Wonder (4 page)

As a child he would sometimes kneel to draw in the sand pictures that the sea would erase almost immediately. More than anything else, he loved the long hours spent not far from town alone on the beaches, some as black as soot and scattered with grains of silver like stars in an inky sky, while others, gold like ripe fruit, unfurled
their blondness in the sunshine. He would catch sharp-clawed violet crabs with one brisk movement as they scurried diagonally on their oddly articulated claws; dig with his toe when he saw small bubbles forming on the surface of the sand, announcing the presence of a clam; fill baskets with crustaceans and conches for his aunt to make the spicy soup she would announce loudly and sell to passersby. When no one was looking, he would gulp the pink or grey contents of a shell.

He would stick his head underwater and for a few minutes the world ceased to exist, replaced by that other bluish universe where he was weightless, as if he’d been set free. His fluid movements would encounter a resistance that could have been due to the silence they had to pass through – the pirouettes of fish fleeing at his approach; the slow flight of the enormous ray, nearly invisible against the sand, half-bird, half-fish; the hypnotic sway of water weeds like long hair blown by the wind; the erratic leaps of scallops advancing in short bursts – all bathed in a similar weightlessness where time itself seemed suspended.

Now and then a wave deeper than others would grab him and he would let himself swirl as if in a sandstorm, not knowing where the surface was and where the depths, rolling with the water until it calmed down and dropped him peacefully on the beach. From those dives he would
bring back a pearly nautilus, a tiny sea horse, or a red starfish, which he would return to the sea a few hours later, humble gifts from the ocean, all of them treasures.

One day when he was around ten years old, he had opened an oyster to discover, nestled against the soft and fleshy creature in the shell, a pearl the size of his fingernail, not perfectly spherical, its whiteness reflecting all the colours of the rainbow, like a minuscule, nearly full moon fallen into the sea and swallowed whole by a greedy mollusk.

“What did you find?” his cousin Raoul had shouted when he saw him absorbed in something taken out of the foam at his feet.

Without thinking, Baptiste had thrown back his head and gulped the slippery, salty oyster.

“Nothing,” he replied, displaying the empty shell.

Not until Raoul had turned his back and resumed his own explorations did Baptiste spit the pearl into his hand, then slip it into his trouser pocket, wondering if he had just stolen something, though he’d have had trouble saying from whom. But he knew that when the moment came he would have to confess this wicked deed to God.

On the first Tuesday of every month he went to confession with his cousins, waiting his turn in the dim nave under the threatening gaze of the statues of saints, some
of which shed scented wax tears once a year. Sitting on the hard seat in the confessional, he observed through the fine lattice work the glistening eye of the priest to whom he said: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Next came a list of his misdeeds in recent weeks which he strove scrupulously to report in order, in case that made any difference. The priest reminded him every time that the least of his offences added another thorn to Christ’s crown and imposed Hail Marys and Our Fathers in proportion to the number and gravity of his sins: two Our Fathers for stealing a coconut, three for a papaya. Over time the image of those new thorns driven into the Saviour’s flesh became unbearable to Baptiste and at age twelve he decided to avoid all sins, to stop pilfering and to obey his aunt and uncle on all matters. One Tuesday he appeared at confession triumphant, certain that he had not contributed at all to the suffering of Our Lord, impatient to tell his feat to the priest, who would be sure to congratulate him. He pulled the velvet curtain in the confessional behind him and silently took a seat. He wasn’t sure how to begin. On the other side of the finely worked grille he could make out the face of the priest in silhouette. The smell of incense, beeswax, and garlic floated in the air.

“Well?” asked the priest after a moment.

“Hello, Father,” replied Baptiste, his voice quavering
slightly from combined fear and pride. “This month I didn’t sin.”

The face turned towards him, a grey mask whose features were erased by the dimness.

“No sins. Whoever heard of such a thing? Presumption, my child, is a wicked fault,” said the priest.

Baptiste didn’t get the connection so he waited, hands clasped, for the
curé
to go on.

“So you’ve done nothing wrong, you haven’t stolen, you haven’t fought …”

“No, Father.”

“Maybe you’ve disobeyed your mother or father?”

Baptiste wanted to point out how impossible the latter hypothesis would have been but he decided not to and merely replied:

“No, Father.”

He now could detect a hint of impatience in the voice of the
curé
, who went on:

“Lied then?”

“No, Father, I haven’t told a lie.”

“Not even by omission?”

Baptiste didn’t know what the
curé
meant by that and not daring to ask, said again, but less certainly:

“No, Father.”

Sensing he was on to something, Father Blanchot leaned forward and whispered:

“But you’ve committed impure deeds or had impure thoughts, haven’t you?”

The smell of garlic was stronger now. Baptiste didn’t know what the
curé
meant by that either. His confessions had never gone on so long: usually, he would admit that he’d filched a mango and gone for a stroll after nightfall when his aunt had forbidden it, the
curé
would absentmindedly impose a penance, and that was it until the following month. Now he almost wished he had a crime to acknowledge.

“I don’t know, Father.”

“Aha!” said the priest smugly, leaning back comfortably. “Girls?”

Of course Baptiste liked looking at girls and he would sometimes drop a coin so he would have to bend down and could look under their skirts. But that could not be a sin.

As Baptiste wasn’t replying, the
curé
suggested, his voice even lower:

“Boys?”

The only boys he rubbed shoulders with were his cousins and even if he hoped every morning on waking up that Siméon would stop wetting the bed, he was fairly sure that wasn’t what the
curé
meant.

“No, Father,” he declared.

The confessor heaved a sigh, brought his face close to the grille again so Baptiste could see his nose, his chin,
and his eyebrows cut into little squares, and declared: “There are many things that wound Our Lord, but of all the sins, lying is the most loathsome. To shed the urge to tell falsehoods, young man, do ten Stations of the Cross, recite fifty Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. And come back when you’re ready to confess the wrongs that taint your soul.”

The small partition separating the confessional slammed shut and for a long moment, Baptiste sat unmoving in the dark. The following month and every other month until he turned sixteen, when once and for all he stopped begging Father Blanchot for mercy, he invented a list of misdeeds that he left at the
curé
’s feet as a rotten offering, then went away whistling a tune – after spitting in the holy water stoup.

In his cell that night, when there was utter darkness around him, Baptiste dug in the beaten earth floor until he found a pebble sufficiently sharp and pointed, and he began to trace around the circle engraved in the stone a broad rectangle divided into squares. Behind it he scrawled waves, sand, and some fluffy clouds. Then he lay down in the dark again, looking towards the invisible wall where he had opened a window.

T
HE NAUSEATING SMELL THAT
P
ELÉE SOMETIMES
gave off for days, a sulphur stench amusingly called “mountain farts,” had been bathing the city for weeks, forcing the populace to keep their windows sealed tight despite the heat. The lovelies on the streets untied their long scarves and placed them over their noses and mouths, making them look a little like the veiled women of the desert, the difference being that the multicoloured fabrics in which they wrapped themselves teemed with flowers, birds, and vegetation, and that they didn’t hesitate to lift a corner to show off the dazzle of a smile where sometimes a gold tooth shone.

Both household pets and farm animals behaviour began to behave strangely, some refusing to eat while others, who’d always been absolutely gentle, delivered kicks and bites whenever anyone tried to tie them up.

Finally, something new was observed, but for obvious reasons only among the most affluent citizens of Saint-Pierre; silver objects were covered overnight with a dark coating similar to charcoal.

Father Blanchot, summoned before lauds while eating his morning boiled egg, thought at first that it was a bad joke.

“What’s the matter?” he snapped at a trembling altar boy. It was common knowledge that the
curé
disliked being disturbed during meals, which he ate alone and in silence. Madame Pinson, his housekeeper, put on felt slippers to serve and to clear the table.

“Father,” stammered the boy, twisting a corner of his child’s size soutane, “it’s the ciborium …”

“The ciborium? What on earth have you done to it? You can’t have broken it, it’s sterling silver! Or else … have you lost it, you little devil?” he roared, brandishing a toast finger like a threat.

“No, Father, nothing like that … But … it’s all black.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, lad,” said the
curé
, reassured in spite of everything, taking a sip of
café au lait
. “You forgot to shine it for a few days, you were too busy playing, and now it’s slightly tarnished. Don’t waste any more time, go and polish it before the service!”

He tried to brush the intruder away with the back of his hand but the child refused to vanish.

“I mean, Father, it’s not just the ciborium, it’s also the chalice, the monstrance …”

“What are you talking about, you disrespectful boy?”

“And the candlesticks, Father.”

Father Blanchot got up grudgingly and, glancing at his still half-full plate, warned:

“Watch out if you’re fooling around, young man.”

But the altar boy wasn’t fooling around.

The good Father had never done so well since his arrival in Saint-Pierre. His church was always full; at certain hours the faithful who had been unable to find a seat inside crowded together out front all the way to the steps and listened from there to the sermon that came to them through the half-open doors, which let into the nave a fine black dust smelling of sulphur.

For a variety of reasons that he couldn’t fully explain, Father Blanchot had always harboured a fascination with the Apocalypse of Saint John. Certainly he appreciated the more subtle rhetorical devices set forth in the Book of Job or in Ecclesiastes, among others. But this fat and rather pusillanimous man, who liked his comfort and his own habits and customs, experienced at the mere mention of lion-headed horses, poisoned grasshoppers, and other baleful harbingers of Revelation, a shudder such as he hadn’t felt since his teenage years, when watching one of his classmates with flowing blond hair being thrashed by a teacher who always had a long wooden ruler tucked into the waist of his soutane. Yes, definitely, the subject inspired him. There was matter there for more than one edifying sermon.

He had long lamented the fact that it was so hard to waken his flock to the threat of torture awaiting those who did not obey the precepts of Our Lord during their earthly existence. This did not prevent him from brandishing the terrifying promise of eternal fire and damnation every week before parishioners already half stunned by the heat, fanning themselves by waving their Bibles in front of their faces as if trying to chase away a fly.

All that had changed around a month earlier. At the first indistinct rumbling of Mount Pelée, tearful women had banged on the closed doors of the cathedral in the light of a mauve dawn to confess sins they had just most willingly committed. Those who had led them onto this ruinous way – or who’d followed them, it varied – were quick to copy them and soon the House of God was filled night and day, ringing out at all hours with the
curé
’s powerful voice recalling the tragic destinies of vile Sodom and Gomorrah, of impure Babylon, of arrogant Babel. Morning, noon, and evening, the altar boys polished the liturgical vessels, which turned black almost before their eyes. The housekeeper had been pressed into service and was watching over the preparation of enough communion wafers in the presbytery kitchen to feed all those starving souls who by the grace of God would be satisfied.

Writing sermons had never been so easy for Father Blanchot: he just had to look out the window to see what
new scourge was raging and, inevitably, the Bible would offer him an illustration or a dreadful explanation. Should smoke rise from the crater in the morning, he would announce in a lugubrious voice: “There arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.” Should the flagstone floor tremble beneath the feet of the islanders gathered in the church, he would go on in a voice like thunder: “I beheld when he opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.” Of course no one had yet seen stars crash to earth, but the mountain spat flying sparks into the night, sending down a disturbing extravaganza of yellow, red, and orange against the blackness of the sky, and at dawn the
curé
trumpeted: “And there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up and a third of the trees was burned up, and all green grass was burned up.”

But what was most spectacular in his sermon, what he was most proud of, came to him in the form of a swarming mass, a veritable rain of insects beating down on the town. Creatures never before in human memory seen in broad daylight – hairy spiders that lived in burrows, eyeing
their prey; red scorpions; foot-long millipedes that didn’t hesitate to attack the hens – and others they knew all too well: fearsome carpenter ants, green grasshoppers with legs like twigs, innumerable cockroaches, all came down the mountain slopes to storm the streets of Saint-Pierre.