Boy in the World by Niall Williams

Author:Niall Williams [Niall Williams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007283606
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

In the morning the boy was awake and sitting on his bed writing in his journal when Sister Bridget arrived with a breakfast of coffee and a length of baguette. She was wearing a nun’s habit, and at first the boy was struck by how different she appeared, as though he had forgotten she was a Sister of Mercy.

‘Well,’ she asked, ‘how did you sleep?’

‘I dreamed someone was after me. They wanted me dead.’

‘Did you see their face?’

‘No,’ said the boy. ‘I think it was God.’

The nun was startled. ‘It couldn’t be,’ she told him, ‘you don’t believe in Him.’

The boy shrugged. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was you He was after.’

He sipped at the bitter strong coffee and scowled.

‘Nuns’ brew,’ Bridget apologized. ‘So?’

‘So?’

‘So have you thought about maybe going back?’

‘I am not going back.’ He tried the coffee again. ‘If you want to you can. I can go on by …’

‘Things are not the same as they were. Everywhere is more dangerous now. I watched the television last night. The world is …’ Bridget searched for an adequate phrase.

‘At war with itself.’

‘Well …’

‘It is. I know it is. But there is nowhere for me to go back to. I’m going on.’

‘There must be. You must have friends who will be missing you.’

‘I have no friends.’

Something in the way the boy said this made Bridget bite her lower lip. She knew he was going on and she knew she was going with him. ‘From what I understand of the news,’ she said, ‘there are over two hundred people dead. They say they thought Paris would be safe. They thought because of its politics, and because there is a large Muslim population here on the outskirts of the city, because they have lived here peacefully a long time, they didn’t think … well, things are out of control now.’

‘Do they have a computer?’

‘What?’

‘The convent here, do they have Internet?’

‘Yes, I think, in the small library off the main hall.’

‘Can I use it?’

Bridget hesitated. She knew the Mother Superior did not want the boy moving about in the convent, that it was a condition of their sheltering them.

‘There is Mass at ten,’ she said. ‘When all the nuns are there, you can slip down and use it. Be back here in forty minutes. Let nobody see you.’ She unsnapped the small buckle at her wrist and handed the boy her watch.

‘Where will you be?’ he asked her.

‘Praying to God for you.’

* * *

At ten o’ clock exactly, the boy opened the heavy cell door and stepped out into the flagstone corridor. He let the weight of the door take it gently back into place, and then he moved away like a thief, stepping softly, prepared at any moment to run. Down the stairs he heard the faint murmuring of voices from within the chapel. The prayers were like the low hum of an engine, a secret force in the heart of the city. Quickly he slipped past. He made his way into the front hallway and saw the sign ‘Bibliothèque’.

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