‘Hack her to pieces! She must not be born again,’ cried the Third Priest in a rasping voice.
‘Throw her pieces to the four winds. Let them be blown to the ends of the earth so that even her chi cannot find them,’ the Second Priest intoned.
‘Who are we that we should sit in final judgement over her?’ asked the First Priest, shaking his white head sorrowfully.
‘We are the appointed judges of Ajala, our great Mother Earth. This woman sinned against her and should not be returned to her,’ answered the Second Priest contemptuously.
‘We were appointed to judge mortals not spirits,’ countered the First Priest. ‘Therefore, let us be merciful. The woman has sinned, it is true, but her sins have been washed away by her death.’ His mellow, slow voice calmed the acolytes, whose hysterical chanting now became a low dirge.
‘You are the First, the anointed head,’ said the Third Priest. ‘But let my dissension be recorded. Not all sins can be washed away by death alone, else there would be no evil or tormented spirits and all mortals dying would automatically be washed pure and reborn. But the spirit of sinners must sojourn in Hades, to be tormented and to wander around for some time with hopes of being born again. One of the greatest punishments that can be meted out to a mortal or spirit is to be left wandering without hope. This woman’s sin cannot be washed away by death, nor even by letting her spirit wander for some time. It is better she be cut to pieces so that she can never be born again and her spirit will wander endlessly.’
‘So let it be, oh First,’ chanted the Second Priest.
‘No! It shall not be. Let it not be said we stretched our mortal hand into a world we know nothing of. Let the spirits judge the spirits and the mortals, mortals. Therefore, let the spirit of the dead woman wander for a while and not endlessly. We will bury her with the honours befitting a noble woman, with chalk and camwood markings on her face and body; with a root of the iroko and spittle of the tortoise mixed into a potion to anoint her belly, and her okike strung across the top of the two tallest palm trees in the village and not untied till it has either been shot down or eight days have elapsed; with the mat woven from the ute that grows on the banks of the sacred stream. I, the First, have passed judgement. We will now wait for Mother Ajala to declare her wishes.’
There was a hushed silence. Even the acolytes with their heavily chalked faces and foam-specked mouths controlled their moaning.
Presently the rays of the full moon cut through the foliage of the giant age-old trees surrounding Ajala’s shrine and fell on the circular sacrificial stone on which lay the naked body of the dead young woman. Ranged round her were the three squatting priests who waited, their closely shaven heads bent, to learn the wishes of their goddess, but their minds could not concentrate on the same thing for a very long time. And as time rolled inexorably by, lengthened by the silence of the surrounding forest, their thoughts veered away to …
She had walked into his house that afternoon two years ago, her three multicoloured beads sitting so becomingly on her slim, dark waist. On her beautiful lips was the smile he knew so well, the teasing smile that could set the muddy blood of an old man on fire. Without touching her breasts, he knew her nipples were hard because of the way they stood out, and round them, as always, were two concentric circles of uli.
‘Okwomma,’ she greeted him.
‘My child,’ he answered, controlling, with difficulty, the trembling of the lips and hands that often assailed him in her presence.
She sat down on the opposite ngidi, the mud bed, not the way women always sat with legs stretched out together in front of them, but in her own exciting way – legs drawn up and hands hugging her knees as if she were cold.
‘I just thought I should come by and greet you, Third Priest,’ she said in her low, husky voice, her eyes modestly lowered.
‘You did well, my child. Had your beloved father been alive, he would have approved. But why didn’t you go to the Afo Ezinma today?’
‘I had nothing to sell, Third Priest. And besides, Mother and the other wives were going, so I decided to stay at home to look after the children and cook dinner.’
He grunted and brought out his old black clay pipe and leaf tobacco from his soot-covered raffia bag, which had been handed down to him from his grandfather. With superfluous concentration, he began to fill his pipe. He had often discovered that a smoke quieted his blood, and took his mind away from mundane thoughts, particularly the one that bothered him at that moment.
The sound of children playing in the heat-haze of the afternoon, the bark of lean, dirty dogs, the occasional squawks of frightened chickens taking cover from the sharp claws of a diving hawk and the bleating of goats emphasized the absence of all the able-bodied men and women in the village who had gone to the Afo market in Ezinma, five miles away.
His pipe lit, he leaned back on the red mud wall and sucked a grateful lungful. ‘Don’t you like my staying at home?’ asked Maruma.
‘Why do you ask, child?’
‘Because you grunted after I explained why I stayed.’
‘I was filling my pipe.’
‘You hadn’t brought out your pipe then.’ She had dropped the formal manner of addressing the priests of Ajala, and her legs were now curled up under her.
‘No, my child,’ said the Third Priest slowly. ‘I don’t dislike your staying home. In fact, I like it.’
‘I knew you would, Third Priest.’
As if caught unawares, he puffed away nervously at his dying pipe. He had been staring at her for some time, figuring what it would be like. Now he bent forward and rearranged the smouldering wood of the fire between them. Deftly, he picked up a glowing charcoal with his fingers and put it into the bowl of his pipe. He drew hard at the pipe, his large Adam’s apple moving rhythmically up and down, and now and again he pressed the charcoal in with his index finger. Before long, he was enveloped in pungent smoke.
‘I don’t like the smell of your tobacco.’
‘Why, child? It smells good to me.’
‘Don’t call me a child. I’m a full-grown woman.’
He removed his pipe and stared at her. Her long slim legs were now stretched out in front of her, thus exposing her wide hips, flat belly and large bosom, and on her lips played that smile – innocent, teasing and inviting, all at the same time.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m sorry …’
‘It’s all right,’ she hastily assured him. She had begun to feel uneasy and afraid she might not be able to control the emotion she was stirring up. Those looks of his were not the looks of a priest, and she had felt his eyes mauling her. ‘It’s all right, Third Priest,’ she said, recalling that he was, at a mere thirty-five, the youngest of the three and had become a priest by inheritance, and not by personal achievement or remarkable holiness.
She stood up, tall and straight, luscious and desirable, a woman at eighteen, conscious and proud of her bloom.
‘I’m going to prepare lunch for the children.’ The flesh was strong, but the will weak.
He, too, was standing.
Without looking, she could see the cloth ugbolo tied between his legs in the form of pants striving and straining to contain the stirring of life down there. She could also feel, without touching, the heat radiating from his hardpacked, bare body, and the fire between them accentuating it. She swallowed hard in an effort to clear the impending clogging of her throat, and her other self wondered why she felt as she did, why she had become hypersensitive to every nuance in the environment. She had been in this situation with him before and had come out of it unscathed, having enjoyed every minute of it, but …
‘Maruma, look at me.’ It was the first time ever he had called her by name.
Their eyes met, and she thought she saw lightning flashes criss-crossing between them.
He thought the same too, or willed it, and in one bound, he was by her side and the next, carried her into his bedroom. Her cry rent the air as he threw her onto the bamboo bed. He tore at his ugbolo with feverish, erratic fingers – but he couldn’t undo it!
Her next cry cut across his befogged brain like a whip lash. She had called on the protection of Ajala and she must, therefore, remain inviolate or he would be damned. He wrung his hands in fury, cursing silently the day he was born and his inherent fear of this goddess whom he served and was bonded to serve to the end. With glazed eyes, he watched her get off the bed and walk through the low door to freedom. His bird had flown again, after having walked into his den. Cursed be her chi!
And as Maruma stepped into the hot sun she began to shiver as one suffering from the ague.
*
His son had rushed into the hut that evening holding his stomach, and through his fingers he could see red seeping through, leaving a well-emblazoned trail. His heart sank when he knew instinctively what it was.
‘Nwobi, what happened? Who did that to you? Tell me, tell me!’
The boy collapsed on the ngidi moaning, his handsome face a picture of pain and wonder. ‘Maruma, Maruma stabbed me, stabbed me in the stomach.’ He fainted.
Maruma, that she-devil, thought the Second Priest as he dressed his son’s wound. Thanks to Ajala, it was not a very deep one, but still an ugly sight. Nwobi must have jumped back as she struck since his flesh had a ‘torn’ look.
‘Oh, Ajala, what shall we do to this vixen before she destroys all our young men?’
With his knowledge of the herbs, the Second Priest brought his son back to the land of the living in four days – one Ibo week – and during that period he often wished he were not Ajala’s priest so that he could take vengeance on Maruma, though she was the Chief’s daughter and, like everyone in the village, Ajala’s child.
The shepherd could not scatter his flock; if he did, he would be many more times damned!
And what was more, no one should ever know that his son had been worsted in a fight with a girl!
It took another three days before the Second Priest could get his son to tell him how it had all happened. Had the boy’s mother been alive, he would have known sooner, but then her death had made it possible for him to prepare for the priesthood.
Nwobi had recounted the events in his sing-song high tone.
Three days before the incident, Maruma had asked him to escort her to the farm to pull up some cassava tubers. He had accepted with alacrity, for even though he was three years older, she could twist him round her finger. So much did he love her!
The day was hovering between the end of the afternoon and the beginning of the evening when they set out to the cassava farms two miles away. Maruma led, in her loping gait, her body swaying and undulating in a way all her own, and her graceful long neck straight, carrying the head on which balanced an elongated rectangular basket.
‘Why do you have to get this cassava tonight?’ Nwobi had asked diffidently.
‘Because I couldn’t do it earlier, and besides, we’re having many guests on Nkwo day.’
‘What of your other sisters? Surely, they could have escorted you.’
‘How can the blind lead the blind? They’re afraid of the dark as much as I. But with you here …’
Pulling up the cassava tubers was easy as they had been planted on slightly sandy soil and soon their basket was full.
In a nearby stream, they washed and chopped the cassava into six-inch lengths and immersed them in a big pot full of water berthed at the edge. By the time they finished they were hot and dirty.
‘Let’s have a dip before we go,’ suggested Maruma. They waded to the bathing area downstream. ‘Do you know that my pots of cassava ferment faster than all those here? Mine take only two days whilst the others take from three onwards.’
‘It seems you have the devil heating the bottom of your pots.’
‘Maybe. Father says the devil loves beautiful women!’
They did not dally at the stream, but it became completely dark before they were halfway home.
‘Nwobi, may I hold your hand? I can’t see well in the dark.’ In this way they proceeded another hundred yards. ‘Why don’t we wait till the moon comes up?’
‘What will your mother say when we come home very late?’
‘I’m too old to be lost or kidnapped!’
She put down the basket and he the little hoe and matchet and they sat close together by the edge of the path. As time passed, she leaned on him more and more, her arms encircling his waist. Once, perhaps to kill an ant, she slapped her right thigh hard and, whilst replacing her hand round his waist, she touched the stirring life. She did not seem shocked but rather fascinated by it, for pushing aside his ugbolo, his only article of clothing, she touched it many more times, wonderingly, like a child given a new toy. Sometimes she enclosed it softly in her palm, feeling the urgency, the tautness and the throb of life.
And oh, how hard he tried to get into her! But when he seemed to succeed, she would cry out in pain, withdrawing as if he were a leper, and so he contented himself with touching until his dam burst …
He did not see her, even though he constantly patrolled the approaches to her home throughout the next day, till the day of the incident. He had been looking for the holes dug by the ewi, the big rat, when, on parting a shrub … she was a few feet away, her back towards him. She was trying to break a small coil of brass bangle and was so engrossed in it – he could see the straining muscles of her back – she did not hear him approach.
He did not disturb her, else she might break the perfect picture she created, with the setting sun flooding her naked back with golden tears and making her beads glint.
She must have succeeded, and with legs placed wide apart, she bent down and began digging up the earth with the broken bangle.
He could stand by no longer, and was soon trying to thrust himself into her, but she was swifter. With a little cry, she swivelled round and … the pain … the pain and the blood …
‘The she-devil!’ muttered the Second Priest, his lined face a picture of hatred and anger.
‘No, Father, she isn’t! She is an angel. It was my fault …’
That was eight years ago, and Nwobi was fifteen then.
The news had spread like an epidemic.
*
The First Priest was sick, sick unto death. Not even his fellow priests, nor the doctors, could tell what was wrong with him, except that the symptoms were high fever, coughing and lack of appetite. There was no close relative to nurse him, either. He had taken to the priesthood at a very young age, and did not marry, even though he was the only surviving male child of his household. Many times, people had advised him to leave the priesthood and get married but he had refused.
‘I was called by Ajala to serve her!’ he always answered. ‘Perhaps if I’m devoted to her, completely and without guile, I may be able to expiate the sins of my family and stop the curse on them spreading to their daughters and their children.’
But now it seemed his services to Ajala were coming to an end.
‘Ovuegbe,’ greeted Maruma one afternoon.
‘My child,’ said the First Priest in a barely audible whisper. He was lying on his back and looked very emaciated; one could almost smell death in his smoke-filled room.
‘I’ve come to nurse you back to health.’
He managed a thin, wry smile, ‘My child … you talk as if you’re Ajala herself. Those who can, have tried and failed. I’m resigned to death. Already I can hear the knocking on the wall.’
She sat down on the edge of the ngidi. ‘Please don’t say that.’ She brushed away the tears that filled her eyes. ‘I can’t let you die. You’re the only person I’ve got since Father died.’
The priest’s long silence frightened Maruma. She was about to panic, when he started one of his coughing spasms that often left him exhausted and breathless. After he recovered he said:
‘Don’t bother, my child. Your intention is noble. But it’s too late.’
‘Even if it is, please promise you won’t give up hope of being well again. Just promise me that and I’ll be satisfied.’
His reply took a long time in coming, and when it did she had to bend forward to hear, ‘Nobody likes to die, my child,’ and he fell into a coma.
She immediately set to work cleaning the house. She washed the cooking pots and clay plates; swept the compound that was beginning to resemble the abode of a dead man, littered with fallen leaves and refuse of many days. The firewood and water would last her for that day.
From the moment she had entered the First Priest’s house, Maruma felt she knew what was really wrong with him, because her father had suffered the same illness at regular intervals and had allowed only her to prepare his medicine. After restoking the fire in the room where he lay, thus eliminating most of the smoke, she went out in search of herbs. With the optimism of youth, she cut several handfuls of lemon grass, leaves of lime including a few branches, dug up the yellow roots of nkpologwu and picked the kidney-shaped leaves of the ejeje shrub. Reaching home, she kindled a fire in the kitchen, and began to boil all that she had collected in a huge wide-mouthed pot. Next, she peeled yams with which to prepare a hot palm oil broth, and as it was getting dark, lit a palm-husk candle.
The First Priest had come out of his coma by the time she finished brewing the medicine and the broth.
‘How do you feel, First Priest?’ she asked sitting down on the edge of his bed.
He did not answer but moved his head slowly from side to side.
‘Will you be able to stand up?’
Again he moved his head.
Maruma went back to the kitchen and brought out the steaming pot of medicine, placing it as close as possible to the edge of the sick man’s bed. She had decided to treat him where he was. From the wooden box on the alcove, she took out a thick cloth that looked like a bedspread. Gently she helped the First Priest to sit up in such a way that the pot of medicine was between his legs and then she covered him and the pot with the cloth. She removed the cloth a few minutes later when the First Priest started gasping for air, and noted with satisfaction his sweat-covered body. She rubbed him down with lukewarm water, fed him some spoonfuls of the broth she had prepared and put him to bed, covering him with every available mat and cloth. For the first time since his illness the First Priest slept through the night like one drugged.
Maruma continued her treatment for another two days, making sure, however, that the First Priest drank a portion of the medicine after she had rubbed him down.
On the morning of the third day, he woke up earlier than she did. When she heard her name called in a sonorous voice that reminded her of the echoes of the mother of drums, Maruma was startled. Slowly she sat up, her face a mixture of happiness and relief.
‘So you haven’t gone yet?’ the First Priest asked. She shook her head. She was unable to speak.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Three days,’ her lips formed the words.
‘What of your mother? Didn’t she look for you? Oh, never mind. But why do you bother yourself with an old man like me?’
And she began to cry, all her pent-up feelings of relief, happiness, irritation and fatigue finding expression at last in a welter of tears.
Six months later, Maruma’s husband of one month, Nwaobi, died suddenly after a few hours’ illness. The rumour was that she poisoned him, but none could prove it. When, however, she went mad a few weeks afterwards, the Second and Third Priests said Ajala had punished her for killing her husband. She was immediately ostracized, and a hut was built for her at the edge of the bad bush. She lingered on in her madness and at the age of twenty fell off a coconut tree and died.
‘I have heard the voice of Ajala,’ chanted the Third Priest.
In a dreadful crescendo, the acolytes burst into their wild song of the judgement; a song that could be heard miles away, and that warned the villagers of the presence of the great goddess in her shrine.
‘I too have heard her command!’ The Second Priest could not suppress his joy; at last, at last …
‘Speak, Third Priest.’ There was deep sorrow in the First Priest’s voice as he added, ‘And may the goddess hold you to ransom if you speak with a false tongue.’
‘You cannot scare me, First Priest. I heard the voice of our Mother loud and clear and her message is unmistakable. She said, “Tell my First Priest I am displeased with his judgement for he has let himself be swayed by sentiments. It is true, this dead daughter of mine saved his life, but then a woman has more than one nature. It is the sum -total of her natures that determines whether she is good or bad, and to know her natures you have to see her in four dimensions. I have thus listened to the four winds from the four directions; the winds that saw all her movements during her lifetime and I hereby pass judgement. My dead daughter was a bad woman! I therefore command that she be thrown into the bad bush, and a black goat sacrificed to cleanse the people who will take her there. I also command that on pain of death, none of my children now and in generations to come be given her name nor told of her.” Thus did Ajala command, First Priest.’
‘You have heard rightly, Third Priest. For I, too, heard the same. May you now seal the judgement, First Priest.’
‘So be it then, even though I do not think our merciful Mother would have passed such judgement on a poor girl who suffered greatly. Third Priest, heat the seal of judgement.’
The Third Priest gathered dry leaves and a few sticks and soon made a fire in the stone hearth twenty yards from the sacrificial stone. The youngest acolyte – there were thirteen of them – handed him the brass seal of judgement, shaped in the form of infinity with a wooden handle attached to the centre, which he heated until it was hot to the touch. He was about to pick it up when he heard a rumbling noise from above. He straightened up, peering into the thick canopy of leaves but he could detect nothing.
Meanwhile, the chanting had ceased, and there was a hush and a chill in the air, and the moon seemed to have lost much of its cold lustre.
The rumbling noise increased in volume, and the First Priest, his voice sounding like a god’s, asked, ‘What is delaying you, Third Priest? Shall we not seal the judgement you said Ajala passed through you?’
But the Third Priest seemed not to hear. He was intent on the commotion that seemed to be coming from the very heavens. He stood there petrified, his feet bound to the earth with cords of iron.
Then with a roar and a crash, a huge dead tree fell on him, crushing him into the earth.
‘… and may the goddess hold you to ransom if you speak with a false tongue.’