A Very Bold Leap (19 page)

“We pay well.”

“How much?”

“Eight dollars an hour, for a forty-hour workweek.”

Such a fabulous figure silenced Charles. He sat with his mouth open and his eyes round as saucers.

“Are you … serious?” he finally managed to ask.

“We are always serious about serious matters. All our employees are hired under contract, and we respect our signature. We have twenty-two churches in Quebec, and five more in Ontario. They all have to be maintained and made to conform to local municipal regulations. We’re about to open another church in Rimouski. As you will see, there is no lack of work. That being said,” added Brother Miguel with an extraordinarily intense smile, “we also like to laugh and have fun, as it is our aim to behave like true children of God, as we were ordained to do with such insistence by Our Blessed Balthasar Chicoine, who was inspired only by Holy Scripture. The spiritual path, as you know,
can be followed only in joy and gaiety. Does the position of electrician’s apprentice interest you at all?”

“Well… I guess.”

“In my view, you will make an excellent apprentice. You have an intelligent look, and you appear to me to be honest. Unless you change your mind, come back and see me the day after tomorrow, at the same time, and we will settle the formalities.”

They both stood up at the same time and laughed at the coincidence. Brother Miguel conducted his visitor to the door, his hand resting paternally on Charles’s shoulder. There was no longer any other sound in the presbytery. The distribution of tracts must have begun. Charles could hardly believe that in two days he would be making more than three hundred dollars a week, an incredible salary that no one his age or with his education would ever dream of achieving. Surely there was a catch. But where?

He turned abruptly to Brother Miguel and looked him straight in the eye with a bold smile.

“Are you going to try to convert me?” he asked.

“Should we?” replied the latter, with irony.

“I don’t believe in God, at least, not much,” Charles said, wondering what he could possibly mean by that.

“Don’t worry, Charles, I won’t try to convert you. That would be awkward, wouldn’t it, not to mention futile. It’s God who will convert you, when He judges the time is right. We are only His instruments. It might happen tomorrow, it might happen ten years from now. Look, can you see this little scar on my left temple, that little half-circle? It is the result of a bloodletting I underwent seventeen years ago while being treated for a cerebral hemorrhage. God took advantage of that serious illness to remind me that He existed. Before that I heeded nothing but my own passions and my thirst for money. After my operation, I woke up semi-paralyzed and was forced to spend six months flat on my back in bed. I was able to think about my life, the life that was God’s precious gift. God created me out of nothing so that I could rise to meet Him, and yet there I had been, floundering around like a fish out of water.”

A
fter leaving the presbytery, Charles went to the Villa Medica on Sherbrooke Street, where Steve had been convalescing for the past two weeks. Wrapped in a body cast, his left leg and arm immobilized by an apparatus of cables and steel rods that made him look like a ballet dancer frozen in mid-flight, he spent most of his time bemoaning his treatments, his meals and the absence of cigarettes, flirting with the nurses, and asking for more physiotherapy sessions. Two or three times a week he made his mother break down in tears. He didn’t seem to have come to terms with the fact that he was still alive, and pretty much in one piece. Every now and then the television or a severe migraine headache — a result of the trauma to his head — would sink him into a deep silence that would last for an hour, sometimes two, and allow the staff to catch their breath. But his unhappiness grew along with his recovering strength, and he became so agitated that the doctor forbade him coffee and was thinking of putting him on tranquilizers. He also complained that his friends were neglecting him, but when they came to see him he had little to say to them, and seemed bored with their presence. Only Céline and Isabel were able to distract him, draw an occasional smile, and reconcile him at least for a short time to his lot by talking about the good times that awaited him when he left the hospital. At such times he became almost maudlin. He would sigh and promise himself that, once he was back on his feet, he would immediately set about finding himself a nice girl.

“I don’t have enough women in my life,” he’d complained one night. “I don’t get as much tail as I’d like. It must be because my nose is too long.”

“What do you mean?” Céline exclaimed. “There’s nothing wrong with your nose. It’s nice… I know lots of men who would love to have a nose like yours.”

“Thanks, Céline,” he said, giving her a strange look. “You’re very sweet. But I’m not blind.”

That day, Charles found him in such a good mood that, although he had decided not to, he told Steve about his new job. Steve stared at him in silence for a full ten seconds.

“The church of what?” he finally asked.

“The Church of the Holy Apostles of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ,” Charles repeated, blushing slightly.

Ten more seconds went by.

“How is it,” Steve said, “that I’m the one who got whacked in the head, and you’re the one who’s lost his marbles? What the hell happened? Did the Holy Virgin appear to you in a bikini while you were taking a shower, or what?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m in it for the cash: they’re paying me three hundred and twenty bucks a week. Think about it. If anyone offered you that kind of money, you’d take it, the same as me.”

“No way, José! Those sects are full of homos and nutcases! They use money as bait. First they’re going to stuff your head full of bullshit and then, when your head’s completely full, they’ll start stuffing it up your ass!”

Charles burst out laughing. “Well, at least you don’t beat around the bush, do you…. They’re not going to stuff anything up my ass, my friend.”

“Sure, sure … They’ve seen fancy boys like you before, guys who think they’re smarter than they are but end up getting shafted just the same.”

“Well, when you get out of here you can come and work with me. We’ll take care of each other.”

“Not me. As soon as they patch me back up again, I’m going to finish my education, get myself a real job, find myself a pretty little chick, and have four kids with her.”

“So, it’s not ambition you’re lacking. But why just four?”

“Well, we’ll see, we’ll see,” Steve replied, taking the question seriously.

The conversation drifted after that. Steve began telling stories about his father, who had died when Steve was ten years old. Félicien Lachapelle had been an extraordinary man, a professional truck driver who could drive
forty-eight hours straight without so much as a yawn. He’d been famous for his enormous appetite. Steve remembered watching him down two huge plates of spaghetti, drink a case of beer, then top it all off with a whole sugar pie and six scoops of ice cream.

“When I was a kid, he’d grab me by the seat of my pants and toss me in the air so high my back would touch the ceiling. My mother would scream bloody murder! But we’d be laughing like a couple of hyenas. Once, I guess I must’ve been about seven, he took me with him to pick up a load of grapefruit in Florida. When we got back, I wanted to quit school and just travel around with him! He practically had to strangle me to get me to go back to my books and my school bag. Too bad he’s dead… I think about him a lot. Sometimes I see him in my dreams, tossing loaves of bread in the air, still up to his old tricks …”

Listening to him, Charles was suddenly overcome by a feeling of melancholy mixed with envy. It had been a long time since he’d heard his friend being so talkative. That very morning, Steve recounted, the doctor had told him there was a good chance they’d be taking his body cast off in a few days, and removing the rigging of cables and rods; after that, he could start going to more physiotherapy sessions.

“If I could move, I’d have kissed the man’s hands,” Steve said. “Maybe even his ass!”

Which brought the conversation back to sects.

“Charlie, my boy, if you want to do me a favour, think twice before going to work for those wackos. At least find out something about them. I mean, the newspapers are full of stories about people who get sucked in by these preachers or whatever they call themselves… Don’t you remember that guy Moses Thériault who had that harem of women up in the Gaspésie? I’m telling you, if you don’t watch out you’re going to end up with a very nasty surprise, take it from me.”

Steve spoke with such a look of concern on his face that Charles was impressed. He walked home in order to give himself time to think. A vague unease had come over him, and despite all the precautions he told himself he would take, he wasn’t able to shake the feeling off. He became irritated with himself. As he walked, he glanced up at the sky from time to time. At that hour it was blue-black, traversed by heaps of lead-grey clouds that, in their scattered confusion, seemed to be fleeing something. Was that a
warning? “Just let them try any of their tricks on me, those holy rollers,” he said, narrowing his eyes menacingly, “and they’ll find out who they’re dealing with. Oh, boy, will they ever!” And he kicked violently at a plastic bottle that was lying in the middle of the sidewalk. The bottle careened crazily into the air and landed in the middle of the street, where it was crushed by a passing car. The incident filled him with childish happiness, as though it had been sent his way as a good omen.

But that night, sleep was so long in coming that Boff, disturbed by Charles’s continuous jerky movements, jumped down from the bed and went to curl up on the sofa.

The Church of the Holy Apostles of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ did not confine itself to spreading the Word of God. It also devoted itself enthusiastically to performing all kinds of good works. Different teams, made up of specialist volunteers, concerned themselves with giving “moral, psychological, and spiritual aid” to alcoholics, drug addicts, welfare recipients, single-parent families, and the elderly, singles as well as married couples; they set up libraries and bookstores that distributed “constructive” literature; they organized food banks for individuals and families in need; Youth Beat, a group of thirty amateur musicians under the direction of a forty-year-old saxophone player with long hair, got together at a different locale each week with three hundred other young devotees and held what they called “healthy explosions,” in which they delivered God’s Message through the medium of rock ‘n’ roll; Econo-Shop provided new and used clothing and school supplies at rock-bottom prices; and there was talk of starting a Literacy Team. All these charitable activities had but a single goal: obviously, the recruitment of new converts.

Brother Miguel conducted Charles from office to office, introducing him to the leaders of the different teams that happened to be on the premises that afternoon, emphasizing that without volunteer workers, none of these activities would have seen the light of day. The leader of Youth Beat, with his long, greasy hair, his gravelly voice and his hard, lined features, looked to Charles like someone who had just got out of prison. The librarian, a blond woman whose face was ravaged by acne, offered him her delicate, soft,
nearly weightless hand, and favoured him with such a strange look that it seemed to pierce right through him and lose itself in the depths of infinity. She welcomed him in her wispy voice: she hoped his presence in their Church would daily make him more aware of the presence of God within him, and be a source of unutterable joy.

While they were waiting for José Coïmbro, the electrician with whom Charles was to work, Brother Miguel invited Charles into his office, where he presented the new apprentice with a contract and asked him to read it over carefully, and then to sign it if everything seemed in order. It was a very simple document, comprising only two pages. The clause outlining the period of probation surprised him: it stipulated that the trial period would last two years.

“That’s a long apprenticeship,” Charles remarked.

“Not at all,” replied Brother Miguel, smiling broadly. “When I take someone on, I’m never mistaken. I haven’t been wrong in ten years. If there has ever been the slightest problem, the Good Lord has always alerted me to it. And He hasn’t done so with you.”

Charles made a face.

“I don’t ask that you believe me,” said the pastor, laughing. “The only thing I ask is that you watch us in our daily work. God will do the rest — if He so desires.”

José Coïmbro still hadn’t shown up. The pastor dialled his home number, then hung up with a resigned expression. No one knew where the electrician was.

“He’s not very punctual,” Brother Miguel sighed. “Sometimes I find that a problem. But what can you do? We all have our faults. God gave us life so that He could better us,” he added, laughing, “but there are those among us who may need more than one lifetime.”

Charles signed both copies of the contract, placed one on the desk, and folded the other into his shirt pocket. Sitting back in his chair, Brother Miguel was studying a small crack near the ceiling on the wall facing him, expending, it seemed, a great deal of mental energy trying to figure out what was causing it. The ticking of a large clock hanging under a crucified Christ became more and more annoying as the time passed.

“What is your doctrine?” Charles asked suddenly, mostly to break the silence.

Brother Miguel turned to him with a brilliant and incisive look.

“We don’t have one.”

“You don’t have a doctrine?”

“No. No particular doctrine. Our only guide is the Holy Bible, which is the Word of God. We believe everything it tells us and nothing that it doesn’t tell us. For example, the Bible speaks of hell, but there is no mention of purgatory; we don’t believe in purgatory. The Bible condemns homosexuality; we condemn it as well, despite the times we live in, but we don’t condemn homosexuals themselves, because they are our brothers in Christ, as are all Christians. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that priests and bishops cannot marry; in fact, there are many passages that provide examples of the exact opposite. Therefore, we allow our pastors and pastoresses to marry. In several places, the Bible foretells the second coming of Christ; we believe in His return and we declare that publicly through the name of our Church. And so on and so on. It’s in that sense that I say we have no doctrine.”