The Constant Gardener

"I think I'll live awhile before I answer that one," he replies awkwardly, at which Lorbeer lets out a roar of honest laughter.

"But not too long, man! Otherwise eternity come and get you! You ever see a food drop before?" A sudden lowering of the voice as he grabs Justin's arm.

"I'm afraid not."

"Then I show you one, man. And then you will believe in eternity, I promise. We get four drops a day here and it's God's miracle every time."

"You're very kind."

Lorbeer is about to deliver a set piece. The diplomat in Justin, the fellow sophist, hears it coming.

"We try to be efficient here, Mr. Atkinson. We try to get food into the right mouths. Maybe we oversupply. When customers are starving, I never saw that as a crime. Maybe they lie to us a little, how many they got in their villages, how many are dying. Maybe we make a few millionaires in the black market in Aweil. Too bad, I say. OK?"

"OK."

Jamie has appeared at Lorbeer's shoulder, accompanied by a group of African women bearing clipboards.

"Maybe the food-stall keepers don't love us too much for screwing up their trade. Maybe the poor spearmen and witch doctors in the bush say we do them out of business with our Western medicines. Maybe with our food drops we create a dependency. OK?"

"OK."

A gigantic smile dismisses all these imperfections. "Listen, Mr. Atkinson. Tell this to your readers. Tell it to the U.N. fat-arses in Geneva and Nairobi. Every time my food station gets one spoonful of our porridge into the mouth of one starving kid, I've done my job. I sleep in God's bosom that night. I earned my reason to be born. You tell them that?"

"I'll try."

"You got a first name?"

"Peter."

"Brandt."

They shake hands again, for longer than before.

"Ask anything you want, OK, Peter? I got no secrets from God. You got something special you want to ask me?"

"Not yet. Maybe later, when I've had a chance to get the hang of things."

"That's good. You take your time. What's true is eternal, OK?"

"OK."

* * *

It is prayer time.

It is Holy Communion time.

It is miracle time.

It is time to share the Host with all mankind.

Or so Lorbeer is pronouncing, and so Justin affects to write in his notebook, in a vain effort to escape the oppressive good spirits of his guide. It is time to watch "the mystery of man's humanity correcting the effects of man's evil," which is another of Lorbeer's disconcerting sound bites, delivered while his gingery eyes squint devoutly into the burning heaven, and the great smile beckons down God's benison, and Justin feels the shoulder of his wife's betrayer nudge affectionately against his own. A line of spectators is drawn up. Jamie the Zimbabwean and Arthur the Commissioner and his courtiers are the closest. Dogs, groups of tribesmen in red robes and a subdued crowd of naked children arrange themselves around the airstrip's edge.

"Four hundred and sixteen families we feed today, Peter. For a family you got to multiply by six. The Commissioner over there, I give him five percent of everything we drop. That's off the record. You're a decent guy so I tell you. Listen to the Commissioner, you'd think the population of Sudan was a hundred million. Another problem we got, that's rumor. Takes one guy to say he saw a horseman with a gun and ten thousand people run like hell, leave their crops and villages."

He stops dead. At his side, Jamie is pointing one arm to heaven while her spare hand discovers Lorbeer's and gives it a covert squeeze. The Commissioner and his retinue have also heard it, and their response is to raise their heads, half close their eyes and stretch their lips in tense and sunny smiles. Justin catches the far rumble of an engine and makes out a black spot lost in a burnished sky. Slowly the spot becomes another Buffalo like the one that flew him here, white and brave and solitary as God's own cavalry, clearing the treetops by a hand's breadth, flickering and bobbing as it jockeys for line and height. Then vanishes, never to return. But Lorbeer's congregation does not lose faith. Heads remain lifted, willing it back. And here it comes again, low and straight and purposeful. A lump rises in Justin's throat and tears start to his eyes as the first white shower of food bags, like a trail of soap flakes, issues from the plane's tail. At first they drift playfully, then gather speed and spatter onto the drop zone in a wet tattoo of machine-gun fire. The plane circles to repeat the maneuver.

"You see that, man?" Lorbeer is whispering. There are tears in his eyes also. Does he weep four times a day? Or only when he has an audience?

"I saw it," Justin confirms. As you saw it and like me, no doubt, became an instant member of his church.