The Clowns of God

by Morris West

  They laughed at that and applauded the rabbinical humour. Mendelius went on.

  “Paul was prepared for the event. Peter was not. In the absence of scriptural dictate, he had to find justification for his new position in a vision—‘Take and eat’—remember?”

  They remembered, and gave a murmur of approval.

  “So now, our ‘perhaps.’ The Last Days are upon us. How prepared are we?”

  They hung back now. Mendelius offered them another example.

  “Some few of you here are old enough to remember the last days of the Third Reich; a country in ruins, a monstrosity of crimes revealed, a generation of men destroyed, a whole ethos corrupted, the only visible goal, survival! To those of us who remember, is it not at least a fair analogue of the millennial catastrophe?… But you are here today because, somewhere, somehow, faith and hope and charity survived and became fruitful again.… Do I explain myself?”

  “Yes.” The answer came back in a muted chorus.

  “How then…” He challenged them strongly. “How do we ensure that faith and charity survive, if and when the Last Days come upon us? Forget the Last Days if you must. Suppose that, as many predict, we have atomic war within a twelvemonth, what will you do?”

  “Die!” said a sepulchral voice from the back; and the room dissolved into a roar of laughter.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Mendelius chuckled helplessly. “There speaks a true prophet! Would he like to come up here and take my place?”

  No one stirred. After a few moments the laughter died into silence. More quietly now, Mendelius went on.

  “I should like to read to you now an extract from a document prepared by a dear friend of mine. I cannot name him. I ask you to accept that he is a man of great sanctity and singular intelligence; one, moreover, who understands the usages of power in the modern world. After the reading I shall ask for your comments.”

  He paused to wipe his spectacles and then began to read from Jean Marie’s encyclical: “… It is clear that in the days of universal calamity the traditional structures of society will not survive. There will be a ferocious struggle for the simplest needs of life—food, water, fuel and shelter. Authority will be usurped by the strong and the cruel. Large urban societies will fragment themselves into tribal groups.…”

  He felt the words take hold of them, the tension begin to build again. When the reading was done the silence was like a wall before him.

  He stepped back from the rostrum and asked simply, “Any comment?”

  There was a long pause and then a young woman stood up.

  “I am Henni Borkheim from Berlin. My husband is a pastor. We have two young children. I have a question. How do you show charity to a man who comes with a gun to rob you and take the last food from your children?”

  “And I have another!” The young man next to her stood up. “How do you continue to believe in a God who contrives or permits so universal a calamity—and then sits in judgment on its victims?”

  “So perhaps,” said Carl Mendelius gravely, “we should all ask ourselves a more fundamental question. We know that evil exists, that suffering and cruelty exist, that they may well propagate themselves to extremity like cancer in the body. Can we really believe in God at all?”

  “Do you, Professor?” Henni Borkheim was on her feet again.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then will you please answer my question!”

  “It was answered two millennia ago. ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’”

  “And that’s the answer you would give?”

  “I don’t know, my dear.” He was about to add that he had not yet been crucified; but he thought better of it. He stepped down from the rostrum and walked down through the audience to where the girl was sitting with her husband. He talked calmly and persuasively.

  “… You see the problem we get when we demand a personal testimony on every issue? We do not, we cannot, know how we will act. How we should act, yes! But how we will, in an immediate situation, there is no way to know in advance.… I remember as a youth in Dresden my mother talking to my aunt about the coming of the Russians. I was not supposed to hear; but I did. My mother handed her a jar of lubricant jelly and said: ‘Better relax and survive than resist and be murdered.’… Either way it’s rape, and there is no miracle promised to prevent it; no legislation to cover the time of chaos.” He smiled and held out his hand to the young woman. “Let’s not contend but discuss in peace.”

  There was a small murmur of approval as they joined hands; then Mendelius put another question.

  “In a plural world, who are the elect? We Romans, you Lutherans, the Sunnis or the Shi’ites in Islam, the Mormons of Salt Lake City, the Animists of Thailand?”

  “In respect of the individual, it is not for us to distinguish.” A grey-haired pastor rose painfully to his feet. His hands were knotted with arthritis. He spoke haltingly but with conviction. “We are not appointed to judge other men by our lights. We are commanded only to love the image of God in our fellow pilgrims.”

  “But we are also commanded to keep the faith pure, to spread the good news of Christ,” said Pastor Allman of Darmstadt.

  “When you sit down at my table,” said the old man patiently, “I offer you the food I have. If you cannot digest it, what should I do—choke you with it?”

  “So, my friends!” Mendelius took command of the meeting again. “When the black night comes down, in the great desert, when there is neither pillar of cloud nor spark of fire to light the path, when the voice of authority is stilled, and we hear nothing but the confusion of old argument, when God seems to absent himself from his own universe, where do we turn? Whom can we sanely believe?”

  He walked slowly back to the rostrum and, in a long hush, waited for someone to answer.

  “I’m scared, liebchen! So damn scared, I’d like to walk out of here and take the next plane back to Germany!”

  It was thirty minutes after midday and they were eating an early lunch in a quiet restaurant near the Pantheon, before Mendelius left for Monte Cassino. Two tables away, Francone shovelled spaghetti into his mouth and kept a vigilant eye on the door. Lotte leaned across to Mendelius and wiped a speck of sauce from the corner of his mouth. She chided him firmly:

  “Truly, Carl, I don’t know what the fuss is about! You’re a free man. You’re going to see an old friend. You don’t have to accept any commission, any obligations, beyond this one visit.”

  “He’s asked me to judge him.”

  “He had no right to demand that.”

  “He didn’t demand—he asked, begged! Look, liebchen. I’ve thought round and round this thing. I’ve talked it up and down; and still I’m no nearer to an answer. Jean Marie’s asking for an act of faith just as big as… as an assent to the Resurrection! I can’t make that act.”

  “So tell him!”

  “And do I tell him why? ‘Jean, you’re not mad; you’re not a cheat; you’re not deluded; I love you like a brother—but God doesn’t have dialogues in country gardens about the end of the world; and I wouldn’t believe it if you came complete with the stigmata and a crown of thorns!”

  “If that’s what you mean, say it.”

  “The problem is, liebchen, I think I mean something else altogether. I’m beginning to believe the Cardinals were right to get rid of Jean Marie.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It arises out of my dialogues at the Academy—and even a talk I had with Hilde Frank. The only finality people can cope with is their own.… Total catastrophe is beyond their comprehension and probably their capacity to deal with. It’s an invitation to despair. Jean Marie sees it as a call to evangelical charity. I think it would lead to an almost complete breakdown in social communication. Who was it who said: ‘The veil that hides the face of the future was woven by the hand of Mercy’?”

  “Then I think,” said Lotte firmly, “you have to be as honest with Jean Marie as you’re trying to be wi
th yourself. He asked you for a judgment. Give it to him!”

  “I want to ask you a straight question, liebchen. Do you think I’m an honest man?”

  She did not answer him directly. She cupped her chin on her hands and looked at him for a long time without speaking. Then very quietly she told him:

  “I remember the first day I met you, Carl. I was with Frederika Ullman. We were walking down the Spanish Steps, two German girls on their first visit to Rome. You were there, sitting on the steps next to a lad who was painting a very bad picture. You were dressed in black pants and a black roll-necked sweater. We stopped to look at the picture. You heard us talking in German and you spoke to us. We sat down beside you, very glad to have someone to chat with us. You bought us tea and buns in the English Tea Shop. Then you invited us to go for a ride in a carrozza. Off we went, clip-clopping, all the way to the Campo dei Fiori. When we got there you showed us that marvellous brooding statue of Giordano Bruno and told us about his trial and how they burned him for heresy on the same spot. Then you said: ‘That’s what they’d like to do to me!’ I thought you were drunk or a little crazy until you explained that you were a priest under suspicion of heresy.… You looked so lonely, so haunted, my heart went out to you. Then you quoted Bruno’s last words to his judges: ‘I think, gentlemen, that you are more afraid of me than I of you.’… I’m looking at the same man I saw that day. The same man who said: ‘Bruno was a faker, a charlatan, a muddled thinker, but one thing I know: he died an honest man!’ I loved you then, Carl. I love you now. Whatever you do, right or wrong, I know you’ll die an honest man!”

  “I hope so, liebchen!” said Carl Mendelius gravely. “I hope to God I can be honest with the man who married us!”

  V

  At three-thirty precisely Francone set him down at the portals of the great Monastery of Monte Cassino. The guestmaster welcomed him and led him to his room, a plain whitewashed chamber furnished with a bed, a desk and chair, a clothes closet and a prie-dieu over which was hung a crucifix carved in olive wood. He threw open the shutters to reveal a dizzying view across the Rapido valley to the rolling hills of Lazio. He smiled at Mendelius’ surprise and said:

  “You see! Already we are halfway to heaven!… I hope you enjoy your stay with us.”

  He waited while Mendelius laid out his few belongings and then led him along the bare, echoing corridors to the Abbot’s study. The man who rose to greet him was small and spare with a lean, weathered face and iron-grey hair and the smile of a happy child.

  “Professor Mendelius! A pleasure to meet you! Please, sit down. Would you like coffee, a cordial perhaps?”

  “No, thank you; we stopped for a coffee on the autostrada. It’s very kind of you to receive me.”

  “You come with the best recommendations, Professor.” There was a hint of irony in the innocent smile. “I don’t want to keep you too long from your friend; but I thought we should talk first.”

  “Of course. You told me on the telephone he had been ill.”

  “You will find him changed.” The Abbot chose his words carefully. “He has survived an experience that would have crushed a lesser man. Now he is going through another—more difficult, more intense, because it is an interior struggle. I counsel him as best I can. The rest of the brethren support him with their prayers and their attentions; but he is like a man consumed by a fire inside him. It may be he will open himself to you. If he does, let him see that you understand. Don’t press him. I know that he has written to you. I know what he has asked. I am his confessor and I cannot discuss that subject with you, because he has not given me permission to do so.… You, on the other hand, are not my subject and I cannot presume to direct your conscience either.”

  “Perhaps then, you and I could open our minds to each other.”

  “Perhaps.” Abbot Andrew’s smile was enigmatic. “But first, I think you should talk to our friend Jean.”

  “Certain questions arise. Does he truly want to see me?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed.”

  “Then why, when I wrote to you both, did he not write back as well as you? When I called on the telephone, why did you not invite him to speak with me?”

  “It was not discourtesy, I promise you.”

  “What was it?”

  The Abbot sat silent for a long moment, studying the backs of his long hands. Finally he said, slowly, “There are times when it is not possible for him to communicate with anyone.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “On the contrary, Professor. It is my belief, based on personal observation, that your friend Jean has reached a high degree of contemplation, that state, in fact, which is called ‘illuminative,’ in which, for certain periods, the spirit is totally absorbed in communication with the Creator. It is a rare phenomenon; but not unfamiliar in the lives of the great mystics. During these periods of contemplation the subject does not respond to any external stimuli at all. When the experience is over, he returns immediately to normality.… But I am telling you nothing you don’t know from your own reading.”

  “I know also,” said Carl Mendelius drily, “that catatonic and cataleptic states are very well known in psychiatric medicine.”

  “I, too, am aware of it, Professor. We are not altogether in the Dark Ages here. Our founder, Saint Benedict, was a wise and tolerant legislator. It may surprise you to know that one of our fathers is a quite eminent physician with degrees from Padua, Zurich and London. He entered the order only ten years ago after the death of his wife. He has examined our friend. He has, on my direction, consulted with other specialists on the matter. He is convinced, as I am, that we are dealing with a mystic and not a psychotic.”

  “Have you so informed the people who declared him a madman?”

  “I have informed Cardinal Drexel. For the rest…” He gave a small chuckle of amusement. “They’re very busy men. I prefer not to disturb them in their large affairs. Any more questions?”

  “Only one,” said Mendelius gravely. “You believe Jean Marie is a mystic, illuminated by God. Do you also believe that he was granted a revelation of the Parousia?”

  The Abbot frowned and shook his head.

  “Afterwards, my friend! After you’ve seen him. Then I’ll tell you what I believe.… Come! He’s waiting in the garden. I’ll take you to him.”

  He was standing in the middle of the cloister garden, a tall slim figure in the black habit of St. Benedict, feeding crumbs to the pigeons that fluttered at his feet. At the sound of Mendelius’ footfall he turned, stared for a single moment, and then hurried towards him, arms outstretched, while the pigeons wheeled in panic above his head. Mendelius caught him in midstride and held him in a long embrace, shocked to feel, even through the coarse stuff of the habit, how thin and frail he was. His first words were a stifled cry:

  “Jean… Jean, my friend!”

  Jean Marie Barette clung to him, patting his shoulder and saying over and over, “Grâce à Dieu… Grâce à Dieu!”

  Then they held each other at arms’ length, looking into each other’s face.

  “Jean! Jean! What have they done to you? You’re as thin as a rake.”

  “They? Nothing.” He fished a handkerchief from the sleeve of his habit and dabbed at Mendelius’ cheeks. “Everybody’s been more than kind. How are all your family?”

  “Well, thank God. Lotte’s here in Rome. She sends you her best love.”

  “Thank her for lending you to me.… I prayed you would come quickly, Carl!”

  “I wanted to come sooner; but I couldn’t leave Tübingen until end of term.”

  “I know… I know! And now I read that you are involved in a terrorist shooting in Rome. That troubles me.…

  “Please, Jean! It’s a nine-day wonder. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Shall we walk awhile? It’s very pleasant here. One gets the breeze from the mountains, cool and clean, even on the hottest day.”

  He took Mendelius’ arm and they began to stroll slowly round the cl
oisters, making small tentative talk, as the first rush of emotion ebbed and the calm of an old friendship took hold of them.

  “I am very much at home here,” said Jean Marie. “Abbot Andrew is most considerate. I like the rhythm of the day; the hours of the office sung in choir, the quiet work.… One of the fathers is an excellent sculptor in wood. I sit in his workshop and watch. I love the smell of wood shavings! It’s a feast day today. I prepared the dessert you will be having for supper. It’s an old recipe my mother used. The fruit is from our own orchard. In the kitchen they have decided I’m better as a cook than as a Pope.… And how is life with you, Carl?”

  “It’s good, Jean. The children are beginning to make their own lives. Katrin is head over heels in love with her painter. Johann is brilliant in economics. He’s decided he’s not a believer anymore. One hopes he will grope his way back into faith; but he’s a good lad just the same. Lotte and I, well, we’re just beginning to enjoy being middle-aged together.… The new book’s moving ahead. At least it was, until you put it all out of my head.… I don’t think there’s been an hour when you were absent from my thoughts.…”

  “And you were never far from mine, Carl. It was as if you were the last spar to which I could cling after the shipwreck. I dared not let you go. I look back on those last weeks in the Vatican, with real horror.”

  “And now, Jean… ?”

  “Now I am calm—if not yet at peace, because I am still struggling to divest myself of the last impediments to a conformity with God’s will.… You cannot believe how hard it is, when it should be so simple, to abandon yourself absolutely to His designs, to say and mean it: ‘Here I am, a tool in your hands. Use me any way you want.’ The trust has to be absolute; but always one tries—without even knowing—to hedge the bet.”

  “And I was part of the hedge?” Mendelius said it with a smile and a hand’s touch to soften the question.

  “You were, Carl. I suppose you still are; but I believe also that you are part of God’s design for me. Had you not written, had you declined to come, I would have been forced to think otherwise. I prayed desperately for strength to face the possibility of a refusal.”