Blind Man's Lantern Part 4

Musa the carpenter brought his son home well after dark. Waziri had had adventures, the old man said; dancing, gambling on the Fool's Wheel, sampling fonio-beer, celebrating his own young life's springtime with the earth's. Both the old man and the boy were barefoot, Aaron noticed; but said nothing: perhaps shoelessness was part of their spring-festival.

Waziri a bit _geschwepst_ with the beer, tottered off to bed. "Thanks to you, friend Haruna, that boy became a man today," the carpenter said. He accepted a gla.s.s of Aaron's cider. "Today Waziri's wallet jingled with bronze and copper earned by his own sweat, a manful sound to a lad of fifteen summers. I ask pardon for having returned your laborer in so damaged a condition, brother Haruna; but you may be consoled with the thought that the Mother's festival comes but once in the twelve-month."

"No harm was done, brother Musa," Aaron said, offering his visitor tobacco. "In my own youth, I sometimes danced with beer-light feet to the music of worldly guitars; and yet I reached a man's estate."

Offered a refill for his pipe, Musa raised a hand in polite refusal.

"Tomorrow's sun will not wait on our conversation, and much must be done, in the manner of racers waiting the signal, before the first blade breaks the soil," he said. "Good night, brother Haruna; and may Mother grant you light!"

"Mother keep you, brother Musa," Aaron murmured the heathen phrase without embarra.s.sment. "I'll guide your feet to your wagon, if I may."

Aaron, carrying the naphtha lantern, led the way across the strip of new-plowed soil. Set by frost into plastic mounds and ridges, the earth bent beneath his shoes and the carpenter's bare feet. Aaron swung Musa's picket-iron, the little anchor to which his horse was tethered, into the wagon, noticing that it had been curiously padded with layers of quilted cloth. "May you journey home in good health, brother Musa," he said.

"_Uwaka!_" Musa shouted, staring at the plow-cuts.

Aaron Stoltzfoos dropped the lantern to his side, amazed that the dignified old man could be guilty of such an obscenity. Perhaps he'd misheard. "Haruna, you have d.a.m.ned yourself!" Musa bellowed. "Cursed be this farm! Cursed be thy farming! May thy seedlings rot, may thy corn sprout worms for ta.s.sles, may your cattle stink and make early bones!"

"Brother Musa!" Aaron said.

"I am no sib to you, O Bearded One," Musa said. "Nor will I help you carry the curse you have brought upon yourself by today's ill-doing." He darted back to the farmhouse, where he ordered half-wakened Waziri to pad barefoot after him to the wagon, rubbing his eyes. "Come, son," Musa said. "We must flee these ill-omened fields." Without another word to his host, the carpenter hoisted his boy into the wagon, mounted, and set off into the night. The hoofs of his horse padded softly against the dirt road, unshod.

Martha met the bewildered Aaron at the door, wakened by Musa's shouting.

"_Wa.s.s gibt_, Stoltz?" she asked. "What for was all the carry-on?"

Aaron tugged at his beard. "I don't know, woman," he admitted. "Musa the carpenter took one look at the plowing I did today, then cursed me as though he'd caught me spitting in his well. He got Waziri up from bed and took him home." He took his wife's hand. "I'm sorry he woke you up, Liebchen."

"It was not so much the angry carpenter who waked me as the little jack rabbit you're father to," Martha said. "As you say, a _Bun_ who can kick so hard, and barefoot, too, will be a strong one once he's born."

Aaron was staring out the window onto the dark road. "_Farwas hot Musa sell gehuh?_" he asked himself. "What for did Musa do such a thing? He knows that our ways are different to his. If I did aught wrong, Musa must know it was done not for want to harm. I will go to the village tomorrow; Musa must forgive me and explain."

"He will, Stoltz." Martha said. "_Kuum, schloef._ You'll be getting up early."

"How can I sleep, not knowing how I have hurt my friend?" Aaron asked.

"You must," Martha urged him. "Let your cares rest for the night, Aaron."

In the morning, Stoltzfoos prepared for his trip into Datura by donning his Sunday-best. He clipped a black patent-leather bow tie, a wedding gift, onto his white s.h.i.+rt: and fastened up his best broadfall trousers with his dress suspenders. Over this, Aaron put his _Mutzi_, the tailed frock coat that fastened with hooks-and-eyes. When he'd exchanged his broad-brimmed black felt working-hat for another just the same, but unsweated, Aaron was dressed as he'd be on his way to a House-Amish Sunday meeting back home. "I expect no trouble here, Martha," he said, tucking a box of stogies under his arm as a little guest-gift for the old carpenter.

"Hurry home, Stoltz; I feel wonderful busy about the middle," Martha said. There was a noise out on the road. "Listen!" she said. "Go look the window out, now; someone is coming the yard in!"

Aaron hastened to lift the green roller-blind over the parlor window.

"Ach; it is the _groesie Fisch_, Sarki Kazunzumi, with half the folk from town," he said. "Stay here, woman. I will out and talk with them."

The Sarki sat astride his white pony, staring as Aaron approached him.

Behind their chief, on lesser beasts, sat Kazunzumi's retainers, each with a bundle in his arms. "Welcome, O Sarki!" Aaron said, raising his fist.

Kazunzumi did not return the Amishman's salute. "I return your gifts, Lightless One," he announced. "They are tainted with your blasphemy." He nodded, and his servants dismounted to stack at the side of the road Aaron's guest-gifts of months before. The bale of tobacco was set down, the bolt of scarlet silk, the chains of candy, the silver-filigreed saddle. "Now that I owe you naught, Bearded One, we have no further business with one another." He reined his horse around. "I go in sadness, Haruna," he said.

"What did I do, Kazunzumi?" Aaron asked. "What am I to make of your displeasure?"

"You have failed us, who was my friend," the Sarki said. "You will leave this place, taking your woman and your beasts and your sharp-shod horses."

"Sir, where am I to go?"

"Whence came you, Haruna?" the Sarki asked. "Return to your own black-garbed folk, and injure the Mother no longer with your lack of understanding."

"Sarki Kazunzumi, I know not how I erred," Stoltzfoos said. "As for returning to my own country, that I cannot. The off-world vessel that brought us here is star-far away; and it will not return until we are all five summers older. My Martha is besides with child, and cannot safely travel. My land is ripe for seeding. How can I go now?"

"There is wilderness to the south, where no son of the Mother lives,"

the Sarki said. "Go there. I care not for heathen who are out of my sight."

"Sir, show us mercy," Aaron said.

Kazunzumi danced his shoeless horse around to face Aaron. "Haruna, who was my friend, whom I thought to stand with me in Mother's light, I would be merciful; but I cannot be weak. It is not me whom you must beseech, but the Mother who feeds us all. Make amends to Her, then Sarki Kazunzumi will give his ear to your pleas. Without amends, Haruna, you must go from here within the week." Kazunzumi waved his arm and galloped off toward Datura. His servants followed quickly. On the roadside lay the gifts, dusted from the dirt raised by the horses.

The Amishman turned toward the house. Martha's face was at the parlor window, quizzical under her prayer-covering, impatient to hear what had happened. Aaron plodded back to the house with the evil news, stumbling over a clod of earth in the new-turned furrows near the road. Martha met him at the door. "_Waas will er?_" she demanded.

"He says we must leave our farm."

"Why for?" she asked.

"Somehow, I have offended their _fadommt_ Mum-G.o.d," Aaron said. "The Sarki has granted us a week to make ready to go into the wilderness." He sat on a coffee-colored kitchen chair, his head bowed and his big hands limp between his knees.

"Stoltz, where can we go?" Martha asked. "We have no _Freindschaft_, no kin, in all this place."

Aaron tightened his hands into fists. "We will not go!" he vowed. "I will find a way for us to stay." He broke open the box of cigars that had been meant as a gift for Musa and clamped one of the black stogies between his teeth. "What is their _heidisch_ secret?" he demanded. "What does the Mother want of me?"

"Aaron Stoltz," Martha said vigorously, "I'll have no man of mine offering dignity to a heathen G.o.d. The _Schrift_ orders us to cut down the groves of the alien G.o.ds, to smash their false images; not to bow before them. Will you make a golden calf here, as did your namesake Aaron of Egypt, for whose sin the Children of Israel were plagued?"

"Woman, I'll not have you preach to me like a servant of the Book,"

Aaron said. "It is not for you to cite Scripture." He stared through the window. "What does the Mother want of me?"

"As you shout, do not forget that I am a mother, too," Martha said. She dabbed a finger at her eye.

"_f.a.gep mir_, Liebling," Aaron said. He walked behind the chair where his wife sat. Tenderly, he kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck.

"I am trying to get inside Musa's head, and Kazunzumi's; I am trying to see their world through their eyes. It is not an easy thing to do, Martha. Though I lived for a spell among the 'English,' my head is still House-Amish; a fat, Dutch cheese."

"It is a good head," Martha said, relaxing under his ma.s.sage, "and if there be cheese-heads hereabouts, it's these blackfolk that wear them, and not my man."

"If I knew what the die-hinker our neighbors mean by their Mother-talk, it might be I could see myself through Murnan eyes, as I can hear a bit with Hausa ears," Aaron said. "_Iss sell nix so_, Martha?"

"We should have stood at home, and thought with our own good heads," she said.

"Let me think," Aaron said. "If I were to strike you, wife," he mused, "it could do you great hurt, and harm our unborn child, _Nee?_"