by Carmel Bird
So here is the letter:
My Dear Roland, Brother in Christ,
I have just now replied to your email news regarding your impending visit to Rome. So many years have sped away since you came here, and I am delighted at the prospect of seeing you again and of spending precious days with you.
You will note the use of the word ‘precious’, and may imagine that I use it lightly, but this is not the case. The days are now more precious to me than they ever were. The hours, the minutes are precious as I approach my last moments on this lovely yet bedevilled earth. I pray that I may see you before I move on.
Over the years, as I have enjoyed your companionship and friendship via the truly miraculous medium of email, I have had at the back of my mind the notion that one day I will unburden myself to you on a matter that I believe, indeed I know, is of deep importance to yourself. Forgive me if this letter appears to be unduly verbose. I do realise that in unburdening myself I am placing a burden on your shoulders, and for this I am truly sorry. I have tried, but I can find no way around this dilemma. I therefore offer you this burden as a gift.
May I take you back to that rainy night in 1994? As I write that date my hand feels a little unsteady. Do I proceed? I must. I felt at the time that you had a central and specific role to play in the whole process of the robbery. It is a saga, Roland. In this regard I confess that sometimes when I think or speak or write your name I hear the line from King Lear, from Edgar, and I hear the Browning poem, and the final lines ring and raddle in my mind’s ear:
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.’
Whereupon the dreadful images of desolation and the empty quest force themselves across my imaginative landscape and I am flooded with thoughts of the dangerous quest and of the malevolent guide, seeing myself as that guide, and I am occasionally overwhelmed with the spectre of blind meaninglessness and the wasteland that is my soul’s country.
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend.
My faith has not, as you may be imagining, deserted me; I simply wish to alert you to some of the pitfalls of the salamander of my very human imagination.
I am taking my farewell of you here, in case I am unable to do so in the flesh, having died before the time of your arrival here. If I am truthful, I prefer to compose this farewell and this confession in a missive than to deliver it face to face, eye to eye, to put it into the air of that earthly room in which we might find ourselves together. I believe, dear Roland, that we do see eye to eye, you and I, and I trust that you will be with me heart to heart as I tell you my tale. ‘Farewell of each friend.’ You, Roland, are such a dear and marvellous friend, perhaps you do not know how dear. Forgive me if I appear to spell things out, for I feel I must chronicle this strange and troubling matter in fine and sometimes shocking detail.
You have explained to me how your mother has displayed a lifelong devotion to the Bambinello, how you suspect that Callianthe invoked our specific image and manifestation of the Holy Child with regard to your own conception, and how this devotion became only stronger after the tragedy of the loss of your sister Eleena. That the statue disappeared on the very night of your arrival in the Holy City is a condition that may be viewed in a number of ways. We have never discussed these ways, perhaps because such matters can appear to dwell in the realm of fantasy and whimsy, and are sometimes best left undisturbed. They do perhaps in truth dwell in the realm of the miraculous, a perilous realm at the best of times.
I feel I must now set them out if I am truly to unburden myself of the thoughts and truths that trouble me. Over time I have been in contact with Diana Castillo whose life work is, as you know, to complete her late husband’s vast compendium of the Black Virgins, and as a result of this contact I have also come to know Rosita Vienna. Rosita has taken on the task of seeking the Lost Child with great and even mystic enthusiasm and insight. To see the energy and dedication that Rosita brought to her self-appointed task was to me quite heartbreaking, and you will see why as my story unfolds for you.
In the rather arrogant hope, and for want of any better idea, of keeping Rosita – what? – ‘entertained’ is the word that sadly now and rather impishly springs to my mind, a thin word in the circumstance – I directed the two ladies, along with little Corazón of course, to the Paris convent of Le Sourire de l’Enfant Jésus. You will in due course realise why I selected the word ‘entertained’. I had in my possession a little facsimile of the statue of the cherry-wood Virgin at Le Sourire, you may well have observed it on the study shelf. On impulse I gave the statue to Corazón – she seemed to be a little troubled and distracted at the time, a teenage girl with only two old ladies for company in Rome. I imagine that my own unconscious was very active in all this, as you will see.
Le Sourire is a convent of very ancient origin, built on the site of a spring, once dedicated to Venus, where a gentleman out hunting came upon the cherry-wood statue of a woman that was floating in the waters. It held the child cradled in its arms, but soon afterwards the child disappeared and has never been found. It was a miraculous statue of the Black Virgin and appeared in a vision, shortly after its discovery, to a woman whose baby had just died. The legend tells that the statue was holding in her arms the minute living incarnation of the woman’s own child, and that the child was returned to the mother.
The convent became celebrated for the numerous miracles of this type. A mother would bring her dead baby to the turntable gate at the convent, and would then retire to the church to invoke the Black Virgin. Sometimes, when the woman returned to the turntable her child would be there, sleeping peacefully, alive, breathing, sweet with its own radiant innocence. In later centuries and in more cynical times, whores and unwed mothers of all kinds would bring their unwanted children to the turntable and deposit them there in order that the sisters might recycle them in the form of miracles. Children born within the convent walls were also given out in this way to the mothers of dead babies. There was a time before the Revolution, according to documents discovered in the archives of the cathedral in distant Boulogne-sur-Mer, when babies were in fact farmed within the convent walls at Le Sourire. Shall we ever know where the facts of these matters lie? And does it matter?
In the present day the sisters run an orphanage and hospital, and also a refuge for unwed mothers. If this sounds quaint in this day and age, I am sorry, but what I tell you is the truth. I have made several visits to Le Sourire and I am in fact a patron of the convent.
The babies born there bring great joy into the world, as babies should. Well, in this case they bring joy to everyone, except the mothers who give birth to them, since these babies have been promised to client families, mostly in America. It is curious, is it not, that in these times there should still be an endless supply of unwanted pregnancies while yet there is a shortage of fertility? You know how my mind tends to dwell on paradox. It seems to me to be curious, as if all the so-called ‘wonderful’ modern techniques of contraception and birth control might count for nothing – babies will come into the world no matter what. Do not ask what God is thinking, ask rather what mankind is thinking.
A most curious fact is the fact of infertility. I discussed this with Mother Josette at Le Sourire, and she explained that her American clientele are women who suffer unbelievable and endless difficulty in achieving motherhood. In my comparative ignorance I imagine that just as the climate of the globe is changing, so the internal climate of human fertility is changing too. Is that a strange thought? I believe it is not so very strange. Not only are these women completely desperate to have children, to adopt them and even to employ the girls at Le Sourire as surrogates, but they are prepared and able to subsidise the work at the convent by the donation of truly enormous sums of money.
These details of the history of Le Sourire are relevant to the story
I am telling you, for they underline the complexity of the faith that is bound up in our statue, and also demonstrate how the central matter of childbirth and the child runs deep and beautiful in the structure of our faith, as well as deep in the human soul – body, heart, mind, soul. In a more light-hearted footnote to this narrative, I must tell you that the convent is often referred to as ‘La Souris’, in reference to the little wooden mouse that peeps from beneath the Virgin’s wooden robe, as much as in crooked reference to ‘Le Sourire’.
I knew that Diana would be interested in collecting material from the convent archives for her book, and I also knew that Rosita would be very happy (hence ‘entertained’) and diverted to see the many statues of the Infant Jesus that the Sisters have collected over the centuries. For Rosita was determined to discover the lost Bambinello, and had developed a keen interest in all places where there is a reverence for the image of the Holy Child. These statues are housed in the subterranean Chapelle des Enfants which is deeply dark and mysterious, lit, need I say, with a blaze of candles and tended night and day by a roster of vigilant Sisters. There are many types of different statues, some of which are facsimiles of such celebrated figures as the Infant of Prague and the Bambinello. It is said that in the flickering candlelight the statues can be seen to smile. Myself I find the Chapelle des Enfants quite eerie and disturbing, although many people find it a place of great inspiration and spiritual healing. Rosita was apparently particularly moved by her visit.
I cannot now decide whether my sending Rosita to Le Sourire was a kind or an unkind act on my part. I pray it was not unkind. Rosita, who is I believe something of a powerful and prophetic dreamer, has written to me saying that she apparently had several dreams in which she saw that the True Bambinello was to be found hidden among fine copies of himself. That would be a very neat trick, you would agree. She examined the works in the Chapelle des Enfants but to her great disappointment discovered them all to be copies – wood, plaster, wax, stone – copies.
I hesitate to tell you, even now, but I really must explain to you, Roland, that I myself was one of the children from the orphanage at Le Sourire.
I can never really know my own history, for the records are systematically destroyed, or at least securely concealed. I sometimes think that my close bond with the Bambinello is bound up with my sad origins. I was adopted, was in fact bought by a couple – my mother was Italian, my father English – from the Sisters at Le Sourire, and I was brought up in Somerset. When I tried to follow my bloodline, my search ended at Le Sourire, where there are no real records kept.
I have an affection for the beautiful cherry-wood Black Virgin at Le Sourire. You once remarked upon its mysterious half smile. You realise I have no memories of the convent from my early life. I left there before my first birthday. However whenever I return I am conscious that deep down I am somehow very familiar with the place. The perfume of honey and lavender and wax goes straight to my heart of hearts.
Now, you and I have sometimes discussed the matter of Furta Sacra, and indeed this doctrine and its workings are to a degree central to the story I must tell you.
I now return to the Christmas of 1993. During the celebrations that year, when the Bambinello was frequently moved about, as he always is at Christmas, I had occasion to observe for the first time something strange about a deep and ancient scratch on the back of his head. The paint on this scratch had flaked ever so slightly and it was clear to me that this statue was not made from wood. It was in fact plaster, apparently weighted with some marble fragments in the base.
I searched and searched the archives and other documents for an explanation, and I told nobody about my discovery. I prayed for enlightenment and guidance. Perhaps it did not even matter that he was not what he seemed, I told myself. Perhaps the real statue had disappeared long ago and had been replaced without record or comment. So far so good. This state of affairs could have continued. I could have had the scratch discreetly repaired. I could have kept vigil over the statue for the rest of my life to ensure nobody should discover the truth about it.
Imagine, then, my distress when I learned that in March the following year a group of archaeologists from Texas was due to examine the Bambinello as part of a study of ancient miraculous figures in Italian and Spanish churches. In short, the authenticators were on their way like a marauding barbarian tribe, and the Bambinello, my beloved Bambinello, would be exposed as a disgraceful fraud. Fraud would be a matter of monumental, indeed infinite, distress to the faithful, some of whom have devoted their lives to dedication of the Bambinello. It appeared to me that I had been assigned the task of saving him and us from this ignominy, and from all the anguish it would cause to such honest believers as your own mother, believers who are, as you know, legion.
I did not act entirely alone. I prayed. I prayed as I said for divine guidance, and the idea kept coming back to me over and over again like a message: if the statue were stolen, all would be, insofar as it could be, well. All would be well. Fervently I believed this.
The notion would not go away, it took hold of my being. I took it to be the answer to my prayers for guidance. By little coincidences, documents and texts concerning Furta Sacra kept appearing on my desk, making themselves prominent on the bookshelves. I even had a request (from, as it happened, the people at the university in Texas) to write a paper on the subject of Furta Sacra for a conference they were organising in Lausanne.
My reasoning was this: ‘If the Original has absented himself, and if I can become the instrument whereby the Copy disappears, I must be working within the field of Furta Sacra. I am being asked to perform this task. I have been given this responsibility.’ I am still unable to see past the logic of this line of reasoning, try as I might. I consulted nobody but Christ and His Mother and St Francis, and in the end I believe myself to have been operating under instruction. I believe this, Roland.
I now pass on these facts to you in all the confidence and secrecy that applies to a sincere Confession, for I cannot die with this matter on my soul.
In that swift twilight moment before you yourself arrived at the shrine, I executed the theft and placed the statue, along with an antique wax statue of the Infant of Prague that I had had in my possession for many years, in a carton. I sent the carton off by courier to Le Sourire in Paris. In a sudden blinding access of guilt, I considered keeping the crown here, for I believed it to be the very crown conferred upon the Bambinello by the Pope. I could of course have been mistaken in this, for perhaps the true crown had long since disappeared. You see my problem. In any case, I quickly realised that to take the statue without the crown would only complicate matters further. So I left the statue just as it was.
I say I sent the two statues by ‘courier’, but I probably should explain that by this I mean Antonio and Ulisse whom you met several times when you were here. I am not sure whether you realised the nature of their business – it involves the clandestine international transport of goods and sometimes persons. As you are aware, the links between the Confessional and the Underworld are strategic and unbreakable. And Antonio and Ulisse had, in any case, no knowledge of what was inside the carton.
Once before I had sent the Sisters in Paris a handsome miniature marble Infant of Prague, which had been left to me by a gentleman in Florence. So my gift of the Bambinello was not without precedent. The two statues I sent this time were rather similar in size and age, two excellent copies of their miraculous selves, both in golden robes, the Infant looking of course more cheerful and friendly than the Bambinello. The Sisters, who tirelessly and selflessly and without critical analysis tend to their collection, thanked me kindly in a profuse letter written in an elegant hand in purple ink in a most nostalgic form of French. The robes on the statues were described as being the colour of English marmalade – something that had not, I must say, ever occurred to me, but I realised the Sisters were quite right.
This letter of theirs came to me some months after the brouhaha concerning the dis
appearance had all but died down. The quaint old-fashioned Sisters decorated the letter with some well-preserved and exquisite white violets – one of their enterprises is the drying of flowers for the craft industry worldwide. (As a little footnote I must tell you that they use a particularly fine type of orris root which they import from a flower farm in Tasmania – I fancy it could be the farm belonging to Cora’s family.)
I expect that my tale of theft and concealment may be very shocking to you, my dear Roland. Please bear with me and afford me if you will the benefit of the doubt. It was not a sacrilegious act, I tell you as I tell myself, since the statue was only a copy of the Original. And I believe that I was acting within Furta Sacra.
For one thing I worked in the simple hope that the series of events might after all bring back the work that was once painted by the angels to its rightful home here in the Aracoeli. This is the truth. I felt in my arrogance that I was the instrument of this grace, and perhaps indeed I was. Time will tell. Time only will tell. I also regarded my action in sending him to the Sisters at Le Sourire as a gesture of gratitude for my own life, a life which was originally saved by their sanctuary and good will. Time will tell.