The Pop’s Rhinoceros (100 page)

Later still, when her brothers had stalked out of the hut and she and Namoke were alone, she turned her painted face to the older man, to her father’s brother. The residue of her contempt hung in the air between them.

“I had thought there would be a festival for your homecoming,” Namoke said eventually. “I imagined the mmo-men performing a masquerade for their Eze-Ada and the Nri-people sitting down to feast together. A great celebration. At other times I imagined you were dead. I could not see you. I could not see your life.” He shrugged wearily. “It was hard to believe you were dead, but it was harder to believe you were alive. And amongst the White-men. …”

“Yet you have not buried my father,” she said. “As the youngest son, Onugu might have washed his body in my place. It is permitted if there is no Eze-Ada, and if the men of the Nzemabua agree. My brothers wished it so, did they not? Who opposed them?”

“Anayamati would have wanted his daughter to wash his body, to calm his house. He is waiting for you now.”

“I have heard him,” she said. Namoke brought his head up sharply. “You are the leader of the Nzemabua,” she went on, ignoring his surprise. “Who else would speak for me? Alike? Ewenetem, perhaps?”

Namoke smiled. Alike and Ewenetem were notoriously taciturn.

“I need you to speak for me again. Nri-people need you to speak for me. Do you remember the Ijaw who told us of the White-men? The old man with his necklaces of shark’s teeth? You suspected even then, I know you did.”

Namoke was shaking his head. “Your brothers did not lie to you. It is an old story, hardly even a story. Our children chant it at each other, not grown men and women. If I were to stand before the men of the Nzemabua and speak as you ask, they might think fondly of their childhoods, but they would not act. They would laugh, and I would laugh with them, all of us together at my foolishness.”

“And who will be the fools if it is true?” she demanded. “I know it, and so do you.”

“Even if it is true, who is to say these White-men are what you claim? They are few, and far away, and weak. …”

“So you call a palaver to talk about nothing? The Bini did not come here to fish in the River. The Ngola did not send his men to hunt pigs in the forest. They come to Nri-people as they always have, and what do we say then? That White-men fall from the sky? Anayamati sees them already in his dreaming. Soon they will be in Nri and he will know them as I do. What will Nri-people say then? What will they do?”

The vehemence in her voice had increased throughout this speech until she was almost shouting at her uncle, and at its conclusion the silence in the hut was heavier even than when her brothers had left. Namoke waited several long seconds before replying.

“Good question,” he commended her. “You always asked good questions, Usse, even as a little girl. Suppose the old story is true, and suppose the White-men are what you say they are, what will Nri-people say then? What will they do?”

He paused then, and she saw a strange expression pass across his face, recognition mixed with something else. Disappointment, perhaps.

“I do not know, Usse. If what you say is true, I do not know what Nri-people should do. I am not your father. I am not the Eze-Nri. I know of no rite that would cleanse this stain.”

“Yes, you do,” she said quietly.

Namoke shook his head, puzzled by her now. There were rites to make the yam grow, and the coco- and oil-palm, rites for the rain, and the drought, and the flood. There were rites for the birth of children and the death of old men. There were rites to erect taboos and others to demolish them, thousands upon thousands, which only Nri-people knew and only Nri-people might perform. There were rites to cleanse the land of any stain that might fall upon it. … But not the one she urged on him now. His eyes narrowed in concentration, watching her across the fire as she began to recite the chant that he had not sung since childhood, speaking the words at first, then intoning them in a singsong voice, like a child, gradually adding emphases until the simple rhythm asserted itself by force
of repetition, for every verse was identical in form: a question followed by a response, and the latter growing more insistent as the chant went on, for although the questions were all different the answer was always the same.

“Enyi knows, Enyi knows,” Usse sang to her uncle, over and over again.

Daughter…?

The Ndi Mili Nnu cared more for their boats than their homes, Namoke reflected, looking across the water. The low windbreak they had built on the north side of the sandbank only goaded the harmattan, which gusted down the River, met the inadequate obstacle, and tumbled over it chaotically to assault their roughly thatched bivouacs. Raffia mats used to patch holes in the roofs flapped and luffed in the stiffening breeze as though threatening to carry off the ramshackle shelters and send them skidding over the River’s glare or lift them high into the haze-white sky, a flock of lumpish, disintegrating birds molting bamboo poles and palm leaves. Their inhabitants disdained them, except to sleep. They preferred to gather about their boats, for which they had driven heavy stakes deep into the sand of the temporary island to serve as mooring posts. The Ndi Mili Nnu were wary of land. Rains would dissolve it and redeposit it elsewhere. The River’s flood was more constant than its banks, its annual destruction more dependable. Soon the late echo of that flood would wash away the island on which they were camped just as it always did. The sand was a distant and colorless strip against the prickling glitter of the River, visible at all from this bank only because of the antlike figures shifting about upon it as they readied their craft for the daily crossing to the palaver. The first of them were already pushing out into the water, angling their pirogues counter to the current and directing them along a shallow arc that brought them invariably to the exact mud-flat that they favored. Namoke watched them until he could see the water spilling off their paddles. Behind him, the
obiri
was already loud with the mixed pidgins that the tribes used amongst themselves. He felt his unease rise again. The men of the Nzemabua would meet in Chima’s compound, in the village itself and out of earshot of the palaver. He had told Usse that the decision she sought would mean nothing without the Eze-Nri. It had been his last argument. She had smiled and said only that the Eze-Nri was not so far away as he thought. Anayamati’s successor already chosen? Her words might mean anything or nothing, but they had unsettled him all the same. Now he was waiting for Aguve and Ilonwagu and turned anxiously every few seconds to search for them amongst the men milling about below the ridge. A covered litter bobbed amidst little knots of people who stepped aside impatiently. The first of the Ndi Mili Nnu had landed and were dragging their pirogues up the mud-bank.

“Uncle.”

He turned quickly. The two men he awaited were standing before him. Usse stood between them. They exchanged greetings formally, and then he led the way along the short path that led to the village. Usse walked behind all three. This is
how goats are herded, thought Namoke. Was this how she brought the White-men here? If all she had pressed on him was true, the three of them were already at Nri. And if that were true, it had already begun and there was no more time. She would sit beside him when he addressed the Nzemabua. She would not speak.

Although, ringed with the impassive countenances of his peers, men whom he had known since childhood, finding himself almost unnerved by the unfamiliar stoniness of the expressions on these familiar faces, he reached for Usse’s words, not his own. The sound of them as she had modulated between scorn and cajoling, pulling him forward only to push him away, then pull him in again, drawing him slowly toward the core of her belief. … He needed that now, not the words themselves, but the shape of them, that they should fit the world the silent men of the Nzemabua saw with their own eyes, stitch it together, and patch the rents in its fabric. To convince them. He began by speaking of Eri and his first son, which they would take for a conventional piety, nodding slowly as the story unfolded. Then he spoke of the second son, which was a story reserved by the men of Nzemabua, a secret they shared. It would draw them tighter together. He told them of the fight in the mud by the water-hole, speaking lightly as though he himself were unsure how much credence the tale deserved and moving back and forth over the protagonists and their actions, pointing out this or that detail or implication, recasting the story slowly, and even signaling that he was doing this by the repetition of stock phrases until their meaning began to shift and grow slippery; he would discard them then and adopt others. He spoke softly so that they would lean forward to catch the words. Usse sat at his side, motionless and silent as she had promised.

He said, “When the White-men came, the Ijaws knew what they were. The Bini knew too, and the Calabaris, and the Ife-people. The Ngola and the Mani Kongo were in no doubt. Nor the Aworo of the Esie, nor the Attah of Idah. They all knew. …” He paused there and looked around the ring of faces. “But, as we know from the wise discussions in the
obiri,
they all knew very
differently. …

Most of the younger men smiled. He caught Onugu’s eye on the far side of the circle. He could entertain them now, if he chose. He could tap their frustration at the quarrels and shouting matches they had endured in the thick of the
obiri
. Or he could touch on their unease.

“Only Nri-people were mystified, asking, What are these White-men?” He said this in a wondering tone, weighing the moment, gauging their readiness. “Only the people who most should have known, as though we had forgotten our own oldest stories. As though we no longer believed them and left them instead for little children to sing and then discard when they come of age. Well, we are all of age now. Some of us a little more than that. …”

This time no one smiled. They were wavering between caution and curiosity, and underneath Namoke sensed a strange eagerness. Had they been waiting for one of their number to break the silence? He could not stop. This was the last
part, the piece that fitted exactly with all that he had already said and all that they had accepted. He felt their different attentions variously sweep over him or fix upon him or float freely, uncaptured as yet. The words themselves were almost beside the point. He guided himself forward by the ebb and flow of his audience, its sympathies and antipathies, feeling his way forward. He began to speak of Ezodu. His gaze moved steadily around the circle—Alike, Enweleani, Obalike, Ewenetem, Usse’s brothers next to him, Onugu, Apia, Gbujo, then Nwamkpo, Oniojo, Aguve, Ilonwagu, and so all the way around until the only member of the Nzemabua he could not see was its speaker: himself.

He had not been able to read them, he remembered later. He had believed he had lost them, although his voice had held the level note he had first struck, held its suasive equilibrium. And the resolution they were coming to was inevitable in any case and independent of his efforts. With hindsight, the rite had already begun, the call to gather the beasts was already ringing through the
obiri,
already unstoppable. Anayamati and his willful daughter. … But, in Chima’s compound, their faces had told him nothing. He talked and was heard. He saw eyes flick side ways rather than meet his own. He sensed distraction. They were drifting, or being drawn away, as though a malevolent
dibia
were at his invisible work, burying chicken claws and muttering gibberish. They were not watching him. In fact, he realized with a start, they were paying him no attention at all.

Their eyes were fixed on Usse, who had not moved or uttered a word. At first he thought she was staring at her brothers, for her face was turned to them, but her gaze either stopped short of their faces or continued on past them, through the mud-wall behind their backs and the village outside. Or it was turned in upon herself. She was sealed off from them, an echo sounding to herself, and they could do no more than press their palms to the walls of her chamber in search of its resonance.

It was then that they had come over to him. Her painted face was rapt and abstracted. He had not believed her before, Namoke realized.

Father…?

She was confined, her privacy loud with great thuds and crashes, the din of something trying to get in or something trying to get out.

Gather the animals
.

Her lips echoed the command, forming words the men of the Nzemabua no longer needed to hear, and which they would echo themselves until they amplified and magnified, their noise drowning out the bickering voices of the palaver. Their legacy was an old mistake; an ancient stain. They were choiceless custodians, debtors to an old story, victims of a prank played long ago.

Heh, heh, heh, heh …

“Wet clay, dry clay, water, ashes, chaff, and goat-hair,” said the old man. “My pig-bristle brush, Iguedo’s stirring stick, sunlight, the iron rings hanging on the wall back there, two thin bronze rods, and a large store of patience. We will need all these things.”

He had attached two strips of wax to the wax model that projected at a comical angle from each of the figure’s knees. They would serve as “sprues,” apparently. The boy had not yet decided whether knowing what “sprues” were was worth the mockery that the question would provoke.

“Clay, bronze, and iron are the materials which every Eze-Nri must gather for his coronation,” the old man went on. “Bronze must come from the Nupe, who trade with the peoples of the desert; iron must come from Awka; and the clay must come from the bed of the Anambra River. There are things he must make in secret.”

He turned the model about, indicating creases and depressions, the eye-holes in the leopard’s face, the thin grooves delineating the arms. “This part will be difficult,” he said, stabbing the end of his little finger into the irregular space formed between the figure’s legs and the
ofo
-bundle between the feet. He held it up and squinted, eventually nodding to himself as though to say that whatever problem he had diagnosed was soluble.