Chapter 9: Chapter 9
The next day, the preparation for the funeral of the late Igwe began. They had buried his corpse after the confirmation of his demise, but they must perform this rite. The funeral was a requisite for the coronation of the new Igwe. This has always been a very important festival in the life of the community. Two heads of horses accompanied the spirit of a court principal. But they slew twenty stallions to go with the spirit of royal fathers. The funeral was a great occasion, the people looked forward to it for its merriment. This was a day of transition from mourning to thanksgiving.
The manner with which everyone gained consolation has all the trappings of black magic. One may begin to wonder the sincerity of all the wailings and curses. Of course, one has a cause to, because there was a good deal of drama therein. It became a principle that any woman who learned about the death of a compatriot must mourn. Only the men never cried as something shielded the tears from streaming off their eyes. But they must beat their chest, curse the day, and take heart.
Crying was the women’s deal. It makes them feel at ease. But in Ezzum, even if a woman knew how to take solace, she must learn to cry her heart to bear. The logic was, if one was not guilty of the death of a person, she must feel compassion. So, the women who do not feel at all had their way of acting magic. They called the tears to flood their eyes as they wail. The tear gland can be a major betrayal despite a woman’s loudest lament. If the tears refused to stream, then, the cry is not a sincere one. This made distinguishing cries which lacked emotions as easy as telling amusements.
The stouthearted women manufactured for themselves a formula capable of inducing tears. These women knew quite well the quantum of threat, having tasted the wrath every here and once. They would say it is the reward for negligence, not mischief. The wise ones will always say that pepper was not a friend to the eyes. It is easy for the fortunate ones to say and say again. They have the original delicate heart of a woman. The mischievous women added a bit of pepper to their eyeliner when they visited death yards. No one would suspect their scheme because all the women wore makeup. They believed it sharpened their sights.
In a group of twos and threes, the men who would sojourn to the land of the spirit began to storm the shrine of Ogwu. The priest seemed to be aware of the company he had. Even without anyone telling him, he would every here and now come out to inspect the surrounding. Each time he came out, he never spoke to anyone.
Only noblemen in the community were eligible to embark on this quest to the land of the spirit. Several numbers of factors determined a man’s nobility. For instance, how many wives he had in his courtyard. The number of children and grandchildren who answered his name. The counts of titles he had, and his relationship to the Igwe’s inn.
There were quite enough men to undertake the task, but the diviner was still not satisfied. The last time he came out, there were twenty men assembled. It seemed like he had names on his list who were yet to arrive. Every man inspected the other with a grim look, quantifying the fellow’s nobility. There were nods and nods of affirmation among them. Soon they started murmuring, and wondering what the priest was waiting for.
About then, Nwosu and his friend Njoku added to the number. The men assembled received the last two men with a good deal of amazement. They fixed stares on them as if they were the people who kept them waiting for so long. The duo took their time, minding every step they threw. They preoccupied themselves with whatever discussion they had been having on the road. When they approached, it became clearer the reason for the many stares they received. Their credibility was under serious scrutiny.
The men completed the assessment of them and began to ask questions. They came to conclusion that both Nwosu and Njoku were not qualified for the task. There was none who does not know the genealogy of these two persons very well. Njoku for instance was not responsible for the burial rites of his father. He had let strangers take over the funeral. The community people considered it a shame for a man’s relatives to lay him to rest upon his demise when he has an heir.
They do not admit one into manhood if he had not undertaken the funeral rite of his own father. He could receive minute help by opening the doors of blessings to his fellow, but he must be at the helm of affairs. This was where Njoku failed. As at the time of the death of his father, he has no experience to have carried the weight of his father’s corpse. On the other end, Nwosu lost his own father in a rift with a neighbor over an argument on the ownership of a plot of land. His father defiled all counsels to let the gods take charge, so he engaged in a show of who was more of a man than the other.
The land in question was free at the time of the conflict. The party who owned it had no reason to secure it. This usually happened when a man was at peace with his neighbors. They only invited a dibia to acknowledge the ownership when there was distrust. When a dibia secured any possession to a person, he can determine what happens to a trespasser.
Smartness prevailed in the case of Nwosu’s father and his neighbor. While the former went soliciting for witnesses, the latter engaged the service of a dibia. The man secured the piece to himself and placed a ban on intruders. He cursed any man who stepped into the land with the intention of disputing rights with him. Nwosu’s father was able to garner a handful of elders who were willing to follow him to see the property in dispute. Some men he approached told him they had no business in land disputes. Others who were kind advised him to challenge the other man into swearing an Ofor, but he refused to take heed. The men who stood by him were the people who stirred trouble in the community. When there was a fight between two parties, they took the side of the one they could harness some pieces of silver. There was one source of enrichment to them. Their job was to cheer their party and give the truth to them no matter what question was in contention.
On a fateful day, Nwosu’s father led his team to inspect the parcel and all attributed the title to the land to him. This alone gladdened his father and for the moment he felt like he had won the battle. He thought everyone knew the truth and only this could set one upright. He did not know the mischievous people had fabricated it with falsehood. It was only a few days later the manifestation of the outcome of the visit to the farmland began to surface. His legs swell until he could not use them again to walk around.
At the very beginning, they thought it was a normal ailment. It took only the consultation of a good traditional healer to reveal the origin. He had stepped on a bad medicine. That day, the Dibia brought his calabash of liquid screen. The screen was a very big one, as wide as a basin. He sat it in Nwosu’s courtyard for all the members of the household to watch. This was the first time everyone will be looking into the screen. Even the ones who had visited a Dibia’s shrine before were never opportune to have had a peek.
The Dibias maintained some secrecy and only instructed based on what they could see. Allowing clients to have a peek into the calabash of the liquid screen was not only wrathful to them, but to the Dibia. A client may after having knowledge of his nemesis wage assaults without evidence. Spiritual battles are quite unlike in the physical. In the spirit realm, one’s worst rival can be his best ally. Now, it is unrealistic to wage an assault on a friend whom the people had always known one with. This act will be absurd if the people have not recorded any strain in the friendship. When this happens, people will ask questions, and the person might want to prove his sanity. The more foolish ones will say, “it is that Dibia who showed me his face.” Then, spirits do not stand the test of men and may choose not to manifest when the Dibia will want to prove himself. This Dibia found it appropriate to unmask the identity of the villain right in the sight of all.
Afterward, they carried Nwosu’s father to the shrine of Ogwu as only the deity can handle his case. It was while he was in the priest's custody that he gave up the ghost. None of his households ever saw his body. The custom has it that any person who died within the sight of Ogwu belonged to the deity. The household of the deceased can only mourn, but for the corpse, no one contends with the spirits. This was how Nwosu lost out in his manliness, as the incident robbed his father of a befitting burial rite.
No sooner than Njoku and his friend Nwosu arrived did the priest came out of the shrine and begun with. Sojourning to the spirit world was not a child’s thing. The deity must keep watch on whomever was traveling beyond if ever one had a plan of coming out alive. In there, one’s eyes are as useless as that of a blind man. Only the eye of the gods sees the way. There is no entrance and exit but when the spirit willed, a man sojourns and returns.
The sight of human heads staked on long sticks made Nwosu very uneasy. This was quite normal, after losing his own father to the deity. Once upon a time, the skulls belonged to humans, full bloody as his father once lived. One could tell from the frenzied look on his face that he was in distress. Since he entered the shrine, he has been looking at the skulls as if to sort which was his father’s. This finding will be very difficult now that the surrounding flesh has vanished. What a vanity upon human life, the skin which one labored to keep in good shape would someday disappear. In this state of existence, one cannot tell the well-fed mouths from the starved and destitute. Nwosu looked at one, and imagined it was his father’s, he visualized the mouth yawning and calling for food. But his imaginations were vain. Skulls do not eat, neither does the dead feel hungry. Even so, the skull he took to be his father’s might not be.
Once again, he drowned in his world of imagination. He tried to figure out if his father had a big or small head. This was only what he needed to distinguish which from the dozens of skulls had belonged to his father. Before the evil spirit could set him to thinking of how to steal his father’s skull, the priest recalled his soul. He sprinkled the concoction over his face and there was absolute calm in his head. All the disturbing thoughts flew away at once. It was catastrophic standing in the front of Ogwu, thinking of committing sacrilege. The deity never spared anyone who dared. His head would have followed.
Nwosu came alive to the event playing right in the shrine. The priest carried a calabash on his left arm, clutched to his breast. The red painting of the exterior gave him an inkling of what the content would be. There is every possibility his guess was right. One who traded human skulls should also have in his possession lifeblood. When he looked down, he noticed he was standing on a cordial line, and he loved it. He began to examine the tips of their toes.
There was a vacant space to his left side, the priest had chased away one man, and he was yet to learn why. When he asked the person out, he was absent from the reality of his surroundings. Now he is dismissing another. The other men must be grumbling in their heads. It was as if he had expected this, that he first put pieces of palm fronds in their mouth, so they were unable to talk. If one must communicate with the other, it must be through the face marks. But the face can only say it is sad or pleasing and nothing more.
If the man who left now doubled his pace, he could catch up with the first. Nwosu could imagine what their discourse would be. He began to wonder what Nwokocha was doing among men. Despite his age, they do not consider him a man. He must have thought that being in the same peer as the others qualified him to manhood.
“Does a man wake up in the early hours of the morning and begin going to places no one has invited him?” Nwosu thought. He turned to blame the person who had called Nwokocha to the party. He was sure no one came to the place on their own. The priest has invited him and his friend to be part of the group. “Did the priest not listen very well to the gods that he enlisted some wrong people along?”
Every man desired to embark on this journey for the reward which awaits the members of the party. Upon arrival, the priest initiated them into the Igwe’s cabinet with new titles. Receiving and adding new titles was one of the truest tests of one’s nobility in the community.
Since the night Nwosu got the priest’s message for his inclusion, he has been brainstorming his title. He knew the priest was returning the good deeds he has been doing him by dashing him this slot. In as much as the customs made everyone believe it was the gods who called, the sincerity of it was questionable. Most of the men whom the priest called had many titles to their name. Some had two, three, four, and only a handful had one. It appeared only he and Njoku had none if he put aside the other men sent off. Although he did not know the first man, he knew with certainty that Nwokocha had no title either.
One may wonder why the gods kept choosing the same people for every noble quest and ignoring a good fraction of men. If not that the priest was returning his favor, he would not have imagined achieving this feat. Nwosu has given so much to the priest. Spirits do not eat human food, so when one sacrificed to the gods, it is its diviner who feasts on their behalf. He began counting how many offerings he had made to the deity but they were too many, and he could not remember them all.
At the beginning of every new moon, he offered a cock to Ogwu, and he has lost record. For every flock he slew, he made sure the head and legs went to the shrine of Ogwu, and he even added the entrails. Yet he does not keep count of how many times he had done these. He offered a good quota of his produce at the beginning of every harvest. When his farmland gets weak, he offered it as well. The priest must be thankful. He is a blessing to the shrine of Ogwu and to the community. It is for his kind of person that whenever Chineke-Nna looked at the evils of men, he withheld his wrath. If only every man were as generous as he, the diviner would never want or go hungry.
He imagined if his friend was open-handed to the priest as he. The priest has also invited him for the quest. Only yesterday, he informed Njoku that the ancestors offered him mgbada. No one has ever heard of such in the entire history of the existence of humankind. Of course, the mgbada was a spirit one, and there was a great consequence for hunting or feasting on the game. But yesterday, the priest told everyone that the one was an offering from the ancestors. Going by how the ceremony ended, one might wonder if the god’s hands were in all that went on.
“If the priest’s claim was right, why then did the gods allow Ekwensu to tempt the men into fighting? Why did the gods release masquerades from Ani-Muo to come and chase everyone away from the ground?” Nwosu queried in his thought. He began to buy into the widespread illusion that the diviner has a long throat. When it comes to the matter relating to meat, his ears misinterpret the message of the gods.
The thought about Nwokocha returned to his mind. This time he imagined he had come to pace with the other man. The other man would be Ikemba. The man whose wife almost lost her sight during the period of mourning for the death of the late Igwe. Nwanyidika was a stout-hearted woman, notorious for fake grieves. No wonder she always contoured her eyes with heavy eyeliner. It was from her misapplication that the secret formula came to the knowledge of all and sundry. For no known reason, she had not felt single compassion for the demise of the Igwe. One would expect she would take the death as her personal loss for the many titles her husband received.
The Ikemba’s slew their affection for the Igwe when he passed his Onowu to another man. Ikemba did everything he could. Everyone bore testimony of him lobbying his way for this position. He even went to the extent of imposing on himself the functionaries of the office.
Nwanyidika, on her own part, frequented the Igwe’s courtyard. She splashed the Igwe’s wife with a lot of goodies. Everyone who had an eye to the office felt defeated with the manner Ikemba imposed himself. Every man eyed this office, it was in the ranks of the noblest of all titles. Aside from the commands of the Igwe, it came next. Upon reception of the news of the Igwe’s death, there was a mark of relief from Ikemba’s courtyard. Another opportunity has once more presented itself. The joy intoxicated his heart that he began to make reckless utterances.
“Yesterdays, I lost all hopes to the darkness of the night. A new dawn has come with fresh ones. So be it, if the Igwe must pass on to give life to my ambition. No man can cause my star to gloom. My destiny is to become Onowu. Now, I will seize the title to myself whatever it takes.”
The universe has caught Ikemba’s voice, and his case was under investigation. Speaking to the winds was like conversing with the gods as through their mouthpiece. Only there is no speculation whether the diviner had communicated the right thoughts. If Ikemba was a wise man, today is the day he begins to contemplate his life to fish out where he had lost it. He might as well carry on crying foul throughout the crannies of the community. His exclusion was like a warning sign. He is a lucky man because others never had this sort of opportunity. The grace Ikemba had was like that of a man who died, and his gods were merciful to give him a second life. If the person leverages the opportunity, he can appease for his sins. Ikemba must take heed and do the needful or stand the risk of incurring the wrath when he has outlived the favor.
Nwokocha, on the other end, was out of context. He cannot be the man he desired when there are still an ocean of tears clogging in his eyes.
“How can a man who still receives commands from his father pride himself as a man? When they request men to hands up, he raises both hands.”
By truth, Nwokocha had wept once, during the death of his mother, but the second and decisive one has not happened. Nwosu was sure he must be grumbling too. Sometimes his ordeal becomes pitiable so much so that one gives him sympathy. He is a hardworking man, and ever viable to carry any weight of responsibility on his head. But the gods would not allow his father across the land of the living. Despite all the social injuries the plight had mated on him, he never for one moment wished his father death. In fact, he resolved to not let any man put him under the pressure of counting his losses. Countless times he had warned any man who took this as an avenue to insult his person.
“Human beings are not gods. A man cannot kill his own father to please the world.”
In Nwosu’s head, Nwokocha had matched Ikemba’s pace and they both are now walking together. Ikemba was complaining to the other man. He cannot understand how he should sit at home with his titles when young men with none take to task. He was threatening to cause trouble, to show everyone why his father had named him Ikemba. His utterances scared even the other man who had not said much since he caught up steps with him. The two men had not too many things in common. While Nwokocha knew the reason for his exclusion and kept to his peace, Ikemba did not seem to understand. He has refused to discern whatever cause, only threatening to do his worst.
The reality playing in the shrine eased his preoccupation with the dismissed persons. The priest was now shaving their hair with a blunt blade, and he was not being friendly at all. Every one whom he got to and began to shave wore a peculiar face, stoned, and very confused. If not for the palm fronds between their lips, some could have screamed or demanded a change of hand. No one escaped this exercise, not even those who had shaved their head the night before. Later, he washed their head, and those he found leftover hair, he once more plucked it off with the blade. He did so until their head was as smooth as a rock. Then, he began an incantation until a squall formed and stood in place. He went to the men one after the other. Without further utterances he points to the men and then to the wind. The men walked blind or as a people who have no brain into the storm and it flew them away.