Children of Paradise: A Novel (8 page)

—How could I give up all of this?

He spreads his arms at the river and the surrounding country and the light bathing them all.

—Do you ever regret it?

She hates herself for saying this the moment it jumps out of her mouth. She looks at her feet, rubs her hands down the front of her dress as if to smooth out the pleats, and shakes her head. She wonders how her talk about God and the commune and her leader has turned to this intimate conversation with a man whom she’s known only a day.

—Never. Not for one moment. Especially at times like this, with someone new and surprising on my boat.

She stands next to him as he steers. Trina sits nearby and draws two adult stick figures standing on either side of a child and holding the twigs of that child’s arms.

—You’re not like a white woman, you behave different.

She makes a surprised O of her mouth and covers her widened eyes with her hands.

—I really want to know what a white woman is supposed to be like and just how many of them you’ve met to help you form this expert opinion about me.

He confesses that he met few of them on his boat but encountered some in the city, and they were all bossy know-it-alls and seemed cross-eyed when they talked to him, as if looking down their noses at something unsightly hanging from the end of their vision.

—What makes you think I’m white?

—Your skin is a dead giveaway, though your jet-black hair is something of a puzzle. Do you have something mixed with your European blood?

She says she has yet to meet someone who is not tainted with some mixture or other. Her father came from Spain to Florida on business and met her mother, a Miccosukee, in an illegal casino at West Palm Beach. Her mother thought he was an awful gambler, but he stayed at her table just to be dealt cards from her hand with her smile.

—He lost a lot of money that night, but she slipped him her phone number by dealing seven cards to him in a sequence that she said was an awful-looking hand but a number of some import to him if he cared to remember it. And the rest was history, as they say.

The captain smiles at this beautiful answer.

—That explains your hair and your ways.

—And what exactly do you mean by that, Captain?

—Well, you seem more open to me as a human being. You don’t see me as black first and human second.

He wonders if she feels an affinity to nature. He says everyone knows that the tribes in this forest have lived here for thousands of years without interfering with the place, while the Europeans with their enslaved Africans and indentured Indians from South Asia ruined the place in just four hundred years. Right on cue, a barge floats by with a red flag warning them that logs would follow, and they pull to the side as a half mile of felled trees floats past them with hired indigenous tribesmen running acrobatically across the logs to keep them together and hopping back into small motorboats that zip up and down alongside the flotilla of felled trees.

The captain says he has one more thing to ask her, and ordinarily he would wait a little longer, but the dock for the commune is coming up around the next bend in the river.

—Trina’s father?

This makes Joyce laugh. She calls Trina and asks if she would kindly tell the captain about her father. Trina set down her sketchpad.

—Oh, show me that.

Trina holds up the double page for the captain, who sees an S for their river filled with logs. Instead of trees, lines of bulldozers are parked along the river’s banks, and instead of flocks in the air, just airplanes.

—You have a gift, Trina.

Trina says her mother met her father at college.

—He was a football star, and he abandoned us for a life of women and drink.

—Trina!

—But Mom, that’s what you say about him.

—I know, but you’re not allowed to repeat it.

They are smiling, and the captain takes off his hat and raises his eyebrows at the first mate who seems equally amused and mildly shocked. Trina sees none of this and blithely carries on.

—He looked like you, but you seem a lot nicer.

This surprises the captain.

—Like me?

—Yes, Captain.

Joyce adds that Trina’s father always maintained that his ancestors were never enslaved.

—They arrived in Florida as free people from Haiti. He played for a few years and a knee injury ended his career and he got locked up for tax evasion and that was that. He’s back there somewhere, wheeling and dealing and, mercifully, out of our lives.

—Any regrets?

—Not a one.

Joyce hugs Trina. A natural lull follows with some searching out of objects in the river. A log floats like an alligator, just submerged in the water. The current billows and mimics shape-shifting cloud. They pass herons nesting in the mangroves, pure white splotches against bright green and the green rising out of the mineral-stained water.

A watch repairman who sells clocks and watches and peddles his wares in a cart ignores the No Trespassing sign and tries to sneak around the commune gates. The guards fire at his cart, alarmed by the noise coming from it. He opens the cart to show them that it is full of harmless clocks and watches. He tells the guards that by shooting at his cart, they try to kill time but succeed only in ruining his merchandise. The commune leader purchases a kitchen clock and a schoolroom clock from the watch repair specialist to compensate him for the damage and for the fright of being fired upon. The seller of timepieces trudges from the compound, dissatisfied. He grumbles.

—Time wasted on you people.

The man feels he knows time from the inside out.

—Nobody can beat time. No matter how grand he think he is.

On his way out of the compound, the time seller waves at Adam.

—I feel sorry for you, forced to live here and watch them day and night.

The time seller’s sweeping gesture takes in the rain forest, whose clock is the rain made in the trees and the mist grazing and a sun crawling in a blue sea fished by birds and sailed by cloud.

Adam looks around at the industry of the commune that surrounds him. The people’s unceasing labor is a testament of their higher calling, and by their treatment of him, keeping him close to them and giving him a central place in their lives, he feels elevated from his humble position of a dumb beast to honorary citizen of the commune. The people want him here so that he can witness their toiling. All he has to do is look up at the giant monocot trees that fringe the compound to see how much labor it takes to clear this place and erect buildings and weed and pluck the wild greenery every day to keep it from encroaching and swallowing the compound. He, too, could pluck, chop, and carry if they would let him. He cannot see himself sitting around in a clearing or propped against a tree picking fleas from some other gorilla’s fur as another hand combs his fur for ticks to nibble. He knows nothing of that life. He was captured too young. Saved from his preordained station in the order of things, his fate tied to that of the compound and its inhabitants. His place in the world is narrated in the creation stories read aloud by the children seated in a semicircle in front of a teacher and sheltered from the flames of the sun under the inclusive canopy of a tree. But he will prove destiny wrong.

T
he entire community of more than one thousand souls is required to attend nightly sermons unless someone is bedridden in the infirmary. Everyone aims to finish chores early to find a chair. Latecomers end up seated on the floor. The singing of hymns begins right away and continues as the place fills up, and soon those who have missed finding a chair simply squat on the ground beside a row of seats and shelter under the tarpaulin from the cool night breeze, the mosquitoes, and the general feel of discomfort of sitting too close to the thick jungle dark. Citronella coils burn. Bulbs strung around the tented structure attract kamikaze moths. Guards stand around the edges of the congregation to keep children in their place and wave off with big sticks and much gesticulating of arms and whistling and curses any curious night life that will arrive, mostly in the form of snakes, wild boar, and the occasional hungry panther. The preacher remains in his house waiting for the right time to join the congregation and deliver his sermon. He paces the corridor behind his front door and warms up for the service. He clasps his leather-bound Bible to his right breast and utters verses aloud, gesturing wildly. He hears the singing and clapping and waits until he is satisfied that the congregation has reached an optimal volume. And if joy in a clearing means anything in the pitch black of the jungle, it surely amounts to the preacher’s flock of devoted followers in full swing, vocals at a maximum, hands red from vigorous clapping, feet hot from stamping on the ground, and wide smiles on sweating faces invigorated by chanting and movement and pooled enthusiasm.

His appearance results in shouts and whistles and prolonged applause. He holds up his arms and calls for calm and thanks his congregation for its unbridled welcome. But he takes a full five minutes of saying thank you, and please, and okay, and praise the Lord, before his followers settle and wait for him. They erupt once more the moment he lifts his arms and praises the Lord, which is always a signal for the congregation to repeat his words in unison and throw their arms collectively into the air and start the applause all over again. The preacher cannot begin his train of thought until ten minutes after his arrival. He spends the time standing there and watching and smiling. Gradually, his people settle and become still for him and concentrate on him to the exclusion of everything else, from the whirring fans and jungle shrieks and coughing from those who turned up sick, to the discomfort of the metal folding chairs with no elbow room between one person and the next.

—How far we have come, my children.

—Praise the Lord.

—Look around you. Look at the strength of our numbers.

This results in many heads turning from side to side and lots of peering up and down rows of seats. A fresh wave of applauding, whistling, and shouted praise the Lords erupts. Chairs shift, shoulders bump, bodies press together to fit everyone under the big tent. The preacher tells his followers that they cannot be governed by earthly time. Unlike the rest of ordinary humanity, busy putting to no good use its time on earth, the commune must bide theirs until such time as the calling from on high comes for their salvation to eternity, to a place of timelessness and an existence free of want and pain.

—Repeat after me. We are destined for a place of timelessness.

The congregation repeats as instructed but in disarray, parts of the response starting too late and other parts finishing too early to create the effect of a loud jumble. The preacher ignores the confusion and carries on.

—Repeat after me. Eternal life free of want and pain.

This time the congregation works in concert. Those who are late starting the repetition simply skip a word or two and join in with the majority. The effect sounds much smoother, and the preacher nods approvingly and smiles at Trina and her mother seated in the front row. He gazes at them and they bow their heads, Trina’s mother more deeply. Trina’s eyes remain wide. She sits forward in her seat. She stays so still, she looks frozen to the edge of the metal chair. Blinking or slouching in her chair might rob her of some crucial detail. Trina expects something to happen, since her mother supervised her as she washed and made her wear a clean, ironed dress and one of the preacher’s assistants walked them from the dormitory to the tented meetinghouse and seated them in places vacated by two other assistants who said they were keeping the seats warm for Trina and her mother.

—My children, another day is over in a calendar of days dedicated to the glory of God.

—Praise the Lord.

He says they are disciples of the Savior. Their devotion to Him is surely proved by their challenging location in the jungle and by the daily hard work.

—All of you demonstrate your dedication to the Lord by your hard labor every day.

—Praise the Lord.

—All of you demonstrate your spirituality by your daily study of the Scripture.

—Praise the Lord.

—All of you are ripe and ready for paradise.

Applause and cheers in waves, dying down and rising up to spill from the tent and ricochet off the walled dark that joins the trunks of trees. The preacher asks if, in such an environment, doubters might still be found, skeptics might abound, and cynics thrive. The congregation shouts a variety of expressions of disbelief. No. No way. Never. Impossible. They look around, knitted brows meeting wide-eyed amazement.

—If a man asked you to place your head in the mouth of a lion, would you do it?

The congregation is slow to respond. His assistants say no, loud and clear, and the rest take the cue and add their voices to the mix.

—No. Of course you wouldn’t. Not if asked by any man. And why would a man ask such a thing of you? Such a man might mean to do you harm, and to follow his instruction would be foolish to the nth degree, right?

—Right!

—But what if the request came from your Savior? What if the voice that asks you to perform such a feat comes from within? Not from flesh and blood standing in front of you but from a guiding spirit inside you? What would you do then? Would you place your head in a lion’s mouth?

—Yes. Yes. Yes.

—God’s work is a miracle, and we see it in a myriad of ways, and God is everywhere in all the beauty of the things we see around us and in ourselves. But God cannot do everything for us. Right?

—Right!

—We have to help ourselves to prove we are worthy of His salvation. We have to work for His light to shine in us and through our example of discipline and dedication to the strictures of the Scripture. Right?

—Right!

—Repeat after me. Strictures of the Scripture.

—Strictures of the Scripture.

—Remember that phrase and find a tune for it to recharge you in your daily work. Are you with me?

—Yes.

—Do I make myself clear?