Achebe chinua arrow of godtxt7262014 84255 pm to spit

Achebe, Chinua - Arrow of God.txt[7/26/2014 8:42:55 PM]
to spit out a morsel which fortune had placed in his mouth but in certain circumstances such a man compelled respect.
Ezeulu himself was full of satisfaction at the way things had gone. He had settled his little score with the white
man and could forget him for the moment. But it was not easy to forget and as he went over the events of the past few
days he almost persuaded himself that the white man, Wintabota, had meant well but that his good intentions had been
frustrated in action by all the intermediaries like the Head Messenger and this ill-mannered, young white pup. After all,
he reminded himself, it was Wintabota who a few years ago proclaimed him a man of truth from all the witnesses of
Okperi and Umuaro. It was he also who later advised him to send one of his sons to learn the wisdom of his race. All
this would suggest that the white man had goodwill towards Ezeulu. But what was the value of the goodwill which
brought him to this shame and indignity? The wife who had seen the emptiness of life had cried: "Let my husband hate
me as long as he provides yams for me every afternoon."
In any case, Ezeulu said to himself, Wintabota must answer for the actions of his messengers. A man might pick
his way with the utmost care through a crowded market but find that the hem of his cloth had upset and broken
another's wares; in such a case the man, not his cloth, was held to repair the damage.
But in spite of all this Ezeulu's dominant feeling was that more or less he was now even with the white man. He
had not yet said the last word to him, but for the moment his real struggle was with his own people and the white man
was, without knowing it, his ally. The longer he was kept in Okperi the greater his grievance and his resourses for the
fight. At first few people in Umuaro believed the story that Ezeulu had rejected the white man's offer to be a Warrant
Chief. How could he refuse the very thing he had been planning and scheming for all these years? his enemies asked.
But Akuebue and others undertook to spread the story to every quarter of Umuaro and very soon it was known also in
all the neighbouring villages.
Nwaka of Umunneora treated the story with contempt. When he could no longer disbelieve it he explained it
away.
"The man is as proud as a lunatic," he said.
"This proves what I have always told people, that he inherited his mother's madness."
Like every other thing Nwaka said from malice this one had its foundation in truth. Ezeulu's mother, Nwanyieke,
had suffered from severe but spasmodic attacks of madness. It was said that had her husband not been such a powerful
man with herbs she might have raved continuously.
But despite Nwaka and other implacable enemies of Ezeulu the number of people who were beginning to think
that he had been used very badly grew every day in Umuaro. More and more people began to visit him at Okperi; on
one day alone he received nine visitors, some of whom brought him yams and other presents.