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Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
First published in 1959
(One of the first African novels written in English to receive global critical acclaim)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things Fall Apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
...
B
...
His fame rested
on solid personal achievements
...
Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven
years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino
...
It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old
men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the
wild for seven days and seven nights
...
Amalinze
was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water
...
In the end Okonkwo threw the Cat
...
He was tall and huge, and his bushy
eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look
...

When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs,
as if he was going to pounce on somebody
...
He
had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly
enough, he would use his fists
...
He had had no
patience with his father
...
In his day he was
lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow
...
He always said that whenever he saw a dead
man's mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one's lifetime
...

He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop
...
He was very good on his flute,
and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the harvest when the village
musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the fireplace
...
Sometimes another village
would ask Unoka's band and their dancing egwugwu to come and stay with them and
teach them their tunes
...
Unoka loved the good hire and the good fellowship, and he
loved this season of the year, when the rains had stopped and the sun rose every morning
with dazzling beauty
...
Some years the harmattan was very severe and a
dense haze hung on the atmosphere
...
Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites that returned with
the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to them
...
As soon as he found one he would sing with his

whole being, welcoming it back from its long, long journey, and asking it if it had
brought home any lengths of cloth
...
Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure
...
People laughed at him
because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money because he
never paid back
...

One day a neighbour called Okoye came in to see him
...
He immediately rose and shook hands with Okoye,
who then unrolled the goatskin which he carried under his arm, and sat down
...

"I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his
guest
...
He who brings kola brings life
...

"No, it is for you, I think," and they argued like this for a few moments before
Unoka accepted the honour of breaking the kola
...

As he broke the kola, Unoka prayed to their ancestors for life and health, and for
protection against their enemies
...
Unoka was never happy when it
came to wars
...
And so he
changed the subject and talked about music, and his face beamed
...
The total effect was gay and brisk, but if one picked out the
flute as it went up and down and then broke up into short snatches, one saw that there
was sorrow and grief there
...
He played on the ogene
...
He had a large barn full of yams and he had three wives
...
It was a very expensive ceremony
and he was gathering all his resources together
...
He cleared his throat and began: "Thank you for the kola
...
"
Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye said the next half a dozen sentences in
proverbs
...
Okoye was a great talker and he spoke for a
long time, skirting round the subject and then hitting it finally
...
As soon as Unoka understood what his friend was driving at, he burst out
laughing
...
His visitor was amazed, and sat speechless
...


"Look at that wall," he said, pointing at the far wall of his hut, which was rubbed
with red earth so that it shone
...
There were five groups, and the smallest group
had ten lines
...
You see, I owe
that man a thousand cowries
...
I
shall pay you, but not today
...
I shall pay my big debts first
...
Okoye rolled his
goatskin and departed
...
Any
wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him? Fortunately, among these
people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his
father
...
He was still young but he had won
fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages
...
To crown it all he had taken two
titles and had shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars
...
Age was
respected among his people, but achievement was revered
...
Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands and so
he ate with kings and elders
...

The ill-fated lad was called Ikemefuna
...
Gome, gome, gome,
gome, boomed the hollow metal
...
And this was the message
...
Okonkwo wondered what was amiss, for
he knew certainly that something was amiss
...

The night was very quiet
...

Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them
...
Dangerous animals became
even more sinister and uncanny in the dark
...
It was called a string
...

On a moonlight night it would be different
...
And perhaps those not so young would be playing in

pairs in less open places, and old men and women would remember their youth
...
"
But this particular night was dark and silent
...

Okonkwo on his bamboo bed tried to figure out the nature of the emergency - war with a
neighbouring clan? That seemed the most likely reason, and he was not afraid of war
...
Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood
...
That was his fifth head
and he was not an old man yet
...

In the morning the market place was full
...
At last Ogbuefi Ezeugo stood up in the
midst of them and bellowed four times, "Umuofia kwenu," and on each occasion he faced
a different direction and seemed to push the air with a clenched fist
...
Then there was perfect silence
...
He moved his hand
over his white head and stroked his white beard
...

"Umuofia kwenu," he bellowed a fifth time, and the crowd yelled in answer
...
" He threw his head down and
gnashed his teeth, and allowed a murmur of suppressed anger to sweep the crowd
...
And in a clear unemotional voice he told
Umuofia how their daughter had gone to market at Mbaino and had been killed
...
The crowd then shouted with anger and thirst for blood
...
An ultimatum was immediately dispatched to Mbaino asking them to choose
between war - on the one hand, and on the other the offer of a young man and a virgin as
compensation
...
It was powerful in war and in magic,
and its priests and medicine men were feared in all the surrounding country
...
Nobody knew how old
...
In fact, the medicine itself was called agadi-nwayi, or old woman
...
And if anybody was so
foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see the old woman hopping
about
...

And in fairness to Umuofia it should be recorded that it never went to war unless its case
was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle - the Oracle of the Hills and the
Caves
...
If the clan had disobeyed the Oracle they would surely have been beaten, because
their dreaded agadi-nwayi would never fight what the Ibo call a fight of blame
...
Even the enemy clan knew that
...
The lad's name was Ikemefuna,
whose sad story is still told in Umuofia unto this day
...
At the end they
decided, as everybody knew they would, that the girl should go to Ogbuefi Udo to
replace his murdered wife
...
Okonkwo was, therefore, asked on behalf of the clan to
look after him in the interim
...

Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand
...
Perhaps
down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man
...
It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of
evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature,
malevolent, red in tooth and claw
...
It was not
external but lay deep within himself
...
Even as a little boy he had resented his father's failure and weakness,
and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him
that his father was agbala
...

And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion - to hate everything that his father Unoka had
loved
...

During the planting season Okonkwo worked daily on his farms from cock-crow
until the chickens went to roost
...
But his
wives and young children were not as strong, and so they suffered
...
Okonkwo's first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old but was already
causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness
...
And
so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth
...
He had a large compound
enclosed by a thick wall of red earth
...
Each of his three wives had her own hut, which together
formed a half moon behind the obi
...
At the opposite end of the compound
was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment to her hut for the hens
...
He worshipped them
with sacrifices of kola nut, food and palm-wine, and offered prayers to them on behalf of
himself, his three wives and eight children
...
When Okonkwo brought him home that day he called his most
senior wife and handed him over to her
...
"So look after him
...

"Do what you are told, woman," Okonkwo thundered, and stammered
...

As for the boy himself, he was terribly afraid
...
How could he know that his father had taken a
hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia? All he knew was that a few men had arrived at
their house, conversing with his father in low tones, and at the end he had been taken out
and handed over to a stranger
...
And so the stranger had brought him, and a girl, a long, long way from
home, through lonely forest paths
...


CHAPTER THREE
Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had
...
There was no barn to inherit
...

The Oracle was called Agbala, and people came from far and near to consult it
...
They came to discover what the future held for them or to consult the spirits
of their departed fathers
...
Worshippers and those who came to seek
knowledge from the god crawled on their belly through the hole and found themselves in
a dark, endless space in the presence of Agbala
...
But no one who had ever crawled into his awful shrine had come out
without the fear of his power
...
The fire did not burn with a flame
...

Sometimes a man came to consult the spirit of his dead father or relative
...
Some people even said that they had heard the spirits flying and flapping
their wings against the roof of the cave
...
The priestess in those days was a woman called Chika
...
Unoka stood before her and began his
story
...
It is the law of our fathers
...
I clear the bush and set fire to it when it is dry
...
I weed" -"Hold your peace!" screamed the priestess, her voice terrible as it echoed through the
dark void
...
And when a man is at
peace with his gods and his ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the
strength of his arm
...
When your neighbours go out with their axe to cut down virgin
forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labour to clear
...

Go home and work like a man
...
He had a bad chi or personal god, and evil fortune
followed him to the grave, or rather to his death, for he had no grave
...
When a man was afflicted with
swelling in the stomach and the limbs he was not allowed to die in the house
...
There was the story of a very stubborn man
who staggered back to his house and had to be carried again to the forest and tied to a
tree
...
He died and rotted away above the earth, and was not given the first or the
second burial
...
When they carried him away, he took with him his
flute
...
He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even a young wife
...
It was slow and painful
...
And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's contemptible
life and shameful death
...
His name was Nwakibie and he had taken the highest but one
title which a man could take in the clan
...

He took a pot of palm-wine and a cock to Nwakibie
...
He presented a
kola nut and an alligator pepper, which were passed round for all to see and then returned
to him
...
We pray for life, children, a good
harvest and happiness
...
Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too
...
"
After the kola nut had been eaten Okonkwo brought his palm-wine from the
corner of the hut where it had been placed and stood it in the centre of the group
...
"
"Nna ayi," he said
...
As our people say, a man
who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness
...
But let us drink the wine first
...
Nwakibie brought down his own horn, which was
fastened to the rafters
...


The first cup went to Okonkwo, who must taste his wine before anyone else
...
When everyone had drunk two or three
horns, Nwakibie sent for his wives
...

"Is Anasi not in?" he asked them
...
Anasi was the first
wife and the others could not drink before her, and so they stood waiting
...
There was authority in
her bearing and she looked every inch the ruler of the womenfolk in a large and
prosperous family
...

She walked up to her husband and accepted the horn from him
...
She rose, called him by his
name and went back to her hut
...

The men then continued their drinking and talking
...

"There must be something behind it," he said, wiping the foam of wine from his
moustache with the back of his left hand
...
A toad does not
run in the daytime for nothing
...

"Obiako has always been a strange one," said Nwakibie
...
The Oracle said to him, 'Your dead father wants you to sacrifice a goat to him
...
' Everybody laughed heartily except Okonkwo, who laughed uneasily
because, as the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are
mentioned in a proverb
...

At last the young man who was pouring out the wine held up half a horn of the
thick, white dregs and said, "What we are eating is finished
...
"Who will drink the dregs?" he asked
...

Everybody agreed that Igwelo should drink the dregs
...
As Idigo had said, Igwelo had a job in hand because
he had married his first wife a month or two before
...

After the wine had been drunk Okonkwo laid his difficulties before Nwakibie
...
"Perhaps you can already guess what it is
...
I know what it is to ask a man to trust
another with his yams, especially these days when young men are afraid of hard work
...
The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree to the ground said
he would praise himself if no one else did
...
If you give me some yam seeds I shall not
fail you
...
"It pleases me to see a young man like you these
days when our youth has gone so soft
...
When I say no to them they think I am hard hearted
...
Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he
has learned to fly without perching
...
But I can
trust you
...
As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its
look
...
Go ahead and prepare your farm
...
He knew
that Nwakibie would not refuse him, but he had not expected he would be so generous
...
He would now have to make a
bigger farm
...

Share-cropping was a very slow way of building up a barn of one's own
...
But for a young man whose father had no
yams, there was no other way
...
And supporting his
mother also meant supporting his father
...
And so at a very early age when he was striving desperately to build
a barn through share-cropping Okonkwo was also fending for his father's house
...
His mother and sisters worked hard
enough, but they grew women's crops, like coco-yams, beans and cassava
...

The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed-yams from Nwakibie was the
worst year in living memory
...
It seemed as if the world had gone mad
...
The blazing sun returned, more fierce than it had
ever been known, and scorched all the green that had appeared with the rains
...
Like all good farmers,
Okonkwo had begun to sow with the first rains
...
He watched the sky all day for signs of rain
clouds and lay awake all night
...
He had tried to protect them from the smouldering earth by making
rings of thick sisal leaves around them
...
He changed them every day, and prayed that the rain might fall in
the night
...

Some farmers had not planted their yams yet
...
This year they were the
wise ones
...

Okonkwo planted what was left of his seed-yams when the rains finally returned
...
The yams he had sown before the drought were his own, the
harvest of the previous year
...
So he would make a fresh start
...
Rain fell as it had never fallen before
...
Trees

were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere
...

But it went from day to day without a pause
...
The yams put on luxuriant green leaves, but
every farmer knew that without sunshine the tubers would not grow
...
One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged
himself
...
It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the
load of despair
...

"Since I survived that year," he always said, "I shall survive anything
...

His father, Unoka, who was then an ailing man, had said to him during that
terrible harvest month: "Do not despair
...
You have a manly
and a proud heart
...
It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone
...
His love of talk had grown with age and
sickness
...


CHAPTER FOUR
"Looking at a king's mouth," said an old man, "one would think he never sucked at his
mother's breast
...
The old man bore no ill will
towards Okonkwo
...
But he was
struck, as most people were, by Okonkwo's brusqueness in dealing with less successful
men
...
Without looking at the man Okonkwo had said: "This
meeting is for men
...
That was why he
had called him a woman
...

Everybody at the kindred meeting took sides with Osugo when Okonkwo called
him a woman
...
Okonkwo said he
was sorry for what he had said, and the meeting continued
...
He had cracked them himself
...
If ever a man deserved
his success, that man was Okonkwo
...
That was not luck
...
But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his
chi says yes also
...
And not only his chi
but his clan too, because it judged a man by the work of his hands
...
And such was the deep fear that their enemies had for Umuofia that they
treated Okonkwo like a king and brought him a virgin who was given to Udo as wife, and
the lad Ikemefuna
...
But no one thought It would be as long as three years
...

At first Ikemefuna was very much afraid
...
He thought of his mother and his three-year-old sister
and wept bitterly
...
But all he said was: "When shall I go home?" When Okonkwo heard that
he would not eat any food he came into the hut with a big stick in his hand and stood over
him while he swallowed his yams, trembling
...
Nwoye's mother went to him and placed her hands on
his chest and on his back
...

He was by nature a very lively boy and he gradually became popular in
Okonkwo's household, especially with the children
...
He could fashion out flutes from bamboo stems and even from the elephant
grass
...
And he knew which trees made the strongest bows
...

Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger
...
He
therefore treated Ikemefuna as he treated everybody else - with a heavy hand
...
Sometimes when he went to big village meetings or
communal ancestral feasts he allowed Ikemefuna to accompany him, like a son, carrying
his stool and his goatskin bag
...

Ikemefuna came to Umuofia at the end of the carefree season between harvest and
planting
...
And that was also the year Okonkwo broke the peace, and was punished, as was
the custom, by Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess
...
Okonkwo did not know at first that she was not at home
...
There was nobody in the hut and
the fireplace was cold
...

"She has gone to plait her hair
...

"Where are her children? Did she take them?" he asked with unusual coolness and
restraint
...
Okonkwo bent down
and looked into her hut
...


"Did she ask you to feed them before she went?"
"Yes," lied Nwoye's mother, trying to minimise Ojiugo's thoughtlessness
...
He walked back to his obi to
await Ojiugo's return
...
In his anger he
had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace
...

But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not
even for fear of a goddess
...
Some of them came over to see for
themselves
...

Before it was dusk Ezeani, who was the priest of the earth goddess, Ani, called on
Okonkwo in his obi
...
I shall not eat in the house of a man who has no respect for our gods
and ancestors
...
He held a short staff in his hand which he brought down on the floor to
emphasise his points
...
"You are not a stranger in
Umuofia
...
We live in peace with our fellows to honour our great goddess of the earth
without whose blessing our crops will not grow
...
" He
brought down his staff heavily on the floor
...
" His staff came down again
...
The earth goddess whom you have insulted may refuse to give us her increase, and
we shall all perish
...
"You will bring to
the shrine of Ani tomorrow one she-goat, one hen, a length of cloth and a hundred
cowries
...

Okonkwo did as the priest said
...

Inwardly, he was repentant
...
And so people said he had no respect for the gods of the clan
...
They called him the little bird nza
who so far forgot himself after a heavy meal that he challenged his chi
...
People called on their neighbours
and drank palm-wine
...
It was the first time for many years that a man had broken the
sacred peace
...

Ogbuefi Ezeudu, who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men
who came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become
very mild in their clan
...
"My father told me that he had been told that
in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village

until he died
...
"
"Somebody told me yesterday," said one of the younger men, "that in some clans
it is an abomination for a man to die during the Week of Peace
...
"They have that custom in Obodoani
...
It is a bad custom
which these people observe because they lack understanding
...
And what is the result? Their clan is full of
the evil spirits of these unburied dead, hungry to do harm to the living
...
The cut bush was left to dry and fire was then set to it
...
The rainy season was approaching when they would go away
until the dry season returned
...
He looked at each
yam carefully to see whether it was good for sowing
...
His eldest son, Nwoye, and Ikemefuna helped him by fetching the yams in long
baskets from the barn and in counting the prepared seeds in groups of four hundred
...
But he always found fault
with their effort, and he said so with much threatening
...
"If you
split another yam of this size, I shall break your jaw
...
I
began to own a farm at your age
...
But he thought that one could not begin too
early
...
Okonkwo wanted his son to be a great
farmer and a great man
...

"I will not have a son who cannot hold up his head in the gathering of the clan
...
And if you stand staring at me like that,"
he swore, "Amadiora will break your head for you!"
Some days later, when the land had been moistened by two or three heavy rains,
Okonkwo and his family went to the farm with baskets of seed-yams, their hoes and
machetes, and the planting began
...

Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king
...
The young tendrils were protected from earth-heat with rings of sisal leaves
...
The yams were then staked, first with little sticks and later with tall and big tree
branches
...


And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that even the village
rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene
...
The personal dynamism required to counter the forces of these extremes
of weather would be far too great for the human frame
...

Sometimes it poured down in such thick sheets of water that earth and sky seemed
merged in one grey wetness
...
At such times, in each of the countless
thatched huts of Umuofia, children sat around their mother's cooking fire telling stories,
or with their father in his obi warming themselves from a log fire, roasting and eating
maize
...

Ikemefuna had begun to feel like a member of Okonkwo's family
...
Ikemefuna had an endless stock of folk
tales
...
Nwoye remembered this period very vividly till the end
of his life
...
Nwoye's mind had gone immediately to Nwayieke, who lived
near the udala tree
...

Gradually the rains became lighter and less frequent, and earth and sky once again
became separate
...
Children no longer stayed indoors but ran about singing: "The rain is falling, the
sun is shining, Alone Nnadi is cooking and eating
...
In the end he decided that Nnadi must live in that land of Ikemefuna's
favourite story where the ant holds his court in splendour and the sands dance forever
...
It was
an occasion for giving thanks to Ani, the earth goddess and the source of all fertility
...
She was the ultimate
judge of morality and conduct
...

The Feast of the New Yam was held every year before the harvest began, to
honour the earth goddess and the ancestral spirits of the clan
...
Men and women, young and old,
looked forward to the New Yam Festival because it began the season of plenty--the new
year
...
The new year must begin with tasty, fresh yams and not the

shrivelled and fibrous crop of the previous year
...
Yam foo-foo and vegetable soup was the chief food in the celebration
...
The story was always told of a wealthy man who set
before his guests a mound of foo-foo so high that those who sat on one side could not see
what was happening on the other, and it was not until late in the evening that one of them
saw for the first time his in-law who had arrived during the course of the meal and had
fallen to on the opposite side
...

The New Yam Festival was thus an occasion for joy throughout Umuofia
...
Okonkwo always asked his wives' relations, and
since he now had three wives his guests would make a fairly big crowd
...
He was a good eater and he could drink one or two fairly big gourds of palmwine
...
He would be very much happier working on his farm
...
Okonkwo's wives had scrubbed the
walls and the huts with red earth until they reflected light
...
They then set about painting themselves with
cam wood and drawing beautiful black patterns on their stomachs and on their backs
...
The three women talked excitedly about the relations who had been invited, and
the children revelled in the thought of being spoiled by these visitors from the
motherland
...
The New Yam Festival seemed to him to be
a much bigger event here than in his own village, a place which was already becoming
remote and vague in his imagination
...
Okonkwo, who had been walking about aimlessly in his
compound in suppressed anger, suddenly found an outlet
...

A hush fell on the compound immediately
...
Okonkwo's second wife had
merely cut a few leaves off it to wrap some food, and she said so
...

Neither of the other wives dared to interfere beyond an occasional and tentative, "It is
enough, Okonkwo," pleaded from a reasonable distance
...
He had an old rusty
gun made by a clever blacksmith who had come to live in Umuofia long ago
...
In fact he had not killed a rat with his gun
...
Unfortunately for her Okonkwo heard it and ran madly into
his room for the loaded gun, ran out again and aimed at her as she clambered over the

dwarf wall of the barn
...
He threw down the gun and jumped into the barn
and there lay the woman, very much shaken and frightened but quite unhurt
...

In spite of this incident the New Yam Festival was celebrated with great joy in
Okonkwo's household
...

As the day wore on his in-laws arrived from three surrounding villages, and each
party brought with them a huge pot of palm-wine
...
It was difficult to say which the people enjoyed more, the feasting and
fellowship of the first day or the wrestling Contest of the second
...
She was Okonkwo's second wife
Ekwefi, whom he nearly shot
...
Many years ago when she was the
village beauty Okonkwo had won her heart by throwing the Cat in the greatest contest
within living memory
...
But a few years later she ran away from her husband and came to live with
Okonkwo
...
Now Ekwefi was a woman of forty-five
who had suffered a great deal in her time
...

It was not yet noon on the second day of the New Yam Festival
...
The
fowl Ekwefi had just killed was in the wooden mortar
...
She put back the empty pot on the circular pad in the corner, and looked at her
palms, which were black with soot
...

"Ekwefi," she said, "is it true that when people are grown up, fire does not burn
them?" Ezinma, unlike most children, called her mother by her name
...
Her daughter was only ten years old but
she was wiser than her years
...
"
Ekwefi turned the hen over in the mortar and began to pluck the feathers
...
"
"It means you are going to cry," said her mother
...
"
"That means you will see something
...

"How can I know?" Ekwefi wanted her to work it out herself
...
"I know what it is--the wrestling match
...
Ekwefi tried to pull out the horny beak but it
was too hard
...
She pulled again and it came off
...
It was Nwoye's mother,
Okonkwo's first wife
...
That was the way people answered calls from
outside
...

"Will you give Ezinma some fire to bring to me?" Her own children and
Ikemefuna had gone to the stream
...

"Thank you, Nma," she said
...

"Let me make the fire for you," Ezinma offered
...
She often called her Ezigbo, which means "the
good one
...

She broke them into little pieces across the sole of her foot and began to build a fire,
blowing it with her breath
...
"Use the fan
...
As soon as she got up, the troublesome nanny goat, which had
been dutifully eating yam peelings, dug her teeth into the real thing, scooped out two
mouthfuls and fled from the hut to chew the cud in the goats' shed
...
Ezinma's fire was now sending up
thick clouds of smoke
...
Nwoye's mother
thanked her and she went back to her mother's hut
...
It came from the
direction of the ilo, the village playground
...
The
drums beat the unmistakable wrestling dance - quick, light and gay, and it came floating
on the wind
...
It filled
him with fire as it had always done from his youth
...
It was like the desire for woman
...

"They will not begin until the sun goes down
...
"
"Yes
...
Go and see if your father has brought out yams for the afternoon
...
Nwoye's mother is already cooking
...
We must cook quickly or we shall be late for the
wrestling
...


Ekwefi peeled the yams quickly
...
She cut the yams into small pieces and began to prepare a pottage,
using some of the chicken
...
It was
very much like Obiageli, Nwoye's sister
...

"Yes," she replied
...
"
The weeping was now quite close and soon the children filed in, carrying on their
heads various sizes of pots suitable to their years
...
Obiageli brought up the
rear, her face streaming with tears
...

"What happened?" her mother asked, and Obiageli told her mournful story
...

Nwoye's younger brothers were about to tell their mother the true story of the
accident when Ikemefuna looked at them sternly and they held their peace
...
She had balanced it on her head,
folded her arms in front of her and began to sway her waist like a grown-up young lady
...
She only began to weep when
they got near the iroko tree outside their compound
...
Their sound was no
longer a separate thing from the living village
...
It
throbbed in the air, in the sunshine, and even in the trees, and filled the village with
excitement
...

Ezinma took it to him in his obi
...
Obiageli,
who had brought it from her mother's hut, sat on the floor waiting for him to finish
...

"Sit like a woman!" Okonkwo shouted at her
...

"Father, will you go to see the wrestling?" Ezinma asked after a suitable interval
...
"Will you go?"
"Yes
...
" Okonkwo was specially fond of Ezinma
...
But his fondness only
showed on very rare occasions
...

"Yes, she has told me about it," Okonkwo said between mouthfuls
...
"
"That is very true
...
"
He uncovered his second wife's dish and began to eat from it
...
And then Nkechi came in, bringing the third
dish
...


In the distance the drums continued to beat
...
They stood round in a
huge circle leaving the centre of the playground free
...
Okonkwo was
among them
...

The wrestlers were not there yet and the drummers held the field
...
Behind them was the big and
ancient silk-cotton tree which was sacred
...
On ordinary days young women who desired children came to sit
under its shade
...
Three men beat them with sticks, working feverishly from one drum to
another
...

The young men who kept order on these occasions dashed about, consulting
among themselves and with the leaders of the two wrestling teams, who were still outside
the circle, behind the crowd
...

At last the two teams danced into the circle and the crowd roared and clapped
...
The people surged forward
...
Old men nodded to the beat of the drums and
remembered the days when they wrestled to its intoxicating rhythm
...
There were only three such
boys in each team
...
Within a
short time the first two bouts were over
...
It was as quick as the
other two, perhaps even quicker
...
As soon as the two boys closed in, one of them did something which no one could
describe because it had been as quick as a flash
...

The crowd roared and clapped and for a while drowned the frenzied drums
...
Three young men from the victorious boy's
team ran forward, carried him shoulder high and danced through the cheering crowd
...
His name was Maduka, the son of Obierika
...
Their bodies shone
with sweat, and they took up fans and began to fan themselves
...
They became ordinary human beings again, talking and
laughing among themselves and with others who stood near them
...
It was as if water had been poured on
the tightened skin of a drum
...


"I did not know it was you," Ekwefi said to the woman who had stood shoulder to
shoulder with her since the beginning of the matches
...
"I have never seen such a large crowd of
people
...
I cannot yet find a mouth with which to tell the
story
...
And how is my daughter, Ezinma?"
"She has been very well for some time now
...
"
"I think she has
...
"
"I think she will stay
...
"
"I pray she stays," said Ekwefi with a heavy sigh
...
She was the priestess of
Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves
...
She was very friendly with Ekwefi and they shared a common shed in the
market
...
" Quite often she bought beancakes and gave Ekwefi some to take home to
Ezinma
...

The drummers took up their sticks and the air shivered and grew tense like a
tightened bow
...
A young
man from one team danced across the centre to the other side and pointed at whomever
he wanted to fight
...

There were twelve men on each side and the challenge went from one side to the
other
...
Five matches ended in this way
...
The huge voice of the crowd then rose to the sky and in
every direction
...

The last match was between the leaders of the teams
...
The crowd wondered who would throw the other this
year
...

Last year neither of them had thrown the other even though the judges had allowed the
contest to go on longer than was the custom
...
It might happen again this year
...
The drums went mad
and the crowds also
...

The palm fronds were helpless in keeping them back
...
Okafo seized it, and they closed in
...
Ikezue strove to dig in his right heel behind Okafo so as to pitch him backwards
in the clever ege style
...
The crowd had
surrounded and swallowed up the drummers, whose frantic rhythm was no longer a mere
disembodied sound but the very heartbeat of the people
...
The muscles on their
arms and their thighs and on their backs stood out and twitched
...
The two judges were already moving forward to separate them when Ikezue, now

desperate, went down quickly on one knee in an attempt to fling his man backwards over
his head
...
Quick as the lightning of Amadiora, Okafo raised
his right leg and swung it over his rival's head
...

Okafo was swept off his feet by his supporters and carried home shoulder high
...
Has he thrown a hundred men?
He has thrown four hundred men
...
Then send him word to fight for us
...
He grew rapidly like a yam tendril in the rainy
season, and was full of the sap of life
...
He was like an elder brother to Nwoye, and from the very first seemed to have
kindled a new fire in the younger boy
...
Nothing pleased
Nwoye now more than to be sent for by his mother or another of his father's wives to do
one of those difficult and masculine tasks in the home, like splitting wood, or pounding
food
...

Okonkwo was inwardly pleased at his son's development, and he knew it was due
to Ikemefuna
...

He wanted him to be a prosperous man, having enough in his barn to feed the
ancestors with regular sacrifices
...
That showed that in time he would be able to control his
women-folk
...
He was like the man
in the song who had ten and one wives and not enough soup for his foo-foo
...
Nwoye knew that it was
right to be masculine and to be violent, but somehow he still preferred the stories that his
mother used to tell, and which she no doubt still told to her younger children--stories of
the tortoise and his wily ways, and of the bird eneke-nti-oba who challenged the whole
world to a wrestling contest and was finally thrown by the cat
...
At last Vulture was sent to plead with Sky, and to soften his
heart with a song of the suffering of the sons of men
...
At last Sky was moved to pity, and he gave to Vulture rain

wrapped in leaves of coco-yam
...
And so heavily did it rain on Vulture that he
did not return to deliver his message but flew to a distant land, from where he had espied
a fire
...
He warmed
himself in the fire and ate the entrails
...
But he now knew that they were for
foolish women and children, and he knew that his father wanted him to be a man
...
And when he did this he saw that
his father was pleased, and no longer rebuked him or beat him
...
And as he told them of the
past they sat in darkness or the dim glow of logs, waiting for the women to finish their
cooking
...
An oil lamp was lit and Okonkwo tasted from each bowl, and then passed two
shares to Nwoye and Ikemefuna
...
And then the locusts came
...
The elders said locusts came once in a generation,
reappeared every year for seven years and then disappeared for another lifetime
...
And then after another lifetime these men opened the caves again and the locusts
came to Umuofia
...

Okonkwo and the two boys were working on the red outer walls of the compound
...
A new cover of thick palm
branches and palm leaves was set on the walls to protect them from the next rainy season
...
There
were little holes from one side to the other in the upper levels of the wall, and through
these Okonkwo passed the rope, or tie-tie, to the boys and they passed it round the
wooden stays and then back to him,- and in this way the cover was strengthened on the
wall
...
The harmattan was in the air and
seemed to distill a hazy feeling of sleep on the world
...

And then quite suddenly a shadow fell on the world, and the sun seemed hidden
behind a thick cloud
...
But almost immediately a shout of joy broke out
in all directions, and Umuofia, which had dozed in the noon-day haze, broke into life and
activity
...
The
locusts had not come for many, many years, and only the old people had seen them
before
...
They were the harbingers sent to survey the
land
...
Soon it covered half the sky, and the solid mass
was now broken by tiny eyes of light like shining star dust
...

Everyone was now about, talking excitedly and praying that the locusts should
camp in Umuofia for the night
...
And at last the locusts
did descend
...
Mighty tree branches broke away under them, and the
whole country became the brown-earth colour of the vast, hungry swarm
...
And they were right
...
Then all Umuofia turned out in spite of the cold
harmattan, and everyone filled his bags and pots with locusts
...

And for many days this rare food was eaten with solid palm-oil
...
Ezeudu was the oldest
man in this quarter of Umuofia
...
He refused to join in the meal, and asked
Okonkwo to have a word with him outside
...
When they were out of earshot, he said to Okonkwo:
"That boy calls you father
...
" Okonkwo was surprised, and
was about to say something when the old man continued: "Yes, Umuofia has decided to
kill him
...
They will take him
outside Umuofia as is the custom, and kill him there
...
He calls you his father
...
They did not stay very long, but when they went
away Okonkwo sat still for a very long time supporting his chin in his palms
...
Nwoye
overheard it and burst into tears, whereupon his father beat him heavily
...
His own home had gradually become very faint and distant
...
But
somehow he knew he was not going to see them
...

Later, Nwoye went to his mother's hut and told her that Ikemefuna was going
home
...
"
The next day, the men returned with a pot of wine
...
They
passed their cloths under the right arm-pit, and hung their goatskin bags and sheathed
machetes over their left shoulders
...
A deathly silence descended on Okonkwo's
compound
...
Throughout that day Nwoye sat
in his mother's hut and tears stood in his eyes
...
But as they drew near to the outskirts of Umuofia silence fell upon them too
...
Some birds chirruped in the forests around
...
All else was silent
...
It rose and faded with the wind--a peaceful dance from a
distant clan
...
But no one was sure where
it was coming from
...
They argued for a short
while and fell into silence again, and the elusive dance rose and fell with the wind
...

The footway had now become a narrow line in the heart of the forest
...
The sun breaking through their leaves and
branches threw a pattern of light and shade on the sandy footway
...
The man
who had whispered now called out aloud, urging the others to hurry up
...
Then he and another man went before
Ikemefuna and set a faster pace
...
Although he
had felt uneasy at first, he was not afraid now
...
He could
hardly imagine that Okonkwo was not his real father
...
But his mother
and his three-year-old sister
...
Would he
recognise her now? She must have grown quite big
...
She
would want to hear everything that had happened to him in all these years
...
Then quite suddenly a thought came upon him
...
He
tried in vain to force the thought out of his mind
...
He still remembered the
song: Eze elina, elina!
Sala
Eze ilikwa ya
Ikwaba akwa ogholi
Ebe Danda nechi eze Ebe
Uzuzu nete egwu Sala

He sang it in his mind, and walked to its beat
...
If it ended on his left, she was dead
...
It ended
on the right
...
He sang the song again, and it ended on the left
...
The first voice gets to Chukwu, or God's house
...
Ikemefuna felt like a child once more
...

One of the men behind him cleared his throat
...
The way he said it sent cold
fear down Ikemefuna's back
...

Why had Okonkwo withdrawn to the rear? Ikemefuna felt his legs melting under him
...

As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo
looked away
...
The pot fell and broke in the sand
...
Dazed with fear, Okonkwo
drew his machete and cut him down
...

As soon as his father walked in, that night, Nwoye knew that Ikemefuna had been
killed, and something seemed to give way inside him, like the snapping of a tightened
bow
...
He just hung limp
...
Every child loved the harvest season
...

And if they could not help in digging up the yams, they could gather firewood together
for roasting the ones that would be eaten there on the farm
...
It was after
such a day at the farm during the last harvest that Nwoye had felt for the first time a
snapping inside him like the one he now felt
...
A sudden hush had fallen on the women, who had been talking, and
they had quickened their steps
...
A vague chill had
descended on him and his head had seemed to swell, like a solitary walker at night who
passes an evil spirit on the way
...
It descended
on him again, this feeling, when his father walked in that night after killing Ikemefuna
...
He drank
palm-wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and fierce like the eyes of a rat
when it was caught by the tail and dashed against the floor
...
But the boy was afraid of him and slipped out of the hut as soon as
he noticed him dozing
...
He tried not to think about Ikemefuna,-but the more he
tried the more he thought about him
...
But he was so weak that his legs could hardly carry him
...
Now and then a cold shiver
descended on his head and spread down his body
...
She
prepared it the way he liked--with slices of oil-bean and fish
...
"So you must finish this
...
Okonkwo ate the food absent-mindedly
...
He passed her a piece of fish
...
Ezinma rushed out of the hut,
chewing the fish, and soon returned with a bowl of cool water from the earthen pot in her
mother's hut
...
He ate a few more
pieces of plantain and pushed the dish aside
...
He searched in it for his snuff-bottle
...
It contained other things apart from his snuff-bottle
...
When he brought out the snuff-bottle he tapped it a few times against his
knee-cap before taking out some snuff on the palm of his left hand
...
He searched his bag again and brought out a
small, flat, ivory spoon, with which he carried the brown snuff to his nostrils
...
"She should have been a boy," Okonkwo said to himself again
...
If only he could find some work to do
he would be able to forget
...
The only work that men did at this time was covering the walls of their
compound with new palm fronds
...
He had finished
it on the very day the locusts came, when he had worked on one side of the wall and
Ikemefuna and Nwoye on the other
...
"
He sprang to his feet, hung his goatskin bag on his shoulder and went to visit his
friend, Obierika
...
He exchanged greetings with Okonkwo and led the way
into his obi
...

"Is it well?" Okonkwo asked
...
"My daughter's suitor is coming today and I hope we will
clinch the matter of the bride-price
...
"
Just then Obierika's son, Maduka, came into the obi from outside, greeted
Okonkwo and turned towards the compound, "Come and shake hands with me,"

Okonkwo said to the lad
...
" The
boy smiled, shook hands with Okonkwo and went into the compound
...
"If I had a son like him I should be
happy
...
A bowl of pounded yams can throw him in a
wrestling match
...
But I can tell you,
Obierika, that my children do not resemble me
...
She has the right spirit
...
"The children are still very
young
...
At his age I was already fending
for myself
...
A chick that will grow into a cock can be
spotted the very day it hatches
...
"
"Too much of his grandfather," Obierika thought, but he did not say it
...
But he had long learned how to lay that ghost
...
And so he did now
...

"I cannot understand why you refused to come with us to kill that boy," he asked
Obierika
...
"I had something better to
do
...
"
"I do not
...
"
"But someone had to do it
...

And what do you think the Oracle would do then?"
"You know very well, Okonkwo, that I am not afraid of blood and if anyone tells
you that I am, he is telling a lie
...
If I were you I
would have stayed at home
...
It is the kind
of action for which the goddess wipes out whole families
...
"A
child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm
...
"But if the Oracle said that my son should be
killed I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it
...
It was clear
from his twinkling eyes that he had important news
...

Obierika offered him a lobe of the kola nut he had broken with Okonkwo
...
When he finished his kola nut he said: "The things
that happen these days are very strange
...

"Do you know Ogbuefi Ndulue?" Ofoedu asked
...

"He died this morning," said Ofoedu
...
He was the oldest man in Ire," said Obierika
...
"But you ought to ask why the drum has not
beaten to tell Umuofia of his death
...

"That is the strange part of it
...
She is called Ozoemena
...
"Ozoemena was, as you know, too old to attend Ndulue
during his illness
...
When he died this morning, one of these
women went to Ozoemena's hut and told her
...
She knelt on her knees and hands at the threshold and called her
husband, who was laid on a mat
...
When the youngest wife went to call her again to be present at the washing of
the body, she found her lying on the mat, dead
...
"They will put off Ndulue's funeral
until his wife has been buried
...
"
"It was always said that Ndulue and Ozoemena had one mind," said Obierika
...
He could not do
anything without telling her
...
"I thought he was a strong man in his
youth
...

Okonkwo shook his head doubtfully
...

Okonkwo was beginning to feel like his old self again
...
If he had killed Ikemefuna during the busy planting
season or harvesting it would not have been so bad, his mind would have been centred on
his work
...
But in absence of work,
talking was the next best
...

"I must go home to tap my palm trees for the afternoon," he said
...

"Umezulike," replied Okonkwo
...
"It wounds my
heart to see these young men killing palm trees in the name of tapping
...
"But the law of the land must be obeyed
...
"In many other clans a man of
title is not forbidden to climb the palm tree
...
It is like Dimaragana, who would not
lend his knife for cutting up dogmeat because the dog was taboo to him, but offered to
use his teeth
...

"In those other clans you speak of, ozo is so low that every beggar takes it
...
"In Abame and Aninta the title is
worth less than two cowries
...
"
"They have indeed soiled the name of ozo," said Okonkwo as he rose to go
...

"I shall return very soon," said Okonkwo, looking at the position of the sun
...
The suitor was
a young man of about twenty-five, and with him were his father and uncle
...

"Ask Akueke's mother to send us some kola nuts," said Obierika to his son
...
The conversation at once centred on
him, and everybody agreed that he was as sharp as a razor
...
"He
hardly ever walks
...
If you are sending him on an errand he flies
away before he has heard half of the message
...
"As our people
say, 'When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
...
"
As he was speaking the boy returned, followed by Akueke, his half-sister,
carrying a wooden dish with three kola nuts and alligator pepper
...

She was about sixteen and just ripe for marriage
...

She wore a coiffure which was done up into a crest in the middle of the head
...
She wore a black necklace which hung down in three coils just above her
full, succulent breasts
...

When she had shaken hands, or rather held out her hand to be shaken, she
returned to her mother's hut to help with the cooking
...
"Every day I tell you that jigida and fire are not
friends
...
You grew your ears for decoration, not for hearing
...
"
Akueke moved to the other end of the hut and began to remove the waist-beads
...
She rubbed each string
downwards with her palms until it passed the buttocks and slipped down to the floor
around her feet
...
It was a very good wine and powerful, for in spite of the palm fruit
hung across the mouth of the pot to restrain the lively liquor, white foam rose and spilled
over
...

The young suitor, whose name was Ibe, smiled broadly and said to his father: "Do
you hear that?" He then said to the others: "He will never admit that I am a good tapper
...

"That was about five years ago," said Ibe, who had begun to pour out the wine,
"before I learned how to tap
...
Then he

poured out for the others
...

As the men drank, they talked about everything except the thing for which they
had gathered
...

Obierika then presented to him a small bundle of short broomsticks
...
"They are thirty?" he asked
...

"We are at last getting somewhere," Ukegbu said, and then turning to his brother
and his son he said: "Let us go out and whisper together
...
When they returned Ukegbu handed the bundle of sticks back to Obierika
...
He passed them over to his
eldest brother, Machi, who also counted them and said: "We had not thought to go below
thirty
...

Marriage should be a play and not a fight so we are falling down again
...

In this way Akuke's bride-price was finally settled at twenty bags of cowries
...

"Go and tell Akueke's mother that we have finished," Obierika said to his son,
Maduka
...
Obierika's
second wife followed with a pot of soup, and Maduka brought in a pot of palm-wine
...

"It was only this morning," said Obierika, "that Okonkwo and I were talking
about Abame and Aninta, where titled men climb trees and pound foo-foo for their
wives
...
They do not decide bride-price as we do,
with sticks
...
"
"That is very bad," said Obierika's eldest brother
...
In Umunso they do not bargain at all, not even with broomsticks
...
It is a
bad custom because it always leads to a quarrel
...
"I have even heard that in some tribes a
man's children belong to his wife and her family
...
"You might as well say that the woman lies on top
of the man when they are making the children
...
He held up a piece of chalk, which every man kept in his obi and with
which his guests drew lines on the floor before they ate kola nuts
...
"
"And have you never seen them?" asked Machi
...

"One of them passes here frequently," said Machi
...
"
Those who knew Amadi laughed
...
"

CHAPTER NINE
For the first time in three nights, Okonkwo slept
...
He
began to wonder why he had felt uneasy at all
...
He stretched himself and
scratched his thigh where a mosquito had bitten him as he slept
...
He slapped the ear and hoped he had killed it
...
But it was as
silly as all women's stories
...
"How much longer do you
think you will live?" she asked
...
" Mosquito went away
humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive
...
He was roused in the
morning by someone banging on his door
...
He knew it must be Ekwefi
...

"Ezinma is dying," came her voice, and all the tragedy and sorrow of her life were
packed in those words
...

Ezinma lay shivering on a mat beside a huge fire that her mother had kept burning
all night
...

Ekwefi knelt beside the sick child, occasionally feeling with her palm the wet,
burning forehead
...
Very often it was
Ezinma who decided what food her mother should prepare
...
One day as Ezinma was eating an egg Okonkwo had come in unexpectedly
from his hut
...
But it was impossible to refuse Ezinma anything
...
And she enjoyed above all the
secrecy in which she now ate them
...

Ezinma did not call her mother Nne like all children
...
The relationship between them was
not only that of mother and child
...

Ekwefi had suffered a good deal in her life
...
As she buried one child after
another her sorrow gave way to despair and then to grim resignation
...
The naming ceremony after seven market weeks became an
empty ritual
...

One of them was a pathetic cry, Onwumbiko-"Death, I implore you
...
The next child was a girl, Ozoemena-"May it not happen again
...
Ekwefi then became defiant and called her next child Onwuma-"Death may please himself
...

After the death of Ekwefi's second child, Okonkwo had gone to a medicine man,
who was also a diviner of the Afa Oracle, to enquire what was amiss
...

"When your wife becomes pregnant again," he said, "let her not sleep in her hut
...
In that way she will elude her wicked tormentor and
break its evil cycle of birth and death
...
As soon as she became pregnant she went to live
with her old mother in another village
...

She did not return to Okonkwo's compound until three days before the naming
ceremony
...

Onwumbiko was not given proper burial when he died
...
His name was Okagbue Uyanwa
...
He was light in complexion and his eyes were red and fiery
...
He asked
Okonkwo a few questions about the dead child
...

"On what market-day was it born?" he asked
...

"And it died this morning?"
Okonkwo said yes, and only then realised for the first time that the child had died
on the same market-day as it had been born
...

"Where do you sleep with your wife, in your obi or in her own hut?" asked the
medicine man
...
"
"In future call her into your obi
...
He brought out a sharp razor from the goatskin bag slung from his left shoulder and
began to mutilate the child
...
After such treatment it would think
twice before coming again, unless it was one of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying
the stamp of their mutilation--a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine
man's razor had cut them
...
Her
husband's first wife had already had three sons, all strong and healthy
...
Ekwefi had nothing but good wishes for her
...
And so, on the
day that Nwoye's mother celebrated the birth of her three sons with feasting and music,
Ekwefi was the only person in the happy company who went about with a cloud on her
brow
...

How could she know that Ekwefi's bitterness did not flow outwards to others but inwards
into her own soul,- that she did not blame others for their good fortune but her own evil
chi who denied her any?
At last Ezinma was born, and although ailing she seemed determined to live
...
But when
she lived on to her fourth, fifth and sixth years, love returned once more to her mother,
and, with love, anxiety
...
She was rewarded by occasional spells of health during which Ezinma
bubbled with energy like fresh palm-wine
...
But
all of a sudden she would go down again
...
These
sudden bouts of sickness and health were typical of her kind
...
Some of them did become tired of their evil rounds
of birth and death, or took pity on their mothers, and stayed
...
She believed because it was that faith alone that gave
her own life any kind of meaning
...
Everyone knew then that she would
live because her bond with the world of ogbanje had been broken
...

But such was her anxiety for her daughter that she could not rid herself completely of her
fear
...

But Ezinma's iyi-uwa had looked real enough
...
The man who dug it up was the same Okagbue who was famous in all the clan
for his knowledge in these matters
...

But that was only to be expected
...

"Where did you bury your iyi-uwa?" Okagbue had asked Ezinma
...

"What is iyi-uwa?" she asked in return
...
You buried it in the ground somewhere so that you can die
and return again to torment your mother
...

"Answer the question at once," roared Okonkwo, who stood beside her
...

"Leave her to me," the medicine man told Okonkwo in a cool, confident voice
...
"Where did you bury your iyi-uwa?"
"Where they bury children," she replied, and the quiet spectators murmured to
themselves
...

The crowd set out with Ezinma leading the way and Okagbue following closely
behind her
...
When she came to the main
road, Ezinma turned left as if she was going to the stream
...

"No," said Ezinma, whose feeling of importance was manifest in her sprightly
walk
...
The crowd followed
her silently
...
And they all knew Ekwefi and her daughter very well
...
Because of her size she made her way through trees and creepers more
quickly than her followers
...
Ezinma went deeper and deeper and the
crowd went with her
...
Everybody stood to let her pass and then filed after her
...

"I have told you to let her alone
...

Ezinma led the way back to the road, looked left and right and turned right
...

"Where did you bury your iyi-uwa?" asked Okagbue when Ezinma finally
stopped outside her father's obi
...
It was quiet and
confident
...

"And why did you not say so, you wicked daughter of Akalogoli?" Okonkwo
swore furiously
...

"Come and show me the exact spot," he said quietly to Ezinma
...

"Point at the spot with your finger," said Okagbue
...
Okonkwo stood by,
rumbling like thunder in the rainy season
...

'When Ekwefi brought the hoe, he had already put aside his goatskin bag and his
big cloth and was in his underwear, a long and thin strip of cloth wound round the waist
like a belt and then passed between the legs to be fastened to the belt behind
...
The neighbours sat
around watching the pit becoming deeper and deeper
...
Okagbue
worked tirelessly and in silence, his back shining with perspiration
...
He asked Okagbue to come up and rest while he took a hand
...

Ekwefi went into her hut to cook yams
...
Ezinma went with her and helped in
preparing the vegetables
...


"Don't you see the pot is full of yams?" Ekwefi asked
...
"
"Yes," said Ezinma, "that was why the snake-lizard killed his mother
...

"He gave his mother seven baskets of vegetables to cook and in the end there
were only three
...

"That is not the end of the story
...
"I remember now
...
And there were again only three
...
"
Outside the obi Okagbue and Okonkwo were digging the pit to find where
Ezinma had buried her iyi-uwa
...
The pit was now so
deep that they no longer saw the digger
...
Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, stood near the edge of the pit
because he wanted to take in all that happened
...
He worked, as usual,
in silence
...
The children had lost
interest and were playing
...

"It is very near now," he said
...
"
There was immediate excitement and those who were sitting jumped to their feet
...
But Ekwefi and Ezinma had
heard the noise and run out to see what it was
...
After a
few more hoe-fuls of earth he struck the iyi-uwa
...
Some women ran away in fear when it was thrown
...
Okagbue
emerged and without saying a word or even looking at the spectators he went to his
goatskin bag, took out two leaves and began to chew them
...
And then the smooth,
shiny pebble fell out
...

"Is this yours?" he asked Ezinma
...
All the women shouted with joy because Ekwefi's troubles
were at last ended
...

And then suddenly she had begun to shiver in the night
...
But she had got worse and worse
...
Although her husband's wives were saying that it was nothing more than
iba, she did not hear them
...
He went into Ekwefi's
hut, put down his load and sat down
...
"
Ekwefi went to bring the pot and Okonkwo selected the best from his bundle, in
their due proportions, and cut them up
...


"Is that enough?" she asked when she had poured in about half of the water in the
bowl
...
I said a little
...

She set the pot on the fire and Okonkwo took up his machete to return to his obi
...
If it does its power will be gone
...
Her eyes went constantly from
Ezinma to the boiling pot and back to Ezinma
...
He looked
it over and said it was done
...
"
He took down the pot from the fire and placed it in front of the stool
...
The thick mat was
thrown over both
...
She started to cry
...
Ekwefi
mopped her with a piece of cloth and she lay down on a dry mat and was soon asleep
...
Most communal ceremonies took place at
that time of the day, so that even when it was said that a ceremony would begin "after the
midday meal" everyone understood that it would begin a long time later, when the sun's
heat had softened
...

There were many women, but they looked on from the fringe like outsiders
...
In front of them was a
row of stools on which nobody sat
...
Two little groups of people
stood at a respectable distance beyond the stools
...
There were three
men in one group and three men and one woman in the other
...
In the other group were her husband,
Uzowulu, and his relatives
...
Uzowulu and his relative, on the other hand, were
whispering together
...
Everybody in the crowd was talking
...
From a distance
the noise was a deep rumble carried by the wind
...
Everyone
looked in the direction of the egwugwu house
...
Then came the voices of the egwugwu,
guttural and awesome
...
But it was momentary
...


The drum sounded again and the flute blew
...
The egwugwu
house into which they emerged faced the forest, away from the crowd, who saw only its
back with the many-coloured patterns and drawings done by specially chosen women at
regular intervals
...
No woman ever did
...
If they
imagined what was inside, they kept their imagination to themselves
...

Am oyim de de de de! flew around the dark, closed hut like tongues of fire
...

The metal gong beat continuously now and the flute, shrill and powerful, floated
on the chaos
...
The women and children sent up a great shout
and took to their heels
...
A woman fled as soon as an egwugwu came in
sight
...
Even Mgbafo took to her heels and had to be
restrained by her brothers
...
Their leader was
called Evil Forest
...

The nine villages of Umuofia had grown out of the nine sons of the first father of
the clan
...

"Umuofia kwenu!" shouted the leading egwugwu, pushing the air with his raffia
arms
...
And it
began to shake and rattle, like something agitating with a metallic life
...

Okonkwo's wives, and perhaps other women as well, might have noticed that the
second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okonkwo
...
But if they thought these things they kept them within themselves
...
He looked
terrible with the smoked raffia "body, a huge wooden face painted white except for the
round hollow eyes and the charred teeth that were as big as a man's fingers
...

When all the egwugwu had sat down and the sound of the many tiny bells and
rattles on their bodies had subsided, Evil Forest addressed the two groups of people
facing them
...
Spirits always addressed humans as
"bodies
...


"Our father, my hand has touched the ground," he said
...

"How can I know you, father? You are beyond our knowledge
...

"The body of Odukwe, I greet you," he said, and Odukwe bent down and touched
the earth
...

Uzowulu stepped forward and presented his case
...
I married her with my money
and my yams
...
I owe them no yams
...
One morning three of them came to my house, beat me up and took my wife
and children away
...
I have waited in vain for my wife
to return
...

I did not send her away
...
The law of the clan is that you should
return her bride-price
...
So I have
brought the matter to the fathers of the clan
...
I salute you
...
"Let us hear Odukwe
...
"
Odukwe was short and thickset
...

"My in-law has told you that we went to his house, beat him up and took our
sister and her children away
...
He told you that he came to take back her
bride-price and we refused to give it him
...
My in-law, Uzowulu, is a
beast
...
During those years no single day passed in
the sky without his beating the woman
...

"Two years ago," continued Odukwe, "when she was pregnant, he beat her until
she miscarried
...
She miscarried after she had gone to sleep with her lover
...
"What kind of
lover sleeps with a pregnant woman?" There was a loud murmur of approbation from the
crowd
...
We heard of it, and did as you have been told
...
But in this case she ran
away to save her life
...
We do not dispute it, but they
are too young to leave their mother
...
"
The crowd roared with laughter
...
A steady cloud of smoke rose from his head
...
They were both Uzowulu's neighbours, and they agreed about
the beating
...
He ran a few steps in the direction of the women,- they all fled in terror, only to
return to their places almost immediately
...
They were silent for a long time
...
The egwugwu had emerged once again from their underground
home
...

"Umuofia kwenu!" roared Evil Forest, facing the elders and grandees of the clan
...

Evil Forest began to speak and all the while he spoke everyone was silent
...

"We have heard both sides of the case," said Evil Forest
...
" He turned to Uzowulu's group
and allowed a short pause
...

"Our father, my hand has touched the ground," replied Uzowulu, touching the
earth
...

"I am Evil Forest
...
"
"That is true," replied Uzowulu
...
It is not
bravery when a man fights with a woman
...

"Odukwe's body, I greet you," he said
...

"Do you know me?"
"No man can know you," replied Odukwe
...
If your in-law brings wine to you, let your sister go with him
...
" He pulled his staff from the hard earth and thrust it back
...

"I don't know why such a trifle should come before, then said one elder to
another
...

As they spoke two other groups of people had replaced the first before the
egwugwu, and a great land case began
...
The moon had been rising later and later every night
until now it was seen only at dawn
...

Ezinma and her mother sat on a mat on the floor after their supper of yam foo-foo
and bitter-leaf soup
...
Without it, it would have
been impossible to eat,-one could not have known where one's mouth was in the darkness

of that night
...

The world was silent except for the shrill cry of insects, which was part of the
night, and the sound of wooden mortar and pestle as Nwayieke pounded her foo-foo
...
Every
woman in the neighbourhood knew the sound of Nwayieke's mortar and pestle
...

Okonkwo had eaten from his wives' dishes and was now reclining with his back
against the wall
...
He turned it on to
his left palm, but nothing came out
...
That was always the trouble with Okeke's snuff
...
Okonkwo had not bought snuff from him for a long
time
...
But he had recently fallen
ill
...
Ekwefi and her daughter, Ezinma,
sat on a mat on the floor
...

"Once upon a time," she began, "all the birds were invited to a feast in the sky
...
They painted
their bodies with red cam wood and drew beautiful patterns on them with uli
...

Nothing that happened in the world of the animals ever escaped his notice,- he was full of
cunning
...
There was a famine in those days and Tortoise had not eaten a good meal
for two moons
...
So he began
to plan how he would go to the sky
...

"Be patient," replied her mother
...
Tortoise had no wings, but he
went to the birds and asked to be allowed to go with them
...
'You are full of
cunning and you are ungrateful
...
'
"'You do not know me,' said Tortoise
...
I have learned that a
man who makes trouble for others is also making it for himself
...

"At last the great day came and Tortoise was the first to arrive at the meeting
place
...
Tortoise was very
happy and voluble as he flew among the birds, and he was soon chosen as the man to
speak for the party because he was a great orator
...
'When people are invited to a great feast like this, they take new names for the
occasion
...
'
"None of the birds had heard of this custom but they knew that Tortoise, in spite
of his failings in other directions, was a widely-travelled man who knew the customs of

different peoples
...
When they had all taken, Tortoise
also took one
...

"At last the party arrived in the sky and their hosts were very happy to see them
...

His speech was so eloquent that all the birds were glad they had brought him, and nodded
their heads in approval of all he said
...

"After kola nuts had been presented and eaten, the people of the sky set before
their guests the most delectable dishes Tortoise had even seen or dreamed of
...
It was
full of meat and fish
...
There was pounded yam and also yam
pottage cooked with palm-oil and fresh fish
...
When
everything had been set before the guests, one of the people of the sky came forward and
tasted a little from each pot
...
But Tortoise jumped to his
feet and asked: Tor whom have you prepared this feast?'
"'For all of you,' replied the man
...

The custom here is to serve the spokesman first and the others later
...
'
"He began to eat and the birds grumbled angrily
...
And so Tortoise ate the best part
of the food and then drank two pots of palm-wine, so that he was full of food and drink
and his body filled out in his shell
...
Some of them were too angry to eat
...
But before they left each took back the feather he had lent to
Tortoise
...
He asked the birds to take a message for his wife, but they all refused
...

"Tell my wife,' said Tortoise, 'to bring out all the soft things in my house and
cover the compound with them so that I can jump down from the sky without very great
danger
...
But when he
reached Tortoise's house he told his wife to bring out all the hard things in the house
...

Tortoise looked down from the sky and saw his wife bringing things out, but it was too
far to see what they were
...
He fell and fell and
fell until he began to fear that he would never stop falling
...
" ';,; "Did he die?" asked Ezinma
...
"His shell broke into pieces
...
Tortoise's wife sent for him and he gathered all the bits of
shell and stuck them together
...
"
"There is no song in the story," Ezinma pointed out
...
"I shall think of another one with a song
...
"

"Once upon a time," Ezinma began, "Tortoise and Cat went to wrestle against
Yams--no, that is not the beginning
...
Everybody was lean except Cat, who was fat and whose body shone as if
oil was rubbed on it
...
It was Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, prophesying
...
Once in a while Chielo was possessed by the spirit of her god
and she began to prophesy
...
The folk stories stopped
...
"Okonkwo! Agbala ekme gio-o-o-o! Agbala cholu ifu ada ya
Ezinmao-o-o-oi"
At the mention of Ezinma's name Ekwefi jerked her head sharply like an animal
that had sniffed death in the air
...

The priestess had now reached Okonkwo's compound and was talking with him
outside his hut
...
Okonkwo pleaded with her to come back in the morning because Ezinma was
now asleep
...
Her voice was as clear as metal, and Okonkwo's
women and children heard from their huts all that she said
...
Ekwefi quickly took her to their bedroom
and placed her on their high bamboo bed
...
"Beware, Okonkwo!" she warned
...
Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!"
She walked through Okonkwo's hut into the circular compound and went straight
toward Ekwefi's hut
...

"Ekwefi," she called, "Agbala greets you
...
"
Ekwefi came out from her hut carrying her oil lamp in her left hand
...
Nwoye's mother,
also carrying an oil lamp, emerged from her hut
...
Okonkwo's youngest wife also came out and
joined the others
...

"Where else but in his house in the hills and the caves?" replied the priestess
...

"Tufia-al" the priestess cursed, her voice cracking like the angry bark of thunder
in the dry season
...
Bring me my daughter
...

"Come, my daughter," said the priestess
...
A baby
on its mother's back does not know that the way is long
...
She was used to Chielo calling her "my daughter
...

"Don't cry, my daughter," said the priestess, "lest Agbala be angry with you
...
I shall give you
some fish to eat
...
She broke a piece
in two and gave it to Ezinma, who clung to her
...
They went outside again
...

"Agbala do-o-o-o! Agbala ekeneo-o-o-o!
...
She turned round sharply and walked through Okonkwo's hut,
bending very low at the eaves
...
The
two voices disappeared into the thick darkness
...

Ezinma's voice soon faded away and only Chielo was heard moving further and further
into the distance
...

"She will bring her back soon," Nwoye's mother said
...
She stood for a while, and then, all of
a sudden, made up her mind
...

"Where are you going?" he asked
...
Okonkwo
cleared his throat, and brought out his snuff-bottle from the goatskin bag by his side
...
Ekwefi hurried to
the main footpath and turned left in the direction of the voice
...
But she picked her way easily on the sandy footpath hedged on either
side by branches and damp leaves
...
She hit her left foot against an outcropped
root, and terror seized her
...
She ran faster
...
Had she been running too? How could she go so fast with Ezinma on
her back? Although the night was cool, Ekwefi was beginning to feel hot from her
running
...

Once she tripped up and fell
...
Her heart beat violently and she stood still
...
But Ekwefi could not see her
...
But it was useless
...

There were no stars in the sky because there was a rain-cloud
...

Between Chielo's outbursts the night was alive with the shrill tremor of forest insects
woven into the darkness
...
Agbala ekeneo-o-o-o!
...
She thought they must be going towards the
sacred cave
...
What would she do when
they got to the cave? She would not dare to enter
...
She thought of all the terrors of the night
...
Ekwefi had been returning
from the stream with her mother on a dark night like this when they saw its glow as it
flew in their direction
...
That was the only time
Ekwefi ever saw Ogbu-agali-odu
...

The priestess' voice came at longer intervals now, but its vigour was
undiminished
...
Ezinma sneezed
...
" At the same time the priestess also said, "Life to you, my daughter
...
She trudged slowly
along
...
"Somebody is walking behind me!" she said
...
One mind said to her: "Woman, go home before
Agbala does you harm
...
She stood until Chielo had increased the
distance between them and she began to follow again
...
Then it occurred to
her that they could not have been heading for the cave
...
Chielo's voice
now came after long intervals
...
The cloud had lifted
and a few stars were out
...
When
the moon rose late in the night, people said it was refusing food, as a sullen husband
refuses his wife's food when they have quarrelled
...
The priestess was now saluting the village of Umuachi
...
As they emerged into the open village from the narrow forest
track the darkness was softened and it became possible to see the vague shape of trees
...
She walked numbly along
...
Ekwefi had
a feeling of spacious openness, and she guessed they must be on the village ilo, or
playground
...
She was, in fact, returning
...
Chielo passed by, and they began to go back the way they had come
...
The moon was definitely rising, and although it had not yet appeared on the sky its
light had already melted down the darkness
...
She slowed down her pace so as to increase the distance
between them
...


She had prayed for the moon to rise
...
The world was now peopled with vague,
fantastic figures that dissolved under her steady gaze and then formed again in new
shapes
...
What she had seen was the shape of a man
climbing a palm tree, his head pointing to the earth and his legs skywards
...
It was not the same Chielo who sat with her in the
market and sometimes bought beancakes for Ezinma, whom she called her daughter
...

Ekwefi trudged along between two fears
...
Her arms were folded across her bare
breasts
...
She could no longer think, not even about
the terrors of night
...

At last they took a turning and began to head for the caves
...
She greeted her god in a multitude of names--the owner of
the future, the messenger of earth, the god who cut a man down when his life was
sweetest to him
...

The moon was now up and she could see Chielo and Ezinma clearly
...
But
Ekwefi was not thinking about that
...

"Agbala do-o-o-o! Agbala ekeneo-o-o-o! Chi negbu madu ubosi ndu ya nato ya
uto daluo-o-o!
...
They formed a
circular ring with a break at one point through which the foot-track led to the centre of
the circle
...
It was indeed the shrine of a great
god
...
She was already beginning to doubt
the wisdom of her coming
...
And if
anything happened to her could she stop it? She would not dare to enter the underground
caves
...

As these things went through her mind she did not realise how close they were to
the cave mouth
...

As she stood gazing at the circular darkness which had swallowed them, tears gushed
from her eyes, and she swore within her that if she heard Ezinma cry she would rush into
the cave to defend her against all the gods in the world
...

Having sworn that oath, she sat down on a stony ledge and waited
...
She could hear the priestess' voice, all its metal taken out of it by the vast
emptiness of the cave
...

She did not know how long she waited
...
Her
back was turned on the footpath that led out of the hills
...
A man stood there with a machete in his hand
...


"Don't be foolish," said Okonkwo's voice
...

Ekwefi did not answer
...
She knew her daughter
was safe
...
"I shall wait here
...
It is almost dawn
...
"
As they stood there together, Ekwefi's mind went back to the days when they
were young
...
Two
years after her marriage to Anene she could bear it no longer and she ran away to
Okonkwo
...
The moon was shining
...
Okonkwo's house was on the way to the stream
...
Even in those days he was not a man of many
words
...


CHAPTER TWELVE
On the following morning the entire neighbourhood wore a festive air because
Okonkwo's friend, Obierika, was celebrating his daughter's uri
...
Everybody had been invited--men, women and children
...

As soon as day broke, breakfast was hastily eaten and women and children began
to gather at Obierika's compound to help the bride's mother in her difficult but happy task
of cooking for a whole village
...
Nwoye's
mother and Okonkwo's youngest wife were ready to set out for Obierika's compound with
all their children
...
Okonkwo's youngest wife,
Ojiugo, also had a basket of plantains and coco-yams and a small pot of palm-oil
...

Ekwefi was tired and sleepy from the exhausting experiences of the previous
night
...
The priestess, with Ezinma sleeping
on her back, had crawled out of the shrine on her belly like a snake
...
She looked straight ahead of her and walked back to the village
...
They thought the priestess might be going to
her house, but she went to Okonkwo's compound, passed through his obi and into
Ekwefi's hut and walked into her bedroom
...

Ezinma was still sleeping when everyone else was astir, and Ekwefi asked
Nwoye's mother and Ojiugo to explain to Obierika's wife that she would be late
...


"You need some sleep yourself," said Nwoye's mother
...
"
As they spoke Ezinma emerged from the hut, rubbing her eyes and stretching her
spare frame
...
She went back to the hut and brought her
pot
...

"Yes," she replied
...
"
"Not before you have had your breakfast," said Ekwefi
...

"We shall be going," said Nwoye's mother
...
" And so they all went to help Obierika's wife--Nwoye's mother with her
four children and Ojiugo with her two
...

Okonkwo was also feeling tired, and sleepy, for although nobody else knew it, he
had not slept at all last night
...
When Ekwefi
had followed the priestess, he had allowed what he regarded as a reasonable and manly
interval to pass and then gone with his machete to the shrine, where he thought they must
be
...
Okonkwo had returned home and sat waiting
...
But the Hills
and the Caves were as silent as death
...

Obierika's compound was as busy as an anthill
...
Cooking pots went up and down the tripods and foo-foo was
pounded in a hundred wooden mortars Some of the women cooked the yams and the
cassava, and others prepared vegetable soup
...
The children made endless trips to the stream
...
They were very fat goats, but the fattest of all was tethered to a peg near the
wall of the compound and was as big as a small cow
...
It was the one he would present alive to
his in-laws
...
"
"It is the result of a great medicine," said Obierika
...
So they
made a powerful medicine
...
With this magic
fan she beckons to the market all the neighbouring clans
...
"
"And so everybody comes," said another man, "honest men and thieves
...
"

"Yes" said Obierika
...

There was once a man who went to sell a goat
...
But as he walked through the market he realised that people were
pointing at him as they do to a madman
...
"
"Do you think a thief can do that kind of thing single-handed?" asked Nwankwo
...
"They use medicine
...
Then they washed them and cut them up for the women who prepared
the soup
...
It
was a cry in the distance: oji odu aru ijiji-o-o! (The one that uses its tail to drive flies
away!)
...

"We cannot all rush out like that, leaving what we are cooking to burn in the fire,"
shouted Chielo, the priestess
...
"
"It is true," said another woman
...
"
Five women stayed behind to look after the cooking-pots, and all the rest rushed
away to see the cow that had been let loose
...
When the women had exacted the penalty they
checked among themselves to see if any woman had failed to come out when the cry had
been raised
...

"She is ill in bed," said Mgbogo's next-door neighbour
...
"
"The only other person is Udenkwo," said another woman, "and her child is not
twenty-eight days yet
...

"Whose cow was it?" asked the women who had been allowed to stay behind
...
"One of the young children had opened the
gate of the cow-shed
...
They were duly presented to the women, who drank a cup or two each, to help them
in their cooking
...

When the heat of the sun began to soften, Obierika's son, Maduka, took a long
broom and swept the ground in front of his father's obi
...
Some of them were
accompanied by their sons bearing carved wooden stools
...

They sat in a half-circle and began to talk of many things
...


Okonkwo brought out his snuff-bottle and offered it to Ogbuefi Ezenwa, who sat
next to him
...
His actions were deliberate, and he spoke as he
performed them: "I hope our in-laws will bring many pots of wine
...
"
"They dare not bring fewer than thirty pots," said Okonkwo
...
"
At that moment Obierika's son, Maduka, led out the giant goat from the inner
compound, for his father's relatives to see
...
The goat was then led back to the inner compound
...
Young men and boys in single file,
each carrying a pot of wine, came first
...
Twenty, twenty-five
...
" Then more pots came
...
The
hosts nodded in approval and seemed to say, "Now they are behaving like men
...
After the pot-bearers came Ibe, the suitor, and
the elders of his family
...
The pots of wine stood in their midst
...
The bride's mother led the way, followed by the bride and the
other women
...

When the women retired, Obierika presented kola nuts to his in-laws
...
"Life to all of us," he said as he broke it
...
"
The crowd answered-
...
She will be a good wife to you
...
"
" Ee-e-e!"
The oldest man in the camp of the visitors replied: "It will be good for you and it
will be good for us
...
My
mother was one of you
...

You are a great family
...
" He looked in the direction of Okonkwo
...

" Ee-e-e!"
The kola was eaten and the drinking of palm-wine began
...
As the evening wore on, food was presented to
the guests
...
There were also
pots of yam pottage
...


As night fell, burning torches were set on wooden tripods and the young men
raised a song
...
They had something to say for every man
...
Okonkwo was the greatest
wrestler and warrior alive
...
At first the bride was not
among them
...
All the other dancers made way for her
...
Her brass anklets rattled as she danced and her
body gleamed with cam wood in the soft yellow light
...
And they were all gay
...
"
The night was already far spent when the guests rose to go, taking their bride
home to spend seven market weeks with her suitor's family
...
Okonkwo made a present of two cocks to them
...
Di-go-go-di-go
...
One of the
things every man learned was the language of the hollowed-out wooden instrument
...

The first cock had not crowed, and Umuofia was still swallowed up in sleep and
silence when the ekwe began to talk, and the cannon shattered the silence
...
Somebody was dead
...
Di-go-go-di-go-di-di-go-go floated in the message-laden night air
...
Now and
again a full-chested lamentation rose above the wailing whenever a man came into the
place of death
...
Now and again the cannon boomed
...
It began by naming the clan: Umuofia obodo dike! "the land of the brave
...
Then
it went nearer and named the village: "Iguedo of the yellow grinding-stone!" It was
Okonkwo's village
...
At last the man was named and people sighed "E-u-u, Ezeudu is dead
...
"That boy calls you father," he had said
...
"
Ezeudu was a great man, and so all the clan was at his funeral
...
It was a
warrior's funeral, and from morning till night warriors came and went in their age groups
...

Now and again an ancestral spirit or egwugwu appeared from the underworld, speaking
in a tremulous, unearthly voice and completely covered in raffia
...
Sometimes he turned
round and chased after those men, and they ran for their lives
...
He sang, in a terrifying voice, that Ekwensu, or Evil
Spirit, had entered his eye
...
He was always alone and was
shaped like a coffin
...
Even the greatest medicine men took shelter when he was near
...
This one had only one hand and it carried a basket full of water
...
One of them was so old and
infirm that he leaned heavily on a stick
...

The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors
...
A man's life from birth to
death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors
...

Whenever one of these ancient men appeared in the crowd to dance unsteadily the funeral
steps of the tribe, younger men gave way and the tumult subsided
...
As the evening drew near,
the shouting and the firing of guns, the beating of drums and the brandishing and
clanging of machetes increased
...
It was a rare achievement
...
When they did, they became the lords of the land
...

But before this quiet and final rite, the tumult increased tenfold
...
Guns were fired on all sides and sparks
flew out as machetes clanged together in warriors' salutes
...
It was then that the one-handed spirit came, carrying a basket full of
water
...
Even the smell of
gunpowder was swallowed in the sickly smell that now filled the air
...

"Ezeudu!" he called in his guttural voice
...
But you were rich
...
But you were a fearless warrior
...
But you lived long
...
If your death was the death of nature, go
in peace
...
" He danced a few
more steps and went away
...
Darkness was around the corner, and the burial was near
...
And then from the centre of the delirious fury came a cry of
agony and shouts of horror
...
All was silent
...
It was the dead man's sixteen-year-old son,
who with his brothers and half-brothers had been dancing the traditional farewell to their
father
...

The confusion that followed was without parallel in the tradition of Umuofia
...

The only course open to Okonkwo was to flee from the clan
...
The crime was of two kinds, male and female
...
He could return to the clan after seven years
...
His wives
wept bitterly and their children wept with them without knowing why
...
They each made nine or ten trips
carrying Okonkwo's yams to store in Obierika's barn
...
It was a little village called
Mbanta, just beyond the borders of Mbaino
...
They set fire to his houses, demolished
his red walls, killed his animals and destroyed his barn
...
They had no hatred in their hearts against
Okonkwo
...
They were merely cleansing
the land which Okonkwo had polluted with the blood of a clansman
...
When the will of the goddess had
been done, he sat down in his obi and mourned his friend's calamity
...
He was merely led into greater complexities
...
What crime had
they committed? The Earth had decreed that they were an offence on the land and must
be destroyed
...
As the elders
said, if one finger brought oil it soiled the others
...
The old man who
received him was his mother's younger brother, who was now the eldest surviving
member of that family
...
Okonkwo was only a boy then and Uchendu still
remembered him crying the traditional farewell: "Mother, mother, mother is going
...
Today Okonkwo was not bringing his mother home to
be buried with her people
...
As soon as Uchendu saw him with his sad and weary
company he guessed what had happened, and asked no questions
...
The old man listened silently to the
end and then said with some relief: "It is a female ochu
...

Okonkwo was given a plot of ground on which to build his compound, and two or
three pieces of land on which to farm during the coming planting season
...
He then
installed his personal god and the symbols of his departed fathers
...

At last the rain came
...
For two or three moons the
sun had been gathering strength till it seemed to breathe a breath of fire on the earth
...

Evergreen trees wore a dusty coat of brown
...
And then came the clap of thunder
...
A mighty wind arose and filled the air with dust
...

When the rain finally came, it was in large, solid drops of frozen water which the
people called "the nuts of the water of heaven
...

The earth quickly came to life and the birds in the forests fluttered around and
chirped merrily
...
As the
rain began to fall more soberly and in smaller liquid drops, children sought for shelter,
and all were happy, refreshed and thankful
...
But it was like
beginning life anew without the vigour and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become
left-handed in old age
...

His life had been ruled by a great passion--to become one of the lords of the clan
...
And he had all but achieved it
...
He had been cast out of his clan like a fish onto a dry, sandy beach, panting
...
A man could not rise
beyond the destiny of his chi
...
Here was a man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation
...
He would speak to him after the isa-ifi ceremony
...
The
bride-price had been paid and all but the last ceremony had been performed
...
And so it was time for the final ceremony of confession
...
Uchendu's eldest daughter had come from Obodo,
nearly half a day's journey away
...
It was a full
gathering of umuada, in the same way as they would meet if a death occurred
...

They sat in a big circle on the ground and the young bride in the centre with a hen
in her right hand
...
The men
stood outside the circle, watching
...
It was evening and the sun was
setting
...
"How man men
have lain with you since my brother first expressed his desire to marry you?"
"None," she answered simply
...
"None?" asked Njide
...

"Swear on this staff of my fathers," said Uchendu
...

Uchendu took the hen from her, slit its throat with a sharp knife and allowed some
of the blood to fall on the ancestral staff
...
The
daughters of the clan did not return to their homes immediately but spent two more days
with their kinsmen
...
The men brought their goatskin mats, with which they sat on the
floor, and the women sat on a sisal mat spread on a raised bank of earth
...
Then he began to speak, quietly and
deliberately, picking his words with great care: "It is Okonkwo that I primarily wish to
speak to," he began
...
I am an old
man and you are all children
...
If there is
any one among you who thinks he knows more let him speak up
...

"Why is Okonkwo with us today? This is not his clan
...
He does not belong here
...
And so he is bowed with grief
...
Can you tell me, Okonkwo, why it is that one of the commonest names we give
our children is Nneka, or "Mother is Supreme?" We all know that a man is the head of
the family and his wives do his bidding
...
A man belongs to his fatherland and not to his
motherland
...
' Why is that?"
There was silence
...

"I do not know the answer," Okonkwo replied
...
You have many
wives and many children--more children than I have
...

But you are still a child, my child
...
But there is one more
question I shall ask you
...
Why is that? Your
mother was brought home to me and buried with my people
...

"He does not know that either," said Uchendu, "and yet he is full of sorrow
because he has come to live in his motherland for a few years
...
"What about you? Can you answer my
question?"
They all shook their heads
...
"It's true that a child belongs to
its father
...
A man
belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet
...
Your mother is there to protect you
...
And that is why we say that mother is supreme
...
Your duty is to comfort your wives and children
and take them back to your fatherland after seven years
...
" He paused for a long while
...
" He waved at his sons and daughters
...
I have none now except that young girl who
knows not her right from her left
...
I did not hang myself, and I am
still alive
...
Have you not heard the song they sing
when a woman dies?
"'For whom is it well, for whom is it well? There is no one for whom it is well
...
"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was in the second year of Okonkwo's exile that his friend, Obierika, came to visit him
...
Okonkwo helped them put down their loads
...

Okonkwo was very happy to receive his friend
...

"You must take him to salute our father," said one of the cousins
...
"We are going directly
...
She nodded, and soon the children were chasing
one of their cocks
...
He was therefore waiting to receive them
...

"This is Obierika, my great friend
...
"
"Yes," said the old man, turning to Obierika
...
I knew your father, Iweka
...
He
had many friends here and came to see them quite often
...
Your generation does not know that
...
Even a man's motherland is strange to him
nowadays
...
"I am an old man and I like to talk
...
" He got up painfully, went into an inner room and came back with a kola
nut
...
Okonkwo told him
...
"Welcome, my sons
...

"Go into that room," he said to Okonkwo, pointing with his finger
...
"
Okonkwo brought the wine and they began to drink
...

"Yes," said Uchendu after a long silence
...

There is not a single clan in these parts that I do not know very well
...
"
"Have you heard," asked Obierika, "that Abame is no more?"
"How is that?" asked Uchendu and Okonkwo together
...
"It is a strange and terrible story
...
Was it not on an Eke day that they fled into Umuofia?" he
asked his two companions, and they nodded their heads
...
Most of them were sons of our land whose mothers had
been buried with us
...
And so they fled into
Umuofia with a woeful story
...
He continued: "During the last planting season a white man had appeared in their
clan
...

"He was not an albino
...
" He sipped his wine
...
The first people who saw him ran away, but he stood beckoning to
them
...
The elders consulted
their Oracle and it told them that the strange man would break their clan and spread
destruction among them
...
"And so they killed

the white man and tied his iron horse to their sacred tree because it looked as if it would
run away to call the man's friends
...
It said that other white men were on their way
...
And so they killed him
...

"He said nothing," answered one of Obierika's companions
...
"He
seemed to speak through his nose
...
Perhaps he had been going to Mbaino and
had lost his way
...
This
was before the planting season began
...
The rains had
come and yams had been sown
...

And then one morning three white men led by a band of ordinary men like us came to the
clan
...
Most of the men and women of
Abame had gone to their farms
...
For many market weeks nothing else happened
...
That was
the day it happened
...
They must have used a powerful medicine to make themselves
invisible until the market was full
...
Everybody was killed,
except the old and the sick who were at home and a handful of men and women whose
chi were wide awake and brought them out of that market
...

"Their clan is now completely empty
...
A great evil has come upon
their land as the Oracle had warned
...
Uchendu ground his teeth together audibly
...
Those men of Abame were fools
...
"Mother Kite once sent her daughter to bring food
...
'You have done very well,' said Mother Kite to her daughter, 'but tell me, what
did the mother of this duckling say when you swooped and carried its child away?'
'It said nothing,' replied the young kite
...
'
'You must return the duckling,' said Mother Kite
...
' And so Daughter Kite returned the duckling and took a chick instead
...
'It cried and raved and cursed
me,' said the young kite
...
'There is nothing to
fear from someone who shouts
...
"
"They were fools," said Okonkwo after a pause
...
They should have armed themselves with their guns and their
machetes even when they went to market
...
We
have heard stories about white men who made the powerful guns and the strong drinks
and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true
...
"The world has no end, and
what is good among one people is an abomination with others
...
Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from
their way to a land where everybody is like them?"
Okonkwo's first wife soon finished her cooking and set before their guests a big
meal of pounded yams and bitter-leaf soup
...

"You are a big man now," Obierika said to Nwoye
...
"
"Is he well?" asked Nwoye
...

Ezinma brought them a bowl of water with which to wash their hands
...

"When did you set out from home?" asked Okonkwo
...
"But
Nweke did not appear until it was quite light
...
" They all laughed
...

"He has married Okadigbo's second daughter," said Obierika
...
"I do not blame you for not hearing the cock
crow
...

"That is the money from your yams," he said
...
Later on I sold some of the seed-yams and gave out others to sharecroppers
...
But I thought you would need the money now and so I
brought it
...
"
"God will not permit it," said Okonkwo
...
"
"I can tell you," said Obierika
...

"That will not be enough," said Okonkwo
...

"Forgive me," said Okonkwo, smiling
...
"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When nearly two years later Obierika paid another visit to his friend in exile the
circumstances were less happy
...
They had built
their church there, won a handful of converts and were already sending evangelists to the
surrounding towns and villages
...
None of his converts was a man whose word was heeded in the assembly of the
people
...
They were mostly the kind of people that were
called efulefu, worthless, empty men
...
Chielo, the priestess
of Agbala, called the converts the excrement of the clan, and the new faith was a mad dog
that had come to eat it up
...

"What are you doing here?" Obierika had asked when after many difficulties the
missionaries had allowed him to speak to the boy
...

"How is your father?" Obierika asked, not knowing what else to say
...
He is not my father," said Nwoye, unhappily
...
And he found that Okonkwo
did not wish to speak about Nwoye
...

The arrival of the missionaries had caused a considerable stir in the village of
Mbanta
...
Every man and woman came
out to see the white man
...
And so
everybody came to see the white man
...
The harvest was over
...
He spoke
through an interpreter who was an Ibo man, though his dialect was different and harsh to
the ears of Mbanta
...
Instead of saying "myself" he always said "my buttocks
...
He said he was one of them,
they could see from his colour and his language
...
The white man was also their brother
because they were all sons of God
...
He told them that they worshipped false gods,
gods of wood and stone
...
He
told them that the true God lived on high and that all men when they died went before
Him for judgment
...
But good men who
worshipped the true God lived forever in His happy kingdom
...

"Your buttocks understand our language," said someone light-heartedly and the
crowd laughed
...
But before he could
answer, another man asked a question: "Where is the white man's horse?" he asked
...
They told the white man and he smiled benevolently
...
Some of them will even ride the iron horse themselves
...
They were talking excitedly among
themselves because the white man had said he was going to live among them
...


At this point an old man said he had a question
...
"All
the gods you have named are not gods at all
...
There is only one true God and He has the
earth, the sky, you and me and all of us
...

"They are pieces of wood and stone
...

These men must be mad, they said to themselves
...

Then the missionaries burst into song
...
The interpreter explained each verse to the audience, some of whom now
stood enthralled
...
It told of one sheep out on the hills, away from the gates of God and
from the tender shepherd's care
...
Okonkwo, who only stayed in the hope that it might come to chasing the men
out of the village or whipping them, now said "You told us with your own mouth that
there was only one god
...
He must have a wife, then
...

"I did not say He had a wife," said the interpreter, somewhat lamely
...
"So he must have a wife and all
of them must have buttocks
...
At the
end of it Okonkwo was fully convinced that the man was mad
...

But there was a young lad who had been captivated
...
It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him
...
It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow
...
He felt a relief within as the hymn
poured into his parched soul
...
Nwoye's callow mind was greatly puzzled
...
They asked who the king of the village was,
but the villagers told them that there was no king
...

It was not very easy getting the men of high title and the elders together after the
excitement of the first day
...
It was
also the dumping ground for highly potent fetishes of great medicine men when they
died
...
It
was such a forest that, the rulers of Mbanta gave to the missionaries
...

"They want a piece of land to build their shrine," said Uchendu to his peers when
they consulted among themselves
...
" He paused, and
there was a murmur of surprise and disagreement
...
They boast about victory over death
...
" They laughed and agreed, and sent for the missionaries, whom
they had asked to leave them for a while so that they might "whisper together
...
And to their greatest
amazement the missionaries thanked them and burst into song
...
"But they will understand
when they go to their plot of land tomorrow morning
...

The next morning the crazy men actually began to clear a part of the forest and to
build their house
...
The first day passed and the second and third and fourth, and none of them died
...
And then it became known that the white man's fetish had
unbelievable power
...
Not long after, he won his first three converts
...
He dared not go too near the missionaries for fear of his father
...
And he was already beginning to know some of the simple stories they told
...
Kiaga, the interpreter, who was now in
charge of the infant congregation
...
Kiaga's congregation
at Mbanta
...
Kiaga, "and we want you all to come in
every seventh day to worship the true God
...
He heard the voice of
singing and although it came from a handful of men it was loud and confident
...

Was it waiting to snap its teeth together? After passing and re-passing by the church,
Nwoye returned home
...
But
even in such cases they set their limit at seven market weeks or twenty-eight days
...
And so excitement mounted in the village
as the seventh week approached since the impudent missionaries built their church in the
Evil Forest
...

At last the day came by which all the missionaries should have died
...
Kiaga
...
And for the first time they had a woman
...
She was very
heavy with child
...
But each time she had
borne twins, and they had been immediately thrown away
...
It was a good riddance
...
He was
greatly surprised, and when he got home he went straight to Okonkwo's hut and told him
what he had seen
...

It was late afternoon before Nwoye returned
...
Nwoye turned round to walk into the inner compound when
his father, suddenly overcome with fury, sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck
...

Nwoye struggled to free himself from the choking grip
...

"Answer me!" he roared again
...
The women were screaming outside, afraid to go in
...
It was Okonkwo's
uncle, Uchendu
...
But he left hold of Nwoye, who walked away and never
returned
...
Kiaga that he had decided to go to
Umuofia where the white missionary had set up a school to teach young Christians to
read and write
...
Kiaga's joy was very great
...
"Those that hear my words are my father and my
mother
...
But he was happy to leave his father
...

As Okonkwo sat in his hut that night, gazing into a log fire, he thought over the
matter
...
But on further thought
he told himself that Nwoye was not worth fighting for
...
For how else could he explain his great misfortune and exile and
now his despicable son's behaviour? Now that he had time to think of it, his son's crime
stood out in its stark enormity
...
Suppose
when he died all his male children decided to follow Nwoye's steps and abandon their
ancestors? Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the
prospect of annihilation
...
If such a thing were ever
to happen, he, Okonkwo, would wipe them off the face of the earth
...
" As he looked into the log
fire he recalled the name
...
How then could he have begotten a son
like Nwoye, degenerate and effeminate? Perhaps he was not his son
...

His wife had played him false
...
He pushed the thought out of his mind
...
How could he have begotten a woman for a
son? At Nwoye's age Okonkwo had already become famous throughout Umuofia for his
wrestling and his fearlessness
...
And
immediately Okonkwo's eyes were opened and he saw the whole matter clearly
...
He sighed again, deeply
...
At first the clan had
assumed that it would not survive
...
The clan was worried, but not overmuch
...
When one came to think of it, the Evil Forest was
a fit home for such undesirable people
...
As far as the villagers were concerned,
the twins still remained where they had been thrown away
...
Three
converts had gone into the village and boasted openly that all the gods were dead and
impotent and that they were prepared to defy them by burning all their shrines
...
The men were
seized and beaten until they streamed with blood
...

But stories were already gaining ground that the white man had not only brought a
religion but also a government
...
It was even said that they had hanged
one man who killed a missionary
...
There was

no question of killing a missionary here, for Mr
...
As for his converts, no one could kill them without having to flee from the
clan, for in spite of their worthlessness they still belonged to the clan
...
If they became more troublesome than they already were they
would simply be driven out of the clan
...
It all began over the question of admitting outcasts
...
And so one
Sunday two of them went into the church
...
Those who found themselves nearest to them
merely moved to another seat
...
But it only lasted till the end of the
service
...
Kiaga stopped them and began to explain
...
We are all children of God and
we must receive these our brothers
...
"What will the heathen say of
us when they hear that we receive osu into our midst? They will laugh
...
Kiaga
...

Why do the nations rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing? He that sitteth in the
heavens shall laugh
...
"
"You do not understand," the convert maintained
...
But this is a matter which we know
...

He was a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart--a taboo for ever, and his
children after him
...
He was in
fact an outcast, living in a special area of the village, close to the Great Shrine
...

A razor was taboo to him
...
He could not take any of the four titles of
the clan, and when he died he was buried by his kind in the Evil Forest
...
Kiaga
...
And he went
...
Kiaga stood
firm, and it was his firmness that saved the young church
...
He ordered the outcasts to shave off
their long, tangled hair
...

"Unless you shave off the mark of your heathen belief I will not admit you into
the church," said Mr
...
"You fear that you will die
...

But they have cast you out like lepers
...
The heathen say you will die if you
do this or that, and you are afraid
...
Am I dead? They said I would die if I took care of twins
...
The
heathen speak nothing but falsehood
...
"
The two outcasts shaved off their hair, and soon they were the strongest adherents
of the new faith
...
It was in fact one of them who in his zeal brought the church into serious
conflict with the clan a year later by killing the sacred python, the emanation of the god
of water
...
It was addressed as "Our Father," and was allowed to go wherever it chose, even
into people's beds
...
If a
clansman killed a royal python accidentally, he made sacrifices of atonement and
performed an expensive burial ceremony such as was done for a great man
...
Nobody thought
that such a thing could ever happen
...
That was the way the clan at first looked at it
...
The story had arisen among the Christians
themselves
...
Many of them spoke at great length and in fury
...

Okonkwo, who had begun to play a part in the affairs of his motherland, said that until
the abominable gang was chased out of the village with whips there would be no peace
...

"It is not our custom to fight for our gods," said one of them
...
If a man kills the sacred python in the secrecy of his hut, the matter lies
between him and the god
...
If we put ourselves between the god and his
victim we may receive blows intended for the offender
...
We put our fingers into our ears to stop us
hearing
...
"
"Let us not reason like cowards," said Okonkwo
...
These people are daily pouring filth over us, and Okeke
says we should pretend not to see
...
This was a
womanly clan, he thought
...

"Okonkwo has spoken the truth," said another man
...

But let us ostracise these men
...
"
Everybody in the assembly spoke, and in the end it was decided to ostracise the
Christians
...

That night a bellman went through the length and breadth of Mbanta proclaiming
that the adherents of the new faith were thenceforth excluded from the life and privileges
of the clan
...
Mr
...
"When I think that it is only eighteen months since the Seed was
first sown among you," he said, "I marvel at what the Lord hath wrought
...
Kiaga had asked the women to bring
red earth and white chalk and water to scrub the church for Easter, and the women had
formed themselves into three groups for this purpose
...

Mr
...

He rounded off his prayer and went to see what it was all about
...
They said that some young men had chased them away
from the stream with whips
...
Some of them had been heavily whipped
...

"What does it all mean?" asked Mr
...

"The village has outlawed us," said one of the women
...
But it is not our custom to debar anyone from the stream or the quarry
...
They will not allow us into the
markets
...
"
Mr
...
Of course they had all heard the bellman, but they had never
in all their lives heard of women being debarred from the stream
...
"We will go with you to meet those
cowards
...

But Mr
...
He wanted first to know why they had been
outlawed
...

"It is false," said another
...
"
Okoli was not there to answer
...
Before the
day was over he was dead
...
The clan saw no reason then for molesting the Christians
...
It was the time for treading red earth with
which to build walls
...

It was going to be Okonkwo's last harvest in Mbanta
...
Although he had prospered in his
motherland Okonkwo knew that he would have prospered even more in Umuofia, in the
land of his fathers where men were bold and warlike
...
And so he regretted every day of his exile
...
But that did not alter the facts
...
But two years
later when a son was born he called him Nwofia--

"Begotten in the Wilderness
...
He could not ask another man to build
his own obi for him, nor the walls of his compound
...

As the last heavy rains of the year began to fall, Obierika sent word that the two
huts had been built and Okonkwo began to prepare for his return, after the rains
...
And that could not be
...

It came slowly
...
Sometimes the sun shone through the rain and a light breeze blew
...
The rainbow began to appear, and sometimes two rainbows, like a
mother and her daughter, the one young and beautiful, and the other an old and faint
shadow
...

Okonkwo called his three wives and told them to get things together for a great
feast
...

Ekwefi still had some cassava left on her farm from the previous year
...
It was not that they had been lazy, but that they had many children to
feed
...

Nwoye's mother and Ojiugo would provide the other things like smoked fish, palm-oil
and pepper for the soup
...

Ekwefi rose early on the following morning and went to her farm with her
daughter, Ezinma, and Ojiugo's daughter, Obiageli, to harvest cassava tubers
...
Fortunately, a light rain had fallen during the night
and the soil would not be very hard
...

"But the leaves will be wet," said Ezinma
...
She felt cold
...
We should have waited for the sun to rise and dry the leaves
...
"Are you
afraid you may dissolve?"
The harvesting was easy, as Ekwefi had said
...
Sometimes it
was not necessary to dig
...

When they had harvested a sizable heap they carried it down in two trips to the
stream, where every woman had a shallow well for fermenting her cassava
...
"They are young
tubers
...
"I planted the farm nearly two years
ago
...
"
Okonkwo never did things by halves
...


"I am calling a feast because I have the wherewithal
...
My mother's people have been good to me and I
must show my gratitude
...
It was like a wedding
feast
...

All the umunna were invited to the feast, all the descendants of Okolo, who had
lived about two hundred years before
...
The kola nut was given him to break, and he prayed to the
ancestors
...
"We do not ask for wealth because he
that has health and children will also have wealth
...
We are better than animals because we have kinsmen
...
" He
prayed especially for Okonkwo and his family
...

As the broken kola nuts were passed round, Okonkwo's wives and children and
those who came to help them with the cooking began to bring out the food
...
There was so much food and drink that many kinsmen
whistled in surprise
...

"I beg you to accept this little kola," he said
...
A child cannot pay for its mother's milk
...
"
Yam pottage was served first because it was lighter than foo-foo and because yam
always came first
...
Some kinsmen ate it with egusi soup and
others with bitter-leaf soup
...
Every man rose in order of years and took a share
...

As the palm-wine was drunk one of the oldest members of the umunna rose to
thank Okonkwo: "If I say that we did not expect such a big feast I will be suggesting that
we did not know how openhanded our son, Okonkwo, is
...
But it turned out to be even bigger than we expected
...

May all you took out return again tenfold
...
A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from
starving
...
When we gather together in the moonlit
village ground it is not because of the moon
...

We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so
...
I say it because I fear for the younger generation, for you people
...
"As for me, I have only a short while to live, and
so have Uchendu and Unachukwu and Emefo
...
You do not know what it is to
speak with one voice
...
A man can now leave his father and his brothers
...
I fear for you, I fear for the clan
...
"

CHAPTER TWENTY
Seven years was a long time to be away from one's clan
...
As soon as he left, someone else rose and filled it
...

Okonkwo knew these things
...
He had lost the chance to lead his
warlike clan against the new religion, which, he was told, had gained ground
...
But some of these
losses were not irreparable
...
He would return with a flourish, and regain the seven wasted years
...
The first thing
he would do would be to rebuild his compound on a more magnificent scale
...

Then he would show his wealth by initiating his sons into the ozo society
...
Okonkwo saw clearly the high esteem in which
he would be held, and he saw himself taking the highest title in the land
...
His yams grew abundantly, not only in his
motherland but also in Umuofia, where his friend gave them out year by year to
sharecroppers
...
At first it appeared as if it might
prove too great for his spirit
...
He had five other sons and he would bring them up in the way of
the clan
...
The youngest of them
was four years old
...
Now he is no longer my
son or your brother
...
If any one of you prefers to be a woman, let him follow Nwoye now
while I am alive so that I can curse him
...
"
Okonkwo was very lucky in his daughters
...
Of all his children she alone understood his every mood
...

Ezinma grew up in her father's exile and became one of the most beautiful girls in
Mbanta
...

The young ailing girl who had caused her mother so much heartache had been
transformed, almost overnight, into a healthy, buoyant maiden
...
These
moods descended on her suddenly and for no apparent reason
...
As long as they lasted, she could bear no other person but her father
...

But she refused them all, because her father had called her one evening and said to her:
"There are many good and prosperous people here, but I shall be happy if you marry in
Umuofia when we return home
...
But Ezinma had seen clearly all the thought and hidden
meaning behind the few words
...

"Your half-sister, Obiageli, will not understand me," Okonkwo said
...
"
Although they were almost the same age, Ezinma wielded a strong influence over
her half-sister
...

And so the two of them refused every offer of marriage in Mbanta
...
She understood things
so perfectly
...
His future sons-in-law would be men of authority in the clan
...

Umuofia had indeed changed during the seven years Okonkwo had been in exile
...
Not only the low-born and the outcast but
sometimes a worthy man had joined it
...
The white missionary was very proud of him and he was one of the first
men in Umuofia to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, or Holy Feast as it was
called in Ibo
...
He had therefore put his drinking-horn into his
goatskin bag for the occasion
...
They
had built a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in ignorance
...
Many of these messengers came from
Umuru on the bank of the Great River, where the white men first came many years before
and where they had built the centre of their religion and trade and government
...
They were called kotma, and because of their ash-coloured
shorts they earned the additional name of Ashy Buttocks
...
Some of these prisoners
had thrown away their twins and some had molested the Christians
...

Some of these prisoners were men of title who should be above such mean occupation
...
As they cut
grass in the morning the younger men sang in time with the strokes of their machetes:
"Kotma of the ashy buttocks, He is fit to be a slave
...
"
The court messengers did not like to be called Ashy-Buttocks, and they beat the
men
...

Okonkwo's head was bowed in sadness as Obierika told him these things
...
"But I
cannot understand these things you tell me
...

"I have heard," said Okonkwo
...
Why did they not fight back? Had they no guns and machetes? We
would be cowards to compare ourselves with the men of Abame
...
We must fight these men and drive them from the
land
...
"Our own men and our sons have
joined the ranks of the stranger
...
If we should try to drive out the white men in Umuofia we should find it
easy
...
But what of our own people who are following their
way and have been given power? They would go to Umuru and bring the soldiers, and we
would be like Abame
...
"
"What has happened to that piece of land in dispute?" asked Okonkwo
...
"
"Does the white man understand our custom about land?"
"How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our
customs are bad, and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our
customs are bad
...
He came quietly and peaceably with his
religion
...
Now he has won
our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one
...
"
"How did they get hold of Ancto to hang him?" asked Okonkwo
...
This was about eight days after the fight, because Oduche had not died
immediately from his wounds
...
But everybody
knew that he was going to die and Aneto got his belongings together in readiness to flee
...
He was imprisoned with all the leaders of his family
...
The other people were released, but
even now they have not found the mouth with which to tell of their suffering
...


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There were many men and women in Umuofia who did not feel as strongly as Okonkwo
about the new dispensation
...


And even in the matter of religion there was a growing feeling that there might be
something in it after all, something vaguely akin to method in the overwhelming
madness
...
Brown, the white missionary, who was very
firm in restraining his flock from provoking the wrath of the clan
...
His name was Enoch and his father was the priest
of the snake cult
...

Mr
...
Everything was possible, he told
his energetic flock, but everything was not expedient
...
Brown came to be
respected even by the clan, because he trod softly on its faith
...

One of the great men in that village was called Akunna and he had given one of his sons
to be taught the white man's knowledge in Mr
...

Whenever Mr
...
Neither of them succeeded in converting
the other but they learned more about their different beliefs
...
Brown's visits
...
He
made all the world and the other gods
...
Brown
...
You carve a piece of wood--like that one" (he pointed at the rafters from
which Akunna's carved Ikenga hung), "and you call it a god
...
"
"Yes," said Akunna
...
The tree from which it came
was made by Chukwu, as indeed all minor gods were
...
It is like yourself
...
"
"No," protested Mr
...
"The head of my church is God Himself
...

Somebody like yourself must be the head here
...
"
"That is exactly what I am saying
...
He
has sent you here as his messenger
...
Or let me take another example, the District Commissioner
...
"
"They have a queen," said the interpreter on his own account
...
He finds that he
cannot do the work alone and so he appoints kotma to help him
...
He appoints the smaller gods to help Him because His work is too great for
one person
...
Brown
...
And the worst thing about it is that you give
all the worship to the false gods you have created
...
We make sacrifices to the little gods, but when they fail and there
is no one else to turn to we go to Chukwu
...
We approach a great man
through his servants
...
We appear to pay greater attention to the little gods but that is not so
...
Our fathers knew that Chukwu
was the Overlord and that is why many of them gave their children the name Chukwuka-"Chukwu is Supreme
...
Brown
...
In
my religion Chukwu is a loving Father and need not be feared by those who do His will
...
"And who
is to tell His will? It is too great to be known
...
Brown learned a good deal about the religion of the clan and he
came to the conclusion that a frontal attack on it would not succeed
...
He went from family to family begging people to
send their children to his school
...
Mr
...
He said that the leaders of
the land in the future would be men and women who had learned to read and write
...
They could already see that happening in the Native Court, where the
D
...
was surrounded by strangers who spoke his tongue
...

In the end Mr
...
More people came to
learn in his school, and he encouraged them with gifts of singlets and towels
...
Some of them were thirty years old or
more
...

And it was not long before the people began to say that the white man's medicine was
quick in working
...
Brown's school produced quick results
...
Those who stayed longer
became teachers,- and from Umuofia labourers went forth into the Lord's vineyard
...
From
the very beginning religion and education went hand in hand
...
Brown's mission grew
from strength to strength, and because of its link with the new administration it earned a
new social prestige
...
Brown himself was breaking down in health
...
But in the end he had to leave his flock, sad and broken
...
Brown
left for home
...
He had just sent Okonkwo's son, Nwoye,
who was now called Isaac, to the new training college for teachers in Umuru
...
But Okonkwo had driven him away
with the threat that if he came into his compound again, he would be carried out of it
...
It
was true his two beautiful daughters aroused great interest among suitors and marriage
negotiations were soon in progress, but, beyond that, Umuofia did not appear to have
taken any special notice of the warrior's return
...
The new religion and government

and the trading stores were very much in the people's eyes and minds
...

And it was the wrong year too
...
But the initiation
rite was performed once in three years in Umuofia, and he had to wait for nearly two
years for the next round of ceremonies
...
And it was not just a personal grief
...


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mr
...
He condemned openly Mr
...
He
saw things as black and white
...
He saw the world as a battlefield in
which the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness
...
He believed in
slaying the prophets of Baal
...
Smith was greatly distressed by the ignorance which many of his flock
showed even in such things as the Trinity and the Sacraments
...
Mr
...
He
should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds
...
Narrow is the way and few the number
...
Our Lord used the whip only once in His life--to drive the
crowd away from His church
...
Smith suspended a young
woman from the church for pouring new wine into old bottles
...
The child had been declared an ogbanje,
plaguing its mother by dying and entering her womb to be born again
...
And so it was mutilated to discourage it from returning
...
Smith was filled with wrath when he heard of this
...
He replied that such
stories were spread in the world by the Devil to lead men astray
...

There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for
him
...
Smith danced a furious step and so the drums went mad
...
Brown's restraining hand now flourished in full
favour
...
Enoch's devotion to the new faith had seemed so
much greater than Mr
...


Enoch was short and slight of build, and always seemed in great haste
...
Such
was the excessive energy bottled up in Enoch's small body that it was always erupting in
quarrels and fights
...
And if he happened to sit near one of them he would occasionally
turn to give him a meaningful look, as if to say, "I told you so
...
Brown left
...
At such times the ancestors of the clan who had been committed to Mother Earth at
their death emerged again as egwugwu through tiny ant-holes
...
And this was what Enoch did
...
The Christian women who had been to church could not therefore go home
...
They agreed and were already retiring, when Enoch boasted aloud that
they would not dare to touch a Christian
...
Enoch fell on him and
tore off his mask
...
Enoch had killed an ancestral spirit, and Umuofia was thrown into confusion
...
It was a terrible night
...
It seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming-- its
own death
...
They came from all the quarters of the clan and even from the neighbouring
villages
...
It was a terrible gathering
...
For the first
time in living memory the sacred bull-roarer was heard in broad daylight
...
Some of the
elders of the clan went with them, wearing heavy protections of charms and amulets
...
As for the ordinary men
and women, they listened from the safety of their huts
...
Smith's parsonage on the
previous night
...
The chilling sound affected Mr
...

"What are they planning to do?" he asked
...
Mr
...


"One thing is clear," said Mr
...
"We cannot offer physical resistance to
them
...
" They knelt down together and prayed to God for
delivery
...
Smith
...

They decided that Enoch should be hidden in the parsonage for a day or two
...
But
wisdom prevailed in the camp of the faithful and many lives were thus saved
...
And from there they made for the
church, intoxicated with destruction
...
Smith was in his church when he heard the masked spirits coming
...
But when the first three or four egwugwu appeared on the church compound he
nearly bolted
...

They surged forward, and a long stretch of the bamboo fence with which the
church compound was surrounded gave way before them
...
Mr
...
He turned round and saw Okeke, his interpreter
...
Okeke had gone as far as to say that Enoch should not be hidden in the parsonage,
because he would only draw the wrath of the clan on the pastor
...
Smith had rebuked
him in very strong language, and had not sought his advice that morning
...
Smith looked at him and
smiled
...

For a brief moment the onrush of the egwugwu was checked by the unexpected
composure of the two men
...
The second onrush was greater than the first
...
Then an unmistakable voice rose above the tumult and there was immediate
silence
...

Ajofia was the leading egwugwu of Umuofia
...
His voice was unmistakable and
so he was able to bring immediate peace to the agitated spirits
...

Smith, and as he spoke clouds of smoke rose from his head
...

"The body of the white man, do you know me?" he asked
...
Smith looked at his interpreter, but Okeke, who was a native of distant
Umuru, was also at a loss
...
It was like the laugh of rusty metal
...
But let that pass
...
He dug his rattling spear

into the ground and it shook with metallic life
...

"Tell the white man that we will not do him any harm," he said to the interpreter
...
We liked his brother who was with
us before
...
But this shrine which he built must be destroyed
...
It has bred untold abominations and we have come to put an end to it
...
"Fathers of Umuofia, I salute you
...
He turned again to the missionary
...
You can worship your own god
...
Go back to your house so that you may not be hurt
...
"
Mr
...
This is the
house of God and I will not live to see it desecrated
...
He will be
happy if you leave the matter in his hands
...
We say he is foolish because he does not know
our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his
...
"
Mr
...
But he could not save his church
...
Brown had built was a pile of earth
and ashes
...


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
For the first time in many years Okonkwo had a feeling that was akin to happiness
...
The clan which had turned false on him appeared to be making amends
...
And they had listened to him with respect
...
Although they had not agreed to kill the
missionary or drive away the Christians, they had agreed to do something substantial
...
Okonkwo was almost happy again
...
Every man in
Umuofia went about armed with a gun or a machete
...

Then the District Commissioner returned from his tour
...
Smith went
immediately to him and they had a long discussion
...
The missionary often
went to see his brother white man
...

Three days later the District Commissioner sent his sweet-tongued messenger to
the leaders of Umuofia asking them to meet him in his headquarters
...
He often asked them to hold such palavers, as he called them
...

Okonkwo warned the others to be fully armed
...
"He may refuse to do what he is asked, he does not refuse to be asked
...
"
And so the six men went to see the District Commissioner, armed with their
machetes
...
They were led into the
courthouse where the District Commissioner sat
...
They
unslung their goatskin bags and their sheathed machetes, put them on the floor, and sat
down
...
I have been told a few things but I cannot believe them until I have
heard your own side
...
"
Ogbuefi Ekwueme rose to his feet and began to tell the story
...
"I want to bring in my men so that they
too can hear your grievances and take warning
...
James! Go and
bring in the men
...

They sat together with the men of Umuofia, and Ogbuefi Ekwueme began to tell the story
of how Enoch murdered an egwugwu
...
There was only a
brief scuffle, too brief even to allow the drawing of a sheathed machete
...

"We shall not do you any harm," said the District Commissioner to them later, "if
only you agree to cooperate with us
...
If any man ill-treats you we shall come to
your rescue
...
We have a court of law where
we judge cases and administer justice just as it is done in my own country under a great
queen
...
That must not happen in the dominion of our
queen, the most powerful ruler in the world
...
You will be released as soon as you agree to this and
undertake to collect that fine from your people
...
He told the court messengers, when he left the guardroom, to treat the men with
respect because they were the leaders of Umuofia
...

As soon as the District Commissioner left, the head messenger, who was also the
prisoners' barber, took down his razor and shaved off all the hair on the men's heads
...

"Who is the chief among you?" the court messengers asked in jest
...
Does it cost as much as ten cowries?"
The six men ate nothing throughout that day and the next
...
At night the messengers came in to taunt them and to knock their
shaven heads together
...

It was only on the third day, when they could no longer bear the hunger and the insults,
that they began to talk about giving in
...

"We could have been in Umuru now waiting to be hanged," someone said to him
...

Nobody spoke
...
" He carried a strong stick, and he hit each man a few blows on the head and back
...

As soon as the six men were locked up, court messengers went into Umuofia to
tell the people that their leaders would not be released unless they paid a fine of two
hundred and fifty bags of cowries
...
"
This story spread quickly through the villages, and was added to as it went
...
Some said that their families would also be hanged
...

It was the time of the full moon
...
The village ilo where they always gathered for a moon-play was empty
...
Young men who were always abroad in the moonlight kept
their huts that night
...
Umuofia was like a startled animal with ears erect,
sniffing the silent, ominous air and not knowing which way to run
...
He called
every man in Umuofia, from the Akakanma age group upwards, to a meeting in the
marketplace after the morning meal
...
He did not leave out any of the main footpaths
...
It was as if cold water had
been poured on it
...
His daughter
Ezinma had broken her twenty-eight day visit to the family of her future husband, and
returned home when she heard that her father had been imprisoned, and was going to be
hanged
...
But Obierika had not been home since morning
...
Ezinma was satisfied that something was being
done
...
They did not know that fifty bags would go to the court
messengers, who had increased the fine for that purpose
...
The District
Commissioner spoke to them again about the great queen, and about peace and good
government
...
They just sat and looked at him and at his
interpreter
...
They rose and left the courthouse
...
The courthouse, like the church, was built a little way outside the village
...
It was open and sandy
...
But when the rains came the bush grew thick on either side and closed in on the
path
...
As they made their way to the village the six men met
women and children going to the stream with their waterpots
...
In the village little groups of men
joined them until they became a sizable company
...
As each of the
six men got to his compound, he turned in, taking some of the crowd with him
...

Ezinma had prepared some food for her father as soon as news spread that the six
men would be released
...
He ate absent-mindedly
...
His male relations and friends had gathered in his obi,
and Obierika was urging him to eat
...

The village crier was abroad again in the night
...
Everyone knew that
Umuofia was at last going to speak its mind about the things that were happening
...
The bitterness in his heart was now mixed
with a kind of childlike excitement, before he had gone to bed he had brought down his
war dress, which he had not touched since his return from exile
...
They were all
satisfactory, he had thought
...
If Umuofia decided on war, all would be
well
...
He thought
about wars in the past
...

In those days Okudo was still alive
...
He was not a fighter, but his voice turned every man into a lion
...
"Isike
will never forget how we slaughtered them in that war
...
Before the end of the fourth market week they were suing
for peace
...
"
As he thought of these things he heard the sound of the iron gong in the distance
...
But it was very faint
...
He ground his teeth
...


"The greatest obstacle in Umuofia," Okonkwo thought bitterly, "is that coward,
Egonwanne
...
When he speaks he moves
our men to impotence
...
" He ground his teeth
...
' If they listen to him I shall leave them and plan my
own revenge
...
Okonkwo turned from one side to the other and derived a
kind of pleasure from the pain his back gave him
...
" He ground his teeth
...
Obierika was waiting in his
obi when Okonkwo came along and called him
...
Obierika's hut was close to
the road and he saw every man who passed to the marketplace
...

When Okonkwo and Obierika got to the meeting place there were already so
many people that if one threw up a grain of sand it would not find its way to the earth
again
...
It
warmed Okonkwo's heart to see such strength of numbers
...

"Can you see him?" he asked Obierika
...
Most of the men sat on wooden stools they had brought with them
...
"Yes, there he is, under the
silk-cotton tree
...
I despise him and those who listen to
him
...
"
They spoke at the top of their voices because everybody was talking, and it was
like the sound of a great market
...
"Then I shall speak
...

"Because I know he is a coward," said Okonkwo
...
Okonkwo
did not turn round even though he knew the voices
...
But one of the men touched him and asked about the people of his compound
...

The first man to speak to Umuofia that morning was Okika, one of the six who
had been imprisoned
...
But he did not have the
booming voice which a first speaker must use to establish silence in the assembly of the
clan
...

"Umuofia kwenu!" he bellowed, raising his left arm and pushing the air with his
open hand
...


"Umuofia kwenu!" he bellowed again, and again and again, facing a new
direction each time
...

Okika sprang to his feet and also saluted his clansmen four times
...
My father used to
say to me: 'Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that
something is after its life
...
" He
paused for a brief moment and then began again: "All our gods are weeping
...
Our dead fathers
are weeping because of the shameful sacrilege they are suffering and the abomination we
have all seen with our eyes
...

"This is a great gathering
...

But are we all here? I ask you: Are all the sons of Umuofia with us here?" A deep
murmur swept through the crowd
...
"They have broken the clan and gone their several ways
...
If we fight the stranger we shall
hit our brothers and perhaps shed the blood of a clansman
...
Our fathers
never dreamed of such a thing, they never killed their brothers
...
So we must do what our fathers would never have done
...
' We
must root out this evil
...
And we must do it now
...
"
At this point there was a sudden stir in the crowd and every eye was turned in one
direction
...
And so no one had seen the approach of the five
court messengers until they had come round the bend, a few paces from the edge of the
crowd
...

He sprang to his feet as soon as he saw who it was
...
The man was fearless and stood
his ground, his four men lined up behind him
...
There was utter
silence
...

The spell was broken by the head messenger
...

"What do you want here?"
"The white man whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to
stop
...
The messenger crouched to avoid the
blow
...
Okonkwo's machete descended twice and the man's head lay beside
his uniformed body
...

Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man
...
He
knew because they had let the other messengers escape
...
He discerned fright in that tumult
...


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
When the district commissioner arrived at Okonkwo's compound at the head of an armed
band of soldiers and court messengers he found a small crowd of men sitting wearily in
the obi
...

"Which among you is called Okonkwo?" he asked through his interpreter
...

"Where is he?"
"He is not here!"
The Commissioner became angry and red in the face
...
The men murmured
among themselves, and Obierika spoke again
...
"
The Commissioner did not understand what Obierika meant when he said,
"Perhaps your men will help us
...

Obierika with five or six others led the way
...
He had warned Obierika that if he and his men
played any monkey tricks they would be shot
...

There was a small bush behind Okonkwo's compound
...
The hole would not let a man
through
...
They
skirted round the compound, keeping close to the wall
...

Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo's body was dangling, and they
stopped dead
...

"We have sent for strangers from another village to do it for us, but they may be a long
time coming
...
The resolute administrator
in him gave way to the student of primitive customs
...

"It is against our custom," said one of the men
...
It is an offence against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be
buried by his clansmen
...
That is why we
ask your people to bring him down, because you are strangers
...

"We cannot bury him
...
We shall pay your men to do it
...
We shall make sacrifices to cleanse
the desecrated land
...
You drove him to kill himself and now he will be buried like a
dog
...
His voice trembled and choked his words
...

"Take down the body," the Commissioner ordered his chief messenger, "and bring
it and all these people to the court
...

The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him
...
One of them was that a District Commissioner must never
attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree
...
In the book which he planned to write he
would stress that point
...
Every
day brought him some new material
...
One could almost write a whole
chapter on him
...

There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details
...

A GLOSSARY OF IBO WORDS AND PHRASES
agadi-nwayi: old woman
...

Chi: personal god
...

egwugwu: a masquerader who impersonates one of the ancestral spirits of the
village
...

eneke-nti-oba: a kind of bird
...

iba: fever
...
, take place
...

isa-ifi: a ceremony
...

iyi-uwa: a special kind of stone which forms the link between an ogbanje and the
spirit world
...

jigida: a string of waist beads
...
The word is not of Ibo origin but is a corruption of
"court messenger
...

ndichie: elders
...

nno: welcome
...

nza: a very small bird
...

obodo dike: the land of the brave
...

ogbanje: a changeling,- a child who repeatedly dies and returns to its mother to be
reborn
...

ogene: a musical instrument; a kind of gong
...
e
...

osu: outcast
...

Oye: the name of one of the four market days
...

tufia: a curse or oath
...

uli: a dye used by women for drawing patterns on the skin
...

umunna-: a wide group of kinsmen (the masculine form of the word umuada)
...


The End

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930
...

His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director
of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran
War
...

From 1972 to 1976, and again in 1987 to 1988, Mr
...

Cited in the London Sunday Times as one of the "1,000 Makers of the Twentieth
Century" for defining "a modern African literature that was truly African" and thereby

making "a major contribution to world literature," has published novels, short stories,
essays, and children's books
...
Of his
novels, Arrow of God is winner of the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and
Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize in England
...
Achebe has received numerous honours from around the world, including the
Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, as well
as more than twenty honorary doctorates from universities in England, Scotland, the
United States, Canada, and Nigeria
...

At present, Mr
...
They have four children

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