(1969) The Seven Minutes

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Yes. The first is a transcript of a telephone conversation I had in Paris with J J Jadway. I had written to him from Rome that I would like to interview him, but I had received no reply. Once in Paris, I telephoned him several times and missed him. Finally he called me back, and I transcribed our discussion. The second document is a letter that Jadway wrote me - a rather defiant one, I might say -and this was sent me after our telephone conversation. The last document is a transcript prepared by a member of the Curia, since deceased, reporting on a statement Jadway made to him during a meeting in Italy. This statement was signed by Jadway and notarized.’

  ‘Does this information from Jadway confirm the testimony of his French publisher, Mr Leroux, about Jadway’s attitudes and motives relevant to his writing of The Seven Minutes ?’

  ‘To that question I would reply in the affirmative. Yes, the sum total of the Church’s findings, including these documents, tends to confirm what Mr Leroux has already revealed. I will say that, aside from these documents, our records of the investigation are somewhat circumscribed and formal. We possess no information about the author Jadway’s family or his life in America. But from these documents we know that the author Jadway was a Catholic, one who had fallen away from the faith. We know his tastes in literature were for the immoral and the atheistic. As he told me, his library contained Casanova’s Memoirs, as well as works by Henri Bergson, Benedetto Croce, and Karl Pelz, all of which were prohibited to Catholics. He had once participated in an anticlerical demonstration before Notre-Dame. His circle consisted of dissolute freethinkers who frequented the cafes of the Left Bank. He had consorted with prostitutes before living a life of sin with the young woman known as Cassie McGraw. I doubt that the Church’s condemnation played any part in his suicide. His suicide was a consequence of his having no moral standards, which is reflected in his single published work. After his death he was cremated, and it was said that Miss McGraw carried out his last wish. His ashes were scattered from a balloon over Montparnasse. It is a sad story.’

  Throughout Father Sarfatti’s recital, especially during the last of it, Barrett felt the urge to voice legal objection. He had grounds -much of the clergyman’s testimony was irrelevant, and the last of it was hearsay - yet Barrett resisted speaking up. The material, in a different context, had previously been made known inside and outside the court by Leroux. Any objection, under these circumstances,

  might make it appear to some jurors that the defense was trying to gag a minion of the Lord. Right or wrong, Barrett kept his peace and continued to listen closely.

  ‘Father Sarfatti, do your records give any evidence as to J J Jad-way’s motives for writing The Seven Minutes?’

  ‘Only in his remark, contained in the letter to me, that all religions and institutions of learning were trying to pretend the world was one huge candy box, whereas in his book he had set out to prove that it was - it was a dunghill - a dunghill that could ultimately fertilize truth and produce beauty if one ceased to pretend. Beyond that, I might suggest that his printed words, as well as his manner of life in Paris, bespeak his motives. He had no legitimate ties in Paris at any time. You may draw what inference you wish from that.’

  ‘Do your records give evidence of Cassie McGraw’s influence on Jadway during his writing of The Seven Minutes or, in fact, anything about Cassie McGraw’s - ?’

  ‘Your Honor, I object!’ interrupted Barrett. He could not let this go through or be stricken only after it had been answered. But Duncan, apparently, was going to make an effort to bring Cassie McGraw into the trial, for he was requesting a bench conference.

  At the conference, Duncan tried to bend the information he knew Father Sarfatti was ready to offer by trying to relate it to obscene material in the novel. After all, Duncan argued, Cassie McGraw had been the prototype for the heroine. In his eagerness, Duncan not only bent testimony yet to come, but finally snapped it in two. ‘The Church has a copy of the birth certificate of Cassie McGraw’s child by Jadway,’ Duncan was saying. ‘The child was christened Judith Jan Jadway. Father Sarfatti is prepared to tell us that the last and most recent note in the Vatican file reveals that Miss McGraw was married in the city of Detroit in 1940 and that her husband was killed in Salerno during the Second World War. While neither his full name nor her married name were recorded, and while there is no indication of Miss McGraw’s eventual fate or her daughter’s fate, still I believe what is known about her will help tell the jury …’ He went on, and when he was done, Judge Upshaw impatiently chastised him for trying to introduce material entirely irrelevant to the case. ‘On this matter, your witness can tell the jury nothing of value,’ concluded Judge Upshaw. ‘I am sustaining defense counsel’s objection.’

  Back at his table, Barrett could hear the District Attorney resuming his interrogation.

  ‘Now, Father, if we can return briefly to the procedure of…’

  Mike Barrett tuned out.

  Fifteen minutes later, his antenna trapped a sound. Offered the chance to recant while he was in Italy.

  Swiftly Barrett tuned in.

  ‘You mean, Father Sarfatti, a member of the Church met with

  Jadway personally and offered him the opportunity to recant his errors?’

  ‘Exactly. It is not unusual, Mr Duncan. The Church moves slowly, and with considerable tolerance, against the author of a denounced work. Often an author will appeal to the Vatican, saying that he had written in good faith and had not realized fully the error of his doctrine. On such occasions the Congregation of the Holy Office, after making public the decree of condemnation, might then make public a notice reading, “The author has recanted and has repudiated his work.” The first condemnation will stand, but his name and work may be kept from the Index itself. I can give you one example. Henry Lasserre, an orthodox Catholic who wrote an excellent book on the miracle at Lourdes, decided to translate the Gospels into French. He was not satisfied to follow the original. He invested his translation with some of his own imaginings. This translation was soon condemned and prohibited. But, fortunately, Lasserre saw the error of his ways. Quickly he took his book out of circulation. He recanted. As a consequence, the Holy Office withdrew its prohibition and expunged the author’s name from subsequent editions of the Index.’

  ‘And J J Jadway - now, let me understand, did he wish to recant on his own initiative or was he offered the chance?’

  ‘He was offered one last chance. He had arrived with his mistress in Italy, and was visiting Venice, when a Church emissary was dispatched to meet with him. He was tendered the opportunity - a generous one, I must say - to repudiate The Seven Minutes and to take it out of circulation. He refused. You have the document signed by Jadway to that effect. TheChurch then had no choice but to condemn the work for its obscenity and sacrilege.’

  Barrett tuned out.

  With the end of Duncan’s effective examination, Judge Upshaw declared a two-hour lunch recess. Abe Zelkin already had the Index file from Donna and several pages of scrawled notes taken during a telephone conversation with Kimura minutes earlier. Sending an errand boy down to the lobby of the Hall of Justice for sandwiches and soft drinks, Barrett and Zelkin retired to a vacant office in the municipal building and spent the better part of the two hours reviewing the research and mapping out the strategy of the crossexamination.

  Preparing to return to the courtroom, Barrett was briefly tempted to take the offensive in his crossexamination. The Church that Father Sarfatti represented must be held sacrosanct. Yet Barrett was aware that some of its history, like that of every other faith in the world, was highly vulnerable to attack. In the Middle Ages, and at the very time when the Index was being prepared, the Church and its flock were obsessed with sex. St Augustine had confessed that, before embracing Christianity, he had possessed ‘an insatiable appetite’ for sex and had ‘boiled over in … fornication.’

  Whereas Augustine had overcome his weakness of the flesh, his successors to the cloth had often been less resolut
e. The Bishop of Liege had been known to have had sixty-five illegitimate children. A Spanish abbot at St Pelayo was said to have kept, in his lifetime, seventy mistresses. In Switzerland, married men had been forced to protect their wives from seduction in the confessional by petitioning authorities to permit their priests to keep one mistress apiece. In the Holy See itself, Marozia, daughter of a papal official, had had Pope Sergius III for her lover and her pawn; and in 931 a.d. she had conspired to have her illegitimate son named Pope John XI. Pope Leo VIII had expired of a stroke suffered while engaging in sexual intercourse. And Pope Alexander VI, admitted father of the Borgias, had possessed two mistresses while in the Vatican, one of them the seventeen-year-old Giulia Farnese. And this little more than fifty years before the Holy See had begun to condemn authors for immorality in the first Index.

  What would Jesus have made of this? Might he not have said what he had said to the Pharisees on the occasion when they had brought before him an adulteress who they thought should be stoned to death? Might not Jesus have said, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’ ?

  Now, in open court, Barrett must contest a Church representative who was a protector of morals. Dare Barrett say,’ “He that is without sin among you …” ?’

  He was sorely tempted. Then, finally, he knew that such an attack was impossible. It would be misconstrued. And if he did attempt it, he could predict Elmo Duncan’s protest: Irrelevant!

  He would have to play it the hard way.

  At two o’clock, confronting the formidable Father Sarfatti, Mike Barrett knew that he was not the match of the witness. In his knowledge of Church history in the matter of condemned literature, the prelate stood on a solid foundation, while Barrett realized his own footing was on quicksand. But still, he was charged to offer for the defense, and so now he did.

  First, the procedure of the censuring apparatus.

  ‘Father Sarfatti, I heard you remark - correct me if I heard wrongly - I believe you stated that the Curia offices have been revamped and streamlined since J J Jadway’s book was published in 1935. Can you expand upon this as it would relate to book censorship ?’

  ‘To be brief-‘

  ‘Forgive me, Father, but there is no need to be brief. It would be useful to hear every detail you feel to be relevant to this trial.’

  T thank you for your courtesy, sir. Let me say that in 1966, in keeping with the new Ecumenical Council spirit that pervaded the Church and all Christendom, Pope Paul VI abolished the title of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, because it had long been held offensive by Protestants who associated it with what

  they regarded as persecutions in early Church history. By the elimination of the Holy Office, the Section for the Censure of Books was also eliminated.’

  ‘Why was this done?’

  ‘As I have said, sir, it was in keeping with the new spirit of unity among the various Christian faiths.’

  ‘I see. I’m interested to know whether there were other motives. Is it not true, Father, that at the convening of the Ecumenical Council in Rome there were numerous Roman Catholic clerics who protested against the old Holy Office the very office that had condemned Jadway, because it did not hold fair hearings for authors, and these clerics felt that the Index of Prohibited Books should be permanently abolished?’

  ‘Well, there was a minority of clerics who felt that way. That is true.’

  ‘And, Father, is it not also true, as our Associated Press reported from the Vatican City, that “by wiping out the Section for the Censure of Books, the Pope made a dramatic gesture signifying a major de-emphasis of the Index mentality of the past” ?’

  ‘Of course, we must accept the fact that news services often employ sweeping generalizations and tend to exaggerate. In essence, I would say that there was this effort to de-emphasize any function of the Holy Office that had once antagonized non-Catholics.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it hold then, Father, in view of this new liberality on the part of the Church, that what the Church condemned and prohibited in 1935 it might not condemn and prohibit today?’

  ‘Sir, that is a hypothetical question which I have neither the qualifications nor the authority to answer. I can submit certain facts that might point to a conclusion. For one thing, the new Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which I am a member, is continuing to review and examine published writings denounced as contrary to the doctrines of the Church. For another, the Index has not been abolished. It still exists. His Holiness may assign any written work to the Index that he wishes. Finally, sir, I am here before you as a representative of the Vatican because the Church is just as concerned today as it was in 1935 about the publication and circulation of an immoral and sacrilegious work of fiction entitled The Seven Minutes.”

  Barrett went no further on the procedure of the Church’s censuring apparatus. He had fumbled that one. Another tack.

  Second, the infallibility of the Index.

  ‘Father, like the learned counsel for the People, I too have been examining a copy of the Index - in fact, the edition in which J J Jadway’s name was first listed - as well as some writings about the Index. I would like to ask you a number of questions about this censorship calendar or encyclopedia. I was surprised to find Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Pascal’s Pensees,

  and J. S. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, and Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, and all of Zola’s works still listed in the Index and hence still prohibited. Why were they condemned - because they were obscene or because they were anticlerical?’

  ‘Because they were anticlerical.’

  ‘Not because they were harmful to morals?’

  ‘Because they were harmful to the faith.’

  ‘And The Seven Minutes, Father Sarfatti ? I remind you, this is a trial concerned only with the question of whether or not the book is obscene. Whether Jadway’s writings were contrary to the faith or anticlerical does not enter into the discussion in this courtroom. With this in mind, will you tell me officially, was The Seven Minutes condemned to the Index because it is obscene or because it is heretical?’

  ‘It was condemned because it is both - both obscene and heretical.’

  ‘Very well, Father. As to the burning question of what is obscene and what is not obscene, this is, of course, a value judgment. Do you feel you can recognize an obscene work when you read it or hear it read aloud?’

  ‘Speaking for myself, yes. I cannot speak for the Church.’

  ‘Suppose I read you a brief passage from a novel. Do you think that you could tell me whether it is immoral or obscene or neither ?’

  ‘I could try, but I would be speaking for myself alone.’

  ‘But speaking as an expert on obscene literature?’

  ‘Very well. As an expert.’

  ‘I will read to you two excerpts from a popular novel. I would appreciate your judgment of them. The first excerpt: “I found his hand in my bosom; and when my fright let me know it, I was ready to die; and I sighed and screamed, and fainted away.” The second excerpt: “But he kissed me with frightful vehemence, and then his voice broke upon me like a clap of thunder. Now… said he, is the dreadful time of reckoning come, that I have threatened - I screamed out in such a manner, as never anybody heard the like. But there was nobody to help me: and both my hands were secured, as I said. Sure never poor soul was in such agonies as I. Wicked man! said I…. O God! my God! this time this one time deliver me from this distress!” ’

  ‘Did God deliver her, Mr Barrett?’

  ‘He did … Father Sarfatti, do you judge these two excerpts to be obscene?’

  ‘I regard them as immature, suggestive, but I do not regard them, by today’s lights, as obscene. However, the Holy Office did consider them obscene in 1755 when it placed those passages, along with the rest of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, in the Index. I am sorry to spoil your sport, Mr Barrett, but I will not question the wisdom of the Ch
urch in condemning Pamela in 1755 even as it

  condemned The Seven Minutes in 1937. The modern trend toward permissive immorality may mock those old judgments, but if they had been heeded, all society and moral standards might be the better for it today.’

  ‘Are you saying, Father, that the censors on the Index are without human fallibility, having never committed errors of judgment?’

  From across the courtroom, Duncan voiced his objection. Defense counsel was being argumentative. Objection sustained.

  Barrett sought to rephrase his question. ‘Father Sarfatti, does any factual evidence exist that the censors assigned to the Index have ever, at any time, admitted to errors in judgment?’

  ‘Of course errors have been made,’ said Father Sarfatti calmly. ‘When members of the Holy Office, after further consideration, have found that they have been mistaken about any writings, they have never failed to see justice done, to admit their errors and rectify them. The works of Galileo were placed on the Index. When this was later proved unjustified, our censors removed the prohibition against Galileo’s writings. But I cannot persuade myself that the Church will ever remove its prohibition from J J Jadway’s book.’

  Bloodied, Barrett considered releasing the witness. Yet, one more try.

  Third, the meeting with J J Jadway in Venice.

  ‘Father, you stated earlier that a Vatican emissary had personally met with Jadway in Venice to ask him to repudiate the book. Do your records tell exactly where this meeting was held?’

  ‘In the ducal palace, the Doge’s Palace-in the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci, the Hall of the Council of Ten.’

  ‘How long did the meeting last?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Did Jadway, in the affidavit he signed, give his reasons for refusing to repudiate The Seven Minutes ?’

  There is no record of his reasons.’

  ‘According to Mr Leroux, this was a low point in Jadway’s life, a period when he was alleged to have been remorseful about having written the book and was only months away from taking his life because of it. If this were so, wouldn’t it have been natural for Jadway to repudiate the book and recant ?’