by Morris West
‘How long do we have,’ asked Kiril, ‘before a new appointment is necessary?’
‘Two months, I should say, three at the outside. England needs a red hat.’
‘If it were left to Your Eminence, whom would you choose? Parker or Ellison?’
‘I should choose Ellison.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you. Let’s do this. We shall defer a decision for one month. During that time I should like you to make another canvass of opinion among the Curia, and among the English hierarchy. After that we shall decide.’
Then there were the reports from Poland. Cardinal Potocki had pneumonia and was critically ill. If he died there would be two immediate problems. He was deeply loved by his people, and deeply feared by the government against whom he had held out stubbornly for sixteen years. His funeral might well be the occasion for spontaneous demonstrations, which the government could use for provocative action against the Catholic population. Equally important was the question of his successor. He had to be named and in readiness to take office immediately the old fighter died. He had to know of his appointment, yet it had to be kept secret lest the authorities moved against him, before Potocki’s death. A secret emissary had to get from the Vatican to Warsaw and present the papal rescript of succession.
So one by one the countries of the world came under review, and the memory of a summer holiday faded further and further into the background. Finally, towards the end of September, came a letter from Cardinal Morand in Paris.
. . . A suggestion was made to Your Holiness’s Illustrious Predecessor that a papal visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes might have a spectacular effect upon the life of the Church in France. There were at that time several obstacles to the project – the health of the Holy Father, the war in Algeria, and the political climate in metropolitan France.
Now these obstacles do not exist. I am informed that the French government would look with great favour on a papal visit, and would be delighted to welcome Your Holiness to Paris after the visit to Lourdes.
I need not say how delighted the clergy and faithful would be to have the Vicar of Christ on the soil of France after so long a time.
If Your Holiness were prepared to entertain the idea, I should like to suggest that the most appropriate time would be the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on February 11, next year. The French government concurs heartily with this timing.
May I beg Your Holiness most humbly to consider our request, and the good which might come from it, not only for Catholic France, but for the whole world. It would make a historic occasion – the first journey of a Pope into this land for more than a century. The eyes of all the world would be focused on the person of Your Holiness, and there would be for a while a public and universal pulpit available. . . .
The letter excited him. Here was the historic gesture ready to be made. After his first exit from Rome others would follow almost inevitably. In the convergent world of the twentieth century, the apostolic mission of the Pontiff might be reaffirmed in a startling style.
Immediately, and without consultation, he wrote a reply to Morand in his own hand:
. . . We are delighted by Your Eminence’s suggestion of a visit to France in February of next year. We have no doubt that there will be certain voices in the Church raised against it, but We Ourselves are most favourably disposed. We shall discuss the matter at the earliest opportunity with Cardinal Goldoni and later with members of the Curia.
Meantime, Your Eminence may accept this letter as Our personal authority to initiate preliminary discussions with the French authorities concerned. We suggest that no public announcement be made until all the formalities are concluded.
To Your Eminence and Our Brother Bishops, to the clergy and all the people of France, we send from a full heart Our apostolic benediction.
He smiled as he sealed the letter, and sent it out for posting. Goldoni and the Curia would be full of doubts and consequential fears. They would invoke history and protocol, and logistics and political side-effects. But Kiril the Pontiff was a man elected to rule in God’s name, and in the name of God he would rule. If doors were open to him he would walk through them, and not wait to be led through them by the hand like a petty princeling . . .
The idea of a peripatetic Pope had, with the passage of time, become strange in the Church. There were those who saw in it a succession of dangers – to dignity, since a man who packed his bags and went flying round the world might look too human; to authority, since he would be required to speak ex tempore on many subjects without study and without advice; to order and discipline, since the Vatican Court needed at all times a firm hand to hold it together; to stability, since modern air travel entailed a constant risk, and to lose one Pontiff and elect another was an expensive, not to say perilous, business. Besides, the world was full of fanatics who might affront the august personage of Christ’s Vicar, and even threaten his life.
But history was not made by those who shied away from risks. Always the Gospel had been preached by men who took death for a daily companion . . . More than all, Kiril Lakota was an opportunist with a restless heart. If a journey were possible, he would make it, discounting all but the profit in souls . . .
From Kamenev, holidaying by the Black Sea, came a letter delivered by the ubiquitous Georg Wilhelm Forster. It was longer and more relaxed than the others, and it carried the first clear expression of his thoughts on the approaching crisis:
. . . At least I am in private conversation with the other side of the Atlantic. I am more grateful than I can say for your good offices.
I have been resting for a while, thinking out the programme for the coming year and asking myself, at the same time, where I stand at this moment of my public and private life. My career is in apogee. I can go no higher. I have perhaps five more years of full authority and activity; after that the inevitable decline will begin, and I must be prepared to accept it.
I know I have done well for this country. I should like to do better. For this betterment, peace is necessary. I am prepared to go far to maintain it, yet you must understand that I want to go farther than I shall be permitted by the Party and the Praesidium.
First, therefore, let me show you the position as I see it. You can trace my thesis on a child’s map of the world. China is in a bad way. That means six hundred million people are in a bad way. This year’s harvests have been dangerously light. There is real starvation in many areas. There have been reports, hard to confirm because of rigid censorship, that bubonic plague has broken out in some coastal towns. We have taken a serious view of this, and we have imposed a sanitary cordon at all frontier posts along our borders with China.
Her industrial development is slow. We have deliberately made it somewhat slower by withdrawing many of our construction teams and experts, because we do not want China to grow too quickly under the present regime.
The present leaders are old men. They are subject to increasing pressures from their juniors. If the economic crisis gets any worse, they will be forced into action, and they will inevitably mount military moves in the direction of South Korea, and Burma, and the north-east frontier of India. At the same time they will ask us to provide a diversionary front by renewing our pressure on Berlin and by pressing for a solution to the East German question, even to the point of armed intervention.
Once these moves are made, America must set herself in battle order against us.
Is there any remedy for this hair-trigger situation? I believe there is. But we must not be naïve about its efficacy. Let us get a breathing space first, so that we may proceed with a little more confidence to a long-term solution.
The first and most obvious remedy is nuclear disarmament. We have been debating this for years now, and we are no nearer to agreement. I think it is still out of the question, because public and Party opinion can be so swiftly excited by the issue. I know I could not risk a decisive move, and neither can my opposite number. So we must discount it for a while.
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The second remedy might appear to be the admission of China to the United Nations. This again is complicated by the fiction of the two Chinas and the existence of a rump government-in-arms on Formosa. Again we are involved in a highly political situation, too easily complicated by catchwords and prepared attitudes.
It is my view that, with some preparation and a minimum of good will, a remedy may be found elsewhere. If the miseries of China were fully exposed to the world, not as a political, but as a human spectacle, and if an offer were made by America and the nations of the West to resume normal trade relations with the Chinese, by exporting food to her, by allowing the free passage of vital commodities, then we might at least defer the crisis. Of course, China would have to be prepared to accept the gesture – and to get her to do it is a delicate problem. We, on our part, would have to put our weight behind the Western offer, and we should have to make some kind of proposal of our own.
How far can we go? More properly, how far can I go with any hope of support from the Party and the country? I must be honest with you. I must not promise more than I can hope to fulfil.
Here I think is my limit. We would put no further pressure on Berlin, and leave the East German question in abeyance, while we reach for a less rigid form of settlement. We would discontinue nuclear tests in return for an assurance that the United States would also discontinue. We would reopen immediately – with a more practical compromise formula – the question of nuclear disarmament, and I would add my own personal authority to any effort to achieve a settlement within a reasonable time limit.
I do not know whether the Americans will find this enough, but it is the best I could assure in any negotiations. Even so, both we and the United States will need a very favourable climate to bring off a settlement. There is not too much time to prepare it.
I can almost hear you ask yourself how far you can trust me now. I cannot swear an oath, because I have nothing to swear by, but what I have written here is the truth. How I comport myself in the public view, how I behave during the negotiation, is another matter. Politics is more than half theatre, as you know. But this is the bargain I propose, and even if the Americans hedge it a little, we can do business and give the world what it desperately needs at this moment, a breathing space to measure the current value of peace against what may happen if we lost it.
I hope your health is good. Mine is fairly robust, but sometimes I am reminded sharply of the passing of the years. My son has finished his training and has now been admitted as a bomber pilot in our air force. If war comes he will be one of the first victims. This is a cold thought that haunts me while I sleep. This, I think, is what saves me from the ultimate corruption of power. What do I want for him? In olden times kings murdered their sons lest they prove rivals – and when they got lonely they could always breed other ones. It is different now. There are those who say we have simply grown softer – I like to think we are growing at least a little wiser.
I am reminded of your request to ease some of the burdens of your flock in Hungary, Poland and the Baltic areas. Here again I must be honest, and not promise more than I can perform. I cannot issue a direct command, nor can I reverse abruptly a traditional Party policy, to which, moreover, I am personally committed. However, there will be a meeting of Premiers of the fringe countries in Moscow next week. I shall put it to them as a proposal to prepare the atmosphere for what I hope will be a discussion of the Chinese question between ourselves and America.
I am hoping your Cardinal Potocki will recover. He is a danger to us, but as things are I should rather have him alive than dead. I admire him almost as much as I admire you.
One more point, perhaps the most important of them all. If we are to negotiate along the lines I have suggested, we shall need to reach a settlement before the middle of March next year. If the Chinese begin a military build-up it will be early in April. Once they start we are in real trouble.
I read a copy of your letter to the Church on education. I thought it excellent and at times moving, but we have been doing so much better than the Church for forty years. One would think that you had less to lose than we have. Forgive the irony. It is hard to lose bad habits. Help us if you can. Greetings.
Kamenev
Kiril the Pontiff sat a long time pondering over the letter. Then he went into his private chapel and knelt in prayer for nearly an hour. That same evening after supper, he summoned Goldoni from the Secretariat of State and was closeted with him until after midnight.
‘You are an embarrassment to me, Mr Faber,’ said Corrado Calitri gently. ‘I imagine you are an embarrassment to Chiara as well. She is very young. Now that the Holy Roman Rota has pronounced her free to marry, I imagine she will quickly find a new husband. The presence of an elderly lover could make things very difficult for her.’
He was sitting in a high carved chair behind a buhl desk, slim, pale and dangerous as a medieval prince. His lips were smiling, but his eyes were cold. He waited for George Faber to say something; and when he did not answer, he went on, in the same silken tone. ‘You understand, Mr Faber, that under the terms of the Concordat the decision of the Holy Roman Rota takes effect in civil law as well?’
‘Yes, I understand that.’
‘Legally, therefore, your attempt to suborn a witness is a criminal offence under the laws of the Republic.’
‘It would be very difficult to prove subornation. No money was passed. There were no witnesses. Theo Respighi is a somewhat disreputable character.’
‘Don’t you think his testimony would make you look disreputable too, Mr Faber?’
‘It might. But you wouldn’t come out of the affair very well either.’
‘I know that, Mr Faber.’
‘So it’s a stalemate. I can’t touch you. You can’t touch me.’
Calitri selected a cigarette from an alabaster box, lit it and leaned back in his chair, watching the smoke rings curl upwards towards the coffered ceiling of his office. His dark eyes were lit with malicious amusement. ‘A stalemate? I rather think it is a checkmate. I have to win, you see. No government, and certainly no political party, can support a situation where a correspondent for the foreign press can determine the career of one of its ministers.’
In spite of himself Faber laughed dryly. ‘Do you think that’s likely to happen?’
‘After what you have done, Mr Faber, anything is likely to happen. I certainly do not trust you. I doubt whether you will ever be able to trust yourself again. Hardly an edifying sight, was it? The dean of the press corps offering a bribe to a broken-down actor to pervert the law – and all because he wanted to go to bed legally with a girl! You’re discredited, my friend! I have only to say a word and you will never again be received in any government office, or any of the Vatican congregations. Your name will be dropped from every guest list in Italy. You see, I’ve never made any pretence of what I am. People have accepted me on my own terms, just as the country will accept me again at the next election . . . So, it is checkmate. The game is over. You should pack up and go home.’
‘You mean I’m expelled from the country?’
‘Not quite. Expulsion is an official act of the administration. So far we are speaking . . . unofficially. I am simply advising you to leave.’
‘How long do I have?’
‘How long would you need to make other arrangements with your paper?’
‘I don’t know. A month, two months.’
Calitri smiled. ‘Two months then. Sixty days from this date.’ He laughed lightly. ‘You will note, Mr Faber, that I am much more generous with you than you would have been with me.’
‘May I go now?’
‘In a moment. You interest me very much. Tell me, were you in love with Chiara?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you unhappy when she left you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Strange,’ said Calitri with sardonic humour. ‘I have always thought that Chiara would make a better mistress than a wife. You we
re too old for her, of course. Not potent enough, perhaps. Or were you too much the Puritan? That’s the answer, I think. One has to be bold in love, Faber. In whatever kind of loving one elects . . . By the way, is Campeggio a friend of yours?’
‘He’s a colleague,’ said Faber evenly. ‘Nothing more.’
‘Have you ever lent him money?’
‘No.’
‘Borrowed from him?’
‘No.’
‘That’s curious. A cheque in the amount of six hundred thousand lire – one thousand American dollars – was drawn by Campeggio and paid into your bank account.’
‘That was a business transaction. How the hell did you know about it?’
‘I’m a director of the bank, Mr Faber. I like to do my work thoroughly . . . You have two months. Why don’t you take a real holiday and enjoy our lovely country? . . . You may go now.’
Sick with anger and humiliation, George Faber walked out into the thin autumn sunshine. He turned into a telephone booth and called Orlando Campeggio. Then he hailed a taxi and had himself driven to Ruth Lewin’s apartment.
She fed him brandy and black coffee, and listened without comment while he rehearsed his short and ignominious interview with Corrado Calitri. When he had finished she sat silent for a moment and then asked quietly, ‘What now, George? Where do you go from here?’
‘Back home, I suppose. Although, after fifteen years in Rome, it’s hard to think of New York as home.’
‘Will you have any trouble with the paper?’
‘I don’t think so. They’ll accept any explanation I care to give them. They’ll give me a senior job in the home office.’