Warburg in Rome (37 page)

The ceremony began with the
obbedienza
—a procession of the existing cardinals, who, one by one, presented themselves at the papal throne, each with his crimson
cappa magna
flowing behind, which attendants carried as if every cardinal were an aged bride. Each prelate threw himself to the ground to kiss the Pope’s extended foot, and each was then hoisted to kiss the air beside the Pope’s sallow cheeks.
I obey
.

The new cardinals, thirty-two of them, were posted in a large semicircle before the throne, and their contrast in youth and vigor with the older prelates was dramatic. As the choir chanted the
Te Deum
, they prostrated themselves with a certain practiced grace, hoods alike in being pulled over their heads. These were the field marshals in the coming conflict, men chosen more for the strategic significance of their seats than for their individual brilliance, much less holiness. China, Latin America, the heart of Europe, London, New York, Berlin. Stalin’s archenemy Adamo Stefano Sapieha of Kraków was here to be elevated, despite being nearly eighty, and so was Thomas Tienchensing, archbishop of Peking, despite his pastoral charge over fewer than ten thousand Catholics amid a pagan population of five million. The one pagan on whom Pius had fixed his sights was Mao Tse-tung.

The Right Reverend Monsignor Kevin Deane was here, as supernumerary privy chamberlain, standing behind the red-cloaked prostrate form of Francis Spellman, the fifty-six-year-old archbishop of New York, the Boss. As Spellman’s chaplain, Deane’s job was to ensure that the faceless attendants properly swished Spellman’s skirts as he took his turns in the sacred choreography, getting up from the floor once the litany was finished and mounting the stairs to receive his ring, zucchetto, and biretta. To all appearances, Deane was a stoic courtier, but his mind had been cut loose.

For most observers, the high drama of the consistory came from the Pope’s appointment of the men from Eastern Europe and China, the front lines of the war against the atheistic Communists, but what struck Deane was Argentina. One of those on the floor before him was Antonio Caggiano, the fifty-seven-year-old archbishop who, until recently, was the Vatican chief of Catholic Action, a tool for jacking up the Church’s political influence everywhere. But Caggiano had just been named archbishop of Rosario, a second-rate city of about half a million, nearly two hundred miles northwest of Buenos Aires. What the hell? Deane eyed the prostrate form of the Argentine prelate, blanketed in red, impossible to read—but not to guess. He was the man who’d seen to the stashing of the Croatian gold in the crypt below Santa Marta—gold that had mysteriously and entirely disappeared right after Deane had dutifully reported it to Tardini. What the hell indeed.

Only two things suggested why such a minor city as Rosario might have been sent the Red Hat. Rosario was the center of the junta leader Juan Perón’s strength, the place from which the anti-Communist colonel was poised to solidify control of Argentina. And, nicely positioned on the Parana River, inland from the Atlantic, it was a harbor that passenger vessels favored over the grimy industrial port at Buenos Aires—the debarkation point, therefore, of many travelers arriving from Europe. The Rosario–Vatican Express.

• V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
  .
  
• R. Parce nobis, Domine
  .
  

The choir had rounded the last curve and was heading into the litany’s home stretch. Deane picked up the chant himself.

• V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
  .
  
• R. Exaudi nos, Domine
  .
  
• V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
  .
  
• R. Miserere nobis
  .
  
• V. Christe, audi nos
  
• R. Christe, exaudi nos
  .
  
• V. Kyrie eleison
  .
  
• R. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison
  . . .
  

The new cardinals rose to their knees, then to their feet, as the choir prayed the souls of the faithful departed into peace. Amen.

Deane watched closely. The Boss did well, moving with an agile grace that bespoke his happiness. Acolytes fluttered among the prelates, arranging capes. When Spellman turned briefly to beam back at Deane, Deane nodded. The Boss had not been named the Vatican secretary of state, but neither had anyone else, and it had become clear that the Pope was reserving the office to himself. So if Spellman had not moved ahead, neither had he fallen behind. Indeed, he was arguably the most powerful figure on the sanctuary floor today, surely the most powerful non-Italian. With Europe in ruins, only the American Church could carry the costs of the Vatican’s administration now: Spellman was the Vatican’s new banker. But the diminutive new cardinal was certain that his bond with His Holiness went deeper than such worldly ties. Spellman believed that there was a personal intimacy between them, an absolute sense of trust—enhanced, from his side, by a reverence that approached veneration.

But Deane knew that, in some way, Spellman was kidding himself. The Pope’s refusal to name him or anyone else as secretary of state was more than a simple reservation of the diplomatic portfolio to Ourselves. It was a way of making sure the Vatican bureaucracy lacked a center, which in practice meant that from now on the fiefdoms would compete, keeping secrets from one another, guaranteeing that no one would behold Church power whole. It was obvious to Deane why such scattering served the purposes of the supremely wily Pius XII. The Pope and his court had been bested by Hitler, despite postwar Vatican triumphalism. Not just bested—humiliated. Pius was determined not to repeat that failure with his archnemesis, Stalin. If Russia was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, then the Holy See, under its genius pontiff, and he alone, would be more so.

When the cardinal archbishop of New York now kissed the Pope’s foot, he was not fooling. Deane chastised himself for wincing at the sight of the ritual obeisance, which in any other context would have been seen as groveling pure and simple. He reminded himself that there was a cross embroidered on the Pope’s velvet slipper, and it was that sign of Christ, so they said, that was being kissed. But really.

Deane backed away from his disdain. This ritual of allegiance had been enacted by the predecessors of these men for a thousand years. Foppery and vanity, all part of the picture. Yet this pinnacle of the sacramental pyramid topped off not just Catholicism but Western civilization, which over the past six years had very nearly succeeded in suicide. Even museums were laid waste across the continent, yet the Church was no museum. What but dissolution was left to Europe except the last vestiges of Christendom? This.

“Somewhat to my surprise,” Deane said later, “I was moved by it. The flowing crimson cloaks and all.”

“Reminded me of Westminster Abbey,” Sister Thomas said. “Especially the ermine shoulder capes. You lads do like your regalia, don’t you. Put us nuns to shame.” With a flick of her head she made her black veil swirl. “At Westminster, of course, the peers carry sandwiches in their coronets.”

Deane laughed. Yet then he said, “Why shouldn’t we be moved, though, to find our deepest fear—the near triumph of nihilism just yesterday, the thunder of its approach again tomorrow—addressed directly by the glories of that place and its rituals?”

Sister Thomas did not reply.

Deane pressed, “No?”

Outdoing him in earnestness, she asked, “What would those rituals mean in Cinecittà, Bergen-Belsen, or Föhrenwald? What’s the purpose of all this”—she gestured toward the crowded room—“if not somehow to help the poor people still awaiting succor after all these months?”

Her question silenced them, and they turned. Monsignor Deane and Sister Thomas were standing near the great frescoed wall in the Sala Regia, the broad antechamber to the Sistine Chapel, which had long been used as the hall for receiving princes and royal ambassadors. Today it was serving a more mundane function, as the site of the celebratory collation for curial officials, senior Vatican functionaries, and VIP guests, including the Duke of Savoy, the Prince of Naples, the various contessas in their mantillas, the bedecked diplomatic corps. The cardinals were gathered in the Sala Clementina, the grander hall at the entrance to the papal apartments—the Third Floor. His Holiness would not deign to present himself even there, but he could no doubt hear the happy chatter of men whose day had come. Here in the Sala Regia, their hangers-on could celebrate more robustly, flapping streamers on the kites that had just climbed in the only wind that mattered. Breath of God.

Deane and Sister Thomas fell into separate reveries, each taking in the festive scene. In a nearby corner, a string quartet, decked out in tails, was chirping away at Vivaldi. Of all before him, it was the women whom Deane noticed—the patrician beauties in gowns and lace head coverings; the dozen or so nuns, like Thomas. Not long ago, having women at such a gathering would be unthinkable. Chalk up another to Mother Pascalina, running the Pope’s office. It was said that she rather liked bubbly functions like this.

Deane was holding a crystal cup with fruit punch laced with Asti Spumante. Sister Thomas had let the drink tray pass. She was looking at the nearby fresco, the scene, from five hundred years before, of Pope Gregory XI’s return from Avignon to Rome. The painting was cluttered with figures, not one of whom was female. Sister Thomas indicated it. “Who’s missing?” she asked.

Deane looked. “What?”

“Catherine of Siena. She should be in there somewhere. It was she who badgered the Pope into returning to Rome. Shamed him, really. Don’t you think Catherine should be there, perhaps on that little ledge with the fellow in feathers?”

“She was a Dominican sister of yours, as I recall.” Deane grinned. He gestured at the crowd. “But the women are present here, and so”—he pointed at a Maltese knight—“are the fellows in feathers.” His eye then fell on a familiar figure, the swarthy, lean priest in his well-tailored cassock, standing beside a faded beauty twice his age, a woman whose long black dress nevertheless displayed her well-preserved figure, whose mantilla did not so much cloak her hair and face as showcase them. With one of her long-gloved hands she coquettishly fluttered a fan at her cheek. The other she had through the priest’s arm, with high-court formality.

“It’s Lehmann,” Deane said. Given the din of talk around them, he and the nun could have been alone. Still, his voice was barely more than a whisper. “That must be his mother.”

“Lady of Spain,” Sister Thomas said.

With a closer look, the woman’s pallor outweighed her elegance—a hint of the pathetic in the way she’d forced herself into her presentation gown, as if this were her cotillion. Even from across the room, the coal black of her hair had a bottled dullness. “Her ladyship,” Deane said, “is not getting the message that time is sending.”

“The lad keeps her young,” Sister Thomas said.

A fancy older couple presented themselves to Lehmann and his mother with familiarity. The priest bowed and took the woman’s hand, thrilling her with his kiss. Deane thought, Not Casanova, but a mama’s boy. Lehmann’s mother now held the fan at her décolletage.

“Did you notice where he stood in the ceremony?” Deane asked.

“From where I was sitting? Are you serious?”

“He was supernumerary privy chamberlain, same as me. Standing behind his cardinal-designate.”

“Berlin?”

“Rosario.”

“Argentina? Caggiano?”

“Sí.”

“That’s a bit blatant, don’t you think?”

“Or a signal. A very public signal, declaring that Lehmann is a man to trust, if you are a man with reason to
dis
trust. An imprimatur, stamped for those with an interest in Argentina. Have you learned anything?”

“Yes. Did you not see the rose?” The question was her way of saying, Not here. “I put it there this morning.”

“This morning I was laying out Spellman’s new buskins and mozzetta. You laugh, Sister. But when they depend on you for the small things, the big things come naturally.”

“I don’t laugh, Monsignor. I’ve been known to sew a button on His Eminence Cardinal Tisserant’s mozzetta. And Tisserant is part of what I need to tell you about. But now you should be mingling, listening to the gossip so you’ll have something to tell
your
cardinal.” Sister Thomas excused herself with the barest of nods, then glided away.

A waiter drifted by, white tie and tails, white gloves. Deane placed his cup on the tray, which never stopped moving. The happily reconstituted College of Cardinals would be adjourning soon from the Sala Clementina, each of the newly consecrated prelates to hustle off to his own private festivities for the family and friends he had brought from home. By Deane’s arrangement—a coup—Spellman’s party would convene in one of the spectacular rooms of the Vatican Museum, the Sala Rotonda, modeled after the Pantheon, centered on a massive bust of Zeus and a gilt bronze statue of Hercules. When Deane had escorted His Excellency there the day before, to show him, Spellman had clapped his hands with pleasure, saying, “Wait’ll Henry Luce gets a load of this.” Feet bouncing under his cassock, Spellman had danced a little jig, and, not for the first time, the short, stout archbishop had reminded Deane of the comic strip character the Little King. But then Spellman noted the sculptures of the gods. “Who are these fellows?”

Deane grinned. “For Henry Luce?
Time
magazine? Let’s just say Abraham and Moses.”

“Right,” Spellman had chirped. “Jew boys.”

Once, Deane would have thought nothing of such a crack, but now it unsettled him—an unfortunate moment to feel a spike of dislike, since Spellman then said, “And by the way, Kevin, now that I have the Red Hat, I’ll be passing along a miter.”

“Your Eminence?”

“My new auxiliary bishop in New York. Any ideas?”

“I can draw up a list for you, suggest some candidates.”

“No need for that, my friend. None at all.” Spellman winked and said, “Coming soon to a theater near you.” The cardinal gave Deane’s shoulder a congratulatory slap, as if his episcopal consecration had just happened. Deane blushed. This news was not unexpected, yet it filled him almost completely with pleasure. Almost—but for the sour taste in his throat.
Jew boys
.