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Earth will d
ry up this water for me
E-e Nwaka Dimkpolo
Who will punish this Earth for me?…
‘No, no, no,’ Nkechi broke in.
‘What can happen to Earth, silly girl?’ asked Nwafo.
‘I said it on purpose to test Nkechi,’ said Obiageli.
‘It is a lie, as old as you are you can’t even tell a simple story.’
‘If it pains you, come and jump on my back, ant-hill nose.’
‘Mother, if Obiageli abuses me again I shall beat her.’
‘Touch her if you dare and I shall cure you of your madness this night.’
‘Let us change to another story,’ said Obiageli. ‘This one has no end.’ At the same time she reached for the ladle which had just returned from another visit to the soup pot on the fire. But her mother snatched it from her.
Chapter Seven
The market place was filling up steadily with men and women from every quarter. Because it was specially their day, the women wore their finest cloths and ornaments of ivory and beads according to the wealth of their husbands or, in a few exceptional cases, the strength of their own arms. Most of the men brought palm wine in pots carried on the head or gourds dangling by the side from a loop of rope. The first people to arrive took up positions under the shade of trees and began to drink with their friends, their relations and their in-laws. Those who came after sat in the open which was not hot yet.
A stranger to this year’s festival might go away thinking that Umuaro had never been more united in all its history. In the atmosphere of the present gathering the great hostility between Umunneora and Umuachala seemed, momentarily, to lack significance. Yesterday if two men from the two villages had met they would have watched each other’s movement with caution and suspicion; tomorrow they would do so again. But today they drank palm wine freely together because no man in his right mind would carry poison to a ceremony of purification; he might as well go out into the rain carrying potent, destructive medicines on his person.
Ezeulu’s younger wife examined her hair in a mirror held between her thighs. She could not help feeling that she did a better job on Akueke’s hair than Akueke did on hers. But she was very pleased with the black patterns of uli and faint yellow lines of ogalu on her body. In previous years she would have been among the first to arrive at the market place; she would have been carefree and joyful. But this year her feet seemed to drag because of the load on her mind. She was going to pray for the cleansing of her hut which Oduche had defiled. She was no longer one of many, many Umuaro women taking part in a general and all-embracing rite. Today she stood in special need. The weight of this feeling all but crushed the long-awaited pleasure of wearing her new ivory bracelets which had earned her so much envy and hostility from her husband’s other wife, Matefi.
She was still polishing the ivory when Matefi set out for the Nkwo market place. Before she went she called out from the middle of the compound:
‘Is Obiageli’s mother ready?’
‘No. We shall be following. You need not wait.’
When she was fully prepared Ugoye went behind her hut to the pumpkin which she specially planted after the first rain and cut four leaves, tied them together with banana string and returned to her hut. She put the leaves down on a stool and went to the bamboo shelf to examine the soup pot and the foofoo which Obiageli and Nwafo would eat at midday.
Akueke stooped at the threshold and peeped into Ugoye’s hut.
‘So you are not ready to go yet? What are you fussing about like a hen in search of a nest?’ she asked. ‘At this rate we shall find nowhere to stand at the market place.’ Then she came into the hut carrying her own bunch of pumpkin leaves. They admired each other’s cloths and Akueke praised Ugoye’s ivory once again.
As soon as they set out Akueke asked:
‘What do you think was Matefi’s annoyance this morning?’
‘I should ask you; is she not your father’s wife?’
‘Her face was as big as a mortar. Did she ask if you were ready to go?’
‘She did; but it went no deeper than the lips.’
‘In all the time I have come across bad people,’ said Akueke, ‘I have not yet met anyone like her. Her own badness whistles. Since my father asked her to cook for my husband and his people the day before yesterday her belly has been full of bile.’
On ordinary Nkwo days the voice of the market carried far in all directions like the approach of a great wind. Today it was as though all the bees in the world were passing overhead. And people were still flowing in from all the pathways of Umuaro. As soon as they emerged from their compound Ugoye and Akueke joined one such stream. Every woman of Umuaro had a bunch of pumpkin leaves in her right hand; any woman who had none was a stranger from the neighbouring villages coming to see the spectacle. As they approached Nkwo its voice grew bigger and bigger until it drowned their conversation.
They were just in time to see the arrival of the five wives of Nwaka and the big stir they caused. Each of them wore not anklets but two enormous rollers of ivory reaching from the ankle almost to the knee. Their walk was perforce slow and deliberate, like the walk of an Ijele Mask lifting and lowering each foot with weighty ceremony. On top of all this the women were clad in many coloured velvets. Ivory and velvets were not new in Umuaro but never before had they been seen in such profusion from the house of one man.
