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I

The events of this story took place in Manira, a coastal town in a postcolonial African country, scene of a history of rivalry between native animists who believed that everything was imbued with God, and other faiths that, over the years, had come to us by the sea – Islam, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant. Swords and guns on their sides, they claimed that God was only to be found in the books they read and dwelt only in buildings they set up, that God confided in their priests exclusively. They expelled God from the universe and confined him to a book, a building, and a priest. Colored with all hues of hate, the only thing that united the book-based faiths was their hatred of native animism and the magic of the universe in the everyday.

And yet the evidence of magic is there in the name of the town. Local lore tells of some missionaries of all faiths – Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim, Protestant of the Anglican variety, and even reluctant missionaries from Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism – who, on their way to Manira in the Pacific, met on the sands of this area and started fighting on behalf of their God. They were so absorbed in the sounds of the clashing of their swords that they did not see the devil, frothing laughter, emerge from the sea and pull them down into the quicksand. The native watchers saw them disappear; a big wave swept away all traces of their struggle. They called it Manira in ironic reference to the Manira of their intended destiny, but this time meaning the place where a laughing devil once swallowed quarrelsome missionaries. Their followers never learned the lesson. The events about to unfold happened hundreds of years after the frothing devil came to the shore.

You don’t believe in devils and magic, you say?

This is a story for those who believe in magic. So, if you are one of those who don’t believe in magic, miracles, and mirages, stop there. The only assurance I can give is that, on this occasion, I was there: I saw what I saw and heard what I heard. Do you still want to hear it?

II

The first time it happened was in church. The priest, in the regalia of his office, sonorously went on about sin and damnation and redemption, dwelling on sex and drinking. He was more concerned with the latter because it was alcohol that led to other indulgences. He told a parable of a drunk who fell into a ditch and landed on a nest of red ants that, thanking their good luck, started feasting on his flesh. Picture him snoring through the bites; imagine him later in the morning telling his wife and family what had befallen him, every word a lie, his every sentence thus sinking him deeper into sin. The person could even be sitting in a pew, in this very church, without any intention to confess, the priest surmised.

The horror on the faces of women – Joycelin, the local judge’s wife, among them – at the implication that such a miscreant could be seated among them affected the priest strangely, making his voice soar to new heights of righteous indignation.

God sees you, I can see you, he intoned, then stopped, but his finger, pointing at the congregation, remained in the air. What started as a parable seemed to have changed into a probability. Slowly and deliberately his eyes wandered over the audience, piercing the heart of each. A scared silence softened the audience into a sense of the sacred so that when suddenly a man stood up, tearing asunder the sacred silk of silence, all eyes turned toward him.

Stop softening it with parables, the man said slowly, as if about to confess publicly. You must have seen me in the ditch, this morning. Then, wagging his finger at the priest, he raised his wrath a notch higher: Why didn’t you lift a finger to help me up? Where was the Good Samaritan you always preach about? Why do you spy on me in my home, listening in to talks between man and wife? And now you ridicule me in the house of worship? God saw me, he sees everything, he never said a thing in censure: do you think you are bigger than God?

Without waiting for the priest to answer, the man walked out, saying that he was done with churches and sermons.

The priest was not abashed; he stood there, with a beaming smile, looking completely satisfied: the man’s outburst had just proved the prophetic side of his sermons. He had not been anywhere near the scenes of the man’s sin, he told the congregation, but, as they had just seen with their very eyes, God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. The man is wrong about God’s apparent silence. I am God’s eye. I am God’s mouth. I am the voice of God.

Mo, who sat in the front pew, loved the stories he heard in church, parables mostly. He liked best the story of Jesus turning one loaf and one glass of wine into many types of bread and wine that fed and wined thousands. It was something he would have liked to do: feed the hungry of the world with just one loaf, or quench their thirst with just one glass of wine. Thinking about it in light of the priest’s admonitions about alcohol, he wondered about the sin and damnation of wining the whole world. Did Jesus sin? He shook off the heretic thought and focused on the scene that had just happened between the man and the priest. The real-life drama overwhelmed those of parables, and he truly enjoyed it. And he would have gone home satisfied except that the scene and the drama of women weeping, a man walking out, and the glint of triumph in the priest’s eyes now triggered Mo’s memory.

Mo, a ten-year-old dreamer and reader of strange books, had difficulties in recalling details of the past, what he had seen, heard, or felt. In the dark, everything was clear, but in the light, everything was dark or blurred, and it took a face, a voice, a gait, a gesture, or some other detail to trigger it into clarity. Now the glint in the priest’s eyes had done it.

He thought he had seen him; yes, he was sure he had seen him; no, he was not so sure, the light blurred the outline of the time and place and the person even. He shut his eyes tight to simulate darkness. No, yes, yes, it was three o’clock, yes, saw him sneak out of bed, take a whole bottle of Johnnie Walker from a small cabinet in the kitchen, and, in two or three gulps, swallow it all. He took out another bottle, three or four gulps, and there he lay on the floor, totally out, even pissing on the floor. Then, on all fours, he crawled through the urine, back to bed, where he snored and farted thunder alternately. Mo remembered wanting to shout something but his voice had faded into sleep … and on waking up he thought the whole experience a bad dream.

Now, torn between doubt and certainty, he did not want to say anything in front of the congregation, but, knowing that the priest always mingled with the worshippers outside afterward, Mo went out and waited to seize any opening for a dialogue.

Donned in the flowing robes of holiness, the priest did not disappoint, though Mo found the robes less intimidating now that the wearer was not hiding behind the podium, a distance from the front pew.

Excuse me, sir, Padre, Mo said, politely.

Thinking that this young man was going to ask a question about the sermon or something, the priest stopped, a smile simultaneously lighting up his face. The tall thirty-year-old something towering over the earnest face of a slender ten-year-old was a striking visual contrast, older and younger versions of each other.

And what can I do for you, my son?

Mo just wanted to know the hour of confession today.

Oh, not a question about the sermon, the priest thought, but this was even better: a confession?

Every time is a timely time for those who seek salvation, said the priest. Seek, and ye shall find. Son, confession is a sacred contract of a contrite heart with the cleanser of human souls.

That this youth should be so desirous of confessing that he had approached him so soon after the service was the second testimony to the quality of the sermon. Already, it had driven out an unrepentant drunken devil’s advocate from the premises; now it had brought to the same premises a repentant angel child. No wonder Jesus spoke in parables.

Within minutes, Mo was standing outside the confessional window, ahead of a line that included Joycelin, the pious wife of the judge. Framed by the tiny window with dotted holes, Mo stared into a transfiguration. A rainbow halo hung around the hallowed window behind which sat or stood the priest, whose disjointed, glinting eyes could be seen through the holes. Mo could picture, even feel, the intense light emanating from the eyes that watched him, which raised more doubts in Mo, tying his tongue. How was it possible that a man who the night before wallowed in his vomit, shit, and urine could be the calm, collected, handsome presence whose voice made women swoon and men feel uplifted? Why pursue silhouettes of dreams at night?

It’s okay to lay down the burden in your heart, the voice behind the window encouraged him.

Mo cleared his throat:

Forgive me, Father, for you have sinned and come short of the glory of the Lord.

You have the order of the words wrong, the padre corrected him, gently. The words are: forgive me, Father, for I have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

I forgive you, Father, for you have sinned and come short of the glory of God, Mo said.

No, no, said the priestly voice, with infinite patience. Just confess, son, just confess without preliminaries.

Father, I am a little scared, Mo said. I fear what will happen to me.

Don’t fear. Come ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. What is it that scares you?

God once cursed Ham for seeing his father naked and not doing something about it, Mo said in a tone between a question and a statement.

Yes, said the priest, that He did and laid the burden of blackness on Ham and his children forever. Jesus changed all that; his Grace redeemeth Ham’s repentant children and maketh them whiter than snow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. That’s from Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 18.

I hear you, Father. Do you think it a sin to watch a priest awash in alcohol and not do something about it?

Oh no, and yes, my son, but …?

Father, I assure you that, unlike Ham, I tried to warn you, but since I didn’t actually say anything …

Son, take care that you don’t sin against the Holy Spirit, said the priest with a slightly bemused tone. When was this Ham business?

Some time ago, late at night … don’t you remember? Even today, at the podium, you stunk of alcohol. Luckily none of your congregation was near enough to smell it. Were you preaching to yourself?

The priest did not know who this upstart was, and the rules of the priestly trade did not allow him to ask accusatory details. He must follow the upstart, the better to know him and his parents. But by the time he came around to the front, he only saw Mo’s back in the distance. How could the upstart have seen me? I was alone in my house.

The priest was young; his life, a marvel. He had escaped the hardships of a herdsboy only because of the death of his father’s cattle, and then his father. A chance encounter with a white Catholic Father impacted his life dramatically. The Father was dishing out candies to children in the streets, enticing them to follow him all the way back to the church. The glass pane of the church had the colour of candies, and he thought of the church as an endless source of free candy. His enthusiasm was noticed. As an altar boy he found himself drawn toward the life of a spiritual shepherd; in time, he served under different fathers and grew in the church. He was lucky: he narrowly escaped the fate of those boys and girls turned into play objects of the celibate clerics. The fact that some of them would indulge in debauchery and yet be cleansed by prayer and repentance fascinated him. There was no sin so dirty that it could not cleansed by confession.

He rose rapidly in the Catholic order and entered priesthood, part of the third-generation postindependence youth meant to inject the postcolonial church with the face and vigour of black youth. The church had changed over the years: in the colonial days, the church obtained land from the colonial state for free. The cost of building came from Rome or the various orders of white priesthood. Now a parish gave land, donated money for building, and maintained it with their harvests, signs that the colonial church had finally taken root among the natives. The congregation loved him: they bought him a house and a car, and met the wages of those who worked around the house – gardeners, cooks, and housekeepers. The glory of their priest shed light on their misery. (Others of the Protestant variety took the cue and became charismatic evangelists and televangelists. Their lavish lifestyles were evidence of their closeness to God. The priest prided himself on not being so lavish, and was very humble in his appearance.)

At home after Mo’s confession, the priest questioned his workmen, one at a time: had they seen a strange presence loitering around the house late in the night? And they all answered with an emphatic no, one of them even adding, What would I be doing in the dark when I should be in bed?

Still, the priest would not take chances, and asked one of his most trusted workmen to keep guard at his bedroom window every night. He indulged himself only once; otherwise he spent the rest of the week trying to figure out how he could discover the identity of the boy. He would then take the parents aside and quietly warn them about the fire next time.

III

The second time, it was also in church, the same church, the same priest. He surprised his congregation with a question: in the last two weeks, had anybody seen a person, a friend, or a neighbour drinking? He assured the audience that they would not be required to disclose the person’s name, time, or place, or anything that might identify the fallen. Nearly all raised their hands, which was not particularly helpful. Let’s narrow it down. What about a priest drinking? Anybody? People looked around. No takers. Even Mo hesitated. He had witnessed the same scene a week after the first one, but he wondered if it was worth the effort to say anything in public. Then he recalled Ham’s curse for not doing anything about his father’s nakedness, and was the priest not his spiritual padre?

He raised his hand. Eyes were turned to him. A few people suppressed sniggers, barely.

What’s your name?

Mo.

Son of?

My mother.

No father?

I must have one, Mo said, to some laughter from a section of the audience, but the truth is, I don’t know him.

So you come from a broken home?

Oh, no, my mother is holy.

A single parent, then?

Yes, like everybody.

What do you mean?

Everybody is born of one woman.

Is your mother in church today?

No.

Does she come to church?

No.

Does she pray for you, with you, before meals?

She says God sees everything and everybody. Why would she tell him what he already knows? God does not sleep, she tells me. She trusts everything to his wisdom and generosity, his hindsight, his foresight, his sidesight.

Actually, Mo’s mother was a small farmer, if a strip of land could be called a farm, but she had the knack of making it yield her and her son’s needs. She kept to herself but otherwise was not one to hold back a stream of curses at anyone who provoked her. At a political gathering she would ask questions that voiced concerns people had in mind. Secretly they would be grateful for her questions while publicly shaking their heads in apparent censure. That woman, Mo’s mom, does she take something? they would say. But she did not take anything stronger than water. Her stream of obscenities made people desist crossing her path. They thought her head was wrong, which made it easier for them to tolerate her swear words but ignore their truth. Mo was his mother’s child, keeping to her ways mostly, but otherwise different in his polite speech and demeanour and his attraction to churches, mosques, and temples.

But do you say prayers? The rosary?

I do, not the rosary, but prayers. To God be the glory of creation. I try to find him in different places. My mother says that drinking clean water, washing in clean water, and caring about plants, and animals, and birds, creatures big and small, is enough worship. Life is life, she says. In the beginning was water. And air. And soil. And sun’s fire, and these birthed life. My mother says drinking alcohol is an insult to God, who made us from water. I like to say thank you for all the life around me – water, air, soil, and everything that comes therefrom. And stars. The Big Sun! The Sun of God!

You’re certainly wiser than your mother, though you must love and pray for her.

I do; I am always grateful she brought me into the world. Imagine, she carried me for nine months, and she says I swam in the water inside her. She says that in the beginning …

Yes, yes, water, the priest interrupted Mo. The holy book says so. The earth didn’t have any shape, and it was empty. Darkness was over the surface of the ocean. At that time, the ocean covered the earth. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And what brings you to church today?

To tell you what I saw, to help you in your God’s work.

The congregation greeted this with open laughter. The priest admonished them: let the little children come to me, he intoned, and not hinder them because to such as these belong the Kingdom of God. Haven’t you read Isaiah? The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

Women were in tears; men gasped with admiration, their priest’s generous gesture reminding them of the young Christ. Who were they to cast the first stone?

And when was it, the priest said, I mean when you saw them, I mean your priests, drinking?

I saw one priest only, Mo said, as he gave the day and the hour.

And where were you at the time?

In my bed.

Sceptical gasps replaced those of wonder. The priest put on the air of infinite forbearance. But he was relentless in his pursuit of a cornered quarry.

In your bed? Then how did you see the priest or priests drinking?

Father, should I call out the priest in question and ask him to answer truthfully?

It’s not necessary, said the priest, but he had already noted Mo’s name, the face, and family details.

After the session, the priest took one of his most adoring and faithful parishioners to keep guard over Mo’s house, every night, and asked him to call the priest by cell phone should he see or spot Mo sleepwalking. He believed that strange demons, probably his mother’s, possessed the poor child, and the priest would like to cast them out.

And now that he had installed guards around his and Mo’s houses, he felt free to indulge his alcoholic palate, but always late at night when he knew that every household in the parish was asleep.

IV

The third time was in the same church. The priest asked the same question with similar results, Mo’s being the only hand raised in response. The priest gave a little parable of how the devil often insinuated itself into the souls of innocents and even accompanied them to church. After which, the priest asked Mo to come to the confessional after the sermon.

My son, said the priest, now behind the window. I am glad you have come to confess sins of lying.

No, I am not lying, Father.

Then which priest did you imagine you really saw?

You, said Mo, and he once again described in detail the days and the hour that he saw him drinking, including the types of liquors and the places where the priest hid them.

And, Father, this last time you also talked to a lady on the phone. Don’t you want to confess? Mo asked.

And where were you when you saw your imaginary priest drinking and talking dirty to invisible ladies?

In my bed, and I did not say you were talking dirty. Unless saying you hoped the God’s seeds you had planted in her garden will sprout is talking dirty. And also some kinds of sacred objects you gave her. Father, are you sure you are not lying?

Son, said the priest, his holy patience wearing thin at the thought that the boy might know more than he was letting on. Son, lying is a sin. I ask you again. Confess.

Before you?

Yes.

Truthfully?

Of course.

I confess truthfully that at those hours I was in my bed, and my mother can confirm it.

Okay, my son. We have to cast out the devil in you.

In you, did you say? Can one cast a devil from himself, the boy asked, genuinely curious. My mother says that the devil is the other face of God. You see, when children die for nothing, and diseases kill people, and things like that happen without God stopping the evil, it must be the devil’s doing, right? And God is implicated, like Ham was, for not doing anything about his father’s nakedness. I thought you would need another to cast out the devil from yourself.… Can I see you doing it, please? I would like to know how to do it.

God is God and the devil is the devil.

My mother says the two can be in one, right? She says that sometimes she curses; at other times she blesses. She laughs and cries at other times, angry and happy. She gives, she takes, and yet she is the same person. Right? God can be all those and still remain God, right?

I shall send some people to talk to your mother about this nonsense. She needs the devil taken out of her. Bad influence on a child. Leave everything to me for now.

But my mother does not drink.

Leave.

The mobile phone had made life easier, the priest muttered to himself. Mo, of course, did not hear the priest dial anything.

A mile or so from the church building, police arrested him and charged him with stealing gold figurines from the priest’s residency. An anonymous caller had tipped them.

V

The case attracted many people. Even Joycelin, the judge’s wife, a lady known for her piety and the many hours she spent in the confessional, was present. The priest was the main and only prosecution witness. Dressed in the white collar of his trade, he cited the hour and the day when the items were stolen, but did not say that he was citing the last day Mo said he had seen him. Reason was on his side, the priest argued through the prosecutor. Mo had obviously concocted lies about seeing a priest drinking. Wasn’t it clever of the youth that he had chosen the hour of darkness when all were asleep? Unfortunately for the culprit, who had tried to back up his lies with a specific hour and day, these coincided with the day and the hour of the theft! The ‘drinking priest’ was a product of the boy’s vivid imagination only. But he is not here to answer to charges of youthful mendacity. Theft. Clearly, from his testimony alone, Mo must have been at the premises. Truth has ways of outing and outlasting lies. But why steal secretly, successfully, and then pin it on the priest? The boy has a grudge against the priest. But he did not count on the priest being God’s eye on earth.

Actually, Mo loved his priest, who often wandered around the parish dishing out candy to children, whether they were of Catholic faith or not. He visited widows, and attended funerals. Although Mo hated the very smell of alcohol, he thought that a priest who drank in the privacy of his house, one or two bottles of whisky at a time even, a priest who enjoyed talking to ladies late at night, and about sacred gifts and the God’s seeds he had planted in their secret gardens, though in a drunken voice, was a good priest, human. His only sin, in Mo’s eyes at least, was in condemning others for doing what he also did without condemning himself. That’s why he wanted the priest to confess in the first place. It was for the good of the soul of the priest, Mo reasoned.

At the insistence of the priest, with no objection from the defendant, the court called Mo’s mother to the dock. She let out a stream of obscenities at the judge, the court, the police, the priest, the proceedings, but finally testified that her son was indeed in bed on the days and times mentioned.

And I have always told him that these churches are dens of thieves and robbers, she said, to the laughter of those present. The whites started it; the blacks ran away with it. Now they make us build them houses, buy them cars, pay for their house help, some even make us buy them helicopters and airplanes. But he won’t listen to his mother. Says he wants to find the truth for himself. It’s these books. What does a ten-year-old know about truth? I tell him, truth is life itself. Leave my son alone.

You see, even his mother says the boy does not know the truth, the prosecutor observed.

In his defence, Mo asked the court for one thing only. The court should ask the priest to say publicly if, or not, he had drunk whisky on the hour and the days mentioned.

The priest was not expecting this kind of request from this uncouth youth. Did he have something up his sleeve? Scared of sinning publicly, the priest confessed to having had one or two tumblers. This played well into the police case.

The youth must have spotted him with a tumbler and decided to base his lies on a speck of fact, said the prosecutor. He must then have waited for the priest to sleep and then somehow opened the door, crept in, stole the items, and probably took them to his eccentric mother. You have heard her weird rants. She might even have been a party to …

What? May the devil swallow your police and priestly lies, and all you, like he once did some lying missionaries, long ago, Mo’s mother screamed, and this time the court ordered she be removed from the court. Manira devil, Manira devil come for the miscreants, she screamed as she was forcibly led out.

The judge accepted the argument of the prosecution, noting that Mo did not dispute that he had seen the said priest and the whisky at the hour the priest claimed the theft occurred. He noted that Mo was a minor; and this was his first offence. The court also took into account his mother’s eccentric behaviour. The court ordered Mo to produce the stolen items. Then the court would decide on the sentence. Your cooperation with the court might be taken into account in deciding on the sentence. What do you say?

Mo made a strange request. He asked the judge to cover him with a blanket and make sure that no light came through. The police were to do as he directed them or rather as his voice directed them. He wanted his mother present, as a witness, to ensure each side kept to the bargain. This was so bizarre that even the judge’s curiosity was aroused. He granted the request. His mother was brought back, one police officer covering her mouth to prevent her screams and curses; he then taped her mouth.

It was a drama which outdid any that had ever occurred in the court. Not even those cases in which criminals undressed completely, or urinated in the court, or even attacked the judge, could beat this. Even Mo’s mom seemed struck with awe, and did not try to curse through the tape.

They heard his voice describe the route officers should take to the bedroom of one of the most trusted ladies of the church, Joycelin, the wife of the judge. The court recessed waiting for the results. The police returned with two gold items they recovered from the bedroom of the judge’s wife. Who gave them to you, the irate judge asked his wife?

The priest, she replied.

What for?

Just a token, a token of his love for me. But it was unrequited love, she hastened to add.

By that time the priest was nowhere to be seen. A furious judge set Mo free and ordered his mother ungagged.

What Mo did not tell the court, of course, because nobody thought of asking him, was that in the dark, and only in the dark, his psychic self took over and sometimes went to places and saw things that his body self could not.

VI

Under other circumstances, even without our knowing about his divided self, Mo’s act would have dominated our lives. The gag on the mother would have turned into heavy chains, and the blanket into an enormous dome, the police force, in riot gear inside armoured vehicles, helicopters hovering above us. We loved magic, miracles, and mirages, and we were known to create perfect mountains out of molehills. Hundreds of years after the event, the story of the devil who swallowed missionaries in the sand still enlivened many an evening in our homes, and never lost its appeal with time, despite more recent spectacles.

Once, a passerby claimed that his wife had given birth to a boy, half dog and half human, and said that he would let people see the spectacle for a fee. He put up a big tent. Seats were limited. People paid in advance; on the day of the show, the man and his tent vanished, but we would not let go of the story, and some claimed that the human dog had turned savage and swallowed the man and then flew away, with the tent for wings. Some even swore they had seen the flying tent above them and others that they had heard the triumphant barking of a dog in the sky. A story of the impossible enlivened our humdrum lives of meagre wages in factories and coffee plantations and hard work on strips of land that produced less the more we coaxed it. I don’t know why we had thought that things would change with blacks taking over from whites but it did not matter; in both times, we had God, priests, reverends, rabbis, and mullahs and even Krishna on our side. We were so blessed. That’s why we all competed to ensure that our priest was better than the priest from the next village. Ours was God’s eye; his tongue, God’s, proven by the many parables out of his mouth that turned out to be naked truth.

That’s why the real-life disappearance of a beloved priest – so young, so handsome, so glorious a voice – leaving behind a parish that worshipped his shadow, as well as a home and a car we had bought for him from our meagre resources, dwarfed every wonder, even that of a ten-year-old seeing in the dark while ensconced in his bed. We forgot Mo; we mourned the disappearance of a priest instead. Could he have been swallowed by the devil like his predecessors? It was possible, because nobody saw him vanish, but then, would God allow the devil to touch His eye and mouth?

It became the talk of our small community, generating tension between parishes, some of whose members shed crocodile tears in sympathy they did not feel. They wouldn’t forgive us for all the hymns that we had sung to the glory of the handsome priest and our acting as if we were better than the other parishes with their aging grey-haired priests, remnants of the colonial era.

Some floated the thought that envious mosques, temples, and Protestant competitors had disappeared him, out of envy of course, and this called for vengeance. Kidnap their priests? Various ideas were floated. Some started beating drums of war. War of Faiths!

VII

It was a new rumour that silenced the drums and averted the War of Faiths. At first it was easier to dismiss the claims when they were traced to the drunk who once left the church. A man who could snore through ant bites was capable of any fantasy. But when different others, women mostly, started claiming strange encounters with Michael Jackson at all sorts of places and times but mostly at dawn and evening twilight, the rumour swept the community like the flu. Sceptics went to internet cafés to seek a clue in Jackson’s music on YouTube. The images of people rising from the dead gave legs to the rumours: the singer had foretold his resurrection.

But why our village? Why not? The question and the answers were irrelevant to the fact of the sighting. Magic and miracles, as we had learned over the years, had no logic. They were there, marvels that thrilled us; marvels that moved us became even more marvellous in the retelling. In all their varieties, the stories were eerily similar. He was always dressed in black shoes, white socks, and jeans that reached to above the ankles. And a hat, a Michael Jackson hat. And apparently, he never talked: just moonwalked in and away, tipping his hat, without indicating when or where he might appear next.

Now we really missed our priest. He would no doubt unravel the mystery of the second coming. We yearned for his return. We thought of petitioning the bishop for a new priest but decided to hold back for a while: we had nowhere to house him. Those of us who were there can remember our attempts to repossess the home we had helped to build and the car we had bought for the convenience of our priest, depriving ourselves to make our man of God happy and satisfied. We had registered the property in his name. Some argued that the properties belonged to him as a priest and not to him as man, but others argued that once a priest always a priest, unless, of course, the Pope defrocked him. There was talk of sending a delegation to the Vatican, Rome, to appeal to the Holy See directly, but it would take years of savings to afford the flight to Rome.

Our parish was in limbo: did we or did we not have a priest? Did the house and the car belong to the priest who had worn the robes of a priest and said Mass, in which case we could bring another one to wear similar robes, or to the man behind the regalia? We kept up paying the wages of the workmen at our priest’s house; the grounds were to remain ready for the return of the priest or his replacement. Protestants were building churches on every empty space; others were creating their own personal churches; some even insulted us by offering to buy our church building and put it to the service of real Protestant holiness. Even Muslims and Judaists vied to possess it and turn it into a temple that testified to their faith.

Our new worries replaced the stale rumors of Jackson sightings. We joined other parishes for worship, and adopted their rivalries and prejudices and tried to forget still our new anxieties. But the rival parishes would not let us forget our loss, making jokes at our expense; they told endless tales about hypocrisy or vanishing padres, but we knew they were aimed at our loss and pride.

Those of us in a position of leadership called a meeting of all the elders and leaders of the various groups of our parish community. The agenda about what next quickly turned into a query about the past. We started quibbling over words, parsing them into syllables and even single letters to find hidden meanings that might help us settle our doubts. The judge’s wife had spoken of tokens of love. She did not say that the jewellery was a gift, just a token. A token was not an act; it was a picture of the real, not the real itself. We sent a delegation to the judge’s residence to see if she would clarify, but the judge said his wife was aboveboard. How dare we … and threatened to have a few of us locked up for malice and slander of innocents.

The debate resumed without the help of the judge. What wrongs had our priest committed? Love? Lust? Lustre? Coveting another’s property? None of this had occurred. If we were to condemn a person for thoughts that crept into the mind, then wouldn’t everybody have sinned at one time or another and come short of the glory of God? How then did we let ourselves be orphaned? The fact that we did not actually drive him away did not lessen the intensity of our self-flagellations.

And that’s when we recalled Mo and his antics. It all started with the brat: before Mo broke the rhythm of our lives there was peace on earth. We all agreed: we were victims of a child’s imagination, moreover one who came from a broken home and was brought up by a godless mother who insulted God by claiming He did not need houses of worship on account that he owned the universe, and worse, that God and the devil were two in one. It’s the homeless and the poor who needed houses. What apostasy! Even Jesus had said the poor would always be among us. It was God who needed our complete, undivided attention, not the poor. We had driven our own away on the basis of lies that a misguided judge accepted as testimony. A judge should not let himself be blinded by jealousy: did he ever catch the priest atop his wife? Our remorse was unbearable, making us dismiss as irrelevant the few voices that reminded us that none of us had actually driven the priest away. Not even the judge.

One question persisted till it became a chorus: since when did adults let little children lead them, we asked again and again, forgetting all about that line about how a little child shall lead them. Children? Mo was not a normal child. Satan dwelt inside the soul of that child. They recalled his demands that he be covered head to foot under a blanket: who, or what, was he communing with under the cover of darkness?

And that was how Mo became the target of our communal wrath and frustration. If we had had the good sense to tear the veil, we might have caught the evil one intact. We still could do it. It was the only way by which we could assuage our remorse. Force Mo to tell the devil to give us back our priest.

Mo and his mother had all but forgotten about the priest and the church. Not that churches and mosques and temples were her thing. She was glad that Mo had given up the church thing, coming to her view that every space was God’s space and every time God’s time and hence one could talk to It from anywhere at any time. As for Mo, the images of the priest crawling on his piss, or talking dirty with ladies late at night, had not come back to disturb his sleep.

So when we descended on his house, he just told us a completely unacceptable truth: that he did not know the priest’s fate or his whereabouts.

Ask your devil friend, we demanded.

I don’t have devil for friend or enemy, he said.

We seized and covered him under a blanket. We ignored the woman’s pleas and curses, threatening to burn her alive, even, mother of witches who had driven a husband, whoever he was, to oblivion. Or maybe she had fucked the devil. Mo was a devil’s child?

Choke him to death, some shouted. The devil loves pain; he is the author of pain, a young man said, adding, in English, torture will thrill him.

A thriller in Manira, another said.

Thriller! Thriller! shouted the crowd, feverishly.

The word thriller triggered an image in Mo.

Don’t choke me, he pleaded from inside the blanket. Get me Michael Jackson and I will get you your priest.

The request was so unexpected that we fell back momentarily. But hadn’t Michael Jackson joined our ancestors?

So had Jesus, who after three days rose from the dead and showed himself to a select few, Mo replied; even those who first heard that Christ had risen doubted at first. But he rose.…

We broke into hymn:

He rose, He rose, He rose from the dead;?

He rose, He rose, He rose from the dead;?

He rose, He rose, He rose from the dead;?

And the Lord shall bear my spirit home.

Are you saying that Michael Jackson is back from the dead?

You have heard the news. Ask the girls to whom he has appeared. Your girl, for instance.

Some of the girls were present, and under the pressure of the moment confessed to having seen him, dressed in the color of the break of dawn or masked by evening twilight, and in the pathways of our village town, of all places.

We turned to Mo. No threats this time, but could he please lead us to any one of Jackson’s appearances? He did not promise but demanded to have a band of youth near him at dawn and twilight. He had no control of the time or the space of his visions, he said, and this had a strange effect on those present. One person cited some verses from Mark:

Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back – whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping.

We chose to stay with him all the time. Mo did not disappoint, and one evening he guided us with words to an open-air place, the way he had guided the police at the court.

Bush telegraph must have spread the word, for by the time we reached the place, we found an assembly of screaming youth, girls and boys, but too late for them to execute their mission. Jackson had vanished but left a note about the place and day of his next appearance. But not the hour.

VIII

The fourth time it happened was in the same church. Except for the Judge and Joycelin, his wife, all the old members were there. Hundreds more had come. The media were there. Rumour had spread the news of a resurrection.

We who kept vigil inside the church watched everything with blurred expectations. The choir rendered a version of Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ chorus. The scent of the myrrh and frankincense and flowers at the altar spread to the pews and outside. And then, finally, he appeared, not moonwalking as the rumors would later have it, but certainly gliding backward, airborne, a foot from the ground, his robes looking more like wings of glory. More like how Jesus walked on water, a few said.

And then we saw his face. It was the priest. Our priest. But something had changed. His face. It was white or brown or something, anything but the black face we had come to know. Ambi skin lightening cream? Born again? So many questions. His voice, when finally he spoke, had the same sonorous quality.

He had been possessed by the spirit of Michael Jackson and had moonwalked wide and far, over the earth. He had spent forty days in the wilderness, feeding on nothing but honey and berries. But he was glad to be back to lead the faithful to new heights of glory.…

IX

Mo, who had not attended the church but saw the whole thing under a blanket with which his mother had covered him at his request, was describing the whole scene as it unfolded. He could not understand how the congregation could so easily accept the return of the priest. No questions asked. Nothing about the forty days. Nothing about his flight from the court. Nothing about the Jackson appearances to a select few. It was as if nothing had happened, as if the past did not matter at all. Only the illusion …

They worship their priest, their building, their vanity, his mother told him. Buildings under different names, Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Evangelical, Judaic, compete. Their priests call themselves shepherds and train their followers to sheep-walk. God is not Catholic, Muslim, Judaic, Protestant, Hindu, Sikh; God is not a building. He lives here, there, and everywhere. My son, God sees all, because the universe is hers, and she never sleeps.… She is the universe.… Let’s go and tell the whole world.…

You have to go, Mo suddenly told his mother. We have seen too much, heard too much for them to leave us alone. They would rather uproot the eyes that see and the tongue that tells. I will join you later.…

X

There’s work to do, the priest in a white face was saying at the church. He had come back to fight prying devils, sons of Ham who had seen their father naked and had not clothed him but went about bragging about having seen his nakedness. The devil is alive and well: he knew because he had wrestled with him in the wilderness. Now he resides in a child by the name of Mo. He and his devil mother must be burned alive.

If I had not been there and seen with my eyes, I would never have believed what happened next. We did not wait for darkness but surrounded Mo’s place with oil and torches. Mo’s mom was nowhere to be seen. Mo was still under the blanket. We lifted the veil only to find his inert body. The devil.

The devil is dead, we started singing, in a tone between triumph and disappointment. We were about to go back to the church, bringing back the good tidings, when someone suggested we burn the body.

That’s when it happened. We all saw Mo’s body rise as if its soul had come back for a reunion with its body. We ran, everybody their way, back to the church, crying for help from our priest, for none of us had ever seen a body rise from the dead.

We locked ourselves inside the church. The police found us there when they came to arrest the priest and later arraigned him at the judge’s court, charged with stealing gold from God and then trying to implicate the judge’s wife in the crime.

Another miracle; a sight to see. Forty girls in Manira were carrying big tummies. When questioned, they all claimed that the tummies began to swell some months after the visitation of the holy spirit to their beds, mostly after every moonwalk, forty moonwalks in all.…