Chocolat

37

Saturday March 29

Easter Eve

HELP ME, PERE. HAVEN'T I PRAYED ENOUGH?’

SUFFERED enough for our sins? My penance has been exemplary. My head swims from lack of food and sleep. Is this not the time of redemption, when all sins are washed away? The silver is back on the altar, the candles lit in anticipation. Flowers, for the first time since the beginning of Lent, adorn the chapel. Even mad St Francis is crowned with lilies, and their scent is like clean flesh. We have waited so long, you and I, since your first stroke. Even then you would not speak to me, though you spoke to others. Then, last year, the second stroke. They tell me you are unreachable, but I know this to be pretence, a waiting game. You will awake in your own time.

They found Armande Voizin this morning. Stiff and still smiling in her bed, pere; another one who has evaded us. I gave her the last rites though she would not have thanked me even if she had heard. Perhaps I am the only one who still derives comfort from such things.

She meant to die last night, arranged everything to the minutest detail, food, drink, company. Her family around her, deceived by her promises of reform. Her damnable arrogance! She will pay, promises Caro, twenty Masses, thirty Masses. Pray for her. Pray for us. I find I am still trembling with rage. I cannot answer her with moderation. The funeral is on Tuesday. I imagine her now, lying in state in the hospital mortuary, peonies at her head and with that smile still fixed on her white lips, and the thought fills me, not with pity or even satisfaction, but with a terrible, impotent fury.

Of course, we know who is behind this: The Rocher woman. Oh, Caro told me about that. She is the influence, pere, the parasite which has invaded our garden. I should have listened to my instincts. Uprooted her the moment I set eyes on her. She who has balked me at every turn, laughing at me behind her shielded window, sending out corrupting suckers in every direction. I was a fool, pore. Armande Voizin was killed because of my folly. Evil lives with us. Evil wears a winning smile and bright colours. When I was a child I used to listen in terror to the story of the gingerbread house, of the witch who tempted little children in and ate them. I look at her shop, all wrapped in shining papers like a present waiting to be unwrapped, and I wonder how many people, how many souls, she has already tempted beyond redemption. Armande Voizin. Josephine Muscat. Paul-Marie Muscat. Julien Narcisse. Luc Clairmont. She has to be routed. Her brat too. In any way we can manage. Too late for niceties, pere. My soul is already compromised. I wish I were sixteen again. I try to recall the savagery of. sixteen, the inventiveness of the boy I once was. The boy who flung the bottle, and who put the matter behind him.. But those days are over. I must be clever. I must not discredit my office. And yet if I fail…

What would Muscat do? Oh, he is brutal, contemptible in his way. And yet he saw the danger long before I did. What would he do? I must take Muscat as my model, Muscat the pig, brutal, but cunning as a pig.

What would he do? The chocolate festival is tomorrow. On this depends her success or failure. Too late to turn the tide of public opinion against her. I must be seen to be blameless. Behind the secret window, thousands of chocolates wait to be sold. Eggs, animals, Easter nests wrapped in ribbon, gift boxes, baby rabbits in bright ruffles of Cellophane… Tomorrow a hundred children will awaken to the sound of Easter bells, and their first thought will not be He is risen! but Chocolates! Easter chocolates! But what if there were no chocolates? The thought is paralysing. For a second hot joy suffuses me. The clever pig within me grins and prances. I could break into her house, it tells me. The back door is old and half-rotten. I could lever it open. Sneak into the shop with a cudgel. Chocolate is brittle, easily damaged. Five minutes among her gift-boxes would do it. She sleeps on the top floor. She might not hear. Besides, I would be quick. I could wear a mask too, so that if she saw… Everyone would suspect Muscat, a revenge attack. The man is not here to deny it, and besides Pere, did you move? I was certain for a moment that your hand twitched, the first two fingers crooked as if in benediction. Again, that spasm, like a gunfighter dreaming past battles. A sign.

Praise the Lord. A sign.