The Clowns of God (50 page)

Jean Marie could not deal so curtly with a man who, however evil, was an element in the Divine economy. Lives had been terminated, lives damaged, lives perhaps enriched, however momentarily, by Dolman’s presence on the planet.

It was not enough to pass the loveless judgment of the puritans: “Pardon was offered; pardon was rejected; he took the inevitable walk to the Judas-tree.”

Jean Marie Barette once a Pope had too much experience of paradox to believe that the Almighty dispensed frontier justice. Whatever the Scriptures said, it was not possible to divide the world into white hats and black hats.

He himself had been granted a revelation and been reduced to a cold-eyed contemplation of suicide. He had been given a mission to proclaim the Last Things and, at the moment of announcement, had been struck dumb. So, perhaps it was not too strange to see in Dolman’s suicide an act of repentance, and in his visit, a victory over the killer who lived in his skin.

Were there not the tales old grandfather Barette used to tell, of men bitten by mad dogs? They knew that death was inevitable; so, rather than infect their families, they blew their brains out with a hunting gun or locked themselves in a mountain cabin and howled themselves to death.

Once again Jean Marie was back to the dark, terrifying mystery of pain and evil and who was saved and who was not and who was ultimately responsible for the whole bloody mess. Who spawned the man who trained the killer dog? And what cosmic emperor looked down, in everlasting indifference, on the baby-child which the dog tore to pieces? .. .

It was still only noonday; but the midnight blackness enveloped him again. He wished Mr. Atha were there to walk him to the gymnasium and talk him out of the darkness towards the centre of light.

Mr. Atha stepped back into his life as casually as he had stepped out of it. That evening, while Jean Marie was eating supper, he walked in, looked Jean Marie up and down like an exhibit at a flower show and smiled his approval.

“I see you’ve made splendid progress.” He laid a small package on the tray.

“That’s your reward.”

“I missed you.” Jean Marie held out both hands to greet him.

“Look! Both working! Did you have a successful trip?”

“It was busy.” Mr. Atha was as evasive as ever about himself.

“Travel is very difficult now. There are delays at every airport and much intervention by the police and the military. People are mistrustful and afraid. Look at your present.”

Jean Marie unwrapped the package and found a pouch of soft leather, inside which was a small silver box, intricately engraved.

Mr. Atha explained: “The design is made up of the invocations to Allah. There is an old man in Aleppo who used to make them. Now he is blind. His son engraved this one.

Open it.”

Jean Marie opened the box. Inside, nestling in a bed of white silk, was an ancient ring. The setting was gold, the stone a pale emerald with the head of a man carved on it, cameo-fashion. The stone was worn and scratched like a pebble abraded by the sea. Mr. Atha told him the story.

“This was given to me by a friend in Istanbul. He says it is certainly of the early first century and it probably comes from Macedonia. There is a half-effaced inscription in Greek on the back of the stone. You need young eyes or a magnifying glass to make it out; but it says, Timothy to Sylvanus. Peace!” My friend thought it might have some connection with the Apostle Paul and his two companions Sylvanus and Timothy.

Who knows? I had the whimsical idea that since you gave up the Fisherman’s ring, you might like to have this one instead.”

Jean Marie was deeply moved. Behind Mr. Atha’s ‘whimsical idea’ there was so much and so gentle a care. Jean Marie slipped the ring on to his finger. It fitted comfortably. He took it off and laid it in the silver box. He said:

“Thank you, my friend. If my blessings count for anything, you have them all.” He gave a small, unsteady laugh.

“I suppose one does need a certain amount of faith; but wouldn’t it be wonderful if it really were a gift from Timothy to Sylvanus? They were in Macedonia together. It’s clear from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. Let me see if I can remember it.

“Paul and Sylvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians: in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” He frowned, fumbling for the next words.

“Sorry, I’m blocked on the rest of it.”

”’.. . Grace to you and peace!”” Mr. Atha completed the quotation. ““We give thanks to God always for you all.”” Jean Marie stared at him in surprise. He said, “I knew you were a believer. You had to be.”

He used the French word croyant. Mr. Atha shook his head.

“No, I am not a believer. It happens that I was brought up in the Jewish tradition; but the act of faith is not one I personally can make. As for the passage in Thessalonians, I looked it up when my friend told me the provenance of the ring. It seemed so very appropriate: “Grace to you and peace!” . Now, let us talk about you. You’ve had all your tests and the results are good.”

“Yes, thank God! The doctors say they could discharge me immediately. However, they’d prefer I stay here for three or four more days. I can go out in the day-time and return in the evening. That way they can monitor my first reactions to physical and psychic stress.”

“And you’ll be surprised how much of both you’ll get,” said Mr. Atha.

“Will you stay with me? Take me about in London perhaps fly with me to Munich and hand me over to my friends? I want to be with them for Christmas. I’m sure they’d be glad to have you, too. I don’t want to take you away from other people who need you; but I’m out of practice in the simplest things.”

“Enough!” said Mr. Atha.

“You have me! I’d always intended to stay with you until you were properly recovered.

You’re a rather special client in spite of your bad reputation!”

“That has to mean …”

“Yes, I’ve read the other book, too,” said Mr. Atha.

“It has, I understand, been suppressed by injunction in some countries; but where I’ve been it was freely available and selling well!” The thing is a disreputable caricature.”

“Even so, it will harm a lot of people,” said Jean Marie moodily.

“Especially Roberta.”

“Not too much,” said Mr. Atha.

“It will be forgotten before the year is out.”

“I wish I felt so confident.”

“It is not a matter of confidence, but of simple fact. Before New Year’s Day we shall be at war.”

Jean Marie gaped at him in total amazement.

“How can you say that? Every estimate I ever heard gave us at least until spring, possibly well into the summer.”

“Because,” Mr. Atha explained patiently, “all the estimates were based on text-book evaluations a conventional war by land, sea and air, escalating to a limited use of tactical nuclear weapons with the big ones held in reserve for bargaining.

The logic of history says you don’t start that kind of war in the winter certainly not between Russia and Europe or Russia and China! But I’m afraid, my friend, that the logic of history is already out the window. This time they will start with the big fire-crackers, on the premise that whoever hits first wins and that the outcome will be decided in a week…

How little they know!”

“How much do you know?” Jean Marie was wary now.

There was a sharp edge to his question.

“What proof can you offer?”

“None,” said Mr. Atha calmly.

“But then, what proof could you offer for your vision or even for what you wrote in Last Letters from a Small Planet? Believe what I tell you! It will happen and there will be no warning. What we are seeing now troop movements, civil defence exercises, meetings of ministers is all grand opera. It’s tradition; people expect it; so their governments are giving it to them. The reality is much different: men in concrete caverns, far below the earth, men in capsules far above it, waiting on the last fatal command. Did you hear the evening news?”

“No, I missed it.”

“The French President arrives here tomorrow, for emergency talks at Downing Street. Your friend, Duhamel, will be with him.”

Jean Marie set down his fork with a clatter.

“How do you know Duhamel is a friend of mine?”

“He is mentioned in The Fraud.”

“Oh!” Jean Marie was embarrassed.

“I’ve never read the book. I wonder if Duhamel would agree with your interpretation of global events.”

“I hardly think it matters.”

“It matters to me,” said Jean Marie testily. Then instantly he apologised.

“I’m sorry; that was rude. There’s a long story between Duhamel and myself. I don’t want to bore you with it.”

“I am never bored,” said Mr. Atha.

“I am too much in love with this small world. Tell me about Duhamel.”

It took a long time in the telling, from the moment of his first call from brother Alain’s office, to Duhamel’s resolve to end it all on Rubicon Day and the cosmos-cup that was the symbol of the bond between them.

When the story was ended, Mr. Atha added his own footnote.

“So now you’d like it all tidy and tied with a pink ribbon: Duhamel and his wife safe in the arms of Everlasting Mercy. Yes?”

“Yes!” said Jean Marie flatly.

“It would be good to know something was tidy in the economy of salvation.”

“I’m afraid it never is,” said Mr. Atha.

“The mathematics are too complicated for human calculation … I must leave you now. I’ll pick you up here at ten-thirty in the morning, clothed and in your right mind!”

It was extraordinary how, in the shadow of Mr. Atha’s prediction, the simplest pleasures became exquisitely precious: the sight of children playing in the park, the faces of women window-shopping, the tinsel and the glitter of Christmas decorations, even the grey drizzle that drove them to seek shelter in the snuggery of an English pub.

With Mr. Atha he felt the same kind of companionable ease that he had enjoyed in the early years of his friendship with Carl Mendelius. Yet there was a difference. With Mendelius there were always the explosive moments of anger at an injustice, of excitement at some newly grasped idea, of emotion at a glimpse of hidden beauty. Mr. Atha, on the contrary, was inexorably calm, like a great rock in a turbulent sea. He did not communicate emotion. He understood it. He absorbed it. What he gave back was an almost physical sensation of peace and repose.

If Jean Marie were surprised, Atha would somehow enlarge the surprise to wonder, the wonder to a serene illumination. If Jean Marie were saddened as he was by moments at the sight of a derelict sleeping rough in an alley, a youth soliciting on a street corner, a child with the marks of cruelty or neglect, Mr. Atha would transmute the sadness into a hope which, even under the threat of Armageddon, seemed not incongruous.

“In poorer and simpler countries we respect beggars and honour madmen. The beggars remind us of our own good fortune and the madmen are blessed by God with visions denied to others. We experience cataclysms but see them in terms of continuity rather than of termination. The strange thing is that men who have unlocked the secrets of the atom and of the spiral helix will now use those secrets to destroy themselves

…”

“What is in us that brings us inevitably to the precipice?”

“You were taught it from a child. Man is made in God’s image. That means he is a creature of almost unbelievable resources, of frightening potential.”

“Which he always misuses.”

“Because he will not come to terms with his mortality.

Always he believes he can cheat the hangman.”

“I thought you told me you were not a believer.”

“Nor am I,” said Mr. Atha.

“Belief is impossible to me.

“Relatively or absolutely?” Jean Marie teased him with a theologian’s question.

“Absolutely,” said Mr. Atha.

“Now, let’s take a taxi.

Waldo Pearson wants you at the Carlton Club at twelve forty-five precisely.”

“You were invited, too.”

“I know. I’m duly flattered; but I’m sure Pearson and Duhamel would like to have you to themselves.”

“Duhamel? I didn’t know he was going to be there.”

“I suggested it,” said Mr. Atha amiably.

“After all, it is a farewell meal. I’ll pick you up at two-thirty.”

It was strange to be back in the room where he had been stricken, a little embarrassing to exchange nods or greetings with the men who had witnessed his collapse. This luncheon was another moment of testimony, given in the understated English fashion, but trumpet-clear to everyone familiar with the rituals of the realm. Waldo Pearson was saying: “This man is still my friend; the things you have read about him are lies;

if any of you thinks otherwise let him raise his voice and tell me so!”

The presence of Pierre Duhamel was also a potent witness to his good character. The President of the Republic was lunching at Downing Street. His most trusted counsellor was very visible at the Carlton Club, giving the lie to a libel about Jean Marie Barette. But Duhamel dismissed the issue over the soup.

“Pouf! A nothing! A graffito on the ruins, with no one left to read it! Don’t you agree, Waldo?”

“Regrettably, I do,” said Waldo Pearson.

“We’re facing a grim Christmas and a very dubious New Year. You could be as villainous as the Borgias now, Jean, and no one would give a damn.”

“I am told,” said Jean Marie carefully, “that we may not see a New Year.”

Pearson and Duhamel exchanged anxious glances.

Duhamel asked with dry irony, “Another vision?”

“No,” said Jean Marie with a shrug of deprecation.

“This time it was Mr. Atha, my therapist.”

“In that case,” said Waldo Pearson with obvious relief, “we can enjoy lunch. I recommend the rack of lamb and a bottle of the club’s Burgundy. I chose it myself and you won’t get better at the President’s table.”

Jean Marie was not to be put off so blandly, even by Waldo Pearson. He turned to Pierre Duhamel and put the barbed question, “How far are we from Rubicon Day?”

“Not very far.” Duhamel answered without hesitation.

“Troops of the Warsaw Pact are already mobilised in Europe.