Amos Tutuola The Palm Wine Drinkard (epub) i

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.This was a wonderful child, because if a hundred men were to fight with him, he would flog them until they would run away.When he sat on a chair, we could not push him away.He was as strong as iron, if he stood on a place nobody could push him off.Now he became our ruler in the house, because sometimes he would say that, we should not eat till night and sometimes he would drive us away from the house at mid-night and sometimes he would tell us to lie down before him for more than two hours.As this child was stronger than everybody in that town, he went around the town and he began to burn the houses of the heads of that town to ashes, but when the people in the town saw his havocs and bad character, they called me (his father) to discuss how we could exile him away from the town, then I told the people that I knew how I would exile him away from the town.So one night, when it was one o’clock in the mid-night, when I noticed that he slept inside the room I put oil around the house and roof, but as it was thatched with leaves and also it was in the dry season, I lighted the house with fire and closed the rest of the windows and doors which he did not close before he slept.Before he woke up, there was a great fire around the house and roof, smoke did not allow him to help himself, so he burnt together with the house to ashes.When we saw that the child had burnt into ashes all the town’s people were very glad and the town was in peace.When I saw that I had seen the end of the child, then I pressed my wife’s father to tell me where my palm-wine tapster was and he told me.∨ The Palm-wine Drinkard ∧12On the way to an unknown placeThe same day that the father of my wife told me the place that my tapster was, I told my wife to pack all our belongings and she did so, then we woke up early in the morning and started to travel to an unknown place, but when we had travelled about two miles away to that town which we left, my wife said that she forgot her gold trinket inside the house which I had burnt into ashes, she said that she had forgotten to take it away before the house was burnt into ashes.She said that she would go back and take it, but I told her that it would burn into ashes together with the house.She said that it was a metal and it could not burn into ashes and she said that she was going back to take it, and I begged her not to go back, but she refused totally, so when I saw her going back to take it, then I followed her.When we reached there, she picked a stick and began to scratch the ashes with it, and there I saw that the middle of the ashes rose up suddenly and at the same time there appeared a half-bodied baby, he was talking with a lower voice like a telephone.At the same time that we saw the ashes rise up and change into half-bodied baby, and he was also talking with a lower voice, then we started to go.Then he was telling my wife to take him along with is, to wait and take him, but as we did not stop and take him with us, he then commanded that our eyes should be blinded and we became blinded at the same moment as he said it; still we did not come back and take him, but we were going on, when he saw that we did not come back and take him, he commanded again that we should stop breathing, truly speaking we could not breathe.When we could not breathe in or out, we came back and took him along with us.As we were going on the road, he told my wife to carry him by head, and as he was on my wife’s head, he was whistling as if he was forty persons.When we reached a village we stopped and bought food from a food-seller to eat as we were very hungry before reaching there, but when we were about to eat the food, the half-bodied baby did not allow us to eat it, instead of that he took the food and swallowed it as a man swallows a pill, so when the food-seller saw him do so, she ran away and left her food there, but when our half-bodied baby saw that the food-seller had left her food, he crept to the food and swallowed it as well.So this half-bodied baby did not allow us to eat the food, and we did not taste it at all.When the people of that village saw the half-bodied baby with us, they drove us away from the village.Then we started our journey again and when we had travelled about seven miles away from that village, there we reached another town; we stopped there also, and we bought other food there, but this half-bodied baby did not allow us to eat that again.But by that time we were annoyed and we wanted to eat it by force, but he commanded as before and at the same time we became as he commanded, then we left him to swallow it.When the people of that town saw him there with us again, they drove us away with juju and they said that we were carrying a spirit about and they said that they did not want a spirit in their town.So if we entered any town or village to eat or sleep, they would drive us away at once and our news had been carried to all towns and villages [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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