The Shoes of the Fisherman

by Morris West

  He pressed the bell and handed his visitor back into the practised hands of the Maestro di Camera.

  When Corrado Calitri walked out of the bronze gate and into the pale sunshine of St Peter’s Square, the Princess Maria-Rina was waiting for him in the car. She questioned him shrewdly and eagerly. ‘Well, boy, how did it go? No problems, I hope? You got along well together? Did he talk about the verdict? About politics? This sort of thing is most important, you know. You are going to live with this man for a long time.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Aunt,’ said Corrado Calitri irritably. ‘Will you shut up and let me think!’

  At eleven o’clock the same evening, the telephone rang in Kiril’s private apartment. Cardinal Rinaldi was on the line. He was in deep distress. Jean Télémond had suffered a heart attack, and the doctors expected another at any moment. There was no hope for his life. Rinaldi had already administered the last rites and summoned the Father General of the Jesuits. Kiril slammed down the phone and ordered his car to be ready in five minutes with an escort of Italian police.

  As he dressed hurriedly for the road, childish, simple prayers leapt to his lips. It must not be. It could not be. God must be kinder to Jean Télémond, who had risked so much for so long. ‘Please, please hold him a little longer! Hold him at least till I get there and can set him at peace. I love him! I need him! Don’t take him so abruptly! ’

  As the big car roared out through the night-time city, with the Vatican pennant fluttering and the police sirens clearing the traffic, Kiril the Pontiff closed his eyes and fingered the beads of his rosary, concentrating all the resources of his spirit in a single petition for the life and the soul of Jean Télémond.

  He offered himself as a hostage – a victim, if necessary – in his place. And even as he prayed, he wrestled with the guilty resentment that, thus incontinently, the man he loved should be snatched away from him. The darkness that Jean Télémond had endured seemed now to come down on him, so that even while he wrenched his will into submission, his heart cried out bitterly for a stay of judgement.

  But when Rinaldi met him at the door of the villa, grey-faced and shaken, he knew that his petition had been refused. Jean Télémond, the restless traveller, was already embarked on his last voyage.

  ‘He’s sinking, Holiness,’ said Valerio Rinaldi. ‘The doctor’s with him. He will not last the night.’

  He led the Pontiff into the antique room where the doctor stood, with the Father General of the Jesuits, looking down on Télémond, and the candles burned for a last light to the departing spirit. Télémond lay, slack and unconscious, his hands at rest on the white coverlet, his face shrunken, his eyes closed deep in their sockets.

  Kiril knelt by the bedside and tried to summon him back into consciousness. ‘Jean! Can you hear me? It’s I, Kiril. I came as soon as I could. I’m here with you, holding your hand. Jean, my brother, please speak to me if you can!’

  There was no sign from Jean Télémond. His hands were still slack, his eyelids closed against the light of the candles. From his cyanosed lips there issued only the shallow, rattling breath of the dying.

  Kiril the Pontiff leaned his head on the breast of his friend and wept as he had not wept since his nights of madness in the bunker. Rinaldi and Semmering stood watching him, moved, but helpless, and Semmering, unconscious of the trick of memory, whispered the Gospel words, ‘See how he loved Him.’

  Then when the weeping had spent itself, Rinaldi laid his old hand on the sacred shoulder of the Pontiff and summoned him gently. ‘Let him go, Holiness! He is at peace. It is the best we can wish him. Let him go!’

  Early the next morning, Cardinal Leone presented himself unannounced in the papal apartments. He was kept waiting for twenty minutes and then was shown into the Pontiff’s study. Kiril was sitting behind his desk, lean, withdrawn, weary of mouth and eye after the night-long vigil. His manner was strained and distant. It seemed an effort for him to speak.

  ‘We had asked to be left alone. Is there something special we can do for Your Eminence?’

  Leone’s craggy face tightened at the snub, but he controlled himself and said quietly, ‘I came to offer my sympathy to Your Holiness, on the death of Father Télémond. I heard the news from my friend Rinaldi. I thought Your Holiness would like to know that I offered a Mass this morning for the repose of his soul.’

  Kiril’s eyes softened a little, but he still held to the formality of speech. ‘We are grateful to Your Eminence. This is a great personal loss to us.’

  ‘I feel guilty about it,’ said Leone. ‘As if in some way I were responsible for his death.’

  ‘You have no cause to feel that, Eminence. Father Télémond had been ailing for some time, and the Holy Office verdict was a shock to him. But neither you nor the Eminent Fathers could have acted differently. You should dismiss the matter from your mind.’

  ‘I cannot dismiss it, Holiness,’ said Leone in his strong fashion. ‘I have a confession to make.’

  ‘Then you should make it to your confessor.’

  Leone shook his white mane and lifted his old head in answer to the challenge. ‘You are a priest, Holiness. I am a soul in distress. I elect to make my confession to you. Do you refuse me?’

  For a moment it seemed as if the Pontiff would explode into anger. Then slowly his taut features relaxed, and his mouth turned upwards into a tired smile. ‘You have me there, Eminence. What is your confession?’

  ‘I was jealous of Jean Télémond, Holiness. I did what was right, but my intention was not right while I did it.’

  Kiril the Pontiff looked at the old man with puzzled eyes. ‘Why were you jealous of him?’

  ‘Because of you, Holiness. Because I needed but could not have what you gave him at a first meeting – intimacy, trust, affection, a place in your private counsels. I am an old man. I have served the Church a long time. I felt I had deserved better. I was wrong. None of us deserves anything, but the promised wage for a worker in the vineyard . . . I’m sorry. Now will Your Holiness absolve me?’

  As the Pontiff moved towards him, he went down stiffly on his knees and bent his white head under the words of absolution. When they were finished he asked, ‘And the penance, Holiness?’ ‘Tomorrow you will say a Mass for one who has lost a friend, and is still only half resigned to God’s will.’

  ‘I will do that.’

  Kiril’s strong hands reached down and drew him to his feet, so that they stood facing each other, priest and penitent, Pope and Cardinal, caught in the momentary wonder of understanding.

  ‘I too have sinned, Eminence,’ said ‘I kept you at a distance from me because I could not tolerate your opposition in my projects. I was at fault with Jean Télemond, too, I think, because I clung to him too strongly; and when the moment came to let him go into the hands of God, I could not do it without bitterness. I am empty today, and very troubled. I am glad you came.’

  ‘May I tell you something, Holiness?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I have seen three men sit in this room, you are the last I shall see. Each of them came in his turn to the moment where you stand now – the moment of solitude. I have to tell you that there is no remedy for it, and no escape. You cannot retire from this place as Rinaldi has done, as I hope you will let me do very soon. You are here until the day you die. The longer you live, the more lonely you will become. You will use this man and that for the work of the Church, but when the work is done, or when the man has proved unequal to it, then you will let him go and find another. You want love. You need it as I do, even though I am old. You may have it for a while, but then you will lose it because a noble man cannot commit himself to an unequal affection. And a gross man will not satisfy you. Like it or not, you are condemned to a solitary pilgrimage, from the day of your election until the day of your death. This is a Calvary, Holiness, and you have just begun the climb. Only God can walk with you all the way, because He took on flesh to make the same climb Himself . . . I wish I could tell you dif
ferently. I cannot.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Kiril sombrely. ‘I know it in the marrow of my bones. I think I have shrunk from it every day since my election. When Jean Télemond died last night a part of me died with him.’

  ‘If we die to ourselves,’ said the old lion, ‘in the end we come to live in God. But it is a long, slow dying. Believe me, I know! You are a young man. You have yet to learn what it is to be old.’ He paused a moment, recovering himself, and then asked, ‘Now that we are at one, Holiness, may I ask you a favour?’

  ‘What is it, Eminence?’

  ‘I should like you to let me retire, like Rinaldi.’

  Kiril the Pontiff pondered on it for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No. I cannot let you go yet.’

  ‘You ask a great deal, Holiness.’

  ‘I hope you will be generous with me. You were not made to rusticate or wither away in a convent garden . . . There are lions abroad in the streets and we need lions to fight them. Stay with me a while longer.’

  ‘I can only stay in trust, Holiness.’

  ‘In trust, I promise you.’

  ‘You must not flatter me, Holiness.’

  ‘I do not flatter you, Eminence,’ said Kiril gravely. ‘You have much courage. I want to borrow it for a while . . . Just now, you see, I am very much afraid.’

  The fear was tangible, familiar, and mightily threatening. It was the same which he had endured in the hands of Kamenev and he had been brought to it by the same process: months of self-questioning; recurrent crises of pain; sudden and spectacular revelations of the complexities of existence, beside which the simple propositions of faith seemed pitifully inadequate.

  If the pressure was kept on long enough, the delicate mechanism of reflection and decision seized up like an overdriven motor. All the processes of the personality seemed to fall into syncope so that one was left confused and irresolute – even grateful to be swayed by a stronger will.

  Every day during these first months of his pontificate, he had been forced to question his motives and his capacities. He had been forced to measure his private convictions against the accumulated experience of the bureaucracy and the hierarchy. He felt like a man pushing a stone uphill only to have it roll back upon him at every third step.

  Then, just when the progress seemed easier, he had been faced with a deep and long-hidden weakness in himself: the need for love that had driven him to cling so urgently to the friendship of Jean Télémond that his detachment as a religious man had been almost wholly destroyed. The foundations of his confidence had been weakened still further by his indulgence of resentment against Leone. It was not he who had made the first step to reconciliation, but the old Cardinal. It was not he who had helped Jean Télémond to the conformity in which he needed to die, but Rinaldi and Rudolf Semmering.

  If he had failed so dismally in these simple relationships, how could he trust himself and his convictions under the complex demands of leadership in the universal Church?

  So, even after seventeen years of endurance for the faith, everything was called in question again, and he saw how easy it would be to shift the burden of action. He had only to relax, to let the system of the Church take over. He did not have to decide anything. He had simply to propose and suggest, and work according to the opinions tendered to him by the Secretariat of State, by the Sacred Congregations, and by all the administrative bodies, little and great, within the Church.

  It was a legitimate method of government. It was a safe one, too. It rested itself firmly upon the collective wisdom of the Church and could be justified as an act of humility on the part of a leader who had found himself wanting. It would preserve the integrity of the Church, and the dignity of his office, against the consequences of his own incapacity. Yet, deep inside him – deep as the roots of life itself – was the conviction that the work to which he had been called was far other. He had to show forth in himself the faculty for renewal which was one of the marks of the living Church. The problem now was that he could no longer reason out the conviction. The fear was now that he was living an illusion of self-love, and self-deception, and destructive pride.

  Daily the evidence was mounting up against him. The question of his visit to France and of his involvement in the political discussion of the nations was already being canvassed among the Cardinals and Primates of the Church. Daily their opinions were being brought to his desk and he was troubled by the extent to which they differed from his own.

  Cardinal Carlin wrote from New York: ‘So far the President of the United States has professed himself happy with what Your Holiness has done to assist the opening of negotiations with the Soviet Union. However, now that the talks have begun at diplomatic level, there is a fear that the Holy See may try to colour them by using its influence in the European bloc of nations, whose interests diverge at certain important points from those of America. Under this aspect, Your Holiness’s proposed visit to France may wear a far different look from that which is intended.’

  From Archbishop Ellison, who had not yet received the red hat, came the cool comment: ‘Your Holiness must be aware that the republic of France was the bitterest opponent of the participation of Britain in the European community of nations. If Your Holiness goes to France, inevitably you will be invited to Belgium and to Germany as well. It might seem to many Englishmen that France is trying to use the Holy See, as she used her before, to strengthen her own position in Europe at the cost of ours.’

  Platino, the ‘Red Pope’, had another point of view. ‘I am convinced, as is Your Holiness, that sooner or later the Vicar of Christ must take advantage of modern travel to present himself in person to the churches throughout the world. I ask myself, however, whether the first gesture should not be one which is free from historic association. Might it not be better to plan much further ahead for a visit, say, to South America or to the Philippines, so that the missionary work of the Church would receive an impetus which it so badly needs at this moment? . . .’

  From Poland, where Potocki was dying and where his successor had already been secretly named, came a warning even more blunt. It was delivered by word of mouth from the emissary who had carried the papal appointment to the new incumbent: ‘There is a feeling strongly expressed that Kamenev, who is known as a subtle and ruthless politician, may be trying to create a situation in which the Holy See can be named as a cooperator with the Kremlin. The effect of this among Catholics behind the Iron Curtain could well be disastrous . . .’

  On the other hand, there was Kamenev’s last letter, which, if it meant anything at all, meant a startling change in the rigid Marxist thought, and a deeper change working in the man himself. Man was not a static animal. Society was not static, nor the Church either. Whether in the sense of Jean Télémond or in another, they were evolving, shedding historic accretions, developing new attitudes and new potentials, groping consciously or instinctively towards the promise of more light and fuller life. They all needed time – time and the leaven of divinity working in the human lump. Every moment saved was a deferment of chaos. Every hint of good was an evidence of God’s fervent in His own creation.

  . . . So, thanks to your good offices, we are enabled to begin at diplomatic level a negotiation with the United States which has at least some hope of success. There will be rough words and hard bargaining, but time is running out and of this at least we are all convinced.

  I am interested in your plan for a visit to France in the first part of February. I agree – though the Party would have my head if they heard it – that you may do much towards preparing a suitable climate for our discussions.

  I shall be more than interested to read what you will say. Inevitably you must discuss the question of rights and duties between nations. How will you treat the rights of Russia, where you have suffered so much and whence your Church has been extirpated? How will you treat the rights of China, where your bishops and priests are in prison?

  Forgive me. I am an incurable joker, but this time the
joke is against myself. If any man could convince me that there is a God, you, Kiril Lakota, would be the one to do it. But for me there is still an empty heaven and I must plot and plan, and lie and bargain, and close my eyes on terror and violence, so that my son and a million other sons may grow and breed without a canker in the guts or a monster in the cradle because of atomic radiation.

  The irony is that all I do may be proved a folly and a precipitant for what I am trying to avoid. You are more fortunate. You believe you rest in the providence of God. Sometimes I wish – how very much I wish – that I could believe with you. But a man carries his destiny written on the palm of his hand, and mine is written differently from yours. I am often ashamed of what I did to you – I should like to prove to you that you have some reason to be proud of what you have done for me. If we have peace for only a year, you will have earned a great part of it.

  Think of me gently sometimes.

  Yours, Kamenev

  They were all separate voices. Yet in their diverse accents they expressed a common hope that man, living under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, might yet survive in peace to fulfil a divine plan in his regard.

  He had to listen to them all. He might hope that in the end the conflict of their opinions would resolve itself into a harmony. Yet, for all his fears he knew that this hope was an illusion.

  He could not, without a grim risk, step outside the field of action set down for him by divine commission. But inside that field of action he was supreme. The government was upon his shoulders and upon no other’s. In the end he must decide . . . Yet knowing his own infirmities he shrank away from the decision.

  Only two things were guaranteed to him by divine promise – that standing in the shoes of the Fisherman he would not err in doctrine and that, whatever folly he might commit, the Church would survive . . . In all else he was left to his own devices. He might augment the Church, gloriously, or inflict upon it a terrible diminishment. And this was the prospect that terrified him.