Arrow of God (The African Trilogy 3)

‘I salute you all.’ It was like the salute of an enraged Mask. ‘When an adult is in the house the she-goat is not left to suffer the pains of parturition on its tether. That is what our ancestors have said. But what have we seen here today? We have seen people speak because they are afraid to be called cowards. Others have spoken the way they spoke because they are hungry for war. Let us leave all that aside. If in truth the farmland is ours, Ulu will fight on our side. But if it is not we shall know soon enough. I would not have spoken again today if I had not seen adults in the house neglecting their duty. Ogbuefi Egonwanne, as one of the three oldest men in Umuaro, should have reminded us that our fathers did not fight a war of blame. But instead of that he wants to teach our emissary how to carry fire and water in the same mouth. Have we not heard that a boy sent by his father to steal does not go stealthily but breaks the door with his feet? Why does Egonwanne trouble himself about small things when big ones are overlooked? We want war. How Akukalia speaks to his mother’s people is a small thing. He can spit into their face if he likes. When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it? I salute you all.’

Akukalia and his two companions set out for Okperi at cock-crow on the following day. In his goatskin bag he carried a lump of white chalk and a few yellow palm fronds cut from the summit of the tree before they had unfurled to the sun. Each man also carried a sheathed matchet.

The day was Eke, and before long Akukalia and his companions began to pass women from all the neighbouring villages on their way to the famous Eke Okperi market. They were mostly women from Elumelu and Abame who made the best pots in all the surrounding country. Everyone carried a towering load of five or six or even more big water pots held together with a net of ropes on a long basket, and seemed in the half light like a spirit with a fantastic head.

As the men of Umuaro passed company after company of these market women they talked about the great Eke market in Okperi to which folk from every part of Igbo and Olu went.

‘It is the result of an ancient medicine,’ Akukalia explained. ‘My mother’s people are great medicine-men.’ There was pride in his voice. ‘At first Eke was a very small market. Other markets in the neighbourhood were drawing it dry. Then one day the men of Okperi made a powerful deity and placed their market in its care. From that day Eke grew and grew until it became the biggest market in these parts. This deity which is called Nwanyieke is an old woman. Every Eke day before cock-crow she appears in the market place with a broom in her right hand and dances round the vast open space beckoning with her broom in all directions of the earth and drawing folk from every land. That is why people will not come near the market before cock-crow; if they did they would see the ancient lady in her task.’

‘They tell the same story of the Nkwo market beside the great river at Umuru,’ said one of Akukalia’s companions. ‘There the medicine has worked so well that the market no longer assembles only on Nkwo days.’

‘Umuru is no match for my mother’s people in medicine,’ said Akukalia. ‘Their market has grown because the white man took his merchandise there.’

‘Why did he take his merchandise there,’ asked the other man, ‘if not because of their medicine? The old woman of the market has swept the world with her broom, even the land of the white men where they say the sun never shines.’

‘Is it true that one of their women in Umuru went outside without the white hat and melted like sleeping palm oil in the sun?’ asked the other companion.

‘I have also heard it,’ said Akukalia. ‘But many lies are told about the white man. It was once said that he had no toes.’

As the sun rose the men came to the disputed farmland. It had not been cultivated for many years and was thick with browned spear grass.

‘I remember coming with my father to this very place to cut grass for our thatches,’ said Akukalia. ‘It is a thing of surprise to me that my mother’s people are claiming it today.’

‘It is all due to the white man who says, like an elder to two fighting children: You will not fight while I am around. And so the younger and weaker of the two begins to swell himself up and to boast.’

‘You have spoken the truth,’ said Akukalia. ‘Things like this would never have happened when I was a young man, to say nothing of the days of my father. I remember all this very well,’ he waved over the land. ‘That ebenebe tree over there was once hit by thunder, and people cutting thatch under it were hurled away in every direction.’

‘What you should ask them,’ said the other companion who had spoken very little since they set out,

‘what they should tell us is why, if the land was indeed theirs, why they let us farm it and cut thatch from it for generation after generation, until the white man came and reminded them.’

‘It is not our mission to ask them any question, except the one question which Umuaro wants them to answer,’ said Akukalia. ‘And I think I should remind you again to hold your tongues in your hand when we get there and leave the talking to me. They are very difficult people; my mother was no exception. But I know what they know. If a man of Okperi says to you come, he means run away with all your strength. If you are not used to their ways you may sit with them from cock-crow until roosting-time and join in their talk and their food, but all the while you will be floating on the surface of the water. So leave them to me because when a man of cunning dies a man of cunning buries him.’

The three emissaries entered Okperi about the time when most people finished their morning meal. They made straight for the compound of Uduezue, the nearest living relation to Akukalia’s mother. Perhaps it was the men’s unsmiling faces that told Uduezue, or maybe Okperi was not altogether unprepared for the mission from Umuaro. Nevertheless Uduezue asked them about their people at home.

‘They are well,’ replied Akukalia impatiently. ‘We have an urgent message which we must give to the rulers of Okperi at once.’

‘True?’ asked Uduezue. ‘I was saying to myself: What could bring my son and his people all this way so early? If my sister, your mother, were still alive, I would have thought that something had happened to her.’ He paused for a very little while. ‘An important mission; yes. We have a saying that a toad does not run in the day unless something is after it. I do not want to delay your mission, but I must offer you a piece of kolanut.’ He made to rise.

‘Do not worry yourself. Perhaps we shall return after our mission. It is a big load on our head, and until we put it down we cannot understand anything we are told.’

‘I know what it is like. Here is a piece of white clay then. Let me agree with you and leave the kolanut until you return.’

But the men declined even to draw lines on the floor with the clay. After that there was nothing else to say. They had rebuffed the token of goodwill between host and guest, their mission must indeed be grave.

Uduezue went into his inner compound and soon returned with his goatskin bag and sheathed matchet. ‘I shall take you to the man who will receive your message,’ he said.

He led the way and the others followed silently. They passed an ever-thickening crowd of market people. As the planting season was near many of them carried long baskets of seed-yams. Some of the men carried goats also in long baskets. But now and again there was a man clutching a fowl; such a man never trod the earth firmly, especially when he was a man who had known better times. Many of the women talked boisterously as they went; the silent ones were those who had come from far away and had exhausted themselves. Akukalia thought he recognized some of the towering headloads of water pots they had left behind on their way.

Akukalia had not visited his mother’s land for about three years and he now felt strangely tender towards it. When as a little boy he had first come here with his mother he had wondered why the earth and sand looked white instead of red-brown as in Umuaro. His mother had told him the reason was that in Okperi people washed every day and were clean while in Umuaro they never touched water for the whole four days of the week. His mother was very harsh to him and very quarrelsome, but now Akukalia felt tender even towards her.

Uduezue took his three visitors to the house of Otikpo, the town-crier of Okperi. He was in his obi preparing seed-yams for the market. He rose to greet his visitors. He called Uduezue by his name and title and called Akukalia Son of our Daughter. He merely shook hands with the other two whom he did not know. Otikpo was very tall and of spare frame. He still looked like the great runner he had been in his youth.

He went into an inner room and returned with a rolled mat which he spread on the mud-bed for his visitors. A little girl came in from the inner compound calling, ‘Father, Father.’

‘Go away, Ogbanje,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see I have strangers?’

‘Nweke slapped me.’