Philip met him as he approached the sliding door, guiding him to one of the chairs; the others were occupied by two gentlemen he assumed to be Karl and Antonio. His suspicions proved correct as Philip made the introductions, thereafter offering beer and cigarettes all around. Brother Mike did not smoke, but he was a minority of one and the room was soon redolent with tobacco smoke.
They chatted while Philip’s houseboy adjusted the dining area to make room for a folding card table under the central hanging light, placing a similar folding chair on each side. As Brother Mike was not only new to the game, but also to the group, the preliminary conversation was more biographic. Brother Mike by now knew Philip well, knowing he was starting his second decade in Central Africa after lengthy schooling in ophthalmology, specializing in tropical eye diseases.
Brother Mike now learned by current standards Philip was still wet behind the ears in terms of experience living abroad. In fact, for the others, living abroad was really the wrong term, applied only because both Karl and Antonio were from European stock, but neither had ever really lived in Europe. Karl had been born in Central Africa where his father had been a doctor in the colonial service. Antonio’s equatorial roots were even deeper. His family had migrated to German East Africa in 1888, and started a bodega in Bagamoyo in what is now Tanzania. His family had considerably expanded their business interests from those early days, but in 1962, when Nyerere was elected president, it became hard for the family to hold onto its investments in an environment of African Socialism. They had moved further into the hinterland, into the Great Lakes Region. Today, after two decades of rebuilding, Antonio and his family had a thriving supermarket as well as commercial and residential property and a profitable poultry farm.
Brother Mike wondered how it was that he had never met these gentlemen before. After all, the provincial capital had a population of less than 70,000 inhabitants; it was not a big city—the expats of all varieties, including the religious orders, accounted for less than three percent of the census. It would seem logical that everyone knew everyone else, but this was obviously not the case. Everyone may well know the rumors and tall tales of everyone else, but they certainly did not know everyone else in the flesh and blood. Karl and Antonio definitely had stories to tell. They were people from whom lessons could be learned.
But this was not the time for introspection. The card table was set with a fresh deck of cards impatiently waiting to be shuffled, not to mention Vespers getting all the closer with each passing minute. Everyone picked up their sweating amber beer bottles and moved to the square field of battle.
The cards were shuffled and dealt and then reshuffled. The conversation was mainly monosyllabic. At one critical point when Brother Mike was considering his wager, there was a loud call of “Bullshit!” When Brother Mike looked up from his hand, he could not tell which of his adversaries had made such a pronouncement. As he stared at his opponents, a resounding “Bullshit!” was again uttered, but by none of the players. His consternation was clear on his face.
Philip saw Brother Mike’s predicament and laughingly pointed to the corner of the room. There, for the first time, Brother Mike noticed a tall cylindrical cage with a domed top. He placed his cards face down on the table and got up to see, more closely, the creature that had so rudely interrupted his concentration.
As he approached the cage, he saw it was occupied by a most impressive African grey parrot. As he got nearer, the parrot scooted across his perch and bowed his head, almost as if to seek Brother Mike’s blessing. Brother Mike extended a finger to try and scratch the proffered head.
“Don’t do that,” said Philip in a stern voice. “You get your finger in there and he’ll flay it. He doesn’t like men.
“That’s Kasuku, Angela’s naughty bird. They say the female parrots bond with men and the males with women. We don’t know which sort this one is, but by its behavior we assume it’s a male and it sure is tight with Angela and enjoys inflicting great pain on us boys.”
Brother Mike withdrew his finger and was turning to regain his chair when, as if understanding the full conversation, Kasuku bid him goodbye with a loud “Asshole!”
Time passed quickly with no big winner nor loser. Soon the shadows lengthened and Brother Mike knew he would have to race the sun to its setting, the hour of Vespers corresponding to sundown at these latitudes.
The next Saturday, as the veranda at the Crane began to simmer with weekend energy, Philip confirmed to Brother Mike that their Wednesday game would be on and would be on for the foreseeable future, as all the players were now committed to the new schedule, which they found to be the most agreeable way to pass a midweek afternoon.
With due precision, the group assembled at Philip’s on the next appointed date. As the introductions and biographies had been taken care of, they were able to plunge directly into their cards. Each was engrossed in evaluating what the Fates had given them when they heard the door slide open. With a quick glance, Philip said, “Do you all know my wife, Angela?”
Karl and Antonio looked up from their cards and offered a familiar greeting to Philip’s spouse who they obviously knew well. When Brother Mike looked up, she had her back turned, as she was removing her scarf. He mumbled a brief salutation and was just about to look back to his cards when she did an about-face and, to his shock, he realized that Mrs. Philip was the lady with whom he had exchanged words at the hardware shop all those weeks ago.
There was a twinkle in her eyes as she came over to the card table and offered her hand to Brother Mike. He politely stood and took her hand, noticing the firm return pressure and the dry palm. She then softly intoned, “My pleasure Brother Mike, Philip has told me so much about you. And, as I see you now before me, I wonder, have we met before?”
“Indeed,” replied Brother Mike. “You may have long forgotten a modest monk who exchanged a few words with you in a hardware store some time back.”
“Hmmm,” she followed through. “I have no idea of the modesty, but I do recall the conversation. I also recall our discourse being a bit one-sided. I hope your cards treat you better than did my dialogue.”
With this she excused herself and went into the interior of the house.
Brother Mike felt obliged to add some background to their somewhat cryptic exchange, explaining to his fellow players that he had met a charming lady at a hardware store when seeking supplies for the Abbey, having no idea this lady was Mrs. Philip.
Philip seemed to want to fill in the blanks and added, “I tell Angela she’s the slum lord of the town. She has lots of small rentals scattered hither and yon. Although these don’t seem to put much meat on the table, or money in the pot, the oversight and upkeep do seem to fully occupy her time. Therefore, if you ever have to move out of the Abbey, she has a place for you. You would probably not find her accommodation that different from the monastery’s cells.”
At this, all had a good laugh followed by a good swallow of beer before they got back to the serious business of poker. Again, time dictated their play and soon Brother Mike was bumping along the road to the Abbey, unsure if it was the stiff springs of the pickup or the potholes of the laterite road that were most answerable for the jostling he was receiving as he headed toward Vespers with his pockets full of considerably more francs than he had had when he had departed early in the morning in search of a valve for one of the clinic’s toilets.
The next day after Lauds, Brother Mike snuck away to his refuge on the pond bank. After he had impaled a worm on the hook of the cane pole he secreted in a nearby banana grove, he leaned back against the acacia tree that had pierced the dike and took score, not of his poker hands, but of his life.
Things seemed to be as well as they could, with the knowledge that the unknown always offered both greater riches and a shortcut to Purgatory. His management of the Abbey’s affairs