Children of Paradise: A Novel (39 page)

A shot and another in quick succession send Adam reeling backward and clutching at his arm and leg. He turns to charge at a group of men who run out of the trees not far from Kevin and Eric. Joyce screams at the men to stop, and Trina grabs Adam, who holds on to her and keeps her to one side as his legs buckle under him. Joyce asks Kevin to remember his promise. She tells the prefect to say nothing about any of this to anyone, not even her parents, since it will get them all in big trouble. The prefect looks at Joyce but does not respond. The guards get on their radio and say mission accomplished. About eight men lift Adam onto a cart and bind his hands and feet, and the men, helped by a donkey, pull the cart back to the compound. The doctor shines a light into each of the prefect’s eyes. She fails to respond to any of his questions or to her parents, who stop asking her if she is all right and just hold her while the doctor pronounces that she is in deep shock. He prescribes a sweet drink and a sedative to help her rest. The preacher tells the community that this reappearance of the child is nothing short of a miracle and they should pray. He says he cannot explain it to them, that God’s infinite work is a mystery, more often than not, to the limited minds of humanity.

—The child was lost and now she is found. God’s power is supreme.

He asks them to pray hard, for this is surely a sign from God of things drawing to a close, some big event on the horizon for the commune. The preacher questions Kevin and Eric at length, and whatever they say to him induces him to thank Trina and Joyce for their good work.

The guards reinforce Adam’s cage with staves hammered deep into the ground. They pour cement into the tunnel dug by Adam and attach a shackle to his left leg. A long chain on the shackle allows Adam some restricted movement in his cage. They padlock another chain around the bars of the cage. Adam snoozes in his drugged condition while the preacher whispers and Trina plays her flute. The preacher says that Adam is special, but how would he manage in the wild when all his life was spent in captivity? He wants to know, if Adam truly understands his sermons, how could the gorilla attempt to escape?

Kevin and Eric march to the pig farm. They debate the merits of their decision to stay with the preacher. Kevin says it is a matter of faith.

—If Joyce lost hers, that’s her loss.

Eric wonders if their love of God and their love for the reverend and for each other are all three reconcilable. Kevin says he cannot imagine a heaven with a God whose love is anything but unconditional. He says Joyce can do what she wants with her daughter, but she must not implicate them in her plans. At the farm Eric touches Kevin’s arm, a quick furtive gesture, and walks on toward the landing for his guard duty. Kevin walks over to Joyce and Trina, who rake pig muck and turn their backs on him. Kevin wants Joyce to know that she can do what she wants, but it must not involve him or Eric. He apologizes for spoiling her plans but says that when he and Eric found them, they were stuck on the wharf with nowhere to go and the other guards arrived just a few minutes later. He tells her she needs a better plan. And just so she knows, he says, his good friend Eric has just two more days of duty at the dock before the rotation puts some strange guard in his place. Kevin walks away and Joyce stops raking and utters a quick thank you. She nudges Trina and points with her chin in the direction of the jetty, where Eric marches.

The captain and his first mate meet Eric at the pier. The captain asks Eric if he is all right. Eric twirls a used tranquilizer dart between his fingers.

—What happened?

Eric says it would be unwise to pursue the issue, but no one got hurt in the incident, it was all a misunderstanding. The men drink ginger beer and the captain breaks out a few precious slices of his black cake. Eric asks what they would say to him if he told them of a miraculous attempt to flee the commune by a gorilla as smart as a man who grabbed a child and took off with it. The captain replies that if he were not the source of the ginger beer and cake, he would think the bearer of such a tale was drunk or having visions, but knowing the source of the story, drink and cake or no drink and cake, he has no choice but to believe it.

The captain asks Eric if he cares whether Joyce and Trina leave the commune. Eric says he does not care but he cannot risk being blamed for their departure. The captain asks, if Joyce and Trina were to slip past Eric and he did not see them and so could swear they did not pass by him while he was on his watch, would that absolve him of blame in their departure. Eric says that in all good conscience he would have to be unaware of their presence if he is to be in a position to swear before his leader and before God that he knows nothing about such an event. The captain thanks him and wishes him a good day.

The preacher announces to the commune that they must prepare the place for the delegation even if it is true that their worst enemies are about to descend on them. He says they must meet these evil people and show them once and for all that commune life is sacred. He instructs his carpenters and painters to spruce up the place, from the hut at the main gate to the pig farm. He asks that all schoolchildren wear commune insignia, yellow and green, as a uniform. The choir puts together a repertoire and the band polishes its brass. He reminds them that cleanliness is next to godliness. The hammering and painting start right away, along with the cutting of cloth for yellow shirts and green trousers and yellow blouses and green skirts for the children. He walks through the campus with his managers, and they list the things that need immediate attention. He doubles the gardening contingent. He asks for guards to work at their stations on one other task in addition to their guard duty.

The guards at the front gate paint their hut while on duty. The bakers double up as spring cleaners of the bakery. The preacher sets groups to work on the infirmary, his house, the schoolhouse, and the library as the main buildings earmarked for a brief tour by the delegation, and these buildings are whitewashed and the paths leading to them weeded and cleaned. He doubles the rations for the children and asks the doctor to get as many patients as possible out of the infirmary to create an impression of a healthy environment, even if that means putting those bedridden patients in secluded buildings.

The schoolchildren practice greeting important personages and learn special songs and recitations of key Bible and Shakespeare passages to impress the delegation. The doctor and nurses order patients to look as if they are more recovered than ill and not to disclose their true diagnoses but to offer milder, less debilitating diseases. Most are told to use the flu as their preferred ailment, and most are to say they expect to be up and about the next day. The managers stock the pharmacy to capacity, and an odd aroma of almonds emanates from it. They overflow the kitchen shelves with all manner of imported goods, and meat appears on the menu every day leading up to the delegation’s arrival.

The preacher explains the importance of creating a good impression to get the devils off his back and ensure the commune a future free of outside interference. He draws a circle on the ground and says the commune is that circle and outside of the circle are the forces determined to break the sovereignty of the commune. Those in the circle are fortunate because they are saved, those outside of it are damned and determined to drag the saved to hell. He says he spent his life fighting evil and this delegation is just another manifestation of it. And he will continue the good fight and protect the circle and everyone in it from those evildoers.

He asks people if they are happy, and if they say yes, as they invariably do, he makes them elaborate on the exact source of their happiness. A guard says he is happy because he lives in the commune. The preacher corrects him and says the guard should say the commune lives inside of him because of his faith, that his faith is the first source of his happiness and the second is his location in this veritable paradise. He makes the guard repeat that exact thing. He asks Rose if she misses any aspect of her former life but warns her she cannot say ice cream trucks and chocolate bars and cotton candy and hamburgers. Rose thinks very hard because she knows her answer must have some bearing on her new life as a saved person. She says she misses or rather does not miss the gunshots in her ghetto and she still dreams about hiding under her bed while a battle rages between drug dealers and the police, and this commune makes her pinch herself every day to make sure she has not died and gone straight to heaven. The preacher kisses her and presses a chocolate bar in her hand.

He tries similar bribes to induce the prefect to speak. Since her rescue by Adam, she has not uttered a word, and though she washes and dresses and eats and attends school, she begins a task only if some supervisor tells her to start one and stops only when directed to stop. If someone tells her to sweep a room and leaves her with a broom, she will sweep until the person returns, no matter how long the interval or whether the job is complete. If she is forgotten at the task, then that is where she will be found hours later. Her need for constant supervision makes her the baby again to her parents, and the preacher takes it as a personal challenge that he should get the prefect to say her first words. He offers a chocolate bar, and when she takes it, he keeps hold of it and says thank you, hoping she will understand that his release of the bar is contingent on her saying thank you. She keeps quiet and he tugs at the bar as she tugs at it and the bar breaks, with the prefect getting the lion’s share, and the preacher flings away his piece and walks off.

Another time he asks Trina to offer the prefect chocolate, but Trina should keep hold of it until the girl says thank you or something that approximates civil speech. Trina tries to catch the prefect’s eye by stooping to look up at her bowed head. But the prefect keeps her head lowered and the chocolate in Trina’s hand seems to provide no incentive. Trina tells the prefect that the chocolate is really a gift from Adam and not from the preacher and Adam worries about her and all she has to do is take the chocolate and look at Adam’s cage and smile and that will put Adam’s mind at ease. The prefect looks at Trina and then at the cage, and sure enough Adam in chains stands in his usual posture, gripping the bars and looking intently through them with his head inclined to the left and to the right in small adjustments, depending on what he looks at and where the action is located.

The prefect takes the bar and holds it up toward Adam, who pushes his hand through the cage. The two girls walk to the cage and the prefect breaks a piece of the chocolate and hands it to Adam, who pops it into his mouth. She breaks another piece and another. Adam takes the last piece and stops just short of putting it in his mouth and offers it back to her. The prefect takes the morsel and smiles and pushes it into her mouth and nods at Adam.

Rose looks on. She asks Trina how she managed to tolerate a scorpion and a tarantula. Trina says what Ryan did, taking bread from the bakery for all of them, was brave. They must keep him hidden and remember to bring him food and water. She tells Rose that she is bravest of all for helping to keep Ryan safe. An insect or two is nothing, Trina says, compared to finding fresh bread and sharing it and taking a beating for the whole group, as Ryan did.

Rose agrees but still wants to know how Trina tolerated the scorpion and tarantula crawling up and down her arms. Trina says she thought about something altogether different from those insects on her arms, and her arms belonged to the preacher for the duration of his experiment. Rose says that Ryan must have put something good in his head when he walked in the dark to the bakery. He imagined everyone in the dormitory with him, linking arms and making a chain of steps in the dark, and that carried him there and back with the loaf of fresh bread.

—He carried us with him in the dark forest.

Rose likes this idea. Trina adds to it. She says that while the body may be trapped in this place, the mind is always free to roam wherever it feels safe.

Later that night, Trina asks her mother if the two of them are the only ones who might try to leave the commune. Joyce looks at her daughter and says nothing. Trina wonders if there is room for two more. Joyce says it would jeopardize a lot of carefully laid plans and Trina must be a hundred percent certain of what her suggestion means, since it could ruin everything. Trina says two more adds up to little more, since the two she has in mind are trustworthy. Joyce says if that is the case, then Trina is correct, but the fewer people who know about the plan, the smaller the risk, so Trina should wait for the time being and not divulge any of it to anyone else. Trina says there might be a way of including others without telling them what is going on. Joyce feels that presents a moral dilemma, since the persons would be fooled into a course of action for their own good rather than out of personal choice. Trina says her faith took away her choice and her loss of faith returned it. If the act of deception saves the person’s life, surely it is a good thing. Joyce says it will not be seen as such if the person believes in an afterlife as a better place, that some people think any effort to extend this life on earth merely defers their appointment with paradise.

—Mother, I want to live, but I feel bad that my future will be without my friends.

—Child, the two of us can barely save ourselves, never mind others.

—If there’s a way to save everyone who wants to be saved, would you agree to it?

—Of course, Trina. Everyone deserves the chance to live, but we have to be careful; we are in a dangerous place.

—The more I want to leave, the more people I want to take with me.

—Let’s put our minds together and see what we can come up with.

The preacher tells his assistants to watch the prefect for signs that her mute condition is but insolence. How else would she smile for Trina and not say thank you to him? Lucky for her he has bigger fish to fry, with the impending arrival of the delegation. This visit promises to be the biggest test of the commune since its arrival to the interior of the country five years ago. But he says he has a bad feeling about it. Politicians typically use one move as a way to get to another position rather than admit defeat to the opposition. Politicians act because their survival matters more than loyalty to a group or idea. And sending this delegation to the commune is a political act, nothing more. He says while the commune fights for its spiritual survival and entry into heaven, the politician merely seeks to protect his material well-being in the here and now. In addition, the preacher worries that no matter how good a show the commune mounts for the delegation, it might leave the place and redouble its opposition.