The Shoes of the Fisherman

by Morris West

  That the harmony did exist, he was convinced beyond doubt. That it could be demonstrated he believed also – though in another mode of credence. The pattern was laid but it was not yet complete. He believed he had grasped the main lines of it; but his problem was to explain them in terms intelligible and acceptable. So vast an exposure needed new words, new levels of thought, new analogies and a new boldness in speculation.

  For too long Western thought had been disinclined towards a unified knowledge of the world. Even in the Church the spiral thinking of the Eastern fathers, the traditional Christian gnosis, had been overshadowed by the nominalist and rationalist tradition of Western theologians. Now, if ever, the hope of the world’s survival seemed to rest on a leap out of mere logic into a recognition of new and bolder modes of communication.

  Yet the terror of this first moment in Rome was that under the first impact of this noisy, brawling city, where past and present rubbed elbows with each other at every step, his conviction seemed to be weakening. Rome was so sure of itself, so sophisticated, so sceptical, so certain that everything that had happened or could happen had been weighed and judged beyond dispute – that his own voice must sound small and meaningless.

  A long time ago, from a hut on the fringe of the Gobi desert, he had written, ‘I understand now how little mere travel gives to a man. Unless the spirit expands with the explosion of space about him, then he returns the same man as he went out.’ Here in the Mother House of the Society, where all the rooms looked the same, where everyone was dressed in the same black cassock and attended the same exercises of devotion, and ate at the same table, he wondered whether in truth he had changed at all, and whether the enlargement which he thought to have attained was not a bitter illusion.

  With a gesture of impatience, he stacked the last manuscripts on the desk, closed the door on them, and walked out to view the city which threatened him so vividly.

  A few moments’ walking brought him out on to the broad reach of the Street of Conciliation and in full view of the Piazza of St Peter’s. The slim finger of the obelisk pointed to the sky, and on either hand Bernini’s colonnades swept backward to the sunlit dome of the Basilica. The sudden majesty of it all – the towering cupola, the gigantic figures of windy stone, the rearing masses of columns and pilasters – oppressed him and he felt drunk with the suddenness of sun and space.

  Instinctively he lowered his eyes to the human aspect: the straggle of afternoon tourists, the coachmen gossiping at their horses’ heads, the pedlars with their little boxes of rosaries, the buses and cars, and the slim jets of the fountains. Once again the cogs of memory slipped into gear and he remembered what he had written after his first look at the Grand Canyon of the Colorado…‘I am either unmoved or tremendously troubled by the sight of natural grandeur, or even by a spectacular artifact deserted by its makers. As soon as man appears I am comforted again because man is the only significant between the physical order and the spiritual one. Without man the universe is a howling wasteland contemplated by an unseen Deity.…’ If man deserted even this ageless splendour of St Peter’s, it would decay and rot into a goat-cropping, where tree roots grew out of the stones and animals drank from the muddy basins of the fountains.

  Encouraged, he strolled across the Piazza towards the entrance of the Basilica, pausing to look up at the papal apartments and ask himself what manner of man now dwelt in them. Soon they would meet face to face, and Jean Télémond would have to justify his own life’s work to a man charged to perpetuate the life of the whole Church. Already rumours were rife about the new Pontiff and his challenge to the reactionaries and the extreme traditionalists in the Vatican. There were those who saw him as the prime mover of a second Renaissance within the Church, a new and unexpected link between the logical West and the illuminated East.

  If the rumours were true then there was hope that Jean Télémond might be freed at last from his exile. If not…

  On the opposite side of the Piazza lay the Palace of the Holy Office, where the Hounds of God kept watch over the Deposit of Faith. To them Jean Télémond was known already. Once a priest came under their scrutiny he was never forgotten, and everything he wrote must pass through their hands before it could be printed. Cardinal Leone was still there, too, he of the white mane and the cold eye and the uncertain temper. It was an open secret that Leone had small liking for the Father General of the Jesuits and that he favoured more the opinions and the manners of the older orders in the Church. Télémond wondered what had prompted Semmering to risk the displeasure of the old lion by bringing back to Rome a man of suspect opinions.

  There were politics inside the Church as well as out of it. There were questing minds and reluctant ones. There were blind traditionalists and too eager innovators. There were men who sacrificed order to growth, and others who reached so boldly for change that they held it back for centuries. There were rank pietists and fierce ascetics. There were administrators and apostles – and God help any luckless fellow who was caught between the millstones.

  There was only one refuge; one committal which he had made a long time ago. A man could walk only the path he saw at his own feet or that which was pointed out to him by a lawful superior. After that he was in the hands of God…And their compass was more generous, their hold more reassuring, than the hands of any man.

  In spite of the warmth, he shivered and quickened his steps towards the interior of the Basilica. Looking neither to right nor left, he walked down the echoing nave towards the sanctuary, and then knelt for a long time praying at the tomb of Peter.

  In the small cold hours between midnight and dawn, George Faber lay wakeful and grappled with his new situation. Beside him Chiara lay sleeping like a child, satiated and tranquil. Never in the months of their loving had he experienced a passion so tumultuous, a mating so abandoned, as on this night. Every sense had quickened, every emotion had surged up and spent itself in a climax of union so intense that death itself had seemed only a whisper away. Never had he felt so much a man. Never had Chiara shown herself so generously a woman. Never had speech been stifled so swiftly by the outpourings of tenderness and the transports of desire…Never in all his life had he been so suddenly overwhelmed by the sadness of the afterward.

  When their loving was done Chiara had given a small contented sigh, buried her face in the pillow and lapsed immediately into sleep. It was as if she had left him without warning and without farewell to embark on a private journey – as if having touched the limit of love he were left solitary to face the darkness and the terrors of an endless night.

  The terrors were more real than they had ever been before. For so rich a pleasuring, some time, somehow, a price must be paid. And he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would be the one to pay it. What he had felt this night was a springtime flowering which might never repeat itself, because for him it was late summer, late harvest, with the tax man waiting at the gate to claim his due.

  For Chiara life was still her debtor. Payment had been deferred too long and her body was greedy for the tribute. For himself, a man on the wrong side of forty, the case was far other. He knew where the price tags were hidden. He knew the needs that followed the brisk satisfaction of the act of union: the need of continuity, the need of children to be born of the seed so richly spent in lust or love, the need of quiet harbour and a morning sunlight after the storms of the night.

  Even as he thought about it, Chiara stirred and turned towards him for warmth. It was a gesture made in a dream but it was more eloquent than words. Until her marriage to Calitri she had been protected at every step – by rich and doting parents, by cosseting nuns, by the traditions of her class. When her marriage had failed she had found another refuge, and now she had come to rest in his arms to forgetfulness in his practised embrace. So long as he held her strongly and securely she would stay. But the moment his grip slackened or his courage faltered, she would slip away.

  The strange thing was that she saw nothing one-sided in the ba
rgain. She had given him her body, she had given him her reputation; what else was there to demand? Had he told her, she would never have understood. Married and the mother of children she would grow in the end to maturity, but in this halfway state she would always be the girl-woman, half delighted by the adventure, half afraid of its consequences, but never wholly understanding that the debt of love was not all paid in the coin-age of the flesh.

  For her even tonight’s encounter, rich, ruinous and wonderful, was a kind of flight – and he was too old, too wise, or too calculating to make it with her. Instinctively he turned, threw his arms about her and drew her to him, wondering even as he did so why the miraculous oneness of the flesh should last so short a time, and why in the end two lovers must lie so often and so long like islands in a dark sea. Her slack hand lay across his body, her hair brushed his lips, her perfume surrounded him. But sleep would not come, and he rehearsed over and over again their dinner-table talk, when he had told her of Campeggio’s advice, and where it might lead the pair of them…

  She had listened attentively, chin cupped in her hands, her dark eyes bright with eagerness, intrigued by the prospect of a plot.

  ‘Of course, darling! It’s so simple. Why didn’t we think of it before? There must be twenty people in Rome who’d be happy to give evidence against Corrado. All we’ve got to do is find them.’

  ‘Do you know any of them, Chiara?’

  ‘Not really. Corrado was always fairly discreet with me. Still, I’m sure if we talked around we’d get a whole list of names.’

  ‘The one thing we mustn’t do,’ he told her firmly, ‘is talk around. If word gets out about what we’re doing, we’re finished. Don’t you understand? This is a conspiracy.’

  ‘George, darling, don’t be so melodramatic. All we’re trying to do is get justice for me. You couldn’t call that conspiracy, surely.’

  ‘It wears the colour of it. And in the eyes of the Church, and civil law, it comes to the same thing. There are only two things we can do – employ a professional investigator or I’ll have to do the investigation myself. If we use an investigator it will cost me more money than I can afford, and in the end he could sell me out to your husband. If I do the job myself…I’m immediately embroiled up to the neck.’

  She stared at him, wide-eyed and innocent. ‘Are you afraid, George?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Of my husband?’

  ‘Of his influence, yes.’

  ‘Don’t you want to marry me, darling?’

  ‘You know I do. But once we’re married we have to live. If I lose my reputation in Rome I can’t work here any longer. We’d have to go back to America.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind that…Besides, what about my reputation? I didn’t throw that in your face, did I?’

  ‘Please, Chiara! Please try to understand this isn’t a matter of morals, it’s a matter of authority, professional status…the credit I live by. If I’m held up as a common blackmailer…where do I start again? This is the double standard, sweetheart. You can sleep around as much as you like. You can make a million by exploiting the poor. But if you pass a bad cheque for ten dollars or breach the code of professional ethics, you’re dead and buried and there’s no coming back. That’s the way the world is, rough as guts. Do what you want. Take what you want. But if you trip – God help you! That’s what we have to fate – together.’

  ‘If I’m not afraid, George, why should you be?’

  ‘I’ve got to be sure that you know what’s involved.’

  ‘I wonder if you really know what’s involved for me. A woman needs to be married, George. She needs to have a home and children, and a man who belongs to her. What we have is wonderful, but it isn’t enough. If you won’t fight for it, George, what can I do?’

  …And there it was, the challenge that had taken him at one stride to her arms – a challenge to his virility, a challenge to the one folly he had never indulged – to count the world well lost for love. But George Faber was a man of his own world. He knew himself too well to believe that he could live without it. He had made the gesture, to be sure. He had flung his cap at the whirling windmills, but when the time came to assault them with sword and lance, how would he be then? A knight in shining armour with his lady’s favour on his helm…? Or an ageing Quixote on a spavined nag, an object of laughter for men and angels?

  Valerio Cardinal Rinaldi sat on the terrace of his villa and watched the day decline towards the sea. The folds of the land were full of purple shadows, the hills were touched with gold and bronze, and the rooftops of village and farmhouse shone russet in the glow. A small breeze stirred across the land, carrying the scent of lilac and roses, and mown grass. The sound of childish laughter rose from the garden below, where his niece’s daughter played among the Orphic marbles.

  This was the good time – the hour between day and dusk, when the eye was rested from the harshness of the sun and the spirit was not yet touched by the melancholy of twilight. The cicadas were still, and the crickets had not begun their mournful chirping. He picked up the book that lay on his lap and began to read the crabbed Greek characters which hid the magical words of Euripides:

  And O for that quiet garden by the Western sea

  Where the daughters of Evening sing

  Under the golden apple-tree;

  Where the bold sailor wandering

  Finds the Ocean-god has barred

  His Westward path over the purple waste!

  Where huge Atlas lives to guard

  The solemn frontiers of the sky!

  Where in Zeus’ palace fountains of ambrosial wine

  Flow by the festal couch divine,

  While holy Earth heaps high

  Her fruits of rarest taste

  To bless the immortal feast with bountiful supply!

  He was a lucky man and he knew it. It was given to few to arrive at eminence and then survive it with a strong heart and a good digestion to enjoy the quiet garden where the daughters of Evening sang. It was given to few in his profession to hear the voices of children in his own orchard close, to have them cluster about his knee for a story, to give them a kiss and an old priest’s blessing at bedtime.

  Others he knew had died before their time. Others again survived painfully, with blear eyes or palsied limbs or slow cankers, on the charity of the Church. Some lapsed into senility or a poverty of possession and spirit. But he sat here in the splendour of a fading day – prosperous, independent, the last of the princely Cardinals of the Church. He had few regrets, because regret had always seemed a vanity and alien to his nature. He was ready for retirement – prepared for it, too, by a curious and scholarly mind and a diversity of friendships and interests. He did not fear death because in the normal course it was still a long way off, and he had lived an orderly life, investing his talents as best he knew for the service of the Church.

  Yet sometimes – in the twilight hour, in the wakeful nights of an old man, or when he watched the peasants bending over the tillage of his estate – the poignant question presented itself: why have I so much? Why am I endowed so richly and others in so niggardly a fashion? Or is this all a divine irony whose point will be revealed only in eternity?

  Old Euripides had raised the same question and yet answered it no better:

  They wander over the waves, visit strange cities,

  Seeking a world of wealth,

  All alike sure of achievement; yet

  One man’s aim misses the lucky moment,

  Another finds fortune in his lap.

  And there was another question still. What did one do with all this fruitage of life? Toss it away, like little Brother Francis, and walk the world singing the praise of Lady Poverty? It was too late in the day for that. The grace of abandonment had passed him by – if, indeed, it had ever been offered. For better or for worse he was saddled with the career he had built.

  He was neither gluttonous nor spendthrift. He was educating his sister’s children, and a pair of needy s
tudents for the priesthood. When he died half his wealth would go to his family, the other half to the Church. The Pontiff himself had approved the disposition. For what then should be reproach himself? For nothing, it seemed, except, perhaps, a certain mediocrity of spirit, a need of his nature to have the best of both worlds. And yet God Almighty had made them both, the seen and the unseen, for man’s habitation and benefit. He had made man too, and it was the nature of His mercy to exact no more than a just return on the talent He had given to each one.

  Valerio Rinaldi was wise enough not to rejoice too freely in his good fortune. Yet he could not weep because there was nothing to weep for. So he sighed a little as the shadows drew closer over the land and went on reading the story of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus:

  To go into the dark! Now let me die, and pass

  To the world under the earth, into the joyless dark!

  Since you, dearer than all, are at my side no longer,

  And the death you have dealt is more than the death

  that has swallowed you.

  When twilight came at last, he closed his book and went in to say evening prayers with his household, and then prepare himself for dinner with Cardinal Leone.

  The white-haired inquisitor was growling and crusty as ever, but he softened instantly at the entry of the children. When they bobbed before him, three dark-haired little maids, to receive his blessing, his eyes clouded and his hands trembled as he laid them on their foreheads. When the children backed away respectfully, he drew them to him and talked gravely as any grandfather about their lessons and their dolls and the momentous event of a day at the zoo. Rinaldi smiled secretly to see the old lion tamed so swiftly. He was even more surprised when the man who was the guardian of so many mysteries fumbled his way through a jigsaw puzzle and begged for time for the children to finish it with him.