Chapter 14
The Prophet
The room in Wakiso cost forty thousand shillings a month, and had a hole in the floor.
It was not a large hole. It was in the corner by the door, where the cement had cracked and broken away, and it let in a thin steady stream of ants. It was a single room at the back of a compound, behind a place that sold charcoal, in a long low row of identical doors. There was no window. There was a bed, a stool, a nail in the wall, and a bucket. The roof was low, and it rang like a drum in the rain.
She took it because nobody knew her there.
That was the whole recommendation. She had come by taxi, on a Thursday in March, with her suitcase and her paper bag, and walked down a dozen lanes in the heat, asking at doors. A room? A cheap one? For one? She had stood in front of a dozen faces. She had seen the eyes go to her thinness, her cheekbones, the shadows. She had seen a woman in a doorway shake her head, politely, and say, "Ah, no, it is taken," when a moment ago it had not been. But in Wakiso, in the lane behind the charcoal shop, a boy of fourteen had said, "There is one," and led her, without a question, to a door with a padlock, and she had paid a month's rent in advance, in notes, to a man who did not look up from his newspaper.
She sat on the bed. The ants were coming in. She watched them, one by one, for a long time.
It's all right, she thought. I'll be quiet here.
She put the pills under the bed, in a plastic bag, inside a sock.
She found work in a week.
It was in a restaurant, a plain hot place on the main road, with plastic tables and a sign in red paint: FRESH FOOD — FAST FOOD — GOD IS GOOD. The owner, a big slow Muslim woman in a headscarf, who was called Hajjat Zainab and who sat all day behind the till with her eyes half shut, took one look at her and said, "Can you carry a tray?"
"Yes."
"Can you wash a plate?"
"Yes."
"Can you smile at a man who has just complained about the beans?"
"I can try."
"Fifteen thousand a day. You eat here. You do not steal." She closed her eyes. "Start tomorrow."
It was brutal work. She stood from six in the morning to ten at night, in a stained apron, among steam and shouting and the roar of a gas ring. She carried plates of matooke and beans to workmen, and taxi drivers, and a table of loud students who left no tip. She scraped, and scrubbed, and wiped. Her feet swelled. Her back ached. At the end of each day she took a cloth and cleaned the long, greasy, sticky tables by the light of a single bulb, listening to the radio, and went home to the hole in the floor.
She was surprised to find that she did not mind.
It was a kind of peace. Nobody here knew a thing about her. Nobody asked. They looked at her, when they looked at all, as a thin girl in an apron, a waitress, a pair of hands. She took orders in a quiet voice. She listened to the cook, a tall silent man called Ssebo, tell her about his football team. At eleven each morning, she took her break on an upturned crate behind the kitchen, and ate a plate of rice and beans, and felt the sun on her face.
She took the pill every evening, at eight, behind the door, with the stool pushed against it.
She did it as one performs a secret rite. She waited until the lane was quiet. She took the sock from under the bed, and the bag from the sock, and the bottle from the bag, and shook out a single yellow pill, and held it, for a moment, in her palm. Then she swallowed it dry. She put everything back, in its order. She sat for a minute, with her hand on her chest, listening.
Tomorrow, again.
It was a thing she did for herself, in the dark. It was a small act of love, and she hid it, as one hides a candle in a draught.
She did not go back to the Blue Door.
She meant to. She had a card. Review: 15th. But the clinic was two taxis away, in Kisenyi, in the very lane where a dozen women knew her face. She thought of the bench. She thought of the old man with the newspaper. She thought of a landlady running down a lane, shouting. And on the fifteenth of April, when she had a day off, she stood at the stage in Wakiso, with the card in her hand, and her stomach turned to water, and she walked back to her room.
Next week, she thought.
She still had three weeks of pills. The doctor had given her a month. She told herself, I will go before they run out.
She did not go.
It was Hajjat Zainab's niece who told her about the Prophet.
Her name was Rukia, and she was nineteen, a plump, merry, restless girl with a gap in her teeth, who came to the restaurant in the afternoons to help in the kitchen. She was a Pentecostal, which was a scandal in the family, and she talked about it, in a loud whisper, across the sinks. "You have to come," she said. "On Sunday. You have no idea."
"I'm Catholic."
"It doesn't matter. He doesn't care." She dried a plate with a flourish. "He is not like the others. Do you know that he raised a man from the dead? In Kasangati. A taxi driver. Two days in a mortuary. Prophet Mulwana walked in, and shouted, and the man sat up and asked for tea."
"I'm sure."
"It is true! My cousin was there. She saw." Rukia lowered her voice. "He heals everything. Blindness. Cancer. Barrenness. Demons. A woman at our church had a tumour the size of a melon. He put his hand on it. In one night, gone."
"Gone?"
"Like a... like smoke."
Nabirye said nothing. She was scrubbing a pot. She had learned, in four months, to say nothing at certain moments, in a certain tone. She knew a good deal, she thought, about tumours.
"I know what you're thinking," said Rukia. She had put down the plate. "But listen. I am not saying don't go to the doctor. I'm only saying, there are things the doctors can't see." She hesitated. Her round face was suddenly serious, and a little shy. "You are not well, Nabirye. Everybody knows. You are thin. You cough. You go home straight and you do not talk to anyone. There is something... I do not know. A heaviness. It is on you."
"I'm just tired."
"It is spiritual."
"I'm sure it isn't."
"Come on Sunday." She put a hand, lightly, on her arm. "Just once. If it's nothing, you'll have lost an afternoon. And if it is something..." She smiled. "Then you will be so glad."
The Overcomers' Healing Tabernacle was a warehouse.
It stood on a hill, on the edge of Wakiso, a huge corrugated shed, painted white, with a cross on the roof in red neon and a banner across the gate. SIGNS AND WONDERS. PROPHET ELIAKIM MULWANA. THE MAN OF GOD. COME AS YOU ARE. LEAVE AS YOU WERE MEANT TO BE. A wide car park was full of buses, taxis, boda bodas, wheelchairs. Vendors sold bottled water, plastic crosses, tubs of anointing oil at five thousand shillings a bottle. Loudspeakers on poles blasted a pounding, joyful, hypnotic gospel music across the whole valley. And streaming in at the gate, in their thousands, in their Sunday best, in torn clothes, on crutches, in slings, came the people.
She had never seen so many sick.
They came in a tide. A man on a handcart, with a bandaged leg. A woman with a goitre like a second head. A little boy with an enormous belly, carried on his father's shoulders, his face the colour of ash. An old man, blind, led by a girl with a stick. A mother with a baby that did not cry. They moved forward together, slowly, in silence, with a single look on every face, a sort of wide, naked, exhausted hope.
Nabirye walked with them.
She had not intended to. She had intended to stay at the gate. But Rukia had taken her by the hand, and the crowd had lifted her like water, and she found herself inside the shed, among rows of plastic chairs, in a vast hot roaring space under a tin roof, with ten thousand people clapping, singing, weeping, swaying, stamping their feet.
At the front, on a high stage, under a banner of white lilies, a man was dancing.
He was a big man, bald, in a gleaming white suit, with a gold cross on his chest and a microphone at his lips. He was perhaps fifty. He had a broad, glowing, handsome face, and a smile of such enormous, radiant, uncomplicated warmth that she felt it reach her, even at the back, like the heat of a fire. He moved with the loose-limbed, joyous freedom of a boy at a wedding. He sang. He clapped. He shouted, in a deep, rolling, honey-sweet voice, over the pounding of the band, "Is there anyone here who is tired?"
"Yes!" roared the crowd.
"Is there anyone here who is sick?"
"Yes!"
"Is there anyone here who has been told, by the doctors, by the nurses, by the whole wicked world, that there is no hope?"
"YES!"
"Then I say to you," cried the Prophet, throwing out both arms, so that the white sleeves flared like wings, "tonight, in the name of Jesus, you are going to be HEALED!"
The tabernacle exploded.
She stood among them. She was shaking. She did not know why. It was not faith. She did not believe a word. She was a trained nurse, with a notebook of pathophysiology in a drawer. But there was something in the great shouting hum of ten thousand voices, in the heat, in the clapping and the sweat and the smell of anointing oil, that went in under her ribs and took hold. She felt, suddenly, that she was a very small, very tired, very lonely creature in a very dark place, and that someone, somewhere, was holding out a hand.
I am so tired of being afraid.
He found her at the end.
She did not know how. It was nearly midnight, and the service had gone on for six hours, through a succession of sermons and testimonies and songs, and the floor of the tabernacle was littered with discarded crutches, plastic bags, lost shoes. A line had formed at the front. One by one, the sick had been brought up to the stage, and the Prophet had laid his hand on their heads and shouted, and they had fallen, backwards, into the arms of a pair of ushers. Some had risen, dazed, blinking, and been led away to cheers. Some had not risen. She had not looked.
She was sitting on a plastic chair at the back, with her hands in her lap, waiting for Rukia, who had gone to find the toilet.
"Daughter."
She looked up.
He was standing in front of her, in the aisle, in the white suit. Close to, he was larger than she had thought. He smelled of a heavy, sweet cologne. He had a large soft hand, in which he held a handkerchief, and a face wet with sweat. Round him, at a respectful distance, stood two young men in black, with earpieces.
"Yes?"
"I felt you." His voice was low, rich and gentle. "From the stage. I felt it, here." He laid a hand on his chest. "There is a heavy thing on you, my child. A spirit. I have been watching it for hours."
"I'm sorry. I don't..."
"What is your name?"
"Nabirye."
"Nabirye. A good name. A name of a blessed one." He smiled. He sat down, suddenly, heavily, in the chair next to hers, so close that she could feel the heat coming off him. "Do not be afraid. I'm only a servant. But the Lord has given me eyes." He took her hand. "Tell me. How long have you been sick?"
She did not answer.
"Not from the doctors. In your heart." His thumb moved over her knuckles. It was warm and dry. "I see a girl who is carrying a great shame. I see a very beautiful girl who has been used. By many. By men with money." His eyes were closed. "I see a house on a hill. I see a lake."
She went cold.
How does he...
"I see a mother," said the Prophet softly. "In a green dress. With a sack."
She made a sound. It was a small, choked, involuntary sound, like a hiccup.
"Ah," said the Prophet. He opened his eyes. They were large and bright and brimming with tenderness. "You see? I do not need to be told. The Holy Spirit tells me everything." He squeezed her hand. "You have been so lonely. You have carried it by yourself. You have been told that it is a disease. A thing in the blood. A virus, they call it." His voice dropped to a murmur. "But I tell you, my daughter. I tell you, as God is my witness. It is not a disease. It's a demon."
"A..."
"A spirit of infirmity. Sent by a jealous woman. A witch, perhaps, in your village. A rival. Sent across the water to punish you for your beauty, and your gifts." He nodded gravely. "I have seen it a hundred times. They call it AIDS. It is the devil's work."
"But I've had a test."
"Of course you have."
"It was positive."
"The doctors say so." He spoke with infinite compassion. "They have their machines. They have their paper. They are good men, in their place. But their place is the body. And you, my child, are not sick in your body. You are sick in your soul."
"I take medicine."
"Ah."
He sat very still. A faint, grave, sorrowful shadow crossed his face.
"What medicine?"
"For the virus. Antiretrovirals. They're... it's a pill. Once a day."
"Every day?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"For ever."
"For ever." He said it softly, almost under his breath, as one repeats a very distasteful phrase. "I see. And do you believe, in your heart, that you will be well?"
"I... the doctor says..."
"Do you believe?"
She opened her mouth. Nothing came.
"I will tell you what I see," said the Prophet. He leaned very close. His breath was sweet. His hand lay over hers. "I see a child who has been taught that she will be sick for all her life. That she must swallow poison every night, to the end of her days. And I say to you, in the name of the living Christ, that is not the voice of God." His eyes blazed. "That is the voice of fear. That is the devil's covenant. A pill every night is a chain. It's a daily proof that you do not trust the One who made you."
"It keeps me alive."
"Does it?" He smiled. "Or is that what they have told you?"
She did not answer.
"I will say it plainly." He sat back. His voice was rich, and slow, and tender. "If you want to be free, truly free, you must do the hardest thing. You must lay down the pills. You must put your whole faith in God. Not half. Not a little. All. You must say, Lord, I trust you, I do not need their medicine, you alone are my healer." He took a bottle from his pocket. It was small, dark glass. "And I will anoint you, tonight, with the oil of the Holy Spirit. And you will be clean."
"I can't stop the pills."
"Why not?"
"I'd... I'd get sick."
"That is the fear speaking."
"The doctor said..."
"The doctor cannot see." The Prophet took her chin, gently, in his hand, and tipped her face to the light. "Look at me, Nabirye. Look into my eyes. I am going to tell you what I see. I see a woman who will have children. I see a woman who will walk into a church, in a white dress, and a husband will take her hand. I see a house with a green roof, and a garden, and a girl in a nurse's uniform, laughing." His voice trembled. "I see a mother who is not ashamed."
She began to weep.
It came all at once, without a sound. It ran down her face, in a hot silent stream, and she could not stop it. She had not heard anyone say those words. She had not let herself hear them. A husband. A white dress. A mother who is not ashamed. They fell on her, one by one, like a soft rain on a parched field.
It's so easy, she thought. All I have to do is stop.
All I have to do is believe.
"I will pray for you," said the Prophet. "Now. This minute. If you will let me."
She nodded.
He laid his hand on her head.
It did not feel like a miracle. She would remember that. She had expected something more, a flash, a falling, a warm wind. But the Prophet's palm was only a large, damp, heavy hand on the crown of her head, and he shouted, in her ear, in a great ringing voice, a prayer she could not follow. She was aware of the heat of him. She was aware of a crowd, gathering, murmuring, and of someone beginning to sing. She was aware, very distinctly, of a voice at the back of her mind, small and clear, in a language of numbers and stages, saying, This is not how it works.
I know, she answered. I know.
So why are you doing it?
Because I'm so tired.
Because it's so heavy.
Because for one hour, just one hour, a man looked at me, and said I might be well.
She fell backward.
She did not decide to. It was the weight of the hand, and the shouting, and the heat, and the sleepless weeks. She went down into the arms of two young men in black, and they laid her gently on the floor, on a mat of plastic, and she lay with her eyes shut, with the whole roaring roof going round. A cheer rose. A woman screamed with joy. Somebody laid a cloth over her face, wet with oil, and she smelled the heavy sweetness of it, and a surge of such deep, crushing, childlike relief went through her that she lay there sobbing.
Done, she thought.
It is done.
When she got up, a long while later, the Prophet was gone. The hall was nearly empty. A man was sweeping up the shoes. Rukia was standing over her, in tears, holding her handbag, and saying, "I saw! I saw it! You were glowing!"
"Was I?"
"Like a lamp!"
She sat up. She felt strange, light, weightless, a little drunk. The oil on her face was cooling. She looked down at her hands, in the poor light, and turned them over. They were the same. They were thin, and brown, and shook a little. But she thought, with a flicker of wild unreasoning joy, they feel different.
"Did he say anything?" she said. "To you? About me?"
"He said..." Rukia was wiping her eyes. She had a card in her hand, a stiff white one, printed with a gold cross. "He said you must come back. Every Sunday. For twelve weeks. To seal it. And that you must bring an offering. And..." She hesitated. "And that you should put the medicine away. Not tomorrow. Tonight. So the blessing doesn't break."
"Did he?"
"He said it's the most important thing."
She sat very still.
It's the most important thing.
She knew it was a lie. She knew it, as one knows a bad smell. She knew it in the nursing student's part of her brain, the part with a diagram of a virus on a white page, a spiked ball with a core. She knew that nothing she had felt, nothing she had believed, was in any way connected to the numbers in her blood. She knew that a man who tells a person to stop her medicine is no healer, but a thief. She knew it, as clearly as she had ever known anything.
And she took the bottle out of her bag, that night, in the lane behind the charcoal shop, in the thin light of a streetlamp, and looked at it for a long time.
One more night, she thought. I'll take it tonight, and tomorrow I will decide.
She took it.
She did the same the next evening. She did it for a week.
On the eighth night, she tipped out the last of the bottle into her palm, and counted. There were twelve. She looked at them, small and yellow and round, like a handful of seeds.
And she heard it. In the cool dark of the room, among the ants, with the rain beginning on the tin, she heard a voice. It was not the Prophet's. It was not Sister Agnes's. It was her own, small and breathless and young, and it said, with all the simplicity of a child, I want to be well.
I want it to be over.
I want to go home.
She did not know that this was the most dangerous prayer in the world.
She put the bottle on the shelf, with twelve pills in it. She did not take one. She lay down on the bed, in the sound of the rain, and slept for the first time in four months without a dream.
In the morning she felt wonderful.
She felt, in fact, so well, so light, so cleansed, that she wept again, with joy, in the lane. She told Rukia. Rukia screamed. It was a miracle. The Prophet had done it. She did not need the pills. Her face had colour. Her cough had gone. She ate two plates of rice at the restaurant, and Hajjat Zainab opened one eye, and smiled.
It was true. That was the cruelty. It was entirely true. The virus, held down by four months of medicine, lay quiet in her blood, a sleeping thing, and would lie so for weeks, for months, in the long mercy of a drug that lingers. She was well. She was as well as she had been in two years. There was nothing, in that bright June morning, to tell her otherwise.
She had not yet learned that a fire can be damped, and still be a fire.
She had not yet learned that the sleeping thing was only waiting.