Ivory Bangles by Eric Ng'maryo - A SILENT SONG AND OTHER STORIES

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          The Plot Summary


The old man goes to a tribal seer for a consultation after noticing something strange about a goat he had slaughtered (he notices blood specks on the liver of a goat he had slaughtered).


The seer after listening to the old man tells him that his wife, is going to die (based off that sign from the slaughtered goat), and the only way to prevent this is to give the wife a thorough beating and send her to her parents.The seer’s pebbles say the man’s wife is going to die because the spirits were jealous of a happy wife.


The old man is hesitant to follow this advice and suggests offering goats as a sacrifice instead. However, the seer is adamant that to avert the wife's death, the pebbles say he has to give her a thorough beating.


The old man is a chief's councillor and is regarded as a small chief. As much as he is respected, many are surprised that he has only one wife. When the chief suggested that he marries another wife, the man replies using a riddle. The chief quickly and ravels the riddle as “A wife, a co-wife, witchcraft and death”. This reveals that the people have deep seated beliefs about witchcraft and death.


The man loves his wife dearly. When she had their first child, he gifted her twenty four handcrafted ivory bangles some etched with the words of a long love poem.


During the evening meal with his wife, the man is disturbed since he doesn’t know how to deliver the bad news to his loving wife. That night the man divulges the seer's words to the wife. “The spirits want me to give you a ritual beating.” (pg. 22) However, the woman dismisses this and hints that she knows the seer. He once wanted to marry her and had threatened to put a spell on her.


The man is adamant that the seer did not put blood specks on the goat's liver and that he is only the mouthpiece of their dead ancestors.


The man is ready to carry out the seer's instructions in order to avert the wife’s death. The wife talks him out of it, proposing that there is another way.


The old man's wife goes to the market. While at the market, she thinks of her plan: She intends to go home and cook for the husband before going to her brother’s place. She would go there weeping that her husband had beaten her for no reason, and would refuse to go back to him until her clan and her husband's clan meet to reconcile them. The husband would be asked to part with a fine and they would drink beer of reconciliation. This would certainly fool the spirits.


As she returns home from the market , she hears people talking about a herd of elephants that are coming down from the forest. She hurries home and does some gardening before enacting 'the plan'. As she gardens, her thoughts wander to Leveri, her daughter-in-law, who had helped her weed just three weeks ago. Leveri had run away from her husband who had beaten her badly. The woman does not understand why their son is different from his father. While gardening, she is attacked and killed by a wounded bull elephant after it lifts her and stamps on her repeatedly.


When she is found, she is a mass of flesh and blood with shattered ivory bangles.“They found her thus in her shallow grave: a mass of flesh and blood and shattered ivory bangles.” (pg. 25)


The powers of the seer seem to be confirmed since his eerie prediction comes to pass.


The woman dies because she deviates from customary norms after her husband and she defy the tribal seer, a priest of the people.


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