The Clowns of God (11 page)

He put down the receiver and stood, brooding and perplexed, under the indifferent gaze of the fauns and shepherdesses on the ceiling. Unwittingly he had walked into a minefield. One more incautious move and it would explode under his feet.

Domenico Giuliano Francone, chauffeur and man of confidence to His Eminence, was, in looks and character, an original. He was six feet tall, with an athlete’s body, a grinning goat’s face and a mop of reddish hair kept sedulously dyed. He claimed to be forty-two years old, but was probably on the wrong side of fifty. He spoke a German he had learned from the Swiss Guards, an atrocious Genovese French, English with an American accent and Italian with a Sorrentine singsong lilt.

His personal history was a litany of variables. He had been an amateur wrestler, a champion cyclist, a sergeant in the Carabinieri, a mechanic of the Alfa racing team, a notable boozer and wencher until, after the untimely death of his wife, he had found religion and taken a job as sexton in the titular church of His Eminence.

His Eminence, impressed by Francone’s industry and devotion and possibly by his raffish good humour had promoted him into his personal household. Because of his police training, his skill as a driver, his knowledge of weapons and his experience in hand-to-hand combat, he had assumed, almost by natural right, the duties of bodyguard. In these rough and godless times, even a Prince of the Church was not safe from the sacrilegious threats of the terrorists. While a religious man dared not show himself afraid, the Italian government made no secret of its fears and demanded commonsense precautions.

All this and more Domenico Francone elaborated eloquently, as he drove the Mendeliuses and the Franks’ on a Saturday afternoon excursion to the Etruscan tombs of Tarquinia. His authority established, he then laid down the rules:

“I am responsible to His Eminence for your safety. So you will please do as I say, and do it without question. If I tell you to duck, you get your heads down fast! If I drive madly, you hang on tight and don’t ask why. In a restaurant you let me pick the table. If you, Professor, go on foot in Rome, you wait until I have parked the car and am ready to follow you.

That way you keep your mind on your own affairs and let me do the worrying. I know the way these mascalzoni work.”

“We have every confidence in you,” said Mendelius amiably, “but is there anyone following us now?”

“No, Professor.”

“Then perhaps you’d take it a little more slowly. The ladies would like to look at the countryside.”

“Of course! My apologies! .. . This is a very historic zone, many Etruscan tombs. There is, as you know, a ban on excavation without permission, but still there is looting of hidden sites. When I was in the carabinieri …”

The torrent of his eloquence poured over them again. They shrugged and smiled at each other, and drowsed the rest of the way to Tarquinia. It was a relief to leave him standing sentinel by the car, while they followed a soft-voiced custodian through the upland wheat fields to visit the people of the painted tombs.

It was a tranquil place, filled with lark-song and the low whisper of the wind through the ripening wheat. The prospect was magical: the fall of the green land to the brown villages, with the blue sea beyond, and the scattered yachts, spinnakers filled with the land-breeze, heading westward to Sardinia. Lotte was entranced, and Mendelius tried to recreate for her the life of a long-vanished people.

“They were great traders, great seafarers. They gave their name, the Tyrrhenian, to this part of the Mediterranean.

They mined copper and iron and smelted bronze. They farmed the rich lands from here to the Po valley and as far south as Capua. They loved music and dancing and made great feasts; and, when they died, they were buried with food and wine and their best clothes, and pictures of their life painted on the walls of their tombs.”

“And now they’re all gone,” said Lotte quietly.

“What happened to them?”

“They got rich and lazy. They hid behind their rituals and trusted to gods who were already out of fashion. Their slaves and commoners revolted. The rich fled with their wealth to buy the protection of the Romans. The Greeks and the Phoenicians took over their trade routes. Even their language died out.” He quoted softly the epitaph: ““O ancient Veii!

Once you were a kingdom and there was a golden throne in your forum. Now the idle shepherd plays his pipes within your walls; and, above your tombs, they reap the harvest of the fields!”” “That’s pretty. Who wrote it?”

“A Latin poet, Propertius.”

“I wonder what they’ll write about our civilisation?”

“There may not be anyone left to write a line,” said Mendelius moodily, “and there certainly won’t be pastorals painted on the side of our sepulchres. At least these people expected continuity. We look forward to a holocaust. It took a Christian to write the Dies Irae.”

“I refuse to think any more gloomy thoughts,” said Lotte firmly.

“It’s beautiful here. I want to enjoy my day.”

“My apologies.” Mendelius smiled and kissed her.

“Get ready to hide your blushes. The Etruscans enjoyed sex, too, and they painted some very pretty reminders of it.”

“Good!” said Lotte.

“Show me the naughty ones first. And make sure it’s my hand you’re holding, not Hilde’s!”

“For a virtuous woman, my dear, you have a very dirty mind.” “Be glad of it, my love.” Lotte giggled happily.

“But for God’s sake don’t tell the children!”

She took his hand and trotted him up the slope towards the beckoning custodian. He was a young fellow with agreeable manners, a recent Laureate in Archaeology and full of enthusiasm for his subject. Awed by the presence of two distinguished scholars, he devoted his attention to the women, while Mendelius and Herman Frank chatted quietly in the background. Herman was in the mood for confidences.

“I’ve talked things out with Hilde. We’ve decided to take your advice. We’ll shift ourselves out to the farm gradually of course and I’ll work out a programme of writing. If I could get a contract for a series of volumes, it would give me a continuity of work and some sense of financial security.”

“That’s what my agent recommends.” Mendelius encouraged him.

“He says publishers like that sort of project because it gives them time to build a readership. When we get back to Rome, I’ll call him and see what progress he’s made.

He always spends weekends at home.”

“There’s only one thing that worries me, Carl …”

“What’s that?”

“Well, it’s slightly embarrassing …”

“Come on! We’re old friends. What’s the problem?”

“It’s Hilde. I’m a lot older than she is. I’m not as good in bed as I used to be. She says it doesn’t worry her and I believe it probably because I want to, anyway. We do have a good life in Rome: lots of friends, many interesting visitors. It… well, it seems to balance things out. Once we leave, I’ll have my work; but she’ll be stuck in a cottage in the hills like a farmer’s wife. I’m not sure how that will work out. It would be easier if we had children or grandchildren; but as things are it would kill me to lose her, Carl!”

“What makes you think you will?”

“That!” He pointed ahead to the two women and the custodian, who was just unlocking the next sepulchre. Hilde was joking with him and her high bubbling laugh echoed across the quiet hills.

“I’m an old fool, I know; but I get jealous and scared!”

“Swallow it, man!” Mendelius was curt with him.

“Swallow it and keep your mouth shut. You have a good life together. Hilde loves you. Enjoy it, day by day! Nobody gets eternal reassurance. Nobody has a right to it! Besides, the more scared you get, the worse you’ll be in bed. Any physician will tell you that.”

“I know, Carl. But it’s rough sometimes to …”

“It’s always rough.” Mendelius refused to bend to him.

“It’s rough when your wife seems to pay more attention to the children than she does to you. It’s rough when the kids fight you for the right to grow up in a different way from yours. It’s rough when a man like Malagordo walks out to lunch and a pretty girl puts a bullet in his balls! Come on, Herman! How much sugar do you need in a cup of coffee?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’ve got it off your chest. Now forget it.”

He leafed through his catalogue.

“This one’s the Tomb of the Leopards, with the flute player and the lutanist. Let’s go in and join the girls.”

As they stood inside the ancient chamber, listening to the custodian expound the meaning of the fresco, Mendelius pondered another random thought. Jean Marie Barette, lately a Pope, was driven to proclaim the Parousia; but did people really want to know about it? Did they really want to listen to the gaunt prophet shouting from the mountain-top? Human nature had not changed much since 500 B.C. when the old Etruscans buried their dead to the sound of lutes and pipes, and locked them in a perpetual present, with food and wine and a tame leopard for company, under the painted cypresses.

That night Mendelius and Lotte dined out in a trattoria on the old Appian Way. The garrulous Francone drove them there, and when they protested his long hours he silenced them with the now familiar phrase: “I am responsible to His Eminence.” He ordered them to sit with their backs to the wall, then retired to eat in the kitchen, whence he could survey the yard and make sure no one planted a bomb under the Cardinal’s limousine.

Their host for the evening was Enrico Salamone, who published Mendelius’ works in Italy; a middle-aged bachelor with a taste for exotic and preferably intelligent women. His escort for this time was one Madame Barakat, the divorced wife of an Indonesian diplomat. Salamone was a shrewd and successful editor who admired scholarship but never disdained a topical and sensational subject.

“Abdication, Mendelius! Think about it. A vigorous and intelligent Pope, still only in his mid-sixties, quits in the seventh year of his reign. There has to be a big story behind it.”

“There probably is.” Mendelius was elaborately casual.

“But your author would break his back finding it. The best journalists in the world got only stale crumbs.”

“I was thinking of you, Carl.”

“Forget it, Enrico!” Mendelius laughed.

“I’ve got too much on my plate already.”

“I tried to tell him,” said Madame Barakat.

“He should be looking outward. The West is a small and incestuous world.

Publishers should be opening new windows to Islam, to the Buddhists, to India. All the new revolutions are religious in character.”

Salamone nodded a reluctant agreement.

“I see it. I know it. But where are the writers who can interpret the East to us? Journalism is not enough; propaganda is a whore’s trade. We need poets and story-tellers steeped in the old traditions.”

“It seems to me,” said Lotte ruefully, “everyone shouts too loud and too often. You can’t tell stories in a mob. You can’t write poetry with the television blaring.”

“Bravo, darling!” Mendelius squeezed her hand.

“It’s true!” She was launched now and ready to engage in combat.

“I don’t have many brains, but I know Carl’s always done his best work in a quiet, provincial situation. Haven’t you always told me, Carl, too many people argue their own books out of existence? You, too, Enrico! You said once you’d like to lock your authors up until they were ready to walk out with a finished manuscript.”

“I said it, Lotte. I believe it.” He gave her a swift sidelong grin.

“But even your husband here isn’t the hermit he pretends to be. What are you really doing in Rome, Carl?”

“I told you: research, a couple of lectures, and having a holiday with Lotte.”

“There’s a rumour,” said Madame Barakat sweetly, “that you were given some kind of mission by the former Pope.”

“Hence my suggestion for a book,” said Enrico Salamone.

“Where the hell did you pick up that nonsense?” Mendelius was nettled.

“It’s a long story.” Salamone was amused but wary.

“But I assure you it is authentic. You know I’m a Jew. It’s natural that I entertain the Israeli Ambassador and any visitors he wants to present in Rome. It’s also natural that we talk about matters of mutual concern. So now! .. . The Vatican has always refused diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel.

The refusal is pure politics. They don’t want to quarrel with the Arab world. They would like, if they could, to assert some kind of sovereignty over the Holy Places in Jerusalem.

Echoes of the crusades! There was hope that this position might change under Gregory XVII. His personal response to diplomatic relations with Israel was believed to be favourable.

So, early this spring, a private meeting was arranged between the Israeli Ambassador and the Pontiff. The Pope was frank about his problems, inside his own Secretariat of State and outside, with Arab leaders. He wanted to continue exploring the situation. He asked my Ambassador whether a personal and unofficial envoy would be welcome in Israel. Their answer was naturally in the affirmative. Yours was one of the names suggested by the Pontiff.”

“Good God!” Mendelius was genuinely shocked.

“You have to believe me, Enrico. I knew absolutely nothing about it.”

“That’s true!” Lotte was instant in support.

“I would have known. This thing was never, never mentioned not even in his last …”

“Lotte, please!”

“I’m sorry, Carl.”

“So there was no mission.” Madame Barakat was soothing as honey.

“But there was communication?”

“Private, madame,” said Mendelius curtly.

“A matter of old friendship… And I’d like to change the subject.”

Salamone shrugged and spread his hands in surrender.

“Fine! But you mustn’t blame me for trying. That’s what makes me a good publisher. Now tell me, how’s the new book coming?”

“Slowly.”

“When can we expect the manuscript?”

“Six, seven months.”

“Let’s hope we’re still in business by then!”

“Why shouldn’t you be?”

“If you read the papers, my dear Professor, you’ll know the great powers are talking us all into a war.”