stained by sin. I cannot abide such music tonight…. Yes, my friends, despite your talent, despite your young and fervent sensitivities, tonight I want you to put down your instruments. Tonight the Holy Name of God must be invoked in respectful silence, not in our poor human music. I have not the good fortune to be a musician myself. But even if I were able to play an instrument as well as you do, I wouldn’t be able to do it, not I, a miserable sinner, trying to celebrate Jesus and unable to express anything but the limitations of my miserable human nature, which God, in his infinite goodness, has had the good grace to love just as it is, despite its wretchedness.”
A light shiver made its way through the audience. Sitting next to Charles, a fat man in a turtleneck sweater with pink cheeks murmured, “Thank you, God.”
“Ah! I love You, Jesus,” the preacher went on, clasping his hands, “or rather my corrupt and sullied heart tries to love You, with all its might, but without Your grace, oh my Saviour, I know that I can never fully come to love You, and you, too, my brothers and sisters, you too will never fully come to love Jesus, so thoroughly has the Evil One spread in us the venom of sin. Ah! how I detest sin! Do you detest sin?” he asked the audience.
“Yes!” shouted everyone in the church.
“Do you hear that, Lucifer? Do you hear it? We hate you, you and your odious venom that has brought us so much unhappiness since Adam and Eve, and which has plunged so many men and women — so many men, and so many women — into eternal damnation. Oh, Jesus! I beg of You, save us from damnation!”
“Save us from damnation,” implored the crowd.
Charles looked about him, dumbfounded. Across the aisle from him a frail, good-looking young woman was crying loudly and pressing her baby against her; the child looked frightened and opened his eyes wide.
“Aren’t you like me, my brothers, my sisters?” continued the preacher, wringing his hands. “Do you, too, feel your heart wallowing in the filth of sin even as it struggles desperately to combat Evil? Yes, I can hear you, I can hear your sighs and your groans, I can see your tears. You are all poor sinners, like me, who owe your existence to the bounty of God and your eternal salvation to His merciful and infinite grace.”
He fell to his knees. Tears flowed down his cheeks, his face became wracked and tormented, and he raised his hands towards heaven.
“Thank you, dear God! Oh! Thank you for helping me to gain my eternal soul! Unworthy as I am! All-merciful as You are! I feel Your grace running through my veins, I feel it beating in my heart! Thank you for filling me and lifting me above my dreadful condition!”
A sort of delirium spread through the audience. Loud sobs broke out around Charles. His neighbour raised his arms and called out the name of God in a hoarse voice, trembling, then plunging a hand into his pocket took out a dirty, white handkerchief and blew his nose loudly into it. A cry arose behind him. Turning to the back of the church, Charles saw a young woman lying on her back in the aisle, moaning, her whole body shaking.
Father Raphaël had risen to his feet and was watching the audience with a grave expression that nonetheless expressed a sort of satisfaction. He raised one hand and silence fell.
“This morning,” he said in a suddenly soothing voice, “I saw some beautiful children, six beautiful children, their faces clear and pink, their hair fine and shiny. It was only a few steps from here. I felt that what I had before me were angels, my brothers, young angels come to bless this earth, and I watched them amuse themselves in a state of grace, and I was rejuvenated, my heart filled with joy. It was almost as if I had become one of them, and for an instant I felt pure and light, remade in their image, just as I was when I was a child. How beautiful they were! How much pleasure it gave me to see their delicious innocence! I watched them and I wanted to hug them, to embrace them, and I wanted to ask God to let them stay as they were forever, young, rosy-cheeked, full of grace. And what if God had decided to amuse Himself by playing a trick on me? I suddenly asked myself. It happens occasionally! What if they weren’t children at all, but really were angels sent by Him to give me a few moments of comfort…”
He stopped and his face took on a look of profound sadness.
“But no, they were only children after all, simple, human children, subjected to evil like the rest of us, but to an evil that for now rests outside them, an evil that comes from adults and that, sooner or later, bit by bit, will infect them and make them lose their marvellous angelic grace.”
He stopped for a moment, his eyes troubled as though he was contemplating a disaster. Then, after a deep sigh, he resumed.
“This evil, my brothers and sisters, most often comes in the form of kindness — which of course makes it all the more cunning and terrifying! But it can come with just as much savagery, as you all know full well, and these small beings whom we now see so close to heaven will be beaten, wounded, dirtied — and sometimes even killed.”
Charles stared at the man, his mouth open, completely taken aback. Atrocious images began surging within him, images he thought had been expelled forever but which were stirred up now in his head with hissing noises and horrendous cries.
He stood up, tears filling his eyes, overcome by emotion, and left the church as quickly as he could manage without drawing attention to himself. He walked the streets of the city for hours trying to calm himself, but peace was a long time coming.
Coïmbro had been right after all, he thought: there was more to this theatrical preacher than met the eye.
A few days later, Charles was leaving his apartment building in the morning on his way to work when he was stopped by two very polite young men who asked him if he was Charles Thibodeau.
“Yes,” said Charles, much surprised. “What do you want?”
“Brother Miguel gave us your address,” explained the first young man.
“We wanted to meet with you,” added the second.
“What about?” said Charles, more and more surprised, and with the beginnings of irritation in his voice.
One of the strangers seemed to be in his mid-twenties, the other younger. Both had long, brown hair and agreeable features, with a certain determination in their expressions. The first had a prominent nose, bright red cheeks, and beautiful teeth, and seemed to be the more thoughtful of the two; the younger man had bright, lively, and somewhat mischievous eyes that were always looking about, a thick-lipped mouth, and the beginning of a thin moustache that, far from making him look older, accentuated the impression of prolonged adolescence. Unlike most people their age, who generally wore running shoes, jeans, and a cotton T-shirt printed with a drawing of some kind and a slogan, usually in English, this pair were dressed in black dress pants with razor-sharp creases, carefully polished black shoes, and beige long-sleeved shirts. They looked like waiters in a chic café, or clerks in a store that sold high-end products.
“We’re here on behalf of Pastor Raphaël Grandbois,” said the elder of the two.
“He’s usually just called Father Raphaël,” said the other one. “He prefers that.”
“Do you mind if we talk with you for a bit?”
“Like, in that restaurant over there,” said the younger man, pointing to a small corner café.
“Sorry,” said Charles, curious to find out what they wanted, but also a bit annoyed. “I have to go to work. I’m already late.”
“No problem,” said Thin Moustache, “Brother Miguel knows about our meeting, and has told Mr. Coïmbro you’ll be a bit late.”
“This won’t take long, in any case,” added Rosy Cheeks. “Ten minutes, tops.”
“It would really make Father Raphaël happy if you said yes.”
Charles followed them into the café. His two companions ordered herbal tea and told Charles to order whatever he wanted. Had he had time to have breakfast?
“Thanks,” said Charles, “I’ve already eaten. But I’ll have an espresso. Okay,” he said for the third time, “what is it you want of me?”
“Were you at the pra
yer meeting last Thursday?” asked Rosy Cheeks. “The one that was held in the church on avenue de Lorimier?”
Charles nodded.
“What did you think of Father Raphaël?”
Charles admitted that he had been impressed by the pastor, without going into any details of his true thoughts on the matter.
“He’s always like that,” said Moustache. “He’s great!”
The two men told Charles that they had been working as the preacher’s assistants for three years. They accompanied him on all his lecture tours, and it had been the most marvellous three years of their lives, full of all kinds of experiences; the most spectacular, obviously, was being able to rub shoulders with someone as extraordinary as Father Raphaël; he was a man of extreme generosity, an elevated soul, a man with powers of discernment that were impossible to describe; he spread goodness wherever he went with such abundance that being with him must be what being with Jesus had been like two thousand years ago.
“As good as that, eh?” said Charles cynically.
“As good as that,” replied both men seriously.
He had even performed miracles, they went on. Maybe not as spectacular as the miracles described in the Bible, the parting of the Red Sea, the wedding at Cana, the resurrection of Lazarus, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes, to name but a few. To be honest, Father Raphaël’s miracles were more like spiritual phenomena: sudden, fervent conversions undergone by persons who until that moment had strongly resisted the Word of God; acts of extraordinary generosity that seemed to come out of nowhere; and, in Father Raphaël, a gift of divination that made it possible for him to “see” events in certain people’s pasts without their giving him the slightest hint, and to describe those events in the minutest details.
Charles felt his attention begin to wander.
“If you say so,” he said, pouring warm milk into his coffee.
“You don’t believe us, do you?” said Moustache, sadly.
“That’s understandable,” said his companion. “I had the same reaction when I heard about Father Raphaël for the first time. I had to see him in action before I would change my mind.”
“You’ll change your mind, too,” Moustache assured Charles, suddenly becoming familiar.
“Listen, Charles,” said his companion, also becoming friendlier than ever, “maybe we’re not the best messengers for Father Raphaël. Not everyone has the gift of speech. But really, that doesn’t matter. When you meet with him again, everything will be made clear.”
“He wants to meet with me again?”
“Yes.”
“What the hell for?”
“I don’t know. He’ll tell you that himself. He’s got an incredibly heavy schedule today, but if you can be at Brother Miguel’s office at four o’clock on the dot, he can give you fifteen minutes.”
“You talk about him like he’s the Pope!” Charles laughed.
“He’s better than the Pope, as you’ll see!” the younger man enthused, winking and giving Charles a friendly pat on the shoulder.
Father Raphaël sat in Brother Miguel’s swivel chair, regarding Charles with a small smile. A faint odour of chocolate still hung about the room. Was it the result of another attack by the troop of the pastor’s children, or did Brother Miguel suffer from the sin of gluttony?
“Our conversation the other day pleased me very much,” the preacher finally said.
“Wish I could say the same,” replied Charles. He was trying as hard as possible not to show how intimidated he was by his interlocutor.
But he could feel his cheeks burning.
“Put you off your feed, did I?” said the preacher, smiling broadly. “Sorry about that, but no permanent damage done, obviously. No one is perfect, I no more than anyone else, and in any case, trying to please everyone is a waste of time, don’t you agree? You’re not the first person to make me aware of my deficiencies. What I find intriguing in you, though, is the ease with which you do it. Nothing displeases me more than hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the invention of Satan.”
“So why did you want to see me?” asked Charles, impatient to terminate the meeting.
“Brother Miguel has spoken at length to me about you, Charles. He holds you in very high esteem, you know. He prays every day on your behalf, for God to illuminate within you His grace. But in the end that’s really not our business. It’s His business. It’s up to Him to decide when His divine light will penetrate your soul, allowing you to understand the true reality. Maybe it won’t happen until the moment of your death, who can say? But honestly,” he added, laughing, “I hope Grace will descend on you long before that.”
“Maybe so, but that still doesn’t tell me why you wanted to see me.” The pastor’s smiling friendliness was beginning to put Charles off his guard.
“Charles, I would like you to come and work for me.”
Dumbfounded, Charles kept his silence.
“I want to hire you as an assistant when I’m on my lecture circuit. It means you would be moving continuously about the province, and even, eventually, in other francophone countries, in Europe, Africa. If you like, you could return to Montreal every three weeks or so. You would be working with Marcel-Édouard and Maxime, whom you’ve already met this morning and who could stand some time off; after three years of traipsing around from village to village in my agreeable company, they find themselves in need of a bit of a breather, which I completely understand…”
He ran his long, manicured fingers through his hair before continuing.
“You’ll continue at the same salary you’re getting now, plus I’ll cover all your travelling and accommodation expenses — and I will not be asking you for any donations, I assure you.”
A curious giddiness spread through Charles. A wild series of contradictory feelings and ideas whirled about in his head, making him incapable of any kind of lucid judgment. What he had been dreaming of for so long had just been presented to him on a gold platter (or at least seemed to have been). But at the same time, the man who was making the astonishing offer seemed to Charles to be hard to figure out and vaguely disturbing — in any case, that’s the way he had seen him just a few moments before!
Charles’s trouble must have been evident, since Father Raphaël looked away and hid his mouth behind his hand, as though screening a smile.
Charles stood up quickly.
“Well?”
“I don’t know… I have to think about it.”
“You’ll have to do some quick thinking, my friend, because I’ll be leaving very soon.”
“I’ll let you know… tomorrow.”
Charles offered his hand to the preacher, who had stood up to escort Charles to the door.
“Tell me, Charles … Do you have your driver’s licence?”
Charles nodded.
Father Raphaël gave him a big smile. “Good. Very good. Have a good day, and may God guide you in your deliberations.”
Wearing a dressing gown and slippers, Parfait Michaud carefully filled two glasses of port and handed one to Charles; the young man thanked him with a slight nod of his head, still surprised by this unexpected meeting at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. Wedged into a sofa chair, he stared covetously at a stack of compact discs on a sideboard to his right, transformed into a luminous column by a ray of sunlight coming through the window. He wondered how much such a collection of CDs would cost.
“Since you’re in a hurry, Charles, I won’t beat around the bush. Fernand told me yesterday that you’re about to take off on a trip around the province with a preacher. You’ll forgive my asking this, Charles, but… have you taken leave of your senses?”
Charles gave a start and the port danced in his glass.
“Not at all,” he said dryly.
“I’m glad to hear it. But I’m afraid it doesn’t quite ease my mind, not in the slightest. Have you considered the amount of trouble you could be getting into?”
“I don’t see any trouble.”
“Charl
es, Charles, don’t underestimate these people, or their powers of seduction… and I’m using the word in its larger connotation, my dear fellow. You laugh, but you may soon be laughing out of the other side of your mouth. These people are master manipulators, Charles, the best in the business: they’ve made a profession out of it.”
“I’m nearly twenty-one years old, Parfait,” said Charles, derisively.
“I know you are, and I know you are an intelligent, cultivated young man. More than that. But that doesn’t change anything. Plenty of men more savvy and experienced than you have fallen victim to their sort of brainwashing.
It’s a science, Charles. I read a book about it. Given enough time and opportunity, these people can indoctrinate anyone. Haven’t you heard about the experiments in the Soviet Union? And China? And in the States? They take a free man and turn him into a consenting slave. It’s simply a matter of having the patience. Who is this preacher-man, anyway?”
“His name is Raphaël Grandbois. He should have gone into politics. He talks as well as Pierre Bourgault.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“He’s promised he’ll never hound me with questions of religion.”
“Of course he has! What do you expect him to promise? That’s part of their strategy. Small steps, one foot after another.”
“If I ever feel I’m getting in over my head, all I have to do is call it quits, simple as that.”
“Yes, it may seem like that now, because you’re a free man. But how long will that last? That’s the question.”
Charles’s response was to laugh.
Sitting across from him on the sofa, the notary shrugged his shoulders in a discouraged fashion, then stretched out his legs and took to studying the ceiling. His glass of port, posed on the armrest, assumed a dangerous angle. Charles leapt from his chair and caught it just as it was about to fall.
“You see?” he said, still laughing, and leaned over Michaud. “I see everything.”
Michaud thanked him with a curt nod and took the glass. Charles sat back down on his chair and studied the notary. He made a pitiful sight.
A Very Bold Leap Page 20