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‘I have told you the price is ego nese.’
‘I think ego nato suits it well; it’s only a tiny basket.’ She picked up the basket to show that it was small. Ojinika seemed to have forgotten all about her and was engrossed in arranging her okro in little lots on the mat.
‘What do you say?’
‘Put that basket down at once!’ Then she changed her tone and sneered. ‘You want to take it for nothing. You wait till the yams are ruined and come and buy a basket of cassava for eighteen cowries.’
Matefi was not the kind of person another woman could tie into her lappa and carry away. She gave Ojinika more than she got – told her the bride-price they paid for her mother. But when she got home she began to think about the hostility that was visibly encircling them all in Ezeulu’s compound. Something told her that someone was going to pay a big price for it and she was afraid.
‘Go and call me Obika,’ she told her daughter, Ojiugo.
She was preparing some cocoyams for thickening soup when Obika came in and sat on the bare floor with his back on the wooden post in the middle of the entrance. He wore a very thin strip of cloth which was passed between the legs and between the buttocks and wound around the waist. He sat down heavily like a tired man. His mother went on with her work of dressing the cocoyams.
‘Ojiugo says you called me.’
‘Yes.’ She went on with what she was doing.
‘To watch you prepare cocoyams?’
She went on with her work.
‘What is it?’
‘I want you to go and talk to your father.’
‘About what?’
‘About what? About his… Are you a stranger in Umuaro? Do you not see the trouble that is coming?’
‘What do you expect him to do? To disobey Ulu?’
‘I knew you would not listen to me.’ She managed to hang all her sorrows and disappointments on those words.
‘How can I listen to you when you join outsiders in urging your husband to put his head in a cooking pot?’
‘Sometimes I want to agree with those who say the man has caught his mother’s madness,’ said Ogbuefi Ofoka. ‘When he came back from Okperi I went to his house and he talked like a sane man. I reminded him of his saying that a man must dance the dance prevailing in his time and told him that we had come – too late – to accept its wisdom. But today he would rather see the six villages ruined than eat two yams.’
‘I have had the same thoughts myself,’ said Akuebue who was visiting his in-law. ‘I know Ezeulu better than most people. He is a proud man and the most stubborn person you know is only his messenger; but he would not falsify the decision of Ulu. If he did it Ulu would not spare him to begin with. So, I don’t know.’
‘I have not said that Ezeulu is telling a lie with the name of Ulu or that he is not. What we told him was to go and eat the yams and we would take the consequences. But he would not do it. Why? Because the six villages allowed the white man to take him away. That is the reason. He has been trying to see how he could punish Umuaro and now he has the chance. The house he has been planning to pull down has caught fire and saved him the labour.’
‘I do not doubt that he has had a grievance for a long time, but I do not think it goes as deep as this. Remember he has his own yam-fields like the rest of us…’
‘That was what he told us. But, my friend, when a man as proud as this wants to fight he does not care if his own head rolls as well in the conflict. And besides he forgot to mention that whether our harvest is ruined or not we would still take one yam each to Ulu.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Let me tell you one thing. A priest like Ezeulu leads a god to ruin himself. It has happened before.’
‘Or perhaps a god like Ulu leads a priest to ruin himself.’
There was one man who saw the mounting crisis in Umuaro as a blessing and an opportunity sent by God. His name was John Jaja Goodcountry, Catechist of St Mark’s C.M.S. Church, Umuaro. His home was in the Niger Delta which had been in contact with Europe and the world for hundreds of years. Although he had been in Umuaro only a year he could show as much progress in his church and school as many other teachers and pastors would have been proud to record after five or more years. His catechumen class had grown from a mere fourteen to nearly thirty – mostly young men and boys who also went to school. There had been one baptism in St Mark’s Church itself and three in the parish church at Okperi. Altogether Mr Goodcountry’s young church presented nine candidates for these occasions. He had not been able to field any candidates for confirmation, but that was hardly surprising in a new church among some of the most difficult people in the Ibo country.
The progress of St Mark’s came about in a somewhat unusual way. Mr Goodcountry with his background
of the Niger Delta Pastorate which could already count native martyrs like Joshua Hart to its credit was not prepared to compromise with the heathen over such things as sacred animals. Within weeks of his sojourn in Umuaro he was ready for a little war against the royal python in the same spirit as his own people had fought and conquered the sacred iguana. Unfortunately he came up against a local stumbling block in Moses Unachukwu, the most important Christian in Umuaro.
From the beginning Mr Goodcountry had taken exception to Unachukwu’s know-all airs which the last catechist, Mr Molokwu, had done nothing to curb. Goodcountry had seen elsewhere how easy it was for a half-educated and half-converted Christian to mislead a whole congregation when the pastor or catechist was weak; so he wanted to establish his leadership from the very beginning. His intention was not originally to antagonize Unachukwu more than was necessary for making his point; after all he was a strong pillar in the church and could not be easily replaced. But Unachukwu did not give Mr Goodcountry a chance; he challenged him openly on the question of the python and so deserved the public rebuke and humiliation he got.
