No Other Life (27 page)

A few days after my release from Fort Nöl, the nuncio handed me a letter from Cardinal Innocenti which had been sent by diplomatic pouch. It was marked ‘confidential’ and sealed with a papal seal. In it, the Cardinal expressed his regret for what had happened to me and asked if I had any news of Jeannot. He also said he was anxious to have my impressions of the current state of affairs in Ganae. Any information I could give him would, he reassured me, remain confidential.

I was grateful for his efforts in securing my release and in my report I tried to summarise my own impressions and conjectures. I told him that ‘All searches, killings, beatings and other intimidation of Father Cantave’s followers among the poor have failed to quench their faith in his eventual return, and so the government seems to have decided that its wisest course of action is to pretend that the battle is won. Father Cantave’s name is never mentioned by the government-controlled media. If questioned about his return, civilian and army leaders pretend indifference. Raymond, the premier, recently told
Le Monde
that “Cantave is now irrelevant. Ganae has moved on to a new stage of democracy.” I should also mention a statement made by Archbishop Pellerat to a group of visiting American bishops, which may not have come to the attention of Your Eminence. He was quoted as saying, “The ideas of social revolt promulgated by Father Cantave have been repudiated by the poor. They have had enough of the rioting and killings that his teachings inspired. In addition, his followers among the clergy, those priests and nuns who advocated radical social change, have been left without leadership.”

‘Your Eminence, the truth of the matter seems to be that Father Cantave’s ideas have not been repudiated but, indeed, have in some way been strengthened by his mysterious absence. The poor, more than ever, consider him a sort of Messiah and await his eventual return.

‘To answer your primary question I have no news at all of Father Cantave, nor do I expect to have any. He did not confide in me before his disappearance. In our last days together he told me that people must not rely on one leader. They must learn to make the revolution themselves. When I asked him how they could do that, he answered, “Christ was a leader who did not lead.” It is possible therefore that, in some way, he hopes to emulate Our Lord by passing into legend. I do not expect to see him again.’

A month after I sent this report I received a reply from Cardinal Innocenti thanking me for my ‘interesting and informative letter’. He made no comment on its contents and hoped that I would call on him, if ever I revisited Rome.

12

It is now ten years since that day when Jeannot seemed to disappear from this earth. There has been no revolution but, to the dismay of the elite and the Army, an ungovernable rage and resentment consumes the daily lives of the poor. In the slums of La Rotonde and Doumergueville and in the wretched villages of Cap Nord and Mele, candles are lit daily to Jeannot’s memory. Small, homemade shrines may be seen at country crossroads and on the barren hillsides of Cap Gauche, Papanos and Pondicher. The shrines are religious, with a crucifix at their head, as though to ward off the vampires of the regime. Most contain crude images of Jeannot, but there is also an oleograph or statue of the Virgin Mary. Because of this intermingling of religious iconography with Jeannot’s image, even the brutal soldiers of the new special battalions have not dared to desecrate or destroy these shrines. And so they have stood for years, tended with flowers, restored after storms. Women kneel before them, on their long journeys from village to city. Workers, passing them on their way to the fields, make the sign of the cross and bow their heads.

In parliament, the
noirs
have used Jeannot’s memory to force the
mulâtres
to share legislative power. Because of this,
noirs
now occupy most of the ministerial posts and are installed in the highest positions in the Army and police. But nothing has changed. The system is, as always, totally corrupt. The poor are its victims.

In the past ten years there have been many rumours and false sightings. Some of the people have always believed that Jeannot was murdered by Macandal’s soldiers: others say that he is alive and will return to lead an armed revolt. His name is never mentioned among the elite but the mystery of his disappearance sits under the arrogance and privilege of their lives, like a dangerous earthquake fault.

At the beginning of this account, I wrote that I want to record the hidden event, the story never told. I do not know who will read these pages. I have asked myself: Is it my duty to remain silent? Or is it my duty to tell?

A year after Jeannot’s disappearance, Father Bourque retired and I became Principal of the Collège St Jean. One morning when I was in my office, preparing class rosters, our doorman told me that there was a woman waiting to speak to me at the front entrance.

‘Who is she?’

‘She will not say, sir. She is from the country. They are very ignorant people in that place. I know it, sir. It’s called Toumalie.’

Toumalie
. I looked up from my papers. ‘Put her in the visitor’s parlour. I’ll come down.’

But when I reached the ground-floor parlour the doorman came up to me. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but the woman will not come in.’

I went outside. A tall woman was standing near the front door. She was one of those who make the long journey each day from distant villages to the central market at Port Riche. She had lowered her market bundles to the ground and stood beside them, nervous, looking as if she might bolt.

I went up to her. ‘Good morning. I am Father Michel. Can I help you?’

She stared at me for a moment, then with a sudden shy smile reached into the red-and-yellow bandanna that covered her head and took out an object which she handed to me. It was a pocket watch, with a gold case that closed over the dial. My hand trembled as I snapped open the case and saw the initials I had ordered engraved on its inside. J.P.C. I shut the case. The woman was lifting her bundles from the ground.

‘Wait. Who gave you this?’

She smiled, balanced the huge bundles on her head and, erect and stately, walked off towards the college gates. I hurried after her.

‘Please? Tell me who gave you this. And why did you bring it here?’

‘I am sorry,’ she said, and kept on walking.

‘You are from Toumalie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please tell me. Who?’

‘He just ask me to bring it,’ she said, quickening her pace as we passed through the gates. ‘Because I come to Port Riche, two times each week.’

‘Who asked you?’

‘Frédéric.’

‘Frédéric who?’

‘Please,
Mon Pe
. Let me go now.’

She hurried off down the street.

I left the car in Melun. It was twenty-one years since I had been in Toumalie but there was still no road over which a car could safely travel. I set off on muleback in early afternoon, knowing there would be no bed for me that night if I did not sleep at the house of the local priest. And, of course, I could not do that. When I came into the village, a little after four o’clock, I saw some women washing clothes in a stream at the side of the road. Children played and splashed in the water. Further upstream a man squatted in the shallows while his wife scrubbed his back. I rode up to this couple and asked if they could tell me where to find Frédéric.

A priest, even a
blanc
priest, is not a dangerous person in a place like Toumalie. ‘Frédéric, there are two Frédérics,’ the man said. ‘Young Frédéric, you want?’

‘How old is he?’

‘I don’t know. A boy.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘The other one.’

The man stood up, dripping, and shook himself like a dog. ‘They’re on the hill,’ he said. He pointed. ‘See that shack up there? It’s not that one. Next one up is Frédéric’s.’

I thanked him and went on. As the mule picked its way along the narrow rocky path I wondered if this was the same path down which I had carried Jeannot twenty-one years ago. When I passed the first shack, two small children ran out and seeing me, a stranger, ran back in again. The second shack was larger and had recently been reroofed with tin. There was a ramshackle porch and in front of it a heap of cooking stones, a sign that the shack had no kitchen. Again, children ran out, three girls and a little boy. But these children, seeing me, did not run away. They stood and stared as I threw the mule’s reins over its neck and climbed down, stiff and aching. Somewhere in the distance a cock crowed. I looked up at the hillside behind the house and saw tiny terraced fields fenced in by rocks to keep the soil from slipping down the mountainside. The children watched me and the smallest, the boy, ran over to a little shed behind the main shack.

‘Papa,’ he called.

The shed door opened, loose on creaking hinges, and a man stepped out. He was small and frail, his hair like steel wool, tight-knitted to his skull. As he came towards me I felt a sudden shock. I had never seen him before but I knew him. I held out the watch. He looked at it, then looked at me angrily. ‘She told you my name?’

‘Frédéric?’

He nodded. He pointed to the porch. ‘The sun is still hot,’ he said. ‘Let’s go in.’

We walked up on to the porch and sat on the rickety chairs. He turned to the children, who were watching. ‘Go inside.’

Obedient, they filed past us into the shack. The screen door banged shut.

‘You look like him,’ I said. ‘I would have known you. Where are your cousins? Is your aunt still alive?’

‘She’s dead. My cousins have all left Toumalie. Some work in a factory in Papanos, the rest are labourers in a mill in Pondicher. I did not want to leave. So I try to work this farm.’

He leaned back in his rickety chair and in a familiar gesture put his hand up, his fingers covering his eyes. I could have been watching Jeannot.

‘You should not have come here,’ he said. ‘Your coming is dangerous for us.’

‘No one knows I am here. And I will tell no one.’

‘But what if they find out? Many times in the past they have come here, police and soldiers, asking, looking everywhere, telling us they will beat us. They know my name is Cantave. I tell them always the same thing, that you took him from us when he was a child. I told them that he never came back to see us, not once. All true, as you know. But now, if they find out you have come, they will say I lied to them.’

‘They will not know. I promise you.’

‘How can you promise that? Those children you saw just now, they are mine and they are dear to me. I put them in danger because of him. I didn’t want him to come back. He never helped us. We did not exist for him. But when he came, alone, after all those years, I said to myself, “I mustn’t do as he did.” So I took him in.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He is dead. He died last winter. There is a fever, I don’t know the name. There are no doctors here. My children caught this fever but they are young and strong. He caught it from them but he was – you know – always sick and weak. He sweated and fought it, but the fever did not break for him. On the third night, he died.’

I looked at the watch that I held in my hand. From the moment the woman gave it to me I had known it was a knell. I opened the gold case and saw again his initials. J.P.C.

‘Why did you send me this? Did he ask you to?’

Frédéric shook his head. ‘No. He didn’t think he would die. But his time had come. I sent it to you because it is yours, not mine. As he was yours. You took him away, you made him what he was. I didn’t like what he was. How many hundreds have died because of his preachings? How many more would die tomorrow if they thought it would bring him back?’

‘Where is he buried?’

He hesitated, then said, ‘All right, I will tell you. He is up there on the hill. I buried him myself. I told no one. And I ask you, Father. Tell no one. If you do, people will come here to pray and make trouble. They may even want to take him from the grave. And then the soldiers will come and beat me and put me in prison. My family will suffer. And for what?’

I stood up. Grief had come upon me like a panic. I wanted to weep, to run outside.

I said, ‘I must get back to Melun before night. May I see the grave?’

‘Yes. Come.’

Behind the ramshackle house, a footpath led up through the meagre fields. He walked ahead, not looking back. He said, ‘It’s good that you visit the grave. You can say the prayers. I prayed there myself when I put him down, but I’m not a priest.’

On a muddy slope, which tilted so steeply that it could not be farmed, he stopped and pointed to the ground. I saw no sign of a grave. Leaves and mud covered the place he indicated. ‘I did it at night,’ he said. ‘The children don’t know where it is. Not even my wife knows. Of course, I could not put up a cross. You can see for yourself. No one would know that this ground has been touched.’

He paused, then said, ‘I’ll leave you to your prayers. You can find your own way down. Goodbye. And please. Don’t come again.’

‘I won’t. Thank you.’

He shook his head angrily, dismissing my thanks. Turning, he went back down the narrow path.

And then I was alone with Jeannot, alone for the last time. I looked at the ground, anonymous as the unmarked graves of peasants who had died a hundred years ago. Jeannot, his incantatory voice for ever silent, Jeannot who had passed into legend. If only he
were
the Messiah, if only the gravestone could be rolled back. But I stood on this earth and he lay beneath it, his frail body returning, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.