by Tess Evans
‘I’m sorry, Paulina. I meant to keep you safe.’
In less than an hour, the room was back to its original austerity, but when he left for work the next morning, he decided to keep it locked. It was the one place in his rambling house he could find the solitude he increasingly craved.
But he couldn’t give up on Paulina.
You must try harder, the Voice said. Your efforts are pathetic.
I just need time, Hal pleaded. Give me more time.
After dinner one night, he sat down heavily on the bed. What had he been thinking? As he had said to Father Murphy, no prayers, no ritual would bring her back. He had not looked after her properly and she’d left him. And well she might. It was the nature of things. Sin entails penance.
Over the next few weeks, Hal read all he could find on penance. Like the Inquisitors, he favoured physical punishment. A few Hail Marys was a penance for children and the faint-hearted. He finally settled on fasting or flagellation. He still needed to operate in the world, so fasting wasn’t a long-term option. So by default, flagellation became his penance of choice.
He slipped into Handee Hardware and examined the range of ropes. The Carmelites suggested a soft rope that wouldn’t break the skin. He took it home and knotted it; he wanted to feel pain. Then he waited. The following Monday, while Mrs McLennon was at bingo and the children were doing their homework, Hal began his penance. He sat with the rope on his knees and wondered how it was done.
‘Shirt off,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘Singlet.’ He looked at the little pile of clothes on the floor, decided he felt a bit silly in his shoes and removed those as well. He peeled off his socks, and stared for a bit at his long, bony feet. He left his Y-fronts on. That was a blessing, at least.
‘Okay, then.’ He swung the rope experimentally over his shoulder. It grazed his ear and fell limply down his back. Try again. His bursitis was hurting more than the rope. Best to try the other hand. Maybe if he swung under his arm and aimed for his lower back . . . That was a bit better but he was sure that pictures he had seen of saints had them doing it the other way. He changed hands and tried over the shoulder once more.
Swish! Swipe! The rope tangled itself around the bedpost. That night he went to bed early and took a Bex for the pain in his shoulder. His back remained smooth and unmarked.
A coarser rope. That would solve the problem. Hal went to the hardware store at lunchtime and found just the thing. That night he could hardly wait to finish dinner and rushed off to his room. He rolled his shoulder a few times before attempting to apply the new rope. No point in doing any real damage. Swish! Swipe! Nothing. The problem was now obvious. The rope was too light. He needed something heavier to give it sufficient momentum. For someone who barely recognised the working end of a screwdriver, he was spending a lot of time in Handee Hardware. The new rope wasn’t very pliable and he spent a frustrating half-hour before knotting it to his satisfaction. He took off his shirt, shoes and socks.
‘Here we go!’ Swish! Swipe! He groaned. It was no good. He had always been uncoordinated. With sudden, and I have to say, rare insight, he imagined what Paulina would have said. How they would have laughed. He grinned, despite himself. He must look a right idiot sitting on a chenille bedspread, trying to scourge himself with a rope.
At that moment, there was an urgent banging on the door.
‘Open up, Hal. It’s me, Bob.’
‘Please come out, Mr R. It’s me—Mrs McLennon.’
‘What’s wrong? Just a mo’.’ Hal tucked the rope under his pillow. Still buttoning his shirt, he opened the door. ‘What’s up?’
‘You’re safe. Thank you, Jesus.’ Mrs McLennon crossed herself in relief.
‘Safe? Jesus? What’s going on?’
Bob pushed his way into the room. ‘Mrs Miles from Handee Hardware rang her. Said you were buying rope.’ He cleared his throat. ‘She thought you might have been—you know . . .’
Hal looked puzzled. ‘What? I might have been what?’
‘Going to do away with yourself,’ said Mrs Mac, her words tumbling over one another. ‘And then what would happen to those poor children?’
They would have been better off. That’s what. Because it wasn’t long after this small drama that Hal met Godown Moses as he walked past the discreet doorway of The Perfumed Garden in Purdy Street.
5
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN HARD to miss Godown Moses, as he swept the steps leading up to the club. For a start, he was so large. And black. A huge, muscular man with exuberant hair and dark, humid eyes. His manner belied his wild appearance.
‘Pardon me, Sir,’ he said as Hal walked by. Hal, lost in thought, was startled to hear himself addressed in a voice at once deep and harmonious. ‘Pardon me, Sir. Could I interest you to the company of a pretty lady?’ Godown Moses leaned on his broom and waited courteously for a reply.
Hal stopped, despite himself. The demeanour of this man made him impossible to ignore. ‘Er—thank you, no,’ Hal said finally. ‘Family man, actually.’ And made to hurry away.
‘Good for you, Sir,’ said the man, following him a little down the street. ‘Then may I invite you and your family to the Church of the Divine Conflagration this Sunday?’ He handed Hal a leaflet and then turned to another passer-by.
‘Pardon me, Sir. Could I interest you in a pretty lady?’
Hal thrust the leaflet into his pocket and continued on his way. What an odd character. Touting women on one hand and church on the other.
A couple of days later, as he emptied his pockets prior to loading the laundry basket, Hal found the leaflet.
Church of the Divine Conflagration, he read. Services Sundays at ten am. Rear Safouris’ Electrical Repairs and Dry Cleaning, 52 Horton St, Yarra Falls. Acknowledge your evil and lay down your burden at the feet of the Lord, the text advised, just above the PTO. Hal turned the paper. There he saw a hand-drawn map with a cross marking the location of the church, under a letterhead for The Perfumed Garden faintly visible beneath the pencil lines that were meant to obliterate it. Smiling, he prepared to toss it in the wastepaper basket but hesitated and slipped it into the drawer instead.
The leaflet was amateurish, he knew, but Hal felt its call. He took it out and studied it again. Was this a message? The burden. Did this refer to his quest for connection to Paulina? Acknowledge your evil. The Voice had intoned those very words over and over. And here it was in black and white on a leaflet for the Church of the Divine Conflagration. Hal’s eyes took on a feverish light as he sought to confirm what he wanted to believe.
Apart from the words on the leaflet, there was the man who had given it to him. Along with the strange courtesy and distinguished bearing, Hal sensed a quiet force. Perhaps knowledge. Even if their meeting were a coincidence, Hal was compelled to follow it up. His intellectual scepticism was counterbalanced by his very real need to believe in something beyond the material world that, without Paulina, was simply insufficient.
While to me, the Church of the Divine Conflagration was a joke, I have to admit that there was something about that large black man—his eyes, his voice, I don’t know. But I can see why my grandfather was intrigued.
Hal found the leaflet in his hand again the next night. He read the details more carefully. So the church was behind Safouris’ shop. He knew it well. He took his suits there to be dry-cleaned and had exchanged pleasantries with the Greek couple who ran the business. The shop was divided in two by means of a red line painted on the floor. This line continued over the counter and up the back wall and Spiros and his wife defended their separate territories with military fervour. As a dry-cleaning customer, Hal had to stand on the right side of the line. Should he stray a little, Spiros would look up from under dark brows and clear his throat.
‘Would you mind stepping this way, Mr Rodriguez,’ Helena would sigh. ‘My husband is a pig, you understand.’ And she would flash a triumphant smile across the line. One successful battle in a long campaign.
When Hal arrived on
Sunday morning, he hoped to see Spiros and Helena, but the shop was shut. He stood uncertainly on the footpath and was relieved to see the man who had given him the leaflet striding down the street.
‘Is this the church?’ Hal asked.
The man stopped in surprise.
‘Indeed it is, Sir.’ He held out his hand. ‘I am Pastor Moses B. Washbourne, formerly Sergeant Moses B. Washbourne, of the Armed Forces of the United States of America.’
Hal’s hands were large, but they were entirely lost in the mighty grip of Moses B. Washbourne. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Pastor—Sergeant.’
‘Only Pastor when church is in session. Rest of the time people call me Godown Moses or just Godown.’ He began to sing in a fine baritone Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land . . . The singing stopped abruptly. ‘That’s how I got my name.’ He shuffled his feet and managed to look both shifty and repentant. ‘Well, to be honest,’ he sighed, ‘I was a bad man with the women before I returned to the Lord and my army buddies gave me that name, but it means somethin’ different now.’ All the while he was fiddling with the padlock on a side gate as Hal stood by, silent and bemused.
‘This way.’ Godown Moses led his flock of one down a narrow path to a large backyard, where a fibro-cement shed stood under the shelter of two large flowering gums. He stepped in, switched on a light and motioned for Hal to enter.
The dimly lit interior of the shed was dominated by a large wooden cross. In front of this was a lectern supporting an open book. There were several chairs facing the cross and the side walls were lined with neatly labelled cartons. ½ inch cable, Hal read. Duct tape, switches (mixed), coat hangers, ledgers 1952–58 . . .
Godown busied himself at the lectern and took a stole from one of his ample pockets. He draped it around his neck and raised his hands, palms out.
‘Give thanks unto the Lord,’ he intoned. ‘For he is good; for his mercy endureth forever.’
Hal looked around. Where was the rest of the congregation? ‘Give thanks unto the God of gods; for his mercy endureth forever.
‘Give thanks to the Lord of lords; for his mercy endureth forever.’
The pastor looked meaningfully at Hal. ‘For his mercy endureth forever. That’s the response, brother.’
‘For his mercy endureth forever,’ Hal mumbled, shuffling his feet.
‘To him who alone doth great . . .’ Godown shut the book. ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘I can’t preach the Word to just one person. Still, it’s a startin’ point. In His own good time, the Lord will send us companions in worship.’
Hal, used to stained-glass windows and marble altars, was unable to imagine why anyone would want to worship in a shed full of junk. He looked at the cardboard cartons, the cobwebs and the battered lectern. Then he looked at the pastor who was eagerly scanning his Bible for next week’s text.
‘What do you think of this one? “Come to me all ye who labour and are heavy burdened?” I do so enjoy preachin’ to a text like that. Showin’ the Lord’s mercy and compassion and all.’ Meanwhile, he bustled about, tidying up his meagre belongings, planning his sermon and humming an unfamiliar but haunting tune.
Hal recognised simple goodness in the other man’s face and understood, that it was the pastor himself who would draw people to this church, just as he, Hal had been drawn. He turned to leave but felt the sharp realisation of impending loss. He was sure now that this man had access to the knowledge he craved.
So Hal, rather than risk losing this opportunity, fell back on the banal. ‘Come over to my place for a beer,’ he said, ‘and you might as well stay for lunch.’
The pastor shook his head and sighed. ‘A beer? Get thee behind me, Satan.’ But he was ready enough to jump at the offer, especially if it came with a family meal.
Mrs McLennon and the children were more than a little surprised to find an exceptionally large, black man, wearing a purple stole, drinking beer in their lounge room. At first, Zav thought that their visitor was the coolest person he had ever seen, but Sealie hung behind her brother. She was even more alarmed when a large, albeit gentle hand was placed on her head and a loud voice entreated the Lord to bless and keep her. She backed out of the room, her eyes large with fright while her oblivious father asked Mrs McLennon to put a few more veggies in the oven.
Over their Sunday roast lamb, the family listened to Godown’s story. He was born and raised in Washington DC, he told them and his father was a driver for a US senator. His mother was a dressmaker, ‘a God-fearin’ woman, who sang in the church choir. I was workin’ on buildin’ sites when Pearl Harbor was bombed so, quick as you like, I joined up in one of them Negro regiments.’
‘How did you find yourself in Australia?’ Hal asked. ‘Did you come here on leave?’
‘I surely did. Came here on furlough in forty-five and married a girl from Brisbane. She was a sweet girl, but it didn’t last. Those parents of hers didn’t want no coloured grandchildren. They poisoned my little Judy against me.’
Mrs McLennon looked at him doubtfully. Underneath the courteous exterior, she sensed something—energy? Fervour, maybe? She couldn’t put her finger on it, she told Alice later. But it was there. Maybe the girl’s parents felt that too, she thought, although she was realistic enough to acknowledge that black skin was probably more than enough to alarm them.
After lunch, Hal took his guest back into the lounge room and quizzed him some more over coffee. There was a question he couldn’t ask at the table.
‘How is it that you work in a brothel? I mean, with your religious convictions, it’s a strange choice of career.’
Godown snorted. ‘Choice of career? Choice? Don’t you see I’m black? What choice you think I got?’ He held Hal’s embarrassed gaze in his own. ‘Even at the Garden, they only want me for my muscles.’
Hal turned away and began to poke at the fire. ‘I’m sorry . . . didn’t think,’ he mumbled. What Hal meant was, he didn’t notice. He saw that Godown was black of course, but it made no difference to him at all and it pained him that it might make a difference to others. My grandfather was a straightforward man, genuinely unable to imagine why skin colour should be an issue. He listened courteously as Godown continued.
‘You know why I can’t do the Lord’s work properly? One— I’m a lone black man in a white city. And two—I work in a brothel.’
Hal was intrigued. ‘But you invite the punters in. How can you square that with God?’
‘The Lord tells me to give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s. The Garden pays me, and I owe it to them to do a good job.’ He grinned conspiratorially. ‘Don’t stop me from tryin’ to convert some of them girls, though.’
They sat in companionable silence for some moments, then Godown looked shrewdly at his host. ‘I’m sensin’ somethin’ sad in your life, friend,’ he said. ‘Offer your sorrows to the Lord. He’s a truly lovin’ Father.’
‘So they say,’ said Hal drily. ‘I can’t say I’ve noticed it myself.’
‘You can’t say that. Let me help you, friend.’
‘Hal. Please. Hal.’
‘Hal. Let me show you the ways of the Lord. Let me unlock the springs of your sorrow.’
Hal had never heard anyone speak this way in normal conversation. It was so rhythmic and soothing it sounded like poetry. Or a song. The resonance of Godown’s voice made his words a song.
From that moment, Hal placed his trust in Pastor Godown Moses. He told him how he had built this house for his bride. How they had two precious children. How they had lived happily, but not ever after.
‘I’ve tried to reach her—I’ve tried to reconcile with God. But she moves further away every day. I’ve let her down and she’s moving further away from me.’
‘She’s waitin’ for you, Hal. When your time in this vale of tears has passed, she’ll be there, waitin’ to lead you to glory.’
This notion of a kindly God. Hal knew it was all rubbish, of course. No different from Father Murphy when you thought about it
. But he had seen faith and hope in this man’s eyes. What if it wasn’t rubbish? What if this stranger knew, really knew that the universe made sense? That the loss of a loved one was a temporary state? What if he actually knew the one thing that Hal wanted to believe?
Hal’s voice was low, so low that Godown had to lean forward to hear him. ‘How can I know? What can I do?’
The pastor’s eyes shone. ‘You have to know the Lord to understand his ways.’
‘Tell me about him.’
Godown could recite whole passages of the Bible by heart. ‘In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth . . . Now what does that tell you, friend?’
Hal had never thought much about the meaning of the scriptures and was largely unfamiliar with the Old Testament.
‘A bit more,’ he said. ‘I can’t get anything out of a few words.’
Leaning forward, Godown grasped his hands. ‘But you can. Just think. First there was nothin’ and no-one ’cept God. And what did he do? He created places—homes for us, Hal. For you and me. God created heaven and earth.’
‘How do we know he created them for us? Maybe he wanted them for Himself.’
‘Because He didn’t need no place for Himself. He was already there. Logic, Hal. He created them places for somethin’ outside of Himself. Us.’ He emphasised his words by tapping his own then Hal’s chest. ‘Me ’n’ you, Hal. Me ’n’ you.’
Hal was impressed by the other man’s certainty. He refused to question the spurious argument because he wanted so much to believe. If there was earth, which there obviously was, then there must be a heaven and if there was a heaven, well, Paulina still existed and one day . . . As Godown said— logic. Hal had moved right to the edge of his chair. ‘Yes. I see. Go on.’