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he's being battered something terrible. Like this, is it?
Joe stood up and swung his arms, pounding the table.
Do I have it right? Just swinging away at this head beneath him, for Christ's sake, and then the cardinal
goes into the final writhing snatch of his seizure and screams something holy? Maybe that the flesh of the
lamb is good to eat? And this last blow of his is so holy and determined, has so much passionate religious
conviction behind it, it bangs your man right down into the dust, just lays the dwarf flat out in the dust?
True or not?
Have you heard this story, Joe?
I have not, not a word of it, but tales have a way of running true to course and so far this one's holding
together as such things should. Now if I'm not wrong, I'd suspect the cardinal collapses in his sedan chair
at this point and is wafted away to a cool palace in Tripoli where he can have a glass of wine and a bath
and a relaxing snooze. In other words he's finished. He's done what he came to do in the story and now
we can forget about him. Yes or no?
Yes.
Still on course then. Still in line and back we go to our hero, our dwarf peasant-priest, who is lying in the
dust, flat out and thoroughly dazed, his head singing from the blows of higher authority, trying as best he
can to recover from this very holy beating. And his black congregation is staring at him, naturally, and
he's staring back at them, and nobody knows what to make of it all. I mean this appears to be a frightful
way to spend a morning. True?
Yes.
And those poor blacks sitting there in the dust are starving. Any one of them would be more than happy
to have a bite of lamb if they could, just as the cardinal suggested, but they know there's no hope of them
ever getting their hands on a morsel, not even the tiniest. Right?
Yes.
And now we find this very same scene, utterly static, a tableau if you like, continuing on through an
endless hot afternoon in the shimmering heat under that palm tree, no one moving and nothing but mirages
on the horizon, not a cloud in the sky, the black congregation staring at the dwarf priest from Normandy
and the dwarf peasant-priest staring at this starving congregation, just on and on as the sun slips lower
and lower crushing what shade there had been and burning everyone, until there is no shade, just this
hopeless heat and blistering dust, suffocating it is, and that continues for about five thousand hours or until
the sun bloody well sets. Is that how it went, Stern?
Yes.
Joe sucked in his coffee and poured more cognac.
All right. Sunset. Here we are then. The sun is gone and now that it's getting dark the people under this
palm tree rise like ghosts from the dust, the two sides of them, the dwarf priest on the one side, the
starving blacks on the other, nobody having said a thing all day, nobody having moved a muscle all day,
and the two sides go their separate ways in the shadows of the night. Correct?
Yes.
Yes, you say? Then I'm beginning to see it clearly now. Well what happens that night is that the peasant
dwarf-priest locks himself in his room, lonely as he can be, just lonely as lonely, and breaks out a bottle
of Calvados and says to himself, What's going on here? What was all that about? Why is an epileptic
cardinal from Paris beating me senseless into the dust? Why is my head being used as a lectern by
anyone anyway? Why am I spending an endless afternoon flat out in the shimmering heat, nothing but
mirages around me and not a single cloud overhead, while my poor black congregation stares at me and I
stare at them? Is there anything Christian about that? says the peasant-priest to himself, pouring another
healthy slug of Calvados. Be that the case at hand?
Yes.
Still running to course then. So the next morning we find your man, who's done some thoughtful thinking
over his bottle of Calvados in the course of a long lonely night, thinking ahead for sure and ruminating on
a more amenable future for himself, we find him respectfully approaching his White Father superiors with
a modest proposal. Why don't you send me to Timbuktu as a one-man missionary team, he says, and I'll
convert the heathens there. Fact?
Yes.
Good, a fact. Although of course it's also true there's no French army within a thousand miles of
Timbuktu, which means converting anyone there is out of the question. But his superiors decide to grant
the request anyway, because losing a dwarf peasant-priest from Normandy doesn't mean anything to
them, and also because a show of missionary effort so far away to the south would certainly be pleasing
news to their cardinal back in Paris, who didn't find their stolen mosaics as valuable as he'd thought
they'd be. Still true?
Yes.
All right. Off goes the dwarf peasant-priest, and after adventures that would take hours to recount he
finally reaches Timbuktu. There he sets himself up in a dusty courtyard and begins to preach an
exceptionally mild message of love that's all-encompassing. Love thy neighbor, sure, that's for certain.
But don't stop there. Love strangers and non-neighbors, in fact love everyone you ever meet. Is that it?
Yes.
Do a certain amount of honest labor, but after that and before that and in between times, love anyone you
happen to find on the premises?
Yes.
Joe jumped to his feet. He pushed back his chair and climbed up on it. The snow was falling faster
outside. The Arab who had been asleep at the front of the shop belched and scratched his groin and
belched again, staring in disbelief at Joe standing on his chair, his arms outstretched, dressed in the baking
priest's shabby uniform from the Crimean War.
And it is especially important, intoned Joe, caressing the fetid air with his hands, that no one should ever
find himself sitting alone in the dust on a hot afternoon staring at a group of people. Nor should a group of
people sit and stare at a poor lonely person, even a dwarf, who happens to find himself alone across the
way. Instead both sides should rise at once and mix in the love of God. In short, make love for God's
sake. Don't just sit and stare, make love, now and quickly and all together. Was that the ultra-Christian
message, Stern, that was heard down there in Timbuktu?
Stern nodded, smiling up at Joe.
Well then, said Joe, that must be a true account of how a former peasant-priest from Normandy came to
establish a huge polysexual commune on the far side of the Sahara in the nineteenth century. And by this
manner of activity one Father Yakouba, a dwarf more generally known as the White Monk of the
Sahara, became the father in time of nine hundred children. On which occasion the legendary explorer
Strongbow, your said father, sent to his old friend the said dwarf in Timbuktu, by way of most sincere
and congratulatory sentiments, a pipe of the priest's most favored beverage, Calvados, which by a less
prodigious man's measurements would be some seven hundred regular bottles of the stuff. Am I still free
from error?
Yes.
Joe dropped his arms. He jumped to the floor, coughing, and sat down. He drank and lit a cigarette.
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