John’s paternalism allowed him to ignore this almost personal slight. “Now, now, there’s no need to talk like that. It’s not as if they are alternatives. And you know full well that everyone, except for a few of our own priests, is filled with pride at the thought of this forgotten little town having its own cathedral. It’s not just a building. It’s a symbol of a change in attitude amongst the community. It puts the place on the map, so no one can ignore it, not even the government.”
“The money would have fed half the district until the next rains,” said Michael with a scoff. His views on the construction project were well known.
John still spoke quietly, calmly brushing aside the invitation to argument. “I see no point in going over old ground, Michael. When I was in your position, I was also a man totally involved in the problems of my parishioners and put them before any other consideration. But you must understand and accept what we are trying to do here. We are not just a charity to be used when needed. We’re the missionaries of a living Church that represents a way of life and, in that respect, our mission is permanence. That’s why we need a cathedral.” John again awaited a reply.
Michael understood the argument, but he did not agree with it. A building could always come tomorrow, but a life must be saved today.
“After all,” continued John O’Hara, knowing that Michael had just come from the town with a box of groceries in the boot of his car, “none of us gives up his own table to the poor…”
“And that’s why we are always going to be a diocese of missionary Fathers contenting ourselves with the subservience of our congregations,” said Michael, irritated by what he considered to be a lack of foresight. “On that basis, we are here to fill churches, not spread the faith!”
John was sterner this time. “We’re here to do both, Michael. We cannot ignore either side of the work.” John’s heavy eyebrows lowered a little as he came to the point, abruptly. He eyed the younger man with all his authority locked into the silence of his stare. “There’s also been a lot of talk around the town about your relationship with the girl in Migwani.”
Michael was shattered, the shock running so deep that he was rendered quite speechless. John O’Hara seemed to interpret his reticence as an admission of guilt, or at least acceptance that there was an issue to confront.
“If the talk has reached Kitui, then goodness knows what it’s like around Migwani. It’s just not good enough, Michael.” O’Hara’s voice was now solid and pointed, and also louder than he himself realised, amplified by the inner rage he was trying hard to contain.
“That is quite ridiculous,” shouted Michael. “If you are willing to believe a lot of senseless, puerile gossip, then I wonder how it is you have risen to where you are today…”
John was incensed by this. “If that’s what you think of the sincere beliefs and fears of ordinary people, Michael, then all I can say is that you have no right to call yourself either a man of God or a man of the people!”
The two men thus began a loud and bad-tempered argument. Michael challenged O’Hara to believe his word as he described the friendship, and no more, that he shared with Janet Rowlandson. He believed that there was nothing wrong with their eating together, talking together or occasionally visiting friends together. As far as he was concerned, his friendship with Janet was the same as his relationship with his catechists, with his cook or with anyone else he called a friend.
O’Hara did not dispute Michael’s word, but he strongly refuted the assertion that the relationship should be viewed like any other. Janet was young, attractive and white, and, her presence in Migwani accepted, that alone created a link with Michael, a link that had to be managed carefully, with always one eye on what people might think. The crime, he continued, lay not with people who rushed to adopt bigoted opinions, but with Michael and Janet for not having realised that they might fuel imaginations if they behaved without tact. Furthermore, Michael must not underestimate the psychological effect on himself of spending so much time with an attractive young girl. He had seen it happen before, he repeatedly pointed out, and the consequences could be dire for all concerned, including the Church.
Michael appreciated the argument and did not doubt John’s claim to experience. Neither did he dismiss the last point. Only a few years before this same discussion had taken place between O’Hara and another young priest, who had become infatuated with a girl working for a year in one of the hospitals. On that occasion, the priest had become so angry with what he considered to be the warped minds of ‘churchmen’ that he decided there and then that he no longer wanted to be counted amongst their number. He left the Diocese and the priesthood, and then married the girl.
Michael, however, kept his calm. As the argument continued, he began to admit a strong disillusion. How could he, a young man with, he believed, the right ideas and the energy to put them into practice, work effectively in his own way when the people who controlled the institution he had joined held such obviously different views? Did John O’Hara really believe that Michael’s beliefs were not founded on the interests of the Church? Surely he would never have joined a missionary order had that been the case. But he knew this dichotomy, even conflict, was not personal but institutional within the Church. The Second Vatican Council had created an agenda for priests like Michael Doherty. For older priests like John O’Hara, the Church as institution was paramount. It took the lead, was teacher to its flock and, in Michael’s view, spoke with a one-voice-fits-all formula for salvation. It remained the individual’s personal mission to live up to the model, to achieve its goals through a private aspiration to share a perhaps eternally unattainable grace. But for post-Vatican Two priests, the Church was a community. Faith and salvation remained personal, but expressed collectively the concepts now assumed a social dimension, a dimension that could be explored and perhaps fulfilled via social action. For priests of O’Hara’s generation, the Church was the didactic teacher. For Michael Doherty and his kind it had become the heuristic learner. They were members of a single Church, but the worlds they inhabited shared no common universe.
After silence had cleared the air, O’Hara spoke again. Assertion was again edited from the voice. “Michael, my boy, don’t worry yourself. There’s no need to get worked up about it. Let me tell you what I want to suggest. Your leave is overdue. Is that right?”
“It is,” said Michael blankly. He knew now what to expect.
“I suggest, then, that you take some months off and do a job for me while you’re away. You can spend some time at home in Limerick and then I’ll arrange a tour of North America.”
Michael’s thoughts rushed ahead to the time when he expected Janet’s stay in Migwani to come to an end. He might not see her before she left. Suddenly he felt completely empty. The crudeness of the Bishop’s calculations was obvious.
“I am sure you will prove to be an excellent ambassador for us, Michael,” continued O’Hara. “There’s so much good will to be tapped over there. I am sure that what we have achieved thus far is only a fraction of what is possible. The people are very generous.”
Michael leaned forward in his chair and stared blankly at O’Hara. He had not been listening to the last comments. For a while he simply sat, quite motionless, his thoughts somewhere distant while Bishop O’Hara sketched the type of itinerary he might expect. He would arrive in New York and visit several of the large Catholic organisations before making his way to California via stops in Ohio and Illinois. The church in Santa Barbara, which had raised a hundred thousand shillings for the cathedral, would be his host for a fortnight, before he flew to Florida to begin his return journey to New York through the states along the eastern seaboard.
Michael, with his mind firmly fixed on August, got up and, without saying a word, walked briskly out of the house. O’Hara, caught off-guard by this, hesitated at first but then followed, offering first a sympathetic word and then, after this did not regis
ter, a stern shouted command that Michael should come back inside. With the military-like order ringing in his ears, Michael opened the door of his car and got in but he left the door open. The Bishop did not cross the kitchen threshold. He was clearly very angry, but his hands were clasped as if in prayer.
Back in the sitting room of his house, John O’Hara lit a cigarette. He drew deeply on it, the sound of his breath wheezing around the room. It seemed that the cigarette had become the focus of his thoughts. He would not chase after Michael, who would have to live with the consequences of his own actions and decisions, but he wondered whether he, himself, might have pushed too hard, been too forthright, implied criticism where opportunity might have spoken louder.
When Michael re-entered the room, neither of them spoke for several minutes. Michael looked at O’Hara and thought that a simple humanity had overcome and replaced the burden of authority. In his eyes, questions had replaced anger.
“I think you are a wiser man than I,” said O’Hara at last.
“I am sorry, John,” said Michael.
“It is not I who deserves your apologies, Michael.”
Chapter Eleven
February 1975
The courtroom was crowded to overflowing. With windows shuttered to keep out the sun, the room vibrated with a humid heat and the assembled, seated on long plain wooden benches, sweated freely. Some occasionally mopped their brows with handkerchiefs and mumbled words of conversation beneath the muting cover of cupped hands. Others allowed their sweat to run freely and turned to whisper their words to their neighbours. Though a nervous silence pervaded all, the room was full of discussion held in whispers, spoken between the lines of time. As if with a collective bated breath, the entire room awaited the calling of the next case with a feeling of shared bitterness softened by apprehension. Over a hundred people had travelled from the scattered homesteads and shambas that comprised the village of Nzawa and fifty or more had crammed into the minute court room to hear the proceedings, the rest excluded only by the room’s inability to accommodate them. People stood around the walls, sat on the floor between and beside the rows of wooden forms, while others pressed in groups outside by the shuttered windows, hoping they might hear what transpired inside. A group standing by the boarded window to the right of the magistrate’s desk had encroached upon the section of open floor whose imaginary confines served as the defendants’ dock. The sergeant at arms, a young and obviously inexperienced police officer, turned out in immaculate dress uniform, quietly, apologetically, but defiantly ushered them all to other parts of the room, other parts that were already crowded, so there was much jostling for position and whispered apologies as they stumbled along the blocked aisles.
In the very centre of the room sat Janet. Beside her was Joseph Munyolo’s mother. They had no way of communicating verbally, so, as a means of offering reassurance, Janet held her hand and turned to her occasionally to smile. Janet looked down at the calloused and lined hand, which contrasted so sharply with the soft whiteness of her own. Munyolo’s mother was a true kiveti, a housewife, whose daily chores started each day probably before sunrise and did not stop until well after dark, when the dishes from the late meal had been cleared away. She was probably only forty or so, but she looked at least sixty, her wiry body appearing to bear not an ounce of fat and the whole supported on ankles that looked incongruously slender above the plastic flip-flops, flattened almost wafer thin by continual use, their original bright green now masked by ingrained dirt. Munyolo’s mother had loosened the cloth, the kitambaa, she invariably used to cover her head, to reveal close-cropped hair gathered into squares with rivers of sweating scalp between. Janet’s discomfort was easier to see. Her neck glistened with lines of sweat and her light grey T-shirt was patched darker over most of its area.
The main door of the courtroom continually opened and closed as people came and went. No one wanted to leave. No one wanted to miss this next case, but the interior had become so uncomfortable that some people were prepared to suffer the embarrassment of threading and stumbling their way to the exit for a breath of fresh air. Thus a steady stream of people punctuated the expectant but near silent buzz of the room, as each of those coming and going turned at the door to face the oblivious and unconcerned magistrate to offer a silent and self-conscious, but carefully stated bow. These people were poor, but they bore their respect.
John concluded his report on the previous case by signing the document before him on his desk and rubber-stamping his official seal beneath. The defendant, accused of stealing from a shop, had flatly denied the charge, despite the combined and accusatory testimony of a procession of eyewitnesses. After being told by the magistrate that he was found guilty and that a confession would reduce his sentence, the man, still ignorant of the consequences, had refused to comply. In a voice heavy with regret and resignation, John had sentenced him to one month’s imprisonment or a fine of four hundred shillings. The defendant, stricken dumb with shock, stood with his jaw sagging pathetically, trying in vain to equate the severity of the sentence with the meagre worth of the bag of sugar he had stolen. How could he pay such a fine? If he had money to pay a fine, would he not have simply bought the sugar in the first place? What would happen to his family while he was in prison? They were poor people and had no food. What else could he do?
Still mouthing the questions his body refused to ask, he was led by the handcuffed wrist, accompanied by the attached policeman who had brought him into the court. If the man had employed an attorney, most of whom were willing, at a price, to attend any court and fight any case, an appeal would have been lodged and the sentence then duly reassessed on compassionate grounds. With no money to finance such a defence, however, the man was led away and made ready for his transfer to Kitui prison, where he would serve his time. At least he would get a meal a day for the whole of the next month.
Syengo, self-conscious of his obvious youth, placed a new file on the desk in front of John Mwangangi and then turned to face the court to announce in Kikamba and English the title of the next case to be heard. “The disturbance at Nzawa School,” he said, without expression. As John extracted the papers one by one from their folder, examining each of them methodically and closely before reassembling them in a pile, a tall neatly dressed young man, who had been sitting at the table beside Syengo and his silent typewriter, rose slowly and deliberately to his feet. For some time he stood there, fumbling with a pen, waiting to catch the attention of the magistrate, but John’s eyes remained angled down, focused on the detail of his papers, detail which his agile mind merely needed to reinforce, since he had read them many times already over the preceding days. Eventually John looked up and the man brought attention to himself by holding up his pen. John nodded.
The man put his pen down on the desk and then stretched himself to his full height. Before speaking, he slipped his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and took a deep, long and deliberate breath, whilst casting his gaze around the room to ask for total silence. Whether he had copied this attitude from re-runs of American courtroom dramas he had watched on the television he so proudly owned, only he knew. Most in the court were duly impressed. Janet thought him an obvious idiot. She could not predict how Mwangangi might respond.
“Your honour,” said the impeccable young man in only lightly accented English, “I am here to represent my clients Mr Kivara and Mr Muchira.” Pauses here and throughout his speech allowed Syengo to translate each sentence into Kikamba for the benefit of the court. As Syengo spoke these words of introduction, a ripple of noise spread across the room as members of the audience turned to their neighbours to whisper, “Another Kikuyu.”
The attorney, keen to conclude his business, continued above the murmur. He had accepted the case only reluctantly. Those who knew him would have realised from the terseness of his words that he resented travelling from Nairobi to attend such a lowly gathering in such a tiresomely bush area. Had the two teachers n
ot made him such a generous offer, he would never have contemplated going to such trouble. “My clients,” he continued, “have requested that the case should be adjourned until certain key witnesses, who are not present today, can be called.” Syengo translated. The response was a collective, audible sigh from the gallery. They had come for nothing.
“The crooks are frightened to come here!” shouted a faltering voice from the back. It was an old woman, who had not found a seat and took support from the shoulders of the man in front of her. A wizened old man at the side of the room shouted his agreement and waved his stick towards the superior-looking attorney in a defiant gesture. John smacked his gavel on the table and called for order. After threatening the two hecklers with expulsion from the court, John turned to face the public prosecutor who, acknowledging the prompt, immediately rose to his feet.
“I have no objections, your Honour,” he said, correctly anticipating John’s unasked question. Syengo translated.
“The case is then adjourned until the next meeting of the court, which will be two weeks from today,” said John, without looking up from the papers upon which he was making a handwritten record of the proceedings.
Janet stood up and raised her hand to attract Mwangangi’s attention. All eyes rested on her as John continued to write. Though embarrassed, she continued to stand and to hold her arm high, afraid that Mwangangi would again refuse her request or, worse than that, simply ignore her and move on to the next case. She had decided not to try to see Mwangangi personally, where a suggestion of a bribe might be made, preferring to conduct all communication with him in a social arena. She now feared that this might have been a mistake. Her distrust of all officials suggested that the magistrate would conveniently forget to acknowledge her request for bail.
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