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‘They were late for work.’
‘Why were you late?’
‘I have not come home to answer anybody’s questions,’ Obika shouted.
‘You may answer or not as you please. But let me tell you that this is only the beginning of what palm wine will bring to you. The death that will kill a man begins as an appetite.’
Obika and Ofoedu walked out.
Chapter Nine
Edogo’s homestead was built against one of the four sides of his father’s compound so that they shared one wall between them. It was a very small homestead with two huts, one for Edogo and the other for his wife, Amoge. It was built deliberately small for, like the compounds of many first sons, it was no more than a temporary home where the man waited until he could inherit his father’s place.
Of late another small compound had been built on the other side of Ezeulu’s for his second son, Obika. But it was not quite as small as Edogo’s. It also had two huts, one for Obika and the other for the bride who was soon to come.
As one approached Ezeulu’s compound off the main village pathway Edogo’s place stood on the left and Obika’s on the right.
When Obika walked away with his friend, Edogo returned to the shade of the ogbu tree in front of his compound to resume work on the door he was carving. It was nearly finished and after it he would leave carving for a while and face his farm work. He envied master craftsmen like Agwuegbo whose farms were cultivated for them by their apprentices and customers.
As he carved his mind kept wandering to his wife’s hut from where the cry of their only child was reaching him. He was their second child, the first having died after three months. The one that died had brought sickness with him into the world; a ridge ran down the middle of his head. But the second, Amechi, had been different. At his birth he had seemed so full of life. Then at about the sixth month he had changed overnight. He stopped sucking his mother’s breast and his skin took the complexion of withering cocoyam leaves. Some people said perhaps Amoge’s milk had gone bitter. She was asked to squirt some of it into a bowl to see if it would kill an ant. But the little ant which was dropped into it stayed alive; so the fault was not with the milk.
Edogo’s mind was in pain over the child. Some people were already saying that perhaps he was none other than the first one. But Edogo and Amoge never talked about it; the woman especially was afraid. Since utterance had power to change fear into a living truth they dared not speak before they had to.
In her hut Amoge sat on a low stool, her crying child set on the angle of her two feet which she had brought together to touch at the heels. After a while she lifted her feet and child together on to another spot leaving behind on the floor a round patch of watery, green excrement. She looked round the room but did not seem to find what she wanted. Then she called: Nwanku! Nwanku! Nwanku! A wiry, black dog rushed in from outside and made straight for the excrement which disappeared with four or five noisy flicks of its tongue. Then it sat down with its tail wagging on the floor. Amoge moved her feet and child once again but this time all that was left behind was a tiny green drop. Nwanku did not consider it big enough to justify getting up; it merely stretched its neck and took it up with the corner of the tongue and sat up again to wait. But the child had finished and the dog was soon trying without success to catch a fly between its jaws.
Edogo’s thoughts refused to stay on the door he was carving. Once again he put down the hammer and changed the chisel from his left hand to the right. The child had now stopped crying and Edogo’s thoughts wandered to the recent exchange of words between his father and brother. The trouble with Ezeulu was that he could never see something and take his eyes away from it. Everybody agreed that Obika’s friendship with Ofoedu would not bring about any good, but Obika was no longer a child and if he refused to listen to advice he should be left alone. That was what their father could never learn. He must go on treating his grown children like little boys, and if they ever said no there was a big quarrel. This was why the older his children grew the more he seemed to dislike them. Edogo remembered how much his father had liked him when he was a boy and how with the passage of years he had transferred his affection first to Obika and then to Oduche and Nwafo. Thinking of it now Edogo could not actually remember that their father had ever shown much affection for Oduche. He seemed to have lingered too long on Obika (who of all his sons resembled him most in appearance) and then by-passed Oduche for Nwafo. What would happen if the old man had another son tomorrow? Would Nwafo then begin to lose favour in his eyes? Perhaps. Or was there more to it than that? Was there something in the boy which told their father that at last a successor to the priesthood had come? Some people said Nwafo was in every way an image of Ezeulu’s father. Actually Edogo would feel greatly relieved if on the death of their father the diviner’s string of beads fell in favour of Nwafo. ‘I do not want to be Chief Priest,’ he heard himself saying aloud. He looked round instinctively to see if anyone had been near enough to have heard him. ‘As for Obika,’ he thought, ‘things like the priesthood did not come near his mind.’ Which left only Oduche and Nwafo. But as Ezeulu had turned Oduche over to the new religion he could no longer be counted. A strange thought seized Edogo now. Could it be that their father had deliberately sent Oduche to the religion of the white man so as to disqualify him for the priesthood of Ulu? He put down the chisel with which he was absentmindedly straightening the intersecting lines on the iroko door. That would explain it! The priesthood would then fall on his youngest and favourite son. The reason which Ezeulu gave for his strange decision had never convinced anyone. If as he said he merely wanted one of his sons to be his eye and ear at this new assembly why did he not send Nwafo who was close to his thoughts? No, that was not the reason. The priest wanted to have a hand in the choice of his successor. It was what anyone who knew Ezeulu would expect him to do. But was he not presuming too much? The choice of a priest lay with the deity. Was it likely that he would let the old priest force his hand. Although Edogo and Obika did not seem attracted to the office that would not prevent the deity from choosing either of them or even Oduche, out of spite. Edogo’s thinking now became confused. If Ulu should choose him to be Chief Priest what would he do? This thought had never worried him before because he had always taken it for granted that Ulu would not want him. But the way he saw things now there was no certainty about that. Would he be happy if the diviner’s beads fell in his favour? He could not say. Perhaps the only sure happiness it would give him was the knowledge that his father’s partiality for his younger sons had been frustrated by the deity himself. From Ani-Mmo where dead men went Ezeulu would look up and see the ruin of all his plans.
Edogo was surprised by this depth of ill-will for his father and relented somewhat. He remembered what his mother used to say when she was alive, that Ezeulu’s only fault was that he expected everyone – his wives, his kinsmen, his children, his friends and even his enemies – to think and act like himself. Anyone who dared to say no to him was an enemy. He forgot the saying of the elders that if a man sought for a companion who acted entirely like himself he would live in solitude.
Ezeulu was sitting at the same spot long after his quarrel with Obika. His back was set against the wall and his gaze on
the approaches to his compound. Now and again he seemed to study the household shrine standing against the low threshold wall in front of him. On his left there was a long mud-seat with goatskins spread on it. The eaves on that part of the hut were cut back so that Ezeulu could watch the sky for the new moon. In the daytime light came into the hut mostly from that part. Nwafo squatted on the mud-seat, facing his father. At the other end of the room, on Ezeulu’s right, stood his low bamboo bed; beside it a fire of ukwa logs smouldered.
Without changing his fixed gaze Ezeulu began suddenly to talk to Nwafo.
‘A man does not speak a lie to his son,’ he said. ‘Remember that always. To say My father told me is to swear the greatest oath. You are only a little boy, but I was no older when my father began to confide in me. Do you hear what I am saying?’
Nwafo said yes.
‘You see what has happened to your brother. In a few days his bride will come and he will no longer be called a child. When strangers see him they will no longer ask Whose son is he? but Who is he? Of his wife they will no longer say Whose daughter? but Whose wife? Do you understand me?’ Nwafo saw that his face was beginning to shine with sweat. Someone was coming towards the hut and he stopped talking.
‘Who is that?’ Ezeulu screwed up his eyes in an effort to see. Nwafo jumped down from the mud-seat and came to the centre of the hut to see.
‘It is Ogbuefi Akuebue.’
Akuebue was one of the very few men in Umuaro whose words gained entrance into Ezeulu’s ear. The two men were in the same age group. As he drew near he raised his voice and asked: ‘Is the owner of this house still alive?’
‘Who is this man?’ asked Ezeulu. ‘Did they not say that you died two markets come next Afo?’
‘Perhaps you do not know that everyone in your age group has long died. Or are you waiting for mushrooms to sprout from your head before you know that your time is over?’ Akuebue was now inside the hut but he still maintained the posture he had assumed to pass under the low eaves – the right hand supported above the knee and the body bent at the waist. Without rising to his full height he shook hands with the Chief Priest. Then he spread his goatskin on the floor near the mud-seat and sat down.
‘How are your people?’
‘They are quiet.’ This was always how Akuebue answered about his family. It amused Nwafo greatly. He had an image in his mind of this man’s wives and children sitting quietly with their hands between their laps.
‘And yours?’ he asked Ezeulu.
‘Nobody has died.’
