Arrow of God (15 page)

‘Give me a little of that thing to clear my head,’ said Akuebue who had just drunk his water.

‘Come and get it,’ replied Ezeulu. ‘You do not expect me to provide the snuff and also the walking around, to give you a wife and find you a mat to sleep on.’

Akuebue rose half-erect with his right hand on the knee and the left palm opened towards Ezeulu. ‘I will not dispute with you,’ he said. ‘You have the yam and you have the knife.’

Ezeulu transferred two spoonfuls of the snuff from his own palm into Akuebue’s and then brought out some more from the bottle for himself.

‘It is good snuff,’ said Akuebue. One of his nostrils carried brown traces of the powder. He took another small heap from his cupped left hand on to his right thumbnail and guided it to the other nostril, throwing his head back and sniffing three or four times. Then he had traces on both nostrils. Ezeulu used the ivory spoon instead of his thumbnail.

‘I do not buy my snuff in the market,’ said Ezeulu; ‘that is why.’

Edogo came in dangling a calabash of palm wine from a short rope tied round its neck. He saluted Akuebue and his father and set down the calabash.

‘I did not know that you had palm wine,’ said Ezeulu.

‘It has just been sent by the owner of the door I am carving.’

‘And why do you bring it in the presence of this my friend who took over the stomach of all his dead relatives?’

‘But I have not heard Edogo say it was meant for you.’ He turned to Edogo and asked: ‘Or did you say so?’ Edogo laughed and said it was meant for two of them.

Akuebue brought out a big cow’s horn from his bag and hit it thrice on the floor. Then he rubbed its edges with his palm to remove dirt. Ezeulu brought out his horn from the bag beside him and held it for Edogo to fill. When he had served him he took the calabash to Akuebue and also filled his horn. Before they drank Ezeulu and Akuebue tipped a little on to the floor and muttered a barely audible invitation to their fathers.

‘My body is full of aches,’ said Ezeulu, ‘and I do not think that palm wine is good for me yet.’

‘I can tell you it is not,’ said Akuebue who had gulped down the first horn and screwed up his face as though waiting for a sound inside his head to tell him whether it was good wine or not.

Edogo took his father’s horn from him and filled himself a measure. Oduche came in then, saluted his father and Akuebue and sat down with Nwafo on the mud-seat. Since he joined the white man’s religion he always wore a loincloth of towelling material instead of the thin strip of cloth between the legs. Edogo filled the horn again and offered him but he did not drink. ‘What about you, Nwafo?’ asked Edogo. He also said no.

‘When is it you are going to Okperi?’ Ezeulu asked.

‘The day after tomorrow.’

‘For how long?’

‘They say for two markets.’

Ezeulu seemed to be turning this over in his mind.

‘What are you going for?’ asked Akuebue.

‘They want to test our knowledge of the holy book.’

Akuebue shrugged his shoulders.

‘I am not sure that you will go,’ said Ezeulu. ‘But let the days pass and I shall decide.’ Nobody said anything in reply. Oduche knew enough about his father not to protest. Akuebue drank another horn of wine and began to gnash his teeth. The voice he had been waiting for had spoken and pronounced the wine good. He knocked the horn on the floor a few times and prayed as he did so.

‘May the man who tapped this wine have life to continue his good work. May those of us who drank it also have life. The land of Olu and the land of Igbo.’ He rubbed the edges of his horn before putting it away in his bag.

‘Drink one horn more,’ said Edogo.

Akuebue rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand before replying.

‘The only medicine against palm wine is the power to say no.’ This statement seemed to bring Ezeulu back to the people around him.

‘Before you came in,’ he said to Akuebue, ‘I was telling that little boy over there that the greatest liar among men still speaks the truth to his own son.’

‘It is so,’ said Akuebue. ‘A man can swear before the most dreaded deity on what his father told him.’

‘If a man is not sure of the boundary between his land and his neighbour’s,’ continued Ezeulu, ‘he tells his son:
I think it is here but if there is a dispute do not swear before a deity
.’

‘It is even so,’ said Akuebue.

‘But when a man has spoken the truth and his children prefer to take the lie…’ His voice had risen with every word towards the dangerous pitch of a curse; then he broke off with a violent shake of the head. When he began again he spoke more quietly. ‘That is why a stranger can whip a son of mine and go unscathed, because my son has nailed up his ear against my words. Were it not so that stranger would already have learnt what it was to cross Ezeulu; dogs would have licked his eyes. I would have swallowed him whole and brought him up again. I would have shaved his head without wetting the hair.’

‘Did Obika strike the first blow then?’ asked Akuebue.

‘How do I know? All I can say is that he was blind with palm wine when he left here in the morning. And even when he came back a short while ago it had still not cleared from his eyes.’

‘But they say he did not strike the first blow,’ said Edogo.

‘Were you there?’ asked his father. ‘Or would you swear before a deity on the strength of what a drunken man tells you? If I was sure of my son do you think I would sit here now talking to you while a man who pokes his finger into my eyes goes home to his bed? If I did nothing else I would pronounce a few words on him and he would know the power in my mouth.’ The perspiration was forming on his brow.

‘What you say is true,’ said Akuebue. ‘But in my thinking there is still something for us to do once we find out from those who saw it whether Obika struck the first blow or…’ Ezeulu did not let him finish.

‘Why should I go out looking for strangers to tell me what my son did or did not do? I should be telling them.’

‘That is true. But let us first chase away the wild cat, afterwards we blame the hen.’ Akuebue turned to Edogo. ‘Where is Obika himself?’

‘It appears that what I said has not entered your ear,’ said Ezeulu. ‘Where…’

Edogo interrupted him. ‘He went out with Ofoedu. He went out because our father did not ask him what happened before blaming him.’

This unexpected accusation stung Ezeulu like the black ant. But he held himself together and, to everybody’s surprise, leaned back against the wall and shut his eyes. When he opened them again he began to whistle quietly to himself. Akuebue nodded his head four or five times like a man who had uncovered an unexpected truth. Ezeulu moved his head slightly from side to side and up and down to his almost silent whistling.

‘This is what I tell my own children,’ said Akuebue to Edogo and the two boys. ‘I tell them that a man always has more sense than his children.’ It was clear he said this to mollify Ezeulu; but at the same time it was clear he spoke truth. ‘Those of you who think they are wiser than their father forget that it is from a man’s own stock of sense that he gives out to his sons. That is why a boy who tries to wrestle with his father gets blinded by the old man’s loincloth. Why do I speak like this? It is because I am not a stranger in your father’s hut and I am not afraid to speak my mind. I know how often your father has pleaded with Obika to leave his friendship with Ofoedu. Why has Obika not heeded? It is because you all – not only Obika but you all, including that little one there – you think you are wiser than your father. My own children are like that. But there is one thing which you all forget. You forget that a woman who began cooking before another must have more broken utensils. When we old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouth; it is because we see something which you do not see. Our fathers made a proverb about it. They said that when we see an old woman stop in her dance to point again and again in the same direction we can be sure that somewhere there something happened long ago which touched the roots of her life. When Obika returns tell him what I say, Edogo. Do you hear me?’ Edogo nodded. He was wondering whether it was true that a man never spoke a lie to his sons.

Akuebue wheeled round on his buttocks and faced Ezeulu. ‘It is the pride of Umuaro,’ he said, ‘that we never see one party as right and the other wrong. I have spoken to the children and I shall not be afraid to speak to you. I think you are too hard on Obika. Apart from your high position as Chief Priest you are also blessed with a great compound. But in all great compounds there must be people of all minds – some good, some bad, some fearless and some cowardly; those who bring in wealth and those who scatter it, those who give good advice and those who only speak the words of palm wine. That is why we say that whatever tune you play in the compound of a great man there is always someone to dance to it. I salute you.’

Chapter Ten

Although Tony Clarke had already spent nearly six weeks in Okperi most of his luggage, including his crockery, had arrived only a fortnight ago – in fact the day before he went on tour to the bush. That was why he had not been able until now to ask Captain Winterbottom to his house for a meal.

As he awaited the arrival of his guest Mr Clarke felt not a little uneasy. One of the problems of living in a place like this with only four other Europeans (three of whom were supposed to be beneath the notice of Political Officers) was that one had to cope with a guest like Winterbottom absolutely alone. Of course this was not their first social encounter; they had in fact had dinner together not very long ago and things did not altogether grind to a stop. But then Clarke had been guest, without any responsibilities. Today he was going to be host and the onus would rest on him to keep the conversation alive, through the long, arduous ritual of alcohol, food, coffee and more alcohol stretching into midnight. If only he could have invited someone like John Wright with whom he had struck up a kind of friendship during his recent tour! But such a thing would have been disastrous.

Clarke had shared the lonely thatch-roofed Rest House outside Umuaro with Wright for one night during his tour. Wright had been living in one half of the Rest House for over two weeks then. The Rest House consisted of two enormous rooms each with a camp-bed and an old mosquito-net, a rough wooden table and chair and a cupboard. Just behind the main building there was a thatched shed used as a kitchen. About thirty yards away another hut stood over a dug latrine and wooden seat. Farther away still in the same direction a third hut in very bad repair housed the servants and porters who were sometimes called ‘hammock boys’. The Rest House proper was surrounded by a ragged hedge of a native plant which Clarke had never seen anywhere else.

The entire appearance of the place showed that it had not had a caretaker since the last one vanished into the bush with two camp-beds. The beds were replaced but the key to the main building and the latrine was thereafter kept at headquarters so that whenever a European was going on tour and needed to lodge there the native Chief Clerk in Captain Winterbottom’s office had to remember to give the key to his head porter or steward. Once when the Police Officer, Mr Wade, had been going to Umuaro the Chief Clerk had forgotten to do this and had had to walk the six or seven miles at night to deliver it. Fortunately for him Mr Wade had not suffered any personal inconvenience as he had sent his boys one day ahead of himself to clean the place up.

As he walked round the premises of the Rest House Tony Clarke felt that he was hundreds of miles from Government Hill. It was quite impossible to believe that it was only six or seven miles away. Even the sun seemed to set in a different direction. No wonder the natives were said to regard a six mile walk as travelling to a foreign country.

Later that evening he and Wright sat on the veranda of the Rest House to drink Wright’s gin. In this remote corner, far from the stiff atmosphere of Winterbottom’s Government Hill, Clarke was able to discover that he liked Wright very much. He also discovered to his somewhat delighted amazement that in certain circumstances he could contain as much gin as any Old Coaster.

They had only met for very brief moments before. But now they talked like old friends. Clarke thought that for all the other man’s squat and rough exterior he was a good and honest Englishman. He found it so refreshing to be talking to a man who did not have the besetting sin of smugness, of taking himself too seriously.

‘What do you think the Captain would say, Tony, if he were to see his young Political Officer being nice and friendly to a common road-maker?’ His big red face looked almost boyish.

‘I don’t know and don’t much care,’ said Clarke, and because the fume of gin was already working on his brain, he added: ‘I shall be happy if in all my years in Africa I succeed in building something as good as your road…’

‘It’s good of you to say so.’

‘Are we having a celebration to open it?’

‘The Captain says no. He says we have already overspent the Vote for it.’

‘What does it matter?’

‘That’s what I want to know. And yet we spend hundreds of pounds building Native Courts all over the division that nobody wants, as far as I can see.’

‘I must say though that that is not the Captain’s fault.’ Clarke was already adopting Wright’s half-contemptuous manner of referring to Winterbottom. ‘It is the policy of Headquarters which I happen to know the Captain is not altogether in agreement with.’

‘Damn the Headquarters.’

‘The Captain would approve of that sentiment.’

‘Actually, you know, the Captain is not a bad fellow at all. I think that deep down he is quite a decent fellow. One must make allowances for the rough time he’s had.’

‘In the matter of promotions, you mean?’

‘He’s been badly treated there too, I’m told,’ said Wright. ‘Actually I wasn’t thinking of that at all. I was thinking of his domestic life. Oh yes. You see during the war while the poor man was fighting the Germans in the Cameroons some smart fellow walked away with his wife at home.’