The Shoes of the Fisherman

by Morris West

  ‘Large questions,’ said Rinaldi gently, ‘not to be answered by small minds or gross ones.

  Leone shook his lion’s mane stubbornly. ‘For the people they come down to simplicities! Why shouldn’t I covet my neighbour’s wife? Who takes the revenge that is forbidden to me? And who cares when I am sick and tired, and dying in an upstairs room? I can give them a theologian’s answer. But whom do they believe but the man who feels the answers in his heart, and bears the scars of their consequences in his own flesh? Where are the men like that? Is there one among all of us who wear the red hat? Eh…!’ His grim mouth twitched into a grin of embarrassment, and he flung out his arms in mock despair. ‘We are what we are, and God has to take half the responsibility even for theologians!…Now tell me – where do we go for our Pope?’

  ‘This time,’ said Rinaldi crisply, ‘we should choose him for the people and not for ourselves.’

  ‘There will be eighty-five of us in the conclave. How many will agree on what is best for the people?’

  Rinaldi looked down at the backs of his carefully manicured fingers. He said softly, ‘If we showed them the man first, perhaps we could get them to agree.’

  Leone’s answer was swift and emphatic. ‘You would have to show him to me first.’

  ‘And if you agreed?’

  ‘Then there would be another question,’ said Leone flatly. ‘How many of our brethren will think as we do?’

  The question was subtler than it looked, and they both knew it. Here, in fact, was the whole loaded issue of a papal election, the whole paradox of the Papacy. The man who wore the Fisherman’s ring was Vicar of Christ, Vicegerent of the Almighty. His dominion was spiritual and universal. He was the servant of all the servants of God, even of those who did not acknowledge him.

  On the other hand, he was Bishop of Rome, Metropolitan of an Italian see. The Romans claimed by historic tradition a preemption on his presence and his services. They relied on him for employment, for the tourist trade and the bolstering of their economy by Vatican investment, for the preservation of their historic monuments and national privileges. His court was Italian in character; the greater number of his household and his administrators were Italian. If he could not deal with them familiarly in their own tongue, he stood naked to palace intrigue and every kind of partisan interest.

  Once upon a time the Roman view had had a peculiarly universal aspect. The numen of the ancient empire still hung about it, and the memory of the Pax Romana had not yet vanished from the consciousness of Europe. But the numen was fading. Imperial Rome had never subdued Russia or Asia, and the Latins who conquered South America had brought no peace, but the sword. England had revolted long since, as she had revolted earlier from the legions of Roman occupation. So that there was sound argument for a new, non-Italian succession to the papal throne – just as there was sound reason for believing that a non-Italian might become either a puppet of his ministers or a victim of their talent for intrigue.

  The perpetuity of the Church was an article of faith; but its diminutions and corruptions, and its jeopardy by the follies of its members, were part of the canon of history. There was plenty of ground for cynicism. But over and over again the cynics were confounded by the uncanny capacity for self-renewal in the Church and in the Papacy. The cynics had their own explanations. The faithful put it down to the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Either way there was an uncomfortable mystery: how the chaos of history could issue in so consistent a hold on dogma or why an omniscient God chose such a messy method of preserving His foothold in the minds of His creatures.

  So every conclave began with the invocation of the Paraclete. On the day of the walling-in, Rinaldi led his old men and their attendants into St Peter’s. Then Leone came, dressed in a scarlet chasuble and accompanied by his deacons and subdeacons, to begin the Mass of the Holy Spirit. As he watched the celebrant, weighed down by the elaborate vestments, moving painfully through the ritual of the sacrifice, Rinaldi felt a pang of pity for him and a sudden rush of understanding.

  They were all in the same galley, these leaders of the Church-himself along with them. They were men without issue, who had ‘made themselves eunuchs for the love of God’. A long time since they had dedicated themselves with greater or less sincerity to the service of a hidden God, and to the propagation of an unprovable mystery. Through the temporality of the Church they had attained to honour, more honour perhaps than any of them might have attained in the secular state, but they all lay under the common burden of age – failing faculties, the loneliness of eminence, and the fear of a reckoning that might find them bankrupt debtors.

  He thought, too, of the stratagem which he had planned with Leone, to introduce a candidate who was still a stranger to most of the voters, and to promote his cause without breaching the Apostolic Constitution which they had sworn to preserve. He wondered if this were not a. presumption and an attempt to circumvent Providence, whom they were invoking at this very moment. Yet, if God had chosen, as the faith taught, to use man as a free instrument for a divine plan, how else could one act? One could not let so momentous an occasion as a papal election play itself like a game of chance. Prudence was enjoined on all – prayerful preparation and then considered action, and afterwards resignation and submission. Yet however prudently one planned, one could not escape the uncanny feeling that one walked unwary and unpurged on sacred ground.

  The heat, the flicker of the candles, the chant of the choir, and the mesmeric pace of the ritual made him drowsy, and he stole a surreptitious glance at his colleagues to see if any of them had noticed his nodding.

  Like twin choirs of ancient archangels they sat on either side of the sanctuary, their breasts hung with golden crosses, the princely seals agleam on their folded hands, their faces scored by age and the experience of power.

  There was Rahamani of Antioch, with his spade beard and his craggy brows and his bright, half-mystical eyes. There was Benedetti, round as a dumpling with pink cheeks and candyfloss hair, who ran the Vatican Bank. Next to him was Potocki from Poland, he of the high, bald dome and the suffering mouth and the wise, calculating eyes. Tatsue from Japan wanted only the saffron robe to make him a Buddhist image, and Hsien, the exiled Chinese, sat between Ragambwe, the black man from Kenya, and Pallenberg, the lean ascetic from Munich.

  Rinaldi’s shrewd eyes ranged along the choir stalls, naming each one for his virtues or his shortcomings, trying on each the classic label papabile, he-who-has-the-makings-of-a-Pope. In theory every member of the conclave could wear it; in practice very few were eligible.

  Age was a bar to some. Talent or temperament or reputation was an impediment to others. Nationality was a vital question. One could not elect an American without seeming to divide East and West even further. A Negro Pope might seem a spectacular symbol of the new revolutionary nations, just as a Japanese might be a useful link between Asia and Europe. But the princes of the Church were old men and as wary of spectacular gestures as they were of historic hangovers. A German Pope might alienate the sympathies of those who had suffered in World War II. A Frenchman would recall old memories of Avignon and tramontane rebellions. While there were still dictatorships in Spain and Portugal, an Iberian Pope could be a diplomatic indiscretion. Gonfalone, the Milanese, had the reputation of being a saint, but he was becoming more and more of a recluse, and there was question of his fitness for so public an office. Leone was an autocrat who might well mistake the fire of zealotry for the flame of compassion.

  The lector was reading from the Acts of the Apostles. ‘In those days, Peter began and said, Men, Brethren, the Lord charged us to preach to the people and to testify that He is the one who has been appointed by God to be judge of the living and of the dead…’ The choir sang, ‘Veni, Sancte Spiritus…Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful ones…’ Then Leone began to read in his strong stubborn voice the Gospel for the day of the conclave: ‘He who enters not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up another way is a thief
and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep’. Rinaldi bent his head in his hands and prayed that the man he was offering would be in truth a shepherd, and that the conclave might hand him the crook and the ring.

  When the Mass was over, the celebrant retired to the sacristy to take off his vestments, and the Cardinals relaxed in the stalls. Some of them whispered to one another, a couple were still nodding drowsily, and one was seen to take a surreptitious pinch of snuff. The next part of the ceremony was a formality, but it promised to be a boring one. A prelate would read them a homily in Latin, pointing out once again the importance of the election and their moral obligation to carry it out in an orderly and honest fashion. By ancient custom, the prelate was chosen for the purity of his Latin, but this time the Camerlengo had made another arrangement.

  A whisper of surprise stirred round the assembly as they saw Rinaldi leave his place and walk down to the far end of the stalls on the Gospel side of the Altar. He offered his hand to a tall, thin Cardinal and led him to the pulpit. When he stood elevated in the full glare of the lights, they saw that he was the youngest of them all. His hair was black, his square beard was black too, and down his left cheek was a long, livid scar. On his breast, in addition to the cross, was a pectoral ikon representing a Byzantine Madonna and Child. When he crossed himself, he made the sign from right to left in the Slavonic manner; yet, when he began to speak, it was not in Latin but in a pure and melodious Tuscan. Across the nave Leone smiled a grim approval at Rinaldi, and then they surrendered themselves like their colleagues to the simple eloquence of the stranger:

  ‘My name is Kiril Lakota, and I am come the latest and the least into this Sacred College. I speak to you today by the invitation of our brother the Cardinal Camerlengo. To most of you I am a stranger because my people are scattered, and I have spent the last seventeen years in prison. If I have any rights among you, any credit at all, let this be the foundation of them – that I speak for the lost ones, for those who walk in darkness and in the valley of the shadow of death. It is for them and not for ourselves that we are entering into conclave. It is for them and not for ourselves that we must elect a Pontiff. The first man who held this office. was one who walked with Christ, and was crucified like the Master. Those who have best served the Church and the faithful are those who have been closest to Christ and to the people, who are the image of Christ. We have power in our hands, my brothers. We shall put even greater power into the hands of the man we elect; but we must use the power as servants and not as masters. We must consider that we are what we are – priests, bishops, pastors – by virtue of an act of dedication to the people who are the flock of Christ. What we possess, even to the clothes on our backs, comes to us out of their charity. The whole material fabric of the Church was raised stone on stone, gold on golden offering, by the sweat of the faithful, and they have given it into our hands for stewardship. It is they who have educated us so that we may teach them and their children. It is they who humble themselves before our priesthood, as before the divine Priesthood of Christ. It is for them that we exercise the sacramental and the sacrificial powers which are given to us in the anointing and the laying-on of hands. If in our deliberations we serve any other cause but this, then we are traitors. It is not asked of us that we shall agree on what is best for the Church, but only that we shall deliberate in charity and humility, and in the end give our obedience to the man who shall be chosen by the majority. We are asked to act swiftly so that the Church may not be left without a head. In all this we must be what, in the end, our Pontiff shall proclaim himself to be – servants of the servants of God. Let us in these final moments resign ourselves as willing instruments for His hands. Amen.’

  It was so simply said that it might have been the customary formality, yet the man himself, with his scarred face and his strong voice and his crooked, eloquent hands, lent to the words an unexpected poignancy. There was a long silence while he left the pulpit and returned to his own place. Leone nodded his lion’s head in approval, and Rinaldi breathed a silent prayer of gratitude. Then the Master of Ceremonies took command and led the Cardinals and their attendants with their confessor and their physician and surgeon, and the Architect of the Conclave, and the conclave workmen out of the Basilica and into the confines of the Vatican itself.

  In the Sistine Chapel they were sworn again. Then Leone gave the order for the bells to be rung, so that all who did not belong to the conclave should leave the sealed area at once. The servants led each of the Cardinals to his apartment. Then the prefect of the Master of Ceremonies, with the Architect of the Conclave, began the ritual search of the enclosed area. They went from room to room pulling aside draperies, throwing light into dark comers, opening closets, until every space was declared free from intruders.

  At the entrance of the great stairway of Pius IX they halted and the Noble Guard marched out of the conclave area, followed by the Marshal of the Conclave and his aides. The great door was locked. The Marshal of the Conclave turned his key on the outside. On the inside the Masters of Ceremonies turned their own key. The Marshal ordered his flag hoisted over the Vatican, and from this moment no one might leave or enter, or pass a message, until the new Pope was elected and named.

  Alone in his quarters, Kiril Cardinal Lakota was beginning a private purgatory. It was a recurrent state whose symptoms were now familiar to him: a cold sweat that broke out on face and palms, a trembling in the limbs, a twitching of the severed nerves in his face, a panic fear that the room was closing in to crush him. Twice in his life he had been walled up in the bunkers of an underground prison. Four months in all, he had endured the terrors of darkness and cold and solitude and near starvation, so that the pillars of his reason had rocked under the strain. Nothing in his years of Siberian exile had afflicted him so much, nor left so deep a scar on his memory. Nothing had brought him so close to abjuration and apostasy.

  He had been beaten often, but the bruised tissue had healed itself in time. He had been interrogated till every nerve was screaming and his mind had lapsed into a merciful confusion. From this too he had emerged, stronger in faith and in reason, but the horror of solitary confinement would remain with him until he died. Kamenev had kept his promise. ‘You will never be able to forget me. Wherever you go, I shall be. Whatever you become, I shall be part of you.’ Even here, in the neutral confines of the Vatican City, in the princely room under Raphael’s frescoes, Kamenev, the insidious tormentor, was with him. There was only one escape from him, and that was the one he had learned in the bunker – the projection of the tormented spirit into the arms of the Almighty.

  He threw himself on his knees, buried his face in his hands, and tried to concentrate every faculty of mind and body into the simple act of abandonment.

  His lips commanded no words, but the will seized on the plaint of Christ in Gethsemane. ‘Father, if it be possible, let this Chalice pass.’

  In the end he knew it would pass, but first the agony must be endured. The walls pressed in upon him relentlessly. The ceiling weighed down on him like a leaden vestment. The darkness pressed upon his eyeballs and packed itself inside his skull-case. Every muscle in his body knotted in pain and his teeth chattered as if from the rigors of fever. Then he became deathly cold, and deathly calm, and waited passively for the light that was the beginning of peace and of communion.

  The light was like a dawn seen from a high hill, flooding swiftly into every fold of the landscape, so that the whole pattern of its history was revealed at one glance. The road of his own pilgrimage was there like a scarlet ribbon that stretched four thousand miles from Lvov, in the Ukraine, to Nokolayevsk on the sea of Okhotsk.

  When the war with the Germans was over, he had been named, in spite of his youth, Metropolitan of Lvov, successor to the great and saintly Andrew Szepticky, leader of all the Ruthenian Catholics. Shortly afterwards he had been arested with six other bishops and deported to the eastern limits of Siberia. The six others had died, and he had bee
n left alone, shepherd of a lost flock, to carry the cross on his own shoulders.

  For seventeen years he had been in prison, or in the labour camps. Once only in all that time he had been able to say Mass, with a thimbleful of wine and a crust of white bread. All that he could cling to of doctrine and prayer and sacramental formulae was locked in his own brain. All that he had tried to spend of strength and compassion upon his fellow prisoners, he had had to dredge out of himself and out of the well of the Divine Mercy. Yet his body, weakened by torture, had grown miraculously strong again at slave labour in the mines and on the road gangs, so that even Kamenev could no longer mock him, but was struck with wonder at his survival.

  For Kamenev, his tormentor in the first interrogations, would always come back; and each time he came, he had risen a little higher in the Marxist order. Each time he had seemed a little more friendly as if he were making a slow surrender to respect for his victim.

  Even from the mountain-top of contemplation, he could still see Kamenev cold, sardonic, searching him for the slightest sign of weakness, the slightest hint of surrender. In the beginning he had had to force himself to pray for the jailer. After a while they had come to a bleak kind of brotherhood, even as the one rose higher and the other seemed to sink deeper into a fellowship with the Siberian slaves. In the end, it was Kamenev who had organized his escape – inflicting on him a final irony by giving him the identity of a dead man.