No Other Life (22 page)

We said no.

Willi went to a sideboard, took out a bottle of whisky and poured some into a glass. He drank, then asked, ‘Did that happen on the road?’

‘Yes. Some soldiers drove by, firing at random.’

‘The Army’s on the rampage all right,’ Willi said. ‘There’s trouble everywhere.’

‘What about Cap Gauche?’ Jeannot asked. ‘We saw some people crossing the causeway just now.’

‘Those were fishermen from Bouglie. At noon today they staged a demonstration in the town.’

‘Was there trouble?’

‘No. The local garrison had sent its troops to Papanos, before the demo started. What are your plans, Jeannot? Do you still want to go on the air?’

‘It’s up to you. I want to let the people know I’m still here, still free.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘We’ll leave right away.’

‘You can’t, not in that car. You’ll be picked up. Where are you headed?’

We looked at each other.

‘Maybe Lavallie,’ Jeannot said. ‘If we can get there.’

‘Can either of you handle a motor bike?’

‘I can,’ I said.

‘I have one. It’s old but it works.’

‘What about the broadcast?’ Jeannot said. ‘Is it possible?’

‘Of course it’s possible. But you’ll have to keep it short. I’ll tape it and air it later today and make sure it’s also picked up abroad. By the time they trace it back – if they do – you’ll be long gone.’

A few minutes later, Jeannot sat in front of a microphone in that crowded room overlooking the town of Skele. In front of him, a red lamp bulb switched to green.

Brothers and Sisters,

I speak to you from Ganae.

Yes, I am here.

I am still your priest. I am still your president.

Soon, I will speak to you again from Port Riche.

The plotters, the rich,

The generals, the old Doumerguists,

The
bleus
who have come out of hiding,

All will be punished and disgraced.

Today, on the orders of the criminal Macandal

Who has crept back into this country,

Soldiers are given bottles of
usque
.

They are told to get drunk.

And drunk, they are killing their brothers,

For what reason?

For no reason.

But yes, there is a reason,

A reason in the mind of General Macandal.

The reason is fear.

Fear is his weapon and he will use it.

He will use soldiers and guns to make you afraid.

If you are afraid, you will not rise up and demand

That freedom be given back to Ganae.

He
is afraid.

He is afraid because you have gone into the streets,

To show that the freedom we have won is ours.

That we are not afraid of drunken soldiers,

That we are not afraid of murderers with guns.

We are millions.

They are few.

Already, their coup has failed.

People of Ganae,

Know your power.

Use it.

We will defend the election.

We will defend democracy.

Already, the great world has learned the truth.

Already, in the capitals of America and Europe,

These criminals have been denounced.

Their time is short.

Their day is done.

They have failed.

So go into the streets.

Rejoice.

You are the people.

You have the power.

Use it.

Jeannot looked up, signalling that he had finished. The green lamp switched to red.

‘Too long?’

Willi shook his head. ‘No. But tell me. Do you realise what you’re saying?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Go into the streets. Use your power. Last week they did that, didn’t they? They used machetes and they got away with it. But things have changed. The Army’s on the loose now. The Army has the guns. You’re inviting a massacre.’

‘If the people come out on the streets in full force, the Army can’t shoot all of them, can they? They’d have to kill hundreds, maybe thousands. And by tomorrow Port Riche will be filled with foreign journalists.’ He stood up, putting his hand on Willi’s shoulder. ‘This is what I want to say. I believe it will work. Will you send it?’

‘OK, I made a promise,’ Willi said. ‘I don’t like it, but I’ll send it out an hour from now.’

‘Thank you.’

Jeannot turned to me. ‘What will we do about Mathieu?’

‘The boy in your car?’ Willi said. ‘There’s a priest here, Father Briand, a supporter of yours.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Jeannot said. ‘He helped in my campaign.’

‘I’ll ask him to arrange the burial,’ Willi said. He picked up the bottle again. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a drink?’

‘I don’t drink,’ Jeannot said. ‘Maybe Paul?’

I shook my head.

‘Well, then.’ Willi fumbled in his shorts pocket and handed me a key. ‘Let’s go and get the bike.’

A few minutes later we stood in his garage, as he wheeled an old motor bike out from the shadows. I looked back at our little white Peugeot, its windshield shattered, its doors pocked with bullet marks, Mathieu dead inside. I had not said a prayer for his soul. The familiar words came to mind. ‘Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him.’ But they were remembered, not said. Perpetual light? Eternal rest? My mother’s words came back.

Willi was explaining the workings of the motor bike. He handed me a pair of goggles. To Jeannot he gave a visored helmet. ‘Let Jeannot wear the helmet,’ he said. ‘I don’t have two of them. But it’s like a mask. He won’t be recognised.’

I wheeled the bike out into the sunlight. Jeannot climbed on behind me. I kicked the engine into life. Willi waved to us.

Minutes later, we roared back across the causeway, the road empty, the rain ended. I looked down at Jeannot’s hands clasped around my waist and felt his frail body press against mine. Back through the years, a woman sat on a ramshackle porch, watching, as I went down a hilly road on muleback, a little boy hanging on behind me, a boy she had given into my care.

We were headed for Lavallie where Nöl Destouts had lent us his small cottage in the hills. The locals were mountain people, like the people of Toumalie, Jeannot’s village. There were no
bleus
among them. If there was a place in Ganae where he might go to ground, Lavallie was that place.

But twenty minutes up the road, after crossing the causeway, we saw an army roadblock ahead. Vehicles and pedestrians were being checked by soldiers. Sober soldiers. The operation was being supervised by a captain wearing the shoulder flash of the Port Riche Battalion. I brought the motor bike to a stop.

‘They’ll be looking for your little white Peugeot,’ Jeannot said. ‘Not for two men on a motor bike.’

‘They’ll be looking for you and for a
blanc
priest. We can’t risk it.’

‘Is there another road to Lavallie?’

‘No.’

I turned the bike round and we drove back the way we had come. As we approached the causeway, I saw that a second roadblock was being set up there. We were now cut off in both directions. A convoy of three army trucks was crossing the causeway, coming from Cap Gauche.

‘Those trucks may have been to Willi’s,’ Jeannot said. ‘One thing is sure. Someone back at Pat Redmond’s place has given them that description of your car and told them we’re in this area.’

Our danger had doubled. Before, we had been hiding. Now, we were hunted. As we halted in the middle of the road, the truck convoy rumbled through the roadblock. In a few minutes it would be on us. Hurriedly, we pulled the motor bike into the long grasses and lay down beside it, not knowing if we could be seen from the road. After a few moments we felt the ground shake as the trucks passed above us. I buried my head in the grass, cringing, as though at any moment a bullet would strike my back. When the sound diminished, Jeannot sat up, lifted the visor of his helmet and scanned the hills around us. He pointed to a village that stuck out on a rocky promontory overlooking the road and the valley below. ‘Let’s hide the bike and go up there.’

‘But it’s completely cut off,’ I said. ‘What will we do there?’

‘That place is too small to have police or soldiers. The people will hide me.’

I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid. I wanted to hide. I felt that at any moment we might be discovered by soldiers down here on the road. Yet if we went up that rocky path to that isolated place we would be cut off, on foot, unable to escape if pursued. We set off, pushing the heavy bike up the narrow path, looking for a place to hide it. Trees and bushes had long ago been razed for firewood and the bare mountain slopes offered no cover. We heard a noise above us. It grew louder. Coming over the mountaintop was a helicopter, a rare sight in Ganae. As it came towards us we saw its army markings. Hastily, we dragged the bike off the path and lay down beside it with little hope of not being seen. But the helicopter flew over us and did not pause. We watched it circle towards the second roadblock, hover, then lift up to disappear behind a hill.

‘Missed us,’ Jeannot said.

But I did not feel so sure.

‘Let’s leave the bike behind those rocks,’ Jeannot said. ‘At least it won’t be seen from the road.’

We pulled the bike in behind some boulders. Jeannot put his helmet down beside it. ‘They
didn’t
see us,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

He led. I followed. As we continued up the rocky path leading to the hilltop village, I kept glancing back at the roadblock below. If the Army had learned that we were somewhere between Cap Gauche and Papanos, they would send in hundreds of soldiers to flush us out. Pelardy was right. Jeannot, free in Ganae, was a man marked down for death.

The village ahead of us was of the poorest sort, some fifteen wood-frame shacks, with walls of mud-daubed wattles, their roofs thatched with palm branches. On the steep slopes around them were a few mean fields of congo peas and yams. In the centre of the village we saw three hobbled donkeys, a pen containing a few pigs and, on the rocky bluffs above, six mountain goats. Now we heard the sound of drums and a
mandoline
. Voices chanted a dirge which I did not recognise. But Jeannot did.

‘It’s a wake,’ he said. ‘In that house.’

Children playing on a makeshift see-saw waved to us as we went to the open door of the shack Jeannot had pointed out. Inside, people were beating drums, clapping hands, and singing to the sound of the
mandoline.
When they saw Jeannot they smiled and beckoned him to come in. But when we did and the singers saw my
blanc
face, their voices faltered. The music stopped.

The dead man was seated at a table dressed, as was the custom, in his best clothes, a clean white shirt, denim trousers, sandals. His old felt fedora was perched jauntily on his head. On the table was a funerary wreath fashioned from white frangipani and red immortelles. A dish of plantains, beans and rice had been set before him and an unlit cigarette drooped from his lips. He was a peasant in his thirties, scarecrow thin, as were most of the others in the room. And then I saw the bullet hole in his temple. The blood had been cleaned away.

People nodded humbly to me, the priest. They looked with curiosity at Jeannot, not recognising him.

Jeannot smiled at them and said, ‘God is with us.’

It was as though he had spoken his name. There was, at once, an amazing stillness in the room. In a chorus, voices answered.

‘
C’e Mesiah. C’e Mesiah!
’

People came forward touching him as they might touch a sacred object. ‘
Mesiah! Mesiah!
’ They wept, they smiled, they bowed to him in reverence.

Jeannot, moving through the crowd, went to the table and gently touched the dead man’s hand.

‘Who killed our brother?’

Stumbling, interrupting each other in their eagerness to tell, the villagers explained that they had gone down to Papanos two days ago to join other peasants in a protest against parliament’s refusal to accept Jeannot’s choice of premier. The dead man was carrying a poster with Jeannot’s picture and had been shot by soldiers when he tried to hoist it up over the entrance to the town hall.

And now, as in a biblical miracle, Jeannot had appeared at the dead man’s wake. The villagers did not ask why he had come or how he knew of the death. The Messiah is not a man. He co-exists in the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit. To them, Jeannot had appeared in their village as the Virgin might appear. He was God’s messenger. Because of this, the room was filled with a strange exaltation. These lives of poverty, of endless toil, of children’s early deaths, of storms that washed away the meagre crops, of soldiers and
bleus
who beat and pillaged, were, in that room, on that day, transformed into the promise of a future life. Now, with the Messiah come among them, they believed anew. Paradise would be theirs.