Blind Man's Lantern

Sarki's."

  Waziri, crouched near the tent to pick up such talk as might pass insideconcerning himself, was at first dismayed by Aaron's whoops of joy. ThenMartha joined her husband in happy laughter. Since her tiny-garmentsline had been delivered in Low Dutch, the young Murnan chose to believethat the enthusiastic sounds he heard within the tent reflected joy athis employment.

  * * * * *

  It was cold the week the barn was raised, and the mattocks had heavywork gouging out frozen earth to be heaped into the bank leading up theback. The Murnan laborers seemed to think midwinter as appropriate asany other time for building; they said the Mother slept, and would notbe disturbed. Martha served coffee and buttermilk-pop at break-time, andpresided over noontime feasts, served in several sittings, in the tent.Before the workers left in the evening, Aaron would give each a drinkout back, scharifer cider, feeling that they'd steamed hard enough toearn a sip of something volatile. There are matters, he mused, in whichcommon sense can blink at a bishop; as in secretly trimming one's bearda bit, for example, to keep it out of one's soup; or plucking a guitarto raise the spirits.

  When the fortnight's cold work was done, the Stoltzfoos Farm was likenothing seen before on Murna. The bank-barn was forty feet high. On itslee side, Aaron had nailed thin, horizontal strips of wood about a footapart, hoping to encourage the mud-daubing birds he'd seen on the wallat Datura to plaster their nests onto his barn, and shop for insects inhis fields. Lacking concrete, he'd constructed a roofless stone hutabutting the barn to serve as his manure shed. The farmhouse itself wasa bit gay, having an inside toilet to cheat the Murnan winters and asunporch for Martha's bacteriological equipment. As the nearest Amish_Volle Diener_--Congregational Bishop--was eighty light-years off, andas the circumstances were unusual, Aaron felt that he and Martha weresafe from the shunning--_Meidung_--that was the Old Order's manner ofpunishing Amischers guilty of "going gay" by breaking the church rulesagainst worldly show.

  A third outbuilding puzzled the Murnan carpenters even more than thetwo-storied wooden house and the enormous barn. This shed had hingedsidings that could be propped out to let breezes sweep through thebuilding. Aaron explained to Musa the function of this tobacco shed,where he would hang his lathes of long-leafed tobacco to cure fromAugust through November. The tobacco seedlings were already sprouting inMason jars on the sunporch window-sills. The bank-barn's basement wasalso dedicated to tobacco. Here, in midwinter, Aaron and Martha andWaziri 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 PennsylvaniaType 41 would sell better here than anything else he could grow.

  Martha Stoltzfoos was as busy in her new farmhouse as Aaron and Waziriwere in the barn. Her kitchen stove burned all day. Nothing ever seen inLancaster County, this stove was built of fireclay and brick; but thefood it heated was honest Deitsch. There were pickled eggs and redbeets, 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 ofWaziri's head, haystacks of sauerkraut, slices off the great slab ofhome-preserved chipped beef, milk by the gallon, stewed chicken, popcornsoup, rashers of bacon, rivers of coffee. In the evenings, protectingher fingers from the sin of idleness, Martha quilted and cross-stitchedby lamplight. Already her parlor wall boasted a framed motto thatreduced 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 hisyoung helper in a sweat. Martha's cooking and the heavy work wereslabbing muscle onto Waziri's lean, brown frame. Aaron's farmingmethods, so much different to Murnan routines, puzzled and intrigued theboy. Aaron was equally bemused by the local taboos. Why, for example,did all the politer Murnans eat with the right hand only? Why did thewomen veil themselves in his presence? And what was this Mother-goddessworship that seemed to require no more of its adherents than theinclusion of their deity's name in every curse, formal and profane?"Think what you please, but not too loud," Aaron cautioned himself, andcarefully commenced to copy those Murnan speech-forms, gestures, andattitudes that did not conflict with his own deep convictions.

  But the soil was his employment, not socializing. Aaron wormed hisswine, inspected his horse-powered plow and harrow, gazed at the sun,palpated the soil, and prayed for an early spring to a God whounderstood German. Each day, to keep mold from strangling the moistmorsels, he shook the jars of tobacco seed, whose hair-fine sprouts werejust splitting the hulls.

  The rations packaged in Pennsylvania were shrinking. The Stoltzfoosstake of silver and gold cowries was wasting away. Each night, bruisedwith fatigue, Aaron brought his little household into the parlor whilehe 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 nothingof the hard High German: "_For the Lord God will help me: thereforeshall 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'sbearded God.

  * * * * *

  The Murnan neighbors, to whom late winter was the slackest season in thefarm-year, visited often to observe and comment on the off-worlder'swork. Aaron Stoltzfoos privately regarded the endless conversations astoo much of a good thing; but he realized that his answering theMurnan's questions helped work off the obligation he owed the governmentfor the eighty light-years' transportation it had given him, theopportunity he'd been given to earn this hundred acres with five years'work, and the interest-free loans that had put up his barn andfarmhouse.

  With Waziri hovering near, Aaron's proud lieutenant, the neighbors wouldstuff their pipes with native tobacco, a leaf that would have gagged oneof Sir Walter Raleigh's Indian friends, while the Amishman lit a stogiein self-defense. Why, the neighbor farmers demanded, did Aaron proposeto dust his bean-seeds with a powder that looked like soot? Martha'smicroscope, a wonder, introduced the Murnans to bacteria; and Aarontediously translated his knowledge of the nitrogen-fixing symbiotes intoHausa. But there were other questions. What was the purpose of the brushstacked on top of the smooth-raked beds where Aaron proposed to planthis tobacco-seedlings? He explained that fire, second best to steaming,would kill the weed-seeds in the soil, and give the tobacco uncrowdedbeds to prosper in.

  Those needles with which he punctured the flanks of his swine andcattle: what devils did they exorcise? Back to the microscope for anexplanation of the disease-process, a sophistication the Murnans hadlost in the years since they'd left Kano. What were the bits of blue andpink paper Aaron pressed into mudballs picked up in the variousprecincts 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--nodung of animals, but a sort of flour--that he intended to work into hissoil? Aaron answered each question as best he could, Wazirisupplying--and often inventing--Hausa words for concepts likephosphorous, ascarid worms, and litmus.

  Aaron had as much to learn from his brown-skinned neighbors as he had toteach 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 legumeAaron had no experience of beyond purchasing an occasional tooth-ful atthe grocery-store, won half a dozen acres from Korean lespedeza, thecrop he'd at first selected as his soil-improver there. He gotacquainted with a plant no Amishman before him had ever sown, acrabgrass called fonio, a staple cereal and source of beer-malt onMurna, imported with the first Nigerian colonists.

  Aaron refused to plant any lalle, the henna-shrub from which the Murnansmade the dye to stain their women's hands, feeling that it would beimproper for him to contribute to such a vanity. Bulrush millet, anothernative crop, was il
l suited to Aaron's well-drained fields. He plannedto grow corn, though, the stuff his people called _Welschkarn_--aliencorn. Though American enough, maize had been a foreigner to the firstAmish farmers, and still carried history in its name. This crop waschiefly for Wutzchen, whose bloodlines, Aaron was confident, would leadto a crop of pork of a quality these heretics from Islam had nevertasted before.

  * * * * *

  Work wasn't everything. One Sunday, after he and Martha had sungtogether from the _Ausbund_, and Aaron had read from the _Schrift_ andthe _Martyr's Mirror_, there was time to play.

  Sarki Kazunzumi and several other gentlemen who enjoyed City Hall orChamber of Commerce standing in Datura had come to visit theStoltzfooses after lunch; as had Musa the carpenter and his older