CHAPTER ONE
Joao was by no means any more special than any of his eleven brothers or eight sisters. In fact; working on the farm, from where he was born and subsequently much later expulsed, he had always proven to be the appendix of his family’s working organs.
His hands were too small to grasp and his legs were like two elastic bands balancing on ice cubes. He had the coordination of a dizzy drunkard and all the force of a polite request. As a young boy, he could barely even carry his own reflection in a mirror.
As for the labour of attending to the land, his sight was poor and his bulimic learning had him knowledgably bankrupt, being able to only hold onto an idea for as long as it would take him to forget it. So useless was he in fact that he couldn’t even pick a seed from a grain of sand. His worth on the farm and more so, to the family, could be summed up in the inspirations of his father;
“Little useless donkey,” he’d say, “you’re only talent is in breathing. God gave you lungs so you could stay alive long enough to trouble him a little less.”
Joao never took it to heart inasmuch as he never argued himself out of accepting the truth that; on the farm, his presence alone was akin to that of a drought. Whenever he neared the toils of his siblings, they would curse and moan and band together to shoe him off like a diseased cattle; with he, wandering off to graze by himself in the dry dusted earth of the unwanted and unmanageable land they had always called home.
His mother; bless her heart, was no kinder than a bull ant in her maternal affection; a giant hulking mass of a woman with elephantine like calloused hands that were more leathered than a cattle’s skin and tougher than a crocodile’s arse.
She always wore the same floral dress that struggled to adapt and stretch around her huge knobbly knees. It was a white cotton dress but over the years it had worn itself into a reddish, orange hue from the time she spent with her knees buried firmly into the dusted earth, breaking and then turning the ground with her bare hands, doing the lord’s work to unshackle the dry dusted earth from the devil’s unquenchable thirst.
His mother was no stranger to hard work and had run the family farm since she too was a child, having dealt with her own parents’ untimely death in the fashion of digging her fingers into the dirt and burying the mounting stress and sadness of her burden, with every seed.
And so, she passed on to her own children what had helped her to survive for many a torrential season under the harsh sun and parched earth, feeding them from an emotional well that was as dry as the Sahara and as deep as a lizard’s print in the sand. Instead, they learned and drank from the goodness of Lord Jesus Christ and quenched their thirst on his divine words and bared themselves through the agonizing sores on the tips of their fingers with the promise of daily prayer.
Hard work was the ink on which their lives were scribed and Joao had always struggled to find himself; as a part of the family and as use to the land. He had not the strength of his brothers, nor the homeliness of his sisters, making a burden of himself wherever he stood.
From the moment he learned how to crawl, he had almost instantly; as some self-preserving nature started to distance himself from the accident of his nature which; as one and one is as to two, would be the inexorable disappointment in everything that he was to do.
His brothers and sisters teased him daily, calling him cruel names and pushing him into fox holes, burying him up to his neck and leaving him to roast under the scorching sun and swell up like an oddly shaped balloon as the stinging ants crawled over his face, taking out their own pent frustration towards this godforsaken arid land by biting into his milky white skin that would quickly turn pinkish red as the sun preyed upon his fair complexion.
Their father; the old drunk preacher, egged them along and made residence of the boy’s sentence; to be the butt of their humour and the foot stool unto which the insurmountable weight of their spiritual abandon rested so heavily, making light of how they spent their days; one after the other, turning the soil and suffocating their hope in an impotent dry dusted earth.
There wasn’t much for the children to like about Joao; in fact his father used to deny having ever being involved in his conception, saying instead that his wife had once swallowed a poisoned seed; one passed through the hands of the devil who had come dressed as a cunning trader and from that seed then spawned the flower of Satan that then blossomed into the gangly little donkey called Joao.
Although nobody actually believed his story, the other children loved to listen to their father’s fevered sermon. Nobody believed it, nobody except for Joao that is and for this reason alone; he accepted the cruelty of the family of which he so longed to one day belong.
Every night before he lay his oddly shaped head down on the bumpy ground to set himself to sleep, he would pray silently; whispering inside his own mind, for Lord Jesus to take him away and find him somewhere where he could belong; not so he could be happy, but so his brothers and sisters would no longer have to feel so spited that they needed to curse and refer to cruelty to irk the foul form that nested within his skin and tricked its way into their salvation. And also, that his mother may live a single day without having to see the shadow of her disgrace walking in her footsteps and begging for her embrace. And as for his father, well, his father was a preacher and on terms with Christ, so he needn’t pray for someone who as a servant of the Lord would obviously bargain their own redemption.
Every night, though, he thought of his family and how much he loved them and it grieved him thinking how something as simple as his being was enough to cause them so much hurt and for god; because of his existence, to have to go so far as condemning this land to bear no life to any seed which made its bed under where his cursed feet had left their impression.
But it wasn’t all so terrible for Joao.
Not always anyway.
Their farm had become; over the years, popular amongst travelers; Europeans mainly, looking to absorb themselves in the rustic and arduous countryside and enrich their identity by assembling some closeness to their primitive tidings like an eagle on a spiritual quest, deciding upon his ascent to shut its eyes and flap with one wing.
There was one visitor who made an impression on Joao. He was unusual in that he was unlike the other travelers who yearned and likened to quieten their educated tongues, speaking only to the dry dusted earth with the sound of their knuckles scraping against the sharpened edges of reddened stones.
In fact this stranger had the knuckles of a new born baby; rounded, smooth and unblemished like a ripe tomato. There was not a single line of bother or burden across his pasty white skin and he had an annoying happiness about him, always appearing out of nowhere with a guitar around his neck and not a speck of dust on his knees, always toting that imbecilic donkey grin as if he were reliving the moment he blew out the candles on his seventh birthday every single moment of his life; completely inappropriate and horribly distracting.
At first, Mother thought he was just always hungry so she’d shove a beet or two in his open gob hoping he’d wander off and keep himself busy chewing on it for an hour or two until; like the rash on her gargantuan thighs, she could figure out how to get rid of him without having to skip a beat of work.
When; almost immediately, The European spat out the beets and returned to his manic grin, she realized that he wasn’t hungry and was probably just retarded; one of God’s little miracles. And so, in the end she let him be, expecting no more out of him than she would a stubborn wart or dead cattle; much like her ne’er do well son, Joao.
And so, for a short time, Joao had a friend and he felt less uncommon than he had had for the entire of his life. The two were inseparable. It was the Cheshire stranger actually, who goaded Joao to make his first coffee and it was he who taught him that coffee was more than a drink.
He said it was one of many fractals of existence; examples of universal mathematics and that like life, the perfect drink should be bitter sweet and that coffee is the resonance of existence in that;
like the perfect coffee, life has many grains of bitter days; the type of days that could rot your stomach if they are all that you had; but, every now and then, one has a few sweet moments that make the tough days easier to digest, meaning one can take the learned lesson from life; the good and the bad and then strengthen their resolve and return in the morn with an eager thirst for more.
“Life is coffee and sugar” he would say to Joao, teaching him that when making the perfect coffee, he should become the person for whom the drink will be prepared.
He should cast their bitterness and struggle into the cup and then drizzle; like a light rain, the fondness of life that are the subtle, sweet moments that quench the aridity in the drought of one’s spirit.
“It is” he would say, “a reward for what has been given and what has been done; as a solution is to a problem, as heaven is unto earth and for what the beginning is unto the end. Every ending should be bitter sweet.”
Although Joao understood little of his conned musings, he did like the stranger’s maniacal grin and how he waved his arms around and stamped his feet like a musical gorilla while he ranted in his philosopher’s tongue, holding the cup of coffee knightly in his hands as if he were raising the wounded body of Christ up into the open mouth of heavens above.
And so, while the maniacal stranger strummed away on his guitar, humming a song about a rich man and a zoo, Joao went about pouring his heart into every cup, imagining the burden being worn by his mother and the bitterness that lathered in the thick callouses on her skin. And he then prepared a coffee to suit, with the kick of a stubborn ox and only a hint of sweet summer rain; just enough to wet the sting of the broiling, in a temporal drought that etched in the back of her throat.
And so, at the end of every day; when the unforgiving sun made its bed in the blanket of the horizon, his mother, his father, his brothers and his sisters would all return from their toils on the land to a single cup of coffee awaiting each and every exhausted hand; a flavor unto its own, prepared as a toast to the marriage of the arduousness and amenity of their unique existences; the perfect coffee and sugar, brewed as the sum of their every day.
And then; in every morn, as the darkest hour turned to the faintest light when in the outstretch of the night, the sun birthed from nature’s womb, a coffee with sugar would be waiting for each and every one.
Joao was happy to find a place; somewhere useful to belong inside his family, even if it were for just a minute or two at the start and end of every day and so he dedicated himself to becoming an artist at what he did, putting his heart and soul into every single cup, watching from the creepy shadows as each and every person whisked up their cup gingerly and pressed it gently against their lips, lightly breathing a chilling wind over the skin of the coffee; just enough to shake off the lines of steam that clung to the surface like fine dust on old photograph.
He loved to watch their eyes speaking what their voices could not. When the coffee touched their tongues, their pupils would shudder, as if the sun had just taken refuge in a blind man’s eyes, unshackling some obedient disconnection concerning within, shocking their senses into familiarity.
And as their eyes settled and their hands clasped the cup, their fingers would fold gently like the pages in a book; as if in silent prayer. And each and every person would; like a child seeing themselves for the first time in their own reflection, feel the warmth of their own aching heart stretching down to iron out the creases in their souls. And as each drop rolled from their wilted, cracked lips, over their enslaved, domesticated and tongues and deluged their droughted senses, each and every person would discover their own existence and the effect of their own heavenly embrace.
And so, as every brother and sister heaved their chests against his infinitesimal frame barging through the darkness, out of the old swinging doors that squeaked and squealed under the tear of rusted hinges as they flung back and forth, stirring the wasps that slept on the frame just above; angering them into wake to start their day more belligerent and beguiled than the last, Joao fell; from the push and the shove, backwards into a useless heap on the dry dusted earth, dressed; like the European stranger, in a Cheshire smile, no longer yearning to belong, until it was, that he looked upon the table to see one cup left untouched.
And in every eve and every morn, a final chill would slip through the tapered cloth that kept neither the sun nor the wind from molesting his tender skin, a chill that crept from his spine through to the fine hairs on his neck that shrilled with a fevered disappointment as the coffee he made with the all of his heart sat quiet and tepid next to a yellow, stained glass where in it housed the escape of a single clear droplet; like a poisoned tear, running from the sweetness of the rim where a small swarm of bees all bumbled about and then pooled in the thick well of pasted sugar at the bottom of the glass.
Joao could never please his father. Even with the passion of his art and he; hidden in the blanket of absence and out of sight, his father would never touch a single drop of his coffee.
Instead, the old man started his every day with large glass of cane juice, sweetened with eight large spoons of white sugar. So sweet was it that his lips bore the stings of hundreds of bees that swarmed drunkenly around his glass every morning; he, waking them from their delicate slumber into a trace like gravity about the cracks in his mouth and upon the broken edges of his filthy, yellow glass.
And every night, his father would greet the going down of the sun with that same filthy yellow glass, served tall with the heavy aroma of cachaça, filling a bottle or four into his liver before his reverend mind rested in the stillness of the night.
The Bishop; as of which he was spoken and revered across the community of farms, cared only for the sweetness in life, having bared no grief, no hardened days and having worn nothing of the bloodied, blistered hands of his wife or of his children.
He was a preacher; one of the finest orators ever to be carved in the name of Jesus Christ and the scars he wore were visible in his heart, not on the souls of his feet.
He alone was responsible for digging the spiritual well for which his family thirsted. But he was not just the surveyor of divinity for his pious lineage; he was, in fact, the voice of god and the servant of Christ for every poor farmer within miles of whom, all travelled on donkey, horse and foot, on bicycle and rusted Beetle to tap into his divine grace so as to bridge themselves to his link to god.
Every Sunday they would come marching over the dry dusted earth, carrying with them, the emotional burdens that they longed to trade for spiritual restoration; a sense of purpose, strength and direction that they could take back with them to fasten the buckles of their determination to ground themselves in the fight to overcome the imposing will of self-defeat in each of their own personal struggles and then; in their au fait fight, together as a band of brothers, enduring the test of god to make fertile; by their loving grace alone, the parched and impotent womb of nature.
In the late afternoon, their shadows would ascend from a faint line in the distance, far beyond the limit of orange and red earth and beyond the splitting sounds of shovels and spades scraping and cutting away at the crumbling soil like a malignant cancer where hope itself was reserved in the farmer’s hearts and not exposed at the tip of their blade where the blunt edge of diligence bore through the cynically expectant soil.
Joao would always be the first to see them coming; his eyes floating free like his unlaborious hands, unabridged from the pursuit of work as he spent the whole of the days watching his brothers and sisters breaking their spirits against hard rock and the kick of stubborn mules.
In his own mind, he was becoming the thought of their labour so that he could be the bitterness of their tireless grind and then imagine what sweetness would be lulled in their hearts while their fingers blistered and bled and the reddish purple rash between their toes readily worsened.
This was his work; to become their somatic discontent and peer behind the thick callouses of their hearts to find n
ot only the condition of their assiduousness, but also, the colour and song of their souls so that when they rested their rusted trowels and bade farewell to the suffocating leather that molested the sores on their feet, they could all spend a moment or two in private solicitous prayer, consuming the sum of themselves, just as a drunk might pause to admire the submissive, accepting and apologetic eloquence of his battered wife or how the successful executive might take a moment to count; on one hand, the sum of all the days he had spent watching his son becoming less like an emotionally wanting child and more of a cold and unaffecting, disconnected version of himself.
What his brothers and sisters tasted was the extent of their cruel impiety bridged with the amiability that they themselves were flawless strangers to; the kindness in them; imagined as already having been abjured or aborted, that they would recognize as an illness were it ever to seep into how they went about administering the predicament that was their hardened selves.
They encountered a moment of tender awakening that each would render in a longing stare and gentle embrace of their fingers around the inflecting ceramic reflection of their laborious yet laudable lives. And the prolonged heavy breath that followed every sip, would usher out the abandoned and forsaken sediment that clung like a sider’s silk to their exposed and vulnerable, infantile souls.
So, while his hardened siblings bruised their backs; basting under a fiery orange sun, Joao sat in simple contemplation watching their toil and envisioning how the arid land fought so gallantly to undo; unto it, what do his siblings would like to have done.
And as the sun threatened to explode on the ridge of its decent; it stretched it rays around their desiccated skin like the long stinging tentacles of a jelly fish, lashing at its prey as the tides pulls it further from its mooring, being sunk and weighed down by something more insurmountable than its own daily depression. Joao watched in expecting delight as from the fatiguing horizon, came the birth of one shadow; at first seemingly an infinitesimal fracture in his sight and then to a tiny black spot that soon morphed and broke away from itself and multiplied like a viral cell until a shadowy crest swelled up under the falling sun like a tidal wave of gentle familiarity, rushing towards their tiny farm to wash away the stains of isolation.
By the time the sun settled below the horizon; bringing the dawn of struggle to another farm on another distant part of this world, the great shadow that had ascended across the land had melded into a horde of smiling faces, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, warm, longing hugs and simple converse.
On one eve, in particular, the farmer’s wives gathered together and cackled away in their hoarse voices and in the extent of their laughter and shared joy, they sounded more like a collection of antique kettles, whistling away and all coming to boil. They all looked remarkably reverent, dressed sententiously in white; their dresses flat against their either corpulent or skeletal frames and flapping only lightly against the rough skin on their knees as a hot dry breeze slithered its way through the air like a snake through yellowish dry brush.
As they sat in their circles, the old women talked about their sore joints and their strained muscles and they compared scars and snake bites and oohed and aahed whenever one of the old women lifted their Sunday dress above their knobby knees and gargantuan thighs to reveal a scar thicker and more bulbous than the ones that had come before.
And they cheered and clapped and admired as one old lady told tales of her close encounter with the devil, mistaking a python warming under her covers and sliding over her trunk like legs for the spent affection of her drunken husband, thinking she was reaching to peel away his slimy advancing sexuality, only to pull hard at the snake’s tail and receive four bites at the bridge between her thumb and her index finger.
She showed the marks where her husband had cut her hand to suck out the venom and all of the women crowed around her in marvel and wonder.
The men said very little.
They gathered in a circle like the cattle they herded; their heads hanging low, their eyes looking out from the edges of their straw hats and their hands each cradling a stained glass of cachaça, listening with silent applause while another man attended to his beaten up old acoustic and strummed away, as in the sky abounding, the last hint of light pledged its allegiance to the retreat of day.
And as the man with the guitar strummed, he sang songs about life on the hard land; digging and turning the uncouth soil and making one’s bed in the asperity of life. The farmers all kept their stern faces, clasping and cradling their strong drinks and nodding their heads every now and then as they played out in their minds, the words of the songs that painted with a dry, coarse stroke, the attendance of their difficult and rarely rewarding lives on their farms.
The men never talked about their problems or their worries. They would just sip on their cachaça and tilt their heads about until they caught another’s eye and then tip their heads forward, wink lightly (though with such a leathered face, one would have to use quite an amount of force to feign a slight wink), make an unidentifiable utterance that may or may not be a word and then continue to tilt their heads about like a bouncy ball, bobbing about in the open sea.
The men didn’t like the uncomfortableness of sitting still with arms flat and in attention. They responded and reasoned better with order and direction and were more common to communicate with primal grunting and pointing, conversing in high esteem only with their horses and stubborn cattle as opposed to their complicating wives and directionless children.
This circular quietude; the gathering of men, was just offsetting, so they relied on one man to strum away on his guitar while another canted openly and profoundly about horses and stubborn cattle, something they all had in common and longed to nod away to in communicable agreement.
Once the night had settled in, The Bishop called everyone into attendance and the stiffened men lifted themselves from their uncomfortable wait and the cackling, worn, old women lowered their girthing dresses and put away their aging scars as the two groups came together; the smiling women being taken in arm by their reserved men then scooping up their children as they shuffled along the dirt path to the back of the farm where; in an old shabby barn, there waited, under a single flashing bulb, Joao’s father. The Bishop stood tall on his podium with his arms reaching out into the distance as if he were their shepherd, calling them into his pasture to feast upon his good word.
Every Sunday they came from far and wide; from all over this sun drenched country to listen to The Bishop give his sermon. The farmers sat quietly and attentively on rows of benches carved out of splintered and diseased wood and balanced on piles of dirt, sticks and rocks with the heaviest people sitting on each end to balance out the seat for all of the others.
The women sat with their hands in their laps while the more prosperous of the men, held in their hands; as they had their glass of cachaça, a small, leather bound black book which to them was as a key is to a lock, as violence is to obedience and as love is to servitude.
They sat still like wayfaring bulls, looking straight at The Bishop just as a sailor would, the forever line of the horizon; unflinchingly and covetous, while beside them, the children sat submissive, edging to gather again in group and race about on the dusted earth in play but having been clipped over their ears and pinioned enough times through the years to restrain the wanton wrecking of the devilish child within them and instead, listen intently to the good word of god.
Joao was not allowed to enter the shed and instead would have to watch the sermon from the gaps in the swinging doors as a thin piece of copper wire struggled; like his mother’s waist band, to keep the heavy doors from swinging back open.
He would crouch in the sand, his left knee pressing against a small carven hole in the splintered wood and his toes curling into the sand where the two heavy doors met.
It was something he had always done; shifting the warm sand between his toes while his father stood magnificent and gallant in front of the many in
spired people.
At this moment, he was deaf to the echo of his father’s abusive slurs and immune to the tyranny of insult from his entire family, for; while he stared at his father, the image of his veneration and communal splendor alone was enough for him to drizzle sweetness onto his own bitter struggle to belong in his family, in his own body and in the world.
To Joao, The Bishop; when he was preaching of course, was mountainous in his stature. His two arms could stretch out and embrace the world, holding it tight and safe, free from falling away from its passage about the sun just as his word did to strengthen the will of man and stop them from descending into debauchery and societal slavery with alcohol, parties, drugs, sex and other spices of the devil’s condiments.
The reality was that The Bishop was a tiny bulbous man, with short stubby legs and balloon like hands. He had a big fat belly that hung low over his rusted belt buckle with his tight shirt pulling against his sweaty skin, clinging just below his belly button so the thick and sweaty, black hairs of his chest and crotch would ride up into the air and glisten under the low light like fresh dew on a prickly thorn under the rise of the sun.
His hair was flat and matted. He had a large bald spot that he smoothed over with a mixture of the sweat from his belly and grease from the insides of old truck tires that he would move about daily feigning use and activity while the rest of the family earned their measly supper. He would spend the greater part of his days running his hands through his long fringe and flattening it down over the top of his sunburned head.
The Bishop wore flat footed loafers. He did no work on the farm other than preparing the weekly sermon so he needed not of the leather to bear the daily trenching through the fields like his children. Instead, he wore comfortable slip on shoes that were slightly large for his feet so that every time he walked, he would slap the heel of the shoe loud and annoyingly against the ground, thinking to himself that he displayed all the grace of a show pony plodding around the less muddy and dusty parts of the farm.
Joao hated this sound. And while he would sit and watch his siblings toil on the land; imagining their bitter struggle, The Bishop would slap his stupid feet about like a flamboyant donkey in his usual uneducated and arrogant accent and the sound alone would pull Joao from his focus, driving him towards internal disturbance.
He would try to balance himself and ignore the slapping of plastic heels on cold tile; breathing calmly and looking out in the distance without trying to attain any focus whatsoever, just letting the conscious storm pass without dirtying his creativity.
It was no use, though. The second a breath of silence returned and he started imaging the troubles of one of his brothers or one of his sisters, from out of nowhere would come that annoying, ignorant slapping sound.
Back and forth it went, all day long; the sound of his father’s feet smacking against the ground, begging for someone to craft a question as to where they might be heading and what they might be doing when they get there.
And everywhere that his feet slapped were those two stubby legs with knees that looked like two squashed turnips, jeans that were too big, even for his lumpish frame, hanging off his arse like a diaper that’s just been filled, that enormous stomach and its protruding sweaty, black hairs, his two tubby arms that looked like someone had just attached his forearms to his shoulders.
And then there was the leather case.
The Bishop had a little black, leather bag with a long, leather strap that he carried with him everywhere he went and nobody quite knew what he kept inside but the way he swung it about let all and sundry know that he was a man in charge.
And everywhere that he went, he would have the bag thrown over his shoulder with his wrist bent lightly back, walking with a cretinous swagger as if he thought he was in league with Santa Claus or a vagrant hobo.
That was his weekly parade, though, for now and every Sunday, he was dressed as sophistication; his hair combed neatly over his balding spot, the tufts of grey hair that sprouted from his ears gelled back into their waxen housing and all of the other unnecessary hair trimmed and cut away with his face shaven of the thick, black, prickly hairs that under the hot sun, pushed their way through warts and puss filled blemishes.
He wore a shining black suit. I say shining because to look into its stellar dark, one could see a glimmer of hope. And his midnight black leather loafers glistened under the dim light. So embossed were they that they would glisten under the faintest light of the moon on the darkest part of the earth. He looked entirely like a man of profession and, of course, a servant of Christ has; in his making, the profession of holiness, of goodliness and of spiritual ascension.
After all, he who is appointed to preside upon god’s word must look as if he could administer a heaven.
Joao looked through the tiny hole in the fence in pleasant wonder as The Bishop raised his hands and sang his words in mighty esteem, banishing the doubt and fear that coagulated in the crevices of his congregation’s collective consciousness.
Whenever he spoke of drought, disease or of a stubborn ox, he would shake his fist about as if he were inviting the devil himself to a duel. He cursed the fallen one for everything that wronged the world and as he spoke of travesty and tragedy, the farmers would gather around him; his faithful flock, shedding tears from their stone set eyes and cringing under the vexing weight of his words.
And just as that pressing weight seemed unlivable, he would open his fist, extend his arms into the air with his open palms tilted backwards facing the dim light above him and he would lift his head and look upwards slightly as if he were reading the word of god from the back of his hands and chant out the name of his lord Jesus Christ high and mighty, with love and without fear so that the light he carried in his heart exploded from his chest and exalted the devil from the will of mankind.
And he would shed many a tear as he talked about the unquestionable love that Jesus Christ had for each and every, man, woman and child and how his sacrifice that atoned for their sins; if not gone unloved and unmarried, would always carry them through the torrential part of any calvary that they endured and that the love of Christ alone, had once shaken him of the devil from the clench of his fist and spilled pure grace down the length of his arms, dripping the light and love of Jesus Christ and his splendorous heaven into his virtuous Christian soul.
And on this particular eve, the farmers erupted in joyous canter, swaying their arms around as if they were shooing away a plague of locusts from circling about their heads. Their eyes lit up like a forest fire and it seemed as if some drug had taken its effect, overpowering their senses and extending them to pure exhilaration and Elysium.
And a drug had in deed taken effect.
The ecstasy of Jesus Christ was swimming in their blood and coursing through their varicose veins, dousing their senses with pure Christian goodness and taking them beyond the immediacy of the aches and pains that swelled at their feet and bludgeoned through their stinging open pores.
It lifted them beyond the valley of defeat where their dreams and aspirations had become firmly rooted in disparaging soil. It unhinged the worry that shouted the veracious viscidity of life so deafeningly in their hardened minds; that which consistently edged them closer to temptation and to disregard their struggle as a worthy test of their faith by instead condemning the light in their heart for blinding them along a weak and crooked path.
It lifted them to the sight of the heavens where the charity of Christ extended from a bridge paved with their devotion and cemented with the blood, sweat and tears that quenched the fire of their laden trial.
It left them lighter than a single breath, rising up from the most profound depths of an ocean of self-doubt to join its brethren in a listless, heavenly abode where they could kiss the stars each and every night.
Joao peeped through a tiny hole, pressing his face tight against the wood and squinting with one eye whilst catching sharp slinters in the flesh near the corner of the open other, trying to s
ee as everyone saw; the light of the world coming down upon them. He twisted and turned on the spot, ignoring the little splinters here or there, pressing his knee into the hole just above the ground and scrunching his now blackened toes in the hot dirty sand.
He wriggled and writhed, waiting for his favourite part of the service, when The Bishop would invite each parishioner to the front so they could speak of their saving graces and so they could thank Jesus for the miracles he had spelled upon them to turn their trail of troubles into an abode of fortune.
It was at this moment that Joao would do what it was that Joao was unrivalled at doing. He crouched in the sand with his head turned to the side, pressing against the splintered hole and he listened with his ears and he would listen with his heart while each person canted their bitterness into the hands of The Bishop and at the end of their ordeal, they spoke of the delicacy of their faith and the sweetness that Jesus Christ brought to their hearts.
Joao became their struggle, closing his eyes and imagining himself walking back through sodden fields with sore blistered feet, blurry eyes and blistered hands, having reaped only mockery and insult from his dry earth to then stumble through an open door, thirsting for anything to parch the defeat that clung to his skin and opening the fridge to see his last beer having been drunk and then turning to the table to see that the chicken had spoiled and then finally marching into the bedroom to see his wife on all fours, blaspheming the name of god whilst a singing European knelt behind her with his guitar swinging off his back, banging her like a French drum and all the while singing that song that he always sang.
“Baby you’re a rich man, baby you’re a rich man, baby you’re a rich man too. You keep all your money in a big brown bag inside the zoo, what a thing to do,” singing and singing and slapping her rump as if he were riding her off into the sunset, waving his left arm in the air while his right gripped her thighs and treated his good little woman like some bucking bronco.
As the old farmer canted in honest bravado, his voice swelled with anger for the seeming betrayal but he saw no blame in his wife, for she was swept upon by the lust of Satan and she was screaming out the name of Jesus to come and save her from this obviously horrendous torment.
“I know myself,” The Old Farmer said, “that when my dear wife and I consummate our love, she says not a word and she’s as quiet in bed as she is at the dining table so I knew then that the devil had put a spell on her and she was screaming to lord Jesus to free her from that man’s lure. Apparently she was screaming for quite some time. In fact, one of the farm hands told me she stopped several times and would start up again just minutes later, moaning away and screaming out the name of Jesus to come and rescue her. And it was God who had me down my tools and save my dear Beatrice. It was Jesus who walked in my boots and sent that devil packing and onto the road of good intentions. I thank Jesus every day that I got there in time to save my dear Beatrice and I know he counts her blessings along with me.”
The Old Farmer leaned his head to the right to bid a naive shimmering eye to his clearly disheveled wife who looked on with a nervous look herself, convinced that the lust which burned between her thighs on that day and even now, as her husband relived her orgiastic trial, was the work of the devil and not of her own will and that the purity of her good Christian heart, of her faith to her husband, had her; in the throes of hellish emotion, still find her soul’s voice and chant out the lord’s name in between heavy moaning.
“My Maria suffered the same” yelled one man.
“As did my Josephine” yelled another.
In fact, much to the surprise of Joao, all of the men had suffered the same bitter struggle which in the end would make his work much simpler and appeasing.
Each and every man stood to attention, looking longingly and mournfully at their spiritually injured wives with apparently all having had played the fool to the trickery of Satan as in apparently mortified splendor, the singing European had wandered from farm to farm and lusted all of the women whilst their men were away attending to the land.
They all told the same sweet tale that Jesus had called them to their homes and there they had heard the desperate moaning and pleading of their wives; some of whom were on all fours while others rode the European like a king of the rodeo, obviously drunk on the devil’s deception and evil trickery.
As each man spoke, their wives looked onwards like beaten puppies welcoming the tender and caring touch of consoling hands brushing against theirs, accepting their grace and concern like the innocent victims that they were. And they all thanked Lord Jesus Christ for guiding them back to heed their fearful wives’ cries.
Joao lived every moment of their ordeal and as he did, his hands crushed and stirred at a mix of beans in an old wooden bowl and he looked not at his hands for his eyes were gelled shut, but he looked through his fingertips. And he crushed the beans not with the weight of his fist, but with the extent of his heart, smashing down on the beans with his faith and his love of Jesus Christ; a love that would carry him through the most bitter of ordeals and a love of which would always sweeten the journey.
As he listened with his ear and his heart, his attention was stifled by the sound of a guitar strumming off in the distance and the sound was edging closer to where he stood. As he stirred the grains, the men inside the church all spoke of the same devil; the unworked European with delicate hands, long wavy hair, sky blue eyes, an aversion to chore and a penchant for song.
As they all canted the same tale, The Bishop’s eyes flared and an awakening became him, for he had invited the devil into his own home. That very man had spent weeks lazing about his farm, singing that wretched song and only god knows what else. He cursed loudly and looked at his wife who had worn a sheepish distance until that point and he asked her down on his knees; reaching out in loving kindness to her gargantuan bulbous knees.
“Has the devil bedded with you my love?” he asked.
A slight snigger went about the congregation as all looked upon the giant mass of a woman and all imagined that god had built her with such grace, charm and dimension, that the devil himself would be warned off from her earthly spell and mountainous thighs.
“I but merely shook his hand, bid him work and nothing more,” said Mother.
“The devil is among us” spoke The Bishop as outside, the strumming of the guitar grew louder with the European quizzing Joao, pulling him from his heavenly grace and concerned focus.
“C’mon, it no fun out here,” he said, pushing the door open and standing in obvious shock.
Around him, angered famers pointed fingers and sheepish wives grinned lightly and waved hello in secrecy, apparently consumed again by the devil’s allure.
“Ladies” the European said humbly as he turned away and ran; followed by scores of angry farmers and the Bishop in tow, all of them picking up sharp stabbing instruments and chasing the skinny white European through the dusted terrain and out into the black of the night where in the invisibleness of visual abandon, he disappeared and was never seen again.
When the parishioners all returned, there waited for each and every one, their own cup of coffee and sugar, mixed and prepared by Joao alone as he gave himself to their bitter struggles and Christ’s sweet descent.
But nobody was interested in coffee that night and as Joao spied from outside the kitchen window where he stood on a rusted metal drum and peered through a smudge in the grease laden window that allowed him to see mainly the outlines of people in the room, he could see; as they walked around waving their fists in anger, that no hand warmed against a ceramic cup and so he looked to the table where aspiringly, he could just make out what looked like every coffee that he had prepared, sitting exactly where he had left them, all but one.
The Bishop burst out of the house with the cup of coffee in his hand and as he did Joao slipped off the rusted container in ambushed wonder, a large smile entrapping his face and the joy of seeing his father finally about to taste his own reflection and
see in him; for once, a state of usefulness was saddened and depleted when The Bishop raced towards the edge of the veranda and threw his heavy set forwards, putting all of his weight into his right hand which cast the cup of coffee up and into the darkness with the smashing of the ceramic cup crying out as a faint whisper compared to the breaking of the young boy’s heart.
Normally, service was; compared to this particular eve, a lot more sedated with a lot of singing and dancing, a lot of prayers and many tears of joy. Rarely did they actually do battle with Satan, but on occasion they did, just as they had done the night that life for Joao and The Bishop would shift degrees of states; both metaphysical and geographical.
But before anyone spoke of change, the good people cast off the strangeness that had become them and sat themselves back in the barn where there sat on the podium; where The Bishop had stood, a small black and white television that crackled and hissed and snowed in and out of picture, responding kindly to a quick wrapping on its side before eventually clearing up, showing the title for the only thing as important as Jesus in their lives of which was; ‘The Carriage of my Heart’; the longest running and most successful soap opera, having been a part of the weekly fixture on their farm since before Joao was accidented and even dating back to when The Bishop himself was just a boy.
Everything the family knew about life, they had learned from this television show. Through it, the children learned how to speak, picking up useful and; unfortunately, sometimes quite unsavoury phrases but in general, the language was very acceptable. Overall the show helped them to gain a clearer perspective on the troubles facing their country’s culture and for themselves too, to have real idols of which to aspire.
Theirs was the only television around for longer than the lineage from donkey to horse. So after every service, the farmers would sit in awe, watching the small static television and living the extension of their desires through their favourite heroes and villains; imagining the sweet poison that is life in the city.
The idea of the city alone was gargantuan and terrifying but at the same time, wickedly wanting. As they watched, the women dressed their imaginations in the riches they saw, having the same silken fabrics slide over their skin like they conceived, charity over the poor; feeling lighter than air upon their moist skin and invented firm breasts as they were weighed only by the pith of their elegance as their necks shone with strings of pearls and their slender fingers sparkled with diamonds and gold as the noble poor; black men dressed in tailored suits, waited upon them hand and foot, calling them Madam, opening their doors, fetching their bags, sparkling their champagne and brushing off their condescending, benighted, racial tirades that they costumed as educated, titular empathy.
The men on the other hand imagined themselves younger, taller, of more generous proportion, strikingly featured with striking chiseled faces and hands that were tough enough to fight a bear, yet delicate enough to rock a crying baby to sleep; the type of man who could fire a gun in one hand whilst writing a poem in the other.
This was the city man, the man they imagined themselves being; riding in their sports cars, signing contracts, lifting weights unnecessarily; not because they had to, but because they could. And of course, sexing everybody; their secretaries, their cleaners, their children’s nannies, their personal trainers, their venereal disease clinicians and their marriage counselors.
They were men of power, influence and potent libido and every day was a grand adventure where devilish good looks and roguish charm were all you needed to be rich, successful and happy.
Every now and then you could see one of the old farmers imagining himself in his animal prime, escorting his beautiful modeled wife; or children’s nanny, through the city streets in his European convertible with the warm summer evening breeze flowing like a raging rapid through his long, luscious, wavy hair as every light that he passed was green, winding his way; like a seamstress with her needle and thread, in and out of heavy traffic like some mechanical ballet with everyone looking in his direction and every whisper, said about him in envy with everyone wishing they could be just as he was.
And he would smile drunkenly before being awoken from his own wishing by a rude nudge, twisting his neck to see his elephantine and leathered wife sitting by his side with her neck red raw from the constant caressing of her imaginary necklace with her long dirt laden nails and moaning like an old tractor that won’t shift out of neutral.
After ‘The Carriage of My Heart,’ the farmers would all shake hands, bid gentle polite kisses to the cheeks of the women and make their way by torchlight back along the long dusted track from whence they came to settle upon their own lands and put to bed, their rejuvenation and joy.
When they left, the Bishop liked to call the whole family into the barn and together send thirty minutes to one hour watching some midnight television; that being ‘The 13th Apostle of The World Church of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Heavenly Glory’.
Even Joao; who would normally be resigned to experiencing family togetherness through a peep hole, was welcomed to it on the rickety wooden benches and watched The Thirteenth Apostle as he preached in front of thousands of devout Christians, all herded into one massive auditorium; ten thousand people, body to body, perspiring their struggle onto one another, all standing with their arms raised to the throne of god and praising the name Jesus Christ.
The Bishop watched The 13th Apostle attentively, studying how he used the light of god like a sword to cut through the fear that imprisoned the people.
He was a big man. In fact, the cameramen had to be positioned down the street just so they could fit his enormous hands and his head in one frame and his voice, it boomed of the weight of heavenly goodness; a tremor of divinity that rippled in one’s belly and kept one’s feet sure on the earth while their spirit and mind ascended into the heavens to be whispered sweet nurtures by god almighty.
His hands were so large that the microphone looked like a broken match and when he called the old crippled women to the stage, they too looked infinitesimal when wrapped up in his arms; their faces pressed tight against his sweaty, yellow shirt that peeled off their skin like a bandage when they lifted their heads to look up at his giant flaring nostrils with The 13th Apostle, retelling their struggle and heartache in his words; with one hand pressed against the back of the old lady’s head, baptizing her face once again into the river of sweat that pooled on his chest.
“That should be you” Mother would say, looking to The Bishop.
His children would then all join in the commotion, feeding the benevolent respect for their father, praising his reverence and wishing a world stage upon his voice.
The Bishop would listen to their words and inflate his self-belief in hearing the echo of his own assumptions and on this particular eve in question; some time in the past, Joao spoke and for the first time, was apparently heard.
“You should go there, to the city” Joao said, and as he did, none so much as looked in his direction or acknowledge his speaking as much as they took it upon themselves to extend his meaning and harvest a seed that had been planted a long time ago and was budding now, into a fruitful reality.
“You will go to the city; for your family, for Jesus and to save the world. He needs your help, The 13th Apostle, he does. The devil is getting stronger, his reign more torrential. The war, the drugs, the sex” said Joao’s mother.
“And the Catholics” yelled one of his brothers.
“He’s right; there are more of them every day. And it’s because of that singing priest. We have to stop them” she said.
“And the Jews,” said one brother.
“And the Arabs,” said another.
“What? God, no, that’s horrible, no, just the Catholics. Now who wants some corn ice-cream?” she asked.
The Bishop was pensive, imaging himself on the grand stage orating to hundreds of thousands of devout Christians, receiving awards and acclaim for his sermons and then out of nowhere, taking a bullet in the stom
ach as a lone Catholic gunman invaded the church, shooting wildly.
The Bishop burst through the pack of panicked parishioners to jump headstrong into the gunmen, wrestling him to the floor and wrenching his pistol from his hands, sliding it across the auditorium as he struggled and writhed, eventually securing the assassin in a wrist lock and held him until the police arrived with the parishioners all cheering and chanting his name as he looked down to see a thin stream of red trickling from a hole in his stomach, down onto his bended knee and onto the floor where he then collapsed upon both knees, gripping his wounded belly as then under the adoration of the world, he closed his eyes and died a hero and a martyr for Jesus Christ.
“I’ll need a hand. One of the boys” The Bishop said.
“You can take Joao,” Mother said.
“Why would I bring a donkey to a horse race?” he asked annoyed.
“I need the strong boys here to work the land. You need someone to get your things, arrange your church, and help you prepare your sermon, yes?” she asked.
“Well, yes but...”
“Perfect. The donkey can carry your things while you race. Joao, pack your bag you’re going to the city” she said, pointing her bulbous stubby finger.
The Bishop lowered his head into his straining right hand and shook negatingly while Joao jumped up from the rickety old bench and ran gleamingly past his brothers and sisters who sat disbelievingly with mouths agape; the evening flies buzzing around their tongues that swilled like a shooing tail on a horse’s arse.
Joao burst out the doors of the barn and danced around in the midnight black, jumping from one leg to another and swinging his arms like a windmill; happiness burgeoning at his centre as for the first time in his life he felt important, useful and seen.
He ran about in the darkness humming in his mind the song about the rich man, jumping up and down from one foot to the next, stamping each one firmly into the dry dusted earth until his right leg slipped on a thick slimy patch of cow dung and over he went; his swinging hands grabbing; in desperate fall, a mesh gate that swung open with his rapid descent making a calamitous clanging sound as he crashed to the floor, smacking his face hard against the earth and cutting just above his lip with the family’s hens and roosters all barging out of the open cage and disappearing into the night.
“Really? You couldn’t have at least given me one of the girls?” said The Bishop.
“You’re taking Joao,” she said before waving her gorilla like hands to the other children to fan them away like a bad smell.
“What are you waiting for?” she said. “Get out there and find those chickens.”
The children all got up from where they sat and whispered to one another as they moved out of the barn in pairs, off into the endless night where under dim torch light, they fixed their eyes to the play of shadows and raced after each chicken in their midnight parody running this way and that, tripping over one another as they dived onto the shifting light like a confused actor trying to find his mark.
They cursed silently and muttered to themselves their hatred for Joao as they pardoned their sleep to amend the outcome of his poorly equated existence.
“Joao is no good to me here. You’ll find a use for him. You have to be careful, we don’t know what the city is gonna throw at you. There’s all that sex and drugs and fast cars and rock n roll music. You keep him away from all of that and keep him away from those city girls. They’re all sluts and whores” Mother said.
“Do you really think I can do it?” asked The Bishop.
“If ‘The Carriage of my Heart’ has told me anything, it’s that anything is possible, especially with the love of Christ in your heart. This has to work, if it doesn’t, the farm will collapse. If you come back without money you better not come back at all. Understand? We need money. Jesus believes in you” she said.
“And you?”
“I believe in Jesus.”
“Ok, I’ll do it. I’ll go to the city; I’ll spread my word to the world. I’ll save our farm. But what am I supposed to do with Joao?”
“Figure something out. Just get him off my farm before he destroys anything else. You’ll leave before dawn.”
“I’ll make you proud. I’ll be a famous preacher. I’m gonna be rich and I’ll send money back every month, understand? We won’t ever have to worry soon. And I’ll find a use for Joao, I’ll keep him busy.”
“Do what you want with him just no whores” Mother yelled in closing, leaving the barn and stomping her way into the house and then into bed.