Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

by Tom Robbins

  “Good for you. The right kind of elitism can restore the butterfat to a homogenized society. It multiplies nuance and expands the range of cultural motion.” He started to recount for her Maestra’s views on the virtues of true elitism, but Domino waved him off.

  “I’m not looking for justification or approval, but I was sure you would understand, because in a sense it must be similar to your decision to belong to the CIA. I’ve come to suspect that we are somewhat alike in that way, having a desire not for power but for a status that lies beyond the consciousness of those who are merely powerful. Now, however, let me tell you that while I loved the stark sanctity of the cloister, it failed to entirely satisfy me. The secrets there were not especially secret, for one thing. The Christian select had essentially the same—how do you say it?—scoop as the Christian masses. They simply ritualized it differently and concentrated on it more exclusively. So, silly Simone was disappointed and by 1981 had decided to leave the nunhood. Really. I was set to turn in my wimple. That’s when my aunt showed me the contents of this envelope.” She patted the scruffy packet.

  “It isn’t that what is inside here is so amazing. You may well regard the last prophecy of Fatima as anticlimactic or even outright nonsense. The intriguing thing for me, silly sinner that I am, has always been the very secrecy of it, the fact that I have had access to holy information that not even the College of Cardinals, not even the present pope is privy to. By luck or design, our little maverick order was charged with the safekeeping of a . . . a unique message—ha! no grammar ticket!—that the Blessed Mother deemed vitally important. I’ve found that situation exciting. It’s put me in league with Mary somehow, and it’s made me feel a part of something singular, momentous, and . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Fun?”

  “No, no. For all of the consternation it’s caused us here, it has been thrilling for me, as I’ve shamefully admitted, but I would draw the line at calling it ‘fun.’ How could I when there is nothing the least bit funny or, from the Western point of view, even hopeful about the third prophecy. In fact, it’s all quite horrible. Quite horrible.”

  Her eyes suddenly became tight and intense. “But see for yourself. Voilà.” She thrust the envelope into his hands.

  It was sturdy, the old envelope, but scuffed and flaky, and might have felt to him like the dried skin of a sidewinder had not his fingertips been slick with petroleum jelly.

  Switters offered a brief preamble of his own.

  “Etymologically,” he said, clearing that part of his throat that hadn’t been cleared by the arrack, “a prophet is somebody who ‘speaks for’ somebody else, so I take prophecy (from the Greek, proph¯et¯es) with about the same amount of salt as I take press releases from a corporate shill. A prophet is just a self-proclaimed mouthpiece for invisible taciturn forces that allegedly control our destiny, and prophecy buffs tend to be either neurotically absorbed with their own salvation or morbidly fascinated by the prospect of impending catastrophe. Or both. A death wish on the one hand, a desperate, unrealistic hope for some kind of supernatural rescue operation on the other.”

  As he undid the clasp on the envelope, she informed him that the roots of the word notwithstanding, the prophet in this case was not speaking on behalf of a higher power, was hardly God’s publicist but rather, in a sense, a whistleblower, warning her beloved humanity what the Almighty had in store for it if it didn’t shape up. Our Lady of Fatima, then, was a kind of spy, a mole, an operative, working behind the scenes to delay if not forestall divine retribution, scheming to buy more time for her earthly brood. Domino thought that Agent Switters, of all people, would be sympathetic.

  He responded that any feeling of occupational bond with the Virgin Mary was regrettably beyond him at the moment, but he promised to keep his mind as open to Marian ideas as a convenience store was to hold-up men. Nevertheless, he believed it only fair to advise her up front that he was as leery of those who predicted the future as he was disdainful of those for whom the future always promised to be real in ways that the present was not. “It’s here. Today. Right now,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “All of it.”

  “Today is tomorrow?”

  “There you go.” He flashed her a grin that could housebreak a walrus. Then, he opened the envelope.

  Inside the envelope were not one but four sheets of paper. On two of them, Domino had provided complete English translations of the first and second Fatima prophecies. The crowning item, obviously, was the page of personal papal stationery, now dog-eared and yellowed, upon which Cardinal Thiry had written down his French version of the controversial third prophecy nearly forty years earlier. In addition, there was included an English translation—rendered, presumably, by Domino—of the third prophecy.

  Since he had read them largely in bits and pieces or paraphrase, while assisting Suzy and Masked Beauty with their individual research projects, and since Domino was of the opinion that the trio of predictions was ultimately inseparable, Switters decided to refamiliarize himself with One and Two before tackling the pièce de résistance.

  the first prophecy

  You have seen Hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end soon, but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given to you by God that He is about to punish the World for its crimes, by means of war, famine and persecutions of the Church and the Holy Father.

  Okay, then. And next—

  the second prophecy

  To prevent World punishment, I have come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the first Saturdays (of each month). If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the World, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated.

  Already sedated by dinner, arrack, and the act of love most naughty, Switters could barely read those prognostications without yawning. They struck him as vague, bland, generalized, incongruous, and overly concerned with the fate of the Church, its dogma, and its leader. Had he heard them related by a starry-eyed ten-year-old Portuguese peasant girl in 1917, they might possibly have spun the propeller on his intellectual beanie, but now he just stretched and sighed like a hockey coach at a tea dance before proceeding to the ballyhooed main event: that legendary ultrasecret time-release pope onion,

  the third prophecy of fatima

  Before this century draws to a close, there are to be unimaginable advances in all sciences. These achievements will bring about a great physical ease but little intelligence or happiness. Everywhere, communication and education will flourish, yet men, deprived of My Immaculate Heart, will sink ever further into stupidity. Anguish and violence will increase apace with material wealth, and many will be lost to fiery death and sickness of spirit. In the century after this one, however, a certain unexpected wisdom and joy will come upon a segment of the population that has survived the earlier sorrows, but, alas, the Word that brings about this healing will be delivered to mankind neither from Rome’s basilica nor from a converted Russia, but from the direction of a pyramid. Whether it is by design of God or the Evil One, even I do not know, yet the World must not fail to pay it close attention, for Heaven and Hell hang in the balance.

  That was how it went. Switters read both the English and French versions, and as far as his sleepy mind could tell, they were in perfect agreement. In the next to last sentence, the French mot had been translated as “word” when he supposed it could have been rendered, as it often was in French, as “cue” (something said or signed in order to elicit a particular action onstage), but
the meaning here was virtually the same, and he was scarcely in a mood to quibble. In fact, he yawned like a pigeonhole before conceding that “This little augury is more intriguing than the first two. Definitely more intriguing. But I honestly can’t see what all the furor is about, why you’d find it so horrifying or ol’ John the Twenty-third would go through a ream and a half of Kleenex.”

  “You don’t see why?”

  “No, sister love, I don’t. I mean, it’s hardly headline news that the corporate state and its media are using the latest gadget-com and gimmick-tech to dumb us down as steadily as if they were standing on a stool and pounding our brains with a frozen ham. Or that an abundance of information can exacerbate ignorance, if the information is of poor quality. Or that people can be lavishly entertained right around the clock and still feel empty and disconnected. Fatima slam-dunked the crystal ball in that regard, I have to give her credit, whoever she was. All that stuff is on us like a bad suit, and she called it in 1917. But, hey, there’s a flip side to it, ways to profit from it, ways to get around it, and—”

  “Yes, yes,” Domino broke in impatiently. “The remedy is Her Immaculate Heart. But what about the rest of the prophecy?”

  “You mean the nice part about unexpected joy and wisdom heading our way in the next century? Sounds bloody jolly to me, to quote the late Potney Smithe, Esquire. Bloody jolly. Assuming that you and I will be among the survivors.”

  “Yes, but this so-called wisdom and joy, this healing, will not be brought about by the Church.”

  “So? Who gives a damn whether the Church brings it about as long as it’s brought about?”

  She frowned so hard her cheeks nearly doubled. “Don’t you see? The enlightening doctrine is to come from the direction of the pyramids. From the Middle East. That means Islam. Mary’s inference is that Islam will succeed where Christianity has failed. Who gives a damn? Everyone in the Western world ought to give a damn! The implications are almost too disturbing to be contemplated.”

  “Well now, this wouldn’t happen to be the whining of a poor loser, would it?” A herd of sarcastic remarks was set to stampede out of his voice box, but he bit his tongue and turned them back. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he was too drowsy to covet prolonged conversation. “Listen,” he said, “these prophecies leave a lot of room for interpretation, and there’s a possibility you may have missed—”

  “Don’t you think we haven’t—”

  “Yeah, I know you and Masked Beauty have been kicking this gong around for years, but you still may have misinterpreted some point or other. Isn’t that why you wanted me to cast my unflinching bloodshot beam on it? I, who have left speechless entire roomfuls of itinerant journalists and shadowy international entrepreneurs with my unprecedented unravelings of certain passages of Finnegans Wake? Just let me sleep on it, sister love. Do please let me sleep on it.”

  With that, he blew out the closest candle, kissed the disappointed nun, and snuggled down between the rugs. “Have you noticed,” he asked in a faint, sweet voice just before he began to snore, “that nobody talks about the sandman anymore?”

  Our hero must have received a heavy dusting of the sandman’s sedative grit because when he finally awoke, the sky was full of blue and the bed empty of Domino. The secret envelope and the telltale Vaseline were gone as well, though the English translation of the third prophecy could be seen protruding from his left tennis shoe. It was eight according to his watch, which meant it would have been eleven, Christmas Eve, in Seattle. He’d intended to ring his grandmother at an earlier hour, but even though it was now past her bedtime, he decided to call her. He held his breath as he punched in the numbers, fearful that Suzy might answer the phone, discouraged that she probably would not.

  “This had better be good,” a sleepy voice grumbled.

  “It’s a holiday greeting, full of love, warmth, and good cheer,” piped Switters.

  “You!” Maestra growled. “I might have known. You think an old woman doesn’t need her rest just because it’s Santa Claus’s birthday? Next thing I know you’ll be calling me up at midnight on the Fourth of July to pledge allegiance to what’s left of the flag.” Then she softened and inquired as to his health and whereabouts—”Not that you’d be truthful about it”—and complained that he was off in some flea-bitten land somewhere, ignoring her, risking his hide and lying about it, when it was no longer of any necessity. “You can take the boy out of the CIA but you can’t take the CIA out of—”

  “Merry X-mas, Maestra.”

  “Heh! Merry X-mas, you no-good scamp. I miss you. Little Suzy misses you, too, for some unfathomable reason. It was you who put dirty ideas in the poor child’s head and led her astray. She’s gone to Sacramento for the holidays. What time is it, for God’s sake? That cute Captain Case checks up on us every now and then. He doesn’t wait until the middle of the night on Christmas. Okay, there’s just one thing I have to know. Are you still scooting yourself around in that pathetic dodge-’em chair?”

  “No. I’m not. I’m on stilts.”

  There was prolonged silence on the other end of the line, although he could tell from her breathing that she definitely hadn’t dozed off.

  Maestra’s silence must have been contagious, for the oasis was unusually quiet that morning. He was soon to learn from a note pinned to the door of his room that Masked Beauty, rather abruptly, had decreed it a day of private devotion, during which the sisterhood would neither eat nor speak. That’s fine, Switters reasoned. It’ll create an atmosphere conducive to my contemplation of the Fatima folderol.

  But was it folderol? Rilke, the poet whose verses had helped him get out of bed mornings in Berkeley, wrote, “The future enters into us in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.” And Today Is Tomorrow, with his vision root, had offered the Swit an actual glimpse of the interpenetration of realities and chronologies. He could not with conviction deny that prophecy was theoretically possible. It was just that so much of it reeked of hysteria, esoterica, naiveté, and humbug—and Fatima’s forewarnings were hardly free of that shrill cloy. Nevertheless . . .

  Nevertheless, a fair amount of what she (be she Divine Mother or schizophrenic pasture girl) had predicted in her three-pronged prognosis had indisputedly come to pass. It wasn’t much, really, but it was enough to merit serious consideration of the remainder of her declarations.

  The part that Switters found encouraging (though he would never admit to a need for encouragement), and the part that seemed to hurt Domino deep in her heart, was the business about a happy transformation of humanity (or, rather, a portion of humanity, an elite, perhaps) that would be cued not from the Church or the Kremlin but from pyramid territory. Domino believed this a foretelling of the triumph of the Islamic point of view, a victory of Mohammed’s metaphysical system over the institutions and metaphysics of Jesus Christ. Switters was not so sure. He kept harkening back to the material he’d pulled off the Net for Masked Beauty, the stuff about King Hermanos constructing the pyramids as vaults in which to shelter the revelations and secrets of the ancient sages. He’d wager neither his Beretta nor his Broadway show tunes on it, but he had an inkling that it was in those mystical, astrological, and alchemical texts known as the Hermetic Writings, rather than in the teachings of the Koran (and the dogma into which those teachings had been subsequently corrupted), that modern survivors would locate their cue as to how to attain and sustain a wise and joyful existence. After all, the Hermetic Writings were from the pyramids, were, in effect, responsible for the pyramids, whereas any connection between pyramids and Islam was of the most tenuous and after-the-fact geographical nature.

  Thus it was that on Christmas Day, Switters had sat in the shade of a lemon tree and, while nibbling on leftover falafel that he’d stolen from Maria Une’s deserted kitchen, sump-pumped into his frontal lobe everything that he could remember about the Hermetic tradition.

  Chickpea in his mouth, dry heat in his nostrils, papery leaf rustle and narcotic hen c
luck in his ears, grainy wind on his skin, distant shimmer (like a flutter of god beards, a pulse of muslin-wrapped phosphorus) in his eyes, thirst never far from his throat: it was, in terms of the senses, a perfect situation in which to try to summon his faint knowledge of that series of writings (like the Bible, it was a disjointed, fragmented collection rather than a unified canon) known as the Corpus Hermeticum. The tradition, while popularized in ancient Greece, had originated in still older Egypt, in places probably not wildly different from this one.

  Hermetic teachings, as best as he could recall, did not constitute a theology, but, rather, were designed as a practical guide to a sane and peaceful life of natural science, contemplation, and self-refinement. They did, however, in their effort to define and celebrate humanity’s place in the grand scheme of things, analyze at great length our relationship to the cosmos, before and after death. Their purpose, though, was to educate and improve; to enlarge the soul rather than to save it.

  Well and good, Switters supposed. There was much to admire about a belief system that refused to proselytize or to water itself down to attract converts, that was nature friendly, body friendly (references abounded in the writings to various forms of sex magic), tolerant, respectful, and innocent of any recorded act of repression or bloodshed. A belief system that didn’t insist on belief? That did more good than harm? He’d award it six stars out of five and tell it to keep the change—bearing in mind all the while that a committee of dullards (who but the dull had time or patience to serve on committees?), a small infusion of earnest missing links, could pull it down to their squeaky level and enfeeble it almost overnight.