—Come again?
—I said you look to me like one of those loose-tongued fellas who go around maligning the good name of the commune.
The first mate says that if he did not know the guard was from the commune, and therefore a declared teetotaler, he would mistake him for a drunk. Before the first mate can say another thing, the guard fishes a knife out of his pocket and slashes the face of the first mate, who does not have time to lift his arms to avoid the swift blade. He screams and covers his face. The knife has sliced from his left earlobe down his jaw to the corner of his mouth. He grabs his face and screams for the captain to help him. The captain dashes from the bridge area, leaving the steering wheel unmanned, an act of madness, he knows, but he cannot help himself, and he runs to his cousin’s aid. He uses a short stick to hit the knife from the guard’s hand. Other guards lunge at the captain and his cousin, and the two men fight off four commune guards, who kick and punch at them. The first mate begs them to stop, but they seem motivated to hurt not just the first mate but the captain as well. Passengers who have nothing to do with the commune rush to the aid of the first mate and one of them fires a pistol into the air, which makes the commune guards stop and draw their guns. The captain shouts at everyone:
—Cool down. Please. Just stop.
He says the boat will hit a bank at any moment and jeopardize all the passengers if he does not attend to it right away, and he says he will allow the boat to crash into the rocks and let them all go to hell if that is what they want. He will resume his captaincy only on condition that all weapons are set aside and if the commune guards promise to stop their assault on him and his first mate. They agree and the captain leaves his first mate with a couple of passengers who attend to the young man’s cut face. The captain dashes back to the wheel. The first mate keeps saying:
—The man cut my face; the man cut my face.
He seems unable to believe the sting of the cut and the blood pouring down the left side of his face. The guard who brought the original message from the preacher advises the captain to make himself scarce; it would be unsafe for him to be seen in the capital and on these waters, that locking horns with the commune would bring trouble, that the preacher views altercations with his enemies as a life-and-death situation.
—You’re threatening me?
—We’re past making threats, Captain. You need to watch your back.
At the port, the captain tells the guards that this is the end of his working relationship with the commune. He puts his first mate in a taxi headed straight for the hospital, and he knocks on the door of the office of the port authority. He complains to the port authority police about the conduct of the commune guards on his boat. He says he wants the men charged with assault of his first mate and explains that the men made an explicit threat to their lives as well. The port officer calls the capital’s central police station, and the central police station calls the chief of police, who advises the central station to direct the port authority police to scrap the charges. The captain waits for two hours to hear that nothing can be done about his complaint. The captain asks the police officer if, in addition to donning the uniform of his profession, he swore an oath to serve the people and to uphold the law. The officer says yes, he did. The captain says if that is the case, how can this officer stand there in a uniform in an official capacity and tell a citizen he has no rights. The officer orders a few of his men to bring the captain from the area of the front desk to a more discreet location inside the building. They try to grab the captain, but he assures them that he will cooperate and they do not need to manhandle him. Once in a back room, the officer says to the captain that if he wishes to practice his trade on this river and keep his prized boat, he had better forget about this incident. They leave him for a couple of hours to think it over.
When the officer returns, the captain tries to say something about checking the arrogant power of the commune, whose members behave as if they are above the laws of the land. The officer raises his voice. He says the captain should persist with the complaint only if he really wants more trouble than he bargained for. Two more officers show up at the office door. The officer wants to know if his uniform is official enough for the captain to comprehend his meaning, because if it is not, they can talk a different language, one less decorous, one more rudimentary. He stares at the captain, who returns his gaze. The two police, poised at the office door, step into the room. The captain looks at the three men and shakes his head and raises his arms in a sign of surrender, shrugs. Before he leaves the building, they copy the details of his boating license.
The commune office in the capital calls the port authority and lodges an official complaint of incompetence and endangerment of the public against the captain. They say they have four men willing to sign an affidavit. They ask for his license to operate a boat on the river to be revoked. The port authority police promise to look into the matter and examine the license of the captain. The guards want to know if they need to take the matter higher up, to, say, the chief of police, or whether the port authority can handle the matter. The port authority police assure the commune guards that it will not be necessary to go higher up, since the matter is in the right hands and they should not worry about it. The guards invite the officer to drop by the commune office at his earliest convenience for a thank-you gift. The officer thanks the guards for their generosity and wishes them a good night.
On his walk home, the captain decides to take a shortcut through the city’s oldest graveyard. The graves are so ancient that some of the tombstones list to one side and the mounted concrete graves look vacant, as though their occupants have risen up and left for the evening. Footpaths twist through the graveyard and resemble corridors in places with graves stacked as high as an adult’s chest and arms’ width apart. In these spots a person can turn a corner and come face-to-face with some stranger whose intentions may not always be good. Robberies and stabbings occur frequently. A person must be in some big rush or entertain some kind of a death wish to take the graveyard shortcut at night. But the captain is not in a hurry and he does not want trouble. He needs time to think, and this place, for all its claustrophobia and dilapidation, seems to offer him solace. Ever since he was a young man, he found the graveyard the best location to be in a crowded city, to capture that isolated feeling in the most splendid and luxurious of ways, because it cost nothing, just a little courage in the dark.
As a young man, he tried to bring women he courted to the graveyard, but all of them except one thought him a little eccentric if not downright creepy. He walks east to west and cuts a leisurely path through the intersecting passages, wanting to emerge into the city street, refreshed in his mind, having succeeded in undoing some Gordian knot of a worry that accompanied him into the graveyard, a worry that he left behind in the unkempt graves.
Tonight he wants to decide on a course of action for Joyce and Trina—and how, if there is a how, he should deal with the violence of the commune guards against his first mate and their threats to him and his livelihood. He feels unafraid for himself, but his young cousin carries a scar for life. And although he feels fine, he knows that Joyce and Trina might really need his help if they are held captive at the commune. Even if his young cousin prevails over the incident and is keen to move on, as well and good as that sounds, there will remain the matter of Joyce’s and Trina’s safety at the commune. He would go back to navigating the river and its tributaries and resuscitate the old pleasures of life on his boat with no one to bother him and only the tides to govern his movement from one day to the next. But the river would be spoiled for him. He would see Joyce and Trina around every twist and turn.
He crossed paths with some powerful and dangerous people, and yet he knows he cannot walk away and pretend to forget about everything. If he persists, he realizes he is guaranteed to meet calamity of some kind from people whose tentacles stretch deep into the politics of the city. At least that is how it is put to him, and he has to believe that i
s how it would turn out if he ignored the warnings and pursued the matter. Would the preacher try to harm him? Where in the land could he hide to evade the clutches of the commune?
The moon falls on the graves and casts deep shadows that seem more defined than the graves themselves. Shadows crisscross and create the impression of three or four torchlight moons shining on each grave. The captain sees how each step he takes elongates his shadow ahead and to the side of him, and as he turns a lighted corner, his shadow compacts to a dwarf and gathers under his feet as if darting back from tentative exploration to a safe haven. On evenings like this, the capital courts a light and cool breeze that refreshes everything it touches. The dead all around him could not be blamed for going on walkabout; it is too good a night for even the dead to pass up. Do they walk around with him right now? They occupy another dimension and ignore the likes of him. In the distance, the captain makes out what he counts as three or four adult shadows, which retreat from view as he approaches a narrow walk between looming graves. The captain stops and considers turning back and heading for another intersection.
—What’s going on there, boys?
He waits for a reply but none comes. The captain pulls his trusty baton from his belt and picks up a large stone. He walks forward and tries to keep his breathing steady. He quells an impulse to turn on his heels and run. His years of walking at night in the graveyard will not allow him to flee. He thinks this place will be as good as any for trouble to find him.
—I know you’re there, you may as well show yourselves.
He commits himself to the narrow path, just one way back and one way forward, with two walls of old tombs on either side. About halfway along it, four men step in front of him, and he glances back to see two others walking fast to meet him. The captain turns and runs at full speed toward the two men approaching him. The four others who stand blocking his path give chase. A few steps from the two men, he notices that they hold large wooden clubs and he thinks he catches the glint of a knife in one of their hands. The captain calculates that if he can bring down one of his assailants, he might create an opening for his escape. He directs his attention to the man flashing the glimmering blade. He kicks the man in the crotch and whacks the man’s hand with a stick and frees the metal from the man’s grip. The captain and the man tumble to the ground, and with the man under him, the captain swings his stone down into the man’s face. But he feels lashes on his back and kicks to his ribs. He rolls to one side and curls up in an instant to protect his face and ribs. He absorbs a flurry of boots and fists and sticks.
—Captain, you need to listen.
A voice shouts through its exertions delivering an assault on the captain.
—This is your one and only warning.
The voice punctuates its warning with hits to the captain’s body as an arm grips the captain’s neck and chokes him.
—Keep away from the commune.
The captain tries to pry the arm from around his neck, but the other men have him pinned. Though he kicks, he cannot budge the stranglehold. The moon swoops down toward him and brings its bright bulb close to his face, not one moon or two or three, but four or five of those moons run up close and swerve from him at the last possible moment and leave him in darkness.
A call from the office at the capital to the commune reports that the captain has been put in his place for good.
—He won’t be seen on the river again.
The office manager asks that the rest of the conversation with the preacher be conducted in private. The preacher says they are all one family and the office manager should go ahead and say what is on her mind. She recommends strongly that the preacher hears in private what she has to say before he divulges it to the rest of the group, since what she has to tell him will determine how he strategizes with the rest of the commune. The preacher, intrigued by the request for privacy, puts on a pair of earphones and sits in front of a microphone. The office manager says her call concerns the organization formed by relatives of people in the commune. The preacher dismisses the organization as a lot of hot air, a bunch of losers, and a campaign in search of a cause. The office manager informs the preacher that recent activities of the organization have taken on new meaning for the commune. The preacher interrupts and says he will be the judge of whether those miscreants huffing and puffing at his brick house are really to be considered a cause for concern. That he doubts it very much. And so should she, if she has any faith in him. She apologizes and swears that her faith is intact but he should listen to the rest of what she has found out.
She says that letters smuggled out of the commune make various allegations about cruelty and imprisonment of those who express a desire to leave. The preacher wants to know what letters. He demands proof. She says an official affidavit, hand-delivered to the office in the capital, names a dozen children at the commune, Rose among them, whose relatives want them back on the grounds that they are minors. The office manager adds that the California-based pressure group has convinced the state government to launch an inquiry into the affairs of the commune. Despite the commune’s many gifts to various ministries in the capital, a U.S. delegation not only expressed a strong desire to visit to make the determination whether people lived there voluntarily and not against their will, as claimed by the relatives’ pressure group, but the delegation was granted permission to visit the country in an official capacity, with a view to gaining entry to the commune.
The preacher swears. He thinks there must be some mistake. He asks her who in the government ratified the U.S. delegation’s visit. What the office manager says next surprises the preacher.
—Permission came from the very top, Reverend.
—The very top?
—Yes, Reverend, the very top.
The preacher tears off his headphones and slams them to the floor and tips over the microphone. He storms out of the radio room and shouts at his assistants to gather everyone for a meeting. The radio operator collects the headphones and tidies the microphone on the desk. The preacher decides his next sermon will be about this onslaught from hostile outside forces determined to destroy the commune’s way of life.
Dressed in a khaki suit, the preacher asks the congregation to imagine that he is on a safari hunt to capture souls. He asks if they would like to be the prey hunted by the power of the Lord. Everyone cries out to be hunted by Him. He says his other reason for dressing in khaki, as if ready for a hunt, concerns their location. The jungle offers a natural refuge for his community, but there are mercenaries hidden out there in the trees who might attack the commune, and while his soldiers, their brethren, can hold off mercenaries for a while, there is not much hope of success against a hired professional army bent on their destruction.
—But I am a soldier of Christ, and every single one of you here tonight is here because you are willing to be commissioned into my army to serve Christ. Every one of you is willing to serve as prey for Christ and allow yourself to be captured because you want to serve the Lord. True or false?
—True, Reverend.
He asks Joyce, seated with Trina in the front row, what she would do under such circumstances:
—Remember, you’re about to be overrun by mercenaries whose mission is to destroy your refuge and take you back to the bad old ways of your former life and shame you in front of everyone for your willingness to follow in the path of righteousness. They would lock you in prison with common criminals and throw away the key for following Christ. They would take your precious children and institutionalize them in decrepit government detention centers for lost children.
He pushes the microphone under Joyce’s nose, and she says through her sore and cut lips that she would use any weapon she could lay her hands on to defend herself.
—But you cannot defend yourself, Joyce. Not against overwhelming odds. So what would you do?
Joyce thinks about her reply for a moment. If the preacher says there is nothing to do, meaning no earthly course of action, that means ther
e remains only one thing to do. She knows what she must say by the way he stares at her and half-smiles, that same look and expression multiplied on the faces of his assistants and personal bodyguards.
—I would kill myself, Reverend.
—Say that again and louder this time.
—Kill myself, Reverend.
—You hear that, people? To evade certain capture and to stay pure and true to her word, Miss Joyce would deny her enemies the ultimate victory and satisfaction derived from her capture and defeat by killing herself. Joyce, you are a genius.
He kisses her on the forehead and asks her what about the little princess seated beside her.
—What about Trina, Reverend?
—What becomes of her after your inspired escape from the oppressors?
His question startles Joyce. She wonders why ask something if everyone in the room already knows the answer. She realizes she must play her small role in the preacher’s method of roping his audience inexorably into accepting the conclusions of his reasoning. Some important lesson in his head requires her cooperation for it to be instilled among the congregation, of which she is just one expendable piece in a larger puzzle of nearly one thousand pieces.
—Remember, you’ve killed yourself to deny your enemies.
—Yes, Reverend.
—And what becomes of your precious daughter without her mother to protect her? You would leave her to her fate, to a life in the hands of our worst enemies? The very people who are out to imprison us and separate us from our children?
Children of Paradise: A Novel Page 22