Considering that in every other aspect she was as handsome as a person of her advanced age might hope to be, one would think that her little gift from God could be overlooked. It could not. It was the monstre sacré, a magical beast. He tried to compare it to the third eye of an Asian saint, but the wart was as blind as a mole rat and twice as ugly. Both repelling and compelling, it was charged with the grisly charisma of a serial killer. In its globby piled-on redness, it was a scarlet letter embroidered by an obsessive compulsive. And it was too damn vivid.
Nevertheless, they each made a certain peace with its imposition. He refused to allow the wart to unsettle him, she refused to brood over whether he might possibly be unsettled. Thus, they proceeded with their objectives.
“This little bastard operates on solar batteries, the likes of which are unknown to the civilian population. When you get your conventional desktop PC—and I wish we had one now because it’d be a lot easier to teach you on—you’ll either have to run your generator during daylight hours or else, if you choose to go DC, charge its batteries almost every night. Burn more fossil fuel, in any case, I’m afraid. The dinosaurs died so that chat rooms might flourish.”
Masked Beauty nodded. She didn’t exactly take to cyberspace like a duck to orange sauce. Switters attributed this to her background rather than to her age. Look at Maestra, after all. As the weeks dragged dryly by, the abbess learned little more than how to boot up and shut down. One problem was that she could barely type. When there was a lengthy e-mail to transmit, Switters functioned as a stenographer, taking her dictation directly on the keyboard. A couple of things prevented him from becoming so bored that he unleashed his imp: one, the realization that it was Matisse’s blue nude for whom he was clerking; and two, the delight he took in imagining the look on Mayflower Cabot Fitzgerald’s steely face every time Langley intercepted another missive from Switters’s address clamoring for papal reforms and advocating global birth control. And, ha-ha, what about those exorcism instructions?
Soon, however, it seemed that less and less of their time was devoted to e-mail and more and more to searching the Internet. The subject of their search was Mary aka Miriam aka Maria aka Marian aka the Blessed Holy Virgin Mother of God, the legendary Jewess whose maidenhead was alleged to have remained unpopped, sound as a dollar, even after she gave birth to a seven-pound baby boy.
In one of their earliest conversations, Domino had disclosed to Switters that the Pachomians were busily redefining their relationship to their religion: to Jesus, to Mary, and to God. Working now with Masked Beauty, it was clear to him that, for the present, their central focus was on Mary. Since Mary was mentioned in the Bible no more than a dozen times, and then mostly in passing, and since she was paid little or no attention in the first four hundred years of the Church’s existence, any material upon which one might base a reevaluation of her was comparatively recent. That didn’t mean that such material was scarce. Oh, no. Enough had been written about her—an astonishingly huge amount in the late twentieth century—to fill every boxcar on the Bethlehem, Golgotha & Santa Fe Railroad. If one aspect of the material interested the abbess more than any other, she did not let on.
It was slow going. For reasons of both portability and government security, the sophisticated little computer lacked a printer. Switters read aloud the data off the screen—often struggling to translate as he read, for the majority of it was in English or Italian—and Masked Beauty wrote it down in French and by hand. Following their afternoon siestas, she and Domino would go over the longhand “printouts,” and several evenings a week, the entire sisterhood would gather for group discussions centered around the gleaned information. Switters would have liked to have been included in those discussions, if for no other reason than to blow the gunk out of his intellectual carburetor and to keep his discursive spark plugs clean. It was a long, long way from the C.R.A.F.T. Club, but, hey, a fully conscious man was an adaptable man.
When the Mary material concerned, as it increasingly did, one or more of the Virgin’s alleged modern apparitions, he was especially keen on joining the conversations. For better or worse, he’d trod the electronic road to Fatima before, and he very well might have something to contribute. (Remembering that Suzy had not even sent him a copy of her paper, a thin sheen of hurt lacquered his so-called fierce, hypnotic green eyes, only to instantly evaporate in the arid air. He couldn’t blame her. Suzy’s generation was unforgiving of dishonesty, and rightly so. Alas, it remained rather blissfully unaware that it was being lied to by corporate America—through the movies, TV shows, and magazines it so adored—a hundred times a day, but that’s another story.) Alas, again, no invitation to participate in the dialogues appeared forthcoming. Whether out of their exclusiveness or consideration for his own privacy, the doors to their meetings were closed to him.
Then, late one night at the burnt end of August, as the happy ghosts of long-deceased Bedouins rode the gritty desert winds (because they in life possessed the wisdom of physical nonattachment, nomads enjoyed an unusually smooth transition into death and made the world’s most contented ghosts), he discovered himself in unexpected and unusual discourse, the consequences of which were to be considerable.
It was well past midnight when he heard the bell. The bell ding-donged him out of a dream in which red-eye gravy played a prominent role. (Could it be that he’d munched one too many cucumbers, chewed a few too many chickpeas?) After the first four or five rings, he was alert; after the next four or five, he was on his stilts. He stood at the door, which had been left ajar to facilitate a nighttime stirring of day-parched air. There was more ringing, followed by male voices from outside the compound, followed by female voices from within. The male voices sounded angry, the female voices alarmed. Switters unzipped the crocodile valise. Mr. Beretta! Rise and shine!
Before he could pull on his trousers, there was a burst of automatic gunfire. In a flash, he was through the door, stilt-sprinting along a moonlit path in his boxer shorts. The ones with the baby ducks on them.
Something brighter than blood sang in his arteries. It climbed up his spine like the high notes of an anthem, clarifying his lungs, teasing his muscles and making them brisk. It wasn’t a syrup of wahoo, really: it wasn’t pure enough for that. Mostly, it was good old retro primal adrenaline, concocted in the fight-or-flight kitchen, the reptile house of the brain. But there were drops of wahoo in it. Had he said otherwise, he would have been untruthful.
He hadn’t gotten far before he met Domino. She’d been running to his room to get him. “For the gate,” she gasped. “They are demanding it open.”
“Yeah, I can hear that. Although their French really sucks.” He resumed his sprint. “And I have to say your English isn’t much better.”
“Switters! . . .” She was trying to keep up with him.
“It’s okay, darling. It’s just because you’re excited.”
Domino looked at him as if he were completely demented. “This is serious!” she cried.
“Ah, yes,” he agreed. She could have sworn his tone was sarcastic, or at least facetious.
By then, they had reached the gate. All of the sisters, with the exception of Masked Beauty, were gathered there. A couple of them had their hands clasped, apparently in prayer, but they were amazingly calm and composed. On the other side of the thick mud wall, men were shouting in broken French. They were saying that the oasis was a holy garden of Allah that had been desecrated by handmaidens of the great Western Satan. “Ah, yes,” muttered Switters again. This time, his voice had overtones of boredom and weariness. “Infidels!” the men screamed repeatedly. There was another savage spurt of gunfire. Switters yelled to the women to take cover, although he realized that the bullets, for the moment, were being sprayed in the air.
“They’re drunk,” whispered Domino, who was crouched at his side.
“Yeah, but not on arrack. Help me onto these stilts.” He was transferring to the taller pair that Pippi kept at the gate.
?
??Killer-B stuff?” she suggested, steadying the poles.
He grinned at her approvingly and nodded. “That’s some toxic honey. Blind a man and make him crazy.”
“Do be careful.”
Leaning the stilts and his body against the gate so that his hands would be free, he slid open the grate and stared down on the men, who raised their rifles and stepped back a few feet to stare up at him. There were only three of them. They had sounded like more. Dressed in cheap civilian khakis and those red-and-white checkered headdresses that always looked as if they’d been yanked off tabletops in a suburban spaghetti parlor (“They’ve copped our Italian night!” he wanted to yell to Pippi), the men had arrived in a dented old Peugeot sedan.
He greeted them in polite Arabic, and it would have been difficult to determine which had surprised them more, his language (it was an extended greeting and as flowery as the finest Arabic often can be) or his sex. The fact that the moon was illuminating—and the grate framing—a grin spiked with strife-torn teeth, a pair of gleaming f.h.g. eyes, and the barrel of a most capable-looking handgun, must also have contributed to their astonishment.
After a period of rather stunned silence, the men all began to clamor at the same time. Speaking Arabic now, one asked what kind of man would live in a nest of unclean women, another demanded to know what a foreigner was doing speaking in the tongue of great Allah, and the third inquired if Switters was prepared for death.
To the first question, he replied, “A lucky man”; to the second, “It’s as stupidly ethnocentric to think God’s language is Arabic as it is to believe Jesus spoke King James English”; and to the last, “Everybody on earth, unfortunately, is prepared for death, but very damn few are prepared for life.” The eloquence of his Arabic surprised even him: he must have chipped the rust off when traveling with the Kurds and Bedouins. While the attackers were quietly jabbering among themselves about his replies, he interrupted to ask if they might tell him a joke.
His request bewildered them—and rekindled their hostility. “Tell you a joke? Do you think this is a funny matter?”
“Hey, it’s written in the Koran that the gates of Paradise open wide for he who can make his companions laugh.” He quoted the chapter and verse, challenging them to look it up. “I was wondering if you boys might be among those favored by Heaven.”
That threw them into a state of consternation. For a good three or four minutes, they conferred with one another, occasionally scratching their kaffiyehs with their rifles, as if trying to remember a punch line. Finally, the eldest of the trio (all under thirty) stepped forward and announced, “It is irrelevant to Heaven whether or not we can make you laugh because you are not our companion.”
Well, that was reasonable enough, and he told them so. “You fellows aren’t as dumb as I originally believed.” At this, they seemed oddly pleased. Then, again listing chapter and verse, he brought up Mohammed’s prohibition against priests, asking them why, since the Koran clearly stated that each individual must approach God singularly and alone, had modern Islam spawned such an authoritarian hierarchy of ayatollahs, imams, and mullahs.
This time, their consultation was more brief. “These exalted authorities to whom you refer,” the spokesman said, “are not priests but scholars.” He stepped back rather smugly, confident that he’d had the final word, unaware that he was dealing with Switters.
Though Switters didn’t know the Arabic for semantics, he, nevertheless, got his point across. “They can call themselves ‘scholars’ until the camels come home,” he said, “but the truth is, they function as priests and bishops and cardinals, and you know they do. They intercede between a man and Allah.”
All four of them bantered about that for a while, making a lot of fuss but getting nowhere, until Switters eventually said, “Show me, if you can, where it says in the Koran that a devout Muslim has the duty or the right to kill those who don’t believe as he does. Show me where Mohammed sanctions the murder of those of another faith—or no faith at all—and I’ll unbolt this gate and let you in to bravely slaughter these unarmed women.” When there was no immediate response, he added, “It is not the Prophet who advocates violent behavior but ambitious ayatollahs, and the politicians who share their vested interests.”
Of course, the men could not refute him with scripture, as the Koran was on Switters’s side, but they argued with him, bringing up such things as the Israeli displacement of Palestinians and the murderous legacy of the Christian Crusaders, neither of which he was wont to defend in the slightest. In fact, he seconded everything they said about the Crusades, plainly exhibiting his own disgust and revulsion, yet refusing to accept any residual guilt, claiming that it had nothing to do with him or them. He understood, however, that Arabic peoples had a different sense of time, of history, than a Westerner such as himself; had, like the Kandakandero, a different relationship with the past and their ancestors.
After that, the discussion cooled down. The night was cooling down as well, and on the ground behind him, the ex-nuns were beginning to shiver in their thin cotton gowns. The talk continued, though, for at least another two hours, during which many cross-cultural theological issues were fairly evenly debated. In the end, the attackers, drained and a trifle flabbergasted by the encounter, made as if to depart. Just to make sure, to cap the melting sundae with a tangy cherry, Switters announced that the compound was under the personal aegis of President Hafez al-Assad, Audubon Poe, and Pee-wee Herman, and if any harm came to its occupants, heads would roll all the way to Mecca. “Take it up with those worthy gentlemen if you have any doubts. Tell them Switters sent you.”
The men nodded gravely. Then, following an exchange of formal, fairly cordial farewells, they climbed into the Peugeot, which, suspensefully, took as long to start as a barrio limo, and drove off into the sands.
“Oh, goody! My trusty starship.”
At some juncture during the seemingly interminable bull session, Domino had slipped away to his room and fetched his wheelchair. Now, he dropped onto it. Once he was seated, the sisters, cold, frazzled, some very nearly asleep on their feet, crowded around him as if he were a conquering hero. Women love these fierce invalids home from hot climates?
“Magnifique!” exclaimed Masked Beauty. The abbess had shown up at the gate soon after the engagement began and, having acquired a rudimentary familiarity with Arabic as long ago as her service in Algeria, translated for the others, as best she could, the highlights of the debate. She had arrived veiled, in the event that she had to confront strangers, but had removed the cloth now, and it dangled from her fingers. A ray of moonlight striking her double-decker wart made the growth resemble a dab of ketchup-coated curds. Cottage cheese with ketchup, he thought. Richard Nixon’s favorite meal. Probably got the recipe from John Foster Dulles. Patooie!
“How do you know so well Islam?” the abbess asked.
“Oh, I used to flip through the Koran—and the Bible—and the Talmud—occasionally,” he said. “Before I discovered Finnegans Wake.”
Thanking and congratulating him again, Masked Beauty patted his curly top. Then, shooing her charges ahead of her like geese, she, and they, went off to bed. Domino stayed behind, however, intent on pushing his chair. “I don’t believe I can sleep,” she said, “but you must be exhausted.” He claimed that he was as buzzed as a June bug up a maypole, so they repaired to his room for a spot of cold tea. It was the first time she had visited him there since the Fannie affair at the beginning of summer. She stood with her back to him while he pulled on a shirt and trousers. Baby ducks, adieu.
When they were settled, he in his Invacare, she on the stool (the cot was avoided as deliberately, as warily, as if it were an altar upon which certain arcane, unmentionable rituals were known to have occurred), she told him how grateful she was that the incident at the gate had concluded without bloodshed. He said that no self-respecting cowboy would have let such a splendid opportunity to fire his gun pass him by, but that he supposed a peaceful solution w
as best for all concerned. “Those agitated stooges probably have innocent kids to support.”
“It’s their religion,” she said accusingly.
He corrected her. “It’s their religion plus your religion.”
“Our lives were threatened, and you are saying that my religion must share the blame? What have we done?”
He sighed. “You’ve tried to own God,” he said. “Just like them.”
Domino looked puzzled. Then she nodded. “Okay, I think I see what you mean. The Moslems and the Christians are each insisting that their way to God is the only way, so if only one side is right, then those on the other side . . .”
“Having hocked their lives, are left to face death without the pawn ticket. That smarts. And remember: there’re three sides to every story, including the monotheism story.”
She curtly dismissed the Jews, however, stating that Judaism’s Killer B’s wouldn’t figure into the final equation. Before he could challenge that assertion—and, really, all he was wanting to do was to settle back and unwind—she asked what the name Fatima meant to him.
“It’s the podunk burg in Portugal where that most profoundly splendid of oxymorons, the Virgin Mother, supposedly yo-yoed the sun in 1917.” One didn’t play cyberspace errand boy for Marian enthusiasts of all ages without picking up a tidbit or two. “Fatima, Lourdes, Bosnia; Knock, Ireland; Tepeyac, Mexico. Isn’t it fascinating how Mary usually seems to turn up in ugly, boring, economically depressed locales in dire need of a tourist attraction? Projecting, we could forecast that she’ll show up next—where? Western Oklahoma, probably. Middle of Saskatchewan. Except that those places don’t have enough Catholics on site to organize a fish fry.”