The Night Church Part 20

From the edges of her eyes tears once again gleamed.

Nothing Jonathan had read had prepared him for the relentless cynicism that had infected this city. It was almost us if the merchants of the place were trying to mock their Catholic customers.

And what of her, bringing her broken body here in hope of cure? This exhibition must be shattering.

Jonathan would have done anything to spare her this ugliness. If only he had known, he would have really fought the trip, made certain it didn't happen.

The plastic and the glare were nailing her to her wheel-chair forever. She sobbed, and Jonathan felt as never before her catastrophe.

The driver yanked open the cab door and drew Patricia out with exaggerated gentleness that Jonathan took for more cynicism. Jonathan gave him his money, adding as a tip the smallest coin in his pocket, which the driver took with reverence. He stood on the sidewalk, his cap in his hand, smiling after them.

Jonathan became aware of the scene around them. Stretchers, wheelchairs, frames, medical supplies, and lug-gage lay about on the sidewalk. The Holy Spirit pilgrims were nowhere to be seen. Of them only Father Goodwin remained. He was rushing back and forth between the hotel and the pilgrims, his face sweat-shiny, helping the other priests to organize their charges.

The Gethsemane appeared to be a typical middle-grade Lourdes hostelry, six stories of small windows, a gray stone facade. Only its top two floors suggested any promise of decent accommodation. On floors seven and eight the win-dows were large and arched. Light shone from behind beautiful draperies.

Well-dressed people could be seen com-ing and going in the rooms beyond.

Mary got out of her cab and stood with Jonathan, looking upward. They saw the silhouette of a trim little man ap-proach one window. Then the light behind it went out.

"Relax, Harry," Mike called to the frantic priest. "You're gonna get a coronary."

Jonathan really noticed Father Goodwin for the first time since they had landed. Gone was the guitar-playing priest of the airplane. This new Father Goodwin acted like a man let down on the most dangerous street in the worst part of the Los Angeles barrio. He wasn't just overexcited, he was in a panic.

And he was looking up too, furtively, as if he ex-pected someone to stone him from above.

Jonathan followed one of his glances and was surprised to see that the seventh and eighth floors were now completely dark.

Mary saw Father's consternation too, and strode over to him. There was a whispered conversation.

Father, his face gray with what was surely shock, his eyes stricken with sorrow, spoke to the gathered pilgrims. "We have to stay here," he said thickly. "There are no other hotels available. Let's go in."

"He doesn't like the hotel," Mary said as she returned to the Banion group.

"Has he been inside?" Mike asked.

"I have no idea. I think he's suffering from jet lag."

They went into the gray-tiled lobby and found a bright young concierge behind the aged hotel desk. She wore a dingy brown dress and greeted them with the same defer-ence everybody had thus far exhibited.

"Here are your keys. Americains. Americains. The lift is opposite the restaurant. As you asked, The lift is opposite the restaurant. As you asked, Madame, Madame, your rooms are on the second floor, two-oh-two through two-twelve." your rooms are on the second floor, two-oh-two through two-twelve."

Jonathan was disappointed. He had a.s.sumed that Ameri-can pilgrims routinely got the first-cla.s.s accommodations, which were obviously on seven and eight. "I'd like to be higher, Mother."

"It's not safe with the chair. These places are firetraps."

Jonathan knew better than to argue with her over a matter like this. Mother had an obsessive fear of fire.

Oddly, the elevator showed only six floors to the hotel. There weren't even keys for the two additional floors. Once they got upstairs it was clear that Father's intuition had been right. The "rooms" were dormitories fitted with cots and obviously intended to sleep no fewer than four. There were no singles or doubles; the Gethsemane hadn't even been built that way. Mike moved his family, Patricia, and Father Goodwin into 202. This was as depressing an arrange-ment as Jonathan could imagine. Chances of privacy flew out the window, a crack of a thing overlooking the hotel's kitchen exhaust. Behind a frayed screen stood an ancient lavatory and toilet. On the bidet was a handmade sign, FEET ONLY FEET ONLY, NO URINATION! NO URINATION!

"Beautiful," Mike growled, throwing luggage down. "Thank G.o.d the Sick aren't here." For pilgrims in need of constant medical attention the Church had built Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, which was some blocks away.

In that she did not require nursing or medication, Patricia was here rather than at the hospital. As Jonathan wheeled her across the room, thinking of his unasked question, he longed to be alone with her.

She took the wheels and went over to Mike and Mary. "I don't even mind the room," she said. "I'm so glad to be at Lourdes."

"All the plastic Jesuses-I could do without that part of it," Mike said.

"It won't be like that at the grotto," Mary a.s.sured her. She touched Patricia's face, very much more tenderly than she ever had before. "You'll see."

Mike leaned over and kissed Patricia's forehead. "You're too good, that's your problem."

Father Goodwin, who had been dashing up and down the hall in a frenzy of announcements and schedule changes, stuck his head in the door. "Soubirous tour in fifteen min-utes! Those interested please gather in the lobby. The bus will pull out at exactement exactement eight P.M." eight P.M."

"He seems to have recovered some of his savior-faire," savior-faire," Mary said acidly. She was behind the screen; Mike had pulled a bottle of Chivas out of his suitcase and was trying to make a drink in one of the hotel's cracked plastic cups. "No way," he said, as it leaked whiskey from at least six different holes. Mary said acidly. She was behind the screen; Mike had pulled a bottle of Chivas out of his suitcase and was trying to make a drink in one of the hotel's cracked plastic cups. "No way," he said, as it leaked whiskey from at least six different holes.

"Jonathan," Patricia said, "I'd like very much to go."

"Don't," Mary called. "We can arrange a private visit tomorrow."

"I'd like to go on the tour, really I would." That was unfortunate. Jonathan's one wish was to bury himself in the two-inch foam-rubber mattress allocated to him and forget his disappointment.

"It won't be very pleasant," Mary said.

"It'll do me good to be with other pilgrims. I mean sick ones."

"I'll be glad to come, darling," Jonathan said. "But I intend to sleep through the Bernadette bit."

Mary laughed. "You two go along. But if you get tired and want to come back early, hail one of the Peugeot cabs. And make sure it's a Peugeot. They're the best."

The tour bus was huge but astonishingly flimsy, as if it might be built of cardboard. At the rear was a large double door and a pneumatic chair lift. Jonathan wheeled Patricia onto the contraption. He soon discovered, when nothing happened, that it was first necessary to pay the driver an American dollar to operate the lift.

He put the money into the kid's hand. Once inside the bus he had to move Patricia onto a seat. This was a harrowing operation, involving picking her up in his arms and carrying her down the narrow aisle from the chair-storage area in the back. She was not a small girl, and the lifelessness of her lower body made it difficult. She winced as he slid her into an empty seat.

"I'm sorry, Jonathan."

"I love you."

In answer she kissed him gently on the cheek.

Behind them the lift whined again and again until there were thirty people in the bus, ten of them the Sick.

Father Goodwin, who no longer seemed to have any pilgrims from his own group, was tuning his guitar.

"Uh oh," Patricia said. "More hymns."

They were soon navigating in traffic to the strains of "Dominique." Faces pressed to the windows. This was, after all, the most famous place of pilgrimage on earth. Despite the kitsch, this was was Lourdes. Lourdes.

At the end of a shuddering, backfiring trip up a hill the bus came to a stop. "Maison Paternelle," "Maison Paternelle," the driver roared. Then the clatter and confusion of disembarking began. This time it went more smoothly. the driver roared. Then the clatter and confusion of disembarking began. This time it went more smoothly.

Evidently the first dollar cov-ered the whole journey.

The House of Bernadette proved to be attached to the back wall of a huge souvenir shop. Here there were even baseball caps with Aquero-as Our Lady of the Grotto was called-on their badges. Statues of Aquero rotated on little pedestals, the "Ave Maria" or the "Lourdes Hymn"-or "Lara's Theme" or even "Indian Love Call"-tinkling from music boxes in the bases. There were Dutch wooden shoes with Aquero statuettes glued to the toes.

Patricia looked slowly left and right as Jonathan propelled her down the aisle to the shrine at the rear, which looked more like a jail cell than a one-room cottage, barred to prevent its being pillaged by relic hunters.

She reached back and found his hand. "Take me out," she said.

He turned her around and wheeled her back to the bus.

"Jonathan, this is awful. It's terrifying!"

"Obscene is the word. Those statues-"

"Not the souvenirs, the people behind the counters. Haven't you noticed them?"

"No, to tell you the truth."

"Jonathan, we are being carefully watched. We have been ever since we got here." She s.n.a.t.c.hed his hands, glared into his eyes. "Please, let's go home right now."

"Who's watching us?"

"The girl at the airport, some of the people in the streets, everybody in the shops, even the concierge at the hotel."

"Darling, I think you're a little overwrought. Mother's right, we need to rest."

"I am not tired and I am not crazy! Everybody in this whole city-all the people who work in the stores, in the hotel, all the drivers-they are watching you and me."

"Patricia, really-"

"Don't you 'really' me. They're all watching us-staring at us. Just at us."

Jonathan had been bending over the wheelchair. When he stood up he looked right into the face of a salesman who had been standing behind a counter in the shop. The man low-ered his eyes and walked away.

Jonathan found one of the Peugeots. "We'll stick close to the hotel," he said. What else could he say? She wasn't paranoid, she was absolutely right.

But why? Surely no cult was large enough to include the inhabitants of a whole town, thousands of miles from home.

Yet they were watching, even now, from sidewalks, out of shop windows.

As the cab made its way through the jammed streets Patricia's face revealed how trapped she felt. From time to time Jonathan saw her dart a glance out the window.

And the crowds, the swirling ma.s.s of eyes, looked back.

MARY: THE SHADOW OF THE INQUISITION.

Now HAS COME the night of highest peril. We will kill her or cure her. She is useless to us as she is.

We own this town-its shops, its hotels, even the spring that feeds the grotto. But the great underground river beneath the grotto is n.o.body's property. Alpheus, the river of life and death.

It is not like the little aboveground trickle into which Catholic pilgrims dip their infirm parts. Alpheus is wild and dark and dangerous. If it sweeps you away you are lost forever. I think it may be more than water, more than a simple trick of geology. If a demon had a body it would be very like Alpheus, a freezing torrent raging against the rock of the earth.

This week at Lourdes many of the pilgrims are our people. We have booked the best rooms, taken the best charters. Some of our Catholic customers will have to wait until next week to continue buying their kitsch and bathing themselves in one another's sweat. Yet our beloved child is in as much jeopardy here as at home. As if the Inquisition had a sort of shadow...

Our people have made us welcome. To them it is the highest honor to have the Prince and Princess among them. Never have two people been so well guarded.

When Gottlieb told me that her paralysis would prevent childbirth, I remember I said I wanted to die.

He is a wise man. "Concentrate on your work. Keep to the plan." How I threw myself into my work!

I've arranged the worldwide vaccination program, the food supplies, all we need to see us through the coming extinction.

I even have Mike performing his allotted role. I am insisting he wear a vetiver cologne I had compounded at Keil's in Manhattan just for him. But it is more than scent. Jerry Cochran has mixed his vaccine into it.

Every time Mike splashes some on, he contributes to the immunity he will some day need in order to fulfill his place in our plan.

If all goes as we intend, we will require him to remain alive some little time after the others are dead.

Such a fatherly man can be put to good use.

Lately I have really been trying to seduce Mike, to make him love me as he has never loved anybody before. Frankly, I hope we will be able to convert him.

Still, I could not bear to be with him tonight. I lay on that miserable pallet in the Catholic part of the hotel downstairs, sweating and worrying until I could bear no more; now I am here where it is risky for me to be, in the suite where a princess of the Night Church belongs, writing and writing and trying to pretend that I am not exhausted, that I do not tremble, that my hand is as firm as ever.

Stupid woman. You calm yourself by writing in your jour-nal. Then you tear out the pages and burn them.

Outside quiet mult.i.tudes file toward the aid stations for their vaccinations. My own arm itches furiously where Jerry himself applied the needle. Lourdes is the main vaccination center for southern Europe. We will vaccinate thirty thou-sand faithful in the alleyways of this town before we are finished.

When the rest of the world is weakening and dying, in that time of unimaginable chaos, our Church must be stronger than ever.

As I write these words I feel the immensity and the difficulty of our task. Despite Jerry's brilliance and Frank-lin's great strength, I feel almost alone. The French have filled this room with flowers, have brought me a late supper of salmon trout and champagne. They are so awed by the presence of t.i.tus blood among them that they are not able even to meet my eyes.

They must have a hard time understanding Mike, who is so obviously not of the royal lineage. The husband of a princess? Impossible!

Oh, Mike, Mike, I rise to the heavens beneath your sweating body. I hate you! I will not say the opposite, but I do feel it too. Love, d.a.m.n it all. You obsess me for a very simple reason: I cannot decide what what I feel about you, and have good reasons for all my contradictory impulses. I feel about you, and have good reasons for all my contradictory impulses.

Two fifteen in the morning. Throughout our ancient capital our people have just begun going from the hidden vaccina-tion stations to the basilica itself, for the great ritual cleans-ing. We will take our darling down under the grotto to the banks of the secret river.

She will overcome her paralysis or she will drown in it.

Are we about to kill the hopes of two thousand years?

I go now, as always, loyal to my duty. I am crying, weak woman that I am. I call to my demon fathers.

Hear me.