The Clowns of God Read online

  “We’ll talk about it another time, liebchen. I need some professional counsel before I move a step out of Tübingen.”

  At fifty-three, Anneliese Meissner had achieved a variety of academic distinctions—the most notable of which was to be voted unanimously the ugliest woman in any faculty of the university. She was squat, fat and sallow, with a frog mouth and eyes scarcely visible behind thick myopic lenses. Her hair was a Medusa mess of faded yellow and her voice a hoarse rasp. Her dress was mannish and always ruinously untidy. Add to all that a sardonic wit and a merciless contempt for mediocrity and you had, as one colleague put it, “the perfect profile of a personality doomed to alienation.”

  Yet, by some miracle, she had escaped the doom and established herself as a kind of tutelary goddess in the shadow of the old castle of Hohentübingen. Her apartment on the Burgsteige was more like a club than a dwelling place, where students and faculty perched on stools and boxes to drink wine and make fierce debate until the small hours. Her lectures in clinical psychology were packed and her papers were published in learned journals in a dozen languages. She was even credited in student myth with a lover, a troll-like creature who lived in the Harz Mountains and who came to visit her in secret on Sundays and the greater holidays of the university calendar.

  The day after he received Jean Marie’s letter, Carl Mendelius invited her to lunch in a private booth at the Weinstube Forelle. Anneliese Meissner ate and drank copiously, yet still managed to deliver waspish monologues on the administration of university funds, the local politics of Land Baden-Württemberg, a colleague’s paper on endogenous depression, which she dismissed as “puerile rubbish,” and the sexual lives of Turkish labourers in the local paper industry. They were already at the coffee before Mendelius judged it wise to ask his question.

  “If I were to show you a letter, would you be able to offer a clinical opinion on the person who wrote it?”

  She fixed him with a myopic stare and smiled. The smile was terrifying. It was as if she were about to gobble him up with the crumbs of her strudel. “Are you going to show me the letter, Carl?”

  “If you’ll accept it as a professional and privileged communication. ”

  “From you, Carl, yes. But before you give it to me, you’d better understand a few axioms in my discipline. I don’t want you to communicate a document that’s obviously important to you and then complain because my commentary’s inadequate. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “First then: handwriting, in serial specimens, is a fairly reliable indicator to cerebral states. Even simple hypoxia—the inadequate oxygen supply to the brain—will produce rapid deterioration of the script. Second: even in the gravest psychotic illnesses, the subject may have lucid periods in which his writings or utterances are completely rational. Hölderlin died in this town of ours a hopeless schizophrenic. But would you guess it from reading Bread and Wine or Empedocles on Etna? Nietzsche died of general paralysis of the insane, probably due to syphilitic infection. Could you diagnose that, solely on the evidence of Thus Spake Zarathustra? Third point: any personal letter contains indications of emotional states or even psychic propensities; but they are indicators only. The states may be shallow, the propensities well within the confines of normality. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Admirably, Professor!” Carl Mendelius made a comical gesture of surrender. “I place my letter in safe hands.” He passed it to her across the table. “There are other documents as well, but I have not yet had time to study them. The author is Pope Gregory the Seventeenth, who abdicated last week.”

  Anneliese Meissner pursed her thick lips in a whistle of surprise but said nothing. She read the letter slowly, without comment, while Mendelius sipped his coffee and munched petits fours—bad for the waistline but better than the cigarette habit which he was trying desperately to abandon. Finally Anneliese finished her reading. She laid the letter on the table in front of her and covered it with her big pudgy hands. She chose her first words with clinical care.

  “I am not sure, Carl, that I am the right person to comment on this. I am not a believer, never have been. Whatever may be the faculty that enables one to make the leap from reason to faith, I have never had it. Some people are tone-deaf; others are colour-blind. I am incurably atheist. I have often regretted it. In clinical work I have sometimes felt handicapped when dealing with patients who have strong religious beliefs. You see, Carl”—she gave a long, wheezing chuckle—“according to my lights, you and all your kind live in a fixed delusional state, which is, by definition, insanity. On the other hand, since I can’t disprove your delusions, I have to accept that I may be the sick one.”

  Mendelius grinned at her and popped the last petit four into her mouth.

  “We’ve already agreed that your conclusions will be subject to large qualification. Your reputation will be safe with me.”

  “So, the evidence as I read it.” She picked up the letter and began her annotation. “Handwriting: no evidence of disturbance. It’s a beautiful regular script. The letter itself is precise and logical. The narrative sections are classically simple. The emotions of the writer are under control. Even when he speaks of being under surveillance, there is no overemphasis to indicate a paranoid state. The section dealing with the visionary experience is, within its limits, clear. There are no pathological images, with either a violent or a sexual connotation.… Prima facie, therefore, the man who wrote the letter was sane when he wrote it.”

  “But he does express doubts about his own sanity.”

  “In fact he does not. He recognizes that others may have doubts about it. He is absolutely convinced of the reality of his visionary experience.”

  “And what do you think of that experience?”

  “I am convinced that he had it. How I would interpret it is another matter. In the same fashion I am convinced that Martin Luther believed he saw the Devil in his cell and pitched an inkwell at him. That doesn’t mean I believe in the devil, only in the reality of the experience to Luther.” She laughed again, and went on in a more relaxed fashion. “You’re an old Jesuit, Carl. You know what I’m talking about. I deal with delusional patients all the time. I have to start with the premise that their delusions are real to them.”

  “So you’re saying Jean Marie is a delusional subject?”

  “Don’t put the words in my mouth, Carl!” Her reproof was instant and sharp. She thrust the letter towards him. “Take another look at the vision passage again, and the pieces before and after. It falls exactly into a daydream structure. He is reading and meditating in a sunny garden. All meditation involves some degree of auto-hypnosis. He dreams in two parts: the aftermath of the cataclysm on an empty earth, and then the whirling fiery passage to outer space. Both these images are vivid but essentially banal. They could have been culled from any good science fiction film. He has celebrated them many times before. Now he daydreams them. When he wakes he is back in the garden. It’s a common phenomenon.”

  “But he believes it is a supernatural intervention.”

  “He says he does.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean,” said Anneliese Meissner flatly, “he could be lying!”

  “No! It’s impossible! I know this man. We’re close as brothers.”

  “An unfortunate analogy,” said Anneliese Meissner mildly. “Sibling relationships can be infernally complicated. Simmer down, Carl! You wanted a professional opinion, you’re getting it. At least take time to examine a reasonable hypothesis.”

  “This one is pure fantasy!”

  “Is it? You’re an historian. Think back. How many convenient miracles can you name? How many most timely revelations? Every sect in the world has to provide them for its devotees. The Mormons have Joseph Smith and his fabulous golden plates; the Reverend Sun Myung Moon made himself the Lord of the Second Advent, even Jesus bowed down to worship him. So suppose, Carl—just suppose!—your Gregory the Seventeenth decided that this was crisi
s time for the institution and that the moment was ripe for some new manifestation of divine involvement.”

  “Then he was taking a hell of a gamble.”

  “And he lost it. Might he not now be seeking to recover something out of the wreckage, and using you to do it?”

  “It’s a monstrous idea!”

  “Not to me. Why are you choking on it? I’ll tell you. Because, though you like to believe you’re a liberal thinker, you’re still a member of the Roman Catholic family. For your own sake you have to protect the mythos. I noticed you didn’t wince once when I mentioned the Mormons and the Moonies. Come on, my friend! Where’s your mind?”

  “It seems I’ve mislaid it.” Carl Mendelius was grim.

  “If you take my advice, you’ll drop the whole affair.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a scholar with an international reputation. You want no truck with madness or folk magic.”

  “Jean Marie is my friend. I owe him at least an honesty enquiry.”

  “Then you’ll need a Beisitzer—an assessor to help you weigh the evidence.”

  “How would you like the job, Anneliese? It might give you some new clinical insights.”

  He said it as a joke to take the sting out of their discussion. The joke fell flat.

  Anneliese weighed the proposition for a long moment and then announced firmly, “Very well. I’ll do it. It’ll be a new experience to play inquisitor to a Pope. But, dear colleague”—she reached out and laid her big hand on his wrist—“I’m much more interested in keeping you honest!”

  When his last lecture was over, late in the afternoon, Carl Mendelius walked down to the river and sat a long time, watching the stately passage of swans on the grey water.

  Anneliese Meissner had left him deeply disturbed. She had challenged not only his relationship with Jean Marie Barette, but his integrity as a scholar, his moral stance as a seeker after truth. She had probed shrewdly at the weakest point in his intellectual armour: his inclination to make more tender judgments about his own religious family than about others. For all his skeptic bent, he was still god-haunted, conditioned to the pavlovian reflexes of his Jesuit past. He would rather conform his findings as an historian with orthodox tradition than deal bluntly with the contradictions between the two. He preferred the comfort of a familiar hearth to the solitude of the innovator. So far, he had not betrayed himself. He could still look in the mirror and respect the man he saw. But the danger was there, like a small prickling lust, ready to take fire at the right moment with the right woman.

  In the case of Jean Marie Barette, the danger of self-betrayal could be mortal. The issue was clear and he could not gloss or hedge it. There were three possibilities, mutually exclusive. Jean Marie was a madman. Jean Marie was a liar. Jean Marie was a man touched by God, charged to deliver a momentous revelation.

  He had two choices: refuse to be involved—which was the right of any honest man who felt himself incompetent—or submit the whole case to the most rigid scrutiny, and act without fear or favour on the evidence. With Anneliese Meissner, brusque and uncompromising, as his Beisitzer he could hardly do otherwise.

  But what of Jean Marie Barette, longtime friend of the heart? How would he react when the harsh terms of reference were set before him? How would he feel when the friend he sought as advocate presented himself as the Grand Inquisitor? Once again Carl Mendelius found himself flinching from the confrontation.

  Far away towards the Klinikum an ambulance siren sounded—a long, repetitive wail, eerie in the gathering dusk. Mendelius shivered under the impact of a childhood memory: the sound of air-raid sirens, and after it, the drone of aircraft and the shattering explosions of the fire bombs that rained down on Dresden.

  When he arrived home, he found the family huddled around the television screen. The new Pope had been elected in an afternoon session of the conclave and was now being proclaimed as Leo XIV. There was no magic in the occasion. The commentaries were without enthusiasm. Even the Roman crowd seemed listless and the traditional acclamations had a hollow ring.

  Their Pontiff was sixty-nine years old, a stout man with an eagle’s beak, a cold eye, a rasping Aemilian accent and twenty-five years’ practice in Curial business behind him. His election was the outcome of a careful but painfully obvious piece of statecraft.

  After two foreign incumbents, they needed an Italian who understood the rules of the papal game. After an actor turned zealot and a diplomat turned mystic the safest choice was Roberto Arnaldo, a bureaucrat with ice water in his veins. He would raise no passions, proclaim no visions. He would make none but the most necessary pronouncements; and these would be so carefully wrapped in Italian rhetoric that the liberals and the conservatives would swallow them with equal satisfaction. Most important of all, he suffered from gout and high cholesterol and, according to the actuaries, should enjoy a reign neither too short nor too long.

  The news kept the conversation going at Mendelius’ dining table. He was glad of the diversion, because Johann was moody over an essay that would not come right, Katrin was snappish and Lotte was at the low point of one of her menopausal depressions. It was an evening when he wondered with wry humour whether the celibate life had not a great deal to recommend it, and a non-celibate bachelor existence, even more. However, he was practiced enough in marriage to keep that kind of thought to himself.

  When the meal was over he retired to his study and made a telephone call to Herman Frank, director of the German Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.

  “Herman? This is Carl Mendelius. I’m calling to ask a favour. I’m coming to Rome for a week or ten days at the end of the month. Could you put me up?”

  “Delighted!” Frank was a silver-haired courtly fellow, an historian of Cinquecento painters, who kept one of the best tables in Rome. “Will Lotte be coming with you? We’ve got acres of space.”

  “Possibly. It’s not decided yet.”

  “Bring her! Hilde would be delighted. She needs some girl company.”

  “Thanks, Herman. You’re very kind.”

  “Not at all. You might be able to do me a favour, too.”

  “Name it.”

  “While you’re here the Academy will be playing host to a group of Evangelical pastors. The usual thing—daily lectures, evening discussions, afternoon bus rides. It would be a great feather in my cap if I could announce that the great Mendelius would give a couple of lectures, perhaps conduct a group discussion… ?”

  “Happy to do it, my friend.”

  “Wonderful! Wonderful! Let me know when you’re arriving and I’ll pick you up at the airport.…”

  Mendelius put down the receiver and gave a chuckle of satisfaction. Herman Frank’s invitation to lecture was a stroke of good fortune. The German Academy was one of the oldest and most prestigious national academies in Rome. Founded in 1910 in the reign of Wilhelm II of Prussia, it had survived two wars and the mindless ideologues of the Third Reich and still managed to maintain a reputation for solid Germanic scholarship. It offered Mendelius, therefore, a base of operations and a highly respectable cover for his delicate enquiries.

  The German contingent at the Vatican would respond happily to a dinner invitation from Herman Frank. His guest book was an elaborate tome resplendent with exotic titles like “Rector Magnificent of the Pontifical Biblical Institute” and “Grand Chancellor of the Institute of Biblical Archaeology.” How Lotte would respond to the idea was another matter. He needed a more propitious moment to open that little surprise packet.

  His next step was to prepare a list of contacts to whom he should write and announce his visit. He had been a denizen of the city long enough to assemble a miscellany of friends and acquaintances, from the crusty old Cardinal who disapproved his defection but was still generous enough to appreciate his scholarship, to the Custodian of Incunabula in the Vatican Library and the last dowager of the Pierleoni, who directed the gossips of Rome from her wheelchair. He was still dredging up names when Lotte came in,
carrying a tray of coffee. She looked penitent and forlorn, uncertain of her welcome.

  “The children have gone out. It’s lonely downstairs. Do you mind if I sit up here with you?”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her. “It’s lonely up here too, liebchen. Sit down and relax. I’ll pour the coffee.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Arranging our holiday.”

  He told her of his talk with Herman Frank. He enthused about the pleasures of the city in summer, the opportunity to meet old friends, do a little touring. She took it all with surprising calm. Then she asked:

  “It’s really about Jean Marie, isn’t it?”

  “Yes; but it’s also about us. I want you with me, Lotte. I need you. If the children want to come, I’ll arrange hostel accommodation for them.”

  “They have other plans, Carl. We were arguing about them before you came home. Katrin wants to go to Paris with her boyfriend. Johann is going hiking in Austria. That’s fine for him; but Katrin…”

  “Katrin’s a woman now, liebchen. She’ll do what she wants whether we approve or not. After all…” He bent and kissed her again. “They’re only lent to us; and when they leave home we’ll be left where we started. We’d better start practicing to be lovers again.”

  “I suppose so.” She gave a small shrugging gesture of defeat. “But, Carl…” She broke off, as if afraid to put the thought into words.

  Mendelius prompted her gently. “But what, liebchen?”

  “I know the children will leave us. I’m getting used to the idea, truly I am. But what if Jean Marie takes you away from me? This—this thing he wants of you is very strange and frightening.” Without warning she burst into convulsive sobbing. “I’m afraid, Carl… terribly, terribly afraid!”

  II

  “In these last fateful years of the millennium…” Thus the opening line of Jean Marie Barette’s unpublished encyclical. “In this dark time of confusion, violence and terror, I, Gregory, your brother in the flesh, your servant in Christ Jesus, am commanded by the Holy Spirit to write you these words of warning and of comfort.…”