No Other Life

by Brian Moore

  He rose and walked to the window. Outside in the morning sun a tiny green hummingbird, its wings beating at invisible speed, poised immobile over an hibiscus flower. As Jeannot moved to the window, the hummingbird switched its tiny head, saw him, and flew off into a blaze of sun.

  He stood, his back to me, looking out of the window. ‘This is the worst possible time for me to have trouble with Rome,’ he said. ‘We’re just getting started here. The first thing is to try to improve people’s working conditions. And to do that we must make the employers afraid of us. Otherwise they won’t change a thing.’

  ‘Is that why you sent mobs into the streets last week?’

  He turned away from the window and asked angrily, ‘What mobs in the streets? Is that what they’re saying? I didn’t put mobs in the streets. The people have taken to the streets themselves. They see that those who helped the dictator are still in power. They’re asking that these people be punished. I was elected by the poor. I must heed their demands.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means arrests. And trials.’

  ‘Jeannot, listen to me. Arrests and trials will not put food in people’s mouths. What will you do if foreign investors pull out of Ganae? You need trade, you need tourism, you need new investment, new jobs.’

  ‘I see,’ he said bitterly. ‘Now, we will have the American aid lecture. Calm down. Let the poor be exploited. Aid will follow. I don’t want that sort of aid.’

  ‘Neither do I. But you won’t change conditions here through denunciations and revenge. It’s going to take a lot more than that.’

  ‘Paul,’ he said. ‘I thought you were my spiritual advisor, not my campaign manager. What do you know about politics?’

  ‘Not a great deal. But perhaps more than some of those dreamers I see sitting in your outer office. You’ve been given power, Jeannot. For God’s sake, use it wisely.’

  ‘For God’s sake?’ His eyes, those extraordinary eyes, widened in anger. ‘Was I elected to do things for God’s sake, or for the sake of the poor of Ganae? Aren’t they the same thing?’

  ‘That’s simplistic.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He was silent for a moment, then bowed his head, covering his eyes with his hand, rocking to and fro on his stool. I recognised the signs. I went to the door and opened it. The presidential guards rose from their chairs. Behind them I saw Pelardy talking on the telephone. I told him what had happened. At once, a flurry of people began moving in and out of Jeannot’s study. Sister Maria, a nun who had trained as a medical doctor, gave him some tablets and a glass of water. She ordered the shutters drawn. I waited outside with the others. Telephones rang. Pelardy was postponing Jeannot’s appointments. After a few minutes, Sister Maria came out. ‘He’s asking for you.’

  When I went back into the room he was lying on a couch, well away from the light. ‘Come, sit by me,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about this.’

  ‘Did I bring it on?’

  ‘The migraine? No. It’s been waiting for me all morning. Paul, please forgive me for speaking to you like that. But there is a plot to bring me down. Can you imagine the range of our enemies? Archbishop Pellerat, King Coke, the elite, Macandal. What a team! And now they’re going to bring the Vatican into it. If the Vatican strips me of my role as a priest it could do me more damage than any other factor in this mess. Is there any way you can find out what’s happening in Rome?’

  ‘I could try.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  As though he had been listening outside the door, Pelardy entered the room to say that Ganae’s ambassador in Washington was on the line. I took my leave.

  At the residence that evening Father Bourque confirmed that the nuncio had been recalled to Rome. ‘I only heard of it yesterday,’ he said. ‘Something’s going on. I was told that the Archbishop also went to Rome last weekend.’

  ‘Do you think this means the Vatican will move against Jeannot?’

  ‘The Archbishop will certainly advise them to disown him.’

  I went up to my room that night, planning to ring Jeannot in the morning and tell him about the Archbishop’s departure. I had undressed and was getting into bed when Hyppolite knocked on my door. ‘There is a Monsieur on the phone who say he is your brother.’

  I thought it would be Jeannot calling incognito. But when I went downstairs, the voice on the phone was Henri’s, far away in Ville de la Baie, Quebec.

  ‘Paul, Maman has had a massive coronary attack. The doctors say there’s no hope she’ll survive it. She keeps asking for you. She told me to ask you to come at once. Is that possible?’

  ‘Yes. Where is she? What hospital?’

  ‘She’s at home. She wanted to come home and the specialist says at this stage it won’t make any difference. She’s conscious, though, quite clear in her mind. And, as I say, she keeps asking for you.’

  I told him I would leave in the morning. I went back to my room and took from under my bed the flat tin trunk that contained my winter clothing. The black serge suit and heavy winter overcoat looked as though they had once belonged to some larger, more confident man. As I laid them out I remembered that the flight was at seven a.m. I must reach Jeannot tonight to tell him about the Archbishop and about my leaving.

  And so I went back downstairs and rang the palace. After a delay, Sister Maria’s voice said, ‘He’s asleep, Father. Is it urgent?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is.’

  ‘I’ll wake him.’

  A few minutes later the silence of the telephone line was broken by a whispered voice. ‘What is it, Paul?’

  ‘I have to go to Quebec first thing tomorrow morning. My mother is dying.’

  ‘Oh, Paul, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that Archbishop Pellerat left last weekend for Rome. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘Father Bourque. He also said that Pellerat will advise the Vatican to disown you.’

  He was silent. Then he said, ‘Is there any hope for your mother?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. But she’s asking for me. I feel I must go.’

  ‘Of course. Paul, hurry back. I’ll need you.’

  And was gone.

  Next morning, wearing the heavy winter clothing that no longer fitted me, I was driven to the airport by Hyppolite. There, I bought a return ticket to Miami with ongoing connections to Montreal. When I handed in my passport at the desk of the Police de Sécurité the policeman checked it against a list and then, to my surprise, asked me to wait. I watched him go to an inner office and speak with a sergeant. The Sergeant came out to the front desk.

  ‘May I see your tickets?’

  I gave him my tickets.

  ‘Are these all of the tickets? No other destination?’

  ‘No.’

  He went back into the office and picked up a phone. I watched, but could not hear what was said. He returned to the counter, stamped my passport with an exit visa and handed passport and tickets back. ‘Bon voyage, Mon Père.’

  As I waved goodbye to Hyppolite at the departure gate I told myself that Doumergue was dead and the junta was no longer in power. This was Jeannot’s Ganae. Why, then, was my name on a list? Why was I asked about my final destination? Did he not believe I was going to visit my mother? Even under Jeannot, would nothing ever change here?

  My plane, turning in an arc, passed over the abandoned buildings of the Bicentennial Exposition Grounds, that symbol of Ganae’s efforts to imitate other, more fortunate lands. But the people of Ganae know no other lands. They live in a world apart. Even to me as I flew away from it, its endless struggles, its cruelties and despairs seemed a tale so frightening that, if I told it, no one would believe that such a place existed. My plane, as though confirming this, flew over the white froth of surf that rings the fouled beachfront, leaving the island behind us, wiped out like a chalk mark on the great green blackboard of sea.

  That evening I was met in Montreal by a y
oung seminarian from the Collège St Luc where I had studied when I was his age. I was driven through well-lighted, snow-swept streets, past tall gleaming buildings and an affluence of every sort, to the grounds, chapel and classrooms of the seminary where my fellow-Order priests were waiting to give me supper. Next morning, shivering in sub-zero temperatures, I flew to the town of Chicoutimi, two hundred miles north of Montreal. On the plane, listening to the familiar French accents of my native Quebec, my life’s choice came back to haunt me. What if I had stayed in Ville de la Baie and become a doctor like my father and my brother? I thought of that life I would never know, a life lived with a woman, a life with children of my own. And then, as though presenting me with my alternative self, the first person waiting for me at the arrival gate was Henri. We hesitated. We were never demonstrative in our family, but was a handshake enough after sixteen years? Awkwardly, we embraced.

  ‘How is Maman?’

  ‘She’s still conscious, still waiting for you. Frankly, we think that’s what’s keeping her alive.’ Suddenly he broke off and pointed to my shoes. ‘Don’t you have snow boots or rubbers? Your feet will be soaking.’

  And with that remark he established our long-held positions. He, the older brother, responsible, provider for his mother, his wife and his children. I, the impractical younger brother who have lived my life under the protective shelter of a religious order. I knew at once that he would drive us to the nearest shopping mall where he would select for me heavy socks and boots and would expect to pay for them.

  ‘How much is that?’ he asked, handing his credit card to the salesman.

  ‘Wait. I’ll get it.’

  ‘What’s happened to the vow of poverty?’

  ‘Times have changed.’

  ‘You mean the Order pays you now?’

  He intended no insult. To Henri, religion is part of the social contract. I would guess he has not thought of God in many years. I smiled and took a hundred-dollar US bill from my wallet. At once, he warned me. ‘Be sure they give you the proper rate of exchange.’

  Twenty minutes later, driving on the road to Ville de la Baie, we reached the great snow-covered fjords that enclose the Saguenay River. It is a road I remember well for at the end of it is the lumber yard founded by my grandfather. As we passed by I looked for the old sign: bois de charpente – michel, but instead saw a new and ugly billboard: quincaillerie de la baie.

  ‘Hardware?’ I said to Henri. ‘What’s happened to the lumber business?’

  ‘It’s secondary now. Times have changed, remember?’

  But had they really? We drove into the town and it was as though I had never left. I saw the familiar white-painted wooden houses, the wide front porches, the high, slanting roofs. We passed through the commercial streets of the town with their old-fashioned shop fronts, higgledy-piggledy corner grocery stores and the Quebec Liquor Commission outlet, its floors piled high with cartons of beer. We reached a quiet square. Standing alone in a white rectangle of untrodden snow, was the grey stone church with its tall silver spire where I, an eight-year-old altar boy, served my first Mass. Had anything changed here? I remembered Maman telling me about the Great Depression when hungry families queued for free soup and men went door-to-door looking for a day’s work. But what did they know of despair? No one starved, no child played in filthy water, no one’s twelve-year-old daughter offered herself for sale. What if I had been an altar boy in La Rotonde?

  We drove into Rue du Fort. Half-way down the street was the house where I was born. Several cars were parked outside and when we walked up the narrow, snow-cleared path to the front door I saw a jumble of overshoes in the hall, a sign that there were many people inside. In the front sitting room were my sister Justine, her husband Robert, Aunt Marie, Aunt Isabelle and many people whom I did not know. I was embraced and introduced, offered coffee, told that I could not see Maman just yet as the doctor was with her. I sat, half-hearing what was said to me, my eyes fixed on a familiar oleograph of Christ crowned with thorns. I remembered, as a child, sitting in different parts of this room, trying to avoid that portrait’s stare. But, no matter where I moved, His eye was on me.

  A uniformed nurse appeared and said that I could go up. When I went out to the hallway a young man was coming downstairs. He smiled at me and, putting his hand on my shoulder, said, ‘I’m Dr Pouliot. It’s wonderful that you managed to get here in time. I’m afraid it won’t be long now.’ He pressed my arm and, as he moved away towards the overloaded coat rack in the hall, the nurse beckoned me to follow her upstairs.

  My mother’s bedroom was as I remembered it from childhood. There were two painted statues on the mantelpiece, one of Jesus, one of Mary. A red votive lamp burned between these effigies and the room itself had a faint, sickly smell, reminiscent of stale flowers. In the high, old-fashioned bed in which I was born, my mother lay, surrounded by pillows and cushions. She was tiny in age, her skin translucent, as though lit by some flame flickering within her body. When I kissed her I saw that her white hair now barely covered her pink, domed skull. I sat down beside her, holding her hand.

  ‘Maman, it’s me. Paul.’

  When I spoke, she looked up, as though seeing me for the first time. Easing her hand free of mine, she lay back on the pillows, her breathing suddenly harsh. I looked at the nurse who hovered behind us but the nurse smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s all right, Father. I’ll leave you now.’

  My mother watched the door close, then pulled herself up into a sitting position.

  ‘Paul, I couldn’t . . .’ She stopped, in mid-sentence. ‘Paul, I want to ask you . . .’

  ‘What is is, Maman?’

  ‘It’s the end for me.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said, foolishly.

  ‘Father Demarais has given me the last rites. So I know it’s over. Paul, I’m afraid.’ She began to weep.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I told her. ‘No one wants to die, but no one is more ready for death than you are. Soon, you will be in heaven.’

  When I said that, she lifted her head and stared at me. Her face was the face of a stranger, frightened, despairing. ‘No, Paul, no!’

  Was there some sin, real or imagined, which made her think this? ‘Why, Maman?’

  ‘Do you remember when you were a little boy and did something bad? I would say to you, “Remember, Paul, the Man Upstairs is watching you.” Do you remember that?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I was wrong to tell you that,’ my mother said. ‘There is no one watching over us. Last week, when I knew I was dying, I saw the truth. Paul, I have prayed all my life. I believed in God, in the Church, I believed I had a soul that was immortal. But I have no soul. When we die, there is nothing. That’s why I sent for you. I must speak to you – you of all my children. Paul, listen. You must give up the priesthood. When I think how I guided you towards it, when I think of the times I told you how happy it would make me if you became a priest. If it weren’t for me you might be a doctor doing useful work like your father and Henri. You’d be married, you’d have children. You would not have wasted your life telling people something which isn’t true. Please, Paul. You’re forty-seven years old. It’s not too late. Promise me. Leave the priesthood now.’

  ‘Maman, you’re wrong. You didn’t make me a priest. I was the one who decided it. And you will go to heaven. You will.’

  ‘No.’ She lay back on the pillows, her eyes not on me but on the red votive lamp flickering between the painted plaster statues on the mantelpiece. ‘There is no other life,’ my mother said.

  Again, I reached for her hand and held it, the skin loose as a glove over her small, aged bones. Words of pious reassurance stumbled through my brain, mechanical as a doctor’s promise that what is about to happen will not cause pain. There are things one says to those who fear death, whose faith is weak, whose courage has forsaken them. But they would not help my mother. Her words mocked all pretence. I raised her hand and kissed it, that hand which had fed and washed me, which ha
d lifted me from my crib. She tried to speak but, instead, gasped and coughed, her breathing harsh and shallow. Speechless, she stared at me in desperate pleading. I rose, ran to the door and called the nurse. In a moment the room was filled with people. As they moved her in the bed, her nightgown twisted about her shoulders, revealing her withered breasts. I averted my eyes and, facing the mantelpiece, saw, as though in mockery of her agony, the painted statue of Jesus, its index finger pointing towards the bleeding heart painted on its breast. Below the statue the flame of the little red votive lamp flickered behind its heart-red glass. Soon, this room would be empty. Someone would blow the flame out.

  Later that afternoon, we family members knelt around her bed to recite the rosary. I led the prayers. Facing me, Justine prayed, her head bowed. She was forty years old, the mother of a boy and two girls. Henri, dutifully mouthing Hail Marys at the foot of the bed, was also a parent. Were her children and grandchildren the only true continuation of my mother’s life? I looked at Maman’s dying face, her eyes shut tight, her breathing harsh as she fought to fend off that absence which had already entered the sickroom. There is no other life. My voice continued to recite the familiar prayers. The rosary ended, we rose and left the room. When next I saw my mother it was at six o’clock that evening in answer to an urgent summons from the nurse. We crowded into the sickroom. Faces turned to me, waiting for me to raise my hand in blessing and pray for the repose of my mother’s soul. I made the sign of the cross but found I could not speak.

  On the island of Ganae the night is never silent. In the slums that adjoin our residence, there are no cars or trucks and so the noises of night are medieval. Voices quarrel, shout, sing drunken songs. Dogs bark. Roosters, wakened untimely, crow in darkness. Footsteps sound loud in the narrow, filthy streets below my bedroom window.