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.In the slums of La Rotonde and Doumergueville and in the wretched villages of Cap Nord and Mele, candles are lit daily to Jeannot’s memory.Small, homemade shrines may be seen at country crossroads and on the barren hillsides of Cap Gauche, Papanos and Pondicher.The shrines are religious, with a crucifix at their head, as though to ward off the vampires of the regime.Most contain crude images of Jeannot, but there is also an oleograph or statue of the Virgin Mary.Because of this intermingling of religious iconography with Jeannot’s image, even the brutal soldiers of the new special battalions have not dared to desecrate or destroy these shrines.And so they have stood for years, tended with flowers, restored after storms.Women kneel before them, on their long journeys from village to city.Workers, passing them on their way to the fields, make the sign of the cross and bow their heads.In parliament, the noirs have used Jeannot’s memory to force the mulâtres to share legislative power.Because of this, noirs now occupy most of the ministerial posts and are installed in the highest positions in the Army and police.But nothing has changed.The system is, as always, totally corrupt.The poor are its victims.In the past ten years there have been many rumours and false sightings.Some of the people have always believed that Jeannot was murdered by Macandal’s soldiers: others say that he is alive and will return to lead an armed revolt.His name is never mentioned among the elite but the mystery of his disappearance sits under the arrogance and privilege of their lives, like a dangerous earthquake fault.At the beginning of this account, I wrote that I want to record the hidden event, the story never told.I do not know who will read these pages.I have asked myself: Is it my duty to remain silent? Or is it my duty to tell?A year after Jeannot’s disappearance, Father Bourque retired and I became Principal of the Collège St Jean.One morning when I was in my office, preparing class rosters, our doorman told me that there was a woman waiting to speak to me at the front entrance.‘Who is she?’‘She will not say, sir.She is from the country.They are very ignorant people in that place.I know it, sir.It’s called Toumalie.’Toumalie.I looked up from my papers.‘Put her in the visitor’s parlour.I’ll come down.’But when I reached the ground-floor parlour the doorman came up to me.‘I’m sorry, sir, but the woman will not come in.’I went outside.A tall woman was standing near the front door.She was one of those who make the long journey each day from distant villages to the central market at Port Riche.She had lowered her market bundles to the ground and stood beside them, nervous, looking as if she might bolt.I went up to her.‘Good morning.I am Father Michel.Can I help you?’She stared at me for a moment, then with a sudden shy smile reached into the red-and-yellow bandanna that covered her head and took out an object which she handed to me.It was a pocket watch, with a gold case that closed over the dial.My hand trembled as I snapped open the case and saw the initials I had ordered engraved on its inside.J.P.C.I shut the case.The woman was lifting her bundles from the ground.‘Wait.Who gave you this?’She smiled, balanced the huge bundles on her head and, erect and stately, walked off towards the college gates.I hurried after her.‘Please? Tell me who gave you this.And why did you bring it here?’‘I am sorry,’ she said, and kept on walking.‘You are from Toumalie?’‘Yes.’‘Please tell me.Who?’‘He just ask me to bring it,’ she said, quickening her pace as we passed through the gates.‘Because I come to Port Riche, two times each week.’‘Who asked you?’‘Frédéric.’‘Frédéric who?’‘Please, Mon Pe.Let me go now.’She hurried off down the street.I left the car in Melun.It was twenty-one years since I had been in Toumalie but there was still no road over which a car could safely travel.I set off on muleback in early afternoon, knowing there would be no bed for me that night if I did not sleep at the house of the local priest.And, of course, I could not do that.When I came into the village, a little after four o’clock, I saw some women washing clothes in a stream at the side of the road.Children played and splashed in the water.Further upstream a man squatted in the shallows while his wife scrubbed his back.I rode up to this couple and asked if they could tell me where to find Frédéric.A priest, even a blanc priest, is not a dangerous person in a place like Toumalie.‘Frédéric, there are two Frédérics,’ the man said.‘Young Frédéric, you want?’‘How old is he?’‘I don’t know.A boy.’‘No,’ I said.‘The other one.’The man stood up, dripping, and shook himself like a dog.‘They’re on the hill,’ he said.He pointed.‘See that shack up there? It’s not that one.Next one up is Frédéric’s.’I thanked him and went on.As the mule picked its way along the narrow rocky path I wondered if this was the same path down which I had carried Jeannot twenty-one years ago.When I passed the first shack, two small children ran out and seeing me, a stranger, ran back in again.The second shack was larger and had recently been reroofed with tin.There was a ramshackle porch and in front of it a heap of cooking stones, a sign that the shack had no kitchen.Again, children ran out, three girls and a little boy.But these children, seeing me, did not run away.They stood and stared as I threw the mule’s reins over its neck and climbed down, stiff and aching.Somewhere in the distance a cock crowed.I looked up at the hillside behind the house and saw tiny terraced fields fenced in by rocks to keep the soil from slipping down the mountainside.The children watched me and the smallest, the boy, ran over to a little shed behind the main shack.‘Papa,’ he called.The shed door opened, loose on creaking hinges, and a man stepped out.He was small and frail, his hair like steel wool, tight-knitted to his skull.As he came towards me I felt a sudden shock.I had never seen him before but I knew him.I held out the watch.He looked at it, then looked at me angrily.‘She told you my name?’‘Frédéric?’He nodded.He pointed to the porch.‘The sun is still hot,’ he said.‘Let’s go in.’We walked up on to the porch and sat on the rickety chairs.He turned to the children, who were watching.‘Go inside.’Obedient, they filed past us into the shack
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