Eminence

by Morris West

  How right you are about the need to work through both grief and love! You seem to have done it much more successfully than I. I thought I could accomplish it like an athlete surfing on the adrenalin rush of power games. I have become very good at that, as you know, but the disciplines are rigid, the diet is spartan and the bed is lonely at night.

  There’s another cost, too, which mounts higher every day. I cannot call myself a believer any more. Ironic, isn’t it? I am one of the hinge-men of the Church. I am a potent figure in an ancient cult, whose rituals I practise, but whose belief I no longer accept. Simple folk kneel to kiss my hand. For them, I still dispense a magic. For myself, there is no magic any more. The inner shrine is dark and empty.

  Strange as it may seem, there is a kind of liberation in this. There is no one who can suborn me or frighten me. Even so, I cower like a child from the vestigial nightmares which still take me unawares. I use your name like a spell to rid myself of them. Perhaps when you come you will help me to purge them for ever. You ask where and how I shall entertain you. I have just the place. It is small and private and every foot of soil, every plant and fruit is mine. For me, it has been like the sacred island of Cos, a healing place. I shall be glad and grateful to welcome you into its peace.

  It’s late, the Pope is dying. I have had a long day. There will be longer ones yet.

  Goodnight my dear, my very dear.

  Luca.

  He waited a long moment before he decided to transmit the message. He knew that this was the most naked avowal he had ever made, and that if it ever became public it would be a catastrophe. Yet, the need to say it was overpowering. So, drunk and reckless with the toxins of fatigue and stress, he entered the transmission code and let it go.

  In the Papal bedchamber, the Pontiff still lay ashen and immobile. There were oxygen tubes in his nostrils, an intravenous drip in his arm. His eyes were blank and expressionless. Two Sisters of Mercy had just taken over the night watch and Doctor Mottola was giving them instructions:

  “You’ve both dealt with this sort of thing before, so you don’t need a lecture on it. At the moment he appears to be stable, though, in fact, he is going downhill. All we’re doing is administering oxygen and hydrating him with the drip. I don’t expect any major change before morning. Of course, there will be a continuing build up of mucous fluid in the lungs, because he can’t clear it by coughing. There will also be an excess of carbon dioxide which typically will produce apnoea and Cheyne-Stokes respiration. If that comes on, call me. I’ll be here in ten minutes. Don’t panic. You’ll see nothing you haven’t seen before. Even a Pope gets no respite from mortality.”

  The elder of the two nuns asked:

  “What about coning?”

  The doctor gave her an approving look.

  “You do know your job, Sister. If coning occurs, he will be swiftly and visibly terminal because the pressure of bleeding inside the skull will compress the brain and force cerebral tissue out of the skull case at the base. However, there are no significant indications that coning is imminent here. My hope is that you’ll have a quiet night. Just look in on him every half hour or so – and make sure you write up the chart each time. It won’t help the patient very much; but it will keep our professional reputations clean! Say a prayer for him – and for me.”

  “We’ll do that, doctor. Goodnight.”

  When he had gone, the two women settled themselves in the anteroom from which they had a clear view of their patient. They were, as Mottola had acknowledged, experienced senior nurses, and they had kept a death-watch many times. Even so, they were religious women and there was a certain numinous quality about this event which would colour the rest of their lives. The man, dying piecemeal before their eyes, was endowed with an awesome series of titles: Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of Vatican City State.

  The titles were inflated by centuries of myth-making, conflated with imperial histories, fortified by traditional Roman legalisations, sanctified by long memories of martyrdoms buttressed by great edifices over whose lintels were carved in stone the legend: “Tu es Petrus … You are the Rock upon which the Kingdom of God is built.” All of which was reduced to a single bleak irony – an old man dying in a small bedroom, attended by two women, gossiping softly in the antechamber.

  There was a discreet knock at the door and Claudio Stagni, valet to the Pontiff, came in with a tray of coffee and food for their supper. He was a short man, ruddy and cheerful – the only one, according to court legend, who could make the Pontiff laugh and lift him out of his crotchets and ill-humours. In the small family circle they called him Figaro, because, as he trotted about his tasks, he parodied himself with the Rossini melody, “Figaro qua, Figaro là, Figaro su, Figaro giù!”. When the women thanked him for his service and apologised for keeping him up late, he grinned and shrugged.

  “In this job, one has to be a night creature. His Holiness often works into the small hours. He needs coffee and sandwiches and an occasional chat. He likes to try out his ideas on me because he says even a Pope can’t be a hero to his valet, but if he can get through to me, he has a reasonable chance of making sense to the rest of the Church!”

  The younger nun asked him:

  “What is he really like in private?”

  Claudio made an eloquent gesture of deprecation.

  “What’s he like? Boh! How do you turn an epic into a sonnet? He’s been a big man in his time – and it’s been a long time too! Some might say too long. But you can’t measure him by what you see in the bed there.”

  “Would you say he was a saint?” This time it was the older nun who put the question.

  “A saint?” The valet made an elaborate comedy of pondering the question. “My dear Sister, I’m not sure I know what a saint is. In lots of ways he’s just as human as you and me. He’s got a quick temper – and it hasn’t got any sweeter these last years. He doesn’t like people to contradict him, but he admires anyone who is prepared to face him in a knock-down fight. He likes gossip, which is why he likes to have me around; but he listens too readily to people who make him feel good, because it’s lonely up here, as you can feel for yourselves. Any mistakes he makes are bound to be big ones, with big consequences. In spite of all that, he’s a generous man. He’ll listen to all sides of a case – provided, of course, the Curia lets him hear them, which doesn’t always happen. Is he a saint? I’d say you’d have to be something of a saint just to stick out the life he’s lived. He scoots around the world like a tenor on tour, handing out smiles and blessings which the people lap up – and reading speeches that the local hierarchies have written, and the people yawn over. He also prays a lot. He used to say he couldn’t survive without God to lean on. And God is very real to him.” He broke off, then gave the women a little conspiratorial grin.

  “Tell you what, Sisters, why don’t you two finish your coffee, while I go in and tell him goodnight. I’d like to do that. And I think I should just tidy his closet and leave out a change of nightclothes in case you want to freshen him up before morning. Besides, it will make me feel useful. There’s precious little else I can do for him.”

  He left them then. They lost sight of him as he turned inside the door of the bedroom to reach the Pontiff’s clothes closet. A few moments later, they caught a glimpse of him bundling up a few items of laundry and setting down a small pile of clean nightclothes at the foot of the bed. Then he did a curious and touching thing. He took two white handkerchiefs from the pile of fresh linen and touched them to the brows of the silent Pontiff. Then he brought them out and with a rueful smile presented one to each of the nuns.

  “Here! We all know he’s never going to need them again. I’m sure he’d like to say thank you for what you’re doing for him. If they make him a saint one day, these will be important relics, won’t they? And don’t
feel badly about taking them. I’m his valet. I bought them for him. You can’t imagine a Pope going shopping for fine cambric in the Via Condotti, can you?”

  The two women were deeply moved. They were still murmuring their thanks when he waved goodnight and stepped quietly out of the room with the bundle of laundry in his hands. They did not know – how could they? – that Claudio Stagni had just procured for himself a life-time pension – three slim volumes of the most intimate diaries of the Pontiff, which he had written up at the end of each day, and kept concealed in a drawer in his closet.

  Their existence was unknown to anyone except his faithful valet, confidant and court-jester, who had often provided an audience for the brusque comments of a weary man as he set them on paper. When he died, these records would pass immediately into the custody of the Cardinal Camerlengo who might well choose to bury them for a century or two in the Secret Archive. Better, far better, that Figaro, the happy ironist, the long-suffering body servant, should present them to the world, provide them with context and provenance, and, in due time, write his own biography of the Pontiff. There were already profitable deals on offer from several media sources for any material he chose to provide about his life as body servant to the Pope, but, with these texts in his possession, Figaro was certain he could double and redouble and double them again, and live rich and happy ever after.

  The nightmare of Luca, Cardinal Rossini never changed. It was as if a strip of old silent film had been looped inside his skull and set to roll at the coldest darkest hour before dawn. The action began each time with the same frame: a tiny sub-Andean town north west of Tucumán.

  There was a church and a priest’s house, facing a small colonnaded market square, where grain and livestock and pottery and woven fabrics were traded for goods imported from Buenos Aires. The local population was a typical Argentine cocktail of the mid-seventies: Creoles, legal and illegal migrants from Chile and Uruguay, mestizos and the relics of Inca tribes, fragmented by the policies of old Imperial Spain.

  The carts of the traders, heavy lumbering vehicles, were lined around the square so that the dwellers above the colonnades had a theatre-goer’s view of the small dramas enacted on the cobbles below. This also was Rossini’s viewpoint for the film unrolling in his head. He was watching himself, enacting himself on a silent screen.

  The action began with a military truck driving into the square. The townsfolk froze at the sight of it. A group of militiamen leapt out and formed themselves in a line facing the entrance to the church. Their commander was a sergeant, a hulking fellow who looked like a circus strongman. He stepped out of the cabin of the truck and stood a long time, an ominous giant, surveying the scene and slapping at his breeches with a riding crop.

  Then he began a slow circuit of the square while its small population of men, women and children huddled, mute, around the carts. When he had completed the circuit, he signalled with his riding-crop to the waiting troops.

  Four men stepped out of the ranks, two on either flank of the square, and moved around the stallholders, demanding, always in dumb show, their identity papers. If there was any delay or hesitation, the trade goods were smashed or trampled on the ground. Anyone who protested was felled immediately with fist or rifle-butt. Children were cuffed or kicked aside.

  Halfway through this systematic intimidation, Luca Rossini came running out of the church. He was dressed in shirt, slacks and sandals. The only symbol of his priestly office was a small silver crucifix hung about his neck. Even as witness of the dream, he was shocked to see how young he was. The terror was that he could not hear the words he shouted, nor restrain his fierce gestures of protest.

  He noted, however, that his silent shouting had some effect. The militiamen halted in their tracks and looked to the sergeant for orders. The sergeant raised his hand to command a pause, then walked up slowly to confront Rossini, who was still expostulating with gestures and silent mouthings. The sergeant smiled benignly and slashed him twice across the face with the riding-crop. He signalled again to the troops and Rossini was overwhelmed by a rush of armed men.

  They tore the shirt from his back, and pulled his trousers down around his ankles so that his back and his buttocks were bare. They spreadeagled him against the big wooden wheel of a trader’s cart and tied his wrists and ankles to the rim and the spokes. He could see nothing now, except a patch of cobbles between the spokes, and a pile of spilt grain and the frightened face of a child, hiding under the cart.

  Then, measuring and savouring each stroke, the sergeant began to beat him with the riding-crop. At first he tried to remain silent, biting his lips, but finally the first soundless screams were torn from him, and the screams turned to moans and grunts as the blows continued to fall on his back and buttocks. The crowd in the square were silent. The watchers in the windows were dumb with fear and horror. From a quarter of a century away, in another dimension of time and space, Luca, Cardinal Rossini watched the cold-blooded degradation of the young man he had been. Finally the beating ended. The sergeant wiped blood and tissue from his riding-crop, then he stepped back to survey his handiwork. He nodded, smiled and turned to address his troops. This time the words were audible. They were spoken in Lunfardo, the argot of the slums of Buenos Aires which Rossini had learned in his childhood.

  “There now, see! I’ve softened him up for you. He’s wet and warm. Who’d like to fuck a priest?”

  The screen went black and Luca, Cardinal Rossini struggled out of the nightmare to face a grey Roman dawn.

  There were others in Vatican City stirring early that morning. Staff members of the Sala Stampa had been up all night monitoring media sources in Europe, the Americas and South East Asia. Their director, Monsignor Domingo Angel-Novalis, was at his desk by five, summarising the information for the Secretary of State.

  Angel-Novalis was an Aragonese, educated in Madrid, and launched early, with family money, on a successful career as an international financier. He had married well. His wife, a pious woman, had encouraged him to join the lay wing of Opus Dei. When his wife and their infant son were killed, he was supported in his grief by the fellowship of the congregation. Their rigorism, their close-knit and elitist community life matched his needs. Their closed circuit philosophy stilled all doubts, as the old battle-cry of the crusaders had steeled them to battle – “Ut deus vult!” – As God wills it! At the end of a year he applied and was accepted as a candidate for the priesthood.

  In any profession he would have been prime material. In this one, with a marriage and a successful career behind him, a personal battle won, he was gem quality. He finished his studies in Rome and was ordained there. He was commended to the attention of the Pontiff. His history and his manifest talents as a communicator brought him swift appointment to the Sala Stampa, where a certain cool irony about the world and its ways won him respect if not affection. His note to the Secretary of State was touched with the same irony:

  So far, we have not done too badly with the world media. Most editors were caught off balance by the timing of your first bulletin. They had little chance to assemble commentary material or strike a clear editorial line. However, we may be sure that such material will emerge in the next few days. Early indicators are the following:

  Daily Telegraph, London: The Pontiff’s collapse was not an unexpected event. What was unexpected was the decision to treat him in his Vatican apartment, rather than in Gemelli Hospital where he has usually gone for treatment. One explanation current in Rome – though not yet advanced by any Vatican source – is that the Pontiff is so severely brain-damaged that no intervention is feasible or desirable. However, in his present condition, every medical act – the administration of oxygen, hydration by intravenous drip – represents a significant act of intervention.

  Le Monde, Paris: The message of the bulletin is clear enough. His Holiness had, at an earlier time, expressed his desire that there should be no officious prolongation of his life. Someone in the Vatican is clearly prepared to give
witness to that effect. What is not at all clear is whether, in the same context, the Pontiff consented in advance to be relieved of his office if there were any doubt about his competence to serve the Church. In the absence of such consent, then other questions arise: Can his wish be presumed? If the presumption is disputed, who decides the issue? And, how and in what form will he be removed to open the way for a successor?

  New York Times: Vatican physicians and curial officials are now facing a tight-rope walk on an issue which, when it touches the ordinary faithful, they tend to dismiss with a trenchant theological proposition. It is said that the Pope has rejected in advance any prolongation of his already long life. So far, no documentary evidence has been offered. The Pope can no longer express himself in any fashion at all. He certainly cannot function in his office. Who decides for him, his physician or a Curial committee? And by what criteria will they judge, a rigorist theology or a liberal one? Both are current in today’s Church. The Pontiff was, without doubt, a rigorist. He pushed the limits of infallibility as far as he could stretch them without a schism. So now, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians at the gates, and how will the faithful judge their actions?

  With great respect, Eminence, I suggest that from this moment onwards, we return to the customary order of communication. The Sala Stampa drafts the bulletins, submits them to you for approval and issues them through its normal channels. We are walking now through a minefield and we have yet to encounter the tabloid press and the talking-heads of television!

  I beg an urgent instruction from your Eminence. I should like to draft the next bulletin myself, as soon as the physicians have made their morning report.

  D. Angel-Novalis.

  At six-thirty in the morning, Doctor Mottola and his two specialist colleagues examined their patient. They had asked to be left alone with him. The nursing Sisters had gone to take coffee, while the Secretary of State and a group of senior prelates, together with the Papal secretary and Domingo Angel-Novalis, were waiting in the Pontiff’s study.