The Clowns of God (36 page)

“If you drop it you pay for it!”

“I’ll be very careful. It’s beautiful. What does the design represent?”

She hesitated for a moment, as if afraid of mockery, then explained: “I call it a cosmos-cup. The goblet’s a circle, the sign of perfection. The lower part is the sea, waves and fishes.

The upper is the land, wheat and vines. It’s a representation of the cosmos.”

“And where are the humans in the cosmos?”

“They drink from the cup.”

The conceit pleased him. He wondered how far she would embellish it. He asked again: “Does God figure in the design?”

She gave him a swift, suspicious look.

“Is it important?”

“It’s interesting, at least.”

“Are you a Christian?”

Jean Marie chuckled.

“I am, even if I don’t look like one.”

“Then you’ll know that the fish and the vine and the wheat are symbols of Christ and the Eucharist.”

“How much is the piece?”

“Six hundred francs.” Then she added defensively:

“There’s a lot of work in it.”

“I can see that. I’ll take it. Can you pack it safely for me?”

“Yes. It won’t be elegant, but it will be safe.”

She set down the work she was doing and began packing the goblet in a stained cardboard box filled with plastic pellets. Watching her, Jean Marie noticed how thin she was, and how, with the small effort, the sweat broke out on her forehead, and her hands fumbled unsteadily with the fragile piece. As he counted out the money he said:

“I’m a sentimental collector. I always like to celebrate with the artist. Will you join me for a drink and a sandwich?”

Again she gave him that wary sidelong look and said curtly:

“Thanks, but you paid a good price. You don’t have to do me favours.”

“I was asking you to do me one,” said Jean Marie Barette.

“I’ve had a rough morning and a nervous lunch. I’d be glad of someone to talk to. Besides, it’s only three steps from here to the cafe.”

“Oh, very well.”

She shoved the parcel into his hands, called to a nearby painter to watch her table, then walked with Jean Marie to the cafe at the corner of the Place. She had a curious, hop pity gait which slewed her almost in a half-circle with every pace. The spinal curvature was grossly pronounced, and her head, elfishly beautiful, was comically mismatched, as if set askew by a drunken sculptor.

She ordered coffee and a cognac and a ham roll and a hardboiled egg. She ate ravenously, while Jean Marie toyed with a glass of Vichy water and tried to keep the conversation alive.

“I had another piece of luck this afternoon: a first edition of Verlaine’s Fetes Galantes.”

“You collect books too?”

“I love beautiful things; but these are gifts for other people.

Your goblet will go to a lady near Versailles who has multiple sclerosis. I’ll write and explain the symbolism to her.”

“I can save you the trouble. I typed up a little piece about it. I’ll give it to you before you go. Strange you should ask me where God came in.”

“Why strange?”

“Most people find the subject embarrassing.”

“And you?”

“I gave up being embarrassed a long time ago. I accept that I’m a freak. It’s easier for me, it’s easier for people if I take my oddity for granted. Sometimes it’s hard though. Up here on the Place you get all types. There are some weird ones who want to sleep with crippled women. That’s why I was a bit sharp with you. Some of the weird ones are even older than you.”

Jean Marie threw back his head and laughed till the tears ran down his face. Finally he managed to splutter: “Dear God! And to think I had to come back to France to hear it!”

“Please! Don’t make fun of me! Things can get very rough up here, believe me!”

“I do believe you.” Jean Marie recovered himself slowly.

“Now, would you mind telling me your name?”

“It’s signed on the piece -Judith.”

“Judith what?”

“Just that. In the community we use only first names.”

“The Community? You mean you’re a nun?”

“Not exactly. There are about a dozen of us women who live together. We’re all handicapped in one way or another not all physically! We share what we earn. We look after each other. We’re also a kind of refuge for young girls of the quarter who get into bother. It sounds primitive, and it is; but it’s very satisfying and we feel it puts us close to the early Christian idea. After what you paid for the cosmos-cup you deserve to be remembered tonight at the meal prayer! What’s your name work.”

I like to keep a list of people who’ve bought my “Jean Marie Barette.”

“Are you anybody important?”

“Just remember me in the meal prayer,” said Jean Marie Barette.

“But tell me one thing. How did this this community of yours start?”

“That was strange. You remember some months ago the Pope abdicated and a new one was elected. Normally it wouldn’t have meant very much. I’ve never met anyone higher than a parish priest. But that was a bad time for me.

Nothing seemed to be going right. There seemed to be a connection between that event and my life. You know what I mean?”

“I know very well,” said Jean Marie with feeling.

“A little while afterwards I was working in my studio. I had a little mansard apartment down the road from here. A girl I know, a model who works for some of the painters, staggered in. She was drunk and she’d been raped and punched about and her concierge had thrown her out. I sobered her up and took her to the clinic to be patched up, then I brought her back to my place. That night she turned very strange remote and hostile and how do I say it? disconnected. I was frightened to be near her and yet I didn’t dare to leave her. So, just to get her interested in something, I started carving a little doll out of a clothes peg. I made three altogether; then we sat down and made dresses for them, as though I were the mother and she the child. That night she slept quietly in my bed, holding my hand. Next day I got two friends to share the day with her; and so it went on until she came back to normal. By then we had a little group and it seemed a pity to break it up. We worked out that we could save money and live more comfortably if we lodged as a family. The religious part? Well, that seemed to come in quite naturally. One girl had been in India and had learned meditation techniques. I’d been brought up in a convent and I rather liked the idea of meeting for family prayer. Then one of the girls brought home a worker priest she’d met in a brasserie. He talked to us, lent us books. Also, if we were bothered at night we’d telephone him and he’d arrive with a couple of his friends from the factory. That was a help I promise you! Well, after a while, we managed to work out a pattern of living that suited us. Few of us were virgins. None of us is sure whether we’re ready for a long-term relationship with a man. Some of us may get married. But we’re all believers and we work at trying to live by the Book. So there we are! I’m sure it doesn’t mean too much to you, but for us, it’s a peace-giving thing.”

“I’m very glad to have met you,” said Jean Marie Barette.

“And very proud to have your cosmos-cup. Would you accept a gift from me?”

“What sort of gift?” The old wary look was back.

He hastened to dispel her fears.

“The Verlaine I found today. There is a line in it that might have been written about you. It’s in the poet’s own handwriting.” He took the small volume from his pocket and read her the quatrain pasted inside the jacket… ““Votre ame est unpaysage choisi…”.”

He asked very humbly: “Will you accept it please?”

“If you’ll dedicate it for me.”

“What sort of dedication?”

“Oh, the usual. Just a little word and your autograph.”

He thought about it for a moment and then wrote:

For Judith, who showed me the universe in a wine cup Jean Marie Barette, lately Pope Gregory XVII The girl stared, unbelieving, at the classic script. She looked up, searching for mockery in his smiling face. She said tremulously:

“I don’t understand I…”

“I don’t understand either,” said Jean Marie Barette.

“But I think you have just given me a lesson in faith.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said the small, twisted girl.

“It means that what I was trying to tell the world from Vatican Hill, you have accomplished from a mansard in Paris.

Let me try to explain …” . And when he had finished telling her the whole long story, she stretched out an emaciated hand, rough from the etcher’s tools, and laid it over his. She said with an urchin grin:

“I hope I can tell it to the girls the way you’ve explained it to me. It would help if I could. Every so often they get fed up, because our little family seems so pointless and disorganised. I keep saying that there’s one good thing about hitting rock bottom. The only place to go is up!” Her smile faded and she added gravely: “You’re down there now; so you know. Would you like to come home to dinner?”

“Thank you; but no!” He was careful not to disappoint.

“You see, Judith my love, you don’t need me. Your own hearts have taught you better than I ever could. Already you have Christ in the midst of you.”

The evening traffic was murderous; but he rode back to the Hostellerie on a white cloud of serenity. Today, if ever in his life, he had seen how the Spirit preempted all the plans of high men. This tiny group of women, maimed and threatened, had made themselves a family. They had asked no patent, no rescript. They had love to share and they shared it.

They needed to think; they thought. They found an impulse to pray; they prayed. They found themselves a teacher in a workers’ bar; and girls in trouble came to them, because they felt the warmth of the hearth-fire.

The group might not be stable. It had no guarantees of continuity. There was no constitution, no sanction to give it legal identity. But what matter? It was like the camp-fire in the desert, lit at nightfall, quenched at dawn; but while it lasted it was a testimony to human sojourn to the God who visited man in his dreams. Once again the voice of Carl Mendelius wove itself into his reverie: ‘.. . The Kingdom of God is a dwelling-place for men. What else can it signify but a condition in which human existence is not only tolerable but joyful because it is open to infinity…”

How better could one express the phenomenon of a small, twisted girl who engraved the cosmos on a wine glass and made a family for hurt women under the roof-tops of Paris?

When he arrived at the Hostellerie his first act was to telephone Tubingen. Lotte was at the hospital but Johann was at home. He had good news.

“Father’s condition is stable. The infection is under control. We’re still not sure about his sight; but at least we know he’ll survive. Oh, another piece of news! The valley’s ours.

The contracts were signed today. I’m going down next week to talk to surveyors and architects and engineers. And I’ve been deferred from military service on compassionate grounds! How are things with you, Uncle Jean?”

“Good, very good! Will you give a message to your father?

Write it down like a good fellow.”

“Go ahead.”

“Tell him from me: “Today I was again given a sign. It came from a woman who showed me the cosmos in a wine glass.”

Repeat that please.”

“Today you were again given a sign. It came from a woman who showed you the cosmos in a wine glass.”

“If ever you get a message that purports to come from me, it must carry that identification.”

“Understood! What are your movements, Uncle Jean?”

“I don’t know but they may be hurried. Remember what I told you. Get your family out of Tubingen as soon as you can. My love to you all!”

“And ours to you. What’s the weather like in Paris?”

“Threatening.”

“Same here. We disbanded our club as you suggested.”

“And got rid of the equipment?”

“Yes.”

“Good! I’ll be in touch whenever I can. Remember me kindly to Professor Meissner. Auf Wiedersehen.”

He had hardly set down the receiver when Pierre Duhamel came to deliver his new passport, and a new identity card, inscribed to J. M. Gregoire, pasteur en retraite. He described to Jean Marie their uses and limitations.

“Everything is authentic, since you once bore the name Gregory. You are a minister of religion. You are pensioned off. The numbers on the documents belong to a series used for special categories of government agents so no French immigration officer will want to ask questions. Foreign consulates will not raise too many problems about granting a visa to a retired clergyman travelling for his health. However, try not to lose the documents, try not to get into trouble and have them impounded. That could be embarrassing to me.

Apropos of which, my dear Monseigneur, you opened your mouth very wide with the bankers this morning. The lines were buzzing as soon as they got back to their offices. Once again you are named as a dangerous gad-fly.”

“And you, my dear Pierre, are you of the same mind about me?”

Duhamel ignored the question. He said simply:

“My wife sends you her thanks. She is in remission again and more comfortable than she has been for a long time. The curious thing is that even though she appeared to be unconscious, she remembers your visit and describes what you did, most vividly, as a ‘caress of life’. Under other circumstances I would be very jealous of you.”

Jean Marie ignored the tiny barb.

“I bought a small gift for you both.”

“There was no need.” Duhamel was touched.

“We are already in your debt.”

Jean Marie handed him the cardboard box and made a smiling apology.

“I wasn’t able to have it gift-wrapped. You can open it if you want.”

Duhamel snapped the string, opened the box and took out the goblet. He examined it with the care of a connoisseur.

“This is lovely. Where did you find it?”

Jean Marie recounted his meeting with Judith, the maimed one, in the Place du Tertre. He gave him the paper which explained the symbolism of the design, and told of the curious little community of women.

Pierre Duhamel listened in silence and made only a single terse comment: “You’re working very hard to convert me.”