The Miracle

by Irving Wallace

  Ahead, at the rear of the many benches facing the grotto, he saw an elderly woman rise from her seat and move away. Hurriedly, he led Natale to the bench and settled her into the empty place.

  He told Natale exactly where he had seated her, and her position in relation to the grotto. "You just sit here and pray," he said. "I'll take the bag with me, and see that your candle is lighted. And I'll fill the bottles with water."

  "You're so sweet, Mikel."

  "I do this for all my loves," he said lightly, and bent down and kissed the smile off her lips. "Be back soon."

  Slowly, easily, he picked his way through the crowd on the far side of the grotto. No one was paying any attention to anything except the cave in the hillside. It was almost too easy to drift away, and be interested in the foliage of the hillside, and move up it unhurriedly inspecting the plants and gradually disappear behind a group of trees.

  He continued climbing a short distance, until the grotto itself was hidden from view. He sought the depression behind the large oak tree he had spotted earlier, and he found it filled with fallen leaves, broken branches, bits of other vegetation. Setting down Natale's flight bag, he knelt and began using both hands to scoop the debris out of the hole. When he had finished his excavation, he was pleased. The depression would be deep enough to hold and hide his equipment.

  Emptying Natale's bag of the bottles and candle, he gingerly took out his own packages containing the sticks of dynamite, the detonator, the clock, the wiring, the tape, and the shopping bag. Casting about to see if he had by chance been followed, or, indeed, if there were any other climbers in the vicinity, he was satisfied that he was quite alone. He resumed work, lowering his packages into the hole, covering them with the folded shopping bag. Quickly, he scooped up the debris beside the hole, the dead leaves, branches, brush, and covered the shopping bag with them until the explosives and other materials were completely buried out of sight.

  Rising, he examined his handiwork. The leafy surface of the ground looked untouched, as if it had been arranged by nature. Care-

  fully, he restored Natale's bottles and candle to her flight bag. Then, with one hand, he dusted all signs of the foliage from his jacket and trousers. Taking up the bag, careful of his footing, he began his descent, noting every obvious landmark that would guide him on his return late that night.

  When he came off the hill, he was sure that almost no one had seen him, or if they had, they would have small curiosity about this nature lover and exercise freak. Ready to melt into the crowd surrounding the grotto, he became aware of the flight bag in his hand. He had told Natale that he would take care of her candle and her plastic bottles. He searched off toward the baths, saw the rows of flickering candles nearby, and went to them and piously lighted Natale's candle and placed it alongside the others. Next, dutifully, he approached a water gutter with a spigot at either end where pilgrims were lined up taking their turns filling a variety of containers. Finally, his turn came. He uncapped each of Natale's empty plastic bottles, several shaped like the Virgin Mary, and filled all of them, one by one, with the supposedly curative water, and then capped each bottle and set it in the flight bag.

  All there was left to do was to return to Natale, and guide her back to the hotel for lunch.

  Weaving through the people milling about the grotto, he thought of Natale, of how attracted he was to her. He thought of her vivacity and her magnificent body and her passion, and suddenly he was impatient to take her to the hotel, get lunch over with if she was hungry, and return to her room for another memorable coupling. Anticipating this, he wondered about something else. He wondered how serious he was about her, and how much he wanted to deal with her in the future. Was she the woman he had always fantasied about and hoped to live with for the rest of his life? Was it possible to devote one's years to an afflicted person, one who would forever be afflicted? He did not know, or even know if she was interested in giving her own life over to an unseen Basque revolutionary—and a struggling author. Well, he told himself, it would all work itself out some way.

  He had expected to find her on the bench as he had left her, occupied with silent prayer or meditating behind those dark glasses. Instead, when she came into sight, he saw that she was engaged in an animated conversation with a vaguely familiar older woman, a rather tall woman with black hair drawn back severely into a bun, who was seated beside her.

  Puzzled, he advanced upon the pair. The older woman was speaking now, and Natale listening, as Hurtado came upon them. He waited

  for the other woman to finish, and then he stepped closer, and touched Natale on the shoulder.

  "Natale," he said, "It's Mikel. I have all your bottles—"

  Natale twisted toward him, a smile on her upturned face, as she reached for his hand. "Mikel, you must meet someone dear to me. The lady I'm talking to is Rosa Zennaro, our family friend from Rome and my helper here in Lourdes."

  "Yes, of course," said Hurtado, offering her a bow and a smile, "the one for whom we left the note. Pleased to meet you, Signora Zennaro."

  "The pleasure is mine," said Rosa. "Natale has been telling me all about you—"

  "Not quite all," said Natale to Hurtado, blushing.

  "—and that you are competing to replace me by becoming her brancardier," Rosa finished.

  "I'm sure that would be impossible," said Hurtado. "I saw you two deep in conversation, and I really didn't mean to interrupt."

  "Nothing important," said Rosa. "I was merely telling Natale about the statue of the Virgin Mary in the niche beside the grotto." She pointed off. "There it is. You can't miss it."

  Hurtado peered off guiltily, unable to admit that he knew it well, had been closer to it than either of them, and the plans he had for its demise. "Yes," he said. "Quite attractive."

  "But Bernadette didn't think so, Mikel." Natale turned, fumbling for Rosa's arm and tugging it. "Rosa, tellMikel about the statue—he'll be so interested."

  Without protest, Rosa launched into telling the story a second time. "There had been a plaster statuette of the Virgin in the niche next to the grotto, placed there by the townsfolk. Two sisters in Lyons, much devoted to the grotto, wanted to replace it with a larger and more accurate statue of the apparition that Bernadette had seen. They commissioned a well-known sculptor, Joseph Fabisch, of the Lyons Academy of Arts, to prepare it. Fabisch traveled down to Lourdes to interview Bernadette and get a description from her of what the Virgin had looked like when She had announced that She was the Immaculate Conception. To describe what Bernadette had seen, Fabisch later recorded, 'Bernadette got up with the greatest simplicity. She joined her hands and raised her eyes to heaven. I have never seen anything more beautiful. . . . Neither Mino da Fiesole, nor Pemgino, nor Raphael have ever done anything so sweet and yet so profound as was the look of that young girl, consumptive to her fingertips.' Somewhat according to Bernadette's specifications, but allowing himself a degree of artist's

  license, Fabisch carved his large statue out of Carrara marble. When Father Peyramale received the statue in Lourdes, and showed it to Bernadette, she exclaimed, 'No, that's not it!' "

  Natale was delighted. "Bernadette couldn't pretend about anything."

  "Bernadette did not withhold her criticism," Rosa went on. "She considered the statue too tall, too mature, too fancy, and she insisted that by making the Virgin raise her eyes but not her head to heaven, the sculptor had given her a goiter. Nevertheless, the statue was placed in the niche with great ceremony on April 4, 1863. Bernadette was not allowed to attend, presumably because curiosity-seekers might bother her. But I suspect that she was kept away because she might be too frank and make a negative remark about the statue."

  "Very amusing," said Hurtado, feeling guiltier than ever. "Well, shall we all have lunch? You'll join us, won't you, Mrs. Zennaro?"

  "Thank you," said Rosa. "I'd enjoy that."

  "Mikel, you go ahead of us, please. I want a few moments alone with Rosa, to discuss something personal. We'
ll be right behind you."

  "Okay," said Hurtado, starting away.

  But before he was out of earshot, he could overhear Natale and Rosa conversing in stage whispers. They were still speaking in English.

  Natale was saying, "Rosa, isn't he wonderful? I'd give anything to see him. Do you mind—would you give me some idea what he looks like?"

  Rosa was answering, "He's ugly as sin, like something monstrous out of Goya. Pop eyes, squashed nose, crooked teeth, and as big as a gorilla."

  "Now I know that's untrue," said Natale laughing. "You're joking, aren't you?"

  "Joking completely, dear one. He's as handsome as you could have wished for. He looks like an artist—"

  "He's a writer," said Natale.

  "I can believe that. He is perhaps five foot ten, slight but sinewy, strong face with dark soulful eyes, straight longish nose, full lips, determined jaw, and close-cropped dark auburn hair. Very intense all around, like one who knows what he is after and is going to get it."

  Listening, Hurtado mouthed a soft amen, and trudged on up the ramp.

  For Gisele Dupree, it had been a leisurely morning. She had had no tour group to guide until early afternoon, so after lying abed late, she had decided to dress and go out and take care of a few odds and ends.

  On the Avenue Bernadette Soubirous, she had stopped to purchase some cosmetics—eye-liner, lipstick, moisturizer -- to bolster her new resolve to begin wearing make-up again. Then she had gone along the Rue de la Grotte until she reached a leather store that had a red wallet she liked, and she had decided to buy it. At the last moment, about to stock up on food, she had remembered the roll of film that she had taken of her Nantes pilgrim group at the grotto the day before yesterday. For a gratuity, she had been guaranteed a forty-eight-hour delivery. She had detoured to the camera shop, picked up the color prints, and promised herself to drop them at the tour group's hotel after lunch. Tucking the packet of prints in her purse, she had set off for the food shops, determined to cut her lunch and dinner bills by eating at Dominique's apartment for the remainder of the week.

  In the tiny dining room of the cool apartment, after heating some tomato soup, preparing a chopped egg salad, and putting jelly on a croissant, she sat down with a few days of accumulated copies of Le Figaro to catch up on the news that was already old. She had started to read when she recalled the packet of photographs and decided to see if they had all come out well, since she had never been one of the world's best photographers. Finding the packet in her purse, she took it back to the table, pulled out the prints and resumed digging into her salad.

  The prints of the group, mostly posed and static, had come out fairly well, at least each one was in focus. As she turned them over, one by one, she counted nine of them. Then, to her surprise, there were three more photographs of a complete stranger, some lone older man standing in the sun near the grotto. The pictures had been shot in rapid succession, the first of the older man just standing in the sun, his suit clinging to him, obviously because he'd been in the baths, with a slight blur resembling the feathers of a small bird fluttering in front of his shirt. The second picture showed him bending down, picking up what might have been the bird with outspread wings. And finally the third picture showed the man fastening the bird—no, not a bird, but a mustache -- to his upper lip, and with that photograph he was no longer a stranger. She recognized him.

  He was Samuel Talley, her former client, the professor from New York.

  Instantly, recollection came. As she had been photographing the tour group, she had seen Talley standing alone near them. As a lark, she had diverted the lens of her camera to focus on him and had taken three automatic fast snapshots of him. Perhaps she had done it for fun, to please him with a record of his visit to the grotto, which could be plainly seen in the distance behind him, or perhaps there had been an

  ulterior motive, to please him in order to wheedle another tip from him. She had a long way to go to reach that translator's school in Paris, but still those tips added up, each one counted.

  Anyway, the pictures of Talley were crazy.

  She had ceased eating to consider each picture again. At first the sequence made no sense, and then she realized that it did. The crazy thing was the mustache, the flowing Talley mustache. It was false, a false mustache. She recreated the scene. He had come out of the baths, and his mustache had fallen off, because he had been immersed in the water. He had stooped to retrieve it. He had pasted it back on his upper lip.

  Funny.

  But odd, also. She had thought his shaggy mustache real. But here she could see it was false, a disguise.

  Why on earth would a nobody professor from far away want to wear a disguise in a place where he was a foreigner and unknown?

  Unless, of course, he didn't want to be recognized, and was therefore not unknown, and therefore a visitor who might be known but preferred to be in Lourdes unknown.

  The intrigue side of her mind was going a mile a minute now -- a favorite expression from America—and her curiosity was thoroughly aroused.

  Why the devil would a nonentity of a professor worry about being seen in Lourdes? Maybe he was trying to avoid a onetime French girl friend who might be here? Maybe he was trying to avoid a local creditor in Lourdes whom he owed for a previous extravagance beyond his means? Or—

  Maybe he wasn't Samuel Talley at all. Maybe his name was false just like his mustache. Maybe he was someone else, someone more important, someone who for some reason did not want to be identified with Lourdes.

  Someone important?

  Gisele threw aside the second and third photographs, and concentrated on the first one, the one of Talley sans mustache, the older man with his face exposed, looking as he really looked. Gisele brought the photograph up closer, narrowing her eyes, staring at the Slavic countenance in the picture. There were thousands and thousands of important faces in the world, and she knew only a few of them, mainly those that belonged to entertainers or politicians she had seen featured in the daily newspapers. Yet this particular photograph of the man who called himself Talley, the man who had lost his false mustache, had a look of familiarity about him.

  It was as if she had seen him somewhere before.

  The obviously Slavic features, now with the upper lip growth out of the way. An upper lip with a wart. Slavic features on a man who had told her he was an American of Russian parentage and taught Russian at Columbia University, and yet might be somebody else. But—

  Gisele blinked. Why not Russian, really Russian?

  Then like a bolt it struck her, recognition struck her.

  She had seen this man before, or his double, in person, in the newspapers. She ransacked through recent memory, the UN months. Yes, that's where she had seen the face with the wart. Her lover, Charles Sarrat, had taken her to a UN reception, and she had seen the great man, had been awed to see him up close. And again, just the day before yesterday, on the front page of Le Figaro.

  Her hand streaked to the backlog of unread copies of the newspapers. The day-before-yesterday"s edition, the front page, and there it was, and there he was on the front page before her. One of the three candidates being speculated upon as the possible successor to the ailing premier of the Soviet Union. There he was in the paper, the very face in the color photograph she had taken at the grotto.

  Sergei Tikhanov, foreign minister of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  It couldn't be, it just couldn't be. But it might be, almost certainly it might be.

  Quickly, she had the faces side by side, the one in the Paris newspaper, the one in the photograph she had taken playfully yesterday at the grotto, and she was comparing them.

  Absolutely, they were one and the same. Samuel Talley, of the false mustache, was actually the renowned and mighty Sergei Tikhanov. My God, Holy Jesus, if this were true.

  The clever and deductive side of her mind was racing now, outlining possibilities, one logical possibility.

  The successor to the leaders
hip of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was ill. As Talley, he had admitted that he was ill. He was in line for the top job in Russia. But he was ill, and maybe doctors didn't give him much hope. So he was trying for any cure, and Lourdes had been in the headlines these past weeks. In desperation, he had made the decision to visit Lourdes. But as a leader of the biggest atheistic state in the world, he dared not let it be known that he was indulging in a romantic and wild enterprise like seeking succor from the Virgin Mary at the foremost Catholic shrine. Therefore, he had come here under a pseudonym, and wearing a disguise.

  Gisele sat back, shaken by the enormity of her discovery.

  If true.

  The discovery was a prize, but it had to be true, verified, proved. There could be no mistake. Her only evidence was the very clear snapshot of Talley-Tikhanov taken near the grotto, and the one in the photograph resembled the image in her memory of the Soviet foreign minister she had seen up close briefly at the United Nations reception. But memory could be faulty, inexact. Then there was the photograph in the newspaper, clear yet not totally clear because it was reproduced on cheap newsprint.

  What additional evidence did she need?

  For one thing, a better photograph of Tikhanov that would be clearer than the one in the newspaper, a real print that she could hold beside her own clear snapshot taken at the grotto.

  And one more thing. Absolute evidence that Talley, the name, was fake, that it was not his own name but as much a disguise as his mustache. It that could be proved, that Talley wasn't Talley, and a truer picture of Tikhanov showed him to be the one at the grotto, then there would be no more doubt. She would be able to expose someone who, at any cost, did not want to be exposed. She would be on to a big one, the biggest break in her young life.