by Okey Ndibe
Iji was about to talk, but Osuakwu’s voice interjected. “Ikechukwu, the journey that brought you home, is it a good one?”
Osuakwu sat up, hands clasped close to his body, his shoulders hunched. A tremor rocked Ike’s body. He felt drowsy, like a man shaken awake as he tottered over a gorge. He opened his mouth but remained mute. The words welling up his throat were a lump he could neither swallow nor emit. He nodded.
An odd silence descended on the shrine. The silence was eerie and pregnant, as if the air in the shrine stood still, straining. Ike heard his heart beating, leaping for his throat.
“Nno,” Osuakwu said, once again welcoming his nephew.
“Da alu,” Ike said.
“Nno. Nno,” the rest of the company echoed.
Ike nodded to his right and left.
“I welcomed you once, and I welcomed you again,” Osuakwu continued. “Yet, you’re a son to me—your father’s mouth followed mine to suck from the same breast. You’re my son and this obi is yours. You can walk in and out of here at will, and there won’t be anybody in the world to throw a suspicious eye in your direction. Why then do I persist in welcoming you with the anxiety of words I should reserve only for strangers? One reason is that you have come from a long, long distance. You’ve crossed wilds and seas to arrive in Utonki. So we must tell you nno. But there’s another reason.” He paused and raised his eye to Ike, as if it was up to the younger man to unravel the mystery. “Did you tell Nwanyi Eke you were coming to see me?”
Nwanyi Eke was the name Osuakwu called Ike’s mother. “No,” Ike said.
“Aha,” Osuakwu said, throwing up his hands in vindication. “If you had told her you were coming here, she would have thrown herself in your path. Tell me, am I lying?”
Ike gazed silently.
“Your mother is my wife. I accompanied your father to go and talk about her. I was there—at the head—the day we asked her people to let her live among us. If I had uttered one word of doubt, just one word, your father would not have proceeded. That’s how close we were, your father and I. Did your father not tell you that he and I were not the only fruits of our mother’s womb?”
Ike shook his head.
“He didn’t?” Osuakwu asked again.
“No.”
“Well, you’re hearing it today. If your father didn’t tell you, I can tell you because you’re also my son. Nne had had two daughters and one son before I was born. Each of those children went back to the spirit world soon after birth. I came next and lived. Four years after I suckled Nne’s breast, your father came. Your father and I were close. You should know that. Even after your father joined the church of Father and I answered the call to serve Ngene, we remained close. True, your father tried to talk me into abandoning Ngene, but it was all the talk of brothers. I would ask him if he didn’t see that Ngene fed me well. I told him Ngene fed me yams and cocoyams, chicken and turkey, goats and cows. I teased him about the tiny wafer Father pasted on his tongue. How could such a wafer feed a grown man like me? My brother and I were like Teeth and Tongue, inseparable. Yes, sometimes Teeth leaves Tongue bloodied. Sometimes they would quarrel, but nobody ever heard that Teeth and Tongue went their separate ways. No!
“Ten and one years ago, Death sneaked in at night and took my brother. I don’t think there was anybody more grieved by his death than I. I rolled myself on the ground and cried. I cried in a way that a man doesn’t cry unless his world has been broken in two. If it was possible to fight Death, I would have girded myself and tried. But I know the story of the king who hired two medicine men to ward off Death. What happened? Death killed the two healers and struck terror in the king’s heart! Do we frown at Death? If we screw up our face at Death, it poaches another. Do we flee from Death? If we try to flee, Death strikes down another and leaves us with two funerals. If I could have sacrificed myself to Death in order to retrieve my brother from its clutch, I would have done that. I had to check my grief only because I realized it fell to me to help Nwanyi Eke to hold herself together. For several years, I tried to help your mother mend her broken life. Every morning, after beating the gong in greeting to Ngene, I went to see Nwanyi Eke, to inquire after her health. Each night, right after eating, I visited her again to make sure her day had gone well. She seemed pleased with my visits. Once, when iba had beaten me down with its fever and I couldn’t go, she hastened here, her face scarred with fear. For the three days I was flattened by iba, Nwanyi Eke joined my wives to prepare me meals filled with sharp leaves.
“Everything changed three years ago. I went one morning to inquire after your mother’s health, but found the doors and windows barred. I knocked and knocked, but the door remained shut. I went away, thinking she must have left early for the farm. I returned that night, but there was nobody to open the door. I feared that something dreadful might have happened, but a passing neighbor assured me he’d seen her, hale and hearty, earlier that evening. I went home. The next morning, I went back to see Nwanyi Eke. I met a shock that I’ve never shared with any breathing person. When I knocked on the door and said my name, Nwanyi Eke began to howl from inside the house. She called me the very devil. She said Nne and I had killed her husband, and now I wanted to kill her as well. She shrieked that Nne and I should stop attacking her at night or her God would clip our wings. She shouted that I should take my demons and go home. She cried that she was now covered with the blood of Jesu Christi.”
Osuakwu paused, his voice nearly broken. Ike glanced up. His uncle’s hands, clasped together, trembled. The old man’s chest heaved. Ike lowered his head and sniffed the gin, his emotions chaotic, anger mingled with shame. His eyes had misted up; the gin in his hand transformed into a small pool of tears.
“Ikechukwu, my ears heard words no mouth should ever utter. For a man to be accused before the world of killing his own brother, a mother blamed for the death of her own son—no words can be more bitter to the ear! I left your mother’s home and ran as fast as my bones could carry me to tell Nne what my ears had heard. Before I could open my mouth, Nne began to tell me her own horrors. The evening before, your mother had stood at Nne’s threshold and called her all manner of names. She called Nne a sucker of blood and devourer of her son’s flesh. She told Nne—the mother of her husband—that death stalked her door. Are such words spoken? Are they spoken even to one’s enemy? Tufia!
“It was shortly after that I heard that a man had come to Utonki and set up a mad church. And I learned that Nwanyi Eke had left the church of Father and thrown herself, body and mind, into the madness. She began to dance to the tune played by the efulefu who said he was a man of God. Every mad thing the man said, she took with two hands and put inside her bag. He told her that death was on its way to call Nne home, but that Nne and I had used magic to deflect the cold-fingered one to her husband. Are such things heard? He told her, this efulefu, that we were now planning to kill you as well as your sister. Does it not bite the ear to hear such madness? Yet your mother opened her ears and let the madman pour it all in.”
Suddenly silent, Osuakwu rocked himself forward and backward.
A lump blocked Ike’s throat. His uncle’s face was a portrait of pain. In the silence Ike could hear the sound of men breathing, waiting.
“Pour me more wine,” Osuakwu said. Don Pedro rose to the task. Osuakwu drank lustily, head tipping ever backward until he had finished off the drink. He belched and wiped his lips. His features softened.
“I’m glad you came to see me. If news had reached me that you, my son, had come home and then went away without coming here, it would have killed my spirit. Listen, let me give you a message you must carry to Nwanyi Eke. Tell your mother you came to my obi. Tell her you tasted Masiolu’s cooking, that you ate kola nut and drank gin—but your stomach didn’t churn nor did your head ache. Tell her I didn’t kill you.” He paused and glanced around the roomful of faces. “Does a sane man kill somebody he must bury and mourn?” he asked.
“Mba!” chorused the others.
>
“Mba!” Osuakwu echoed. Shoulder raised, he filliped his fingers in a gesture of abhorrence. “But the madman who brought the church of dancers must be from a clan where mothers kill their own babies, where brothers slaughter brothers.”
“Osuakwu!” a voice hailed from outside.
“Ogbuefi Okwuego,” Osuakwu saluted in return.
All eyes turned to the shrine’s entrance. A man shuffled in, old and stooped, steadying himself on a walking cane. He exchanged pleasantries with Osuakwu and the shrine’s habitués.
“How were the people of the white country when you left them?” the man asked, turning to Ike.
“They were fine,” Ike said.
Stabbing the floor for emphasis, the old man said, “You must wipe your eyes with two cuffs when you’re dealing with white people. They’re slippery as fish. They can kill you while smiling at you.”
“Mind your words,” Iji teased, “or Jideofo will soon ask why you speak as if white men were your drinking pals.”
The old man stamped his walking stick on the floor. He scanned the room, then spoke to Iji. “There’s nothing I don’t know about white men. Don’t forget, I met many of them in Burma. There’s no trick a white man will bring today that will bewilder me. I’ve studied them front and back.” He fixed his eyes once again on Ike. “What I tell you is this: look at a white man with the same eye a flutist casts toward a masquerade wielding a machete. Smile with him, play the flute for him—but never take your eye off him. Be alert so that when he brandishes the machete, you can flee! Nno.” He shook Ike’s hand, then grunted as he lowered himself onto the sitting platform.
“Da alu,” Ike said, wincing from the fierce pressure of gas in his belly.
“I was talking to my son about the new church—”
The old man hissed, cutting into Osuakwu’s speech. “Why not leave talk about the insane to the insane?”
Osuakwu smiled sadly. He addressed Ike in the reestablished silence.
“There’s no wrong your mother hasn’t heaped on my head. She said I was planning to make you the priest of Ngene after my bones have danced their last dance. I had to laugh at that one. A rump like me to choose for Ngene the man who will serve him? When the time comes that they look for me but I can’t be found, Ngene will speak his mind about a new carrier. If he wants you, you must come home to serve him—or you’ll fall into madness. That you’re in the white man’s country does not mean you can reject the call. When Ngene winks at a man, the man has no choice but to serve. When I was called, did I want to answer? No! Ask Ogbuefi Okwuego who just came in. He and I had just come back from Burma. Like other young men, my dream was to snatch one of the white man’s jobs. Then I started fainting when the sky opened up and wept its waters. When they told me Ngene had called me, I told them to go and put their ears back on the ground, that I had other things I wanted to do with my life. They laughed and went away. My son, when I began to see the things I saw at night, I needed nobody to tell me to answer the summons. Ngene chooses his own carrier. If he wants you, you must leave everything else. If he doesn’t, nobody can sneak you into the priest’s chair. I, Osuakwu, won’t dare. I can’t!”
“Only a man who courts death would dare usurp a deity’s voice,” said the newly arrived old man.
Osuakwu ran a hand across his brow, sweeping up a pool of perspiration that dripped onto his thigh. Grabbing a raffia fan, he cooled himself with wide, strong arcs of the hand. He spoke while fanning, his speech set to the rhythm of his hand’s wide motions. “My son, a stranger arrived in our midst with a basket of stories he plucked from the air—and he has used these to drive many apart. Nwanyi Eke gave her head to this bringer of mad tales. The man put poisonous seeds in her head. He told her that I, Osuakwu, am a wizard, that I suck the blood of my own brood. The seed of that tale germinated and tarred your mother’s heart. It was as if she too had become a stranger.
“At first, I laughed it off. I was sure your mother would return to her senses; she would come to know that the stranger’s stories were madness. I thought that the stranger would be found out, that one day we’d wake up to hear he’d fled from our midst. Our people say that if a profane act marks a year, it becomes part of custom. I’ve waited for your mother to come to my compound and say that what she said before she no longer says. It’s been three years and Osuakwu is still waiting.
“Has the stranger tucked in his tail and fled? No. He’s still here, his gut swelling by the day. More and more of our people are joining his madhouse. More and more are accusing their blood brethren of being killers and suckers of blood. They go to the stranger in droves—gorging on the very air he fouls with lies. Our noses have been rubbed in feces, but what are we to do? When a goat enters a homestead and urinates as well as defecates, why, it’s already too late to shoo it off.
“Each day, this stranger tells his followers that Ngene is a fallen god. He boasts that his own God will come down one day in a ball of fire and consume Ngene.”
“He told me that,” Ike said.
“Oh, he did?” Osuakwu asked. “Then you know I haven’t told a single lie. He wants to destroy Ngene. He doesn’t know what happened to the first white man who dared fart in Ngene’s face.”
“You’re talking about Sutanteeny?” the old man asked, his thick accent burdening “Stanton” with extra syllables.
“Yes. Ngene flicked him as one flicks a fly.”
“That’s the fate that awaits that rump that calls himself Uka,” Iji said.
Osuakwu turned to Ike. “You’re telling me that that grandson of an abductor has carried his madness to your ears as well?”
“Yes,” Ike said. “He invited me over to his house. I came straight from his house to here.”
“He speaks the words of a madman!” cried Don Pedro. “The swollen phallus boasts about teaching the thigh a lesson. But once discharged of its seeds, it collapses in a heap.”
The men chuckled at the analogy. Ike felt a string of sweat tickle his spine. He took another swig.
Osuakwu sat erect in his chair, brow furrowed. Then he said to Ike, “Go outside and bring me a stone. The first stone you see.”
A stone? Ike was mystified but in no mood to ask questions. As he struggled to stand, he noticed that his right leg had been deadened by a cramp. Worse, the gin combined with the heat had rendered him lightheaded. He stood up with effort, favoring his left leg. As he scuffed outside, his gait was unsteady, his head disoriented. The world spun madly about him. When he saw a stone, he steadied himself before bending over to dislodge and lift it from the soil.
“I have a question for you,” Osuakwu said once Ike handed him the stone. “This stone you just fetched, is it alive or is it dead?” His face wore an earnest, expectant look.
Ike peered at his uncle, lost for words.
“You’ve gone to school, and you know more than all of us here. That’s why I ask, that you may explain to us: is the stone dead or is it alive?”
Ike was tempted to launch into an exposition of the principles of animation and inanimateness, but held back. After a weighty pause, he said, “I’d say dead.”
“You’ve answered well. You’ve spoken like the man of great learning that you are. But now, I have another question: If the stone is dead, how come it doesn’t smell? And how come it isn’t decaying?” He regarded Ike with a fixed look.
Ike swigged his gin, staring. After a while, he asked his uncle, “Are you saying the stone is alive, then?”
“Did you see me open my mouth? I asked you because you’re the one with learning.”
Ike had the sensation of drowning in a river of gin. It was as if, starting with his ankles, the drink had slowly risen to his knees, then his thighs, his waist, past his chest, and pressing to submerge the crown of his head. He said, “Maybe it’s alive.”
“Then why does it not breathe? Why does it not rise and flee when human feet are about to step on it? Why does it lie there, indifferent to storms and the punishing blasts of
the sun?”
“I don’t know,” Ike said. It was less a confession than a plea to be spared further interrogation.
Osuakwu smiled. “Ngene and I are like this stone. If you guess we’re dead, your guess is wrong. Yet, if you guess we’re alive, your guess may also be wrong.” He pointed at the statue. “That madman thinks Ngene is this carving from a tree. Ngene is a mystery deeper than what any man can understand. That mystery lives in the river itself that coils around Utonki. It is a river that provided our ancestors with both life and protection. That river is still doing its work today, even though the oyibo has come and turned today into yesterday, making a lion into a lamb. Can any man carry off a river in a basket?”
Ike shook his head.
“No,” Osuakwu verbalized. “A river far surpasses the strength of a basket. Does fire consume a river?”
“No,” Jideofo answered, speaking as Ike’s uninvited proxy.
“No,” Osuakwu echoed. “However fiery a fire, a river easily drenches it and snuffs out its rage. That’s why Ngene and I are not a bit worried when a madman talks about a ball of fire.”
“The only fire the crazed churchman knows is the heat of his own fart,” said the old man.
The comment provoked an explosion of laughter. Ike, too, laughed, grateful.
Osuakwu waited until the laughter died down, then he addressed Ike: “Let me ask you, my son. This man who calls himself Pastor Uka, do you know anything about his God?”
Ike, drawing the glass of gin to his lips, shook his head.
“Well, I’ll tell you. You see, when I first heard what the rump was telling his followers about Ngene, I said I would go and visit his God to lodge a complaint. But when I asked where his God was, I was told that it was invisible. My son, it’s not good to have dealings with a god that is not visible. The spirit of Ngene is in the river, but its body is here, in this statue. Why did our ancestors insist that each god must have its wooden body in a shrine?”
