The Clowns of God

The Clowns of God by Morris West

Morris West is already well-known as the author of such modern classics as The Devil’s Advocate and The Shoes of the Fisherman. His latest work, THE CLOWNS OF GOD, is a rare thing: a daring and profound novel of love, faith and hope, a text for modern men and women who are whether they like it or not involved in the last dramatic decades of this century.

Hodder & Stoughton

11-95 By the same author

THE CROOKED ROAD (English title: THE BIG STORY)

BACKLASH (English title: THE SECOND VICTORY)

THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

SCANDAL IN THE ASSEMBLY (with R. Francis) THE HERETIC, a play in three acts

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data West, Morris The clowns of God I.Title

823 PR9619.3.W4

1SBNO 340265 124

Copyright 1981 by Campania Financiera Perlina S.A. First printed

1981.

Third impression August 1981. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting by King’s English’ Typesetters Limited, Cambridge. Printed in Great Britain by The Thetford Press Ltd.” Thetford and London for Hodder & Stoughton Limited, Mill Road, Dunlon Green, Sevenoaks, Kent.

Editorial Office: 47 Bedford Square, London, we1B 3DP.

For my loved ones with my heart’s thanks “Who knows but the world may end tonight?”

Robert Browning “The Last Ride Together’ Once you accept the existence of God however you define Him, however you explain your relationship to Him then you are caught for ever with His presence in the centre of all things. You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.

Prologue In the seventh year of his reign, two days before his sixty fifth birthday, in the presence of a full consistory of cardinals, Jean Marie Barette, Pope Gregory XVII, signed an instrument of abdication, took off the Fisherman’s ring, handed his seal to the Cardinal Camerlengo and made a curt speech of farewell.

“So, my brethren! It is done as you demanded. I am sure you will explain it all adequately to the Church and to the World. I hope you will elect yourselves a good man. God knows you will need him!”

Three hours later, accompanied by a colonel of the Swiss Guard, he presented himself at the Monastery of Monte Cassino and placed himself under the obedience of the Abbot. The Colonel drove immediately back to Rome and reported to the Cardinal Camerlengo that his mission was accomplished.

The Camerlengo breathed a long sigh of relief and set about the formalities of proclaiming that the See of Peter was vacant and that an election would be held with all possible speed.

I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying: “What thou se est write in a book and send it to the seven churches.”

Revelation of St. John the Divine Ch. I, verses 10-11 She looked like a country-woman, stout, apple-cheeked, dressed in coarse woollen stuff, her wispy grey hair trailing from under a straw hat. She sat bolt upright in the chair, hands folded over a large old-fashioned handbag of brown leather. She was wary but unafraid, as if she were studying the merchandise in an unfamiliar market.

Carl Mendelius, Professor of Biblical and Patristic Studies at the Wilhelmsstift, once called the Illustrious College of the University of Tubingen, stretched his legs under the desk, made a bridge of his fingertips and smiled at her over the top of it. He prompted her gently:

“You wanted to see me, madame?”

“I was told you understand French?” She spoke with the broad accent of the Midi.

“I do.”

“My name is Therese Mathieu. In religion I am I was called Sister Mechtilda.”

“Am I to understand that you have left the convent?”

“I was dispensed from my vows. But he said I should always wear the ring from my profession day, because I was still in the service of the Lord.”

She held up a large work-worn hand and displayed the plain silver band on the wedding finger.

“He? Who is Her’ “His Holiness, Pope Gregory. I was with the Sisters who work in his household. I cleaned his study and his private rooms. I served his coffee. Sometimes, on feast-days, while the other Sisters were resting, I prepared a meal for him. He said he liked my cooking. It reminded him of home. He would talk to me then. He knew my birthplace very well. His family used to own vineyards in the Var. When my niece was left a widow with five young children and the restaurant to keep going, I told him about it. He was very sympathetic. He said perhaps my niece needed me more than the Pope who had too many servants anyway. He helped me to think freely and understand that charity was the most important of virtues. My decision to return to the world was made at the time whefi the people in the Vatican began to say all those terrible things that the Holy Father was sick in the head, that he could be dangerous all that. The day I left Rome I went to ask his blessing. He asked me, as a special favour, to come to Tubingen and give his letter into your hands. He put me under obedience to tell no one what he had said or what I was carrying. So, I am here.”

She fished in the leather bag, brought out a thick envelope and passed it across the desk. Carl Mendelius held it in his hands, weighing it. Then he laid it aside. He asked:

“You came straight here from Rome?”

“No. I went to my niece and stayed for a week. His Holiness said I should do that. It was natural and proper. He gave me money for the journey and a gift to help my niece.”

“Did he give you any other message for me?”

“Only that he sent you his love. He told me, if you asked any questions, I should answer them.”

“He found himself a faithful messenger.” Carl Mendelius was grave and gentle.

“Would you like coffee?”

“No thank you.”

She folded her hands over the bag and waited, the perfect nun even in her country homespun. Mendelius posed his next question with casual care.

“These problems, this talk in the Vatican, when did they begin? What caused them?”

“I know when.” There was no hesitation in her answer.

“When he came back from his visit to South America and the United States, he looked ill and tired. Then there were the visits of the Chinese and the Russians and the people from Africa which seemed to leave him much preoccupied. After they left he decided to go into retreat for two weeks at Monte Cassino. It was after his return that the troubles began.”

“What sort of troubles?”

“I never really understood. You must know I was a very small personage, a Sister doing domestic work. We were trained not to comment on matters which were not our concern. The Mother Superior frowned on gossip. But I noticed that the Holy Father looked ill, that he spent long hours in the Chapel, that there were frequent meetings with members of the Curia, from which they would come out looking angry and muttering among themselves. I don’t even remember the words except once I heard Cardinal Arnaldo say: “Dear God in Heaven! We are treating with a madman!”” “And the Holy Father himself, how did he seem to you?”

“With me he was always the same, kind and polite. But it was clear he was very worried. One day he asked me to fetch him some aspirin to take with his coffee. I asked whether I should call the physician. He gave me a strange little smile and said: “Sister Mechtilda, it is not a doctor I need but the gift of tongues. Sometimes it seems I am teaching music to the deaf and painting to the blind.” In the end, of course, his doctor did come and then several others on different days.

Afterwards, Cardinal Drexel came to see him he’s the Dean of the Sacred College and a very stern man. He spent the whole day in the Holy Father’s apartment. I helped to serve them lunch. After that, well … it all happened.”

“Did you understand anything of what was going on?”

“No. All we were told was that for reasons of health and for the welfare of souls, the Holy Father had decided to abdicate and devote the rest of his life to God in a monastery.

We were asked to pray for him and for the Church.”

“And he made no explanation to you?”

“To me?” She stared at him with innocent surprise.

“Why to me? I was a nobody. But after he blessed me for the journey, he put his hands on my cheeks and said: “Perhaps, little Sister, we are both lucky to have found each other.” That was the last time I saw him.”

“And now what will you do?”

“Go home to my niece, help her with the children, cook in the restaurant. It is small, but a good business if we can hold it together.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Carl Mendelius respectfully. He stood up and held out his hand.

“Thank you, Sister Mechtilda. Thank you for coming to see me for what you have done for him.”

“It was nothing. He was a good man. He understood how ordinary folk feel.”

The skin of her palm was dry and chapped, from dishwater and the scrubbing pail. He felt ashamed of his own soft clerkly palms into which Gregory XVII, Successor to the Prince of the Apostles, had consigned his last, most secret memorial.

* He sat late that night, in his big attic study, whose leaded windows looked out on the grey bulk of the Stiftskirche of Saint George. The only witnesses to his meditation were the marble busts of Melanchthon and Hegel, the one a lecturer, the other a pupil in the ancient university; but they were dead long since and absolved from perplexity.

The letter from Jean Marie Barette, seventeenth Gregory in the papal line, lay spread before him: thirty pages of fine cursive script, impeccable in its Gallic style, the record of a personal tragedy and a political crisis of global dimension.

My dear Carl, In this, the long dark night of my soul, when reason staggers and the faith of a lifetime seems almost lost, I turn to you for the grace of understanding.

We have been friends a long time. Your books and your letters have travelled with me always: baggage more essential than my shirts and my shoes. Your counsels have calmed me in many an anxious moment. Your wisdom has been a light to my feet in the dark labyrinths of power.

Though the lines of our lives have diverged, I like to believe that our spirits have maintained a unity.

If I have been silent during these last months of purgation, it is because I have not wished to compromise you.

For some time now I have been closely watched and I have been unable to guarantee the privacy even of my most personal papers. Indeed, I have to tell you that if this letter falls into the wrong hands, you may be exposed to great risk; more, if you decide to carry out the mission I entrust to you, the danger will double itself every day.

I begin at the end of the story. Last month, the Cardinals of the Sacred College, among them some I believed to be friends, decided by a large majority that I was, if not insane, at least no longer mentally competent to discharge the duties of Pontiff. This decision, the reasons for which I shall explain in detail, placed them in a dilemma both comic and tragic.

There were only two ways to get rid of me: by deposition or abdication. To depose me they must show cause, and this, I believed, they would not dare attempt. The smell of conspiracy would be too strong, the risk of schism too great. Abdication, on the other hand, would be a legal act which, if I were insane, I could not validly perform.

My personal dilemma was a different one. I had not asked to be elected. I had accepted fearfully but trusting in the Holy Spirit for light and strength. I believed and I am still trying desperately to believe that the light was given to me in a very special fashion and that it was my duty to display it to a world caught already in the darkness of the last hour before midnight. On the other hand, without the support of my most senior collaborators, the hinge-men of the Church, I was impotent. My utterances could be distorted, my directives nullified. The Children of God could be cast into confusion or misled into rebellion.

Then Drexel came to see me. He is, as you know, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, and it was I who appointed him Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He is a formidable watchdog, as you have good reason to know. In private, however, he is a compassionate and understanding man. He was at pains to be precise. He was the emissary of his brother Cardinals.

He dissented from their opinion but was charged to deliver their decision. They required me to abdicate and retire to obscurity in a monastery. If I refused they would, in spite of all the risks, take steps to have me declared legally insane and placed in confinement under medical supervision.