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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/24567-h.zip b/24567-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d155447 --- /dev/null +++ b/24567-h.zip diff --git a/24567-h/24567-h.htm b/24567-h/24567-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0dd3605 --- /dev/null +++ b/24567-h/24567-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1902 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blind Man's Lantern, by Allen Kim Lang. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + + .tr { text-align:left; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 2em; + background-color: #f6f2f2; color: black; border: solid black 1px;} + + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blind Man's Lantern, by Allen Kim Lang + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Blind Man's Lantern + +Author: Allen Kim Lang + +Illustrator: Schelling + +Release Date: February 10, 2008 [EBook #24567] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLIND MAN'S LANTERN *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<p class="tr"> <b>Transcriber's note.</b> +<br />This etext was produced from Analog December 1962. +Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the +U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 444px;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="444" height="441" alt="cover" title="cover" /> +</div> + + + + +<h1>Blind Man's Lantern</h1> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Successful colonies among the stars require interstellar ships—but +they require, also, a very special kind of man. A kind you might +not think to look for....</p></div> + +<h3>by</h3> + +<h2>Allen Kim Lang</h2> + +<h3>Illustrated by Schelling</h3> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/illus1.png" width="400" height="546" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Walking home in the dark from an evening +spent in mischief, a young man spied coming toward him down the +road a person with a lamp. When the wayfarers drew abreast, the +play-boy saw that the other traveler was the Blind Man from his +village. "Blind Man," the youngster shouted across the road, "what +a fool you be! Why, old No-Eyes, do you bear a lantern, you whose +midnight is no darker than his noonday?" The Blind Man lifted his +lamp. "It is not as a light for myself that I carry this, Boy," he +said, "it is to warn off you fools with eyes."</i></p></div> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p>—<i>Hausa proverb</i></p></div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;"> +<img src="images/illus2.png" width="460" height="265" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + + +<p>The Captain shook hands with the black-hatted Amishman while the woman +stood aside, not concerning herself with men's business. "It's been a +pleasure to have you and <i>Fraa</i> Stoltzfoos aboard, Aaron," the Captain +said. "Ship's stores are yours, my friend; if there's anything you need, +take it and welcome. You're a long way from the corner grocery."</p> + +<p>"My Martha and I have all that's needful," Aaron Stoltzfoos said. "We +have our plow, our seed, our land. Captain, please tell your men, who +treated us strangers as honored guests, we thank them from our hearts. +We'll not soon forget their kindness."</p> + +<p>"I'll tell them," the Captain promised. Stoltzfoos hoisted himself to +the wagon seat and reached a hand down to boost his wife up beside him. +Martha Stoltzfoos sat, blushing a bit for having displayed an accidental +inch of black stocking before the ship's officers. She smoothed down her +black skirts and apron, patted the candle-snuffer <i>Kapp</i> into place over +her prayer-covering, and tucked the wool cape around her arms and +shoulders. The world outside, her husband said, was a cold one.</p> + +<p>Now in the Stoltzfoos wagon was the final lot of homestead goods with +which these two Amishers would battle the world of Murna. There was the +plow and bags of seed, two crates of nervous chickens; a huge, round +tabletop; an alcohol-burning laboratory incubator, bottles of +agar-powder, and a pressure cooker that could can vegetables as readily +as it could autoclave culture-media. There was a microscope designed to +work by lamplight, as the worldly vanity of electric light would ill +suit an Old Order bacteriologist like Martha Stoltzfoos. Walled in by +all this gear was another passenger due to debark on Murna, snuffling +and grunting with impatience. "<i>Sei schtill</i>, Wutzchen," Stoltzfoos +crooned. "You'll be in your home pen soon enough."</p> + +<p>The Captain raised his hand. The Engineer punched a button to tongue the +landing ramp out to Murnan earth. Cold air rammed in from the outside +winter. The four horses stomped their hoofs on the floor-plates, their +breath spikes of steam. Wutzchen squealed dismay as the chill hit his +nose.</p> + +<p>"We're <i>reddi far geh</i>, Captain," Stoltzfoos said. "My woman and I +invite you and your men to feast at our table when you're back in these +parts, five years hence. We'll stuff you fat as sausages with onion +soup and Pannhaas, Knepp and Ebbelkuche, shoo-fly pie and <i>scharifer</i> +cider, if the folk here grow apples fit for squeezing."</p> + +<p>"You'll have to set up planks outdoors to feed the lot I'll be bringing, +Aaron," the Captain said. "Come five-years' springtime, when I bring +your Amish neighbors out, I'll not forget to have in my pockets a toot +of candy for the little Stoltzes I'll expect to see underfoot." Martha, +whose English was rusty, blushed none the less. Aaron grinned as he +slapped the reins over the rumps of his team. "Giddap!" The cart rumbled +across the deck and down the ramp, onto the soil of Murna. Yonnie, the +Ayrshire bull, tossed his head and sat as the rope tightened on his +noseband. He skidded stubbornly down the ramp till he felt cold earth +against his rear. Accepting fate, Yonnie scrambled up and plodded after +the wagon. As the Stoltzfooses and the last of their off-worldly goods +topped a hillock, they both turned to wave at the ship's officers. Then, +veiled by the dusty fall of snow, they disappeared.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"I don't envy them," the Engineer said, staring out into the wintery +world.</p> + +<p>"Hymie, were you born in a barn?" the Exec bellowed.</p> + +<p>"Sorry, sir." The Engineer raised the landing ramp. Heaters hummed to +thaw the hold's air. "I was thinking about how alone those two folks are +now."</p> + +<p>"Hardly alone," the Captain said. "There are four million Murnans, +friendly people who consider a white skin no more than a personal +idiosyncrasy. Aaron's what his folks call a <i>Chentelmaan</i>, too. He'll +get along."</p> + +<p>"Chentelmaan-schmentelmaan," the Engineer said. "Why'd he come half +across Creation to scratch out a living with a horse-drawn plow?"</p> + +<p>"He came out here for dirt," the Captain said. "Soil is more than +seed-bed to the Amish. It feeds the Old Order they're born to. Aaron +and Martha Stoltzfoos would rather have built their barns beside the +Susquehanna, but all the land there's taken. Aaron could have taken a +job in Lancaster, too; he could have shaved off his beard, bought a +Chevie and moved to the suburbs, and settled down to read an +English-language Bible in a steepled church. Instead, he signed a +homestead-contract for a hundred acres eighty light-years from home; and +set out to plow the land like his grandpop did. He'll sweat hard for his +piece of Murna, but the Amish always pay well for their land."</p> + +<p>"And what do we, the government, I mean, get from the deal?" the Exec +wanted to know. "This wagon of ours doesn't run on hay, like Aaron's +does."</p> + +<p>"Cultures skid backwards when they're transplanted," the Captain said. +"Murnan culture was lifted from Kano, a modern city by the standards of +the time; but, without tools and with a population too small to support +technology, the West African apostates from Islam who landed here four +hundred years ago slid back to the ways of their grandparents. We want +them to get up to date again. We want Murna to become a market. That's +Aaron's job. Our Amishman has got to start this planet back toward the +machine age."</p> + +<p>"Seems an odd job to give a fellow who won't drive a car or read by +electric light," the Engineer observed.</p> + +<p>"Not so odd," the Captain said. "The Amish pretty much invented American +agriculture, you know. They've developed the finest low-energy farming +there is. Clover-growing, crop-rotation, using animal manures, those are +their inventions. Aaron, by his example, will teach the natives here +Pennsylvania farming. Before you can say Tom Malthus, there'll be steel +cities in this wilderness, filled with citizens eager to open charge +accounts for low-gravs and stereo sets."</p> + +<p>"You expect our bearded friend to reap quite a harvest, Captain," the +Engineer said. "I just hope the natives here let him plant the seed."</p> + +<p>"Did you get along with him, Hymie?"</p> + +<p>"Sure," the Engineer said. "Aaron even made our smiths, those human +sharks bound for Qureysh, act friendly. For all his strange ways, he's a +nice guy."</p> + +<p>"Nice guy, hell," the Captain said. "He's a genius. That +seventeenth-century un-scientist has more feeling for folkways in his +calloused left hand than you'd find in all the Colonial Survey. How do +you suppose the Old Order maintains itself in Pennsylvania, a tiny +Deitsch-speaking enclave surrounded by calico suburbs and ten-lane +highways? They mind their business and leave the neighbors to theirs. +The Amish have never been missionaries—they learned in 1600 that +missionaries are resented, and either slaughtered or absorbed."</p> + +<p>"Sometimes digestively," the Engineer remarked.</p> + +<p>"Since the Thirty Years' War, back when 'Hamlet' was opening in London, +these people have been breeding a man who can fit one special niche in +society. The failures were killed in the early days, or later went gay +and took the trappings of the majority. The successes stayed on the +farm, respected and left alone. Aaron has flirted with our century; he +and his wife learned some very un-Amish skills at the Homestead School. +The skill that makes Aaron worth his fare out here, though, is an Amish +skill, and the rarest one of all. He knows the Right Way to Live, and +lives it; but he knows, too, that your Truth-of-the Universe is +something different. And right, for you. He's quite a man, our Aaron +Stoltzfoos. That's why we dropped him here."</p> + +<p>"Better him than me," the Engineer said.</p> + +<p>"Precisely," the Captain said. He turned to the Exec. "As soon as we've +lifted, ask Colonel Harris to call on me in my cabin, Gene. Our Marines +had better fresh-up their swordsmanship and cavalry tactics if they're +to help our Inad Tuaregs establish that foundry on Qureysh."</p> + +<p>"It sometimes seems you're more Ship's Anthropologist than Captain," the +Engineer remarked.</p> + +<p>"I'm an anthro-apologist, Hymie, like Mr. Kipling," the Captain said. +"<i>There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays. +And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!</i>" Bells rang, and the ship +surged. "Aaron and Martha, God keep you," the Captain said.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Whoa!" Aaron shouted. He peered back toward the ship, floating up into +grayness, the cavitation of her wake stirring the snow into patterns +like fine-veined marble. "<i>Gott saygen eich</i>," he said, a prayer for his +departing friends.</p> + +<p>His wife shivered. "It's cold enough to freeze the horns off a +mooley-cow," she said. She glanced about at the snow-drifted little +trees and clutched her black cloak tighter. "I'm feared, Stoltz. There's +naught about us now but snow and black heathen."</p> + +<p>"It's fear that is the heathen," Aaron said. "<i>By the word of the Lord +were the heavens made; and the host of them by the breath of His +mouth.</i>" He kissed her. "I welcome you to our new homeland, wife," he +said.</p> + +<p>Behind them Wutzchen—"piglet"—grunted. Martha smiled back at the giant +porker, perched amongst the cases and bags and household goods like the +victim of some bawdy chiavari. "I've never heard a pig mutter so," she +said.</p> + +<p>"If he knew that his business here was to flatter the local lady-pigs +with farrow, Wutzchen would hop out and run," Aaron said.</p> + +<p>"<i>Dummel dich</i>, Stoltz," Martha said. "I've got to make your supper yet, +and we don't have so much as a stove lit in our tent."</p> + +<p>Stoltzfoos slapped the team back into motion. "What we need for our +journey home are a few of the <i>altie lieder</i>," he said, reaching back in +the wagon for his scarred guitar. He strummed and hummed, then began +singing in his clear baritone: "<i>In da guut alt Suumer-zeit</i> ...</p> + +<p>"... <i>In da guut alt Suumer-zeit</i>," Martha's voice joined him. As they +jolted along the path through the pine trees, heading toward +Datura-village, near which their homestead stood, they sang the other +homey songs to the music of the old guitar. "<i>Drawk Mich Zrick zu Alt +Virginye</i>," nostalgic for the black-garbed Plain-Folk left at home. Then +Aaron's fingers danced a livelier tune on the strings: "<i>Ich fang 'n +neie Fashun aw</i>," he crowed, and Martha joined in:</p> + +<p>"A new fashion I'll begin," they sang,</p> + +<p>"The hay I'll cut in the winter;</p> + +<p>"When the sun-heat beats, I'll loaf in the shade.</p> + +<p>"And feast on cherry-pie.</p> + +<p>"I'll get us a white, smearkase cow,</p> + +<p>"And a yard full of guinea-hen geese;</p> + +<p>"A red-beet tree as high as the moon,</p> + +<p>"And a patent-leather fence.</p> + +<p>"The chickens I'll keep in the kitchen," they sang; whereupon Martha +broke down laughing.</p> + +<p>"It's a new world, and for now a cold world; but it's God's world, with +home just up ahead," Aaron shouted. He pulled the wagon up next to the +arctic tent that was to be their temporary farmhouse, beside the wagon +loads of provision he'd brought before. He jumped down and swung Martha +to earth. "Light the stove, woman; make your little kitchen bright, +while I make our beasts feel welcome."</p> + +<p>The Amishwoman pushed aside the entrance flap of the tent. Enclosed was +a circle some twelve feet wide. The floor was bare earth. Once warmed by +the pump-up "naptha" lantern and the gasoline hotplate, it would become +a bog. Martha went out to the wagon to get a hatchet and set out for the +nearby spinny of pines to trim off some twigs. Old Order manner forbid +decorative floor-coverings as improper worldly show; but a springy +carpet of pine-twigs could be considered as no more than a wooden floor, +keeping two Plain Folk from sinking to their knees in mud.</p> + +<p>The pots were soon boiling atop the two-burner stove, steaming the +tent's air with onion-tangy <i>tzvivvele Supp</i> and the savory pork-smell +of <i>Schnitz un Knepp</i>, a cannibal odor that disturbed not a bit +Wutzchen, snoring behind the cookstove. Chickens, penned beneath the +bed, chuckled in their bedtime caucus. The cow stood cheek-by-jowl with +Yonnie, warming him with platonic graciousness as they shared the hay +Aaron had spread before them. Martha stirred her soup. "When the bishop +married me to you," she told Aaron, "he said naught of my having to +sleep with a pig."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but I thought you knew that to be the purpose of Christian +marriage, woman," Aaron said, standing close.</p> + +<p>"It's Wutz I mean," she said. "Truly, I mind not a bit living as in one +of those automobile-wagons, since it's with you, and only for a little +while."</p> + +<p>"I'll hire a crew of our neighbors to help with the barn tomorrow," +Aaron said. "That done, you'll have but one pig to sleep with."</p> + +<p>After grace, they sat on cases of tobacco to eat their meal from a table +of feed sacks covered with oilcloth. "The man in the ship's little +kitchen let me make and freeze pies, Stoltz," Martha said. "He said we'd +have a deepfreeze big as all outdoors, without electric, so use it. Eat +till it's all, <i>Maan</i>; there's more back."</p> + +<p>Yonnie bumped against Aaron's eating-elbow. "No man and his wife have +eaten in such a zoo since Noah and his wife left the ark," Aaron said. +He cut a slice of Schnitz-pie and palmed it against the bull's big snout +to be snuffled up. "He likes your cooking," he said.</p> + +<p>"So wash his face," Martha told him.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Outside the tent there was a clatter of horse-iron on frozen ground. +"What the die-hinker is that?" Aaron demanded. He stood and picked up +the naphtha lantern.</p> + +<p>Outside, Aaron saw a tall black stranger, astride a horse as pale as the +little Murnan moons that lighted him. "<i>Rankeshi dade!</i>" the visitor +bellowed.</p> + +<p>"May your life be a long one!" Aaron Stoltzfoos repeated in Hausa. +Observing that his caller was brandishing a clenched fist, the Amishman +observed the same ambiguous courtesy. "If you will enter, O Welcome +Stranger, my house will be honored."</p> + +<p>"Mother bless thee, Bearded One," the Murnan said. He dismounted, +tossing his reins to one of the four retainers who remained on +horseback. He entered the tent after Aaron; and stared about him at the +animals, letting his dark eyes flick across Martha's unveiled face. At +the Amishman's invitation, the visitor sat himself on a tobacco case, +revealing as he crossed his legs elaborately embroidered trousers and +boot tops worked with designs that would dazzle a Texan. Martha bustled +about hiding the remains of their meal.</p> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 451px;"> +<img src="images/illus3.png" width="451" height="500" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + + +<p>The Murnan's outer dress was a woolen <i>riga</i>, the neckless gown of his +West-African forefathers, with a blanket draped about his shoulders, +exactly as those ancestors had worn one in the season of the cold wind +called harmattan. Aaron introduced himself as Haruna, the Hausa version +of his name; and the guest made himself known as Sarki—Chief—of the +village of Datura. His given name was Kazunzumi. Wutzchen snuffled in +his sleep. The Sarki glanced at the huge pig and smiled. Aaron relaxed a +bit. The Islamic interdict on swine had been shed by the Murnans when +they'd become apostates, just as Colonial Survey had guessed.</p> + +<p>Stoltzfoos' Hausa, learned at the Homestead School at Georgetown +University, proved adequate to its first challenge in the field, though +he discovered, with every experimenter in a new language, that his most +useful phrase was <i>magana sanoo-sanoo</i>: "please speak slowly." Aaron let +the Chief commence the desultory conversation that would precede talk of +consequence. Martha, ignored by the men, sat on the edge of the bed, +reading the big German-language Bible. Aaron and Kazunzumi sang on in +the heathen tongue about weather, beasts, and field-crops.</p> + +<p>The Sarki leaned forward to examine Aaron's beard and shaven upper lip, +once; and smiled. The Murnan does not wear such. He looked at Martha +more casually now, seeing that the husband was not disgraced by his +wife's naked face; and remarked on the whiteness of her skin in the same +tones he'd mentioned Wutzchen's remarkable girth.</p> + +<p>Aaron asked when the snows would cease, when the earth would thaw. The +Sarki told him, and said that the land here was as rich as manure. +Gradually the talk worked round to problems involving carpenters, nails, +lumber, hinges—and money. Aaron was pleased to discover that the +natives thought nothing of digging a cellar and raising a barn in +midwinter, and that workers could be easily hired.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Sarki Kazunzumi stood and slapped his palms together. The tent +flap was shoved open. Bowed servants, who'd shivered outside for over an +hour, placed their master's presents on the sack table, on the twig +floor, even beside Martha on the bed. There were iron knives, a roast +kid, a basket of peanuts, a sack of roasted coffee beans, a string of +dried fruit, and a tiny earthware flask of perfume. There was even a +woolen riga for Aaron, black, suggesting that the Survey had said a bit +to the natives about Amish custom; and there were bolts of +bright-patterned cloth too worldly for aught but quilts and +infant-dresses, brightening Martha's eyes.</p> + +<p>Aaron stood to accept the guest gifts with elaborate thanks. Sarki +Kazunzumi as elaborately bemeaned his offerings. "Musa the carpenter +will appear on tomorrow's tomorrow," he said. "You will, the Mother +willing, visit me in Datura tomorrow. We will together purchase lumber +worthy of my friend-neighbor's barn-making. May the Mother give you +strength to farm, Haruna! May the Mother grant you the light of +understanding!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Sannu, sannu!</i>" Stoltzfoos responded. He stood at the door of his +tent, holding his lantern high to watch the Sarki and his servants ride +off into the darkness.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"<i>Er iss en groesie Fisch, nee?</i>" Martha asked.</p> + +<p>"The biggest fish in these parts," Aaron agreed. "Did you understand our +talk?"</p> + +<p>"The heathen speech is hard for me to learn, Stoltz," Martha admitted, +speaking in the dialect they'd both been reared to. "While you had only +the alien speech to study, I spent my time learning to grow the buglets +and tell the various sorts apart. Besides, <i>unser guutie Deitschie +Schproech, asz unser Erlayser schwetzt, iss guut genunk fa mier</i>." (Our +honest German tongue, that our Saviour spoke, is good enough for me).</p> + +<p>Aaron laughed. "So <i>altfashuned</i> a <i>Maedel</i> I married," he said. "Woman, +you must learn the Hausa, too. We must be friends to these <i>Schwotzers</i>, +as we were friends with the English-speakers back in the United +Schtayts." He pushed aside the bolt of Murnan cloth to sit beside his +wife, and leafed through the pages of their <i>Familien-Bibel</i>, pages +lovingly worn by his father's fingers, and his grandfather's. "Listen," +he commanded:</p> + +<p>"<i>For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks +of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; +a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; +a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread +without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose +stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou +hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord they God for the +good land which He hath given thee.</i>" Aaron closed the big book +reverently. "Awmen," he said.</p> + +<p>"Awmen," the woman echoed. "Aaron, with you beside me, I am not +fretful."</p> + +<p>"And with the Lord above us, I fear not in a strange land," Aaron said. +He bent to scrape a handful of earth from beneath Martha's pine-twig +carpet. "<i>Guuter Gruundt</i>," he said. "This will grow tall corn. Tobacco, +too; the folk here relish our leaf. There will be deep grasses for the +beasts when the snow melts. We will prosper here, wife."</p> + +<p>The next morning was cold, but the snowfall had ceased for a spell. The +Stoltzfooses had risen well before the dawn; Martha to feed herself, her +husband, and the chickens; Aaron to ready the horse and wagon for a trip +into Datura. He counted out the hoard of golden cowries he'd been loaned +as grubstake, did some arithmetic, and allowed his wife to pour him a +second cup of coffee for the road. "You may expect the Sarki's wives to +visit while I'm gone," he remarked.</p> + +<p>"I'd be scared half to death!" Martha Stoltzfoos said. Her hands went to +the back of her head, behind the lace prayer covering. "My hair's all +strooby, this place is untidy as an auction yard; besides, how can I +talk with those dark and heathen women? Them all decked out in golden +bangles and silken clothes, most likely, like the bad lady of Babylon? +Aaron Stoltz, I would admire a pretty to ride into town with you."</p> + +<p>"Haggling for hired-help is man's <i>Bissiniss</i>." he said. "When +Kazunzumi's women come, feed them pie and peaches from the can. You'll +find a way to talk, or women are not sisters. I'll be back home in time +for evening chores."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Bumping along the trail into Datura, Aaron Stoltzfoos studied the land. +A world that could allow so much well-drained black soil to go unfarmed +was fortunate indeed, he mused. He thought of his father's farm, which +would be his elder brother's, squeezed between railroad tracks and a +three-lane highway, pressed from the west by an Armstrong Cork plant, +the very cornstalks humming in harmony with the electric lines strung +across the fields. This land was what the old folks had sought in +America so long ago: a wilderness ripe for the plow.</p> + +<p>The wagon rumbled along the hoof-pocked frozen clay. Aaron analyzed the +contours of the hills for watershed and signs of erosion. He studied the +patterns of the barren winter fields, fall-plowed and showing here and +there the stubble of a crop he didn't recognize. When the clouds scudded +for a moment off the sun, he grinned up, and looked back blinded to the +road. Good tilth and friendship were promised here, gifts to balance +loneliness. Five years from spring, other Amish folk would come to +homestead—what a barn-raising they'd have! For now, though, he and +Martha, come from a society so close-knit that each had always known the +yield-per-acre of their remotest cousin-german, were in a land as +strange as the New York City Aaron, stopping in for a phone-call to the +vet had once glimpsed on the screen of a gay-German neighbor's +stereo-set.</p> + +<p>Datura looked to Aaron like a city from the Bible, giving it a certain +vicarious familiarity. The great wall was a block of sunbaked mud, fifty +feet tall at the battlements, forty feet thick at its base; with bright, +meaningless flags spotted on either side of the entrance tower. The +cowhide-shielded gate was open. Birds popped out of mud nests glued to +the mud wall and chattered at Aaron. Small boys wearing too little to be +warm appeared at the opening like flies at a hog-slaughtering to add to +the din, buzzing and hopping about and waving their arms as they called +companions to view the black-bearded stranger.</p> + +<p>Aaron whoaed his horse and took a handful of <i>anenes</i>, copper +tenth-penny bits, to rattle between his hands. "<i>Zonang!</i>" he shouted: +"Come here! Is there a boy amongst you brave enough to ride with an +off-worlder to the Sarki's house, pointing him the way?"</p> + +<p>One of the boys laughed at Aaron's slow, careful Hausa. "Let Black-Hat's +whiskers point him the way!" the boy yelled.</p> + +<p>"<i>Uwaka! Ubaka!</i>" Damning both parents of the rude one, another +youngster trotted up to Aaron's wagon and raised a skinny brown fist in +greeting. "Sir Off-Worlder, I who am named Waziri, Musa-the-Carpenter's +son, would be honored to direct you to the house of Sarki Kazunzumi."</p> + +<p>"The honor, young man, is mine," Stoltzfoos assured the lad, raising his +own fist gravely. "My name is Haruna, son of Levi," he said, reaching +down to hoist the boy up beside him on the wagon's seat. "Your friends +have ill manners." He giddapped the horse.</p> + +<p>"Buzzard-heads!" Waziri shouted back at his whilom companions.</p> + +<p>"Peace, Waziri!" Aaron protested. You'll frighten my poor horse into +conniptions. Do you work for your father, the carpenter?"</p> + +<p>"<i>To</i>, honorable Haruna," the boy said. "Yes." The empty wagon thumped +over the wheel-cut streets like a wooden drum. "By the Mother, sir, I +have great knowledge of planing and joining; of all the various sorts of +wood, and the curing of them; all the tools my father uses are as +familiar to me as my own left hand."</p> + +<p>"Carpentry is a skillful trade," Aaron said. "Myself, I am but a +farmer."</p> + +<p>"By Mother's light! So am I!" Waziri said, dazzled by this coincidence. +"I can cultivate a field free of all its noxious weeds and touch never a +food-plant. I can steer a plow straight as a snapped chalk-string, grade +seed with a sure eye; I can spread manure—"</p> + +<p>"I'm sure you can, Waziri," Aaron said. "I need a man of just those rare +qualifications to work for me. Know you such a paragon?"</p> + +<p>"Mother's name! Myself, your Honor!"</p> + +<p>Aaron Stoltzfoos shook the hand of his hired man, an alien convention +that much impressed Waziri. The boy was to draw three hundred anenes a +day, some thirty-five cents, well above the local minimum-wage +conventions; and he would get his bed and meals. Aaron's confidence that +the boastful lad would make a farmer was bolstered by Waziri's loud +calculations: "Three hundred coppers a day make, in ten day's work, a +bronze cowrie; ten big bronzes make a silver cowrie, the price of an +acre of land. Haruna, will you teach me your off-world farming? Will you +allow me to buy land that neighbors yours?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Sei schtill, Buu</i>," Aaron said, laughing. "Before you reap your first +crop, you must find me the Sarki."</p> + +<p>"We are here, Master Haruna."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The Sarki's house was no larger than its neighbors, Moorish-styled and +domed-roofed like the others; but it wore on its streetside walls +designs cut into the stucco, scrolls and arabesques. Just above the +doorway, which opened spang onto the broadway of Datura, a grinning +face peered down upon the visitors, its eyes ruby-colored glass.</p> + +<p>Waziri pounded the door for Aaron, and stepped aside to let his new +employer do the speaking. They were admitted to the house by a thin, old +man wearing a pink turban. As they followed this butler down a hallway, +Aaron and Waziri heard the shrieks and giggles of feminine consternation +that told of women being herded into the zenana. The Amishman glimpsed +one of the ladies, perhaps Sarki Kazunzumi's most junior wife, dashing +toward the female sanctuary. Her eyes were lozenges of antimony; her +hands, dipped in henna, seemed clad in pale kid gloves. Aaron, recalling +pointers on Murnan etiquette he'd received at Georgetown, elaborately +did not see the lady. He removed his hat as the turbaned butler bowed +him to a plush-covered sofa. Waziri was cuffed to a mat beside the door.</p> + +<p>"<i>Rankeshi dade!</i>" the Sarki said. "May the Mother bring you the light +of understanding."</p> + +<p>"Light and long life, O Sarki," Stoltzfoos said, standing up.</p> + +<p>"Will the guest who honors my roof-cup taste coffee with his fortunate +host?" the Sarki asked.</p> + +<p>"The lucky guest will be ever the Sarki's servant if your Honor allows +him to share his pleasure with his fellow-farmer and employee, Waziri +the son of Musa," Aaron said.</p> + +<p>"You'd better have hired mice to guard your stored grain, O Haruna; and +blowflies to curry your cattle, than to have engaged the son of Musa as +a farmer," Kazunzumi growled. "Waziri has little light of understanding. +He will try to win from the soil what only honest sweat and Mother's +grace can cause to grow. This boy will gray your beard, Haruna."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps the sun that warms the soil will light his brains to +understanding," Aaron suggested.</p> + +<p>"Better that your hand should leave the plowhandle from time to time to +warm his lazy fundament," the Sarki said.</p> + +<p>"Just so, O Sarki," the Amishman said. "If Waziri does not serve me +well, I have an enormous boar who will, if kept long enough from +wholesomer food, rid me of a lazy farm-hand." Waziri grinned at all the +attention he was getting from the two most important men in town, and +sat expectantly as the turbaned elder brought in coffee.</p> + +<p>Stoltzfoos watched the Sarki, and aped his actions. Water was served +with the coffee; this was to rinse the mouth that the beverage could be +tasted with fresh taste buds. The coffee was brown as floodwater silt, +heavy with sugar, and very hot; and the cups had no handles. "You are +the first European I have seen for many years, friend Haruna," the Sarki +said. "It is five years gone that the white off-worlders came, and with +a black man as their voice purchased with silver the land you now +farm."</p> + +<p>"They bought well," Aaron said; "the seller sold justly. When the fist +of winter loosens, the soil will prove as rich as butter."</p> + +<p>"When the first green breaks through, and you may break the soil without +offense, you will do well," Kazunzumi said. "You are a man who loves the +land."</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 213px;"> +<img src="images/illus4.png" width="213" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>"My fathers have flourished with the soil for twenty generations," the +Amishman said. "I pray another twenty may live to inherit my good +fortune."</p> + +<p>"Haruna," the Sarki said, "I see that you are a man of the book, that +volume of which Mother in her grace turns over a fresh page each spring. +Though your skin is as pale as the flesh of my palm, though you have but +one wife, though you speak throat-deep and strangely, yet you and I are +more alike than different. The Mother has given you light, Haruna, her +greatest gift."</p> + +<p>"I thank the Sarki for his words," Aaron said. "Sir, my good and only +wife—I am a poor man, and bound by another law than that of the +fortunate Kazunzumi—adds her thanks to mine for the rich gifts the +Chief of Datura presented us, his servants. In simple thanks, I have +some poor things to tender our benefactor."</p> + +<p>Waziri, perceiving the tenor of Aaron's talk, sprang to his feet and +hastened out to the wagon for the bundles he'd seen under the seat. He +returned, staggering under a seventy-pound bale of long-leaf tobacco, +product of Aaron's father's farm. He went back for a bolt of scarlet +silk for the Sarki's paramount wife, and strings of candy for the great +man's children. He puffed in with one last brown-wrapped parcel, which +he unpacked to display a leather saddle. This confection was embossed +with a hundred intricate designs, rich with silver; un-Amish as a +Christmas tree. Judging from the Sarki's dazzled thanks, the saddle was +just the thing for a Murnan Chief.</p> + +<p>As soon as Kazunzumi had delivered his pyrotechnic speech of thanks, and +had directed that Aaron's gifts be placed on a velvet-draped dais at the +end of the room, a roast kid was brought in. Waziri, half drunk with the +elegance of it all, fell to like any other adolescent boy, and was soon +grease to the armpits. Aaron, more careful, referred his actions to the +Sarki's. The bread must be broken, not cut; and it was eaten with the +right hand only, the left lying in the lap as though broken. Belching +seemed to be <i>de rigueur</i> as a tribute to the cuisine, so Aaron belched +his stomach flat.</p> + +<p>Business could now be discussed. Aaron, having no pencil, traced with a +greasy finger on the tile floor the outlines of the barn and farmhouse +he envisaged. The Sarki from time to time demanded of young Waziri such +facts as a carpenter's son might be expected to know, and added +lumber-prices in his head as Aaron's bank-barn and two-story farmhouse +took form in his imagination. Finally he told the Amishman what the two +buildings would cost. Better pleased by this figure than he'd expected +to be, Aaron initiated the long-drawn ceremony required to discharge +himself from Kazunzumi's hospitality.</p> + + +<p>As the Stoltzfoos wagon jolted out the gate of Datura, bearing the cot +and clothes trunk of Waziri together with the owner of those chattels, +the boys who'd jeered before now stared with respect. The black-hatted +<i>Turawa</i> had been to visit the Sarki; this established him as no safe +man to mock. Waziri gave his late playmates no notice beyond sitting +rather straighter on the wagon seat than was comfortable.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>There was light enough left when they got back to the farm for Aaron and +Waziri to pace out the dimensions of the barn and house. The bank-barn +would go up first, of course. No Christian owner of beasts could consent +to being well-housed while his animals steamed and shivered in a +cloth-sided tent. Waziri pounded stakes into the frozen ground to mark +the corners of the barn. Aaron pointed out the drainage-line that would +have to be ditched, and explained how the removed earth would be packed, +with the clay dug for the cellar, into a ramp leading to the barn's +second story in the back. Come next fall, the hayladder could be pulled +right up that driveway to be unloaded above the stalls. Aaron took the +boy to the frozen-solid creek to show him where a wheel could be placed +to lift water to a spillway for the upper fields. He introduced his new +helper to Wutzchen, and was pleased to hear Waziri speak wistfully of +pork chops. Waziri didn't want to meet Martha yet, though. As a proper +Murnan boy, he was not eager to be introduced to the boss' barefaced +wife, though she bribed him with a fat wedge of applecake.</p> + +<p>When Waziri set out with the lantern to tend to the final outdoor +chores, Aaron inquired of his wife's day. The Sarki's Paramount Wife, +with two servants, had indeed visited, bringing more gifts of food and +clothing. Somehow the four of them had managed to breach the +Hausa-<i>Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch</i> curtain. "What in the world did +you talk about?" Aaron asked.</p> + +<p>"First, not knowing what to say, I showed the ladies a drop of vinegar +under the microscope," Martha said. "They screamed when they saw all the +wriggly worms, and I was put to it to keep them from bundling back home. +Then we talked about you, Stoltz, and about the farm; and when would I +be giving you <i>Kinner</i> to help with all the work," she said. Martha +fiddled with the cloak she was sewing for her husband. "It was largely +their heathen speech we used, so I understood only what they pointed at; +but they ate hearty of anything without vinegar in it, and I laughed +with them like with friends at a quilting-bee. My, Stoltz! Those +<i>Nay-yer</i> women are lovely, all jeweled like queens, even the servant +girls; even though they have no proper understanding of Christian +behavior."</p> + +<p>"Did they make you feel welcome, then?" Aaron asked.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ach, ja!</i> They pitied me, I thought," Martha said. "They said you must +be poor, to have but one wife to comfort you; but they said that if the +crops be good, you can earn a second woman by next winter. <i>Chuudes +Paste!</i>"</p> + +<p>"I hope you told the Sarki's woman we've been married only since +haying-time," Aaron said, "and it's a bit previous for you to be giving +me little farmhands."</p> + +<p>"I did that," Martha said. "I told them, too, that by the time the oak +leaves are the size of squirrel's ears—if this place has oaks, indeed, +or squirrels—we'd have a youngling squalling in our house, loud as any +of the Sarki's."</p> + +<p>Waziri, crouched near the tent to pick up such talk as might pass inside +concerning himself, was at first dismayed by Aaron's whoops of joy. Then +Martha joined her husband in happy laughter. Since her tiny-garments +line had been delivered in Low Dutch, the young Murnan chose to believe +that the enthusiastic sounds he heard within the tent reflected joy at +his employment.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It was cold the week the barn was raised, and the mattocks had heavy +work gouging out frozen earth to be heaped into the bank leading up the +back. The Murnan laborers seemed to think midwinter as appropriate as +any other time for building; they said the Mother slept, and would not +be disturbed. Martha served coffee and buttermilk-pop at break-time, and +presided over noontime feasts, served in several sittings, in the tent. +Before the workers left in the evening, Aaron would give each a drink +out back, scharifer cider, feeling that they'd steamed hard enough to +earn a sip of something volatile. There are matters, he mused, in which +common sense can blink at a bishop; as in secretly trimming one's beard +a bit, for example, to keep it out of one's soup; or plucking a guitar +to raise the spirits.</p> + +<p>When the fortnight's cold work was done, the Stoltzfoos Farm was like +nothing seen before on Murna. The bank-barn was forty feet high. On its +lee side, Aaron had nailed thin, horizontal strips of wood about a foot +apart, hoping to encourage the mud-daubing birds he'd seen on the wall +at Datura to plaster their nests onto his barn, and shop for insects in +his fields. Lacking concrete, he'd constructed a roofless stone hut +abutting the barn to serve as his manure shed. The farmhouse itself was +a bit gay, having an inside toilet to cheat the Murnan winters and a +sunporch for Martha's bacteriological equipment. As the nearest Amish +<i>Volle Diener</i>—Congregational Bishop—was eighty light-years off, and +as the circumstances were unusual, Aaron felt that he and Martha were +safe from the shunning—<i>Meidung</i>—that was the Old Order's manner of +punishing Amischers guilty of "going gay" by breaking the church rules +against worldly show.</p> + +<p>A third outbuilding puzzled the Murnan carpenters even more than the +two-storied wooden house and the enormous barn. This shed had hinged +sidings that could be propped out to let breezes sweep through the +building. Aaron explained to Musa the function of this tobacco shed, +where he would hang his lathes of long-leafed tobacco to cure from +August through November. The tobacco seedlings were already sprouting in +Mason jars on the sunporch window-sills. The bank-barn's basement was +also dedicated to tobacco. Here, in midwinter, Aaron and Martha and +Waziri would strip, size, and grade the dry leaves for sale in Datura. +Tobacco had always been a prime cash-crop for Levi, Aaron's father. +After testing the bitter native leaf, Aaron knew that his Pennsylvania +Type 41 would sell better here than anything else he could grow.</p> + +<p>Martha Stoltzfoos was as busy in her new farmhouse as Aaron and Waziri +were in the barn. Her kitchen stove burned all day. Nothing ever seen in +Lancaster County, this stove was built of fireclay and brick; but the +food it heated was honest Deitsch. There were pickled eggs and red +beets, ginger tomatoes canned back home, spiced peaches, pickled pears, +mustard pickles and chowchow, pickled red cabbage, Schnitz un Knepp, +shoo-fly pie, vanilla pie, rhubarb sauce, Cheddar cheeses the size of +Waziri's head, haystacks of sauerkraut, slices off the great slab of +home-preserved chipped beef, milk by the gallon, stewed chicken, popcorn +soup, rashers of bacon, rivers of coffee. In the evenings, protecting +her fingers from the sin of idleness, Martha quilted and cross-stitched +by lamplight. Already her parlor wall boasted a framed motto that +reduced to half a dozen German words, the Amish philosophy of life: +"What One Likes Doing is No Work."</p> + +<p>For all the chill of the late-winter winds, Aaron kept himself and his +young helper in a sweat. Martha's cooking and the heavy work were +slabbing muscle onto Waziri's lean, brown frame. Aaron's farming +methods, so much different to Murnan routines, puzzled and intrigued the +boy. Aaron was equally bemused by the local taboos. Why, for example, +did all the politer Murnans eat with the right hand only? Why did the +women veil themselves in his presence? And what was this Mother-goddess +worship that seemed to require no more of its adherents than the +inclusion of their deity's name in every curse, formal and profane? +"Think what you please, but not too loud," Aaron cautioned himself, and +carefully commenced to copy those Murnan speech-forms, gestures, and +attitudes that did not conflict with his own deep convictions.</p> + +<p>But the soil was his employment, not socializing. Aaron wormed his +swine, inspected his horse-powered plow and harrow, gazed at the sun, +palpated the soil, and prayed for an early spring to a God who +understood German. Each day, to keep mold from strangling the moist +morsels, he shook the jars of tobacco seed, whose hair-fine sprouts were +just splitting the hulls.</p> + +<p>The rations packaged in Pennsylvania were shrinking. The Stoltzfoos +stake of silver and gold cowries was wasting away. Each night, bruised +with fatigue, Aaron brought his little household into the parlor while +he read from the Book that had bound his folk to the soil. Waziri bowed, +honoring his master's God in his master's manner, but understood nothing +of the hard High German: "<i>For the Lord God will help me: therefore +shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, +and I know I shall not be ashamed. Awmen.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Awmen," said Martha.</p> + +<p>"Awmen," said Waziri, fisting his hand in respect to his friend's +bearded God.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The Murnan neighbors, to whom late winter was the slackest season in the +farm-year, visited often to observe and comment on the off-worlder's +work. Aaron Stoltzfoos privately regarded the endless conversations as +too much of a good thing; but he realized that his answering the +Murnan's questions helped work off the obligation he owed the government +for the eighty light-years' transportation it had given him, the +opportunity he'd been given to earn this hundred acres with five years' +work, and the interest-free loans that had put up his barn and +farmhouse.</p> + +<p>With Waziri hovering near, Aaron's proud lieutenant, the neighbors would +stuff their pipes with native tobacco, a leaf that would have gagged one +of Sir Walter Raleigh's Indian friends, while the Amishman lit a stogie +in self-defense. Why, the neighbor farmers demanded, did Aaron propose +to dust his bean-seeds with a powder that looked like soot? Martha's +microscope, a wonder, introduced the Murnans to bacteria; and Aaron +tediously translated his knowledge of the nitrogen-fixing symbiotes into +Hausa. But there were other questions. What was the purpose of the brush +stacked on top of the smooth-raked beds where Aaron proposed to plant +his tobacco-seedlings? He explained that fire, second best to steaming, +would kill the weed-seeds in the soil, and give the tobacco uncrowded +beds to prosper in.</p> + +<p>Those needles with which he punctured the flanks of his swine and +cattle: what devils did they exorcise? Back to the microscope for an +explanation of the disease-process, a sophistication the Murnans had +lost in the years since they'd left Kano. What were the bits of blue and +pink paper Aaron pressed into mudballs picked up in the various +precincts of his property? Why did those slips oftentime change color, +from blue to pink, or pink-to-blue? What was in those sacks of stuff—no +dung of animals, but a sort of flour—that he intended to work into his +soil? Aaron answered each question as best he could, Waziri +supplying—and often inventing—Hausa words for concepts like +phosphorous, ascarid worms, and litmus.</p> + +<p>Aaron had as much to learn from his brown-skinned neighbors as he had to +teach them. He was persuaded to lay in a supply of seed-yams, +guaranteeing a crop that would bring bronze cowries next fall in Datura, +the price of next year's oil and cloth and tools. The peanut, a legume +Aaron had no experience of beyond purchasing an occasional tooth-ful at +the grocery-store, won half a dozen acres from Korean lespedeza, the +crop he'd at first selected as his soil-improver there. He got +acquainted with a plant no Amishman before him had ever sown, a +crabgrass called fonio, a staple cereal and source of beer-malt on +Murna, imported with the first Nigerian colonists.</p> + +<p>Aaron refused to plant any lalle, the henna-shrub from which the Murnans +made the dye to stain their women's hands, feeling that it would be +improper for him to contribute to such a vanity. Bulrush millet, another +native crop, was ill suited to Aaron's well-drained fields. He planned +to grow corn, though, the stuff his people called <i>Welschkarn</i>—alien +corn. Though American enough, maize had been a foreigner to the first +Amish farmers, and still carried history in its name. This crop was +chiefly for Wutzchen, whose bloodlines, Aaron was confident, would lead +to a crop of pork of a quality these heretics from Islam had never +tasted before.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Work wasn't everything. One Sunday, after he and Martha had sung +together from the <i>Ausbund</i>, and Aaron had read from the <i>Schrift</i> and +the <i>Martyr's Mirror</i>, there was time to play.</p> + +<p>Sarki Kazunzumi and several other gentlemen who enjoyed City Hall or +Chamber of Commerce standing in Datura had come to visit the +Stoltzfooses after lunch; as had Musa the carpenter and his older son, +Dauda, Waziri's brother. Also on the premises were about a dozen of the +local farmers and craftsmen, inspecting the curious architecture the +off-worlder had introduced to their planet. Aaron, observing that the +two classes of his guests were maintaining a polite fiction, each that +the other was not present, had an idea. He'd seen Murnans in town at the +midwinter festival, their status-consciousness forgotten in mutual +quaffs of fonio-beer or barley-brandy, betting together at horse-races +and wheels-of-fortune. "My friends," the Amishman addressed the Murnans +gathered in his barn, inspecting Wutzchen, "let's play a game of ball."</p> + +<p>Kazunzumi looked interested. As the local Chief of State, the Sarki's +approval guaranteed the enthusiasm of all the lesser ranks.</p> + +<p>Aaron explained the game he had in mind. It wasn't baseball, an +"English" sport foreign to Amishmen, who can get through their teens +without having heard of either Comiskey Park or the World Series. Their +game, <i>Mosch Balle</i>, fits a barnyard better.</p> + +<p>In lieu of the regulation softball used in the game of Corner Ball, +Martha had stitched together a sort of large beanbag. The playing-field +Aaron set up with the help of his visitors was a square some twelve +yards on a side, fence-rails being propped up to mark its boundaries and +fresh straw forked onto it six inches deep as footing.</p> + +<p>Aaron's eight-man team was chosen from the working-stiffs. The opposing +eight were the Brass. To start the game, four of the proletarians stood +at the corners of the square; and two men of Kazunzumi's team waited +warily within.</p> + +<p>Aaron commenced to explain the game. To say that the object of <i>Mosch +Balle</i> is for a member of the outer, offensive, team to strike an inner, +defensive man with the ball is inadequate; such an explanation is as +lacking as to explain baseball as the pitcher's effort to throw a ball +so well that it's hittable, and so very well that it yet goes unhit. +Both games have their finer points.</p> + +<p>"Now," Aaron told his guests on the field, "we four on the corners will +toss the ball back and forth amongst ourselves, shouting <i>Hah</i>, <i>Oh</i>, <i>Tay</i>, +with each pitch. Whoever has the ball on <i>Tay</i> has to fling it at one of +the two men inside the square. If he misses, he's Out; and one of the +other men on our team takes his place. If he hits his target-man, the +target's Out, and will be replaced by another man from the Sarki's team. +The team with the last man left on the straw wins the first half. <i>Des +iss der Weeg wie mir's diehne</i>, O.K.?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Afuwo!</i>" the Sarki yelled, a woman's call, grinning, crouched to +spring aside. "Hah!" Aaron shouted, and tossed the ball to Waziri's +older brother, Dauda. "Oh!" Dauda yelled, and threw the ball to the +shoemaker. "Tay!" the cobbler exulted, and slammed the ball at the +lower-ranking of the two men within the square, the village banker. The +shoemaker missed, and was retired.</p> + +<p>The Daturans were soon stripped down to trousers and boots, their black +torsos steaming in the cold air. Aaron removed his shirt—but not his +hat—and so far forgot his Hausa in the excitement that he not only +rooted for his teammates in <i>Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch</i>, but even +punctuated several clumsy plays with raw <i>Fadomm</i>'s.</p> + +<p>Aaron's skill won the first half for his team. Blooded, the Chamber of +Commerce Eight fought through to win the second half. A tie. The +play-off saw the Working-Man's League pummeled to a standstill by the +C-of-C, who took the laurels with a final slam that knocked Waziri into +the straw, protesting that it was an accident.</p> + +<p>Sweating, laughing, social status for the moment forgotten, the teams +and their mobs of fans surged into the farmhouse to demand of Martha +wedges of raisin pie and big cups of strong coffee. As the guests put +their rigas and their white caps back on, and assumed therewith their +game-discarded rank of class, they assured Aaron that the afternoon at +the ball game had been a large success.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The next day was crisp and cold. With nothing more to be done till the +soil thawed, Aaron took Waziri down to the creek to investigate his +project of irrigating the hilltop acres. The flow of water was so feeble +that the little stream was ice to its channel. "Do you have hereabouts a +digger-of-waterholes?" Aaron asked the boy. Waziri nodded, and supplied +the Hausa phrase for this skill. "Good. <i>Wonn's Gottes wille iss</i>, I +will find a spot for them to dig, smelling out the water as can my +cousin Blue Ball Benjamin Blank," Aaron said. "Go get from the barn the +pliers, the hand-tool that pinches."</p> + +<p>Waziri trotted off and brought back the pliers. "What are you up to, +Haruna-boss?" he asked. Aaron was holding the bulldog pliers out before +him, one handle in each hand, parallel to the ground.</p> + +<p>"I am smelling for the well-place," the Amishman said, pacing +deliberately across the field. The boy scampered along beside him. "We +will need at least one well to be safe from August draught. Cousin +Benjamin found the wet depths in this fashion; perhaps it will work for +me." Aaron walked, arms outstretched, for half an hour before his face +grew taut. He slowed his walking and began to work toward the center of +a spiral. Waziri could see the sweat springing up on the young farmer's +brow and fingers, despite the cold breeze that blew. The bulldog pliers +trembled as though responding to the throbbing of an engine. Suddenly, +as though about to be jerked from Aaron's hands, the pliers tugged +downward so forceably that he had to lift his elbows and flex his wrists +to hold onto them. "Put a little pile of stones here, Waziri," he said. +"We'll have the diggers visit as soon as the ground thaws."</p> + +<p>Waziri shook his head. "Haruna, they will not touch soft earth until the +first grass sprouts," he said.</p> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/illus5.png" width="450" height="700" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + + +<p>"Time enough," Aaron said. He looked up to satisfy himself that his +prospective well-site was high enough to avoid drainage from his +pig-yard, then left the Murnan boy to pile up a cairn for the diggers. +It would be good to have a windmill within ear-shot of the house, he +mused; its squeaking would ease Martha with a homey sound.</p> + + +<p>Alone for a few minutes, Aaron retired to the workshop in the cellar of +the barn. He planed and sanded boards of a native lumber very like to +tulipwood. Into the headboard of the cradle he was making, he +keyhole-sawed the same sort of broad Dutch heart that had marked his own +cradle, and the cradles of all his family back to the days in the +Rhineland, before they'd been driven to America.</p> + +<p>Martha Stoltzfoos was speaking Hausa better than she'd spoken English +since grade-school days, and she kept busy in the little bacteriological +laboratory on her sunporch, keeping fresh the skills she'd learned at +Georgetown and might some day need in earnest; but she still grew +homesick as her child-coming day drew nearer. It was wrong, she told +Aaron, for an Amishwoman to have heathen midwives at her lying-in. For +all their kindness, the Murnan women could never be as reassuring as the +prayer-covered, black-aproned matrons who'd have attended Martha back +home. "Ach, Stoltz," she told her husband, "if only a few other of +<i>unser sart Leit</i> could have come here with us."</p> + +<p>"Don't worry, Love," Aaron said. "I've eased calves and colts enough +into the world; man-children can't come so different."</p> + +<p>"You talk like a man," Martha accused him. "I wish my Mem was just down +the road a piece, ready to come a-running when my time came," she said. +She put one hand on her apron. <i>Chuudes Paste!</i> The little rascal is +wild as a colt, indeed. Feel him, Stoltz!"</p> + +<p>Aaron dutifully placed his hand to sense the child's quickening. "He'll +be of help on the farm, so strong as he is," he remarked. Then, tugging +his hat down tight, Aaron went outdoors, bashful before this mystery.</p> + +<p>The little creek had thawed, and the light of the sun on a man's face +almost gave back the heat the air extorted. Waziri had gone to town +today for some sort of Murnan spring-festival, eager to celebrate his +hard-earned wealth on his first day off in months. The place seemed +deserted, Aaron felt, without the boy; without the visitors he'd played +ball and talked crops with, striding up in their scarlet-trimmed rigas +to gossip with their friend Haruna.</p> + +<p>Between the roadway and the house, Aaron knelt to rake up with his +fingers a handful of the new-thawed soil. He squeezed it. The clod in +his hand broke apart of its own weight: it was not too wet to work. +Festival-day though it was to his <i>Schwotzer</i> neighbors, he was eager to +spear this virgin soil with his plow blade.</p> + +<p>Aaron strode back to the barn. He hitched Rosina—the dappled mare, +named "Raisin" for her spots—to the plow and slapped her into motion. +Sleek with her winter's idleness, Rosina was at first unenthusiastic +about the plow; but the spring sun and honest exercise warmed her +quickly. Within half an hour she was earning her keep. Though Aaron was +plowing shallow, the compact soil broke hard. Rosina leaned into the +traces, leaving hoofprints three inches deep. No gasoline tractor, Aaron +mused, could ever pull itself through soil so rich and damp. +<i>Geilsgrefte</i>, horsepower, was best exerted by a horse, he thought.</p> + +<p>The brown earth-smells were good. Aaron kicked apart the larger clods, +fat with a planet-life of weather and rich decay. This land would take a +good deal of disking to get it into shape. His neighbors, who'd done +their heavy plowing just after last fall's first frost, were already +well ahead of him. He stabled Rosina at sundown, and went in to sneak a +well-earned glass of hard cider past Martha's teetotaling eye.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Musa the carpenter brought his son home well after dark. Waziri had had +adventures, the old man said; dancing, gambling on the Fool's Wheel, +sampling fonio-beer, celebrating his own young life's springtime with +the earth's. Both the old man and the boy were barefoot, Aaron noticed; +but said nothing: perhaps shoelessness was part of their +spring-festival.</p> + +<p>Waziri a bit <i>geschwepst</i> with the beer, tottered off to bed. "Thanks to +you, friend Haruna, that boy became a man today," the carpenter said. He +accepted a glass of Aaron's cider. "Today Waziri's wallet jingled with +bronze and copper earned by his own sweat, a manful sound to a lad of +fifteen summers. I ask pardon for having returned your laborer in so +damaged a condition, brother Haruna; but you may be consoled with the +thought that the Mother's festival comes but once in the twelve-month."</p> + +<p>"No harm was done, brother Musa," Aaron said, offering his visitor +tobacco. "In my own youth, I sometimes danced with beer-light feet to +the music of worldly guitars; and yet I reached a man's estate."</p> + +<p>Offered a refill for his pipe, Musa raised a hand in polite refusal. +"Tomorrow's sun will not wait on our conversation, and much must be +done, in the manner of racers waiting the signal, before the first blade +breaks the soil," he said. "Good night, brother Haruna; and may Mother +grant you light!"</p> + +<p>"Mother keep you, brother Musa," Aaron murmured the heathen phrase +without embarrassment. "I'll guide your feet to your wagon, if I may."</p> + +<p>Aaron, carrying the naphtha lantern, led the way across the strip of +new-plowed soil. Set by frost into plastic mounds and ridges, the earth +bent beneath his shoes and the carpenter's bare feet. Aaron swung Musa's +picket-iron, the little anchor to which his horse was tethered, into the +wagon, noticing that it had been curiously padded with layers of quilted +cloth. "May you journey home in good health, brother Musa," he said.</p> + +<p>"<i>Uwaka!</i>" Musa shouted, staring at the plow-cuts.</p> + +<p>Aaron Stoltzfoos dropped the lantern to his side, amazed that the +dignified old man could be guilty of such an obscenity. Perhaps he'd +misheard. "Haruna, you have damned yourself!" Musa bellowed. "Cursed be +this farm! Cursed be thy farming! May thy seedlings rot, may thy corn +sprout worms for tassles, may your cattle stink and make early bones!"</p> + +<p>"Brother Musa!" Aaron said.</p> + +<p>"I am no sib to you, O Bearded One," Musa said. "Nor will I help you +carry the curse you have brought upon yourself by today's ill-doing." He +darted back to the farmhouse, where he ordered half-wakened Waziri to +pad barefoot after him to the wagon, rubbing his eyes. "Come, son," Musa +said. "We must flee these ill-omened fields." Without another word to +his host, the carpenter hoisted his boy into the wagon, mounted, and set +off into the night. The hoofs of his horse padded softly against the +dirt road, unshod.</p> + +<p>Martha met the bewildered Aaron at the door, wakened by Musa's shouting. +"<i>Wass gibt</i>, Stoltz?" she asked. "What for was all the carry-on?"</p> + +<p>Aaron tugged at his beard. "I don't know, woman," he admitted. "Musa the +carpenter took one look at the plowing I did today, then cursed me as +though he'd caught me spitting in his well. He got Waziri up from bed +and took him home." He took his wife's hand. "I'm sorry he woke you up, +Liebchen."</p> + +<p>"It was not so much the angry carpenter who waked me as the little jack +rabbit you're father to," Martha said. "As you say, a <i>Bun</i> who can kick +so hard, and barefoot, too, will be a strong one once he's born."</p> + +<p>Aaron was staring out the window onto the dark road. "<i>Farwas hot Musa +sell gehuh?</i>" he asked himself. "What for did Musa do such a thing? He +knows that our ways are different to his. If I did aught wrong, Musa +must know it was done not for want to harm. I will go to the village +tomorrow; Musa must forgive me and explain."</p> + +<p>"He will, Stoltz." Martha said. "<i>Kuum, schloef.</i> You'll be getting up +early."</p> + +<p>"How can I sleep, not knowing how I have hurt my friend?" Aaron asked.</p> + +<p>"You must," Martha urged him. "Let your cares rest for the night, +Aaron."</p> + +<p>In the morning, Stoltzfoos prepared for his trip into Datura by donning +his Sunday-best. He clipped a black patent-leather bow tie, a wedding +gift, onto his white shirt: and fastened up his best broadfall trousers +with his dress suspenders. Over this, Aaron put his <i>Mutzi</i>, the tailed +frock coat that fastened with hooks-and-eyes. When he'd exchanged his +broad-brimmed black felt working-hat for another just the same, but +unsweated, Aaron was dressed as he'd be on his way to a House-Amish +Sunday meeting back home. "I expect no trouble here, Martha," he said, +tucking a box of stogies under his arm as a little guest-gift for the +old carpenter.</p> + +<p>"Hurry home, Stoltz; I feel wonderful busy about the middle," Martha +said. There was a noise out on the road. "Listen!" she said. "Go look +the window out, now; someone is coming the yard in!"</p> + +<p>Aaron hastened to lift the green roller-blind over the parlor window. +"Ach; it is the <i>groesie Fisch</i>, Sarki Kazunzumi, with half the folk +from town," he said. "Stay here, woman. I will out and talk with them."</p> + +<p>The Sarki sat astride his white pony, staring as Aaron approached him. +Behind their chief, on lesser beasts, sat Kazunzumi's retainers, each +with a bundle in his arms. "Welcome, O Sarki!" Aaron said, raising his +fist.</p> + +<p>Kazunzumi did not return the Amishman's salute. "I return your gifts, +Lightless One," he announced. "They are tainted with your blasphemy." He +nodded, and his servants dismounted to stack at the side of the road +Aaron's guest-gifts of months before. The bale of tobacco was set down, +the bolt of scarlet silk, the chains of candy, the silver-filigreed +saddle. "Now that I owe you naught, Bearded One, we have no further +business with one another." He reined his horse around. "I go in +sadness, Haruna," he said.</p> + +<p>"What did I do, Kazunzumi?" Aaron asked. "What am I to make of your +displeasure?"</p> + +<p>"You have failed us, who was my friend," the Sarki said. "You will leave +this place, taking your woman and your beasts and your sharp-shod +horses."</p> + +<p>"Sir, where am I to go?"</p> + +<p>"Whence came you, Haruna?" the Sarki asked. "Return to your own +black-garbed folk, and injure the Mother no longer with your lack of +understanding."</p> + +<p>"Sarki Kazunzumi, I know not how I erred," Stoltzfoos said. "As for +returning to my own country, that I cannot. The off-world vessel that +brought us here is star-far away; and it will not return until we are +all five summers older. My Martha is besides with child, and cannot +safely travel. My land is ripe for seeding. How can I go now?"</p> + +<p>"There is wilderness to the south, where no son of the Mother lives," +the Sarki said. "Go there. I care not for heathen who are out of my +sight."</p> + +<p>"Sir, show us mercy," Aaron said.</p> + +<p>Kazunzumi danced his shoeless horse around to face Aaron. "Haruna, who +was my friend, whom I thought to stand with me in Mother's light, I +would be merciful; but I cannot be weak. It is not me whom you must +beseech, but the Mother who feeds us all. Make amends to Her, then Sarki +Kazunzumi will give his ear to your pleas. Without amends, Haruna, you +must go from here within the week." Kazunzumi waved his arm and galloped +off toward Datura. His servants followed quickly. On the roadside lay +the gifts, dusted from the dirt raised by the horses.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The Amishman turned toward the house. Martha's face was at the parlor +window, quizzical under her prayer-covering, impatient to hear what had +happened. Aaron plodded back to the house with the evil news, stumbling +over a clod of earth in the new-turned furrows near the road. Martha met +him at the door. "<i>Waas will er?</i>" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"He says we must leave our farm."</p> + +<p>"Why for?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Somehow, I have offended their <i>fadommt</i> Mum-god," Aaron said. "The +Sarki has granted us a week to make ready to go into the wilderness." He +sat on a coffee-colored kitchen chair, his head bowed and his big hands +limp between his knees.</p> + +<p>"Stoltz, where can we go?" Martha asked. "We have no <i>Freindschaft</i>, no +kin, in all this place."</p> + +<p>Aaron tightened his hands into fists. "We will not go!" he vowed. "I +will find a way for us to stay." He broke open the box of cigars that +had been meant as a gift for Musa and clamped one of the black stogies +between his teeth. "What is their <i>heidisch</i> secret?" he demanded. "What +does the Mother want of me?"</p> + +<p>"Aaron Stoltz," Martha said vigorously, "I'll have no man of mine +offering dignity to a heathen god. The <i>Schrift</i> orders us to cut down +the groves of the alien gods, to smash their false images; not to bow +before them. Will you make a golden calf here, as did your namesake +Aaron of Egypt, for whose sin the Children of Israel were plagued?"</p> + +<p>"Woman, I'll not have you preach to me like a servant of the Book," +Aaron said. "It is not for you to cite Scripture." He stared through the +window. "What does the Mother want of me?"</p> + +<p>"As you shout, do not forget that I am a mother, too," Martha said. She +dabbed a finger at her eye.</p> + +<p>"<i>Fagep mir</i>, Liebling," Aaron said. He walked behind the chair where +his wife sat. Tenderly, he kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck. +"I am trying to get inside Musa's head, and Kazunzumi's; I am trying to +see their world through their eyes. It is not an easy thing to do, +Martha. Though I lived for a spell among the 'English,' my head is still +House-Amish; a fat, Dutch cheese."</p> + +<p>"It is a good head," Martha said, relaxing under his massage, "and if +there be cheese-heads hereabouts, it's these blackfolk that wear them, +and not my man."</p> + +<p>"If I knew what the die-hinker our neighbors mean by their Mother-talk, +it might be I could see myself through Murnan eyes, as I can hear a bit +with Hausa ears," Aaron said. "<i>Iss sell nix so</i>, Martha?"</p> + +<p>"We should have stood at home, and thought with our own good heads," she +said.</p> + +<p>"Let me think," Aaron said. "If I were to strike you, wife," he mused, +it could do you great hurt, and harm our unborn child, <i>Nee?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Aaron!" Martha scooted out from under her husbands kneading hands.</p> + +<p>"<i>Druuvel dich net!</i>" he said. "I am only thinking. These blackfolk now, +these neighbors who were before last night our friends, speak of Light +as our bishop at home speaks of Grace. To have it is to have all, to be +one with the congregation. If I can find this Light, we and the Sarki +and his people can again be friends." Aaron sat down. "I must learn what +I have done wrong," he said.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Other than drink a glass of cider now and then, and make worldly music +with a guitar, you've done no wrong," Martha said stubbornly. "You're a +good man."</p> + +<p>"In the Old Order, I am a good man, so long as no <i>Diener</i> makes trouble +over a bit of singing or cider," Aaron said. "As a guest on Murna, I +have done some deed that has hurt this Mother-god, whom our neighbors +hold dear."</p> + +<p>"Heathenish superstition!"</p> + +<p>"Martha, love, I am older than you, and a man," Aaron said. "Give me +room to think! If the goddess-Mother is heathen as Baal, it matters not; +these folk who worship her hold our future in their hands. Besides, we +owe them the courtesy not to dance in their churches nor to laugh at +their prayers; even the 'English' have more grace than that." Aaron +pondered. "Something in the springtime is the Murnan Mother's gift, her +greatest gift. What?"</p> + +<p>"Blaspheme not," Martha said. "Remember Him who <i>causeth the grass to +grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring +forth food out of the earth</i>."</p> + +<p>"Wife, is the True God less, if these people call Him Mother?" Aaron +demanded.</p> + +<p>"We are too far from home," the woman sighed. "Such heavy talk is +wearisome; it is for bishops to discourse so, not ordinary folk like +us."</p> + +<p>"If I can't find the light," Aaron said, "this farm we live on, and +hoped to leave to our children, isn't worth the water in a dish of +soup." He slapped his hands together and stood to pace. "Martha, hear me +out," he said. "If a woman be with child, and a man takes her with lust +and against her will, is not that man accursed?"</p> + +<p>"Aaron!" she said. "<i>Haagott</i>, such wicked talk you make!"</p> + +<p>"Seen with Murnan eyes, have I not done just such a cursed thing?" Aaron +demanded. "The Mother-god of this world is <i>mit Kinndt</i>, fat with the +bounty of springtime. So tender is the swollen belly of the earth that +the people here, simple folk with no more subtle God, strip the iron +from the hoofs of their horses not to bruise her. They bare their feet +in her honor, treat her with the tenderness I treat my beloved Martha. +And to this Goddess, swollen earth, I took the plow! Martha, we are +fortunate indeed that our neighbors are gentle people, or I would be +hanged now, or stoned to death like the wicked in the old days. <i>Ich hot +iere Gotterin awgepockt</i>: I raped their Goddess!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Martha burst into tears. When Aaron stepped forward to comfort her, she +struck his chest with her balled fists. "Stoltz, I wed you despite your +beer-drinking from cans at the Singing, though you play a worldly guitar +and sing the English songs, though people told me you drove your gay +Uncle Amos' black-bumpered Ford before you membered to the district; +still, house-Amish pure Old Order though my people are, I married you, +from love and youngness and girlish ignorance. But I do not care, even +in this wilderness you've brought us to in that big English ship, to +hear such vileness spoke out boldly. Leave me alone."</p> + +<p>"I'll not."</p> + +<p>"You'd best," she said. "I'm sore offended in the lad I'm wifed to."</p> + +<p>"Love, <i>Ich bin sorry</i>," Aaron said. "The Book, though, says just what +our neighbors told me: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set +you free. I have found the truth, the truth of our dark-skinned friends. +I did not want to wound the ears of <i>da Oppel fuun mein Awk</i>, +apple-of-mine-eye sweet Martha; but I must speak out the truth."</p> + +<p>"It is not good enough," Martha sobbed, "that you accept this +brown-skinned, jewel-bedizzened woman-god; but you must make love to +her; and I, wed to you by the Book, nine months gone with <i>Kinndt</i>, am +to make no fuss."</p> + +<p>"I loved the Mother-god with the plow, and accidentally," Aaron +bellowed. "<i>Haagott!</i> woman; have you no funny?"</p> + +<p>"I will birth our child in my lap from laughing," Martha said, weeping. +"Aaron, do what you will. I can hardly walk home to my Mem to bear a son +in my girlhood bedroom. We are like <i>Awduum uuu Ayf</i>, like you said; but +the serpent in this Eden pleases me not."</p> + +<p>"When I spoke of colts, and the borning of them," Aaron said, "I forgot +me that mares are more sensible than human women. Martha, <i>liebe</i> +Martha, you wed a man when you married me. All your vapors are naught +against my having seen the light. If to stay here, on this land already +watered with my hard sweat, I had to slaughter cattle in sacrifice to +the Mother, I'd pick up the knife gladly, and feel it no blasphemy +against our God."</p> + +<p>"Aaron Stoltz," Martha said, "I forbid you to lend honor to this god!"</p> + +<p>Aaron sat. He unlaced his shoes and tugged them off. "Woman," he asked +softly, "you forbid me? Martha, for all the love I bear you, there is +one rule of our folk that's as holy as worship; and that's that the man +is master in his house." He pulled off his black stockings and stood, +barefoot, with callouses won on the black earth of his father's farm; +dressed otherwise meetly as a deacon. "I will walk to Datura on my naked +feet to show our friends I know my wrong-doing, that I have hurt the +belly of the pregnant earth. I will tell Sarki Kazunzumi that I have +seen his light; that my horses will be unshod as I am, that the Mother +will not feel my plow again until the grasses spring, when her time will +be accomplished."</p> + +<p>Martha crossed her hands about her middle. "Ach, Stoltz," she said. "Our +<i>Buu iss reddi far geh</i>, I think. Today will be his birthday. Don't let +your tenderness to the earth keep you from walking swiftly to Datura; +and when you return, come in a wagon with the Sarki's ladies, who +understand midwifery. I think they will find work here."</p> + +<p>"I will hurry, Mother," Aaron promised.</p> + + +<h3>The End.</h3> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blind Man's Lantern, by Allen Kim Lang + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLIND MAN'S LANTERN *** + +***** This file should be named 24567-h.htm or 24567-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/5/6/24567/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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+++ b/24567.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1805 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blind Man's Lantern, by Allen Kim Lang + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Blind Man's Lantern + +Author: Allen Kim Lang + +Illustrator: Schelling + +Release Date: February 10, 2008 [EBook #24567] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLIND MAN'S LANTERN *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's note. + +This etext was produced from Analog December 1962. +Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the +U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. + + * * * * * + + + + +Blind Man's Lantern + +by + +Allen Kim Lang + + Successful colonies among the stars require interstellar ships--but + they require, also, a very special kind of man. A kind you might + not think to look for.... + + +Illustrated by Schelling + +[Illustration] + + + _Walking home in the dark from an evening spent in mischief, a + young man spied coming toward him down the road a person with + a lamp. When the wayfarers drew abreast, the play-boy saw that + the other traveler was the Blind Man from his village. "Blind + Man," the youngster shouted across the road, "what a fool you + be! Why, old No-Eyes, do you bear a lantern, you whose midnight + is no darker than his noonday?" The Blind Man lifted his lamp. + "It is not as a light for myself that I carry this, Boy," he + said, "it is to warn off you fools with eyes."_ + + --_Hausa proverb_ + + + +The Captain shook hands with the black-hatted Amishman while the woman +stood aside, not concerning herself with men's business. "It's been a +pleasure to have you and _Fraa_ Stoltzfoos aboard, Aaron," the Captain +said. "Ship's stores are yours, my friend; if there's anything you need, +take it and welcome. You're a long way from the corner grocery." + +"My Martha and I have all that's needful," Aaron Stoltzfoos said. "We +have our plow, our seed, our land. Captain, please tell your men, who +treated us strangers as honored guests, we thank them from our hearts. +We'll not soon forget their kindness." + +"I'll tell them," the Captain promised. Stoltzfoos hoisted himself to +the wagon seat and reached a hand down to boost his wife up beside him. +Martha Stoltzfoos sat, blushing a bit for having displayed an accidental +inch of black stocking before the ship's officers. She smoothed down her +black skirts and apron, patted the candle-snuffer _Kapp_ into place over +her prayer-covering, and tucked the wool cape around her arms and +shoulders. The world outside, her husband said, was a cold one. + +Now in the Stoltzfoos wagon was the final lot of homestead goods with +which these two Amishers would battle the world of Murna. There was the +plow and bags of seed, two crates of nervous chickens; a huge, round +tabletop; an alcohol-burning laboratory incubator, bottles of +agar-powder, and a pressure cooker that could can vegetables as readily +as it could autoclave culture-media. There was a microscope designed to +work by lamplight, as the worldly vanity of electric light would ill +suit an Old Order bacteriologist like Martha Stoltzfoos. Walled in by +all this gear was another passenger due to debark on Murna, snuffling +and grunting with impatience. "_Sei schtill_, Wutzchen," Stoltzfoos +crooned. "You'll be in your home pen soon enough." + +The Captain raised his hand. The Engineer punched a button to tongue the +landing ramp out to Murnan earth. Cold air rammed in from the outside +winter. The four horses stomped their hoofs on the floor-plates, their +breath spikes of steam. Wutzchen squealed dismay as the chill hit his +nose. + +"We're _reddi far geh_, Captain," Stoltzfoos said. "My woman and I +invite you and your men to feast at our table when you're back in these +parts, five years hence. We'll stuff you fat as sausages with onion +soup and Pannhaas, Knepp and Ebbelkuche, shoo-fly pie and _scharifer_ +cider, if the folk here grow apples fit for squeezing." + +"You'll have to set up planks outdoors to feed the lot I'll be bringing, +Aaron," the Captain said. "Come five-years' springtime, when I bring +your Amish neighbors out, I'll not forget to have in my pockets a toot +of candy for the little Stoltzes I'll expect to see underfoot." Martha, +whose English was rusty, blushed none the less. Aaron grinned as he +slapped the reins over the rumps of his team. "Giddap!" The cart rumbled +across the deck and down the ramp, onto the soil of Murna. Yonnie, the +Ayrshire bull, tossed his head and sat as the rope tightened on his +noseband. He skidded stubbornly down the ramp till he felt cold earth +against his rear. Accepting fate, Yonnie scrambled up and plodded after +the wagon. As the Stoltzfooses and the last of their off-worldly goods +topped a hillock, they both turned to wave at the ship's officers. Then, +veiled by the dusty fall of snow, they disappeared. + + * * * * * + +"I don't envy them," the Engineer said, staring out into the wintery +world. + +"Hymie, were you born in a barn?" the Exec bellowed. + +"Sorry, sir." The Engineer raised the landing ramp. Heaters hummed to +thaw the hold's air. "I was thinking about how alone those two folks are +now." + +"Hardly alone," the Captain said. "There are four million Murnans, +friendly people who consider a white skin no more than a personal +idiosyncrasy. Aaron's what his folks call a _Chentelmaan_, too. He'll +get along." + +"Chentelmaan-schmentelmaan," the Engineer said. "Why'd he come half +across Creation to scratch out a living with a horse-drawn plow?" + +"He came out here for dirt," the Captain said. "Soil is more than +seed-bed to the Amish. It feeds the Old Order they're born to. Aaron +and Martha Stoltzfoos would rather have built their barns beside the +Susquehanna, but all the land there's taken. Aaron could have taken a +job in Lancaster, too; he could have shaved off his beard, bought a +Chevie and moved to the suburbs, and settled down to read an +English-language Bible in a steepled church. Instead, he signed a +homestead-contract for a hundred acres eighty light-years from home; and +set out to plow the land like his grandpop did. He'll sweat hard for his +piece of Murna, but the Amish always pay well for their land." + +"And what do we, the government, I mean, get from the deal?" the Exec +wanted to know. "This wagon of ours doesn't run on hay, like Aaron's +does." + +"Cultures skid backwards when they're transplanted," the Captain said. +"Murnan culture was lifted from Kano, a modern city by the standards of +the time; but, without tools and with a population too small to support +technology, the West African apostates from Islam who landed here four +hundred years ago slid back to the ways of their grandparents. We want +them to get up to date again. We want Murna to become a market. That's +Aaron's job. Our Amishman has got to start this planet back toward the +machine age." + +"Seems an odd job to give a fellow who won't drive a car or read by +electric light," the Engineer observed. + +"Not so odd," the Captain said. "The Amish pretty much invented American +agriculture, you know. They've developed the finest low-energy farming +there is. Clover-growing, crop-rotation, using animal manures, those are +their inventions. Aaron, by his example, will teach the natives here +Pennsylvania farming. Before you can say Tom Malthus, there'll be steel +cities in this wilderness, filled with citizens eager to open charge +accounts for low-gravs and stereo sets." + +"You expect our bearded friend to reap quite a harvest, Captain," the +Engineer said. "I just hope the natives here let him plant the seed." + +"Did you get along with him, Hymie?" + +"Sure," the Engineer said. "Aaron even made our smiths, those human +sharks bound for Qureysh, act friendly. For all his strange ways, he's a +nice guy." + +"Nice guy, hell," the Captain said. "He's a genius. That +seventeenth-century un-scientist has more feeling for folkways in his +calloused left hand than you'd find in all the Colonial Survey. How do +you suppose the Old Order maintains itself in Pennsylvania, a tiny +Deitsch-speaking enclave surrounded by calico suburbs and ten-lane +highways? They mind their business and leave the neighbors to theirs. +The Amish have never been missionaries--they learned in 1600 that +missionaries are resented, and either slaughtered or absorbed." + +"Sometimes digestively," the Engineer remarked. + +"Since the Thirty Years' War, back when 'Hamlet' was opening in London, +these people have been breeding a man who can fit one special niche in +society. The failures were killed in the early days, or later went gay +and took the trappings of the majority. The successes stayed on the +farm, respected and left alone. Aaron has flirted with our century; he +and his wife learned some very un-Amish skills at the Homestead School. +The skill that makes Aaron worth his fare out here, though, is an Amish +skill, and the rarest one of all. He knows the Right Way to Live, and +lives it; but he knows, too, that your Truth-of-the Universe is +something different. And right, for you. He's quite a man, our Aaron +Stoltzfoos. That's why we dropped him here." + +"Better him than me," the Engineer said. + +"Precisely," the Captain said. He turned to the Exec. "As soon as we've +lifted, ask Colonel Harris to call on me in my cabin, Gene. Our Marines +had better fresh-up their swordsmanship and cavalry tactics if they're +to help our Inad Tuaregs establish that foundry on Qureysh." + +"It sometimes seems you're more Ship's Anthropologist than Captain," the +Engineer remarked. + +"I'm an anthro-apologist, Hymie, like Mr. Kipling," the Captain said. +"_There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays. +And--every--single--one--of--them--is--right!_" Bells rang, and the ship +surged. "Aaron and Martha, God keep you," the Captain said. + + * * * * * + +"Whoa!" Aaron shouted. He peered back toward the ship, floating up into +grayness, the cavitation of her wake stirring the snow into patterns +like fine-veined marble. "_Gott saygen eich_," he said, a prayer for his +departing friends. + +His wife shivered. "It's cold enough to freeze the horns off a +mooley-cow," she said. She glanced about at the snow-drifted little +trees and clutched her black cloak tighter. "I'm feared, Stoltz. There's +naught about us now but snow and black heathen." + +"It's fear that is the heathen," Aaron said. "_By the word of the Lord +were the heavens made; and the host of them by the breath of His +mouth._" He kissed her. "I welcome you to our new homeland, wife," he +said. + +Behind them Wutzchen--"piglet"--grunted. Martha smiled back at the giant +porker, perched amongst the cases and bags and household goods like the +victim of some bawdy chiavari. "I've never heard a pig mutter so," she +said. + +"If he knew that his business here was to flatter the local lady-pigs +with farrow, Wutzchen would hop out and run," Aaron said. + +"_Dummel dich_, Stoltz," Martha said. "I've got to make your supper yet, +and we don't have so much as a stove lit in our tent." + +Stoltzfoos slapped the team back into motion. "What we need for our +journey home are a few of the _altie lieder_," he said, reaching back in +the wagon for his scarred guitar. He strummed and hummed, then began +singing in his clear baritone: "_In da guut alt Suumer-zeit_ ... + +"... _In da guut alt Suumer-zeit_," Martha's voice joined him. As they +jolted along the path through the pine trees, heading toward +Datura-village, near which their homestead stood, they sang the other +homey songs to the music of the old guitar. "_Drawk Mich Zrick zu Alt +Virginye_," nostalgic for the black-garbed Plain-Folk left at home. Then +Aaron's fingers danced a livelier tune on the strings: "_Ich fang 'n +neie Fashun aw_," he crowed, and Martha joined in: + +"A new fashion I'll begin," they sang, + +"The hay I'll cut in the winter; + +"When the sun-heat beats, I'll loaf in the shade. + +"And feast on cherry-pie. + +"I'll get us a white, smearkase cow, + +"And a yard full of guinea-hen geese; + +"A red-beet tree as high as the moon, + +"And a patent-leather fence. + +"The chickens I'll keep in the kitchen," they sang; whereupon Martha +broke down laughing. + +"It's a new world, and for now a cold world; but it's God's world, with +home just up ahead," Aaron shouted. He pulled the wagon up next to the +arctic tent that was to be their temporary farmhouse, beside the wagon +loads of provision he'd brought before. He jumped down and swung Martha +to earth. "Light the stove, woman; make your little kitchen bright, +while I make our beasts feel welcome." + +The Amishwoman pushed aside the entrance flap of the tent. Enclosed was +a circle some twelve feet wide. The floor was bare earth. Once warmed by +the pump-up "naptha" lantern and the gasoline hotplate, it would become +a bog. Martha went out to the wagon to get a hatchet and set out for the +nearby spinny of pines to trim off some twigs. Old Order manner forbid +decorative floor-coverings as improper worldly show; but a springy +carpet of pine-twigs could be considered as no more than a wooden floor, +keeping two Plain Folk from sinking to their knees in mud. + +The pots were soon boiling atop the two-burner stove, steaming the +tent's air with onion-tangy _tzvivvele Supp_ and the savory pork-smell +of _Schnitz un Knepp_, a cannibal odor that disturbed not a bit +Wutzchen, snoring behind the cookstove. Chickens, penned beneath the +bed, chuckled in their bedtime caucus. The cow stood cheek-by-jowl with +Yonnie, warming him with platonic graciousness as they shared the hay +Aaron had spread before them. Martha stirred her soup. "When the bishop +married me to you," she told Aaron, "he said naught of my having to +sleep with a pig." + +"Ah, but I thought you knew that to be the purpose of Christian +marriage, woman," Aaron said, standing close. + +"It's Wutz I mean," she said. "Truly, I mind not a bit living as in one +of those automobile-wagons, since it's with you, and only for a little +while." + +"I'll hire a crew of our neighbors to help with the barn tomorrow," +Aaron said. "That done, you'll have but one pig to sleep with." + +After grace, they sat on cases of tobacco to eat their meal from a table +of feed sacks covered with oilcloth. "The man in the ship's little +kitchen let me make and freeze pies, Stoltz," Martha said. "He said we'd +have a deepfreeze big as all outdoors, without electric, so use it. Eat +till it's all, _Maan_; there's more back." + +Yonnie bumped against Aaron's eating-elbow. "No man and his wife have +eaten in such a zoo since Noah and his wife left the ark," Aaron said. +He cut a slice of Schnitz-pie and palmed it against the bull's big snout +to be snuffled up. "He likes your cooking," he said. + +"So wash his face," Martha told him. + + * * * * * + +Outside the tent there was a clatter of horse-iron on frozen ground. +"What the die-hinker is that?" Aaron demanded. He stood and picked up +the naphtha lantern. + +Outside, Aaron saw a tall black stranger, astride a horse as pale as the +little Murnan moons that lighted him. "_Rankeshi dade!_" the visitor +bellowed. + +"May your life be a long one!" Aaron Stoltzfoos repeated in Hausa. +Observing that his caller was brandishing a clenched fist, the Amishman +observed the same ambiguous courtesy. "If you will enter, O Welcome +Stranger, my house will be honored." + +[Illustration] + +"Mother bless thee, Bearded One," the Murnan said. He dismounted, +tossing his reins to one of the four retainers who remained on +horseback. He entered the tent after Aaron; and stared about him at the +animals, letting his dark eyes flick across Martha's unveiled face. At +the Amishman's invitation, the visitor sat himself on a tobacco case, +revealing as he crossed his legs elaborately embroidered trousers and +boot tops worked with designs that would dazzle a Texan. Martha bustled +about hiding the remains of their meal. + +The Murnan's outer dress was a woolen _riga_, the neckless gown of his +West-African forefathers, with a blanket draped about his shoulders, +exactly as those ancestors had worn one in the season of the cold wind +called harmattan. Aaron introduced himself as Haruna, the Hausa version +of his name; and the guest made himself known as Sarki--Chief--of the +village of Datura. His given name was Kazunzumi. Wutzchen snuffled in +his sleep. The Sarki glanced at the huge pig and smiled. Aaron relaxed a +bit. The Islamic interdict on swine had been shed by the Murnans when +they'd become apostates, just as Colonial Survey had guessed. + +Stoltzfoos' Hausa, learned at the Homestead School at Georgetown +University, proved adequate to its first challenge in the field, though +he discovered, with every experimenter in a new language, that his most +useful phrase was _magana sanoo-sanoo_: "please speak slowly." Aaron let +the Chief commence the desultory conversation that would precede talk of +consequence. Martha, ignored by the men, sat on the edge of the bed, +reading the big German-language Bible. Aaron and Kazunzumi sang on in +the heathen tongue about weather, beasts, and field-crops. + +The Sarki leaned forward to examine Aaron's beard and shaven upper lip, +once; and smiled. The Murnan does not wear such. He looked at Martha +more casually now, seeing that the husband was not disgraced by his +wife's naked face; and remarked on the whiteness of her skin in the same +tones he'd mentioned Wutzchen's remarkable girth. + +Aaron asked when the snows would cease, when the earth would thaw. The +Sarki told him, and said that the land here was as rich as manure. +Gradually the talk worked round to problems involving carpenters, nails, +lumber, hinges--and money. Aaron was pleased to discover that the +natives thought nothing of digging a cellar and raising a barn in +midwinter, and that workers could be easily hired. + +Suddenly Sarki Kazunzumi stood and slapped his palms together. The tent +flap was shoved open. Bowed servants, who'd shivered outside for over an +hour, placed their master's presents on the sack table, on the twig +floor, even beside Martha on the bed. There were iron knives, a roast +kid, a basket of peanuts, a sack of roasted coffee beans, a string of +dried fruit, and a tiny earthware flask of perfume. There was even a +woolen riga for Aaron, black, suggesting that the Survey had said a bit +to the natives about Amish custom; and there were bolts of +bright-patterned cloth too worldly for aught but quilts and +infant-dresses, brightening Martha's eyes. + +Aaron stood to accept the guest gifts with elaborate thanks. Sarki +Kazunzumi as elaborately bemeaned his offerings. "Musa the carpenter +will appear on tomorrow's tomorrow," he said. "You will, the Mother +willing, visit me in Datura tomorrow. We will together purchase lumber +worthy of my friend-neighbor's barn-making. May the Mother give you +strength to farm, Haruna! May the Mother grant you the light of +understanding!" + +"_Sannu, sannu!_" Stoltzfoos responded. He stood at the door of his +tent, holding his lantern high to watch the Sarki and his servants ride +off into the darkness. + + * * * * * + +"_Er iss en groesie Fisch, nee?_" Martha asked. + +"The biggest fish in these parts," Aaron agreed. "Did you understand our +talk?" + +"The heathen speech is hard for me to learn, Stoltz," Martha admitted, +speaking in the dialect they'd both been reared to. "While you had only +the alien speech to study, I spent my time learning to grow the buglets +and tell the various sorts apart. Besides, _unser guutie Deitschie +Schproech, asz unser Erlayser schwetzt, iss guut genunk fa mier_." (Our +honest German tongue, that our Saviour spoke, is good enough for me). + +Aaron laughed. "So _altfashuned_ a _Maedel_ I married," he said. "Woman, +you must learn the Hausa, too. We must be friends to these _Schwotzers_, +as we were friends with the English-speakers back in the United +Schtayts." He pushed aside the bolt of Murnan cloth to sit beside his +wife, and leafed through the pages of their _Familien-Bibel_, pages +lovingly worn by his father's fingers, and his grandfather's. "Listen," +he commanded: + +"_For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks +of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; +a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; +a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread +without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose +stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou +hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord they God for the +good land which He hath given thee._" Aaron closed the big book +reverently. "Awmen," he said. + +"Awmen," the woman echoed. "Aaron, with you beside me, I am not +fretful." + +"And with the Lord above us, I fear not in a strange land," Aaron said. +He bent to scrape a handful of earth from beneath Martha's pine-twig +carpet. "_Guuter Gruundt_," he said. "This will grow tall corn. Tobacco, +too; the folk here relish our leaf. There will be deep grasses for the +beasts when the snow melts. We will prosper here, wife." + +The next morning was cold, but the snowfall had ceased for a spell. The +Stoltzfooses had risen well before the dawn; Martha to feed herself, her +husband, and the chickens; Aaron to ready the horse and wagon for a trip +into Datura. He counted out the hoard of golden cowries he'd been loaned +as grubstake, did some arithmetic, and allowed his wife to pour him a +second cup of coffee for the road. "You may expect the Sarki's wives to +visit while I'm gone," he remarked. + +"I'd be scared half to death!" Martha Stoltzfoos said. Her hands went to +the back of her head, behind the lace prayer covering. "My hair's all +strooby, this place is untidy as an auction yard; besides, how can I +talk with those dark and heathen women? Them all decked out in golden +bangles and silken clothes, most likely, like the bad lady of Babylon? +Aaron Stoltz, I would admire a pretty to ride into town with you." + +"Haggling for hired-help is man's _Bissiniss_." he said. "When +Kazunzumi's women come, feed them pie and peaches from the can. You'll +find a way to talk, or women are not sisters. I'll be back home in time +for evening chores." + + * * * * * + +Bumping along the trail into Datura, Aaron Stoltzfoos studied the land. +A world that could allow so much well-drained black soil to go unfarmed +was fortunate indeed, he mused. He thought of his father's farm, which +would be his elder brother's, squeezed between railroad tracks and a +three-lane highway, pressed from the west by an Armstrong Cork plant, +the very cornstalks humming in harmony with the electric lines strung +across the fields. This land was what the old folks had sought in +America so long ago: a wilderness ripe for the plow. + +The wagon rumbled along the hoof-pocked frozen clay. Aaron analyzed the +contours of the hills for watershed and signs of erosion. He studied the +patterns of the barren winter fields, fall-plowed and showing here and +there the stubble of a crop he didn't recognize. When the clouds scudded +for a moment off the sun, he grinned up, and looked back blinded to the +road. Good tilth and friendship were promised here, gifts to balance +loneliness. Five years from spring, other Amish folk would come to +homestead--what a barn-raising they'd have! For now, though, he and +Martha, come from a society so close-knit that each had always known the +yield-per-acre of their remotest cousin-german, were in a land as +strange as the New York City Aaron, stopping in for a phone-call to the +vet had once glimpsed on the screen of a gay-German neighbor's +stereo-set. + +Datura looked to Aaron like a city from the Bible, giving it a certain +vicarious familiarity. The great wall was a block of sunbaked mud, fifty +feet tall at the battlements, forty feet thick at its base; with bright, +meaningless flags spotted on either side of the entrance tower. The +cowhide-shielded gate was open. Birds popped out of mud nests glued to +the mud wall and chattered at Aaron. Small boys wearing too little to be +warm appeared at the opening like flies at a hog-slaughtering to add to +the din, buzzing and hopping about and waving their arms as they called +companions to view the black-bearded stranger. + +Aaron whoaed his horse and took a handful of _anenes_, copper +tenth-penny bits, to rattle between his hands. "_Zonang!_" he shouted: +"Come here! Is there a boy amongst you brave enough to ride with an +off-worlder to the Sarki's house, pointing him the way?" + +One of the boys laughed at Aaron's slow, careful Hausa. "Let Black-Hat's +whiskers point him the way!" the boy yelled. + +"_Uwaka! Ubaka!_" Damning both parents of the rude one, another +youngster trotted up to Aaron's wagon and raised a skinny brown fist in +greeting. "Sir Off-Worlder, I who am named Waziri, Musa-the-Carpenter's +son, would be honored to direct you to the house of Sarki Kazunzumi." + +"The honor, young man, is mine," Stoltzfoos assured the lad, raising his +own fist gravely. "My name is Haruna, son of Levi," he said, reaching +down to hoist the boy up beside him on the wagon's seat. "Your friends +have ill manners." He giddapped the horse. + +"Buzzard-heads!" Waziri shouted back at his whilom companions. + +"Peace, Waziri!" Aaron protested. "You'll frighten my poor horse into +conniptions. Do you work for your father, the carpenter?" + +"_To_, honorable Haruna," the boy said. "Yes." The empty wagon thumped +over the wheel-cut streets like a wooden drum. "By the Mother, sir, I +have great knowledge of planing and joining; of all the various sorts of +wood, and the curing of them; all the tools my father uses are as +familiar to me as my own left hand." + +"Carpentry is a skillful trade," Aaron said. "Myself, I am but a +farmer." + +"By Mother's light! So am I!" Waziri said, dazzled by this coincidence. +"I can cultivate a field free of all its noxious weeds and touch never a +food-plant. I can steer a plow straight as a snapped chalk-string, grade +seed with a sure eye; I can spread manure--" + +"I'm sure you can, Waziri," Aaron said. "I need a man of just those rare +qualifications to work for me. Know you such a paragon?" + +"Mother's name! Myself, your Honor!" + +Aaron Stoltzfoos shook the hand of his hired man, an alien convention +that much impressed Waziri. The boy was to draw three hundred anenes a +day, some thirty-five cents, well above the local minimum-wage +conventions; and he would get his bed and meals. Aaron's confidence that +the boastful lad would make a farmer was bolstered by Waziri's loud +calculations: "Three hundred coppers a day make, in ten day's work, a +bronze cowrie; ten big bronzes make a silver cowrie, the price of an +acre of land. Haruna, will you teach me your off-world farming? Will you +allow me to buy land that neighbors yours?" + +"_Sei schtill, Buu_," Aaron said, laughing. "Before you reap your first +crop, you must find me the Sarki." + +"We are here, Master Haruna." + + * * * * * + +The Sarki's house was no larger than its neighbors, Moorish-styled and +domed-roofed like the others; but it wore on its streetside walls +designs cut into the stucco, scrolls and arabesques. Just above the +doorway, which opened spang onto the broadway of Datura, a grinning +face peered down upon the visitors, its eyes ruby-colored glass. + +Waziri pounded the door for Aaron, and stepped aside to let his new +employer do the speaking. They were admitted to the house by a thin, old +man wearing a pink turban. As they followed this butler down a hallway, +Aaron and Waziri heard the shrieks and giggles of feminine consternation +that told of women being herded into the zenana. The Amishman glimpsed +one of the ladies, perhaps Sarki Kazunzumi's most junior wife, dashing +toward the female sanctuary. Her eyes were lozenges of antimony; her +hands, dipped in henna, seemed clad in pale kid gloves. Aaron, recalling +pointers on Murnan etiquette he'd received at Georgetown, elaborately +did not see the lady. He removed his hat as the turbaned butler bowed +him to a plush-covered sofa. Waziri was cuffed to a mat beside the door. + +"_Rankeshi dade!_" the Sarki said. "May the Mother bring you the light +of understanding." + +"Light and long life, O Sarki," Stoltzfoos said, standing up. + +"Will the guest who honors my roof-cup taste coffee with his fortunate +host?" the Sarki asked. + +"The lucky guest will be ever the Sarki's servant if your Honor allows +him to share his pleasure with his fellow-farmer and employee, Waziri +the son of Musa," Aaron said. + +"You'd better have hired mice to guard your stored grain, O Haruna; and +blowflies to curry your cattle, than to have engaged the son of Musa as +a farmer," Kazunzumi growled. "Waziri has little light of understanding. +He will try to win from the soil what only honest sweat and Mother's +grace can cause to grow. This boy will gray your beard, Haruna." + +"Perhaps the sun that warms the soil will light his brains to +understanding," Aaron suggested. + +"Better that your hand should leave the plowhandle from time to time to +warm his lazy fundament," the Sarki said. + +"Just so, O Sarki," the Amishman said. "If Waziri does not serve me +well, I have an enormous boar who will, if kept long enough from +wholesomer food, rid me of a lazy farm-hand." Waziri grinned at all the +attention he was getting from the two most important men in town, and +sat expectantly as the turbaned elder brought in coffee. + +Stoltzfoos watched the Sarki, and aped his actions. Water was served +with the coffee; this was to rinse the mouth that the beverage could be +tasted with fresh taste buds. The coffee was brown as floodwater silt, +heavy with sugar, and very hot; and the cups had no handles. "You are +the first European I have seen for many years, friend Haruna," the Sarki +said. "It is five years gone that the white off-worlders came, and with +a black man as their voice purchased with silver the land you now +farm." + +"They bought well," Aaron said; "the seller sold justly. When the fist +of winter loosens, the soil will prove as rich as butter." + +"When the first green breaks through, and you may break the soil without +offense, you will do well," Kazunzumi said. "You are a man who loves the +land." + +"My fathers have flourished with the soil for twenty generations," the +Amishman said. "I pray another twenty may live to inherit my good +fortune." + +"Haruna," the Sarki said, "I see that you are a man of the book, that +volume of which Mother in her grace turns over a fresh page each spring. +Though your skin is as pale as the flesh of my palm, though you have but +one wife, though you speak throat-deep and strangely, yet you and I are +more alike than different. The Mother has given you light, Haruna, her +greatest gift." + +"I thank the Sarki for his words," Aaron said. "Sir, my good and only +wife--I am a poor man, and bound by another law than that of the +fortunate Kazunzumi--adds her thanks to mine for the rich gifts the +Chief of Datura presented us, his servants. In simple thanks, I have +some poor things to tender our benefactor." + +Waziri, perceiving the tenor of Aaron's talk, sprang to his feet and +hastened out to the wagon for the bundles he'd seen under the seat. He +returned, staggering under a seventy-pound bale of long-leaf tobacco, +product of Aaron's father's farm. He went back for a bolt of scarlet +silk for the Sarki's paramount wife, and strings of candy for the great +man's children. He puffed in with one last brown-wrapped parcel, which +he unpacked to display a leather saddle. This confection was embossed +with a hundred intricate designs, rich with silver; un-Amish as a +Christmas tree. Judging from the Sarki's dazzled thanks, the saddle was +just the thing for a Murnan Chief. + +As soon as Kazunzumi had delivered his pyrotechnic speech of thanks, and +had directed that Aaron's gifts be placed on a velvet-draped dais at the +end of the room, a roast kid was brought in. Waziri, half drunk with the +elegance of it all, fell to like any other adolescent boy, and was soon +grease to the armpits. Aaron, more careful, referred his actions to the +Sarki's. The bread must be broken, not cut; and it was eaten with the +right hand only, the left lying in the lap as though broken. Belching +seemed to be _de rigueur_ as a tribute to the cuisine, so Aaron belched +his stomach flat. + +Business could now be discussed. Aaron, having no pencil, traced with a +greasy finger on the tile floor the outlines of the barn and farmhouse +he envisaged. The Sarki from time to time demanded of young Waziri such +facts as a carpenter's son might be expected to know, and added +lumber-prices in his head as Aaron's bank-barn and two-story farmhouse +took form in his imagination. Finally he told the Amishman what the two +buildings would cost. Better pleased by this figure than he'd expected +to be, Aaron initiated the long-drawn ceremony required to discharge +himself from Kazunzumi's hospitality. + +[Illustration] + +As the Stoltzfoos wagon jolted out the gate of Datura, bearing the cot +and clothes trunk of Waziri together with the owner of those chattels, +the boys who'd jeered before now stared with respect. The black-hatted +_Turawa_ had been to visit the Sarki; this established him as no safe +man to mock. Waziri gave his late playmates no notice beyond sitting +rather straighter on the wagon seat than was comfortable. + + * * * * * + +There was light enough left when they got back to the farm for Aaron and +Waziri to pace out the dimensions of the barn and house. The bank-barn +would go up first, of course. No Christian owner of beasts could consent +to being well-housed while his animals steamed and shivered in a +cloth-sided tent. Waziri pounded stakes into the frozen ground to mark +the corners of the barn. Aaron pointed out the drainage-line that would +have to be ditched, and explained how the removed earth would be packed, +with the clay dug for the cellar, into a ramp leading to the barn's +second story in the back. Come next fall, the hayladder could be pulled +right up that driveway to be unloaded above the stalls. Aaron took the +boy to the frozen-solid creek to show him where a wheel could be placed +to lift water to a spillway for the upper fields. He introduced his new +helper to Wutzchen, and was pleased to hear Waziri speak wistfully of +pork chops. Waziri didn't want to meet Martha yet, though. As a proper +Murnan boy, he was not eager to be introduced to the boss' barefaced +wife, though she bribed him with a fat wedge of applecake. + +When Waziri set out with the lantern to tend to the final outdoor +chores, Aaron inquired of his wife's day. The Sarki's Paramount Wife, +with two servants, had indeed visited, bringing more gifts of food and +clothing. Somehow the four of them had managed to breach the +Hausa-_Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch_ curtain. "What in the world did +you talk about?" Aaron asked. + +"First, not knowing what to say, I showed the ladies a drop of vinegar +under the microscope," Martha said. "They screamed when they saw all the +wriggly worms, and I was put to it to keep them from bundling back home. +Then we talked about you, Stoltz, and about the farm; and when would I +be giving you _Kinner_ to help with all the work," she said. Martha +fiddled with the cloak she was sewing for her husband. "It was largely +their heathen speech we used, so I understood only what they pointed at; +but they ate hearty of anything without vinegar in it, and I laughed +with them like with friends at a quilting-bee. My, Stoltz! Those +_Nay-yer_ women are lovely, all jeweled like queens, even the servant +girls; even though they have no proper understanding of Christian +behavior." + +"Did they make you feel welcome, then?" Aaron asked. + +"_Ach, ja!_ They pitied me, I thought," Martha said. "They said you must +be poor, to have but one wife to comfort you; but they said that if the +crops be good, you can earn a second woman by next winter. _Chuudes +Paste!_" + +"I hope you told the Sarki's woman we've been married only since +haying-time," Aaron said, "and it's a bit previous for you to be giving +me little farmhands." + +"I did that," Martha said. "I told them, too, that by the time the oak +leaves are the size of squirrel's ears--if this place has oaks, indeed, +or squirrels--we'd have a youngling squalling in our house, loud as any +of the Sarki's." + +Waziri, crouched near the tent to pick up such talk as might pass inside +concerning himself, was at first dismayed by Aaron's whoops of joy. Then +Martha joined her husband in happy laughter. Since her tiny-garments +line had been delivered in Low Dutch, the young Murnan chose to believe +that the enthusiastic sounds he heard within the tent reflected joy at +his employment. + + * * * * * + +It was cold the week the barn was raised, and the mattocks had heavy +work gouging out frozen earth to be heaped into the bank leading up the +back. The Murnan laborers seemed to think midwinter as appropriate as +any other time for building; they said the Mother slept, and would not +be disturbed. Martha served coffee and buttermilk-pop at break-time, and +presided over noontime feasts, served in several sittings, in the tent. +Before the workers left in the evening, Aaron would give each a drink +out back, scharifer cider, feeling that they'd steamed hard enough to +earn a sip of something volatile. There are matters, he mused, in which +common sense can blink at a bishop; as in secretly trimming one's beard +a bit, for example, to keep it out of one's soup; or plucking a guitar +to raise the spirits. + +When the fortnight's cold work was done, the Stoltzfoos Farm was like +nothing seen before on Murna. The bank-barn was forty feet high. On its +lee side, Aaron had nailed thin, horizontal strips of wood about a foot +apart, hoping to encourage the mud-daubing birds he'd seen on the wall +at Datura to plaster their nests onto his barn, and shop for insects in +his fields. Lacking concrete, he'd constructed a roofless stone hut +abutting the barn to serve as his manure shed. The farmhouse itself was +a bit gay, having an inside toilet to cheat the Murnan winters and a +sunporch for Martha's bacteriological equipment. As the nearest Amish +_Volle Diener_--Congregational Bishop--was eighty light-years off, and +as the circumstances were unusual, Aaron felt that he and Martha were +safe from the shunning--_Meidung_--that was the Old Order's manner of +punishing Amischers guilty of "going gay" by breaking the church rules +against worldly show. + +A third outbuilding puzzled the Murnan carpenters even more than the +two-storied wooden house and the enormous barn. This shed had hinged +sidings that could be propped out to let breezes sweep through the +building. Aaron explained to Musa the function of this tobacco shed, +where he would hang his lathes of long-leafed tobacco to cure from +August through November. The tobacco seedlings were already sprouting in +Mason jars on the sunporch window-sills. The bank-barn's basement was +also dedicated to tobacco. Here, in midwinter, Aaron and Martha and +Waziri would strip, size, and grade the dry leaves for sale in Datura. +Tobacco had always been a prime cash-crop for Levi, Aaron's father. +After testing the bitter native leaf, Aaron knew that his Pennsylvania +Type 41 would sell better here than anything else he could grow. + +Martha Stoltzfoos was as busy in her new farmhouse as Aaron and Waziri +were in the barn. Her kitchen stove burned all day. Nothing ever seen in +Lancaster County, this stove was built of fireclay and brick; but the +food it heated was honest Deitsch. There were pickled eggs and red +beets, ginger tomatoes canned back home, spiced peaches, pickled pears, +mustard pickles and chowchow, pickled red cabbage, Schnitz un Knepp, +shoo-fly pie, vanilla pie, rhubarb sauce, Cheddar cheeses the size of +Waziri's head, haystacks of sauerkraut, slices off the great slab of +home-preserved chipped beef, milk by the gallon, stewed chicken, popcorn +soup, rashers of bacon, rivers of coffee. In the evenings, protecting +her fingers from the sin of idleness, Martha quilted and cross-stitched +by lamplight. Already her parlor wall boasted a framed motto that +reduced to half a dozen German words, the Amish philosophy of life: +"What One Likes Doing is No Work." + +For all the chill of the late-winter winds, Aaron kept himself and his +young helper in a sweat. Martha's cooking and the heavy work were +slabbing muscle onto Waziri's lean, brown frame. Aaron's farming +methods, so much different to Murnan routines, puzzled and intrigued the +boy. Aaron was equally bemused by the local taboos. Why, for example, +did all the politer Murnans eat with the right hand only? Why did the +women veil themselves in his presence? And what was this Mother-goddess +worship that seemed to require no more of its adherents than the +inclusion of their deity's name in every curse, formal and profane? +"Think what you please, but not too loud," Aaron cautioned himself, and +carefully commenced to copy those Murnan speech-forms, gestures, and +attitudes that did not conflict with his own deep convictions. + +But the soil was his employment, not socializing. Aaron wormed his +swine, inspected his horse-powered plow and harrow, gazed at the sun, +palpated the soil, and prayed for an early spring to a God who +understood German. Each day, to keep mold from strangling the moist +morsels, he shook the jars of tobacco seed, whose hair-fine sprouts were +just splitting the hulls. + +The rations packaged in Pennsylvania were shrinking. The Stoltzfoos +stake of silver and gold cowries was wasting away. Each night, bruised +with fatigue, Aaron brought his little household into the parlor while +he read from the Book that had bound his folk to the soil. Waziri bowed, +honoring his master's God in his master's manner, but understood nothing +of the hard High German: "_For the Lord God will help me: therefore +shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, +and I know I shall not be ashamed. Awmen._" + +"Awmen," said Martha. + +"Awmen," said Waziri, fisting his hand in respect to his friend's +bearded God. + + * * * * * + +The Murnan neighbors, to whom late winter was the slackest season in the +farm-year, visited often to observe and comment on the off-worlder's +work. Aaron Stoltzfoos privately regarded the endless conversations as +too much of a good thing; but he realized that his answering the +Murnan's questions helped work off the obligation he owed the government +for the eighty light-years' transportation it had given him, the +opportunity he'd been given to earn this hundred acres with five years' +work, and the interest-free loans that had put up his barn and +farmhouse. + +With Waziri hovering near, Aaron's proud lieutenant, the neighbors would +stuff their pipes with native tobacco, a leaf that would have gagged one +of Sir Walter Raleigh's Indian friends, while the Amishman lit a stogie +in self-defense. Why, the neighbor farmers demanded, did Aaron propose +to dust his bean-seeds with a powder that looked like soot? Martha's +microscope, a wonder, introduced the Murnans to bacteria; and Aaron +tediously translated his knowledge of the nitrogen-fixing symbiotes into +Hausa. But there were other questions. What was the purpose of the brush +stacked on top of the smooth-raked beds where Aaron proposed to plant +his tobacco-seedlings? He explained that fire, second best to steaming, +would kill the weed-seeds in the soil, and give the tobacco uncrowded +beds to prosper in. + +Those needles with which he punctured the flanks of his swine and +cattle: what devils did they exorcise? Back to the microscope for an +explanation of the disease-process, a sophistication the Murnans had +lost in the years since they'd left Kano. What were the bits of blue and +pink paper Aaron pressed into mudballs picked up in the various +precincts of his property? Why did those slips oftentime change color, +from blue to pink, or pink-to-blue? What was in those sacks of stuff--no +dung of animals, but a sort of flour--that he intended to work into his +soil? Aaron answered each question as best he could, Waziri +supplying--and often inventing--Hausa words for concepts like +phosphorous, ascarid worms, and litmus. + +Aaron had as much to learn from his brown-skinned neighbors as he had to +teach them. He was persuaded to lay in a supply of seed-yams, +guaranteeing a crop that would bring bronze cowries next fall in Datura, +the price of next year's oil and cloth and tools. The peanut, a legume +Aaron had no experience of beyond purchasing an occasional tooth-ful at +the grocery-store, won half a dozen acres from Korean lespedeza, the +crop he'd at first selected as his soil-improver there. He got +acquainted with a plant no Amishman before him had ever sown, a +crabgrass called fonio, a staple cereal and source of beer-malt on +Murna, imported with the first Nigerian colonists. + +Aaron refused to plant any lalle, the henna-shrub from which the Murnans +made the dye to stain their women's hands, feeling that it would be +improper for him to contribute to such a vanity. Bulrush millet, another +native crop, was ill suited to Aaron's well-drained fields. He planned +to grow corn, though, the stuff his people called _Welschkarn_--alien +corn. Though American enough, maize had been a foreigner to the first +Amish farmers, and still carried history in its name. This crop was +chiefly for Wutzchen, whose bloodlines, Aaron was confident, would lead +to a crop of pork of a quality these heretics from Islam had never +tasted before. + + * * * * * + +Work wasn't everything. One Sunday, after he and Martha had sung +together from the _Ausbund_, and Aaron had read from the _Schrift_ and +the _Martyr's Mirror_, there was time to play. + +Sarki Kazunzumi and several other gentlemen who enjoyed City Hall or +Chamber of Commerce standing in Datura had come to visit the +Stoltzfooses after lunch; as had Musa the carpenter and his older son, +Dauda, Waziri's brother. Also on the premises were about a dozen of the +local farmers and craftsmen, inspecting the curious architecture the +off-worlder had introduced to their planet. Aaron, observing that the +two classes of his guests were maintaining a polite fiction, each that +the other was not present, had an idea. He'd seen Murnans in town at the +midwinter festival, their status-consciousness forgotten in mutual +quaffs of fonio-beer or barley-brandy, betting together at horse-races +and wheels-of-fortune. "My friends," the Amishman addressed the Murnans +gathered in his barn, inspecting Wutzchen, "let's play a game of ball." + +Kazunzumi looked interested. As the local Chief of State, the Sarki's +approval guaranteed the enthusiasm of all the lesser ranks. + +Aaron explained the game he had in mind. It wasn't baseball, an +"English" sport foreign to Amishmen, who can get through their teens +without having heard of either Comiskey Park or the World Series. Their +game, _Mosch Balle_, fits a barnyard better. + +In lieu of the regulation softball used in the game of Corner Ball, +Martha had stitched together a sort of large beanbag. The playing-field +Aaron set up with the help of his visitors was a square some twelve +yards on a side, fence-rails being propped up to mark its boundaries and +fresh straw forked onto it six inches deep as footing. + +Aaron's eight-man team was chosen from the working-stiffs. The opposing +eight were the Brass. To start the game, four of the proletarians stood +at the corners of the square; and two men of Kazunzumi's team waited +warily within. + +Aaron commenced to explain the game. To say that the object of _Mosch +Balle_ is for a member of the outer, offensive, team to strike an inner, +defensive man with the ball is inadequate; such an explanation is as +lacking as to explain baseball as the pitcher's effort to throw a ball +so well that it's hittable, and so very well that it yet goes unhit. +Both games have their finer points. + +"Now," Aaron told his guests on the field, "we four on the corners will +toss the ball back and forth amongst ourselves, shouting _Hah_,_Oh_,_Tay_, +with each pitch. Whoever has the ball on _Tay_ has to fling it at one of +the two men inside the square. If he misses, he's Out; and one of the +other men on our team takes his place. If he hits his target-man, the +target's Out, and will be replaced by another man from the Sarki's team. +The team with the last man left on the straw wins the first half. _Des +iss der Weeg wie mir's diehne_, O.K.?" + +"_Afuwo!_" the Sarki yelled, a woman's call, grinning, crouched to +spring aside. "Hah!" Aaron shouted, and tossed the ball to Waziri's +older brother, Dauda. "Oh!" Dauda yelled, and threw the ball to the +shoemaker. "Tay!" the cobbler exulted, and slammed the ball at the +lower-ranking of the two men within the square, the village banker. The +shoemaker missed, and was retired. + +The Daturans were soon stripped down to trousers and boots, their black +torsos steaming in the cold air. Aaron removed his shirt--but not his +hat--and so far forgot his Hausa in the excitement that he not only +rooted for his teammates in _Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch_, but even +punctuated several clumsy plays with raw _Fadomm_'s. + +Aaron's skill won the first half for his team. Blooded, the Chamber of +Commerce Eight fought through to win the second half. A tie. The +play-off saw the Working-Man's League pummeled to a standstill by the +C-of-C, who took the laurels with a final slam that knocked Waziri into +the straw, protesting that it was an accident. + +Sweating, laughing, social status for the moment forgotten, the teams +and their mobs of fans surged into the farmhouse to demand of Martha +wedges of raisin pie and big cups of strong coffee. As the guests put +their rigas and their white caps back on, and assumed therewith their +game-discarded rank of class, they assured Aaron that the afternoon at +the ball game had been a large success. + + * * * * * + +The next day was crisp and cold. With nothing more to be done till the +soil thawed, Aaron took Waziri down to the creek to investigate his +project of irrigating the hilltop acres. The flow of water was so feeble +that the little stream was ice to its channel. "Do you have hereabouts a +digger-of-waterholes?" Aaron asked the boy. Waziri nodded, and supplied +the Hausa phrase for this skill. "Good. _Wonn's Gottes wille iss_, I +will find a spot for them to dig, smelling out the water as can my +cousin Blue Ball Benjamin Blank," Aaron said. "Go get from the barn the +pliers, the hand-tool that pinches." + +Waziri trotted off and brought back the pliers. "What are you up to, +Haruna-boss?" he asked. Aaron was holding the bulldog pliers out before +him, one handle in each hand, parallel to the ground. + +"I am smelling for the well-place," the Amishman said, pacing +deliberately across the field. The boy scampered along beside him. "We +will need at least one well to be safe from August draught. Cousin +Benjamin found the wet depths in this fashion; perhaps it will work for +me." Aaron walked, arms outstretched, for half an hour before his face +grew taut. He slowed his walking and began to work toward the center of +a spiral. Waziri could see the sweat springing up on the young farmer's +brow and fingers, despite the cold breeze that blew. The bulldog pliers +trembled as though responding to the throbbing of an engine. Suddenly, +as though about to be jerked from Aaron's hands, the pliers tugged +downward so forceably that he had to lift his elbows and flex his wrists +to hold onto them. "Put a little pile of stones here, Waziri," he said. +"We'll have the diggers visit as soon as the ground thaws." + +[Illustration] + +Waziri shook his head. "Haruna, they will not touch soft earth until the +first grass sprouts," he said. + +"Time enough," Aaron said. He looked up to satisfy himself that his +prospective well-site was high enough to avoid drainage from his +pig-yard, then left the Murnan boy to pile up a cairn for the diggers. +It would be good to have a windmill within ear-shot of the house, he +mused; its squeaking would ease Martha with a homey sound. + +[Illustration] + +Alone for a few minutes, Aaron retired to the workshop in the cellar of +the barn. He planed and sanded boards of a native lumber very like to +tulipwood. Into the headboard of the cradle he was making, he +keyhole-sawed the same sort of broad Dutch heart that had marked his own +cradle, and the cradles of all his family back to the days in the +Rhineland, before they'd been driven to America. + +Martha Stoltzfoos was speaking Hausa better than she'd spoken English +since grade-school days, and she kept busy in the little bacteriological +laboratory on her sunporch, keeping fresh the skills she'd learned at +Georgetown and might some day need in earnest; but she still grew +homesick as her child-coming day drew nearer. It was wrong, she told +Aaron, for an Amishwoman to have heathen midwives at her lying-in. For +all their kindness, the Murnan women could never be as reassuring as the +prayer-covered, black-aproned matrons who'd have attended Martha back +home. "Ach, Stoltz," she told her husband, "if only a few other of +_unser sart Leit_ could have come here with us." + +"Don't worry, Love," Aaron said. "I've eased calves and colts enough +into the world; man-children can't come so different." + +"You talk like a man," Martha accused him. "I wish my Mem was just down +the road a piece, ready to come a-running when my time came," she said. +She put one hand on her apron. "_Chuudes Paste!_ The little rascal is +wild as a colt, indeed. Feel him, Stoltz!" + +Aaron dutifully placed his hand to sense the child's quickening. "He'll +be of help on the farm, so strong as he is," he remarked. Then, tugging +his hat down tight, Aaron went outdoors, bashful before this mystery. + +The little creek had thawed, and the light of the sun on a man's face +almost gave back the heat the air extorted. Waziri had gone to town +today for some sort of Murnan spring-festival, eager to celebrate his +hard-earned wealth on his first day off in months. The place seemed +deserted, Aaron felt, without the boy; without the visitors he'd played +ball and talked crops with, striding up in their scarlet-trimmed rigas +to gossip with their friend Haruna. + +Between the roadway and the house, Aaron knelt to rake up with his +fingers a handful of the new-thawed soil. He squeezed it. The clod in +his hand broke apart of its own weight: it was not too wet to work. +Festival-day though it was to his _Schwotzer_ neighbors, he was eager to +spear this virgin soil with his plow blade. + +Aaron strode back to the barn. He hitched Rosina--the dappled mare, +named "Raisin" for her spots--to the plow and slapped her into motion. +Sleek with her winter's idleness, Rosina was at first unenthusiastic +about the plow; but the spring sun and honest exercise warmed her +quickly. Within half an hour she was earning her keep. Though Aaron was +plowing shallow, the compact soil broke hard. Rosina leaned into the +traces, leaving hoofprints three inches deep. No gasoline tractor, Aaron +mused, could ever pull itself through soil so rich and damp. +_Geilsgrefte_, horsepower, was best exerted by a horse, he thought. + +The brown earth-smells were good. Aaron kicked apart the larger clods, +fat with a planet-life of weather and rich decay. This land would take a +good deal of disking to get it into shape. His neighbors, who'd done +their heavy plowing just after last fall's first frost, were already +well ahead of him. He stabled Rosina at sundown, and went in to sneak a +well-earned glass of hard cider past Martha's teetotaling eye. + + * * * * * + +Musa the carpenter brought his son home well after dark. Waziri had had +adventures, the old man said; dancing, gambling on the Fool's Wheel, +sampling fonio-beer, celebrating his own young life's springtime with +the earth's. Both the old man and the boy were barefoot, Aaron noticed; +but said nothing: perhaps shoelessness was part of their +spring-festival. + +Waziri a bit _geschwepst_ with the beer, tottered off to bed. "Thanks to +you, friend Haruna, that boy became a man today," the carpenter said. He +accepted a glass of Aaron's cider. "Today Waziri's wallet jingled with +bronze and copper earned by his own sweat, a manful sound to a lad of +fifteen summers. I ask pardon for having returned your laborer in so +damaged a condition, brother Haruna; but you may be consoled with the +thought that the Mother's festival comes but once in the twelve-month." + +"No harm was done, brother Musa," Aaron said, offering his visitor +tobacco. "In my own youth, I sometimes danced with beer-light feet to +the music of worldly guitars; and yet I reached a man's estate." + +Offered a refill for his pipe, Musa raised a hand in polite refusal. +"Tomorrow's sun will not wait on our conversation, and much must be +done, in the manner of racers waiting the signal, before the first blade +breaks the soil," he said. "Good night, brother Haruna; and may Mother +grant you light!" + +"Mother keep you, brother Musa," Aaron murmured the heathen phrase +without embarrassment. "I'll guide your feet to your wagon, if I may." + +Aaron, carrying the naphtha lantern, led the way across the strip of +new-plowed soil. Set by frost into plastic mounds and ridges, the earth +bent beneath his shoes and the carpenter's bare feet. Aaron swung Musa's +picket-iron, the little anchor to which his horse was tethered, into the +wagon, noticing that it had been curiously padded with layers of quilted +cloth. "May you journey home in good health, brother Musa," he said. + +"_Uwaka!_" Musa shouted, staring at the plow-cuts. + +Aaron Stoltzfoos dropped the lantern to his side, amazed that the +dignified old man could be guilty of such an obscenity. Perhaps he'd +misheard. "Haruna, you have damned yourself!" Musa bellowed. "Cursed be +this farm! Cursed be thy farming! May thy seedlings rot, may thy corn +sprout worms for tassles, may your cattle stink and make early bones!" + +"Brother Musa!" Aaron said. + +"I am no sib to you, O Bearded One," Musa said. "Nor will I help you +carry the curse you have brought upon yourself by today's ill-doing." He +darted back to the farmhouse, where he ordered half-wakened Waziri to +pad barefoot after him to the wagon, rubbing his eyes. "Come, son," Musa +said. "We must flee these ill-omened fields." Without another word to +his host, the carpenter hoisted his boy into the wagon, mounted, and set +off into the night. The hoofs of his horse padded softly against the +dirt road, unshod. + +Martha met the bewildered Aaron at the door, wakened by Musa's shouting. +"_Wass gibt_, Stoltz?" she asked. "What for was all the carry-on?" + +Aaron tugged at his beard. "I don't know, woman," he admitted. "Musa the +carpenter took one look at the plowing I did today, then cursed me as +though he'd caught me spitting in his well. He got Waziri up from bed +and took him home." He took his wife's hand. "I'm sorry he woke you up, +Liebchen." + +"It was not so much the angry carpenter who waked me as the little jack +rabbit you're father to," Martha said. "As you say, a _Bun_ who can kick +so hard, and barefoot, too, will be a strong one once he's born." + +Aaron was staring out the window onto the dark road. "_Farwas hot Musa +sell gehuh?_" he asked himself. "What for did Musa do such a thing? He +knows that our ways are different to his. If I did aught wrong, Musa +must know it was done not for want to harm. I will go to the village +tomorrow; Musa must forgive me and explain." + +"He will, Stoltz." Martha said. "_Kuum, schloef._ You'll be getting up +early." + +"How can I sleep, not knowing how I have hurt my friend?" Aaron asked. + +"You must," Martha urged him. "Let your cares rest for the night, +Aaron." + +In the morning, Stoltzfoos prepared for his trip into Datura by donning +his Sunday-best. He clipped a black patent-leather bow tie, a wedding +gift, onto his white shirt: and fastened up his best broadfall trousers +with his dress suspenders. Over this, Aaron put his _Mutzi_, the tailed +frock coat that fastened with hooks-and-eyes. When he'd exchanged his +broad-brimmed black felt working-hat for another just the same, but +unsweated, Aaron was dressed as he'd be on his way to a House-Amish +Sunday meeting back home. "I expect no trouble here, Martha," he said, +tucking a box of stogies under his arm as a little guest-gift for the +old carpenter. + +"Hurry home, Stoltz; I feel wonderful busy about the middle," Martha +said. There was a noise out on the road. "Listen!" she said. "Go look +the window out, now; someone is coming the yard in!" + +Aaron hastened to lift the green roller-blind over the parlor window. +"Ach; it is the _groesie Fisch_, Sarki Kazunzumi, with half the folk +from town," he said. "Stay here, woman. I will out and talk with them." + +The Sarki sat astride his white pony, staring as Aaron approached him. +Behind their chief, on lesser beasts, sat Kazunzumi's retainers, each +with a bundle in his arms. "Welcome, O Sarki!" Aaron said, raising his +fist. + +Kazunzumi did not return the Amishman's salute. "I return your gifts, +Lightless One," he announced. "They are tainted with your blasphemy." He +nodded, and his servants dismounted to stack at the side of the road +Aaron's guest-gifts of months before. The bale of tobacco was set down, +the bolt of scarlet silk, the chains of candy, the silver-filigreed +saddle. "Now that I owe you naught, Bearded One, we have no further +business with one another." He reined his horse around. "I go in +sadness, Haruna," he said. + +"What did I do, Kazunzumi?" Aaron asked. "What am I to make of your +displeasure?" + +"You have failed us, who was my friend," the Sarki said. "You will leave +this place, taking your woman and your beasts and your sharp-shod +horses." + +"Sir, where am I to go?" + +"Whence came you, Haruna?" the Sarki asked. "Return to your own +black-garbed folk, and injure the Mother no longer with your lack of +understanding." + +"Sarki Kazunzumi, I know not how I erred," Stoltzfoos said. "As for +returning to my own country, that I cannot. The off-world vessel that +brought us here is star-far away; and it will not return until we are +all five summers older. My Martha is besides with child, and cannot +safely travel. My land is ripe for seeding. How can I go now?" + +"There is wilderness to the south, where no son of the Mother lives," +the Sarki said. "Go there. I care not for heathen who are out of my +sight." + +"Sir, show us mercy," Aaron said. + +Kazunzumi danced his shoeless horse around to face Aaron. "Haruna, who +was my friend, whom I thought to stand with me in Mother's light, I +would be merciful; but I cannot be weak. It is not me whom you must +beseech, but the Mother who feeds us all. Make amends to Her, then Sarki +Kazunzumi will give his ear to your pleas. Without amends, Haruna, you +must go from here within the week." Kazunzumi waved his arm and galloped +off toward Datura. His servants followed quickly. On the roadside lay +the gifts, dusted from the dirt raised by the horses. + + * * * * * + +The Amishman turned toward the house. Martha's face was at the parlor +window, quizzical under her prayer-covering, impatient to hear what had +happened. Aaron plodded back to the house with the evil news, stumbling +over a clod of earth in the new-turned furrows near the road. Martha met +him at the door. "_Waas will er?_" she demanded. + +"He says we must leave our farm." + +"Why for?" she asked. + +"Somehow, I have offended their _fadommt_ Mum-god," Aaron said. "The +Sarki has granted us a week to make ready to go into the wilderness." He +sat on a coffee-colored kitchen chair, his head bowed and his big hands +limp between his knees. + +"Stoltz, where can we go?" Martha asked. "We have no _Freindschaft_, no +kin, in all this place." + +Aaron tightened his hands into fists. "We will not go!" he vowed. "I +will find a way for us to stay." He broke open the box of cigars that +had been meant as a gift for Musa and clamped one of the black stogies +between his teeth. "What is their _heidisch_ secret?" he demanded. "What +does the Mother want of me?" + +"Aaron Stoltz," Martha said vigorously, "I'll have no man of mine +offering dignity to a heathen god. The _Schrift_ orders us to cut down +the groves of the alien gods, to smash their false images; not to bow +before them. Will you make a golden calf here, as did your namesake +Aaron of Egypt, for whose sin the Children of Israel were plagued?" + +"Woman, I'll not have you preach to me like a servant of the Book," +Aaron said. "It is not for you to cite Scripture." He stared through the +window. "What does the Mother want of me?" + +"As you shout, do not forget that I am a mother, too," Martha said. She +dabbed a finger at her eye. + +"_Fagep mir_, Liebling," Aaron said. He walked behind the chair where +his wife sat. Tenderly, he kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck. +"I am trying to get inside Musa's head, and Kazunzumi's; I am trying to +see their world through their eyes. It is not an easy thing to do, +Martha. Though I lived for a spell among the 'English,' my head is still +House-Amish; a fat, Dutch cheese." + +"It is a good head," Martha said, relaxing under his massage, "and if +there be cheese-heads hereabouts, it's these blackfolk that wear them, +and not my man." + +"If I knew what the die-hinker our neighbors mean by their Mother-talk, +it might be I could see myself through Murnan eyes, as I can hear a bit +with Hausa ears," Aaron said. "_Iss sell nix so_, Martha?" + +"We should have stood at home, and thought with our own good heads," she +said. + +"Let me think," Aaron said. "If I were to strike you, wife," he mused, +"it could do you great hurt, and harm our unborn child, _Nee?_" + +"Aaron!" Martha scooted out from under her husbands kneading hands. + +"_Druuvel dich net!_" he said. "I am only thinking. These blackfolk now, +these neighbors who were before last night our friends, speak of Light +as our bishop at home speaks of Grace. To have it is to have all, to be +one with the congregation. If I can find this Light, we and the Sarki +and his people can again be friends." Aaron sat down. "I must learn what +I have done wrong," he said. + + * * * * * + +"Other than drink a glass of cider now and then, and make worldly music +with a guitar, you've done no wrong," Martha said stubbornly. "You're a +good man." + +"In the Old Order, I am a good man, so long as no _Diener_ makes trouble +over a bit of singing or cider," Aaron said. "As a guest on Murna, I +have done some deed that has hurt this Mother-god, whom our neighbors +hold dear." + +"Heathenish superstition!" + +"Martha, love, I am older than you, and a man," Aaron said. "Give me +room to think! If the goddess-Mother is heathen as Baal, it matters not; +these folk who worship her hold our future in their hands. Besides, we +owe them the courtesy not to dance in their churches nor to laugh at +their prayers; even the 'English' have more grace than that." Aaron +pondered. "Something in the springtime is the Murnan Mother's gift, her +greatest gift. What?" + +"Blaspheme not," Martha said. "Remember Him who _causeth the grass to +grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring +forth food out of the earth_." + +"Wife, is the True God less, if these people call Him Mother?" Aaron +demanded. + +"We are too far from home," the woman sighed. "Such heavy talk is +wearisome; it is for bishops to discourse so, not ordinary folk like +us." + +"If I can't find the light," Aaron said, "this farm we live on, and +hoped to leave to our children, isn't worth the water in a dish of +soup." He slapped his hands together and stood to pace. "Martha, hear me +out," he said. "If a woman be with child, and a man takes her with lust +and against her will, is not that man accursed?" + +"Aaron!" she said. "_Haagott_, such wicked talk you make!" + +"Seen with Murnan eyes, have I not done just such a cursed thing?" Aaron +demanded. "The Mother-god of this world is _mit Kinndt_, fat with the +bounty of springtime. So tender is the swollen belly of the earth that +the people here, simple folk with no more subtle God, strip the iron +from the hoofs of their horses not to bruise her. They bare their feet +in her honor, treat her with the tenderness I treat my beloved Martha. +And to this Goddess, swollen earth, I took the plow! Martha, we are +fortunate indeed that our neighbors are gentle people, or I would be +hanged now, or stoned to death like the wicked in the old days. _Ich hot +iere Gotterin awgepockt_: I raped their Goddess!" + + * * * * * + +Martha burst into tears. When Aaron stepped forward to comfort her, she +struck his chest with her balled fists. "Stoltz, I wed you despite your +beer-drinking from cans at the Singing, though you play a worldly guitar +and sing the English songs, though people told me you drove your gay +Uncle Amos' black-bumpered Ford before you membered to the district; +still, house-Amish pure Old Order though my people are, I married you, +from love and youngness and girlish ignorance. But I do not care, even +in this wilderness you've brought us to in that big English ship, to +hear such vileness spoke out boldly. Leave me alone." + +"I'll not." + +"You'd best," she said. "I'm sore offended in the lad I'm wifed to." + +"Love, _Ich bin sorry_," Aaron said. "The Book, though, says just what +our neighbors told me: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set +you free. I have found the truth, the truth of our dark-skinned friends. +I did not want to wound the ears of _da Oppel fuun mein Awk_, +apple-of-mine-eye sweet Martha; but I must speak out the truth." + +"It is not good enough," Martha sobbed, "that you accept this +brown-skinned, jewel-bedizzened woman-god; but you must make love to +her; and I, wed to you by the Book, nine months gone with _Kinndt_, am +to make no fuss." + +"I loved the Mother-god with the plow, and accidentally," Aaron +bellowed. "_Haagott!_ woman; have you no funny?" + +"I will birth our child in my lap from laughing," Martha said, weeping. +"Aaron, do what you will. I can hardly walk home to my Mem to bear a son +in my girlhood bedroom. We are like _Awduum uuu Ayf_, like you said; but +the serpent in this Eden pleases me not." + +"When I spoke of colts, and the borning of them," Aaron said, "I forgot +me that mares are more sensible than human women. Martha, _liebe_ +Martha, you wed a man when you married me. All your vapors are naught +against my having seen the light. If to stay here, on this land already +watered with my hard sweat, I had to slaughter cattle in sacrifice to +the Mother, I'd pick up the knife gladly, and feel it no blasphemy +against our God." + +"Aaron Stoltz," Martha said, "I forbid you to lend honor to this god!" + +Aaron sat. He unlaced his shoes and tugged them off. "Woman," he asked +softly, "you forbid me? Martha, for all the love I bear you, there is +one rule of our folk that's as holy as worship; and that's that the man +is master in his house." He pulled off his black stockings and stood, +barefoot, with callouses won on the black earth of his father's farm; +dressed otherwise meetly as a deacon. "I will walk to Datura on my naked +feet to show our friends I know my wrong-doing, that I have hurt the +belly of the pregnant earth. I will tell Sarki Kazunzumi that I have +seen his light; that my horses will be unshod as I am, that the Mother +will not feel my plow again until the grasses spring, when her time will +be accomplished." + +Martha crossed her hands about her middle. "Ach, Stoltz," she said. "Our +_Buu iss reddi far geh_, I think. Today will be his birthday. Don't let +your tenderness to the earth keep you from walking swiftly to Datura; +and when you return, come in a wagon with the Sarki's ladies, who +understand midwifery. I think they will find work here." + +"I will hurry, Mother," Aaron promised. + + +The End. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blind Man's Lantern, by Allen Kim Lang + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLIND MAN'S LANTERN *** + +***** This file should be named 24567.txt or 24567.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/5/6/24567/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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