by Morris West
But even a tree did not always grow at the same rate or with the same profusion of leaf and flower. There were times when it seemed that the sap was sparse, or the ground less nourishing, so that the gardener must come and open up the soil and inject new food into the roots.
For a long time now, Rudolf Semmering had been troubled by the reports that came to him from all over the world, of a slackening of the influence of his Society and of the Church. More students were drifting away from religious practice in the first years after college. There were fewer candidates for the priesthood and for religious orders. The missionary drive seemed to lack impetus. Pulpit preaching had declined into formality – and this in an age when the whole world lived under the shadow of atomic destruction, and men were asking more poignantly than ever before to what end they were made, and why they should breed children into so dubious a future.
In his younger days in the Society, he had been trained as an historian, and all his later experience had confirmed him in the cyclic and climatic view of history. All his years in the Church had shown him that it grew and change with the human pattern in spite of – or perhaps because of – its perennial conformity with the Divine One. There were seasons of mediocrity and times of decadence. There were centuries of brilliance when genius seemed to spring from every lane and alley. There were times when the human spirit, burdened too long by material existence, leapt from its prison and went shouting free and fiery across the rooftops of the world, so that men heard thunders out of a forgotten heaven and saw once more the trailing splendours of divinity.
When he looked up at the great altar and saw the celebrant, moving stiffly under sixty pounds of gilded vestments, he asked himself whether this might not be the forerunner of such a time. Remembering the Pope’s plea for men with winged feet and burning hearts, he wondered whether this were not the first offering he should make out of the resources of the Society – a man who could speak the old truths in a fresh mode and walk as a new apostle in the strange world that had been born out of the mushroom cloud.
He had the man, he was sure of it. Even in the Society he was little known because most of his life had been spent in strange places, on projects that seemed to have little relation to matters of the spirit. Yet now it appeared from his writing and his correspondence that he was ready to be used otherwise.
His meditation over, Rudolf Semmering, the spare methodical man, took out his notebook and made a memorandum to send a cable to Djakarta. Then from the dome of the Basilica the trumpets broke out in a long melodious fanfare, and he lifted his eyes to see Kiril the Pontiff raise above his head the body of the God whom he represented on earth.
On the night of his coronation, Kiril Lakota dressed himself in the black cassock and the platter hat of a Roman priest and walked alone out of the Angelic Gate to survey his new bishopric. The guards at the gate hardly glanced at him, being accustomed to the daily procession of Monsignori in and out of the Vatican. He smiled to himself and hid his scarred face behind a handkerchief, as he hurried down the Borgo Angelica towards the Castle of Sant’ Angelo.
It was a few minutes after ten. The air was still warm and dusty, and the streets were alive with traffic and the passage of pedestrians. He strode out freely, filling his lungs with the new air of freedom, excited as a schoolboy who had just broken bounds.
On the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo he stopped and leaned on the parapet, staring down at the grey waters of the Tiber, which had mirrored for five thousand years the follies of emperors, the cavalcade of Popes and princes, and the dozen births and deaths of the Eternal City.
It was his city now. It belonged to him as it could never belong to anyone else but the successor of Peter. Without the Papacy it could die again and crumble into a provincial relic, because all its resource was in its history, and the history of the Church was half the history of Rome. More than this, Kiril the Russian was now Bishop of the Romans – their shepherd, their teacher, their monitor in matters of the spirit.
A long time ago it was the Romans who elected the Pope. Even now they claimed to own him; and, in a sense, they did. He was anchored to their soil, locked within their walls until the day he died. They might love him, as he hoped they would. They might hate him as they had many of his predecessors. They would make jokes about him as they had done for centuries, calling the hoodlums of the town figli di papa, sons of the Pope, and blaming him for the shortcomings of his Cardinals and his clergy. Provoke them enough and they might even try to murder him and throw his body in the Tiber. But he was theirs and they were his, though half of them never set foot in a church, and many of them carried cards which showed them to be Kamenev’s men and not the Pope’s. His mission was to the world, but his home was here, and, like any other householder, he must get along with his neighbours as best he could.
He crossed the bridge and plunged into the network of lanes and alleys between the Street of the Holy Spirit and the Via Zanardelli, and within five minutes the city had engulfed him. The buildings rose on either hand, grey, pitted, and weather-stained. A pale lamp glimmered at the shrine of a dusty Madonna. An alley cat, scrabbling in a heap of refuse, turned and spat at him. A pregnant woman leaned in a doorway under the coat of arms of some forgotten prince. A youth on a clattering Vespa shouted as he passed. A pair of prostitutes, gossiping under a street lamp, giggled when they saw him and one of them made the sign against the evil eye. It was a trivial incident, but it made a deep impression on him. They had told him of this old Roman custom, but this was the first time he had seen it. A priest wore skirts. He was neither man nor woman, but an odd creature who probably was mal’ occhio. It was better to be sure than sorry and show him the horns.
A moment later he broke out into a narrow square at whose angle there was a bar with tables set on the sidewalk. One of the tables was occupied by a family group, munching sweet pastries and chattering in harsh Roman dialect; the other was free, so he sat down and ordered an Espresso. The service was perfunctory, and the other guests ignored him. Rome was full of clerics, and one more or less made no matter.
As he sipped the bitter coffee, a wizened fellow with broken shoes sidled up to sell him a newspaper. He fumbled in his cassock for change, then remembered with a start that he had forgotten to bring any money. He could not even pay for his drink. For a moment he felt humiliated and embarrassed; then he saw the humour of the situation and decided to make the best of it. He signalled the bartender and explained his situation, turning out his pockets as evidence of good faith. The fellow made a surly mouth and turned away, muttering an imprecation on priests who sucked the blood of the poor.
Kiril caught at his sleeve and drew him back. ‘No, no! You misunderstand me. I want to pay and I shall pay.’
The newsvendor and the family waited silently for the beginning of a Roman comedy.
‘Beh!’ The barman made a sweeping gesture of contempt. ‘So you want to pay! But when and with what? How do I know who you are or where you come from?’
‘If you like,’ said Kiril with a smile, ‘I’ll leave you my name and address.’
‘So I’m to go trotting all over Rome to pick up fifty lire?’
‘I’ll send it to you or bring it myself.’
‘Meantime, who’s out of pocket? Me! You think I have so much that I can buy coffee for every priest in Rome?’
They had their laugh then and they were satisfied. The father of the family fished in his pocket and tossed a few coins expansively on the table. ‘Here! Let me pay for it, Padre. And for the paper too.’
‘Thank you…I’m grateful. But I would like to repay you.’
‘Nothing, Padre, nothing!’ Paterfamilias waved a tolerant hand. ‘And you must forgive Giorgio here. He’s having a bad time with his wife.’
Giorgio grunted unhappily and shoved the coins into his pocket. ‘My mother wanted me to be a priest. Maybe she was right at that.’
‘Priests have their problems, too,’ said Kiril mildly. ‘Even the Pope has a few, I�
��m told.’
‘The Pope! Now there’s a funny one.’ This from the paper vendor, who, being a seller of news, claimed the right to comment upon it as well. ‘They’ve really cooked us beautifully this time. A Russian in the Vatican! Now there’s a story for you!’ He spread the paper on the table and pointed dramatically to the portrait of the Pontiff which covered nearly half the front page. ‘Now tell me if he isn’t an odd one to foist on us Romans. Look at that face and the…’ He broke off and stared at the bearded visage of the newcomer. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Dio! You look just like him.’
The others craned over his shoulder, staring at the portrait.
‘It’s queer,’ said Giorgio, ‘very queer. You’re almost his double.’
‘I am the Pope,’ he told them, and they gaped at as if he were a ghost.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Giorgio. ‘You look like him. Sure! But you’re siting here, without a lira in your pocket, drinking coffee, and it’s not very good coffee at that.’
‘It’s better than I get in the Vatican.’
Then seeing their confusion and their trouble, he asked for a pencil and wrote their names and their addresses on the back of a bar bill. ‘I’H tell you what I’ll do. I’ll send each of you a letter and ask you to come to lunch with me in the Vatican. I’ll pay you back the money then too.’
‘You wouldn’t joke with us, Padre?’ asked the newsvendor anxiously.
‘No. I wouldn’t joke with you. You’ll hear from me.’
He stood up, folded the newspaper, and shoved it into the pocket of his cassock. Then he laid his hands on the old man’s head and murmured a benediction. ‘There now. Tell the world you’ve had a blessing from the Pope.’ He made the sign of the cross over the little group. ‘And all of you, tell your friends that you have seen me and that I didn’t have enough money for coffee.’
They watched him, stupefied, and he strode away, a dark, gaunt figure but oddly triumphant from his first encounter with his people.
It was a petty triumph at best, but he prayed desperately that it might be the presage of greater ones. If Creation and Redemption meant anything at all, they meant an affair of love between the Maker and His creatures. If not, then all existence was a horrible irony unworthy of Omnipotence. Love was an affair of the heart. Its language was the language of the heart. The gestures of love were the simplicities of common intercourse, and not the baroque rituals of ecclesiastical theatre. The tragedies of love were the tragedies of a waiter with sore feet and a wife who didn’t understand him. The terror of love was that the face of the Beloved was hidden always behind a veil so that when one lifted one’s eyes for hope, one saw only the official face of priest or Pope or politician.
Once, for a short space in a narrow land, God had shown His face to men in the person of His Son, and they had known Him for a loving shepherd, a healer of the sick, a nourisher of the hungry. Then He had hidden Himself again, leaving His Church for an extension of Himself across the centuries, leaving, too, His vicars and His priesthood to show themselves other Christs for the multitude. If they disdained the commerce of simple men and forgot the language of the heart, then, all too soon, they were talking to themselves…
The alleys closed around him again, and he found himself wishing that he could peer beyond their blank doors and their blind windows into the lives of their inhabitants. He felt a strange momentary nostalgia for the camps and the prisons, where he had breathed the breath of his fellows in misfortune and wakened at night to the muttering of their dreams.
He was halfway along a reeking lane when he found himself caught between a closed door and a parked automobile. At the same moment the door opened and a man stepped out, jostling him against the panels of the car.
The man muttered an apology and then, catching sight of the cassock, stopped in his tracks. He said curtly, ‘There’s a man dying up there. Maybe you can do more for him than I…’
‘Who are you?’
‘A doctor. They never call us until it’s too late.’
‘Where do I find him?’
‘On the second floor…Be a little careful. He’s very infectious. TB – secondary pneumonia and haemothorax.’
‘Isn’t there anyone looking after him?’
‘Oh yes. There’s a young woman. She’s very capable – better than two of us at a time like this. You’d better hurry. I give him an hour at most.’
Without another word, he turned and hurried down the alley, his footsteps clattering on the cobbles.
Kiril the Pontiff pushed open the door and went in. The building was one of those decayed palaces with a littered courtyard and a stairway that smelled of garbage and stale cooking. The treads cracked under his feet, and the banister was greasy to the touch.
On the second landing he came on a small knot of people huddled around a weeping woman. They gave him a sidelong, uneasy stare and when he questioned them, one of the men jerked a thumb in the direction of the open door.
‘He’s in there.’
‘Has he seen a priest?’
The man shrugged and turned away, and the wailing of the woman went on, unchecked.
The apartment was a large, airless room, cluttered as a junk shop and full of the morbid smell of disease. In one comer was a large matrimonial bed where a man lay, fleshless and shrunken, under a stained counterpane. His face was unshaven, his thin hair clung damp about his forehead, and his head rolled from side to side on the piled pillows. His breathing was short, painful, and full of rales, and a small bloody foam spilled out of his mouth.
Beside the bed sat a girl, incongruously well groomed for such a place, who wiped the sweat from his forehead and cleansed his lips with a linen swab.
When Kiril entered she looked up, and he saw a young face, strangely serene, and a pair of dark, questioning eyes.
He said awkwardly, ‘I met the doctor downstairs. He thought I might be able to do something.’
The girl shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. He’s in deep shock. I don’t think he’ll last very long.’
Her educated voice and her calm professional manner intrigued him. He asked again, ‘Are you a relative?’
‘No. The people around here know me. They send for me when they’re in trouble.’
‘Are you a nurse, then?’
‘I used to be.’
‘Has he seen a priest?’
For the first time she smiled. ‘I doubt it. His wife’s Jewish and he carries a card for the Communist Party. Priests aren’t very popular in this quarter.’
Once again Kiril the Pontiff was reminded how far he was from being a simple pastor. A priest normally carried in his pocket a small capsule of the Holy Oils for the administration of the last sacraments. He had none, and here a man was dying before his face. He moved to the bed, and the girl made place for him while she repeated the doctor’s warning:
‘Just watch yourself. He’s very infectious.’
Kiril the Pontiff took the slack, moist hand in his own, and then bent so that his lips touched the ear of the dying man. He began to repeat slowly and distinctly the words of the Act of Repentance. When it was done he urged quietly, ‘If you can hear me, press my hand. If you cannot do that, tell God in your heart you’re sorry. He’s waiting for you with love, it needs only a thought to take you to Him.’
Over and over again he repeated the exhortation while the man’s head lolled restlessly, and the fading breath gurgled in his gullet.
Finally the girl said, ‘No use, Father. He’s too far gone to hear you.’
Kiril the Pontiff raised his hand and pronounced the absolution. ‘Deinde ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis…I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’
Then he knelt by the bed and began to pray passionately for the soul of this shabby voyager who had begun his last lonely pilgrimage while he himself was being crowned in the Basilica of St Peter.
In ten minutes the little tragedy was over,
and he made the prayers for the departed spirit while the girl closed the staring eyes and composed the body decently in the attitude of death. Then she said firmly:
‘We should go, Father. Neither of us will be welcome now.’
‘I would like to help the family,’ said Kiril the Pontiff.
‘We should go.’ She was very definite about it. ‘They can cope with death. It’s only living that defeats them.’
When they walked out of the room, she announced the news bluntly to the little group. ‘He’s dead. If you need help call me.’
Then she turned away and walked down the stairs with Kiril at her heel. The high mourning cry of the woman followed them like a malediction.
A moment later they were alone in the empty street. The girl fumbled in her handbag for a cigarette and lit it with an unsteady hand. She leaned back against the car and smoked a few moments in silence. Then she said abruptly, ‘I try to fight against it, but it always shakes me. They’re so helpless, these people.’
‘At the end, we’re all helpless,’ said Kiril soberly. ‘Why do you do this sort of thing?’
‘It’s a long story. I’d rather not talk about it just now. I’m driving home – can I drop you off somewhere?’
It was on the tip of his tongue to refuse; then he checked himself and asked, ‘Where do you live?’
‘I have an apartment near the Palatine, behind the Foro Romano.’
‘Then let me ride with you as far as the Foro. I’ve never seen it at night – and you look as though you need some company.’
She gave him an odd glance, then without a word opened the door of the car. ‘Let’s go then. I’ve had more than enough for one night.’
She drove fast and recklessly until they broke out into the free space where the Forum lay, bleak and ghostly, under the rising moon. She stopped the car. They got out together and walked over to the railing, beyond which the pillars of the Temple of Venus heaved themselves up against the stars. In the terse fashion which seemed habitual to her, she challenged him: