The Convert

The Convert – Love Short Story

An acquisitive farmer once lived in a large, isolated house on a hill. The days of his life, dodging between flamboyant dawns and somnolent sunsets, had slipped away nonchalantly. As he stirred up the memories of the complacent, and the piquant events in his life, his mind was left in a perplexed state. Sighing deeply and disconcerted, he sat upon the low white wall of his balcony like an unfinished sketch of a gargoyle.

The softly rolling moulded hills were fluted with green fields. The silver streaks of rivulets, springs and rills played upon, soused and fed the verdant slopes and wove through gently flattened plains, quilted with fields.

Snugly below lay a village, gleaming white with red roofed houses. A school stood tucked away discreetly somewhere in the neighbourhood. Small fluffs of trees and shrubs which dotted the vicinity were surplus.

The villagers were farmers. They lived halcyon lives. He watched a sting of veins move like senile caterpillars upon tenuous brown tracks, flanked by emerald fields.

His yellow house sat smug upon the side of the lush hill, proudly offering him a bird’s-eye view of the idyllic panorama below. No rapport existed between the villagers and this opulent farmer. On market days, the farmer did descend to make his way to the village market. Then they flocked to watch him, awe struck, as though he were divinity come down from above to honour the village.

He hovered like a bejewelled dragonfly, a thick chain of gold around his neck, a gold bracelet upon his wrist and pudgy fingers sparkling with stone studded rings. He strutted like a peacock, attempting a cool swagger, which evolved into a grotesque walk. The village youth, he suspected, giggled and chattered behind his back. He glowered like a thunder cloud at them.

He eyed the villagers as verminous as they crowded around to watch his gaily painted retinue of wains. Its bursting sacks of grains rode past like portly dwarfs.

Yet, for all the panoply, he was a sad joke. He detested children. He had remained a bachelor, abhorring the notion of sharing his wealth with a woman nor child. The Gargantuan obsession he possessed for himself bordered upon the edge of insanity. This introverted mollycoddling compensated for the love he hardly received from his kith and kin, villagers and labourers. Upon this wave of self love, the farmer surfed his days away.

In the wee hours of the day he moseyed in his garden, inhaling the dew drenched morning air. The birds twittered
Melodious cadence; the cows mooed a sombre descant; the goats chorused with random bleats. The servants like a swarm of bees busied themselves with the day’s terrene chores. Since the farmer paid them well they vied and flocked to work for him.

His barns and silos that stood in rows like timber boxes were replete with grains, spices, seeds and pulses. On market days he sold his produce at the village, when the market came alive with a riot of colours and bustle. Here his stentorian voice could e heard, as he bartered and bargained, stuffing his leather money bags with pelf from these transactions.
Returning home he fed himself a sumptuous meal. Then he slumped into his elaborately carved teak bed and drifted into an abysmal slumber.

Down in the village, a lonely widow lived in a tidy cottage, adjacent to her well stocked grocery. She had beady eyes, set too close, which darted this way and that, like those of a song thrush. Bereft of her husband who had left her childless, her existence was bromidic. Her husband’s fortune, she held onto like a trophy. A sedate, sensible woman, she sat in her grocery selling her goods, and watched the money trickle in.

She was mundanely polite to the villagers. However, of late, the sight of the farmer aroused her senses. When he sashayed into the grocery, small blobs of blush stole into her tanned waxen cheeks. He was her most esteemed customer. She bustled about, in ill concealed excitement, catering to his every whim and need. His visits transformed the dour widow into a radiant incarnation.

In turn, the farmer observing these reactions in the widow was quite gratified by her unabashed solicitudes. He began delving into her worshipping eyes, finding mysterious messages in their tenebrous depths. This mutual fascination cost them many a nights’ sleep. Each lay awake tossing, dreamy eyed and smiling yellow toothed foolish smiles in the dark.

The women folk in the village nudged and whispered behind them. “The black widow will marry him by and by!” said they, nodding and smiling merrily like a cluster of phlox.

On a day finely garbed in the splendour of the morning sun, the black widow was announced into a totally surprised farmer’s presence. She had ascended the hill on her red horse drawn cart, accompanied by a weary looking, middle aged pastor. This wan shepherd of the village folk had come in search of lost sheep. His presence, however, puzzled the farmer, who glowered at him, but waved him to a chair.

His countenance softened at the sight of the black widow, who stood shyly at a distance. He offered her the cushioned divan and for a moment imagined her to be the dusky moon, hiding her coyness behind gossamer veils of clouds.
The intense pastor was on a soul saving spree. After few minutes of the preliminary light chatter, he broached upon religion and Christianity, interrupted by bouts of incessant cough. His thick unruly hair gave him a fierce look. Yet, in a finely modulated voice, he spoke of a Jew named Jesus.

The pastor opened a shining black book (the farmer had mistaken it for a black money box) and with increasing urgency, he leafed through the pages, spearing down verses that he read aloud. The widow, as though mesmerized, hung upon his every word, which quite nettled the farmer.

The pastor rattled on about Jesus, hailing from the land of Israel, who had been at loggerheads with the reigning government, and chief priests who had ruled the roost. Strangely, he had loved the down trodden, the maimed, the unloved, the sorry offenders, the helpless, the destitute and the diseased.

Since it was the first time the farmer had ever heard the name Jesus, his interest was aroused but diffused by the black widow, whose presence distracted him. His eyes strayed to her and his mind went into a poetic dream lull. He found the pastors words wafting into his well occupied mind, and all he could mutter at the half heard account of Jesus was, “How outlandish….even eccentric….strange!”

At length, warm drinks were served, and the pastor, with a small feeling of triumph, took his leave, having sown the seed of faith on good ground. The black widow lingered, expounding the more about Jesus.

”I have become a Christian,” she explained. “It had long been coming, for love of Jesus is magnetic!”

As she said it her eyes shone and the farmer felt fascinated and jealous, that Jesus had captured her heart before he did. She spoke of her conversion and the new life she found in Jesus. The farmer right now was more enraptured by the curve of her lips and the twitch of her mouth, and lingered upon the parapet wall, watching her leave. Her back revealed her gross tresses deftly knotted into a severe bun, coddling her brown neck, and the farmer knew he was hopelessly in love.

The fervent pastor took to visiting the farmer with, and gradually without the widow. The farmer was good to the pastor for the widow’s sake. With the passing of days, however, as burns a moth enticed by a flame, the accounts of Christ’s love spread its fire into the gelid heart of the farmer. Soon he learned of the love of Jesus, His mission, His death and His resurrection.

He learnt, too, of the black widow’s love, now, fully abloom, with the warmth of his passion. To a man unaccustomed to the giving an taking of love, this double dose of love exhilarated his sense and went to his head like strong wine. The loveless winters of their lives were dispelled by a new flush of eternal romance and enchantment. It was an almost a mystique experience. These middle aged souls were soused by the flood of this new found love.

Her grocery had become the farmer’s favourite purlieu. Prinked up and glowing, they dined often at her table. Frequently, the kindly pastor accompanied them though his bouts of coughs had hardly subsided. Kindly village women had concocted various combinations of herbal drinks to relieve him of this perennial ailment to no avail. Sadly, it was the death of him, eventually.

Weeks and months rolled by and the pastor observing the farmer had matured enough in faith, urged him to be saved – the next subsequent step then was baptism. Gone were the days when words like ‘saved’ brought forth innocent outrageous questions from the farmer,( driving the pastor up alleys of mirth) who knew nothing of souls or spirituality, but only looked to mundane matters like seeds and grains stored and ‘saved’ for next year’s sowing.

The pastor and the widow soothed his yo-yo mind gradually as it strove to find sense in various sanctified sentiments. Like an adventurous child he invaded the realms of Christianity, imbibing its mysteries and doctrines like a thirsting nomad.

One day the pastor read Luke 12:15. It said, “And He said unto them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth.”

And the pastor read on, while the farmer bristled, observing the unhappy parallels between the rich man in the parable and himself. Pricked to the core, he commanded the pastor to leave.

That night he tossed upon his ornate bed, guilt stricken and angered. Oh, how he abhorred sharing his wealth! He had presented the widow with expensive gifts. But beyond her his world dissolved into a hollow nothingness.

The black widow who was sagacious enough to know an acorn does not become an oak overnight, patiently bid her time. In slow degrees, the black widow erased the dread the farmer had for children; the terrible greed within him. She cured him of the plague of self love and a mingy spirit. She drugged him as it were, with Luke 12:15 quite generously, which worked like a narcotic. The words of Jesus expurgated his blighted mind and restored his broken spirit.

With the passing of months, the cadaverous pastor and the black widow between them, converted the farmer into a Christian. Seventeen years have sped, since they first stepped into the portals of the farmer’s house on the hills.

The exuberant pastor married the farmer and the black widow one summer morn. And the farmer vowed his vows with great haste and clinched his marriage as though it were a good deal, in life’s market. As indeed it was.

The farmer and his wife replenished the earth with five robust scions. He was a changed man, with his generosity to the poor endeared him to the villagers.

The pastor died one rainy noon, his passion to snatch souls for Christ, stilled and calmed at last. The farmer and his wife with the grieving villagers buried him in the church yard, where he sleeps the slumber of the blessed.
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By- Jayashree Jayapaul