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, 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