Beyond The Rainbow

  ‘There you are,’ said the Bishop, smugly. ‘Is that the behaviour of a responsible priest? He is irrational.’

  Colonel Lorraine was embarrassed. ‘Your Lordship,’ he said to the Bishop. ‘I am a military man ... I know about guns ... camels ... the desert... but I am not a psychiatrist ...’

  ‘Psychiatrist! Good God,’ roared Father Benoir. ‘Colonel ... you, too! You think I’m mad?’

  ‘No, no, Father . . . not mad. I am a friend, I would never think you were insane.’ Colonel Lorraine avoided looking into Father Benoir’s eyes. ‘I defended you strongly against His Eminence only this morning.’

  ‘You defended me?’ Father Benoir pulled the Mayor round to face him. ‘How did you need to defend me, Colonel Lorraine? ‘

  ‘The Cardinal spoke to us, in the square.’

  ‘Us? Who are us?’

  ‘Everyone,’ said Colonel Lorraine. ‘I don’t know what he said to you yesterday, but I imagine it was much the same. He made everyone feel foolish. He said that Rome placed no blame on a flock of sheep that followed a lost shepherd.’

  ‘So you think, then, that I am a lost shepherd?’

  ‘A misguided shepherd, rather ...’ corrected the Bishop. Colonel Lorraine licked his lips. ‘No, Father. I don’t think you are a lost shepherd.’

  ‘Good,’ said Father Benoir. He took a pace backwards and smiled at Colonel Lorraine. ‘Have faith. There are now less than twenty-four hours to go. Tomorrow, before dawn every villager must be on board the ark, with all their belongings. We have until noon.’ He rubbed his hands together.

  ‘I’m sorry, Father Benoir,’ whispered Colonel Lorraine. ‘But they won’t go into the ark.’

  Father Benoir’s face stopped in a half-grin. ‘Won’t go . . . ?’

  ‘I didn’t tell you all His Eminence said.’ Colonel Lorraine pressed his lips together. He reached up and took his monocle from his eye. ‘There was talk of sacrilege. Heresy. The Devil’s work. The everlasting wrath of Rome. Many more things ...’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘This is quite unnecessary,’ snapped the Bishop. ‘What His Eminence said to the people was meant only for the ears of the people.’

  ‘I am people,’ shouted Father Benoir.

  ‘The Cardinal pointed to the starvation, sickness and misery among those crowds gathered outside our walls, Father. He called the ark the evil instrument of Satan. He forbade anyone to enter the ark until he had exorcized the spirit from within it.’

  ‘And the villagers believed him?’ Father Benoir’s voice was incredulous.

  ‘He is an officer of the Vatican. The Pope’s highest legate,’ said Colonel Lorraine. ‘And he mentioned excommunication.’

  Father Benoir banged both his fists against his thighs. ‘Colonel Lorraine. One question, to you, as a soldier. Have you always believed in the orders of your superiors? Have they never been wrong?’

  Colonel Lorraine hesitated before he answered. ‘I have not always believed them. And I have sometimes thought them to be incorrect. But ...’

  ‘But? ‘ Father Benoir raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I have always obeyed them, Father,’ said Colonel Lorraine quietly. ‘That’s why I can’t go with you in the ark, either.’

  Father Benoir said nothing. Tears ran down his cheeks.

  Colonel Lorraine looked down at his feet. ‘I’m sorry, Father. You see, I’ve just had a telephone call - from Admiral Dordogne.’

  God paced angrily across his office, his face twitching with rage. He swung round suddenly. ‘Peter,’ he roared. ‘Get them in .... all of them in here. Now!’

  ‘All? ‘ queried Saint Peter, nervously.

  ‘All. . .’ roared God. ‘And instantly . . . every single person in Heaven.’

  ‘In here?’ asked Saint Peter, looking at the small office.

  God impatiently waved an arm. The office vanished to leave Saint Peter and himself standing on a wide plain. It became filled in every direction, as far as Saint Peter could see, with millions upon millions of the heavenly host.

  God waved his arms wide, again. The murmur of his people died to complete silence.

  ‘Who am I? ‘ said God in a voice which carried across the endless arena.

  ‘GOD ...’ roared the heavenly host, instantly.

  ‘Who am I? ‘ repeated God.

  ‘GOD ...’ came the second great shout.

  God asked the question a third time, and received the same reply. He waved his arms again. Saint Peter and he were back in his diminutive office.

  ‘I’m God,’ said God to Saint Peter. The saint nodded. ‘I just wanted confirmation,’ continued God. ‘I was beginning to doubt myself.’

  ‘Those three gentlemen from Rome have convincing arguments,’ agreed Saint Peter. ‘It makes you wonder who they worship.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be me,’ said God, sadly. ‘But when they talk about me, I don’t recognize myself. In as little as two thousand years, it’s all become twisted and turned and shaken and screwed. It’s making me a schizophrenic God. Have I lost touch with my people, or have they lost touch with me?’

  ‘They with you,’ said Saint Peter, comfortingly.

  God began his pacing again. ‘I could hurl a few thunderbolts . . . destroy the opposition. Make the three churchmen explode with loud pops in front of the awed villagers. Have a few hairy demons rend them asunder to a fiendish chorus from the choir. Or just turn them into gibbering imbeciles and have them eaten by the herd of Gadarene swine.’

  Saint Peter shook his head. ‘You know that’s not the way. You don’t like converting people by force.’

  ‘Get out your notebook,’ said God firmly. ‘I am about to say something of importance that should be recorded for posterity.’ Saint Peter nodded and fumbled beneath his robes, for his pad. He licked the end of his pencil. ‘Right.’

  ‘Let it be known,’ intoned God, his voice rich with emotion. ‘Throughout the Cosmos. That those who shall be saved . . . who shall partake of my eternal and infinite love and goodness . . . will come before me of their own making.’

  Saint Peter waited for a long while before he spoke. ‘Is that all, Lord?’

  God scowled at him. ‘It’s damn well enough.’

  Barbusse’s bar was usually noisy in the evenings, bouncing with the coarse humour and jovial conversation of the men who had spent the day working on the ark. Tonight there was a tangibly funereal air about the place.

  ‘Is there any more brandy? ‘ asked d’Arle from beside the bar. His voice was unnaturally flat.

  ‘Help yourself,’ answered Barbusse. He sat at a table with Joliot, Ravelle, Grouflier and Flambert. At another table, a few feet away, were Constable Chaminade, Laplace, and Moreau.

  Barbusse banged his huge palm flat on the table top. The wine already spilt there splatttered the men on either side of him. ‘I feel I’m a prick,’ said Barbusse. ‘Just a big prick.’ Normally, Farmer Joliot could not have ignored the temptation to use Barbusse’s statement as a lead to a personal insult. Tonight, he just sighed. ‘I think that’s how we all feel,’ he said.

  ‘I’m bankrupt,’ groaned Ravelle. ‘Don’t you all realize that? The remainder of you have lost little. Some of you probably have gained. But me? There is not a single standard of timber left in my woodyard.’

  D’Arle brought his fresh brandy back to a vacant seat at Barbusse’s table. ‘The Cardinal talked of some financial compensation,’ he said, dropping heavily into the seat. ‘For all of us. He said he would appeal on our behalf to the government.’ ‘The government,’ grunted Grouflier, scathingly. ‘They should have stepped in before now. They should have prevented it in the first place. Is this what we pay taxes for? To have a useless government hundreds of miles away.’

  ‘I think we should have been advised,’ agreed Joliot. ‘A government official should have come along and said, look here men . . . think it over ….’

  Constable Chaminade’s chair grated as he turned from the neighbouring table. ‘Yo
u can’t blame the police, they tried to get in here. We stopped them. You stopped them, Barbusse.’ ‘And you also threw the government official down the gorge,’ said d’Arle. ‘I saw you do it. I bet he was the man sent to tell us not to waste our time.’

  ‘And then you blew up the bridge,’ added Grouflier. ‘And you were going to shoot Admiral Dordogne when he came on the tank.’

  ‘Me? ‘ roared Barbusse. ‘Why me? I’m only a sergeant ... I mean a barkeeper ... I didn’t have the authority to act on my own. I obeyed orders.’

  ‘The Mayor’s orders,’ sniffed Constable Chaminade.

  ‘Yes, the Mayor ordered me,’ agreed Barbusse. ‘He knew that, as an ex-para, I’d have to obey his orders. It was an unfair advantage. If I’d been allowed to act on my own initiative, I would have behaved differently.’

  ‘We were all under orders . . . pressure,’ said Ravelle. ‘Now look where it has got us. I wonder how much timber I can salvage.’

  ‘I don’t think we can blame the Mayor.’ D’Arle reached behind him and grabbed for the bottle near the edge of the bar. ‘We were all at that first meeting, when Father Benoir told us about that telephone call ….’

  Barbusse snatched the bottle from him and filled his own glass to the top. ‘Oh, he got a telephone call all right. From some damned practical joker ... if I ever get my hands on him . . .’

  ‘We acted like children,’ d’Arle went on, retrieving the brandy bottle. ‘All of us. As the Cardinal said, we were just like sheep being led by a misguided shepherd, a sick man. He mesmerized us . . . Hypnotized us into believing we heard music from Heaven. That’s what the Cardinal said.’

  ‘It’s very sad,’ said Joliot. ‘I used to like Benoir. But he’s only a boy.’

  Barbusse raised his glass and poured the brandy into his mouth. He swilled it round for a few seconds, then swallowed it. ‘That’s the trouble with the permissive society,’ he muttered. ‘Young people nowadays have too much imagination and not enough discipline.’

  His customers nodded.

  ‘You’re the only person I’ve seen smiling around here, lately,’ said Morry Cohen, sitting himself next to Claire Laplace on the steps of Admiral Dordogne’s statue.

  Claire shook her hair back off her face. ‘I’m happy about some things, sad about others.’ She looked towards Barbusse’s bar.

  Morry grunted. ‘Oh, them. They’re pretty typical of people, generally. It’s something you’ll learn as you get older. They support you, back you, as long as things are going fine. But, one small snag, the merest doubt, and they turn on a man in exactly the same way as a pack of sharks will attack one of their number if it’s wounded.’

  ‘I suppose they’re attacking Father Benoir,’ said Claire.

  Morry nodded. ‘Him and anyone else they can blame. Each other, the Mayor, the government ... the Church. About any time now, someone will say - ah ha, it’s all the fault of the Jew outside.’

  ‘Do you think Father Benoir is to blame? ‘ asked Claire.

  ‘To blame for what? You talk as though he’s committed a criminal act. To be to blame for something, one has to have at least done something to be blamed for. No, I don’t think he’s to blame for anything.’

  ‘You think, then, that he’s still right?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Morry. ‘Personally, I’m not influenced by Christian arguments, least of all, by arguments from church leaders like this lot. That fat man in the purple nightshirt, and his two creepy servants can shout as much as they like. I made up my mind about Father Benoir some time ago. Nothing has been said to make me change my opinion. Even if a good Rabbi came to me . . . I’d probably just tell him to bugger off.’

  Claire snuggled herself up to Morry. ‘You’re nice. If I wasn’t in love with Father Benoir, I could even fall in love with you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You know what I do every night?’ asked Claire, cheerfully. ‘I go into the church and pray to God that Father Benoir is unfrocked - just so’s I can marry him.’

  ‘That,’ said Morry, ‘sounds like an extremely dirty kind of prayer.’

  Now that it was dark, the crowds in the valley outside the village lit fires wherever they could find room. Then they huddled silently around them, gathering what warmth there was.

  The glow from the flames trickled down the valley and faded miles away in the darkness.

  From the air, the high valley resembled the mouth of an erupting volcano, radiating arms of bright lava that spiralled a hundred miles in every direction . . . growing longer every minute. And still more people forced their torch-lit way towards St Pierre-des-Monts.

  Cardinal Flamini shook his head in the darkness of the battlements. The Bishops could see the movement only because his eyes reflected the lights of the camp fires. ‘The Church’s souls,’ observed the Cardinal softly. ‘Outside these walls are our people. Our own Church’s children, my brothers.’

  ‘Oh, how much we love the people,’ breathed Bishop Orsolo. ‘And there are so many to love,’ agreed Bishop Vitroletti. ‘It is one of the wonders of being a priest of the Church, that one is given such a capacity to love so many. To love everyone of the millions who wait without these walls.’

  ‘All the little children have been sent to us,’ smiled Bishop Orsolo.

  ‘As ever, we will give them the strength and help of the Church,’ nodded Cardinal Flamini. ‘The Church, my brothers, is the great support in every crisis.’

  ‘Amen...’ chorused the Bishops.

  Thirteen

  The village square on the morning of July the Fourteenth looked like a market place. The hundreds of boxes of supplies, accumulated for use in the ark, had been opened and now lay in straight rows alongside the hull. Vegetables that had been in storage in Pierre Flambert’s refrigerated room, awaiting the ark’s completion, were now piled high in neat stacks on the cobbles. Below the boarding gangplank, sheltered from the sun, were the barrels of wine which Barbusse had ordered.

  Father Benoir stood outside his house, still accompanied by the Bishop, and peered shortsightedly at the villagers in the square. He was not exactly ignored by them, but their greetings were quiet, almost awkward.

  ‘Smell that good bread,’ suggested the Bishop, as Henri Laplace hurried by with a bundle of long loaves on his shoulders. ‘Think of those outside the walls whose stomachs will soon be filled for the first time, Father Benoir.’ Then he added. ‘Now this . . . feeding the multitudes, is the real work of the Lord. You would do well to remember what you will see here today.’ Father Benoir looked at him, disbelievingly. ‘You would bring the multitudes here?’

  Bishop Vitroletti pointed into the square. ‘We need no miracle. There is food enough here for all.’

  ‘Food, yes, perhaps, but...’ Father Benoir paused. ‘The food should be taken out to them, not they brought to the food.’ ‘Fortunately,’ said Bishop Vitroletti, looking patronizingly at the priest. ‘We arrived in time to prevent total disaster. Although weak and sick through your folly, our children still have the strength to walk. And we will give them spiritual and bodily comfort within the shelter of the village walls. Do not concern yourself, Brother Benoir. Continue to enjoy your convalescence.’

  The Cardinal appeared, with Bishop Orsolo, and Mayor Lorraine, on the top of the church steps. Cardinal Flamini was smiling. He bowed to Father Benoir, who simply jerked his head a little by way of reply. The Cardinal whispered something to Mayor Lorraine, who no longer wore his uniform, but the neatly cut grey suit that he had, in the past, worn only at weddings or on feast days, or to church on Sundays. He waved his arm at Barbusse. The barman nodded to him and hurried towards the gate. It was then that Father Benoir noticed for the first time that the few pieces of timber left over from the ark’s construction had been joined together to form a portable bridge. He watched Barbusse and Constable Chaminade heave open the heavy gates, then several of the workmen, on each side of the portable bridge, pushed it out of the village and into the position across the g
orge. Barbusse waved a signal back to the Mayor.

  ‘Tell them, welcome,’ shouted the Cardinal in a voice primed with benevolence. ‘Tell my children to come to me. We have succour for them ... ’

  Barbusse turned back to the bridge.

  There were smug and benign smiles on the faces of Cardinal Flamini, and Bishops Orsolo and Vitroletti, as the first of the people from the crowds outside the gate entered the town, hesitantly.

  Cardinal Flamini walked down the steps of the church to meet them. He stood on the cobbled square in his purple robes, both arms held wide in greeting. Mayor Lorraine remained motionless at the top of the church steps.

  ‘See, Father Benoir,’ said Bishop Vitroletti. ‘See how His Eminence radiates love.’

  Cardinal Flamini met the first of the crowd. He waved his’ arms like a policeman on traffic duty. ‘Over there,’ he cried, pointing to the lines of food boxes beneath the ark. ‘There is food for you all... food and wine.’

  The villagers by the food stocks held up some of their wares. Sausages, meat, bread, cheese and wine were snatched greedily by the new arrivals who took all they were offered - before clambering aboard the ark to commandeer the villagers’ cabins for their own use. The tide of people swelled as outside the walls, news of the opening of the gates spread. The masses, now scattered over the whole valley, rose from around their camp fires, grabbed their bed-rolls and meagre belongings and converged on the village.

  The new bridge was narrow. On either side of it, the steep sides of the gorge dropped to the stream below. The crowd fought to pack themselves into the bottleneck. They jostled and strained to keep away from the edge of the gorge, found themselves forced across the swaying bridge and through the gateway. Once inside, the crowd expanded in the less restricting space of the square. They ran to escape the press of those behind them. The motion grew - until suddenly, there were too many people to be served. The new arrivals grabbed what they could of the food and wine, and fought each other up the gangplank to the ark to claim the remaining places.