by Morris West
It was still too early to determine who they might be, but Milan had strengthened to twenty-five votes, the Spaniard had risen to nineteen and the man from Brazil had taken a three-vote lead on the Mexican candidate. Politically, both were positioned firmly on the right of centre.
At five-thirty, Monsignor Piers Hallett came to the room with a bottle of Scotch in one pocket of his soutane and a packet of peanuts in the other. He set them down with a flourish.
“Talk about a scramble! Their Eminences make a lethal tribe at the water-hole! I’m afraid there’s no ice. Shall I pour? You look as though you could do with a drink.”
“I have small taste for rituals. How was your day?”
“Long, but full of interesting gossip. The buzz-words now, courtesy of Opus Dei, are stability, continuity, fidelity. The Spaniards, home-grown or colonial, are the standard-bearers. No! Don’t take it lightly! Spain’s the power-base, the money-base and it has a stable monarchy that still makes a kind of sense to the traditional Arab world which remembers Alhambra.”
“They’re taking a hell of a risk,” said Luca Rossini.
“They’re prepared to take it.”
“Who is their favoured candidate?”
“Gossip says Chile. The smart money says the Spaniard’s already ensconced in the Curia. Word is that they’d like to run you as pacer for the money horses.”
“I’m on the wrong side, Piers. They know that.”
“That doesn’t worry them. They’re sure you’ll run out of steam just as their own people hit the front.”
Luca Rossini laughed.
“What can I say to that?”
“I wasn’t expecting a comment,” said Hallett, “but I’d welcome one on my next item, which is me. I know this is only day one and I’m stuck here for the duration of the conclave; but the point is, I’ve pretty much made up my mind.”
“To do what?”
“Quit the priesthood and go back to work as a secular scholar.”
“Do you want to tell me why?”
“I do. Your knowing is important to me. You have always been my eminently good friend. You took me as I was, as I am: a scholar of some worth, an indifferent cleric, passionless enough, I thought, to stay out of trouble and enjoy the pleasures of learning and friendship. So far it has worked out well enough. But it can’t any longer. The clergy are too much in the spotlight now. I’m vulnerable and one day I could be too desperate for companionship to be discreet. Besides, if I want to seek gainful employment, now is the time to do it. There are a couple of jobs on offer: one at Harvard, one at the Getty in Los Angeles. The money’s better at the Getty, but there’s tenure at Harvard. So that’s where I’ll address myself first. Any comment from my eminent friend?”
“Not too much. I think it’s a wise decision. I’ll do the best I can to facilitate your laicisation; but if we get a hard-line Pontiff, you may have some procedural headaches, which, on balance, I’d advise you to wear and ignore.”
“And that’s all?”
“I can’t think of anything else. It’s a simple situation. You don’t have to turn it into a desperate one. You might, however, pour me another whisky.”
“With pleasure,” said Piers Hallett. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve dreaded this moment.”
“Which part of it? The decision or the telling?”
“Both. A lot of people would have fallen back to some prepared position. You know … take a little time, get some counselling, find a wise confessor, take a cold shower!”
Luca Rossini smiled and shook his head.
“There are no prepared positions, none that last very long anyway. Sooner or later, we come to a final standing-place from which we fight or die. Salud amigo!”
When they had drunk the toast, Piers Hallett set down his glass and remarked:
“I checked for messages, as you asked. There were none.”
“It’s too soon,” said Rossini. “It’s much too soon. I’m praying we’ll be out of here long before anything happens to Isabel.”
“And when it does?”
“That’s my standing-place.”
“To fight or die, you said.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s a drastic choice,” said Piers Hallett. “But you didn’t offer it to me. Why not?”
“I have an argument with God that needs to be settled.”
“And Jacob wrestled all night with the angel,” said Piers Hallett. “And Jacob came away limping. If you don’t mind, I’m going to have another drink.”
“It’s your liquor,” said Rossini. He raised his glass in a toast. “To health, money and love – and time to enjoy them. I wish you every good fortune, my friend!”
Fifteen
After dinner that night, Luca Rossini was invited to take coffee with the Secretary of State and the Camerlengo in the Camerlengo’s private office. Now that his name had suddenly shown up in the voting, he wondered whether he was to be wooed or warned. He decided to pre-empt the question:
“Who’s running me into the ballot?”
“Fifteen voters, according to the count.” The Camerlengo was suitably vague. “You’re a scrutineer, you checked the figures yourself.”
“Who are the voters? Yours or theirs?”
The Camerlengo shook his head.
“No way to know; and it’s the wrong question anyway. Both sides see a certain merit in your candidacy. Your sermon moved a lot of people.”
“You’re also a splendid symbol.” Turi Pascarelli said it with a smile. “You’re a penitent survivor, now leading a blameless life, uncorrupted by power. You’d be a very popular choice with the people.”
“But the people have no voice in the election – and imagine what the press would do afterwards!”
“We’re not thinking about afterwards,” said Turi Pascarelli, “we’re thinking about now – the next few days.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Strategy,” said the Camerlengo. “The strategy for the Old Guard is to push the conclave as far as it will go, without having to invoke the rule of absolute majority – which, in our view, they may not attain. Their best chance is to hold out to the final stage of stalemate when the electoral college will agree to an election by simple majority, in effect, a simple head count, first past the post.”
“How long before that happens?”
“With a small field and four ballots a day, it will not be too long before the pressure builds up for a resolution. Don’t forget all those people waiting in the piazza outside, all the millions watching television around the world. They are our constituents. We’re in a fantasy land here. We like to believe we’re the arbiters of human destiny, but we are not impregnable. We never have been.”
“So, tell me now, my friends, tell me plainly, what’s your preferred outcome?”
“This time around? An Italian Pontiff, politically clean, calm enough to settle things down and create an atmosphere of confidence in the Church again.”
“Milan, in other words.”
“Yes.”
“He’s my own choice,” said Luca Rossini.
“Would you step aside for him?” It was the Camerlengo who asked the question. Rossini stared at him in disbelief.
“Step aside? I’m not even in contention. There is no chance at all that I can be elected. All my history speaks against it.”
“Your history speaks for you.” The Secretary of State was emphatic. “Don’t you see? You’re a charismatic man, Luca. Your very weaknesses recommend you. Who is more appealing than the penitent Peter, or Saul struck blind on the road to Damascus? You’re quite unaware of the power you radiate, even among our most sceptical colleagues. You are much admired by many pastoral Cardinals with whom you have dealt in your various missions. I’ll make a wager that your voting tally will rise at each ballot from now on.”
“And you, of course, will contribute to the inflation?”
“No guarantees, but yes, we’ll contribute.”
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“And you’re expecting Milan to rise, too?”
“We’re sure he will.”
“But you’re equally sure he’s a better choice as Pontiff than I am.”
“Don’t you agree?”
“Of course I agree. So why bother playing out this comedy? I’ve already told you Milan is my candidate, too. I have neither ambition nor talent for the office. If it helps, I’ll withdraw my candidacy before the next ballot.”
“We beg you not to do that,” said the Camerlengo. “We need you in the ballot. We hope we can build around you a voting bloc that will eliminate the Old Guard and bring us swiftly to a run-off between you and Milan.”
Rossini stared at him in total disbelief. Then he burst into laughter, a huge gusty bellow with a hint of gallows humour at the high end of it.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You know me better than any other men in Rome. You know my past, my present – even the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over my future in the Church, and in the Faith itself. Yet you are lobbying for me with the electors, even putting me in a position to challenge Milan in a run-off ballot. I can’t take this seriously.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are risking too much on my fidelity. Give me enough voters, I could turn rogue and filch the Fisherman’s Ring for myself.”
“We risk less on you than on the ambition of certain other colleagues, who shall be nameless.”
“Perhaps you judge them more stringently than you judge me.”
‘We believe,” said the Camerlengo “that you would make a better Pontiff than they. Your faults commend you more than their virtues.”
“But,” the Secretary of State was swift to add the postscript, “we still believe that Milan is the man who will do best for the Church at this moment. There is strong opposition to him. He is a scholar. He is a Jesuit. He has welcomed alien voices into his pulpit. He could bring new light and new hopes into the Church. Nevertheless, we need more leverage to lift him to the chair of Peter. We need you to remain a candidate until we tell you the time is right to abdicate. Will you do it?”
“Suppose you misjudge the situation? Suppose Milan falls out of favour, and I become the favourite? Suppose my nearest rival is a man we all disapprove of, where does that leave me?”
“Alone on the Mount of Temptation.” The Secretary of State was sombre. “With all the kingdoms of the earth spread below you like a carpet.”
“And both of you would leave me there, alone?”
“You would not be alone, Luca, my friend.”
“Why not?”
“Think about it,” said the Secretary of State, and then abruptly changed the subject. “This is terrible coffee, Baldassare. Can’t you do something about it?”
“It’s tradition,” said the Camerlengo cheerfully. “Members of the conclave must be kept in reasonable discomfort to encourage them to finish their work!”
The coffee kept him awake and the conversation haunted the long sleepless hours until midnight and after. For all his protestations, there was a curious seduction in the thought that he, Luca Rossini, might succeed to the See of Peter. The seductive imagining turned subtly into a temptation that insinuated itself like a vapour into the closed fortress of himself. This was where the vestigial hatreds lurked, the long memory of unrequited wrongs, the revulsion from every image of tyranny inside the Church and out of it.
He began to play a mind-game with himself. He set the rules carefully. I, myself, do not wish to become a tyrant or a brute. I wish only to balance the scales of justice. AB a putative Pontiff, I have power in my hands. I have seen how far that power stretches, how potently it can be used, how good men and good women can be persuaded to serve it, how others equally good can be oppressed by it. Where do I begin? What pieces do I remove from the board? To whom do I grant patents of power? Who will be my counsellors, who my pursuivants?
He was surprised how much the permutations and combinations of the game intrigued him. He was shocked by the intensity of the primitive lusts they evoked in him.
There was a moment when images of reprisal became so overpowering that he could not close his mind against them, nor even summon any resolution to do so. His scarred back began to itch and burn. His heart was racing and he was sweating profusely. He forced himself to get out of bed, strip off his sodden pyjamas and take a long shower to wash away the dirt of the past that still seemed to cling to him. He wished for music to charm out the demons. There was no radio. He remembered that he was in prison, as much enslaved as the early Pope Pontian exiled to quarry labour in Sardinia.
He picked up his breviary and tried to read. The words swam before his eyes. He tried to meditate and the first text that came into his head was that of Paul to the Romans: “O man who are you to rail against God? Has not the potter power over the day to make one piece into a vessel of honour, the other into a vessel of dishonour?”
His late patron had urged him many times to think upon it. He had chewed it like a grass-stalk until there was no juice left in it; but still he found himself in dispute with his maker. Still he demanded to know, “Why, why me? Why her? Why is your world made thus and not otherwise? I have wrestled with you too long. I’m going to call off the bout and send you home – wherever your home is. All that clutter of galaxies and they tell me you extend to fill all the emptiness between!”
Somewhere in the small still hours, he lapsed into sleep.
The first two ballots on the following day showed a slight shift in the voting pattern. Milan secured more votes. Rossini registered a modest gain. The Brazilian and the American lost support and retired. The losses and gains in the rest of the list reflected the overnight discussions and manoeuvrings of the Grand Electors and a rival group of mid-Europeans.
Gossip over the luncheon tables reflected certain anxieties. A prolonged election would underscore the rifts within the Church. It would suggest that the victorious candidate might be a compromise choice. It would make the task of reunification more difficult. Like it or not, every new Pontiff had to be provided with a public image, which he would wear, perforce, for the duration of his reign. If the image-makers botched their job, or if the subject himself were difficult, the faithful could be alienated even more.
As they left the dining-room, the Secretary of State passed a swift word to Rossini: “The last ballot today should give us some reading on how the currents are running.”
“I’m glad someone can read them, Turi. In spite of all the crowds waiting in Saint Peter’s Square, I wonder how relevant we really are to the People of God.”
The Secretary of State gave a very Roman shrug.
“Who knows? I’ll tell you one thing, Luca. If we weren’t here, and all that we stand for, there’d be a big blank space in human history and a great empty well in the human psyche.”
Then he was gone, and Luca Rossini strolled over to a private corner of the Vatican gardens to read his breviary and offer the ancient prayers for the beloved who was now beyond his care.
As the Secretary of State had predicted, the last ballot of the day provided, if not an earthquake, at least a tremor strong enough to shake out a batch of weaker candidates and confirm Milan and Rossini as the front-runners, with the Belgian and the Chilean still possible contenders.
Three hours later, Rossini was again bidden to meet with the Camerlengo and the Secretary of State. The Camerlengo delivered the first instalment of the news.
“We can finish this tomorrow at the first ballot. Chile and Belgium will step down. The decision between you and Milan will be made by a simple majority of votes.”
“Is that legal?”
“It’s a de facto situation,” said the Secretary of State. “It doesn’t please everybody, but nobody in the electoral college is prepared to challenge it.”
“There is, however, a problem,” said the Camerlengo. “There is a solid core of opposition to Milan. There are people who don’t like the Jesuit connection. There are others –
God help us! – who mistrust his liberal scholarship and his openness to non-believers. So, both Turi and I judge it could be a close-run thing. You could win the election.”
“And lay the responsibility on the Holy Spirit!” Suddenly he was laughing, a happy schoolboy laugh that welled up in his throat and shone in his eyes. “Forgive me, my friends! I did warn you, didn’t I?”
“You did,” said the Secretary of State.
“And you also made a promise,” said the Camerlengo.
“Which I shall certainly keep.” Rossini was grave again. “But you must instruct me how best to do that. Do I abdicate my candidacy before the vote is taken?”
“In that case,” said the Camerlengo, “you would have to ask that the electors signify their agreement to Milan by acclamation. It would be embarrassing if they declined to do it.”
“If, on the other hand, I am elected and I decline to accept?”
“Then a claim could be made that the process was tainted or rigged, and we might have to begin it again. Stranger things have happened down the centuries.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then Rossini stood up.
“I have no solutions for you, gentlemen. I shall do as I promised. I can say no more at this moment. We should pray perhaps to be infused with the wisdom of the Spirit while we sleep.”
He was awakened by the shrilling of a telephone – a suspect sound in the House of Saint Martha. He had to grope to find the instrument, and rub the gravel out of his eyes to read his watch. It was eight in the morning. The voice on the line was that of Piers Hallett.
“Can I come up, please?”
“Of course. I’m glad you called. I had a bad night. I over-slept. Give me fifteen minutes to make myself presentable. If it’s not too much trouble, bring me some coffee and a panino.”
