Eminence

by Morris West

  “You’re the host, Turi! You call the tune. It’s a very short text. I assume you didn’t want a whole essay.”

  “Of course not. Go ahead.”

  “Minute on Raul Jaime Ortega, proposed by the Government of Argentina for appointment as Ambassador to the Holy See. I have read the proposal. I have never met the candidate personally, though I have some knowledge of his background. I note that he claims an important role in securing my safe exit from Argentina during the regime of the military junta. My information at the time was that his influence was minimal. The real power was exercised by his father, General Jaime Alfonso Ortega, who was an important personage in the junta. On the other hand, Raul Ortega’s wife, Isabel, nursed me back to health after the beating and sheltered me in secret while her father was negotiating for my safe-conduct out of the country. Given Raul Ortega’s eagerness to have this final posting at the Vatican, it is perhaps understandable that he should exaggerate his own role. I see no good reason to contest his version of the affair. I am sure he would make at least a competent Ambassador and, by all accounts, an ornamental one. In short, I record a nihil obstat – no fundamental objection. I recommend, however, a minimal expectation of him in either good or harm to the Holy See.”

  The Secretary of State leaned back in his chair and laughed.

  “Beautifully read, Luca! Beautifully drafted! An elegant warrant for a bloodless execution!”

  “Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

  “Let’s say I was curious to know what you would say – given the special circumstances.”

  Luca Rossini chided him sharply.

  “Don’t play games with me, Turi! We’ve known each other too long!”

  “This is not a game, Luca, just the prelude to our lunch-time discussion. When you came to Rome all those years ago with the Apostolic Nuncio, a certain amount of rumour came with you. The Nuncio discounted it in his report but pointed out that the junta would certainly use it against you if you attempted to speak out against them.”

  “The junta is long out of power. So the threat is irrelevant.”

  “True.”

  “But these rumours remain noted in your files.”

  “As a matter of record only.”

  “What do they say?”

  “That during your rescue a sergeant was shot and that while you were recovering in a secret hiding place, you had a love affair with Ortega’s wife.”

  “The love affair was constructed as a rumour. It happened to be a fact. I made this known to His Holiness when he first received me in Rome. I have never made any pretence or excuse about what happened. On the other hand, I have never felt obliged to broadcast it. To do so would have put Isabel at even greater risk. She had killed a man to save me. She gave me a love that restored my manhood.”

  “Were you never tempted to stay in Argentina and continue the affair?”

  “Of course, but that would have put both her and her father at risk of their lives. My exile was the price of their safety.”

  “Did you love her, Luca?”

  “I did. I do.”

  “And she loves you?”

  “Yes. We still correspond. It doesn’t heal the wounds, but it makes them easier to bear. Why are you raising all this now, Turi? It has been buried for more than twenty years!”

  “Because I wondered how you would react to Ortega’s posting as Ambassador if he intended, as he obviously does, to bring his wife and daughter with him.”

  “In point of fact, Turi, his wife and their daughter are coming to Rome for a private visit in the very near future.”

  “That’s news to me!” The Secretary of State was genuinely surprised. “When did you hear this?”

  “Only this morning. There was a message from Isabel on my e-mail. I hope your people can reserve a couple of good seats for them on the diplomatic fringes in Saint Peter’s and in the Piazza.”

  “Of course. I take it you’ll be seeing them during their visit?”

  “Isabel said she would contact me when she arrived in Rome.”

  The Secretary of State permitted himself a slow smile of approval. He said gently, “I hope it’s a pleasant experience for you both. You have been given a special gift, Luca, the gift to survive in a solitude of the heart. I’ve often wondered how you could be so bold in your dealings, even with the Holy Father himself. You hide nothing. You face up to every question, as you have just done now. We’re all going to need that gift very soon. Now, let’s have lunch. There are large matters to discuss and we need nourishment.”

  The frugal meal was soon over. The wine was as thin as ever, but they lingered a long time over coffee. The Secretary of State opened his heart to Luca Rossini as he had never done before:

  “Our man is dying, Luca – the man who gave each of us the red hat and put me in this job. The press of the world is sitting in judgment on him.Before and during the conclave, you and I will be delivering our own judgments.”

  “And what will be yours, Turi?”

  “We must abrogate many practices we have condoned too long, and many policies which our master has framed.”

  “And which you administered.”

  “Administered, enforced or at the very least did not protest strongly enough. Even so, I shall feel like a traitor to his memory.”

  “Don’t blame yourself too much, Turi. We are what we were trained to be – obedient in heart and mind and will.”

  “I’m not in the mood for mockery, Luca!”

  “I’m not mocking you. God forbid! I, too, have wept over our Pontiff. He gave me kindness when I needed it and dignity when I had none. I fought him, sometimes more bitterly than you know, because I saw behind him the shapes of old tyrannies, and before him the shadow of new ones.”

  “But you fought him. I didn’t.”

  “You were always a good officer, Turi. You were incapable of mutiny. I’ve been on the verge of it many times.”

  “Where are you now, Luca?”

  Luca Rossini frowned as he tried to frame his answer.

  “I’m still in uniform. I live by the book. I draw my stipend. I do my job as best I can. Only my reasons have changed.”

  “How?”

  “That’s another question for another time. Tell me what’s on your mind, Turi?”

  The Secretary of State was silent for a moment. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts, sorting through words, debating whether or not to trust himself to Luca Rossini. Finally he began to talk, haltingly at first, then with passion and eloquence.

  “You don’t need me to read you a list of the ills of the Church. We have defied the reality of human experience, we have refused to listen to the People of God, men and women of goodwill. They have asked for the bread of life and we have offered them stones. So they have turned away, men, women and children, too. We, ministers of the Word, have become irrelevant to them. Sometimes, of late, I have had a recurrent nightmare: His Holiness in full pontificals, standing on the battlements of a ruined castle, a lost crusader, shouting his rallying cry across a desert, empty of people …”

  “When he topples off,” Rossini supplied the coda, “we bury him and turn away to find another candidate for crucifixion. When that one’s bled out, we let him, too, hang on the cross while the crows peck his eyes out.”

  “That’s the beginning of madness!” There was fire in Pascarelli’s voice now. “We are twentieth-century people. God knows, we should have learnt by now the diminishments and dangers of the ageing process. Even for a Pope, there is no insurance against dementia, or any other encroachment of age. Yet we elect our candidate for life, kneel in perpetual fealty, attribute to him an infallible discernment and use every sophistry in theology to endow him with the numen of near divinity … Vicar of Christ! I’ve always found the title hard to swallow, though I’ve never had the courage to challenge it. Was Alexander VI a Vicar of Christ, or Julius II or Sergius III, who murdered his two predecessors? We can’t blame ourselves for the past, but we are responsi
ble for repeating it. You’re right, my dear Luca, when you talk about electing a candidate for crucifixion. We begin indeed by tempting him up to a high mountain and showing him literally all the kingdoms of the world at one glance. I can do that little trick in my own office with a map of the world and some flashing lights! Then we play on his crusader’s ambition. The Word is the sword of the spirit. With swift travel and instantaneous communication, the Word can be made always and everywhere present, delivered by and in the Pontiff himself. That’s heady wine, Luca. All those upturned faces, those outstretched hands! The need they express is much more seductive to a good man than all the gold and glitter and lechery of Avignon or Renaissance Rome. So, when we ask him ‘Do you accept election?’, he consents with appropriate gravity and humility. Then he sets out, as Paul did, full of passion, zeal and certainty, to change the world.” He broke off abruptly. “You can finish the story, Luca. I need more coffee.”

  Luca Rossini picked up the narrative on a note of smiling irony.

  “He learns the hard way that jet-lag and travel weariness do impair the judgment, that those he leaves to keep house in Rome have their own ambitions: to create their own dukedoms inside the Kingdom of God. He learns what every politician and every beautiful woman has to learn: that over-exposure is a danger, that the image becomes shopworn, the noblest phrases sound like cliches and the warmest welcome wears out in time, because the guest and his entourage cost money to feed and entertain.”

  “There’s more yet, Luca.” The Secretary of State continued the recital. “All this learning doesn’t come at once. It comes in a series of subdued shocks, like the tremors in an earthquake zone. The tremors are unsettling. They create a sense of solitude, which creates in its turn a dependence upon the comfort of counsellors within an inner cabinet. So the great traveller becomes a recluse, clinging to certainties within his own soul, trusting a small cabal of intimate friends, losing the language of the common folk from whom he sprang. We have a chance to change that, Luca – one chance.”

  “Define it for me, Turi.”

  “Let’s find ourselves a Pope who will agree to call a new General Council, to write into the canons a statutory age for the retirement of a Pope, just as it has been written for us, and a consent in advance to his own removal, should he become mentally incompetent.”

  “Let me ask you then, Turi, if you were elected would you do such things? There’s a catch here, you see. Once you’re in office and endowed with all the absolute powers, who reminds you of your promise? Who exacts performance? You have to know the answer, Turi. You’re a prime candidate.”

  “I shall not be a candidate. I shall so inform the electors.”

  “Why, Turi? Why are you telling me this?”

  “To the first question: I’m a good diplomat because I can juggle endlessly with the possible. I work in private, not in public. I have no pastoral experience, nor any real wish to acquire it. Why am I telling you? I think there’s at least an outside chance that you could be elected.”

  “Me?” Luca Rossini was shocked. He was no longer the sceptic and the ironist. “That’s madness, Turi! I’ve always been an exotic here. Some of our colleagues used to call me ‘the protected species’. That’s what I was, the pseudo-hero, the young martyr miraculously preserved to do great things in the Church! Let me tell you, Turi, I was one of His Holiness’s more notable mistakes! I’m not what you think I am. I’m not even …”

  There was the muted shrilling of a telephone. The Secretary of State held up his hand to silence Rossini. He fished in the pocket of his soutane and brought out his phone.

  “This is Pascarelli.” He listened in silence for a few moments, thanked the caller and switched off. He turned to Rossini.

  “His Holiness has just died.”

  “God rest him,” said Luca Rossini, the unbeliever.

  “Amen,” said the Secretary of State. “Now the See is vacant and we all have work to do.”

  Claudio Stagni had one last service to render to his master. He laid out the vestments in which the Pontiff’s body would be clothed by the embalmers for the lying-in-state and the entombment. Then he presented himself to the Camerlengo.

  “I have finished, Eminence. Is there anything more you need from me?”

  “Thank you, Claudio. There is nothing.”

  “Will there be employment for me here after the election?”

  “I’m sure there will be something, but not in the present post. A new Pontiff will wish to make his own household arrangements. You are of pensionable age, yes?”

  “I am. I also have several months accumulated leave.”

  “I suggest you take some of it now.”

  “Thank you, Eminence. I need to think what I shall do with my life.”

  “Of course. We are grateful for your long and faithful service, Claudio.”

  “It was my honour and always my pleasure to serve His Holiness. He was a great man.”

  “A great man,” said the Camerlengo absently. “Was there anything else, Claudio?”

  “Just one thing, Eminence. I hope it will not seem disrespectful if I do not attend the funeral. I don’t think I could face the crowds and the long ceremonies. My life with His Holiness was a very private one.”

  “You’re a bachelor, I understand.”

  “That’s right. His Holiness used to say sometimes we were just two old bachelors living in a house too big for them.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” The Camerlengo’s tone was dry. “Have a good holiday.”

  “Thank you, Eminence.”

  His Eminence was already bent over his checklists. Figaro bowed himself out and walked sedately down to the paymaster’s office to collect all the monies due to him and file the application for his pension. Once outside Vatican City, he hailed a taxi to take him to his apartment in Trastevere where he picked up his baggage – an overnight bag and a scuffed briefcase. From Trastevere he was driven to Fiumicino airport to embark on a six o’clock flight to Zurich.

  On arrival in Zurich he checked into a suite in the Savoy Hotel. The tariff made him gasp, then he remembered what had brought him here and was cheerful again. He locked his briefcase in the room safe, called the desk clerk to tell her that he could be found in the grill-room, then went downstairs to order a dinner that even a self-indulgent Cardinal might envy. He was sitting over his coffee and an excellent brandy when the waiter brought him the telephone. A woman’s voice asked in Italian:

  “Claudio Stagni?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Barbara Busoni from New York. We are downstairs in the lobby. May we come up?”

  “The concierge will send someone to escort you to my suite.”

  “There will be three of us.”

  “So many?”

  “A handwriting expert, an attorney and myself.”

  “Good! I like tidy work. I, myself, am a very tidy man. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  He called for the bill, signed it with a flourish, drained the last drop of brandy, then walked jauntily to the elevator to face the inquisitors, whom he hoped to turn overnight into generous paymasters.

  The woman was younger and more attractive than he had expected, with honey-coloured skin, dark eyes and a Florentine accent and russet hair cut in a page-boy style. She made the introductions quite formally.

  “Mr Stagni, I am Barbara Busoni. We have talked several times. I work with our agency on developmental projects. If we go ahead, I’ll be your editor. This gentleman is Maury Rosenheim, our in-house attorney, and this is Sergei Malenkov, a recognised handwriting expert. This, gentlemen, is Signor Claudio Stagni, formerly valet to His Holiness.”

  “Formerly or presently?”

  “Formerly, Mr Rosenheim. His Holiness died this morning.”

  “I didn’t know. I’ve been flying for eight hours, sleeping for most of it. I take it you have already left your employment.”

  “Not at all. I am on holiday. The Cardinal Camerlengo – that�
�s the Chamberlain in English – suggested I use up some of my accumulated leave before deciding whether I should seek other employment in the Vatican.”

  The lawyer frowned in puzzlement.

  “This isn’t the way it was represented to me, Barbara. I know I’m tired but …”

  “Why don’t you just hush up and listen, Maury. We’re a long way from documents yet. It is my understanding that Mr Stagni is offering us an intimate personal memoir of his years as valet to the Pontiff, together with exclusive rights to certain private papers of the Pontiff which have come legitimately into his possession. Mr Stagni has agreed in principle that he would dictate his memoirs under my supervision, that I would edit them as we work, so that they could be ready for syndication before the conclave begins. The price we discussed was one million five in US dollars for world rights in all media, payable half on the beginning of work and half on completion. Is that your understanding, Mr Stagni?”

  “I understood and accepted it as a starting-point for negotiation. Circumstances have changed since then.”

  “In what respect, Mr Stagni?”

  “Much more material – intimate and exclusive material in the Pontiff’s own hand has been made available to me. It is of such a nature that I believe it should be published first, and my memoir second, because that way great value would be added to both projects.”

  “You mean, Mr Stagni, you’re hiking the price?”

  “On the one hand, yes. On the other, I’m offering you an enormously more valuable product.”

  “May we see some of it, please?” Barbara Busoni was testy now. “You must admit this is something of a surprise.”

  “Figaro was always full of surprises, wasn’t he?”

  “Figaro?”

  “That was the nickname they gave me in Rome. I was the Pope’s valet, barber, costumier, whatever – but I was also one of the few people who could get a real laugh out of him. Here, let me show you what we’re talking about.” He opened his worn briefcase and took out a leather-bound missal. He opened it to a flyleaf and passed it to Malenkov, the handwriting expert.