by Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Season of Anomy
Wole Soyinka, the first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a distinguished playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist of global stature. Born in Nigeria, Soyinka studied at University College in Ibadan, Nigeria, and University of Leeds, England. Soyinka’s extensive body of work includes several poetry collections; more than twenty plays; five memoirs, including Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981); and three novels—The Interpreters (1965), Season of Anomy (1973), and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People of Earth (2021).
Also by Wole Soyinka
NOVELS
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
The Interpreters
MEMOIRS
You Must Set Forth at Dawn
Ìsarà: A Voyage Around “Essay”
Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: A Memoir 1945–1965
Aké: The Years of Childhood
The Man Died: Prison Notes
POETRY COLLECTIONS
Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known
Early Poems
Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems
Ogun Abibiman
A Shuttle in the Crypt
A Big Airplane Crashed into The Earth (originally titled Poems from Prison)
Idanre and Other Poems
PLAYS
Alápatà Àpáta
King Baabu
Document of Identity (radio play)
The Beatification of Area Boy
A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)
The Detainee (radio play)
From Zia with Love
Childe Internationale
A Play of Giants
Requiem for a Futurologist
Opera Wonyosi
Death and the King’s Horseman
Jero’s Metamorphosis
Camwood on the Leaves (radio play)
The Bacchae of Euripides
Madmen and the Specialists
The Road
Kongi’s Harvest
Before the Blackout
The Strong Breed
My Father’s Burden (television play)
A Dance of the Forests
The Trials of Brother Jero
The Lion and the Jewel
The Swamp Dwellers
The Invention
Copyright © 1973 by Wole Soyinka
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United Kingdom by Rex Collings Ltd, London, in 1973, and subsequently in United States by The Third Press, a division of Joseph Okpaku Publishing Co. Inc, in 1974.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at the Library of Congress.
Vintage International Trade Paperback ISBN 9780593467190
Ebook ISBN 9780593467206
Cover design and illustrations by Linda Huang and Madeline Partner
www.vintagebooks.com
ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0
CONTENTS
1 Seminal
I
II
2 Buds
III
IV
V
3 Tentacles
VI
VII
VIII
4 Harvest
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
5 Spores
XIV
XV
1
SEMINAL
I
A quaint anomaly, had long governed and policed itself, was so singly-knit that it obtained a tax assessment for the whole populace and paid it before the departure of the pith-helmeted assessor, in cash, held all property in common, literally, to the last scrap of thread on the clothing of each citizen—such an anachronism gave much patronising amusement to the cosmopolitan sentiment of a profit-hungry society. A definitive guffaw from the radical centres of debate headed by Ilosa, dismissed Aiyéró as the prime example of unscientific communalism, primitive and embarrassingly sentimental. To the governments that came and went it posed neither threat nor liability. Thus it was that Aiyéró, unique beneficiary of a three-quarter century of accidental isolation was permitted to be itself. Until its rediscovery at the time of the census…the tourists swamped Aiyéró, then the sociologists armed with erudite irrelevances. Even the Corporation, intent on its ever-expanding cocoa drive took note of a new market for cocoa-bix and cocoa-wix. Ofeyi, the promotions man took his team down to Aiyéró.
Why did they all always come back? Aiyéró’s young generation Ofeyi meant, asking the question of Pa Ahime. What makes all your youth come back?
The Elders of Aiyéró, adopting the wisdom of its parent body Aiyétómò, sent Aiyéró’s young men all over the world to experience other mores and values. Income from boat-building provided Aiyéró’s main income but these young men also sent back a portion of their earnings to the communal fund. It was an act of faith by the commune to send the restless generation to work at whatever new industries were opened in the rest of the country, trusting that the new acquired skills would be brought back to aid the already self-sufficing community. And this was the unusual feature which intrigued the cocoa promotions man. They all returned. The neon cities could not lure them away. The umbilical cord, no matter how far it stretched, never did snap.
What brings them back, he again and again demanded of Ahime who played the role of Chief Minister to the Custodian of the Grain. What makes them different from the rest of their generation who succumb to other life styles and values? But the old man would only reply, that is like asking me why we came, why we are still here, why we live. The answer is, I do not know.
Ofeyi sent his campaign team back to Ilosa and remained to find out. Iriyise remained with him and, soon after, he began to wonder if his resolve to remain in Aiyéró had been entirely his or if it had to do with a sense of rediscovering the woman within that questioning environment. She took to Aiyéró as a new organism long in search of its true element. He began to wonder which provided him a cause for his long hours of unrest: Aiyéró, or simply this woman who seemed to change under his touch.
After the second week the Custodian sent for him. He was a very old wizened man with eyes that seemed permanently hooded, until they burst out with a sun’s after-rain intensity and clarity.
“Ahime has been telling me about you. We’ve had quite a number of people come to visit us, some have even stayed as long as you have. Tourists and government men—those don’t stay long—the government man is usually the tax man, and he always finds his money waiting so there is no longer reason for him to stay. Money!” He spat the word out, paused as if he needed to regain his strength. “But you, why are you here? Ahime says you are not working for a degree. The ones who stay as long as that are usually trying to make a higher degree out of us so they can earn more money. They call themselves sociologists I think. Isn’t that right Ahime? Or else a journalist who wants to take photographs to sell for money.” He leant forward, his chin over his hands which rested on a stick. “What are you lo
oking for? You sent back the rest of your cocoa band a long time ago. Why are you still here?”
Laughing, Ahime revealed that Ofeyi had asked why the young men of Aiyéró came back. The old man blinked. “Is that true?”
Ofeyi admitted that the phenomenon did make him curious.
“And you haven’t found out yet?”
“No. To tell the truth I haven’t even found out if that is the only reason I have stayed here so long.”
The eyes shot open from behind the lids, regarded him for a long time. He spoke slowly. “Will you make me a promise?”
Dubious, Ofeyi said that he would try.
“Any time you find out, even if it is a long way from here, you must come back at once and tell me.”
On the way back to the guest-house Ahime made a surprising revelation.
“Do you wish to know why the Founder wished to see you? He won’t mind my telling you. Not that he has confided in me, but I know him well by now. I should.”
“Yes. I should very much like to know.”
“He is searching for the new Custodian of the Grain.”
“Custodian of…you mean a sort of food commissar? Minister of Food Supply or something like that?”
Ahime smiled. “No. It is a title we don’t use much, except among ourselves. We don’t have much use for titles come to think of it but of course it is easier for duties to be defined by labels. No, the Custodian of the Grain is…” Then the old man broke into a roguish laugh. “Well why don’t I leave you to add it to the list of things you wish to find out in Aiyéró?”
Two days later he did find out. Simply by putting the question directly to one of the natives of the place. Unable to believe the answer he went to a second, then a third and fourth. The riddle—it was not even worth calling it that as the question was answered simply and directly—confirmed in him a growing suspicion that there was a slightly insane element, if not about Aiyéró itself, then certainly about its elders. Casually, pretending that he had not yet discovered what office the Custodian entailed, he asked the old man if he had been serious about the matter. Ahime was too wily to be fooled.
“Oh you’ve found out already have you?”
He denied it hotly. The old man rubbed his chin. “Hm. Then tell me why the idea terrifies you. Why do you imagine I have gone clean out of my mind?”
“I know where I am going” Ofeyi retorted. “Clean out of here!”
“You have found out everything you wished?”
“More than enough.” Seriously he added, “I cannot tell you how much I have valued your hospitality. But to even think of me as successor to…”
The old man placed his arm around his shoulders. “Aiyéró adopted you almost as soon as we set eyes on you.” He nodded briskly. “Yes, it is true. It was an unusual encounter for us, you and your strange assortment of entertainers. It did not take us long to see that there was more to what you did than your slides and Mobile Cinema. All those tattered films which tried to teach the farmer what he had known for the past ten generations! But your casual—or maybe not so casual, certainly instructive side-shows at odd hours of the day…well, it was startling to find your message was the same as brought our community into being long before you were born.”
“You have earned the right to your contentment,” Ofeyi said. “But even the state of content can become malignant. Like indifference. Or complacency. Already you are near stagnant…please don’t take offence.”
“No, no. You know I value frankness,” Ahime reassured him.
“Well, your children travel the wide world, achieve all sorts of experience in their own right and still return to the tiny pond to settle. It’s admirable but…it encourages in-breeding. They seem untouched by where they have been, by the plight of the rest of mankind, even of our own people.”
“We find no virtue in agression, son. Evangelism is a form of aggression.”
“I know. That is a contradiction which I have yet to resolve within myself. All the same…oh I don’t know how to convey to you the smell of mould, stagnation which clings to places like this. It can prove paralysing in a crisis, and our generation appears to be born into one long crisis.”
They trod the shoreline in silence. For a moment Ofeyi thought he caught a downcast look on the face of the old man, the first time he had found even the faintest suspicion of such a mood on any face in Aiyéró. Ahime stopped, stood before him and held his eyes. “Maybe the same thought has occurred to some among us. Have you thought of that? Why do you think the Founder began to think of a total stranger to succeed him as Custodian of the Grain? The meaning of grain is not merely food but, germination…”
Ofeyi waves his hands helplessly around. “Within this constriction?” He shook his head. “The waters of Aiyéró need to burst their banks. The grain must find new seminal grounds or it will atrophy and die.”
“Then join the community” the old man challenged. “We have long recognized our need for new blood.”
“No, no. You cannot guarantee what would come of that. You have your own people.”
He parted from Aiyéró the following day. “You’ll be back” Ahime shouted across the water. “I shall welcome you back on this same beach.”
* * *
—
He could not resist the invitation to the funeral. Nor was that all, he went a full week early; there were still questions, possibilities in his mind. Aiyéró promised much, tantalized him with answers, potencies. It had to yield something to his search.
He gave himself to it, grateful for Ahime who took charge of Iriyise, infatuated beyond belief by the gin-and-tonic siren from the godless lights of the capital. Ahime schemed to draw him to Aiyéró through her, sent women of cunning kindness from his own household who grew so close to her that he saw little of her from day to day. He did not mind. When he looked for her he found her locked deep in talk with strange old women whom he did not wish to know. Then he woke one morning and found she was no longer by his side. Instead there was old Ahime fussing about his breakfast, the creases on his face one happy enigma. “Don’t look for your woman” he said, “she is getting to know the heart-beat of this earth of ours which you take so much for granted.”
Iriyise returned mid-morning in the midst of the old women. She came in a white-and-ochre wrapper, antimony round her eyes, a solid bangle of ivory on her neck—how did they get those heavy things onto a woman’s neck! Ofeyi felt himself excluded by such transparent numinous excitement as flushed her face…how little I know of her, how very little after all. When they were at last alone she would only say, it filled me Ofé, it filled me completely where I had felt so empty. I know I am now complete. Who on earth, what on earth could have taught her to say that, whose only knowledge of fulfilment till now had been the aftermath of love!
Nor was that the end of her power to astonish. That same night as they lay in bed—he had been afraid that her new world might indeed exclude the ecstatic aspects of their bond—she turned to him and suddenly, irrelevantly, out of the deep inward absorption that came upon her after hours of love that betrayed no abatement in ardour, she simply said, “Don’t hold up our people much longer Ofe. You belong to us before all others. Us!”
He did not grow to understand, merely marvelled all through the ten days of the Custodian’s lying in state, the ten days of red chieftain caps, of flaunting cockatoo feathers, coral riches, ivory bangles, iron emblems, brass and silver, the smell of tanned leather, deep resonances of wooden gongs, the red froth of malt wine in fired-clay throats, a deep ferment of sweat, voices, clay and hide timbres, metallic percussions.
Camwood vistas and chalk. Walls in bark-gritty daubings of camwood, chalked doors and doorsteps, wide swathes of chalk below the camwood against beaten clayey earth. Rushes of red barley in the fences, chalk belts on massive tree trunks, posts, bamboo piers and the storehouses of the w
aterfront. The lagoon dissolved its daily tribute of camwood. And Pa Ahime’s voice through it all patiently admonishing…why do you insist on calling our country Aiyéró? Say—Aiyéró. Ró! If you find the world bitter don’t foist your despair on us. Aiye ti wa ró. It works, it is upright and balanced because we have made it so. Ofeyi mumbled his apologies, then grew querulous in turn…why do you make such fuss about a little tonal deflection? Ah, the old man wagged his head, it tells a lot you see. It isn’t only that you change the meaning to what it isn’t, to the opposite of what it is, but it tells a lot of your state of mind. You’ve been defeated by life and it shows in your tone.
“Is it time to tell me the secrets of Aiyéró?” he asked him finally.
“What do you wish to know exactly? Our story is a long one.”
“Well, let’s begin with why you broke away from Aiyétómò.”
The old man sighed. He turned and looked away over the waters to the earliest working theocracy on the coast. Aiyéró made no effort to deny its parenthood but was reticent about the cutting of its umbilical cord.
“We do not believe” the old man began, “in the shackles of memory. We are here, we prosper and we know harmony. It suffices. It is the first principle we teach our children, they grow up despising dead knowledge whose nature is the nature of what is gone, dead, rotted. This is not to say that we keep things hidden. All our people know from where we came, and they know that we founded Aiyéró to seek truth, a better life, all the things which men run after. They also believe that we found it. That is why our children always come back.”
“So do the children of Aiyétómò” Ofeyi pointed out.
The old man turned triumphantly on him. “There you are! What greater proof could you have of the wisdom of our ways. Because you see, they are also the ways of Aiyétómò. We seek no converts, we indulge in no futile recriminations. The way of Aiyétómò was—accept what we have made or go freely. There came a time when our founder, the first Custodian of the Grain felt he could no longer follow the path of the old prophets. He stood up in the meeting-house and gave voice to his new-found faith. He set off to found a new homeland, and those who believed him followed him. When our children grow up and ask questions all we tell them is—yes, Aiyétómò is our parent-home, but if you want to find out more than we’ve told you, get in your canoe and row yourself over. You will be welcomed.”