In The Name of The Father

by A. J. Quinnell

  ‘And it is not?’

  He inserted a slightly stern note into his voice. ‘All you need to know, Sister, is that it is to the good of our Church. You know that very often we have to act with great caution in the Soviet bloc.’

  He watched her nod dutifully. Satisfied, he opened a drawer, took out an envelope and handed it to her. ‘Tomorrow you report at eight a.m. to the Collegio Russico on Via Carlino Cattaneo, here in Rome.

  There you will meet a Father Van Burgh and place yourself under his obedience. He will tell you more. He is in charge of this mission. He will supervise your training over the coming days.’

  He looked up at the clock and then rose. She did the same. He came around the desk and took her hands in his and said gently, ‘It will be difficult, Sister Anna, sometimes embarrassing. But remember what I told you. In your heart you will always be a nun.’

  She murmured, ‘I will always remember it, Your Eminence. Please give me your blessing.’

  He did so and she kissed his ring. As he led her to the door he smiled and said, ‘Of course during this time you will have to revert to your birth name. It’s Ania, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Your Eminence. Ania Krol.’

  He patted her on the shoulder. ‘Ania; it’s a nice name.’

  No sooner had he closed the door than his phone rang. With a tired sigh he crossed the room and picked it up. His secretary informed him that the soffrigenti were here. He sighed again and told his secretary to wait ten minutes, then show them in. He settled himself in his chair and struggled to compose some words in his mind. His election as head of the one hundred thousand strong Order had taken place six months before and with it more work and problems than he could ever have imagined. Occasionally over the months he had received small delegations of what the Order called soffrigenti. These were priests who, in the course of their work around the globe, had suffered greatly. Some had been imprisoned for decades, others tortured, some maimed. There were also those who had spent lifetimes in solitary, obsessive study. It was the Order’s policy that, when possible, such priests should come to Rome to receive the thanks of their leader and his blessing and inspiration. This was one such delegation, assembled from priests who worked and who had suffered in the Soviet bloc.

  Mennini was very conscious that the words he spoke to them would always be remembered. Every single word must have profound significance. He must be for them a father and a mother and a rock on which to cement their own faith. Their final allegiance, of course, was to the Holy Father, but it was definitely channelled through him. He hated to repeat himself on such occasions and struggled to find words which would sound fresh and inspiring. It was difficult. His eyes were constantly drawn to the leather folder on his desk and its single content. He opened it and read again the sheet of paper. Marvelled at the perfection of the signature and seal. He had seen both many times. These contained not a trace of deviation. The Bacon Priest was truly a genius. That reflection was replaced by another. By its use and what lay beyond, he, Cardinal Angelo Mennini, was committing a cardinal sin. Was it a sign to test his real faith?

  Much troubled, he opened a drawer and slid in the file. He turned the lock and slipped the key into a hidden pocket of his gown, hoping, in a way, to lock away the thoughts. He turned his mind again to formulating words but it was hopeless. He would have to rely on his visitors to give him inspiration.

  They did. Seven old men filed into the room. The youngest was in his early sixties. The oldest over eighty. Mennini greeted them all by name as they kissed his ring. The oldest, Father Samostan from Yugoslavia, tried to kneel. Very gently Mennini lifted him up and enfolded him in his arms and then led him slowly to a comfortable chair. The others sat on two angled settees. They had already been given refreshments in the anteroom. The audience would last no more than ten or fifteen minutes. Mennini studied them. Seven tips of the Order’s tentacles. They were in the forefront of the Order’s battle, but they did not look like warriors. Just seven bent, black-clad old men. There was Botyan from Hungary. Over forty years a secret priest, hunted and haunted by a solitary life; bald head, cadaverous face, eyes deep in their sockets. But what eyes! They were luminous in faith, honesty and determination.

  Next to him sat Klasztor from Poland. Eighteen years in the Gulags. The Bacon Priest had somehow got him out five years before. He had refused to retire comfortably to the West but insisted on doing pastoral work in his native land. Dangerous pastoral work. Mennini knew the histories of all these men. Inevitably his attention was drawn to the bony figure sitting at the end of one of the settees. This man was Father Jan Panrowski, the youngest of the group. He did not appear the youngest. His frail body was twisted as if by terrible arthritis. His hair was stark white and down his right cheek ran four parallel pink scars half an inch apart. Mennini had met several of the others but not this priest. He knew that of all of them he had suffered perhaps the most. Also a Pole, he had been put into a concentration camp by the Nazis in 1941 because he gave food to the Resistance. He miraculously escaped and made his way East and again worked with the Resistance, but in the Russians’ eyes he had been in the wrong group. When they rolled through towards Warsaw they shot most of his group. He again was spared, after a fashion. They sent him further East into Russia itself where, for seven years, he was made to work virtually as a slave. He combined this labour with a huge effort to give spiritual love and solace to his fellow slaves. With the death of Stalin he was one of the lucky few to be released and the Order managed to bring him out to Rome. However, like Klasztor, he had refused the comforts of a quiet secure life and in 1958 had gone as a secret priest to work in Czechoslovakia - the most virulent anti-Church state in the Soviet bloc. For two years he worked in an agricultural machinery factory in Liberec and then he was caught one afternoon saying the Angelus. He had spent the next eighteen years in solitary confinement in the notorious Bakoy Prison in Kladno. Solitary confinement, except for the times when they had taken him to the torture rooms. They let him out in 1980. After six months in a Rome hospital and a further six months in a monastery near the Pope’s summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, he had sought an audience with the then head of the Order and begged to be allowed to return to his birthplace in Poland, the city of Olsztyn. His mother and an aunt, both in their nineties, were still alive and he wished to care for them. The city also had an ancient seminary and he would like to teach. He was reluctantly allowed to go. That city was also on one of Van Burgh’s pipelines out of Russia and occasionally he proved helpful. Several times travellers going the other way dropped off a slab of bacon.

  He sat now like a bent sparrow, his eyes on his leader. Eyes that sent out a miasma of remembered pain.

  Mennini looked at all their faces and into all their eyes. The phrases he had composed vanished into the sea of his compassion. He started to say, ‘I am made humble before . . .’

  Then he broke down. He did not lower his head. He sat there erect while the tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

  The tears had more eloquence than words. His visitors knew him to be an austere unemotional man. They looked at the tears and the humility in his wet eyes and they too wept in response. All except Father Panrowski. He put his arms around his bony shoulders and sank back deeper into the corner of the settee. He lowered his chin to his chest as though once more experiencing physical pain. All his tears had long since been shed.

  The Cardinal recovered. Father Botyan offered him a handkerchief which he accepted with a wan smile. He dried his eyes and face and when he tried to hand it back the old priest merely smiled and shook his head. Mennini tucked it into his sash with a grateful gesture of acceptance. Then he completed his sentence.

  ‘I am made humble before your suffering and your faith.’

  He heard their murmurs of deprecation. Now the words came easily to him. In a strong voice he talked about the martyrs and saints of the Order and how their faith and devotion had changed history and the face and mind of the wo
rld. He talked to them as equals about his hopes for the future, both for the Order and for the Church as a whole. He invoked their prayers for the beloved Holy Father.

  They said a short prayer together and then he gave them all his blessing. The audience over, they moved towards the door. He could tell by their faces that he had given what they had travelled far to receive. It struck him that he too had received from them the gifts of love and inspiration.

  He watched as Father Panrowski shuffled his broken body across the thick carpet and suddenly he realised that there was yet another priceless gift he could give this old man, and in giving receive comfort himself. Quietly he asked him to remain behind for a few minutes.

  When the door closed behind the others he took the priest by the arm and helped him to a well-cushioned, high-backed chair. As Panrowski settled into it, his face puzzled, the Cardinal said, ‘Father, we have all been uplifted by your suffering and your faith. I would be deeply moved and honoured if you would hear my confession.’

  At first the old priest did not seem to understand. He raised his head and asked, ‘Confession?’

  ‘Yes, Father, my confession.’

  Father Panrowski was dazed. He had heard that such things occasionally happened. Even that the Holy Father sometimes asked this of a humble parish priest. He stammered, ‘But Eminence . . . I am not . . . not worthy.’

  ‘Father, there are none more worthy in our beloved Church.’

  The Cardinal pulled up a low velvet-topped stool. He sat on it next to, and below, the priest. He took his hands in his and bowed his head.

  ‘Please, Father.’

  Father Panrowski heard his own voice. A hoarse whisper.

  ‘What do you remember?’

  The Cardinal spoke, his voice low, humble but resonant.

  ‘Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. I have let my temperament and my impatience dominate my pastoral mission. On occasions I have failed to understand the frailties and humanity of some who are around me and who would help me.’

  The priest breathed more easily. This would be the confession of the natural infringements of a powerful personality whose intellect occasionally overshadowed his compassion.

  So it took its course. He listened sympathetically and admonished gently. He assumed it was over but the Cardinal remained sitting, his head bent. Perhaps a minute or two passed. The Cardinal raised his head slightly. He was looking at his desk. The priest felt his hand squeezed; clasped tight by his leader. Mennini was breathing deeply. He lowered his head again and spoke in a whisper. Spoke of a thing far beyond any infringement. Queried painfully whether he was perpetrating an act of God or an act of survival and could the two be compatible? It was a plea from one who suffered a little to one who had suffered a lot.

  The priest was rigid in mind and body. Many seconds passed, spaced out by the soft ticking of the ormolu clock. It was too much for this priest but he was the confessor and he had to find words. Words of comfort. Words of understanding. They were expected. Yearned for. He was as old as this man at his feet, but infinitely older in relating faith and truth to pain and reality. He lowered his head and said softly, ‘My son, yes, my son, it is wrong to do wrong for what you think is right. But it is wrong to do nothing against evil. We sin because we are human and Our Lord understands and judges . . . and you will be forgiven.’

  He felt the pressure on his hands lighten. Slowly the Cardinal raised his head and crossed himself. Then he lifted the gold Crucifix from his waist and kissed the tiny, spreadeagled image.

  They rose and he helped the priest across the room. Silently the priest lowered his head and kissed the Cardinal’s ring. Then he straightened his bent body and looked him in the eyes. A look of understanding. He said, ‘Eminence, I shall pray for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Father. Have a safe journey. God be with you.’

  As the heavy door closed Mennini raised a hand to his side and felt the outline of the key in its little secret pocket. He also felt comforted.

  Chapter 5

  ‘You are too beautiful, much too beautiful!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father.’

  The Bacon Priest laughed.

  ‘Ah, I wonder if a woman ever said that before in all history.’

  He pushed his bulk to his feet, moved out from behind his desk and slowly walked around her. Ania Krol stood very still, a troubled look on her face.

  A middle-aged nun stood in a corner with a smile on her lips. She said, ‘Sister Anna looks wonderful!’

  Van Burgh rounded on her. ‘Ania,’ he said sternly. ‘From this moment she is Ania! Her name will change at times but you and she must remember. Sister Anna is temporarily a non-person.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ the nun said dutifully, but in no way abashed. ‘But why is she too beautiful?’

  He sighed. ‘Because great beauty attracts attention. That’s the last thing we want.’

  He stood in front of Ania and studied her. She was dressed in a plain white blouse and dark blue pleated skirt and black polished high-heeled shoes. He shook his head.

  ‘I sent to the East for authentic clothes and cosmetics designed by good party designers and made by the proletariat for the proletariat and you look like you stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine. Imagine what couturiers in Rome or Paris would do to you?’

  ‘But what can I do, Father?’ she asked.

  He ignored the question and did one more circuit around her.

  ‘It’s the hair,’ he said finally. ‘It really is your crowning glory.’

  Her hair was thick and long and so black it seemed to glow with ebony blue streaks. It swung like a dark bell to her shoulders.

  ‘We shall have to dye it,’ he stated emphatically.

  ‘Oh no!’ cried the nun in the corner. ‘It would be a crime.’

  ‘Silence,’ he admonished. ‘But first we shall cut it. I think a sort of page-boy style. We must not make you too plain. The man whose wife you are supposed to be is handsome . . . and I dare say appealing enough to women to have an attractive wife. But you cannot be as beautiful as you are.’

  He was looking at her legs. They were neither slim nor sturdy, but they curved gracefully to slim ankles. The high heels accentuated the curve of her calves.

  ‘The high heels have to go,’ he announced. ‘Flat, sensible shoes and a lower hemline.’

  Ania hardly heard him. She was in mourning for her hair. Mentally it was her only feminine vanity. As a child the nuns had trimmed it, combed it, admired it and taught her to take care of it. At night before she slept and in the mornings before prayers she would always stroke her brush through it a hundred times, taking pleasure from its caress on her neck and shoulders; moving her head from side to side, letting it swing like a dark flower in a breeze. Then in the mornings she would tuck it up into her starched, austere headpiece, like a glittering piece of onyx wrapped and hidden in a pristine handkerchief.

  ‘We shall make you a little garish,’ Van Burgh said. ‘It’s the fashion now in the East.’ He pointed to her fingers. ‘Not colourless nail varnish but a slightly loud red and more rouge on your cheeks . . . and a darker lipstick more thickly applied. Also some bright metal bangles for your wrists and a cheap silver-plated chain round your neck, holding the letter “A”.’

  Yet again he circled her, obviously now seeing, in his inner eye, a different woman. He stopped again in front of her. ‘And a few patent leather belts with shiny buckles just too big to be in good taste.’ He looked again at her hair. ‘We shall need two or three wigs of different style and colour . . . obviously with your skin colouring not blonde. Auburn, dark mousy, and so on. Ania, take your shoes off and walk across the room.’

  She slipped off the shoes and walked back and forth in front of him. He sighed again.

  ‘You walk like a nun.’

  ‘I am a . . . How does a nun walk?’

  ‘Like this.’

  He held his head up, pulled back his shoulders, put his hands by his sides and, with s
hort steps, walked across the room with an expression of great piety on his face. The two women laughed in surprise. In their eyes his brown cassock was suddenly a white habit. Van Burgh was a perfect mimic and could have made his fortune on the stage. He walked exactly like a modest, demure nun.

  ‘So how should I walk?’

  ‘Like this.’

  His entire posture changed. Even before he took one step he was a young woman, aware of her looks and sensuality. His hands and arms moved differently. He patted an imaginary lock of hair into place and walked again. Now there was a swing to his stride. He glanced to left and right. His left elbow was cocked against his side as though carrying a handbag.

  Again the two women laughed, but then Ania was thoughtful. She had seen the complete difference.

  ‘But Father, I don’t have your talent. How can I learn to walk like that?’

  ‘I will teach you, Ania. Also you will spend time in the streets of Rome. Watch how other women walk, and talk to each other . . . and to men. Watch how they shop and use the telephone and carry bags. You must watch with a different eye than you have been used to. You will do that in the mornings. Every morning for the next week. You will go into coffee shops and ride on buses. You will walk the lobbies of big hotels and visit tourist attractions. Do you have any lay friends in Rome?’

  Her hair swung as she shook her head. ‘No, Father.’

  He frowned. For all her common sense and intellect she must get used to the close proximity and the conversation of people outside the clergy.

  ‘I will arrange some acquaintances for you: men and women. You will take coffee with them and lunches and, yes, sometimes drinks and dinner in the evening.’

  ‘I don’t drink, Father.’

  ‘Of course not, Ania. Just soft drinks - and you will tell these people that you were a nun who has just renounced her vows.’

  Her lips tightened. ‘I certainly will not.’

  He sighed. ‘Ania, listen to me. In the coming days we will build up a convincing cover for you. But it will take time. You will have much to learn and remember. You will be doing that in the afternoons and evenings along with other things that will be necessary and useful. In the meantime you must get used to the world outside of a convent. So it is important that your temporary cover is that you renounced your vows.’