The Clowns of God Read online

  Mendelius could hardly believe the evidence of his own eyes. Papal encyclicals, for all their portentous authority, were usually commonplace documents—stating traditional positions on matters of faith or morals. Any good theologian could frame the argument. Any good Latinist could make it eloquent.

  The pattern was still that of the old rhetoricians. The argument was laid down. Scripture and the Fathers were quoted in support. Directives were given, binding the conscience of the faithful. There was a closing exhortation to faith, hope and continuing charity. The formal “we” was used throughout, not merely to express the dignity of the Pontiff but to connote a community and a continuity in the office and in the teaching. The implication was plain: the Pope taught nothing new; he expounded an ancient and unchangeable truth, simply applying it to the needs of his time.

  At one stroke Jean Marie Barette had broken the pattern. He had abrogated the role of exegete and assumed the mantle of the prophet. “I, Gregory, am commanded by the Holy Spirit…” Even in the formal Latin, the impact of the words was shocking. No wonder the men of the Curia had blanched when they read them for the first time. What followed was even more tendentious:

  … The comfort which I offer you is the abiding promise of our Lord Jesus Christ: “I will not leave you orphans. Behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.” The warning I give you is that the end is very near, that this generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled… I do not tell you this of myself, or because I have predicated it upon human reason, but because it was shown to me in a vision, which I dare not conceal but am commanded to tell openly to the world. But even that revelation was no new thing. It was simply an affirmation, clear as sunrise, of what was revealed in the Holy Scriptures.…

  There followed a long exposition of texts from the Synoptic Gospels, and a series of eloquent analogies between the biblical “signs” and the circumstances of the last decade of the twentieth century: wars and rumours of wars, famines and epidemics, false Christs and false prophets.

  To Carl Mendelius, deeply and professionally versed in apocalyptic literature from the earliest times to the present, it was a disturbing and dangerous document. Emanating from so high a source it could not fail to raise alarm and panic. Among the militant it might easily serve as a rallying cry for one last crusade of the elect against the unrighteous. To the weak and the fearful it might even be an inducement to suicide before the horrors of the last times overtook them.

  He asked himself what he would have done had he, like the secretary, seen it, new-written, on the Pontiff’s desk. Without a doubt he would have urged its suppression. Which was exactly what the Cardinals had done: suppressed the document and silenced the author.

  Then a new thought presented itself. Was not this the fate of all prophets, the price they paid for a terrible gift, the bloody seal of truth upon their soothsaying? Out of the welter of biblical eloquence another text echoed in his mind; the last lamentation of Christ over the Holy City.

  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent to thee! How often would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but thou wouldst not!… Therefore the day will come when thine enemies will cast a trench about thee, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the things that are to thy peace!”

  It was an eerie thought for the midnight hour, with the moonlight streaming through the leaded windows and the cold wind searching down the Neckar valley and round the alleys of the old town where poor Hölderlin died mad and Melanchthon, sanest of men, taught that “God draws; but he draws the willing ones.”

  All his experience affirmed that Jean Marie Barette was the most willing, the most open of men, the least likely to fall victim to a fanatic’s illusion.

  True, he had written a wildly imprudent document. Yet, perhaps this was the core of the matter: that in the hour of extremity only such a folly could command the attention of the world.

  But command it to what? If the final catastrophe were at hand, its date computed irrevocably into the mechanism of creation, then why proclaim it at all? What counsel could prevail against the nightmare knowledge? What prayer had potency against a rescript written from eternity? There was a deep pathos in Jean Marie’s response to the questions:

  … My dear brothers and sisters, my little children, we all fear death, we shrink from the suffering which may precede it. We quail from the mystery of the last leap, which we must all make, into eternity. But we are followers of the Lord, the Son of God who suffered and died in human flesh. We are the inheritors of the good news which he left with us: that death is the gateway to life, that it is a leap, not into darkness, but into the hands of Everlasting Mercy. It is an act of trust, an act of love, by which, as lovers do, we abandon ourselves to, become one with, the Beloved.…

  The knock at the door startled Mendelius. His daughter, Katrin, entered, hesitant and timid. She was in her dressing gown, her blond hair tied back with a pink ribbon, her face scrubbed clean of makeup, her eyes red with weeping. She asked, “May I talk with you, Papa?”

  “Of course, sweetheart.” He was instantly solicitous. “What’s the matter? You’ve been crying.” He kissed her gently and led her to a chair. “Now tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “This trip to Paris. Mother’s still very angry about it. She says I have to discuss it with you. She doesn’t understand, Papa—truly she doesn’t. I’m nineteen. I’m a woman now, just as much as she is and…”

  “Take it easy, little one! Let’s start from the beginning. You want to go to Paris for the summer. Who’s going with you?”

  “Franz, of course! You know we’ve been going together for ages now. You said you liked him very much.”

  “I do. He’s a very nice young man. A promising painter, too. Are you in love with him?”

  “Yes, I am.” There was a note of defiance in the answer. “And he’s in love with me!”

  “Then I’m very happy for you both, little one!” He smiled and patted her hand. “It’s the best feeling in the world. So what comes next? You’ve talked about marriage? You want to become engaged? Is that it?”

  “No, Papa.” She was very firm about it. “Not yet anyway.… And that’s the point—Mama refuses to understand.”

  “Have you tried explaining it to her?”

  “Over and over! But she just won’t listen.”

  “Try me then,” said Mendelius gently.

  “It’s not easy. I’m not good with words like you. The thing is, I’m afraid; we’re both afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of always… just that. Of getting married and having children and trying to make a home, while the whole world could tumble round our ears in a day.” Suddenly she was passionate and eloquent. “You older ones don’t understand. You’ve survived a war. You’ve built things. You’ve had us; we’re grown up. But look at the world you’ve left us! All along the borders there are rocket launchers and missile silos. The oil’s running out so we’re using atom power and burying the waste that will one day poison our children.… You’ve given us everything except tomorrow! I don’t want my baby to be born in a bomb shelter and die of radiation sickness! All we’ve got is today and loving each other and we think we’ve got a right at least to that!”

  Her vehemence shocked him like water dashed in his face. The little blond Mädchen he had dandled on his knee was gone forever. In her place was an angry young woman, filled with a deep resentment against himself and his whole generation. The grim thought struck him that perhaps it was for her and all the others like her that Jean Marie Barette had written his prescription for life in the last days. Certainly it was not the young ones who had suppressed it, but the men of his generation, the elders, the seeming wise, the perennial pragmatists, living, in any case, on borrowed time. He breathed a silent prayer for wisdom of the t
ongue and began softly and tenderly to reason with her.

  “… Believe me, little one, I understand how you feel, both of you. Your mother understands, too, but in a different way, because she knows how a woman can be hurt, and how the consequences can be longer for her than for a man. She fights with you because she loves you and she’s afraid for you.… You see, whatever mess the world’s in—and I’ve been sitting here reading how much more horrible it may get—you’ve had the experience of loving and being loved. Not the whole experience, yet, but some of it; so you do know what loving’s about: giving and taking and caring and never grabbing the whole cake for yourself.… Now you’re beginning the next chapter with your Franz, and only the pair of you can write it, together. If you botch it, the best your mother and I can do is dry your tears and hold your hand until you’re ready to begin living again.… We can’t tell you how to arrange your emotional lives, or even your sexual lives. All we can tell you is that if you waste your hearts and waste that special joy that makes sex so wonderful, it’s something you can’t renew.… You can find other experiences, other joys, too, but never again that first, special, very exclusive ecstasy that makes this whole confusion of living and dying worthwhile.… What more can I say, little one? Go to Paris with your Franz. Learn your loving together. As for tomorrow?… How’s your Latin?”

  She gave him a tearful smile. “You know it’s always been terrible.”

  “Try this. ‘Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere.’ Old Horace wrote it.”

  “It still means nothing.”

  “It’s very simple. ‘Forbear to ask what tomorrow may bring.’… If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.”

  “Oh Papa!” She threw her arms round his neck and kissed him. “I love you so much! You’ve made me very happy.”

  “Go to bed, little one,” said Carl Mendelius softly. “I’ve still got an hour’s work ahead of me.”

  “You work too hard, Papa.”

  He gave her a small admonitory pat on the cheek and quoted lightly, “A father without work means a daughter without a dowry. Good night, my love. Golden dreams!”

  When the doors closed behind her, he felt the prickling of unbidden tears—tears for all the youthful hope in her, and all her threatened innocence. He blew his nose violently, picked up his spectacles and settled back to his reading of Jean Marie’s apocalypse.

  … It is clear that in the days of universal calamity the traditional structures of society will not survive. There will be a ferocious struggle for the simplest needs of life—food, water, fuel and shelter. Authority will be usurped by the strong and the cruel. Large urban societies will fragment themselves into tribal groups, each hostile to the other. Rural areas will be subject to pillage. The human person will be as much a prey as the beasts whom we now slaughter for food. Reason will be so clouded that man will resort for solace to the crudest and most violent forms of magic. It will be hard, even for those founded most strongly in the Promise of the Lord, to sustain their faith and continue to give witness, as they must do, even to the end.… How then must Christians comport themselves in these days of trial and terror?

  … Since they will no longer be able to maintain themselves as large groups, they must divide themselves into small communities, each capable of sustaining itself by the exercise of a common faith and a true mutual charity. Their Christian witness must be given by spreading that charity outwards to those who are not of the faith, by aiding the distressed, by sharing even their most meager means with those who are most deprived. When the priestly hierarchy can no longer function, they will elect to themselves ministers and teachers who will maintain the Word in its integrity, and continue to conduct the Eucharist.…

  “God Almighty! He’s really done it now!” Mendelius heard his own voice echo round the attic room. Fiction or predestined fact, this, from the pen of a Pope, was the unsayable, the absolutely unprintable. If the press of the world got hold of it, they would make Jean Marie Barette look like the maddest of mad mullahs, the craziest of all prophets of doom. And yet, in the context of an atomic calamity, it was a matter of simple logic. It was a scenario which, in one form or another, every national leader kept locked in his most secret files, the script for the aftermath of Armageddon.

  Which brought Mendelius, by a round turn, to the third and final document: the list of those who, Jean Marie thought, would be prepared to believe his message and his messenger. This was perhaps the most startling deposition of all. Unlike the letter and the encyclical it was typewritten, as if it had once formed part of an official file. It contained names, addresses, titles, telephone numbers, methods of private contact, and terse, telegraphic notes on each individual. There were politicians, industrialists, churchmen, leaders of dissident groups, editors of well-known journals, more than a hundred names in all. Two sample entries set the tone of the record.

  U.S.A.

  Name:

  Michael Grant Morrow

  Title:

  Secretary of State

  Private Address:

  593 Park Avenue, New York

  Telephone:

  (212) 689-7611

  Religion:

  Episcopalian

  Met at presidential dinner. Firm religious convictions. Speaks Russian, French and German. Respected in Russia but Asian relations weak. Deeply aware of hair-trigger situation on European frontiers. Has written a private monograph on the function of religious groups in a disintegrating social framework.

  U.S.S.R.

  Name:

  Sergei Andrevich Petrov

  Title:

  Minister for Agricultural Production

  Private Address:

  Unknown

  Telephone:

  Moscow 53871

  Private visit Vatican with nephew of Premier. Aware of need for religious and ethnic tolerance in U.S.S.R. and satellites, but unable make headway against party dogmatists. Concerned that Russia’s problems with food supplies and oil may precipitate conflict. Close friends in high military; enemies in K.G.B. Vulnerable in event bad harvest or economic blockade.

  On the last page was a note in Jean Marie’s own handwriting:

  All of the people on this list are known to me personally. Each in his own fashion has demonstrated an awareness of the crisis, and a willingness to confront it in a spirit of human compassion, if not always from the standpoint of a believer. Whether they will change under the pressure of coming events, I do not know. However, each has reposed a degree of trust in me and I have tried to return the gesture. As a private person you will be regarded at first with suspicion and they will be much more reserved with you. The risks of which I have warned you will begin at your first contact, because you will have no diplomatic protection, and the language of politics is contrived for the concealment of truth. J.M.B.

  Carl Mendelius took off his spectacles and tried to palm the sleep out of his eyes. He had read his brief with the devotion of a friend and the care of an honest scholar. Now, in this lonely hour after midnight, he must pass judgment on the text, if not yet on the man who had written it. A sudden cold fear took hold of him, as if the shadows of the room were haunted by old accusing ghosts: the ghosts of men burned for heresy and women drowned for witchcraft and nameless martyrs bewailing the vanity of their sacrifice.

  In these skeptical years of middle age, prayer did not come easily to him. Now he felt the need of it; but the words would not come. He was like a man locked in darkness so long that he had forgotten the sound of human speech.

  “Now, we’re really in cloud-cukoo-land!” Anneliese Meissner munched on a pickled gherkin and washed it down with red wine. “This so-called encyclical is a nonsense—a hotchpotch of folklore and mysticism!”

  They were sitting in her cluttered apartment, with the documents spread before them on the table and a bottle of Assmanshausen to keep down the dust that lay everywhere. Mendelius had refused to let the documents out of his sight, while Anneliese had
demanded, with equal vehemence, the right of the assessor to read every line of evidence. Mendelius protested her curt dismissal of the document.

  “Let’s stop right there! If we’re going to debate the issue let’s be scientific about it. First of all there’s a whole body of millenarian literature from the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament to Jakob Boehme in the seventeenth century and Teilhard de Chardin in the twentieth. Some of it is nonsense—yes! Some of it is high poetry like that of the Englishman William Blake. Some of it represents a critical interpretation of one of the oldest traditions in the world. Second, any serious scientist will tell you that there may be a term, by evolution or catastrophe, to human existence as we know it on the planet. What Jean Marie has written falls well within the saner confines of the codex. The scenario of catastrophe is already a matter of informed speculation by the scientists and military strategists.”

  “Agreed. But your man still makes a mishmash of it! Faith, hope and charity while the wolf-children are snarling at the gates! A loving God brooding over the chaos he himself has engineered. Balls, Professor!”

  “What would happen if the text were published?”

  “Half the world would laugh it out of court. The other half would catch the dancing madness and go waltzing out to meet the redeemer on his ‘cloud of glory.’ Seriously, Carl, I think you ought to burn the damned thing and forget it!”

  “I can burn it; but I can’t forget it.”

  “Because you’re a victim of the same God-madness!”

  “What about this third document—the list of names?”

  “I don’t see that it has any significance at all. It’s an aide-mémoire pulled out of the filing cabinet. Every politician in the world keeps records like that. What does he expect you to do with it? Trot round the world visiting all these people? What will you say to them? ‘My friend Gregory the Seventeenth, the one they tossed out of the Vatican, believes the end of the world is coming. He’s had a vision about it. He thought you should have advance notice.’ Come on, Carl! They’d have you in a straitjacket halfway through the first interview!”