The Battle of the Gods: A Folktale
Photo: David Cohen
In the days when the sky was earth to the lizards and mothers walked to the streams with their breasts bared to the sky, there was a great dispute in the land of the gods. The gods had gathered for a meeting. Nay, they didn’t gather for a meeting. The dispute between ChiUkwu and Jesus called for one.
ChiUkwu, my father, Vengeance, told me, was worshipped by his father and his father’s father. To us, the people of ArọChiUkwu, ChiUkwu is not just our own. ChiUkwu owns us. Jesus, on the other hand, came visiting from the land of Ndị Ọcha, Ndị Jew.
To get to the land of Ndị Jew from our ArọChiUkwu, my father told me that his father, who had followed some of the white people home, had passed through ọhịa na asaa and mmiri na asaa. It is too vast, this distance between our land and the land of the Jews, that the seven forests and seven oceans must be passed. It is like getting to the end of the sky, only that sharks and antelopes, instead of clouds, are what the sojourner must battle, especially a sojourner foolish enough to set off on foot.
In the land of the gods where ChiUkwu and Jesus live, such a distance does not exist, though. Jesus can get to ChiUkwu before a falling ụdala fruit reaches the ụdala tree’s base.
It happened that the worshippers of Jesus, who had spread from the land of the Jews to all other parts of the white man’s land, decided to take Jesus to ala ndị Isi Ojii—the land of people with hair like mine; people whose hairs, standing like the arrows of rain, give charcoal its colour. They made boats—different and more powerful than our amala boats—with which they crossed the seven oceans. They also built other powerful machines, never before seen in ArọChiUkwu—they looked like moving houses—with which they crossed the seven forests and landed in our own ArọChiUkwu. This landing was the beginning of the battle of the gods.
The white worshippers of Jesus started preaching that their god is the supreme divine deity to whom all other gods, including our own ChiUkwu, bow. Grandfather watched his own father laugh at these strangers’ foolishness, and as a teen influenced by his father, he laughed too. ChiUkwu is called ChiUkwu for a reason. He is the only god with “ukwu” attached to his name. The Great. The Supreme. And what does a man so weak that the rains had beaten the melanin off him know about greatness?
The worshippers of ChiUkwu, led by Grandfather’s father, were ready to continue dismissing the men as drunk had it not been that whatever alcohol they were taken was too strong it drowned their brains. They didn’t, couldn’t, stop at just proclaiming the supremeness of their god. They also proclaimed their own supremeness. When a man says to you, “Look, my god is stronger than your god,” you merely shrug and allow the gods to sort themselves out. The mortal does not fight for the immortal lest his bones become the immortal’s weapons. But when a man says to you, “You small boy, I am stronger than you,” and as if to prove it, goes on to slap you, you’ll need more than shrugs.
“ChiUkwu is called ChiUkwu for a reason. He is the only god with “ukwu” attached to his name. The Great. The Supreme. And what does a man so weak that the rains had beaten the melanin off him know about greatness?”
Grandfather’s father and his people needed more than shrugs to prove to the white worshippers of Jesus that even if they were children of a lesser God, they weren’t lesser humans, at least not lesser than the white men themselves. In the battle that followed, men fell on both camps and graves were dug to bury the dead. ChiUkwu’s camp though required more space to bury their dead, including Grandfather’s father.
Grandfather came out of the battle the most shaken. He who carried his father’s stool and bag to events; he who, because his father said he had stronger teeth, ate his father’s share of the lambs and chickens offered to their god; he who laughed with his father at the foolishness of a group who think it’s in their place to assign power to the gods—no longer had a father to laugh with. Grandfather’s father was felled by those whose guns do more than smoke, and grandfather swore to learn the secrets of the gunpowder that makes a heap of bodily mass, men whose veins bulged on their foreheads.
The death of the chief priest and his teenage son’s decision to become a worshipper of Jesus, the white worshippers took to be a manifestation of the supremeness of their god. Not only was the chief priest dead, his son was also ready to serve the god of the murderers, even at the risk of being disowned by his family. The young man has truly seen The Light. Praise the Lord.
It was a boiling ChiUkwu who visited Jesus. Jesus, still rising from his bed, received a slap that removed every trace of drowsiness from his eyes. ChiUkwu, still seething, demanded to know why Jesus had not called his worshippers to order.
“Which worshippers?” Jesus wondered. The same worshippers whose morning prayers he was yet to listen to? He wondered if he could even hear them now, if the slap had not damaged his ear drum. He looked at ChiUkwu. He wasn’t chewing kola nuts. It was either his worshippers had stopped ChiUkwu’s worshippers from offering him the usual kola nuts, or his worshippers had done something else, something more grave that ChiUkwu had ignored the kola nuts offered him and rushed straight to deliver this slap. The slap. Thinking of the slap, Jesus felt himself breathing in the fumes from ChiUkwu’s bonfire of anger.
What does a man do to another who imprints the morning greeting, Ị bọọla chi, with his palms? Our people say a man must not go looking for a fight, but what do they say a man should do when the fight comes with a mat to his doorstep? Hide? Run? It is only a coward that hides and runs from a fight brought to his homestead, and Jesus is many things but a coward.
Jesus replied with a slap whose decibel was a mountain higher than ChiUkwu’s. The battle began. A punch here, a broken nose there, a flying tooth here, a bloodshot, swollen eye there. It was a fight to the death, but gods do not die. The noise awoke Amadiọha and Ogun, who was curious about this fight that had escaped his notice. How does a battle happen without the knowledge of the fierce god of war? Allah dropped his kettle of coffee to rush to the fight scene, while Anyanwụ, who was already spreading her fingers of radiance over the universe, left her duty post to rush over to Jesus’ abode. Many other gods, male and female, all left whatever they were doing to rush to the battlefield. Agwụ, who is sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes both, and other times none, also joined in the march to Jesus’ place. He wore the body of a man and, in his lackadaisical manner, wasn’t rushing like the others. He strolled leisurely, chewing two lobes from amongst the harvest of kola nuts offered him that morning, complaining about how some of his people suddenly decided that Schnapps was better for him than palm wine, even without hearing from him. It’s funny how these humans act. Even Ekwensu, who only responds to his gong, the Ekwe, was there in Jesus’ place. He had mistaken Jesus’ slap for the sound of his gong.
Ala did not move. She had gotten tired of settling her children’s disputes. “These children will not kill me,” she muttered, “for I did not kill my own mother.” She continued making some of the seeds buried into her sprout, as if nothing had happened. She smiled at her thoughtless mutter. Which mother? She is the earth, the unborn, unmovable mother of all. The sense of fulfilment and joy that came with remembering that was short-lived. Some truths have a way of erasing joy. Like her special love for Jesus, which she knew might be the final undoing of the spirit land should her other children discover it.
After the gods had separated Jesus and ChiUkwu, who seemed intent on undoing each other’s immortality, they asked what caused the early morning fracas. Jesus was the first to speak. He lamented his waking up to a slap by a raging and mad ChiUkwu. A seething ChiUkwu retorted that it was Jesus’ father and spirit who were mad and not him, ChiUkwu. The others scolded ChiUkwu and asked him to allow Jesus to finish while warning Jesus to desist from cussing because it is said that the wound is safe only after both the housefly and the wounded have been scolded. The house fly cannot lay eggs inside a wound not exposed by its carrier. Jesus said he was already done before ChiUkwu’s interruption. ChiUkwu was then asked to state his side of the story.
“Ndị mbụ na ndị egede. The living dead. The ones who create and order the paths of humans. My co-creators. I greet you all.”
Murmurs of response went up. Agwụ said something about a man whose gourds lacked palm wine lacking the strength to respond to greetings. ChiUkwu, who on a normal day would have laughed and asked him to go tap the palm himself—after all, Mother had many of them—ignored him. It wasn’t a normal day.
“We are all aware of how pompous and proud Jesus has become,” ChiUkwu continued. “We all see how he carries himself as if we were not here before he came.”
“Agwụ has entered that boy’s head, of recent,” Ogun interrupted. “Agwụ is pushing that boy. I discussed this with Mother last week, and she asked me to ignore him. She is of the opinion that his are just manifestations of childishness.”
“Ogun,” Agwụ shouted, “shut up and sit. I said, shut up and sit. If you do not know what to say, allow ChiUkwu to continue before my brother, Amadiọha, reshapes your mouth. Every madness is attributed to Agwụ, including the ones Agwụ cannot even imagine its magnitude. Agwụ this, Agwụ that. Soon, you will also accuse Agwụ of being the one who poured blood into your eyes. Just shut up.”
Ogun rose in anger. His metallic armour added sound to the energy already in the air. He began to address Agwụ.
“Agwụ, I see that your madness increases every time Anyanwụ spreads her fingers, but do not worry. The belly that plays with the pointed edge of a blacksmith’s sweat will soon have its entrails spread for the vultures’ feast. The child who boasts of having a skin which cannot be penetrated by the arrows of rain should ask itself from which door cold enters its body. I—”
“Oh Ogun, just shut up. For dog’s sake, shut up. You think life is all about eating dogs and dropping proverbs filled only with vibes, threats, and insha’Allah? You even dare threaten the one whose gender is not even known? Just wait—”
Allah made to stand and lash out at Agwụ for mentioning his name, but Amadiọha, sensing that that would mean the firing of more verbal bullets, beat him to it.
“Let’s all calm down, please. We all are siblings and should always behave like one. ChiUkwu, please continue. Meanwhile, Ogun fear not, I am in love with the shape of your mouth and will not be reshaping it. Also, if you get more dogs than needed, please do share with me. And let’s be quick to get over this before Allah’s coffee cools down.” Amadiọha had added the joke with the hope of easing the tension. The smile across Ogun’s face and the lowering of Allah’s raised shoulders showed that he’d achieved that.
“Yes, as I was saying,” ChiUkwu continued. “Jesus has been carrying himself as if it was Ala, the Great Mother, that came out of his loins and not him, her womb. Like Mother told Ogun, I also thought his was just juvenile delinquency and chose to ignore him. I said to myself, ‘if Ekwensu, who he has been accusing of being responsible for all his misdeeds, chose to ignore him, why should I be the one complaining?’ Can the eyes complain about the ụdala fruit not being tasty when the tongue had said nothing? Or the anus complain about not passing water when the penis has raised no complaints? So, I just decided to ignore, thinking that he’d soon grow up, until yesterday—”
“Ehmmmm,” Ekwensu cleared his throat, interrupting ChiUkwu, “before you talk about what happened yesterday, I want to speak because you mentioned my name. As you all know, I do not act until my gong is sounded. I do not speak, even. That I am here now is because I’d mistaken the sound of the young boy’s slap for the sound of my gong. I must say that the young boy is growing. Who would have imagined that such a small hand that had only been used to play the childish trick of turning water into wine—not the sweet palm wine that Agwụ craves, but that bland wine which those funny men in overflowing white gowns barely take a drop of and calls it the young boy’s blood—can now give such a high sounding slap? The young shall, indeed, grow.
“I, for one, have always ignored his childish tantrums and acts because of what they are—childish. They are not strong enough to sound my gong which even the best of Ogun’s metals only tickles. I do not think that I should bother myself with a man or a woman or one of Agwụ’s people who are neither men nor women, who claim that their diarrhoea—that came after taking a drop of what they believe is the young man’s blood—is my doing. Such a person is foolish, and foolishness does not rouse me from my sleep.
“Why am I saying this? It’s because I want you, ChiUkwu, to know that I am not bothered by the young man’s juvenile delinquencies. I am not that jobless, and even if I were, I could just start counting how many grains of sand Mother houses in her belly—and that’s not to say that you are jobless by reacting to him, though. We’re all the same and yet so different.”
“Thanks for those words, Ekwensu,” ChiUkwu continued after Ekwensu had resumed his seat. “I know that it does not bother you like you said, but Mother does say that a sleeping man talks in his sleep not because he loves talking, but to let others in the room know that being asleep is not the same as being dead. I am that sleeping man, and I have slept for so long that my face now looks like death. Yesterday, a coffin was made for me. My action this morning is me talking, to let Jesus and his people know that I am still alive.”
“ChiUkwu,” Agwụ cut in. “Can you stop with all these your proverbs and parables and tell us what happened? We do not have all morning to acknowledge your oratory. Allah, for example, has his morning coffee which it seems you are intent on having go cold. And even if Allah and others are not bothered, I am. I, too, still have cheap Schnapps poured to me, which I need to drink up before Mother beats me to the game. I may not like Schnapps as much as I love palm wine, but that doesn’t mean I should leave those to waste.”
Again, ChiUkwu ignored Agwụ.
“It was yesterday that the people of Jesus—those ones high on a single drop of the wine the boy made from water—went and burnt the house I stay in whenever I visit my people. What happened?” ChiUkwu asked, looking at the faces of all his god-brethren. Satisfied that they were listening, he answered, “Jesus had been drumming it into his people’s ears that he is the supreme deity and that every other deity, that is, all of us here, are either false or lesser than him. This they parroted to my people. My people ignored them, thinking that the madness would fizzle away. But it didn’t. The madness, rather than go away, started building its house in another man’s land and, from there, flings whatever leaves its anus into the other man’s compound.
“No one sees his father’s land seized and his destroyed and looks the other way, pretending that nothing has happened, that nothing is happening. My people had to defend themselves, and that they did. Only for Jesus’ people—those leprosy-stricken fools—to shoot many of my people dead. Go and ask Mother. She normally says black don’t crack, but go and ask Mother. Yesterday, she saw black crack and bleed and die. She was the one who received their bodies. We can go and ask her. That was why I decided to teach the pompous boy one or two lessons. It takes just a needle to show the balloon that it’s not a kite.”
ChiUkwu resumed his seat, and the anger he had lost while laying his complaints returned. Springs grew beneath his feet and on his buttocks, but he succeeded in stopping himself from leaping and landing on Jesus and continuing from where they stopped.
The other gods weighed in on the matter. Many supported ChiUkwu, and a few blamed him for not giving his people better guns to protect themselves. Ogun was the most vocal among those who berated ChiUkwu for not protecting his people. He couldn’t understand why his close friend didn’t ask him to provide his worshippers with the best guns when he knew that all blacksmiths were Ogun’s people. “That’s carelessness and not meekness. I am the god of war not because I love blood, even though my eyeballs swim in it, but because it is better to be with a sword in the garden than with a flower on the war front”
They all agreed that Jesus was the offender and should apologize to ChiUkwu. Jesus refused. He found it preposterous that he was being asked to apologize for telling the truth. How would he explain that to his worshippers, whom he always told to tell the truth—for the truth shall set them free?
“Am I not more powerful than ChiUkwu?” Jesus asked. “Why ask me to apologize?”
“Who told you you are more powerful?” Ogun asked in answer. “What will I not hear? That you fathered a son before your father?”
The castigations went forth and back, but Jesus wouldn’t budge. Seeing Jesus’ mulish determination not to apologize, the other gods decided to settle the case in the traditional way—to set a test. So, a power-proving test was set for ChiUkwu and Jesus. If Jesus should win, ChiUkwu was to acknowledge that truly Jesus was more powerful than him. He was also to give up his name, ChiUkwu, which Jesus would take as his title amongst the ArọChiUkwu people and their neighbours. Should Jesus fail, he will give up his godhood and return to earth as an ordinary human, never to have anything to do with divinity again, and his worshippers added to ChiUkwu’s.
The test was a simple one. They were to plant an ụdala seed each, and after thirty-three years, the one whose tree bore the most fruits would be announced the winner. ChiUkwu was to plant his own tree in ArọChiUkwu, and Jesus any other town apart from ArọChiUkwu. Jesus chose to plant his in the land of the Jews.
After thirty-three years, it was clear to all the gods that Jesus’ ụdala tree was the most fruitful. What wasn’t known was Mother Earth’s role in that success. Ala, not wanting to see her most beloved de-deified, supplied more nutrients to the land of the Jews than any other land in those years. Jesus’ tree not only grew to bear more fruits but also bore the sweetest ụdala fruits ever to exist on earth.
Feeling guilty, Ala gave ChiUkwu’s ụdala fruits in looks what they lacked in taste and number. ChiUkwu’s ụdala fruits became the most appealing ụdala fruit in the whole world, but Jesus had won.
Father said that it was said that when Grandfather came back, he was wearing an overflowing purple-coloured gown. He had fully joined those whom he sought to destroy. But try the chicken what it may, its feathers and wings can never make it accepted by the kites as one of their own. There are birds, and there are birds. While the white men gave their own people white gowns and called them Father, they gave grandfather a purple gown—a colour which competes with black as the face of death—and called him Catechist.
The people had laughed at him, not knowing that he had chosen to be a catechist instead of a priest. He wanted to bear children. When asked whether he would no longer use the white people’s knowledge to destroy the white people, Grandfather always said, “Vengeance is for God.” That got him the nickname, Cathe Vengeance, one of his legacies that the people passed onto my father upon Grandfather’s death.
About the Author
Ugochukwu Anadị is a student at the University of Nigeria, where he studies Mechatronic Engineering during the day and Literature and Creative Writing at night. His writings which mainly explore human sexuality, sexual orientation, climate change, traditional religions and human rights have been published in Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Nantygreens, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Afapinen, Afrocritik, etc. and in a few print anthologies. He won the Nelson Mandela Peace Prize as awarded by IHRAF, USA, for an essay on human rights and was longlisted for the Africa@2050 Climate Fiction Prize
