Free The Orientalist and the Ghost by Susan Barker Page A

shouted. ‘Even worse than a policeman. You’ve betrayed me! Jesus whore!’
    I promised the woman that her troubles wouldn’t go any further than the mission kitchen, and eventually she was calm enough to sit and jig her whimpering baby (though it was clear from the murder in her eyes that if she hadn’t had a whimpering baby to jig she’d have done some serious violence to Blanche).
    ‘This is Mrs Ho,’ Blanche whispered. ‘Her husband is an opium-eater and she is afraid he will gamble the baby away to fund his addiction. She wants the mission to adopt the child, to save him from a life of serfdom. But this is impossible! Miss Tolbin and I are too busy to bring up a child.’
    ‘Opium is a police matter,’ I said,
sotto voce
, ‘and gambling is illegal in this village …’
    ‘Stop whispering in your Foreign Devil tongue!’ interrupted Mrs Ho.
    ‘Mrs Ho,’ I said, ‘do you really want to give your baby away?’
    ‘Better to give my baby to a good home than have him gambled into a bad one.’
    ‘But surely it is better to keep your baby? Surely it is better to cure your husband’s addiction?’
    ‘One word to my husband and I will kill myself,’ Mrs Ho said calmly. ‘Then you’ll have six children to find homes for.’
    ‘Suicide is sin, Mrs Ho,’ said Blanche, equally matter-of-fact.
    ‘I promise to become a Christian and worship your Jesus God if you adopt my baby.’
    ‘Mrs Ho, God does not bargain,’ Blanche replied firmly. ‘Faith is unconditional. When you are a Christian you will learn this. If you say your prayers every day, then the Holy Spirit will move within you. He will lend you the strength to overcome your problems.’
    Mrs Ho was dissatisfied with this. There wasn’t the time to wait for the Holy Spirit to move within her. The Jesus People had to take her baby
now!
She threatened to take her life once again and my patience snapped.
    ‘Here’s the solution,’ I said: ‘we arrest this husband of yours for the opium-eating and send him to prison. Then you and your children are safe. And we’ll give you food rations to compensate for the shortfall in income, so you won’t go hungry. Now, isn’t that better than suicide?’
    Mrs Ho’s chair flew backwards as she stood up. She screamed, hexing my manhood with infertility (a hex that failed – my manhood is obviously a potent force to be reckoned with) and howling that if anything happened to her husband she’d set fire to the Jesus Whores’ hut and poison their dog. I feared for her crying baby as she thrashed in her selfish commotion. I promised not to say a word to the police and pleaded with her to hold the baby properly. But Mrs Ho wouldn’t listen. Her tantrum chased me back through the strands of beaded curtain.
    The classroom was silent but for the scratching of pencils. The circle of little ’uns looked up at me, eyes blazing with curiosity. I hoped that none of Mrs Ho’s children had overheard the horrific threats their mother had made.
    ‘It’s no good. The kitchen is amok with demons!’ said Blanche, as she walked me to the door. ‘Such a furore! I only hope we can baptize Mrs Ho before it is too late!’
    Blanche then invited me to join her congregation on the coming sabbath, but as I’d not been on speaking terms with God since the war I had politely to decline.
    After saying goodbye to Blanche, I crouched in the garden to pet Humphrey the Saint Bernard, who thumped his tail, his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth. The poor old chap was dying in the heat. Why had no one thought of shearing his shag-pile fur? As I made plans to get hold of some clippers I heard a baby-voiced whispering. I turned to find myself eye-level with two urchins, peering at me through the fence pickets like midget jailbirds.
    ‘If we go into that hut will the Jesus People give us orange drinks?’ one of them asked.
    ‘Yes … but I advise against it,’ I said.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I can’t tell you.’
    ‘Oh, tell us, tell