7
Chapter Seven
There was an unexpected sameness in the weeks that followed. It was unexpected because I had pictured a nice sequence of events which would visibly mark the progress of the new work among the mountain Quichuas: Getting acquainted, Visiting, Contact, Witnessing, Conversions, Translation of the Bible. Oh, of course I had not expected all this in a short time. It would be slow, but it would, once it got started, be steady, and there would be things to report. Instead of this, things seemed to have come to a standstill as soon as I had met Pedro, and I found myself getting up in the mornings, reading my Bible and praying, eating breakfast and swallowing my vitamin pills, washing dishes and dusting, thinking of excuses to visit as many shops as possible in order to engage the shopkeepers in conversation, going to the post office to get my mail, strolling through the market in hope of making the acquaintance of more Indians, and wishing for something to happen. If nothing happened, where was my raison d’être? It was not that I was lonely or bored. Quite the contrary. I loved the setting—the little house, the quiet street, the bustling village, the gorgeous valley and mountains with the big sky overhead. I loved watching the life of those around me, trying to understand what they did and why they did it. But what right had I to enjoy myself if that was all I could do? The world was full of people who had no other aim in life. My very contentment became a rebuke to me. Here were these souls all around me, busy with occupations and preoccupations in which I had no part, and not one of them yet won.
When I was in college there was a red-haired girl with a beautiful voice who sang,
Over the ocean, millions I see,
Fettered in bondage, beckoning me.
Crushed beneath sorrows, too heavy to bear—
Gladly I answer, Lord, send me there.
The words always stirred me and I was puzzled to find fellow students unmoved by the song, or by the statistic presented to us of the numbers who die daily without Christ. Words like “apathy” and “complacency” ran through my mind and I wondered what such students would have to lay at the Master’s feet. There was another song about “nothing but leaves” which came to mind then. Here I was now, over the ocean, surrounded by the beckoning millions, but their lives went on as usual. I saw in their faces sadness and the emptiness of despair at times; I saw poverty and suffering and injustice. At the same time I saw that the sun shone on their peaceful valley and the women spun with their skillful fingers and carried their plump, contented babies on their backs; the men drank firewater in the marketplace and laughed loudly and ate their potatoes and fried pork skins with gusto, and at evening everyone had a house to go to and the next day would be the same. Once I was on the point of approaching a woman whose face looked especially sorrowful. She was standing beside a display of shoes made out of rubber tires. Just then a man leaned out of a truck and shouted, “Hold, bonita!” and the woman laughed and shouted back at him and then turned and gaily swatted a child who ducked past her into the stall. How, exactly, was I supposed to interrupt their lives? If one has been summoned to loosen fetters where does one begin?
Daily I prayed that the Lord would lead me to the ones I should speak to and it seemed on several occasions that my prayer had been answered. I found a woman in one of the meat stalls who could read. She was not strictly an Indian, but belonged to the cholo class, of mixed blood, and had had several years of schooling. Since she was there every day I decided to buy my meat from her and concentrate some effort on winning her friendship. She was unusually friendly and interested and after two or three conversations she asked if I would give her a Bible. I hesitated to start out with a whole Bible and suggested that she read a portion such as one of the Gospels, and then we could discuss it and, if she wished, I would give her more. She gladly accepted the idea and each time I went to her stall I found her with the book. She was, in feet, so avid in her reading and so instantaneous in her agreement with all I said about the Gospel that I could not help suspecting that she was only seeking to satisfy a customer. How was one to know?
There was a little girl, too, who begged me for one of my pretty books and ran eagerly home to show it to her mother. She told me later that her mother had beaten her for bringing the foreigner’s book into their house and had torn it out of her hand and thrown it away, but the child retrieved it secretly and was reading it. An Indian boy had come to market one day with a small pig to sell. Seeing me sitting on a bench he came over and began to ask questions about my books so I read to him and we talked of many things. But when I asked what he knew of God he was frightened and hurried off to sell his pig.
Pedro was often in the marketplace with his rope slung across his shoulder, and though he was naturally very reluctant to recognize me at first—my friendliness baffled him utterly—as time went on he summoned the courage to answer my greetings. I asked him again if his wife ever came to market and he said that she would perhaps be coming the following week I tried to find out what day but he only shook his head and said that he didn’t know. When she came she would come, he said, using an odd Spanish phrase which I took to be a literal translation from his own language. My faith that God had indeed directed me in the initial contact with this man was renewed, and I sent up a veritable storm of prayer that I might meet Pedro’s wife and thereby gain the longed-for entrance into the Indian community. Perhaps she would be my “first-fruits”—for, in spite of the few earlier encouragements, I was still not at all certain that I had ever won a soul.
When I was a student in Bible school the principal had once electrified us by asking how many in the audience had never won a soul. “How many, now,” he had said, knitting his brows and leaning toward us over the pulpit, “have never won a soul? I want you to stand.” The palms of my hands went damp and I could feel the blood rising in my temples. So far as I knew, I had never brought a single person to a decision about Christ. I had tried—not many times, but several, diligently and sincerely, without any result. I stood up. Every head in the auditorium was supposed to be bowed and every eye but the principal’s closed. Mine, however, opened for a moment, and I saw only two others standing. Nearly a thousand sat in their seats. I felt marked for life—and even, I thought with horror, for perhaps longer than that. Was I after all one of the damned? At the same moment I felt a loathing for those who ought to have stood and hadn’t. Surely we could not be the only three. Yet perhaps we were. Perhaps it was true that of that crowd only three had been disqualified, unusable for God. Self-justification and despair alternated in my mind so that permission from the platform to sit down brought little relief.
Now God was giving me another chance. In answer to my prayer, “Lord, send me,” He had sent me and I had every reason to believe that He would glorify Himself by bringing forth results. I went every day to the market during that next week, and at last I saw a woman following close behind Pedro, carrying a basket of vegetables. He eyed me surreptitiously from the side and made no move to recognize me, but I hurried over and greeted him. The woman kept her eyes on the ground until I asked Pedro if this was his wife.
“Yes, señorita.”
“It is my pleasure,” I said in Spanish, giving my name and hoping she spoke enough Spanish to understand my good will. She smiled diffidently, passed a hand quickly to the mass of gold beads around her neck, and shifted her feet.
“She does not speak Spanish,” said Pedro. Good, I thought, for after all if I am to learn her language it is better that we have no recourse to another. Already I imagined myself seated in her hut, scribbling furiously as she talked to me in Quichua and cooked her corn and potatoes. This would be the real beginning of the translation work. O Lord, so let it be. Make this woman know that I want to befriend her. Open the door, Lord. Open the door.
“What is her name?” I asked Pedro.
He looked embarrassed. He glanced at his wife; she looked from him to me and back at him. I could not tell whether I had committed a faux pas or whether perhaps he could not remember her name. Then, as though with sudden resolution, he blurted out, “Rosa.” The effort this revelation cost him made me feel like a thief. I had extorted something from him which he had not wished to give. I remembered that Mrs. MacDonald had told me that Indian women do not take the husband’s surname. But I did not yet even know what Pedro’s was.
“Rosa,” I repeated. “Rosa and Pedro. What is your surname, Pedro?”
He looked sheepishly at his wife, who was watching me closely.
“My surname? My surname is Chimbu, señorita. I am Pedro Chimbu.”
“And mine is Sparhawk,” I said, smiling. “It is a kind of bird. Does Chimbu mean something?”
It is my surname, señorita.”
“Those are lovely vegetables, Rosa,” I said. “Did you grow them?” Then I remembered she could not understand. Pedro giggled.
“Tell your wife that I think her vegetables are very nice,” I said.
“Bueno, señorita,” he said and was silent.
“Tell her what I said,” I urged. He laughed nervously and made a move as if to go. Rosa followed and I said I hoped I would see them again. In my heart I resolved to see them. There was something winsome about Rosa’s face and sad, humble eyes. If only I could show her that not all white people hated her. If only I could show her God’s love. . . .
It took several encounters like this one, widely spaced since Rosa came to market only once a week or less, before I dared to ask the thing I really wanted. In between visits with them in the market I prayed very hard that God would speak to them and cause them to invite me to come to their home. Finally I felt that God was telling me I should broach the subject—after all, He had sent me to them, not them to me, and I should not be shy in the King’s business.
I found them contemplating some stainless-steel spoons at a little stall. They talked together for some time and at last must have decided against the purchase and began to move away. I went up to them.
“Buenos días, Rosa. Buenos días, Pedro.”
“Buenos días, señorita.”
I gave the baby on Rosa’s back an affectionate pat or two, asked about their health and that of their children, remarked on the lovely weather, which drew a blank look from each of them, and then asked, “Could I come, Pedro, to visit your house someday?”
He stared at me in wonder.
“To our house?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “I would like to visit your house.”
He spoke in Quichua to Rosa. Her eyes shot a hard glance at me, then she said a few words—to Pedro, who repeated as though to himself, “To visit our house.”
“Shall I come?” I said.
“Come,” said Pedro.
He went with me to the street where I lived, which commanded a view of the valley and mountains, and pointed out the road I was to take.
“When you come to a house, ask them where I live. Tell them Pedro Chimbu, son of Old Pedro. In each house, ask, and they will tell you. They will show you the road.”