The Miracle (38 page)

Her good friend, Michelle Demalliot, head of the Sanctuaries Press Bureau, might be the one person to help her.

Gisele had an eye on the clock. There wasn't time enough to go down to the press center and talk to Michelle, and get back into town in time for her tour. Well, she needn't do it in person. The telephone would be enough. Pushing aside her half-finished salad, she went into the living room, found the white and red telephone book titled Hautes-Pyrenies which listed telephone numbers in Lourdes and Tarbes. Finding the listing for the Sanctuaries Press Bureau, she sat next to the phone and dialed the number.

An unfamiliar female voice answered.

"Is Michelle Demalliot there?" Gisele asked.

"She's just going out the door to lunch. I'll try to catch her."

"Please! Tell her Gisele Dupree is calling."

Gisele held on, and then was relieved to hear Michelle's voice on the phone.

"Hello, Michelle, it's Gisele. I don't want to make you late for lunch, but I need a favor."

"Of course. What?"

"I need some still photographs of the Soviet Union's foreign minister, you know, Sergei Tikhanov. I need them as soon as possible."

"Whatever for?"

"Because—because when I was at the United Nations -- remember? —I saw him and met him, and some small magazine has asked me to write a short piece on him, but they won't buy it without a picture. So I wondered if you had any press people still coming to Lourdes, today, tomorrow, whom you might talk into bringing a few pictures of Tikhanov along? Can you think of anyone?"

"Well, everyone is mostly here waiting for the Reappearance, but there may be a few more—wait, let me see."

Michelle left the phone for thirty seconds and then she was back on the line.

"I just checked. You may be in luck. I have someone coming in this evening from Paris, a photographer from Paris-Match, to do a layout of the activity here and hang around to photograph the person who sees the Virgin Mary, if someone does. I could call him at Paris-Match, probably catch him. If I do, you want a photograph of Sergei Tikhanov?"

"A good clear glossy portrait of his face from their file. I'll pay for it. If I can see a couple of shots all the better. Can you call me back? Here's the number I'm at." She read off Dominique's phone number.

"All right, Gisele, let me call Paris right this second. If I can't pull it off in five minutes, I'll let you know. If he can bring your pictures, I won't bother to call back. You'll know they'll be here tonight. You can pick them up at the Press Bureau around eight tonight. How's that?"

"Super. You're a doll, Michelle. Thanks a million!"

She hung up thinking, A million, a million, God knows what it might be worth if it was true.

She sat there beside the phone, hoping it would not ring. She sat waiting for five minutes, six, seven, ten. No ring.

That meant her friend had reached Paris-Match. That meant the photographs of Tikhanov would be in her hands tonight.

Step one on its way.

Next, step two. To find out if Talley really was Samuel Talley, a professor in the language department at Columbia University. Gisele knew exactly how to find out. Her old American friend Roy Zimborg had graduated from Columbia University. She glanced at the mantel clock. She had no time for the call to New York now. She'd better be off to her job. Besides, it would be terrible to wake Zimborg at this early hour in New York. It would be better late tonight, maybe midnight, when it would be six in the evening in New York and when she had already seen the Paris-Match photograph and had ascertained that it was the same person she had caught in her own amateur's snapshot at the grotto.

She sat very still, a smile wreathing her face.

A miracle was happening in Lourdes, after all, a personal miracle all her own.

By tonight she might have her ticket and her passport to the United Nations. She could not think of it as blackmail. Only as good fortune to one who was so deserving.

• • • August 17

They were coming out of the parking lot on the Rue de Lourdes in Nevers, where they had left their rented Peugeot and were starting uphill toward the Saint-Gildard Convent, Bernadette's last resting place and their destination.

Early this morning Liz Finch and Amanda Spenser had taken an Air Inter flight from Lourdes to Paris, rented the car, and driven down to Nevers in three hours.

Walking now in the midday heat, Amanda spoke. "Do you think anything will come of this?" she wondered. "Maybe it's a wild goose chase."

Liz shrugged. "Never can tell. In my profession, you don't miss a bet. You just keep burrowing and burrowing, and hope for a gleam of gold. I don't expect we'll find anyone here as bitchy as Father Cayoux. Yet, we might find something—we just might."

They had reached the eight-foot-high convent wall that led to the open gates at the entrance. A diminutive middle-aged nun, in gray habit, short skirt, standing inside the gates, was waiting for them. She had a broad smooth brow, unlined peach complexion, bright intelligent dark eyes, and a gentle smile.

"Miss Liz Finch? Miss Amanda Spenser? You are the Americans we are expecting?"

"None other," said Liz.

"I'm Sister Francesca—"

"Who speaks perfect English," said Liz.

"I hope so," said the nun, "coming, as I do, from an American father and a French mother. Well, welcome to Saint-Gildard Convent." She paused. "I understand you are writing a story on Saint Bernadette, Miss Finch, and that Miss Spenser is your assistant. We are glad to cooperate. You'll have to give me an idea what you want to know. Saint-Grildard Convent was, of course. Saint Bernadette's last station on earth. Do you want me to show you around first?"

"Definitely," said Liz. "Miss Spenser and I want to see everything related to Bernadette. After that, we'd like to spend a little while with you asking some questions."

"I hope that I have the answers," said Sister Francesca. "But let's begin with a brief guided tour."

The nun was leading them past a long bank of lavender-colored flowers, and they followed her until she slowed down.

"La Grotte de Lourdes," Sister Francesca announced.

To Amanda's surprise, they were standing in front of a replica of the original grotto at Lourdes, smaller than the real one, but hardly miniature, either, a replica of the real grotto created on a slope that ran uphill to street level.

"For ourdoor Masses," the nun said.

Then Amanda realized that, behind them, but facing the duplicate grotto, were rows of benches for pilgrims, and that a horde of pilgrims was this moment leaving the benches and filing out toward another exit on the side.

"Those are the members of a German pilgrimage from Cologne and Dortmund, about four hundred of them," the nun explained. "They have finished their religious services now and are going across the Boulevard Victor Hugo to our Abri du Pelerin—our pilgrim shelter or dormitory for visitors. This group will remain for tonight and then go on to Lourdes itself."

Amanda was examining the replica grotto once more. There, at the upper right, inside the niche, was a blue and white statue of the Virgin Mary.

"The plague beneath the statue," said Sister Francesca, "tells us that the little piece of rock mounted on it is an actual rock fragment from the real grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes. Now, let me show you our convent church and Saint Bernadette herself." She had started away from the rephca grotto toward a courtyard, and was beckoning

Liz and Amanda past a tall, white marble statue of the Virgin Mary to a side door of the church.

Once inside the convent church, and proceeding down the center aisle between pews. Sister Francesca resumed speaking in a hushed tone. "This church was constructed in 18SS. It was modernized twice, the last time in 1972. The white altar ahead is concrete."

Except for the modernity of the church's interior decoration, Amanda felt that she had been inside this church before. She had visited at least a hundred churches in Europe, and they were always the same. High above the altar the arched ceiling and the multicolored windows. Behind the altar a crucifix, a bronze Jesus on a pale wooden cross. Immediately on either side of her, the rows of oak and walnut pews and a scattering of worshippers in silent prayer or meditation.

Liz and Amanda had arrived at the two steps leading up to the altar, and halted with their nun guide. Sister Francesca's voice dropped lower. "After the apparitions, Bernadette was at a loss as to what to do with herself. True, she was going to school at last, and sometimes acting as a baby-sitter to earn money for her parents, but she was constantly the object of attention from both neighbors and the endless stream of visitors coming to Lourdes. She could not be alone. She was daily exposed to intruders with their questions. By 1863, her mentors had decided that she needed a vocation, and suggested she enter some holy order as a nun."

"Maybe the church people just wanted her out of sight," said Liz provocatively. "By then, she was a growing legend, yet she sometimes did not behave like one. She had a streak of stubbornness, I've heard, and she disliked discipline, enjoyed playing pranks, had too lively an interest in fancy clothes. Maybe the churchmen wanted to get her off the streets and out of the way. To them, probably a convent seemed a convenient place to put her."

In this setting, Liz's assessment seemed harsh, and Amanda wondered how their nun guide would react. But Sister Francesca reacted nicely. "Some of that may have been true," she agreed, "but actually many convents considered her a prize and were after her, although with reservations because her health was so poor and her fame might disrupt their routines. The Carmehtes and the Bemardines were both after her. She rejected the latter because she did not like their ungainly headdress. When she settled on the order in Nevers, she remarked, 'I am going to Nevers because they did not lure me.' The mayor of Lourdes wanted her to become a dressmaker, but she told him she preferred to be a nun. On July 4, 1866, at the age of twenty-two, she left Lourdes forever, and took a train, her first and last train ride, to Nevers and entered our

order. She remained here until her death on April 16, 1879, at the age of thirty-five. She was elevated to sainthood in 1933." The nun paused, smiled, and said, "Now we can have a look at Saint Bernadette herself. She rests in the chapel near the altar."

Trailing after the other two, Amanda could not imagine what to expect.

They were facing the chapel, a restricted alcove, a narrow room almost sterile in its simphcity. The ceiling was a Gothic arch, the high windows dark blue, the three walls gray stone, and the centerpiece of the chapel was a large glass-and-gold casket, and inside it lay the body of a young woman, the object of their quest.

"Bernadette," the nun whispered.

Unaccountably, Amanda found herself drawn closer to the casket. When she had approached the low railing that protected the chapel, her emotion had been combative, as if she were about to come face to face with the other woman, this woman who stood between Ken and herself and their planned life together. But now, preceding Liz and Sister Fran-cesca to look closely at the casket, Amanda found that her anger had dissipated. She was enveloped by a sense of awe at what this young woman, little more than her own age, an unlettered peasant girl, had achieved, the unswerving beliefs she'd held, the indomitable strength of her belief

The casket itself was trimmed in gold, with glass sides, quite ornate, and rested on a carved solid-oak stand. Inside the reliquary, attired in the black and white habit of her order, eyes eternally shut, hands crossed on her breast as if in prayer, lay Bernadette. She seemed like one asleep, and at peace, after a long wearying day.

"It's really Bernadette?" asked Amanda softly, as Liz and Sister Francesca joined her.

"Yes, the blessed Saint Bernadette," said the nun, "all but the face and hands, that is."

"All but the face and hands?" Amanda said, surprised.

"In truth those are wax impressions of her face and hands that were fitted after her third and final exhumation."

"No wonder she looks so smooth and unblemished," said Liz.

"I'd better explain," said Sister Francesca. "Bernadette's physical condition was poor at the time of her death—bed sores on her back, a knee swollen from tuberculosis, lungs collapsed—therefore what followed is all the more remarkable. Her corpse was displayed for three days after her death. Then she was placed in a lead coffin, which was set in an oak coffin, and this was buried in a vault beneath a garden chapel. Thirty years after her burial, when efibrts were first being undertaken

by an episcopal commission to start Bernadette on the road to sainthood, her coffin was opened. That was in 1909."

"Why?" Liz wanted to know.

"To observe her condition," said the nun. "Most bodies of ordinary corpses suffer putrefaction. But a church tradition has always held that the body of a candidate for canonization would escape decay, be found in good condition. Well, when the coffin was opened, Bernadette's remains were found to be in an excellent state. The report by the examining doctor read: 'The head was tilted to the left. The face was matte white. The skin clung to the muscles and the muscles adhered to the bones. The sockets of the eyes were covered by the eyelids. The brows were flat on the skin and stuck to the arches above the eyes. The lashes of the right eyelid were stuck to the skin. The nose was dilated and shrunken. The mouth was open slightly, and it could be seen that the teeth were still in place. The hands, which were crossed on her breast, were perfectly preserved, as were the nails. The hands still held a rusting rosary."

"What happened next?" asked Liz.

"Bernadette's body was washed, dressed, reburied. There were two more exhumations as sainthood came closer, one more in 1919, and the last one in 1925. Each time the body was found well preserved, a good sign of sanctity. But after all those exposures to air and light, the body began to be affected and blacken. So impressions were made of Bernadette's face and hands, and in Paris a mask of wax was made for the face and wax covers for the hands. I will admit the artist took a few minor liberties—in the face mask he straightened Bernadette's nose a wee bit, plucked her eyebrows a little, and he added polish to her fingernails on the hand covers. Finally, the mask was fitted, Bernadette's body was wrapped in bandages and dressed in a fresh habit, and she was ready to be shown to the world. Here she has rested ever since. If there is anything else you would like to know—"

"I have a few questions," said Liz firmly.

A man with an armband had come into the chapel from the altar area and held some kind of photograph over the casket. In a few seconds he left.