The Clowns of God (40 page)

“Five letters. Something better than six thousand words.”

“My God! You are industrious. I’ll be over in twenty minutes.”

“Would you do me a favour? On your way, pick up a basket of flowers for Roberta and a card to go with them. I’d do it myself, but I’m not supposed to leave the house.”

“Better still: let me have them delivered direct from the florist. What do you want to say on the card?”

“Just: “To say my thanks, Jeannot le Bouffon’.”

“Got it! I’m on my way.”

In eighteen minutes he was at the door, brisk, blunt and businesslike. Before he read a line of the manuscript he laid down another set of ground rules.

“This is the big game: no compliments, no concessions. If it’s good I say so. If it’s bad we burn it. In between? Well, we think about it.”

“Very proper,” said Jean Marie placidly, “except you can’t burn anything you don’t own!”

Hennessy glanced quickly through the manuscript.

“Good! For a start it’s legible. Why don’t they teach handwriting like this any more? I want to be alone for half an hour. That will give you time to read vespers in the garden. You might remember me when you come to the Domine Exaudi.”

“With pleasure.”

He was hardly out of the door before Hennessy was deep in his reading. Jean Marie chuckled quietly to himself. He felt like a scene-shifter in a Japanese play; he was dressed in black and therefore to be ignored. He did, however, make remembrance of Adrian Hennessy at the Domine Exaudi. He said, “Please! Let me be able to trust him! I’m not sure in my judgments any more.”

The judgment that Hennessy passed on the manuscript was brief and final.

“That’s what you promised. You moved me and I’ve got boiler plate around my heart.”

“So what happens now?”

“I take these, have them copied and a couple of file copies sent to you. I retain the original holographs in case we have to authenticate. Natalie and Florent read them and come up with ideas for special audio-visual treatments. Meantime, I’m looking for newspaper, magazine and book outlets in all languages. You will continue writing and may God guide your pen! As soon as we’ve got concrete situations, we’ll present them to you for approval. Your flowers are ordered.

Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“I’m under Grade A surveillance as a political agitator or at least I will be as soon as my whereabouts are known. I’d like to get out and stretch my legs, eat in a restaurant; but my face is too well known. Any suggestions?”

“Easiest thing in the world.” Hennessy consulted his pocket-book and then made a telephone call.

“Rolf? Adrian Hennessy. I’ve got a job for you. Immediate. Highest scale for payment. Let me see… I’ll read him off to you. Age:

sixty-five, grey hair reasonably abundant, fair complexion, features thin but fine-boned, eyes blue, very slim. Well, the point is he’s anchored to the house and he’ll soon be chewing the carpet. Yes, he is well known, so it’s a whole transformation scene… but not the Hunchback of Notre Dame, for God’s sake! He still wants to eat in a public place. Have you got a pencil? I’ll read you the address. How long will it take you to get here? .. . Fine, I’ll wait. That’s right. He’s one of mine and very close!” He put down the receiver and turned to Jean Marie.

“Rolf Levandow, Russian-Jewish, best makeup man in the world. He’ll be here in half an hour with his box of tricks. When he’s finished, your own mother wouldn’t know you without a voice-print.”

“You amaze me, Adrian Hennessy.”

“I am what you see. I give what I’m paid for: total service!

That’s the chalk-line. Nobody steps over it unless I ask them even you, Jeannot le Bouffon!”

“Please!” Jean Marie held up his hands in protest.

“I wasn’t asking to hear your confession!”

“You’ve heard it, anyway.” Adrian Hennessy was suddenly strange and far away.

“I know how to arrange any service you want, from a lipstick promotion to a liquidation.

I walk some pretty wavy lines; but I don’t cross up my clients, and nobody owns enough of me so that I can’t toss the contract back on the desk and walk out. But let’s talk about you for a moment. A couple of months ago you were one of the high men, spiritual leader of half a billion people, absolute monarch of the smallest but most important enclave in the world. That’s an enormous power base. With it, you had a whole, world-wide organisation of clergy, monks, nuns and parochial laity. Yet you surrendered it all!.. . Now look at you! You can’t go for a stroll except in disguise. You’re the houseguest of a lady lion-hunter. You’re depending on her to buy you print-space and air-time that once you could have had for free. I have to ask myself what sense this makes to you.”

Jean Marie considered the question for a moment and then shook his head.

“Let’s not play dialectic games, Mr. Hennessy. An eagle can talk sense with a canary but a canary with a goldfish, never! They live by diverse modes in diverse elements. I have had an experience which has changed me completely for better or worse is not the question. It is simply that I am different.”

“How? In what particulars?” Hennessy, cold-eyed, pressed the question.

“I need to know the man I’m serving.”

“I can tell you only by simile,” said Jean Marie quietly.

“Do you remember the gospel story of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead?”

“I remember it.”

“Think about the details: the sisters in grief, in fear of what might be revealed when the tomb was opened. lam foetet, they said.

“Already he stinks!” Then the tomb opened. Jesus called. Lazarus stepped out, still wrapped in the cerecloths.

Have you ever thought how he must have felt, as he stood blinking in the sunlight, looking anew on a world from which he had taken his last leave?.. . After what happened to me in the garden at Monte Cassino, I was like Lazarus. Nothing could ever be the same as it was before.”

“I think I understand,” said Hennessy dubiously, “but even if you’ve changed, the world hasn’t. Never forget that!”

“Why do you call Roberta Saracini a lion-hunter?”

“Because I’m trying to be polite.” Hennessy was suddenly snappish.

“In my country they use a dirtier word for women who chase male celebrities. Don’t mistake me! She’s a good client and you need her! But part of me is an old-fashioned Irishman and I hate to see a priest tied to a woman’s apron strings ” “You have bad manners and a dirty mouth!” Jean Marie was angry and harsh.

“I presume you said all this to Madame Saracini before you began taking her money?”

“I did.” Hennessy was unmoved.

“Because it’s my job to point out the land mines before you both step on them. Since her father was put away, Roberta’s got religion. She works at it, as she works at everything else. It helps her and I’m glad.

But before that and I know! cocktails with Roberta meant breakfast in bed as well. So, you, Monseigneur, can very easily get caught in the slipstream of her past. You’re under Grade A surveillance, because the government is looking for nails to put in your coffin. If you think I’ve got a dirty mouth, wait till you hear the government brand of pornography! .. . Simple example! You ordered flowers for Roberta.

A gentleman’s gesture to his hostess; no harm in it at all! But how would you feel if someone planted a gossip item: “What high Catholic dignitary is sending flowers to what lady banker whose daddy once took the Vatican for a reputed fifteen million?” That’s only one of the risks.”

“I am grateful for your care,” said Jean Marie with mild irony.

“But I suggest that there is no recourse against malice and evil report.”

“Don’t patronise me!” Hennessy was suddenly furious.

“It happens I do care! I believe what you say! I want it heard! But I don’t want my Church shamed in the city square.”

“Forgive me!” Jean Marie made a rueful apology.

“I

warned you. I haven’t changed for the better.”

“At least you’ve got fire in your belly,” said Hennessy with a sour grin.

“Next time I’ll choose my words more carefully.”

The make-up man arrived a big, swart, bearded fellow who looked like an Old Testament prophet and was just as eloquent and peremptory. Disguise, he explained at length, was a matter of illusion. Complicated make-up was for the stage or the screen. Very few women knew how to use cosmetics properly, even though they applied them every day. Rolf Levandow would certainly not trust an elderly gentleman of sixty-five to do a successful maquillage. So, let’s see! Head this way, head that! A pity to change the hair. It would be a kind of mutilation. Presumably Jean Marie was not entering himself for a concourse of elegance. On the other hand, he could not pass for a workman not with those thin shoulders and flat belly and soft hands. Well then! A retired professor, a magazine critic, something in the arts! Again the idea was to create a local identity; so that the man behind the bar and the girl at the newspaper kiosk and the waiter in the brasserie would swear that he was familiar and safe. Finally, Jean Marie found himself looking into a mirror at a slightly seedy scholar, who wore a basque beret, gold pince-nez with a moire ribbon and a pair of gum-pads that gave him a rabbit faced look. As the make-up man explained, a literary magazine under the arm would help; an inexpensive cane was optional; and a certain air of parsimony was recommended, like counting out his coins from a little leather purse. Practice would suggest other embellishments. He should try to enjoy it as a game. If he wanted a change for any reason, then it could be arranged. Frequently one found the subject got bored with a single identity. He would leave his card

.. .

“Break it up, Rolf!” said Hennessy.

“My friend and I have lots of work to do. I’ll walk you to the taxi rank.”

When he came back Jean Marie was still studying himself in the mirror. Hennessy laughed.

“It works, doesn’t it? I told you he was the best. And it would pay you to keep in touch with him for more reasons than make-up.”

“Oh?”

“He’s an Israeli agent, a member of Shin Beth. This job is a useful cover. He travels a lot with film people and does regular work for French television. He recognised you instantly. He says the Israelis are well disposed towards you.

They understand prophets in exile! Who knows, you may find him helpful. I should be on my way.”

“When will I hear from you?”

“As soon as there’s anything to report. You keep working on the letters.”

“I will. Could I ask a small service?”

“Sure!”

“Let me walk with you as far as the quai. I have to get used to this new fellow with the pince-nez and the beret!”

It was the simplest of pleasures to stroll along the river, watch the hopeful anglers and the lovers hand in hand and the tourists in the bateaux mouches and the sunset splendours drenching the grey pile of Notre Dame. There was a childlike fun, too, in the disguise game. He bought, for a few francs, a battered volume of Les Trophees and a cane with a dog’s-head handle. Thus protected, as if by a cloak of invisibility, he sauntered along, happy as any literary gentleman who, even if he were pinched by inflation, still got the best out of his autumn years.

It was an agreeable fantasy and it carried him through to the last ceremony of the afternoon, when he settled himself under the awning of a pavement cafe, ordered coffee and a sweet pastry and divided his attention between the passers-by and the lapidarian verse of Jose Maria de Heredia. He found that the old Parnassian had worn well and that he himself could still be moved by that last poignant moment between Antony and Cleopatra on the eve of the battle of Actium.

Et co urbe sur elle, I’ardent imperator Voyait dans ses yeux clairs etoiles de points d’or, Toute nne mer immense ou fuyaient des gale res

The grave and fateful beauty of the image matched his own mood of elegy. It seemed a blasphemy even to contemplate the ruin of Paris, this so-human city, the extinction of all its serene beauties. And yet, come Rubicon Day, the sentence would be irrevocable and any man who had lived in Rome knew how fragile was the fabric of the greatest empire and how quiet the dead were in their urns and catacombs. Then he heard the voice. It was close and to his left, a hearty American baritone expounding the art of bouquinage:

“You don’t go at it as if you’re turning out grandmother’s attic. You decide on one set of prints you’d really like to own.

It doesn’t matter if they’re as rare as hens’ teeth. That’s just the starting point. It tells the man you’re serious, that you’ve got money to spend and it will pay him to take time and show you what he’s hiding under the counter. That’s the way I worked in Germany and …”

As the monologue rolled on, Jean Marie fished for money in his wallet and turned his head slowly as if to signal a waiter.

He remembered the dictum of Rolf Levandow. Disguise was illusion. Even if someone thought he recognised you, he was still put off by the unfamiliar features. You had to capitalise on that, stare him down, snub him if he greeted you.

Alvin Dolman was seated at the next table, deep in talk with a young woman dressed in bright summer cotton. As Jean Marie raised his hand to signal for the check, Dolman looked up. Their eyes met. Jean Marie remembered that he was wearing pince-nez and that, very probably, Dolman could not see his eyes. He turned away slowly; then, as if impatient to be gone, shoved a ten franc note under the saucer, gathered up his book and cane and edged his way past Dolman’s table towards the street. Mercifully, Dolman had not paused in his monologue.

“Now you have to remember the kind of things that usually turn up on the book stalls I met a guy today the one next to where you were standing who specialises in ballet designs. That’s not my line, but …” . But the noonday devil was in Paris and Jean Marie Barette could make some disturbing guesses at his current employment. Ten paces away from the cafe he let his book fall to the pavement. As he bent to retrieve it, he looked back.

Alvin Dolman was still deep in talk with the girl. He seemed to have made some progress. He was now holding her hand.

Jean Marie Barette hoped she would be responsive enough to keep him interested at least until he himself was safe in his own bolt-hole.