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‘I say shut your mouth! Are you mad?’
Matefi stopped her screaming. She moaned resignedly: ‘I have shut my mouth. Why should I not shut my mouth? After all Oduche is Ugoye’s son. Yes, Matefi must shut her mouth.’
‘Let nobody call my name there!’ shouted the other wife as she came out from her hut where she had sat as though all the noise in the compound came from a distant clan. ‘I say let nobody mention my name at all.’
‘You, shut your mouth,’ said Ezeulu, turning to her; ‘nobody has called your name.’
‘Did you not hear her calling my name?’
‘And if she did?… Go and jump on her back if you can.’
Ugoye grumbled and returned to her hut.
‘Oduche!’
‘E-e-h.’
‘Come out here!’
Oduche came out from his mother’s hut.
‘What is all this noise about?’ asked Ezeulu.
‘Ask Ojiugo and her mother.’
‘I am asking you. And don’t you tell me to ask another or a dog will lick your eyes this morning. When did you people learn to fling words in my face?’ He looked round at them all, his manner changed to that of a crouching leopard. ‘Let one of you open his mouth and make fim again and I will teach him that a man does not talk when masked spirits speak.’ He looked round again, daring anyone to open his mouth. There was silence all round and he turned and went back to his obi, anger having smothered his interest in the cause of the affray.
Akuebue’s haste in plunging into the subject of Oduche proved to be ill-judged. He was anxious to finish with it before more people arrived, for there could be no doubt that quite soon the three compounds would be filled. Many of the people who came last night would come again, and many more would be coming for the first time because at this hungry season when most barns were empty of all but seed-yams no one would miss the chance of biting a morsel and drinking a horn in the house of a wealthy man. Akuebue knew that as soon as the first man arrived he could no longer talk with Ezeulu; so he wasted no time. Had he known how much Ezeulu had just been annoyed perhaps he would have waited for another day.
Ezeulu listened silently to him, holding back with both hands the mounting irritation he felt.
‘Have you finished?’ he asked when Akuebue ceased talking.
‘Yes, I have finished.’
‘I salute you.’ He was not looking at his guest but vaguely at the threshold. ‘I cannot say that I blame you; you have said nothing that a man could be blamed for saying to his friend. I am not blind and I am not deaf either. I know that Umuaro is divided and confused and I know that some people are holding secret meetings to persuade others that I am the cause of the trouble. But why should that remove sleep from my eyes? These things are not new and they will follow where the others have gone. When the rain comes it will be five years since this same man told a secret meeting in his house that if Ulu failed to fight in their blameful war they would unseat him. We are still waiting, Ulu and I, for him to come and unseat us. What annoys me is not that an overblown fool dangling empty testicles should forget himself because wealth entered his house by mistake; no, what annoys me is that the cowardly priest of Idemili should hide behind him and urge him on.’
‘It is jealousy,’ said Akuebue.
‘Jealousy for what? I am not the first Ezeulu in Umuaro, he is not the first Ezidemili. If his father and his father’s father and all the others before them were not jealous of my fathers why should he be of me? No, it is not jealousy but foolishness; the kind that puts its head into the pot. But if it is jealousy, let him go on. The fly that perches on a mound of dung may strut around as it likes, it cannot move the mound.’
‘Everybody knows these two,’ said Akuebue. ‘We all know that if they knew the way to Ani-Mmo they would go to quarrel with our ancestors for giving the priesthood of Ulu to Umuachala and not to their own village. I am not troubled about them. What troubles me is what the whole clan is saying.’
‘Who tells the clan what it says? What does the clan know? Sometimes, Akuebue, you make me laugh. You were here – or had you not been born then – when the clan chose to go to war with Okperi over a piece of land which did not belong to us. Did I not stand up then and tell Umuaro what would happen to them? And who was right in the end? What I said, did it happen or did it not?’
Akuebue did not answer.
‘Every word happened as I said it would.’
‘I do not doubt that,’ said Akuebue and, in a sudden access of impatience and recklessness, added, ‘but you forget one thing: that no man however great can win judgement against a clan. You may think you did in that land dispute but you are wrong. Umuaro will always say that you betrayed them before the white man. And they will say that you are betraying them again today by sending your son to join in desecrating the land.’
Ezeulu’s reply to this showed Akuebue once again that even to his best friend the priest was unknowable. Even his sons did not know him. Akuebue was not sure what reply he had expected, but it was most certainly not the laugh which he got now. It made him afraid and uneasy like one who encounters a madman laughing on a solitary path. He was given no time to examine this strange feeling of fear closely. But he was to have it again in future and it was only then he saw its meaning.
‘Don’t make me laugh,’ said Ezeulu again. ‘So I betrayed Umuaro to the white man? Let me ask you one question. Who brought the white man here? Was it Ezeulu? We went to war against Okperi who are our blood brothers over a piece of land which did not belong to us and you blame the white man for stepping in. Have you not heard that when two brothers fight a stranger reaps the harvest? How many white men went in their party that destroyed Abame? Do you know? Five.’ He held his right hand up with the five fingers fanned out. ‘Five. Now have you ever heard that five people – even if their heads reached the sky – could overrun a whole clan? Impossible. With all their power and magic white men would not have overrun entire Olu and Igbo if we did not help them. Who showed them the way to Abame? They were not born there; how then did they find the way? We showed them and are still showing them. So let nobody come to me now and complain that the white man did this and did that. The man who brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.’
‘I cannot dispute any of the things you say. We did many things wrong in the past, but we should not therefore go on doing the same today. We now know what we did wrong, so we can put it right again. We know where this rain began to fall on us…’
‘I am not so sure,’ said Ezeulu. ‘But whether you do or not you must not forget one thing. We have shown the white man the way to our house and given him a stool to sit on. If we now want him to go away again we must either wait until he is tired of his visit or we must drive him away. Do you think you can drive him away by blaming Ezeulu? You may try, and the day I hear that you have succeeded I shall come and shake your hand. I have my own way and I shall follow it. I can see things where other men are blind. That is why I am Known and at the same time I am Unknowable. You are my friend and you know whether I am a thief or a murderer or an honest man. But you cannot know the Thing which beats the drum to which Ezeulu dances. I can see tomorrow; that is why I can tell Umuaro: come out from this because there is death there or do this because there is profit in it. If they listen to me, o-o; if they refuse to listen, o-o. I have passed the stage of dancing to receive presents. You knew my father who was priest before me. You knew my grandfather too, albeit with the eyes of a little child.’ Akuebue nodded in agreement.
