One day, when they were working in Verdun installing some backup lighting in one of the sect’s “biblical encounter” rooms that had been tacked on to one of those modern churches that look more like office or apartment buildings than places of worship, a young woman came up to them carrying a tray with cups, a coffee pot, and a plate of muffins. She introduced herself as the wife of the local pastor, Brother Roch, and said that her husband hoped they would excuse him for not coming to greet them himself, but he had such a cold that he had been confined to his bed.
Charles spent some time chatting with her. She was open, very pretty, and — God be thanked — did not lard her conversation with quotations from the Bible. On the contrary, she seemed to be a healthy, normal woman, endowed with much common sense and even a sense of humour. José Coïmbro listened to them talking as he worked, and from time to time indicated his agreement by nodding his head. After a few minutes, the woman continued on her way.
“That’s my kind of woman, that one,” said the electrician when she’d gone.
“Yeah,” said Charles. “She’s got what it takes, all right. Except that her husband and the Holy Ghost are the only ones who can lay a finger on her.”
Coïmbro gave him a scandalized look, but went on with his work without saying anything.
“Do you have a girl, José?” Charles asked him after a few minutes.
“No,” Coïmbro replied brusquely, then added, “Never have had one, neither.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
Coïmbro wrinkled his brow and thought about it for a moment, then turned to Charles with a grin. “When God thinks it’s time for me to meet someone, then I’ll meet someone.”
“But what if God forgets to set you up, what’ll you do then?”
“Enough of your yammering. God doesn’t forget things.”
An hour later the pastor’s wife came back with another tray. The two men thanked her profusely, and Charles complimented her on the muffins, saying they all looked so good he didn’t know which one he should take.
“Oh, that makes me feel good,” she said, laughing. “You both are working so hard, I thought you could use the calories.”
She came back two or three more times in the course of the day, always bringing baked goods and coffee. Coïmbro became more and more taken with her, and even ventured to speak a few words when she appeared. He gobbled muffins and drank coffee after coffee, to Charles’s great amusement, since earlier the electrician had called coffee the devil’s own brew, declaring it to be an insidious poison that was one of the chief causes of violence in the world.
By five o’clock, Coïmbro had become so jittery and hyper that he was trying to do ten things at once and was unable to finish any of them. He dropped his pliers and his screwdrivers, misplaced wires, spun around frantically looking for a tool that had been in his hand all along, then stopped in mid-task, a troubled look on his face, having forgotten what it was he was doing. Taking pity on him, Charles suggested they take a break so he could pull himself together. They went into an adjoining room, and the electrician sat down, stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his hands behind his head, and tried to take a few deep breaths. But he continued to be wracked by bouts of nervous twitching.
“I think I drank too much coffee,” he said, sounding miserable.
Very seriously, Charles nodded in agreement. “Poor José,” he said. “Why on earth did you drink so much of the stuff, since you clearly don’t like it?”
“I did it to please her,” Coïmbro said. “I’m not even sure she noticed! That’s me all over, that is, always trying to do the right thing. And look where it gets me!”
Maybe it was a side effect of too much caffeine, but the electrician launched into an account of his life. He’d been born in Saint-Henri, one of the suburbs of Montreal, to a set of parents who were so perennially unhappy that they managed to pass their unhappiness down to their children. He and his five brothers had been abandoned when they were very young, and had been handed from one foster home or orphanage to another. One of them had even ended up living in an old-age home run by the Grey Nuns!
“But it was a great experience,” Coïmbro assured Charles, with his flashing smile, which now seemed vaguely pathological. “I had some very good times. Oh yeah, it was hard once in a while, but that just made me stronger. When you come right down to it, I was pretty lucky.”
“You hardly knew your parents, then, is that right?”
“No, they took off when I was four. But I remember them well. I didn’t hear from my mother again until a week before she died, when I was fourteen. She left a note on the kitchen table saying how sorry she was that she’d abandoned us, and asking our forgiveness. I thought that was pretty funny.”
He went on with his story. He’d always lived on his own, but he’d got along fairly well, considering. Charles could sense loneliness wrapping itself around the man like a warm coat, not too heavy, not too loose, not too colourful, but a bit too thin when the wind chill factor went up. Coïmbro dragged it with him wherever he went. He didn’t even know he was doing it. It made him sad sometimes, it sapped his energy, but most of the time he found it comforting. The Church of the Holy Apostles was like the family he’d never had, without actually being a family, since he hardly ever spoke to anyone in it.
For a long time, he said, he’d lived the life of a maggot, working here and there when he had to in order to eat, but never having the slightest idea of why he had been placed on this earth. His chaotic childhood hadn’t allowed him to form any solid convictions about anything.
Then, one day, God tested him, and afterwards opened His arms to him. He’d been doing some repair work on the old Loew’s Cinema building on Sainte-Catherine, and an electric cable had fallen on him and electrocuted him. He spent two weeks in a coma, and when he woke up, he heard the voice of God calling him to a better life, a life that was uplifting, and meaningful. During his stay in hospital, he had begun looking into the differences between the various religions, and he’d had a long conversation with Brother Miguel that decided everything. He was on the right path. All he had to do was stay on it, even if it proved to be rocky and steep.
“You’ll find it, too,” he said to Charles, tapping him on the shoulder and smiling. Charles noticed that the corner of the electrician’s mouth was twitching.
“Maybe. But in the meantime, how about we install the rest of those junction boxes?”
They went back to work. Coïmbro, however, was still so jumpy that Charles soon burst out laughing and sent him out to get a breath of fresh air, assuring him that he would have no trouble finishing the installation himself. The electrician came back after an hour and a half, having missed a round of coffee and muffins but a bit more relaxed, and inspected his apprentice’s work.
“Good, good! All tickety-boo!” he said admiringly. “Couldn’t have done it better myself! You’re going to make a real champion, you heard it here first, folks.”
The next day, when Charles turned up at Brother Miguel’s office to collect his pay, he could tell from the warm reception the pastor gave him that José Coïmbro had been in singing his praises. From certain remarks directed his way by other church members over the next few days, he received the distinct impression that he was held in high esteem by all, and that everyone was praying for his conversion to the faith.
Which was soon to have unforeseen consequences for him.
The Church of the Holy Apostles of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was run by a President who lived, curiously enough, in Waterloo, a small village in the Eastern Townships blessed with an excellent Chinese restaurant; exactly how he ran the organization was a matter shrouded in some mystery, since He was never seen, and the few times Charles heard anyone speak of Him, it was only with the vaguest of allusions — highly respectful, but also highly obscure.
That being said, the organization seemed to run smoothly and efficiently, with the different responsibilities of each of its manager
s delineated with a great deal of care and precision. There were, at the bottom of the managerial ladder, the pastors, whose role was similar to that of curates. Next came the evangelists, a kind of itinerant preacher. Then there were the teachers, the professors of “theology” who instructed the pastors in various Bible colleges; a rank above them were the prospectors, who were former teachers who scrutinized and analyzed the biblical record to extract from it the maximum teachings (a prospector could spend months on three verses!). And then there were the pioneers, the shock troops, who travelled from one region to another trying to open new churches.
These functions weren’t always completely carved in stone. Under the right circumstances, pioneers could become evangelists. The pastor was always a kind of evangelist, since he delivered weekly sermons to the faithful in his church, and also like a teacher, since he could find himself spending part of his time in a Bible school.
A single church could have a number of pastors, each of whom carried out their ministry under the direction of a principal pastor. Three months before Charles’s arrival at the church on avenue de Lorimier, Brother Miguel had lost two assistant pastors under circumstances that changed depending on who was recounting them. But since their departure, Brother Miguel had found himself alone and fairly overworked, which meant he hadn’t had the time he’d wanted to take charge of Charles’s spiritual state. Besides, Charles worked outside most of the time. Sometimes, however, as though in passing, he would invite Charles to one of the “prayer meetings,” or to a “witness evening,” which took place each week in the church. At other times it was the librarian, she of the almost immaterial hands, who took time to inform herself of Charles’s spiritual well-being, although she was always careful to change the subject as soon as she sensed the slightest boredom or irritation on the part of her interlocutor.
Charles was therefore able to reply to the innuendos of Steve and Céline, and also to those, less caustic, of Blonblon and Isabel, by insisting that the Church of the Holy Apostles was not trying to convert him in any way, shape, or form, but, on the contrary, was leaving him entirely free to hold and even to express his own religious convictions.
On the other hand, it was true that after a few weeks he decided, out of curiosity, and perhaps a little out of polite interest (it was always a good idea to keep on the good side of an employer who paid so handsomely), to attend one of the witness meetings.
Coïmbro had just told him that an exceptional guest was visiting the church, Pastor Bukuru Tabala-Taopé, having come directly from Africa to share an extraordinary mystical experience with the faithful members in Quebec. Céline was going out that night anyway, and so Charles had dinner with the electrician in a restaurant near the church. He ate a filet de sole that hadn’t seen the ocean for many a long day, and at seven o’clock took his place in the almost filled-to-capacity auditorium to listen to the witnessing of the foreign visitor.
Charles was looking up, inspecting the damage that a leak in the roof had caused to a painting on the ceiling that showed Jesus in the temple debating with the Doctors of Law, when a wave of shushing announced the arrival on stage of Pastor Tabala-Taopé and his introducer, Brother Miguel, both of whom had appeared at the front of the church, from which the altar had been temporarily removed. They stood a few steps from the railing, their faces grave, their hands folded, their heads slightly inclined, while an electric guitar and a saxophone, accompanied by a set of drums, played the air from the canticle “Jesus, You Bring Us Life.”
When the music stopped, Brother Miguel motioned his guest to a chair, thanked the audience for coming, and launched into a lengthy introduction. After ten minutes, Charles was so bored he could barely sit still. Pious blandishments followed by meaningless superfluities floated in a syrupy banality larded with obscure biblical quotations, the whole thing delivered in a vibrant staccato that was meant to whip up fervour and enthusiasm but that failed to produce even the hint of an emotional response. Charles felt sorry that Brother Miguel was such a boring speaker, because despite everything he rather liked the man. He looked at Coïmbro, who was listening unperturbed, staring fixedly at the black pastor.
Finally it was Bukuru Tabala-Taopé’s turn to speak. He was a thin, nervous-looking man, nearly bald, somewhere in his forties, who had lived through an experience that had been at once both marvellous and terrifying. Two years ago, he began to relate, after a long period of hardship and overwork, he had had a heart attack. A doctor called to his aid had actually pronounced him dead. His wife, however, a fervent redemptionist, threw herself to her knees before his mortal remains and invoked the Very Powerful Name of Jesus — upon which her husband, through the grace of Our Lord and Saviour, had been brought back to life, despite the fact that the early signs of rigor mortis had already begun to set in!
The pastor made a sign and two teenagers sitting in the front row stood up and began distributing photographs to the listeners: they showed Bukuru Tabala-Taopé holding up his own death certificate.
He then began to recount the story of his voyage beyond the grave.
After having crossed a zone of storms that was so dark that no human being could imagine its opacity, he flew over Hell, of which he gave a predictably gloomy description, and finally ended up next to an enormous stone wall. He could vaguely make out the contours of an immense rectangular structure accessed by an equally massive door, also constructed of stone. The entire scene was bathed in a kind of otherworldly light that was impossible to describe. A sort of breath of wind, neither warm nor cold, enveloped the new arrival, filling him with a feeling of well-being that was both strange and exquisite. Suddenly, a being appeared before him. It was of medium height and wearing a luminous robe or tunic; his hair was blond and his face was also luminous, and in his hand he held a sword that was so shiny it hurt Tabala-Taopé’s eyes.
It was one of the Guardian Angels at the Gate of Heaven, Bukuru Tabala-Taopé declared to his rapt audience. And he had a message to deliver to the pastor, a message that was both good news and bad.
“Bukuru,” said the angel in a voice as powerful as it was melodious, “you are at Heaven’s Door. But the Lord has judged that the moment has not yet arrived for you to share with Him the joys of celestial bliss. He is sending you back to your loving wife, and to your human brothers and sisters, so that you may continue to pour out your love and your support, and in that way bring your virtue to a state of perfection. Return to Earth,” the angel said, “and fear sin.”
And that is when the pastor had come back to life, to the great joy and amazement of his wife and his children, and his friends, and his flock.
All this could have been related in five minutes, but the pastor spoke for an hour and a half in his nasal, monotonous voice, rolling all his r’s, transforming his o’s into ou’s, and sprinkling l’s all over the place. Charles never did find out how the pastor’s fabulous adventure ended, because he fell asleep.
“That was awful,” declared a sombre-faced Coïmbro as they left the church. “My cat could have given a better talk than that. I mean, I believe his story, but the grace of God wasn’t in him…”
Charles laughed.
“Come on, José. Don’t tell me you believe all that claptrap! Posing for a photograph of himself with his death certificate! What a childish trick! I suppose next he’s going to paste some plastic wings on his back and pass himself off as an angel.”
Coïmbro tried to defend the resuscitated pastor, but without much conviction, relying mainly on the authority and prestige of Brother Miguel, who always chose his guests with great care and discernment.
“Wait until next week, Charles,” he said, suddenly bubbling over with enthusiasm. “It’ll be another thing altogether. I guarantee you, my friend, that it will be an extraordinary night. The guy who’s going to come and speak to us, I’ve heard him before. Three times. And all I can tell you, Charles, is … is…”
He searched for the words but couldn’t find any that would express his
feelings. In the end he grabbed his companion’s arm.
“You’ve got to come! Promise me you’ll come!”
“I’d rather spend the time in a meat grinder,” Charles laughed.
“No, Charles, come. Come next week or our friendship is over!”
And Coïmbro stalked off angrily down the street.
A week later, sitting on his bed, his eyes closed, Charles was inhaling the fragrance from a pretty, apricot-coloured slip that Céline must have left him the previous night as a memento of their long, fevered evening of love-making, when the phone gave its small, imperious ring, which was about as welcome and friendly as a parking ticket. It was Brother Miguel. He apologized for calling him so early; he’d been wanting to discuss an important matter with him for a couple of weeks now, but had always been detained in the four corners of Montreal by work. Would Charles be so kind as to stop by his office at around eight o’clock in the morning?
“What the devil does he want with me?” Charles asked himself, intrigued but vaguely uneasy as he made his way north on the subway.
As he neared the presbytery, he noticed that someone had placed a splint on a branch of the small chestnut tree that some idiot had broken the previous week. The sight of the bandaged tree, all perked up with its large leaves turned joyously towards the sun, brought a smile to his lips.
As he entered the building, his attention was immediately drawn to the smell of hot chocolate that floated down the hall; then he heard the laughter of children coming from Brother Miguel’s office. He knocked on the door.
“Come in, Charles,” called the pastor.
He was greeted by a surprising spectacle. Brother Miguel was sitting behind his desk, on which were six steaming cups of hot chocolate, and he was brushing the long, blond hair of a young girl of about five years old. When she saw Charles, the girl leapt to her feet with a frightened cry, broke away from Brother Miguel’s arms, and ran into the next room; four other children, whom Charles hadn’t noticed until then, also jumped to their feet and followed her, shoving each other aside in their haste to escape; a sixth, hidden behind a filing cabinet, raised his head and let out an impertinent “Cuckoo!” before returning to his hiding place.
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