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‘Do they say that Obika was whipped by the white man?’
Ezeulu opened both palms to the sky and said nothing.
‘What did they say was his offence?’
‘My friend, let us talk about other things. There was a time when a happening such as this would have given me a fever; but that time has passed. Nothing is anything to me any more. Go and ask your mother to bring me a kolanut, Nwafo.’
‘She was saying this morning that her kolanuts were finished.’
‘Go and ask Matefi then.’
‘Must you worry about kolanuts every time? I am not a stranger.’
‘I was not taught that kolanut was the food of strangers,’ said Ezeulu. ‘And besides do not our people say that he is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger? But I know what you are afraid of; they tell me you have lost all your teeth.’ As he said this he reached for a lump of white clay in a four-sided wooden bowl shaped like the head of a lizard and rolled it on the floor towards Akuebue who picked it up and drew four upright lines with it on the floor. Then he painted the big toe of his right foot and rolled the chalk back to Ezeulu and he put it away again in the wooden bowl.
Nwafo was soon back with a kolanut in another bowl.
‘Show it to Akuebue,’ said his father.
‘I have seen it,’ replied Akuebue.
‘Then break it.’
‘No. The king’s kolanut returns to his hands.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Indeed I say so.’
Ezeulu took the bowl from Nwafo and set it down between his legs. Then he picked up the kolanut in his right hand and offered a prayer. He jerked the hand forward as he said each sentence, his palm open upwards and the thumb holding down the kolanut on the four fingers.
‘Ogbuefi Akuebue, may you live, and all your people. I too will live with all my people. But life alone is not enough. May we have the things with which to live it well. For there is a kind of slow and weary life which is worse than death.’
‘You speak the truth.’
‘May good confront the man on top and the man below. But let him who is jealous of another’s position choke with his envy.’
‘So be it.’
‘May good come to the land of Igbo and to the country of the riverain folk.’
Then he broke the kolanut by pressing it between his palms and threw all the lobes into the bowl on the floor.
‘O o-o o-o o o-o,’ he whistled. ‘Look what has happened here. The spirits want to eat.’
Akuebue craned his neck to see. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six. Indeed they want to eat.’
Ezeulu picked up one lobe and threw it outside. Then he picked up another one and put it into his mouth. Nwafo came forward, took the bowl from the floor and served Akuebue. For a short while neither man spoke, only the sound of kolanut as it was crushed between the teeth broke the silence.
‘It is strange the way kolanuts behave,’ said Ezeulu after he had swallowed twice. ‘I do not remember when I last saw one with six lobes.’
‘It is indeed very rare, and you only see it when you are not looking for it. Even five is not common. Some years ago I had to buy four or five basketfuls of kolanuts before I could find one with five lobes for a sacrifice. Nwafo, go to your mother’s hut and bring me a big calabash of cold water… This type of heat is not empty-handed.’
‘I think there is water in the sky,’ said Ezeulu. ‘It is the heat before rain.’ As he said this he rose three-quarters erect and walked a few steps to his bamboo bed and took from it his goatskin bag. This bag was sewn together with great cunning; it looked as though the goat which lived in it had been pulled out as one might pull out a snail from its shell. It had four short legs and the tail was intact. Ezeulu took the bag to his seat and began to search arm-deep for his bottle of snuff. When he found it he put it down on the floor and began to look for the small ivory spoon. He soon found that also, and he put the bag away beside him. He took up the little white bottle again, held it up to see how much snuff there was left and then tapped it on his kneecap. He opened the bottle and tipped a little of the content into his left palm.
‘Give me a little of that thing to clear my head,’ said Akuebue who had just drunk his water.
‘Come and get it,’ replied Ezeulu. ‘You do not expect me to provide the snuff and also the walking around, to give you a wife and find you a mat to sleep on.’
