16
Chapter Sixteen
Not many weeks after our visit to the jail I was preparing to go to Pedro’s house—this time not just for the usual language study, but to begin in earnest the translation of the Gospel of Mark. Long months of study lay behind me now, hundreds of pages of Quichua text had been analyzed, and the bits of Scripture which Pedro and I had translated had been read many times to the Indians. We needed more, a whole book, with its continuity and completeness, so I decided to begin with the shortest of the Gospels, that of Mark. I was just going out my gate in happy anticipation of the job when Mr. MacDonald’s jeep came clattering up the road.
“I’ve brought a visitor to see you, Margaret,” he said, climbing out “This is Mr. Elmer Harvey of Millions Untold. He is making a mission survey in Latin America and wanted to see the work here in Indi Urcu.” A beaming, heavy-set man in a raincoat bounded out of the jeep toward me.
“How do you do, Mr. Harvey.” See the work, I repeated to myself. What work? Luckily, today there was something. “I was just going up the mountain to visit my informant. Do you think you’d like to come along?”
“Well, praise the Lord, Miss Sparhawk! Or can I call you Margaret? No use being too formal. After all, we’re all brothers and sisters in the Lord, isn’t that right?” He laughed and shifted the camera straps a bit on his shoulder. “Your informant—sounds sort of sinister, doesn’t it! You mean the one who helps you with language work?”
“Yes—I’m hoping to do a little translation work today.”
“Bible translation?
“Yes.”
“Now isn’t that wonderful! Guess the Lord brought us here on the right day, Brother MacDonald. Can’t think of anything I’d rather do than go visiting with you, Margaret. Not sure I have just the right footgear”—he looked down at his shoes—“but it won’t be too rough, will it?”
“It’s dusty, and a bit steep,” I said, “but I’m sure you can make it”
“Should have brought my old combat boots. They’d have been just the thing, but the airlines only allow you forty-four pounds. These new Florsheims weren’t really made for rugged trekking. But then, nothing’s too good for the Lord, eh, MacDonald? Ought to be glad to wear out a pair of shoes for Him!”
Mr. MacDonald gave him a thin smile.
“Could I give you a cup of tea before we leave?” I asked. Mr. MacDonald must be thirsty from the dusty drive up to Indi Urcu.
“Oh thank you, Margaret. If you have time, a cup of tea would be lovely,” said Mr. MacDonald. This time his smile was warm.
Half an hour later we set out on foot for Pedro’s house. The sun struck full on the eastern slope of Chimborazo, the great snowcap, setting it high and exalted above the whole earth, the joy of the valley beneath it. My heart lifted and cheered at the sight of that glory and seemed to run up the shining slopes.
“Cobblestones,” said Mr. Harvey, picking his way carefully along the street in his polished shoes. “The genuine article. I suppose they’ve been here since the Year One.”
“Maybe a hundred years,” I ventured, not really having any idea how old they were.
We soon came to the end of the cobblestones and took the turn which led up the mountainside. Mr. Harvey, I noticed with some misgiving, was puffing already. The altitude might be too much for him.
“Turn around and look at the view from here, Mr. Harvey,” I suggested, in order to give him a chance to rest “Isn’t the sun beautiful on the mountain?”
He paused, his shoulders heaving and making the two cameras rise and fell. He pushed his felt hat back a bit on his forehead, glanced at the mountain, and then looked down toward the village.
“Picturesque little place, isn’t it? Wonder if I could get a picture.”
Just then a small boy with two pigs came toward us on the road, one of the pigs grunting in time to his trotting, the other zigzagging back and forth across the road as the boy flourished a stick and yelled at him. Mr. Harvey looked apprehensively at the pig, which seemed bent on scurrying between his legs. The boy lunged at the pig, whacked it on the hind quarters, and sent it squealing past us.
“Say—there’s a picture now. Could I get a picture of him?” He turned to me. I called to the boy and asked if the gringo might take his picture. The boy smiled shyly and nodded, but kept after his pigs.
“Do you think you could get him to stand over here on the sunny side, Margaret?”
“I’m afraid I can’t get him to stand anywhere with those pigs. You’ll just have to try to get them on the run.”
Mr. Harvey was fussing with a light meter.
“Here. Over here I think the light will be perfect” He peered at the meter, then at the sky, then looked for the boy. He and his pigs were a block away.
“Oh say. That would have been a good one. Guess we’ll have to let it go. Maybe I can get one of the town. Let’s see. It is picturesque, isn’t it, those mountains in the background and all. My. What a view.” He looked through the range finder, turned the camera on end and back again, checked the setting, braced himself to snap the shutter, then turned abruptly.
“Oh—here. What’s the matter with me? I want you people in this one. Would you mind standing over there by that palm tree—cactus, whatever it is? Both of you, if you don’t mind. That’s it. Little more to the left. That’s good. I can see the whole town in back of you. That will be great” He snapped, grinned broadly. “Thanks a lot”
We walked up the road again. There was a slapping, beating sound, and we came upon a group of women in the meadow by the roadside, kneeling beside a narrow stream of water. Clothes lay all around them on the grass, stiff and humpy, drying in the sunshine. There were several flat rocks at the edge of the stream and over these the women bent their fachalinas, the rectangular cloth worn around their shoulders, flung back, their breasts swinging in the loose blouses. Their hands were red when they lifted their arms out of the water, pounding the clothing into wads which streamed with water as they lifted them and slapped them down hard upon the stones. There was a rhythm in the bowing, slapping, lifting and bowing. It was broken for a moment as they paused to survey the foreigners with a direct, unabashed gaze. Mr. Harvey focused his camera and they bent to the task, their hair falling over their faces again, the water shining and dripping from their arms. One woman was rubbing her hair with a handful of fibrous staff which made it sudsy. She wore a dark blue cloth tied around under her arms in place of a blouse, and she dipped the glistening black mass of her hair into the icy water, where it waved and swirled in the current.
“How come they don’t use any soap?” Mr. Harvey asked.
“It’s too expensive for them, I suppose. And they pound the clothes so vigorously they must get most of the dirt out that way.”
“How about giving them a tract?” said my visitor. “I have a bunch of Spanish tracts here.” He dug into the pocket of his gabardine raincoat.
“I’m afraid they don’t read. I doubt if they even speak Spanish,” I told him.
“They don’t read? Oh, I suppose not. But there’ll be somebody at home who can read to them. Here, I’ll just give them a few. They’ll like it, and then it’s seed sown. You never know what the results may be.”
Seed sown. In Spanish. It would be like planting bananas in Alaska, I thought.
Mr. Harvey started to walk across the grass in the direction of the women. They looked at him apprehensively. All at once he drew up, lifting his feet one after the other and looking at his shoes. He had stepped into a bog, where the water from the stream had spread out into the thick grass. One of the women giggled, quickly covering her mouth with a wet hand. The others smiled furtively and went on washing.
“Guess it’s no good going over there. They looked scared anyway, didn’t they?” He tiptoed to firmer ground.
The road took us past cornfields and potato fields, through pastures of grazing sheep and cattle, past a few huts which Mr. Harvey photographed. “Here. I’ll have to get some of these thatched roofs. Really primitive, aren’t they?” He snapped away, standing with feet apart and raincoat whipping in the wind, then winding his film with a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction. The smile faded as he walked and the powdery dust plastered his wet shoes. He stopped to scrape them on a tuft of grass, then took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wiped his forehead and the back of his neck A glance at the color of the handkerchief afterward surprised him, and he quickly folded and stuffed it back into his pocket.
“Dust is terrific up here. How far is it to Pedro’s?” he asked.
“Another half hour, perhaps,” I told him. “We go by time rather than mileage up here.”
“Pretty rugged climb. Do you do this often?”
“Two or three times a week.”
“I guess we at home don’t know much about what missionaries go through. And that’s exactly why I came. I want to see what it’s really like, so I can go back and challenge the rest of them.” I could hear his breath coming in short gasps behind me for a moment. Then a wave of wind swept the sound away.
We reached Pedro’s house and were greeted by the children, who had begun to look forward to my visits. Sometimes I brought them candy or small toys. Rosa was sitting on the porch weaving a faja, a narrow woolen belt. Mr. Harvey took a picture of her, after a futile attempt to get her to smile. She watched his movements in bewilderment, for although she knew what the camera was she did not know why he made feces at her. She went on with her weaving, telling us to sit down until Pedro came. He was hoeing potatoes, but was expecting us and would soon be home.
We sat down, Mr. Harvey on a sack of corn, Mr. MacDonald and I on a bench that stood by the wall. A rooster raised a weak cry in the yard, and a couple of skinny hens scraped and picked about where he had been scratching. The valley lay in a veil of dust below us, but the mountain rose clear in the sun. I felt that we were set on a shelf midway between plain and peak. The breadth of this view never failed to gladden me, carrying my eye far down the slope up which we had come, across the wide plain, and up the smooth slopes to the east, beyond which lay the mystery of jungle and Amazon rain forest.
“Nice view up here too,” said Mr. Harvey, tearing open a new roll of film. “Think I’ve about used up that roll, but I want to get Pablo when he comes—and you working with him, of course, Margaret”
Rosa got up from her weaving and went inside. Soon she appeared with bowls of soup for us.
“Do you think it’s safe?” asked Mr. Harvey.
“Oh, I think so,” said Mr. MacDonald. “I’ve eaten it many times, and never had any trouble.”
“Well, I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. I’ve got a lot of trips lined up, and then I have to be back for deputation. They’re just waiting for my report, you see. I’m not used to foreign foods. Of course, if I lived here like you do—” he broke off. Mr. MacDonald and I were drinking the soup, and Mr. Harvey took a tentative sip. Rosa was watching him closely. She had caught the tone of uncertainty in his voice when she offered it to him. He swallowed, looked at me, sniffed the soup and sipped again. He repressed the grimace he felt coming, and the soup was drunk without social disaster.
Finally Pedro came, his face and neck caked with dust, his clothes powdered to a uniform color. He picked up a rag from the floor near Rosa and wiped his forehead with hard, rough strokes as he greeted us. I knew that he had been working very hard, but he gave no indication that he was tired. He simply sat down on the doorsill, asked Rosa for a drink, and waited for me to start asking questions. I forgot for the moment what I was going to say. There was something in the frank, level gaze of his eyes—an almost innocent manliness—that made me feel a rush of pride and gratitude for him, and I wanted to say, “God bless you, Pedro.” Instead, I said, “Today we are going to begin to translate God’s word.”
“It is so.”
I had with me a copy of the New Testament in Spanish and English which I opened to the Gospel of Mark.
“The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” There was no noun for beginning. The infinitive could sometimes be used in this way, so I gave it a try. “Gospel” presented a problem. I found that it meant simply “good news” but Quichua had no word for news. How about “good word”? Pedro accepted that. There was no preposition “of.” The idea had to be expressed as an adjective, as in, for example, “the tree foot” instead of “the foot of the tree,” or as a possessive, “the tree’s foot” So here it became ‘Jesus Christ, God’s Son—about Him good word begins.” Pedro said that was “bearable” all right, so I wrote it down.
“Could you just tilt your face a little bit toward the sun, Margaret?” said Mr. Harvey. “I can’t quite get enough light on it. There. That’s better. Now get Pablo to take his hand down so I can see the Bible. Oh, that’s wonderful. I can even get a corner of the adobe wall and part of the loom in.” He clicked, wound, and clicked again. “Better take a couple, just in case.”
We went through six verses of the first chapter of Mark in about two hours. There were no Quichua words for messenger, wilderness, baptize, forgiveness, confess, or camel. For each we had to employ a clumsy phrase, a Quichua approximation, or perhaps a Spanish loan word. The result of that first translation session left me feeling utterly deflated. How could I have thought I was prepared to undertake such a task? Two years was too short a time in which to know the Indian idiom sufficiently well to translate the Bible. I had read of missionaries doing it in less time than that—in fact, one missionary had learned a language and translated the whole book of Mark inside two years’ time. How did they do it? I had seen pictures of them giving out copies of their translations to eager natives. Who taught the people to read? Were the translations really readable and meaningful? I looked over what I had just written and wondered if it would mean anything to an Ecuadorian Quichua.
“Well, Margaret, this has been a thrill for me!” exclaimed Mr. Harvey. “To think that God brought me here just on the very day you were to begin this great task. Now I can say I have actually seen and heard a missionary translating the Word of God. Wonderful, isn’t it, MacDonald?”
The Scotsman did not quite manage to match Mr. Harvey’s enthusiasm. He knew how far I was from success, though he did not belittle the attempt.
“It’s a beginning, brother. It’s a beginning.” (And how many more beginnings will there have to be? I wondered gloomily. Surely this would all have to be done over, God knew how many times.) “She’s got a long, hard job ahead of her, and of course there’s no one, so far, who can teach the people to read Quichua. She’ll have to do that, too, before the translation will be of any value.”
“Yes.” Mr. Harvey looked crestfallen. “I never thought of that. They don’t read, do they? How about Pablo? Doesn’t he read?”
“Pedro?” I said. “No, he doesn’t read.”
“Hardly anyone reads even Spanish. No one reads Quichua,” said Mr. MacDonald.
“Is that right?” Mr. Harvey was amazed. “So you don’t have a mission school here?”
“No. We had hoped to, but the couple who were assigned to establish it could not come.”
“How about a church? You have a church here somewhere?”
“No, not yet”
“There must be one someplace among the mountain Quichuas—I mean, I’m sure I heard there was one someplace. Or was that in Peru?”
“There are one or two believers on stations north of here. You couldn’t call them churches.”
“What about medical work? Do you do any of that?” There was real anxiety in his tone now. Mr. MacDonald looked to me for the answer to this question. I explained as well as I could what I was doing, seeing the bewilderment grow in my visitor’s eyes. Desperately he sought proofs, exhibits. What he had found was clearly not up to his expectations of the work of God.
“But in Guatemala we saw a tremendous work—why, there are so many believers among some of those tribes the witch doctors are going out of business! I saw a baptism of eighteen Indians—pure-blooded Indians—all on one Sunday, right there on the station. And schools, clinics, nice little church buildings. But then you’re just getting started, aren’t you? Well, the Lord will work. Your labor is never in vain in the Lord, you’ve got to remember that”
The sun had passed its zenith and was sliding around to the west, throwing its rays now on the western slopes of Chimborazo. Pedro’s children were peering out at us from the doors of the hut where they had been all during our visit.
“Don’t these kids ever play?” asked Mr. Harvey.
“They seem to have little idea of playing as our children do. They work, and they can sit quietly much longer than American children can,” Mr. MacDonald said. “I don’t know why it is.”
Mr. Harvey unsnapped his camera case again, but the children disappeared into the gloom.
“Shucks. Thought I could get a picture of them. They’re so cute with their hats and ponchos and things. Won’t they come out?”
I asked Pedro if they would mind.
“They are afraid,” he said.
I suggested it was time to go, but Mr. Harvey was taking pictures again—of the pigs, the donkey, the view over the valley, Pedro with his rope sandals and dark poncho, the mud hut and the loom.
“I want to get all this stuff. I really want to be able to challenge the folks when I get back.” He knelt on one knee to get a back-lighted photo of Pedro against the sky, and the shoulder of the hill. I thought of possible captions Mr. Harvey might give it: “A typical Indian of the High Andes, one of millions still without Christ,” or, if he chanced to catch Pedro smiling, “The light of the Gospel shines in the face of one of the descendants of the Inca sun worshipers.” Challenge the folks back home. What did he mean? I had been “challenged” by men like him, had believed what they told me as though they had been oracles. Today I saw the makings of such a challenge—the swift, superficial glimpse; the intrusion it necessitated into two missionaries’ time and an Indian’s home; the frame of mind—Harvey had not come to learn but to document what he already assumed; his preconceptions governed his selection of picture subjects. Propaganda, I thought, demands simplification. Choose the pictures which show the poverty and primitiveness of the Indian, the successes of the missionary. Most disturbing of all to me was the realization that neither Mr. Harvey nor I was in a position to assess accurately either the Indians’ need (who could say that they were worse off than New Yorkers, for example?) or my own success (who but God knew which were the victories, which the defeats?). For the visitor it was clear-cut and simple: “Here is what God is doing.” The picture of me with the open Bible and the earnest Indian, ‘Translating the Scriptures into the mountain Quichua dialect.” It was fortunate, I thought with some irony, that Mr. Harvey had succeeded in finding one success of the kind he sought. What would he have done had I not been going to Pedro’s that day? Lynn’s formula came to my mind: Do the truth. How would Mr. Harvey have photographed that?
We said goodbye and I thanked Pedro and gave him his wages.
“Oh—you pay him for this?” Mr. Harvey was surprised.
“Why, yes.”
“Wouldn’t he do it without pay?”
“I don’t know—but it’s hard work for him. Harder than packing sacks of potatoes and firewood in the market”
“But isn’t he a believer?”
“I think he is.” The non sequitur puzzled me.
“A believer and he charges you for helping you translate the word of God?”
“Well—the laborer is worthy of his hire, isn’t he? I wouldn’t think of asking him to do it for nothing. He has his family to support. You see, Mr. Harvey, if he weren’t working for me he would have to be working in the market, and I need him. He is unusually intelligent, I think, he speaks Spanish, and he was willing to do the work. All that means a great deal.”
“Too bad, though, isn’t it, that they won’t do anything without pay. I suppose once you start paying them—well, it would be wonderful if they were willing just to serve the Lord.” I thought of the meetings in which Mr. Harvey would show his pictures and of the offerings which would be collected for him just because he was serving the Lord.
We started down the mountainside, the wind flinging dust into our feces so that I could feel grit in my teeth. The cold penetrated our coats as the afternoon progressed. Some beautiful white birds sailed across the valley below us, brilliant against the somber color of the fields beyond them, and came to rest like neat, white boats on the lake.
“Do you see those lovely birds?” said Mr. MacDonald.
“Where?” asked Mr. Harvey.
“There. They’ve landed on the lake now, away down there.”
“Oh. Yes. Pretty, aren’t they? Wow, this wind is cold. Funny, you don’t think of a country on the equator as being cold. Another one of the things folks back home just don’t realize.”
He would appear before his audiences as an authority. He had been there, he ought to know. And he could, in all honesty, present what seemed to him facts. Had he not incontestable evidence, there in his pictures, of the need of the Indian, and of the work of the missionary? Who would question the validity of the evidence? Who could gainsay him?
I watched the back of his thick neck, hunched into the raincoat, and heard his hard soles crunching on the stony earth. The cameras bobbed and swung at his side—packed with the evidence, I thought, for cameras “never lie”—material for a thousand illustrated “messages,” thrill-packed missionary “challenges.”
“Well, praise God!” said Mr. Harvey. “Praise God!”