For a long time no one stood up to reply. Instead there was general talking (which sometimes sounded like murmuring) among the assembled rulers of Umuaro. Ezeulu sat down on his stool and fixed his eye on the ground. He did not even reply when Akuebue told him that he had spoken all the words that needed to be said. At last Nwaka of Umunneora stood up.
‘Umuaro kwenu!’
‘Hem!!’
‘Umuaro kwenu!’
‘Hem!!’
‘Kwekwanu ozo!’
‘Hem!!’
He put right his toga which had nearly come undone from his left shoulder.
‘We have all heard what Ezeulu said. They were good words and I want to thank him for calling us together and speaking them to us. Do I speak the mind of Umuaro?’
‘Speak on,’ replied the men.
‘When a father calls his children together he should not worry about placing palm wine before them. Rather it is they who should bring palm wine to him. Again I say thank you to the priest of Ulu. That he thought it necessary to call us and tell us these things shows the high regard in which he holds us, for which we give him our thanks.
‘But there is one thing which is not clear to me in this summons. Perhaps it is clear to others; if so someone should explain it to me. Ezeulu has told us that the white ruler has asked him to go to Okperi. Now it is not clear to me whether it is wrong for a man to ask his friend to visit him. When we have a feast do we not send for our friends in other clans to come and share it with us, and do they not also ask us to their own celebrations? The white man is Ezeulu’s friend and has sent for him. What is so strange about that? He did not send for me. He did not send for Udeozo; he did not send for the priest of Idemili; he did not send for the priest of Eru; he did not send for the priest of Udo nor did he ask the priest of Ogwugwu to come and see him. He has asked Ezeulu. Why? Because they are friends. Or does Ezeulu think that their friendship should stop short of entering each other’s houses? Does he want the white man to be his friend only by word of mouth? Did not our elders tell us that as soon as we shake hands with a leper he will want an embrace? It seems to me that Ezeulu has shaken hands with a man of white body.’ This brought low murmurs of applause and even some laughter. Like many potent things from which people shrink in fear leprosy is nearly always called by its more polite and appeasing name – white body. The applause and laughter was mingled with the salutation: Owner of words to Nwaka. He waited for the laughter to die down and said: ‘If laughter presses you you can laugh; as for me it does not press me.’ Ezeulu sat in the same way as he had sat when he ended his speech.
‘What I say is this,’ continued Nwaka, ‘a man who brings ant-ridden faggots into his hut should expect the visit of lizards. But if Ezeulu is now telling us that he is tired of the white man’s friendship our advice to him should be: You tied the knot, you should also know how to undo it. You passed the shit that is smelling; you should carry it away. Fortunately the evil charm brought in at the end of a pole is not too difficult to take outside again.
‘I have heard one or two voices murmuring that it is against custom for the priest of Ulu to travel far from his hut. I want to ask such people: Is this the first time Ezeulu would be going to Okperi? Who was the white man’s witness that year we fought for our land – and lost?’ He waited for the general murmuring to die down. ‘My words are finished. I salute you all.’
Others spoke. Although none spoke as harshly as Nwaka, only two came out clearly against his line of thinking. Perhaps there were others who did also, but they did not speak. Most of those who spoke said it would be foolhardy to ignore the call of the white man; had they forgotten what happened to clans which fell out with him? Nwokeke Nnabenyi tried to soften the harsh words even more. He said that six elders should be chosen to go with Ezeulu.
‘You may go with him if your feet are hungry for a walk,’ shouted Nwaka.
‘Ogbuefi Nwaka, please do not speak into my words. You stood up here and spoke to your fill and no one answered you back.’ He repeated his suggestion that six elders of Umuaro should go with their Chief Priest to Okperi.
Ezeulu stood up then. The big fire which had been lit some distance away shone in his face. There was complete silence when he spoke. His words did not carry the rage in his chest. As always his anger was not caused by open hostility such as Nwaka showed in his speech but by the sweet words of people like Nnabenyi. They looked to him like rats gnawing away at the sole of a sleeper’s foot, biting and then blowing air on the wound to soothe it, and lull the victim back to sleep.
He saluted Umuaro and began to speak almost with gaiety in his voice.
‘When I called you together it was not because I am lost or because my eyes have seen my ears. All I wanted was to see the way you would take my story. I have now seen it and I am satisfied. Sometimes when we have given a piece of yam to a child we beg him to give us a little from it, not because we really want to eat it but because we want to test our child. We want to know whether he is the kind of person who will give out or whether he will clutch everything to his chest when he grows up.
‘You yourselves know whether Ezeulu is the kind of man to run away because the white man has sent a message to him. If I had stolen his goat or killed his brother or fucked his wife then I might plunge into the bush when I heard his voice. But I have not offended him in any way. Now, as for what I shall do I had set my mind on it before I asked Ikolo to summon you. But if I had done anything without first speaking to you you might turn round and say: Why did he not tell us? Now I have told you and happiness fills my mind. This is not the time for many words. When the time comes to speak we shall all speak until we are tired and perhaps we shall find then that there are orators in Umuaro besides Nwaka. For the present I salute you for answering my call. Umuaro kwenu!’
‘Hem!!’
One of the people who followed Ezeulu home that night and offered to go with him in the morning to Okperi was his younger half-brother, Okeke Onenyi, a famous medicine-man. But Ezeulu refused his offer as he had refused all the others, among them his friend, Akuebue’s. He had taken the decision to go alone and he was not going to change.
As soon as he had made his offer and it was refused Okeke Onenyi rose to go although the first sporadic drops of a heavy rain had started to fall.
‘Won’t you wait and watch the face of the sky awhile?’ asked Edogo.
‘No, my son,’ replied Okeke Onenyi and, feigning lightheartedness, added: ‘Only those who carry evil medicine on their body should fear the rain.’ He walked out into the coming storm. The darkness was lit up at short, irregular intervals by lightning; sometimes it was a strong, steady light, sometimes it flickered before it went out as if the rushing wind shook its flame.
Okeke Onenyi’s voice rose powerfully against the wind and thunder as he sang and whistled a song to keep him company in the dark.
Ezeulu had said nothing to persuade him not to go in the rain. But then he rarely had anything to say to him. It was difficult to think of them as brothers. But even if they had been closer together Ezeulu might still have said nothing because his mind was not there in the hut with them. In fact all he had said for a long time was that this rain was the harbinger of a new moon. But no one took his meaning.
Ezeulu and his half-brother were not enemies, but neither were they friends. Ezeulu was known to harbour an ill-will against all medicine-men most of whom he said were greedy charlatans. True medicine, he said, had died with his father’s generation. Practitioners of today were mere dwarfs.
Ezeulu’s father had indeed been a great medicine-man and magician. He performed countless marvels but the one that people talked about most was his ability to make himself invisible. There was a time when war was raging between Umuaro and Aninta and no one from the one clan dared set foot in the other. But the Chief Priest passed through Aninta as often as he wished. He always went with his son, Okeke Onenyi, who was then a little boy. He gave the boy a short broom to hold in his left hand and t
old him not to speak or salute any passer-by but walk close to the right edge of the path. The boy went in front and the Chief Priest followed at a distance behind, always keeping the boy in sight. Any passer-by who approached them suddenly stopped before they reached him and began to peer into the bush on the other side of the path like a hunter who had heard the rustle of game. He would be peering thus until the boy and his father passed behind him and only then would he turn again and continue on his way. Sometimes a passer-by would turn right round on their approach and go back the way he was coming.
Okeke Onenyi learnt many herbs and much anwansi or magic from his father. But he never learnt this particular magic whose name was Oti-anya afu-uzo.
There were few priests in the history of Umuaro in whose body priesthood met with medicine and magic as they did in the body of the last Ezeulu. When it happened the man’s power was boundless.
Okeke Onenyi always said that the cause of the coolness between him and the present Ezeulu, his half-brother, was the latter’s resentment at the splitting of the powers between them. ‘He forgets,’ says Okeke Onenyi, ‘that the knowledge of herbs and anwansi is something inscribed in the lines of a man’s palm. He thinks that our father deliberately took it from him and gave to me. Has he heard me complaining that the priesthood went to him?’
As was to be expected this was how people who did not like Ezeulu saw his estrangement from Okeke Onenyi. They were quick to point out that it was Ezeulu’s pride and jealousy that made him so disdainful of his brother’s renown in medicine. They pointed to the recent Covering-up Sacrifice for Obika’s wife when, rather than ask his brother, Ezeulu had sent for a worthless medicine-man who could not even eat three meals a day from his doctoring.
But there were others like Akuebue who knew Ezeulu better who retorted that there was something which Okeke Onenyi did to Ezeulu. It was not very clear what this thing was. All that was known was that it was not a thing which a brother should do to a brother; that it was unforgivable. The trouble was that Ezeulu would never unburden himself even to his friends on this matter. So his defenders had nothing but conjectures to put forward. Some said that Okeke Onenyi had tied up the womb of Ezeulu’s first wife after she had borne him only three children.
‘But that cannot be,’ was the usual reply to this. ‘We know all the evil medicine-men in Umuaro and Okeke Onenyi is not among them. He is not the kind of man to inflict a curse on a woman who has done him no harm, least of all his brother’s wife.’
‘But you forget that Okeke Onenyi has a big grudge against Ezeulu,’ the others might say. ‘You forget that in their childhood their father led Okeke to think that he was going to succeed to the priesthood and that on the old man’s death Okeke all but questioned the decision of the oracle.’
‘That may be so,’ the other side might say. ‘But we know all our medicine-men and we say again that Okeke Onenyi has never yet been accused by anyone of sealing up his wife’s womb. Besides, medicine-men who carry on such vile practices, like men who relish human flesh, never prosper with children. But just look at Okeke Onenyi’s compound flowing with sons and daughters!’
This final argument was unanswerable especially when it was pointed out that Okeke Onenyi’s best friend in Ezeulu’s compound was Edogo, the son of the very women he was said to have afflicted! In fact this relationship between Edogo and his uncle was known to give Ezeulu great dissatisfaction. Perhaps it was out of pique that he had said that the carving done by the one was about as good as the medicine practised by the other.
‘Those two?’ he once asked, ‘a derelict mortar and rotten palm nuts!’
For two or three days now Captain Winterbottom had been feeling unduly tired and run down. The rains did not seem to bring the expected respite. His gums looked paler than ever and his feet felt cold. He would not be due for another bout of fever for yet awhile; but these were the signs all right. Of course he was not afraid as a new boy might be. Fever to an old coaster was no more than an inconvenience; it laid one off for a few days that was all.
Tony Clarke was suitably impressed. ‘You should go and see a doctor,’ he said, knowing that this was the kind of stuff expected of new boys.
‘Doctor? Good Lord! For a fever? No my boy. It’s the first time you want to be careful. Poor Macmillan wasn’t careful enough in spite of my warning. I’ve had a fever every single year for ten years and when you’ve had it so often you stop taking any notice. No, all I need is a change of air for a week and you’ll see me back as sound as a bell. The trip to Enugu will do it.’
He was planning a visit to Headquarters in two days’ time. For obvious reasons he wanted to tidy up the business of a Warrant Chief for Umuaro before he met the headquarters’ chaps. He could not possibly conclude the matter in two days but he wanted to be able to say that he had taken the first steps. He was a great believer in leaving the house in order as he expected to find it on his return. So he wrote copious handing-over notes for Tony Clarke. He put down in black and white what he proposed to do on the subject of the Paramount Chief. ‘I have today sent messengers to Umuaro to bring Ezeulu here for a preliminary discussion. Arising out of this discussion I shall fix an appropriate date in the future when the warrant of office will be given to him in the presence of the elders and ndichie of his clan.’ Captain Winterbottom enjoyed mystifying other Europeans with words from the Ibo language which he claimed to speak fluently.
Having made these detailed arrangements for the benefit of Ezeulu Captain Winterbottom was understandably enraged when the messenger came back with the insulting reply from the self-important fetish priest. He immediately signed a warrant of arrest in his capacity as magistrate for the apprehension of the priest and gave instructions for two policemen to go to Umuaro first thing in the morning and bring the fellow in.
‘As soon as he comes,’ he told Clarke, ‘you are to lock him up in the guardroom. I do not wish to see him until after my return from Enugu. By that time he should have learnt good manners. I won’t have my natives thinking they can treat the Administration with contempt.’
Perhaps it was Captain Winterbottom’s rage and frenzy that brought it on; perhaps his steward was right about its cause. But on that very morning when two policemen set out to arrest Ezeulu in Umuaro Captain Winterbottom suddenly collapsed and went into a delirium. The only intelligible thing he kept saying was: My feet are cold; put the hot water bottle there! His steward heated some water, put it in the rubber bottle and placed it on the man’s feet. Winterbottom screamed that it was not hot enough. The steward poured in boiling water but even that was still not hot enough. He kept changing the water every few minutes and still the Captain complained. By the time Tony Clarke (who could not drive a car) found Wade to take the Captain in his old Ford to the hospital six miles away his feet had been badly scalded. But this was not discovered until the following day in the hospital.
Clarke and Wade were amazed and not a little embarrassed to see Dr Mary Savage, the severe and unfeminine missionary doctor in charge of the hospital, collapse into tears and panic as Captain Winterbottom was brought in. She kept calling, ‘Tom, Tom,’ and behaving generally as though her doctoring had deserted her. But her panic lasted only a short time; she was soon mistress of herself and the situation. However, it had lasted long enough to have been noticed by a few native nurses and ward attendants who spread it not only in the hospital but in the small village of Nkisa. Both in the hospital and outside in the village Dr Savage was known as Omesike, One Who Acts With Power, and it was not expected that she would ever cry for a patient, not even when the patient happened to be Captain Winterbottom whom they mischievously called her husband.
Winterbottom’s delirium lasted three days and in all that time Dr Savage rarely left his bedside. She even postponed the operations which she performed every Wednesday for which that day was known throughout the village as Day of the Cutting Open of Bowels. It was always a sad day and the little daily market which had sprung up outside the gates of th
e hospital to supply the needs of patients from distant clans attracted fewer market women on Wednesdays than on any other day of the week. It was also noticed that even the sky knew that day of death and mourned in gloom.
Dr Savage checked through her list of operation cases and was satisfied that there was none that could be called very urgent and decided to postpone them till Friday. Captain Winterbottom’s condition had improved very slightly and there was a little hope. The next day or two would be decisive and a lot would depend on skilled nursing to help him over the critical threshold. He was in a special ward all by himself and nobody was allowed in there except Dr Savage and her only European Sister.
Captain Winterbottom’s steward, John Nwodika, was told to escort the two policemen to Umuaro as he had done for the messenger. But in his mind he had sworn never again to take a representative of ‘gorment’ to his home clan. His resolve was strengthened in this case when he got to know that the two policemen would be armed with a warrant of arrest and handcuffs for the Chief Priest of Ulu. But since he could not turn round and say to his master: No, I shall not go, he agreed to go but made other plans. Consequently when the two policemen came for him before the crow of the first cock they found him shivering from a sudden attack of iba. Wrapped up in an old blanket which Captain Winterbottom had given him for the child his wife delivered four months ago John managed with great effort to whisper a few directions to the men. Once they were in Umuaro, he said, any suckling child could show them Ezeulu’s house. This turned out to be literally true.
The two men entered Umuaro at the time of the morning meal. Soon they met a man carrying a pot of palm wine and stopped him.
‘Where is Ezeulu’s house?’ asked the leader, Corporal Matthew Nweke. The man looked suspiciously at the uniformed strangers.
‘Ezeulu,’ he said after a long time in which he had seemed to search his memory. ‘Which Ezeulu?’
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