The Black Madonna

by Peter Millar

  Then, with a sudden violence, his face contorted into an expression of pure and holy hatred, he lifted high above his head a meat cleaver and buried it with a resounding, wood-splitting crash into the face of the Virgin Mary.

  8

  Altötting, Bavaria

  It should have been a day like any other in the sleepy little Bavarian town of Altötting: a day full of clerical routine, quiet mediation and the contemplation of miracles.

  As she walked across the expanse of neatly mown green lawns between the great churches towards the tiny chapel in their middle, Sister Galina paused for a while, as was her habit on warm days, in the shade of the ancient grove of linden trees, and felt at peace with the world. Her place in the hierarchy of Mother Church was lowly, but the job was special. Her place of work was the oldest Christian building in Germany and one of the country’s most sacred shrines.

  Compared to the monumental religious buildings from the fifteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries that surrounded it, the tiny Chapel of Grace that gave the vast square its name was almost comically out of scale. Architecturally it tended towards the absurd: the pointy roof sat on the little octagonal chapel like a witch’s hat and the external canopy that ran all the way round looked more in keeping with a bus shelter or some arcade in which bad artists hawked their works to tourists.

  Close up that impression was reinforced: all the way around, fixed to the walls and even inside the canopy roof, were paintings. Almost without exception they were works of no value at all from an artistic point of view, but that was not the point. These paintings were not for sale; they were offerings. Each and every one of them, from the ancient, weathered, oil-painted wooden panels to the childish crayon drawings on A4 paper in a supermarket frame, was a testimony to the miraculous power of prayer and divine intervention. And that in itself was more than enough to make them special.

  Sister Galina felt in the pockets of her habit among the rosary beads and her hand-carved crucifix, for the key to the little chapel, and smiled as she opened the door. It was dark inside, for the tiny windows had mostly been blocked; the light of day was not encouraged to penetrate a place which held such ancient treasures.

  The familiar smell of old incense and doused candles greeted her, rich, pungent and slightly acrid. The nave of the chapel, a later eighteenth-century addition, was, like the canopy outside, adorned with pictures donated by pilgrims. Beyond, behind a dark screen was the tiny octagonal chamber that was the oldest part of the church, first built for the baptism of heathen warlords in the first half of the eighth century, in the days when Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, was battling the Saracens in Spain and Christendom was on the verge of collapse.

  The original font had long gone, of course. What made Altötting special, what attracted the tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over Germany, the rest of Europe, even the world, in planes, trains, buses, coaches, cars and even on foot, was the presence of the Mother of God. Or rather, Sister Galina corrected herself with a smile for she had almost erred on the side of heresy, Her miraculous image. The little seventy-centimetre crude wooden carving of the Holy Virgin had been brought to Altötting, nobody knew from where, some time in the early fourteenth century, but its cult dated from 1489 when a three-year-old child believed drowned had miraculously come back to life when brought before it. Since then the legend of miracles attributed to the statue had spread like a bush fire to make Altötting the German-speaking world’s prime pilgrimage site dedicated to the cult of Mary, visited annually by up to 300,000 believers. The Altötting cult had reached its climax not in the Middle Ages but on the 15th of August, Ascension Day, 2008, when Benedict XVI, the first German pope in nearly 1,000 years, and coincidentally a local lad by birth, returned to his homeland to bestow on Altötting a papal Golden Rose, one of the highest honours of the Catholic Church.

  It was not Sister Galina’s job to attend to the Blessed Virgin; she was too lowly to be allowed the job of dusting around Her, let alone cladding Her in any of the vast wardrobe of silver, gold and jewel-encrusted robes accumulated over the centuries.

  She bowed her head in the direction of the holy image before turning to open the door on the right which led into the sacristy. This was the mundane part of the chapel, a little room furnished in relatively modern style, that is with the dull functionality of the late twentieth century. It contained a desk, two chairs, filing cabinets and, as Sister Galina demonstrated by clicking a switch, even had electric light. The only obvious ecclesiastical item in the room was a large silver chalice which stood on the desk next to several heavy, leather-clad books.

  She sat down at the desk and opened the uppermost ledger at the bookmark she had placed within its pages yesterday. Then she opened the desk drawer and took out the expensive italic fountain pen kept specifically for the purpose of making entries in the ledger.

  It was not exactly state-of-the-art, but even a nun younger than Sister Galina brought up on the cusp of the twenty-first century would still regret the day – possibly not far off, now that the order had its own website and email address – when even tasks such as this were computerised. It would not exactly be sacrilege but a break with the past, with centuries of tradition. Here above all else tradition mattered.

  It was Sister Galina’s task, although she thought of it more as an honour, to record the letters, prayers and offerings sent by grateful recipients of divine mercy. She would note down, as her colleagues and predecessors had done for hundreds of years, the names of those offering their thanks to the Madonna, the city, town, district or even foreign land they came from, what their prayer to her had been and in what way it had been answered.

  Some pilgrims whose prayers had been answered, often months or years afterwards – and sometimes with the intervention of modern medicine rather than by instantaneous intercession, but deemed their cure miraculous nonetheless – came back to leave offerings. There were crutches no longer needed piled by the door. Others, following an ancient, if somewhat grotesque, tradition, sent replicas of their formerly afflicted organs. The custom had begun with mediaeval princes, some of whom had donated near life-size silver images of themselves. The greatest among them had obtained permission for their hearts, after death, to be encased in elaborate gold or silver urns and entombed in niches in the wall around the sacred statue. No fewer than twenty-two members of the Wittelsbach clan, Bavaria’s ancient ruling family, had their hearts removed after death and enshrined in the Chapel of Grace, the most recent among them Antonia of Luxemburg, Crown Princess of Bavaria, who had died in 1954.

  Their modern imitators were more often reduced to sending plastic models, almost invariably made in China: little hearts or arms or legs hung from the ancient timbers of the outside canopy like the carnage from some massacre of the puppets, until the elements faded the colour to a grimy pink as if drained of blood. Other grateful supplicants more prosaically sent cheques for the maintenance of the shrine and continuance of the brothers’ work. They were appreciated none the less.

  Over the centuries the gifts showered upon Altötting’s shrine were such that a special treasury had been set up within the great fifteenth-century Foundation Church nearby to house the most valuable gifts of gold and silver. Only a very few of the most sacred or historically important remained in the inner sanctum with the Virgin Herself.

  Sister Galina ran her eye with benign interest over the last few entries: ‘From Uschi Bernstein, Halle, thanks to the Holy Mother for restoring my husband to health following a heart attack’, donation: photograph of smiling pensioner in jogging suit. ‘From Gabi Urkamp, Regensburg, grateful thanks to the Queen of Heaven for recovery from breast cancer.’ ‘From Sylvie Schabowski, Munich, super thanks for getting me through my school exams.’ Sister Galina smiled; nothing was too insignificant for the attention of the Mother of God.

  She was just wondering what today’s post would bring when there was a knock on the door, a loud knock, the sort
that suggested a more businesslike attitude than the usual hushed reverence demonstrated by the faithful. ‘Enter,’ she said in a voice that she hoped was both firm and gentle. She was not expecting the apparition which confronted her. Rather than being opened gently, as was usual, the door was flung open rudely and Sister Galina found herself staring in shock at a faceless figure in black. She pushed back her chair and stood up. Sisters in holy orders were not used to unannounced visitations from leather-clad motorcycle messengers in visored helmets.

  ‘Delivery,’ said the muffled voice, as the figure produced a weatherproof silver bag and dumped it unceremoniously on the desk next to the leather-bound ledger, nudging the ornate chalice aside. A Protestant, Sister Galina decided.

  ‘Sign here.’

  ‘Which company are you from?’ asked Sister Galina, removing the top of her fountain pen for the first time that day and fastidiously inscribing her name on the grubby piece of paper proffered. ‘Not DHL or Fedex? I don’t recognise the uniform.’

  ‘Private,’ came the gruff reply from the already retreating back. The door closed behind him and within seconds the nun could hear the growl of a powerful motorbike starting up outside. Funny that she hadn’t heard it arriving. She also realised that the paper she had signed had been taken away without her receiving a copy. Sloppy. A sign of the times.

  She opened the desk drawer again and took out a long silver paper knife with the familiar Altötting heraldic depiction of the Madonna and Child in yellow and red enamel on the handle. The blade, however, was not sharp enough to open the thick weatherproof bag. A pair of scissors did the trick.

  Sister Galina cut carefully along one corner. There was something about this that made her uneasy. Call it superstition, or intuition; the Queen of Heaven moved in mysterious ways. There was no indication to whom the parcel had been addressed. Possibly that had been on the receipt so rudely thrust under her nose and taken away again; if so, she had not noticed. She assumed, since it had been brought directly to the sacristy of the Chapel of Grace, that it was intended as a gift to the Madonna, although normally items dedicated to the shrine were not received directly at the sacristy, unless pilgrims themselves left them.

  She wondered if she was wise to open it, if it might not be better left to someone else, but then quickly decided that under the circumstances she had little choice. It was always possible there was a covering note of explanation inside.

  There was not. Instead, inside the bag was another, black, made of some thick rubbery material, heat-sealed. Whatever was inside was small, irregularly shaped. It felt somehow distantly familiar as if it was something she ought to recognise, bizarrely out of context.

  Carefully she took the scissors again and cut along one side of the rubber bag, near the seal mark. Almost immediately her senses were assailed by a strange, sweet-sour smell, like something that had been left in the fridge too long. She looked inside the rubber bag and saw that whatever it contained was further wrapped in a normal transparent plastic bag. Gingerly she extracted it by one corner, wishing all of a sudden that the sacristy had a pair of the rubber gloves they used in the convent for washing-up.

  The object in the plastic bag was fleshy, lobed, and she realised with an unmistakable creeping horror, bloody. But that horror was as nothing to that which exploded an instant later as she realised what she was holding in her hand. Immediately, convulsively, Sister Galina committed an act of wholly unintentional sacrilege: she threw up into the silver chalice.

  Lying on the ancient ledgers of donations to the Mother of God, was a bleeding heart – not the idealised sacred image that glowed pink and perfect on images of Christ – but the authentic organ, assymetrical and caked in dried brown gore. Worse was what lay next to it, shrivelled, obscene and almost unidentifiable at first glance: the severed sexual organs of an adult human male.

  9

  Terminal 3, Heathrow airport, London

  Marcus Frey stood in the arrivals hall scanning every face that emerged from the sliding doors with scarcely concealed anticipation. It had been more than three years since he had last seen Nazreem.

  He knew from the newspaper that she had changed little physically, except perhaps for that hint of hardness in her eyes that may have been a trick of the light, although it could also have been the hard knocks of the world she lived in and chose not to leave. Nazreem had always had more self-confidence than most women who grew up in such a male-dominated world. But over time the process of attrition was bound to take its toll.

  He had no idea how they would react to each other. Her manner on the telephone had been tense, and not just because of the theft from her museum. It was almost as if she was afraid of something. Marcus was worried. On the other hand, he told himself, maybe he was just imagining it. The truth was, he was nervous about seeing her again. Why she was coming to London, he had no idea. He was certainly not vain enough to imagine that it was to see him. There was another question: how was she managing to come to London at all; as far as Marcus knew the Rafah crossing into Egypt was currently closed, opened only sporadically to let through emergency supplies, usually in inadequate quantities. The Palestinian Authority’s attempt to set up its own embryonic airline had been left literally in ruins by the bombing raids that had ripped up the runway of Gaza City’s short-lived ‘international airport’. The port was blockaded and the Israeli navy patrolled the coast. The occupying army might have gone, but Gaza remained little more than an open prison.

  The information displayed on the arrivals board indicated that the EgyptAir flight from Cairo had landed some forty minutes ago and that the baggage had already been transferred to the arrivals hall. But Marcus was not surprised to be still waiting. In the current international political climate security checks were strict, particularly on passengers arriving from the Middle East. Even as he scanned the arrivals board, he could feel the ubiquitous surveillance camera panning across the crowd. It was all in the name of passenger safety, but sometimes he felt there was nowhere in Britain nowadays that didn’t have a ‘big brother’ looking over your shoulder.

  The doors slid open again and a new batch of arrivals emerged, pushing trolleys loaded with heavy bags, blinking at the waiting crowds, looking for family members, men wearing sunglasses indoors, holding message boards with Arabic names written in English, waiting chauffeurs or mini-cab drivers. As a rule Marcus hated airports. But Heathrow Terminal 3 exuded a whiff of spice and the tropics: Saudis and Gulf State Arabs in white djellebahs and checkered keffiyehs, Nigerians and Ghanaians with colourful floor-length robes and pill-box African headdresses, Iranian or Afghan women in body-covering black chadors or burkhas with tiny slits for their eyes, Americans and Australians in either sharp suits or bulging out of ill-advised tourist leisurewear, businesslike Japanese tour groups, Indian and Pakistani women in brightly-coloured saris, Sikhs in turbans – although many of them he noted actually belonged to the airport ground staff. As an old colonial boy, he never ceased to be amazed by how multicultural London had become.

  And then he caught sight of her: a slight figure bustling in a businesslike manner through the ambling crowds of passengers. She looked more like a hassled Western backpacker than a museum curator, with a functional-looking green coat over trousers, a headscarf pushed well back so that it was more like a neckerchief; her only luggage a rucksack and a leather bag slung over one shoulder. She saw him immediately.

  For the past forty-eight hours Marcus had been trying to imagine this moment, wondering how he would react, and only now realised that he still didn’t know. He beamed, held out his arms and brought them back together and then with an awkwardness he could scarcely believe, held out his hand. Nazreem walked straight towards him and with a wry smile on her face, took it, then stood on tiptoes and pecked him on the cheek.

  ‘Good to see you,’ she said.

  ‘You too.’ For an instant their eyes met.

  ‘Here, let me take that,’ he said, reaching for the rucksack. ‘You travel li
ght. Looks like you’re planning on camping.’

  She pushed him back, firmly but still smiling. ‘It’s okay. Thanks, but I can manage. And it’s practical. I don’t like suitcases. You never know what people can put in them.’

  ‘Right, of course. I hadn’t thought of it like that.’ He had almost forgotten where she had come from. ‘How did you … I mean …?’

  ‘How did I get out of Gaza? The great open jail?’ She touched the side of her nose, gave him a cynical glance and mimed throwing a shovelful of earth over her shoulder.

  ‘The tunnels? I thought they were all …’

  ‘The Israelis tried to bomb them all. The Egyptians fill them in. We dig more. It is not hard to know someone who knows someone, and on the other side it is still Rafah, the same language more or less, the same people more or less … and from Cairo, I still have a French passport, you remember, the one gift from my mother.’

  ‘Of course.’ He could hardly have forgotten. Had Nazreem possessed nothing more than the so-called passport issued by the Palestinian Authority, travel would have been a nightmare, an everlasting series of queues for visas, and unwanted interrogations, and that from those countries that professed to look on it kindly.

  ‘I have a car,’ Marcus said.

  ‘Good. Then let’s get out of here.’

  As they turned towards the exit doors from the terminal making their way to the car park, a dark-haired young man with dark glasses and a beard who had been holding a sign indicating he was a chauffeur sent to meet M. Joliet arriving from Tangier obviously decided his charge was no longer coming, and did likewise.