Stars of the Long Night. Tanure Ojaide
of tales and legends.
He acknowledged the indispensible role of his grandmother in his life. Once his grandma knew that he could tell stories, she was so elated that she worked hard to fortify his memory and voice in every possible way.
“You have to protect what is dear to you,” she used to tell herself.
She initiated her grandson into the shrine of Aridon, god of storytellers, singers, and performers. He had remained a devotee of the memory god. Before she returned to where she came from, as she referred to her imminent death, his grandma had placed her right palm on his forehead to bless him. She told him that after a great experience he should thread together the different happenings of Agbon into one story. Tefe realized that whatever she told him in the morning would happen that day always turned out right before bedtime. And so he knew that somehow someday he would tell the great story that she said he had to tell. That would be part of the great Edjenu Festival when he would tell Agbon's story for her sake.
When Obie left his family compound to build his own house as an adult male, many people expected the wood carver to go far. Nobody expected him to live and practice his woodcarving in a clustered street. However, he went farther than anybody had imagined. He got a plot on the way to the farm, where nobody had contemplated building a house. His friends and relatives who helped him in the building did not fear for his life but pitied him in that lonesome home. His was the farthest house in a lonely street, and he liked it so.
He knew that for many years to come nobody would build near his house. Folks would not build in his lonesome vicinity because they would be afraid of one thing or another. Too close to the forest and big trees on which owls would perch. The owl shook and planted fear in the hearts of many Agbon people, who saw it as a metamorphosed witch in the ugly bird's shape. Many would go to a soothsayer if they heard the owl hoot from their rooftops or nearby trees. Many times had people been in a frenzy to cut down tall trees around their homes to drive away witches from using them as their meeting places. Obie moved far out. His home was close to a mahogany tree, but he had no fear. After all, the woodcarver had to cultivate the friendship of timber, the key to his success. Why should he then fear big or tall trees? He asked himself.
He feared neither witches nor spirits, who, he believed, were the projections of people's fears and hopes. If there were no witches, people would invent them to run away from what they feared or hated. If there were no robbers around, they would still imagine them to stay close to one another. It was not that he did not like people, but he wanted peace as he did his work.
Obie understood his people well enough to keep away from them. They cheered you on, only to abandon you. They called you, only to turn away as soon as you faced them. They drew you close, only to kick you away. He did not want them to complain of disturbance, as they did over women pounding yam late at night. It did not matter to any of such whining men when the woman returned from the distant market; the men still condemned her for preparing food late for her family and disturbing their peace. And yet her husband would wait for her to come home and prepare food for him before taking his supper. As for drunken men who desecrated night's serene spirit with cacophonous and meaningless songs, no man saw such as a disturbance. To them it was only the busy and dutiful wife who disturbed the peace of the night with her pestle as she prepared food to feed her children and her baby of a husband.
Obie interrogated himself before his decision to live far away from the crowd. Would people not curse him for disturbing their sleep? Would they not grumble when he kept himself busy? Would they not be the first to pelt him with insults for being a wood sculptor instead of being a farmer or a fisherman?
There was nothing you did in Okpara without complaints. You could not satisfy an entire town or people. Even if you killed yourself to protect or save them, they would say you were a fool and did not value your own life anyway. You had to be careful dealing with people that could not be pleased in any way. Nothing could be taken for granted. They could grow used to his type of noise; they could, but they might not. And if they did not get used to him, the trouble would then begin. Would he uproot his house to plant it elsewhere? But that was not possible. From the beginning he had to find a place where he would live his life and do his work peacefully. And this distant place provided him the peace he much needed.
As a carver, he had to be free to work whenever his tools called upon him to wield them. He could wake from a dream and jump to take his tools to work and reflect his vision on wood before it faded away. He had to seize whatever image every moment provided him. He might be called when everybody else was asleep, and he would have to answer the call of inspiration at the oddest of times rather than wait for some other time. Answering the call for him as a carver meant making noise. He had to seize the moment whenever an idea or feeling came to him to create something with his wood. He could go to bed blank and suddenly wake filled with motifs he had to register on wood.
He could receive inspiration at anytime and would, for the sake of others, not fail to respond to an important call. He must cut wood, knock the wood with his tools as he fitted parts together. There was no way a woodcarver, dedicated to his work, could avoid making noise. Most of his neighbours would not understand why he disturbed them. Some would even invent reasons as to why he kept them from sleep with hammer blows as if he himself did not like to sleep or could not sleep and so wanted others to suffer the same insomniac's fate with him. He would then be a nuisance to them.
A quiet, rather shy man, Obie had become famous all over Agbon for his admirable carvings. Who thought that an Agbon person could carve better than the pampered carvers of Benin? The Oba paid those ones in cash and kind. Benin carvers were important chiefs and always enjoyed the valued patronage of the Oba. In Agbon, Obie was highly respected but had not gained the status conferred on Benin carvers. He admitted to himself that he had been wrong about his people in one aspect. They often commissioned him to do many works for them despite his initial fear that they might not patronize him. Widely known beyond his initial expectations, his problem was not of customers; he had more than enough commissions to occupy him all year round. He had the bigger problem of having his tasks completed by the time expected of him.
Clients came from distant towns in Agbon to seek his expertise. Once they described to him what they wanted, he went on to produce what surpassed their expectations. He intuitively knew more than his customers really wanted for themselves. He translated the idea into wood, and wood and idea got fused into a beautiful figure. His finished works were so real that, even before they were taken away, they appeared to be breathing the ancestor, god, or spirit represented.
He took his fame calmly and always told customers who praised him that he was still learning.
“Learning what?” they would ask.
“Nobody knows the whole thing,” he would say.
“Only God you would say, but God lends you his perfect hand.”
“God helps me. What I do is beyond me.”
The carver spent much of the day attending to Okpara's matters and taking new orders and giving back what he had produced. Priests and priestesses came to him. He often said jokingly that he served uncountable gods and goddesses. Every sect came to him to carve their god. Nobody had seen a god or a goddess but each deity must be given a physical shape to be installed in a shrine for adoration.
Very active in the community, Obie worked like an ant at night. Many wondered when he slept. He was seen in most places where his age-grade could be seen during the day. However, at night people woke to hear from a distance the sound of his tools. His hammer blows tore through the thin tendons of night and the distant echo made tender waves in the air. When did he sleep? Like a crab, he had never been caught sleeping. But he slept like every other person; only that he did so at odd hours. He often took short naps during the day to make up for lost sleep at night.
He worked either standing or sitting on a low wooden stool; his tools spread on the floor of his workroom, which looked like a shrine. It was a shrine with shadows of gods but no priests. Each carving was mere wood until consecrated in the very shrine of the priest. But already completed works had the