You Give God a Bad Name [Part 2]
Leon and I sometimes spend a few days in summer at a hunting lodge near my old hometown. Summer is a good time to occupy a hunting lodge - there are neither hunters nor dead animals around and one can enjoy a kind of pseudo-pastoralism without any of the annoying work of real farm life. Also, I don't know if I'd want to do Molteno in winter again, having acclimatised to the much milder Western Cape a long time ago.
Of course it always leaves a lingering sadness that we have to go and stay on someone else's farm. But hey, ons het almal op ons manier 'n plaas verloor, get over it. So we invited Anton to drive up from East London and share our little pastoral fantasy, and the vast old sandstone house, for a weekend. His eldest son would join us. I was on my way into town when I met them driving out to the farm and pulled over.
A small, grey man got out from the passenger side of the Landcruiser. He was hunched over and holding onto the front of his loose cotton shirt, pulling it away from his chest. The smell of decay was unbearable, even in the open air next to the road. I hugged him gingerly, not realising what was under that shirt. He looked frail, ashen, brittle, and very, very old. He was 51.
It would take another two years and we would see Anton one more time before he would agree to come to Cape Town for treatment. At some point during this time he begged to die. There were flies. They laid eggs. He told his mother. His mother told me. When I told Leon, much later, that Anton had had maggots living in his chest, Leon said maggots were clean things, they probably cleaned out the rotten flesh. But nothing has been able to erase that image from my mind. The maggots live behind my eyes, writhing, bathed in dusty yellow light leaking from tightly drawn curtains in a filthy house.
At this point I need to state that I do not blame Allen Wilson for my brother-in-law's psychopathology, which left him at the mercy of a father figure. We all have our issues, and Anton's psychological baggage rendered him susceptible to the promise of paradise offered by any kind of drug, religion included. But it cannot be denied that the pusher of the drug, the one peddling pain relief, shares accountability. While the pusher may not be to blame for the addiction, he sure as shit takes advantage of the vulnerability of the addict.
My brother-in-law arrived at Cape Town International in a wheelchair. He took a long time to appear from the tunnel while Leon and I waited, digesting a telephone call from their sister's husband, who had taken him to the airport on the other side. Michael said we'd better drive straight to hospital, not home as we had planned to do, because Anton wouldn't make it through the weekend. We stood in the waiting area wondering whether he had died during the flight. He hadn't.
The next few months filled up with emergency rooms and neurologists, dealing with the divide between private and state health care, and witnessing Anton lying helpless in an airless room, cursing God. So much self-loathing erupted from him that it threatened to overwhelm me. I approached my most steadfast Christian friend for help. I knew what I wanted to say but Anton wouldn't hear me as I did not speak Evangelical. My dearest friend was familiar with the language but felt unqualified to undo a decade of brainwashing. She consulted several faith leaders, who insisted that the deprogramming of false teachings is better left to a professional. And, is the catch, that Anton had to ask for their intervention.
Well, that ain't gonna happen. And while the good people sit on the sidelines and wait for him to ask for help the lay preachers and the Pentecostalists can be found at his bedside every day, giving without being asked, preaching, praying, singing, screaming, judging, promising, telling him what to believe. And I don't have a proselytising bone in my body. But I know when I've had enough, and I reached that point yesterday.
We had taken Anton a small TV some time ago but the reception was limited to a snowy SABC 2. So it was with delight that I noticed someone had installed a new aerial. And, it seemed, a mini-DVD player. Brilliant, I thought, now he could watch movies and not have to worry about the reception. Then I saw the pile of DVDs in the bedside drawer.
Two acolytes from the church in Molteno had visited the week before and kindly left him with all this viewing and reading material. I had a look at the first page and decided to take them away: "The Lord wants me to believe that the word that Allen gives me will save me and save my household." Kim and Craig, your DVDs and pamphlets are at my house. You may collect them whenever you like. I will not give them back to Anton. If he ever reverts to your brand of belief it will be in spite of me.
You are not welcome here.
You give God a bad name.
