Wonder

by Dominique Fortier

  THE WALLS OF THE DUNGEON WERE COVERED with graffiti left over the years by other prisoners. Some, drawn with a piece of charred wood or a pebble, were nearly erased; others had been carved into the stone where Baptiste could decipher the marks by running his finger over them the way he’d once seen a blind man read a book. There were names of men who might now be alive or dead, dates that corresponded to nothing, small obscene drawings, flowers, birds. His favourite was a hollowed-out circle with lines of different lengths radiating from it. He didn’t know if the aim had been to draw a sun or a star, but several times a day he would trace the curve of the minute celestial body embedded in the damp stone.

  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 h
e 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.

  THE NAUSEATING SMELL THAT PELÉE 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.

  Hordes of bats emerged from the darkness of caves at midday to flutter, blind, above the heads of the terrified islanders, sometimes brushing close enough to lift a lock of hair with their crooked fingers.

  Overnight, alleys were teeming with snakes that slipped into the slightest chink between the boards or the stones of houses; and the inhabitants found them in their kitchens, their bathtubs, even between their sheets. People now walked with eyes to the ground, while in the sky the crater kept spitting grey clouds and orange flames. Some talked of seeing hideous reptiles crawl, undulating, into the sea and disappear into the waves; others even swore that snakes had been found coiled up in the holds of ships, hidden among the rigging.

  The curé had no doubt: it was unquestionably the Apocalypse. He had witnessed it from the outset, following its progress step by step while its spectacle of fire unfolded before his dazzled eyes. God was speaking to him by showing him how to read in the surrounding countryside the mysterious story that had been transcribed into the sacred texts thousands of years before. The thought filled him with elation when he presented to all, several times a day, the blood of Christ in a
chalice that turned black in his hands.

  By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying …

  Here, he had to break off, choking in the acrid smell filling the church. The crater spewing flames was trying to prevent him from spreading the Good Word – ah! He would rise up, alone, before the diabolical mountain. He coughed, tried to get his breath back, choked again, finally reached out mechanically for the cup resting nearby on the altar. He gulped some wine and felt better.

  Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen … he repeated, startling certain members of the congregation, some of whom, knowing little of the cursed city’s history, searched briefly with their eyes for a woman called Babylon who had stumbled in the aisle. And is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul sprit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buys their merchandise anymore: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thy fine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious woods, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.