“Yes.” she wagged her finger at them. “Just as I told you. Did you believe me then, eh? Did you listen to your sister, Usse?”
She made them feel her wrist where it had been broken, the little nodules of bone in there.
So she had shamed them, and now they were all together in the pirogue, pressed up against each other with the White-men, too: cadavers and their rags. She glanced forward at the soldier, recalling the episodes she had left untold. His had shocked her, merely how hot his skin had felt when she had lain with him and the violence in his face while he’d performed the act. His sweat, a White-man’s sweat. She watched his back when it showed around that of the giant. The third was the one who had watched her in the night, the first night, when she had sought and found her father in the Ijaw village. She was sure of it, and now she thought of him as the Thief. Soldier, Giant, and Thief. It was like the beginning of a children’s tale: “Tortoise and Leopard were out walking in the forest …” or “Hare and Dog met one day at the water-hole …” She felt drowsy even with the motions of the boat, the muddy-watery smell in the air, the little grunts of the paddlers, whose rhythm never changed. Soldier, Giant, and Thief went in a boat to a strange country with a fierce princess called Usse. They wanted to catch the ugliest beast in the world. …
Ezodu and Enyi were walking in the forest. … Eh, Usse? Remember that one, my fierce little princess?
She woke with a start. River-glare. The men paddling. Apia reached forward and touched her on the shoulder. She shrugged him off, reaching into herself for the source of the voice.
Father?
Ezodu and Enyi were once the best of friends. They used to meet at the water-hole, eh? Heh, heh, heh, heh …
And then he was gone. She sat up quickly. Gone as abruptly as he had come. Her father playing tricks on her? Strange. Not like him. Had his dreaming made him playful? Then she noticed the Thief.
He was sitting bolt upright, a puzzled expression on his face that she could see only because he turned his head to left and right; his baffled, startled, searching head. With its spying eyes and its thieving ears. Could he have heard, too? Was it possible that a White-man could hear such voices? The Thief was the one she would watch most closely. Now he was settling back again, readjusting his ragged hat and pulling it forward until it covered his eyes. Sleep, then, she thought, or feign sleep. Nri would reveal him. Nri would reveal all of them.
Their course began to take them in toward the right-hand bank, where a single dense thicket of greenery marched up to the water’s edge and rose at their approach until solid cliffs of vegetation loomed over them, the canopies of the great cottonwoods appearing as teetering shelves and overhangs. Closer yet and the wall dissolved into boughs and branches, bristling bushes decked with tiny scarlet flowers and looping lilac convulvulus. Here and there were gaps through which she glimpsed the cool shade of the forest’s interior. Then the bank fell away again, and a little later the Engenni River broke through the forest to mix its brighter brown waters with the great flood beneath them and the pirogue was pushed farther out by its current. They were almost at Ndoni and the afternoon was well advanced, but they would not stop. Later, the Orashi would come into view in a similar fashion, sweeping in from the right with its bunched meanders seeming to recoil from the greater mass of the River, and beyond that confluence would be Osomari. And they would not stop there, either. The paddles rose and fell, rose and fell. The backs of the men bent and strained, yet they did not slacken their pace. Atani was where the River widened and the far bank dwindled to a distant puny ridge, where years ago, in another life, a boy had fished in a pool of shadowed water and she had sat digging her toes into the cool earth, watching him. They stopped there.
At first the White-men were a sickness and no one knew what to do. They came across the sea in great white-winged boats, and their mouths were full of blood and lies that they spat on the people whom they met. Their weapons were light machetes, slightly curved, and fire-sticks that they held up to their eyes. There was a soft bang, some smoke, and then whomever it was pointed at fell down dead. Their chests were thick as tree-trunks, and their legs were thin as twigs. They were silent, often for days at a time, and then they would begin shouting while keeping their bodies very still. Most were exceedingly ugly and stank. They did not bury their excrement. They were quarrelsome, and powerful magicians. They had no women. Their speech sounded like coughing. The land frightened them, and they spent as little time on it as possible. When sufficiently angered, they would wave one arm and whole villages disappeared. The ground where they stood was churned up and the soil so hot that it smoked. They were impossible to insult. Nobody knew what made them so angry, or ugly, or white, or red, or whatever color they were, no one amongst the Ijaw, anyway, so it must be a kind of sickness, or madness, a bad spirit that squatted in their heads, shat down their throats, and could not be expelled. Much of this, Namoke knew, was nonsense.
The rains had come and gone four times since he and Usse had sat in the old Ijaw man’s hut and listened to him ramble and grumble about the Nembe down the coast, the sharks in their fishing-ground, and then after a calabash of palm-wine the White-men. … Anayamati was not yet in his dreaming, but it was not far off, and he was cautious, their Eze-Nri. Too cautious for his angry, restless daughter. The titled men had sat down together, broken the kola-nut, passed the calabash amongst themselves, scratched their behinds, and talked of what these “White-men” portended. And talked more. And talked more again. She was too impatient, Anayamati’s daughter, and too wild, eventually bursting in and mocking them for their circumspection, strutting before them, spitting out the suspicion that none of them would voice before storming out in frustration. Had she been right? Anayamati had shaken his head at the disgrace, then broken the heavy silence. “Sometimes I think she is Ezodu herself. …” He had rolled his eyes in a comical fashion, and they had chuckled along to spare his feelings, gone back to their tombo and their jawing. Had she heard them? They were cautious old men, proceeding as cautious old men are wont to do, making cautious old men’s decisions. She would have left anyway, Namoke told himself.
Later they learned that the Bini across the River to the west had several of the White-men already at Ughoton, although they kept them out of the city, and there were more of them down on the coast, where they had built a stone fort. The famine took Nri-men farther afield than they had ever been before and wherever they traveled they listened now for tales of these White-men. To the east and south as far as Mpinde in the lands ruled by Nzinge Nvembe, to the west and north as far as the land of the Dyulas, they heard the same stories over and over. One day great boats hung with white sails appeared off the coast, then smaller boats rowed to shore, and within these were the White-men, who traded well or badly, and then they were gone again until the next year. Each year they would stay a little longer, and sometimes a few would stay behind (as ransom? punishment?), and sometimes build houses for themselves. According to Nvembe, they had reached Ngola of Mbundu after him, just as they had reached the Calabaris before him, and the Nembe-people and Ijaws before that, and so on west through the lands of the Bini and the Warri, then north up the coast as far as the desert, where nothing grew and where the tribes who lived there built nothing but each day woke and fled from the fierceness of the sun until nightfall, when they would drop to the ground and sleep again. The north was where the White-men came from. Usse had gone in pursuit of them. Now she was coming back. Nri-men had listened to these tales and observed the unease of their tellers. The White-men were weak and few in number, but there was something fearsome in them. Something hidden even from themselves. Perhaps the foolish Ijaws were right, Namoke thought now: the White-men were a sickness.
And no one knew what to do. Not the Uzama-men of Oba Esigie of the Bini, now picking their way like storks in their white robes along the bank of the River. Not the counselors of the Alafin of Oyo, nodding wisely to one another a little way ahead of them. Not the Aworo of the Es
ie, closeted with the petrified images of half a hundred of his ancestors in the elaborately constructed ju-ju shrine that his retainers had raised behind the ridge and that they would disassemble and carry away when the palaver ended. (When would they all lose patience? Namoke wondered. A week? a month?) Not Tsoede, the Eze-Nupe, who had arrived on a litter as tall as a cottonwood carried by sixty slaves and had yet to descend from it. Not the Achadu of the Attah of Idah, permanently veiled by a brimmed hat whose hangings reached to his ankles, nor the Oni of Ife, who had sent his eldest and youngest sons. Not the delegates of the Mani Kongo, one of whom claimed to have been carried to the house of the White-men’s King but would say nothing of it except that it was cold, nor those of Ngola Ndongo, who allowed them to trade from the mouth of the Dande. Not the Odum of the Awome Calabaris, who was permanently drunk. Not the Aro-people, nor the Uratta-people, nor the Ekwerre-people, nor the Etche-people, nor the Asapeople, nor the Ndokinor-people, nor the Awka-people, some of whom were already drifting back to their villages a mere three or four days away. Not the Anam-people across the River at Asaba, nor the Ndi Mili Nnu, who had waited for the sand-island that appeared in midstream at this time of year to rise slowly above the surface before suddenly materializing upon it one morning, Ijaws and Nembe camped peaceably together—a miracle of sorts. And not the Ozo-people, whose village this was, or had been before the word sent out from Nri had gathered more than a thousand men from some three dozen peoples within a camp that spilled along the bank of the River almost to the bend where the broad flood was joined by the Anambra. None of them knew, any more than they knew where the rain came from or went or why the yams would grow one year and fail the next. So they had turned to Nri, and Nri-men had gathered them for the palaver that had turned Onitsha from a, village into a transitory city.
The ground rose slightly at both ends of the encampment to form gently humped ridges of rain-smoothed, sun-hardened red mud that ran out of the forest and broke off abruptly at the River’s edge. From his vantage point Namoke looked down on a sprawl of makeshift huts, shelters, and shrines roofed with raffia mats or thatched with the long grasses that grew in abundance after the recession of the floodwaters. The men moving among the homes of this flimsy city were counselors, headmen, priests, princes, title-holders, their numbers swollen further by retinues of servants and slaves. All of them, in one way or another, had wanted this palaver. Now, a mere twelve days after its commencement, they were growing impatient. Those who already had trade relations and treaties with the White-men had broken them off in deference to those who believed the strangers were no better than rats in a hen coop. None of them agreed on anything, except a desire that Nri should answer the questions arising out of their disquiet. … They wanted the Eze-Nri to appear in a thundercloud and tell them what to do, which was very foolish, for Nri-people had never told anyone what to do. Nri was the condition of their meeting, no more than that.
Namoke’s sandaled feet scuffed the new shoots of grass forcing their way out of the baked laterite earth. Pirogues were hauled up on the shelving mud-bank below him, two scores of them, at least. On the bank behind them stood the obiri, its roof raised high off the ground on thick abara-wood poles, open at the sides, its floor covered with raffia mats. A few Ikwerre-men were already sitting there, waiting for that day’s palaver to begin. His ofo-staff, a collection of sticks bound around a short branch, was balanced on a small, elaborately carved stool at the far end of the obiri. It seemed innocuous, sitting there on its stool—a little bundle of kindling wood or a ramshackle bird nest—yet if he were to advance through the encampment with it raised above his head, if he were to plant it in soft earth, then rip it up again by its root and scatter the soil as though it were seed, then they would take to their heels and flee in terror, every last one of them. They would flee it as they would their own deaths. … Tempting.
A kingfisher whirred over the boats in a blur of green. Namoke turned to look downriver. Two days had gone by since Gbujo, Apia, and Onugu had got word from the Ijaws that their sister was traveling through the mangrove-swamp and had set off downriver to meet her. But there was nothing on the River now except some fishing canoes and the pirogues setting out from the island bearing the chiefs of the Ndi Mili Nnu, crossing over for the palaver. He turned and walked down to the obiri, watched by the Ekwerre, and the strutting Bini, and the delegates from the Mani, and those from Ngola, and the Awka-men, and the Nupe-men, and the eldest and youngest sons of the Oni of Ife together with their (separate) retinues of servants. … They were waiting for him, and waiting for the palaver, and waiting for the words of the Eze-Nri.
The soft white glow of the harmattan sky intensified to a harsh glare. As the hours went by, men gathered slowly, speaking softly at first, but then more emphatically, clustering in little groups, which quickly became factions, knots of disagreement and argument, until Namoke overlooked a forest of waving arms and pointing fingers and the noise was an angry din of grievances, resentments, obscure insults, pleas falling on skeptical ears, rejected lines of reasoning, rivalry, pigheadedness. … How, he wondered, moving calmly among the squabblers, will agreement come of this? He looked toward the River again, his view partly obscured by three Nupe-men browbeating a hapless Calabari, who was protesting that three men from his village had been killed by White-men, or at least had set out one morning to trade fish and had never come back. The River was very broad here, the long paddle over to Asaba broken only by the sand-island where the Ndi Mili Nnu were camped. Usually a large market was held there. Namoke contemplated its annual appearance in the midst of the River’s turbid waters, hard ground rising out of mud-choked floodwater, where the traders could meet in amity to buy and barter. Perhaps agreement would come like that? Then he remembered the phenomenon that the Idah-people called yangbe: a brief swelling of the River that was due in a week or two and raised the water level the height of a man’s knee. The yangbe lasted only a few days, just long enough to wash the island away.
The afternoon wore on and the debates in the obiri grew sullen and ill-tempered. An Awka-man called Jiofo was arguing fiercely with a tall Bini who stood impassively in front of him, his long arms folded inside his robes.
“They want gold and slaves, Enyi-tusks, pepper. Very well. …” Jiofo was waving a finger in the air. “That is only today. What about tomorrow? What do they want then? More of them come each year—you say as much yourself—and the Bini give them land to live on, protect them even when they have stolen from the people on the coast. …”
“Oba Esigie has banished them for the time of the palaver, just as he promised. Besides, they are very weak and most of them die of fevers,” the Bini interjected.
“Yes!” Jiofo shouted. “Even the air hates them, and nothing grows in the earth that they touch. The land they touch is stained! Dead!”
Namoke looked from one to the other, the Bini man shaking his head in exasperation, Jiofo still shouting at him. Similar confrontations were breaking out throughout the palaver, and the racket sounded to him like angry hornets. What good would come of this?
“Just wait,” Jiofo finished up, turning now to Namoke. “When the Eze-Nri makes his judgment, you’ll see!”
“When the Eze-Nri speaks,” the Bini man said as though speaking to himself, “everything will be clear. Your head, too, perhaps.” He stalked off contemptuously.
Deprived of an opponent, Jiofo redirected his complaint to Namoke.
“These Bini people think they are so much better than everyone else, eh? All they do is sit around and twiddle their lovely long fingers, and what good is that? Look at these.” He held up his own hands, whose fingers were short and thick. “These hands have smithed a hundred blades since last harvest, and before that I lose count. Bini people, huh!” He made as if to spit on the ground, which was taboo in the obiri, and then resumed his complaint while Namoke nodded calmly and waited for a chance to slip away. But Jiofo droned on and on, his voice boring into Namoke’s head like arrow-worm, and the
re were so many voices trapped in there already, twisting and gnawing away at him. When the Eze-Nri speaks … Where was that voice? The voice they all awaited with the dwindling patience that fueled Jiofo’s vehemence now, still hammering away, repeating himself, the man’s bitterness growing out of the same anxiety that had brought them all here, and the anxiety out of ignorance. The iron is broken. … A smith should relish that particular turn of phrase, Namoke reflected grimly, though not the fact it concealed: And no one knows what to do. A little oil to help the dry words down. He realized with grateful surprise that the man had at last fallen silent. There was a group of Idah-men talking amongst themselves. As he watched, they fell silent, too. An eerie hush was gathering and swelling behind him, an unsoothing silence as of rivals catching sight of each other through the jabber of the marketplace and breaking off in midsentence to stare at one another, the corridor of their attention growing quiet and thickening until it silences the whole assembly. So mouths closed, or hung slackly open, and seconds later the whole obiri was silenced, everyone peering forward to the very spot where he had stood earlier. He sensed her presence then. “So,” Namoke murmured as he turned with the rest of them, “she is back.”
Usse stood at the very edge of the obiri. The sunlight fell on her there, and to the eyes fixed upon her, grown used to the shade, her hair was a headdress of bright scarlet and her face a mask of ebony slashed with blue. The line of the ridge cut her in two, the red sun-baked earth and the white sky set above it. She took a single step forward, and those nearest fell back as though she exerted a physical force upon them. Still no one spoke. Namoke began to move forward through the silenced crowd. Her eyes widened as he broke through the bodies that were pressed together in their efforts to keep a protective distance between themselves and her, a living ju-ju that confronted and dazzled them. He sensed the force of her through them, how she lay coiled inside the painted body, strong and untouchable like a python’s muscle. Her breath filled their lungs, pumping them full so that if she were to hiss and suck, they would collapse, fall to the ground as sucked-out skins, Nri taking back their spirits. … She was more powerful now, Namoke realized. She stepped forward again, raised and extended an arm, the movement carving her own shape out of the stony air. Her fingers corked their straining ears, and she had only to pull them out for the words to flood their heads and come pouring out of their mouths. They were caged apart from one another and bound together only by the snaking arm that reached out of her and gripped them, each one held singly—she was pivoting, her limbs motionless, as though her spine were a stake stabbing deep into the earth, where Ala grasped and twirled it slowly between the strong white pads of her fingers. So she turned slowly between the River to her left and the forest to her right and had she spoken an instant sooner, Namoke reflected later, they would have formed the shape of her compulsion, falling beneath her shadow in exact congruence with it; her image casting a hard island of darkness into the bright soft soil of the palaver, where they were all sinking, the Eze-Ada’s redoubt. … And yet.
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 72