The Three Sisters (37 page)

“Bernard, what are you doing?” asked Detective Hole just as Benny had finished sliding the pictures under the
other papers.

“How about a riddle, Schmuck Hole?” asked K the Catholic, trying to distract
the detective.

“Don’t you ever stop this?” asked the
zacotic zealot.

“Not if I can help it,” replied K which stood for neither Kinder, Kirche,
nor Küche.

“All right, but if I hear one of your riddles, you have to hear one of mine,” demanded Detective Hole. John Hotchkiss was ready
to leave.

“You drive a tough bargain, and I’m not sure if it’s worth it,” said Coito. “But oh well, here goes nothing. What did Jesus say to Satan in the Garden
of Gethsemane?”

Several seconds later: “I
give up.”

“No, he said, ‘Get thee behind
me Satan.’”

“Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see how you three will suffer in Hell. Don’t you fear for your
mortal souls?”

“Never think of it,” confessed Coito. “What about
your riddle?”

“Oh,” said Detective Hole, brightening up. “Who in the Bible besides Adam had
no father?”

“Joshua, the son of Nun,” Theodora answered correctly. “I haven’t heard that one
in years.”

“Drat,” said
Detective Hole.

“You shouldn’t swear, Schmuck Hole,” admonished Theodora. “’Drat’ is short for God rot, which is
nearly blasphemous.”

Detective Hole had never had anyone answer one of his religious riddles before, and Theodora’s response angered him even more than Coito’s blasphemies. He decided to leave the cell immediately, taking Bernard with him whether the boy wanted to leave or not. He motioned to the guards guarding to let them out, but before parting past the priests praying, he left a few final words. “In my opinion, I think you three are getting off easy by only being crucified and burned at the stake. In the past blasphemers had their tongues pulled out before they were killed by decapitation. I only wish the same would be done
for you.”

“Cluck, cluck, cluck,” answered K, providing an
aglossal imitation.

“I am leaving now,” he said as the cell door opened. Benny gathered up his papers very carefully to ensure that the photos did not scatter on
the floor.

“So soon?” asked Coito. “Be sure and bring Benny and
Béni-oui-oui
with you next time. They’re much more fun
than you.”

“I have tried to save your souls, but I see now that that is impossible,” Detective Hole said as Benny and John Hotchkiss walked through the doorway. “I shall not see you again until the day you are to be crucified. It is an event I look forward to.” The door slammed shut behind
Detective Hole.

Benny had gotten to see Regina and had apologized to her, but he wished Coito and Detective Hole had not been there so he could have spent the whole afternoon alone with Regina. Benny wanted to give Regina one last sign of his feelings for her, so before the group of three visitors had rounded the corner and the cell went out of sight, Benny looked back and yelled, “Bye, Regina, I love you,” for he knew he would never see
her again.

CHAPTER XVII

What is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And, live how we can, yet die
we must.

– Henry VI, Part III
, II,
ii.
27

etween the three’s sentencing and their scheduled crucifixion, Father Novak devoted himself exclusively to seeing that Virnovak Enterprises produced and marketed the hundreds of old and new three sisters souvenirs which would provide him with the capital requisite for producing Catholic consumer goods after the crucifixion had concluded. What had been intended in June as a temporary flirtation with three heretics to obtain the necessary funds to achieve his real ambition, had turned into a six-month long process of thinking up products, reifying the ideas, producing the goods, planning their distribution, marketing the manifold products related to the three, and fostering better
public relations.

Virnovak Enterprises’s first four months had seen the kind of enviable success which champions of the free enterprise system love to quote to prove that capitalism is alive and well, and that anyone who sets his mind to it can make a fortune. Already sales were in eight figures with no fall in projected revenues expected, but as with any expanding company, increasing sales was no problem.

The principle difficulty the company faced came in maintaining a positive net cash flow. Royalties from television, concomitant loans, Victor’s profits from the Kennedy Center, revenues from the three sisters souvenirs—all were consumed as quickly as they came in. The main reason for this was that Father Novak and Victor Virga had decided to begin producing Catholic consumer goods while their company was still receiving the mountains of free publicity created by the well-known relationship between the three condemned Catholics and Virnovak Enterprises. But in order to begin production, the company had to buy up a number of factories and companies whose debts were not insignificant. Any funds freed by rescheduling debt arrangements of the companies they bought were immediately consumed for retooling the factories to produce Catholic
consumer goods.

Since June, Virnovak Enterprises had received a lot of positive publicity for its zealous promotion of the three sisters. This made it easier for the company to secure loans from banks at good rates; however, Virnovak Enterprises was expanding so rapidly that Victor’s financial managers were beginning to wonder how long they could go on borrowing before the banks would get wise. Virnovak Enterprises’s day of reckoning, however, was indefinitely delayed when the three sisters
were sentenced.

The decision to crucify the three proved to be a shot in the arm which not only spurred profits, but enhanced interest in the company and its viability. It was no coincidence that Virnovak Enterprises decided to issue public stock on the strength of the crucifixion’s boost to their company. Father Novak had spent the previous four months of PR work on TV revealing his commitment to producing Catholic consumer goods for the nation and telling of his faith in his fellow Catholics. With this basis of popular support, he hoped to build his corporation by issuing common stock to Catholics and
non-Catholics alike.

On December
3
, Victor Virga and Father Novak appeared above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell, for that was the day that their stock IPO’d on the exchange. “Always dreamed of doing that. One the biggest thrills of my life,” Victor told a reporter that day. With the capital the company got from issuing stock, their cash flow problems disappeared. The stock (symbol VVK) immediately got a pop and continued to rise for the rest of the year.

All of his life, Father Novak had prayed for his corporation to come to life, and it seemed that God had finally granted his prayers. At last Father Novak could serve God as he thought it was his duty. Yet the most exciting part of Father Novak’s life was not having his dream fulfilled, but running Virnovak Enterprises with Victor. The work was a far cry from doing research on the medieval Church and its contemporary economic system or fighting the Catholic hierarchy, and even with the long hours, the taxing PR work which required that Father Novak travel constantly, the rush decisions, and other pressures which came with his new position in life, Father Novak was enjoying his work immensely.

Since June, Father Novak had acquired from Victor and others the financial capability, marketing expertise, business connections, managerial help, and other skills and knowledge requisite for producing and selling Catholic consumer goods efficiently. In fact, he had gained his expertise with a celerity and facility which seemed almost shocking. His job required long hours, a willingness to make decisions and give orders, and dedication, but no extraordinary skills or innate ability which was beyond him. He thanked God daily for providing him with the ability to manage the business so well (what other fact could explain his success?), but sometimes he wondered if earning so much money with such ease could be honest. It not only could be, Victor told him, but it was. “Know what they say,” added Victor. “Early to bed, early to rise, preach the Gospel
and advertise.”

Though Father Novak did not admit it, the crucifixion had been a blessing in disguise. Looking over his inventory of goods on November
1
, Father Novak had had strong suspicions that the company would suffer losses on the unsold items. He was prepared to sell them off at a large discount to cut his losses so he could work exclusively on producing Catholic consumer goods, but when the Supreme Court sentenced the three, Father Novak received a seven-week reprieve, which not only meant that he could once again sell his inventory in the dear market instead of the discounted market, but that Virnovak Enterprises could produce more souvenirs for the public and reap
more profits.

After predicting the parabola of sales in November and December, Victor Virga and Father Novak calculated that by Thanksgiving their existing inventory would be depleted, but exactly how much more they should produce was difficult to determine. During the trial, because of strong sales during the first week in October, they had stepped up production only to see sales plummet during the third week. A businessman may make mistakes, but a good businessman never makes the same mistake twice, so Victor and Father Novak tried to obtain better predictions of future sales.

Since consumer behavior under such unknown circumstances baffled them, they decided to hire several economists to solve their problems. To answer the businessmen’s queries, the analysts adapted theories, analyzed markets, crunched numbers, overloaded computers, and came up with seven different scientifically irrefutable answers to end Virnovak Enterprises’s marketing dilemmas, all of which disagreed with each another.

The advisors were careful not to tell Victor and Father Novak which of the seven roads to follow, but merely advised them that each was a strategy which could obtain some of the goals aimed for by the company, but not all. After deciding never to waste money on economists again, the two threw the seven plans out the window and decided to follow their intuition. Victor called the chosen factories and subcontractors and told them to begin producing
to capacity.

Not only did Virnovak Enterprises order more of the old souvenirs, but they told the producers about the new products designed exclusively for the upcoming Festivities (thus the crucifixion had been euphemistically christened) of December
25
when the three were to pay their debt to society.

There were new T-shirts such as
i was there when they crucified the three
,
the three sisters did not survive the festivities of
1979
, or more simply,
crucify!
Coito suggested
ein feste burg ist unser gott
, for those who still supported the three against the pressure of public opinion, and Theodora suggested a T-shirt saying,
yeah, by the waters of the potomac they burned
. Regina’s idea was for Virnovak Enterprises to sell buttons saying
i saw the three die in living color
, for
TV viewers.

It may seem odd that the three still divulged their ideas for new products to Victor (who rarely visited them anymore), even though they were going to die and would never profit from their ideas, but the three sisters’ interest in their fates after death superseded their antipathy towards
the Festivities.

“We wanted to have some control over what was left of our lives. We decided that if we could create some of the souvenirs that would survive us, we would be leaving a legacy behind us for the future,” Theodora explained. “Romans who had no descendants left money as a legacy to someone whose job it was to keep the deceased’s memory alive. We had no money or descendants, but we did have
the souvenirs.”

December being the month when consumers traditionally lose control over their oniomanic passions, business boomed. Father Novak was having more success in business in those few months than in his previous forty-five years of life put together, but as December
25
approached, a feeling of apprehension about what he was doing came over him. Though Father Novak spent every waking hour working or thinking about Virnovak Enterprises and the three sisters, he never once visited them in their cell after the trial had finished. He was profiting from the three sisters’ scheduled crucifixion as much, if not more, than anyone else involved with it, but the more he became involved in the three sisters’ products, the more the source of his profits began to
trouble him.

Back in June, Father Novak had wondered whether it were right to make his fortune and save the Church by using three atheists to his own advantage, but with Robert Schuller-like optimism, he rationalized that he was turning Satan’s negative into God’s positive and was showing others how to serve God in the
twentieth century.

Victor had convinced Father Novak to set up Virnovak Enterprises instead of working exclusively under the aegis of the Catholic Church for political and financial reasons
becuse Victor feared jealous Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals would try to interfere with their plans, and because a corporation had better access to capital and could produce broader consumer appeal than a Vatican-run company. “Cardinals stick their noses in, we’ll be supporting every missionary in Africa to baptize the Pagan Babies,” Victor had warned
Father Novak.

His doubts about Victor’s advice disappeared when Victor’s predictions about potential interference from the Catholic hierarchy proved true in the weeks before the trial. Though all the company’s earnings were immediately reinvested to expand future production so that by the end of November very little money had actually flowed into the Church’s coffers, Father Novak saw that the company and the Catholic Church would reap the whirlwind in a year
or two.

What really began to worry Father Novak, however, was not the company’s financial situation, but Coito, Theodora and Regina. Until the sentencing, Father Novak had not been bothered by the three’s fates. They had spun their own web of wicked deeds and had become ensnared in it. They would be punished for their crimes and well deserved it, but like everyone else, he had not anticipated the severity of the sentence meted out to the three. At first, Father Novak had thrown himself at the work before him with an unbounded fury which left him with little time to think about the sentence, but his oblivious bliss only lasted so long before his thoughts pushed themselves to
the forefront.

Naturally, when Father Novak was around Victor, or in public, he did not betray the questions which assailed him in private, but once he was by himself, his misgivings returned. Oh yes, Father Novak knew the justification for the sentence recited perfunctorily by most: that the three were traitors to their God and country, and so capital punishment was their just reward, and had Father Novak not been involved in the three sisters’ fates, he might have accepted the decision like so many others.

But for Father Novak, the sentence was not something which he could quickly dismiss with some rationalization created for the nonce, for he was partially responsible for the three’s fates. Yet, whenever this thought hit him, his mind immediately shot back: the sisters had committed the crimes, Victor had arranged the trial, the media had sensationalized every event, Coito had made herself infamous and culpable with her cynicism at the Confessions, and the Supreme Court had passed judgment and sentenced them only after consulting half of Washington. So how could he be responsible for what had happened? The answer was that the Confessions and many of the souvenirs had been his idea. Without them, the three might not have been sentenced
to death.