates more subtly but no less powerfully at other levels in The Palm-Wine Drinkard. A boundary implies a duality of jurisdictions both of which must be honoured if there is to be order in the world. Tutuola suggests that promise and fulfilment constitute one such duality, for a promise is no less than a pledge for future work, a solemn undertaking to work later if you can play now. Consequently, we find that Tutuola never allows a broken promise to go unpunished. There are quite a few examples of such breach and punishment in the book but we shall only refer to the case of the Drinkard’s father-in-law. We may recall that this man has promised that if the Drinkard rescues his daughter he will direct him towards the goal of his quest. The Drinkard performs his part of the bargain, but the man, not wishing to part from his daughter, who has in the meantime married the Drinkard, begins to prevaricate. Consequently, the Drinkard tarries in his father-in-law’s town for three years. It is during this time that a terrible scourge of a child is born to the young couple, a child who begins straight away to terrorize the town. He causes so much havoc that the community conspire to burn him to ashes. After this experience the old man needs no further persuasion to give his son-in-law the information he has withheld for years in breach of his promise.
The principle of unfulfilled promise explored in this episode and elsewhere is developed further and given a new twist in the activities of that strange personage called Give and Take. You will recall that when we first encounter him he is meekly seeking to enlarge his experience by knowing poverty at first hand. The Drinkard obliges him by setting him up to taste the bitter life of an indentured labourer. Later, we learn to our great surprise that Give and Take is no ordinary fellow but “the head of all the Bush-creatures … and the most powerful in the world of the Bush-creatures.” This mysterious monarch of the jungle does get the experience he seeks but in the process establishes the principle behind his name: that a community which lets some invisible hand do its work for it will sooner or later forfeit the harvest. Give and Take proves a merciless exactor; for the labour he has given he takes not only the people’s crops but, in the conflict that ensues, their lives as well.
Finally, we can also apply the concept of boundaries to the dual jurisdictions of work and play. Because the Drinkard’s appetite knows no limit or boundary, he takes and takes without giving and allows play not just to transgress but wholly and totally to overrun the territory of work. His ordeal in the jungle of correction changes him from a social parasite to a leader and a teacher whose abiding gift to his people is to create the condition in which they can overcome want and reliance on magic, and return to the arts of agriculture and husbandry.
“Relevance” is a word bandied around very much in contemporary expression, but it still has validity nonetheless. In The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Tutuola is we
aving more than a tall, devilish story. He is speaking strongly and directly to our times. For what could be more relevant than a celebration of work today for the benefit of a generation and a people whose heroes are no longer makers of things and ideas but spectacular and insatiable consumers?
The first Equiano Memorial Lecture, University of Ibadan, 15 July 1977.
CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO could not enter or leave a room unremarked; yet he was not extravagant in manner or appearance. There was something about him not easy to define, a certain inevitability of drama and event. His vibrancy and heightened sense of life touched everyone he came into contact with. It is not surprising therefore that the young poet/artist Kevin Echeruo, who died even younger, soon after Okigbo, should have celebrated him as ogbanje, one of those mysterious, elusive and often highly talented beings who hurry to leave the world and to come again; or that Pol Ndu, who was to die in a road disaster, every gory detail of which he had predicted in a poem five years earlier, should call Okigbo a seer.
Okigbo’s exit was, for me, totally in character. I can see him clearly in his white “gown” and cream trousers among the vast crowd milling around my bombed apartment, the first spectacle of its kind in the Biafran capital in the second month of the war. I doubt that we exchanged more than a sentence or two. There were scores of sympathizers pressing forward to commiserate with me or praise God that my life and the lives of my wife and children had been spared. So I hardly caught more than a glimpse of him in that crowd and then he was gone like a meteor, forever.
That elusive impression is the one that lingers out of so many. As a matter of fact, he and I had talked for two solid hours that very morning. But in retrospect, that earlier meeting seems to belong to another time.