No Other Life (12 page)

He rose, letting go of my hand. ‘Thank you, Father. Remember, I am counting on you.’

Monsignor Giobbi was waiting in the corridor. I now knew that he was my friend. He did not ask what took place in my talk with the Cardinal but enquired if I was ready to return to the residence. I thanked him for his words of support. As we walked back down the corridor he looked up at the portraits of cardinals that lined the walls. ‘Some of these men were saints,’ he said. ‘Some were libertines. Hard to tell from their faces, isn’t it?’ He smiled. ‘What are your plans now, Father?’

‘I must fly back to Ganae at once.’

6

‘Father Michel?’

As I crossed the tarmac in New York to board the plane that would take me on the last leg of my journey back to Ganae, Elie Audran moved alongside me, a slim, elegant figure in a beige silk suit. ‘I have been following you,’ he said. ‘You came from Rome. I know, because I boarded your plane when it stopped over in Paris. But I was in first class, so we didn’t meet. How was Rome? Cold?’

‘Not very.’

‘Paris was miserable. But I saw a wonderful show of
Les Fauves
at the Grand Palais, which made it worth the trip.’

I knew that whatever Elie was doing in Paris it was not simply looking at paintings. Paris was the present home of General Macandal. Elie’s wife was Macandal’s niece. I consoled myself that this conversation would end as soon as we boarded the plane, for, as he had pointed out, we travelled in different classes.

When Elie Audran first introduced himself to me some years before, it was as a parent asking if I could find a place in the college for his ten-year-old son who, until then, had been an indifferent scholar. A year later, after we had improved the boy’s scholastic performance, Elie abruptly transferred him to an exclusive private school in Paris. The college was merely a stepping stone towards the ideal he had set for his son: to be a member of the mulatto elite.

It would not be easy. Elie had a mulatto mother but was the son of a humble black policeman. He was, he told me, a ‘businessman’. One of his businesses that I knew about was canvassing for cast-off clothing from charity organisations in the United States then selling it to the poor in Port Riche. His more publicised business was as an art dealer, specialising in local primitives. His most important business connection was, of course, his connection to Macandal.

As we went up the gangway leading to the plane entrance, Elie smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘How is Jeannot, Father? I hear he’s out of favour in Rome. True?’

‘I don’t think so.’

He laughed. ‘Ah, well. You would know these things.’

The stewardess took our tickets and guided him to a first-class seat. ‘See you at the other end, Father. Can I give you a lift into town?’

‘Thank you, no. Someone’s meeting me.’

I took my seat at the rear of the plane. Although we were just taking off from New York, I was already back in Ganae. I remembered the Police de Sécurité who had checked my tickets on leaving. I had said that Montreal was my final destination. But I had gone on to Rome. Would Jeannot, surrounded as he was by intrigues, wonder if I had lied to him? And now I was returning on a plane with Macandal’s relative, who had offered me a lift in from the airport. I told myself that I was being foolish. Jeannot would never doubt my word. But when we landed in Port Riche, I found myself hanging back, avoiding Elie until he had collected his baggage and cleared customs.

Then, as I stood at the passport desk, Elie appeared in front of me. ‘Excuse me, Father, but I wonder if you noticed? Was I carrying a camera when we got on the plane?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Damn! I must have left it in my hotel in New York. It’s gone for ever now.’

At that point I was next in the queue at the passport desk. ‘You’re together?’ the policeman said.

‘No,’ I said.

Elie moved away. The policeman examined my passport, stamped it and handed it back. At that point Ti-Louis, a boy from Jeannot’s orphanage, who hung around the airport, came up to me. ‘Want a taxi,
Mon Pe
?’

I shook my head. Normally, Ti-Louis would not have asked me. I am not someone who would require his services. I thought at once: He saw me talking with Elie. Jeannot will hear of this.

As I walked out of the terminal, carrying my bag, I saw Elie standing on the pavement about fifty yards away. He was with two soldiers. Suddenly, one of them took him by the arm and pushed him towards a parked army truck. There were six armed soldiers sitting in the truck. They dropped the tailboard and forced Elie to climb aboard. As he did he looked back, saw me, and raised his arms in a gesture of hopelessness. The truck drove away.

I turned and walked towards the airport car-park where Hyppolite was to meet me. He was standing beside our little white Peugeot, a tall, melancholy figure wearing one of my cast-off shirts and a pair of khaki trousers which once belonged to Father Joliette. He hurried to take my bag, almost wrenching it from my grip in his eagerness to help.

‘
Mère ben
?’ he asked, as he put the suitcase into the trunk.

I told him my mother was dead. He accepted this news with a nod. He felt no need to offer his sympathy. It was understood. We drove out on to the Avenue des Présidents in a mass of traffic: old trucks top-heavy with industrial containers stencilled with American markings, gaudily painted local taxi-buses loaded with passengers and, walking on the rim of the dusty avenue, women balancing heavy loads on their heads on the long march from the countryside to the city’s markets. Abruptly, as though there were no traffic ahead of it, a large Mercedes swept past, repeatedly sounding its horn. Hyppolite looked at it as though it reminded him of something, then said, ‘
Madame Lambert arrête, hier
.’

I watched the limousine disappear among humbler vehicles. Caroline Lambert rode in Mercedes limousines, lived in a mansion staffed by thirty servants, sailed the Baie des Saints in a sixty-foot yacht. Caroline Lambert’s cars, clothes, jewels, were the symbols of her husband’s power. In Ganae a colonel in the Army earns less than a sergeant in the army of the United States. But the colonel who becomes King Coke is another matter.

Elie Audran, Caroline Lambert. The attack on the elite had begun. I looked at Hyppolite. ‘What do people say?’

‘They say it is time to start the justice. Start with her, that’s good. Everybody know Caroline. King Coke run away, he’s scared of Jeannot. But Caroline not scared. She thinks she’s still boss of us. Now, we teach her.’

I looked at him, surprised. If people like Hyppolite, the silent, the humble, the submissive, those on whose mute fatalism dictators thrive, if
they
were angry, then these trials, promised by Jeannot, would be the tumbrels of vengeance.

Everybody know Caroline
, Hyppolite had said. The week after her husband fled the country, Caroline Lambert’s picture had appeared in magazines and newspapers both in Ganae and abroad. I discovered that she was already familiar to the people of Ganae much as a film star would be in other lands. Even those who had never seen her photograph and the hundreds and thousands who could not read a newspaper knew her story. It had been passed on by word of mouth from Port Riche into every remote hamlet, much as such things were told in medieval times. She had become the visible symbol of her husband’s crimes, a beautiful, evil
mulâtre
witch, living out the fairy-tale people believed to be her life.

We turned off the Avenue des Présidents and entered the heart of the city. Here, criss-crossing like the lanes in a gigantic marketplace, were crowded thoroughfares crammed with cheap shops, open-air stalls, and peasants sitting on worn blankets, their few tawdry wares spread out at their feet. In the clamour of honking horns, street music and shouting vendors, our car slowed to five miles an hour to avoid the heedless pedestrians who danced across the street as though it were a ballroom floor. And now I saw, proliferating everywhere, the posters and proclamations which had been used in Jeannot’s recent campaign for president. In former times, portraits of the dictator were put up by order of the government. Jeannot’s portraits and proclamations had been erected by the poor. On crumbling walls, graffiti announced that Ganae was free at last, that:
pe jeannot will bring us justice. Pe
Jeannot. Father Jeannot. He was still their priest.

We drove on, climbing into the hills that ring the capital. In the suburbs of Bellevue the villas of the elite sat in tree-shaded grounds, surrounded by high walls and electronic alarms. There were no portraits of Jeannot on these walls. As we drove on I sensed an air of tension. In Avenue Delisle we came upon people standing in a group, staring at some sort of bonfire. Two policemen appeared in front of our car, signalling us to move past the charred and stinking remains of a heap of burning rubbish. As we did, I saw a hand-scrawled banner lying in the gutter. It read:
bas le pape.

bas le pape
. Down with the Pope. We drove on. When we reached the residence, Father Denis Joliette was standing on the first-floor veranda, looking out. He waved and came down to meet me. I told him about the banner and the bonfire. ‘What’s happening, Denis?’

‘Was it on Avenue Delisle?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it’s part of the anti-Rome riot.’

‘What riot?’

He sighed. ‘Yesterday, Jeannot went on national radio to announce that the Vatican has refused to recognise his government.’

‘But that’s not true. I’ve just been in Rome.’

He looked at me, surprised, then said, ‘Anyway, this morning a mob went up to Bellevue and broke into the nuncio’s house. The nuncio’s in Rome but the mob didn’t know that. They beaat up some of the house servants, for refusing to tell them where the nuncio was hiding. They then ransacked the residence, breaking windows and smashing furniture. When they finished they lit a bonfire in the street. That must be what you saw.’

‘But what about the police?’

‘They just stood by. They did nothing.’

‘And what has Jeannot said about this?’

Father Joliette shrugged. ‘Radio silence. He put them up to it, I’ll bet.’

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Of course he would. What do you think his radio speeches are all about? They’re incitements to violence.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think he sees them as that.’

‘Paul, it’s obvious you think he’s a saint. He’s not. He’s become a rabble-rouser, a fanatic.’

‘Fanatic?’ I said. ‘Fanatic about what? About helping the poor?’

‘About getting his own way. And, as Diderot once said, “Only one step separates fanaticism from barbarism.” This morning’s the proof.’

He looked at me. ‘By the way, what were you doing in Rome?’

‘It’s a long story. Denis, I’ve got to get in touch with Jeannot.’

While we were speaking Nöl Destouts came into the room and sat down on a rocking chair near the window, lifting the skirts of his soutane to cross his legs, his large black feet clad incongruously in cheap red Cuban sandals. Nöl was bursar of the college, a Ganaen, a professor of French literature, and my friend. In the past he had also been Jeannot’s friend but now I wondered if he had gone over to Denis Joliette’s opinions. When I said I must get in touch with Jeannot, Nöl got up from the rocking chair.

‘I’ll drive you there,’ he said. ‘Jeannot’s gone down to Lavallie for some sort of publicity stunt. I spoke with him an hour ago. He rang here, asking for you.’

Lavallie is the market in the dock area. It was one of the first sights tourists saw when they got off the American cruise ships for a day in Port Riche. It had always been an unpleasant, noisesome maze of tin sheds and rickety stalls, its streets strewn with rotting fruit and vegetable waste, its walls slimed with mud, its corrugated iron roofs red with rust. That morning when we drove there we were obliged to leave our car several streets away. A huge crowd filled the market, most of them armed with brooms fashioned from twigs, plastic buckets, rag mops and wooden baskets. A dozen empty army trucks were lined up along the main thoroughfare. Soldiers, beggars, peasants, market sellers, nuns, schoolboys, all were engaged in cleaning off the streets, washing down walls, and carting away the detritus of decades. People sang as they worked. The music of two Java bands boomed out from the central square. I saw Jeannot, his white peasant shirt and cotton trousers already splotched with mud and grime, leading a group of his office staff in lifting wooden baskets of trash on to an army truck. The cameras of the national television station, the announcers from Radio Libre and a crush of foreign photographers moved ahead of him, elbowing each other for the best shot of the priest-president shovelling rubbish.

‘What’s this all about?’ I asked Nöl.

‘It’s symbolic,’ Nöl said. ‘Clean up the streets. You start with that and end up by chasing the money changers out of the temple.’

‘It looks real,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you in favour of clean streets?’

‘It’s still symbolic,’ Nöl said. ‘Will this place be clean a month from now? Will anything have changed except for Jeannot’s image?’

‘Wait a minute. When did the people of Lavallie clean up the streets for Doumergue, or any other president?’