Red Jacket (6 page)

Father John Kelly, S.J.

In August 1974 James Nathaniel Atule enters the Society of Jesus with one other Mabulian novice, Simeon Lubonli, a slender, nervous fellow with a huge appetite that's no threat to his svelte physique. As Simeon dispatches food the first day, he jokes that they will hereafter live according to LHB and LSB — L'Heure des Blancs et Les Saisons des Blancs
.
Jimmy raises an eyebrow. Colours of time and season, white, black, or otherwise, matter not; nobody thinks he'll be here long.

His smiling countryman throws another buck-naked mango seed into the trash.

Simeon doesn't know how truly he speaks. Nila died in January of the previous year. Cold, or more precisely, snow, White Winter's pretty instrument, killed her. He still craves her, the comfort of her body, the compass of loving her, the promise of making children with her. He misses the family they almost had. Sometimes he thinks God has punished him for committing the gravest sin. He worshipped Nila.

He knows he is self-willed — not selfish, just stubborn. And full of drama, so as a child his sisters called him “star de cinéma.” The only son and next-to-last child, longed for after four girls, the thirteen pounds of him nearly killed his mother, Makda. She was his first love and after her, Mapome, his father's mother. Enchanted in his cradle basket, he poked at their eyes and noses, at their mouths, opening and closing, making noises. Hugged to their warm bodies, he sniffed them. His nose remembers the perfume of the neroli oil with which they anointed themselves each morning, a scent that swelled with the sun and the day's exertions. He also loved his four big sisters, and Angélique, la petite, when she came. Why not? They all fussed round him as if he were a prince, not the least bit jealous of the extravagant attention bestowed on him.

So, long before coming of age, he'd been pleased to exercise his right as the only son to do what he chose and get what he wanted. Then while he was at boarding school in Benke, the demons danced in and Mapome upped and died. The relentless mutiny of adolescence in his body and the tumult of puberty rites jostled him past that, but his future was not to be tranquil. He'd raced through the American University in Cairo, taking three years instead of four, and then joined his father's business as a buyer. He revelled in the travel, using his native French and English and picking up a little Italian and Spanish.

He thrived in his job, and business was booming.

At this juncture, his parents decided that he could support a family and should start one. He'd allowed them to find him a wife, and they set about choosing a suitable mate. His father's grandfather had converted to Catholicism, so the woman must be Catholic. The ceremony would take place in the cathedral in Benke, but the celebrations afterwards would be according to the customs of the Mnkete clan, both families bearing the cost. No expense would be spared. He'd have preferred not to marry just then. He thirsted for the world — the flesh too but the world more — and even a bit, the devil. But it had been decided that this was an auspicious time, and anyway, eventually he'd have to marry, so it might as well be now. He set some conditions. Travelled, educated, and urbane, what he expected of a wife was more than childbearing, child minding, and running his home. She must be lively, articulate, educated, and, he insisted, uncut. Life in the twentieth century was hard enough. Sex should pleasure both parties. They'd chosen, and he'd consented to their choice, so a dowry was agreed upon, the festivities were arranged, and the marriage proceeded: an exchange of vows before the Bishop of Benke and three days of feasting, stick fighting, juggling, gymnastics, singing, music, and dancing. To top it all, a brilliant Italian fireworks display on the evening of the third day. Everyone said there had been nothing like it before; the patriarchs had been more than pleased.

The party concluded, both of them having waved goodbye to their families, he closed the door to their suite and turned to his bride. He didn't know her well. They'd met two weeks before and had spent time together since then, but little of it alone. Still, the more he spent time with her, the more she seemed her own natural, confident self. Now he was taking her in as she relaxed, head back, eyes closed, the white of her gown contrasting with the copper of her face and throat, the henna of her hair, so it quite startled him when she erupted into fits of laughter, no girlish giggles, but skirmishes of robust sound. Nerves, he'd told himself, determinedly indulgent, trying for a tender smile, trusting she would regard it so, for his sisters often called him cruelly inscrutable.

The clamour ceased as abruptly as it had begun. She sat straight up in the armchair where she'd been lounging, set her feet demurely one next to the other on the floor, put a finger to her lips, and inclined her head, as if in deep contemplation. He thought she might be hungry and reluctant to say so.

“Tu as faim?”

She shook her head, voluptuous gold earrings doing a rhumba at her ears. Charming, clever, classy, she'd been educated by nuns in Benke and sent to Switzerland for finishing. When she was in the middle of doing a degree in African History at London University, her father fell ill and she came home to be with him. When he recovered, she'd wanted to resume, but at just that time his father approached hers. Somehow they convinced her he was a prospect she shouldn't let slip.

For something to do he went to the large picture window and pulled back the curtains. It was cool at night, so he opened the louvres beside the window only enough to let in some air. The sun had set some time before. There was no clear view of the dunes, but smouldering against the red sky a sinuous horizon shrugged in their outlines.

“Mon mari,” the lushly puckered mouth spoke so softly he had to turn to hear, “Je suis à ton service.” At his service? That was sweet, if curious, especially after the hoots of laughter. Not that he minded a wife disposed to do as he wished, though she didn't strike him as the submissive type. Unhooking the gold embroidered fastening of his kiloli, he slipped it off. He was sinking onto the bed, when she leapt up, tearing off her evening jacket, gown, and slip to reveal a flimsy one-piece undergarment secured by tiny buttons down the front. These she undid, swift fluting fingers playing descending scales. Then she plopped onto the bed beside him, stark naked. He gaped.

“Jimmy, cesse de me regarder comme
ça
! Stop staring and let's get on with it. My family have gone, I'm far from home, none of this is what I planned, and I'm scared to death of being bored. I'm counting on sex hugely.”

“Mon Dieu! She's mad!” Panic alighted like a mischievous monkey on his head. That would explain the odd routine of cackling, submissiveness, and then the wild, unseemly disrobing.

She yawned and stretched. He smelled her end-of
-day smell as she lifted her arms, saw round firm breasts, nipples plump and alert as the pointy ends on figs. It lit the tree at his belly-bottom. He looked down. She joined his gaze and grinned. “Et bien?”

He was pulling her to him when it landed, no mischievous monkey but a beast that slapped him, shoved him down, toppled him backwards on the bed. He stiffened. His eyes rolled over. His body, hard as board, slammed the mattress.

“Jimmy? Jimmy!” She touched his forehead and recoiled. He sensed her tucking bedclothes round him. He was shaking recklessly, his face contorted, lips peeled back, bared teeth making a ridiculous rhythmic noise. He bit his tongue and tasted blood; felt her finger in his mouth covered by cloth that set his teeth on edge.

“Jimmy … James! Come on!”

Later (he couldn't afterwards say how much) his body relaxed, his face slack, his jaws loose enough so she could pull her finger from his mouth, he twisted in the sheets to wipe sweat from his body and then opened his eyes to see her finger bleeding into white silk. He shifted over to her, peeled the cloth from her finger, and sucked the bite marks. They lay silent for a bit, then she pushed herself up on one elbow to look full into his face. He was still perspiring.

“Jimmy, what was it?”

“What?” He rubbed his head on her shoulder, smearing the moisture on her warm skin. He dared not think about what had just happened. Sex was a saving grace. He prodded her with his penis. “This?”

She sighed. “Ici.”

Afterwards he wondered what the nuns had been teaching in Benke. She'd been like a youngster playing games, eager to demonstrate all the things she was good at, now and then slipping in questions tagged with, “But don't tell me, if you don't want to, Jimmy.” By insisting he needn't say anything, she dug most of what had happened out of him.

Coming up to daybreak, curled up against him, her back to his front, she asked, “Jimmy, is there more to it than you've told me?”

He risked his morning fart. “Oops,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Enfin de compte, c'est pas un problème.” True, all things considered, it was not a big deal, but he felt he should give her fair warning nonetheless. “It's not always a puff!” he said, grinning his cute grin, looking past her, through the louvres, into a sky sporting the fizzled fireworks of the remaining stars.

Six months later, she was dead.

“Mon ami? Tu vas bien?”

Simeon's voice brings him back to the present. “I'm fine thanks, Simeon. Just a little distracted.”

“Tu le veux?” He offers the last mango.

“No thanks. You go ahead.”

Simeon dispatches the ninth fruit in short order.

Jimmy battles with the sex thing, worrying about it with each damp waking morning. He and Nila were given to extravaganzas of ebullient lovemaking. Now he is like Sisyphus, forever pushing away his lusts only to have them roll back down on top of him. How is he to give himself completely to God or keep a vow of chastity, when the merest memory of her, a glimpse of someone looking like her, makes his body stand to attention and salute?

One dismal morning late in the second year of his novitiate, a short man, white, rotund, ragged at the edges, arrives, “bearing nothing but empty arms” as the Mabuli saying goes. Father John Kelly's arms are hairy, short, and powerful, and plugged into an equally hirsute chest. His cotton shirt, open halfway down and soaked with perspiration, hugs his plump curves. The priest arrives with only a small backpack, for it emerges that the airline has sent his bags not to Ouagadougou but to Guangzhou. He flies into Ouaga because the airport near Benke is closed yet again on account of sandstorms, which occur with frequency because of the drought. No one is prepared to guess when the bags will be found, and the only novice with clothes big enough to fit him has gone home to bury a family member, taking his wardrobe with him.

The novice master approaches the white man. “Father John,” he broaches it gingerly, “we have no clothes to fit you. We are sorry. But we …”

“Don't you have one of those wrap things, Erasmus?”

People have trouble keeping a straight face when the pale priest appears that evening in a brilliant green and gold kiloli
.
Not that he is awkward; it's just the distressing sight of his hairy white legs, networked with blue veins, growing down to splayed feet in a pair of worn sandals. No Mabuli man of any status carries himself like that.

Father John Kelly has come to direct the novices thirty-day retreat. Jimmy has made retreats before, but the Thirty Day Exercises of St. Ignatius are “une toute autre affaire” — another matter entirely. On the next day, Sunday, the day before the exercises are to begin, he and Simeon bounce down the chapel stairs after Mass in the morning. His friend mimes jumping jacks as they hit the ground.

“Ready for the Ignatius workout?”

Jimmy croaks, “A geriatric like me? I'm waiting for an angel to bring me a wheelchair!” Simeon he-haws from down in his thin belly. Head and shoulders sunk in mock submission to their fates, they sniff their way to breakfast.

On Monday, Jimmy gets through the “Principle and Foundation,” Ignatius's first-day exercise. He figures they let you slide into contemplation's slow eddies before shoving you through the rapids and over the falls, so while he can, he savours paddling about in “reverencing and serving God.” It is what he wants, now that there's no Nila. After she died, he was stuck up a stagnant, smelly creek, mired in indifference, so he knows the price of attachment. He longs to be “free from all worldly desires,” to have “a wholesome sense of God, himself, and creation” as St. Ignatius recommends. Floating downstream with no wants and no cares will be heaven indeed!

These thoughts are pretty much what he reports to the director on Tuesday, as he reviews his response to the day before. He is relieved to confess to Father Kelly that Nila has been a part of his prayerful consideration. He loved her utterly — indeed he's caught himself weighing her and God side by side, more than once. Isn't that idolatry? Reverencing Nila as much as reverencing God?

Today is day three, the day for grappling with sin. It is going to be a grim business, a trip through the torrents and very likely over fearful cataracts, so Jimmy can't tell what prompts him to bring up the matter of how much they are all diverted by the sight of the priest in his kiloli.

“Father, if I may ask a question before we begin …”

“You certainly may, Brother.”

“Doesn't it bother you?”

“Is there something that ought to be bothering me — remind me of your name, please. I've forgotten.”

It irks him that the priest doesn't remember his name. John Kelly is old, but not that old, and there are just a dozen retreatants. Perhaps the foreigner is feigning ignorance to upset his composure, teach him humility, show him he is just one of the bunch and nothing special. He lets himself think this, at the same time that he knows it makes little sense for a strange priest to come halfway across the world to conduct a retreat and begin by dissembling about, of all things, recalling a novice's name. The idea and his irritation nonetheless persist.