In Borkor, the fishermen suburb where I live, people became jumpy and brisk-tempered. Children started misbehaving and skipping classes. Women would quarrel until deep in the night throwing insults never heard before, while men indulged themselves in palm wine and akpeteshi overtime. And that was not all: in the house where the Mortuary technicians lived, a lamb with two heads was born while their first neighbour Apostle Zechariah, General Overseer of the Tabernacle of the Three Times Blessed Holy Heritage (International) started growing horns. All his three wives ran away. (I am so happy; we Borkor people do not belong to his church. We are all ardent supporters of Reverend Brimstone and his Cathedral of the Automatic Heavenly Transmission (International).)
 In the third week of Lent a thief was lynched. He was a demented, nameless boy everybody in Borkor knew. He had allegedly torn away the vanity mirror from the sunshade in a car that had been left with windows rolled down. The owner of the car had entered Charley’s Corner, just for a minute, to bring so badly needed sobriety into his fidgety mind, when that hideous act of robbery took place. In fact, nobody saw the Boy actually taking the mirror, but we all knew of the Boy’s passion for mirrors. The Boy was not older than sixteen and had a serene, almost girlish face. He used to rummage through piles of garbage is search of pieces of broken glass to admire his looks. Formerly, before the moon went berserk, women would offer him food and idlers at Charley’s Corner would have treated him to a glass of akpeteshi providing he went on all fours and barked.
 When the owner of the missing mirror discovered the crime and alarmed his friends, everybody left their drinks and ran to the beach where the Boy had his quarters under an abandoned dugout canoe. The Boy, scared as a lizard, made an attempt to run away. That was the final proof of his guilt. In vain he zigzagged over the soft sand; the pursuers were faster. They gave him a well deserved beating. After the Boy’s body went limp they gave him yet another dozen kicks and then, breathless of all that exertion, went back to the bar to cool down. Next morning police collected the Boy’s body. The tide had taken it some two miles beyond the Salt Works.
 The night after, we saw strange lights in the sky. Pink, silvery and at times greenish flashes danced high above the sparse clouds. The uneducated majority believed that those fiery dancers were merely reflections of distant lightning from somewhere beyond the Eastern Hills. The better educated were convinced that an alien spacecraft had been overflying West Africa. I disagreed. I insisted that for reasons unknown, the aurora borealis had gone off its usual course and straggled as far as the tropics. ‘If the moon could perform antics, why wouldn’t the polar light do something similar?’ I solemnly declared to my drinking companions.
 ‘Uncle Kojo, you are wrong! It was a celestial battle! That is what it was!’ It was Akua, an eleven-year-old girly that helped in Charley’s Corner. No one was surprised to hear that she had her own interpretation. That girl always pretended to know the true explanation for whatever happened anywhere in our neighbourhood. However, this time she overdid it. Pouting her lips, she narrated in that husky voice of hers how she had witnessed thousands of angels charging at the Forces of Darkness that wanted to invade the skies! We laughed of course, although most of us were jealous that we could not find such an imaginative explanation. I only wondered where she could have learned that strange word - celestial.
 Akua was tall for her age and of a defiant comportment. Her lips were always angrily pouted and her eyes had a challenging glint. Only when she believed that no one was around would she permit herself to relax and her eyes would become meek and lovable. Like most girls in Mildenport’s poor suburbs, Akua hardly knew her parents. Apparently her father went to Ghana in search for work, never to come back, while her mother remarried and settled in a village deep in the Forest Belt. After her mother had given birth to five more children, Akua was given to a distant Auntie who lived in the capital. Auntie Sally was the owner of Charley’s Corner.
 In the mornings Akua attended classes in the Borkor Primary. In the afternoons she would go to the beach to skip there like a possessed goat, while in the evenings she helped in Auntie Sally’s bar. Since recently when she began to develop those unwelcome swellings on her breasts, she would go as far as the Borkor Common to find some solitude. Borkor Common was a patch of wilderness between the football field and the nurses’ flats. She would cleave her way through the bush searching for God-knows-what in vain hope that her breasts would reduce to normal.
 As I have already stated, Akua was known for framing up stories. Mr. Pepper, her teacher nicknamed her Akua the Liar. He was forced to waste quite a lot of his precious time on beating the girl to eradicate that shameful habit of hers. Quite justifiably! Some time, a year ago, Akua had invented how a platoon of dwarfs had stormed out of a banana copse to take her prisoner. ‘Not taller than ten inches, they were,’ she claimed in her husky voice. ‘And they had long beards and shiny uniforms!’
 Hear that! Everybody knew that dwarfs had long beards; but uniforms! On another occasion she had created panic among the Borkor fishermen after she had apparently seen a sea-monster wallowing in the shallows and spitting fire towards the night sky! However, some fishermen later confirmed her story but with different, less dramatic details. They said it had not been a monster but merely a stranded baby-whale. Everything ended with a good laugh and with yet another spanking.
 But her latest invention, her celestial battle was the most brazen invention of all and blasphemous too. Akua had even claimed she had seen Satan in person leading his Legions. Akua described the devil with such astounding vividness that her schoolmates got scared to death despite their knowledge that Akua must have made it all up. ‘And high above the clouds angels swished their fiery swords and pushed the Forces of Darkness back to the underworld!’
 This time it was not Mr. Pepper who meted the justice out. As Akua’s perpetration was a matter of blasphemy, it was reverend Brimstone who was called to come to the Borkor Primary to bring the girl back to her senses. And Reverend Brimstone, a former prize-fighter, did his task with excellence. Akua took the punishment stoically. Her lips were pouted even more than usual but what was in her head and in her heart, no one knew. For several days Akua could not sit and she attended the classes standing in the corner of the classroom.
 On Palm Sunday, late in the night, lights in the sky danced again and even a comet was observed in the north-western quadrant. We all stuck to our previous explanations, only Akua kept her mouth shut. Reverend’s educational efforts surely had brought the intended healing effect.
 On Monday morning when we met at Charley’s for our first bout of drinks we praised Reverend Brimstone. Once again the priest proved himself to be the spiritual leader and the pace-tracer of morality in Borkor.
 Around eleven o’ clock, when we had already reached an advanced stage of elation cherishing the memory of Akua’s salvaging, Reverend Brimstone came to Charley’s corner in person. That was very much against his firmly established habits. At that early hour he would be still deep in his prayers, practicing different intonations of Praise the Lord and Halleluiah. His sermons were rich and sounded as inspiring as battle cries of a drill Sergeant engaged in fighting hosts of white mice. The rumour said that he had attended the famous Academy of Spiritual Guidance in Krankenville, Alabama to acquire that acumen which regularly brought his congregation close to delirium. Of course that was not true. The former bantamweight boxer who later became the bouncer in the Kilimanjaro nightclub had never been outside Ebonyland and had never attended any educational institutions after he had completed the Islamic Primary School in Toosla. He had learned all the presbyteral skills from his grandfather, who had been a fetish priest deep in the Ebonian Forest Belt.
 
 In Reverend’s wake there ambled Mr. Pepper, the only teacher in the Borkor Primary and Junior Secondary School. Mr. Pepper was almost as God-fearing as the Reverend himself. On Wednesday nights, Friday evenings and Sunday mornings Pepper allowed the Borkor school premises to be used as the Cathedral of the Automatic Heavenly Transmission (International). As a sign of appreciation, Reverend Brimstone gave him one third of the collection-money.
 The two sat at the table reserved only for exceptional patrons. The presence of the two leading citizens made us feel uncomfortable. We finished our drinks and left the bar.
 ‘Reverend,’ Mr. Pepper started when we were at a safe distance. ‘So far, we are doing fine. Our church is fulfilling the noble task and we can say without false modesty that heathenish practices and similar misbehaviour are on the decline in our community. Yet, there is a matter of importance that I wanted to discuss with you.’ The teacher removed his pince-nez, cleaned them and continued in a confidential tone. ‘Ever since you have installed those extra strong loudspeakers the electricity bills have gone up beyond justification. I would like to draw …’
 ‘Pepper, don’t beat about the bush. We have three collections during the service. Two for the church and one for you. And it was agreed that out of your share you should secure the understanding of the clerks …’
 ‘Precisely! But they are not satisfied. The head clerk informed me that the high electricity bills may draw attention of the comptroller and that we must secure his understanding. You are not aware what risks I run. The school is government property. And the school is supposed to be used only for what the government has …’
 ‘So, what do you propose?’ Reverend Brimstone had expected that question for some time. He knew that Ministry clerks had insatiable appetite for money but he did not want to lose the cooperation of the teacher. Not only that without the teacher’s support, his Cathedral would find itself on the beach, but the teacher, as a person, was irreplaceable. Mr. Pepper was an exceptional singer. Brimstone could not possibly find anyone else with such outstanding talent and with such a frightening voice. He repeated his question, ‘So, what do you propose?’
 ‘What I wanted to suggest is that we should introduce the fourth collection.’
 ‘Pepper, you are a lay man but sometimes there is a touch of divinity in your words. But what do we say to our congregation?’
 ‘We should explain to our congregation that the money is required for rural electrification and for the overall benefit of the nation. And by the way, bearing in mind my precarious situation, I shall be free to demand two thirds of the forth collection.’
 ‘Agreed! Now, please, go and dismiss the classes. We shall need the classroom for ourselves. We need to practice in peace. And don’t forget to give the leaflets to the children. They must distribute them today. If we do not advertise, we shall never be able to bring the Truth closer to human hearts.’
 On the news that they were free to go, the pupils of the Borkor School screamed with joy and poured out from the ramshackle structure that acted as the school. The heat of the noon did not affect their spirits.
 ‘Holy Cross – Holy Cross – Holy Cross ...’ Reverend Brimstone chanted in fast succession as though the words had been fired from a Kalashnikov. Simultaneously, Mr. Pepper underlined the gunfire with slow, vibrating ‘Jeeezus, Jeeezus’ in a discordant seventh lower. The effect was awesome! Same like many other ecclesiastical skills, Brimstone had learned that vocal charm from his already mentioned grandfather. However, now, that disturbing concoction of sounds was used for a good cause.
 By the time the two servants of Christ mastered to catch the seventh with ease, Akua was far away. As she had a lot of time before she was expected at Auntie Sally’s place, she decided to go as far as the nurses’ flats to visit her friends Sabudjin and Aladdin, a pair of wizened Northerners who planted lettuce, cabbages, green peppers and onions on a small patch of waste land. Having come from the dry, Northern regions, the two old men could never understand how it was possible that these costal people could waste arable land so recklessly. Not only that the two were more hardworking than the locals, but they had a different, more beautiful spirit. Whatever surrounded them had more than the eye could see. Akua loved their stories. And she loved the way those two narrated them. Their stories were so different from the dull yarns she could hear from Borkor fishermen that she would listen to them with her mouth open. Especially Aladdin. He knew how to introduce all sorts of spiritual beings in his tales. After she would have heard them, Akua would always suffer from an additional inspiration for her notorious lies.
 As she ambled towards the Borkor Common, the noontime heat had emptied the streets. Man and animal hid in deep shades of acacia trees and enormous mahogany grandfathers. Only midges hovered in the hot semi-liquid air. The heat was hanging in the air like silver dust. Akua crossed the main road and entered the Borkor Common. She passed the football field and took the narrow path leading towards the back of the hospital. Nothing was on her mind. The heat killed her thoughts and she walked like as if she had been transported to Aladdin’s dreamland.
 Suddenly she got startled. Something was rustling in the dense brush that enclosed the path. Akua woke up and stopped. She felt a sudden surge of fear. Any kind of evil could jump on her from the brush. Snakes, dwarfs and god-knows what else. When she was already about to take to her heals and run back to the football field, she noticed the black bristles of Rambo’s crest. She laughed with relief. Rambo was the most popular billy-goat of the area. Children from Borkor, from Christmas in Egypt and Banana Inn knew him well. He was known for his turbid, almost human gaze and for his trembling braying that so much sounded like reverend Brimstone’s sermons when a new lady member joined his congregation.
 Rambo came out from the ticket to observe the intruder. He tilted his head and snorted scornfully at Akua. He turned then around and pushed back into the bush. A pouch as big as a jumbo squid was hanging from below his tail. Akua had seen that pouch many times before but at that moment the sight of it made her restless and uncomfortable. Watching the goat swagger away, displaying that hairy bag ostentatiously, provoked in Akua a feeling she had never experienced before. Her heart went berserk and she felt a strong desire to touch that velvety appendage. To feel its warmth! She remembered how other children had been cheering whenever Rambo would have climbed a nanny-goat to ride her about in a frenzied way. ‘They are having sex!’ Yaa, who was a year older than Akua had explained to her. ‘No, no!’ As always, Akua had a better explanation. ‘He is punishing her for eating too much.’ Yet the simple, one-syllable word “sex” remained in her mind purporting something that made her mouth dry and her guts tickle.
 Rambo disappeared in search for food and Akua went on. The air was so hot that she almost felt sick. She started seeing things. Ponds of glistening water; trees planted upside-down. Strange shapes were suspended in the misty, silvery air. Even some little winged creatures that reminded her so much of angels were fluttering around. But she immediately dismissed the idea. They could not be angels. The sting left by Reverend Brimstone’s belt was still fresh.
 She passed the rear entrance to the abandoned garden restaurant and directed herself towards the block of flats where hospital nurses lived. And there, on a stump of a grandfather-tree, she saw a man sitting. In all that sun! Hot air danced around him and created an illusion as if he had been hovering above the dark surface of the felled tree. The Man was wrapped in a ragged sheet which had long before lost its colour. Somehow it came to Akua’s mind that once it must have been snow-white. She stopped and looked at the Man. He was different from any other human creature she had ever seen. He looked more as if he had materialized from one of Aladdin’s stories. The colour of his skin was neither of the rich brown hue of the Ebonians nor of that sickly pink of the foreigners. He looked as if he had been moulded out of old, burned gold. The Man was lean and wiry. There was a mat of dreadlocks covering his head and his shoulders. A fluffy beard hung from his cheeks. His brow was high and a strange pattern of dirt pockmarked his front; as though someone had intentionally tried to draw a garland. His eyes were deep in the sockets and spoke not only of ascetic deprivation but of compassion and love too.
 ‘Good afternoon, my child,’ the Man addressed her. His voice was smooth and sonorous and in sharp contrast with his haggard appearance. He addressed her in the local dialect almost without a trace of accent, although Akua recognised the gutturality of those drifters who were coming to Mildenport all the way from the hungry Sahel.
 ‘Good afternoon,’ she responded in English just to make herself important. She knew perfectly well that refugees from the Sahel could not speak that foreign language.
 A shy smile crossed the Man’s face. ‘Why are you staring at me?’ He turned to English as well. ‘And where are you going in all this heat?’
 Akua did not want to accept defeat although she was shocked with Man’s impeccable fluency in English. ‘I am heading towards the nurses’ flats.’ She forced herself to imitate the TV announcer. ‘I want to visit my friends Sabudjin and Aladdin. They are gardeners.’
 ‘Your English is well pronounced,’ the Man complimented her. ‘And the neatness of your uniform tells me that you are a good student.’
 ‘I am. I am in class four. And I already know a part of the Bible by heart. It is called Leviticus.’
 ‘Hear that! That’s good. What else have you learned? How about geography and biology?’
 ‘What’s that?’
 The Man’s smile widened. ‘It’s science. But let me put it in a different way ...’ he paused for a while and then continued in a challenging voice: ‘Can you explain to me what an egg is?’
 ‘Of course! It’s food.’ Akua’s voice took an arrogant twist.
 ‘Ha, you are smart, but your answer is not complete. Listen, grasshoppers can be food as well, but if I asked you what grasshoppers were, you would not tell me they were food, would you?’
 ‘Of course not. I know that some people in the North eat grasshoppers but I would never say grasshoppers were food; I would say that they were God’s creatures.’ Now there was triumph in her voice. She had finally shown that foreigner how smart she was!
 ‘Still you did not convince me that eggs are food. Snakes lay eggs too, but you would never eat their eggs, would you?’
 ‘Uncle, you are too smart. But let me tell you something. Fish eggs, we eat. People from the North eat even ants’ eggs. Sabudjin and Aladdin told me so and they never lie. What do you say to that?’
 ‘I agree with you and I agree with your friends. But my initial question has been not what we use eggs for, but what eggs are; what their function in our existence is. You know what existence means, don’t you?’
 Akua pursed her lips while her brain was doing extra speed, yet she could not find an appropriate reaction to the Man’s question. Finally she blurted out defiantly: ‘Uncle, when you are so knowledgeable, why don’t you tell me what eggs are?’
 ‘I shall. An egg is the essence of life. It is a single cell that contains the programme of creation and development of any living creature. Females of all species lay eggs. The hen that laid an egg did not do so with the intention to give us food but to bring new life to this world. Same do all birds. And as you have already mentioned fishes and ants and ...’
 ‘But not humans!’ Akua protested triumphantly. She lifted her hand and extended her index finger in the fashion Mr. Pepper would do when making a point. She continued bravely, ‘I caught you, ha, ha! We come out from the bellies of our mothers. Same like dogs and sheep and goats!’
 ‘You are quite observant, but that is not exactly so. Humans and the animals you have mentioned are called mammals and they do lay eggs as well, but they keep those eggs in their wombs until the baby is ready to be born.’
 ‘Nonsense! You want to tell me that I have become from an egg? I don’t believe that!’
 ‘Well, that is why I asked you my original question. I asked you if you read biology. You can find that in all biology books.’
 ‘But not in the Bible. Not in the Bible.’ Akua protested vehemently.
 ‘The Bible is a very inspiring book but not all knowledge is in the Bible. There are many, many books. All human knowledge and experience is in the books. And you should read as many books as you can lay your hands upon.’ After a short pause the Man continued, ‘Even those books that tell lies and spill venom can be useful if you read them with concern. Your heart will always recognise bad intention of the writer.’ The Man stopped again as if had not been sure how to explain his point. ‘You see, if a book calls you to harm yourself, to harm your neighbour or to harm the environment, that book has bad intentions. On the contrary if a book teaches you how to improve yourself, how to help you neighbour and how to preserve the environment, then this book is good.’
 ‘Have you read all the books?’
 ‘No, I have not. Most of the books have not yet been written.’
 ‘You should be a priest and not a drifter. You know how to talk. If you were a priest you would soon have plenty money; and a nice car; and a big house. But tell me, why are you teaching me for free or perhaps you think that I have money to pay you?’
 ‘No, I don’t need money. I teach you because you are a child and the future is still open in front of you. Our peace and happiness depends on how we teach our children. If we teach then to hate and destroy, soon there will be no humans left. And what is even more important, if we restrict knowledge that we offer to our children only to one single book no matter how that book is good, children will become convinced that only the knowledge offered in that book is good and that those who have read a different book are in the wrong. And then, they will fight. Do you want that, huh? Do you want to fight with Sabudjin and Aladdin? Are they bad people?’
 ‘No, they are not bad. They are the best two men I know.’
 ‘But they are Muslims; they do not read the Bible?’
 ‘No, they don’t. They read the Koran. But I shall teach them the Bible.’
 ‘Why? You have just pronounced them for the two best men you know. So, why should you confuse them?’
 Akua panicked. ‘But if they don’t read the Bible, they will not go to the Paradise!’ She was angry with herself that she had not already thought of enlightening them and bringing the word of Christ to them. ‘I must teach them how to pray! Muslims do not know how to pray. They never clap! They only knock their heads against the ground.’
 ‘The ticket to Paradise cannot be bought with prayers. Prayers are words. It is only that our deeds can take us to Paradise. Good is planted in everybody’s heart. And it grows there or it dies there, depending on our deeds - not words.’
 For a while the Man and the girl were silent. The heat was not so oppressive any more, yet the Man still appeared to be hovering above the stump of the dead tree. But Akua had seen so many wonders that nothing could surprise her. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘But I would like to see you again.’
 ‘I shall be here every afternoon.’ + + +
 After having been so long in the sun, Akua had a restless night. Pains in her head and a funny feeling in her belly prevented her from sleeping. Squeezed and jostled by her cousins she could not find her peace. The kiosk where they slept was stuffy and hot. Not a breath of fresh air to come in; only heat and mosquitoes. Somewhere close to her head a daring cockroach was rustling in the mat. To make everything even worse, Uncle Teye and Auntie Sally were engaged in their usual nocturnal fights. Panting and groaning. He was again punishing her for eating too much!
 Then all the noises subsided and in the scant light she saw something big and black looming from the corner. Turbid stern eyes on an ugly horned head. Reverend Brimstone, Akua panicked! But no: it was again only that funny Rambo.
 ‘You have an egg in your belly,’ Rambo bleated. ‘I should do something about it.’ The goat laughed raucously and turned around to display his squid. Akua shivered and suddenly the pain in her belly dissipated.
 Rambo was gone. After that she felt a gentle touch upon her shoulder. Somebody’s hand, soft and tender slid towards her breast and began to stroke it. First, she wanted to push the intruder away and slap the hand, but she immediately changed her mind. The stroking was so soothing and pleasant that she abandoned herself to it. It was like drinking iced water on a hot day. It was unquenchable. Akua wished it was that drifter she had met the previous day. And lo! She saw his haggard face in a nimbus of light. Her breathing became stronger and she started to moan with gratification.
 Suddenly, a violent slap on her cheek woke her up!
 ‘You dirty girl!’ Uncle Teye was fuming. Touching yourself! Shame on you! Who taught you to do something like that? I shall report you to the Reverend!’
 For a while Akua cried, then she fell back to sleep.
 In the morning, to her horror, she discovered that her panties were soaked with blood. + + +
 That day in the afternoon, it was the Tuesday before Easter, Akua made me a surprise visit. I was dosing on the floor of my small terrace when her voice woke me up. ‘Uncle Kojo, hey, Uncle Kojo! Wake up! Is Auntie Dora at home?’
 ‘She isn’t. What business do you have with her?’
 ‘She pursed her lips, hesitating to confide in me. Then she improvised, ‘I wanted to ask her for two eggs. I wish to boil them, to give them to a beggar.’
 ‘Don’t you have eggs in your house?’
 ‘We have.’ Now Akua averted her eyes from me. Her lips were not pouted any more but rather stretched in an asymmetrical grin. She was evidently embarrassed. ‘Uncle Teye will beat me if I take eggs. He always complains that too much food is wasted on me.’
 I got up and went to our room, took two eggs from the basket and gave them to the little girl.
 ‘Thank you Uncle Kojo. Now I know that you are a true Christian.’
 ‘Nonsense, my girl! You must have known that I am a Christian. Don’t we go to the same church?’
 ‘We do, indeed. But going to church does not make you a Christian.’
 ‘Hey, listen to that! First you invent a celestial battle, now you dare to set standards ...’
 ‘Please, Uncle Kojo, don’t be angry with me. And please, don’t say that to Reverend.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
 ‘Don’t worry, I shall not tell him anything. But out of curiosity, just tell me where have you learnt that word celestial?’
 ‘Oh, it was there, in my head. There are a lot of things in my head. Sometimes I am even afraid to go through my head – not to disturb all those wonders which have been deposited there. You may not believe me, but I have really seen that celestial battle. I mean, not in reality but in my mind. It was like a dream. You know, dreams are stronger than what happens in reality. Dreams make us believe, they make us want and they guide us.’
 She left me speechless. Inadvertently I echoed her words, ‘Dreams make us believe, they make us want and they guide us.’ Not only that those words were incongruent with her character – they were totally incongruent with her age and with her social standing. At eleven, you don’t nurture that kind of cogitation. She must have read them from one of those leaflets competing churches were distributing among fishwives of Borkor.
 ‘Uncle Kojo, thank you for the eggs and may I ask for the permission to go?’
 ‘The road is free,’ I answered as the local politeness demanded.
 I watched her ambling up the street when I saw my wife coming back from town. Thanks to the blessed West African habit of supporting words with hand language I could follow their conversation. Now the nature of Akua’s worries was clear. My wife opened the bag with her shopping and handed the girl one packet of pads. Gesturing vividly she explained her how to use them. In the end Dora gave her even a warm ‘welcome to womanhood’ hug and Akua, good spirits restored danced away towards her auntie’s house. + + +
 On Thursday, the day the Easter vacation would start, a schoolmate reported Akua to Mr. Pepper for talking with strangers. He had seen her in the bush behind the football field chatting freely with a dirty Rastaman. The teacher reacted wisely. No action should be taken until a proper investigation had been conducted. His investigation, he started with the girl’s guardian. That afternoon God failed to provide and Teye was in a very fidgety mood. He immediately proposed they went to the Common to catch the girl in the act.
 While walking there, Teye informed the teacher about Akua’s nocturnal indecencies. ‘Can you imagine: squeezing her breasts and pushing the finger in the dirty place!’
 Pepper was shocked. ‘We must inform the Reverend about that. Her flesh should be mortified! Otherwise her soul shall be lost!’
 Exactly at the place that the informer had indicated they saw Akua chatting with that dangerous character. The two were engrossed in conversation and failed to see the pursuers. Pepper and Teye went prone among the bushes as if they had been experienced rangers. Ants and bugs bothered them but their resolution to find the full truth did not waver. They wanted to collect as much evidence as possible to be able to make a full report to Reverend Brimstone. Unfortunately no words could be heard. However, judging by the excited gesticulation of the girl, the stranger was revealing some diabolic knowledge. No wonder she had dirty dreams!
 Several times Teye proposed they charged and beat the hell out of them but Pepper’s stern whispers kept the young man out of action. After some twenty minutes, when the girl was about to go away, the Rastaman stroked her hair gently and distinctly said, ‘Thanks for the food. And come again.’ The investigators only looked at each other and nodded significantly.
 When the girl reached the safety of the football field, her teacher and her guardian jumped out of the bush and arrested her. On the spot she got a brief but temperamental beating from Uncle Teye for giving food away. Pepper did not object to the premature trashing as it did not have to do anything with her more serious sins. But as soon as Teye had finished his number Mr. Pepper promised solemnly, ‘From now on we shall pass the responsibility on Church Authorities.’ + + +
 Good Friday was the day Akua would remember as long as she lived. In the afternoon, between the two services of the Cathedral of the Automatic Heavenly Transmission (International), Akua was tried!
 I was on the jury with other elders of the Automatic Heavenly Transmission. One of the elders complained that the court should sit in Charley’s Corner, as a more appropriate place for us, the elders to meet, but the Reverend refused. We were forced to squeeze ourselves in the front benches of the classroom while the rest of the congregation and a sizeable crowd of well-wishers invaded the backseats and even the schoolyard. They were jostling and pushing for a better view.
 Akua was standing in front of the teacher’s desk mesmerised by the display of sticks and canes Mr. Pepper had generously offered to Reverend Brimstone for this extraordinary occasion. Her lips were pouted as usual but her eyes were not defiant. They were rather full of tears.
 ‘Our Church and our community are facing a new threat! Individuals, alien to our ways, are prowling about and debauching our children’ Reverend Brimstone’s voice had a strange bleating undertone. ‘I call upon witnesses to come forward and give their evidence.’
 Pepper was the first to make a statement. To Brimstone’s disappointment his story was tepid and lacked the expected edge. The teacher disclosed only what he had actually seen. Reverend cut him short and called the girl’s uncle.
 ‘Our Reverend, Elders of the Church, my brothers and sisters, this girl is a witch!’
 ‘Oooh!’ The congregation reacted.
 ‘Last night when I interrogated her about her secret tryst, she admitted that a stranger had offered to teach her witchcraft. That dirty man claimed that he could hatch humans out of eggs!’
 An even louder ripple of ‘Oooh’ passed among the assembled members of the Church. Many started praying and imploring our Lord to save the child. Others, mostly men, were suggesting that there were better methods of salvaging than prayers! ‘Prayers will not save her soul. Deeds are important – not words!’
 Akua burst into a shower of tears. Her lanky body was shaking with sobs.
 As for Teye, he kept talking. Foam appeared upon his lips but as his task was to disclose the truth, nothing could stop him. In the end he even disclosed how he had caught the girl in her ‘carnal exercise’. Shrieks of surprise and disgust came from the believers.
 ‘Is that true, Akua?’
 The bleated out question remained unanswered. Akua’s mind had drifted far away. The glint in her eyes and the glow of her face could be compared only with the elation experienced by martyrs. However, a lash over her calves brought her back. She screamed! The well-wishers got heated and asked for more. There is nothing so rewarding as to watch someone else’s suffering. Revered Brimstone repeated the question.
 ‘I don’t know; I was asleep!’ The girl whispered through sobs.
 With a slow, well calculated and overall dignified movement Reverend Brimstone returned the thin stick in its place and took instead a sizeable cane.
 ‘Oooh!’
 ‘Speak up girl! Or you will never see the Paradise. Tell us what that wretched man taught you.’
 Akua, with her eyes fixed on the impatient bamboo in Reverend’s hand, admitted that the Man explained what celestial bodies were and how they acted.
 Oh no, I thought. Not again! I was sure that the girl needed psychiatric help.
 However, what she said later made sense. ‘The Man told me that if we reduced everything ten million times, our Earth would be only as big as a four-foot water tank. Like the tank on Mr. Kojo’s house.’
 I frowned as everybody looked suspiciously at me. Fortunately the girl continued. ‘And that water tank shoots through the space at a precipitous speed of 30 kilometres per second.’
 ‘Oooh!’ The rumour of disbelief passed among the believers while I wondered however that girl had learned the word precipitous!
 ‘... and it circles around the sun at the distance of 15 kilometres if the scale is the same. And the sun would be twice as big as the tallest building in Mildenport.’
 ‘Hey, Akua, and how big would be the moon?’ A jester from the audience shouted mockingly. ‘Must be as big as your auntie’s cauldron!’
 ‘Oh no,’ Akua took the question seriously. ‘It would be much smaller. It would be slightly bigger than an ordinary football. And it circles around the water tank at a distance of about forty yards. And it makes four revolutions in one second.’
 ‘Nonsense! Nonsense!’ The believers protested.
 ‘How dared you listen to those blasphemies?’ Reverend reacted angrily. ‘The lights which God put in the sky can’t be footballs and ...’
 ‘Reverend, Reverend,’ Pepper gesticulated trying to attract Big Man’s attention. ‘Leave it! It is not blasphemous. It is only a cheap comparison. But basically it is correct.’
 Brimstone was furious. Now even his right-hand man was protecting that wicked brat. Yet, he gave in. ‘Never mind. Let us forget about this nonsense. We better concentrate on matters of greater significance. Akua, is it true that that Rastaman was touching you?’
 ‘He stroked my hair.’
 ‘I did not mean that. Did he fondle your private parts, huh?’
 ‘Oooh!’
 ‘No, he did not! He did not. I swear, he did not!’
 ‘Mr. Pepper, will you hold the girl, please!’ Brimstone put the loyalty of his disciple on trial.
 With a well practiced grip the teacher doubled up the girl and the cane in Brimstone’s hand stormed down. I closed my eyes firmly. I closed them so firmly that red circles appeared in my mind’s eye.
 ‘Yes, yes! He touched my breast!’ The cry for mercy came already after the third whack.
 ‘Oooh!’
 I reopened my eyes. Now I could hardly see. The classroom was lost in a greenish-yellowish mist. As tough a heap of sulphur and brimstone was afire. Gradually my sight was restored and I noticed that the teacher had already released the girl. That provoked a hurricane of protests among the believers and well-wishers. They asked for more. Their throat veins were pronounced as though they would explode. Their faces were distorted in a frenzy of religious passion. Their eyes bloodshot. Some were virtually salivating. I was sure that Akua’s martyrdom would reward our Church with scores of new believers.
 ‘But it was only in a dream.’ Akua offered as a mitigating factor.
 ‘In a dream, you say! In a dream, you sinful child!’ Brimstone’s bleating turned into a lion’s roar. ‘He haunted your dreams? Like an Inca-bus?’ He turned then towards the audience and explained that incubus, or ‘Inca-bus’ as he pronounced it, was the devil himself when he would invade dreams of wicked women for their mutual carnal pleasure. The audience was once again impressed with Reverend’s vivid explanation and grateful for all the knowledge that he so selflessly shared with his flock.
 ‘Reverend and if a witch comes to haunt the dreams of a man, does she come as well on an Inca-bus?’ The jester from the audience interrupted the priest.
 ‘No, she comes by School-bus.’
 ‘Oooh!’ Now all the eyes were on poor Mr. Pepper who had been promising to get from the Ministry a school bus that could be used for the congregation.
 (Now, I must interrupt the story and for the sake of my readers explain that the Reverend misled his congregation. A witch, which sexually assaults a man in his dream, is called a succubus and she does not use any kind of public transportation. She usually comes riding her broom.)
 Reverend addressed again the girl, ‘So, Satan invaded your dream and came to offer you carnal pleasure? Your flesh must be mortified. Otherwise your dreams will become more important than reality!’
 ‘Reverend, I beg you,’ Akua restarted in her newly acquired maudlin voice.
 
 ‘Hold her fast,’ Brimstone ordered the teacher.
 After having received another five well measured whacks Akua screamed, ‘Dreams are only dreams. Dreams do not count! Only reality counts. I promise I shall never dream again!’
 I was surprised with the girl’s readiness to reject publicly her belief that dreams can be stronger than reality. And only two days earlier, she had been so proud of her dreams. That day she had almost convinced me that she was right.
 ‘Oh God! Oh Jesus, Oh Holy spirit! Deliver us from the Cunning! Akua repent and pray!’ Reverend stretched his arms in the form of the cross and bellowed, ‘Friends, citizens, believers, this girl has been touched by Satan’s hand. We must all contribute to the Church generously and pray!’
 Several voices from the congregation shouted that no prayers could save Akua as long as the devil was among us. ‘Deeds are important- not prayers!’ someone screamed. ‘What are we waiting for?’
 ‘What are we waiting for?’ The others joined in and repeated the trite formula which claimed more lives than pestilence. An avalanche of believers and well-wishers hit the street. Teye and Charley’s regulars were leading the posse. They thundered towards the Common like a stampede of wildebeests. Not more than ten of us remained in the inquisition room. We were like paralyzed.
  ‘I could do nothing to stop them, could I?’ Sweat was pouring down Brimstone’s noble brow and fear settled in his eyes.
 ‘You couldn’t.’ We confirmed.
 ‘One beggar less is a step towards eradication of poverty in Africa.’ Pepper offered his words of consolation. + + +
 On Saturday morning the Man was still alive but not able to move. He had been dumped on the beech close to the Boy’s dugout. Up on the sandbank, in the cool shade of coco-palms which had survived the storm, a crowd gathered and watched him silently. Only my wife Dora summoned sufficient courage to go down and offer him a glass of sour wine diluted with water. He only took a few sips and looked at her dolefully. She reported later that both his wrists and his feet were bleeding.
 The heat of the noon finally dissipated the curious. The Man was left to flies and gnats.
 The night fell but the heat would not abate. The air refused to stir. Somewhere from the East rumbling of distant thunderclaps could be heard. A typical Easter-storm was brewing. Our room was stuffy and I stayed outside to gawp into the night and wait for the rain. Hours trod on. It must be around midnight that in the scant light reflected from the low clouds I saw a lanky figure making her way towards the beach.
 Well past midnight the storm hit full force and woke me up. A hell of a gale was blowing and weird lights danced over the beach. It was a fantastic display of colours; red, green, electric blue, then yellow suffusing to orange. At that moment it just came to my mind that perhaps those who had claimed that lights we had seen in the sky had been crated by an alien spacecraft were right! In all those fireworks I could see the palm trees bent almost to the ground by the force of the wind.
 Squalls of rain chased me in and I slumped upon my mat. + + +
 Next morning was as bright as an Easter-Sunday morning should be. The Cathedral of the Automatic Heavenly Transmission (International) welcomed a large group of new members who expressed their desires to join our congregation. Reverend Brimstone was as good and as loud as never before. While we were chanting and clapping to support the mesmerizing ‘Holy-Cross, Holy-Cross’ impromptu, a police ambulance drove slowly towards the beach. However, their stretcher party were left empty-handed. The body of the Man was not on the beach any more. They found only a soaked shroud among the driftage and two eggs. The eggs must have been totally spoiled; they were of a bright red colour.
 ‘Let us go boys!’ The Sergeant commanded. ‘The tide must have claimed the body.’
 I am in no doubt that Akua the Liar had a better explanation but she never told us anything about that. If not her flesh, at least her dreams had been mortified for the rest of her life.