It was Sister Dymphna, easily recognisable by her stately slenderness compared with her dumpy superior, and then by a pearly glimpse of her lovely face as she turned at the beaching of the boat.
Father Glascock, barefoot and with pants rolled to the knees, was first out of the boats, saying, evidently to Fergus and the General, ‘Must away. I leave friends to you. Excuse, Captain.’ He went trotting up the beach, keeping to the left to pass the ranked choir, bowing slightly to the nun, but addressing the children: ‘Good evening, children. Your singing was very nice. I’ll give you a present for it . . . mango jam . . . that all right?’ They giggled.
He passed them, was amongst the first of the casuarinas, when a shadow stirred and startled him with a cackling old voice: ‘’Tis ayvenin’ you call it, Father?’
Halted, he bent to put on the Japanese scuffs and roll down his pants, grunting, ‘We’ve discussed the usage of the word Evening before, Reverend Mother . . . which in English, the language we teach, is that period between the onset of darkness and normal bedtime . . .’
The cackling voice rose: ‘Depending on what you call normal, Your Reverence. Bedtime for my children tonoight is going to be annything but that.’
Rising, he hissed at her, ‘Madam . . . keep a hold of your tongue! There are gentlemen behind us.’
The cackle dropped to a fierce whisper, ‘Don’t Madam me . . . I’ve a toitle of my own!’
He sighed gustily, went on his way — but with her beside him, still at it, even if with the dry old voice subdued: ‘And if it’s the Orientals you’d be referring to as gintlemen, then I’m remoinded that it’s not so long since Your Reverence was calling them Slant-eyed Despoilers of the innocents of your flock . . . and with all due respect to your cloth and your English usage, Bloody Spies into the bargain!’
He broke into a run, caught a scuff in a root, fell to hands and knees. The old woman chuckled deeply, calling after him as he rose and went on, ‘Haven’t I always said those Japanese shoon were made only for cloven hoofs?’
She turned at sound of steps behind her. General Esk greeted her, ‘Good evening, Reverend Mother. A lovely set of song birds you have.’
‘Goodnight, Gineral. Yes, indeed . . . if they were as good at everything else as they are at singing, the instruction of them would be another story. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be seeing to getting them along to Vespers.’
‘We’ll be along, too. Your Reverence.’
‘Indeed . . . and that’ll be a high honour for all of us . . . including yourselves.’
The church was lit with two pressure lamps, one hanging in the porch, the other behind in the sacristy, combining to make a holy twilight in which the altar candles burnt reverently, touching things as it were with tiny tongues of fire, even the bent knees and drooped jowl of the Hanged God. David, wearing scarlet cassock and lace-edged alb and black biretta and an air of deep piety, placed the visitors in a front pew. The other front pew was occupied by particoloured females, including the two Barbus from the kitchen, with Mother Mathias sitting dragon-like at the inner end as if to protect them from the Haythens across the bit of aisle. Other respectably clad adults filled the rest. The captive boys were packed in a mass, sitting on forms, with St Joseph to keep an eye on them. The girls were on the other side, more carefully watched by Sister Dymphna, since the Virgin before them looked too smug with beatification to care what anybody did; and doubtless anything was likely to happen to those black maids, to judge by the glittering eyes in black faces crowded behind and peering through the louvres from outside. Sister Dymphna was seated alone, looking over an harmonium, which was crying softly. Prindy, seated with the visitors, every now and then craned to see over that other side, perhaps interested only in the little organ, and not the fact that his wife was there in the choir, as the sharp intervening glances of Mother Mathias seemed to suggest.
Then there was Father Glascock, brilliantly gowned in white and gold and purple, tasselled biretta on his head, looking a very different person, indeed not looking a mere person at all, but a priest, and acting it, the way he walked, with eyes downcast, hands piously folded. Behind him came David, swinging the censer, the smoke of which rushed to the candles like holy breath, causing them to flicker — as it were, to genuflect. Behind David were two boy acolytes, similarly attired, but with faces black as their small birettas. As all made obeisance before the altar, the harmonium’s crying rose into the shout of the Te Deum, which the choir took up, so much more powerful of voice with the rearing corrugated iron roof to give resonance.
The priest went through the liturgy, mumbling and murmuring, with incomprehensible and seemingly inconsequential asides from his aides, all three bowing and kneeling and crossing over. Then he climbed into the pulpit beneath his dead white god, and proceeded to harangue his flock in a mixture of English, Murringlitch, and local lingo, the burden of his address being the benefits this thing he represented offered to everybody with the savvy to accept it, but with some cracking at those who weren’t playing the game as far as practical contracts were concerned. These contracts would be those entered into whereby youngsters of the tribes were hired by the Mission from their elders for a price until they reached maturity. It would seem that some of the hirers were pressing for further payments, since having disbursed the primary one in profligacy, and others were breaking the contracts by sneaking the objects contracted for away. But none of this no-good bijnitch would work, for the simple reason that Him Up Top There was watching all the while and telling him, Father Glascock, exactly what was going on and who was doing it. So look out!
In all it lasted about forty-five minutes, perhaps cut down because Mother Mathias, who would be keeping the time, if what Father Glascock had said of her and her time-tables was correct, came to heaving about and sighing. Then as the choir sang Faith of My Fathers, to somewhat different words from the original, as was only to be expected, first the boys marched out, led by Brother David, and then the choir itself, led by Sister and tailed by Mother, both parties heading for their dormitories. The blacks vanished like grey ghosts. The visitors waited while Father Glascock became a man again, then went with him to his presbytery.
With the Gift from the Deep standing like a talisman between them, so fairy-like in the glare of the hissing lamp and yet so fish-foul, priest and guests sat drinking brandy, and talking, talking. They talked as it were out of corners, half-hidden, out of shyness, awkwardness, suspicion of each other, such their appearance about the table in the overbright half-hooded light and the manner of their having to pass the conversation in bits from one to another to make sense of it; if indeed true sense were got from it at all, what with the difficulty of language and the subjects. These latter were those usually avoided in merely friendly company: religion and politics. In the circumstances, perhaps, there were no others.
To the evident astonishment of the Europeans, it was revealed that the religion of Japan was what was summed up by both Japanese as Shinto-Buddho-Christo. Thus it seemed that the Japanese had religion to serve them in all ways, or as Father Glascock declared, while inclined to argue about it, a Hotchpotch Religion. Perhaps it was the amount they drank while trying to work out the religious conundrum that rendered them all somewhat drunk by the time they got onto politics. Captain Okada, drunker than the rest, for one reason that he swigged the fire water much as he had the beer, and perhaps for another that he had stated later, was much more forthright in declaring his politics than the others. Becoming bombastic, he declared that there was only one Japanese, Tenno, known to lesser breeds as the Mikado — but he had eighty million heads. At least that’s how his vociferating was finally interpreted. A nicely poetic way of claiming perfect national unity, as the General said — although evidently the idea appalled him. Not that the British Hempirer had anything to fear from this, apparently, the way Okada went on. It was the United States of America the myriad-headed Niponjin No O Kata Gata was set on bringing to its knees. No mere politeness to presen
t company this, as evident in the Captain’s raucous condemnation of American arrogance towards Japan dating from the middle of the last century, when a ship of the US Navy broke the stately isolation of what he called the Japan Ord Rion, by bombarding Yokohama without provocation. Japan Ord Rion was, at some pains, interpreted as Japan the Old Lion. He shouted. ‘Ord Rion sreep quiet in Sun. Rong time sreep quiet. By’n’by from West come Tiger . . . Brrr! Grrr! Yrrr! Now Ord Rion say: “Must that bugger Tiger eat him me, spone I not do nothing. Aw right, I put on tiger skin — Brrr! Grrr! Yrrr! I give him back.” What you stink o’ that, eh?’ Whatever his audience thought, he began to roar with laughter: ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ Soon they were all laughing with him, although for probably a different reason, except Sakamura, who only giggled and looked rather troubled, perhaps because he feared his chief was saying too much. Prindy also, long since retired to his stretcher on the other verandah, was not amused, rolling and groaning in interrupted sleep.
Okada wound up his tirade against the Americans with a story of something purported to have happened recently in Shanghai. It seemed that Japanese and American naval ratings, meeting in a bar, took to vying in acts of strength and endurance, in which the Japanese outpointed the Yanks easily. Finally, a brawny Yank, having bared his forearm, took out a sharp knife and, tossing it aloft, as it fell, took the point on his tensed muscle, causing the knife to bounce off. He then picked up the knife, offered it to the rivals, saying: Beat that Jap! One Japanese promptly took the knife, bared his left arm to the biceps, into which he plunged it to the hilt. Thereupon the Americans left. ‘What you stink o’ that?’ Okada demanded again, this time rising, as if to challenge someone to try it out with him. But he staggered. Sakamura leapt to hold him up. The Captain guffawed feebly, ‘Too much dlink hit my head now . . . flom too much deep dive.’
They swayed off the verandah together, turned, goggling with oily slant eyes at the others. Sakamura bowed, said, ‘Sayonara.’ Then he swung his chief around and marched him off into the darkness, while the others blinked after them in silence.
It was not for a good half-minute and after they heard Okada burst into raucous song somewhere in the casuarinas, that any of the others spoke. It was the General, saying stiffly, ‘Well, there it is . . . Dai Nippon, in all its . . . its arrogance.’
‘Fanaticism!’ grunted Glascock.
‘So long’s they use the knife on ’emselves,’ murmured Fergus. ‘The old hara-kiri. And speakin’ o’ hara-kiri, I’m off to disembowel myself down the dunny. All that seaweed and bird-shit and stuff they fed us has given me the gripes. Then I’m off to beddo. Got ’o fly tomorrow . . . that right, General . . . or is it today? Sayonara!’
‘I think I’ll retire too,’ murmured the General. ‘Thank you, Father, for a very pleasant evening . . .’
‘It’s noight, man . . . noight . . . even accordin’ to proper English usage . . . hic!’
The priest didn’t rise as the General went off with exaggerated dignity, but dropped bushy head to arms on the table.
Apparently in any position Father Glascock was the grand snorer. The very bottles and glasses on the table tinkled to the vibrations he soon was sending through it. The cacophony woke Prindy, who after lying under his net listening for a while, got out and stole through to take a look. Evidently completely wakened, returning to his own verandah, he sat in a deck-chair and watched the southern sky. Now the stars there were blotted out by a cloud-mass in which lightning flared and thunder grumbled. The Waianga had drifted inland, to be caught by the Old One, who was giving them a bit of hurry-up in the old style. Prindy sang of it softly as he watched, songs he had sung with the Pookarakka, but into which there soon was popping hints of what he had heard in last night’s session — Oshamnu, bogadnu, gozalnu — until he was singing only that. He rose and went to his bed, got out of pyjama shorts and into his poplin clothes. Then from his suitcase he took the flute, and with it slipped away, going round the back of the house, and heading for the sea. It was noisy away there out on the sea, with the tide rushing through the many channels. Hidden Igulgul up to his tricks. He entered the casuarinas, but to turn about hastily when fiercely attacked by mosquitoes and sandflies, and made his way to the street.
The white buildings looked like phosphorescent night-growths of rainforest, believed to be spirit-things that glow and fade in signal to each other; as these did in response to the far-off fireworks in the sky and the passing of so odd a thing as a lone small golden boy at midnight. Undaunted he made his way up the street, past convent, kitchen, boys’ school, all soundless and in darkness. But there was no passing the church. A red eye was watching from it, suddenly to be seen staring unwinking through the open porch. He stopped, to stare back. At length he was drawn to the porch.
Save for that red eye, the sanctuary lamp, inside it was utterly dark. That is to begin with. Slowly things took ghostly shape. Then he entered, slowly, but purposefully by his movement, because, coming to the pews, he chose the one in front across the aisle from that he’d sat in at the service, seating himself at the left end of it, almost directly before the Crucifix. This thing was even plain to see now in the ruby darkness: the sagged knees, the drooped thorn-crowned head, the helpless hopeless spread of arms, the impaled feet: bloodied ghost of Man’s dead dream of identifying himself with God?
Strange irony of chance that caused political upheaval on the other side of the world, a boozy party, and hungry mosquitoes, to send a semi-savage boy to lay the ghost by playing to it the very music expressing the ancient wisdom against which, in flesh, it had heritecised at cost of being pinioned for ever. Over ond over, ever so softly, he played the pieces he had come to know of Yom Kippur: I have Trespassed, and Prayer for the Dead, mingling them, eventually making them into something of his own, in final accomplishment of which he made bold to give it full voice.
Then he fell silent, to listen. Still no sound anywhere, except the murmurous violence of the sea and the faint rumbling of that distant warfare in the sky. But that magic in here was at an end. He did not put pipe to lips again, but yawning, shook his spittle from the mouthpiece, then rose, turning his back without ceremony on the dead things of Jesus Business, and headed for the street.
There could be no doubt about what moved him to his next performance: the sheer impishness of the prentice to a sorcerer. The idea must have struck him as he emerged into the street and found, apparently still dead to the world, the community he had risked rousing in the sudden boldness of achievement; for he stopped in his tracks and stared at the signalling ghosts, which alone seemed aware of him. A moment. Then he put pipe to lips again, and softly began to play the vague opening bars of Schubert’s Ave Maria, which are like the shy approach of a lover to the beloved to whom, after a moment, he is pouring his heart out: Hail Mary, full of Grace. The piping rose, clear as the crying of kweeluks. With his ears filled with his own sweet rendering, he would not have heard the almost-instant scuffling, bumping, fearful whispering, which betrayed the fact that his audience was wakeful enough, only so far stunned by his first effort. Ave, ave, ave — the flute cried in ecstacy — Ave Maree-ee-ah, or-or-or-or-or-ra pro no-o-bis . . . beatificat supra omnes muliro-or-or-um . . . Ave, ave . . . ah — — — vay!
That last long note dissolved, leaving the void of silence deeper than ever — say for five slow breaths. Then pandemonium, subdued, but no less intense: thumping, bumping, squealing, squeaking. Lights glimmered in convent and quarters of kitchen-staff, blazed suddenly. Lights flickered in the girls’ dormitory, with a hubbub of young voices rising like the exchanges of scared birds — till quelled by an old bird’s peremptory cackling. Silence again. A listening silence now.
The watching imp raised the pipe again. Ave, ave, ah-ah-ahvay Mar-eeee-ah. Just that much.
Stationary lights leapt again. The louvres of the convent front verandah leaked with light. A fireball of light burst into the street with the opening of the verandah door. Shadows lurched to the swing of a pressure lantern w
ith voluminous draperies. A dimmer light popped out of the staff quarters. Kitchen and convent women were converging. There was also flashing of light from the boys’ quarters, clack of voices, thud of feet.
The imp bolted, first for the cover of the church on the northern side, then to the casuarinas. He looked back to judge how things were going. By sights and sounds, an excited advance was being made on the church. Also through on the beach human voices could be heard above those of the returning waters. He slipped into the grove of trees, not to pass through, but to head towards the Presbytery.
Father Glascock was sleeping as before, although not now with nearly so much suggestion of abandonment of priestly dignity. With falling pressure in the lamp and smudging of the mantle, the glare of it had faded to a mere twilight, so that bottles and glasses were mostly hidden, and the Japanese-English dictionary and accompanying scribbling-pad close to the dark curly head made it look like that of a worn-out student. Prindy gave him only a glance as he passed, by way of the rear verandah, to his own side. Back at his stretcher, he put away the flute, got into pyjamas again, and under the net. But scarcely had his head touched the pillow, when he sat up quickly at sound of voices in the street. Light was also dancing towards the presbytery.
Feet scattering gravel. Then a cackling voice, high with excitement: ‘Father . . . Father!’ Steps slapped on the concrete floor before there was a grunt in reply.
‘Father . . . there’s been a miracle!’
‘Eh? Eh . . . what you talking about?’
‘An angel in the church, Father . . .’
‘Wha’s up . . . you walking in your sleep?’
‘An angel, Father . . . as Almighty God’s me witness!’
Sister Dymphna’s voice, added, shrill as an excited child’s: ‘An angel playing a flute . . . a divine instrument . . . playing Ave Maria . . .’
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