The Last Western (58 page)

He read it again and a third time and he did not understand it and he thought it might just as well be in another language. Then he thought, It is already in another language. He wondered what it was like to know that language and use it, what it was like to understand things in an orderly way and not to have to depend on dreams and silence and things that had no explanation.

Through the window he could see the people pouring out into the piazza, and he knew they would go home now and tell their children and their neighbors and their friends that they had talked to papa and they would not be able to say why it meant whatever it meant to them.

He pitied them in the cold light because they looked very small from this place of books and because they seemed to need to come and see him and call him papa and because they hungered for more than all the things that were kept in this place, and whatever it was they got from seeing him and calling him papa, that too would go very soon, and they would hunger again, perhaps worse than before.

His mind spun around for a while and he started to fall asleep. He had not eaten in many days now and the hunger had gone into a new phase and he was weak and lightheaded. He was like one of those little candy men that his father had given him one Christmas, that looked like solid chocolate but were hollow inside so that you had to be careful how you picked them up or they broke between your fingers.

He put the book by the American theologian back in the niche of the dungeon wall and then he saw a clock sitting among the books, under a glass dome. A card in English said that this clock, made by the Pemberly Clock Firm of Rochester, New York and presented by Mr. Roger Pemberly to His Holiness Pope Felix VII, would run for 1,000 years without error and was as perfect a clock as man had ever made.

He leaned close to the face of the clock to hear the ticking but instead of ticking, there was only a tiny hum. He listened a long time to the humming and put the glass dome back over the clock, and he considered how some things endured and how things would go on after it was over—and those people out there in the piazza—how they would come back to call another man papa, and then he felt faint.

He sat down and closed his eyes and fell into a dreamless sleep that was almost a coma, and Joto had a hard time waking him an hour later.

“Urgent, most urgent, Brother Will. That Mr. Golden from America on videophone. Says most important.”

So he went sleepily to the next room where the videophone showed Goldenblade on the lawn of his Houston house with the golden statue of the Lady of Fatima behind him.

“Holiness Father Brother, can you see me all right? George Doveland Goldenblade, of course, Goldenblade Communications?”

“Yes, Mr. Goldenblade?”

“Turn your contrast a little will you, Father Brother, Excellency? You’re coming in yellow.”

Willie adjusted the knob on the side of the phone.

“Now you’re greenish—my god, er, goodness—like a freakish monster out of the depths, ha ha ha, of the sea, ha.”

Willie turned the knob once more.

“Why, Brother Holiness, you look like a godd—you don’t look right. Hold up your hand.”

Willie held up his hand.

“The color is off, but it appears to be you.”

“It’s me,” said Willie.

Goldenblade brought Willie’s face to close-up.

“There’s been a lot of impersonating here in the States on the videophone—Communist and pervert monists and such, dressed up and pretending to be citizens. Or else they’re clones. It is a threat to every American home I can tell you. But I see you really are Your Holiness even if your color is so putrid. What is it you have been eating, that crummy wop slop?”

“It is me,” said Willie, almost blinded by the glare of the sun on the shrine behind Goldenblade.

“That’s what sent Uncle Eminence Earl out of his switch—eating that Roman matter over there, which is outright slop, and not taking our new product, Goldenblade Hydrofood, which would have built up his blood, such as I told him time after time, till his godd—stupid head exploded, which it did.”

“Sir?”

“The edibles did it!” Goldenblade roared, switching to close-up, so that only his eyes and nose were visible. “Right after that fu—that conclave when he was over there slopping it up, that’s when his blood went. The tongues came on. Tongues of the Holy Spirit! Holy Chr—Holy Spirit! Don’t you think I believe in the Holy Spirit, Holiness? Spirit!” Goldenblade was shouting at the top of his voice.

“It’s me,” said Willie.

“Walking around like an insane pervert, my own brother, my own Eminence Earl, who used to be a levelheaded businessman and still would be if his blood hadn’t run to chicken soup. Chicken soup, Father Brother Holy! Chick chick chick! I could cry! Jeeeee—” Goldenblade, halfway through the name of the Savior, saw Willie’s face on the screen, “pers! Forgive me, Your Brother, I haven’t been myself since that man lost his computer.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Goldenblade,” said Willie.

“You’re forgiven, Pope,” said Goldenblade. Then leaning closer to the phone-camera: “You are quite alone, Brother Holiness?”

“Yes.”

“I have important news to give you.”

“Yes.”

“Bob Regent has been in contact with me.”

Willie felt his body jerk in the chair.

“Bob Regent,” said Goldenblade, “your former owner.”

“What did he want? What did he—”

“Well, Bob and I chatted quite awhile about this L-Day Plan of yours. We both had given a lot of thought to this particular operation. To tell you the truth, Brother Father, I was opposed to it at the beginning. In fact right up to the time Bob called, I thought it was one of the most asinine capers that ever came down the pike, no disrespect to your nationality intended.”

“Will Mr. Reg—”

“Please, please, Holiness, let me finish what I was saying. This plan has been creating havoc throughout our industry and has caused many numbskull workers and shiftless nig—personnel—dolts for the most part—to strike us and demand unreasonable pension settlements and the like. It has set off panic everywhere else too. Well,
you
must see the news over there. I don’t have to tell you what this thing has done to people. Because of all these screwed-up happenings, I have been opposed to the plan all along, and frankly, I tried to do something about it, about stopping it, I mean, and then this call from Bob came in.”

“Will Mr. Regent—”

“If,” Goldenblade cried, “
if
you’ll bear with me, Father Holy, I’ll try to tell you about it. Bob called night before last, using the old audio, because as you know he has an abhor-ence of getting himself seen. This was about four a.m. and Bob did not want to say what country he was in—if he was in a country—because of his feeling about being in any one country at any one time, if you follow. He identified himself in that twenty-word drill he has been using the last few years so that there was no question it was Bob who was calling, from somewhere.

“Bob told me how the plan struck him. To my surprise he told me he thought it was wonderful, though as a human being he did regret so many people were taking it the wrong way, blowing their chicken-hearted brains out, and so on. He called it a splendid gesture and said he truly believed it would make the world a finer place to do business in.”

“Did he—”

“Your Brother Holy,” said Goldenblade, “I don’t want to be impertinent or disrespectful, but I can’t tell my story when you are constantly talking, not giving me a chance. Granted you are the pope, granted you are used to monopolizing the conversation, granted you are infallible, still with all that, don’t you agree just as fellow Christian to fellow Christian, we all have to be silent once in a while and let the other man speak?”

“Yes, Mr. Goldenblade.”

“Good,” said Goldenblade. He lighted a cigar. “Well, Bob Regent is just delighted, just thrilled spiritually by this whole promotional thing of L-Day and especially by some message which you sent to him—about some meeting with him? Through some Grayson?”

Willie nodded to the camera.

“He has asked me to acknowledge that message for him and also to invite you to meet him and join him for the hunting party which he holds each fall up near Springfield, Illinois. He wants you to join him there, if that is possible—I mean join him and a few of his friends for the plove hunting. Now, Father Holy, I can tell you, this is a sport you will truly enjoy. These aren’t your mechanical birds, you understand, but live birds, very fast, which Bob himself breeds for the hunt. The hunt lasts four, five days and is always held the last week of November. Bob thinks this would be a perfect manly American place and setting for you and him to get together, and I agree.”

“Yes, Mr. Golden—”

“You accept then?”

“Yes.”

“Splendid. Now Bob will be at his lodge during that time, you understand. He has a regular mansion right near this little town on the river, Babylon Bend it’s called, a village of 200 or 300 yokels. You’ll meet him there?”

“I will not be there for the hunt because I will be busy just before and just after,” said Willie carefully. “But I will come up to the lodge at the earliest hour of November 24.”

“Delightful! Brother Holiness, you are a man with true business intelligence. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. And I know Bob will be happy too.”

“I—I’ll see you then on the twenty-third, that night.”

“We’ll provide the press coverage if—”

“No,” said Willie. “No press. I want to keep this personal, just between me and Mr. Regent. The press will find us anyway, but I don’t want a public announcement of where I will be.”

“That is absolutely insane public relations, Brother Holy, if you’ll forgive the personal opinion. No one but a jackass would throw away such an opportunity, not that you personally are a jackass, if you understand. But—you’re the boss, ha ha ha ha. Now I’ve got to get back to business.”

“Yes, Mr. Goldenblade.”

Goldenblade motioned to the shrine behind him and turned a knob on the phone-camera so that the golden Lady of Fatima came up huge on the screen.

“That’s my mom,” said Goldenblade. “When everything tears apart in business, when a pacification goes bust, when Earl makes a fool of himself, I come out here and talk to mom, and then—then I feel better. Maybe you would like to say something to mom.”

Willie could think of nothing.

“Tell her you love her,” said Goldenblade. “It’s my mom.”

“I—had a mother once.”

“So?”

“I loved her.”

“But my mom is the real mom, even you know that.”

The statue got bigger and bigger as the camera slowly zoomed in, the eyes peering straight ahead, and the eyes getting larger.

“Sweet mama,” said Goldenblade. “Sweet mama says get your color straight and lay off the wop slop or you’ll rot your guts. Right mama?”

The camera got closer and closer, until finally there was only one eye, looking like a crater of the moon, staring at Willie, and then the screen went black.

* *  *

The tension of the world grew and the world was coming up to a still later round and the late chill winds of November blew the leaves along the streets of Berlin and London and Paris and New York. The first snows had fallen, and Willie grew weaker, and the time was coming, and so he called them together again—the spokesmen and the officials of the Vatican—and he called them to the same great marble room where they had met before, but this time they appeared to be of firm pink flesh and he had become the gray man.

Even they noticed it, seeing the blotch of white that had appeared on the side of the red head, as if some chemical had been thrown upon that shock of hair while he slept.

They saw how thin he was and how his cheekbones stuck out and how the slanted eyes had receded farther into his head, and they heard how his voice had thinned.

“What is wrong with him?” Cardinal Liderant whispered.

“He’s ill, obviously,” said Profacci, eyeing Willie closely. “The cooks say he cannot hold food. And he will not see a doctor.”

“Why, he is a changed man,” said Liderant.

Orsini said in a slow, curious way, “Perhaps men have gone to a great deal of trouble for nothing.”

“What men?” said Liderant.

“Never mind,” said Orsini.

Willie stood a little apart from them. He seemed very weak and the colors of his skin had paled and he was like a poor watercolor painting of himself.

Liderant, surprising the other officials, moved toward him as if to help.

Willie saw this gesture and smiled but waved the help aside. Then he spoke to them.

“My brothers. In a short time now I shall leave Rome to go to the United States to celebrate the day of love. I must go there to ask the forgiveness of a man I once wronged. But last night I could not sleep because I thought of all you who will remain here in the city, though many of you, I am sure, will also make a journey to meet persons whom in your past lives you wronged.

“It came to me during the night that I have wronged many of you by the things that I have done. And I cannot leave you now,” he looked at their faces—Liderant, Nervi, Profacci, “without saying that I think of you as my brothers and that if I have hurt you, I ask your forgiveness, even as I forgive anything you have done to harm me.”

They stirred uneasily before him.

“You are my brothers. Is it so important,” he whispered, unable to turn away from the eyes of Orsini, “is it so important that we agree on everything, each and every policy, each and every doctrine? What are ideas that they should separate brothers and stand in the way of life joining life?

“I was wrong, I know it now, not to have told you before, shown you before, that I truly do love you, my brothers, that I need you and that I will keep on loving you to the end.”

His eyes fell on Liderant now, and Liderant in an instant became the young man he had once been and felt the sensation that he said later was like a knife wound, everything he had always thought important suddenly becoming useless and all that he held precious breaking and dissolving into slag.

He sighed deeply, as if something trapped in him had succeeded after a long struggle in getting out.