“St. John of the Cross died in Ubeda, and his body was brought here soon afterward,” the friar said. “At first, he was interred below the floor. The tomb that you see here was installed ten years ago.”
Ernesto ran his gaze across the marble monument. “And how did St. John die?”
“A disease of the legs, I believe.” The friar headed for the door. “Come. I'll bring you to our other guest.”
We followed him out of the chapel. Leaving the church, we ascended a flight of stone steps to a corridor lined with cells. The friar knocked softly at the nearest door, then pushed it open. Inside, a man was seated at the edge of a pallet, a rosary in his hands. As we entered, the visitant looked up, and I thought I saw something like holy fever in his eyes.
“God be with you, my son,” the friar said politely. “And how are you feeling?”
“Better,” the man said. As he looked between us with a mild, peering expression, the friar explained that the visitant had recently arrived from Burgos, having been diagnosed some time before with an incurable carcinoma.
In response to our request, the visitant extended his scrawny arms for us to examine. On the palms of his hands, which were trembling slightly, I observed the same markings that I had seen on the woman in Madrid.
Without being asked, the visitant raised the hem of his robe, allowing us to look at his feet. Here, too, were marks that might have been those of stigmata, although they seemed larger than the wounds that nails would have made. On his legs, I saw what looked like a number of welts or bruises. “The marks of the flail,” the friar said helpfully, “where Our Lord was beaten by the soldiers.”
“Of course,” Ernesto said. From his jacket pocket, he took a few sunflower seeds, which the visitant accepted gladly. As we filed out of the room, I saw that he had already turned back to his rosary.
Going downstairs, we left the monastery, heading back to where we had left the car. When we arrived, Hipolito was leaning against the hood, his arms folded. As we drew close enough to see him in the shade, the driver gestured with a nod of his head. “Watch out. We have a guest.”
I turned. Fifty yards away, leaning against the wall that encircled the monastery, there stood a slender figure in a beret and overcoat. He was watching us. Ernesto frowned, then spoke to the friar. “You know this man?”
“Yes,” the friar said, the color draining from his face. “He is one of the Falangists.”
“I was afraid of that.” Ernesto signaled to Hipolito. “Come on. Let's leave this Fascist bastard behind.”
As I got into the car, I glanced back at the figure by the wall, who had begun to watch us more openly. Ernesto climbed into the front seat, then glanced at the friar. “You'll be all right on your own?”
“Yes, I'll take care of it,” the friar said. “But you should go now. God be with you.”
“And also with you, padre,” Ernesto said. As we drove away from the monastery, a cloud of dust rose behind the car. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the friar approaching the man in the beret, who was tracking us with his eyes. Then we rounded the corner and lost sight of them both.
The drive back to the city was a long one. On our approach to Madrid, we passed within sight of a formation of reserve troops, perhaps the same ones we had seen on our way to Segovia. At some point in the past few hours, they had been bombarded. Bodies lay on the ground, no more than lumps in the dirt, with medical crews and burial squads moving among the fallen.
When we returned to the city, Hipolito dropped us off at the hotel. As we approached the entrance, the granite dust caking on our boots, Ernesto spoke at last. “The padre was braver than he looked. The Fascists won't be pleased that he met with us, even if it turns out to have been for nothing.”
We entered the hotel, passing between the two guards at the door. “So you still don't believe in miracles?”
“I'm not sure,” Ernesto said, heading for the concierge's desk. “Give me a few days.”
As it turned out, I didn't talk to him again for the better part of a week. From time to time, I would see him in the lobby, a few books under one arm, or speaking to the medical officer of the Eleventh International Brigade, a German national with the eyes of a monk.
One evening, however, as I was returning to the hotel, I found a note from Ernesto waiting for me at the front desk, asking if I would be kind enough to meet him at Chicote's. When I pushed through the revolving door that night, the bar was fairly quiet. Ernesto was seated at his favorite table, under a window piled with sandbags, drinking a gin and tonic.
Next to his glass, instead of the usual newspapers or political tracts, there was a stack of leatherbound books. Pulling up a chair, I saw that two were medical textbooks, one was a life of St. John of the Cross, and the last, unexpectedly, was an edition of the letters of Anton Chekhov.
“Don't be so surprised,” Ernesto said, clearing a space for me to sit. “My father was a doctor, you know. I even drove an ambulance during the war. So I know a few things about how the body works.”
I ordered a whiskey. “But I assume your current interest was inspired by our trip.”
“I suppose you might say that,” Ernesto said. “In fact, I have solved the mystery.”
My incredulity must have shown on my face, for Ernesto laughed and assured me that he was perfectly serious. “First off, I hope you'll agree to exclude the possibility of miracles. My own feelings aside, the supernatural should be invoked only after all other possibilities have been excluded.”
“Agreed,” I said, taking a sip of the whiskey. “So how do you propose to begin?”
“With the facts. Take away the stigmata and the air of the supernatural, and what do we have? A case of spontaneous remission. So I consulted the literature on the subject. These recoveries do happen, if rarely. According to one source, they occur in fewer than one in a hundred thousand cases.”
Ernesto picked up a volume from the pile. “This is an account of the work of William Coley, a surgeon who made the first systematic study of spontaneous remission. As a young man, he was asked to consult on the case of a girl of seventeen, who complained of pain and swelling in her right hand. The biopsy revealed that she was suffering from a severe sarcoma. They amputated her arm below the elbow, but it was too late. A few months later, she died.”
He opened the book, gently turning over the leaves. “Another man might have moved on, but Coley was a gifted surgeon and still very young. He became obsessed with investigating cases of sarcoma, trying to discover how to treat such a terrible disease. During his research, he uncovered many instances of spontaneous remission. And he found that most of these cases had one thing in common.”
I sensed that he was intentionally milking the drama, but I was willing to play along. “What did he find?”
“He found cases, some dating back a century or more, of cancer patients who experienced spontaneous remission after surviving a serious infection. When the immune system rallies to fend off a bacterial invasion, it seems, it can eliminate cancer as well. The body has wonderful defenses, but it doesn't always recognize cancer as a threat. An infection serves to mobilize the body against one enemy, while also taking care of a more insidious foe. Chekhov mentions this. He was a doctor, you know, and in one of his letters, he notes that when a patient develops erysipelas, a severe skin infection caused by streptococcus, the growth of tumors is also checked. So these observations go back a long time.”
He closed the book. “It's even possible, if you're so inclined, to draw an analogy to the present war. I'm not a communist. I have nothing against the church. But I want to destroy fascism. And the only way to do this is to align that struggle with the movements that want to do away with capitalists and clergymen. In the short term, it leads to atrocities on both sides. But we can't stop fascism unless we connect the fight to an impulse that the people can understand.”
“We're straying from the point, I think,” I said. “What about William Coley?”
“Well,
after reviewing the literature, he began looking for instances of spontaneous remission that were closer to home. In particular, he heard about the case of a German immigrant who had been diagnosed with terminal sarcoma. Later, the patient came down with erysipelas, the kind of infection that Chekhov mentions, but eventually recovered. Coley went looking for this patient, knocking on tenement doors until he finally tracked him down. And what he found was that the patient was alive and free of cancer, apparently because of the infection he'd survived.”
I began to see where Ernesto was going. “So we're talking about a cure for cancer.”
“Coley certainly seemed to think so. He began to investigate the possibility of deliberately infecting cancer patients to trigger their natural immune defenses. He even developed an antitumor vaccine, a brew of microbes, including erysipelas bacteria, that could be injected directly into the body. The results, not surprisingly, were mixed. Some patients recovered, but others died. After all, there's always a chance that erysipelas itself might kill the patient. It can be a brutal disease. There's one famous case, in particular, that might be relevant here—”
I found that I knew exactly what he was going to say. “St. John of the Cross.”
Ernesto nodded, pleased, as if I had passed a test. “I've looked into the details. St. John came down with a fever, then an inflammation of the leg. It ulcerated and spread to his lower back, where it killed him. His biographers agree it was erysipelas. But let's file that fact away for now.”
Signaling to the waiter for another round, Ernesto picked up a handbook of infectious diseases. “So what are the symptoms of erysipelas? It begins as a fever with tremors. A red, swollen, hardened rash appears, usually on the extremities, particularly the hands, feet, and legs. The rashes tend to be raised, with sharply defined edges. In some cases, they take the form of elevated vesicles or blisters. Not unlike, shall we say, the marks of a nail—”
The waiter arrived with our drinks, although I barely noticed this. “So you think these cases of stigmata were really erysipelas?”
“It isn't so hard to believe. Imagine that round, hardened welts appear on a supplicant's hands and feet after a visit to the shrine. Someone else at the monastery takes them for stigmata. Then, as word gets around, later cases show the marks even more clearly. Why? Because everyone knows what stigmata are supposed to look like. The mind influences the size and location of the markings. The cycle feeds on itself. All it takes is a certain degree of credulity.”
“Hold on,” I said. “So you're saying that these miracles are due to visitors to the shrine being infected by erysipelas. Their symptoms are mistaken for stigmata. Because the war has reduced their access to medical care, they don't receive the usual diagnosis or treatment, but if they survive the infection on their own, it drives off their cancer. But are you really implying that they've been infected by the body of a saint who died over three centuries ago?”
“That's something I found hard to accept, too,” Ernesto said. “But look at the circumstances. A reliquary is an ideal place for bacteria to grow. Staphylococcus, for instance, has been found thriving in newly opened tombs. And you've seen that chapel. Visitors lie on the floor for hours at a time. They're near death, undernourished, vulnerable to infection, in a dark, damp place that has been recently disturbed by bombing. And any battlefield doctor can tell you that bombardment releases microbes that have been dormant in the landscape for a long time.”
I remembered Ernesto's conversation with the doctor at the International Brigade. “Is that why you spoke to Dr. Heilbrun?”
“Yes. And he reminded me of a case I might otherwise have forgotten. I imagine that you've heard of it. A tomb was reopened after thousands of years. Soon after the excavation, a number of those involved died, including the man who financed the dig, which led to certain fantastic theories. Well, the tomb was that of Tutankhamen. The man was Lord Carnarvon. And he died of erysipelas.”
We fell silent. I became aware that I had drunk too much. “So what are you going to do about it?”
Ernesto contemplated his glass for a moment, then took a careful swig. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” My head was throbbing, and I had trouble understanding what he meant. “What are you talking about?”
He did not respond right away. Around us, the bar had grown packed with journalists, soldiers, and girls, and when he spoke again, I had to listen carefully to hear him over the crowd:
“The Segovia offensive needs to take place,” Ernesto said slowly. “If we don't recapture Segovia, Franco will push north until he reaches Bilbao, which will cut the Loyalists in half. If that happens, the war is lost. And if I write about this shrine, it will only complicate the situation.”
He looked into his glass, which was nearly empty. “That's the strange thing, you see. The friar came to me because he thought word of a miracle might discourage the attack. He was wrong, of course. The last thing the Loyalists want is to give legitimacy to the church. But when you cast things in scientific terms—”
Ernesto paused. “That's a different story. The socialists have made a fetish of science. They'll want to look into it. Even to postpone the offensive until they have more information. And I can't allow that to happen.”
“But what if you're right?” I asked. “If the chapel contains a cure for cancer, are you willing to throw that away?”
“I'm willing to make the hard choice. Perhaps a handful of men and women will die without this cure. On the other hand, we have the future of a nation, even the world, to consider. You've seen the forces at play here. Sarcoma is nothing compared to the cancer of fascism. If you don't believe me, imagine how Europe will look in a few years, if that cancer isn't snuffed out now.”
I weighed this in silence. Deep down, I knew that there was nothing I could do. I was neither famous nor expert enough to make the case for the shrine on my own. And there was always the possibility that Ernesto was right.
“Well, hell,” I said at last. “If that's what you've decided, I'm not going to stop you.”
Ernesto only finished his drink, without meeting my eyes. It was too loud to talk any further, so we paid the bill and left. Outside, the city was very quiet. We headed back to the Hotel Florida, moving in silence through the ruined streets, and parted ways at the elevator. I don't think we even said goodbye.
* * * *
Ernesto left the city soon afterward. I stayed for another few months, writing and working on my own, long enough to see the failure of the Segovia offensive, which began three weeks after his departure. Even after it became clear that the assault had fallen short, it was difficult to understand how things had gone so wrong. After suffering more than a thousand casualties, the offensive faltered, then fell back. In the end, it succeeded in delaying the capture of Bilbao by less than two weeks.
After that, I only saw Ernesto once more. A year after the war ended, I wound up in Havana, where I learned that he was staying at an estate fifteen miles from the city. On an impulse, I gave him a call. Rather to my surprise, he agreed to see me that day, if I'd be willing to drive up to the house.
When I arrived at the estate, which the locals called the Finca Vigia, it was lunchtime. I rang the bell, and Martha let me inside. She looked as beautiful as always, a tall, elegant blonde, and she seemed glad to see me. Showing me into the study, she left us alone, saying that she would bring some refreshments.
Ernesto was seated at his desk, wearing a soft red robe. Beside the typewriter lay a heap of manuscript pages. I had heard that he was working on a novel inspired by the Segovia offensive, and asked if he had a title yet. He said he was thinking of calling it The Undiscovered Country.
Waving me into a seat, Ernesto leaned back in his chair. “Any news of the padre?"
“Yes,” I said, accepting a glass of scotch from Martha, who set down a tray of sandwiches and left the room. “He was shot by the Falangists a month after our visit. For all I know, it was because they saw him with us.”
> “Damn them,” Ernesto said mildly. “But it's hard to be sure about these things. What about the chapel?”
“As far as I can tell, the cures have ceased. Visitants kept coming, but after a while, there were no more recoveries. Nobody knows why. Although I hear that the monastery was disinfected from top to bottom after a typhus scare.”
Ernesto straightened the papers on his desk. “It isn't surprising. Microbes change character quickly. Like men. So perhaps the factors that made the cure possible simply ceased to exist.”
He took a sip of his drink. “In any case, it's for the best. The last thing we need is for Franco to lay claim to a shrine. You can imagine how he would treat it. It would become a Fascist Lourdes. Proof that his regime had been blessed by heaven. Better for it to disappear altogether.”
We lapsed into a rather melancholy silence. After a moment, the alcohol spreading through my body prompted me to speak more philosophically than usual. Finishing my glass, I said, “You know, the Loyalist republic never would have lasted. A government that is utterly opposed to the church can't survive for long. The need for faith runs too deep.” I paused. “Perhaps in time, if things had been different, the Loyalists would have realized this.”
Ernesto, in his red robe, looked out the window at the sea. On the surface of the water, the sun was beating down in a long white line.
“Yes,” Ernesto said at last, draining his glass of scotch. “Isn't it pretty to think so?”
Copyright © 2011 by Alec Nevala-Lee
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* * *
Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: MU NEUTRINOS AS TACHYONS?
by John G. Cramer
Rumors have been circulating in the physics community for the last few days about a spectacular new result coming from the OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment at CERN. This morning, CERN produced a press release about the result, and this afternoon hundreds of physicists crowded into the large seminar room at CERN's site at Meyrin, Switzerland, just West of Geneva, to hear a presentation by the OPERA Collaboration's physics coordinator, Dr. Dario Autiero of the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Lyon, France. I was able to “attend” the seminar over the Internet from Westport, NY.
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