The Good Shepherd

by Thomas Fleming

  Dennis turned out the light and lay awake in the darkness for a long time, listening to Matthew Mahan moving restlessly around his twin bed. Once he took a deep breath and released it in a kind of sigh that made Dennis’s heart skip. It must have been close to dawn when Dennis finally fell asleep. He awoke to find Matthew Mahan quietly saying mass on the top of the room’s dresser. For a moment, he wondered why and then groggily remembered that they had decided before they left to conduct themselves as anonymously as possible in Rome.

  Outside, the weather was foul. Rain drizzled miserably from the gray sky. People scurried along the street below the pensione, their coat collars turned up against a wolfish wind. “Sunny Italy,” Dennis said, staring out the window at the viscous-looking Tiber.

  “People have told me you can get pneumonia here in the winter quicker than you can in Chicago,” Matthew Mahan said. “Now I believe them.”

  After lunch, having read Osservatore Romano and two or three other dailies, Matthew Mahan sent Dennis out to buy a copy of Pope John’s autobiography, Journal of a Soul.

  “Should I get an extra copy to send to the Vatican?” Dennis asked.

  It was as cold and as miserably wet in the streets as it looked. In the lobby on his way back, he met Father Mirante. As they went up in the elevator, Dennis said, “What do you think you’ll get if you talk him into going home? A professorship at the Gregorian, perhaps?”

  Mirante glared at him as they stepped out of the elevator. “Your career, if it deserves such a term, is finished. You must know that,” he said.

  “I never had a career.”

  Dennis started to walk ahead of him down the hall. Mirante seized him by the shoulder and spun him around. “Would you believe me if I said that it is to his advantage as well as mine that he goes home? Do you think it’s impossible for a man to act in his own interests and out of love and concern for a friend at the same time?”

  The pain on the middle-aged face was exquisite. “I’m beginning to think anything is possible,” Dennis said softly.

  “He is a great soul. Why do you torment him? You are the evil genius here.”

  “Evil?” Dennis said. “Compared to you, Father Mirante, I don’t think I even understand the meaning of the word.”

  They walked down the rest of the hall in silence. Dennis handed over the copy of Pope John’s journals. Father Mirante launched a feverish monologue in Italian. Matthew Mahan listened somberly, then turned to Dennis. “He says they are preparing to disgrace me. There’ll be an accusation that I’ve misused the finances of the archdiocese. Apparently Leo the Great’s columns have traveled far.”

  “They wouldn’t dare. They have more to lose than you in a mess like that.”

  “Yes. I think so, too,” Matthew Mahan said. He looked out the window at the gloomy sky. St. Peter’s dome looked forlornly gray. “I should have expected this. But it still hurts.”

  “They can be petty as well as stupendous,” Father Mirante said. “Your Eminence, I see only the futility of this. The danger both to your reputation and your health.”

  “I know, I know, Guilio. But when it’s something your soul summons you to do -”

  “Isn’t it we that summon the soul?”

  “The souls of others. It’s seldom - too seldom - that we let our own souls speak. Don’t you think so?”

  Tears suddenly streamed down Mirante’s face. “Yes. Yes.” He fell on his knees and clutched Matthew Mahan’s right hand to kiss his ring. “Forgive me, forgive me,” he said. “I am not worthy of your friendship. I am not worthy of anyone’s friendship.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Guilio. But whatever it is, you’re forgiven. Not by me. God’s forgiveness is always yours for the asking, you know that.”

  Mirante shook his head. “What does His forgiveness matter when you cannot obtain it from yourself? For a wasted life, a ruined career?”

  Matthew Mahan said nothing. He just stood there letting Mirante cling to his hand. On the other side of the room, Dennis McLaughlin thought: I must never forget this moment. The slight Italian, his lined, world-weary face wet with tears on his knees before the tall, somber American Cardinal.

  Mirante lurched to his feet and stumbled to the door. “I will tell those bastards that I am on your side.”

  The door slammed. He was gone. Matthew Mahan looked at Dennis and sat down to read Pope John. “I’m so glad you found this book,” he said after about an hour. “It makes me feel close to him again. I think I told you how close I felt last May. But this time, I only felt his absence.”

  He sighed and began pacing the floor again. Each time he passed the window, he looked out at St. Peter’s dome. “I’m getting mad,” he said. “I’m an Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church. I don’t think I should be left sitting here like a pensioner.” He paced for another ten minutes. “Paul is so sad. He breaks your heart. If I hadn’t taken that vow -”

  “Couldn’t you argue that it was taken under duress?”

  “Now, now. Don’t use your Jesuit logic on me. Either we do this straight or it isn’t worth doing.”

  They ate supper. Dennis noticed that the Cardinal barely touched his chicken. He drank his milk, ate a little bread and some canned fruit. “Are you planning a hunger strike?” Dennis said.

  “No, I - I’m just not hungry. Actually I feel a little nauseated. Maybe I’m getting a virus.”

  The telephone rang. It was Mirante. “I am calling from a phone in the street. This is not the conspirator, this is the friend,” he said. “Tonight you will be visited by Jean Cardinal Derrieux. Prevent him if possible, my young friend, prevent him from seeing your Cardinal.”

  “Why? They’re friends. He’s -”

  “He was a great liberal. Now a week scarcely passes without him denouncing one of the Pope’s enemies in Osservatore Romano or elsewhere. He sees Villot on the throne. A French pope. For that, he will do anything.”

  Dennis hung up. “Who was that?” Matthew Mahan asked.

  Lie to him? No, this thing has to be done straight. “Mirante.” He told him what the Italian ex-Jesuit had just said.

  Matthew Mahan looked both pained and puzzled. “Derrieux? I can’t believe it. If he comes, I’ll certainly see him. I think Guilio’s like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another.”

  At eight-thirty, the phone rang again. A voice introduced himself as Monsignor Gaspieri. He was Cardinal Derrieux’s secretary. The Cardinal wished to see His Eminence, Cardinal Mahan, as soon as possible. Would 9:00 p.m. be convenient? Dennis passed on the question. Matthew Mahan nodded. “Give him the room number.”

  Precisely at 9:00 p.m., there was a knock on the door. Dennis opened it, and Jean Cardinal Derrieux stepped into the room. His face seemed starker than Dennis recalled it. The pinched cheeks, the small narrow mouth, the dominating high-crowned nose, and intense dark eyes had the impact of a knife blade. He wore a red cassock, and a jeweled pectoral cross glittered on his chest. He held out his hand, ring turned upward. Dennis bobbed his head toward it and brushed his lips against the thin, feminine fingers. He got a whiff of cologne. He stepped back and let Matthew Mahan shake hands. He was wearing his plain clerical black without a trace of red on it. “Jean,” he said, “I’m glad to see you. If they had to send anyone, I’m glad -”

  “I wish I could agree,” said Derrieux in a voice with only the hint of a French accent.

  They sat down in the room’s two wing chairs. Dennis stood against the far wall. “I think it would be best if he left,” Cardinal Derrieux said with a sideways nod of his head.

  “I see no reason for that. Father McLaughlin is completely aware of why I am here.”

  “Too aware, from what I hear. Time is short, and we are talking about things too important for niceties. I am told from many who know you, many from your own archdiocese, that you are this young man’s dupe.”

  “I’ve never heard anything sillier in my life,” Matthew Mahan said. “I don’t think I am any man
’s dupe.”

  Cardinal Derrieux reached inside his cassock and took out a single piece of paper. “I have been given this letter which you wrote to His Holiness. Cardinal Villot, the Secretary of State, gave it to me. He is, of course, horrified by it. So am I.”

  “Has His Holiness seen it?”

  “His Holiness is an old man. Not a well man. It is our task to protect him from this sort of aberration.”

  There was pain on Matthew Mahan’s face. Dennis felt it in his own body, along with anger. Get mad, get mad. Tell him off, he begged silently.

  “Aberration?” Matthew Mahan said. “I can’t believe that you - would say such a thing. One of the great spokesmen for freedom in the Church.”

  “So you have your freedom,” Derrieux said with an almost animal bark, “this is what you do with it. You and your friends in Holland.”

  “I have very few friends in Holland.”

  “You are prepared to lie as well as threaten?”

  “That’s a very serious thing to say to me,” Matthew Mahan said.

  “I say it with the evidence in hand,” Derrieux snarled, shaking the envelope in his face. “Do you take us for fools? The Dutch bishops betray the Pope one day, and you join the assault the next day. Without collusion, without any plan in advance?”

  “I am prepared to swear on this cross to the truth of what I am saying,” Matthew Mahan said, picking up his pectoral cross from the small table between them.

  Derrieux gave no sign that he had even heard him. “You people have succumbed to the vilest of all beliefs, the end justifies the means. You will do anything, say anything, to destroy the papacy. You want to rip down, in a night, what 2,000 years of sacrifice have created, the one voice through which God speaks to men clearly, infallibly.”

  “I am not a theologian. I would not dream of debating with a thinker of your reputation.”

  “But still you throw down the gauntlet,” Derrieux shouted, shaking the letter again. “You presume to lecture the Holy Father.”

  “I presume to tell him what’s in my heart and head.”

  “Nonsense, my friend, that is what is in your heart and head, vile nonsense. You are the captive of this young mountebank and his generation, who want to stand everyone on his head so they can proclaim the substitution of genitalia for thought.”

  “I will not allow you to insult Father McLaughlin,” Matthew Mahan said in a voice that remained low but was now very tense. “He is a fellow priest, a dedicated fellow priest.”

  “We have evidence that suggests other conclusions. He has a carnal relationship with an ex-nun, a woman named Helen Reed. Moreover, he connived with his brother to disrupt your diocese. When your most intimate advisers, your chancellor and your vicar-general, urged you to dismiss him, you refused.”

  “Is that - is that true?” Dennis McLaughlin asked Matthew Mahan.

  The Cardinal avoided his eyes. “Derrieux - my friend -” he said with a tremor in his voice, “this has nothing to do with my letter.”

  “It has everything to do with it. What else could produce this monstrosity but evil, a web of evil in which you have been trapped, my friend, with your tragic American innocence.” He pointed his delicate index finger at Dennis. “I see it on his face. Hatred of the Church, of the priesthood. I see it in his eyes. The words are almost on his lips.”

  Just hatred of you, Your Eminence. With a mighty effort, Dennis did not say the words. He prayed that his face was expressionless.

  “This is vicious,” Matthew Mahan said.

  “Evil, the kind of evil he represents deserves no mercy,” Derrieux said.

  “Please!” Matthew Mahan brought his fist down on the table. His pectoral cross bounced onto the floor. He picked it up. “Please let us discuss what is in that letter. Let us discuss what is happening to the Church. What will happen unless those warnings are taken seriously. While we sit here reviling each other, we are losing souls, Your Eminence. People are dying spiritually. Some of them sit at the gates of the Church begging while we walk past them, loaded with our spiritual riches. Priests are sitting in rectories watching their vocations dying day by day.” He pointed to Dennis McLaughlin. “This young man is a priest. Deeply, profoundly a priest. If he falls away, anyone can fall away, anyone will.”

  No, no I am not worthy, Dennis thought. Forget me, forget this absurd love that has happened between us.

  “Your infatuation with this heretic is truly alarming, Your Eminence. It suggests the most frightening thoughts to me. I pray to God for the sake of your soul that they are not true.”

  He stood up and flipped the letter onto the table top. “The Church, which you see as crumbling, dying, is undergoing a transformation that will carry it triumphantly into a new era of greatness.”

  He snatched up the copy of Journal of a Soul. “We are purging ourselves of the infection of this holy fool. I’m told that you are one of his disciples. Perhaps that is another explanation for this act of idiocy you have committed.”

  He let the book fall back onto the table with a thud. Dennis heard in its echo the sound of nightsticks hitting bodies, of gavels falling, of guillotines.

  Derrieux walked to the door and turned with a royal sweep of his cassock. “I am told by the Cardinal Secretary of State to give you the following order. Go home to your diocese and write another letter, asking the Holy Father’s forgiveness. He will try to obtain it for you. But he guarantees nothing.”

  He opened the door and strode away down the hall without bothering to close it. Dennis kicked it shut and whirled to face Matthew Mahan. He was eager to explode, to ignite this man with his own anger. But what he saw strangled the hot words in his throat. Matthew Mahan sat in the wing chair like a beaten man. There were no scars or bruises on his face, but his head lolled back against the blue cushions, as if he had been battered by a hundred punches and kicks.

  “He was my friend,” he said in a small, sad voice. “We used to have coffee together once or twice a week during the council. I used to introduce him as my walking graduate school.”

  “He’s a son of a bitch. A power-hungry son of a bitch,” Dennis said.

  The sadness in Matthew Mahan’s eyes was almost unbearable. “Did you - did you refuse to fire me?” Dennis asked. Matthew Mahan hesitated. Dennis realized he already knew the answer. Blindly he stumbled in another direction. “I mean - how would he know about what the chancellor or the vicar-general said to you?”

  “One - or both - have been writing to Rome,” Matthew Mahan said wryly. “It’s probably George Petrie. I’m sure by now he thinks he can do a better job than I’m doing - and he’s probably right.”

  “No!” Dennis cried. “Remember what you said - about just doing the job. You’ve been doing so much more than that. Petrie’s just too dumb - or too ambitious - to see it.”

  Matthew Mahan nodded, a sad unconvinced smile on his face. For a moment, Dennis felt close to weeping; the next, he was struggling for breath. The room was charged with defeat, disaster.

  “You’re not going to let him discourage you, are you, that - that clerical De Gaulle?”

  Matthew Mahan forced a smile. “No. No. I said we’d stay here until the Pope saw us. We will.”

  Conviction, strength, had vanished from his voice. “I’m sure the Pope hasn’t even seen your letter,” Dennis said. “Write a covering note and I’ll take it back to the Vatican tomorrow. Hand-deliver it.”

  “He saw it,” Matthew Mahan said. “Why else would I be told to ask his forgiveness?”

  Dennis was silent. It was his turn to pace the floor. “That man would lie about anything. He talks about evil, infection. It’s all over him like sores. The infection of power.”

  “Paul saw it, Dennis, he saw it. It had the ring of truth,” Matthew Mahan sighed. “Let’s go to bed. I feel terribly tired. We can talk in the morning.”

  By ten-thirty, they had both showered and were in bed. Dennis turned out the light and lay there rigid. Sleep was out of the question.
Matthew Mahan was apparently doing no better. The springs of his bed creaked every time his big body moved on it. Hours passed. Dennis dozed. Half in, half out of sleep, he heard bells tolling distantly. Then a voice, equally distant, calling: “Dennis. Dennis.” It was a dream, of course. The voice was so faint it was unrecognizable. Who was it, his brother Leo? “Dennis -” The voice was half-choked now. He woke up. The harsh unmistakable sound of a throat struggling for air filled his ears. “Den -” Gurgling.

  He turned on the light and cried out with anguish. Matthew Mahan was slumped against the back of his bed. The shirt of his blue pajamas was soaked with blood. There was blood everywhere. On the pillow. On the sheets. On the floor beside the bed. As he stumbled to his feet, more blood gushed from Matthew Mahan’s mouth.

  “A hemorrhage,” Matthew Mahan whispered. “Bill Reed warned me -” He choked and tried to hold back a mouthful. It burst through his fingers. “Get me to the bathroom -”

  “No. Lie still,” Dennis cried and snatched up the phone. A sleepy clerk answered after twenty rings. The pensione had no doctor. He was new to the city, a stranger from Bergamo. He knew nothing about doctors. All this in incredibly broken English.

  “Call the police then. An ambulance.”

  “Ambulanza?” asked the clerk.

  “Ambulanza. Ambulanza,” Dennis shouted. “Presto. Subito.”

  “Get me a towel, Dennis. I’m making such a mess,” Matthew Mahan said as he hung up.

  He got him a towel. Within minutes, it was soaked with blood. “Oh Jesus, where is that ambulance?” Dennis cried.

  A knock on the door. The room clerk stood there wide-eyed. “Where’s the ambulance?” Dennis screamed.

  “Dottore.”

  The fellow turned and ran down the hall. Dennis realized that he had not called the ambulance yet. He had decided to come upstairs and see if these crazy Americans were drunk or something.

  Another towel slowly turning red in Matthew Mahan’s clutching fists. Then it was over. No more blood. Over. “Thank God, Dennis prayed frantically.

  “Let me get this off you,” Dennis said, unbuttoning his soaked pajama shirt with trembling fingers. He stripped it away, threw it into the bathroom. “Can you move to my bed?”