Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" Chapters 1-16

They haggle and bargain as if they were buying a goat or a cow in the market."

She wore a coiffure which was done up into a crest in the middle of the head.

In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow.

Nwoye's callow mind was greatly puzzled.

She immediately dropped her pestle with which she was grinding pepper, folded her arms across her breast and sighed, "Poor child."

But there was a young lad who had been captivated.

â€Ã‚¦" Ekwefi trudged behind, neither getting too near nor keeping too far back.

They were merely cleansing the land which Okonkwo had polluted with the blood of a clansman.

He brought out a sharp razor from the goatskin bag slung from his left shoulder and began to mutilate the child.

He knew the names of all the birds and could set
clever traps for the little bush rodents.

And if anybody was so foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see the old woman hopping about.

Once in a while two young men carrying palm fronds ran round the circle and kept the crowd back by beating the ground in front of them or, if they were stubborn, their legs and feet.

She wore a black necklace which hung down in three coils just above her full, succulent breasts.

Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.

The house was now a pandemonium of quavering voices: Am oyim de de de de! filled the
air as the spirits of the ancestors, just emerged from the earth, greeted themselves in their esoteric language.

I have learned to be stingy with my yams.

The priestess' voice came at longer intervals now, but its vigor was undiminished.

They were the harbingers sent to survey the land.

The short trees and sparse undergrowth which surrounded the men's village began to give way to giant trees and climbers which perhaps had stood from the beginning of things, untouched by the ax and the bush-fire.

So Nwoye and Ikemefuna would listen to Okonkwo's stories about tribal wars, or how, years ago, he had stalked his victim,
overpowered him and obtained his first human head.

When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody.

The house was now a pandemonium of quavering voices: Am oyim de de de de! filled the
air as the spirits of the ancestors, just emerged from the earth, greeted themselves in their esoteric language.

It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.

"Yes," lied Nwoye's mother, trying to minimize Ojiugo's thoughtlessness.

"After kola nuts had been presented and eaten, the people of the sky set before their guests the most delectable dishes Tortoise had even seen or dreamed of.

But as he flew home his long talon pierced the leaves and the rain fell as it had never fallen before.

And it began to shake and rattle, like something agitating with a metallic life.

The interpreter explained each verse to the audience, some of whom now stood enthralled.

He had tried to protect them from the smoldering earth by making rings of thick sisal leaves around them.

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered.

Tortoise was very happy and voluble as he flew among the birds, and he was soon chosen as the man to speak for the party because he was a great orator.

And so on this particular night as the crier's voice was gradually swallowed up in the distance, silence returned to the world, a vibrant silence made more intense by the universal trill of a million million forest insects.

Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently?

At the beginning of their journey the men of Umuofia talked and laughed about the locusts, about their women, and about some effeminate men who had refused to come with them.

At last the young man who was pouring out the wine held up half a horn of the thick, white dregs and said, "What we are eating is finished."

His visitor was amazed, and sat speechless.

Okonkwo's first son, Nwoye, was then
twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness.

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.

When all the egwugwu had sat down and the sound of the many tiny bells and rattles on their bodies had subsided, Evil Forest addressed the two groups of people facing them.

The wave struck the women and children and there was a backward stampede.

Sometimes when he went to big village meetings or communal ancestral feasts he allowed Ikemefuna to accompany him, like a son, carrying his stool and his goatskin bag.

The next morning they were roasted in clay pots and then spread in the sun until they became dry and brittle.

The air, which had been stretched taut with excitement, relaxed again.

They were very fat goats, but the fattest of all was tethered to a peg near the wall of the compound and was as big as a small cow.

Here was a man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation.

The water began to boil, and in one deft movement she lifted the pot from the fire and poured the boiling water over the fowl.

A vague scent of life and green vegetation was diffused in the air.

In that way she will elude her wicked tormentor and break its evil cycle of birth and death."

The troublesome nanny-goat sniffed about, eating the peelings.

Now and again an ancestral spirit or egwugwu appeared from the underworld, speaking in a tremulous, unearthly voice and completely covered in raffia.

CHAPTER TWELVE
On the following morning the entire neighborhood wore a festive air because Okonkwo's friend, Obierika, was celebrating his daughter's uri.

At first Ekwefi accepted her, as she had accepted others—with listless resignation.

That was why Okonkwo had been Chosen by the nine villages to carry a message of war to their enemies unless they agreed to give up a young man and a virgin to atone for the murder of Udo's wife.

An ultimatum was immediately dispatched to Mbaino asking them to choose between war - on the one hand, and on the other the offer of a young man and a virgin as compensation.

Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable anger by his youngest wife, who went to plait her hair at her friend's house and did not return early enough to cook the afternoon meal.

Neither of the other wives dared to interfere beyond an occasional and tentative, "It is enough, Okonkwo," pleaded from a reasonable distance.

Suddenly Okagbue sprang to the surface with the agility of a leopard.

Tortoise stood up in his many-colored plumage and thanked them for their invitation.

The crowd roared and clapped and for a while drowned the frenzied drums.

Ekwefi was reassured.

"A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm."

Ezinma had not wanted to cooperate with him at first.

He put it down to his inflexible will.

The harmattan was in the air and seemed to distill a hazy feeling of sleep on the world.

The imagery of an efulefu in the language of the clan was a man who sold his machete and wore the sheath to battle.

The oldest man present said sternly that those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.

Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable anger by his youngest wife, who went to plait her hair at her friend's house and did not return early enough to cook the afternoon meal.

The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth.

Okonkwo was, therefore, asked on behalf of the clan to look after him in the interim.

They argued for a short while and fell into silence again, and the elusive dance rose and fell with the wind.

Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark.

Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water.

He could hear in his mind's ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe and the udu and the ogene, and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them, decorating them with a colorful and plaintive tune.

As the evening drew near, the shouting and the firing of guns, the beating of drums and the brandishing and clanging of machetes increased.

The harmattan was in the air and seemed to distill a hazy feeling of sleep on the world.

He was like an elder brother to Nwoye, and from the very first seemed to have kindled a new fire in the younger boy.

The yams put on luxuriant green leaves, but every farmer knew that without sunshine the tubers would not grow.

And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene.

And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the proud and imperious emissary of war, he was
treated with great honor and respect, and two days later he returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young virgin.

He still thought about his mother and his three-year-old sister, and he had moments of sadness and depression But he and Nwoye had become so deeply attached to each other that such moments became less frequent and less poignant.

They came when misfortune dogged their steps or when they had a dispute with their neighbors.

It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.

They sympathized with their neighbors with much shaking of the head, but inwardly they were happy for what they took to be their own foresight.

He lelt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.

Okonkwo and the boys worked in complete silence, which was only broken when a new palm frond was lifted
on to the wall or when a busy hen moved dry leaves about in her ceaseless search for food.

Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king.

The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did.

Most communal ceremonies took place at that time of the day, so that even when it was said that a ceremony would begin "after the midday meal" everyone understood that it would begin a long time later, when the sun's heat had softened.

Between Chielo's outbursts the night was alive with the shrill tremor of forest insects woven into the darkness.

He was merely led into greater complexities.

Now and again an ancestral spirit or egwugwu appeared from the underworld, speaking in a tremulous, unearthly voice and completely covered in raffia.

One of them was a pathetic cry, Onwumbiko—"Death, I implore you."

They were locusts, it said, and that first man was their harbinger sent to explore the terrain.

Okonkwo wondered what was amiss, for he knew certainly that something was amiss.

He trembled with the desire to conquer and subdue.

It was a brief resting period between the exacting and arduous planting season and the equally exacting but light-hearted month of harvests.

He lelt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.

As soon as she got up, the troublesome nanny goat, which had been dutifully eating yam peelings, dug her teeth into the real thing, scooped out two mouthfuls and fled from the hut to chew the cud in the goats' shed.

Ekwefi tried to pull out the horny beak but it was too hard.

He held a short staff in his hand which he brought down on the floor to emphasize his points.

But almost immediately a shout of joy broke out in all directions, and Umuofia, which had dozed in the noon-day haze, broke into life and activity.

But as they drew near to the outskirts of Umuofia silence fell upon them too.

They set fire to his houses, demolished his red walls, killed his animals and destroyed his barn.

And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the proud and imperious emissary of war, he was
treated with great honor and respect, and two days later he returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young virgin.

He wore a haggard and mournful look except when he was drinking or playing on his flute.

Unfortunately for her Okonkwo heard it and ran madly into his room for the loaded gun, ran out again and aimed at her as she clambered over the dwarf wall of the barn.

CHAPTER Two
Okonkwo had just blown out the palm-oil lamp and stretched himself on his bamboo bed when he heard the ogene of the town crier piercing the still night air.

But the drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams were killed.

Ekwefi screwed her eyes up in an effort to see her daughter and the priestess, but
whenever she thought she saw their shape it immediately dissolved like a melting lump of darkness.

Her mother consoled her and promised to buy her her another pot.

And when he did this he saw that his father was pleased, and no longer rebuked him or beat him.

On receiving such a message through a younger brother or sister, Nwoye would feign annoyance and grumble aloud about women and their troubles.

The blazing sun returned, more fierce than it had ever been known, and scorched all the green that had appeared with the rains.

To crown it all he had taken two titles and had shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars.

His father, Unoka, who was then an ailing man, had said to him during that terrible harvest month: "Do not despair. 1 know you will not despair.

The oldest man present said sternly that those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.

This was interpreted to them but very few of them heard.

Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark.

He spoke through an interpreter who was an Ibo man, though his dialect was different and harsh to the enrs of Mbanta.

She was nine then and was just recovering from a serious illness.

Only a week ago a man had contradicted him at a kindred meeting which they held to discuss the next ancestral feast.

And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene.

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.

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.

And then suddenly like one possessed he shot out his left hand and pointed in the direction of Mbaino, and said through gleaming white teeth firmly clenched: "Those sons of wild animals have dared to murder a daughter of Umuofia."

Some people even said that they had heard the spirits flying and flapping their wings against the roof of the cave.

In spite of this incident the New Yam Festival was celebrated with great joy in Okonkwo's household.

He could hear in his mind's ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe and the udu and the ogene, and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them, decorating them with a colorful and plaintive tune.

Even Mgbafo took to her heels and had to be restrained by her brothers.

The drums rose to a frenzy.

Only a week ago a man had contradicted him at a kindred meeting which they held to discuss the next ancestral feast.

The priestess' voice came at longer intervals now, but its vigor was undiminished.

She had balanced it on her head, folded her arms in front of her and began to sway her waist like a grown-up young lady.

Evergreen trees wore a dusty coat of brown.

There was a famine in those days and Tortoise had not eaten a good meal for two moons.

Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk.

Its most potent war-medicine was as old as the clan itself.

Whenever one of these ancient men appeared in the crowd to dance unsteadily the funeral steps of the tribe, younger men gave way and the tumult subsided.