The Thorn Birds

by Colleen McCullough

  Archbishop Ralph sat down, clenched his hands between his knees, stared rebelliously out the window at the doves soaring, golden in the setting sun, toward their cote. At forty-nine he was thinner than of yore, and was aging as splendidly as he did most things.

  “Ralph, we are what we are. Men, but only as a secondary consideration. First we are priests.”

  “That wasn’t how you listed our priorities when I came back from Australia, Vittorio.”

  “I meant a different thing then, and you know it. You are being difficult. I mean now that we cannot think as men. We must think as priests, because that is the most important aspect of our lives. Whatever we may think or want to do as men, our allegiance is to the Church, and to no temporal power! Our loyalty lies only with the Holy Father! You vowed obedience, Ralph. Do you wish to break it again? The Holy Father is infallible in all matters affecting the welfare of God’s Church.”

  “He’s wrong! His judgment’s biased. All of his energies are directed toward fighting Communism. He sees Germany as its greatest enemy, the only real factor preventing the westward spread of Communism. He wants Hitler to remain firmly in the German saddle, just as he was content to see Mussolini rule Italy.”

  “Believe me, Ralph, there are things you do not know. He is the Pope, he is infallible! If you deny that, you deny your very faith.”

  The door opened discreetly, but hastily.

  “Your Eminence, Herr General Kesselring.”

  Both prelates rose, their late differences smoothed from their faces, smiling.

  “This is a great pleasure, Your Excellency. Won’t you sit down? Would you like tea?”

  The conversation was conducted in German, since many of the senior members of the Vatican spoke it. The Holy Father was fond of speaking and listening to German.

  “Thank you, Your Eminence, I would. Nowhere else in Rome does one get such superbly English tea.”

  Cardinal Vittorio smiled guilelessly. “It is a habit I acquired while I was the Papal Legate in Australia, and which, for all my innate Italianness, I have not been able to break.”

  “And you, Your Grace?”

  “I’m an Irishman, Herr General. The Irish, too, are brought up on tea.”

  General Albert Kesselring always responded to Archbishop de Bricassart as one man to another; after these slight, oily Italian prelates he was so refreshing, a man without subtlety or cunning, straightforward.

  “As always, Your Grace, I am amazed at the purity of your German accent,” he complimented.

  “I have an ear for languages, Herr General, which means it’s like all talents—not worth praising.”

  “What may we do for Your Excellency?” asked the Cardinal sweetly.

  “I presume you will have heard of the fate of II Duce by now?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency, we have.”

  “Then you will know in part why I came. To assure you that all is well, and to ask you if perhaps you would convey the message to those summering at Castel Gandolfo? I’m so busy at the moment it’s impossible for me to visit Castel Gandolfo myself.”

  “The message will be conveyed. You are so busy?”

  “Naturally. You must surely realize this is now an enemy country for us Germans?”

  “This, Herr General? This is not Italian soil, and no man is an enemy here except those who are evil.”

  “I beg your pardon, Your Eminence. Naturally I was referring to Italy, not to the Vatican. But in the matter of Italy I must act as my Führer commands. Italy will be occupied, and my troops, present until now as allies, will become policemen.”

  Archbishop Ralph, sitting comfortably and looking as if he had never had an ideological struggle in his life, watched the visitor closely. Did he know what his Führer was doing in Poland? How could he not know?

  Cardinal Vittorio arranged his face into an anxious look. “Dear General, not Rome herself, surely? Ah, no! Rome, with her history, her priceless artifacts? If you bring troops within her seven hills there will be strife, destruction. I beg of you, not that!”

  General Kesselring looked uncomfortable. “I hope it won’t come to that, Your Eminence. But I took an oath also, I too am under orders. I must do as my Führer wishes.”

  “You’ll try for us, Herr General? Please, you must! I was in Athens some years ago,” said Archbishop Ralph quickly, leaning forward, his eyes charmingly wide, a lock of white-sprinkled hair falling across his brow; he was well aware of his effect on the general, and used it without compunction. “Have you been in Athens, sir?”

  “Yes, I have,” said the general dryly.

  “Then I’m sure you know the story. How it took men of relatively modern times to destroy the buildings atop the Acropolis? Herr General, Rome stands as she always was, a monument to two thousand years of care, attention, love. Please, I beg of you! Don’t endanger Rome.”

  The general stared at him in startled admiration; his uniform became him very well, but no better than the soutane with its touch of imperial purple became Archbishop Ralph. He, too, had the look of a soldier, a soldier’s sparely beautiful body, and the face of an angel. So must the Archangel Michael look; not a smooth young Renaissance boy but an aging perfect man, who had loved Lucifer, fought him, banished Adam and Eve, slain the serpent, stood at God’s right hand. Did he know how he looked? He was indeed a man to remember.

  “I shall do my best, Your Grace, I promise you. To a certain extent the decision is mine, I admit it. I am, as you know, a civilized man. But you’re asking a lot. If I declare Rome an open city, it means I cannot blow up her bridges or convert her buildings into fortresses, and that might well be to Germany’s eventual disadvantage. What assurances do I have that Rome won’t repay me with treachery if I’m kind to her?”

  Cardinal Vittorio pursed his lips and made kissing noises at his cat, an elegant Siamese nowadays; he smiled gently, and looked at the Archbishop. “Rome would never repay kindness with treachery, Herr General. I am sure when you do find the time to visit those summering at Castel Gandolfo that you will receive the same assurances. Here, Kheng-see, my sweetheart! Ah, what a lovely girl you are!” His hands pressed it down on his scarlet lap, caressed it.

  “An unusual animal, Your Eminence.”

  “An aristocrat, Herr General. Both the Archbishop and myself bear old and venerable names, but beside her lineage, ours are as nothing. Do you like her name? It is Chinese for silken flower. Apt, is it not?”

  The tea had arrived, was being arranged; they were all quiet until the lay sister left the room.

  “You won’t regret a decision to declare Rome an open city, Your Excellency,” said Archbishop Ralph to the new master of Italy with a melting smile. He turned to the Cardinal, charm falling away like a dropped cloak, not needed with this beloved man. “Your Eminence, do you intend to be ‘mother,’ or shall I do the honors?”

  “ ‘Mother’?” asked General Kesselring blankly.

  Cardinal di Contini-Verchese laughed. “It is our little joke, we celibate men. Whoever pours the tea is called ‘mother.’ An English saying, Herr General.”

  That night Archbishop Ralph was tired, restless, on edge. He seemed to be doing nothing to help end this war, only dicker about the preservation of antiquities, and he had grown to loathe Vatican inertia passionately. Though he was conservative by nature, sometimes the snaillike caution of those occupying the highest Church positions irked him intolerably. Aside from the humble nuns and priests who acted as servants, it was weeks since he had spoken to an ordinary man, someone without a political, spiritual or military axe to grind. Even prayer seemed to come less easily to him these days, and God seemed light-years away, as if He had withdrawn to allow His human creatures full rein in destroying the world He had made for them. What he needed, he thought, was a stiff dose of Meggie and Fee, or a stiff dose of someone who wasn’t interested in the fate of the Vatican or of Rome.

  His Grace walked down the private stairs into the great basilica of Saint Peter’s, whence his
aimless progress had led him. Its doors were locked these days the moment darkness fell, a sign of the uneasy peace which lay over Rome more telling than the companies of grey-clad Germans moving through Roman streets. A faint, ghostly glow illuminated the yawning empty apse; his footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone floor as he walked, stopped and merged with the silence as he genuflected in front of the High Altar, began again. Then, between one foot’s noise of impact and the next, he heard a gasp. The flashlight in his hand sprang into life; he leveled his beam in the direction of the sound, not frightened so much as curious. This was his world; he could defend it secure from fear.

  The beam played upon what had become in his eyes the most beautiful piece of sculpture in all creation: the Pietà of Michelangelo. Below the stilled stunned figures was another face, made not of marble but of flesh, all shadowed hollows and deathlike.

  “Ciao,” said His Grace, smiling.

  There was no answer, but he saw that the clothes were those of a German infantryman of lowest rank; his ordinary man! That he was a German didn’t matter.

  “Wie geht’s?” he asked, still smiling.

  A movement caused sweat on a wide, intellectual brow to flash suddenly out of the dimness.

  “Du bist krank?” he asked then, wondering if the lad, for he was no more, was ill.

  Came the voice, at last: “Nein.”

  Archbishop Ralph laid his flashlight down on the floor and went forward, put his hand under the soldier’s chin and lifted it to look into the dark eyes, darker in the darkness.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked in German, and laughed. “There!” he continued, still in German. “You don’t know it, but that’s been my main function in life—to ask people what’s the matter. And, let me tell you, it’s a question which has got me into a lot of trouble in my time.”

  “I came to pray,” said the lad in a voice too deep for his age, with a heavy Bavarian accent.

  “What happened, did you get locked in?”

  “Yes, but that isn’t what the matter is.”

  His grace picked up the flashlight. “Well, you can’t stay here all night, and I haven’t got a key to the doors. Come with me.” He began walking back toward the private stairs leading up to the papal palace, talking in a slow, soft voice. “I came to pray myself, as a matter of fact. Thanks to your High Command, it’s been a rather nasty day. That’s it, up here…. We’ll have to hope that the Holy Father’s staff don’t assume I’ve been arrested, but can see I’m doing the escorting, not you.”

  After that they walked for ten more minutes in silence, through corridors, out into open courts and gardens, inside hallways, up steps; the young German did not seem anxious to leave his protector’s side, for he kept close. At last His Grace opened a door and led his waif into a small sitting room, sparsely and humbly furnished, switched on a lamp and closed the door.

  They stood staring at each other, able to see. The German soldier saw a very tall man with a fine face and blue, discerning eyes; Archbishop Ralph saw a child tricked out in the garb which all of Europe found fearsome and awe-inspiring. A child; no more than sixteen years old, certainly. Of average height and youthfully thin, he had a frame promising later bulk and strength, and very long arms. His face had rather an Italianate cast, dark and patrician, extremely attractive; wide, dark brown eyes with long black lashes, a magnificent head of wavy black hair. There was nothing usual or ordinary about him after all, even if his role was an ordinary one; in spite of the fact that he had longed to talk to an average, ordinary man, His Grace was interested.

  “Sit down,” he said to the boy, crossing to a chest and unearthing a bottle of Marsala wine. He poured some into two glasses, gave the boy one and took his own to a chair from which he could watch the fascinating countenance comfortably. “Are they reduced to drafting children to do their fighting?” he asked, crossing his legs.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy. “I was in a children’s home, so I’d be taken early anyway.”

  “What’s your name, lad?”

  “Rainer Moerling Hartheim,” said the boy, rolling it out with great pride.

  “A magnificent name,” said the priest gravely.

  “It is, isn’t it? I chose it myself. They called me Rainer Schmidt at the home, but when I went into the army I changed it to the name I’ve always wanted.”

  “You were an orphan?”

  “The Sisters called me a love child.”

  Archbishop Ralph tried not to smile; the boy had such dignity and self-possession, now he had lost his fear. Only what had frightened him? Not being found, or being locked in the basilica.

  “Why were you so frightened, Rainer?”

  The boy sipped his wine gingerly, looked up with a pleased expression. “Good, it’s sweet.” He made himself more comfortable. “I wanted to see Saint Peter’s because the Sisters always used to talk about it and show us pictures. So when they posted us to Rome I was glad. We got here this morning. The minute I could, I came.” He frowned. “But it wasn’t as I had expected. I thought I’d feel closer to Our Lord, being in His own Church. Instead it was only enormous and cold. I couldn’t feel Him.”

  Archbishop Ralph smiled. “I know what you mean. But Saint Peter’s isn’t really a church, you know. Not in the sense most churches are. Saint Peter’s is the Church. It took me a long time to get used to it, I remember.”

  “I wanted to pray for two things,” the boy said, nodding his head to indicate he had heard but that it wasn’t what he wished to hear.

  “For the things which frighten you?”

  “Yes. I thought being in Saint Peter’s might help.”

  “What are the things which frighten you, Rainer?”

  “That they’ll decide I’m a Jew, and that my regiment will be sent to Russia after all.”

  “I see. No wonder you’re frightened. Is there indeed a possibility they’ll decide you’re a Jew?”

  “Well, look at me!” said the boy simply. “When they were writing down my particulars they said they’d have to check. I don’t know if they can or not, but I suppose the Sisters might know more than they ever told me.”

  “If they do, they’ll not pass it on,” said His Grace comfortingly. “They’ll know why they’re being asked.”

  “Do you really think so? Oh, I hope so!”

  “Does the thought of having Jewish blood disturb you?”

  “What my blood is doesn’t matter,” said Rainer. “I was born a German, that’s the only important thing.”

  “Only they don’t look at it like that, do they?”

  “No.”

  “And Russia? There’s no need to worry about Russia now, surely. You’re in Rome, the opposite direction.”

  “This morning I heard our commander saying we might be sent to Russia after all. It isn’t going well there.”

  “You’re a child,” said Archbishop Ralph abruptly. “You ought to be in school.”

  “I wouldn’t be now anyway.” The boy smiled. “I’m sixteen, so I’d be working.” He sighed. “I would have liked to keep going to school. Learning is important.”

  Archbishop Ralph started to laugh, then got up and refilled the glasses. “Don’t take any notice of me, Rainer. I’m not making any sense. Just thoughts, one after the other. It’s my hour for them, thoughts. I’m not a very good host, am I?”

  “You’re all right,” said the boy.

  “So,” said His Grace, sitting down again. “Define yourself, Rainer Moerling Hartheim.”

  A curious pride settled on the young face. “I’m a German, and a Catholic. I want to make Germany a place where race and religion won’t mean persecution, and I’m going to devote my life to that end, if I live.”

  “I shall pray for you—that you live, and succeed.”

  “Would you?” asked the boy shyly. “Would you really pray for me personally, by name?”

  “Of course. In fact, you’ve taught me something. That in my business there is only one weapon at my disp
osal—prayer. I have no other function.”

  “Who are you?” asked Rainer, the wine beginning to make him blink drowsily.

  “I’m Archbishop Ralph de Bricassart.”

  “Oh! I thought you were an ordinary priest!”

  “I am an ordinary priest. Nothing more.”

  “I’ll strike a bargain with you!” said the boy, his eyes sparkling. “You pray for me. Father, and if I live long enough to get what I want, I’ll come back to Rome to let you see what your prayers have done.”

  The blue eyes smiled tenderly. “All right, it’s a bargain. And when you come, I’ll tell you what I think happened to my prayers.” He got up. “Stay there, little politician. I’ll find you something to eat.”

  They talked until dawn glowed round the domes and campaniles, and the wings of pigeons whirred outside the window. Then the Archbishop conducted his guest through the public rooms of the palace, watching his awe with delight, and let him out into the cool, fresh air. Though he didn’t know it, the boy with the splendid name was indeed to go to Russia, carrying with him a memory oddly sweet and reassuring: that in Rome, in Our Lord’s own Church, a man was praying for him every day, by name.

  By the time the Ninth was ready to be shipped to New Guinea, it was all over bar the mopping up. Disgruntled, the most elite division in Australian military history could only hope there might be further glory to amass somewhere else, chasing the Japanese back up through Indonesia. Guadalcanal had defeated all Japanese hopes in the drive for Australia. And yet, like the Germans, they yielded bitterly, grudgingly. Though their resources were pitifully stretched, their armies foundering from lack of supplies and reinforcements, they made the Americans and the Australians pay for every inch they gained back. In retreat, the Japanese abandoned Buna, Gona, Salamaua, and slipped back up the north coast, to Lae and Finschafen.