The Ghosts of Eden Page 11

  He said to Simon, ‘Yes, I think we should definitely ask Mr Patel to tell us if they’re diamonds.’ And getting his father a car wasn’t selfish like going around the world in a jet plane. It was a Kingdom of God thing to do; he was pleased that Simon had thought of it.

  Michael thought of something else: God must have especially put the diamonds on Crystal Mountain when he made the world so that he and Simon would find them later. God had very carefully placed each tiny diamond on the summit with his huge fingers, pressing each one into the ground a little to make them not too easy to find. Then he had sat back and waited a long time for him and Simon to find them. Now God must be very pleased. He would be even more pleased when his dad won the Safari. Michael thought it super that he was a big part of God’s plan for his father. Even Mr Patel was in the plan, although he probably didn’t know it. He pictured his father standing on the winning podium, with his big Bible in his hand, preaching a sermon, while all the Africans crowded around cheering and crying and giving their hearts to Jesus right there where they stood.

  He imagined Simon admiring his father’s winning Zephyr: the mud-splattered windscreen, the thousands of insects stuck in the radiator grille, the bashed-up wheelarches. He could see Simon turning to him and saying, ‘If this is what God can do, I think I’d better let Jesus into my heart.’

  They were almost back at the school now. Michael could not hold his thoughts in any longer. He said to Simon, ‘These are definitely diamonds because God wants my dad to win the East African Safari.’

  Simon looked at his crystals again for a long time and then nodded, as if Michael must know.

  At the school Nurse Janine examined them for ticks and scolded them for the grass burrs in their socks; then they sat on the lawns by the lake and had orange juice and sponge cake. Nurse Janine took some cake to Tim in the san.

  ‘He can’t be very ill if he’s eating cake,’ said Michael to Simon.

  ‘Maybe he just wants to die ’cause he didn’t go up Crystal Mountain, and Nurse Janine’s just trying to make him want to stay alive,’ Simon replied.

  That evening the children lined up in their fluffy dressing gowns and slippers and padded after Auntie Priscilla into the cosy wood-panelled prayer room off the hall. They all sat in a circle on small wicker-seated chairs around a peacock-blue Persian rug. The shuttered windows had peep holes, although at night they were hidden behind weaver-bird-yellow curtains. A black Bakelite telephone sat on a lamp table in the corner with its wires cut off. The school was not yet on the telephone, the end of the line being some sixty miles away. The aunties used the telephone to explain about prayer. Simon told Michael that once he had got through to the devil and he had to say he had got the wrong number. Michael didn’t think that was so funny. They also make-believed the telephone was a public phone box, so they could get the second star of the Wolf Cub Scout badge. An auntie stood behind the curtain and pretended to be a policeman at the other end of the line. They all laughed at the story of the little boy who had said, ‘Hello, can you tell my mummy to come and take me home?’ and then blubbed.

  In the prayer room, in the Presence Of The Lord and in the presence of an auntie, Michael became unhappy again about going to see Mr Patel without permission. He needed to have a sign from God that Mr Patel was also in the plan. In the Bible Gideon had put out a fleece from a sheep when he had wanted a sign. It was the only thing with dew on it in the morning. That was how Gideon knew. There was a fleece rug in front of the telephone table. Michael looked at it for a long time, wondering if he could sneak into the room at night and drag the rug out onto the lawn. But it looked clean and white. What if a dog chewed it in the night or the night-watchmen sat on it? Auntie Beryl was very clever but he doubted that she would understand. God was not exactly making it easy. Sometimes it seemed that it was easier to ask God for forgiveness than ask for permission. He had to ask for another sign. It was not much to ask of God.

  Now they were singing again.

  Jesus bids us shine

  With a pure, clear light,

  Like a little candle

  Burning in the night.

  In this world of darkness

  So let us shine,

  You in your small corner,

  And I in mine.

  Michael liked that song. He liked to think that he was a little candle shining in the corner of a dark room, but what did it mean, ‘this world of darkness?’ All things were bright and beautiful and there were crowns for little children above the bright blue sky. They sang those songs every day. ‘Little children, little children . . . black and yellow, red and white, all are precious in his sight.’ Everyone he knew had let Jesus into his heart, except Simon and some of the Africans, but Simon was soon going to – when they got the money for the Zephyr from the diamonds – and his father and mother were telling the Africans. It was only a matter of time before everyone had let Jesus in and then the whole world, not just home and school and Crystal Mountain and the lake, would be shining.

  They sang another song:

  He will gather, He will gather

  The gems for His kingdom:

  All the pure ones, all the bright ones,

  His loved and His own.

  Michael shot up his hand.

  ‘Yes, Michael?’ asked Auntie Priscilla. Normally Michael avoided noticing her much – she had a wide straight fringe of thick brown hair and a round face with chubby cheeks like a monk that Michael thought should belong to a boy, not a grown auntie, and when she prayed she rolled her eyes up so they became white – but now he had to speak to her straight away.

  ‘Are diamonds like gems?’

  ‘Yes, Michael, diamonds are a type of gem.’

  It was amazing how quickly God had spoken. While Auntie Priscilla read from a small book called Daily Light, Michael was thinking about whether he would stand on the podium with his father when he won the Safari; and whether his father would thank him for his part in Bringing To Fruition God’s Plan. And then he heard Auntie Priscilla reading about jewels. He definitely heard her say ‘jewels’. God had spoken again in case he had not heard the first time. Sometimes God shouted at him.

  Rosalind put up her hand. ‘What does that mean – detestable idols?’

  Auntie Priscilla read out the verse again.

  ‘They were proud . . .’ she said ‘proud’ slowly as if she was teaching them pronunciation, ‘of their beautiful jewellery and used it to make their detestable idols and vile images. Therefore I will turn these into an unclean thing for them.’

  Michael started to pay attention again because Auntie Priscilla had straightened herself in her chair and was fidgeting as if she wanted to go to the toilet.

  The End Times were never far from Priscilla’s mind. She had an apocalyptic faith and supped hungrily on such passages. Abominations hovered near: she felt the hot breath of the four horses of the apocalypse on her neck, heard them snorting in her ear. She spent her evenings studying eschatology: the red horse, the pale horse, the four beasts from the sea, the six seals, the sky rolling up like a scroll, the full moon become blood, the shaft of the bottomless pit. She started revealing some of these visions to the children, pulling back the veil a little, telling them about the depraved statues of bloated cows, the graven images of shameless women, the foul masks worn by frenzied men. She spoke of a woman in purple on a scarlet beast, drunk with the blood of the saints. A warm flow moved down the centre of her torso, a delicious kneading. She found herself panting and noticed that Rosalind looked as if she was going to cry; so she turned her attention to lambs lying down with lions, angels in soft raiment wiping away children’s tears, city walls of glassy jasper, foundations inlaid with amethyst and carnelian, gates fashioned from single pearls. With a quiet ecstatic moan she subsided into the chair again.

  Michael was confused. The message from God was strong, but what was it? What did it mean? Were jewels good or bad? God was being difficult again.

  It was time for the children
to take it in turns to pray around the circle.

  Angela prayed, ‘Thank you for my rabbit, that we will never eat it.’

  Rosalind prayed, ‘Thank you for dying on the cross and help Lewis not to be so awkward.’

  After Rosalind had prayed, Auntie Priscilla said, ‘Michael, don’t pick your nose.’ Someone sniggered. Lewis had told Michael that if you picked your nose you would get a hole between the nostrils. After that he only picked his nose in secret, or when people were supposed to have their eyes closed. He scowled. Auntie Priscilla should have had her eyes closed properly during prayers. Perhaps she could see through the whites of her eyes.

  It was Michael’s turn to pray. He concentrated hard, screwing up his eyes tight. His last memory verse came to mind and he said loudly, ‘Send forth your light and your truth. Let them guide me.’

  Priscilla looked across at Michael, startled, as did all the children, suddenly wide eyed. No child had spoken with such authority and conviction before, and although Michael had spoken words that might have been uttered, in a ritual tone, by any Anglican vicar, the words were far too precocious to have come from a relative babe. As Priscilla stared a transfiguration occurred; the tension in Michael’s upturned face melted away and it was as if a transcending inner peace had come upon him. A luminous presence attended him. Priscilla knew that she was witnessing an epiphany, an anointing. It was as if not the child had spoken but the Holy Spirit through him. Would the child grow in wisdom to become a prophet? Could such an ordinary child, who picked his nose, be a Latter-Day Saint? As the silence extended, Priscilla saw Michael open his eyes.

  ‘What?’ he said defensively. ‘I didn’t pick my nose again.’

  Priscilla collected herself, but made a mental note to observe the child in case an angel was in their midst. Now she thought about it, she had seen glimpses of the celestial in Michael’s face before. True, with his fair pudding-bowl hair and big trusting eyes he looked like a cherubic choirboy, but she sensed more: a spiritual aura perhaps, as if he had been touched by the divine.

  She gave Michael a little smile and then said, ‘David, you’re next.’

  But all other prayers around the circle were trifling after Michael’s supplication. When they said the Grace together Priscilla noted that all the children spoke louder than normal, as if they were keen to show that they were just as fervent as Michael.

  Lying in bed after prayers, Michael guessed that God would tell him what to do during the service in the cathedral in the morning. Now that Simon was expecting him to be right about the diamonds he was sure that God would not let him down. He just had to Wait On The Lord. Tomorrow he and Simon would come back from Mr Patel’s with their pockets stuffed with money. He wondered if he should take a duffle bag.

  The bats momentarily extinguished a star here, and a star there, but Michael did not notice as he was asleep.

  Three

  The drums outside the cathedral started at 7.30am while the children were scoffing their porridge. The poundings burst through the windows of the school, stamped down the hill to shake the leaves of the eucalyptus trees in the town, made dancing water-spheres on the crest of the wavelets lapping the shore, ribbled over corrugated roofs, agitated the fields of maize beside wattle and daub huts, stepped up the hillside terraces planted with beans and sweet potatoes and turned the head of a goatherd on a humpback summit. Far below the goatherd, in front of the whitewashed cathedral, drummers struck the great cowhide drums. The drums were bound tightly to a stake lest the old legends be true and they break free and go looking for their wives and cattle, or were stolen – the owner of such drums might hold immense power. But these beliefs were sinking away: over the preceding half century a tide of Christian faith had swept inland from the sea. At its high tide mark, hundreds of miles from Africa’s eastern shore, the cathedral lay like a bleached driftwood crate.

  Michael and Simon sat on the cement floor of the cathedral, pressed in by soft flesh and marinated in the scents of another race. They had somehow become orphaned from the rest of the school who sat in a block a few rows behind. The bishop gave a command in a voice which was given weight and ecclesiastical authority by the acoustics of the high space of the building. They stood, all rising as one – it would have been difficult to resist, so tightly were they compressed together. The wooden chairs of the clergy at the front of the church scraped and screeched on the floor. Then, without instrumental introduction, a lone voice rose high and wavering and was taken up by the congregation: a plaintive cry drifting out and away into the hills, sliding into a melody that had been composed in Victorian Britain, translated by the worshippers into their own musical dialect: an indigenous inflection, a collective sighing, a melodic wailing. The voices slewed from note to note, bar to bar: strong male harmonies, high and anguished female parts. Singing of redemption through blood; the spilling of blood. The congregation knew about blood: chicken blood spurting from the severed neck, goat blood drying on the stones behind the cooking hut, caked blood on cow skins, blood from the gash of the panga, blood from childbirth. Blood was the strongest metaphor for life. They understood the blood of the Lamb, why it had to be shed. Sin was serious unto death. Only a life offering was sufficient atonement.

  Through the tall windows Michael could see a hill. It looked like the Green Hill Far Away and the path running down its side was red. He saw then that the children in front were just like him, that all the people squashed in around him, whether mothers suckling their babies, porters with roughened hands, old women with milky sight, robed clergy, beaky aunties or soft-limbed cooks; they were all the same to God. He saw that everybody – black and yellow, red and white – had to be washed in the same blood.

  Feeling rinsed of his sins, Michael sank down to the floor again with everyone else. The bishop climbed the pulpit, pulling himself up by the rail because he wore such heavy robes of scarlet and black. Another man, slim and straight like a skittle, glided to the foot of the pulpit. Michael thought he might be wearing roller-skates under his long white nightie. The bishop’s booming words filled up the cathedral. When he paused the words drained away quickly out of the glassless windows. Then the roller-skate man spoke, saying in English what the bishop had said in Rukiga, but his little voice was like a narrow beam which only passed over Michael now and then.

  Michael was distracted by the heads in front of him; he wondered whether his own head was as bumpy under his hair as the African children’s. They had tiny wiry curls for hair which he wanted to touch.

  Simon, cradling his crystals in his cupped hands, put his head close to Michael’s and whispered, ‘Stay at the back when we leave.’

  The roller-skate man was saying, ‘Once we were in bondage to the spirits. We gave them our allegiance. We did nothing without fear. In the morning when we woke, in the daytime when we . . .’ His voice disappeared.

  Simon said, ‘I’ve cleaned them.’

  The bishop spoke again and the roller-skate man said, ‘. . . who can break the power of the spirits over us? Who . . .’

  Simon was fingering a crystal. ‘I think this big one’s a diamond.’

  ‘. . . there is only One that can free us . . .’

  ‘How much money is a diamond?’ Michael asked in the sudden quiet.

  ‘. . . a Greek woman came to our Lord begging him to cast out the demon . . .’

  Simon said, ‘I think we can buy two cars with two diamonds. Mr Patel will know.’

  ‘. . . it is not right to take the bread for the children and throw it to the dogs . . .’

  Michael said, ‘Do you swear you’ll share the money?’

  ‘. . . even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs . . .’

  ‘I swear on Cub’s honour,’ Simon said forcefully. The heads in front swivelled to look at him.

  ‘. . . for such a reply, you may go; the demon has left . . .’

  ‘What’s he saying about demons? My dad says there aren’t any,’ Simon said.

  Michael
looked knowingly at Simon. ‘It’s because he doesn’t believe in the Bible. If he did, he would know there are demons.’

  Simon said, ‘I think my dad has a demon sometimes.’

  Michael suddenly wanted to wet his pants. ‘Does he really have a demon? Is that true?’ he asked. He was going to stay at Simon’s house in the holiday while his mother and father were away at a convention for two whole days. He didn’t think his parents would let him stay at Simon’s house if they knew his father had a demon, even if he only had it sometimes.

  He didn’t hear Simon’s reply as they were lifted to their feet again at the command of the bishop. The bishop read a collect and prayers from the Book of Common Prayer; the congregation murmured its responses. Michael felt a rising panic as they dropped to the floor again, but not about demons. He had not been listening out for the sign that would tell him whether it was right to go to see Mr Patel without the aunties’ permission. What if God had spoken already and he had missed it?

  He tried to concentrate hard. A Bible reading followed. When it was translated Michael heard at last what he had been waiting for.

  ‘He said to them, ‘If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.’’’

  Michael sucked in his cheeks and bit them, thrilled. God could not have been clearer. It was lawful to do good on the Sabbath. He was going to be doing tremendous good for his father, but everyone else would be happy as well: the aunties; Freda and all the fat cooks; his home friend, Tomasi; their cross-eyed night-watchman, Kapere; and their fumbling gardener, Silas. Everyone he knew. And if they weren’t as happy as they ought to be (he found that grown-ups, except Auntie Cynthia, sometimes forgot to be Joyful In The Lord), then Rachel, his little sister, was sure to get excited enough to jump up and down until she fell over. No one but Rachel ever got that excited about what he did; he must remember to tell her when she was older not to worship him because Worship The Lord Your God Only. It was definitely lawful to see Mr Patel on the Sabbath when he was doing so much good.