The New Collected Short Stories (32 page)

Congratulations were exchanged.

Mr Pinmay’s repentance was now permanent, and his conscience so robust that he could meet the chief with ease and transact business with him in private, when occasion required it. The brown hand, lying dead for an instant in his own, awoke no reminiscences of sin.

Wriggling rather awkwardly inside his clothes, Barnabas said with a smile: ‘Will you take me a short drive in your dog-cart, Mr Pinmay?’

Mr Pinmay replied that he had no dog-cart.

‘Excuse me, sir, you have. It stands below. It, and the horse, are my wedding gift to you.’

The missionary had long desired a horse and cart, and he accepted them without waiting to ask God’s blessing. ‘You should not have given me such an expensive present,’ he remarked. For the chief was no longer wealthy; in the sudden advent of civilization he had chanced to lose much of his land.

‘My reward is enough if we go one drive, sir.’

As a rule he did not choose to be seen pleasuring with a native – it undermined his authority – but this was a special occasion. They moved briskly through the village, Barnabas driving to show the paces of the horse, and presently turned to the woods or to what remained of them; there was a tolerable road, made by the timber-fellers, which wound uphill towards a grove. The scene was uninteresting, and pervaded by a whitish light that seemed to penetrate every recess. They spoke of local affairs.

‘How much of the timber is earmarked for the mines?’ inquired Mr Pinmay, in the course of the conversation.

‘An increasing amount as the galleries extend deeper into the mountain. I am told that the heat down there is now so great that the miners work unclad. Are they to be fined for this?’

‘No. It is impossible to be strict about mines. They constitute a special case.’

‘I understand. I am also told that disease among them increases.’

‘It does, but then so do our hospitals.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Can’t you grasp, Barnabas, that under God’s permission certain evils attend civilization, but that if men do God’s will the remedies for the evils keep pace? Five years ago you had not a single hospital in this valley.’

‘Nor any disease. I understand. Then all my people were strong.’

‘There was abundant disease,’ corrected the missionary. ‘Vice and superstition, to mention no others. And inter-tribal war. Could you have married a lady from another valley five years ago?’

‘No. Even as a concubine she would have disgraced me.’

‘All concubines are a disgrace.’

‘I understand. In regard to this marriage, sir, there is, however, a promise that you made me once.’

‘About the mining concession, of course? Exactly. Yes, I never thought you were treated fairly there. I will certainly approach my future brother-in-law to get you some compensation. But you ought to have been more careful at the time. You signed your rights away without consulting me. I am always willing to be consulted.’

‘It is not the mining concession,’ said Barnabas patiently; although a good steward for the Church, he had grown careless where his own affairs were concerned. ‘It is quite another promise.’ He seemed to be choosing his words. Speaking slowly and without any appearance of emotion, he said at last: ‘Come to Christ.’

‘Come to Him indeed,’ said Mr Pinmay in slightly reproving tones, for he was not accustomed to receive such an invitation from a spiritual inferior.

Barnabas paused again, then said: ‘In the hut.’

‘What hut?’ He had forgotten.

‘The hut with the Mercy Seat.’

Shocked and angry, he exclaimed: ‘Barnabas, Barnabas, this is disgraceful. I forbad you ever to mention this subject.’

At that moment the horse drew up at the entrance of the grove. Civilization tapped and clinked behind them, under a garish sun. The road ended, and a path where two could walk abreast continued into the delicate gray and purple recesses of the trees. Tepid, impersonal, as if he still discussed public affairs, the young man said: ‘Let us both be entirely reasonable, sir. God continues to order me to love you. It is my life, whatever else I seem to do. My body and the breath in it are still yours, though you wither them up with this waiting. Come into the last forest, before it is cut down, and I will be kind, and all may end well. But it is now five years since you first said Not yet.’

‘It is, and now I say Never.’

‘This time you say Never?’

‘I do.’

Without replying, Barnabas handed him the reins and then jerked himself out of the cart. It was a most uncanny movement, which seemed to proceed direct from the will. He scarcely used his hands or rose to his feet before jumping. But his soul uncoiled like a spring, and thrust the car violently away from it against the ground. Mr Pinmay had heard of such contortions, but never witnessed them; they were startling, they were disgusting. And the descent was equally sinister. Barnabas lay helpless as if the evil uprush had suddenly failed. ‘Are you ill?’ asked the clergyman.

‘No.’

‘Then what ails you?’

‘No.’

‘Do you repent of your words?’

‘No.’

‘Then you must be punished. As the head of the community you are bound to set an example. You are fined one hundred pounds for backsliding.’

‘No.’ Then as if to himself he said: ‘First the grapes of my body are pressed. Then I am silenced. Now I am punished. Night, evening and a day. What remains?’

What should remain? The remark was meaningless. Mr Pinmay drove back alone, rather thoughtful. He would certainly have to return the horse and cart – they had been intended as a bribe – and the hundred pounds must be collected by one of his subordinates. He wished that the whole unsavoury business had not been raked up into the light just before his wedding. Its senselessness alarmed him.

IV

MORNING

The concluding five years of Mr Pinmay’s ministry were less satisfactory than their predecessors. His marriage was happy, his difficulties few, nothing tangible opposed him, but he was haunted by the scene outside the grove. Could it signify that he himself had not been pardoned? Did God, in His mystery, demand from him that he should cleanse his brother’s soul before his own could be accepted? The dark erotic perversion that the chief mistook for Christianity – who had implanted it? He had put this question from him in the press of his earlier dangers, but it intruded itself now that he was safe. Day after day he heard the cold voice of the somewhat scraggy and unattractive native inviting him to sin, or saw the leap from the cart that suggested a dislocated soul. He turned to the Christianity of the valley, but he found no consolation there. He had implanted that too: not in sin, but in reaction against sin, and so its fruits were, as bitter. If Barnabas distorted Christ, the valley ignored Him. It was hard, it lacked personality and beauty and emotion and all that Paul Pinmay had admired in his youth. It could produce catechists and organizers, but never a saint. What was the cause of the failure? The hut, the hut. In the concluding years of his stay, he ordered it to be pulled down.

He seldom met Barnabas now. There was no necessity for it, since the chiefs usefulness decreased as the community developed and new men pushed their way to the top. Though still helpful when applied to, he lost all capacity for initiative. He moved from his old stockaded enclosure with its memories of independence, and occupied a lofty but small modern house at the top of the village, suitable to his straitened circumstances. Here he and his wife and their children (one more every eleven months) lived in the semi-European style. Sometimes he worked in the garden, although menial labour was regarded as degrading, and he was assiduous at prayer meetings, where he frequented the back row. The missionaries called him a true Christian when they called him anything, and congratulated themselves that witchcraft had no rallying-point; he had served their purpose, he began to pass from their talk. Only Mr Pinmay watched him furtively and wondered where his old energies had gone. He would have preferred an outburst to this corrupt acquiescence; he knew now that he could deal with outbursts. He even felt weaker himself, as if the same curse infected them both, and this though he had again and again confessed his own share of the sin to God, and had acquired a natural loathing for it in consequence of his marriage.

He could not really feel much sorrow when he learned that the unfortunate fellow was dying.

Consumption was the cause. One of the imported workers had started an epidemic, and Mr and Mrs Pinmay were busied up to the moment of their own departure, negotiating an extension to the cemetery. They expected to leave the valley before Barnabas did, but during the last week he made, so to speak, a spurt, as if he would outstrip them. His was a very rapid case. He put up no fight. His heart seemed broken. They had little time to devote to individuals, so wide was the scope of their work, still they hurried over to see him one morning, hearing that he had had a fresh haemorrhage, and was not likely to survive the day. ‘Poor fellow, poor lad, he was an important factor ten years back – times change,’ murmured Mr Pinmay as he pushed the Holy Communion under the seat of the dog-cart – Barnabas’s own cart, as it happened, for Mrs Pinmay, knowing nothing of the incident, had acquired it cheaply at a sale a couple of years back. As he drove it briskly up through the village Mr Pinmay’s heart grew lighter, and he thanked God for permitting Barnabas, since die we must, to pass away at this particular moment; he would not have liked to leave him behind, festering, equivocal, and perhaps acquiring some sinister power.

When they arrived, Mrs Barnabas told them that her husband was still alive, and, she thought, conscious, but in such darkness of spirit that he would not open his eyes or speak. He had been carried up on to the roof, on account of the heat in his room, and his gestures had indicated that he would be left alone. ‘But he must not be left alone,’ said Mr Pinmay. ‘We must watch with him through this dark hour. I will prepare him in the first place.’ He climbed the staircase that led through a trapdoor on to the roof. In the shadow of the parapet lay the dying man, coughing gently, and stark naked.

‘Vithobai!’ he cried in amazement.

He opened his eyes and said: ‘Who calls me?’

‘You must have some covering, Barnabas,’ said Mr Pinmay fussily. He looked round, but there was nothing on the roof except a curious skein of blue flowers threaded round a knife. He took them up. But the other said, ‘Do not lay those upon me yet,’ and he refrained, remembering that blue is the colour of despair in that valley, just as red is the colour of love. ‘I’ll get you a shawl,’ he continued. ‘Why, you are not lying upon a mattress, even.’

‘It is my own roof. Or I thought it was until now. My wife and household respected my wishes. They laid me here because it is not the custom of my ancestors to die in a bed.’

‘Mrs Barnabas should have known better. You cannot possibly lie on hard asphalt.’

‘I have found that I can.’

‘Vithobai, Vithobai,’ he cried, more upset then he expected.

‘Who calls me?’

‘You are not going back to your old false gods?’

‘Oh no. So near to the end of my life, why should I make any change? These flowers are only a custom, and they comfort me.’

‘There is only one comforter . . .’ He glanced around the roof, then fell upon his knees. He could save a soul without danger to himself at last. ‘Come to Christ,’ he said, ‘but not in the way that you suppose. The time has come for me to explain. You and I once sinned together, yes, you and your missionary whom you so reverence. You and I must now repent together, yes, such is God’s law.’ And confusedly, and with many changes of emotion and shiftings of his point of view and reservations, he explained the nature of what had happened ten years ago and its present consequences.

The other made a painful effort to follow, but his eyes kept closing. ‘What is all this talk?’ he said at last. ‘And why do you wait until I am ill and you old?’

‘I waited until I could forgive you and ask your forgiveness. It is the hour of your atonement and mine. Put away all despair, forget those wicked flowers. Let us repent and leave the rest to God.’

‘I repent, I do not repent . . . ‘ he wailed.

‘Hush! Think what you say.’

‘I forgive you, I do not forgive, both are the same. I am good I am evil I am pure I am foul, I am this or that, I am Barnabas, I am Vithobai. What difference does it make now? It is my deeds that await me, and I have no strength left to add to them. No strength, no time. I lie here empty, but you fill me up with thoughts, and then press me to speak them that you may have words to remember afterwards . . . But it is deeds, deeds that count, O my lost brother. Mine are this little house instead of my old great one, this valley which other men own, this cough that kills me, those bastards that continue my race; and that deed in the hut, which you say caused all, and which now you call joy, now sin. How can I remember which it was after all these years, and what difference if I could? It was a deed, it has gone before me with the others to be judged.’

‘Vithobai,’ he pleaded, distressed because he himself had been called old.

‘Who calls me the third time?’

‘Kiss me.’

‘My mouth is down here.’

‘Kiss my forehead – no more – as a sign that I am forgiven. Do not misunderstand me this time . . . in perfect purity . . . the holy salutation of Christ. And then say with me: Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name . . .’

‘My mouth is down here,’ he repeated wearily.

Mr Pinmay feared to venture the kiss lest Satan took an advantage. He longed to do something human before he had the sinking man carried down to receive the Holy Communion, but he had forgotten how. ‘You have forgiven me, my poor fellow,’ he worried on. ‘If you do not, how can I continue my vocation, or hope for the forgiveness of God?’

The lips moved.

‘If you forgive me, move your lips once more, as a sign.’

He became rigid, he was dying.

‘You do still love me?’

‘My breast is down here.’

‘In Christ, I mean.’ And uncertain of what he ought to do he laid his head hesitatingly upon the poor skeleton. Vithobai shivered, then looked at him with surprise, pity, affection, disdain, with all, but with little of any, for his spirit had mainly departed, and only the ghosts of its activities remained. He was a little pleased. He raised a hand painfully, and stroked the scanty hair, golden no longer. He whispered, ‘Too late,’ but he smiled a little.