The Grey Wedding Pt. 2

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