The Clowns of God (14 page)

He walked slowly back to the rostrum and, in a long hush, waited for someone to answer.

“I’m scared, darling! So damn scared, I’d like to walk out of here and take the next plane back to Germany!”

It was thirty minutes after midday and they were eating an early lunch in a quiet restaurant near the Pantheon, before Mendelius left for Monte Cassino. Two tables away, Francone shovelled spaghetti into his mouth and kept a vigilant eye on the door. Lotte leaned across to Mendelius and wiped a speck of sauce from the corner of his mouth. She chided him firmly:

“Truly, Carl, I don’t know what the fuss is about! You’re a free man. You’re going to see an old friend. You don’t have to accept any commission, any obligations, beyond this one visit.”

“He’s asked me to judge him.”

“He had no right to demand that.”

“He didn’t demand he asked, begged! Look, my dear.

I’ve thought round and round this thing. I’ve talked it up and down; and still I’m no nearer to an answer. Jean Marie’s asking for an act of faith just as big as … as an assent to the Resurrection! I can’t make that act.”

“So tell him!”

“And do I tell him why?

“Jean, you’re not mad; you’re not a cheat; you’re not deluded; I love you like a brother but God doesn’t have dialogues in country gardens about the end of the world; and I wouldn’t believe it if you came complete with the stigmata and a crown of thorns!”” “If that’s what you mean, say it.”

“The problem is, I think I mean something else altogether.

I’m beginning to believe the Cardinals were right to get rid of Jean Marie.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It arises out of my dialogues at the Academy and even a talk I had with Hilde Frank. The only finality people can cope with is their own. Total catastrophe is beyond their comprehension and probably their capacity to deal with. It’s an invitation to despair. Jean Marie sees it as a call to evangelical charity. I think it would lead to an almost complete breakdown in social communication. Who was it who said: “The veil that hides the face of the future was woven by the hand of Mercy’?”

“Then I think,” said Lotte firmly, “you have to be as honest with Jean Marie as you’re trying to be with yourself.

He asked you for a judgment. Give it to him!”

“I want to ask you a straight question, darling. Do you think I’m an honest man?”

She did not answer him directly. She cupped her chin on her hands and looked at him for a long time without speaking. Then very quietly she told him:

“I remember the first day I met you, Carl. I was with Frederika Ullman. We were walking down the Spanish steps, two German girls on their first visit to Rome. You were there, sitting on the steps next to a lad who was painting a very bad picture. You were dressed in black pants and a black roll-necked sweater. We stopped to look at the picture. You heard us talking in German and you spoke to us. We sat down beside you, very glad to have someone to chat with us.

You bought us tea and buns in the English Tea Shop. Then you invited us to go for a ride in a carrozza. Off we went, clip-clopping, all the way to the Campo dci Fiori. When we got there you showed us that marvelous brooding statue of Giordano Bruno and told us about his trial and how they burned him for heresy on the same spot. Then you said:

“That’s what they’d like to do to me!” I thought you were drunk or a little crazy until you explained that you were a priest under suspicion of heresy. You looked so lonely, so haunted, my heart went out to you. Then you quoted Bruno’s last words to his judges: “I think, gentlemen, that you are more afraid of me than I of you.” I’m looking at the same man I saw that day. The same man who said: “Bruno was a faker, a charlatan, a muddled thinker, but one thing I know: he died an honest man!” I loved you then, Carl. I love you now. Whatever you do, right or wrong, I know you’ll die an honest man!”

“I hope so, dear!” said Carl Mendelius gravely.

“I hope to God I can be honest with the man who married us!”

At three-thirty precisely Francone set him down at the portals of the great monastery of Monte Cassino. The guest master welcomed him and led him to his room, a plain whitewashed chamber furnished with a bed, a desk and chair, a clothes-closet and a priedieu over which was hung a crucifix carved in olive-wood. He threw open the shutters to reveal a dizzying view across the Rapido valley to the rolling hills of Lazio. He smiled at Mendelius’ surprise and said:

“You see! Already we are halfway to heaven! I hope you enjoy your stay with us.”

He waited while Mendelius laid out his few belongings and then led him along the bare, echoing corridors to the Abbot’s study. The man who rose to greet him was small and spare with a lean, weathered face and iron-grey hair and the smile of a happy child.

“Professor Mendelius! A pleasure to meet you! Please, sit down. Would you like coffee, a cordial perhaps?”

“No, thank you; we stopped for a coffee on the autostrada.

It’s very kind of you to receive me.”

“You come with the best recommendations, Professor.”

There was a hint of irony in the innocent smile.

“I don’t want to keep you too long from your friend; but I thought we should talk first.”

“Of course. You told me on the telephone he had been ill.”

“You will find him changed.” The Abbot chose his words carefully.

“He has survived an experience that would have crushed a lesser man. Now he is going through another more difficult, more intense, because it is an interior struggle.

I counsel him as best I can. The rest of the brethren support him with their prayers and their attentions; but he is like a man consumed by a fire inside him. It may be he will open himself to you. If he does not, let him see that you understand. Don’t press him. I know that he has written to you. I know what he has asked. I am his confessor and I cannot discuss that subject with you, because he has not given me permission to do so. You, on the other hand, are not my subject and I cannot presume to direct your conscience either.”

“Perhaps, then, you and I could open our minds to each other.”

“Perhaps.” Abbot Andrew’s smile was enigmatic.

“But first, I think you should talk to our friend Jean.”

“Certain questions arise. Does he truly want to see me?”

“Oh, yes, indeed.”

“Then why, when I wrote to you both, did he not write back as well as you? When I called on the telephone, why did you not invite him to speak with me?”

“It was not discourtesy, I promise you.”

“What was it?”

The Abbot sat silent for a long moment, studying the backs of his long hands. Finally he said, slowly: “There are times when it is not possible for him to communicate with anyone.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“On the contrary, Professor. It is my belief, based on personal observation, that our friend Jean has reached a high degree of contemplation, that state, in fact, which is called ‘illuminative’, in which, for certain periods, the spirit is totally absorbed in communication with the Creator. It is a rare phenomenon; but not unfamiliar in the lives of the great mystics. During these periods of contemplation, the subject does not respond to any external stimuli at all. When the experience is over, he returns immediately to normality. But I am telling you nothing you don’t know from your own reading.”

“I know also,” said Carl Mendelius drily, “that catatonic and cataleptic states are very well known in psychiatric medicine.”

“I, too, am aware of it, Professor. We are not altogether in the Dark Ages here. Our founder, Saint Benedict, was a wise and tolerant legislator. It may surprise you to know that one of our Fathers is a quite eminent physician with degrees from Padua, Zurich and London. He entered the order only ten years ago after the death of his wife. He has examined our friend. He has, on my direction, consulted with other specialists on the matter. He is convinced, as I am, that we are dealing with a mystic and not a psychotic.”

“Have you so informed the people who declared him a madman?”

“I have informed Cardinal Drexel. For the rest .. He gave a small chuckle of amusement.

“They’re very busy men. I prefer not to disturb them in their large affairs. Any more questions?”

“Only one,” said Mendelius gravely.

“You believe Jean Marie is a mystic, illuminated by God. Do you also believe that he was granted a revelation of the Parousia?”

The Abbot frowned and shook his head.

“Afterwards, my friend! After you’ve seen him. Then I’ll tell you what I believe. Come! He’s waiting in the garden. I’ll take you to him.”

* He was standing in the middle of the cloister garden, a tall slim figure in the black habit of Saint Benedict, feeding crumbs to the pigeons that fluttered at his feet. At the sound of Mendelius’ footfall he turned, stared for a single moment, and then hurried towards him, arms outstretched, while the pigeons wheeled in panic above his head. Mendelius caught him in mid-stride and held him in a long embrace, shocked to feel, even through the coarse stuff of the habit, how thin and frail he was. His first words were a stifled cry:

“Jean… Jean, my friend!”

Jean Marie Barette clung to him, patting his shoulder and saying over and over:

“Grace a Dieu… Grace a Dieu!”

Then they held each other at arm’s length looking into each other’s faces.

“Jean! Jean! What have they done to you? You’re as thin as a rake.”

“They? Nothing.” He fished a handkerchief from the sleeve of his habit and dabbed at Mendelius’ cheeks.

“Everybody’s been more than kind. How are all your family?”

“Well, thank God. Lotte’s here in Rome. She sends you her best love.”

“Thank her for lending you to me. I prayed you would come quickly, Carl!”

“I wanted to come sooner; but I couldn’t leave Tubingen until end of term.”

“I know … I know! And now I read that you are involved in a terrorist shooting in Rome. That troubles me.”

“Please, Jean! It’s a nine-day wonder. Tell me about yourself.”

“Shall we walk awhile? It’s very pleasant here. One gets the breeze from the mountains, cool and clean, even on the hottest day.”

He took Mendelius’ arm and they began to stroll slowly round the cloisters, making small tentative talk, as the first rush of emotion ebbed and the calm of an old friendship took hold of them.

“I am very much at home here,” said Jean Marie.

“Abbot Andrew is most considerate. I like the rhythm of the day; the Hours of the Office sung in choir, the quiet work. One of the fathers is an excellent sculptor in wood. I sit in his workshop and watch. I love the smell of wood-shavings! It’s a feast-day today. I prepared the dessert you will be having for supper.

It’s an old receipe my mother used. The fruit is from our own orchard. In the kitchen they have decided I’m better as a cook than as a Pope. And how is life with you, Carl?”

“It’s good, Jean. The children are beginning to make their own lives. Katrin is head over heels in love with her painter.

Johann is brilliant in economics. He’s decided he’s not a believer any more. One hopes he will grope his way back into the faith; but he’s a good lad just the same. Lotte and I, well, we’re just beginning to enjoy being middle-aged together.

The new book’s moving ahead. At least it was, until you put it all out of my head. I don’t think there’s been an hour when you were absent from my thoughts.”

“And you were never far from mine, Carl. It was as if you were the last spar to which I could cling after the shipwreck. I dared not let you go. I look back on those last weeks in the Vatican with real horror.”

“And now, Jean?”

“Now I am calm if not yet at peace, because I am still struggling to divest myself of the last impediments to a conformity with God’s will. You cannot believe how hard it is, when it should be so simple, to abandon yourself absolutely to His designs, to say and mean it: “Here I am, a tool in your hands. Use me any way you want.” The trust has to be absolute; but always one tries without even knowing to hedge the bet.”

“And I was part of the hedge?” Mendelius said it with a smile and a hand’s touch to soften the question.

“You were, Carl. I suppose you still are; but I believe also that you are part of God’s design for me. Had you not written, had you declined to come, I would have been forced to think otherwise. I prayed desperately for strength to face the possibility of a refusal.”

“It’s still a possibility, Jean,” said Mendelius with grave gentleness.

“You asked me to judge you.”

“Have you reached a verdict yet?”

“No. I had to talk to you first.”

“Let’s sit down, Carl. Over there, on the stone bench.

That’s where I was sitting when it happened. But, first, there are other things to tell you.”

They settled themselves on the bench. Jean Marie scooped up a handful of pebbles from the path and began tossing them at an imaginary target. He talked casually, in a tone of wry reminiscence.

“Let me say outright, Carl, that in spite of all the ritual disclaimers and the public acts of humility, I really wanted to be Pope. All my life I had been a careerist in the Church. I use the word in the French sense. I was built for what I did. As a youth I fought with the Maquis. I came to the seminary a man, sure of his vocation and of his motives. More, I understood instinctively how the system works. It’s like Saint Cyr or Oxford or Harvard … If you know the rules of the game, the averages are in your favour. There’s no discredit . that’s not what I’m saying. I simply point out that there is, there has to be, an element of ambition, an element of calculation. I had the ambition. I also had a good, tidy French mind.

“So, I was a good priest, a good diocesan bishop. I mean that! I worked hard at it. I spent a lot of love. I held the people together, even the young. I set up social experiments.

I was attracting vocations to the ministry while others were losing them. My people told me they felt a sense of unity, of religious purpose. In short, I had to be, sooner or later, a candidate for the red hat. In the end it was offered to me, on condition that I came to Rome and joined the Curia. Naturally, I accepted. I was appointed Prefect of the Secretariat for Christian Unity and Sub-prefect of the Secretariat for NonBelievers. These were minor offices as you know. The real power was vested in the important Congregations: Doctrine of the Faith, Episcopal and Clerical Affairs.