While she exuded an air of nonchalance, Brother Mike immediately sensed an aura of danger. Danger, yet in some way a sensual peril. This woman would be a testament to his skills.
She seemed to put out tentacles to test the waters, could she seduce or otherwise entice this religious man? Apparently her on-the-spot assessment was negative and, like an amoeba, she changed shape, assuming a less defiant and aggressive mien.
Politely declining her offer to imbibe with a charming smile and an imperceptible bow, Brother Mike sat upright in the rocker across from his subject. He realized diplomacy would be a wasted effort and cut immediately to the core of the matter: was she intent on making the otherwise honorable Doctor van Hoot pay for his recent and regrettable indiscretion?
She only smiled over the rim of her glass. Brother Mike, expecting as much, came forth with his carrot and stick: the stick first. In the most succinct of terms, he recalled how he had proof (perhaps a bit of a stretch on his part) that the father of her daughter was in fact a Muslim trafficker and not the upstanding businessman the community as a whole had taken to be the girl’s sire. Were this irregularity to be made widely known, unquestionably the uncle would feel obliged to go to court to right this grievous wrong. However, to ensure that no such action was taken, and to allow all parties a respite, Doctor van Hoot was happy to provide the lady with a return ticket to Brussels where she could go to visit the family undoubtedly anxious to hear from her, passing a few leisurely months enjoying the climate and the food, free from the cabals spinning around her here.
Brother Mike had known instinctively when he entered the house that a threat would not be sufficient to achieve his aims—he needed a carrot. While he had not discussed the payment of airfare with the Doctor, he was sure he would feel this a small price to pay to get this lubricious event dismissed and have his family life return to normal.
Brother Mike took the lady’s continued silence as acquiescence. He stood up, indicating that he felt the affair was closed and saw himself off. The lady took a gulp of whisky as he closed the door.
Bouncing back to the Abbey in the pickup, Brother Mike wished he were on the pond back where he could contemplate in a more suitable, calming setting. But here he was. This was not and had not been just business as usual. This was damage control for things that had run amok. The mess had not been a mess of the Abbey, and God knew there were many headaches there awaiting attention. The mess was not a mess of the Church, although God also knew His Church needed special attention in many areas. The mess was not even a mess of the town, province, or country. The mess was the mess of two inebriated foolish people, the same type of mess that foolish people everywhere get themselves into all the time. Why had this warranted his intervention? Not his intervention as Brother Mike, a relative nobody who was hopefully someone still relatively invisible to those surveying the landscape. This had indeed been an intervention by himself on behalf of the Farther Abbot and by inference, on behalf of the Abbey and even the Church. This role for him was either the pure and simple coincidence of the Abbot deciding he should provide a helping hand to someone, anyone, to demonstrate the Abbey’s good faith. Or, this was a calculated intervention by the Abbot using Brother Mike as his agent. Flukes did happen. In fact, they happened with surprising regularity, but this did not feel like a fluke. This felt like the beginning of a movement or an offensive. The sands had begun to shift in some direction and Brother Mike needed to make sure he did not lose his balance.
❦❦❦
Over the next poker game, Brother Mike fixed his sights on Antonio who had been so helpful in exposing the history of the van Hoot quandary. “Antonio,” he asked, “who best knows the annals of the various religious groups hereabouts from before Independence to the present?”
After briefly pulling on his chin, Antonio recommended Brother Gustaf of the Jesuits, a member of the order that had a monastery in the north of the province where they raised a lot of bananas and made particularly potent varieties of banana beer and banana liqueur. Brother Gustaf, Antonio figured, must be in his eighties and, like so many of the community, he had come here as a young man during the colony and never left.
Brother Mike devised a plan. He went to his confrère who managed the kitchens, a sort of dietitian who decided what would be on the menu and when. He suggested the community would be most blessed to partake of a bit of the splendid local banana beverages so meticulously blended by their Jesuit brothers.
As was often the case with all things involving spirits, the debate was short lived as each saw things through the same lens: more drink made the Abbey joyous, and joy was good.
Accordingly, Brother Mike made arrangements for a day trip to the north of the province to procure banana spirits; and of course, to encounter Brother Gustaf. Most of the 80-km trip involved relatively well-maintained paved roads that wove between the hills, crossing several wide, papyrus-filled wetlands on stout concrete bridges built by the Chinese. However, the last 15 km was on a typical bush road—a washboard and rutted laterite passage that was rarely maintained. The Jesuits, as others before and after them, had chosen a beautiful hilltop for their Abbey. They had planted eucalyptus as a palisade, with coffee plantations, banana stands, and vegetable gardens spiraling down the hill in a most ornate fashion.
Brother Mike found Brother Gustaf waiting for him in a small gazebo sheltered away in the eucalyptus where the aroma of these fragrant trees filled the air, along with the whispering of their leaves. Brother Gustaf was a bit hunchbacked with slightly milky eyes, but seemed in generally good form for a man of his age who had spent a lifetime in the service of our Lord in Central Africa.
Without providing much in terms of background, Brother Mike posed his questions as he expansively anointed Brother Gustaf with the oils of ancestry—referring to him as the living legacy of their community, a treasure, and a font of knowledge.
Brother Mike only explained that his Father Abbot had asked him to be of assistance to Doctor van Hoot, who Brother Gustaf most certainly knew. To be able to fulfill the Abbot’s wishes to the fullest, Brother Mike needed to know the history of the good Doctor and, if relevant, any relationship with the Abbot or the Abbey.
Brother Gustaf assumed a relaxed pose to where it seemed he was almost dozing, his eyes mostly closed, with his breathing deep and regular. Brother Mike could practically visualize Gustaf digging deep into his memories. After a brief interlude, he stiffened a bit and began, “You may recall that in 1940 there was a fascist party in Flanders, the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (the Flemish National Union), that wanted an independent Flanders. With the German occupation of World War II, this party ultimately metamorphosed into the Duits-Vlaamse Arbeidsgemeenschap (the German Flemish Work Community) under the pennants of anti-communism and anti-clericalism, but also with the aim of integrating Flanders into Hitler’s Reich. There were a number of young Flemish men who fought with Hitler in the Waffen-SS. Among these SS soldiers was a young schoolteacher from Gistel, outside Oostende. He was a mild-mannered man with two younger brothers, and although he was considered as compassionate by many, he was a fervent Flemish nationalist. His SS duties transformed this young man from the docile teacher into the efficient and ruthless killing machine and in due time, he was held responsible for the deaths of dozens of Belgians in the Resistance. Although he survived the war unscathed, he was brutally killed by vengeful Belgians after the Armistice. His disdain for the Church led to his burial in an unmarked grave somewhere west of Bruges. At the time of his death, his own parents had died but his two younger brothers and their young families had to go into hiding. Their older brother had been a truly diabolical person, scaring many families in both Flanders and Wallonia, and they feared retribution for his acts spilling over onto themselves and their families.
“The two brothers with their families ultimately changed their names and migrated to Congo. One family became the van Hoots and the other the de Graffs. The van Hoots stayed in what was Leopoldville at that time, becoming relatively well-to-do operators of a construction company. They were able to send their son to medical school in Belgium, from where he graduated and assumed the role of Team Leader here with us. The de Graffs moved to Costermansstad (later named Bukavu) on the shores of Lake Kivu, where they became successful coffee farmers. Their son went