22
Chapter Twenty-Two
If I had said no to Romero and Pava, and had not gone to their father’s wake, I would probably have forsaken my place among the Indians of the highland, and perhaps my place as a missionary anywhere at all. But then I do not really know. The decision was not one which I weighed carefully. The children came and brought their request, and I went with them. It seems to me now that the decision was right, and that it was indeed the voice of God, still and small, that said, “And omega.” Perhaps He would have borne with me even if I had said no, and have brought me by another way. He is indeed of great mercy. Only I know that I was glad to have been at the wake, and I am glad to be here in my house in Indi Urcu.
The sun shines today, as you know that it nearly always does in the mornings, and the great mountain Chimborazo shines with it, lifting its gleaming peak toward heaven, reminding me that the strength of the hills is His also.
The only light at the wake came from the two candles we brought. One was placed at Pedro’s head, one at his feet, and Rosa bent over him in the yellow circle, her black hair falling across his face, and wailed the death wail until the cocks began to crow at dawn. People came from all over the mountain, packing themselves into the stuffy little room (the candles flickered for lack of oxygen), crying for a little while, talking, sitting stolidly in the gloom until another mourner arrived, when it was necessary briefly to renew the wailing. Rosa uncovered the face of the corpse when a relative came, and each time she did so the features looked a trifle younger and sharper, the deep tea color of his skin gradually paler. I found myself spellbound by the sight of that face, which had registered nothing when Pedro first met me, then, as time had passed, had shown shy friendliness, trust, interest, eagerness, joy—would it not change now, would not a single tiniest muscle twitch, an eyelash fall? Rosa covered the face again, more tenderly than I had seen her do anything, and then raised her arms to her head once more and rocked and chanted. And then when the cocks had crowed and darkness was driven over the far eastern hills the mourners got up one by one, straightened their ponchos and their skirts, and left the house, filing off over the cracked fields to their work. A few of the men stayed to wait for the coffin which had been sent for from the town. They put the body in it, there was another night of watching, and on the morning of the second day I saw the long file moving toward the village, four men carrying the wooden coffin on their shoulders. I went with them, too, to the Indian section of the little cemetery. The relatives had hired a few professional mourners—poor white people who knew the prayers that had to be said and possessed rosaries which they agreed to use in exchange for some corn and chicha.
Pava stood quietly by the open grave, a single ray of sunlight falling across her cheekbones under the wide, upturned brim of her felt hat. As the ropes let the coffin gently into the earth I saw the glitter of tears on her lashes.
When the earth was thrown onto the coffin and stamped down, she wrapped her shawl tightly around her arm, and pushed her nose into the crook of her elbow, her shoulders heaving with sobs. Rosa wept openly, as was expected of her at the grave, and when it was over she took her children home in silence, there to take up what God had left her of life.
I wonder whether I will ever live in an Indian house. Even here in Indi Urcu the people come casually, now and then, to visit me. I go to visit them and they talk as freely or they are as silent as ever. If they talk, they often speak of Pedro’s death and my part in it. There is no conspiracy of silence between us on that subject. If they are silent it is not a different silence from before. Some are as hostile and suspicious as they have ever been but not, I think, more so; some are slowly losing their reticence, like Manuela, who asked me if her small relatives could join Pedro’s children in the reading classes. I still have the classes. Of course they are not formal. The children come to my house now, when they feel like coming, and we spread out the books on the tiny verandah or, if the group is too large, in the fenced enclosure. Some of them make astonishing strides and then abruptly stop coming. Others, without the slightest flagging of hope and enthusiasm, learn nothing at all, though they come week after week Perhaps the reading classes will come to an end. God knows about that. As for the translation of the Bible, of course, I cannot go ahead without an informant. God knew about that when Pedro died. I do not write prayer letters any more, for I have nothing to say about my work. It seemed, on the night of Pedro’s death, as though Finis were written below all I had done. Now, in the clear light of I see that I was in part correct. God, if He was merely my accomplice, had betrayed me. If, on the other hand, He was God, He had freed me.
I find that I can no longer arrange my life in an orderly succession of projects with realizable goals and demonstrable effects. I cannot designate this activity as “useful” and that one as “useless,” for often the categories are reversed and even more often I am at a loss to apply either label, for the work, in the end, as well as the labeling, is God’s.
One day a few weeks ago I went down to the village graveyard again to visit Pedro’s grave. The paper flowers that had been put there had faded and were laden with dust. The mound of earth had sunk a little. But at the head of the grave someone had put up a flimsy wooden cross, painted white, and had written in pencil the name PEDRO CHIMBU, and the date of his death.
Nothing else had changed. The sky was vast and blue above me, the mountains calm around me. There was no sound except that of a few sheep beyond the mud wall, and a faint piping as someone—it sounded like a child—went by on the road, playing on his panpipes.
It was as it should be. I found myself alone—Rosa was not here, but carrying out her own work at home; the MacDonalds, Lynn, my colleagues in many places had also their appointed tasks for which they would individually give account; those who prayed for me at home might at this moment be praying, and He to whom the prayers were addressed would know what answer to give. For my part, I was left alone before God—indeed, it seemed to me this morning that for the first time in my life I stood in direct relation to Him as Moses stood when he beheld the burning bush. For me, however, it was no such dramatic vision. There were before me only the dry mound of earth and the pitiful little cross with its penciled legend. What was it about that cross that cleared the way to God? I think it was this: I saw for the first time my own identity in its true perspective. Once I had envisioned Pedro, highland Indian, Christian, translator of the Bible, soldier of the Cross because I, Margaret Sparhawk, had come. He was my project, he was the star in my crown. But here was another cross, with a name and a date, to mark where a dead man lay—because I, Margaret Sparhawk, had come.
And God? What of Him? “I am with thee,” He had said. With me in this? He had allowed Pedro to die, or—and I could not then nor can I today deny the possibility—He had perhaps caused me to destroy him. And does He now, I asked myself there at the graveside, ask me to worship Him?
I lay down on the grass and saw that high above me a condor circled, looking down on the tops of the frosted peaks, on the lakes and the serene valley. The child went by the gate once more, piping softly.