The Vatican Games

by Alejandra Guibert

  The new husband had decided that the girl should help them on the farm. This was no time to be studying. The bank was not granting loans and her father had left nothing but debts. That was one of the explanations which seemed totally incomprehensible to Alina. The brusque transformation took her unawares. She had led a simple but good life before the danger. She knew life could be gentle and sweet. She had experienced such moments with her father. As time passed, the violence that the new husband began to inflict upon them made no sense to her. Nor would the deaths on television later on.

  Saving the world. Conspiracy theorists were shouting from the rooftops that, in their final attempt at oppression, the neocons had provided weapons against their own security to enable them later on to save the world. Theories were recycled. A state of siege was declared and the army took over.

  People around the world and their governments were too weakened by the cataclysm to offer any strong opposition. Retaliation was neither approved nor condemned by the international community. The silence was even greater than the horror. The terrorist attack had been virtually unilateral, as had its consequences. That was reason enough for the superpower’s counterattack, which hailed from the cowboy era: wild Indians against armies in defence of justice. Except that losses now were vastly more costly in terms of human lives and destruction. The flag of democracy had been left in tatters by the constant battering which preceded the cataclysm. These events, as though in a pressure cooker, were condensed before the explosion.

  The world had divided unsustainably. The disaster movie had become part of life. A conclusion was expected. With everyone gripped on the edge of their seats in front of the screen, almost without breathing the denouement unfolded. Shiny missiles shot out in all directions. Against all Jeffersonian principles, the manoeuvre ensued in a burst of vengeance, almost unplanned. Justification tied on to missiles like messenger doves of death. With decades of preparation costing millions and ideals and guarantees of human progress. So similar it was like holding up a mirror to past empires justifying their claims of civilization.

  With self-proclaimed right, the US launched the most brutal attack in history. The Forty-Day War had started. Missiles fell in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The confusion which reigned following the bioterrorist attack was equalled and surpassed by that of retaliation. The destruction made it impossible to tend to the injured, care for the displaced, distribute food. It was not only civil and military chaos. Governments of countries suffering the onslaught were disabled, giving way to another military force for a third assault. Retaliation by those who had suffered retaliation. This time against Israel. The counterattack on Israel brought out the disciples of the prophecies of destruction.

  The convent closed its eyes to the horror. Father Zillo urged the community to pray night and day. Not only was it the only thing they could do, he would tell them, it was essential. Only Benedita interrupted her prayers to find out about the world. Mother Teresa understood that Father Zillo would not want to keep them up to date about the devastation.

  “See, Sister, read this piece,’ Dugati invited Benedita to sit by his side while he searched for a document in his laptop. ‘I don’t think it goes against your beliefs. The way things are, I don’t think it’s just coincidence. Have you heard of Nostradamus? Please read this paragraph. In his predictions he talks about the end of the world, the karmic mass and the prelude to the arrival of the Antichrist.’ He handed her his laptop.

  Benedita read the piece through to the end. The coincidences with recent events were staggering:

  ‘National territorial operations under false pretexts and their culmination in the Third World War will lead to the extermination of practically the entire population. Eight bombs will explode in eight cities of the USA on the same day. Although incapable of recovery, big brother USA will counterattack with all its might against the Muslim world. China will supply arms to Muslim countries reduced to a mountain of rubble in six days, with hatred against the USA directed at Israel. Social turmoil and the weakening of political structures will promote the arrival of the Antichrist. The USA, at the mercy of a natural disaster, will be devastated as a nation, creating conflict, despair and destitution. In economic ruin, it will be hard put to deal with the disaster. Another three powerful nations will send help to assist its citizens. Changes will come about which will help the Antichrist take over the world and use populations like slaves.’

  It was real events articulating the prophetic words. Benedita was not disturbed nor, as usual, did she share the predictions with the community. Even though at that point she could not explain why, she still had hope, she told Dugati. She had never felt so calm, as if she had a sense of the future. She was also very selective about what information she passed on to Mother Teresa. She had enough to do dealing with Sister Eulalia and her increasingly frequent panic attacks.

  When governments had almost given up on finding a way out, the last report of the last death reached the news agencies. In a few months the terrorist pandemic and the war which followed had annihilated half the world population seven hundred years on from the Great Plague of the 14th century initiated on the steppes of Central Asia. This time it had begun in the city which was the symbol of economic power, the steppe of the capitalist world spreading throughout the territory like a lit fuse. The warmongering drive came to an end in a final death rattle of violence. Neighbours exchanged shocked looks as if they had never seen each other before. The events were kept in the silence of incredulity.

  PART II

  Darkness had seeped into her. She had remained bound to that instant which lay between life and death. Alina no longer watched television. Inexplicable as it was, she had understood everything. She needed to know no more. With no outlook for the future, her inner pace became attuned to the quiescence of the old lady and her daydreams. As she became familiar with the housework routines in the old lady’s house, Alina began to adopt a leisurely rhythm which bore her along from chore to chore throughout the day until nightfall. Chores became routine. Some of them utterly unnecessary, a pointless repetition of the past. The ritual waxing of the floor, whose shine the old lady could barely discern. Polishing a few bits of silverware, briefly aired before being relegated once more to the darkest depths of the sideboard. Cleaning mirrors which no longer played host to any human reflection other than the drifting shadow of the old lady with her bowed head. The old house continued to be well looked after, regardless. Decades of routine resisting the futility of the present, in readiness each day, irrespective of any purpose. Perhaps awaiting the arrival of others or of a day when life would once again take over.

  The things that kept Alina busy hardly affected her life or that of the old lady. She failed to notice the redundancy of her actions. She rarely went to Vera in her new static perception of time. The hours passed by slowly but surely, evolving into something closer to the essence of being. Vera would suckle at her mother’s breast whenever they had contact, absorbing the few words her mother murmured to her from her new, mesmerising world.

  The silence of the days was barely broken by Vera’s occasional crying announcing that it was time for her feed. It was a sound that brought her mother to life like no other. It dispelled the half-darkness to reward her with few minutes of rapture a day. In a natural, close communion without reservation or aspiration; without artifice or conditions. As if under a brief spell, she would be infused with light emanating from Vera in spite of the surroundings. Free from the past, without future. Only the precise time of being. Save for those intervals of restorative feeding, day after day Vera went from the darkness of the day to the moonlit window at night.

  The simplicity of the day-to-day routine brought the two women of otherwise disparate generations closer together. They shared an almost wordless understanding, sensing each other in the silence. They echoed each other more than either of them could grasp. Their apathy bound them closer than their obvious social standings separated them. The world was s
hut off from their daily contact.

  Once a month the old lady went into the pantry with Alina. She would stand before the tins, bags and boxes of dried food. Each month she would say the same thing, without the slightest inflection in her voice. Like a script she had acted out too many times, made monotonous by the indifference of time.

  ‘I can’t see properly. What else do we need? We’ll order only what we need. We aren’t given to extravagance anymore.’ Struggling to emerge briefly from her stupor, Alina would respond.

  ‘Write it down, please.’ The old lady would hand her the yellowed paper and the pencil she had sharpened unnecessarily before entering the pantry. With Alina by her side, dictating what she had written, only just intelligibly, the old lady placed the order for those depleted provisions. Once a fortnight they would open the door to receive a basket of fruit and vegetables which would soon also dry up or be consumed, just like the old lady and her maid. It was the only source of life entering the house where everything seemed to be motionless and unchanging save for the bluish light surrounding Vera in her cot.

  Outside, the world continued to bustle. Surviving populations were relocated to make way for reconstruction, as urgent a task as it was painful. Life in those cities which had not suffered a direct hit gradually returned to normal over a few months. There was a palpable feeling of relief at the encouraging news. The convent celebrated with psalmodies the diluted version of the news that Benedita passed on from Dugati. The first world directive for a ceasefire and general amnesty was followed by the start of the sixty-day summit to reformulate a physically and morally ruined world. One by one, practical solutions for the new order were suggested, debated, approved and eventually adopted by consensus. The G20 spread their arms to become the G35, welcoming developing countries that were rich in oil and reserves. China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia. The G35 and representatives of UN Member States met while the stench of death was still rising to the sky like a rancid prayer. This time the world that had plodded on with no sense of urgency had been shaken by its own reality. The new world order had decided to stop looking the other way. Step by step a natural balance took over to alter the weights on the scales. The world that emerged from the destruction was being remade.

  Once normal banking activity had been resumed, Father Zillo no longer went to the convent with their monthly allowance. The Vatican needed him more than ever to operate within the new economic structure in order to survive. Invited as the Vatican’s financial representative, Zillo took part in hearings and round tables, within think tanks summoned to work towards establishing a world at peace.

  ‘I have some important news to read to you, my dear Mother.’ Over the phone, he read out an excerpt from the universal decree to Mother Teresa. ‘From now on the world will count on each and every survivor, it will no longer be possible to survive without genuine cooperation. Governments are to have a level playing field. Many have not played a role in the past. The world will now be able to settle that debt.’ Nations have finally voted to establish foundations for a new society and it was unanimous.’

  The world was barely able to hold itself together when, in an unprecedented summit, the new G35 and the UN General Assembly drafted a world constitution which would prevent new threats. Just as in 1945, world leaders were queuing up to sign a peace agreement. Once the summit was over, the UN took political control of the world. The World Government was born.

  America had no choice but to abide by the latest rules of the new order. The rekindled international mistrust in the superpower compounded the devastation of its farming infrastructure, with land ending up not only unproductive, but toxic. Now that time was not measured in incinerations, cleanups, health controls, safety and aid for the population, procedures were traced and details of the cataclysm came to light. Purging or absorption of the pathogens would take years, or longer. The US countryside would be a noxious cauldron for generations to come.

  America depended on this new world to put their infected soil to another use. Most of the land was assigned to the generation of solar and wind power. Their operations in distant lands sought new ways to generate revenue. A new attempt at rising from the ashes. The US made commendable efforts to overcome disaster. Like a vast wasteland, its barren land and its landscape were covered in wind turbines and solar panels. The American countryside was slowly becoming one huge power plant, its skin covered in silver scales and long white splinters rising to the blue sky, as if the only thing alive were the air. Extensive wind farms buzzing constantly were a sign of danger to all forms of life tempted to approach the ground where only metallic spikes could survive. Paper-thin rolls of solar material were printed in Germany like newspapers. Giant solar power plants with huge mirrors extracted what the northern soil could not provide in a forgotten world where five billion had lived with no energy. Now thermal storage systems not only ensured abundance in the supply of energy but the second coming of the growth boom. More significant was the second coming of Latin America. Reinstated as the granary of the world it now made up for the systemic barrenness of its northerly neighbours by exporting round the clock. Brazil, with its endless reserves of fresh water in its innumerable rivers, became a saviour of the thirsty North by exporting clean water used for drinking, food preparation and supplying the various industries that now kept it afloat.

  The structure of global labour and production adapted tamely to the drastic changes in the world after the cataclysm and the Third World War. It was decided at the summit that foodstuffs and agricultural products should be produced locally where the earth was fertile and water had not been contaminated.

  The new G35 injected money into the markets and banks, with the creation of a new world authority for financial and banking control to guarantee stability. Measures were applied globally to end trade wars which had already begun. After the removal of protectionism, thirty seven tax havens were eliminated and with them money laundering and the mafias.

  With investment by emerging Asian economies buying companies, merging with fallen countries from the old First World, a single world economy took shape. Shared interests enabled alliances to be forged. Suddenly all the proposals, excuses, alibis were removed like an iron curtain that had proved impossible to raise under the weight of individual interests.

  What happened beyond the frontiers of the house was alien to Alina and the old woman. It was as if they had started out on a self-absorbing, lethargic race with death as the finishing line. When Alina stopped eating, the old lady also failed to notice that the daily chores were often left undone. The intervals between stocking the pantry became increasingly longer. Fresh food would spoil before the old lady, with her weak appetite, had got around to consuming it. Almost without knowing where the day began or ended, the hours of sleep would lengthen to shorten time. In the darkness of the house, the old lady’s tired eyes did not see the dust gathering nor the cobwebs dangling across the corners awaiting the denouement. One by one the usual household noises faded away. Alina’s toing and froing, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the dining room. The old lady no longer missed the chimes which in another era she had anticipated with an aficionado’s zeal. She barely heard Vera’s inconsolable crying as she clamoured in vain to be fed.

  That morning as usual, the old lady, who could only just manage to shuffle from room to room, rang the bell she used instead of her voice. The minutes stretched on as she waited just like the increasingly loud grating sound that came from Vera’s vocal chords, now clamouring for dear life. There was nothing that might be holding up her maid except the vital duty of feeding her baby. Why was the child crying if she was with her mother? If she had been ill, she would have told her. Alina had never gone out without telling her and it was simply impossible that Alina could not hear the piercing sound of the bell. She rang it at intervals almost certain that her maid would not come. If she did not answer Vera’s bawling, it was even less likely she would answer the bell let alone the cracked, weakene
d voice of an old lady. The routine and peace which were her only consolation were disrupted. With the passing of the hours and the fixed attention the old lady directed for the first time to Vera’s rhythmic crying, a forgotten feeling began to take hold. A shift away from the emotional paucity that had settled over her life – an event barely reflected in her eyes. It was expressed by her hands through the sound of alarm she had initiated. With each ring she felt unfettered concern taking root. The instinctive, primal response which was reborn in spite of her wrinkles. The protective instinct which despite herself revived what seemed barren. Little by little her indifference was transformed like the inside of a magician’s hat revealing a symbolic white dove. It was the child who asked her. The transformation was complete. As though on a high-level mission, the old lady, not without effort, ventured to the room at the back passing through the drawing room, dining room, kitchen and pantry. She had hardly any strength left when she poked her head in before entering. The scene was unequivocal. She had almost sensed it beforehand. At last with a superhuman impulse she lifted up the crying baby and removed her from the room like a fireman saving the last victim of a fire. The old lady who was already so much closer to death did not need to approach the bed to check whether Alina was breathing or touch her skin to understand. Without much thought, with an intuition that came from years of a spiritual bond with her deceased loved one, the old woman understood Alina’s death to have a bigger significance than the circumstances surrounding it. The implications would be revealed at the right time.