A Fool's Knot by Philip Spires Page B

bar or at least tell him to shut up?”
    â€œThey wouldn’t do that,” said Michael. “He’s a mad man. People will just try to ignore him. They don’t put people like him away, you know. They just stay around the home and their families look after them. It’s quite humane, really. It means that no one is ever left destitute or homeless, no matter how old or mad they become. No, people here will just let the old fool do as he wishes. If he asked for food in that restaurant, the owner would give him some. He doesn’t need to buy anything. But his case is a bit strange, stranger than most, because he has no family. Quite soon after I arrived in Migwani, when he was still compos mentis and quite a figure in the community, he had an accident. I was out early one morning, contemplating my vocation, as we priests do, and found him in the marketplace under the tree where he now sleeps. He was drunk and had either fallen or had a stroke. If I hadn’t taken him to the hospital in Muthale, he would probably have died. It might have been better for everyone if he had. Anyway, because he has no family, all the town supports him. Wherever he goes, he gets what he wants. All he ever asks for is beer and a bit of food, but he is never refused.”
    â€œBut our boys, Mutuli and Kitheka, they ran away…” said Janet, sounding confused. “I asked them to tell him to go away and they just ran.”
    â€œOh,” interrupted Michel, “they would not want to order him around. They wouldn’t do that at all. They will just want to leave him alone to do whatever he wants. They would not want to get in his way.”
    Janet thought for a second, trying to remember the name the boys had used to describe the old man. “They gave him a special name, but it wasn’t Munyasya. It was more like Mw… Mw…”
    â€œ Mwana wa mungu ?” asked Michael.
    â€œYes. That was it. Mwana wa mungu ,” she repeated.
    â€œThat’s not a name,” said Michael. “That just means a madman. Well…” Michael paused here to consider how he might explain. “It doesn’t actually mean madman. Literally it means ‘child of God’. People believe, you see, that these madmen become mad because they can see things that men should not see. They are really living in another world.”
    Janet felt very much better and her immediate anxiety had gone. The thought of being cursed to change into a snake ought to worry her, she thought, but Michael’s flippant dismissal of the entire incident made it impossible to be afraid. “I wonder,” she said, “if I had been a Kamba and Munyasya had done the same thing to me and delivered a curse, would I be worried.”
    Michael thought again. “It’s a strange question, because in his case he only seems to go for white people.” He was silent again for a few moments. “I suppose you would be worried.”
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Chapter Ten
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    March 1976
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    John O’Hara was a man with problems on his mind. As he sat alone to eat his lunch, his thoughts drifted behind piercing blue eyes, whose fixed stare was trained through the window he faced, but whose focus was far beyond the mango tree that the opening framed. The material side of his diocese was taking care of itself. The problem of raising funds for the parishes was ongoing, but then it always was. The cathedral, which just two years before had been but a dream, was almost complete, the money coming from visits and lecture tours by himself and his priests to North America. They had realised a number of verbal commitments from churches and charities, and these had since matured into funding for the special projects that his priests planned and executed. He had seen the cathedral grow from an architect’s model to become, already, the most prestigious building in Kitui town. Although unfinished, it was breathtakingly beautiful,