Pages 220–248 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 38–67.
The narrator and his wife hear music and carry the half-bodied baby towards it. They encounter three creatures, called Drum, Song, and Dance, and follow them and their music for five days without stopping. At the end of this time, Drum, Song, and Dance go into a building made of mud, where the half-bodied baby follows them. The narrator and his wife then continue on their journey without the baby. When they run out of money, the narrator changes into a canoe, and his wife uses this to ferry people across a river. When the route becomes dangerous, the narrator changes himself into a bird, and they travel by air. They eventually come to the town where the narrator’s father-in-law said the palm-wine tapster was living. The people there say that the tapster has gone to Deads’ town, a faraway place inhabited only by the dead.
The narrator and his wife begin their journey to Deads’ town, sleeping in a thick bush at the end of the first day. Late at night, the narrator sees a strange creature that is large and white and resembles a pillar. He turns himself into a fire to frighten the creature away, but many more of the creatures come, as they are cold and want to warm themselves. When the narrator and his wife, still in the guise of fire, leave the bush, the white creatures stay behind.
The next night, the narrator and his wife rest in a field beside a termites’ house. When they wake up in the night, they find that they are in the middle of a market. The people of the field complain to their king that the narrator and his wife have trespassed on their land, but the king refers the matter to the gods of war, who do the narrator no harm, since he himself is “Father of the gods.”
The narrator and his wife travel to an area full of islands. The people there are kind and beautiful, and they give the narrator a fine house on “Wraith Island” in which to live. He helps the people to plant their crops, and one day he is disturbed in his work by a monster the size of an elephant. However, it soon becomes clear to him that the monster is the owner of the land. The monster takes the narrator to his house and gives him corn, rice, and okra seeds, which, when he plants them, germinate, grow, and bear fruit within ten minutes. Another time, the King of the Wraith Island commands one of the fields to be cleared, but the tiniest creature on the island, the size of a baby, makes the weeds grow again to show its power and express its chagrin at being overlooked when the king chose his subjects to clear the field.
The narrator and his wife bid farewell to the people of Wraith Island and return to the bush. The trees there laugh at them, and they are unable to sleep, so they enter the forest. There they encounter the “Spirit of Prey,” a huge creature the size of a hippopotamus that walks upright. His head is like a lion’s, and his body is covered in scales. The Spirit of Prey does not chase its pre, but has only to close its eyes for...
(This entire section contains 924 words.)
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the other creature to drop dead and be dragged towards it. The narrator and his wife climb a tree, and the Spirit of Prey does not see them. They resume their journey on a road which they believe leads to Unreturnable-Heaven’s Town, a place where the inhabitants are “very bad, cruel and merciless.”
The narrator and his wife attempt to leave the road but find themselves unable to do so, even by using magic. They enter the town and see indescribable creatures, which beat them and throw stones at them. These creatures take the narrator and his wife to their king, who interrogates them about where they come from and where they are going. He tells them that the town is one “in which there are only enemies of God living, only cruel, greedy and merciless creatures.”
The townspeople scrape the hair off their heads with stones, rub pepper on their bleeding heads, and bury them up to their necks in a field. They whip their heads, throw stones at them, and excrete and urinate over them. Later, when it rains, the earth becomes soft enough for the narrator and his wife to escape. However, they cannot get out of the town, so they wait until nightfall and then burn it to the ground. The next day, no living people remain in the town, so the narrator cuts a hole in the wall, and they are able to leave.
After their ordeal in Unreturnable-Heaven’s Town, the narrator and his wife build a house in the bush and rest for five months. When they resume their journey, they see a large white tree and hear a voice telling them to go inside. When they do so, they find themselves inside a large and beautiful house, where a woman is sitting in the parlor. She introduces herself as “Faithful-Mother” and says that she helps “those who were in difficulties and enduring punishments but not killing anybody.”
