(I959)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things Fall Apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

--W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"



CHAPTER ONE



Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame
rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought
honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wres-
tler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino. He was called the
Cat because his back would never touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo
threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the found-
er of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.

The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath. Ama-
linze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Ev-
ery nerve and every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their
thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end
Okonkwo threw the Cat.

That was many years ago, twenty years or more, and during this time Okonkwo's
fame had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan. He was tall and huge, and his
bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look. He breathed heavily,
and it was said that, when he slept, his wives and children in their houses
could hear him breathe. When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground
and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody.
And he did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever
he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his
fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had had no patience with
his father.

Unoka, for that was his father's name, had died ten years ago. In his day he
was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow.
If any money came his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds
of palm-wine, called round his neighbours and made merry. He always said
that whenever he saw a dead man's mouth he saw the folly of not eating
what one had in one's lifetime. Unoka was, of course, a debtor, and he owed
every neighbour some money, from a few cowries to quite substantial amounts.

He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop. He wore a haggard and mourn-
ful look except when he was drinking or playing on his flute. He was very good
on his flute, and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the
harvest when the village musicians brought down their instruments, hung above
the fireplace. Unoka would play with them, his face beaming with blessedness
and peace. Sometimes another village would ask Unoka's band and their dancing
egwugwu to come and stay with them and teach them their tunes. They would go to
such hosts for as long as three or four markets, making music and feasting. Unoka
loved the good fare and the good fellowship, and he loved this season of the
year, when the rains had stopped and the sun rose every morning with dazzling
beauty. And it was not too hot either, because the cold and dry harmattan wind
was blowing down Irom the north. Some years the harmattan was very severe and a
dense haze hung on the atmosphere. Old men and children would then sit round log
fires, warming their bodies. Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites
that returned with the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to
them. He would remember his own childhood, how he had often wandered around look-
ing for a kite sailing leisurely against the blue sky. As soon as he found one
he would sing with his whole being, welcoming it back from its long, long jour-
ney, and asking it if it had brought home any lengths of cloth.

That was years ago, when he was young. Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure. He
was poor and his wife and children had barely enough to eat. People laughed at
him because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money
because he never paid back. But Unoka was such a man that he always succeeded
in borrowing more, and piling up his debts.

One day a neighbour called Okoye came in to see him. He was reclining on a
mud bed in his hut playing on the flute. He immediately rose and shook hands
with Okoye, who then unrolled the goatskin which he carried under his arm, and
sat down. Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden
disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk.

"I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his
guest.

"Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break
it," replied Okoye, passing back the disc.

"No, it is for you, I think," and they argued like this for a few moments be-
fore Unoka accepted the honour of breaking the kola. Okoye, meanwhile, took
the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.

As he broke the kola, Unoka prayed to their ancestors for life and health,
and for protection against their enemies. When they had eaten they talked a-
bout many things: about the heavy rains which were drowning the yams, about
the next ancestral feast and about the impending war with the village of Mb-
aino. Unoka was never happy when it came to wars. He was in fact a coward
and could not bear the sight of blood. And so he changed the subject and talked
about music, and his face beamed. He could hear in his mind's ear the blood-
stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe and the udu and the ogene, and he
could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them, decorating them with a
colourful and plaintive tune. The total effect was gay and brisk, but if one
picked out the flute as it went up and down and then broke up into short
snatches, one saw that there was sorrow and grief there.

Okoye was also a musician. He played on the ogene. But he was not a failure
like Unoka. He had a large barn full of yams and he had three wives. And now
he was going to take the Idemili title, the third highest in the land. It
was a very expensive ceremony and he was gathering all his resources together.
That was in fact the reason why he had come to see Unoka. He cleared his
throat and began: "Thank you for the kola. You may have heard of the title
I intend to take shortly."

Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye said the next half a dozen sentences in
proverbs. Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly,
and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Okoye was a great
talker and he spoke for a long time, skirting round the subject and then hit-
ting it finally. In short, he was asking Unoka to return the two hundred
cowries he had borrowed from him more than two years before. As soon as Uno-
ka understood what his friend was driving at, he burst out laughing. He laugh-
ed loud and long and his voice rang out clear as the ogene, and tears stood
in his eyes. His visitor was amazed, and sat speechless. At the end, Unoka
was able to give an answer between fresh outbursts of mirth.

"Look at that wall," he said, pointing at the far wall of his hut, which was
rubbed with red earth so that it shone. "Look at those lines of chalk," and
Okoye saw groups of short perpendicular lines drawn in chalk. There were
five groups, and the smallest group had ten lines. Unoka had a sense of the
dramatic and so he allowed a pause, in which he took a pinch of snuff and
sneezed noisily, and then he continued: "Each group there represents a debt
to someone, and each stroke is one hundred cowries. You see, I owe that
man a thousand cowries. But he has not come to wake me up in the morning
for it. I shall pay you, but not today. Our elders say that the sun will shine
on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them. I shall
pay my big debts first." And he took another pinch of snuff, as if that was
paying the big debts first. Okoye rolled his goatskin and departed.

When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt. Any
wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him? Fortunately, among these
people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth
of his father. Okonkwo was clearly cut out for great things. He was still
young but he had won fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages. He
was a wealthy farmer and had two barns full of yams, and had just married his
third wife. To crown it all he had taken two titles and had shown incredible
prowess in two inter-tribal wars. And so although Okonkwo was still young, he
was already one of the greatest men of his time. Age was respected among his
people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed
his hands he could eat with kings. Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands and
so he ate with kings and elders. And that was how he came to look after the
doomed lad who was sacrificed to the village of Umuofia by their neighbours
to avoid war and bloodshed. The ill-fated lad was called Ikemefuna.



CHAPTER TWO



Okonkwo had just blown out the palm-oil lamp and stretched himself on his bam-
boo bed when he heard the ogene of the town crier piercing the still night air.
Gome, gome, gome, gome, boomed the hollow metal. Then the crier gave his mess-
age, and at the end of it beat his instrument again. And this was the message.
Every man of Umuofia was asked to gather at the market place tomorrow morning.
Okonkwo wondered what was amiss, for he knew certainly that something was a-
miss. He had discerned a clear overtone of tragedy in the crier's voice, and even
now he could still hear it as it grew dimmer and dimmer in the distance.

The night was very quiet. It was always quiet except on moonlight nights. Dark-
ness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them. Chil-
dren were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits. Dangerous ani-
mals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake was never
called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string.
And so on this particular night as the crier's voice was gradually swallowed
up in the distance, silence returned to the world, a vibrant silence made
more intense by the universal trill of a million million forest insects.

On a moonlight night it would be different. The happy voices of children
playing in open fields would then be heard. And perhaps those not so young
would be playing in pairs in less open places, and old men and women would
remember their youth. As the Ibo say: "When the moon is shining the crip-
ple becomes hungry for a walk."

But this particular night was dark and silent. And in all the nine villages
of Umuofia a town crier with his ogene asked every man to be present tomor-
row morning. Okonkwo on his bamboo bed tried to figure out the nature of
the emergency - war with a neighbouring clan? That seemed the most likely
reason, and he was not afraid of war. He was a man of action, a man of war.
Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood. In Umuofia's latest war
he was the first to bring home a human head. That was his fifth head and he
was not an old man yet. On great occasions such as the funeral of a village
celebrity he drank his palm-wine from his first human head.

In the morning the market place was full. There must have been about ten
thousand men there, all talking in low voices. At last Ogbuefi Ezeugo stood
up in the midst of them and bellowed four times, "Umuofia kwenu," and on
each occasion he faced a different direction and seemed to push the air
with a clenched fist. And ten thousand men answered "Yaa!" each time. Then
there was perfect silence. Ogbuefi Ezeugo was a powerful orator and was al-
ways chosen to speak on such occasions. He moved his hand over his white
head and stroked his white beard. He then adjusted his cloth, which was
passed under his right arm-pit and tied above his left shoulder.

"Umuofia kwenu," he bellowed a fifth time, and the crowd yelled in answer.
And then suddenly like one possessed he shot out his left hand and pointed
in the direction of Mbaino, and said through gleaming white teeth firmly
clenched: "Those sons of wild animals have dared to murder a daughter of
Umuofia." He threw his head down and gnashed his teeth, and allowed a mur-
mur of suppressed anger to sweep the crowd. When he began again, the anger
on his face was gone, and in its place a sort of smile hovered, more ter-
rible and more sinister than the anger. And in a clear unemotional voice
he told Umuofia how their daughter had gone to market at Mbaino and had
been killed. That woman, said Ezeugo, was the wife of Ogbuefi Udo, and he
pointed to a man who sat near him with a bowed head. The crowd then shout-
ed with ainger and thirst for blood.

Many others spoke, and at the end it was decided to follow the normal
course of action. An ultimatum was immediately dispatched to Mbaino ask-
ing them to choose between war - on the one hand, and on the other the
offer of a young man and a virgin as compensation.

Umuofia was feared by all its neighbours. It was powerful in war and in
magic, and its priests and medicine men were feared in all the surround-
ing country. Its most potent war-medicine was as old as the clan itself.
Nobody knew how old. But on one point there was general agreement--the
active principle in that medicine had been an old woman with one leg. In
fact, the medicine itself was called agadi-nwayi, or old woman. It had
its shrine in the centre of Umuofia, in a cleared spot. And if anybody
was so foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see
the old woman hopping about.

And so the neighbouring clans who naturally knew of these things feared
Umuofia, and would not go to war against it without first trying a peace-
ful settlement. And in fairness to Umuofia it should be recorded that it
never went to war unless its case was clear and just and was accepted as
such by its Oracle - the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves. And there
were indeed occasions when the Oracle had forbidden Umuofia to wage a war.
If the clan had disobeyed the Oracle they would surely have been beaten,
because their dreaded agadi-nwayi would never fight what the Ibo call a
fight of blame.

But the war that now threatened was a just war. Even the enemy clan knew
that. And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the proud and
imperious emissary of war, he was treated with great honour and respect,
and two days later he returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young
virgin. The lad's name was Ikemefuna, whose sad story is still told in
Umuofia unto this day.

The elders, or ndichie, met to hear a report of Okonkwo's mission. At
the end they decided, as everybody knew they would, that the girl should
go to Ogbuefi Udo to replace his murdered wife. As for the boy, he belon-
ged to the clan as a whole, and there was no hurry to decide his fate.
Okonkwo was, therefore, asked on behalf of the clan to look after him in
the interim. And so for three years Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo's house-
hold.


Qkonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the
youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his
little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man.
But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of
weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and cap-
ricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces
of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was great-
er than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was
the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.
Even as a little boy he had resented his father's failure and weakness,
and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate
had told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first
came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could
also mean a man who had taken no title. And so Okonkwo was ruled by
one passion - to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One
of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.

During the planting season Okonkwo worked daily on his farms from cock-
crow until the chickens went to roost. He was a very strong man and
rarely felt fatigue. But his wives and young children were not as strong,
and so they suffered. But they dared not complain openly. Okonkwo's
first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old but was already causing his
father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was
how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant
nagging and beating. And so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth.

Okonkwo's prosperity was visible in his household. He had a large comp-
ound enclosed by a thick wall of red earth. His own hut, or obi, stood
immediately behind the only gate in the red walls. Each of his three
wives had her own hut, which together formed a half moon behind the obi.
The barn was built against one end of the red walls, and long stacks
of yam stood out prosperously in it. At the opposite end of the com-
pound was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment
to her hut for the hens. Near the barn was a small house, the "medicine
house" or shrine where Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal
god and of his ancestral spirits. He worshipped them with sacrifices
of kola nut, food and palmwine, and offered prayers to them on behalf
of himself, his three wives and eight children.


So when the daughter of Umuofia was killed in Mbaino, Ikemefuna came
into Okonkwo's household. When Okonkwo brought him home that day he
called his most senior wife and handed him over to her. "He belongs
to the clan," he told her. "So look after him."

"Is he staying long with us?" she asked.

"Do what you are told, woman," Okonkwo thundered, and stammered.
"When did you become one of the ndichie of Umuofia?"

And so Nwoye's mother took Ikemefuna to her hut and asked no more ques-
tions.

As for the boy himself, he was terribly afraid. He could not under-
stand what was happening to him or what he had done. How could he know
that his father had taken a hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia?
All he knew was that a few men had arrived at their house, conversing
with his father in low tones, and at the end he had been taken out
and handed over to a stranger. His mother had wept bitterly, but he
had been too surprised to weep. And so the stranger had brought him,
and a girl, a long, long way from home, through lonely forest paths.
He did not know who the girl was, and he never saw her again.



CHAPTER THREE



Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually
had. He did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to
inherit. The story was told in Umuofia, of how his father, Unoka, had
gone to consult the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves to find out why
he always had a miserable harvest.

The Oracle was called Agbala, and people came from far and near to
consult it. They came when misfortune dogged their steps or when they
had a dispute with their neighbours. They came to discover what the
future held for them or to consult the spirits of their departed fath-
ers.

The way into the shrine was a round hole at the side of a hill, just
a little bigger than the round opening into a henhouse. Worshippers
and those who came to seek knowledge from the god crawled on their
belly through the hole and found themselves in a dark, endless space
in the presence of Agbala. No ne had ever beheld Agbala, except his
priestess. But no one who had ever crawled into his awful shrine
had come out without the fear of his power. His priestess stood by
the sacred fire which she built in the heart of the cave and proclaim-
ed the will of the god. The fire did not burn with a flame. The glow-
ing logs only served to light up vaguely the dark figure of the priest-
ess.

Sometimes a man came to consult the spirit of his dead father or rel-
ative. It was said that when such a spirit appeared, the man saw it
vaguely in the darkness, but never heard its voice. Some people even
said that they had heard the spirits flying and flapping their wings
against the roof of the cave.

Many years ago when Okonkwo was still a boy his father, Unoka, had
gone to consult Agbala. The priestess in those days was a woman call-
ed Chika. She was full of the power of her god, and she was greatly
feared. Unoka stood before her and began his story.

"Every year," he said sadly, "before I put any crop in the earth, I
sacrifice a cock to Ani, the owner of all land. It is the law of our
fathers. I also kill a cock at the shrine of Ifejioku, the god of
yams. I clear the bush and set fire to it when it is dry. I sow the
yams when the first rain has fallen, and stake them when the young
tendrils appear. I weed --"

"Hold your peace!" screamed the priestess, her voice terrible as it
echoed through the dark void. "You have offended neither the gods
nor your fathers. And when a man is at peace with his gods and his
ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength
of his arm. You, Unoka, are known in all the clan for the weakness
of your machete and your hoe. When your neighbours go out with
their axe to cut down virgin forests, you sow your yams on exhaust-
ed farms that take no labour to clear. They cross seven rivers to
make their farms,- you stay at home and offer sacrifices to a reluct-
ant soil. Go home and work like a man."

Unoka was an ill-fated man. He had a bad chi or personal god, and
evil fortune followed him to the grave, or rather to his death, for
he had no grave. He died of the swelling which was an abomination to
the earth goddess. When a man was afflicted with swelling in the sto-
mach and the limbs he was not allowed to die in the house. He was car-
ried to the Evil Forest and left there to die. There was the story of
a very stubborn man who staggered back to his house and had to be car-
ried again to the forest and tied to a tree. The sickness was an abom-
ination to the earth, and so the victim could not be buried in her
bowels. He died and rotted away above the earth, and was not given
the first or the second burial. Such was Unoka's fate. When they car-
ried him away, he took with him his flute.

With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo did not have the start in life which
many young men had. He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even
a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages, he had begun even
in his father's lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous future.
It was slow and painful. But he threw himself into it like one possess-
ed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's contempt-
ible life and shameful death.


There was a wealthy man in Okonkwo's village who had three huge barns,
nine wives and thirty children. His name was Nwakibie and he had taken
the highest but one title which a man could take in the clan. It was
for this man that Okonkwo worked to earn his first seed yams.

He took a pot of palm-wine and a cock to Nwakibie. Two elderly neigh-
bours were sent for, and Nwakibie's two grown-up sons were also present
in his obi. He presented a kola nut and an alligator pepper, which were
passed round for all to see and then returned to him. He broke the nut
saying: We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest
and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what
is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one
says no to the other, let his wing break."

After the kola nut had been eaten Okonkwo brought his palm-wine from
the corner of the hut where it had been placed and stood it in the cen-
tre of the group. He addressed Nwakibie, calling him "Our father."

"Nna ayi," he said. "I have brought you this little kola. As our peo-
ple say, a man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own
greatness. I have come to pay you my respects and also to ask a favour.
But let us drink the wine first."

Everybody thanked Okonkwo and the neighbours brought out their drink-
ing horns from the goatskin bags they carried. Nwakibie brought down
his own horn, which was fastened to the rafters. The younger of his
sons, who was also the youngest man in the group, moved to the centre,
raised the pot on his left knee and began to pour out the wine. The
first cup went to Okonkwo, who must taste his wine before anyone else.
Then the group drank, beginning with the eldest man. When everyone
had drunk two or three horns, Nwakibie sent for his wives. Some of
them were not at home and only four came in.

"Is Anasi not in?" he asked them. They said she was coming. Anasi was
the first wife and the others ould not drink before her, and so they
stood waiting.

Anasi was a middle-aged woman, tall and strongly built. There was au-
thority in her bearing and she looked every inch the ruler of the wo-
menfolk in a large and prosperous family. She wore the anklet of her
husband's titles, which the first wife alone could wear.

She walked up to her husband and accepted the horn from him. She then
went down on one knee, drank a little and handed back the horn. She
rose, called him by his name and went back to her hut. The other wives
drank in the same way, in their proper order, and went away.

The men then continued their drinking and talking. Ogbuefi Idigo was
talking about the palm-wine tapper, Obiako, who suddenly gave up his
trade.

"There must be something behind it," he said, wiping the foam of
wine from his moustache with the back of his left hand. "There must
be a reason for it. A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing."
"Some people say the Oracle warned him that he would fall off a palm
tree and kill himself," said Akukalia.

"Obiako has always been a strange one," said Nwakibie. "I have heard
that many years ago, when his father had not been dead very long, he
had gone to consult the Oracle. The Oracle said to him, 'Your dead
father wants you to sacrifice a goat to him.' Do you know what he
told the Oracle? He said, 'Ask my dead father if he ever had a fowl
when he was alive.' Everybody laughed heartily except Okonkwo, who
laughed uneasily because, as the saying goes, an old woman is always
uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb. Okonkwo remembered
his own father.

At last the young man who was pouring out the wine held up half a
horn of the thick, white dregs and said, "What we are eating is fin-
ished."

"We have seen it," the others replied. "Who will drink the dregs?"
he asked. "Whoever has a job in hand," said Idigo, looking at Nwak-
ibie's elder son Igwelo with a malicious twinkle in his eye. Everyb-
ody agreed that Igwelo should drink the dregs. He accepted the half-
full horn from his brother and drank it. As Idigo had said, Igwelo
had a job in hand because he had married his first wife a month or
two before. The thick dregs of palm-wine were supposed to be good
for men who were going in to their wives.

After the wine had been drunk Okonkwo laid his difficulties before
Nwakibie.

"I have come to you for help," he said. "Perhaps you can already
guess what it is. I have cleared a farm but have no yams to sow. I
know what it is to ask a man to trust another with his yams, espec-
ially these days when young men are afraid of hard work. I am not
afraid of work. The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree to
the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did. I began
to fend for myself at an age when most people still suck at their
mothers' breasts. If you give me some yam seeds I shall not fail you."

Nwakibie cleared his throat. "It pleases me to see a young man like
you these days when our youth has gone so soft. Many young men have
come to me to ask for yams but I have refused because I knew they
would just dump them in the earth and leave them to be choked by
weeds. When i say no to them they think i am hard hearted. But it
is not so. Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot
without missing, he has learned to fly without perching. I have
learned to be stingy with my yams. But I can trust you. I know it
as I look at you. As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by
its look. I shall give you twice four hundred yams. Go ahead and
prepare your farm."

Okonkwo thanked him again and again and went home feeling happy.
He knew that Nwakibie would not refuse him, but he had not expect-
ed he would be so generous. He had not hoped to get more than four
hundred seeds. He would now have to make a bigger farm. He hoped
to get another four hundred yams from one of his father's friends
at Isiuzo.

Share-cropping was a very slow way of building up a barn of one's
own. After all the toil one only got a third of the harvest. But
for a young man whose father had no yams, there was no other way.
And what made it worse in Okonkwo's case was that he had to support
his mother and two sisters from his meagre harvest. And supporting
his mother also meant supporting his father. She could not be ex-
pected to cook and eat while her husband starved. And so at a very
early age when he was striving desperately to build a barn through
share-cropping Okonkwo was also fending for his father's house. It
was like pouring grains of corn into a bag full of holes. His mother
and sisters worked hard enough, but they grew women's crops, like
cocoyams, beans and cassava. Yam, the king of crops, was a man's
crop.


The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed-yams from Nwakibie
was the worst year in living memory. Nothing happened at its proper
time,- it was either too early or too late. It seemed as if the
world had gone mad. The first rains were late, and, when they came,
lasted only a brief moment. The blazing sun returned, more fierce
than it had ever been known, and scorched all the green that had
appeared with the rains. The earth burned like hot coals and roast-
ed all the yams that had been sown. Like all good farmers, Okonkwo
had begun to sow with the first rains. He had sown four hundred
seeds when the rains dried up and the heat returned. He watched the
sky all day for signs of rain clouds and lay awake all night. In
the morning he went back to his farm and saw the withering tendrils.
He had tried to protect them from the mouldering earth by making
rings of thick sisal leaves around them. But by the end of the day
the sisal rings were burned dry and grey. He changed them every
day, and prayed that the rain might fall in the night. But the
drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams were killed.

Some farmers had not planted their yams yet. They were the lazy
easy-going ones who always put off clearing their farms as long as
they could. This year they were the wise ones. They sympathised
with their neighbours with much shaking of the head, but inwardly
they were happy for what they took to be their own foresight.

Okonkwo planted what was left of his seed-yams when the rains fin-
ally returned. He had one consolation. The yams he had sown before
the drought were his own, the harvest of the previous year. He still
had the eight hundred from Nwakibie and the four hundred from his
father's friend. So he would make a fresh start.

But the year had gone mad. Rain fell as it had never fallen before.
For days and nights together it poured down in violent torrents,
and washed away the yam heaps. Trees were uprooted and deep gorges
appeared everywhere. Then the rain became less violent. But it went
from day to day without a pause. The spell of sunshine which always
came in the middle of the wet season did not appear. The yams put
on luxuriant green leaves, but every farmer knew that without sun-
shine the tubers would not grow. That year the harvest was sad, like
a funeral, and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and
rotting yams. One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged
himself.

Okonkwo remembered that tragic year with a cold shiver throughout
the rest of his life. It always surprised him when he thought of
it later that he did not sink under the load of despair. He knew
that he was a fierce fighter, but that year-had been enough to
break the heart of a lion.

"Since I survived that year," he always said, "I shall survive any-
thing." He put it down to his inflexible will.

His father, Unoka, who was then an ailing man, had said to him dur-
ing that terrible harvest month: "Do not despair .I know you will
not despair. You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can
survive a general failure because such failure does not prick its
pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone."

Unoka was like that in his last days. His love of talk had grown
with age and sickness. It tried Okonkwo's patience beyond words.



CHAPTER FOUR



"Looking at a king's mouth," said an old man, "one would think he
never sucked at his mother's breast." He was talking about Okonkwo,
who had risen so suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be
one of the lords of the clan. The old man bore no ill will towards
Okonkwo. Indeed he respected him for his industry and success. But
he was struck, as most people were, by Okonkwo's brusqueness in
dealing with less successful men. Only a week ago a man had contra-
dicted him at a kindred meeting which they held to discuss the next
ancestral feast. Without looking at the man Okonkwo had said: "This
meeting is for men." The man who had contradicted him had no titles.
That was why he had called him a woman. Okonkwo knew how to kill a
man's spirit.

Everybody at the kindred meeting took sides with Osugo when Okonkwo
called him a woman. The oldest man present said sternly that those
whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit
should not forget to be humble. Okonkwo said he was sorry for what
he had said, and the meeting continued.

But it was really not true that Okonkwo's palm-kernels had been crack-
ed for him by a benevolent spirit. He had cracked them himself. Any-
one who knew his grim struggle against poverty and misfortune could
not say he had been lucky. If ever a man deserved his success, that
man was okonkwo. At an early age he had achieved fame as the great-
est wrestler in all the land. That was not luck. At the most one
could say that his chi or personal god was good. But the Ibo people
have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonk-
wo said yes very strongly, so his chi agreed. And not only his chi
but his clan too, because it judged a man by the work or his hands.
That was why Okonkwo had been Chosen by the nine villages to carry
a message of war to their enemies unless they agreed to give up a
young man and a virgin to atone for the murder of Udo's wife. And
such was the deep fear that their enemies had for Umuofia that they
treated Okonkwo like a king and brought him a virgin who was given
to Udo as wife, and the lad Ikemefuna.

The elders of the clan had decided that Ikemefuna should be in Okon-
kwo's care for a while. But no one thought It would be as long as
three years. They seemed to forget all about him as soon as they had
taken the decision.

At first Ikemefuna was very much afraid. Once or twice he tried to
run away, but he did not know where to begin. He thought of his moth-
er and his three-year-old sister and wept bitterly. Nwoye's mother
was very kind to him and treated him as one of her own children. But
all he said was: "When shall I go home?" When Okonkwo heard that he
would not eat any food he came into the hut with a big stick in his
hand and stood over him while he swallowed his yams, trembling. A
few moments later he went behind the hut and began to vomit painful-
ly. Nwoye's mother went to him and placed her hands on his chest and
on his back. He was ill for three market weeks, and when he recov-
ered he seemed to have overcome his great fear and sadness.

He was by nature a very lively boy and he gradually became popular
in Okonkwo's household, especially with the children. Okonkwo's son,
Nwoye, who was two years younger, became quite inseparable from him
because he seemed to know everything. He could fashion out flutes
from bamboo stems and even from the elephant grass. He knew the
names of all the birds and could set clever traps for the little bush
rodents. And he knew which trees made the strongest bows.

Even Okonkwo himself became very fond of the boy - inwardly of course.
Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of
anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth
demonstrating was strength. He therefore treated Ikemefuna as he
treated everybody else - with a heavy hand. But there was no doubt
that he liked the boy. Sometimes when he went to big village meetings
or communal ancestral feasts he allowed Ikemefuna to accompany him,
like a son, carrying his stool and his goatskin bag. And, indeed, Ikeme-
funa called him father.


Ikemefuna came to Umuofia at the end of the carefree season between
harvest and planting. In fact he recovered from his illness only a
few days before the Week of Peace began. And that was also the year
Okonkwo broke the peace, and was punished, as was the custom, by E-
zeani, the priest of the earth goddess.

Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable anger by his youngest wife, who
went to plait her hair at her friend's house and did not return ear-
ly enough to cook the afternoon meal. Okonkwo did not know at first
that she was not at home. After waiting in vain for her dish he went
to her hut to see what she was doing. There was nobody in the hut
and the fireplace was cold.

"Where is Ojiugo?" he asked his second wife, who came out of her hut
to draw water from a gigantic pot in the shade of a small tree in
the middle of the compound.

"She has gone to plait her hair."

Okonkwo bit his lips as anger welled up within him.

"Where are her children? Did she take them?" he asked with unusual
coolness and restraint. "They are here," answered his first wife,
Nwoye's mother. Okonkwo bent down and looked into her hut. Ojiugo's
children were eating with the children of his first wife.

"Did she ask you to feed them before she went?"

"Yes," lied Nwoye's mother, trying to minimise Ojiugo's thought-
lessness.

Okonkwo knew she was not speaking the truth. He walked back to his
obi to await Ojiugo's return. And when she returned he beat her
very heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of
Peace. His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him
that it was the sacred week. But Okonkwo was not the man to stop
beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess.

Okonkwo's neighbours heard his wife crying and sent their voices
over the compound walls to ask what was the matter. Some of them
came over to see for themselves. It was unheard of to beat somebody
during the sacred week.

Before it was dusk Ezeani, who was the priest of the earth goddess,
Ani, called on Okonkwo in his obi. Okonkwo brought out kola nut
and placed it before the priest.

"Take away your kola nut. I shall not eat in the house of a man who
has no respect for our gods and ancestors."

Okonkwo tried to explain to him what his wife had done, but Ezeani
seemed to pay no attention. He held a short staff in his hand which
he brought down on the floor to emphasise his points.

"Listen to me," he said when Okonkwo had spoken. "You are not a
stranger in Umuofia. You know as well as I do that our forefathers
ordained that before we plant any crops in the earth we should ob-
serve a week in which a man does not say a harsh word to his neigh-
bour. We live in peace with our fellows to honour our great goddess
of the earth without whose blessing our crops will not grow. You
have committed a great evil." He brought down his staff heavily
on the floor. "Your wife was at fault, but even if you came into
your obi and found her lover on top of her, you would still have
committed a great evil to beat her." His staff came down again. "The
evil you have done can ruin the whole clan. The earth goddess whom
you have insulted may refuse to give us her increase, and we shall
all perish." His tone now changed from anger to command. "You will
bring to the shrine of Ani tomorrow one she-goat, one hen, a length
of cloth and a hundred cowries." He rose and left the hut.

Okonkwo did as the priest said. He also took with him a pot of palm-
wine. Inwardly, he was repentant. But he was not the man to go about
telling his neighbours that he was in error. And so people said he
had no respect for the gods of the clan. His enemies said his good
fortune had gone to his head. They called him the little bird nza
who so far forgot himself after a heavy meal that he challenged his
chi.

No work was done during the Week of Peace. People called on their
neighbours and drank palm-wine. This year they talked of nothing
else but the nso-ani which Okonkwo had committed. It was the first
time for many years that a man had broken the sacred peace. Even
the oldest men could only remember one or two other occasions some-
where in the dim past.

Ogbuefi Ezeudu, who was the oldest man in the village, was telling
two other men who came to visit him that the punishment for break-
ing the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan.

"It has not always been so," he said. "My father told me that he
had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was drag-
ged on the ground through the village until he died. But after a
while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which
it was meant to preserve."

"Somebody told me yesterday," said one of the younger men, "that
in some clans it is an abomination for a man to die during the Week
of Peace."

"It is indeed true," said Ogbuefi Ezeudu. "They have that custom
in Obodoani. If a man dies at this time he is not buried but cast
into the Evil Forest. It is a bad custom which these people observe
because they lack understanding. They throw away large numbers of
men and women without burial. And what is the result? Their clan
is full of the evil spirits of these unburied dead, hungry to do
harm to the living."


After the Week of Peace every man and his family began to clear
the bush to make new farms. The cut bush was left to dry and fire
was then set to it. As the smoke rose into the sky kites appeared
from different directions and hovered over the burning field in si-
lent valediction. The rainy season was approaching when they would
go away until the dry season returned.

Okonkwo spent the next few days preparing his seed-yams. He look-
ed at each yam carefully to see whether it was good for sowing.
Sometimes he decided that a yam was too big to be sown as one
seed and he split it deftly along its length with his sharp knife.
His eldest son, Nwoye, and Ikemefuna helped him by fetching the
yams in long baskets from the barn and in counting the prepared
seeds in groups of four hundred. Sometimes Okonkwo gave them a
few yams each to prepare. But he always found fault with their
effort, and he said so with much threatening.

"Do you think you are cutting up yams for cooking?" he asked
Nwoye. "If you split another yam of this size, I shall break your
jaw. You think you are still a child. I began to own a farm at
your age. And you," he said to Ikemefuna, "do you not grow yams
where you come from?"

Inwardly Okonkwo knew that the boys were still too young to un-
derstand fully the difficult art of preparing seed-yams. But he
thought that one could not begin too early. Yam stood for man-
liness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest
to another was a very great man indeed. Okonkwo wanted his son
to be a great farmer and a great man. He would stamp out the dis-
quieting signs of laziness which he thought he already saw in him.

"I will not have a son who cannot hold up his head in the gather-
ing of the clan. I would sooner strangle him with my own hands.
And if you stand staring at me like that," he swore, "Amadiora
will break your head for you!"

Some days later, when the land had been moistened by two or three
heavy rains, Okonkwo and his family went to the farm with baskets
of seed-yams, their hoes and machetes, and the planting began.
They made single mounds of earth in straight lines all over the
field and sowed the yams in them.

Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king. For three or
four moons it demanded hard work and constant attention from
cockcrow till the chickens went back to roost. The young tendrils
were protected from earth-heat with rings of sisal leaves. As the
rains became heavier the women planted maize, melons and beans be-
tween the yam mounds. The yams were then staked, first with little
sticks and later with tall and big tree branches. The women weeded
the farm three times at definite periods in the life of the yams,
neither early nor late.

And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that
even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to inter-
vene. He could not stop the rain now, just as he would not attempt
to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger
to his own health. The personal dynamism required to counter the
forces of these extremes of weather would be far too great for the
human frame.

And so nature was not interfered with in the middle of the rainy
season. Sometimes it poured down in such thick sheets of water that
earth and sky seemed merged in one grey wetness. It was then uncer-
tain whether the low rumbling of Amadiora's thunder came from above
or below. At such times, in each of the countless thatched huts of
Umuofia, children sat around their mother's cooking fire telling
stories, or with their father in his obi warming themselves from a
log fire, roasting and eating maize. It was a brief resting period
between the exacting and arduous planting season and the equally
exacting but light-hearted month of harvests.

Ikemefuna had begun to feel like a member of Okonkwo's family. He
still thought about his mother and his three-year-old sister, and he
had moments of sadness and depression But he and Nwoye had become
so deeply attached to each other that such moments became less fre-
quent and less poignant. Ikemefuna had an endless stock of folk
tales. Even those which Nwoye knew already were told with a new
freshness and the local flavour of a different clan. Nwoye remember-
ed this period very vividly till the end of his life. He even remem-
bered how he had laughed when Ikemefuna told him that the proper
name for a corn cob with only a few scattered grains was eze-agadi-
nwayi, or the teeth of an old woman. Nwoye's mind had gone immediate-
ly to Nwayieke, who lived near the udala tree. She had about three
teeth and was always smoking her pipe.

Gradually the rains became lighter and less frequent, and earth and
sky once again became separate. The rain fell in thin, slanting
showers through sunshine and quiet breeze. Children no longer stayed
indoors but ran about singing:

　　　"The rain is falling, the sun is shining,
　　　Alone Nnadi is cooking and eating."

Nwoye always wondered who Nnadi was and why he should live all by
himself, cooking and eating. In the end he decided that Nnadi must
live in that land of Ikemefuna's favourite story where the ant holds
his court in splendour and the sands dance forever.



CHAPTER FIVE



The Feast of the New Yam was approaching and Umuofia was in a festi-
val mood. It was an occasion for giving thanks to Ani, the earth god-
dess and the source of all fertility. Ani played a greater part in the
life of the people than any other diety. She was the ultimate judge
of morality and conduct. And what was more, she was in close communion
with the departed fathers of the clan whose bodies had been committed
to earth.

The Feast of the New Yam was held every year before the harvest be-
gan, to honour the earth goddess and the ancestral spirits of the clan.
New yams could not be eaten until some had first been offered to these
powers. Men and women, young and old, looked forward to the New Yam
Festival because it began the season of plenty--the new year. On the
last night before the festival, yams of the old year were all disposed
of by those who still had them. The new year must begin with tasty,
fresh yams and not the shrivelled and fibrous crop of the previous
year. All cooking pots, calabashes and wooden bowls were thoroughly
washed, especially the wooden mortar in which yam was pounded. Yam foo-
foo and vegetable soup was the chief food in the celebration. So much
of it was cooked that, no matter how heavily the family ate or how many
friends and relatives they invited from neighbouring villages, there
was always a large quantity of food left over at the end of the day.
The story was always told of a wealthy man who set before his guests
a mound of foo-foo so high that those who sat on one side could not
see what was happening on the other, and it was not until late in the
evening that one of them saw for the first time his in-law who had
arrived during the course of the meal and had fallen to on the oppo-
site side. It was only then that they exchanged greetings and shook
hands over what was left of the food.

The New Yam Festival was thus an occasion for joy throughout Umuofia.
And every man whose arm was strong, as the Ibo people say, was expect-
ed to invite large numbers of guests from far and wide. Okonkwo always
asked his wives' relations, and since he now had three wives his
guests would make a fairly big crowd.

But somehow Okonkwo could never become as enthusiastic over feasts
as most people. He was a good eater and he could drink one or two
fairly big gourds of palm-wine. But he was always uncomfortable sit-
ting around for days waiting for a feast or getting over it. He would
be very much happier working on his farm.

The festival was now only three days away. Okonkwo's wives had
scrubbed the walls and the huts with red earth until they reflected
light. They had then drawn patterns on them in white, yellow and dark
green. They then set about painting themselves with cam wood and draw-
ing beautiful black patterns on their stomachs and on their backs.
The children were also decorated, especially their hair, which was
shaved in beautiful patterns. The three women talked excitedly about
the relations who had been invited, and the children revelled in the
thought of being spoiled by these visitors from the motherland. Ikeme-
funa was equally excited. The New Yam Festival seemed to him to be a
much bigger event here than in his own village, a place which was al-
ready becoming remote and vague in his imagination.

And then the storm burst. Okonkwo, who had been walking about aim-
lessly in his compound in suppressed anger, suddenly found an outlet.

"Who killed this banana tree?" he asked.

A hush fell on the compound immediately.

"Who killed this tree? Or are you all deaf and dumb?"

As a matter of fact the tree was very much alive. Okonkwo's second
wife had merely cut a few leaves off it to wrap some food, and she
said so. Without further argument Okonkwo gave her a sound beating
and left her and her only daughter weeping. Neither of the other
wives dared to interfere beyond an occasional and tentative, "It is
enough, Okonkwo," pleaded from a reasonable distance.

His anger thus satisfied, Okonkwo decided to go out hunting. He had
an old rusty gun made by a clever blacksmith who had come to live
in Umuofta long ago. But although Okonkwo was a great man whose prow-
ess was universally acknowledged, he was not a hunter. In fact he
had not killed a rat with his gun. And so when he called Ikemefuna
to fetch his gun, the wife who had just been beaten murmured some-
thing about guns that never shot. Unfortunately for her Okonkwo heard
it and ran madly into his room for the loaded gun, ran out again and
aimed at her as she clambered over the dwarf wall of the barn. He
pressed the trigger and there was a loud report accompanied by the
wail of his wives and children. He threw down the gun and jumped
into the barn and there lay the woman, very much shaken and fright-
ened but quite unhurt. He heaved a heavy sigh and went away with the
gun.

In spite of this incident the New Yam Festival was celebrated with
great joy in Okonkwo's household. Early that morning as he offered
a sacrifice of new yam and palm oil to his ancestors he asked them
to protect him, his children and their mothers in the new year.

As the day wore on his in-laws arrived from three surrounding vill-
ages, and each party brought with them a huge pot of palm-wine. And
there was eating and drinking till night, when Okonkwo's in-laws
began to leave for their homes

The second day of the new year was the day of the great wrestling
match between Okonkwo's village and their neighbours. It was dif-
ficult to say which the people enjoyed more, the feasting and fellow-
ship of the first day or the wrestling Contest of the second. But
there was one woman who had no doubt whatever in her mind. She
was Okonkwo's second wife Ekwefi, whom he nearly shot. There was
no festival in all the seasons of the year which gave her as much
pleasure as the wrestling match. Many years ago when she was the
village beauty Okonkwo had won her heart by throwing the Cat in
the greatest contest within living memory. She did not marry him
then because he was too poor to pay her bride-price. But a few
years later she ran away from her husband and came to live with
Okonkwo. All this happened many years ago. Now Ekwefi was a
woman of forty-five who had suffered a great deal in her time.
But her love of wrestling contests was still as strong as it was
thirty years ago.

It was not yet noon on the second day of the New Yam Festival.
Ekwefi and her only daughter, Ezinma, sat near the fireplace wait-
ing for the water in the pot to boil. The fowl Ekwefi had just
killed was in the wooden mortar. The water began to boil, and in
one deft movement she lifted the pot from the fire and poured the
boiling water over the fowl. She put back the empty pot on the
circular pad in the corner, and looked at her palms, which were
black with soot. Ezinma was always surprised that her mother could
lift a pot from the fire with her bare hands.

"Ekwefi," she said, "is it true that when people are grown up,
fire does not burn them?" Ezinma, unlike most children, called
her mother by her name.

"Yes," replied Ekwefi, too busy to argue. Her daughter was only
ten years old but she was wiser than her years.

"But Nwoye's mother dropped her pot of hot soup the other day
and it broke on the floor."

Ekwefi turned the hen over in the mortar and began to pluck the
feathers.

"Ekwefi," said Ezinma, who had joined in plucking the feathers,
"my eyelid is twitching."

"It means you are going to cry," said her mother.

"No," Ezinma said, "it is this eyelid, the top one."

"That means you will see something."

"What will I see?" she asked.

"How can I know?" Ekwefi wanted her to work it out herself.

"Oho," said Ezinma at last. "I know what it is--the wrestling
match."

At last the hen was plucked clean. Ekwefi tried to pull out the
horny beak but it was too hard. She turned round on her low stool
and put the beak in the fire for a few moments. She pulled again
and it came off.

"Ekwefi!" a voice called from one of the other huts. It was
Nwoye's mother, Okonkwo's first wife.

"Is that me?" Ekwefi called back. That was the way people an-
swered calls from outside. They never answered yes for fear it
might be an evil spirit calling.

"Will you give Ezinma some fire to bring to me?" Her own child-
ren and Ikemefuna had gone to the stream.

Ekwefi put a few live coals into a piece of broken pot and Ezin-
ma carried it across the clean swept compound to Nwoye's mother.

"Thank you, Nma," she said. She was peeling new yams, and in a
basket beside her were green vegetables and beans.

"Let me make the fire for you," Ezinma offered.

"Thank you, Ezigbo," she said. She often called her Ezigbo,
which means "the good one."

Ezinma went outside and brought some sticks from a huge bundle
of firewood. She broke them into little pieces across the sole
of her foot and began to build a fire, blowing it with her breath.
"You will blow your eyes out," said Nwoye's mother, looking up
from the yams she was peeling. "Use the fan." She stood up and
pulled out the fan which was fastened into one of the rafters.
As soon as she got up, the troublesome nanny goat, which had been
dutifully eating yam peelings, dug her teeth into the real thing,
scooped out two mouthfuls and fled from the hut to chew the cud
in the goats' shed. Nwoye's mother swore at her and settled down
again to her peeling. Ezinma's fire was now sending up thick
clouds of smoke. She went on fanning it until it burst into
flames. Nwoye's mother thanked her and she went back to her mo-
ther's hut.

Just then the distant beating of drums began to reach them. It
came from the direction of the ilo, the village playground. Ev-
ery village had its own ilo which was as old as the village it-
self and where all the great ceremonies and dances took place.
The drums beat the unmistakable wrestling dance - quick, light
and gay, and it came floating on the wind.

Okonkwo cleared his throat and moved his feet to the beat of
the drums. It filled him with fire as it had always done from
his youth. He trembled with the desire to conquer and subdue.
It was like the desire for woman.

"We shall be late for the wrestling," said Ezinma to her mother.

"They will not begin until the sun goes down."

"But they are beating the drums."

"Yes. The drums begin at noon but the wrestling waits until
the sun begins to sink. Go and see if your father has brought
out yams for the afternoon."

"He has. Nwoye's mother is already cooking."

"Go and bring our own, then. We must cook quickly or we shall
be late for the wrestling."

Ezinma ran in the direction of the barn and brought back two
yams from the dwarf wall.

Ekwefi peeled the yams quickly. The troublesome nanny-goat
sniffed about, eating the peelings. She cut the yams into small
pieces and began to prepare a pottage, using some of the chick-
en. At that moment they heard someone crying just outside their
compound. It was very much like Obiageli, Nwoye's sister.

"Is that not Obiageli weeping?" Ekwefi called across the yard
to Nwoye's mother.

"Yes," she replied. "She must have broken her waterpot."

The weeping was now quite close and soon the children filed
in, carrying on their heads various sizes of pots suitable to
their years. Ikemefuna came first with the biggest pot, close-
ly followed by Nwoye and his two younger brothers. Obiageli
brought up the rear, her face streaming with tears. In her hand
was the cloth pad on which the pot should have rested on her
head.

"What happened?" her mother asked, and Obiageli told her mourn-
ful story. Her mother consoled her and promised to buy her her
another pot.

Nwoye's younger brothers were about to tell their mother the
true story of the accident when Ikemefuna looked at them stern-
ly and they held their peace. The fact was that Obiageli had
been making inyanga with her pot. She had balanced it on her
head, folded her arms in front of her and began to sway her
waist like a grown-up young lady. When the pot fell down and
broke she burst out laughing. She only began to weep when they
got near the iroko tree outside their compound.

The drums were still beating, persistent and unchanging. Their
sound was no longer a separate thing from the living village.
It was like the pulsation of its heart. It throbbed in the air,
in the sunshine, and even in the trees, and filled the village
with excitement.

Ekwefi ladled her husband's share of the pottage into a bowl
and covered it. Ezinma took it to him in his obi.

Okonkwo was sitting on a goatskin already eating his first
wife's meal. Obiageli, who had brought it from her mother's hut,
sat on the floor waiting for him to finish. Ezinma placed her
mother's dish before him and sat with Obiageli.

"Sit like a woman!" Okonkwo shouted at her. Ezinma brought
her two legs together and stretched them in front of her.

"Father, will you go to see the wrestling?" Ezinma asked af-
ter a suitable interval.

"Yes," he answered. "Will you go?"

"Yes." And after a pause she said: "Can I bring your chair
for you?"

"No, that is a boy's job." Okonkwo was specially fond of Ez-
inma. She looked very much like her mother, who was once the
village beauty. But his fondness only showed on very rare oc-
casions.

"Obiageli broke her pot today," Ezinma said.

"Yes, she has told me about it," Okonkwo said between mouth-
fuls.

"Father," said Obiageli, "people should not talk when they
are eating or pepper may go down the wrong way."

"That is very true. Do you hear that, Ezinma? You are older
than Obiageli but she has more sense."

He uncovered his second wife's dish and began to eat from it.
Obiageli took the first dish and returned to her mother's hut.
And then Nkechi came in, bringing the third dish. Nkechi was
the daughter of Okonkwo's third wife.

In the distance the drums continued to beat.



CHAPTER SIX



The whole village turned out on the ilo, men, women and child-
ren. They stood round in a huge circle leaving the centre of
the playground free. The elders and grandees of the village
sat on their own stools brought there by their young sons or
slaves. Okonkwo was among them. All others stood except those
who came early enough to secure places on the few stands which
had been built by placing smooth logs on forked pillars.

The wrestlers were not there yet and the drummers held the
field. They too sat just in front of the huge circle of spec-
tators, facing the elders. Behind them was the big and ancient
silk-cotton tree which was sacred. Spirits of good children
lived in that tree waiting to be born. On ordinary days young
women who desired children came to sit under its shade.

There were seven drums and they were arranged according to
their sizes in a long wooden basket. Three men beat them with
sticks, working feverishly from one drum to another. They were
possessed by the spirit of the drums.

The young men who kept order on these occasions dashed about,
consulting among themselves and with the leaders of the two
wrestling teams, who were still outside the circle, behind the
crowd. Once in a while two young men carrying palm fronds ran
round the circle and kept the crowd back by beating the ground
in front of them or, if they were stubborn, their legs and feet.

At last the two teams danced into the circle and the crowd
roared and clapped. The drums rose to a frenzy. The people surg-
ed forward. The young men who kept order flew around, waving
their palm fronds. Old men nodded to the beat of the drums and
remembered the days when they wrestled to its intoxicating
rhythm.

The contest began with boys of fifteen or sixteen. There were
only three such boys in each team. They were not the real wres-
tlers; they merely set the scene. Within a short time the first
two bouts were over. But the third created a big sensation even
among the elders who did not usually show their excitement so
openly. It was as quick as the other two, perhaps even quicker.
But very few people had ever seen that kind of wrestling before.
As soon as the two boys closed in, one of them did something
which no one could describe because it had been as quick as a
flash. And the other boy was flat on his back. The crowd roared
and clapped and for a while drowned the frenzied drums. Okonkwo
sprang to his feet and quickly sat down again. Three young men
from the victorious boy's team ran forward, carried him shoulder
high and danced through the cheering crowd. Everybody soon knew
who the boy was. His name was Maduka, the son of Obierika.

The drummers stopped for a brief rest before the real matches.
Their bodies shone with sweat, and they took up fans and began
to fan themselves. They also drank water from small pots and ate
kola nuts. They became ordinary human beings again, talking and
laughing among themselves and with others who stood near them.
The air, which had been stretched taut with excitement, relaxed
again. It was as if water had been poured on the tightened skin
of a drum. Many people looked around, perhaps for the first time,
and saw those who stood or sat next to them.

"I did not know it was you," Ekwefi said to the woman who had
stood shoulder to shoulder with her since the beginning of the
matches.

"I do not blame you," said the woman. "I have never seen such
a large crowd of people. Is it true that Okonkwo nearly killed
you with his gun?"

"It is true indeed, my dear friend. I cannot yet find a mouth
with which to tell the story."

"Your chi is very much awake, my friend. And how is my daugh-
ter, Ezinma?"

"She has been very well for some time now. Perhaps she has come
to stay."

"I think she has. How old is she now?"

"She is about ten years old."

"I think she will stay. They usually stay if they do not die
before the age of six."

"I pray she stays," said Ekwefi with a heavy sigh.

The woman with whom she talked was called Chielo. She was the
priestess of Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves. In
ordinary life Chielo was a widow with two children. She was very
friendly with Ekwefi and they shared a common shed in the market.
She was particularly fond of Ekwefi's only daughter, Ezinma,
whom she called "my daughter." Quite often she bought beancakes
and gave Ekwefi some to take home to Ezinma. Anyone seeing Chielo
in ordinary life would hardly believe she was the same person who
prophesied when the spirit of Agbala was upon her.


The drummers took up their sticks and the air shivered and grew
tense like a tightened bow.

The two teams were ranged facing each other across the clear
space. A young man from one team danced across the centre to the
other side and pointed at whomever he wanted to fight. They danc-
ed back to the centre together and then closed in.

There were twelve men on each side and the challenge went from
one side to the other. Two judges walked around the wrestlers and
when they thought they were equally matched, stopped them. Five
matches ended in this way. But the really exciting moments were
when a man was thrown. The huge voice of the crowd then rose to
the sky and in every direction. It was even heard in the surround-
ing villages. The last match was between the leaders of the teams.
They were among the best wrestlers in all the nine villages. The
crowd wondered who would throw the other this year. Some said Oka-
fo was the better man, others said he was not the equal of Ikezue.
Last year neither of them had thrown the other even though the
judges had allowed the contest to go on longer than was the custom.
They had the same style and one saw the other's plans beforehand.
It might happen again this year.

Dusk was already approaching when their contest began. The drums
went mad and the crowds also. They surged forward as the two young
men danced into the circle. The palm fronds were helpless in keep-
ing them back.

Ikezue held out his right hand. Okafo seized it, and they closed
in. It was a fierce contest. Ikezue strove to dig in his right heel
behind Okafo so as to pitch him backwards in the clever ege style.
But the one knew what the other was thinking. The crowd had sur-
rounded and swallowed up the drummers, whose frantic rhythm was
no longer a mere disembodied sound but the very heartbeat of the
people.

The wrestlers were now almost still in each other's grip. The
muscles on their arms and their thighs and on their backs stood
out and twitched. It looked like an equal match. The two judges
were already moving forward to separate them when Ikezue, now des-
perate, went down quickly on one knee in an attempt to fling his
man backwards over his head. It was a sad miscalculation. Quick
as the lightning of Amadiora, Okafo raised his right leg and swung
it over his rival's head. The crowd burst into a thunderous roar.
Okafo was swept off his feet by his supporters and carried home
shoulder high. They sang his praise and the young women clapped
their hands:

"Who will wrestle for our village?
Okafo will wrestle for our village.
Has he thrown a hundred men?
He has thrown four hundred men.
Has he thrown a hundred Cats?
He has thrown four hundred Cats.
Then send him word to fight for us."



CHAPTER SEVEN



For three years Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo's household and the el-
ders of Umuofia seemed to have forgotten about him. He grew rapidly
like a yam tendril in the rainy season, and was full of the sap of
life. He had become wholly absorbed into his new family. He was
like an elder brother to Nwoye, and from the very first seemed to
have kindled a new fire in the younger boy. He made him feel grown-
up, and they no longer spent the evenings in his mother's hut while
she cooked, but now sat with Okonkwo in his obi, or watched him as
he tapped his palm tree for the evening wine. Nothing pleased Nwoye
now more than to be sent for by his mother or another of his fa-
ther's wives to do one of those difficult and masculine tasks in
the home, like splitting wood, or pounding food. On receiving such
a message through a younger brother or sister, Nwoye would feign
annoyance and grumble aloud about women and their troubles.

Okonkwo was inwardly pleased at his son's development, and he knew
it was due to Ikemefuna. He wanted Nwoye to grow into a tough young
man capable of ruling his father's household when he was dead
and gone to join the ancestors. He wanted him to be a prosperous
man, having enough in his barn to feed the ancestors with regular
sacrifices. And so he was always happy when he heard him grumbl-
ing about women. That showed that in time he would be able to con-
trol his women-folk. No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was
unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women)
he was not really a man. He was like the man in the song who had
ten and one wives and not enough soup for his foo-foo.

So Okonkwo encouraged the boys to sit with him in his obi, and
he told them stories of the land--masculine stories of violence
and bloodshed. Nwoye knew that it was right to be masculine and
to be violent, but somehow he still preferred the stories that
his mother used to tell, and which she no doubt still told to
her younger children--stories of the tortoise and his wily ways,
and of the bird eneke-nti-oba who challenged the whole world to
a wrestling contest and was finally thrown by the cat. He remem-
bered the story she often told of the quarrel between Earth and
Sky long ago, and how Sky withheld rain for seven years, until
crops withered and the dead could not be buried because the hoes
broke on the stony Earth. At last Vulture was sent to plead with
Sky, and to soften his heart with a song of the suffering of the
sons of men. Whenever Nwoye's mother sang this song he felt car-
ried away to the distant scene in the sky where Vulture, Earth's
emissary, sang for mercy. At last Sky was moved to pity, and he
gave to Vulture rain wrapped in leaves of coco-yam. But as he
flew home his long talon pierced the leaves and the rain fell as
it had never fallen before. And so heavily did it rain on Vulture
that he did not return to deliver his message but flew to a dis-
tant land, from where he had espied a fire. And when he got there
he found it was a man making a sacrifice. He warmed himself in
the fire and ate the entrails.

That was the kind of story that Nwoye loved. But he now knew
that they were for foolish women and children, and he knew that
his father wanted him to be a man. And so he feigned that he no
longer cared for women's stories. And when he did this he saw
that his father was pleased, and no longer rebuked him or beat
him. So Nwoye and Ikemefuna would listen to Okonkwo's stories
about tribal wars, or how, years ago, he had stalked his victim,
overpowered him and obtained his first human head. And as he
told them of the past they sat in darkness or the dim glow of
logs, waiting for the women to finish their cooking. When they
finished, each brought her bowl of foo-foo and bowl of soup to
her husband. An oil lamp was lit and Okonkwo tasted from each
bowl, and then passed two shares to Nwoye and Ikemefuna.

In this way the moons and the seasons passed. And then the lo-
custs came. It had not happened for many a long year. The el-
ders said locusts came once in a generation, reappeared every
year for seven years and then disappeared for another lifetime.
They went back to their caves in a distant land, where they
were guarded by a race of stunted men. And then after another
lifetime these men opened the caves again and the locusts came
to Umuofia.

They came in the cold harmattan season after the harvests had
been gathered, and ate up all the wild grass in the fields.

Okonkwo and the two boys were working on the red outer walls
of the compound. This was one of the lighter tasks of the af-
ter-harvest season. A new cover of thick palm branches and
palm leaves was set on the walls to protect them from the next
rainy season. Okonkwo worked on the outside of the wall and
the boys worked from within. There were little holes from one
side to the other in the upper levels of the wall, and through
these Okonkwo passed the rope, or tie-tie, to the boys and
they passed it round the wooden stays and then back to him,-
and in this way the cover was strengthened on the wall.

The women had gone to the bush to collect firewood, and the
little children to visit their playmates in the neighbouring
compounds. The harmattan was in the air and seemed to distill
a hazy feeling of sleep on the world. Okonkwo and the boys
worked in complete silence, which was only broken when a new
palm frond was lifted on to the wall or when a busy hen moved
dry leaves about in her ceaseless search for food. And then
quite suddenly a shadow fell on the world, and the sun seemed
hidden behind a thick cloud. Okonkwo looked up from his work
and wondered if it was going to rain at such an unlikely time
of the year. But almost immediately a shout of joy broke out
in all directions, and Umuofia, which had dozed in the noon-
day haze, broke into life and activity.

"Locusts are descending," was joyfully chanted everywhere,
and men, women and children left their work or their play and
ran into the open to see the unfamiliar sight. The locusts
had not come for many, many years, and only the old people
had seen them before.

At first, a fairly small swarm came. They were the harbing-
ers sent to survey the land. And then appeared on the horizon
a slowly-moving mass like a boundless sheet of black cloud
drifting towards Umuofia. Soon it covered half the sky, and
the solid mass was now broken by tiny eyes of light like shin-
ing star dust. It was a tremendous sight, full of power and
beauty.

Everyone was now about, talking excitedly and praying that
the locusts should camp in Umuofia for the night. For although
locusts had not visited Umuofia for many years, everybody
knew by instinct that they were very good to eat. And at
last the locusts did descend. They settled on every tree and
on every blade of grass, they settled on the roofs and cover-
ed the bare ground. Mighty tree branches broke away under
them, and the whole country became the brown-earth colour of
the vast, hungry swarm.

Many people went out with baskets trying to catch them, but
the elders counselled patience till nightfall. And they were
right. The locusts settled in the bushes for the night and
their wings became wet with dew. Then all Umuofia turned out
in spite of the cold harmattan, and everyone filled his bags
and pots with locusts. The next morning they were roasted in
clay pots and then spread in the sun until they became dry
and brittle. And for many days this rare food was eaten with
solid palm-oil.

Okonkwo sat in his obi crunching happily with Ikemefuna and
Nwoye, and drinking palm-wine copiously, when Ogbuefi Ezeudu
came in. Ezeudu was the oldest man in this quarter of Umuofia.
He had been a great and fearless warrior in his time, and was
now accorded great respect in all the clan. He refused to
join in the meal, and asked Okonkwo to have a word with him
outside. And so they walked out together, the old man support-
ing himself with his stick. When they were out of earshot, he
said to Okonkwo:

"That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death."
Okonkwo was surprised, and was about to say something when
the old man continued:

"Yes, Umuofia has decided to kill him. The Oracle of the
Hills and the Caves has pronounced it. They will take him
outside Umuofia as is the custom, and kill him there. But I
want you to have nothing to do with it. He calls you his fa-
ther."

The next day a group of elders from all the nine villages
of Umuofia came to Okonkwo's house early in the morning, and
before they began to speak in low tones Nwoye and Ikemefuna
were sent out. They did not stay very long, but when they
went away Okonkwo sat still for a very long time supporting
his chin in his palms. Later in the day he called Ikemefuna
and told him that he was to be taken home the next day.
Nwoye overheard it and burst into tears, whereupon his fa-
ther beat him heavily. As for Ikemefuna, he was at a loss.
His own home had gradually become very faint and distant.
He still missed his mother and his sister and would be very
glad to see them. But somehow he knew he was not going to
see them. He remembered once when men had talked in low
tones with his father, and it seemed now as if it was hap-
pening all over again.

Later, Nwoye went to his mother's hut and told her that I-
kemefuna was going home. She immediately dropped her pestle
with which she was grinding pepper, folded her arms across
her breast and sighed, "Poor child."

The next day, the men returned with a pot of wine. They
were all fully dressed as if they were going to a big clan
meeting or to pay a visit to a neighbouring village. They
passed their cloths under the right arm-pit, and hung their
goatskin bags and sheathed machetes over their left shoul-
ders. Okonkwo got ready quickly and the party set out with
Ikemefuna carrying the pot of wine. A deathly silence des-
cended on Okonkwo's compound. Even the very little children
seemed to know. Throughout that day Nwoye sat in his mo-
ther's hut and tears stood in his eyes.

At the beginning of their journey the men of Umuofia talk-
ed and laughed about the locusts, about their women, and
about some effeminate men who had refused to come with them.
But as they drew near to the outskirts of Umuofia silence
fell upon them too.

The sun rose slowly to the centre of the sky, and the dry,
sandy footway began to throw up the heat that lay buried
in it. Some birds chirruped in the forests around. The men
trod dry leaves on the sand. All else was silent. Then from
the distance came the faint beating of the ekwe. It rose
and faded with the wind--a peaceful dance from a distant
clan.

"It is an ozo dance," the men said among themselves. But
no one was sure where it was coming from. Some said Ezimi-
li, others Abame or Aninta. They argued for a short while
and fell into silence again, and the elusive dance rose and
fell with the wind. Somewhere a man was taking one of the
titles of his clan, with music and dancing and a great feast.

The footway had now become a narrow line in the heart of
the forest. The short trees and sparse undergrowth which
surrounded the men's village began to give way to giant
trees and climbers which perhaps had stood from the begin-
ning of things, untouched by the axe and the bush-fire.
The sun breaking through their leaves and branches threw
a pattern of light and shade on the sandy footway.

Ikemefuna heard a whisper close behind him and turned
round sharply. The man who had whispered now called out
aloud, urging the others to hurry up.

"We still have a long way to go," he said. Then he and
another man went before Ikemefuna and set a faster pace.

Thus the men of Umuofia pursued their way, armed with
sheathed machetes, and Ikemefuna, carrying a pot of palm-
wine on his head, walked in their midst. Although he had
felt uneasy at first, he was not afraid now. Okonkwo walk-
ed behind him. He could hardly imagine that Okonkwo was
not his real father. He had never been fond of his real
father, and at the end of three years he had become very
distant indeed. But his mother and his three-year-old sis-
ter... of course she would not be three now, but six.
Would he recognise her now? She must have grown quite big.
How his mother would weep for joy, and thank Okonkwo for
having looked after him so well and for bringing him back.
She would want to hear everything that had happened to
him in all these years. Could he remember them all? He
would tell her about Nwoye and his mother, and about the
locusts... Then quite suddenly a thought came upon him.
His mother might be dead. He tried in vain to force the
thought out of his mind. Then he tried to settle the mat-
ter the way he used to settle such matters when he was a
little boy. He still remembered the song:

　　　Eze elina, elina!
　　　　　　　　　Sala
　　　Eze ilikwa ya
　　　Ikwaba akwa ogholi
　　　Ebe Danda nechi eze Ebe
　　　Uzuzu nete egwu
　　　　　　　　　Sala

He sang it in his mind, and walked to its beat. If the
song ended on his right foot, his mother was alive. If it
ended on his left, she was dead. No, not dead, but ill.
It ended on the right. She was alive and well. He sang
the song again, and it ended on the left. But the second
time did not count. The first voice gets to Chukwu, or
God's house. That was a favourite saying of children. Ik-
emefuna felt like a child once more. It must be the
thought of going home to his mother.

One of the men behind him cleared his throat. Ikemefuna
looked back, and the man growled at him to go on and not
stand looking back. The way he said it sent cold fear down
Ikemefuna's back. His hands trembled vaguely on the black
pot he carried. Why had Okonkwo withdrawn to the rear?
Ikemefuna felt his legs melting under him. And he was a-
fraid to look back.

As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised
his machete, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. The
pot fell and broke in the sand. He heard Ikemefuna cry,
"My father, they have killed me!" as he ran towards him.
Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down.
He was afraid of being thought weak.


As soon as his father walked in, that night, Nwoye knew
that Ikemefuna had been killed, and something seemed to
give way inside him, like the snapping of a tightened bow.
He did not cry. He just hung limp. He had had the same
kind of feeling not long ago, during the last harvest sea-
son. Every child loved the harvest season. Those who were
big enough to carry even a few yams in a tiny basket went
with grown-ups to the farm. And if they could not help in
digging up the yams, they could gather firewood together
for roasting the ones that would be eaten there on the
farm. This roasted yam soaked in red palm-oil and eaten
in the open farm was sweeter than any meal at home. It was
after such a day at the farm during the last harvest that
Nwoye had felt for the first time a snapping inside him
like the one he now felt. They were returning home with
baskets of yams from a distant farm across the stream when
they heard the voice of an infant crying in the thick forest.
A sudden hush had fallen on the women, who had been talking,
and they had quickened their steps. Nwoye had heard that
twins were put in earthenware pots and thrown away in the
forest, but he had never yet come across them. A vague chill
had descended on him and his head had seemed to swell, like
a solitary walker at night who passes an evil spirit an the
way. Then something had given way inside him. It descended
on him again, this feeling, when his father walked in that
night after killing Ikemefuna.



CHAPTER EIGHT



Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death
of Ikemefuna. He drank palm-wine from morning till night,
and his eyes were red and fierce like the eyes of a rat when
it was caught by the tail and dashed against the floor. He
called his son, Nwoye, to sit with him in his obi. But the
boy was afraid of him and slipped out of the hut as soon as
he noticed him dozing.

He did not sleep at night. He tried not to think about Ike-
mefuna; but the more he tried the more he thought about him.
Once he got up from bed and walked about his compound. But
he was so weak that his legs could hardly carry him. He felt
like a drunken giant walking with the limbs of a mosquito.
Now and then a cold shiver descended on his head and spread
down his body.

On the third day he asked his second wife, Ekwefi, to roast
plantains for him. She prepared it the way he liked--with
slices of oil-bean and fish.

"You have not eaten for two days," said his daughter Ezinma
when she brought the food to him. "So you must finish this."
She sat down and stretched her legs in front of her. Okon-
kwo ate the food absentmindedly. 'She should have been a
boy,' he thought as he looked at his ten-year-old daughter.
He passed her a piece of fish.

"Go and bring me some cold water," he said. Ezinma rushed
out of the hut, chewing the fish, and soon returned with a
bowl of cool water from the earthen pot in her mother's hut.

Okonkwo took the bowl from her and gulped the water down.
He ate a few more pieces of plaintain and pushed the dish
aside.

"Bring me my bag," he asked, and Ezinma brought his goatsk
in bag from the far end of the hut. He searched in it for his
snuff-bottle. It was a deep bag and took almost the whole
length of his arm. It contained other things apart from his
snuff-bottle. There was a drinking horn in it, and also a
drinking gourd, and they knocked against each other as he
searched. When he brought out the snuff-bottle he tapped it
a few times against his knee-cap before taking out some snuff
on the palm of his left hand. Then he remembered that he had
not taken out his snuff-spoon. He searched his bag again and
brought out a small, flat, ivory spoon, with which he carried
the brown snuff to his nostrils.

Ezinma took the dish in one hand and the empty water bowl
in the other and went back to her mother's hut. "She should
have been a boy," Okonkwo said to himself again. His mind
went back to Ikemefuna and he shivered. If only he could
find some work to do he would be able to forget. But it was
the season of rest between the harvest and the next planting
season. The only work that men did at this time was covering
the walls of their compound with new palm fronds. And Okonkwo
had already done that. He had finished it on the very day the
locusts came, when he had worked on one side of the wall and
Ikemefuna and Nwoye on the other.

"When did you become a shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked
himself, "you, who are known in all the nine villages for
your valour in war? How can a man who has killed five men in
battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their num-
ber? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed."

He sprang to his feet, hung his goatskin bag on his shoulder
and went to visit his friend, Obierika.

Obierika was sitting outside under the shade of an orange tree
making thatches from leaves of the raffia-palm. He exchanged
greetings with Okonkwo and led the way into his obi.

"I was coming over to see you as soon as I finished that
thatch," he said, rubbing off the grains of sand that clung
to his thighs.

"Is it well?" Okonkwo asked.

"Yes," replied Obierika. "My daughter's suitor is coming to-
day and I hope we will clinch the matter of the bride-price.
I want you to be there."

Just then Obierika's son, Maduka, came into the obi from out-
side, greeted Okonkwo and turned towards the compound,

"Come and shake hands with me," Okonkwo said to the lad.
"Your wrestling the other day gave me much happiness." The
boy smiled, shook hands with Okonkwo and went into the
compound.

"He will do great things," Okonkwo said. "If I had a son like
him I should be happy. I am worried about Nwoye. A bowl of
pounded yams can throw him in a wrestling match. His two young-
er brothers are more promising. But I can tell you, Obierika,
that my children do not resemble me. Where are the young suckers
that will grow when the old banana tree dies? If Ezinma had
been a boy I would have been happier. She has the right spirit."

"You worry yourself for nothing," said Obierika. "The child-
ren are still very young."

"Nwoye is old enough to impregnate a woman. At his age I was
already fending for myself. No, my friend, he is not too young.
A chick that will grow into a cock can be spotted the very day
it hatches. I have done my best to make Nwoye grow into a man,
but there is too much of his mother in him."

"Too much of his grandfather," Obierika thought, but he did
not say it. The same thought also came to Okonkwo's mind. But
he had long learned how to lay that ghost. Whenever the thought
of his father's weakness and failure troubled him he expelled
it by thinking about his own strength and success. And so he
did now. His mind went to his latest show of manliness.

"I cannot understand why you refused to come with us to kill
that boy," he asked Obierika.

"Because I did not want to," Obierika replied sharply. "I had
something better to do."

"You sound as if you question the authority and the decision
of the Oracle, who said he should die."

"I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to car-
ry out its decision."

"But someone had to do it. If we were all afraid of blood, it
would not be done. And what do you think the Oracle would do
then?"

"You know very well, Okonkwo, that I am not afraid of blood
and if anyone tells you that I am, he is telling a lie. And let
me tell you one thing, my friend. If I were you I would have
stayed at home. What you have done will not please the Earth.
It is the kind of action for which the goddess wipes out whole
families."

"The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her messenger,"
Okonkwo said. "A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece
of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm."

"That is true," Obierika agreed. "But if the Oracle said that
my son should be killed I would neither dispute it nor be the
one to do it."

They would have gone on arguing had Ofoedu not come in just
then. It was clear from his twinkling eyes that he had import-
ant news. But it would be impolite to rush him. Obierika offer-
ed him a lobe of the kola nut he had broken with Okonkwo. Ofoedu
ate slowly and talked about the locusts. When he finished his
kola nut he said: "The things that happen these days are very
strange."

"What has happened?" asked Okonkwo.

"Do you know Ogbuefi Ndulue?" Ofoedu asked.

"Ogbuefi Ndulue of Ire village," Okonkwo and Obierika said to-
gether.

"He died this morning," said Ofoedu.

"That is not strange. He was the oldest man in Ire," said Ob-
ierika.

"You are right," Ofoedu agreed. "But you ought to ask why the
drum has not beaten to tell Umuofia of his death."

"Why?" asked Obierika and Okonkwo together.

"That is the strange part of it. You know his first wife who
walks with a stick?"

"Yes. She is called Ozoemena."

"That is so," said Ofoedu. "Ozoemena was, as you know, too old
to attend Ndulue during his illness. His younger wives did that.
When he died this morning, one of these women went to Ozoemena's
hut and told her. She rose from her mat, took her stick and walk-
ed over to the obi. She knelt on her knees and hands at the
threshold and called her husband, who was laid on a mat. 'Ogbuefi
Ndulue,' she called, three times, and went back to her hut. When
the youngest wife went to call her again to be present at the
washing of the body, she found her lying on the mat, dead."

"That is very strange, indeed," said Okonkwo. "They will put off
Ndulue's funeral until his wife has been buried."

"That is why the drum has not been beaten to tell Umuofla."

"It was always said that Ndulue and Ozoemena had one mind," said
Obierika. "I remember when I was a young boy there was a song a-
bout them. He could not do anything without telling her."

"I did not know that," said Okonkwo. "I thought he was a strong
man in his youth."

"He was indeed," said Ofoedu.

Okonkwo shook his head doubtfully.

"He led Umuofia to war in those days," said Obierika.

Okonkwo was beginning to feel like his old self again. All that
he required was something to occupy his mind. If he had killed Ik-
emefuna during the busy planting season or harvesting it would not
have been so bad, his mind would have been centred on his work.
Okonkwo was not a man of thought but of action. But in
absence of work, talking was the next best.

Soon after Ofoedu left, Okonkwo took up his goatskin bag to go.

"I must go home to tap my palm trees for the afternoon," he said.

"Who taps your tall trees for you?" asked Obierika.

"Umezulike," replied Okonkwo.

"Sometimes I wish I had not taken the ozo title," said Obierika.
"It wounds my heart to see these young men killing palm trees in
the name of tapping."

"It is so indeed," Okonkwo agreed. "But the law of the land must
be obeyed."

"I don't know how we got that law," said Obierika. "In many o-
ther clans a man of title is not forbidden to climb the palm tree.
Here we say he cannot climb the tall tree but he can tap the
short ones standing on the ground. It is like Dimaragana, who
would not lend his knife for cutting up dogmeat because the dog
was taboo to him, but offered to use his teeth."

"I think it is good that our clan holds the ozo title in high
esteem," said Okonkwo. "In those other clans you speak of, ozo
is so low that every beggar takes it."

"I was only speaking in jest," said Obierika. "In Abame and An-
inta the title is worth less than two cowries. Every man wears
the thread of title on his ankle, and does not lose it even if
he steals." "They have indeed soiled the name of ozo," said Ok-
onkwo as he rose to go.

"It will not be very long now before my in-laws come," said Ob-
ierika.

"I shall return very soon," said Okonkwo, looking at the posi-
tion of the sun.


There were seven men in Obierika's hut when Okonkwo returned.
The suitor was a young man of about twenty-five, and with him
were his father and uncle. On Obierika's side were his two elder
brothers and Maduka, his sixteen-year-old son.

"Ask Akueke's mother to send us some kola nuts," said Obierika
to his son. Maduka vanished into the compound like lightning.
The conversation at once centred on him, and everybody agreed
that he was as sharp as a razor.

"I sometimes think he is too sharp," said Obierika, somewhat
indulgently. "He hardly ever walks. He is always in a hurry.
If you are sending him on an errand he flies away before he
has heard half of the message."

"You were very much like that yourself," said his eldest bro-
ther. "As our people say, 'When mothercow is chewing grass
its young ones watch its mouth.' Maduka has been watching your
mouth." As he was speaking the boy returned, followed by Aku-
eke, his half-sister, carrying a wooden dish with three kola
nuts and alligator pepper. She gave the dish to her father's
eldest brother and then shook hands, very shyly, with her sui-
tor and his relatives. She was about sixteen and just ripe for
marriage. Her suitor and his relatives surveyed her young body
with expert eyes as if to assure themselves that she was beau-
tiful and ripe.

She wore a coiffure which was done up into a crest in the mid-
dle of the head. Cam wood was rubbed lightly into her skin, and
all over her body were black patterns drawn with uli. She wore
a black necklace which hung down in three coils just above her
full, succulent breasts. On her arms were red and yellow bangles,
and on her waist four or five rows of jigida, or waist beads.

When she had shaken hands, or rather held out her hand to be
shaken, she returned to her mother's hut to help with the cook-
ing.

"Remove your jigida first," her mother warned as she moved
near the fireplace to bring the pestle resting against the wall.
"Every day I tell you that jigida and fire are not friends. But
you will never hear. You grew your ears for decoration, not for
hearing. One of these days your jigida will catch fire on your
waist, and then you will know."

Akueke moved to the other end of the hut and began to remove
the waist-beads. It had to be done slowly and carefully, taking
each string separately, else it would break and the thousand
tiny rings would have to be strung together again. She rubbed
each string downwards with her palms until it passed the butt-
ocks and slipped down to the floor around her feet.

The men in the obi had already begun to drink the palm-wine
which Akueke's suitor had brought. It was a very good wine and
powerful, for in spite of the palm fruit hung across the mouth
of the pot to restrain the lively liquor, white foam rose and
spilled over.

"That wine is the work of a good tapper," said Okonkwo.

The young suitor, whose name was Ibe, smiled broadly and said
to his father: "Do you hear that?"

He then said to the others: "He will never admit that I am a
good tapper."

"He tapped three of my best palm trees to death," said his
father, Ukegbu.

"That was about five years ago," said Ibe, who had begun to
pour out the wine, "before i learned how to tap." He filled
the first horn and gave to his father. Then he poured out for
the others. Okonkwo brought out his big horn from the goatskin
bag, blew into it to remove any dust that might be there, and
gave it to Ibe to fill.

As the men drank, they talked about everything except the
thing for which they had gathered. It was only after the pot
had been emptied that the suitor's father cleared his voice
and announced the object of their visit.

Obierika then presented to him a small bundle of short broom-
sticks. Ukegbu counted them. "They are thirty?" he asked. Ob-
ierika nodded in agreement.

"We are at last getting somewhere," Ukegbu said, and then
turning to his brother and his son he said: "Let us go out
and whisper together." The three rose and went outside. When
they returned Ukegbu handed the bundle of sticks back to Obi-
erika. He counted them,- instead of thirty there were now only
fifteen. He passed them over to his eldest brother, Machi,
who also counted them and said: "We had not thought to go be-
low thirty. But as the dog said, 'If I fall down for you and
you fall down for me, it is play'. Marriage should be a play
and not a fight so we are falling down again." He then added
ten sticks to the fifteen and gave the bundle to Ukegbu.

In this way Akuke's bride-price was finally settled at twen-
ty bags of cowries. It was already dusk when the two parties
came to this agreement.

"Go and tell Akueke's mother that we have finished," Obieri-
ka said to his son, Maduka. Almost immediately the women came
in with a big bowl of foo-foo. Obierika's second wife follow-
ed with a pot of soup, and Maduka brought in a pot of palm-
wine.

As the men ate and drank palm-wine they talked about the
customs of their neighbours.

"It was only this morning," said Obierika, "that Okonkwo
and I were talking about Abame and Aninta, where titled men
climb trees and pound foo-foo for their wives."

"All their customs are upside-down. They do not decide bride-
price as we do, with sticks. They haggle and bargain as if
they were buying a goat or a cow in the market."

"That is very bad," said Obierika's eldest brother. "But
what is good in one place is bad in another place. In Umunso
they do not bargain at all, not even with broomsticks. The
suitor just goes on bringing bags of cowries until his in-
laws tell him to stop. It is a bad custom because it always
leads to a quarrel." "The world is large," said Okonkwo. "I
have even heard that in some tribes a man's children belong
to his wife and her family."

"That cannot be," said Machi. "You might as well say that
the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the
children."

"It is like the story of white men who, they say, are white
like this piece of chalk," said Obierika. He held up a piece
of chalk, which every man kept in his obi and with which his
guests drew lines on the floor before they ate kola nuts.
"And these white men, they say, have no toes."

"And have you never seen them?" asked Machi.

"Have you?" asked Obierika.

"One of them passes here frequently," said Machi. "His name
is Amadi."

Those who knew Amadi laughed. He was a leper, and the polite
name for leprosy was "the white skin."



CHAPTER NINE



For the first time in three nights, Okonkwo slept. He woke up
once in the middle of the night and his mind went back to the
past three days without making him feel uneasy. He began to
wonder why he had felt uneasy at all. It was like a man wonder-
ing in broad daylight why a dream had appeared so terrible to
him at night. He stretched himself and scratched his thigh where
a mosquito had bitten him as he slept. Another one was wailing
near his right ear. He slapped the ear and hoped he had killed
it. Why do they always go for one's ears? When he was a child
his mother had told him a story about it. But it was as silly
as all women's stories. Mosquito, she had said, had asked Ear
to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable
laughter. "How much longer do you think you will live?" she ask-
ed. "You are already a skeleton." Mosquito went away humiliated,
and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still
alive.

Okonkwo turned on his side and went back to sleep. He was rous-
ed in the morning by someone banging on his door.

"Who is that?" he growled. He knew it must be Ekwefi.

Of his three wives Ekwefi was the only one who would have the
audacity to bang on his door. "Ezinma is dying," came her voice,
and all the tragedy and sorrow of her life were packed in those
words.

Okonkwo sprang from his bed, pushed back the bolt on his door
and ran into Ekwefi's hut. Ezinma lay shivering on a mat beside
a huge fire that her mother had kept burning all night. "It is
iba," said Okonkwo as he took his machete and went into the bush
to collect the leaves and grasses and barks of trees that went
into making the medicine for iba.

Ekwefi knelt beside the sick child, occasionally feeling with
her palm the wet, burning forehead.

Ezinma was an only child and the centre of her mother's world.
Very often it was Ezinma who decided what food her mother
should prepare. Ekwefi even gave her such delicacies as eggs,
which children were rarely allowed to eat because such food
tempted them to steal. One day as Ezinma was eating an egg
Okonkwo had come in unexpectedly from his hut. He was great-
ly shocked and swore to beat Ekwefi if she dared to give the child
eggs again. But it was impossible to refuse Ezinma anything. After
her father's rebuke she developed an even keener appetite for
eggs. And she enjoyed above all the secrecy in which she now ate
them. Her mother always took her into their bedroom and shut the
door.

Ezinma did not call her mother Nne like all children. She call-
ed her by her name, Ekwefi, as her father and other grownup pe-
ople did. The relationship between them was not only that of mo-
ther and child. There was something in it like the companionship
of equals, which was strengthened by such little conspiracies
as eating eggs in the bedroom.

Ekwefi had suffered a good deal in her life. She had borne ten
children and nine of them had died in infancy, usually before
the age of three. As she buried one child after another her sor-
row gave way to despair and then to grim resignation. The birth
of her children, which should be a woman's crowning glory, be-
came for Ekwefi mere physical agony devoid of promise. The nam-
ing ceremony after seven market weeks became an empty ritual.
Her deepening despair found expression in the names she gave her
children. One of them was a pathetic cry, Onwumbiko--

"Death, I implore you." But Death took no notice,- Onwumbiko
died in his fifteenth month. The next child was a girl, Ozoemena--

"May it not happen again." She died in her eleventh month, and
two others after her. Ekwefi then became defiant and called her
next child Onwuma--

"Death may please himself." And he did.

After the death of Ekwefi's second child, Okonkwo had gone to
a medicine man, who was also a diviner of the Afa Oracle, to
enquire what was amiss. This man told him that the child was
an ogbanje, one of those wicked children who, when they died,
entered their mothers' wombs to be born again.

"When your wife becomes pregnant again," he said, "let her not
sleep in her hut. Let her go and stay with her people. In that
way she will elude her wicked tormentor and break its evil cycle
of birth and death." Ekwefi did as she was asked. As soon as
she became pregnant she went to live with her old mother in an-
other village. It was there that her third child was born and
circumcised on the eighth day.

She did not return to Okonkwo's compound until three days be-
fore the naming ceremony. The child was called Onwumbiko.

Onwumbiko was not given proper burial when he died. Okonkwo
had called in another medicine man who was famous in the clan
for his great knowledge about ogbanje children. His name was
Okagbue Uyanwa. Okagbue was a very striking figure, tall, with
a full beard and a bald head. He was light in complexion and
his eyes were red and fiery. He always gnashed his teeth as he
listened to those who came to consult him. He asked Okonkwo a
few questions about the dead child. All the neighbours and rel-
ations who had come to mourn gathered round them.

"On what market-day was it born?" he asked.

"Oye," replied Okonkwo.

"And it died this morning?"

Okonkwo said yes, and only then realised for the first time
that the child had died on the same market-day as it had been
born. The neighbours and relations also saw the coincidence and
said among themselves that it was very significant.

"Where do you sleep with your wife, in your obi or in her own
hut?" asked the medicine man.

"In her hut."

"In future call her into your obi."

The medicine man then ordered that there should be no mourning
for the dead child. He brought out a sharp razor from the goat-
skin bag slung from his left shoulder and began to mutilate the
child. Then he took it away to bury in the Evil Forest, holding
it by the ankle and dragging it on the ground behind him. After
such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless
it was one of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp
of their mutilation--a missing finger or perhaps a dark line
where the medicine man's razor had cut them.

By the time Onwumbiko died Ekwefi had become a very bitter woman.
Her husband's first wife had already had three sons, all strong
and healthy. When she had borne her third son in succession, Okon-
kwo had slaughtered a goat for her, as was the custom. Ekwefi had
nothing but good wishes for her. But she had grown so bitter about
her own chi that she could not rejoice with others over their good
fortune. And so, on the day that Nwoye's mother celebrated the
birth of her three sons with feasting and music, Ekwefi was the
only person in the happy company who went about with a cloud on her
brow. Her husband's wife took this for malevolence, as husbands'
wives were wont to. How could she know that Ekwefi's bitterness did
not flow outwards to others but inwards into her own soul,- that
she did not blame others for their good fortune but her own evil
chi who denied her any?

At last Ezinma was born, and although ailing she seemed determin-
ed to live. At first Ekwefi accepted her, as she had accepted o-
thers--with listless resignation. But when she lived on to her
fourth, fifth and sixth years, love returned once more to her mo-
ther, and, with love, anxiety. She determined to nurse her child
to health, and she put all her being into it. She was rewarded by
occasional spells of health during which Ezinma bubbled with ener-
gy like fresh palm-wine. At such times she seemed beyond danger.
But all of a sudden she would go down again. Everybody knew she
was an ogbanje. These sudden bouts of sickness and health were ty-
pical of her kind. But she had lived so long that perhaps she had
decided to stay. Some of them did become tired of their evil
rounds of birth and death, or took pity on their mothers, and
stayed. Ekwefi believed deep inside her that Ezinma had come to
stay. She believed because it was that faith alone that gave her
own life any kind of meaning. And this faith had been strengthened
when a year or so ago a medicine man had dug up Ezinma's iyi-uwa.
Everyone knew then that she would live because her bond with the
world of ogbanje had been broken. Ekwefi was reassured. But such
was her anxiety for her daughter that she could not rid herself
completely of her fear. And although she believed that the iyi-uwa
which had been dug up was genuine, she could not ignore the fact
that some really evil children sometimes misled people into dig-
ging up a specious one.

But Ezinma's iyi-uwa had looked real enough. It was a smooth
pebble wrapped in a dirty rag. The man who dug it up was the
same Okagbue who was famous in all the clan for his knowledge
in these matters. Ezinma had not wanted to cooperate with him at
first. But that was only to be expected. No ogbanje would yield
her secrets easily, and most of them never did because they died
too young - before they could be asked questions.

"Where did you bury your iyi-uwa?" Okagbue had asked Ezinma. She
was nine then and was just recovering from a serious illness.

"What is iyi-uwa?" she asked in return.

"You know what it is. You buried it in the ground somewhere so
that you can die and return again to torment your mother."

Ezinma looked at her mother, whose eyes, sad and pleading, were
fixed on her.

"Answer the question at once," roared Okonkwo, who stood beside
her. All the family were there and some of the neighbours too.

"Leave her to me," the medicine man told Okonkwo in a cool, con-
fident voice. He turned again to Ezinma. "Where did you bury your
iyi-uwa?"

"Where they bury children," she replied, and the quiet specta-
tors murmured to themselves. "Come along then and show me the
spot," said the medicine man.

The crowd set out with Ezinma leading the way and Okagbue fol-
lowing closely behind her. Okonkwo came next and Ekwefi followed
him. When she came to the main road, Ezinma turned left as if
she was going to the stream.

"But you said it was where they bury children?" asked the medi-
cine man.

"No," said Ezinma, whose feeling of importance was manifest in
her sprightly walk. She sometimes broke into a run and stopped
again suddenly. The crowd followed her silently. Women and child-
ren returning from the stream with pots of water on their heads
wondered what was happening until they saw Okagbue and guessed
that it must be something to do with ogbanje. And they all knew
Ekwefi and her daughter very well.

When she got to the big udala tree Ezinma turned left into the
bush, and the crowd followed her. Because of her size she made
her way through trees and creepers more quickly than her follow-
ers. The bush was alive with the tread of feet on dry leaves and
sticks and the moving aside of tree branches. Ezinma went deeper
and deeper and the crowd went with her. Then she suddenly turned
round and began to walk back to the road. Everybody stood to let
her pass and then filed after her.

"If you bring us all this way for nothing I shall beat sense
into you," Okonkwo threatened. "I have told you to let her a-
lone .I know how to deal with them," said Okagbue.

Ezinma led the way back to the road, looked left and right and
turned right. And so they arrived home again.

"Where did you bury your iyi-uwa?" asked Okagbue when Ezinma
finally stopped outside her father's obi. Okagbue's voice was
unchanged. It was quiet and confident.

"It is near that orange tree," Ezinma said.

"And why did you not say so, you wicked daughter of Akalogoli?"
Okonkwo swore furiously. The medicine man ignored him.

"Come and show me the exact spot," he said quietly to Ezinma.

"It is here," she said when they got to the tree.

"Point at the spot with your finger," said Okagbue.

"It is here," said Ezinma touching the ground with her finger.
Okonkwo stood by, rumbling like thunder in the rainy season.

"Bring me a hoe," said Okagbue.

'When Ekwefi brought the hoe, he had already put aside his
goatskin bag and his big cloth and was in his underwear, a
long and thin strip of cloth wound round the waist like a belt
and then passed between the legs to be fastened to the belt be-
hind. He immediately set to work digging a pit where Ezinma had
indicated. The neighbours sat around watching the pit becoming
deeper and deeper. The dark top soil soon gave way to the bright
red earth with which women scrubbed the floors and walls of huts.
Okagbue worked tirelessly and in silence, his back shining with
perspiration. Okonkwo stood by the pit. He asked Okagbue to
come up and rest while he took a hand. But Okagbue said he was
not tired yet.

Ekwefi went into her hut to cook yams. Her husband had brought
out more yams than usual because the medicine man had to be fed.
Ezinma went with her and helped in preparing the vegetables.

"There is too much green vegetable," she said.

"Don't you see the pot is full of yams?" Ekwefi asked. "And you
know how leaves become smaller after cooking."

"Yes," said Ezinma, "that was why the snake-lizard killed his
mother."

"Very true," said Ekwefi.

"He gave his mother seven baskets of vegetables to cook and in
the end there were only three. And so he killed her," said Ezin-
ma.

"That is not the end of the story."

"Oho," said Ezinma. "I remember now. He brought another seven
baskets and cooked them himself. And there were again only three.
So he killed himself too."

Outside the obi Okagbue and Okonkwo were digging the pit to
find where Ezinma had buried her iyiuwa. Neighbours sat around,
watching. The pit was now so deep that they no longer saw the
digger. They only saw the red earth he threw up mounting higher
and higher. Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, stood near the edge of the
pit because he wanted to take in all that happened.

Okagbue had again taken over the digging from Okonkwo. He
worked, as usual, in silence. The neighbours and Okonkwo's
wives were now talking. The children had lost interest and
were playing. Suddenly Okagbue sprang to the surface with
the agility of a leopard.

"It is very near now," he said. "I have felt it."

There was immediate excitement and those who were sitting jump-
ed to their feet.

"Call your wife and child," he said to Okonkwo. But Ekwefi and
Ezinma had heard the noise and run out to see what it was.

Okagbue went back into the pit, which was now surrounded by
spectators. After a few more hoe-fuls of earth he struck the
iyi-uwa. He raised it carefully with the hoe and threw it to
the surface. Some women ran away in fear when it was thrown.
But they soon returned and everyone was gazing at the rag from
a reasonable distance. Okagbue emerged and without saying a
word or even looking at the spectators he went to his goatskin
bag, took out two leaves and began to chew them. When he had
swallowed them, he took up the rag with his left hand and began
to untie it. And then the smooth, shiny pebble fell out. He
picked it up.

"Is this yours?" he asked Ezinma.

"Yes," she replied. All the women shouted with joy because
Ekwefi's troubles were at last ended. All this had happened
more than a year ago and Ezinma had not been ill since. And
then suddenly she had begun to shiver in the night. Ekwefi
brought her to the fireplace, spread her mat on the floor and
built a fire. But she had got worse and worse. As she knelt
by her, feeling with her palm the wet, burning forehead, she
prayed a thousand times. Although her husband's wives were
saying that it was nothing more than iba, she did not hear
them.


Okonkwo returned from the bush carrying on his left shoulder
a large bundle of grasses and leaves, roots and barks of med-
icinal trees and shrubs. He went into Ekwefi's hut, put down
his load and sat down. "Get me a pot," he said, "and leave
the child alone."

Ekwefi went to bring the pot and Okonkwo selected the best
from his bundle, in their due proportions, and cut them up.
He put them in the pot and Ekwefi poured in some water.

"Is that enough?" she asked when she had poured in about
half of the water in the bowl. "A little more... I said a little.
Are you deaf?" Okonkwo roared at her.

She set the pot on the fire and Okonkwo took up his machete
to return to his obi.

"You must watch the pot carefully," he said as he went,
"and don't allow it to boil over. If it does its power will
be gone." He went away to his hut and Ekwefi began to tend
the medicine pot almost as if it was itself a sick child.
Her eyes went constantly from Ezinma to the boiling pot and
back to Ezinma.

Okonkwo returned when he felt the medicine had cooked long
enough. He looked it over and said it was done.

"Bring me a low stool for Ezinma," he said, "and a thick mat."

He took down the pot from the fire and placed it in front of
the stool. He then roused Ezinma and placed her on the stool,
astride the steaming pot. The thick mat was thrown over both.
Ezinma struggled to escape from the choking and overpowering
steam, but she was held down. She started to cry.

When the mat was at last removed she was drenched in perspir-
ation. Ekwefi mopped her with a piece of cloth and she lay down
on a dry mat and was soon asleep.



CHAPTER TEN



Large crowds began to gather on the village ilo as soon as the
edge had worn off the sun's heat and it was no longer painful
on the body. Most communal ceremonies took place at that time
of the day, so that even when it was said that a ceremony
would begin "after the midday meal" everyone understood that
it would begin a long time later, when the sun's heat had soft-
ened.

It was clear from the way the crowd stood or sat that the
ceremony was for men. There were many women, but they looked
on from the fringe like outsiders. The titled men and elders
sat on their stools waiting for the trials to begin. In front
of them was a row of stools on which nobody sat. There were
nine of them. Two little groups of people stood at a respect-
able distance beyond the stools. They faced the elders. There
were three men in one group and three men and one woman in the
other. The woman was Mgbafo and the three men with her were
her brothers. In the other group were her husband, Uzowulu,
and his relatives. Mgbafo and her brothers were as still as
statues into whose faces the artist has moulded defiance.
Uzowulu and his relative, on the other hand, were whispering
together. It looked like whispering, but they were really talk-
ing at the top of their voices. Everybody in the crowd was
talking. It was like the market. From a distance the noise was
a deep rumble carried by the wind.

An iron gong sounded, setting up a wave of expectation in
the crowd. Everyone looked in the direction of the egwugwu
house. Gome, gome, gome, gome went the gong, and a powerful
flute blew a high-pitched blast. Then came the voices of the
egwugwu, guttural and awesome. The wave struck the women and
children and there was a backward stampede. But it was moment-
ary. They were already far enough where they stood and there
was room for running away if any of them should go towards them.

The drum sounded again and the flute blew. The egwugwu house
was now a pandemonium of quavering voices: Aru oyim de de de de!
filled the air as the spirits of the ancestors, just emerged from the
earth, greeted themselves in their esoteric language. The egwugwu
house into which they emerged faced the forest, away from
the crowd, who saw only its back with the many-coloured pat-
terns and drawings done by specially chosen women at regular
intervals. These women never saw the inside of the hut. No
woman ever did. They scrubbed and painted the outside walls
under the supervision of men. If they imagined what was inside,
they kept their imagination to themselves. No woman ever asked
questions about the most powerful and the most secret cult in
the clan.

Aru oyim de de de de! flew around the dark, closed hut like
tongues of fire. The ancestral spirits of the clan were abroad.

The metal gong beat continuously now and the flute, shrill
and powerful, floated on the chaos. And then the egwugwu ap-
peared. The women and children sent up a great shout and took
to their heels. It was instinctive. A woman fled as soon as
an egwugwu came in sight. And when, as on that day, nine of
the greatest masked spirits in the clan came out together it
was a terrifying spectacle. Even Mgbafo took to her heels and
had to be restrained by her brothers.

Each of the nine egwugwu represented a village of the clan.
Their leader was called Evil Forest. Smoke poured out of his
head.

The nine villages of Umuofia had grown out of the nine sons
of the first father of the clan. Evil Forest represented the
village of Umueru, or the children of Eru, who was the eldest
of the nine sons.

"Umuofia kwenu!" shouted the leading egwugwu, pushing the air
with his raffia arms. The elders of the clan replied, "Yaa!"

."Umuofia kwenu!"

"Yaa!"

"Umuofia kwenu!"

"Yaa!"

Evil Forest then thrust the pointed end of his rattling staff
into the earth. And it began to shake and rattle, like some-
thing agitating with a metallic life. He took the first of the
empty stools and the eight other egwugwu began to sit in order
of seniority after him.

Okonkwo's wives, and perhaps other women as well, might have
noticed that the second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okonkwo.
And they might also have noticed that Okonkwo was not among the
titled men and elders who sat behind the row of egwugwu. But if
they thought these things they kept them within themselves. The
egwugwu with the springy walk was one of the dead fathers of
the clan. He looked terrible with the smoked raffia "body, a
huge wooden face painted white except for the round hollow eyes
and the charred teeth that were as big as a man's fingers. On
his head were two powerful horns.

When all the egwugwu had sat down and the sound of the many
tiny bells and rattles on their bodies had subsided, Evil Forest
addressed the two groups of people facing them.

"Uzowulu's body, I salute you," he said. Spirits always address-
ed humans as "bodies." Uzowulu bent down and touched the earth
with his right hand as a sign of submission.

"Our father, my hand has touched the ground," he said.

"Uzowulu's body, do you know me?" asked the spirit.

"How can I know you, father? You are beyond our knowledge."

Evil Forest then turned to the other group and addressed the
eldest of the three brothers.

"The body of Odukwe, I greet you," he said, and Odukwe bent
down and touched the earth. The hearing then began.

Uzowulu stepped forward and presented his case.

"That woman standing there is my wife, Mgbafo. I married her
with my money and my yams. I do not owe my inlaws anything. I
owe them no yams. I owe them no cocoyams. One morning three of
them came to my house, beat me up and took my wife and children
away. This happened in the rainy season. I have waited in vain
for my wife to return. At last I went to my in-laws and said to
them, 'You have taken back your sister. I did not send her away.
You yourselves took her. The law of the clan is that you should
return her bride-price.' But my wife's brothers said they had
nothing to tell me. So I have brought the matter to the
fathers of the clan. My case is finished. I salute you."

"Your words are good," said the leader of the egwugwu. "Let
us hear Odukwe. His words may also be good."

Odukwe was short and thickset. He stepped forward, saluted the
spirits and began his story. "My in-law has told you that we
went to his house, beat him up and took our sister and her child-
ren away. All that is true. He told you that he came to take back
her bride-price and we refused to give it him. That also is true.
My in-law, Uzowulu, is a beast. My sister lived with him for nine
years. During those years no single day passed in the sky without
his beating the woman. We have tried to settle their quarrels
time without number and on each occasion Uzowulu was guilty--

"It is a lie!" Uzowulu shouted.

"Two years ago," continued Odukwe, "when she was pregnant, he
beat her until she miscarried."

"It is a lie. She miscarried after she had gone to sleep with
her lover."

"Uzowulu's body, I salute you," said Evil Forest, silencing him.
"What kind of lover sleeps with a pregnant woman?" There was a
loud murmur of approbation from the crowd. Odukwe continued:

"Last year when my sister was recovering from an illness, he beat
her again so that if the neighbours had not gone in to save her
she would have been killed. We heard of it, and did as you have
been told. The law of Umuofia is that if a woman runs away from
her husband her bride-price is returned. But in this case she
ran away to save her life. Her two children belong to Uzowulu.
We do not dispute it, but they are too young to leave their
mother. If, in the other hand, Uzowulu should recover from his
madness and come in the proper way to beg his wife to return she
will do so on the understanding that if he ever beats her again
we shall cut off his genitals for him."

The crowd roared with laughter. Evil Forest rose to his feet
and order was immediately restored. A steady cloud of smoke rose
from his head. He sat down again and called two witnesses. They
were both Uzowulu's neighbours, and they agreed about the beat-
ing. Evil Forest then stood up, pulled out his staff and thrust
it into the earth again. He ran a few steps in the direction of
the women,- they all fled in terror, only to return to their
places almost immediately. The nine egwugwu then went away to
consult together in their house. They were silent for a long time.
Then the metal gong sounded and the flute was blown. The egwugwu
had emerged once again from their underground home. They saluted
one another and then reappeared on the ilo.

"Umuofia kwenu!" roared Evil Forest, +facing the elders and
grandees of the clan.

"Yaa!" replied the thunderous crowd,- then silence descended
from the sky and swallowed the noise.

Evil Forest began to speak and all the while he spoke everyone
was silent. The eight other egwugwu were as still as statues.

"We have heard both sides of the case," said Evil Forest. "Our
duty is not to blame this man or to praise that, but to settle
the dispute." He turned to Uzowulu's group and allowed a short
pause. "Uzowulu's body, I salute you," he said.

"Our father, my hand has touched the ground," replied Uzowulu,
touching the earth.

"Uzowulu's body, do you know me?"

"How can I know you, father? You are beyond our knowledge," Uz-
owulu replied.

"I am Evil Forest. I kill a man on the day that his life is
sweetest to him."

"That is true," replied Uzowulu.

"Go to your in-laws with a pot of wine and beg your wife to re-
turn to you. It is not bravery when a man fights with a woman."
He turned to Odukwe, and allowed a brief pause.

"Odukwe's body, I greet you," he said.

"My hand is on the ground," replied Okukwe.

"Do you know me?"

"No man can know you," replied Odukwe.

"I am Evil Forest, I am Dry-meat-that-fills-the-mouth, I am Fire-
that-burns-without-faggots. If your inlaw brings wine to you,
let your sister go with him. I salute you." He pulled his staff
from the hard earth and thrust it back.

"Umuofia kwenu!" he roared, and the crowd answered.

"I don't know why such a trifle should come before the egwugwu,"
said one elder to another.

"Don't you know what kind of man Uzowulu is? He will not listen
to any other decision," replied the other.

As they spoke two other groups of people had replaced the first
before the egwugwu, and a great land case began.



CHAPTER ELEVEN



The night was impenetrably dark. The moon had been rising later
and later every night until now it was seen only at dawn. And
whenever the moon forsook evening and rose at cock-crow the
nights were as black as charcoal.

Ezinma and her mother sat on a mat on the floor after their
supper of yam foo-foo and bitter-leaf soup. A palm-oil lamp
gave out yellowish light. Without it, it would have been im-
possible to eat; one could not have known where one's mouth
was in the darkness of that night. There was an oil lamp in
all the four huts on Okonkwo's compound, and each hut seen
from the others looked like a soft eye of yellow half-light
set in the solid massiveness of night.

The world was silent except for the shrill cry of insects,
which was part of the night, and the sound of wooden mortar
and pestle as Nwayieke pounded her foo-foo. Nwayieke lived
four compounds away, and she was notorious for her late cook-
ing. Every woman in the neighbourhood knew the sound of Nway-
ieke's mortar and pestle. It was also part of the night.

Okonkwo had eaten from his wives' dishes and was now reclin-
ing with his back against the wall. He searched his bag and
brought out his snuff-bottle. He turned it on to his left palm,
but nothing came out. He hit the bottle against his knee to
shake up the tobacco. That was always the trouble with Okeke's
snuff. It very quickly went damp, and there was too much salt-
petre in it. Okonkwo had not bought snuff from him for a long
time. Idigo was the man who knew how to grind good snuff. But
he had recently fallen ill.

Low voices, broken now and again by singing, reached Okonkwo
from his wives' huts as each woman and her children told folk
stories. Ekwefi and her daughter, Ezinma, sat on a mat on the
floor. It was Ekwefl's turn to tell a story.

"Once upon a time," she began, "all the birds were invited
to a feast in the sky. They were very happy and began to pre-
pare themselves for the great day. They painted their bodies
with red cam wood and drew beautiful patterns on them with
uli.

"Tortoise saw all these preparations and soon discovered what
it all meant. Nothing that happened in the world of the animals
ever escaped his notice,- he was full of cunning. As soon as
he heard of the great feast in the sky his throat began to itch
at the very thought. There was a famine in those days and Tor-
toise had not eaten a good meal for two moons. His body rattled
like a piece of dry stick in his empty shell. So he began to
plan how he would go to the sky."

"But he had no wings," said Ezinma.

"Be patient," replied her mother. "That is the story. Tortoise
had no wings, but he went to the birds and asked to be allowed
to go with them.

"'We know you too well,' said the birds when they had heard
him. 'You are full of cunning and you are ungrateful. If we
allow you to come with us you will soon begin your mischief.'

"'You do not know me,' said Tortoise. 'I am a changed man. I
have learned that a man who makes trouble for others is also
making it for himself.'

"Tortoise had a sweet tongue, and within a short time all
the birds agreed that he was a changed man, and they each
gave him a feather, with which he made two wings.

"At last the great day came and Tortoise was the first to
arrive at the meeting place. When all the birds had gathered
together, they set off in a body. Tortoise was very happy
and voluble as he flew among the birds, and he was soon cho-
sen as the man to speak for the party because he was a great
orator. "There is one important thing which we must not for-
get,' he said as they flew on their way. 'When people are
invited to a great feast like this, they take new names for
the occasion. Our hosts in the sky will expect us to honour
this age-old custom.'

"None of the birds had heard of this custom but they knew
that Tortoise, in spite of his failings in other directions,
was a widely-travelled man who knew the customs of different
peoples. And so they each took a new name. When they had all
taken, Tortoise also took one. He was to be called All oj
you. "At last the party arrived in the sky and their hosts
were very happy to see them. Tortoise stood up in his many-
coloured plumage and thanked them for their invitation. His
speech was so eloquent that all the birds were glad they had
brought him, and nodded their heads in approval of all he
said. Their hosts took him as the king of the birds, espec-
ially as he looked somewhat different from the others.

"After kola nuts had been presented and eaten, the people
of the sky set before their guests the most delectable dish-
es Tortoise had even seen or dreamed of. The soup was brought
out hot from the fire and in the very pot in which it had
been cooked. It was full of meat and fish. Tortoise began
to sniff aloud. There was pounded yam and also yam pottage
cooked with palm-oil and fresh fish. There were also pots of
palm-wine. When everything had been set before the guests,
one of the people of the sky came forward and tasted a lit-
tle from each pot. He then invited the birds to eat. But
Tortoise jumped to his feet and asked: Tor whom have you
prepared this feast?'

"'For all of you,' replied the man.

"Tortoise turned to the birds and said: 'You remember that
my name is All of you. The custom here is to serve the spoke-
sman first and the others later. They will serve you when
I have eaten.'

"He began to eat and the birds grumbled angrily. The people
of the sky thought it must be their custom to leave all the
food for their king. And so Tortoise ate the best part of
the food and then drank two pots of palm-wine, so that he
was full of food and drink and his body filled out in his
shell.

"The birds gathered round to eat what was left and to peck
at the bones he had thrown all about the floor. Some of them
were too angry to eat. They chose to fly home on an empty
stomach. But before they left each took back the feather he
had lent to Tortoise. And there he stood in his hard shell
full of food and wine but without any wings to fly home. He
asked the birds to take a message for his wife, but they all
refused. In the end Parrot, who had felt more angry than the
others, suddenly changed his mind and agreed to take the mes-
sage.

"Tell my wife,' said Tortoise,'to bring out all the soft
things in my house and cover the compound with them so that
I can jump down from the sky without very great danger.'

"Parrot promised to deliver the message, and then flew a-
way. But when he reached Tortoise's house he told his wife
to bring out all the hard things in the house. And so she
brought out her husband's hoes, machetes, spears, guns and
even his cannon. Tortoise looked down from the sky and saw
his wife bringing things out, but it was too far to see
what they were. When all seemed ready he let himself go. He
fell and fell and fell until he began to fear that he would
never stop falling. And then like the sound of his cannon
he crashed on the compound." ';,; "Did he die?" asked Ezinma.

"No," replied Ekwefi. "His shell broke into pieces. But
there was a great medicine man in the neighbourhood. Tor-
toise's wife sent for him and he gathered all the bits of
shell and stuck them together. That is why Tortoise's shell
is not smooth."

"There is no song in the story," Ezinma pointed out.

"No," said Ekwefi. "I shall think of another one with a
song. But it is your turn now."

"Once upon a time," Ezinma began, "Tortoise and Cat went
to wrestle against Yams--no, that is not the beginning. Once
upon a time there was a great famine in the land of animals.
Everybody was lean except Cat, who was fat and whose body
shone as if oil was rubbed on it..."

She broke off because at that very moment a loud and high-
pitched voice broke the outer silence of the night. It was
Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, prophesying. There was no-
thing new in that. Once in a while Chielo was possessed by
the spirit of her god and she began to prophesy. But tonight
she was addressing her prophecy and greetings to Okonkwo,
and so everyone in his family listened. The folk stories
stopped.

"Agbala do-o-o-o! Agbala ekeneo-o-o-o-o," came the voice
like a sharp knife cutting through the night. "Okonkwo! Ag-
bala ekme gio-o-o-o! Agbala cholu ifu ada ya Ezinmao-o-o-oi!"

At the mention of Ezinma's name Ekwefi jerked her head
sharply like an animal that had sniffed death in the air.
Her heart jumped painfully within her.

The priestess had now reached Okonkwo's compound and was
talking with him outside his hut. She was saying again and
again that Agbala wanted to see his daughter, Ezinma. Okon-
kwo pleaded with her to come back in the morning because
Ezinma was now asleep. But Chielo ignored what he was try-
ing to say and went on shouting that Agbala wanted to see
his daughter. Her voice was as clear as metal, and Okonkwo's
women and children heard from their huts all that she said.
Okonkwo was still pleading that the girl had been ill of
late and was asleep. Ekwefi quickly took her to their bed-
room and placed her on their high bamboo bed.

The priestess screamed. "Beware, Okonkwo!" she warned.
"Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak
when a god speaks? Beware!"

She walked through Okonkwo's hut into the circular com-
pound and went straight toward Ekwefi's hut. Okonkwo came
after her.

"Ekwefi," she called, "Agbala greets you. Where is my
daughter, Ezinma? Agbala wants to see her."

Ekwefi came out from her hut carrying her oil lamp in her
left hand. There was a light wind blowing, so she cupped her
right hand to shelter the flame. Nwoye's mother, also carry-
ing an oil lamp, emerged from her hut. The children stood
in the darkness outside their hut watching the strange event.
Okonkwo's youngest wife also came out and joined the others.

"Where does Agbala want to see her?" Ekwefi asked.

"Where else but in his house in the hills and the caves?"
replied the priestess.

"I will come with you, too," Ekwefi said firmly.

"Tufia-a!" the priestess cursed, her voice cracking like
the angry bark of thunder in the dry season. "How dare you,
woman, to go before the mighty Agbala of your own accord?
Beware, woman, lest he strike you in his anger. Bring me
my daughter."

Ekwefi went into her hut and came out again with Ezinma.

"Come, my daughter," said the priestess. "I shall carry
you on my back. A baby on its mother's back does not know
that the way is long."

Ezinma began to cry. She was used to Chielo calling her
"my daughter." But it was a different Chielo she now saw
in the yellow half-light.

"Don't cry, my daughter," said the priestess, "lest Agba-
la be angry with you."

"Don't cry," said Ekwefi, "she will bring you back very
soon. I shall give you some fish to eat." She went into the
hut again and brought down the smoke-black basket in which
she kept her dried fish and other ingredients for cooking
soup. She broke a piece in two and gave it to Ezinma, who
clung to her.

"Don't be afraid," said Ekwefi, stroking her head, which
was shaved in places, leaving a regular pattern of hair.
They went outside again. The priestess bent down on one
knee and Ezinma climbed on her back, her left palm closed
on her fish and her eyes gleaming with tears.

"Agbala do-o-o-o! Agbala ekeneo-o-o-o!..." Chielo began
once again to chant greetings to her god. She turned round
sharply and walked through Okonkwo's hut, bending very low
at the eaves. Ezinma was crying loudly now, calling on her
mother. The two voices disappeared into the thick darkness.

A strange and sudden weakness descended on Ekwefi as she
stood gazing in the direction of the voices like a hen whose
only chick has been carried away by a kite. Ezinma's voice
soon faded away and only Chielo was heard moving further and
further into the distance.

"Why do you stand there as though she had been kidnapped?"
asked Okonkwo as he went back to his hut.

"She will bring her back soon," Nwoye's mother said.

But Ekwefi did not hear these consolations. She stood for
a while, and then, all of a sudden, made up her mind. She
hurried through Okonkwo's hut and went outside. "Where are
you going?" he asked. "I am following Chielo," she replied
and disappeared in the darkness. Okonkwo cleared his throat,
and brought out his snuff-bottle from the goatskin bag by
his side.


The priestess' voice was already growing faint in the dis-
tance. Ekwefi hurried to the main footpath and turned left
in the direction of the voice. Her eyes were useless to her
in the darkness. But she picked her way easily on the sandy
footpath hedged on either side by branches and damp leaves.
She began to run, holding her breasts with her hands to stop
them flapping noisily against her body. She hit her left foot
against an outcropped root, and terror seized her. It was an
ill omen. She ran faster. But Chielo's voice was still a long
way away. Had she been running too? How could she go so fast
with Ezinma on her back? Although the night was cool, Ekwefi
was beginning to feel hot from her running. She continually
ran into the luxuriant weeds and creepers that walled in the
path. Once she tripped up and fell. Only then did she realise,
with a start, that Chielo had stopped her chanting. Her heart
beat violently and she stood still. Then Chielo's renewed out-
burst came from only a few paces ahead. But Ekwefi could not
see her. She shut her eyes for a while and opened them again
in an effort to see. But it was useless. She could not see
beyond her nose.

There were no stars in the sky because there was a rain-
cloud. Fireflies went about with their tiny green lamps,
which only made the darkness more profound. Between Chielo's
outbursts the night was alive with the shrill tremor of for-
est insects woven into the darkness.

"Agbala do-o-o-o!... Agbala ekeneo-o-o-o!..." Ekwefi trudg-
ed behind, neither getting too near nor keeping too far back.
She thought they must be going towards the sacred cave. Now
that she walked slowly she had time to think. What would she
do when they got to the cave? She would not dare to enter.
She would wait at the mouth, all alone in that fearful place.
She thought of all the terrors of the night. She remembered
that night, long ago, when she had seen Ogbu-agali-odu, one
of those evil essences loosed upon the world by the potent
"medicines" which the tribe had made in the distant past a-
gainst its enemies but had now forgotten how to control. Ek-
wefi had been returning from the stream with her mother on
a dark night like this when they saw its glow as it flew in
their direction. They had thrown down their water-pots and
lain by the roadside expecting the sinister light to descend
on them and kill them. That was the only time Ekwefi ever
saw Ogbu-agali-odu. But although it had happened so long
ago, her blood still ran cold whenever she remembered that
night.

The priestess' voice came at longer intervals now, but its
vigour was undiminished. The air was cool and damp with dew.
Ezinma sneezed. Ekwefi muttered, "Life to you." At the same
time the priestess also said, "Life to you, my daughter."

Ezinma's voice from the darkness warmed her mother's heart.
She trudged slowly along.

And then the priestess screamed. "Somebody is walking be-
hind me!" she said. "Whether you are spirit or man, may Ag-
bala shave your head with a blunt razor! May he twist your
neck until you see your heels!"

Ekwefi stood rooted to the spot. One mind said to her:
"Woman, go home before Agbala does you harm." But she could
not. She stood until Chielo had increased the distance be-
tween them and she began to follow again. She had already
walked so long that she began to feel a slight numbness in
the limbs and in the head. Then it occurred to her that they
could not have been heading for the cave. They must have
bypassed it long ago,- they must be going towards Umuachi,
the farthest village in the clan. Chielo's voice now came
after long intervals.

It seemed to Ekwefi that the night had become a little
lighter. The cloud had lifted and a few stars were out. The
moon must be preparing to rise, its sullenness over. When
the moon rose late in the night, people said it was refus-
ing food, as a sullen husband refuses his wife's food when
they have quarrelled.

"Agbala do-o-o-o! Umuachi! Agbala ekene unuo-o-o!" It was
just as Ekwefi had thought. The priestess was now saluting
the village of Umuachi. It was unbelievable, the distance
they had covered. As they emerged into the open village from
the narrow forest track the darkness was softened and it be-
came possible to see the vague shape of trees. Ekwefi screw-
ed her eyes up in an effort to see her daughter and the
priestess, but whenever she thought she saw their shape it
immediately dissolved like a melting lump of darkness. She
walked numbly along.

Chielo's voice was now rising continuously, as when she
first set out. Ekwefi had a feeling of spacious openness,
and she guessed they must be on the village ilo, or play-
ground. And she realised too with something like a jerk
that Chielo was no longer moving forward. She was, in fact,
returning. Ekwefi quickly moved away from her line of re-
treat. Chielo passed by, and they began to go back the way
they had come.

It was a long and weary journey and Ekwefi felt like a
sleepwalker most of the way. The moon was definitely rising,
and although it had not yet appeared on the sky its light
had already melted down the darkness. Ekwefi could now dis-
cern the figure of the priestess and her burden. She slowed
down her pace so as to increase the distance between them.
She was afraid of what might happen if Chielo suddenly
turned round and saw her.

She had prayed for the moon to rise. But now she found
the half-light of the incipient moon more terrifying than
darkness. The world was now peopled with vague, fantastic
figures that dissolved under her steady gaze and then form-
ed again in new shapes. At one stage Ekwefi was so afraid
that she nearly called out to Chielo for companionship and
human sympathy. What she had seen was the shape of a man
climbing a palm tree, his head pointing to the earth and
his legs skywards. But at that very moment Chielo's voice
rose again in her possessed chanting, and Ekwefi recoiled,
because there was no humanity there. It was not the same
Chielo who sat with her in the market and sometimes bought
beancakes for Ezinma, whom she called her daughter. It was
a different woman--the priestess of Agbala, the Oracle of
the Hills and Caves. Ekwefi trudged along between two fears.
The sound of her benumbed steps seemed to come from some
other person walking behind her. Her arms were folded a-
cross her bare breasts. Dew fell heavily and the air was
cold. She could no longer think, not even about the terrors
of night. She just jogged along in a half-sleep, only wak-
ing to full life when Chielo sang.

At last they took a turning and began to head for the caves.
From then on, Chielo never ceased in her chanting. She greet-
ed her god in a multitude of names--the owner of the future,
the messenger of earth, the god who cut a man down when his
life was sweetest to him. Ekwefi was also awakened and her
benumbed fears revived.

The moon was now up and she could see Chielo and Ezinma
clearly. How a woman could carry a child of that size so
easily and for so long was a miracle. But Ekwefi was not
thinking about that. Chielo was not a woman that night.

"Agbala do-o-o-o! Agbala ekeneo-o-o-o! Chi negbu madu u-
bosi ndu ya nato ya uto daluo-o-o!..."

Ekwefi could already see the hills looming in the moon-
light. They formed a circular ring with a break at one
point through which the foot-track led to the centre 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. No-
thing 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 realise
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 cir-
cular 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 mar-
riage 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. Okon-
kwo'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 neighbourhood wore a
festive air because Okonkwo's friend, Obierika, was cele-
brating 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 wo-
men 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
neighbourhood. 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 pre-
sent 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 experi-
ences 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 Ek-
wefi 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 water-pots 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 troop-
ed 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 regard-
ed 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 oc-
curred 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 wor-
ried.


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 mak-
ing 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 and 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 neighbours. 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 neighbouring 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 walked through the market he realised
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 sud-
den interruption came. It was a cry in the distance: oji
odu aru 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 priest-
ess. "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 own-
er, who at once paid the heavy fine which the village im-
posed on anyone whose cow was let loose on his neighbors'
crops. When the women had exacted the penalty they check-
ed 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 neighbour.
"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 cowshed."


Early in the afternoon the first two pots of palm-wine ar-
rived 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 ac-
companied by their sons bearing carved wooden stools. Ok-
onkwo 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 Og-
buefi 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 in-
ner 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-bear-
ers 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 ank-
lets 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-e!"

"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 direct-
ion 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 centre, 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 prom-
inent 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 talk-
ing to the clan. One of the things every man learned was the
language of the hollowed-out wooden instrument. Dum! Dum!
Dum! boomed the cannon at intervals.

The first cock had not crowed, and Umuofia was still swal-
lowed 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 dist-
ant wailing 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 end-
less 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, anxi-
ety 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 breathles-
sly 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 fun-
eral. 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 eg-
wugwu 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
after 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.

But the most dreaded of all was yet to come. He was al-
ways alone and was shaped like a coffin. A sickly odour
hung in the air wherever he went, and flies went with him.
Even the greatest medicine men took shelter when he was
near. Many years ago another egwugwu had dared to stand
his ground before him and had been transfixed to the spot
for two days. This one had only one hand and it carried
a basket full of water.

But some of the egwugwu were quite harmless. One of them
was so old and infirm that he leaned heavily on a stick.
He walked unsteadily to the place where the corpse was
laid, gazed at it a while and went away again--to the un-
derworld.

The land of the living was not far removed from the do-
main of the ancestors. There was coming and going between
them, especially at festivals and also when an old man
died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors.
A man's life from birth to death was a series of transi-
tion rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his an-
cestors.

Ezeudu had been the oldest man in his village, and at his
death there were only three men in the whole clan who were
older, and four or five others in his own age group. When-
ever one of these ancient men appeared in the crowd to
dance unsteadily the funeral steps of the tribe, younger
men gave way and the tumult subsided.

It was a great funeral, such as befitted a noble warrior.
As the evening drew near, the shouting and the firing of
guns, the beating of drums and the brandishing and clang-
ing of machetes increased. Ezeudu had taken three titles
in his life. It was a rare achievement. There were only
four titles in the clan, and only one or two men in any
generation ever achieved the fourth and highest. When they
did, they became the lords of the land. Because he had
taken titles, Ezeudu was to be buried after dark with only
a glowing brand to light the sacred ceremony.

But before this quiet and final rite, the tumult increas-
ed tenfold. Drums beat violently and men leaped up and
down in frenzy. Guns were fired on all sides and sparks
flew out as machetes clanged together in warriors' salutes.
The air was full of dust and the smell of gunpowder. It
was then that the one-handed spirit came, carrying a basket
full of water. People made way for him on all sides and the
noise subsided. Even the smell of gunpowder was swallowed
in the sickly smell that now filled the air. He danced
a few steps to the funeral drums and then went to see the
corpse.

"Ezeudu!" he called in his guttural voice. "If you had
been poor in your last life I would have asked you to be
rich when you come again. But you were rich. If you had
been a coward, I would have asked you to bring courage.
But you were a fearless warrior. If you had died young,
I would have asked you to get life. But you lived long.
So I shall ask you to come again the way you came before.
If your death was the death of nature, go in peace. But
if a man caused it, do not allow him a moment's rest."
He danced a few more steps and went away.

The drums and the dancing began again and reached fever-
heat. Darkness was around the corner, and the burial was
near. Guns fired the last salute and the cannon rent the sky.
And then from the centre of the delirious fury came a cry
of agony and shouts of horror. It was as if a spell had been
cast. All was silent. In the centre of the crowd a boy lay in
a pool of blood. It was the dead man's sixteen-year-old
son, who with his brothers and half-brothers had been
dancing the traditional farewell to their father.

Okonkwo's gun had exploded and a piece of iron had pierc-
ed the boy's heart.

The confusion that followed was without parallel in the
tradition of Umuofia. Violent deaths were frequent, but
nothing like this had ever happened.

The only course open to Okonkwo was to flee from the
clan. It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill
a clansman, and a man who committed it must flee from
the land. The crime was of two kinds, male and female.
Okonkwo had committed the female, because it had been
inadvertent. He could return to the clan after seven
years.

That night he collected his most valuable belongings
into head-loads. His wives wept bitterly and their
children wept with them without knowing why. Obierika
and half a dozen other friends came to help and to con-
sole him. They each made nine or ten trips carrying
Okonkwo's yams to store in Obierika's barn. And before
the cock crowed Okonkwo and his family were fleeing to
his motherland. It was a little village called Mbanta,
just beyond the borders of Mbaino.

As soon as the day broke, a large crowd of men from
Ezeudu's quarter stormed Okonkwo's compound, dressed
in garbs of war. They set fire to his houses, demolish-
ed his red walls, killed his animals and destroyed his
barn. It was the justice of the earth goddess, and they
were merely her messengers. They had no hatred in their
hearts against Okonkwo. His greatest friend, Obierika,
was among them. They were merely cleansing the land
which Okonkwo had polluted with the blood of a clansman.

Obierika was a man who thought about things. When the
will of the goddess had been done, he sat down in his
obi and mourned his friend's calamity. Why should a man
suffer so grievously for an offence he had committed
inadvertently? But although he thought for a long time
he found no answer. He was merely led into greater com-
plexities. He remembered his wife's twin children, whom
he had thrown away. What crime had they committed? The
Earth had decreed that they were an offence on the land
and must be destroyed. And if the clan did not exact pun-
ishment for an offence against the great goddess, her
wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the of-
fender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it
soiled the others.




　　　　PART TWO



CHAPTER FOURTEEN



Okonkwo was well received by his mother's kinsmen in Mb-
anta. The old man who received him was his mother's young-
er brother, who was now the eldest surviving member of
that family. His name was Uchendu, and it was he who had
received Okonkwo's mother twenty and ten years before
when she had been brought home from Umuofia to be buried
with her people. Okonkwo was only a boy then and Uchendu
still remembered him crying the traditional farewell:
"Mother, mother, mother is going."

That was many years ago. Today Okonkwo was not bringing
his mother home to be buried with her people. He was tak-
ing his family of three wives and their children to seek
refuge in his motherland. As soon as Uchendu saw him with
his sad and weary company he guessed what had happened,
and asked no questions. It was not until the following
day that Okonkwo told him the full story. The old man
listened silently to the end and then said with some re-
lief: "It is a female ochu." And he arranged the requi-
site rites and sacrifices.

Okonkwo was given a plot of ground on which to build his
compound, and two or three pieces of land on which to
farm during the coming planting season. With the help
of his mother's kinsmen he built himself an obi and three
huts for his wives. He then installed his personal god
and the symbols of his departed fathers. Each of Uchendu's
five sons contributed three hundred seed-yams to enable
their cousin to plant a farm, for as soon as the first
rain came farming would begin.

At last the rain came. It was sudden and tremendous. For
two or three moons the sun had been gathering strength
till it seemed to breathe a breath of fire on the earth.
All the grass had long been scorched brown, and the sands
felt like live coals to the feet. Evergreen trees wore a
dusty coat of brown. The birds were silenced in the for-
ests, and the world lay panting under the live, vibrating
heat. And then came the clap of thunder. It was an angry,
metallic and thirsty clap, unlike the deep and liquid
rumbling of the rainy season. A mighty wind arose and fill-
ed the air with dust.

Palm trees swayed as the wind combed their leaves into
flying crests like strange and fantastic coiffure.

When the rain finally came, it was in large, solid drops
of frozen water which the people called "the nuts of the
water of heaven." They were hard and painful on the body
as they fell, yet young people ran about happily picking
up the cold nuts and throwing them into their mouths to
melt.

The earth quickly came to life and the birds in the for-
ests fluttered around and chirped merrily. A vague scent
of life and green vegetation was diffused in the air. As
the rain began to fall more soberly and in smaller liquid
drops, children sought for shelter, and all were happy,
refreshed and thankful.


Okonkwo and his family worked very hard to plant a new
farm. But it was like beginning life anew without the
vigour and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become
left-handed in old age. Work no longer had for him the
pleasure it used to have, and when there was no work to
do he sat in a silent half-sleep.

His life had been ruled by a great passion--to become
one of the lords of the clan. That had been his life-spring.
And he had all but achieved it. Then everything had been
broken. He had been cast out of his clan like a fish onto
a dry, sandy beach, panting. Clearly his personal god or chi
was not made for great things. A man could not rise beyond
the destiny of his chi. The saying of the elders was not true
--that if a man said yea his chi also affirmed. Here was a
man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation.

The old man, Uchendu, saw clearly that Okonkwo had yield-
ed to despair and he was greatly troubled. He would speak
to him after the isa-ifi ceremony.

The youngest of Uchendu's five sons, Amikwu, was marrying
a new wife. The bride-price had been paid and all but the
last ceremony had been performed. Amikwu and his people
had taken palm-wine to the bride's kinsmen about two moons
before Okonkwo's arrival in Mbanta. And so it was time for
the final ceremony of confession.

The daughters of the family were all there, some of them
having come a long way from their homes in distant villages.
Uchendu's eldest daughter had come from Obodo, nearly half
a day's journey away. The daughters of Uehuiona were also
there. It was a full gathering of umuada, in the same way
as they would meet if a death occurred. There were twenty-
two of them.

They sat in a big circle on the ground and the young bride
in the centre with a hen in her right hand. Uchendu before
her, holding the ancestral staff of the family. The men
stood outside the circle, watching. Their wives also. It
was evening and the sun was setting Uchendu's eldest daught-
er, Njide, asked her"

"Remember that if you do not answer truthfully you will suf-
fer or even die at childbirth," she began. "How man men have
lain with you since my brother first expressed his desire to
marry you?"

"None," she answered simply.

"Answer truthfully," urged the other women "None?" asked
Njide.

"None," she answered.

"Swear on this staff of my fathers," said Uchendu "I
swear," said the bride.

Uchendu took the hen from her, slit its throat with a
sharp knife and allowed some of the blood to fall
on the ancestral staff.

From that day Amikwu took the young bride and she became
his wife. The daughters of the clan did not return to
their homes immediately but spent two more days with their
kinsmen.

On the second day Uchendu called together his sons and
daughters and his nephew, Okonkwo. The men brought their
goatskin mats, with which they sat on the floor, and the
women sat on a sisal mat spread on a raised bank of earth.
Uchendu pulled gently at his grey beard and gnashed his
teeth. Then he began to speak, quietly and deliberately,
picking his words with great care:

"It is Okonkwo that I primarily wish to speak to," he began.
"But I want all of you to note what I am going to say. I am
an old man and you are all children .I know more about the
world than any of you. If there is any one among you who
thinks he knows more let him speak up." He paused, but n
o one spoke.

"Why is Okonkwo with us today? This is not his clan. We
are only his mother's kinsmen. He does not belong here.
He is an exile, condemned for seven years to live in a
strange land. And so he is bowed with grief. But there is
just one question I would like to ask him. Can you tell
me, Okonkwo, why it is that one of the commonest names
we give our children is Nneka, or "Mother is Supreme?"
We all know that a man is the head of the family and his
wives do his bidding. A child belongs to its father and
his family and not to its mother and her family. A man
belongs to his fatherland and not to his motherland. And
yet we say Nneka -'Mother is Supreme.' Why is that?"

There was silence. "I want Okonkwo to answer me," said
Uchendu.

"I do not know the answer," Okonkwo replied.

"You do not know the answer? So you see that you are a
child. You have many wives and many children--more child-
ren than I have. You are a great man in your clan. But
you are still a child, my child. Listen to me and I shall
tell you. But there is one more question I shall ask you.
Why is it that when a woman dies she is taken home to be
buried with her own kinsmen? She is not buried with her
husband's kinsmen. Why is that? Your mother was brought
home to me and buried with my people. Why was that?"

Okonkwo shook his head.

"He does not know that either," said Uchendu, "and yet
he is full of sorrow because he has come to live in his
motherland for a few years." He laughed a mirthless laugh-
ter, and turned to his sons and daughters. "What about
you? Can you answer my question?"

They all shook their heads.

"Then listen to me," he said and cleared his throat.
"It's true that a child belongs to its father. But
when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its
mother's hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things
are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and
bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your moth-
er is there to protect you. She is buried there. And
that is why we say that mother is supreme. Is it right
that you, Okonkwo, should bring to your mother a heavy
face and refuse to be comforted? Be careful or you may
displease the dead. Your duty is to comfort your wives
and children and take them back to your fatherland after
seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down
and kill you they will all die in exile." He paused for
a long while. "These are now your kinsmen." He waved at
his sons and daughters.

"You think you are the greatest sufferer in the world?
Do you know that men are sometimes banished for life?
Do you know that men sometimes lose all their yams and
even their children? I had six wives once. I have none
now except that young girl who knows not her right from
her left. Do you know how many children I have buried--
children I begot in my youth and strength? Twenty-two.
I did not hang myself, and I am still alive. If you
think you are the greatest sufferer in the world ask my
daughter, Akueni, how many twins she has borne and thrown
away. Have you not heard the song they sing when a woman
dies?

　　　　"'For whom is it well, for whom is it well?
　　　　There is no one for whom it is well.'

"I have no more to say to you."



CHAPTER FIFTEEN



It was in the second year of Okonkwo's exile that his
friend, Obierika, came to visit him. He brought with him
two young men, each of them carrying a heavy bag on his
head. Okonkwo helped them put down their loads. It was
clear that the bags were full of cowries.

Okonkwo was very happy to receive his friend. His wives
and children were very happy too, and so were his cousins
and their wives when he sent for them and told them who
his guest was.

"You must take him to salute our father," said one of
the cousins.

"Yes," replied Okonkwo. "We are going directly." But
before they went he whispered something to his first
wife. She nodded, and soon the children were chasing
one of their cocks.

Uchendu had been told by one of his grandchildren that
three strangers had come to Okonkwo's house. He was
therefore waiting to receive them. He held out his
hands to them when they came into his obi, and after
they had shaken hands he asked Okonkwo who they were.

"This is Obierika, my great friend. I have already
spoken to you about him."

"Yes," said the old man, turning to Obierika. "My son
has told me about you, and I am happy you have come to
see us. I knew your father, Iweka. He was a great man.
He had many friends here and came to see them quite of-
ten. Those were good days when a man had friends in
distant clans. Your generation does not know that. You
stay at home, afraid of your next-door neighbour. Even
a man's motherland is strange to him nowadays." He look-
ed at Okonkwo. "I am an old man and I like to talk.
That is all I am good for now." He got up painfully,
went into an inner room and came back with a kola nut.

"Who are the young men with you?" he asked as he sat
down again on his goatskin. Okonkwo told him.

"Ah," he said. "Welcome, my sons." He presented the
kola nut to them, and when they had seen it and thank-
ed him, he broke it and they ate.

"Go into that room," he said to Okonkwo, pointing with
his finger. "You will find a pot of wine there."

Okonkwo brought the wine and they began to drink. It
was a day old, and very strong.

"Yes," said Uchendu after a long silence. "People tra-
velled more in those days. There is not a single clan
in these parts that I do not know very well. Aninta,
Umuazu, Ikeocha, Elumelu, Abame--I know them all."

"Have you heard," asked Obierika, "that Abame is no
more?"

"How is that?" asked Uchendu and Okonkwo together.

"Abame has been wiped out," said Obierika. "It is a
strange and terrible story. If I had not seen the
few survivors with my own eyes and heard their story
with my own ears, I would not have believed. Was it
not on an Eke day that they fled into Umuofia?" he ask-
ed his two companions, and they nodded their heads.

"Three moons ago," said Obierika, "on an Eke market
day a little band of fugitives came into our town. Most
of them were sons of our land whose mothers had been
buried with us. But there were some too who came be-
cause they had friends in our town, and others who
could think of nowhere else open to escape. And so
they fled into Umuofia with a woeful story." He drank
his palm-wine, and Okonkwo filled his horn again. He
continued:

"During the last planting season a white man had appear-
ed in their clan."

"An albino," suggested Okonkwo.

"He was not an albino. He was quite different." He
sipped his wine. "And he was riding an iron horse. The
first people who saw him ran away, but he stood beckon-
ing to them. In the end the fearless ones went near and
even touched him. The elders consulted their Oracle and
it told them that the strange man would break their clan
and spread destruction among them." Obierika again drank
a little of his wine. "And so they killed the white man
and tied his iron horse to their sacred tree because it
looked as if it would run away to call the man's friends.
I forgot to tell you another thing which the Oracle said.
It said that other white men were on their way. They
were locusts, it said, and that first man was their har-
binger sent to explore the terrain. And so they killed
him."

"What did the white man say before they killed him?"
asked Uchendu.

"He said nothing," answered one of Obierika's companions.

"He said something, only they did not understand him,"
said Obierika. "He seemed to speak through his nose."

"One of the men told me," said Obierika's other compan-
ion, "that he repeated over and over again a word that
resembled Mbaino. Perhaps he had been going to Mbaino
and had lost his way."

"Anyway," resumed Obierika, "they killed him and tied
up his iron horse. This was before the planting season
began. For a long time nothing happened. The rains had
come and yams had been sown. The iron horse was still
tied to the sacred silk-cotton tree. And then one morning
three white men led by a band of ordinary men like us came
to the clan. They saw the iron horse and went away again.
Most of the men and women of Abame had gone to their
farms. Only a few of them saw these white men and their
followers. For many market weeks nothing else happened.
They have a big market in Abame on every other Afo day
and, as you know, the whole clan gathers there. That was
the day it happened. The three white men and a very large
number of other men surrounded the market. They must
have used a powerful medicine to make themselves invisible
until the market was full. And they began to shoot. Every-
body was killed, except the old and the sick who were at
home and a handful of men and women whose chi were
wide awake and brought them out of that market." He
paused.

"Their clan is now completely empty. Even the sacred
fish in their mysterious lake have fled and the lake
has turned the colour of blood. A great evil has come
upon their land as the Oracle had warned." There was
a long silence. Uchendu ground his teeth together audi-
bly. Then he burst out: "Never kill a man who says no-
thing. Those men of Abame were fools. What did they
know about the man?" He ground his teeth again and told
a story to illustrate his point. "Mother Kite once sent
her daughter to bring food. She went, and brought back
a duckling. 'You have done very well,' said Mother Kite
to her daughter, 'but tell me, what did the mother of
this duckling say when you swooped and carried its
child away?'

'It said nothing,' replied the young kite. 'It just
walked away.'

'You must return the duckling,' said Mother Kite.
'There is something ominous behind the silence.'

And so Daughter Kite returned the duckling and took a
chick instead. 'What did the mother of this chick do?'
asked the old kite. 'It cried and raved and cursed me,'
said the young kite. 'Then we can eat the chick,' said
her mother. 'There is nothing to fear from someone who
shouts.' Those men of Abame were fools."

"They were fools," said Okonkwo after a pause. "They
had been warned that danger was ahead.

They should have armed themselves with their guns and
their machetes even when they went to market."

"They have paid for their foolishness," said Obierika,
"But I am greatly afraid. We have heard stories about
white men who made the powerful guns and the strong
drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no
one thought the stories were true."

"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu.
"The world has no end, and what is good among one peo-
ple is an abomination with others. We have albinos a-
mong us. Do you not think that they came to our clan
by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to
a land where everybody is like them?"


Okonkwo's first wife soon finished her cooking and set
before their guests a big meal of pounded yams and bit-
ter-leaf soup. Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, brought in a pot
of sweet wine tapped from the raffia palm.

"You are a big man now," Obierika said to Nwoye. "Your
friend Anene asked me to greet you."

"Is he well?" asked Nwoye.

"We are all well," said Obierika.

Ezinma brought them a bowl of water with which to wash
their hands. After that they began to eat and to drink
the wine.

"When did you set out from home?" asked Okonkwo.

"We had meant to set out from my house before cockcrow,"
said Obierika. "But Nweke did not appear until it was
quite light. Never make an early morning appointment
with a man who has just married a new wife." They all
laughed.

"Has Nweke married a wife?" asked Okonkwo.

"He has married Okadigbo's second daughter," said Obi-
erika.

"That is very good," said Okonkwo. "I do not blame you
for not hearing the cock crow."

When they had eaten, Obierika pointed at the two heavy
bags.

"That is the money from your yams," he said. "I sold
the big ones as soon as you left. Later on I sold some
of the seed-yams and gave out others to sharecroppers.
I shall do that every year until you return. But I
thought you would need the money now and so I brought
it. Who knows what may happen tomorrow?

Perhaps green men will come to our clan and shoot us."

"God will not permit it," said Okonkwo. "I do not know
how to thank you."

"I can tell you," said Obierika. "Kill one of your sons
for me.

"That will not be enough," said Okonkwo.

"Then kill yourself," said Obierika.

"Forgive me," said Okonkwo, smiling. "I shall not talk
about thanking you any more."



CHAPTER SIXTEEN



When nearly two years later Obierika paid another visit to
his friend in exile the circumstances were less happy. The
missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built their church
there, won a handful of converts and were already sending
evangelists to the surrounding towns and villages. That was
a source of great sorrow to the leaders of the clan, but many
of them believed that the strange faith and the white man's
god would not last. None of his converts was a man whose word
was heeded in ihe assembly of the people. None of them was a
man of title. They were mostly the kind of people that were
called efulefu, worthless, empty men. The imagery of an ef-
ulefu in the language of the clan was a man who sold his
machete and wore the sheath to battle. Chielo, the priestess
of Agbala, called the converts the excrement of the clan, and
the new faith was a mad dog that had come to eat it up.

What moved Obierika to visit Okonkwo was the sudden appear-
ance of the latter's son, Nwoye, among the missionaries in
Umuofia.

"What are you doing here?" Obierika had asked when after
many difficulties the missionaries had allowed him to speak
to the boy.

"I am one of them," replied Nwoye.

"How is your father?" Obierika asked, not knowing what else
to say.

"I don't know. He is not my father," said Nwoye, unhappily.

And so Obierika went to Mbanta to see his friend. And he
found that Okonkwo did not wish to speak about Nwoye. It
was only from Nwoye's mother that he heard scraps of the
story.


The arrival of the missionaries had caused a considerable
stir in the village of Mbanta. There were six of them and
one was a white man. Every man and woman came out to see
the white man. Stories about these strange men had grown
sim one of them had been killed in Abame and his iron
horse tied to the sacred silk-cotton tree. And so every-
body came to see the white man. It was the time of the year
when everybody was at home. The harvest was over.

When they had all gathered, the white man began to speak
to them. He spoke through an interpreter who was an Ibo
man, though his dialect was different and harsh to the
enrs of Mbanta. Many people laughed at his dialect and the
way he used words strangely. Instead of saying "myself" he
always said "my buttocks." But he was a man of commanding
presence and the clansmen listened to him. He said he was
one of them, they could see from his colour and his language.
The other four black men were also their brothers, although
one of them did not speak Ibo. The white man was also their
brother because they were all sons of God. And he told them
about this new God, the Creator of all the world and all
the men and women. He told them that they worshipped false
gods, gods of wood and stone. A deep murmur went through
the crowd when he said this. He told them that the true God
lived on high and that all men when they died went before
Him for judgment. Evil men and all the heathen who in their
blindness bowed to wood and stone were thrown into a fire
that burned like palm-oil. But good men who worshipped the
true God lived forever in His happy kingdom.

"We have been sent by this great God to ask you to leave
your wicked ways and false gods and turn to Him so that you
may be saved when you die," he said.

"Your buttocks understand our language," said someone light-
heartedly and the crowd laughed.

"What did he say?" the white man asked his interpreter.
But before he could answer, another man asked a question:
"Where is the white man's horse?" he asked. The Ibo evange-
lists consulted among themselves and decided that the man
probably meant bicycle. They told the white man and he
smiled benevolently.

"Tell them," he said, "that I shall bring many iron horses
when we have settled down among them. Some of them will even
ride the iron horse themselves." This was interpreted to
them but very few of them heard. They were talking excitedly
among themselves because the white man had said he was going
to live among them. They had not thought about that.

At this point an old man said he had a question. "Which is
this god of yours," he asked, "the goddess of the earth, the
god of the sky, Amadiora or the thunderbolt, or what?"

The interpreter spoke to the white man and he immediately
gave his answer. "All the gods you have named are not gods
at all. They are gods of deceit who tell you to kill your
fellows and destroy innocent children. There is only one
true God and He has the earth, the sky, you and me and all
of us."

"If we leave our gods and follow your god," asked another
man, "who will protect us from the anger of our neglected
gods and ancestors?"

"Your gods are not alive and cannot do you any harm,"
replied the white man. "They are pieces of wood and stone."

When this was interpreted to the men of Mbanta they broke
into derisive laughter. These men must be mad, they said
to themselves. How else could they say that Ani and Amad-
iora were harmless? And Idemili and Ogwugwu too? And some
of them began to go away.

Then the missionaries burst into song. It was one of those
gay and rollicking tunes of evangelism which had the power
of plucking at silent and dusty chords in the heart of an
Ibo man. The interpreter explained each verse to the audi-
ence, some of whom now stood enthralled. It was a story of
brothers who lived in darkness and in fear, ignorant of the
love of God. It told of one sheep out on the hills, away
from the gates of God and from the tender shepherd's care.

After the singing the interpreter spoke about the Son of
God whose name was Jesu Kristi. Okonkwo, who only stayed
in the hope that it might come to chasing the men out of
the village or whipping them, now said "You told us with
your own mouth that there was only one god. Now you talk
about his son. He must have a wife, then." The crowd agreed.

"I did not say He had a wife," said the interpreter, some-
what lamely.

"Your buttocks said he had a son," said the joker. "So he
must have a wife and all of them must have buttocks."

The missionary ignored him and went on to talk about the
Holy Trinity. At the end of it Okonkwo was fully convinc-
ed that the man was mad. He shrugged his shoulders and
went away to tap his afternoon palmwine.

But there was a young lad who had been captivated. His
name was Nwoye, Okonkwo's first son. It was not the mad
logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not un-
derstand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, some-
thing felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat
in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and per-
sistent question that haunted his young soul--the quest-
ion of the twins crying in the bush and the question of
Ikemefuna who was killed. He lelt a relief within as the
hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn
were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry
palate of the panting earth. Nwoye's callow mind was great-
ly puzzled.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



The missionaries spent their first four or five nights in
the marketplace, and went into the village in the morning
to preach the gospel. They asked who the king of the vill-
age was, but the villagers told them that there was no
king. "We have men of high title and the chief priests and
the elders," they said.

It was not very easy getting the men of high title and
the elders together after the excitement of the first day.
But the arrivees persevered, and in the end they were re-
ceived by them They asked for a plot of land to build on,

Every clan and village had an evil forest. In it were buried all
those who died of the really evil diseases, like leprosy and
small-pox. It was also the dumping ground for highly potent
fetishes of great medicine men when they died. An evil for-
est was, therefore, alive with sinister forces and powers of
darkness. It was such a forest that, the rulers of Mbanta
gave to the missionaries. They did not really want them
near to the clan, and so they made them that offer which
nobody in his right senses would accept.

"They want a piece of land to build their shrine," said U-
chendu to his peers when they consulted among themselves.
"We shall give them a piece of land." He paused, and there
was a murmur of surprise and disagreement. "Let us give
them a portion of the Evil Forest. They boast about victory
over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which
to show their victory." They laughed and agreed, and sent
for the missionaries, whom they had asked to leave them
for a while so that they might "whisper together." They
offered them as much of the Evil Forest as they cared to
take. And to their greatest amazement the missionaries
thanked them and burst into song.

"They do not understand," said some of the elders. "But
they will understand when they go to their plot of land
tomorrow morning." And they dispersed.

The next morning the crazy men actually began to clear
a part of the forest and to build their house. The in-
habitants of Mbanta expected them all to be dead within
four days. The first day passed and the second and third
and fourth, and none of them died. Everyone was puzzled.
And then it became known that the white man's fetish had
unbelievable power. It was said that he wore glasses on
his eyes so that he could see and talk to evil spirits.
Not long after, he won his first three converts.

Although Nwoye had been attracted to the new faith from
the very first day, he kept it secret. He dared not go
too near the missionaries for fear of his father. But
whenever they came to preach in the open marketplace or
the village play ground, Nwoye was there. And he was
already beginning to know some of the simple stories they
told.

"We have now built a church," said Mr. Kiaga, the in-
terpreter, who was now in charge of the infant congre-
gation. The white man had gone back to Umuofia, where
he built his headquarters and from where he paid regular
visits to Mr. Kiaga's congregation at Mbanta.

"We have now built a church," said Mr. Kiaga, "and we
want you all to come in every seventh day to worship
the true God."

On the following Sunday, Nwoye passed and repassed the
little red-earth and thatch building without summoning
enough courage to enter. He heard the voice of singing
and although it came from a handful of men it was loud
and confident. Their church stood on a circular clearing
that looked like the open mouth of the Evil Forest. Was
it waiting to snap its teeth together? After passing and
re-passing by the church, Nwoye returned home.

It was well known among the people of Mbanta that their
gods and ancestors were sometimes longsuffering and would
deliberately allow a man to go on defying them. But even
in such cases they set their limit at seven market weeks
or twenty-eight days. Beyond that limit no man was suffer-
ed to go. And so excitement mounted in the village as the
seventh week approached since the impudent missionaries
built their church in the Evil Forest. The villagers were
so certain about the doom that awaited these men that one
or two converts thought it wise to suspend their allegiance
to the new faith.

At last the day came by which all the missionaries should
have died. But they were still alive, building a new red-
earth and thatch house for their teacher, Mr. Kiaga. That
week they won a handful more converts. And for the first
time they had a woman. Her name was Nneka, the wife of
Amadi, who was a prosperous farmer. She was very heavy
with child.

Nneka had had four previous pregnancies and child-births.
But each time she had borne twins, and they had been im-
mediately thrown away. Her husband and his family were al-
ready becoming highly critical of such a woman and were
not unduly perturbed when they found she had fled to join
the Christians. It was a good riddance.


One morning Okonkwo's cousin, Amikwu, was passing by the
church on his way from the neighbouring village, when he
saw Nwoye among the Christians. He was greatly surprised,
and when he got home he went straight to Okonkwo's hut
and told him what he had seen. The women began to talk ex-
citedly, but Okonkwo sat unmoved.

It was late afternoon before Nwoye returned. He went into
the obi and saluted his father, but he did not answer.
Nwoye turned round to walk into the inner compound when
his father, suddenly overcome with fury, sprang to his
feet and gripped him by the neck.

"Where have you been?" he stammered.

Nwoye struggled to free himself from the choking grip.

"Answer me," roared Okonkwo, "before I kill you!" He seize-
d a heavy stick that lay on the dwarf wall and hit him two
or three savage blows.

"Answer me!" he roared again. Nwoye stood looking at him
and did not say a word. The women were screaming outside,
afraid to go in.

"Leave that boy at once!" said a voice in the outer com-
pound. It was Okonkwo's uncle, Uchendu. "Are you mad?"

Okonkwo did not answer. But he left hold of Nwoye, who
walked away and never returned. He went back to the church
and told Mr. Kiaga that he had decided to go to Umuofia
where the white missionary had set up a school to teach
young Christians to read and write.

Mr. Kiaga's joy was very great. "Blessed is he who forsakes
his father and his mother for my sake," he intoned. "Those
that hear my words are my father and my mother."

Nwoye did not fully understand. But he was happy to leave
his father. He would return later to his mother and his
brothers and sisters and convert them to the new faith.

As Okonkwo sat in his hut that night, gazing into a log
fire, he thought over the matter. A sudden fury rose within
him and he felt a strong desire to take up his machete, go
to the church and wipe out the entire vile and miscreant
gang. But on further thought he told himself that Nwoye
was not worth fighting for. Why, he cried in his heart,
should he, Okonkwo, of all people, be cursed with such a
son? He saw clearly in it the finger of his personal god
or chi. For how else could he explain his great misfortune
and exile and now his despicable son's behaviour? Now that
he had time to think of it, his son's crime stood out in
its stark enormity. To abandon the gods of one's father
and go about with a lot of effeminate men clucking like old
hens was the very depth of abomination. Suppose when he
died all his male children decided to follow Nwoye's steps
and abandon their ancestors? Okonkwo felt a cold shudder
run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect
of annihilation. He saw himself and his fathers crowding
round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship
and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days,
and his children the while praying to the white man's god.
If such a thing were ever to happen, he, Okonkwo, would
wipe them off the face of the earth.

Okonkwo was popularly called the "Roaring Flame." As he
looked into the log fire he recalled the name. He was a
flaming fire. How then could he have begotten a son like
Nwoye, degenerate and effeminate? Perhaps he was not his
son. No! he could not be. His wife had played him false.
He would teach her! But Nwoye resembled his grandfather,
Unoka, who was Okonkwo's father. He pushed the thought out
of his mind. He, Okonkwo, was called a flaming fire. How
could he have begotten a woman for a son? At Nwoye's age
Okonkwo had already become famous throughout Umuofia for
his wrestling and his fearlessness.

He sighed heavily, and as if in sympathy the smouldering
log also sighed. And immediately Okonkwo's eyes were open-
ed and he saw the whole matter clearly. Living fire begets
cold, impotent ash. He sighed again, deeply.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN



The young church in Mbanta had a few crises early in its
life. At first the clan had assumed that it would not
survive. But it had gone on living and gradually becoming
stronger. The clan was worried, but not overmuch. If a gang
of efulefu decided to live in the Evil Forest it was their
own affair. When one came to think of it, the Evil Forest
was a fit home for such undesirable people. It was true
they were rescuing twins from the bush, but they never
brought them into the village. As far as the villagers were
concerned, the twins still remained where they had been
thrown away. Surely the earth goddess would not visit the
sins of the missionaries on the innocent villagers?

But on one occasion the missionaries had tried to over
step the bounds. Three converts had gone into the village
and boasted openly that all the gods were dead and impotent
and that they were prepared to defy them by burning all
their shrines.

"Go and burn your mothers' genitals," said one of the
priests. The men were seized and beaten until they streamed
with blood. After that nothing happened for a long time be-
tween the church and the clan.

But stories were already gaining ground that the white man
had not only brought a religion but also a government. It was
said that they had built a place of judgment in Umuofia to
protect the followers of their religion. It was even said that
they had hanged one man who killed a missionary.

Although such stories were now often told they looked like
fairytales in Mbanta and did not as yet affect the relation-
ship between the new church and the clan. There was no ques-
tion of killing a missionary here, for Mr. Kiaga, despite his
madness, was quite harmless. As for his converts, no one could
kill them without having to flee from the clan, for in spite
of their worthlessness they still belonged to the clan. And so
nobody gave serious thought to the stories about the white
man's government or the consequences of killing the Christ-
ians. If they became more troublesome than they already were
they would simply be driven out of the clan.

And the little church was at that moment too deeply absorb-
ed in its own troubles to annoy the clan. It all began over
the question of admitting outcasts.

These outcasts, or osu, seeing that the new religion wel-
comed twins and such abominations, thought that it was pos-
sible that they would also be received. And so one Sunday
two of them went into the church. There was an immediate
stir, but so great was the work the new religion had done
among the converts that they did not immediately leave the
church when the outcasts came in. Those who found themselves
nearest to them merely moved to another seat. It was a mir-
acle. But it only lasted till the end of the service. The
whole church raised a protest and was about to drive these
people out, when Mr. Kiaga stopped them and began to explain.

"Before God," he said, "there is no slave or free. We are
all children of God and we must receive these our brothers."

"You do not understand," said one of the converts. "What
will the heathen say of us when they hear that we receive
osu into our midst? They will laugh."

"Let them laugh," said Mr. Kiaga. "God will laugh at them
on the judgment day. Why do the nations rage and the peo-
ples imagine a vain thing? He that sitteth in the heavens
shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision."

"You do not understand," the convert maintained. "You are
our teacher, and you can teach us the things of the new
faith. But this is a matter which we know." And he told him
what an osu was.

He was a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart--a
taboo for ever, and his children after him. He could neither
marry nor be married by the free-born. He was in fact an
outcast, living in a special area of the village, close to
the Great Shrine. Wherever he went he carried with him the
mark of his forbidden caste--long, tangled and dirty hair.
A razor was taboo to him. An osu could not attend an assemb-
ly of the free-born, and they, in turn, could not shelter
under his roof. He could not take any of the four titles of
the clan, and when he died he was buried by his kind in the
Evil Forest. How could such a man be a follower of Christ?

"He needs Christ more than you and I," said Mr. Kiaga.

"Then I shall go back to the clan," said the convert. And
he went. Mr. Kiaga stood firm, and it was his firmness that
saved the young church. The wavering converts drew inspira-
tion and confidence from his unshakable faith. He ordered
the outcasts to shave off their long, tangled hair. At first
they were afraid they might die.

"Unless you shave off the mark of your heathen belief I will
not admit you into the church," said Mr. Kiaga. "You fear
that you will die. Why should that be? How are you different
from other men who shave their hair? The same God created
you and them. But they have cast you out like lepers. It is a-
gainst the will of God, who has promised everlasting life to
all who believe in His holy name. The heathen say you will
die if you do this or that, and you are afraid. They also
said I would die if I built my church on this ground. Am I
dead? They said I would die if I took care of twins. I am
still alive. The heathen speak nothing but falsehood. Only
the word of our God is true."

The two outcasts shaved off their hair, and soon they were
the strongest adherents of the new faith. And what was more,
nearly all the osu in Mbanta followed their example. It was
in fact one of them who in his zeal brought the church into
serious conflict with the clan a year later by killing the
sacred python, the emanation of the god of water.

The royal python was the most revered animal in Mbanta and
all the surrounding clans. It was addressed as "Our Father,"
and was allowed to go wherever it chose, even into people's
beds. It ate rats in the house and sometimes swallowed hens'
eggs. If a clansman killed a royal python accidentally, he
made sacrifices of atonement and performed an expensive bur-
ial ceremony such as was done for a great man. No punishment
was prescribed for a man who killed the python knowingly.
Nobody thought that such a thing could ever happen.

Perhaps it never did happen. That was the way the clan at
first looked at it. No one had actually seen the man do it.
The story had arisen among the Christians themselves.

But, all the same, the rulers and elders of Mbanta assembled
to decide on their action. Many of them spoke at great length
and in fury. The spirit of wars was upon them. Okonkwo, who
had begun to play a part in the affairs of his motherland,
said that until the abominable gang was chased out of the
village with whips there would be no peace.

But there were many others who saw the situation differently,
and it was their counsel that prevailed in the end.

"It is not our custom to fight for our gods," said one of
them. "Let us not presume to do so now. If a man kills the
sacred python in the secrecy of his hut, the matter lies be-
tween him and the god. We did not see it. If we put ourselves
between the god and his victim we may receive blows intended
for the offender. When a man blasphemes, what do we do? Do
we go and stop his mouth? No. We put our fingers into our
ears to stop us hearing. That is a wise action."

"Let us not reason like cowards," said Okonkwo. "If a man
comes into my hut and defecates on the floor, what do I do?
Do i shut my eyes? No! I take a stick and break his head
That is what a man does. These people are daily pouring filth
over us, and Okeke says we should pretend not to see." Okon-
kwo made a sound full of disgust. This was a womanly clan,
he thought. Such a thing could never happen in his father-
land, Umuofia.

"Okonkwo has spoken the truth," said another man. "We
should do something. But let us ostracise these men. We
would then not be held accountable for their abominations."

Everybody in the assembly spoke, and in the end it was dec-
ided to ostracise the Christians. Okonkwo ground his teeth
in disgust.


That night a bell-man went through the length and breadth
of Mbanta proclaiming that the adherents of the new faith
were thenceforth excluded from the life and privileges of
the clan.

The Christians had grown in number and were now a small
community of men, women and children, self-assured and con-
fident. Mr. Brown, the white missionary, paid regular vis-
its to them. "When I think that it is only eighteen months
since the Seed was first sown among you," he said, "I mar-
vel at what the Lord hath wrought."

It was Wednesday in Holy Week and Mr. Kiaga had asked the
women to bring red earth and white chalk and water to scrub
the church for Easter, and the women had formed themselves
into three groups for this purpose. They set out early that
morning, some of them with their water-pots to the stream,
another group with hoes and baskets to the village earth
pit, and the others to the chalk quarry.

Mr. Kiaga was praying in the church when he heard the women
talking excitedly. He rounded off his prayer and went to see
what it was all about. The women had come to the church with
empty waterpots. They said that some young men had chased
them away from the stream with whips. Soon after, the women
who had gone for red earth returned with empty baskets. Some
of them had been heavily whipped. The chalk women also re-
turned to tell a similar story.

"What does it all mean?" asked Mr. Kiaga, who was greatly
perplexed.

"The village has outlawed us," said one of the women. "The
bellman announced it last night. But it is not our custom
to debar anyone from the stream or the quarry."

Another woman said, "They want to ruin us. They will not
allow us into the markets. They have said so."

Mr. Kiaga was going to send into the village for his men-
converts when he saw them coming on their own. Of course
they had all heard the bell-man, but they had never in all
their lives heard of women being debarred from the stream.

"Come along," they said to the women. "We will go with you
to meet those cowards." Some of them had big sticks and
some even machetes.

But Mr. Kiaga restrained them. He wanted first to know why
they had been outlawed.

"They say that Okoli killed the sacred python," said one
man.

"It is false," said another. "Okoli told me himself that
it was false."

Okoli was not there to answer. He had fallen ill on the
previous night. Before the day was over he was dead. His
death showed that the gods were still able to fight their
own battles. The clan saw no reason then for molesting the
Christians.



CHAPTER NINETEEN



The last big rains of the year were falling. It was the time
for treading red earth with which to build walls. It was not
done earlier because the rains were too heavy and would have
washed away the heap of trodden earth, and it could not be
done later because harvesting would soon set in, and after
that the dry season.

It was going to be Okonkwo's last harvest in Mbanta. The
seven wasted and weary years were at last dragging to a
close. Although he had prospered in his motherland Okonkwo
knew that he would have prospered even more in Umuofia, in
the land of his fathers where men were bold and warlike. In
these seven years he would have climbed to the utmost
heights. And so he regretted every day of his exile. His mo-
ther's kinsmen had been very kind to him, and he was grate-
ful. But that did not alter the facts. He had called the first
child born to him in exile Nneka-- "Mother is Supreme"--out
of politeness to his mother's kinsmen. But two years later
when a son was born he called him Nwofia--"Begotten in
the Wilderness."

As soon as he entered his last year in exile Okonkwo sent
money to Obierika to build him two huts in his old compound
where he and his family would live until he built more huts
and the outside wall of his compound. He could not ask an-
other man to build his own obi for him, nor the walls of
his compound. Those things a man built for himself or in-
herited from his father.

As the last heavy rains of the year began to fall, Obi-
erika sent word that the two huts had been built and Okon-
kwo began to prepare for his return, after the rains. He
would have liked to return earlier and build his compound
that year before the rains stopped, but in doing so he
would have taken something from the full penalty of seven
years. And that could not be. So he waited impatiently for
the dry season to come.

It came slowly. The rain became lighter and lighter until it
fell in slanting showers. Sometimes the sun shone through
the rain and a light breeze blew. It was a gay and airy kind
of rain. The rainbow began to appear, and sometimes two
rainbows, like a mother and her daughter, the one young and
beautiful, and the other an old and faint shadow. The rainbow
was called the python of the sky.

Okonkwo called his three wives and told them to get things
together for a great feast. "I must thank my mother's kin-
smen before I go," he said.

Ekwefi still had some cassava left on her farm from the
previous year. Neither of the other wives had. It was not
that they had been lazy, but that they had many children
to feed. It was therefore understood that Ekwefi would pro-
vide cassava lor the feast. Nwoye's mother and Ojiugo would
provide the other things like smoked fish, palm-oil and pep-
per for the soup. Okonkwo would take care of meat and yams.

Ekwefi rose early on the following morning and went to her
farm with her daughter, Ezinma, and Ojiugo's daughter, Obia-
geli, to harvest cassava tubers. Each of them carried a long
cane basket, a machete for cutting down the soft cassava
stem, and a little hoe for digging out the tuber. Fortunate-
ly, a light rain had fallen during the night and the soil
would not be very hard.

"It will not take us long to harvest as much as we like,"
said Ekwefi.

"But the leaves will be wet," said Ezinma. Her basket was
balanced on her head, and her arms folded across her breasts.
She felt cold. "I dislike cold water dropping on my back.
We should have waited for the sun to rise and dry the leaves."

Obiageli called her "Salt" because she said that she dis-
liked water. "Are you afraid you may dissolve?"

The harvesting was easy, as Ekwefi had said. Ezinma shook
every tree violently with a long stick before she bent down
to cut the stem and dig out the tuber. Sometimes it was not
necessary to dig. They just pulled the stump, and earth
rose, roots snapped below, and the tuber was pulled out.

When they had harvested a sizable heap they carried it
down in two trips to the stream, where every woman had a
shallow well for fermenting her cassava.

"It should be ready in four days or even three," said Ob-
iageli. "They are young tubers."

"They are not all that young," said Ekwefi. "I planted the
farm nearly two years ago. It is a poor soil and that is
why the tubers are so small."


Okonkwo never did things by halves. When his wife Ekwefi
protested that two goats were sufficient for the feast he
told her that it was not her affair.

"I am calling a feast because I have the wherewithal. I
cannot live on the bank of a river and wash my hands with
spittle. My mother's people have been good to me and 1
must show my gratitude."

And so three goats were slaughtered and a number of
fowls. It was like a wedding feast. There was foo-foo and
yam pottage, egusi soup and bitter-leaf soup and pots and
pots of palm-wine.

All the umunna were invited to the feast, all the des-
cendants of Okolo, who had lived about two hundred years
before. The oldest member of this extensive family was O-
konkwo's uncle, Uchendu. The kola nut was given him to
break, and he prayed to the ancestors. He asked them for
health and children. "We do not ask for wealth because he
that has health and children will also have wealth. We do
not pray to have more money but to have more kinsmen. We
are better than animals because we have kinsmen. An animal
rubs its itching flank against a tree, a man asks his kins-
man to scratch him." He prayed especially for Okonkwo and
his family. He then broke the kola nut and threw one of
the lobes on the ground for the ancestors.

As the broken kola nuts were passed round, Okonkwo's wives
and children and those who came to help them with the cook-
ing began to bring out the food. His sons brought out the
pots of palm-wine. There was so much food and drink that
many kinsmen whistled in surprise. When all was laid out,
Okonkwo rose to speak.

"I beg you to accept this little kola," he said. "It is
not to pay you back for all you did for me in these seven
years. A child cannot pay for its mother's milk. I have only
called you together because it is good for kinsmen to meet."

Yam pottage was served first because it was lighter than
foo-foo and because yam always came first. Then the foo-foo
was served. Some kinsmen ate it with egusi soup and others
with bitter-leaf soup. The meat was then shared so that eve-
ry member of the umunna had a portion. Every man rose in or-
der of years and took a share. Even the few kinsmen who had
not been able to come had their shares taken out for them
in due term.

As the palm-wine was drunk one of the oldest members of
the umunna rose to thank Okonkwo:

"If I say that we did not expect such a big feast I will be
suggesting that we did not know how openhanded our son,
Okonkwo, is. We all know him, and we expected a big feast.
But it turned out to be even bigger than we expected. Thank
you. May all you took out return again tenfold. It is good in
these days when the younger generation consider themselves
wiser than their sires to see a man doing things in the grand,
old way. A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do
so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own
homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground
it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own
compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen
to do so. You may ask why I am saying all this. I say it
because I fear for the younger generation, for you people."
He waved his arm where most of the young men sat. "As for
me, i have only a short while to live, and so have Uchendu
and Unachukwu and Emefo. But I fear for you young people
because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kin-
ship. You do not know what it is to speak with one voice.
And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled
among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers.
He can curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like
a hunter's dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on his mas-
ter. I fear for you, i fear for the clan." He turned again
to Okonkwo and said, "Thank you for calling us together."

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