by Morris West
“Provided we ask the right questions,” said Guillermin, “and don’t waste time duplicating them.”
“A suggestion then. Why don’t we pool our questions and have them put by a single interrogator who can’t be side-tracked and can move forward quickly? Our guest is very fast on his feet, as we all know.”
“I nominate Steffi.” Ulrich grinned at her. “She thought of the idea. She’s fast on her feet, too. I’ve never known a man who could catch her!”
Guillermin ignored the jibe and refused the challenge.
“The questions should be asked in English, in which our guest is fluent. It makes for easier coverage and pooling both of questions and answers.”
“Who chooses the final list of questions?” This from Colson.
“Bureau chiefs of those papers who bought the publication rights – and television services who contributed to the purchase. Does anybody have problems with that?”
“None from me,” said the man from the New York Times.
“None from us,” said The Times of London.
Guillermin had the final word.
“All questions to be handed to the barman by six this evening. We need a morning’s work to set them in order and give ourselves the best chance at a first-rate story. I nominate Frank to put the questions. Even I can understand his English. One more thing – we’re more interested in what is said than in camera angles. We’ll allot positions for TV crews and still photographers. We can’t have people popping off flash bulbs during the speech or the question time. And people who have paid for syndication rights get priority. Understood?”
Of course they understood! In Rome everyone understood everything, even before it was uttered, so no one took time to listen to anything. But Steffi Guillermin had lived long enough in the city to understand arrangiarsi; the art of arranging oneself. So she gathered her own small group of conspirators to set a seating plan and formulate the questions in English with Frank Colson.
At five in the afternoon, Angel-Novalis called. He had been granted permission to speak at the luncheon. There were, however, certain conditions. Guillermin was instantly in combat position.
“What conditions, Monsignore?”
“First, you must note in reports that I am speaking as a private individual and not as a Vatican representative.”
“That’s stretching the truth, isn’t it?”
“It’s expressing a canonical fact. The See of Peter is vacant. All the prescriptions of the recent Pontiff are in force until a new Pope is elected. I cannot comment on his policies or make prophecies about new ones. I can, however, express my private opinions, provided they are so designated.”
“You understand that what we send from here may be changed or omitted by editors in our home offices?”
“Of course. I am as you might say …”
“Covering your backside,” said Steffi Guillermin. “We understand that, Monsignore. What’s the next condition?”
“I will not express opinions on specific persons whose names are mentioned in the diaries. The risk of libel still exists for me and for you.”
“But you won’t back away from general enquiries about ‘certain persons’?”
“I reserve always my right to refuse comment.”
“We’re comfortable with that. Anything else?”
“The subject of my address will be ‘Past and Future in an Abiding Church’.”
“It doesn’t sound like a lunch-time laugh show,” said Guillermin, “but I’m sure you’ll do a beautiful job. You may find this hard to believe, but you will be among friends.”
“I never doubted it, Mademoiselle! Until tomorrow, then.”
Guillermin hung up and gave a little yelp of delight. This man was bright – sometimes too bright for his own good, but he had enough self-esteem to guarantee a first-rate performance. This would be a classic courtroom piece with a very assured defendant and a very urbane prosecutor. At issue would be twenty-five years of centrist Church government and a vision – if such existed – of a new millennial epoch, each interpreted from the secret diaries of a dead man.
When Luca Rossini returned home at seven in the evening, there was a message from Isabel.
Luisa and I leave New York at 1830 hours this evening.
We arrive Rome 0850 hours tomorrow morning and will be met by an attaché from the Argentine Embassy. Raul has reserved a suite for us at the Grand Hotel. He insists that we “present ourselves with a proper style”. After a long night flight, we shall both need a rest and some beauty treatment before we meet our very special Eminence! We shall expect you at eight for dinner in the suite. Please leave a message at the hotel to confirm that you will arrive – even if Attila is at the gates of Rome.
All my love,
Isabel.
In spite of all the fantasies he had nourished, the impact of the news took his breath away. After a quarter of a century of separation and soul exile, they would be together in the same room. They would meet, eye to eye, lip to lip, body to body – and all the lost yesterdays would be forgotten.
Then a sudden panic seized him. This, too, was a fantasy. There would be a witness to the meeting, a young woman in her mid-twenties, daughter of Isabel and Raul, granddaughter of that doughty old adventurer, Carlos Menéndez, who had bullied the junta and the Church to send him safely out of the country. Menéndez’s grim warning still echoed in his memory: “It takes a long time to recover from the experience of torture. It’s too soon to know how you’ll come out. I hope one day you’ll be a made man.”
How would old Carlos judge him now – wherever he was lodged? He had died ten years ago, when his chopper went down in a remote Andean valley. He asked himself also how the young woman would react to him. Most of all, he wondered how he would look to Isabel who, so many years ago, had nursed him out of an obscene degradation into the image of a man.
He walked into the bedroom, and stood a long time looking at himself in the mirror on his bureau. He saw a lean fifty-year-old fellow with the olive skin of a Mediterranean man, iron-grey hair, and a mouth grim in repose, which could twitch into a rare smile when the lights were lit in his dark eyes. He was tall for a southerner and he had wondered sometimes what tincture of corsair or raiding Norseman had given him his height and his long loping gait.
Suddenly he burst out laughing at the image in the mirror and the tally he was making of its good points, as if he were judging an animal. This was the root of his fear: that Isabel, the one woman he had loved, should find him ridiculous.
Which brought him, by a round turn, to a new series of questions. How would they greet each other: with a handshake or a kiss, and what sort of a kiss would be appropriate in the presence of her daughter? Isabel had given him no signals in any of her letters, yet she, too, must have dreamed the moment of their meeting. Whenever she mentioned her daughter, it was with pride and affection – and a genuine satisfaction that relations between the girl and her father were good. “She adores him, because he denies her nothing. She is his show-pony whom he delights to display – and he is very careful about whom among his friends, male or female, he introduces to her. She on her part has a generous and happy spirit and we have become good companions.”
So, another question – more foolish than any others: what should he wear to this three-cornered dinner-party? He had several choices: a cassock, scarlet-piped with scarlet cincture, highly formal and certain to create a stir in the lobby of the Grand Hotel, a standard clerical suit, with only a Roman collar and the purple stock to denote his rank, or the business suit with collar and tie which he wore when he travelled to places where it was expedient to display a religious neutrality. He rejected that option instantly. It would take too long to explain. However, he promised himself that when he drove Isabel out to his retreat in the hills, he would wear his work clothes and she, please God, would agree to come alone.
A shadow of resentment intruded into his musings. Why had Isabel arranged their first encounter like
this? Had she already drawn some kind of line in the sand? Was she afraid of a sudden impulse of passion on his part or her own? He was angry with himself even for entertaining the idea. She owed him nothing. He was the debtor. She had the right to set the terms of payment. Besides, her letters were the true testimony to her feelings for him – and, he had to admit, they were much more open than his to her. So he rejected the untimely thought and exchanged a grin of self-mockery with the image in the mirror.
None the less, he was restless and uneasy. He did not want to face the evening alone. He told the staff he would be out for dinner. Then he dialled the number of a certain Monsignor Piers Paul Hallett, who worked as a palaeographer in the Vatican Library. Theirs was an unlikely friendship which had flowered out of a chance meeting in the Library just after Rossini’s arrival in Rome. As soon as they had been introduced, Hallett had asked the languid question: “I say dear boy, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about Inca time numeration would you?”
Hallett had a witty tongue, a gift for indolent scholarship, and a very English contempt for the excesses of clerical government. Was he free for dinner? Always when the Eminent were paying. Would he be happy with Antica Pesa? Of course. The place was splendidly discreet, and it would be even more comfortable if they could both wear civilian clothes.
“No offence to my eminent host, but Rome these days is suffering from a plague of prelates. All that red and purple! It’s like a measles rash!”
The name Antica Pesa signified the Old Weigh-house where carters’ loads were checked and taxed before they went on up the Janiculum Hill. It was situated in an ancient tenement whose front doors opened on to the cobbled pavement of the Via Garibaldi, while at the rear it gave access to a small enclosed garden, a pleasant place for summer dining.
There was a chill in the air that night, so Rossini and his guest settled themselves in the glow of an olivewood fire set in an ingle-nook large enough to roast an ox. They agreed on the menu: spaghetti alta poverella and vitello arrosto with a flagon of red wine and a bottle of mineral water. Then, counting on a leisurely service, they began the ambling talk of old friends. Hallett, as always, put the opening questions.
“So tell me, eminent friend, what’s the truth about these diaries? Are they authentic? Were they stolen? Why no public protest from the Vatican about their publication?”
Rossini shrugged and rattled off the answers:
“They’re authentic, yes. The provenance seems simple. The Holy Father gave them to Stagni as a personal legacy. There’s a manuscript letter to prove it.”
“The man must have been in his dotage!”
“He’s dead and buried, my friend. Let him rest m peace.”
“What do you know about this valet?”
“Not much. He was already a fixture when I arrived in Rome. I’ve passed the time of day with him; but like everyone else, I’ve just taken him for granted. You’ve been here longer than I, what do you know?”
“I work in the Library, which is a long way from the Papal bedchamber, but I do take coffee every morning in the Nymphaeum across the garden. It’s a lively place – for the Vatican at least! Stagni was there often.”
“What was he like?”
“An agreeable gossip. People liked him. They called him Figaro; but you know that, of course.”
“I know it.”
“What you probably don’t know is that he had been talking for a long time about writing a book when he retired. Obviously some Italian publisher had approached him, but he had larger ambitions. He was like a jackdaw snatching up scraps of information about agents, publishers and the media in different countries. I gave him an old copy of Writers and Artists Year Book and suggested he get a similar publication for America. He was profusely grateful.”
“Once he had the contacts,” Rossini mused, “he would have been encouraged to extend the ideas.”
“Exactly! Now here’s another sidelight. This time I’m involved.”
“You? How in God’s name …”
“Patience, dear Eminence! Patience! In my line of work, the question of forgery crops up from time to time. It’s an ancient trade: people have been forging artefacts and documents for centuries. We’ve done our share of it in the Church, too! Anyway, the question came up one morning at coffee time. Stagni was there. He claimed to know an old man who had done time on Lipari for forgery of identity documents, banknotes and even – would you believe – phoney patents of nobility. There was quite a trade in those just after the war.”
“Do you remember this man’s name?”
“I do, as a matter of fact. I got his address from Stagni and consulted with him on a disputed document. His name was Aldo Carrese. He’s dead now.”
“When did he die?”
“A few months ago.”
“Was Stagni using him?”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“Why would Stagni give you his name?”
“He could hardly refuse it. I told you he was a gossip. He had talked himself into a corner.”
“Not that it helps us very much now. The man’s dead. The diaries are already in publication. Stagni’s home free and rich.”
“That’s a shame!”
“Still, we may be able to salvage something. Angel-Novalis is addressing the Foreign Press Club. I’ll talk to him in the morning. I confess I can’t care too much. This whole affair is a nine-days’ wonder.”
“Is that meant to be a pun?”
“It is. We’ve just started the nine-day memorials – looking back, looking forward. The press will go into a feeding frenzy over the diaries, until we’re locked into the conclave. After that, it will be a dead issue – a footnote to history.”
“That touches a nerve!” Hallett was suddenly moody. He relapsed into silence. Rossini prompted him.
“Something’s on your mind, Piers. We’re friends. Tell me.”
“I was just thinking,” Hallett began slowly, “I’ve been dealing with footnotes all my life.”
“I thought you were happy in your work.”
“I was, until recently.”
“Something’s happened to change that?”
“Nothing’s happened exactly. I’m just going through a bad patch – boredom, accidie, vanity of vanities, all flesh is grass – that sort of thing.”
“You probably need a holiday – or a change of job.”
“The latter, more likely. It’s the job itself that’s getting to me. I used to love it, but now there’s no taste in it any more.”
“Go on.”
“It’s simple enough. I’m a palaeographer. I deal with ancient writings and inscriptions. It’s one of the most arid fields of scholarship – one of the most lonely, too. Everything refers back to the past. The signposts all point down dead-end streets, to crumbling temples and forgotten gods. My own self has become a very dusty habitat. That’s why I was so delighted when you called and invited me to dinner tonight.”
Before Rossini had time to respond, the waiter set down the heaped plates of pasta and chanted his litany: “Cheese, gentlemen? Pepper? Good appetite!”
“I have the appetite,” said Luca Rossini. “I could use a blessing.”
Hallett made the sign of the cross over the food and pronounced the benediction.
“Bless us, O Lord, and the food we share in friendship.”
“Amen!” said Luca Rossini. “I’m grateful for your company, too, Piers.”
They ate steadily through the mountain of pasta; but halfway into the dish, Rossini was defeated. He picked up the thread of Hallett’s talk.
“I understand what you say, Piers, about the solitude of specialist scholarship. The Hittites and the ancient Illyrians are hard to share over a breakfast table.”
Hallett put down his fork with a clatter and looked up at Rossini. There was a fire of anger in his eyes.
“It’s the breakfast table I’m missing, Luca! I’m withering in celibate solitude. I hit fifty next year and what have
I got to show in merit for myself or good for anyone else? I’m not a priest; I’m a pedant. More than that, Luca, I’m a wasted man!”
“Who’s the girl, Piers?” It was only half a joke, a fly cast to catch a too difficult confession. Hallett rose to the lure.
“It’s not a girl, Luca. It’s a man.”
Rossini hesitated for a split second only, then asked with studious neutrality:
“Do you want to tell me the rest of it?”
“He’s a priest, like me. He’s been working for the last six months over in the Secret Archive. He’s British, like me, which adds a certain piquancy to the joke. Remember old Peyrefitte and the young French cleric who fed him material from the Archive to build into his plots? Peyrefitte grew rich and famous on the novel, which, if memory serves me, was called The Keys of Saint Peter. The cleric achieved fame as a character in his works.”
“I never read the book,” said Luca Rossini, “but I understand how you feel.”
“I wonder if you do. This is the first time in love for me, Luca, and, God help me, it’s the coup de foudre! I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know what to do or say. Until now, all my fantasies and all my little lusts used to be safely hidden under my cassock. I had work I enjoyed. I prayed as I was taught to do against the noonday devil. I played by the rules. Now I see no point in the game. I’m too vulnerable. The Church is too vulnerable to me.”
“And your friend in the Archive?”
“We meet, we talk, we find pleasure in each other’s company. For the moment that’s all – but it won’t go on like that.”
“What does he want to do?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t had to declare himself yet. I’m not sure either that I’m ready for it. All I know is that this is the wrong place for me.”
“I’m sure we could find another appointment for you in a more congenial environment.”
“You know that’s not the answer.”
“I know it, my friend – better than most. We carry our own devils on our backs, because often they’re the only company we can endure. We’re just friends talking through a difficult situation; even so, I am not sure how to advise you.”