About No Longer at Ease. A classic story of moral struggle in an age of turbulent social change and the final book in Chinua Achebe’s The African Trilogy When Obi Okonkwo, grandson of Okonkwo, the main character in Things Fall Apart returns to Nigeria from England in the 1950s, his foreign education separates him from his African roots. No Longer at Ease, the third and concluding novel in.

EPUB, 856 KBCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVEimage: When the district commissioner arrived at Okonkwo’s compound at the head of an armed band of soldiers and court messengers he found a small crowd of men sitting wearily in the obi. He commanded them to come outside, and they obeyed without a murmur.“Which among you is called Okonkwo?” he asked through his interpreter.“He is not here,” replied Obierika.“Where is he?”“He is not here!”The Commissioner became angry and red in the face.

He warned the men that unless they produced Okonkwo forthwith he would lock them all up. The men murmured among themselves, and Obierika spoke again.“We can take you where he is, and perhaps your men will help us.”The Commissioner did not understand what Obierika meant when he said, “Perhaps your men will help us.” One of the most infuriating habits of these people was their love of superfluous words, he thought.Obierika with five or six others led the way. The Commissioner and his men followed their firearms held at the ready. He had warned Obierika that if he and his men played any monkey tricks they would be shot.

And so they went.There was a small bush behind Okonkwo’s compound. The only opening into this bush from the compound was a little round hole in the red-earth wall through which fowls went in and out in their endless search for food. The hole would not let a man through.

It was to this bush that Obierika led the Commissioner and his men. They skirted round the compound, keeping close to the wall. The only sound they made was with their feet as they crushed dry leaves.Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo’s body was dangling, and they stopped dead.“Perhaps your men can help us bring him down and bury him,” said Obierika. “We have sent for strangers from another village to do it for us, but they may be a long time coming.”The District Commissioner changed instantaneously. The resolute administrator in him gave way to the student of primitive customs.“Why can’t you take him down yourselves?” he asked.“It; is against our custom,” said one of the men. “It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offense against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen.

His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it. That is why we ask your people to bring him down, because you are strangers.”“Will you bury him like any other man?” asked the Commissioner.“We cannot bury him. Only strangers can. We shall pay your men to do it. When he has been buried we will then do our duty by him.

We shall make sacrifices to cleanse the desecrated land.”Obierika, who had been gazing steadily at his friend’s dangling body, turned suddenly to the District Commissioner and said ferociously: “That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself; and now he will be buried like a dog.” He could not say any more.

His voice trembled and choked his words.“Shut up!” shouted one of the messengers, quite unnecessarily.“Take down the body,” the Commissioner ordered his chief messenger, “and bring it and all these people to the court.”“Yes, sah,” the messenger said, saluting.The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material.

The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate.

There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.image: CHINUA ACHEBEChinua 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.CHAPTER EIGHTimage: Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna.

He drank palm-wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and fierce like the eyes of a rat when it was caught by the tail and dashed against the floor. He called his son, Nwoye, to sit with him in his obi. But the boy was afraid of him and slipped out of the hut as soon as he noticed him dozing.He did not sleep at night.

He tried not to think about Ikemefuna, but the more he tried the more he thought about him. Once he got up from bed and walked about his compound.

But he was so weak that his legs could hardly carry him. He felt like a drunken giant walking with the limbs of a mosquito. Now and then a cold shiver descended on his head and spread down his body.On the third day he asked his second wife, Ekwefi, to roast plantains for him. She prepared it the way he liked—with slices of oil-bean and fish.“You have not eaten for two days,” said his daughter Ezinma when she brought the food to him. “So you must finish this.” She sat down and stretched her legs in front of her. Okonkwo ate the food absent-mindedly.

‘She should have been a boy,’ he thought as he looked at his ten-year-old daughter. He passed her a piece of fish.“Go and bring me some cold water,” he said. Ezinma rushed out of the hut, chewing the fish, and soon returned with a bowl of cool water from the earthen pot in her mother’s hut.Okonkwo took the bowl from her and gulped the water down. He ate a few more pieces of plaintain and pushed the dish aside.“Bring me my bag,” he asked, and Ezinma brought his goatskin bag from the far end of the hut. He searched in it for his snuff-bottle. It was a deep bag and took almost the whole length of his arm.

It contained other things apart from his snuff-bottle. There was a drinking horn in it, and also a drinking gourd, and they knocked against each other as he searched. When he brought out the snuff-bottle he tapped it a few times against his knee-cap before taking out some snuff on the palm of his left hand. Then he remembered that he had not taken out his snuff-spoon.

He searched his bag again and brought out a small, flat, ivory spoon, with which he carried the brown snuff to his nostrils.Ezinma took the dish in one hand and the empty water bowl in the other and went back to her mother’s hut. “She should have been a boy,” Okonkwo said to himself again. His mind went back to Ikemefuna and he shivered.

If only he could find some work to do he would be able to forget. But it was the season of rest between the harvest and the next planting season. The only work that men did at this time was covering the walls of their compound with new palm fronds. And Okonkwo had already done that. He had finished it on the very day the locusts came, when he had worked on one side of the wall and Ikemefuna and Nwoye on the other.“When did you become a shivering old woman,” Okonkwo asked himself, “you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valor in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed.”He sprang to his feet, hung his goatskin bag on his shoulder and went to visit his friend, Obierika.Obierika was sitting outside under the shade of an orange tree making thatches from leaves of the raffia-palm.

He exchanged greetings with Okonkwo and led the way into his obi.“I was coming over to see you as soon as I finished that thatch,” he said, rubbing off the grains of sand that clung to his thighs.“Is it well?” Okonkwo asked.“Yes,” replied Obierika. “My daughter’s suitor is coming today and I hope we will clinch the matter of the bride-price. I want you to be there.”Just then Obierika’s son, Maduka, came into the obi from outside, greeted Okonkwo and turned towards the compound.“Come and shake hands with me,” Okonkwo said to the lad. “Your wrestling the other day gave me much happiness.” The boy smiled, shook hands with Okonkwo and went into the compound.“He will do great things,” Okonkwo said.

“If I had a son like him I should be happy. I am worried about Nwoye. A bowl of pounded yams can throw him in a wrestling match.

His two younger brothers are more promising. But I can tell you, Obierika, that my children do not resemble me. Where are the young suckers that will grow when the old banana tree dies? If Ezinma had been a boy I would have been happier. She has the right spirit.”“You worry yourself for nothing,” said Obierika.

“The children are still very young.”“Nwoye is old enough to impregnate a woman. At his age I was already fending for myself.

No, my friend, he is not too young. A chick that will grow into a cock can be spotted the very day it hatches. I have done my best to make Nwoye grow into a man, but there is too much of his mother in him.”“Too much of his grandfather,” Obierika thought, but he did not say it. The same thought also came to Okonkwo’s mind. But he had long learned how to lay that ghost. Whenever the thought of his father’s weakness and failure troubled him he expelled it by thinking about his own strength and success. And so he did now.

His mind went to his latest show of manliness.“I cannot understand why you refused to come with us to kill that boy,” he asked Obierika.“Because I did not want to,” Obierika replied sharply. “I had something better to do.”“You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die.”“I do not. Why should I?

But the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision.”“But someone had to do it. If we were all afraid of blood, it would not be done.

And what do you think the Oracle would do then?”“You know very well, Okonkwo, that I am not afraid of blood; and if anyone tells you that I am, he is telling a lie. Kitchen game download free. And let me tell you one thing, my friend. If I were you I would have stayed at home.

What you have done will not please the Earth. It is the kind of action for which the goddess wipes out whole families.”“The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her messenger,” Okonkwo said. “A child’s fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm.”“That is true,” Obierika agreed. “But if the Oracle said that my son should be killed I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it.”They would have gone on arguing had Ofoedu not come in just then. It was clear from his twinkling eyes that he had important news. But it would be impolite to rush him.

Obierika offered him a lobe of the kola nut he had broken with Okonkwo. Ofoedu ate slowly and talked about the locusts.

When he finished his kola nut he said:“The things that happen these days are very strange.”“What has happened?” asked Okonkwo.“Do you know Ogbuefi Ndulue?” Ofoedu asked.“Ogbuefi Ndulue of Ire village,” Okonkwo and Obierika said together.“He died this morning,” said Ofoedu.“That is not strange. He was the oldest man in Ire,” said Obierika.“You are right,” Ofoedu agreed. “But you ought to ask why the drum has not beaten to tell Umuofia of his death.”“Why?” asked Obierika and Okonkwo together.“That is the strange part of it. You know his first wife who walks with a stick?”“Yes. She is called Ozoemena.”“That is so,” said Ofoedu.

“Ozoemena was, as you know, too old to attend Ndulue during his illness. His younger wives did that. When he died this morning, one of these women went to Ozoemena’s hut and told her. She rose from her mat, took her stick and walked over to the obi. She knelt on her knees and hands at the threshold and called her husband, who was laid on a mat. ‘Ogbuefi Ndulue,’ she called, three times, and went back to her hut.

When the youngest wife went to call her again to be present at the washing of the body, she found her lying on the mat, dead.”“That is very strange, indeed,” said Okonkwo. “They will put off Ndulue’s funeral until his wife has been buried.”“That is why the drum has not been beaten to tell Umuofia.”“It was always said that Ndulue and Ozoemena had one mind,” said Obierika. “I remember when I was a young boy there was a song about them. He could not do anything without telling her.”“I did not know that,” said Okonkwo. “I thought he was a strong man in his youth.”“He was indeed,” said Ofoedu.Okonkwo shook his head doubtfully.“He led Umuofia to war in those days,” said Obierika.image: Okonkwo was beginning to feel like his old self again.

All that he required was something to occupy his mind. If he had killed Ikemefuna during the busy planting season or harvesting it would not have been so bad; his mind would have been centered on his work. Okonkwo was not a man of thought but of action. But in absence of work, talking was the next best.Soon after Ofoedu left, Okonkwo took up his goatskin bag to go.“I must go home to tap my palm trees for the afternoon,” he said.“Who taps your tall trees for you?” asked Obierika.“Umezulike,” replied Okonkwo.“Sometimes I wish I had not taken the ozo title,” said Obierika.

“It wounds my heart to see these young men killing palm trees in the name of tapping.”“It is so indeed,” Okonkwo agreed. “But the law of the land must be obeyed.”“I don’t know how we got that law,” said Obierika.

“In many other clans a man of title is not forbidden to climb the palm tree. Here we say he cannot climb the tall tree but he can tap the short ones standing on the ground. It is like Dimaragana, who would not lend his knife for cutting up dogmeat because the dog was taboo to him, but offered to use his teeth.”“I think it is good that our clan holds the ozo title in high esteem,” said Okonkwo. “In those other clans you speak of, ozo is so low that every beggar takes it.”“I was only speaking in jest,” said Obierika. “In Abame and Aninta the title is worth less than two cowries. Every man wears the thread of title on his ankle, and does not lose it even if he steals.”“They have indeed soiled the name of ozo,” said Okonkwo as he rose to go.“It will not be very long now before my in-laws come,” said Obierika.“I shall return very soon,” said Okonkwo, looking at the position of the sun.There were seven men in Obierika’s hut when Okonkwo returned. The suitor was a young man of about twenty-five, and with him were his father and uncle.

On Obierika’s side were his two elder brothers and Maduka, his sixteen-year-old son.“Ask Akueke’s mother to send us some kola nuts,” said Obierika to his son. Maduka vanished into the compound like lightning.

The conversation at once centered on him, and everybody agreed that he was as sharp as a razor.“I sometimes think he is too sharp,” said Obierika, somewhat indulgently. “He hardly ever walks. He is always in a hurry. If you are sending him on an errand he flies away before he has heard half of the message.”“You were very much like that yourself,” said his eldest brother.

“As our people say, ‘When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth.’ Maduka has been watching your mouth.”As he was speaking the boy returned, followed by Akueke, his half-sister, carrying a wooden dish with three kola nuts and alligator pepper. She gave the dish to her father’s eldest brother and then shook hands, very shyly, with her suitor and his relatives.

She was about sixteen and just ripe for marriage. Her suitor and his relatives surveyed her young body with expert eyes as if to assure themselves that she was beautiful and ripe.She wore a coiffure which was done up into a crest in the middle of the head. Cam wood was rubbed lightly into her skin, and all over her body were black patterns drawn with uli. She wore a black necklace which hung down in three coils just above her full, succulent breasts. On her arms were red and yellow bangles, and on her waist four or five rows of jigida, or waist beads.When she had shaken hands, or rather held out her hand to be shaken, she returned to her mother’s hut to help with the cooking.“Remove your jigida first,” her mother warned as she moved near the fireplace to bring the pestle resting against the wall. “Every day I tell you that jigida and fire are not friends. But you will never hear.

You grew your ears for decoration, not for hearing. One of these days your jigida will catch fire on your waist, and then you will know.”Akueke moved to the other end of the hut and began to remove the waist-beads. It had to be done slowly and carefully, taking each string separately, else it would break and the thousand tiny rings would have to be strung together again. She rubbed each string downwards with her palms until it passed the buttocks and slipped down to the floor around her feet.The men in the obi had already begun to drink the palm-wine which Akueke’s suitor had brought.