clinic.
Early on, as a bachelor, he would stay in the clinic at night until the last patient was seen and then head to his favorite bar, a small off-license called Chez Martin, situated in a working-class neighborhood with few expatriates. This reminded him of the bars his father used to frequent in Belgium. He relished the frosty beer and took pleasure in trying to pick up the local dialect as he chatted with fellow customers who, once they grew used to a white man in their midst, treated him just like any other drinking buddy.
Philip avoided the expat watering holes and the expat social events. He had not come all this way to live as a Belgian in Belgium. That was the life he had forsaken to the great chagrin of his family, a family that had indeed sacrificed greatly to get him to where he was.
As he began sinking African roots, Philip moved into the small bungalow he occupied to today. He hired Joseph as his cook, launderer, cleaner, and live-in caretaker. The same Joseph who still cooked his frites just so, and kept the fridge stocked with ice cold beer.
For several years his life seemed like a record on a Victrola—when the needle got to the last groove, the arm lifted up automatically and gently placed the needle on the first groove and it all started over again. Up—coffee, cigarette, and baguette for a starter—to the clinic, closing when the last person had been seen—to Chez Martin (he used to keep the bottle caps in his pocket to know how many beers he had drunk, but this disgusted him so he abandoned the practice)—home at some point finding dinner prepared by Joseph and warming in the oven, to bed—either alone or accompanied. The next day it all started over again.
Then one day his routine changed forever. As usual, he went into his exam room to see a patient the nurses had prepped. As he glanced into the chair, he felt a lump in his throat—a sensation with which he was completely unfamiliar. Here in his chair was a rather diminutive youngish lady but who had the most mischievous eyes and enigmatic smile. He was truly taken aback. Aware of his reaction, he felt compelled to at least try and find out more about his patient than her vision problems. In fact, it turned out her eyesight was 20/20. She had been working in a garden, pruning a large Euphorbia plant, when her machete splashed the milky sap into her eyes and she felt she was blinded. Once Philip washed the eyes thoroughly and let them rest with some comforting ointment, her sight returned—uninjured and perfect. He sensed that her relief at his findings made her let her guard down and she did at least impart enough of her story for him to ascertain that she was single, the daughter of a rather prosperous businessman who had three sons and was disappointed that his last born was not also a male.
She seemed disinclined to give much more information. However, what she had provided—or more correctly, the cheeky fashion with which she had provided it—was enough to tweak Philip’s soul and he knew he would go to the records to get her address so that he could call upon her later.
This was Angela. Philip had courted her with ardor and all the energy his compact but muscular body could muster. He had abandoned all the casual girlfriends he had lined up, focusing totally on this one indecipherable female who so intrigued him. As he had later recounted to Brother Mike, Philip had heard that in dental school, students had to learn to tie complex knots inside a matchbox with their eyes closed to practice the dexterity needed to perform all variety of maneuvers in the space of a mouth. In trying to court Angela, Philip felt like he was trying to untie a complicated knot in a matchbox. While Angela did not shun him completely, she certainly did not encourage him. She was often aloof, keeping him, and seemingly everyone else, at arms-length. While her enticing smile that went all the way to the corners of her piercing eyes was at times tender, her mannerisms tended to be impassive, and at times glacial.
But if Philip was nothing else, he was determined. Slowly he thawed Angela’s spirit, slowly they moved through friendship to something deeper and richer. Slowly she opened and told her story.
Philip had known that she had come from a well-to-do family that had a preference for male children. But what he now learned was that, when she had just entered university, she had met a young Congolese, a sharp and savvy entrepreneur who saw great opportunities in real estate. They became engaged. She was planning on leaving her studies to work with him. Her father was choleric. He had but one daughter and she would complete university—something he had always regretted he himself, like Philip’s father, had been unable to accomplish. But she was equally resolute, she would marry the man of her dreams and they would create new, grander dreams together.
Angela had forged ahead regardless of the consequences and found herself banished from her family. They treated her as if she did not exist.
But she did exist and her love existed. Through this love she and her husband had formed a beautiful girl child. They watched their real estate holdings grow as the girl grew and life seemed to be on track. Then it had happened. In going to arrange for title documents at the national capital, her husband had been in a terrible accident; he was dead on the spot. Angela was now a widow with no close family ties, a young daughter, and an expanding business to manage. It took all her considerable will to stand up under these pressures, but stand up she did, and she transformed the real estate business into a portfolio of rental properties that, even if they did not bring wealth, would keep her daughter and herself in good shape, food on the table, bills paid, and enough for her daughter’s education.
Then Angela met Philip.
They had now been married for nearly ten years. Angela’s daughter, Lucie, was away at boarding school. Angela and Philip had had one son, Germain, who was now six. As Joseph continued to oversee the household, including Germain’s daily upkeep, Angela and Philip were free to spend the necessary hours and days taking care of their respective jobs, being a landlord and an eye doctor.
Brother Mike had no idea how the marriage now faired with two workaholic spouses. But he had heard from Philip, reading a bit between the lines, that as in Angela’s case, Philip’s family had been apoplectic when they had heard their son was to be married to an African. It was already more than they could bear that their boy had gone to some hellish place where he hid his light under a basket and where the family would never receive any acclaim for his healing skills and their grand sacrifice that had led to these skills. But now this ungracious offspring had gone native and was going to take a heathen wife. They could not support the shame. His father had not toiled in the mud and muck to put his only son through school for this. His mother had not tolerated the abuse of the rich and rude to put food in his stomach for this. His sister had not struggled for long hours to help pay his tuition for this. No, the family was beyond the breaking point. Philip was no more. Their son was dead.
Two souls, having been cast off by disapproving families; Brother Mike wondered if it was a match made in Heaven. He had no idea, but it certainly was a pairing of two very strong forces. And, like strong magnets, these forces could attract or repel. Brother Mike was uncertain how they were joined. But he found himself nearly magnetically attracted to each, seeing each as so different yet somehow part of a whole.
❦❦❦
Some afternoons when things seemed to be going as they should, Brother Mike would slip off to the pond, grab his pole, and let his mind fly as he hoped his worm would entice a nice sized bream. When the sky was that pale blue you-can-see-forever clear, the siesta hour gusts like gentle puffs from a snoozing calf, and the eucalyptus leaves rustling like shifting sands, Brother Mike’s mind would soar like a falcon, riding the zephyr, looking down at mankind as though spying on termites in a massive transparent mound—each going his own way, order out of disorder, production out of decay.
Brother Mike could be a deep thinker. He could wonder about man’s inhumanity to man. He could ponder a world overtaken by a tumescent population. He could even probe the furthest reaches of his intellect, asking himself, “Is God with us?” Brother Mike could do all these things or Brother Mike could drink a cold beer and play a hand of cards. While the former might
