No Other Life (14 page)

He stopped speaking and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. ‘I have been asked to take a small group of soldiers to the palace on the morning of the coup. I know the procedures to gain entry. We will arrest and hold Father Cantave. As we do this, the politician I have told you about will be driven to Radio Libre to make a broadcast. He will announce that Father Cantave has been replaced as president because of his refusal to co-operate with parliament and govern by democratic methods. When we hear the broadcast begin, we, at the palace, will shoot Father Cantave.’ He paused and nervously lit a fresh cigarette. ‘When they asked me to join the coup they believed I was Doumergue’s man. They didn’t guess that I cannot kill Father Cantave. I cannot kill a saint, although he is a saint who does not know how to govern this country and his rule will not last. I don’t know what you will do now, or how you can advise him. He must change his guard at the palace. It should be a guard of soldiers who are his followers. But this is the most important part, Father, and this is what you must tell him. He must pretend to know nothing of this plan. If he does, I promise you I will tell you the date and the time as soon as I find out. So when we arrive at the palace he will have gone into hiding. Will you tell him that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I may be followed here today. They are being very careful. We must have a code, you and I. The simplest thing would be for me to come here to the college and leave a message if I do not reach you. The message will say that I want to bring my nephew to see you and I will propose a date. That date will be the date of the coup.’

Then this strange man came up to me, gripped me by the shoulders and stared into my face. ‘Do as I say, Father, and he will be saved. But you must warn him. If he attempts to arrest me or to contact me in any way, they will kill me. I am putting my life in his hands. And in yours.’

Still holding me, he pressed his sweating cheek against mine. Then, releasing me, he opened the door and, with no farewell, walked off down the corridor to the school’s main entrance. An army jeep was parked by the front door. I watched him get in and drive away.

That evening at six when my school duties were completed and my absence would not be noticed, I left the residence and drove to the palace. I did not telephone ahead. When I was admitted to the main hall I asked for Pelardy but, instead, was greeted by Sister Maria. ‘Father Cantave is ill,’ she told me. ‘Is it urgent?’

When I said yes, she asked me to wait. I noticed that there were several young soldiers standing by the entrance, armed with automatic pistols and bearing a shoulder flash which I had not seen before. The Garde Présidentielle had been in evidence at the main gates but when Sister Maria came back and led me up flights of marble stairs, along panelled corridors and again up more stairs, I saw small groups of these young soldiers at every turn. On the top floor of the palace, we went towards a wing that jutted out over the main square. The usual presidential bodyguards, those heavy-set sergeants, were nowhere in sight. Instead, two young soldiers opened a double set of doors to admit us to a huge bedroom dominated by a tall four-poster bed, a room which could have been a royal bedroom in some European palace. There were many chairs grouped around the bed, all of them empty.

The room was hot. The great windows that looked out over the presidential square and the rooftops of the parliament buildings were closed and covered by screens. There was a smell of medicine and rubbing alcohol. The bed itself was surrounded by mosquito netting. As I came closer I saw Jeannot, wearing a long white nightshirt, propped up among many pillows. Above him, a simple wooden crucifix was nailed to the headboard. At his side were two telephones and his breviary. A mass of official-looking files was strewn about the bed. He appeared to be asleep, but when Sister Maria left the room he opened his eyes and smiled at me.

‘Ridiculous, isn’t it, this bed. Yet, there’s a lot of history in this room. Did you know this is the bed Doumergue died in? Screaming, they say. Seydoux, who was president in the twenties, was shot to death at that window. They came for President Mouton in the middle of the night. He hid under this bed and they dragged him out and cut his throat. That was in the nineteenth century. He was
noir
, like me. Then there was President Beauvais, in the eighteen-nineties, the one whose carriage was called the virgin’s hearse. He brought them to bed here. Thirteen-year-old girls, mostly.’

‘And now there’s a breviary in the bed.’

‘True.’ He laughed. ‘How are you, Paul? Where have you been?’

‘Are you ill, Jeannot?’

‘It’s nothing. A little fever. I feel cold all the time. What’s wrong? You have that familiar worried look.’

I pulled aside the mosquito netting and sat on the edge of his bed. When I began to tell him what had happened that morning he sat up with his hand over his eyes, a gesture which signalled that he was fighting off a migraine. When I finished, he nodded and said, ‘Strange that it would be you who would find out. I’ve been expecting this. You know about Raymond?’

Alphonse Raymond was the head of the Progressive Party which ran a poor second to Jeannot in the elections.

‘What about him?’

‘Parliament wants to make him our premier. I’ve refused. I want my premier to be someone from my own group. So they’re calling me a dictator. Raymond must be the one they’ve picked to replace me as president.’

‘But that’s parliament,’ I said. ‘This colonel is talking of a military coup.’

‘It’s one and the same thing,’ Jeannot said. ‘They’re all in it together, the parties, the generals, the businessmen, the elite. I have only one strength and I’ll have to use it. The people. We must show our fist.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ll see. As for having my own guards, I’ve already thought of that. Did you notice my hand-picked soldiers?’

‘Yes. Who are they?’

‘They’re not real soldiers. They’re my own
bleus
, boys who were once in the Ste Marie Orphanage. Because, as your colonel pointed out, we can no longer trust anyone in the real army. The question is – can we trust your colonel?’

‘Why shouldn’t we?’

‘We’re supposed to relax until he tells us the coup is under way. If he’s a plant, then we’re being lulled into a false sense of security.’

He reached up and gripped my hand. ‘Paul, thank you for coming. Don’t stay away. Come every day, if you can. This is our moment of truth.’

7

In Ganae television is perceived as an instrument of government. And so the event which occurred one week after I spoke to Jeannot may have been planned and staged by his staff. For, on the following Monday morning, the daily sludge of canned musical programmes was interrupted by a seemingly unscheduled telecast, a look at the city of Port Riche in what seemed to be the first stages of a revolution.

There was a large television set in the main dining hall of the college. I don’t know who had turned it on. But, shortly before lunchtime, the college servants, setting out cutlery for the midday meal, were suddenly aware of what was happening. Within minutes, classes had been interrupted and priests, students, and everyone else crowded into the big room, watching in amazement.

We were looking at the Avenue Beaucaire, a main thoroughfare leading up to the parliament buildings. A mass of people holding aloft placards with makeshift banners and the now familiar portrait of Jeannot was moving in a great chanting flood, filling the street, crowding against the adjoining buildings. The television crews, unskilled in spontaneous filming, moved erratically ahead of the demonstrators, cameras tilting upwards to catch glimpses of the banners’ hand-printed slogans.

jeannot is us – raymond is them

power to the poor

jeannot

our voice – don’t shut him out

As we watched, the procession approached the gates of the parliament buildings. Inside the courtyard the cars of parliamentary delegates could be seen parked in rows, a sign that parliament was in session. In front of the gates soldiers were disembarking from trucks and hastily shuffling into a double line to block the demonstrators. At the head of the crowd I saw four young priests wearing white soutanes, two of them holding aloft processional crucifixes, and two presenting open pages of bibles, as though bearing witness. Behind them were the familiar faces of Port Riche’s lower town, women in white bandannas and ugly flowered dresses, grey-grizzled, rheumy-eyed old men, thin starveling girls in short white shifts, nervous, stick-like little boys. The television cameras, rising higher, showed the thick mass of the crowd behind these emblematic representatives of the slums. Suddenly, the voice of a commentator was heard.

‘We are at the Place du Parlement where a march led by supporters of President Cantave has come to protest parliament’s proposal to appoint the leader of the Progressive Party, Alphonse Raymond, as premier of Ganae. Father Cantave’s choice, Yves Gabin, has been rejected by parliament on the grounds that he has close ties to the President and this, in effect, encourages one-party rule. As you can see, this demonstration is made up of ordinary people, most of them belonging to the poorer classes. The crowd is calling for Members of Parliament to appear and answer its challenge, but it now seems unlikely that they will receive the courtesy of a reply.’

At that point, the commentator seemed to run out of words. The cameras roved aimlessly over the heads of the crowd. When, at last, they came to rest on the rows of soldiers lined up at the parliament gates, the commentator found his voice again. ‘It is obvious that the Army, under the command of General Hemon, is backing the President and these soldiers are here purely to maintain order. Violence is being avoided.’

And, indeed, there was no violence. After a few minutes the huge crowd, as if on orders, began to move away from the parliament buildings, going back up the Avenue Beaucaire in straggling, disorderly fashion as though the demonstration were breaking up. At that point the television cameras were shut off and the television screen showed a studio interior. An announcer, sitting at a desk, told us we were now being returned to normal programming.

‘This is an historic occasion,’ Father Duchamp said as we ate our lunch. ‘Dictators put down demonstrations. Jeannot provokes them. The mob is his army.’

Duchamp was, of course, in the habit of making this type of sarcastic comment and normally I would have tried to ignore his remark. But, on that same afternoon, Monsignor Taburly, the Vatican’s acting chargé d’affaires in Ganae, asked me to come and see him on an urgent matter which he could not discuss on the phone.

I went at once.

Driving through the city on my way to Bellevue, I noticed that the daily street market had disappeared from the pavements of the Rue Royale and that shops were shuttered as on a Sunday. On Rue Desmoulins my car was stopped by a crowd of boys standing by a threatening pile of stones. Three of them came up to me, rocks poised in their hands.

‘Do you have cigarettes?’ one asked.

‘Let me through.’

They stared at me for a moment. Then one of them recognised me. ‘
Pe Paul, Pe Paul. Ami.
’

So they were Jeannot’s boys. They smiled foolishly, like children caught in some prank. They waved me on. But when I looked back they had stopped another car.

The nunciature still flew the papal flag on its front lawn, but was shuttered and silent as though its occupants were elsewhere. When I parked in the empty courtyard and rang the doorbell, Taburly himself opened the door for me. He was dressed oddly in white trousers, an open-necked shirt, and velvet slippers embroidered in gold with his initials. Taburly was French. I knew that he was not happy with his posting here. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘Good of you to come so quickly.’

He led me upstairs to a large room, a sort of office, equipped with fax machines, telephones and a computer. ‘I’ve received a query from Rome. Cardinal Innocenti is worried about the situation. I’m afraid I won’t be able to reassure him. You saw the television this morning?’

‘Yes.’

He went to a desk and handed me a fax. It was in Italian. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t – ’

‘Of course.’ He took it back. ‘It’s from the Cardinal. He asks me to contact you and find out what you know. He says Rome has been advised that Father Cantave is about to establish a dictatorship. If this is so, he says he must reconsider the guarantees he gave you. He asks for an immediate answer.’

‘From me?’

‘From both of us. I will be glad to transmit your report to him. When can you send it?’

‘First, I must speak with Father Cantave.’

‘As you wish. I am sending my own report tonight. I will tell the Cardinal of this morning’s march on parliament. In view of what’s happening, I must recommend that Rome now distance itself from Cantave.’

As he spoke, a servant appeared in the doorway. Taburly turned to me. ‘I’ve just ordered some tea. Would you care to join me?’

‘Thank you, no.’

When I drove back to the college, it was late in the afternoon. Classes were over but I noticed that the study halls were empty and the reading room where students tended to congregate in their off hours was similarly deserted. ‘Where is everyone?’ I asked Nöl Destouts.