Sid says to the chief:
—That went well.
The chief ignores Sid and says to the commune representatives:
—Thank the preacher for me. We did not mean to offend him. We look forward to hearing his answer in a few days.
The delegation members climb into the jeeps and speed away. At the entrance to the compound, only Sid waves to Kevin and Eric. They wave back, aiming their parting gesture at Sid only.
—I should have filled those jars with pig shit.
The preacher hurls the masks across the room and stamps on the clothing and tears some into shreds and spits on the pieces and tosses a few more until he runs out of breath and is covered in sweat. He inhales deeply at the urging of one assistant while another massages his shoulders. He takes off his sweat-soaked shirt and holds out his arms as an assistant hangs a clean one on his body. He waves off the assistants and radios the capital, and an official puts him through to the president’s office. The preacher demands to know who sent a delegation of the local tribes to his compound to stir trouble. The first secretary to the president says he has no knowledge of any such delegation. The man wants to know if foreign nationals put the Indians up to this mischief. The first secretary says the president is overseas currently, but he will pass the matter to the minister of the interior and that the preacher is not to worry another minute about it. The preacher says he needs to speak with the interior minister right away because he hears from the Indian delegation that a government inspector is scheduled to visit the area. The preacher stays on the radio as the first secretary connects him to the Ministry of the Interior, who in turn connects him to the interior minister’s secretary, who says that the minister is in a meeting and will have to call back.
—Not so.
The preacher shouts into the two-way radio that he is a personal friend and this is an urgent matter and if the secretary values his job, he will interrupt that meeting and get the minister on the line right away. There is an elongated pause of static as the preacher waits and his breathing comes back to normal. He complains aloud that he pays these people good money made by the honest sweat that drips from the brow of the commune, and this is how he is treated. At last the interior minister materializes on the line and apologizes immediately and asks the preacher what the nature of his emergency might be. The preacher explains about the delegation, the rumor of a looming inspector visit, and the commune’s pig-farming practices. The interior minister says the preacher should forget about the inspector.
—Poof, he’s gone.
He promises that there will be no inspection of anything pertaining to the commune. The indigenous delegation, though, will require a little appeasement, since the treaty about the treatment of natural resources directly affects tribes in the area, and that treaty is ratified by the United Nations. The preacher says he does not give a rat’s ass who ratified what. He just wants to know that no one will interfere in the business of the commune. The minister repeats the need for some gesture of appeasement from the commune to the indigenous delegation working on behalf of the local tribes.
—How much?
—Let us not talk about such matters on the air. I will meet with someone at your office here in the capital, and we can come to an amicable arrangement. Satisfied?
—Okay.
And that is the end of the matter as far as the preacher is concerned. He slams the radio receiver onto the table.
—These people think I can pull a golden calf out of my ass.
He paces back and forth and rails against the forces he perceives as direct threats to his dream on earth, his rainbow coalition of the poor and the powerless ennobled and lifted nearer to God by his communal enterprise. His assistants keep out of his way and move valuable or dangerous objects out of his reach. He says if he bulldozed the forest, there would be no delegation. If he gouged deep holes in the landscape to extract minerals, there would be no delegation (though one would be justified). But the second he deposits a little innocent pig shit in the river, whose currents sweep the shit away anyway, all hell breaks loose, delegations from eight tribes put aside their usual squabbles, he says, and they have the gumption to petition him and threaten him with government scrutiny. He will fix their indigenous backsides, he shouts at the furniture. He says they have owned all this land for centuries and done nothing with it. He flings his dark glasses across the room, pounds the table, and looks around for something else that is loose and within reach that he can throw, and seeing nothing, he knocks over a chair and kicks it and curses and limps in a circle and stoops to examine his throbbing big toe.
And he wails for his assistants.
—Nora, Dee, Pat, anybody.
TWELVE
Everyone gathers early for the evening sermon in part to find a chair but more out of helpless anticipation based on the day’s events with the children. Adults and children move in such an economical and orderly fashion that they force the guards to keep their sticks by their sides and languish next to entrances. Even the sick in the infirmary ask for help to get to the meeting. Miss Taylor, the commune’s makeup artist and seamstress, says she wants to be there if they can wheel her in her bed. The doctor says that is out of the question. The recent rain-softened ground would prove unsuitable for any such attempt. She accepts the doctor’s explanation and tells the nurse to make sure an assistant powders the preacher’s forehead, which has a tendency to shine in the congregation tent’s fluorescent lights. And he should wear something bright for the occasion.
A few sick people enter the tent and a number of people jump up to offer their seats. These instant displays of sacrifice result in many offerings of blessings from the sick, God bless you, brother, sister, child. The air becomes more akin to a carnival atmosphere than the usual tense wait for the unpredictable twists and turns of the preacher’s sermons. People know not to show any levity that is unrelated to a specific instance of spirituality, but they cannot hide or disguise a collective sense of movement with a common purpose. The cooperation is instinctive, the consideration for the children, the elderly, the infirm, exemplary. No one has to ask for anything. They anticipate one another’s every need: a proffered chair, a gentle hand steering an old elbow, a need for someone to scoot over and make a bit more room, all met instantaneously and accepted with abiding grace.
Waiting for the preacher to appear is no less a gracious affair. The talk remains hushed, and the moment the band and choir strike up, every pair of lungs in the tent pitches in. The hymn promises that someday the singers will meet Jesus in heaven. The singers declare this repeatedly. The tambourines, drums, and various flutes make it clear that such a place includes these very instruments; they, too, will be brought up to meet Him. Trina is among the church band, but an assistant pulls her from the group and seats her beside her mother, who sits in a chair at the end of the second row. Trina tucks her flute in the space between chairs, and the two clap along with the congregation and sing. The joy and happiness that the congregation swears is theirs, along with peace, really seems possible at that moment. But not for Trina and Rose, who worry about Ryan, and not for Joyce, who wonders what may be in store tonight for her and her daughter.
More than joy and happiness and peace thrive in the room. The air seems positively ecstatic. Each voice, each instrument, lifts the other up to a place that makes everyone’s spirit soar. Trina looks along her row and encourages Rose with a smile.
The preacher hears the glorification, all in his name, as he prepares for his sermon. He thinks how early it is for the congregation to reach such a crescendo. He calls for Dee, his most trusted assistant. She looks with raised eyebrows at Nora and Pat and lifts her shoulders in acknowledgment of their complicity. They know her name is on the preacher’s lips tonight, but tomorrow it may be either of their names. The man is in the shower. He asks her to soap his back. She knows what that means. She removes her apron and nurse’s hat and rolls up her sleeves. He draws the shower curtain and leaves the water runni
ng and causes it to sprinkle the stone floor. He gestures for her to come over to him, but she says she does not want to get her uniform wet.
—Well, what are you waiting for?
—But there isn’t time, Father.
—I make the time around here, come on in.
And with that, she kicks off her shoes.
—Slow, slow, imagine you’re wading into the sea on the Pacific coast.
She moves like a sloth as she steps out of her dress and unhooks her bra and peels off her stockings and, last, her underwear, which she wriggles out of from side to side as the scant fabric moves along her hips and thighs and over her knees to her ankles. Naked, she curtsies. He holds out his hand, and she grasps it daintily as she steps into the shower. He pulls her to him. She flicks the curtain shut to keep the floor from getting soaked.
Adam sits in his cage in the semi-dark. A little light dribbles his way from the tent and a few of the buildings strewn about the compound. He claps, clucks, and sways along with the worshippers in the tent. Though he dearly wants to be in the tent, enjoying the band and the people straining at the top of their lungs, he hopes the preacher will leave him out of the evening’s proceedings. He does not appreciate the way he is put to use. He can do more for the preacher. The last time they roped him and injected him and bribed him with fruit and hauled him to the tent. He hates needles and the indignity of ropes and handlers who clearly fear and despise him. If they turn up again, he will not let them near him. Adam grabs the bars of his cage and shakes them. He leaps up and imagines landing on the heads of the guards who tug him to and fro at the end of a rope. His only friends are the preacher with his treats and his backscratching and the girl with her flute. All the rest are his wishes splintered into a thousand pieces and sent hurtling around the compound. Now they sing the night into being. Their voices pull this dark veil over the trees, vines, flowers, shrubs and stitch everything into one seamless fabric that joins him to them and unites everything so that distance means nothing and nothing can come between them, least of all the bars of his cage.
The preacher, pelt freshened by his shower, tells Dee that he wants his Elvis look: slicked-back hair, dark glasses, a white sequined shirt, and tight white trousers made to measure by the commune’s tailor, with pointy-toed cowboy boots stitched by the commune’s shoemaker. He sneers at the mirror one last time and heads for the front door, Bible in one hand and pistol in the other. Pat, Nora, and Dee and two bodyguards follow him.
—To the infirmary! I need to say goodbye to my makeup lady.
The boards that pave the walkway rattle as they march along. He bursts into the infirmary, and the doctor and nurses bolt to attention and swarm around him. He touches the bed of each patient as he passes and makes the sign of the cross. They thank him and cry with joy. He looks at the parents of Ryan, labeled as dissidents and locked in a chemical prison of sedatives. Both are hooked to drips with bags feeding liquid into their taped arms. The preacher moves on and stops at the bed of the old woman. Who will put on her makeup? he wonders. He cannot see himself getting so old. She opens her eyes and says, Praise the Lord. The preacher leans over and kisses her.
—I miss my makeup lady.
He sets aside his Bible and pistol and hugs her for a long time. She sobs with great heaves of her chest and gasps.
—Do not cry. You’re going to make me cry. You are heading for paradise, and I cannot wait to meet you there. You will wait for me, won’t you?
—Yes, Father.
—You have nothing to fear. You know that, don’t you?
—Yes, Father.
—Thank you for your service to this community; you kept us looking good and feeling good to the end. Don’t think I have not noticed it, and if I have noticed it, the Lord has surely taken note of it and awaits your services. We will meet again in the kingdom of the Most High.
—Yes, Father, thank you, Father.
—Do not thank me. I thank you.
The reverend falls to one knee and keeps his grip on the old lady’s hand. Everyone’s eyes close. Miss Taylor grabs her compact with powder and sponge and dabs the forehead, cheeks, and nose of the preacher. He rises and thanks her. The old seamstress and makeup artist smiles through her tears, and there really is not a dry eye in the infirmary. He leans over, kisses her again, and turns and marches out of the infirmary with his Bible and pistol.
Just before he enters the tent, he hands his Bible and gun to his assistants, who duck into the tent’s entrance ahead of him. They make sure everything is in place: his jug of ice water, his towel. They place his Bible next to the jug on a small table beside a large high-backed chair. The music and singing stop. Everyone looks at the exit left of the stage where his assistants entered. The congregation fully expects the man to follow at any moment. The preacher walks with a bodyguard around the outside of the tent to the exit. He takes care to avoid the sticks that he orders his guards to pile at each exit. He straightens, takes a deep breath, pushes his dark glasses up the bridge of his nose, rolls his shoulders, flicks both arms out in front of him, and steps into the hall’s fluorescence.
The people seated near the entrance turn their heads and cry out, and everyone, even the guards at the front of the room, jumps and grabs their weapons. The man touches people’s heads and grasps their outstretched hands as he walks to the front of the congregation, careful to step over the legs of children scrambling to their feet along the aisle.
—Bless you, bless you.
He tries to catch the eyes of each person and maintain his leisurely, impeded walk to the stage. Those seated too far from the aisle to benefit from direct contact stand up and applaud, and the entire room jumps to its feet and surges forward, clapping and hollering:
—Praise the Lord.
He repeats each phase as he marches forward. About halfway up the aisle, with the preacher’s touch and blessing part and parcel of his forward trajectory, the band strikes up “When the Saints,” and the congregation begins to clap in unison and sing. The guards put aside their sticks and rifles and clap and sing, too.
The preacher hops up onto the stage and claps his hands and waves and points at individuals in the congregation. He grabs the microphone and sings “I want to be in that number,” more as a sound test than anything. He signals to the music teacher doubled as band leader, and she waves her arms for the band to come to a close with a long flourish intended to settle the congregation into their seats. Everyone finds a chair or a spot on the floor, and the guards lean on their sticks and rifles.
—Thank you, thank you, and may God continue to bless your lungs, good people.
Laughter and applause.
—We had plenty of rain these last few days, didn’t we?
—Yes, Father.
—Another thirtysomething days of that deluge, and we would have been boarding the ark.
More laughter and applause.
—But it was good, wasn’t it? It was bountiful. It was proof of the glory of the Lord. Yes?
—Yes!
—Finish my thoughts for me, good people. I know you all know what I am about to say. So speak for me as I speak for you. Our children are our own and not our own. I know and you know that they can try us sometimes, and heaven knows we have to work hard to keep them from turning into sour apples, fruit picked too early and ripened too fast for their own good, forced-ripe fruit. But the good Lord says, suffer the little children . . .
And here he cups an ear in his hand and inclines his head toward the congregation, who complete his sentence:
—To come unto me.
—That’s right. And though they may test us and we need to keep them on the straight path. We must not spare the rod and . . .
He cups his ear at the congregation again, and they shout:
—Spoil the child.
—We must see them in their innocence as already admitted into the kingdom of heaven. Tonight I want us to think about temptation, in all of its many disguises. It is a snake.
—It is the flesh.
—Yes, Father.
—It is the promise of riches on earth.
—Yes, Father.
—But do not worry yourselves about riches. You know what the Good Book says about the rich man. It is easier for a camel to stream through the eye of a needle than—finish my thoughts for me, brothers and sisters—than . . .
—For a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
—Very good. A camel is easy to see, right? But the effort required from a rich man to be able to enter the gates of paradise is close to a miracle, isn’t it? Picture the huge camel to my left, and in my right hand see the little needle, and not just the needle, but the eye of the needle. Can you see it, madam? You, yes, you in the front row.
—No, Father.
—No, you cannot. If you had said yes, I would have asked you to go and see the doctor, for you would be seeing things, madam. Wouldn’t you?
—Yes, Father.
—You might be able to see the needle, but the eye of the needle is so small and the camel so big that it would take a miracle to feed that camel through that needle. Look, even I have to close one eye and lick the thread several times to get a thin piece of cotton through a needle.
Here the man mimics licking a piece of thread and aiming at a needle, and he closes one eye and tries a few times to perform the task. The congregation laughs and claps.
—You see how hard it is to put what should be put through a needle’s eye?
Children of Paradise: A Novel Page 13