The Clowns of God

by Morris West

  “After that he took me to my house and told me to clean myself up. I had a long hot bath, then I powdered myself and put on perfume and lay on the bed, naked, to wait for him. Only it wasn’t my bed. It was a beautiful circular one, soft and comfortable and smelling of lavender. After a while he came in. He went into the bathroom and when he came out he was naked and clean like me. He kissed my breasts and excited me with his hands and then he came inside me and we had a big climax which was like the tin caddies exploding in the tea shop.… I always close my eyes when I have a climax. This time when I opened them he was lying beside me, all bloody. His hand was on my breast, but it was just a hand with no arm or body. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. Then I saw his face, it was just empty like a big red saucer. Then the bed wasn’t a bed anymore, but a big black box with both of us inside it…”

  Anneliese Meissner switched off the machine and said, “Well, that’s it!”

  Jean Marie Barette was silent for a long moment, then he asked, “Who is the man in the dream?”

  “Her ex-husband. He still lives in the town.”

  “And you know him?”

  “Not very well; but, yes, I know him.”

  Jean Marie said nothing. He held up his glass. She refilled it for him. Then she asked tentatively:

  “Any comment on what you’ve just heard?”

  “I’m not an expert on the decipherment of dreams; but the tape did tell me something. The woman is haunted by guilt. She has knowledge which she is afraid to share with anyone else. So she dreams it, or constructs a dream about it and tells it to you. Whatever she knows is connected in some way with the Mendelius affair.… How am I doing so far, Frau Professor?”

  “Very well. Please go on!”

  “I think,” said Jean Marie deliberately, “I think that you have the same problem as your patient. You know something which you’re unwilling or unable to disclose.”

  “I’m unwilling because I’m not sure of my conclusions. I’m unable because it involves my professional integrity. You’d have the same problem with a confessional secret.”

  “They’re both good reasons for reticence,” said Jean Marie drily.

  “There are others.” Now she was irritable and combative.

  “Please! A moment!” Jean Marie held up a warning hand. “Let’s not get heated. You invited me here. I have given you my guarantee of secrecy. If you want to tell me what’s bothering you, I’ll listen. If not, then let’s enjoy the wine!”

  “I’m sorry!” It was hard for her to express any sort of penitence. “I’m so used to playing God in the consulting room that I forget my everyday manners.… You’re right. I’m desperately worried. I don’t see what I can do about it, without opening a whole new nest of vipers. Anyway, here’s item one. The woman on that tape is both vulnerable and acquisitive. A young divorcee in a university town, she’s had more affairs than she knows how to cope with. One of her more serious romances was with Johann Mendelius. It was finished only this summer before he left on vacation. Fortunately, neither Carl nor Lotte got wind of it. But I knew because she was my patient and I had to listen to the whole big drama. Item two is where I stumble. Her ex-husband is a man—how shall I explain it?—a man so improbable that he has to be authentic. I have a whole series of tapes on their relationship. He’s the one who’s selling guns to Johann and his group; and if that tape means what I think it does, he’s the one who sent the letter bomb to Carl.… I know it sounds absurd but…”

  “Evil is the ultimate absurdity,” said Jean Marie Barette. “It is the last sad buffoonery: a man sitting in the ruins of his world, daubing himself with his own excrement.…”

  It was nearly six-thirty when he left Armeliese’s apartment. As he closed the front door behind him, his attention was caught by a plaque on the building opposite, a sturdy hostelry built in the first half of the sixteenth century where the burghers of Tübingen still came to eat and drink. The plaque announced in Gothic script: “The Old Schloss Keller. Here lived Professor Michael Maestlin of Goppingen, teacher of the astronomer Johannes Kepler.”

  The inscription pleased him, since it celebrated the lesser-known master before the effulgent pupil. It reminded him, too, of the fear that had haunted his predecessor: that Tübingen might become the center of a second anti-Roman revolt. He himself had never had such fears. It had always seemed as fruitless an exercise to impeach a scholar for heresy as to hang out the bloody sheets after a bridal night. It further occurred to him that he ought to provide the wine for the evening meal. So he pushed open the heavy nail-studded door and went inside.

  Half the booths were full of student drinkers, and a dozen burly countrymen propped up the bar. Jean Marie Barette made himself perfectly understood in Hochdeutsch but was totally confused by the names of unfamiliar vintages which the barman reeled off in dialect. Finally he settled on a pleasantly dry white from the Ammertal, bought two bottles and made for the exit. A call from a corner booth stopped him in his tracks.

  “Uncle Jean! Over here! Come and join us!” Johann took the bottles and pushed his companions along the bench to make room for Jean Marie. He made the introductions briskly: “Franz, Alexis, Norbert, Alvin Dolman. This is my uncle Jean. Franz is my sister’s boyfriend. Alvin’s an American and a very good friend of Father’s.”

  “I’m happy to meet you gentlemen.” Jean Marie was cordiality itself. “May I buy you a drink?”

  He signalled the waitress and ordered a round for the company and a glass of mineral water for himself.

  Johann asked, “What are you doing up this end of town, Uncle Jean?”

  “Visiting Professor Meissner. We met at the hospital. I walked home with her.”

  “How was Father this afternoon?”

  “The doctor says he’s improved. His temperature is down, his pulse steadier.”

  “That’s great news; great!” Alvin Dolman seemed a little gone in his cups. “Let me know when I can see him, Johann. I’ve found something he’ll like. It’s a carving of Saint Christopher, Early Gothic. This he gets for free, as soon as he’s sitting up and taking nourishment.”

  Jean Marie was instantly intrigued. “You are a collector then, Mr. Dolman?”

  “No, sir, a dealer! But I’ve got the eye for the game. You’ve got to have the eye.”

  “Indeed, yes. You live here?”

  “I live here, work here. Once I was married here—son-in-law to the Bürgermeister yet! But that didn’t last. Old dogfaces like me shouldn’t marry. We’re reject china, you might say.… Matter of fact, your Professor Meissner was a great friend of my wife. Helped her to straighten out after the divorce.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Jean Marie. “And what kind of work do you do, Mr. Dolman?”

  “I’m an artist—a technical illustrator, if you must spell it out. I work for educational publishers up and down the Rhine. On the side I deal in antique art… in a small way, of course. I don’t have money for the big stuff.”

  “I thought the company supplied the funds.” Jean Marie leaned ever so lightly on the word.

  “Please?”

  It was the minutest reaction—hardly the flicker of an eyelid; but Jean Marie had dealt with too many clerics and too many other subtle fellows to miss it. Alvin Dolman smiled and shook his head.

  “The company? I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. I’m strictly freelance. I accept commissions just like a portrait painter. No, sir! The only company I’ve ever worked for is good old Uncle Sam.”

  “Forgive me.” Jean Marie smiled an apology. “One speaks a foreign language, but always one makes mistakes in the simplest things.… Johann, what time do we sit down for your mother’s dinner?”

  “No later than eight. Let’s finish our drinks and I’ll walk back with you. We’re only five minutes away.”

  “I should be moving, too,” said Alvin Dolman. “I’ve got a date in Stuttgart. While I’m there I’ll see what I can do for you guys. But remember, it has to be cash on the line
! Wiedersehen all!”

  He climbed awkwardly to his feet and Jean Marie had to rise to let him out of the booth. As he moved to the door Jean Marie followed him. When they came out into the nearly deserted street he said in English:

  “A word with you, Mr. Dolman.”

  Dolman swung round to face him. His smile was gone now. His eyes were hostile.

  “Yes?”

  “I know you,” said Jean Marie Barette. “I know who you are, and what company employs you, and whose is the evil spirit that inhabits you. If I tell them inside, they will kill you with the same guns you have sold to them. So, keep your life and go from this place. Go now!”

  Dolman stared at him for a moment and then laughed.

  “Who do you think you are—God Almighty?”

  “You know who I am, Alvin Dolman. You know everything that has been said and written about me.… And you know it is true. Now, in the name of God, go!”

  Dolman spat in his face, then he turned on his heel and went limping hurriedly down the cobbled slope. Jean Marie wiped the spittle from his cheeks and went back into the Schloss Keller.

  “… Get rid of the guns! Every one of them is marked to convict you. Disband the Jacquerie. You are blown anyway. Dolman made you the victims of the classic intelligence plot: concentrate all the dissidents in one group, then knock them off at leisure. Meantime he was using you to cover up his own tracks as an assassin.…”

  It was one in the morning and they were alone in Mendelius’ study under the rooftops. Outside, the first chill wind of early autumn keened around the belfry of the Stiftskirche. On the floor below, Lotte and Katrin slept peacefully, unaware of the mystery play which had been enacted around them. Johann, for all his shame and weariness, could still not abandon the debate.

  “… But it doesn’t make sense. Dolman’s a huckster who’ll trade you anything. He’s a clown who laughs when an old lady falls from a bus and shows her drawers. But an assassin—no!”

  “Dolman is the perfect agent-in-place.” Jean Marie admonished him patiently. “As Professor Meissner says, he’s so improbable he has to be authentic.… More! As an agent of a friendly power, concerned with Germany as its eastern frontier, he’s the perfect instrument for dirty jobs like the bomb strike on your father.… But that’s not all! I have known men highly practiced in violence who are not half as evil as their deeds. They are conditioned, bent like twigs beyond straightening. In some, a key component has been lost, so that they can never be otherwise than what they are. But Dolman is different. Dolman knows who he is and what he is and he wants to be just that. He is, truly, in the old phrase, a habitation of evil.”

  “How can you know that? You met him only once. I understand Professor Meissner having an opinion about him, because she’s heard all the stories from his wife. I heard them, too, many a time, in her bed; but I didn’t believe them, because Dolman knew I was having her, and he encouraged me to enjoy it—and prepared me to get out when the fun was over.… But you? One meeting? I’m sorry, Uncle Jean. It doesn’t make sense unless you know something more than you’re telling me.”

  “I know less than you about Alvin Dolman—but much, much more about the noonday devil.” He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned far back in Mendelius’ armchair. “In the high places where I used to live he was a very frequent visitor—and most beguiling company!”

  “That’s too easy, Uncle Jean. I don’t accept it.”

  “Very well. Let me put it another way. While you were playing love games with Dolman’s wife, would you have invited a child to witness them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because…”

  “Because you recognize innocence, even if you can’t define it. You recognize evil, too; but you close your eyes to it. Why?”

  “I… I suppose because I don’t want to recognize the evil in myself either.”

  “At last we come to it. Now will you take some advice from your uncle Jean?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “As soon as your father can travel, move away from here. If you can complete the purchase of the Alpine property and make it fit for habitation, go there. Try to keep the family together: your mother and father, Katrin, her man, too, if he will go with you.… Dolman is gone. He will not come back; his company will not use him again in this region; but the company is still in business.… and always in partnership with the noonday devill”

  “And where will you go, Uncle Jean?”

  “Tomorrow to Paris to see my family and arrange my financial affairs. After that… who knows? I wait on the call!”

  Johann was still uneasy and irritable. He objected, “So we’re back to private revelation and prophecy and all that?”

  “Well?”

  “I don’t believe in it. That’s all!”

  “But you believed in a man who tried to kill your father. You didn’t believe the truths his wife told you in bed. You don’t know how to smell evil from good. Does that tell you nothing about yourself, Johann?”

  “You really strike for the throat, don’t you?”

  “Grow up, boy!” Jean Marie Barette was implacable. “We’re talking about life, death and the hereafter. No one gets an absolution from reality!”

  That night Jean Marie Barette had a dream. He was walking in the Marktplatz of Tübingen. He paused by a fruit stall selling beautiful black grapes. He tasted one; it was sweet and satisfying. He asked the stall holder to weigh him out a kilo. She gaped at him, horror-struck, raised her hands in front of her face and backed away. All the people in the marketplace did the same until he stood isolated in a circle of hostile humans, holding a bunch of grapes in his hand. He spoke peaceably, asking what was the matter. No one answered. He took a few steps towards the nearest person. His way was barred by a big fellow with a butcher’s knife. He stopped in his tracks and cried out:

  “What’s the matter? Why are you afraid of me?”

  The big fellow answered, “Because you’re a Pestträger—a plague-carrier! Get out before we kill you!”

  Then the crowd began to close in, forcing him inexorably towards the mouth of the alley down which, he knew, he must turn and run for his life.…

  In the morning, red-eyed and unrested, he had an early breakfast with Lotte and then went with her to the hospital to say his farewells to Carl Mendelius. There, in a final quiet moment, he told them both:

  “… We will meet again. I’m sure of it; but where and how, God knows! Lotte, my dear, don’t cling to anything here. When Carl is ready, just pack and go! Promise me!”

  “I promise, Jean! It won’t be hard to leave.”

  “Good! When the call comes, Carl, you will be ready for it. For the present, resign yourself to a long convalescence. Help Lotte to help you. Tell her you’ll do that.”

  Carl Mendelius raised his good hand and stroked her cheek. She drew the hand to her lips and kissed the palm. Jean Marie stood up. He traced the sign of the cross with his thumb on Mendelius’ forehead and then on Lotte’s. His voice was unsteady.

  “I hate farewells. I love you both. Pray for me.”

  Mendelius clutched at his wrist to stay him. He struggled to speak. This time, painfully but clearly, he managed to articulate the words:

  “The fig tree, Jean. I know now. The fig tree!”

  Lotte pleaded with him. “Please, dearest, don’t try to talk.”

  Jean Marie said soothingly, “Dear Carl, remember what we agreed! No words, no arguments. Let God make the trees grow in His own good time.”

  Mendelius relaxed slowly. Lotte held his hand. Jean Marie kissed her and, without another word, walked out of the room.

  He was halfway to Paris, flying blind through storm clouds, when Mendelius’ words made sense to him. They were an echo of the text from the Gospel of Matthew that had fallen open in his hands on the day of the vision: “… And from the fig tree learn a parable. When the branch is tender and the leaves come forth you know that summer
is near. So, when you see all these happenings you will know that the end things are very near, yes, even at the gates!”

  He felt a strange surge of relief, almost of elation. If Carl Mendelius believed at last in the vision, then Jean Marie Barette was not left utterly alone.

  IX

  In Paris the dream of the plague-carrier came true. His brother, Alain Hubert Barette, silver of hair, silver of tongue, a pillar of the banking establishment on the Boulevard Haussmann, was shocked to the soles of his handmade shoes. He cherished Jean Marie. He would somehow make adequate financial provisions; but to open up a forty-year-old trust, and dismantle the most complicated international arrangements—pas possible! Jean had come at a most inconvenient time. It would be most difficult to lodge him with the family. They had the decorators in. Odette was in a constant state of near hysteria. And the servants—my God! However, the bank would be most happy to let him use its suite at the Lancaster until he was able to make other arrangements.

  How was Odette—apart from the hysteria? Well enough, but shocked—devastated indeed—by the abdication! And, of course, when Cardinal Sancerre, Archbishop of Paris, came back from the consistory and began spreading all those odd stories—that was truly an intimate distress for the whole family.

  Political contacts? Diplomatic encounters? Normally Alain Hubert Barette would have been happy to act as host to such meetings; but in this precise moment—eh!—one counselled a great discretion. One did not want to risk a snub, by too direct an approach to the President or even to the high gentlemen at the Quai d’Orsay. Why not come tomorrow night for dinner with Odette and the girls and then discuss the whole question?

  Meantime, the money problem… The bank would grant Jean Marie a substantial credit line, guaranteed by the trust, until such time as it was possible to reconstitute the arrangements.

  “… Now, let’s get some documents signed so that you can have funds immediately. I suggest—strictly between loving brothers!—that a good tailor is a first requisite and a decent shirtmaker. After all, you are still a Monseigneur and even the garments of a layman should indicate the hidden dignity.”