∨ The Palm-wine Drinkard ∧

25

I and my palm-wine tapster in the deads’ town

When it was 8 o’clock in the morning, then we entered the town and asked for my palm-wine tapster whom I was looking for from my town when he died, but the deads asked for his name and I told him that he was called ‘BAITY’ before he died, but now I could not definitely know his present name as he had died.

When I told them his name and said that he had died in my town, they did not say anything but stayed looking at us. When it was about five minutes that they were looking at us like that, one of them asked us from where did we come? I replied that we were coming from my town, then he said where. I told him that it was very far away to this town and he asked again were the people in that town alives or deads? I replied that the whole of us in that town had never died. When he heard that from me, he told us to go back to my town where there were only alives living, he said that it was forbidden for alives to come to the Deads’ Town.

As that dead man told us to go back, I began to beg him to allow us to see my palm-wine tapster. So he agreed and showed us a house which was not so far from the place where we stood, he told us to go there and ask for him, but as we turned our back to him (dead man) and were going to the house that he showed us, the whole of them that stood on that place grew annoyed at the same time to see us walking forward or with our face, because they were not walking forward there at all, but this we did not know.

As soon as the dead man who was asking us questions saw us moving he ran to us and said that he had told us to go back to my town because alives could not come and visit any dead man in the Deads’ Town, so he told us to walk backward or with our back and we did so. But as we were walking backward as they themselves were walking there, I stumbled over suddenly and as I was trying not to fall into a deep pit which was near there, I mistakenly turned my face towards the house that he showed us. But when he saw me again like that, he came to us as before and said that he would not allow us to go to the house any more, because people were not walking forward in that town. Then I begged him again and explained to him that we came to see him (palm-wine tapster) from a very far town. But I stumbled on a sharp stone in that pit, some part of me was scratched and bleeding, then we stopped to rub off the blood as it was bleeding too much. When this dead man saw that we stopped, he came nearer and asked what stopped us, then I pointed my finger to the bleeding part of my body, but when he saw the blood, he was greatly annoyed and dragged us out of the town by force. As he was dragging us out of the town, we wanted to beg him, but he said, no more excuse. We did not know that all the deads did not like to see blood at all, and it was that day I knew. He dragged us out of their town and told us to stay there and we did as he said. Then he went back to the house of my tapster and told him that two alives were waiting for him. After a few minutes, my palm-wine tapster came, but immediately he saw us, he thought that I had died before coming there, so he gave the sign of deads to us, but we were unable to reply to him, because we never died, and at the same time that he reached us, he knew that we could not live with them in the town as we could not reply to his signal, then before we started any conversation, he built a small house there for us. After that we put our loads inside the house, but to my surprise, this my tapster was also walking backward and he was not walking like that before he died in my town. After he had built the house, he went back to the town and brought food and ten kegs of palm-wine for us. As we were very hungry before reaching there, we ate the food to excess and when I tasted the palm-wine, I could not take my mouth away until I drank the whole ten kegs. After that we started conversation which went thus – I told him that after he had died, I wanted to die with him and follow him to this Deads’ Town because of the palm-wine that he was tapping for me and nobody could tap it for me like him, but I could not die. So one day, I called two of my friends and went to the farm, then we began to tap for ourselves, but it did not taste like the wine he was tapping before he died. But when all my friends saw that if they come to my house there was no more palm-wine to drink again, then they were leaving me one by one until all of them went away, even if I should see one of them at outside and call him, he would only say that he would come, but I would not see him come.

Though my father’s house was full of people before, nobody at present was coming there. So one day, I thought what I could do, then I thought within myself that I should find him (palm-wine tapster) wherever he might be and tell him to follow me to my father’s town and begin to tap palm-wine for me as usual. So I started my journey early in the morning, and at every town or village that I reached I asked them whether they had seen him or knew where he was, but some would say unless I should help them to do something, they would not tell. Then I showed the tapster my wife and told of how, when I went to a certain town and her father who was the head of that town received me as his guest, my wife was taken to a far forest by a gentleman who afterwards was reduced to a ‘ Skull’ and how I went there and brought her to her father, so after he had seen the wonderful work which I did for him, then he gave her to me as a wife and after I had spent about one and half or more years with them there, then I took her and sought him about. And how before reaching here, we met much difficulty in the bush, because there was no road to this Deads’ Town and we were travelling from bush to bush every day and night, even many times, we were travelling from branches to branches of trees for many days before touching ground and it was ten years since I had left my town. Now I was exceedingly glad to meet him here and I should be most grateful if he would follow me back to my town.

So after I had related how the story went to him, he did not talk a single word, but he went back to the town, and after a while, he brought about twenty kegs of palm-wine for me, then I started to drink it. After that he started his own story: – He said that after he had died in my town, he went to a certain place, which anybody who just died must go to first, because a person who just died could not come here (Deads’ Town) directly. He said that when he reached there, he spent two years in training and after he had qualified as a full dead man, then he came to this Deads’ Town and was living with deads and he said that he could not say what happened to him before he died in my town. But when he said so, I told him that he fell down from a palm-tree on a Sunday evening when he was tapping palm-wine and we buried him at the foot of the very palm-tree on which he fell.

Then he said that if that should be the case, he overdrank on that day.

After that, he said that he came back to my house on the very night that he fell and died at the farm and looked at everyone of us, but we did not see him, and he was talking to us, but we did not answer, then he went away. He told us that both white and black deads were living in the Deads’ Town, not a single alive was there at all. Because everything that they were doing there was incorrect to alives and everything that all alives were doing was incorrect to deads too.

He said that did I not see that both dead persons and their domestic animals of this town were walking backwards? Then I answered “Yes.” Then he told me that he could not follow me back to my town again, because a dead man could not live with alives and their characteristics would not be the same and said that he would give me anything that I liked in the Deads’ Town. When he said so, I thought over what had happened to us in the bush, then I was very sorry for my wife and myself and I was then unable to drink the palm-wine which he gave me at that moment. Even I myself knew already that deads could not live with alives, because I had watched their doings and they did not correspond with ours at all. When it was five o’clock in the evening, he went to his house and brought food for us again and he went back after three hours. But when he canxe back early in the morning, he brought another 50 kegs of palm-wine which I drank first of all that morning. But when I thought that he would not follow us to my town, and again, my wife was pressing me too much to leave there very early, when he came, I told him that we should leave here tomorrow morning, then he gave me an ‘EGG’. He told me to keep it as safely as gold and said that if I reached my town, I should keep it inside my box and said that the use of the egg was to give me anything that I wanted in this world and if I wanted to use it, I must put it in a big bowl of water, then I would mention the name of anything that I wanted. After he gave me the egg we left there on the third day after we arrived there and he showed us another shorter road and it was a really road, not a bush as before.

Now we started our journey from the Deads’ Town directly to my home town which I had left for many years. As we were going on this road, we met over a thousand deads who were just going to the Deads’ Town and if they saw us coming towards them on that road, they would branch into the bush and come back to the road at our back. Whenever they saw us, they would be making bad noise which showed us that they hated us and also were very annoyed to see alives. These deads were not talking to one another at all, even they were not talking plain words except murmuring. They always seemed as if they were mourning, their eyes would be very wild and brown and everyone of them wore white clothes without a single stain.