Chapter Twelve (The Grey Wedding Pt. 2)
African Surrealist Fiction
Five cowries and a lot of words later, the ime-ego dowry custom in the house was completed. It was now time for the celebration to be taken outside for the igba-nkwu - the carrying of drink. The hottest part of noon since had passed with the sun’s fire starting to cool, but needless to say; the drinking had not stopped. In the compound, it was canopy after canopy - bamboo pillared and palm frond thatched. The umuadas had to have their own place, a society of first daughters largely responsible for the affairs of women, from marital conduct to civility in the market. They were a necessary check for the power of the men, and a great representative for women in kingdom politics. There was another canopy for the umunnas, men from the father’s village there to bear witness and drink to stupor. Then there were canopies for the titled men, the Nzes and the Ozos, the Ezes and the Obis. Distinguished men like master hunters, decorated warriors and agbara men of science also had a place right next to ndi odu - the titled women of the white tusk society. There were other canopies too, for whoever wanted to drink and celebrate. For a man like Nnanyi, famed as an Ogbuagu - a leopard killer, needless to say, there wasn’t anyone that could make it to his obi that was not present. In fact, the celebration spilled into the streets, lines of stools and small chairs meandering down the road with bamboo cups floating around.
Anyi remained close to his father as he had been instructed to. Whatever the older man needed that day, he was the hand waiting to be commanded.
‘Anyi,’ Nnanyi leaned closer to Anyi’s ears, his eyes searching the crowd while his lips moved in the shapes of numbers. ‘Go and tell them to bring out more barrels. There are too many cups and not enough to drink.’
Anyi nodded and scuttled off to do as he was instructed. Moving through a cluster of swaying bodies, he slipped past the kitchen where the smell of okro soup mixed with egusi soup, and the pounding of yam sounded like a heartbeat, dum-dum, dum-dum, as pistons slammed against mortar. He turned to the right and appeared at the backyard where drums and jars rested on the ground and tables. Flies danced on lids trying to get a taste of the sweet wine themselves, and bare-chested young boys stood as if they guarded the supply. They were speaking to themselves.
‘You were allowing them to just take anyhow. One person, five drinks. And night has not even come. A lot of the titled men are not even yet here. Do you not have sense to at least know to save a barrel or two? Do you eat the last meat in the pot without knowing if your father will be hungry?’
One boy scolded the other, but the one getting told off showed little remorse.
‘Nnanyi said he does not want to hear that someone came to his daughter’s wedding and did not leave filled with the spirits. He said he had ordered many barrels just for libation. The problem is with the supplier. This is clearly not all the drinks he ordered.’
‘What is going on?’ Anyi broke in.
The two boys looked at him, the worry on their face evident as they wondered how much he had heard.
‘He finished the drinks, he allowed it finish.’ one pointed to the other.
‘So all the drinks have finished?’ Anyi asked.
Silence followed.
Anyi counted with his eyes in silence, his father would be livid. Clearly, the wine tappers had under-delivered. He had warned them too - he did not want to hear stories or excuses.
‘We can get the pig-men to supply us. They say they can turn water to wine.’ The smaller of the boys offered.
‘Are you stupid? It’s like this grey eyes are rotting your brain. How can someone turn water to wine?’ The bigger one responded.
‘Do we not turn palm juice to palm wine and then kai-kai.’
’Stop, stop, stop.’ Anyi raised one hand in the air to halt their bickering. ‘If my father hears this, he will kill somebody. Instead of all this talk-talk, how about one of you go and trace the wine tappers or call the pig-men you say can turn water to wine.’
The boys stopped their bickering to look at each other.
‘We have to act fast!’ Anyi stressed.
For him, it was a task in itself telling his father, a man who would rather death than shame, that the drinks at his daughter’s wedding had run out. He imagined the words leaving his lips and the anger rising in the older man’s face. But he had no choice.
‘I will tell him what is happening. If he comes here to discover it himself, he might kill somebody by mistake.’ Anyi turned and left, the two boys still wondering why they stood still guarding barrels that already echoed with emptiness.
‘Don’t just wait here, start going to the palm feilds to search for the barrels. Maybe one of you can even start heading to the pig-men just in case.’ On Anyi’s word, the boys scrambled their way out.
Anyi weaved through the crowd again, this time his eyes tried to count who had a cup and who did not, who swayed with barely open eyes and who appeared to still have it all together. As it were, most of the men were already dancing a bit too much for sober eyes, and the women nursed their drinks as if trying to make it last or delaying their descent into drunkenness. Nnanyi was boasting about getting someone drunk when his son found him.
‘Ahh, Chiyelugo, when we are finished with you today, you will enter the hen house and make a bed in the hay, just make sure none of the chicken lays eggs for you.’
The men and everyone within earshot laughed, the kind of roaring laughter characteristic of men already on the journey to said hen house.
‘Nnanyi,’ Anyi tugged at him as gently as he could, as if any louder intrusion would have been rude or at least improper.
‘What is it? Didn’t I ask you to tell those boys to roll out another barrel? Do I have to go there myself?’
Nnanyi had barely started drinking and was not one to take too many cups to find his confidence. He however was not immune to the spirit of excitement and the performance of power often expressed in the ability to spoil one’s guest.
‘Nnanyi, there is something important I need to tell you.’
It was all Anyi needed to say and his father understood the need for discretion.
‘Give me a second,’ he excused himself, ‘as some of you with married daughters would know, there is no day you must be more servant than lord than on a day like this.’
The men largely his age and rank in status roared with laughter at the joke. Under the cover of their excitement; he slipped away to listen to his son.
Over the music that seemed to swim from every direction, finding a quiet place to speak meant quickly stepping into a hut. There, people still lingered with cups, but there was enough room to find a corner one could whisper in.
‘What is the matter?’ Nnanyi asked, his thick brows furrowing so much they almost touched in the middle of his lined face.
‘Nnanyi, ermm,’ the words were on his tongue, and then at the back of his throat.
‘Nnanyi…’ he tried again.
‘Speak boy!’ his father commanded.
‘Nnanyi, it’s the drinks.’ He stared.
‘What about the drinks?’ His father pressed, patience that already wore thin slipping away in his tone.
‘I went to the back to ask them to bring out another barrel, but,’ Anyi paused to muster the last drop of courage in his shaky heart. ‘but they said that the drinks have finished. That the drink people had not delivered all they had promised.’
‘So you are saying that the moon is not even in the sky yet and my daughter’s wedding runs dry as the desert plains of the northern lands? Is that what you are saying?’
Anyi said nothing, but he nodded his reply with a swollen face.
‘And what are they doing about this? I hired their people to supply the wine. It is not my business if their supplier has failed them. They must do something about it.’
Anyi had imagined that telling his father about the problem was the harder part. But in many ways, although the older man’s voice was lined with anger, he had tried to keep a grip on it. If anything, he seemed to be more reasonable than mad. Asking what was being done at least showed that he was open to something being done. Something that wasn’t dragging the supposed wine suppliers by the ears and lashing them with a cane.
‘They have left to find the supplier. They are suspecting maybe something happened on the road. One of them will also be speaking to the pig-men. They say that they have used them to turn water to wine in some weddings.’
‘Ala ana pu gi?’ Nnanyi barked at his son. ‘Are you stupid?’
Anyi embarrassed for reasons he was not too sure of only blinked. Solemn eyes on a solemn face.
‘So they will tell you that me, Ogbuagu of Eke Kingdom will taste the blood coloured wine of pig-men and you will not tell them that your father you know would rather drink from a frog poisoned well?’
‘I’m sorry Nnanyi, it’s just that so many titled men have had nothing to drink. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. I will tell them to hold on with the pig-men. But what if they are our only choice?’
Nnanyi sighed, a heavy sigh that carried a weight to match the thoughts that had brought it on.
‘Have you said anything to the groom’s father about this?’ Nnanyi asked.
‘No, I have spoken to no one else about it, only you.’
‘Good.’ Nnanyi’s eyes drifted out the window and into the compound where people still laughed in between the chattering of their lips.
‘I came together with him to make these drinks happen, to give our children a befitting wedding. I was the one that collected the cowries and silvers from him, it was my responsibility to ensure everything went as we had discussed. This is so embarrassing.’
Anyi needed no lesson in the way of his people to know that pride was a staple in the culture, and depending on a man’s status, even higher levels of it were expected of him. He watched his father grind his jaw with tension and then sigh again.
‘They should find the wine men, but if they can’t and the pig-men must come here, I will see them first before they start passing out anything. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, it is very clear.’
‘I will say it again so you will not say that you did not hear.’
Anyi nodded and waited.
‘If we must use the pig-men, make sure I speak with them first before anything. Are we clear?’
‘Yes, we are very clear.’
Anyi knew his father enough to know he had only considered this path because he couldn’t weigh the shame of his perceived incompetence over that of his tribal pride. He also knew it had much to do with the fact that this was his daughter’s wedding, not his own affair. The shame he was now trying to avoid was for the entire family and not just himself.
‘Whichever one they are doing, they need to do it fast-fast, there is no time to waste. Guests are still only coming in.’
‘I will rush them.’ Anyi assured his father.
With that, Anyi left to find the boys, his memory tracing the route he had walked with many times to get to the palm fields.
After taking a few right turns and meandering through some corners, he came to find what he could only describe as a disaster. A man was sitting on the bare earth, his hand on his head and tears in his eyes.
‘I swear to Ala and Amadioha, someone did this. This one is not us. Someone targeted it.’ Two other men stood with him as did the two boys from the compound.
‘You were supposed to be watching it. You had one job! But you got drunk and fell asleep, now it is not your fault. All of us are going to die today.’
Anyi got closer to notice maybe twenty barrels lined by a hut he knew to house wine by the tappers. Close to the base of each barrel, he could spot a hole no larger than a finger. The supposed guard might have well been drunk and sleeping, but he did not lie about there being a malicious actor. It made absolutely no sense that anyone would have filled barrels they well knew to be pissing out wine from the base.
‘We don’t have time for this oh!’ Anyi made his voice and the haste in it clear.
‘I am so sorry, please, we are working to resolve it. Just tell your father to be patient.’
‘To be patient is what my mother tells him when the stew needs to simmer for another thousand breaths and his belly grumbles with hunger. I don’t know if that will work in this situation. We need more than patience. What are you doing to solve the problem?’
The boys talked in hushed tones within themselves and then turned to face Anyi again.
‘We are discussing with the pig-men priests, they have a special wine that can be made from water through the power of their Xrist. But we need the old barrels to be filled up with water before they can do the turning.’
‘Can they really do that?’ Anyi asked.
‘Do what?’ One of the boys replied, his grey eyes facing Anyi with a stare that almost appeared vacant.
‘Turn water to wine.’ Anyi emphasised.
‘I have seen with my eyes and tasted with my lips, I need no other proof.’ The boy licked his lip in memory of what he believed he had witnessed. Anyi wondered how much older then him this boy could be. Perhaps no more than five rains his senior judging from his height and size. Old enough to know when he tasted strong drink for sure.
‘My father will not be made a fool of, my family will not be made a fool of. Do you understand?’ Anyi caught these words leaving his lips and wondered when he began to speak like this? Not long ago, he would have perhaps pleaded with these men to ensure things went well, now he stated his will with the certainty that it mattered, that it was weighted – words of a man. His eyes met the boy’s in a measured gaze and he did not blink or look away. Somewhere in the recess of his mind, the vicious face of a masquerade flickered and the growl of a panther could be heard. In his body, it was as if he could feel the energy in that memory.
‘No one is going to make a fool out of anybody, I am telling you, I have seen and tasted. Am I not a wine supplier?’
The other boy said nothing, his confidence chinked with what Anyi could only imagine to be shame. It was in how the boy’s brown eyes searched the floor as if he had dropped his honour on it.
‘Okafor, help me tell him nah. You are just standing there.’ The bigger boy tried to encourage his partner.
‘They will deliver, I have seen it too.’ He made no mention of taste.
‘I will get the Umunnas to fill the barrels from the well. Will your pig-men be needing anything for this agbara they hope to perform.’
‘No no, nothing. They come with all their tools, just fill the barrels and they will do the rest. They perform the ritual like theatre, the guests will love it.’
‘If you wish they could present it as a gift.’ The brown-eyed larger boy spoke in a rush, ‘I think your father will prefer it that way.’
Anyi could not imagine how exactly the pig-men displayed this magic it appeared they possessed, but it was them or a sober wedding.
‘We are waiting.’ Anyi concluded.
‘What will happen to me?’ The grey-
eyed young man supposed to have been guarding the barrels in the storage asked.
‘That is between you and your oga. He is at the wedding too, so when we run dry I will inform him.’ Anyi spoke with his eyes searching the leaking barrel.
‘I can give you the extra we saved at the back. It’s not much, but the vandals didn’t get to it.’
The boy escorted them to the back where they found two barrels maybe as high as Anyi’s waist. The boys picked one each.
‘If you like, share it around like it’s akara, fill every idiot’s cup and spill some on the ground too.’ The older boy said to the younger.
The boys headed back, rolling the drum down the street in a practised chase. Anyi followed, his mind’s eye glancing back to the empty barrel.
But who would have done such a thing?
THANK YOU FOR READING
