Pages 191–220 Summary
Note: The page numbers listed in this summary correspond to the 1994 Grove Press edition of The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. For those reading the original 1953 Grove Press edition of the novel, this summary refers to pages 7–37.
The first-person narrator introduces himself as the eldest of eight children, and as one who has been a palm-wine “drinkard” since he was ten years old. His father, the richest man in town, gave him a farm containing 560,000 palm-trees, and engaged a tapster to tap palm wine for his son all day.
When the narrator had spent fifteen years drinking palm-wine with his friends, his father died. Six months later, the tapster fell from a palm tree he was tapping and also died. The narrator was unable to tap his own palm wine and was forced to drink water. Having heard old people say that those who die do not go directly to heaven but are still to be found somewhere in the world, he decided to go out and look for the tapster.
The narrator leaves his hometown and goes in search of the palm-wine tapster. After seven months, he encounters an old man who is actually a god. This old man says that he will tell the narrator—who introduces himself as “Father of the gods who could do anything in the world,” a sobriquet he employs throughout the book—where the tapster is if he will find a blacksmith and bring back the thing the old man told the blacksmith to make for him. The narrator assumes the form of a bird and listens to the old man talking to his wife. He is able to learn that the object the old man wants from the blacksmith is a bell, and he goes to fetch this from the blacksmith.
The old man sets the narrator another task, giving him a net and telling him to bring back Death in it. The narrator finds the house of Death and sleeps there, but he sleeps under the bed rather than on it, so when Death comes in the night to club him, Death rains blows on the bed, but the narrator is unharmed. The next day, the narrator digs a pit for Death and stretches the net over it. Having tricked Death into falling in the pit, he wraps the net round him and takes him to the old man.
The old man is terrified, particularly when Death escapes from the net. He and all the other inhabitants of the town run away, so there is no one left to tell the narrator anything about his palm-wine tapster. The narrator starts on his travels again. Less than five months later, he comes to another town, where the head man says that he knows where the tapster is and will tell the narrator if he can help to recover his captured daughter.
The head man’s daughter had been at the town market, when she had seen a fine gentleman, beautifully dressed, and had followed him home, despite having been warned not to do so. As he went away from the market into the endless forest, the gentleman returned various parts of his body to the original owners, who had rented them out to him. He returned his feet, belly, ribs and chest, and became a terrible creature with only a head, arms, and a neck. The lady then tried to return to her father, but the creature prevented her from doing so. Eventually, having returned his arms, neck and skin, the gentleman was nothing but...
(This entire section contains 1123 words.)
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a skull. The skull brought the lady back to his home, a hole in the ground in which other skulls were also living. He tied a cowrie around her neck, and this prevented her from speaking. The cowrie raised the alarm whenever the lady tried to escape, and the skulls would prevent her from leaving.
The narrator agrees to find the lady and drinks forty kegs of the head man’s palm wine. The next morning, he sees the fine gentleman in the marketplace and knows that he is really “a curious and terrible creature.” When the gentleman leaves the market, the narrator follows him, changing himself into the form of a lizard so that he will not be seen. After observing the gentleman divest himself of all the parts of his body and become a skull again, the narrator follows the skull into his house, where he sees the lady. When the skull goes outside, the narrator changes into a man again so that he can talk to her.
When the lady stands up, the cowrie round her neck sounds the alarm, and the skulls try to capture the narrator and tie a cowrie around his neck. However, he changes himself into air and evades them. He manages to escape with the lady, changing her into a kitten and himself into a bird. He brings her home, but the cowrie around her neck is still making a terrible noise, which prevents her from talking or eating. The narrator tries to cut the cowrie from around her neck but succeeds only in stopping the noise. The lady remains unable to speak or eat.
The narrator returns to the forest and sees the skull, who puts a spell on some leaves, saying that unless the lady eats them, she will remain in the power of the cowrie forever. The narrator brings the leaves back to the lady, who eats them and is released. Her grateful parents give her to the narrator in marriage.
The narrator stays with his wife and her parents for three and a half years. At the end of this time, he notices that his wife’s thumb is swollen, and a male child bursts out of it. Within an hour, the boy is three feet tall and can speak with perfect clarity. He tells them that his name is Zurrjir, and he drinks all the palm-wine and eats all the food in the house, fighting and beating anyone who attempts to stop him.
The child is stronger than anyone in the town and begins to create havoc, burning people’s houses to ashes. The townspeople therefore appeal to the narrator, the child’s father, who burns the child to death in the family home while he is asleep. The narrator then sets out again in search of his palm-wine tapster. The narrator’s wife scratches the ashes of their burned house with a stick and conjures up a half-bodied baby, which accompanies them on the journey against their will. The half-bodied baby eats all their food and terrifies the villagers they meet on their journey, making them outcasts wherever they go.
