Author Bio

KATHERINE VAZ

THE GRAY ELEPHANT FROM DENMARK

To: Isabel.Dias@gmail.com
From: Carlos.Vasco@gmail.com

Caríssima Izzy…I hate to see your dad ailing & it feels like yesterday we were doing those Easter-egg hunts in his restaurant. I’m glad you called when he got confused about your mom being gone. And thanks for listening to me bitch re David. I went to the Italian Market for dried codfish to experiment w/making Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, & there was Jeffrey checking out squid pasta or whatever, I KNOW he’s having a Thing w/my husband; he barely said two words to me, I guess b/c the pasta was fascinating.

Querida, I unearthed that copy of the letter Clara & Filomena & you sent ages ago to Lúcia of Fátima. I know she never replied b/c if you talk to the Blessed Virgin when you’re 12, what is there left to say? But do you know that I wrote to her too?

David is bathing Sammy, who likes to play “drown the animals,” i.e., holding the rubber duck, tiger, & dinosaur etc. underwater, & she SCREAMS b/c they’re screaming, should I be worried? In addition to my worry re David and Jeffrey, D. is way too happy & it couldn’t be b/c of me, I’ve been working late for months on this brief about Chino suing a dairy b/c of cow crap in the lake. Com um carinho, Your humble Man-Servant Carlos

 

To: Exma. Sóror Maria Lúcia of the Discalced Carmelites
Coimbra, Portugal
March 1, 1970

Dear Sister Lúcia,
Why you won’t release the Third Secret that the Virgin Mary gave you at Fátima? Sister Delfina says you were supposed to do it in 1963, but the Pope wouldn’t let you because it is scary. What was it like to talk to heaven? We are in fifth grade at Our Lady of Grace School in California. We were only three in 1963, and maybe by now you can tell us the Secret, please.
Your friends,
Isabel (Izzy) Dias
Clara Lobo
Filomena (Filly) Flores

 

To: Sister Lúcia dos Santos
Carmelite Convent of Santa Teresa, Coimbra, Portugal
January 5, 1987

Dear Sister Lúcia,
I am twelve. I have three brothers and three sisters. My friends wrote you a letter long ago because the Virgin told you a Secret, and you didn’t answer because you’re busy, but I need your help. There’s no one like me in school. I hear in church that I am not normal, and I don’t know what to do. Jack Kinnard in my class calls me names and beats me up.

A terrible thing happened. I was walking our dog. He’s named Moby because he’s white, like the whale. My brother Jaime wanted to name him Ghost. Moby is a husky, with one blue eye and one brown. He is so smart that I say, “Moby, fetch your orange squeak toy,” and he’ll do it. Jack came out from some bushes with a B-B gun and called me the usual names. He shouted that my dog was the devil, and he shot Moby in his blue eye.

Moby is blind in that eye now and wears a patch. Jack’s parents refused to do anything until a lawyer named Frank Lemos sued them to pay the vet bill. But Jack still mocks me and laughs about Moby. Mr. Lemos goes to a restaurant where we go also, and the owner said I should write to you, and he gave me a Mona Lisa stamp. Frank Lemos’s adopted daughter, Ana Lídia, is like me, except as a girl (woman), so earlier when I said there was no one, that wasn’t exactly true. I meant there is no one my age. Ana Lídia agreed I should mail you a letter. Can you send a miracle? Is it wrong to ask if Jack can disappear? Also ask the Virgin to give Moby back his eye, please, he is a great dog.
Sincerely,
Carlos Vasco

 

To: Carlos Vasco
Hayward, California
17 January 1987

Dear Carlos,
I am a forty-year-old journalist from London, assigned to write an article for The International Herald Tribune on the sole survivor of the apparition of the Virgin at Fátima. I see that you are unaware that the revelation of the so-called “third secret” happened two years ago. It was, forgive me, a predictable lot of warnings that we’ll burn in hell for our sins. An influx of mail followed this news and has continued without let-up, staggering the convent. Your note stood out because of its Mona Lisa stamp.

My being English-speaking seemed a godsend when I knocked at the convent’s door. In exchange for agreeing to play secretary for a while, I was granted an audience with Lúcia. I didn’t realize this is unheard of. She is near to 80, and her fingernails have those ridges that indicate a lack of certain vitamins. She granted me a quiet kiss.

I shall summarize my current life (young Carlos, I’ll confess that you wrote a letter I myself might have done at your age, were I as brave) by reporting that I decided to stay and earn my keep in this little city of women. I reply to any mail I can decipher. Frequently, the letters are crazy. One woman wanted Lúcia to send linoleum for her kitchen. Often people send photos for her to touch, although I do not believe that does much. My view of miracles is that they are wishes for someone else to do what we should do on our own, via taking command of our fates. I hasten to add I have sympathy nevertheless for everyone’s desires. You sent a “message in a bottle” into the world, and I read between your lines, and I cried.

I am one of you. Does that provide comfort? There is a code I’ve learned to use: People Like Us. “PLU.” London felt so lonely. Here I am welcomed. I do not plan to file my story with my editor, who wanted me to debunk the “miracle,” but I choose not to harm Maria Lúcia dos Santos.

I share your outrage about Moby’s eye. Your bond with a “PLU” woman, Ana Lídia, does indeed mean you are not alone. Some adults love you enough to aid you in writing to Lúcia, and I hope having your words fall into the hands of Ellen Dodd is not disappointing. This is what I think about miracles: You must fight back on your own. We look to the supernatural when we are afraid of facing a battle and thensaying to God, “Here is how I fixed something ill in Your creation.”

But I understand how Divine Powers can impress! Let me give you one more tale. An unfortunate contest is going on in the convent. The Mother Superior picks one person a night to watch by Lúcia’s bedside, and jostling for this privilege occurs. With Lúcia aging, there are rumblings that she may get a “last message.” A young nun, Sister Carmen, is particularly vile in her eagerness. I pray that Sister Carmen will see Lúcia wave a hand that she should draw closer, and when Carmen bends near and whispers, “Yes? Yes?” Lúcia will reply, “Your veil needs washing.”

I found a Magic Lantern, a style of projector. A glass slide painted with a picture can project an image on a wall. Slides may include a series of pictures, and if you glide them through the machine’s light source, a little story is set in motion, such as a branch sprouting with flowers. I found a slide with a ghost stretching out her arms. (The nickname of these projectors is “The Lanterns of Fear.”) I set up the Magic Lantern to beam the ghost into Sister Carmen’s room, and her shrieking was entirely enjoyable. She has since left off her Night Watch campaign. People ask for miracles all the time, but what they often want is merely to lord it over everyone that God loves them best. Kiss Moby for me. Find an episode of power, a miracle of your own.
In Friendship,
Ellen Dodd

 

To: Miss Ellen Dodd
Carmelite Convent of Santa Teresa, Coimbra, Portugal
February 8, 1987

Dear Miss Dodd,
I showed your letter to my PLU friend, Ana Lídia, and she told me she had a Magic Lantern! The owner of the Portuguese restaurant here, Mr. August Dias, is a good painter, and he made a glass slide of a Moby-like wolf baring his fangs, with an eye-patch.

The Kinnards live near De Anza Park. Ana Lídia and Betty, the person we call her “roommate,” brought a ladder. At midnight, Betty held the ladder, and I climbed it. Ana Lídia handed up the Lantern with its slide of a White Wolf leaping. I settled on a branch and pointed the beam into Jack’s room on the second story. I ran the slide slowly in its slot. Betty tried not to laugh. I wondered if I’d be in a tree all night, or if we’d get caught. But then Jack was yelling. I turned off the Lantern. He ran to the window, but he couldn’t see us. It was great. His hair was standing up in school the next morning. It was the first day he left me alone.
Sincerely,
Carlos V.

 

To: Carlos Vasco
Hayward, California
19 February 1987

Dear Carlos,
Isn’t the world glorious? The cork trees here have red branches and white medicine on their trunks so insects won’t eat them alive. There are sunflowers. A nun named Teresa drives me in the convent’s car to view the Mondego River. I am content to walk with Lúcia in the garden, which is full of vegetables. When young, she wore gold earrings that reached her shoulders and adorned herself with peacock feathers. Imagine! We get to be many people in our one life.

I went to Fátima and hated all that moaning and walking on knees to appease God’s taste for pain. I bought a statue of Mary, and her fuzzy cape turns blue when it is sunny and pink to predict rain. I’m sending it to you. We can use magic tricks to our advantage, especially in combating brutes. Magic is simply being acquainted with the normal ways of the wide world, and those who lack imagination will always fail to understand that. The weather-predicting statue is, for instance, ruled by the laws of barometric pressure.
PLU-ily Yours,
Ellen Dodd

 

To: Miss Ellen Dodd
Carmelite Convent of Santa Teresa, Coimbra, Portugal
March 3, 1987

Dear Miss Dodd,
Thank you for the statue of Our Lady of Fátima! My brothers, sisters, and parents love it too. Yesterday the cape turned pink, and it rained!

I want to be a lawyer like Ana Lídia’s father. When he arrives every Friday at the Portuguese restaurant called Caravela—the day they serve Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá—everyone applauds. I told him I have to make a five-minute speech in class on the topic “Something True about the Human Mind,” and he gave me a “mentalist trick”:

1. Think of any number between 1 and 10.
2. Multiply it by 2.
3. Add 8. Divide by 2.
4. Subtract the number you first picked.
5. Change your answer to the matching letter of the alphabet. “1” is “A,” “2” is B, etc.
6. Think of a country starting with your letter.
7. Think of an animal starting with the next letter in the alphabet.
8. Think of that animal’s color.
9. Name your color, animal, and country.

I walked to Jack Kinnard and whispered, “Your answer is ‘a gray elephant in Denmark.’”
He almost tipped over his desk. I shouted, “A gray elephant in Denmark!” Everyone screamed. Mr. Lemos told me the math will always make the answer “4,” and our brains are so much on the same pathways that everyone thinks of Denmark for “D,” and “elephant” always comes to mind for “E,” and “gray” follows. Believing how alike our minds can be helps him in court. Like you, he believes that magic is the word people use when they should be talking about common sense. Jack Kinnard now RUNS when he sees me. Moby needs a bath. I use mint shampoo. He sends greetings, and so do I.
Abraços,
Carlos V.

 

To: Carlos Vasco
Hayward, California
16 March 1987

Dear Carlos,
I have a friend named Lília, a novitiate. Almost like your Ana “Lídia,” isn’t it. She took me to see a pear tree in Águeda, where someone had tied bottles around the blossoms. The pears had grown whole inside the glass. When the wind blows, the bottles sing against the branches. Lilía and I held hands and listened to the Pear-Bottle Tree, and I hope the photo I took of it flies unwrinkled across the sea to you. May you, young man, remain my friend, even as you stand on the verge of your wild new grown-up life.
Ellen Dodd

 

Miss Ellen Dodd
Carmelite Convent of Santa Teresa, Coimbra, Portugal
Christmas, 1987

Dear Miss Dodd,
Sorry it has taken months to write! Your Pears in the Bottle Tree is on my bulletin board, next to the schedule for the Plunge (public pool) and a flier for the Night Search for Owls Party at Sulfur Creek (sponsored by H.A.R.D., the Hayward Area Recreational District). My oldest sister said the pears are stuck like the clappers of bells in the glass. I pretend I hear the music of your Bottle Tree. Moby says hello. Hello to Lília. You deserve friends who make you glad. I know that’s what you make me.
Yours,
Carlos Vasco

 

To: Carlos.Vasco@gmail.com
From: Isabel.Dias@gmail.com

Carlinho, Attached is a scan of a wonderfully hilarious item I dug out of a box: The Enquirer clipping from 1985 with the headline: “Revealed for the lst Time—the Third Secret of Fátima!” Standard-issue gibberish about an apocalypse: “Millions of men will die from hour to hour,” and “fire and smoke will fall from the sky.” Remember how the nuns made us “pray for Russia,” because Fátima was a warning against Communism?

You understand how anxious I am about my father. I’m worried about you too, because I may have to put out your eye with a B-B gun, since you can’t see what’s in front of you anyway. Carlie, David is grinning a lot because he adores you and Sam. Ever think of that? Thanks for taking care of me and Daddy…I’ll always love you, you dunce.—Iz

To: Isabel.Dias@gmail.com
From: Carlos.Vasco@gmail.com

Attached is a JPEG file of that photo of bottled pears from Ellen Dodd, dug out of a crate with my law schoolbooks. When David & I got married, I wrote to her again, first time in ages. No answer. I wondered if she’d died. Or moved back to London. Then it occurred to me that of course Ana Lídia was “Ellen,” since she (conveniently) owned a Magic Lantern and probably found a Bottle Tree in the valley. Intercepting my letters at the post office via Manny Dutra there, creating a postmark from Portugal. She was your great-aunt’s child, but she has been my big sister. As have you. David is snoring on the couch, & Sammy is asleep w/her stuffed giraffe. The house smells like low tide from my soaking dried codfish, Isabel, Izzy-in-a-Tizzy. Today I put a bottle over a blossom on our lemon tree. No idea why it’s taken me this long. Make your father promise he’ll be there when we harvest a fleet of lemon ships in glass. Beijinhos, C.