“A misunderstanding with my classmates,” he explained. “I’m the hostel mess secretary. I decided to give our Sunday biryani to the hungry ones outside the church.”
“Aah. And your classmates weren’t prepared to fast?”
“The Sunday sermon was Matthew twenty-five. ‘I was hungry, and you fed me.’ Very meaningful to me. Then in Bible study my pious classmates swore to live by those principles. So . . .”
Shoshamma said, “Monay, you’ve heard the saying Aanaye pidichunirtham, aseye othukkinirthaan prayasam.” Easier to control an elephant than to control desires!
Uplift Master stared at her. Was this meant for him?
“True, Kochamma. Still, they’re such hypocrites! What would Jesus say when there’s food in one house and the neighbors starve. If Jesus returns, don’t you think he’ll vote Communist?”
A man behind Lenin shouted, “Bloody blasphemy! Christ voting for Communists?” The Party had made history and had many voters, but few would be on a bus heading to the Maramon Convention. In the ensuing scuffle, the bus lurched to a stop, and Lenin escaped through the driver’s exit. He was laughing, arms pumping and pelvis gyrating like a Bollywood hero’s, before he took off on a dead run.
Rory McGillicutty’s face is pitted like a jackfruit from the acne of his youth, and he’s as stocky as a plavu. He has a thick head of hair with each follicle looking as if it were hammered in like a railroad spike, but he has not been introduced to Jayboy’s Brahmi Oil, so his hair is wild and unruly. It’s a miracle that a man who grew up fishing in the flats of Aransas Bay could wind up as a fisher of men in the village of Maramon, in Kerala, India.
Uplift Master, meeting Rory backstage, is concerned: the man has no written speech, no notes, no verses bookmarked. Rory has a different concern. He has just watched a bishop deliver his speech in a monotone, his only gesture the tentative raising of a finger, like a child feeling a mastiff’s nose, yet the unsmiling audience didn’t mind. Rory’s style, as he now explains to his translator, is the opposite. “I want my listeners to smell the singed hair, feel the heat of the eternal fires of damnation. Only then can one appreciate Salvation—you understand?”
Uplift Master’s eyebrows shoot up, alarmed, though his head movement—like an egg wobbling on a counter—could mean yes or no. Or neither of those.
“I can testify to these things,” McGillicutty says, “because I’ve been there. I’d still be in the gutter if I hadn’t been saved by the blood of the Lamb.” McGillicutty’s fire-and-brimstone style plays well in the Deep South and as far north as Cincinnati. It was a winner in Cornwall, England, and the basis for his last-minute invitation to India. Rory has no fallback: his style is his message. He clutches Uplift Master’s shoulders, looking him earnestly in the face. “My friend, when you translate you must physically convey my passion. Otherwise, I’m doomed.”
Master has misgivings. “Reverend, please to remember, this is Kerala. We don’t speak in tongues at the Maramon Convention. That and all is the Pentecostals. Here, we’re . . . serious.”
McGillicutty’s face falls. He’s not one to speak in tongues, but when the Holy Spirit makes the impressionable babble, who is he to object? Such a sight can transform a tentful of sinners.
“Well . . . Give it your best? Try to match your tone, your gestures with mine. Passion! Passion is what I am after!”
A chemachen alerts them that they’re on after the choir. McGillicutty retreats to a corner.
Uplift Master watches him walk away. The hubris of this jackfruit-face with no script! But then he’s humbled to see Rory get on his knees and bow his head in prayer. It should neither surprise Master nor soften his heart, but it does both. He feels like a hypocrite—didn’t he just lecture Shoshamma about passion? When McGillicutty rises, Uplift Master puts his hand on the white man’s shoulder—something he’s never done in his life. “Not to worry. My best only I will do. Passion will be there. Mostly there. As much as possible it will be there.” McGillicutty’s relief makes Master feel he’s done the Christian thing. McGillicutty thumps him on the back and then the reverend pours from a steel flask into its cup, offering it to his translator. Uplift Master sips and comes to a new understanding of the visitor, who motions for him to finish it. Then Rory downs a cup and sucks air between his teeth. Uplift Master feels the fiery whatever-it-is light up his chest. The passion within swells. He’s a bit hungover, truth be told, and the reverend’s flask is divine intervention. They have another cupful each. Uplift Master feels better than well. In fact, he has never felt better. His earlier trepidation has vanished. He loosens his shoulders. He tells himself, If McGillicutty fails, it won’t be for want of a good translator.
The crowd murmurs with anticipation: a white priest from afar is always of interest, even if it’s not Billy Graham. We are enslaved even after we are free, Uplift Master thinks. We assume a white man’s message is better than what our own might say.
McGillicutty is announced, and they both walk on stage. There’s pin-drop silence.
The reverend opens with a long, involved joke. When he comes to the punch line, he belts it out, one hand reaching to the sky, looking expectantly at the crowd. Several thousand smooth and expressionless faces look back at him. A red flush spreads above his collar. He turns to his translator, his eyes pleading.
Uplift Master flattens his oiled hair with his palm. He scans the crowd confidently, contemptuously, even. He holds their gaze for a long time. Then he addresses them as intimates.
“My long-suffering friends. Do you want to know what just happened? The Right Reverend Sahib Master-Rory Kutty just cracked a joke. To tell you the truth, I was so surprised I can’t give you the details. Who expects a joke at the Maramon Convention? Let me just say it involved a dog, an old lady, a bishop, and a handbag . . .” Someone in the women’s section giggles, a high-pitched ejaculation. There’s shocked silence, and then the children laugh. Now ripples of laughter spread in response to Uplift Master’s audacity.
“The joke isn’t as funny as the reverend thinks. Besides, do any old ladies in Kerala carry handbags? At most, some coins wrapped in the kerchief, is it not? But please, let’s not disappoint a guest from far, far away. Blessed are those who laugh at a visitor’s jokes. Isn’t that in Beatitudes? Aah. So, when I count to three, please, everybody, laugh—and I’m especially talking to you rowdy children sitting here in front, you masters of conniving and pretending holiness for your parents, because here’s your God-given opportunity. Do it now, with the Lord’s blessing. One, two . . . three!”
McGillicutty is thrilled. The old lady, the bishop, and the handbag has worked everywhere from McAllen to Murfreesboro—and now, Maramon. And better in Malayalam than in English!
The reverend turns serious and holds up his hand for silence. Uplift Master, his dark shadow, imitates his posture.
McGillicutty bows his head, hand still in the air. “My brothers and sisters, I stand before you as a sinner . . .”
Uplift Master translates: “Joking matters are now over, praise the Lord. He says, I stand before you as a sinner.”
A murmur of appreciation ripples through the crowd.
“I stand before you as an adulterer . . . A fornicator.”
“I stand before—” Uplift Master’s voice stalls. His stomach feels just like that time in Madras when he had dysentery. If he uses the first-person pronoun to translate what McGillicutty said, won’t everyone think he is the fornicator, the adulterer? He looks for Shoshamma in the crowd.
The reverend, glancing anxiously at his silent translator, says, “Friends, I’m not one to mince my words. A fornicator, I say. A man who slept with every loose woman and some who weren’t till I pried them loose. That’s who I was.”