Homecoming of the gods

by Frank Achebe

  Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

  Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

  Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

  And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

  She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

  And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.

  As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him.

  Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him.

  The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.

  Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

  When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,

  And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.

  Jesus wept.

  Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!

  And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?

  Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

  Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

  Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?

  Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

  And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

  And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

  And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

  Then many of the Jews, which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.”

  # # #

  Zach did not remember any other thing after the reading from the Service including the references that the priest made to what the sisters in the parish house had told him of the boy. Except of course, his commentary on the boy’s obsession with the Holy Mother and Child image. He was sure that it was just another sermon for those who heard it but not for him.

  It made him aware.

  It was indeed a grand way for the intelligent priest to put it:

  “For those of us who consider her worthy of double honour, and even more, it is no accident that the Mother of Christ is venerated alongside her Son. In the Immaculate Conception, God, the Highest, identifies with the downtrodden of the world. In the Advent, He identifies with shepherds. In the manger too as in being the Lamb of God, He identifies with even animals. His life on the streets of Galilee bears us this witness. He walked among us, as with those who are the least of us.

  Most importantly, in the pain of childbirth, He identifies with the women of the world.

  In the image of the Holy Mother and her Child, which is divine for many and certainly for Pûjó, the forgotten women of the world look up to find the greatness of the woman in childbearing and child nurturing. In this, they find the consolation that they are not forgotten in the world. She becomes for the society and the men who rule it, a condemnation of the unfairness with which the woman and her children is regarded.

  Blessed, it is said is the fruit of her womb. In this blessedness in which she participates, she calls the woman to find her greatness in the pain and burden of childbirth and child raising. In this blessedness, by which she becomes divine for the women of the world and her children, she achieves the greatest for those who are the least—and for the society that despises her.

  Let this be a challenge to us today for only in emulating the Holy Mother can we be truly worthy of her. Pûjó was our child to raise as are many like him among us. But we betrayed him by not seeing greatness in raising him as our own child. It is good to seek greatness in things and achievements, but let us also seek for greatness in raising our children. They are our future and the future of humanity. The society that has no regard for its children is a society that has no future. And our society is gradually losing its regard for its children and for the women that bear and raise them.

  We rebel against the ‘Father Image’, an image that haunts us everywhere in society, moreso in our religious life. You all call me ‘father’ but how many of you can truly stand me? We are told to accept authorities that are mostly strange to us. And what else? We are abused by these authorities. The woman suffers the most on account of this image. She becomes the ‘prostitute’ and the man thrive on her pain. She is forgotten, rejected and downtrodden. The line is drawn and she lives on the frontiers of the society. Therefore, God, in an unconditional participation on her fate and in the fate of her children, slips into the world as a child wrapped in the arms of a teenage girl. Every Christmas, we are confronted by this image. At this image, we must ever always halt in guilt.

  It is by this image that God condemns us all in our selfishness and subversiveness. And it is by this image alone that we stand condemned in the way we have treated this boy and the way we treat many others like him among us today.

  Let us hail Mary, the mother of the One who is the Christ.”

  # # #

  ‘You were terrific!’ Kuniā had told him. ‘Didn’t you see that?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘You had them with the reading. All of them. If a hairpin had fallen from my hair, the whole church would have heard it.’

  ‘What had them, the story or the reading?’

  ‘I don’t know but from the way you read that story, they were scared that boy would rise from his fresh grave…. You should be thanking me for dragging you along.’

  ‘Yeah, really.’

  Chapter Thirty: The Plague

  Mwāi was to return to his parents on Saturday and while he packed his belongings for the journey, he felt disappointed that he hadn’t found the answer to the riddle. His grandmother was excessively proud when the story came out. As usual, she rang in a lot more other things into his head. But he was left with mixed feelings: of his disappointment over his inability to solve the riddle and of course, his most recent heroics for which more praise awaited him in Noiā.

  Saturday and Sunday witnessed an unprecedented downpour that started Friday night until Sunday evening. By Sunday evening when the rains finally abated, large portions of all the roads in the town had disappeared under the pools of water that had replaced them. Even Pûjó’s shack did not survive the rain. It was as if the rains had excused him to his death before taking his shack.

  Many people spent their Sunday evening fixing broken ceilings and flushing flooded passages with thick brooms. Church attendance that Sunday was minimal. And by the time the people were emerging to Sunday evening, it certainly felt like a new town altogether. They were used to such rains. However, it did seem to those with very poignant sensibilities, that something supernatural had transpired during those two days they were locked inside their homes.

  Mwāi was happy that the rains had postponed the trip until Monday. He was still hopeful of winning the prize.

  He had read the book himself and had told the boys the story. All about the Humpty Dumpty and cravat was his idea. The book couldn’t be the true prize h
e sought to win. The true prize was in that feeling of self-satisfaction at being able again to fulfil his destiny as a ‘special child’.

  Throughout the weekend, he grappled with that one riddle to the point of despair. More than just the riddle, he was now grappling with himself. It seemed he now had an image, one that had been given to him by the little solar system where he was the sun, to protect as he had his curiosity to satisfy. A part of him kept telling him that the riddle had no answer or that if it did, he would never come to know it. But he dismissed that part as the weak part of him. The strong one kept telling him that it was absurd that a book like that would have a riddle in that did not have an answer. By Sunday evening, he was at the point of tears.

  By Monday morning, he was trying to devise ways to stay back in town. It was as serious as it was foolish and his grandmother was trying her best to pamper his pride as always. But that Monday morning, feeling frustrated at all her efforts to comfort him and assure him that he would still find the answer to the riddle in time, she threw a very loud tantrum.

  Now as they sat in the bus, he muffling his tears with sobs, she mumbled to herself to his hearing: ‘What is the shame in admitting that one does not know the answer to a question if one does not? Ask me why a raven is like a writing desk and I’ll tell you it is because there’s no shame in admitting that we don’t know the answer to a question if we don’t. There’s greatness in that too.’

  It was not the first time she was telling him such. She was not sure he understood her then but she was sure that one day, he would.

  # # #

  Zach meanwhile had a new topic on his list of reflections. Over the weekend, he went over them in his mind with delicateness trying to find where they converged. That point of convergence was by far more important than the different thoughts themselves.

  As he sat out the priest’s visit that Thursday evening and tried to take one last and long look at the shack he once shared with the vegetable boy, another pair of feet had walked up to the shack. The owner of the feet was a man whose looks did cause Zach come revulsion.

  He was Alright. He had walked up to the shack with his two hands in his coat and a wide smile on his face, hiding his insecurities.

  # # #

  Alright had his own insecurities. They did disappear when he was with his students. It was only they who recognized his intelligence and celebrated him for it. The rest of the people despised him for his attempt to decolorize himself. They did not think he had any reasons to do that. Michael Jackson may have had his reasons but Paintbucket did not. They felt betrayed. In Noiā however, no one seemed to bother about his colour, at least not to the point of feeling ‘betrayed’. And very well, he always showed them that he knew they despised him.

  ‘Good day sir,’ he greeted with a hand out. ‘Alright is the name.’

  Zach took the hand and returned the greeting with a look of surprise on his face.

  ‘That’s your real name?’

  ‘Yes, my father gave me the name and I like it.’

  He looked around the shack but wouldn’t seat. ‘I am their teacher—the boys. You seem to have put something on them.’

  ‘They have a lot respect for you.’

  Alright laughed. ‘Yeah, Paintbucket, Michael Jackson. They are still kids. What do they know about respect after all? They missed their classes today and when I asked around, they told me of the dead boy. I’m sorry about his death.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Rest his soul. I suppose they may have made mention of Paintbucket.’

  Zach chuckled.

  ‘The guy that doesn’t believe in God and in Jesus Christ. Bleh bleh bleh.’

  ‘Mention was made of that.’

  Alright had jumped on the chance to meet with Zach. It felt at the time, under the circumstances in which he had first heard about the man that he judged him a man of refined character. He was not sure what had given him that impression but that was it. He hadn’t even come to see Zach on account of the boys missing their classes. He had come to rub minds with him for a minute.

  What transpired between the two left Zach with the impression that he was not unlike Thaddy.

  # # #

  ‘You know when people say things like: The world is coming to an end; something prophetic is implied in those words. They imply that their world is coming to an end. More or less. And that the new world will have no place in it for them and the ideals they hold dear to heart. Truth is: sir, these boys will grow into a world that they won’t be able to identify with this one.’

  ‘What difference will it make?’

  ‘They may lose their place in it if they fail to adjust to that world. As a man that has tasted that world and as their teacher, I see it as my responsibility to prepare them for that world.’

  ‘You perceive that I am a religious man? And that this coming world will have no place for religious people.’

  Alright laughed.

  ‘Do you read a lot, sir?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘Then allow me to make reference to a certain parable….’

  He did not tell Zach the parable quite as he had read of it. However, I shall tell the parable the way it was told. But for curiosity sake, I shall make no mention of the book where he’d read it or the person who had told it.

  # # #

  The whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned, because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and their voices.

  # # #

  As he thought about the discussion, after which Alright had announced to him that he would be leaving town that Saturday to resume school the next week, and all that had transpired that week, it occurred to him that both Alright and Reverend Iňaō were right after all. A lot of things were quickly fading into myth. The Plague had reached them from far away Europe. They could no longer pretend that they lived on the frontier of that world. They were called upon by necessity to choose where to stand in this world. While the reverend was unwilling to either accept or adjust to that world that had reached him and had shattered his ‘ideals’, and was escaping to ‘heaven’ for it, Alright had accepted the reality and was adjusting himself to it.

  What about him?�
��Did he feel any anxieties over the latest developments.

  He quite could not answer.

  What about the boys? He was more consoled than he was worried.

  They too had seen the Face of God, not in the skies but in the face of that boy whose life they had celebrated.

  BOOK II

  THE BRIDGE

  Chapter One: The Tempest

  Hééb was shaking with both the cold of a two-day heavy downpour that had filtered into his body, and the fear of all that he had witnessed in those two days. His mother was leaning over him. She was saying something but he could make anything out of her ramblings. All that he could hear was the thumping of his heart and the jabbering of his jaws. They seemed to want to shatter themselves to the cold. In a while, he passed into deep sleep again.

  On his waking, Hééb felt great body pains. The cold was now replaced with dead muscles and jabbed bones. He could not move a limb and there was no one in the scorching room that now had three blazing firepots!

  He sat there with his face to the ceiling reminiscing on what he’d experienced the past week. The whole thing was his mother’s idea from the very beginning. She was positive that if he followed her instructions, that he “would make something out of it, something that could be yours.”

  He had taken the brothers to the edge of the town, his heart trembling with the anxiety of being a murderer, before dismissing them. The idea was funny as it was touchy. The boy he was taking to his death, was he not already dead after all? It seemed so silly to think that anything would change for the good. There were no guarantees, not from his mother, that anything would happen for anybody’s good, let alone his own. The risk was his to take or not take.

  However, it did seem that he had nothing left to lose. All was already lost. Finding courage in that, he had carried the boy to where his mother had directed him: ‘Find a spot in the river where the water level is above the navel and place him on the waterbed. Use something to tether him to a rock, or a tree so the tide doesn’t move him away from the spot. Then stay and watch what happens.’