16

“I have to go, and you know I don’t want to,” Prin said.

“Do I know that?” Molly asked.

The girls were well ahead of them as they walked home from church. It was Holy Thursday and a warm April night in Toronto. Most of the snow had melted into pocky grey-white ridges that lined the sidewalks. The leaves were but small black buds, shaking in the wind. Prin felt clammy all around. The weather was close, he’d been picked to have his feet washed by the priest and had done a poor job of drying off, the adult diaper he was wearing chafed, and also, oh yes, he was lying to his wife. He wanted to go to Dragomans. Or, he had been told.

The need to go had been with him since the end of the meeting, and throughout Holy Week. Hearing the voice—somehow in his head and not in his head, loud and clear but only to him, Hebrew but he knew what was said—put his heart off-beat, his mind off-kilter. What had happened was … not what, but who. Who. Whom. The memory of it made him hold his breath, wait for someone to notice, someone to say something. He strained, but nothing else had happened since. There was only a ringing in his ears from straining to hear again. He didn’t know how to tell Molly why he wanted to go to Dragomans. How to explain it, without sounding like a madman or a conniving jackass?

Had he really heard a voice? Really? A voice? No. Worse. Better. No, worse. He’d heard The Voice.

Yours.

But wait. That he had to go to Dragomans in July was also plainly true, mundanely true. After the Skype call, Fr. Pat and Wende together explained that the Minister had, unbidden, sent UFU an initial investment to demonstrate just how serious the government was in its desire to create a partnership. The investment reflected the government’s recently taking back control of the country’s oil refineries from a series of militias and Russians, and the initial money was enough, on its own, to pay the professors’ salaries for the summer.

All that was asked for, in return, was a small show-of-good-faith: that a professor from Toronto come to Dragomans at the end of Ramadan to deliver a lecture and meet with prospective students. Prin was the obvious choice. Why is that? he’d asked. And then, before the ensuing compliments became outright lies, he interrupted Fr. Pat and said he thought faculty salaries were guaranteed for at least a year. Fr. Pat said they were guaranteed for the academic year, September to May. Prin complained that this distinction had never been made publicly and Fr. Pat said he couldn’t believe that in spite of the school’s dire situation, people still weren’t reading his blog.

“Who else is going?” Molly asked.

“Wende,” Prin said.

“I see,” Molly said.

“But there’s really nothing to worry about there, dear. She’s not why I want to go. Besides, you already told me you’re not concerned,” Prin said.

“And I’m not,” Molly said.

“Then what is it?” Prin asked.

“It’s almost like you want me to be concerned. But we both know why I’m not. You’re a faithful husband, Prin. I know that’s true of your heart and your soul. Your trueness has never been in doubt for me,” Molly said.

“I’m glad,” Prin said.

“As for your body, well, because of the cancer—” Molly said.

“So that’s what you and Wende talked about in the kitchen,” he said.

“No! And it doesn’t matter what we talked about. She doesn’t matter. Even your not having a salary this summer doesn’t matter. We could make ends meet. We could skip swimming lessons and Gregorian chant camp. We could go to Milwaukee and stay with my family. Whatever. What matters is that you’re thinking of going to a Middle Eastern country that just had a civil war. What matters is that you’ve survived cancer and now you’re willing to risk your life for, for what? For who?”

“Whom,” he said.

She walked ahead, catching up with the girls. She didn’t turn back. Sometimes Molly didn’t enjoy being married to an English professor.

But he wasn’t just being an English professor! He didn’t know how to tell her who, whom. Whom. He had to go there for work, and he wanted to go, yes, for far more than work. And not because he could tell Wende wanted this, for whatever technically-useless-but-still-kind-of-flattering reason, or to help UFU, or even to help Mariam and her fellow Christian orphan Kafka readers, or even, even to visit a chapel that had something to do with the crucifixion. Yes and yes and yes and yes, but he still wanted to go for more than all of that.

Actually, no, that wasn’t it at all.

Prin didn’t want to go. It was risky, even dangerous all around. Prin, alone by his own little lights, didn’t see any higher good in going. But that rushing in his ears, that pulling at his chest right after Wende had told him he had to go. That reaching in had left him with a sense of his life suddenly off-beat, off-kilter. And not thrown off by an enlarged and cancerous and then removed prostate or by the swishy spectre of an overseas trip with an ex-girlfriend, but thrown off because this something, this someone, wasn’t his to keep balanced; because deep down it was firm, full, real, and far more than mere candle-flicker and mountain view.

He didn’t want to go.

God wanted him to go.

His phone rang.

“Prin!” said Kingsley.

“Yes, Dad?” said Prin.

“Don’t be late! The tournament begins at 12 pm tomorrow,” said Kingsley.

“Sorry, Dad, what tournament?” asked Prin.

The phone was silent for a very long time. Or mostly silent: there was a great deal of bullish steam being blown through an angry old man’s flared nostrils.

“Oh yes, right, the tournament! Wait, it’s happening on Good Friday?” Prin said.

“NO! You need to be more ambitious in life, son! If we win the tournament it’s going to be a Great Friday!”