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So the little birds who drink it
Will all perish from the hiccup
Mother’s goat is in the barn
And the yams will not be safe
Father’s goat is in the barn
And the yams will all be eaten
Can you see that deer approaching
Look! he’s dipped one foot in water
Snake has struck him!
He withdraws!
Ja – ja . ja kulo kulo!
Traveller Hawk
You’re welcome home
Ja – ja . ja kulo kulo!
But where’s the length
Of cloth you brought
Ja – ja . ja kulo kulo!
‘Nwafo!… Nwafo!’ called Ezeulu.
‘Nwafo has gone to the stream!’ replied his mother from her hut.
‘Nwafo has what?’ Ezeulu shouted back.
Ugoye decided to go into the obi in person and explain that Nwafo had gone on his own account.
‘Nobody asked him to go,’ she said.
‘Nobody asked him to go?’ retorted Ezeulu parodying a child’s talk. ‘Did you say that nobody asked him to go? Do you not know that he sweeps my hut every morning? Or do you expect me to break kolanut or receive people in an unswept hut? Did your father break his morning kolanut over yesterday’s wood ash? The abomination all you people commit in this house will lie on your own heads. If Nwafo has become too strong to listen to you why did you not ask Oduche to come and sweep my hut?’
‘Oduche went with the rest.’
Ezeulu chose not to speak any more. His wife went away but soon returned with two brooms. She swept the hut with the palm-leaf broom and the immediate frontage of the obi with the longer and stronger bundle of okeakpa.
Obika came from his hut while she swept the outside and asked: ‘Do you sweep the iru-ezi nowadays? Where is Nwafo?’
‘No one is born with a broom in his hand,’ she replied testily and increased the volume of her singing. Because of the length of the broom she held and wielded it like a paddle. Ezeulu smiled to himself. When she had finished she gathered the sweepings into one heap and carried them into the plot of land on the right where she was going to plant cocoyams that season.
Akuebue planned to visit Ezeulu soon after the morning meal, to rejoice with him for his son’s new wife. But he had other important things to talk over with him and that was why he chose to go so early – before other visitors in search of palm wine filled the place. What Akuebue wanted to talk about was not new. They had talked about it many times before. But in the past few days Akuebue had begun to hear things which worried him greatly. It was all about Ezeulu’s third son, Oduche, whom he had sent to learn the secrets of the white man’s magic. Akuebue had doubted the sense in Ezeulu’s action from the very first but Ezeulu had persuaded him of its wisdom. But now it was being used by Ezeulu’s enemies to harm his name. People were asking: ‘If the Chief Priest of Ulu could send his son among people who kill and eat the sacred python and commit other evils what did he expect ordinary men and women to do? The lizard who threw confusion into his mother’s funeral rite did he expect outsiders to carry the burden of honouring his dead?’
And now Ezeulu’s first son had joined, albeit surreptitiously, his father’s opponents. He had gone to Akuebue on the previous day and asked him to go as Ezeulu’s best friend and speak to him without biting the words.
‘What is wrong?’
