The Tomorrow-Tamer (7 page)

In this purgatorially hot and exposed steam bath, I awaited with some trepidation the arrival of Amory Lemon, proselytizer for a mission known as the Angel of Philadelphia.

Above the buildings flew the three-striped flag–red, yellow and green–with the black star of Africa in its centre. I wondered if the evangelist would notice it or know what it signified. Very likely not. Brother Lemon was not coming here to study political developments. He was coming–as traders once went to Babylon–for the souls of men.

I had never seen him before, but I knew him at once, simply because he looked so different from the others who came off the plane–ordinary English people, weary and bored after the long trip, their still-tanned skins indicating that this was not their first tour in the tropics. Brother Lemon's skin was very white and smooth–it reminded me of those sea pebbles which as a child I used to think were the eyeballs of the drowned. He was unusually tall; he walked in a stately and yet brisk fashion, with controlled excitement. I realized that this must be a great moment for him. The apostle landing at Cyprus or Thessalonica, the light of future battles already kindling in his eyes, and replete with faith as a fresh-gorged mosquito is with blood.

“Mr. Lemon? I'm Will Kettridge–the architect. We've corresponded–”

He looked at me with piercing sincerity from those astonishing turquoise eyes of his.

“Yes, of course,” he said, grasping me by the hand. “I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance. It surely was nice of you to meet me. The name's Lee-
mon
. Brother Lee-
mon
. Accent on the last syllable. I really appreciate your kindness, Mr. Kettridge.”

I felt miserably at a disadvantage. For one thing, I was wearing khaki trousers which badly needed pressing, whereas Brother Lemon was clad in a dove-grey suit of a miraculously immaculate material. For another, when a person interprets your selfish motive as pure altruism, what can you tactfully say?

“Fine,” I said. “Let's collect your gear.”

Brother Lemon's gear consisted of three large wardrobe suitcases, a pair of water skis, a box which from its label and size appeared to contain a gross of cameras but turned out to contain only a Rolleiflex and a cine-camera complete with
projector and editing equipment, a carton of an antimalarial drug so new that we in this infested region had not yet heard of it, and finally, a lovely little pigskin case which enfolded a water-purifier. Brother Lemon unlocked the case and took out a silvery mechanism. His face glowed with a boyish fascination.

“See? It works like a syringe. You just press this thing, and the water is sucked up here. Then you squirt it out again, and there you are. Absolutely guaranteed one hundred per cent pure. Not a single bacteria. You can even drink swamp water.”

I was amused and rather touched. He seemed so frankly hopeful of adventure. I was almost sorry that this was not the Africa of Livingstone or Burton.

“Wonderful,” I said. “The water is quite safe here, though. All properly filtered and chlorinated.”

“You can't be too careful,” Brother Lemon said. “I couldn't afford to get sick–I'll be the only representative of our mission, for a while at least.”

He drew in a deep breath of the hot salty tar-stinking air.

“I've waited six years for this day, Mr. Kettridge,” he said. “Six years of prayer and preparation.”

“I hope the country comes up to your expectations, then.”

He looked at me in surprise.

“Oh, it will,” he said with perfect equanimity. “Our mission, you know, is based on the Revelation of St. John the Divine. We believe there is a special message for us in the words given by the Spirit to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia–”

“A different Philadelphia, surely.”

His smile was confident, even pitying.

“These things do not happen by accident, Mr. Kettridge. When Andrew McFetters had his vision, back in 1924, it was
revealed that the ancient Church would be reborn in our city of the same name, and would take the divine word to unbelievers in seven different parts of the world.”

Around his head his fair hair sprouted and shone like some fantastic marigold halo in a medieval painting.

“I believe my mission has been foretold,” he said with stunning simplicity. “I estimate I'll have a thousand souls within six months.”

Suddenly I saw Brother Lemon as a kind of soul-purifier, sucking in the septic souls and spewing them back one hundred per cent pure.

 

That evening I told Danso of my vague uneasiness. He laughed, as I had known he would.

“Please remember you are an Englishman, Will,” he said. “Englishmen should not have visions. It is not suitable. Leave that to Brother Lemon and me. Evangelists and Africans always get on well–did you know? It is because we are both so mystical. Did you settle anything?”

“Yes, I'm getting the design work. He says he doesn't want contemporary for the church, but he's willing to consider it for his house.”

“What did he say about money?” Danso asked. “That's what I'm interested in.”

“His precise words were–‘the Angel of Philadelphia Mission isn't going to do this thing on the cheap'.”

Danso was short and slim, but he made up for it in mercurial energy. Now he crouched tigerish by the chaise-longue, and began feinting with clenched fists like a bantamweight–which, as a matter of fact, he used to be, before a scholarship to an English university and an interest in painting combined to change the course of his life.

“Hey, come on, you Brother Lemon!” he cried. “That's it, man! You got it and I want it–very easy, very simple. Bless you, Brother Lemon, benedictions on your name, my dear citric sibling.”

“I have been wondering,” I said, “how you planned to profit from Brother Lemon's presence.”

“Murals, of course.”

“Oh, Danso, don't be an idiot. He'd never–”

“All right, all right, man. Pictures, then. A nice oil. Everybody wants holy pictures in a church, see?”

“He'll bring them from Philadelphia,” I said. “Four-tone prints, done on glossy paper.”

Danso groaned. “Do you really think he'll do that, Will?”

“Maybe not,” I said encouragingly. “You could try.”

“Listen–how about this? St. Augustine, bishop of hippos.”

“Hippo, you fool. A place.”

“I know that,” Danso said witheringly. “But, hell, who wants to look at some fly-speckled North African town, all mudbrick and camel dung? Brother Lemon wants colour, action, you know what I mean. St. Augustine is on the river bank, see, the Congo or maybe the Niger. Bush all around. Ferns thick as a woman's hair. Palms–great big feathery palms. But very stiff, very stylized–Rousseau stuff–like this–”

His brown arms twined upward, became the tree trunks, and his thin fingers the palm fans, precise, sharp in the sun.

“And in the river–real blue and green river, man, all sky and scum–in that river is the congregation, only they're hippos, see–enormous fat ones, all bulging eyes, and they're singing ‘Hallelujah' like the angels themselves, while old St. Augustine leads them to paradise–”

“Go ahead–paint it,” I began, “and we'll–”

I stopped. My smile withdrew as I looked at Danso.

“Whatsamatter?” he said. “Don't you think the good man will buy it?”

In his eyes there was an inexpressible loathing.

“Danso! How can you–? You haven't even met him yet.”

The carven face remained ebony, remained black granite.

“I have known this pedlar of magic all my life, Will. My mother always took me along to prayer meetings, when I was small.”

The mask slackened into laughter, but it was not the usual laughter.

“Maybe he thinks we are short of ju-ju,” Danso remarked. “Maybe he thinks we need a few more devils to exorcise.”

When I first met Brother Lemon, I had seen him as he must have seen himself, an apostle. Now I could almost see him with Danso's bitter eyes–as sorcerer.

 

I undertook to show Brother Lemon around the city. He was impressed by the profusion and cheapness of tropical fruit; delightedly he purchased baskets of oranges, pineapples, paw-paw. He loaded himself down with the trinkets of Africa–python-skin wallets, carved elephants, miniature
dono
drums.

On our second trip, however, he began to notice other things. A boy with suppurating yaws covering nearly as much of his body as did his shreds of clothing. A loin-clothed labourer carrying a headload so heavy that his flimsy legs buckled and bent. A trader woman minding a roadside stall on which her living was spread–half a dozen boxes of cube sugar and a handful of pink plastic combs. A girl child squatting modestly in the filth-flowing gutter. A grinning penny-pleading gamin with a belly outpuffed by navel hernia.
A young woman, pregnant and carrying another infant on her back, her placid eyes growing all at once proud and hating as we passed comfortably by. An old Muslim beggar who howled and shouted
sura
from the Qoran, and then, silent, looked and looked with the unclouded innocent eyes of lunacy. Brother Lemon nodded absently as I dutifully pointed out the new Post Office, the library, the Law Courts, the Bank.

We reached shanty town, where the mud and wattle huts crowded each other like fish in a net, where plantains were always frying on a thousand smoky charcoal burners, where the rhythm of life was forever that of the women's lifted and lowered wooden pestles as the cassava was pounded into meal, where the crimson portulaca and the children swarmed over the hard soil and survived somehow, at what loss of individual blossom or brat one could only guess.

“It's a crime,” Brother Lemon said, “that people should have to live like this.”

He made the mistake all kindly people make. He began to give money to children and beggars–sixpences, shillings–thinking it would help. He overpaid for everything he bought. He distributed largesse.

“These people are poor, real poor, Mr. Kettridge,” he said seriously, “and the way I figure it–if I'm able through the Angel of Philadelphia Mission to ease their lives, then it's my duty to do so.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But the shilling or two won't last long, and then what? You're not prepared to take them all on as permanent dependants, are you?”

He gazed at me blankly. I guess he thought I was stony-hearted. He soon came to be surrounded by beggars wherever he went. They swamped him; their appalling voices followed him down any street. Fingerless hands reached out; half-limbs
hurried at his approach. He couldn't cope with it, of course. Who could? Finally, he began to turn away, as ultimately we all turn, frightened and repelled by the outrageous pain and need.

Brother Lemon was no different from any stranger casting his tiny shillings into the wishful well of good intentions, and seeing them disappear without so much as a splash or tinkle. But unlike the rest of us, he at least could console himself.

“Salvation is like the loaves and fishes,” he said. “There's enough for all, for every person in this world. None needs to go empty away.”

He could hardly wait to open his mission. He frequently visited my office, in order to discuss the building plans. He wanted me to hurry with them, so construction could begin the minute his land-site was allocated. I knew there was no hurry–he'd be lucky if he got the land within six months–but he was so keen that I hated to discourage him.

He did not care for the hotel, where the bottles and glasses clinked merrily the night through, disturbing his sombre slumbers. I helped him find a house. It was a toy-size structure on the outskirts of the city. It had once (perhaps in another century) been whitewashed, but now it was ashen. Brother Lemon immediately had it painted azure. When I remonstrated with him–why spend money on a rented bungalow?–he gave me an odd glance.

“I grew up on the farm,” he said. “We never did get around to painting that house.”

He overpaid the workmen and was distressed when he discovered one of them had stolen a gallon of paint. The painters, quite simply, regarded Brother Lemon's funds as inexhaustible. But he did not understand and it made him unhappy. This was the first of a myriad annoyances.

A decomposing lizard was found in his plumbing. The
wiring was faulty and his lights winked with persistent malice. The first cook he hired turned out to have both forged references and gonorrhoea.

Most of his life, I imagine, Brother Lemon had been fighting petty battles in preparation for the great one. And now he found even this battle petty. As he recounted his innumerable domestic difficulties, I could almost see the silken banners turn to grey. He looked for dragons to slay, and found cockroaches in his store-cupboard. Jacob-like, he came to wrestle for the Angel's blessing, and instead was bent double with cramps in his bowels from eating unwashed salad greens.

I was never tempted to laugh. Brother Lemon's faith was of a quality that defied ridicule. He would have preferred his trials to be on a grander scale, but he accepted them with humility. One thing he could not accept, however, was the attitude of his servants. Perhaps he had expected to find an African Barnabas, but he was disappointed. His cook was a decent enough chap, but he helped himself to tea and sugar.

“I pay Kwaku half again as much as the going wage–you told me so yourself. And now he does this.”

“So would you,” I said, “in his place.”

“That's where you're wrong,” Brother Lemon contradicted, so sharply that I never tried that approach again.

“All these things are keeping me from my work,” he went on plaintively. “That's the worst of it. I've been in the country three weeks tomorrow, and I haven't begun services yet. What's the home congregation going to think of me?”

Then he knotted his big hands in sudden and private anguish.