No Other Life (20 page)

‘Raymond made a speech on radio about fifteen minutes ago,’ Mathieu said. ‘According to him, you’ve been removed by parliament because of your refusal to govern by democratic means. The general assembly has appointed Raymond premier until elections can be held. He also said you’re believed to have fled the country.’

‘They’re pretending it isn’t a military coup,’ Jeannot said. ‘But as long as I’m free and able to contact a radio station, that lie isn’t going to work.’

We were coming on to the road that leads from Port Riche into the mountains where Lavallie is situated. It was a main road, one of six that led out of the city. Ahead, amid the trudging lines of peasants bringing their bundles to market, was the usual hodge-podge of old cars, camionettes and mule carts moving in and out of the capital. But, as we came closer, we crawled along so slowly that we were moving little faster than the pedestrians marching along the sides of the road.

‘Roadblock,’ Pelardy said.

Straddling the road were two army trucks and an armoured car, a machine gun swivelling on its turret. The officer in charge of the operation was a
mulâtre
with the rank of captain.

Jeannot, when he saw the officer, turned to Pelardy. ‘Why is it a captain? Because they need someone who’ll recognise me, someone who’ll be able to control the soldiers who might let me through.’

‘It will be the same at all other exit roads from the city,’ Pelardy said. ‘And they’ll have a watch on the airport and the docks.’

‘If we could get past this lot,’ Mathieu Clément said, ‘there’s a coastal village outside Lavallie. We might be able to rent a fishing boat to take us to Cuba.’

‘I can’t leave,’ Jeannot said. ‘People must know that I’m here, that I haven’t been killed.’

‘What will we do, then?’

‘We must try to get to Callil. Father Pat Redmond – remember his radio station? It’s local, so they’ve probably overlooked it.’

We were still about two hundred yards from the roadblock. ‘All right,’ Jeannot said. ‘The rest of you go through. They don’t know you.’

He motioned me to stop the car. He got out and slipped into the queue of men and women who were trudging along the edge of the road. I saw him speak to a woman who was laden with baskets. He took some of the baskets and fell in behind her. In his cane cutter’s floppy hat, his worn shirt and trousers, he looked no different from the others. The soldiers ahead, intent on checking the vehicles on the road, were paying little attention to the pedestrians who shuffled past the armoured car.

Our line of vehicles speeded up. We left Jeannot behind. When we reached the roadblock, the officer looked first at me, the
blanc
, and then at Pelardy, the
mulâtre
.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To the St Viateur School,’ I said.

He nodded and waved us on.

We drove slowly and pulled in at a turn in the road, out of sight of the soldiers. When I saw Jeannot coming towards us, still part of the peasant group, I thanked God for his deliverance. But when Jeannot got into the car and we drove slowly on in the stream of rickety vehicles my prayer mocked me. What deliverance?

Then, confirming my fears, Pelardy said to Jeannot, ‘I’ve been thinking. You shouldn’t risk a radio address. It’s far too dangerous. You should try for asylum in one of the embassies and put your case from there. It’s not going to be easy for you. Raymond’s saying this is a political upset. Unfortunately, the world’s going to believe him.’

‘Nonsense,’ Jeannot said.

‘Is it? Your “machete” speech was reported in all the foreign media. Since then we’ve had street riots, property burned down, people killed. That’s what the world is hearing about. And there’ll be more of it once our people realise that they’ve lost their little priest.’

‘They haven’t lost me,’ Jeannot said. ‘When I go on radio they’ll rise up and turn these plotters out. And the world will back
us.
We represent democracy, we were freely elected. The United Nations – every parliament, every country – will be on our side.’

‘If you go on radio,’ Pelardy said, ‘the Army will make sure you don’t do it twice. This is a small island. They’ll find you and kill you.’

Jeannot turned around and smiled at Pelardy who was sitting in the back seat. ‘I know you don’t believe in God, Pele. But God is here, He is with us now and He, not I, dictates these events. If it’s His will that I be killed, then I must accept it. In the meantime, we’ll go to Callil.’

We drove on. Two miles up the road, I turned off on a small road that led to the Pondicher region. For the next twenty miles, the only vehicles we saw were three heavy old army trucks laden with vegetables, which passed us slowly, going in the opposite direction. A sergeant sitting on top of the load was listening to a blaring portable radio. The announcer was speaking in Creole. I couldn’t catch the words.

‘Did you hear?’ Jeannot asked. ‘He said something about a riot in Mele. That means they haven’t taken over the radio stations yet. If they had, they’d never let that news get out.’

I looked at him. He was smiling and cheerful as I’d rarely seen him in these last weeks. He saw my look and said, ‘Cheer up, Paul. We’re winning. I know it.’

Shortly after two o’clock we reached Callil, a large village which had grown up around two coffee plantations owned by a wealthy mulatto family who lived in Port Riche. The peasants who worked in these plantations lived in huts made of wooden frames, walled with mud-daubed wattles and thatched with palm branches and guinea grass. Approaching Callil, one could imagine oneself in rural Africa. But in the past ten years, with help from Jeannot and his boys’ club workers, Father Pat Redmond of the Holy Ghost Fathers had built a church, an elementary school and, because he was a fervent radio ham, a small transmitting station from which he broadcast sermons and news of the region. Redmond, a carrot-haired Irish priest, was a natural rebel, often in trouble with his religious superiors. He was one of Jeannot’s strongest supporters.

Now his parishioners, seeing our car, ran down to the village well, where Redmond was at work repairing the pump. ‘Jeannot! Jeannot,
ici
!’

At once it seemed that half the occupants of the village came running out of their dwellings and up from the coffee groves to cluster around Jeannot, cheering, embracing him as he got out of the car. ‘Wait, wait,’ I heard him say. ‘Were soldiers here today?’

‘Not today. They came two days ago. We had a demonstration but they stopped it. They took Marie-Claire Boulez and her husband. Shot them. There.’ They pointed to a crucifix of palm branches and a wreath of frangipani placed against a wall of the village school.

At that moment I saw Pat Redmond come up the rutted path from the well, red-faced, and a little out of breath, his cassock hiked up around his waist showing baggy khaki trousers and heavy workboots. Attached to his belt was a small radio which he shut off as he came towards us. Jeannot went to him, asking, ‘You heard about the coup?’

‘Of course.’ He pointed to the radio on his belt. ‘I’ve been listening all morning.’

‘Tell us,’ Pelardy said. ‘We have no radio.’

‘Macandal’s plane arrived from Paris an hour ago. Lambert is with him. General Hemon has stepped down as Army Chief of Staff. So it looks as if you’ve lost your backing.’

‘The people will back me,’ Jeannot said.

Redmond hesitated, then said, ‘Jeannot, you’re not safe here. The Margitals have their spies. They’re probably phoning them from the plantation office, right this minute.’

The Margitals were the plantation owners. I had thought of the same thing. But Jeannot said, ‘We won’t stay long. I came to make a broadcast. Is that possible? I’ve got to let people know that I’m safe.’

Redmond glanced at the expectant villagers clustered around us. ‘Let’s go inside.’

He led us into the schoolhouse where children sat at homemade desks, listening to Father Rourke, a Holy Ghost Father in his twenties, who had recently come to help run the parish. We went into Pat’s crowded office, one part of which was partitioned off and filled with his radio equipment.

But he did not take us in there. Instead, he shut the outer door of the office and said, ‘We’ve had a lot of trouble here. The day after your “machete” speech our people marched down to the plantation office asking for proper wages. The Margitals were scared and called in the soldiers. Two people were shot to death and I had to send fourteen others, some of them kids, over to the hospital in Melun. It was like the old days with Doumergue’s
bleus
. Brutal.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jeannot said.

‘Are you?’

We were standing in a semi-circle, Pelardy, Mathieu Clément, myself, Pat, Jeannot. In the other room we heard children’s voices recite a verse. Behind the desk an old wall clock ticked away. I stared at Pat’s sun-reddened Irish face, his cold, blue, Gaelic eyes.

Then Jeannot said, ‘Of course I’m sorry that these things happened. But I’m not ashamed of it. The people themselves will make the revolution. I am only the catalyst. This morning, the elite tried to get rid of me. They failed. I am here. I am still President. When people find that out they will go into the streets again and demand that I be reinstated. I’m not asking for violence. I ask for justice. Democracy must prevail.’

‘And if it doesn’t,’ Pat Redmond said, ‘how many of our people will be killed? Half an hour ago I spoke with friends over the short-wave radio. The streets of Port Riche, Mele, Doumergueville and Papanos are filled with soldiers. Maybe, the only thing that really works in this country is the staging of a coup. They’ve taken over Radio Libre – ’

‘I know that,’ Jeannot said. ‘That’s why I’m here. I don’t know anything about radio but if I speak on your transmitter it will be picked up, won’t it? Abroad, as well?’

‘It’s not only your speech that will be picked up,’ Pat said. ‘You’ll be picked up. Once they find out where the broadcast is coming from, they’ll close off all roads to Callil in half an hour. Where will you hide?’

‘People will hide me,’ Jeannot said. ‘But that’s not important. The important thing is that I speak out now. That the truth is broadcast to the rest of the world, to the United Nations, to the Organisation of American States. If that happens they’ll never get away with this. Will you help me?’

‘No.’

We stood there, all of us, as though shot by that one word. We were the faithful and Jeannot was our leader. He had helped Pat build his church and build the schoolhouse we stood in. He was asking for something vital, something only Pat could give.

‘Are you afraid?’ Jeannot said.

‘Yes. This is my parish, these are my people. If we help you, we’ll be punished. They won’t shoot me, but they will shoot men, women and kids who can’t read or write, who never heard of the United Nations or the OAS, who marched down to the Margitals’ office last week because you told them to. You say you won’t preach violence but it’s too late for that. Violence has begun. The people believe in you. They will march against armed soldiers to defend you. They think of you as the Messiah. I don’t.’

‘If only I were,’ Jeannot said. He went up to Pat and embraced him. ‘All right, Pat. Follow your conscience. That’s what they taught us.’

He turned to Mathieu Clément. ‘There’s another possibility, do you remember that station in Cap Gauche, the one run by Willi – Willi something?’

‘Willi Narodny,’ Mathieu said. ‘He’s a wild man.’

‘And he doesn’t have a parish,’ Jeannot said. He turned back to Pat. ‘Can I use your phone? Is that all right?’

‘I can do better than that,’ Pat said. ‘Willi’s a ham. We talk all the time. Come in here.’

He led Jeannot into the room that was his radio station. As they went in, Jeannot closed the door, leaving me, Mathieu and Pelardy alone in the outer office.

‘He should go to an embassy,’ Pelardy said. ‘Tell him, Father. He’ll listen to you.’

‘He won’t.’

‘How far is Cap Gauche from here?’ Pelardy asked Mathieu.

‘An hour. But we have to go through Papanos. Pat said it’s full of soldiers, remember?’

‘I’m not going with you,’ Pelardy said.

We looked at him.

‘Because you’re not going to make it. Let me go back to Port Riche. I’ll go to the Canadian Embassy and ask for their help. If we could get him in there, he’d be safe.’

But when, a few minutes later, Jeannot and Pat came out of the radio room and Pelardy made his suggestion, Jeannot said at once, ‘A prisoner in an embassy, surrounded by Lambert’s soldiers, waiting for the big world to help me out? No thanks.’ He turned to me. ‘Paul, will you take me to Cap Gauche? I’ve spoken to Willi. His station hasn’t been shut down. He’s been told he can stay on the air but he must issue no news bulletins until he’s given one by the coup leaders. He’s obeyed so far, but he’s willing to help me.’

Pelardy said, ‘Jeannot, let me tell you one thing. You don’t understand politics, you never will. If you want to be a martyr, I can’t stop you. But if you go on to Papanos and are arrested, it will be the end of everything we fought for. I’m going back to Port Riche.’

Jeannot turned to Mathieu. ‘And you?’

‘I’m your press secretary,’ Mathieu said. ‘You want to make a broadcast. Fine.’