No Longer at Ease Page 15

  His father, although uncompromising in conflicts between church and clan, was not really a man of action but of thought. It was true he sometimes took precipitous and violent decisions, but such occasions were rare. When faced with a problem under normal circumstances, he was apt to weigh it and measure it and look it up and down, postponing action. He relied heavily on his wife at such moments. He always said in jest that it all started on their wedding day. And he would tell how she had cut the cake first.

  When the missionaries brought their own kind of marriage, they also brought the wedding cake. But it was soon adapted to suit the people’s sense of drama. The bride and the groom were given a knife each. The master of ceremonies counted “One, two, three, go!” And the first to cut through the cake was the senior partner. On Isaac’s wedding day his wife had cut the cake first.

  But the story that Obi came to cherish even more was that of the sacred he-goat. In his second year of marriage his father was catechist in a place called Aninta. One of the great gods of Aninta was Udo, who had a he-goat that was dedicated to him. This goat became a menace at the mission. Apart from resting and leaving droppings in the church, it destroyed the catechist’s yam and maize crops. Mr. Okonkwo complained a number of times to the priest of Udo, but the priest (no doubt a humorous old man) said that Udo’s he-goat was free to go where it pleased and do what it pleased. If it chose to rest in Okonkwo’s shrine, it probably showed that their two gods were pals. And there the matter would have stood had not the he-goat one day entered Mrs. Okonkwo’s kitchen and eaten up the yam she was preparing to cook—and that at a season when yam was as precious as elephant tusks. She took a sharp matchet and hewed off the beast’s head. There were angry threats from village elders. The women for a time refused to buy from her or sell to her in the market. But so successful had been the emasculation of the clan by the white man’s religion and government that the matter soon died down. Fifteen years before this incident the men of Aninta had gone to war with their neighbors and reduced them to submission. Then the white man’s government had stepped in and ordered the surrender of all firearms in Aninta. When they had all been collected, they were publicly broken by soldiers. There is an age grade in Aninta today called the Age Group of the Breaking of the Guns. They are the children born in that year.

  These thoughts gave Obi a queer kind of pleasure. They seemed to release his spirit. He no longer felt guilt. He, too, had died. Beyond death there are no ideals and no humbug, only reality. The impatient idealist says: “Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.” But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace. The most horrible sight in the world cannot put out the eye. The death of a mother is not like a palm tree bearing fruit at the end of its leaf, no matter how much we want to make it so. And that is not the only illusion we have.…

  It was again the season for scholarships. There was so much work now that Obi had to take some files home every day. He was just settling down to work when a new model Chevrolet pulled up outside. He saw it quite clearly from his writing desk. Who could it be? It looked like one of those prosperous Lagos businessmen. Whom could he want? All the other occupants of the flat were unimportant Europeans on the lower rungs of the civil service.

  The man knocked on Obi’s door, and Obi jumped up to open it for him. He probably wanted to ask him the way to somewhere else. Nonresidents of Ikoyi always got lost among its identical flats.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “Good afternoon. Are you Mr. Okonkwo?”

  Obi said yes. The man came in and introduced himself. He wore a very expensive agbada.

  “Please have a seat.”

  “Thank you.” He brought out a little towel from somewhere in the folds of his flowing gown and mopped his face. “I don’t want to waste your time,” he said, mopping one forearm and then the other under the wide sleeves of his agbada. “My son is going to England in September. I want him to get scholarship. If you can do it for me here is fifty pounds.” He brought out a wad of notes from the front pocket of his agbada.

  Obi told him it was not possible. “In the first place I don’t give scholarships. All I do is go through the applications and recommend those who satisfy the requirements to the Scholarship Board.”

  “That’s all I want,” said the man. “Just recommend him.”

  “But the Board may not select him.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just do your own …”

  Obi was silent. He remembered the boy’s name. He was already on the short list, “Why don’t you pay for him? You have money. The scholarship is for poor people.”

  The man laughed. “No man has money in this world.” He rose to his feet, placed the wad of notes on the occasional table before Obi. “This is just small kola,” he said. “We will make good friends. Don’t forget the name. We will see again. Do you ever go to the club? I have never seen you before.”

  “I’m not a member.”

  “You must join,” he said. “Bye-bye.”

  The wad of notes lay where he had placed it for the rest of the day and all night. Obi placed a newspaper over it and secured the door. “This is terrible!” he muttered. “Terrible!” he said aloud. He woke up with a start in the middle of the night and he did not go to sleep again for a long time afterwards.

  “You dance very well,” he whispered as she pressed herself against him, breathing very fast and hard. He put her arms round his neck and brought her lips within a centimeter of his. They no longer paid any attention to the beat of the high-life. Obi steered her towards his bedroom. She made a halfhearted show of resisting, then followed.

  Obviously she was not an innocent schoolgirl. She knew her job. She was on the short list already, anyway. All the same, it was a great letdown. No point in pretending that it wasn’t. One should at least be honest. He took her back to Yaba in his car. On his return journey he called on Christopher to tell him about it so that perhaps they might laugh it off. But he left again without having told the story. Some other day, perhaps.

  Others came. People would say that Mr. So-and-so was a gentleman. He would take money, but he would do his stuff, which was a big advertisement, and others would follow. But Obi stoutly refused to countenance anyone who did not possess the minimum educational and other requirements. On that he was unshakeable.

  In due course he paid off his bank overdraft and his debt to the Hon. Sam Okoli, M.H.R. The worst was now over, and Obi ought to have felt happier. But he didn’t.

  Then one day someone brought twenty pounds. As the man left, Obi realized that he could stand it no more. People say that one gets used to these things, but he had not found it like that at all. Every incident had been a hundred times worse than the one before it. The money lay on the table. He would have preferred not to look in its direction, but he seemed to have no choice. He just sat looking at it, paralyzed by his thoughts.

  There was a knock at the door. He sprang to his feet, grabbed the money, and ran towards his bedroom. A second knock caught him almost at the door of the bedroom and transfixed him there. Then he saw on the floor for the first time the hat which his visitor had forgotten, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He thrust the money into his pocket and went to the door and opened it. Two people entered—one was his recent visitor, the other a complete stranger.

  “Are you Mr. Okonkwo?” asked the stranger. Obi said yes in a voice he could hardly have recognized. The room began to swim round and round. The stranger was saying something, but it sounded distant—as things sound to a man in a fever. He then searched Obi and found the marked notes. He began to say some more things, invoking the name of the Queen, like a District Officer in the bush reading the Riot Act to an uncomprehending and delirious mob. Meanwhile the other man used the telephone outside Obi’s door to summon a police van.

  Everybody wondered why. The learned judge, as we have seen, could not comprehend how an educated young man and so on and so forth. The Bri
tish Council man, even the men of Umuofia, did not know. And we must presume that, in spite of his certitude, Mr. Green did not know either.

  Chinhua Achebe

  The Education of a

  British-Protected Child

  His first new book

  in more than twenty years

  Chinua Achebe’s characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen autobiographical essays. An indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

  Available October 2009 in hardcover from Knopf

  $24.95 • 192 pages • 978-0-307-27255-3

  Please visit www.aaknopf.com

  CHINUA ACHEBE

  Chinua Achebe is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. He was, for over fifteen years, the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is the author of five novels, two short story collections, and numerous other books. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. He lives with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island.

  Books by Chinua Achebe

  Anthills of the Savannah

  The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories

  Things Fall Apart

  No Longer at Ease

  Chike and the River

  A Man of the People

  Arrow of God

  Girls at War and Other Stories

  Beware Soul Brother

  Morning Yet on Creation Day

  The Trouble with Nigeria

  The Flute

  The Drum

  Home and Exile

  Hopes and Impediments

  How the Leopard Got His Claws (with John Iroaganachi)

  Winds of Change: Modern Short Stories from Black Africa (coeditor)

  African Short Stories (editor, with C. L. Innes)

  Another Africa (with Robert Lyons)

  ALSO BY CHINUA ACHEBE

  ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH

  In the fictional West African nation Kangan, newly independent of British rule, the hopes and dreams of democracy have been quashed by a fierce military dictatorship. Chris Oriko is a member of the cabinet of the president for life, one of his oldest friends. When the president is charged with censoring the oppositionist editor of the state-run newspaper—another childhood friend—Chris’s loyalty and ideology are put to the test. The fate of Kangan hangs in the balance as tensions rise and a devious plot is set in motion to silence the firebrand critic.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-26045-9

  ARROW OF GOD

  Ezeulu, the chief priest of several Nigerian villages, is a prominent member of the Igbo people. So prominent, in fact, that he is invited to join the British colonial administration. But when he refuses to be a “white man’s chief” and is thrown in jail, Ezeulu’s influence begins to wane, as the resentful decisions he makes from prison have adverse effects on his people. As Christian missionaries flood Ezeulu’s villages, Western culture may very well unravel the traditions he has spent his life protecting.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-01480-9

  THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD

  Essays

  Chinua Achebe’s characteristically eloquent and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. From a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria to considerations on the African-American diaspora, from a glimpse into his extraordinary family life and his thoughts on the potent symbolism of President Obama’s election—this charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise collection is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

  Essays/978-0-307-47367-7

  GIRLS AT WAR

  And Other Stories

  Here we read of an ambitious farmer who is suddenly shunned by his village when a madman exacts his humiliating revenge; a young nanny who is promised an education by her well-to-do employers, only to be cruelly cheated out of it; and in three fiercely observed stories about the Nigerian civil war, we are confronted with the economic, ethnic, cultural, and religious tensions that continue to rack modern Africa.

  Fiction/Short Stories/978-0-385-41896-6

  HOME AND EXILE

  More personally revealing than anything Achebe has written, Home and Exile is a major statement on the importance of stories as real sources of power, especially for those whose stories have traditionally been told by outsiders. In three elegant essays, Achebe seeks to rescue African culture from narratives written about it by Europeans. Looking through the prism of his experiences as a student in English schools in Nigeria, he provides devastating examples of European cultural imperialism. He examines the impact that his novel Things Fall Apart had on efforts to reclaim Africa’s story. And he argues for the importance of writing and living the African experience because, he believes, Africa needs stories told by Africans.

  Essays/978-0-385-72133-2

  HOPES AND IMPEDIMENTS

  Selected Essays

  In Hopes and Impediments, Chinua Achebe considers the place of literature and art in our society. This collection of essays spans his writing and lectures over the course of his career, from his groundbreaking and provocative essay on Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness to his assessments of the novelist’s role as a teacher and of the truths of fiction. Achebe reveals the impediments that still stand in the way of open, equal dialogue between Africans and Europeans, between blacks and whites, but also instills us with hope that they will soon be overcome.

  Essays/978-0-385-41479-1

  A MAN OF THE PEOPLE

  Chief Nanga—the powerful but corrupt minister of culture—comes to visit the school where his former student Odili is now a teacher. But Odili soon sees that Nanga is not the man he pretends to be … and eventually decides that he must run for office himself, with disastrous consequences. Perhaps Achebe’s most political novel, A Man of the People is a story of corruption and expectations, deceit and hope. Elegantly fusing the worlds of the traditional village and the modern city, A Man of the People brings together multiple identities of a country leaving behind its colonial past, while trying to make its way into an independent future.

  Fiction/978-0-385-08616-5

  NO LONGER AT EASE

  When Obi Okonkwo—grandson of Okonkwo, the main character of Things Fall Apart—returns to Nigeria from England in the 1950s, his foreign education separates him from his African roots. He’s become a part of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. Forced to choose between traditional values and the demands of a changing world, he finds himself trapped between the expectations of his family, his village, and the larger society around him.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-47455-9

  THINGS FALL APART

  Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-47454-2

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  Collected Poems, 978-1-4000-7658-1

  ANCHOR BOOKS

  Available at your local bookstore, or visit

  www.randomhouse.com

 

 

 
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