One can only see what one observes, and one only observes things which are already in the mind.
Alphonse Bertillon
Outside the bullet-pocked walls of the Palace of Governors half a million servings of beans and maize fritters were nearing noontime readiness and the attentions of the population of San Sacramento. Inside the Palace the monthly meeting of the Generals was drawing to a leisurely close. As with most other such meetings not a great deal had been discussed and much of that consisted of hoary topics: how best to deceive the current batch of IMF spies and visiting auditors from the World Bank about the true state of the Parazuelan economy, and what might be done further to undermine the credibility of the three-member delegation from Amnesty International. Now it was time for Any Other Business, which was usually chit-chat while tunics were buttoned, peaked caps found, swagger-sticks sorted out and holsters unfastened preparatory to going outside.
‘I suppose we’d better brace ourselves for that ghastly little Jew again,’ said General Mendez.
‘Which particular one?’ asked the Generalissimo.
‘That ex-Mossad fellow who lives in Munich. Silverstein? Silberbein? Feigenbaum? The one with the bee in his bonnet about Nazis in hiding. Hadn’t you heard, then? I gather someone has written another book saying that Horst Wessel is alive and well and practising medicine in some poverty-stricken barrio here.’
‘No, that’s not it,’ corrected General Ocampo. ‘This time it’s a reporter who swears he has proof that Hitler’s living in Parazuela. It was on the BBC’s World Service.’
‘Hitler? Oh, really, it’s too absurd. Whatever will they think of next?’ The Generalissimo pocketed the calculator on which he had done some depressing arithmetic during the economic part of the meeting. ‘The fellow would have to be a fossil. Wait till I tell old man Schicklgruber on Sunday: I’m lunching over at their ranch. They’ll love that. Anyone else got any funnies?’
‘Weird report from Tutuban this morning,’ said General Edmilson.
‘Where?’
‘Tutuban. Iguaçu province, apparently; I hadn’t heard of it, either. Couple of kids claim to have seen the Virgin Mary.’
‘I expect it was Goering in disguise,’ said General Preciosa, who was reputed to have had a mean wit in his Military Academy days. Certainly everyone laughed.
‘If so, he really fooled the kids. They’re convinced it was the Virgin and they’ve convinced a lot of locals, too. In fact people are starting to go on pilgrimages to Tutuban from other parts of the province, and one or two are already claiming to have been cured of their horrid condition.’
‘Credulity, for example?’ suggested General Preciosa.
‘Don’t knock it,’ said the Generalissimo. ‘Without it this country would be ungovernable, even by us, to say nothing of the rest of Latin America. I just wish someone would discover a way of infecting the Gnomes of Zurich with the virus. And now, gentlemen, shall we adjourn?’ With some mutual saluting the meeting broke up.
‘But,’ said General Preciosa a couple of hours later, ‘but but but but….’ He was a little drunk but not very, having lunched well in a permanently reserved room above San Sacramento’s best Viennese restaurant. ‘But,’ he added thoughtfully.
‘But, Fernando …?’ prompted General Edmilson.
‘But what about Lourdes?’
‘Oh, dead. Has been for months.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that. She disappeared in a football stadium. With several hundred others, I believe.’
‘What on earth are you gibbering about, Manolo?’ asked his friend brusquely.
‘That protest singer woman. Maria Lourdes. You surely remember her? Dangerously popular; criminally off-key.’
‘Not her. The place. You know, Lourdes in France. Kids? Visions? Virgin Marys? Big Moneys?’
‘Oh, that Lourdes.’
‘Exactly. Do buck up, Manny, or I’ll have to buy you another tequila. I’ve had an idea which could do you a lot of good. You are Minister of the Interior, are you not? Well, then, who’s our Minister for Tourism?’
‘Minister for Tourism? Ah, now, let me see….’
‘There isn’t one,’ General Preciosa cut his friend off in mid-speculation, ‘as you very well know. It isn’t that Parazuela hasn’t got more than its fair share of potential tourist attractions, either.’
‘Certainly isn’t. There’s the Taquarí asphalt lakes, for a start. And the Glass Iguana of Teoxihuatl. Nobody knows how—’
‘Oh, do shut up; we had all that in high school, like several hundred other Parazuelans. No, the reason Parazuela is not on the world’s tourist itineraries is because for years we were considered far too dangerous for your average American matron, and I agree that forty-one presidents in nineteen years did look bad on paper. But now this country’s probably the most stable on the entire continent and we’re still being boycotted by those same American matrons because according to their press and despite the imminence of elections we’re a fascist Latin junta. Obviously there’s never going to be any pleasing them. So write them off; we don’t need them, either. But there’s a still-untapped source of tourism awaiting an enterprising Minister, were he to drink a little less and play his cards a bit more shrewdly.’
‘Ah…. Ah?’
‘Manny! Your story. Your own story about these stupid kids out in the sticks in Iguaçu. Can’t you see what a gift it is? You could really make it work in your favour. You remember old Raul going on this morning about how it was up to all of us to find ways of raising revenue so we won’t have to re-reschedule interest payments on the national debt? Well, then. A really watertight Madonna could be parlayed into quite a steady little source of foreign revenue, don’t you think?’
General Edmilson had at last caught up. ‘Good God, Nandy, that’s bright. Lots of possibilities there. Revenue for the country, revenue for us…. What’s your cut in all this?’
‘Accommodation,’ said Fernando Preciosa succinctly. ‘I want hotels. All hotels come through me.’
‘You got ’em. Er … what do you suppose I could have?’
‘Political power. Kudos. Think about it: as Minister of the Interior it will fall to you to follow up this story and find it genuine. The Minister for Tourism then becomes your appointee. Any developments in tourism which follow from this accrue to you. You’ll be quids in with old Raul and you’ll have complete control over planning further expansion.’
‘That’s marvellous, Nandy…. I – well, I wouldn’t mind a bit of cash, too, if you follow me?’
‘Use your initiative. Go to Tubitan or whatever it’s called and buy the bloody grotto. Get a bit of real estate.’
‘Do we know there’s a grotto?’
‘Of course there’s a grotto; there’s always a grotto. It’ll certainly be one in the eye for the American matrons, won’t it? I mean, if Parazuela’s good enough for the Queen of Heaven to visit it ought to be OK for some fat harridan from Omaha in purple shorts.’
‘That’s a point. Yes, we ought certainly to play that up. Seal of approval, sort of thing. Do you know, Nandy, I think you’re on to a winner. I’ll get someone trustworthy to poke around and get a few hard facts. I only hope it all turns out to be genuine and not some ignorant peasant hoax.’
‘There are no such things as fake Madonnas,’ said General Preciosa wisely. ‘There are only Madonnas.’
‘Yes, but I mean it’s a good job we’re Parazuelans. I can just imagine some jumped-up little Guayadorean dictator inventing the entire thing to make a quick buck.’
‘Can you, Manny? Can you really?’ said General Preciosa, shaking his head as at the perfidy of the less scrupulous.
Inside three days General Edmilson’s spy had reported back to San Sacramento. To the General’s relief the story ‘checked out’, as his informant put it. He had met the children concerned – three little sisters between the ages of seven and twelve – and had convinced himself that whatever may or may not have happened they had not been put up to it by their parents or the local priest. He had interviewed each of them separately and, although they all cried a good deal, they gave identical accounts. There had definitely been a strange sighting the previous week in Tutuban. Local opinion was, however, divided roughly along lay and religious lines. The common folk all believed it fervently, but the Church in Iguaçu province was decidedly sceptical and would need a lot more convincing before they could accept the event as genuinely miraculous. The trend towards radicalism among the younger clergy had evidently forced their superiors to sharpen their wits. The Madonna’s physical appearance was, among some of the older clergy, one sticking-point.
‘She was black, you see,’ said the spy.
‘Black? You can’t have a black Madonna,’ said the General. ‘They’re blondes or brunettes. Everybody knows that. Long blue robes and a sad smile and a sort of haze of light around them. At least, so I’ve always thought.’
‘The children insisted she was black. Apparently there are precedents, sir.’
‘Not’, said the General firmly, ‘in Parazuela.’
‘Also she wore spectacles.’
‘Oh, great. That’s terrific. Everybody else gets the original version but poor old Parazuela draws some damn great buck Madonna in shades.’
‘One or two priests are beginning to think this is a point in her favour,’ the spy explained. ‘They say that if the kids had really invented it all they would have made her conform to the traditional image. To have deliberately made her black and spectacled would have been creative originality way beyond their capabilities. I must say I think it’s quite a convincing point myself.’
‘Well …,’ said the General dubiously. ‘Well … I suppose if that’s the story we’ll have to live with it. What else?’
‘My impression is that, sceptical or not, the Church is going to have to take it seriously. There are already reports of miraculous cures attributed to her.’
‘Are there indeed? That’s good. What sort of cures, I wonder?’
‘Fairly minor stuff so far, I believe. Warts and sprains. But it’s early days yet and, after all, the halt and the lame are probably going to take a long time actually getting to Tutuban. When they do things will become a bit more organised. It only needs one per cent of them able to throw away their sticks and walk home for real pilgrimages to start in earnest.’
‘Bus company,’ murmured the General to himself.
‘Nothing, nothing. I’m sorry, just thinking aloud. Go on.’
‘That’s about it. I’m afraid I don’t know very much about these things so I have no idea what happens next. I don’t imagine the Church will ever come out completely in favour of something like this because they’ve been made to look pretty silly in the past. Some sort of noncommittal tolerance is probably the best we can hope for. On the other hand, certain priests there are seeing it as evidence of renewed spiritual interest on the part of some of their flock and will be happy to use it as a way of reaching those they feel had begun to get out of touch, if you see what I mean?’
‘No,’ said General Edmilson.
‘No,’ admitted the spy, ‘neither do I. I’m simply repeating what an Irish Dominican father told me. Oh, and there was one other odd thing about Our Lady of Tutuban which the children all swore to. She was holding a beautiful casket and as the children watched she gently threw handfuls of greyish dust towards them. She looked very sad and raised her hand to bless them before she disappeared.’
‘There,’ exclaimed the General, ‘that’s more like it. I knew she had to look sad and do some blessing. I’ve never heard of the dust before, though.’
‘It got one of the old priests very excited. Apparently there’s a precedent for that, too, somewhere in Italy in the sixteenth century. It was interpreted then as the dried tears of the Mater Dolorosa. This old fellow thinks it puts the whole thing beyond doubt as there’s no way these illiterate kids or their family could ever have heard that story before. It was officially discredited at the Council of Navarre in 1887 and has been suppressed ever since on the grounds that Our Lady’s tears would have been far too pure to have left a precipitate other than salt. Certainly nothing greyish.’
‘There you see the inexorable march of secular man,’ said the General. ‘The faith of centuries judiciously gives way to high-school chemistry.’
‘You’re probably right, sir,’ the spy agreed. ‘As a matter of fact, there is no high school yet in Tutuban.’
‘There you are, then.’
Mexico City,
11 June 1985
Dear Ruthie,
It feels like about a hundred years since waving goodbye to you from a train window in Rio, but my little squeaky calculator tells me it’s only eleven days. I’ve had the weirdest things happen in that time, so it’s all a bit dream-like and I shall wake up soon and find I’m still a Volunteer and you and Ed and I’ll maybe get a little high and drift on down to São Felipe and go on a favela-hunt like we always do Tuesdays. Boy, did we ever find some! I really believe we found places even the city council doesn’t know exist still less Holy Bob Krummmmm!
Well, I haven’t woken up yet and it’s still Mexico City outside and I’m still sitting on the balcony of this place belonging to some Volunteer I’ve never even met because she’s off in Baja or someplace and the Peace Corps Office here gave me the keys! Can you believe? It’s full of her tacky cassettes and books. Small Business Management in the Developing World, yeccch. I fly out tomorrow morning and I’ve got a feeling that Galveston’s going to seem real tame after Brazil, but Life has now got to Begin In Earnest, careers have got to be carved out, a husband lined up and all that shit I think I’m no longer cut out for. But enough of that and on to the weirds.
Well, you remember I was going to go through Parazuela and drop by Handsome Jack out in the boonies and give him a heart-attack and poor old Poyson? The problems took a day and a half to arrive, which is the time it takes the train from Rio to reach Taquarí on the Parazuelan border after crossing what’s got to be the biggest stretch of unwanted real estate in the world, all cactuses (cacti?) and giant ant-hills. The train stops at the border, and if you want to go on you have to get out and walk a hundred yards and change into another because of course it’s Parazuela and they built their railroad three inches narrower than everyone else in South America. So after a long wait and me putting off going to the john (if only I’d known the john was enough to put you off going: a cupboard with a crusty hole in the floor) we set off and travelled maybe all of a mile before stopping again. In a million years you couldn’t guess why. The answer was tar – you know, like we have on roads back home? – but in Parazuela they’ve got it in damn great lakes and they turn out to be tidal for one month in every fifty years and wouldn’t you know Sage Maclean chooses that one month to hit Parazuela. This tar – and I’m not kidding – had suddenly flooded in great black smoking gloops over the track and was pouring slowly like treacle over the embankment and out across the fields. So everybody got out carrying their luggage and walked! a huge detour right round the fields coughing in the sulphury fumes. I was really pissed off for about a hundred yards and then I started laughing and I just couldn’t stop, specially when this little kid came trotting alongside offering to row us across in an asbestos boat for a dollar fifty. Well, I just collapsed. I never did see the boat incidentally and I expect he made it up except of course we were in Parazuela and you never quite know. Finally we came out on the far side and climbed into three old Greyhound buses hitched together and mounted on railway wheels, and they chugged us along nicely to San Sacramento, the capital.
I was pretty bushed after the journey as you can imagine specially since I’ve left out a lot, for example the Customs at the border going through every one of my bags for about an hour – shook them all out over a table and then examined the luggage itself, I suppose for coke hidden in the handles, etc. They were pretty fazed by poor old Poyson in my jewellery-box. They sniffed him while I deliberately held off saying what it was until one of them stuck in a wet finger and tasted him as I knew they would eventually, they don’t believe a word you say. I explained then it was a pet pooch belonging to a Peace Corps Volunteer working in Parazuela and which had died in exile in Rio but they didn’t believe that, either, and I can’t say I blame them! Anyway I thought I was wonderfully patient, and my whole face was aching from my easygoing co-operative smile. Oh, and they didn’t like my passport photo, either, because they’d shot me in contact lenses before I had that conjunctivitis in Brazil and had to go back to glasses. So one way and another I was feeling pretty much Looney Tunes by the time we reached San S.
Anyway, get to the point, Sage. Next day I found the Peace Corps Office and discovered how to get to Handsome Jack’s and my heart began to fail a bit when I heard it was this two-day trip by bus and river but I reminded myself of how hunky he was and looked at his picture again and sort of felt my resolution coming back. Then off to the airline office to learn if I wanted to get to Caracas I’d have to go at the end of the week in 5 days’ time or wait another week after that. So I booked the earlier flight to keep to my schedule and thought, OK, time enough for one torrid day with Handsome and who knew anyway? he might have some secret way of getting me back to San S. in less than 2 days – you know, wangle me on to an Air Force flight like FAB in Brazil.
I won’t bore you with the journey – it was just like anyone’s used to anywhere in South America: buses with crazed drivers and green-tinted windows crossing endless non-country and stopping in the middle of nowhere for leather steaks and manioc flour or, of course, corn fritters and beans beans beans. The sleepless night with the Latin advances from the seat next to me, the dawn arrival at a riverside quay, the rotting steamer going slowly up-river while avoiding some of the sand-bars. By the time we hit Tutuban it was of course night and the Office was closed and I checked into the usual dump where you just step into the shower and cover yourself in real good smelly lather when the fucking water stops. I was so tired I just sat in the shower and cried, but it made the soapsuds run in my eyes and sting so I had to get out and there was just enough water in the drinking jug to wash the worst off my face. Then the electricity went off, too, and I just thought to hell with the lot of them and lay down on the bed, suds and all, and fell asleep and when I woke it was morning and the suds had dried into a sticky coating which itched like hell. But the water was back on so I got it all off me but it left sort of a rash all over – great, I thought, really looking my best – and I set off in a filthy mood and covered in that freesia lotion of yours – for which bless you because it did stop me scratching in public, more or less.
Well, Handsome Jack’s got this really neat bungalow on the edge of town with hills covered in banana plants behind it, you know quiet compared to Rua Caxias. And I was admiring it at the same time as trying to kick the door down and get my clammy hands on him when this Indian lady appears from a hut nearby and says that Señor Brunner is away for three days at some project he’s got, only it took a bit of time to work out because she obviously wanted to explain in Guaraní or something and Parazuelan Spanish isn’t Brazilian Portuguese and I didn’t want to believe her anyway. I guess I puzzled her, too, because I was wearing the famous Togo toga to be cool (and hide the rash!) and I guess she didn’t realise I was a gringo or whatever they are in Parazuela because gringos have got to be peroxide blondes in Dior safari-suits with paunchy husbands trotting along carrying the home movie camera. They sure as hell can’t be African Queens.
So, dear, dear Ruthie, back to the Hotel Bristol to put on a brave face and drag around Tutuban seeing the sights, which can be done in 5 minutes. Boring Spanish-style church with graven image on the roof, beggars on the steps, people selling religious cards and herbal medicines. Town square with statue of General Santos Velasquez y Something on a horse waving a muzzle-loader in the air, the Don Miguel Baixos Memorial Library (burned out), the local government offices (closed) and the market stretching down to the river which is by far the most interesting thing in town. Lots of indios from up-country selling slabs of compressed leaves (?coca but didn’t risk chewing any, though, they might have been donkey-poultices) also pretty blankets very rough and cheap which were tempting but I couldn’t face humping any more stuff around. I bought some batteries for the radio to see if I could get VOA but luckily I noticed in time they were all fizzy round the ends and took them back and they gave me some more, but you could see they weren’t absolutely delighted. Screw them. So I went back to the hotel again and fell asleep and then woke and thought, right, Sage Maclean, you don’t come all this way to turn round and meekly go away again with your tail between your legs without at least telling Handsome Jack what he’s missed. So I wrote him a letter and was just going off to deliver it when I remembered Poyson still sitting there in my jewellery-box and I got real sad suddenly. I mean he was a great dog even if he never did get much less scruffy than when Jack walked in with him that day in Rio. Do you remember how he came in and stood there holding the dog in his arms and saying, ‘Hi, I’ve just found this little fellow outside about to get all et up by a hound the size of a mule, no kidding, so I’ve rescued him and I guess he’s kinda neat,’ all this in his best laid-back strong silent manner and then without changing his voice, ‘Oh God,’ as he discovered it was pissing all down his shirt. (I think there ought to be a question mark at the end of that sentence but I can’t get worked up enough to put one.) But it was quite witty and unexpected when Jack thought up his name. ‘Nothing soft and cutesie. Anything with pus in one eye which pisses on your shirt has got to be an anti-Snoopy. Poyson; that’s an anagram. And now I’m going off to boil him in Drāno.’ And I guess it really was that moment as much as any other I first thought of Jack as handsome, which by golly he was, wasn’t he? (Maybe still is but now I’ll have to wait until the end of his contract to find out.) But we did all have some great times together, didn’t we, Ruthie? And how poor old Poyson howled and howled when the eight months were up and Jack went back to Parazuela and I guess now I’ve seen the place I know it was best he didn’t take him. He’d probably have been turned into pie at the Customs. And anyway the poor animal only spoke Portuguese and English.
I’ve gone off again, haven’t I? But it’s still Mexico City here and I’ve nothing better to do (no offence, it’s actually very therapeutic getting everything down on paper to you of all people). Anyhow, I thought I couldn’t leave Poyson in the care of an unknown Indian lady and I couldn’t explain about cremation, etc., so I reopened my letter to Jack and added a PS to tell him what I was going to do and went off to stuff it under his door, grabbing the radio for company, I guess, but perhaps I did have some crazy idea of sitting on his stoop for a bit, which was as close as I was ever going to get to him, damn him, and a whole lot better than stuck in a hotel room. So back I went and I did sit on the stoop, corny as it was, and found the cassette in the radio was yours! still there from when I was packing my last night in Rio; those Bach cantatas, I’m afraid, and I know it’s about your favourite and I’ve got it right here and I’ll mail it tomorrow with this letter without fail, promise, promise. Anyhow, I put that on not too loud, although there wasn’t anybody else around thinking I was maybe some insane trespasser. But after a while the sun was going down and the mosquitoes came out in clouds and I saw that Jack had screens up on all the windows and doors – obviously a bad place and as it’s Parazuela probably malarial into the bargain. I don’t know if you can stomach the next bit, Ruthie, as it’s to be honest sentimental and I can just hear you laugh scornfully saying ‘Sage, sentimental? Sage Maclean? Ms Spit-in-your-eye herself?’ But I guess it was all to do with Jack not being there after all that and my feeling inadequate when faced with reality after stupidly having looked forward to it too much for my own good. You know? There I was, unannounced and unmet, covered in a rash which still itched like crazy and all I had to give the absent man was his own dead dog when what I wanted to give him was…. Well let’s not go into that.
Anyhow, I took the radio and climbed up the little hill behind his house and went through some bananas and things and came out on a grassy patch overlooking the roof down below (which had a flat bit on which he’d left a lounger and bottles of sun lotion – so he is vain after all! The strong and occasionally silent Jack is aware of his Bodddy!). Now comes the sentimental part – brace yourself, Ruthie – I scattered poor old Poyson to the four winds hoping he’d drift down to Jack’s roof and become incorporated with his master’s next tanning session but there wasn’t even one wind and the pooch, unhelpful to the last, bless him, fell all over my feet and I was about to brush him off when I noticed these kids watching me. Well, I can tell you I was embarrassed all to hell to have been witnessed scattering the remains of a Brazilian mongrel to the sound of ‘Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt’. I gave them a sort of grave salute and faded back into the bananas and switched off the cassette and made it back down to the road without being seen but feeling like a real idiot. And so my long-awaited visit to Handsome Jack Brunner was abortive and ended in farce! Just my luck. But I’ll bet you laugh all the same.
I got back to San S. in time to catch my plane and I wasn’t sad to see the last of Parazuela – that is, until I landed in Caracas which is the pits!! although I saw Ellen and Paul who’re doing fine and send their love. And now here I am in MC with writer’s cramp and promise to write you again if anything of interest happens to me between here and Galveston. I’m not betting on it.
Love to João, Sadie and anyone else worthy of it. But most of all to you.
SAGE
A letter from Fr Ignatius O’Malley, Order of St Dominic, Parish of Pampola and Tutuban, to the Chaplain to the Bishop of Iguaçu, Parazuela, dated 16 June 1985. (Original in Spanish.)
Dear Father Xavier,
Word has reached me via the good offices of Brother Aristeo that your Bishop has requested you should write a report about the Tutuban Affair so that he can, in turn, inform Cardinal Celso in San Sacramento. I shall do my best, of course, but have no experience in such matters and anyway you know me – I’m bound to be too outspoken or undiplomatic so you’ll have to censor this as you see fit. Treat it, therefore, I beg you, merely as notes towards a report rather than as anything more final.
I refer to it as ‘the Tutuban Affair’ because with the best will I cannot dignify it with a title such as would lend it the least respectability. It is from all viewpoints lamentable. Briefly the facts are as follows:
(1) On 5 June this year three children of this parish (Nimfa, Rosario and Milagros Irubú) were on the hillside behind Calle Sta Isabel picking medicinal herbs at approximately 6.00 p.m. It cannot have been much later since the sun set at 6.22 on that particular evening and herb-picking in the dark is probably beyond the capabilities even of these favoured children (censor that). They allege that Our Lady suddenly appeared to them and blessed them. After perhaps ten seconds this apparition vanished.
(2) The children ran home and told their mother, specifying that the alleged apparition had been of a young black woman wearing spectacles and a long white robe. She was accompanied by ‘heavenly music’ and in her left hand held a beautiful casket from which she took and scattered a greyish dust with her right. Her demeanour was ‘sad’, and when she saw the children she smiled sweetly and lifted her hand in blessing before fading from their sight.
(3) The mother immediately summoned Fr Ayma of this parish, who on hearing the children’s account induced them to take him to the exact spot, which he then blessed, together with them, possibly to be on the safe side (excise that).
(4) News travels fast in rural areas, as I need scarcely remind you. By the next evening at the same time a crowd of some 150 parishioners was waiting on the hillside for a possible reappearance, which, however, was not vouchsafed them.
(5) Within a week pilgrims had begun arriving in Tutuban from as far away as Coatiara. In the meantime sermons had been preached in every church in town urging people to be cautious before accepting any rumour as well founded, the more so if that rumour purported to be of something miraculous. This warning, to judge from the ever-growing crowds besieging the home of the three children and the site of the alleged apparition, fell on preternaturally deaf ears.
(6) On 9 June a man named Gustavo Mittelwalder arrived in Tutuban on the personal authority of the Minister of the Interior, Gral. Edmilson, in order to discover the facts of the case. I spoke to him at some length and told him all I have summarised so far. He appeared quite satisfied and left.
(7) Three days later I received a visit from an American Peace Corps Volunteer named Jack Brunner who lives in the parish and has been working here for some time. Mr Brunner had just returned from a trip up-river to Meycauara where there is a tilapia-breeding scheme (a species of fish, I gather). His return had been delayed by transportation problems. On his arrival he found his house besieged, for he lives on the Calle Sta Isabel in a rented bungalow at the foot of the Miraculous Mountain itself (your blue pencil, please). On enquiring he soon learned how the quiet house he had left a week ago had in the meantime been transformed into a centre of pilgrimage. But the reason he came to me (we are quite well acquainted and have discovered a mutual friend in Dublin) was because he had found a letter left at his house in his absence by another Peace Corps Volunteer whom he had known in Rio de Janeiro and who had just passed through Tutuban on the off-chance of seeing him on her way home to America.
(8) I append a photocopy of this letter left by Sage Maclean for Mr Brunner which he has most kindly allowed me to send you as documentary evidence. You will, Fr Xavier, be unsurprised to learn that the lady in question is black, bespectacled and has a penchant for wearing long African-style robes. You will also be amused to read the all-too-plausible explanation of the ‘grey dust’. Indeed, all that remains unexplained is the children’s ‘heavenly music’ – presumably pure imagination on their part – and the abject credulousness of their elders, who should know better.
(9) I immediately notified Sr Mittelwalder – who had mean while returned to San Sacramento – of this turn of events, enclosing a second photocopy of the letter.
(10) The next day, 14 June, a parishioner, Sra Marajacú, who is a near neighbour of Mr Brunner’s, claimed that she had also ‘seen’ Our Lady on 5 June, but earlier in the day than the children. She told me she had not come forward before in case she was thought a liar who had invented it to cash in on the Irubú children’s fame. She was indeed timid and confused, poor woman, but did add a detail. She made no mention of any ‘precious casket’ or ‘heavenly music’ but did say the apparition ‘smelled sweeter than the sweetest flower’. Indeed, it was this intense fragrance she remembered most clearly. She also claimed the vision had spoken to her but, unfortunately for Mankind, was quite unable to remember a word. (Axe that.)
(11) Yesterday, the fifteenth, Sr Mittelwalder returned to Tutuban by military helicopter, landing close to the site of the ‘apparition’. His manner was considerably changed, being altogether more brusque, even menacing. He at once demanded the original of Mr Brunner’s letter. I told him truthfully that I did not have it. And then, because there was something in the man’s behaviour I could not trust, I confess to having told an untruth. I said I had made only the one photocopy I had sent him whereas in point of fact Mr Brunner (who considers the whole thing a vast joke) had told me to make as many copies as I liked in order to expose the whole misunderstanding as soon as possible. (He finds the crowds which perpetually beleaguer his house extremely trying and says they stop him from sunbathing on the roof! I admit to finding him a highly sympathetic young man.) However, seeing no real need beyond one other copy to send to you I made only the two. Between ourselves I think it important that as the secular authorities already have a copy so also should the ecclesiastical authorities, especially since a matter like this is far more our business than the military’s (you had better eat this when you have finished with it). Altogether I was disturbed by Sr Mittelwalder’s tone, which had become positively threatening. I was told later in the day that Mr Brunner accompanied him in the helicopter when it took off for, presumably, San Sacramento. I’m not sure I like the sound of that.
I think, dear Father, that concludes the chain of events up to yesterday. As you can see by the date, I’m getting this down on paper while still fresh in my mind because, to be honest, I have a hundred more urgent spiritual matters to attend to and do not wish to waste time later having to rack my already unreliable memory. To summarise the entire thing, then, there is a completely rational – not to say banal – explanation for the ‘mysterious apparition’ of Our Lady at Tutuban ten days ago. She was in fact a visiting Peace Corps Volunteer who, by the merest accident of circumstances compounded by a regrettable superstitiousness, innocently induced three ignorant peasant children to believe she was of heavenly origin whereas she is, I gather, from Texas. No fraud was ever remotely intended, and I write at this length – and enclose Miss Maclean’s letter – so that your Bishop or even Cardinal Celso himself can issue the clearest possible statement and bring this episode to a swift close. Its prolongation can surely serve nobody’s interests. Indeed, I cannot imagine why the military authorities have not acted so far to quash the story: they are not generally slow in suppressing local newspapers and so on. Yet in the present instance there must be dozens of people in Tutuban who saw Miss Maclean during her visit – not least the staff of her hotel – but there has been not one mention in the Noticias de Tutuban. Strange and sinister times we live in, indeed. Meanwhile there are pressing human needs here in Tutuban as in every barrio of the entire country and we should not allow ourselves to be sidetracked for a moment from ministering to them.
I greet you fraternally in Xto and entrust this letter to Brother Aristeo, who is returning almost immediately to Iguaçu.
IGNATIUS O’MALLEY, OSD
A memorandum dictated by Ambassador Philip Kleinman later used as the basis of his report to the State Department with particular reference to the official enquiry into the death of Jack S. Brunner, a serving Peace Corps Volunteer in Parazuela:
The first I heard of this sorry business was when I was informed at eight-fifteen this morning comma June 17 that the police in Barrio Yagros comma a suburb of San Sacramento comma were holding the body of an unidentified Caucasian male believed to be a US citizen which had been found an hour earlier in an alley stop I immediately despatched John Socco er give him his full title etc. to make a preliminary identification but by the time he had arrived in Barrio Yagros the police at the precinct there claimed to have quote just found close quote an American passport in another alley approximately three blocks over from where the body was allegedly discovered stop and, Gloria, leave allegedly in, will you? er The passport was US passport number etc. dated etc. in the name of Jack initial S Brunner and from it and having inspected the body John Socco was able to make a clear preliminary identification of Mr Brunner stop, no, comma whose injuries appeared to be a single stab wound in the left lower back stop better make that injury singular At first sight, no, new para.
At first sight Mr Brunner seems to be one more victim of the brutal robberies which are endemic in this city for the pockets were cut out of his pants but there is increasing evidence to suggest he had very recently been in police custody if not under actual detention by the military without comma of course comma this Embassy having been notified stop If confirmed this would put a new angle into the whole caboodle stop can you massage that last phrase please? You know, give it the Gloria treatment er The reasons for this suspicion are as follows colon
(1) Mr Brunner was reported being escorted into a military helicopter in Tutuban comma Iguaçu province three days ago on whatever date it was stop Our informant was an Irish priest working in a parish there named O’Murphy I think but better check that stop He mentioned it in a phone conversation with a priest in San Sacramento a day or so after Mr Brunner was flown out of Tutuban because he claimed that quote on reflection there was something not quite right about it since Mr Brunner had no luggage with him and had not yet returned close quote Since then we have made every effort to reach Father O’Murphy to confirm this but without success since nobody in Tutuban knows where he is stop It begins to look as though he too has quote disappeared close quote stop
(2) On learning of his allegation comma however comma strenuous representations were made yesterday from this office to General Tuig at National Integrated Police HQ and to General Mendez at Camp Gutierrez Command HQ and both denied absolutely that Mr Brunner comma or indeed any other foreign national comma was in their custody stop
(3) Approximately two hours ago I received a personal summons to visit urgently the Minister of the Interior General Edmilson from whose office I have just returned stop He expressed regret at Mr Brunner’s death and informed me bluntly he had proof that Mr Brunner had been involved with an antigovernment rebel movement and was in close contact with guerrilla forces in the remote Meycauara district upriver from Tutuban where the Peace Corps Director here and the RAPCD in Iguaçu tell me Mr Brunner had personally instituted a successful fish hyphen farming project stop Needless to say I denied this allegation in the strongest possible terms and demanded substantive proof stop General Edmilson offered none whatever but claimed it was quote on its way close quote and added that there was a further suspicion that Mr Brunner had been involved in the narcotics trade stop At this point I asked the General if Mr Brunner had not also been suspected of theft comma arson comma and counterfeiting thousand hyphen peso bills and could he still assure me that in view of these suspicions and allegations Mr Brunner had never been in official custody stop I added that I now had the gravest doubts about the circumstances surrounding his death and that the US did not take lying down the murder of its innocent young Volunteers stop To support his drug hyphen running theory the General made an extraordinary circumstantial allegation based on a letter he claimed was in his possession from another Volunteer he declined to identify who had seemingly come from Rio de Janeiro bringing drugs with her stop In this same letter comma the General alleged comma this quote courier unquote had written that she had come quote to scatter poison unquote comma a phrase I found opaque but which the General informed me was Brazilian underground slang for drug trafficking stop I wish it to be on record that I did not then believe a word of this nonsense and nor do I now stop New para, Gloria, please
At this time we are awaiting the autopsy report so there is not much more to add except some private speculations which comma since they come from someone who has had close dealings with Parazuela for almost seven years comma may retrospectively prove pertinent stop Good stuff, eh, Gloria? I regret to say that in the light of experience I have the gravest doubts that we ever shall learn the true reason for the unfortunate Mr Brunner’s death stop It may be that he was indeed the victim of casual street violence and certainly he was found in an area of the city notorious for such crimes stop It is an area full of bars comma brothels comma and night hyphen clubs which might well be thought to have offered strong temptations to a young single man having to spend months on end in a remote country region with almost no er facilities for relaxation stop new para
However comma there are aspects of this case which lead me to suspect that Mr Brunner was deliberately killed with the sanction comma if not on the direct orders comma of high hyphen ranking military or police personnel stop If this is so comma the truth will probably never be known stop Even in democracies such things have occasionally happened and have proved enormously difficult to establish semicolon in a country like Parazuela under the present regime they are well hyphen nigh impossible to prove stop At all events the poor boy is dead and the reasons already given for his death by the police here will undoubtedly be the ones which it will be the US Government’s melancholy duty to pass on to his parents stop There is absolutely no need to cause distress by advancing alternative theories which might fuel speculation about conspiracies which can never be unravelled stop new para
At this point I would like to state unequivocally and not for the first time that I do not consider Parazuela a fit country for the services of young Volunteers stop God knows the people on the ground could benefit from their presence comma but er in my opinion it is not fair to send such young comma inexperienced and highly motivated people out at large in a country which cannot offer even minimum standards of lawful protection and is wholly without the traditions and infrastructure which could support a democratic way of life stop I would now most earnestly recommend the closing down of Peace Corps operations in Parazuela stop new para
There is one further and quite probably unconnected aspect to Mr Brunner’s death but which is at the very least a strange coincidence stop There are reports of a new religious cult centred on a plot of land immediately adjacent to Mr Brunner’s house in Tutuban stop It is claimed that some local children saw the Virgin Mary there a fortnight or so ago stop It seems to me eminently possible that Mr Brunner maybe put some fervent believer’s nose out of joint by complaining or scoffing colon he was only 24 and it should be noted that he was unafraid on all application forms and official declarations to give his religious status as quote atheist unquote stop The religious er sensitivities of the Parazuelans are considerable and deep hyphen running comma whether they are Catholic or charismatic or just plain superstitious stop It seems to me that youngsters coming from a culture which is to say the least often pretty sceptical about such things ought to be better briefed about how easy it can be for them unwittingly to give offence stop new para Sorry, Gloria, it’s getting a bit long, I know, but I’ve hit a vein. Don’t worry, we’re nearly through. New para or did I say that?
If there does turn out to be a quote religious angle unquote to this unhappy affair we can rest assured that the Parazuelan Church hierarchy will experience little reluctance in siding with the military and supporting whatever line is chosen by the Generalissimo providing it is not too outrageously compromising stop Church links with the Government comma especially at the level of Cardinal Celso comma are extremely ramified as I believe I made clear in my Confidential Report entitled whatever and dated whenever stop Since that report was written links have been still further strengthened by the founding of the caps Gloria PFCTP colon the Christian Family comma Tradition comma and Property Party stop new para
A private footnote colon it would in my view be a miracle if against this background we as foreigners in Parazuela can ever unravel the truth in all this but I have just been assured by the Embassy Chaplain comma a man whose tongue is never knowingly in his cheek comma that the age of miracles is not yet past stop That’s it, Gloria. Print it. And, oh, I’ll liberate some embassy wine for our dinner tonight: I’m sure as dammit not drinking that Barrio Plonk again.
Transcript of extracts from a Global Probe television documentary entitled Sister Pia: Saint, Hoaxer or Dupe? transmitted worldwide on 5 June 2025:
| PRESENTER: | Parazuela. A hillside outside the bustling provincial town of Tutuban. On this very spot exactly forty years ago three little sisters had an experience which lasted a mere ten seconds but whose echoes simply won’t die down even today. For what those little girls claimed was that on the evening of 5 June 1985 they saw a vision of the Virgin Mary, who was the mother of Jesus Christ the prophet. Almost from that moment Tutuban … Parazuela … even the Christian world itself was sharply divided between those who believed in the vision and those who could not. And almost from that moment the miracles – as many claimed they were – began. Within a week of that fateful evening this place had become the destination of the first of countless thousands of pilgrims who began flocking here to worship and seek cures. Pilgrims who, to this day, still flock in undiminished numbers. For let us make no mistake: Tutuban is today the centre of a vast pilgrimage industry. It is Latin America’s answer to Lourdes in France. It is perhaps too easy to look at these hotels … at these restaurants … souvenir shops … fleets of buses at the bus station and rows of aircraft at the airport … in short at all the evident signs of prosperity glittering among the poverty like gold in a rotten tooth. Too easy to look at it all and think only of the enormous wealth which has undoubtedly been generated in four decades largely on the word of three illiterate Indian children. We should look also at these hostels for the pilgrims … at Tutuban’s impressive hospital with one of the most advanced psycho-surgery units in Latin America … and at the pilgrims themselves. Often poor, many have walked to Tutuban from hundreds of kilometres away. We should look, too, at these literally hundreds of thousands of testimonials of miraculous cures, many attested by independent medical opinion, and at these countless votive notes of thanks to the Virgin for spiritual and physical help…. You will never convince Ms Josefina Kaspar that she was the victim of some cynical racket. This is how she looked eleven years ago when, as thirteen-year-old Josefina Suarez, she made the pilgrimage to Tutuban. Paralysed from the chest down in a street accident at the age of five she was pushed in her wheelchair across the Andes from her home town of Santiago by her father, himself a sufferer from a heart condition…. So. Big business or a uniquely miraculous source of help? Well, maybe somewhere in between. It is a familiar story: at Lourdes … at Fatima … at Guadelupe. But there is something about the Madonna of Parazuela which makes her different from the others. A unique mystery surrounds her. Indeed, from the very first a key question-mark hung over her. Let us go back forty years to that evening. This imposing shrine which can seat three thousand pilgrims was not here then, of course. In those days this was a simple bare hillside. It was here that Milagros, Nimfa and Rosario Irubú were picking flowers when they had their vision. Every effort was made to fault their story but despite countless separate questionings it stood up in every detail. And this great picture hanging above the Grotto itself was painted under the children’s direction so as to be an exact likeness of the vision they claimed to have seen. A dark-skinned lady wearing old-fashioned spectacles, some sort of twentieth-century version of today’s moon-shift, and holding a jewelled box. In close-up here we can see the box is full of a grey powder and there is a pinch of this between the lady’s two fingers. We shall be coming back to this detail later. An unusual vision, perhaps. Certainly unexpected in that it did not conform to any Catholic images which the children would have been familiar with. And ever since that day there have been rumours. These rumours have said that this picture, far from representing a supernatural manifestation, is the portrait of a real person whom the children saw and merely mistook for the Virgin Mary. If this could ever be proved it would have shattering consequences. And from this first mystery a second one hangs. Why didn’t the investigators of the Church make more effort at the time to determine the true facts? And might this failure have something to do with the military government of the day? A good question. To understand the labyrinthine relationship between Church and State in Parazuela forty years ago we will need a brief explanation of the nature of Parazuelan politics then. Today’s social-democratic administration is an incredible twenty-seven governments removed from that military dictatorship in power in 1985. In those days the Roman Catholic Church was still a very powerful institution in terms of influencing the way ordinary people thought. But the secular power of the military was even greater in terms of the everyday control of life in Parazuela. Throughout the 1970s Church and State had been squaring off for a fight … and by 1985 State had won. The military could never have abolished the Church in Parazuela and nor would it have wanted to. It merely needed to ensure the support of the more important of the Church’s leaders. Such as Cardinal Celso, Archbishop of San Sacramento and effectively the head of the Church in Parazuela. A man whose weakness for rubber sex made him uniquely vulnerable to blackmail. Among officers in the Government who were directly involved, Generals Manolo Edmilson and Fernando Preciosa played a key role in…. Global Probe has managed to reconstruct some of the major events that fateful June of so long ago and, against the background of the leading dramatis personae we have just been introduced to, can now present a diary which is probably as close to what really happened as anyone can ever get. One problem, of course, is that nearly all the people directly involved are dead. But Global Probe investigators have finally managed to trace a lady living in Australasia who may have the key to the entire mystery. She is Ms Ruth Tressell and her claim is a startling one. According to her, the story begins in Rio de Janeiro where she was a community service volunteer from 1984 to 1986. One of the other volunteers at the time, and a close friend of hers, was a certain American girl named Sage Maclean, who, in mid-1985…. Why did Ruth not come forward at the time despite suspicions aroused by the first letter she had received from Sage Maclean and then the international press coverage of the story? More important, why did neither she nor Sage Maclean come forward later, after extensive correspondence between them in, respectively, Rio and Texas? |
| RUTH TRESSELL: | Look, you’ve got to remember we were practically kids then and the whole thing struck us initially as too crazy. I really forget the sequence of events now but I do remember Sage and I were badly shaken by the news of Jack Brunner’s death, and as there didn’t seem to be any connection between the two stories the more personally urgent one took precedence. Then not long after she got back to the States poor Sage learned that she was pretty sick and that she might not make it, you know? I think they gave her up to a year to live, but she didn’t last that long. I swear it was Brazil that killed her; just one bout of hepatitis too many, they said. That, too, tended to push the whole Tutuban Virgin story on to the sidelines as far as we all were concerned. After Sage did die I remember looking around and thinking, well, there’s really only you left of the old gang, Ruthie, and look what happened to everyone else. And, besides, have you ever tried standing up in public suspiciously late in the day to pour cold water on a religious story that plenty of respectable people were accepting and which by then was becoming an industry? Me, a single girl, going on national TV to talk about conspiracy theories and in effect calling three kids liars who by then were practically little saints? No way. I’d lost two good friends and I was sick of the whole thing. And, God, you know those drug allegations about Jack Brunner? Some of that shit stuck and it was absolute lies from start to finish. I don’t know where that story came from. Jack was never into that and in that respect he … he was Mr Clean. I think it was that which really broke up his family. But I’m glad it’s all coming out now. We none of us live for ever and I’m happy not to have to … well, die with the story untold. |
| PRESENTER: | More and more the evidence seems to be indicating that there was a massive cover-up by the military government of the day, aided and abetted by senior Church officials. Three people could perhaps have cleared up the mystery once and for all but two are known to be dead and the third presumed to be. Jack S. Brunner. Murdered on the night of 16 June 1985. Sage Maclean. Died January 1986 of a liver disease almost certainly contracted during her service in Brazil. Foul play is not suspected. And the Irish priest, Father Ignatius O’Malley. Disappeared on that same 16 June aged forty-four. Never seen again. Foul play very strongly suspected. So we have to rely on the cover-up theory to explain certain otherwise inexplicable things. First, how was it that nobody else came forward to suggest that Sage Maclean had been mistaken for the Madonna? She must have been seen by dozens of people both in San Sacramento and Tutuban during her short visit. Only the military had the sort of power which could have prevented their voices being heard. And, secondly, why a cover-up at all? What was in it for the military government to have an American girl mistaken for the Virgin Mary? It is only a theory, but many people nowadays, Global Probe among them, think it was a shrewd piece of psychology on the part of the Generals. A sudden interest in a non-political, supernatural event gripping the imagination of the common people of Parazuela could divert their attention away from their very real grievances and make them that much more docile. Dr Zeke Chaffee is Professor of Humanist Psychology at MIT…. Our story almost ends there. Almost, but not quite. For there is one other survivor of those fateful events, perhaps in her way the most important of all. This is the Convent of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Tutuban. And this nun quietly embroidering in the peace of its secluded garden, far removed from the hubbub of pilgrimage for which she was directly responsible, is Sister Pia, born Nimfa Irubú. For she is the last of the three sisters who saw the vision still alive. She has never left this convent since the day she entered its doors at the age of twelve. Still only fifty-two, she looks a good deal older. For even the reclusive world of the nun is not untouched by controversy. Sister Pia is by far the most famous nun in Parazuela, probably in the whole of Latin America. But this very fame, unsought though it may be, has inevitably brought with it the rumours, the gossip, the doubts. It is an open secret that even some other members of her Sisterhood privately question her popular status as the Convent’s visionary and bitterly resent her celebrity. In terms of fame she easily outranks her own Mother Superior, whose position she has never coveted. The rumours persist that she was the innocent victim of her own youthfulness and gullibility. But Sister Pia herself has never had a moment’s doubt. She remains supremely convinced that on that evening forty years ago she and her two little sisters were granted a glimpse of heaven on earth. And the Madonna she saw – unconventional in appearance though she might have been – lives on in Sister Pia’s memory as a person more real and more vivid than those who have surrounded her ever since. She has seen photographs of Sage Maclean but has always maintained that the young volunteer looked nothing like the person – or vision – she originally saw. Today Sister Pia devotes her time to prayer and embroidery. She declined to speak to a Global Probe investigator since all verbal contact is forbidden to her Order, although they talk freely among themselves. However, in a reply to written questions we submitted through her Mother Superior she stated that she is perfectly well aware of the rumours concerning the validity of her claims. She insists that all such reports casting doubt on her vision of Our Lady were originally manufactured by the corrupt military regime of the day in their unceasing and often brutal campaign against the spiritual values of the Church. Viewers of this documentary may well feel by now that such a view is at best simplistic…. The question has sometimes been asked: ‘Is Sister Pia a saint?’ It is something she herself has always emphatically denied. The Roman Catholic Church certainly doesn’t recognise her as one since she has not yet even been beatified, itself a necessary first step for full canonisation, or sainthood. Nowadays the Church’s rules governing beatification are so strict as to make becoming a modern saint virtually impossible. Indeed, Cardinal Nutzbaum of New York recently remarked that if Jesus Christ himself were to reappear on earth he might not even qualify. So once again we ask the question: Sister Pia: Saint? Hoaxer? Or Dupe? Global Probe believes it has put forward enough facts for open-minded viewers to be able to form their own judgement. But perhaps in all fairness the last word should go to Sister Pia herself, expressed in the earthy imagery of her own Indian origins: ‘The proof of the boat-making is in the floating,’ she says. ‘Are there or are there not miracles here in Tutuban? ‘Do not the incurably sick take up their beds and walk? ‘Do not the lame run, the afflicted smile again? ‘Have not a million hearts been filled these last forty years with that supreme happiness which is the special gift of Our Lady of Tears?’ ENDS |