'Come along,' they said to the women. 'We will go with you to meet those
cowards.' Some of them had big sticks and some even matchets.
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TH INGS FALL APART, PART 3 / 269 1
But Mr Kiaga restrained them. He wanted first to know why they had been outlawed.
'They say that Okoli killed the sacred python,' said one man.
'It is false,' said another. 'Okoli told me himself that it was false.'
Okoli was not there to answer. He had fallen ill on the previous night. Before
the day was over he was dead. His death showed that the gods were still able to fight their own battles. Th e clan saw no reason then for molesting the Christians.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The last big rains of the year were falling. It was the time for treading red earth with which to build walls. It was not done earlier because the rains were too heavy and would have washed away the heap of trodden earth; and it could not be done later because harvesting would soon set in, and after that the dry season.
It was going to be Okonkwo's last harvest in Mbanta. Th e seven wasted and weary years were at last dragging to a close. Although he had prospered in his motherland Okonkwo knew that he would have prospered even more in Umuofia, in the land of his fathers where me n were bold and warlike. In these seven years he would have climbed to the utmost heights. An d so he regretted every day of his exile. His mother's kinsmen had been very kind to him, and he was grateful. But that did not alter the facts. He had called the first child born to him in exile Nneka?'Mother is Supreme'?out of politeness to his mother's kinsmen. But two years later when a son was born he called him Nwofia?'Begotten in the Wilderness'.
As soon as he entered his last year in exile Okonkwo sent money to Obierika to build him two huts in his old compound where he and his family would live until he built more huts and the outside wall of his compound. He could not ask another man to build his own obi for him, nor the walls of his compound. Those things a ma n built for himself or inherited from his father.
As the last heavy rains of the year began to fall, Obierika sent word that the two huts had been built and Okonkwo began to prepare for his return, after the rains. He would have liked to return earlier and build his compound that year before the rains stopped, but in doing so he would have taken something from the full penalty of seven years. An d that could not be. So he waited impatiently for the dry season to come.
It came slowly. Th e rain became lighter and lighter until it fell in slanting showers. Sometimes the sun shone through the rain and a light breeze blew. It was a gay and airy kind of rain. Th e rainbow began to appear, and sometimes two rainbows, like a mother and her daughter, the one young and beautiful, and the other an old and faint shadow. Th e rainbow was called the python of the sky.
Okonkwo called his three wives and told them to get things together for a great feast. 'I must thank my mother's kinsmen before I go,' he said.
Ekwefi still had some cassava left on her farm from the previous year. Neither of the other wives had. It was not that they had been lazy, but that they had many children to feed. It was therefore understood that Ekwefi would provide cassava for the feast. Nwoye's mother and Ojiugo would provide the other things like smoked fish, palm-oil and pepper for the soup. Okonkwo would take care of meat and yams.
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269 2 / CHINUA ACHEBE
Ekwefi rose early on the following morning and went to her farm with her daughter, Ezinma, and Ojiugo's daughter, Obiageli, to harvest cassava tubers. Each of them carried a long cane basket, a matchet for cutting down the soft cassava stem, and a little hoe for digging out the tuber. Fortunately, a light rain had fallen during the night and the soil would not be very hard.
'It will not take us long to harvest as muc h as we like,' said Ekwefi.
'But the leaves will be wet,' said Ezinma. Her basket was balanced on her head, and her arms folded across her breasts. She felt cold. 'I dislike cold water dropping on my back. We should have waited for the sun to rise and dry the leaves.'
Obiageli called her 'Salt' because she said that she disliked water. 'Are you afraid you may dissolve?'
The harvesting was easy, as Ekwefi had said. Ezinma shook every tree violently with a long stick before she bent down to cut the stem and dig out the tuber. Sometimes it was not necessary to dig. They just pulled the stump, and earth rose, roots snapped below, and the tuber was pulled out.
Whe n they had harvested a sizeable heap they carried it down in two trips to the stream, where every woman had a shallow well for fermenting her cassava.
'It should be ready in four days or even three,' said Obiageli. 'They are young tubers.' 'They are not all that young,' said Ekwefi. 'I planted the farm nearly two years ago. It is a poor soil and that is why the tubers are so small.'
Okonkwo never did things by halves. Whe n his wife Ekwefi protested that
two goats were sufficient for the feast he told her that it was not her affair.
'I am calling a feast because I have the wherewithal. I cannot live on the
bank of a river and wash my hands with spittle. My mother's people have been
good to me and I must show my gratitude.'
And so three goats were slaughtered and a number of fowls. It was like a
wedding feast. There was foo-foo and yam pottage, egusi9 soup and bitter-leaf
soup and pots and pots of palm-wine.
