by Wole Soyinka
In Aiyéró’s meeting-house where all new projects were discussed Ofeyi caught Ahime watching him curiously. His request was stated simply: a portion of forested land for his scheme—co-operation of the people of Aiyéró and their patience, especially when the intrusive cameras began to turn and threaten to violate their long-treasured insulation.
Ahime presided thoughtfully, taking no part. The people listened, discussed without arguing, asked questions, put forth ideas and listened again. Iriyise sat among the women, her presence provoked a flow of celluloid images; he translated them to the gathering, simply. The people of Aiyéró gave their assent, set aside acres of virgin land for the scheme.
Even the Corporation gave its approval.
The forest was cleared, sown. The founding ballads of Aiyéró were unearthed, a new body of work-songs grew from the grain of the vanguard idea. Iriyise abandoned the circuit of Ilosa’s lights, the earth of Aiyéró held her deeper than any bed of eiderdown.
In wrapper and sash with the other women of Aiyéró, her bared limbs and shoulders among young shoots, Iriyise weaving fronds for the protection of the young nursery, bringing wine to the sweating men in their struggle against the virgin forests. Again and again Ofeyi allowed himself the pleasure of astonishment at her transformations, her unending capacity to learn. From merely singing praises of the “cocoa complexion” she had burgeoned in unforseeable directions. Now she could even tell a blight on the young shoot apart from mere scorching by the sun. Her fingers spliced wounded saplings with the ease of a natural healer. Her presence, the women boasted, inspired the rains.
Then the ardent bloodhounds of the Cartel began to sniff out hidden roots. Unseen fingers combed his workshop, leaving a trail of ransacked papers and tapes. They turned over the shooting-script to experts, pored over each word and queried phrases. The work-songs stuck in their throats.
“Mr. Ofeyi, this is not quite the outline which we approved at the meeting of the board. The story of the cocoa plant from seed to ripening….”
“And the life of the community. The parallel life of a child from seed—well, as near as we can get to that of course—to maturity.”
“Even so Mr. Ofeyi…!”
The uncut and incomplete footage was re-run for the hundredth time, the sound-track played over and over again by the tenacious bulldogs of the Cartel….
“Mr. Ofeyi, this Corporation thinks that perhaps you should take leave of absence. A study leave. We will arrange your itinerary to take in as many countries as possible where you will be able to see how they do these things, perhaps borrow a few ideas…America, Japan, Germany and so on. The Americans have the greatest advertising know-how in the world. They really understand the profession, that is why they are such a prosperous country. The Secretary will inform you of the arrangements. We want you to understand that the Corporation is quite happy—generally—with your work, we merely want to obtain the best possible from your talents. See the Accountant in the morning. He has instructions to er…ensure that your tour is as comfortable as possible. The Corporation likes to keep its employees as happy as the employees permit. You understand?”
Ofeyi understood. The Cartel still had hopes of his eventual salvation.
“What happens to the existing footage?”
“Oh, we’ll keep it in our safe. It will be there when you return. There is no hurry after all. You can begin all over again on your return or shoot a new documentary altogether. The idea is most valuable, but there are other suitable lands and communities beside Aiyéró.” He smiled. “Well, enjoy your trip Mr. Ofeyi.”
II
Time expired, the prodigal returned.
At the root of his new sense of urgency was the airport encounter with the lone wolf whom he had mentally begun to refer to as “The Dentist.” It drove him straight to Aiyéró the moment his plane touched home ground, almost as if he feared, not a weakening of resolve, but that a sinister potency of the Cartel might penetrate and forestall possibilities that yet existed only in his mind. The air of Ilosa where the plane landed appeared instantly filled by the corrupting agency of the Cartel and its many subservient alliances. Uncertain even now what strategies the new confrontation demanded, he trusted to that inspiration which he constantly derived from Aiyéró’s calm sufficiency but wondered what the old man Ahime would make of that self-effacing priest of violence, the Dentist, whose single-mindedness had resuscitated his own wavering commitment. Ofeyi’s sole doubt was whether such a force could ever be truly harnessed. The unexpectedness of their encounter was matched only by the other departure from the real programme of his study tour, a restorative idyll with the Asian enigma, Taiila. The airports of the world seemed to have turned hunting-grounds for alienated souls.
Ofeyi began to search for a blunted language which would best describe the Dentist to Ahime without hardening him in opposition to what he now considered a necessary alliance. A selective assassin? The term sounded meaningless, the point of assassination being that it is selective. An agency of retribution? A pre-emptive support? The last seemed closer to the Dentist’s declared principles of scotching the snake before it had time to strike. Ofeyi’s sceptical snort anticipated the old man’s response to all such transparent efforts at making the Dentist’s role any less stark, so he gave up the attempt. The Cartel had killers and used them; the Dentist would redress the balance, at least to some extent. As his motorboat neared Aiyéró, he began to rehearse the arguments in his mind.
But what he first asked Ahime, after the embrace and the welcome was, “What did he have in mind exactly, your late Founder, when he made me that improbable proposal?”
The old man fluttered his hands. “Why do you continue to call it improbable? Even a child can be Custodian of the Grain.”
“Yes, but a child does not reek, as much as I must have done, of complete alienation from his way of life. I came to Aiyéró directly from wallowing in the filth and compromises of Ilosa.”
“Then why are you here?” the old man asked him. “Why do you keep coming back?”
Ofeyi met the frank eyes of the old man and admitted simply, “I need something from Aiyéró.”
Ahime waited.
“What would you say” Ofeyi began, moving to the point at last, “if I told you that I now respect the claims of violence?”
A flicker of surprise showed in Ahime’s eyes but he merely shrugged and said, “The founding history of Aiyéró had its roots in violence.”
“Even so,” Ofeyi reassured him, “violence is not what I want from here. Just the same, the sowing of any idea these days can no longer take place without accepting the need to protect the young seedling, even by violent means.”
“Go on” Ahime urged. “Tell me exactly what you want from us.”
Ofeyi shook his head. “To begin with it is what I would like you to accept. Such as the need to form a common purpose with forces which are…well, let’s just say—not exactly peaceful in their methods. Even if it contains the risk that such forces may run wild and endanger the meagre scaffolding….”
Ahime stopped him. “All this has to do with your travels, am I right? New books you have read perhaps or new societies you have studied?”
“No. It is more to do with a new kind of person I encountered.” And he proceeded to describe the encounter with the Dentist and the logic of the man. Ahime listened patiently then commented,
“You speak of sowing a new idea. But surely you have also heard that saying—sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind?”
“The storm was sown by the Cartel, Pa Ahime. Unless we can turn the resulting whirlwind against them, we are lost.”
Ahime thought it over in silence. He returned finally to the question that still troubled him most. “What will this mean for us in Aiyéró?”
“Nothing, if you mean from the Dentist’s own activities. Aiyéró is my own pro
vince. I don’t know what essence of leaves or bark you inject into your children from birth; I only know that it innoculates them against the poison of places like Ilosa, against temptations such as the Cartel can offer. I believe in Aiyéró.”
Ahime betrayed a little glimmer of triumph. “Then why don’t you simply stay here with us? What more do you seek?”
Ofeyi shook his head. “The healing essence which soothes one individual or some stray dog that happens to wander into Aiyéró is not enough for the bruises of others I know of. They require a very different form of healing.”
“How do you know?” the old man retorted. “There are essences which no one sees, which may be slow in taking effect. Why do you think we pay such attention to ritual sacrifices?”
“That’s just it!” Ofeyi snapped, “You have never broken off completely from your parent stock. You still indulge in these grandiose illusions. It’s rather like those white monks who have stayed within their citadels of stone, shut off from the real world of evil, offering little candle-puffs of piety on behalf of the hideous hunger of the living world and even, presumptuously, of the hunger of the dead.”
Laughing, Ahime admitted, “Well, that really describes us. We don’t ignore the dead in Aiyéró.”
“No you don’t. You claim intercession from the dead and rotted same as those monks. Do you know how a friend described it? Matter of fact it was the Dentist, and he was referring to a girl I met about the same time as he. She wanted very much to become a nun. It was something of a tussle Pa Ahime, I have to tell you about it sometime. If I had been superstitious I would have thought that she was miraculously sent to save me from the path of damnation as represented by the Dentist. You know, good angel on one side, bad angel on the other.”
“What became of her?”
Ofeyi laughed. “You don’t fool me Pa. What you really mean to ask is, what became of Iriyise during that episode? We-e-ell, to tell you the truth, Iri was never in serious danger. I don’t know how, but that woman has become indissoluble in my mind from the soil of Aiyéró. Taiila on the other hand is…”
Tired of waiting for him to find the right words Ahime reminded him that he had been on the point of repeating the Dentist’s verdict on the girl.
“Oh it was nothing profound. Just a crack about her trying to run a two-way commuter service of requests and counter-requests between the living and the unknown. That is the business of monasteries. Seriously Pa, Aiyéró is rather like that. That function is not enough. It won’t do for those whose needs I have encountered face to face, needs which I have seen men bleed and die for, from the lack of fulfilment.”
“We have been called everything” Ahime commented drily, “including a pocket Utopia.”
“You know what that means?”
“Oh yes. Our sons bring back all forms of literature. I have little to do with my time these days except read them. And I come to the conclusion over and over again that there is really nothing new on the surface of this earth.” He gave his mischievous chuckle—“Or in the next. Men’s minds have travelled across vast distances and embraced one another. Travelled vast periods too, both backwards and into the future and embraced one another. For good or evil. That knowledge teaches both humility and pride.”
“You think that’s what your people find out for themselves? Is that what brings them back here?”
“You still bother your head with that riddle?”
“Don’t you ever ask them yourself?”
“Why should I?” Ahime demanded. “That is as much as to say I don’t expect them back, which is hardly true is it?”
In the middle of the night Ofeyi started out of sleep, an inspired certainty rendered the prospect of sleep futile for the rest of the night. He scrambled into his trousers and rushed across the sleeping township to Ahime’s compound. It was at least three in the night but, even without the light which still shone from a window in Ahime’s house he would have knocked on the door and broken the old man’s sleep.
Ahime opened the door himself. “Come in Ofe. You haven’t slept I see.”
Ofeyi began to apologize for the late visit but Ahime stopped him. “I was not asleep. At most I sleep four hours in the night. At my age, sleep becomes less and less essential.” He laid aside the book he had been reading. “I like your Mao” he commented. “You can see I have been reading things to make sure I can meet you on your own grounds. He is unique this Chinese isn’t he? A man of simple truths and a large experimental farm. For the first time I feel like undertaking a journey to meet a man I have only encountered on the pages of a book. After all, it is the time of life to travel…”
“Pa Ahime…” Ofeyi interrupted.
Ahime turned and looked into his face. “Oh, I see you did not come here to pass the night in idle discussion. All right, let’s sit down and be comfortable.”
Ofeyi sat in a chair opposite the old man. “I have come to make you an offer.”
Ahime nodded slowly, his eyes alert.
“You have men all over the country,” Ofeyi said. “In nearly all of the major towns. They are scattered all over, in every factory and industry. Lend them to me for two years. After that…”
Ahime raised his hand. “No, no conditions. Just tell me why you want them.”
Ofeyi spread out his hands. It was this, or leave the entire initiative to other, more drastic, means. The goals were clear enough, the dream a new concept of labouring hands across artificial frontiers, the concrete, affective presence of Aiyéró throughout the land, undermining the Cartel’s superstructure of robbery, indignities and murder, ending the new phase of slavery. His look indicated that he had expected this to be as obvious to the wise Ahime.
“I did not mean what you would make them do” the old man said. “I meant, why the men of Aiyéró?”
“Because they live by an idea, their lives are bound up by the one idea. I believe they cannot be corrupted, or swayed.”
The old man nodded briefly. “They are yours.”
Blinking, Ofeyi enquired, “They are mine? Just like that?”
“Oh I shall get our Treasurer to give you a list of where they can be found. That’s how we know where they are at any time, by the addresses from which they last sent us their surplus earnings.”
“But I can’t just go to them and say…”
“That I sent you? Of course you can’t. Because I don’t send you. They are all free men who live, as you say, by a certain idea. If your own goals correspond to that idea, then all you have to do is go to them. I doubt if any of them has ever joined a political party even out of curiosity, they know all about them from close enough quarters. But if your idea fulfils their own constant readiness for service…”
Ofeyi stood up. “I promise I….”
“No promises” the old man insisted. “Suppose you consent at this moment to be Custodian of the Grain, staying with us in Aiyéró, what’s to prevent you doing what you want with these men, working at your own pace until you have persuaded the whole community to go along with you, freely using our resources in the promotion of your idea? Or even splintered the community and taken with you those who are swayed by your persuasive vision of the larger community to which we all belong. You see, it is in fact only a modest part of what we offered that you have demanded of me.”
He accompanied Ofeyi to the door. “After all the battles of the world, one needs a resting-place. And often, in between the battles. Aiyéró was created for such needs or perhaps, let’s simply say, it can fulfil such needs. Oh, I nearly overlooked this, when you have spoken to the men and they are yours, tell them that what they normally send to us in Aiyéró now belongs to the cause. They will know that we have consented to it. Well, that’s all I can think of for now.”
Outside, Ofeyi stood still for some moments, staring into the night. The spontaneity of Ahime’s support overwhelmed
him, taking on an even more deciding aspect than the earlier genesis of the strategy itself. He turned to the old man and asked, “Have you no doubts at all?”
“Doubts upon doubts, thicker than the night around us.” His teeth gleamed in his face. “I quoted you the reply which our Founder made to me when I asked him, many years after Aiyéró had established itself firmly and stably, the same question as you asked me just now. Of course I have doubts!”
Ofeyi grinned. “Sleep well Pa Ahime.”
“Sleep well, son.”
He heard the door shut gently behind him.
2
BUDS
III
In the beginning, there was nectar and ambrosia
A golden pod contained them…
But the Chairman was no longer riled. He could afford to smile his benediction on the orchestra…do carry on, carry on fools. It’s not who begins it but who ends it. And we will. We will.
Favoured of gods they made the cosmos rosier
The gods wiped the dribble from their beard
And snores of thunder soon were heard
For the elixir also bred divine amnesia
Ta-ra-ra-ra-.ta-.ta--ta---. The Chairman even supplied the coda in his head. It was different at the beginning when he raged at the perfidy. Now he could even afford to be amused. He ran his hand over his chin as if to treat his fingers to the rich dribble of nectar before it vanished into mere imagination. Damned weeping Jeremiahs. Envy-ridden flea-bitten social dregs! As for Ofeyi—it was clear, he had learned nothing. The Corporation had wasted money on him. He had returned truly incorrigible.
The cocoa-pod became their sole desire
Its food alone sustained them
Thou golden honeycomb, they sang to a golden lyre
Pure ambrosia-laden beans
