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‘From what I saw this morning and yesterday I think it is aru-mmo.’
‘Please do not repeat it.’
‘But I am not telling you that Nwokonkwo or Nwokafo told me. This is what I saw with my own eyes.’
Ezeulu began to gnash his teeth.
‘I went to see him this morning. His breath seemed to be scraping his sides with a blunt razor.’
‘Who have they hired to make medicine for him?’ asked Ezeulu.
‘A man called Nwodika from Umuofia. I told them this morning that had I been there when they took the decision I would have told them to go straight to Aninta. There is a doctor there who nips off sickness between his thumb and finger.’
‘But if it is the sickness of the Spirits, as you say, there is no medicine for it – except camwood and fire.’
‘That is so,’ said Akuebue, ‘but we cannot put our hands between our laps and watch a sick man for twelve days. We must grope about until what must happen does happen. That is why I spoke of this medicine-man from Aninta.’
‘I think you speak of Aghadike whom they call Anyanafummo.’
‘You know him. That is the very man.’
‘I know many people throughout Olu and Igbo. Aghadike is a great doctor and diviner. But even he cannot carry a battle to the compound of the great god.’
‘No man can do that.’
The gun sounded again.
‘This gun-shooting is no more than a foolish groping about,’ said Ezeulu. ‘How can we frighten Spirits away with the noise of a gun? If it were so easy any man who had enough money to buy a keg of gunpowder would live and live until mushrooms sprouted from his head. If I am sick and they bring me a medicine-man who knows more about hunting than herbs I shall send him away and look for another.’
The two men sat for a little while in silence. Then Akuebue said:
‘From what I saw this morning we may hear something before another dawn.’
Ezeulu moved his head up and down many times. ‘It is a story of great sorrow, but we cannot set fire to the world.’
Akuebue who had stopped working on his yams went back to them now with the proverbial excuse that greeting in the cold harmattan is taken from the fireside.
‘That is what our people say,’ replied Ezeulu. ‘And they also say that a man who visits a craftsman at work finds a sullen host.’
The gun sounded yet again. It seemed to make Ezeulu irritable.
‘I shall go over and tell the man that if he has no medicine to give to the sick man he should at least spare the gunpowder they will use for his funeral.’
‘Perhaps he thinks that gunpowder is as cheap as wood ash,’ said Akuebue, and then more seriously: ‘If you go there on your way home say nothing that might make them think you wish their kinsman evil. They may say: What is gunpowder to a man’s life?’
Ezeulu did not need two looks at the sick man to see that he could not pass the twelve days which the Spirits gave a man stricken with this disease. If, as Akuebue had said, nothing was heard by tomorrow it would be a thing to tell.
The man’s trunk was encased in a thick coat of camwood ointment which had caked and cracked in countless places. A big log fire burned beside the bamboo bed on which he lay and a strong whiff of burning herbs was in the air. His breathing was like the splitting of hard wood. He did not recognize Ezeulu who on entering had greeted those in the room with his eyes alone and made straight for the bedside where he stood for a long time looking down on the sick man in silence. After that he went and sat down with the small crowd of relations talking in very low voices,
‘What has a man done to merit this?’ he asked.
‘That is what we all have been asking,’ replied one of the men. ‘We were not told to expect it. We woke up one morning to find our shinbone deformed.’
The herbalist sat a little apart from the group, and took no part in the conversation. Ezeulu looked around the room and saw how the man had fortified it against the entry of the Spirits. From the roof hung down three long gourds corked with wads of dry banana leaf. A fourth gourd was the big-bellied type which was often used for carrying palm wine. It hung directly over the sick man. On its neck was a string of cowries, and a bunch of parrots’ feathers danced inside it with only their upper half showing. It looked as if something boiled about their feet forcing them to gyrate around the mouth of the gourd. Two freshly sacrificed chicks dangled head downwards on either side of it.
The sick man who had been silent except for his breathing began quite suddenly to groan. Everyone stopped talking. The medicine-man, a ring of white chalk dubbed round one eye and a large leather-covered amulet on his left wrist, rose up and went outside. His flint-gun lay at the threshold, its base on the ground and the barrel pointing into the hut. He picked it up and began to load. The gunpowder was contained in a four-cornered bottle which had once carried the white man’s hot drink called Nje-nje. When he had loaded the gun he went to the back of the house and let it off. All the cocks and hens in the neighbourhood immediately set up an alarm as if they had seen a wild animal.
When he returned to the hut he found the sick man
