Conclave (10 page)

Perhaps it was Lomeli’s imagination, but there seemed to be the tiniest flicker of hesitation before Bellini said, ‘I accept that the issue of female ordination is closed for my lifetime – and probably for several lifetimes to come.’

‘No, Aldo,’ replied Sabbadin firmly, ‘it is closed for
all
time. It has been decreed on papal authority: the principle of an exclusively male priesthood is founded on the written word of God—’

‘“Set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium” – yes, I know the ruling. Not perhaps the wisest of St John Paul’s many declarations, but there it is. No, of course I am not proposing female ordination. But there is nothing to stop us bringing women into the Curia at the highest levels. The work is administrative, not sacerdotal. The late Holy Father often spoke of it.’

‘True, but he never actually
did
it. How can a woman instruct a bishop, let alone
select
a bishop, when she isn’t even allowed to celebrate Communion? The College will see it as ordination by the back door.’

Bellini prodded his piece of veal a couple of times and then laid down his fork. He rested his elbows on the table, leaned forward and looked at each of them in turn. ‘Listen to me, my brothers, please. Let me be absolutely clear. I do not seek the papacy. I dread it. Therefore I have no intention of concealing my views or pretending to be anything other than I am. I urge you – I plead with you – not to canvass on my behalf. Not a word. Is that understood? Now, I am afraid I have lost my appetite, and if you will excuse me, I shall retire to my room.’

They watched him go, his stork-like figure bobbing stiffly between the tables and across the lobby until he disappeared upstairs. Sabbadin took off his spectacles, breathed on the lenses, polished them with his napkin, and then put them back on. He opened a small black notebook. ‘Well, my friends,’ he said, ‘you heard him. Now I suggest we divide the task. Rocco,’ he said to Dell’Acqua, ‘your English is the best: you talk to the North Americans, and to our colleagues from Britain and Ireland. Which of us has good Spanish?’ Panzavecchia raised his hand. ‘Excellent. The South Americans can be your responsibility. I shall speak to all the Italians who are frightened of Tedesco – that is, most of them. Gianmarco,’ he said to Santini, ‘presumably your work at the Congregation for Education means you know a lot of the Africans – will you deal with them? Needless to say, we avoid all mention of women in the Curia . . .’

Lomeli cut his veal into tiny pieces and ate them one at a time. He listened as Sabbadin went round the table. The Archbishop of Milan’s father had been a prominent Christian Democrat senator; he had learnt how to count votes in the cradle. Lomeli guessed he would be Secretary of State in a Bellini pontificate. When he had finished doling out assignments, he shut his notebook, poured himself a glass of wine and sat back with a satisfied expression.

Lomeli looked up from his plate. ‘I take it then you don’t believe our friend is sincere when he says he doesn’t want to be Pope.’

‘Oh, he’s perfectly sincere – that’s one of the reasons I support him. The men who are dangerous – the men who must be stopped – are the ones who actively desire it.’

Lomeli had kept an eye out all evening for Tremblay, but it wasn’t until the end of the meal, when the cardinals were queuing for
coffee in the lobby, that he had the chance to approach him. The Canadian was standing in the corner holding a cup and saucer and listening to the Archbishop of Colombo, Asanka Rajapakse, by common consent one of the great bores of the Conclave. Tremblay’s eyes were fixed upon him. He was leaning towards him and nodding intently. Occasionally Lomeli heard him murmur, ‘Absolutely . . . absolutely . . .’ He waited nearby. He sensed that Tremblay was aware of his presence but was ignoring it, hoping he would give up and move away. But Lomeli was determined, and in the end it was Rajapakse, whose eyes kept darting to him, who reluctantly interrupted his own monologue and said, ‘I think the dean wishes to speak with you.’

Tremblay turned and grinned. ‘Jacopo, hello!’ he cried. ‘This has been a lovely evening.’ His teeth were an unnaturally brilliant white. Lomeli suspected he had had them polished for the occasion.

‘I wonder if I might borrow you for a moment, Joe?’ he said.

‘Yes, of course.’ Tremblay turned to Rajapakse. ‘Perhaps we could continue our conversation later?’ The Sri Lankan nodded to both men and moved away. Tremblay seemed sorry to see him go, and when he returned his attention to Lomeli, there was a trace of irritation in his voice. ‘What is this about?’

‘Could we talk somewhere more private? Your room, perhaps?’

Tremblay’s brilliant teeth vanished. His mouth turned down. Lomeli thought he might refuse. ‘Well I suppose so, if we must. But briefly, if you don’t mind. There are still some colleagues I need to speak to.’

His room was on the first floor. He led Lomeli up the stairs and along the passage. He walked quickly, as if anxious to get the thing over with. It was a suite, exactly the same as the Holy Father’s.
All the lights – the overhead chandelier, the bedside and desk lamps, even the lights in the bathroom – had been left burning. It seemed antiseptic, gleaming like an operating theatre, entirely bare of possessions, apart from a can of hairspray on the nightstand. Tremblay closed the door. He didn’t invite Lomeli to sit. ‘What is this about?’

‘It concerns your final meeting with the Holy Father.’

‘What about it?’

‘I’ve been told it was difficult. Was it?’

Tremblay rubbed his forehead and frowned, as if making a great effort of memory. ‘No, not that I recall.’

‘Well, to be more specific, I have been told that the Holy Father demanded your resignation from all your offices.’

‘Ah!’ His expression cleared. ‘That piece of nonsense! This has come from Archbishop Woźniak, I presume?’

‘That I can’t say.’

‘Poor Woźniak. You know how it is?’ Tremblay’s hand wobbled an imaginary glass in mid-air. ‘We must make sure he receives proper treatment when all this is over.’

‘So there’s no truth in the allegation that at the meeting you were dismissed?’

‘None whatsoever! How utterly absurd! Ask Monsignor Morales. He was present.’

‘I would if I could, but obviously I can’t at the moment, as we’re sequestered.’

‘I can assure you he’ll only confirm what I’m telling you.’

‘No doubt. But still, it seems rather curious. Can you think of any reason why such a story should be circulating?’

‘I should have thought that was obvious, Dean. My name has been mentioned as a possible future Pope – a ludicrous suggestion,
I need hardly add, but you must have heard the same rumours – and someone wants to blacken my name with false slurs.’

‘And you think that person is Woźniak?’

‘Who else could it be? I know for a fact he went to Morales with some story about what the Holy Father was alleged to have said to him – I know that because Morales told me. I might say he’s never dared speak directly to
me
about it.’

‘And you ascribe this entirely to a malicious plot to discredit you?’

‘I fear that’s what it comes to. It’s very sad.’ Tremblay put his hands together. ‘I shall mention the archbishop in my prayers tonight, and ask God to help him through his difficulties. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would like to go back downstairs.’

He made a move towards the door. Lomeli blocked his way.

‘Just one last question, if I may, simply to put my mind at rest: could you tell me what it was that you discussed with the Holy Father in that final meeting?’

Outrage came as easily to Tremblay as piety and smiles. His tone became metallic. ‘No, Dean, I cannot. And to be truthful, I am shocked that you should expect me to disclose a private conversation – a very precious and private conversation, given that those were the last words I ever exchanged with the Holy Father.’

Lomeli pressed his hand to his heart and bowed his head slightly in apology. ‘I quite understand. Forgive me.’

The Canadian was lying, of course. They both knew it. Lomeli stood aside. Tremblay opened the door. In silence they walked back together along the corridor and at the staircase went their separate ways, the Canadian down to the lobby to resume his conversations, the dean wearily up another flight to his room and his doubts.

THAT NIGHT HE
lay in bed in the darkness with the rosary of the Blessed Virgin around his neck and his arms folded crosswise on his chest. It was a posture he had first adopted in puberty to avoid the temptations of the body. The objective was to maintain it until morning. Now, nearly sixty years later, when such temptations were no longer a danger, he continued out of habit to sleep like this – like an effigy on a tomb.

Celibacy had not made him feel neutered or frustrated, as the secular word generally imagined a priest must be, but rather powerful and fulfilled. He had imagined himself a warrior within a knightly caste: a lonely and untouchable hero, above the common run.
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
He was not entirely naïve. He had known what it was to desire, and to be desired, both by women and by men. And yet he had never succumbed to physical attraction. He had gloried in his solitariness. It was only when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that he had begun to brood on what he had
missed. Because what was he nowadays? No longer a shining knight: just another impotent old fellow, no more heroic than the average patient in a nursing home. Sometimes he wondered what had been the point of it all. The night-time pang was no longer of lust; it was of regret.

In the next-door room, he could hear the African cardinal snoring. The thin partition wall seemed to vibrate like a membrane with each stertorous breath. He was sure it was Adeyemi. No one else could be so loud, even in his sleep. He tried counting the snores in the hope that the repetition would lull him to sleep. When he reached five hundred, he gave up.

He wished he could have opened the shutters for some fresh air. He felt claustrophobic. The great bell of St Peter’s had ceased tolling at midnight. In the sealed chamber, the dark early-morning hours were long and trackless.

He turned on his bedside lamp and read a few pages from Guardini’s
Meditations Before Mass.

But how was such stillness to be achieved? That was the question to which Guardini offered no answer, and in place of stillness, as the night wore on, the noise in Lomeli’s mind became even shriller than usual.
He saved others; himself he cannot save –
the jeer of the scribes and elders at the foot of the cross. The paradox at the heart of the
Gospel. The priest who celebrates Mass and yet is unable to achieve Communion himself.

He pictured a great shaft of cacophonous darkness, filled with taunting voices thundering down upon him from heaven. A divine revelation of doubt.

At one point in his despair he picked up the
Meditations
and flung it at the wall. It bounced off it with a thump. The snoring ceased for a minute, and then resumed.

At 6.30 a.m., the alarm sounded throughout the Casa Santa Marta – a clanging seminary bell. Lomeli opened his eyes. He was curled up on his side. He felt groggy, raw. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, only that it couldn’t have been for more than an hour or two. The sudden remembrance of all he had to do in the coming day passed over him like a wave of nausea, and for a while he lay unable to move. Normally his waking routine was to meditate for fifteen minutes then rise and say his morning prayers. But on this occasion, when at last he managed to summon the will to put his feet to the floor, he went directly into the bathroom and ran a shower as hot as he could bear. The water scourged his back and shoulders. He twisted and turned beneath it and cried out in pain. Afterwards he rubbed away the moisture on the mirror and surveyed with disgust his raw and scalded skin.
My body is clay, my good fame a vapour, my end is ashes.

He felt too tense to breakfast with the others. He stayed in his room, rehearsing his homily and attempting to pray, and left it until the very last minute to go downstairs.

The lobby was a red sea of cardinals robing for the short procession to St Peter’s. The officials of the Conclave, led by Archbishop
Mandorff and Monsignor O’Malley, had been allowed back into the hostel to assist; Father Zanetti was waiting at the foot of the stairs to help Lomeli dress. They went into the same waiting room opposite the chapel in which he had met Woźniak the night before. When Zanetti asked him how he had slept, he replied, ‘Very soundly, thank you,’ and hoped the young priest would not notice the dark circles beneath his eyes and the way his hands shook when he handed him his sermon for safe keeping. He ducked his head into the opening of the thick red chasuble that had been worn by successive deans of the College over the past twenty years and held out his arms as Zanetti fussed around him like a tailor, straightening and adjusting it. The mantle felt heavy on his shoulders. He prayed silently:
Lord, who hast said, My yoke is easy and My burden is light, grant that I may so bear it as to attain Thy grace. Amen.

Zanetti stood in front of him and reached up to place upon his head the tall mitre of white watered silk. The priest stepped back a pace to check it was correctly aligned, squinted, came forward again and altered it by a millimetre, then walked behind Lomeli and tugged down the ribbons at the back and smoothed them. It felt alarmingly precarious. Finally he gave him the crozier. Lomeli lifted the golden shepherd’s crook a couple of times in his left hand, testing the weight.
You are not a shepherd
, a familiar voice whispered in his head
. You are a manager.
He had a sudden urge to give it back, to tear off the vestments, to confess himself a fraud and disappear. He smiled and nodded. ‘It feels good,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’