A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's "Vengeful Creditor"
Author: Gale Cengage Learning
Date: 2016-07-06 00:00:00+00:00
Description: A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's "Vengeful Creditor," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning

Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. His first novel, Things Falls Apart, became a classic of international literature and required reading for students worldwide. He also authored four subsequent novels, several short-story collections, and numerous other books. He was the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University and, for over fifteen years, was the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement. He died in 2013.

BOOKS BY CHINUA ACHEBE

The African Trilogy

Anthills of the Savannah

Arrow of God

Chike and the River

Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems

Collected Poems

The Education of a British-Protected Child

Girls at War

Home and Exile

Hopes and Impediments

How the Leopard Got His Claws

A Man of the People

Morning Yet on Creation Day

No Longer at Ease

There Was a Country

Things Fall Apart

Vengeful Creditor
from Girls at War and Other Stories
by Chinua Achebe

A Vintage Short

Vintage Books

A Division of Penguin Random House LLC

New York

Copyright © 1971 by Chinua Achebe

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto. Originally published in hardcover as part of Girls at War and Other Stories in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1972.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

“Vengeful Creditor” was originally published in Okike, No. 1, 1971.

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Girls at War is available from the Library of Congress.

Vintage eShort ISBN 9781101973189

Series cover design by Joan Wong
www.vintagebooks.com
v4.1
a

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Books by Chinua Achebe

Title Page

Copyright

Vengeful Creditor

“Madame, this way,” sang the alert, high-wigged salesgirl minding one of a row of cash machines in the supermarket. Mrs. Emenike veered her fullstacked trolley ever so lightly to the girl.

“Madame, you were coming to me,” complained the cheated girl at the next machine.

“Ah, sorry my dear. Next time.”

“Good afternoon, Madame,” sang the sweet-voiced girl already unloading Madame’s purchases on to her counter.

“Cash or account, Madame?”

“Cash.”

She punched the prices as fast as lightning and announced the verdict. Nine pounds fifteen and six. Mrs. Emenike opened her handbag, brought out from it a wallet, unzipped it and held out two clean and crisp five-pound notes. The girl punched again and the machine released a tray of cash. She put Madame’s money away and gave her her change and a foot-long receipt. Mrs. Emenike glanced at the bottom of the long strip of paper where the polite machine had registered her total spending with the words THANK YOU COME AGAIN, and nodded.

It was at this point that the first hitch occurred. There seemed to be nobody around to load Madame’s purchases into a carton and take them to her car outside.

“Where are these boys?” said the girl almost in distress. “Sorry, Madame. Many of our carriers have gone away because of this free primary…John!” she called out, as she caught sight of one of the remaining few, “Come and pack Madame’s things!”

John was a limping forty-year-old boy sweating profusely even in the air-conditioned comfort of the supermarket. As he put the things into an empty carton he grumbled aloud.

“I don talk say make una tell Manager make e go fin’ more people for dis monkey work.”

“You never hear say everybody don go to free primary?” asked the wigged girl, jovially.

“All right-o. But I no go kill myself for sake of free primary.”

Out in the car-park he stowed the carton away in the boot of Mrs. Emenike’s grey Mercedes and then straightened up to wait while she opened her handbag and then her wallet and stirred a lot of coins there with one finger until she found a threepenny piece, pulled it out between two fingers and dropped it into the carrier’s palm. He hesitated for a while and then limped away without saying a word.

Mrs. Emenike never cared for these old men running little boys’ errands. No matter what you gave them they never seemed satisfied. Look at this grumbling cripple. How much did he expect to be given for carrying a tiny carton a few yards? That was what free primary education had brought. It had brought even worse to the homes, Mrs. Emenike had lost three servants including her baby-nurse since the beginning of the school year. The baby-nurse problem was of course the worst. What was a working woman with a seven-month-old baby supposed to do?

However the problem did not last. After only a term of free education the government withdrew the scheme for fear of going bankrupt. It would seem that on the advice of its experts the Education Ministry had planned initially for eight hundred thousand children. In the event one million and a half turned up on the first day of school. Where did all the rest come from? Had the experts misled the government? The chief statistician, interviewed on the radio, said it was nonsense to talk about a miscalculation. The trouble was simply that children from neighbouring states had been brought in in thousands and registered dishonestly by unscrupulous people, a clear case of sabotage.

Whatever the reason the government cancelled the scheme. The New Age wrote an editorial praising the Prime Minister for his statesmanship and courage but pointing out that the whole dismal affair could have been avoided if the government had listened in the first place to the warning of many knowledgeable and responsible citizens. Which was true enough, for these citizens had written on the pages of the New Age to express their doubt and reservation about free education. The newspaper, on throwing open its pages to a thorough airing of views on the matter, had pointed out that it did so in the national cause and, mounting an old hobby-horse, challenged those of its critics who could see no merit whatever in a newspaper owned by foreign capital to come forward and demonstrate an equal or a higher order of national commitment and patriotism, a challenge that none of those critics took up. The offer of space by the New Age was taken up eagerly and in the course of ten days at the rate of two or even three articles a day a large number of responsible citizens—lawyers, doctors, merchants, engineers, salesmen, insurance brokers, university lecturers, etc.—had written in criticism of the scheme. No one was against education for the kids, they said, but free education was premature. Someone said that not even the United States of America in all its wealth and power had introduced it yet, how much less…

Mr. Emenike read the various contributions with boyish excitement. “I wish civil servants were free to write to the papers,” he told his wife at least on three occasions during those ten days.

“This is not bad, but he should have mentioned that this country has made tremendous strides in education since independence because parents know the value of education and will make any sacrifice to find school fees for their children. We are not a nation of Oliver Twists.”

His wife was not really interested in all the argument at that stage, because somehow it all seemed to hang in the air. She had some vague, personal doubts about free education, that was all.

“Have you looked at the paper? Mike has written on this thing,” said her husband on another occasion.

“Who is Mike?”

“Mike Ogudu.”

“Oh, what does he say?”

“I haven’t read it yet…Oh yes, you can trust Mike to call a spade a spade. See how he begins: ‘Free primary education is tantamount to naked Communism’? That’s not quite true but that’s Mike all over. He thinks someone might come up to nationalize his shipping line. He is so scared of Communism.”

“But who wants Communism here?”

“Nobody. That’s what I told him the other evening at the Club. But he is so scared. You know one thing? Too much money is bad-o.”

The discussion in the Emenike family remained at this intellectual level until one day their “Small Boy,” a very bright lad of twelve helping out the cook and understudying the steward, announced he must go home to see his sick father.

“How did you know your Father was sick?” asked Madame.

“My brodder come tell me.”

“When did your brother come?”

“Yesterday for evening-time.”

“Why didn’t you bring him to see me?”

“I no no say Madame go wan see am.”

“Why you no talk since yesterday?” asked Mr. Emenike looking up from his newspaper.

“At first I tink say I no go go home. But today one mind tell me say make you go see-am-o; perhaps e de sick too much. So derefore…”

“All right. You can go but make sure you are back by tomorrow afternoon otherwise…”

“I must return back by morning-time sef.”

He didn’t come back. Mrs. Emenike was particularly angry because of the lies. She didn’t like being outwitted by servants. Look at that little rat imagining himself clever. She should have suspected something from the way he had been carrying on of late. Now he had gone with a full month’s pay which he should lose in lieu of notice. It went to show that kindness to these people did not pay in the least.

A week later the gardener gave notice. He didn’t try to hide anything. His elder brother had sent him a message to return to their village and register for free education. Mr. Emenike tried to laugh him out of this ridiculous piece of village ignorance.

“Free primary education is for children. Nobody is going to admit an old man like you. How old are you?”

“I am fifteen years of old, sir.”

“You are three,” sneered Mrs. Emenike. “Come and suck breast.”

“You are not fifteen,” said Mr. Emenike. “You are at least twenty and no headmaster will admit you into a primary school. If you want to go and try, by all means do. But don’t come back here when you’ve gone and failed.”

“I no go fail, oga,” said the gardener. “One man for our village wey old pass my fader sef done register everyting finish. He just go for Magistrate Court and pay dem five shilling and dey swear-am for Court juju wey no de kill porson; e no fit kill rat sef.”

“Well it’s entirely up to you. Your work here has been good but…”

“Mark, what is all that long talk for? He wants to go, let him go.”

“Madame, no be say I wan go like dat. But my senior brodder…”

“We have heard. You can go now.”

“But I no de go today. I wan give one week notice. And I fit find anoder gardener for Madame.”

“Don’t worry about notice or gardener. Just go away.”

“I fit get my pay now or I go come back for afternoontime?”

“What pay?”

“Madame, for dis ten days I don work for dis mont.”

“Don’t annoy me any further. Just go away.”

But real annoyance was yet to come for Mrs. Emenike. Abigail, the baby-nurse, came up to her two mornings later as she was getting ready for work and dumped the baby in her lap and took off. Abigail of all people! After all she had done for her. Abigail who came to her full of craw-craw, who used rags for sanitary towels, who was so ignorant she gave the baby a full bowl of water to stop it crying and dropped some through its nose. Now Abigail was a lady; she could sew and bake, wear a bra and clean pants, put on powder and perfumes and stretch her hair; and she was ready to go.

From that day Mrs. Emenike hated the words “free primary” which had suddenly become part of everyday language, especially in the villages where they called it “free primadu.” She was particularly angry when people made jokes about it and had a strong urge to hit them on the head for a lack of feeling and good taste. And she hated the Americans and the embassies (but particularly the Americans) who threw their money around and enticed the few remaining servants away from Africans. This began when she learnt later that her gardener had not gone to school at all but to a Ford Foundation man who had offered him seven pounds, and bought him a bicycle and a Singer sewing-machine for his wife.

“Why do they do it?” she asked. She didn’t really want or need an answer but her husband gave one all the same.

“Because,” said he, “back home in America they couldn’t possibly afford a servant. So when they come out here and find them so cheap they go crazy. That’s why.”

Three months later free primary ended and school fees were brought back. The government was persuaded by then that its “piece of hare-brained socialism” as the New Age called it was unworkable in African conditions. This was a jibe at the Minister of Education who was notorious for his leftist sympathies and was perpetually at war with the formidable Minister of Finance.

“We cannot go through with this scheme unless we are prepared to impose new taxes,” said the Finance Minister at a Cabinet meeting.

“Well then, let’s impose the taxes,” said the Minister of Education, which provoked derisive laughter from all his colleagues and even from Permanent Secretaries like Mr. Emenike who were in attendance and who in strict protocol should not participate in debate or laughter.

“We can’t,” said the Finance Minister indulgently with laughter still in his mouth. “I know my right honourable friend here doesn’t worry whether or not this government lasts its full term, but some of us others do. At least I want to be here long enough to retire my election debts…”

This was greeted with hilarious laughter and cries of “Hear! Hear!” In debating skill Education was no match for Finance. In fact Finance had no equal in the entire Cabinet, the Prime Minister included.

“Let us make no mistake about it,” he continued with a face and tone now serious, “if anyone is so foolish as to impose new taxes now on our long-suffering masses…”

“I thought we didn’t have masses in Africa,” interrupted the Minister of Education starting a meagre laughter that was taken up in good sport by one or two others.

—

“I am sorry to trespass in my right honourable friend’s territory; communist slogans are so infectious. But as I was saying we should not talk lightly about new taxes unless we are prepared to bring the Army out to quell tax riots. One simple fact of life which we have come to learn rather painfully and reluctantly—and I’m not so sure even now that we have all learnt it—is that people do riot against taxes but not against school fees. The reason is simple. Everybody, even a motor-park tout, knows what school fees are for. He can see his child going to school in the morning and coming back in the afternoon. But you go and tell him about general taxation and he immediately thinks that government is stealing his money from him. One other point, if a man doesn’t want to pay school fees he doesn’t have to, after all this is a democratic society. The worst that can happen is that his child stays at home which he probably doesn’t mind at all. But taxes are different; everybody must pay whether they want to or not. The difference is pretty sharp. That’s why mobs riot.” A few people said “Hear! Hear!” Others just let out exhalations of relief or agreement. Mr. Emenike who had an unrestrainable admiration for the Finance Minister and had been nodding like a lizard through his speech shouted his “Hear! Hear!” too loud and got a scorching look from the Prime Minister.

A few desultory speeches followed and the government took its decision not to abolish free primary education but to suspend it until all the relevant factors had been thoroughly examined.

—

One little girl of ten, named Veronica, was broken-hearted. She had come to love school as an escape from the drabness and arduous demands of home. Her mother, a near-destitute widow who spent all hours of the day in the farm and, on market days, in the market left Vero to carry the burden of caring for the younger children. Actually only the youngest, aged one, needed much looking after. The other two, aged seven and four, being old enough to fend for themselves, picking palm-kernels and catching grasshoppers to eat, were no problem at all to Vero. But Mary was different. She cried a lot even after she had been fed her midmorning foo-foo and soup saved for her (with a little addition of water to the soup) from breakfast which was itself a diluted left-over from last night’s supper. Mary could not manage palm-kernels on her own account yet so Vero half-chewed them first before passing them on to her. But even after the food and the kernels and grasshoppers and the bowls of water Mary was rarely satisfied, even though her belly would be big and tight like a drum and shine like a mirror.

Their widowed mother, Martha, was a hard-luck woman. She had had an auspicious beginning long, long ago as a pioneer pupil at St. Monica’s, then newly founded by white women-missionaries to train the future wives of native evangelists. Most of her schoolmates of those days had married young teachers and were now wives of pastors and one or two even of bishops. But Martha, encouraged by her teacher, Miss Robinson, had married a young carpenter trained by white artisan-missionaries at the Onitsha Industrial Mission, a trade school founded in the fervent belief that if the black man was to be redeemed he needed to learn the Bible alongside manual skills. (Miss Robinson was very keen on the Industrial Mission whose Principal she herself later married.) But in spite of the bright hopes of those early evangelical days carpentry never developed very much in the way teaching and clerical jobs were to develop. So when Martha’s husband died (or as those missionary artisans who taught him long ago might have put it—when he was called to higher service in the heavenly mansions by Him who was Himself once a Carpenter on earth) he left her in complete ruins. It had been a bad-luck marriage from the start. To begin with she had had to wait twenty whole years after their marriage for her first child to be born, so that now she was virtually an old woman with little children to care for and little strength left for her task. Not that she was bitter about that. She was simply too overjoyed that God in His mercy had lifted her curse of barrenness to feel a need to grumble. What she nearly did grumble about was the disease that struck her husband and paralysed his right arm for five years before his death. It was a trial too heavy and unfair.

Soon after Vero withdrew from school Mr. Mark Emenike, the big government man of their village who lived in the capital, called on Martha. His Mercedes 220S pulled up on the side of the main road and he walked the 500 yards or so of a narrow unmotorable path to the widow’s hut. Martha was perplexed at the visit of such a great man and as she bustled about for colanut she kept wondering. Soon the great man himself in the hurried style of modern people cleared up the mystery.

“We have been looking for a girl to take care of our new baby and today someone told me to inquire about your girl…”

At first Martha was reluctant, but when the great man offered her £5 for the girl’s services in the first year—plus feeding and clothing and other things—she began to soften.

“Of course it is not money I am concerned about,” she said, “but whether my daughter will be well cared for.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Ma. She will be treated just like one of our own children. My wife is a Social Welfare Officer and she knows what it means to care for children. Your daughter will be happy in our home, I can tell you that. All she will be required to do is carry the little baby and give it its milk while my wife is away at the office and the older children at school.”

“Vero and her sister Joy were also at school last term,” said Martha without knowing why she said it.

“Yes, I know. That thing the government did is bad, very bad. But my belief is that a child who will be somebody will be somebody whether he goes to school or not. It is all written here, in the palm of the hand.”

Martha gazed steadily at the floor and then spoke without raising her eyes. “When I married I said to myself: My daughters will do better than I did. I read Standard Three in those days and I said they will all go to College. Now they will not have even the little I had thirty years ago. When I think of it my heart wants to burst.”

“Ma, don’t let it trouble you too much. As I said before, what any one of us is going to be is all written here, no matter what the difficulties.”

“Yes. I pray God that what is written for these children will be better than what He wrote for me and my husband.”

“Amen!…And as for this girl if she is obedient and good in my house what stops my wife and me sending her to school when the baby is big enough to go about on his own? Nothing. And she is still a small girl. How old is she?”

“She is ten.”

“You see? She is only a baby. There is plenty of time for her to go to school.”

He knew that the part about sending her to school was only a manner of speaking. And Martha knew too. But Vero who had been listening to everything from a dark corner of the adjoining room did not. She actually worked out in her mind the time it would take the baby to go about on his own and it came out quite short. So she went happily to live in the capital in a great man’s family and looked after a baby who would soon be big enough to go about on his own and then she would have a chance to go to school.

Vero was a good girl and very sharp. Mr. Emenike and his wife were very pleased with her. She had the sense of a girl twice her age and was amazingly quick to learn.

Mrs. Emenike, who had almost turned sour over her recent difficulty in getting good servants, was now her old self again. She could now laugh about the fiasco of free primadu. She told her friends that now she could go anywhere and stay as long as she liked without worrying about her little man. She was so happy with Vero’s work and manners that she affectionately nicknamed her “Little Madame.” The nightmare of the months following Abigail’s departure was mercifully at an end. She had sought high and low then for another baby-nurse and just couldn’t find one. One rather over-ripe young lady had presented herself and asked for seven pounds a month. But it wasn’t just the money. It was her general air—a kind of labour-exchange attitude which knew all the rights in the labour code, including presumably the right to have abortions in your servants’ quarters and even have a go at your husband. Not that Mark was that way but the girl just wasn’t right. After her no other person had turned up until now.

—

Every morning as the older Emenike children—three girls and a boy—were leaving for school in their father’s Mercedes or their mother’s little noisy Fiat, Vero would bring the baby out to the steps to say bye-bye. She liked their fine dresses and shoes—she’d never worn any shoes in her life—but what she envied them most was simply the going away every morning, going away from home, from familiar things and tasks. In the first months this envy was very, very mild. It lay beneath the joy of the big going away from the village, from her mother’s drab hut, from eating palm-kernels that twisted the intestines at midday, from bitter-leaf soup without fish. That going away was something enormous. But as the months passed the hunger grew for these other little daily departures in fine dresses and shoes and sandwiches and biscuits wrapped in beautiful paper-napkins in dainty little school bags. One morning, as the Fiat took the children away and little Goddy began to cry on Vero’s back, a song sprang into her mind to quieten him:

Little noisy motor-car

If you’re going to the school

Please carry me

Pee—pee—pee!—poh—poh—poh!

All morning she sang her little song and was pleased with it. When Mr. Emenike dropped the other children home at one o’clock and took off again Vero taught them her new song. They all liked it and for days it supplanted “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Simple Simon” and the other songs they brought home from school.

“The girl is a genius,” said Mr. Emenike when the new song finally got to him. His wife who heard it first had nearly died from laughter. She had called Vero and said to her, “So you make fun of my car, naughty girl.” Vero was happy because she saw not anger but laughter in the woman’s eyes.

“She is a genius,” said her husband. “And she hasn’t been to school.”

“And besides she knows you ought to buy me a new car.”

“Never mind, dear. Another year and you can have that sports car.”

“Na so.”

“So you don’t believe me? Just you wait and see.”

More weeks and months passed by and little Goddy was beginning to say a few words but still no one spoke about Vero’s going to school. She decided it was Goddy’s fault, that he wasn’t growing fast enough. And he was becoming rather too fond of riding on her back even though he could walk perfectly well. In fact his favourite words were “Cayi me.” Vero made a song about that too and it showed her mounting impatience:

Carry you! Carry you!

Every time I carry you!

If you no wan grow again

I must leave you and go school

Because Vero e don tire!

Tire, tire e don tire!

She sang it all morning until the other children returned from school and then she stopped. She only sang this one when she was alone with Goddy.

—

One afternoon Mrs. Emenike returned from work and noticed a redness on Vero’s lips.

“Come here,” she said, thinking of her expensive lipstick. “What is that?”

It turned out, however, not to be lipstick at all, only her husband’s red ink. She couldn’t help a smile then.

“And look at her finger-nails! And toes too! So, Little Madame, that’s what you do when we go out and leave you at home to mind the baby? You dump him somewhere and begin to paint yourself. Don’t ever let me catch you with that kind of nonsense again; do you hear?” It occurred to her to strengthen her warning somehow if only to neutralize the smile she had smiled at the beginning.

“Do you know that red ink is poisonous? You want to kill yourself? Well, little lady you have to wait till you leave my house and return to your mother.”

That did it, she thought in glowing self-satisfaction. She could see that Vero was suitably frightened. Throughout the rest of that afternoon she walked about like a shadow.

When Mr. Emenike came home she told him the story as he ate a late lunch. And she called Vero for him to see.

“Show him your finger-nails,” she said. “And your toes, Little Madame!”

“I see,” he said waving Vero away. “She is learning fast. Do you know the proverb which says that when mother cow chews giant grass her little calves watch her mouth?”

“Who is a cow? You rhinoceros!”

“It is only a proverb, my dear.”

A week or so later Mrs. Emenike just home from work noticed that the dress she had put on the baby in the morning had been changed into something much too warm.

“What happened to the dress I put on him?”

“He fell down and soiled it. So I changed him,” said Vero. But there was something very strange in her manner. Mrs. Emenike’s first thought was that the child must have had a bad fall.

“Where did he fall?” she asked in alarm. “Where did he hit on the ground? Bring him to me! What is all this? Blood? No? What is it? My God has killed me! Go and bring me the dress. At once!”

“I washed it,” said Vero beginning to cry, a thing she had never done before. Mrs. Emenike rushed out to the line and brought down the blue dress and the white vest both heavily stained red!

She seized Vero and beat her in a mad frenzy with both hands. Then she got a whip and broke it all on her until her face and arms ran with blood. Only then did Vero admit making the child drink a bottle of red ink. Mrs. Emenike collapsed into a chair and began to cry.

Mr. Emenike did not wait to have lunch. They bundled Vero into the Mercedes and drove her the forty miles to her mother in the village. He had wanted to go alone but his wife insisted on coming, and taking the baby too. He stopped on the main road as usual. But he didn’t go in with the girl. He just opened the door of the car, pulled her out and his wife threw her little bundle of clothes after her. And they drove away again.

—

Martha returned from the farm tired and grimy. Her children rushed out to meet her and to tell her that Vero was back and was crying in their bedroom. She practically dropped her basket and went to see; but she couldn’t make any sense of her story.

“You gave the baby red ink? Why? So that you can go to school? How? Come on. Let’s go to their place. Perhaps they will stay in the village overnight. Or else they will have told somebody there what happened. I don’t understand your story. Perhaps you stole something. Not so?”

“Please Mama don’t take me back there. They will kill me.”

“Come on, since you won’t tell me what you did.”

She seized her wrist and dragged her outside. Then in the open she saw all the congealed blood on whip-marks all over her head, face, neck and arms. She swallowed hard.

“Who did this?”

“My Madame.”

“And what did you say you did? You must tell me.”

“I gave the baby red ink.”

“All right, then let’s go.”

Vero began to wail louder. Martha seized her by the wrist again and they set off. She neither changed her work clothes nor even washed her face and hands. Every woman—and sometimes the men too—they passed on the way screamed on seeing Vero’s whip-marks and wanted to know who did it. Martha’s reply to all was “I don’t know yet. I am going to find out.”

She was lucky. Mr. Emenike’s big car was there, so they had not returned to the capital. She knocked at their front door and walked in. Mrs. Emenike was sitting there in the parlour giving bottled food to the baby but she ignored the visitors completely neither saying a word to them nor even looking in their direction. It was her husband who descended the stairs a little later who told the story. As soon as the meaning dawned on Martha—that the red ink was given to the baby to drink and that the motive was to encompass its death—she screamed, with two fingers plugging her ears, that she wanted to hear no more. At the same time she rushed outside, tore a twig off a flowering shrub and by clamping her thumb and forefinger at one end and running them firmly along its full length stripped it of its leaves in one quick movement. Armed with the whip she rushed back to the house crying “I have heard an abomination!” Vero was now screaming and running around the room.

“Don’t touch her here in my house,” said Mrs. Emenike, cold and stern as an oracle, noticing her visitors for the first time. “Take her away from here at once. You want to show me your shock. Well I don’t want to see. Go and show your anger in your own house. Your daughter did not learn murder here in my house.”

This stung Martha deep in her spirit and froze her in mid-stride. She stood rooted to the spot, her whip-hand lifeless by her side. “My Daughter,” she said finally addressing the younger woman, “as you see me here I am poor and wretched but I am not a murderer. If my daughter Vero is to become a murderer God knows she cannot say she learnt from me.”

“Perhaps it’s from me she learnt,” said Mrs. Emenike showing her faultless teeth in a terrible false smile, “or maybe she snatched it from the air. That’s right, she snatched it from the air. Look, woman, take your daughter and leave my house.”

“Vero, let’s go; come, let’s go!”

“Yes, please go!”

Mr. Emenike who had been trying vainly to find an opening for the clearly needed male intervention now spoke.

“It is the work of the devil,” he said. “I have always known that the craze for education in this country will one day ruin all of us. Now even children will commit murder in order to go to school.”

This clumsy effort to mollify all sides at once stung Martha even more. As she jerked Vero homewards by the hand she clutched her unused whip in her other hand. At first she rained abuses on the girl, calling her an evil child that entered her mother’s womb by the back of the house.

“Oh God, what have I done?” Her tears began to flow now. “If I had had a child with other women of my age, that girl that calls me murderer might have been no older than my daughter. And now she spits in my face. That’s what you brought me to,” she said to the crown of Vero’s head, and jerked her along more violently.

“I will kill you today. Let’s get home first.”

Then a strange revolt, vague, undirected began to well up at first slowly inside her. “And that thing that calls himself a man talks to me about the craze for education. All his children go to school, even the one that is only two years; but that is no craze. Rich people have no craze. It is only when the children of poor widows like me want to go with the rest that it becomes a craze. What is this life? To God, what is it? And now my child thinks she must kill the baby she is hired to tend before she can get a chance. Who put such an abomination into her belly? God, you know I did not.”

She threw away the whip and with her freed hand wiped her tears.

BOOKS BY

CHINUA ACHEBE

GIRLS AT WAR
and Other Stories

Twelve stories by the internationally renowned novelist which recreate with energy and authenticity the major social and political issues that confront contemporary Africans on a daily basis.

Short Stories

THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD

From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart comes a collection of autobiographical essays. Chinua Achebe’s characteristically eloquent and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. From a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria to considerations on the African-American Diaspora, from a glimpse into his extraordinary family life and his thoughts on the potent symbolism of President Obama’s elections—this charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise collection is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

Essays

HOPES AND IMPEDIMENTS

One of the most provocative and original voices in contemporary literature, Chinua Achebe here considers the place of literature and art in our society in a collection of essays spanning his best writing and lectures from the previous two decades. For Achebe, overcoming goes hand in hand with eradicating the destructive effects of racism and injustice in Western society. He reveals the impediments that still stand in the way of open, equal dialogue between Africans and Europeans, between blacks and whites, but also instills us with hope that they will soon be overcome.

Essays

HOME AND EXILE

More personally revealing than anything Achebe has written, Home and Exile is a major statement on the importance of stories as real sources of power, especially for those whose stories have traditionally been told by outsiders. In three elegant essays, Achebe seeks to rescue African culture from narratives written about it by Europeans. Looking through the prism of his experiences as a student in English schools in Nigeria, he provides devastating examples of European cultural imperialism. He examines the impact that his novel Things Fall Apart had on efforts to reclaim Africa’s story. And he argues for the importance of writing and living the African experience because, he believes, Africa needs stories told by Africans.

Essays

THINGS FALL APART

Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.

Fiction

NO LONGER AT EASE

The story of a man whose foreign education has separated him from his African roots and made him parts of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. More than fifty years after it was first written, this novel remains a brilliant statement on the challenges still facing African society.

Fiction

ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH

In the fictional West African nation Kangan, newly independent of British rule, the hopes and dreams of democracy have been quashed by a fierce military dictatorship. Chris Oriko is a member of the cabinet of the president for life, one of his oldest friends. When the president is charged with censoring the oppositionist editor of the state-run newspaper—another childhood friend—Chris’s loyalty and ideology are put to the test. The fate of Kangan hangs in the balance as tensions rise and a devious plot is set in motion to silence the firebrand critic.

Fiction

ALSO AVAILABLE

Chike and the River

Collected Poems

ANCHOR BOOKS

Available wherever books are sold.

www.anchorbooks.com

HIGHLIGHTS FROM VINTAGE SHORTS

♦ We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

♦ Moral Disorder: A Story by Margaret Atwood

♦ The Outing by James Baldwin

♦ Dallas: November 22, 1963 by Robert A. Caro

♦ Where Climate is Heading by Climate Central

♦ Fifteen Poems by Leonard Cohen

♦ Progress by Katharine Graham

♦ How War Begins by John Keegan

♦ The Vision by Jonathan Lethem

♦ Provence in Ten Easy Lessons by Peter Mayle

♦ Vissi d’Arte by Lorrie Moore

♦ American Hunger by Eli Saslow

♦ Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party by Alexander McCall Smith

♦ A Market Tale by Martin Walker

Find out more on the Vintage Shorts Facebook page

What’s next on
your reading list?

Discover your next
great read!

Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

Sign up now.