Rich Beyond Dreams

Rich beyond dreams

By Lawrence Kadzitche

 

Luke Kamala was now convinced that everything was conspiring against him. What had started as a cool day was now a blazing furnace. The breeze that had been cooling him had stopped to blow. Dark clouds had joined the plot, blocking off the sun that had relentlessly beaten on him, to bring the ominous news of a brewing storm. The rumbling thunder and flashing lightning that was rapidly gathering made his misgivings worse.

 

Had it been in a movie, one would have thought he was a zombie. The threadbare black suit hung on his wasted frame as if it was draped on a scarecrow. His pointed shoes gaped like a dead fish. He had always worn his hair in a curly afro style but it now looked like that of a madman about to grow a dreadlock. The bible that was clasped in his bony fingers was in no better shape. He made no effort to chase away the flies that flew about him.

 

The pathetic figure shuffled towards the big house shimmering in the haze. It was about one hundred metres to the main door but, intolerably hungry, he felt as if it was many times that distance. The thought that he might soon get some food made him feel hungrier.

 

Reaching the door, he petulantly rapped on it several times. Footfalls approached from inside. Then the door swung open. A huge scantily dressed woman with a heavily painted face filled the doorway.

 

“What do you want?” she asked him with the impatience of one waving off a fly hovering over the face. She had tiny eyes that peered at him over steel rimmed glasses.

 

The naked hostility in her voice jarred him. “I…I’m very hungry…”

 

The big woman took off her glasses and looked at him from top to bottom. Revulsion glinted in her small eyes. “There’s a restaurant down the road,” she spat at him.  “Try there.”

 

“I don’t have money, madam,” Kamala said quickly.

 

“I don’t feed beggars. Go away!”

 

“Madam, I’m a preacher,” he said, waving his tattered bible. “I’ve been without food for two days.”

 

The woman let out a contemptuous laugh. “Balderdash! Who’re you trying to kid? You’re a thief trying to use some tricks to steal something.”

 

“Madam…”

 

But he was talking to himself. The woman had slammed the door shut. He heard the key turn in the lock. Suddenly he felt dizzy and leaned against the door for support. This was not the first time he had been denied food. Or chased away like a dog. Or even called a thief. Didn’t they know he was an elect of God? Didn’t they know he had lost prospects of a bright career and comfortable life because he had chosen to serve the Lord?

 

“I said go away or I’ll set the dogs on you!” screeched the mountainous woman from a window, jolting him out of his thoughts.

 

Slowly, as if he was in a trance, Kamala turned and walked away. His step and posture had all the signs of defeat like that of a cock beaten in a cock fight. To add to his misery, the heavens opened up without warning. He rushed towards a small house standing some distance from the road and found shelter on its tidy verandah.

 

But his relief was short lived. The front door clicked open and a well-dressed young woman stepped out.

 

“You’ve the impudence to stand on my porch, beggar. Get lost!” she said angrily.

 

“Madam…”

 

“I said evaporate and condense somewhere!” she commanded, waving him away imperiously. “Can’t you see you’re spoiling the floor? This isn’t a rain shelter. Leave at once!”

 

Kamala had no option but to step into the open. It was now raining cats and dogs and he was quickly soaked to the skin. Coming across a bridge, he took shelter under it.

 

Why was he being treated like dirt? He asked himself. Why had he to suffer like this? Was it his fault? Why couldn’t the Almighty God make these people see that he had thrown away all the things that would have made him live an affluent life for the sake of their own souls?

 

He recalled that he was born into a well-to-do family and went to a good school. His ambition had been to become an accountant. However, things took a different turn when he went to college. There, he became an ardent member of a certain fanatical religious group. The cult’s members were told that the love of money and material things was the root of all evil. At the core of the sect’s teaching was that the world would come to an end in a couple of years.

 

Kamala used to preach during the week-ends. But as time passed he decided to stop learning and start full time preaching. After all, why should he get educated when very soon the Lord would send the college to dust on Judgment Day and plunge its wicked students into everlasting fire?

His friends and parents advised him not to leave school. They said that he could venture into full time preaching after completing his studies. They pointed out that everything has its own time. If done at a wrong time, an otherwise good thing could have disastrous consequences.

 

But their advice fell on deaf ears. He said that he was a youth with a mission. God had chosen him to preach to the lost sheep before the Judgment Day.

 

“But you’ll need food, clothes…” his friends had pointed out.

 

“God will provide,” he had answered simply. Didn’t God feed Elijah in the desert when he was fleeing to the mountain of God, Horeb? How could he fail to look after him who was abandoning his education in order to save lost souls?

 

Frustrated, his parents gave him an ultimatum: either continue with school or be disowned. He chose to leave school and his parents immediately disowned him. With the fervor of a zealot, he plunged into the field of evangelism armed only with a bible and a few basic necessities. He went to Blantyre where he preached in markets, bus stations or anywhere he could get people to listen to his sermons.

 

He depended on donations from people who were touched by his teachings for money to buy food and pay for lodgings. But as time went on he found out that not many people were willing to donate money to him. It also dawned on him that that a lot people resented his message of impending doom.

 

Left with no options, he resorted to begging. This worsened things. People started to say he was using the preaching as a façade for begging. He could hardly get money to buy food let alone buy clothes or pay for lodgings.

 

That’s why he, a shepherd of God’s sheep, was now under the bridge while the rain raged around him. A man with no home to call his own. A man who had no food to eat. A poor man depending on charity like an invalid.

 

He had been patient like Job, convinced that God would look after him and reward him in the end. But now he wasn’t so sure. Looking at his emaciated body and frayed clothes, for the first time felt sorry for himself. Had he made a correct choice in entering this field? Why was he suffering like this if he had?

 

Suddenly something died within him. He came to a decision. Enough was enough. All the people managed to kick him around because they had money while he did not. He could obtain every comfort in the city if he had money. If he had money…

 

It all boiled down to money, he concluded. Money was the key. It was only money that could end all his suffering. If he had money, he would not be crouching under the crude shelter of a bridge like a wild beast while it rained heavily.

 

A plan took shape in his brain. A smile flickered on his gaunt face. He let out an insane laugh and threw his bible into the river. It would be useless now.

 

When the rain stopped it was already dark. He crept out of his shelter and took the way he had come from. There was a difference to his walk. It was now confident and sure. The step of a victor.

 

An hour later, he was hiding in the bushes near the house of the enormous woman, his eyes darting furtively. He saw the woman and her family get into a car and drive away obviously for a night in town.

 

Cautiously, he approached the house. The watchman was warming himself by the fire with other watchmen at a neighbouring house.  A quick glance to the right. Then left. A muted jingle of a breaking glass. And he had a window open.

 

In a jiffy, he was inside the house and on his way to the bedrooms. It did not take him time to find what he was looking for: money. There was a lot of it. The stingy woman, how could she stint him of a little food when she had so much money? He would teach her a lesson in manners, he thought spitefully as he scooped the cash out of the place where it had been hidden and stuffed it into a bag he had found in the bedroom.

 

Kamala was about to leave the house when a mouthwatering smell of food reached his nostrils. Now he noticed his intense hunger again. He had to eat. An open door led him into the dining room. The lights were on. Rats fled at his entry. His eyes fell on food spread on the table. The vermin had been feeding on it. The fat woman must be unhygienic to leave food like that. No wonder rats were found in such a big nice house, he thought. He dug into the food like a hungry pig.

 

He was finishing the food when intense pain gripped his stomach. Was it because he had taken so long without eating? He had to leave the house fast. To his horror, he could not move. His strength was draining fast like water out of leaky pail. He collapsed to the floor like a pricked balloon.

 

What was happening to him? Then he saw three of the rats that had climbed the wall fall down. His eyes went to packet of rat poison on a shelf. Then he realized what was wrong. The food was poisoned. It had been left there deliberately for the pests.

 

His senses began to desert him. As death crept closer and closer all he could think of was his money. He was rich, rich beyond his wildest dreams. He could now afford all the comfort and luxury the city offered. He clutched at the bag of money like a person swept by an angry river clinging to a floating log.

 

Some 600 kilometers away, a wealthy man who had been touched by Kamala’s sermons was writing a letter to him. He was informing him that he had secured a scholarship for the young evangelist to learn at an evangelism college in Canada. It never occurred to him that his letter would never reach the preacher. Precisely at that moment Kamala died of rat poison in the city. He had failed the acid test of his call at the eleventh hour.

 

End