Arrow of God (The African Trilogy 3)

Akuebue rose half-erect with his right hand on the knee and the left palm opened towards Ezeulu. ‘I will not dispute with you,’ he said. ‘You have the yam and you have the knife.’

Ezeulu transferred two spoonfuls of the snuff from his own palm into Akuebue’s and then brought out some more from the bottle for himself.

‘It is good snuff,’ said Akuebue. One of his nostrils carried brown traces of the powder. He took another small heap from his cupped left hand on to his right thumbnail and guided it to the other nostril, throwing his head back and sniffing three or four times. Then he had traces on both nostrils. Ezeulu used the ivory spoon instead of his thumbnail.

‘I do not buy my snuff in the market,’ said Ezeulu; ‘that is why.’

Edogo came in dangling a calabash of palm wine from a short rope tied round its neck. He saluted Akuebue and his father and set down the calabash.

‘I did not know that you had palm wine,’ said Ezeulu.

‘It has just been sent by the owner of the door I am carving.’

‘And why do you bring it in the presence of this my friend who took over the stomach of all his dead relatives?’

‘But I have not heard Edogo say it was meant for you.’ He turned to Edogo and asked: ‘Or did you say so?’ Edogo laughed and said it was meant for two of them.

Akuebue brought out a big cow’s horn from his bag and hit it thrice on the floor. Then he rubbed its edges with his palm to remove dirt. Ezeulu brought out his horn from the bag beside him and held it for Edogo to fill. When he had served him he took the calabash to Akuebue and also filled his horn. Before they drank Ezeulu and Akuebue tipped a little on to the floor and muttered a barely audible invitation to their fathers.

‘My body is full of aches,’ said Ezeulu, ‘and I do not think that palm wine is good for me yet.’

‘I can tell you it is not,’ said Akuebue who had gulped down the first horn and screwed up his face as though waiting for a sound inside his head to tell him whether it was good wine or not.

Edogo took his father’s horn from him and filled himself a measure. Oduche came in then, saluted his father and Akuebue and sat down with Nwafo on the mud-seat. Since he joined the white man’s religion he always wore a loincloth of towelling material instead of the thin strip of cloth between the legs. Edogo filled the horn again and offered him but he did not drink. ‘What about you, Nwafo?’ asked Edogo. He also said no.

‘When is it you are going to Okperi?’ Ezeulu asked.

‘The day after tomorrow.’

‘For how long?’

‘They say for two markets.’

Ezeulu seemed to be turning this over in his mind.

‘What are you going for?’ asked Akuebue.

‘They want to test our knowledge of the holy book.’

Akuebue shrugged his shoulders.

‘I am not sure that you will go,’ said Ezeulu. ‘But let the days pass and I shall decide.’ Nobody said anything in reply. Oduche knew enough about his father not to protest. Akuebue drank another horn of wine and began to gnash his teeth. The voice he had been waiting for had spoken and pronounced the wine good. He knocked the horn on the floor a few times and prayed as he did so.

‘May the man who tapped this wine have life to continue his good work. May those of us who drank it also have life. The land of Olu and the land of Igbo.’ He rubbed the edges of his horn before putting it away in his bag.

‘Drink one horn more,’ said Edogo.

Akuebue rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand before replying.

‘The only medicine against palm wine is the power to say no.’ This statement seemed to bring Ezeulu back to the people around him.

‘Before you came in,’ he said to Akuebue, ‘I was telling that little boy over there that the greatest liar among men still speaks the truth to his own son.’

‘It is so,’ said Akuebue. ‘A man can swear before the most dreaded deity on what his father told him.’

‘If a man is not sure of the boundary between his land and his neighbour’s,’ continued Ezeulu, ‘he tells his son: I think it is here but if there is a dispute do not swear before a deity.’

‘It is even so,’ said Akuebue.