by Saul Dobney
“Sorry boss,” said Molly. She picked up the piece of paper and dropped in the waste bin. “She said it was a private student matter. She even mentioned physics.”
“Metaphysics maybe,” said Dr Hill.
Molly flinched at the tone of Dr Hill's reply.
He saw her face and put his hands up. “Sorry Molly. Not your fault. I understand how tricksy these people can be. How can so many people think that because I made a silly little talk, somehow I'm on the look out for some new messiah?”
“The papers do call you the Messiah Hunter,” said Molly. “So didn't you bring this on yourself?”
Dr Hill raised his eyebrows and stared at Molly. “I'm going to take lunch. If God calls, I'm busy.”
He walked out of college and past Caius and the Gothic stonework of Kings College, through the stalls of the market and into town.
As he reached the small shopping mall in Lion Yard he had the sudden sensation that he was being followed. He stopped by the window of the sweater shop and saw the reflection of three young men and two young women behind him. He had a recollection that he seen their north-Indian style baggy trousers and collar-less shirts outside college.
He cursed under his breath uncertain if he should run or try to hide in the closest shop. But before he could decide, one of the women called out to him.
“Dr Hill? Dr Hill?”
He turned to see a woman semi-jogging towards him, almost bowing as she reached him. She was wearing beads in her long mousy brown hair and a ring in the side of her nostril.
“Dr Hill, I hope we don’t disturb you, but we recognised you from your photo in the paper.”
Dr Hill looked at her and then at the others suspiciously. He wasn’t sure if he was about to be set up as the subject of a prank, or whether it was something more serious. “Yes?” he enquired.
“We, that is us.” The girl indicated at the four others. “Well we heard about your search for the new messiah. And, well, we know who it is. He has come to Cambridge to see you. Could you come? He’s on Parker's Piece with the others. He said he must meet with you.”
“Well, I’m not sure you really want me to meet him,” said Dr Hill trying to get out of the engagement.
“Please. It’s this way. It’ll only take two minutes,” pleaded the girl. She placed her hand on his elbow and compelled him down Regent Street towards Parker's Piece.
It was with some reluctance that Dr Hill accompanied them but he had a faint curiosity as to what type of person might describe themselves as a messiah.
They arrived at Parker’s Piece on the corner by the Cambridge Hotel. Ahead of them was a large open unfenced expanse of grass crossed by two diagonal paths. Now, as each summer, small groups of students sat in rings chatting, or playing football or volleyball on the grass, bicycles lying haphazardly behind them. At the far corner across the diagonal, a larger group of twenty or thirty people had gathered.
“Come on.” The girl dragged Dr Hill towards them waving towards her friends.
Dr Hill cursed under his breath at the waste of his lunch hour.
The larger group saw them and waved, jumping up and down in excitement. By the time Dr Hill and his escort party arrived the groups were clapping and singing in unison and moving in a slow hypnotic Tai Chi type of dance. The scent of narcotics mixed with the smell of josticks and Dr Hill noticed several of the party smoking long white clay pipes.
A young man, tall and slim with blond hair and a wispy light beard stood up and came towards them. He shook Dr Hill by the hand. “It is good of you to meet with me brother. I am Johannes. I am the one you are looking for. Will you join us?”
Behind Johannes the dancing stopped and his entourage clapped and whistled in support.
Dr Hill sighed. “OK. I’ve done the meeting. What makes you think you’re a messiah then?”
Johannes appeared taken aback. “I am,” he replied. “God showed me. You are the Seeker. You should recognise me.”
Dr Hill shook his head in bewilderment. “Why should I believe that?”
“God has given me the power. He has told me it is my duty to change the world.”
Dr Hill looked sceptical. “And how did he do that?”
“In Nepal. On my gap year. We were climbing in the mountains and I fell, but God didn't let me fall. He caught me in mid-air.”
“Really?” said Dr Hill, his eyebrows raised.
“He led me to a cave and opened my mind and showed me that if we let ourselves be free we can do anything. So now I have to tell the world. To make the world right again. He has chosen me. We just need to believe in Him.”
“So you believe it, and it has to be true, is that it?”
“Of course. We are what we believe. My friends and disciples, they believe too. God has told me and I have shown them.” Johannes raised his chin and stood proudly.
“What a complete bunch of crackpots,” said Dr Hill. He turned to leave.
In anger, Johannes grabbed Dr Hill by the shoulder. “You have to listen to me. You are the Seeker. It says so in the papers. I have seen your picture. I am the one you are seeking. Recognise me so the world will know.”
“Recognise you?” exclaimed Dr Hill jabbing his finger at Johannes. “All I can see is an overconfident and rather mixed up young man with a God-complex and a bunch of layabouts.”
The singing stopped abruptly and the girl with the nose-ring gasped. A young man in an ochre shirt stood up, jutting his chin out aggressively. Dr Hill felt the hairs on his neck stand up.
But before the man came closer, Johannes put his hand up. The man stopped and Johannes tilted his head to one side and peered upwards into the cloudless sky as if seeking inspiration.
“I think I understand,” said Johannes after a moment, to the group as much as to Dr Hill, “The seeker will need proof, something to prove who I am. There must be a test or a demonstration.”
Dr Hill shook his head. “I’d be very surprised if you could prove anything useful to me.”
Johannes surveyed the Piece and the buildings around. “There.” He pointed to the ugly grey multi-storey car-park just across the road from where they were standing, next to the Kelsey Kerridge sports centre and swimming pool. “Wait here,” he said to Dr Hill. “You will see.”
Johannes walked over to his friends they made a small huddle. Johannes pointed to the car-park and the others glanced up. Johannes clapped his hands twice, and left with two other young men across the road.
“He’s knows a way to convince you,” said the girl with the nose ring. “Wait and see. Come we have food.”
Dr Hill walked with the girl and took a samosa from a paper bag. She offered him a smoke, but he refused. He stood with the girl while the others danced and chanted with their clanking instruments, wondering what was going to happen next.
The others kept glancing towards the car-park, then one of the young men pointed and waved. The others too. Dr Hill looked to where they were pointing.
At the top of the car-park building he could see Johannes standing on the wall of the top floor over the road below, arms outstretched.
“What’s he doing?” Dr Hill asked the girl.
“He’s going to prove to you he is the messiah,” said the girl. “He’s going to show you he can fly.”
“No,” said Dr Hill agitated. “Stop him. Quickly. He’ll kill himself.”
“Why? Don’t you understand? God will protect him. He’s done it before.”
“Look, I don’t care what he believes but this isn't a cartoon. I know about gravity. I learnt about it at school. It bloody hurts.” Dr Hill ran to the edge of the road beneath the car park and shouted up to the triumvirate, “Stop. Don’t jump.”
Passers-by stopped and gazed up to the car-park roof.
Johannes looked down and grinned, waving at the spectators.
“Why are you being so disrespectful to what people believe?” asked the girl. “Gravity is just a theory. With true faith, the laws of science will stop
. God tells us this. He has shown Johannes before.”
“I’m a scientist. I deal in predictable truths,” said Dr Hill feeling rattled. “If that young man believes he can fly, he’d be better off testing his ideas at the swimming pool next door. Sincerity in belief is no protection against the laws of physics.”
Above him, Johannes climbed onto the top of the perimeter wall.
“Johannes. Stop,” he shouted to the top of the building. “Come down and show me something different. Something less dangerous.”
But it was too late.
Johannes waved to the crowd below and shouted ‘Alleluia’ into the sky. Then with arms outstretched, he let himself fall forwards. As he passed the second storey, Johannes began to scream.
11. Schooling
“Are Mosi and Kwasi still sick?” asked Libby from behind the teacher's desk, shouting to make herself heard above the sound of drumming on the roof.
Outside it was raining; the torrential rain that was common in Kenya. A handful of children were scurrying from building to building, their heads covered with plastic bags, jumping on stepping stones to avoid the mud of the courtyards.
“That's almost seven children off today. So then it's your turn Yanif. Let's look at the letters again. This is a B, this is an T and this is an A. Once again, I will mix them up and you point to the letter I ask you.” Libby shuffled the three letters from the alphabet pack that Martha and Lyndsay had sent and laid them on the desk.
She was at the end of her second week and there was exasperation in her voice. She had come to St Peter’s straight from teaching at elementary school taking time out from her failing marriage in the US. Still looking the New England first-grade teacher, her blond hair tied back and large rimmed glasses on her nose, she seemed out of place in the rough orphanage school house with its breeze-block walls and the visible wooden frame of the roof beams holding the corrugated metal roof.
“A. Can you find the letter A Yanif?” she repeated.
Yanif kept his hands by his side, fiddling with a small piece of paper in his fingers. He shook his head. He had reached eight, and was slim in build with dark straight hair and light-coloured skin.
“Look Yanif. Look.” Libby lifted up Yanif’s right hand so it hovered over the desk on which the letters were sitting. “Point to the letter Yanif. Point to it.”
Yanif pulled his hand back to his side and looked down at the crumpled scrap of paper in his hands.
Libby threw her head back and let out a grunt of irritation. “That’s it. I cannot help you if you will not help me. You must try Yanif.”
“Yanif doesn’t read miss.” Eshe's voice came from one of the long continuous desks in the classroom. She was seated on one of the benches besides Tremus and Mikela.
“What do you mean he doesn't read? Why not?” asked Libby finding Eshe among the faces in front her.
“When he first came he didn't speak English,” said Eshe trying to be helpful. She put the piece of chalk she was holding onto the slate where she had been working out the sums that had been written onto the blackboard at the front of the classroom. “We have tried to teach him. I read to him. Tremus does too. But Yanif doesn’t see letters or numbers miss.”
“How long have you been here Yanif?” asked Libby turning to Yanif.
Yanif was quiet and directed his eyes to the floor, but Eshe replied. “Yanif came here when I was seven miss. I'm twelve now.”
The rest of the classroom had stopped and was listening to the conversation; a mix of ages crammed into the narrow space, each dressed in the purple t-shirts of St Peter’s.
Libby focused on Yanif over the top of her glasses. “So how are you able to manage at school without being able to read?”
Tremus replied. “We tell him things. We all read for him and tell him.”
Libby tried again. “So how come you could read the story of David and Goliath yesterday when you took turns reading it out?”
Yanif was still quiet, he eyes still fixed on the floor.
“He remembers the words,” said Tremus. “Yanif remembers the words to all the stories. He knows all the stories in the Bible.”
Libby shook her head and sent Yanif to sit down and turned her attention back to the rest of the class, her face showing her disappointment at Yanif’s lack of interest. “Yesterday we had a story about the Passover. Who can tell us what we learnt?”
A few hands went up among them Yanif’s.
“Yes Yanif.” Libby looked surprised.
Yanif stood up and while the rest of the class sat in silence he recited the description of Passover that Libby had read to the class the day before. She had it on her lap as a prompt for discussions with the class.
As Yanif finished, Libby shook her head, open-mouthed. “Yanif was yesterday the first time you heard that story?”
Yanif nodded.
“That was exactly what I read out yesterday, word-for-word. You remembered it perfectly.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “So can you tell me using your own words why we have Passover and why Moses wanted to leave Egypt?”
Yanif shrugged.
“But you just told me the story. Can you tell me what the Promised Land is?”
Yanif shrugged again.
“He knows the words miss, but sometimes he doesn’t get what they mean,” said Eshe. “We try to explain, but sometimes he doesn’t understand.”
The rain drummed harder on the roof and a sudden bolt of lightning cast harsh shadows across the room followed in an instant later by a huge blast of thunder that shook the building. Two of the electric light bulbs that swung from the ceiling burst and showered the children in glass shading the room in a gloom of grey. Some of the younger children screamed and hid under the desks.
“Be calm children. Be calm,” said Libby. “We'll take a recess. Stay here while I go and find some more lights.”
After Libby left, the noise in the classroom grew as the children played then screamed with each burst of lightning. Yanif felt uncomfortable and he left the classroom. Outside he threaded his way past the puddles, unconcerned by the rain.
Beth was in the dormitory when he arrived.
“Hi Yanif,” she said as he came through the door. “Have you come to help our invalids?”
Almost half the beds were occupied by a boy sleeping or groaning or just sneezing and Yanif was about to say something when Libby’s head popped around the door.
“We really do have half the orphanage out sick,” said Libby totting up the number of boys in the beds. “Is it serious?”
“Not yet,” said Beth. “It's mostly colds, some flu but Osca has the first signs of measles and that's making John worried. In the States it would be fine. But out here, complications get more complicated. We nearly ended up with a funeral two years ago from our last outbreak.”
Libby exhaled. “That bad? So it would best to keep the others in the classroom for recess?”
Beth nodded. “It's better to keep it quiet in here to speed recovery.”
From the end of the dormitory Mosi sneezed three times. Yanif walked to his friend and sat on his bed. He stared up at Beth, his face plaintive with childish eyes seeking permission to stay.
“OK. Doctor Yanif you can stay and help out. Some of the boys need their cups refilling. Could you go fetch a pitcher of water?” said Beth.
Yanif brightened up at being asked to help. He headed back out to the rain to get a pitcher from the kitchen.
When he returned, Beth had left the dormitory and the only sounds were the throaty breathing of the boys and the slow rhythmic drumming of the rain on the roof. Carrying the pitcher carefully in two hands, he went round the beds filling up their cups.
Mosi was feeling a little better and whispered to Kwasi in the next bed, “Here comes nursie-nurse Yanif.”
Kwasi gave a chuckle which turned into a cough that filled the whole room. Yanif came over and gave Kwasi a drink from the cup he had just filled, using his hand to lift Kwasi’s head.
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Kwasi took a drink and the coughing subsided and he sat up. “You’re a proper little doctor Yanif, aren't you? But where is your Steffus Coat? You can’t be a doctor with no Steffus Coat.” He chuckled again.
“What’s a Steffus Coat?” asked his brother slyly from the neighbouring bed. “Is that the special white coat the doctor wears – you know with the pens in the top pocket?”
“No. No. Course it’s not a coat,” replied Kwasi. “You know, a Steffus Coat, the thing they wear around their neck and listen to your heart.”
“Oh the stethoscope,” corrected Mosi. “Stetho-scope. You know Mr Stupid. Stetho- like the dinosaur. Stetho-saurus.”
Kwasi took his pillow and threw it at Mosi. “Well Mr Lost-his-brains, even I know it’s not a stethosaurus. It’s a ste-go-saurus. The one with the plates on its back.” He outlined the shape of the dinosaur with his finger drawing in the air. “I drew that in Bible studies going onto the Ark with the other animals. So who’s stupid now?” Kwasi thumbed his nose at Mosi and let out a hearty laugh that rapidly collapsed into a chesty cough.
Mosi started to laugh at Kwasi’s discomfort and soon the two of them were coughing and spluttering all over Yanif.
From outside another crack of thunder shook the walls and the rain grew heavier, thumping on the metal roof. The figure on the cross on the end wall illuminated by the cracks of lightning. More blasts of thunder came.
In the end bed Osca started to cry.
Yanif left Mosi and Kwasi and sat with Osca gently brushing the boy’s hot cheek. Osca sniffed and held his hands over his ears while the thunder and rain roared overhead, his eyes heavy with desire for sleep. Yanif touched his hands together in prayer then whispered into Osca's ear and kissed him on the forehead before gently closing Osca’s eyelids with his fingertips. Osca turned in his bed and fell back to sleep.
Yanif smiled and slipped to the next bed. Moving quietly, Yanif visited each of the boys in the room. For each one the same sequence, the prayer, whisper then kiss, followed by the gentle closing of their eyes. Slowly the boys in the dorm quietened down and soon each was asleep. By the time he returned to Kwasi and Mosi, they were also sleeping.