by Morris West
And that was the final irony of the silent God: there would be no one with whom he could share his desolation. Isabel would be gone. Luisa, grieving but secure in the love of two fathers, would in the end dispense with both of them and find her own man.
In spite of the impending ruin about him, he could not surrender without a fight. He would not involve Isabel or Luisa in his private war. If love meant anything, it meant the last steps had to be made to support the beloved. The last prayer had to be shared, even if it had no meaning for himself, but only for the other. After that, what? One last great horn-blast like Roland’s at Roncesvalles to challenge the mute God to make himself heard once more in the desert silence?
Luca, Cardinal Rossini, was an ironist himself. He could still raise a thin smile at his own conceits. Too much talk and too much caffeine on an empty stomach were bad medicine. The black devils were beginning to crowd in on him again. He needed food and company. He reached for the phone and dialled the number of Monsignor Piers Hallett at the Vatican Library. Mercifully, the man was still at his desk.
“Piers, we need to talk. If you’re free, I’ll feed you lunch at my house. Pick me up here in twenty minutes.”
“Eminence, you’ve saved my life. I’m facing a stale ham sandwich and a page of a sixth-century Gospel text in Greek. My problem is that it’s owned by a rather irascible prelate from middle America. He isn’t going to be very happy when I tell him it’s a poor fake and the original text is held in Rossano in the custody of the Archbishop!”
Nine
Isabel and Luisa had spent the morning in an orgy of shopping. They had wandered into every gilded trap between the Via Condotti and the Corso and had fetched up, footsore and poorer, in Babington’s Tea-Rooms at the foot of the Spanish Steps. They found themselves a discreet corner, kicked off their shoes under the table and ordered Earl Grey tea with cucumber and smoked salmon sandwiches.
“Just like a pair of Anglos,” said Luisa, with a grin.
“Don’t mock, young lady,” Isabel admonished her lightly. “This place has a lot of happy memories for me. My father and mother brought me here when I was sixteen years old. That was back in the late fifties when Argentina was rich and Italy was very cheap to visit. We came by ship, a return trip on one of the big liners that were bringing Italian migrants from Naples to Buenos Aires.”
“And this place was here then?”
“This place has been here, if I remember rightly, since 1894. It was founded by a Miss Anna Babington, who was British, and Miss Isabel Cargill, who came from New Zealand. I remember her because her name was the same as mine – ‘Isabel’. There’s a lot more to the story, but I won’t bore you with it.”
“No, please! You’re not boring me. I love it when you share memories with me. It doesn’t happen often enough these days.”
“One loses the habit,” said Isabel. “I’m told one needs grandchildren to bring it back.”
The waitress came, laid out the sandwiches, poured the tea, wished them good appetite and left.
“Please,” Luisa begged her. “Please finish the story.”
“It’s strange, how things arrange themselves in your mind. Babington’s I remember as my mother’s place. The Anglo part of it appealed to her, and the history fascinated her. Anna Babington was descended from one Anthony Babington who was hanged, drawn and quartered for treason against Queen Elizabeth I of England. Her friend, Isabel Cargill, was descended from a Scots covenanter who preached against Charles II, accusing him of tyranny and lechery. He was executed in Edinburgh. When times were bad in Argentina and Luca and I were at risk, I used to dream about this place. Your grandfather Menéndez, on the other hand, was never comfortable here. He preferred the Caffè Greco just across the square on the Via Condotti. All the great romantics went there: Byron, Liszt, Wagner … And my father was a romantic – but he had the heart of a lion. When we were in hiding, after I’d shot the sergeant, he went alone to Buenos Aires and bargained for our lives … He never told me what happened, but when he died in the chopper crash, I wondered whether it was a final pay-back from someone whom he had threatened. It was reported as an accident; but who knows? We have buried so many secrets over the past twenty-five years. Still, here we are, you and I, drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches at Babingtons on the Piazza di Spagna!”
“While your Luca – and my new father – is a Cardinal with a red cap, who could even be our new Pope.”
“How do you feel about him now?”
“I don’t know. You’ve had twenty-five years to get used to him. I’ve only had twenty-four hours. Don’t you understand how confusing that is? It’s as though a figure has stepped out of a picture and is now pacing about the most private room in my life. You have to help me! You have to explain him. Where has Luca fitted in your life all this time? Where does he fit in your future?”
“The future? That’s easy. I’ll go home without him. I’ll die loving him.”
“My God, you can be brutal sometimes, Mother!”
“I killed a man, remember. That’s a brutal act. I lived through brutal times. Forgive me! You asked me to explain. I’m trying. But this love for Luca doesn’t explain itself in easy words. I was young then. I adored my father, who was everything Raul was not. He was strong, adventurous, decisive. He had himself seconded out of the army because he hated what was happening in the forces. I was still learning that Raul was what he would always be, a spoilt boy, an agreeable charmer, but a dead loss when you had to depend on him. He travelled a lot. He played when he travelled. When he was absent, I used to visit my father wherever he was working. That’s how I came to be in Luca’s parish that morning. I’d seen him a couple of times in the village, long enough to say good morning, to notice that he was a good-looking young man, and to wonder why he was content to bury himself in a no-place like that. The day the soldiers came everything changed.”
“Please, Mother, I don’t want to hear that part again. How did Luca behave?”
“You have to understand, nobody ‘behaves’ after a beating like that, he just hung on the wheel, moaning and twitching, with the sergeant’s riding crop stuck into his backside, while the sergeant unbuttoned his breeches and prepared to sodomise him.”
“My God!”
“Luca himself has blocked that part out completely. In all the weeks we were together, he never mentioned it. The doctor said he might suppress it till he died if his reason survived that long. The internal injury was not serious – but the damage to his psyche was, as the doctor put it, ‘inadmissible’ …”
“So, you pitied him and fell in love with him?”
“No! Quite the reverse. I fell in love with the anger he still had, the curses he could still summon up, the defiant soul of him. I wasn’t seeing him as a victim, but as a man tormented yet unbroken in spirit. He was my prize. I had killed for him. I, too, might be killed in the end, but this man was mine.”
“But you couldn’t keep him?”
“No! I healed him. I nursed him through fevers and nightmares. I used every trick I had ever learned to stir his passion and restore the ravages to his pride and his manhood. My God, Luisa! If ever there were a love-child in the world, you were that child.”
“So, why did you let Luca go? Why did you stay with Raul?”
“Because that was the deal my father had to make with the Generals and with the Church.”
“And if he hadn’t made it?”
“All three of us would have ended among the disappeared ones.”
“How much of this does Raul know?”
“I can’t say. We have never discussed the matter.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“It’s true. As soon as Grandfather Menéndez confronted the Generals – and remember Raul’s father was one of them! – they all saw the danger of the situation. There had been massacres and killings and disappearances in the past. This could be one too many. A little up-country priest – he was a cipher! But the daughter-in-law of
a general, wife of a well-known international playboy, daughter of a well-known engineer in the oil business? Enough, they said! Get the woman home to her husband. Get the priest out of the country. Let the Apostolic Nuncio deliver him, gift-wrapped, to Rome. But in silence! One word out of place, and you’ll never guess how bad it can get! We were all hostages to silence!”
“Why didn’t you and Luca run away together?”
“Where could we have run? Peru, Chile? And don’t forget there were other hostages, too – my father, Raul and his family. There was no way we could better the deal we had! We both knew that.”
“How did Luca react?”
“I have never seen him so enraged. Our last love-making was wild and desperate and wonderful – but our goodbye was calm and quiet. We stood in the shade and watched the helicopter land. We didn’t kiss. We didn’t embrace. We had decided there should be no witnesses – no official ones at least – to our love for each other. Two people got out of the helicopter: a cleric and an army major. Luca’s eyes were like dark stones. His face looked like carved wood. I remembered what he had said to me in the first hour of the false dawn: “I love you. I will always love you. There will never be another woman in my life.” He walked away, proud and silent between the two men, without a backward glance. I don’t know whether he waved to me or not when they lifted off. I was blind with tears.”
“But you still went home and made love to my father, and you had other lovers. How did you feel when you were with them?”
“They were the toys I played with. They were my revenge for what Raul was doing to me.”
“But Luca, too, was part of your revenge.”
“No! He was my man.”
“You said he was your prize. Did you truly own him?”
“Not all of him.”
“Do you own him now?”
“No. Nobody owns him. His love is a free gift from a free man.”
“I’m sorry, Mother, but I’m trying to understand. Do you think Luca kept his promise about other women?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“How can you be? Did he feel so guilty about you that he lost all taste for women?”
“On the contrary. He refused to see me as a guilt in his life. He called me ‘a saving gift’, and he was right.”
“But he’s not saved yet, not altogether. He’s wrapped the Church around him like a cloak of invisibility. That hermitage of his tells another side of the story. He’s still in flight. He still needs a refuge. He won’t admit it. He’s too proud to do that, but you are still the lodestone which gives direction to his life. What will he do when you’re not here?”
“Is that what you’re afraid of, Luisa: that he will try in some fashion to lean on you?”
“It’s possible.”
“It’s impossible and it won’t happen. When Luca and I surrendered ourselves to the inevitable, that chapter of our lives was closed. The affair was over. Neither of us was prepared to accept a self-inflicted torture. Love was something else, a treasure, secret to both of us. We didn’t even begin to write to each other until your father and I moved to New York and I was working at the Institute with an office of my own. I was the one who began the correspondence. So never think Luca will intrude in your life!”
“But, like you, I can’t ever shut him out of it.”
“That’s true. So why not welcome him?”
“And thank him for acknowledging me as his daughter?”
“That, too, if you want.”
“It would make a big mess of his career if that news got out!”
“I doubt it.” Isabel signalled to the waitress to bring the check.
“How can you say that, Mother?”
“Because I think he may be on the verge of leaving the Church.”
Luisa gaped at her mother in surprise.
“To do what?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t think he knows either.”
“But why would he want to resign? Unless they make him Pope, he’s climbed as high as any man can go in Rome.”
“I don’t think he sees it that way.”
“How then?”
“He’s come to a crisis of belief. It may be that this is the form in which the unresolved trauma in his life will work itself out. The beating, the violation, our love for each other, the conspiracy of silence between the Church and the State in which, to save our lives, we both consented to be joined. It’s a lot to wear, my dear daughter. So try not to judge either of us too unkindly. By the way, what are you doing with your afternoon?”
“I’ll take our packages back to the hotel, then I’ll write some eards and letters. What about you?”
“I have a meeting at two-thirty with the leader of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. She’s staying with the Missionary Sisters of Nazareth over on Monte Oppio. After the meeting, I’ll pass by Luca’s house and spend a little time with him, provided he’s home and will receive me.”
“Remember we’re booked for dinner at the Embassy tonight. They’re sending a car for us. You should leave enough time for a rest before we go.”
“What time are we due?”
“Eight for eight-thirty – oh, and since we’re still in mourning for the Pope, dress is informal.”
“That’s a blessing,” said Isabel. “Let’s move. We’ll pay at the desk.”
“Before we go, Mother. I know I sound like a bitch sometimes, but I do love you and I do know it’s very special to be your love-child as well as your legal one.”
“Do you know why?”
“Tell me!”
“Aunt Amelia used to say, ‘Love children are lucky when they’re welcomed. They have better care, and generally better manners, than the rest of the family.’”
On his small roof-top terrace in the Via del Governo Vecchio, Rossini was pouring coffee for Monsignor Piers Hallett. He was also delivering a short information piece on the conclave arrangements.
“This time, all the conclavists and their attendant staff will be lodged in Saint Martha’s House. It isn’t exactly the Grand Hotel, but it’s an all-new building with a hundred and eight suites and twenty-three single rooms, together with dining and lounge areas. The present tenants will be moved out to accommodate the conclavists. We’re not sure yet how many Cardinals will be present, but let’s say anywhere between a hundred and ten and the top limit of a hundred and twenty. That doesn’t leave too much room for attendant staff. Each of us has been asked to specify the personal staff we need and to justify their presence in an accompanying memorandum to the Camerlengo. Quite apart from questions of space, the move is to cut down on the number of clerical flunkeys who used to be trotting between various factions of electors. So I’ve decided, my dear Piers, to present you as my personal confessor.”
Hallett burst out laughing.
“That’s rich! Piers Hallett, palaeographer, pedant, library mouse, now private confessor to an eminence! They’ll never buy it! They’ll run me out of the place by the scruff of my neck!”
“No, they won’t,” Rossini told him. “I’ve already made it clear that I have a personal problem and that I hope to sort it out during the conclave, during which we are commanded to act ‘having God alone always before our eyes’. So, in fact, I do need a confessor – and I’m nominating you.”
“You still have to be joking.”
“No, I’m not. You’re a priest, yes?”
“Of course. But look, friend to friend, I’m not a spiritual man. I’m a scholar in a dog-collar. What counsel can I offer a man like you?”
“But you asked counsel of me, about a very spiritual matter, your own identity, your own moral life. I hope I can help you; I’m sure you can help me.”
“How, for God’s sake?”
“By listening, by hauling me through the bramble patches into open country. All our talk will be under the seal. We’re free, either of us, to grant or refuse forgiveness at the end.”
“This is pure formalism.” Hallett was genuinely
surprised. “I never expected to hear you talk like this.”
“I know,” said Rossini. “But it’s all I have left at this moment. You see, what I have to decide – with your assistance, I hope – is whether or no I am still a believer, whether or no I should resign quietly and go into the desert for a while.”
“Where would you go?”
“That was Peter’s question: ‘Lord to whom shall we go?’”
“But Peter answered it for himself. ‘You have the words of eternal life.’”
“Exactly; but Peter already had the answer. I’m not sure I have any longer.”
“And I’m not sure either.” Hallett was suddenly moody. “I’m not sure where I fit in this pluperfect world of the moral absolutists. Perhaps we’ll make some discoveries together while we watch the raree-show of Peter’s Successor!”
Luca Rossini was puzzled by the reference. He asked: “What was it you said?”
“‘The raree show of Peter’s Successor’. It’s a quotation from the English poet, Robert Browning.”
“But what, please, is a raree-show?”
“Oh dear! In Italian or Spanish, I would guess the nearest word would be carnival, although the expression in English suggests a fairground with jugglers, sword-swallowers, bearded ladies and other freaks.”
“With some comic ecclesiastics thrown in – a Cardinal or two, or a skeleton from the vaults of the Franciscans.”
“Now you’ve got the idea,” said Hallett happily. “It’s an old-fashioned word, but it might raise some ghosts in Vatican City!”
Rossini was still chuckling over the image when his mobile rang. He answered brusquely; then his whole expression changed. One moment he was eager, the next dubious and concerned. Finally, he said: “Very well. I’ll see her with you. I’ll have my man drive her back afterwards. I need to talk with you alone for a while. No, not at all, I have a visitor with me, that’s all.” He switched off and turned to Hallett.
“I have people to see in about twenty minutes, so I’ll have to throw you out. Are we agreed, then? You will enter the conclave as my personal confessor. All our personal transactions henceforth are under the confessional seal.”