Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker [52]
Indeed, I think, I am not. But neither would I say I am fully alive.
Considering the deterioration of the rest of the prison, says Mbati, it is odd that the chapel is still intact.
That’s because no one uses it, says Adam, fingering the dusty unopened Bible, whose gilt-edged pages have been gnawed by moths.
It is even cool here, in the evenings; the windows are large and nothing, not even shutters, blocks the breeze. There are no bars, presumably because it is too high to jump.
Since the trial, Olivia has volunteered to work mornings downstairs on the AIDS floor. Adam, Benny and Pierre have rented a jeep and explored the countryside. We’ve filmed everything, says Benny, and now we want you to see it.
Adam starts the projector; at first there are slides. Pictures of the northern territory and its petroglyphs and faded paintings of celebrations and hunts. But then there is a film. I know they are trying to prepare me for it because Olivia is suddenly handing me a glass of water and Adam is holding my hand.
Pierre, who has said he wants to be the first anthropologist to empower and not further endanger his subjects, now stands quietly beside the machine.
At first I think they are showing me a human settlement, a village. The shapes are the same. Huts with umbrella-shaped tops. Huts like mushrooms. But then there is a close-up of the “huts” and a man’s feet and legs rising above them. I recognize Adam’s hiking boots. Then, when the picture is opened up, I see that the settlement is vast, but the “huts” are tiny, only three to six inches high.
Hah, says Adam, squeezing my hand. Fooled you!
I thought it was a village, I say, turning to Olivia and Mbati. Didn’t you?
Mbati smiles. Olivia says, Yes, I did. Though I did wonder about that short lumpy hut that leaned so drastically to the left.
But what is…, I start to say, but am choked by the desperate surge of my heart as it makes a sudden attempt to leave my chest.
It’s ok, says Adam. You are not alone. We are all here with you.
You’re not alone. You’re not, you’re not, I hear from Raye. Her perky voice seems to come to me from another age. Women who are not gelded have a different sound, I think. They can sound perky. A gelded woman can not.
I think this in a flash. My mind in despairing flight from the sight of a tall, rough, earthcolored column on the screen before me, Benny, dwarfed beside it, smiling uncertainly into the camera. My bag of clay! I think.
Pierre clears his throat. It is my belief, he says, after stopping the projector on the image before us, that human beings in Africa (the first ones on the planet, it is assumed), because of the heat and humidity, imitated the termite when they looked about for housing that would be comfortable, long-lasting and easily built. That is why many traditional African houses, even today, and all adobe houses anywhere, resemble those of termites. It was termites who taught early humans about natural air-conditioning, with their long vaulted passageways and great domed storage rooms. Termite houses, like mosques, are always cool, no matter what the outside temperature. Termite houses are made from the earth itself, from clay, the cheapest and most plentiful substance around.
What surprises me is that I can hear Pierre, and even understand what he is saying. It is true my heart leapt painfully once, but now it is beating normally. I glance around the room at the faces gathered about me. They are each as intent as my own.
I look at Pierre and think: Yes, it is a good thing that we train our children to help us. We who need so much help. I send a flash of gratitude to those schools I’ve never set foot in, Berkeley and Harvard. If I should live, I think, I would visit them as shrines.
I believe, he continues, that over