Free Ajaiyi and His Inherited Poverty by Amos Tutuola

your friend, Ade, today ?” “He is not here, he was even the very one who caused my death and he was even among the king’s killers who beat me to death here with the heavy clubs,” I wiped my face with both hands and then explained to this terrible creature with sorrow as Aina was looking at me.
    “Did you not beg me the other day that Ade was faithful to you and that I must spare him for you?” this creature reminded me. “Certainly, I begged you that day to spare him for me and not to eat him. And it is true that I told you that day as well that he was faithful to me and thathe was the only man that I liked most in this world,” I replied with a dead voice.
    “Now, I come back to you today but as you did not allow me to eat the dead-body of Ade the other day, I shall eat you today instead, because the human dead-bodies are my favourite food!” But as this terrible creature was preparing to kill me back and then to eat my dead-body. Aina hastily knelt down before him, she began to beg him with tears to spare me for her. She explained to him that I was her only brother that she got in this world and that it was the poverty which we had inherited from our father and mother was driving us about until we came to Ade’s town. Luckily, when Aina explained like that to this terrible creature with tears which were rolling down her cheek, he hesitated for a few minutes and then he said: “All right, I reluctantly spare him for you because it is a pity to me to hear from you that he is your only brother and that both of you are in poverty! All right, both of you can go back to the town now but I warn you seriously that you should disassociate yourself from Ade forthwith otherwise he will soon run you into another trouble! Goodbye!” This terrible creature hardly spared me for Aina and warned me seriously when he disappeared suddenly.
    *
    Then Aina and I went back to the town with happiness and the people of the town including Ade, the traitor, were surprised to see that I returned alive. Of course, I woke Ade from death the other day when the cruel king condemned him to death for only a minor offence which was not deserved death sentence. But he betrayed me to death at last.
    However, as soon as Aina and I entered the house I went direct to the room just to open the box in which I kept my two hundred pounds to take a few shillings from it which to be used for our food. But to my disappointment, I saw that the box had been broken into pieces and the two hundred pounds had been stolen away. Immediately I saw that the money had been stolen, I did not know when I fell down and fainted for about thirty minutes before I became normal. As soon as I became normal I went out I asked from a number of people whether they knew who had stolen my money. But they told me that they saw Ade when he entered the house and that he was the man who had stolen away my two hundred pounds. Having heard this information from the people I went to Ade. I asked him about the money but he denied entirely that he was not the one who had stolen it. When I tried all my efforts to recover the money back from Ade but were failed then I came back to the house with great sorrow and embarrassment. But I was quite sure that he was the right person who stole the money. That was how my two hundred pounds was stolen away by Ade, the unfaithful and traitor friend.
    Now, I came back to my poverty as before. When I came back to the house, I sat down and then I began to say within myself that it was certain that I was really created with poverty otherwise Ade could have not been able to steal my two hundred pounds. Now I could not get such a big money as this again because the juju-gourd or magic gourd which had the power to wake the deads had been thrown into the river by Ade and the terrible creature who gave it to me, the terrible creature who had the voice that of the human beings, had taken it back assoon as Ade threw it into the river. It was this magic gourd