“How you know he’s calling to change something?” Ata ventures, checking out the gray walls and angles of his modern gingerbread office space.
Fraser sucks his teeth and turns away. How will she ask? he wonders briefly. He watches her holding in the little excitement of her afternoon, clutching her roses, trying to take in his bigger problem. I will let her ask, he decides.
The cardboard building site of a church sits between them and the plywood base covers most of his desk. A curved wall stands erect on layers of terraced white land. One square column is the only other thing standing. Bits of construction card and paper are strewn about. A Corbusier book rests atop a stack at the edge of the desk. Photocopies of a curvy church are stuck to the wall close by, details of a dark interior with rectangle shafts of sunlight streaming in through holes in the wall. Fraser’s own deft sketches — a cluster of shapes, the single strong line of a roof among a tangle of black marker strokes — are pinned up too.
“What’s that?” Ata points at some contoured bits on the model.
He explains the steps, shallow and wide along the whole front of the building. And that the thing is — how many chances would he get to build a church? A Roman Catholic one at that. It’s not just a house or an office, it’s something for the people. And that he had had to ask himself, What does church mean to me? What are the contemporary and eternal resonances of it?
“Where will it be built?” she asks.
He told her — Maloney. And now it was her turn to look at the dreams lying bare on his face.
“In the housing-scheme area. By the highway,” he adds, apologetically.
The miles of hot little concrete boxes, crammed into a grid off the highway, are an outstanding government eyesore. Faded, inner-city-style council blocks tower sadly above the dry field of packed boxes, not a space for a tree between them.
“I know, I know.” He hurries on. “But this is it! The government gave them a plot of land to do something — for the community.”
“Government gave the Roman Catholics?”
“Yes, but it’s not a very big piece.”
“And they build a church?”
Fraser is surprised by the sharp side of this deer, talking as if she knows him from some long-gone forest days. It makes him feel like he knows her better somehow too, like she senses his base position. Her wide gaze boldens him to remind himself — as he had convinced the priests with this architectural opportunity of a lifetime — that the church will be more than a place of worship. It will become a real community center, as any church should actually be …
“Planning and religion can’t force ‘community’—people have to want it. Government built a rat-racetrack of a ghetto suburb, relocating people from all over. Can children even play in the streets there?” Ata asks
“That’s why it’s needed!” He sees from her ferny smile that she really does understand, and can see the task before him. What does church mean to Maloney? Among broken bottles, telegraph poles, and wires? One can be true in this situation.
“Look, look at this.” He grabs the Corbusier book and flashes pages at her. “This man, in his own way, created something genuine. Something as true as the Ethiopian Lalibela rock churches. And then there’s the question of faith. Faith there was in a God. Faith lost. The architect’s own faith…”
He sees on her face that he’s going too far, beginning to preach his own lush pastures. She glances at her flowers resting on the settee. “Forget about him for a minute,” he mutters.
“Who?” She jumps, startled. Flight or fight.
“The Frenchman who’s after you … He’s okay,” he adds, flopping himself onto the small settee wearily and offering her the other half. She sits awkwardly. Her eyes still hesitant. “Have fun, go on. I’ve known Pierre awhile now and he’s a decent soul really, as far as Frogs go.”
She wants to say that she should call him, to give her answer, but suddenly feels juvenile, even while so comfortable with this strange, charming turtle. Pierre can wait, she shouldn’t rush.
Fraser sees her slight relief and picks up again, needing practice for the priests. Yes, the Catholic Church is the most hypocritical, self-interested, powerful organization. But a church can offer an earthly ecstasy. A moment when worldly life is suspended and something else enters. Lots of people have written about it, he says. “And there will be a piazza.”
She listens to the Cambridge tone creeping into his voice.
“Look at the roof, I wanted to make it mobile but they were against that. This lets in the afternoon sun and makes the space seem almost open-air, bigger than it actually is. On this side, the walls don’t touch.
“(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.”
He insists that Eliot’s “red rock” is the Ethiopian rock-hewn church. And that Africa is in Maloney, needing to be sung and praised even though the sky is strung with wires and the shape of hope is the heat-shimmering peaks of the Northern Range in the distance. An African Elegy from his latest obsession, Ben Okri — the turtle was on a roll, surfing.
“That is why our music is so sweet,
It makes the air remember.
There are secret miracles at work
That only time will bring forth.
I too have heard the dead singing.
“Once people can gather the elders will find their voices again. It will have served a civic purpose. Not like one of them dingy concrete sheds they call community centers. No doors, and the floor slopes down toward the altar. White tiles. Everything will be white and the roof — curved, bare, galvanized sheeting.”
He sees her watching his vision unfold, glorious words melting, landing on architectural scrolls, the fish-scale wind chime twisting slowly in the draft of the air conditioner; on a rainbow of felt-tipped markers, pink anthuriums in a blue vase. Proud and pleasured by his own world of beauty, he notices her hands and wonders if she plays an instrument, with those long long fingers. He imagines his friend bringing those fingers to his mouth, them touching his friend’s strange white chest, brushing the thin skin above his hip bone. He sighs and throws a leg over the arm of the settee, grunts, and closes his eyes.
The leatherback nestles down, right in front of her. “Think of,” Ata whispers, “all them old ladies with they Sunday hats and skatie shoes, sliding on the slanted tiled floor, skating right down and bunching up by the altar!”
He cracks a peek at her mischievous face.
“You sure a playground, a patch of grass and some trees, a sports center, wouldn’t be more useful?”
He chuckles and she laughs, just as Fraser’s phone rings and he digs at his tight jeans pockets to pull out one huge old cell phone.
“It is he speaking,” he says into it, drawing up his best British accent, beaming at Pierre’s voice on the line. “She’s right by my side…” Holding her eyes as she clues in. “Of course, she said she would love to … and can’t wait!” Shielding himself as Ata launches at him. “She’s saying … yes. Eight o’clock, her place.” Laughing his head off as he leaps from the settee to escape her assault. “Yes, yes, I’ll send a taxi for you. Cheers!”