The Black Madonna (15 page)

‘Charming.’

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it. Some people call it a
memento mori
, a reminder that this life is but transient, a pilgrimage to heaven. Others see the same thing and take the message
carpe diem
: enjoy yourself because this is all you’ve got.’

‘I assume the Catholic Church prefers the former.’

‘Oh absolutely, but then the Catholic Church is a relative
newcomer
in Altötting.’

Marcus looked at him askance: ‘How do you mean? I rather got the impression that the whole place revolved around the Church, and the black Madonna in particular.’

‘Yes, you would, and it’s true nowadays and has been for
centuries
, but Altötting’s history as a religious centre goes way back beyond any of that.’

Marcus nodded. ‘Yes, one of the nuns at the institute hinted at something like that.’

Vischer smiled a knowing smile. ‘Ah, you talked to them, did you? The
englische Fräulein
, the little English Virgins – there have to be some somewhere – you know they used to call them the “female Jesuits”?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Very self-assured, they are. Not without reason perhaps. They do a good job, teaching and so forth. By their own lights.’

‘But you’re suggesting there’s more that they didn’t tell us.’

‘Oh, not at all, not at all. Not necessarily, but the Church rather prefers to play down the old pagan side of Altötting.’

‘I didn’t realise there was a pagan side.’

‘It was considered sacred a long time before the arrival of
Christianity
? It has been the centre of religious cults for millennia probably. You noticed the trees?’

‘The little grove, planted around the shrine.’

‘Yes, except that there were trees there long before the shrine. Lime trees you sometimes call them in English, though I think you also use the German word – linden. They were sacred in old
Teutonic
cults from the dawn of time. Berlin’s Unter den Linden ring a bell?’

‘Yes, but surely that’s not …’

‘I’m only joking, sort of – about Berlin – but I’m quite serious about the lindens in Altötting. Over the centuries they have been rearranged, replanted and made to look like a formal garden around the shrine. Originally they would have been a grove on their own, visible for miles around on that plateau, a place for worship. And for sacrifice.’

‘You’re saying …’

‘I’m not saying anything, other than telling you as one scholar to another that it’s just another example of an ancient site the Church has appropriated to its own interpretations. They never dared cut down the lindens completely, you know. These things linger, in
people’s
imagination – call it superstition or what you will – but there was an almighty fuss back in the seventeenth century when they cut down one of the trees that even then they knew to be at least 250 years old. They replaced it with an extra little shrine, a little metal chapel for candles, as if it was an exorcism.’

Marcus remembered noticing the little structure out in front of the old chapel, mimicking it obliquely in its metal shape. There had indeed been candles inside, and flowers. He had thought nothing more of it at the time. There had been candles everywhere.

‘And then there’s the Madonna herself, of course. You noticed what she was made of, the dark figure underneath all the gold and silver getup?’

‘I took it for granted she was carved of wood.’

‘Indeed, but not just any wood. Linden. The holy wood of the ancients.’

The sight of students in cut-off jeans and T-shirts lying on the grass in the warm summer sunshine or playing Frisbee on the lawns outside the gallery was a welcome reminder of the modern world at its everyday level. Marcus’s head was spinning. He considered himself a master at reconciling conflicting versions of reality, but that was when he set his own agenda. Altötting had seemed a familiar if faintly absurd shrine to Christian tradition. Now all of a sudden he found himself forced to look at it as an alien, slightly sinister
hangover
from ancient Paganism. Which was true? Either, or neither?

Nazreem on the other hand had not seemed even mildly surprised. Her eyes shone as she studied the painting in minute detail, without taking part in the conversation between Marcus and Dr Vischer, yet she had clearly taken in every word. There was a disquieting quality to her silence as if she were in some state of hyper-awareness where everything assumed an added significance unnoticed by the
uninitiated
. Or maybe she was just daydreaming. Certainty was becoming a mirage.

‘Does any of this alter anything?’ asked Marcus as they walked between the university buildings in the rough direction of the city centre. ‘I mean your idea that the first Altötting figure might have been a copy of the original life-portrait of Mary?’

To his surprise she almost laughed. ‘Alter anything? No, not in the slightest. Unless of course you think these people were actually trying to depict the Virgin Mary?’

Marcus stopped abruptly, suddenly not sure what he was hearing. ‘But I thought that was the whole point. That was why you wanted to see this painting. To see if it looked like her.’

Nazreem shook her head, as if in disbelief that he could have misunderstood. ‘No, no. Quite the opposite. I knew that this was nothing like – you told me about the Dutch painters. I just wanted to see an early example, to get a better idea of how they did it?’

‘How who did what? I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Don’t you see? This painting, this image of St Luke creating the Madonna’s likeness, it’s not real …’

‘Well, of course it’s not real. It’s just a painting, a late mediaeval artist’s rendition of a famous scene.’

‘But that’s just it. It’s not a famous scene. It’s not a scene at all – it’s a legend …’

‘That’s what I mean.’ Marcus was getting annoyed with her nitpicking.

‘But you don’t say what you mean, you’re using a shorthand that implies that it really happened. Like a lot of people believe. But it’s a legend okay, only not like in the fairy stories. More like in the spy stories. The legend is a cover story. A piece of propaganda. Black propaganda, if you want.’

‘Now I really don’t understand. What sort of propaganda? And for whom?’

‘For the Christians, of course. To make the Virgin Mary look like one of them.’

‘Hang on a minute, you’re not trying to claim the Virgin Mary for Islam, are you?’

She looked at him with mock horror, and then laughed: ‘Marcus, sometimes I wonder, for a university man, how little you know. The Virgin Mary is part of Islam. Just like Isa, Jesus, her son, who was one of the messengers from Allah, a prophet, one of the forerunners of Mohammed, as was Musa, the one you call Moses.

‘In the Koran his mother, Maryam,
your
Virgin Mary is the only woman mentioned by name. Not even the daughters of the prophet himself are so honoured. The third chapter is named after her father, Imran, and his family, the nineteenth chapter after Mary, Maryam, herself, including the story of the visitation of the angel Jibril – whom you call Gabriel – and her virgin conception. Allah guided her to a palm tree with a little river running by it so she would have fresh water and a tree that showered dates upon her when she shook it, for food. And that is where she gave birth to Isa, Jesus.’

‘That’s not exactly the way we learned it in Sunday School.’

‘No, of course not. But who was this Mary, some Dutch woman, or German or English – or African? I think that if she existed,
according
to the holy books of either religion, she was a woman whose world more closely resembled mine than that of some mediaeval European housewife.’

Marcus found himself nodding. She was giving him an object lesson in his own field of study: looking at the same story from a
different
perspective, the same supposed events told in a different way in a different culture. The difference between historiography and history, remembering that history is written by humans. It was the key point in all his lectures. Why should it not apply to religion too?

‘It is one of the phrases from the Koran that is learned by heart by all Muslim girls, the words uttered by Jibril to the virgin.’ She dropped her tone into a quiet hush and said something softly in Arabic, a recital learned by rote in childhood, then raised her voice again, as if the magic could not be conveyed in the English: ‘“Maryam, Allah has chosen you and purified you – chosen you above the women of all nations.”’

‘Now that is almost exactly the wording in the Bible.’

She shrugged. ‘Why would it not be? But I do not know. In any case, once you have translated the Koran, it is no longer supposed to be the genuine word of Allah.’

Marcus looked suitably sceptical. ‘I’m sure He’s capable of more than one language.’

She smiled. ‘I would like to think so, but it is a way of keeping the orthodoxy. Remember, for centuries the Christian Bible was only read in Latin, even though it had originally been written in Aramaic or Greek. These things serve human purposes. Like that painting in there. You have to agree that it is strange that Christianity, this
religion
which was born in Palestine and first flourished in Egypt and Syria, ended up an almost exclusively European religion.’

‘It’s a global religion today.’

‘Only because it was spread by European colonialism.’

Marcus inclined his head. There was no arguing with that. Even the most ardent Christians admitted that the great European voyages of exploration had been the chief motors of Christian expansion. They tried to explain it as the will of God, even if some of the excesses of gold-hungry conquistadors looked distinctly un-Christian.

‘I suppose,’ he said instead, taking up the issue as seriously as he knew she intended, ‘it goes back to the Emperor Constantine. If he hadn’t made Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire in the early fourth century, it might never have attained more than cult status outside the Middle East.’

Nazreem was nodding now, as if pleased to see that he was open
to the discussion and not just defending ‘his’ side against hers, Christians versus Muslims. That would have been an insult to both of their intelligences: ‘And the emperor adopted it because he
witnessed
a miracle. Because God entered his heart and he saw the folly of his ways?’

Marcus smiled broadly. She was teasing him, goading him on. Well, he would give her what she was asking for. ‘Not exactly. The legend is that he saw a vision before a crucial battle against one of his rivals for the throne – the Greek letters
chi
and
rho
, like a capital X and P in English, the first two in the word Christ – and so after he won the battle, he converted. Most of that is certainly legend. Even the early Christian historians admitted Constantine was a
pragmatist
who prayed to any god going for victory. He did end the
persecution
of Christians but didn’t adopt the religion himself until his deathbed. Even then it was a close run thing. He was tempted by lots of others including some Persian cult I don’t remember the name of right now, but it was more to do with pragmatism than religious conviction. But that was probably the Yorkshire in him.’

‘What?’

Marcus chuckled. ‘Yorkshiremen. It’s just a little joke among British historians. He was staying at a military base at Eboracum – York – when his father died and he was proclaimed emperor.
Yorkshiremen
have a reputation for stubbornness, you know.’

‘Sometimes I think the English are very strange.’

‘Tell me about it. But it was because of Constantine that Europe, and as a result the modern ‘Western’ world, became Christian. Once the emperor had legalised Christianity and adopted it himself, though only on his deathbed, the religion was accepted as that of the state. The Romans liked the hierarchical structure, the chain of authority. It pretty much mirrored the empire. And eventually became it. The Pantheon in Rome is revered today as one of the oldest, finest Christian churches but it began life as a pagan temple. The roots of its very name – “pan” and “theos” – mean “all the gods”.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What do you mean – exactly?’

‘Christianity stole what it needed to establish itself as the imperial religion, to supplant all the others so that there would only be one system of belief.’

‘They stole your black Madonna?’

She sighed in exasperation: ‘Marcus, Marcus, it is not
my
black Madonna. It is not anybody’s. It is certainly also not the Catholic Church’s. At least not exclusively. That is what I mean by a legend, a black legend. That’s why the oldest Madonnas are all dark. The white, European-looking ones only began to appear in the Middle Ages, when Christianity was running scared from Islam which had taken over the holy places and was threatening to invade Europe. They stripped the religion of almost all its true Middle Eastern roots.

‘All these stories, these “other Marys”, they’re all attempts to explain away the images, their continued existence, the reverence people automatically felt for them. It’s a way of usurping their status, their power if you like.

‘But it’s more than that. There’s something else, older and somehow obvious but still hidden. Maybe it fits in with what the curator was saying about Altötting, about the linden trees,
something
that explains why no one in the Catholic Church wants to be precise about how long and why it’s been a holy site. Sister Galina didn’t understand but she knew all the same, that it goes way back, to before Christianity.’

‘You’re not just talking about the conflict between Islam and Christianity?’

She stopped and stared at him suddenly as if he was being
inexplicably
dense.

‘Of course not. At their worst, the one’s as good – or as bad – as the other. It’s just that we let ourselves be blinded by what’s in our faces. You don’t think 3,000 years of culture disappeared overnight, do you. The Greeks, the Romans, the people who founded your culture, the Arabs who developed mine, all have roots in the sands of Ancient Egypt.’ She smiled suddenly: ‘Look around you.’

‘Hmm?’ Marcus looked puzzled and then realised where they were; their apparently random stroll back towards the hotel had taken them to the edge of Königsplatz, the great regal square laid out by Bavaria’s nineteenth-century kings. On either side rose great stone neoclassical buildings, museums of ancient sculpture and archaeology, lined with classical columns, one Doric, the other Ionic.

Between the two, forming a third side to the square stood two Egyptian-style pylon gates. As chance had it, workmen were
erecting
a stage with gold and topaz sphinxes, for an open-air summer
performance of Verdi’s opera
Aïda
, a nineteenth-century Italian’s hymn of praise to ancient Egypt, named for a Nubian princess.

Nazreem was looking at him smugly as if it was some sign of divine intervention. ‘There are parallels between the story of Mary, Maryam, and the ancient Egyptian Isis, the goddess who was mother of Horus. When you first met me, I was studying Egyptology living in Cairo. I came to understand that ancient Egypt never went away; it was simply swallowed up, by your world and by mine.’

‘You’re not going to bring Leonardo da Vinci into this, are you?’

Nazreem smiled and shook her head: ‘We’re talking real history here, facts interpreted to make sense not nonsense.’

‘So you’re not going to tell me Jesus Christ was secretly married.’

‘To be frank, Marcus, I neither know nor care about the man’s sexual preferences, marital arrangements or lack of either. As far as I am concerned, he was probably some radical Jewish rabbi who attracted a following and ended up in trouble with the Romans. But you know there’s not even any real historical record of that. Not that wasn’t tinkered with later by the Christians to make it fit their
supposed
facts. Come on, Marcus, you’re the expert in this field. You know how history can be rearranged to suit the present.’

‘That’s for sure,’ he said wryly, looking around at the great square’s imposingly monumental nineteenth-century pastiche of the ancient world’s most grandiose architecture. ‘You know what else this square is famous for.’

She eyed him obliquely, expecting a trap.

‘In the 1930s it was paved over. To make it even more imposing, more of a synthesis of the ancient world and what they thought then was the new world order. That also made it more suited to military parades. They don’t talk about it much in modern Munich but in the 1930s they called this city the “Hauptstadt der Bewegung”, the “capital of the movement”, the National Socialist movement.

‘This square was the Nazi storm troopers’ favourite marching ground. They carried out the infamous book-burning here, close to the university. So let’s not think of it as a monument to ancient truth.’

‘I’m talking about the power of religion. Wasn’t Nazism a sort of religion?’

Marcus thought of the swastika, an ancient ayurvedic symbol stolen and abused, the mass parades, the ritual obeisance and the fanaticism, Dr Goebbels the little prophet and Adolf Hitler his
improbable Messiah. Oh yes, Nazism had been a religion all right.

These buildings, museums built in the style of ancient temples, had temporarily been appropriated to fit. Was religion like history, not a matter of eternal truth but just a question of which side you were on? Why the hell not? Hell was real enough. Hell on earth.