Nadine Gordimer - Telling Times - Writing and Living, 1950-2008

The case to be heard by the representatives of the ancestors this time is a commonplace enough one: a wife and children have been abducted from her husband by her family. He demands that they shall return the bride-price he paid for her.

A member of her family, Odukwe, declares what the man has said is true; but what is also true is that ‘My in-law, Uzowulu, is a beast … no single day passed in the sky without his beating the woman … when she was pregnant, he beat her until she miscarried.’

Uzowulu shouts: ‘It is a lie. She miscarried after she had gone to sleep with her lover.’

To roars of laughter from the crowd, Odukwe, no mincer of words, continues: the wife may be allowed to return to her husband ‘on the understanding that if he ever beats her again we shall cut off his genitals for him.’

And one elder in the crowd says to another, ‘I don’t know why such a trifle should come before the egwugwu .’ Here is Achebe delighting in puncturing solemnity with a sly aside.

The interaction between the lively, happy daily life of the village, centred by Achebe on Okonkwo’s family, and the ever-present darkness of supernatural beliefs beneath it continues at this pre-colonial stage in the community’s history. The reader is listening in to a cosy, wonderful evening of story-telling exchange between Ezinma and her mother when the graphic legend of the Tortoise, who names himself ‘All of You’, who engages with the birds, named ‘People of The Sky’, is shattered by the arrival of Chielo, priestess of the god Agbala. She claims Ezinma as ‘her daughter’ and declares that Agbala demands that the child come to him ‘in his house in the hills and the caves’. Okonkwo protests; the priestess screams, ‘Beware Okonkwo! Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god is speaking?’

There follows an exciting night-long ordeal of tension and dread as the priestess, with Ezinma on her back, takes the trail, terrified Ekwefi following. The priestess and Ezinma disappear into a narrow cave mouth. Ekwefi vows that if she hears Ezinma cry out she will ‘rush into the cave to defend her against all the gods in the world. She would die with her.’ Okonkwo has decided to follow: he suddenly appears and they wait together until dawn. Achebe understands so well the curious process by which memory distracts, sustainingly, from the most fearful events. Beside Okonkwo, Ekwefi finds herself thinking of their youth. Another dawn: she was going to fetch water. His house was on the way to the stream. She knocked at his door. ‘Even in those days he was a man of few words. He just carried her to his bed and in the darkness began to feel around her waist for the loose end of her cloth.’

Achebe leaves us in suspense, on that intimate pause. The story is taken up surprisingly next day: Okonkwo’s friend Obierika is celebrating a joyous occasion, the wedding of his daughter: life goes on; whatever fears and disasters threaten individuals, the yam and the knife eternally contend. For Okonkwo, tragedy has been averted: we learn, as the preparations for the feast begin, that Ezinma is sleeping safely in her bed — the priestess brought her back and laid her there, unharmed. On the turning wheel of human life, the festive scene of the wedding is followed by another ceremony in the cycle, the funeral of a man who had the distinction of having taken three anklet titles out of the four created by the clan. Okonkwo is among the men who, to drumming and dancing, fire a last salute to the dead dignitary. Then comes ‘a cry of agony and shouts of horror. It was as if a spell had been cast.’ And it is as if a spell has been cast on Okonkwo: his gun has exploded and killed the dead man’s sixteen-year-old son. Achebe does not, and doesn’t have to remind us of the echo here of the other crime Okonkwo was led into by circumstance — the final death-blow he gave Ikemefuna — we hear it.

‘The only course open to Okonkwo was to flee from the clan. It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a clansman … the crime was of two kinds, male and female. Okonkwo had committed the female, because it had been inadvertent. He could return to the clan after seven years.’

Seven years.

Okonkwo has become an exile; of a kind. For he takes his wives and children to the village of Mbanta, from where his mother came and where she was returned for burial. He is well received by his mother’s kinspeople, given land, helped to build an obi and huts for his family, supplied with seed-yams. ‘… but it was like beginning life anew … like learning to become left-handed … his life had been ruled by a great passion — to become one of the lords’ in his clan in Umuofia. ‘That had been his life-spring. And he had all but achieved it. Then everything had been broken.’ To Okonkwo, personally, has come to pass this prophecy of Achebe’s title Things Fall Apart .

The second section of the novel is taken up in the second year of Okonkwo’s exile. The white man makes his real, ominous entry this time. A visit of an old friend from Umuofia brings news of the destruction of their neighbouring village, Abame.

During the last planting season a white man had appeared in their clan.

‘An albino’ suggested Okonkwo.

‘He was not an albino. He was quite different. He was riding an iron horse. The first people who saw him ran away; but he stood beckoning to them … The elders consulted their Oracle and it told them that the strange man would break their clan and spread destruction among them … And so they killed the white man and tied his iron horse to their sacred tree because it looked as if it would run away to call the man’s friends. It was said that other white men were on their way.’

They were indeed; they came to the market day and killed everyone there. Okonkwo’s friend Obierika says

‘We have heard stories about white men who made the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no-one thought the stories were true.’

‘There is no story that is not true’ said someone else. ‘The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.’

Two years pass once again. The white man, in the person of missionaries, has come to both Umuofia and Mbanta. Okonkwo’s son has appeared in Umuofia as a convert. Obierika comes to Mbanta to tell Okonkwo that when he asked Nwoye ‘“How is your father?” Nwoye said, “I don’t know. He is not my father.”’ But Okonkwo does not want to speak of the son who has rejected his origin for God the Father.

Achebe, having dropped this bombshell, reels the story back to create the scene of the arrival of the missionaries, which has already taken place. The event is bitingly hilarious. When they had all gathered the white man began to speak to them. He spoke through an interpreter who was an Ibo man. Many people laughed at the way the white man appeared ‘evidently’ to be using words strangely. According to the interpretation, instead of saying ‘myself’ he always said ‘my buttocks’. But he was a man of commanding presence and the clansmen listened attentively.

He said he was one of them … The white man was also their brother because they were all sons of God. And he told them about this new God, the creator of all the world and all the men and women. He told them they worshipped false gods, gods of wood and stone … the true God lived on high and that all men when they died went before him for judgement.

‘We have been sent by this great God to ask you to leave your wicked ways and false gods and turn to Him so that you may be saved when you die.’

‘Your buttocks understand our language,’ said someone light-heartedly and the crowd laughed.

When the white missionary speaks of the Son of God,