Children of Paradise: A Novel (30 page)

—Who spoiled your pretty face?

He is about to answer, but she raises an arm to silence him:

—Don’t tell me.

She lowers her arm and he decides not to say anything. They are silent for a moment or two.

—Unless you really want to.

He tells her his story. She says she can help him, but he has to come back in two hours, and she demands half the payment up front and half when he picks up the goods. He asks if she cares to recommend a place nearby where he might spend two hours. She says it depends what he wants to do with his time.

—Sleep. I’m tired.

She steps close to him and he holds his ground. She squints at him.

—Whoever stitched your face must have used a knitting needle.

Her breath smells of cardamom. She runs her index finger along the ripe scar on his left cheek and he closes his eyes.

The captain, meanwhile, finds the dock that is no more than a clearing next to the water and does not appear on any map. There he climbs into a canoe, which conveys him in darkness as two paddles scrape the boat and lick and caress the river. He moves toward a lamp far out in the water. The light stretches over the pliant surface from bright strips to faint tentacles that grasp at the canoe. These tentacles seem to grow as they nose toward the lamp, and they pull the boat slowly, as if hauling in a delicate catch by even more delicate means. The captain sees a familiar figure holding up the lamp as the canoe nuzzles up to
Coffee
. The first mate helps the captain up with a hug and a slap on the back, which draws a sharp intake of air and a wince and sincere apologies from the first mate.

Across town at the commune’s city office, the guards, field officers, and receptionists make calls to the commune at various times to report calls received at the office from abroad, and they pass on messages from their leader to various government dignitaries. The guards, receptionists, and field officers hold hands around a dinner table and pray and give thanks for their leader and for the dinner of fried chicken with chips and squash, all from abroad, chased down with cans of Jamaican ginger beer. The carbonated drink causes one of the younger guards to belch loudly, and this inadvertently triggers a belching competition among the men. The women call them juvenile. One of the young men tries to belch and vomits ginger beer through his nostrils. An older guard orders them to stop.

Six of the guards pile into a pair of jeeps and drive to the port and ask the whereabouts of the boat named
Coffee
registered to a Captain Aubrey. The port police on duty say the boat is moored nearby and not accessible in the dark. The commune guards say they will wait right there until they hear from the officer that the
Coffee
is secure. After several phone calls, the officer shakes his head and says that the
Coffee
is not moored in the city, otherwise he would know about it, that the first mate and captain must have taken the craft upriver, and since the two have done so without jurisdiction and without declaring a destination, that would be two arrest-worthy offenses. The commune guards say arrest and imprisonment would be too good for those scoundrels and they want to be notified the minute anyone spots the boat.

The senior commune guard gives the senior officer an envelope to be shared with his colleagues, and the uniformed men offer effusive thanks. The guards say they look forward to hearing some good news sooner rather than later. They wish the captain, his first mate, and that boat to be out of sight and nowhere near the delegation visiting from overseas.

—Mum, will we die here?

—No. Stop worrying.

Joyce’s swollen and cut lips barely move, but she sounds clear and defiant. She squints through bruised, bloodshot eyes, and these purple islands from her assault disrupt the even tan on her arms and legs. She pulls Trina close and whispers to her about the things she must remember in case of an emergency. As her mother speaks, Trina moves her lips, knowing all the words and hearing the sounds in her mother’s voice. River. Boat. Captain. Adam. She speaks as her mother says them, but in her mother’s voice. Trina’s eyes light up as she hears her mother declare her belief that Trina was right about Adam the morning she woke in front of his cage. Adam. Captain. River. Boat. Heard as if said in front of a mirror.

The preacher doubles security around the settlement. He orders his guards to turn away anyone who appears at the gates without an appointment, and if the person claims to have an appointment, the guards should radio the main house and confirm it with him personally. He broadcasts on the community-wide loudspeakers about the outside forces determined to destroy them all for no other reason than these forces swore allegiance to the devil against the commune’s shining example of divinity. He pauses to take or make phone calls, to eat, drink, and freshen up. Otherwise he sits and talks to his followers on the loudspeakers about the short pit stop of this life compared to the eternity that awaits them in the next. About the need for them to trust in him and believe that those who operate in this life on the assumption that seventy-odd years is all this great design of a universe is set up to bequeath humanity, these folks labor with a false belief, and theirs will be a hell of fire and eternal damnation for promoting this paltry flesh against the Holy Spirit. About how only the commune people’s belief can open the gates of paradise and grant them entry to eternal salvation.

The preacher cries as he speaks into the loudspeakers. If only their songs of praise really meant that their voices lifted in veneration of the Most High. He wakes the entire commune in the small hours to remind them that they chose him, needed him, and wanted the things he talked about. Slaps the desk in front of him and says now he makes the choices and now he chooses them, handpicks each and every one of them for paradise. He asks if they do not recognize him as a messenger of God, if they intend to fail the small, short test of their flesh and blood. His tears cause a flood of wailing in the commune. Even Adam howls. The preacher’s followers berate themselves for making their leader cry, for making him doubt their loyalty, for proving themselves unworthy of his beneficence, for seeming unfit for paradise, for their weak flesh that houses their weak spirits, for their persistent dreams of doughnuts and burgers despite the promise in heaven of myrrh and frankincense, for the magnet of desire in the fragile body that makes them lose sight of the eternal polarities of the spirit in heaven, for hunger, always the hunger of their bellies that snuffs the mind’s flame of a vision of heaven and a hell competing for their eternal spirits, for their failure to see the beauty of a parakeet in its glory of flight and bounty of colors as evidence of God’s plenty, for the preacher’s twenty/twenty vision in all things pertaining to this world and the next and their own continued myopia.

The nurse selected to nurture the motherless newborn says she feels uneasy about her role as a surrogate, and in God’s eyes surely her false claim will not go unpunished. She speaks her mind to the young guard nursed back to health with the help of her readings of military verses from the Good Book. He agrees with her in private, he says, but he will not say that he does in public, so she should keep it to herself. He proposes that the two of them make a child of their own. She brushes him aside and says there will be plenty of time for that if his devotion is more than to just the flesh. He says he loves her and perhaps he could help her care for the baby she feels bad about, a destitute soul they could learn to love as they love each other. She thanks him for his offer of help and says it is not the loving of the child that bothers her but the false premise that she birthed it. He tells her it is one of those things that must be done, however uncomfortable, because Father wants it done that way.

Nevertheless, she confides to the other nurses about her concern for her soul. One nurse, elected to watch over the others, reports back to the preacher about her colleague’s objections. The preacher flings his glass across the room. His assistants and the other guards around the house rush in. He asks the reporting nurse to repeat to the assistants and guards what she just told him. She says that the mother of the baby dislikes her foster-mother role on the grounds that it might look false in God’s eyes. The man says that this is the last straw. Is it such a great sacrifice for the stupid nurse to look after one child? Did he really ask too much of her? The reporting nurse and the assembled eyewitnesses all say no, of course not, Father, and that the woman is selfish.

—What if I complain about all the things that I must hold my nose and perform on behalf of this community? What if I pick and choose what I will and will not do for all of you here? Where would you all be? I’ll tell you. Back in a ghetto in that materialist nightmare of a country, wringing your hands for deliverance from your living hell, that’s where.

He stamps his foot and walks over to a guard, punching him in the stomach as if he is the cause of the whole problem. Nora, Pat, and Dee usher the guard away and encircle the preacher in an effort to calm him.

The preacher pushes them away and announces over the community public address system that everyone should gather right away at the congregation hall. He makes the announcement several times, and people respond by putting out fires and turning off engines and removing overalls and marching to the tent. Trina stops her flute practice and Joyce collects her and they head for the meeting hall. The preacher tells Pat, Nora, and Dee that he wants the offending nurse to appear before the congregation. He does not bother to select a costume for his appearance before the impromptu gathering. He simply washes his face and grabs his Bible and marches out of his house with his guards at a respectable distance and his assistants in a rush to collect a towel and a jug of water for him. He walks into the hall and stops the singing and asks the choir and band to put aside their instruments, for there is no joy in his heart today about what he has to tell them. He says that as a young man, he was called by God to devote his life to spreading the good word, and as a young man with many competing ambitions and passions, he embraced God’s calling and turned his back on all temptations.

—It was not easy. If it was easy to renounce this world, there would be no need for proselytizing to humanity, God’s word would be obvious to one and all, and it would be a question of simply waiting for the flesh to give up on this world in order to gain automatic entry into the next.

The congregation nods and shouts assent.

—You all agree with me to my face, but behind my back, I know you grumble. What am I asking of each of you? Am I asking too much?

The members of the congregation look around, puzzled and in search of the right response to the preacher’s question; not sure of one, many resort to shaking their heads and holding up their hands.

—What do I want from you that you find it so hard to give?

Again the nods all around but fewer hands in the air, since they are afraid to answer incorrectly and earn his opprobrium. The preacher searches his pocket for a handkerchief and finds none, but Nora steps forward with a towel. He wipes his face and neck with it and throws it back at her.

—Would you believe it, people, that what I ask of you is not something you cannot give to me, and I am not the one doing the asking. I am a messenger, and what is asked of you comes from God, and what you have to give is so little compared to what you will receive. What is asked of you is a little sacrifice in this life, and what you get in return is eternal life. Here is an example from your sinful past. Imagine buying a lottery ticket, just one, and the number, the one you pick, a birthday, a zip code, an anniversary, whatever it may be, that number comes up. Well, all you did was take a short walk to the store and put up a dollar, and what do you get in return? Millions. Well, that is what is asked of you in this life to gain entry into the next. For one dollar of sacrifice, each of you gains eternal life. Now, our nurse here, well qualified, a gifted healer, a soothing voice to many, has her dollar but refuses to place the bet of a lifetime, even though it is a gamble she cannot lose.

The preacher calls the nurse to step forward and tell the congregation why she cannot in all good conscience place the dollar-bet sacrifice asked of her in order to win eternal millions. He gives her the microphone. The nurse stands on the stage and looks at the preacher and his assistants, unsure whether she should tell the congregation of the exact nature of the sacrifice she needs to make. The nurse covers the microphone and asks the preacher if she is allowed to go into all the details of the case. He tells her she has the floor and she should use it as she sees fit. The nurse says she is not cut out to be a mother. She feels too young for the responsibility. She says she chose geriatric nursing as her specialty because she could not bear to work in maternity and witness daily the many things that go wrong with such fragile human beings. The preacher nods, and seeing his approval, the majority of the congregation nods as well. Some faces in the audience look bewildered, unsure where the nurse’s talk might take them. Many of the people watch the preacher more than the nurse, just to be sure that they react exactly how they should as events unfold in the hall.

—I’m not the mother of that child. I slept with no man.

Pat grabs the microphone from the nurse, and the guards surround the nurse, and she fights with them as they wrestle her to the ground. The preacher informs the people that the Holy Spirit moves in the nurse. He says if her last statement is true, then hers has to be only the second virgin birth in human history. The audience is clearly confused. They want to see why the guards pin the nurse to the ground and why she cannot speak. The preacher says the community is blessed but not that blessed. This stops the audience, and they wait to hear how the preacher will follow that last remark.

—The truth is she is overworked, delusional, suffering from postnatal depression. Or else the devil speaks through her.