The Shoes of the Fisherman

by Morris West

  ‘I shall tell him,’ said Georg Wilhelm Forster. ‘Now may I have Your Holiness’s leave to go?’

  ‘Go with God,’ said Kiril the Pontiff.

  He walked with the strange little man to the gate of the garden and watched him drive away into the bright and hostile world beyond.

  The Princess Maria-Rina was a doughty old general, and she had planned her nephew’s campaign with more than usual care. First she had set him to rights with the Church, without which he could neither arrive at power nor begin to rule comfortably. Then she had isolated Chiara for a whole month from her American lover. She had set her down in a gay playground surrounded by young men, one at least of whom might be ardent enough to seduce her into a new attachment. Now she was ready for her next move.

  Accompanied by Perosi, and with Calitri’s letter tucked into her handbag, she drove to Venice, plucked Chiara off the beach, and hurried her off to lunch in a quiet restaurant on Murano. Then she added her own brusque commentary to Calitri’s letter:

  ‘…You see, child, all of a sudden it is very simple. Corrado has come to his senses. He has set his conscience in order and in a couple of months you will be free.’

  Chiara was still shocked and delighted by the news. She was prepared to trust the whole world. ‘I don’t understand it. Why? What made him do it?’

  The old princess dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. ‘He’s growing up. For a long time he was hurt and bitter. Now he has better thoughts…For the rest, you need not concern yourself.’

  ‘But what if he changes his mind?’

  ‘He won’t, I promise you. Already his new depositions are in the hands of Perosi here. The final papers will be ready for presentation to the Rota immediately after the holidays. After that it’s just a formality…As you will see from his letter, Corrado is disposed to be generous. He wants to pay you quite a large sum by way of settlement. On the understanding, of course, that you will make no further claims on him.’

  ‘I don’t want to make any claims. All I want is to be free.’

  ‘I know, I know. And you’re a sensible girl. There are, however, a couple of other matters. Perosi here will explain.’

  It was all so neatly done that she was totally disarmed. She simply sat there, looking from one to the other, while Perosi explained himself with smooth formality:

  ‘You understand, Signora, that your husband is a public figure. I think you will agree that it would be most unfair, after this generous gesture, to expose him to comment and notoriety.’

  ‘Of course. I wouldn’t want that either.’

  ‘Good. Then we understand each other. Once the affair is over, then we should let it die quietly. No publicity. No word to the newspapers, no hasty action on your part.’

  ‘What sort of action? I don’t understand.’

  ‘He means marriage, child,’ said the Princess Maria-Rina gently. ‘It would be most undesirable for you and for Corrado if you were to rush into a hasty union, as soon as the decree of nullity is granted.’

  ‘Yes, I see that.’

  ‘Which brings us to the next question,’ said Perosi with elaborate care. ‘Your present association with an American correspondent. His name, I believe, is George Faber.’

  Chiara flushed, and was suddenly angry. ‘That’s my business. It doesn’t concern anyone else.’

  ‘On the contrary, my dear young lady. I hope to persuade you that it is the business of everyone. The settlement, for example, would not be payable if you were to marry Faber – or, indeed, if you were to marry anyone within six months.’

  ‘Then I don’t want the settlement.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be too hasty about that, child. It’s a lot of money. Besides…’ She reached out a skinny claw and imprisoned Chiara’s hand. ‘Besides, you don’t want to make another mistake. You’ve been hurt enough already. I should hate to see you wounded again. Take time, child. Enjoy yourself. You’re still young. The world’s full of attractive men. Kick up your heels a while. Don’t tie yourself down before you’ve had three looks at what’s offering in the marriage market. There’s another thing, too…Even if you did want to marry Faber there might well be certain difficulties.’

  ‘What sort of difficulties?’

  She was frightened now, and they read the fear in her eyes. Perosi pressed the advantage shrewdly. ‘You are both Catholics, so naturally I presume you will want to be married in the Church.’

  ‘Of course, but…’

  ‘In that case you both come immediately into conflict with canon law. You have, if I may put it bluntly, been living in sin. It is a delicate question whether in the terms of canon law this would constitute “public and notorious concubinage”. My own view is that it might. In this case a principle applies: that a guilty person shall not be permitted to enjoy the fruits of guilt. In canon law this is called crimen, and it is an invalidating impediment to marriage. It would be necessary to approach the Church for a dispensation. I have to tell you that there is no certainty that it would be granted.’

  The old princess added a final rejoinder. ‘You don’t want this kind of complication, do you? You deserve better. One mess is enough for any lifetime…You do see that, don’t you?’

  She saw it very clearly. She saw that they had her trapped and beleaguered and that they would not let her go without a struggle. She saw something else, too. Something that ashamed and excited her at once. She wanted it this way. She wanted to be rid of an attachment which had already grown stale for her. She wanted to be free to hold hands and play love games with young Pietro Antonelli while the moon shone and the mandolins played soft music in a gondola on the Grand Canal.

  The day after his encounter with Theo Respighi, George Faber drove back to Naples. His self-esteem had been badly damaged – by a man with too much honour and by another with too little. He felt shaken and sordid. He could hardly bear the sight of himself in a shaving-mirror. The image of the great correspondent was still there, but behind it was an empty man who lacked the courage even to sin boldly.

  He was desperate for reassurance and the forgetfulness of loving. He tried to telephone Chiara in Venice, but each time she was out, and when she did not return his call, he was filled with sour anger. His imagination ran riot as he pictured her carefree and flirtatious, while he, for her sake, was making this drab and uncomfortable journey to the hollow centre of himself.

  He had one more person to see – Alicia de Nogara, authoress of Ischia. But he had to restore himself before he could confront her. He spent a day in Naples hunting for copies of her books, and finally came up with a slim, expensive volume, The Secret Island. He sat in the gardens trying to read it, and then gave up, discouraged by its florid prose and its coy hints of perverted love among the maidens. In the end he skimmed through it to get enough information for a conversation piece and then gave it to a ragged urchin who would pawn it for the price of a biscuit.

  He went back to the hotel and put in a call to Ruth Lewin. Her maid told him she was on vacation and was not expected back for several days. He gave up in disgust, and then, in sullen reaction, he determined to divert himself. If Chiara could play so could he. He set off for a three-day bachelor jaunt to Capri. He swam in the daytime, flirted sporadically in the evening, twice as much as he needed, and ended with an abortive night in bed with a German widow. More disgusted with himself than ever, he packed his bag the next morning and set out for Ischia.

  The villa of Alicia de Nogara was a rambling pseudo-Moorish structure set on the eastern slope of Epomeo, with a spectacular view of terraced vineyards and blue water. The door was opened to him by a pale, flat-chested girl, dressed in a gipsy shirt and silk slacks. She led him into the garden, where the great authoress was at work in a vine arbour. The first sight of her was a shock. She was dressed like a Sibyl in filmy and flowing draperies, but her face was that of a faded girl and her blue eyes were bright with humour. She was writing with a quill pen on thick, expensive paper. When he approached she st
ood up and held out a slim, cool hand to be kissed.

  It was all so stylized, so theatrical in character, that he almost laughed aloud. But when he looked again into her bright, intelligent eyes, he thought better of it. He introduced himself formally, sat down in the chair she offered him, and tried to marshal his thoughts. The pale girl hovered protectively beside her patron.

  Faber said awkwardly, ‘I’ve come to see you about rather a delicate matter.’

  Alicia de Nogara waved an imperious dismissal. ‘Go away, Paula. You can bring us some coffee in half an hour.’

  The pale one wandered away disconsolately, and the Sibyl began to question her visitor:

  ‘You’re rather upset, aren’t you? I can feel it. I am very sensitive to emanations. Calm yourself first. Look at the land and the sea. Look at me if you want to. I am very calm because I have learned to float with the air as it moves. This is how one should live, this is how one should love, too. Floating on the air whichever way it blows. You have been in love, haven’t you?…Many times, I should say. Not always happily.’

  ‘I’m in love now,’ said George Faber. ‘That’s why I’ve come to see you.’

  ‘Now there’s a strange thing! Only yesterday I was saying to Paula that although my books are not widely read they still reach the understanding heart. I think you have an understanding heart. Haven’t you?’

  ‘I hope so. Yes. I understand you know a man called Corrado Calitri.’

  ‘Corrado? Oh yes, I know him very well. A brilliant boy. A little perverted, I’m afraid, but very brilliant. People say I’m perverted, too. You’ve read my books, I presume. Do you think so?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not,’ said George Faber.

  ‘There, you see. You do have an understanding heart. Perversion is something different. Perversion is the urge to destroy the thing one loves. I want to preserve, to nurture. That’s why Corrado is doomed. He can never be happy. I told him that many times…Before he was married, after his marriage broke up.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Calitri’s marriage.’

  ‘Of course. I knew it. That’s what the emanations were telling me. You’re in love with his wife.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’m a woman. Not an ordinary woman. Oh no! A sapphic woman they call me, but I prefer to say a full woman, a guardian of the deep mysteries of our sex…So you’re in love with Corrado’s wife.’

  ‘I want to marry her.’

  The Sibyl leaned forward, cupping her small face in her hands and fixing him with her bright blue eyes. ‘Marriage. That’s usually a terrible mistake. The air, remember! One must be free – to float, to rise, to fall, to be held or to be let go. Strange that men never understand these things. I was married once, a long time ago. It was a great mistake. Sometimes I think men were born defective. They lack intuition. They were born to be slaves of their own appetite!’

  ‘I’m afraid we were,’ said George Faber with a grin. ‘May I tell you what I want?’

  ‘Please, please do.’

  ‘I want evidence for the Holy Roman Rota. For Chiara to be free, we have to prove that Corrado Calitri entered into marriage with a defective intention. We have to prove that he expressed this defective intention to a third person before the marriage took place.’ He fished in his pocket and drew out a typewritten statement which he had prepared that morning. ‘That, more or less, is the thing we want. Would you be prepared to sign it?’

  Alicia de Nogara picked up the paper with fastidious fingers, read it and laid it down on the table. ‘How crude! How terribly crude of the Church to demand this sort of indignity. Freedom again, you see! If people fail in love, let them be free to begin again. The Church tries to close up the soul in a bottle as if it were a foetus preserved in formaldehyde…So very vulgar and medieval …Tell me, does Corrado know that you’ve come to me?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. For a reason I can’t understand he wants to hold on to Chiara…Not to live with her, of course, but to hold her like a piece of land or an apartment.’

  ‘I know, I know. I told you he was perverse, didn’t I? This is how it shows. He likes to torment people. He tried to torment me even though I wanted nothing from him. All I wanted to do was teach him how to give and return love. I thought I had succeeded, too. He seemed very happy with me. Then he went away, back to his boys, back to his little game of promises and refusals. I wonder if he’s as happy now as he was with me.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Do you want to hurt him?’

  ‘No. I just want Chiara to be free and to have the chance of making her happy.’

  ‘But if I sign this it will hurt him, won’t it?’

  ‘It will hurt his pride, probably.’

  ‘Good! That’s where he needs to be hurt. When one loves one must be humble. When you commit yourself to the air, you have to be humble. Are you humble, Faber?’

  ‘I guess I have to be,’ said Faber ruefully. ‘I haven’t very much pride left. Are you prepared to sign that document? I shouldn’t say this, but I was prepared to pay for the evidence.’

  ‘Pay?’ She was dramatically insulted. ‘My dear man, you are desperate, aren’t you? In love one must never pay. One must give, give, give! Freely, and from the full heart. Tell me something. Do you think you could love me?’

  He had to swallow hard to get the thought down, but he did it. He twisted his mouth into what he hoped was a smile and answered elaborately, ‘It would be my good fortune if I could. I’m afraid I shouldn’t deserve it.’

  She reached out and patted his cheek with a cool, dry hand. ‘There, there, I’m not going to seduce you, though I think you would seduce very easily. I’m not sure I should let you throw away your life in marriage, but you have to learn in your own way, I suppose…Very well, I’ll sign it.’

  She picked up the quill and subscribed the document with a flourish. ‘There now. Is that all?’

  ‘I think we should have a witness.’

  ‘Paula!’

  The pale girl came hurrying to her cry. She set her signature at the foot of the paper, and George Faber folded it and put it into his pocket. The thing was done. He had soiled himself to do it, but it was done. He let them lead him through the rituals of coffee and endless, endless talk. He exerted himself to be gentle with them. He laughed at their pathetic jokes and bent like a courtier over the hand of the Sibyl to say goodbye.

  As the taxi drove him down to the crowded port, as he leaned against the rail of the lake steamer that took him back to Naples, he felt the document crackling and burning against his breast. Finita la commédia! The shabby farce was over, and he could begin to be a man again.

  When he got back to Rome, he found Chiara’s letter telling him that her husband had agreed to co-operate in her petition and that she had fallen in love with another man. Finita la commidia! He tore the paper into a hundred shreds, and then proceeded, savagely and systematically, to get himself drunk.

  EXTRACT FROM THE SECRET MEMORIALS OF KIRIL I PONT. MAX.

  I have had a wonderful holiday, the first in more than twenty years. I feel rested and renewed. I am comforted by a friendship which grows in depth and warmth each day. I never had a brother, and my only sister died in childhood. So my brotherhood with Jean Télémond has become very precious to me. Our lives are full of contrasts. I sit at the summit of the Church; he lies under the rigid obedience of his Order. I spent seventeen years in prison; he has had twenty years of wandering in the far corners of the earth. Yet we understand each other perfectly. We communicate swiftly and intuitively. We are both caught up in this shining hope of unity and common growth towards God, the Beginning, the Centre, and the End…

  We have talked much these last few days of the grains of truth that underlie even the most divergent errors. For Islam God is one, and this is already a leap from paganism to the idea of a single spiritual creator. It is the beginning of a God-centred universe. Buddhism has degenerated into a series of sterile fo
rmulae, but the Buddhist code, although it makes few moral demands, conduces to co-operation, to non-violence, and to a polite converse among many people. Communism has abrogated a personal God, but there is implicit in its thesis an idea of the brotherhood of man…

  My immediate predecessor encouraged the growth of the Ecumenical spirit in Christendom – the exploration and the confirmation of common grounds of belief and action. Jean Télémond and I have talked much about the possibility of the Christian idea beginning to infuse the great non-Christian religions. Can we, for example, make any penetration of Islam, which is spreading so quickly through the new nations of Mrica and Indonesia? A dream, perhaps, but perhaps, also, an opportunity for another bold experiment like that of the White Fathers.

  The grand gesture! The action that changes the course of history! I wonder if I shall ever have the opportunity to make it…The gesture of a Gregory the Great, or a Pius V. Who knows? It is a question of historic circumstance and the readiness of a man to co-operate with God and in the moment…

  Ever since the visit of Georg Wilhelm Forster, I have been trying to think myself into the minds of Kamenev and the President of the United States. It is true, I think, that all men who arrive at authority have certain attitudes in common. They are not always the right attitudes, but at least they provide a ground of understanding. The man in power begins to see more largely. If he has not been corrupted, his private passions tend to diminish with age and responsibility. He looks, if not to permanence, at least for a peaceful development of the system he has helped to create. On the one hand, he is vulnerable to the temptations of pride. On the other, he cannot fail to be humbled by the magnitude and complexity of the human problem…He understands the meaning of contingency and mutual dependence…