"I admit I was wondering why you weren't showing me the basilica devoted to the Virgin of Atocha."
"Well, you know, you told me you had seen ample images of the virgin and child," Bobadilla said, his running-in-place cooldown finally coming to an end. His appearance in exercise clothing had taken her somewhat aback. In her experience, most Europeans were terribly formal in dress, especially in front of Americans. "The basilica is not so much about the Santo Niño. Our Lady of Atocha is far more significant to us. She is rival to the Virgin of Almudena for the devotions of pious Madrileños. A few years ago our king, Juan Carlos, recognized the Lady of Atocha as protectress of the royal family."
Annja leaned on the rail. Below, a few tourists stood snapping digital cameras at the gardens while locals strolled by. Overhead the space rose to a high half-cylinder ceiling, ribbed with metal girders and pierced with a great skylight to allow the sunlight to pour down on the tropical jungle in miniature. Structurally, the mall looked like nothing so much as a turn-of-the-twentieth-century train station. As it once had been.
"But wasn't the church built on the site of the original Santo Niño manifestation?" she asked.
"No. To tell you the truth, no one knows precisely where that took place. The church was originally consecrated by Alfonso VI, who credited an image of the virgin for his reconquest of Madrid from the Moors in 1083. That was two centuries before the events commemorated in the Santo Niño legend supposedly took place. Why Alfonso picked the site is anybody's guess. For much of its history the church lay derelict. Indeed, the current cathedral is younger than this, the old Atocha station."
He gestured around to encompass the echoing space. "The station was rebuilt after a fire in 1892. Meanwhile the image of the virgin wasn't even housed at the church until 1926, shortly after a rather desultory reconstruction began."
"Desultory?"
He shrugged. "The basilica did not open until 1951. I thought it might please you to see our old station, which is something of an attraction for tourists. I hope I have done right; if you wish I can order a cab to carry us to the basilica at once."
He started to fish under his jersey, presumably for a cell phone. Annja stopped him.
"That's okay. I love ancient cathedrals, or I wouldn't have my specialty. But 1951 isn't ancient to anyone. And what I really wanted was to get as much of a feel for the origins of the story as I could."
"Regrettably," the little man with the big, bald head said, "very little indeed remains of the thirteenth-century village of Atocha within twenty-first-century Madrid."
She smiled at him. "Perhaps you'd at least fill me in on the story of the Holy Child."
"It would be my pleasure. You must first understand that the Santo Niño enjoys no great popularity in Spain today. His worship is far more prevalent in the colonies, Cebu, Mexico, Chimayó. Indeed, it appears to be the case that the earliest known image of the Holy Child as we know him today was the one sent as a present to the Mexican town of Plateros in the sixteenth century. In the thirteenth century the Moors, it is said, held the little village of Atocha, then well outside the walls of Madrid. Prisoners captured in the continuing war for freedom from the occupiers were kept in most deplorable conditions in a building in the town. The Moors refused to feed them, insisting that the local townsfolk should provide, which was not an uncommon arrangement for the time, however harsh. In time, suspecting the Christian villagers were all sympathizers with the insurgency – as no doubt they were – the local ruler forbade anyone to visit the prisoners except children under the age of twelve.
"Then lo! A child appeared, dressed as a pilgrim of the day, in robe and cape, sandals and hat with plume. He carried a staff with a water gourd suspended from it, and a basket of bread. The guards permitted him to enter. One story has it that no matter how much bread and water he distributed to the captives, neither his bread basket nor water gourd ever ran out – a clear linkage to the biblical miracle of loaves and fishes."
He raised his right leg behind him, grasped his instep, pulled. "Please forgive me. I have a tendency to cramp. A consequence of adult-onset diabetes, I fear. Another, even more miraculous version of the story has important resonances for these apparitions of the Holy Child you're having in the New World.
"In this rendition the jailers did not permit the Holy Child to visit the prisoners. But they could not keep him out. They would hear talking from within the cells, rush in, find the captives just swallowing the last of their bread and water. But never a sign of the Holy Child."
"He vanished," Annja said, "just the way he supposedly vanishes from the backs of people's cars in New Mexico."
"Precisely! Moreover, when the women of Atocha went to give thanks to the image of the Santo Niño – in this account, Christ as a child in pilgrim's garb rather than the miraculous figure who brought succor to the Christian prisoners of Atocha – they found his shoes soiled and worn out. Leading to the charming custom in Chimayó of taking baby shoes to the image of the Santo Niño in the chapel there, I understand."
"So in that story we have the origins of the vanishing-hitchhiker elements of the Santo Niño," Annja said.
Bobadilla laughed. "I had not heard that connection drawn before. But yes, it is apt. Especially in view of these American sightings. And also of the tradition of the Holy Child succoring travelers in need or peril, which I also understand plays a role in these modern encounters."
"Yes." She hesitated. "What truth, if any, do you assign to the story?"
"I am not a particularly observant Catholic. I consider myself a man of reason. So naturally I will tend, at least intellectually, to discount the miraculous elements of the story. As for an unknown child appearing, dressed as a pilgrim, and bringing food to the suffering captives, I personally believe it almost certainly happened."
"Really?"
"Quite so. It makes sense. It did, after all, cleverly skirt the prohibition on adult visitors. And the pilgrim garb may be explained by the fact that Muslims then as now hold pilgrims in particular regard, even infidels. After all, while the Christians were undoubtedly subject to varying degrees of oppression, their religion was not forbidden.
"Moreover even the apparently inexhaustible supply of bread and water might have a factual basis – in extra baskets and gourds concealed beneath the flowing robe and cape, yes?"
Annja laughed. "That sounds quite plausible actually."
"I would not be surprised if the Moorish guards were wise to the ruse and went along with it. For all the real hostility existing between Muslims and Christians during the occupation, these people were neighbors. They lived far more of their lives peacefully together than they did in fighting one another."
"People depended on each other to survive," Annja said.
"Precisely! The lines were not drawn nearly so starkly at the time as they are now, in our pictures. Also there is a respect of cleverness and resourcefulness in many Islamic cultures. The guards may have thought the whole thing a capital joke, regardless of how seriously their commander took his edicts. And I think to see echoes in the tale, even at this essentially plausible level, from Sufi parables, which often involve degrees of deception. That strain of Muslim mysticism, as you well know, played an integral if often forgotten role in shaping our own Spanish intellectual and mystic traditions, after all."
"Yes," said Annja, who had studied Spanish history. "But what of the more...esoteric elements to the story?" she asked.