Wonder Read Online Free PDF Page A

priest after a moment.
    “Hello, Father,” replied Baptiste, his voice quaveringslightly from combined fear and pride. “This month I didn’t sin.”
    The face turned towards him, a grey mask whose features were erased by the dimness.
    “No sins. Whoever heard of such a thing? Presumption, my child, is a wicked fault,” said the priest.
    Baptiste didn’t get the connection so he waited, hands clasped, for the
curé
to go on.
    “So you’ve done nothing wrong, you haven’t stolen, you haven’t fought …”
    “No, Father.”
    “Maybe you’ve disobeyed your mother or father?”
    Baptiste wanted to point out how impossible the latter hypothesis would have been but he decided not to and merely replied:
    “No, Father.”
    He now could detect a hint of impatience in the voice of the
curé
, who went on:
    “Lied then?”
    “No, Father, I haven’t told a lie.”
    “Not even by omission?”
    Baptiste didn’t know what the
curé
meant by that and not daring to ask, said again, but less certainly:
    “No, Father.”
    Sensing he was on to something, Father Blanchot leaned forward and whispered:
    “But you’ve committed impure deeds or had impure thoughts, haven’t you?”
    The smell of garlic was stronger now. Baptiste didn’t know what the
curé
meant by that either. His confessions had never gone on so long: usually, he would admit that he’d filched a mango and gone for a stroll after nightfall when his aunt had forbidden it, the
curé
would absentmindedly impose a penance, and that was it until the following month. Now he almost wished he had a crime to acknowledge.
    “I don’t know, Father.”
    “Aha!” said the priest smugly, leaning back comfortably. “Girls?”
    Of course Baptiste liked looking at girls and he would sometimes drop a coin so he would have to bend down and could look under their skirts. But that could not be a sin.
    As Baptiste wasn’t replying, the
curé
suggested, his voice even lower:
    “Boys?”
    The only boys he rubbed shoulders with were his cousins and even if he hoped every morning on waking up that Siméon would stop wetting the bed, he was fairly sure that wasn’t what the
curé
meant.
    “No, Father,” he declared.
    The confessor heaved a sigh, brought his face close to the grille again so Baptiste could see his nose, his chin,and his eyebrows cut into little squares, and declared: “There are many things that wound Our Lord, but of all the sins, lying is the most loathsome. To shed the urge to tell falsehoods, young man, do ten Stations of the Cross, recite fifty Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. And come back when you’re ready to confess the wrongs that taint your soul.”
    The small partition separating the confessional slammed shut and for a long moment, Baptiste sat unmoving in the dark. The following month and every other month until he turned sixteen, when once and for all he stopped begging Father Blanchot for mercy, he invented a list of misdeeds that he left at the
curé
’s feet as a rotten offering, then went away whistling a tune – after spitting in the holy water stoup.
    In his cell that night, when there was utter darkness around him, Baptiste dug in the beaten earth floor until he found a pebble sufficiently sharp and pointed, and he began to trace around the circle engraved in the stone a broad rectangle divided into squares. Behind it he scrawled waves, sand, and some fluffy clouds. Then he lay down in the dark again, looking towards the invisible wall where he had opened a window.

 
    T HE NAUSEATING SMELL THAT P ELÉE SOMETIMES gave off for days, a sulphur stench amusingly called “mountain farts,” had been bathing the city for weeks, forcing the populace to keep their windows sealed tight despite the heat. The lovelies on the streets untied their long scarves and placed them over their noses and mouths, making them look a little like the veiled women of the desert, the difference being that the multicoloured fabrics in which they wrapped