How to Escape From a Leper Colony (14 page)

Father Simon comes in often and Corban enjoys his company. Corban knows that Father Simon recommends his finer caskets to families Father is counseling in grief. The finer caskets are very expensive. These Corban gets from Europe. One is in the largest shop window today. Its debut. It is a casket of pure white marble. Inside it is lined with down pillows covered in Tibetan white silk. It has pallbearer handles but they are vestigial. The coffin is too heavy to lift or carry. One can also purchase the special Dignity Deluxe carriage for its transportation. The casket is an artisan piece but the Dignity Deluxe carriage must be ordered from a catalog.

The store is never crowded, so often when Corban and Simon are there they can talk openly. They talk the way men might at a rum shop or on a corner, but more quietly. Corban goes to rum shops on some nights after the store is closed, but Father Simon cannot do those things because of his profession. “Do you have anything new in, Corban?” But before Corban can respond that he has installed glass in the windows—just look at the light—two girls in school uniforms walk in. They have notebooks. “School project,” the blond one says as she waves her book at him. He knows they are lying. He knows that though he is running an honest and important business, for some his shop is just a curiosity. They too are attracted to the children’s coffins, but the darker one slinks away shyly to the Mexican coffins that are closer to the counter, where there is less light.

These are shiny, waxed like a new car, in colors like amber and magenta and burnt orange. There is an image of the Black Virgin emblazoned on the side of one. On another the Virgen de Guadeloupe takes up the entire outside cover and there is another replica of her on the inside of the lid as well. Corban makes a mental note to move one of them closer to the window so it can catch the new sunlight. He also watches the girls. They want to touch things. Corban has to come from behind the counter, where he displays small things like votive candles and marigolds, to ask them if they need some help.

“We’re picking our coffins,” says the brown-skinned girl.

The other opens her eyes at her friend. “For a history project,” she interjects.

The girls wear ties. They are seniors in high school. Private school, by the uniform colors they are wearing, but Corban can’t tell which one. He leans on a plain pine coffin. It has been nailed with wooden nails, as the Jews in the Virgin Islands most often request. It is not the kind of coffin Father Simon would ever suggest. He leans on it more heavily. It is strong despite its simplicity.

Simon looks the girls over. “What is the topic of the assignment?” He does not know them. They do not go to the Catholic school.

“Death,” the fair one says.

“The history of death?” asks Simon with what sounds like disbelief but is actually heavier with intrigue.

“The history of mourning,” the Indian-looking one interjects. Father Simon nods. Now he knows they are lying but the history of mourning would indeed make a decent field of study.

“Well,” says Corban, looking askance at Simon. “This is a place that celebrates life.”

Father Simon snaps in. “Not life, surely, Mr. Corban,” giving him the
mister
because the young people are there. “Perhaps
lives.
Perhaps many individual lives.” He runs his hand delicately over the treasure chest.

Father Simon has brought Corban more business than any other single person. Every family he counsels for their grief he also counsels them to go to Corban. And Simon always counsels for wealth. His form of counseling always encourages spending: “Take a trip.” “Buy something for yourself.” He takes his own advice often. There is nothing humble or modest about him and he is quite un-Catholic in this way. Father Simon wears two fine gold chains around his neck—one in yellow gold and the other in rose gold. On one wrist he wears two thick yellow gold hand chains, one in the popular puff Gucci link and the other in a more traditional rope. On his other hand he wears a ring on each finger. This is the left hand. This is also the hand he proffers when he is shaking hands. This is an odd thing to do especially since where he is from the left hand is considered the dirty hand. No one here in these American colonies takes offense at the left-handed shake. It seems to everyone only that his right hand is always busy, holding up his robes at Mass or scratching at the corner of his eye. Parishoners feel dismissed perhaps by the disinterest suggested by a left-handed shake but no one suspects that they are being soiled.

Father Simon is below the Western average in height. He had been slim when he first arrived on the island as a young priest a decade before, but he has grown thick. He is balding and has a great big head, so that balding seems quite natural as you never can imagine hair making it across the entire skull. The balding is most prominent at the back of the head and at the temples. But never does Simon appear short and fat and balding with a big head. He walks and speaks and gestures as if he is a very handsome man. This is learned. And this is a sign of an inescapable past.

In Brikama, the city where his parents still live in Gambia, Father Simon Peter is a very important man—even there where his past is known. As a young boy he had worked as a carpenter because his father wanted all the sons to have a trade.

The thing about working wood is that wood changes. It breathes. It shrinks and tightens and buckles and sheds. All depends on the kind of wood. Some wood needs glaze. Other wood needs paint. Some wood doesn’t take paint well—makes the color look garish when you meant for it to look gentle and soft. Once a tourist bought a sculpture that Simon Peter himself made. But this is not why he is an important man. He is an important man because he is a priest. How Simon Peter went from woodworker to priest is the drama of his life.

The name of the shop was Jesus Saves Wood. It was a big shop at the edge of Banjul. In Banjul the ocean did not yet turn into the ocean-fed river that split the country. It was still the ocean and it blew salt into the shop. Simon Peter often took the long way home from school so he could watch the water. Before Simon, one of his brothers had been sent to Banjul to learn the trade of fishing. This brother was much older, in his twenties, whereas Simon was a teenager. Simon never saw his brother, who was engaged and working hard to make money before the wedding, but still he looked for him along the roads that led to the beaches. In Brikama, Simon Peter had never seen the ocean or the river.

The shop had been written up in some tourist book so besides the usual few Germans and Brits now many Americans bought their carvings from the front part of the store. The Americans would walk among the stools and walking sticks. They would pick things up and touch them as if they owned them already. If any of the assistants, Simon Peter included, were in the front this would make them nervous. They could see this touching made even Uncle Omar tense. It was such a violation. To pick things up, to touch them, to treat them like your own when you hadn’t yet paid. But the Americans were allowed. They were allowed because they did it with such authority that no one knew how to tell them to put a piece down without insulting them. Then they would leave with only one small piece and smiles on their faces as though they’d done the shop, and perhaps all of Africa, a favor.

Later when Simon’s carving was touched and picked up he would understand what a violation it really was. He had seen the American tourists haggle and haggle as if it was a game. They would laugh or look hurt alternatively, as though this wasn’t a livelihood. As though they didn’t have more dalasi in their purses than the entire shop had in its safe.

In the back was what Uncle Omar called the studio but everyone else in the town just called it the workshop. This is where the assistants sold things to Africans. Bed frames, tables, shelves, and coffins. All these things were made to order. Back there Omar trained the three boys, all like brothers in the art of wood. Omar’s wife and children were in England. She was working and it was said that the children were going to school. Sometimes his wife came home with fancy clothes and gifts even for the boys in the shop. Things like soaps and creams and T-shirts. Omar’s children never came home.

Of the three boys, Simon Peter was the newest addition. He was still learning to make shelves when the senior boys were making coffins and fancy tables. Only Uncle Omar made the carvings that the rich people bought for decoration. That, he said, was art. Simon was in awe of it. Uncle Omar, as he told the boys to call him, didn’t use the big graceless tools that the boys used for tables and shelves. He used little dainty knives, he caressed the pieces, he spoke to them. Simon would pocket little pieces of wood and try to copy Omar’s designs. Copy the “We All Are One” and the “Brotherly Love.” Those were his favorite. When he went home on the holidays he presented these crude interpretations to his mother, who passed them around to her co-mothers before giving them finally to his father.

The shop was like home. Simon Peter went to school in the day and came home to the shop at night. He worked in the shop and Omar paid his school fees and fed him. In his first and only year with the shop many things happened to Simon Peter. One was that he did very well on his exams and was offered a scholarship at a Catholic boarding school in the country. His brother had been offered a scholarship before him. This kind of thing made his parents proud, but his brother had not been able to take the scholarship because his parents did not want their sons taught by the white man. They had seen what it did to other young men. How they learned the European ways and forgot their own. They had decided that Simon Peter would teach and run a wood shop in their village. But they did not have their wish. Simon Peter ended up going to the boarding school even before his year of apprenticeship to Omar was over.

He had done so well on his exams that the school would be willing and pleased to take him mid-semester. Besides, the schoolmasters were happy to save the boy from the drudgery of the wood shop. At the boarding school the Catholic priests will notice his quiet piety. Notice his love for art and nature and encourage his path to seminary. He loved art, it is true, but he will avoid the other young boys for reasons unrelated to piety.

His brothers in the shop were Kebba and Valentino. Valentino was allowed to put the final coat of paint or varnish on tables. He was in charge of dusting and polishing the carvings in the front room. He was the boss of them. Kebba was happy to have someone younger. Someone whom he could show around and be more important than. And Simon Peter was happy to oblige. Valentino was so talented and so lucky, and though Omar made it clear that his sons would inherit the shop it was easy to see how Valentino might manage to usurp the never-come sons. That would leave Kebba and Simon Peter as Valentino’s servants. But now at least they had each other. Though never completely.

On the first day: “This is your bed, Simon Peter.” Valentino showed him to the floor in the corner. Kebba looked away as he made his own bed by laying down a piece of cloth over a bed frame. He smiled a small shy smile when he looked at Simon. But he did not offer any help.

In the morning Valentino was already up. Not bothering to wake them so they could impress Uncle Omar. Kebba went to Simon Peter and shook him from the floor. “You have to make your own bed.” Simon Peter thought he understood and started to fold the clothes he had laid down as cushion. “No, no. I mean you have to build your own bed. You sleep on the floor until you learn how to make a bed frame. Then you can begin to save for a mattress.”

“But I won’t be getting paid. Uncle Omar is using my money to send me to school.”

“Then I don’t think you’ll be getting much good sleep.”

Simon hadn’t wanted to cry but he recognized in Kebba a small kindness that made him feel a burn in his chest like he might cry. They worked side by side that day and every day. School was only until 1:00 p.m. and then Simon went to the shop. The other boys would have been working all day already. They wouldn’t even seem to notice when Simon slipped in beside them to watch. But then they would mutter to him to fetch this or do that.

“Like so,” Kebba said. Showing him the mechanics of a coffin. “It’s the easiest thing we do. You get their height, their width, and their weight. Then you know how to cut. Always leave more room because sometime the body bloats, depending on the cause of death. Sometimes it shrinks. But we don’t always know the business of the corpse. Always give at least three inches all around just in case.” Most often the coffins were made for Christians, for secular Muslims who thought coffins sanitary, or for those from mixed families like Simon’s.

Two months into Simon Peter’s assistantship, the body came. Simon had already been home and given his mother the miniatures. He kept his favorite one in his pocket at school and caressed it as if it were a pet mouse. After the body came, that one time, all their lives were changed. The coffin was made by Valentino. When Simon came home from school he found Valentino sawing at a large board of mahogany. For an entire three days Valentino had put aside his normal duties to make a coffin. Simon didn’t understand why thick heavy wood, usually for stools or walking sticks, was being used for this. When Simon went to the front there was Kebba gently polishing the “Seller Woman with Basket” and “Thinking Man” with a reverence that Simon envied. Simon caressed the little figurine in his pants pocket. It looked at though he was touching himself inappropriately. Kebba pretended not to see.

The shop was in confusion because the premier assistant was not doing the premier work. When Simon went to the front room Uncle Omar barked at him. “Boy. Go finish that table for Mrs. Anidiye. And ey, don’t disturb Valentino. He is building his father’s coffin.” Finishing the table was a huge promotion. The table was a fine one and the end nubs of the legs still needed to be carved out. Then the legs had to be attached. Then the whole thing had to be sanded down and varnished. Simon went to the workshop and sat down before the table. He daydreamed as he worked. He thought about his mother and his sister sitting at a table this fine. As he worked he gritted his teeth. It was easy to forget Valentino working only feet away.