The Clowns of God (13 page)

He found Malagordo propped up on his pillows, with a ;lucose drip strapped to his left arm. His lean, handsome face it up with pleasure at the sight of his visitor.

“My dear Professor! Thank you for coming. I wanted so much to see you.”

“You seem to be making a good recovery.” Mendelius pulled a chair to the bedside.

“How do you feel?”

“Better each day, thank God. I owe you my life. I understand you are now in danger because of me. What can I say? The newspapers can be so irresponsible. May I order you some coffee?”

“No, thank you. I had a late lunch.”

“What do you think of my sad country, Professor?”

“It was mine, too, for a number of years, Senator. At least I understand it better than most foreigners.”

“We have gone back four centuries, to the bandits and the condottieril I see small hope for betterment. Like all the other Mediterraneans, we are lost tribes, squabbling on the shores of a putrid lake.”

The threnody had a familiar ring to Mendelius. The Latins were great mourners of a past that never existed. He tried to lighten the conversation.

“You may be right, Senator; but I must tell you the wines are still good in Castelli, and Zia Rosa’s spaghetti alia carbonara is magnificent as always. My wife and I lunched there on Sunday. The nice thing was she remembered me from my clerical days. She seemed to approve the change.”

The Senator brightened immediately.

“I’m told she used to be a great beauty.”

“Not any longer. But she’s a great cook and she rules that place with an iron fist.”

“Have you been to the Pappagallo?”

“No.”

“That’s another very good place.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Malagordo said with wry humour: “We talk banalities. I wonder why we waste so much life on them.”

“It’s a precaution.” Mendelius grinned.

“Wine and women are safe topics. Money and politics lead to broken heads.”

“I’m retiring from politics,” said Malagordo.

“As soon as I get out of here, my wife and I are emigrating to Australia.

Our two sons are there, doing very well in business. Besides, it’s the last stop before the penguins. I don’t want to be in Europe for the great collapse.”

“Do you think it will collapse?” asked Mendelius.

“I’m certain of it. The armaments are nearly all ready. The latest prototypes will be operational in a year. There’s not enough oil to go round. More and more governments are in the hands of gamblers or fanatics. It’s the old story: if you’re faced with riots at home, start a crusade abroad. Man is a mad animal, and the madness is incurable. Do you know where I was going when I got shot? To plead for the release of a woman terrorist who is dying of cancer in a Palermo gaol!”

“God Almighty!” Mendelius swore softly.

“I think He’ll be happy to see this race of imbeciles eliminate itself.” Malagordo made a wry mouth as a sudden pain took hold of him.

“I know! From a Jew that’s blasphemy. But I don’t believe in the Messiah any more. He’s delayed too long. And who needs this bloody mess of a world anyway?”

“Take it easy,” said Mendelius.

“If you get excited, they’ll have me thrown out. That ward sister is a real dragon.”

“A missed vocation.” Malagordo was good humoured again.

“She’s got quite a good body under all that drapery.

Before you go…” He reached under his pillow and brought out a small package wrapped in bright paper and tied with a gold ribbon.

“I have a gift for you.”

“It wasn’t necessary.” Mendelius was embarrassed.

“But thank you. May I open it?”

“Please!”

The gift was a small gilt box with a glass lid. Inside the box was a shard of pottery inscribed with Hebrew characters.

Mendelius took it out and examined it carefully.

“Do you know what it is, Professor?”

“It looks like an ostracon.”

“It is. Can you read the words?”

Mendelius traced them slowly with his fingertip.

“I think it spells Aharon ben Ezra.”

“Right! It came from Masada. I am told it is probably one of the shards which were used to draw lots when the Jewish garrison killed each other, rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.”

Mendelius was deeply moved. He shook his head.

“I can’t take this. Truly, I can’t.”

“You must,” said Malagordo.

“It’s the nearest I can get to a proper thank you all that’s left of a Jewish hero, for the life of a lousy senator, who isn’t even a man any more. Go now, Professor, before I make a fool of myself!”

When he reached the ground floor he found Francone waiting for him. As he moved towards the exit Francone laid a restraining hand on his arm.

“We’ll wait here for a few minutes, Professor.”

“Why?”

Francone pointed out through the glass doors. There were two police cars parked in the driveway and four more outside in the road. Two orderlies were loading a stretcher into an ambulance under the eyes of a curious crowd. Mendelius gaped at the scene. Francone explained tersely.

“We were followed here, Professor. One car. Then a second one arrived and parked just outside the gates. They had both entrances covered. Fortunately I spotted the tail just after we left town. I telephoned the Squadra, Mobile as soon as we arrived. They blocked both ends of the street and caught four of the bastards. One’s dead.”

“For God’s sake, Domenico! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It would have spoiled your visit. Besides, what could you have done? Like I told you, Professor, I know how these mascalzoni work.”

“Thanks!” Mendelius held out a damp and unsteady hand.

“I hope you won’t tell my wife.”

“When you work for a Cardinal,” said Francone with grave condescension, “you learn to keep your mouth shut.”

“Dear colleagues,” Carl Mendelius, smiling and benign, adjusted his spectacles and surveyed his audience.

“I begin today with a mild censure on person or persons unknown “I know that travel is expensive. I know that ministers of the gospel are paid very little. I know that it is a common practice to supplement one’s income, or one’s travel allowance, by supplying conference reports to the press. I have no objection to the practice, provided it is open and declared;

but I think it is an abridgment of academic courtesy to file press reports in secret and without notice to colleagues. One of our members has caused me considerable embarrassment by reporting to a senior journalist that I believed the end of the world could be imminent. True, I said so in this room;

but, out of the context of our assembly and its specialist discussions, the statement could be interpreted as frivolous or tendentious. I do not ask for a confession from the reporter. I do, however, seek an assurance that what is said here today will be reported only with our full knowledge. Will all those who agree please raise their hands? Thank you. Any dissenters? None. Apparently we understand each other. So let us begin.

“We have talked about the doctrine of last things:

consummation or continuity. We have expressed differing views on the subject. Now let us accept, as hypothesis, that the consummation is possible and imminent: that the world will end soon. How should the Christian respond to that event? .. . You, sir, in the third row.”

“Wilhelm Adler, Rosenheim. The answer is that the Christian or anyone else for that matter cannot respond to a hypothesis, only to an event. This was the mistake of the school men and the casuists. They tried to prescribe moral formulae for every situation. Impossible! Man lives in the here and the now, not in the perhaps.”

“Good! But does not human prudence dictate that he should prepare for the perhaps?”

“Could you give an example, Herr Professor?”

“Certainly. The earliest followers of Christ were Jews.

They continued to live a Jewish life. They practised circumcision. They observed the dietary laws. They frequented the synagogues and read the Scriptures… Now Paul Saul that was of Tarsus embarks on his mission to the Gentiles, the non-Jews, to whom circumcision is unacceptable and the dietary laws are unexplainable. They see no point in bodily mutilation. They have to eat what they can get. Suddenly they are out of theory into practice. The question simplifies itself. Surely salvation does not hang on a man’s foreskin; nor does it depend on his starving himself to death.”

They laughed at that and applauded the rabbinical humour.

Mendelius went on.

“Paul was prepared for the event. Peter was not. In the absence of scriptural dictate, he had to find justification for his new position in a vision “Take and eat’ remember?”

They remembered, and gave a murmur of approval.

“So now, our ‘perhaps’. The last days are upon us. How prepared are we?”

They hung back now. Mendelius offered them another example.

“Some few of you here are old enough to remember the last days of the Third Reich; a country in ruins, a monstrosity of crimes revealed, a generation of men destroyed, a whole ethos corrupted, the only visible goal, survival! To those of us who remember, is it not at least a fair analogue of the millennial catastrophe? But you are here today because, somewhere, somehow, faith and hope and charity survived and became fruitful again. Do I explain myself?”

“Yes.” The answer came back in a muted chorus.

“How then …” He challenged them strongly.

“How do we ensure that faith and charity survive, if and when the last days come upon us? Forget the last days if you must. Suppose that, as many predict, we have atomic war within a twelvemonth, what will you do?”

“Die!” said a sepulchral voice from the back; and the room dissolved into a roar of laughter.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Mendelius chuckled helplessly.

“There speaks a true prophet! Would he like to come up here and take my place?”

No one stirred. After a few moments the laughter died into silence. More quietly now, Mendelius went on.

“I should like to read to you now an extract from a document prepared by a dear friend of mine. I cannot name him. I ask you to accept that he is a man of great sanctity and singular intelligence; one, moreover, who understands the usages of power in the modern world. After the reading I shall ask for your comments.”

He paused to wipe his spectacles and then began to read from Jean Marie’s encyclical:

It is clear that in the days of universal calamity the traditional structures of society will not survive. There will be a ferocious struggle for the simplest needs of life: food, water, fuel and shelter. Authority will be usurped by the strong and the cruel. Large urban societies will fragment themselves into tribal groups.

He felt the words take hold of them, the tension begin to build again. When the reading was done the silence was like a wall before him.

He stepped back from the rostrum and asked simply: “Any comments?”

There was a long pause and then a young woman stood up.

“I am Henni Borkheim from Berlin. My husband is a pastor. We have two young children. I have a question. How do you show charity to a man who comes with a gun to rob you and take the last food from your children?”

“And I have another!” The young man next to her stood up.

“How do you continue to believe in a God who contrives or permits so universal a calamity and then sits in judgment on its victims?”

“So perhaps,” said Carl Mendelius gravely, “we should all ask ourselves a more fundamental question. We know that evil exists, that suffering and cruelty exist, that they may well propagate themselves to extremity like cancer in the body.

Can we really believe in God at all?”

“Do you, Professor?” Henni Borkheim was on her feet again.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then will you please answer my question!”

“It was answered two millennia ago.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”” “And that’s the answer you would give?”

“I don’t know, my dear.” He was about to add that he had not yet been crucified; but he thought better of it. He stepped down from the rostrum and walked down through the audience to where the girl was sitting with her husband. He talked calmly and persuasively.

“You see the problem we get when we demand a personal testimony on every issue? We do not, we cannot, know how we will act. How we should act, yes! But how we will, in an immediate situation, there is no way to know in advance. I remember as a youth in Dresden my mother talking to my aunt about the coming of the Russians. I was not supposed to hear; but I did. My mother handed her a jar of lubricant jelly and said: “Better relax and survive than resist and be murdered’ .. . Either way it’s rape, and there is no miracle promised to prevent it; no legislation to cover the time of chaos.” He smiled and held out his hand to the young woman.

“Let’s not contend; but discuss in peace.”

There was a small murmur of approval as they joined hands; then Mendelius put another question:

“In a plural world, who are the elect? We Romans, you Lutherans, the Sunnis or the Shi’ites in Islam, the Mormons of Salt Lake City, the Animists of Thailand?”

“In respect of the individual, it is not for us to distinguish.”

A grey-haired pastor rose painfully to his feet. His hands were knotted with arthritis. He spoke haltingly but with conviction.

“We are not appointed to judge other men by our lights. We are commanded only to love the image of God in our fellow pilgrims.”

“But we are also commanded to keep the faith pure, to spread the good news of Christ,” said Pastor Allmann of Darmstadt.

“When you sit down at my table,” said the old man patiently, “I offer you the food I have. If you cannot digest it, what should I do choke you with it?”

“So, my friends!” Mendelius took command of the meeting again.

“When the black night comes down,in the great desert, when there is neither pillar of cloud nor spark of fire to light the path, when the voice of authority is stilled, and we hear nothing but the confusion of old argument, when God seems to absent himself from his own universe, where do we turn?

Whom can we sanely believe?”