Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart

He knew that he was a fierce fighter, but that year-had been enough to break the heart of a lion.

It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.

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

And he did pounce on people quite often.

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

He always said that whenever he saw a dead man's mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one's lifetime.

He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop.

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

When they had eaten they talked about many things: about the heavy rains which were drowning the yams, about the next ancestral feast and about the impending war with the village of Mbaino.

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 colourful and plaintive tune.

The total effect was gay and brisk, but if one picked out the flute as it went up and down and then broke up into short snatches, one saw that there was sorrow and grief there.

At the end, Unoka was able to give an answer between fresh outbursts of mirth.

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

Okonkwo's gun had exploded and a piece of iron had pierced the boy's heart.

Ekwefi could now discern the figure of the priestess and her burden.

"Umuofia kwenu," he bellowed a fifth time, and the crowd yelled in answer.

The priestess bent down on one knee and Ezinma climbed on her back, her left palm closed on her fish and her eyes gleaming with tears.

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.

It had its shrine in the centre of Umuofia, in a cleared spot.

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

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

His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children.

He was light in complexion and his eyes were red and fiery.

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.

But now she found the half-light of the incipient moon more terrifying than darkness.

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

When a man was afflicted with swelling in the stomach and the limbs he was not allowed to die in the house.

And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's contemptible life and shameful death.

"Who will drink the dregs?" he asked.

After all the toil one only got a third of the harvest.

In the morning he went back to his farm and saw the withering tendrils.

But Ekwefi did not hear these consolations.

Trees were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere.

A proud heart can survive a general failure because such failure does not prick its pride.

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

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.

You know as well as I do that our forefathers ordained that before we plant any crops in the earth we should observe a week in which a man does not say a harsh word to his neighbour.

Sometimes he decided that a yam was too big to be sown as one seed and he split it deftly along its length with his sharp knife.

She was going to the stream to fetch water.

He even remembered how he had laughed when Ikemefuna told him that the proper name for a corn cob with only a few scattered grains was eze-agadi-nwayi, or the teeth of an old woman.

And what was more, she was in close communion with the departed fathers of the clan whose bodies had been committed to earth.

The fowl Ekwefi had just killed was in the wooden mortar.

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

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.

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.

At last the hen was plucked clean.

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

He trembled with the desire to conquer and subdue.

All others stood except those who came early enough to secure places on the few stands which had been built by placing smooth logs on forked pillars.

The palm fronds were helpless in keeping them back.

The drums rose to a frenzy.

Within a short time the first two bouts were over.

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

Once in a while Chielo was possessed by the spirit of her god and she began to prophesy.

She broke off because at that very moment a loud and high-pitched voice broke the outer silence of the night.

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

He remembered the story she often told of the quarrel between Earth and Sky long ago, and how Sky withheld rain for seven years, until crops withered and the dead could not be buried because the hoes broke on the stony Earth.

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

He warmed himself in the fire and ate the entrails.

After her father's rebuke she developed an even keener appetite for eggs.

Ezinma struggled to escape from the choking and overpowering steam, but she was held down.

At first, a fairly small swarm came.

Many people went out with baskets trying to catch them, but the elders counselled patience till nightfall.

The air was cool and damp with dew.

Every woman in the neighbourhood knew the sound of Nwayieke's mortar and pestle.

How then could he have begotten a son like Nwoye, degenerate and effeminate?

The men trod dry leaves on the sand.

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 axe and the bush-fire.

A chick that will grow into a cock can be spotted the very day it hatches.

Whenever the thought of his father's weakness and failure troubled him he expelled it by thinking about his own strength and success.

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

It was clear from his twinkling eyes that he had important news.

"Who is the chief among you?" the court messengers asked in jest.

If you are sending him on an errand he flies away before he has heard half of the message."

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

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

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

His feet were short and broad, and when he stood or walked his heels came together and his feet opened outwards as if they had quarrelled and meant to go in different directions.

Of his three wives Ekwefi was the only one who would have the audacity to bang on his door.

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

But she had grown so bitter about her own chi that she could not rejoice with others over their good fortune.

Her husband's wife took this for malevolence, as husbands' wives were wont to.

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 the mat was at last removed she was drenched in perspiration.

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

Then came the voices of the egwugwu, guttural and awesome.

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.

The metal gong beat continuously now and the flute, shrill and powerful, floated on the chaos.

"I don't know why such a trifle should come before, then said one elder to another.

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.

"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 she picked her way easily on the sandy footpath hedged on either side by branches and damp leaves.

It was an ill omen.

The six men remained sullen and silent and the Commissioner left them for a while.

But at that very moment Chielo's voice rose again in her possessed chanting, and Ekwefi recoiled, because there was no humanity there.

She greeted her god in a multitude of names--the owner of the future, the messenger of earth, the god who cut a man down when his life was sweetest to him.

Ekwefi could already see the hills looming in the moonlight.

As night fell, burning torches were set on wooden tripods and the young men raised a song.

He could not understand it until he looked back and saw that what he led at the end of the tether was not a goat but a heavy log of wood."

They were duly presented to the women, who drank a cup or two each, to help them in their cooking.

They sang songs as they went, and on their way they paid short courtesy visits to prominent men like Okonkwo, before they finally left for their village.

The cannon seemed to rend the sky.

The faint and distant wailing of women settled like a sediment of sorrow on the earth.

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

They had broken into tumult instead of action.

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

Okonkwo had committed the female, because it had been inadvertent.

As soon as the day broke, a large crowd of men from Ezeudu's quarter stormed Okonkwo's compound, dressed in garbs of war.

When the will of the goddess had been done, he sat down in his obi and mourned his friend's calamity.

The Earth had decreed that they were an offence on the land and must be destroyed.

Living fire begets cold, impotent ash.

'There is something ominous behind the silence.'

'It cried and raved and cursed me,' said the young kite.

Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"

"What will the heathen say of us when they hear that we receive osu into our midst?

When this was interpreted to the men of Mbanta they broke into derisive laughter.

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

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

Nwoye's callow mind was greatly puzzled.

The villagers were so certain about the doom that awaited these men that one or two converts thought it wise to suspend their allegiance to the new faith.

Her husband and his family were already becoming highly critical of such a woman and were not unduly perturbed when they found she had fled to join the Christians.

A sudden fury rose within him and he felt a strong desire to take up his machete, go to the church and wipe out the entire vile and miscreant gang.

For how else could he explain his great misfortune and exile and now his despicable son's behaviour?

Now that he had time to think of it, his son's crime stood out in its stark enormity.

Now that he had time to think of it, his son's crime stood out in its stark enormity.

Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation.

The two outcasts shaved off their hair, and soon they were the strongest adherents of the new faith.

An abominable religion has settled among you.

"When I think that it is only eighteen months since the Seed was first sown among you," he said, "I marvel at what the Lord hath wrought."

But it is not our custom to debar anyone from the stream or the quarry."

But I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship.

The young ailing girl who had caused her mother so much heartache had been transformed, almost overnight, into a healthy, buoyant maiden.

Although they were almost the same age, Ezinma wielded a strong influence over her half-sister.

The church had come and led many astray.

They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his government.

There were many men and women in Umuofia who did not feel as strongly as Okonkwo about the new dispensation.

Everything was possible, he told his energetic flock, but everything was not expedient.

He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares.