The Miracle (12 page)

"How much is a little more?" asked Liz.

"I would guess at least one hundred francs an hour."

A paltry sum, Liz thought, for someone on an expense account. She could be generous just to be sure. "Tell her I'll pay her one hundred fifty francs an hour."

Michelle was impressed and immediately reached for the telephone and dialed. After a brief wait, someone on the other end answered.

"Gabrielle?" said the press officer. "This is Michelle Demalliot at the Bureau de Presse des Sanctuaires. Fm looking for Gisele—Gisele Du-pree. She told me she'd be returning from her last tour for today about . . . What? She's just walked in? Perfect. Can you put her on?" Michelle cupped the phone. "So far, so good. Now we shall see."

Liz leaned forward. "Be sure to tell her I'll pay one hundred fifty francs an hour, and that I probably won't need her for more than an hour today."

Michelle nodded and was back on the phone. "Gisele? How are you? This is Michelle again. . . . Tired, you say? Ah, we are all tired. But listen, this is something special. I have with me a prominent American journalist, a lady from Paris named Liz Finch. She has just arrived in Lourdes. She does not wish to take our routine guided press tours. She would much prefer to have her own escort to show her around the city, to visit the historic sites, the domain, the grotto. It could be worth your while." A pause. "One hundred fifty francs an hour." A pause. "Thank you, Gisele, I'll tell her."

Michelle hung up and swiveled to face Liz. "You are in luck. Miss Finch. Gisele askod that you wait for her right here. She'll pick you up in fifteen minutes."

"Great."

"Pleased to be of help. While waiting, you might want to acquaint yourself with our latest accommodation, a press tent outside, especially put up to handle the influx of journalists starting tomorrow. There are counters and desks with electric typewriters, a battery of telephones for long-distance calls, supplies, refreshments. You can use anything you wish, at any time, when there is free space."

"Thanks. I'll have a peek at it tomorrow. I want to concentrate on one thing at a time. I want to learn all about Bernadette and Lourdes before I do anything else. I hope this friend of yours, this guide—"

"Mademoiselle Gisele Dupree."

"Yes, I hope she can help me."

The press officer smiled reassuringly. "I promise you, Miss Finch, she'll tell you more than you'll ever need to know."

They were on the first lap of their walking tour, in the footsteps of Bernadette, on the way to see the cachot, or cell—the Gaol as Gisele called it—where the Soubirous family had dwelt in poverty when Bernadette was fourteen and had seen the first apparition of the Virgin Mary at the grotto.

They were striding in step, and Liz kept her gaze fixed on the young tour guide, pretending to be attentively listening to her, but actu-

ally studying her. When they had been introduced in the press office twenty minutes ago, Liz had taken an instant dislike to her guide because at first impression the girl had reminded her of Marguerite La-marche, her API rival. Gisele Dupree was beautiful and sexy in that special French way, possessing the overall beauty and sensuality that Marguerite had always flaunted. The guide had made Liz imjnediately feel ugly and uncomfortable, and once more aware of her own kinky carroty hair, beak of a nose, thin lips, undershot jaw, sagging breasts, flaring hips, bowlegs. In the world of femininity, Gisele was one more of the enemy.

But now, since meeting, walking with her, studying her more closely, Liz could see that except for her overall perfection Gisele was not like Marguerite at all. Marguerite was willowy and aloof Gisele, striding beside her, was completely different. She was not your typical high-fashion French model. She was your typical French gamine. Gisele was small, maybe five foot three, with pale corn-silk hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face was frank, open, serious. A pair of white-rimmed heart-shaped sunglasses sat low on her petite nose. Above were large green-gray eyes, and below, moist full lips, especially the lower lip. Beneath her sheer white blouse, her skintone bra hardly hid her straight firm breasts and prominent nipples. In her pleated white skirt, she resembled a healthy, tanned, outdoor child-woman. Liz guessed her to be about twenty-five years old.

Marching along, Gisele recited her piece with gravity, trying to make it interesting, with certain emphasis here, certain pauses there, even though she was only repeating what she declaimed during her tours every day. For a French girl, her colloquial English, Americanese really, was right off" the streets of Manhattan. When she was greeted by passersby who knew her, she replied not only in French, but in acceptable Spanish and German upon occasion. A remarkable young one to be trapped in a remote provincial town like Lourdes. Liz was beginning to warm up to her companion. Liz decided to be more attentive and tuned in.

"So, as you can gather," Gisele was saying, "Bernadette's father, Fran9ois Soubirous, was always a loser. He was a strong, silent, maybe hard-drinking man, and inept at business. At thirty-five, he had married a nice gentle woman of seventeen named Louise, and a year later the couple had their first child, and this was Bernadette. They were living at the Boly mill, where Fran§ois ground his neighbors' grain, but he even-tually lost the mill. He was too extravagant with money, and had a poor head for business. Then he worked as a day laborer, later was loaned some money which he invested in another mill, and within a year he

had lost that mill, too. Of the eight children that followed Bernadette, only four survived infancy—Toinette, Jean-Marie, Justin, Bernard-Pierre—and the family sank deeper into poverty, until a relative installed them in an abandoned prison cell, the Gaol, which an official at the time described as 'a foul, somber hovel' It was four meters forty by four meters, damp, malodorous, smelling of manure. It was awful. You shall see for yourself in a few minutes."

"That's where Bernadette lived?" Liz inquired. "How did she get along?"

"Not too well, I'm afraid," said Gisele. "She was a tiny, rather attractive, girl, only four foot six, gay and basically bright, but she was uneducated, unable to read, spoke no French, only the local Bigourdan dialect, and she was frail, suffering from asthma and undernourishment. To help her family, she worked as a waitress in her aunt's bar. She also often went to the nearby river, the Gave de Pau, to pick up bones, driftwood, pieces of scrap iron to sell to dealers for a few sous."

They had turned into a narrow street, many of its old buildings with flaking plaster and in general disrepair, when Gisele said, "Here we are. The Rue des Petits-Fosses, and that's the Gaol straight ahead on the left. Number fifteen. Let's go in."

Passing through the entrance into the building, Liz heard Gisele explain that the room that had sheltered six members of the Soubirous family was at the back, at the end of a long hall, from which a htany of subdued voices could be heard. They walked along the hall to a low doorway in the rear. Inside, Liz saw a group of perhaps a dozen English pilgrims, gathered in a semi-circle, heads bowed as they chanted in unison, "Hail Mary, ftill of Grace, the Lord is with Thee ..."

Moments later, their devotions completed, the group filed out, and Gisele motioned for Liz to enter. Except for two crudely made wooden benches, and a few logs stacked on the fireplace hearth, the room was devoid of ftimishings. A large crucifix, brownish wood, hung above the mantel.

Liz shook her head. "Six people?" she asked. "In this hole?"

"Yes," agreed Gisele. "But remember, it was from here that Bernadette went on February 11 in 1858, to gather the firewood that would— well, in a sense—light Lourdes up for the whole world." Gisele gestured toward the room. "Well, what do you think of it?"

Liz was studying the plaster that had fallen away from the walls exposing the dirty embedded rocks.

"What I think," said Liz, "is that the city fathers and the Church have done a lousy job of preserving the room in which the girl lived, the

girl who would make the town so famous and prosperous. I don't understand the neglect."

Gisele apparently had never thought of this, had seen the historic site too often to realize how poorly it had been kept up. She looked around it with fresh eyes. "Maybe you're right, Miss Finch," she murmured.

"Okay, let's go on from here," said Liz.

Emerging into the street once more, Gisele announced professionally, "Now we will go to the Lacade mill, then the Boly mill where Bernadette was born, after that the Hospice of the Sisters of Christian Instruction and Charity of Nevers where Bernadette finally received some education—"

Liz held up her hand. "No," she said. "No, we're not bothering with all that nit-picking. I'm a joumahst, and there's no story in any of that. I want to go straight to the main dish."

"The main dish?"

"The grotto. I want a taste of the grotto of Massabielle."

Momentarily off-balance by this change in her routine, Gisele recovered quickly. "All right. Off we go. But we might just as well walk past the Boly mill on our way. It's just a few meters from here. Number Two on the Rue Bernadette Soubirous -- and from there we can walk downhill and head for the grotto."

"Is it far?"

"Not far at all. You will see."

They resumed their walk and within a few minutes were standing in front of the stone dwelling that bore one-foot-high block letters that read: MAISON OU EST NEE STE BERNADETTE LE MOULIN DE BOLY.

"So what's this?" Liz wanted to know, gazing up at the three-story house in the comer of an alley. "Is this where her parents lived?"

"Yes, when Bernadette was born."

"Let's give it a quickie," said Liz, as she went inside followed by Gisele.

From the entry hall, Liz saw an open doorway and a wooden staircase. Through the doorway, Liz looked into a souvenir shop. Gisele hastily explained, "What is now a shop used to be, in Bernadette's time, a kitchen and downstairs bedroom. Let me take you upstairs to see Bernadette's own bed." As they began to ascend the staircase, Gisele added, "These are the original stairs." They feel like it, Liz thought, uneven and creaky.

The pair arrived in a bedroom. It was not large, but it was not cramped, either. "Not too bad," said Liz.

"Not too good," said Gisele.

"But it's not exactly one of your hovel hovels," said Liz. "I've seen worse family rooms in parts of Washington, D.C., and in Paris."

"Do not be fooled. This was remodeled and cleaned for tourists."

Liz examined the furnishings of the room. Bernadette's own double bed, covered with a blue checkered bedspread, was enclosed in a glass showcase, which was cracked. On the wall, amid a mess of graffiti, were hung three framed timewom photographs of Bernadette, her mother, her father. At the far end, an aged grandfather clock and a bureau upon which stood several cheap statuettes of the Virgin Mary were protected from tourists by ordinary wire meshing.

Liz sniffed. "What is it? A room, another shabby room, that's all. No story. I want to get to the story."

Descending into the street, they were on the Boulevard de la Grrotte once more. They began walking again, then halted. "There," Gisele said, pointing toward a gray, wrought-iron gate on the far side of the bridge across the river, "that's the beginning of the Domaine de la Grotte, also called the Domain of the Sanctuaries. Forty-seven acres. To give you a better picture, we really should approach the grotto from this far end."

Peering off, Liz saw a vast expanse that might be regarded as a football field, except that it was somewhat oval. She shrugged amiably. "Whatever you say."

They came off the bridge, advanced toward the gate, and entered through it onto what Liz realized resembled a vast parade ground.

"We've just come through the Saint-Michel gate into the actual domain area," explained Gisele, "and this esplanade leads all the way up to the three churches at the far end—the tallest on top with the two bell-turrets and the octagonal spire is the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception or the Upper Basilica, below it the Crypt, and at the bottom the Basihca of the Rosary. The Crypt with its chapel was built first, followed by the Upper Basilica, but when the clergy realized that these couldn't hold the daily influx of pilgrims, the planners added the Basilica of the Rosary at ground level, with its fifteen chapels, to seat two thousand more people. The holy grotto is off on the right side of the Upper Basilica. It cannot be seen from here."

Liz Finch was hobbling to a metal bench. "I've got to get off my feet a minute." She sat down with a sigh of relief and kicked off her flat-soled brown shoes. She waved her hand at her surroundings. "What in the hell is all this? You called it the domain. What does that mean?"

Gisele came over briskly to join her. "Well, it—but first, before you can understand what this means, you've got to understand what the

grotto means. Because the grotto made this possible." She eyed Liz squarely. "Do you know why the grotto is so important?"

"Well, sure, that's where Bernadette claimed that she saw the Virgin Mary a number of times, and the Virgin Mary told her a secret. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, but to understand fully, Miss Finch, you'd better know exactly what happened here if you intend to write about it. The Virgin Mary appeared before Bernadette eighteen times between February 11 and July 16 of 1858."

"That's right," said Liz. "I remember their mentioning that at the press conference in Paris, and later I researched those apparitions."

"Well, you should know as much as possible about the visitations, because that's what this is all about."

Liz sighed again, suffering in the heat. "If you insist. But don't describe all eighteen. I couldn't endure that in this weather."

"Oh, no, no, you don't need every detail. Just allow me to tell you of the first apparition completely. After that, a few highlights of the other visits. Surely, that will be enough."

Liz found a handkerchief and mopped her brow. "The first one," she said. "Then a few highlights. Okay, I'm listening."

At once, comfortably, Gisele Dupree sat down and fell into her tour-guide patter. "At daybreak, a Thursday morning, February 11, 1858, Bernadette, her younger sister, Toinette, and one of her sister's schoolfriends, Jeanne, decided to go to the banks of the Gave de Pau, the river at the edge of town, and gather driftwood and scraps of bone to help Bernadette's family. Because the morning was chilly, and Bernadette's health was poor, her mother insisted that she wear her capulet— a sort of hood—and stockings besides her dress and sabots. Remember, Bernadette was fourteen years old at the time, unschooled but intelligent. The three girls went past the Savy mill and along the canal toward the Gave which joined the canal near a large cave, or grotto, known as Massabielle. The other two girls quickly waded through the cold water of the canal, and after urging Bernadette to follow them, searched along the bank for bits of driftwood. Bernadette planned to wade across the canal, but held back to take off her shoes and stockings. As she leaned against a boulder to do so, something curious happened, something that would affect the entire world." Gisele paused dramatically. "It was very curious."