Things fall apart (19 page)

Authors: Chinua Achebe

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BOOK: Things fall apart

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The Commissioner did not understand what Obierika meant when he said, "Perhaps your men will help us." One of the most infuriating habits of these people was their love of superfluous words, he thought.

Obierika with five or six others led the way. The Commissioner and his men followed their firearms held at the ready. He had warned Obierika that if he and his men played any monkey tricks they would be shot. And so they went.

There was a small bush behind Okonkwo's compound. The only opening into this bush from the compound was a little round hole in the red-earth wall through which fowls went in and out in their endless search for food. The hole would not let a man through. It was to this bush that Obierika led the Commissioner and his men. They skirted round the compound, keeping close to the wall. The only sound they made was with their feet as they crushed dry leaves.

Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo's body was dangling, and they stopped dead.

"Perhaps your men can help us bring him down and bury him," said Obierika. "We have sent for strangers from another village to do it for us, but they may be a long time coming."

The District Commissioner changed instantaneously. The resolute administrator in him gave way to the student of primitive customs.

"Why can't you take him down yourselves?" he asked.

"It is against our custom," said one of the men. "It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offence against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it. That is why we ask your people to bring him down, because you are strangers."

"Will you bury him like any other man?" asked the Commissioner.

"We cannot bury him. Only strangers can. We shall pay your men to do it. When he has been buried we will then do our duty by him. We shall make sacrifices to cleanse the desecrated land."

Obierika, who had been gazing steadily at his friend's dangling body, turned suddenly to the District Commissioner and said ferociously: "That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself and now he will be buried like a dog..." He could not say any more. His voice trembled and choked his words.

"Shut up!" shouted one of the messengers, quite unnecessarily.

"Take down the body," the Commissioner ordered his chief messenger, "and bring it and all these people to the court."

"Yes, sah," the messenger said, saluting.

The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought:

The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

A GLOSSARY OF IBO WORDS AND PHRASES

agadi-nwayi: old woman.

Agbala: woman; also used of a man who has taken no title.

Chi: personal god.

efukfu: worthless man.

egwugwu: a masquerader who impersonates one of the ancestral spirits of the village.

ekwe: a musical instrument; a type of drum made from wood.

eneke-nti-oba: a kind of bird.

eze-agadi-nwayi: the teeth of an old woman.

iba: fever.

ilo: the village green, where assemblies for sports, discussions, etc., take place.

inyanga: showing off, bragging.

isa-ifi: a ceremony. If a wife had been separated from her husband for some time and were then to be re-united with him, this ceremony would be held to ascertain that she had not been unfaithful to him during the time of their separation.

iyi-uwa: a special kind of stone which forms the link between an ogbanje and the spirit world. Only if the iyi-uwa were discovered and destroyed would the child not die.

jigida: a string of waist beads.

kotma: court messenger. The word is not of Ibo origin but is a corruption of "court messenger."

kwenu: a shout of approval and greeting.

ndichie: elders.

nna ayi: our father.

nno: welcome.

nso-ani: a religious offence of a kind abhorred by everyone, literally earth's taboo.

nza: a very small bird.

obi: the large living quarters of the head of the family.

obodo dike: the land of the brave.

ochu: murder or manslaughter.

ogbanje: a changeling,- a child who repeatedly dies and returns to its mother to be reborn. It is almost impossible to bring up an ogbanje child without it dying, unless its iyi-uwa is first found and destroyed.

ogene: a musical instrument; a kind of gong.

oji odu achu-ijiji-o: (cow i. e., the one that uses its tail to drive flies away).

osu: outcast. Having been dedicated to a god, the osu was taboo and was not allowed to mix with the freeborn in any way.

Oye: the name of one of the four market days.

ozo: the name of one of the titles or ranks.

tufia: a curse or oath.

udu: a musical instrument; a type of drum made from pottery.

uli: a dye used by women for drawing patterns on the skin.

umuada: a family gathering of daughters, for which the female kinsfolk return to their village of origin.

umunna-: a wide group of kinsmen (the masculine form of the word umuada).

Uri: part of the betrothal ceremony when the dowry is paid.

The End

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centres of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan.

His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad.

From 1972 to 1976, and again in 1987 to 1988, Mr. Achebe was Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and also for one year at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Cited in the London Sunday Times as one of the "1,000 Makers of the Twentieth Century" for defining "a modern African literature that was truly African" and thereby making "a major contribution to world literature," has published novels, short stories, essays, and children's books. His volume of poetry, Christmas in Biafra, written during the Biafran War, was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God is winner of the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize in England.

Mr. Achebe has received numerous honours from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as more than twenty honorary doctorates from universities in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and Nigeria. He is also the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award.

At present, Mr. Achebe lives with his wife in Annandale, New York, where they both teach at Bard College. They have four children.

ALSO BY CHINUA ACHEBE

Anthills of the Savannah

Arrow of God

Girls at War and Other Stories

A Man of the People

No Longer at Ease

Nonfiction:

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays

The Trouble With Nigeria

Poetry:

Beware Soul Brother