On the Lament of the Innocent Harlot and the Loyalty of Dogs

They say drink loosens the tongue a bit, and for this purpose wine is fine, but liquor is quicker. Yet, too much of it can cause people to read out loud those secret verses that they normally keep concealed in the inner chambers of the heart. No doubt liquor and loose tongues also contributed to the chaos that broke out in our church on Christmas morning.

Everything had gone fine up to that point; the people were dressed in their Sunday best and eager to hear the good news of the birth of the Savior and to renew their faith in the promise of eternal salvation. The choir was in thrall to the angels and sang of the shepherds so beautifully one could almost see them resting their flocks by the stable where the newborn Savior lay in the arms of his virgin mother.

At one stage the singers had their hands outstretched to heaven in supplication to the Lord Almighty, and we could indeed feel the Holy Spirit upon the house, and we knew in our hearts that all would be well with us some day. As the choir sang, “I looked over Jordan and what did see, coming forth to carry me ho-ooome?” our pastor took to the podium to confirm that the Son of God had indeed paid with his holy blood the ultimate price for our redemption. God demanded a human sacrifice to atone for the sins of man, and blameless Jesus suffered that torment on the cross for our sakes.

He went on to talk of the birth of the Messiah and how his miraculous conception surely proved that Jesus was indeed the son of God, which was the main theme of his sermon, but he felt it necessary to address a small theological problem here. You see, the reverend is a learned man who did not get his views on theology from sudden revelations of his urgent need for salvation late one night at the bottom of a bottle of Tassies, as some lay preachers tend to, but from years of study at the top schools of theology.

He thus reminded his flock: “There are people even today who still doubt and snigger, just as there were people in the time of Jesus who seriously questioned the power of God to interrupt the processes of nature, and who seriously doubted that the mother of the Son of God was a virgin.” At which point some teenage girls giggled, while the elders murmured their disapproval of such faithless people who would question the Word of God.

“But to be fair,” he said, “Nobody in the world had ever seen or heard of such a thing before or since. Yet the skeptics who think they are so smart are in fact ignorant,” he shouted, “of the unmatched power of God to do as he pleases with whoever and whenever he pleases! Because of their blindness to the reality of God’s awesome power they could no more conceive of a virgin getting pregnant without the intervention of a man, than they could imagine the light of day without the rising of the sun. But God alone can make all things possible,” he said with one hand pointing to the sky.

And as one, the people said: “Amen!”

Now the preacher was in his element and admitted that, according to the Holiest Books, “Even Joseph, who was engaged to Mary and who was a reasonable man, doubted Mary’s whole story and wanted to divorce her quietly in the hope she would not be stoned to death for her indiscretion, for this was the custom of the Hebrews under the laws of Moses.”

But sensing some nagging doubts in the minds of his audience, the pastor held up his hand as if to stop that train in its tracks, and said: “That is why the messenger of God came directly and told Joseph in a dream about the whole business between God and Mary and how the making of Jesus came about, because it was nobody but the Holy Ghost himself who fecundated the virgin.”

Now at him saying this, one of the kids in the front row jumped up, put her tiny hand up and said so everyone could hear: “Mamie, mamie, pastor did swear!”

One man who sat near the front then caused more disturbance. His name is Cox, but most people know him by his surname Saka, a prominent businessman and owner of many well-known companies, like the Discount Redemption Bar, the Lord’s Auto Repairs, Heavenly Gambling House, as well as Quick Salvation Cash Loans. He was often in church and was hoping to be made an elder soon on account of the regular cash donations he made to the church. Of this man we will speak more later, but suffice to say he was one of those men who liked to emphasize his presence at all times and liked to raise his voice in church.

This morning though he found within himself the audacity to state his vile opinion so the whole church could hear: “Given this whole town is like one big whorehouse without a roof,” he said, “if all the whores in the city had to be stoned to death, as Moses commanded, there’d be nobody left here to carry on the human race, then surely the Holy Spirit would have to fecundate all the survivors himself.”

At which some laughed, and others, mostly the women were outraged and hissed at him, saying ‘Siesss’.

The pastor was meanwhile vexed with trying to explain to the faithful in the front row that he didn’t say the Holy Spirit “fuckin’ dated” Mary, and went off to the back rooms to look for an English dictionary.

It was amid this upset in the house that a woman from Donkerhoek took the opportunity to make her way to the front, where she picked up the microphone, because “I have something to confess.”

About this woman my neighbor in the pews whispered that he knew her all too well since he works as a government cleaner. He said she was a prostitute and was employed as a sort of matrass by some of the officers at the barracks or by government officials when they were sleeping away from home.

On re-entering the hall, the pastor with a look of disbelief ran to retrieve the mike from the woman before she could go on, for though there was heartache in her eyes, on her breath he could smell the distinct whiff of cheap wine and stale cigarettes, but she would not hand it over and wrestled with him instead, as drunk people are wont to do. With hands folded as if in prayer, he then pleaded: “Please, this is not a time for confession, it is Christmas.”

But by this time it was too late, because the congregation was already invested with great interest in what this fallen woman had to say, for there was no doubt that she retained a certain beauty and youthful charm that could persuade men to pay attention to her, but with that look of a lost and hurt child in her eyes that made gentler people feel at once a sense of pity and wonder.

For it was rumored, whispered the fellow next to me, that when she was a child she was rejected by her family and was often nourished by little more than the scraps brought to her by two stray dogs, who carried pieces of discarded food to her and followed her everywhere like two guards. People said the dogs kept her warm with their bodies when she slept under the trees, or in shallow holes they dug, as if they were her only protectors.

Some in the congregation recognized in her that same child that was once thrown to the dogs, who had now returned to the fold of the church as a grown woman, so the people insisted, ‘Let her speak, let her speak!” Thus the pastor gave up on his cause and stood back.

“You may not believe it,” at last she said in a soft tone, “because it seems a long time ago now but I too was once a virgin,” at the suggestion which Saka burst into laughter, but the women near him pouted with a finger in front of their lips, to say: “Ssshhh.”

The woman in front went on to say, “Though I am only 25 years old I cannot remember so well how I came to this, for it must have been a long time ago since I was only an innocent child, but I have been used and torn and am tattered like a dirty blanket that nobody cares for, but I am told that since everyone is born a virgin and pure in the eyes of God, that I too must have been pure once upon a time.”

There was a flash of fury in her eyes, then turning her gaze up to heaven tears started to flow from her, as she called on God’s Son in the highest realms to hear her cries, “I know Lord Jesus that you are out there somewhere, even in space far beyond the moon, where you live among the stars, far from the world of violent and cruel men. They devour the helpless children of God down here like beasts of prey sent to hunt us down and punish us for the sins of our fathers. But if you can hear me now, please forgive me sweet Jesus for all the things I’ve done to survive in this world. I drank from dirty pools because I was thirsty, not because I wanted to pollute myself. I ate the food of the dogs, not because I am a bitch but because I didn’t want to die.”

She was crying softly and now looked down as she spoke.

“Dronk verdriet,” quipped one woman behind me. But the tainted woman in front was impervious to their mockery, as if she had grown immune to it. Her voice was gaining strength and she grew bolder in her appeal to the Highest Powers. At this point, while the pastor had gone again to look for some books to explain how the Holy Spirit fertilized the womb of Mary without penetration, the speaker could not contain her longing for a touch of grace.

Through her drunken lament the audience in the front rows could smell the sour vapors of wine mixed with heartache wafting over them, but they took it in as if it were some kind of incense, as her trembling voice now grew stronger, her lament lifted them up to show them the world from a great height, then tossed them down into the seas of sorrow, that the waves washed over them, now drowning them, then raising them up and soaring above the clouds straight towards heaven, then ebbing in strength and falling like a bird with burnt wings to the ground, only to touch the tips of the trees and then rise again on the warm winds of hope, straining to reach towards the ever-elusive light of salvation, with her voice still trembling like a knife in the hands of an angry person, it cut the silence in half and pierced our hearts.

Now the congregation was either too spellbound by this unexpected drama and the naked confession of sin, or perhaps by the prospect of some gossip-worthy material to stop her from speaking, because then she started to confess without restraint:

“My Lord, I have done terrible things to survive the cruel world you made for us. I have slept with cruel and violent men just for a place to rest my head; when I was hungry I let them use my body in painful and humiliating ways, just for half a loaf of bread, for a drink, for a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken, net een boudjie my Lord, not even a proper Streetwise Two.”

“But you, who can see all these things and can look deep into the hearts of men, you know all about the wickedness of this world, my Lord, and yet you let it continue, although it brings suffering and pain to the children of God, for it is said ‘Thy will must be done in heaven as it is on Earth,’” she sobbed, as if to say it is unfair that we should be born into the world to suffer.

“Yet this world you made is too hard for us my Lord, I am ready to leave here and join you, even now, if you can take me from the world of pain and poverty, take me to that VIP area in the upstairs lounge where you are, for I have known nothing since I have come into this world but pain, rejection, and despair, and in my short years I have committed so many sins out of loneliness and fear of death, enough sins to fill many lifetimes and many volumes of wise men’s books.

“But I am tired of this world and all its cruelties Lord. If you can forgive me, as you forgave the woman that the Pharisees wanted to stone to death for giving of herself to men. Give me that special ticket Lord to leave this place that is right by the gates of hell and let me enter also by the Gates of Heaven, so that I may escape this life of tears and come to sit by your feet and eat and drink and dance with you for all eternity, and that I too, whose ears have been filled only with the violence and fury of men since I was a child, may know the sweetness of the music of heaven and rest my weary head on the breast of my Savior.”

At this point, people were reaching for their handkerchiefs and some were saying things like, “God forgives my child. He forgives all who come before him,” when the drunk woman took things a bit too far and said, “And if you let me stay there by your place in the sky, you can even make love to me my Lord, I can show you everything.”

At which point the congregation broke into bedlam.

Some jumped up shouting in outrage at this new heresy from Donkerhoek, others fell to their knees to pray for urgent forgiveness and that God would not smite them in fury all at once, for they never saw this drunken whore before today, they swore, but only heard about her infamous deeds in Dolam and Wambo Lokasie, such loud pleas for clemency could be heard from all sides.

‘Oh my God, save us!’ some cried while others fell on their face and put their foreheads to the ground to beg for mercy. Yet others were in a fit of outrage at the drunken sayings of this mad woman and were throwing the hymn books at her, but she, being full of wine which gives people good courage, went on to say, “My Lord, I will even do all your disciples too, I promise, if you can just give me one ticket to get to heaven please, because I am already at the very gates of hell. Please, I can’t take anymore…”

At which point someone managed to grab the mike from her. Without resisting now, she just seemed to sink away from them and into a small heap of broken humanity on the floor, as if she had summoned and used up all her last reserves of strength to appeal directly to the highest power, with everything she has to offer, offering her whole body and soul, to persuade the Son of God Himself to please let her come home, to free her from this wretched world of tears, for the weariness of it was in her bones and gnawed away at her heart, and so she was reduced by the weight of injustice and the wickedness of men to a small heap of flesh and bone, and lay there weeping softly and inconsolably like a child before the altar.

The reverend put aside his dictionary, kneeled where she lay and placed a hand on her head to pray.

Now when this drama had begun to draw to a close and the people had wiped their tears away, joyful in the knowledge that the Lord hears even the cries of sinners, the congregation started to make their way home. But one man — he is known to us as Abraham, for he is the father of many stories — came to those of us who were standing around outside to discuss the fiasco inside and said to us that, although the fallen girl did not tell the whole story today, for it would be too much for us to bear, he had lived for many years in that area of Rykmans Heuwel where her family also lived, and knew that girl from when she was a child, and therefore we would be well advised not to condemn her so harshly as a ‘drunken whore’.

For, he said, there was a time when she too was pure and innocent, like the unspoiled Virgin Mary, who was impregnated by the Almighty Father. For the girl lying in tears before the altar came from a well-off family, but when she was no more than a child was defiled by her own father.

On learning of this disgrace, the mother chased the small girl from their home, saying she had seduced her father, with the blood still drying on her legs and the tears still wet on her face, and forced the beautiful child with nothing but the clothes on her back to go onto the streets to make a living by submission to the violence of men.

So it was that the child-woman came to know only the kindness and loyalty of dogs, but not of men.

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* ARTWORK: The Black Madonna by Magdalena Walulik