Uchendu had been told by one of his grandchildren that three strangers
had come to Okonkwo's house. He was therefore waiting to receive them. He
held out his hands to them when they came into his obi, and after they had
shaken hands he asked Okonkwo who they were.
'This is Obierika, my great friend. I have already spoken to you about him.'
'Yes,' said the old man, turning to Obierika. 'My son has told me about
you, and I am happy you have come to see us. I knew your father, Iweka. He
was a great man. He had many friends here and came to see them quite often.
Those were good days when a man had friends in distant clans. Your genera
tion does not know that. You stay at home, afraid of your next-door neighbour.
Even a man's motherland is strange to him nowadays.' He looked at Okonkwo.
'I am an old man and I like to talk. That is all I am good for now.' He got up
painfully, went into an inner room and came back with a kola nut.
'Who are the young men with you?' he asked as he sat down again on his
goatskin. Okonkwo told him.
'Ah,' he said. 'Welcome, my sons.' He presented the kola nut to them, and
when they had seen it and thanked him, he broke it and they ate.
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TH INGS FALL APART, PART 3 / 2681
'Go into that room,' he said to Okonkwo, pointing with his finger. 'You will find a pot of wine there.' Okonkwo brought the wine and they began to drink. It was a day old, and very strong.
'Yes,' said Uchendu after a long silence. 'People travelled more in those days. There is not a single clan in these parts that I do not know very well. Aninta, Umuazu, Ikeocha, Elumelu, Abame?I know them all.'
'Have you heard,' asked Obierika, 'that Abame is no more?'
'How is that?' asked Uchendu and Okonkwo together.
'Abame has been wiped out,' said Obierika. 'It is a strange and terrible story. If I had not seen the few survivors with my own eyes and heard their story with my own ears, I would not have believed. Was it not on an Eke day that they fled into Umuofia?' he asked his two companions, and they nodded their heads.
'Three moons ago,' said Obierika, 'on an Eke market-day a little band of fugitives came into our town. Most of them were sons of our land whose mothers had been buried with us. But there were some too who came because they had friends in out town, and others who could think of nowhere else open to escape. And so they fled into Umuofia with a woeful story.' He drank his palm-wine, and Okonkwo filled his horn again. He continued:
'During the last planting season a white ma n had appeared in their clan.'
'An albino,' suggested Okonkwo.
'He was not an albino. He was quite different.' He sipped his wine. 'And he was riding an iron horse.6 The first people who saw him ran away, but he stood beckoning to them. In the end the fearless ones went near and even touched him. Th e elders consulted their Oracle and it told them that the strange man would break their clan and spread destruction among them.' Obierika again drank a little of his wine. 'And so they killed the white ma n and tied his iron horse to their sacred tree because it looked as if it would run away to call the man's friends. I forgot to tell you another thing which the Oracle said. It said that other white men were on their way. They were locusts, it said, and that first ma n was their harbinger sent to explore the terrain. An d so they killed him.'
'What did the white ma n say before they killed him?' asked Uchendu.
'He said nothing,' answered one of Obierika's companions.
'He said something, only they did not understand him,' said Obierika. 'He
seemed to speak through his nose.'
'One of the men told me,' said Obierika's other companion, 'that he
repeated over and over again a word that resembled Mbaino. Perhaps he had
been going to Mbaino and had lost his way.'
'Anyway,' resumed Obierika, 'they killed him and tied up his iron horse.
This was before the planting season began. For a long time nothing happened.
The rains had come and yams had been sown. The iron horse was still tied to
the sacred silk-cotton tree. An d then one morning three white me n led by a
band of ordinary men like us came to the clan. They saw the iron horse and
went away again. Most of the men and women of Abame had gone to their
farms. Only a few of them saw these white men and their followers. For many
market weeks nothing else happened. They have a big market in Abame on
