The Black Madonna

by Peter Millar

  ‘But if all the oldest images of the Madonna have been lost, or destroyed and replaced with copies,’ said Nazreem, ‘there is no way of finding a sure link to the Gaza figure.’

  ‘I did not say they have all been destroyed or replaced, merely that not everything is known. The three most ancient figures are all on the Iberian peninsula: one, our Lady of Nazaré, is in Portugal. The other two are in Spain, at Montserrat and Guadalupe.’

  ‘Montserrat and Guadalupe?’ said Marcus. ‘I thought they were islands in the Caribbean?’

  The nun looked at him for several seconds, the longest time she had let her eyes rest on him, and then said: ‘Yes, you are right. But not just that. There are places bearing those names in many parts of the New World. The patron saint of Mexico is Our Lady of Guadalupe, named for a vision seen by a converted Aztec. But the origins of those names are in Europe, names taken with them by the conquistadors because of the power in men’s minds of the images they left behind, at home in the barren hills of central Spain.’

  ‘So why are the originals less well known?’

  ‘Because they have remained as they always were: monastic retreats, not new settlements, and I assure you they are not less known to those who care about such things. Montserrat is in the high black mountains that rise beyond Barcelona, while Guadalupe lies in the Sierra that shares its name, to the east of Madrid.

  ‘Both have had miracles attributed to them repeatedly over the centuries. The figure in Guadalupe in particular is of great age. It is said that it was brought to the shores of Europe by St Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine himself.’

  ‘If that’s so, that would date it to at least the latter part of the third century,’ said Nazreem. Marcus could not fail to note a sense of almost excitement in her voice.

  ‘If that is so,’ echoed Sister Galina.

  ‘There is some doubt?’

  ‘My child, my child, there is always doubt. That is why there must always be faith. The Madonna of Guadalupe is the oldest known example – or was, until now.

  ‘I do not wholly follow your reasoning. But then I do not understand so much in this world any more. The police said the man whose body parts were delivered to the chapel was a suicide bomber who died in Israel. Afterwards. It does not make sense. But then evil never does.’

  Nazreem kept her eyes downcast. For a long moment she was silent, as if she was fighting a mental battle with herself. When at length she spoke, her words were quiet, almost muttered, and there was once more that black hardness in her eyes and in her voice as she began to speak, the words coming out as if she had composed them in advance:

  ‘I don’t believe in coincidence. I … I believe there is a link between what happened here and what happened in Gaza. You will forgive me if I do not go into detail,’ she glanced at Marcus briefly, ‘but it has become clear that there is indeed evil involved. Evil and desperate men who would like to erase all memory of the existence of this figure.’

  Sister Galina put a second hand on the one that already rested lightly on Nazreem’s and said in a soft, quiet voice: ‘Evil men who do evil things. But Our Lady is their implacable enemy. In our time of need she looks down on us, and will protect and comfort us.’

  The atmosphere in the little sitting room was close. Sitting to one side, apart from the two women, Marcus felt almost excluded. With a lump in his throat, he watched as Nazreem lifted her eyes to the nun opposite and the hardness that he had noticed in them since she walked through the arrivals gates at Heathrow seem to melt for a moment. Then he realised that what he saw in her eyes was moisture. She was on the verge of tears.

  Marcus went to put his hand on her shoulder, but she pushed him away, kindly but firmly, and pulled herself together.

  ‘Are you staying long in Altötting?’ the nun asked.

  ‘We’re in Munich actually,’ Marcus intervened. ‘At the Pension Blauer Bock,’ he added, for the sake of something to say, the trivia of their accommodation an absurd yet welcome relief from the intensity of the two women’s mind-melding empathy.

  ‘I am grateful to you for coming to see me,’ said the nun, turning again to Nazreem and taking her hands. ‘I have spent my life in the service of Our Lady, and it was my deepest wish to look upon her countenance. But once again the likeness of the Mother of God has been snatched from us, maybe for ever.’ Marcus noticed that the pitch of the nun’s voice rose at the end of the sentence, as if she were hinting at a question.

  ‘No,’ said Nazreem all of a sudden with certainty in her voice. ‘Not for ever.’

  The nun reached forward again and took her hand, looking at her curiously.

  ‘You seem very certain of this, my child?’

  ‘I am,’ said Nazreem with a resolution that surprised Marcus too. ‘Absolutely certain.’

  26

  The black clouds had settled in overhead, fulfilling their promise of rain abundantly, with big heavy drops splattering on the windscreen as Marcus and Nazreem climbed into the car. Dusk was falling fast and the great square was deserted – even the pair of circling pilgrims had at last laid down their crosses and departed – save for the two bikers on the other side and even they were now pulling up rain hoods and revving up their engines preliminary to shattering the somnolent idyll of the rural Bavarian evening.

  Marcus looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly seven-thirty,’ he said. ‘I suggest we head back to Munich.’ Nazreem merely nodded and looked ahead through the windscreen at the rivulets of rain. Then the wipers clicked in and swept them all away.

  The road back was as tortuous as it had been on the way out save that there were fewer tractors. Only once on the edge of a little village of red-roofed houses with an onion-domed church that reminded Marcus incongruously of something out of Doctor Zhivago did a great bug-eyed behemoth with its giant headlights forcing a path through the constant rain pull out of a field laden with plastic-wrapped bales of summer grain.

  Marcus braked hard to avoid getting too close to the heavy spray kicked up by the thick-treaded tyres. Only then did he notice the single headlight in his rear-view mirror hurtling towards him, then suddenly drop back as if the rider too had pulled hard on the brakes. He thought nothing of it until a second one appeared, the two drawing level, both beams side by side now, almost capable of being mistaken for a car. Then one grew larger until the motorbike and rider were clearly visible just a few metres behind them. In front the tractor still kept him crawling along at barely forty kilometres per hour. Now the bike drew level, the whine of its engine high-pitched against the dull purr of the Volkswagen and the grumble of the agricultural vehicle in front. He wondered if it was the two bikers who had been so evident in the square at Altötting and decided it had to be: two leather lads from the big city out for a summer’s day spin, caught out by unexpected foul weather and hurrying home to put the bikes away and get out for a few beers.

  But in that case why didn’t they overtake? On these narrow roads, a tractor posed a serious obstacle to a car, but a bike could soar past. And yet they didn’t. One remained a consistent distance behind him, as if deliberately matching his speed; the other was also matching his speed, almost parallel to him. Marcus squinted sideways and was almost certain he recognised the bike as the big black Kawasaki with the red stripe he had noticed earlier. Whatever game they were playing he was not happy about it. It seemed improbable that the same people who had been tailing Nazreem in London could have latched onto them so quickly here. Or did it? Not necessarily if her suppositions about the link between the Gaza statue and the one here were true. But if these were the people who had stolen the statue, surely they had what they wanted.

  The tractor in front unexpectedly turned off into a farmyard and Marcus accelerated but there was more traffic in front: villagers in no particular hurry taking care in the bad weather. Traffic in both directions. The bike matched his speed, the rider playing with him, his colleague behind closing, just a few car lengths between them now. He braked sharpl
y. The light in his rear-view mirror grew rapidly closer, then as quickly fell back. That’ll teach you to keep your distance in the wet, thought Marcus. Any harder and whoever was on it would have been flying over the Polo’s bonnet.

  The biker beside them, however, caught out by the manoeuvre too, pulled into the space between them and the car in front. Marcus looked for a number plate but if there was one it was invisible, illegally unilluminated in the dark. Then the bike in front braked hard, playing Marcus’s trick back on him, forcing him to slow down. He tried instead to pull out but was faced by a solid line of oncoming traffic. The bike behind had pulled level now and Marcus saw Nazreem gape in horror as the opaque black visor of the rider loomed large in her window, a faceless automaton. Jesus, he thought suddenly, what if he has a gun. He had never heard of drive-by shootings carried out by bikers, but that did not mean they didn’t happen.

  Then suddenly they were bathed in light, the road ahead cleared. They had hit the short stretch of autobahn that extended from the Munich ring road. Marcus rammed his foot down, the revs screaming as the little car accelerated from thirty-five up to 130 kilometres per hour while he scrunched his way through the gears. For a gratifying few seconds the bike’s headlights dwindled rapidly in the rear-view mirror. And then they grew again. Coming steadily closer. Marcus looked at the speedometer. There was no way the little VW Polo could outrace two performance bikes. If they wanted them, they would have them.

  But it would not go unnoticed. The relative dark and anonymity of the country road was gone now. As they got closer to Munich the volume of traffic grew, the smart BMWs and Mercedes of affluent city dwellers replacing the small cars and trucks of the countryside. The motorway lights were bright. Number plates would be visible, a lack of them too. An incident would have witnesses. Not that he was reassured by the idea of ‘witnesses after the event’. But the bikes showed no sign of closing, maintaining their distance some hundred metres behind. For a few seconds at a time Marcus was forced to stop watching them, heeding instead the traffic around him and the confusing signs as the autobahn split, weaving left and right, north towards the airport, Nürnberg and Regensburg, south to the Alps, Austria and Italy, then again, spurs tucking themselves into the city’s series of concentric ring roads. When he looked again, they were gone.

  Or rather they no longer stood out. In the long queue of vehicles behind them as they turned off the autobahn proper into a dual carriageway that seemed to lead towards the city centre, there was maybe one bike, maybe two. And then there was maybe none. Maybe.

  ‘Are they gone?’ Nazreem said to him, her voice betraying no trace of the anxiety he had felt.

  ‘I think so,’ he said, not knowing whether he really thought so. ‘I think so.’ Maybe the threat was in his head. Maybe they had been just two local cowboys, hotshots baiting strangers for kicks along country roads on a wet night. Maybe. But he didn’t think so. There was only one obvious purpose to their pursuit and sudden disappearance: that they had succeeded in their aim. Identifying the woman in the passenger seat.

  Whatever else was true or false in the labyrinth of conspiracy that Nazreem was clearly creating in her own mind, one thing was indisputable. She herself held the key.

  27

  The next morning the sun shone again as if the summer storm that had brought such a bleak end to the day before had never happened. Nazreem beamed over her breakfast orange juice as though she too had dismissed the dark forebodings that had clouded both their minds on the journey back into the city.

  To Marcus the images of the dark riders on their black motorbikes speeding after them then disappearing into the night were still all too vivid. He could not escape the foolish fantasy that they were updated versions of Tolkien’s ‘ring wraiths’: anonymous, faceless – even soulless – riders sent to stalk them by some unknown sinister power guiding their destinies. Common sense told him it was nonsense, but that didn’t make the imagery any less pervasive or persistent.

  ‘I think we should go back to Altötting, I would like to see Sister Galina again,’ said Nazreem, pouring Marcus a cup of strong-looking black coffee as he sat down beside her. The breakfast room of the little hotel was bright, airy and decorated with fresh flowers, for all that its main occupants seemed to be tired-looking travelling salesmen and a few tourists.

  The hotel had been as easy to find as the woman at the airport tourist office had promised, just a short walk from the city’s central square, the Marienplatz. Marie, Mary, Maria. Miriam in Hebrew, Maryam in the Arabic Nazreem had quoted to such powerful effect in Altötting. In front of the square’s great neo-Gothic city hall a statue of the virgin in her role as protectress of Munich stood high on a column: the Virgin Mary to Western European eyes: white and saintly with her halo and the Christ Child in her arms, one hand raised in a gesture of benediction. Almost a deity in her own right. Even so, Marcus felt he would never look at even the most banal representation of the Madonna in the same way again.

  ‘But first,’ Nazreem was saying, breaking into his thoughts: ‘I would like to go to see the painting, the one you mentioned, by the Dutchman. It is here, in Munich, you said?’

  Marcus blinked for a moment, his train of thought disjointed. Then he remembered: the painting of St Luke sketching the first portrait of the Madonna, by the fifteenth-century Flemish painter whose name still escaped him, the one he had mentioned to her over dinner in Brick Lane, before the chaos overtook them.

  ‘Uh, yes, at least I think so. We need to check where though. Munich has a lot of art galleries.’

  It turned out not to be as easy as Marcus had expected to find out exactly which of Munich’s cornucopia of galleries was in possession of a particular painting, especially if you were unsure of both its title and the artist’s name. But most of the major galleries were close together near the university buildings, a short U-bahn ride north of the city centre, and it seemed a safe guess that the great nineteenth-century gallery known as the Alte Pinakothek was the most likely place to house a painting by a Flemish master of the early Renaissance period.

  Marcus found himself unable to stop searching the faces of people in the street and on the U-bahn, as if he suspected any of them – at least any of vaguely Middle Eastern appearance – to be part of some nefarious conspiracy that had designs on them, or at least on Nazreem. Several people matched the racial profile which he realised with some personal embarrassment he was applying, none of them appeared remotely interested in either Nazreem or himself. None of them obviously got on or off the U-bahn at the same stops they did. There were no clear-cut suspects, no menacing men on motorbikes lingering on street corners, at least not in the vicinity of the Pinakothek itself.

  The gallery was a vast neoclassical stone building, with bomb damage from the Second World War patched in red brick like scars from ancient wounds. It held an enormous collection of European paintings from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Their task had been made somewhat easier: Marcus’s brain had finally dredged up from his subconscious the name of the artist. The work they were looking for was by Rogier van der Weyden.

  But even that did not make it as easy as it ought to have been. Van der Weyden was a significant figure for his day, important enough for him to have most of one room to himself on the first floor, but the painting of St Luke and the Madonna was not on display. Nor was it mentioned in the gallery’s current catalogue. Yet Marcus was sure he had known it was here. Now he began to ask himself if he could have been mistaken. Was there another gallery in Munich with a similar collection? He found it hard to believe.

  A tubby man nodding gently on a metal-framed chair in the doorway between the two rooms displayed a name badge which indicated he was gallery staff. Security probably, although he did not offer very much of that. At Nazreem’s prompting, Marcus approached him. The man jolted and gave him a rude stare but his attitude changed when Marcus made clear he was from London and inquiring about a painting. But the best Marcus could glean from the man
’s almost impenetrable Bavarian dialect was that the painting was ‘gone, taken away.’

  Where? He asked, but got only a brusque shake of the head and an indifferent shrug. Only when Nazreem appeared at his shoulder with a beseeching look on her face and pressed a ten-euro note into the attendant’s palm did his reaction alter, abruptly. Marcus waited for a shocked German reaction to her instinctive Middle East baksheesh, but the man palmed the note and grunted that they should wait here and disappeared into the next room.

  A few minutes later he returned with a younger man sporting a short, spiky haircut and a leather jacket. For a moment Marcus thought he had fetched help to have them thrown out, but then the younger man, in perfect unaccented English, said: ‘My name is Helmut Vischer. I am curator of the old Dutch paintings. This man tells me you are also academics and wish to see the Van der Weyden St Luke.’

  The attendant at his side was smiling as if the role of expert facilitator was second nature to him. Marcus nodded and introduced himself as a don from All Souls in Oxford and Nazreem as his research assistant, which earned him a sharp look from her.

  ‘Yes, we were surprised to find it not on display.’

  Vischer raised his almost invisible blond eyebrows as if minimally surprised.

  ‘But if it is at all possible,’ said Nazreem.

  He turned and gave her a brief cool smile, before turning back to Marcus.

  ‘As it happens, you are very lucky I was available. I should be happy to show you the painting. It is hanging in my office.’

  Marcus’s eyes clearly suggested that this was something of an extravagance even for a gallery curator, but Vischer laid a hand on his arm almost conspiratorially: ‘We are allowed our little indulgences, you know. I couldn’t bear to let such a fine piece of work be confined to the cellars, simply because some group of pedants had declared it not to be the original.’