These sombre words, ringing out like the trumpets of Judgment Day in the dimness of the nave, were followed by a silence so deep that one could hear the wheezing of the stunned parishioners on the long wooden pews. They held their Bibles motionless at the level of their chests, a frail paper rampart against the firestorm that threatened at any moment to swoop down on them, uncertain if it was the fruit of divine rage or of the malice of the devil.
THE HATCH IN THE BOTTOM OF THE HEAVY wooden door creaked open, a heel of bread was tossed inside, and a hand reached out for the empty jug Baptiste was supposed to give over promptly. With any luck it would be returned a few hours later, filled with tepid water. He hurried, knowing they had a brief attention span. The night before he had taken too long to emerge from the sound sleep he’d fallen into abruptly, as though he’d fainted, and the hatch had slammed shut before he could hold out the nearly empty jug. This time, he managed to hand over the receptacle, which disappeared straightaway.
Sitting on the ground opposite the window he’d drawn on the blank wall, he sucked on the hard chunk of bread. He softened it under his tongue, revealing the abrasive texture of the coarsely ground wheat and corn. When the crumb had regained a little of its elasticity he chewed slowly, waiting for its taste to spread before he tore off a new mouthful.
Long hours went by, maybe the whole day, before he heard again the click of the key in the lock that announced the hatch was about to be opened. With one leap he was at the door, holding out his hand for the jug, which was released before he had time to close his fingers on the rounded neck or to grab a handle. The precious liquid spilled onto the ground, which drank it up at once. The hatch was shut and Baptiste dropped to all fours like a dog and tried to lap up what was left, but the earth had swallowed it all. He stood and looked at the dark spot, its outlines already blurred. Tears of helplessness were already filling his eyes; he swallowed them. They too would have been wasted water.
Meanwhile, L’Opinion was trying to reassure the population by calling on history:
We have read the report addressed to the Governor in 1851, by the Commission which had studied the volcano. The result was that the eruption of the mountain does not represent any danger. This volcano has released nothing save mud and ashes. Inhabitants of this island, sleep well, dear friends!
Les Colonies, whose editor-in-chief was a friend of La Tour-Major and one of his most ardent supporters, was doing the same, reporting on any “oddities” that affected the island, but careful to put together articles, advertisements, and commentaries at the back of the journal that demonstrated that life on the island was following its course and there was no cause for alarm.
On May 2 he published a notice stating that the grand excursion organized by the gymnastics and firing club, planned to close with a picnic on the summit of Mount Pelée, would be held as announced, on Sunday the fourth. Weather permitting, the participants would spend the day creating happy memories they would cherish for a long time. If they had climbed the mountain that Sunday afternoon and been able to pierce the fog with their rifles, or if some practice of gymnastics had let them rise above the strip of poisoned clouds that encircled its upper third, club members would have seen a smooth sea, coal-grey, on which floated hundreds of dead birds in lugubrious black-and-white clusters. But no one ventured onto the mountain that day and even at Les Colonies they had to resign themselves, on the eve of the celebrations, to publishing the following laconic notice in the midst of the obituaries: The outing planned for tomorrow will not take place, as the crater is absolutely inaccessible.
“You see, my dear, I told them,” began Monsieur de La Chevrotière, turning towards his wife who rolled her eyes, unseen, because the darkness was total, “it would be best to avoid panic and to do so, nothing could compare with organized entertainments.” For several hours now, he had been giving her a detailed account of the meeting held earlier that evening, when the La Tour-Major clan had decided on the strategy to adopt so as not to let the election get away from them. She had thought she could put an end to the wave of words by getting into bed, but her husband continued to hold forth while donning pyjamas and nightcap and, lying comfortably beside her, back propped against two down-filled pillows, he continued his soliloquy: “Enough modesty, they had no choice but to recognize that I had the best idea. And I—” Just then he was interrupted by a small piece of plaster that fell from the ceiling and landed on his cheek.
A few seconds later, the entire dwelling folded like a house of cards collapsing inwards. A cloud of poisoned gas had gushed down the mountain to drown the city, while at the summit, in the purple darkness, white flashes of lightning shot through the sky.
“I … I am … dying,” Monsieur de La Chevrotière managed to get out finally, and his wife, with a superhuman effort, covered her ears with her hands.
AT FOUR A.M. ON THAT ASCENSION DAY, MAY 8, 1902, a man leaning on the bar of the Blessé-Bobo went to look at his watch and realized it had been stolen; a woman unable to sleep was getting up to gaze out the window to see if the white soot falling from the sky for days had finally stopped; two lovers met at the Agnes Fountain as they did every night, and left together, impatient; a dog dreamed that he was chasing a cat, his chops and whiskers quivering as he uttered shrill little cries in his sleep; an old man on his deathbed suddenly felt better and found the courage to haul himself up on his pillows and ask the servant dozing in a chair beside his bed, cap askew, for a drink; the Sun was still on the other side of Earth; the murmuring wind was tickling the palm fronds; a gendarme was writing a report and drinking black coffee; a prostitute on her stool, lipstick more or less intact, was waiting, staring vacantly, for dawn to come at last; a butler above all suspicion was stuffing silver spoons into a bag, intending to sell them the next morning; a child was waking from one nightmare only to fall into another; the sea was leaving on the sand handfuls of shells, tangled tufts of seaweed, and pieces of driftwood licked clean until they were white and smooth as bone; a mother exhausted from sitting up with her sick son laid her head on the pillow next to the child’s clammy head; a horse in a stable fell to his knees, then collapsed; a hen nearby laid an egg then stared at it, dumbfounded; a poet peered in vain at the smudged sky, awaiting inspiration, and without realizing it, left an ink spot where he’d intended to begin a sonnet; moths in the hundreds scorched their wings on streetlamp bulbs; a lover slipped in silence into his mistress’s bed while her husband slept some rooms away, and put his hand on her breast, half-smiling; spread-eagled on the dirt floor of his cell, Baptiste listened to the swarm of cockroaches; a sailor on a ship moored in the harbour leaned over the ship’s rail to vomit a bitter mixture of rum and ale; at the bottom of the sea a telegraph cable broke; bats flew back to the caves where they spent the daylight hours hanging by their feet; the pressman at L’Opinion watched the metal monster spit out long rolls of paper; Gontran de La Chevrotière farted in his sleep and was deeply satisfied; a colony of termites completed a castle of earth and saliva as tall as a man; Father Blanchot dreamed about a beast with seven heads, all blond, that looked at him with blue eyes; a former slave put her hand unconsciously on her ankle where there used to be fetters; an ancient banana tree in the depths of the forest fell amid a rustling of leaves heard by no one; under its warm crust, the earth seethed; in a hospital bed, a man who’d been told he would never walk again was running in his dream, while one floor higher a white woman gave birth to a black baby; a pickpocket examining the night’s spoils admired a gold watch whose second hand was moving by fits and starts.
And then, in a moment, all that was blown away, and infinitely more; all multiplied by a hundred, a thousand, thirty thousand: wiped out.
FOR A FEW HOURS NOW THE ATMOSPHERE IN the solitary dungeon in the prison yard has been saturated with very fine coal-black dust that comes in through the slightest crack and hangs in the air like sand in water. Baptiste’s gullet is on fire, his eyes dry and sore, face and hands flayed like wounds rubbed with sa
lt. He could swear that it has been days since he’s been given anything to drink, although his prison is sunk into a false darkness that makes the day look very much like the night.
The distant rumbling that has not been silent for a week and has become so familiar it has become a new kind of silence, all at once seems to explode. A blast shakes the stone walls and even the ground where Baptiste is lying. A few seconds later, the room is filled with an even denser cloud smelling of sulphur, which catches at his throat and keeps him from breathing. He takes off his tattered vest and ties it around his head. With the fabric covering his nose and mouth, he manages to take short breaths. With cautious steps he approaches the tiny window and jumps up with all his strength, trying to see outside. He finally is able to clutch the bars, but immediately cries out, gazes at his palms where already blisters filled with brackish water are forming. He cannot give a meaning to the images glimpsed: blackened shapes stretched out or standing; trees with leaves of fire; apocalyptic visions that he persuades himself are the fruit of his imagination, thrown into turmoil by thirst and fear. The air becomes more and more rare inside the stone walls, which are as hot to the touch as his burning forehead. He tries in vain to get away from the source of the danger by curling up in a corner of the room, hugging his legs with his arms and trembling. He senses that death is near, that it might already be there.
Then, without wanting to, almost as if he were looking from a distance at the actions of a man who looks like him, he realizes that he is taking off his pants, which he observes for a moment before urinating on them. The cloudy stream appears to be as viscous as the unbreathable air that fills the dungeon. This strange man with his own features takes the soaking trousers and fits them as best he can between the bars of the window to keep the smoke and dust from getting in. Baptiste follows his movements, vaguely interested, admiring even, as if the stranger were more and more alien to him. Then he drops his head and closes his eyes.
—
Behind his eyelids dances the sea that was always the same and every day different. Sometimes swollen by storms, its waves like shifting mountains hemmed with lead-coloured foam; at other times slack and smooth as a sheet of ice, its surface pierced now and then by a seabird diving head first, wings folded, then reappearing with a wriggling fish in its beak, a mirror in which were reflected motionless inverted ships, sails furled, masts pointed towards the centre of the earth; shimmering green and blue, like the feathers of some wild parrot that must be approached with great care. At certain hours, before a storm, it became drained of all colour and all substance until it was no more than a shadow sea, its yellowish glimmers reminiscent of the overripe flesh of mangoes. On those days more than others, he couldn’t tell whether the clouds were lending their colour to the ocean or the water was dictating its mood to the sky, the grey of both merging to draw a horizon that seemed to unite, not separate them. Then that line disappeared as well and there was no longer anything in him or around him but fog.
When he opens his eyes a few hours later, he knows in a flash that the end of the world has come and that he has been forgotten.
WHEN HE WAS HALF-DRAGGED, HALF-CARRIED from the dungeon that had nearly been his tomb, Baptiste, dazzled, had to protect his eyes from the overly bright light assaulting him. The landscape revealed itself little by little, outlines blurred and hazy at first, then more and more precise – unbearable.
It was not an apocalyptic landscape he was crossing but the landscape of the day after the apocalypse, once the destruction has been accomplished. Of the houses, streets, city that he’d known there remained nothing but heaps of rubble and ash pierced by charred beams like grim gallows. One half of a miraculously preserved sign, of which the other part had been blown away by the blast of the volcano, announced, incomprehensible and pathetic:
HÔ CAR E
Smoke was rising everywhere from the ruins carrying with it an indescribable stench. The odour of scorched wood could not entirely mask the smell of sulphur, which was in turn dominated by a third, repulsive smell, that of burned flesh.
Baptiste choked, coughed, tried to say: “Take me back inside,” but was only able to produce a series of guttural sounds that could have expressed pain as much as gratitude.
“Sssh,” advised one of the men holding him by the elbow, “don’t try to talk. You had an amazing stroke of luck, do you know that? We’ve been looking for three days and you’re the first we’ve found.”
“Th-the first prisoner?” Baptiste managed to ask, almost inaudibly.
There was a moment when the two men flanking him exchanged a look but said nothing. Then the taller replied:
“No. The first and only one in town.”
A NURSE CAME MORNING AND NIGHT TO CHANGE his dressings, give him something to drink, and feed him, like a bird, a few mouthfuls of puréed fruit that he had trouble swallowing. He felt as if his throat were still constricted by the smoke and the red-hot cinders.
In the darkness he could see dragons spitting fire, hideous sea serpents snapping up the ships in the depths of the ocean, so he slept as little as possible and was careful always to have a lamp lit beside him. After some twenty days he was able to stand up and take a few steps, leaning on the doctor’s arm, then sit for half an hour in the armchair by the open window and look at the sky, no longer masked by the crenellated foliage of the palm trees. Then he started taking short walks alone in the deserted city and he felt for his massacred, charred, petrified, suppurating island a love such as he had never experienced when it was verdant and sweetly scented.
In some places nothing indicated the presence of dwellings, shops, or even streets; everywhere the ground was covered with a thick layer of ill-assorted debris coated with a fine dust in which his feet left a solitary, labyrinthine trail. Unconsciously he bent down now and then to pick up – as he had once picked up shells and agates – a fountain pen monogrammed in gold, a mother-of-pearl button, a marble that in the heat had assumed the shape of a bean.
Absurdly, some papers had survived the holocaust that had turned wood, fabric, even the bricks of the buildings to ashes, and Baptiste was soon sifting through the ruins that on June 15 were still smoking, finding sheets of paper flying in the wind or stuck between a charred shoe and a cash register with its keys welded together. He assembled a bouquet of pages that grew thicker every day. Monsieur Hugo’s Cosette and the Thénardier couple rubbed shoulders with a list of vegetable seeds adapted to a tropical climate, followed by a baptismal register written on a larger sheet of the creamy white stationery reserved for the administration, and then, on a page with ragged edges, something in incomprehensible letters that might have been Greek, expenditures for the month of March by the Hôtel Excelsior, and the final pages of the Apocalypse of Saint John, on which could still be read, in small, thick letters: And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Leafing through the bundle of papers, some with scorched edges, others a nearly immaculate white, some still bearing the threads of their unstitched binding like the scar from a poorly sutured wound, he felt he was contemplating the history of his island, broken open, interrupted, in its middle, forever incomplete yet over now.
Some men, fewer women, were pacing the rubble in search not of survivors – they knew now that one individual, only one, had made it through the firestorm, and his name was actually becoming famous – but of traces of those they had loved and lost, searching the ruins in the hope of finding a photo, a button, a pipe testifying to the existence of the dead. They ignored one another, sometimes brushed up against each other seemingly unaware, each one carrying on a quest that he knew was hopeless; sad, slow-moving rubbish collectors who seemed like ghosts back from the kingdom of the dead.
Black birds from who knows where were also pecking through the debris with strident cries; searching among the stones and sometimes rising up with a heavy flapping of wings, holding in their beaks some rosy morsel. They were known as birds of misfortune,
not because they had announced the calamity – like their more graceful cousins they had deserted Saint-Pierre weeks before the eruption – but because they ate so heartily.
Baptiste’s steps brought him back despite himself to the stone dungeon where he had thought he would perish and to which he owed his life. The small structure now stood alone in the middle of a large field of pulverized and blackened rubble. He paced the periphery, eyes to the ground, unable to admit to himself that he was trying to find the pearl from which he hadn’t been separated since childhood and that had become his talisman. His memories grew confused and when he tried to sort them out they got away from him, as if he was trying to grasp a mass of spindrift. It seemed to him then that he’d had the pearl with him in the dungeon, but as soon as he tried to clarify that idea – had he at some point slipped it into his shirt pocket or the seam of his trousers, or had he stored it carefully under his tongue as he often did? – a thousand other possibilities came along and blurred it. The pearl had been stolen from him in the communal cell on the night of his arrest several weeks earlier; he had dropped it on the ground in his impatience to escape that last night; or had he, in a moment of panic when he was not entirely master of his movements, buried it in a corner of the dungeon to protect it against whatever might happen to him? How could he find out?
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