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‘Have you heard of the palm tree in my village which they call Okposalebo?’
Obika and Ofoedu said no.
‘Anyone who has not heard of Okposalebo and yet claims to be a good drinker deceives himself.’
‘What Maduka says is very true,’ said one of the others. ‘The wine from this tree is never sold in the market, and no one can drink three hornfuls and still know his way home.’
‘This Okposalebo is a very old tree. It is called Disperser of a Kindred because two brothers would fight like strangers after drinking two hornfuls of its wine.’
‘Tell us another story,’ Obika said, filling his horn. ‘If the tapper adds medicine to his wine that is another matter, but if you are telling us of the fluid as the tree yields it, then I say tell us another story.’
Then Maduka threw the challenge. ‘It is not profitable to speak too many words. The palm tree is not in the distant riverain country, but here in Umuaro. Let us go from here to Nwokafo’s compound and ask him to give us a gourd from this tree. It is very costly – the gourd may be ego-nese – but I shall pay. If you two drink three hornfuls each and still go home let it be my loss. But if not you must give me ego-neli whenever you come to your senses again.’
It was as Maduka had said. The two boasters
had fallen asleep where they sat, and when night came he left them there and retired to his bed. But he came out twice in the night and found them still snoring. When he woke up finally in the morning, they were gone. He wished he had seen them depart. Perhaps when they heard their betters talking about palm wine in future they would not open their mouths so wide.
Ofoedu did not seem to have fared as badly as Obika. When he woke up and found that the sun was already shining he rushed to Ezeulu’s compound to call Obika. But although they shouted his name and shook him he showed no sign of stirring. Eventually Ofoedu poured a gourd of cold water over him and he woke up. The two then set out to join their age group working on the new road. They were like a pair of Night Masks caught abroad by daylight.
Ezeulu who lay in his obi prostrate from the exhaustion of the festival was wakened by all the commotion in the inner compound. He asked Nwafo the meaning of all the noise and was told that they were trying to rouse Obika. He said nothing more, only gnashed his teeth. The young man’s behaviour was like a heavy load on his father’s head. In a few days, Ezeulu said within himself, Obika’s new bride would arrive. She would have come already if her mother had not fallen sick. When she arrived what a husband she would find! A man who could not watch his hut at night because he was dead with palm wine. Where did the manhood of such a husband lie? A man who could not protect his wife if night marauders knocked at his door. A man who was roused in the morning by the women. Tufia! spat the old priest. He could not contain his disgust.
Although Ezeulu did not ask for details he knew without being told that Ofoedu was behind this latest episode. He had said it over and over again that this fellow Ofoedu did not contain the smallest drop of human presence inside his entire body. It was hardly two years since he sent everybody running to his father’s compound in a false fire alarm for which his father, who was not a rich man, paid a fine of one goat. Ezeulu had told Obika again and again that such a person was not a fit friend for anyone who wanted to do something with his life. But he had not heeded and today there was as little to choose between them as between rotten palm nuts and a broken mortar.
When the two friends first set out to join their age group they walked in silence. Obika felt an emptiness on top as if his head had been numbed by a whole night’s fall of dew. But the walking was already doing him some good; the feeling was returning that the head belonged to him.
After one more turning on the narrow, ancient footpath they saw, a little distance ahead of them, a vast opening which was the beginning of the new road. It opened like day after a thick night.
‘What do you think of that thing Maduka gave us?’ asked Ofoedu. This was the first mention either of them made to the incident of the previous day. Obika did not reply. He merely produced a sound which lay half-way between a sigh of relief and a groan.
‘It was not naked palm wine,’ said Ofoedu. ‘They put some potent herbs in it. When I think of it now we were very foolish to have followed such a dangerous man to his own house. Do you remember that he did not drink even one hornful.’
Obika still said nothing.
‘I shall not pay the ego-neli to him.’
‘Were you thinking at any time that you would pay?’ Obika looked surprised. ‘I regard anything we said yesterday as words spoken in honour of palm wine.’
They were now on the portion of the new road that had been built. It made one feel lost like a grain of maize in an empty goatskin bag. Obika changed his matchet from the left hand to the right and his hoe from right to left. The feeling of openness and exposure made him alert.
As the new road did not point in the direction of a stream or a market Ofoedu and Obika did not encounter many villagers, only a few women now and again carrying heavy loads of firewood.
‘What is that I am hearing?’ asked Obika. They were now approaching the old, ragged egbu tree from which the night spirits called Onyekulum began their journey loaded with song and gossip in the carefree season after the harvest.
‘I was just about to ask you. It sounds like a funeral song.’
As they drew nearer to the work site there was no longer any doubt. It was indeed the dirge with which a corpse was taken into the burial forest:
Look! a python!
Look! a python!
Yes, it lies across the way.
The two men recognized it now and also recognized the singers as men of their age group. They burst out laughing together. Someone had given the ancient song a new and irreverent twist and changed it into a half familiar, half strange and hilarious work song. Ofoedu was certain that he saw the hand of Nweke Ukpaka in it, it was the kind of malicious humour he had.
The approach of Obika and his friend brought about a sudden change among the workers. Their singing stopped and with it the sound of scores of matchets cutting together into tree-trunks. Those who bent forward with hoes to level the cleared parts stopped and straightened up, their feet still planted wide apart, covered with red earth.
Nweke Ukpaka raised his voice and shouted: ‘Kwo Kwo Kwo Kwo Kwo!’ All the men replied: ‘Kwooooh oh!’ and everyone burst out laughing at this imitation of women acknowledging a present.
