For the next three weeks, the only reports on the Pontiff were the medical bulletins, the gossip of the Papal household at Castel Gandolfo and the occasional garrulities of Monsignor Malachy O’Rahilly.
The bulletins were studiously uninformative: the Holy Father was making steady progress but, on the advice of his physician, he had cancelled all public appearances until the end of August. The Mass of the Assumption in St Peter’s on 15 August would be celebrated by His Eminence Cardinal Clemens.
The household gossip was meagre enough. His Holiness rose late and bedded early. He said his Mass in the evening instead of the morning. He was on a strict diet and was losing weight rapidly. Every day a therapist came to supervise him in an hour of exercise. For the rest – he received visitors from ten till eleven in the morning, walked, read, rested and was in bed by nine every night. One change, however, was noted by everyone. He was less tetchy, less demanding and much more gentle in manner. How long it would last, of course, was anyone’s guess. After all, an intervention like that reduces a man’s vitality.
The garrulities of Monsignor Malachy O’Rahilly were much more revealing. Life at Castel Gandolfo was a bore at the best of times. There was a castle, the village and the black lake below; damn small diversion for a gregarious Celt who loved convivial company. ‘… but with the old man in this mood it’s Tombstone Terrace, believe me! He won’t read letters. I have to send holding notes. He’s become quite obsessive about what he eats and how much exercise he does, and I wish I could drop the weight off the way he’s doing. But he’s very quiet. When his visitors come, he doesn’t talk more than courtesies: ‘Thank you and how’s your father’, that sort of thing. He’s not fey, just distant and abstracted. He reminds me sometimes of Humpty Dumpty, trying to put the pieces of himself together again. Except he isn’t fat any more – and the Pontifical tailors are working overtime to refit him before he goes back to the Vatican … I notice he reads a lot more than he used to, prays a lot more too – which doesn’t exactly leap to the eye, but you become aware of it, because he’s in another world, if you take my meaning. It’s as if he’d put himself in retreat, a self-imposed solitude …
‘What is he reading? Well now, that’s interesting. He’s reading the very fellows that have been in trouble with Doctrine of the Faith – the Dutch, the Swiss, the Americans. In a moment of boldness – or excessive boredom – I remarked on it. He gave me the oddest look. He said, “Malachy, when I was young, I used to watch the test pilots streaking along the Po valley and out to sea. I used to think how wonderful it would be to risk oneself like that to discover something new about a machine or about myself. As my life settled into its pattern, I forgot the wonder. Now that my life has become less important, I am reliving it again … Time was when we burnt men like Giordano Bruno who speculated about plural worlds and the possibility of men travelling between them. Of course, we don’t burn our speculative thinkers any more. Instead, if they’re clerics we silence them, remove them from their teaching posts, prohibit them from public utterance on contentious matters. All this we do in the name of holy obedience. How do you feel about that, Malachy?”
‘That stumped me for a minute. I didn’t want to put my foot in a cowpat, so I said something like: “Well, Holiness, I suppose there’s some kind of principle of progressive enlightenment.” To which he said: “Malachy, you’re not half the fool you try to be. Don’t play games with me. I haven’t the time!” Needless to say, I ducked for cover; but he didn’t make a big issue of it. It’s hard to know what he’s really thinking. I’d love to get a look at his diary. He writes in it every evening before he goes to bed. The rest of the time it’s locked in his private safe …’
‘As a young bishop, I was asked to bless a new ship, about to be launched from the slips at La Spezia. Everyone was there: the builders, the owners, the shipwrights and their families. The tension was quite extraordinary. I asked one of the executives of the cantiere to explain it to me. He said: ‘Once they knock the chocks away and she slides down the slipway, all our lives are riding with her. If our calculations are wrong and she broaches, we’re as good as dead … so give us your best blessing, please Excellenza …” I am like that now. All my temporary supports have been taken away – Drexel, Salviati, Tove Lundberg, the staff at the clinic. I am launched. I am afloat. But I am a hulk without fittings, without crew, dead in the water …
‘The sense of isolation weighs on me like a leaden cope. Castel Gandolfo, Vatican City – these are my empire and my prison house. Outside, I move only by the permission of others. But my confinement is not by frontiers, it is by the identity to which I was elected Bishop of Rome, Successor to the Prince of the Apostles, Vicar of Christ … thus and thus and thus, every title a new barricade between me and the commonality of humankind. There is another confinement too – the Lazarus syndrome. I am not, nor can I ever be again, the same as other men. I have never understood until now – how could I? – the trauma of a young woman who can no longer breed because of a surgical intervention … the anger and despair of the soldier maimed in a minefield. They have become as I have: irretrievably other …
‘I can share these thoughts only with those who have shared the experiences; but they are not accessible to me … I do not see myself making the rounds of hospital wards and prison cells, patting hands and mumbling platitudes. Neither can I see myself closeted with Clemens as I have been in the past, sniffing out heresies, putting this academic and that under silence and obedience to test their faith. That is a torture more acute than the rack and the thumbscrew. I will have no more of it …
‘Now comes the rub. Clemens is where he is because I put him there. I put him there because of what he is, because of what I was. What do I say to him now? Everything is changed because I have seen a great light? He will face me down – because he does not lack courage. He will say: “This is the oldest heresy of all. You have no right to impose your private gnosis upon the People of God.” I will be vulnerable to that, because even now I cannot explain the change in me …
‘And that, dear Lord, is the strangest irony of all. I procured the deposition of Jean Marie Barette because he claimed a private revelation of the last things. I cannot move forward or backward until I am convinced that I am not myself entrapped in the ancient pride of private knowing. Against this kind of evil there is no remedy but prayer and fasting. I am fasting! God knows, I am fasting! Why does the prayer refuse to frame itself on my lips? Please God, put me not to the trial of darkness. I do not think I shall be able to bear it!
‘I woke this morning with this same fear hanging over me. There is no one here to whom I can communicate it, as I did to Tove Lundberg, so I must grapple with it alone. I went back to that marvellous first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, where he speaks first of offices and functions in the community: “God has given us different positions in the Church; apostles first, then prophets, thirdly teachers; then come miraculous powers, gifts of healing, works of mercy, the management of affairs …” Then he speaks of the better way which transcends all others: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am like sounding brass and tinkling cymbal … “
‘This is what I must remember every day when, after the summer vacation, I begin my personal dialogues with the Church. I must not be the man who tears it apart with contention. I must heal the grievous wounds within it.’
For Nicol Peters, the tag-end of summer had settled into its somnolent routine. The Miriam Latif story was dead. The Sword of Islam was no longer a headline item. The Pope was safely home. Mr Omar Asnan was living the agreeable life of a prosperous merchant. The Israeli Ambassador was on vacation, the Mossad man, Aharon ben Shaul, had faded back into his grey netherworld and was no longer available. This was the way life rolled in the news game. You learned to roll with the rhythm of events and non-events. You kept your story-files up to date and hoped to be ready when the next rocket went up.
Katrina was busy at the boutique. The summer visitors were out in force and the cash register was playing merry little tunes every day. The Romans had a proverb: only cani and Americani – dogs and Americans – could tolerate summer in the city. There was, however, an art to it. You worked in the morning. At midday you swam and lunched at the swimming club, where you also entertained your contacts. You worked again from five until eight, then rounded off the evening with friends at a taverna where you were well enough known to get a reasonably honest bill.
Their friendship with Sergio Salviati and Tove Lundberg was maturing slowly. Distance was a problem. It was nearly an hour’s drive from Castelli to the city, longer in the peak hour traffic. The shadow of the terrorist threat still hung over them. They travelled to and from the clinic at staggered hours in a Mercedes driven by a former member of the highway police trained in evasive driving.
On Saturdays, Tove worked with the other parents at the colonia. Sundays she kept for Salviati, who was busier than ever at the clinic and more and more dependent on the brief tranquil time they spent together. It was Katrina who made the astute comment: ‘I wonder how long they can keep it up, both so dedicated and controlled. It’s like watching a trapeze act at the circus …You know if one mistimes, they both go. Somehow I think she’s in better shape than he is, even though she’s the one under threat.’
Matt Neylan had become something of a fixture in their lives. His affair with the lady of the mysteries had run its cheerful little course and ended with a touching farewell at the airport, after which Neylan drove back to Rome to lunch with his New York editor and drive her up to Porto Ercole for a weekend editorial conference.
It was all good clean fun and the book – a popular study of Vatican diplomacy and the personalities involved in it – was beginning to take hold of him. However, he was becoming more and more aware that not all the attention he was paid was due to his wit or good looks.
There was a steady trickle of invitations through his mailbox; to embassy affairs, to seminars, to art shows sponsored by this or that cultural committee, screening of obscure films, appeals for victims of sundry wars and permanent famines. It was a useful antidote to boredom, provided you were not infected – as Matt Neylan knew himself to be – with the massive cynicism of the ex-believer. Once you had renounced the Almighty and all his prophets, it was hard to pin your faith to the petty propagandists of the cocktail circuit, or the recruiters of the flyblown intelligence networks who infested the city.
So, while he took full advantage of the free food and liquor and company, Matt Neylan devoted half his days to the demanding business of authorship and the other half to the passionate pursuit of women. Since he was proficient in five languages and haltingly adequate in three others, he was offered a wide range of choices. The odd thing was that he felt obliged, sooner or later, to run them past Katrina Peters for her nod of approval. Katrina found it beguiling. Nicol was not amused.
‘Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart. Matt’s naive but he’s not stupid. You’re his mother hen. He’s relying on you for his sentimental education.’
‘I find that rather flattering, Nico darling.’
‘It’s a warning, lover. Matt’s an agreeable friend but, like a lot of men with his history, he’s a user. All these years he’s lived a protected and very privileged bachelor life. He’s never had to worry where his next meal was coming from; his career was laid out by the Church, he didn’t have to battle for it, people paid him the respect they always give to the clergy and he didn’t have to dirty his hands to get it. Now that he’s out – and moderately well off by all accounts – he’s doing exactly the same thing: freeloading, and freeloading emotionally, too … I get a little bored watching the game and I get irritated when I see you involved in it. There now! I’ve said my piece!’
‘And I’ve listened very politely; so now let me say mine. Everything you’ve said is true – not only about Matt, but half the clerics we meet here. They’re like Oxford dons, living in their own very comfortable bunkers while the world goes to hell in a basket. But there’s something about Matt that you’re missing. He’s a man with a great black hole in the middle of himself. He doesn’t have faith any more and nobody’s ever taught him about love. He’s grabbing for sex as if it were being taken off the market; then when the girl goes home or he sends her – whichever is the scenario of the day – he’s back in the black hole. So don’t be too rough on him. Times are, my love, when I could strangle you with my bare hands; but I’d hate to wake up and find you weren’t there!’
For Matt Neylan, there were other and more subtle problems than those diagnosed by his friends. The work he had taken on, for which his publishers had paid him a very substantial advance, was easy to outline; but to finish it required a great deal of documented research for which the most necessary source was the Vatican Archive itself where, classified in various degrees of secrecy, a thousand years of records were preserved. As an official insider he had access by right; as an outsider, a recent renegade from the ranks, he could hardly claim even the privileges granted to visiting scholars and researchers.
So, well trained in the shifts and stratagems of diplomacy, he set about building a new set of alliances and communications, with junior clerics in the Secretariat of State, with lay members of the Archive staff, with foreign academics already accredited as researchers in the Archive and in the Vatican Library itself.
In this enterprise he found help from an unexpected quarter. After several feints, the Russian Ambassador made what seemed like a straightforward proposition.
‘You are a citizen of a neutral country. You have long experience in a specialised field of religious and political diplomacy. You have no present affiliations. You are continuing your studies in the same field. We should like to retain you, quite openly, on a written contract, as adviser to our Embassy here. The pay would be generous … What do you say, Mr Neylan?’
‘I’m flattered, of course. However, I need to think about it very carefully.’
‘Take all the time you need. Talk to whomever you choose. As I said, this is a matter of considerable importance in the future development of our European policy.’
In the end, Matt Neylan decided to take the Ambassador at his word. He sought and obtained a meeting with the Secretary of State, who received him in the bleak conference room reserved for casual visitors. Neylan came straight to the point.
‘I am offering you a courtesy, Eminence. I need a favour in return.’
‘So far,’ – Agostini made a little spire of his fingertips and smiled at him over the top of it – ‘so far you are admirably clear. What are you offering me?’
‘A piece of information. The Russians have invited me to advise them on what they call religious and political diplomacy. They offer good money and an open contract – presumably to save me the taint of espionage.’
‘Will you accept the offer?’
‘I’ll admit it has a certain fascination – but no. I’m turning it down. However, I think it determines for your department where certain emphases are being laid in Soviet policy.’
‘You could be right. It could also be that you are doing exactly what they expected. You are the bearer of a signal from them to us. Either way, I am in your debt. How can I repay you?’
‘You know the work on which I’ve embarked?’
‘Yes.’
‘I need access to the Archive – the same access which would normally be granted to any scholar or researcher.’
Agostini was puzzled.
‘Has it ever been denied you?’
‘No; but I thought it more tactful not to apply so soon after my exit.’
‘I'll send a note to the prefect tomorrow morning. You can begin work whenever you choose.’ ‘Thank you, Eminence.’
‘Thank you. How are things with you? I hear on various authorities that you are much in demand socially.’
‘I’m enjoying myself,’ said Matt Neylan. ‘And Your Eminence? It must be a relief to have His Holiness safe behind the ramparts.’
‘It is; though I do not believe the threat to him is past. That is something you could do for me. If you hear any news, any rumour of terrorist activity that makes sense to you, I should be grateful if you would contact me. Also His Holiness has personal concerns about Tove Lundberg and her child … This is a small town. News and rumour alike travel fast. Thank you for coming, Matt.’
‘Next time, Eminence,’ said Neylan with a grin, ‘could you invite me into your office? I’m not a travelling salesman.’
‘My apologies.’ Agostini was urbane as ever. ‘But you must admit it’s a little hard to define what you are.’
In his search for a sexual identity, Matt Neylan was making discoveries that to men half his age were already clichés. The first was that most of the women he met at official functions were married, divorced, dedicated to dreams of permanent union, or otherwise disqualified from listing in a bachelor’s telephone directory. He had also discovered that it was sometimes less expensive and less exhausting to buy the obligatory two drinks at the Alhambra Club and watch the floor show than to waste an evening and a dinner at Piccolo Roma with a bore, a bluestocking or a featherhead.
The Alhambra Club had another advantage, too: Marta the cigarette girl, who was always ready for a laugh and a few moments of gossip when business was slow. She was small, dark, and lively and, she said, a Hungarian. When he asked her for a date, she demurred. She worked the club every night. She couldn’t leave until three in the morning. However, if he felt like taking her out to lunch one day …
Which he did, and was happy with the experience, and they both decided to repeat it, same day, same time, same place, next week.
And that was how Matt Neylan, one time Secretary of Nunziatures in the Vatican service, author to be, heir to a prosperous little holding in the Ould Sod, came to bed once a week with Marta Kuhn, Mossad agent assigned to surveillance duty in the Alhambra Club, the contact point for members of the Sword of Islam.
At ten o’clock on a warm summer morning, Leo the Pontiff was taking coffee on the terrace and wrestling with the problem of Cardinal Clemens, a man whom he himself had appointed, who had fulfilled punctually the brief he had been given, but who now was an obstacle to his master’s plans.
A flight of birds passed overhead and he looked up to see a man scrambling precariously around the dome which houses the telescope of the Vatican observatory. He recognised him as Father John Gates, the director of the observatory and superior of the small community of Jesuits who ran it. He signalled to Gates to come down and join him for coffee.
Even though the observatory was perched high in the hills, on top of the castle itself, it was almost at the end of its usefulness, because the air above Rome and its environs was so polluted that the old-fashioned equipment could hardly function. Gates and his colleagues spent most of the year at the Astrophysical Institute in Huston, Texas. If the Pontiff was in residence at Castel Gandolfo Gates presented himself to pay his respects. After that he became a figure in the landscape, like the household staff and the farmhands.
He was a sturdy man in his late forties, with a ready smile and a quiet wit. His Italian was fluent and accurate. He had the easy confidence of a man secure in himself and in his scholarship. The Pontiff, hungry for company and eager for distraction from his own dark thoughts, plied him with questions, polite and casual at first, then more and more probing.
‘I’ve always wondered how the astronomer thinks of time, of eternity. How he conceives of the Godhead?’
Gates considered the question for a moment and then, like a good Jesuit, tried to define the terms.
‘If Your Holiness is asking whether I think differently from other believers, the answer has to be yes. In science we are faced always with new revelations about the universe. We are forced therefore to entertain new hypotheses and invent new terms to express them. We are always bumping our heads on the limitations of language and of mathematics. That was the last cry of Einstein: “I have run out of mathematics.” Goethe made the same plea in different words: “More light!” You ask me how I conceive of the Godhead. I can’t. I don’t try. I simply contemplate the immensity of the mystery. At the same time, I am aware that I myself am part of the mystery. My act of faith is an act of acceptance of my own unknowing.’
‘Are you saying that the traditional formulae of faith have no meaning for you?’
‘On the contrary. They mean much more than they can say. They are man-made definitions of the indefinable.’
‘Let’s take one formula then.’ The Pontiff pressed him. ‘That which is at the root of our Christian faith. “Etverbum caro factum est. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us”. God became man. What does that mean to you?’
‘What it says – but also much more than it says; otherwise we should be making human words a measure of God’s infinite mystery.’
‘I’m not sure I understand you, Father.’
‘I look at the heavens at night. I know that what I am witnessing is the birth and death of galaxies, light years away from ours. I look at this earth, these hills, that dark water down there. I see another aspect of the same mystery, God literally clothing himself with his own creation, working within it like yeast in a dough, renewing it every day and yet still transcending it. The Godhead clothing itself with human flesh is only part of that mystery. I find myself moving further and further away from the old dualist terms – body and soul, matter and spirit – in which much of our theology is expressed. The more the limits of knowledge recede from me, the more I experience myself as a oneness.’
The Pontiff gave him a long shrewd look and then lapsed for a while into silence. When finally he spoke, his words were mild, but there was a winter chill in his voice.
‘Why is it that when I hear these very personal formulations, I am uneasy? I ask myself whether our faithful recognise in them the simple gospel which we are called to preach.’ He tried to soften the blow. ‘That is not intended as a reproof, believe me. You are my guest. You honour me with your openness. I seek simply to understand.’
The Jesuit smiled, took out his pen and notebook and scribbled an equation. He passed it across to the Pontiff.
‘Can you tell me what that means, Holiness?’
‘No, I cannot. What is it?’
‘It’s a mathematical expression of the Doppler effect, the change of wavelength caused by any motion of a light source along a line of sight.’
The Pontiff smiled and spread his hands in despair.
‘Even that description means little to me!’
‘I could explain it to you; but since you have no mathematics, I would have to use metaphor. Which is exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t explain God. He described what God does, what God is, in the images of a rural people in an earlier age. You and I are people of another age. We have to speak and reason in the language of our own time, otherwise we make no sense. Look! It is part of my job in America to help train men to be astronauts, space travellers. Their imagery is quite different from yours or mine or that of Jesus himself. But why, for that reason, be suspicious of it? Why in this day and age try to put the human spirit in a straightjacket?’
‘Do you truly believe that is what we are trying to do?’
Father Gates shrugged and smiled.
‘I’m a guest at your table, Holiness.’
‘So you have the privilege of a guest. Speak freely. And remember that I am supposed to be the servant of the servants of God. If I am delinquent, I deserve reproof.’
‘Which I am not charged to administer,’ said the Jesuit with surprising firmness. ‘Let me try to approach the question differently. I’ve travelled a great deal. I’ve lived in Asia, in South America, in Africa, here in Europe. In the end, I find that all human experience is unitive. The tragic cycle – propagation, birth, death – is always completed by a metamorphosis. The graves are covered with flowers, wheat fields flourish over ancient battlefields. The techniques of modern storage and retrieval confer a continuity which is analogous to our notions of immortality, even of resurrection. Dead beauties come to life again on the television screen. I sometimes ask myself – I know this is a thorny subject right now – what might the television cameras have seen had they been trained all night on Jesus’s burial place?’
The Pontiff gave a small, relaxed chuckle.
‘A pity we’ll never know the answer.’
‘I take the opposite view. A lifetime of scientific exploration has made the act of faith much easier for me. I demand always to know more, but I am prepared to risk much more on creative ignorance.’
‘Creative ignorance!’ The Pontiff seemed to savour the phrase. ‘I like that. Because we are ignorant we seek to know. Because we are in darkness, we cry for light. Because we are lonely, we yearn for love … I confess to you, my friend, that, like Goethe, I have great need of light. I envy your starwalkers. It must be easy to pray up there.’
The Jesuit grinned happily.
‘When I was a boy, I couldn’t make any real sense of the Doxologies – Glory to God in the Highest, and so on. It sounded like people cheering at a football match, flattering the Creator by telling Him what a great fellow he was. But now, when I look through the telescopes and listen to the myriad signals that come to us from outer space, the prayer of praise is the only one I can utter. Even the wastage and the horror of the universe seem to make a kind of sense, though the haunting presence of evil rises always like a miasma from a swamp … I am talking too much. I should leave Your Holiness in peace. Thank you for the coffee.’
‘Thank you for coming, Father. Thank you for sharing yourself with me.’
When he had gone, Leo the Pontiff asked himself an almost childish question: why he had denied himself so long the pleasure of such men at his table. Why had he not given himself – stolen if need be – the leisure to learn from them? In the mood of depression that descended upon him, he found only a sad answer: he was a peasant who had never learned to be a prince.
Katrina Peters’s reading of the situation between Tove Lundberg and Sergio Salviati was very close to the truth. Each for a different reason was living under stress and the stress was evident even in that part of their lives which they shared most fully and intimately.
Salviati was deeply angered by the fact that, once again, in the country of his birth, he and those close to him were under threat simply because he was a Jew. Every time he stepped into the Mercedes, said good morning to the driver, checked the alarms on his house, monitored Tove’s comings and goings, he felt a fierce resentment. This was no way for a man to live, haunted by another man he had never seen, who by all accounts lived like a pasha, doing big business under the protection of the Italian government.
His resentment was all the greater, because he knew it was beginning to affect his work. In the operating theatre he was still the cool technician, totally concentrated on the patient. Outside, on ward rounds and the ‘white glove’ inspections, he was edgy and impatient.
Tove Lundberg was worried enough to confront him over dinner.
‘You can’t go on like this, Sergio. You’re doing exactly what you tell your patients not to do – driving yourself, living on adrenalin. You’re alienating the staff, who would do anything for you. You’ve got to take a break.’
‘And tell me, pray, how do I do that?’
‘Invite James Morrison down from London. He’d come like a shot. Move young Gallico up beside him. He could use the experience with another man. The administration works pretty well anyway – and I can always keep an eye on things for you. I know how the place runs.’
‘You wouldn’t come on vacation with me?’
‘No.’ She was very definite. ‘I think you need to go alone, feel absolutely free. At this moment I’m part of your burden, precisely because I’m threatened and you feel you have to protect me. Well, I am protected, as much as I ever can be. If it would make things easier, I could take off and work full time at the colonia while you’re away … I’ve got some problems of my own to work out.’
‘Look, my love!’ Salviati was instantly penitent. ‘I know I’m hard to live with these days -’
‘It isn’t you. It’s Britte. She’s a young woman now. I have to work out what kind of a life I can make for her and with her. The colonia isn’t the final answer, you know that. It’s given her a wonderful start; but it’s a small, elitist group. Once Anton Drexel dies who’s going to develop it and hold it together? The property is mortgaged to the Church. I’m sure one could make some arrangement with them; but much more is needed: a plan, development funds, training of new teachers.’
‘Is that what you see yourself doing?’
‘It isn’t. That’s the point. I’m thinking of something much simpler – a home for Britte and myself, a career for her. It would be a limited one, but she is a good painter.’
‘And what about you?’
‘I don’t know yet. Just now I’m living from day to day.’ ‘But you’re putting me on notice there’s a change coming?’ ‘There has to be. You know that. Neither of us is a totally free agent.’
‘Then why don’t we do what I’ve suggested before – get married, join forces, make a family for Britte?’
‘Because I’d still be denying you the chance to make a family for yourself.’
‘Suppose I accept that.’
‘Then one day, sure as sunrise, you’ll hate me for it. Look, my love, we’re still friends, we still support each other. Let’s go on doing that. But let’s be honest. Things are out of our control. You got the most prominent man in the world as a patient in your clinic. It was a triumph. Everybody recognised it. Now we drive back and forth with an armed guard and pistols taped under the seats … Britte’s an adolescent. She can’t be managed like a child any longer. And you, my love, have spent so much of yourself that you’re wondering just what’s left … We have to make a change!’
Still he would not admit the need. It was as if, by admitting the process of evolution, he might suddenly call on the earthquake. There was no easy solace for either of them any more. The good taste of loving was gone, all that seemed to be left was the bitter aftertaste of lost illusions.
She tried to talk about it to Drexel, who for all his ripe wisdom had his own quirks and quiddities. He did not want to lose his little family. He did not want to consider any alienation of the villa property during his lifetime. He would happily work with Tove to extend and organise the colonia; but she would have to make a total commitment to it … All of which meant another set of barriers to what had once been open and affectionate communication.
Then she realised that, although he was scarcely aware of it, Drexel himself was dealing with another set of problems. Now that he was truly pensioned off, he was lonely. The rustic life for which he had longed so ardently was not nearly enough to satisfy his active mind and his secret yearning for the excitements of the power game in which he had played all his life. This was the meaning of the transparent little strategy which he proposed to Tove Lundberg.
‘Britte has finished her portrait of His Holiness. Why don’t I arrange for her to present it to him? I’m sure he would be happy to receive us together at Castel Gandolfo.’
As it turned out the strategy was unnecessary. Next morning he received by telephone a summons to wait upon the Pontiff before midday.
‘Read this!’ The Pontiff slammed the flat of his hand on the pages of Osservatore Romano laid open on his desk. ‘Read it very carefully!’
The article was headed ‘An Open Letter to the Signatories of the Tübingen Declaration’ and it was a blistering attack, in the most formal terms, on the content of the document and what it called the ‘arrogant and presumptuous attitudes of clerics who are entrusted with the highest duties of Christian education’. It ended with the flat pronouncement: ‘The luxury of academic argument cannot be allowed to undermine the loyalties which all Catholics owe to Peter’s successor or to obscure the clear outlines of Christ’s message of salvation.’ It was signed Roderigo Barbo.
Drexel’s first question was the obvious one: ‘Who is Roderigo Barbo?’
‘I have asked. I am informed that he is, and I quote: “A layman. One of our regular and most respected contributors.”’
‘One has to say,’ observed Drexel mildly, ‘he has a very good grasp of the official line.’
‘Is that all?’
‘No. If Your Holiness wants me to speculate …’
‘I do.’
‘Then I detect – or think I detect – the fine Gothic hand of Karl Clemens in this matter.’
‘I too. You know I met with him in the clinic. I told him there should be a cooling off period before any contact is made with the signatories of the Tübingen Declaration or any action taken against them. He disagreed. I overruled him. I believe he chose this method to sidestep my direct order.’
‘Can you prove that, Holiness?’
‘I am not required to prove it. I shall ask him the question direct. In your presence. He is already waiting to see me.’
‘And what does Your Holiness expect me to do?’
‘What good sense and equity tell you to do. Defend him if you think he merits it. I do not wish my judgement in this matter to be clouded by anger – and I have been very angry this morning.’
He pressed a buzzer on the desk. A few moments later, Monsignor O’Rahilly announced His Eminence, Karl Emil Cardinal Clemens. The ritual greetings were exchanged. The Pontiff made a curt explanation.
‘Anton is present at my behest.’
‘As Your Holiness pleases.’ Clemens was steady as a rock.
‘I presume you have seen this piece in Osservatore Romano, signed by Roderigo Barbo.’
‘I have seen it, yes.’
‘Do you have any comment on it?’
‘Yes. It is in line with other editorials published in Catholic papers around the world: in London, in New York, Sydney Australia and so on.’
‘Do you agree with it?’
‘Your Holiness knows that I do.’
‘Did you have any hand in its composition?’
‘Clearly, Holiness, I did not. It is signed by Roderigo Barbo, and would have been commissioned directly by the editor.’
‘Did you have any influence, directly or indirectly, by suggestion or comment, upon its commissioning or publication?’
‘Yes, I did. Given that Your Holiness was not in favour of official action at this moment, it seemed to me not inopportune to open the matter to public discussion by the faithful – which the authors of the original document had done in any case. In short, I believed that the other side of the case should at least be heard. I believed also that the climate should be prepared for any action that might later be taken by the Congregation.’
‘And you did this in spite of our discussion at the clinic, and my clear directive on the matter.’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you explain that?’
‘The discussions were too short to cover the whole range of issues. The directive was a limited one. I followed it to the letter – no official action or response.’
‘And Osservatore Romano is not official?’
‘No, Holiness. It is sometimes a vehicle for the publication of official announcements. Its opinions are not binding.’
The Pontiff was silent for a long moment. His strange predator’s face, lean now from illness and dieting, was tight and grim. He turned to Anton Drexel.
‘Does Your Eminence have any comment?’
‘Only this, Holiness. My colleague Karl has been very frank. He has taken a position which, though it may not be palatable to Your Holiness, is still understandable, given the temper of his mind and his concern for the maintenance of traditional authority. I believe also Your Holiness must credit him with the best of intentions in trying to spare you stress and anxiety.’
It was a lifeline and Clemens grasped it as eagerly as a drowning man.
‘Thank you, Anton. I should have been hard put to defend myself so eloquently. There is only one more point I should like to make, Holiness. You put me in this office. You gave me a clear commission to examine rigorously – and the word is yours – any persons or situations dangerous to the purity of the faith. You quoted to me the words of your distinguished predecessor Paul VI: “The best way to protect the faith is to promote the doctrine.” If you find my performance unsatisfactory, I shall be happy to offer you my resignation.’
‘We take note of the offer, Eminence. Meantime, you will refrain from further prompting of the Press – sacred or profane – and interpret our instructions broadly, according to their spirit and not narrowly, according to the letter. Do we understand each other?’
We do, Holiness.’
‘You have our leave to go.’ He pressed the buzzer to summon Malachy O’Rahilly. ‘Anton, you will wait. We have other matters to discuss.’
The moment Clemens had left the room, the demeanour of the Pontiff changed. The tense muscles in his face relaxed. He folded the newspaper slowly and laid it aside. Then he turned to Drexel and asked a blunt question.
‘Do you think I was too hard on him?’
Drexel shrugged. ‘He knew the risk. He took it …’
‘I can forgive him. I can’t trust him again.’
‘That is for Your Holiness to decide.’
A slow smile dawned in the eyes of the Pontiff. He asked: ‘How does it feel to be just a farmer, Anton?’
‘Less interesting than I had hoped.’
‘There, too, I have problems which I had not foreseen.’ He told of his conversations with Tove Lundberg, and the question which loomed for her and for all the other parents: what future could be offered to these brilliant but terribly handicapped children? ‘I confess I have no answer to it – nor, I fear, are we equipped in this country to deliver one. We may have to look outside for models and answers …’
‘Then why not do it, Anton? Why not propose that to Tove Lundberg? I would be willing to find some funds from my private purse … But now to other matters. You are retired. You will remain retired. You will, however, remain as a member – in petto as it were, private and unobserved – of the pontifical family … Today is the beginning of change. Clemens did a foolish thing and I am very angry with him. Yet, the more I think about it, the more clearly I see that he has done us all a great favour. He has put into my hands exactly what I need: the instruments of change, the lever and the fulcrum to get the Church moving again. I lay awake for hours last night thinking about it. I got up early this morning to say the Mass of the Holy Spirit to beg for guidance on it. I’m sure I’ve made the right decision.’
‘I hope Your Holiness will permit me to reserve judgement until I’ve heard it.’
‘Let me reason it through with you.’ He pushed himself out of his chair and began to pace the room as he talked. Drexel was amazed to see how much weight he had lost and how vigorously he moved so early in his convalescence. His voice was strong and clear and, best of all, his exposition did not falter. ‘Clemens goes. He has to go. His argument was casuistry and unacceptable. He defied authority more blatantly than the Tübingen signatories who complained publicly about the alleged misuse of it … So now we need a new prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
‘Do you have anyone in mind?’
‘Not yet. But you and I know that that Congregation is the most important and the most powerful instrument in the Church. All of us bend to its demands, because its purpose is to defend that upon which the existence of the Church depends – the purity of the teaching given to us by Christ and handed down from apostolic times … Clemens thought I would bend too, because I am still not wholly recovered and I dare not alienate the heritage of the ancient faith. But he was wrong – as the Congregation has been wrong, grievously wrong so many times down the centuries. I am going to reform it, root and branch. I am going to abrogate the dark deeds of its history, the tyrannies of the Inquisition, the secrecy and the inequities of its procedures. It is and always has been an instrument of repression. I am going to turn it into an instrument of witness, against which not only our doctrine, but our charity as a Christian Assembly, may be judged by all.’
He broke off, flushed and excited, then sat down, mopping his hands and his brow. Drexel passed him a glass of water and then asked quietly: ‘How do you propose to do all this, Holiness?’
‘By motu proprio. I need your help in drafting it.’
‘You need more than that, Holiness.’ Drexel gave a little rueful laugh. ‘There are fourteen cardinals and eight bishops running the Congregation. You can’t dismiss them all. And what will you do with Clemens? He is known as your man. You can hardly stick his head on a pike outside the Porta Angelica!’
‘On the contrary. I shall draw him very close to me. I shall give him your place as Cardinal Camerlengo and make him, in addition, prefect of my household. How does that sound?’
‘Very much in character,’ said Drexel with wry humour. ‘Your Holiness is obviously much recovered.’’
‘Be glad I am.’ The Pontiff was suddenly grim again. ‘I am changed, Anton, changed to the core of my being. I am setting out to repair the damage I have done to the Church. But in one thing I have not changed. I am still a country bumpkin, a hard-head. I don’t want a fight; but if I’m forced into it, I have to win or drop.’
At which point Anton Drexel deemed it prudent to change the subject. He asked: ‘Before you return to the Vatican, may I bring Britte and her mother to see you? Your portrait is finished. It’s very good …’
‘Why don’t we do it tomorrow at eleven?’
‘We’ll be here. And, Holiness, Tove Lundberg herself is going through a difficult time. It would help if you could encourage her to talk about it.’
‘By all means. You can take Britte into the garden. Leave Tove to me.’
As he was driven back from Castel Gandolfo to his own villa, Drexel replayed the events of the morning. First and most dramatic was the emergence of the old Leo, the man who knew how the vast machine worked and where to put his finger on the nerve-centres that controlled it. He had shed uncertainty. The fire was alight in his belly. He would thrust forward relentlessly towards the goal he had set himself. How wisely he had decided was another matter; but there was no gainsaying the sense of history that determined his choice.
Before the sixteenth century, the affairs of the Universal Church, including doctrinal matters, were handled by the Apostolic Chancery. In 1542 Paul III, Alessandro Farnese, founded the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition. It was in the beginning a temporary institution, replaced by secular commissions under Pius IV, Gregory XIII, Paul V. But the first stable one, with an organic plan, was set up by Sixtus V, who had himself served as an inquisitor in Venice and who, as Pope, ruled with Draconian severity; imposing the death penalty for thievery, incest, procuration, adultery and sodomy. It was he who planned with Philip II of Spain to send the Armada against England, and when the Armada was sunk, defaulted on the payments to his ally. Pius X changed the name to the Holy Office, Paul VI changed it again to Doctrine of the Faith.
But the essential character of the institution had not changed. It was still essentially authoritarian, repressive, penal, incurably secretive and, in its procedures, inequitable.
In an institution like the Roman Catholic Church, built solidly on the old imperial model, relentlessly centralised, this inquisitorial institution was not only enormously powerful, it was a symbol of all the scandals of the centuries: the witch-hunts, the persecution of Jews, the burning of books and of heretics, the unholy alliances between the Church and the colonisers.
In the post conciliar world it was identified with reaction, with the concerted attempt to hold back reform and developments which the Council had set in motion. Leo XIV had used it himself precisely for those purposes. He knew its importance. His attempt to reform it was a true measure of the change in him.
The means he had in mind were interesting, too. A motu proprio was a document issued by a Pope on his own initiative over his own signature. It was, therefore, in a special sense a personal directive. It laid him open to challenge from the Sacred Congregations and the senior hierarchy; but it also put his pontifical authority on the line in a matter on which he held strong personal convictions.
By the time the car turned into his own driveway, Drexel was convinced that there was stormy weather ahead but that Ludovico Gadda had a reasonable chance to survive it.