Knife Fight and Other Struggles (9 page)

The pang lasted an instant. Looking past Lottie, I noticed that Ruman was gone. Seeing my confusion, Lottie pointed to the pulpit.

“Ah,” I said. Ruman had made his way there with some two-dozen others. There was no music playing, but he and they seemed to be dancing, or their shoulders were moving like dancers. The pastor stepped onto the low stage and reached down to help another up: this one an older woman in a long dress, her grey hair tied in a bun. The room dimmed as a cloud drifted past the sun. She held her hands up in the air, waggled her fingers, and began to sway. The pastor said nothing, but held his microphone to his chest, and swayed also. Around me, the congregation began to stand, and Carrie nudged me, and Cheryl tugged my arm as she stood. Beside her, Lottie shut her eyes and began to hum.

A spotlight came on, illuminating the woman on the stage. She leaned her head back as though bathing in it. Then she too began to speak, to shout. She bunched her shoulders, as though coiling a spring there, and released, her arms spreading from her waist, and she did not just shout—she screamed. The pastor stepped back and held his arms out over her head, fingers spread as though he were preparing to catch her, should gravity fling her high.

I remember an impulse then, to wrap my own arms around myself. But I could not. Cheryl and Carrie had taken my hands, one each, and held my arms apart. I suppose I might have pulled away, forcefully drawn my arms in. But the fear passed as fast as it came. And like Cheryl, like Carrie—like Ruman, gyrating and babbling with the crowd in front of the pulpit—

I was swept up.

When it was finished, we all went for lunch at a pancake place on the other side of the motorway. It was crowded and noisy, and there was no hope of finding a table for all of us. We divided ourselves: Cheryl, myself, Lisa, and Lottie took a table near the window; Ruman, Carrie, Mary, and Rose found a booth not too far off. Cheryl thought it important that no one who had come to church in the same car also sit at the same table.

“How else are we going to build community,” she asked as we took our places in the sunlight, “if every time we worship, we all sit in our little tribes?”

“Amen,” I said. I glanced over at the booth. Ruman’s face was obscured by the menu.

“Aw,” said Lottie, “you miss your friend?” She patted my arm.

“He seems to like it here,” I said. It was true. We didn’t speak much in the short drive over, but I had never seen Ruman seem so . . . nourished.

“He does at that,” said Cheryl. “How ’bout you? You think you might join us?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “I don’t know about. . . .” I waggled my fingers at my shoulders and swayed a bit in my chair. Lisa concealed a grin. Cheryl didn’t bother. She laughed.

We ordered: me, a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs; Lottie, a platter of fresh fruit; Cheryl, an omelette. Lisa asked for a big plate of pancakes topped with stewed apples.

“Did you go to church with Ruman?” asked Lisa, as we waited for our meals. “Back in the old country?”

“No. Ruman came here just recently. I have been here two years more. I did not know Ruman. We have a job together.”

“He said he didn’t like church in the old country.” I could see Lottie trying to shush Lisa, but she made as not to notice and pressed on. “He said he likes this one better. Do you like this one better?”

Cheryl cut in. “Well, I bet there’s no dancing back in the old church, not like we have,” she said. She waggled her fingers as I had.

“Oh, there can be dancing,” I said. “They do all sorts of things in our churches.”

“You see?” said Cheryl to Lottie, as though settling a long argument. “There’s more we have in common than not, even across the wide ocean.”

The food came, but not all at once. First, Lottie got her fruit, which she left untouched in front of her, sipping at her tea until my eggs and bacon arrived along with Cheryl’s omelette, whereupon Lisa urged all of us to eat.

“I do like your church better,” I said as I scooped egg onto a piece of toast. “But I did not spend much time inside our churches. We have a different. . . .” I struggled for the word in the new language.

“Faith?” offered Cheryl, but I shook my head.

“Obligation,” I said. “Nearer that. Our God demands different things than yours does.”

“It’s all one God,” said Cheryl, and Lottie added: “Praise Be He.”

“It’s not all one God,” said Lisa, “when you think about the Muslims and the Buddhists and the Hindus . . . the
things
they worship. Can’t be. And how can you say God is He?”

“Oh, cut that out. I’ll tell your mother.” Cheryl wagged her finger and laughed. “It’s all one God,” she said to me, “when you get right down to it.”

“Okay,” I said and nodded over Lisa’s shoulder. “I think your food is coming.”

The plate for pancakes was larger than any of ours, and I had to move aside to make room for it. The waitress smiled as Lottie made an ooh-ing sound, and Cheryl said, “Better you than us, kiddo,” to Lisa. “That’d go straight to my thighs.”

“Enjoy,” said the waitress, and moved off. Lisa just looked at it, hands in her lap.

“What is it, sweetheart?” asked Lottie. “Bigger than you expected?”

Lisa looked up at all of us.

“It’s a miracle,” she said quietly, and pointed to the top of her pancake stack.

We all looked. Cheryl said she didn’t see anything at first, but she was the only one.

“It’s the face of Jesus,” said Lottie. Cheryl frowned and looked at it, and then at me. I nodded. There was a face, there, in the apples—strong cheekbones over deep-set eyes, brows of apple crescents, and the yellow sauce spilling down the edge of the pancakes in the unmistakable shape of a beard. It was a bright face, a Holy face—formed from apple on a young girl’s plate.

Cheryl looked again and gasped.

“You’re right, hon. It is a miracle.” Cheryl waved at the booth. “Hey! Rose! Come look what the Lord made your daughter!”

Rose came over, and soon everyone from the other table was standing around, bearing witness to the miracle of the apple face on Lisa’s plate. The waitress stopped by to see if everything was all right, and when Carrie explained to her, she looked and agreed. Mobile phones emerged from purses and recorded the miracle through their tiny lenses.

Lisa wondered what she should do with it, and it was finally Ruman who settled the matter.

“You should eat it,” he said, “for God has delivered your Harvest, and it would be a sin to deny His bounty, yes?”

That made Lisa smile. “Well, I don’t want to be sinning,” she said, and I suppressed a gasp as she cut into the apparition’s cheek with her fork.

I didn’t have opportunity to speak with Ruman again that day. As lunch finished, it transpired that Rose had offered to drive Ruman home. The offer created complications, displacing one from that car—either Cheryl or Carrie—and Cheryl wondered if she could take Ruman’s place in mine. Of course I agreed.

When in Radejast, I did not only visit the cathedral and walk at night at solstice. I was there for two weeks’ time, on my own, and the nights were long. I visited the taverns, and one night, I met a woman. She was no virgin, but not a whore either. I think she may have hoped I would bring her back with me, as my bride. But no words were spoken to that effect as we quit the tavern arm in arm, slipped through a dark alcove and into her rooms. When I left, there were no tears. She kissed me on the cheek and touched her forehead to my shoulder and sent me away.

It was another matter with Cheryl.

She lived on the second floor of a low-rise apartment building that overlooked a deep ravine. When I started to pull toward the front doors where the taxis would come and go, she told me the visitor parking was in back. “If you want to,” she said, and put her hand on mine. “It would be okay.”

And so I came to Cheryl’s apartment. It was not much larger than mine, but she had made it far more pleasant. The television, the sofa, even the pictures on the walls—everything seemed new. The window gave a tantalizing view of the ravine through tree branches, and hid the view of the other high rises that grew from the far bank. It was as though she lived on the edge of a deep forest.

“You like?” she asked from behind me. I said that I did. She reached around and took my hand—and truly, I was not surprised when she placed it on her naked hip. I turned and saw that her dress was abandoned, sloughed off like a skin, on the floor behind her.

“You are very beautiful,” I said as she withdrew, and she laughed—softly now—and for an instant turned away.

“You don’t believe me?” I said, and she answered, “No. But you’re a pretty liar,” and the instant passed, and she kissed me once more.

“Oh God, forgive me,” she said as she reached down and fumbled with my belt buckle. I reached to help her, but she batted my hand away and finished the work, bent down and yanked my trousers to my knees. I stumbled a bit, and at that she laughed, and pushed, and I fell back, landing hard on my behind just short of the sofa.

Cheryl did not ask for my forgiveness. She laughed, fell to her hands, crawled forward so her face hung over mine, grinning like a mountain cat’s. She moaned low. I kicked off my shoes, my trousers. She descended upon me. And in this way we copulated, swaying and growling as if to the rhythms of the old chants, on the thin carpet over her apartment’s hard concrete floor.

I wrote down the number of my mobile before I left Cheryl’s apartment that afternoon, but she told me not to expect a call.

“You got to go,” she said, her voice flat, when she finally came out of the washroom. She had clothed herself in light blue track pants and a sweater. Her feet, still bare, never lifted far off the floor as she led me to the door. I didn’t hear her crying, not once that day, but her eyes were red and wet. Perhaps I should have apologized, although for what I could not fathom. So I said all I could think of—

“You are beautiful.”

—which only enraged her. She shouted at me to get out, called me names, waved her fists, but I put my hands up in surrender and told her I would leave if that was what she wished. This placated her, and Cheryl stood, huffing and swallowing and glaring, as I gathered myself and hurried into the dim corridor.

I ate lunch with Ruman on Monday but we did not talk about very much. He did thank me for joining him at the congregation, or more properly, for the ride there, but he said he wouldn’t need another; he’d made an arrangement with Rose. He didn’t, thankfully, ask me if I’d enjoyed myself at the service or afterwards, and I didn’t ask him. I made one feeble joke—biting into my apple, peering at the pulp I announced, “No face today.” Ruman just shook his head and waved the little blasphemy away with the flat of his hand.