The Clowns of God (24 page)

This isn’t evidence; but add it to the indiscretion of Monsignor Logue and we have a strong indicator as to the nature of the Friends of Silence. My feeling is to incorporate a reference into our story as Mandel has done and see what reactions we get. I’m going to draft a small section on another aspect of the phenomenon: that in times of acute crisis, the public leans always to dictators and juntas as the sick man leans to the reassuring doctor however incompetent he may be. If I’m not here when you start work, you’ll find the new stuff on my desk.

He pinned the note to Rainer’s copy of the draft, then drew his own copy of the manuscript towards him and, under the heading “The Time-frame of Gregory XVII’ he began to write:

Psychic epidemics are no new phenomenon in human history. The germs which cause them lie encapsulated, like the anthrax bacillus, until conditions are ripe for their rebirth. These conditions are fear, uncertainty, the breakup of social systems too fragile for the loads imposed on them. The symptoms are as various as the illusions of mankind: the self-mutilation of the flagellants and the castrate priests, the murderous fury of the sicarii, the sexual perversion of the witch-hunters, the methodical madness of the inquisitors who think to confine truth in a phrase and burn any contumacious fellow who dares dissent from their definition. But the effects of the disease are always the same. The patient becomes fearful and irrational, subject to nightmare terrors, addicted to pleasurable illusions an easy prey to pedlars of nostrums, magical incantations, and the collective follies of the other afflicted ones.

To chart the origin and the course of the disease is one thing; to cure it is quite another. The most drastic remedy is extermination. The only problem is that you are never sure who will emerge from the slaughter-house: the lunatics or the sane. Propaganda is another potent medicine.

You pump the patients full of healing thoughts from dawn to dusk, and even through their sleeping hours. You tell them, over and over, that all is for the best in this most benign of all creations. And they will believe you too, gladly and gratefully until the day when they first smell fire in the wind and see blood on the altar-stone. Then they will turn and rend you limb from limb in a manic fury of resentment.

It was for this reason that the Sacred College decided to silence Jean Marie Barette and suppress the account of his vision. They knew that the backlash of a millennial proclamation could be enormous. Yet it was for exactly the same reason that Jean Marie proposed in his encyclical a preparation of. the spirit against an inevitable period of social insanity. He wanted physicians and places of asylum already established before the epidemic took hold. And, in principle, at least, I believe he was right.

Even in ancient times asylum was a mystic word. It connoted a sacred place, a temple, a shrine, a forest grove where a criminal or a runaway slave would find sanctuary from his pursuers and sleep safe under the numen of the resident god. It was not merely the in gathering which was important. It was the outgoing as well; the outgoing of the power, the hope, the life-thrust, which sustained the panting fugitive for the last mile as the hounds bayed closer and closer at his heels.

A new thought took hold of Mendelius. He laid down his pen to meditate on it. Everything he had just written about the causes and symptoms of psychic epidemic might be applied with equal justice to Jean Marie. He had abdicated reason for the wildest of revelations. He had abdicated the place from which, alone, power could be exercised. He offered no hope, only a cataclysm and a final judgment on the survivors. His adversaries, whatever they called themselves, had at least pragmatic common sense on their side. Traditional organisations had been tested by time and had survived the vast stresses of the centuries. Traditional interpretations commanded respect, if only for their antiquity and durability.

When the roof was falling in you needed a tiler and not a prophet.

And here precisely was the weakness which Lotte, Anneliese and Pia had all found in his portrait of Jean Marie.

It carried no conviction because its author had none. It excited no passion because it was bathed in the flat white light of pure reason. Or perhaps, as Anneliese Meissner had warned him long ago, he was still too much the Jesuit to embarrass the family of the faith with an unpopular truth!

Enough then! He picked up a red pencil and began savagely and methodically to cut his copy of the manuscript to pieces Then he pulled a clean brief-pad towards him and began again with a simple stark testimony.

I write of a man I love. I am, therefore, a suspect witness. For this reason, if for no other, I offer only such testimony as may be accepted under the strictest rules of evidence. Where I present an opinion I call it so. I express my doubts as honestly as my certainties. But, I repeat, I am writing of a man I love, to whom I am in debt for some of the best things in my life, who is closer to me than a brother and whose present agonies I have been unable fully to share.

Suddenly, it was as if he were endowed with a grace of eloquence. He knew exactly what he must say about Jean Marie and how he must say it to touch the hearts of the most simple. When he came to expound the doctrine of Last Things and how closely Jean Marie adhered to it, he was lucid and persuasive. Jean Marie had been silenced without a hearing. Now, said Mendelius, the unwilling advocate, he must have open judgment.

But when he came to answer the questions which Anneliese had asked: the nature of evil and the mode of the Second Coming, he was forced to a moving admission. I know that evil exists. I am already marked as a victim of its destructive power. I pray daily to be delivered from it. I do not know why there is evil and pain in a world designed by a beneficent creator. The vision of Gregory XVII described only the effects of that evil; it cast no light upon the mystery of its existence. So, too, with the Second Coming. He tells us nothing of the how, the when, the where of the event, which Christians believe is implicit in and irrevocably guaranteed by the doctrine of the Resurrection. So it would be quite just to say that the vision of Gregory XVII tells us nothing that we do not know already. But this does not discredit the vision or the visionary, any more than a painter is discredited because he shows us light and landscape as we have never seen them before. I wish I could interpret the meaning of my friend’s moment of private rapture. I cannot. The best I can do is to show how for good reasons or bad Jean Marie Barette, Pope Gregory XVII, was prevented from offering his own interpretation to the world. Are we the richer or the poorer? Only time will tell.

Three days later, with the help of four typists and two translators, the thing was done. The English and the German versions were boxed for the couriers. The affidavits and the photographic copies of the documents were all attested. Lars Larsen was making a farewell toast before driving to Frankfurt to pick up his flight to New York.

“Always, when I’ve sold a big one like this, I’m scared. My head’s on the block. If my judgment’s discredited, I’m out of a job. If my author delivers me a turkey, what do I say to the publishers? But this time, I can drop a package on the publisher’s desk and swear on my mother’s memory he’s getting his money’s worth. We’ve got world-wide agreement.

Simultaneous publication next Sunday. After that, sit tight for the backlash. But you’re sturdy fellows, you’ll weather it well. When the going gets rough, remember every television interview is dollars and deutsch marks and yen in the bank.

Georg, Carl, I take off my hat to you both. Lotte, my love, thanks for your hospitality. Pia, may your man bring you to New York. And you, Professor Meissner, it’s been a pleasure to know you. When I finally crack under the strain I hope you’ll undertake my treatment.”

“You’ll never crack.” Anneliese Meissner gave him her most wolfish smile.

“Not until they abolish money and go back to barter!”

“Be glad of me!” said Lars Larsen cheerfully.

“I like the game, so I play it well. I hope you fellows get as much fun out of spending the money as I had getting it for you. Cheers!”

It was a good exit line and Mendelius gave him full marks for it. Even Anneliese offered amends and asked whether Larsen would consent to represent her works in the American market. Georg Rainer admitted that feeling rich was a novel and pleasant experience. He was reluctant to agree with Pia that there was now no impediment to his getting married preferably to her. He changed the subject hastily.

“There’s a couple of matters that still bother me, Carl.

We’ve mentioned the Friends of Silence. We’ve introduced Gregory XVII’s list of sympathetic politicians; but we’ve offered no firm conclusions about either. Sooner or later we’re going to be questioned in these areas. So, I’ll continue digging in Rome and if I get anything new I’ll call.”

“I’ll be more interested to know if you’re still under surveillance when you get back to Rome.”

“So will I. The dumbest spy has had time to trace me here.

But now that the story’s written and with so many copies in circulation, I don’t see what anyone can do about it. I’m taking Pia to Bonn to deliver a safety-copy. Even if they hijacked that, the news would still break. I’m not worried . just curious. I hate loose ends.”

After that, there was a flurry of farewells and the inevitable anti-climax. Anneliese left to keep appointments at the clinic.

Lotte was impatient to get to her housekeeping so that the place would be shining for the return of her brood. Mendelius took one look at his littered study and opted for a walk in the botanical gardens to feed the ducks and the swans.

The next day the children came home. Katrin, bubbling with happiness, arrived in the morning. She presented her mother with an expensive scarf and Mendelius with the promised picture from Franz a fully worked canvas of the Place du Tertre. Then she took a deep breath and delivered the big news. She and Franz had decided to set up house in Paris. They would be independent and modestly prosperous.

Franz had been taken up by a well-known art-dealer. She herself would be employed by a German import house in Paris. Yes, she and Franz had discussed the question of marriage. They both agreed it would be wiser to wait awhile and please! please! would Mutti and Papa try to understand!

Lotte was shaken, but managed to retain her composure. It was Mendelius who tried to reason with Katrin the problems of an unmarried couple, living in a foreign country in a period of impending disorder. Yet, somehow, the arguments lacked conviction. At bottom he was glad to see her removed from the threat which hung over them all in Tubingen. He wanted her to enjoy what happiness she could before the dark times came and the world fell apart.

In the end, it was agreed that Lotte would go with her to Paris to help her find an apartment and see her settled and that Mendelius would provide a personal capital fund which would sustain her if the love affair turned sour. All three of them were aware though none dared put it into words that it was at bottom a cold-blooded talk about survival, and the best terms that could be arranged to hold the family together and let the leaven of the old pieties continue to work in an unsatisfactory situation.

Afterwards, while Katrin was unpacking, Lotte wept quietly and Mendelius groped for words of comfort.

“I know you’re disappointed, darling; but at least this way the family holds together and she will still turn to us in the bad times. I know you’d love a white wedding and a grandchild the first year afterwards. I’m afraid I wouldn’t.

I’m glad to see her still free. And I’m glad we now have enough money to make her independent.”

“But she’s so young, Carl and Paris seems so far away.”

“The farther the better at this moment,” said Mendelius bitterly.

“You and I can look after each other; but the last thing I want is our children taken hostages. Dry your eyes now. Go upstairs and talk with her. She needs you just as much as you need her.”

By the time Johann arrived they were all calm again and ready to interest themselves in the account of his Alpine retreat. He showed them his photographs, and enthused about the possibilities of development.

“The entrance is hidden at the end of a timber cutter’s track. It’s a long, narrow defile that opens into this strange valley, which is like an axe-cut, straight down the centre of the ridge. All around the lake are meadows a metre deep in good soil. The woods are full of deer but they need culling. The waterfall is here, and to the left of it is the entrance to the old mine workings, which are nearly half a mile long, with lots of natural passages which we didn’t explore, because we’re not trained and we hadn’t the proper equipment.”

Mendelius let him talk himself out and then put the blunt question:

“Are you still interested in acquiring the place and developing it?”

“Interested sure! But it would cost a mint of money to develop. You need labour for farming and building. You need expert advice on engineering, plumbing and even on Alpine cultivation. I got out some figures. Even if we leased the place, it would still take something like three hundred thousand deutsch marks to make it a going concern. I know we can’t come up with that sort of money.”

“Suppose we could. What then?”

Johann considered the question and then asked another.

“Have I missed something while I’ve been away?”

“Quite, a lot,” Katrin told him ruefully.

“These parents of ours have been embroiled in some rather explosive affairs.

You’d better tell him from the beginning, Papa.”

Mendelius told him. Johann listened intently, asking few questions, masking his feelings, as he always did. Finally Mendelius came to the postscript of his tale.

“As a result of what I have written about the abdication of Gregory XVII, I’ve made a lot of money. Therefore we’re able to think more freely about our immediate futures. But there are certain things beyond our control. We may well be at war within the next twelve months. You and Katrin will be liable for military call-up in September.”