The Alteration

by Kingsley Amis

  Pope John XXIV was nearly at the end of his day's business in the cabinet of his summer quarter: the documents on the porphyry work-table had been reduced to three, and only three persons remained in attendance. These were Count Paolo Maserati, Inventor-General to the Papacy, Father Gregory Satterthwaite, SJ, the privy secretary who had served His Holiness since eight years before his coronation, and Cardinal Berlinguer. Curtains of Swedish ermine kept out the late-afternoon sun and moved now and then in the slight breeze. At this hour, the plain, the City still scorched in the heat, but it was no more than pleasantly warm two and a half thousand feet up among the Alban hills, and, thanks to clever siting and careful building, the air seemed always fresh in the spacious apartments of the Castel Alto.

  The one who evidently found it not quite fresh enough at the moment was Count Maserati. Despite the thinness of his biscotto-coloured woodman style suit, he was sweating a little. He said now in careful English, the mode and language in which the present Pope greatly preferred to be addressed, 'The size of the assay was determined by the Chamber after due process, Your Holiness.'

  'On your advice, Count.' The Pope stared heavily through his eyeglasses. 'And, as we and you have just been let know, it was too small.'

  'But no assay can ever be large enough to guarantee—'

  'We're struck dumb by you. We don't know what to say, we're sure. There's no lack of subjects, after all. Over a hundred and fifty thousand without having to look outside Italy. And what are they? Heretics, apostates, runaways, New Englander spies, Turkish spies—grievous sinners every mother's soil. They mean to defy our authority, Count. Do you understand? They're-they're bad folk.'

  'Yes, Your Holiness,' said Maserati with conviction.

  'And what do you do? You take two hundred of them, a measly two hundred, and have them fornicate their heads off in between doses of Crick's Conductor. Ee, what a shocking fate! What do they care if they do lose their fertility?—they're inside again at the year's end, and they'll never need it there. Why did you not take two thousand? Four thousand? Then the deformities must have appeared, would have been ten or twenty times more likely to appear. Eh?'

  'Our facilities would not have allowed so many, Your Holiness.' Maserati spoke with less conviction than before.

  'Fuck your facilities! If they lack anything it's your blame and you know it. You are the Inventor-General, we believe.'

  There was silence but for the faint sound of cicadas. Frowning, the Pope stared at the nearest wall. It was fifty feet away and, like those adjacent to it, was hung from top to bottom with olive-green velvet. The purpose of this was to rest the eye and to conceal from it the beautiful travertine stone of which the room was built. The ceiling, painted with an awe-inspiring Creation by Tiepolo, was likewise hidden by an immense sheet of white linen. No object was visible, not even a clock or a candlestick, that might show signs of more than the absolute minimum in the way of craftsmanship: not an inch of floor showed between the plain rugs, the table bore a thin but opaque cloth and the chairs were of some black-painted wood with tie'd-on cushions covered in white silk. It was not (so he often said) that John XXIV disliked art, simply that he saw enough of it at other times to make its absence refreshing when he was at work. Throughout the rest of the building, as throughout the Vatican palaces except for the various cabinets there, art flourished unchecked, indeed perceptibly added to in one room and another by the reigning Pope himself, who knew that this was one ready method of furthering his very settled ambition to be remembered with exceptional vividness as long as the Papacy should last.

  The Vicar of Christ let Maserati wait for it a few moments longer, then said with some curiosity, 'How old are you, Count?'

  'Fifty-seven, Your Holiness.' Maserati spoke as if the fact singled him out for special and favourable notice, which was what he always tried to do when the Pope asked him this question.

  'Well, that's not truly old as men go today. Some reach the zenith of their powers at such an age.' (The Pope was fifty-four.) 'And then again some... begin... to decline. Do you feel that you begin to decline?'

  'No, Your Holiness.'

  'Another error of half this proportion and out go you. Further than that door into the bargain.'

  'Yes, Your Holiness,' said Maserati, trying this time to hide his relief.

  Here, Cardinal Berlinguer broke in. His English was not nearly as good as the Count's, but then it did not need to be: he had got his red hat two years earlier than the Pope and was second only to him in power. 'May I speak?'

  'Oh, we suppose so,' said the Pope impatiently. 'There are two matters still to be conferred upon.'

  'I will be short. Consider these numbers. The children we expect in the year is eight thousand and some more. The children who are born is six thousand and some more. This is just the... denatalita...'

  'Fall in the birth-rate,' supplied the Jesuit.

  'Yes, which we want, exact. The deformed children is one per centum and some more. This is almost seventy. Corsica is three thousand three hundred... square miles and some more. This is one deformed child in fourty-seven square miles and some more. This is nearly the same as the English island of Jersey. This morning I study it. Is this... so bad?'

  The Jesuit, a pale, thin-lipped man of fifty, said without expression, 'The design was to run at first for ten years. What do you say to ten deformed children in Jersey, Your Eminence? And some more.'

  'It is not so good,' agreed Berlinguer, nodding seriously. 'But I ask is it so bad.'

  'We'll be buggered!' The Pope sounded incredulous. 'Here you are, two grown men, and you talk of Jersey, where all they do is farm or idle. We and you don't intend to work our design only in such parts, leave alone dirty little savage places like Corsica. Consider not the square miles but the number of folk. There are almost twelve hundred thousand in London. If Crick's Conductor goes into the drinking-water there, in ten years we have...' The point of his stylus moved quickly over the tablet in front of him. 'We have almost three thousand children with this particular deformity, and in all England... over a hundred thousand.'

  Cardinal Berlinguer spread his hands. 'But—'

  'Yes, it is so bad! There'd be ill feeling among our flock, and if there's one thing we can't abide it's that. There'd be talk of divine displeasure, special pilgrimages to us and all manner of nuisance. And don't forget the matter of safety. Ay, that's what we said—safety. Do you think that no one in Corsica, even in Corsica, has remarked or will ever remark that the year of the deformities was also the year when officers were uncommonly interested in records touching births, and when the births themselves were uncommonly few?'

  'Shoot them,1 said Berlinguer.

  'Why, you... You go too fast, our lad. We're all for a bit of shooting when it's needed, but to shoot the guilty folk means rinding them, and rinding them means questioning, and questioning means a further threat to safety. We won't have it, do you hear? Crick's Conductor must not be applied again as it now stands.' The Pope turned to Father Satterthwaite. 'Have London let Crick know and order him to continue his trials. No, fetch him here to us... Now, as to our plague,' he went on, with a glance at the second remaining document, 'we need say very little to you. Our Inventor-General was right at first and at last, as he so often is.'

  None of the other three showed the smallest surprise at this change of tenor, certainly not Maserati, who knew quite well that the last phrases were intended to harrow his companions for talking of Jersey, not to mollify him in the least.

  'Yes, the indications were plain enough after the provings at East Runton and, uh, that Frenchie spot. The principle was too deadly to be transmitted. By which we mean'—the Pope gave a series of weighty nods at this point-'that the bastards awoke to life immortal before they could pass it on to their neighbours. The Sitges proving wasn't really needed, but we like to be on the safe side, as you know. We're afraid you'll just have to bear with us. We know we can rely on you to do that. Well, that's nearly four hundred souls th
e fewer, anyhow. And at least they didn't die in vain. To be reminded that the wrath of God can be strange and terrible and sudden does folk a power of good. Cease all trials of deadly principles,' he added abruptly to the Jesuit.

  'All?' asked Berlinguer.

  'Ay, all.' His Holiness gave a long sigh. 'Safety again. See, if we were a canny sod in a village on the coast and we learned of these incidents, do you know what we'd do? We'd conduct a design of night sentinels to watch for strangers, for anything out of the common coming by sea or land. That's what we'd do. And then...'

  'I said we were wrong to publish these things.'

  'Worse to let rumour do its work. Now, we graciously thank the honoured Inventor-General for his attendance and give him our blessing.'

  There was more silence when Maserati had taken his leave.

  The Pope, neatly-brushed head lowered, gazed at the final paper on the tablecloth before him. His expression was very grim indeed. Berlinguer and Satterthwaite exchanged looks of foreboding.

  'It's all too slow,' said the Pope finally. 'Try this, try that, try the other damned thing, give it time and it'll sort itself out. But time's what we and you are short of. Time runs out. We blame these medical inventors. For ever on the go saving life, extending life, protecting life and we don't know what all. Are you aware, Father Satterthwaite,' he demanded with an air of challenge, 'that at this pace there'll be eighty million folk in England by the year of Our Lord 2000?'

  'Yes, Your Holiness,' said the Jesuit, who was well enough aware, having himself supplied the figure to his master. 'Too many to feed.'

  'Too many to rule,' said Berlinguer.

  'There's nought else for it,' said the Pope.

  'War,' said Berlinguer.

  If we could only have it our way, it'd be simplicity itself. The English clobbering the bloody Frenchies, that's how it ought to go. But it can't be done. We'd have to intervene, quickly and decisively, else our authority would be weakened, and to our way of thinking that's out of the question. Ah well. Fetch us the Secretary of the War Chamber, the Captain-General, the High Admiral, the Superintendent of Aircraft and the comandantes in the Active Sphere. By the week's end, Father. Eh, it'll be a right cordial to give old Abdul a sore nose. We're afraid we don't take kindly to Mahometans. All those wives. And disputing our authority as the Almighty's vice-regent. He wouldn't much care to have Bulgaria pinched off him, wouldn't our Abdul. Not but what he won't live to thank us at last. After all, he has an excess of folk himself, or will have inside a generation. But we must admit we'd as soon there was some other way.'

  This theme was resumed when, Berlinguer having departed to his own castello down the valley, the Pope and his secretary stood on the long terrace that overlooked the plain and, in the furthest distance, the Tyrrhenian Sea. Only a little nearer, it seemed from here, lay Rome, still bright in the declining sun with tints of honey, pale rose, sienna and terracotta; by comparison, the two men were no more than a step from the ruins of the Castel Gandolfo, a Papal abode from early in the seventeenth century until the fatal night in 1853 on which a certain Percy Shelley, excommunicate English runaway and minor versifier, had set fire to it before perishing by his own hand. And the vineyard of the Castel Alto ran up almost to its walls, the source of a wine highly esteemed all over Latium but altogether disregarded by its proprietor, who now clutched a pewter mug of the Yorkshire stingo he regularly imported in bottle by aircraft.

  'It's a cruel shame, Greg, truly it is,' said the Pope, munching his lips together as he drank. 'All those men doomed to die. In the cause of Christ, we know. It's the wrong way on, look. The folk to go for are the females. What we mean—a hundred females and one male, suppositional limit to pregnancies in any given stretch of time, one hundred; a hundred males and one female, suppositional limit, one. Our word, if only we could put the women in the field, like in that book of Burgess's. Interesting lad, Burgess. It's a mortal pity he had to go and... Well, as we said, we do what we must do. But if we could just go about it differently...'

  'Aside from artificial regulation.' Only Satterthwaite was on such terms with the Pope as to be able even to utter this phrase in his presence.

  'That bugger Innocent XVII. We'd give him innocent. A Switzer, he was, and you can't whack them for contrariness. As soon as folk start to really believe-we're not talking about perishing inventors and suchlike, but sensible folk like us and you—as soon as they start to believe that the birth-rate desperately needs control, they go and put it to Innocent that he must sanction artificial regulation in some form. And what does he do? He ups and publishes a Bull declaring any such practice to be murder and its perpetrators to be subject to immediate excommunication. Do you follow us, Greg?'

  'Oh yes, Your Holiness,' said the Jesuit, understating the case, in the sense that after all these years he was ahead of the Pope as well.

  'Good. Now you see where that lands us and all the Supreme Pontiffs between us and Innocent. To revoke a Bull of an import like that, even to moot it, would lay any Holy Father open to a charge of heresy; at the very best, he must abdicate. Well, we say any: we mean any who's not so powerful that he hasn't a single enemy or rival in the whole Sacred College. In other words, more powerful than us, which we flatter ourselves is saying something. Yes, friend Berlinguer and his merry men would be at us like a pack of wolves and we'd have a Council on our hands before we knew where we were. We've not the slightest intention of landing up like our unfortunate predecessor and namesake in fourteen-whatever-it-was, thank you very much. That's that. And, as you may have heard us mention before, the only other design, to tacitly condone artificial regulation, to turn a blind eye, like Nelson at Lipari—that would be just as fatal. Mortal sin flourishing unrebuked by the Vicar of Christ? Don't make us laugh. See, it's already flourishing as much as we dare permit from Iceland to Cape Town.'

  The Pope lifted his mug and a manservant hurried forward to pour a fresh bottle of stingo. Father Satterthwaite declined an offer of more white wine.

  'Well, Greg, we and you mustn't take on. There are bright spots. One comes up tonight, when young Hubertus Incus commences in Rome. A notable occasion.'

  'I'd thought that music wasn't among Your Holiness's keenest pleasures.'

  'You know bloody well it isn't, but appearing in the character of the foremost of all lovers of art is. You know that too. And this time there'll be a mite added. Now and then our thoughts will turn to Abbot Thynne, once the lad's principal. He's a right gowk, is Thynne. Someone lets him know-he'd never have guessed it himself-that we require Hubertus in our city. And what does he do? He goes and petitions his Cardinal Archbishop to intercede for him with the King. We ask you! What could the King have done, a mere babe, new to the post, not yet crowned even? His father might have made a good show, but'—the Pope shook his head slowly—'no more than a show. As it is, of course, young William hears not a word of the matter, and... How does Thynne suppose a man's given Canterbury under an English Pope? As we said, he's a gowk. Well, we trust he soon settles down nicely in Madras. It's a fine city, we hear, though a touch hot in summer.'

  The great bells began to sound in the tower above their heads.

  'We say, is it that already? We must go and make ourselves beautiful for our guest. And you, Greg, hop to the transmitter and forewarn the Captain-General and the others of our design. No time like the present-that's our motto.'

  Over fifteen years afterwards, in the first week of December, a new production of Valeriani's L'Arkcchinata was put on at the Teatro Nuovo dell' Opera. The recent alterations and additions to the building, designed to fit it for performances of of works using the largest forces, such as the present one, Wagner's Kreuz and the Butterworth trilogy, had been the occasion of an impressive architectural feat. The opera-house now dominated the southern side of the Piazza Venezia, but by far the greater part of the medieval and ancient structures at the site had been preserved: in particular, the remnants of the tomb of Publius Bibulus, a landmark dating back to the fi
rst century BC, had been skilfully incorporated into the eastern end of the ridotto. To stand at that spot was to feel the continuance of all the centuries of Roman history as a living thing; so, at least, Pope John XXIV, now in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, had declared in a public letter to the principal mason.

  On a great chord, sounded by seventy voices and more than a hundred and fifty instruments, including two piano-fortes and organ, the first of the two acts ended. A couple of minutes later, Hubertus Incus was stretched on a silk-covered day-bed in his private green-room, eyes closed and body relaxed. His wig and outer costume hung near by; letters and tachygrams, flowers, fruit and confectionery covered a large marquetry table-top and overflowed on to the floor. Now and then, he sipped at the glass of still mineral water which, by invariable custom, was to be his only refreshment until after the performance. There came a tap at the door and his dresser answered it. A liveried usher handed over two name-cards, turning his head aside and raising his eyes to heaven in a way that told of much pressure or reward. The dresser gave a shrug and approached his master.

  'No, Ettore, nessuno.'

  'Ma e dui gentiluomi inglesi, maestro—ecco.'

  'Madre de Dio! By St George's sacred... Well. Si si, Ettore, subito.'

  Very soon the usher had admitted two well-attired young men in their later twenties. The shorter of them was an ordinary-looking priest in clerical black and grey, the taller a handsome dark-haired fellow in slashed velvet with pink lace at throat and wrists. What followed was an interval of happy shouts, embraces and hand-wringings.

  'Hubert, my dear! It's truly you, then!'

  'Thomas! Mark! After so long!'

  'You look not a day older, Hubert,' said Mark. 'Quite unchanged.'

  'Oh, taller,' said Thomas. 'Grander. And far richer!'

  Upon that came more laughter and an offer of wine, which both visitors accepted readily.

  'You surprise me, Mark-I remember you as one likely to grow into a famous abstinent.'