The Dreamer and the Oracle

Chin Ce

Description

In The Oracle the author explores individual flagellations within a far wider dimension of cosmic interdependency. It also evokes Gamji motifs as the reigious and political mindlessness which impoverish the African landscape. Dedicated to Chinua Achebe The Oracle honours a shamanistic teacher and story teller who, with his spiritual double helps to liberate the protagonist from an insidious mind control programme by and evil intelligence that bestrides humanity through several ages of chaos.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Handel Books
• Date de parution: 29 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789783603714
• Langue: English

Extrait

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The Dreamer and The Oracle
Chin Ce


(c) 2013 African Books Network
AI, 480001 EBS Nigeria
ISBN: 978-9-7836-0371-4

The Oracle
For Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)
“There is a drawn battle for the mind of this world. Some old men have been spreading their message of liberty, just like you do with your counter tales: throwing words around and quite a few are picking up these seeds in their hearts.
“You will preach unity and faith, peace and progress, but read my lips: that four-footed creature draws from my mind which controls every behaviour on this soil with robotic precision.
“Negate and convict them, persuade them to repudiate their worth; immobilise, demobilise and leave them stagnated in the contradictions of their doctrines and injunctions. Lead them to lie here by my feet.
“The great lie is their loyalty; the more ignorant the more loyal to the cause; the more fanatical and violent... – Babul

Onku
*
IT was near noon but seemed to be morning yet. Koma’s uncle reclined by his choice corner before the veranda of the house under the shade of an ancient mango that now looked like a baobab tree warming his legs by the hearth. He had just lectured us against our silly game of cards and rounded off a familiar one about one of his travels round the world. Now he contemplated his pipe with a curious expression on his face. Komas and I pestered for another story.
“Onku, what can you tell us about the legend of the Kongo twin,” I ventured.
The December harmattan blew a stream of chilly bursts that scattered leaves and dusts. This season's was the strong type that would dry your skin brittle and freeze your bones if you let it. It brought nostalgic memories of my childhood that carried further to some distant and forgotten period in a dim past.
“Barwa or Parwa?” the old teacher frowned; his brows and moustache were etched white. “That story is well untold. Sunu, son of my good friend, Eva,” he called to me, “Why do you want to know things that should not be told to young ears?”
“A great teacher once said that the lore of old could tell where the rain began to beat us,” I feigned.
“Surely, your memory has not failed you, Onku?” Komas shot him a glance and we exchanged furtive smiles. We knew how to pull the leg of the grand master. Wonder aloud if his memory was failing and you had him. For Onku and his travels round the world made irresistible stories for anyone who had ears to listen.
He was a glorious old fellow, though well in his eighties now. His face had an unnatural tinge behind the hardened, marbled eyes that had looked fear and death in the face many times over. This great bird of our clan had known years of rare wisdom which the young, as he often said, had yet to understand.
“Barwa and Parwa,” he said again. “-the big lie of history; one black like coal, the other fair like ripe pawpaw,” he smiled to himself. It was as if a chapter of the story was lighting up in his memory. “After them, none could have twins again in the whole of Kongo…
“That was until Slessor came!
“Of course, there are other versions,” he acknowledged. “Some say they were not twins but brothers. Others that they were close friends, you know, 'five-and-six,' like you and Okoma,” he gestured good naturedly to his great nephew who had a different kind of smile on his face as he anticipated the old man.
Onku - the way we called him - was actually the great uncle of Komas and had become the oldest surviving member of the family as well as the entire clan of Omaha. It was said that Onku went to Cambridge but his unlettered grandfather, Aham, the great seer of Omaha, was the one who opened his head and placed the ancient knowledge of the clan in them.
“Yes, I still have my memory intact,” Onku had warmed to the bait. “And which one of you shall claim it when I pass on? …that is, if chickens will ever come to cockerels for guidance. Ha! Ha!”
We laughed with him.
“Oh yes,” he continued on his usual gay note. “Only the old can tell an original tune. But first, you must make me my pipe, Oko,” he commanded. “And you, Sunu, stir the fire to warm my bones!”
Komas still had the knowing smile on his face as he hastened to oblige him while I gathered the tinder to revive the dying hearth.
Onku nudged me with a gay chuckle, showing a whole pair of toothless gums save few brown and rusted molars. “Really,” he teased, “you boys waste your time with those cards you call a game,” he peered into my face. “College these days is a pack of cards, isn't it?”
“No, a load of books,” I corrected with equal humour. “Many books and quizzes, you know.”
“Baa!” he snorted. “And what do those chap books tell? Blind as bats and leading their young to the ditch. Baa!” he shuffled both feet on the ground. “If you learned at the feet of the oracle, you would come to know the true wisdom of Mother Earth, I tell you.”
Presently Komas was back with the pipe refilled just the way the old man liked it - with a trail of white cloud. Onku would tell you he had tended those herbs since his young days, even after his Cambridge and before his travels; in fact, from time immemorial. Soon he was puffing luxuriantly, sending out brilliant sparks of light accompanied with dull thuds of crackling seeds. His eyes glowed as he let the smoke drift through the chimney of his nostrils and ears. Then he blew straight to my face. I winced and made as if to cough, holding my breath. This was the part he seemed to like for he gave a loud chortle. “You must smoke a pipe one day, boy,” he told me. “Learn to open up your mind. Now where were we?” he asked.
“Barwa and Parwa,” Komas reminded him.
“The big lie of history,” I added.
“The tale is taboo,” he warned again; “might turn your head when you hear it. And no,” he raised his right hand and his wizened index finger dug into my chest. It felt like a sharp sting from a talon. “Only one survived: Barwa, or Babul the great, who seized the life force of his twin and lived for seven whole generations!” he motioned.
Then his voice began to sound like a tape about to fast forward. “Some say he never died but still lives, a phantom of a life-” he winked knowingly.
“The sort that, rather than go on in the land of the ancients, falls back to the abyss, the darkness of the void, to become an incarnate of Enshu himself-
“Enshu,” he smirked, “who never tires of the chase nor wearies of the hunt…” he paused. His hairy nostrils and lips were barely visible in the white cloud from his pipe.
“And we in this land, my boy,” his eyes, presently blood shot with mysterious gleams, dug into mine. I had a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach as his voice took on an eerie note.
“We are the quarry. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
My head was swelling, dizzy with unearthly gurgles and foggy visions that seemed to jog my body of memory alert.
Or numb?
Whatever the case, I must have been completely unprepared for what followed next…

Captive
*
SUDDENLY I was running.
Fast as the wind, fast as my thoughts, all seemed lost in the blur; the entire world had fled with a rapidity that astonished me. Only the sound of the wind cooed sharply and furiously against the ears as I ran along a dusty road, blind and not looking.
I must have been running for hours, maybe days. My breath was beginning to flail. My lungs stung; my belly was a violent ache as if something was lodged in my mid-section. I lurched violently, reeling left and right, my legs sagging from underneath me. Finally, I came down with a slow, weary slump, blacking out the fast receding world I fled from.
When my eyes opened again I found myself in a secluded corner of a wide desert, near a bare footstone among some dusty piles of rock. This was strange. Where was I?
It's Naigon, I realised. Here was the arid region so much talked about in Kongo legends where battles had taken place in human heads. Stretched ahead were the desert and sand mounds of an endless, sprawling wasteland. The sand and dusts swirled and danced in wild gyrations to surging winds.
“To be free at last,” I found myself muttering, although not knowing why I said that. Maybe it was the feeling of vastness and space in this region that had impressed itself upon me as I rested to meditate upon the prospect of tearing free from the sudden blight. For everywhere around me was yawning poverty and scorched parches of stone. The sun had become a never-setting glaze of terror, its countenance a fierce tinge of devilish vengeance upon this part of earth that seemed impervious to all noble intents.
I began to thirst. Beads of perspiration were dropping down my neck. I shut my eyes. I had a long history behind, and a promising task ahead.
The wind was lashing violently like a discarnate monster. Its deathly hand seemed to lace over my head; a sense of foreboding hovered ever so near. I was way to a past that was stealthily pulling me by the ears. I was seeing images of terror and, I knew, somehow, they were projected by a virulent power in a matrix of t