Children of Paradise: A Novel (24 page)

The commune exerts a hold on her that baffles him. He is prepared to give up his boating life to be with her if she asks him to go away with her to another place. But to expect his total loyalty to a preacher in charge of a community is another matter. For her to ask him to follow, unquestioningly, a leader whose gospel makes him president and high priest, and who keeps a stranglehold on everyone around him, strikes the captain as too much to ask of anyone. He has to get a message to her. He must see her just once more to make certain he does not give up too easily on the woman who stirs in him the most unpredictable elation while he is in her company and the deepest gloom away from her. He cannot focus properly on his job. Every trip to the commune raises his expectation of seeing her, but she fails to appear and he leaves feeling disconsolate and listless for the entire voyage back to the capital, so much so that his first mate remarks on it and the captain makes a concerted effort to communicate with his passengers and conjure a cheerful disposition.

He inquires about Joyce and the information given to him—that she is busy with commune business or indisposed or not someone he should worry about or a woman way higher than his league—rattles him inside, and he fights to keep calm and look merely intrigued by Joyce rather than acknowledge his deep need of her. On many occasions he helps to unload commune cargo, but his offer to help carry it from the dock is always politely declined. The guards usually wait for help to arrive, and anyone on the boat who wants to visit the commune is told to make an appointment by writing to the spiritual leader. The captain jokes once about the high secrecy of the commune. Are they growing marijuana or something? The guards, Eric and Kevin included, become very serious and inform him it is no joking matter to belittle another person’s faith unless he wants a fight on his hands.

—And don’t expect a fistfight.

Eric touches a revolver strapped to his hip. The captain asks the guard to lighten up and apologizes for his bad joke. Eric says no problem, and they shake hands and return to talk about the scarcity of basic food items in the capital when so much of the country has arable land.

—We can’t get any crops to stay in the ground; only weeds and vines flourish in it.

—I’m no farmer, but I bet the Waurá or one of the other indigenous peoples might be able to help your commune find the right crop for the region.

—I think the reverend is looking into that angle.

The captain says to the guard that they should not argue politics because the guard had a distinct advantage with his gun. Eric laughs about the ineptitude of political leaders. Other guards chime in that politics is a material undertaking doomed to failure unless wedded to the spiritual, to a belief in God. Their leader conceived of the commune as a social system with a spiritual core, and therefore as systems went, theirs was infallible. The captain senses that he should choose his words carefully, but something in him rankles at their certainty about themselves and dismissal of everything else.

—For me, belief is a private matter between a man and his God.

—Captain, you’re naive. How can one person, mere flesh and blood, know a supreme being like God the Creator?

—I just steer my craft up and down the river and keep my eyes and ears and heart and mind open.

—You think organized religion is corrupt and has nothing to do with a loving God?

—I’m not sure people are able to act in God’s name and get a result that is any different to someone acting out of self-interest. I think faith is too personal an experience to be organized into any system.

The guards, Eric and Kevin among them, ask him who would guide those lost souls wandering the streets and vulnerable to exploitation by the wicked, who, they might add, always seem to organize themselves into gangs and cartels and political parties. Here the captain says he agrees, but he has a ship to guide safely into harbor, so he must return to his work.

On another trip to the commune, he gives the wheel to his first mate and devotes his time to composing another letter, this time not to Joyce but to the preacher, and in his best handwriting.

Dear Reverend:

I write to request your kind permission to visit the commune to see the miracle of the settlement you and your followers have created. As you know I have served as boatman to your commune from its early days of construction to its habitation and to the present day. As you are aware I ferried the first expeditionary group to the interior and traveled back and forth with raw materials and saw the commune grow from a clearing to a community of buildings. The first planeload of community members sailed on my boat, and though every boat in the vicinity was commissioned to convey the group to the location, it was my sturdy craft that worked around the clock to help establish the community
.

If there is any doubt about my reliability, then I should be dismissed forthwith from the privilege of doing any more business with your community, but if this letter contains a shred of truth about the beginnings of the commune and my relationship to it, then I know you will agree with me in saying that I deserve an audience with you, the spiritual leader of the community
.

Sincerely
,

Captain Aubrey Bryant

The captain licks the envelope, seals it, and writes across the front
Attention: The Reverend
and hands it to Eric as he disembarks at the commune’s dock.

The captain’s letter is delivered to the preacher, duly read, and consigned to the bundle of letters from the captain to Joyce in a larger pile of mail withheld from commune members placed on probation because of the unwelcome interest shown them by relatives in the U.S. or because the followers appeared less than enthusiastic about life at the commune. All incoming mail, no matter the addressee, undergoes careful scrutiny. If anything appears in a letter that obliquely criticizes the commune or seeks to entice a member away from the community or contains news deemed too upsetting to impart to the follower or offers information about the outside world that might capture the attention of the person and subtract from the total attention that must be paid to matters pertaining to the commune, that piece of mail never makes it to the name on the envelope but sits in the dead pile, waiting to grow to a size worthy of a trip to the incinerator, which covers just about every piece of mail addressed to every member of the commune.

The preacher refuses to see the captain. He relays a verbal message to the captain delivered by Eric.

—The preacher told me to tell you that you can keep up your work for the commune as a boatman, or you can quit and the commune will procure (that’s the preacher’s word, not mine) the services of another captain and boat.

The captain cannot believe what he hears. He struggles to remain calm. Instead of speaking right away and in a manner that might make things worse, he takes his hat off his head and runs a handkerchief across his forehead and on the back of his neck. He turns his hat around in his hands.

T
rina exercises her newfound freedom to work with whomever she pleases wherever she pleases by joining the garden crew for the day. She catches up with a dozen or so children, Rose among them, marching with their prefect to the fields.

Thank you for joining us today, Miss Trina.

The prefect hands Trina a hoe. She falls in behind him at the head of the line. A few steps later, she asks him if they ever sing as they march. The prefect suppresses a weary look and says that there is plenty of time to sing hymns at the sermons and in the classroom, and out here a walk in silence allows everyone to observe the bounty of God.

—Who said anything about singing hymns?

—Oh, what did you have in mind?

He looks over his shoulder at her.

—Well, we could start with something for the young ones and then graduate to other, more grown-up things.

He laughs.

—So you’re a grown-up now, eh, Miss Trina?

—No. Since we walk all this way, we can make it more interesting for everyone.

—Take it away.

Trina gives him her hoe and falls out from the single file and walks backward and fires her instructions to the children.

—Okay, everybody, we are going to sing and whistle. I’ll start us off, and as soon as you recognize the tune, join in. Got it?

—Yes.

Enthusiasm breaks out at the change in their routine trudge to the fields and back.

—First we have to march in step.

It takes a few adjustments by some of the children to get the march right. Trina watches the caterpillar feet of the line of children. She clicks her fingers, counts to three, and begins: Hi-ho, hi-ho . . . and with that, the dozen child laborers pick up their feet and sing and look at one another and compete to be the loudest in a jaunt toward the rows of unresponsive roots and vegetables, the beets, carrots, onion, potatoes, yam, cassava, okra, peas, and more, put in the ground and coaxed to no avail, all waiting for their attention. Or planted and weeded and sprayed with insecticide only to have a downpour kick the seedlings down the slope or float them away on instantly formed rivulets, or one time a plague of insecticide-proof locusts.

Well, this is fine, Trina thinks, but the song soon becomes a lot of whistling and not much else. The prefect asks if she knows any more tunes. She says: This old man, he played one, and the prefect replies while looking at Rose that Trina’s song is too young even for the seven-year-olds among them. So Trina says: How about Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-ling”? The prefect looks aghast for a second and intrigued for another second and, in no time, positively thrilled.

—Miss Trina, only you can make such a suggestion.

And with that Trina announces the new song and tells the girls to pretend for the sake of the song that they are boys, and the children slap each other on the arms and shoulders and laugh, and she launches into it with them at full throttle in a walk that is less of a march and more of a dance.

As they near the field, she signals to them to stop singing. They turn the corner and meet adults dotted about the rows of vegetable plants. All of the adults stop their work and stare in the children’s direction. Trina’s mother walks up to her.

—That was some show, young lady. It might not be a good thing to stray so far from the usual repertoire.

Trina apologizes and her mother tells her not to worry and they fall to work side by side with Rose. They weed, hoe, and pick at things. Joyce wields the hoe, and Trina and Rose clear and fetch and pluck. They pause to mop sweat with the end of their clothing and to stretch and lean back from the ache of constantly leaning forward. They take a break and queue for a drink from a drum of water on a cart pulled by a donkey. The cart rests in a shaded spot at one end of the field; the unharnessed donkey grazes close by. Each person lifts a ladle on a string, dips it into the drum, and drinks directly from the ladle, taking care not to slurp or spill a drop. They throw back heads and tilt the ladle into open mouths. They share according to the preacher’s dictum that they must all eat from the same pot and drink from the same well. The younger children wet faces and necks and find the mess refreshing and amusing. Joyce steps in and holds the ladle for each child and directs the child to dip right into the barrel and open wide, wider, or to drink slow, slower, since the water is not going anywhere except into their little potbellies.

The donkey heehaws a loud neck-stretching bray that lasts so long, it causes everyone to stop and stare as the donkey winds down and falls silent. People hum, and some sing church songs to match the swing of a hoe or shovel or pull and throw of weeds. Most of the younger children assist the older children and adults. They fetch this or take away that and idle with a small bucket and stick and prod insects and block the path of worms and ants by placing stones and other obstacles in their path. The sky out in the field broadens and flattens for the child who lies back and looks up and waits for something to happen up there. And for Rose, something begins, small and brilliant to her eyes. A hawk drifts on a sideways moving loop, a flock of parrots swivels left and right with the precision of an aircraft made up of shuffling colorful pieces, a bunch of cloud shifts a city of towers, steeples, animals, and big heads with beards.

The final time Joyce and the captain made the trip to the capital together, neither one suspected it would be their last uninhibited meeting. Joyce is thrilled to see the captain, and he tells her that he spent every trip upriver looking for her and hoping she would be sent to the capital on commune business and not stay there but return a few days later on his boat, that what he ideally wants is to operate his boat and welcome her aboard as his permanent guest.

—That sounds like a marriage proposal. I thought you weren’t the kind of man to commit to someone else.

—On my boat, I can do anything.

Joyce says that she is a package deal these days; Trina is a crucial part of her life. The captain says he means both of them and he is sorry to leave Trina’s name out of his talk, he includes her in his thoughts. They pick up passengers along the way, but Joyce is the only person traveling from the commune to the capital. The captain maximizes his time with her by handing over pilot duty to his first mate. During a downpour on the boat, the captain and Joyce stand together in the rain, holding on to each other while sticking an arm out, palm up. An old woman shouts at the captain to bring his poor wife and himself under the shelter before the two of them catch their death of a cold. They obey the old woman’s request, but neither bothers to correct her statement about their relationship. They just look at each other and smile. And the slow way they walk in from the rain makes it look as if they are reluctant to part from each other untouched by the inclement weather. It is not the first time a stranger views them as a couple and construes their easy intimacy to be contractual and far more practiced than is the case. They take this as a blessing that somehow an invisible charm is at work in their favor.