The Poisonwood Bible
Page 173
“Well, sure,” I said. “He was probably still preaching hell and brimstone over his shoulder while he ran! “Which is true.
“They surrounded him in an old coffee field and he climbed up on one of those rickety watchtowers left over from the colonial days. Do you know what I’m talking about? They call them tours de maitre.The boss towers, where in the old days the Belgian foreman would stand watching all the coffee pickers so he could single out which ones to whip at the end of the day.”
“And they burned him?”
“They set the tower on fire. I’m sure it went up like a box of matches. It would have been twenty-year-old jungle wood, left over from the Belgians.” ;
“I’ll bet he preached the Gospel right to the very end,” I said.
“They said he waited till he was on fire before he jumped off. Nobody wanted to touch him, so they just left him there for the animals to drag off.”
I thought, Well, nobody around there’s going to be drinking any coffee for a while! But it seemed like the wrong moment for a joke. I ordered another round of Elephant beers and we sat pondering our different thoughts.
Then Adah got a very strange look and said, “He got The Verse.”
“Which one?” Leah asked.
“The last one. Old Testament. Second Maccabees 13:4: ‘But the King of Kings aroused the anger of Antiochus against the rascal.’“
“I don’t know it,” Leah said.
Adah closed her eyes and thought for a second and then quoted the whole thing out: ‘“The King of Kings aroused the anger of Antiochus against the rascal. And when Lysias informed him this man was to blame for all the trouble, he ordered them to put him to death in the way that is customary there. For there is a tower there seventy-five feet high, filled with ashes, and there they push a man guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes to destruction. By such a fate it came to pass that the transgressor died, not even getting burial in the ground.’“
“Holy shit!”I declared.
“How come you know that verse?” Leah asked.
“I must have gotten that one fifty times. It’s the final ‘The Verse’ in the Old Testament, I’m trying to tell you. One-hundred-count from the end. If you include the Apocrypha, which of course he always did.”
“And what’s at the finish of it?” I asked. “The take-home lesson?”
“The closing statement of the Old Testament: ‘So this will be the end.’“
“So this will be the end,” Leah and I both repeated, in complete amazement. After that we were speechless for approximately one hour, while we listened to each other’s throat sounds every time we took a swallow of beer.And Leah smoked the last two Lucky Strikes in West Africa.
Finally she asked, “Why would he give you that verse so many times? I never got that one.” Which if you ask me is really not the point.
But Adah smiled, and answered like it mattered, “Why do you think, Leah? For being slow.”
After a while I smelled wood smoke. Some vendors were setting up to grill meat along the side of the street. I got up and bought some for everyone with my own money, so I wouldn’t have to hear Leah gripe that it was too expensive, or Adah telling us what exact germs were living on it. I got chicken on wooden skewers and brought it back to the table wrapped in wax paper.
“Eat up and be merry!” I said. “Cheers.”
“In memory of the Father,” Adah said. She and Leah looked at their shish kebabs, looked at each other, and had another one of their private little laughs.
“He was really his own man, you have to give him that,” Leah said, while we munched. “He was a history book all to himself. We used to get regular reports from Tata Boanda and the Fowleses, when he was still around Kilanga. I probably could have gone to see him, but I never got up the nerve.”
“Why not?” I asked her. “I would, just to tell him where to get off.”
“I guess I was scared of seeing him as a crazy person. The tales got wilder and wilder as the years went by.That he’d had five wives, who all left him, for example.”
“That’s a good one,” I said. “Father the Baptist Bigamist.”
“The Pentecostal Pentigamist,”Adah said.
“It was really the best way for him to go, you know? In a blaze of glory,” Leah said. “I’m sure he believed right up to the end that he was doing the right thing. He never did give up the ship.”
“They surrounded him in an old coffee field and he climbed up on one of those rickety watchtowers left over from the colonial days. Do you know what I’m talking about? They call them tours de maitre.The boss towers, where in the old days the Belgian foreman would stand watching all the coffee pickers so he could single out which ones to whip at the end of the day.”
“And they burned him?”
“They set the tower on fire. I’m sure it went up like a box of matches. It would have been twenty-year-old jungle wood, left over from the Belgians.” ;
“I’ll bet he preached the Gospel right to the very end,” I said.
“They said he waited till he was on fire before he jumped off. Nobody wanted to touch him, so they just left him there for the animals to drag off.”
I thought, Well, nobody around there’s going to be drinking any coffee for a while! But it seemed like the wrong moment for a joke. I ordered another round of Elephant beers and we sat pondering our different thoughts.
Then Adah got a very strange look and said, “He got The Verse.”
“Which one?” Leah asked.
“The last one. Old Testament. Second Maccabees 13:4: ‘But the King of Kings aroused the anger of Antiochus against the rascal.’“
“I don’t know it,” Leah said.
Adah closed her eyes and thought for a second and then quoted the whole thing out: ‘“The King of Kings aroused the anger of Antiochus against the rascal. And when Lysias informed him this man was to blame for all the trouble, he ordered them to put him to death in the way that is customary there. For there is a tower there seventy-five feet high, filled with ashes, and there they push a man guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes to destruction. By such a fate it came to pass that the transgressor died, not even getting burial in the ground.’“
“Holy shit!”I declared.
“How come you know that verse?” Leah asked.
“I must have gotten that one fifty times. It’s the final ‘The Verse’ in the Old Testament, I’m trying to tell you. One-hundred-count from the end. If you include the Apocrypha, which of course he always did.”
“And what’s at the finish of it?” I asked. “The take-home lesson?”
“The closing statement of the Old Testament: ‘So this will be the end.’“
“So this will be the end,” Leah and I both repeated, in complete amazement. After that we were speechless for approximately one hour, while we listened to each other’s throat sounds every time we took a swallow of beer.And Leah smoked the last two Lucky Strikes in West Africa.
Finally she asked, “Why would he give you that verse so many times? I never got that one.” Which if you ask me is really not the point.
But Adah smiled, and answered like it mattered, “Why do you think, Leah? For being slow.”
After a while I smelled wood smoke. Some vendors were setting up to grill meat along the side of the street. I got up and bought some for everyone with my own money, so I wouldn’t have to hear Leah gripe that it was too expensive, or Adah telling us what exact germs were living on it. I got chicken on wooden skewers and brought it back to the table wrapped in wax paper.
“Eat up and be merry!” I said. “Cheers.”
“In memory of the Father,” Adah said. She and Leah looked at their shish kebabs, looked at each other, and had another one of their private little laughs.
“He was really his own man, you have to give him that,” Leah said, while we munched. “He was a history book all to himself. We used to get regular reports from Tata Boanda and the Fowleses, when he was still around Kilanga. I probably could have gone to see him, but I never got up the nerve.”
“Why not?” I asked her. “I would, just to tell him where to get off.”
“I guess I was scared of seeing him as a crazy person. The tales got wilder and wilder as the years went by.That he’d had five wives, who all left him, for example.”
“That’s a good one,” I said. “Father the Baptist Bigamist.”
“The Pentecostal Pentigamist,”Adah said.
“It was really the best way for him to go, you know? In a blaze of glory,” Leah said. “I’m sure he believed right up to the end that he was doing the right thing. He never did give up the ship.”
