The Clowns of God

by Morris West

  “It’s still a possibility, Jean,” said Mendelius with grave gentleness. “You asked me to judge you.”

  “Have you reached a verdict yet?”

  “No. I had to talk to you first.”

  “Let’s sit down, Carl. Over there, on the stone bench. That’s where I was sitting when it happened. But, first, there are other things to tell you.…”

  They settled themselves on the bench. Jean Marie scooped up a handful of pebbles from the path and began tossing them at an imaginary target. He talked casually, in a tone of wry reminiscence.

  “… Let me say outright, Carl, that in spite of all the ritual disclaimers and the public acts of humility, I really wanted to be Pope. All my life I had been a careerist in the Church. I use the word in the French sense. I was built for what I did. As a youth I fought with the Maquis. I came to the seminary a man, sure of his vocation and of his motives. More, I understand instinctively how the system works. It’s like Saint Cyr or Oxford or Harvard… If you know the rules of the game, the averages are in your favour. There’s no discredit… that’s not what I’m saying. I simply point out that there is, there has to be, an element of ambition, an element of calculation… I had the ambition. I also had a good, tidy French mind.…

  “So, I was a good priest, a good diocesan bishop. I mean that! I worked hard at it. I spent a lot of love. I held the people together, even the young. I set up social experiments. I was attracting vocations to the ministry while others were losing them. My people told me they felt a sense of unity, of religious purpose. In short, I had to be, sooner or later, a candidate for the red hat. In the end it was offered to me, on condition that I came to Rome and joined the Curia. Naturally, I accepted. I was appointed Prefect of the Secretariat for Christian Unity and Subprefect of the Secretariat for Nonbelievers.… These were minor offices as you know. The real power was vested in the important Congregations: Doctrine of the Faith, Episcopal and Clerical Affairs.

  “Still I was very happy. I had access to the Pontiff. I had an open brief, the opportunity to travel, to make contacts far outside the Roman enclave.… This was when we met, Carl. You remember the excitements we shared. It was like having a box at the opera!… And there were good and great things to be done.…

  “But then, slowly I began to see how very little I had accomplished—or could ever accomplish for that matter. At home, if I founded a school or a hospital, the results were there, tangible and consequential. I saw the dying comforted by the sisters. I saw the children taught in a religious tradition.… But as a Cardinal in Rome—what? Plans and projects and discussions and a new printing press to roll out the documents, but between me and the people a wall was thrown up. I was no longer an apostle. I was a diplomat, a politician, a go-between, and I did not like the man who walked in my shoes.… I liked the system even less: cumbersome, archaic, costly and full of cozy comers where slothful men could sleep their lives away and intriguers flourish like exotic plants in a hothouse.

  “However, if I wanted to change it—and I did, believe me!—I had to stay inside the Curia. I had to work within the limits of my own character. I am a persuader, not a dictator. I hate rudeness. I have never pounded a table in my life!…

  “So, when my predecessor died and the conclave was deadlocked, they chose me, Jean Marie Barette, Gregory the Seventeenth, Successor to the Prince of the Apostles!” He tossed the last pebbles onto the pathway and eased himself painfully to his feet. “Do you mind, Carl, if we go to Father Edmund’s workshop? It’s warmer there, and we can still be private. When evening comes I feel the cold.…”

  Inside the workshop, amid the cheerful clutter of wood billets and shavings and tools and a shaggy Baptist half born from a block of oak, they perched themselves like schoolboys on the bench while Jean Marie continued his story.

  “… And there I was, my dear Carl, suddenly as high as man could climb in the City of God. My titles assured me of my eminence and my authority: Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy… et patati et patata!” He gave a laugh of genuine amusement. “I tell you, Carl, when you stand for the first time on that balcony and look across Saint Peter’s square and hear the applause of the crowd, you really believe you’re someone! It’s very easy to forget that Christ was a wandering prophet who slept in caves, and Peter was a fisherman from a lakeside in Galilee and John the Precursor was murdered in a prison cell.

  “… After that, of course, you learn very fast. The whole system is designed to surround you with the aura of absolute authority, and resolutely to obstruct your use of it. The long liturgical ceremonies and the public appearances are theatre pieces in which you are stage-managed like an actor. Your private audiences are diplomatic occasions. You talk banalities. You bless medals. You are photographed for the posterity of your visitors.…

  “Meantime, the bureaucracy grinds on, filtering what comes to your desk, editing and glossing what you hand down. You are besieged by counsellors whose sole object seems to be to delay decision. You cannot act except through intermediaries. There are not enough hours in the day to digest a tenth of the information presented to you—and the language of Curial documents is as carefully designed as America officialese or the double-talk of the Marxists.…

  “I remember speaking about this to the President of the United States and, later, to the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China. Each told me the same thing in different words. The President, a very salty fellow, said: ‘They geld us first and then expect us to win the Kentucky Derby.’ The Chairman put it rather more politely: ‘You have five hundred million subjects. I have nearly twice that number. That is why you need hellfire and I need the punishment camps—and death takes us both before the work is half done.’… That’s the other thing, Carl, our own mortality makes us desperate; and desperate leaders are very vulnerable. We either surround ourselves with sycophants or we weary ourselves in a daily battle with men as resolute as we are.…”

  “Or we begin to look for miracles,” said Carl Mendelius quietly.

  “Or we are tempted to create them.” Jean Marie gave him a swift shrewd look. “The politicians have their propaganda pieces. The Pope has his wonder-workers. That’s what you’re really saying, isn’t it, Carl?”

  “It’s a point at issue, Jean. I had to put it to you.”

  “The answer’s simple. Yes, you wish for miracles. You pray for God to show His hand sometimes on this cruel planet. But to create them for yourself, or find yourself a ready-made magus, or adopt one from the annual crop of soi-disant saints—no, Carl! Not I! What happened to me was real, and uninvited. It was a torment and not a gift.”

  “But you did try to exploit it?”

  “Do you believe that, old friend?”

  “I ask because others believe it—still others could say it in the future.”

  “And I can offer no proof to the contrary.”

  “Precisely, Jean! To use the terms of biblical analysis, you claim a private disclosure experience, but you cannot ask for an act of faith in your unsupported testimony. Therefore, there has to be a legitimizing sign.… The Cardinals were scared you would get it by invoking the dogma of infallibility. They were desperate to get rid of you before you could do it.…”

  Jean Marie frowned over the idea for a moment, then nodded agreement.

  “Yes, I accept your definitions. I claim a disclosure experience. I lack a legitimizing sign which authorizes me to proclaim it…”

  “Correction.” Mendelius frowned over the phrase. “… which authorizes you to proclaim it as Pontiff of the Universal Church.”

  “But look at our Baptist here.” Jean Marie ran his hand over the half-finished sculpture. “He came out of the desert, preaching that the Kingdom of God was at hand, that men should repent and be baptized. What was his patent of authority? I quote: ‘The word of the Lord came to John the son of Zachary in the desert.…’ ” He smiled and shrugged. “At least there are precedents, Carl! But let me go on.…
We were talking about power and its limitations. One thing I did have as Pope was access to information—and from the highest sources. I travelled. I talked to heads of state. They sent emissaries to me.

  “All of them, without exception, faced the same dreadful dilemma. They were appointed to serve a national interest If they failed to do that, they would be deposed. But they knew that at some point they had to compromise national interest with other interests equally imperative; and if the compromise failed, the world would be plunged into an atomic war.…

  “They knew more, Carl, more than they ever dared to make public: that the means of destruction are so vast, so deadly, so far beyond antidote, that they can obliterate mankind and make the planet itself unfit for human habitation.… What these high men told me was the stuff of nightmares and I was haunted by them, day and night. Everything else became petty and irrelevant: dogmatic disputes, some poor priest hopping into bed with a housemaid, whether a woman should take a pill or carry a little card to count her lunar periods to avoid making gun-fodder for the day of Armageddon.… Do you understand, my friend? Do you really understand?”

  “I understand, Jean,” said Mendelius with somber conviction. “Better than you perhaps, because I have children and you have not. On this matter we are not at odds. But I have to put it to you, that you didn’t need a vision to show you the last disaster. It was already burned into your brain. You, yourself, called it the stuff of nightmares—and you can have those, waking or sleeping!”

  “And the rest of it, Carl? The final deliverance, the last justification of God’s redeeming plan, the Parousia? Did I dream that, too?”

  “You could have.” Mendelius pieced out his answer slowly. “I tell you as an historian, I tell you as a man and as a student of mankind’s beliefs, the dream of the last things haunts the folk-memory of every race under the sun. It is expressed in every literature, in every art, in every death ritual known to man. The forms are different; but the dream persists, haunting our pillows in the dark, forming itself by day out of the storm clouds and the lightning flash. I share the dream with you; but when you say, as you do in your encyclical: ‘I… am commanded by the Holy Spirit to write you these words,’ then I have to ask, as your colleagues did, whether you are speaking in symbol or of fact. If of fact, then show me the rescript and the seal; prove to me that the message is authentic!”

  “You know I can’t do that,” said Jean Marie Barette.

  “Exactly,” said Carl Mendelius.

  “But if you admit, Carl, that catastrophe is possible and even imminent, if you admit that the Doctrine of Last Things is an authentic dream of all mankind—and a clear tradition in Christian doctrine, why should I not say so—vision or no vision?”

  “Because you determine it!” Mendelius was implacable. “You determine it by circumstance, by approximate time. You demand immediate and specific preparations. You close out all hope of continuity—and you lock yourself into so narrow a doctrine of election that it will be rejected by most of the world and half our own church as well. For those who accept it the consequences may be disastrous—mass panic, public disorders, and most certainly a rash of suicides.…”

  “My compliments, Carl!” Jean Marie gave him a smile of ironic approbation. “You’ve made a splendid case, better even than my Cardinals presented.”

  “I rest it there,” said Carl Mendelius.

  “And you expect me to answer it?”

  “You asked me in your letter to spread the message which you could no longer proclaim. You have to prove to me that it is authentic.”

  “How, Carl? What evidence would convince you? A burning bush? A rod turned into a serpent? Our Baptist here, stepping alive out of this block of wood?”

  Before Mendelius had time to frame an answer the monastery bell began to toll. Jean Marie slipped off the bench and dusted the sawdust from his robe.

  “It’s a feast day. Vespers are half-an-hour early. Are you going to join us in the chapel?”

  “If I may,” said Mendelius quietly. “I’ve run out of human answers.”

  “There are none,” said Jean Marie Barette, and quoted softly: “‘Nisi dominus aedificaverit domum.… Unless the Lord build the house, the builders labour in vain!’”

  In the chapel, the ancient hierarchic order still prevailed. The Abbot sat in the place of honour with his counsellors about him. Jean Marie, lately a Pope, was seated with the juniors. Carl Mendelius was placed among the novices, with a borrowed breviary in his hands. It was a strange, poignant experience, as if he had stepped back thirty years, to the old monkish life in which he had been trained. Every cadence of the Gregorian chant was familiar. The words of the Psalms called up vivid pictures of his student days; lectures and disputations and long, painful discussions with superiors in the period before his exit.

  “Ad te domine, clamabo…” the choir intoned. “To thee O Lord I will cry out. O my God be not silent to me, lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like those who go down into the pit. Hear O Lord the voice of my supplication when I pray to thee, when I lift up my hands to thy holy temple.”

  The invocations had a new meaning for him as well. The silence which had fallen between himself and Jean Marie was sinister. Suddenly they were strangers, met in a no-man’s-land, each speaking a language alien to the other. The God who spoke to Jean Marie was silent to Carl Mendelius.

  “According to the works of their hands…” the chant echoed through the vaulted nave, “render to them their reward.” And the response came back, somber and menacing: “Because they have not understood the works of the Lord… thou shalt destroy them and not build them up.”

  But… but—against the counterpoint of the psalmody Mendelius wrestled his way through the argument—whose understanding was the right one? If the leap of faith were not a rational act, it became an insanity, to which he could not commit, even if his refusal meant the rupture of the bond between himself and Jean Marie. It was a thing sad to contemplate, late in life, when the simple abrasion of time wore out so many cherished relationships.

  He was glad when the service was over and he joined the community for the feast-day meal in the refectory. He could laugh at the small community jokes, applaud Jean Marie’s dessert, discuss with the father archivist the resources of the library, and with the Abbot, the quality of the wines of the Abruzzi. When the meal was over and the monks moved into the common room for evening recreation, Jean Marie approached the Abbot and asked:

  “May we be excused, Father Abbot? Carl and I still have things to discuss. Afterwards we’ll read Compline together, in my cell.”

  “Of course.… But don’t keep him up too late, Professor! We’re trying to get him to take care of himself.”

  Jean Marie’s cell was as bare as the guest room. There were no ornaments save the crucifix, the only books were the Bible, a copy of the Rule, a book of hours and a French edition of The Imitation of Christ. Jean Marie took off his habit, kissed it and hung it in the closet. He pulled a woolen jersey over his shirt and sat on the bed, facing Mendelius. He said with a touch of irony:

  “So here we are, Carl! No popery, no monkery; just two men trying to be honest with each other. Let me ask you some questions now.… Do you believe I am a sane man?”

  “Yes, I do, Jean.”

  “Am I a liar?”

  “No.”

  “And the vision?”

  “I believe the experience you described in your letter was real to you. I believe you are totally sincere in your interpretation of it.”

  “But you will not commit yourself to that interpretation.”

  “I cannot. The best I can do is keep an open mind.”

  “And the service I asked of you?”

  “To spread the word of the catastrophe and the Coming? I cannot do it, Jean. I will not. Some of the reasons I’ve explained to you; but there are others as well. You abdicated over this issue! You wore the Fisherman’s ring. You held the seal of the Supreme Teacher. You surrendered them!
If you could not proclaim as Pope what you believe, what do you want of me? I’m not a cleric anymore. I’m a secular scholar. I am deprived of authority to teach in the Church. What do you expect me to do? Go round forming little sects of millenarian Christians? That’s been done before, as far back as Montanus and Tertullian—and the consequences have always been disastrous.…”

  “That’s not what I mean, Carl.”

  “It’s what would happen! Like it or not, you’d have charismatic anarchy.”

  “There will be anarchy in any case!”

  “Then I refuse to contribute to it.”

  “I will tell you something more, Carl! The mission you refuse now, you will one day accept. The light you cannot see will be shown to you. One day you will feel God’s hand on your shoulder, and you will walk wherever it leads you.”

  “For the love of God, Jean! What are you? Some kind of oracle? You can’t pile prophecy on prophecy and make anything but a madness. Now, listen to me! I’m Carl Mendelius, remember? You asked me to make a judgment. So I make it! I judge that you tell us too much and too little! You were the Pope. You say you had a vision. In the vision you were called by God to proclaim the imminence of the Parousia.… Now, face this fact. You did not proclaim it! You bent to a power group. Why did you let them silence you, Jean? Why are you silent now? You abdicated the one rostrum from which you might have spoken to the world! Why do you expect a middle-aged professor from Swabia to recover what you threw away?” Mendelius’ anger and frustration vented itself in a final, bitter tirade. “Drexel tells me you’ve become a mystic. That’s a fine, traditional thing to be—and it saves the Establishment a whole lot of trouble, because even the newspapers shy away from God-madness! But what you wrote in your encyclical signified life or death for millions on this small planet. Was it fact or fiction? We need full testimony! We can’t wait around while Jean Marie Barette plays hide-and-seek with God in a monastery garden!”