For the first time in three nights, Okonkwo slept. He woke up once in the middle of the night and his mind
went back to the past three days without making him feel uneasy. He began to wonder why he had felt uneasy at all. It was like a man wondering in broad daylight why a dream had appeared so terrible to him at night. He stretched himself and scratched his thigh where a mosquito had bitten him as he slept. Another one was wailing near his right ear. He slapped the ear and hoped he had killed it. Why do they always go for one’s ears? When he was a child his mother had told him a story about it. But it was as silly as all women’s stories. Mosquito, she had said, had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. “How much longer do you think you will live?” she asked. “You are already a skeleton.” Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.
Okonkwo turned on his side and went back to sleep. He was roused in the morning by someone banging on his door.
“Who is that?” he growled. He knew it must be Ekwefi. Of his three wives Ekwefi was the only one who would have the audacity to bang on his door.
“Ezinma is dying,” came her voice, and all the tragedy and sorrow of her life were packed in those words.
Okonkwo sprang from his bed, pushed back the bolt on his door and ran into Ekwefi’s hut.
Ezinma lay shivering on a mat beside a huge fire that her mother had kept burning all night.
“It is iba,” said Okonkwo as he took his machete and went into the bush to collect the leaves and grasses and barks of trees that went into making the medicine for iba.
Ekwefi knelt beside the sick child, occasionally feeling with her palm the wet, burning forehead.
Ezinma was an only child and the center of her mother’s world. Very often it was Ezinma who decided what food her mother should prepare. Ekwefi even gave her such delicacies as eggs, which children were rarely allowed to eat because such food tempted them to steal. One day as Ezinma was eating an egg Okonkwo had come in unexpectedly from his hut. He was greatly shocked and swore to beat Ekwefi if she dared to give the child eggs again. But it was impossible to refuse Ezinma anything. After her father’s rebuke she developed an even keener appetite for eggs. And she enjoyed above all the secrecy in which she now ate them. Her mother always took her into their bedroom and shut the door.
Ezinma did not call her mother Nne like all children. She called her by her name, Ekwefi, as her father and other grownup people did. The relationship between them was not only that of mother and child. There was something in it like the companionship of equals, which was strengthened by such little conspiracies as eating eggs in the bedroom.
Ekwefi had suffered a good deal in her life. She had borne ten children and nine of them had died in infancy, usually before the age of three. As she buried one child after another her sorrow gave way to despair and then to grim resignation. The birth of her children, which should be a woman’s crowning glory, became for Ekwefi mere physical agony devoid of promise. The naming ceremony after seven market weeks became an empty ritual. Her deepening despair found expression in the names she gave her children. One of them was a pathetic cry, Onwumbiko—“Death, I implore you.” But Death took no notice; Onwumbiko died in his fifteenth month. The next child was a girl, Ozoemena—“May it not happen again.” She died in her eleventh month, and two others after
her. Ekwefi then became defiant and called her next child Onwuma
—“Death may please himself.” And he did.
After the death of Ekwefi’s second child, Okonkwo had gone to a medicine man, who was also a diviner of the Afa Oracle, to inquire what was amiss. This man told him that the child was an ogbanje, one of those wicked children who, when they died, entered their mothers’ wombs to be born again.
“When your wife becomes pregnant again,” he said, “let her not sleep in her hut. Let her go and stay with her people. In that way she will elude her wicked tormentor and break its evil cycle of birth and death.”
Ekwefi did as she was asked. As soon as she became pregnant she went to live with her old mother in another village. It was there that her third child was born and circumcised on the eighth day. She did not return to Okonkwo’s compound until three days before the naming ceremony. The child was called Onwumbiko.
Onwumbiko was not given proper burial when he died. Okonkwo had called in another medicine man who was famous in the clan for his great knowledge about ogbanje children. His name was Okagbue Uyanwa. Okagbue was a very striking figure, tall, with a full beard and a bald head. He was light in complexion and his eyes were red and fiery. He always gnashed his teeth as he listened to those who came to consult him. He asked Okonkwo a few questions about the dead child. All the neighbors and relations who had come to mourn gathered round them.
“On what market-day was it born?” he asked.
“Oye,” replied Okonkwo. “And it died this morning?”
Okonkwo said yes, and only then realized for the first time that the child had died on the same market-day as it had been born. The neighbors and relations also saw the coincidence and said among themselves that it was very significant.
“Where do you sleep with your wife, in your obi or in her own hut?” asked the medicine man.
“In her hut.”
“In future call her into your obi.”
The medicine man then ordered that there should be no mourning for the dead child. He brought out a sharp razor from the goatskin bag slung from his left shoulder and began to mutilate the child. Then he took it away to bury in the Evil Forest, holding it by the ankle and dragging it on the ground behind him. After such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless it was one of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp of their mutilation—a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine man’s razor had cut them.
By the time Onwumbiko died Ekwefi had become a very bitter woman. Her husband’s first wife had already had three sons, all strong and healthy. When she had borne her third son in succession, Okonkwo had slaughtered a goat for her, as was the custom. Ekwefi had nothing but good wishes for her. But she had grown so bitter about her own chi that she could not rejoice with others over their good fortune. And so, on the day that Nwoye’s mother celebrated the birth of her three sons with feasting and music, Ekwefi was the only person in the happy company who went about with a cloud on her brow. Her husband’s wife took this for malevolence, as husbands’ wives were wont to. How could she know that Ekwefi’s bitterness did not flow outwards to others but inwards into her own soul; that she did not blame others for their good fortune but her own evil chi who denied her any?
At last Ezinma was born, and although ailing she seemed determined to live. At first Ekwefi accepted her, as she had accepted others—with listless resignation. But when she lived on to her fourth, fifth and sixth years, love returned once more to her mother, and, with love, anxiety. She determined to nurse her child to health, and she put all her being into it. She was rewarded by occasional spells of health during which Ezinma bubbled with energy like fresh
palm-wine. At such times she seemed beyond danger. But all of a sudden she would go down again. Everybody knew she was an ogbanje. These sudden bouts of sickness and health were typical of her kind. But she had lived so long that perhaps she had decided to stay. Some of them did become tired of their evil rounds of birth and death, or took pity on their mothers, and stayed. Ekwefi believed deep inside her that Ezinma had come to stay. She believed because it was that faith alone that gave her own life any kind of meaning. And this faith had been strengthened when a year or so ago a medicine man had dug up Ezinma’s iyi-uwa. Everyone knew then that she would live because her bond with the world of ogbanje had been broken. Ekwefi was reassured. But such was her anxiety for her daughter that she could not rid herself completely of her fear. And although she believed that the iyi-uwa which had been dug up was genuine, she could not ignore the fact that some really evil children sometimes misled people into digging up a specious one.
But Ezinma’s iyi-uwa had looked real enough. It was a smooth pebble wrapped in a dirty rag. The man who dug it up was the same Okagbue who was famous in all the clan for his knowledge in these matters. Ezinma had not wanted to cooperate with him at first. But that was only to be expected. No ogbanje would yield her secrets easily, and most of them never did because they died too young— before they could be asked questions.
“Where did you bury your iyi-uwa?” Okagbue had asked Ezinma.
She was nine then and was just recovering from a serious illness. “What is iyi-uwa?” she asked in return.
“You know what it is. You buried it in the ground somewhere so that you can die and return again to torment your mother.”
Ezinma looked at her mother, whose eyes, sad and pleading, were fixed on her.
“Answer the question at once,” roared Okonkwo, who stood beside her. All the family were there and some of the neighbors too.
“Leave her to me,” the medicine man told Okonkwo in a cool, confident voice. He turned again to Ezinma. “Where did you bury
your iyi-uwa?”
“Where they bury children,” she replied, and the quiet spectators murmured to themselves.
“Come along then and show me the spot,” said the medicine man.
The crowd set out with Ezinma leading the way and Okagbue following closely behind her. Okonkwo came next and Ekwefi followed him. When she came to the main road, Ezinma turned left as if she was going to the stream.
“But you said it was where they bury children?” asked the medicine man.
“No,” said Ezinma, whose feeling of importance was manifest in her sprightly walk. She sometimes broke into a run and stopped again suddenly. The crowd followed her silently. Women and children returning from the stream with pots of water on their heads wondered what was happening until they saw Okagbue and guessed that it must be something to do with ogbanje. And they all knew Ekwefi and her daughter very well.
When she got to the big udala tree Ezinma turned left into the bush, and the crowd followed her. Because of her size she made her way through trees and creepers more quickly than her followers. The bush was alive with the tread of feet on dry leaves and sticks and the moving aside of tree branches. Ezinma went deeper and deeper and the crowd went with her. Then she suddenly turned round and began to walk back to the road. Everybody stood to let her pass and then filed after her.
“If you bring us all this way for nothing I shall beat sense into you,” Okonkwo threatened.
“I have told you to let her alone. I know how to deal with them,” said Okagbue.
Ezinma led the way back to the road, looked left and right and turned right. And so they arrived home again.
“Where did you bury your iyi-uwa?” asked Okagbue when Ezinma finally stopped outside her father’s obi. Okagbue’s voice was
unchanged. It was quiet and confident.
“It is near that orange tree,” Ezinma said.
“And why did you not say so, you wicked daughter of Akalogoli?” Okonkwo swore furiously. The medicine man ignored him.
“Come and show me the exact spot,” he said quietly to Ezinma. “It is here,” she said when they got to the tree.
“Point at the spot with your finger,” said Okagbue.
“It is here,” said Ezinma touching the ground with her finger.
Okonkwo stood by, rumbling like thunder in the rainy season. “Bring me a hoe,” said Okagbue.
When Ekwefi brought the hoe, he had already put aside his goatskin bag and his big cloth and was in his underwear, a long and thin strip of cloth wound round the waist like a belt and then passed between the legs to be fastened to the belt behind. He immediately set to work digging a pit where Ezinma had indicated. The neighbors sat around watching the pit becoming deeper and deeper. The dark top soil soon gave way to the bright red earth with which women scrubbed the floors and walls of huts. Okagbue worked tirelessly and in silence, his back shining with perspiration. Okonkwo stood by the pit. He asked Okagbue to come up and rest while he took a hand. But Okagbue said he was not tired yet.
Ekwefi went into her hut to cook yams. Her husband had brought out more yams than usual because the medicine man had to be fed. Ezinma went with her and helped in preparing the vegetables.
“There is too much green vegetable,” she said.
“Don’t you see the pot is full of yams?” Ekwefi asked. “And you know how leaves become smaller after cooking.”
“Yes,” said Ezinma, “that was why the snake-lizard killed his mother.”
“Very true,” said Ekwefi.
“He gave his mother seven baskets of vegetables to cook and in the end there were only three. And so he killed her,” said Ezinma.
“That is not the end of the story.”
“Oho,” said Ezinma. “I remember now. He brought another seven baskets and cooked them himself. And there were again only three. So he killed himself too.”
Outside the obi Okagbue and Okonkwo were digging the pit to find where Ezinma had buried her iyi-uwa. Neighbors sat around, watching. The pit was now so deep that they no longer saw the digger. They only saw the red earth he threw up mounting higher and higher. Okonkwo’s son, Nwoye, stood near the edge of the pit because he wanted to take in all that happened.
Okagbue had again taken over the digging from Okonkwo. He worked, as usual, in silence. The neighbors and Okonkwo’s wives were now talking. The children had lost interest and were playing.
Suddenly Okagbue sprang to the surface with the agility of a leopard.
“It is very near now,” he said. “I have felt it.”
There was immediate excitement and those who were sitting jumped to their feet.
“Call your wife and child,” he said to Okonkwo. But Ekwefi and Ezinma had heard the noise and run out to see what it was.
Okagbue went back into the pit, which was now surrounded by spectators. After a few more hoe-fuls of earth he struck the iyi-uwa. He raised it carefully with the hoe and threw it to the surface. Some women ran away in fear when it was thrown. But they soon returned and everyone was gazing at the rag from a reasonable distance. Okagbue emerged and without saying a word or even looking at the spectators he went to his goatskin bag, took out two leaves and began to chew them. When he had swallowed them, he took up the rag with his left hand and began to untie it. And then the smooth, shiny pebble fell out. He picked it up.
“Is this yours?” he asked Ezinma.
“Yes,” she replied. All the women shouted with joy because Ekwefi’s troubles were at last ended.
All this had happened more than a year ago and Ezinma had not been ill since. And then suddenly she had begun to shiver in the night. Ekwefi brought her to the fireplace, spread her mat on the floor and built a fire. But she had got worse and worse. As she knelt by her, feeling with her palm the wet, burning forehead, she prayed a thousand times. Although her husband’s wives were saying that it was nothing more than iba, she did not hear them.
Okonkwo returned from the bush carrying on his left shoulder a large bundle of grasses and leaves, roots and barks of medicinal trees and shrubs. He went into Ekwefi’s hut, put down his load and sat down.
“Get me a pot,” he said, “and leave the child alone.”
Ekwefi went to bring the pot and Okonkwo selected the best from his bundle, in their due proportions, and cut them up. He put them in the pot and Ekwefi poured in some water.
“Is that enough?” she asked when she had poured in about half of the water in the bowl.
“A little more … I said a little. Are you deaf?” Okonkwo roared at her.
She set the pot on the fire and Okonkwo took up his machete to return to his obi.
“You must watch the pot carefully,” he said as he went, “and don’t allow it to boil over. If it does its power will be gone.” He went away to his hut and Ekwefi began to tend the medicine pot almost as if it was itself a sick child. Her eyes went constantly from Ezinma to the boiling pot and back to Ezinma.
Okonkwo returned when he felt the medicine had cooked long anough. He looked it over and said it was done.
“Bring me a low stool for Ezinma,” he said, “and a thick mat.”
He took down the pot from the fire and placed it in front of the stool. He then roused Ezinma and placed her on the stool, astride the steaming pot. The thick mat was thrown over both. Ezinma
struggled to escape from the choking and overpowering steam, but she was held down. She started to cry.
When the mat was at last removed she was drenched in perspiration. Ekwefi mopped her with a piece of cloth and she lay down on a dry mat and was soon asleep.
