“Oom, I don’t want to waste our time, so I will come directly to it. There are two Americans in town and they have with them Andy Selbourne, a man who has been dazzling you with his salesmanship. I know about him, I know about their arrangements with him. I know about their interference outside of South Africa and about their positions and arrangements with government. I know what their agenda is and that part of it is to swallow up churches that are in trouble.”
Gert was trying to keep the surprise off his face at the succinct summary and reference to additional information that even he did not know about.
“When I was youth leader here,” JJ went on, “people queued out the door on Sunday—only white people, as the blacks and coloureds went elsewhere. Now everyone comes here, and yet there’s still plenty of room.”
“There is nothing wrong with our attendance.” Gert bridled at the truth.
“Maybe… maybe not. We’re in tough financial times, and even a parent church has a budget.”
“They would never allow that to happen,” Gert blurted out his deepest fears and wiped the expression of worry from his face a moment too late.
But for all his emphasis on never, his voice and eyes did not have conviction, and JJ saw it. “Perhaps in Oudtshoorn and Swellendam, and now in Kimberley, there is an ex-pastor who said the same thing.”
The truth stung Gert and his mouth set to a thin and hard line. He brought his fist down on the back of a pew. “Never!”
“I am not the executioner here, Oom,” JJ reminded him. “I am just an observer. You believe I have moved so far from my Faith that I have no regard left for my culture and my people, but that is unfair and untrue; the two are not indivisible. I can love my people and yearn for my memories of how it felt, and still want to protect this simple way of life without agreeing with its every detail.”
Gert was stationary, paused with his fist still down on the back of the pew.
In the silence, JJ’s mind leapt to a new irony. Dara had shared with him what Dawie had posed about the culture shift for the Bushmen… that they lose their identity when they don Nikes or use a mobile. And here he was talking to a man terrified that in watching his people’s faith shift and crumble, he is witnessing the end of his culture.
“Religion is our culture, Dominee. Without religion, we don’t really have a culture—and I’ve recognized that,” JJ put those unspoken fears into words.
The two statements staggered Gert. The prodigal had turned, and was facing his home for the first time in a decade. The boy had called him by his title; Dominee; he had not done this in years, always pointedly preferring the neutral ‘Oom’ since he’d lost his Faith. This instantly softened the old man’s heart and Gert saw that the Lord was at work here, so he let the boy talk.
“Much as I’ll not deny how I’d like to see our culture evolve toward reason, I recognize that it is a slow process. Accepting that things take time to change,” JJ explained his thoughts carefully, “and the bigger threat to us all and to progress in general is not the old church that you represent, for all its follies of the past and faults of the present. Much as I’ve come to disagree with it, you and what you represent are sincere. The threat is the moneymaking churches—they are conniving. They appeal to the youth, and are positioned like the business that they are, to draw the new generation away from our culture. They don’t have the welfare of the individual or the community at heart. What they want, are mind-slaves contributing into their fund… You don’t own a jet, Dominee… you’re not a Dominee who is also an oil tycoon. I’ve never heard of a Dominee who would want to be an oil tycoon or fly the world in a private Gulfstream. That is the threat and that is our common enemy.”
Gert turned and faced the man who he had once known, the man who was like the young lion his father once was.
“What are you proposing,” he asked, looking JJ in the eye.
“I propose that you were duped, Dominee. I’m not going to sugar coat it and pay you the hollow respect of pretending that it didn’t happen—you were had. I don’t doubt that your heart was in the right place, but somebody with an agenda—a businessman—did a sales job and convinced you to pick a fight you shouldn’t have picked, a fight with progress.”
Gert was about to argue against it, but JJ held up his hand.
“I am not insulting you, Dominee, I am telling it as it is. The NG church has no argument with science, although perhaps that is one they should have, because science does corrode faith. I don’t want to argue that. In this debacle, you were convinced by someone else to take the lead role without elevating the proposal up the chain of leadership to the synod; am I wrong?”
Gert couldn’t deny it and he was surprised at the man’s insight to how it had in fact happened.
“I get a sense that you know this already from the signs on every street pole out there.”
The look on Gert’s face confirmed to JJ all he needed to know.
“They’re taking control already, acting like they own this gemeente—our parish. They think they already own you.”
Gert was nodding on the outside, and seething within. Seething because the true state of affairs was so obvious to a man he’d rejected, one whom he’d come to despise and now grudgingly found himself having to respect.
“We fix it by recognizing that it is true. We reconcile it by making apologies—to your superiors, to the gemeentelede, and to the parishioners who you have wound up on this issue. Let them think they are winning, let the outsiders have this media event, let it go ahead and watch them fail in front of the volk.”
“You propose that I give them my church and my altar? That I expose my flock… to people with an agenda?” Gert asked, squinting with deep skepticism. “Tonight, you have spoken more sense than I knew you had, but this idea…”
“You think it’s too much of a risk? You have that much faith in their ability? This little faith in our people?”
Gert heard the conviction in him as he said “our people” and he knew instantly that JJ was in the fold of the community again.
“The world we are entering is not like the one we are leaving, Dominee. When you carried out your ministry, the world was closed; there was our church and few others out here, and very little other influence. Out there has come here. Whether we like it or not, it is an open market of ideas and only those ideas that can compete on their own merit will survive. If you try to keep the lid on and pretend there are no other ideas for the next generation to choose from, those ideas will come right in past you and take them away. No—you give them your stage and let them compete. Then you rely on real strength of character to come through in the people you have served for so long. These newcomers will make no inroads here if you allow them to be defeated in open battle. If you deny them an open battle, they’ll do it with stealth, that’s precisely what they’re masters at doing… and that’s an infinitely tougher fight for us to win.”
“Allow them to be defeated?” Gert was cynical.
“Yes, without a shadow of a doubt they’ll be defeated. I’m so sure of it I would also like to make a donation, a donation I would like to see them match. A big donation for all that I learned from you as a young man.”
“I can’t be bought!” Gert snapped.
“I’m not suggesting you can be, Dominee. But it is in my capacity to help this community and I believe you help this community, so I will help you to help. I would like to see these people do more than talk. I’d like them to show their commitment.”
“You surprise me,” Gert admitted. “But I do have serious reservations.”
“It is your choice. If you cancel the event here in the church, they’ll take it elsewhere to another hall. If you hold it here, our people that show up will already be on their own familiar turf, aligned to you, and less open to persuasion than they’d be if they were on more neutral ground in another hall.”
“I don’t know…” Gert shook his head.
“This is what I do, Dominee; I strategize
. I know what I’m talking about. Why not think on it? Pray on it,” JJ suggested.
“I will do that,” Gert agreed.
They began to make their way to the exit door, walking slowly, contemplatively, each in thought about the world they’d shared, and their paths that had diverged. Now, a glimmer of commonality seemed possible.
As they reached the daylight, still under the shade of the tall spire, the Dominee put his hand on JJ’s shoulder as he would when the boy was youth leader. Back then he’d have reached down to do so, now he had to look up as he put an earnest question to him.
“For many years I have feared and prayed for you. I have feared that you left the path and would only inherit hell. Do you not fear this? Do you have no dread for the hell that your path has surely put you on?” Gert implored.
“Yes, I fear hell, Dominee,” JJ responded.
He allowed the old man a moment to think he had a triumph, and then he went on.
“But I want to first tell you about heaven. My heaven is the knowledge that this is the only life I'm going to get. It is that thought that makes me fall in love with reality every day. To savour that reality. Even when I sat saying my private goodbyes to my father in this church just days ago, I was at peace that I would never again see him or anyone else that dies. This makes me value those who are alive, while they are alive. It motivates me to bury hatchets. This makes me deeply grateful for the curious experience I am able to have being alive and with people I love. In the tragedy of my father’s loss and in all the other tragedies and challenges I face, I keep in mind that just being alive and experiencing life and family, and community, is the greatest privilege. And it is this heaven of truly living that makes me want to make the world a better place and treat others kindly.”
“Then death becomes your hell?” Gert challenged him.
“No, Dominee. Hell is far worse than that. Hell is for the living, for those who believe it exists. It is their hell to torture themselves with that idea every day that they live. It is their hell to reach the end of their finite time of being a living and thinking person and realize they have wasted it on hope, not buried hatchets and not treated every moment of life as if it is their last.”
Chapter 37
“They want to kill me Baasie!” Oom Karel had visibly aged in the past weeks since JJ had last seen him. When he’d come in for his check-up, the X-ray had revealed the lethal progress of the growths in his lungs, and the young doctor had insisted he remain as an inpatient.
As he lay there, his face was drawn, his complexion sallow, his eyes sunken and with the opacity that comes near death, but he still mustered plenty of energy to deliver a good argument and a smile that imploded his toothless face.
When he needed it—like now, when he was aiming toward an objective—he could also somehow manufacture the old twinkle of health in his eyes.
“They say I must have clean air, so they take my tobacco,” he grumbled, “and then they put me in this place that smells so bad. I would be better if I could have my tobacco, and be home.”
“It’s antiseptics,” JJ assured him, trying to justify what had been done to the old man, taking his will to live with it. “It kills disease.”
But Karel would have none of it. “It makes a man sick,” he insisted.
The old Bushman’s sense of smell—in spite of a long career devoted to smoking everything that came to hand—was refined far beyond the olfactory reach of even a virile young city dweller.
JJ appreciated how the old man must be suffering from the astringent chemical odours and the cultural deprivations away from his people. “I’ll fix it,” he promised.
“And the light is terrible. So bright, everything so white.” Karel wanted to leave no room for misunderstanding.
“It’s how we keep the hospital as clean as possible, but I’ll get you home today, Oom. In the meantime, I’ll have them turn the lights down.” And he sent for the administrator to see that it was done immediately.
“Ja, but my poor old eyes…” Karel groused, sounding instantly weak to the point of expiring.
While he had the young Baas JJ ready to argue his case and get him concessions, Karel was determined to negotiate all he could.
“These blankets are too much. They want to keep me covered, but it’s suffocating me. And, I don’t know…” he shook his head with a great tragedy and weakly lifted his arm, festooned as it was with drips and monitors. “How can an old man survive with so many pipes and wires? And the food…”
Just then the nurse came in to check readings on the monitor and Karel managed to devise the appearance and manufacture a cough that would ensure him extra special attention. JJ took the opportunity to step into the corridor where Marsha, catching a ride back from Pieter the lawyer, was waiting. She’d heard the exchange and had sneaked a peak past the door.
“Is it a good idea to have him discharged?” Marsha asked quietly. “He looks like he’s at death’s doorstep.”
“Don’t let him fool you, he’s stronger than he looks,” JJ assured her, his voice warm with affection and confidence. But he couldn’t cover the real pang of concern he felt, and she knew she was right. “They’re the best actors in the business. I’ll bet he bounces right back as soon as we get him home. Right now, he’s craving his tobacco before anything.”
“You don’t think it’s as serious as it seems?” she quizzed, trying to tease the facts out of JJ.
“Oh, it’s very serious, but it comes down to his will now. I wish they hadn’t kept him. These people are extraordinary; unless you work with them you’ll never believe it, tough beyond imagining. I’d wager that even in this condition he could still keep going for years. It comes down to his will to fight, and they took it away by trying to nurse him better. They took away his reason to keep going.”
“You think?”
“Without a doubt, Marsha. He doesn’t think of himself as an individual like you and I do. Nothing in his background has given him the perception of individuality. He was probably conceived in an open room full of other families; born into it, grown up in it, and conceived his own kids that way. To him, his community matters much more than himself. He thinks of himself as just another actor in the unfolding drama of his clan.”
Just then the administrator arrived, and JJ followed him into the ward. Leading to much protestation from the old man, JJ instructed that they were to turn down the lights and begin discharge procedures to get him home.
Earlier, Karel had confirmed that nobody had come to discuss the heritage claim with him as the Dominee had said they would. Karel had of course heard about the death of Andre and was remarkably sad given that his own grandson had suffered so terribly at the man’s hands.
“I wanted to apologize in person,” JJ had told him, “for the terrible things my father did. They were inexcusable.”
Karel had nodded solemnly and then had countered, “He was a policeman, that was his job.”
“No, it wasn’t Oom, not like that. The time is over when police can act like a judge… and worse. He was wrong,” JJ had insisted.
“Dawie is a strong boy, it did him no harm.” It was a long-standing custom for his people to justify the injustices, and though he may well have thought differently about it he would never stand up to authority, certainly not to the man whose father had wielded it over him and his people so thoroughly for decades.
“Any harm that’s been done I want to help fix it, Oom. And that is why we are here and making sure you get home today.” JJ had gone on to lay forth the option for Dawie to come with him to Cape Town and the new opportunities it would bring the boy; and through his success, success to his community too.
“It will break this old man’s heart,” Karel had confirmed, “but it is my death wish that you take him.”
“You are far from dying Oom, but if you allow this, I will bring him back here every holiday—four times a year,” JJ had assured.
“He has been my reason to live, and I am only ho
lding him back by staying.” No amount of arguing against this dire prognosis would sway him from his decision that it was time to go.
And, it was true—in spite of JJ’s hopeful claims that the old man could beat his condition if only he could be back home, the doctors had confirmed to JJ that the old man’s time was running short, and the lung cancer was advanced. The weeping puncture wound made to drain fluid from his lungs was uncovered to let it dry out. It looked like a small mouth between ribs that stood in stark relief to the baggy old skin.
JJ asked if it was painful and the old man insisted he could not feel it at all.
“I think I have an idea,” JJ told him with a wry smile, and in a conspiratorial voice he suggested something cunning. “We get one of the nurses in here and ask her to make wounds in each hand and maybe a few prick-marks around your scalp.”
“And then?” the old man asked, squinting, puzzled at the suggestion.
“Well, when you get to the pearly gates, St. Peter may confuse you for the Son of the Big Man in the Sky.”
Karel began to laugh, the little mouth in his side chortling along with each compression as laughter morphed into a life-threatening death rattle. He thought it a fantastic idea that, in his own words, a little “lelike ou Boesman” ugly old Bushman, might be mistaken for the handsome son of God he’d seen in the statues and stained glass when his Baas Bauer had once taken him to the big church.
Karel told them that Dawie had got his phone back, but the screen was cracked and the battery missing.
“That’s nothing,” JJ told him. “I will get him a better phone. I will get you a phone too. I’ll go buy it right now, one with WiFi so it will work, and get it to your house before you get there.”
The old man laughed heartily again at the thought of it. He had no need for a phone, not now or before, or ever.
A Trojan Affair Page 34
