The Clowns of God (21 page)

Our faculty members are now asked to report to the security service on the political affiliations of our students.

So, this most elementary of relationships is corrupted and may be utterly destroyed. I have already given notice that I shall resign if the request is made an order. But you see how subtly the corruption works: if I rely on the police for personal protection, how can I, with sound reason, refuse them my cooperation in a national emergency? The answer is clear to me. It will be clear to very few others, when the propagandists raise what Churchill called ‘the bodyguard of lies’.

But if fear is an infection; despair is a plague. Your vision of the end of temporal things obsesses us all; but the rest of it the final redeeming act, the ultimate demonstration of Divine justice and mercy how does one express these, in terms that will keep human hope alive? Your closed-out cosmos, my dear friend, will be a terrible place without it.

The telephone rang. Lotte laid down her knitting to answer it. Georg Rainer was on the line. When Mendelius picked up the phone Rainer launched immediately into monologue.

“I’m in Zurich. I flew up just to make this telephone call. I couldn’t trust the Italian circuits. Now, listen carefully and don’t make any comments at all. Do you remember, at our last meeting, we discussed a list?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have it close by?”

“Upstairs. Hang on.”

Mendelius hurried up to his study, unlocked the old safe and fished out Jean Marie’s list. He picked up the receiver.

“Right. I have it in front of me.”

“Is it arranged by countries?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to mention four names from four countries. I want to know whether the names are on your list. Clear?”

“Go ahead.” :

“USSR. Petrov?”

“Yes.”

“U.K. Pearson?”

“Yes.”

“U.S.A. Morrow?”

“Yes.”

“France. Duhamel?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That means my informant is reliable.”

“You’re talking in riddles, Georg.”

“I sent you a letter from the General Post Office in Zurich.

It will explain the riddles.”

“But you’re coming here on Wednesday.”

“I know. But I’m a pessimist. I hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Somebody’s had a tail on me since Saturday. Pia thought she spotted a changeover at the airport which means we could be under surveillance in Zurich as well. So we’re going to try a little evasive action and come overland instead of by air. Can you accommodate both of us?

There’s no way I can leave Pia alone in Rome.”

“Of course! This is all very sinister, Georg!”

“I warned you it might be. Sit tight and light a candle for us. Auf Wiederseben.”

Mendelius set down the receiver, and began absently leafing through the typewritten pages of Jean Marie’s list.

Right from the beginning he had accepted Anneliese Meissner’s dismissive description of it as ‘an aide-memoire pulled out of a filing cabinet’. He had given no thought at all to the strength and potency of friendship between high men. But Rainer had understood its importance; Rainer had opened a whole new area of investigation and was now at risk because of it.

Lotte stuck her head around the door and asked: “What did Rainer want?”

“He was rather cryptic. He wanted me to confirm that four names were on this list from Jean Marie. He also wanted to tell me he was coming overland to Tubingen and bringing Pia with him.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that Rainer was under surveillance but he thought better of it.

“Oh, dear!” Lotte was instantly the housewife.

“That does make complications. I’ll have to change the rooms about. Do you think we could put Lars Larsen up here in the study?”

“Whatever you want, dear… Any chance of some coffee?”

“Chocolate,” said Lotte firmly.

“I don’t want you tossing about all night.” She kissed him and went out.

Mendelius turned back to his letter. He was tempted to make reference to Rainer’s phone call and ask for a further explanation of the significance of the list, but he thought better of it. Italian mail was never secure and he did not wish to be too specific. So I find myself returning again and again to your letter and annexures and I am exercised by the problem of presenting your ideas in open forum. I wonder how you would wish them presented, for example, to the people on your list…

In what terms do we discuss the Parousia with a twentieth-century audience of believers and nonbelievers? I ask, my dear Jean, whether we have not corrupted its meaning out of all recognition. We talk of triumph, judgment, ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with great power and majesty’.

I wonder whether the power and the majesty and the glory may not demonstrate themselves far otherwise than we expect. I remember the phrase in your letter: ‘a moment of exquisite agony’ and how you explained it as a sudden perception of the oneness of all things. Like the dying Goethe, I cry still for more light. I am a sensual man, burdened with too much learning and too little real understanding. At the end of a long day, I know I am very content with Lotte’s hot chocolate and her arms around me in the dark.

Lars Larsen, brusque, dapper and voluble, arrived an hour before midday after a night flight from New York and a break-neck drive from Frankfurt. Within fifteen minutes he was closeted with Mendelius, reading him the facts of life within the literary establishment.

“Yes, I’ll represent you and Rainer but not until I’ve worked out a satisfactory contract between you both and that has to be at least sixty-forty in your favour. Before we even get that far Rainer has to disclose his arrangements with Die Welt. If he’s a staff man, pure and simple, the Springer group can claim full ownership of anything he contributes to this project. So, first I talk to Rainer alone. You stay away until I’m ready. Now, don’t give me any arguments, Carl.

Fifty-fifty just isn’t acceptable. You have to control this thing, and you can’t do that unless you own the votes.

Besides, it’s you the customers want to buy. I’ve got three bids for world rights to serial and book publication with a million and a half up front and that’s on your name, and your association with Gregory XVII, not on Rainer! Once I see what you’ve got we can probably raise the floor to two million… plus a whole lot of healthy spin-offs. So get it clear, Carl! You’re making Rainer a wealthy man. You don’t have to apologise for the terms.”

“I wasn’t thinking about Rainer.” Mendelius was suddenly moody.

“I was thinking about myself. When this story is published, a lot of people will want to discredit me as they discredited Jean Marie. Two million dollars could make me look like a very expensive Judas.”

“If you do it for nothing,” said Lars Larsen, “they’ll think you’re a schnook too crazy to be believed. Money always smells clean. However, if it bothers you, talk to your lawyer, maybe he’ll advise you to set up a benefice for fallen women!

That’s not my problem. The money I get you guarantees that your publishers have to get you a big readership… and that, in the end, is what you want. Now, can I look at the documents, please?”

Mendelius unlocked the old safe and brought out the envelope containing Jean Marie’s letter and the encyclical. Larsen glanced at the documents and then asked bluntly:

“These are genuine?”

“Yes.”

“You can authenticate the handwriting?”

“Of course and I’ve verified them in personal discussion with the author.”

“Good. I’ll want a notarised deposition to that effect. I’d also like to phot graph some specimen passages… not necessarily the important ones. For this kind of money the clients demand boiler-plate protection. And the last thing they want is a run-in with the Vatican over phony attributions.”

“I’ve never known you so careful before, Lars.”

“We’re only at the beginning, Carl.” Larsen was not amused.

“Once this story breaks, your past and present will be under the microscope. So will Rainer’s and professionally, at least, he’d better be squeaky clean. Now do you think you could get me another cup of coffee and leave me alone to study this stuff.”

“While you’re doing it,” said Mendelius with a grin, “make a few notes on the internal evidence: the handwriting, the polished French style, the quality of the reasoning and the rendering of personal emotion.”

“I know about internal evidence,” said Larsen tartly.

“One of my earliest clients was a master plagiarist. He was sued for a million and lost. I had to return my commissions. Now, what about that coffee?”

When he came down to lunch at one-thirty, Larsen was a different man, shaken and subdued. He picked at his food, and talked disjointedly.

“I’m usually detached when I read. I have to be. No one can sustain the impact of all those student personalities clamouring at you from the manuscripts. But that letter, Lotte! It had me in tears. I never go to church except for weddings and funerals. But my grandfather, on my mother’s side, was an old-fashioned Swedish Lutheran. When I was little he would sit me on his knee and read the Bible to me.

Upstairs, it was as if I were listening to him again.”

“I know what you mean.” Lotte picked up the discussion eagerly.

“That’s why I keep saying to Carl that this account of Jean Marie must be done with love and fidelity. No one must be allowed to make it cheap or vulgar.”

“How do you feel, then, about Georg Rainer?”

“I don’t know him very well. He’s charming and witty. I think he’s very knowledgeable about Italy and the Vatican.

However, I do say Carl must stay in control of this project.”

“Let’s be clear about this.” Mendelius was suddenly edgy and irritable.

“Georg Rainer arrives here this afternoon as our guest. The important thing is that he and I work happily and productively together. I don’t want any arguments about money to spoil that. And I don’t want to offer him a halfhearted welcome, either.”

“Jawohl, Herr Professor!” Lotte made a mocking mouth at his solemnity.

“Trust me, Carl.” Lars Larsen grinned at him.

“I’m a very good surgeon. I cut clean and all my patients recover! Now I want to tie up your phone for a couple of hours. They’re open for business in New York; and after what I’ve read oh, boy! do we have business!”

Afterwards, in the kitchen, Lotte giggled helplessly to Mendelius.

“Lars is so funny! As soon as he starts talking money, you can feel the electricity. His eyes sparkle and you almost expect his hair to stand on end. I’m sure he’d be shocked if you told him; but he’s like the fat man at the circus gate, shouting his head off, selling tickets for Judgment Day!”

Lars Larsen’s sales campaign went on all the afternoon. At five-thirty, with the bidding at two and a quarter million, he closed the market. As he explained to Mendelius, he now had a handsome cash guarantee with which to begin discussions with Georg Rainer. But Georg Rainer was late. At seven, he called in from a road-house twenty miles south of Tubingen.

He explained that they had been followed out of Zurich, that he had shaken the surveillance team before the border post, and then driven half the country roads in Swabia to make sure they had not been picked up again. At eight-thirty he arrived with Pia, wind-blown and travel-worn. An hour later, relaxed over Lotte’s ample supper, he explained the melodrama.

“The most extraordinary thing about the abdication was the secrecy with which it was accomplished. Nobody, but nobody, was willing to talk. Which prompted us in the press corps to believe that Gregory XVII must not only have made powerful enemies, but also alienated most of his friends inside and outside the Vatican. We knew him as you did, Carl, for a man of singular charm. So where had all his friends gone?

Then you told me about this list and it seemed to me that it must have a special importance. You said it was typewritten.

So it had to have come from a file. I asked myself who would know about Gregory XVII’s private file. I came up with his private secretary. In my records he was listed as Monsignor Bernard Logue, who, in spite of his Irish name, is a Frenchman, a descendant of one of the wild geese who fled to France to fight the English. I enquired what had happened to him after the abdication.”

“That was clever of you, Georg. Logue was the man who denounced the encyclical to the Curia and started the whole affair. I never thought to ask how he was rewarded.”

“Apparently not well. He was moved out of the Papal Household into the Secretariat for Public Communications. I had been told he was a rather unhappy fellow who might be prepared to air his grievances. On the contrary! He was the perfect clerical functionary precise, patronising, absolutely convinced that the finger of God guided every scribe in Vatican City. Clearly he was not about to spill secrets on my plate. So, I told him I was working on an account of the last days of Gregory XVII, in which he, Monsignor Logue, had played a key role. That shook him. He asked me to define the role he was supposed to have played. I told him that he had informed the Curia of the contents of Gregory XVII’s last unpublished encyclical. That really upset him. He denied any such act. He disclaimed knowledge of any encyclical. Then I mentioned the list and quoted from it the names which you had confirmed to me. He demanded to know where I had seen that document. I told him I had to protect my sources;

but clearly, I might be prepared to trade some information with him. He told me he knew about the list but he had never seen it. He went on to explain Gregory XVII was a great believer in personal diplomacy. He was altogether too vulnerable to gestures of friendship. The Secretariat of State saw great dangers also in his attitude towards Les Amis du Silence.”

“The what?” It was almost a shout from Mendelius. Rainer threw back his head and laughed.

“I thought that would get to you, Carl! It certainly did to me. Who were the Friends of Silence, I asked. But our little Monsignor realised that he had made a big blunder and urged me to forget that I had ever heard such a phrase. I tried to reassure him. He refused to be comforted. The interview was over. I was left with the four names: Petrov and the others and something called “Les Amis du Silence’. That night, Saturday, I took Pia to dinner at Piccola Roma and afterwards to a discotheque. We left about two in the morning. The streets were almost deserted. That was when we realised we were being followed. We’ve been under surveillance ever since.”