The Vatican Games

by Alejandra Guibert

  By the afternoon Alina had managed to forget about the inert bodies in the cab. She climbed down to pick some ears of wheat. She chewed the almost ripe grains while she covered Vera with the lower part of her skirt which she had torn off with her teeth. In the same way she had cut the umbilical cord which joined her to her baby, whom she now gave to the world. As if knowing already of Vera’s extreme vulnerability, Alina covered her head with her handkerchief. She waited a second night for the rescuers while the full moon, now shining brightly high up in the sky, nourished Vera’s calm sleep. Holding her daughter in her arms Alina pulled the empty sacks over the two of them, yearning for another dawn.

  The following morning Vera was in the same position in her arms. Still clinging to her breast, suckling from time to time, letting go only to sleep. There they were, the truck, the dead, the burnt tyre no longer smoking. Nobody had come to rescue them. Nobody would come. Alina ate a few more wheat grains, while she looked Vera over and twisted her skirt into a point to remove the occasional remains of dried blood from the folds of the baby’s skin. Having eaten Alina regained the confidence she had lost. Now she was certain that if she waited for help they would die. First her, probably, and then her baby once her breast had dried up completely. She herself would have to save them both. How? was the question in her mind. She could not even drive a car, let alone a truck. She first made sure Vera had a good feed and left her asleep in the shade of the canopy. She tore off the sleeve of her T-shirt, tied it at the nape of her neck like a surgical mask and jumped down from the truck. In one swift movement Alina opened the cab door, apologising as she did so. Without looking at him she tugged at the shirt of the driver, who fell stiffly onto the dry ground. She struggled into his seat and stared ahead, trying not to look at the co-driver. The smell was only just bearable. She hardly breathed, not because of the stench coming from the body beside her – she was used to strong smells on her mother’s farm – but because of the stillness which had built up overnight in the cab; an inertia which she could not define but could only be overcome with the composure of that protective instinct which now drove her to act. She looked around the dashboard and, though not understanding much, she did recognise the pedals and the gear lever. But she had no idea in what order to use them.

  ‘It’ll be all right… it’ll be all right’, she told herself when she shut her eyes and turned the key which responded instantly. It was the familiar, encouraging sound of the running engine. Alina could almost feel her father’s presence with clear images of him at the wheel. She tried to evoke the movements, the sequence of steps. She knew that in order to move the gear lever she had to depress one of the pedals. It had been many years since her father had allowed her to change gears in the pickup when the family went out for a drive on Sundays. Even if she had looked to see which pedal he used, she would not be able to remember now. She would have to try them one at a time. The right-hand pedal increased the engine noise but the truck remained stationary. The middle pedal did not allow any movement of the gear lever at all. To move the lever she clearly had to step on the pedal on the left. The anticipation of driving her baby to safety herself thrilled her. She took a deep breath, depressed the clutch pedal and went into first gear. Alina was about to step on the accelerator, half-closing her eyes, when she released the clutch. The liberating sound of the engine became hostile. The whole truck shook before falling into its previous silence broken only by Vera’s inconsolable crying. She had no idea why it had not worked. The body next to her was now pressing against her shoulder and all her earlier courage drained away. Then with a huge jump Alina launched herself from the cab onto the dusty ground, hard enough to make her ankle twist with the fall. Frustrated by her efforts and troubled by her daughter’s cry, Alina wept for the first time. She could not think for thirst and pain. Cradling Vera in her arms, the precious fluid of her tears fell onto her baby’s tiny hands as she stroked them between her fingers. In an effort to console both herself and her baby she rocked back and forth. She let Vera suckle barely the last drops of life she could offer her, feeling the warm, humid mouth on her breast as she sealed her own dry lips. If only she had something to drink. If she could drink… Against all odds it struck her that the only hope might be among the corpses she had left behind so she retraced her steps. A rubbish bag hanging from a post near an entrance to the wheat field swayed slightly. At the end of the day’s work the labourers disposed of their empty cans or other litter in it before leaving the field. They had not finished work that day. The cans must be with their owners, fallen like them onto the dry ground. If any liquid was left in the cans next to the bodies it would have dried up from the heat. Absurd as it seemed, each prone body encouraged the hope that she might find something to drink. She was glad she barely knew those pale faces with their gaping mouths against the ground.

  Despite her eighteen years, Alina rarely visited Abriola. She had seldom left her mother’s farm and only then in the company of her mother and her new husband – the man who had replaced her father overnight. Although years had gone by since her father’s death, she would always see him as the new husband who forbade everything and demanded it all. Each year the young girl witnessed the unmentionable, her eyes incredulous. That man would never be her father. Her unexpected pregnancy had deepened her need to seek other possibilities. It had not been easy for her to convince him to let her apply for the job at the flour mill. Alina was aware that they needed the extra income. No words were necessary. She knew all too well what life would be like for her child on the farm. The new husband controlled the money they spent, the work they did, the time to rest, the time to go out, their joys and sorrows – the latter always plentiful. He also controlled the frequency of the beatings to which he had been subjecting the two women for the past seven years. Alina did not want Vera to be born there. She would take her last few weeks’ pay and leave for the city. She had saved what little money the man would give her out of her salary, ‘For the baby boy,’ he had said to her, ‘it’s going to be a boy.’ ‘Once I’ve left the mill’ was all Alina could think of. The foreman at the flour mill had found her a job, working for a recently widowed old lady. The pay was not much but the main thing was to get away from the farm. The foreman asked no questions and would give no answers. The simplicity of their tacit understanding was an unexpected blessing compared to the risk inherent in her intentions. A risk which became almost negligible when viewed from the wheat field. Now her plans seemed so distant, belonging to another reality on which she must not dwell if she hoped to save her child.

  Under the weighty body only the strap of the cloth bag was visible to the side. Alina put down her walking stick and tugged at the canvas until she saw the bulky bag. A further hefty pull shook the stiff corpse. Again she apologised as she crossed herself. The can in the bag was unopened. The lifeless body had sheltered it from the intense heat. The sugar in the fizzy drink would give her the necessary energy to face the twelve-mile walk back to the mill. As Alina opened the can and put it to her lips, the sound of engines in the distance made her look up. The blue sky was cloudless and empty, but in the distance a familiar cloud of dust was travelling towards the truck. The noise was not of an aeroplane but of a vehicle approaching by land. Providentially she dropped the can onto the ground, the foamy brown liquid running into the wheat, just like her. Without her walking stick, clutching her tender and painful loins, Alina strode back as best she could to reach Vera, whom she had left sleeping under the canopy on the truck.

  Dressed in white from head to toe, the men arrived in several vehicles to remove the bodies. The extraordinary events took on a new dimension for Alina, when she saw the men wearing transparent bell-like covers over their heads. Avoiding any physical contact they took her away in a sealed van. She was instructed to lie on a stretcher. When they tried to take Vera away she would not let them in spite of having little strength left to object to anything. After giving her a few sips of water, a male nurse explained that she would not y
et be able to eat anything. They needed to carry out several blood tests to confirm that she was not in danger. Another nurse informed her they would give her oxygen in order to take blood. They were not only exceedingly careful but they were also very kind. For a moment she felt like the most important person in the world. She did not expect them to be taking blood every fifteen minutes in tiny tubes on which they marked the exact time. Nor could she imagine at any point that she would be taken by plane to the Bioterrorism Research Centre. She simply did not even know where she was or why.

  On the plane she was isolated in a special cabin. Here two nurses would measure her vital signs each time they took blood to monitor her state. They would record the results, later sealing them in a plastic envelope together with the samples. They only took blood from Vera twice since Alina objected when she started crying forcefully the second time.

  Several doctors were awaiting them at the Centre. Some spoke in a strange language and only addressed Alina to give her instructions or tell her briefly what they were going to do. The assistants went back and forth with the plastic envelopes containing the blood samples of mother and daughter. When someone else tried again to take away the baby girl, Alina would not allow them to. It was only then that they sutured the umbilical cord, bathed her, measured and weighed her in the lab. She set as a condition for their attending to her that Vera was to have someone beside her to look after her at all times. To Alina, who had always had conditions imposed on her, it felt strange to have her demands accepted without question. They were eventually moved to a private room where Alina was able to shower. From the shower she could see Vera asleep in her cot. In barely forty-eight hours her life had changed from a daily nightmare to another, far more extreme and unreal. Now from the safety of her bed Alina took pleasure in looking back on it like a film. It was a luxury to be able to smile at her daughter for the first time since she had been born.

  She was unaware that many had died in Abriola. A nurse in a standard uniform gave her a white night-dress and brought her some chicken soup. She could also speak good Italian. These were the first clear signs of safety and Alina was at last able to sleep without interruption. Her deep sleep prevented her dreams from surfacing and being remembered. In an instinctive effort to avoid any further turmoil, she had preferred not to know. But when she woke up the nurse’s expression made her feel the need to ask:

  ‘Do you know what happened to those people in the wheat fields?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. You must rest.’

  ‘You don’t want to tell me, or did they tell you not to say anything?’

  ‘You lost a lot of blood during the birth.’

  ‘I feel all right. Where are we?’

  ‘Saint Louis, Missouri.’ By Alina’s blank expression, the nurse realised these names didn’t mean anything to her. ‘America. Nobody knows why, but people are dying. That’s what they say on the news. They brought in all those who’d been with you in the field to find out what happened. You two are OK. All the tests were negative.’

  This information was enough for her to ask when she could leave, prompting a neurologist to appear, dressed in everyday clothes, to examine Vera’s skull. Through the nurse he asked her where she lived and explained she would be transferred to a specialist hospital back home in Italy. Alina just showed him the piece of paper with the old lady’s address in the city of Bari written on it. He gave her some money she did not expect. With it she set out on a new journey to leave memories behind.

  Scientists continued to analyse the dozens of blood samples from Alina, seeking some exceptional antibody able to resist what had annihilated everyone else. They had found in the blood of the dead traces of atropine, an anticholinergic agent which had blocked their central and peripheral nervous systems. Its action was like closing a heavy hatch and locking it by turning the wheel with the combination lock. Whoever had extracted the atropine from belladonna, the most toxic plant in the western hemisphere, knew that a single leaf of the plant is fatal. For the compound they had obviously used the much more toxic root. The experts knew it had to be a compound. The report from the US stated that it was cattle and horses that had died initially. Scientists were perplexed, knowing that cattle were immune to belladonna. They needed to find an isolated sample of the compound that could be hiding its other components in blood. But nothing was hidden in either Vera or her mother’s blood. They were the only ones in the wheat fields who had escaped being infected. If only they had asked Alina, she could have told them that the people in Abriola had been suffering under the terrible heat. That for days the villagers had done nothing but guzzle soft drinks which arrived with the sponsorship. If they had only asked her she could have told them that she had drunk nothing but water. They would not find anything in her blood samples. The only answer was in the blood of the dead.

  The flight back seemed too long now that she knew she was going home. It was her first time in a city. There was an ambulance waiting for them at Bari airport. The neurologist at the University Neurological Hospital also predicted that Vera would not survive the night. After five nights a nurse told her they had to free up the hospital bed.

  With the money they had given her at the Centre Alina rented a room in a hostel near the old lady’s house to start her new life. If everything went to plan the old lady would return in a few weeks from her brother’s house where her husband’s funeral had been held. The only thing she could do was wait. Everything would be different there. She would be free of the ordeal of the farm. Vera was her only chance of freedom.

  In the press the news came out before any real knowledge of the compound was available or the experts had precise scientific facts to report. Tabloids all over the world speculated as usual. They first broke the shock news, revelling in the sordid details. In other sections of the media, parallels to Greek mythology readily inspired the intellectuals as soon as one of the toxic elements was found, ‘atropine’. One article read: ‘Ironically, its name comes from the Greek “Atropos”, the eldest of the three goddesses of destiny, known for being inflexible and inevitable. According to Greek mythology the fate of human beings was in the hands of the three sisters. Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured it and Atropos chose the time and manner to cut the thread. The distributors of destiny were the managers of the thread of life. Are we dealing with the manifestation of a Machiavellian intrigue planned with expert sadism? Or is it simply a monstrous coincidence?’

  After a few days the articles gave way to lists of people and places and to reports on where to go to incinerate the bodies of relatives or neighbours. There were no more plays on words. Reality had gone beyond fantasy. Telephone lines became overloaded hampering order and facilitating chaos. People were asked to remain in their homes during the night and to go to work during the day. Carry on as usual, implored the authorities. Messages on the national networks announced, reminded, urged people to carry on with life in the midst of death.

  Many in Abriola had died but the contamination there had not spread. Now the world knew why. The cans of soft drink that killed the people in the field it emerged had come directly from the United States, where deaths were numbering almost 150,000 in just a few days. Alina had not been told any of this. Nobody knew that many more deaths were on the horizon. Unthinkable figures.

  Terrorists were believed to have contaminated a soft drinks plant in Atlanta. In New York three billion gallons of drinking water a day were distributed to the households of over twenty million inhabitants through a network of twenty-two reservoirs and five controlled lakes. In the Newtown Creek plant in Brooklyn, processing 500 million gallons of water a day, the most horrific plague also broke out. New York was a mere example of what was to come in the whole of the American territory and beyond.

  Through drinking water systems from surface water streams, rainwater distribution systems, rivers, lakes, the sewerage system, septic fields, waste water ducts, storm drains, reservoirs. Through water treatment plants, with capac
ity of twenty million gallons a day. By way of biosolids or sediment made into fertilizer. For their use in sown fields which had also received water from irrigated fields. In each and every one of these the poison lay in wait. Contaminated water emerged from the sewers straight into the rivers and streams. The cycle was infinitely renewed. Although water was being analysed, it was months before it was possible to correctly identify the agent that was poisoning the population. Meanwhile, nobody knew what to do with the contaminated waters that flowed murky or crystalline with the new poison in other outlets, other drains, other fountains in major cities of the USA.