Arrow of God

by Chinua Achebe

  ‘Why not ask Nweke Ukpaka to run for you?’

  ‘I knew about Nweke Ukpaka when I came to you. I even passed by his house.’

  Obika considered the matter.

  ‘There are many people who can do it,’ said Aneto. ‘But he whose name is called again and again by those trying in vain to catch a wild bull has something he alone can do to bulls.’

  ‘True,’ said Obika. ‘I agree but I am agreeing in cowardice.’

  ‘If I say no,’ Obika told himself, ‘they will say that Ezeulu and his family have revealed a second time their determination to wreck the burial of their village man who did no harm to them.’

  He did not tell his wife that he would be going out that night until he had eaten his evening meal. Obika always went into his wife’s hut to eat his meals. His friends teased him about it and said the woman had spoilt his head. Okuata was polishing off the soup in her bowl when Obika spoke. She crooked her first finger once more, wiped the bowl with it, stretched it again and ran it down her tongue.

  ‘Going out with this fever?’ she asked. ‘Obika, have pity on yourself. The funeral is tomorrow. What is there they cannot do without you until morning?’

  ‘I shall not stay long. Aneto is my age mate and I must go and see how he is preparing.’

  Okuata maintained a sullen silence.

  ‘Bar the door well. Nobody will carry you away. I shall not stay long.’

  The ekwe-ogbazulobodo sounded kome kome kokome kome kokome and continued for a while warning anyone still awake to hurry up to bed and put out every light because light and ogbazulobodo were mortal enemies. When it had beaten long enough for all to hear it stopped. Silence and the shrill call of insects seized the night again. Obika and the others who would carry the ayaka spirit-chorus sat on the lowest rung of the okwolo steps talking and laughing. The man who beat the ekwe joined them, leaving his drum in the half-light of the palm-oil torch.

  When the ekwe began to beat out the second and final warning Obika was still talking with the others as though it did not concern him. The old man, Ozumba, who kept the regalia of the night spirits took a position near the drummer. Then he raised his cracked voice and called ugoli four or five times as if to clear the cobweb from it. Then he asked if Obika was there. Obika looked in his direction and saw him vaguely in the weak light. Slowly and deliberately he got up and went to Ozumba, and stood before him. Ozumba bent down and took up a skirt made of a network of rope and heavily studded with rattling ekpili. Obika raised both arms above his head so that Ozumba could tie the skirt round his waist without hindrance. When this was done Ozumba waved his arms about like a blind man until they struck the iron staff. He pulled it out of the ground and placed it in Obika’s right hand. The ekwe continued to beat in the half-light of the palm-oil torch. Obika closed his hand tight on the staff and clenched his teeth. Ozumba allowed him a little time to prepare himself fully. Then very slowly he lifted the ike-agwu-ani necklace. The ekwe beat faster and faster. Obika held his head forward and Ozumba put the ike-agwuani round his neck. As he did so he said:

  Tun-tun gem-gem

  s mgbada bu nugwu.

  The speed of the deer

  Is seen on the hill.

  As soon as these words left his mouth Ogbazulobodo swung round and cried: Ewo kuo! Ewo kuo! The drummer threw down his sticks and hastily blew out the offending light. The spirit planted the staff into the earth and it reverberated. He pulled it out again and vanished like the wind in the direction of Nkwo leaving potent words in the air behind.

  ‘The fly that struts around on a mound of excrement wastes his time; the mound will always be greater than the fly. The thing that beats the drum for ngwesi is inside the ground. Darkness is so great it gives horns to a dog. He who builds a homestead before another can boast more broken pots. It is ofo that gives rain-water power to cut dry earth. The man who walks ahead of his fellows spots spirits on the way. Bat said he knew his ugliness and chose to fly by night. When the air is fouled by a man on top of a palm tree the fly is confused. An ill-fated man drinks water and it catches in his teeth…’

  He was at once blind and full of sight. He did not see any of the landmarks like trees and huts but his feet knew perfectly where they were going; he did not leave out even one small path from the accustomed route. He knew it without the use of eyes. He only stopped once when he smelt light… ‘Even while people are still talking about the man Rat bit to death Lizard takes money to have his teeth filed. He who sees an old hag squatting should leave her alone; who knows how she breathes? White Ant chews igbegulu because it is lying on the ground; let him climb the palm tree and chew. He who will swallow udala seeds must consider the size of his anus. The fly that has no one to advise him follows the corpse into the ground…’

  A fire began to rage inside his chest and to push a dry bitterness up his mouth. But he tasted it from a distance or from a mouth within his mouth. He felt like two separate persons, one running above the other.

  ‘… When a handshake passes the elbow it becomes another thing. The sleep that lasts from one market day to another has become death. The man who likes the meat of the funeral ram, why does he recover when sickness visits him? The mighty tree falls and the little birds scatter in the bush… The little bird which hops off the ground and lands on an ant-hill may not know it but is still on the ground… A common snake which a man sees all alone may become a python in his eyes… The very Thing which kills Mother Rat is always there to make sure that its young ones never open their eyes… The boy who persists in asking what happened to his father before he has enough strength to avenge him is asking for his father’s fate… The man who belittles the sickness which Monkey has suff ered should ask to see the eyes which his nurse got from blowing the sick fire… When death wants to take a little dog it prevents it from smelling even excrement…’

  The eight men who would sing the ayaka chorus were still talking where Obika left them. Ozumba had come to sit with them to await his return. They were talking about the big bull which Amalu’s children had bought for his funeral when they heard the voice already coming back. The ayaka men scrambled to their feet and got ready to break into song as soon as Ogbazulobodo re-entered the ilo. They were all amazed that he was already returning. Had he left out any of the paths?

  ‘Not Obika,’ said Ozumba proudly. ‘He is a sharp one. Give me a sharp boy even though he breaks utensils in his haste.’

  This was hardly out of his mouth when Ogbazulobodo raced in and fell down at the foot of the okwolo. Ozumba removed the necklace from his neck and called his name. But Obika did not answer. He called again and touched his chest.

  They poured some of the cold water which was always kept handy over his face and body. The song of the ayaka had stopped as abruptly as it had started. They all stood around unable yet to talk.

  The first cock had not crowed. Ezeulu was still in his obi. The fire still glowed on the big logs but the flame had long gone out. Were those footsteps he was hearing? He listened carefully. Yes, they were getting louder, and voices too. He felt for his matchet. What could this be?

  ‘Who?’ he called. The footsteps stopped, and the voices. For a moment there was silence, heavy with the presence of the strangers outside in the dark.

  ‘People,’ said a voice.

  ‘Who is called people? My gun is loaded, let me warn people.’

  ‘Ezeulu, it is me, Ozumba.’

  ‘Ozumba.’

  ‘Eh.’

  ‘What brings you out at this time?’

  ‘An abomination has overtaken us. Goat has eaten palm leaves from off my head.’

  Ezeulu merely cleared his throat and began slowly to stoke the fire. ‘Let me build a fire to see your faces.’ One of the sticks of firewood was too long and he broke it across his knee. He blew the fire a few times and it broke into a flame.

  ‘Come in and let me hear what you are saying.’

  As soon as he saw Obika’s body coming in under the low eaves he sprang
to his feet and took up his matchet.

  ‘What happened to him? Who did this? I said who?’

  Ozumba began to explain but Ezeulu did not hear. The matchet fell from his hand and he slumped down on both knees beside the body. ‘My son,’ he cried. ‘Ulu, were you there when this happened to me?’ He hid his face on Obika’s chest.

  When the first light came nearly every arrangement had been made for the announcement of the death. The village death-drums were leaning against a wall. A bottle of gunpowder had been found and put aside. Ezeulu wandered up and down among the busy people trying to help. At one point he found the long broom they used paddle-wise to sweep the compound, took it up and began to sweep. But someone took it from him and led him by the hand back to his hut.

  ‘People will soon be here,’ he said weakly, ‘and the place is still unswept.’

  ‘Leave it to me. I shall find somebody to do it straight away.’

  Obika’s death shook Umuaro to the roots; a man like him did not come into the world too often. As for Ezeulu it was as though he had died.

  Some people expected Ezidemili to be jubilant. Such people did not know him. He was not that kind of man and besides he knew too well the danger of such exultation. All he was heard to say quietly was: ‘This should teach him how far he could dare next time.’

  But for Ezeulu there was no next time. Think of a man who, unlike lesser men, always goes to battle without a shield because he knows that bullets and matchet strokes will glance off his medicine-boiled skin; think of him discovering in the thick of battle that the power has suddenly, without warning, deserted him. What next time can there be? Will he say to the guns and the arrows and the matchets: Hold! I want to return quickly to my medicine-hut and stir the pot and find out what has gone wrong; perhaps someone in my household – a child, maybe – has unwittingly violated my medicine’s taboo? No.

  Ezeulu sank to the ground in utter amazement. It was not simply the blow of Obika’s death, great though it was. Men had taken greater blows: that was what made a man a man. For did they not say that a man is like a funeral ram which must take whatever beating comes to it without opening its mouth; that the silent tremor of pain down its body alone must tell of its suffering?

  At any other time Ezeulu would have been more than a match to his grief. He would have been equal to any pain not compounded with humiliation. But why, he asked himself again and again, why had Ulu chosen to deal thus with him, to strike him down and then cover him with mud? What was his offence? Had he not divined the god’s will and obeyed it? When was it ever heard that a child was scalded by the piece of yam its own mother put in its palm? What man would send his son with a potsherd to bring fire from a neighbour’s hut and then unleash rain on him? Who ever sent his son up the palm to gather nuts and then took an axe and felled the tree? But today such a thing had happened before the eyes of all. What could it point to but the collapse and ruin of all things? Then a god, finding himself powerless, might take flight and in one final, backward glance at his abandoned worshippers cry:

  If the rat cannot flee fast enough

  Let him make way for the tortoise!

  Perhaps it was the constant, futile throbbing of these thoughts that finally left a crack in Ezeulu’s mind. Or perhaps his implacable assailant having stood over him for a little while stepped on him as on an insect and crushed him under the heel in the dust. But this final act of malevolence proved merciful. It allowed Ezeulu, in his last days, to live in the haughty splendour of a demented high priest and spared him knowledge of the final outcome.

  Meanwhile Winterbottom, after a recuperative leave in England had returned to his seat and married the doctor. He did not ever hear of Ezeulu again. The only man who might have carried the story to Government Hill was John Nwodika, his steward. But John had since left Winterbottom’s service to set up a small trade in tobacco. It looked as though the gods and the powers of event finding Winterbottom handy had used him and left him again in order as they found him.

  So in the end only Umuaro and its leaders saw the final outcome. To them the issue was simple. Their god had taken sides with them against his headstrong and ambitious priest and thus upheld the wisdom of their ancestors – that no man however great was greater than his people; that no one ever won judgement against his clan.

  If this was so, then Ulu had chosen a dangerous time to uphold that truth for in destroying his priest he had also brought disaster on himself, like the lizard in the fable who ruined his mother’s funeral by his own hand. For a deity who chose a moment such as this to chastise his priest or abandon him before his enemies was inciting people to take liberties; and Umuaro was just ripe to do so. The Christian harvest which took place a few days after Obika’s death saw more people than even Goodcountry could have dreamed. In his extremity many a man sent his son with a yam or two to offer to the new religion and to bring back the promised immunity. Thereafter any yam harvested in his fields was harvested in the name of the son.