Red Jacket (8 page)

“Subtle? Aye, maybe, but there you have it.” The priest looks content. Jimmy wonders what he does with his lusts. The word suits him: he is a lusty man. His face glows in the half dark, and not with heat. “That's the whole thing, Brother, in a nutshell. Grace is subtle. God is subtle, sensitive, following us into light and dark, tones and hues, little yearnings and grand obsessions. Too often we won't let him be God, for even our sins are in his charge. He knows them in and out — he even makes good of them. For sure he's not an Almighty Machine with two counters, one to number sinners, the other to tally saints.”

“But God does count, Father John. What of those Old Testament stories, the angel looking for a hundred men so God would spare the city, then ten, then one? What of the parable of the talents, what was done with the five and the two and the one? I'd say there is much numbering in the Bible.”

“It's not a book for lazy brains, nor people who have no imagination. Suppose I tell you of a soccer match where the score was nil-all, another where the score was three-nil, and another where the score was ten-nil. What do those scores mean to you?”

“I'd hope the side getting nil all the time isn't the one I'm supporting.”

“Nah, that was my side,” says the priest. He takes a rag from his pocket and wipes his brow, a rash of drops on it despite the coolness of the night. “Do the scores tell you nothing else, then?”

“They say that in one game, your team was as good or as bad as mine. In another mine beat yours fair and square. And the last time mine trounced yours.”

“Good. And if you thought about them a bit longer, they would tell you more, lead you to wonder about the side getting nil all the time, and the one getting better and better scores. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says his father has numbered all the hairs on your head, but that has nothing to do with counting.”

“Nor hairs,” Jimmy acknowledges.

The sun has almost set; the puff of cloud Jimmy saw earlier has long since blown away. Instead, the day has shrivelled like an overripe mango. Through the window, he can hear the cries of nightjars and owls and glimpse, beyond the three baobabs, an intermittent wind plaiting and replaiting the fields of grain.

Jimmy looks at his watch. “Our time's almost done, Father, but I don't know if we've solved the problem of me and my desires.”

“We need to discern whether you have a problem. Desire, you know, is among the easier ones. Pride now, or envy, they are real challenges.”

Jimmy gets up to go. Whatever the reason, his loins no longer appear such a dreadful threat to his vocation. On his way out, as he discreetly adjusts the offending instruments, he turns to the priest and inquires, “Father John, you know they're laughing — we're laughing — at you in your kiloli. Don't you mind?”

“Should I?” His grin is impish. There is chimp in him after all. “Please ask Brother Simeon to come in.”

Bible in hand, Simeon spins around and asks, “My time?” when he hears Jimmy's step. Jimmy nods. Simeon bounds forward, nimble as a gazelle.

Baggage

At the halfway point in the exercises, the day they break their regimen of silence, John Kelly's belongings arrive. The novices straggle in from hunting njamra in a stubborn stream on the south side of the property to find his baggage at the bottom of the front stairs. Probably brought from Benke with the rest of the week's provisions, mail, newspapers, magazines, and packaged and tinned food supplies, it's been discarded as nonchalantly as a school bag shed by a child on its way out to play.

The harvest of shrimp is disappointing — a pity, since they eat as much from the property as they are able. The shrimp are fat but hard to find, their dark shells melding into the gloom of rock and river bottom. The outing has still been fruitful. Frustrated by the njamra search, Mike and Gabe Assalé, brothers from Cameroon, went exploring on a track that runs through bourgou grass and patches of gallery forest, and came across two black crowned cranes. They spotted the elegant curling necks and gold headpieces in a grove of acacia trees. Warned to be circumspect, since the birds might well be guarding nests, the others snuck up to join the two brothers and gazed in awe. Red-cheeked, their black berets sporting golden plumes, the birds sat composed as judges in their singular headgear, dark robes, and white wing sleeves.

There is something poignant in the novices returning from the majestic birds — “deux oiseaux majestueux!
”
as Gabe described them — to greet the priest's sorry baggage, which comprises a single, very large, tightly packed suitcase with a long tear. The valise is tied together with thick string. No one imagines it started out in this state, but John Kelly makes no complaint. He unties the string and opens the case, exposing its contents: plain white T-shirts, light-coloured trousers, shorts, underwear, handkerchiefs, socks, a few toiletries, a pair of black leather shoes. The bulk is mostly books folded into his clothes. He has one priest's outfit, a suit in black wool.

The black costume unsettles Jimmy, who is detailed to help the man discover the state of his belongings and arrange for his clothes to be washed, if need be. In an odd way, when he pictures the priest in the suit, he is reminded of the cranes. He sees the priest all in black, cheeks red, untidy thatch of mostly orange hair standing on end like the cranes' golden cockscombs — a sad parody.

“But you will be hot in this, won't you, Father? From the rest you packed, you clearly bore the heat in mind.”

“The nuncio might ask me to dine or the bishop.”

“You're joking, Father?”

“No, I'm not. Father Azikiwe warned that either man might pay us a visit, and then I would need to seem imposing, serpentine, albeit I am harmless as a dove. You get my drift?” His smile is complicit.

Jimmy has no idea whither he is drifting.

“For sure it's near twelve, but we can have most of these laundered today, and you'll have them for tomorrow, or perhaps later this afternoon, if you wish, Father.”

“But I've done so well in my kiloli,
”
John Kelly displays his upper body proudly. His face, shoulders and arms begin by peeling, but he and the sun have come to terms. “I knew I'd get a tan,” he boasts. “The Irish are from Africa, you know. They came by boat to the fair green isle three thousand years ago.”

“I've never heard that.”

“My sainted Mum maintained it. Said it explains why both sets of people are loud, quarrelsome, superstitious, drink like fish, fight like fury, and have dark skins, curly hair, and lots of children.”

This seems to Jimmy at best bizarre and at worst insulting. He gives the priest an appraising look, but holds his peace.

“Naw, don't puzzle, Brother. She was a mad woman, to be sure. We're all children of Eve, you know, fruit of the same womb, the one bleeding placenta. They'll find out soon enough. We Irish aren't so bad. If Africans have to resemble any white folks, we're their best bet.”

Jimmy lets this pass as well. “I'll take the clothes to the laundry, Father. And I'll show the suitcase to Philip. Perhaps he can figure out how to mend it.”

“It's hardly worth bothering about, though I'd thank you for arranging for the clothes to see some soap. I'll put a bunch of these books in the library and the rest in the chapel. I want you to have them right off. Perhaps Father Erasmus could tell the others that they're here?”

As they start in different directions, a flock of starlings takes off from under some date palms near the cobblestone path, as if pelted by six or seven shrill wails from across the courtyard. Jimmy and the priest halt and look in the direction from which the sounds came, but they stop as abruptly as they begin and there is no sign of movement or any indication of what has caused them. Indeed, nothing any longer stirs or sounds. Bird calls, insect cheeps, animal noises have ceased.

Erasmus Azikiwe does not reveal what caused the midday screams, although he can't hide the fact that something bad has transpired. That evening the novices watch as staff leave the premises, baskets and bundles in hand, crowding about Elise and Lili, twins, young women in their early twenties who are part of the kitchen crew. The others surge round them, a huddle of dark figures, taking turns talking to them, putting an arm around their shoulders, squeezing their hands.

They hear the dreadful news during vespers, when Father Kelly asks them to pray for the twins' father. He was attacked the day before in their village, his skull concussed by a ferocious blow. He is a marabout, famous as a healer, and his sanctuary room has been ransacked, his medicines stolen, many of his ritual objects broken. The attack on the twins' father is all the talk at supper, for the tiny women are favourites with everyone. Also, as everyone knows, random assaults often presage larger conflicts: a man here, a man there, then twos, then tens, then pretty soon, a war. And who ever knows the plotters?

By the next morning, things are back to normal. Though the twins are still absent, the other staff have returned. Breakfast appears at seven, and lunch and dinner at the appointed times, and the novices find snacks and juice in the refectory if they need refreshment during the day.

Over the last day and a half, Jimmy has been uneasy, his mind disturbed by a series of small, unnatural events. Coming back from the laundry where he deposited Father Kelly's clothes, he notices the dogs, a ragamuffin crew who had been growling at the priest up until then, wildly wagging their tails, leaping up to greet him and rubbing themselves against his legs. He sees mongoose-like mbuni, rodents who scrupulously avoid human contact, halting their lightning dashes across the yard to approach the priest's feet. He notices presents of seeds and cones, select mbuni morsels, piled up near the retreat director's door. Mabuli sand puppies, dedicated underground dwellers, peek from dirt hills that thrust up to form a quaint honour guard under his window.

Surely, on the way to and from the director's office, his brother novices must have observed the mbuni piling up their votary offerings, the sand puppies watching from their mounds? Jimmy doesn't know about anyone else, but he needs to make sense of it. Has hysteria induced by the attack on the marabout rattled them all into imagining bizarre versions of the ordinary? Has the hunger for food and everyday conversation prompted mass hallucination? Or perhaps, and this is the interpretation he most favours, the animals sense the imminence of some type of geophysical phenomenon like an earthquake or a giant rainstorm or sandstorm, and this explains their behaviour. He decides to speak to Father Kelly about it. The man has come a long way: he deserves the satisfaction of earning his keep.

There is mostly, though not always a homily at vespers. That night, the retreat director speaks about verses 28 to 31 from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 12, which was the reading at morning Mass. “Jesus says to love our neighbour as ourselves. We keep forgetting that last part. He exemplified that proper self-love, daring to be who he was, the Messiah, son of God, and getting killed for it. Whenever we are rejected, we need to remember that and to remember too that he rises again and his resurrected self renews the sacred self of each of us, making each of us more lovable. Think of it as lungs, hearts, kidneys, corneas, revived, new cells, new organs transplanted from the risen Jesus into us.”

Jimmy sits in the chapel, closes his eyes, and tries to meditate on the reflection, but the matter of his initial response to the director keeps intruding. What does he not love in himself that has led him to be hostile to the foreigner? Eventually he gives in and recites the
Confiteor
to ask forgiveness for his initial suspicion of the man, his arrogance at their first meeting, his glee at the sight of the white man in his kiloli
,
his scorn of the priest's worn sandals and unkempt feet. He thinks of John Kelly's easy good nature, his ready ear, of the fact that their hilarity at the sight of him in a kiloli seems not to bother him. He is ashamed.

After half an hour, he walks back to his room, the night clear so it seems he can count the points of light in the great stars, the dry air a sculptor's rasp scraping dust and detritus from his lungs. He lies in bed and thinks of Jesus and organ transplants and Africa. Adam and Eve are set down in the Garden of Eden in East Africa. The first heart to find its way from one human body to another does so in South Africa. Jesus lived up the coast in Palestine, so, in a way, in Africa as well. He is transfixed by a vision in which Africa's vastness throbs at the end of God's outstretched finger.

And then, Oh holy ancestors, assist us! Blue Mother of Sorrows, pray for us! At the tip of God's finger he beholds a field of maggots feasting on tawny bodies, corpses tumbled down hills of sand, rotting on roadsides, putrefying in ditches, piled in middens that seethe and hum. He can hear the larvae squirming in an ecstasy of eating, the brush of a plague of tiny wings, the munching of a swarm of mouths. A bloody filter tracks across sand dunes and rocky desert, as gory bodies, baked in the sun, turn every hue of brown and black. The mouldering flesh stinks so high that it invades his senses. He can taste it. Dried blood encrusts his fingers, intrudes under his nails. Chorales of gnawing insects sing in his ears, as God folds his finger, and pulls his hand away.

Shivering, clutching his belly, he hunches over, ready for the fit, stomach muscles taut, bladder squeezed tight, chin tucked into collarbone. He curses the fates for hurling this at him now, when he is just kneading his life into some kind of shape.

The seizure never comes. Foresight but no fit! After minutes of shivering, arms still hugging his middle, breath in long draughts, he feels a trepidation so great he knows he must tell somebody. He drags on his shoes, grabs a shirt, and never mind he's had his consultations for the day, runs to the director's office, praying he will still be there. Mbuni are dozing near his door, eyes closed, pointed heads at rest between their front paws. In the scrub, tree frogs puff their tiny cheeks, trilling
ko-kee
noises. Night birds hoot and howl.

Jimmy raps and hears a sleepy, “Come in.”

“Sorry to disturb you, Father John.”

“Are you still up then, Brother Atule?”

“As you see, Father.”

What he's doing is unprecedented, Jimmy knows, but he's leaving it up to the director. The priest can send him back, if he wishes.

“Have a seat and say what's on your mind.”

“Thank you.” Jimmy sits. “I'd better just confess it. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I'm a soothsayer. I see the future: I divine, foretell, whatever the hell it is.”

“It is hell, is it?”

“It is.”

“Why don't you tell me about it?”

“You believe me, Father?”

“Shouldn't I?”

“Yes. But first, I must assure you that I've never dabbled in the occult, nor my family. We've always had good teaching on that in Mabuli and not just from you Christians.” He smiles briefly at that; the priest smiles too. “We Mabulians know the difference between asking the intercession of the saints, and of our holy ancestors, who are watchful for us, and trafficking with evil spirits.”

“Understood. Tell me what happened, or happens, if it still does.”

“It does, Father. It just did … That's why I'm here.”

“So tell me.”

He might as well begin at the beginning.

“I was twelve.” The sound of his voice in the silence helps. Proper self-love, Jimmy thinks wryly. “They'd closed school for a month because of an outbreak of mumps. One morning I went tramping through the forest with Tjuma, my best friend. We were looking for mushrooms, the hallucinogenic kind, and we were lucky. We found a whole lot. We made a fire, and brewed up a drink. He had half the tin, and I had the rest, then we sat waiting, all excited.”

“And?”

“Nothing. The fungi were perfectly safe. We trudged home, terribly disappointed. I had lunch, and went outside to nap on a bench in the yard. I slept — how long I don't know. And then it happened.” He stops.

“Go on,” the priest encourages.

“I opened my eyes. Or so I thought. But I couldn't move. Not my hands. Not my feet. Not anything. Couldn't breathe. Not even wiggle a finger. My heart shut down in my chest. My whole body, cold and stiff, lay rattling on the bench the way corpses bounce in the undertaker's cart when it rattles over the unpaved village roads.”

“Sounds like fun. How long did it go on?”

“I don't know. A long time.”

“And afterwards?”

“I had a … a prescience, I guess you could call it.”

“Of what, Brother Jimmy?”

“I knew Mapome, my father's mother, was going to die.”

“Had your grandmother been ill?”

“She was perfectly healthy, and not especially old, not by our standards anyway.”

“Did she die?”

“The next day.”