Three Marys Read online

  Cal smiled. ‘Thanks, Joe. Any questions?’

  ‘Thank you, Father Murphy,’ Da Silva said. ‘I do enjoy a good Bible lesson.’

  ‘So,’ Cal said, ‘I suppose the central question here is whether we’re dealing with something with a rational scientific/biological explanation versus a spiritual/religious one. We already know that these girls or their families can’t be accused of perpetrating a hoax. They are very much pregnant and are very much virginal.’

  ‘Precisely,’ the cardinal said.

  ‘Let’s start with spiritual explanations. By the very nature of the beast it’s impossible to find direct empirical evidence to explain an intrinsically spiritual event. As you well know, this is the fundamental issue into any miracles investigation. Essentially, conclusions on the veracity of a miracle claim must rest on the absence of a persuasive alternative explanation.’ Cal realized he was sounding awfully professorial. ‘Look, it’s a process of elimination. If you can’t figure out what the heck is going on after trying your damnedest then maybe, just maybe, you’re looking at a miracle. Over the last century, nearly all of the miracles claims bubbling up to the Vatican for formal investigation have involved disease cures arising from the intercession of a putative saint. These cures generally happen in incurable diseases and they need to be spontaneous, often instantaneous and complete. Credible doctors have to certify that there’s no natural explanation for what happened. Now pregnancy isn’t a disease – though if it happened to one of my girlfriends I’d feel ill – but the approach has to be much the same.’

  Cal paused to see how his unfortunate quip had gone over. Elisabetta was frowning. He was about to apologize when she spoke.

  ‘It seems to me that we have eliminated the two rational and scientific ways that these girls may have become pregnant,’ she said. ‘These are sexual intercourse and artificial insemination. Their undeniable virginal anatomy excludes these. That leaves a phenomenon I know very little about other than its Wikipedia page, and that is parthenogenesis: asexual reproduction where an embryo develops without fertilization.’

  ‘Actually, I was just going to bring this up. I’m with you on this,’ Cal said. ‘I looked at the same Wikipedia page. I was going to flag it as something we needed to get an expert opinion about.’

  ‘For sure, we will find an Italian expert,’ Elisabetta said. ‘But as this is an important condition for us to understand and to confidently defend, two opinions would be useful. I wonder if you could also find an American expert, perhaps from Harvard or one of your other Boston institutions?’

  Cal thought about it for a moment. A name came to him along with a spasm in his gut. ‘I think I’ve got someone.’ Then he said, ‘The other factor I was going to raise is DNA. Once the babies are born we’re going to have a lot of interesting data.’

  ‘For sure, but we will have to wait for two months,’ she said. ‘Our curiosity must surely take a back seat to the small but real risks of amniocentesis.’

  ‘Well,’ Cal said, leaning back in his chair, ‘I suppose it’s not completely premature to talk about spiritual explanations. Aside from the overwhelming significance of virgin birth to Christianity, one of the unifying experiences each girl describes is being interrupted on her journey by a blinding light. Light is the universally defining aspect of divine presence. This is not limited, of course, to Christianity – it’s thematic in most religions. One nicely representative image in Christianity comes from Acts Nine where Saul is on the way to Damascus.’ Cal reached for his notes and read, ‘“And suddenly there shined around him a light from heaven. And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus.” Now there’s nothing about the Virgin Mary experiencing a light in association with her visitation by Gabriel but the presence of blinding light in the stories of our Marys is an element that has to be included in any analysis. The girls also heard voices proclaiming their chosen status. I’d say that tilts the balance toward the spiritual end of things, but that’s just me. I’ll defer to the Vatican on the spiritual judgments. Could I ask what you think, Your Eminence?’

  The cardinal’s sigh came through the speaker loud and clear. ‘What do I think,’ he repeated. ‘What indeed? If this is not a miracle it is a very big headache for the Church. If it is a miracle it is the biggest one since the Gabriel told Mary what was going to happen to her. Please do whatever it takes to shine a light – divine or otherwise – on this matter.’

  Jessica Nelson was still angry.

  A woman to her word, she had gone to Iceland on her own and, apparently, she had not enjoyed herself. Cal let her vent, shaking his head and scrunching his chin compassionately as she recounted each of the indignities she had to endure as a single woman fending off the advances of men of all nationalities at hot springs, hotel bars, and the like, but he suspected she rather got a kick out of busting balls – both theirs and his.

  ‘I especially didn’t like the food,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Someone talked me into trying fermented shark.’

  ‘Dinner tonight is but the first step in a long and arduous program to rehabilitate myself,’ he said.

  The tasting menu at Menton in Boston – not far from Jessica’s condo – was almost three-hundred dollars a head with the wine pairing. He wasn’t fooling around tonight. That was mainly because he liked her more than a little and felt guilty about pulling out of the Iceland jaunt. She was tall and brassy, an attractive motor-mouth who spewed out super-interesting facts and opinions about – well, almost everything. Cal was a confident guy but her level of self-assurance dwarfed his own not inconsiderable ego and he liked that too. Many of the women he’d dated were in awe of his accomplishments and he tired of being on a relationship pedestal. Jessica was very much his equal – athletically, financially, and accomplishment-wise.

  Of course, the other reason for the hard-fought date was that he wanted to pick her brain.

  ‘Parthenogenesis?’ she asked midway through the main course. ‘Why the hell are you interested in that?’

  He told her what he’d been up to while she’d been touring volcanoes. The plates were being cleared for dessert when he finished.

  ‘Trust me,’ she said finally. ‘This isn’t parthenogenesis. I’m a geneticist. Want to know what I think?’

  ‘I do, Jessica. That’s why I’m asking,’ he said, throwing back the rest of his third vodka on the rocks.

  ‘I think these girls got knocked up the old-fashioned way.’

  ‘Their hymens were intact.’

  ‘Oh, and you’re an expert on hymens?’

  ‘No – although I do have a fair bit of amateur-level experience with female anatomy,’ he said with a smile. ‘But some real experts have examined the girls and studied the photos. Tell me why you’re dismissive of parthenogenesis.’

  ‘Because your Marys aren’t insects or lizards or fish. No mammalian species is capable of giving birth without a father. First of all, mammalian eggs won’t divide until they receive a chemical signal from the sperm. Second, mammalian eggs have only half the number of chromosomes they need for development. Without sperm, the embryo would end up with only half the DNA it needs to survive.’

  ‘No way around this?’

  ‘Well, assuming you could find a clever way to overcome both of those barriers in the lab there’s a third obstacle that probably can’t be. It involves something called genomic imprinting that’s way more complicated than you’ll be interested in, believe me. It involves the way some maternal and paternal genes are suppressed by one another. Without the sperm-cell imprint, the offspring won’t survive.’

  ‘But this doesn’t matter in insects?’

  ‘Way simpler genomes. But let’s say that some way more brilliant geneticist than me – if that’s even a concept – could get around all three of these obstacles, imprinting included, there’s a final nail in the coffin. You said their babies are male.’
<
br />   ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘Theoretically, if mammalian parthenogenesis were to produce a viable embryo, it would have to be female. No sperm: no y chromosome. No y chromosome: the embryo is xx. A female. Game, set, match.’

  ‘I see.’ He hoped he’d be able to remember all of this for his report to the cardinal.

  The waiter was coming at them with the dessert menu.

  Jessica whispered to him, ‘Hey, all this sex talk’s made me horny. What do you say we get the check and go back to my place?’

  EIGHT

  Paradise Village could be a rough place at night. An outsider couldn’t possibly know the invisible boundary lines but rival gangs knew exactly which blocks belonged to which posse. So, mobile phones began lighting up when a 4X4 began winding its way through the slum, blowing through territorial boundaries.

  ‘Who’s that white Toyota belong to, bro?’

  ‘Not ours. Think it’s the Sputniks?’

  ‘Better fucking not be, bro. Only one way to find out.’

  A group of a dozen shirtless and liquored-up young men brandishing machetes soon flooded into the streets blocking one of them completely. The Toyota pulled up and flashed its headlights. When that didn’t disperse them, the driver laid into the horn. That only churned the waters. The youths started waving their machetes over their heads and a couple pulled small revolvers from their waistbands.

  The driver and front passenger doors opened and two Filipino men got out. Both wore dark trousers and loose-fitting white, collared shirts. They weren’t street gangsters and they weren’t cops but what got the young men chattering among themselves were the semi-automatic pistols they were holding at their sides.

  ‘Shit, bro,’ one of them said, ‘they got 1911s.’

  The driver said calmly, ‘We going to have a problem here, boys?’

  A skinny guy with a revolver and baggy shorts said, ‘You got business in our hood, man?’

  ‘Yeah, we got business but it’s not your business. You better put that pea-shooter away before you get yourself dead.’

  The skinny kid said, ‘There’s only two of you fags, and those 45s got, what – eight in the mag, one in the rack? You’ll be skinned before you take all of us. So get the fuck off our block.’

  A rear door opened and another man got out. His firepower was more impressive – an AK-47 with a long banana clip.

  ‘Full auto,’ the driver said. ‘What you boys wanna do?’

  Two of the youths whispered to each other and the skinny kid who appeared to have authority declared, with a hesitant bravado, ‘OK, you can pass through but don’t be stopping. This is our house, understand?’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ the driver said, climbing back inside. He proceeded slowly as the gang made way.

  When the road narrowed and became impassable the men got out. There was a woman with them, stocky with shiny black hair, clutching a shoulder bag to her side. The driver, his pistol at his hip, led the four-person procession, the man with the rifle at the rear. Most of the shanties were dark and there were few street lights so he had to use a flashlight. A solitary old man sat in a lawn chair outside Maria Aquino’s house and he stood as the party approached.

  ‘Can I be of assistance?’ the old man asked.

  It was the woman who did the talking, speaking English with a Latin accent. The driver translated. ‘We would like to speak with Mrs Aquino.’

  ‘But it’s midnight,’ the old man said. ‘She is asleep.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is important. I was sent here from the Vatican. I am the representative of the pope. I must speak with her.’

  The old man blinked nervously. ‘You have guns.’

  ‘A good thing too,’ the woman said. ‘This seems to be a dangerous place at night.’

  ‘It is, it is,’ the old man agreed. ‘Please wait. I will wake her.’

  Maria’s mother came to the door, droopy-eyed, in a t-shirt and shorts.

  ‘You say you’re from the Vatican?’

  ‘I am,’ the woman said. ‘Your priest, Father Santos, has advised the Vatican of Maria’s situation. May I come inside to speak with you?’

  ‘A man from the Vatican came before.’

  The woman looked at her blankly. She missed a beat then said, ‘And now I am here.’

  Mrs Aquino stared at the men with guns behind her.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ the woman said. ‘They are my driver and security guards. We were told your area was dangerous at night. It’s true, I think.’

  She was invited into the dark room where Mrs Aquino lit the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and asked if she wanted tea.

  ‘I’m fine, dear.’

  The woman wore expensive clothes and had lots of makeup and perfume. She eyed the grimy sofa and elected to stand.

  ‘What does the pope want with my Maria?’ Mrs Aquino asked, her arms folded across her chest.

  ‘You must know, dear, that Maria is a very special girl. The whole world is talking about her. The Holy Father is concerned, very concerned about her safety. He has asked about her home situation and he has learned that there are many crowds during the day and gangs and drug dealers who roam during the night.’

  ‘But everyone, even the gangsters, are respectful of Maria. They all love her. They call her the Little Virgin of Paradise Village.’

  The woman nodded but said, ‘And there is the matter of health care. She is a very young mother. Her birth could have complications. The Holy Father wants her to have the very best health care and the top doctors attending to her prenatal care and the delivery of her baby.’

  ‘The local hospital is OK for her,’ Mrs Aquino said. ‘She has a good doctor.’

  ‘The Holy Father wants his own doctor to see her. They have the best lady-doctors and the best baby-doctors in Rome.’

  ‘What are you saying to me?’

  ‘I want Maria to come with me now. We will fly to the Vatican tonight. The Holy Father will bless her tomorrow.’

  ‘I cannot leave,’ her mother said, shaking her head vigorously. ‘I have other children.’

  ‘You stay with them. I will take care of Maria. Don’t worry.’

  ‘No. She is staying here. I don’t want to hear any more of this.’

  The woman took her large purse from her shoulder and handed it to her.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked.

  ‘Look inside.’

  Mrs Aquino walked under the hanging bulb and opened it. Then she gasped.

  ‘There’s 200,000 pesos in there,’ the woman told her. That was almost five thousand US dollars.

  Mrs Aquino tried to push the bag back into the woman’s hands but she backed away and wouldn’t take it.

  ‘My daughter is not for sale. Please leave.’

  ‘You’re taking this the wrong way,’ the woman said quickly. ‘It’s a gift to take care of you and your other little ones. Maybe get a nice house in a better area. Once Maria has had her baby she will come back to you. We will give you a mobile phone so you can talk to her whenever you want. She’ll have beautiful clothes and pretty things. It’s going to be amazing for everyone.’

  ‘No! Get out!’

  Her voice was loud enough to get Maria out of bed and to summon two of the armed men who’d been waiting outside.

  ‘What is it, Mama?’ Maria asked.

  ‘It’s nothing, go back to bed, honey.’

  The woman knelt on the rug and said, ‘Hello, Maria. Pope Celestine sent me to take you to see him. Would you like to meet the Holy Father?’

  ‘With Mama?’

  ‘Only you, sweetheart.’

  Her mother got in between them. ‘Go back to your room, Maria,’ she said.

  The woman raised an arm for one of the men to help her up and when she was upright she said, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Aquino, but I have to insist. Carry the girl to the car,’ she told the driver.

  One man pushed the mother away and the driver grabbed the girl and lifted her up, holding her in both
arms.

  ‘Be gentle with her,’ the woman said. ‘Remember, she’s pregnant.’

  Mrs Aquino started screaming and the old man who’d been keeping vigil ran inside and demanded to know what was going on. He got rough treatment from the second man who threw him on to the floor and that set him howling that he’d hurt his hip.

  ‘Don’t take my baby!’ her mother cried.

  Two young girls popped their heads out from the bedroom. The woman shooed them back and told them to stay put.

  The men were prepared for this development. The man with the rifle came inside and leaned it against the wall. He had plastic zip ties and a gag and after a brief but ferocious struggle, Mrs Aquino was bound hand and foot and silenced in the corner.

  Maria was crying and shouting but the woman told her to be quiet or they’d have to hurt her mother. ‘Do you understand, sweetheart?’

  The girl nodded.

  The woman had a typed sheet of paper and a pen. She knelt by Mrs Aquino and asked her if she could write. The woman shook her head once.

  ‘Very well,’ the woman said.

  She put the pen into Mrs Aquino’s hand and when the woman tried to drop it, she squeezed her fingers around it and forced her to make an X at the bottom of the page.

  ‘OK, let’s go,’ she told the men.

  Before they left, the woman placed her purse in Mrs Aquino’s lap.