“Eri had two sons,” the old man said. He might have been addressing the face that stared blindly up at him. “You remember their names, boy? Hmm?”
He blinked and struggled to clear his head. Two sons? Eri had one son. These were stories that everybody knew. One son. He was sure.
“Ifikuanim,” he answered. “He was the second Eze-Nri.”
The old man was nodding, gazing down at the image he had created. “The other had no name. Has a name now. But back then …”
He lifted the knife clear of the wax and placed it carefully back in the basket, then he held up the figure to the light. As he turned it slowly in his hands, the glow from the dying fire and the oil-lamps played over its scarified surface. The boy’s eyes ached, yet privately he marveled at the cleverness of the design. The tusk curving up the line of the chest was hardly more than a ridge and the otonsistaff mostly obscured by the arm that held it. The detail in the headdress was more suggestion than reality, and the leopard’s-head breastplate seemed to leap forward even though it was little more than a bulge with three holes in it. He counted fingers and toes. The ofo-twigs were a lump of wax with some grooves in it and yet uncannily realistic. It was the shadow that revealed these details, for when the old man moved it nearer the light, the figure appeared almost featureless. He tutted and frowned as he peered at it.
“Something wrong here,” the old man said. “You see that, boy?You see what’s wrong?” When he eventually shook his head, the old man regained his usual ill temper and began mocking him as before. “Can’t see it? It’s staring you in the face! What does the Eze-Nri look like? What do all Nri-people look like? Answer’s in front of your spotty little nose. …”
And so on and so forth. He was too tired to care. His eyes closed, and he knew that if he did not open them, the old man’s voice would drift away and the yammering, whining, goading mockery would fall silent. He wanted only to sleep now.
“What color is wax? Eh?” insisted the voice. A new tone, anger. At what? He did not care. Then the answer to his own question, spat out and succeeded by the silence of sleep:
“No color at all! Wax is the color of nothing. …”
They walked in single file, for the paths they followed were narrow channels cut through waist-high ferns; and they walked in silence, for each time any one of them uttered a word the old woman would stop and clench a fist in front of her mouth as though to catch the sound and strangle it. Diego never spoke in any case, but Bernardo seemed unable to comprehend this simple interdiction. Every few minutes he would turn to Salvestro, who was walking behind him, and the first syllable of some pent-up query would burst from his lips and be instantly quelled by the old woman’s increasingly vigorous gesture, so their conversation was effectively limited to “Wh…”
There was little to say in any case, and what there was had been said the previous night:
“She’s probably just keeping us here till the rest of them arrive.”
“Or fattening us up.”
“Or poisoning us.”
“We could just leave.”
“She’d follow us.”
“We’d have to kill her.”
“Or tie her up.”
“With what?”
“And where would we go?”
Silence. The flames of the fire, an eye-aching orange in the encircling darkness.
“So we’d better stay here?”
“At least till morning.”
“This meat isn’t bad.”
“What’s left?”
“Just the head.”
Chewing noises followed. Then some crunching, then sleep, and the next morning found all three following the old woman through the forest, up to their waists in a sea of ferns, arms flailing like three hapless canoeists: Salvestro and Bernardo without the least idea of where they were going or why they were going there, Diego locked in silence. Since attempting his speech by the river, he had not said a word. Monkeys chattered and crashed about in the branches high above their heads. Raucous birds shrieked and flew from perch to perch. The forest whirred and buzzed and chirruped and growled, and the little procession thrashed its way forward through fleshy fronds and tendrils, their sore feet padding down the path.
After an hour or more of this the ferns began to thin, then gave out altogether. The men’s legs reappeared, and the dim sunlight brightened as gaps opened in the topmost canopy, hard shafts and beams lancing the leaves of the lower trees. The forest grew quieter and the land rose in a gentle slope. At its summit the trees stopped and a vista opened before them.
Two diverging ridges ran forward in front of them, and between these the ground fell away, forming a ravine that deepened and widened, becoming a long valley whose wooded sides fell steeply to the floor far below. A ravine identical to the one they now overlooked formed the distant end of the valley that was thus shaped like the hull of a sharp-prowed ship, or so it seemed to Salvestro. The canopies of the trees merged together to coat its sides and bottom in green. Like moss, he thought. Or, remembering the Lucia, mold. Here and there thin plumes of smoke rose up. Something glittered. Water?
“Where are we?” Bernardo asked finally, and this time the old woman did not gesture for him to be silent.
He looked to Salvestro for an answer, but Salvestro only shrugged. They had not crossed the river, which meant that they must be east of it. The back of the valley was still in shade, and from the position of the sun they were facing east now. The river was behind them. A steep valley was in front of them. Apart from these facts, he knew nothing. The old woman was beckoning for them to follow her down a path that ran at an angle off to the left and then disappeared into the trees lower down. Salvestro and Bernardo turned, but Diego simply stood there, motionless and transfixed. The woman beckoned again.
“Here,” Diego said.
Salvestro looked around in surprise at the breaking of the soldier’s silence. The old woman said something in her own tongue. Diego gazed into the valley.
“This is where I will find the beast,” he said.
Daughter…
Almost there now. The men had drifted back out of the forest in twos and threes, their fruitless pursuit abandoned and its fury expended. Their trails and noisy passages were wounds in the cool of the forest that healed as soon as made. She ran a finger down her cheek. They were shallow cuts, made for show.
Later still, when her brothers had stalked out of the hut and she and Namoke were alone, she turned her painted face to the older man, to her father’s brother. The residue of her contempt hung in the air between them.
“I had thought there would be a festival for your homecoming,” Namoke said eventually. “I imagined the mmo-men performing a masquerade for their Eze-Ada and the Nri-people sitting down to feast together. A great celebration. At other times I imagined you were dead. I could not see you. I could not see your life.” He shrugged wearily. “It was hard to believe you were dead, but it was harder to believe you were alive. And amongst the White-men. …”
“Yet you have not buried my father,” she said. “As the youngest son, Onugu might have washed his body in my place. It is permitted if there is no Eze-Ada, and if the men of the Nzemabua agree. My brothers wished it so, did they not? Who opposed them?”
“Anayamati would have wanted his daughter to wash his body, to calm his house. He is waiting for you now.”
“I have heard him,” she said. Namoke brought his head up sharply. “You are the leader of the Nzemabua,” she went on, ignoring his surprise. “Who else would speak for me? Alike? Ewenetem, perhaps?”
Namoke smiled. Alike and Ewenetem were notoriously taciturn.
“I need you to speak for me again. Nri-people need you to speak for me. Do you remember the Ijaw who told us of the White-men? The old man with his necklaces of shark’s teeth? You suspected even then, I know you did.”
Namoke was shaking his head. “Your brothers did not lie to you. It is an old story, hardly even a story. Our children chant it
at each other, not grown men and women. If I were to stand before the men of the Nzemabua and speak as you ask, they might think fondly of their childhoods, but they would not act. They would laugh, and I would laugh with them, all of us together at my foolishness.”
“And who will be the fools if it is true?” she demanded. “I know it, and so do you.”
“Even if it is true, who is to say these White-men are what you claim? They are few, and far away, and weak. …”
“So you call a palaver to talk about nothing? The Bini did not come here to fish in the River. The Ngola did not send his men to hunt pigs in the forest. They come to Nri-people as they always have, and what do we say then? That White-men fall from the sky? Anayamati sees them already in his dreaming. Soon they will be in Nri and he will know them as I do. What will Nri-people say then? What will they do?”
The vehemence in her voice had increased throughout this speech until she was almost shouting at her uncle, and at its conclusion the silence in the hut was heavier even than when her brothers had left. Namoke waited several long seconds before replying.
“Good question,” he commended her. “You always asked good questions, Usse, even as a little girl. Suppose the old story is true, and suppose the White-men are what you say they are, what will Nri-people say then? What will they do?”
He paused then, and she saw a strange expression pass across his face, recognition mixed with something else. Disappointment, perhaps.
“I do not know, Usse. If what you say is true, I do not know what Nri-people should do. I am not your father. I am not the Eze-Nri. I know of no rite that would cleanse this stain.”
“Yes, you do,” she said quietly.
Namoke shook his head, puzzled by her now. There were rites to make the yam grow, and the coco- and oil-palm, rites for the rain, and the drought, and the flood. There were rites for the birth of children and the death of old men. There were rites to erect taboos and others to demolish them, thousands upon thousands, which only Nri-people knew and only Nri-people might perform. There were rites to cleanse the land of any stain that might fall upon it. … But not the one she urged on him now. His eyes narrowed in concentration, watching her across the fire as she began to recite the chant that he had not sung since childhood, speaking the words at first, then intoning them in a singsong voice, like a child, gradually adding emphases until the simple rhythm asserted itself by force of repetition, for every verse was identical in form: a question followed by a response, and the latter growing more insistent as the chant went on, for although the questions were all different the answer was always the same.
“Enyi knows, Enyi knows,” Usse sang to her uncle, over and over again.
Daughter…?
The Ndi Mili Nnu cared more for their boats than their homes, Namoke reflected, looking across the water. The low windbreak they had built on the north side of the sandbank only goaded the harmattan, which gusted down the River, met the inadequate obstacle, and tumbled over it chaotically to assault their roughly thatched bivouacs. Raffia mats used to patch holes in the roofs flapped and luffed in the stiffening breeze as though threatening to carry off the ramshackle shelters and send them skidding over the River’s glare or lift them high into the haze-white sky, a flock of lumpish, disintegrating birds molting bamboo poles and palm leaves. Their inhabitants disdained them, except to sleep. They preferred to gather about their boats, for which they had driven heavy stakes deep into the sand of the temporary island to serve as mooring posts. The Ndi Mili Nnu were wary of land. Rains would dissolve it and redeposit it elsewhere. The River’s flood was more constant than its banks, its annual destruction more dependable. Soon the late echo of that flood would wash away the island on which they were camped just as it always did. The sand was a distant and colorless strip against the prickling glitter of the River, visible at all from this bank only because of the antlike figures shifting about upon it as they readied their craft for the daily crossing to the palaver. The first of them were already pushing out into the water, angling their pirogues counter to the current and directing them along a shallow arc that brought them invariably to the exact mud-flat that they favored. Namoke watched them until he could see the water spilling off their paddles. Behind him, the obiri was already loud with the mixed pidgins that the tribes used amongst themselves. He felt his unease rise again. The men of the Nzemabua would meet in Chima’s compound, in the village itself and out of earshot of the palaver. He had told Usse that the decision she sought would mean nothing without the Eze-Nri. It had been his last argument. She had smiled and said only that the Eze-Nri was not so far away as he thought. Anayamati’s successor already chosen? Her words might mean anything or nothing, but they had unsettled him all the same. Now he was waiting for Aguve and Ilonwagu and turned anxiously every few seconds to search for them amongst the men milling about below the ridge. A covered litter bobbed amidst little knots of people who stepped aside impatiently. The first of the Ndi Mili Nnu had landed and were dragging their pirogues up the mud-bank.
“Uncle.”
He turned quickly. The two men he awaited were standing before him. Usse stood between them. They exchanged greetings formally, and then he led the way along the short path that led to the village. Usse walked behind all three. This is how goats are herded, thought Namoke. Was this how she brought the White-men here? If all she had pressed on him was true, the three of them were already at Nri. And if that were true, it had already begun and there was no more time. She would sit beside him when he addressed the Nzemabua. She would not speak.
Although, ringed with the impassive countenances of his peers, men whom he had known since childhood, finding himself almost unnerved by the unfamiliar stoniness of the expressions on these familiar faces, he reached for Usse’s words, not his own. The sound of them as she had modulated between scorn and cajoling, pulling him forward only to push him away, then pull him in again, drawing him slowly toward the core of her belief. … He needed that now, not the words themselves, but the shape of them, that they should fit the world the silent men of the Nzemabua saw with their own eyes, stitch it together, and patch the rents in its fabric. To convince them. He began by speaking of Eri and his first son, which they would take for a conventional piety, nodding slowly as the story unfolded. Then he spoke of the second son, which was a story reserved by the men of Nzemabua, a secret they shared. It would draw them tighter together. He told them of the fight in the mud by the water-hole, speaking lightly as though he himself were unsure how much credence the tale deserved and moving back and forth over the protagonists and their actions, pointing out this or that detail or implication, recasting the story slowly, and even signaling that he was doing this by the repetition of stock phrases until their meaning began to shift and grow slippery; he would discard them then and adopt others. He spoke softly so that they would lean forward to catch the words. Usse sat at his side, motionless and silent as she had promised.
He said, “When the White-men came, the Ijaws knew what they were. The Bini knew too, and the Calabaris, and the Ife-people. The Ngola and the Mani Kongo were in no doubt. Nor the Aworo of the Esie, nor the Attah of Idah. They all knew. …” He paused there and looked around the ring of faces. “But, as we know from the wise discussions in the obiri, they all knew very differently. …
Most of the younger men smiled. He caught Onugu’s eye on the far side of the circle. He could entertain them now, if he chose. He could tap their frustration at the quarrels and shouting matches they had endured in the thick of the obiri. Or he could touch on their unease.
“Only Nri-people were mystified, asking, What are these White-men?” He said this in a wondering tone, weighing the moment, gauging their readiness. “Only the people who most should have known, as though we had forgotten our own oldest stories. As though we no longer believed them and left them instead for little children to sing and then discard when they come of age. Well, we are all of age now. Some of us a little more than that. …”
This time no one smiled. They were wavering between caution and curiosity, and underneath Namoke sensed a strange eagerness. Had they been waiting for one of their number to break the silence? He could not stop. This was the last part, the piece that fitted exactly with all that he had already said and all that they had accepted. He felt their different attentions variously sweep over him or fix upon him or float freely, uncaptured as yet. The words themselves were almost beside the point. He guided himself forward by the ebb and flow of his audience, its sympathies and antipathies, feeling his way forward. He began to speak of Ezodu. His gaze moved steadily around the circle—Alike, Enweleani, Obalike, Ewenetem, Usse’s brothers next to him, Onugu, Apia, Gbujo, then Nwamkpo, Oniojo, Aguve, Ilonwagu, and so all the way around until the only member of the Nzemabua he could not see was its speaker: himself.
He had not been able to read them, he remembered later. He had believed he had lost them, although his voice had held the level note he had first struck, held its suasive equilibrium. And the resolution they were coming to was inevitable in any case and independent of his efforts. With hindsight, the rite had already begun, the call to gather the beasts was already ringing through the obiri, already unstoppable. Anayamati and his willful daughter. … But, in Chima’s compound, their faces had told him nothing. He talked and was heard. He saw eyes flick side ways rather than meet his own. He sensed distraction. They were drifting, or being drawn away, as though a malevolent dibia were at his invisible work, burying chicken claws and muttering gibberish. They were not watching him. In fact, he realized with a start, they were paying him no attention at all.
Their eyes were fixed on Usse, who had not moved or uttered a word. At first he thought she was staring at her brothers, for her face was turned to them, but her gaze either stopped short of their faces or continued on past them, through the mud-wall behind their backs and the village outside. Or it was turned in upon herself. She was sealed off from them, an echo sounding to herself, and they could do no more than press their palms to the walls of her chamber in search of its resonance.
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 75