Applause.
“We shall do this!” he cried more emphatically.
“That is why the hopes of the world are turned upon us at this very moment; that is why the communications media of the planet are here this evening, enabling us to speak to billions of people through the miracle of modern technology. The generosity of several nations and private benefactors have made possible the broadcasting of the proceedings of this congress and its individual seminars to the entire world. In the coming days, the people of the planet will be able to hear speakers from every field of human endeavor: the arts, the academy, the sciences, the various world religions, and those selfless individuals who work within the existing order, leaders and government officials who understand politics as the art of birthing a truly human, truly global community. In all this vast banquet of culture, you will hear the cry of man, and the cry of divinity: Unites! Unites! Unites! Come home, mankind! Come home from exile and live within your own body and soul. Find on this earth the ultimate meaning of our common destiny!”
He bowed to the audience and without ceremony walked offstage.
The crowd leapt to its feet, roaring and clapping. Elijah remained seated, stunned, trying to collect his thoughts. Anna stood and joined the applause, but hers was calm, measured clapping, and her face was expressionless.
Floodlights poured over the image of the globe, and an orchestra in the wings began to play, competing with the roar of the crowd. People broke up into hundreds of groups, discussing the speech with enthusiasm. Surging above the mayhem, the music was sensuous, sensitive, stirring, with a note of exuberance that was kept just below the level of stridency. It perfectly matched the mood of the crowd.
Several people came over to Anna and engaged her in animated conversation, but her manner, although pleasant, remained detached.
“Yes, a fine speech”, she replied to one. “I agree, he knows how to blend urgent topics with a poetic gift. A master of language. Moving. Yes, I think the world will pay close attention from now on. Fine, I’ll see you in Amsterdam next week. Goodbye, Thea. Don’t forget the committee meeting for the show in Florence. Good, I’ll have my secretary flag the documents when they come to the office. Your Excellency, how very good to see you here. I did. I was impressed with his style. He is always impressive. You are so right—he knows how to touch a crowd. Absolutely. Yes, he struck all the right chords.”
She bent her head graciously toward another inquirer. “Am I excited? Well, no, not actually. I am just a little under the weather. A touch of the flu. Please give my regards to Eleanor. You too! Indeed. Buona notte! Adieu!”
Lines of people poured toward the exits leading to the reception foyer. Uniformed waiters circulated amidst the crowd offering trays of wine. Long banquet tables laden with delicacies were besieged.
Elijah exhaled and stood, struggling into his trench coat Anna stared up at the empty stage, her eyes clouded.
“Well,” said Elijah, “you must go now, mustn’t you? I expect there is a private reception. He is waiting for you. Or are you waiting for him?”
She turned to him with an unreadable expression.
“I am not waiting for him. He is not waiting for me.”
“You seemed preoccupied a moment ago.”
She shook her head and put on her evening coat,
“I am feeling unwell. I think I will go straightaway to the hotel. Thank you for your company, Father Schäfer.”
“Can I hail a taxi for you?”
“If you wish.”
Because of the crowds, they stood in a light rain for some time before there was an available taxi. When Anna told the driver, “The Marriott”, Elijah exclaimed. “Why, I’m staying there too. May I ride with you?”
She said, “Of course.”
They rode in silence. In the hotel lobby, he told her that he hoped she would soon be feeling better. She replied that a good night’s rest would help. She did not wish to miss tomorrow’s presentations. Which room would he be speaking in? He told her, and she bid him good night.
Elijah went to his room and lay on the bed. He stared at the ceiling for a long time. It seemed impossible to him that so much intense experience could be packed into a single day. Only that morning he had helped a dying man in his final moments—it seemed ages ago—and then the events of the evening, so heavy with significance, were like a mountain falling into the sea of consciousness. Wave after wave of memory raced through his mind, tormenting and mesmerizing.
Not the least of the day’s happenings was the barely perceptible movement of his heart toward Anna Benedetti.
He looked into the mirror of the dressing table and said aloud, “Who are you, Elijah Schäfer? Why has it become so easy to penetrate your detachment? Do twenty years of priesthood simply vanish in the presence of a woman?”
He looked at his reflection and did not like what he saw. An anguish, solemn with grief, was written there.
“Who are you?” he said aloud.
A thought flashed through his mind, I am David.
He shook it off.
“I was David. I was married for a brief time to Ruth, but I am no longer married. I am a monk. I have become a new being, marked forever with the anointing of ordination. My soul is a different soul than it once was.”
And what of your heart?
“My heart, like all human hearts, will bear the mark of the fall of man until the very end. The true test of a man’s identity lies in his will. How perfectly he conforms to divine order is the real measure of his love.”
Elijah—David, does love negate love?
“When one gives his life to another, it is with the totality of his being. If at times the heart slips back, or looks away from the Beloved toward a human love, it is a moment of testing. It does not negate the original gift. In fact, it may be a chance to prove love and strengthen it in the forge of adversity.”
You committed no sin, told no lie—yet you made a gesture of intimacy.
“At table I murmured a few words that released a message of longing.”
Longing for what?
“For union with another heart.”
Long ago you gave away your heart.
“I did. I know I did. But tonight, when that mad impulse ran through my veins, I did not realize what I was doing. It was a moment of weakness.”
Understand, My son, that your heart belongs to Me alone, and in this way it is poured out for all mankind. There is no greater love than this.
“The longing was an intolerable sweetness.”
You took your gift back into your own hands. It became a possession.
“I know, my Lord. I know.”
Countless souls depend on your fidelity. In Paradise the love that awaits you far surpasses your present loneliness.
“I am so tired. I cannot think.”
Rest in Me and pray, and I will be your strength.
His body, he realized, was utterly exhausted and hyper-tense. He knelt, prayed his breviary, and eventually lay down again in peace.
* * *
Elijah’s talk was delivered in a small meeting hall on the third floor of a wing of the palace complex. Four times a day, delegates could choose from among several presentations given simultaneously. Each talk was to be recorded for broadcast on world television, and also would be available in video format.
Of the thousands of delegates, no more than a dozen filed into the room. One of them, Elijah was glad to see, wore the white habit of Saint Dominic’s order. He and the others sat waiting for the cameraman to finish preparing his technology. When he was ready, he flashed a sign at Elijah, a red light winked on, and the priest began his lecture.
He had taken care to wear his Carmelite habit. Dressing in his hotel room that morning, he had recalled the Holy Father’s request that all professed religious wear their habits in public, as a sign of their consecration, a visual witness to lives given wholly to God. Few obeyed him any more. Indeed, this request had been bandied about in the Catholic
and secular press alike as a symptom of the Pope’s “legalism” and had been hotly debated where it was not simply dismissed with a laugh. Although Elijah had received a dispensation to wear secular clothing in deference to his new “mission territory”, he felt that if he was the one representative of orthodox Catholicism speaking here today, then his witness should not be without a cohesive unity. He did not wish to give even the appearance of disdain for the requests of the pope. The audience, such as it was, eyed his robes with curiosity, as if he were a character in a new and daring opera, set in a quaint past.
He had completed a brief historical sketch of biblical criticism when a few delegates put up their hands. With apologies for the interruption, they informed Elijah that the simultaneous translation service was not operating properly on their headsets. Elijah was speaking in German. It was soon determined that the German and Spanish channels were functioning, but the other language channels were dead.
Making a silent prayer that his listeners would be able to follow, he proceeded in German to describe the theologian Bultmann’s influence on biblical criticism, and the ensuing decline into naturalistic explanations of the miraculous—the so-called “demythologizing” schools.
Three people got up, shrugging, pointing at the headsets, shaking their heads. They left the room.
Elijah, distracted, attempted to collect his thoughts, consulted his notes, and pressed on. It was going badly, he knew, but when Anna came in quietly and took a seat at the back, he felt a burst of cheer.
He described the first discoveries of the Old Testament scrolls at Qumran, which authenticated the precision of later translations of the Bible. He went on to describe with enthusiasm the extraordinary material recently discovered in other caves near Ephesus and the Dead Sea, texts that achieved three immensely important things: they were far older than the earliest known manuscripts of the Gospels; one of them was written in plain Aramaic, accompanied by a facing text in Greek, the work of a scribe-scholar who was either taking the dictation of a living apostle, or was checking his translation with the same living apostle, ensuring that the exact sense was being rendered for future generations. The manuscript effectively dated the New Testament to the lifetime of the evangelists, and thereby demolished, in a few bold strokes, the school of biblical criticism that sought to “demythologize” the New Testament.
It had come to be believed that certain first- and second-century Christians had rewritten the life of Christ to suit their particular theological outlooks, colored by the crises of their day. The recent discoveries, Elijah asserted, refuted this theory. If one considered human psychology, it was less likely that those who had witnessed the events of the Gospels, or who had written parts of the New Testament under their direct guidance, would project their personalities upon what to them were shattering events of the most recent past. Theological coloration was far more likely in the present age, so dominated by theory and myth. Could it be that modern exegetes had projected their own disbelief, styles, and temperaments back onto the people of the first century? If this was true—and the discoveries provided convincing evidence that it was—it was no small failure. The loss of objectivity, not to mention professional detachment, pointed to a tragic blind spot. Many had simply presumed that they knew better than those who had gone before them. They had assumed that the advance of time confers a near-infallible superiority. This, Elijah underlined, was really a form of myth, the myth of the evolution of intelligence.
“Perhaps,” he added with a gentle smile, “perhaps it is the demythologizers who need to be demythologized.”
One or two uneasy laughs came from the audience.
He went on to say that intelligence, training, knowledge, however advanced they might be in this century, were clearly no guarantee of immunity from man’s abiding handicap: subjectivity.
“Pride blinds us to our own blindness,” he said, “and there is no pride sweeter to the taste, and so enslaving, as the illusion of superior knowledge. This is especially true when one has a great deal invested emotionally in one’s own theory. In the end, the need to demythologize the sacred Scriptures is rooted not in the exigencies of scholarship or science, but in profound spiritual problems. Man loses wisdom when he persists in sin. . .”
The Dominican stood up dramatically in his swirling white habit, and said irritably in French, “Are you saying that those who question your simplistic notion of God are living in sin! Fundamentalist nonsense!” He stalked out.
Elijah took a deep breath. Undaunted, he went on, speaking at length about specific passages from the new codices, comparing a sampling of verses in the Aramaic text, its Greek companion, and several reliable modern translations. The effect was stunning. But there were only eight people left in the room, including the cameraman.
When it was over, no one came forward. Everyone filed out, except the technician and Anna. She was writing in a notebook, and when she looked up she gave him a look of sympathy.
The technician was muttering and cursing in Polish, flicking switches and bobbing all over his machinery.
“Is there a problem?” said Elijah.
“I don’t believe it! All the settings were correct!”
He threw up his hands and growled, “I’m sorry. It didn’t record a damn thing!”
He went out snarling to himself, carrying the rebellious equipment with him.
Elijah exhaled loudly. “Well, it seems a complete disaster”, he said.
“Not entirely”, said Anna. “I found it fascinating. Should we go for lunch?”
On the staircase, they met a flushed young woman running up from the ground floor with a sheaf of papers under her arm. Anna introduced her as one of the President’s press secretaries.
“Quickly, quickly”, she gasped. “We need you downstairs.”
In the crowded lobby, the President greeted Elijah with his customary warmth and asked him to stand beside him. To his surprise, von Tilman came out of the crowd and stood with them. The President put his arms about the shoulders of both men, one on either side. Cameras began to flash and several media technicians filmed the moment.
Then an interview with the President commenced, and Elijah felt that he was no longer needed, or wanted.
“Lunch”, whispered Anna and took him away.
The private banquet room set aside for conference speakers and associates was also crowded. Anna and Elijah found a corner table and sat drinking their soup and munching on sandwiches.
“What was that about?” he asked.
“Publicity, I suppose. He is doing it with every speaker and national delegation. Hundreds of such sessions I would guess.”
“Von Tilman and myself represent Catholicism?”
“I imagine so”, she said. Her serious tone had returned, and along with it the mask of emotional neutrality. He had come to think of it as a mask. Why a mask, he wondered? Masks disguise, protect, evade. What was it she did not wish him to see?
“When is your presentation, Anna?”
“Three days from now.”
“What is your subject?”
“I will be speaking on human rights from the perspective of new models of international law.”
“That should draw a good crowd.”
“Undoubtedly. I have two talks scheduled for one of the cinema auditoriums. My first should draw several hundred delegates. There won’t be so many at the second.”
“Why is that?”
“My presentation won’t be what the organizers expect.”
“Really?” he said intrigued. “Why?”
“There is an unspoken uniformity beneath all the eclecticism you observe here this week. It revolves around a single vision of existence. It is the ancient worldview of monism. Monists believe that all divisions are ultimately illusion, all conflicts can be negotiated, all dogmatism is essentially a violation of freedom, and so forth.”
“And you don’t think that is true?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Is
the President a monist?”
“One might call him a neomonist, a new kind of spiritual politician.”
“That is the first hint I have had from your lips that you aren’t at peace with what is happening here.”
“It is rather euphoric, isn’t it? I distrust that. My juridical background, no doubt.”
“So, it is not so much disbelief as professional caution.”
“Yes, I think that would be more accurate to say. I am observing. And I am thinking about many things right now.”
“But you are not happy about monism, even though it comes from the hands of such a remarkable man?”
“He wishes to bring peace to the world. He speaks everywhere of unity. These are truly great objectives. But monism is only superficially about unity. As a judge, I have developed an inner ear for the difference between impressions and facts.”
“And you have detected a distinction?”
“Monism is a pleasing concept; it resolves many difficulties. But I believe that it also creates many destructive tendencies in society.”
“And so, you will raise this caution during your presentation.”
“Yes. In the morning seminar, I will discuss the principles we find in existence, upon which all civilized law is based. I will demonstrate that certain concepts of man may appear to be humanistic and at the same time result in the violation or destruction of human lives.”
“Who could object to that?”
“I think the objections will arise not so much in the mind as in the emotions. My audience will instinctively recognize a threat to euphoria. And to Utopia. And yet I wonder if this is an exercise in futility. Few have the intellectual apparatus to understand what I am going to tell them.”
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