Keys of This Blood (78 page)

Then it is the Pontiffs turn to conclude this meeting, with some remarks in Italian. Gorbachev sinks into a plush white high-back chair, glancing at a Russian translation of Wojtyla's speech, half understanding the Italian, nodding in silent assent now and again, throwing an odd glance at the small ring of dignitaries and aides around them. The deep basso tones of this Priest, the smell of the Sanctuary hanging in the air, the icons of saints and mysteries on the walls, even his half understanding
of the spoken words, all are powerfully evocative. “This meeting will be interpreted as a sign,” John Paul is saying, “as singularly meaningful, as a sign of the times that have slowly matured, a sign rich in promise….”

There is no way this Soviet man, with his mercury-fast intelligence streaking back and forth over all the details, can escape the voice of deepest remembrance in him. Signs have abounded in his life. Once upon a time, when all was fresh in him—his early teenage years—indelible and unspoken convictions were imprinted on his soul and imaged by the lively sensations experienced only in raw youth. He lived those early impressionable years amid an abundance of such signs.

The Easter Days and Holy Days at Russian Mass in his native Privolnoye. Standing between his father and mother, facing the iconostasis that hid the priest from view as he consummated the Mystery, listening and trying to join in the rising and falling cadence of the old Slavonic hymns, half understanding the words but fully understanding the meaning of it all. Surrounded by signs that cozened the Mystery and its meaning—the flickering candles of adoration; the sweet smell of the incense of prayer; the privileged taste of Holy Communion bread tinctured in the consecrated wine; the blue and gold and silver and red of the sacred icons on the walls from which his patron saint, the Archangel Michael, together with saints and angels, with Christ and his Mother, gazed down on him; the oneness of himself with parents, with the other worshipers, with the priest, with the Mystery—their
sobornost
. That child of Privolnoye was “father of the man” now listening to another priest in another Sanctuary embodying the same Mystery.

Nothing in the fugitive years since that springtime of life had erased those profound imprints of his soul. No, not the youthful, dutiful avowals of atheism in the Komsomol, not the solemn professions of Scientific Atheism in the Party, not all the oaths of office up along the ladder of hierarchy, not even the craven submission to the diktat of the Council of Elders required for admission to the leadership of the Party-State. Nothing had changed, really, in him. Merely the choice of his will, and his outward behavior. Both could be changed in an instant. “There are no atheists in foxholes,” was a comment of one soldier returning from the trench warfare of World War I in Flanders. This day, in the Vatican, no atheist is listening to Pope John Paul II.

“The Soviet president is a long-awaited guest,” Wojtyla continued, “a man whose words truly demolish the idols and remove the boulders along the path of the human caravan….” An elegant tribute, certainly, to Mikhail Gorbachev's geopolitical savvy and superior skill. But, also, a momentary stab of light into his heart and the inmost councils of his
mind. Once you demolish the idols, Wojtyla was intimating, there remains only the divinity those idols aped. Once you clear the boulders of fratricide from our road, there remains only love. “In the heart of man, there remains always a certain space which only God can fill, always a desire only God can satisfy.” It was both an analysis and a warning. Wojtyla the geopolitician bespoke the analysis. Wojtyla the priest issued the warning.

In franker terms, he could have said, “Your Lenin, in 1905, called religion ‘a kind of spiritual gin in which the slaves of capital drown their human shape, and their claims to any decent human life.' And a little later, Lenin spoke of ‘the only idol we permit and maintain is godlessness.' Even if your demolition of that idol is a temporary and temporizing proviso, Mr. President, beware of the one that idol was meant to supplant. You knew him once. You worshiped him once. It is terrible to fall into the hands of a living God. For he conquers all by love, because he is love itself. Even if your abandonment of fratricide is merely today's ploy to buy tomorrow's time and next week's dollar credits, beware because you have given love a breathing space. And that love conquers all, including the death you might be reserving in your heart as the ultimate fate for your adversaries.”

These intimate resonances of Papa Wojtyla's words do not echo from the printed text of newspaper reports. They were palpably present in his living voice as he spoke.

For the rest of his speech, Papa Wojtyla was sensible and moderate. He supported
perestroika
, “if it helps to protect and integrate the rights and duties of individuals and peoples so that peace may ensue in Europe and the world.” Of course, he remarked, “many believers in the Soviet Union had suffered painful lives since 1917…. On their behalf, whether they be Latin, Byzantine or Armenian, I nourish the firm hope that they will be able to practice freely their religious life.” John Paul was thinking of such situations as that of Leningrad's venerable Cathedral of Kazan, now a Museum of Soviet Atheism, as well as of its congregation of believers. With some more remarks about the hopes he had for the full normalization of conditions in the Soviet Union, and a last word of thanks to the Soviet president, John Paul concluded.

There remained the exchange of gifts. Papa Wojtyla gave the Soviet man a three-foot-high reproduction of a mosaic from St. Peter's tomb depicting Christ. “This,” he said, “is a memento of this historic event.” Gorbachev had a two-volume reproduction of a fourteenth-century Kievan Psalter for John Paul. “I believe,” he said to the Pope, “you will find this
interesting.” For Raisa, John Paul had a Rosary with a gold cross and mother-of-pearl beads. His murmured words to Mrs. Gorbachev were not recorded. In Roman diplomatic parlance, the gifts were neither “neutral” nor “slaps in the face.” They were “tentative” and “positive” but “safe” expressions of genuine satisfaction and cordiality.

There finally was that last moment between the two men, the final final moment of leaving each other's presence, a last meeting of the eyes, a parting gesture of the hands, when instinctively John Paul would say a “God speed you on your journey, Mr. President,” then turn away, breaking the delicate filament of person-to-person contact between them, and return to his papal study on the third floor, his head crammed with details, his heart pressured by wild hopes and deep apprehensions. From up there, he could only hear the powerful strokes of the escort helicopter leading the five limousines out of the Courtyard of St. Damasus. But, in his mind's eye, he could see it all clearly.

More than any help John Paul had promised or could deliver to Gorbachev, there was the protection of the Archangel Michael, after whom Mikhail Gorbachev had been named, as his personal patron; and there was the protection of the Virgin of Tenderness, whose shrine stands within shouting distance of Gorbachev's working desk in the Kremlin and without whose approval and favor this Soviet president could never succeed, could not survive the ravening wolves of dissension, hate and violence out there in Moscow's streets, in Azerbaijan, in Georgia, in the Ukraine, on the Baltic Sea and over in China.

Was it Goodbye, until Heaven? Or
Do Zwidanya
, until once more on this earth? Was Gorbachev a temporary instrument of God's providence, this day his finest hour, and soon to be cast aside? Or was he the one destined to preside over the coming unveiling of human fate back there throughout the ancient homeland of all the Slavs and all the “Europeans” between the Elbe River and the Caucasus Mountains? There remained for John Paul the crying words of the dying Pius VI, a man who had acquaintance with those ravening wolves: “May the sweet mystery of God's love consume us all in his peace.”

The Soviet president left the Vatican at 12:57 P.M. He was off to lunch and an afternoon visit to the Colosseum, where he would, American style, “press the flesh” in the crowds of gusty Romans, as he had done in Washington, New York, Bonn, Paris and Beijing.

He had participated in what the Pope's own
Osservatore Romano
had described as “a moment of singular intensity” and one Italian paper called “the summit of the century.” Vatican Vice-Secretary of State Archbishop Cassidy was more sober. “Our impression is that Mr. Gorbachev has a vision of a world not just in which conflict is missing, but a
world in which there is a real decent cooperation … but Catholic communities will have to be normalized … bishops recognized and established in their sees … churches opened … a community able to worship in normal situations” before Gorbachev achieved full credibility. John Paul, through his Vatican aide Cassidy was stating his requirement that Gorbachev perform what columnist Cal Thomas aptly called “a conscious and public departure from the convictions of the German and Russian founders of Marxist Communism.”

In the weeks following the meeting, there were many reflections on it, many analyses of its meaning and many practical decisions taken as a consequence. Gorbachev, in his New Year's message, declared that “the world is now forging ahead in pursuit of happiness, freedom and democracy.” We now have, he asserted, “the goal of a humane, democratic socialism, and a society of freedom and justice…. Everyone in the Soviet Union must now shoulder part of what the entire country is experiencing in the complexities and passions of the Soviet Union….” Give me, he appealed over television, “a practice of reason, kindness, patience and tolerance.” You almost expected him to end with a “God bless you all, my fellow Soviet citizens!” sniped journalist Yves de la Coste.

In his New Year's message, Czechoslovakia's writer, saint and president, Vaclav Havel, urged John Paul to visit his country (John Paul went in April). In his annual address to the vast diplomatic corps of Rome, on January 13, he announced the coming birth of a “Europe of the Spirit,” the “common home” of all Europeans; and he congratulated the U.S.A. and the USSR for their new approach to “peace and unity.”

Each one of these men returns to his own habitat fully persuaded that, under the circumstances, he has taken the wisest step toward his ultimate goal and won the best possible conditions from his counterpart. Each hopes the other will fulfill his part of the agreement. Each one in his own way hopes the other will have the strength and time to do so. For each one, in his own way, is tied to a rather inevitable schedule, already running out along the passage of the minutes, hours, days and weeks that slip by. That schedule is the monkey on each man's back, continually screeching about the unavoidable deadline he has undertaken to meet by entering the colossal gamble of geopolitics.

Mikhail Gorbachev must preside daringly but prudently over the process of disaggregating the huge and ailing Soviet giant, already palsied in its extremities, anemic in its internal arteries and deeply disturbed in what has passed for its soul, all these years. What has already happened
to it can be accurately viewed as disintegration, even if it is an allowed disintegration governed by a principle of Lenin that Gorbachev has learned well: “Do not put what is transitory above what is essential.” The former pacific unity of all parts of the hybrid USSR was and is transitory compared to the essential of preserving the “Revolution.” That union represented merely immediate and here-and-now interests. In the continuing “Revolution” lie the external interests of “the world's working class as a whole.”

But the monkey will scream its alarm more and more loudly, as the fitful palsy shakes more and more parts of Gorbachev's USSR; and the fateful deadline will draw nearer, according as the troika of Central Committee, KGB and Red Army finds its strength more and more diluted while, over in the East, along a border of 4,000 miles, the other partner in preserving the “Revolution” waxes stronger and more palpably Leninist than the stricken USSR. How far should the new permissiveness go? Surely not so far that Gorbachev or his successor presides over something resembling the tiny Duchy of Moscow five centuries ago. That would be the point of no return. But how far? In principle: as far as is required for the integration of the Party-State in the “common European home.” But what about the in-between time?

In that “in-between” lies Gorbachev's gamble: that, before the point of no return, he effectively occupies the living room and bedroom of that “common European home.” A full marriage. Then he will have actual or potential power over a union greater than the former USSR's. He can confidently face eastward and purify the Chinese “socialist fraternity” from its terrible deviation in substituting a modern version of its very ancient “warlordism” for the pure Leninist internationalism, and in mistranslating Lenin's universal victory of the worldwide proletarian revolution as the paltry “territorialism” always claimed by the ancient and hateful Middle Kingdom. Capitalist corruption can be tolerated—even used. But the “Chinese deviation” destroys the soul of Leninism.

John Paul, too, must go on presiding daringly but prudently over the disintegration of his Roman Catholic institutional organization. He, in his way, just as the Soviet president in his way, is committed to that course of action—and inaction. But how far is too far?

He must go on with his mission as he has understood it to be ever since he became official Holder of the Keys. He does believe those Keys are guaranteed by the human blood of the man he worships as God. He does also believe that this geopolitical mission he has chosen to fulfill as Pope will be crowned with a success never registered in the life of any preceding pope. That, in effect, in the sight of all nations, his authority
by right of those Keys will be declared in the skies above every nation so that across the face of Earth all men and women will see clearly where they stand in relation to the one who shed his blood to make those Keys perdurable until the end of all human time.