GEORGE FABER left Rome early on a Sunday morning. He headed out through the Lateran Gate and down the new Appian Way towards the Southern autostrada. He had a five-hour drive ahead of him, Terracina, Formio, Naples, and then out along the winding peninsular road to Castellamare, Sorrento, Amalfi, and Positano. He was in no hurry. The morning air was still fresh, and the traffic was heavy, and he had no intention of risking his neck as well as his reputation.
At Terracina he was hailed by a pair of English girls who were hitch-hiking down the coast. For an hour he was glad of their company, but by the time they reached Naples he was happy to be rid of them. Their cheerful certainty about the world and all its ways made him feel like a grandfather.
The heat of the day was upon him now – a dry, dusty oppression which made the air dance and filled the nostrils with the ammoniac stink of a crowded and ancient city. He turned into the Via Carocciolo and sat for a while in a waterfront café, sipping iced coffee and pondering the moves he should make when he reached Positano. He had two people to see: Sylvio Pellico, artist, and Theo Respighi, sometime actor – both of them, according to the record, unhappy associates of Corrndo Calitri.
For weeks now he had been puzzling over the best method to approach them. He had lived long enough in Italy to know the Italian love of drama and intrigue. But his Nordic temper revolted from the spectacle of an American correspondent playing a Latin detective in raincoat and black fedora. Finally he had decided on a simple, blunt approach:
‘I understand you knew Corrado Calitri…I’m in love with his wife. I want to marry her. I think you can give me some evidence against him. I’m prepared to pay well for it…’
For a long time he had refused to reason beyond this point. Yet now, three hours from Rome, and a long way farther from Chiara, he was prepared to come to grips with the if. If all failed he would have proved himself to himself. He would have proved to Chiara that he was prepared to risk his career for her sake. He would be able to demand a two-way traffic in love. If that failed, too…? At long last he was beginning to believe that he would survive it. The best cure for love was to cool it down a little, and leave a man free to measure woman against woman, the torment of a one-sided loving against the bleak peace of no loving at all.
One could not bounce a middle-aged heart, like a rubber ball, from one affair to another; but there was a crumb of comfort in the thought of Ruth Lewin and her refusal to commit his heart or her own to a new affliction without any promise of security.
She was wiser than Chiara. He knew that. She had been tested further and survived better. But love was a rainbow word that might or might not point to a crock of gold. He paid for his drink, stepped out into the raw sunshine, and began the last leg of his journey into uncertainty.
The Gulf of Naples was a flat and oily mirror, broken only by the wake of the pleasure steamers and the spume of the aliscafe, which bounced their loads of tourists at fifty miles an hour towards the siren islands of Capri and Ischia. The summit of Vesuvius was vague in a mist of heat and dust. The painted stucco of the village houses was peeling in the sun. The grey tufa soil of the farm plots was parched, and the peasants plodded up and down the rows of tomato plants like figures in a medieval landscape. There was a smell of dust and dung, and rotting tomatoes and fresh oranges. Horns bleated at every curve, wooden carts rolled noisily over cobblestones. Snatches of music swept by, mixed with the shouts of children and the occasional curse of a farmer caught in the press of summer traffic.
George Faber found himself driving fast and free, and chanting a tuneless song. On the steep spiral of the Amalfi drive he was nearly forced off the road by a careering sports car, and he cursed loud and cheerfully in Roman dialect. By the time he reached Positano, the shabby, spectacular little town that ran in a steep escalade from the water to the hilltop, he was his own man, and the experience was as heady as the raw wine of the Sorrentine mountains.
He lodged his car in a garage, hefted his bag, and strolled down a steep, narrow alley to the city square. Half an hour later, bathed and changed into cotton slacks and a striped sailor shirt, he was sitting under an awning, drinking a Carpano, and preparing for his encounter with Sylvio Pellico.
The artist’s gallery was a long, cool tunnel that ran from the street into a courtyard littered with junk and fragments of old marbles. His pictures were hung along the walls of the tunnel – gawdy abstracts, a few portraits in the manner of Modigliani, and a scattering of catchpenny landscapes to inveigle the sentimental tourist. It was easy to see why Corrado Calitri had dropped him so quickly. It was less easy to see why he had taken him up in the first place.
He was a tall, narrow-faced youth with a straggly beard, dressed in cotton sweatshirt, faded blue denims, and shoes of scuffed canvas. He was propped between two chairs at the entrance to the tunnel, dozing in the sun, with a straw hat tipped over his eyes.
When George Faber stopped to examine the pictures he came to life immediately and presented himself and his work with a flourish. ‘Sylvio Pellico, sir, at your service. My pictures please you? Some of them have already been exhibited in Rome.’
‘I know,’ said George Faber. ‘I was at the show.’
‘Ah! Then you’re a connoisseur. I will not try to tempt you with this rubbish!’ He dismissed the landscapes with a wave of his skinny hand. ‘Those are just eating money.’
‘I know, I know. We all have to eat. Are you having a good season?’
‘Eh!…You know how it goes. Everyone looks, nobody wants to buy. Yesterday I sold two little pieces to an American woman. The day before, nothing. The day before that…’ He broke off and cocked a huckster’s eye at George Faber. ‘You are not an Italian, Signore?’
‘No. I’m an American.’
‘But you speak beautiful Italian.’
‘Thank you…Tell me, who sponsored your exhibition in Rome?’
‘A very eminent man. A Minister of the Republic. A very good critic, too. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. His name is Calitri.’
‘I’ve heard of him,’ said George Faber. ‘I’d like to talk to you about him.’
‘Why?’ He leaned his shaggy head on one side like an amiable parrot. ‘Did he send you to see me?’
‘No. It’s a private matter. I thought you might be able to help me. I’d be happy to pay for your help. Does that interest you?’
‘Who isn’t interested in money? Sit down, let me get you a cup of coffee.’
‘No coffee. This won’t take long.’
Pellico dusted off one of the chairs, and they sat facing each other under the narrow archway.
Crisply Faber explained himself and his mission, and then laid down his offer. ‘…Five hundred dollars, American money, for a sworn statement about Calitri’s marriage, written in the terms I shall dictate to you.’
He sat back in his chair, lit a cigarette, and waited while the artist cupped his brown face in his hands and thought for a long time. Then he lifted his head and said, ‘I’d appreciate an American cigarette.’
Faber handed him the pack and then leaned forward with a light.
Pellico smoked for a few moments, and then began to talk. ‘I am a poor man, sir. Also I am not a very good painter, so I am likely to remain poor for a long time. For one like me, five hundred dollars is a fortune, but I am afraid I cannot do what you ask.’
‘Why not?’
‘Several reasons.’
‘Are you afraid of Calitri?’
‘A little. You’ve lived in this country, you know the way things run. When one is poor, one is always a little outside the law and it never pays to tangle with important people. But that’s not the only reason.’
‘Name me another.’
His thin face wrinkled, and his head seemed to shrink lower between his shoulders. He explained himself with an odd simplicity. ‘I know what this means to you, sir. When a man is in love, eh?…It is ice in the heart and fire in the gut…One loses for a while all pride. When one is out of love the pride comes back. Often it is the only thing left…I am not like you…I am, if you want, more like Calitri. He was kind to me once…I was very fond of him. I do not think I could betray him for money.’
‘He betrayed you, didn’t he? He gave you one exhibition and then dropped you.’
‘No!’ The thin hands became suddenly eloquent. ‘No. You must not read it like that. On the contrary, he was very honest with me. He said every man has the right to one trial of his talent. If the talent was not there, he had best forget it…Well, he gave me the trial. I failed. I do not blame him for that.’
‘How much would you charge to blame him? A thousand dollars?’
Pellico stood up and dusted off his hands. For all his shabbiness, he seemed clothed in a curious kind of dignity. He pointed at the grey walls of the tunnel. ‘For twenty dollars, sir, you can buy my visions. They are not great visions, I know. They are the best I have. Myself I do not sell. Not for a thousand dollars, not for ten thousand. I am sorry.’
As he walked away down the cobbled street, George Faber, the Nordic Puritan, had the grace to be ashamed of himself. His face was burning, his palms were sweating. He felt a swift, unreasonable resentment towards Chiara, sunning herself in Venice five hundred miles away. He turned into a bar, ordered a double whisky, and began to read through the dossier of his next contact, Theo Respighi.
He was an Italo-American, born in Naples and transported to New York in his childhood. He was a middling bad actor who had played small parts in television, small parts in Hollywood, and then returned to Italy to play small parts in Biblical epics and pseudo-classic nonsense. In Hollywood there had been minor scandals – drunken driving, a couple of divorces, a brief and turbulent romance with a rising star. In Rome he had joined the roistering bunch who kept themselves alive on hope and runaway productions and the patronage of Roman playboys. All in all, Faber summed him up as a seedy character who should be very amenable to the rustle of a dollar bill.
He ran Respighi to earth that same evening in a cliff-side bar, where he was drinking with three very gay boys and a faded Frenchwoman who spoke Italian with a Genoese accent. It took an hour to prise him away from the company, and another to sober him up with dinner and black coffee. Even when he had done it, he was left with a hollow, muscular hulk who, when he was not combing his long, blond hair, was reaching nervously for the brandy bottle. Faber stifled the wavering voice of his own conscience and once again displayed his proposition:
‘…A thousand dollars for a signed statement. No strings, no problems. Everything that goes before the Roman Rota is kept secret. No one, least of all Calitri, will ever know who gave the testimony.’
‘Balls!’ said the blond one flatly. ‘Don’t try to con me, Faber. There’s no such thing as a secret in Rome. I don’t care whether it’s in the Church or Cinecittà. Sooner or later Calitri has to know. What happens to me then?’
‘You’re a thousand dollars richer, and he can’t touch you.’
‘You think so? Look, lover boy, you know how films are made in this country. The money comes from everywhere. The list of angels stretches from Napoli to Milano, and back again. There’s a black list here, too, just like in Hollywood. You get on it, you’re dead. For a thousand crummy bucks, I don’t want to be dead.’
‘You haven’t earned that much in six months,’ Faber told him. ‘I know, I checked up.’
‘So what? That’s the way the cookie crumbles in this business. You starve for a while, and then you eat, and eat good. I want to go on eating. Now if you were to make it ten thousand, I might begin to think about it. With that much I could get myself back Stateside, and wait long enough to get a decent start again…Come on, lover! What are you playing for? The big romance or a bag of popcorn?’
‘Two thousand,’ said George Faber.
‘No deal.’
‘It’s the best I can do.’
‘Peanuts! I can get that much by lifting a phone and telling Calitri that you’re gunning for him…Tell you what. Give me a thousand and I won’t make the call.’
‘Go to hell!’ He pushed back his chair, and walked out. The laughter of the blond one followed him like a mockery into the darkened street.
‘The longer I live,’ said Jean Télémond musingly, ‘the more clearly I understand the deep vein of pessimism that runs through so much of modern thought, even the thought of many in the Church…Birth, growth, and decay. The cyclic pattern of life is so vividly apparent that it obscures the pattern that underlies it, the pattern of constant growth, and – let me say it bluntly – the pattern of human progress. For many people, the wheel of life simply turns on its own axis, it does not seem to be going anywhere.’
‘And you, Jean, believe it is going somewhere?’
‘More than that, Holiness. I believe it must go somewhere.’
They had taken off their cassocks, and they were sitting relaxed in the shade of a small copse, with a bank of wild strawberries at their backs and, in front, the flat bright water of Lake Nemi. Jean Télémond was sucking contentedly on his pipe, and was tossing pebbles into the water. The air vibrated with the strident cry of cicadas, and the little brown lizards sunned themselves on rock and tree-trunk.
They had long since surrendered themselves to bucolic ease and the comfort of one another’s company. In the mornings they worked privately – Kiril at his desk, keeping track of the daily dispatches from Rome; Télémond in the garden, setting his papers in order for the scrutiny of the Holy Office. In the afternoons they drove out into the country, Télémond at the wheel, exploring the valleys and the uplands and the tiny towns that had clung to the ridges for five hundred years and more. In the evenings they dined together, then read or talked or played cards until it was time for Compline and the last prayer of the day.
It was a good time for both: for Kiril, a respite from the burden of office; for Télémond, a true return from exile into the companionship of an understanding and truly loving spirit. He did not have to measure his words. He felt no risk in exposing his deepest thoughts. Kiril, for his part, confided himself fully to the Jesuit, and found a peculiar solace in this sharing of his private burden.
He tossed another pebble into the water and watched the ripples fan out towards the farther shore, until they were lost in the shimmer of sunlight. Then he asked another question:
‘Have you never been a pessimist yourself, Jean? Have you never felt caught up in this endless turning of the wheel of life?’
‘Sometimes, Holiness. When I was in China, for instance, far to the north-west, in the barren valley of the great rivers. There were monasteries up there. Enormous places that could only have been built by great men – men with a great vision – to challenge the emptiness in which they lived…In one fashion or another, I thought God must have been with them. Yet, when I went in and saw the men who live there now – dull, uninspired, almost doltish at times – I was afflicted by melancholy…When I came back to the West and read the newspapers and talked with my brother scientists, I was staggered by the blindness with which we seem to be courting our own destruction. Sometimes it seemed impossible to believe that man was really growing out of the slime towards a divine destiny…’
Kiril nodded thoughtfully. He picked up a stick and teased a sleeping lizard, so that it skitted away into the leaves. ‘I know the feeling, Jean. I have it sometimes even in the Church. I wait and pray for the great movement, the great man, who will startle us into life again…’
Jean Télémond said nothing. He drew placidly on his pipe, waiting for the Pontiff to finish the thought.
‘…A man like Saint Francis of Assisi, for instance. What does he really mean?…A complete break with the pattern of history…A man born out of due time. A sudden unexplained revival of the primitive spirit of Christianity. The work he began still continues…But it is not the same. The revolution is over. The revolutionaries have become conformists. The little brothers of the Little Poor Man are rattling alms-boxes in the railway square or dealing in real estate to the profit of the order.’ He laughed quietly. ‘Of course, that isn’t the whole story. They teach, they preach, they do the work of God as best they know, but it is no longer a revolution, and I think we need one now.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Jean Télémond with a twinkle in his shrewd eyes. ‘Perhaps Your Holiness will be the revolutionary.’
‘I have thought about it, Jean. Believe me, I have thought about it. But I do not think even you can understand how limited I am by the very machinery which I inherit, by the historic attitudes by which I am enclosed. It is hard for me to work directly. I have to find instruments apt to my hand. I am young enough, yes, to see big changes made in my lifetime. But there will have to be others to make them for me…You, for instance.’
‘I, Holiness?’ Télémond turned a startled face to the Pontiff. ‘My field of action is more limited than yours.’
‘I wonder if it is?’ asked Kiril quizzically. ‘Have you ever thought that the Russian revolution, the present might of Soviet Russia, was built on the work of Karl Marx, who spent a large part of his life in the British Museum and is now buried in England? The most explosive thing in the world is an idea.’
Jean Télémond laughed and tapped out his pipe on a tree-bole. ‘Doesn’t that rather depend on the Holy Office? I have still to pass their scrutiny.’
Kiril gave him a long, sober look, then quizzed him again. ‘If you fail to pass, Jean, what will you do then?’
Télémond shrugged. ‘Re-examine, I suppose. I hope I shall have the energy to do it.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Partly because I am afraid, partly because because I am not a well man. I have lived roughly for a long time. I am told my heart is not as good as it should be.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Jean. You must take care of yourself. I shall make it my business to see that you do.’
‘May I ask you a question, Holiness?’
‘Of course.’
‘You have honoured me with your friendship. In the eyes of many – though not in mine – it will seem that you have given your patronage to my work. What will you do if it is found wanting by the Holy Office?’
To his surprise Kiril threw back his head and laughed heartily. ‘Jean, Jean. There speaks the true Jesuit. What will I do? I shall always be your friend, and I shall pray that you have health and courage to continue your studies.’
‘But if I should die before they are done?’
‘Sometimes…Believe me, Holiness, whatever the outcome, I have tried to prepare myself for it. But I am convinced that there is a truth in my researches…I do not want to see it lost or suppressed.’
‘It will not be suppressed, Jean. I promise you that.’
‘Forgive me, Holiness, I have said more than I should.’
‘Why should you apologize, Jean? You have shown me your heart. For a lonely man like me, that’s a privilege… Courage now. Who knows? We may see you a Doctor of the Church yet. Now, if it will not offend your Jesuit’s eyes, the Pope of Rome is going for a swim.’
When Kiril stripped off his shirt and made ready for the plunge, Jean Télémond saw the marks of the whip on his back, and he was ashamed of his own cowardice.
Two days later, a courier from Washington delivered to the Pontiff a private letter from the President of the United States:
…I read with lively interest Your Holiness’s letter and the copies of the two letters from the Premier of the USSR which were handed to me by His Eminence Cardinal Carlin. I agree that we shall need to preserve the most rigid secrecy about this whole situation.
Let me say first that I am deeply grateful for the information which you give me about your private association with Kamenev, and your views on his character and his intention. I was also deeply impressed by the frank disagreement of Cardinal Carlin. I know that he would not have spoken so freely without the permission of Your Holiness, and I am encouraged to be equally frank with you.
I have to say that I am very dubious about the value of private conversations at this level. On the other hand, I am happy to pursue them so long as there seems the slightest hope of avoiding the explosive crisis which is inevitable in the next six or twelve months.
The problem as I see it is both simple and complex. Kamenev has expressed it very well. We are caught in the current of history. We can tack across it, but we cannot change the direction of the flow. The only thing that can do that is an action of such magnitude and such risk that none of us would be allowed to attempt it.
I could not, for example, commit my country to one-sided disarmament. I could not abandon our claims for a reunification of Germany. I should very much like to be quit of Quemoy and Matsu, but we cannot relinquish them without a serious loss of face and influence in Southeast Asia. I can understand that Kamenev is afraid of the Chinese, yet he cannot abandon an alliance – even a troublesome and dangerous one – which guarantees a solid Communist bloc from East Germany to the Kuriles.
The most we can hope is to keep the situation elastic, to give ourselves a breathing space for negotiation and historic evolution. We must avoid at all costs a head-on clash, which will inevitably cause a cataclysmic atomic war.
If a secret correspondence with Kamenev will help at all, I am prepared to risk it, and I am very happy to accept Your Holiness as the intermediary. You may communicate my thoughts to Kamenev and make known to him the contents of this letter. He knows that I cannot move alone, just as he cannot. We both live under the shadow of the same risk.
I do not belong to Your Holiness’s faith, but I commend myself to your prayers and the prayers of all Christendom. We carry the fate of the world on our shoulders, and if God does not support us, then we must inevitably break under the burden…
When he had read the letter, breathed a sigh of relief. It was no more than he had hoped, but no less either. The storm clouds were still piled, massive and threatening, over the world, but there was a tiny break in them and one could begin to guess at the sunlight. The problem was now to enlarge the break, and he asked himself how best he might co-operate in doing it.
Of one thing he was certain: it would be a mistake for the Vatican to assume the attitude of a negotiator, to propose grounds for a bargain. The Church, too, carried the burden of history on her back. Politically she was suspect; but the very suspicion was a pointer to her task – to affirm not the method, but the principles of a human society. capable of survival, capable of ordering itself to the terms of a God-given plan. She was appointed to be a teacher, not a treaty maker. Her task was not to govern men in the material order, but to train them to govern themselves in accordance with the principles of the natural law. She had to accept that the end product – if, indeed, one could talk without cynicism about an end – must always be an approximation, a stage in an evolutionary growth.
It was this thought that led him once more into the garden of Castel Gandolfo, where Jean Télémond, studious and absorbed, was annotating his papers under the shade of an old oak tree.
‘Here you sit, my Jean, writing your visions of a world perfecting itself, while I sit like a telephone operator between two men, each of whom can blast us into smithereens by pressing a button…There’s a dilemma for you. Does your science tell you how to resolve it? What would you do if you were in my shoes?’
‘Pray,’ said Jean Télémond with a puckish grin.
‘I do, Jean. Every day – all day, for that matter. But prayer isn’t enough, I have to act too. You had to be an explorer before you came to rest in this place. Tell me now, where do I move?’
‘In this situation, I don’t think you move at all. You sit and wait for the appropriate moment.’
‘You think that’s enough?’
‘In the larger sense, no. I think the Church has lost the initiative it should have in the world today.’
‘I do, too. I should like to think that in my Pontificate we may be able to get some of it back. I’m not sure how. Do you have any ideas?’
‘Some,’ said Jean Télémond crisply. ‘All my life I’ve been a traveller. One of the first things a traveller has to do is learn to accommodate himself to the place and time in which he lives. He has to eat strange food, use an unfamiliar coinage, learn not to blush among people who have no privies, search for the good that subsists in the grossest and most primitive societies. Every individual, every organization, has to sustain a conversation with the rest of the world. He cannot talk always in negatives and contradictions.’
‘You think we have done that?’
‘Not always, Holiness. But of late, all too often. We have lived to ourselves and for ourselves. When I say we, I mean the whole Church – pastors and faithful alike. We have hidden the lamp of belief under a cover instead of holding it up to illuminate the world.’
‘Go on, Jean. Show me how you would display it.’
‘This is a plural world, Holiness. We may wish it to be one in faith, hope, and charity. But it is not so. There are many hopes and strange varieties of love. But this is the world we live in. If we want to participate in the drama of God’s action with it, then we must begin with the words we all understand. Justice, for instance. We understand that…But when the Negroes in America seek justice and full citizenship, is it we who lead them? Or we who support most strongly their legitimate demands? You know it is not. In Australia, there is an embargo on coloured migrants. Many Australians feel that this is an affront to human dignity. Do we support their protests? The record shows that we do not. In principle, yes, but in action, no. We proclaim that the Chinese coolie has a right to work and subsistence, but it was not we who led him towards it. It was the men who made “The Long March”. If we object to the price they put on the rice bowl, we must blame ourselves as much as we blame them…If we want to enter once more into the human dialogue then we must seek out whatever common ground is available to us – as I take it Your Holiness is trying to do with Kamenev – the ground of human brotherhood and the legitimate hopes of all mankind…I have thought often about the Gospel scene when Christ held up the coin of the tribute and proclaimed: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s…” To what Caesar? Has Your Holiness ever thought about it? To a murderer, an adulterer, a pederast…But Christ did not abrogate the conversation of the Church with such a one. On the contrary He affirmed it as a duty…’
‘But what you show me, Jean, is not one man’s commitment. It is the commitment of the whole Church – Pope, pastors, and five hundred million faithful.’
‘True, Holiness – but what has happened? The faithful are uncommitted, only because they lack enlightenment and courageous leadership. They understand risk better than we do. We are protected by the organization. They have only God’s cloak to shelter them. They grapple each day with every human dilemma – birth, passion, death, and the act of love. But if they hear no trumpets, see no crusader’s cross lifted up…’ He shrugged and broke off. ‘Excuse me, Holiness. I am too garrulous, I think.’
‘On the contrary, Jean. I find you a very serviceable man. I am glad to have you here.’
At that moment a servant approached, bringing coffee and iced water, and a letter which had been received that moment at the gate. opened it and read the brief, unceremonious message:
‘I am a man who grows sunflowers. I should like to call upon you at ten-thirty tomorrow morning.’
It was signed: ‘Georg Wilhelm Forster.’
He proved a surprise in more ways than one. He looked like a Bavarian incongruously dressed by an Italian tailor. He wore thick German shoes and thick myopic spectacles, but his suit and shirt and his tie came from Brioni, and on his small pudgy hand he wore a bezel ring; half as large as a walnut. His manner was deferent, but vaguely ironic as though he were laughing at himself and all he stood for. In spite of his German name, he spoke Russian with a strong Georgian accent.
When Kiril received him in his study, he went down on one knee and kissed the papal ring; then he sat bolt upright in the chair, balancing his panama hat on his knees, for all the world like a junior clerk being interviewed for a job. His opening words were a surprise too. ‘I understand Your Holiness has received a letter from Robert.’
Kiril looked up sharply to catch a hint of a smile on the pudgy lips.
‘There is no mystery about it, Holiness. It is all a matter of timing. Timing is very important in my work. I knew when Kamenev’s letter would reach the Vatican. I knew when Cardinal Carlin returned to New York. I was told the date and time of his interview with Robert. From that point it was a simple deduction that Robert’s letter would reach you at Castel Gandolfo.’
Now it was Kiril’s turn to smile. He nodded approval and asked, ‘Do you live in Rome?’
‘I have lodgings here. But as you can guess, I travel a good deal…There is an extensive business in sunflower seeds.’
‘I imagine there is.’
‘May I see Robert’s letter?’
‘Of course.’
Kiril handed the paper across his desk. Forster read it carefully for a few moments, and then passed it back.
‘You may have a copy if you like. As you see, the President is perfectly willing that Kamenev should see the letter.’
‘No copy will be necessary. I have a photographic memory. It’s worth a lot of money to me. I shall see Kamenev within a week. He will have an accurate transcript of the letter and of my conversation with you.’
‘Are you empowered to talk for Kamenev?’
‘Up to a certain point, yes.’
To Kiril’s amazement he quoted verbatim the passage from Kamenev’s second letter:
‘“From time to time…you will receive applications for a private audience from a man named Georg Wilhelm Forster. To him you may speak freely, but commit nothing to writing. If you succeed in a conversation with the President of the United States, you should refer to him as Robert. Foolish, is it not, that to discuss the survival of the human race, we must resort to such childish tricks.” ’
Kiril laughed. ‘That’s an impressive performance. But, tell me, if you know of whom we are speaking why do I have to refer to the President as Robert?’
Georg Wilhelm Forster was delighted to explain himself. ‘You might call it a mnemonic trick. No man can guard altogether against taking in his sleep, or against verbal slips when he is under questioning…So one practises this kind of dodge. It works too. I’ve never been caught out yet.’
‘I hope you won’t be caught out this time.’
‘I hope so too, Holiness. This exchange of letters may have long consequences.’
‘I should like to be able to guess what they may be.’
‘Robert has already pointed to them in his letter.’ He quoted again. ‘“An action of such magnitude and such risk that none of us would be allowed to attempt it.”’
‘The proposition contradicts itself,’ said Kiril mildly. ‘Both Kamenev and the President – excuse me, Robert – point to the need for such action, but each in the same breath says that he is not the man to begin it.’
‘Perhaps they are looking to a third man, Holiness?’
‘Who?’
‘Yourself.’
‘If I could promise that, my friend, believe me I should be the happiest man in the world. But as our countryman, Stalin, once remarked, “How many divisions has the Pope?” ’
‘It is not a question of divisions, Holiness, and you know it. It is at bottom a question of influence and moral authority. Kamenev believes that you have, or may come to have, such an authority…’ He smiled and added an afterthought of his own. ‘From the little I have learned I should say that Your Holiness has a greater stature in the world than you may realize.’
Kiril considered the thought for a few moments and then delivered himself of the firm pronouncement. ‘Understand something, my friend. Report it clearly to Kamenev as I have already reported it directly on the other side of the Atlantic. I know how small are our hopes of peace. I am prepared to do anything that is morally right and humanly possible to preserve it, but I will not allow myself or the Church to be used as a tool to advantage one side or the other. Do you understand that?’
‘Perfectly. I have only been waiting for Your Holiness to say it. Now may I ask a question?’
‘Please do.’
‘If it were possible, and if it seemed desirable, would Your Holiness be prepared to go to another place than Rome? Would you be prepared to use another channel of communication than the Vatican radio and the Vatican press, and the pulpits of Catholic churches?’
‘What place?’
‘It is not mine to suggest it. I put the proposition as a generality.’
‘Then I will answer it as a generality. If I can speak freely, and be reported honestly, I will go anywhere and do anything to help the world breathe freely for however short a time.’
‘I shall report that, Holiness. I shall report it very happily. Now there is a practical matter. I understand the Maestro di Camera has a list of those who may be admitted readily to private audience with Your Holiness. I should like my name added to the list.’
‘It is already there. You will be welcome at whatever time…Now I too have a message for Kamenev. You will tell him first that I am not bargaining, I am not pleading, I am not making any conditions at all for the free passage of talk through me. I am a realist. I know how much he is limited by what he believes and by the system to which he is subject, as I am subject to mine. This being said, tell him from me that my people suffer in Hungary and Poland and East Germany and in the Baltic. Whatever he can do to ease their burden – be it ever so small – I shall count as done to myself, and I shall remember it with gratitude and in my prayers.’
‘I shall tell him,’ said Georg Wilhelm Forster. ‘Now may I have Your Holiness’s leave to go?’
‘Go with God,’ said Kiril the Pontiff.
He walked with the strange little man to the gate of the garden and watched him drive away into the bright and hostile world beyond.
The Princess Maria-Rina was a doughty old general, and she had planned her nephew’s campaign with more than usual care. First she had set him to rights with the Church, without which he could neither arrive at power nor begin to rule comfortably. Then she had isolated Chiara for a whole month from her American lover. She had set her down in a gay playground surrounded by young men, one at least of whom might be ardent enough to seduce her into a new attachment. Now she was ready for her next move.
Accompanied by Perosi, and with Calitri’s letter tucked into her handbag, she drove to Venice, plucked Chiara off the beach, and hurried her off to lunch in a quiet restaurant on Murano. Then she added her own brusque commentary to Calitri’s letter:
‘…You see, child, all of a sudden it is very simple. Corrado has come to his senses. He has set his conscience in order and in a couple of months you will be free.’
Chiara was still shocked and delighted by the news. She was prepared to trust the whole world. ‘I don’t understand it. Why? What made him do it?’
The old princess dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. ‘He’s growing up. For a long time he was hurt and bitter. Now he has better thoughts…For the rest, you need not concern yourself.’
‘But what if he changes his mind?’
‘He won’t, I promise you. Already his new depositions are in the hands of Perosi here. The final papers will be ready for presentation to the Rota immediately after the holidays. After that it’s just a formality…As you will see from his letter, Corrado is disposed to be generous. He wants to pay you quite a large sum by way of settlement. On the understanding, of course, that you will make no further claims on him.’
‘I don’t want to make any claims. All I want is to be free.’
‘I know, I know. And you’re a sensible girl. There are, however, a couple of other matters. Perosi here will explain.’
It was all so neatly done that she was totally disarmed. She simply sat there, looking from one to the other, while Perosi explained himself with smooth formality:
‘You understand, Signora, that your husband is a public figure. I think you will agree that it would be most unfair, after this generous gesture, to expose him to comment and notoriety.’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t want that either.’
‘Good. Then we understand each other. Once the affair is over, then we should let it die quietly. No publicity. No word to the newspapers, no hasty action on your part.’
‘What sort of action? I don’t understand.’
‘He means marriage, child,’ said the Princess Maria-Rina gently. ‘It would be most undesirable for you and for Corrado if you were to rush into a hasty union, as soon as the decree of nullity is granted.’
‘Which brings us to the next question,’ said Perosi with elaborate care. ‘Your present association with an American correspondent. His name, I believe, is George Faber.’
Chiara flushed, and was suddenly angry. ‘That’s my business. It doesn’t concern anyone else.’
‘On the contrary, my dear young lady. I hope to persuade you that it is the business of everyone. The settlement, for example, would not be payable if you were to marry Faber – or, indeed, if you were to marry anyone within six months.’
‘Then I don’t want the settlement.’
‘I shouldn’t be too hasty about that, child. It’s a lot of money. Besides…’ She reached out a skinny claw and imprisoned Chiara’s hand. ‘Besides, you don’t want to make another mistake. You’ve been hurt enough already. I should hate to see you wounded again. Take time, child. Enjoy yourself. You’re still young. The world’s full of attractive men. Kick up your heels a while. Don’t tie yourself down before you’ve had three looks at what’s offering in the marriage market. There’s another thing, too…Even if you did want to marry Faber there might well be certain difficulties.’
‘What sort of difficulties?’
She was frightened now, and they read the fear in her eyes. Perosi pressed the advantage shrewdly. ‘You are both Catholics, so naturally I presume you will want to be married in the Church.’
‘Of course, but…’
‘In that case you both come immediately into conflict with canon law. You have, if I may put it bluntly, been living in sin. It is a delicate question whether in the terms of canon law this would constitute “public and notorious concubinage”. My own view is that it might. In this case a principle applies: that a guilty person shall not be permitted to enjoy the fruits of guilt. In canon law this is called crimen, and it is an invalidating impediment to marriage. It would be necessary to approach the Church for a dispensation. I have to tell you that there is no certainty that it would be granted.’
The old princess added a final rejoinder. ‘You don’t want this kind of complication, do you? You deserve better. One mess is enough for any lifetime…You do see that, don’t you?’
She saw it very clearly. She saw that they had her trapped and beleaguered and that they would not let her go without a struggle. She saw something else, too. Something that ashamed and excited her at once. She wanted it this way. She wanted to be rid of an attachment which had already grown stale for her. She wanted to be free to hold hands and play love games with young Pietro Antonelli while the moon shone and the mandolins played soft music in a gondola on the Grand Canal.
The day after his encounter with Theo Respighi, George Faber drove back to Naples. His self-esteem had been badly damaged – by a man with too much honour and by another with too little. He felt shaken and sordid. He could hardly bear the sight of himself in a shaving-mirror. The image of the great correspondent was still there, but behind it was an empty man who lacked the courage even to sin boldly.
He was desperate for reassurance and the forgetfulness of loving. He tried to telephone Chiara in Venice, but each time she was out, and when she did not return his call, he was filled with sour anger. His imagination ran riot as he pictured her carefree and flirtatious, while he, for her sake, was making this drab and uncomfortable journey to the hollow centre of himself.
He had one more person to see – Alicia de Nogara, authoress of Ischia. But he had to restore himself before he could confront her. He spent a day in Naples hunting for copies of her books, and finally came up with a slim, expensive volume, The Secret Island. He sat in the gardens trying to read it, and then gave up, discouraged by its florid prose and its coy hints of perverted love among the maidens. In the end he skimmed through it to get enough information for a conversation piece and then gave it to a ragged urchin who would pawn it for the price of a biscuit.
He went back to the hotel and put in a call to Ruth Lewin. Her maid told him she was on vacation and was not expected back for several days. He gave up in disgust, and then, in sullen reaction, he determined to divert himself. If Chiara could play so could he. He set off for a three-day bachelor jaunt to Capri. He swam in the daytime, flirted sporadically in the evening, twice as much as he needed, and ended with an abortive night in bed with a German widow. More disgusted with himself than ever, he packed his bag the next morning and set out for Ischia.
The villa of Alicia de Nogara was a rambling pseudo-Moorish structure set on the eastern slope of Epomeo, with a spectacular view of terraced vineyards and blue water. The door was opened to him by a pale, flat-chested girl, dressed in a gipsy shirt and silk slacks. She led him into the garden, where the great authoress was at work in a vine arbour. The first sight of her was a shock. She was dressed like a Sibyl in filmy and flowing draperies, but her face was that of a faded girl and her blue eyes were bright with humour. She was writing with a quill pen on thick, expensive paper. When he approached she stood up and held out a slim, cool hand to be kissed.
It was all so stylized, so theatrical in character, that he almost laughed aloud. But when he looked again into her bright, intelligent eyes, he thought better of it. He introduced himself formally, sat down in the chair she offered him, and tried to marshal his thoughts. The pale girl hovered protectively beside her patron.
Faber said awkwardly, ‘I’ve come to see you about rather a delicate matter.’
Alicia de Nogara waved an imperious dismissal. ‘Go away, Paula. You can bring us some coffee in half an hour.’
The pale one wandered away disconsolately, and the Sibyl began to question her visitor:
‘You’re rather upset, aren’t you? I can feel it. I am very sensitive to emanations. Calm yourself first. Look at the land and the sea. Look at me if you want to. I am very calm because I have learned to float with the air as it moves. This is how one should live, this is how one should love, too. Floating on the air whichever way it blows. You have been in love, haven’t you?…Many times, I should say. Not always happily.’
‘I’m in love now,’ said George Faber. ‘That’s why I’ve come to see you.’
‘Now there’s a strange thing! Only yesterday I was saying to Paula that although my books are not widely read they still reach the understanding heart. I think you have an understanding heart. Haven’t you?’
‘I hope so. Yes. I understand you know a man called Corrado Calitri.’
‘Corrado? Oh yes, I know him very well. A brilliant boy. A little perverted, I’m afraid, but very brilliant. People say I’m perverted, too. You’ve read my books, I presume. Do you think so?’
‘I’m sure you’re not,’ said George Faber.
‘There, you see. You do have an understanding heart. Perversion is something different. Perversion is the urge to destroy the thing one loves. I want to preserve, to nurture. That’s why Corrado is doomed. He can never be happy. I told him that many times…Before he was married, after his marriage broke up.’
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Calitri’s marriage.’
‘Of course. I knew it. That’s what the emanations were telling me. You’re in love with his wife.’
‘How did you know?’
‘I’m a woman. Not an ordinary woman. Oh no! A sapphic woman they call me, but I prefer to say a full woman, a guardian of the deep mysteries of our sex…So you’re in love with Corrado’s wife.’
‘I want to marry her.’
The Sibyl leaned forward, cupping her small face in her hands and fixing him with her bright blue eyes. ‘Marriage. That’s usually a terrible mistake. The air, remember! One must be free – to float, to rise, to fall, to be held or to be let go. Strange that men never understand these things. I was married once, a long time ago. It was a great mistake. Sometimes I think men were born defective. They lack intuition. They were born to be slaves of their own appetite!’
‘I’m afraid we were,’ said George Faber with a grin. ‘May I tell you what I want?’
‘Please, please do.’
‘I want evidence for the Holy Roman Rota. For Chiara to be free, we have to prove that Corrado Calitri entered into marriage with a defective intention. We have to prove that he expressed this defective intention to a third person before the marriage took place.’ He fished in his pocket and drew out a typewritten statement which he had prepared that morning. ‘That, more or less, is the thing we want. Would you be prepared to sign it?’
Alicia de Nogara picked up the paper with fastidious fingers, read it and laid it down on the table. ‘How crude! How terribly crude of the Church to demand this sort of indignity. Freedom again, you see! If people fail in love, let them be free to begin again. The Church tries to close up the soul in a bottle as if it were a foetus preserved in formaldehyde…So very vulgar and medieval …Tell me, does Corrado know that you’ve come to me?’
‘No, he doesn’t. For a reason I can’t understand he wants to hold on to Chiara…Not to live with her, of course, but to hold her like a piece of land or an apartment.’
‘I know, I know. I told you he was perverse, didn’t I? This is how it shows. He likes to torment people. He tried to torment me even though I wanted nothing from him. All I wanted to do was teach him how to give and return love. I thought I had succeeded, too. He seemed very happy with me. Then he went away, back to his boys, back to his little game of promises and refusals. I wonder if he’s as happy now as he was with me.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Do you want to hurt him?’
‘No. I just want Chiara to be free and to have the chance of making her happy.’
‘But if I sign this it will hurt him, won’t it?’
‘It will hurt his pride, probably.’
‘Good! That’s where he needs to be hurt. When one loves one must be humble. When you commit yourself to the air, you have to be humble. Are you humble, Faber?’
‘I guess I have to be,’ said Faber ruefully. ‘I haven’t very much pride left. Are you prepared to sign that document? I shouldn’t say this, but I was prepared to pay for the evidence.’
‘Pay?’ She was dramatically insulted. ‘My dear man, you are desperate, aren’t you? In love one must never pay. One must give, give, give! Freely, and from the full heart. Tell me something. Do you think you could love me?’
He had to swallow hard to get the thought down, but he did it. He twisted his mouth into what he hoped was a smile and answered elaborately, ‘It would be my good fortune if I could. I’m afraid I shouldn’t deserve it.’
She reached out and patted his cheek with a cool, dry hand. ‘There, there, I’m not going to seduce you, though I think you would seduce very easily. I’m not sure I should let you throw away your life in marriage, but you have to learn in your own way, I suppose…Very well, I’ll sign it.’
She picked up the quill and subscribed the document with a flourish. ‘There now. Is that all?’
‘I think we should have a witness.’
‘Paula!’
The pale girl came hurrying to her cry. She set her signature at the foot of the paper, and George Faber folded it and put it into his pocket. The thing was done. He had soiled himself to do it, but it was done. He let them lead him through the rituals of coffee and endless, endless talk. He exerted himself to be gentle with them. He laughed at their pathetic jokes and bent like a courtier over the hand of the Sibyl to say goodbye.
As the taxi drove him down to the crowded port, as he leaned against the rail of the lake steamer that took him back to Naples, he felt the document crackling and burning against his breast. Finita la commédia! The shabby farce was over, and he could begin to be a man again.
When he got back to Rome, he found Chiara’s letter telling him that her husband had agreed to co-operate in her petition and that she had fallen in love with another man. Finita la commidia! He tore the paper into a hundred shreds, and then proceeded, savagely and systematically, to get himself drunk.
I have had a wonderful holiday, the first in more than twenty years. I feel rested and renewed. I am comforted by a friendship which grows in depth and warmth each day. I never had a brother, and my only sister died in childhood. So my brotherhood with Jean Télémond has become very precious to me. Our lives are full of contrasts. I sit at the summit of the Church; he lies under the rigid obedience of his Order. I spent seventeen years in prison; he has had twenty years of wandering in the far corners of the earth. Yet we understand each other perfectly. We communicate swiftly and intuitively. We are both caught up in this shining hope of unity and common growth towards God, the Beginning, the Centre, and the End…
We have talked much these last few days of the grains of truth that underlie even the most divergent errors. For Islam God is one, and this is already a leap from paganism to the idea of a single spiritual creator. It is the beginning of a God-centred universe. Buddhism has degenerated into a series of sterile formulae, but the Buddhist code, although it makes few moral demands, conduces to co-operation, to non-violence, and to a polite converse among many people. Communism has abrogated a personal God, but there is implicit in its thesis an idea of the brotherhood of man…
My immediate predecessor encouraged the growth of the Ecumenical spirit in Christendom – the exploration and the confirmation of common grounds of belief and action. Jean Télémond and I have talked much about the possibility of the Christian idea beginning to infuse the great non-Christian religions. Can we, for example, make any penetration of Islam, which is spreading so quickly through the new nations of Mrica and Indonesia? A dream, perhaps, but perhaps, also, an opportunity for another bold experiment like that of the White Fathers.
The grand gesture! The action that changes the course of history! I wonder if I shall ever have the opportunity to make it…The gesture of a Gregory the Great, or a Pius V. Who knows? It is a question of historic circumstance and the readiness of a man to co-operate with God and in the moment…
Ever since the visit of Georg Wilhelm Forster, I have been trying to think myself into the minds of Kamenev and the President of the United States. It is true, I think, that all men who arrive at authority have certain attitudes in common. They are not always the right attitudes, but at least they provide a ground of understanding. The man in power begins to see more largely. If he has not been corrupted, his private passions tend to diminish with age and responsibility. He looks, if not to permanence, at least for a peaceful development of the system he has helped to create. On the one hand, he is vulnerable to the temptations of pride. On the other, he cannot fail to be humbled by the magnitude and complexity of the human problem…He understands the meaning of contingency and mutual dependence…
It is well, I think, that the Papacy has been slowly stripped of its temporal power. It gives the Church the opportunity to speak more freely, and with less suspicion of material interest, than in other ages. I must continue to build this moral authority, which has its analogies in the political influence of small nations like Sweden and Switzerland and even Israel.
I have given instructions to the Secretariat of State to encourage the visit of representatives of all nations and all faiths to the Vatican. At the lowest they constitute a useful diplomatic courtesy; at their best they may be the beginning of a fruitful friendship and understanding…
This week I had Cardinal Rinaldi to lunch. I like this man. I talked with him about the possible reform of the Roman Rota, and he gave me valuable information about its methods and its personalities. In his quiet fashion, he administered a reproof as well. He told me that Cardinal Leone felt that I did not repose enough trust in him. He pointed out that, for all his vigour, he was an old man who had deserved well of the Church, and that I should perhaps bestow on him a mark of favour and acknowledgement. I find it hard to like Leone; he is so very much a Roman. But I agree with Rinaldi. I have written a gentle letter to Leone thanking him for his work and asking him to wait on me as soon as I return to Rome. I have also asked for his private advice on the appointment of a new Cardinal to take the place of the Englishman, Brandon, who died two days ago. Brandon was one of those who voted against me in the conclave, and our relations were always rather formal and distant. Yet he was an apostolic man, and one always regrets deeply the passing of a labourer from the vineyard. I said a special Mass yesterday morning for the repose of his soul…
News from Hungary and Poland is bad. The new taxation laws have already put several more schools and seminaries out of existence. Potocki is ill in Warsaw. My information is that he will recover. But the illness is serious, and we shall have to think of appointing a new man to help him and later to take over his office as Primate of Poland. Potocki is a man of political genius and deep spiritual life. We shall not easily find another to match him…
Jean Télémond’s first volume, The Progress of Man, is now ready for publication. This is the crucial part of his work, upon which all the rest depends. He is anxious to have it assessed by the Holy Office as soon as possible. For his sake I am anxious too. I have asked Cardinal Leone to appoint commissioners to scrutinize it and report to me as quickly as may be. I have suggested that these commissioners be different men from those who made the first examination. We shall then have two sets of opinions and there will be no question of a carry-over from earlier, and far less complete, works. I am glad to say that Jean is very calm about it. He seems to be well, although I notice that he tires easily and is sometimes out of breath after a small exertion. I have ordered him to submit to an examination by the Vatican physician as soon as we go back to Rome…
I want to keep him by me, but he is afraid of doing me a disservice. The hierarchy and the Curia are suspicious and uncomfortable about a Grey Eminence in the Vatican. Cardinal Rinaldi repeated his invitation to let Jean work at his villa. Jean likes the idea, so I suppose I shall have to let him go. At least we shall not be far from each other, and I shall have the pleasure of his company at dinner on Sundays. Now that I have found him, I am loath to let him go…
I learned so much with him during our journeys through the Italian countryside. The thing that impressed me most vividly was the contrast between entrenched wealth and the grinding poverty in which so many of the people still live. This is the reason for the strength and attraction of communism in Italy. It will take a long time – longer than I have at my disposal – to redress the balance. However, I have thought of a gesture which may become a symbol of what is needed.
The Congregation of Rites has informed me that they are ready to proceed to the beatification of two new servants of God. Beatification is a long and expensive process, and the ceremonies which conclude it are also very expensive. I am informed that the total cost may well be as much as fifty thousand American dollars. It could be that I shall be accused of diminishing the splendour of the liturgical life of the Church; but I have decided to reduce the ceremony to a simple formality and to devote whatever funds are available to the establishment of local works of charity. I shall take steps to see that my reasons are published as widely as possible so that people will understand that the service of the servants of God is much more important than their glorification.
Oddly enough I am reminded at this moment of the woman, Ruth Lewin, and the work which she and others like her are doing, without encouragement and without apparent spiritual help in various places in the world. I am reminded too of the saying of the Master that even a cup of water given in His name is a gift made to Him. A thousand candles in St Peter’s mean nothing beside a poor man grateful to God because he is grateful to one of his fellows…
Wherever I turn, I find myself being drawn irresistibly to the primitive thought of the Church, and I cannot believe that I am being drawn into error. I have no private inspiration. I am in the Church and of the Church, and if my heart beats in tune with its pulse, I cannot be too far wrong. ‘Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from that of the unholy.’