them.”
“You are not afraid?”
“No,” Devereaux said and it was a lie.
“What is the book? What are those numbers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Harry said once they were looking for the wrong book.” Philippe blurted this out because this man impressed him. This man was not afraid. Even Philippe’s own father, Flaubert, was afraid. But this man did not talk too much as Harry did and even though Harry was white, he was afraid of the
gendarmes noirs.
“There’s another book?”
The boy stood unblinking but a little space away from Devereaux. “He said this and laughed. He pointed to his head. That’s all he said. I said there was no book. He laughed at me and said there was a book but they were all looking for the wrong book. The one that counted was the one that was hidden in plain sight. I did not understand him. He said this in French to me very clearly but I did not understand him.”
11
T HE S TRANGER AT THE S QUARE
Simon Bouvier, the archbishop of St. Michel, felt his stomach growl in protest because the morning had not been full of food. He ignored it for once. He blessed the crowd first with holy water so vigorously that a few droplets clung to the face of the president who stood in the front row at the foot of the steps of the cathedral. And then he raised his right hand again to make the sign of the cross over the multitude. His stomach rumbled and even the president heard it.
The square in front of the white adobe cathedral was filled. All in the square blessed themselves, even the people who had come down from the hills and who bore marks of the voodoo on their bodies. All blessed themselves except two of the American reporters who had flown in from Miami and the reporter from the newspaper in Havana. The Cuban reporter explained to everyone, over and over again, that he was an atheist.
The people had been brought in from far neighborhoods of the capital city as well as from the junkyard-strewn suburbs that led into the hills above the squat roofs of the town. The
gendarmes noirs
had gone out very early in the morning, when there was still fog clinging to the damp coastline and the town, to find enough people to fill the square. They had brought them down in flatbed trucks. The trucks growled through the ghostly, foggy streets for hours, bringing down people and going back empty to find more. Some of the people even came on their own, like the people from the hills. It was a national holiday to mark the independence of St. Michel.
In the center of the square was an obelisk of granite erected in 1919 in memory of the men of St. Michel who had volunteered to fight with the French in the first European war. None of them had ever returned, though not all had died. There were twelve names on the obelisk and some said that at least three of the names were fictitious. But the war was lost in a long ago memory and no one cared that some of the names might not be real.
The square and the memorial were the sites of all official celebrations on the island. The flag of St. Michel, adopted from the French tricolor, was red, white, and blue, but superimposed on the white third was a round orange disk that represented the sun.
The cathedral was Norman with two towers, one of which was finished with a pointed roof, the other of which was flat. Bells in the tower rang. They rang on all forty-one feast days and days of national holiday in the calendar of St. Michel.
The president stood as the French consul general walked stiffly across the square and stopped in front of him. He carried a box containing the medal of the Legion of Honor. He said something to the president and the president nodded and said something else that no one could hear. There were loudspeakers but they continued to play music. The president bent his head and the French consul general hung the award on a silken band around his neck and kissed him on each cheek.
Then there were to be speeches. The music stopped and the first scratchy
“You are not afraid?”
“No,” Devereaux said and it was a lie.
“What is the book? What are those numbers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Harry said once they were looking for the wrong book.” Philippe blurted this out because this man impressed him. This man was not afraid. Even Philippe’s own father, Flaubert, was afraid. But this man did not talk too much as Harry did and even though Harry was white, he was afraid of the
gendarmes noirs.
“There’s another book?”
The boy stood unblinking but a little space away from Devereaux. “He said this and laughed. He pointed to his head. That’s all he said. I said there was no book. He laughed at me and said there was a book but they were all looking for the wrong book. The one that counted was the one that was hidden in plain sight. I did not understand him. He said this in French to me very clearly but I did not understand him.”
11
T HE S TRANGER AT THE S QUARE
Simon Bouvier, the archbishop of St. Michel, felt his stomach growl in protest because the morning had not been full of food. He ignored it for once. He blessed the crowd first with holy water so vigorously that a few droplets clung to the face of the president who stood in the front row at the foot of the steps of the cathedral. And then he raised his right hand again to make the sign of the cross over the multitude. His stomach rumbled and even the president heard it.
The square in front of the white adobe cathedral was filled. All in the square blessed themselves, even the people who had come down from the hills and who bore marks of the voodoo on their bodies. All blessed themselves except two of the American reporters who had flown in from Miami and the reporter from the newspaper in Havana. The Cuban reporter explained to everyone, over and over again, that he was an atheist.
The people had been brought in from far neighborhoods of the capital city as well as from the junkyard-strewn suburbs that led into the hills above the squat roofs of the town. The
gendarmes noirs
had gone out very early in the morning, when there was still fog clinging to the damp coastline and the town, to find enough people to fill the square. They had brought them down in flatbed trucks. The trucks growled through the ghostly, foggy streets for hours, bringing down people and going back empty to find more. Some of the people even came on their own, like the people from the hills. It was a national holiday to mark the independence of St. Michel.
In the center of the square was an obelisk of granite erected in 1919 in memory of the men of St. Michel who had volunteered to fight with the French in the first European war. None of them had ever returned, though not all had died. There were twelve names on the obelisk and some said that at least three of the names were fictitious. But the war was lost in a long ago memory and no one cared that some of the names might not be real.
The square and the memorial were the sites of all official celebrations on the island. The flag of St. Michel, adopted from the French tricolor, was red, white, and blue, but superimposed on the white third was a round orange disk that represented the sun.
The cathedral was Norman with two towers, one of which was finished with a pointed roof, the other of which was flat. Bells in the tower rang. They rang on all forty-one feast days and days of national holiday in the calendar of St. Michel.
The president stood as the French consul general walked stiffly across the square and stopped in front of him. He carried a box containing the medal of the Legion of Honor. He said something to the president and the president nodded and said something else that no one could hear. There were loudspeakers but they continued to play music. The president bent his head and the French consul general hung the award on a silken band around his neck and kissed him on each cheek.
Then there were to be speeches. The music stopped and the first scratchy
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