Children of Paradise: A Novel (31 page)

He orders the guards to put her in the cage with the gorilla. A few people scream. The nurse redoubles her efforts to break free from her captors, but each guard holds on to a limb, and a fifth grips her around the torso and clasps a hand over her mouth. They carry her out of the tent.

—Don’t worry about her, worry about your salvation. If the child she just renounced dies right now, its soul will go straight to heaven for having done no wrong but to be born into a world of greed, ambition, selfishness, and pride. Name the cardinal sins, people.

The congregation lists them for him, in alphabetical order, but in their usual manner of rushing ahead or falling behind to create a hum of assent, a mantra familiar only to those uttering it, a spell with a hold over the already enchanted. The preacher claps and they applaud with him. The members of the congregation turn to the left and to the right and shake hands and hug. They leave the tent, beginning with rows nearest the exits, and hurry to the area in front of Adam’s cage.

Joyce and Trina match the responses of the crowd step for step. Joyce explains to Trina that they should disappear in the crowd, become an indistinguishable part of it, and hope that the gaze of the preacher falls on others. The preacher’s favor, granted freely and easily to both of them, can be withdrawn just as freely and easily. There is no way to please him and keep him pleased. Mother and daughter linger at the back of the crowd gathered at Adam’s cage. The nurse appears much calmer, or at least she no longer fights the guards who surround her near the entrance to the cage. Adam moves away from the chained gate. He touches one corner and runs to the next and touches it and repeats the back-and-forth move between two points. The preacher walks to the cage with his assistants and guards around him. He tells the nurse she has two choices. She can do this the easy way, or she may decide to opt for the more difficult course of resistance and end up taking her life into her own hands and out of his safekeeping. Did she understand?

—Yes, Father. Please forgive me. I’ll take care of the baby.

The preacher shakes his head and says it is too late, the damage is done, he will find some more willing and grateful mother for the baby, she needs to be quiet and take her punishment, because her words make it clear to him that she does not understand the gravity of the situation facing the commune. The nurse begs him to explain and she will make sure she understands and follows him. He tells her again to be quiet, since her speech amounts to resistance. He turns to the crowd and says that if people do not understand why the nurse is about to be punished, this is the moment to raise their hands and let him know and he will furnish them with a full explanation. He surveys the crowd, along with his assistants and guards, many of whom, armed with sticks and guns, form a perimeter around the crowd. Joyce and Trina glance at each other, and Joyce hopes that no one is foolish enough to take the bait. Even if rampant puzzlement troubles the assembly, there is no way anyone among them should declare it to a man with a tendency to interpret confusion as insolence, lack of clarity as a liability.

—Good.

He faces the guards around the nurse and flicks his hand from her to the cage. The nurse screams and begs for mercy. A guard unlocks the padlock and pulls the chain from the bars. The guards near the nurse push her to walk into the cage and as she turns to run, they grab her and lift her off the ground and the nurse holds on to the bars and the guards pull her hands away and steer her through the open cage door. Adam stops his run from side to side to watch the open door with the nurse framed in it and the preacher. Adam knows this means only one thing, and he wonders how he can avoid a direct command from the preacher. Adam covers his eyes and looks through his fingers, swaying from left to right. The nurse trembles and leans back into the grip of the guards. The preacher raises his arm and levels it at Adam and then moves it from Adam toward the nurse.

Three rapid shots ring out and freeze the scene: the guards’ fight with the nurse, Adam’s sway rooted to the spot, the crowd’s mix of grief and wild expectation, all cease. Several guards drop to the ground, rifles and pistols ready. Everyone looks at one of three places: the first, at the end of the crowd nearest the infirmary, where the injured guard, with pale and emaciated limbs from his six weeks in a plaster cast, aims a rifle at the two guards nearest him; the second, at Ryan’s father, who stands midway between the preacher’s house and the crowd and aims similarly at the preacher; and third, at Ryan’s mother, also armed, her rifle pointed at the two guards closest to her. The guards nearest to Ryan’s parents and their former colleague all throw away their weapons and stick their arms into the air. The young guard shouts at the men surrounding the nurse:

—Move away from her. Do it now or we shoot.

The guards look at the preacher but do not wait for his direction. They release their grip on the nurse, who wriggles free and runs to the side of the young guard. The preacher tells them to wait a moment. He begins to walk toward the young man aiming the rifle. His assistants and bodyguards take a step with him and he lifts his arm at them and they stop. He talks to the young guard as he walks up to him, and people back away from the young man and part to make way for their leader.

—Aim that rifle at me, young man. You two as well, aim at me. I’m a more valuable target than your comrades, don’t you think? Go ahead. Aim. Look at this, people. This young man and his two helpers are armed and dangerous and intend to test us as a community today.

All three aim at the preacher, and all the guards aim at them. The preacher stops a few inches in front of the rifle and eases his chest forward until he comes into contact with the barrel. The young guard steps back and the preacher steps forward to maintain his contact with the young man’s rifle. His mother steps forward and begs her son to put down his weapon. Others appeal to Ryan’s parents to do the same. The preacher holds an arm in the air and puts an index finger over his lips and the crowd falls silent.

—What’s your problem, son?

—I won’t let you hurt her. I love her, Father. You can’t put her in there. Please.

—Don’t beg, son. You have all the cards in your hands. Okay, what should I do with a liar and a cheat in our midst? You be the judge and jury. You tell me what I should do with her.

The young man appears to search for words. He looks at the nurse and at Ryan’s parents. Ryan’s father speaks:

—Forgive her just like you should have forgiven my son. Forgive her and give her a chance to make amends.

—And if I don’t? If I decide, in my limited wisdom, that she needs this lesson, that we all need it to stop another case of insubordination like yours right now, what do you say to that?

—We’ll shoot, Reverend. I swear to God we’ll shoot you and anyone who tries to stop us. We don’t care about our lives anymore.

—You swear to God you’ll shoot me? I plucked you three miserable excuses for humanity from certain oblivion and guide you to the gates of paradise, the very brink of entering eternity, and now you declare that you’ll shoot me? Go right ahead. You three decide the destiny of this community.

The three stand and aim and look at one another and at the preacher and his guards. The congregation begins to edge closer to the three rebels. The nurse walks from the young man slowly at first, and he calls her back, but she ignores him and picks up her pace and strides into the cage and slams the gate behind her. The young guard drops his rifle and tries to run to her, but the preacher holds him, though not in a restraint; it takes a simple laying of hands on the young man for him to stop. Ryan’s parents lower their rifles, and the nearest guards grab and wrestle the two to the ground. The preacher orders Adam to attack the nurse. Adam pauses and looks at the preacher, who repeats the order with a wave of his arm toward the nurse. Adam knows his fate is tied to the preacher, in whose good graces he must remain or perish. Adam runs at the nurse and bats her to one side. She screams and the crowd turns its attention back to the cage. The guards closest to the preacher charge at the young man, and a rifle discharges as they pile on him and throw him to the ground. People scream. Adam pounds the nurse with his fist and she remains motionless on the ground. The preacher instructs the guards to take the young man and Ryan’s parents to his house, and he walks back to the cage and calls Adam’s name several times before the gorilla stops hitting the bundle at his feet and turns to the voice whose commands he obeys always. The preacher steps into the cage and pushes Nora, Dee, and Pat away from him as they try to stop him. He digs into his pocket, retrieves a bar of chocolate, and hands it to Adam, who grabs the bar and retreats to the back of his cage. The preacher gestures to his guards and assistants, and between them they rush into the cage and gather up the nurse and jog with her to the infirmary. The preacher secures Adam’s cage and dismisses the crowd with a sweep of his arm and tells his assistants and the guards around him:

—Make sure everyone gets back to work. Trina, where are you, my child? Trina.

—Here, Father.

—Play your flute for Adam until he calms down.

—Yes, Father.

The preacher strides in the direction of his house as his followers shrink from him and open a tunnel.

Joyce waits with Trina as she plays her flute for Adam. He seems to slow in his movements and rocks to the music of the flute. As she plays, Trina pictures the trees with Adam roaming free beside Ryan. She imagines thick undergrowth, long vines, a waterfall, and Adam and Ryan able to make a bed of leaves at night anywhere under the canopy, rising with the sun to find fruit and leaves with salt and no one to interrupt them. By the time she finishes, Trina sees herself with Rose and Joyce in the company of Adam and Ryan, all together in that forest. Adam dozes off.

Joyce stores Trina’s flute at the library building, and mother and daughter walk to the pig farm. The worst job after cleaning the commune toilets happens to be the most convenient one for Joyce’s plan. She has picked the pig farm for two reasons. It is farthest from the central part of the commune, and, located as it is on the edge of the land, of all the cultivated sites on the property, the pig farm is nearest to the river. People stay away to avoid the stink on their clothing and their skin, which retains a pigskin smell even after washing with carbolic soap. And when the smell disappears, the nostrils invoke a memory of it, leaving pig workers in permanent doubt about the status of their hygiene.

From the pig farm, it is possible to see a boat arrive at the jetty. The crew is not as easy to identify from a distance of four hundred meters, but the boat can be discerned, and with good eyesight, the lettering on the side, while not legible, suggests either a single name or a double-barrel name. By this process of elimination, Joyce hopes to tell whether a boat about to dock is the
Coffee
and, at four hundred meters, whether the boat’s specious captain dons a distinctive captain’s hat; at least that (specious) was how the preacher described the captain and his many messages to Joyce. The beating Joyce took for messages she did not see and whose contents she can only guess at makes the captain seem like an unlucky talisman for her, but the severity of her punishment and her wholesale condemnation make her believe in the meaningful nature of the captain’s messages, meaningful for her and Trina’s chances away from the commune.

She finds it intriguing that the captain continues his campaign of epistolary worship of her (assuming he did not go through all that trouble just to pour his scorn on her) despite not a syllable of return from her. Could this be love? Can this be what the captain talked about on their river trips, the thing that looks and feels so different from her faith, though just as loyal and blind and persistent? Her gamble: If his love is real and true, this means the captain should interpret her silence not as a rebuttal but as something forced upon her. And if his love is of the fighting kind, as the man himself appears to be—and here her gamble seems biggest—then he will do something to make sure she is not in any danger.

On the walk to the pig farm, Joyce plays a game with Trina where one or the other makes the trip with closed eyes and tries to guess along the way where they are on the trail and how much farther they have to go. This gives each of them an accurate mental picture of the walk. All that remains untested is the trip from the pig farm down to the river. They allow an inquisitive pig to escape under the wooden fence, then take their time retrieving it in order to reconnoiter the area between the farm and the river. Most of the paths are circuitous trails with all manner of hoof and paw prints. Some trails lead to dead ends and make no sense except to a pursuer in a chase.

Kevin, whose guard-duty rotation brings him to the pig farm, tells another guard he will follow the mother and daughter. The other guard watches him as Kevin watches them, so the chain of eyes makes it impossible to do anything but look officious while on duty. He walks along and observes from a little distance as Joyce and Trina slow-chase a squealing piglet, corner it, and drag it, by holding on to one ear each as it screeches blue murder, back in the direction of the pigpen. The guards follow commune workers if they stray for any reason from their designated posts. The official reason given for this close scrutiny—safety—appears legitimate. On two occasions commune workers needed to be rescued by guards from the clutches of a viper and a panther, and once a commune worker became sunblind and walked into the forest and was lucky to bump into a hunting party of Waurá who returned him to the compound late that night.

The guards stop and question anyone who seems to be unattached to a work party. The policy of the commune is to keep people in groups of four or more and to switch the groups on strict rotation and move people from one task to the next, ensuring that there is no group cohesion that might foster negative schemes of any kind. Even the armed guards work on rotation from night to day, from front-gate duty to the pig farm or another part of the compound perimeter, and the group makeup is never the same on consecutive rotations. Kevin misses what he considers the best job for a guard on the compound, duty at the front gate, because only one other guard works with him and it is easy to persuade one other person to go along with a scheme than two or three others, as he persuades Eric to bend and twist the rules of the commune whenever they happen to be posted together. He asks Joyce over the squeals of the piglet why she and her daughter have picked the worst place to work when they have special dispensation from the preacher to work where they please. Joyce says she prefers to be outside, and pigs may be smelly and sound like poor-imitation banshees, but they are very smart, much smarter than cows or chickens. He says he heard that somewhere, but for him the stink cancels all that wisdom.