The Last Western (42 page)

He turned a page.

In all true listening the listener opens his spirit to the Loving One, the Power and the Strength, as some call Him-Her, the YOU, who is wholly Other and yet also wedded to the true self. And it is of t,he essence and perfection of true listening that once the demands of the normal self have been completely put aside, the voice of the self wedded to Truth and Love speak in such a way to the heart of the listener that he is assured it is no other than the voice of the Loving One Him-Herself. And the listener knows this with the exact same degree of certainty that he knows that he exists.

Gloss of Marion Byrne:
Has nothing to do with the lying and insanity of hearing voices, as the Fools of Spain believed. Entirely a matter of opening self completely to Other so that Other might enter and be joined to self so that when self speaks, it is the Other speaking in true wedlock, with utter clarity even though the language may be obscure to the normal self and even unknown to the mental workings of the normal self.

Willie then turned to Observation 61, and his eyes fell on the gloss of Vora Lyons, American, d. 1894.

In any situation where the sacrifice of one’s own life is required, one realizes it with a serene joy and absolute confidence because the road is so clearly marked, and there is never any doubt. If there is hesitation or confusion, the purest listening is required.

Willie read a little further in the Guidebook, then put it down and began to listen once more. Was it not clear? What could be clearer? He was not yet listening, but asking questions.

He was to go back to the court of the treacherous and there, challenging the lie, offer his life that the lie might be destroyed. He was not yet listening.

He let the words of Recommendation 40 come to him again. Then he forced them out of his mind, or tried to, so that he could receive an answer.

But the words would not go away. They were as loud and shrill as before.

He did not feel the certainty or the confidence or the serenity but only the desire to do what Recommendation 40 asked him to do.

The words were echoing back and forth again and he prayed simply that the echoing would stop.

He kept up this prayer until the words did stop and finally there was the silence he had been looking for and then he was in the silence altogether, and the silence was all around, stretching out around him, and in the silence he was alone.

The rain fell and the sky became gray and Willie knelt by the window unseeing and trying to listen and did listen, except that there was nothing to hear and after an hour he still did not hear, and then there was a longer silence, an emptiness of everything, even of his own life, a blank, and then things started to come back. He had the vague idea he had heard something, a word that sounded like
Wait
, but he could not be sure. He listened more closely, but the listening broke down, and he was telling himself that to die there would be an act of revenge—but a second later he wondered why that would be so.

The sky turned white. It was dawn, and he was still kneeling and again he heard quite clearly the word that sounded like Wait, and he felt an excitement and he thanked God and he came back a little once more and he knew where he was, and he thought in the morning they would all have Eucharist and share their thoughts and he felt the Presence for a second and it warmed him in spite of everything and he knew then what he had always known—that He had swallowed down all the lies and arrangements that made for the murder of men.

“Brother Christ,” he said distinctly. And then distinctly a voice replied: “Wake.”

He opened his eyes and there was Joto and there was something Joto was trying to give to him, a handkerchief, no a paper, no a telegram.

“You were sleeping kneeling,” said Joto.

Willie groaned. His body ached. He got to his feet and tore open the telegram.

WHATEVER THE CIRCUMSTANCES GO

IMMEDIATELY TO ROME.        BENJAMIN

“Just arrive,” said Joto.

Willie passed the telegram to Joto, who passed it again to Truman, who was still whimpering and weeping without tears.

“What does it mean?” said Willie. “Father Benjamin is in jail.”

“He know what is happening,” said Joto. “Even in jail.”

Willie looked down on the gray streets and the refugees who were already commencing the long day’s march, and he could see the park where a group of the refugees had been put to work burying the dead. The night came back to him.

He read the telegram again.

“It says immediately,” said Willie.

“Whatever circumstances,” said Joto.

“What can it mean? What possibly can it mean?” said Willie.

He did not know, though he would learn in the next hour, that early the previous day the chauffeur-driven Cadillac of the Pope of Rome, Felix VII, traveling at ninety-eight miles an hour on a gravel detour near the Via Appia had struck a stone marker that had been unearthed by workmen and left carelessly to lie on the edge of the road. The Cadillac had hit the marker and sailed into the air, and the chauffeur had cried to God and the pope had blessed the chauffeur and asked God to take away his sins, and then his own neck had been broken as the Cadillac hit the ground.

The stone marker, erected in 50 b.c. during the reign of the great emperor Julius Caesar, said:
Ite Lente
.

*  *  *

When they came down into the oldest idea of the Western world, it was already past midnight and the great Rome airport was nearly deserted.

Joto and Truman and Willie carried Herman Felder on a stretcher into the customs office, declaring him and their bodies as their only possessions.

Felder had not been awake since the time he clung clownlike to the drape. His pulse was low, and on the long flight north, Joto said that he had never seen him that far under.

The night shift of bored customs officials came forward to meet them, and in their midst Willie saw another figure, an old man emerging from a long time ago.

The years in prison had withered and bent him, and he looked more than ever like the American poet who wrote
Leaves of Grass
, but it was the poet now who had suffered the second stroke and looked out the window all day long and tried to hear the songs Camden, New Jersey made.

“Father Ben—” Willie began, but his voice went out.

He and Father Benjamin embraced. Then Father Benjamin wordlessly and solemnly embraced Joto and Truman.

They stood there for a little while warming themselves in their fraternal love, then gently, tenderly, they placed Herman Felder on a cushioned bench.

Over him the four men held out their hands and chanted one of the well-loved songs of the Servants:
Ubi Caritas et Amor Deus Ibi Est.

The tableau of the strange men—the old man dressed like a ragpicker, the others like workmen from a road gang, the still figure on the bench and the sound of that ancient chant—brought a spell upon the airdrome.

The police and the customs officials and the sleepy travelers waiting for early morning planes and the night workers in the restaurant stared at the scene in the way people linger before a curious figure in a museum, drawn toward it by memories that are engraved on the deepest places of the heart, so deep that they do not know they are there.

There was an American reporter sitting at the counter of the restaurant. He was tired and very bored. When he heard the chanting, he turned to stare with the others and was caught in the spell for a moment before he recognized the red-haired slanty-eyed man among the others in the group. He had been waiting through most of the day for the arrival of this man, he and a thousand other reporters, and now he had him alone.

Grabbing his camera, he rushed into the customs area and took a flash picture of Willie absorbed in the prayer chant, a picture that would appear on world telenews the next morning.

The chief of customs stepped forward then and asked for papers.

He looked at Willie’s passport a long time, then at his clothing. He searched for the ring Willie was not wearing and at last made a hesitant half bow.

“Welcome to Rome, Monsignor. The Vatican has living arrangements prepared, I believe. We hope your stay in Rome will be pleasant.” He thought this over. “We are of course in mourning for our beloved Holy Father.”

“We need to get this man to a hospital,” said Willie.

“One moment, please,” the customs official said, for the first time noticing Felder’s camera riding in its holster on

Willie’s back. “You have permit for the firearm, Monsignor?”

“Not firearm,” Joto said. “Camera.”

The official inspected the lens of the camera poking up from the holster.

“Please—the man is so ill,” said Willie.

At last the official quit his inspection of the camera.

“Very well. Who is this man?”

“Herman Felder.”

A fat man in a white suit, standing at the edge of the customs area, stepped forward.

“
Prego
,” he said. The customs officer turned to the man and handed him Felder’s passport.

The fat man studied the passport with eyes that spoke no emotion.

“Signor Felder,” he said to Willie, “Signor Felder is—how say?—nonwelcome. He is the man
non grata. Capische
?”

“Where is the nearest hospital?” said Willie.

The man in the white suit produced a card and handed it to Willie. The card identified him as Antonio Suggio of the National Internal Security Service.

“Signor Felder is not a lawful man,” the fat man said.

“He is very ill, my brother,” said Willie. “He is close to death.”

“Even dying persons sometimes are unlawful. It is not a question of health. Great murderers often enjoy splendid health.”

“He needs to get to a doctor,” Willie said imploringly.

The fat man’s eyes came to life. “Men need many things. I for instance need money. Am I to steal for that reason? Think, Monsignor, of the law. We come into this world, we make our way badly or well, and there is always the law to guide us. We change, many things change, but the law is above us, outside us, immortal.”

Father Benjamin left Herman Felder’s side then and came up to the fat man and handed him a letter.

It was written on the stationery of the consulate of the United States and was signed by Lawson Thebes, the ex-brother-in-law of Herman Felder.

The letter said that the legal charges brought by the Italian Court against Herman Felder eleven years earlier were no longer binding and that Mr. Felder was free to visit Italy. The letter was countersigned by the head of the Internal Security Service.

The fat man awkwardly clicked his heels. “I am happy. There is much trouble in the world. It is good some of it is gone.”

An ambulance was summoned. Joto and Truman boarded it with Felder while Willie and Father Benjamin followed in a taxi.

“He is so ill,” said Willie.

“I have seen him so in the past,” said Father Benjamin.

“Why didn’t they want him in the country?”

“Once he did something to the golden mosaic of a great church—or was accused of such a crime. He was ejected from the country. Later, there were papers found in his hotel room linking him with other activities.”

“Oh, Father Benjamin, we have all had such trouble. But then so have you. All these years in prison.”

Benjamin turned his blue-white face to Willie.

“The hardest time of all is just beginning,” he said.

Ahead of them in the ambulance, in the brain of Herman Felder, a great blizzard stormed across vast unknown fields.

A ragged group of men, weary from a long journey, huddled about a fire for warmth.

The snows were thickening and the winds driving them on had all but extinguished the fire.

The men were starving.

Felder knew there was food just ahead, but no one believed him.

“We’ll all freeze then!” he shouted.

“No,” a voice answered, “we’ll starve before that.”

“Cold! Freezing cold!” he shouted in the ambulance rushing through the darkened streets with its mournful wee-waa, wee-waa.

One of the attendants, knowing a little English, said to the driver: “A crazy one. It is eighty-nine degrees at this moment.”

“Did you see the others? All crazy,” said the driver, and he turned sharply onto the Via di San Gregorio where, straight ahead, the lighted Colosseum blazed on in the night.

It was a very large church
; it was the largest church in the world, and for nine days its main business was to serve as a funeral parlor.

The people came from all over Rome and Italy, and there were many tourists who had come to Italy for other reasons and they all streamed into the great church that had been named after the first pope to look at the body of the dead pope, and for the tourists who had come from Michigan and Scotland and Lebanon it was a great stroke of good fortune that this extra sideshow had been included in the itinerary and it cost nothing except a wait in line.

The city of Rome slowed a little. It had seen many popes die and Caesars too, and all over the city there were the reminders of the greatness of those who had died. Rome loved to slow down a little and play the sad music on the radio, and the mourning was almost a sexual feeling when the girls came into the sunshine on the Via Veneto wearing bright yellow dresses and there was a fever in the air, and the men looked at the girls and everyone felt death and the sheer brevity of life speeded up the inner emotions even while, on the outside, everything was slower.

At night the television cameras, set high among the arches and the columns of the great church, stared fixedly at the stiff doll-like body of the pope, and the commentators said whatever they could think up, and people all over the world watched and listened and derived the secret thrill from it.

The commentators on the third day were running out of material after they had told the people of the pope’s accomplishments, after they had told the people that this pope would go down in history as the computer pope because he had held an ecumenical council of the church and had run the council entirely by computer, with the bishops of the world submitting their ideas on special punch cards which were even now being processed by the Vatican RevCon office. The commentators were running out of material, but it made no difference since the message that interested the world was the doll lying there among the columns and the marble statuary and the people filing past the bier and the mournful music.