At home after Mo’s confession, the priest questioned his workmen, one at a time: had they seen a strange presence loitering around the house late in the night? And they all answered with an emphatic no, one of them even adding, What would I be doing in the dark when I should be in bed?
Still, the priest would not take chances, and asked one of his most trusted workmen to keep guard at his bedroom window every night. He indulged himself only once; otherwise he spent the rest of the week trying to figure out how he could discover the identity of the boy. He would then take the parents aside and quietly warn them about the fire next time.
III
The second time, it was also in church, the same church, the same priest. He surprised his congregation with a question: in the last two weeks, had anybody seen a person, a friend, or a neighbour drinking? He assured the audience that they would not be required to disclose the person’s name, time, or place, or anything that might identify the fallen. Nearly all raised their hands, which was not particularly helpful. Let’s narrow it down. What about a priest drinking? Anybody? People looked around. No takers. Even Mo hesitated. He had witnessed the same scene a week after the first one, but he wondered if it was worth the effort to say anything in public. Then he recalled Ham’s curse for not doing anything about his father’s nakedness, and was the priest not his spiritual padre?
He raised his hand. Eyes were turned to him. A few people suppressed sniggers, barely.
What’s your name?
Mo.
Son of?
My mother.
No father?
I must have one, Mo said, to some laughter from a section of the audience, but the truth is, I don’t know him.
So you come from a broken home?
Oh, no, my mother is holy.
A single parent, then?
Yes, like everybody.
What do you mean?
Everybody is born of one woman.
Is your mother in church today?
No.
Does she come to church?
No.
Does she pray for you, with you, before meals?
She says God sees everything and everybody. Why would she tell him what he already knows? God does not sleep, she tells me. She trusts everything to his wisdom and generosity, his hindsight, his foresight, his sidesight.
Actually, Mo’s mother was a small farmer, if a strip of land could be called a farm, but she had the knack of making it yield her and her son’s needs. She kept to herself but otherwise was not one to hold back a stream of curses at anyone who provoked her. At a political gathering she would ask questions that voiced concerns people had in mind. Secretly they would be grateful for her questions while publicly shaking their heads in apparent censure. That woman, Mo’s mom, does she take something? they would say. But she did not take anything stronger than water. Her stream of obscenities made people desist crossing her path. They thought her head was wrong, which made it easier for them to tolerate her swear words but ignore their truth. Mo was his mother’s child, keeping to her ways mostly, but otherwise different in his polite speech and demeanour and his attraction to churches, mosques, and temples.
But do you say prayers? The rosary?
I do, not the rosary, but prayers. To God be the glory of creation. I try to find him in different places. My mother says that drinking clean water, washing in clean water, and caring about plants, and animals, and birds, creatures big and small, is enough worship. Life is life, she says. In the beginning was water. And air. And soil. And sun’s fire, and these birthed life. My mother says drinking alcohol is an insult to God, who made us from water. I like to say thank you for all the life around me – water, air, soil, and everything that comes therefrom. And stars. The Big Sun! The Sun of God!
You’re certainly wiser than your mother, though you must love and pray for her.
I do; I am always grateful she brought me into the world. Imagine, she carried me for nine months, and she says I swam in the water inside her. She says that in the beginning …
Yes, yes, water, the priest interrupted Mo. The holy book says so. The earth didn’t have any shape, and it was empty. Darkness was over the surface of the ocean. At that time, the ocean covered the earth. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And what brings you to church today?
To tell you what I saw, to help you in your God’s work.
The congregation greeted this with open laughter. The priest admonished them: let the little children come to me, he intoned, and not hinder them because to such as these belong the Kingdom of God. Haven’t you read Isaiah? The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
Women were in tears; men gasped with admiration, their priest’s generous gesture reminding them of the young Christ. Who were they to cast the first stone?
And when was it, the priest said, I mean when you saw them, I mean your priests, drinking?
I saw one priest only, Mo said, as he gave the day and the hour.
And where were you at the time?
In my bed.
Sceptical gasps replaced those of wonder. The priest put on the air of infinite forbearance. But he was relentless in his pursuit of a cornered quarry.
In your bed? Then how did you see the priest or priests drinking?
Father, should I call out the priest in question and ask him to answer truthfully?
It’s not necessary, said the priest, but he had already noted Mo’s name, the face, and family details.
After the session, the priest took one of his most adoring and faithful parishioners to keep guard over Mo’s house, every night, and asked him to call the priest by cell phone should he see or spot Mo sleepwalking. He believed that strange demons, probably his mother’s, possessed the poor child, and the priest would like to cast them out.
And now that he had installed guards around his and Mo’s houses, he felt free to indulge his alcoholic palate, but always late at night when he knew that every household in the parish was asleep.
IV
The third time was in the same church. The priest asked the same question with similar results, Mo’s being the only hand raised in response. The priest gave a little parable of how the devil often insinuated itself into the souls of innocents and even accompanied them to church. After which, the priest asked Mo to come to the confessional after the sermon.
My son, said the priest, now behind the window. I am glad you have come to confess sins of lying.
No, I am not lying, Father.
Then which priest did you imagine you really saw?
You, said Mo, and he once again described in detail the days and the hour that he saw him drinking, including the types of liquors and the places where the priest hid them.
And, Father, this last time you also talked to a lady on the phone. Don’t you want to confess? Mo asked.
And where were you when you saw your imaginary priest drinking and talking dirty to invisible ladies?
In my bed, and I did not say you were talking dirty. Unless saying you hoped the God’s seeds you had planted in her garden will sprout is talking dirty. And also some kinds of sacred objects you gave her. Father, are you sure you are not lying?
Son, said the priest, his holy patience wearing thin at the thought that the boy might know more than he was letting on. Son, lying is a sin. I ask you again. Confess.
Before you?
Yes.
Truthfully?
Of course.
I confess truthfully that at those hours I was in my bed, and my mother can confirm it.
Okay, my son. We have to cast out the devil in you.
In you, did you say? Can one cast a devil from himself, the boy asked, genuinely curious. My mother says that the devil is the other face of God. You see, when children die for nothing, and diseases kill people, and things like that happen without God stopping the evil, it must be the
devil’s doing, right? And God is implicated, like Ham was, for not doing anything about his father’s nakedness. I thought you would need another to cast out the devil from yourself.… Can I see you doing it, please? I would like to know how to do it.
God is God and the devil is the devil.
My mother says the two can be in one, right? She says that sometimes she curses; at other times she blesses. She laughs and cries at other times, angry and happy. She gives, she takes, and yet she is the same person. Right? God can be all those and still remain God, right?
I shall send some people to talk to your mother about this nonsense. She needs the devil taken out of her. Bad influence on a child. Leave everything to me for now.
But my mother does not drink.
Leave.
The mobile phone had made life easier, the priest muttered to himself. Mo, of course, did not hear the priest dial anything.
A mile or so from the church building, police arrested him and charged him with stealing gold figurines from the priest’s residency. An anonymous caller had tipped them.
V
The case attracted many people. Even Joycelin, the judge’s wife, a lady known for her piety and the many hours she spent in the confessional, was present. The priest was the main and only prosecution witness. Dressed in the white collar of his trade, he cited the hour and the day when the items were stolen, but did not say that he was citing the last day Mo said he had seen him. Reason was on his side, the priest argued through the prosecutor. Mo had obviously concocted lies about seeing a priest drinking. Wasn’t it clever of the youth that he had chosen the hour of darkness when all were asleep? Unfortunately for the culprit, who had tried to back up his lies with a specific hour and day, these coincided with the day and the hour of the theft! The ‘drinking priest’ was a product of the boy’s vivid imagination only. But he is not here to answer to charges of youthful mendacity. Theft. Clearly, from his testimony alone, Mo must have been at the premises. Truth has ways of outing and outlasting lies. But why steal secretly, successfully, and then pin it on the priest? The boy has a grudge against the priest. But he did not count on the priest being God’s eye on earth.
Actually, Mo loved his priest, who often wandered around the parish dishing out candy to children, whether they were of Catholic faith or not. He visited widows, and attended funerals. Although Mo hated the very smell of alcohol, he thought that a priest who drank in the privacy of his house, one or two bottles of whisky at a time even, a priest who enjoyed talking to ladies late at night, and about sacred gifts and the God’s seeds he had planted in their secret gardens, though in a drunken voice, was a good priest, human. His only sin, in Mo’s eyes at least, was in condemning others for doing what he also did without condemning himself. That’s why he wanted the priest to confess in the first place. It was for the good of the soul of the priest, Mo reasoned.
At the insistence of the priest, with no objection from the defendant, the court called Mo’s mother to the dock. She let out a stream of obscenities at the judge, the court, the police, the priest, the proceedings, but finally testified that her son was indeed in bed on the days and times mentioned.
And I have always told him that these churches are dens of thieves and robbers, she said, to the laughter of those present. The whites started it; the blacks ran away with it. Now they make us build them houses, buy them cars, pay for their house help, some even make us buy them helicopters and airplanes. But he won’t listen to his mother. Says he wants to find the truth for himself. It’s these books. What does a ten-year-old know about truth? I tell him, truth is life itself. Leave my son alone.
You see, even his mother says the boy does not know the truth, the prosecutor observed.
In his defence, Mo asked the court for one thing only. The court should ask the priest to say publicly if, or not, he had drunk whisky on the hour and the days mentioned.
The priest was not expecting this kind of request from this uncouth youth. Did he have something up his sleeve? Scared of sinning publicly, the priest confessed to having had one or two tumblers. This played well into the police case.
The youth must have spotted him with a tumbler and decided to base his lies on a speck of fact, said the prosecutor. He must then have waited for the priest to sleep and then somehow opened the door, crept in, stole the items, and probably took them to his eccentric mother. You have heard her weird rants. She might even have been a party to …
What? May the devil swallow your police and priestly lies, and all you, like he once did some lying missionaries, long ago, Mo’s mother screamed, and this time the court ordered she be removed from the court. Manira devil, Manira devil come for the miscreants, she screamed as she was forcibly led out.
The judge accepted the argument of the prosecution, noting that Mo did not dispute that he had seen the said priest and the whisky at the hour the priest claimed the theft occurred. He noted that Mo was a minor; and this was his first offence. The court also took into account his mother’s eccentric behaviour. The court ordered Mo to produce the stolen items. Then the court would decide on the sentence. Your cooperation with the court might be taken into account in deciding on the sentence. What do you say?
Mo made a strange request. He asked the judge to cover him with a blanket and make sure that no light came through. The police were to do as he directed them or rather as his voice directed them. He wanted his mother present, as a witness, to ensure each side kept to the bargain. This was so bizarre that even the judge’s curiosity was aroused. He granted the request. His mother was brought back, one police officer covering her mouth to prevent her screams and curses; he then taped her mouth.
It was a drama which outdid any that had ever occurred in the court. Not even those cases in which criminals undressed completely, or urinated in the court, or even attacked the judge, could beat this. Even Mo’s mom seemed struck with awe, and did not try to curse through the tape.
They heard his voice describe the route officers should take to the bedroom of one of the most trusted ladies of the church, Joycelin, the wife of the judge. The court recessed waiting for the results. The police returned with two gold items they recovered from the bedroom of the judge’s wife. Who gave them to you, the irate judge asked his wife?
The priest, she replied.
What for?
Just a token, a token of his love for me. But it was unrequited love, she hastened to add.
By that time the priest was nowhere to be seen. A furious judge set Mo free and ordered his mother ungagged.
What Mo did not tell the court, of course, because nobody thought of asking him, was that in the dark, and only in the dark, his psychic self took over and sometimes went to places and saw things that his body self could not.
VI
Under other circumstances, even without our knowing about his divided self, Mo’s act would have dominated our lives. The gag on the mother would have turned into heavy chains, and the blanket into an enormous dome, the police force, in riot gear inside armoured vehicles, helicopters hovering above us. We loved magic, miracles, and mirages, and we were known to create perfect mountains out of molehills. Hundreds of years after the event, the story of the devil who swallowed missionaries in the sand still enlivened many an evening in our homes, and never lost its appeal with time, despite more recent spectacles.
Once, a passerby claimed that his wife had given birth to a boy, half dog and half human, and said that he would let people see the spectacle for a fee. He put up a big tent. Seats were limited. People paid in advance; on the day of the show, the man and his tent vanished, but we would not let go of the story, and some claimed that the human dog had turned savage and swallowed the man and then flew away, with the tent for wings. Some even swore they had seen the flying tent above them and others that they had heard the triumphant barking of a dog in the sky. A story of the impossible enlivened our humdrum lives of meagre wages in factories and coffee plantations and hard work on strips of land that produced le
ss the more we coaxed it. I don’t know why we had thought that things would change with blacks taking over from whites but it did not matter; in both times, we had God, priests, reverends, rabbis, and mullahs and even Krishna on our side. We were so blessed. That’s why we all competed to ensure that our priest was better than the priest from the next village. Ours was God’s eye; his tongue, God’s, proven by the many parables out of his mouth that turned out to be naked truth.
That’s why the real-life disappearance of a beloved priest – so young, so handsome, so glorious a voice – leaving behind a parish that worshipped his shadow, as well as a home and a car we had bought for him from our meagre resources, dwarfed every wonder, even that of a ten-year-old seeing in the dark while ensconced in his bed. We forgot Mo; we mourned the disappearance of a priest instead. Could he have been swallowed by the devil like his predecessors? It was possible, because nobody saw him vanish, but then, would God allow the devil to touch His eye and mouth?
It became the talk of our small community, generating tension between parishes, some of whose members shed crocodile tears in sympathy they did not feel. They wouldn’t forgive us for all the hymns that we had sung to the glory of the handsome priest and our acting as if we were better than the other parishes with their aging grey-haired priests, remnants of the colonial era.
Some floated the thought that envious mosques, temples, and Protestant competitors had disappeared him, out of envy of course, and this called for vengeance. Kidnap their priests? Various ideas were floated. Some started beating drums of war. War of Faiths!
VII
It was a new rumour that silenced the drums and averted the War of Faiths. At first it was easier to dismiss the claims when they were traced to the drunk who once left the church. A man who could snore through ant bites was capable of any fantasy. But when different others, women mostly, started claiming strange encounters with Michael Jackson at all sorts of places and times but mostly at dawn and evening twilight, the rumour swept the community like the flu. Sceptics went to internet cafés to seek a clue in Jackson’s music on YouTube. The images of people rising from the dead gave legs to the rumours: the singer had foretold his resurrection.
Minutes of Glory Page 17