‘For our food. We’re going to a much better place. They’ll call us soon. We must protect ourselves. I don’t want you seeing horrible things like I did.’
At night Alina would remove the rubber helmet and put the cot near the window where Vera would be bathed in moonlight.
She asked the young man at reception to read the message to her twice. She had barely understood it the first time in anticipation of the news.
‘I told you we’d be going somewhere nicer. To that big house I showed you. Mummy’s going to work.’
Alina bought two large bags of sweets and gave one to the boy with the ball and the other to the young man at reception, who was disappointed that it was not a bottle of wine. On leaving the room for the last time Alina slammed the door, telling herself she wanted nothing further to do with television or with death.
She had never been in a town house before. The front of the house gave no real idea of its true size. When they arrived the old lady took them to their room. She showed her the whole house and the places where everything lived. Her husband had been the one who took care of it all.
‘He looked after me as though I were made of glass’, she said, hoping Alina would do the same now that he was gone.
She was glad it was a large house. She began working even harder than she used to on her mother’s farm. Alina needed to fill her time. Even though she no longer knew whether she felt happy, she was less fearful for Vera. Everything seemed to be better, in spite of the small size of her room, the darkness and the overwhelming silence. At last Vera had the protection she needed. Alina had not been wrong. Nothing could happen to them in that old house with thick, high walls. With a job and a roof over their heads, life had become normal for her, who preferred not to know what was happening outside. Just like the old lady who could hardly hear and never left the house. Once she had given her instructions, the old lady scarcely spoke to her. She could barely talk at nearly ninety years old, she said. She did not speak because she preferred to live in the torpor of her memories. She would fall asleep in whichever armchair she was sitting in. In her dreams she was reunited with her husband and life became real for her. During the day she lived without him as if in a bad dream. She would walk the few steps from one armchair to the other and from there to the table and then to bed. The wait seemed endless. Her home had become a waiting room in which there was nothing to do until the moment of reunion. Inertia got her through the days as though she were not even there. After several days without speaking she would exchange a few phrases, to which Alina responded in monosyllables. It’s better that way, thought the old lady. She did not realise that her maid’s silence was so deeply ingrained that it had taken her to an unknown, dangerous place.
The day the last element of the synthetic substance was finally discovered, there was no stopping the brutal and irreversible decision to strike back.
The biological synthesis of two poisons and a bacteriological agent, a hybrid of three: botulinum, atropine and ricin, was the exterminating formula. The third element was the same as had been found in the Al-Qaeda caves in Afghanistan. Ricin prevents the formation of cell proteins. The size of a pinhead is enough to kill anyone in less than six hours leaving no trace evidence. Nobody claimed responsibility for the events. The silence was profound. The atrocity of the consequences inconceivable.
At the convent, Benedita was the only one who read the news in the Bari Leggo. Her friend Dugati, who worked for the newspaper would send it to her three times a week. This time the perpetrators would have nothing to celebrate, he assured her. The suspicions being aired in the press were not unfounded. Potential groups could be counted on the fingers of one hand: Al-Qaeda from the Algerian Sahara, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan. In the arid and inhospitable regions of North Africa, beyond law and control. It could also be the GICM, responsible for the Madrid bombings or extremist factions of Hezbollah or the Jihadis, fundamentalist groups supported by the Taliban. To Benedita, the oxymoron in their names said it all: ‘Groups for Prayer and Combat’. For Dugati conjectures served no purpose. Circumstances had not changed. It began with the recruitment of young people with no future. Lost inside their own heads, he reflected. Unfathomable young men like wild dogs in search of a bone to gnaw, jumping from one rubbish tip to another. Until they find their purpose, their daily bread. Some younger than fifteen years old would find the only light that crossed their path: the one that fanned the flames of hate. It was difficult for Benedita to conceive of this. The process was not elaborate. They could find all they needed to know in the training videos and coded forums on the internet. Trips would follow to Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Maghreb countries. Training cells which operated from trucks constantly on the move. Led by good organisers, reliant on income from cocaine trafficking. All sponsored by the marriage of convenience to the Tuareg for the smuggling of chemicals.
‘You don’t need to be an expert,’ Dugati told her, ‘to see what sparks it off. Unemployment does not tally with the thousands of millions of dollars spewed out by oil. Lack of opportunities leads to one or the other. A belt loaded with explosives or a lifebelt to cross the Mediterranean to a better life.’
Before the cataclysm, Benedita would visit the newspaper offices, next to the bank where she would cash the cheque the diocese sent to the community every month.
Mother Teresa knew nothing about Benedita’s meetings with her friend Dugati. There was nothing sinful in them, although their content did stray from the pious life. She and Dugati would have infrequent but lively chats.
‘If I weren’t a nun, I’d be a journalist, Dugati,’ she joked with her friend, who smiled, flattered. ‘If it weren’t for you, I would know nothing about the outside world.’
Countless times they had talked about the crisis. Both suspected that sooner or later the financial debacle would be a thermometer for the impending fireball which was approaching at a blistering speed.
‘They don’t seem to want to admit it, sister. Laboratories the world over keep investing in innovation, while carbon emissions grow as high as the resulting GDP. They don’t see the severity of higher temperatures but they will see the consequences. On top of that, there’s the food crisis and the millions depending on food aid! The UN has recently stopped delivering due to petrol shortages, so the hungry are furiously taking to the streets in sub-Saharan Africa, Senegal, Indonesia and India. Soya is just benefiting a few while the production of biofuels is triggering rises in the price of basic foodstuffs.’
Some of the information Benedita would absorb with keen interest. The rest filled her with anxiety.
‘Sister, do you know why African children are not going to school? Hunger prevents them getting up from their beds or separating from their mothers’ arms. Sometimes their mothers take them to die in hospital, where they also have no food to offer them. A billion people with diseases from starvation.’
Benedita would sometimes question what she was doing at the convent apart from praying.
“I’m going to give a fund-raising talk a week tomorrow at 7 pm,’ Dugati said, handing her a leaflet. ‘Can you come? Who knows, you can help me collect contributions in the chapel on Sundays.”
‘I’m so sorry I can’t attend. It would not be possible for me to leave the convent in the evenings.’
‘Don’t worry, sister.’
‘I would still like to hear what you have to say. Will you be able to print it out for me?’
‘You might be shocked. It’s a different world.’
‘I know and I think we should all know.’
That was the world in which Vera had been growing in her mother’s womb. The world into which she arrived was to be very different although it appeared to be the same. Alina had not known that reality either, even though her own was tragic. On the farm the only news of any interest had been limited to its own small perimeter. At best, it could include the village. There was no time to understand how people lived elsewhere. From six o’clock in the morning, or
five in summer, there was a string of tasks to be performed in the fields, barns, pens and stores. Followed by the tasks which awaited inside the house until nightfall. There everything was palpable, undeniable. Life there demanded minute-by-minute attention. Outside that perimeter the rest belonged to an unknown and almost inexistent universe.
Dugati’s fund-raising presentation just days before the cataclysm now seemed outdated and absurd to Benedita a few weeks later. As if time had speeded up to make whole universes disappear in a flash.
Sitting in her cloister room, Benedita re-read Dugati’s lecture: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I will be brief. You will be aware by now of the aim of this meeting. Allow me a few minutes of your time. The financial debacle has forced the G8 to create a package of global measures to avoid total collapse. China and Russia, with trillions in reserves in foreign currencies, have extended a helping hand to western banks.
There is hope that values could change or that something could be done about the lack of them. Some believe that the American neocon clique is about to be knocked down at the feet of a reality it ignores. I think they are optimists. I believe that war is still their priority. They will not reform markets to share them more equitably. If they do they would risk losing control of resources and markets. For them fear of freefall would justify all actions. Renewed investment in the economy of war could save the energy project and the shrinking markets. With a deficit of hundreds of billions they cannot afford to stop the machinery. The new face in the White House has once again fallen into the void. Interests and ideology are inseparable. Invasions on foreign soil never include a real commitment to civilian services or the needs of citizens. The world knows that and allows it to continue. They are condemned by one discourse and justified by another. Neither approved nor censured. Merely silenced. We are sitting on a time bomb. Now we also have earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts, forest fires and the depletion of sources of fresh water. The excesses of a few and the hunger of many have set up camp both in democracies and in dictatorships. At the service of the US government and its crusades. Supporting oppressive dictatorships, the sale of arms to corrupt governments, secret machinations, undercover diplomacy. With the media by their side every inch of the way, moulding opinion. Legitimising interventionism. Precepts like advertising slogans to sell arms, politics, business, oil, war.’
To her it seemed devastating. It was a different world, just as he had said. She felt the urge to escape. Not from Dugati’s words, but from the precise time when there was no turning back from the present.
For Benedita the thought of the world being able to renew the established order looked quite impossible. However, there was a change. The least expected though the most drastic. Not by the action of politicians, nor by government measures, or the collaboration of NGOs. It was not thanks to religions, nor lobbying by human rights committees. The change was neither gradual nor planned. It happened overnight. It was the end for a world which had long been clamouring for a new outlook. It had arrived. It was not the caring approach that it clamoured for, nor the merciful awareness it hoped for. It was a cold and inevitable stance which demanded full and unconditional attention. That demanded by terror. The most atrocious act, dexterous in its capacity for destruction without damage to the integrity of any of mankind’s creations. Destruction only aimed at human lives.
What was happening was not alien to the old lady. She had known one war. This one was not how she suspected it to be nor one her late husband could ever have imagined. Her dearly departed husband had had to fight. He had been on the front line. She kept his medals together with his gold tooth and a bullet. The old lady knew about the subdued pride her beloved had felt for having taken part in such a just cause. The honour of serving. He would regale her with stories about how his platoon had conquered the hill, how they bravely ran on in spite of the burst of machine-gun fire. How the courageous platoon of fourteen had managed to take the bunker and capture the sniper in the trench. He had received his medal despite falling as part of the advance party. He had taken a bullet in the right buttock. He also regretted having been the only one to be decorated. While he was recovering, the platoon had again gone into action. The group of thirteen had been felled by a landmine. An ambush immediately afterwards had left them with no chance to defend themselves. They were left lying in the woods, their bodies abandoned with no hope of a decent burial. The old lady patiently reassured him that he had nothing to blame himself for. Every so often she would console him. His memories confused him as the order of events turned against him to make him feel responsible. He had only been as brave as his fellow soldiers. He had not withdrawn. How could he be at the front of the platoon if he could barely walk? She avoided using the word ‘luck’. She smiled to herself, grateful for the bullet which had saved his life. She could not tell her courageous captain that she felt nothing for the death of his soldiers. The only thing she cared about was that he had come back alive. She silently preferred love to honour. In the house where they had been so happy, all that now remained were these few souvenirs which the old lady took out of the ebony box and placed on the bed every Sunday. One by one she would take out the medals, letters, photos of his fellow soldiers. She would polish the bullet between her fingers, remembering the warmth of his skin. She would then leave it on the pillow where he no longer laid his head next to hers. Slowed down by the years, she re-read each of his seven letters. The only ones she had ever received from her husband during the only weeks in which life had separated them. They were expressions of love and honour. He did not want to upset her with the practical aspects of war. With her he used words nobody used on the front, in the trenches, or in hospitals, not even in the barracks. There the language used was that of reality. His letters were the artifice which brought some hope to the old lady. The honour of war and the words associated with it had resonated throughout so many stories. History nurtured the myth of the values of war by repeating its favoured terms: honour, heroic, victory. They tainted everyday life. Even the old lady’s wrinkled hands on the white linen sheets. There she rested the objects, an expression of honour. As played out from one century to the next, the old lady latched on to the same words she had heard on the lips of her beloved. Now the new generations had their opportunity. To start all over again. That was it. It was not clear to her where the danger came from this time. No matter. As she recalled him saying, we have to save the world.
‘Haven’t you heard about the war?’ the old lady asked Alina looking at her, eyes wide open, awaiting an answer, which did not come.
‘They call it the Third World War. But it is all happening in countries on the other side. It won’t affect us. Here nothing will harm us as long as we don’t have any soft drinks.’
Alina did not understand any of this. She could only perceive the danger and the need to protect Vera. The rest was a nightmare she had to overcome. Like the nightmare which had begun on the farm following her eleventh birthday and her father’s accident. She waited in vain for his return from hospital. She had seen him work tirelessly. With very little, he had rebuilt a ruined smallholding, turning it into a small treasure he looked after as if it were a grand estate. He had managed to afford the luxury of hiring a labourer for a couple of days a week. His dream had ended in misfortune. Just when life had begun to improve for the three of them, he had had the accident. Her father would not sit again in front of the brand new television. The labourer took to wearing his shoes. A few days later, his death. At her age she thought this only happened to animals, insects or plants. She carried on at school as if nothing had happened. Her mother had not even felt the need to let her know. As if that morning’s event had been banal, as if it was not worthy of her immediate presence. When Alina got home from school that afternoon her father was already in a box. The electricity which ran through her body drove her little hands. She wanted to open it even if she lost her fingernails. The box was sealed. She was not allowed to see him. The perplexing explanations, th
e adults’ meaningless words had dried her tears. Her mother barely put her hand on her shoulder while the labourer talked with some men in the kitchen, who later carried out the box and heaved it up onto the back of his own pickup. If she was going to wake up from that dream, that would have been the moment to do so. It had all been so quick. The priest was waiting for them at the cemetery standing beside next to the gravedigger. Apart from him, nobody said anything. The three of them sitting in the pickup cab – she herself, her mother and the labourer. Behind them her father leaving this life also unable to say a word.
From then on there was no more school. The new circumstances made themselves felt immediately. As dark a transformation as it was violent. A few days were enough to make it clear that the labourer was there to stay. It was explained to her in few words. He had helped her mother deal with her father’s death. Not only would he stay to carry on working, he would head the farm. He would take charge of everything, working hard to give them both a future. They had not said anything to her, but now the labourer also went into her parents’ bedroom. At night from her bed, Alina would wait until sleep won her over, listening out for the bedroom door which would not open again until the next morning. A few weeks later the priest’s visit surprised them all. It confirmed what she had not dared to imagine. ‘I’m glad you’ve decided to stay to look after them. From what I understand, I think you should marry.’ He said to the couple with a stern look. The labourer could not have predicted a better outcome. It was then that Alina cried for her father. Bitterly on the day of her mother’s wedding to the labourer. It was a Sunday on the way to the livestock market. She was the only witness. It was not a social event. Nothing that happened on the farm involved the community. It all took place behind closed doors.
The Vatican Games Page 4