Chapter Thirteen (The Grey Wedding Pt. 3)

African Surrealist Fiction

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Anyi watched his father from the side of his eyes as the man forced tension out of his face in a mask made of laughter. He too did not breathe with ease and felt a sort of twitching in his hands, churning in his belly. The umunnas had been instructed to fill the empty barrel with water and they had not questioned why before they began to move. They drew bucket after bucket from the well, sometimes dropping it with drunken grips. When the last of the barrels was full, they made their way back to their canopy, the exercise stealing the sway that had come over their eyes. 

         ‘Ahh, we need to top up.’ One announced. 

         ‘Don’t worry, strong wine is coming.’ One of the boys assured.

The wine merchants had come to apologise to Nnanyi, offering themselves one the floor for a lashing if he so saw fit. Against the rage in him, he had asked them to rise to their feet and just ensure their pig-men delivered as promised. He also made it clear to all around that it was them who brought the pig-men to the wedding, not him. They agreed in haste, nodding quickly and bowing their gratefulness at him. 

‘I will deal with my boys and the store guard. I promise you, I will deal with them.’ The wine merchant sounded like he meant it, but Nnanyi did not care. 

‘Just deliver. It is no concern of mine what happens to your people. Just make sure your pig-men do not fail you with their magic.’

         The pig-men in question had come from their forest-dwelling and taken over a room in a hut. There, they sat in their priestly robes, converted local porters with them to carry their wooden boxes and sacks of magical apparatus. Their holy books they carried themselves, with their tall walking staffs shaped with crosses at the top. Anyi made it his business to stand by their window, but at the speed they conversed in the pig tongue, they were just about audible to him. Sure, he could not make sense of even a single word; but still, he listened. 

         ‘This is a big opportunity for us. We cannot get this wrong.’ The man that appeared to be in charge spoke. Anyi guessed he was in charge because he appeared older than the others and his robe and hat was much more elaborate - purple with an eye-catching gold embroidered scarf hanging from his neck.

         ‘We have done this many times, we aren’t going to fail now.’ A younger priest offered. 

The black skinned porter said nothing and Anyi wondered if they even understood the language at all. 

         ‘Here, everyone that is anybody is present.’ The older man continued, ‘I don’t know what they are called, but let’s just say the nobles, lords and royals. General Sax will give us whatever we desire if we can capture this place. Do you understand?’

The two younger priests nodded and then they turned to the porters. 

           ‘You can go check if they are ready.’ The priest spoke in Eke tongue, heavy with the accent of his birth, but fluent enough for Anyi to catch every single word. He moved from the side of the window immediately, as if scared he would be discovered. The door swung open and out came the converted porters. 

         The converts wore robes too, similar to the pig-men they served but of a different colour. Their necks were empty where the pig-men all had white collars, and they seemed to be missing the regal looking scarf too. The absence of the walking staff was perhaps the biggest tell of their place in rank. 

         ‘Are the barrels full?’ The porter asked him as soon as their eyes met. 

         ‘Yes, everyone. To the brim.’ Anyi replied. 

         ‘May you take me to them for inspection.’ 

Anyi twisted his face but did not make any arguments. Time was something they had very little to spare as the sun had now to dipped and appetites for liquor found new vigour.

         ‘Follow me.’ 

Anyi led the two porters to the backyard where barrels and barrels of water rested. They inspected each barrel, dipping a finger in and tasting as if to check they weren’t being played a type of trick. It all made very little sense to Anyi, but not much the pig-men did made any sense to him. In fact, the very idea that they could somehow chant water into wine still rattled his mind. 

         ‘How do they do it?’ The words slipped out of his mouth before he could hold it back in. 

The porter turned to Anyi.  

         ‘Through the power of our lord and personal saviour, the living Xrist, all is possible. For it is written, even with the faith of a mustard seed, those that believe will be able to move mountains.’ 

Anyi confusion did not subside. Rather, the reverse was the case forcing him to shake his head with closed eyes. 

         ‘But I do not understand. Nothing moves for a man that he has not moved himself. Even his chi will only agree where he has first agreed.’ 

         ‘The ways of the Xrist chi is greater than the ways of our chi that we know. Perhaps after you have witnessed with your eyes and tasted with your tongue today, you just might begin to understand.’ 

At the mention of the word eyes, Anyi searched the porter’s to find a pair of empty grey staring at him. He would ask Onyi about this greying when this was done. At least when the drink was flowing again and his family was less tense. 

         ‘Anyi Anyi.’ 

Her voice startled him, as if she had appeared because she could feel him thinking about her. 

         ‘What are you doing here?’ Anyi asked. 

         ‘Can I leave you to do anything on your own? You will just ruin it.’ 

Anyi was too used to Onyi’s speech pattern towards him, what the elders called, azu okwu – tongue-in-cheek irony.

         ‘Just say you are bored and you wanted to see me.’ Anyi shot back. 

         ‘Me? Bored? Never.’ She paused, ‘so these are the ndi efulefu.’ 

The distaste in both porters’ face was instant. To be called one of the lost was one thing, to be called it openly by a girl possibly not even old enough to have bled was something else. 

         ‘You think you have wisdom, but the good lord has warned about leaning on our own understanding. You see, it is not us that is lost, but you, and all of Eke Kingdom, stumbling in the dark.’ 

If Onyi took offence, she made sure to have buried it well. Anyi on the other hand was not so tactful. 

         ‘What do you mean? You insult the ancestors. Take it back. We are not lost.’ 

         ‘Then call back the ancestors so that they may turn your water to wine. Or is it only drinking libation they are good for?’ One of the porters asked. 

         ‘Agbara is nothing new,’ Onyi pointed out, ‘our ancestors turned palm juice to wine, smelted metal and sculpted bronze, even made cassava sap into kai-kai and discovered cassava cereal too. Just because your pig-men keep their findings secret doesn’t mean that their power is magic. My father should never have granted them land even in Ajo Ofia. There is no place for them or their ways here.’ 

The porters said no more and Anyi’s rising temper seemed to have calmed too as his breathing slowed and his fist unclenched.  

         ‘I’m sure your masters are waiting for you.’ Onyi watched them with eyes that did not blink - a true daughter of her father. 

         ‘In the eyes of the lord, there are no masters.’ One replied.

‘Yet these pig-men have enslaved enough of us to form a little tribe in their own land.’ 

With that, the men excused themselves but Anyi did not follow. Instead, he stayed back with Onyi and didn’t speak till he was sure the converts were out of earshot. 

         ‘Onyi, your father doesn’t like them too?’ Anyi asked. 

         ‘Pig-men are not to be trusted. He has received word from many towns and villages. They come in peace with plans of destruction.’ 

         ‘What have you heard.’ Anyi’s eyes were now wide with attention. 

         ‘They say shrines are being set on fire in certain places, dibias chased into exile, families are breaking apart, communities collapsing.’ 

         ‘And why are people not resisting? Do you know?’

Onyi paused for thought. 

         ‘They say they have a special new type of gun, one that spits faster than you can count. Our local gunsmiths stand no chance.’

Anyi’s mind was back in his dream from the test of manhood. The picture was clear in his mind’s eyes as Onyi’s face before him. The sound of gattling rounds filled his ears, the roar of something he did not recognize, and the jolt as his body shook with his finger on the trigger. 

         ‘Anyi, where have you gone?’ Onyi waved a hand over his face. 

         ‘Oh sorry,’ he snapped out of it, ‘nothing, nowhere’ 

She watched him with suspicious eyes. ‘That didn’t look like nothing or nowhere.’ 

         ‘The elder men said we must never speak of what we saw in the Ekpe dream. Have you tried the spirit herb before?’

Onyi shook her head, ‘no’, she turned to find the two porters heading towards them. 

         ‘They said we should bring three barrels to the preists,’ each placed their hand on a barrel, ‘they want to pray over it.’

         ‘Where are the drinks?’ A stranger’s voice shouted from behind. 

         ‘We are almost ready.’ Anyi replied in his most reasurring tone. 

         ‘I don’t know what these pig-men are up to, but I hope they can make something of all this. My father will wrestle a leopard to the ground but pride will kill him with a finger.’  

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         Anyi watched as the porters spun the barrels in the direction of the hut they were heading to. Now, all he had to do was wait. The show was surely about to begin. 

When the time was right, Anyi found himself in the bamboo canopy with the rest of his family. Onyi’s canopy with her father and other royals was only a few paces away. In anticipation, he moved to the front, hands gripping the bamboo pillar with eyes on the pig-men. Onyi in her own canopy was doing the same. They caught each other’s eyes and then quickly turned back to the attraction. 

         ‘We greet you.’ The pig-man in the tallest arching cap spoke and the porter turned altar boy translated. 

         ‘We come to celebrate with you today, and to give a gift. We come in peace, and hope that you accept our offering.’ 

Anyi turned to find his father’s face, stonier than it usually was, lips folded in a stern twist. One of the wives rubbed his back as if to soothe him. He did not show any calm. 

         ‘Our Lord Xrist started a great tradition of turning water to wine in a wedding at Kana. It was the first of his miracles, and since then, we have been spreading the word of his power and drink.’ 

The crowd laughed at the last part when the translator was done and the pig-men gave a soft smile. Anyi squinted. He turned to look at Onyi and found her focused, as if counting with her eyes. He returned to the stage - four barrels of water, a drinking horn, candle lights, incense smoking.

         ‘Let us have a volunteer.’ 

Silence followed. 

         ‘Don’t worry, we just need someone to taste that this is a barrel of water.’ 

More silence. 

The translator pushed with words of appeal, stating that he has done this many times and that it was safe. Murmurs followed his words and people nudged at each other for encouragement. A young man stood up. He couldn’t have seen twenty rains, but he was steady in his step. The others watched him, their faces bent in different shapes – worry, curiosity, fear, suspense. He approached the pig-men and waited, his open chest still under the wrapper that went over his shoulder. 

         The long-arched hat man reached into the barrel with a wooden cup and handed it to the volunteer. Anyi watched, his own throat swallowing as the young man gulped down. He heaved and waited. 

         ‘What does it taste like?’ The altar boy asked. 

         ‘Water.’ The young man replied, licking his tongue to be sure it was tasteless. 

He went on to scoop from the other barrels, his colleagues walking around with altar boys to translate the chants they babbled. Anyi’s ears were perked, on the pig speak and the translation. 

         ‘That’s not Anglon pig-speak.’ He heard his father behind him, ‘probably their old tongue, the language of their ancestors.’ 

Anyi did not know pig-speak well enough to tell the range of it apart, but he trusted his father to be right. His eyes left the enchanters and turned back to the volunteer. He was tasting from yet another barrel and Anyi did not know which anymore. He gulped down the contents of the cup and nodded. As if on cue, the priests rounded up their chants and centred back to their leader. He proceeded to light up some incense and then waved it over the drums like a magic stick. As he did this, he murmured words that might have not been words at all. When he was done, they all choroused – hamen. 

         The altar boys moved to emptying some of the contents of barrels, telling the crowd that libation was necessary. That their ancestors on the other side have met the Xrist and would want them to accept him while they still lived. The people were mostly still to these words, the distrust on their faces fractured with curiosity. Anyi wondered too, if perhaps the pig-men had not found secrets to the universe that the Ogbis had not learned. 

When they had poured enough on the ground, they began to mix the contents in the barrel into one another; their priest chanting with his eyes closed, staff stretched out to the barrels. They turned barrel into barrel, in a fast dance that wasn’t without spillage, and then suddenly – they stopped. 

Hamen

In the quietness that floated around, a bird could be heard calling from a guava tree, the ruffle of its wings batting against leaves as it fled in flight. Anyi counted his breath. 

         ‘It is ready.’ The pig-man spoke and the altar boys did not bother with a translation, instead, one found the wooden cup and poured some contents from a barrel in it. They held it out to the volunteer, but he hesitated. They turned to the arched hat and he nodded to them. The young altar boy holding the cup drank and his brother with him followed. On taste, their cheeks winced with the slap of strong liquor.

         ‘Ahh, odi oku. It’s hot.’ 

The crowd let out a nervous laugh. It was quite something watching boys no older than thirteen rains taste alcohol. Their untrained tongue recoiling from the sting. The volunteer took the cup and shot it back. 

         ‘Ahhhh, odikwa oku oh!’ He grabbed his chest as the gin stung. He had never tasted anything like this and the surprise was clear for Anyi and all to see. 

         ‘Nka sikwa ike! This one is very strong!’ 

The elders laughed, ‘your young tongue has not been trained to taste. Pass it around so that we may taste it too and know what is true for ourselves.’ 

More laughter followed and the altar boys and drink servants from earlier moved in with more wooden cups to serve the guests. First they attended to the canopy with the elders, then then royals, and then they served anyone that was closest.

         ‘I know how he did it.’ 

Onyi’s voice found Anyi with furrowed brows still hugging the bamboo pillar. 

         ‘One of the barrels was loaded with strong drink, they poured so much libation to create space for a mix, and they turned the barrels into each other to mix it all together.’ 

Anyi turned to her, impressed that she had noticed the possibility and ashamed that he had missed it. 

         ‘How did you see it?’ 

         ‘It’s easy to see if you know what you are looking for. The masquerade society uses illusions all the time for their performances. I’ve been watching them practise in the palace since I was a baby. This is a classic case of misdirection – not magic.’ 

         Tobe approached the pair, ‘Did you see that too!’ his face was spread wide with excitement. ‘See what?’ Onyi asked. 

         ‘The magic?’

Anyi and Onyi watched him with slacked jaws. His once brown eyes were now grey as bush ash. 

Uzo ran up next, his excited eyes as grey as ever. Anyi looked into Onyi’s eyes, and she looked back at his, terrified of what she might see. 

---

Writings On The Stones: Tablet #4580 From the Great Ape Men

Grey is the vision of the blind 

The ones that believe without knowing, or asking

It is the colour of darkness

The eater of all light

Cursed is the man that carves an image 

And calls it Amadioha

Cursed is the man that slaughters a goat and prays for good harvest 

While others till the soil and water their crops

Grey is the colour of the idolater 

Do not give power to carvings, fellow mortals, or even ideas

Power is for only truth

Know it, and join us 

Blue is for the sons of Ada’m 

The ones that believe only in the things that they can see

Things that they can measure, prove, calculate and predict

They can’t see Amadioha 

So they kill him and call it science 

They are intelligent, but unfeeling

Powerful, but misguided 

They have traded spirit for mind 

And separated body from both 

They have picked reason 

And scarified intuition 

The world is of right and of left

Not of right or of left

Know it, and join us 

Brown is the colour of the sage

The gift of holy madness 

It is seeing first the spirit 

And then the material 

It is knowing that there are many ways of knowing 

It is submitting to the will of Amadioha

You are not a creature of mind 

You are not a creature of body 

You are not a creature of spirit 

You are all three

Of equal parts and at the same time

Know it, and join us  

Part 2 – Things Fall Apart – 3 months later 

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THANK YOU FOR READING

William Ifeanyi Moore (@willifmoore on all socials) is an Igbo multidisciplinary artist of European descent with an interest in cultural restitution and the preservation of pre-colonial thought systems. His work in Akala explores African philosophy and history through surrealist literature that draws on Igbo linguistic practices, cosmological beliefs, and social ordering to reflect a valid value system that should be a contender in the dialectics of today’s discourse as a valid alternative to the current binary and technofeudal orientation sweeping the globe.