Arrow of God (33 page)

The plight of Umuaro lay more heavily on Ezeulu and his family than other people knew. In the Chief Priest’s compound nobody could think of indulging in the many old and new evasions which allowed others to eat an occasional new yam be it local or foreign. Because they were more prosperous than most families they had a larger stock of old yams. But these had long shrivelled into tasteless fibre. Before cooking they had to be beaten with a heavy pestle to separate the wiry strands. Soon even these were finished.

But the heaviest load was on Ezeulu’s mind. He was used to loneliness. As Chief Priest he had often walked alone in front of Umuaro. But without looking back he had always been able to hear their flute and song which shook the earth because it came from a multitude of voices and the stamping of countless feet. There had been moments when the voices were divided as in the land dispute with Okperi. But never until now had he known them to die away altogether. Few people came to his hut now and those who came said nothing. Ezeulu wanted to hear what Umuaro was saying but nobody offered to tell and he would not make anyone think he was curious. So with every passing day Umuaro became more and more an alien silence – the kind of silence which burnt a man’s inside like the blue, quiet, razor-edge flame of burning palmnut shells. Ezeulu writhed in the pain which grew and grew until he wanted to get outside his compound or even into the Nkwo market place and shout at Umuaro.

Because no one came near enough to him to see his anguish – and if they had seen it they would not have understood – they imagined that he sat in his hut gloating over the distress of Umuaro. But although he would not for any reason now see the present trend reversed he carried more punishment and more suffering than all his fellows. What troubled him most – and he alone seemed to be aware of it at present – was that the punishment was not for now alone but for all time. It would afflict Umuaro like an
ogulu-aro
disease which counts a year and returns to its victim. Beneath all anger in his mind lay a deeper compassion for Umuaro, the clan which long, long ago when lizards were in ones and twos chose his ancestor to carry their deity and go before them challenging every obstacle and confronting every danger on their behalf.

Perhaps if the silence in which Ezeulu was trapped had been complete he would have got used to it in time. But it had cracks through which now and again a teasing driblet of news managed to reach him: this had the effect of deepening the silence, like a pebble thrown in a cave.

Today Akuebue threw such a pebble. He was the only man among Ezeulu’s friends and kinsmen who still came now and again to see him. But when he came he sat in silence or spoke about unimportant things. Today, however, he could not but touch on a new development in the crisis which troubled him. Perhaps Akuebue was the only man in Umuaro who knew that Ezeulu was not deliberately punishing the six villages. He knew that the Chief Priest was helpless; that a thing greater than
nte
had been caught in
nte
’s trap. So whenever he came to visit Ezeulu he kept clear of the things nearest to their thoughts because they were past talking. But today he could not keep silence over the present move of the Christians to reap the harvest of Umuaro.

‘It troubles me,’ he said, ‘because it looks like the saying of our ancestors that when brothers fight to death a stranger inherits their father’s estate.’

‘What do you expect me to do?’ Ezeulu opened both palms towards his friend. ‘If any man in Umuaro forgets himself so far as to join them let him carry on.’

Akuebue shook his head in despair.

As soon as he left Ezeulu called Oduche and asked him if it was true that his people were offering sanctuary to those who wished to escape the vengeance of Ulu. Oduche said he did not understand.

‘You do not understand? Are your people saying to Umuaro that if anyone brings his sacrifice to your shrine he will be safe to harvest his yams? Now do you understand?’

‘Yes. Our teacher told them so.’

‘Your teacher told them so? Did you report it to me?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

Silence.

‘I said why did you not report it to me?’

For a long time father and son looked steadily at each other in silence. When Ezeulu spoke again his tone was calm and full of grief.

‘Do you remember, Oduche, what I told you when I sent you among those people?’

Oduche shifted his eyes to the big toe of his right foot which he placed a little forward.

‘Since you have become dumb let me remind you. I called you as a father calls his son and told you to go and be my eye and ear among those people. I did not send Obika or Edogo; I did not send Nwafo, your mother’s son. I called you by name and you came here – in this
obi
– and I sent you to see and hear for me. I did not know at that time that I was sending a goat’s skull. Go away, go back to your mother’s hut. I have no spirit for talking now. When I am ready to talk I shall tell you what I think. Go away and rejoice that your father cannot count on you. I say, go away from here, lizard that ruined his mother’s funeral.’

Oduche went out at the brink of tears. Ezeulu felt a slight touch of comfort.

At last another new moon came and he ate the twelfth yam. The next morning he sent word to his assistants to announce that the New Yam Feast would be eaten in twenty-eight days.

Throughout that day the drums beat in Amalu’s compound because the funeral feast was tomorrow. The sound reached every village in Umuaro to remind them; not that anyone needed reminding at such a time when men were as hungry as locusts.

In the night Ezeulu dreamt one of those strange dreams which were more than ordinary dreams. When he woke up everything stood out with the detail and clarity of daylight, like the one he had dreamt in Okperi.

He was sitting in his
obi
. From the sound of the voices the mourners seemed to be passing behind his compound, beyond the tall, red walls. This worried him a good deal because there was no path there. Who were these people then who made a path behind his compound? He told himself that he must go out and challenge them because it was said that unless a man wrestled with those who walked behind his compound the path never closed. But he lacked resolution and stood where he was. Meanwhile the voices and the drums and the flutes grew louder. They sang the song with which a man was carried to the bush for burial:

Look! a python

Look! a python

Yes, it lies across the way.

As usual the song came in different waves like gusts of storm following on each other’s heels. The mourners in front sang a little ahead of those in the middle near the corpse and these were again ahead of those at the rear. The drums came with this last wave.

Ezeulu raised his voice to summon his family to join him in challenging the trespassers but his compound was deserted. His irresolution turned into alarm. He ran into Matefi’s hut but all he saw were the ashes of a long-dead fire. He rushed out and ran into Ugoye’s hut calling her and her children but her hut was already falling in and a few blades of green grass had sprouted on the thatch. He was running towards Obika’s hut when a new voice behind the compound brought him to a sudden halt. The noise of the burial party had since disappeared in the distance. But beside the sorrow of the solitary voice that now wailed after them they might have been returning with a bride. The sweet agony of the solitary singer settled like dew on the head.

I was born when lizards were in ones and twos

A child of Idemili. The difficult tear-drops

Of Sky’s first weeping drew my spots. Being

Sky-born I walked the earth with royal gait

And mourners saw me coiled across their path.

But of late

A strange bell

Has been ringing a song of desolation:

Leave your yams and cocoyams

And come to school.

And I must scuttle away in haste

When children in play or in earnest cry:

Look! a Christian is on the way.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…

The singer’s sudden, demented laughter filled Ezeulu’s compound and he woke up. In spite of the cold harmattan he was sweating. But he felt an enormous relief to be awake and know that it had been a dream. The blind alarm and the life-and-death urgency fell away from it at the threshold of waking. But a vague fear remained because the voice of the python had ended as the voice of Ezeulu’s mother when she was seized with madness. Nwanyi Okperi, as they called her in Umuaro, had been a great singer in her youth, making songs for her village as easily as some people talked. In later life when her madness came on her these old songs and others she might have made forced themselves out in eccentric spurts through the cracks in her mind. Ezeulu in his childhood lived in fear of these moments when his mother’s feet were put in stocks, at the new moon.

The passage of Ogbazulobodo at that moment helped in establishing Ezeulu in the present. Perhaps it was the effect of the dream, but in all his life he had never heard a night spirit pass with this fury. It was like a legion of runners each covered from neck to ankle with strings of rattling
ekpili
. It came from the direction of the
ilo
and disappeared towards Nkwo. It must have seen signs of light in someone’s compound for it seemed to stop and cry:
Ewo okuo! Ewo okuo!
The offender whoever it was must have quickly put out the light, and the pacified spirit continued its flight and soon disappeared in the night.

Ezeulu wondered why it had not saluted him when it passed near his compound. Or perhaps it did before he woke up.

After the dream and the commotion of Ogbazulobodo’s passage he tried in vain to sleep again. Then they began to fire the cannon in Amalu’s place. Ezeulu counted nine claps separated by the beating of
ekwe
. By that time sleep had completely left his eyes. He got up and groped for the latch of his carved door and opened it. Then he took his matchet and his bottle of snuff from the head of the bed and groped his way to the outer room. There he felt the dry chill of the harmattan. Fortunately the fire had not died from the two big ukwa logs. He stoked it and produced a small flame.

No other person in the village could carry the
ogbazulobodo
as well as Obika. Whenever somebody else tried there was a big difference: either the speed was too slow or the words stuck in his throat. For the power of
ike-agwu-ani
, great though it was, could not change a crawling millipede into an antelope nor a dumb man into an orator. That was why in spite of the great grievance which Amalu’s family nursed against Ezeulu and his family Aneto still came to beg Obika to run as
ogbazulobodo
on the night before his father’s second burial.

‘I do not want to say no to you,’ said Obika after Aneto had spoken, ‘but this is not something a man can do when his body is not all his. Since yesterday I have been having a little fever.’

‘I do not know what it is but everybody you see nowadays sounds like a broken pot,’ said Aneto.

‘Why not ask Nweke Ukpaka to run for you?’

‘I knew about Nweke Ukpaka when I came to you. I even passed by his house.’

Obika considered the matter.

‘There are many people who can do it,’ said Aneto. ‘But he whose name is called again and again by those trying in vain to catch a wild bull has something he alone can do to bulls.’

‘True,’ said Obika. ‘I agree but I am agreeing in cowardice.’

‘If I say no,’ Obika told himself, ‘they will say that Ezeulu and his family have revealed a second time their determination to wreck the burial of their village man who did no harm to them.’

He did not tell his wife that he would be going out that night until he had eaten his evening meal. Obika always went into his wife’s hut to eat his meals. His friends teased him about it and said the woman had spoilt his head. Okuata was polishing off the soup in her bowl when Obika spoke. She crooked her first finger once more, wiped the bowl with it, stretched it again and ran it down her tongue.

‘Going out with this fever?’ she asked. ‘Obika, have pity on yourself. The funeral is tomorrow. What is there they cannot do without you until morning?’

‘I shall not stay long. Aneto is my age mate and I must go and see how he is preparing.’

Okuata maintained a sullen silence.

‘Bar the door well. Nobody will carry you away. I shall not stay long.’

The
ekwe-ogbazulobodo
sounded
kome kome kokome kome kokome
and continued for a while warning anyone still awake to hurry up to bed and put out every light because light and
ogbazulobodo
were mortal enemies. When it had beaten long enough for all to hear it stopped. Silence and the shrill call of insects seized the night again. Obika and the others who would carry the
ayaka
spirit-chorus sat on the lowest rung of the
okwolo
steps talking and laughing. The man who beat the
ekwe
joined them, leaving his drum in the half-light of the palm-oil torch.

When the
ekwe
began to beat out the second and final warning Obika was still talking with the others as though it did not concern him. The old man, Ozumba, who kept the regalia of the night spirits took a position near the drummer. Then he raised his cracked voice and called
ugoli
four or five times as if to clear the cobweb from it. Then he asked if Obika was there. Obika looked in his direction and saw him vaguely in the weak light. Slowly and deliberately he got up and went to Ozumba, and stood before him. Ozumba bent down and took up a skirt made of a network of rope and heavily studded with rattling
ekpili
. Obika raised both arms above his head so that Ozumba could tie the skirt round his waist without hindrance. When this was done Ozumba waved his arms about like a blind man until they struck the iron staff. He pulled it out of the ground and placed it in Obika’s right hand. The
ekwe
continued to beat in the half-light of the palm-oil torch. Obika closed his hand tight on the staff and clenched his teeth. Ozumba allowed him a little time to prepare himself fully. Then very slowly he lifted the
ike-agwu-ani
necklace. The
ekwe
beat faster and faster. Obika held his head forward and Ozumba put the
ike-agwuani
round his neck. As he did so he said: