Telling Times

by Nadine Gordimer

  Okonkwo is just beginning to be able to reconcile himself to – thrust aside – his part in the death of Ikemefuna when his favourite daughter, Ezinma, of whom he thinks so proudly that he has paid her the highest compliment in wishing that she were a boy, falls ill. Iba – malaria – does not respond to the treatment Okonkwo and her mother Ekwefi, one of his wives, give her. With this event, Ekwefi emerges from the wings where so far the village women have remained while men take the centre stage in the story. She is to be the first of a series of women characters, each growing in the author’s intuition of women and recognition of their qualities, their pilgrimage towards the self-realisation that is equality with men in life’s decisions and activities, which was to culminate in the character of Beatrice in his 1987 novel Anthills of the Savannah. Bearing and rearing children is the purpose and dignity allotted to women in Umuofia society. Achebe, the most honest of writers, simply allows us our own judgement of the facts: the fate of local women. Ekwefi has borne ten children and all but Ezinma died in infancy; it is his other wives who have given Okonkwo sons. Ekwefi’s suffering speaks for itself in her natural, dramatic, poetic lament:

  Her deepening despair found expression in the names she gave her children. One of them was a pathetic cry, Onwumbiko – ‘Death, I implore you’. But Death took no notice; Onwumbiko died. The next child was a girl, Ozoemena – ‘May it not happen again’. She died, and two others after her. Ekwefi then became defiant and called her next child Onwuma – ‘Death may please himself’. And he did.

  So Ezinma at ten years old is the single survivor, best beloved of both parents. It is generally accepted in the village that she is an ogbanje. The concept is rather like that of karma: one who dies in one life returns to live again. But here the rebirth represents a curse.

  Some of them [the children] did become tired of their evil rounds of birth and death, or took pity on their mothers and stayed. Ekwefi believed deep inside her that Ezinma had come to stay … a medicine man had dug up Ezinma’s iya-uwa. The iya-uwa was the bond with the world of ogbanje, and the discovery meant that the bond had been broken.

  But Ezinma’s latest grave illness suggests that the iya-uwa might not have been the genuine one. In desperation the parents summon the medicine man, Okagbue, to find out from the child where it is believed she herself has buried her real iya-uwa. Ezinma leads Okagbue, her parents and a following crowd on a wild-goose chase (perhaps mischievously!) beyond the village and then back again to an orange tree beside her father’s obi. The medicine man digs a pit there so deep that he can no longer be seen by the tense crowd. Finally, he throws out a rag on his hoe; some women run away in fear. Ceremoniously he unties the rag and the fetish, a smooth, shiny pebble, falls out. ‘“Is this yours?” he asked Ezinma. “Yes,” she replied. All the women shouted with joy because Ekwefi’s trials were at last ended.’ But Achebe, weaving his diviner’s creative texture of life back and forth, suddenly announces that all this happened a year before the point at which his narrative has arrived now, and Ezinma is once more shivering with iba. This time, Okonkwo cures the attack with an inhalation brewed from grasses, roots and barks of medicinal trees. Natural science, rationality, has won over superstition.

  The presence of the supernatural, however, in its particular forms is among and embodied in the Umuofians’ daily life just as the supernatural, in their particular forms of belief, is embodied in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and other beliefs.

  One of the forms the supernatural takes in Umuofia is the ancestors in the guise of – inhabiting, it is believed – a masquerade of men which among other purposes, administers justice in disputes. The law: not in the judge’s wig and gown, but the fearsome appearance of the egwugwu, ancestral spirits emerging from a sacred hut to sound of drums and flutes. The masquerade faced ‘away from the crowd, who saw only its backs with the many coloured patterns and drawings’ of their masquerade costumes. We can see some of these costumes today in many of the museums of the world, and they are recalled to us from books on African art, for they are recognised as a spectacular and profound art form. Symbolic, like all religious art, they represent, as one of the crowd gathered says, ‘what is beyond our knowledge’.

  The case to be heard by the representatives of the ancestors this time is a commonplace enough one: a wife and children have been abducted from her husband by her family. He demands that they shall return the bride-price he paid for her.

  A member of her family, Odukwe, declares what the man has said is true; but what is also true is that ‘My in-law, Uzowulu, is a beast … no single day passed in the sky without his beating the woman … when she was pregnant, he beat her until she miscarried.’

  Uzowulu shouts: ‘It is a lie. She miscarried after she had gone to sleep with her lover.’

  To roars of laughter from the crowd, Odukwe, no mincer of words, continues: the wife may be allowed to return to her husband ‘on the understanding that if he ever beats her again we shall cut off his genitals for him.’

  And one elder in the crowd says to another, ‘I don’t know why such a trifle should come before the egwugwu.’ Here is Achebe delighting in puncturing solemnity with a sly aside.

  The interaction between the lively, happy daily life of the village, centred by Achebe on Okonkwo’s family, and the ever-present darkness of supernatural beliefs beneath it continues at this pre-colonial stage in the community’s history. The reader is listening in to a cosy, wonderful evening of story-telling exchange between Ezinma and her mother when the graphic legend of the Tortoise, who names himself ‘All of You’, who engages with the birds, named ‘People of The Sky’, is shattered by the arrival of Chielo, priestess of the god Agbala. She claims Ezinma as ‘her daughter’ and declares that Agbala demands that the child come to him ‘in his house in the hills and the caves’. Okonkwo protests; the priestess screams, ‘Beware Okonkwo! Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god is speaking?’

  There follows an exciting night-long ordeal of tension and dread as the priestess, with Ezinma on her back, takes the trail, terrified Ekwefi following. The priestess and Ezinma disappear into a narrow cave mouth. Ekwefi vows that if she hears Ezinma cry out she will ‘rush into the cave to defend her against all the gods in the world. She would die with her.’ Okonkwo has decided to follow: he suddenly appears and they wait together until dawn. Achebe understands so well the curious process by which memory distracts, sustainingly, from the most fearful events. Beside Okonkwo, Ekwefi finds herself thinking of their youth. Another dawn: she was going to fetch water. His house was on the way to the stream. She knocked at his door. ‘Even in those days he was a man of few words. He just carried her to his bed and in the darkness began to feel around her waist for the loose end of her cloth.’

  Achebe leaves us in suspense, on that intimate pause. The story is taken up surprisingly next day: Okonkwo’s friend Obierika is celebrating a joyous occasion, the wedding of his daughter: life goes on; whatever fears and disasters threaten individuals, the yam and the knife eternally contend. For Okonkwo, tragedy has been averted: we learn, as the preparations for the feast begin, that Ezinma is sleeping safely in her bed – the priestess brought her back and laid her there, unharmed. On the turning wheel of human life, the festive scene of the wedding is followed by another ceremony in the cycle, the funeral of a man who had the distinction of having taken three anklet titles out of the four created by the clan. Okonkwo is among the men who, to drumming and dancing, fire a last salute to the dead dignitary. Then comes ‘a cry of agony and shouts of horror. It was as if a spell had been cast.’ And it is as if a spell has been cast on Okonkwo: his gun has exploded and killed the dead man’s sixteen-year-old son. Achebe does not, and doesn’t have to remind us of the echo here of the other crime Okonkwo was led into by circumstance – the final death-blow he gave Ikemefuna – we hear it.

  ‘The only course open to Okonkwo was to flee from the clan. It was a crime against the earth goddess to ki
ll a clansman … the crime was of two kinds, male and female. Okonkwo had committed the female, because it had been inadvertent. He could return to the clan after seven years.’

  Seven years.

  Okonkwo has become an exile; of a kind. For he takes his wives and children to the village of Mbanta, from where his mother came and where she was returned for burial. He is well received by his mother’s kinspeople, given land, helped to build an obi and huts for his family, supplied with seed-yams. ‘… but it was like beginning life anew … like learning to become left-handed … his life had been ruled by a great passion – to become one of the lords’ in his clan in Umuofia. ‘That had been his life-spring. And he had all but achieved it. Then everything had been broken.’ To Okonkwo, personally, has come to pass this prophecy of Achebe’s title Things Fall Apart.

  The second section of the novel is taken up in the second year of Okonkwo’s exile. The white man makes his real, ominous entry this time. A visit of an old friend from Umuofia brings news of the destruction of their neighbouring village, Abame.

  During the last planting season a white man had appeared in their clan.

  ‘An albino’ suggested Okonkwo.

  ‘He was not an albino. He was quite different. He was riding an iron horse. The first people who saw him ran away; but he stood beckoning to them … The elders consulted their Oracle and it told them that the strange man would break their clan and spread destruction among them … And so they killed the white man and tied his iron horse to their sacred tree because it looked as if it would run away to call the man’s friends. It was said that other white men were on their way.’

  They were indeed; they came to the market day and killed everyone there. Okonkwo’s friend Obierika says

  ‘We have heard stories about white men who made the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no-one thought the stories were true.’

  ‘There is no story that is not true’ said someone else. ‘The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.’

  Two years pass once again. The white man, in the person of missionaries, has come to both Umuofia and Mbanta. Okonkwo’s son has appeared in Umuofia as a convert. Obierika comes to Mbanta to tell Okonkwo that when he asked Nwoye ‘“How is your father?” Nwoye said, “I don’t know. He is not my father.”’ But Okonkwo does not want to speak of the son who has rejected his origin for God the Father.

  Achebe, having dropped this bombshell, reels the story back to create the scene of the arrival of the missionaries, which has already taken place. The event is bitingly hilarious. When they had all gathered the white man began to speak to them. He spoke through an interpreter who was an Ibo man. Many people laughed at the way the white man appeared ‘evidently’ to be using words strangely. According to the interpretation, instead of saying ‘myself’ he always said ‘my buttocks’. But he was a man of commanding presence and the clansmen listened attentively.

  He said he was one of them … The white man was also their brother because they were all sons of God. And he told them about this new God, the creator of all the world and all the men and women. He told them they worshipped false gods, gods of wood and stone … the true God lived on high and that all men when they died went before him for judgement.

  ‘We have been sent by this great God to ask you to leave your wicked ways and false gods and turn to Him so that you may be saved when you die.’

  ‘Your buttocks understand our language,’ said someone light-heartedly and the crowd laughed.

  When the white missionary speaks of the Son of God,

  Okonkwo, who only stayed [at the gathering] in the hope that it might come to chasing the men out of the village or whipping them, now said: ‘You told us with your own mouth that there was only one god. Now you talk about his son. He must have a wife, then.’

  The crowd agreed.… ‘Your buttocks said he had a son,’ said the joker. ‘So he must have a wife and all of them must have buttocks.’

  But Nwoye, that day, had been impressed and moved. ‘It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question … the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.’

  The missionaries ask for land to build a church and the elders give them land – in the Evil Forest, where were buried people who died of evil diseases, and which was the dumping ground for the potent fetishes of great medicine men when they died. ‘They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which to show their victory.’

  The missionaries begin to build their church; ‘The inhabitants of Mbanta expected them all to be dead within four days.’ None of them died. ‘And then it was known that the white man’s fetish had unbelievable power. It was said that he wore glasses on his eyes so that he could see and talk to evil spirits.’ Nevertheless, the missionaries begin to make converts.

  Nwoye kept his attraction to the new faith secret, for fear of his father. But someone sees Nwoye among the Christians and reports this. When the boy comes home Okonkwo is overcome with fury and grips him by the neck.

  ‘Where have you been.’ [Nwoye struggles to free himself.] ‘Answer me!’ roared Okonkwo, ‘Before I kill you!’ [He seizes a stick and gives the boy savage blows.]

  ‘Leave that boy at once’ said a voice in the outer compound. It was Okonkwo’s uncle, Uchendu. ‘Are you mad?’

  Okonkwo did not answer. But he left hold of Nwoye, who walked away and never returned.

  The conflict between the white man’s religion and the religion of the Ibo people of Umuofia and Mbanta is personified for Okonkwo in Nwoye, a Christian convert now at a missionary school in Umuofia from which Okonkwo is exiled. ‘… his son’s crime stood out in stark enormity. To abandon the gods of one’s father and go about with a lot of effeminate men clucking like old hens was the very depth of abomination. Suppose when he died all his male children decided to follow Nwoye’s steps and abandon their ancestors?’

  But his distress is soon to go beyond the defection of his son. Animosity and hostile acts between the Christian missionaries and converts and the people of Mbanta was threatening to disrupt the entire way of life. And ‘… stories were gaining ground that the white man had not only brought a religion but also a government. It was said that they had built a place of judgment in Umuofia to protect the followers of their religion. It was even said that they had hanged one man who killed a missionary.’ In these observations and rumours of the Ibos Achebe brings alive to the reader how what goes under the Western label ‘colonialism’ – the guise of conquest by means other than war itself – was seen, realised, experienced by the people themselves: how they visualised the church and the courthouse in their own words, their own ideas of social order. Okonkwo becomes active among the elders in their response to church and court. The decision finally is made to ostracise the Christian converts: the unity that had existed in each village through countless generations is fractured.

  At this time Okonkwo’s seven years of exile are about to end. After the cassava harvest he announces his farewell.

  ‘I am calling a feast because I have the wherewithal. I cannot live on the bank of a river and wash my hands with spittle. My mother’s people have been good to me and I must show my gratitude.’ And so three goats were slaughtered and a number of fowls … It was like a wedding feast. There was foo-foo and yam pottage, egusi soup and bitter-leaf soup and pots and pots of palm wine.

  An elder makes a speech. ‘A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes … We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so. You may ask why I am saying all this. I say it because I fear for the younger generation, for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship. You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. And what i
s the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers. He can curse the gods of his father and his ancestors, like a hunter’s dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan.’

  Okonkwo has returned from exile.

  … seven years was a long time to be away from one’s clan. A man’s place was not always there, waiting for him. As soon as he left, someone else rose and filled it. The clan was like a lizard: if it lost its tail it soon grew another … He knew that he had lost the chance to lead his warlike clan against the new religion, which he was told, had gained ground. He had lost the years in which he might have taken the highest titles in the clan. But some of these losses were not irreparable. He would return with a flourish, and regain the seven wasted years … the first thing he would do would be to rebuild his compound on a more magnificent scale.

  If Nwoye is a traitor whose existence is no longer recognised by his father, that father would show his wealth by initiating his five other sons in the ozo society. ‘Only the really great men in the clan were able to do this. Okonkwo saw clearly the high esteem in which he would be held, and he saw himself taking the highest title in the land.’ Among his sons and daughters Ezinma is still his favourite child and he continues to wish she were a boy; as a compensation for what her strong character could have achieved as his son he envisages that her beauty and personality will attract a son-in-law who would be a ‘man of authority within the clan’.

  Returning to his clan and village, Okonkwo seems to have left behind, along with the years of exile, the Mbata elder’s fearful warning. Okonkwo’s vision of re-establishment is that within the traditional society which has in reality changed irreparably – the tail the lizard has grown is not the same as that of the old body grown whole again. There are many men and women in Umuofia who realise that ‘The white man had indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he had also built a trading store and for the first time palm oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed in Umuofia.’ They have entered the world of production not only for their own consumption, but for sale and profit. ‘… And even in the matter of religion there was a growing feeling that there might be something in it after all, something vaguely akin to method in the overwhelming madness.’