The mail runner brought in two letters. One looked formidable with red wax and seal – the type junior Political Officers referred to lightly as
Top Secret: Burn Before You Open
. He examined it carefully and saw it was not personal to Winterbottom. He felt like a man who had just been initiated into an important secret society. He put the packet aside for the moment to read the smaller one first. It turned out to be no more than the weekly Reuter’s telegram sent as an ordinary letter from the nearest telegraphic office fifty miles away. It carried the news that Russian peasants in revolt against the new régime had refused to grow crops. ‘Serve them right,’ he said, and put it aside; he would take it at the close of day to the notice board in the Regimental Mess. He sat up and took the other packet.
It was a report by the Secretary for Native Affairs on Indirect Rule in Eastern Nigeria. The accompanying note from the Lieutenant-Governor said that the report had been discussed fully at the recent meeting of Senior Political Officers at Enugu which Captain Winter-bottom had unfortunately been too ill to attend. It went on to say that in spite of the very adverse report attached he had not been given any directive for a change of policy. That was a matter for the Governor. But as a decision might be taken one way or another soon it was clearly inadvisable to extend the appointment of Warrant Chiefs to new areas. It was significant that the Warrant Chief for Okperi was singled out in the report for criticism. The letter concluded by asking Winterbottom to handle the matter with tact so that the Administration did not confuse the minds of the natives or create the impression of indecision or lack of direction as such an impression would do untold harm.
When days later Clarke was able to tell Winterbottom about the Report and the Lieutenant-Governor’s letter he showed an amazing lack of interest, no doubt the result of the fever. He only muttered under his breath something like:
Shit on the Lieutenant-Governor!
Chapter Sixteen
Although it was now the heart of the wet season Ezeulu and his companion had set out for home in dry, hopeful, morning weather. His companion was John Nwodika who would not hear of his plan to do the long journey alone. Ezeulu begged him not to trouble himself but it was all in vain.
‘It is not a journey which a man of your station can take alone,’ he said. ‘If you are bent on returning today I must come with you. Otherwise stay till tomorrow when Obika is due to visit.’
‘I cannot stay another day,’ said Ezeulu. ‘I am the tortoise who was trapped in a pit of excrement for two whole markets; but when helpers came to haul him out on the eighth day he cried! Quick, quick: I cannot stand the stench.’
So they set out. Ezeulu wore his shimmering, yellow loincloth underneath and a thick, coarse, white toga over it; this outer cloth was passed under the right armpit and its two ends thrown across the left shoulder. Over the same shoulder he carried his long-strapped goatskin bag. On his right hand he held his
alo
– a long, iron, walking-staff with a sharp, spear-like lower end which every titled man carried on important occasions. On his head was a red
ozo
cap girdled with a leather band from which an eagle feather pointed slightly backwards.
John Nwodika wore a thick brown shirt over khaki trousers.
The weather held until they were about half-way between Okperi and Umuaro. Then the rain seemed to say:
Now is the time; there are no houses on the way where they can seek shelter
. It took both hands off its support and fell down with immense, smothering abandon.
John Nwodika said: ‘Let us shelter under a tree for a while to see if it will diminish.’
‘It is dangerous to stand under a tree in a storm like this. Let us go on. We are not salt and we are not carrying evil medicine on our body. At least I am not.’
So they pressed on, the cloth clinging as if terrified to their bodies. Ezeulu’s goatskin bag was full of water and he knew his snuff was already ruined. The red cap too never liked water and would be the worse for it. But Ezeulu was not depressed; if anything he felt a certain elation which torrential rain sometimes gave – the heady feeling which sent children naked into the rain singing:
Mili zobe ezobe!
Ka mgbaba ogwogwo!
But Ezeulu’s elation had an edge of bitterness to it. This rain was part of the suffering to which he had been exposed and for which he must exact the fullest redress. The more he suffered now the greater would be the joy of revenge. His mind sought out new grievances to pile upon all the others.
He crooked the first finger of his left hand and drew it across his brow and over his eyes to clear the water that blinded him. The broad, new road was like an agitated, red swamp. Ezeulu’s staff no longer hit the earth with a hard thud; its pointed end sank in with a swish up to the length of a finger before it met hard soil. Occasionally the rain subsided suddenly as if to listen. Only then was it possible to see separately the giant trees and the undergrowth with limp, dripping leaves. But such lulls were very short-lived; they were immediately overrun by new waves of thick rain.
Rain was good on the body only if it lasted so long and stopped clean. If it went on longer the body began to run cold. This rain did not know the boundary. It went on and on until Ezeulu’s fingers held on to his staff like iron claws.
‘This is what you have earned for your trouble,’ he said to John Nwodika. His voice was thick and he cleared his throat.
‘It is you I am worried about.’
‘Me? Why should anyone worry about an old man whose eyes have spent all their sleep? No, my son. The journey in front of me is very small beside what I have put behind. Whenever the flame goes out now I shall put the torch away.’
Another gust of rain came and smothered John Nwodika’s reply.
Ezeulu’s people were greatly worried when he came in numb and shivering. They made a big fire for him while his wife, Ugoye, quickly prepared camwood ointment. But first of all he needed some water to wash his feet which were covered with red mud right up to his
ozo
anklet. Then he took the camwood paste from the coconut shell and rubbed his chest while Edogo rubbed his back. Matefi whose turn it was to cook for Ezeulu that night (they had kept count even in his absence) had already started preparing utazi soup. Ezeulu drank it hot and his body began gradually to return to him.
The rain was already spent when Ezeulu got home and soon stopped altogether. The first thing he did after he had drunk his utazi soup was to send Nwafo to tell Akuebue of his return.
Akuebue was grinding his snuff when Nwafo brought him the news. He did not wait to finish his grinding. He transferred the half-ground snuff into a small bottle using a special thin knife-blade. Then he swept the finer particles to the middle of the grinding-stone with a feather and transferred them also to the bottle. He used the feather again on the big and the small stones until all the powder had gone into the bottle. He put the two stones away and called one of his wives to tell her where he was going.
‘If Osenigwe comes to borrow the stones,’ he said as he threw his cloth over his shoulder, ‘tell him I have not finished.’
There were already a handful of people in Ezeulu’s hut when Akuebue arrived. All the neighbours were there and every passer-by who heard of his return interrupted his errand to greet him. Ezeulu said very little, accepting most of the greeting with his eye and a nod. The time had not come to speak or to act. He must first suffer to the limit because the man to fear in action is the one who first submits to suffer to the limit. That was the terror of the puff-adder; it would suffer every provocation, it would even let its enemy step on its trunk; it must wait and unlock its seven fangs one after the other. Then it would say to its tormentor:
Here I am!
All efforts to draw Ezeulu into the conversation failed or achieved only limited success. When his visitors spoke about his refusal to be white man’s chief he only smiled. It was not that he disliked the people around him or the subject about which they spoke. He enjoyed it all and even wished that Nwodika’s son had stayed on to tell them about all the things that had happened; but he had only stopped for a short while and then gone on to his own village to pass the night before returning to Okperi in the morning. He had even refused to wash the mud off his feet.
‘I am going out in the rain again,’ he had said. ‘Washing my feet now would be like cleaning the anus before passing excrement.’
As if he knew what Ezeulu was thinking about at that moment one of his visitors said: ‘The white man has met his match in you. But there is one side to this story which I do not understand – the rôle played by the son of Nwodika in Umunneora. When the matter has cooled down he must answer one or two questions.’
‘I stand with you,’ said Anosi.
‘Nwodika’s son has already explained,’ said Akuebue, who had been acting as Ezeulu’s mouth. ‘What he did was done in the belief that he was helping Ezeulu’.
The other man laughed. ‘He did? What an innocent man! I suppose he puts his bowl of foofoo into his nostrils. Tell me another story!’
‘Never trust a man of Umunneora. That is what I say.’ This was Ezeulu’s neighbour, Anosi. ‘If a man of Umunneora tells me to stop I will run, and if he tells me to run, I shall stand where I am.’
‘This one is different,’ said Akuebue. ‘Travelling has changed him.’
‘Hi-hi-hi-hi,’ laughed Ifeme. ‘He will only add foreign tricks to the ones his mother taught him. You are talking like a small boy, Akuebue.’
‘Do you know why it has rained all afternoon today?’ asked Anosi. ‘It is because Udendu’s daughter is going on
uri
. So the rain-makers of Umunneora chose to spoil their kinsman’s feast. They not only hate others, they hate themselves more. Their badness wears a hat.’
‘True. It is pregnant and nursing a baby at the same time.’
‘Very true. They are my mother’s people but all I do is peep fearfully at them.’
Ifeme rose to go. He was a short, stoutly built man who always spoke at the top of his voice as though every conversation was a quarrel.
‘I must go, Ezeulu,’ he shouted so loud that those in the women’s huts heard him. ‘We thank the great god and we thank Ulu that no bad story has accompanied your travel. Perhaps you were saying to yourself there:
Ifeme has not come to visit me, I wonder whether there is a quarrel between us
. There is no quarrel between Ezeulu and Ifeme. I was thinking all the time that I must visit Ezeulu; my eyes reached you but my feet lagged behind. I kept saying:
Tomorrow I shall go
, but every day gave me a different order. As I said before:
Nno
.’
‘It was the same with me,’ said Anosi. ‘I kept saying:
Tomorrow I shall go, tomorrow I shall go
, like the toad which lost the chance of growing a tail because of
I am coming, I am coming
.’
Ezeulu moved his back from against the wall where it had rested and appeared to be giving all his attention to his grandson, Amechi, who was trying in vain to open the old man’s clenched fist. But his mind was still on the conversation around him, and he spoke a word or two when he had to. He looked up momentarily and thanked Ifeme for his visit.
Amechi’s restlessness increased and soon turned to crying even though Ezeulu had allowed him to open his fist.
‘Nwafo, come and take him to his mother. I think sleep is coming.’
Nwafo came, bent down on both knees and presented his back to Amechi. But instead of climbing on he stopped crying, clenched his little fist and landed a blow in the middle of Nwafo’s back. This caused general laughter, and he looked round the company with streaks of recent tears under his eyes.
‘All right, you go away, Nwafo; he doesn’t like you – you are not a good person. He wants Obiageli.’
And truly Amechi climbed on to Obiageli’s back without any trouble.
‘You see,’ said two or three voices together.
Obiageli raised herself to her feet with difficulty, bent slightly and made a sudden jerk with the waist. This threw the child further up her back and she walked away.
‘Softly,’ said Ezeulu.
‘Don’t worry yourself,’ said Anosi. ‘She knows what to do.’
Obiageli went out in the direction of Edogo’s compound singing:
Tell the mother her child is crying
Tell the mother her child is crying
And then prepare a stew of úzízá
And also a stew of úzìzá
Make a watery pepper-soup
So the little birds who drink it
Will all perish from the hiccup
Mother’s goat is in the barn
And the yams will not be safe
Father’s goat is in the barn
And the yams will all be eaten
Can you see that deer approaching
Look! he’s dipped one foot in water
Snake has struck him!
He withdraws!
Ja – ja . ja kulo kulo!
Traveller Hawk
You’re welcome home
Ja – ja . ja kulo kulo!
But where’s the length
Of cloth you brought
Ja – ja . ja kulo kulo!
As long as he was in exile it was easy for Ezeulu to think of Umuaro as one hostile entity. But back in his hut he could no longer see the matter as simply as that. All these people who had left what they were doing or where they were going to say welcome to him could not be called enemies. Some of them – like Anosi – might be people of little consequence, ineffectual, perhaps fond of gossip and sometimes given to malice; but they were different from the enemy he had seen in his dream at Okperi.