Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

He explains the steps, shallow and wide along the whole front of the building. And that the thing is — how many chances would he get to build a church? A Roman Catholic one at that. It’s not just a house or an office, it’s something for the people. And that he had had to ask himself, What does church mean to me? What are the contemporary and eternal resonances of it?

“Where will it be built?” she asks.

He told her — Maloney. And now it was her turn to look at the dreams lying bare on his face.

“In the housing-scheme area. By the highway,” he adds, apologetically.

The miles of hot little concrete boxes, crammed into a grid off the highway, are an outstanding government eyesore. Faded, inner-city-style council blocks tower sadly above the dry field of packed boxes, not a space for a tree between them.

“I know, I know.” He hurries on. “But this is it! The government gave them a plot of land to do something — for the community.”

“Government gave the Roman Catholics?”

“Yes, but it’s not a very big piece.”

“And they build a church?”

Fraser is surprised by the sharp side of this deer, talking as if she knows him from some long-gone forest days. It makes him feel like he knows her better somehow too, like she senses his base position. Her wide gaze boldens him to remind himself — as he had convinced the priests with this architectural opportunity of a lifetime — that the church will be more than a place of worship. It will become a real community center, as any church should actually be …

“Planning and religion can’t force ‘community’—people have to want it. Government built a rat-racetrack of a ghetto suburb, relocating people from all over. Can children even play in the streets there?” Ata asks

“That’s why it’s needed!” He sees from her ferny smile that she really does understand, and can see the task before him. What does church mean to Maloney? Among broken bottles, telegraph poles, and wires? One can be true in this situation.

“Look, look at this.” He grabs the Corbusier book and flashes pages at her. “This man, in his own way, created something genuine . Something as true as the Ethiopian Lalibela rock churches. And then there’s the question of faith. Faith there was in a God. Faith lost. The architect’s own faith…”

He sees on her face that he’s going too far, beginning to preach his own lush pastures. She glances at her flowers resting on the settee. “Forget about him for a minute,” he mutters.

“Who?” She jumps, startled. Flight or fight.

“The Frenchman who’s after you … He’s okay,” he adds, flopping himself onto the small settee wearily and offering her the other half. She sits awkwardly. Her eyes still hesitant. “Have fun, go on. I’ve known Pierre awhile now and he’s a decent soul really, as far as Frogs go.”

She wants to say that she should call him, to give her answer, but suddenly feels juvenile, even while so comfortable with this strange, charming turtle. Pierre can wait, she shouldn’t rush.

Fraser sees her slight relief and picks up again, needing practice for the priests. Yes, the Catholic Church is the most hypocritical, self-interested, powerful organization. But a church can offer an earthly ecstasy. A moment when worldly life is suspended and something else enters. Lots of people have written about it, he says. “And there will be a piazza.”

She listens to the Cambridge tone creeping into his voice.

“Look at the roof, I wanted to make it mobile but they were against that. This lets in the afternoon sun and makes the space seem almost open-air, bigger than it actually is. On this side, the walls don’t touch.

“(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.”

He insists that Eliot’s “red rock” is the Ethiopian rock-hewn church. And that Africa is in Maloney, needing to be sung and praised even though the sky is strung with wires and the shape of hope is the heat-shimmering peaks of the Northern Range in the distance. An African Elegy from his latest obsession, Ben Okri — the turtle was on a roll, surfing.

“That is why our music is so sweet,

It makes the air remember.

There are secret miracles at work

That only time will bring forth.

I too have heard the dead singing.

“Once people can gather the elders will find their voices again. It will have served a civic purpose. Not like one of them dingy concrete sheds they call community centers. No doors, and the floor slopes down toward the altar. White tiles. Everything will be white and the roof — curved, bare, galvanized sheeting.”

He sees her watching his vision unfold, glorious words melting, landing on architectural scrolls, the fish-scale wind chime twisting slowly in the draft of the air conditioner; on a rainbow of felt-tipped markers, pink anthuriums in a blue vase. Proud and pleasured by his own world of beauty, he notices her hands and wonders if she plays an instrument, with those long long fingers. He imagines his friend bringing those fingers to his mouth, them touching his friend’s strange white chest, brushing the thin skin above his hip bone. He sighs and throws a leg over the arm of the settee, grunts, and closes his eyes.

The leatherback nestles down, right in front of her. “Think of,” Ata whispers, “all them old ladies with they Sunday hats and skatie shoes, sliding on the slanted tiled floor, skating right down and bunching up by the altar!”

He cracks a peek at her mischievous face.

“You sure a playground, a patch of grass and some trees, a sports center, wouldn’t be more useful?”

He chuckles and she laughs, just as Fraser’s phone rings and he digs at his tight jeans pockets to pull out one huge old cell phone.

“It is he speaking,” he says into it, drawing up his best British accent, beaming at Pierre’s voice on the line. “She’s right by my side…” Holding her eyes as she clues in. “Of course, she said she would love to … and can’t wait!” Shielding himself as Ata launches at him. “She’s saying … yes. Eight o’clock, her place.” Laughing his head off as he leaps from the settee to escape her assault. “Yes, yes, I’ll send a taxi for you. Cheers!”

Breathing hard, she’s laughing, objecting, happy all at once, and Fraser envies her. She babbles, about not having anything to cook … and he shares, for a moment, the pre-first-date excitement. He offers his taxi guy and suggests she order something in.

“But I don’t even have a dining table yet!”

Fraser smiles outwardly at what she thinks she doesn’t have and what he can see she possesses — something he will never have. He calls Sammy the taxi guy for her, but her mind had already left his office. He will order terrible Chinese from round the corner again and work a bit more on his church. Maybe he might find some company tonight himself.

* * *

Sam was deep in Independence Square when he get the call. Liming with full-time taxi drivers for a few, passing time, before heading for a sweat on the Savannah with the boys. Vigorous dominoes stirring up elbow grease and dribbles’a cow-heel soup on the metal table, good and proper. Sam just looking on. He like to see everything and hear everything. Is his “learning” he tells people. He would laugh and listen and join in with the talk sometimes, ’cause talk is cheap, even free in his taxi. But he is one man that love he Trinidad, and so when shit happening and he seeing wrong things going down, he does get real real aggravated. It does get him rile, just rile. Then he have to find a way to cool heself and mind he own business. Sometimes he goes and check he lovely girlfriend — look upon she lovely, cool, sweet, and smooth face. Or sometimes he take a extra sweat with the fellas. But this afternoon, nothing riling Sam. He was just listening, and going for a regular football practice, soon.