Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe [38]
“The market of Umuike is a wonderful place,” said the young man who had been sent by Obierika to buy the giant goat. “There are so many people on it that if you threw up a grain of sand it would not find a way to fall to earth again.”
“It is the result of a great medicine,” said Obierika. “The people of Umuike wanted their market to grow and swallow up the markets of their neighbors. So they made a powerful medicine. Every market day, before the first cock-crow, this medicine stands on the market ground in the shape of an old woman with a fan. With this magic fan she beckons to the market all the neighboring clans. She beckons in front of her and behind her, to her right and to her left.”
“And so everybody comes,” said another man, “honest men and thieves. They can steal your cloth from off your waist in that market.”
“Yes,” said Obierika. “I warned Nwankwo to keep a sharp eye and a sharp ear. There was once a man who went to sell a goat. He led it on a thick rope which he tied round his wrist. But as he walked through the market he realized that people were pointing at him as they do to a madman. 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.”
“Do you think a thief can do that kind of thing single-handed?” asked Nwankwo.
“No,” said Obierika. “They use medicine.”
When they had cut the goats’ throats and collected the blood in a bowl, they held them over an open fire to burn off the hair, and the smell of burning hair blended with the smell of cooking. Then they washed them and cut them up for the women who prepared the soup.
All this anthill activity was going smoothly when a sudden interruption came. It was a cry in the distance: Oji odu achu ijiji-o-o! (The one that uses its tail to drive flies away!) Every woman immediately abandoned whatever she was doing and rushed out in the direction of the cry.
“We cannot all rush out like that, leaving what we are cooking to burn in the fire,” shouted Chielo, the priestess. “Three or four of us should stay behind.”
“It is true,” said another woman. “We will allow three or four women to stay behind.”
Five women stayed behind to look after the cooking-pots, and all the rest rushed away to see the cow that had been let loose. When they saw it they drove it back to its owner, who at once paid the heavy fine which the village imposed on anyone whose cow was let loose on his neighbors’ crops. When the women had exacted the penalty they checked among themselves to see if any woman had failed to come out when the cry had been raised.
“Where is Mgbogo?” asked one of them.
“She is ill in bed,” said Mgbogo’s next-door neighbor. “She has iba.”
“The only other person is Udenkwo,” said another woman, “and her child is not twenty-eight days yet.”
Those women whom Obierika’s wife had not asked to help her with the cooking returned to their homes, and the rest went back, in a body, to Obierika’s compound.
“Whose cow was it?” asked the women who had been allowed to stay behind.
“It was my husband’s,” said Ezelagbo. “One of the young children had opened the gate of the cow-shed.”
Early in the afternoon the first two pots of palm-wine arrived from Obierika’s in-laws. They were duly presented to the women, who drank a cup or two each, to help them in their cooking. Some of it also went to the bride and her attendant maidens, who were putting the last delicate touches of razor to her coiffure and cam wood on her smooth skin.
When the heat of the sun began to soften, Obierika’s son, Maduka, took a long broom and swept the ground in front of his father’s obi. And as if they had been waiting for that, Obierika’s relatives and friends began to arrive, every man with his goatskin bag hung on one shoulder and a rolled goatskin mat under his arm. Some of them were accompanied by their sons bearing carved wooden stools. Okonkwo was one of them. They sat in a half-circle and began to talk of many things. It would not be long before the suitors came.
Okonkwo brought out