A Division of the Light Read Free Page B

at them as if they could not quite decide whether they should be welcomed. When the journalist asked if he made a specialty of recording such cases Gregory told him that he did not, and that neitherhad he any religious belief. It was possible, he added wryly, that his editor thought he would be interested merely because he had recently photographed a controversial bishop and turned him into something monolithically baroque. He did not say that it had been on his return from this assignment that he had witnessed a woman being thrown to the ground and robbed.
    A small group of visitors waited near the home of the girl who had seen the vision. Most were silent, but some prayed quietly and continuously. Others knelt on the stony soil with their hands clasped. Some were evidently poor, but one woman had brought a plush velvet cushion to kneel on; another wore clothes for a skiing holiday, the manufacturer’s logo bold across her back. Carla asked if they minded having their photographs taken. No one objected. One woman even asked which newspaper Gregory worked for. He lied and said the English
Sunday Times
.
    â€œThey all want to be part of this,” Carla said as they walked away.
    â€œThey always do,” the journalist said.
    A few chickens scratched around their feet and a goat ate a sparse shrub at the end of its tether.
    â€œYou must have covered other stories like this,” Gregory said.
    â€œI’ve read the files on dozens of cases,” the journalist answered. “They’re all similar. You’ll see what I mean when you meet the family. Miraculous visitations are the product of marginal communities with deep religious beliefs, and the person who sees the vision is always a lonely pubescent girl. Mostly the visions fade when she grows up.”
    â€œYou think that will happen here?”
    â€œMaybe, but there’s a force behind this. You can feel the pressure. This girl fascinates believers, but the rest of the world isfascinated too. If she didn’t have that quality then you and I wouldn’t be here, and neither would anyone else. There’s another TV crew arriving tomorrow because the world wants to know about Little Maria. And a few weeks ago she wasn’t ever called that; she was Anamaria until a newspaper rechristened her. Now even the villagers call her by her new name. Her family does, too.”
    â€œEveryone believes it is better to call her that,” Carla told them.
    â€œAnd do you?” Gregory asked.
    â€œPerhaps. If she saw what she tells us she saw.”
    â€œWhat she saw,” the journalist said, “was what these disturbed young women always see—an apparition that resembled a naïve painting. Little Maria saw a Virgin Mary who was just like an illustration in an instructional book for children. Adults in advanced societies don’t ever see visions like that.”
    â€œA vision can come to anyone,” Carla said.
    â€œWe don’t have visions; we hallucinate,” the journalist answered. “We hear voices inside our heads, or get blinded by non-existent lights, or lose ourselves in the numinous. We don’t get visited by images from picture books. Look around us: we’re at the very edge of subsistence here. It’s like stepping back into feudal Europe. People see what they’ve been taught they will see at the moment of death.”
    The family was what Gregory expected. A few weeks ago the parents might have been credulous, but now they had become used to media attention. He photographed them against a scabbed and whitewashed wall to show off their frayed clothing and lined faces. He asked them to make sure their hands were on display so that readers would be able to study the stumpy fingers and broken nails.
    An ambitious local priest asked to be photographed, too; after all, he was the only one able to provide spiritual guidance to these people. They were, he confided, simple, goodhearted, and unable to