by Morris West
‘The difference between you and me, Kiril, is that I am dedicated to the possible while you are dedicated to a nonsense…“God wishes that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of truth.”…That’s what you preach, isn’t it? Yet you know it’s folly. A sublime folly, I agree. But still – a folly…It doesn’t happen. It won’t happen. It can’t happen. What is your heaven but a carrot to make the donkey trot? What is your hell but a rubbish heap for all your failures – God’s failures, my friend ! And you say He’s omnipotent. Where do you go from here? Do you come with me to achieve the small possible or go chasing after the great impossible?…I know what you want to say: God makes all possible. Don’t you see? I am God to you at this moment because you can’t even move from that chair until I give the order…Here! God gives you a little gift. A cigarette…’
He had taken the cigarette, he remembered, and smoked it gratefully while his tired mind grappled with the paradox which Kamenev had presented to him.…The little gain or the great loss? Which? The limited wisdom or the monstrous folly? He had chosen the folly, and been consigned again to stripes and starvation and solitude to purge it out of him.
And now the paradox had reversed itself. Kamenev was faced with a situation impossible to resolve, while Kiril, the abject prisoner, stood in the shoes of God to whom all things were possible.
For a long time he sat pondering the gigantic humour of the situation. Then he lifted the receiver and called Goldoni in the Secretariat of State.
‘I’m reading your report. I’m impressed. I’m grateful. I’m also very worried. Now tell me something…If I wanted to get a message to the Premier of Russia – a private message – how would I do it?’
EXTRACT FROM THE SECRET MEMORIALS OF KIRIL I PONT. MAX.
…It is well that I have kept a sense of humour; otherwise I should be harassed to madness by the consequences of my most trivial actions. When a man in my position asks a simple question the whole Vatican begins to flutter like a nest of birds. If I make the smallest motion it is as if I were trying to shake the foundations of the world. I can only do what I believe to be right but there are always twenty people with as many reasons why I should not move at all…And I am a fool if I do not at least listen to their opinions.
When I proposed to Goldoni that I should make a pastoral visitation of the whole of Italy, and see on the spot the problems of my local clergy, he was aghast. Such a thing had not been done for centuries. It would create problems with the Italian government. It would raise God knows what questions of protocol and logistics and local ceremony. He pointed out that I was a prince and that the paying of princely honours would impose hardship on poor and depressed areas. I had to be very firm with him on this point and tell him that I am first and foremost a pastor, successor to a fisherman who was executed like a common criminal in the City of the Emperors. Even so we have not yet agreed how and when I shall make this journey; but I am determined to do it before very long.
I want to make other journeys too. I want to cross the frontiers of Europe and the oceans of the world, to see my people – where and how they live, and the burdens they carry on their journey to eternity…This, I know, is a project not easily accomplished. It will involve opposition from governments, a risk to myself and to the administration of the Holy See…But it would, I believe, restate as nothing else could the Apostolic mission of the Pontiff…For the present, however, I have a more pressing concern: to establish and maintain a personal contact with Kamenev.
Immediately after my telephone call, Goldoni came rushing across from the Secretariat of State to talk with me. He is a shrewd man, much practised in diplomacy, and I have great respect for his opinion. His first counsel was a negative one. He could see no possible ground of communication with those who preach an atheistic heresy and who are engaged in an active persecution of the faithful…He made the point, too, that all those who are members of the Communist Party are automatically excommunicated from the Church. I could not help remarking that in the twentieth century excommunication was a blunt weapon and very possibly an outmoded one…He offered then the very valid caution that even a private dialogue with the Kremlin might constitute a diplomatic affront to Western governments.
I could not disagree with him, but I am obsessed by the belief that the prime mission of the Church is a pastoral and not a diplomatic one. I showed Goldoni the letter which Kamenev had written to me, and he understood my anxiety to begin some kind of conversation. Goldoni gave me, however, another warning: any step that I take may be misinterpreted as a sign of weakness and may be used as a propaganda weapon by the Communists…
Goldoni is right, of course, but I do not believe he is wholly right. The truth has a virtue of its own; the good act has a virtue of its own, and we must never discuss the fructifying power of the Almighty…
I have never believed that everyone who comes to Rome must come there by way of Canossa. This, I think, has been one of our historic errors. The good shepherd seeks out the lost sheep and carries them home on his shoulder. He does not demand that they come crawling back, draggle-tailed and remorseful, with a penance cord around their necks…It was St Augustine who said, ‘It takes a big mind to make a heresy.’ And there are noble minds and noble spirits from whom the gift of faith is withheld and for whom salvation comes by way of the uncovenanted mercy of God. With all such we must deal in patience, tolerance and brotherly charity, humbled always by the gratuitous mercy of God in our own regard. For them we must exercise in a special fashion the ministerium of the faith and not insist too harshly upon its magistracy.
So, finally, Goldoni and I agreed on a compromise. We would try to get a message to Kamenev to tell him that I have received his letter and that I have nothing but the most friendly disposition towards him and towards my own people. The problem was, of course, how to deliver the message, but Goldoni in his subtle fashion proposed an amusing solution. A South American diplomat who has social contacts in the Kremlin will seek an opportunity to speak with the Premier at a cocktail party and tell him that a friend of his would like to talk more about the growing of sunflowers…In this way neither one of us will be compromised and the next effective move will be for Kamenev to make. God knows where the move may point, but I must pray and rest in hope…
It is curious but I am more deeply perturbed by the case which Leone has transmitted to me from the Holy Office: a priest accused of soliciting in the confessional, who is now in danger of being cited in a civil paternity suit…This sort of scandal is, of course, sporadic in the Church, but I am troubled by the spectacle of a soul in a mortal sickness.
There are men who should never be priests at all. The system of seminary training is designed to filter out unsuitable candidates, but there are always the odd ones that slip through the net. There are those whose sole hope of a normal and fruitful life is in the married state; yet the discipline of the Western Church imposes on all priests a perpetual celibacy.
It is within my power as the Pontiff to dispense this unfortunate man from his vows and permit him to marry. My heart urges me to do it, and yet I dare not. To do so would be to create a precedent which might do irreparable damage to clerical discipline and to a tradition which has its roots in Christ’s teaching on the state of dedicated virginity.
I have the power, yes, but I must use it to build and not to demolish what has been given into my keeping. I am aware that I may be increasing the danger of damnation of this unhappy soul. I want to deal with him as mercifully as I can, but I dare not, for one soul, put ten thousand others in jeopardy…
The Keys of the Kingdom are given into my hands; but I do not hold them absolutely. They are mine in trust under law…There are times – and this is one of them – when I wish I could take upon myself the sins of all the world and offer my life in expiation for them. I know, however, that I am only a man, and that the expiation was made once for all on Calvary. Through the Church I administer the fruits of redemption. I cannot change the covenant of God
with man which governs their distribution…
It is late and my letter to the Church is still unfinished. Tonight I am working on the text, ‘A chosen generation, a kingly priesthood’. A priest is only a man, and we have only a few short years to train him for the burden of kingship…To those who stumble under its weight, we must extend the maternal love of the Church. For them we must invoke the patronage of the Virgin Mother of all men…
It is warm tonight. Summer is coming in, but there are those who walk in a lifetime winter, lost and alone. Let me not fail them who have felt the winter in my own bones, who have cried at night for love in a loveless prison…
CHAPTER SIX
THE PRINCESS Maria Caterina Daria Poliziano was a small, grey woman who admitted to seventy-five years and was prepared to sue anyone bold enough to dispute her accounting.
Her hair was thin, her skin was shrunken. Her sharp beak and her black agate eyes gave her the look of a mummified eagle dug from some ancient tomb. But the Princess Maria-Rina was very far from dead and was, on the contrary, a very formidable old lady.
She kept an apartment in Rome – which she rarely used ‘because all Romans are beginning to look like commercial travellers’ – a villa in Fiesole, where she held habitual court, estates in Sicily, farms in the Abruzzi, and holdings in beet and rice in the Romagna and along the valley of the Po. Her portfolio, begun by her father and augmented by the fortunate deaths of two husbands, was full of the fattest stocks in Italy, and she traded them as shrewdly as a gipsy tinker.
Her bony finger stirred every political pudding north of Lazio, and those whispers of power which did not begin in her drawing-room circulated there, inevitably, before they blew into a wind. A summons to her table was either a warrant for execution or a promise of promotion. And more than one too bold politico had braved her anger only to find himself running out of funds, favour, and votes at the next election.
Her dress was antique, her manner more tyrannical than regal. She drank Scotch whisky and smoked Egyptian cigarettes in a long gold holder. She had a scandalous tongue, a dangerous memory – and an unexpected discretion. She despised the old and courted the young like a crotchety but humorous vampire who could pay richly for youthful blood. In her villa garden, among the fountains and the cypresses, and the avenues of weathered marbles, it seemed, in very truth, as if time stood still at her aged, but imperious bidding.
Her favourite resort was an arbour hung with maturing grapes and fronting a small fountain where an antique Leda was courted by languid swans to the sound of water music. In a younger time the Princess Maria-Rina had been courted there as well – now, instead, she bargained with the legacies of her youth: power, money, and prestige. Once a month the Archbishop of Florence came to drink coffee with her. Once a week someone from the Quirinale came to lunch and made a private report from the Premier. Where the dandies of another age had bent over her small hand, now the bankers and the stockbrokers came to pay her a reluctant homage, and a tribute of secret confidence.
She was sitting there now, this summer mourning, reading a blunt lecture to a Minister of the Republic, her nephew, Corrado Calitri:
‘You’re a fool, boy! You come a certain way and you think it is the end of the journey. You want to sit down and play with the flowers. It’s delightful, I’m sure, but it isn’t politics.’
Calitri’s pale classic face flushed, and he put down his coffee cup with a clatter. ‘Now listen, Aunt, you know that isn’t true. I do my work. I do it very well. Only yesterday the Premier was good enough to say…’
‘Was good enough to say!’ Her old voice crackled with contempt. ‘Why should you care what he says? What is praise, anyway, but breakfast for the prisoner before they cut his throat? You disappoint me, Corrado. You’re a baby. You can’t see past your nose.’
‘What do you expect me to see, Aunt?’
‘The future!’ said the Princess crisply. ‘Twelve months from now when the election comes. Are you prepared for it?’
‘Of course I am. The funds are there. My committees are working day and night, even now. I don’t think there is any doubt I shall be re-elected…I think the party will have a reduced majority. We’ll have to open out a little further in coalition with the Left, but even so I’m assured of a seat in the Cabinet.’
‘And that’s the end of the story?’ Her dark agate eyes bored into him; her withered lips twitched into a smile of pity.
Calitri shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘Do you see another ending, Aunt?’
‘Yes!’ Her old hands reached across the table and fastened like talons on his wrist. ‘You have twelve months left to plan it, but if you plan aright, you can lead the country.’ He stared at her gape-mouthed and she gave a high, cackling laugh. ‘Never underrate your old aunt, my boy. When you’re as old as I am you’ve learned to see round corners and I tell you without a doubt you can lead the Republic…’
‘You really believe that?’ Calitri’s voice was almost a whisper.
‘I never tell fairy tales, my boy – and I gave up listening to them a long while ago. At lunch today you will meet some people who will show you how you can do it. There will be a certain amount of’ – she rubbed her fingertips together in the gesture that signified money – ‘but that part we can handle. I want to talk to you about something else. There’s another price to be paid, and you’re the only one who can pay it.’
Corrado Calitri cocked a shrewd eye at his relative. ‘And what is the price, Aunt?’
She fixed him with a beady and predatory eye and told him.
‘You’ll have to clean up your life and do it quickly. Get rid of this bunch of pimps and playboys that you hang around with. Push this marriage business through the courts. Get rid of Chiara. She’s no good to you. And get yourself married again, quickly and quietly. I’ll find you a woman who can manage you. You need a strong one – not a dewy-eyed schoolgirl.’
‘I won’t do it!’ Corrado Calitri exploded into sudden anger. ‘I won’t be bought and sold like a piece of merchandise!’
He heaved himself out of his chair and began to pace restlessly up and down the flagged pathway between the arbour and the fountain, while the old princess watched him with a calm and calculating eye.
When his anger had spent itself a little, she went to him and linked her arm in his and led him slowly round the circuit of the villa plantations. She was a different woman now. She made no effort to tease or provoke him, but talked soberly and quietly as if he were her son:
‘…I told you I don’t listen to fairy stories any more – even about myself. I know what I am, Corrado – a dried-up old woman with paint on her face, and her past a million years away…But I’ve lived, my boy. I’ve lived every minute of every hour. I’ve sucked the orange dry and spat out the pips. So listen to me, please…I know you’re not like other men. You were always different, even as a little boy…Watching you, I used to think of someone trying to rub out the world, and paint it new and clean again. I could have made it different for you, I think; but your father would never have me near the house…’ She gave a short, bitter chuckle. ‘He thought I was a corrupting influence. He was a strait-laced fellow with no sense of humour. I never could see what your mother found in him.’
‘Misery,’ said Corrado Calitri harshly. ‘Misery and loneliness, and no love at all. I hated that man from the bottom of my heart.’
‘But you can’t run away from him any longer,’ said the old woman softly. ‘He’s dead and the daisies are growing out of his ears. I know what you look for – the love you didn’t get from him. I know you find it sometimes; but it doesn’t last. I know the dangers when you go on looking desperately and without caution.’ Her thin hands clutched at his arm. ‘You do have enemies, don’t you?’
‘Who hasn’t in a job like mine?’
‘Have you ever been blackmailed?’
‘It’s been tried a couple of times.’
‘Then you know what I’m talking about. The enemies get more
and they grow bigger – bigger than you realize. Take Campeggio, for instance…’
‘Campeggio!’ He swung round to face her, genuinely startled. ‘Campeggio! I’ve never done him any harm.’
‘You have his boy,’ said Maria-Rina gravely.
‘So that’s the story.’ Calitri threw back his patrician head and laughed, startling the birds in the olive trees. ‘The boy works for me. I like him. He has talent, and charm and—’
‘Beauty?’
‘That, too, if you want. But not for me. You think I want to fall foul of Campeggio and the Vatican?’
‘You’ve already done it,’ said the Princess Maria-Rina. ‘And without the Vatican you can’t lead the country at the next election. Now – now do you see what I’m talking about?’
For a long moment he did not answer her, but seemed to shrink back into himself. His youthful face furrowed. His eyes misted with sudden emotion. Finally he said softly, ‘Life is very long, Aunt. Sad, too, sometimes, and solitary.’
‘You think I don’t know that, boy? You think when Louie died I wasn’t sad and solitary? You think I didn’t know what it was like to be middle-aged and rich, and able to buy what I couldn’t get for love? I tried it, too, for a little while. Does that shock you?’
‘No. I understand it.’
‘Then I woke up as you have to wake up. You can’t get out of bed every morning fearing to lose what you don’t own anyway. You can’t wait and weigh the risks of the blackmailer. You can’t govern your life by the snap of a pretty boy’s fingers. No! One day you have to say to yourself: What have I got that is really mine? How best can I enjoy it?…When you come to add it up, you find there’s a great deal. And there may even be a little loving as well.’
‘In marriage?’ he asked with heavy irony.
‘In it or outside. It makes small matter. For you…’ Her skeleton finger stabbed at him like a dagger. ‘For you marriage is necessary. Very necessary.’