A Very Bold Leap (22 page)

Charles shrugged.

“That was the evangelist Raphaël Grandbois, the most prominent preacher in our Church — probably in all our churches.”

“Oh, I see. Sorry,” said Charles, flatly.

Brother Miguel nervously moved papers about on his desk.

“I’m not happy about this. Not happy at all. I hope you will take responsibility for your foolishness. But I suppose it happens to all of us. I’m no exception myself. Where were we?”

“We were discussing my salary,” Charles replied. “I asked you what would happen if I refused to hand over part of my pay.”

Brother Miguel looked away, embarrassed.

“Do whatever your conscience tells you to do, Charles. Just so you know, everyone here donates part of their salary to the Church, in one form or another, but no one is forced to do it. I only wanted you to think about it.”

Charles found this hypocritical response very distressing. It seemed clear to him that the pleasant conditions under which he had signed up for the job had been nothing but a lure; these people had no doubt used them often to draw other naïve persons like himself into their trap.

He stood up and coolly offered his hand to the pastor.

“I will think about it,” he said. “I’ll let you know what I decide tomorrow.”

But he knew full well that a refusal meant he would probably lose his job.

As he was about to leave the office, he heard the sound of footsteps and turned back. Félix was standing in the middle of the office under the disapproving eye of his father, while the rest of the children had crowded into the doorway and were smiling up at him.

“When … When are you going to finish the story?” asked the little boy in a pleading tone.

Upon leaving Brother Miguel’s office, Charles ran into José Coïmbro, who had been asked by the pastor to bring Charles to the presbytery before taking him to work.

“Hey, you’ll never guess what!” cried the electrician. “I just saw Father Raphaël, the preacher I was telling you about the other night! He’s the one we’re going to hear tonight.”

“I’m very much afraid you’ll be going on your own, my friend,” Charles said coolly.

“No way! You promised me you’d come.”

“I never promised any such thing.”

“Come on, Charles, I’m begging you! You have to hear this man! No one speaks like he does, I’m serious!”

“I just heard him speak in Brother Miguel’s office. That was more than enough for me.”

The electrician stared at Charles, struck dumb, his mouth hanging comically open.

“You spoke to him? Just you and him? Just like you’re talking to me now, here, at this moment?”

“Just like that,” said Charles mockingly. “I spoke to him with my mouth, and he answered me with his.”

“Don’t you see how lucky you are! What did he say to you?”

“He gave me shit. Come on, it’s late, let’s get to work.”

For the rest of the day, José redoubled his efforts to convince Charles to go with him to hear the sermon to be delivered by the man who, for some time, had been known only by his Christian name, as though he were some kind of angel sent by God. Charles refused. Coïmbro persisted. Their conversation became heated. The electrician threatened to find another assistant. Charles threatened to bring the whole thing to Brother Miguel, then, realizing that the pastor might not exactly be in his corner at the moment, decided to make peace by agreeing to meet Coïmbro outside the church at seven o’clock.

He showed up at seven sharp, in a bad mood; for dinner he’d eaten a greasy poutine that had begun to decompose in his stomach into a ball of acidic gas. He fully intended to take his leave the minute the sermon became too unbearably boring.

Coïmbro was waiting for him at the church entrance. He waved his arms wildly to get Charles to hurry up.

“Hurry, hurry,” he said, pushing Charles inside. “If we don’t get in early, we’ll have to listen to the sermon standing up.”

The sanctuary was jam-packed and humming with a low murmur of expectation. There was a lot of grey hair in the audience, but also many young people, couples, women with small children, blacks, whites, South Americans, a few Asians — most, it seemed to Charles, from modest backgrounds. Their faces were serious, fervent, sometimes stricken with deep melancholy or else animated by ecstatic jubilation, the cause of which seemed outside themselves, supernatural. An old woman in a white cotton dress printed with cherries and bananas was praying quietly, her hands joined together, her eyes raised to heaven.

Charles and his companion were separated. Coïmbro found a seat in the third row; Charles chose a more prudent spot in the centre of the church, closer to an aisle.

On the right, in the open space created by the removal of the altar, three musicians (electric guitar, saxophone, and drums), all of them in their twenties, played softly, smiling at one another. Charles looked discreetly at the faces around him, then at his watch. He sighed. Having nothing else to do, he looked up at the vaulted ceiling. The wet patch that earlier had been threatening the head of Christ as he lectured to the Doctors of Divinity had now reached his right cheek, which appeared to be slightly puffy, giving the Son of God a somewhat sinister expression. The sound that filled the church was rising by the second. There was the loud crying of a child, then a low, imperious voice, that of a black man, called out, “Praise the Lord!” which was greeted by a round of applause.

Suddenly there was the sound of hollow footsteps at the front of the church and the hubbub fell silent, leaving only the sound of the musicians
to be heard. Charles stretched his neck and saw Father Raphaël standing at centre stage, wearing a black habit with long skirts, looking a bit distracted as he turned his head from left to right as though searching for someone in the audience. He seemed bigger than Charles remembered him, and both fiercer and more impressive than he had been in Brother Miguel’s office. His face was strained and seemed to give off a mysterious energy. All at once he gave a little start and looked over at the musicians as though he had just then become aware of their presence.

“My friends,” he said. “Friends! Stop the music, I beg you, for although its intention is to celebrate Jesus, what it really does is express our human misery, our limited intelligence, our corrupted hearts, our bodies weakened and

stained by sin. I cannot abide such music tonight…. Yes, my friends, despite your talent, despite your young and fervent sensitivities, tonight I want you to put down your instruments. Tonight the Holy Name of God must be invoked in respectful silence, not in our poor human music. I have not the good fortune to be a musician myself. But even if I were able to play an instrument as well as you do, I wouldn’t be able to do it, not I, a miserable sinner, trying to celebrate Jesus and unable to express anything but the limitations of my miserable human nature, which God, in his infinite goodness, has had the good grace to love just as it is, despite its wretchedness.”

A light shiver made its way through the audience. Sitting next to Charles, a fat man in a turtleneck sweater with pink cheeks murmured, “Thank you, God.”

“Ah! I love You, Jesus,” the preacher went on, clasping his hands, “or rather my corrupt and sullied heart tries to love You, with all its might, but without Your grace, oh my Saviour, I know that I can never fully come to love You, and you, too, my brothers and sisters, you too will never fully come to love Jesus, so thoroughly has the Evil One spread in us the venom of sin. Ah! how I detest sin! Do you detest sin?” he asked the audience.

“Yes!” shouted everyone in the church.

“Do you hear that, Lucifer? Do you hear it? We hate you, you and your odious venom that has brought us so much unhappiness since Adam and Eve, and which has plunged so many men and women — so many men, and so many women — into eternal damnation. Oh, Jesus! I beg of You, save us from damnation!”

“Save us from damnation,” implored the crowd.

Charles looked about him, dumbfounded. Across the aisle from him a frail, good-looking young woman was crying loudly and pressing her baby against her; the child looked frightened and opened his eyes wide.

“Aren’t you like me, my brothers, my sisters?” continued the preacher, wringing his hands. “Do you, too, feel your heart wallowing in the filth of sin even as it struggles desperately to combat Evil? Yes, I can hear you, I can hear your sighs and your groans, I can see your tears. You are all poor sinners, like me, who owe your existence to the bounty of God and your eternal salvation to His merciful and infinite grace.”

He fell to his knees. Tears flowed down his cheeks, his face became wracked and tormented, and he raised his hands towards heaven.

“Thank you, dear God! Oh! Thank you for helping me to gain my eternal soul! Unworthy as I am! All-merciful as You are! I feel Your grace running through my veins, I feel it beating in my heart! Thank you for filling me and lifting me above my dreadful condition!”

A sort of delirium spread through the audience. Loud sobs broke out around Charles. His neighbour raised his arms and called out the name of God in a hoarse voice, trembling, then plunging a hand into his pocket took out a dirty, white handkerchief and blew his nose loudly into it. A cry arose behind him. Turning to the back of the church, Charles saw a young woman lying on her back in the aisle, moaning, her whole body shaking.

Father Raphaël had risen to his feet and was watching the audience with a grave expression that nonetheless expressed a sort of satisfaction. He raised one hand and silence fell.

“This morning,” he said in a suddenly soothing voice, “I saw some beautiful children, six beautiful children, their faces clear and pink, their hair fine and shiny. It was only a few steps from here. I felt that what I had before me were angels, my brothers, young angels come to bless this earth, and I watched them amuse themselves in a state of grace, and I was rejuvenated, my heart filled with joy. It was almost as if I had become one of them, and for an instant I felt pure and light, remade in their image, just as I was when I was a child. How beautiful they were! How much pleasure it gave me to see their delicious innocence! I watched them and I wanted to hug them, to embrace them, and I wanted to ask God to let them stay as they were forever, young, rosy-cheeked, full of grace. And what if God had decided to amuse Himself by
playing a trick on me? I suddenly asked myself. It happens occasionally! What if they weren’t children at all, but really were angels sent by Him to give me a few moments of comfort…”

He stopped and his face took on a look of profound sadness.

“But no, they were only children after all, simple, human children, subjected to evil like the rest of us, but to an evil that for now rests outside them, an evil that comes from adults and that, sooner or later, bit by bit, will infect them and make them lose their marvellous angelic grace.”

He stopped for a moment, his eyes troubled as though he was contemplating a disaster. Then, after a deep sigh, he resumed.

“This evil, my brothers and sisters, most often comes in the form of kindness — which of course makes it all the more cunning and terrifying! But it can come with just as much savagery, as you all know full well, and these small beings whom we now see so close to heaven will be beaten, wounded, dirtied — and sometimes even killed.”

Charles stared at the man, his mouth open, completely taken aback. Atrocious images began surging within him, images he thought had been expelled forever but which were stirred up now in his head with hissing noises and horrendous cries.

He stood up, tears filling his eyes, overcome by emotion, and left the church as quickly as he could manage without drawing attention to himself. He walked the streets of the city for hours trying to calm himself, but peace was a long time coming.

Coïmbro had been right after all, he thought: there was more to this theatrical preacher than met the eye.

A
few days later, Charles was leaving his apartment building in the morning on his way to work when he was stopped by two very polite young men who asked him if he was Charles Thibodeau.

“Yes,” said Charles, much surprised. “What do you want?”

“Brother Miguel gave us your address,” explained the first young man.

“We wanted to meet with you,” added the second.

“What about?” said Charles, more and more surprised, and with the beginnings of irritation in his voice.

One of the strangers seemed to be in his mid-twenties, the other younger. Both had long, brown hair and agreeable features, with a certain determination in their expressions. The first had a prominent nose, bright red cheeks, and beautiful teeth, and seemed to be the more thoughtful of the two; the younger man had bright, lively, and somewhat mischievous eyes that were always looking about, a thick-lipped mouth, and the beginning of a thin moustache that, far from making him look older, accentuated the impression of prolonged adolescence. Unlike most people their age, who generally wore running shoes, jeans, and a cotton T-shirt printed with a drawing of some kind and a slogan, usually in English, this pair were dressed in black dress pants with razor-sharp creases, carefully polished black shoes, and beige long-sleeved shirts. They looked like waiters in a chic café, or clerks in a store that sold high-end products.

“We’re here on behalf of Pastor Raphaël Grandbois,” said the elder of the two.

“He’s usually just called Father Raphaël,” said the other one. “He prefers that.”

“Do you mind if we talk with you for a bit?”

“Like, in that restaurant over there,” said the younger man, pointing to a small corner café.

“Sorry,” said Charles, curious to find out what they wanted, but also a bit annoyed. “I have to go to work. I’m already late.”

“No problem,” said Thin Moustache, “Brother Miguel knows about our meeting, and has told Mr. Coïmbro you’ll be a bit late.”

“This won’t take long, in any case,” added Rosy Cheeks. “Ten minutes, tops.”

“It would really make Father Raphaël happy if you said yes.”

Charles followed them into the café. His two companions ordered herbal tea and told Charles to order whatever he wanted. Had he had time to have breakfast?

“Thanks,” said Charles, “I’ve already eaten. But I’ll have an espresso. Okay,” he said for the third time, “what is it you want of me?”

“Were you at the prayer meeting last Thursday?” asked Rosy Cheeks. “The one that was held in the church on avenue de Lorimier?”

Charles nodded.

“What did you think of Father Raphaël?”

Charles admitted that he had been impressed by the pastor, without going into any details of his true thoughts on the matter.

“He’s always like that,” said Moustache. “He’s great!”

The two men told Charles that they had been working as the preacher’s assistants for three years. They accompanied him on all his lecture tours, and it had been the most marvellous three years of their lives, full of all kinds of experiences; the most spectacular, obviously, was being able to rub shoulders with someone as extraordinary as Father Raphaël; he was a man of extreme generosity, an elevated soul, a man with powers of discernment that were impossible to describe; he spread goodness wherever he went with such abundance that being with him must be what being with Jesus had been like two thousand years ago.

“As good as that, eh?” said Charles cynically.

“As good as that,” replied both men seriously.

He had even performed miracles, they went on. Maybe not as spectacular as the miracles described in the Bible, the parting of the Red Sea, the wedding at Cana, the resurrection of Lazarus, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes, to name but a few. To be honest, Father Raphaël’s miracles were more like spiritual phenomena: sudden, fervent conversions undergone by persons
who until that moment had strongly resisted the Word of God; acts of extraordinary generosity that seemed to come out of nowhere; and, in Father Raphaël, a gift of divination that made it possible for him to “see” events in certain people’s pasts without their giving him the slightest hint, and to describe those events in the minutest details.

Charles felt his attention begin to wander.

“If you say so,” he said, pouring warm milk into his coffee.

“You don’t believe us, do you?” said Moustache, sadly.

“That’s understandable,” said his companion. “I had the same reaction when I heard about Father Raphaël for the first time. I had to see him in action before I would change my mind.”

“You’ll change your mind, too,” Moustache assured Charles, suddenly becoming familiar.

“Listen, Charles,” said his companion, also becoming friendlier than ever, “maybe we’re not the best messengers for Father Raphaël. Not everyone has the gift of speech. But really, that doesn’t matter. When you meet with him again, everything will be made clear.”

“He wants to meet with me again?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell for?”

“I don’t know. He’ll tell you that himself. He’s got an incredibly heavy schedule today, but if you can be at Brother Miguel’s office at four o’clock on the dot, he can give you fifteen minutes.”

“You talk about him like he’s the Pope!” Charles laughed.

“He’s better than the Pope, as you’ll see!” the younger man enthused, winking and giving Charles a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Father Raphaël sat in Brother Miguel’s swivel chair, regarding Charles with a small smile. A faint odour of chocolate still hung about the room. Was it the result of another attack by the troop of the pastor’s children, or did Brother Miguel suffer from the sin of gluttony?

“Our conversation the other day pleased me very much,” the preacher finally said.

“Wish I could say the same,” replied Charles. He was trying as hard as possible not to show how intimidated he was by his interlocutor.

But he could feel his cheeks burning.

“Put you off your feed, did I?” said the preacher, smiling broadly. “Sorry about that, but no permanent damage done, obviously. No one is perfect, I no more than anyone else, and in any case, trying to please everyone is a waste of time, don’t you agree? You’re not the first person to make me aware of my deficiencies. What I find intriguing in you, though, is the ease with which you do it. Nothing displeases me more than hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the invention of Satan.”

“So why did you want to see me?” asked Charles, impatient to terminate the meeting.

“Brother Miguel has spoken at length to me about you, Charles. He holds you in very high esteem, you know. He prays every day on your behalf, for God to illuminate within you His grace. But in the end that’s really not our business. It’s His business. It’s up to Him to decide when His divine light will penetrate your soul, allowing you to understand the true reality. Maybe it won’t happen until the moment of your death, who can say? But honestly,” he added, laughing, “I hope Grace will descend on you long before that.”

“Maybe so, but that still doesn’t tell me why you wanted to see me.” The pastor’s smiling friendliness was beginning to put Charles off his guard.

“Charles, I would like you to come and work for me.”

Dumbfounded, Charles kept his silence.

“I want to hire you as an assistant when I’m on my lecture circuit. It means you would be moving continuously about the province, and even, eventually, in other francophone countries, in Europe, Africa. If you like, you could return to Montreal every three weeks or so. You would be working with Marcel-Édouard and Maxime, whom you’ve already met this morning and who could stand some time off; after three years of traipsing around from village to village in my agreeable company, they find themselves in need of a bit of a breather, which I completely understand…”

He ran his long, manicured fingers through his hair before continuing.

“You’ll continue at the same salary you’re getting now, plus I’ll cover all your travelling and accommodation expenses — and I will not be asking you for any donations, I assure you.”

A curious giddiness spread through Charles. A wild series of contradictory feelings and ideas whirled about in his head, making him incapable of any kind of lucid judgment. What he had been dreaming of for so long had just been presented to him on a gold platter (or at least seemed to have been). But at the same time, the man who was making the astonishing offer seemed to Charles to be hard to figure out and vaguely disturbing — in any case, that’s the way he had seen him just a few moments before!

Charles’s trouble must have been evident, since Father Raphaël looked away and hid his mouth behind his hand, as though screening a smile.

Charles stood up quickly.

“Well?”

“I don’t know… I have to think about it.”

“You’ll have to do some quick thinking, my friend, because I’ll be leaving very soon.”

“I’ll let you know… tomorrow.”

Charles offered his hand to the preacher, who had stood up to escort Charles to the door.

“Tell me, Charles … Do you have your driver’s licence?”

Charles nodded.

Father Raphaël gave him a big smile. “Good. Very good. Have a good day, and may God guide you in your deliberations.”