The Clowns of God

by Morris West

  After four days it seemed he had made enough progress for them to initiate him into the games of the new country. But first they had to find him a French-speaking assistant to teach him the rules. He was having enough trouble with phonic jumbles and word blocks, without launching him into a mania of mixed tongues.

  The assistant was a handsome fellow in his early thirties, trim as an athlete, with the olive skin of a Mediterranean man, and an incongruous head of golden hair that looked as though it had been inherited from some long-dead Nordic crusader. He came from what he vaguely described as the Middle East. He confessed to being fluent in English, French, Arabic, Hebrew and Greek. He had built himself a modest career in medical circles in London by acting as interpreter, male nurse and physiotherapist to the polyglot groups who inhabited the metropolis. The neurologist introduced him as Mr. Atha. Together they began a series of games, all designed to map the damage to the sensorium, the part of his brain which perceived sensations. For a man who had once been, by dogmatic definition, the infallible interpreter of God’s message to men, it was shocking to find how fallible he was, and in how many simple matters.

  Asked to close his eyes and raise both arms horizontally in front of him, he was amazed that only one arm obeyed him fully while the other stayed, like the hand of a stopped clock, at twenty-five minutes to the hour.

  Asked to tell where he was pricked with both points of a pair of dividers, he found some of his identifications were wildly astray. Worse, he could not even find the tip of his nose with his left hand.

  However, there were some hopeful signs. When his feet were tickled his toes turned in. This, Mr. Atha explained, showed that his Babinski reflex was functioning. When the inside of his thigh was tickled, his scrotal sac contracted. This, he was told, was also good because his cremaster reflex was in working order.

  Then came a most unhappy moment. Mr. Atha asked him to repeat for the neurologist the words of the old song:

  “Sur le pont, sur le pont,

  Sur le pont d’Avignon.”

  He found, to his horror, that his mouth was full of treacle, and what came out was a burble of phonic nonsense.

  Once again he began to cry. The neurologist admonished him firmly. He was lucky to be alive. He was twice lucky to have suffered so little impairment. The prognosis was hopeful, provided he was prepared to be patient, cooperative and courageous—virtues quite beyond his capacity at that moment.

  Mr. Atha translated it all into more soothing French and volunteered to stay with him until he was calm again. The neurologist nodded approval of the idea, patted Jean Marie’s good hand and went about his other business; which, as Mr. Atha explained, included many patients far worse off than Jean Marie.

  “… I work with them, too; so I know what I am talking about. You can swallow. You have no double vision. You have control of your bowels and your urine.… Eh! Think how much that means! Your speech will improve; because you and I are going to practice together. You see, with the doctor, you are trying to show that you are not damaged. You are determined to prove it by a sudden burst of oratory. When it doesn’t happen, you despair. We’re going to start from the fact that you are damaged. We are going to repair the trauma together.…”

  He was not only persuasive; he had an enormous quality of repose. Jean Marie felt the weight lifting off the top of his head, the fog dissipating from inside his skull case. Mr. Atha talked on quietly.

  “… You used to be Pope, they tell me. So you must remember the Scripture: ‘Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Well, you’re like a child now. You have to learn simple things from the beginning. You have to admit that you can’t cope with complicated ones for a long while yet. But in the end you will grow up again, just as a child does. You’re in kindergarten now. As the weeks go on, you’ll climb through the grades. You’ll learn to dress yourself, get your bad arm and leg moving again—and above all, you’ll talk. You can talk now, if you take it slowly. Let’s pick something very simple: ‘My name is Jean Marie.’ Now, one word at a time.…”

  Somewhere in the long night hours, when the only sounds were the footfalls of the night nurse and the only light was the beam of her torch focused on his face, he learned another lesson. If he tried to remember things, they always eluded him. If, however, he lay quietly, making no effort at all, they crept up on him, and sat about him like woodland animals in a child’s picture book.

  They were not always in the right order. Drexel was next to the little mongol child. Mendelius was mixed up in some bishops’ conference in Mexico, Roberta Saracini was drinking out of the cosmos cup; and the little twisted girl was selling prints to Alvin Dolman. But at least they were all there. He had not lost them like an amnesiac. They were pieces of a pattern in a kaleidoscope. One day they would shake themselves into a familiar order.

  There was something else, too. As with the vision in the monastery garden, he was aware of it in a fashion that escaped verbal definition. Somewhere at the deep core of himself—that sorry fortress so beset and bombarded and ruined—there was a place of light where the Other dwelt, and where, when he could withdraw to it, there was communion of love, blissful but all too brief. It was like—what was it like?—deaf Beethoven with his head full of glories, Einstein bereft of mathematics to express the mysteries he understood at the end. There was another wonder, too. He could not command his limp hand or his numb leg, and only sometimes his halting tongue; but, in this small place of light and peace, he could command himself, dispose freely of himself, as a lover to the beloved. It was here that the pact was made. “Whatever you have laid on me I accept. No questions, no conditions! But please, come Rubicon Day, give light and a taste of joy to my friend Duhamel, and his wife. He is a good one. He has been niggardly only to himself!”

  The first danger point was past, the neurologist told him. Fingers-crossed-and-pray-a-little, this was a one-off episode and he should make a good recovery. There would be sequelae, of course, handicaps and inhibitions of one kind and another; but, in general, there were good hopes that he could return to a normal life. But not yet! Not nearly yet! He must be trained, harder than any athlete. Mr. Atha would not only explain, but would drive him through the exercises, hour after hour, day after day. Visitors? Well, wouldn’t it be better to wait awhile, until he could display to them a certain competence? Sometimes visitors got more distressed than the patients.

  “… Besides,” Mr. Atha added his own good reasons, “you’re an important man. I’d like to feel proud of you the first day you go on display. I want you dressed right, talking right, moving right… with panache, yes?”

  “Panache!” said Jean Marie, and the word came out clear as a bell note.

  “Bravo!” said Mr. Atha. “Now let’s get the nurse in. The first thing we have to do is teach you to sit on the edge of the bed and then stand by yourself.”

  It sounded so simple that he could not believe the effort and the humiliation of it. Time after time, he crumpled like a rag doll into the arms of Mr. Atha and the nurse. Time after time, they stood him up and gradually withdrew their support until he was able to remain erect for a few moments. When he was weary they sat him back on the bed and showed him how to roll himself into a recumbent position and ease himself off the pressure points where bedsores might begin.

  When he had mastered the overture, they began to teach him the opera: how to walk with tiny shuffling steps, how to exercise his left hand with a rubber ball, a whole series of operations with mechanical equipment in a large gymnasium. It was here that he understood, as Mr. Atha had told him, just how fortunate he was. He noted something else, too: the boundless patience which Atha dispensed to his motley group, and how quickly they reacted to his smile and his word of encouragement.

  Atha made him participate in the small, disjointed community life of the gymnasium—by tossing a ball to one, making halting conversation with another, demonstrating to a third a movement which he himself had mastered. Bri
ef as they were, these social interludes left him exhausted; but Atha was adamant.

  “… You will renew your own resources only by sharing them. You cannot expect to spend all this time of healing in a hermetic world and then emerge a social animal. If you get tired of talking, touch people, smile, share your awareness of things—like that pair of pigeons cooing on the window ledge. It may not worry you; but half the people here are terrified that they will no longer be attractive to those who love them, that they will be sexually impotent or even, in the end, a hateful burden to their families.…”

  “I am sorry.” Jean Marie managed to get the words out. “I will try to do better.”

  “Good!” said Mr. Atha with a smile. “You can relax now. It’s massage time!”

  There was one set of games which gave him real pleasure. The neurologist called them gnostic sensibility tests. In fact, they meant the recognition, by touch alone, of textures and weights, shapes flat and solid. The pleasure in this game was that the sensibilities did become perceptibly sharper and his guesses came closer to the objects that produced the sensation.

  His attention span became longer, too, and he was able to enjoy the mass of letters and cards which had piled up, unread, in the top drawer of his bureau. When his concentration lapsed, Mr. Atha would read them to him and help him to frame a simple reply. He would not write it, however. Jean Marie must do that himself. Mr. Atha would supply the words and phrases that lost themselves momentarily from his vocabulary or jumbled themselves with others in some synaptic short circuit.

  Now he had newspapers delivered—English and French—and enjoyed scanning them, though he retained lamentably little of what he read. Mr. Atha consoled him in his calm fashion.

  “… What do you want to retain? The bad news that tells you man is dismantling civilization brick by brick? The good news is here, right under your nose! The blind see. The lame walk. Sometimes even the dead are jolted back to life… and if you listen hard enough, you’ll hear echoes of the good news.”

  “You… you are a… different man!” said Jean Marie in his halting fashion.

  “You meant to say ‘strange.’”

  “So I did.”

  “Then say it now.”

  “Strange,” said Jean Marie carefully. “You are a very strange man.”

  “I also bring good news,” said Mr. Atha. “Next week you may begin having visitors. If you tell me whom you want to see I’ll make a list and get in touch with them for you.”

  Brother Alain was invited first, because Jean Marie felt that the family tie should be respected and now there was no reason left for sibling jealousy. They embraced awkwardly, because of Jean Marie’s useless arm. After the first verbal exchanges, Jean Marie made it plain that he would rather listen than talk; so Alain hurried through the family news until he came to where his own heart was anchored: the Bourse, with all its transactions and its rumours.

  “… Now we are in the big-scale barter business. Oil for grain, soybeans for coal, tanks for iron ingots, meat for yellow powder uranium, gold for everything! If you’ve got commodities we can find a buyer for them.… But why am I running on like this? How long do you expect to be in this place?”

  “They do not say.” Jean Marie had found by now that he did better with simple announcements, fabricated in advance. “I don’t ask. I wait.”

  “When you do get out, you’re welcome to come to us.”

  “Thank you, Alain. No! There are places for… for…” He groped for the word and almost grasped it. “Rehab… rehab…”

  “Rehabilitation?”

  “Right. Mr. Atha will find me one.”

  “Who is Mr. Atha?”

  “He works here with stroke victims.”

  “Oh!” He was not callous or indifferent. He was simply a stranger in a strange country. “Roberta sends her love. She’ll be over in a few days.”

  “Good. Glad to see her.”

  It was the most he could manage. Alain, too, was glad to be dispensed. After a few more exchanges and some long silences they embraced again and parted, each wondering why he had so little to say to the other.

  The next day Waldo Pearson came. He was attended by a manservant, laden with unexpected treasures: six author’s copies of Last Letters from a Small Planet, one leather-bound volume for the author himself, a tape recorder and two best-selling versions of “Johnny the Clown,” one by a male vocalist, the other by a well-known female singer with full chorus. He also brought a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, a bucket of ice, a set of champagne glasses, a jar of fresh caviar, toast, butter and the full text of Jean Marie’s speech at the Carlton Club, also bound in leather. Waldo was in his best “come-and-he-cometh-go-and-he-goeth” mood.

  “My father had two strokes—they didn’t call them cerebrovascular accidents in his day!—so I know the form. Chat when you want. Be silent when you feel like it. Do you like the book?… Handsome, isn’t it. The subscriptions are rolling in. It’s the biggest thing we’ve had in twenty years. We’re assured of rave reviews and big ones, too! I’m only sorry we can’t have you at our launching party. Hennessy called. He tells me the reaction in the Americas and on the Continent is the same. He says he’ll see you on his way back from New York. You’ve really touched a nerve.… And everyone’s whistling the song. I even sing it in my bath.… Champagne? Can you manage the caviar, too?… That’s very good! You really do cope. I was determined you’d have champagne and caviar if I had to feed it to you with an eyedropper.…”

  “I’m very touched. Thank you.” Jean Marie was surprised at his own fluency. “I’m sorry I made such a scene at the club.”

  “That was most curious.” Pearson was instantly grave. “Some of the audience were hostile. Many were deeply moved. None was able to be neutral. I sent copies of the full text to your address to all members and to their guests. The replies, pro and con, were illuminating. Some expressed fear; others spoke of a religious impact; yet others spoke of the contrast between the power of your message and the modesty of your personal demeanor. By the way, did you hear from Matt Hewlett? He said he was going to write. He thought you might be embarrassed if he came to see you.”

  “He wrote. He told me he had offered nine days of Masses for me. The Pontiff cabled and some members of the Curia. Drexel wrote a long… long… long… Forgive me. The simplest words fail me sometimes.”

  “Relax!” said Waldo Pearson. “I’m going to play you the song. I prefer the woman’s version. See what you think.”

  “Can you get me a copy for Mr. Atha?”

  “Of course; but who is he?”

  “He’s a ther… therapist. I can’t tell you what he does for all of us. He’s a god… godsent man! I must autograph a book for him. Does it matter now if I’m known as the author?”

  “I don’t believe it matters a damn anymore,” said Waldo Pearson. “The charitable will find God in the book. The bigots will be sure you’re stricken for your sins. So everyone will be happy.”

  “Did… did Petrov get his grain?”

  “Some, but not enough.”

  “I’ve lost count of time. I can’t remember events…”

  “Be glad! The times are out of joint. Events outrun our control.”

  Jean Marie reached out to grasp his hand. He needed the reassurance of human contact. The thought he had been trying to grasp for weeks was finally clear to him. He pieced it out with desperate care.

  “He showed me the Last Things. He told me to announce the Parousia. I gave up everything to do it. I tried. I truly tried. Before I could get the words out, He struck me dumb!… I don’t know what He wants now. I am so confused.”

  Waldo Pearson held the frail hand between his palms. He said gently:

  “I was confused, too. I was angry. I found myself shaking a fist in His face and demanding to know, why? Why? Then I read Last Letters from a Small Planet and I realized that was your testimony. It was all there in black and white. Whatever you said or failed to say at the Carlton Club was p
ostscript and dispensable.… I remembered something else, too. The first precursor, John, called the Baptizer, came to a strange end. While the Messiah, whom he had announced, was still walking free in Judea, he was murdered in Herod’s dungeon and his head presented on a dish to a belly dancer. All he had from his Messiah was a praise that became an epitaph. ‘Among men that are born of women there is none greater than John the Baptizer.…’”

  “I’d forgotten that,” said Jean Marie Barette. “But then I forget so many things.”

  “Have some more champagne,” said Waldo Pearson, “and let’s listen to the music.”

  The next day, new plagues afflicted him. He was sitting in his wheelchair, scanning the headlines in the morning paper, when Mr. Atha came in to say that he would be absent for a while. He had to go abroad to deal with some of his father’s affairs. Jean Marie’s therapy session would be conducted by a woman assistant.

  “… And when I come back,” said Mr. Atha, “I want to see a vigorous, vocal man.”

  Jean Marie was a prey to sudden panic. “Where… where are you going?”

  “Oh, a number of capitals. My father’s interests are extensive.… I’m taking your book to read on the aircraft. Come now! Don’t look so glum!”

  “I’m afraid!”

  He blurted out the word before it eluded him. Mr. Atha would not bend to the appeal.

  “Then you must confront the fear! All the work we have done together is to one end: to make you walk, talk, think and work for yourself. Courage now!”

  But, the moment Mr. Atha walked out the door, his courage deserted him. Depression, black as midnight, settled over him. Even the place of light was blotted out. He could not find his way back to it. As the day went on, he found himself sinking deeper and deeper into a condition of despair. He would never get well. He would never leave the hospital. Even if he did, where would he go? What would he do? What was the point of all these efforts, if they produced nothing but the ability to put on a jacket, talk elementary inanities, shuffle along a straight line on a concrete pavement?