As crowds were entering Ezennaya's house, people were also crowding into the house of Ezeonyekwelu Ikepuru, Nonyerem's father.
Many
people were comforting him and told him to be patient, that Ezennaya
would surely marry another wife for him. [Remember that Ugonwa suffered
from loss of babies at birth.] Others were telling him that Ezennaya and
his son had done something that could make a person disappear so that
no one would ever see him again.
But
some tricksters went and told him to take revenge, because the chicken
does not look for food in the goat's stomach. [That being an
impossibility, they were implying that there was something "fishy" in
the situation -- perhaps Obiekwe had done something to Nonyerem on
purpose.] Others told him not to carry his son's corpse.
These
things bewildered Ikepuru. He then sighed, shrugged his shoulders and
said that he would not live to let his eyes see his ears [to endure any
more catastrophes]. And he would not be huge like an elephant, yet
eating only an ant's portion, because the Agbaja person says that if a
tribe is dying out and giving birth only to females, and its residents
keep on dying violent deaths, that is what the elders call a dried-up
land.
He
then entered the house, picked up a rope and tied it inside his
loincloth, opened the back door and went out. No one paid attention to
where he was going.
While
he was going along the road, the people he met beat their chests in
grief for him, expressed their condolences, and he thanked them. But his
demeanor gave no clue as to his intentions.
Ikepuru
then followed the road as far as Umudiani, crossed the Ozowata River,
and came out into the Mgbugbo grassland, but he didn't see what he was
looking for. He then went to the Ozowata forest and entered it, and
climbed a stout tree. His mind was not clear because his heart was too
burdened. His body was trembling and shaking.
When
he saw that the tree would not hold his weight, he climbed down, looked
around, and went to another tree with ripe fruit hanging from it. All
the earth of the forest was soft because the leaves of the tree had
fallen all around there.
He
dragged himself over to it, climbed the tree immediately, tied the rope
around a branch of the tree, and tied a noose where he would put in his
head.
Now
he was confused, he bit his lips and tried to put his head into the
rope and then hang from it. Then a loud cry sounded. Ezeonyekwelu looked
but couldn't see what was making the noise.
He decided that the spirits were shouting, so he tried again to put his head into the rope, but the cry sounded again.
Ezeonyekwelu
looked all around, but saw no one. He then snapped his fingers [to ward
off bad luck]. He did not know that a person with swollen stomach had
been placed under that tree.
That
person's stomach was as large as a big water pot, and his relatives had
carried him out into the forest so he could die there and his corpse
would be taken by vultures.
When
the person with the swollen stomach saw that Ezeonyekwelu was trying to
hang himself, and if the rope should snap he would fall on top of him,
he shouted, "Look at me alive here, please don't fall on me and kill
me."
Also,
he saw that if Ezeonyekwelu hung himself and then died, his weight
would fall on his body. Again, if the vultures smelled the hanging body
and came close, they would start to fight over him and then pierce his
stomach.
As
Ezeonyekwelu looked around at the base of the tree and saw the person
who had been placed on the ground, his stomach shiny with distension,
something dawned on him. He then beat his chest and realized that it was
through ignorance that he had tried to throw his life away, when people
with swollen stomachs were longing to live. His body trembled, his fear
left him, and he leaped to the ground and ran without looking back.
The
story of what he saw and heard is unbelievable. But the person with the
swollen stomach laughed at him and called him crazy, because he quoted
the proverb saying that if the day is not going well, a he-goat chases
his mother. [Chasing the mother will not help the situation.]
Ezeonyekwelu
returned to his house, and sent a message telling Ezennaya to bring him
Nonyerem's body. Ezennaya did as he was told. Ezeonyekwelu lifted his
face to the sky and cried out that the Lord in heaven had abandoned him.
Tears were dripping from his eyes.
Everyone
cried out as much as he could, then went and sat down, looking around
in the compound. Ezeonyekwelu said that gunpowder should be bought for
him at Ejemnu's house. Some people went and collected four bottles of
gunpowder, a land gun, and a poker [to set off the firing of the gun].
He told the young men to pound the land gun seventeen times with the
poker, so Agumadu Ogbayaka could set them off, because on the day a
person mourned for his peer he mourned for himself. But his own problem
was that water coming from the head of the stream had gone bad. [Refers
to loss of his only child.]
The land gun and poker then were sounding ''tawuum, tawuum, tawuu gbiim-m.''
Nonyerem
was ''fat and blood'' [like an immature fetus] -- he had not grown up
enough to buckle on a warrior's shield. Those in his group were not yet
old enough to have an age-group in the town of Alaoke.
When
the sun had reached midday and the shadows were long, the young men
went and cut down the things they needed to weave a mat of raffia. When
they finished weaving it they placed it beside the house, and sent out
six people to go and dig the grave in the place where the Alaoke people
buried their dead.
Jideofo
then got up, rubbed the sand from his bottom, and called together their
friends and family and told them that the time had come for them to go
and bury the body, because someone had definitely died. They all agreed,
and called Ezeonyekwelu and informed him, and he told them to do what
they had to do.
They
then brought the raffia mat, shooed away all the women who were sitting
by the body, took the body and put it in the raffia mat. Nonyerem's
mother, Ugonwa, went and collected waist beads, necklaces, leg rings,
Igala beads, finger rings, and ivory beads, and cast them on Nonyerem on
the raffia mat, telling him to take them away with him, because night
had fallen in the afternoon [disaster had struck] and everything
beautiful in her life was gone.
His
father, Ezeonyekwelu, beat his chest, cried manly tears, went into the
house, brought out some cowries that he had put in a pot and covered its
opening with a torn cloth. Everyone sat there watching him.
He
lifted the pot and put it on the raffia mat. Some people then tied up
the corpse and carried it to the grave they had dug and buried it there.
The
story of what happened then is unbelievable. Nonyerem's parents
comforted each other and said that a person whom the world had denied
does not deny himself. [We must carry on even when life has dealt us a
heavy blow.]
That
night, Ezeonyekwelu went and cut down a sacred tree which was in the
center of his compound, and carried the images and the sacred staff and
the ikenga [carved ritual figure] and all the things he used to
invoke the deities, and burned them in the fire. After burning them, he
went out, saying that if the images and the ikenga had cared about him, they would not have allowed what had happened to him to take place.Chapter 6
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