No Other Life (6 page)

I, with Jeannot, was in the front rank of the marchers. As the demonstrators stood there in silence, smartly uniformed soldiers of the Garde Présidentielle appeared in the main courtyard, moving in orderly formation, their rifles at the ready. Leading them, on horseback, was their colonel, who had unsheathed his revolver from its holster. There was no sign of the surly
bleus
who normally lounged around in that courtyard. The main gates of the palace were open. It was a formal confrontation, the President’s elite guard, standing inside the courtyard, facing down the mob.

Suddenly, from somewhere behind the marchers, a volley of shots was fired over the heads of the crowd. In fear, I ducked my head. Others all around me cowered down, but Jeannot moved forward.

In a sight none of us will forget, this small insignificant young man, his white cassock dragging the dust behind his sandalled heels, walked slowly towards the opened gates of the palace, the gun barrels of the Garde Présidentielle aimed at him like the rifles of a firing squad. When he entered the courtyard he knelt down, bowed his head and joined his hands in prayer.

There was a moment of total silence. The guards, aiming, looked up at their colonel as if waiting for an order. I saw the Colonel hesitate, then turn and look back at the long french windows on the ground floor of the palace. His horse, fidgeting, made a sudden sidestep as though shying at some invisible object on the ground. The Colonel, steadying his horse, stood up in his stirrups, staring back at the windows as though searching for something there. Suddenly, he barked out a command. The Garde Présidentielle lowered their weapons.

The central set of windows opened and in the red light of the setting sun a stooped figure shuffled out on to the marble steps. He wore a shabby black suit and a battered Homburg hat. As he stepped down, carefully, each marble stair negotiated as though he would fall, he removed his hat and held it by his side. The reddened evening light fell on the bald black skull of an
authentique
, a
noir
as dark as the poorest peasant from Cap Sud or slum dweller of La Rotonde. His face was disfigured by ugly grey blotches or sores. I saw him moisten his lips with his tongue.

The demonstrators stood, transfixed. The only sounds in that vast square were the clacking hoofs of the fidgeting horse and the slow, dragging steps of the dictator as Doumergue walked slowly towards the open gates and the kneeling figure in his path. He stopped directly in front of Jeannot and, looking out over the crowd, made a feeble signalling gesture with his left hand. At once a bemedalled military aide ran out from the palace, carrying a hand microphone, attached to a long coil. Doumergue waited, staring ahead into the red sky like a blind man until the microphone was put into his hand. At that moment he gave his battered hat to the military aide and tapped the microphone with his fingers to see if it was working. The sound of the tap echoed, eerily loud, from public-address speakers high above the palace courtyard.

And now we heard that reedy yet commanding voice, familiar to us as the voice of a relative, speaking in Creole, the common tongue:

‘My people. You have come here to talk to me. You have heard bad rumours which are not true. Those rumours are spread by enemies of the poor people of Ganae who know I am their protector. You have come here like children who have been deceived. I am sorry that our enemies have lied to you. Your life is hard. You work hard. This is the Sabbath day, a day of rest for you, and for me. I ask you now. Do not believe these stories. They are not true. Go home. Go in peace.’

Jeannot, still on his knees, looked up at the dictator. ‘God has given us the strength to come here. We pray to Him to help us now. If you did not do the killing in Papanos you must punish those who did.’

The dictator stared at him for a moment, then lifted the clublike microphone that he held in his hand and brought it down with a sickening sound on Jeannot’s head. Jeannot, stunned, fell forward, sprawling on the ground. At that moment, one of Jeannot’s orphans, a fifteen-year-old boy called Daniel Lalonde, broke suddenly from the ranks of the crowd and ran in at the opened gates, his long stick upraised to strike the dictator.

A single shot rang out. The boy staggered, then fell prostrate a few feet away from Doumergue. I saw the Colonel on his horse, the revolver in his hand. Jeannot rose from his knees, went to the boy and bent over him, lifting him into his arms. Blood, spreading from a wound in the boy’s neck, spilled on to Jeannot’s white cassock in a great crimson stain.

The dictator, still holding the microphone in his hand, said, in a voice which echoed eerily on the loudspeakers, ‘Bring him inside.’

But Jeannot, carrying the boy, turned away from Doumergue and walked out through the gates. Several of us ran to assist him. When I helped lift the boy from Jeannot’s arms I saw that he was dead. I looked back. The presidential guards were closing the gates. The Colonel had holstered his revolver but sat, slumped on his horse as though he had suffered a wound.

Suddenly, Jeannot called to the marchers, ‘Go home! Go home! God will avenge us! God will avenge us!’

The marchers were no longer a mob, no longer threatening. They were people, shocked, stunned, frightened by violence. Behind the now-closed gates the dictator shakily remounted the marble steps and reentered his palace. The presidential guards still held ranks, their rifles aimed at the marchers who were retreating, half-running, across the vast empty square.

Jeannot, his cassock soaked with the dead boy’s blood, his forehead cut and bruised from the dictator’s blow, walked back with me, silent, at the heels of the fleeing crowd. The red sky went black as the sun fell swiftly behind the distant sea.

In darkness, we brought the dead boy home.

3

In Ganae, because of the heat, funerals are sudden. We buried Daniel at noon on the following day. As Jeannot was not allowed to say Mass in public, I officiated at the church. But, at the gravesite Jeannot conducted the burial service. People covered the cemetery like bees over a hive. Soldiers, massed in double lines as at a public demonstration, surrounded the grave. When the cheap plywood coffin was lowered by ropes into its last resting place, Jeannot, his frail neck protruding from a white surplice, stepped forward and sprinkled Holy Water into the pit, then turned to face the staring military.

‘God is with us!’ he called out. ‘God is with
us
!’ It was not a prayer but a cry of defiance and the multitude, hearing it, repeated it in a disjointed chorus, a rolling thunder in the noonday heat. Then Jeannot cried, ‘But they are killing us in Papanos, they are killing us in Mele. When, oh Father, are we going to live in peace?’

Waiting as only he knew how to wait, staring over the heads of the mourners as though he saw God in the pitiless noon sky. In that moment of silence, the soldiers stood at bay, watching this unpredictable figure in their midst. Then, as though he heard a voice, Jeannot called out, ‘And my Father answers me. You will live in peace when you put your faith in a People’s Church, a church that will lead a people’s revolution, so that our country can breathe free.’

And when he said that, I knew that he had crossed from the City of God to the city of men. This was no longer a religious service for a dead boy. ‘God is with
us
!’ Jeannot cried again and the people echoed him in a new, excited roar. Instinctively I looked towards the line of soldiers, rifles cocked. Their officers stood silent but the soldiers, one rung up from the poverty of those around them, suddenly joined in the chant.

Jeannot raised his hands as in a blessing, stilling the cries. It was then that an old woman in the forefront of the line of people crowding the soldiers at the edge of the grave went down on her knees and called out, ‘
Jeannot c’e Mesiah
!’ In a growing movement like a wave rolling towards shore, other voices took up the cry. ‘
Jeannot c’e Mesiah
!’ It broke on the last word, swelling into a thunderous sound.
Mesiah.

Jeannot is the Messiah. I stood beside him on the edge of the grave. He trembled as though in shock, then held out his hand. I gave him the shovel. He threw earth upon the coffin.

Later, as we left the gravesite, we were surrounded by a throng of mourners, among them many of the younger priests and nuns who crowded around Jeannot asking, ‘What is the People’s Church? Do any of the bishops belong to it? Why have we not heard of it?’

‘The People’s Church is the church of the poor,’ Jeannot said. ‘It does not take orders from dictators as do the bishops here. It is a new church and today was its beginning.’

‘Can we join? Can we join?’

‘You already have,’ Jeannot said. ‘The bishops’ days are numbered.’

As we crowded into the funeral cars that would take us back to Port Riche, I said to him, ‘Jeannot, listen to me. First of all, the bishops will try to have you excommunicated. Rome will call this a heretical church. And the minute Doumergue hears what you said about a “people’s revolution” he’ll lock you up and throw away the key.’

‘I’ve told you. I have no choice. If God has singled me out to do this work, then my fate is in His hands.’

I looked into his face, this boy I had thought of as my son. Saints are people we read about in devotional books. What is a saint? The Church has laid down criteria. Martyrdom is one. Holiness is another. The third is that miracles be connected to that person. Martyrdom? Would he be killed? Miracles? Were the failed assassinations a miracle? Holiness? Yes.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I don’t think Uncle D.’s going to arrest me. Why didn’t he do it yesterday, at the demonstration?’

‘Because you had a dead boy in your arms. Listen to me. Don’t go back to the orphanage. Come with me to the college. Nöl Destouts has a little place in the hills outside Lavallie. Maybe you can hole up there until we see what happens.’

But he refused. Then, as if to confirm my fears, when we reached the orphanage, a Mercedes was waiting in the street.

‘Don’t go in,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘They don’t send
bleus
in Mercedes. Come on.’

The front hall of the orphanage was filled with children, noise and confusion. Seeing us enter, one of the nuns came up. ‘There is a gentleman waiting for you. He said it’s a private matter. I put him in your study.’

When we went into the small, untidy room where Jeannot worked, a man stood with his back to us looking out of the window at the crowded schoolyard. When he turned around I recognised him. He wore a dark civilian suit but I had seen him yesterday on horseback, revolver in hand, dressed in the splendid uniform of the Garde Présidentielle.

‘Can we help you?’ Jeannot said.

‘I’m Colonel Maurras. I’ve just come from the funeral. Believe me, I didn’t go there to spy on you. I went in penance. But I must warn you. Your sermon this morning will be seen as treason.’

He hesitated. ‘Father, I know that a man who has shot and killed an unarmed child cannot ask for your forgiveness. I don’t deserve forgiveness.’

‘Forgiveness comes from God,’ Jeannot said. ‘And His mercy is infinite.’

The Colonel bowed his head, then said in a low voice. ‘You must go into hiding at once.’

‘I can’t do that. If I’m in hiding I can’t do my work.’

‘You may not have to hide for long. Doumergue is dying.’

We looked at each other.

‘Didn’t you see him yesterday? He’s in the final stages of AIDS. We were surprised that he showed himself. He lets no one see him, not even his ministers.’

We stared at him. We who had seen so much of AIDS among the poor, why had we not recognised it?

‘How long do you think he has?’ Jeannot asked.

‘A week ago he developed some sort of fever. They have flown in specialists from France. He could go at any time. That’s why I advise you to keep out of his reach. He’s not dead yet and he’s been quite insane these last weeks. He sees traitors everywhere, even in his own family.’

‘If he finds out you have come to see us you’ll suffer for it,’ Jeannot said.

The Colonel turned and again looked out at the crowded schoolyard. Children’s cries echoed in the room.

‘Nothing matters now. Until yesterday, my life’s ambition was to become a general and command a region. But I know that the stain of yesterday will never leave me. I am a soldier, yet the only person I have ever killed is a harmless child.’

He turned back to us. ‘Goodbye, Fathers. Be very careful.’

When the Colonel had gone, Jeannot said, ‘Perhaps I
should
lie low for a few days?’

‘You must. I’ll drive you up to Lavallie.’

‘No, no, I’ll get the boys to take me in their taxi-bus. No one will look for me in a taxi-bus. And while I’m up there I’ll make plans to organise some of the younger priests and nuns. We’ve got to build our own organisation if we’re to have a People’s Church.’

He must have seen the flicker of misgiving that crossed my face. ‘I’m sorry, Paul. I know this is a great leap for you. If you continue to help me you’ll be in trouble with the Order. You could be expelled. Perhaps you should stay out of this?’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I want to help.’