The Least of These. Andrew E Matthews

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      LEPERS

      The market was teeming with people as we searched and bargained for essentials. I impressed upon Shanti the need to spend as little as possible. In her kindness, she didn't ask why. She just kept bargaining, which she was doing when I was distracted by a small gathering around a man, an Indian, who appeared to be preaching. I wandered over to listen and found myself a subject of his attention. I was carrying the only food we would be eating for a while: a large bag of rice. Unwittingly I provided an illustration for him.

      "Christians are told to forgive their enemies," the man was saying, a statement that was met with some derision and humour from his listeners. He was not an elderly man, but was greying at the temples, so reasonably advanced in years. I wondered what financial benefits he received for this preaching, which I suspected he must be paid by the foreign missionary.

      "Your reaction is right," he acknowledged. "How is this possible? Like this man here," (and this was where I became the subject) "we all have a burden. We have a burden of guilt and unforgiveness that we carry."

      I did not like the attention, but far more annoying were the words, words that quickly cultivated anger in my breast. I was no longer a dependent school boy who had no right of reply. I wanted to shout him down. How dare he presume that I, or anyone else, had burdens of guilt or unforgiveness? How quickly I had forgotten my own feelings from the day before. But now all that was eclipsed by my noble cause.

      "But when Jesus takes that guilt and unforgiveness, then we too can forgive others because we no longer have that burden weighing us down," he continued.

      I would have argued, confident of my right and the anger mushrooming inside me, except for what happened next, turning anger to fear in an instant.

      A boy, a beggar, no more than ten years of age, was wondering through the crowds, begging and no doubt seeking opportunities to steal. And Shanti, having completed her purchase and carrying the bag of vegetables, turned to join me. I suppose neither was looking where they were going in that moment. They collided. Shanti, conscious of the baby she was carrying, reacted to protect her stomach and called out instinctively, a cry that caused me to instinctively swing to her defence.

      The boy, malnourished, but also aware of his secret, had leapt backwards and lost his footing. I moved swiftly toward them and aimed a vengeful kick at the wretch lying on the ground. Apparently he was familiar with such treatment and he expertly avoided contact. But in doing so his hand, a hand that had been holding his buttonless shirt closed around his neck, was needed to balance his deft avoidance. In that moment his shirt fell open.

      Somebody screamed.

      My second strike swung from its target in an avoidance manoeuvre of its own as I swivelled instantaneously towards Shanti, the bag of rice toppling in the swiftness of my act. I let it go, precious grains erupting from the bag as it split, rice flooding onto the dirt.

      My only thought was Shanti. I shielded her from the crush as people put as much distance between themselves and the boy. Shanti had not seen what I had seen.

      "The rice," she called.

      "Leave it. Leper."

      Yes, I knew there was a cure for leprosy, but it hadn't been around that long and the stigma of a curse such as this lingers for many decades in the psyche of a people. There is something at the edge of my memory that I still can't quite grasp - perhaps it is only a feeling - but whatever it is, it causes me to baulk, even now, at the thought of leprosy. Times are changing, but back then, leprosy was still a curse in rural India. I think it is still so. Lepers are not readily accepted back in their communities, if at all.

      The boy who had fallen and who was hopelessly trying to cover the appalling lumps and lesions on his shoulder and neck, was cursed with this sickness that above all others separates one from society, makes one an outcast, and an out-caste.

      And we were closer than I wanted to be, on the edge of the wide circle that had formed around the boy, who was alone now on the dusty ground, staring despairingly at the crowd, they making the sign against evil, some shouting curses at him, others shouting at those pushing to see from the back of the crowd.

      It happened in the middle of this chaos.

      The clamour decreased, the crowd calmed, almost hypnotized it seemed, as a white man, a European in his fifties I guessed, stepped from the crowd. He stood looking at the boy for a moment - it seemed longer. Nobody spoke. He could not see the leprous lesions from the angle he had approached. He started forward.

      Of course it crossed my mind that this was the missionary - Staines was his name. An Australian. Apparently he had been in Baripada for over 30 years. He wasn't the fly in, fly out variety. He was more dangerous. You didn't stick with something that long unless you had carved out a very comfortable life, filled with servants and luxuries you could not enjoy in your home country, or you were of the really hazardous variety: a fanatic.

      Nevertheless, the man was walking right up to a leper, a boy cursed with a terrible, contagious disease, the treatment of which was and is difficult and time consuming. I scanned the crowd - they seemed spellbound, fascinated, watching.

      Shanti felt as I did; we didn't know, and Mishra had not mentioned this aspect of Staines, the missionary.

      'Do something, Baba," she whispered.

      I knew what she meant. I couldn't allow him, irrespective of who he was, to walk up to a leper unknowingly, even if everyone else was going to let him. It did make me wonder, fleetingly, if there was a suppressed animosity towards him amongst the people of this town.

      I called out a warning, "Hey Mister, he's a leper."

      He raised his hand in acknowledgement, but did not look my way, his eyes on the boy alone.

      The boy turned at his approach, alerted by my call. His shirt fell open again and the full effect of the disease up his shoulder and across his chest was revealed. Shanti gasped. I quickly shielded her and tried to move her further away, but the crowd were not giving way at this climactic moment in the drama. I was angry with myself for not getting her away earlier. We were about to have a baby and proximity to a leper, looking at a leper, was asking for bad luck.

      By this time Staines - yes, it was him, although I still wasn't certain at that point - had knelt down beside the boy and was talking to him. Then he did a thing that is still etched in my memory, something so foreign to my way of thinking that I could hardly grasp what my eyes were telling me. This man reached out both arms, took this boy in them and lifted him gently from the ground and held him close.

      At that moment an experience from my youth on the streets of Kolkata flooded my memory in all its detailed and emotional clarity. We were walking on a busy street when my mother pulled me to the side, around a man lying in our way. He was moaning, trying to move, eyes glazed over from starvation and near death. My mother told me not to look, but it was a fascinating sight to a young boy. As I looked back at the man, I saw a small woman dressed in strange clothing kneel down next to him and begin to tend to him. Soon the sight was obscured by the throng of people, but the picture of humility kneeling next to pain, the depiction of compassion and hopelessness merging, that portrait was inexplicable, transcendent, 'other'. It was the only time I saw Mother Teresa.

      The boy buried his head in the man's neck as he was carried from the scene. Then the crowd parted, and quickly too, clearing a wide pathway for this impossible sight to depart along. Had I just witnessed a phenomenal СКАЧАТЬ