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  Jimmy croaks, “A geriatric like me? I’m waiting for an angel to bring me a wheelchair!” Simeon he-haws from down in his thin belly. Head and shoulders sunk in mock submission to their fates, they sniff their way to breakfast.

  On Monday, Jimmy gets through the “Principle and Foundation,” Ignatius’s first-day exercise. He figures they let you slide into contemplation’s slow eddies before shoving you through the rapids and over the falls, so while he can, he savours paddling about in “reverencing and serving God.” It is what he wants, now that there’s no Nila. After she died, he was stuck up a stagnant, smelly creek, mired in indifference, so he knows the price of attachment. He longs to be “free from all worldly desires,” to have “a wholesome sense of God, himself, and creation” as St. Ignatius recommends. Floating downstream with no wants and no cares will be heaven indeed!

  These thoughts are pretty much what he reports to the director on Tuesday, as he reviews his response to the day before. He is relieved to confess to Father Kelly that Nila has been a part of his prayerful consideration. He loved her utterly — indeed he’s caught himself weighing her and God side by side, more than once. Isn’t that idolatry? Reverencing Nila as much as reverencing God?

  Today is day three, the day for grappling with sin. It is going to be a grim business, a trip through the torrents and very likely over fearful cataracts, so Jimmy can’t tell what prompts him to bring up the matter of how much they are all diverted by the sight of the priest in his kiloli.

  “Father, if I may ask a question before we begin …”

  “You certainly may, Brother.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Is there something that ought to be bothering me — remind me of your name, please. I’ve forgotten.”

  It irks him that the priest doesn’t remember his name. John Kelly is old, but not that old, and there are just a dozen retreatants. Perhaps the foreigner is feigning ignorance to upset his composure, teach him humility, show him he is just one of the bunch and nothing special. He lets himself think this, at the same time that he knows it makes little sense for a strange priest to come halfway across the world to conduct a retreat and begin by dissembling about, of all things, recalling a novice’s name. The idea and his irritation nonetheless persist.

  “It’s Jimmy,” he says in his best British. “Jimmy Atule.”

  “Merci,” says the priest. “And I am John.” Perhaps realizing there is awkwardness he adds, “John Kelly.” Feet and eyes and shoulders shift about in the discomfort. “You were saying something should be bothering me, Brother Atule?”

  “No, Father. I was asking whether something was in fact bothering you.”

  Match language proficiency? Jimmy almost laughs. Does this white American want to compete with him where language is concerned? Well, a competition he’ll get for sure! Jimmy thinks of the four languages he speaks, the fact that most Mabulians speak two or three. It is no longer just a matter of the joke with the kiloli.

  “Always when a retreat begins I’m bothered, Brother. Right now the Devil, he looks up, sees twelve men, like the apostles, and he knows they’re going to take thirty whole days to talk to God, meditate on the life of Jesus, consider their walk with him. The sight motivates him greatly. Faced with such a Satan, I’m very bothered.”

  Round one to the pale chimpanzee wrapped up like a Mabulian.

  Ignatius has a modern wisdom about measuring progress, advising that the retreatant move according to his own pace, not according to any arbitrary regimen of time. Jimmy is advancing pretty much with the days, though, and the third day has loomed, for he knows he has tales to tell. Obsessed as he is with sex and celibacy, he forgets that it is not just his sin to be considered; it is the whole story of evil. They are to contemplate the sin of the Rebellious Angels, for which they deserved Hell; Adam and Eve’s sin, for which they had long done penance and which ushered in corruption to the race; and finally his own infractions, a miserable many as against the One Mortal Sin that has sent Various Individuals to Hell. Yes, he supposes he deserves Hell well enough. Except he is lured away from the fullest realization of all this sinfulness by his father’s steady provision and protection, his mother and Mapome’s securing eyes, his sisters’ glad affections, and Nila’s passion. So many people have cared for him and not counted his errant ways. Surely a loving God won’t be scrounging for sin, his or anybody else’s?

  Jimmy is in John Kelly’s office. He looks at his hands, long slim hands, the hands of a musician, Mapome said, or a surgeon, for they put away the film star nonsense once he grew up. By now they know him, and he knows himself, at least a bit: that he is smart, for every report of his teachers confirms it; that he has presence, for people stir when he appears the way a breeze ripples leaves; that he is strong and keen, the way a good horse stows might in his heart and legs. And now the great work of his hands is to be a priestly one. It excites him that he’ll hold a circle of bread, and speak words that will make the white bread become, in his black fists, the Body of Christ — a perfect yin and yang.

  It brings him to his sinful trouble. “I most of all want to be sure I can keep a vow of celibacy, Father. I’m not so stupid as to think I can fool God about anything, and sex is such an obvious thing. I’ve loved women. I’ve enjoyed lovemaking and even now enjoy it in my dreams. How am I going to manage that?”

  The priest shifts in his chair. Ha! He is uncomfortable! Jimmy had determined long before that white people can’t figure out sex, largely because they resist seeing the plain-as-day reason for it, which is to procreate. No Mabulian has that trouble. Nila and he made no attempt to prevent her getting pregnant, so he lost not just a wife but a child as well. That increases his guilt and makes the bereavement harder to bear, and, in some contorted way, aggravates his libido.

  A priest who squirms at sexual matters? He’ll hardly be much use. That Jimmy takes pleasure in the thought is itself sinful, as sinful as the fact that he keeps thinking of the priest as a chimpanzee. But why not? Surely Africans suffer precisely that characterization at the hands of whites? Still, this one is no chimp: a bit of a gorilla maybe, but not a chimp. He doesn’t have the chimp’s playfulness, its kindergarten penchant for mischief.

  The priest breaks into his thoughts on matters simian. “You love women?”

  “I confess I do, Father.”

  “What do you suppose the correct priestly alternative to that might be?”

  Saints preserve his temper! The man is perfectly cognizant of what he is talking about. He’s no intention of pussyfooting around, not during the few times when he can talk in thirty days of silence.

  “Father, I don’t think I can be a good priest if I keep on wanting women, desiring them as sexual partners. ”

  The white man’s eyes are fixed on the wall behind Jimmy’s head where the paint is peeling, as it is elsewhere in the room and in many buildings in the seminary. That, too, makes Jimmy angry, at whom he isn’t sure.

  “Let’s talk about it when we meet this evening. Meantime, why don’t you consider whether Joseph desired Mary? Chat with him. See what he says.”

  That one takes Jimmy by surprise, but he doesn’t let it show. He rises, saying, “Very well, Father. Till this evening, then.”

  “Have a good day and on your way over, do ask Brother Simeon to come in.” Simeon’s name the priest remembers.

  Three big baobab trees, according to tradition the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, stand on the line that marks the eastern boundary of the seminary garden. There is a small chapel inside the trunk of the Holy Ghost, where they can go to meditate if they wish, but it isn’t Jimmy’s favourite place, perhaps because of a story Mapome once told of ancestral spirits living in baobab trees. The big trees have retained their grandeur never mind the drought that for too long has parched the Sahel. Beyond the fence, néré trees mount occasional guard over valiant fields of millet.

  Mabuli has been lucky. Tributaries of the River Bani, next door in Mali, traverse Mabuli’
s long, thin caterpillar shape, hugging the western border of Burkina Faso. Once the rains cease and it is clear there will be no further celestial blessings for a good long while, the Oti, the association of all Mabuli’s holy men — imams, shamans, priests, and marabouts — begin to preach the husbandry of water. People hoard it in containers sunk in basins of sand and stored in dark places. If they travel with it, they hide the water gourds in larger vessels of sand or seeds. The drought tests them, but the country weathers it. By God’s grace and by dint of many prayers, the Mabenke, largest stream feeding the Bani, runs low, but never dry.

  As he approaches Simeon, a graceful figure, his long, thin body bending forward, a reed in a gentle wind, he reminds himself to pray for those who have died in the drought and to keep praying for rain. “Your turn, Simeon.”

  “Il est très étrange, très blanc?” his friend frets.

  “He’s white, but not so strange. In fact, he’s okay. He’s fine.” Jimmy feels free to say this. Simeon will hardly be talking to the priest about wet dreams — though as he watches the other man quicken his steps across the stone path that leads to the main house, he thinks, what does he know, after all? The rest are younger men, one or two still in their teens.

  He stays in the chapel through lunch, emerging when the midday meal is over to go to the refectory for a drink. Alone, and glad of it, he helps himself to water from a fridge that belches as he pulls open the door, something else to grate on his nerves. A grey smudge in the distance catches his attention on the way back, and he muses hopefully that rain clouds might be gathering. He prays for rain once more, as he slips back into the cool dark of the Angelus chapel and lifts his eyes to the Manokouma windows.

  Three stained glass windows show Mary in kilolis of different colours. One of the two small windows shows her, a little girl at riverside among the rocks, jubilant in red and green, brandishing njamra, fat river prawn endemic to the Mabenke; in the other, she is clad in her undergarment, her dead son folded into a blood-encrusted grey kiloli. In the main window behind the altar, the artist has conjured a teenager with burnished skin in a kiloli of cerulean and indigo, mouth half-open in astonishment, eyes matching the gaze of an incandescent angel with a halo of crinkly hair. Nearby a Mabuli Joseph stands at his workbench, hammer in hand, perplexed.

  Jimmy sits watching as the pools of light from the large window chase the darkness from here to there. At school he disputed with his mates about whether or not Mary remained a virgin.

  “Gospel says Jesus had brothers and sisters,” his friend, Tjuma, maintained. “They weren’t all the sons of God, so either Joseph had more than one wife or Mary bore him children.” That is not so much the present point. At home and at school, he has heard about Joseph’s roles: protector during Mary’s pregnancy on the trek to Bethlehem, and the flight into Egypt, and foster father to Jesus. But no one spoke of Joseph as a normal male with a man’s desires. It is such an obvious, human question. Did Joseph want Mary? And if so, did the wanting obligingly evaporate once he started having angelic visitors who hustled him off to foreign lands so as to dodge tyrannical baby-killers?

  At sunset he makes his way past neat lines of beans in the kitchen garden to the retreat director’s office. He imagines himself tranquil by then, soothed by meditative prayer, but as he stoops to sit in John Kelly’s room, what calm the radiant windows brought him flees like a mbuni rat, leaving him nervous and bereft of control, much as he felt when wet water gourds slithered from his hands as a small boy.

  “Did you hear from Joseph, then?” John Kelly asks.

  “We spoke, Father, but he didn’t answer my question directly.”

  “Why not?”

  Given his anxiety, Jimmy is surprised to hear himself say, “He felt that we do not know each other well enough for me to put a query like that to him.”

  The priest’s laughter sets up a quarrel with the kiloli, which quivers bawdily across his belly. “Perhaps he’s suggesting you not make too much of the whole business.”

  “That may be.”

  “Or perhaps he said something you prefer not to tell me. That’s fine too.”

  Jimmy does things with his face that he hopes suggest amiable assent. During the day he examined his conscience again, worried over a lack of charity, perhaps even hostility towards the priest. But he absolves himself. He is the younger man, the man in training, and more than that, the party offended by history. Mabuli is his place, Africa his continent. It is an ancient land, birthplace of man and civilization. Strangers of all colours are welcome, but he is sure God does not wish him to behave with any of them like a subservient nincompoop.

  And the priest is right. He did gather something from Joseph. It has to do with loving a woman as a woman, for he is sure the saint loved Mary so. He isn’t sure how that can be since it puts Joseph in competition with God, but then she was Joseph’s before Gabriel came calling.

  “Aren’t you going a far journey in ten words?” John Kelly resumes.

  “What ten words, Father?”

  “Let’s see. ‘I keep on wanting women, desiring them as sexual partners.’ ”

  “I don’t know about a journey, but I mean the words.”

  “I’ve no doubt. Tell me, will you stop wanting food and water, air and sleep when you take vows?”

  “I’ll keep on wanting women, but I shouldn’t worry? Is that it, Father?” It is rude. He is sorry at how it comes out, but he doesn’t take it back.

  “Worry’s the Devil’s weapon, Brother.”

  Very insightful, Jimmy thinks, but holds his tongue.

  “Shall we go a bit further on your ten-word journey?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not following you, Father.”

  “What’s needed is for us to follow your words, precisely. You went from wanting women, to desiring them as sexual partners, I think?”

  “They’re the same thing, aren’t they? I’ve always thought them the same.”

  “What do you mean when you speak of wanting a woman?”

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say.” Jimmy is immediately furious with himself, but he moves for swift redress. “Are you asking me for a description of my emotional state or a definition of the word ‘want?’ ”

  “The dictionary is for definitions. It’s how you feel that I’m interested in.”

  “It’s a physical thing, isn’t it, a burden in the flesh, a need to be inside a woman.” Again Jimmy watches John Kelly’s face to see if the plain talk upsets him, but the ruddy features betray only attention. “I was married to a woman whom I worshipped. I know wanting isn’t a penis looking for a cozy place to burrow into.”

  “So what is wanting, Brother?”

  “Wanting is how a baby is till it has its mother’s nipple in its mouth.” Again, he is startled at the sureness of his speech. “It’s as the psalmist says. ‘My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.’ ”

  “And what of desire?” the old priest asks.

  “That’s a plainer thing. You desire a meal, a good Arabian horse, or a robe of the best silk. Desire has an object.”

  “And you grasp it, this object?”

  “You do, or you intend to. Perhaps that’s why Jesus says you’ve sinned if you desire your neighbour’s wife in your heart. Maybe it’s reprehensible because you are treating her as a thing.”

  “That may very well be. Is there no object at the end of wanting, then?”

  “Your wanting reposes in a person. That’s its nature. But you do not seek the person as an object, no.”

  Silence, then, “You’ve said that wanting a woman comes with the maleness of you; desiring a woman is an act of your will. Wanting blooms, like a yawn, whereas desire plots, as a wild beast hunts prey. It’s bloody-minded like an ass, bent on its own way. If you let it run off, it won’t be easy to pull up, lead it to drink, eat, do ordinary things to sustain its life.”

  “That’s very subtle, isn’t it, Father John?�
� The confusion of images amuses Jimmy, but he likes their simplicity.

  “Subtle? Aye, maybe, but there you have it.” The priest looks content. Jimmy wonders what he does with his lusts. The word suits him: he is a lusty man. His face glows in the half dark, and not with heat. “That’s the whole thing, Brother, in a nutshell. Grace is subtle. God is subtle, sensitive, following us into light and dark, tones and hues, little yearnings and grand obsessions. Too often we won’t let him be God, for even our sins are in his charge. He knows them in and out — he even makes good of them. For sure he’s not an Almighty Machine with two counters, one to number sinners, the other to tally saints.”

  “But God does count, Father John. What of those Old Testament stories, the angel looking for a hundred men so God would spare the city, then ten, then one? What of the parable of the talents, what was done with the five and the two and the one? I’d say there is much numbering in the Bible.”

  “It’s not a book for lazy brains, nor people who have no imagination. Suppose I tell you of a soccer match where the score was nil-all, another where the score was three-nil, and another where the score was ten-nil. What do those scores mean to you?”

  “I’d hope the side getting nil all the time isn’t the one I’m supporting.”

  “Nah, that was my side,” says the priest. He takes a rag from his pocket and wipes his brow, a rash of drops on it despite the coolness of the night. “Do the scores tell you nothing else, then?”

  “They say that in one game, your team was as good or as bad as mine. In another mine beat yours fair and square. And the last time mine trounced yours.”

  “Good. And if you thought about them a bit longer, they would tell you more, lead you to wonder about the side getting nil all the time, and the one getting better and better scores. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says his father has numbered all the hairs on your head, but that has nothing to do with counting.”

  “Nor hairs,” Jimmy acknowledges.

  The sun has almost set; the puff of cloud Jimmy saw earlier has long since blown away. Instead, the day has shrivelled like an overripe mango. Through the window, he can hear the cries of nightjars and owls and glimpse, beyond the three baobabs, an intermittent wind plaiting and replaiting the fields of grain.