The New Teacher

CHAPTER ONE

That man there? He is the new teacher, or better, he was the new teacher. He is waiting for the train that will bring him back to the big city. An hour ago he left me after saying goodbye and since then I have been looking out of the window to see whether he hasn’t gone yet.

Someone’s back can show a good deal of what goes on inside a person, I always think. Once in a while people should have a good look at their own backs: they would learn much more about themselves that way than by always looking at their face in the mirror. For the past hour or so I have looked at the teacher’s back and I have read all sorts of emotions there: rage, disappointment, irritation, pity, grief, and I am sure many other feelings as well. Maybe I am reasoning in reverse, but I do know that he is a burdened man and then, of course, it is easy to read this from his back or from any part of his body, for that matter.

The train is late. When he left me I told him to hurry, because, as usual, he came to my office only minutes before the 12 o’clock shuttle was due and so our last meeting was brief; mercifully brief, because I really felt sorry for him. But then… The sound of the lumber mill siren jerks noisily over the village: lunch time for the workers and the train isn’t there yet. They almost always sound their sirens in unison, the mill and the train, somehow making it sounds melodious, but not today when I really want to see the train on time. Once he had tried to organize the workers at the mill, but the owner, an elder in our Presbyterian Church, had threatened to close to plant and this had been enough the stop the union. From what I’ve been told, he was like Rev. Macleod, my predecessor, a man with ideas almost as radical as his, but that man of God too had not lasted long at St. Andrew’s. He had left for a mission field after only a few years. I wonder how he is making out in China. The last report at the presbytery gave the impression that things were not going too well. I must remember him in our prayer on Sunday. Just as that young minister, he too- I think- wanted to do too much, expected too much from our people. Coming to church doesn’t mean that people are mature and have a good understanding of the Christian life. On the contrary I often think. And I am reconciled to that. But not this new teacher, who often had acted too undiplomatically. Didn’t he realize that there are all sorts of folk in the church? He, just like Macleod, had lashed out at our poor parishioners, had driven them, and seldom or never praised them. No, although they meant well, and I had basically agreed with their ideals, it was the way they went about it that did them in. Bob Macleod had enough wisdom to leave on his own accord. But not his fellow. Too bad he didn’t have that commonsense.

This year has been the third year that I have lived here in this village, as Presbyterian minister that is. I was born and raised not far from here and although I had been away off to school and serving other churches, my arrival here had been a sort of a homecoming for me. I know these people and they know me, I wonder though whether I really know myself. I always thought I did, but now I am not so sure.

My house, the manse as our people call it here, is just off main street, almost opposite the church, with a view over the market and the business district and, in the distance, the station. I just can make out who comes and goes here. I like that. It keeps me up-to-date on the in and outs of the village. Every day farmers and gardeners arrive from the surrounding area and sell their produce. Even in the winter, that harsh Eastern Ontario winter, they ride in on their horse and buggies with their maple syrup and, well packed against the cold, the winter cabbages and other hardy produce. I see them there and it gives me a feeling of security. I like the smell of the horses. These folk, at least, don’t give me trouble, women mostly, who try to make a few extra dollars for their families, so that they can spend it in the stores, and keep my stipend going. Money that won’t be spent in the hotel. These women know how to hang on to their hard earned cash. I also live close to the school. The school where he taught for one year- and what a year it was -, until, just now, he was asked to leave. On a warm day when the windows of my study are open, I can hear the singing of the kids. I hope they will sing next year again. Maybe a few more hymns, I would like that, and not just the modern songs he taught them, about flowers and animals and also some frolicky songs, with handclapping and shouting. Too modern for my liking, but the kids loved them, I know.

I am quite active in the affairs of the school as chairman of the Public School board. There also is a Catholic school at the other end of town, just below the hill. I like to keep our school Protestant. That’s why I ran for that position and, of course, won handily. In that capacity I have the deciding voice in the hiring and supervising of the staff.

It won’t be easy to find a new teacher to replace this one. A few letters have come in, but nothing much. And here I thought we’d have a man who would reform the school: young, energetic, ambitious, innovative, creative. Too much so, I found out.

Oh, there is the train. I can hear the shrill whistle as it enters the south-easterly boundary of our village. I like the sound of that train, the rattling of the wheels when it crosses the river just before the station. That sound alone is loud enough to herald its impending arrival so that the whistle-blowing is a mere postlude. Twice a day it stops at our village station and a few more times trains- mostly loaded with logs and ore- rumble past. Its a solid sound, a sign that the world moves on and we are part of that world. Good , he is now on his way; I can see him lifting his pack, wander closer to the train and soon finding a seat. I sigh a breath of relief: at last that episode is behind me. I can relax. But can I really? I feel sort of funny. A feeling of fatigue almost makes me feel faint, like a sudden depression, from which my wife suffered sporadically a few years ago and which led to her death. It forces me to sit down. Good, a few more minutes, and he will be gone. That’ll cure me, but why then this sudden gust of unease? Had I done the right thing?

I want to see him go and, in spite of my weariness, I stand up to look through the window. What is that? My eyes are diverted to a young man running towards the station. Another passenger? Good thing the train is late. No, it is not a passenger. It’s Garrett, the son of the owner of the blacksmith shop. He must have come to say goodbye. Garrett was his best student, a young fellow with a future. I should keep an eye on him; perhaps I can help him along.

There is the whistle. The stationmaster, another member of my church, motions to the young man and shouts something. I see Garrett running along the train, looking for his former teacher, who now sees him and has his window down. They are talking and Garrett is motioning him to come out. He walks to the door, tries to open it and – oh no – a few moments later I see the teacher jump down to the platform.

What is this? Is he going to stay? I stand up and bend over to see better. I want him to go. I have had enough trouble with him, however much I have always admired him in my heart. But he does not fit here in our town. I believe he does not fit in society at all. At first I believed in his reformational power as he called it, and, of course, I still believe in it too, but it was the way he went about it: so uncompromising, so rude, really. Maybe he failed because he had no one who could stand up to him. The principal of the school was just a sly compromiser and, I must admit, Armstrong had been lucky. But then, no person by himself could overhaul an educational system. That takes an entire community and is a gradual process that may take generations. And that is how it should be.

What in the world is happening now? The train is going and he is still there. He is turning around, away from the station and walks off, carrying that blasted backpack. In deep conversation with that boy. His arm is draped over Garrett’s shoulder. Two bosom friends. Where are they going? How could he first say goodbye and then stay? I think Garrett is taking him home. Or has he changed his mind and will go south instead, and take the 4 o’clock one? I am staying here near the window to make sure. I want to see him leave. I want him to go, no matter what. If he isn’t on that train at four then I will seek him out, wherever he is, and remind him of his promise. But what if? He has caused enough trouble. Go he must. Oh, how did I ever get into this mess. It has aged me. Disturbed me in my old days more than any other matter.

CHAPTER TWO

It is a year ago now, almost to the date, that the new teacher came. The last train had brought him in. It was dusk and he had carried that bloody backpack so that at first I had thought that he had a hunchback. I wished now that this had been the case. For a hunchback they have some respect here- nor for a backpack. But he didn’t care. Later on too, when he had become persona non grata, he took it with him on his walks in the country and on his long treks with the few Indians left in the area, with whom he made extensive trips in their birch bark canoes. He was pretty close to them and always sought them out whenever they came to town to visit, which was not often. Nobody here did such a thing. Indians drank and stank and spoke neither the English of the many Scots here nor the French the Catholics used, at least most of them.The people here did not like the natives though the lake in town had been named after the tribe that had lived here for times immemorial.

His appointment had been an involved process. The people here are very religious. Most of them belong either to the Presbyterian Church or the Methodist Church with about an equal number of Roman Catholics, who now are building a cathedral in the village and draining away much of the capital. We still have the biggest school but that may change soon with the Irish coming here in droves. So, something drastic was needed. The school, our school, the public school, needed a real boost. Armstrong, a good solid principal, lacked imagination, and had not kept up to date on new developments. As chairman of the board I had noticed that the school had no spirit and horror of horrors, parents concerned with education were considering sending their kids to the Catholic school. So I called for some strong medicine. I demanded a complete educational reform. Also Armstrong was getting on in years and we should have somebody ready to replace him. Last spring Evers had retired. On doctor’s orders he had to quit. In the board I recommended to hire a new teacher not from the normal teachers’ colleges but from a new school, in Italy, of all places, where a female medical doctor had invented a new method of teaching children. I had argued that fresh thinking was needed and that new ideas and perspectives would revitalize the school and make it more attractive to the parents. And just one teacher from that special college would not be dangerous.

We made some inquiries, interviewed some candidates and he was appointed.

The new teacher was a fighter, that I soon found out. Mr Evers and he had come together to see me the day after he had arrived. The old man really looked ready for retirement. When they entered my study to discuss the transfer, his skin looked like dried cod and, as the conversation went on, he seemed to shrivel away even more. In the end he just sat there, exhausted and spent. It affected me so that even I had trouble expressing myself, for the first time in my life, I think.

“My successor spent some time with me in the classroom,” Evers started.

“And learned something?” I interjected jokingly.

“No,” the new teacher said loud and emphatic, that it sounded like he had triggered a hidden gun.

I was startled and glanced at Evers to see whether the shot had hit him. But he was puffing his cigar and didn’t bat an eye.

His successor broke the silence: “I didn’t agree with the method of my colleague,” he said, “and told him so.”

“I am sure he appreciated your opinion,” I replied quietly.

“Of course,” he replied and he sounded like a drill sergeant on the parade ground.

I don’t easily lose my composure. In my office as minister I have had proud women come to me, unable to cope with their marital situation, young people have confessed to me and many a secret is locked in my heart. Dying farmers, in tears, have asked me whether they would go to heaven. In all these situations I have tried to keep my dignity and never has it costs me much trouble. But the attitude of the new teacher irritated me greatly. When we, as a committee had interviewed him, he seemed like a different person. Now his almost arrogant attitude, made me say, a bit more cuttingly than I had suspected myself able, “you seem to be a new broom that not only sweeps clean but also stirs up a lot of dirt.” Although I dislike throwing out cliches like that, I did have a feeling of satisfaction for having put him in place.

He gave me an angry look and shut up.

Minutes later he refused a glass of sherry. Evers took it so eagerly that he spilled in on the rug. I hate that sort of sloppiness but didn’t show it because I wanted to question the new arrival about his plans for the future.

“Do you already have some sort of a plan how you will implement your ideas?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “I have a very definite and well defined plan.”

“Well, that is excellent,” I replied, forcing myself to sound cheerful.

“How can you call it excellent, when you have no idea what I have in mind,” he barked.

I felt my temper rising, but managed to say rather nonchalantly, “Sorry, I was referring to you already having a plan and did not at all refer to its contents.”

He smiled, which surprised me, I had not thought him capable of that. He started to talk about his new work and how he saw it. The more he talked, the more animated he became, the more also my irritation left me. I was captivated by the intensity of his words.

The details of our conversation of that first meeting, I don’t remember anymore, but what he said was new to me, that much I recall. Something like individual stimulation and community consciousness, indirect guidance and development of initiative and self-reliance by permitting children to do by themselves the things that interest them, but within strictly disciplined limits. His fervour really fanned my enthusiasm too. I started to feel confident that he could really be a reforming element in our school. I felt this even more so because of his positive powers of persuasion and the effectiveness of his presentation.

Evers noticed nothing. He just sat there smoking and drinking as if he intended to dissolve himself in fumes and smoke. But maybe my annoyance with his indifferent attitude increased my optimism and confidence in his replacement.

It is hard to imagine now, but at that moment I was even so bold to think that Armstrong himself would be captured by this spirit of renewal. The old system which he was trying to patch up would look ridiculous to all who saw how powerful and daring the newer could make his point.

In the beginning it did look like it for a while, but in the end nothing came of it. We lost more than we gained. It is not my fault, even though I started this fiasco by getting him here. But how could I have guessed his fanatism, if it was so cleverly disguised as idealism?

CHAPTER THREE

Next door to me lives Miss Lane, Miss Peggy Lane as she insists on being called. She is a Sunday School teacher at the Methodist Church in our village. For years now she has lived in a small apartment above the hardware store on Main Street, which soon will be renamed Victoria Street, I have been told, in honour of the Queen of England, who also is our monarch, naturally. Miss Peggy Lane is a somewhat opinionated lady, in my opinion, but then people have accused me of the same. Quite frankly, we two do not get along too well. I know that I have been a Presbyterian minister for some thirty five years now, and I see that as a direct calling. Well, Miss Lane is also convinced that she is a messenger from heaven, personally appointed to transmit all sorts of divine predictions and curses even. All day she is busy walking through town asking whoever she meets ” Are you born again?” Nobody replies anymore and I must admit, it is a difficult question to answer too. Sometimes she manages to gather around her a group of small kids, her students in her Sunday School class among them, and tell them something. I have never bothered to eavesdrop on these impromptu meetings, but the result always is that if they have listened patiently to her monologue they get a picture card with some heavenly scene on it and a text at the back which she reads to each child who gets a card. I am told she urges them to show the card to their mother- never their father- and to ask her to pray for a new heart or to watch out for the Anti-Christ. Every day at noon, when the train arrives, she talks to the strangers coming into town. They certainly must get a queer impression of our village. Let’s hope that the first impression is not the remaining one.

Of course everybody here thinks she is crazy and I think so too, but it is crazier still that nobody dares to say anything against her and many attend her Sunday School classes. We are a friendly town so most people remain on good terms with her and when she talks to them they stop and smile somewhat stupidly. One evening I was sitting in the back yard, smoking my pipe, which my wife forbade me to smoke in the house – and I still honour her wishes – she was standing, with her collections of bible texts in her hand and handing them out to some unsuspecting passers-by when all of sudden I heard somebody talking back to her. I primed my ears, because this was exceptional. Usually people would take the card, say thank you and move on quickly. Not this time.

It was a dead quiet night. Not a carriage rattled by. The noise form the mill was subdued to the point of a mere whimper, and there was no breeze at all. The smoke from my pipe went straight up and I followed its lazy ascent.

“Do I see the devil there,” she called.

“You are wrong” he replied, “it’s me, Mister Chris, the new Teacher.”

“I see you,” she cried, “I know who you are; return from your evil ways and turn to the Lord before it is too late.”

“What do you want; why do you do this, Miss Lane?” he shouted back, equally fierce.

For a while I did not hear anything. I my mind I saw these two confronting each other, she hanging out of her second storey window as a withered tree branch; he on street level with his stubby-haired face tilted up to confront her. In the evening dark, his body silhouetted against the slightly lighter sidewalk. Yes, I could picture him somewhat resembling a horned image.

At last she said, and it sounded unusually weak, “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“That is not for everybody to hear.”

“But I want to know and I am coming up.” And before she could make any objections he had opened the front door- it was never locked, out of principle, she piously maintained- and fumbled his way up. I heard the window snap shut and it was at least an hour before he came down again. I had gone to the front door and pretended to enjoy my last pipe for the day, when he came past. Without a moment of hesitation he walked over to me and said;”That woman, what’s gotten into her? When I left her she almost attacked me and told me there was no place for me here in this village. She would see to it, that life would become impossible for me here, even if it were the last thing she did in her life. Why this hatred, this rage against me. What’s the matter with her?”

Of course I knew what he was talking about but could not find the right approach so quickly – somehow he seems to put me on the spot all the time – and in my confusion invited him to come in, in spite of the late hour. Just to give myself time to gather my wits, I went to my wine rack, selected a bottle of good wine, sat down with him and started to tell him what I knew about Peggy Lane.

I guess that the wine had made me talkative and since I was past my usual bedtime, I became a bit longwinded, searching for the right words. I guess that my story was not too flattering of her and laced with ridicule and told in somewhat mocking and denigrating fashion. This did not sit too well with him, I could sense, because he looked at me, quite a penetrating look, actually, which made me somewhat uncomfortable, I remember.

After what seemed like an long time, he said: “I am not so sure. Of course I have only talked to her for a short while and you have known her much longer. Have you ever been in her room and looked around in her tiny apartment? She does have some good books and her apartment is well furnished. I think that you have prejudged her, and forgotten to take her as she is: a pitiful figure that needs compassion rather than ridicule.”

I am not used to being lectured or reprimanded, and again I felt some resentment welling up. Who was he to say these things to me. It is allright if I talk this way to others – after all that is my job – but being on the receiving end did not sit well with me. This was our second meeting and already he took me to task: I, the chairman of the board, the minister of the village’s largest church, a man whose word was almost always eagerly received. And here was this rookie teacher, barely out of school himself, disagreeing with me. It irritated me visibly especially because he had made a valid point and so, in a sense, had done something which I myself should have done: show compassion and understanding for a fellow creature.

I hid my discomfort and managed to steer the discussion away from Miss Lane to himself.

“Tell me,” I said, ” now that you have been here for a week and have started to teach: what do you expect to accomplish?”

He looked at me with his penetrating eyes piercing from underneath his heavy eyebrows, and took his time to answer me, weighing perhaps what to say or to say anything at all, wondering whether I could be trusted to hear his future plans.

Finally he said, and I could notice that this took some effort ” I am going to do it differently.” And then his face lit up when he started to elaborate. “I intend to educate the whole town. Not only the kids. Everybody.” By now he had risen from his chair and started to talk with a much greater deal of fervor. “What’s the use of educating school children if at home they hear exactly the opposite. I must be able to talk to their parents too!”

Strange ideas he had. Well, not strange , perhaps, because is that not the reason why I am interested too in church and school work. My job too is to educate the parents as well as the children, so really I could see his point quite well. But he wanted to go much further than I. He denied that there was such as thing as a separation between the spiritual and the physical, a split between body and soul. And that he meant business, I found out quite soon.

CHAPTER FOUR

Every morning, rain or shine, I take the dog out for a walk. Ever since my wife died Pluto has been my daily companion. And both my dog and I benefit from the exercise and not only the two of us: I think the entire village is the richer because of this and I’ll tell you why. I can recommend it even if you don’t have a dog. I am sure that I owe part of my popularity to this practice. Promptly at 9.30, after my breakfast and my morning paper, I am on my way. Many would miss me if they were not to see us come past at the regular hour. The polio-crippled boy, the shoemaker in his little shop, the French woman in her vegetable stall, they and many more spontaneously greet me when I stroll in front of their establishment. I always respond to their warm greetings with a wave of my arm and the occasional verbal comment. It is my opinion that true aristocracy is recognized by courteous conduct towards the less fortunate.

One particular morning, I was in a splendid mood, originating, on closer analysis, from the excellent reponse to my sermon yesterday – although I had missed Mister Chris in the service . Many people had stopped me and had expressed their appreciation, something not unusual for me, but nevertheless highly valued. A few people had even commented on some specific passages and had stated their deep personal gratification with the comforting words I had given them. I must admit that I did put it on yesterday. I, myself, would have called it a tear jerker, but, at any rate, they loved it. I wonder how Mister Chris would have responded to it.

In my unusual display of good mood Pluto took advantage of my self absorption and ran off. Fortunately a little boy, whom I had never met before, saw my predicament and caught him for me. I rewarded him with an orange which I had planned to bring to a sick lad of the church. Instead I went to the shoemaker and ordered a pair of new boots, secretly expecting some positive comments from him as well. “Vanity of Vanity says the Preacher”…. I admit to some weaknesses.

Exchanging the usual remarks with the shoemaker, my eye was caught by a conspicuous poster hanging on the outside of the window. Strange how matters are noticed in reverse: I must have passed it when I came in. Since I could not recall ever having seen anything displayed on his shop window before, I sort of jokingly asked whether the circus was coming to town. “May be.” he said, “have a look,”

The poster shocked me. There it was in big red letters: ADULT DEVELOPMENT COURSE, and in smaller print an appeal to all who wanted to increase their understanding of creation, to come to the Public School for a course in “living and learning.” No charge.

That was Mister Chris’ work, of course, and judging by the weathered state of the announcement, it was a few days old. I was annoyed that I had not noticed it before, ripped it off the window and entered the shoeshop again to ask for more information, but he didn’t know anymore than was printed on that paper. He didn’t understand why I was so upset, unless he pretended, but why should he? I was cross at his gullibility and, because I did not want him to see my irritation, I quickly left.

It seemed to me that the best way to deal with this was to go and ask Mister Chris at once, which I did. I went straight to the school, which was in full swing, and walked directly into his class room.

“I am terribly displeased with you” I said,without bothering to keep my voice down. The kids kept on working as if I did not exist.

“I know this would come sooner or later,” he replied. He made no effort to find out the source of my dissatisfaction so I launched right away into the attack.

“Tell me, please, what does this poster mean?” and I threw the pieces on his desk.

“That poster?” he asked. “I put up forty nine of them. Number fifty is hanging in my room over my bed.”

I didn’t believe him right away, but when he showed me on a map of our village the places where he had affixed the advertising for his ‘Living and Learning’ course I was forced to. He looked at me with a triumphant gleam in his eyes which made me feel like giving him a punch in the nose. I wished now I had done it: it would have perhaps stalled or even stopped him. But I didn’t and said: “You should have first asked permission for this.”

“Well, I did ask Armstrong, and he did not object.”

“Yes, but this is a board matter and I, as chairman, should have been notified.”

“But you would not have given it.”

“Of course not.”

“Well?”

“There are certain formalities and unwritten laws you have to observe. Mister Chris,” I said quite huffy.

“You are a church minister, Reverend Pillar,” he replied, “you are bound by rules and regulations, but this matter is too important to be held up by such means. It is in the interest of the school and the entire community that the people here become better educated.”

“Educated for what,” I asked, but he did not want to say. I should come to the registration unless I wanted to block his plans and make the course impossible.

I didn’t want to do that and now I am sorry because I could have prevented a lot of misery not only for the village but especially for him. But in the beginning I had not quite determined my position. I sensed that he possessed an unusual mentality and I was not quite sure whether I should try to hold him back now or take another look at this development later. In his enthusiasm he did not consult with others. Instead he placed them for the facts and forced ahead by himself and those in authority had to accommodate to his wishes. They had to love him and leave him and when they let him have his way he never would show a sign of appreciation. This bluntness was a new experience for me and I found it upsetting, to be frank; his self reliant attitude made me become unsure of myself. In general I pretty well know what I want. His positive behaviour made me admire him while at the same time I resented him. His self- confidence was bigger than mine, perhaps, because he never questioned whether he had any.

I told him that I this poster business did not appeal to me at all but that for the time being I would give him a chance to prove himself with his program of learning. If the other board members would not find out – and this was very unlikely at this stage- then the registration could take place.

I expected my generous offer to be received with an expression of thanks or an apology of sorts, but none came. He said that the absence of a reaction from the board and the tacit approval of the principal was enough proof that his announcement did not unduly differ from all the other advertisments on the billboards throughout the village – and that was all.

I left the classroom which had remained remarkably quiet during our lively conversation, and went home with mixed feelings. My customary coffee and the usual exchange of little tidbits of information with my housekeeper before I went to my study, did not dispel the uneasiness within me.

For him the registration evening was a great success. He had placed a table in the corner next to the schools’ front door and had seated himself behind it as an experienced recruiting officer. On the table he placed a few pens, an inkwell and some official looking forms. The first person to register was the shoemaker. Me he greeted sheepishly and then went over to the table.

“Your name,” Mister Chris asked.

“Keens, Sir, Peter.”

“Your occupation?”

“I am the shoemaker; Reverend Pillar here knows me well.”

“What is the reason for you coming to this course?”

“I want to learn more about what goes on in the world. My children will face an uncertain future and with all respect to Reverend Pillar, I do not see enough leadership coming from the church to prepare our youth for the difficult times ahead. I want to be able myself to guide my children, of which I have five.”

“You are accepted. Find yourself a desk in the second classroom.”

And that’s how it went. One after the other came and I knew almost all of them. There were quite a few- I estimate about a third- that belonged to my church, another third belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, while the remainder were either not church goers or members of various smaller churches, of which we have a number in the village, ranging from the Methodist Church to Salvation Army. He did not ask about church affiliation at all. Yet, for some reason he turned away a few. When I asked him why, he did not say, and because I stayed close to him to observe, I could not see a valid reason for this. Did he had a sixth sense about some people? Was it an aura clash or just bad vibes?

There were more men than women, something that did not surprise me, and the women who did register came mostly without their husbands. The enrollment period was from seven till seven thirty, as announced on the poster and when the schoolbell rang out on the half hour, he closed the front door. After that a few people tried to get in but he ignored their knocking and they soon left.

He certainly did not need anymore: I counted forty eight registrants. For each poster he had obtained one disciple, not counting the one I ripped off, which actually made it forty nine, because I too was there, even though I had not registered. When he had closed the door, I felt nervous. Together we were in that crowded classroom, where, sitting on chairs and benches now close to one hundred eyes looked at him as of salvation would come from Mister Chris. Faces, hungry for what? Had I failed them? Had all the other church ministers and priests failed them? Had my words been insufficient? In a flash I saw these people changed from immature, carefree children to old, worn out persons. Had I done what I could, to have them ready for the crisis years to come? Or had he taken over from me and the other clergy? Or was his self-appointed task also a futile undertaking? If not, if there was still an opportunity, was it this that I wanted him to do?

The dead quietness made my introspection seem all the more dreadful, and I was relieved when Mister Chris started to talk.

“I am really pleased that you feel the need to educate yourself more. That proves that you aren’t as uneducated as you thought. Let me explain to you first what this is not. It is not some sort of a nightschool where I will teach you how to read and to write. I know that you are capable of doing that. What I do have in mind is to talk to you about things that will make your life more worthwhile, things you will benefit from in your day-to day affairs. I will try to make you see the things in life which count and to discern the things which are phoney. I will try to show you that Peggy Lane deserves respect and has the courage of her convictions, but that she also is betting on the wrong horse. I will talk about education and its purpose, our place here in this village as citizens of the state and the world, especially in light of the Boer War which now is raging in South Africa and why this war and most others as well, are being waged. I will talk to you and your family, your work and your money and how the church fits into the spectre of things. I will talk to you about the human race and its destiny and how we should live in regards to our environment and much more. You will perhaps wonder what is the use of all these matters and why we should talk about them. But I hope to show you that after a while your understanding of events and happenings and matters which you always have taken from granted, will change. We will read books together, listen to music, will write and perform plays, even may do some dancing if we can decide on the right type and I will ask the Reverend Pillar to conduct a workshop on how to change worship services, if he feels so inclined.

Suddenly all hundred eyes were focused on me, and I grinned somewhat sheepishly, without saying anything. I don’t think he had expected me to agree on the spot or even agree at all. At any rate he never asked me then or later. Yet, I sensed that the class would have liked me to have said something. I have always had a fine nose for reading the mood of a gathering: I am sure I would have made an excellent politician. But in this case I refrained from any response, in spite of the unspoken, yet to me evident eagerness on the part of the people there for me to commit myself . I now know that then and there I missed a golden opportunity and forfeited a chance to closely co-operate with him and so change the direction of church and society in our village. I guess I lacked the zeal and conviction and – this is difficult to even think – the courage and the faith. And now it is too late for that. Or is it?

At any rate, I decided to wait and hope to see him stumble.

Once a week the course would be held, which hardly seemed sufficient judging by the amount of material he wanted to deal with.

I had already decided to let him have his way. I was sure that, if the matter came up at the board, I could persuade the members.

When the matter did arise there, it was not as easy as I had first thought, but I told them that the teacher had asked my permission long ago and that I had failed to pass on the request. Fortunately the school principal, Mr Armstrong, supported me, as indeed, Mister Chris had cleared the matter with him first.

But his was not the end of it.

Education in our village is paid for by the local tax payer and the cost for the school is entirely born by the village or the township or city in which the school is located. Only a small portion of the cost comes from the province, which has no say in our education fortunately. We have enough troubles as it is without complete strangers meddling in our local affairs. Yet the quality varies from place to place, with some localities allocating more funds per student than others. And it also makes schooling locally subject to political interference, something I had known, but never really experienced, until this year.

CHAPTER FIVE

A few days later a received a letter in the mail from the village council. It was from the mayor himself, asking me to come to the village office because he wanted to have a talk with me. No particulars were given.

I know the mayor quite well. He is a local merchant and also an elder in the Methodist church, where he sometimes preaches as well. Quite a decent sort of a man, even though he is a member of the wrong church and also has a bit of a speech defect, but he cannot help that.

I replied at once, as is my custom, and wrote him that I was busy for the next few days but could easily fit it in on Friday at 10.30. a.m. barring a sudden funeral. I promptly got a note back, by messenger, that this was fine with him.

Mr Ferguson – everybody calls him Fergy- ran a hardware store in town. Quite a large store, really, as our village is the geographical centre of a number of townships and since he stocks almost everything farmers, loggers, miners and trades people need, his store is always busy.

For this day I had delayed my morning walk a bit, so that I could fit in my appointment with the top elected official in the village.

Promptly at 10.30 I was ushered into his office where he sat behind his large desk, obviously waiting for me.

He rose and helped me with my black coat which he carefully hang away.

I sat down. He sat down. I said nothing. He said nothing, obviously trying to find a suitable opening without sounding trite. I saw his jaw working, trying to overcome his slight stuttering. I looked away from him, having read once that looking a person straight into his face, puts him more at unease and I wanted to make matters easy for him, at least in the beginning.

“W…we s…should talk about the new teacher,” he said.

“May be you should,” I answered, “but why me?”

“Ta, ta ta ta ta,” he said, as if he all of a sudden had become a baby who wanted to say ‘good-day’ to me. But then I found out that those sounds had been uttered to warn me not to assume such an aggressive tone.

“P…please don’t get ex…c..cited right away, Reverend,” he said, “but l..l..lets calmly discuss this p..problem. I’ve had complaints.”

“From Miss Lane,” I hazarded.

He looked at me, eyes open and mouth too. “You have guessed it.”

“The New Teacher had told me something about their meeting. I think, now that he has started his evening school, she sees stiff competition in him. May I have a look at the letter, or does it contain confidential matters?”

Evidently he had not expected this and I saw his hesitation. He fumbled among papers on his desk and finally extraced a piece of plain, lined paper. I could detect the large writing and saw even a smudge of ink in it. He held the letter in front of him, rereading it. I saw his lips move and could almost decipher the contents from reading them, but looked the other way.

After a pause, he handed me the letter without a comment.

I griefly glanced at it because the letter was quite short. Then I looked at him, my eyes saying to him, reinforced by my raised eyebrows: Is that worth all the fuzz?

The letter only had one paragraph. It said, and I can recall it even now after almost a year, word for word.

“Mister Chris is the devil. He is out to bring Satan to town. I have seen it in his eyes when he visited me. Please ban him and let him not spread his false gospel, because I only represent the Good Gospel.”

“Do you really believe this,” I asked Fergie, “Don’t you think that this is a slight exaggeration?” implying, of course, that I as a minister of the Presbyterian Church could make a similar claim.

“She is my tenant,” he managed to say without stuttering, “and she is an important person when it comes election time. She also is a member of my church, and teaches Sunday School there. Frankly I like being mayor and I have to take the opinion of all my c..c….constituents seriously.” He added now quite aggressively, as if he wasn’t quite sure of himself: “I see it as competition, even if I don’t like the word, and y…you have g..given him the go ahead.”

“The town council never objected when the school was used for catechism classes, ” I said, trying not to sound aggressive. I can’t see how you can take exeption to a Community Development Course given in the same building.”

“I b..brought it up in the council meeting,” he said. “We don’t disagree but you know that the building is owned by the village and is maintained by us and any use other than directly related to the education of children, needs our approval.”

That was true, of course, but I could hardly tell him that I had said these very words to the New Teacher and that afterwards I had yielded without ever talking about an official approval by the village. He had me by the balls – so to say – and now all I could do was to quote Mister Chris that it was in the best interest of the entire community. I added that even Roman Catholic School supporters were attending his course.

“T..that’s wonderful,” he said, ” but that’s not the point.”

“What is the point then,” I insisted, knowing full well his answer.\par”The p..point is that w..we as village council, and I as mayor, cannot tolerate that somebody, least of all an employee of the school, and this indirectly in service of the village, offends a member of the public.”

I looked at him and my mouth fell open from amazement. I thought I had known this man. I did. I even knew his parents well and in my wildest dreams I had never imagined that he was capable of saying more than 10 words in a row, without being tripped up by his own thoughts. He must have rehearsed this time and again and somebody must have coached him. Who, I wondered.

After having said this he looked at me relieved and triumphant and demonstrately pulled out a box of cigars and proceeded to light one. He was shook up a bit when he noticed that he had forgotten to offer me one and somewhat shyly did so. I still don’t know why I accepted it. My Scottish nature, I presume: the only things we, Scotch, wave away are flies. After having gone through the ritual of lighting my cigar, I said, puffing to soothe the effects of my words: “I am one of the many person of our community who has been offended by a certain person for years already.”

:Miss Lane?” he said, and he veiled her in a smoke screen.

“You’ve guessed it,” I said and almost made her invisible.

Through the haze I thought that I saw him smile. He then bent over to me, as if what he was going to say was in the greatest confidence with not even the walls being allowed to hear. He whispered “You know that Miss Lane cannot be held responsible for her action.”

“You mean to say that when she offends me and other persons, we must simply acccept all her foolishness? I don’t buy that.” And waved away the curtain of smoke that divided us, a symbol of a much larger barrier between us and I hinted at that in my next sentence. “In my opinion not Mister Chris, but Miss Lane is a public menace. She causes nightmares in kids’ minds with her talk about hell and damnation. She does not bring the gospel, the good news, but the wrath and anger of a remote God.”

“Tut. ..tut..tut.. “he stuttered, and now his political instincts emerged. After all I was and always has been one of his stout supporters.

I sensed that we had made some progress because now he assured me that he had no intention to stop the teacher’s course. Everybody was free to come and go as they pleased and if people preferred the New Teacher above Miss Lane, that was their good right. But he insisted on some supervision at his nightly gatherings and proposed that from time to time a member of the schoolboard would drop in and report back to the board. “That wasn’t asking too much, was it.”

True, it was a fair way out, but I believe now that there was more to it than I suspected at that time. I said that I found his proposal reasonable and accepted it. What else could I do? A week later I went to his store and bought a new woodstove, an expensive one, made in Quebec, something I’ve had my eye on for a long time. It wasn’t cheap but I figured it was worth the price of peace. Now I am not so sure.

My mouth is dry, even though I am used to a lot of talking, but I never go on so long without a rest. I keep my sermons to a mere 30 minutes, well among the shortest of the preachers in town, and this accounts in no little part for my popularity. Now I am in the market for a long, tall glass of cool beer. My story may not be too interesting to those who don’t know the village and its people, but to me retelling it brings a sense of relief. It becomes clearer to me now and I am starting to see why our community excommunicated a free-thinker like Mister Chris and tolerated a crazy character like Miss Lane: she does not upset anybody. His going away has affected me, I know. He could have done so much good work here.

CHAPTER SIX

Those fifty persons he molded into a vanguard. Fifty, no more. There were more people who wanted to join, but he simply refused them all except one. I warned him that such an unbending attitude would cause bad feelings, but he shrugged his shoulders. Later my warning proved well founded. If he had been a bit less selective he would have still been here. At the board meeting I reported on my visit with the mayor and, not surprising, I was rapped over my fingers for having acted too independently. As if I ever do otherwise! Baker, the butcher, who always sleeps in church, even introduced a motion to express the dissatisfaction of the board. This went a bit too far for Mrs Dyer, our only female board member, even though I suspected that this had been pre-arranged because they both disapproved of the course and Mister Chris as well. Mrs Dyer, who is a scholarly person, some even say the most erudite person in town, said that Mister Chris was no gentleman. Only when I threatened to resign if they did not stop this nonsense, did we agree on a schedule for visiting, and, as it worked out, I did most of it, because some of the members objected to go there at all, out of principle. I did not pursue this, having caused enough commotion at this point. At any rate, I actually was eager to visit him, curious of what he had to offer and also ready to call him to account if needed.

I still don’t know whether I liked him or not. He did have a powerful influence on people, that was beyond question, but I think that sometimes this is more a disadvantage than an advantage. Of course we need leaders who know where they stand and who can steer people in the right direction, but there are also grave dangers to this. Suppose the direction is the wrong one. What then? I myself I consider it one of the more distinct forms of civilized living not to impose one’s opinion upon somebody else. Perhaps I have been wrong there. Come to think of it: I believe in a sort of a cast system or better class system. In the bottom of my heart – and I will admit this to nobody – I think that I am more privileged than most and so my philosophy is that the less we bother each other, the better our democratic unity will find expression. That certainly was not his way of thinking. Conversation with him was often very difficult because it always turned out to be a profound discussion and because of that he made people say things they often did not want to say at all. At least, that is my experience and I am certainly not a person who is easily influenced. If, for instance, I would start an innocent chat about the state of the log industry – a big and profitable part of our economy – he would immediately come with annoying particulars about clearcutting and the destruction of wildlife habitat and even the desecrating of native lands. Where he got that nonsense, I still don’t understand. To me the only good Indian is a dead Indian, and so far we have done a lot of good there, because very few of them are left. Because I don’t bother my mind about this, and never given it a thought, I also could not refute him. I could only say that these people pay my stipend and if I were to preach his sort of gospel from the pulpit, I would soon be out of a job. If I would tell him some funny incidents connected with my ministry, he would act as if he hadn’t heard them and suddenly would start questioning me about a sermon of mine with which he disagreed.

And here we really clashed. He felt that the church services were far too one-sided; with me there in the pulpit, I was the only source of wisdom and nobody ever had a chance to discuss what I was saying. I, as the minister of the gospel, was apparently the only person able and mature to explain the Word of God, and the entire congregation was being reduced to immature puppets who had never learned to think for themselves and so come to maturity.

There was, of course a grain of truth in what he said, and I agreed with him. I also let him know that he owed his appointment to me and that it was up to him even more to teach the children to think for themselves.To which he retorted that whatever he would teach them, the church would unlearn them even quicker. And so we argued, he lacking all sense of proportion and common sense, something that in the end I no longer could tolerate.

Yet I liked him and felt responsible for him. After all, though I had recommended him, he couldn’t help that he had turned out to be a Trojan horse. He was born that way and I did not succeed in subduing him. Sometimes it looked that I had come out on top but then he pulled way again and with renewed power made up for lost time. He was a fighter at heart and soul and I appreciated that in him. He did fight, after all for a cause I had initiated. I still have a limitless confidence in his capabilities, but I believe they were too big and too strong for our area.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I started to notice a subtle change in our village. It came slowly and was evident only in a few little things. In the window of the Fireside bookstore I noticed an annoucement that those attending the “Living and Learning Course” were eligible for a fifteen percent discount on their book purchases. I went into the store and asked the owner – a member of my church – why he did this. He told me that during the past two weeks he had sold ten books to people who had never been in his store before, and he mentioned their names. I knew almost all of them and I couldn’t understand how some of these people could pay for this, but he said that they did this from the money they usually spent on tobacco and the occasional drink in the hotel. He explained it in terms like two packs of cigarets less each week and in two weeks their savings would equal the price of a good book. “That New Teacher is a miracle worker,” he said with conviction. “He get things done and I now am also attending his course. He gave me special permission to join, on the condition that I would give fifteen percent off on book purchases by those of his adult class.”

The changes in the village were not only a switch to reading, remarkable as that was in itself. Even some personality changes were taking place. I noticed it when I went for my daily shave one day. My barber, John, addressed me as Mister Pillar. When I heard him say that I suddenly moved my head, not believing my ears and almost got my throat cut. The second time, there was no doubt. So I said, quite friendly, but agitated nevertheless; “I haven’t retired yet, John”

What do you mean, Mr Pillar?”

“I am still a minister of the Presbyterian Church and all people call me Reverend Pillar. Why don’t you?”

“Well, look, Sir,” he said falteringly, “I have given the matter some thought. I can’t see any reason why I should call you ‘reverend.’ Your particular profession is no more reverend than mine and neither are you. I have just as much the right to be called reverend as you have, because before God we are all the same.”

“Are you, perhaps, attending the course of the New Teacher?” I asked, because I had started to become somewhat suspicious now.

“Yes Sir,” he said and he started to beam as if he had won the Irish Sweepstakes. You must have seen me there. I sit in the first desk of the third row.”

This sounded so silly that I couldn’t help laughing, in spite of my mounting exasperation with him. John’s unspoiled spirit, or whatever I previously had appreciated in him, had become soiled now that he had been forced to start thinking. Nothing more dangerous than a little knowledge, I thought. I had seen him there, but had not been able to place him because in class he was in a suit and was called Mr Biggar, certainly a misleading name for such a mousy man. It flashed through my mind not to give him my usual tip, but decided against it; after all it was not his fault.

My old friend, the shoemaker, also was a changed man. When I saw him to get my new boots fitted, he started, quite unexpectedly, to talk about the task of a Christian in Politics.

“What do you mean,” I aksed. “We have Peter Rattray as our Member of the Provincial Parliament, even a member of our church. Also that fellow in the Bay City, what’s his name, is a member of St. Andrew’s there. What more do you want?”

“I am very glad that we have these able men in politics,” he said, and he almost sounded to me like one of my local colleagues, “but these men speak only for themselves and in no way do they represent a Christian view on the issues to be discussed. I think, Reverend- at least he still calls me that, I thought – that in your sermons you ought to tell us also what the Bible teaches us regarding our political task.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “When will my boots be ready?” And without waiting for an answer I left.

These were only two examples but they were symptons of a changing atmosphere. There was no doubt that Mister Chris was the instigator. I had, of course, heard him say these words in class, but, as a minister, I had grown accustomed to have my words largely ignored, mainly because I myself really did not take them at their face value. Never, for a moment, had it dawned on me that these simple people would really try to live his ideas. I started to fear that the little flame he had ignited might turn into a real fire which, at a certain moment, he could no longer control. And neither could I. I now started to wonder whether it would not be better to suspend the course and send the people home in the hope that they would remain as stupid as they always had been. But I did not develop that train of thought further and a meeting a few days later made me abandon it.

It was a meeting with his principal, Mr Armstrong who stopped me on the street when I was on the way to see a sick parishioner. He almost begged me to listen to him now – he said he had been on his way to see me at the manse. I offered to go back there with him, but he said that he lived close by and offered his home as a good place to talk. He lived in an older two storey frame house close to the river. I noticed that the storm windows were still on and none were too clean. When he had unlocked the front door, he led me through a smelly corridor and was just about to precede me on the stairs, when a woman’s voice called him from behind a door.

“My wife,” he said apologetically. He opened the door a bit and sticking his head into the room, mumbled something to her. I glanced over his shoulder and saw a part of a bed and a hand holding a book. Almost immediately Armstrong pulled his head back and went on ahead of me.

“A short while ago she had a stroke and now is partially paralyzed,” he said.

“Don’t you have to look after her?” I asked.

He said nothing and invited me to come into his study. It was a terribly furnished with an old big desk completely devoid of anything. His book case had only old, moldy books with dark brown backs and on the wall a wooden plaque with a bible text on it. I believe it was that saying of Joshua: ‘But for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,’ but then my memory may have played me some tricks, influenced, perhaps with what happened later. The room was cold and dark and he did not seem inclined to alter that, so I kept my coat on.

Without any further ado he started to lay the egg that he had been aching to deliver: “Some of my students are getting some strange ideas lately.”

“Isn’t it the task of the school to promote this? I ventured.

“Not ongodly, unchristian ideas,” he said by way of explanation.

“I wouldn’t read too much in that,” I said and I sounded like an expert in pedagogy; “perhaps they get too much religion and throw it back at you.”

“I disagree,” he said emphatically.

“Well, that’s my opinion,” I said, ” and I speak from experience.” Of course I understood quite well where he wanted to go, but I did not feel like helping him along; he should introduce the real reason himself. And that’s what he did.

“My New Teacher,” he said, ” is quite an energetic man.”

I liked his diplomatic utterence here, quite a neutral opening to what I suspected to become a negative report in the end. And I wasn’t wrong.

“I would be pleased to see his activities geared to something more positive,” he continued, in a somewhat unnatural voice, which reminded me of the preaching trant of some of my colleagues or others when praying publicly.

I pulled up my eyebrows which are quite bushy and still fiercely black, even though my -still abundant hair- is graying fast. No wonder with encounters such as this one. But I remained silent, forcing him to continue.

“You know just as well as I do,” his principal said, “that my New Teacher conducts that evening course and I understand that the inerrant, infallible and perfect Word of God is being degraded there. Aren’t you in attendance there on occasion?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must know this, especially as a Man of the Cloth and the chairman of the Schoolboard.”

“Why haven’t you brought this to the attention of my session?” I asked. “After all he is a member of my church. By the way: what makes you say such a thing any way? I’ve never seen you there.”

“I heard it from my grade 7 and 8 pupils,” the principal explained. “They questioned me when I read the Bible at the opening of school, as is my custom. They said the Mister Chris had said that there is more than one word of God.”

I hadn’t been at his classes for a few weeks and now remember that he had told the class that he would present some new ideas about the nature of God’s word in the next few weeks. I had stayed away not only because I had been busy but also because I figured that there was not much he could tell me, a trained theologian and graduate of both Queen’s University and Toronto’s Knox College.

“Did you talk to him about it,” I asked, “after all if anybody can clarify the situation for you, it is Mister Chris.”

“I tried to get in touch with him after school,: Armstrong said lamely, “but when I looked for him, he had left already.”

“Well, I would suggest that you see him first thing in the morning,” I said, rising from my chair.

“Just a minute, Reverend Pillar,” he said quickly, “there is something else I wanted to discuss with you.”

“Well?”

“A few days ago my students told me that according to Mister Chris there is no heaven and that when people die, they just disintegrate and do not go to heaven or hell, as my church and your church teaches.”

“All the more reason for you to have a long conversation with him,” I said, ” and I think it is very premature for you to keep me from my busy schedule to acquaint me with unconfirmed hearsay.” I can be very snotty if I want to be, and I certainly showed my annoyance through my body language as well.

“Reverend,” Armstrong pleaded with me, almost embracing me to prevent my stalking out. I could smell his bad breath. “Reverend, it would be in the interest of our entire church community if that course was stopped. I hope that you will lend your help to make this possible.”

“Mister Armstrong,” I said, and I did my extra best to sound solemn , something which already comes natural to me, “as you well know I give regular reports to our board about this matter and until now I have not found any ground to recommend the suspension of the lectures. Good afternoon.”

“Then I myself will report to the board on this matter.” he shouted.

“In that case you better come well prepared,” I said, “the boardmembers are not all fools, as you well know, Mr Armstrong.”

My last remark did not really reflect my opinion, but it seemed to me that at that moment it could do no harm. Often it is not wise to say what one thinks. Words can come back to haunt us. When he silently brought me to the door, I wished him a speedy recovery for his wife. I thought it would do no harm to remind him of his task in that regard. He answered me by slamming the door.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The vanguard of fifty fighters made enemies but also friends. Sometimes it looked as if a storm had ravaged our village and had put everything upside down.On those occasions it seemed that I was a stranger here, I, born and raised in the village and having deep roots here as well: my great grandparents had come from Scotland directly here and had done well in the lumber trade, well enough to have me become one of the first in the area to study at Queen’s in Kingston. The Fireside Bookstore had increased its discount from fifteen to twenty percent and I saw more and more famers and trades people walk around with books in their pocket.

On Saturday afternoons he organized workshops. On those occasions the attendance was not limited to the fifty faithful but the participants were allowed to take a friend or relative along. The workshops were something new to our village. He would introduce some topic himself, such as ‘the Benefits and Drawbacks of the Industrial Revolution’ or The topic of the day: ‘The Boer War.’ Especially the latter divided the town into two camps: several of our young men had volunteered and had sailed to Great Britain and whenever a relative received a letter from one of these men it was widely ditributed and all churches prayed for the success of the army. He, of course, was dead set against this war and any war and lively discussions ensued. Due to these debates, the village’s attitude changed and people had become much more critical and, in my opinion, belligerent, and, in spite of being against the war effort, the mood in the village turned hostile. Often he would relinguish his chair to another person, even to women, and he just sat in the audience, while they quite ably, I noticed, presided over the proceedings. He also appointed different people to take notes- most of them did anyway- and had them report back to the regular section. Also each week a different person was assigned to write a report to the Village Voice and promptly every week a long story appeared describing some aspect of ‘the Living and Learning’ Course. So it was no wonder that those he were on the sidelines or had remained neutral in this affair, or- and there were a number – who felt offended by all these events, felt out of it and even alienated.

I, in my session, wouldn’t dare to relinguish my chair, Our denomination, sensing the possible pitfalls of increased lay participation, had it written in its Rule book that only the local minister, the Moderator as he was called, could chair the council of elders. A wise decision, I always thought. There is a great danger in giving the lay people an inflated opinion, by promoting them to take the place of the ordained. But He had no such compunction. None whatsoever. The odd time he would ask one on his friends from the City to come and conduct a workshop. But that did not go over too well. Once even a woman-friend came. Did she look different! When I saw here I thought she was an Indian from the neighbouring Reserve, but no, even though she dressed and acted as such, she was pure white Anglo Saxon. She stayed with him at his apartment and that caused some gossip, but soon the talk died when she left after a weekend here. Actually they came together to church that Sunday and I had a chance to talk to her briefly. To me she almost looked more like a man than a woman, even though she had a very womanly figure, in spite of her manly attire.

It still amazes me how he attracted these simple folk who not even three months ago would have felt highly offended if I would call a congregational meeting on an icehockey play-off night. Now a little chat with one of his adult pupils would often end up in a monologue by the other, spewing forth ideas totally foreign to me. It struck me also that they really tried to polish their language and make it sound grammatically correct. It seemed to me that with what to me sounded affected speech, some of their naturalness had disappeared as well. At any rate, culture had gripped them, whether Mister Chris wanted that or not, and refinement is revilement I have read somewhere. Not only were they being refined, but also viled and polished and drilled so much that I was afraid that in the long run nothing more would remain but useless stumps which no tool could possibly fashion anymore into something useful. The queer thing was that during his lectures I never heard anything that could explain this development. Those people must have been tremendously ignorant, either their former teachers had never taught them anything in their youth, or whatever they had learned they had totally forgotten. I refused to contemplate that in any way the churches could be at fault. I was convinced that I always had done my utmost to lead the people of my flock to maturity, even though I was disturbed that so many of my church were part of his following. Could I have failed?

Whatever the case, the fifty apostles made headway: there was no doubt about it. Sometimes I heard farmers and miners make remarks which could only have come from Mister Chris. I never have encountered people who in public quoted parts of my sermons, but here were some, not even his direct disciples he had been bitten by his bug. My own dear housekeeper had been contaminated. For thirty years now she had bought fresh eggs from a member farmer of my church and never ever had she made any remarks on it. One day, when I paid here for the eggs, she paused for a minute and said stupidly: “The beginning of everything alive.”

“What are you referring to, Greta?” I asked.

“About these eggs. It is a miracle, Reverend, these ordinary chicken eggs. It is hard to believe that we also have started this way.”

“And some human later on turned chicken,” I egged her.” She didn’t get excited, as usual, but stayed there, with a silly smile on her face, gazing at these eggs.

“Better put them in the icebox, Greta,” I said finally, “and don’t drop them. And don’t keep them in your hands too long: they might hatch on you.”

I started to become worried. In spite of all the inbreeding, our village had always remained relatively sane, even though some stories make the rounds about the proverbial stupidity of our inhabitants. But when Greta, whose only culture had been breeding, and others as well, started to act as if they were my equals, this made me feel uncomfortable in my own milieu and prompted me to have another talk with Mister Chris.

“How do you like it here?” I asked when he was over to visit me. We were sitting in my living room. Through the windows I could see the school which lay deserted and lifeless across my back yard. Was it the close proximity to the school that had made me decide to become the schoolboard chairman?

“I like it here,” he answered. “There is much to be done here and I am doing a lot too.”

“May be too much,” I said.

“I can take it.”

“I don’t mean you,” I said, “I mean the others. I sometimes have the idea that you teach them things they can’t fully understand.”

“That also I consider part of my task,” he said. “That makes them grow and after a while they will catch on. You know perfectly well that I don’t tell them anything that is beyond their comprehension.”

“Not beyond that of yours or mine,” I answered, “but certainly beyond the grasp of others. When I hear the nonsense they tell, I really question the benefit of your course.”

“I don’t feel the need to have them benefit from it. I want to develop their understanding.”

“Understanding of situations of which they better remain ignorant,” I retorted. “You make rebels of them, Mister Chris, and you cannot offer them anything to improve them in a material sense. The shoemaker, for instance, expresses highly dangerous theories.”

“He is one of my best students,” he said undeterred.

To stall for time I started to fill my pipe. On such ocasions, when there is an impasse, just taking the time cleaning my pipe and carefully fill it from that copper tobacco tin, so gleamingly maintained by Greta, gives me time to reflect. Although I had matches in my pocket, I went to the kitchen to get a new pack.

“We, as board, are quite pleased with your progress in your classroom,” I said when I came back. I really wanted to keep the upperhand in the conversation, although I had no clue what I wanted to achieve. It was true, kids were crazy about him. They regarded him as one of their own and when I saw how during recess he participated in their games, he really was one of them. And yet, he had that indisputable authority but he never needed to display it. Exactly when he needed to, he gave them that little push so that they probably thought that they had done it all by themselves. I was enough of a teacher myself to appreciate his great gifts there. He was, I am sure, an ideal coach and I would have given much if I had been able to hold him here, to only teach that primary level and not being given the chance to fool around with the older people.

When I had called him to account on that poster I should have made this clear then and there. Now I just don’t understand why I had not done it then.

“We are very satisfied with your accomplishments, so far, ” I repeated. “The entire board, including Mrs. Dyer.”

“I can well see that,” he answered self assured. “Since I have joined the staff, we have had twelve new children join the school.”

“Twelve apostles,” I said jokingly, although I think there were eleven if I recall the report at the last board meeting correctly.”

“You want to spare me a Judas,” he asked, and he looked straight at me. “Mister Pilate” he then said, after a brief silence.

That last remark bewildered me. I did not know whether he had grossly offended me or whether he had only made a play of words on my last name. And still, today, I am not sure. To recognize those things is not my strong point and I don’t believe that this a disadvantage: some small degree of childish naivite is an asset in a person’s make-up, I think. I must admit that his remarks were much sharper than mine, much more cutting and those are character traits with which I have difficulty coping. But I never betrayed or condemned him as he perhaps implied at that moment. I couldn’t help it, though, that gradually my attitude toward him changed and my sympathy with his aims started to disappear. Yet, I always remained faithful to him because I knew he meant well and when almost nobody wanted to listen to him anymore, I kept on defending him.

“Let’s stop these witty word plays,” I said after a long silence. “I know your intention are perfect but I doubt whether your method is the right one. You do teach them to see life in its totality as a religious experience, if I understand you correctly, but I believe that, as a person quite up-to-date on religious matters, most people have gone off to sleep a long time ago and nothing will wake them up. You either confuse them or rub them the wrong way.”

This was one of my longer speeches to him and, of course, it failed to dissuade him and so I was not surprised when his answer was. “I happen to disagree with you. I teach them how to live here and now, without worrying about the consequences or even considering possible financial gain so that they will have an true idea how they should shape their lived today and be ready for tomorrow.”

“Try to be a bit more careful,” I said soothingly, “so that the other side does not become irritated or the mayor and your principal will band together to stop you cold.”

“The mayor, why could he possibly object? And Mr Armstrong? I just can’t believe that he will work against a member of his own staff, especially since the school is now becoming so much more popular.”

What could I say? He was right, of course, in his own particular self-righteous way. If I wanted that course to stop it was up to me to do so or plant the idea with the mayor. And both options were impossible. Actually I did not want the course to end; all I wanted was for him to be a bit more moderate and not stir up things that should be left alone. But that was just the point I could not get across to him. I told him time and again that he should realize that in time these things which he now wanted to bring about with force, would happen by themselves, that it was much better to have certain conditions evolve the natural way. I said to him: “You have given the initial push, now wait and see what happens and then go on.” But he called me conservative – as if it is a bad thing to hold on to the good and proven things – and he challenged me to either leave him alone or send him away. He was such a black and white fellow. No compromise. In the end I could only hope that he himself would tire of all that zeal or that his followers would get fed up with him. The last thing did happen, but that was quite a while after we had that discussion.

CHAPTER NINE

He always had some far-out ideas. Where he dreamed them up or how he came to them, was a puzzle to me. I guess his brain was always at work, dreaming up new angles and inventing different ways to keep people thinking and busy. I must admit: he was a real innovator and stimulator. During one of his walking tours in the outlying areas of our region, as always carrying his blasted knapsack, he discovered that the clay-soil situated about 5 miles east of our village was perfectly suited for making pottery.

Our town has an unemployment problem. The pine forests surrounding our village are disappearing fast as families need more land both because of growing families and also due to an increasing market for cheese, our prime export product. But the flipside was that logging, which is very labour intensive,was becoming more difficult and with it the timber trade, the tree processing- logging mills and veneer plants, suffered as well. And a lot of mines surrounding the village are closing because of lack of demand and depletion. We still have a dynamite factory in town, which is also working with a reduced staff. I hear that the owner is planning to cut the wages there, and that there now is some labor unrest. As a member of my church I should remind him of his social responsibilities.

It was a real concern of mine because no new employment opportunities were being created, and the few new jobs in the milk processing plants were not nearly enough to offset the loss in the primary industry. Fortunately those who became unemployed always had extensive gardens and with the necessary canning and preserving skills basic food needs were not a prime concern. Even weaving and making clothes were part of daily life with the result that most people were able to live on little money. And if they needed some, my church was quite helpful to give aid to our members. I had initiated that fund during the depression a few years ago, when the financial burden of some had proved too much. But Mister Chris had a more lasting solution. Once he had discovered the clay he went nosing for a potter and amazingly, he found one: an old man who claimed that he had helped his grandfather with the making of pottery and was quite willing to give a demonstration at one of his evening classes.

And that’s how our village got a new industry. The old man did indeed know how to make potttery with the wheel he somehow had found – way back in the barn he told the class, buried under a pile of straw and not used since the Crimean War, of which he was a veteran. Interesting stories did he tell, while he spun the wheel and with increasing self- assurance and independence taught some unemployed how to become a potter. Of course Mister Chris himself wanted to try it as well and he soon became proficient. He also found a new way to mix and kneed the clay, which a special gang dug out from a certain field for which he had made arrangements with the owner. He also discovered a new way to improve the glazing. How he fixed that, I don’t know, because unintentionally, no doubt, he took that secret with him. Due to that new process the product became as hard and unbreakable as stone. It was a pity that the artistic calibre of the products was rather low, but he also organized a sales force which went from house to house and store to store to sell the stuff and many bought, feeling morally obliged to aid this venture. I haven’t seen any lately; I don’t know why. I guess the industry died with him. Pity.

At another time he had the notion to have his classes do sports and calesthenics. But for that he only got about a dozen people: most of them were scared away by the prescribed clothing required: shorts and short sleeve shirts is something perhaps allright for kids and the young folk – I heard that the young men came out in droves when a few adventurous young ladies showed off their bare knees and ankles. Even a few older citizens were not adverse to that, I was told by my housekeeper, who keeps me abreast of the gossip in the village. I endure this idle talk only because occasionally I hear something useful. However, by and large our people are modest and do not want to make a public spectacle of themselves . When he wanted them to do the exercises outside on the school play ground , he met with severe resistance.

More succesful were his public performances with the drama and singing clubs, in the beginning, at least. Later one of the players had a small accident and the enthusiasm waned somewhat, of the men anyway. Losing a day’s pay because of a mishap away from work, was asking a bit too much. He wrote the plays himself. The usually dealt with a conflict between two opposing elements, between good and evil, progressive and conservative, the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of darkness. This conflict, which according to him ran through all of life, in all circumstances, he secreted into some ordinary life situation and it was up to the public to guess the background and the consequences of the exposure. He organized these plays so that the entire audience participated in the play as well: they had to sing certain parts or had to clap or stamp their feet at a certain point. He always had a well worked out program printed- he must have made a special deal with the local Village Voice because the programs were well laid out and with good graphics. I suspect that the owner was one of his secret supporters. Often his class was partly involved as well so that the parents automatically were in the audience which created for them a feeling of belonging. In this way he really was able to create a sense of community and ownership. I must say when I attended, I only saw happy and smiling faces and a sensation of togetherness which I tried to stimulate in my services but seldom achieved.

One time he put the devil on the stage who played in every scene. He quite ingenuously made the devil be only recognized as the Force of Evil by those people who were keenly aware of their own actions and knew why they did what they did. All the others- the people who live without analyzing their lives – the majority -hardly noticed him at all. All this was quite involved but that did not matter because the Devil played well and they all had great fun. I have no clue – even now- who he -or she perhaps- was, because all players remained anonymous. The Devil played in a hell-red suit and to those who did not know of what material the suit was made, it looked exactly as if the thing had come straight from hell. But I knew that the suit was an old one of mine, some old-fashioned piece of underwear I didn’t need anymore and had donated to the drama club. They had died it red which had made it shrink so much that it locked around the player like burned skin. In the final scene the Devil was to be unmasked and captured by a group of small girls who did not suspect his existence and would encircle him in a prayerful dance.

So far, so good, The Devil himself was standing in the centre of the empty stage, looking around him in apparent triumph, as the true master of the Universe and the kids came up on the stage gaily bouncing. They joined hands and with their backs turned to him made a ring around the Devil. He stretched up and bent down, in what was supposed to be a portrayal of impotent rage of being caged by this impenetrable ring, and over-acted just a bit. Through all these motions a crucial button snapped of his suit, in the only place where buttons were needed and which demarcated the judicial line between decent and indecent exposure. That had never happened to me, but then I also had never worn this suit in public and even in this garment always behaved with decorum. It had been for the eyes only of my deceased spouse. Of course the Devil, in the heat of his acting, did not notice a thing, but the audience did because the hellish colour accentuated the difference. The little girls, of course, had no inkling what was going on as they danced backwardly around him. When, upon the pre-arrranged sign they turned to finally bring him to his knees, they came almost eyeball-to-eyeball with the most controversial member of the community. Some kids bawled, while most of the audience had a ball.

CHAPTER TEN

There are two elementary schools in our part of the country and both are treated equally, that is to say, people are able to send their children to the school of their choice without being penalized financially, at least until grade 10. With the two system, the public- Protestant- and the separate- Roman Catholic- came also two boards of which the principal of each school was a member in an advisory capacity. There is also a high school in our village, but it is strictly public. Most of the children quit school after grade 8 although there are rumblings that soon it will become compulsory to stay in school till the age of 16. I am not so sure whether I am in favour of this extension: it would mean more expenses for the village for building on to the high school.

Our schoolboard has five members, of which I am one, of course. Then there is Mrs Dyer, the museum curator and professed intellectual and three others, one of which has recently died. A real pity because he was a good fellow and, like me, favourably disposed toward Mister Chris. The other two were simply fence sitters, voting with whoever had spoken last or the loudest: Mister Baker, the butcher, and Philip Casey, a farmer, who often nods off during the meetings, but insisted on coming because it meant a gratuity of $5.00 for each time he turns up. Poor guy: when the meeting would last beyond his ususal bedtime, he even snored at times: it always is early rising for him with 15 cows to milk. And he needed the money. These two simply had no opinions of their own and never did any homework or school visiting for that matter. That was left to me. In general my authority and status in the community and my well thought-out arguments were sufficient to have almost all decisions carried without a dissenting vote, leaving me in a pretty strong position.

The new fellow, John Dafoe, a land surveyor, was appointed by the mayor, and also a good friend of Armstrong and this made me suspect that both the mayor and the school principal would work through him to introduce motions that could lead to a disavantage for our New Teacher. And then there was Mrs Dyer, a divorced lady, middle aged, no children. Nobody had ever heard of her former husband or even seen him: we went by her word only that she ever had been married. For all I knew she could be a spinster, but I guess her divorced status – such a rarity in our community – gave her a sort of cachet, since , as far as I know, she is the only woman like that in the area. I’ve seen her glance at Armstrong during the meeting, and suspected something there. Later on it became plain that, indeed, there was a connection. But I am running ahead of myself.

Board meetings are a public affair and a report of the proceedings appeared routinely in the Village Voice, VV for short. The editor of VV is not really a bad guy, even though he is completely nuts with a set of brains so sharp that he can cut anything up, but because he is a notorious imbiber, once cut up, his muddled brain often has trouble piecing the fragments together again. He had smelled a rat with the new board member whom he knew to be a good friend of Fergie, the mayor, and had seen Armstrong and John Dafoe smooch together and perhaps even overheard some of their conversation. A any rate VV next Wednesday had a curious headline: “Armstrong using his elbows” in fat print with as subscript : “Strong Arm Tactics by Armstrong.”

What he said was completely out of proportion. According to the editor, Armstrong, through his new ally on the board John Dafoe, had called me, the chair, the indirect instigator of misleading theories, undermining the very basis of the school community. The editor, an Irishman, Sean O’Rourke, did not fail to mention that the new member was a good friend of the mayor and no doubt was appointed to give him a say on the board.

The head line made quite a stir in the village and when I saw it and had read the article, I walked first to see Sean at the Village Voice but he was out on an assignment, the girl said. I suspected him to be in the Hotel but decided not to confirm my suspicion and instead walked over to the hardware store, where I found its owner sitting behind his desk in his little cublicle, from where he could oversee the store, without himself being conspicuous.

I wasted no time. “I think it is proper to consult me before you appoint a new member to the Board of Education” I told him without any introductory remarks, while throwing my copy of the Village Voice in front of him. “Look what is all over the village.”

He did not bother to look, I guess because he knew all about it. Instead he tried to appease me and started out by uttering “Y…y..ou are m.m….misinformed” But this sounded so phoney that he quit his attempts and instead became more aggressive.

“T..that e..evening c..course in our school has become more and more a p..p..pub..blic c..controversy, Reverend Pillar. May I ask you, do you still attend them.”

“Occasionaly.”

“I haven’t seen anything in the minutes lately.”

“There is nothing new to report.”

“A..and w..what about this?” he asked and with a swift motion produced two books which he placed with a bang in front of me. The one book was by Darwin, ‘the Origin of Species’ and the other was by John Adams, ‘The Wealth of Nations.’

“Although I have heard about these books, I have not read them,” I said truthfully.

“The teacher of “The Living and Learning” course is using these books as text books for his “Christian Perspective Course.” he sneered.

“These certainly are not books to be read for relaxation,” I replied, ” No doubt many people can learn from them. May be even you and Mr Armstrong.”

“Y..you ins..ult me,” he yelled and leapt from his chair. I quickly noticed that when excited he would start stuttering again.

“That makes us even,” I said quietly and remained seated.

At that moment the door behind me was pushed open and somebody came flying in, as if catapulted, and puffing like a steam engine. It was Miss Lane. She did not see me but lunged at her landlord, the mayor, and screamed with a voice almost void of human traces: “I am going out of my mind! I am going out of my mind!”

Even without yelling this, it was plain she spoke the truth. She looked half-cocked, her eyes almost popping out of her head and she mercilessly pulled her hair as if she was doing it to somebody else’s.

“Miss Lane,” the mayor said, “Miss Lane, be quiet,” and he walked toward her with outstretched arms as if he wanted to embrace her, a thing that to me would be the last thing a man wanted to do to her. I stood up, and together we pushed her into a chair. There she sat for a while, like a zombie, lifeless as a puppet, drained, which allowed me to place a cup of water in her hands, which then she routinely emptied, and with the fluid some life returned to her.

“Tell me,” I said paternally, “what is it that makes you so upset.”

I am more and more starting to appreciate the special course I took some years ago in Pastoral Psychology. I knew exactly how to deal with these matters, one of them having been a case study involving religion-sick females. I have yet to encounter a religion-sick male, unless the New Teacher was one.

“They poke fun at me,” she finally said softly. “I have given all of them a new heart in the name of our Savior,” she murmured, “and now they poke fun at me.”

“That’s not very nice,” I said, “but aren’t you used to that?”

“Reverend Pillar!” The mayor said, as to warn me not to go on, but somehow another voice, with a tone of anger in it, and identifying me, acted as a catalyst to unleash her fury and, in spite of the two of us trying to restrain her, she vaulted from her chair and roared: “I tell you, Reverend Pillar, I tell you, they yell: ‘Peggy Lane is insane; Peggy Lane is insane,'” and this she repeated until, exhausted, she fell back in her chair.

“That is shameful,” her landlord said indignantly.

“Don’t get excited about it,” I said. “Just some kids poking fun at her. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I don’t agree with you,” said the mayor. “I notice here the influence of these dangerous books,” and he pounded his fist on the unread books he despised so much.

“I know a Book that you would throw away too, if you understood it properly,” I said angrily. I am talking like that teacher, I thought. I won’t be long and I will be his follower also.

Miss Lane had somewhat regained her usual compusure, which was bad enough. The entire situation was dismal. I didn’t like it a bit and tried to put an end to it. I said: “Can I help you to get to your apartment?” And when she did not reply, but wordlessly tried to stand up, I coached her out of the store. I remember when I was leaving, the mayor saying: “You will understand, Reverend, that this course must be stopped. We will no longer condone the cultivation of immoral feelings and thoughts.” With Miss Lane leaning on me I felt that this was not the appropriate time to pursue the matter, kept quiet and helped Miss Lane up the stairs to her apartment.

The next day I received a message by special delivery barring Mister Chris from using the school after hours for his course. Mister Chris could move heaven and earth and he tried hard enough, but the entrance to the school remained barred. For the first time during his stay here, and perhaps even during his stay on earth, Mister Chris had to strike the colors.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

For Mister Chris the situation looked bleak and to me it seems that he was in a real mess. I started to regret my recommendation that had brought him here. Granted, he had been the initiator of many worthwhile projects, but also the prime cause of many disasters. It always goes that way: the good brings along the evil and every reformation costs blood. I know, as a good Calvinist my motto in life is: Ecclesia Reformata, semper Reformanda. True, I wanted to see the church reformed, and always being busy reforming, but I wanted to do it on my terms and not on the terms of the New Teacher, Mister Chris. I had hoped and, frankly, believed, that he would limit his work to the school and his class, a job he did so remarkably well. I told him, with all the powers of persuasion in my possession, I even ordered him to quit his extra curricular activities, but I could just as well have tried to ask the Catholics to give up on Mother Mary or abandon their saints, he went his way as a man with a divine destiny.

First he tried to accomodate his troup in somebody’s house, but none of them had a room large enough to fit them all in and I, of course, had no intention to make my large house available, although it could well have served the purpose. Then he canvassed all the churches, including mine, with an official request to the clerk of session, but, no, I advised against it, even though some of the elders voted for it, something that has never happened before. He then approached the neighbouring township council. They have a large hall almost next to the church, and low and behold, these farmers agreed.

There is a curious situation in our village. The municipality is situated all around our village and has its administrative office within the village boundaries, which makes sense, of course, because the village lies dead centre in the township.There has been a degree of rivalry between these two councils, something often the case when there is a rural – farming – and a residential- more middle class- section. The township too has their own schools, all small one classroom affairs, spread out over a wide area, and it is generally thought that the village school is far superior. May be that was part of the reason why they agreed to his request. However, the township and village have also have a meeting place rivalry. Where the village owns the theatre building, the township has a large hall where people can meet and do so on occasion. I remember that about a decade ago our church started its services there before we built our own sanctuary. I don’t know whether I should feel sorry now for not having offered him my large living room, but I do know that I almost lost my temper when I heard that he had solved his problem and had rented the township hall for a small fee.

It wasn’t quite suitable for what he had in mind, but apparently he had promised the township people that he would fix up the hall, install a better heating system the cost of which would then go towards the rent. Somehow he had convinced the four farmers and one mine operator that made up the township council – and among which were a couple of my elders as well, exactly those who had voted against me – to have the hall become his permanent base, with a separate room to store some of the stuff, such as the pottery wheel and some props used in the plays. And they had agreed. I can well imagine Mr Ferguson, our mayor, sending in complaint to the county for illegal use of municipal property. Perhaps I should plant a bug in his ear.

At any rate, it seemed that this move had revitalized his band and it made me furious. The sign outside the hall “Join our Mission of Christian Vision,” was an eysore to me, and that next to my church, as if my church was not Christian and not committed to mission. Had I been a Catholic Priest, I would have started excommunication proceedings. For the first time, I was furious, really furious at him. With his actions he had not only made me look ridiculous, but as my protÈgÈ he also had harmed my position as the chairman of the board and the school. When I noticed that people started to stop and read the literature he had attached to the sign, I called him in and I roared at him. I admit I made a darn fool of myself and when I finally had spent my rage I took a strong drink and emptied it in one gulp. I never do that and it showed my agitation.

He listened to me quietly and when he finally found an opening to say something back, he only remarked: “I don’t understand you.”

“Then you are even more crazy than I thought,” I yelled.

“I do what I see is my duty,” he answered and he clipped his words and bit his lips when he was finished, as if he wanted to say more but had second thoughts. He then continued, ” I am not giving up my mission, even if they would put my in the jail house between the township building and your church.”

He did not say ‘our church;’ he said ‘your church’ the first time he used that and it almost swayed me, but then I renewed my attack: “You call your mission “Christian” when you teach people ideas they cannot handle. They become rebellious and unsettled and unsure.”

“So what. Rigid conformity is much more dangerous.”

There we were again: at loggerheads. But now that I had started to oppose him, it seemed that there was no stopping.

“I will take legal action to put a restraining order so that you cannot use the hall.” I said, telling him something I had never even thought about before, yet must have been living in my subconscience.

Suddenly he started to smile and it was not a malicious smile, more a mischievous one. He said, “Reverend Pillar, if they allow Miss Lane the freedom of the road, they cannot refuse me to do exactly the same thing she is talking about.”

“You are talking nonsense,” I said.

“And since when do you think I talk nonsense?’ he asked. Has the Mayor succeeded in using you much sooner than I expected.”

” I am not being used by anybody, not even by you.”

He looked outside and smiled when a saw a few boys making their way into the hall. A growing group of people were standing in front of it, some looking questionly in the direction of the manse, where they guessed Mister Chris was at the moment. His independent attitude irked me so much that I announced, “From now on don’t count on me for anything. You have gone too far, Mister Chris. There are certain norms of courtesy you must adhere to.”

Was I afraid that he would start Sunday services there as well? I know he knew the Scriptures as well as I did, perhaps even better, and would be able to draw large crowds on Sunday if he had decided to start this. And that next to my church. I did not dare ask him for fear giving him this very idea. Was that what motivated me?

I took him a while to answer my last rebuttal, but when he did he hit home. Did he know me better than I did myself when he replied “I know you treasure certain bourgeois norms, Mr Pillar. They also keep you from bringing real sacrifices.”

I hated him and I admired him as always when I suffered defeat. He looked so hilarious with his short and stubby hair on top of his head, hair that was long in the neck, long enough to have a pony tail there, and then his blackish unkept short beard above his red and yellow shirt. He looked like black smoke on top of a flame. Yet he demanded as much respect as the highest British general.

I said weaklyy, “Put yourself in my shoes, Mister Chris. I have brought you here and I have protected you against a bunch of know-alls, so that you had free play. And now you show your gratitude by competing with me next to my church and drawing my people away from the true church and getting them all confused? Isn’t it reasonable for me to have a few objections to your behaviour?”

“From your point of view it is certainly reasonable,” he answered, ” and that’s why I am glad not to be in your shoes. If I were I could never do what I do now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Affluence breeds conservatism and the desire to conserve something really is fear of losing it. In your case this means your position, your ideas and your reputation.”

“So you call me a conservative?”

“Yes.”

“I never thought myself to be one.”

“That’s exactly your trouble. I wish you were, then you would be a conservative out of conviction, but now you think you are progressive while in reality you are not and that causes trouble. People like you hold up the development of Christianity much more than those who openly fight progress. Those at least you can meet head on, but with your kind this is impossible.”

“I am not one of a kind,” I said annoyed. “I am a distinct individual and I do believe that we have had some clashes.”

“Of course we did. That’s because you try to have the best of two world and that simply can’t be done.”

“I think you are an arrogant bastard, pardon the expression, unshakeably convinced of the Gospel Truth of your opinions,” I said, nettled.

“Yes, from you point of view, you are probably right. You can’t agree with me because your minister kind by your very existence promote the idea of a split life, the Sunday for God, plus a bit of midweek catechism, perhaps, if you are ambitious, and the rest you don’t touch.”

“My kingdom is not of this world, Jesus said,” I retorted.

He looked at me with his piercing eyes which made me uncomfortable and defensive. For a long time he said nothing, while I fidgeted with my pipe.

“You know something,” he replied finally. “Right now I am reading a book by Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”.

I nodded that I knew the book. He continued, ” In that case you may remember the episode where Jesus returns during the Spanish Inquisition, and again performs miracles as he did 15 centuries ago, and how this time everybody recognizes him.”

“I remember that episode,” I interjected.

“Then you will recall that the cardinal who heads the Inquisition puts Jesus in prison and when this old prince of the church interrogates Jesus, his first question is why he has come back, because now only the church has the power to speak for God and sees his appearance as interference. He then scolds Jesus and says that he made a serious mistake in resisting the devils’ three temptations in the wilderness: he could have used his powers for his own needs, win a large following by doing miracles, by compromising with Satan. The cardinal concludes that it is the mystery of the church that it has adopted Satan’s suggestions.”

I shrugged my shoulders and said: “That may have applied to the Roman Catholic Church then and perhaps even now and to the Russian Orthodox Church, but not to ours.”

“Then what about the practise of the Christian religion – whether Protestant or Roman Catholic – to split real life – science, business, art, you name it – from Sunday worship? Isn’t that exactly what the Devil wants?”

“Well, no,” I mumbled and looked away from him towards his new assembly place, where a few hundred people had gathered. Some were laughing and yelling, others stood quietly and I would have loved to know who among them were in favor of Mister Chris and who opposed. Automatically I reached for my pipe and was just about to light it when he grabbed my arm so suddenly that I was startled. He almost pleaded, ” Then what? Are you with me or against me? Do you want to teach them or leave them in the dark?” His question bewildered me and I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing how to respond.

“When I leave you now and go into the township Hall, Reverend Pillar, does that mean you and I have gone our separate ways?”

“No,” I yelled.

He nodded as if he had done me a favor to be allowed to yell in my own house. Moments later he left. The people made way for him as he went into the hall and shut the door behind him, leaving the people outside. Had they expected him to address them?

CHAPTER TWELVE

For the Village Voice the entire episode was a real boon. Even people who thoroughly disliked its drunken editor bought copies of his weekly gossip sheet and advertising revenue boomed. Allowing him to buy a more expensive brand of Scotch.

“A New Reformation In the Bulwark of the Reformation” was the headline that covered the whole front page the day after Mister Chris had placed his sign outside the Township Hall. Underneath it was another provocative line: “Village versus Township. Church versus the People.” Sean O’Rourke laid it on thick, alleging how the mayor of the Village wanted Mister Chris out of the people-teaching business, as it competed with his tenant, Peggy Lane. A provocative picture of her, handing out tracts to kids, was the other eye-catcher on the front page. A lot of what he had written was pure nonsense, of course, grossly exaggerated, with references to Luther and Calvin, implying that Mister Chris wanted to make another Geneva of our town. Apparently Mister Chris had given a speech standing before the Township Hall door – must have been on the day I was away at Presbytery – and his challenge of reform had been directed at the church, the civic authorities as well as the board of education. Too bad I don’t have the paper anymore. If I were to believe the Village Voice I could expect each moment now to see 95 theses nailed to the oak doors of St. Andrew’s!

To my amazement there was no reaction to this public event. I had expect the Mayor to lodge a complaint but nothing happened. Why there had been no public outcry became clear to me when I happened to meet the editor on the street in front of his building and he invited me in for a chat. I told him that his article had focused too much on Mister Chris which, in my opinion, was not desirable. All that publicity was attracting too much attention to his extra-curricular activities and could harm the school.

“And the school means You, of course,” he said, quite to the point.

I had to agree to that, partly pleased, partly hurt. I reminded myself that with him I must be careful, especially when he has had a few drink, which was the case. Somehow alcohol puts his brains in high gear, at least after the immediate imbibing.

He smiled, pleased as punch to have scored a point and searched his desk for another glass in which he wanted to pour me a drink. Although I am not adverse to an occasional glass of wine, I politely but firmly declined his offer of some excellent Scotch on the rocks. No, not even with water or soda, I repeated.

He acted as if I had committed a mortal sin, but probably blamed it on my ministerial status, and continued, “What I am going to tell you now is certainly worth hearing, and I am not so sure that after you have heard me out, you might not want a drink.”

He held up his empty glass and through it he glanced at me, holding it first for his one eye and then for the other. Perhaps his distorted view of me would be rectified if he distorted it again by looking through an empty glass. Or may be he was drunk and regarded his own behavior as normal. At any rate he had made me curious, and although I found his manners rather repulsive, I contained myself and said: “Well?”

He again looked at me through his empty glass, darkly, filled it up, offered the bottle to me, which I again declined by shaking my head, then lifted the glass till it reached my eye level and said, absentmindedly: “Christian Educator sins against the Seventh Commandment.”

“You are drinking too much,” I said, fearing that he would start talking drunken nonsense before he would have given me the information he had promised.

“That would make a beautiful headline,” he said, “I will print it an inch high. A School principal and elder in a church deserves bold type that size, don’t you think?”

“You must be talking about Armstrong,” I said.

“I admire your powers of deduction,” he shouted, ” and you, as minister should know all about the sin of the seventh commandment.”

I ignored his sneer but still in the dark about his remarks, I asked: “What do you mean? What has all this got to do with Armstrong?” While I was asking the question, something clicked in me, and, although I could not believe the possibility, I continued my questioning: “Are you implying that Armstrong is misbehaving?”

“If you call that misbehaviour, then I am saying that,” he answered and to prove that he was not drunk, or better, that he still had a great degree of balance, he placed his glass on his head and filled it without spilling.

I ignored his childish behavior and said: “I can’t believe you,” and meant it. “His wife just had a stroke.”

“Correct,” he said, suddenly loud and distinct. “That to me makes this business so immoral that I already have informed the mayor and now here inform you, as chairman of the Board of Education. If this man, in his position, has no morals, who in the world then will have?” He emptied his glass and then in a clipped voice, added: “The mayor was shocked.”

“Did he believe you? ” I asked.

“He had to,” the editor answered, “I have proof, a letter on the stationery of the school. Do you know to whom it was addressed?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Of course not,” he answered. “You Calvinists only see the sins in somebody else, especially doctrinal deviations, as if they are important. I will let you have a good look at yourself one of these days. You may guess three times.”

“Miss Lane,” I said.

“Would make a nice couple,” he thought, but much too obvious. “Two more stabs, dear Reverend.”

“Let’s quit this foolishness,” I said, and made a motion to go.

“With a tired and heavily Irish accent he crooned: “I am goo-ing to devote an article to a highly esteemed lady scholar in the local school board.”

I, in my innocence, again failed to make the connection. May be I was obsessed with the idea that he was drunk and interpreted all his words in that light. My puritan upbringing had ingrained in me that drink and foolish talk go hand in hand which put me at a psychological disadvantage.

I said: “Who is the lady scholar in the school board?”

“Mrs Dyer, of course.”

” If you want to write an article on her, I can help you with a picture of her too. I have it in my file with personal particulars of all board members.”

“Is that true?” he cried out, surprised. “That is news to me, man, big news. Or are you joking?”

“If you hadn’t drunk that much, you would remember that ministers never lie,” I said. Then I stood up and said, “If you are still interested in a picture of Mrs Dyer, come and get it when you are sober. Good day.”

I was already half way through the door, when he noticed I was not sitting across from him anymore. He ran after me, grabbed my coat, and said” “I will, Reverend Pillar, I will gladly. Is tomorrow morning all right?”

“What do you mean? I said, annoyed.

“That picture,” he said, “that picture of that slut.”

“Mrs Dyer may be a nuisance, but I believe her to be a respectable lady,” I corrected him.

He looked at me as if I was drunk, and then broke out laughing and with great difficulty, amidst hiccoughs of deep belly-bursts of laughter, finally managed to say: “You still don’t understand the situation, do you, Reverend Pillar?”

“Understand what?” I said and moved further towards the outside door.

In his headline-type of sentences, he explained: “Church-elder-School-Principal leaves crippled wife for Scholarly Lady on Board of Education.”

At least the full impact of his words hit me. In subdued tones he told me the entire love story of Armstrong and Mrs Dyer with all the exact details. He also pointed out which parts he had revealed to the Mayor to blackmail him.

“But why blackmail him?” I asked, because that sounded too big a word, for this matter.

“That’s journalism for you,” he said proudly. “If he makes a fuss with the Reeve of the Township about the use of their hall, then I am deprived of a great source of news. Mister Chris is news and sells papers. If he keeps up his classes there, I am assured of a full page about him every week.”

“I don’t see the importance of that,” I said.

“That’s your barren minister spirit,” he replied, ” all you ever write is dry sermons for a captive audience who only pretend interest because they fear hell more than boredom. I must create stories that interest people without your powerful stick. By the way, I forgot to tell you that both were in my office, Dyer and Company. They wanted to place an anonymous ad in my paper, in the name of concerned citizens, denouncing Mister Chris’ enterprises.”

Knowing how eager he was to obtain advertising revenue – his drinking was an expensive hobby – I said, “Of course you gave them the back page at a premium.”

“Are you nuts,” he said. “What do you think I am” Some sort of an unethical materialist? But back to the mayor,” he continued, “he will think twice before he will pursue the matter with the Township council, in name of solidarity and good citizenship. If he does, I will expose Mr Armstrong and Mrs Dyer on the front page until they are stark naked.

“Are you so Pro-Chris,” I asked.

“I am an objective newspaper reporter,” he said, with a bow. “My only code is news and Mister Chris is news.”

I nodded as if I approved, and left.

This whole business became rather complicated. What was I to do, as chairman of the Board of Education, as Minister of the Gospel, as one fellow Christian over against another fellow brother and sister, who were living in sin? One consolation was that they did not belong to my church, so officially I could wash my hands off the situation. Perhaps tomorrow I would have a talk with my colleagues. Perhaps.

I did take that drink as the Village Voice Editor had predicted. Even two.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Before I had a chance to talk to my colleague of the Methodist Church, I was able to make use of my knowledge about that sinful situation without having to say a word about it to anybody. The mayor invited me to see him, this time at his house, a neat two-storey brick, on the street behind his store. His house was very properly furnished, the contents were expensive, that I could see, but lacked that touch which make a house a home. The absence of books and magazines struck me. When a person walks in my manse- which is my own, by the way. I insisted on moving in to my ancestral home, a very dignified, two -story brick and stone, with a large fire place and a wrap-around porch – people always comment on the extent of my library and the amount of reading material evident throughout my place, even in the toilet. But not here. The only magazines I spotted, neatly piled up on a closed piano, were a few faded church papers.

“Hm.Hm,” he said, after we had exchanged our views of the weather and the state of moral decay of the nation. Personally I preferred his stuttering, but somehow in his own home he did not seem to suffer from that. He sighed, Humhummed again, and when I remained silent, he courageously lurched into confrontation, and asked: “What is you opinion of Mister Chris continuing at the Townhip Hall?”

“Personally I don’t care for it,” I said, ” So close to my house, it is often far too noisy.”

“Outrageous,” he said, “outrageous, but I don’t care about the noise.”

“What is your problem then?” I asked meekly.

“My problem you said? My Problem?” The suddenly furiously: “Everything, Reverend, Everything. This whole business with the New Teacher, his course, his shorts, his long hair, his radical religion, the Township Council going along with him.”

“You got a whole list there,” I said.

“I am fed up to here,” and he made a motion as if he wanted to decapitate himself.

“You must admit, Reverend, that a teacher and member of your church should at least behave like a gentleman.”

I admitted this and remarked that this equally applied to school principals and members of his church.

“Are you referring to somebody in particular,” he asked suspiciously.

“I am just saying this in general,” I said generously, because I felt that I had the situation in hand.

“Well, at any rate, the New Teacher makes no efforts to behave as one would expect of a teacher,” he said. “On the contrary, he does whatever he can to behave like an idiot and in that he succeeds remarkably well.”

“But he has integrity and behaves courteously towards women,” I said reverendly.

“Integrity, Integrity,” he moaned desperately, as if he, by repeating it he could find out what the word meant. “That may be true, Reverend, but in what way do we benefit from integrity if he makes a laughing stock of our town. In the long run it is impossible to keep this thing localized and then we really loose face. One of these days the paper in the City will get word of it and then we’ve had it. We, as taxpayers, pay for the school and in the final stage as Mayor, I am held responsible.”

“For the action of the entire staff?” I said innocently.

“What do you mean with that?” he said, on an edge.

“Nothing,” I said, not edgy at all. Of course, I very well understood his despair and agreed with him there. I too opposed the entire township hall business and would have gladly arranged for a burning expedition to get rid of the hall, without anybody being in it, of course. But I could not show my true feelings unless I denied Mister Chris. And that I did not want to do; that I have never done, even though I found it increasingly difficult to defend him.

“The Village Council can no longer tolerate Mister Chris’ behavior,” he said finally with a face as if he had spent his last dollar and had exhausted his line of credit at the bank. I picked up on that and said very deliberately: “Well, in that case the Village Council can do either of two things.”

“And they are?”

“Fire him or force him to change.”

“I don’t want to have him fired,” he said, ” his work is perfect. He is an excellent teacher. But what he does in his free time, apart from the school, all that affects the community at large more and more. And that has to change, as you said, but that means that in the first place the hall has to be closed to him.”

“Well, that is a political job. You as the mayor are the right person to pursue that. I believe one of the conditions of the Township hall being in the village is to abide by the zoning regulations. It is an assembly hall, open to all. He limits it to his fifty. So there.” But I could sense his reluctance and could feel the presence of the Village Voice Editor as physical as if he were standing in the room with us.

I know, it is one of my few bad character traits, but, bad as it is, I do enjoy these situations and I can assure you that in my career as a minister, I encounter them more than occasionally.

The chairman smelled a rat or may be the whiskey soaked presence of the editor, but he could not express his true feelings just in case I honestly was ignorant of the Armstrong affair.

Finally he said, “The School Board of which you are the chair, must rectify the situation.”

“I feel honored with the confidence you have in us,” I said.

“That’s a deal then?”

“Of course not,” I said. “The least we need is a meeting to discuss your request, which I want in writing, stating grounds. We then have to decide whether it is within our mandate.”

“I would not be so technical about it, Reverend. It is a request, a kind, unofficial request.”

“I am afraid that it will be denied,” I said, “the Board is unanimously pleased with the teaching abilities of the new man.”

“I have been led to believe that Mrs…” he started but quit halfway. He looked around the room, rose from his chair, left the room for a short while and I heard him rummaging through a drawer in another room. Whatever he had been looking for, he did not find, because when he came back both his hands and his expression were empty.

Somehow this seemed to be a good time to leave. And so we parted.

When I walked home I saw the more radical youth of the area hang around the township hall. Last week Mister Chris had made a public speech from the steps of the hall and he had his talk livened up with some young people playing the guitar and teaching the kids and the old folk new songs his fifty had been composing. I heard the noise through my windows and this had kept me from studying my sermons, of which I make two every week, one for the morning service and one for the evening service. Now these sensation seekers hoped that a repeat performance would take place tonight. But this time he had stayed inside. I made my way through the crowd and tried to open the door. It was locked. I knocked, yelled my name and only then did he open up. My first impression was that a worship service was going on, with Mister Chris as the preacher and the people listening respectfully. But it was not like the regular Sunday service, but more a mid-week or even underground or secret church where only those who had the special signal would be admitted out of fear for persecution. The analogy with the catacomb church in the time of the early church, struck me, when the sign of the Fish was the secret password. I am sure that the slavish attention paid to his words had also been given to the preacher-leaders then, in the day of Nero and later when the Roman Catholic Church persecuted the young Christians through the Inquisition. Did he see me as a member of that notorious religious body?

I listened quite carefully but for me there was little new. He did fascinate me but this came through his power of personality rather than through the actual contents of his words At least, that is my opinion. Actually there was little difference between a class here in the hall and in the school with the younger crowd and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand how or even why the change in these faithful fifty occurred. It must be that he gave them the prescribed medicine exactly at the moment they needed it and then it worked as a miracle drug. They really must have had a tremendous spiritual appetite and in all my years as minister I had never been awarded the type of rapt attention he was getting. Nor the results. The curious part was that what he told them they did not keep to themselves as is the case in the church: they talked with others about it, including their ministers. Not me, so much, because I was seen as one of his disciples, at least in the beginning. Not that he told them to spread his gospel. He never did burden them with certain obligations. What they did they did spontaneously, entirely of their own volition. Therein lay his strength and the big difference between his preaching and mine, or ours, I should say because I am not worse than any of my colleagues in that matter. May be he was right in saying that we ministers sell insurance, sell security for the hereafter. In turn we exact from our sheep that they live morally acceptable lives, not openly wench around, nor drink to excess or smoke, come to church regularly – that is very important – pay the weekly contributions – also very important – and bring up the kids in a christian atmosphere as promised at baptism. Period. We sold them on the absolute holiness of the ministerial office and the complete sanctity of the confessions and for the rest we don’t bother them and by and large, they don’t bother us. They have their bowling evenings or, in some more affluent places, their golf or their cottage and perhaps the odd transatlantic boat trip to the old country and apart from being a member of a church they do not differ from their secular neighbours, of which there were very few here anyway. We were proud to be known as a Christian Village and that too was reflected in our school. Oops, I better be careful there, now that I know what I know. But, apart from that, all this outward religion we have not only condoned but encouraged. We also have silently agreed that when the outer formalities are adhered to, when the Time comes, the Lord will welcome us with open arms in His Heavenly Realms.

It was this complacency and downright hypocricy that Mister Chris was exposing and this had made his stay so dangerous because these were the very things his people were now questioning in their own pastors.

For a while it looked as if the Faithful Fifty would start their own church, without the approval of Mister Chris, however, for he said that there were already far too many churches, and to start another group would only increase the confusion. “Denominations in themselves are already a sinful thing” he said in one of his presentations and “Because they have spent much of their energy on infighting, in the process they have forgotten and lost their original mission.”

Now, that he is gone and even a while before that, these people have again come to their senses. I almost say that they have relapsed to their indifferent ways and I think that before the summer is over they have forgotten the Mister Chris episode.

Well, another hour and he will be gone forever.

It’ll be difficult for me to settle down in my old routine. In many things he was right. I wonder where he got all these ideas.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Township Hall: that’s right. There is more to this hall than just it being a building, and an ugly one at that. It looked more like a bricked- in barn, but it was spacious and it had a large wood furnace, and I could see how his gang would haul in wood during that cold, long winter, to keep the hall warm and the pipes from freezing. He celebrated there his triumphs, but the hall also became his defeat.

Somehow the focus of the village had shifted to the Township Hall, and away from the Village Office and even the churches. It almost became a holy shrine, a public novelty and since it was situated on the Main Street, on a prominent corner with the General Store diagonally across and a large open area for the market straight opposite, with the hotel just a few steps to the north and our church just a few yards to the south, the hall became a tourist attraction. Until Mister Chris had arrived, it was just an eyesore and, in my opinion, a public disgrace, but since he had made it his headquarters, the building somehow had assumed a status of holiness. People flocked into town on Saturdays to do their weekly shopping, and even during the week on Market Days they looked at it as if they had seen Holy Mary on the wall. Our local policeman, had to use his considerable authority, at times, to protect Mister Chris from the enthusiasm of the crowd and when this happened, the Master Himself addressed the people and this seemed to have a calming effect as if he were Christ Himself. Only a few words would suffice and, it seemed that was all they wanted: just to hear his enchanting voice. Even if he scolded them and chided them for their mental laziness and their apathy, they looked at him as if he were pronouncing a blessing. It seemed that the Mayor and I were the only ones annoyed at him and perhaps a few members of the education board. But because the Mayor did not object neither did the rest of the council. And because I did not object, neither did the other members of the board, although by now I could sense a shift in opinion, which came to the fore when I conveyed the request of the Mayor. It certainly looked as if Mister Chris had won again and only a complete surprise attack could move him from his consolidated position. That attack came from Armstrong whom I had thought unable to do this, after the beating he took from him, not literally, of course, because he would not hurt a fly. The beating was of course in popularity, where he, as a mere teacher, had gained a status much greater than any principal ever enjoyed.

It came about like this. One mild early summer evening, Armstrong appeared in the market area across from the hall and behind my house, surrounded by a group of children.

I was standing on the balcony of my bedroom, enjoying the last rays of the day’s sun. My garden was in full bloom, and except for the distant whistle of the iron-ore train, I heard nothing else but a bird trying out his singing voice. My mind had this wavy feeling, pleasantly occupied with nothing, and then, just when I almost imagined myself in paradise, this troup of kids came around the corner, captained by the principal, with Mrs Dyer making up the rear. They all were from the upper grades. I recognized some from my catechism classes. Neatly, and surprisingly quietly, they marched to the door of the hall, where all the windows were open and where inside Mister Chris was having his evening ritual. The entire operation looked like a drill, a carefully rehearsed exercise. In silence, absolute silence, the youthful army surrounded the building from all sides. He must have mobilized almost his entire school. I even saw some of Mister Chris’ class in the crowd, not many, but a few, with brothers and sisters in the higher grades, I assumed, coached along without knowing why. Perhaps he had promised them a reward or a treat. At any rate, when the encircling was complete, Mr Armstrong and Mrs Dyer took each other hands, urging all the children to do the same, forming a long chain of youthful humanity. Then, suddenly, I was startled by a noise as if a canonball from the Boer War had sailed all the way from South Africa to our plaintive village and had landed next to me, without exploding. The shrieking sound, however, was no more than Mr Armstrong’s voice, magnified many times over by a megaphone, which he held in front of his mouth as a gigantic bottle. At his command all the children started to sing a song, a hymn of all things. I heard fragments of the words, and recognized the familiar phrases of “Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to war.” And later “Like A Mighty Army Moves the Church of God.” This was war allright. His intention was clear. He wanted to disrupt the proceedings inside and show his true colors. Despite my irritation I still caught myself feeling a sense of relishing anticipation. I took a chair from my bedroom, put a sweater on and sat down on the balcony. I placed myself so that nobody on the street would notice me. The space between the lattice partitions gave me enough view to see all I wanted to see without being seen. After a while, Mister Chris came out of the door, jumped of the steps in one big bounce and just stood there, not moving at all, except for his eyes. His penetrating eyes sought out the faces of his students and as soon as eye contact was made, they shrunk away as Peter did when he had denied his Lord three times. I am not sure whether they too cried bitterly. One by one the links in the chain disappeared: just the presence of Mister Chris was enough to made them see through the intent of their principal and they abandoned him. A few made attempts to join Mister Chris, but he just shook his head and they too shrank away.

With his own students gone, Mister Chris turned around and made his way back into the hall. His face showed big frowns, I think more of pity than of indignation. I saw him rub his forehead as if he wanted to wipe the words of this militant song out of his brains, and he slowly opened the door and went back into the hall where a few of his adult class had come out to view the commotion. He beckoned them back in and closed the door.

But that was not the end of it. I saw other people coming, attracted to the siege of the hall and the singing, of course, which had continued, mainly through the loud noises coming from the megaphone. It had all the trappings of a revival meeting. Perhaps the leaders had taken their cue from such an event which had drawn hundreds to our town and the fair grounds about a year ago. By now the entire village seemed to be in an uproar and other young people, away from the stern eye of their parents, started to run all over the place, even through my garden in an effort to retrieve a ball. I did not want to reveal my position and let them get away with it this time. Then, once the hymn had ended, Armstrong connected again with his megaphone and broadcasted : “My dear friends, remove yourself from Satan and come and drink with me of the Word of God.” The people in the hall paid no attention to him, of course, and Armstrong, feeling that he was losing his momentum, motioned to Mrs Dyer who started to sing a new hymn and here in our town, our very Christian town, when a hymn is sung people just cannot ignore this. That would be just as sinful as remaining seated when God Save the Queen is sung. Out of reverence for the song, the conversation died down and the full impact of the shrieky voices became again evident. This small success enticed our evangelist to aim his voice multiplier to the open windows again, but most of what he was saying remained incomprehensible to me because he constantly changed the direction of his horn, as if his voice was a beam from a light house. Some shreds of sounds came to me in one piece and from these I could, without great difficulty deduce that it was the usual talk of damnation and hell and new hearts of which he apparently had the exclusive franchise in the village.

I expected that at any moment Mr Chris would not be able to stand it any longer and come out of his meeting again to respond to the provocations even though it would be an uneven battle with Armstrong having the megaphone advantage. I could well imagine the tense atmosphere in the hall, as the racket by Armstrong could be heard there at least as well as here on the balcony. Mister Chris must have felt that he was being sealed into a human enclosure with the sole purpose of creating divisions within his ranks, as some of his disciples’ children were among the assailants, albeit unaware of the real purpose and intent of the exercize.

Later I found out that this had not been his regular class, but that the people, all men inside, were employees of the dynamite plant, discussing labor problems with Mister Chris as rumors had been flying that the entire plant was about to be closed if the workers refused to accept much lower wages.

At the time I knew nothing about this and felt that things were going too far and thought about standing up and addressing the crowd, which by now had become so large that most of the village inhabitants were present. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, though. Still, I realized that something had to be done. The people were getting restless and some were shouting that Mister Chris was a rebel and was advocating strike action. I now saw the owner of the plant as well, and noticed him whispering something into Armstrong’s ears. With all the noise around, he needed the megaphone on his ear to make out what the owner was saying to Armstrong, who nodded his head in approval. I now saw people taking sides and splitting themselves into two camps. I feared a civic war in our village, a sort of class struggle between the capitalists and the proletariat, between the people of the Village and the people of the Township, as their hall in the centre of the village had become a bone of contention.

I decided it was time to act. Resolutely I made my way down to the crowd milling around the hall, in order to act as a peacemaker, and was on the stairs on my way out, when I felt the house shake and heard the rumblings of a tremendous explosion, quite nearby. Even in the darkness of the stairwell I could see a hellish bright light, as if in this case the thunder had preceded the lightning.

I now rushed down, saw outside my front door a covering of fine glass: the explosion had sucked out all the air from my house and the buildings close to me and scattered the panes abroad and onto the street with such a force that I saw pieces of glass embedded in the dirt of the sidewalk. I had been extremely fortunate that I had gone from where I had been watching, because, looking up, I quickly noticed that the glass doors on the balcony had been totally shattered and the glass fragments were even stuck into the wooden lattice through which I had been watching. They most certainly would also have pierced my body and have killed me as sure as a direct canon hit would have killed a horse.

I sent up a quick prayer of thanksgiving to my Maker, while I rushed out to survey the disaster area, where people now were milling around, dazed and disoriented. Fortunately, because so many had been assembled into the open square, and away from any building, the casualty count seemed low in my immediate area.

I made me way to the hall, from which all the windows had been blown out. It also looked that it had some structural damage, with big cracks in the wall. My church had glass damage too, but that was all. Somehow the stainglass had withstood the explosion quite well, I noticed quickly, while rushing to see Mister Chris, who was attending to a child, lying on the ground, unconscious. We silently carried him to my house. I felt his pulse which was weak, probably just fainted, I told Mister Chris, who just nodded and then rushed back to help others, asking me to take care of this boy. Luckily that foolish chain of children around the building had long ago disappeared so that none of those school children were directly hit. Now dust and ashes were raining on us, and we quickly told the leaderless people to go home and stay indoors.

The men in the hall had rushed out, covered with dust as if they just had been on a regular shift at their factory, known for its dirty work. They ran to their plant which, at a distance of about half a mile, at the river, now looked like a burning volcano, spouting flames and dark smoke and grey ash. What could have been the cause? And where was Mr Armstrong? While his absence occurred to me, I heard the bells of the only fire fighting unit the village possessed and saw him sitting on the village’s fire engine, lashing the old horse to greater speed. It was a ridiculous sight, and, in normal circumstances, it would have provoked a chuckle in me, but not now. This was serious business and the men riding behind it were equally determined to fight this inferno. I shook my head at the seeming futility of this exercise: such a little machine, so few tools. How could they ever hope to cope. Mr Armstrong’s loud screams spurred everybody into action. I still had this child to look after, which I brought into my house and so did not see what happened next, but I heard that people gathered from all sides, that quickly buckets and pails were brought in and a long chain was formed from the river to the site of the horse-drawn water tank, from which several hoses were used to pour water on the flames.

The aftermath?

Well, rumor got around that Mister Chris had advocated this sort of sabotage and had discussed this very thing with the Dynamite plant workers when the explosion occurred. Fortunately there was nobody in the plant at the time and no direct casualties were reported there, and apart from broken glass everywhere and cracks in few buildings – the force of the explosion had been like an earthquake- the damage was light.

But not to Mister Chris. The Township hall was closed to everybody, on order of its council and the building inspector. He had lost a significant battle while Armstrong with his valiant behaviour with the fire engines and giving leadership in the ensuing battle to fight the blaze, received heaps of praises.

Of course, exactly the opposite of the rumors had taken place. He had urged the workers to seek out the boss and try to negotiate with him, but rumors are often mightier than the truth and with the plant flattened, all its workers without a job, no collective response from the now scattered workers was available.

Fight he did, after all he was a born fighter, but he lost out more and more. I don’t know whether Armstrong had premeditated this all and had arranged for the explosion, – I know this is a bizarre thought which should not even have come up in me – but whatever the case may be, the evening was the beginning of Mister Chris’ defeat.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Am I to blame ? I don’t know. I don’t think so. What else could I have done but put Mister Chris in place when he told me he was planning to go on with his lessons? His hall was gone. There was no other place to meet. So what were the alternatives? There were none. With no focal gathering place and with public opinion rallying against him, however undeserved, his only choice was to give up on his community education plan. I agreed with the mayor when he told me about this in the presence of Mister Chris. For that occasion we were seated in the council room of the village office, the first and last time we had been invited together.

“Although fortunately nobody was hurt.” the mayor said almost regretfully, ” under the circumstances, with a cloud of suspicion hanging over the village as to the real cause of the explosion, it would not be wise to continue.”

“I don’t see why,” Mister Chris said with his drill instructor’s voice.

“Be reasonable, for once,” I said. “The mayor is right in this case. You’ll never find another place to meet anyway.”

Added the mayor: “With your arrival strange ideas have penetrated our quiet town, Mister Chris, very strange ideas.”

“My ideas are as old as the world,” Mister Chris said. “But this town has forgotten them in spite of or may be because of all these churches.”

“Our town is as Christian as you find anywhere,” the mayor said proudly. “There is not a place in the entire county with a higher per person church contribution and membership. As long as our people faithfully go to church then I wouldn’t worry about our reputation.”

“All this is meaningless if their faith is not brought into practise during the week,” Mister Chris said matter of factly. “All I want to do is to implement what he there – and he pointed to me – rather unsuccesfully tries to tell the people when they do come to church.”

“And for that you need a central place?”

“If you don’t let me use the school again, yes.”

“I felt that the conversation was leading nowhere. Those two would never convince each other and even if Mister Chris would get permission to use the school again, I would somehow have to stop it. By now I was convinced that it was better for all concerned that Mister Chris stop his course and I told him so when we were together at home later on.

“Be glad that you have enlightened a few people,” I said.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“The shoemaker, “I said, “and my housekeeper and the barber, just to name a few.”

“You have betrayed me,” he said softly, ” and all you now can do is find excuses.”

I was getting angry and it showed. “You are crazy,” I called out. “What do you mean anyway with those words?”

“OK, betrayal may not be the correct word,” he said, “you never quite believed in me.”

“Do you really believe that you know more about the way a Christian should live than I do?” I asked mockingly.

“No,” he said, “no, but your trouble is that you know the Way and yet you refuse to follow it, Mr. Pilate.”

“Come off it,” I said, “I am a practical man and it were better for you that you face reality. Sooner or later you’ll make yourself impossible here. You don’t know the people here as I do, but you better believe me when I tell you that because of this unfortunate affair with the dynamite plant and the perceived notion that somewhere you had a hand it this, however false this notion is, many people have begun to look at you from a different perspective, even though it has nothing to do with you.”

“The shoemaker has a different opinion,” he said.

“He is a rebel,” I replied. That was the only word that came quickly to my mind.

“You are judging him unfairly,” was his reply. “He is a real committed Christian.”

“That may be so, but nevertheless many of these people have become scared, really scared. You expect them to be almost superhuman and if you don’t find this in them, you are offended and turned off.”

“What you call superhuman is in my opinion merely human.”

“That, apparently is a difference of opinion between us two.”

“I think you are right, Mr Pillar. Our difference of opinion is so basic that even our points of departure are different. No wonder we disagree.”

“You are impossible,” I said, ” you always want to be right. You would like to be the conscience of the whole world and straighten out anybody who does not follow your philosophy. Ridiculous.”

“You should turn it around,” he said quietly. “The whole world is my conscience and I feel unhappy, even guilty, if I would do something that goes against the laws of creation.”

“Then you really must feel unhappy,” I said.

He looked at me, opened his mouth but, on second thought, did not say anything.

I felt bad about these remarks but I had to be hard in order to get myself detached from him. Gradually I had the feeling to be burdened by him as if he were a giant who used me as a cane. He had directed me according to his plans and I just had to go in the direction he had to go and I did not want to do that anymore. For close to sixty years I had gone my own way and although it was pretty well the accepted path of most of my colleagues, I myself had determined it and I wanted to finish it to the end.

The profession of a minister is not as troublesome as many think or as many ministers make others believe. It has great compensations, although perhaps not materially. However, the position of honor, the esteem our people by and large have for the clergy, especially in our church and villages, the position of near infallibility, the opportunity to address hundreds of people every week, the reliance my churchmembers place on me, the trust they have in my judgement, all these give me a satisfaction which I do not want to miss, not even for my good friend Mister Chris. I refused to be used by him any longer. I admired him for his honesty, his fighting spirit, perhaps even his independence, but all this was done too fanatically, much too radically. He did not budge from what he considered his goal; from the start it had been his intention to show our village people insight into what he considered Radical Christianity: he wanted them to become not hearers but doers of the Word, and whatever had no direct bearing on this he pushed away or smashed to pieces.

After we had been sitting across from each other for some time without saying a word, I said: “You should limit yourself only to your schoolwork, Mister Chris and nobody will mind that. For that you have been appointed, as you will remember.”

“I would certainly mind it myself if I did only the things I had been appointed for.”

“Why don’t you do it in the interest of the school?”

“Has ever the school suffered because of my adult education course?”

“That would be the case if you would continue it.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “At any rate I want to show that I can do both my teaching job to everybody’s satisfaction and conduct my evening learning program as well.”

“You are damned conceited,” I said because I was becoming impatient. “I thought that in a person-to-person talk I would be able to reason with you. Now you force me to bring this question to the board and we will probably be forced to discipline you as a naughty school child.”

“You are trying to sell yourself on that idea,” he replied, “but in your heart you know better.”

“What is in my heart is nobody’s business.”

“It is Somebody’s.”

He bent over to me and brought his face close to mine. His eyes were of a different color, the one was gray, the other green. I had never seen that before but then he had never been so close to me. I started to feel uncomfortable and stood up. Luckily somebody was knocking at the door and I quickly went over to open it. It was the editor of the Village Voice. I did not particularly care to talk to him but to be alone with Mister Chris was an even less appealing prospect and so I invited him in. He was not amazed to see the Teacher and forcefully shook hands with him.

“I’ll only be a minute,” he said and installed himself in an easy chair as if he had plans to hibernate there.

He very deliberately started to search his pockets for a cigar box, unhurriedly selected a specimen, studied, it, sniffed at it, snipped off its point with a special cigar snipper, which he had in the last of the six pockets he searched, and very carefully lit up. I had the impression that all the while he was trying to fathom what had been said between Mister Chris and me. At any rate he was pretty close when he finally asked: “You haven’t let yourself be sucked in by the Mayor, Pillar?”

“I think I can make up my mind myself without somebody trying to influence me,” I said in an offended tone.

“I just thought there there was a possibility that he had been able to convince you of the desirability to keep Mister Chris from continuing his course now that the township hall is off limits to him.”

“Of that I have been convinced already for some time,” I answered stifly.

“I am sorry, but in my article I have not allowed for that possibility.”

“What?” I called out. “Are you implying that you are going to publish that filthy article of yours?”

“The article is clean,” he said quietly. “The facts are dirty. I just reported what I have learned, and even a broad-minded guy like me, felt nauseated. Is this what you preach against in your church? “

“Shut up!” I roared, unable to suppress my fury.

Mister Chris rose. “I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said, ” but it seems that I am not needed here anymore.”

“I agree,” I said, but right after that : “No, stay. I will tell you what this newshawk is trying to do. He has discovered that your principal Armstrong, is having an affair with Mrs Dyer, the female member of our Board of Education. He has written an article about it and he wants to publish it because the mayor and I are blocking you and your course.”

“A simple case of blackmail,” the editor said.

I saw Mister Chris turn white. He sat down. His face twitched nervously. I thought he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. The Village Voice editor looked at him from underneath his greying eyebrows and said nothing either.

“Now the time has come,” I continued with some difficulty, ” and he will expose me as the spineless puppet of the mayor.”

“I am sorry,” the editor said, ” but I can’t understand how you, a learned and religious man can side with the mayor in this matter in blocking this course in Christian Education. I went there often, and I learned a lot about ethics. What I am doing now is telling the truth as I see it. Of course I will not mention your name in the article, Pillar, but that you go along with the mayor, takes much of the punch out of the piece. I had not expected that and apparently given you more credit than you deserve. Here you can read it, and keep it, because I have to revise it anyway.” He grabbed in his coat pocket and threw a few pages of typewritten paper in the table. I reluctantly took them, saw that he had Mrs Dyer’s picture – the one I had given him- and put the pages down unread.

“Whatever you want,” the editor said. “You are a hard fellow to deal with. Actually my reason for coming here was to interview you and I had hoped to place you as an opponent to the mayor in this matter. A classic example of power struggle in the local educational field. That would for in right with this here and then I would have the whole front page filled up.”

“I don’t give a hoot for your frontpage,” I said, still angry. “I don’t want to be used for such things, not even if I did not agree with the mayor. You know that I was against Mister Chris here having the hall from the start and you could have saved yourself the trouble of this visit.”

The VV man stood up and so did I because I wanted him to leave. But he just started to walk up and down the room, took a book from the shelf and called out, read out the title, yelling, ‘Truth and Justice in Society.’ What baloney.” He then sat down on a little coffee table that since then has been ruined. From there he called to me : “You have books about Right and Wrong. I am not a Christian and am, according to you, one of the Devil’s Advocates. But you are supposed to be set free by the Spirit. As a free-ed person you are supposed to be at odds with everything in this sick society. But you are not free. Life is too good for you. You have too much to lose. All I had thought that your dislike for the mayor’s methods would be greater than the preservation of your own position. You know that the issue is not the hall or any other local for Mister Chris. What is at stake is liberty, the basic right of all people to express in actions the legitimate ideas they confess. Armstrong can act like a bloody fool, be a willing tool in the hands of the owner of the dynamite plant and he may even have had a hand in the explosion itself, but because he does it in the name of the church everything is forgiven. But if Mister Chris says a few sensible things, in the name of the same Christ, then he is stopped because this may threaten your position. It’s OK with me. I know what I will do. Are you coming, Mister Chris, maybe together we can arrive at a more happy ending.”

Mister Chris said nothing. He had remained silent all the time but it had not registered with me because I had been thinking how to get rid of this interfering editor.

“I have said enough. Good bye,” and he made some moves to go.

“Wait a minute,” Mister Chris said in his usual booming voice. “If I understand it correctly then you are blackmailing the mayor to help me?”

“Something like it,” the Village Voice said and this was the first time I saw him somewhat embarrassed.

“That answer is too vague.”

“At this moment and in this place I cannot express myself more clearly, Mister Chris.”

“Then I will do it for him,” I said with an uncontrollable urge to put the newspaper man in his place. “He saw you only as a news maker. With all your controversial causes you stir up the people and so create news and readers for his paper.”

“That is only a half-truth, Pillar,” the Village Voice man said. “If I would have disliked Mister Chris as a person, I would never have gone to all this trouble. Actually he did profit from my interest in him as a reporter. If it had been up to you, he would have been stopped a long time ago.”

“I am disappointed,” Mister Chris said, and I had the impression he was on the verge of tears.

He looked at Sean O’Rourke with his penetrating eyes who, after a short while averted his gaze, looking for an ashtray, which I gave him. Mister Chris said, ” I never made an distinction between you as reporter and you as a person. I still don’t make that. I have valued your contribution but I was not aware that I was kept in business because of a plot I knew nothing about.”

“That is only partly true,” the VV man said, half smiling.

“Half a truth is half a lie and I want you to be completely truthful,” was his uncompromising answer. “Tell me the full truth. Officially I don’t know anything about a decision that could stop me. The hall is gone, and that is a temporary setback. I am sure that something else will be found. I have been looking at the old opera house and theatre. It would suit well.”

“You will never get it,” I said. ” It belongs to the village. The mayor will never give his consent.”

“He will, if you push for it hard enough,” he said.

“Which I won’t,” was my immediate reply.

“Why not?

I hated this sort of heated exchange, which served no purpose. I hated it even more that the VV man was sitting there, lurking at his cigar and messing things up everywhere. The whole situation was getting out of hand and I was losing my cool.

“If you don’t give up your course then I will seriously think about dismissing you from the school, even in mid-term. You have gone too far Mister Chris.”

“And you have not gone far enough. Reverend Pillar.”

This was too much for me and I yelled, “Get out.”

He went without giving me another look. The VV man followed him. When he left my study he said: “This I cannot keep from publishing, Mr Pillar.”

I paid no attention to his remark. I hardly gave him time to get his coat. In the hurry he forgot his article which I threw in the woodstove, unread.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It isn’t true, is it, that, in the final analysis, it has been me who made life impossible for Mister Chris? That’s what the Village Voice said. I think it is an idiotic and dirty insinuation. Yet, reflecting on it, I am starting to doubt. Even St. Paul said that he intended the best but sometimes did the opposite. And I am not better than St.Paul, I admit that much. The paradox here is that in my attempts to keep Mister Chris here, I caused him to go. I have experienced this sort of circumstance more often: you do your very best to help somebody or a good cause and the result is the very opposite of what was to be achieved. My colleague is a good example. When he came here as a young first time minister, I taught him the finer points in the ministry, things you don’t learn at seminary and now he uses my advice to draw more people to his church, at my expense. Or would my involvement with the teacher have been a factor?

I am tired. This whole teacher episode is getting on my nerves. It even bothers me in my sleep. Here it is only eight o’clock, and I am ready for bed. All this talking to myself, I am not used to that, except, of course, when I am preaching; but that’s different. It’s been a busy day, even though it isn’t even Sunday.

The Village Voice fellow had used the biggest letters he could find for his slanderous head line. I wonder whether I can sue him for this. His head line had read :’Minister becomes Ruler, Servant becomes Lord.’ In more than half a page of writing he explained his headlines with all sorts of insinuations and lies and in between he managed to pretend disappointment with my willingly submitting to the mayor’s demand to stop the ” Living and Learning’ course.

Me, willingly submitting to Ferguson? I don’t kneel to anybody. In my anger I threw the paper in the same woodstove where I burned his earlier article and when I tried to buy another copy, a few days later, there were none left and I did not dare ask somebody else’s. His reasoning amounted to this, that I had taken Mister Chris under my protection, that I had gradually backed away from the actions of my protÈgÈ, had lost my power over him and that in the end, in my utter annoyance had blindly fallen in the trap set by the mayor. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I in this trapped condition had tried to escape, but no, in all these things I had licked the boots of my captor. That was supposed to mean that I had made the decision which the mayor had not dared to take: stop the adult evening course.

After that came an entire column of high sounding nonsense about the singular qualities of Mister Chris and about the now evaporated opportunities for a cultural and social revival of our impoverished and deprived area. He blamed me more than the mayor for his situation because I as minister of the largest church in town and chairman of the Board of Education should have known better and we could not have expected any better from the mayor, who, after all, was just a small, uneducated businessman. In the end he summed it up with a cliche – like wordplay: ‘A Pillar of a Decayed Structure.’

On the inside page the mayor was very uncharitably being mauled. The article mentioned the relationship between Dyer and Armstrong, without going into particulars, but implying improper conduct. The Village Voice editor had twisted the story in such a way that the full blame of this relationship was put on the mayor who would have sanctioned and even encouraged the love relationship in order to have a spy in the school to watch Mister Chris and an ally on the Board of Education to stop him there. This was, of course, an even more despicable piece of journalistic humbug than the report on me, but both were written so that nobody could catch the writer. That hasn’t happened either. It was clear that he had changed the intent because at first he had wanted to explain it all as being a direct decision from the mayor against Mister Chris. Actually, the real reason for publication had disappeared but he had laid an egg and wanted to hatch it no matter what would come out.

To contrast the situation the editor had not forgotten to lament the lot of Armstrong’s legal wife and elaborated in detail on her stroke and paralysis.

When I had read the report I didn’t know what to do. I thought to call the editor to account bu that would probably have resulted in a new article against me, so I ruled that out. A talk with the mayor was no use. The only thing we could do was to complain to each other about the unfair treatment we had received from the editor. To talk to Mister Chris did not appeal to me at all, although I could see the need for it, but I had enough from him: his battling with Armstrong, against stupidity in general and whatever he felt inclined to tackle in the name of Christ had tired me, even though I had been the root cause of it all.

I wanted to rest. I could hardly imagine that I, as a mature sixty-er had been pulled along by him for some time, had suffered insult because of him and most certainly had lost some of my public esteem because of this article. The best I could think of was to call an emergency board meeting. I had no clue what I wanted to deal with but I understood that silence on my part, now that the paper had published this, would not be regarded as golden, but as an admission of failure.

The meeting was held in my study, because I wanted to stay on home ground. Mrs Dyer poked around in my bookcase while waiting for the others to arrive and pulled out a book on erotica which was given to me by an old Queen’s study friend. I had simply forgotten it still was around and also had not expected to have somebody survey my library, least of all Mrs Dyer. At least this little incident restored some of her composure. She had been quite nervous up till now.

Once four out of five members were there, I started:

“I wanted to discuss with you the two articles in the Village Voice. The personal accusations do not interest me but we should discuss the actions in regards to Mister Chris. It is true that I have told him to discontinue the adult education course.”

“That’s a pity, ” she said with strait face. “It would have been much more politically correct if this had come from the mayor. Then we always could have determined what our position would have been. Now that you have acted in the name of the board you have eliminated that option and also have reduced us to mere rubber-stamping your decision.” I was about to remind her of her presence at the hall, a few nights ago, when she continued: “However, now that you have told him so, I think you made the right decision. It should have been taken long ago. I never fancied the course, nor the teacher, for that matter.”

“I did not ask you opinion about the teacher,” I said, getting steamed up. “He is an excellent fellow, except for that course.”

She opened and closed her mouth as a fish on land and also as much sound as that came out. I was plain that she was afraid her relationship with Armstrong would be discussed. Then Baker, the butcher, asked: Suppose he keeps on going with the course. Will you then stick to your threat and fire him.” I wondered about Baker’s position and his evident animosity towards the teacher, when I suddenly remembered that he had advocated vegetarianism. Of course, that would cost him business! Yet he had put me on the spot because I had not counted on that question. “That’s the very thing I wanted to discuss with you,” I lied. “I have said that more or less in my rage, but of course I have no idea whether here I spoke on behalf of the committee.”

“I think so,” said Mrs Dyer, suddenly a lot more lively.

“Of course, it is not easy to back out of that now,” prompted the butcher, “but it is just as hard to carry that through. You rather liked the fellow, didn’t you?”

His remark made me think. He was a hypocrite, that was plain as day but that did not make his challenge less dangerous. If I retracted, I would lose face over against Mister Chris and also over against the other board members, now that this was in the open. If I let my words stand, then dismissal was the automatic result. I could already sense a majority in favour here. I suddenly knew with certainty that Mister Chris would go on with his course, not to taunt me, but to do what he felt his holy duty to do, to use his own words. Scripture had to be fulfilled, even if he read it all wrong. If he only for a moment would not be so darned obstinate; if he only for once would say: I don’t agree with you, Reverend Pillar, but I will do what pleases you. Then everything would be different. But a man is as he is, and I must admit I can be stubborn too, at times. Finally I said to the patient butcher: “What I personally feel about his matter is not important. I believe that it will hurt the entire school if we go ahead and summarily dismiss him.”

Now that I say these words again, I feel how phoney they really are. Because what matters more to me than personal feelings! I might, as a minister of the Gospel just as easily have said: what I personally believe is not important. Of course, personal feelings and convictions should have been the only ones that would have guided me, but in such a moment they are difficult to recognize. I was filled with frustration and anger and that pushed away all other feelings.

“Of course, of course,” Mrs Dyer said dutifully and rubbed her hands as if she wanted to wash off her innocence. It made me even madder – and that too made me say things that were not kind to her- : “It would have been better for our village if not Mister Chris but the real culprit would go.”

“Who do you mean with that,” she had the audacity to ask.

“His principal, Mrs Dyer.”

All colour left her face and she stopped rubbing her hands. For a moment she sought refuge in her purse, a typical female diversion tactic, and then said, without conviction:

“I had hoped that this name would not be mentioned here.”

The butcher, quite ostentatiously cleared his throat a few times and said; “I think we better not go into this matter or we will be here all evening. I don’t think it has anything to do with the New Teacher.”

“I completely lost my temper and called out: “It has everything to do with it.” And I had great difficulty to end my sentence with “dammit.” I knew I was grossly exaggerating but I said it anyway: “Not only has she let herself be used as his mistress but he has used her as a spy here in the board to keep him posted on our in camera decisions, because he knew that he isn’t worth a hoot as principal. She has weakened our position by disclosing matters that could not be told even to the principal. I don’t see why we should tolerate her here any longer.”

She flew of her chair and rushed to me. This was too much for Philip Casey, the farmer, who was wide awake for once. Not only awake but alert. With a speed I did not thought him capable he placed himself between us and had stretched out both his arms as if he were a traffic cop to wanted a speeding horse to stop. She bumped into him with such a force that he almost lost his footing, and almost weeping with rage, she shouted: “You are protecting that teacher, that – and I still can recall her sarcastic tone- that extraordinary, extremely talented, incomparable Mister Chris. Can a decent man like Armstrong help it if he seeks the company of a cultured lady, now that his own wife no longer needs him anymore?”

“That’s a damn lie,” I said and suddenly calm because I had used that swear word now. And more to the point: “You are turning things around, Mrs Dyer. She now needs her husband more than ever and that, it seems to me, scares him so much that he seeks comfort with you. And you, if you had any compassion in your body, should have sent him back to his wife.”

She managed to bring out a high, tense sounding laugh, retreated to her chair with uncertain motions, and said, when she was seated again and Philip Casey had also taken his place: “I understand that you cannot bear a bad word about your darling teacher, Reverend Pillar. When Mister Chris bestows his devotion to this partly paralysed lady I presume it is called a good deed.”

“What do you mean with that,” I said, ” what sort of an innuendo is this?” With her I like to use this sort of unusual word. She often says them in the wrong context.

Although the farmer had remained silent throughout this fiery interchange, he suddenly interrupted and demanded: “If it is true that Mister Chris has been visiting her, you better tell us why. I think that’s where Reverend Pillar is after.” I looked at him with new respect and said:”You make it sound as if he is courting her. That I find highly improbable.”

Now rather defensively, the woman said: “Well, our good teacher has been seen at least three times with Mrs Armstrong, together in a hired cab.”

“And where were they going?”

“They went north along the highway, over the bridge and have been seen entering the Blacksmith shop there.”

“Has Garrrett’s father confirmed that?” the farmer asked businesslike.

“I have not pursued the matter that far,” she answered stiffly.

“Your information came from her legal husband, I presume?” I asked. “Interesting conversations you two have.”

“Mr Armstrong is not aware of this affair,” she said shamelessly, but she started to drum her finger nervously on the table.

“You are a very poor liar, Mrs Dyer,” I said, banging on the table which made her stop her irritating drumming, and at the time unaware that indeed Dyer rhymes with liar.

The dairy man, again showing a lot of grit, and certainly wide awake, interjected: “How do you know all this if you did not get it from Mr Armstrong? Did you see it yourself?”

She looked at him with a contemptuous glance. I suddenly remember that until now she had never even addressed him and might not even remember his name because he never before had spoken up. She – as I – was certainly surprised at his sudden aggressive tone and speaking directly to him, she replied: “No, I am not at all concerned how Mister Chris spends his spare time. I have not watched him, but I do have information from a reliable source and that I guarantee.”

“I don’t think I believe you,” the farmer said.

His firmness and common sense pleasantly surprised me and I looked at him with new eyes.

“I think you have a guilty mind,” I said, “because you are having an affair you just want to paint Mrs Armstrong black to make you look better.”

“We better investigate this matter later on,” the butcher said suddenly. ” In the meantime Reverend, we completely endorse your actions in regards to the new teacher. I only hope that he has the sense to give in, or we must show him we mean business.”

He rose and shook hands with me which I regarded almost as a Judas kiss. Mrs Dyer left without even looking at me.

When I was alone, I almost felt sick. All my strength left me and I could hardly move. A good thing the meeting was held in my study, just a few steps from my bedroom. I tried not to think about anything and that too did not work. I felt deserted but that came, upon analysis, because I had deserted somebody else. But I still could not agree with the Editor of the Village Voice, and I still cannot do that. Perhaps the only thing that can be said against me is that I just couldn’t cope the intriguing ways of the mayor who had manipulated matters so that all the responsibility had come to me. I am not a duty shirker and am, by and large, a conscientious person. Perhaps too much so. I don’t mind admitting when I am wrong. That adult course was meant well but he stirred up things which would have been better be left alone, and I don’t feel ashamed that I realized that I can’t help that the mayor and others used my good intentions to their personal profit. I’ll just leave them in the illusion that they have put me on the right track again.

That bottle of wine is now finished, I see. I must have drunk much faster than usual. I feel tired. I will go to bed early tonight, but I want to wait till the train leaves.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

On one of my customary morning walks, I met Garrett, one of my star students in catechism. His father is a member of our church. But not an elder. He should be, but he refused to be nominated. Well, that is his good right, of course. Yet, I would rather have him than some of the elders now being on the session, for the rest of their lives. It was that condition that made him refuse the nomination. And here was his son. It was well past school starting time but he was running in a direction opposite the school. I stopped him and asked him whether he was skipping class today. He looked at me startled and scared and did not answer my question, making me think the worst. His eyes avoided mine and roamed till they were fixed on a non-existing point somewhere behind me. I asked him again and then he said that he had been at school, but that Mister Chris had sent him on an errand.

“But where you are going there are no shops at all,” I said, because I knew that he was an honest boy.

“It is not an errand to buy something,” hereplied. “I have to get something from somebody’s home.”..

“And who could that be?” I asked, sticking my nose into something that really wasn’t my business at all.

“The teacher would rather not have that I talked about this with others,” he said, falteringly and added that he would like to go now because he was late already. He looked at me pleadingly so that I almost gave in, but I could not help saying: “I bet you it is a lady.”

“Yes,” he said, quite surprised.

“Mrs Armstrong?” I wondered.

“”Oh, that’s too bad,” he said, disappointed, and I saw that I had really embarrassed him.

I gave him a friendly pat on his shoulder. He must have considered this as a parting sign and in a flash was gone off to complete his mission. I was shocked and had to admit to myself that I started to doubt the good intentions of our teacher. May be that message meant nothing, but with the accusation of Mrs Dyer still fresh in my mind, my suspicion was aroused and the use of this boy as a messemger re-affirmed this impression.

I had thought that I knew Mister Chris pretty well, but I realized then that I virtually did not know a thing about his human emotions, such as love and hate and desire. I saw him as a stubborn fighter, a zealot, a bigot almost. I considered him in a sense, almost as a certain type, but not a human being, capable of laughter and crying and certainly not a person capable of courting. Of course that feeling between Dyer and Armstrong had nothing to do with love, but it could well be that Mister Chris felt attracted to Armstrong’s wife. I thought I better try to get to the bottom of it, even though it could mean a victory for the Dyer woman.

After all that had happened I did not dare to go to Mister Chris and ask him. I did not want to visit Mrs Armstrong either. I would have, of course, had she been a member of my congregation. Home visiting is one of my strong points. I recalled having seen her or part of her through that door when her husband had taken me to his house, and I just could not bring myself to interrogate the woman in her condition. I decided to visit Garrett’ father, the blacksmith and I racked my brain to have a good excuse to see him at his shop. Then I remembered that I needed some extra fireplace tools, a poke and an ash scoop and decided to go and buy them there, as he made them in his shop.

Our town is rather small and if at all possible, I try to walk everywhere rather than summon the church’s caretaker to ride me out in his buggie. Personally I think it is good to stretch one’s legs and my morning walk with my dog has conditioned me sufficiently to be able to walk for miles, if needed. It also gives me time to think and time to think I needed because I had no idea how to prolong my visit at Garrett’s father so that he could get me the information without him becoming suspicious. If he had the information at all. That was just a wild guess on my part.

His blacksmith shop is located just north of town over the bridge across the river that bisects our village. I had not been out his way for a long time and was surprised to see how neat his place was, with the shop some thirty feet away from his house, the garden in beautiful shape, with lots of flowers and a well arranged vegetable garden and also a small orchard. A virtual paradise. Evidently he was doing well.

Garrett’s father, Trevor Morton, received me without showing any surprise, although I can’t remember ever having gone to him to make me something in his shop. I told him, truthfully, that I needed these instruments , and he right away looked for some steel rods and started to fashion the tools I needed.

It was interesting to se him at work, heating up the fire by pulling the bellows suspended from the ceiling, heating up the coals to a hellish red.. He then hammered out a flat piece of steel and welded it to the rod. It took him about half an hour to make me a set as I had described it to him. In the meantime I wandered through his shop and noticed through the door into a small storage place a contraption that looked like a chair on wheels.

“What is that vehicle for?” I asked

He looked at me, just as his son had done a while ago and, after a long pause, in which I could detect his brain weighing the various options, decided to tell me the truth. “Mister Chris would rather have kept it a secret until we have it completely finished. But I will tell you: we are making a wheelchair,”

“You don’t have to be so secretive about that,” I said.

“For Mrs Armstrong.” he added.

So that was what remained of Dyer’s accusation, if Morton was speaking the truth, and I was sure he did. That’s why there had been at least three visits to this place by the two of them and probably many more so that the chair could be made to fit her body. I despised myself for having believed Dyer for one minute and for having doubted Mister Chris’ sincerity and I told myself to given that dirty bitch a piece of my mind the first the best time I saw her. If I equated the feelings of Mister Chris for Mrs Armstrong with the purity of a lily, then the affair of Armstrong with Dyer could be compared to the smell of a fart. But even without this comparision I was sick of that business and I wondered how the principal of the School could follow the doctrine of loving his neighbour if he was deceiving his closest neighbour , his own wife, in such a cruel way.

Now I pitied the crippled woman even more. In my imagination I again saw her pale hand holding a book – the bible ? I now wondered – and I was mad at myself that, instead of having gone into her room and said some kind words to her, I had sheepishly followed Armstrong upstairs to his study. Again I had shown myself inferior to Mister Chris who had cared for her as a good Samaritan with the difference only that the Bible tells about a wounded man who was helped along on a donkey and here the story related to a maimed woman who is placed on a wheelchair. Complete with hypocritical priest and scribes.

All the time, I think, Trevor Morton had been watching me and had read from my face what I had been thinking. He said: “You had not expected that from the New Teacher, did you Reverend?”

“How do you mean that? I asked, somewhat irked.

“That he is so good in making wheelchair,” he said, and he started to smile.

“I must admit to that,” I said. “Did he design it himself?”

“He did, and I helped him, of course, as did others.”

In the meantime he resumed his work. After a while, when he was almost finished, he said: “I somethimes think that you must have a hard job, Reverend, in dealing with so many persons who call themselves Christians but do not show it at all. That was one of the reasons why I declined to become an elder.”

“You may be right.” I said, starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable again.

“This may not apply to you, Reverend,” he continued, ” but my experience with ministers is that they lack courage, plain old guts.” And in a gesture of goodwill towards me, he added: “You of course are an exception.” Since, as far as I know mine has been the only church he ever attended, I took that with a grain of salt. He continued: “Under the disguise of neighbourly love and concern for unity, they fail to come to grips with the real gospel and compromise the Good News so much that they are driving from their churches the very persons they should keep, and keep in the church those they should get rid off.”

I looked at thim and felt that a replay was needed. By nature I am not a defensive person, and I didn’t want my answer to sound as such. So I said something like this :” Of course a church should and can never get rid of members: just the fact they come to church is for me enough. I agree with you that we have turned off the more gifted. But a church is an institution of healing, and those inclined to be that, should have the patience and wisdom to endure that sort of thing. By the way, Has Mister Chris given you these ideas?” I could not imagine that such thoughts had originated with him spontaneously.

“The teacher never talked about these things,” he said, “but I can see that’s happening to him now that he is being persecuted by those who sit in the elder benches of the church and never miss one service.”

I started to feel ill at ease, not really knowing what more he had in mind. After all you can’t get much closer to the elders benches than I am, the teaching elder in the church, as our Book of Forms puts it, and I certainly never miss a service. I knew that, as soon as as the teacher matter is settled I would have to change my approach and would earnestly have to tqckle the lukewarmness and apathy in this town.

I asked him where he would care to show me the wheelchair. He pushed it into the shop and I noticed how easily it could be moved. I then saw that it was not a wheelchair in the ordinary sense. On closer examination it was a much more complicated mobile. It could be made into a bed; also the leg-rests could be changed to any position and the back-rest moved vertically, almost up to any angle up to ninety degrees. Because Mrs Armstrong was paralyzed on the left side, all manuals were placed on the right. The braking device, however, was on the left side. That was done on purpose, the blacksmith said, because the brakes were used only in an emergency and the teacher was convinced that in that case Mrs Armstrong would use her left foot. He even hoped that such an emergency situation would come up where she would have to use the brakes suddenly: maybe it would cure her.

“Does he really plan to have her use this contraption?” I asked unbelievingly.

“Of course,” he said, surprised. “Do you think that it will not work for her? She has been in it a couple of times and it isn’t quite finished yet. We have to put a softer seat and backing in it. The furniture maker in the village is making them now, and, of course, we have to paint it yet. I think a soft green would be a nice colour.”

Strangely, I was beginning to get angry again. Not at Mister Chris or his crew who had thought of this solution, but at myself. Why had I not thought of this? And also a bit at Mister Chris, whose idea it was, of course, and who had implemented it without letting me in on it. That hurt. I began to understand that this helping Mrs Armstrong had been a group exercise, with everybody participating. But why had I not been included and the school board? We could have made it so much easier. But would it have been passed at that level? Perhaps not.

So again my emotions were rocking from admiration to disgust and from anger to downright praise, feelings that hardly ever had registered with me prior to Mister Chris’ arrival, but which during the past year had become know to me with a force which sometimes amazed me.

Now that he is going, I presume that these feelings will wane and I can return to the tranquility of yeasteryear. Many people who have been under the influence of Mister Chris are already calming down and settling into their own routine. The bookstore has suspended its discount, because sales have fallen off: the river of life finds its natural former course automatically after the winter run-off has subsided. I wouldn’t be surprised of the barber would start calling me ‘reverend’ again soon. The trouble is, though, that I am not entirely happy with this prospect. I am not so sure whether I have done the right thing, I am not ashamed to admit it now. Those accusations in the Village Voice I couldn’t care less about. In spite of all that, I still like the crazy Irishman: his paper is his everything and that makes me take him with a grain of salt. I am convinced that we will have a few glasses together yet and, who knows, we may even joke about this whole business then. But will we? Have I done the right hing? What, in all honesty, were my motivations? What can I say in my defense?

Silly me. I don’t have to excuse myself. I have done what I could, or better, what I wanted to do. Perhaps on some occasions I could have acted differently, but in the main I owed it to my feelings of self respect to oppose him. I did not like to do it, but that was no reason to agree with him in everything. Should I have surrendered my sound and traditional and time tested ideas in order to follow what he thought proper? For a while I tried, but we differed too much, both in age and in outlook and especially in implementation. I am not ashamed to admit that. At one time I did believe in him. As a matter of fact, I still believe in him now, and I do intend to apply the things he so greatly believed it. I am sure I will.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was appalling to see how quickly and easily his disciples deserted him. The mishap with the hall in the aftermath of the explosion and the subsequent loss of jobs had lost him more adherents than I had first thought. The explosion had been a trial for his students and many had failed the test. It had caused quite a commotion inside the hall, almost a panic, I heard later, when suddenly all the windows were sucked out and the walls began to shake. A member of my church told me later that, at the very moment the dangerous situation within the plant was being discussed, the thunderous sound of it blowing it, occurred, as on cue. Somehow the doors became unhinged, and this added to the anxiety, and all these men, who appeared so stoic when seen in isolation, suddenly were gripped with fear that the building would fall in on them. In their rush to get out, the workers had all rushed to the door, had threatened Mister Chris, who had pleaded for calm and with his booming voice had outroared all the others in order to quiet the panic. Once calm was restored they had filed out quite orderly. But somehow the sudden loss of the meeting place had taken its toll rather dramatically. He had contacted his friend at the Village Voice and made an arrangement with the editor to write an stimulating article each week but this was not enough: his personal touch was lacking, his radiant magnetism was not conveyed on paper, however well he wrote and that he did. Actually, the fact that he, as soon as he had left the hall, had busied himself to look after those in shock and wounded, and that Armstrong had stolen the limelight with his fire wagon and rallying the troops to fight the fire, also hurt his image, curiously.

The explosion, the hellish mess that it portrayed, gave Miss Lane the needed opening to preach her gospel of hell and damnation. She used the blaze as a pretext to preach her gospel version of eternal fire. On the market she now had a permanent place in a small booth with flags flanking them and a large banner overhead. Where she got all this material and how she paid for the expense involved, was a mystery to me. She must either have a secret benefactor or have access to funds herself. At any case, no expense was spared to make her enterprise attractive and somehow she managed even to install one of those new gramophones which blared out loud hymns whenever she was around to wind the blooming thing.

From my balcony I detected among her steady customers many former students of Mister Chris. Betrayers they were. But then, was I any better? It depressed me. I, always in a good mood, always even tempered and in good spirits, I now had bouts of melancholy. Perhaps I was still mourning the loss of my wife, but I knew that this was not the real reason. I more and more felt the need to prove to him that I still was favorably inclined to him, but how could I do this when his dismissal faced him and me? And, I knew, that this was inevitable. I knew that because he again had been busy indoctrinating the few remaining faithful and that to me amounted to a continuance of the course. I couldn’t back out and neither did I want to back out. It was not the course that mattered: the problem was that Mister Chris, as a person, did not fit our village. He generated unrest and, even if he didn’t do a thing, his very presence affected our life here. Our clash was a clash of principles, of basic philosophy. I think that sacred is sacred and secular is secular. My calling is sacred and so is my position and anything not directly or indirectly connected with the church is secular. But he maintained that all of life was sacred and that not only a minister’s life but everybody’s life was a holy calling and this is something I cannot see. Impossible. This would devaluate my place and task in life, reducing it to a stature equal to any other institution. By no means. He undermined my position and that I could not take.

And this caught up with him, also in the school, or rather with the school parents who found his philosophy far too strict and before long parents started to call me. When I asked whether their children objected to him, the sounded surprised and peeved and said that this had nothing to do with their children. Granted, he was a good teacher and knew how to handle kids but it was his ‘afterschool’ behavior they did not approve of. No doubt this ill conduct would sooner reflect on their kids as well, and they were concerned that their little souls would be badly influenced and might even become endangered, and, although what he taught in school they did not object to, their unformed and innocent souls was their main concern. If their children’s spiritual outlook was being endangered, father and mother and the minister in the church would have a difficult time keeping them pure.

And to think that among these conscientious objectors were some who had been faithful attenders of his evening course! When I reminded them of this they replied that they had been mistaken in him. Armstrong , they told me, might be somewhat oldfashioned, but at any rate he was an upright man, who devoted his life to the church as an elder, and was in numerous committees representing the school as the principal. It was really mean of Mister Chris, they said, to accuse Armstrong of a love affair when the accusers himself, according to eyewitnesses, was guilty of this thing. All this was even more contemptible because Armstrong had shown great courage in helping with extinguishing the fire at the time of the explosion. Of course they would not take their children off school, not with such a good christian as Armstrong at the helm, but they would not much longer tolerate the presence of Mister Chris and I better do something about that.

Mind you, people that said this were a tiny minority, but nevertheless a vocal one. Not everyone left him, of course. The shoemaker and the blacksmith and a few more, altogether about six or seven, stuck with him.

One Saturday afternoon when Peggy Lane was busy evangelizing on the market place, I saw him coming with his little band. I had just come from a visit with one of my colleagues which had resulted in a somewhat heated argument about Mister Chris, of course. When I saw him approaching I thought it wise to avoid him. I suspected that it was no accident which brought him here and I wanted to see from close by what he was up to. To make myself invisible I joined the Peggy Lane devotees right between a few loafers who had nothing better to do than listen to her. She was her usual old self: talking in tongues of hell and damnation and rich promises of future bliss. But the presence of Mister Chris made her nervous; she became more and more excited, partly due, I am sure, to my presence as well. When she was talking about Satan who lives in all our inmost hearts she suddenly launched and attack from her flank and loudly broadcasted : “Today the Devil has dared to appear in our midst in human form, his sulfur spouting breath mingles with our own, and if we do not stand strong he will drag us all down to perish with him forever.”

Her words did not hit home; the teacher did not hear them and her audience routinely ignored her words. To them the customary weeping and gnashing of teeth description of hell was a prospect which had lost its terror through sheer repetition. She realized that her approach had to be even more direct and screamed: “There he is, surrounded by some wayward sheep. Their spirit is seared and burned by his fiery tongue but I know that sometimes soon they will return to the fold as you here around me have done.” With that she looked at me through her almost closed eyes and I felt the eyes of others almost piercing me. I was in a ridiculous predicament but did not want to leave her yet. Some bystanders realized that Miss Lane was no longer speaking abstractly but concretely referred to a living nearby person. They turned to look in the direction her arm was pointing, but when they saw Mister Chris, they seemed disappointed. One man turned around and, it seemed to me, bumped into me on purpose and left the group. I saw him unontrusively join the little group around Mister Chris.

Miss Lane noticed that she was losing ground, angrily placed her loudspeaker before her mouth and invoked divine assistance. Nothing happened, but it impressed the people and when right after that she started to sing a hymn, most of them joined in. Nobody here in this Christian village seems to be able to escape the sounds of an ecclesiastically endorsed song, however terible the melody and fractured the words. So, here I was, trapped in my own devices again, and because of my location I felt that I could not leave her at this particular psalm singing instance. So I remained at the scene and saw that Mister Chris was quietly talking with his few followers who, no doubt, were lingering in the market as if they were waiting for something, yet not knowing what for. It seemed to me that Trevor Morton, the blacksmith, was doing all the talking, holding on to him in an apparent effort of forcing him to stay.

While I was biding my time for a proper opportunity to sneak away, I suddenly heard children sing and soon I saw the first row of a procession of some hundred boys and girls. They carried posters and banners, flags and pennants and one of them had a drum, because I noticed some rhythmic rumblings that grew louder as the group came closer. ‘The Childrens’ Crusade’ that’s what it reminded me of and it was coming straight at us and in my usual cynical mind I imagined that they were going to offer their services to Miss Peggy Lane in her battle against unbelief. Apparently she thought so too. She straightened out her face, twisted from all those tirades and in a triumphant gesture raised her megaphone to heaven, apparently convinced, like Elijah of old, that she had received direct divine assistance. But when the first children were almost near us, they suddenly changed direction and surrounded our entire group like a snake. Then quite unexpectedly, they engulfed us with sounds coming from crude trumpets and all sort of noisemaking instruments.

Amidst this hellish hubbub I recognized Garrett who looked at me victoriously. I soon recognized more familiar faces which led me to believe that most of the kids of the higher grades were filing past us tooting and blaring.

It was a sight; it was grand. It impressed me more than I wanted to admit. For an instance I saw myself as these children see me: the minister, a dark suit, a bit scary, yet something appealing in him, but an old man and old men don’t count. If they had known how terribly lonely I felt at that moment, may be they would have felt less impressed with me. But loneliness is a feeling kids don’t know. Peggy Lane must have felt much worse. Her megaphone dangled from her wrist as a piece of dead metal and she herself looked like a flower which had lost all its petals. Her head bent forward and with saliva dripping from her mouth – or were they tears?- she looked like a broken reed. I really pitied her intensely because such public disillusions I don’t wish to anybody.

All of a sudden it struck me that actually she and Mister Chris differed very little. Both were preachers, both had the urge to convince others, the fanaticism of the one was no less than that of the other and both were definitely slightly mad. What they proclaimed, however, was as different as summer and winter. Peggy was interested only in bringing people to heaven by abandoning this world and letting it go to pot. Chris, on the other hand, wanted to prepare people for a new earth where only those would live who had loved God’s world as much as He did..

And I? Sooner or later I’ll have to make a choice, because though both proclaim Christ, only one is right. A scary thought and a scary choice, one which I have avoided to make and still have not made, because I am not convinced that believing in Christ will be such a black and white issue. Or is that the Devil in me? This is what has disturbed me most: he has upset my equilibrium. I am not sure anymore what I, a minister of the gospel, should believe. It’s half past eight now. In half an hour the last train is going and whether he leaves or not, I will go to bed.

The children with their flags and flutes had turned their backs to us and went straight for Mister Chris and his group. He kept on talking and only when they were almost upon him, did he look their way. I really believe that at that moment he did not realize that they had come for him, that they were his children. He put his arms up in the air and then covered his face with his hands, His pupils could no longer restrain themselves. They broke up their procession and wildly jumped around him, laughing and screaming. All I saw was a multitude of arms and legs, an array of colourfull dresses and shirts with here and there a flag or banner sticking out. But soon after, some order was restored, a wide circle was formed with Mister Chris in the centre and first hesitantly and slowly steadying, a solemn song rose up. I recognized the tune: it was the traditional song of oppression and communal resistance: “We shall overcome.” Deep in my heart I also believed that they were right.

The human ball of young people set itself in motion. It turned just as the earth, around its axle and also moved forward, with humanity, personified in Mister Chris, dead centre. The youthful cluster carried him forward, whether he wanted it or not. And I think that latter was the case. Mister Chris had no choice. When they slowly orbited past me I noticed that he was as white as the snow that blankets our area a good portion of the year, and stopped time and again. Bu then the students in the centre would bump into him and so he was pushed in front of me. It was supposed to be a victory march, instead it became a martyr’s course, a Via Dolorosa, judging by his general appearance. He could have easily put a stop to it, but it seemed that his usual decisiveness had deserted him.: he simply was overwhelmed, was taken so much by surprise that he just passively surrendered to this youthful throng. At long last I now noticed that indeed he had him some of the common humanness which I always had missed in him. I now could also understand in more than one way the words of the song which the kids kept on singing – and which he had taught them, no doubt –

“The Lord will see us through, We shall overcome, We are on the road to Victory

For we shall overcome and we’ll walk hand in hand and we are not afraid

For the Truth shall make us free and we shall live in peace.”

The melody could have never sounded more intense than at this occasion. It may have been sung at many a demonstration, but never more heartrending and convincing than here in this pious town where not a single negro lived and where no Christian was ever persecuted. At least not in my opinion.

In spite of my feeling of discomfort which increased as the parade turned itself more and more into a public spectacle, I admired the courage of the young people. I was convinced that Garrett Morton had been the instigator and principle organizer of this event. Wisely he kept himself in the middle of the crowd just as the heart has a central position in the body.

The boys and the girls were not satisfied until they had toured the entire market place and the block in which my church and the now vacant township hall is located. I didn’t wait for the procession to be dissolved because more and more young people gathered and I thought it better to retreat to my study, but the singing pursued me even there. On the school yard they finally let Mister Chris go. But he had no chance to sneak away because the turmoil had attracted the entire village and they, in turn had closed in on the kids and their teacher. Now he was twice a prisoner, first of this students and then from the hosts of curious onlookers. They and especially the children, expected something from him, after all a teacher cannot be carried around by his students and then locked in by their parents and relatives and then just disappear as if nothing had happened. I was told afterwards that there had been some people who had insisted him to say something and when he did not respond and remained silent and even withdrawn, had ridiculed him and even offended him. At last he had said something like this:

“For the sake of the children I beg you not to stay any longer. This is a farewell, I would like to go. Thank you.” Just a few words, which had been uttered in a tear-choked voice and said so softly that only a few heard them. But all of them understood their meaning.

After that the people had left slowly and even subdued. They had understood that indeed this was the end and then the interest wanes quickly. The solemn sounds of “Shalom Mister Chris, Shalom Mister Chris, We’ ll see you again,”sounded as a doxology. He shook hands with all the children and embraced them passionately, and then he asked them all to go home, and when the last one had gone, he too left.

So ended the first and perhaps the only public demonstration of our schoolchildren.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

That same evening, late, the I heard a knock at the door. I was sitting in my housecoat, reading the Kingston Whig, which comes here a day late. I need that paper to restore my view of the world which is so distorted by that Village Voice Scandal sheet, which later, as I expected, carried an almost hysterically biased report on that afternoon’s happening. I had just taken a bath – I needed it to wash me clean from today’s happenings, like Pilate’s washing of his hands when he was forced to condemn Christ to death. Of course there was no comparison, but still that thought went through my mind. I also needed this warm soaking to make me comfortable before dropping off to sleep alone, something I am not quite used to yet and probably never will.

I was in no frame to see anybody, but, as a minister I have to be ready for these unexpected and inconvenient visits. When I spied Mister Chris at the door, I felt like pleading tiredness, but knowing that he would not take no for an answer, I let him in. I was in a real spot: I wasn’t prepared to talk to him but I also did not want to avoid him any longer, so, I prepared myself for a showdown.

In the corridor I heard a sound as if something had fallen off the wall and for a moment I was afraid that he was injured or in some other way incapacitated, but moments later he came in. He looked tired. The short year in our village had aged him by ten years but his handshake had lost nothing of its vigor and his voice was as military loud as when we first met, a long year ago.

“Was Miss Lane worthwhile listening to this afternoon?” he asked. Immediately his remark caught me of fbalance. So he had seen me. Smilingly he awaited my reply.

“That she never is,” I said defensively. “Of course you realize that I was not standing there out of interest for her.”

“You were interested in me,” he stated matter of factly. “But why then did you not come closer?”

I said nothing, and lit my pipe. The conversation was too fast for me. I was trying to slow it down, but he kept on going.

“She had more people around her than I did. There must be something in her that attracts them, but I haven’t been able to pinpoint it.”

“Later on you had the crowd, though,” I said. “Did you stage the whole thing yourself?”

Immediately I was sorry I had said this. My question had been mean and unfair, but he had put me in the defense and then people grab anything that is around.

He did not reply, and in the empty space that followed I did not know anything better than blow clouds of smoke. I wasn’t prepared to retract my words, and this was a sure hint that I wanted to rid myself of him. I looked past him and stared vacantly into the fireplace where a few pinkish coals were slowly turning black and the warm glow was fading, a symbol of our relationship, I mused.

At last he said, “Children are more honest than adults.”

“Why didn’t you stick to teaching them,” I said, “instead of busying yourself with those adults?”

He shook his head in disgust: “You still don’t understand me at all,” he barked.

“I don’t want to understand you either,” I follied back. “You spoiled the whole business; you had a free hand and that you used to propagate your own silly ideas instead of promoting the school.”

“Instead of advocating your ideas, you mean,” he replied quietly.

“You don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You never told me why you made me come here,” he said and he looked at me in a direct but not unkind way. “You had told me that you wanted to have Public Education become more Christian but you did not tell me that you wanted to get rid of Armstrong.”

“That is one and the same thing,” I said, ” at least in this village.”

“I am sorry,” he replied, “but you know that there is a big diffference. No genuine Reformation can take place if it comes at the expense of another person. Christian Reformation is not a reactionary thing or a question of personal preferences, as you want to see it. Complete Reform stands by itself and affects all: young, old, teacher, minister, mayor and even a self-proclaimed evangelist like Peggy Lane.”

“That sounds wonderful,” I said, “but here in our village that does not work. You just don’t take reality into account.”

“Not the wrong reality.”

“Well, call it wrong,” I said, bored a bit, “but this is the case and we have to accept it as it is.”

“I right away wanted to start at the beginning,” he said with his booming voice. “Once you start wrong, it is impossible to correct it later.”

“Correct, according to you,” I said.

“No, correct according to God,” he boomed back. ” There are not so many ways to the same destination. There is only One Way and you of all people, an official Bible explainer, should most certainly know it. But because you have failed in your appointed position, I have had to do it. You should have shaken up the people from their deep slumber, so that I could have come here to cultivate the minds on a soil already prepared by you. But no, that price was too high; it might have costs you your popularity and possibly even your ‘sacred’ position.”

“If you don’t have anything better to say, you better go,” I said, because I thought he talked like one possessed. “I want to go to bed.”

“Go to sleep, go to sleep,” he said, “in your entire life you will not wake up anymore, Reverend Pillar. Go to sleep and let your flock slumber on. But there are a few others, and even though I go away, I will keep in touch with them. May even….” He did not finish his sentence.

What was he going to say? May even stay here? Is that why he went back with Garrett Morton?

He stood up but instead of going to the door he placed himself in front of the fireplace. He stood there and looked at the dying embers as if he saw in them his dying career in this village. His hands deep in his pockets, his shoulders pulled up high, his stubborn hair peeking up, he stood there like a statute.

I said, just to say something: “I believe that you are too far ahead of us, Mister Chris. I, at least, cannot follow you and I know I am not the only one.”

“I am exactly on time,” he replied without turning around. “I am saying nothing new. The people who do not understand me are behind the time. I want to put them right on time.”

“You want to be right, ” I said, irritated by his self-assured cockiness.

“Everybody wants to be right,” he said, ” even you. But you don’t want to fight for it”

“You are impossible, ” I said, because I could not quickly think of an effective answer. “As an educator you are excellent, Mister Chris; as a person you are impossible.”

“As an educator I don’t act any more different than as a person outside the school,” he replied, and he seated himself across from me again. “You can’t make that distinction, because it does not exist.”

The conversation got stuck, as usual. He was not prepared to budge one step; for him the shortest route between two points was a straight line. If it involved a collision course, so be it. I took a cue from this and blocked his way when I said: “The schoolboard does not appreciate your presence here anymore.”

“It never did.”

“I did.”

“Because you wanted to use me.”

“I needed someone like you, but you spoiled it.”

“I did what I had to do.”

“I have heard that before from you. Who gave you that commission anyway, Mister Chris?”

“Who commissioned Amos?”

“I know that, but who called you?”

“Who called you, Reverend Pillar?”

And so we fought, I reclining in my chair, he bent forward ready as if he were to fly off and on to me. I felt a strange sort of numbness coming over me, but also a deep feeling of sorrow and misery, but I did not show it because I wasn’t sure who it was meant for. His words did not touch me anymore; he was firing them at me with the same speed, but they only added to my frozen state rather than causing painful feelings.

He must have noticed it because he stopped his attack, stood up again and this time moved to the window. One of his hands he placed on the pane. I could clearly see its silhouette contrasted against the flickering street light, one of the few in the village and carefully tended by the police-night watchman. I admit that I felt like crying. Maybe I should have, but I suppressed my tears and instead took another puff at my pipe which had gone out. I sucked some bitter pipe residue instead which got stuck on the lump in my throat and made me feel even more miserable.

He stood there, a picture of forsakenness and it was I who had forsaken him. It was I who had denied him. How many times? Perhaps even more than three times? Armstrong, the mayor, and all the others had been his opponents. They had never been his conpanions, his friends, his disciples, but I had been one of his, and I had deserted him.

I have my shortcomings, of course I have. But I had never felt them so acutely as just then. The faults of the others were immaterial now: Armstrong’s false piety; Mrs Dyer’s unreliability; the mayor’s slyness; but no longer could I blame them for my stand in all this.They only had fought against an enemy. I had betrayed a friend.

At that moment I should have cried out to him that he should stay, that everybody else could go to hell, including the school. But I didn’t do it. Everything had become too complicated for me to salvage anything.

Mister Chris asked: “Are you tired Reverend Pillar?” He called me Reverend to the end.

“Yes,” I said, “yes, I am tired of you and of everything.”

“I don’t want to tire people,” was his soft reply. Did I notice a sob in his voice?

“But you do it. You drive to make people change themselves, to put the whole world upside down, is deadly tiring.”

“There is no other way.”

“Nuts,” I said, angry again. “You are not with it, Mister Chris. It’s about time you do.”

“With it?” he said. “With it? When are we with it? Only when we are with Him.” Then, as if he had decided long ago to leave, he continued: “It’ll be hard to leave here. I have liked it here.”

“You are going then?” I asked, confused. It came so quickly that I wasn’t ready for it.

He said nothing.

I stood up too. Together we stood for a while, looking out into the dark night and maybe more looking in into my dark self. Had he lost or won? That was the question that I kept asking myself and I could not arrive at an answer.

At last he wished me good night and left. I brought him to the door when in the hall he picked up something: his knapsack. I wanted to say that with that thing it all had started. But that was crazy, of course, and without another word we parted.

CHAPTER TWENTY

That was our last talk, because late this afternoon, just a few hours ago, when he said good bye, we hardly talked at all. We had not become enemies, but we didn’t talk because there was nothing left to say. Between that conversation and this moment no more than a few weeks have past. To me it seemed years, and his entire stay a century. Or perhaps better, a life-time, because in the past year I have experienced more than in all my previous years together. Or has that bottle of wine affected me? Maybe I have drunk too fast or too much. I am not a real big drinker and perhaps mental disarray has further diminished my resistance. What is the matter with me anyway? During the past year I have changed from a balanced person with no problems, to a worrier full of guilt feelings and self pity. I have always considered myself myself younger than I really was, but now I feel older than ever. It seems that I have lost my vitality, my zest for life. I also have lost my certainty. All that was old and proven, all the admonitions and texts and glib answers I had comforted other with, seem now useless to me. Tell me: Who is a pastor’s pastor? Where do I go? Where?

Until the very last day Mister Chris continued with his discussion sessions but now that his group has become so small, he met in their homes, by turn. Officially peace and tranquility had returned and common sense prevailed.

A few days ago the mayor called on me. He chose his words carefully but could hardly hide his pleasure over his triumph and asked me whether I had already started to hire a replacement. I was very short with him and answered truthfully that I had, but also that I was considering resigning from the board. That sort of shook him a bit and shattered his complacency.

The board met once more before the summer recess. This time not in my study but in the board room. Mrs Dyer looked prouder than ever and the butcher looked his part: I noticed still some blood on his hands, which made me look at my hands as well. I told them of Mister Chris’ resignation and said that we should start looking for a successor. Mrs Dyer had the gall to express her dismay about him continuing his community undermininig activities: she would have preferred to see him behave properly at least for the short term he still was to be here. I did not comment on her remark but our farmer member said that, now that the teacher had nothing to lose anymore, we should leave him alone. In the end he wanted a vote of thanks recorded in the minutes so that, now that Mister Chris had left, there would be an official acknowledgment of the wonderful work he had done for the school because in the education field our village had never before seen a better person.

Armstrong, the principal, did yet suffer a painful defeat, although at the last minute he managed to turn it into a victory, be it a bitter one. I hope that some day he will reflect on it and if he does, he might yet view it as a loss and if that is so, he will have learned a lesson. For now, in the eyes of the public, he came out as a winner and our village people value the appearance of a victory more than a spirit-filled act. When it happened, I thought for a moment that Mister Chris would as yet come out on top, but this thought proved to be fathered only by my wish.

It happened last Sunday morning, after church. At my request, I had exchanged with my colleague at the Methodist Church. In itself a very unusual occurrence, which, for me was a first. Because of all the turmoil of the past week, I had been unable to get two new sermons ready, and had obtained permission to exchange pulpits. Both Armstrong and the mayor are elders there.

As by custom, at least in my denomination, I positioned myself after the service, at the exit of the church building, on top of the steps, and since it was a glorious summer day, I stood outside, and from this commanding place I availed myself to shake hands with the people, while at the same time overviewing the area in front of the church, where now many horse and buggies were parked.

I do know a lot of people in this congrgation too, and while I was giving a warm hand shake here and a friendly pat there, I was too busy to notice at first that something out of the ordinary was happening. Although I was the first person at the door, I had paid no attention to the people already waiting for their relatives and friends and those who looked after the horses while the owners were attending the worship service. So I had not noticed a small group of people, some distance away, not until I detected a hush, a strange silence, totally out of character with a crowd leaving a church. Had my good Presbyterian style of preaching so impressed the people that they were awetruck? No, I rejected that flattering thought at once. What then? What had caused that unusual hush? It was the expression of the mayor’s face and his strange behavior that alerted me that something extraordinary was taking place. He looked as white as a sheet and since I could not imagine that the service had been the direct cause that affected his health, I followed the direction of his eyes. There, almost in front of the church steps, I saw the wheelchair for Mrs Armstrong, that ingenious device that Mister Chris and Garret Morton’s father had built in his shop. Beside it stood Mrs Armstrong herself, deadly pale, and trembling through her entire sick body. But she stood and behind herm just as tense but with a smile on his face, was Mister Chris.

A miracle must have happened. But the queer thing was that everybody there seemed either dismayed or angry. ‘Six days,’ it flashed through my head, – I had just read the Ten Commandments in church, ‘Six days thou shalt do thy work, but the Seventh day thou shalt keep holy and not do any foolishness like this.’ Not that I thought it was foolish, but this was how I interpreted the damning silence of the saints. It had upset their Sunday routine, and interfered with their Sunday coffee hour, although it would present a wonderful topic there, much better than the sermon. Later I heard that Mrs Armstrong had made the trip from her house to the church all by herself, with Mister Chris and the blacksmith each on a side. On the church square she had stood up and under the silent stare of the few people waiting for the service to end, had done a few steps. After that, partly laughing, partly crying, she had sat down again and moved up till she was almost at the steps of the church where she could hear the organ and the singing.

And then she waited there to surprise her husband. To me she looked almost like a arrow ready to leave the bow. The shaking and trembling of her body reminded me of a quivering projectile, ready to be launched. It would not have surprised me if indeed she would soar through the air and leave us in the dust. Armstrong, whom I had not noticed until now, apparently wanted to prevent such a swift departure, for suddenly I was pushed out of the way, as he rushed past me and grabbed his wiffe.

“How did you get here?” he roared.

She pointed at the wheelchair and remained silent.

“What kind of thing is that?” he shouted.

She said nothing and with a despairing motion turned around. I feared that she would fall but somehow she managed to keep to her feet. Mister Chris stepped forward flanked by the blacksmith and quietly, and with a tremor in his voice, said: “We made it for her.”

Armstrong turned red. I saw his neck above his collar swell up. He made a few queer foot motions, as if he were in a boxing ring, and then yelled uncontrollably: “Devil, that’s what you are, a devil, a devil.”

Mister Chris looked at him. He said nothing. He did not move. He just stood there, and through my mind flashed the evening, a long time ago, the day he had arrived in our pious village, when Peggy Lane had called these same words to him from her upper storey window.

“He also taught me how to walk,” Mrs Armstrong said softly.

“Why don’t you try it once more,” the new teacher said kindly but without coming to her assistance. She straightened her back, started to shake even more than she had before, clenched her hands to fists and made three, four faltering steps to her husband. Some the people yelled some encouraging calls remarks but Armstrong lifted up his hands as if he wanted to hit her, and screamed: “Satan child, get out, get out.”

Helplessly she looked at him with both her hands clasped to her heart, and collapsed. Mister Chris tried to catch her, but Armstrong was quicker. He lifted her up and carried her into the church. In the hall, right in front of me, he turned around and called out: “If you have murdered her, then you will be punished and after your death you will fry in hell forever.”

There he stood, with his dying wife in his arms, as a hero in a play. I had the distinct impression that he realized his theatrical pose and exploited the situation. He played it to the full as if he were on a podium in the Playhouse rather than the portals of sanctity. He did not care about his wife anymore than actors care for each other. He only needed her as a prop to play the role of the avenging angel. When he finally turned around and with his better half entered the sanctuary, he had accomplished what he, by evil instinct, had set out to do. With him went whatever neighborly love had remained with the unlookers and on the church square a boundless hate emerged which was first of all directed towards the wheelchair and through that, to Mister Chris. The product of the work community did not survive. It was destroyed by a few of the more god-fearing avengers and left in ruins against the church walls. They would have done the same thing to the brothers of mercy, but fear for reprisal witheld them, or may be they feared he really was the devil and devils are thrown out.

And that’s what they did. They mocked him and accused him and called him names. I saw someone spit him in the face and another push him inthe back so that he almost fell on his face. If that had happened they would have stamped him out.

I saw his face, his white face contrasted against the red hot heads of his persecutors. I, I couldn’t help him. Too many people were heaped together between us. And they would have killed me too, I think.

That morning I had preached a sermon on Christ in Galilee, in Nazareth and the small villages around it and about the signs and miracles he had performed there. And about the judgement that would be more severe for them because of the preaching presence of the Christ there.

You think I have told my story clear enough? My mother always said: “If something bothers you, write it down or tell it to yourself aloud and see what happens.” She practised what she preached: I often heard her in her room, talking with nobody present. But may be she was praying.

Praying?

“Oh Lord, I have been a louse. Oh Lord, I have been a faker, a coward, a hyprocrite, a Farizee. Oh Lord, I thwarted your Spirit. What on earth got into me? Lord, what have I done? These people here, Lord: it wasn’t them. It was me. They did not kill kill him and his work. I did. They were willing to follow him. And they did. It was me, Lord, who held them back. Me, me, me.”

The clock chimed one, two, three….

And there he is. At last. Garrett is with him and so is his father.

I hear the train coming.

Mister Chris swings his knapsack on his shoulder. There is the train.

I start running. I call: “Chris, Chris, wait for me.”

When I arrive outside, the train is gone and so is Chris.

Garrett and his father stand there, waving and telling each other that he will come back.

Me, they haven’t even noticed.

©1998 Bert Hielema