The Poisonwood Bible
Page 25
To Kilanga’s hungry people Our Father promised at summer’s end the bounty of the Lord, more fish than they had ever seen in their lives. “The word of Christ is beloved!” he cries, standing up precariously in his boat.”zita Jesus is bangala!” So determined he is to win or force or drag them over to the Way of the Cross. Feed the belly first, he announced at dinner one night, seized with his brilliant plan. Feed the belly and the soul will come. (Not having noticed, for a wife is beneath notice, that this is exactly what our mother did when she killed all the chickens.) But after the underwater thunder, what came was not souls but fish. They came rolling to the surface with mouths opened wide by that shocking boom. Round shocked bubbles for eyes. The whole village feasted all day, ate, ate till we felt bug-eyed and belly-up ourselves. He performed a backward version of the loaves and fishes, trying to stuff ten thousand fish into fifty mouths, did the Reverend Price. Slogging up and down the riverbank in trousers wet to the knees, his Bible in one hand and another stickful of fire-blackened fish in the other, he waved his bounty in a threatening manner. Thousands more fish jerked in the sun and went bad along the riverbanks. Our village was blessed for weeks with the smell of putrefaction. Instead of abundance it was a holiday of waste. No ice. Our Father forgot, for fishing in the style of modern redneck Georgia you need your ice.
He was not going to bring up the loaves and fishes in today’s sermon, was a good guess. He would merely give out the communion with the usual disturbing allusions to eating flesh and drinking blood. Perhaps this perked up congregational interest, but we Price girls all listened with half an ear between us. And Adah with her half a brain. Hah. The church service lasts twice as long now because the Reverend has to say it once in English, and then the schoolteacher Tata Anatole repeats it all in Kikongo. Our Father finally caught on, nobody was understanding his horrible stabs at French or Kikongo, either one.
“It was lawlessness that came forth from Babylon! Law less ness!” declared the Reverend, waving an arm impressively toward Babylon as if that turbulent locale lurked just behind the school latrine.
Through the bedraggled roof a ray of sun fell like God’s spotlight across his right shoulder. He paced, paused, spoke, and paced behind his palm-leaf altar, giving every impression he was inventing his Biblical parables on the spot. This morning he was spinning the tale of Susanna, beautiful and pious wife of the rich man Joakim. Annasus ho! While she bathed in the garden, two of Joakim’s advisors spied her naked and cooked up their vile plan. They leaped from the bushes and demanded that she lie down with them. Poor Susanna. If she refused they would bear false witness against her, claiming they caught her in the garden with a man. Naturally the righteous Susanna refused them, even though this meant she would be accused and stoned for adultery. Stoning moaning owning deboning. We were not supposed to wonder what kind of husband was this Joakim, who would kill his own lovely wife rather than listen to her side of the story. No doubt the Babylonians were already out scouting around for their favorite rocks.
The Reverend paused, resting one hand flat on the altar. The rest of his body rocked almost imperceptibly inside his white shirt, marking time, keeping his rhythm. He scrutinized his parishioners’ blank faces for signs that they were on the edge of their seats. There were eleven or twelve new faces now, a regular stampede to glory. A boy near me with his mouth hanging open closed one eye, then the other, back and forth. We all waited for Tata Anatole the school-teacher-translator to catch up.
“But God would not let this happen,” the Reverend growled, like a dog awakened by a prowler. Then rising an octave like “The Star-Spangled Banner”: “God stirred up the holy spirit of a man named Daniel!”
Oh, hooray, Daniel to the rescue. Our Father loves Daniel, the original Private Eye. Tata Daniel (he called him, to make him seem like a local boy) stepped in and demanded to question the two advisors separately. Tata Daniel asked them what kind of tree Susanna was supposedly standing under when she met this man in the garden. “Um, a mastic tree,” said one, and the other, “Well, gee, I guess it was a live oak.” How stupid, that they had not even conspired to get their story straight. All the evildoers in the Bible seem spectacularly dumb.
I watched Tata Anatole, expecting him at least to stumble over “mastic” and “live oak,” as there could not possibly be words for these trees in Kikongo. He did not pause. Kufwema, kuzikisa, kugam-bula, smoothly the words rolled forward and I realized this slick trick schoolteacher could be saying anything under the sun. Our father would never be the wiser. So they stoned the dame and married two more wives apiece and lived happily ever after. I yawned, uninspired yet again by the pious and beautiful Susanna. I was unlikely ever to have her problems.
He was not going to bring up the loaves and fishes in today’s sermon, was a good guess. He would merely give out the communion with the usual disturbing allusions to eating flesh and drinking blood. Perhaps this perked up congregational interest, but we Price girls all listened with half an ear between us. And Adah with her half a brain. Hah. The church service lasts twice as long now because the Reverend has to say it once in English, and then the schoolteacher Tata Anatole repeats it all in Kikongo. Our Father finally caught on, nobody was understanding his horrible stabs at French or Kikongo, either one.
“It was lawlessness that came forth from Babylon! Law less ness!” declared the Reverend, waving an arm impressively toward Babylon as if that turbulent locale lurked just behind the school latrine.
Through the bedraggled roof a ray of sun fell like God’s spotlight across his right shoulder. He paced, paused, spoke, and paced behind his palm-leaf altar, giving every impression he was inventing his Biblical parables on the spot. This morning he was spinning the tale of Susanna, beautiful and pious wife of the rich man Joakim. Annasus ho! While she bathed in the garden, two of Joakim’s advisors spied her naked and cooked up their vile plan. They leaped from the bushes and demanded that she lie down with them. Poor Susanna. If she refused they would bear false witness against her, claiming they caught her in the garden with a man. Naturally the righteous Susanna refused them, even though this meant she would be accused and stoned for adultery. Stoning moaning owning deboning. We were not supposed to wonder what kind of husband was this Joakim, who would kill his own lovely wife rather than listen to her side of the story. No doubt the Babylonians were already out scouting around for their favorite rocks.
The Reverend paused, resting one hand flat on the altar. The rest of his body rocked almost imperceptibly inside his white shirt, marking time, keeping his rhythm. He scrutinized his parishioners’ blank faces for signs that they were on the edge of their seats. There were eleven or twelve new faces now, a regular stampede to glory. A boy near me with his mouth hanging open closed one eye, then the other, back and forth. We all waited for Tata Anatole the school-teacher-translator to catch up.
“But God would not let this happen,” the Reverend growled, like a dog awakened by a prowler. Then rising an octave like “The Star-Spangled Banner”: “God stirred up the holy spirit of a man named Daniel!”
Oh, hooray, Daniel to the rescue. Our Father loves Daniel, the original Private Eye. Tata Daniel (he called him, to make him seem like a local boy) stepped in and demanded to question the two advisors separately. Tata Daniel asked them what kind of tree Susanna was supposedly standing under when she met this man in the garden. “Um, a mastic tree,” said one, and the other, “Well, gee, I guess it was a live oak.” How stupid, that they had not even conspired to get their story straight. All the evildoers in the Bible seem spectacularly dumb.
I watched Tata Anatole, expecting him at least to stumble over “mastic” and “live oak,” as there could not possibly be words for these trees in Kikongo. He did not pause. Kufwema, kuzikisa, kugam-bula, smoothly the words rolled forward and I realized this slick trick schoolteacher could be saying anything under the sun. Our father would never be the wiser. So they stoned the dame and married two more wives apiece and lived happily ever after. I yawned, uninspired yet again by the pious and beautiful Susanna. I was unlikely ever to have her problems.
