“Another man of the cloth,” he said, “and unlike the good bishop here, come from a place of turmoil, eh?”
“Rather more turmoil than in England, I’m afraid,” Dietrich said wearily.
“Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. We must spend some time together, Bonhoeffer. I’d love to hear about your adventures.”
“I’m not sure I consider the crisis at home adventurous,” Dietrich said sharply. “Rather tragic, I’d say.”
“Ah, yes,” Eliot said, covering his mouth with one hand but not looking the least bit abashed.
“Really, Tom,” Bell admonished, “it is a very difficult and delicate situation.”
“Perhaps,” Eliot said with a wave of his hand, “but you must indulge me a bit, George, if you want me to write this damned play of yours.” He turned back to Dietrich. “Martyrdom of Thomas Becket. The last play the church festival had was John Masefield’s The Coming of Christ. Really, George, it’s not fair to me.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “Masefield gets the Divinity and I’m left with poor little Becket.”
“But Becket is my favorite saint!” Hettie said.
Eliot sniffed. “Ah, yes. ‘The hooly blisful martir.’ But I can’t help think of him as a mountebank. Quarreled with Henry the Second over church funds and archbishop’s privileges. Is this the stuff of martyrdom?”
“Next you’ll be telling us Saint Francis was really a vagrant who fed pigeons and talked to himself,” Hettie said.
Bell said, “There is more to Becket than Tom lets on.”
“There is indeed,” Eliot cried, “but what is it? I must know! I’m the one who has to write the damned thing!” He turned to Dietrich. “What do you think, Bonhoeffer? How does an ordinary man like Becket become a saint? Is sainthood truly the fruit of a holy life? Or is it stubbornness, or pride, or sheer luck? And would that be good luck, or bad luck?”
Just then a telephone rang at the far end of the room. The dogs raised their heads. Bell answered, then said to Dietrich with his hand over the mouthpiece, “It’s for you. From Berlin.”
While Dietrich was answering the phone, Hettie whispered to Eliot, “Really, you shouldn’t harass the poor man. Imagine, calls from abroad at this time of night. He’s having a very hard time just now.”
“And so am I, Hettie. I’m trying to find my archbishop.”
“Does it help to press poor Dietrich?”
“Probably not at all,” Eliot said cheerfully, “but I’m desperate.”
When Dietrich spoke into the phone, Niemöller’s voice said, “Bonhoeffer. Sorry to call so late, but I’ve just come from a pastors’ meeting. Trouble, I’m afraid, with your request to address the Jewish question.”
“Trouble, of course,” Dietrich said tersely. “You and I both know it will mean trouble.”
“Listen to me. We’ve got bishops and pastors from all over Germany, finally willing to confront Hitler on Thursday. It’s been a massive effort to get them out, just to rouse them at first, and then to give them courage. But they’re here, and they’ve come to accept that something must be done.”
“But,” Dietrich said, and waited.
“But it’s government interference in church affairs that concerns them. They don’t want to take up the Jewish question except as it pertains to Christians of Jewish ancestry. They’re adamant on this point. I couldn’t change their minds, and if you were here, you couldn’t either.”
“Then why are you bothering to call me?” Dietrich said.
“Believe it or not,” Niemöller said testily, “I thought you might have some idea what to do next. I thought perhaps if the meeting with Hitler goes well, you might want to fly to Berlin and try to persuade the other pastors that taking up the Jewish question is the next logical step. Once it is clear that the church is safe, of course.”
“Safe!” Dietrich’s voice rose. “The church cannot be safe! In fact, Martin, the church no longer exists in Germany. This safe congregation of yours, it no longer interests me. The battle lines have moved elsewhere.”
“Then I take it,” Niemöller said coldly, “there is no need for me to telephone after our meeting with the Führer.”
“That is up to you,” Dietrich said. “I still plan to speak to Bishop Bell. But not on your terms.”
When Dietrich replaced the phone on its cradle and turned, he realized the others were watching him. Bell stood close by, a look of concern on his face.
“Forgive me,” Dietrich said, “but I am very tired. I would like to go to my room.” He turned to Bell. “If I might speak with you about this tomorrow at your convenience?”
Bell patted his shoulder for answer.
Dietrich bowed formally to Hettie and Eliot. “Then I shall say goodnight.”
When he had gone the others fell silent. Eliot rubbed his chin, lost in thought. When Bell offered him a cigar, he looked startled, then said, “No. No, I think I may do some more work tonight,” and took his leave.
In his room, Dietrich changed into pyjamas and climbed into bed with his Bible. Though he’d had a good dinner, he felt ravenously hungry and was pleased to find a tin of biscuits at the bedside. He munched on shortbread, turned to the Gospel of Matthew, and read and reread the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the peacemakers…. blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake…. You have heard that it was said ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one also…. He ate more biscuits and talked to himself, murmuring over and over, “It cannot mean to do nothing, it cannot mean that.” Love and nonviolence, but in what cause? He flipped frantically through Matthew, through Mark with a piercing fear that he had been wrong, that no action was called for but only silent suffering, yet appalled at what seemed the inherent selfishness of such a notion, “For how,” he said aloud, “can one justify one’s own suffering for the good if it leaves the other’s suffering unaddressed?”
At last, unable to keep his eyes open, he let the Bible slip from his grasp and fell asleep, forgetting even to turn off the bedside lamp and insensible to the glow of light.
Tom Eliot did not make an appearance at breakfast. Bell himself served eggs and bacon and grilled tomatoes and mushrooms from the sideboard. Hettie poured the tea and handed around triangles of buttered toast in a silver rack. When they were done eating, Bell said, “Now to the chapel for morning prayer, where Hettie and I shall reveal to you Chichester’s good heart.”
The chapel was on the ground floor, a small plain room with oak beams. Dietrich was admiring the simple proportions when Hettie plucked his sleeve and led him to the near wall. Beyond her was a faded round painting, a Virgin and Child in gold and pale blue.
“The Chichester roundel,” Bell said. “Mid-thirteenth century. Painted over by the Puritans sometime in the seventeenth. What impulse, do you think, could lead anyone to see this as the work of the devil? Thank God it was found and returned to the world.”
“What do you think of it?” Hettie Bell asked like a proud parent at a recital.
Mother and Child were surrounded by acolytes flinging ghostly thuribles at wild angles. Crusted gold adorned the illumined crown of Mary and the halo of the baby Jesus, and golden wisps clung to the Child’s sleeve as He reached for Mary’s neck. Mother and infant bestowed on each other a look of pure love.
“What do I think of it?” Dietrich whispered. “It’s so lovely one doesn’t know what to say.”
“In so many paintings of this type,” Bell said, “the infant Jesus is already looking to heaven and Mary is anticipating her loss. But these faces! No fear of the future, no grief, not even pride of purpose. Nothing here but sheer joy in one another’s company.”
“So sad it’s hidden away where few can see it,” Hettie said.
“Yes,” Dietrich said again. He wished he could be alone.
When he turned, Bell caught his eye and put his hand on his shoulder. “You must visit the c
hapel on your own whenever you like.”
Dietrich nodded his thanks. During Morning Prayer he sat with Hettie at the front of the chapel and felt as though Mother and Child were whispering behind his back.
For the rest of the morning they went their separate ways, Bell to tend to diocesan business in Brighton, Hettie to the meeting of some town charity. Dietrich took his notebook to the garden and tried to write, but nothing would come. Nor could he concentrate on any sort of reading, so he slipped back into the chapel and sat before the roundel, trying to pray. But even the roundel had lost its magic, and the smiles of Mother and Child seemed like indecent smirks. Dietrich felt himself as crabbed and sour as any Puritan. He wandered on through the cloisters, immune to the charms of light upon stone, and into the cathedral. Behind the altar he lit a candle and waited as clear wax wept into gummed sand. He tried to pray for the pastors’ meeting, but knew he was going through the motions.
When he emerged into sunlight he glimpsed Tom Eliot striding—no, prancing—through the garden. Dietrich stepped behind a wall. It was no good. When he looked again, Eliot was headed toward him.
“I thought that was you lurking among the primroses,” the poet exclaimed happily. He threw himself on a bench and motioned Dietrich beside him. “What have you been doing with yourself?”
Dietrich reluctantly sat down. “I have been wrestling with the Sermon on the Mount.”
Eliot laughed. “Wrestling, and losing of course. ‘Blessed are ye,’ et cetera et cetera. ’Course, when you read that blessed list, none of us is.”
“No,” said Dietrich, warming to the American cadences, “None of us is.”
Eliot crossed his legs, leaned back, and continued to smile. Dietrich imagined his own face fixed in a scowl, the stubborn brow and arrogant chin, the clenched fists. He felt ashamed. This man had done nothing to him and did not deserve to be made the butt of his bad humor. He turned to Eliot and said, “I must apologize. I have not been civil to you. I have allowed my concern for what is happening at home to get in the way of common courtesy.”
Eliot shrugged and, as if Dietrich hadn’t spoken, asked, “On what points do you wrestle with the Sermon on the Mount?”
“Well. I had been thinking of the Sermon as a call to action. A proclamation that turns the world upside down. It is the poor, after all, who are blessed, not the rich. It is the meek who shall be rewarded, not the grasping and coarse. The weak who are to be championed, not the powerful.”
Eliot nodded.
Dietrich took a deep breath. “Of course, I have been relating all this to the situation in Germany. For months I have been talking, writing letters, trying to get the church in Germany to be the church of the Sermon.”
“With little success,” Eliot guessed.
“None. My colleagues in Germany are a contemptible collection, some cowardly, some shortsighted, some naive, some bigots, some doddering old fools. Hardly a single principled stand among the lot of them.”
“Dear, dear,” Eliot murmured, looking pleased, unaccountably pleased.
“Then last night,” Dietrich said, “after that telephone call, I read the passage again. I was stricken with terror. The text offered nothing. No call to action, none, only a call to refuse resistance. I began to search elsewhere in the Gospels. Nothing. Whenever I thought I had found some call to act on behalf of the oppressed against an oppressor, it turned out to be God who would do the acting. Not man. God says He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent empty away. God says He has brought good news to the poor and proclaimed release to the oppressed.”
“Well?” Eliot asked.
“He hasn’t!” Dietrich flung his arms wide. “Look at the persecution, the starvation, the injustice throughout the world! God has done nothing! Yet only suffer, the Gospel says. We are to be a pack of impotent bystanders. I can’t bear it.”
“To act and to suffer,” Eliot said. “Perhaps they’re the same.”
Dietrich looked up to see if he was being mocked, but saw the other man was no longer smiling.
“‘You know and do not know what it is to act or suffer,’” Eliot said. “‘You know and do not know that action is suffering and suffering action.’ A line from my play. I read it to some friends in Bloomsbury who didn’t understand a word of it, and I wasn’t able to explain it myself. That’s the way of writing sometimes, you know. The words come and we stand back and wonder what the hell! Anyway, I’d gotten no further, until last night.”
He offered Dietrich a cigarette, shared a match.
“Tell me, Bonhoeffer, have you ever acted? In a play, I mean?”
Dietrich saw the black-uniformed SS flailing their batons, the drawn pistol, Falk Harnack writhing in agony. “Yes, but the last play I was in didn’t go especially well.”
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Eliot said eagerly. “In a couple of days I’d like to gather you and the Bells together for a reading. In the meantime, I’ll play the hermit and write some more. If you don’t mind?”
“No,” Dietrich said. “God willing, I’ll be doing much the same.”
But he could not write until he had spoken with George Bell. He awaited the bishop’s afternoon return as eagerly as he had waited for his parents to return from journeys in his childhood. From the window seat in his bedroom he watched the drive for a sign of the blue Austin, and when it arrived, turning in a graceful half-circle in front of the house, he bounded down the stairs and reached the doorway at the same time as the bishop’s retrievers. Bell laughed when he saw them, and called, “You’re nearly as quick as the dogs, my boy.”
Dietrich blushed. “I’ve so much on my heart,” he said, “that I think I shall burst with holding it in.”
“Then by all means, let’s have our talk.”
“May we go to the chapel?” Dietrich asked. “I’d also like to make a confession. If you’d allow me.”
Bell studied him a moment. “I’ll see we’re not disturbed,” he said.
They sat side by side before the altar, Dietrich leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees, Bell with his elbow on the pew back and his head resting on the heel of his hand. Dietrich recounted his first conversation with Niemöller, including the role Bell might play.
“The meeting with Hitler is—?”
“Thursday,” Dietrich said.
“Day after tomorrow. Yes, I can call Bishop Söderblum in Stockholm this afternoon, and Henriod in Geneva. They’re already at work on this, as you know, and I think they’ll be ready to move. I can certainly have a letter of my own ready to go to the Times. But there’s more to this, isn’t there? You were quite upset last night.”
“The church in Germany won’t take a stand on the Jewish question.”
“I see.”
“It’s worthless, all worthless. The church cannot preserve itself in Germany unless it goes into open political opposition. And if we don’t place ourselves between Hitler and the Jews, we are not worthy of being called the church.”
“I don’t suppose,” Bell said gently, “you could see this as a first step, as Niemöller suggested. The first risk taken is always the hardest. If Hitler sees the pastors are in earnest, perhaps he will negotiate—”
Dietrich shook his head. “No, no, no. Hitler negotiates as a tiger negotiates with its prey. He cannot be trusted, and that is that.”
“And you base this judgment on your own instincts?”
Dietrich stood. “I base it on what my brother-in-law tells me of the methods the Nazis are using to crush dissent. Neighbors denouncing neighbors, arbitrary imprisonments, random murders of Jews and leftists with no attempt to find the perpetrators. And yes, I base this judgment on my own instincts. I can smell the rot. If you of all people don’t believe me, then I have been wasting my time here.”
He turned to leave.
“Dietrich!” Bell said sharply. “You said you wanted confession.”
Dietrich hesitated, then returned and knelt before the bishop
, resting his forehead against the older man’s arm. “Father forgive me,” he said. “I betrayed my twin sister, whom I love more than anyone in the world, by refusing to conduct the funeral of her Jewish father-in-law. And a young woman I—of whom I’ve grown quite fond, who is also Jewish, has broken off all contact with me as a result of the pain this caused her. Worst of all, God has deserted me. I cannot write or pray. I have nowhere to go, I have no home.”
He began to sob. Bell leaned forward, hugged him tightly, and said, Almighty God have mercy upon you; pardon you and deliver you from all your sins; confirm and strengthen you in all goodness; and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. He made the sign of the cross over Dietrich’s bowed head.
They remained there until Dietrich grew calm. Then Bell reached down and picked up the gold-rimmed glasses, which had fallen unnoticed to the floor. He wiped the moist lenses on his sleeve and handed them back to Dietrich.
“You will need these to see clearly,” he said.
Dietrich put his glasses on and sat down wearily. Outside the cathedral clock tolled in the bell tower.
“The absolution was for your betrayal of Sabine,” Bell said, “and her husband and his father. As for the rest, you’re right. Absolutely right. The church cannot be anything less than the church, and only a suffering church can face down Hitler. Don’t allow yourself to be dissuaded.”
“Absolution isn’t enough,” Dietrich said.
“It should suffice. Don’t ever turn your back on grace, Dietrich. It’s a free gift.”
“Not free for me,” Dietrich said. “I am a debtor, and I must somehow make up what I owe. But I can’t go back to Germany. Even if I find the courage, no one listens to me there. The other pastors think I’m mad. What shall I do?”
“You have a part to play in all this. You must pray to find out what it is. But first I suggest you write to Sabine. When was the last time you corresponded?”
Saints and Villains Page 23
