The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

And what did it matter whether he married Phil Hunt or Sophie? Though it ought to be Sophie, who was already the mother of those children . . . and what hypocrisy to sit here worrying about the children, when she was going to leave them because she had not got the energy to stay.

She had about four hours. She spent them delightfully, darkly, sweetly, letting herself slide gently, gently, to the edge of the river. Then, with hardly a break in her consciousness, she got up, pushed the thin rug against the door, made sure the windows were tight shut, put two shillings in the meter, and turned on the gas. For the first time since she had been in the room she lay on the hard bed that smelled stale, that smelled of sweat and sex.

She lay on her back on the green satin cover, but her legs were chilly. She got up, found a blanket folded in the bottom of the chest of drawers, and carefully covered her legs with it. She was quite content lying there, listening to the faint soft hiss of the gas that poured into the room, into her lungs, into her brain, as she drifted off into the dark river.

1963

PHILIP LARKIN 1922-1985

Philip Larkin was born in Coventry; was educated at its King Henry VIII School and at St. John's College, Oxford; and was for many years librarian of the Hull University Library. H e wrote the poems of his first book, The North Ship (1945), under W. B. Yeats's strong enchantment. Although this influence persisted in the English poet's formal skill and subdued visionary longings, Larkin began to read Thomas Hardy seriously after World War II, and Hardy's rugged language, local settings, and ironic tone helped counter Yeats's influence. "After that," Larkin said, "Yeats came to seem so artificial�all that crap about masks and Crazy Jane and all the rest. It all rang so completely unreal." Also rejecting the international modernism of Eliot and Pound because of its mythical allusions, polyglot discourse, and fragmentary syntax, Larkin

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256 6 / PHILIP LARKIN

reclaimed a more direct, personal, formally regular model of poetry, supposedly rooted in a native English tradition of Wordsworth, Hardy, A. E. Housman, Wilfred Owen, and W. H. Auden. Even so, his poetry is not so thoroughly antimodernist as are his declarations: witness his imagist precision and alienated personae, his blending of revulsion and attraction toward modernity.

Larkin was the dominant figure in what came to be known as "the Movement," a group of university poets that included Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, and Thorn Gunn, gathered together in Robert Conquest's landmark anthology of 1956, New Lines. Their work was seen as counteracting not only the extravagances of modernism but also the influence of Dylan Thomas's high-flown, apocalyptic rhetoric: like Larkin, these poets preferred a civil grammar and rational syntax over prophecy, suburban realities over mythmaking.

No other poet presents the welfare-state world of postimperial Britain so vividly, so unsparingly, and so tenderly. "Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are," Larkin said; "I don't want to transcend the commonplace, I love the commonplace life. Everyday things are lovely to me." Eschewing the grandiose, he writes poetry that, in its everyday diction and melancholy wryness, worldly subjects and regular meters, affirms rather than contravenes the restrictions of ordinary life. Love's failure, the erosion of religious and national abutments, the loneliness of age and death�Larkin does not avert his poetic gaze from these bleak realities. As indicated by the title of his 1955 collection The Less Deceived, disillusionment, drabness, and resignation color these poems. Yet Larkin's drearily mundane world often gives way to muted promise, his speakers' alienation to possible communion, his skepticism to encounters even with the sublime. At the end of "High Windows," the characteristically ironic and self-deprecating speaker glimpses both radiant presence and total absence in the sunlit glass: "And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows / Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless."

Like Hardy, Larkin wrote novels�Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947)�and his poems have a novelist's sense of place and skill in the handling of direct speech. H e also edited a controversial anthology, The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973), which attempted to construct a modern native tradition in England. But his most significant legacy was his poetry, although his output was limited to four volumes. Out of "the commonplace life" he fashioned uncommon poems�some of the most emotionally complex, rhythmically polished, and intricately rhymed poems of the second half of the twentieth century.

Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

5 For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

io Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new�

Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: 1 don't.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

.

CHURCH GOING / 2567

Hectoring large-scale verses,1 and pronounce

is "Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,2 Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

20 And always end much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, When churches fall completely out of use What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep A few cathedrals chronically on show,

25 Their parchment, plate and pyx3 in locked cases, And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come To make their children touch a particular stone;

30 Pick simples0 for a cancer; or on some medicinal herbs Advised night see walking a dead one? Power of some sort or other will go on In games, in riddles, seemingly at random; But superstition, like belief, must die,

35 And what remains when disbelief has gone? Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek

40 This place for what it was; one of the crew That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts4 were? Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique, Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?5

45 Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground6 Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt So long and equably what since is found

50 Only in separation�marriage, and birth, And death, and thoughts of these�for which was built This special shell? For, though I've no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here;

I.e., Bible verses printed in large type for read

\ aloud. An Irish sixpence has no value in England. Box in which communion wafers are kept. Galleries on top of carved screens separating

� nave of a church from the choir. 5. Gum resin used in the making of incense; one of three presents given by the Three Wise Men to the infant Jesus. "Gown-and-bands": gown and decorative collar worn by clergypeople. 6. Most churches were built in the shape of a cross.

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256 8 / PHILI P LARKI N 5560 A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round. 1954 1955 MCMXIV' 5Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park,2 The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August bank Holiday lark; io15And the shut shops, the bleached, Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns,3 And dark-clothed children at play Called after kings and queens, The tin advertisements For cocoa and twist,0 and the pubsWide open all day; tobacco 20And the countryside not caring: The place-names all hazed over With flowering grasses, and fields Shadowing Domesday lines4 Under wheat's restless silence; The differently-dressed servants With tiny rooms in huge houses, The dust behind limousines; 25 Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word�the men Leaving the gardens tidy,

1. 1914, in Roman numerals, as incised on stone valuable British coins, respectively. memorials to the dead of World War I. 4. The still-visible boundaries of medieval farmers' 2. London cricket ground and Birmingham foot-long and narrow plots, ownership of which is ball ground. recorded in William the Conqueror's Domesday 3. At that time the least valuable and the most Book (1085-86).

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AMBULANCES / 256 9

30 Th e thousands of marriages Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.

1960 1964

Talking in Bed

Talking in bed ought to be easiest, Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently. 5 Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

An d dark towns heap up on the horizon. None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why At this unique distance from isolation

10 It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.

1960 1964

Ambulances

Closed like confessionals,1 they thread Loud noons of cities, giving back Non e of the glances they absorb. Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,

5 They come to rest at any kerb: All streets in time are visited.

The n children strewn on steps or road, Or women coming from the shops Past smells of different dinners, see

10 A wild white face that overtops Red stretcher-blankets momently As it is carried in and stowed,

An d sense the solving emptiness

That lies just under all we do,

15 An d for a second get it whole, So permanent and blank and true. Th e fastened doors recede. Poor soul, They whisper at their own distress;

1. Enclosed stalls in Roman Catholic churches in which priests hear confession.

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2570 / PHILIP LARKIN

20For borne away in deadened air May go the sudden shut of loss Round something nearly at an end, And what cohered in it across The years, the unique random blend Of families and fashions, there 2530 At last begin to loosen. Far From the exchange of love to lie Unreachable inside a room The traffic parts to let go by Brings closer what is left to come, And dulls to distance all we are. 1961 1964 High Windows When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise 5 Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives� Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester,1 And everyone young going down the long slide ioTo happiness, endlessly. I wonder if Anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought, That'll he the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark 15About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He And his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately 20Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. 1967 1974

1. Farm machine for harvesting grain.

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HOMAGE TO A GOVERNMENT / 25 7 1

Sad Steps'

Groping back to bed after a piss I part thick curtains, and am startled by Th e rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie 5 Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky. There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart (Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

10 High and preposterous and separate� Lozenge0 of love! Medallion of art! diamondlike shape O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

On e shivers slightly, looking up there. The hardness and the brightness and the plain 15 Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain Of being young; that it can't come again, But is for others undiminished somewhere.

1968 1974

Homage to a Government

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home For lack of money, and it is all right. Places they guarded, or kept orderly, Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.

5 We want the money for ourselves at home Instead of working. An d this is all right.

It's hard to say who wanted it to happen, But now it's been decided nobody minds. The places are a long way off, not here,

10 Whic h is all right, and from what we hear The soldiers there only made trouble happen. Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.

15 The statues will be standing in the same Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.

1. Cf. Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella 31: "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies."

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257 2 / PHILIP LARKIN

Our children will not know it's a different country. All we can hope to leave them now is money.

Jan. 10, 1969 1974

The Explosion

On the day of the explosion Shadows pointed towards the pithead:0 mine entrance In the sun the slagheap0 slept. pile of scrap, refuse

Down the lane came men in pitboots 5 Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke, Shouldering off the freshened silence.

On e chased after rabbits; lost them; Cam e back with a nest of lark's eggs; Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

io So they passed in beards and moleskins,1 Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter, Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon, there came a tremor; cows Stopped chewing for a second; sun, 15 Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.

The dead go on before us, they Are sitting in God's house in comfort, We shall see them face to face�

Plain as lettering in the chapels 20 It was said, and for a second Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed � Gold as on a coin, or walking Someho w from the sun towards them,

25 On e showing the eggs unbroken.

1970 1974

This Be The Verse1

They fuck you up, your mu m and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.

1. Clothes of heavy fabric. he lies where he longed to be, / Home is the sailor, I. Cf. the elegy "Requiem," by Robert Louis Ste-home from sea, / And the hunter home from the venson (1850-1894), of which the final verse hill." reads, "This be the verse you grave for me: / Here

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AUBADE / 2573

They fill you with the faults they had An d add some extra, just for you.

5 But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Wh o half the time were soppy-stern An d half at one another's throats.

Ma n hands on misery to man. 10 It deepens like a coastal shelf.2 Get out as early as you can, An d don't have any kids yourself.

Apr. ? 1971 1974

Aubade1

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Wakin g at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there:

5 Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead,

10 Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse �Th e good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused�nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb

15 Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, Th e sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere,

20 An d soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die,

25 An d specious stuff that says N o rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear�no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with,

30 The anaesthetic from which none come round.

2. Underwater land off a coast 1. Music or poem announcing dawn.

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257 4 / NADINE GORDIMER

An d so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

35 An d realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

40 Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can't escape,

Yet can't accept. On e side will have to go.

45 Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

Th e sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

50 Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

1977 1977

NADINE GORDIMER

b. 1923 Nadine Gordimer's fiction has given imaginative and moral shape to the recent history of South Africa. Since the publication of her first book, The Lying Days (1953), she has charted the changing patterns of response and resistance to apartheid by exploring the place of the European in Africa, selecting representative themes and governing motifs for novels and short stories, and shifting her ideological focus from a liberal to a more radical position. In recognition of this achievement, of having borne untiring and lucid narrative witness, Gordimer was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born to Jewish immigrant parents in the South African mining town of Springs, Gordimer began writing early, from the beginning taking as her subject the pathologies and everyday realities of a racially divided society. Her decision to remain in Johannesburg through the years of political repression reflected her commitment to her subject and to her vision of a postapartheid future. In the years since apartheid was dismantled in 1994, Gordimer has continued to live and write in South Africa, and her recent novels, such as The House Gun (1998) and The Picku-p (2001), retain an uncompromising focus on the inhabitants of a racially fractured culture.

In her nonfiction Gordimer self-consciously places her writing within a tradition of European realism, most notably that defined by the Hungarian philosopher and critic Georg Lukacs (1885-1971). Her aim�as shown in her incisive and highly acclaimed novels of the 1970s, The Conservationist (1974) and Burger's Daughter (1979)�is to evoke by way of the personal and of the precisely observed particular a broader political and historical totality. This method gives her characters, and the stories in which they reside, their representativeness. As Gordimer has famously said,

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THE MOMENT BEFORE THE GUN WENT OFF / 2575

"politics is character in South Africa." Yet throughout the long years of political polarization in that country and the banning of three of her own books, Gordimer has distanced herself from polemics and retained a firm humanist belief in what she variously describes as the objectivity and the inwardness of the writer. Although she has referred to an engagement with political reality as imperative and explores permutations of the question of engagement in novels such as Burger's Daughter and July's Peo-ple (1981), she nevertheless asserts the autonomy of the writer's perspective, "the last true judgment." Narrative for Gordimer helps define and clarify historical experience. Her keen sense of history as formation, and as demanding a continual rewriting, has ensured that her novels can be read as at once contemporary in their reference and symbolic of broader social and historical patterns, as in the paranoia

surrounding the case of the buried black body on a white farm in The Conservationist, or in the psychosocial portrait of Rosa Burger in Burger's Daughter.

Gordimer has drawn criticism both for her apparent lack of attention to feminism in favor of race issues and for the wholeness and unfashionable completeness of her novels�their plottedness, meticulous scene paintings, fully realized characters. However, the searching symbolism and complexity of her narratives generally work against such judgments. As the following short story shows, a prominent feature of her writing is to give a number of different perspectives on a situation, in some cases most poignantly those of apartheid's supporters, and in this way to represent the broader anatomy of a diseased politics and, more generally, of the human being in history.

The Moment before the Gun Went Off

Marais Van der Vyver shot one of his farm labourers, dead. An accident, there are accidents with guns every day of the week�children playing a fatal game with a father's revolver in the cities where guns are domestic objects, nowadays, hunting mishaps like this one, in the country�but these won't be reported all over the world. Van der Vyver knows his will be. He knows that the story of the Afrikaner farmer�regional Party leader and Commandant of the local security commando�shooting a black man who worked for him will fit exactly their version of South Africa, it's made for them. They'll be able to use it in their boycott and divestment campaigns, it'll be another piece of evidence in their truth about the country. The papers at home will quote the story as it has appeared in the overseas press, and in the back-and-forth he and the black man will become those crudely-drawn figures on anti-apartheid banners, units in statistics of white brutality against the blacks quoted at the United Nations�he, whom they will gleefully be able to call "a leading member" of the ruling Party.

People in the farming community understand how he must feel. Bad enough to have killed a man, without helping the Party's, the government's, the country's enemies, as well. They see the truth of that. They know, reading the Sunday papers, that when Van der Vyver is quoted saying he is "terribly shocked," he will "look after the wife and children," none of those Americans and English, and none of those people at home who want to destroy the white man's power will believe him. And how they will sneer when he even says of the farm boy (according to one paper, if you can trust any of those reporters), "He was my friend, I always took him hunting with me." Those city and overseas people don't know it's true: farmers usually have one particular black boy they like to take along with them in the lands; you could call it a kind of friend, yes, friends are not only your own white people, like yourself, you take into

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257 6 / NADINE GORDIMER

your house, pray with in church and work with on the Party committee. But how can those others know that? They don't want to know it. They think all blacks are like the big-mouth agitators in town. An d Va n der Vyver's face, in the photographs, strangely opened by distress�everyone in the district remembers Marais Van der Vyver as a little boy who would go away and hide himself if he caught you smiling at him, and everyone knows him now as a man who hides any change of expression round his mouth behind a thick, soft moustache, and in his eyes by always looking at some object in hand, leaf of a crop fingered, pen or stone picked up, while concentrating on what he is saying, or while listening to you. It just goes to show what shock can do; when you look at the newspaper photographs you feel like apologising, as if you had stared in on some room where you should not be.

There will be an inquiry; there had better be, to stop the assumption of yet another case of brutality against farm workers, although there's nothing in doubt�an accident, and all the facts fully admitted by Van der Vyver. He made a statement when he arrived at the police station with the dead man in his bakkie.1 Captain Beetge knows him well, of course; he gave him brandy. He was shaking, this big, calm, clever son of Willem Van der Vyver, who inherited the old man's best farm. Th e black was stone dead, nothing to be done for him. Beetge will not tell anyone that after the brandy Va n der Vyver wept. He sobbed, snot running onto his hands, like a dirty kid. Th e Captain was ashamed, for him, and walked out to give him a chance to recover himself.

Marais Va n der Vyver left his house at three in the afternoon to cull a buck from the family of kudu2 he protects in the bush areas of his farm. He is interested in wildlife and sees it as the farmers' sacred duty to raise game as well as cattle. As usual, he called at his shed workshop to pick up Lucas, a twenty-year-old farmhand who had shown mechanical aptitude and whom Van der Vyver himself had taught to maintain tractors and other farm machinery. He hooted, and Lucas followed the familiar routine, jumping onto the back of the truck. He liked to travel standing up there, spotting game before his employer did. He would lean forward, braced against the cab below him.

Van der Vyver had a rifle and .300 ammunition beside him in the cab. The

rifle was one of his father's, because his own was at the gunsmith's in town.

Since his father died (Beetge's sergeant wrote "passed on") no one had used

the rifle and so when he took it from a cupboard he was sure it was not loaded.

His father had never allowed a loaded gun in the house; he himself had been

taught since childhood never to ride with a loaded weapon in a vehicle. But

this gun was loaded. On a dirt track, Lucas thumped his fist on the cab roof

three times to signal: look left. Having seen the white-ripple-marked flank of

a kudu, and its fine horns raking through disguising bush, Va n der Vyver drove

rather fast over a pot-hole. Th e jolt fired the rifle. Upright, it was pointing

straight through the cab roof at the head of Lucas. Th e bullet pierced the roof

and entered Lucas's brain by way of his throat.

That is the statement of what happened. Although a ma n of such standing

in the district, Va n der Vyver had to go through the ritual of swearing that it

was the truth. It has gone on record, and will be there in the archive of the

local police station as long as Va n der Vyver lives, and beyond that, through

1. Pickup truck. 2. Large African antelope. The males have long, spirally twisted horns.

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THE MOMENT BEFORE THE GUN WENT OFF / 2577

the lives of his children, Magnus, Helena and Karel�unless things in the country get worse, the example of black mobs in the towns spreads to the rural areas and the place is burned down as many urban police stations have been. Because nothing the government can do will appease the agitators and the whites who encourage them. Nothing satisfies them, in the cities: blacks can sit and drink in white hotels, now, the Immorality Act3 has gone, blacks can sleep with whites. . . . It's not even a crime any more.

Van der Vyver has a high barbed security fence round his farmhouse and garden which his wife, Alida, thinks spoils completely the effect of her artificial stream with its tree-ferns beneath the jacarandas.4 There is an aerial soaring like a flag-pole in the back yard. All his vehicles, including the truck in which the black man died, have aerials that swing their whips when the driver hits a pot-hole: they are part of the security system the farmers in the district maintain, each farm in touch with every other by radio, twenty-four hours out of twenty-four. It has already happened that infiltrators from over the border have mined remote farm roads, killing white farmers and their families out on their own property for a Sunday picnic. The pot-hole could have set off a land-mine, and Van der Vyver might have died with his farm boy. When neighbours use the communications system to call up and say they are sorry about "that business" with one of Van der Vyver's boys, there goes unsaid: it could have been worse.

It is obvious from the quality and fittings of the coffin that the farmer has provided money for the funeral. And an elaborate funeral means a great deal to blacks; look how they will deprive themselves of the little they have, in their lifetime, keeping up payments to a burial society so they won't go in boxwood to an unmarked grave. The young wife is pregnant (of course) and another little one, wearing red shoes several sizes too large, leans under her jutting belly. He is too young to understand what has happened, what he is witnessing that day, but neither whines nor plays about; he is solemn without knowing why. Blacks expose small children to everything, they don't protect them from the sight of fear and pain the way whites do theirs. It is the young wife who rolls her head and cries like a child, sobbing on the breast of this relative and that.

All present work for Van der Vyver or are the families of those who work; and in the weeding and harvest seasons, the women and children work for him, too, carried�wrapped in their blankets, on a truck, singing�at sunrise to the fields. The dead man's mother is a woman who can't be more than in her late thirties (they start bearing children at puberty) but she is heavily mature in a black dress between her own parents, who were already working for old Van der Vyver when Marais, like their daughter, was a child. The parents hold her as if she were a prisoner or a crazy woman to be restrained. But she says nothing, does nothing. She does not look up; she does not look at Van der Vyver, whose gun went off in the truck, she stares at the grave. Nothing will make her look up; there need be no fear that she will look up; at him. His wife, Alida, is beside him. To show the proper respect, as for any white funeral, she is wearing the navy-blue-and-cream hat she wears to church this summer. She is always supportive, although he doesn't seem to notice it; this coldness and reserve�his mother says he didn't mix well as a child�she

3. South African government act prohibiting sex-4. Tropical trees with blue flowers. ual relations between whites and other races.

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257 8 / A. K. RAMANUJAN

accepts for herself but regrets that it has prevented him from being nominated, as he should be, to stand as the Party's parliamentary candidate for the district. He does not let her clothing, or that of anyone else gathered closely, make contact with him. He, too, stares at the grave. The dead man's mother and he stare at the grave in communication like that between the black man outside and the white man inside the cab the moment before the gun went off.

The moment before the gun went off was a moment of high excitement shared through the roof of the cab, as the bullet was to pass, between the young black man outside and the white farmer inside the vehicle. There were such moments, without explanation, between them, although often around the farm the farmer would pass the young man without returning a greeting, as if he did not recognize him. When the bullet went off what Van der Vyver saw was the kudu stumble in fright at the report and gallop away. Then he heard the thud behind him, and past the window saw the young man fall out of the vehicle. He was sure he had leapt up and toppled�in fright, like the buck. The farmer was almost laughing with relief, ready to tease, as he opened his door, it did not seem possible that a bullet passing through the roof could have done harm.

The young man did not laugh with him at his own fright. The farmer carried him in his arms, to the truck. He was sure, sure he could not be dead. But the young black man's blood was all over the farmer's clothes, soaking against his flesh as he drove.

How will they ever know, when they file newspaper clippings, evidence, proof, when they look at the photographs and see his face�guilty! guilty! they are right!�how will they know, when the police stations burn with all the evidence of what has happened now, and what the law made a crime in the past. How could they know that they do not know. Anything. The young black callously shot through the negligence of the white man was not the farmer's boy; he was his son.

1991

A. K. RAMANUJAN 1929-1993 Born in Mysore, India, Attipat Krishnaswami Bamanujan grew up amid the different languages that later informed his life's work as poet, translator, and linguist: he spoke Kannada in the streets, Tamil with his mother, and English with his father, a mathematics professor at Mysore University. Educated there and at Deccan College, he traveled for graduate studies to Indiana University, staying on in the U.S. to teach at the University of Chicago from 1961. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 1976 the Indian government honored him with the Padma Shri for distinguished service to the nation.

Ramanujan affirmed that "cultural traditions in India are indissolubly plural and often conflicting," and his poetry�in its texture and subject matter�embodies this complex intercultural mingling within India and across much of the contemporary world. His poems reflect the influence of modern English-language poets, such as

W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace Stevens, while also

.

ELEMENTS OF COMPOSITION / 257 9

drawing on the vivid and structural use of metaphor, the flowing imagery and syntax, the spare diction and paradoxes of ancient and medieval poetry of south India. A poem such as the wittily entitled "Elements of Composition" recalls a traditional Indian vision of identity as embedded in endlessly fluid, concentrically arranged contexts at the same time that it suggests a postmodern vision of the self as decentered, composite, and provisional. "India does not have one past," Ramanujan emphasized, "but many pasts," and the same is true of the self whose multiple pasts he composes and decomposes in his poetry.

Self-Portrait

I resemble everyone but myself, and sometimes see in shop-windows,

despite the well-known laws

5 of optics, the portrait of a stranger, date unknown, often signed in a corner by my father.

1966

Elements of Composition

Composed as I am, like others, of elements on certain well-known lists, father's seed and mother's egg

gathering earth, air, fire, mostly 5 water, into a mulberry mass, moulding calcium,

carbon, even gold, magnesium and such, into a chattering self tangled in love and work,

io scary dreams, capable of eyes that can see, only by moving constantly, the constancy of things

like Stonehenge or cherry trees;

add uncle's eleven fingers 15 making shadow-plays of rajas" Indian kings or princes and cats, hissing,

becoming fingers again, the look of panic on sister's face an hour before

.

258 0 / A. K. RAMANUJAN

20 her wedding, a dated newspaper map of a place one has never seen, maybe no longer there 25after the riots, downtown Nairobi,0that a friend carried in his passport as others would capital of Kenya

a woman's picture in their wallets;

add the lepers of Madurai,0 city in south India male, female, married, with children,

30 lion faces, crabs for claws, clotted on their shadows under the stone-eyed

goddesses of dance, mere pillars, moving as nothing on earth 35 can move�

I pass through them as they pass through me taking and leaving

affections, seeds, skeletons,

40 millennia of fossil records of insects that do not last a day,

body-prints of mayflies, a legend half-heard 45 in a train

of the half-man searching for an ever-fleeing other half1

through Muharram tigers,2 50 hyacinths in crocodile waters, and the sweet

twisted lives of epileptic saints,

1. In an essay Ramanujan compares the Hindu 2. During the first month of the Islamic calendar, myth of the god that "splits himself into male and Muharram processions, often including dancers in female" to "the androgynous figure in Plato's Sym-tiger masks, commemorate the martyrdom of posium, halved into male and female segments Muhammad's grandson, Husein. which forever seek each other and crave union."

.

FOUNDLINGS IN THE YUKON / 258 1

and even as I add, I lose, decompose 55 into my elements,

into other names and forms, past, and passing, tenses without time,

caterpillar on a leaf, eating, 60 being eaten.3

1986

Foundlings in the Yukon

In the Yukon1 the other day miners found the skeleton of a lemming curled around some seeds

5 in a burrow: sealed off by a landslide in Pleistocene times.0 the Great Ice Age

Six grains were whole,

unbroken: picked and planted

io ten thousand years after their time, they took root within forty-eight hours and sprouted

15 a candelabra of eight small leaves.

A modern Alaskan lupine,0 a wildflower I'm told, waits three years to come to flower, but these upstarts drank up sun

20 and unfurled early with the crocuses of Marc h as if long deep burial had made them hasty

for birth and season, for names,

25 genes, for passing on: like the kick and shift of an intra-uterine memory, like

3. According to a poem in the ancient Sanskrit Western' Classics"). Taittiriya Upanishad, "What eats is eaten, / and 1. Mountainous territory in northwestern Can- what's eaten, eats / in turn" (Ramanujan's trans-ada. lation, in his essay "Some Thoughts on 'Non

.

2582 / THOM GUNN

this morning's dream of being

30 born in an eagle's

nest with speckled eggs and the screech

of nestlings, like a pent-up

centenarian's sudden burst

of lust, or maybe

35 just elegies in Duino 2 unbound

from the dark,

these new aborigines biding

their time

for the miner's night-light

40 to bring them their dawn,

these infants compact with age,

older than the oldest

things alive, having skipped

a million falls

45 and the registry of tree-rings,

suddenly younger

by an accident of flowering

than all their timely descendants.

1995

2. The Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875�1926) overcame thirteen years of writer's block in Duino Castle (near Trieste), where he wrote a famous series of elegies. THOM GUNN 1929-2004

The son of a London journalist, Thomson Gunn was educated at University College School, London, then Trinity College, Cambridge, and Stanford University, where he studied under the antimodernist, classically inclined poet Yvor Winters. In a poem addressed to Winters, he wrote: "You keep both Rule and Energy in view, / Muc h power in each, most in the balanced two." The poems of Gunn's Fighting Terms (1954) and The Sense of Movement (1957) aimed for the same balance. They were influenced by the seventeenth-century English poet John Donne and the twentieth- century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and introduced a modern Metaphysical poet able to give powerfully concrete expression to abstract ideas. Along with Philip Larkin, he was seen as a member of "the Movement"�English poets who preferred inherited verse forms to either modernist avant-gardism or high-flown Romanticism. In the second half of My Sad Captains (1961), he began to move away from the will- driven heroes and the tight-fitting stanzas of his early work into more tentative explorations of experience and more supple syllabic or open verse forms. "Most of my poems are ambivalent," he said. Moving from England to San Francisco, he experimented with LS D and moved also from poems presumably addressed to women to poems frankly homosexual. The Man with Night Sweats (1992) ends with a sequence of poems remarkable for their unflinching directness, compassion, and grace about

.

MY SAD CAPTAINS / 2583

the deaths of friends from AIDS. Gunn was a poet of rare intelligence and power in all his protean changes.

Black Jackets

In the silence that prolongs the span Rawly of music when the record ends, The red-haired boy who drove a van In weekday overalls but, like his friends,

5 Wor e cycle boots and jacket here To suit the Sunday hangout he was in, Heard, as he stretched back from his beer, Leather creak softly round his neck and chin.

Before him, on a coal-black sleeve 10 Remote exertion had lined, scratched, and burned Insignia that could not revive Th e heroic fall or climb where they were earned.

On the other drinkers bent together, Concocting selves for their impervious kit, is He saw it as no more than leather Which, taut across the shoulders grown to it,

Sent through the dimness of a bar As sudden and anonymous hints of light As those that shipping give, that are 20 Now flickers in the Bay, now lost in night.

He stretched out like a cat, and rolled The bitterish taste of beer upon his tongue, An d listened to a joke being told: Th e present was the things he stayed among.

25 If it was only loss he wore, He wore it to assert, with fierce devotion, Complicity and nothing more. He recollected his initiation,

An d one especially of the rites. 30 For on his shoulders they had put tattoos: The group's name on the left, The Knights, And on the right the slogan Born To Lose.

My Sad Captains

On e by one they appear in the darkness: a few friends, and

.

2584 / THOM GUNN

5a few with historical names. Ho w late they start to shine! but before they fade they stand perfectly embodied, all 10the past lapping them like a cloak of chaos. They were me n who, I thought, lived only to renew the wasteful force they spent with each hot convulsion. The y remind me, distant now. 15True, they are not at rest yet, but now that they are indeed apart, winnowed from failures, they withdraw to an orbit and turn with disinterested hard energy, like the stars. 1961 From the Wave It mounts at sea, a concave wall Down-ribbed with shine, An d pushes forward, building tall Its steep incline. 5 The n from their hiding rise to sight Black shapes on boards Bearing before the fringe of white It mottles towards. 10Their pale feet curl, they poise Wit h a learn'd skill. It is the wave they imitate Keeps them so still. their weight 15Th e marbling bodies have become Half wave, half men, Grafted it seems by feet of foam Some seconds, then, 20Late as they can, they slice the face In timed procession: Balance is triumph in this place, Triump h possession. Th e mindless heave of which they rode A fluid shelf Breaks as they leave it, falls and, slowed, Loses itself.

.

TH E MISSIN G / 258 5 25 Clear, the sheathed bodies slick as seals Loosen and tingle; And by the board the bare foot feels The suck of shingle. 30They paddle in the shallows still; Two splash each other; Then all swim out to wait until The right waves gather. 1971

Still Life

I shall not soon forget The greyish-yellow skin To which the face had set: Lids tight: nothing of his,

5 No tremor from within, Played on the surfaces.

He still found breath, and yet It was an obscure knack. I shall not soon forget

10 The angle of his head, Arrested and reared back On the crisp field of bed,

Back from what he could neither Accept, as one opposed,

is Nor, as a life-long breather, Consentingly let go, The tube his mouth enclosed In an astonished O.

1992

The Missing

Now as I watch the progress of the plague,0 AIDS The friends surrounding me fall sick, grow thin, And drop away. Bared, is my shape less vague �Sharply exposed and with a sculpted skin?

I do not like the statue's chill contour, Not nowadays. The warmth investing me Led outward through mind, limb, feeling, and more In an involved increasing family.

Contact of friend led to another friend, IO Supple entwinement through the living mass

.

258 6 / DEREK WALCOTT

Which for all that I knew might have no end, Image of an unlimited embrace.

I did not just feel ease, though comfortable: Aggressive as in some ideal of sport, 15 With ceaseless movement thrilling through the whole, Their push kept me as firm as their support.

But death�Their deaths have left me less defined: It was their pulsing presence made me clear. I borrowed from it, I was unconfined,

20 Who tonight balance unsupported here,

Eyes glaring from raw marble, in a pose Languorously part-buried in the block, Shins perfect and no calves, as if I froze Between potential and a finished work.

25 �Abandoned incomplete, shape of a shape, In which exact detail shows the more strange, Trapped in unwholeness, I find no escape Back to the play of constant give and change.

Aug. 1987 1992

DEREK WALCOTT

b. 1930 Derek Walcott was born on the island of Saint Lucia in the British West Indies, where he had a Methodist upbringing in a largely Roman Catholic society. He was educated at St. Mary's College in Saint Lucia and the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He then moved to Trinidad, where he worked as a book reviewer, art critic, playwright, and artistic director of a theater workshop. Since the early 1980s he has also taught at a number of American colleges and universities, especially Boston University; in 1992 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

As a black poet writing from within both the English literary tradition and the history of a colonized people, Walcott has self-mockingly referred to his split allegiances to his Afro-Caribbean and his European inheritances as those of a "schizophrenic," a "mongrel," a "mulatto of style." His background is indeed racially and culturally mixed: his grandmothers were of African descent; his grandfathers were white, a Dutchman and an Englishman. Schooled in the Standard English that is the official language of Saint Lucia, Walcott also grew up speaking the predominantly French Creole (or patois) that is the primary language of everyday life (the island had traded hands fourteen times in colonial wars between the British and the French). In his poetry this cross-cultural inheritance is sometimes the source of pain and ambivalence, as when in "A Far Cry from Africa" he refers to himself as being "poisoned with the blood of both." At other times it fuels a celebratory integration of multiple forms, visions, and energies, as in parts of his long poem Omeros, which transposes elements of Homeric epic from the Aegean to the Caribbean.

Even as a schoolboy Walcott knew he was not alone in his effort to sort through

.

A FAR CRY FROM AFRICA / 258 7

his vexed postcolonial affiliations. From a young age he felt a special affinity with Irish writers such as W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and J. M. Synge, whom he saw as fellow colonials�"They were the niggers of Britain"�with the same paradoxical hatred for the British Empire and worship of the English language. He has repeatedly asked how the postcolonial poet can both grieve the agonizing harm of British colonialism and appreciate the empire's literary gift. Walcott has also acknowledged other English and American writers�T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, W. H. Auden, and Robert Lowell�as enabling influences.

Over the course of his prolific career, Walcott has adapted various European literary archetypes (e.g., the Greek character Philoctetes) and forms (epic, quatrains, terza rima, English meters). He has ascribed his rigorous concern with craft to his youthful Protestantism. At once disciplined and flamboyant as a poet, he insists on the specifically Caribbean opulence of his art: "I come from a place that likes grandeur; it likes large gestures; it is not inhibited by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a society of physical performance; it is a society of style." Although much of his poetry is in a rhetorically elevated Standard English, Walcott adapts the calypso rhythms of a lightly creolized English in "The Schooner Flight," and he braids together West Indian English, Standard English, and French patois in Omeros. H e has a great passion for metaphor, by which he deftly weaves imaginative connections across cultural and racial boundaries. His plays, written in an accurate and energetic language, are similarly infused with the spirit of syncretism, vividly conjoining Caribbean and European motifs, images, and idioms.

A Far Cry from Africa

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt

Of Africa. Kikuyu,1 quick as flies,

Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.2

Corpses are scattered through a paradise.

5 Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:

"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"

Statistics justify and scholars seize

The salients of colonial policy.

What is that to the white child hacked in bed?

10 To savages, expendable as Jews?

Threshed out by beaters,3 the long rushes break

In a white dust of ibises whose cries

Have wheeled since civilization's dawn

From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.

15 The violence of beast on beast is read

As natural law, but upright man

Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.

Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars

Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,

20 While he calls courage still that native dread

Of the white peace contracted by the dead.

1. An east African ethnic group whose members, (Afrikaans). as Mau Mau fighters, conducted an eight-year 3. In big-game hunting, natives are hired to beat campaign of violent resistance against British colo-the brush, driving birds�such as ibises�and nial settlers in Kenya in the 1950s. other animals into the open. 2. Open country, neither cultivated nor forest

.

258 8 / DEREK WALCOTT

Again brutish necessity wipes its hands Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,^

25 The gorilla wrestles with the superman. I who am poisoned with the blood of both, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed The drunken officer of British rule, how choose

30 Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? Betray them both, or give back what they give? How can I face such slaughter and be cool? How can I turn from Africa and live?

1956,1962

From The Schooner Flight

1 Adios, Carenage'

In idle August, while the sea soft, and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim of this Caribbean, I blow out the light by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion

5 to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight. Out in the yard turning grey in the dawn, I stood like a stone and nothing else move but the cold sea rippling like galvanize and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,

io till a wind start to interfere with the trees. I pass me dry neighbour sweeping she yard as I went downhill, and I nearly said: "Sweep soft, you witch, 'cause she don't sleep hard," but the bitch look through me like I was dead.

15 A route taxi pull up, park-lights still on. The driver size up my bags with a grin: "This time, Shabine, like you really gone!" I ain't answer the ass, I simply pile in the back seat and watch the sky burn

20 above Laventille2 pink as the gown in which the woman I left was sleeping, and I look in the rearview and see a man exactly like me, and the man was weeping for the houses, the streets, the whole fucking island.

25 Christ have mercy on all sleeping things! From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road to when I was a dog on these streets; if loving these islands must be my load,

4. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39). repaired. "Adios": goodbye (Spanish). I. Waterfront where schooners are cleaned and 2. Hillside slum outside Port of Spain, Trinidad.

.

THE SCHOONER FLIGHT / 2589

out of corruption my soul takes wings, 30

But they had started to poison my soul with their big house, big car, big-time bohbohl,3 coolie, nigger, Syrian, and French Creole, so I leave it for them and their carnival� I taking a sea-bath, I gone down the road.

35 I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,4 a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes that they nickname Shabine, the patois0 for spoken dialect any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw when these slums of empire was paradise.

40 I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, I had a sound colonial education, I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me, and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.

But Maria Concepcion was all my thought

45 watching the sea heaving up and down as the port side of dories, schooners, and yachts was painted afresh by the strokes of the sun signing her name with every reflection; I knew when dark-haired evening put on

50 her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea, sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back,

55 so I smile to myself as the bow rope untied

and the Flight swing seaward: "Is no use repeating that the sea have more fish. I ain't want her dressed in the sexless light of a seraph,0 angel

I want those round brown eyes like a marmoset,5 and

60 till the day whe n I can lean back and laugh, those claws that tickled my back on sweating Sunday afternoons, like a crab on wet sand." As I worked, watching the rotting waves come past the bow that scissor the sea like silk,

65 I swear to you all, by my mother's milk, by the stars that shall fly from tonight's furnace, that I loved them, my children, my wife, my home; I loved them as poets love the poetry that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea.

70 You ever look up from some lonely beach and see a far schooner? Well, when I write this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt; I go draw and knot every line as tight as ropes in this rigging; in simple speech

3. Or bobol: corrupt practices or fraud, organized 4. Capital of the Bahamas. "Monos": island off the by people in positions of power (Eastern Caribbean northwest coast of Trinidad. English). 5. South American monkey.

.

259 0 / DEREK WALCOTT

75 my common language go be the wind, my pages the sails of the schooner Flight.

1979

The Season of Phantasmal Peace

Then all the nations of birds lifted together the huge net of the shadows of this earth in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues, stitching and crossing it. They lifted up

5 the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes, the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets, the shadow of a frail plant on a city sill� the net rising soundless as night, the birds' cries soundless, until there was no longer dusk, or season, decline, or weather,

10 only this passage of phantasmal light that not the narrowest shadow dared to sever.

And men could not see, looking up, what the wild geese drew, what the ospreys trailed behind them in silvery ropes that flashed in the icy sunlight; they could not hear

15 battalions of starlings waging peaceful cries, bearing the net higher, covering this world like the vines of an orchard, or a mother drawing the trembling gauze over the trembling eyes of a child fluttering to sleep;

it was the light

20 that you will see at evening on the side of a hill in yellow October, and no one hearing knew what change had brought into the raven's cawing, the killdeer's screech, the ember-circling chough0 bird, in crow family such an immense, soundless, and high concern

25 for the fields and cities where the birds belong, except it was their seasonal passing, Love, made seasonless, or, from the high privilege of their birth, something brighter than pity for the wingless ones below them who shared dark holes in windows and in houses,

30 and higher they lifted the net with soundless voices above all change, betrayals of falling suns, and this season lasted one moment, like the pause between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace, but, for such as our earth is now, it lasted long.

1981

.

OMEROS, BOOK 1 / 2591

FROM OMEROS1

Book One

Chapter III

ill

"Mais qui qa qui rivait-'ous, Philoctete?"2 "Moin hlesse.

"But what is wrong wif you, Philoctete?" "I am blest

wif this wound, Ma Kilman,4 qui pas ka guerir piece.

Which will never heal." "Well, you must take it easy. 5 Go home and lie down, give the foot a lickle" little (West Indian English) rest." Philoctete, his trouser-legs rolled, stares out to sea from the worn rumshop window. The itch in the sore tingles like the tendrils of the anemone, and the puffed blister of Portuguese man-o'-war.� jellyfish

10 He believed the swelling came from the chained ankles of his grandfathers. Or else why was there no cure? That the cross he carried was not only the anchor's

but that of his race, for a village black and poor as the pigs that rooted in its burning garbage, 15 then were hooked on the anchors of the abattoir.0 slaughterhouse

Ma Kilman was sewing. She looked up and saw his face squinting from the white of the street. He was waiting to pass out on the table. This went on for days.

The ice turned to warm water near the self-hating 20 gesture of clenching his head tight in both hands. She heard the boys in blue uniforms, going to school,

screaming at his elbow: "Pheeloh! Pheelosophee!" A mummy embalmed in Vaseline and alcohol. In the Egyptian silence she muttered softly:

1. Modern Greek version of the name Homer. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are, along with Dante's Divine Comedy, from which Walcott adapts the terza rima stanza, and James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), major influences on this Caribbean epic, which moves across centuries and geographies, from Saint Lucia to Africa to Ireland. 2. Pronounced fee-loek-TET; a name shared with Philoctetes, who, in the Iliad and Sophocles' eponymous play, is abandoned on an island on the way to the Trojan War after receiving a snakebite. The wound never heals and continually torments Philoctetes, who moans uncontrollably. Later the gods decide that the war cannot be won without him, and the Greek soldiers have to go back to the island and beg him to return with them to battle.

3. French patois, punningly mistranslated below, since hlesse actually means "wounded." 4. The owner of the No Pain Cafe, Ma Kilman serves in the poem as a sibyl (female prophet) and an obeah woman (one practicing a kind of West Indian sorcery).

.

92 / DEREK WALCOTT

"It have a flower somewhere, a medicine, and ways my grandmother would boil it. I used to watch ants climbing her white flower-pot. But, God, in which place?"

Where was this root? What senna,� what tepid medicinal herb

tisanes, medicinal beverages could clean the branched river of his corrupted blood, whose sap was a wounded cedar's? What did it mean,

this name that felt like a fever? Well, one good heft of his garden-cutlass would slice the damned name clean from its rotting yam. He said, "Merci."" Then he left. Thank you (French)

Book Six

Chapter XLIX

i

She bathed him in the brew of the root.1 The basin was one of those cauldrons from the old sugar-mill, with its charred pillars, rock pasture, and one grazing

horse, looking like helmets that have tumbled downhill from an infantry charge. Children rang them with stones. Wildflowers sprung in them when the dirt found a seam.

She had one in her back yard, close to the crotons,0 tree or shrub agape in its crusted, agonized O: the scream of centuries. She scraped its rusted scabs, she scoured

the mouth of the cauldron, then fed a crackling pyre with palms and banana-trash. In the scream she poured tin after kerosene tin, its base black from fire,

of seawater and sulphur. Into this she then fed the bubbling root and leaves. She led Philoctete to the gurgling lava. Trembling, he entered

his bath like a boy. The lime leaves leeched to his wet knuckled spine like islands that cling to the basin of the rusted Caribbean. An icy sweat

glazed his scalp, but he could feel the putrescent shin drain in the seethe like sucked marrow, he felt it drag the slime from his shame. She rammed him back to his place

as he tried climbing out with: "Not yet!" With a rag sogged in a basin of ice she rubbed his squeezed face the way boys enjoy their mother's ritual rage,

Ma Kilman is bathing Philoctete to heal his wound.

.

OMEROS, BOOK 6 / 2593

25 and as he surrendered to her, the foul flower on his shin whitened and puckered, the corolla closed its thorns like the sea-egg. What else did it cure? II The bow leapt back to the palm of the warrior. The yoke of the wrong name lifted from his shoulders. 30 His muscles loosened like those of a brown river that was dammed with silt, and then silkens its boulders with refreshing strength. His ribs thudded like a horse cantering on a beach that bursts into full gallop while a boy yanks at its rein with terrified "Whoas!" 35 The white foam unlocked his coffles, his ribbed shallop broke from its anchor, and the water, which he swirled like a child, steered his brow into the right current, as calm as In God We Troust2 to that other world, and his flexed palm enclosed an oar with the identi40 ical closure of a mouth around its own name, the way a sea-anemone closes slyly into a secrecy many mistake for shame. Centuries weigh down the head of the swamp-lily, 45its tribal burden arches the sea-almond's� spine, in barracoon3 back yards the soul-smoke still passes, a tree but the wound has found her own cure. The soft days spin the spittle of the spider in webbed glasses, as she drenches the burning trash to its last flame, and the embers steam and hiss to the schoolboys' cries 50 when he'd weep in the window for their tribal shame. A shame for the loss of words, and a language tired of accepting that loss, and then all accepted. That was why the sea stank from the frothing urine of surf, and fish-guts reeked from the government shed, 55 and why God pissed on the village for months of rain. But now, quite clearly the tears trickled down his face like rainwater down a cracked carafe from Choiseul,4 as he stood like a boy in his bath with the first clay's innocent prick! So she threw Adam a towel. 60 And the yard was Eden. And its light the first day's. 1990

2. Near the poem's beginning, the character and mine" (1.1.2). Achille chisels this misspelled phrase into his 3. Barracks for housing convicts or slaves, canoe and then decides, "Leave it! Is God' spelling 4. A village in Saint Lucia.

.

2594

TED HUGHES 1930-1998

Ted Hughes was born in Yorkshire, the son of one of seventeen men from a regiment of several hundred to return from Gallipoli in World War I, a tragedy that imprinted the imagination of the poet. He was educated at Mexborough Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where in his last year he changed his course of study from English to archaeology and anthropology, pursuing his interest in the mythic structures that were later to inform his poetry. In 1956 he married the American- born poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963. As poets they explored the world of raw feeling and sensation, a world that Hughes's poems tended to view through the eye of the predator, Plath's through the eye of the victim.

In contrast to the rational I ucidity and buttoned-up forms of Philip Larkin and other English poets of "the Movement," Hughes fashions a mythical consciousness in his poems, embodied in violent metaphors, blunt syntax, harsh alliterative clusters, bunched stresses, incantatory repetitions, insistent assonances, and a dark brooding tone. His early books, The Hawk in the Rain (1957) and Lupercal (1960), show the influence of D. H. Lawrence's Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), and Hughes's electrifying descriptions of jaguars, thrushes, and pike similarly generate metaphors that relate such creatures to forces underlying all animal and human experience. With Crow (1970) and Gaudete (1977) he abandoned at once the semblance of realism and the traditional metrical patterning of his early work, in the belief that "the very sound of metre calls up the ghosts of the past and it is difficult to sing one's own tune against that choir. It is easier to speak a language that raises no ghosts." Returning from the wilder shores of myth, Hughes showed in Moortmvn (1979), Remains of Elmet (1979), River (1983), and Flowers and Insects (1989) that he could render the natural world with a delicacy and tenderness as arresting as his earlier ferocity. In Tales from Ovid (1997) he brilliantly re-created�rather than translated�twenty-four passages from the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the poems of his last volume, Birthday Letters (1998), all but two of which are addressed to Plath, Hughes broke a silence of thirty-five years to lift the curtain on the tragic drama of their marriage. That same year he was appointed a member of the Order of Merit, having served as poet laureate of the United Kingdom since 1984. His Collected Poems was published in 2003.

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet

5 Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as

io The coal-house door. I dared once to look up�

Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes

The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

.

PIKE / 2595

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, At any second to bang and vanish with a flap: 15 The wind flung a magpie away and a black- Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note That any second would shatter it. Now deep In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip 20 Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing, And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on, Seeing the window tremble to come in, Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

1957

Relic

I found this jawbone at the sea's edge: There, crabs, dogfish, broken by the breakers or tossed To flap for half an hour and turn to a crust Continue the beginning. The deeps are cold:

5 In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:

Nothing touches but, clutching, devours. And the jaws, Before they are satisfied or their stretched purpose Slacken, go down jaws; go gnawn bare. Jaws Eat and are finished and the jawbone comes to the beach:

10 This is the sea's achievement; with shells, Vertebrae, claws, carapaces, skulls.

Time in the sea eats its tail, thrives, casts these Indigestibles, the spars of purposes That failed far from the surface. None grow rich

15 In the sea. This curved jawbone did not laugh But gripped, gripped and is now a cenotaph.1

1960

Pike

Pike, three inches long, perfect Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold. Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin. They dance on the surface among the flies.

1. Monument to the dead.

.

2596 / TED HUGHES

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur, Over a bed of emerald, silhouette Of submarine delicacy and horror. A hundred feet long in their world.

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads�

Gloom of their stillness: Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards. Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs Not to be changed at this date; A life subdued to its instrument; The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass, Jungled in weed: three inches, four, And four and a half: fed fry� to them� young fish

Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with. And indeed they spare nobody. Two, six pounds each, over two feet long, High and dry and dead in the willow-herb�

One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet: The outside eye stared: as a vice locks� The same iron in this eye Though its film shrank in death.

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,

Whose lilies and muscular tench1 Had outlasted every visible stone Of the monastery that planted them�

Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished With the hair frozen on my head For what might move, for what eye might move.

The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods Frail on my ear against the dream Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed, That rose slowly towards me, watching.

1959, 1960

1. Variety of freshwater fish.

.

OUT / 2597 Out 1 The Dream Time 510isMy father sat in his chair recovering Fro m the four-year mastication0 by gunfire and mud, grinding; chewing Body buffeted wordless, estranged by long soaking In the colors of mutilation. His outer perforations Wer e valiantly healed, but he and the hearth-fire, its blood-flicker On biscuit-bowl and piano and table leg, Moved into strong and stronger possession Of minute after minute, as the clock's tiny cog Labored and on the thread of his listening Dragged him bodily from under Th e mortised0 four-year strata of dead Englishmen firmly fixed He belonged with. He felt his limbs clearing Wit h every slight, gingerish movement. While I, small and four, Lay on the carpet as his luckless double, His memory's buried, immovable anchor, Amon g jawbones and blown-off boots, tree-stumps, shell-cases and craters, Under rain that goes on drumming its rods and thickening Its kingdom, which the sun has abandoned, and where nobody Ca n ever again move from shelter. 2 20 Th e dead ma n in his cave beginning to sweat; Th e melting bronze visor of flesh Of the mother in the baby-furnace� 2530Nobody believes, it Could be nothing, all Undergo smiling at Th e lulling of blood in Their ears, their ears, their ears, their eyes Are only drops of water and even the dead ma nSits up and sneezes�Atishoo! The n the nurse wraps him up, smiling, And, though faintly, the mother is smiling, An d it's just another baby. suddenly 35As after being blasted to bits Th e reassembled infantryman Tentatively totters out, gazing around with the eyes Of an exhausted clerk.

.

2598 / TED HUGHES

3 Remembrance Day'

The poppy is a wound, the poppy is the mouth Of the grave, maybe of the womb searching�

A canvas-beauty puppet on a wire

Today whoring everywhere. It is years since I wore one.

It is more years

The shrapnel that shattered my father's paybook

Gripped me, and all his dead Gripped him to a time

He no more than they could outgrow, but, cast into one, like iron, Hun g deeper than refreshing of ploughs

In the woe-dark under my mother's eye�One anchor

Holding my juvenile neck bowed to the dunkings of the Atlantic. So goodbye to that bloody-minded flower.

You dead bury your dead. Goodbye to the cenotaphs0 on my mother's breasts. empty tombs

Goodbye to all the remaindered charms of my father's survival. Let England close. Let the green sea-anemone close.

1967

Theology

No, the serpent did not Seduce Eve to the apple. All that's simply Corruption of the facts.

5 Ada m ate the apple. Eve ate Adam. The serpent ate Eve. This is the dark intestine.

The serpent, meanwhile,

io Sleeps his meal off in Paradise� Smiling to hear God's querulous calling.

1967

1. Holiday (November II) commemorating sol-John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields" (1915), diers who lost their lives in battle. The practice of which depicts the flowers growing between the wearing red poppies in honor of lost soldiers recalls graves on a battlefield.

.

DAFFODILS / 2599

Crow's Last Stand

Burning burning burning1 there was finally something

5 The sun could not burn, that it had rendered Everything down to�a final obstacle Against which it raged and charred

An d rages and chars

Limpid0 among the glaring furnace clinkers0 clear / coal remains 10 The pulsing blue tongues and the red and the yellow Th e green lickings of the conflagration

Limpid and black�

Crow's eye-pupil, in the tower of its scorched fort.

1970

Daffodils

Remember how we1 picked the daffodils? Nobody else remembers, but I remember. Your daughter came with her armfuls, eager and happy, Helping the harvest. She has forgotten.

5 She cannot even remember you. And we sold them. It sounds like sacrilege, but we sold them. Were we so poor? Old Stoneman, the grocer, Boss-eyed, his blood-pressure purpling to beetroot (It was his last chance,

IO He would die in the same great freeze as you), He persuaded us. Every Spring He always bought them, sevenpence a dozen, 'A custom of the house'.

Besides, we still weren't sure we wanted to own

is Anything. Mainly we were hungry To convert everything to profit. Still nomads�still strangers To our whole possession. Th e daffodils Were incidental gilding of the deeds,2

20 Treasure trove. They simply came, An d they kept on coming. As if not from the sod but falling from heaven.

1. Cf. "Burning burning burning burning," line can poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). 308 of T. S. Eliot's Waste Land, where it is quoted 2. Document establishing legal possession of a from the Buddha's Fire Sermon. house. 1. Hughes is addressing his first wife, the Ameri

.

2600 / TED HUGHES

Our lives were still a raid on our own good luck. We knew we'd live for ever. We had not learned

25 What a fleeting glance of the everlasting Daffodils are. Never identified The nuptial flight of the rarest ephemera3� Our own days!

We thought they were a windfall. Never guessed they were a last blessing.

30 So we sold them. We worked at selling them As if employed on somebody else's Flower-farm. You bent at it In the rain of that April�your last April. We bent there together, among the soft shrieks

35 Of their jostled stems, the wet shocks shaken Of their girlish dance-frocks� Fresh-opened dragonflies, wet and flimsy, Opened too early.

We piled their frailty lights on a carpenter's bench,

40 Distributed leaves among the dozens� Buckling blade-leaves, limber, groping for air, zinc-silvered� Propped their raw butts in bucket water, Their oval, meaty butts, And sold them, sevenpence a bunch�

45 Wind-wounds, spasms from the dark earth, With their odourless metals, A flamy purification of the deep grave's stony cold As if ice had a breath�

We sold them, to wither.

50 The crop thickened faster than we could thin it. Finally, we were overwhelmed And we lost our wedding-present scissors.

Every March since they have lifted again Out of the same bulbs, the same

55 Baby-cries from the thaw, Ballerinas too early for music, shiverers In the draughty wings of the year. On that same groundswell of memory, fluttering They return to forget you stooping there

60 Behind the rainy curtains of a dark April, Snipping their stems.

But somewhere your scissors remember. Wherever they are. Here somewhere, blades wide open, April by April

65 Sinking deeper Through the sod�an anchor, a cross of rust.

3. Insect that lives only a few days.

.

2601

HAROLD PINTER

b. 1930 Harold Pinter is one of the most original and challenging of the many important playwrights who have emerged in Britain in the last half-century. He was born and educated in East London, studied briefly at the Academy of Dramatic Art, and from the age of nineteen to the age of twenty-seven acted in a repertory company. His first play (in one act), The Room, was written and produced in 1957 and was followed immediately by The Dumb Waiter and The Birthday Party, his first real success. In addition to his prize-winning work for theater and television, he has written a number of screenplays based on novels such as Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time), John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale; his screenplays were collected and published in three volumes in 2000.

Pinter's early work shows the influence of Samuel Beckett and of absurdist drama, notably that of the French playwright Eugene lonesco, but his vision rapidly established itself as more naturalistic (though no less alarming) than theirs. His territory is typically a room (refuge, prison cell, trap) symbolic of its occupants' world. Into this, and into their ritualized relationship with its rules and taboos, comes a stranger on to whom�as on to a screen�the occupants project their deepest desires, guilts, neuroses. The breakdown that follows is mirrored in the breakdown of language. Pinter, who has a poet's ear for the rhythms of spoken English, is a master of the pauses, double entendres, and silences that communicate a secondary level of meaning often opposed to the first. He has said of language:

The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. Whe n true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

The critic Lois Gordon has well said that "one way of looking at Pinter's plays is to

say that they are dramatic stratagems that uncover nakedness."

The Dumb Waiter

SCENE: A hasement room. Two beds, flat against the back wall. A serving hatch, closed, between the beds. A door to the kitchen and lavatory, left. A door to a passage, right.

BEN is lying on a bed, left, reading a paper, GUS is sitting on a bed, right, tying his shoelaces, with difficidty. Both are dressed in shirts, trousers and braces.

Silence.

GUS ties his laces, rises, yawns and begins to walk slowly to the door, left. He stops, looks down, and shakes his foot.

BEN lowers his paper and watches him. GUS kneels and unties his shoelace and slowly takes off the shoe. He looks inside it and brings out a flattened matchbox. He shakes it and examines it. Their eyes meet, BEN rattles his paper and reads. Gus puts the matchbox in his pocket and bends down to put on his shoe. He ties his lace, with difficulty, BEN lowers his paper and watches him. GUS walks to the door, left, stops, and shakes the other foot. He kneels, unties his shoelace, and slowly takes off the shoe. He looks inside it and brings out a flattened cigarette

.

260 2 / HAROLD PINTER

packet. He shakes it and examines it. Their eyes meet. BEN rattles his paper and reads, GUS puts the packet in his pocket, bends down, puts on his shoe and ties the lace.

He wanders off , left. BEN slams the paper down on the bed and glares after him. He picks up the

paper and lies on his back, reading. Silence. A lavatory chain is pidled twice off left, hut the lavatory does not flush. Silence. GUS re-enters, left, and halts at the door, scratching his head. BEN slams down the paper.

BEN Kaw!

[He picks up the paper.]

Wha t about this? Listen to this!

[He refers to the paper.]

A ma n of eighty-seven wanted to cross the road. But there was a lot of traffic, see? He couldn't see how he was going to squeeze through. So he crawled under a lorry.1

GUS He what? BEN He crawled under a lorry. A stationary lorry. GUS No? BEN Th e lorry started and ran over him. GUS G o on! BEN That's what it says here. GUS Get away. BEN It's enough to make you want to puke, isn't it? GUS Wh o advised him to do a thing like that? BEN A ma n of eighty-seven crawling under a lorry! GUS It's unbelievable. BEN It's down here in black and white. GUS Incredible.

[Silence. GUS shakes his head and exits, BEN lies back and reads. The lavatory chain is pulled once off left, but the lavatory does not

flush. BEN whistles at an item in the paper. GUS re-enters.]

want to ask you something. BEN Wha t are you doing out there? GUS Well, I was just � BEN Wha t about the tea? GUS I'm just going to make it. BEN Well, go on, make it. GUS Yes, I will. [He sits in a chair. Ruminatively.] He's laid on some very nice

crockery this time, I'll say that. It's sort of striped. There's a white stripe.

[BEN reads.]

It's very nice. I'll say that.

[BEN turns the page.]

1. Truck.

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 2603

You know, sort of round the cup. Round the rim. All the rest of it's black, you see. The n the saucer's black, except for right in the middle, where the

cup goes, where it's white.

[BEN reads.] Then the plates are the same, you see. Only they've got a black stripe�the plates�right across the middle. Yes, I'm quite taken with the crockery.

BEN [Still reading.] Wha t do you want plates for? You're not going to eat. GUS I've brought a few biscuits. BEN Well, you'd better eat them quick. GUS I always bring a few biscuits. Or a pie. Yo u know I can't drink tea without

anything to eat. BEN Well, make the tea then, will you? Time's getting on.

[GUS brings out the flattened cigarette packet and examines it.]

GUS YOU got any cigarettes? I think I've run out.

[He throivs the packet high up and leans forward to catch it.]

I hope it won't be a long job, this one.

[Aiming carefully, he flips the packet under his bed.]

Oh, I wanted to ask you something.

BEN [Slamming his paper down.] Kaw!

GUS What's that?

BEN A child of eight killed a cat!

GUS Get away.

BEN It's a fact. Wha t about that, eh? A child of eight killing a cat!

GUS HOW did he do it?

BEN It was a girl.

GUS How did she do it?

BEN She�

[He picks up the paper and studies it.]

It doesn't say. GUS Wh y not? BEN Wait a minute. It just says�Her brother, aged eleven, viewed the inci

dent from the toolshed. GUS G o on! BEN That's bloody ridiculous.

[Pause.] GUS I bet he did it. BEN Who? GUS Th e brother. BEN I think you're right.

[Pause. ]

[Slamming down the paper.] Wha t about that, eh? A kid of eleven killing a cat and blaming it on his little sister of eight! It's enough to� [He breaks off in disgust and seizes the paper, GUS rises.] GUS Wha t time is he getting in touch?

[BEN reads.]

Wha t time is he getting in touch? BEN What's the matter with you? It could be any time. An y time. GUS [Moves to the foot of BUN'S bed.] Well, I was going to ask you something. BEN What? GUS Have you noticed the time that tank takes to fill? BEN What tank?

.

260 4 / HAROLD PINTER

GUS In the lavatory. BEN No. Does it? GUS Terrible. BEN Well, what about it? GUS What do you thinks the matter with it? BEN Nothing. GUS Nothing? BEN It's got a deficient ballcock, that's all. GUS A deficient what? BEN Ballcock. GUS No? Really? BEN That's what I should say. GUS Go on! That didn't occur to me.

[GUS wanders to his bed and presses the mattress.]

I didn't have a very restful sleep today, did you? It's not muc h of a bed. I could have done with another blanket too. [He catches sight of a picture on the xvall.] Hello, what's this? [Peering at it.] "The First Eleven."2 Cricketers. You seen this, Ben?

BEN [Reading.] What? GUS The first eleven. BEN What? GUS There's a photo here of the first eleven. BEN Wha t first eleven? GUS [Studying the photo.] It doesn't say. BEN Wha t about that tea? GUS They all look a bit old to me.

[GUS wanders downstage, looks out front, then all about the room.]

I wouldn't like to live in this dump. I wouldn't mind if you had a window,

you could see what it looked like outside. BEN Wha t do you want a window for? GUS Well, I like to have a bit of a view, Ben. It whiles away the time.

[He walks about the room.]

I mean, you come into a place when it's still dark, you come into a room you've never seen before, you sleep all day, you do your job, and then you go away in the night again.

[Pause. ]

I like to get a look at the scenery. You never get the chance in this job. BEN YOU get your holidays, don't you? GUS Only a fortnight. BEN [Lowering the paper.] You kill me. Anyone would think you're working

every day. How often do we do a job? Once a week? What are you complaining about? GUS Yes, but we've got to be on tap though, haven't we? You can't move out

of the house in case a call comes. BEN You know what your trouble is? GUS What? BEN YOU haven't got any interests. GUS I've got interests. BEN What ? Tell me one of your interests.

2. A school's top team of cricketers.

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 2605

[Pause.] GUS I've got interests. BEN Look at me. Wha t have I got? GUS I don't know. What ? BEN I've got my woodwork. I've got my model boats. Have you ever seen me

idle? I'm never idle. I know how to occupy my time, to its best advantage.

Then when a call comes, I'm ready. GUS Don't you ever get a bit fed up? BEN Fed up? What with?

[Silence. BEN reads, GUS feels in the -pocket of his jacket, which hangs on the bed.]

GUS YOU got any cigarettes? I've run out.

[The lavatory flushes off left.]

There she goes.

[GUS sits on his bed.] No, I mean, I say the crockery's good. It is. It's very nice. But that's about all I can say for this place. It's worse than the last one. Remember that last place we were in? Last time, where was it? At least there was a wireless there. No, honest. He doesn't seem to bother muc h about our comfort these days.

BEN Whe n are you going to stop jabbering? GUS You'd get rheumatism in a place like this, if you stay long. BEN We're not staying long. Make the tea, will you? We'll be on the job in a

minute.

[GUS picks up a small bag by his bed and brings out a packet of tea. He examines it and looks up.]

GUS Eh, I've been meaning to ask you. BEN What the hell is it now? GUS Wh y did you stop the car this morning, in the middle of that road? BEN [Lowering the paper.] I thought you were asleep. GUS I was, but I woke up when you stopped. You did stop, didn't you?

[Pause.] In the middle of that road. It was still dark, don't you remember? I looked out. It was all misty. I thought perhaps you wanted to kip,3 but you were sitting up dead straight, like you were waiting for something.

BEN I wasn't waiting for anything. GUS I must have fallen asleep again. Wha t was all that about then? Wh y did

you stop? BEN [Picking up the paper.] W e were too early. GUS Early? [He rises.] What do you mean? W e got the call, didn't we, saying

we were to start right away. We did. We shoved out on the dot. So how

could we be too early? BEN [Quietly.] Wh o took the call, me or you? GUS You. BEN We were too early. GUS TOO early for what?

[Pause.]

You mean someone had to get out before we got in?

3. Nap.

.

260 6 / HAROLD PINTER

[He examines the bedclothes.]

I thought these sheets didn't look too bright. I thought they ponged4 a bit. I was too tired to notice when I got in this morning. Eh, that's taking a bit of a liberty, isn't it? I don't want to share my bed-sheets. I told you things were going down the drain. I mean, we've always had clean sheets laid on up till now. I've noticed it.

BEN How do you know those sheets weren't clean?

GUS What do you mean?

BEN How do you know they weren't clean? You've spent the whole day in them, haven't you?

GUS What, you mean it might be my pong? [He sniffs sheets.] Yes. [He sits slowly on bed.] It could be m y pong, I suppose. It's difficult to tell. I don't really know what I pong like, that's the trouble. BEN [Referring to the paper.] Kaw! GUS Eh, Ben. BEN Kaw! GUS Ben. BEN What? GUS Wha t town are we in? I've forgotten. BEN I've told you. Birmingham. GUS G o on! [He looks with interest about the room.] That's in the Midlands. Th e second biggest city in Great Britain. I'd never have guessed. [He snaps his fingers. ] Eh, it's Friday today, isn't it? It'll be Saturday tomorrow. BEN Wha t about it? GUS [Excited.] W e could go and watch the Villa.5 BEN They're playing away. GUS NO , are they? Caarr! Wha t a pity. BEN Anyway, there's no time. We've got to get straight back. GUS Well, we have done in the past, haven't we? Stayed over and watched a game, haven't we? For a bit of relaxation. BEN Things have tightened up, mate. They're tightened up. [GUS chuckles to himself] GUS I saw the Villa get beat in a cup tie once. Wh o was it against now? White shirts. It was one-all at half time. I'll never forget it. Their opponents won by a penalty. Talk about drama. Yes, it was a disputed penalty. Disputed. They got beat two�one, anyway, because of it. You were there yourself. BEN Not me. GUS Yes, you were there. Don't you remember that disputed penalty? BEN NO. GUS He went down just inside the area. The n they said he was just acting. I didn't think the other bloke touched hi m myself. But the referee had the ball on the spot. BEN Didn't touch him! What are you talking about? He laid him out flat! GUS Not the Villa. Th e Villa don't play that sort of game. BEN Get out of it.

4. Smelled. 5. Aston Villa, popularly known as "the Villa," Birmingham's soccer team.

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 2607

[Pause.] GUS Eh, that must have been here, in Birmingham. BEN What must? GUS The Villa. That must have been here. BEN They were playing away. GUS Because you know who the other team was? It was the Spurs. It was

Tottenham Hotspur.6 BEN Well, what about it? GUS We've never done a job in Tottenham. BEN Ho w do you know? GUS I'd remember Tottenham.

[BEN turns on his hed to look at him.]

BEN Don't make me laugh, will you?

[BEN turns hack and reads. GUS yawns and speaks through his yawn.]

GUS When's he going to get in touch?

[Pause.]

Yes, I'd like to see another football match. I've always been an ardent football

fan. Here, what about coming to see the Spurs tomorrow? BEN [Tonelessly.] They're playing away. GUS Wh o are? BEN The Spurs. GUS Then they might be playing here. BEN Don't be silly. GUS If they're playing away they might be playing here. They might be playing

the Villa.'

BEN [Tonelessly.] But the Villa are playing away.

[Pause. An envelope slides under the door, right, GUS sees it. He stands,

looking at it.]

Gus Ben.

BEN Away. They're all playing away.

GUS Ben, look here.

BEN What?

GUS Look.

[BEN turns his head and sees the envelope. He stands.]

BEN What's that?

Gus I don't know.

BEN Where did it come from?

GUS Under the door.

BEN Well, what is it?

GUS I don't know.

[They stare at it.]

BEN Pick it up.

Gus What do you mean?

BEN Pick it up!

[GUS slowly moves towards it, hends and picks it up.]

What is it? GUS An envelope. BEN Is there anything on it? GUS No.

6. A soccer team; Tottenham is in north London.

.

260 8 / HAROLD PINTER

BEN IS it sealed? GUS Yes. BEN Open it. GUS What? BEN Open it! [GUS opens it and looks inside.]

What's in it?

[GUS empties twelve matches into his hand.] GUS Matches. BEN Matches? GUS Yes. BEN Show it to me.

[GUS passes the envelope, BEN examines it.]

Nothing on it. Not a word. GUS That's funny, isn't it? BEN It came under the door? GUS Must have done. BEN Well, go on. GUS Go on where? BEN Ope n the door and see if you catch anyone outside. GUS Who, me? BEN GO on!

[GUS stares at him, puts the matches in his pocket, goes to his bed and brings a revolver from under the pillow. He goes to the door, opens it, looks out and shuts it.]

GUS N o one.

[He replaces the revolver. ] BEN What did you see? GUS Nothing. BEN They must have been pretty quick.

[GUS takes the matches from pocket and looks at them.] GUS Well, they'll come in handy. BEN Yes. GUS Won't they? BEN Yes, you're always running out, aren't you? GUS All the time. BEN Well, they'll come in handy then. GUS Yes. BEN Won't they? GUS Yes, I could do with them. I could do with them too. BEN YOU could, eh? GUS Yes. BEN Why? GUS We haven't any. BEN Well, you've got some now, haven't you? GUS I can light the kettle now. BEN Yes, you're always cadging matches. How many have you got there? GUS About a dozen. BEN Well, don't lose them. Red too. You don't even need a box.

[GUS probes his ear with a match.] [Slapping his hand.] Don't waste them! G o on, go and light it.

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 2609

GUS Eh? BEN Go and light it. GUS Light what? BEN Th e kettle. GUS You mean the gas.

BEN Wh o does? GUS You do. BEN [His eyes narrowing.] What do you mean, I mean the gas? GUS Well, that's what you mean, don't you? Th e gas. BEN [Powerfully.] If 1 say go and light the kettle I mean go and light the

kettle. GUS Ho w can you light a kettle? BEN It's a figure of speech! Light the kettle. It's a figure of speech! GUS I've never heard it. BEN Light the kettle! It's commo n usage! GUS I think you've got it wrong. BEN [Menacing.] What do you mean? GUS They say put on the kettle. BEN [Taut.] Wh o says?

[They stare at each other, breathing hard.]

[Deliberately.] I have never in all m y life heard anyone say put on the kettle. GUS I bet my mother used to say it. BEN Your mother? Whe n did you last see your mother? GUS I don't know, about� BEN Well, what are you talking about your mother for?

[They stare.]

Gus, I'm not trying to be unreasonable. I'm just trying to point out some

thing to you. GUS Yes, but� BEN Who's the senior partner here, me or you? GUS YOU. BEN I'm only looking after your interests, Gus. You've got to learn, mate. GUS Yes, but I've never heard� BEN [Vehemently.] Nobody says light the gas! Wha t does the gas light? GUS What does the gas�? BEN [Grabbing him with two hands by the throat, at arm's length.] THE KETTLE,

YOU FOOL!

[GUS takes the hands from his throat.]

GUS All right, all right.

[Pause.]

BEN Well, what are you waiting for?

GUS I want to see if they light.

BEN What?

GUS Th e matches.

[He takes out the flattened box and tries to strike.]

No.

[He throws the box under the bed. BEN stares at him. GUS raises his foot.]

Shall I try it on here?

[BEN stares, GUS strikes a match on his shoe. It lights.]

.

261 0 / HAROLD PINTER

Here we are.

BEN [Wearily.] Put on the bloody kettle, for Christ's sake. [BEN goes to his hed, hut, realizing what he has said, stops and half turns. They look at each other. GUS slowly exits, left, BEN slams his paper down on the hed and sits on it, head in hands.]

GUS [Entering.] It's going. BEN What? GUS Th e stove.

[GUS goes to his hed and sits.] I wonder who it'll be tonight.

[Silence.]

Eh, I've been wanting to ask you something. BEN [Putting his legs on the hed.] Oh, for Christ's sake. Gus No. I was going to ask you something.

[He rises and sits on BENS hed.] BEN Wha t are you sitting on my bed for?

[GUS sits.] What's the matter with you? You're always asking me questions. What's the matter with you?

GUS Nothing. BEN YOU never used to ask me so many damn questions. What's come over

you? GUS No, I was just wondering. BEN Stop wondering. You've got a job to do. Wh y don't you just do it and

shut up? GUS That's what I was wondering about. BEN What? GUS Th e job. BEN What job? GUS [Tentatively.] I thought perhaps you might know something.

[BEN looks at him.]

I thought perhaps you�I mean�have you got any idea�who it's going to be tonight? BEN Wh o what's going to be?

[They look at each other.] GUS [At length.] Wh o it's going to be. [Silence.]

BEN Are you feeling all right? GUS Sure. BEN Go and make the tea. GUS Yes, sure.

[GUS exits, left, BEN looks after him. He then takes his revolver from under the pillow and checks it for ammunition. GUS re-enters.]

Th e gas has gone out. BEN Well, what about it? GUS There's a meter.7 BEN I haven't got any money. GUS Nor have I. BEN You'll have to wait.

7. One that controls the supply of gas and must be fed with shilling coins.

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 2611

GUS What for? BEN For Wilson. GUS He might not come. He might just send a message. He doesn't always

come. BEN Well, you'll have to do without it, won't you? GUS Blimey. BEN You'll have a cup of tea afterwards. What's the matter with you? GUS I like to have one before.

[BEN holds the revolver up to the light and polishes it.] BEN You'd better get ready anyway. GUS Well, I don't know, that's a bit much, you know, for my money.

[He picks up a packet of tea from the hed and throws it into the hag.]

I hope he's got a shilling, anyway, if he comes. He's entitled to have. After

all, it's his place, he could have seen there was enough gas for a cup of tea. BEN Wha t do you mean, it's his place? GUS Well, isn't it? BEN He's probably only rented it. It doesn't have to be his place. GUS I know it's his place. I bet the whole house is. He's not even laying on

any gas now either.

[GUS sits on his hed.]

It's his place all right. Look at all the other places. You go to this address,

there's a key there, there's a teapot, there's never a soul in sight�[He

pauses.] Eh, nobody ever hears a thing, have you ever thought of that? W e

never get any complaints, do we, too much noise or anything like that? You

never see a soul, do you?�except the bloke who comes. You ever noticed

that? I wonder if the walls are soundproof. [He touches the wall above his

bed.] Can't tell. All you do is wait, eh? Half the time he doesn't even bother

to put in an appearance, Wilson. BEN Wh y should he? He's a busy man. GUS [Thoughtfully.] I find him hard to talk to, Wilson. Do you know that, Ben? BEN Scrub round it, will you?

[Pause.]

GUS There are a number of things I want to ask him. But I can never get round to it, when I see him.

[Pause. ]

I've been thinking about the last one. BEN Wha t last one? GUS That girl.

[BEN grabs the paper, which he reads.]

[Rising, looking down at BEN.] How many times have you read that paper?

[BEN slams the paper down and rises.]

BEN [Angrily. ] What do you mean? GUS I was just wondering how many times you'd� BEN What are you doing, criticizing me? GUS NO, I was just � BEN You'll get a swipe round your earhole if you don't watch your step. GUS NOW look here, Ben� BEN I'm not looking anywhere! [He addresses the room.] How many times

have I�! A bloody liberty!

GUS I didn't mean that.

.

261 2 / HAROLD PINTER

BEN YOU just get on with it, mate. Get on with it, that's all.

[BEN gets back on the bed.]

GUS 1 was just thinking about that girl, that's all.

[GUS sits on his bed.]

She wasn't muc h to look at, I know, but still. It was a mess though, wasn't it? What a mess. Honest, I can't remember a mess like that one. They don't seem to hold together like men, women. A looser texture, like. Didn't she spread, eh? She didn't half spread. Kaw! But I've been meaning to ask you.

[BEN sits up and clenches his eyes.]

Wh o clears up after we've gone? I'm curious about that. Wh o does the clearing up? Maybe they don't clear up. Maybe they just leave them there, eh? What do you think? How many jobs have we done? Blimey, I can't count them. Wha t if they never clear anything up after we've gone.

BEN [Pityingly.] You mutt. Do you think we're the only branch of this orga

nization? Have a bit of common. They got departments for everything. GUS What, cleaners and all? BEN You birk! GUS NO, it was that girl made me start to think�

[There is a loud clatter and racket in the bidge of wall between the beds, of something descending. They grab their revolvers, jump up and face the wall. The noise comes to a stop. Silence. They look at each other. BEN gestures sharply towards the wall. GUS approaches the wall slowly. He bangs it with his revolver. It is hollow, BEN moves to the head of his bed, his revolver cocked. GUS puts his revolver on his bed and pats along the bottom of the centre panel. He finds a rim. He lifts the panel. Disclosed is a serving-hatch, a "dumb waiter." A wide box is held by pulley's. GUS peers into the box. He brings out a piece of paper.]

BEN What is it? GUS YOU have a look at it. BEN Read it. GUS [Reading.] Tw o braised steak and chips. Tw o sago puddings. Tw o teas

without sugar. BEN Let me see that. [He takes the paper.] GUS [To himself] Tw o teas without sugar. BEN Mmnn. Gus What do you think of that? BEN Well�

[The box goes up, BEN levels his revolver.]

GUS Give us a chance! They're in a hurry, aren't they?

[BEN rereads the note, GUS looks over his shoulder.]

That's a bit�that's a bit funny, isn't it? BEN [Quickly.] No, it's not funny. It probably used to be a cafe here, that's

all. Upstairs. These places change hands very quickly. GUS A cafe? BEN Yes. GUS What, do you mean this was the kitchen, down here? BEN Yes, they change hands overnight, these places. Go into liquidation. The

people who run it, you know, they don't find it a going concern, they move out. GUS You mean the people who ran this place didn't find it a going concern and moved out?

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 2613

BEN Sure. GUS WELL , WHO'S GOT IT NOW? [Silence.] BEN Wha t do you mean, who's got it now? GUS Who's got it now? If they moved out, who moved in? BEN Well, that all depends� [The box descends with a clatter and bang, BEN levels his revolver, GUS goes to the box and brings out a -piece of paper.] GUS [Reading.] Soup of the day. Liver and onions. Jam tart. [A pause. GUS looks at BEN. BEN takes the note and reads it. He walks slowly to the hatch, GUSfollows, BEN looks into the hatch but not up it. GUS puts his hand on BEN'S shoulder, BEN throws it off . GUS puts his finger to his mouth. He leans on the hatch and swiftly looks up it. BEN flings him away in alarm, BEN looks at the note. He throws his revolver on the bed and speaks with decision.] BEN We'd better send something up. GUS Eh ? BEN We'd better send something up. GUS Oh! Yes. Yes. Maybe you're right. [They are both relieved at the decision.] BEN [Purposefully.] Quick! Wha t have you got in that bag? GUS Not much. [GUS goes to the hatch and shouts up it.]

Wait a minute! BEN Don't do that!

[GUS examines the contents of the bag and brings them out, one by one.] GUS Biscuits. A bar of chocolate. Half a pint of milk. BEN That all? GUS Packet of tea. BEN Good. GUS We can't send the tea. That's all the tea we've got. BEN Well, there's no gas. You can't do anything with it, can you? GUS Maybe they can send us down a bob.8 BEN Wha t else is there? GUS [Reaching into bag.] One Eccles cake.9 BEN On e Eccles cake? GUS Yes. BEN YOU never told me you had an Eccles cake. GUS Didn't I? BEN Wh y only one? Didn't you bring one for me? GUS I didn't think you'd be keen. BEN Well, you can't send up one Eccles cake, anyway. GUS Wh y not? BEN Fetch one of those plates. GUS All right.

[GUS goes towards the door, left, and stops.] Do you mean I can keep the Eccles cake then? BEN Keep it?

8. A shilling (i.e., to insert in the gas meter). 9. A small cake originally made in the Lancashire town of Eccles.

.

261 4 / HAROLD PINTER

GUS Well, they don't know we've got it, do they? BEN That's not the point. GUS Can't I keep it? BEN No, you can't. Get the plate.

[GUS exits, left. BEN looks in the hag. He brings out a packet of crisps.' Enter GUS with a plate.]

[Accusingly, holding up the crisps.] Where did these come from? GUS What? BEN Where did these crisps come from? GUS Wher e did you find them? BEN [Hitting him on the shoulder.] You're playing a dirty game, my lad! GUS I only eat those with beer! BEN Well, where were you going to get the beer? GUS I was saving them till I did. BEN I'll remember this. Put everything on the plate.

[They pile everything on to the plate. The box goes up without the plate.]

Wait a minute!

[They stand.]

GUS It's gone up.

BEN It's all your stupid fault, playing about!

GUS What do we do now?

BEN We'll have to wait till it comes down.

[BEN puts the plate on the bed, puts on his shoidder holster, and starts to put on his tie.]

You'd better get ready.

[GUS goes to his bed, puts on his tie, and starts to fix his holster. ]

GUS Hey, Ben.

BEN What?

GUS What's going on here?

[Pause.]

BEN What do you mean? GUS Ho w can this be a cafe? BEN It used to be a cafe. GUS Have you seen the gas stove? BEN Wha t about it? GUS It's only got three rings. BEN SO what? GUS Well, you couldn't cook muc h on three rings, not for a busy place like

this.

BEN [Irritably.] That's why the service is slow!

[BEN puts on his waistcoat.]

GUS Yes, but what happens when we're not here? What do they do then? All these menus coming down and nothing going up. It might have been going on like this for years.

[BEN brushes his jacket.]

What happens when we go?

[BEN puts on his jacket.]

They can't do much business.

[The box descends. They turn about, GUS goes to the hatch and brings out a note.]

1. Potato chips.

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 262 1

GUS [Reading.] Macaroni Pastitsio. Ormitha Macarounada. BEN What was that? GUS Macaroni Pastitsio. Ormitha Macarounada. BEN Greek dishes. GUS No. BEN That's right. GUS That's pretty high class. BEN Quick before it goes up.

[GUS puts the plate in the box.] GUS [Calling up the hatch.] Three McVitie and Price! One Lyons Red Label!

One Smith's Crisps!2 One Eccles cake! One Fruit and Nut! BEN Cadbury's.3 GUS [Up the hatch.] Cadbury's! BEN [Handing the milk.] One bottle of milk. GUS [Up the hatch.] One bottle of milk! Half a pint! [He looks at the label.]

Express Dairy! [He puts the bottle in the box. ] [The box goes up. ]

Just did it. BEN You shouldn't shout like that. GUS Why not? BEN It isn't done.

[BEN goes to his bed.]

Well, that should be all right, anyway, for the time being. GUS You think so, eh? BEN Get dressed, will you? It'll be any minute now.

[GUS puts on his waistcoat, BEN lies down and looks up at the ceiling.] GUS This is some place. No tea and no biscuits. BEN Eating makes you lazy, mate. You're getting lazy, you know that? You

don't want to get slack on your job. GUS Who me? BEN Slack, mate, slack. GUS Who me? Slack? BEN Have you checked your gun? You haven't even checked your gun. It

looks disgraceful, anyway. Why don't you ever polish it? [GUS nibs his revolver on the sheet, BEN takes out a pocket mirror and straightens his tie.]

GUS I wonder where the cook is. They must have had a few, to cope with

that. Maybe they had a few more gas stoves. Eh! Maybe there's another

kitchen along the passage. BEN Of course there is! Do you know what it takes to make an Ormitha

Macarounada? GUS No, what? BEN An Ormitha�! Buck your ideas up, will you? GUS Takes a few cooks, eh?

[GUS puts his revolver in its holster.]

The sooner we're out of this place the better.

[He puts on his jacket.] Why doesn't he get in touch? I feel like I've been here years. [He takes his revolver out of its holster to check the ammunition.] We've never let him

2. Brands, respectively, of cookies, tea, and potato 3. A brand of chocolate bar. chips.

.

261 6 / HAROLD PINTER

down though, have we? We've never let him down. I was thinking only the

other day, Ben. We're reliable, aren't we?

[He puts his revolver hack in its holster.]

Still, I'll be glad when it's over tonight.

[He brushes his jacket.]

I hope the bloke's not going to get excited tonight, or anything. I'm feeling a bit off. I've got a splitting headache.

[Silence. The box descends, BEN jumps up. GUS collects the note. ]

[Reading.[ One Bamboo Shoots, Water Chestnuts, and Chicken. One Char

Siu and Beansprouts. BEN Beansprouts? GUS Yes. BEN Blimey. GUS I wouldn't know where to begin.

[He looks back at the box. The packet of tea is inside it. He picks it up.]

They've sent back the tea. BEN [Anxious.] What'd they do that for? GUS Maybe it isn't teatime.

[The box goes up. Silence. ] BEN [Throwing the tea on the bed, and speaking urgently.] Look here. We'd

better tell them. GUS Tell them what? BEN That we can't do it, we haven't got it. GUS All right then. BEN Lend us your pencil. We'll write a note.

[GUS, turning for a pencil, suddenly discovers the speaking tube, which hangs on the right wall of the hatch facing his bed.]

GUS What's this? BEN What? GUS This. BEN [Examining it.] This? It's a speaking tube. GUS HOW long has that been there? BEN Just the job. We should have used it before, instead of shouting up there. GUS Funny I never noticed it before. BEN Well, come on. GUS What do you do? BEN See that? That's a whistle. GUS What, this? BEN Yes, take it out. Pull it out.

[GUS does so. ]

That's it.

GUS What do we do now?

BEN Blow into it.

GUS Blow?

BEN It whistles up there if you blow. Then they know you want to speak.

Blow.

[GUS blows. Silence.]

GUS [Tube at mouth.] I can't hear a thing.

BEN Now you speak! Speak into it!

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 262 1

[GUS looks at BEN, then s-peaks into the tube.] GUS The larder's bare! BEN Give me that!

[He grabs the tube and puts it to his mouth. ] [Speaking with great deference.] Good evening. I'm sorry to�bother you, but we just thought we'd better let you know that we haven't got anything left. We sent up all we had. There's no more food down here.

[He brings the tube slowly to his ear.]

What? [To mouth.] What? [To ear. He listens. To mouth.] No, all we had we sent up. [To ear. He listens. To mouth.] Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that. [To ear. He listens. To GUS.] The Eccles cake was stale. [He listens. To GUS.] The chocolate was melted. [He listens. To GUS.]

The milk was sour. GUS What about the crisps? BEN [Listening.] The biscuits were mouldy.

[He glares at GUS. Tube to mouth.] Well, we're sorry about that.

[Tube to ear.]

What? [To mouth.] What? [To ear.] Yes. Yes. [To mouth.] Yes certainly. Right away.

[To ear. The voice has ceased. He hangs up the tube.]

[Excitedly.] Did you hear that? GUS What? BEN YOU know what he said? Light the kettle! Not put on the kettle! Not

light the gas! But light the kettle! GUS How can we light the kettle? BEN What do you mean? GUS There's no gas. BEN [Clapping hand to head.] Now what do we do? GUS What did he want us to light the kettle for? BEN For tea. He wanted a cup of tea. GUS He wanted a cup of tea! What about me? I've been wanting a cup of tea

all night! BEN [Despairingly.] What do we do now? GUS What are we supposed to drink?

[BEN sits on his bed, staring.] What about us? [BEN sits.]

.

261 8 / HAROLD PINTER

I'm thirsty too. I'm starving. And he wants a cup of tea. That beats the band, that does.

[BEN lets his head sink on his chest.] I could do with a bit of sustenance myself. What about you? You look as if you could do with something too.

[GUS sits on his hed.] We send him up all we've got and he's not satisfied. No, honest, it's enough to make the cat laugh. Why did you send him up all that stuff? [Thoughtfully.] Why did I send it up?

[Pause. ]

Who knows what he's got upstairs? He's probably got a salad bowl. They must have something up there. They won't get much from down here. You notice they didn't ask for any salads? They've probably got a salad bowl up there. Cold meat, radishes, cucumbers. Watercress. Roll mops.

[Pause. ] Hardboiled eggs.

[Pause.]

The lot. They've probably got a crate of beer too. Probably eating my crisps with a pint of beer now. Didn't have anything to say about those crisps, did he? They do all right, don't worry about that. You don't think they're just going to sit there and wait for stuff to come up from down here, do you? That'll get them nowhere.

[Pause.]

They do all right.

[Pause.]

And he wants a cup of tea.

[Pause. ]

That's past a joke, in my opinion.

[He looks over at BEN, rises, and goes to him.] What's the matter with you? You don't look too bright. I feel like an Alka- Seltzer myself.

[BEN sits up. ] BEN [In a low voice.] Time's getting on. GUS I know. I don't like doing a job on an empty stomach. BEN [Wearily.] Be quiet a minute. Let me give you your instructions. GUS What for? We always do it the same way, don't we? BEN Let me give you your instructions.

[GUS sighs and sits next to BEN on the hed. The instructions are stated and repeated automatically.]

When we get the call, you go over and stand behind the door. GUS Stand behind the door. BEN If there's a knock on the door you don't answer it. GUS If there's a knock on the door I don't answer it. BEN But there won't be a knock on the door. GUS SO I won't answer it. BEN When the bloke comes in� GUS When the bloke comes in� BEN Shut the door behind him. GUS Shut the door behind him. BEN Without divulging your presence. GUS Without divulging my presence.

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 262 1

BEN He'll see me and come towards me. GUS He'll see you and come towards you. BEN He won't see you. GUS [Absently.] Eh? BEN He won't see you. GUS He won't see me. BEN But he'll see me. GUS He'll see you. BEN He won't know you're there. GUS He won't know you're there. BEN He won't know you're there. GUS He won't know I'm there. BEN I take out my gun. GUS You take out your gun. BEN He stops in his tracks. GUS He stops in his tracks. BEN If he turns round-� GUS If he turns round� BEN You're there. GUS I'm here.

[ BEN/rmv J-Z.S and presses his forehead.]

You've missed something out. BEN I know. What? GUS I haven't taken my gun out, according to you. BEN You take your gun out� GUS After I've closed the door. BEN After you've closed the door. GUS You've never missed that out before, you know that? BEN When he sees you behind him� GUS Me behind him� BEN And me in front of him� GUS And you in front of him� BEN He'll feel uncertain� GUS Uneasy. BEN He won't know what to do. GUS So what will he do? BEN He'll look at me and he'll look at you. GUS We won't say a word. BEN We'll look at him. GUS He won't say a word. BEN He'll look at us. GUS And we'll look at him. BEN Exactly.

[Pause.]

GUS What do we do if it's a girl? BEN We do the same. GUS Exactly the same? BEN Exactly.

[Pause. ]

GUS We don't do anything different? BEN We do exactly the same.

.

262 0 / HAROLD PINTER

GUS Oh. [GUS rises, and shivers.]

Excuse me. [He exits through the door on the left, BEN remains sitting on the hed, still.

The lavatory chain is pulled once off left, hut the lavatory does not

flush. Silence. GUS re-enters and stops inside the door, deep in thought. He looks at

BEN, then walks slowly across to his own hed. He is troubled. He stands, thinking. He turns and looks at BEN. He moves a few paces towards him. ]

[Slowly in a low, tense voice.] Why did he send us matches if he knew there was no gas?

[Silence. BEN stares in front of him. GUS crosses to the left side of BEN, to the foot of his bed, to get to his other ear.]

Ben. Why did he send us matches if he knew there was no gas? [BEN looks up.]

Why did he do that? BEN Who? GUS Who sent us those matches? BEN What are you talking about?

[GUS stares down at him.] GUS [Thickly.] Who is it upstairs? BEN [Nervously.] What's one thing to do with another? GUS Who is it, though? BEN What's one thing to do with another?

[BEN fumbles for his paper on the bed.] GUS I asked you a question. BEN Enough! GUS [With growing agitation.] I asked you before. Who moved in? I asked

you. You said the people who had it before moved out. Well, who moved

in? BEN [Hunched.] Shut up. GUS I told you, didn't I? BEN [Standing. [ Shut up! GUS [Feverishly.] I told you before who owned this place, didn't I? I told you.

[BEN hits him viciously on the shoidder.] I told you who ran this place, didn't I?

[BEN hits him viciously on the shoidder.] [Violently.] Well, what's he playing all these games for? That's what I want to know. What's he doing it for?

BEN What games?

GUS [Passionately, advancing.] What's he doing it for? We've been through our tests, haven't we? We got right through our tests, years ago, didn't we? We took them together, don't you remember, didn't we? We've proved ourselves before now, haven't we? We've always done our job. What's he doing all this for? What's the idea? What's he playing these games for?

[The box in the shaft comes down behind them. The noise is this time accompanied by a shrill whistle, as it falls. GUS rushes to the hatch and seizes the note.]

.

THE DUMB WAITER / 262 1

[Reading.] Scampi! [He crnm-ples the note, picks up the tube, takes out the whistle, hlows and speaks.]

WE'VE GOT NOTHING LEFT! NOTHING! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

[BEN seizes the tube and flings GUS away. He follows GUS and slaps him hard, back-handed, across the chest.] BEN Stop it! You maniac! GUS But you heard! BEN [Savagely.] That's enough! I'm warning you! [Silence. BEN hangs the tube. He goes to his bed and lies down. He picks up his paper and reads. Silence. The box goes up. They turn quickly, their eyes meet, BEN turns to his paper. Slowly GUS goes back to his bed, and sits. Silence. The hatch falls back into place. They turn quickly, their eyes meet, BEN turns back to his paper. Silence. BEN throws his paper down.] BEN Kaw! [He picks up the paper and looks at it.]

Listen to this!

[Pause. ]

What about that, eh?

[Pause.] Kaw!

[Pause.] Have you ever heard such a thing? GUS [Dully.] Go on! BEN It's true. GUS Get away. BEN It's down here in black and white. GUS [Very low.] Is that a fact? BEN Can you imagine it. GUS It's unbelievable. BEN It's enough to make you want to puke, isn't it? GUS [Almost inaudible.] Incredible.

[BEN shakes his head. He puts the paper down and rises. He fixes the revolver in his holster.

GUS stands up. He goes towards the door on the left.] BEN Where are you going? GUS I'm going to have a glass of water.

[He exits, BEN brushes dust off his clothes and shoes. The whistle in the speaking tube hlows. He goes to it, takes the whistle out and puts the tube to his ear. He listens. He puts it to his mouth. ]

BEN Yes.

[To ear. He listens. To mouth.]

Straight away. Right.

[To ear. He listens. To mouth.]

Sure we're ready.

.

262 2 / CHINUA ACHEBE

[To ear. He listens. To mouth.]

Understood. Repeat. He has arrived and will be coming in straight away. The normal method to be employed. Understood. [To ear. He listens. To mouth.] Sure we're ready. [To ear. He listens. To mouth.] Right.

[He hangs the tube up. ]

Gus!

[He takes out a comh and combs his hair, adjusts his jacket to diminish the bidge of the revolver. The lavatory flushes off left, BEN goes quickly to the door, left.]

Gus! [The door right opens sharply, BEN turns, his revolver leveled at the door. GUS stumbles in.

He is stripped of his jacket, waistcoat, tie, holster, and revolver. He stops, body stooping, his arms at his sides. He raises his head and looks at BEN. A long silence. They stare at each other.]

CURTAIN

1960

CHINUA ACHEBE

b. 1930 The most celebrated African novelist is Chinua Achebe, whose Things Fall Apart (1958) permanently transformed the landscape of African fiction, both in his own continent and in the Western imagination. His novels, while steadfastly refusing to sentimentalize their Nigerian subjects, effectively challenged many of the West's entrenched impressions of African life and culture, replacing simplistic stereotypes with portrayals of a complex society still suffering from a legacy of Western colonial oppression.

Achebe was born in Ogidi, an Igbo-speaking town in eastern Nigeria, and educated� in English�at church schools and University College, Ibadan, where he subsequently taught (briefly) before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos. He was director of external broadcasting from 1961 to 1966, and then launched a publishing company with Christopher Okigbo, a poet soon to die in the Nigerian civil war (1967�70). After the war Achebe taught in the United States, before returning for a time to the University of Nigeria at Nsukka. Since 1990 Achebe has been Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.

A volume of Achebe's poems was joint winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972. He also has written short stories and essays, including an attack on corruption in Nigerian politics, The Trouble with Nigeria (1983). A more famous attack of another kind, his essay "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," is a vigorous polemic that accuses Conrad of racism, while perhaps deflecting attention from Achebe's debt to his Polish-born precursor. Achebe is best-known for his

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CHINUA ACHEBE / 262 3

novels, however: Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). The first of these is a response to Joyce Cary's Mr. Johnson (1939), a novel famous in its day for its depiction of Nigerian tribal society. Cary had been a British district officer in Nigeria, and his account of the life and tragic death of a young African clerk, although well meaning, was written from an outsider's patronizing perspective. By contrast, Achebe's Things Fall Apart, written with an insider's understanding of the African world and its history, depicts the destruction of an individual, a family, and a culture at the moment of colonial incursion. This novel's hero, Okonkwo, is dignified and courageous, a noble figure, whereas Cary's Mr. Johnson is charming but undignified. Like other tragic heroes, however, Okonkwo is flawed and falls through lack of the balance everywhere celebrated in Achebe's writings.

Taking his title from W. B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming," Achebe shows how "the blood-dimmed tide is loosed" in a Nigerian village by European colonizers, drowning the ceremonies of the indigenous society. The novel is set in the fictional village of Umuofia during the late nineteenth century, before the arrival of Europeans, and in the ensuing period of British imperial "pacification" of southeast Nigeria from

1900 to 1920, including the Ahiara massacre of 1905 (fictionalized in chapter 15 as the Abame incident) and the destruction of Igbo opposition groups by the Bende- Onitsha Hinterland Expedition. The British asserted colonial authority over the Igbo through a combination of economic trade, missionary religion, and political control, and Achebe represents this process of colonization from the vantage point of villagers who are puzzled, intrigued, co-opted, enraged, divided against themselves, or killed. The imperial incursion seems all the more bewildering and violent because the novel has immersed the reader in this village society's finely calibrated cultural practices in religion and government, athletics and storytelling, agriculture and the family. Helping to rebut Western preconceptions about African primitivism, this rich portrait of a culture also advances Achebe's ambition to help his "society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement" produced by the distortions of colonialism. He has said he wants his novels to teach his African "readers that their past�with all its imperfections�was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them." But while Things Fall Apart lays considerable blame for the destruction of Igbo village society at the door of the whites, Achebe carefully avoids rosily idealizing the precolonial Igbo world, and he has frankly acknowledged that "internal problems" also made this African society vulnerable. Things Fall Apart is at once Okonkwo's tragedy and that of a complex tribal society, whose members speak a resonantly proverbial language that operates in the book as an image of all the beautiful and traditional structures transformed irrevocably by colonialism.

PRONOUNCING GLOSSARY

The following list uses common English syllables and stress accents to provide rough equivalents of selected words. Most of the names in Things Fall Apart are pronounced basically as they would be in English (for example, Okonkwo as oh-kon'-kwo), except that Igbo (like other African languages and Chinese) is a tonal language and therefore uses high or low tones for

individual syllables. Chielo: chee'-ay-loh Ikemefuna: ee-kay-may'-foo-na egwugu: eg-woog'-woo mbari: mbah'-ree Erulu: air-oo'-loo Ndulue: in'-doo-loo'-eh Ezeani: ez-ah'-nee Nwakibie: nwa'-kee-ee'-bee-yay Ezeugo: e'-zoo-goh Nwayieke: nwah'-ee-eh'-kay Idemili: ee-day-mee'-lee Umuofia: oo'-moo-off -yah Igbo: ee'-boh

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Things Fall Apart

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

W. B. Yeats: 'The Second Coming1 Part One

CHAPTER ONE

Okonkwo1 was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino.2 He was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.

The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end Okonkwo threw the Cat.

That was many years ago, twenty years or more, and during this time Okonkwo's fame had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan.3 He was tall and huge, and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look. He breathed heavily, and it was said that, when he slept, his wives and children in their out-houses could hear him breathe. When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had had no patience with his father.

Unoka,4 for that was his father's name, had died ten years ago. In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow. If any money came his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palm-wine, called round his neighbours and made merry. He always said that whenever he saw a dead man's mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one's lifetime. Unoka was, of course, a debtor, and he owed every neighbour some money, from a few cowries5 to quite substantial amounts.

He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop. He wore a haggard and mournful look except when he was drinking or playing on his flute. He was

1. Man [ofeo] born on Nkwo Day; the name also 4. Home is supreme. suggests stubborn male pride. 5. Glossy half-inch-long tan-and-white shells, col2. Four settlements. Umuofia means "children of lected in strings and used as money. A bag of the forest" (literal trans.); but ofia ("forest") also twenty-four thousand cowries weighed about sixty means "bush," or land untouched by European pounds and, at the time of the story, was worth influence. approximately ..1 British. 3. A dusty wind from the Sahara.

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very good on his flute, and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the harvest when the village musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the fireplace. Unoka would play with them, his face beaming with blessedness and peace. Sometimes another village would ask Unoka's band and their dancing egxvugwu6 to come and stay with them and teach them their tunes. They would go to such hosts for as long as three or four markets,7 making music and feasting. Unoka loved the good fare and the good fellowship, and he loved this season of the year, when the rains had stopped and the sun rose every morning with dazzling beauty. And it was not too hot either, because the cold and dry harmattan wind was blowing down from the north. Some years the harmattan was very severe and a dense haze hung on the atmosphere. Old men and children would then sit round log fires, warming their bodies. Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites8 that returned with the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to them. He would remember his own childhood, how he had often wandered around looking for a kite sailing leisurely against the blue sky. As soon as he found one he would sing with his whole being, welcoming it back from its long, long journey, and asking it if it had brought home any lengths of cloth.

That was years ago, when he was young. Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure. He was poor and his wife and children had barely enough to eat. People laughed at him because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back. But Unoka was such a man that he always succeeded in borrowing more, and piling up his debts.

One day a neighbour called Okoye9 came in to see him. He was reclining on a mud bed in his hut playing on the flute. He immediately rose and shook hands with Okoye, who then unrolled the goatskin which he carried under his arm, and sat down. Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk.1

"I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his guest. "Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break it," replied Okoye passing back the disc.

"No, it is for you, I think," and they argued like this for a few moments before Unoka accepted the honour of breaking the kola. Okoye, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.2

As he broke the kola, Unoka prayed to their ancestors for life and health, and for protection against their enemies. When they had eaten they talked about many things: about the heavy rains which were drowning the yams, about the next ancestral feast and about the impending war with the village of Mbaino. Unoka was never happy when it came to wars. He was in fact a coward and could not bear the sight of blood. And so he changed the subject

6. Here masked performers as part of musical entertainment. 7. Counting one important market day a week, roughly two English weeks. The Igbo week has four days: Eke, Oye, Afo, and Nkwo. Eke is a rest day and the main market day; Afo, a half day on the farm; Oye and Nkwo, full workdays. 8. A kind of hawk. 9. Man born on Oye Day; a generic "Everyman" name. 1. Signifies coolness and peace and is offered in rituals of hospitality so that the guest may draw his personal emblem on the floor. "Kola nut": a bitter, caffeine-rich nut that is broken and eaten ceremonially; it indicates life or vitality. "Alligator pepper": black pepper, known as the "pepper for kola" to distinguish it from cooking pepper, or chilies. 2. If the guest has taken the first title, he marks his big toe. Higher titles require different facial markings.

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and talked about music, and his face beamed. He could hear in his mind's ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe and the udu and the ogene,3 and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them, decorating them with a colourful and plaintive tune. The total effect was gay and brisk, but if one picked out the flute as it went up and down and then broke up into short snatches, one saw that there was sorrow and grief there.

Okoye was also a musician. He played on the ogene. But he was not a failure like Unoka. He had a large barn full of yams and he had three wives. And now he was going to take the Idemili title,4 the third highest in the land. It was a very expensive ceremony and he was gathering all his resources together. That was in fact the reason why he had come to see Unoka. He cleared his throat and began:

"Thank you for the kola. You may have heard of the title I intend to take shortly."

Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye said the next half a dozen sentences in proverbs. Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Okoye was a great talker and he spoke for a long time, skirting round the subject and then hitting it finally. In short, he was asking Unoka to return the two hundred cowries he had borrowed from him more than two years before. As soon as Unoka understood what his friend was driving at, he burst out laughing. He laughed loud and long and his voice rang out clear as the ogene, and tears stood in his eyes. His visitor was amazed, and sat speechless. At the end, Unoka was able to give an answer between fresh outbursts of mirth.

"Look at that wall," he said, pointing at the far wall of his hut, which was rubbed with red earth so that it shone. "Look at those lines of chalk;" and Okoye saw groups of short perpendicular lines drawn in chalk. There were five groups, and the smallest group had ten lines. Unoka had a sense of the dramatic and so he allowed a pause, in which he took a pinch of snuff and sneezed noisily, and then he continued: "Each group there represents a debt to someone, and each stroke is one hundred cowries. You see, I owe that man a thousand cowries. But he has not come to wake me up in the morning for it. I shall pay you, but not today. Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them. I shall pay my big debts first." And he took another pinch of snuff, as if that was paying the big debts first. Okoye rolled his goatskin and departed.

When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt. Any wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him? Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father. Okonkwo was clearly cut out for great things. He was still young but he had won fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages. He was a wealthy farmer and had two barns full of yams, and had just married his third wife. To crown it all he had taken two titles and had shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars. And so although Okonkwo was still young, he was already one of the greatest men of his time. Age was respected

3. A bell-shaped gong made from two pieces of uncovers the top. sheet iron. "Ekwe": a wooden drum, about three 4. A title of honor named after the river god Idem- feet long, that produces high and low tones (as ili, to whom the python is sacred. "Barn": not a does the Igbo language). "Udu": a clay pot with a building but a walled enclosure for the yam stacks hole to one side of the neck opening; various res-(frames on which individual yams are tied, shaded onant tones are produced when the hole is struck with palm leaves, and exposed to circulating air). with one hand while the other hand covers or

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THINGS FALL APART, PART 1 / 2627

among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings. Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands and so he ate with kings and elders. And that was how he came to look after the doomed lad who was sacrificed to the village of Umuofia by their neighbours to avoid war and bloodshed. The ill-fated lad was called Ikemefuna.5

CHAPTER TWO

Okonkwo had just blown out the palm-oil lamp and stretched himself on his bamboo bed when he heard the ogene of the town-crier piercing the still night air. Gome, gome, gome, gome, boomed the hollow metal. Then the crier gave his message, and at the end of it beat his instrument again. And this was the message. Every man of Umuofia was asked to gather at the market-place tomorrow morning. Okonkwo wondered what was amiss, for he knew certainly that something was amiss. He had discerned a clear overtone of tragedy in the crier's voice, and even now he could still hear it as it grew dimmer and dimmer in the distance.

The night was very quiet. It was always quiet except on moonlight nights. Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them. Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits. Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string. And so on this particular night as the crier's voice was gradually swallowed up in the distance, silence returned to the world, a vibrant silence made more intense by the universal trill of a million million forest insects.

On a moonlight night it would be different. The happy voices of children playing in open fields would then be heard. And perhaps those not so young would be playing in pairs in less open places, and old men and women would remember their youth. As the Ibo say: "When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk."

But this particular night was dark and silent. And in all the nine villages of Umuofia a town-crier with his ogene asked every man to be present tomorrow morning. Okonkwo on his bamboo bed tried to figure out the nature of the emergency�war with a neighbouring clan? That seemed the most likely reason, and he was not afraid of war. He was a man of action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood. In Umuofia's latest war he was the first to bring home a human head. That was his fifth head; and he was not an old man yet. On great occasions such as the funeral of a village celebrity he drank his palm-wine from his first human head.

In the morning the market-place was full. There must have been about ten thousand men there, all talking in low voices. At last Ogbuefi Ezeugo stood up in the midst of them and bellowed four times, "Umuofia kwenu,"6 and on each occasion he faced a different direction and seemed to push the air with a clenched fist. And ten thousand men answered "Yaa!" each time. Then there was perfect silence. Ogbuefi Ezeugo was a powerful orator and was always chosen to speak on such occasions. He moved his hand over his white head

5. My strength should not be dissipated. high title (e.g., the ldemili title) for which the cel6. United Umuofia! An orator's call on the audi-ebration ceremony requires the slaughter of a cow. ence to respond as a group. "Ogbuefi": cow killer "Ezeugo": a name denoting a priest or high initiate, (literal trans.); indicates someone who has taken a someone who wears the eagle feather.

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and stroked his white beard. He then adjusted his cloth, which was passed under his right arm-pit and tied above his left shoulder.

"Umuofia kwenu," he bellowed a fifth time, and the crowd yelled in answer. And then suddenly like one possessed he shot out his left hand and pointed in the direction of Mbaino, and said through gleaming white teeth firmly clenched: "Those sons of wild animals have dared to murder a daughter of Umuofia." He threw his head down and gnashed his teeth, and allowed a murmur of suppressed anger to sweep the crowd. When he began again, the anger on his face was gone and in its place a sort of smile hovered, more terrible and more sinister than the anger. And in a clear unemotional voice he told Umuofia how their daughter had gone to market at Mbaino and had been killed. That woman, said Ezeugo, was the wife of Ogbuefi Udo,7 and he pointed to a man who sat near him with a bowed head. The crowd then shouted with anger and thirst for blood.

Many others spoke, and at the end it was decided to follow the normal course of action. An ultimatum was immediately dispatched to Mbaino asking them to choose between war on the one hand, and on the other the offer of a young man and a virgin as compensation.

Umuofia was feared by all its neighbours. It was powerful in war and in magic, and its priests and medicine-men were feared in all the surrounding country. Its most potent war-medicine was as old as the clan itself. Nobody knew how old. But on one point there was general agreement�the active principle in that medicine had been an old woman with one leg. In fact, the medicine itself was called agadi-nwayi, or old woman. It had its shrine in the centre of Umuofia, in a cleared spot. And if anybody was so foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see the old woman hopping about.

And so the neighbouring clans who naturally knew of these things feared Umuofia, and would not go to war against it without first trying a peaceful settlement. And in fairness to Umuofia it should be recorded that it never went to war unless its case was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle�the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves. And there were indeed occasions when the Oracle had forbidden Umuofia to wage a war. If the clan had disobeyed the Oracle they would surely have been beaten, because their dreaded agadi-nwayi would never fight what the Ibo call a fight ofhlame.

But the war that now threatened was a just war. Even the enemy clan knew that. And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the proud and imperious emissary of war, he was treated with great honour and respect, and two days later he returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young virgin. The lad's name was Ikemefuna, whose sad story is still told in Umuofia unto this day.

The elders, or ndichie, met to hear a report of Okonkwo's mission. At the end they decided, as everybody knew they would, that the girl should go to Ogbuefi Udo to replace his murdered wife. As for the boy, he belonged to the clan as a whole, and there was no hurry to decide his fate. Okonkwo was, therefore, asked on behalf of the clan to look after him in the interim. And so for three years Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo's household.

Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little chil

7. Peace.

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dren. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. Even as a little boy he had resented his father's failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title. And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion� to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.

During the planting season Okonkwo worked daily on his farms from cockcrow until the chickens went to roost. He was a very strong man and rarely felt fatigue. But his wives and young children were not as strong, and so they suffered. But they dared not complain openly. Okonkwo's first son, Nwoye,8 was then twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant nagging and beating. And so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth.

Okonkwo's prosperity was visible in his household. He had a large compound enclosed by a thick wall of red earth. His own hut, or obi, stood immediately behind the only gate in the red walls. Each of his three wives had her own hut, which together formed a half moon behind the obi. The barn was built against one end of the red walls, and long stacks of yam stood out prosperously in it. At the opposite end of the compound was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment to her hut for the hens. Near the barn was a small house, the 'medicine house' or shrine where Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal god and of his ancestral spirits. He worshipped them with sacrifices of kola nut, food and palm-wine, and offered prayers to them on behalf of himself, his three wives and eight children.

So when the daughter of Umuofia was killed in Mbaino, Ikemefuna came into Okonkwo's household. When Okonkwo brought him home that day he called his most senior wife and handed him over to her.

"He belongs to the clan," he told her. "So look after him."

"Is he staying long with us?" she asked.

"Do what you are told, woman," Okonkwo thundered, and stammered. "When did you become one of the ndichie of Umuofia?" And so Nwoye's mother took Ikemefuna to her hut and asked no more questions.

As for the boy himself, he was terribly afraid. He could not understand what was happening to him or what he had done. How could he know that his father had taken a hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia? All he knew was that a few men had arrived at their house, conversing with his father in low tones, and at the end he had been taken out and handed over to a stranger. His mother had wept bitterly, but he had been too surprised to weep. And so the stranger had brought him, and a girl, a long, long way from home, through

8. Child born on Oye Day.

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lonely forest paths. He did not know who the girl was, and he never saw her again.

CHAPTER THREE

Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had. He did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit. The story was told in Umuofia of how his father, Unoka, had gone to consult the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves to find out why he always had a miserable harvest.

The Oracle was called Agbala,9 and people came from far and near to consult it. They came when misfortune dogged their steps or when they had a dispute with their neighbours. They came to discover what the future held for them or to consult the spirits of their departed fathers.

The way into the shrine was a round hole at the side of a hill, just a little bigger than the round opening into a hen-house. Worshippers and those who came to seek knowledge from the god crawled on their belly through the hole and found themselves in a dark, endless space in the presence of Agbala. No one had ever beheld Agbala, except his priestess. But no one who had ever crawled into his awful shrine had come out without the fear of his power. His priestess stood by the sacred fire which she built in the heart of the cave and proclaimed the will of the god. The fire did not burn with a flame. The glowing logs only served to light up vaguely the dark figure of the priestess.

Sometimes a man came to consult the spirit of his dead father or relative. It was said that when such a spirit appeared, the man saw it vaguely in the darkness, but never heard its voice. Some people even said that they had heard the spirits flying and flapping their wings against the roof of the cave.

Many years ago when Okonkwo was still a boy his father, Unoka, had gone to consult Agbala. The priestess in those days was a woman called Chika.1 She was full of the power of her god, and she was greatly feared. Unoka stood before her and began his story.

"Every year," he said sadly, "before I put any crop in the earth, I sacrifice a cock to Ani, the owner of all land. It is the law of our fathers. I also kill a cock at the shrine of Ifejioku, the god of yams. I clear the bush and set fire to it when it is dry. I sow the yams when the first rain has fallen, and stake them when the young tendrils appear. I weed "

"Hold your peace!" screamed the priestess, her voice terrible as it echoed through the dark void. "You have offended neither the gods nor your fathers. And when a man is at peace with his gods and his ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm. You, Unoka, are known in all the clan for the weakness of your matchet2 and your hoe. When your neighbours go out with their axe to cut down virgin forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labour to clear. They cross seven rivers to make their farms; you stay at home and offer sacrifices to a reluctant soil. Go home and work like a man."

Unoka was an ill-fated man. He had a bad chi or personal god, and evil fortune followed him to the grave, or rather to his death, for he had no grave. He died of the swelling which was an abomination to the earth goddess. When a man was afflicted with swelling in the stomach and the limbs he was not

9. The Oracle is masculine, but his priestess, or 1. Sky is supreme. Voice, is feminine. 2. Machete.

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allowed to die in the house. He was carried to the Evil Forest and left there to die. There was the story of a very stubborn man who staggered back to his house and had to be carried again to the forest and tied to a tree. The sickness was an abomination to the earth, and so the victim could not be buried in her bowels. He died and rotted away above the earth, and was not given the first or the second burial. Such was Unoka's fate. When they carried him away, he took with him his flute.

With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men had. He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages, he had begun even in his father's lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous future. It was slow and painful. But he threw himself into it like one possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's contemptible life and shameful death.

There was a wealthy man in Okonkwo's village who had three huge barns, nine wives and thirty children. His name was Nwakibie3 and he had taken the highest but one title which a man could take in the clan. It was for this man that Okonkwo worked to earn his first seed yams.

He took a pot of palm-wine and a cock to Nwakibie. Two elderly neighbours were sent for, and Nwakibie's two grown-up sons were also present in his obi. He presented a kola nut and an alligator pepper, which was passed round for all to see and then returned to him. He broke it, saying: "We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break."

After the kola nut had been eaten Okonkwo brought his palm-wine from the corner of the hut where it had been placed and stood it in the centre of the group. He addressed Nwakibie, calling him 'Our father'.

"Nna ayi," he said. "I have brought you this little kola. As our people say, a man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness. I have come to pay you my respects and also to ask a favour. But let us drink the wine first."

Everybody thanked Okonkwo and the neighbours brought out their drinking horns from the goatskin bags they carried. Nwakibie brought down his own horn, which was fastened to the rafters. The younger of his sons, who was also the youngest man in the group, moved to the centre, raised the pot on his left knee and began to pour out the wine. The first cup went to Okonkwo, who must taste his wine before anyone else.4 Then the group drank, beginning with the eldest man. When everyone had drunk two or three horns, Nwakibie sent for his wives. Some of them were not at home and only four came in.

"Is Anasi not in?" he asked them. They said she was coming. Anasi was the first5 wife and the others could not drink before her, and so they stood waiting.

Anasi was a middle-aged woman, tall and strongly built. There was authority in her bearing and she looked every inch the ruler of the womenfolk in a large and prosperous family. She wore the anklet of her husband's titles, which the first wife alone could wear.

She walked up to her husband and accepted the horn from him. She then went down on one knee, drank a little and handed back the horn. She rose,

3. The child surpasses his neighbors. it first to show that it is not poisoned. 4. A ceremonial gesture; one who gives wine tastes 5. First or favorite wife�not always the same.

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called him by his name and went back to her hut. The other wives drank in the same way, in their proper order, and went away. The men then continued their drinking and talking. Ogbuefi Idigo was talking about the palm-wine tapper, Obiako, who suddenly gave up his trade.

"There must be something behind it," he said, wiping the foam of wine from his moustache with the back of his left hand. "There must be a reason for it. A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing."

"Some people say the Oracle warned him that he would fall off a palm tree and kill himself," said Akukalia.

"Obiako has always been a strange one," said Nwakibie. "I have heard that many years ago, when his father had not been dead very long, he had gone to consult the Oracle. The Oracle said to him, 'Your dead father wants you to sacrifice a goat to him.' Do you know what he told the Oracle? He said, 'Ask my dead father if he ever had a fowl when he was alive.' " Everybody laughed heartily except Okonkwo, who laughed uneasily because, as the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb. Okonkwo remembered his own father.

At last the young man who was pouring out the wine held up half a horn of the thick, white dregs and said, "What we are eating is finished." "We have seen it," the others replied. "Who will drink the dregs?" he asked. "Whoever has a job in hand," said Idigo, looking at Nwakibie's elder son Igwelo with a malicious twinkle in his eye.

Everybody agreed that Igwelo should drink the dregs. He accepted the half- full horn from his brother and drank it. As Idigo had said, Igwelo had a job in hand because he had married his first wife a month or two before. The thick dregs of palm-wine were supposed to be good for men who were going in to their wives.

After the wine had been drunk Okonkwo laid his difficulties before Nwakibie.

"I have come to you for help," he said. "Perhaps you can already guess what it is. I have cleared a farm but have no yams to sow. I know what it is to ask a man to trust another with his yams, especially these days when young men are afraid of hard work. I am not afraid of work. The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did. I began to fend for myself at an age when most people still suck at their mothers' breasts. If you give me some yam seeds I shall not fail you."

Nwakibie cleared his throat. "It pleases me to see a young man like you these days when our youth have gone so soft. Many young men have come to me to ask for yams but I have refused because I knew they would just dump them in the earth and leave them to be choked by weeds. When I say no to them they think I am hard-hearted. But it is not so. Eneke the bird6 says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing, he has learnt to fly without perching. I have learnt to be stingy with my yams. But I can trust you. I know it as I look at you. As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look. I shall give you twice four hundred yams. Go ahead and prepare your farm."

Okonkwo thanked him again and again and went home feeling happy. He knew that Nwakibie would not refuse him, but he had not expected he would be so generous. He had not hoped to get more than four hundred seeds. He would now have to make a bigger farm. He hoped to get another four hundred yams from one of his father's friends at Isiuzo.7

6. Proverbial. 7. Head of the road; a small town.

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Share-cropping was a very slow way of building up a barn of one's own. After all the toil one only got a third of the harvest. But for a young man whose father had no yams, there was no other way. And what made it worse in Okonkwo's case was that he had to support his mother and two sisters from his meagre harvest. And supporting his mother also meant supporting his father. She could not be expected to cook and eat while her husband starved. And so at a very early age when he was striving desperately to build a barn through share-cropping Okonkwo was also fending for his father's house. It was like pouring grains of corn into a bag full of holes. His mother and sisters worked hard enough, but they grew women's crops, like coco-yams, beans and cassava. Yam, the king of crops, was a man's crop.8

The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed-yams from Nwakibie was the worst year in living memory. Nothing happened at its proper time; it was either too early or too late. It seemed as if the world had gone mad. The first rains were late, and, when they came, lasted only a brief moment. The blazing sun returned, more fierce than it had ever been known, and scorched all the green that had appeared with the rains. The earth burned like hot coals and roasted all the yams that had been sown. Like all good farmers, Okonkwo had begun to sow with the first rains. He had sown four hundred seeds when the rains dried up and the heat returned. He watched the sky all day for signs of rain-clouds and lay awake all night. In the morning he went back to his farm and saw the withering tendrils. He had tried to protect them from the smouldering earth by making rings of thick sisal leaves around them. But by the end of the day the sisal rings were burnt dry and grey. He changed them every day, and prayed that the rain might fall in the night. But the drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams were killed.

Some farmers had not planted their yams yet. They were the lazy easy-going ones who always put off clearing their farms as long as they could. This year they were the wise ones. They sympathised with their neighbours with much shaking of the head, but inwardly they were happy for what they took to be their own foresight.

Okonkwo planted what was left of his seed-yams when the rains finally returned. He had one consolation. The yams he had sown before the drought were his own, the harvest of the previous year. He still had the eight hundred from Nwakibie and the four hundred from his father's friend. So he would make a fresh start.

But the year had gone mad. Rain fell as it had never fallen before. For days and nights together it poured down in violent torrents, and washed away the yam heaps. Trees were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere. Then the rain became less violent. But it went on from day to day without a pause. The spell of sunshine which always came in the middle of the wet season did not appear. The yams put on luxuriant green leaves, but every farmer knew that without sunshine the tubers would not grow.

That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral, and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams. One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged himself.

Okonkwo remembered that tragic year with a cold shiver throughout the

8. Yams, a staple food in Western Africa, were a ioc, which is refined in various ways to remove natsacred crop generally cultivated only by men and ural cyanide) were low-status root vegetables, eaten either roasted or boiled. "Coco-yams" (a prepared for eating by boiling and pounding. brown root also called taro) and "cassava" (or man

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rest of his life. It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair. He knew he was a fierce fighter, but that year had been enough to break the heart of a lion.

"Since I survived that year," he always said, "I shall survive anything." He put it down to his inflexible will.

His father, Unoka, who was then an ailing man, had said to him during that terrible harvest month: "Do not despair. I know you will not despair. You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone."

Unoka was like that in his last days. His love of talk had grown with age and sickness. It tried Okonkwo's patience beyond words.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Looking at a king's mouth," said an old man, "one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast." He was talking about Okonkwo, who had risen so suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of the clan. The old man bore no ill-will towards Okonkwo. Indeed he respected him for his industry and success. But he was struck, as most people were, by Okonkwo's brusqueness in dealing with less successful men. Only a week ago a man had contradicted him at a kindred meeting which they held to discuss the next ancestral feast. Without looking at the man Okonkwo had said: "This meeting is for men." The man who had contradicted him had no titles. That was why he had called him a woman. Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's spirit.

Everybody at the kindred meeting took sides with Osugo9 when Okonkwo called him a woman. The oldest man present said sternly that those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble. Okonkwo said he was sorry for what he had said, and the meeting continued.

But it was really not true that Okonkwo's palm-kernels had been cracked for him by a benevolent spirit. He had cracked them himself. Anyone who knew his grim struggle against poverty and misfortune could not say he had been lucky. If ever a man deserved his success, that man was Okonkwo. At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land. That was not luck. At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed. And not only his chi but his clan too, because it judged a man by the work of his hands. That was why Okonkwo had been chosen by the nine villages to carry a message of war to their enemies unless they agreed to give up a young man and a virgin to atone for the murder of Udo's wife. And such was the deep fear that their enemies had for Umuofia that they treated Okonkwo like a king and brought him a virgin who was given to Udo as wife, and the lad Ikemefuna.

The elders of the clan had decided that Ikemefuna should be in Okonkwo's care for a while. But no one thought it would be as long as three years. They seemed to forget all about him as soon as they had taken the decision.

At first Ikemefuna was very much afraid. Once or twice he tried to run away,

9. Low-status (osu) person.

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but he did not know where to begin. He thought of his mother and his threeyear- old sister and wept bitterly. Nwoye's mother was very kind to him and treated him as one of her own children. But all he said was: "When shall I go home?" When Okonkwo heard that he would not eat any food he came into the hut with a big stick in his hand and stood over him while he swallowed his yams, trembling. A few moments later he went behind the hut and began to vomit painfully. Nwoye's mother went to him and placed her hands on his chest and on his back. He was ill for three market weeks, and when he recovered he seemed to have overcome his great fear and sadness.

He was by nature a very lively boy and he gradually became popular in Okonkwo's household, especially with the children. Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, who was two years younger, became quite inseparable from him because he seemed to know everything. He could fashion out flutes from bamboo stems and even from the elephant grass. He knew the names of all the birds and could set clever traps for the little bush rodents. And he knew which trees made the strongest bows.

Even Okonkwo himself became very fond of the boy�inwardly of course. Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength. He therefore treated Ikemefuna as he treated everybody else� with a heavy hand. But there was no doubt that he liked the boy. Sometimes when he went to big village meetings or communal ancestral feasts he allowed Ikemefuna to accompany him, like a son, carrying his stool and his goatskin bag. And, indeed, Ikemefuna called him father.

Ikemefuna came to Umuofia at the end of the carefree season between harvest and planting. In fact he recovered from his illness only a few days before the Week of Peace began. And that was also the year Okonkwo broke the peace, and was punished, as was the custom, by Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess.

Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable anger by his youngest wife, who went to plait her hair at her friend's house and did not return early enough to cook the afternoon meal. Okonkwo did not know at first that she was not at home. After waiting in vain for her dish he went to her hut to see what she was doing. There was nobody in the hut and the fireplace was cold.

"Where is Ojiugo?" he asked his second wife, who came out of her hut to draw water from a gigantic pot in the shade of a small tree in the middle of the compound.

"She has gone to plait her hair."

Okonkwo bit his lips as anger welled up within him.

"Where are her children? Did she take them?" he asked with unusual cool

ness and restraint.

"They are here," answered his first wife, Nwoye's mother. Okonkwo bent down and looked into her hut. Ojiugo's children were eating with the children of his first wife.

"Did she ask you to feed them before she went?"

"Yes," lied Nwoye's mother, trying to minimise Ojiugo's thoughtlessness.

Okonkwo knew she was not speaking the truth. He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo's return. And when she returned he beat her very heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace. His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week. But

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Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess.

Okonkwo's neighbours heard his wife crying and sent their voices over the compound walls to ask what was the matter. Some of them came over to see for themselves. It was unheard-of to beat somebody during the sacred week.

Before it was dusk Ezeani, who was the priest of the earth goddess, Ani, called on Okonkwo in his obi. Okonkwo brought out kola nut and placed it before the priest.

"Take away your kola nut. I shall not eat in the house of a man who has no respect for our gods and ancestors."

Okonkwo tried to explain to him what his wife had done, but Ezeani seemed to pay no attention. He held a short staff in his hand which he brought down on the floor to emphasise his points.

"Listen to me," he said when Okonkwo had spoken. "You are not a stranger in Umuofia. You know as well as I do that our forefathers ordained that before we plant any crops in the earth we should observe a week in which a man does not say a harsh word to his neighbour. We live in peace with our fellows to honour our great goddess of the earth without whose blessing our crops will not grow. You have committed a great evil." He brought down his staff heavily on the floor. "Your wife was at fault, but even if you came into your obi and found her lover on top of her, you would still have committed a great evil to beat her." His staff came down again. "The evil you have done can ruin the whole clan. The earth goddess whom you have insulted may refuse to give us her increase, and we shall all perish." His tone now changed from anger to command. "You will bring to the shrine of Ani tomorrow one she-goat, one hen, a length of cloth and a hundred cowries." He rose and left the hut.

Okonkwo did as the priest said. He also took with him a pot of palm-wine. Inwardly, he was repentant. But he was not the man to go about telling his neighbours that he was in error. And so people said he had no respect for the gods of the clan. His enemies said his good fortune had gone to his head. They called him the little bird nza1 who so far forgot himself after a heavy meal that he challenged his chi.

No work was done during the Week of Peace. People called on their neighbours and drank palm-wine. This year they talked of nothing else but the nsoani2 which Okonkwo had committed. It was the first time for many years that a man had broken the sacred peace. Even the oldest men could only remember one or two other occasions somewhere in the dim past.

Ogbuefi Ezeudu, who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men who came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan.

"It has not always been so," he said. "My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. But after a while this custom was stopped because it spoilt the peace which it was meant to preserve."

"Somebody told me yesterday," said one of the younger men, "that in some clans it is an abomination for a man to die during the Week of Peace."

1. The one that talks back (literal trans.); a small god. aggressive bird. In the traditional story, it is easily 2. Sin, abomination against the Earth goddess defeated (alternatively, caught by a hawk) when it Ani. becomes bold enough to challenge its personal

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"It is indeed true," said Ogbuefi Ezeudu. "They have that custom in Obodoani. 3 If a man dies at this time he is not buried but cast into the Evil Forest. It is a bad custom which these people observe because they lack understanding. They throw away large numbers of men and women without burial. And what is the result? Their clan is full of the evil spirits of these unburied dead, hungry to do harm to the living."

After the Week of Peace every man and his family began to clear the bush to make new farms. The cut bush was left to dry and fire was then set to it. As the smoke rose into the sky kites appeared from different directions and hovered over the burning field in silent valediction. The rainy season was approaching when they would go away until the dry season returned.

Okonkwo spent the next few days preparing his seed-yams. He looked at each yam carefully to see whether it was good for sowing. Sometimes he decided that a yam was too big to be sown as one seed and he split it deftly along its length with his sharp knife. His eldest son, Nwoye, and Ikemefuna helped him by fetching the yams in long baskets from the barn and in counting the prepared seeds in groups of four hundred. Sometimes Okonkwo gave them a few yams each to prepare. But he always found fault with their effort, and he said so with much threatening.

"Do you think you are cutting up yams for cooking?" he asked Nwoye. "If you split another yam of this size, I shall break your jaw. You think you are still a child. I began to own a farm at your age. And you," he said to Ikemefuna, "do you not grow yams where you come from?"

Inwardly Okonkwo knew that the boys were still too young to understand fully the difficult art of preparing seed-yams. But he thought that one could not begin too early. Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another was a very great man indeed. Okonkwo wanted his son to be a great farmer and a great man. He would stamp out the disquieting signs of laziness which he thought he already saw in him.

"I will not have a son who cannot hold up his head in the gathering of the clan. I would sooner strangle him with my own hands. And if you stand staring at me like that," he swore, "Amadiora4 will break your head for you!"

Some days later, when the land had been moistened by two or three heavy rains, Okonkwo and his family went to the farm with baskets of seed-yams, their hoes and matchets, and the planting began. They made single mounds of earth in straight lines all over the field and sowed the yams in them.

Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king. For three or four moons it demanded hard work and constant attention from cock-crow till the chickens went back to roost. The young tendrils were protected from earth-heat with rings of sisal leaves. As the rains became heavier the women planted maize, melons and beans between the yam mounds. The yams were then staked, first with little sticks and later with tall and big tree branches. The women weeded the farm three times at definite periods in the life of the yams, neither early nor late.

And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene. He could not

3. The town of the land (literal trans.); i.e., Any- 4. God of thunder and lightning, town, Nigeria.

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stop the rain now, just as he would not attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger to his own health. The personal dynamism required to counter the forces of these extremes of weather would be far too great for the human frame.

And so nature was not interfered with in the middle of the rainy season. Sometimes it poured down in such thick sheets of water that earth and sky seemed merged in one grey wetness. It was then uncertain whether the low rumbling of Amadiora's thunder came from above or below. At such times, in each of the countless thatched huts of Umuofia, children sat around their mother's cooking fire telling stories, or with their father in his obi warming themselves from a log fire, roasting and eating maize. It was a brief resting period between the exacting and arduous planting season and the equally exacting but light-hearted month of harvests.

Ikemefuna had begun to feel like a member of Okonkwo's family. He still thought about his mother and his three-year-old sister, and he had moments of sadness and depression. But he and Nwoye had become so deeply attached to each other that such moments became less frequent and less poignant. Ikemefuna had an endless stock of folk tales. Even those which Nwoye knew already were told with a new freshness and the local flavour of a different clan. Nwoye remembered this period very vividly till the end of his life. He even remembered how he had laughed when Ikemefuna told him that the proper name for a corn-cob with only a few scattered grains was eze-agadi-nwayi, or the teeth of an old woman. Nwoye's mind had gone immediately to Nwayieke, who lived near the udala tree.5 She had about three teeth and was always smoking her pipe.

Gradually the rains became lighter and less frequent, and earth and sky once again became separate. The rain fell in thin, slanting showers through sunshine and quiet breeze. Children no longer stayed indoors but ran about singing:

"The rain is falling, the sun is shining, Alone Nnadi6 is cooking and eating."

Nwoye always wondered who Nnadi was and why he should live all by himself, cooking and eating. In the end he decided that Nnadi must live in that land of Ikemefuna's favourite story where the ant holds his court in splendour and the sands dance forever.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Feast of the New Yam was approaching and Umuofia was in a festival mood. It was an occasion for giving thanks to Ani, the earth goddess and the source of all fertility. Ani played a greater part in the life of the people than any other deity. She was the ultimate judge of morality and conduct. And what was more, she was in close communion with the departed fathers of the clan whose bodies had been committed to earth.

The Feast of the New Yam was held every year before the harvest began, to honour the earth goddess and the ancestral spirits of the clan. New yams could not be eaten until some had first been offered to these powers. Men and

5. African star apple tree. "Nwayieke": Woman 6. Father is there or Father exists, born on Eke Day.

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women, young and old, looked forward to the New Yam Festival because it began the season of plenty�the new year. On the last night before the festival, yams of the old year were all disposed of by those who still had them. The new year must begin with tasty, fresh yams and not the shrivelled and fibrous crop of the previous year. All cooking-pots, calabashes and wooden bowls were thoroughly washed, especially the wooden mortar in which yam was pounded. Yam foo-foo7 and vegetable soup was the chief food in the celebration. So much of it was cooked that, no matter how heavily the family ate or how many friends and relations they invited from neighbouring villages, there was always a huge quantity of food left over at the end of the day. The story was always told of a wealthy man who set before his guests a mound of foo-foo so high that those who sat on one side could not see what was happening on the other, and it was not until late in the evening that one of them saw for the first time his in-law who had arrived during the course of the meal and had fallen to on the opposite side. It was only then that they exchanged greetings and shook hands over what was left of the food.

The New Yam Festival was thus an occasion for joy throughout Umuofia. And every man whose arm was strong, as the Ibo people say, was expected to invite large numbers of guests from far and wide. Okonkwo always asked his wives' relations, and since he now had three wives his guests would make a fairly big crowd.

But somehow Okonkwo could never become as enthusiastic over feasts as most people. He was a good eater and he could drink one or two fairly big gourds of palm-wine. But he was always uncomfortable sitting around for days waiting for a feast or getting over it. He would be very much happier working on his farm.

The festival was now only three days away. Okonkwo's wives had scrubbed the walls and the huts with red earth until they reflected light. They had then drawn patterns on them in white, yellow and dark green. They then set about painting themselves with cam wood and drawing beautiful black patterns on their stomachs and on their backs. The children were also decorated, especially their hair, which was shaved in beautiful patterns. The three women talked excitedly about the relations who had been invited, and the children revelled in the thought of being spoilt by these visitors from mother-land. Ikemefuna was equally excited. The New Yam Festival seemed to him to be a much bigger event here than in his own village, a place which was already becoming remote and vague in his imagination.

And then the storm burst. Okonkwo, who had been walking about aimlessly

in his compound in suppressed anger, suddenly found an outlet.

"Who killed this banana tree?" he asked.

A hush fell on the compound immediately.

"Who killed this tree? Or are you all deaf and dumb?"

As a matter of fact the tree was very much alive. Okonkwo's second wife

had merely cut a few leaves off it to wrap some food, and she said so. Without further argument Okonkwo gave her a sound beating and left her and her only daughter weeping. Neither of the other wives dared to interfere beyond an occasional and tentative, "It is enough, Okonkwo," pleaded from a reasonable distance.

7. A mashed edible base that is shaped into balls with the fingers and then indented for cupping and eating soup.

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His anger thus satisfied, Okonkwo decided to go out hunting. He had an old rusty gun made by a clever blacksmith who had come to live in Umuofia long ago. But although Okonkwo was a great man whose prowess was universally acknowledged, he was not a hunter. In fact he had not killed a rat with his gun. And so when he called Ikemefuna to fetch his gun, the wife who had just been beaten murmured something about guns that never shot. Unfortunately for her, Okonkwo heard it and ran madly into his room for the loaded gun, ran out again and aimed at her as she clambered over the dwarf wall of the barn. He pressed the trigger and there was a loud report accompanied by the wail of his wives and children. He threw down the gun and jumped into the barn, and there lay the woman, very much shaken and frightened but quite unhurt. He heaved a heavy sigh and went away with the gun.

In spite of this incident the New Yam Festival was celebrated with great joy in Okonkwo's household. Early that morning as he offered a sacrifice of new yam and palm-oil to his ancestors he asked them to protect him, his children and their mothers in the new year.