The Shoes of the Fisherman

by Morris West

  MORRIS LANGLO WEST was born in St Kilda, Melbourne, in 1916. At the age of fourteen, he entered the Christian Brothers seminary as a kind of refuge from a difficult childhood. He attended the University of Melbourne and worked as a teacher. In 1941 he left the Christian Brothers without taking final vows. During World War II West worked as a code breaker, and for a time he was private secretary to former prime minister Billy Hughes.

  After the war, West became a successful writer and producer of radio serials. In 1955 he left Australia to build an international career as a writer and lived with his family in Austria, Italy, England and the USA. West also worked for a time as the Vatican correspondent for the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. He returned to Australia in 1982.

  Morris West wrote 30 books and many plays, and several of his novels were adapted for film. His books were published in 28 languages and sold more than 70 million copies worldwide. Each new book he wrote after he became an established writer sold more than one million copies.

  West received many awards and accolades over his long writing career, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W.H. Heinemann Award of the Royal Society of Literature for The Devils Advocate. In 1978 he was elected a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1985, and was made an Officer of the Order (AO) in 1997.

  Morris West died at his desk in 1999.

  THE MORRIS WEST COLLECTION

  FICTION

  Moon in My Pocket (1945, as Julian Morris)

  Gallows on the Sand (1956)

  Kundu (1957)

  The Big Story (US title: The Crooked Road) (1957)

  The Concubine (US title: McCreary Moves In) (1958)

  The Second Victory (US title: Backlash) (1958)

  The Devil’s Advocate (1959)

  The Naked Country (1960)

  Daughter of Silence (1961)

  The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963)

  The Ambassador (1965)

  The Tower of Babel (1968)

  Summer of the Red Wolf (1971)

  The Salamander (1973)

  Harlequin (1974)

  The Navigator (1976)

  Proteus (1979)

  The Clowns of God (1981)

  The World is Made of Glass (1983)

  Cassidy (1986)

  Masterclass (1988)

  Lazarus (1990)

  The Ringmaster (1991)

  The Lovers (1993)

  Vanishing Point (1996)

  Eminence (1998)

  The Last Confession (2000, published posthumously)

  PLAYS

  The Illusionists (1955)

  The Devil’s Advocate (1961)

  Daughter of Silence (1962)

  The Heretic (1969)

  The World is Made of Glass (1982)

  NON-FICTION

  Children of the Sun (US title: Children of the Shadows) (1957)

  Scandal in the Assembly (1970, with Richard Frances)

  A View from the Ridge (1996, autobiography)

  Images and Inscriptions (1997, selected by Beryl Barraclough)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Terms used in the text do not always reflect current usage.

  This edition published by Allen & Unwin in 2017

  First published in Great Britain in 1963 by William Heinmann Ltd

  Copyright © The Morris West Collection 1963

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

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  Cover design: Julia Eim

  Cover image: Filippo Monteforte/Getty Images

  ISBN 978 1 76029 760 2 (pbk)

  ISBN 978 1 76063 851 1 (ebook)

  For Christopher, Paul, and Melanie

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ROME IS a city older than the Catholic Church. Everything that could happen has happened there, and no doubt will happen again. This is a book set in a fictional time, peopled with fictional characters, and no reference is intended to any living person whether in the Church or out of it.

  I cannot ask my friends to accept the responsibility for my opinions. So those who have helped me with this book must remain anonymous.

  To those who gave me their stories, to those who placed their leaning at my disposal, to those who spent upon me the charity of the faith I offer my heartfelt thanks.

  Thanks are due also to Penguin Books Ltd for permission to reprint three extracts from the Philip Vellacott translations of Euripides (Alcestis, Iphigenia in Tauris, Hippolytus).

  Also to Reverend Father Pedro A. Gonzales OP for a passage from his thesis on Miguel de Unamuno, which is incorporated without quotes in the body of the text.

  M. L. W.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE POPE was dead. The Camerlengo had announced it. The Master of Ceremonies, the notaries, the doctors had consigned him under signature into eternity. His ring was defaced and his seals were broken. The bells had been rung throughout the city. The pontifical body had been handed to the embalmers so that it might be a seemly object for the veneration of the faithful. Now it lay, between white candles, in the Sistine Chapel with the Noble Guard keeping a death watch under Michelangelo’s frescoes of the Last Judgement.

  The Pope was dead. Tomorrow the clergy of the Basilica would claim him and expose him to the public in the Chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament. On the third day they would bury him, clothed in full pontificals, with a mitre on his head, a purple veil on his face, and a red ermine blanket to warm him in the crypt. The medals he had struck and coinage he had minted would be buried with him to identify him to any who might dig him up a thousand years later. They would seal him in three coffins – one of cypress; one of lead to keep him from the damp and to carry his coat of arms, and the certificate of his death; the last of elm so that he might seem, at least, like other men who go to the grave in a wooden box.

  The Pope was dead. So they would pray for him as for any other: ‘Enter not into judgement with thy servant, O Lord…Deliver him from eternal death.’ Then they would lower him into the vault under the High Altar, where perhaps – but only perhaps – he would moulder into dust with the dust of Peter; and a mason would brick up the vault and fix on a marble tablet with his name, his title, and the date of his birth and his obit.

  The Pope was dead. They would mourn with nine days of Masses and give nine Absolutions – of which, having been greater in his life than other men, h
e might have greater need after his death.

  Then they would forget him, because the See of Peter was vacant, the life of the Church was in syncope and the Almighty was without a vicar on this troubled planet.

  The See of Peter was vacant. So the Cardinals of the Sacred College assumed trusteeship over the authority of the Fisherman, though they lacked the power to exercise it. The power did not reside in them but in Christ and none could assume it but by lawful transmission and election.

  The See of Peter was vacant. So they struck two medals, one for the Camerlengo, which bore a large umbrella over crossed keys. There was no one under the umbrella, and this was a sign to the most ignorant that there was no incumbent for the Chair of the Apostles, and that all that was done had only an interim character. The second medal was that of the Governor of the Conclave: he who must assemble the Cardinals of the Church, and lock them inside the chambers of the conclave and keep them there until they had issued with a new Pope.

  Every coin new-minted in the Vatican City, every stamp now issued, bore the words sede vacante, which even those without Latinity might understand as ‘while the Chair is vacant’. The Vatican newspaper carried the same sign on its front page, and would wear a black band of mourning until the new Pontiff was named.

  Every news service in the world had a representative camped on the doorstep of the Vatican press office; and from each point of the compass old men came, bent with years or infirmity, to put on the scarlet of princes and sit in conclave for the making of a new Pope.

  There were Carlin the American, and Rahamani the Syrian, and Hsien the Chinese, and Hanna the Irishman from Australia. There were Councha from Brazil, and da Costa from Portugal. There were Morand from Paris, and Lavigne from Brussels, and Lambertini from Venice, and Brandon from London. There were a Pole and two Germans, and a Ukrainian whom nobody knew because his name had been reserved in the breast of the last Pope and had been proclaimed only a few days before his death. In all there were eighty-five men, of whom the eldest was ninety-two and the youngest, the Ukrainian, was fifty. As each of them arrived in the city, he presented himself and his credentials to the urbane and gentle Valerio Rinaldi, who was the Cardinal Camerlengo.

  Rinaldi welcomed each with a slim, dry hand and a smile of mild irony. To each he administered the oath of the conclavist: that he understood and would rigorously observe all the rules of the election as laid down in the Apostolic Constitution of 1945, that he would under pain of a reserved excommunication preserve the secret of the election, that he would not serve by his votes the interest of any secular power, that, if he were elected Pope, he would not surrender any temporal right of the Holy See which might be deemed necessary to its independence.

  No one refused the oath; but Rinaldi, who had a sense of humour, wondered many times why it was necessary to administer it at all – unless the Church had a healthy disrespect for the virtues of its princes. Old men were apt to be too easily wounded. So, when he outlined the terms of the oath, Valerio Rinaldi laid a mild emphasis on the counsel of the Apostolic Constitution, that all the proceedings of the election should be conducted with ‘prudence, charity, and a singular calm’.

  His caution was not unjustified. The history of papal elections was a stormy one, at times downright turbulent. When Damasus the Spaniard was elected in the fourth century, there were massacres in the churches of the city. Leo V was imprisoned, tortured, and murdered by the Theophylacts, so that for nearly a century the Church was ruled by puppets directed by the Theophylact women, Theodora and Marozia. In the conclave of 1623 eight Cardinals and forty of their assistants died of malaria, and there were harsh scenes and tough words over the election of the Saint, Pius X.

  All in all, Rinaldi concluded – though he was wise enough to keep the conclusion to himself – it was best not to trust too much to the crusty tempers and the frustrated vanities of old men. Which brought him by a round turn to the problem of housing and feeding eighty-five of them with their servants and assistants until the election should be finished. Some of them, it seemed, would have to take over quarters from the Swiss Guard. None of them could be lodged too far from bathroom or toilet, and all had to be provided with a minimum service by way of cooks, barbers, surgeons, physicians, valets, porters, secretaries, waiters, carpenters, plumbers, firemen (in case any weary prelate nodded off with a cigar in his hand!). If (God forbid!) any Cardinal were in prison or under indictment, he had to be brought to the conclave and made to perform his functions under military guard.

  This time, however, no one was in prison – except Krizanic in Yugoslavia, and he was in prison for the faith, which was a different matter – and the late Pope had run an efficient administration, so that Valerio Cardinal Rinaldi even had time to spare to meet with his colleague, Leone of the Holy Office, who was also the Dean of the Sacred College. Leone lived up to his name. He had a grey lion’s mane and a growling temper. He was, moreover, a Roman, bred-in-the-bone, dyed-in-the-wool. Rome was for him the centre of the world, and centralism was a doctrine almost as immutable as that of the Trinity and the Procession of the Holy Ghost. With his great eagle beak and his jowly jaw, he looked like a senator strayed out of Augustan times, and his pale eyes looked out on the world with wintry disapproval.

  Innovation was for him the first step towards heresy, and he sat in the Holy Office like a grizzled watchdog, whose hackles would rise at the first unfamiliar sound in doctrine interpretation, or practice. One of his French colleagues had said, with more wit than charity, ‘Leone smells of the fire.’ But the general belief was that he would plunge his own hand into the flame rather than set his signature to the smallest deviation from orthodoxy.

  Rinaldi respected him, though he had never been able to like him, and so their intercourse had been limited to the courtesies of their common trade. Tonight, however, the old lion seemed in gentler mood, and was disposed to be talkative. His pale, watchful eyes were lit with a momentary amusement.

  ‘I’m eighty-two, my friend, and I’ve buried three Popes. I’m beginning to feel lonely.’

  ‘If we don’t get a younger man this time,’ said Rinaldi mildly, ‘you may well bury a fourth.’

  Leone shot a quick look from under his shaggy brows. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  Rinaldi shrugged, and spread his fine hands in a Roman gesture. ‘Just what it says. We’re all too old. There are not more than half a dozen of us who can give the Church what it needs at this moment: personality, a decisive policy, time and continuity to make the policy work.’

  ‘Do you think you’re one of the half-dozen?’

  Rinaldi smiled with thin irony. ‘I know I’m not. When the new man is chosen – whoever he is – I propose to offer him my resignation, and ask his permission to rusticate at home. It’s taken me fifteen years to build a garden in that place of mine. I’d like a little while to enjoy it.’

  ‘Do you think I have a chance of election?’ asked Leone bluntly.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Rinaldi.

  Leone threw back his great mane and laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I know I haven’t. They need someone quite different; someone’ – he hesitated, fumbling for the phrase – ‘someone who has compassion on the multitude, who sees them, as Christ saw them – sheep without a shepherd. I’m not that sort of man. I wish I were.’

  Leone heaved his bulky body out of the chair, and walked to the big table where an antique globe stood among a litter of books. He spun the globe slowly on its axis so that now one country, now another, swam into the light. ‘Look at it, my friend! The world, our vineyard! Once we colonized it in the name of Christ. Not righteously always, not always justly or wisely, but the Cross was there, and the Sacraments were there, and however a man lived – in purple or in chains – there was a chance for him to die like a son of God. Now…? Now we are everywhere in retreat. China is lost to us, and Asia and all the Russias. Africa will soon be gone, and the South Americas will be next. You know it. I know it. It is the measure of our f
ailure that we have sat all these years in Rome, and watched it happen.’ He checked the spinning globe with an unsteady hand, and then turned to face his visitor, with a new question. ‘If you had your life over, Rinaldi, what would you do with it?’

  Rinaldi looked up with that deprecating smile which lent him so much charm. ‘I think I should probably do the same things again. Not that I’m very proud of them, but they happened to be the only things I could do well. I get along with people, because I’ve never been capable of very deep feelings about them. That makes me, I suppose, a natural diplomat. I don’t like to quarrel. I like even less to be emotionally involved. I like privacy and I enjoy study. So I’m a good canonist, a reasonable historian, and an adequate linguist. I’ve never had very strong passions. You might, if you felt malicious, call me a cold fish. So I’ve achieved a reputation for good conduct without having to work for it… All in all, I’ve had a very satisfactory life – satisfactory to myself, of course. How the recording angel sees it, is another matter.’

  ‘Don’t underrate yourself, man,’ said Leone sourly. ‘You’ve done a great deal better than you’ll admit.’

  ‘I need time and reflection to set my soul in order,’ said Rinaldi quietly. ‘May I count on you to help me resign?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you. Now, suppose the inquisitor answers his own question. What would you do if you had to begin again?’

  ‘I’ve thought about it often,’ said Leone heavily. ‘If I didn’t marry – and I’m not sure but that’s what I needed to make me halfway human – I’d be a country priest with just enough theology to hear confession, and just enough Latin to get through Mass and the sacramental formulae. But with heart enough to know what griped in the guts of other men, and made them cry into their pillows at night. I’d sit in front of my church on a summer evening and read my office and talk about the weather and the crops, and learn to be gentle with the poor and humble with the unhappy ones… You know what I am now? A walking encyclopaedia of dogma and theological controversy. I can smell out an error faster than a Dominican. And what does it mean? Nothing. Who cares about theology except the theologians? We are necessary but less important than we think. The Church is Christ – Christ and the people. And all the people want to know is whether or no there is a God, and what is His relation with them, and how they can get back to Him when they stray.’