Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible

He listened with his head cocked to the side. “And still your father came here determined to plant his American garden in the Congo.”

“My father thinks the Congo is just lagging behind and he can help bring it up to snuff. Which is crazy. It’s like he’s trying to put rubber tires on a horse.”

Anatole raised his eyebrows. I don’t suppose he’s ever seen a horse. They can’t live in the Congo because of tsetse flies. I tried to think of some other work animal for my parable, but the Congo has none. Not even cows. The point I was trying to make was so true there was not even a good way to say it.

“On a goat,” I said finally. “Wheels on a goat. Or on a chicken, or a wife. My father’s idea of what will make things work better doesn’t fit anything here.”

“Ayi, Beene. That poor goat of your father’s is a very unhappy animal.”

And his wife! I thought. But I couldn’t help picturing a goat with big tires stuck in the mud, and it made me giggle.Then I felt stupid. I could never tell if Anatole respected me or just thought I was an amusing child.

“I oughtn’t to laugh at my father,” I said.

“No,” he said, touching his lips and rolling his eyes upward.

“I shouldn’t! It’s a sin.” Sin, sin, I felt drenched and sick of it. “I used to pray to God to make me just like him. Smart and righteous and adequate to His will,” I confessed. “Now I don’t even know what to wish for. I wish I were more like everybody else.”

He leaned forward and looked into my eyes. His finger moved from his lips toward my face and hovered, waiting for a place to plant its blessing. “Beene, if you were more like everybody else, you would not be so beene-beene.”

“I wish you’d tell me what that means, beene-beene. Don’t I have a right to know my own name?”

His hand dropped to the table. “I will tell you someday.”

If I never learned my French conjugations from Anatole, at least I would try to learn patience. “Can I ask you something else?”

He considered this request, his left hand still holding his place in his book. “Yes.”

“Why do you translate the sermons for my father? I know what you think of our mission here.”

“Do you?”

“Well, I think I do. You came to dinner that time and explained how Tata Ndu doesn’t like so many people following Christian ways, instead of the old ways. I guess you probably think that, too, that the old ways were better. You don’t care for the way the Belgians did the elections, and I don’t think you’re even so sure about girls teaching school.”

“Beene, the Belgians did not come to me and ask, Anatole Ngemba, how shall we make the election? They merely said, ‘Kilanga, here are your votes. You may cast them in this calabash bowl or that calabash bowl, or toss them all in the river.’My job was to explain that choice.”

“Well, but still. I don’t think you’re very keen on what my father aims to accomplish here.”

“I don’t entirely know what he aims to accomplish here. Do you?”

“Tell the stories of Jesus, and God’s love. Bring them all to the Lord.”

“And if no one translated his sermons, how would he tell those stories?”

“That’s a good question. I guess he’d keep trying in French and Kikongo, but he gets those mixed up pretty bad. People probably never would get it straight what he was doing here exactly.”

“I think you are right. They might like your father more, if they couldn’t understand him, or they might like him less. It’s hard to say. But if they understand his words, they can make up their own minds.”

I looked long and hard at Anatole. “You respect my father, then.”

“What I respect is what I have seen. Nothing can stay the same, when somebody new walks into your house bringing gifts. Let’s say he has brought you a cooking pot. You already had a cooking pot you liked well enough, but maybe this new one is bigger. You’ll be very pleased, and gloat about it by giving the old one to your sister. Or maybe the new pot has a hole in the bottom. In that case you will thank your visitor very much, and when he is gone you’ll put it in the yard for feeding fish scales to the chickens.”

“So you’re just being polite. You don’t believe in Jesus Christ at all.”

He clicked his tongue. “What I believe in is not so important. I am a teacher. Do I believe in the multiplication tables? Do I believe in la languefrancaise, with its extra letters hanging onto every word like lazy children? No matter. People need to know what they are choosing. I’ve watched many white men come into our house, always bringing things we never saw before. Maybe scissors or medicine or a motor for a boat. Maybe books. Maybe a plan for digging up diamonds or growing rubber. Maybe stories about Jesus. Some of these things seem very handy, and some turn out to be not so handy. It is important to distinguish.”

“And if you didn’t translate the Bible stories, then people might sign up to be Christian for the wrong reasons. They’d figure our God gave us scissors and malaria pills so He’s the way to go.”

He smiled at me sideways. “This word beene-beene, you want to know what it means, then?”

“Yes!”

“It means, as true as the truth can be.”

I felt a tingling blush in my cheeks, and the embarrassment made me blush more. I tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. My eyes returned to French sentences I found I couldn’t translate.

“Anatole,” I said finally, “if you could have anything in the world, what would you want?”

Without hesitation he said, “To see a map of the whole world at once.”

“Really?You never have?”

“Not all of it at once. I can’t work out whether it’s a triangle, a circle, or a square.”

“It’s round,” I said, astonished. How could he not know? He’d gone to plantation schools and served in the houses of men who had shelves full of books. He spoke better English than Rachel. Yet he didn’t know the true shape of the world. “Not a circle, but like this,” I said, cupping my hands. “Round like a ball. Really you’ve never seen a globe?”

“I heard about a globe. A map on a ball. I wasn’t sure I understood it correctly because I couldn’t see how it would fit on a ball. Have you seen one?”

“Anatole, I have one. In America lots of people have them.”

He laughed. “For what? To help them decide where to drive the automobile?”

“I’m not joking. They’re in schoolrooms and everywhere. I’ve spent so much time staring at globes I could probably make one.”

He gave me a doubting look.

“I could. I mean it. You bring me a nice clean calabash and I’ll make you a globe of your own.”

“I would like that very much,” he said, speaking to me now as a grown-up friend, not a child. For the first time ever, I felt certain of it.

“You know what, I shouldn’t be teaching math. I should teach geography. I could tell your boys about the oceans and cities and all the wonders of the world!”

He smiled sadly. “Beene, they would not believe you.”

Rachel

THE DAY AFTER. MY BIRTHDAY, Axelroot came over and we went for a walk. I more or less knew to expect him. His routine was to fly out to his mystery destination on Thursdays, come back Mondays, and come to our house on Tuesdays. So I’d put on my tulip-tailored poison-green suit, which has now officially faded to poison drab and lost two of its buttons. For the first half of last year I prayed for a full-length mirror, and the second half I praised the Lord we didn’t have one. Still, who cares if my suit wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t a date, just a make-believe date for appearances. I planned to walk with him around the village, and not a speck farther. I swore to Mother I would not set foot into the forest with him or anywhere out of sight. She says she doesn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, and believe you me from the look in her eye I think she could throw him pretty far. But he is polite and has cleaned up his style. Standing in the doorway waiting for me in his regulation Sanforized wash-and-wear khakis and pilot sunglasses, why, he very nearly almost looked handsome. If you could ignore the telltale signs that he is a certified creep.