Earthly Powers (60 page)
Dangerous this denial of original sin, though it was not expressed in so many words. You could blame yourself for lack of moral judgment, but not for the dynamic which animated your acts of evil. Original sin was original weakness, not being sufficiently clever, or Godlike, to spot the machinations of the fiend. I was not surprised to find, in one of the numerous appendices, a rehabilitation of the heretic Pelagius.
Somebody, probably Carlo himself, that expert in ecclesiastical history, set out the whole story. Pelagius, a British monk in Rome in the early fifth century, was deeply disturbed when he heard a bishop quote from Augustine's Confessions: "Thou commandest continence; grant what thou commandest and command what thou wilt." This seemed to Pelagius to be a denial of moral responsibility. At the same time a commentator on the epistles of Saint Paul, usually named Ambrosiaster, seemed to affirm that the transmission of Adam's sin was effected biologically, human souls being derived, like human bodies, from the parents. "In Adam all sinned as in one lump." Pelagius, upset by this, wrote his own Pauline commentary and asserted that there was no hereditary transmission of sin, since this would be a denial of free will. Man sinned by an elected imitation of Adam's sin, not through an inherent fault of human nature. In all sin, said Pelagius, there had to be personal assent. The consequence of Adam's sin was a mere bad example which his successors voluntarily embraced. Infants had to be baptised into the faith, but the baptism was not a device of absolution from inherited sin. All this caused a hell of a row. Jerome called Pelagius a fat dog weighed down with Scotch porridge, his brains thick and muddled, a stupid rather than sinful denier of elementary truths—the necessity of infant baptism as an expunger of hereditary sin, the saving power of God's grace, the comparative impotence of man as a free agent thinking himself capable, without that grace, of voluntarily embracing the good. Augustine, expectedly, went wild.
Pope Innocent I said: Heresy. Augustine was happy. Then came Pope Zosimus (417-18). Zosimus was rather pleased with Pelagius's emphasis, in a new book, on free will, as well as his lofty view of morality and papal authority. He told Augustine and the rest of the Africans that Pelagius must be adjudged orthodox. Augustine, expectedly, went wild. But Pelagius had, in Sicily (how these people got around), written a socialistic pamphlet denouncing the irresponsibility of the rich toward the poor and the sinfulness of the maintenance of governmental power by means of torture and wanton execution. Augustine drew the attention of the Emperor at Ravenna to this preaching of social revolution. On April 30, 418, an imperial edict banished Pelagius and his followers from Rome as a menace to peace. Zosimus had to bow to the ultimate secular authority. He formally condemned Pelagius as a heresiarch, and the Church ever since had endorsed that condemnation. But, Carlo (it had to be Carlo) seemed to say, the condemnation, being made under duress, had no true validity, and there were grounds for accepting (he was discreet and cautious here) the Pelagian thesis as more consonant with the True Reformed premise of the goodness and dignity of man than the Augustinian doctrine of his natural depravity.
I had got to that word depravity when Carlo came out with a snore that seemed devised by his unconscious to wake him. He emerged a minute later in his shirt, creased but clearly refreshed, lipsmacking, brighteyed, ready for the fray. I closed the typescript. I would read more of it later, but I felt compelled already to tell him that I couldn't, that he had better give it to somebody else, that it was not my cup of tea. Carlo nodded without displeasure, unlidded the pot to find tea still in it, though cold, and fed himself with the bitter amber fluid straight from the spout. With wet lips, "No hurry," he said. "Don't make a hasty decision. Read it with care."
"I think," I dared to say, "that this is a highly dangerous document."
He was delighted. "Exactly. Religion is the most dangerous thing in the world. It is not little girls in their communion frocks and silly holy pictures and the Children of Mary. It is," he said, "high explosive, dynamite, the," he smiled at the conceit, "splitting of the atom."
CHAPTER 45
I did not drive, I have never driven. I made use in Los Angeles of a studio car to take me to Culver City and back and taxis for excursions of pleasure. Carlo and I, then, travelled in a taxi to the party, and, because of the garrulity of the driver, were able to talk no more for the moment of the holy or unholy project. "Picked up this guy, British, Cary Grant, stingy as hell, you know what I mean, he give me a lousy dime on a fivedollar fare. But Ginger Rogers, she's a lady, yes sir, that ain't her real name, you know that?" And then, "You guys in motion picutres?" and so on. Carlo looked as at the world of fallen man on the endless suburbs that passed for a city—an eatery in the likeness of a sphinx (enter between its forepaws); another, for jumbo malts so thick you can't suck 'em through a straw, in the form of an elephant crouched as at the bidding of its mahout; gimcrack temples of various faiths; attap roofs of nuthurger stands with Corinthian columns; loans loans loans; stores crammed with cut—price radios; a doughnuttery; homes like Swiss chalets, like Bavarian castles, miniature Blenheims, Strawberry Hills, Taj Mahals; a bank in the form of a tiny ocean liner; dusty trees on the boulevards (date palm, orange, oleander); bars with neon bottles endlessly pouring; colleges for stuntmen, beauticians, morticians, degrees in drummajoretteship. It was better at night, even under the sick lamps: the surgical exposure to the Californian sun made one's eyes prick with shame and pity. We arrived at an exclusive residential world of Aztec temples, Parthena, Loire ch‰teaux. I tipped the driver a dollar. Picked up this guy, British, stingy as hell, he give me a lousy buck.
The Storm residence had a long driveway with gravel carparks already fast filling on either side, a driveway guarded by stone or plaster patriarchs in robes with open mouths that gave out soft organ music. It led to a façade roughly modelled on Borromini's (ha) San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Within, as I knew, the hall was a miniature Balthasar Neumann pilgrim church of Vier zehnheiligen in which a cinema screen could be lowered over the reredos. Hidden elevators led up and down to rooms in Chinese or Byzantine or Colonial Spanish or Regency styles. If you saw the mansion from the back, you found something like Martino Lunghi the Younger's SS Vincenzo ed Anastasio.
This, tonight, was floodlit from the commodious lawns where the party was being held, though there would be cardplaying, roulette, a new movie, and fornication indoors. Over the lawns shone seven artificial moons; the real, dimmer, moon was rising over the distant hills. A dance orchestra was playing on a raised platform under a Pier Luigi Nervi waffled ceiling. A singer sang through a microphone: "I'll crash the moon To fetch a spoon Of precious lunar dust. I'll fly as high As heaven's eye. I'll even die if I must...
Popular songs were, at that time, going through a brief phase of literacy. Guests already drank, twirled, laughed, bitched, ate—men in white and silver and gold tuxedos; women in flame, royal purple, cerulean, mock virgin white, bosoms hoisted and teeth snow-capped, many famous, all vulgar. There was a smell of scorched meat, ginger and soy sauce. Fire flared for an instant as cognac was thrown over a Hawaiian pig roast. The dance floor was a polished silver disk by the heartshaped swimming pool. Searchlights played like lewd fat fingers on ravishing girls diving and ploughing the water, from which a loud scent of patchouli arose. Lorelei-like, these girls with perfect teeth tempted fat bald dressed men to jump in just as they were. Carlo seemed awed by all this. Faces he had known only in unnatural enlargement were now, however, reduced to accessibility: it was like a reversal of heaven. Still he murmured, "That, surely, is Joan Blondell. And that Clark Gable. And there is Norma Shearer. And there's Domenico. But where is Hortense?"
One could not first greet one's hostess. One could not find one's hostess. We went to the bar where Domenico, who now wore a corset on ceremonial occasions, was drinking, on the showing of the white flecks round his mouth, a Ramos fizz. He was still handsome, and the recession of his hairline had been disguised with careful blow-combing. It was without grey, and it glistened under the moons like a grilled steak. Drinking with him was a small Mexican starlet called, I think, Rita Morelos, hair like ink, not one straight line in her shape, her scarlet dress subtly slit to the thigh, eyes naughty and lips wet and apout. Domenico, who now called himself Nicky, did not appear to be pleased to see his brother. "I would not have thought," he said, "I mean, a priest."
"Is there some law?" frowned Carlos. "Where is your wife?"
"Hortense," Domenico said, pronouncing the name to rhyme with hence, "is looking after Johnny. He fell riding a pony. He twisted his ankle. There is a little pain. He woke up crying. She is staying with him. Anyway, she doesn't much like parties."
"You do, I see, you do. What's that drink, my child?" he said kindly to Rita Morelos. She was holding a glass long as a bottle on whose foam sat a miniature parasol. It was a Mai-Tai. Carlo asked for whisky.
"Anything at all I'll gladly do To prove a lasting Love for you. Each and every task Beneath the sun: You only have to askIt's done...
Fitted out with a heavy rummer of scotch, Carlo was now ready to be introduced to the cinematic great. My situation in Hollywood was a comfortable one. I was glad to get money out of the industry but I did not really need it. I did not have to bow or yes or cringe. There was one writer there, I noticed, down on his luck: Godfrey (God) Thurston trying to ingratiate himself with a couple of stone-faced moguls. I was Kenneth M. Toomey, distinguished British novelist in distinguished early middle age, whose face was known from book jackets, whose sexual proclivities had not been declared (though all British were supposed to be fags: sour grapes because of our patrician accents and European elegance), who was known by as much as he knew and didn't give a damn anyway. So, at ease, I led Carlo from group to group, introducing him, for convenience, as my brother-in-law, high officer of the Apostolic Delegation to the United States. Some thought this to be a new religious sect and a widemouthed comedian named Joe E. Brown swore he knew some guy who had joined it: no nooky, no booze, take nothing dead into your system, right? But Edward G. Robinson, an actor of about Carlo's height though not as ugly, knew all about it, could catalogue from memory the Vatican's art treasures, and gave, as a bonne bouche, a crisp summary of the Sabellian heresy. At length we met our hostess. Say what one would about the cynical craft of stellif action, there had to be a donnée, and Astrid Storm did really possess a charm which ate Carlo like Venus's-flytrap. Transfixed by those great violet eyes, even when they looked away from him, he gulped and agreed when she uttered nonsense about the need of the Christian churches to be, you know, spiritualized by techniques of Mayan umbilical breathing.
After an hour I had already had enough. Somebody said to Domenico, "Nick boy, I loved your last score, it was the greatest." And Domenico, seeming to be in a hurry to do something somewhere else, said, "Well, thanks, Dave." There was a woman of unearthly beauty who said nothing to her interlocutor but "Yah. A-a-a. Yah." A young blond man of magnificent physique which his tuxedo could not disguise, evidently desperate to be working again, dove from the high board fully clothed and entered the pool hardly raising a ripple. Nobody seemed to notice. A paid ribber came round to insult people.
Carlo said to me, "They tell me there's poker-playing in there," jerking his thumb at SS Vincenzo ed Anastasio.
"Very high stakes, Carlo. Can you afford it?"
"None of these people look like serious card players. Come in and tell me when you think we ought to leave."
"But you'll be going back with Domenico."
"I think not on second thoughts. I think we ought to discuss the book."
"But, Carlo, I have to go to work tomorrow morning."
"Four or five hours' discussion, then sleep. We'll discuss all the better for the little relaxation we're having. Our hostess is a charming woman. I regret," he said roguishly, "my vow of chastity."
"She's been four times divorced."
"American divorce," he said, "is serial polygamy. The Garden of Allah," and he waddled off.
I went back to the bar. A drunken man with a long head and no back to it looked at me narrowly and said, "You call yourself Toomey?"
"That's my name."
"It's not. You stole it from me, you bastard."
"Ah, you a Toomey too? There aren't all that many of us. Where does your family come from?"
"There's only one fucking Toomey and that's me. You're a fucking limey fag thief, you bastard." He picked up a Southern Comfort bottle from the bar and prepared to strike. Such a bore. Two dark-jowled men in black tuxedos, sixty-inch chests on them, rose like exhalations from the dry grass and bore this cursing other Toomey or pseudotoomey away complete with Southern Comfort. Then my eyes were drawn to the Pier Luigi Nervi bandstand. The orchestra had started playing "Happy Birthday," and the singer, an epicene willow-wand with a tow lock over his right eye, was singing it. "Happy birthday, dear Astrid.—The lights were on dear Astrid. She smiled like a piano concerto, not Domenico's. The brass fanfared in a massive cake on wheels, apparently self-driven, an exhaust farting bluely behind. It was far too beautiful to savage with a knife, but chefs with toques fell on it as though it were a white whale. Champagne was poured from methuselahs and dear Astrid's beauty and youth, unassailed by yet another year, were toasted. The cake was passed round in tiny nibbles. "Happy Birthday" was played as a creamy waltz, and men lined up to twirl Astrid in a few celebratory steps each. Very wholesome, but in dark corners of shrubbery low-voiced assignations were being initiated and quarrels smouldered. Teeth gleamed more in snarls than in smiles. But an unknown happy girl dove in in her Directoire gown and emerged with it pasted to her succulent body, and a tap dancer took over the dance floor and tap-danced, a man admirably pared to bone and a fixed smile, to the tune of "Sweet Sue."
