The Madonna on the Moon (42 page)

As the friendly antiques dealer unrolled the 1651 map
Maria et Monti Lunae,
Dimitru froze in astonishment. Then he shouted for joy. “Maria and the mountains! That scholar, that
Jesuit monk, already saw Mary three hundred years ago. On the moon! And with a simple telescope!”

“Who? Who did Riccioli see?” Gheorghe Gherghel shook his head.

“The Virgin Mary. The Mother of God in person. That astronomer found her.”

“How in heaven’s name did you come up with that?”

“Right there!” Dimitru tapped his finger on the map. “It’s right there in black and white:
Maria et Monti Lunae.
According to my modest knowledge of Latin
(thanks to Papa Baptiste, God rest his soul), that means ‘Mary and the mountains of the moon.’”

Gheorghe Gherghel slapped his thighs and held his tummy, he was laughing so hard. “You folks up in the mountains are really loony. God in heaven, what a bunch of linguists. Maria! Maria! I
couldn’t figure out what you meant!
Maria
is the plural
of mare.
And
mare
means ‘sea.’ The first astronomers took the dark spots on the moon for seas.
That’s where they got the names Mare Australe, Mare Imbrium, Mare Vaporum: Southern Sea, Sea of Showers, Sea of Vapors. Now we know those seas are really giant deserts of stone, but we kept
the names. And all the seas together are the
maria,
with the stress on the first
a: mária,
not
maría.
It’s the language of science, but how would you
know that?”

Piqued, Dimitru cleared his throat, but he and Grandfather were still completely convinced that what was behind the identity of the Latin names for “seas” and the Mother of God was
anything but a coincidence.

Chapter Eleven

So as not to attract any attention, I hauled the optical equipment into Baia Luna under cover of darkness and stowed it away in our storeroom. Ilja and Dimitru were burning
with impatience to set up their telescope, and what place was better suited to look for Mary on the moon than the peak of the Mondberg, Moon Mountain? They would have liked to set out on their
expedition immediately, but for days clouds came up every afternoon and obscured the stars at night. Nevertheless, the two of them didn’t sit idle. To familiarize themselves with the terrain
of earth’s satellite, they bent over the map
Maria et Monti Lunae.
Using pencils, rulers, and compasses, they made various calculations in order to be ready to identify potential
locations for Mary even before looking through their telescope. Once Dimitru had translated all the entries on the moon map with the help of a Latin dictionary, he came to a conclusion.

“Mary is enthroned in the Mare Serenitatis.”

“Where?” asked Grandfather.

“In the Sea of Serenity. We can exclude all the other seas.”

“How can you be so sure? The moon is a big place,” Ilja objected. “Mare Imbrium, Mare Humorum, Mare Nubium. The blessed Mary could have landed anywhere after her Assumption.
That means we have to look everywhere except for Mare Moscoviense. She would go out of her way to avoid the Russian Sea.”

“I agree.” But then the Gypsy definitively excluded other locations as well. “Do you really think she would be celebrating in the company of the twelve apostles in a place as
inhospitable as the Oceanus Procellarum, the Ocean of Storms? Or would the teeth of the Mother of Our Lord be chattering in the frosty Mare Frigoris? Or worst of all”—and Dimitru held
his nose—“in the miasma of the Mare Vaporum or in the Palus Putredinis, the Swamp of Decay?”

“You’re both crazy!” Kathalina was amused at first. But gradually she became really concerned about the mental health of the two friends and, finally, completely irritated.
“The both of you are hopeless cases. Since Johannes Baptiste left us, your heads are full of nonsense. Mary on the moon! I pray the village gets a new priest soon who can bring you back to
earth from your delusions of heavenly flights.”

To their objection that they had the highest authority behind them: a papal dogma and the biblical word of God in Revelation, Kathalina replied she had no doubts about the truth of the Bible and
the church, but she did about the influence of the Holy Ghost. Instead of illuminating the minds of her fellow men, it obviously was befogging their brains. “Only boneheads would come up with
the idea of swapping a wonderful television set for an old radio and all this other useless junk.”

Despite my mother’s annoyance, the radio became Ilja’s and Dimitru’s connection to the world. It delivered the latest news directly into our taproom. To be sure, only such
reports as had been filtered through the state censorship office and embellished by the rank imagination of the propagandists. In addition, the information suffered some diminution in transmission
by the outdated technology. After tinkering with it for a while, I discovered that the radio set had no difficulty in receiving broadcast signals, just problems in reproducing the tone. Dimitru
conjectured that the plus and minus poles of the speaker magnets had possibly exchanged places while being transported on the jolting horse-drawn wagon. The defect was evident in the fact that the
radio would sometimes deliver the very best quality sound for hours on end before suddenly starting to chatter again or fall completely silent for brief but decisive moments. The irritated Gypsy
would snap the fingers of his right hand while continuously turning the dial with his left, which got on Kathalina’s nerves so much that she regularly pulled the plug from its socket.

Shortly after the triumph of Gagarin’s spaceflight for the Soviet Union, we heard the news that Grandfather’s beloved America not only built inferior rockets but also was a bad actor
on the world political stage. Ilja cocked his ears as soon as he heard the name Fidel Castro. Dimitru turned up the volume as high as it would go. America had obviously tried to topple a
revolutionary revered in the circles of the Transmontanian Workers’ Party. Because Castro had chased all the capitalists out of Cuba, was proceeding apace to proletarianize the island, and
now also had a pact with the Soviet Union, the USA was gearing up for a counteroffensive. If the newsman was to be believed, counterrevolutionary Cubans had been lured to the USA with a few lousy
dollars, there to be armed to the teeth and sent back to Cuba to fight against their own compatriots. In the end, what exactly was happening in Cuba remained a mystery, since the radio started
acting up again. But at least Grandfather and Dimitru had repeatedly heard the name of the American president who had already sent Khrushchev a congratulatory telegram after Gagarin’s
spaceflight. Apparently, this John Eff Kennedy had also ordered the storming of Cuba to bring its citizens American liberty, which, however, was not appreciated on the island of revolutionaries. As
far as Dimitru could determine, Fidel’s rebel guard had thrown all the invaders into a bay with pigs, whereupon my grandfather, who knew his Bible inside and out, merely remarked that Jesus
had also once exorcized demons and commanded them to enter some swine that proceeded to throw themselves into the sea and drown. For me, the news contained a kernel of truth: Kennedy’s people
had botched the overthrow of Castro. Logically enough, Ilja and Dimitru wondered if the Americans were not just smart enough to see through Korolev’s secret plan but also had a strategy to
defeat it.

“It’s high time,” Grandfather postulated, “for America to respond.”

And it did respond. On May 25, 1961, the president of the United States gave a speech to Congress of utmost urgency for the nation. He spoke of the coming battle between freedom and tyranny from
which, no matter how it ended, America would emerge victorious. As it would in the struggle to conquer space. Kennedy proclaimed, “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

Before Ilja and Dimitru could comprehend their good fortune, a radio commentator demanded their full attention. The chairman of the Transmontanian State Council Gheorghiu-Dej, a staunch
supporter of Moscow, was going to speak in person. In a disquisition on the international political situation, he declared that the USA’s delusions of grandeur with respect to the conquest of
space were in inverse proportion to its terrestrial failures. Kennedy had only announced his utopian plan to fly to the moon in order to create a stir nationally and internationally and distract
attention from his Cuban disaster and his private sex scandals. When Dimitru heard that Kennedy’s compulsive infidelities with a constantly inebriated starlet who also took drugs had weakened
him politically, he clapped his hands in joy.

“The Bolsheviks are getting cold feet. They’re getting nervous. Now their bloodhounds are sniffing around in the president’s bedroom. When the Russkies have no other ideas,
they always go for the balls. But a man who’s determined to get to the moon won’t get tripped up by peccadilloes with women. Believe me, Ilja, if anyone can stop Korolev, our John Eff
can.” Dimitru suddenly stopped and slapped his forehead. “Man, Ilja! This story about the president’s girlfriend! It’s a divine coincidence! On Radio London they’re
always talking about some Marilyn. You know what that means in translation? Marialein, Little Mary! Mary and John Eff! ‘John’ is short for ‘Johannes.’ Eff: Evangelist! John
the Evangelist was the only person to whom the woman on the moon appeared. Understand, Ilja?”

“The Yank gets it!” Grandfather was ecstatic. “Kennedy’s started his counterproject. He wants to go to the moon. And he knows that time is short.”

“I’m guessing John Eff is going to throw the on switch for presses to start printing money. A moon flight costs a lot of dollars. If I understood the news from London,
America’s even hired a German to build its rockets. Wörner Brown or something like that. I’m telling you, when a German has a hand in something, it’s going to
work.”

“If America’s got a German on their side,” my grandfather summed up, “Korolev’s holding a bad hand.”

“You can take that to the bank. Pavel,
zuika
!”

As always, the evening news closed with the weather forecast. For Friday, May 26, and the following days summer temperatures and clear blue skies were predicted for the Carpathians. At once,
Ilja and Dimitru ran to the door. The stars twinkled in a clear night sky. There would be a full moon in two days. What could be more perfect for their telescopic observations than the last days of
the Mary month of May?

Next day the two of them had me explain how to set up the telescope and use the camera, film, and flashbulbs. They asked my mother to pack them supplies for a few days. After Dimitru suggested
that peering through the telescope’s eyepiece for long stretches could cause eye strain and necessitate concentration-enhancing beverages, I added a couple bottles of schnapps, although I
felt the stirrings of a bad conscience. After all, I was the one who had enabled the two Mariologists in the first place by taking them to Gheorghe Gherghel’s shop.

“Don’t forget your loony pills,” Kathalina razzed them.

In the evening, the pair set off.

At about midnight they reached the chapel where the Virgin of Eternal Consolation had once stood. In a clearing between the rocks they set up camp, rammed the tripod into the ground, and mounted
the telescope on it. They thanked the powers of heaven for their clear view of the bright, almost full moon and followed up with a supplication that the Mother of God not shrink from the
telescope’s glassy eye. When it came to deciding who should look through the telescope first, the two started quarreling. Each wanted to let the other go first. Finally Ilja aimed the
instrument in the direction of the moon.

The moment Ilja pressed his own orb against the eyepiece of the Keplerian telescope, he departed this earth. His mouth agape in astonishment, he entered the space between times. Studying the
lunar map had been worth the effort. The Jesuit Giovanni Battista Riccioli had done his work well. What Ilja was now seeing conformed in every detail to the astronomer’s cartographic record.
As if his spirit were bridging heaven and earth, he floated between the chasms and ravines of monumental mountain chains, flew over wrinkled ridges and corroded crests, and glided above endless
desert wastes. Gray-shadowed plains opened before him, punctuated by jagged walls and piles of reddish-brown rocks. In between emerged what looked like the branchings of dry riverbeds, towering
crater walls, round or oval, some like gigantic maws, others without number as tiny as the head of a pin. Ilja recognized the crater named after the Roman historian Pliny. It lay in the north of
the Mare Tranquillitatis, the Sea of Tranquility, where it bordered on the southern edge of the Mare Serenitatis.

“I’ve got it!” Ilja cried.

“What?”

“The Sea of Serenity.”

“What’s there?” Dimitru stopped shivering with cold and started trembling with excitement. “Can you see her?”