I was confused, felt like a ball being tossed by the footballer from left to right. The devil on my left shoulder seemed to win; and I stopped what I was doing and observed her movements.
A sadistic, not only sadistic but sexual, thought and feeling crept and penetrated into my veins, thinking that her coming to the sacristy was not a coincidence, or God was telling me something.
I started having fancies, forbidden fantasy. I would love her genuinely, I won’t cheat on her, I would respect her decision even if it’s till marriage, I would treat her sensitively, I would… These and others were the thoughts that besieged my now holier-than-thou mind. I shook my head vigorously to clear it of all the amorous worms crawling into it. I wondered whether older women had such thoughts about pubescent men. I like her, but where on hell would I start. Not in the sacristy. No, not with her clad in those Immaculate Virgin Mary dresses. No, I do not want to fill her chaste mind with emotions, with the evil of love. Not yet. I could not help thinking of her one day in another man’s arms.
An hour later, I gonged the church bell to tell those who had not entered the church that it was time for the Mass.
I took my usual place at the nave. Hedwig sat next to me. She was a distraction enough for me.
And God said, ‘… it’s not good for man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him… woman is her name because she was taken out of man.’ She could be mine, I convinced myself.
I found myself deducing what could be her plans for her life in my mind. Maybe, she wanted to join the convent. She was the type who could bear with the convent life. Still she was the type with lots of things to be in her life. She was in that age of confusion when we want to be everything, anything.
When the Mass was over, I cleared the altar and set up the pulpit for the facilitators of the workshop to take over. I surprised myself when I asked Hedwig to keep me company in the sacristy when ironing the priest’s vestments as the workshop was on-going. She said, “Why not?” and she offered to help with some work.
I told her that I was not a priest, neither was I in the seminary, nor was I contemplating the ridiculous idea. I tried to tell her this and that, sacristy stuff, only to find that she already knew. “That’s the good thing in being a Mwanashirika. You get to know things known only by boys,” she told me.
At the Cathedral of Our Lady of Africa, Kitui, they were even pushing to have them girls incorporated in serving Mass with their male counterparts in the St. Aloysius Gonzaga devotional group. In other words they wanted to introduce girls’ Mass servers alongside the boys in the diocese.
She helped clean the vestry and later on the whole church. I liked her company.
“May I get personal with you?” I asked, fearing that she might explode and start exorcising the devil in me, but to my respite, she was calm, and… stoical.
“Why not?” she said, shrugging as if to relegate what I had asked to non-importance.
“Ahem... what would you like to be in future?”
She did not answer forthwith. She seemed to ponder on my question for a moment as though it was a question in an English class.
“Or I’m I getting too personal? I don’t intend to. I mean you are utterly attractive…” I checked myself before I said something stupid.
“No, you are not. On the contrary. I just don’t know what to tell you. I haven’t given it a thought yet.”
“Forgive me, but I’ve to say this...”
“Speak your mind, pal.”
“You’re utterly attractive to be a nun. I was just wondering how you would cope especially in...”
For a moment she avoided my eyes. “What makes you say so?”
“The fact that you’ve grown up guarded like the Vatican Guard by...”
“Sure,” she interjected nonchalantly. “But that I leave to God’s plans. Man proposes, God disposes.”
“What would you like to be? Some nun locked forever in some secluded nunnery or caged in marital bliss?”
“Point of correction. I might be young but believe me, marriage is a permanent contract with the devil,” she said. “And whoever gave you the idea that nuns are ugly? Or are they not happy in their vocation?”
“I would answer the last two questions – that’s not what I meant.”
“Aha…”
“Would you like to elaborate?”
“Vocation is a call, may it be marriage or the convent, the call to the order is another case,” she ignored my question indifferently. “It entails more than sees the eye – sacrifice. That I leave to God, as I’ve said.”
I tried many times to rephrase my earlier question, but she kept avoiding it. At last, she said, “Sure, I would definitely like to be a nun, but I would not force myself to live a life I can’t meet its standards or live a double standard life. God knows.”
“But what about your choice?”
“I would prefer matrimony. But why would you ask such a question anyway? I am way too far from that, you know. I have to study first before such thoughts find a place in my mind.”
“No perceptible reason. Just curious because you look like a mystic, to me – just like St. Theresa.”
“Even marriage is a holy vocation where God continues His creation work through the married. No marriage, no more Catholics, the largest church in the world. Plus, St. Bridget was married, and her husband supported her very much; he was devout, God-fearing and faithful. Today we venerate St. Bridget, and other pious men and women who are great in the church and play a significant role in the Catholic spirituality and were married. Why would you think serving God devotedly is for the clergy?”
I smiled at that.
“I know that, but I was beginning to think that girls who join that devotional group gradually become nuns. And the boys in the Saint Aloysius Gonzaga devotional group – the equivalent of you for boys – become priests. My mistake.”
“Not really. It’s just like a nursery. After the seedlings are mature enough to be transferred to the garden, the farmer plants them elsewhere. In the devotional group we are like the young seedlings in a nursery, being taken care of and taught the right way of life and then later on be planted on the gardens where we can yield the fruits of our tending by the mother church. These gardens are different. They are either the seminaries or the convents, or religious homes, or lay families. God knows where to plant us. We’re just being prepared.”
“I think you have explained it to me vividly,” I said.
CHAPTER 111
“Do you have to do it?” Urbanas asked as he took a sip of his hot coffee. “Say whatever you like, Ken, but I’m not letting you out. You’re a loss we can’t afford. It is a mistake. You don’t wanna do this, not yet.”
I had to. My mind was made up. I bit my lower lip. “I told you, Urbanas, I’m opting out. I won’t take anything else from you.”
“Well, you took something from me today. You took yourself from me when you said that you’re quitting. You know this isn’t my way of doing things. Ideally I shouldn’t be here persuading you not to leave but I am doing it anyway because of the duty of care I have for you. Why else do you think I’d do this?”
“I don’t give a damn about anything about you now.”
“That sounds quite out of the way. You’re trying to get the better of me. It won’t be that good if you push me. I think you understand what your decision means, to you.”
“I wouldn’t waste my time trying. Your threats will do you no good. For Chrissake, I have a mind of my own. I choose what I want.”
“Oh, really!” his hands clenched into fists. I could see that his hackles were rising. I was piquing him. “You know I’d do anything to make you regret this.”
“So much threat. It’s a good thing you’re not in a position to do so.”
“Better than being out there, Ken. I would get to you no matter what. Please, don’t do this, come back home.”
“Either way I am in danger. Which is better, be always on th
e run running from the law or be a law abiding citizen caught up in a society where insecurity is the order of the day?”
“The life out there won’t offer you what I’d. Morals aren’t better either. Would you for once see it my way? The whole world is fucked up, everything, everybody.”
“So I have heard.”
“Everything out there is dirty – even the church you want to run to. It’s a house of nincompoops and hypocrites.”
“Something should be dirty for it to be cleansed. Since time immemorial it has been said that no one is perfect. It’s all part of the divine plan.”
“How smart of you to see through it, Ken.”
“My name is not Ken. I am Paul. Get used to it or...”
“It’s not hard to get used to your faking. I don’t know why the hell the priests in that church you want to go don’t see what a faker you are. You’re still you, Ken. Let them call you whatever you want, but you’re still you, Ken.”
“There’s nothing to see of me, and I am truly a wondrous faker.”
“You admit it?”
“Why not? You wouldn’t believe anything else, Urbanas. What shall it do to have you see in vision so clear that I am not in your canoe?”
“Why Paul?”
“I like Saul of Damascus. After all he’s a saint today.”
Urbanas looked puzzled.
“Hey Paul, don’t you remember the oath?”
“I must have grown too old to recall the past.”
Urbanas was watching me. “I see,” he said. “You’re weak of spirit, without power to overcome temptations, until you fall into them. Then you become disillusioned and finally put on a tag of Christianity around your neck. This won’t do you any good.”
“I am not weak. In fact, I am stronger than you who thinks is indefatigable and invincible. I pray that one day you come to realize what a wreck you are.” I stood up. “I am going now.”
“Yes, it’s time,” Urbanas said. “Come back to the family, we need you, and you’ll one day live to thank me for this.”
“I don’t need it. If it’s being a vagabond let me be, but I won’t. I am not coming back. Why don’t you see that? I am done with you, Urbanas.”
“That’s right, you told me that. But come back anyway. Don’t you ask yourself why I am begging you? I am trying to save your neck, Paul.”
“No, I won’t. I wouldn’t dare think otherwise. You’re leading me to the gallows next time. I am not ready for that.”
I turned to go.
“Don’t be too proud, Ken. Don’t you know that arrogance and pride seldom do any good to those who harbour them?”
“Why are you doing this? I was very clear to you.”
“Not out of kindness. I am not a kind guy. I have never been. Perhaps I want to convince you that it isn’t safe out there. I am afraid you want out but winter is coming.”
“Urbanas, I made myself very clear. Turn on me and let loose all the bitterness for my betrayal of the gang and ferocity that’s bottled up inside you. I have never seen anyone with all that stored bitterness and violence.”
I stared at him. I saw it in his eyes. The violence, bitterness, revenge and hope mirage away. He couldn’t break me, not with his empty threats.”
“Go away, Ken. I hope you know what you’ve done, what you’ve chosen. You want to go out there where I got you, poor and impoverished, you’ll think you’ve done what is best for you, and you’ll pray. Such a waste of time. Then I’ll come for you...”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe. I’ll come for you, Kennedy Paul Maina...”
I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness. I hadn’t dreamed about Urbanas for years. Not since I quit Mavis. Why now?
I got out of bed and moved to the window and threw it open. The air was cool on my naked body and I took a deep breath.
The moon, like a shining benignant face, broke through the clouds.
There was light behind the clouds.
CHAPTER 112
2014
Monday 6th January;
“Do you mean,” Hedwig said, “that you were interviewing me that day to come to this?”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked with a genuinely innocent shrug.
“Oh, nothing,” she said sarcastically, piqued, “Nothing at all. Only that I wonder, what about your wife?”
“I have never had one,” I told her, hoping I will get the better of her.
“Oh, I see. Okay then, I am completely astounded to hear that. Little did I know about what you wanted all that time you’re interviewing me.”
We were sitting at a tiny corner table in the vicarage’s lobby, a cosy frangipani pungent smelling place not far from my room at the vicarage.
“I think I should have told you then,” I admitted. “It was pretty much a good idea to know of you first.”
“And what has made you say it now? Why do you think of me that way? For God’s sake, I am a school girl,” she was no longer peeved.
“Because you accepted to come over I take it that you wanted to too. About your school girl thing, I think I have not asked to sleep with you, school gal. And I have not refuted the fact that you’re still in school. I will wait in the world’s longest queue just for the mere fact of being with you.”
“I am too young for that, I can’t do that. For God’s sake I am in high school.”
Now that was a shocker. I had thought that the school girl she meant was college or university. How many college girls were screwing around? She looked as though she was in college, though. It never occurred to me that she was a preteen looking twenty the way she did. I was about to say something when she added, “Lest you mean we be friends.”
“In a way we kind of are friends.”
“Mere friends!” She said brusquely.
“It could be, especially for now when you are still in school.”
“You think the course would change?”
“Think it’d change?” I shrugged, as if to relegate the matter to unimportance. “I don’t really know or have to think whether it’d change or not, it’s only a chance that is needed. Do you think I will or might…?”
“Why not?” she cringed to what she thought I was about to say.
“Because I don’t think that you should see me as Tom, Dick and Harry. I’ve been kind of researching and you’d be surprised by some of the goodies in it.”
“Such as?”
“Well, apart from the fact that you’ve seen many girls fall victim to false love and teaching by your elders that men are vile creatures that eat the yolk of the egg and hit you with the empty of the shell, I know you’ve read and heard many things. It’s all over in the news about love triangles and love affairs turned sour… about paedophiles and all. I am not...”
“It’s pretty true.” She interrupted me sceptically. “I don’t want to regret later. I think I should learn from the mistakes of others since I won’t live that long to make them myself.”
Smart girl.
“Not with me.” I gazed down at the glass of coke on the table that was supposed to be hers. “Why aren’t you taking your drink?” I asked her. Or maybe she feared I had laced it with Psychedelic Heroin. Well, if that was what she was thinking, she was justified in being paranoid. Only if she could know I was not that kind of man? Well, some years before I would have done it without batting an eyelid, but that was then.
“I am,” she picked up her glass and took a sip, her expression disapproving, nonchalant, and disinterested.
“Have I hurt you by…?”
“How would you? I think you are probably crazy, and out of your mind. We just met the other day…” she took another sip, her gawk on me. “Do I look like am thirty to you? And to think I am interested in you? It sucks,” she said and looked at me in the eye.
“If you were interested in me, I’m sure you would find a much better way of telling me,” she told me.
“I’m not sure I know what to say.”
“Then don’t say anything. I am not the type to be sweet talked with a crumpled note of fifty shillings. I know what I want with my life.”
“Hedwig, I have not suggested anything soppy. I just wanted to book early in time. Moreover, the early bird catches the worm.”
“And the early worm gets eaten up,” she said satirically. “The world is full of women, more beautiful and ready for you than me. Why don’t you go to them?”
“You’ve got what they don’t. No man who’d know you would want to let you pass by him. You’re endowed with rare beauty, Hedwig, the inner beauty.”
“How long do you think you would love me before you get tired of me.”
“I will never tire of you. I shall love you forever and ever.”
“The same old promise, ninety-nine per cent perspiration and one per cent inspiration. On the other hand, forever is something denied to mortal man.”
“I told you, Hedwig, I am Ken, not Tom, Dick or Harry.”
“That’s what I’m trying to think whether I would accept as a fact – not to take you as already Tumescent, Dick and Hurry!” she took a long pause then asked, “How many girls have you told this?”
I was silent for a moment, and then took a new tact. “You don’t think I am a savage, do you?”
“Yes! I think you are one sicko who should undergo psychotherapy. Look at me, I am like your daughter if you ever got to marry early, or sister for that matter,” she was spitting it out.
Now this isn’t good.
My mind started to race. Though I was at the fringe of which way to go, I still felt that I needed a woman, as the saying goes – behind every successful man is a woman – for my success in my Christian journey, and I thought I would find that in Hedwig. Being in school was inconsequential, school was for a season. She was mature in a seductive way, alluring. She was right in not only disapproving my insensitivity but also reproaching me for my amative mind.
Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) Page 27
