by Morris West
And how are you, dear friend? We have all your cards. We trace your progress by the handwriting—and, of course, we have the messages from your kind friend in England, Waldo Pearson. We can’t wait to get a copy of your book. Carl is dying to talk to you about it but we understand why you are timid about using the telephone. I am always so, especially when foreigners are on the line. I stammer and stutter and shout for Carl.
When will they let you out of hospital? Carl insists, and so do I, that you come straight to us in Bavaria. We are your family—and Anneliese Meissner says it is most important that you move directly from hospital into a secure environment. She, too, may spend some of the winter vacation with us in Bavaria. She is very attached to Carl. They are good for each other and I have learned not to be jealous of her, as I learned not to be jealous of you. As soon as you know when you are to be discharged, send a telegram to the Bavarian address we gave you. Fly straight to Munich and we shall pick you up at the airport and bring you to the valley.
Carl gets anxious sometimes. He is afraid the frontiers may be closed before you are ready to come to us. There is great tension everywhere. More and more British and American troops are being moved into the Rhineland. One sees many military convoys. The tone of the press is frankly chauvinist and the atmosphere at the University is very strange. There is a constant recruitment of specialists and, of course, all the security surveillance which Carl and Anneliese so feared. The extraordinary thing is that so few students object. They, too, are affected by the war fever, in a way one would never have expected. It is a shock to hear all the old clichés and slogans! I thank God every day Johann and Katrin are out and away.… The madness infects us all. Even Carl and I find ourselves using phrases we have heard on radio or television. It is as if all the old dark Teuton deities were being called up from their caverns; but then I suppose every nation has its underground galleries of war gods…
A raw, transatlantic voice interrupted his reading.
“Good evening, Your Holiness!”
He looked up to see Alvin Dolman, leaning against the doorjamb and grinning down at him. Dolman, too, was dressed in pajamas and dressing gown, and he carried a package wrapped in brown paper.
For a moment Jean Marie was stunned by the sardonic insolence of the man. Then he felt a wild rage boiling up inside him. He fought it down with a brief, desperate prayer that his tongue would not fail him and leave him shamed before the enemy. Dolman moved into the room and perched himself jauntily on the edge of the bed. Jean Marie said nothing. He was in command now. He would wait for Dolman to declare himself.
“You look well,” said Dolman amiably. “The ward nurse tells me you’ll be discharged very soon.”
Jean Marie was still silent.
“I came to bring you a bound copy of The Fraud,” said Dolman. “Inside it you’ll find a list of the people who were really happy to sell you out. I thought you might get a kick out of that. It won’t help you in court; but then nothing helps in a case like this. Whatever verdicts you get, the mud will stick.” He laid the package on the bedside table; then, he picked it up again and partially unwrapped it. “Just to prove it isn’t booby-trapped, like the one I sent to Mendelius. There’s no need for that in your case, is there? You’re out of the game for good.”
“Why have you come?” Jean Marie’s voice was cold as hoarfrost.
“To share a joke with you,” said Alvin Dolman. “I thought you’d appreciate it. The fact is, I go into surgery tomorrow morning. This was the only hospital in London that could take me in a hurry. I’ve got a cancer on the large bowel; so, they’re going to cut out a part of my gut and give me a little bag to carry around for the rest of my life. I’m just tossing up whether it’s really worth the sweat. I’ve got all the tools for a quick, painless exit. Don’t you think it’s funny?”
“I ask myself why you hesitate,” said Jean Marie. “What is there in your life or in yourself that you find so valuable?”
“Not too much,” said Dolman with a grin. “But we’re building up to one hell of a drama—the big bang that wipes out all our past and maybe the future, too! It might be worth waiting for a grandstand seat. I can still opt out afterwards. You’re the man who prophesied it. What do you think?”
“For the little my opinion is worth,” said Jean Marie, “this is what I think. You are scared—so scared that you need to play this silly game of mockery! You want me to be afraid with you—of you! I am not!… Rather I am sad; because I know how you are feeling, how pointless everything looks—how useless a man can seem to himself! This is only the second time we have met. I know nothing about the rest of your life or what you have done to other people. But how do you feel about what you did to Mendelius and to me?”
“Indifferent!” The answer was prompt and definite. “That’s line-of-duty stuff! It’s what I’m trained for; it’s what I do. I don’t question the orders I get. I make no judgments about them—good or bad, sane or insane. If I did, I’d be in the booby hatch! Mankind is a mad tribe! There’s no hope for it. I found a profession in which I could profit from the madness. I work for what is, with what is. I deliver on every contract. The only things I don’t deal in are love and resurrection! But in the end, I’m at least as well off as you are. You’ve been peddling salvation through the Lord Jesus for two thousand years—and look at where it’s got you!”
“You are here, too,” said Jean Marie mildly. “And you came by your own choice. That argues more than indifference.”
“Curiosity,” said Alvin Dolman. “I wanted to see how you were looking. I must say you’ve worn pretty well!”
“Still not enough!”
“O.K. Here it is!” Dolman cocked his head to one side like a predatory bird surveying its victim. “When all this started, I was the one who recommended killing you. I put up a dozen simple plans. Everybody shied away, except the French. They’ve always believed in quick, painless solutions. However, Duhamel intervened. He gave you a special passport and put the word about that he’d chop anyone who tried to chop you. Once you were in England liquidation seemed a less profitable solution. When you had your stroke it was clearly unnecessary.… The argument was that it would be better to discredit you than to make you a martyr.
“I never thought so. When I got the news yesterday that I’d have to have surgery and that I’d be carrying around my own excrement for the rest of my life, I thought, why not kill two birds with the one stone—you first, me afterwards?
“I remembered that evening in Tübingen when you said you knew me and the spirit that dwelt in me. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone so much as I hated you at that moment.” He fished in the pocket of his dressing gown and brought out a gold pen. He displayed it to Jean Marie. “This is Death in one of his more elegant dresses—a capsule of lethal gas sufficient to carry us both off—unless I cover my nose like this while I blow the stuff at you.”
He covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and extended the pen, point forward, towards Jean Marie’s face.
Jean Marie sat very still, watching him. He said quietly, “I came to terms with death a long time ago. You are doing me a kindness, Alvin Dolman.”
“I know.” Dolman stuffed the handkerchief and the pen back in his pocket and made a comic gesture of resignation. “I guess I just needed to prove it to myself!” He reached out and picked up the half-opened packet from the table. He said with a shrug, “It was a bad joke anyway. I’ll be getting back to my room.”
“Wait!” Jean Marie heaved himself slowly out of his chair and stood up. “I’ll walk to the elevator with you.”
“Don’t bother! I can find my own way.”
“You lost your way a long time ago.” Jean Marie’s tone was somber. “You will never find it by yourself.”
Dolman’s face was suddenly transformed into a pale mask of rage. “I said I’d find my own way back!”
“Why are you so angry over a courtesy?”
“You should know that!” Dolman was
grinning now, a rictus of silent glee that was more terrible than the laughter. “You told me in Tübingen you knew the name of the spirit that dwelt in me!”
“I do know it.” Jean Marie spoke with calm authority and an odd quirky humour. “His name is Legion. But let’s not overplay the drama, Mr. Dolman. You are not possessed by devils. You are a habitat of evils—too many evils for one aging man to carry inside himself!”
The taut grinning mask crumpled into a tired, middle-aged face—the face of an aging clochard who had used up all his chances and now had no place to go.
“Sit down, Mr. Dolman,” said Jean Marie gently. “Let’s treat with each other like simple human beings.”
“You miss the point,” said Alvin Dolman wearily. “We call up our own devils because we can’t live with ourselves.”
“You’re still alive. You are still open to change and to God’s mercy.”
“You’re not hearing me!” The tight, twisted grin was back again. “I may look like everyone else; but I’m not. I’m of a different breed.… We’re killer dogs. Try to change us, try to domesticate us, we go mad and tear you to pieces. You’re lucky I didn’t kill you tonight.”
He walked out without a word. Jean Marie went to the door and watched him limping down the long corridor with the brown-paper parcel under his arm. He was reminded of the old tale of the lame devil who roamed the city at night, lifting the roofs off houses, to display the evil that dwelt there. So far as he could remember, the lame devil never found any good anywhere. Jean Marie wondered sadly whether the lame devil was purblind or just too clear-sighted to be happy. Unless one believed in a beneficent Creator and some kind of saving grace, the world was a good place to be out of—especially if you were a middle-aged killer with a cancer in the gut.
That night he offered his Compline prayer for Alvin Dolman. Next midday he telephoned Dolman’s ward nurse, only to be told that Mr. Dolman had died during the night of an unexplained cardiac arrest and that an autopsy was being arranged to establish the cause of death. His papers and his personal effects had already been retrieved by an official from the United States Embassy.
Jean Marie could not deal so curtly with a man who, however evil, was an element in the divine economy. Lives had been terminated, lives damaged, lives perhaps enriched, however momentarily, by Dolman’s presence on the planet. It was not enough to pass the loveless judgment of the Puritans: “Pardon was offered; pardon was rejected; he took the inevitable walk to the Judas tree.”
Jean Marie Barette—once a Pope—had too much experience of paradox to believe that the Almighty dispensed frontier justice. Whatever the Scriptures said, it was not possible to divide the world into white hats and black hats. He himself had been granted a revelation—and been reduced to a cold-eyed contemplation of suicide. He had been given a mission to proclaim the Last Things and, at the moment of announcement, had been struck dumb. So, perhaps it was not too strange to see in Dolman’s suicide an act of repentance, and in his visit, a victory over the killer who lived in his skin. Were there not the tales old Grandfather Barette used to tell, of men bitten by mad dogs? They knew that death was inevitable; so, rather than infect their families, they blew their brains out with a hunting gun or locked themselves in a mountain cabin and howled themselves to death.
Once again Jean Marie was back to the dark, terrifying mystery of pain and evil and who was saved and who was not and who was ultimately responsible for the whole bloody mess. Who spawned the man who trained the killer dog? And what cosmic emperor looked down, in everlasting indifference, on the baby-child which the dog tore to pieces?…
It was still only noonday; but the midnight blackness enveloped him again. He wished Mr. Atha were there to walk him to the gymnasium and talk him out of the darkness towards the center of light.
XIV
Mr. Atha stepped back into his life as casually as he had stepped out of it. That evening, while Jean Marie was eating supper, he walked in, looked Jean Marie up and down like an exhibit at a flower show and smiled his approval.
“I see you’ve made splendid progress.” He laid a small package on the tray. “That’s your reward.”
“I missed you.” Jean Marie held out both hands to greet him. “Look! Both working! Did you have a successful trip?”
“It was—busy.” Mr. Atha was as evasive as ever about himself. “Travel is very difficult now. There are delays at every airport and much intervention by the police and the military. People are mistrustful and afraid.… Look at your present.”
Jean Marie unwrapped the package and found a pouch of soft leather, inside which was a small silver box, intricately engraved.
Mr. Atha explained, “The design is made up of the invocations to Allah. There is an old man in Aleppo who used to make them. Now he is blind. His son engraved this one. Open it.”
Jean Marie opened the box. Inside, nestling in a bed of white silk, was an ancient ring. The setting was gold, the stone a pale emerald with the head of a man carved on it, cameo-fashion. The stone was worn and scratched like a pebble abraded by the sea. Mr. Atha told him the story.
“This was given to me by a friend in Istanbul. He says it is certainly of the early first century and it probably comes from Macedonia. There is a half-effaced inscription in Greek on the back of the stone. You need young eyes or a magnifying glass to make it out; but it says, ‘Timothy to Sylvanus. Peace!’ My friend thought it might have some connection with the Apostle Paul and his two companions Sylvanus and Timothy.… Who knows? I had the whimsical idea that since you gave up the Fisherman’s ring, you might like to have this one instead.”
Jean Marie was deeply moved. Behind Mr. Atha’s “whimsical idea” there was so much and so gentle a care. Jean Marie slipped the ring onto his finger. It fitted comfortably. He took it off and laid it in the silver box. He said:
“Thank you, my friend. If my blessings count for anything, you have them all.” He gave a small, unsteady laugh. “I suppose one does need a certain amount of faith; but wouldn’t it be wonderful if it really were a gift from Timothy to Sylvanus? They were in Macedonia together. It’s clear from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. Let me see if I can remember it.… ‘Paul and Sylvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians: in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’ ” He frowned, fumbling for the next words.… “Sorry, I’m blocked on the rest of it.”
“‘… Grace to you and peace!’ ” Mr. Atha completed the quotation. “ ‘We give thanks to God always for you all.’”
Jean Marie stared at him in surprise. He said, “I knew you were a believer. You had to be.”
He used the French word croyant. Mr. Atha shook his head.
“No, I am not a believer. It happens that I was brought up in the Jewish tradition; but the act of faith is not one I personally can make. As for the passage in Thessalonians, I looked it up when my friend told me the provenance of the ring. It seemed so very appropriate: ‘Grace to you and peace!’… Now, let us talk about you. You’ve had all your tests and the results are good.”
“Yes, thank God! The doctors say they could discharge me immediately. However, they’d prefer I stay here for three or four more days. I can go out in the daytime and return in the evening. That way they can monitor my first reactions to physical and psychic stress.”
“And you’ll be surprised how much of both you’ll get,” said Mr. Atha.
“Will you stay with me? Take me about in London—perhaps fly with me to Munich and hand me over to my friends? I want to be with them for Christmas. I’m sure they’d be glad to have you, too. I don’t want to take you away from other people who need you; but I’m out of practice in the simplest things.”
“Enough!” said Mr. Atha. “You have me! I’d always intended to stay with you until you were properly recovered. You’re a rather special client—in spite of your bad reputation!”
“That has to mean…”
“Yes, I’ve read the other book, too,” said Mr. Atha. “It has
, I understand, been suppressed by injunction in some countries; but where I’ve been it was freely available—and selling well! The thing is a disreputable caricature.”
“Even so, it will harm a lot of people,” said Jean Marie moodily. “Especially Roberta.”
“Not too much,” said Mr. Atha. “It will be forgotten before the year is out.”
“I wish I felt so confident.”
“It is not a matter of confidence, but of simple fact. Before New Year’s Day we shall be at war.”
Jean Marie gaped at him in total amazement. “How can you say that? Every estimate I ever heard gave us at least until spring, possibly well into the summer.”
“Because,” Mr. Atha explained patiently, “all the estimates were based on textbook evaluations—a conventional war by land, sea and air, escalating to a limited use of tactical nuclear weapons—with the big ones held in reserve for bargaining. The logic of history says you don’t start that kind of war in the winter—certainly not between Russia and Europe or Russia and China! But I’m afraid, my friend, that the logic of history is already out the window. This time they will start with the big firecrackers, on the premise that whoever hits first wins and that the outcome will be decided in a week.… How little they know!”
“How much do you know?” Jean Marie was wary now. There was a sharp edge to his question. “What proof can you offer?”
“None,” said Mr. Atha calmly. “But then, what proof could you offer for your vision—or even for what you wrote in Last Letters from a Small Planet? Believe what I tell you! It will happen—and there will be no warning. What we are seeing now—troop movements, civil defense exercises, meetings of ministers—is all grand opera. It’s tradition; people expect it; so their governments are giving it to them. The reality is much different: men in concrete caverns, far below the earth, men in capsules far above it, waiting on the last fatal command.… Did you hear the evening news?”