Nothing of the cathedral: it was too squat, too sunny: only the gold of stained glass and a touch of West Indian baroque on the porch, black archangels, “my piccaninny putti”. Within, a high altar, from which Father Scarron gazed out, at Christmas and Easter, over three hundred worshippers, some of them known atheists who venerated Voltaire, others rumored participants in vodun who venerated Damballa and Papa Legba; a few were both, or all three—and why not? The three in one; or the ancient pantheons; or sermons in stones and good in every thing. Their ancestors had worshipped fire and thunder, rain and tree, lions and leopards; had coupled in the fields to make the land fertile; and had been captured, exiled, auctioned by Christians. He knelt, alone in his own church; it was cool and dark like a grotto. He rummaged his soul for a supreme emotion, and found the void. “Oh Christ,” he said in English. “There were four of us,” the man had confessed: a soft troubled tenor. “Go on, my son.”
