THE NOSTRADAMUS PROPHECIES
Page 13
‘It’s in gobbledegook.’
‘No it’s not. It’s written in reverse. All we need to do is to find a mirror and we should be able to disentangle it.’
‘How do you know they were looking for it?’
‘Logic, Macron. Look. They broke in here for a purpose. That purpose was to steal the Virgin. But the eye-man was also here. They succeeded in driving him away, though, leaving Sabir, the gypsy and the gardien alone in the Sanctuary. But the old man is bewildered by it all and is too old to take charge, so he obeys Sabir and trots off back to the office to phone. The two of them could easily have managed to take the Virgin with them then. She’s only around seventy centimetres tall and hardly weighs anything. But they don’t. They leave her behind. And why do they do that? Because they already have what they came for. Bring me that torch.’
‘But it’s evidence. There may be fingerprints on it.’
‘Just bring me the torch, Macron.’ Calque turned the paper over. ‘Now we’ll shine it against the writing.’
‘Ah. That’s clever. No need of a mirror.’
‘Take this down in your notebook:
‘Il sera ennemi et pire qu’ayeulx Il naistra en fer, de serpente mammelle Le rat monstre gardera son secret Il sera mi homme et mi femelle’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Don’t you understand your own language?’ ‘Well, of course I do.’ ‘Then you decipher it.’
‘Well, the first line reads “He will be an enemy and worse…’’ ’ Macron hesitated. ‘ “…than anyone before him.” ’
‘ “He will be born in iron…” ’
‘ “…of Hell’, Macron. Enfer means Hell. Ignore the fact that it’s been split in two. People aren’t born of iron.’
‘ “…of Hell,’ then, ‘with the nipple of a serpent…” ’
‘ “…he will suckle from a serpent’s breast.” ’
Macron sighed. He exhaled loudly, as if he had just hefted a set of massive weights in the gym. ‘The monstrous rat will hide his secret…” ’
‘Go on.’
‘ “ He will be half man and half woman.” ’
‘Excellent. But the last line may also be read as “He will be neither man nor woman.” ’
‘How do you work that one out?’
‘Because of the clue given in line one. The use of the word ‘ennemi’. It implies that when mi reappears, the em should be changed to en.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘Have you never done crosswords?’
‘They didn’t have crosswords in medieval France.’
‘They had better than crosswords. They had the Kabbalah. It was normal practice to disguise or codify one word by using another. Just as the author has done in line three, with rat monstre. It’s an anagram. We know that because the two words are followed by the word secret, which acts as the pointer. Just like in crosswords. Again.’
‘How do you know all these things?’
‘It’s a little thing called a classical education. Linked to another little thing called common sense. It’s something they obviously failed to teach you people down in that bidonville of a school of yours in Marseille.’
Macron allowed the insult to wash over him. For once in his life he found himself more interested in the case than in himself. ‘Who do you think wrote this stuff? And why are these maniacs after it?’
‘Do you want my honest opinion?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Devil.’
Macron’s mouth dropped open. ‘You’re not serious?’
Calque folded up the sheet of paper and put it in his pocket. ‘Of course I’m not serious. The Devil doesn’t bother to write people billets-doux, Macron. Hell always comes by Express Delivery.’
52
Yola sat up higher in her seat. ‘Look. There’s going to be a wedding.’ She turned and stared critically at the two men. ‘I shall have to wash and mend your clothes. You can’t appear in public like that. And you’ll need jackets and ties.’
‘My clothes are fine as they are, thank you.’ Sabir turned to Yola. ‘And how the Hell did you work that one out about the wedding? We haven’t even arrived in the camp yet.’
Alexi let out a snort. He lay sprawled across the back seat, with his bandaged head propped comfortably against the window. ‘Are all you gadjes blind? We’ve already passed four caravans on the way here. Where do you think they’re going?’
‘To a funeral? To another of your Krisses?’
‘Did you notice the faces of the women?’
‘No.’
‘Well, if you used your eyes for once - like a gypsy - you would have seen that the women were excited, not sad.’ He ran his finger around the inside of his mouth, testing the new geography. ‘Have you got fifty euros on you?’
Sabir switched his attention back to the road. ‘That will scarcely be enough to buy you a new set of gold teeth.’
Alexi grimaced. ‘Have you got them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well give them to me. I’m going to have to pay someone to watch the car.’
‘What are you talking about, Alexi?’
‘Just what I said before. If you don’t pay someone to watch it, someone else will strip it clean. They’re thieves, these people.’
‘What do you mean, “these people”? They’re your people, Alexi.’
‘I know that. That’s why I know they’re thieves.’
***
Sabir and Alexi had been allocated the corner of one of Alexi’s cousins’ caravans. Alexi was recuperating on the single cot, with Sabir seated below him, on the floor.
‘Show me the pistol, Alexi. I want to see why it misfired.’
‘It didn’t misfire. It just didn’t fire at all. I would have had him. Straight through the nose.’
‘You know about safety catches?’
‘Of course I know about safety catches. What do you think I am? An idiot?’
‘And you know about cocking?’
‘Cocking? What’s cocking?’
‘Ah.’ Sabir sighed. ‘Before you can shoot an automatic pistol, you have to pull back this catch here and cock it. It’s called locking and loading in the military.’
‘Putain. I thought it worked like a revolver.’
‘Only revolvers work like revolvers, Alexi. Here. Try it.’
‘Hey. It’s easy.’
‘Stop pointing it at me.’
‘It’s all right, Adam. I’m not going to shoot you. I don’t hate gadjes that bad.’
‘I’m very relieved to hear it.’ Sabir frowned. ‘So tell me, Alexi. Where’s Yola gone?’
‘To be with the women.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that we won’t see her so much for a while. Not like when we’re on the road.’
Sabir shook his head. ‘I don’t get this gypsy split between men and women, Alexi. And what’s all this about impurities and polluting people? What did she call it? Mah … something or other.’
‘Mahrimé.’
‘It’s normal. There are things that pollute and things that don’t pollute.’
‘Like hedgehogs.’
‘Yes. Hedgehogs are clean. So are horses. They don’t lick their own genitals. Dogs and cats are filthy.’
‘And women?’
‘They don’t do that either. What do you think? That they’re contortionists?’
Sabir slapped the sole of Alexi’s foot. ‘I’m serious. I really want to know.’
‘It’s complicated. Women can pollute when they’re bleeding. When that happens, a woman can’t hold someone else’s baby, for instance. Or touch a man. Or cook. Or walk over a broom. Or do anything, really. That’s why a woman must never be above a man. In a bunk, say. Or in a house. He would be polluted.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I tell you, Adam. In my father’s time it used to be worse. Gypsy men could not travel on the Paris Metro, in case, by accident, a gypsy woman would be on the pavement above them. Food had to be placed outside the house, in case a woman walked on the floor above it. Or touched it with her dress.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m very serious. And why do you think Yola asked me to be in the room with you when she showed you the coffer?’
‘Because she wanted to involve you?’
‘No. Because it is not right for an unmarried woman to be alone in a room with a bed in it, in company with a man who is not her brother or her father. Also you were a gadje and that made you mahrimé.’
‘So that’s why the old woman back at the camp wouldn’t eat with me?’
‘You’ve got it. She would have polluted you.’
‘She would have polluted me? But I thought I would have polluted her?’
Alexi made a face. ‘No. I was wrong. You haven’t got it.’
‘And then all this stuff with women wearing long dresses. And yet Yola doesn’t seem to mind baring her breasts in public. I’m thinking of during the funeral.’
‘Breasts are for feeding children.’
‘Well I know that…’
‘But a woman shouldn’t show her knees. That’s not good. It’s up to her not to inflame her father-in-law’s passions. Or those of men other than her husband. Knees can do that.’
‘But what about all the women here in France? You see them in the street all the time. Hell, they bare just about everything.’
‘But they are payos. Or gadje. They don’t count.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘Now you are one of us, Adam, you matter. Not as much as a real gypsy, maybe. But you matter.’
‘Thank you for that. I’m very relieved.’
‘Maybe we even get you a wife some day. Someone ugly. Whom no one else wants.’
‘Fuck you, Alexi.’
53
‘There’s going to be a wedding.’
‘A wedding?’ Calque looked up from the library book he was working on.
‘Yes. I talked to the chief of the Gourdon gendarmerie just as you suggested. There have been caravans arriving for three days now. They’ve even drafted in two extra officers in case of disturbances. Drunks. Trouble with the townspeople. That sort of thing.’
‘Any movement of our trio?’
‘None. I suspect they’re going to be here for the duration. Especially if one of them is injured. Their car is parked at the periphery of the camp. Frankly, they must be mad. A brand-new Audi in that place? It’s like waving a pair of used panties in front of a teenager.’
‘Your metaphor lacks both grace and merit, Macron.’
‘I’m sorry, Sir.’ Macron searched around for something neutral to say. Some harmless way of diffusing his anger at the situation Calque was placing them in. ‘What are you doing, Sir?’
‘I’m trying to decode this anagram. At first I thought rat monstre was simply an anagram for monastère. That it meant that the secret of whatever it is these people are searching for will be kept in a monastery.’
‘But there aren’t enough letters for that. Look. There are too many tees and not enough ees.’
‘I know that.’ Calque scowled at him. ‘I’ve realised that. However, I was making the perfectly reasonable assumption that the author of this verse may have been using an antiquated spelling - monastter, for instance. Or montaster.’
‘But it’s not that?’
‘No. Now I’m looking through this book for other sites in France which have Black Virgins. Perhaps we’ll get to it that way.’
‘But why does it have to be in France?’
‘What are you talking about, Macron?’
‘Why does the place in which this secret is hidden have to be in France? Why not in Spain?’
‘Explain yourself.’
‘My mother is very Catholic, Sir. Particularly so, I should say. When I was a child, she would frequently take us the few hundred kilometres down the coast to Barcelona. By train. On the Estérel. It was her idea of a day out.’
‘Get to the point, Macron. I haven’t got time to listen to stories of your happy childhood holidays just now.’
‘No, Sir. I’m coming to the point. Near Barcelona, not far from Terrassa, lies one of Spain’s holiest shrines. It’s called Montserrat. I don’t remember if there’s a Black Virgin there, but it’s one of the spiritual homes of the Jesuits. St Ignatius de Loyola hung up his armour there after he decided to become a monk. My mother is particularly fond of the Jesuits, you see.’
Calque rocked back in his chair. ‘Macron. For once in your life you’ve succeeded in surprising me. Perhaps we’ll make a detective of you yet.’ He began leafing through the book. ‘Yes. Here we are. Montserrat. And it’s spelled with two tees. Brilliant. And there is a Black Virgin there. Listen to this:
‘The worship of La Virgen de Montserrat, otherwise known as La Morenita, or the Dark One, dates back to 888, when she was found hidden high on the Sierra de Montserrat by a group of shepherds, under the protection of a flock of angels. Carved by St Luke himself, the statue was believed to have been brought from Jerusalem to Montserrat by St Peter, where it had lain undisturbed for hundreds of years. Soon after her discovery, the Bishop of Manresa tried to move the statue, but she remained firmly in place. The Count of Barcelona became her first protector and his son dedicated a shrine to her in 932, an endowment sanctified by King Lothaire of France in 982. Montserrat is now a centre for both pilgrimage and for the promulgation of Catalan nationalism. Married couples visit from all over Spain in order to have their union blessed by the Virgin, for, as the saying goes, “No es ben casat qui no dun la done a Montserrat.” “A man is not properly married until he has taken his bride to Montserrat.” It is also alleged that the present shrine once housed an altar to Venus, goddess of beauty, mother of love, Queen of laughter, the mistress of the graces and pleasure and the patroness of courtesans.’
Calque clapped his hands togeth
er. ‘Venus, Macron.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Do you remember how the verse went? “He will be neither man nor woman.’’ ’
‘What’s that got to do with Venus?’
Calque sighed. ‘Venus was also called Cypria, after her main place of worship on the island of Cyprus. There was a famous statue there, in which Cypria was portrayed with a beard and carrying a sceptre. However and here is the link with the verse, the male-seeming Cypria had the body of a woman and was dressed in female clothes. Catullus, when he saw the statue, even called her the duplex Amathusia. She is a hermaphrodite, in other words, just like her son.’
‘A what?’
‘A hermaphrodite. Half man, half woman. Neither one thing, nor the other.’
‘And what’s that got to do with the Black Virgin?’
‘Two things. One: it confirms your reading of Montserrat - excellent work, Macron. Two: when paired with the writing carved on its base, it further reinforces the connection between the Black Virgin of Montserrat and that of Rocamadour.’
‘How do you figure that one out?
‘Do you remember the faces of the Virgin of Rocamadour and her son? Look. Here is a picture.’
‘I don’t see anything. It’s just a statue.’
‘Macron. Use your eyes. The two faces are similar. Interchangeable. They could both be male, or both be female.’
‘I’m completely lost. I really don’t see what this has to do with our murder.’
‘Frankly, neither do I. But I agree with you about the wedding. I think the gypsies will stay here for the duration and lick their wounds. Sabir is another matter, of course. And where he goes, the eye-man will surely follow. So we are going to be ahead of the game for once.
We are going on a field trip.’