The Clowns of God
by
Morris West

Morris West is already well-known as the author of such modern classics
as The Devil's Advocate and The Shoes of the Fisherman.  His latest
work, THE CLOWNS OF GOD, is a rare thing: a daring and profound novel
of love, faith and hope, a text for modern men and women who are
whether they like it or not involved in the last dramatic decades of
this century.

Hodder & Stoughton

NET

11-95 By the same author

GALLOWS ON THE SAND

KUNDU

CHILDREN OF THE SUN

THE CROOKED ROAD (English title: THE BIG STORY)

THE CONCUBINE

BACKLASH (English title: THE SECOND VICTORY)

THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE

THE NAKED COUNTRY

DAUGHTER OF SILENCE

THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN

THE AMBASSADOR

THE TOWER OF BABEL

SCANDAL IN THE ASSEMBLY (with R. Francis) THE HERETIC, a play in three
acts

SUMMER OF THE RED WOLF

THE SALAMANDER

HARLEQUIN

THE NAVIGATOR

PROTEUS

THE CLOWNS

OF GOD

MORRIS WEST

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND TORONTO

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data West, Morris The clowns
of God I.Title

823 PR9619.3.W4

1SBNO 340265 124

Copyright 1981 by Campania Financiera Perlina S.A. First printed
1981.

Third impression August 1981.  All rights reserved.  No part of this
publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher.  Typesetting by King's English' Typesetters
Limited, Cambridge.  Printed in Great Britain by The Thetford Press
Ltd."  Thetford and London for Hodder & Stoughton Limited, Mill Road,
Dunlon Green, Sevenoaks, Kent.

Editorial Office: 47 Bedford Square, London, we1B 3DP.

For my loved ones with my heart's thanks "Who knows but the world may
end tonight?"

Robert Browning "The Last Ride Together' Once you accept the existence
of God however you define Him, however you explain your relationship to
Him then you are caught for ever with His presence in the centre of all
things.  You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who
walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders
and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.

Prologue In the seventh year of his reign, two days before his sixty
fifth birthday, in the presence of a full consistory of cardinals, Jean
Marie Barette, Pope Gregory XVII, signed an instrument of abdication,
took off the Fisherman's ring, handed his seal to the Cardinal
Camerlengo and made a curt speech of farewell.

"So, my brethren!  It is done as you demanded.  I am sure you will
explain it all adequately to the Church and to the World.  I hope you
will elect yourselves a good man.  God knows you will need him!"

Three hours later, accompanied by a colonel of the Swiss Guard, he
presented himself at the Monastery of Monte Cassino and placed himself
under the obedience of the Abbot.  The Colonel drove immediately back
to Rome and reported to the Cardinal Camerlengo that his mission was
accomplished.

The Camerlengo breathed a long sigh of relief and set about the
formalities of proclaiming that the See of Peter was vacant and that an
election would be held with all possible speed.

BOOK ONE

I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a great
voice, as of a trumpet, saying: "What thou se est write in a book and
send it to the seven churches."

Revelation of St.  John the Divine Ch.  I, verses 10-11 She looked like
a country-woman, stout, apple-cheeked, dressed in coarse woollen stuff,
her wispy grey hair trailing from under a straw hat.  She sat bolt
upright in the chair, hands folded over a large old-fashioned handbag
of brown leather.  She was wary but unafraid, as if she were studying
the merchandise in an unfamiliar market.

Carl Mendelius, Professor of Biblical and Patristic Studies at the
Wilhelmsstift, once called the Illustrious College of the University of
Tubingen, stretched his legs under the desk, made a bridge of his
fingertips and smiled at her over the top of it.  He prompted her
gently:

"You wanted to see me, madame?"

"I was told you understand French?"  She spoke with the broad accent of
the Midi.

"I do."

"My name is Therese Mathieu.  In religion I am I was called Sister
Mechtilda."

"Am I to understand that you have left the convent?"

"I was dispensed from my vows.  But he said I should always wear the
ring from my profession day, because I was still in the service of the
Lord."

She held up a large work-worn hand and displayed the plain silver band
on the wedding finger.

"He?  Who is Her' "His Holiness, Pope Gregory.  I was with the Sisters
who work in his household.  I cleaned his study and his private rooms.
I served his coffee.  Sometimes, on feast-days, while the other Sisters
were resting, I prepared a meal for him.  He said he liked my cooking.
It reminded him of home.  He would talk to me then.  He knew my
birthplace very well.  His family used to own vineyards in the Var.
When my niece was left a widow with five young children and the
restaurant to keep going, I told him about it.  He was very
sympathetic.  He said perhaps my niece needed me more than the Pope who
had too many servants anyway.  He helped me to think freely and
understand that charity was the most important of virtues.  My decision
to return to the world was made at the time whefi the people in the
Vatican began to say all those terrible things that the Holy Father was
sick in the head, that he could be dangerous all that.  The day I left
Rome I went to ask his blessing.  He asked me, as a special favour, to
come to Tubingen and give his letter into your hands.  He put me under
obedience to tell no one what he had said or what I was carrying.  So,
I am here."

She fished in the leather bag, brought out a thick envelope and passed
it across the desk.  Carl Mendelius held it in his hands, weighing it.
Then he laid it aside.  He asked:

"You came straight here from Rome?"

"No.  I went to my niece and stayed for a week.  His Holiness said I
should do that.  It was natural and proper.  He gave me money for the
journey and a gift to help my niece."

"Did he give you any other message for me?"

"Only that he sent you his love.  He told me, if you asked any
questions, I should answer them."

"He found himself a faithful messenger."  Carl Mendelius was grave and
gentle.

"Would you like coffee?"

"No thank you."

She folded her hands over the bag and waited, the perfect nun even in
her country homespun.  Mendelius posed his next question with casual
care.

"These problems, this talk in the Vatican, when did they begin?  What
caused them?"

"I know when."  There was no hesitation in her answer.

"When he came back from his visit to South America and the United
States, he looked ill and tired.  Then there were the visits of the
Chinese and the Russians and the people from Africa which seemed to
leave him much preoccupied.  After they left he decided to go into
retreat for two weeks at Monte Cassino.  It was after his return that
the troubles began."

"What sort of troubles?"

"I never really understood.  You must know I was a very small
personage, a Sister doing domestic work.  We were trained not to
comment on matters which were not our concern.  The Mother Superior
frowned on gossip.  But I noticed that the Holy Father looked ill, that
he spent long hours in the Chapel, that there were frequent meetings
with members of the Curia, from which they would come out looking angry
and muttering among themselves.  I don't even remember the words except
once I heard Cardinal Arnaldo say: "Dear God in Heaven!  We are
treating with a madman!"" "And the Holy Father himself, how did he seem
to you?"

"With me he was always the same, kind and polite.  But it was clear he
was very worried.  One day he asked me to fetch him some aspirin to
take with his coffee.  I asked whether I should call the physician.  He
gave me a strange little smile and said: "Sister Mechtilda, it is not a
doctor I need but the gift of tongues.  Sometimes it seems I am
teaching music to the deaf and painting to the blind."  In the end, of
course, his doctor did come and then several others on different
days.

Afterwards, Cardinal Drexel came to see him he's the Dean of the Sacred
College and a very stern man.  He spent the whole day in the Holy
Father's apartment.  I helped to serve them lunch.  After that, well
... it all happened."

"Did you understand anything of what was going on?"

"No.  All we were told was that for reasons of health and for the
welfare of souls, the Holy Father had decided to abdicate and devote
the rest of his life to God in a monastery.

We were asked to pray for him and for the Church."

"And he made no explanation to you?"

"To me?"  She stared at him with innocent surprise.

"Why to me?  I was a nobody.  But after he blessed me for the journey,
he put his hands on my cheeks and said: "Perhaps, little Sister, we are
both lucky to have found each other."  That was the last time I saw
him."

"And now what will you do?"

"Go home to my niece, help her with the children, cook in the
restaurant.  It is small, but a good business if we can hold it
together."

"I'm sure you will," said Carl Mendelius respectfully.  He stood up and
held out his hand.

"Thank you, Sister Mechtilda.  Thank you for coming to see me for what
you have done for him."

"It was nothing.  He was a good man.  He understood how ordinary folk
feel."

The skin of her palm was dry and chapped, from dishwater and the
scrubbing pail.  He felt ashamed of his own soft clerkly palms into
which Gregory XVII, Successor to the Prince of the Apostles, had
consigned his last, most secret memorial.

* * * He sat late that night, in his big attic study, whose leaded
windows looked out on the grey bulk of the Stiftskirche of Saint
George.  The only witnesses to his meditation were the marble busts of
Melanchthon and Hegel, the one a lecturer, the other a pupil in the
ancient university; but they were dead long since and absolved from
perplexity.

The letter from Jean Marie Barette, seventeenth Gregory in the papal
line, lay spread before him: thirty pages of fine cursive script,
impeccable in its Gallic style, the record of a personal tragedy and a
political crisis of global dimension.

My dear Carl, In this, the long dark night of my soul, when reason
staggers and the faith of a lifetime seems almost lost, I turn to you
for the grace of understanding.

We have been friends a long time.  Your books and your letters have
travelled with me always: baggage more essential than my shirts and my
shoes.  Your counsels have calmed me in many an anxious moment.  Your
wisdom has been a light to my feet in the dark labyrinths of power.

Though the lines of our lives have diverged, I like to believe that our
spirits have maintained a unity.

If I have been silent during these last months of purgation, it is
because I have not wished to compromise you.

For some time now I have been closely watched and I have been unable to
guarantee the privacy even of my most personal papers.  Indeed, I have
to tell you that if this letter falls into the wrong hands, you may be
exposed to great risk; more, if you decide to carry out the mission I
entrust to you, the danger will double itself every day.

I begin at the end of the story.  Last month, the Cardinals of the
Sacred College, among them some I believed to be friends, decided by a
large majority that I was, if not insane, at least no longer mentally
competent to discharge the duties of Pontiff.  This decision, the
reasons for which I shall explain in detail, placed them in a dilemma
both comic and tragic.

There were only two ways to get rid of me: by deposition or abdication.
To depose me they must show cause, and this, I believed, they would not
dare attempt.  The smell of conspiracy would be too strong, the risk of
schism too great.  Abdication, on the other hand, would be a legal act
which, if I were insane, I could not validly perform.

My personal dilemma was a different one.  I had not asked to be
elected.  I had accepted fearfully but trusting in the Holy Spirit for
light and strength.  I believed and I am still trying desperately to
believe that the light was given to me in a very special fashion and
that it was my duty to display it to a world caught already in the
darkness of the last hour before midnight.  On the other hand, without
the support of my most senior collaborators, the hinge-men of the
Church, I was impotent.  My utterances could be distorted, my
directives nullified.  The Children of God could be cast into confusion
or misled into rebellion.

Then Drexel came to see me.  He is, as you know, the Dean of the
College of Cardinals, and it was I who appointed him Prefect of the
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  He is a formidable
watchdog, as you have good reason to know.  In private, however, he is
a compassionate and understanding man.  He was at pains to be precise.
He was the emissary of his brother Cardinals.

He dissented from their opinion but was charged to deliver their
decision.  They required me to abdicate and retire to obscurity in a
monastery.  If I refused they would, in spite of all the risks, take
steps to have me declared legally insane and placed in confinement
under medical supervision.

I was, as you may imagine, deeply shocked.  I had not believed they
would dare so much.  Then came a moment of pure terror.  I knew enough
of the history of this office and its incumbents to see that the threat
was real.  Vatican City is an independent state and for what is done
within its walls there is no outside audit.

Then the terror passed and I asked, calmly enough, what Drexel himself
thought of the situation.  He answered without hesitation.  He had no
doubt that his colleagues could and would make good their threat.  The
damage, in a critical time, would be great, but not irreparable.  The
Church had survived the Theophylacts and the Borgias and the debauches
of Avignon.  It would survive the moon madness of Jean Marie Barette.
It was Drexel's private opinion, offered in friendship, that I should
bow to the inevitable and abdicate on the grounds of ill-health.  Then
he added a rider which I quote for you verbatim: "Do what they ask,
Holiness but no more, not by a fraction.  You will go.  You will retire
into privacy.  I myself will challenge any document that attempts to
bind you to more.  As to this light which you claim to have been given,
I cannot judge whether it is from God or whether it is the illusion of
an overburdened spirit.  If it is an illusion, I hope you will not
cherish it too long.  If it is from God, then He will enable you, in
His own time, to make it manifest.  But if you are declared insane,
then you will be totally discredited and the light will be quenched for
ever.  History, especially Church History, is always written to justify
the survivors."

I understood what he was telling me, but I still could not accept so
trenchant a solution.  We talked all day, examining every possible
option.  I prayed alone far into the night.

Finally, in utter weariness, I surrendered.  At nine the next morning I
summoned Drexel and told him I was prepared to abdicate.

That, my dear Carl, was how it happened.  The why will take much longer
to tell; then you, too, will be forced to sit in judgment on me.  Even
as I write these words I fear lest your verdict may be against me.  So
much for human frailty!  I have not yet learned to trust the Lord whose
gospel I proclaim!  .. .

The poignant appeal moved Mendelius deeply.  The script blurred before
his aching eyes.  He leaned back in his chair and surrendered himself
to memory.  They had met in Rome more than two decades ago, when Jean
Marie Barette was Cardinal Deacon, the youngest member of the Curia,
and Father Carl Mendelius, S. J."  was teaching his first course on the
Elements of Scriptural Interpretation at the Gregorian University.  The
young Cardinal had been a guest at his lecture on Judaic Communities in
the Early Church.  Afterwards, they had dined together and talked, long
into the night.  When they parted they were already friends.

In the bad days, after Mendelius had been de lated on suspicion of
heresy to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Jean Marie
Barette had supported him through long months of inquisition.  When his
priestly vocation no longer satisfied him he had asked to be laicised
and dispensed to marry.  Barette had pleaded his cause with a reluctant
and irascible Pontiff.  When he applied for the Chair at Tubingen, the
most glowing recommendation had been signed "Gregorius XVII, Pont.
Max."

Now, their positions were reversed.  Jean Marie Barette was in exile,
while Carl Mendelius flourished in the free zone of a happy marriage
and a full professional life.  Whatever the cost, he must discharge the
debts of friendship.  He bent again to the study of the letter.

You know the circumstances of my election.  My predecessor, our
populist Pope, had fulfilled his mission.  He had centralised the
Church again.  He had tightened discipline.  He had restated the
traditional dogmatic line.  His enormous personal charm the charm of a
great actor had masked for a long time his essentially rigorist
attitudes.  In his old age he had become more intolerant, less and less
open to argument.  He saw himself as the hammer of God, smiting the
forces of the ungodly.  It was hard to convince him that unless a
miracle happened, there might be no men left at all godly or ungodly.
We were in the last decade of the century and only a stride away from
global war.  When I assumed office, a compromise choice after a six-day
conclave, I was terrified.

I do not need to read you the whole apocalyptic text; the plight of the
Third World thrust to the brink of starvation, the daily risk of
economic collapse in the West, the soaring cost of energy, the wild
armament race, the temptation for the militarists to make their last
mad gamble while they could still calculate the atomic odds.  For me
the most frightening phenomenon was the atmosphere of creeping despair
among world leaders, the sense of official impotence, the strange
atavistic regression to a magical view of the universe.

You and I had discussed many times the proliferation of new cults and
their manipulation for profit and power.

Fanaticism was exploding in the old religions as well.  Some of our own
fanatics wanted me to proclaim a Marian year, call for vast pilgrimages
to all the shrines of the Virgin throughout the world.  I told them I
would have none of it.

A panic of devotees was the last thing we needed.

I believed the best service the Church could offer was that of
mediation with reason and with charity for all.  It was also the task
which I, as Pontiff, was best fitted to perform.  I let it be known
that I would go anywhere, receive anyone, in the cause of peace.  I
tried to make it clear that I had no magical formulae, no illusions of
power.  I knew too well the deadly inertia of institutions, the
mathematical madness that makes men fight to the death over the
simplest equation of compromise.  I told myself, I tried to convince
the leaders of nations, that even one year's deferment of Armageddon
would be a victory.

Nevertheless, the fear of an impending holocaust haunted me day and
night, sapped my reserves of courage and confidence.

Finally, I decided that, to keep any sense of perspective, I must rest
a while and rebuild my spiritual resources.  So I went into retreat for
two weeks at the Monastery of Monte Cassino.  You know the place well.
It was founded by Saint Benedict in the sixth century.  Paul the Deacon
wrote his histories there.  My namesake, Gregory IX, made there his
peace with Frederick von Hohenstaufen.  More than all, it was isolated
and serene.  Abbot Andrew was a man of singular discernment and piety.
I would place myself under his spiritual direction and dedicate myself
to a brief period of silence, meditation and inner renewal.

So I planned it, my dear Carl.  So I began to do it.  I had been there
three days when the event took place..  .

The sentence ended at the bottom of a page.  Mendelius hesitated before
he turned it over.  He felt a faint shiver of distaste as though he
were being asked to witness an intimate bodily act.  He had to force
himself to continue the reading.  I call it an event, because I do not
wish to colour your appraisal of it, and also because, for me, it
remains a fact of physical dimension.  It happened.  I did not imagine
it.  The experience was as real as the breakfast I had just eaten in
the refectory.

It was nine in the morning, a clear sunny day.  I was sitting on a
stone bench in the cloister garden.  A few yards away, one of the monks
was hoeing a flower-bed.  I felt very placid, very relaxed.  I began to
read the fourteenth chapter of Saint John's Gospel, which the Abbot had
proposed for that day's meditation.  You remember how it begins, with
the discourse of Christ at his Last Supper: "Let not your heart be
troubled.  You believe in God; believe also in me."  The text itself,
full of comfort and reassurance, matched my mood.  When I reached the
verse, "And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father', I closed
the book and looked up.

Everything about me had changed.  There was no monastery, no garden, no
labouring monk.  I was alone, on a high, barren peak.  All about me
were jagged mountains, black against a lurid sky.  The place was still
and silent as the grave.  I felt no fear, only a terrible, bleak
emptiness, as if the kernel of me had been scooped out and only the
husk remained.  I knew what I was seeing, the aftermath of man's
ultimate folly a dead planet.  For what happened next I can find no
adequate words.  It was as if I were suddenly filled with flame, caught
up in a fiery whirlwind, hurtled out of every human dimension into the
centre of a vast unendurable light.  The light was a voice and the
voice was a light, and it was as if I were being impregnated with its
message.  I was at the end of all, the beginning of all; the omega
point of time, the alpha point of eternity.  There were no symbols any
more, only the single simple Reality.

Prophecy was fulfilled.  Order was completed out of chaos, ultimate
truth made manifest.  In a moment of exquisite agony I understood that
I must announce this event, prepare the world for it.  I was called to
proclaim that the Last Days were very near and that mankind should
prepare for the Parousia: the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus.

Just when it seemed the agony would explode me into extinction it was
over.  I was back again in the cloister garden.  The monk was hoeing
his roses.  The New Testament was on my lap, open now at the
twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew: For as the lightning cometh out of
the east and shineth even into the west.  So shall the coming of the
Son of Man be."  Accident or omen?  It did not seem to matter any
more.

And there you have it, Carl, as close as I can come to it in words,
with the closest friend of my heart.  When I tried to explain it to my
colleagues back in Rome, I could see the shock in their faces: a Pope
with a private revelation, a precursor of the Second Coming?  Madness!
The final explosive unreason!  I was a walking time-bomb that must be
defused as quickly as possible.  And yet I could no more conceal what
had happened to me than I could change the colour of my eyes.  It was
imprinted on every fibre of my being, like the genetic patterns of my
parents.  I was compelled to talk about it, doomed to announce it to a
world rushing, heedless, towards extinction.

I began work on an encyclical, a letter to the Universal Church.  It
opened with the words: "In his ultimis annis fatalihus ... In these
last fateful years of the millennium ."  My secretary found the draft
on my desk, photographed it in secret and distributed copies to the
Curia.

They were horrified.  Separately and in concert, they urged me to
suppress the document.  When I refused, they put my apartments under
virtual siege, and blocked all my communications with the outside
world.  Then they summoned an emergency meeting of the Sacred College,
brought in a team of physicians and psychiatrists to report on my
mental state, and thus set in train the events which led to my
abdication.

Now, in my extremity, I turn to you, not only because you are my
friend, but because you too have been under inquisition and you
understand how reason rocks under the relentless pressure of
questioning.  If you judge that I am insane, then I absolve you in
advance from any blame and thank you for the friendship we have been
privileged to share.

If you can go halfway to believing that I have told you a simple,
terrible truth, then study the two documents appended to this letter: a
copy of my unpublished encyclical to the Universal Church and a list of
people in various countries with whom I established friendly relations
during my pontificate and who may still be prepared to trust me or a
messenger from me.  Try to contact them, make them aware of what they
can still do in these last fateful years.  I do not believe we can hold
back the inevitable cataclysm, but I am commanded to continue to the
end the proclamation of the good news of love and salvation.

If you accept to do this, you will be at great risk perhaps even of
your life.  Remember the Gospel of Matthew: "Then they shall deliver
you up to be afflicted and shall put you to death .. . and many shall
be scandalised and betray one another and hate one another."

I shall soon leave this place for the solitude of Monte Cassino.  I
trust I may arrive safely.  If not, I commend myself as I commend you
and your family, to God's loving care.

It is very late.  The mercy of sleep has long been denied me, but now
that this letter is written, perhaps it will be granted.

I am, yours always in Christ, Jean Marie Barette Under the signature
was scrawled a brief ironic addendum:

Feu le Pape .. . Lately the Pope.

Carl Mendelius was numb with shock and fatigue.  He could not bring
himself to read the close-written text of the encyclical.  The long
list of names and countries might have been written in Sanskrit.  He
folded the letter and the documents together, then locked them in the
old black safe where he kept the deeds of his house, his insurance
policies and the most precious portions of his research material.

Lotte would be waiting for him downstairs, knitting placidly at the
fireside.  He could not face her until he had composed himself and
framed some kind of answer to her inevitable questions: "What did the
letter say, Carl?  What really happened to our dear Jean Marie?"

What indeed?  Whatever else Carl Mendelius might be failed priest,
doting husband, puzzled father, sceptical believer he was a scholarly
historian, rigid in his application of the rules of internal and
external evidence.  He could smell a textual interpolation a mile away,
trace it with meticulous accuracy back to its source, Gnostic,
Manichean or Essene.

He knew that the doctrine of the Parousia the Second Coming of the
Redeemer which would mark the end of all temporal things was the oldest
and most authentic in tradition.  It was recorded in the Synoptic
Gospels, enshrined in the Creed, recalled every day in the liturgy:
"Christ died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again."  It represented
the deepest hope of the believer for the final justification of the
Divine plan, the ultimate victory of order over chaos, of good over
evil.  That Jean Marie Barette, lately a Pope, should believe it,
preach it as an article of faith, was as natural and necessary as
breathing.

But that he should be committed to the narrowest, most primitive form
of the belief an imminent universal cataclysm, followed by a universal
judgment, for which the elect must prepare themselves was, to say the
least, disquieting.

The millenarian tradition took many forms, not all of them religious.
It was implicit in Hitler's idea of the thousand-year Reich, in the
Marxist promise that capitalism would wither away and give place to the
universal brotherhood of socialism.  Jean Marie Barette had needed no
vision to shape his version of the millennium.  He could have plucked
it ready made out of a hundred sources, from the Book of Daniel to the
Cevenol prophets of the seventeenth century.

Even his purported vision was a familiar and disturbing element in the
pattern.  The minister of an organised religion was called and ordained
to expound, under authority, a doctrine fixed and agreed long since. If
he exceeded his commission he could be silenced or excommunicated by
the same authority that called him.

The prophet was another kind of creature altogether.  He claimed a
direct communication with the Almighty.  Therefore, his commission
could not be withdrawn by any human agent.  He could challenge the most
sacred past with the classic phrase, used by Jesus himself: "It is
written thus .. .

but I tell thus and thus."  So the prophet was always the alien, the
herald of change, the challenger of existing order.

The problem of the Cardinals was not the madness of Jean Marie Barette,
but that he had accepted the official function of High Priest and
Supreme Teacher and then assumed another, possibly a contradictory,
role.

In theory, of course, there need be no contradiction.  The doctrine of
private revelation, of a direct personal communication between Creator
and Creature, was as ancient as that of the Parousia.  the Spirit
descending on the apostles at Pentecost, Saul struck down on the road
to Damascus, John caught up to apocalyptic revelation on Patmos all
these were events hallowed in tradition.  Was it so unthinkable that in
this last fateful decade of the millennium, when the possibility of
planetary destruction was a proven fact and a vivid danger, God might
choose a new prophet to renew His call to repentance and salvation?

In theological terms it was, at least, an orthodox proposition.  To
Carl Mendelius, the historian, called to sit in judgment on the sanity
of a friend, it was a highly dangerous speculation.  However, he was
too tired now to trust his judgment on the simplest matter; so he
locked the door of his study and went downstairs.

Lotte, blonde, plump, affectionate and contented as a cat in her role
as mother of two and Frau Professor Mendelius, smiled up at him and
lifted her face to be kissed.  Caught in a sudden surge of passion he
drew her to him and held her for a long moment.  She gave him a
quizzical look and said:

"What was that for?"

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Let's go to bed."

"I can't go yet.  Johann telephoned to say he's forgotten his key.  I
said I'd wait up for him.  Would you like a brandy?"

"Well, it's the next best thing."

As she poured the drink she asked exactly the questions he had dreaded.
He knew he could not fence with her.  She was too intelligent for half
truths, so he told her flatly:

"The Cardinals forced him to abdicate, because they thought he was
mad."

"Mad?  Dear God!  I should have said no one was more sane."

She handed him his drink and sat on the mat beside him, resting her
head on his knees.  They toasted each other.

Mendelius stroked her forehead and her hair.  She asked again:

"Why did they think he was mad?"

"Because he claimed to them as he has to me that he had a private
revelation that the end of the world was near and that he was the
precursor of the Second Coming!"

"What?"  She gagged on the liquid.  Mendelius passed her his
handkerchief to mop her blouse.

"It's true, dear.  He describes the experience in his letter.

He believes it absolutely.  Now that he is silenced he wants me to help
spread the news."

"I still can't believe it.  He was always so so French and practical.
Perhaps he has gone crazy."

"A crazy man could not have written the letter he wrote to me.  A
delusion, a fixed idea that I could accept.  It can happen, as a result
of stress, or even as a result of a defective exercise in logic.  Sane
men once believed the world was flat.

Sane people run their lives by the horoscopes in the evening papers.
Millions, like you and me, believe in a God they can't prove."

"But we don't go round saying the world's going to end tomorrow!"

"No, we don't.  But we do know it could, if the Russians and the
Americans press the red button.  We all live under the shadow of that
reality.  Our children are as aware of it as we are."

"Don't, Carl, please!"

"I'm sorry."

He bent and kissed the top of her hair and then she pressed his hand
against her cheek.

A few moments later she asked, quietly: "Are you going to do what Jean
Marie wants?"

"I don't know, Lotte.  Truly I don't.  I'll have to think about it
carefully.  I'll need to talk to people who were close to him.
Afterwards I'll want to see him.  I owe him that much.

We both owe it to him."

"That means you'll have to go away."

"Only for a little while."

"I hate it when you're away.  I miss you so much."

"Come with me then.  It's ages since you've been to Rome.

You'd have lots of people to see."

"I can't, Carl.  You know that.  The children need me.  This is a big
year for Johann and I like to keep an eye on Katrin and her young
man."

It was the small familiar contention between them: Lotte's constant
clucking over her grown children, and his own middle-aged jealousy of
her attentions.  But tonight he was too tired for argument, so he
deferred the issue.

"We'll talk about it another time, darling.  I need some professional
counsel before I move a step out of Tubingen."

At fifty-three, Anneliese Meissner had achieved a variety of academic
distinctions the most notable of which was to be voted unanimously the
ugliest woman in any faculty of the University.  She was squat, fat and
sallow, with a frog mouth and eyes scarcely visible behind thick myopic
lenses.  Her hair was a Medusa-mess of faded yellow and her voice a
hoarse rasp.  Her dress was mannish and always ruinously untidy.

Add to all that a sardonic wit and a merciless contempt for mediocrity
and you had, as one colleague put it, 'the perfect profile of a
personality doomed to alienation'.

Yet, by some miracle, she had escaped the doom and established herself
as a kind of tutelary goddess in the shadow of the old castle of
Hohentubingen.  Her apartment on the Burgsteige was more like a club
than a dwelling place, where students and faculty perched on stools and
boxes to drink wine and make fierce debate until the small hours.  Her
lectures in clinical psychology were packed and her papers were
published in learned journals in a dozen languages.  She was even
credited in student myth with a lover, a troll-like creature who lived
in the Harz mountains and who came to visit her in secret on Sundays
and the greater holidays of the University calendar.

The day after he received Jean Marie's letter, Carl Mendelius invited
her to lunch in a private booth at the Weinstube Forelle.  Anneliese
Meissner ate and drank copiously, yet still managed to deliver waspish
monologues on the administration of University funds, the local
politics of Land BadenWurttemberg, a colleague's paper on endogenous
depression, which she dismissed as 'puerile rubbish', and the sexual
lives of Turkish labourers in the local paper industry.  They were
already at the coffee before Mendelius judged it wise to ask his
question.

"If I were to show you a letter, would you be able to offer a clinical
opinion on the person who wrote it?"

She fixed him with a myopic stare and smiled.  The smile was
terrifying.  It was as if she were about to gobble him up with the
crumbs of her strudel.

"Are you going to show me the letter, Carl?"

"If you'll accept it as a professional and privileged communication.  "
"From you, Carl, yes.  But before you give it to me, you'd better
understand a few axioms in my discipline.  I don't want you to
communicate a document that's obviously important to you and then
complain because my commentary's inadequate.  Understood?"

"Understood."

"First then: handwriting, in serial specimens, is a fairly reliable
indicator to cerebral states.  Even simple hypoxia the inadequate
oxygen supply to the brain will produce rapid deterioration of the
script.  Second: even in the gravest psychotic illnesses, the subject
may have lucid periods in which his writings or utterances are
completely rational.  Holderlin died in this town of ours a hopeless
schizophrenic.  But would you guess it from reading Bread and Wine or
Empedocles on Etna!  Nietzsche died of general paralysis of the insane,
probably due to syphilitic infection.  Could you diagnose that, solely
on the evidence of Thus Spake Zarathustrat Third point: any personal
letter contains indications of emotional states or even psychic
propensities; but they are indicators only.  The states may be shallow,
the propensities well within the confines of normality.  Do I make
myself clear?"

"Admirably, Professor!"  Carl Mendelius made a comical gesture of
surrender.

"I place my letter in safe hands."  He passed it to her across the
table.

"There are other documents as well, but I have not yet had time to
study them.  The author is Pope Gregory XVII who abdicated last
week."

Anneliese Meissner pursed her thick lips in a whistle of surprise but
said nothing.  She read the letter slowly, without comment, while
Mendelius sipped his coffee and munched petits fours bad for the
waistline but better than the cigarette habit which he was trying
desperately to abandon.

Finally Anneliese finished her reading.  She laid the letter on the
table in front of her and covered it with her big pudgy hands.  She
chose her first words with clinical care.

"I am not sure, Carl, that I am the right person to comment on this.  I
am not a believer, never have been.  Whatever may be the faculty that
enables one to make the leap from reason to faith, I have never had it.
Some people are tone-deaf;

others are colour-blind.  I am incurably atheist.  I have often
regretted it.  In clinical work I have sometimes felt handicapped when
dealing with patients who have strong religious beliefs.  You see,
Carl," she gave a long, wheezing chuckle, "according to my lights, you
and all your kind live in a fixed delusional state, which is, by
definition, insanity.  On the other hand, since I can't disprove your
delusions, I have to accept that I may be the sick one."

Mendelius grinned at her and popped the last petit four into her
mouth.

"We've already agreed that your conclusions will be subject to large
qualification.  Your reputation will be safe with me."

"So, the evidence as I read it."  She picked up the letter and began
her annotation.

"Handwriting: no evidence of disturbance.  It's a beautiful regular
script.  The letter itself is precise and logical.  The narrative
sections are classically simple.  The emotions of the writer are under
control.  Even when he speaks of being under surveillance, there is no
over-emphasis to indicate a paranoid state.  The section dealing with
the visionary experience is, within its limits, clear.  There are no
pathological images, with either a violent or a sexual connotation.
Prima facie, therefore, the man who wrote the letter was sane when he
wrote it."

"But he does express doubts about his own sanity."

"In fact he does not.  He recognises that others may have doubts about
it.  He is absolutely convinced of the reality of his visionary
experience."

"And what do you think of that experience?"

"I am convinced that he had it.  How I would interpret it is another
matter.  In the same fashion I am convinced that Martin Luther believed
he saw the Devil in his cell and pitched an inkwell at him.  That
doesn't mean I believe in the Devil, only in the reality of the
experience to Luther."  She laughed again, and went on in a more
relaxed fashion.

"You're an old Jesuit, Carl.  You know what I'm talking about.  I deal
with delusional patients all the time.  I have to start with the
premise that their delusions are real to them."

"So you're saying Jean Marie is a delusional subject?"

"Don't put the words in my mouth, Carl!"  Her reproof was instant and
sharp.  She thrust the letter towards him.

"Take another look at the vision passage again, and the pieces before
and after.  It falls exactly into a daydream structure.  He is reading
and meditating in a sunny garden.  All meditation involves some degree
of auto-hypnosis.  He dreams in two parts: the aftermath of the
cataclysm on an empty earth, and then the whirling fiery passage to
outer space.  Both these images are vivid but essentially banal.  They
could have been culled from any good science fiction film.  He has
cerebrated them many times before.  Now he daydreams them.  When he
wakes he is back in the garden.  It's a common phenomenon."

"But he believes it is a supernatural intervention."

"He says he does."

"What the hell do you mean?"

"I mean," said Anneliese Meissner flatly, "he could be lying!"

"No!  It's impossible!  I know this man.  We're as close as
brothers."

"An unfortunate analogy," said Anneliese Meissner mildly.

"Sibling relationships can be infernally complicated.  Simmer down,
Carl!  You wanted a professional opinion: you're getting it.  At least
take time to examine a reasonable hypothesis."

"This one is pure fantasy!"

"Is it?  You're an historian.  Think back.  How many convenient
miracles can you name?  How many most timely revelations?  Every sect
in the world has to provide them for its devotees.  The Mormons have
Joseph Smith and his fabulous golden plates; the Reverend Sun Myung
Moon made himself the Lord of the Second Advent, even Jesus bowed down
to worship him.  So suppose, Carl just suppose!  your Gregory XVII
decided that this was crisis time for the institution and that the
moment was ripe for some new manifestation of Divine involvement."

"Then he was taking a hell of a gamble."

"And he lost it.  Might he not now be seeking to recover something out
of the wreckage, and using you to do it?"

"It's a monstrous idea!"

"Not to me.  Why are you choking on it?  I'll tell you.

Because, though you like to believe you're a liberal thinker, you're
still a member of the Roman Catholic family.  For your own sake you
have to protect the mythos.  I noticed you didn't wince when I
mentioned the Mormons and the Moonies.  Come on, my friend!  Where's
your mind?"

"It seems I've mislaid it."  Carl Mendelius was grim.

"If you take my advice, you'll drop the whole affair."

"Why?"

"You're a scholar with an international reputation.  You want no truck
with madness or folk-magic."

"Jean Marie is my friend.  I owe him at least an honest enquiry."

"Then you'll need a Beisitzer an assessor to help you weigh the
evidence."

"How would you like the job, Anneliese?  It might give you some new
clinical insights."

He said it as a joke to take the sting out of their discussion.

The joke fell flat.

Anneliese weighed the proposition for a long moment and then announced
firmly: "Very well.  I'll do it.  It'll be a new experience to play
inquisitor to a Pope.  But, dear colleague," she reached out and laid
her big hand on his wrist, "I'm much more interested in keeping you
honest!"

When his last lecture was over, late in the afternoon, Carl Mendelius
walked down to the river and sat a long time, watching the stately
passage of swans on the grey water.

Anneliese Meissner had left him deeply disturbed.  She had challenged
not only his relationship with Jean Marie Barette, but his integrity as
a scholar, his moral stance as a seeker after truth.  She had probed
shrewdly at the weakest point in his intellectual armour: his
inclination to make more tender judgments about his own religious
family than about others.

For all his sceptic bent, he was still God-haunted, conditioned to the
Pavlovian reflexes of his Jesuit past.  He would rather conform his
findings as an historian with orthodox tradition than deal bluntly with
the contradictions between the two.  He preferred the comfort of a
familiar hearth to the solitude of the innovator.  So far, he had not
betrayed himself.

He could still look in the mirror and respect the man he saw.

But the danger was there, like a small prickling lust, ready to take
fire at the right moment with the right woman.

In the case of Jean Marie Barette, the danger of self betrayal could be
mortal.  The issue was clear and he could not gloss or hedge it.  There
were three possibilities, mutually exclusive.  Jean Marie was a madman.
Jean Marie was a liar.

Jean Marie was a man touched by God, charged to deliver a momentous
revelation.

He had two choices: refuse to be involved which was the right of any
honest man who felt himself incompetent or submit the whole case to the
most rigid scrutiny, and act without fear or favour on the evidence.
With Anneliese Meissner, brusque and uncompromising, as his Beisitzer
he could hardly do otherwise.

But what of Jean Marie Barette, long-time friend of the heart?  How
would he react when the harsh terms of reference were set before him?
How would he feel when the friend he sought as advocate presented
himself as the Grand Inquisitor?

Once again Carl Mendelius found himself flinching from the
confrontation.

Far away towards the Klinikum an ambulance siren sounded a long,
repetitive wail, eerie in the gathering dusk.

Mendelius shivered under the impact of a childhood memory:

the sound of air-raid sirens, and after it, the drone of aircraft and
the shattering explosions of the fire-bombs that rained down on
Dresden.

r '{ '{ When he arrived home, he found the family huddled around the
television screen.  The new Pope had been elected in the afternoon
session of the conclave and was now being proclaimed as Leo XIV.  There
was no magic in the occasion.

The commentaries were without enthusiasm.  Even the Roman crowd seemed
listless and the traditional acclamations had a hollow ring.

Their Pontiff was sixty-nine years old, a stout man with an eagle's
beak, a cold eye, a rasping Aemilian accent and twenty-five years
practice in Curial business behind him.  His election was the outcome
of a careful but painfully obvious piece of statecraft.

After two foreign incumbents, they needed an Italian who understood the
rules of the papal game.  After an actor turned zealot and a diplomat
turned mystic the safest choice was Roberto Arnaldo, a bureaucrat with
ice-water in his veins.

He would raise no passions, proclaim no visions.  He would make none
but the most necessary pronouncements; and these would be so carefully
wrapped in Italian rhetoric that the liberals and the conservatives
would swallow them with equal satisfaction.  Most important of all, he
suffered from gout and high cholesterol and, according to the
actuaries, should enjoy a reign neither too short nor too long.

The news kept the conversation going at Mendelius' dining-table.  He
was glad of the diversion, because Johann was moody over an essay that
would not come right, Katrin was snappish and Lotte was at the low
point of one of her menopausal depressions.  It was an evening when he
wondered with wry humour whether the celibate life had not a great deal
to recommend it, and a non-celibate bachelor existence, even more.
However, he was practised enough in marriage to keep that kind of
thought to himself.

When the meal was over he retired to his study and made a telephone
call to Herman Frank, Director of the German Academy of Fine Arts in
Rome.

"Herman?  This is Carl Mendelius.  I'm calling to ask a favour.  I'm
coming to Rome for a week or ten days at the end of the month.  Could
you put me up?"

"Delighted!"  Frank was a silver-haired courtly fellow, an historian of
Cinquecento painters, who kept one of the best tables in Rome.

"Will Lotte be coming with you?  We've got acres of space."

"Possibly.  It's not decided yet."

"Bring her!  Hilde would be delighted.  She needs some girl company."

"Thanks, Herman.  You're very kind."

"Not at all.  You might be able to do me a favour, too."

"Name it."

"While you're here the Academy will be playing host to a group of
Evangelical pastors.  The usual thing daily lectures, evening
discussions, afternoon bus-rides.  It would be a great feather in my
cap if I could announce that the great Mendelius would give a couple of
lectures, perhaps conduct a group discussion .. .?"

"Happy to do it, my friend."

"Wonderful!  Wonderful!  Let me know when you're arriving and I'll pick
you up at the airport."

Mendelius put down the receiver and gave a chuckle of satisfaction.
Herman Frank's invitation to lecture was a stroke of good fortune.  The
German Academy was one of the oldest and most prestigious national
academies in Rome.

Founded in 1910 in the reign of Wilhelm II of Prussia, it had survived
two wars and the mindless ideologues of the Third Reich and still
managed to maintain a reputation for solid Germanic scholarship.  It
offered Mendelius, therefore, a base of operations and a highly
respectable cover for his delicate enquiries.

The German contingent at the Vatican would respond happily to a dinner
invitation from Herman Frank.  His guest book was an elaborate tome
resplendent with exotic titles like "Rector Magnificent of the
Pontifical Biblical Institute' and "Grand Chancellor of the Institute
of Biblical Archaeology'.

How Lotte would respond to the idea was another matter.

He needed a more propitious moment to open that little surprise
packet.

His next step was to prepare a list of contacts to whom he should write
and announce his visit.  He had been a denizen of the city long enough
to assemble a miscellany of friends and acquaintances, from the crusty
old Cardinal who disapproved his defection but was still generous
enough to appreciate his scholarship, to the Custodian of Incunabula in
the Vatican Library and the last dowager of the Pierleoni, who directed
the gossips of Rome from her wheel-chair.  He was still dredging up
names when Lotte came in, carrying a tray of coffee.  She looked
penitent and forlorn, uncertain of her welcome.

"The children have gone out.  It's lonely downstairs.  Do you mind if I
sit up here with you?"

He took her in his arms and kissed her.

"It's lonely up here too, darling.  Sit down and relax.  I'll pour the
coffee."

"What are you doing?"

"Arranging our holiday."

He told her of his talk with Herman Frank.  He enthused about the
pleasures of the city in summer, the opportunity to meet old friends,
do a little touring.  She took it all with surprising calm.  Then she
asked:

"It's really about Jean Marie, isn't it?"

"Yes; but it's also about us.  I want you with me, Lotte.  I need you.
If the children want to come, I'll arrange hostel accommodation for
them."

"They have other plans, Carl.  We were arguing about them before you
came home.  Katrin wants to go to Paris with her boyfriend.  Johann is
going hiking in Austria.  That's fine for him; but Katrin ..."

"Katrin's a woman now, darling.  She'll do what she wants whether we
approve or not.  After all..."  He bent and kissed her again, "they're
only lent to us; and when they leave home we'll be left where we
started.  We'd better start practising to be lovers again."

"I suppose so."  She gave a small shrugging gesture of defeat.

"But, Carl ..."  She broke off, as if afraid to put the thought into
words.

Mendelius prompted her gently.

"But what, dear?"

"I know the children will leave us.  I'm getting used to the idea,
truly I am.  But what if Jean Marie takes you away from me.  This this
thing he wants of you is very strange and frightening."  Without
warning she burst into convulsive sobbing.

"I'm afraid, Carl .. . terribly, terribly afraid!"

"In these last fateful years of the millennium .. ."  Thus the opening
line of Jean Marie Barette's unpublished encyclical.

"In this dark time of confusion, violence and terror, I, Gregory, your
brother in the flesh, your servant in Christ Jesus, am commanded by the
Holy Spirit to write you these words of warning and of comfort."

Mendelius could hardly believe the evidence of his own eyes.  Papal
encyclicals, for all their portentous authority, were usually
commonplace documents stating traditional positions on matters of faith
or morals.  Any good theologian could frame the argument.  Any good
Latinist could make it eloquent.

The pattern was still that of the old rhetoricians.  The argument was
laid down.  Scripture and the Fathers were quoted in support.
Directives were given, binding the conscience of the faithful.  There
was a closing exhortation to faith, hope and continuing charity.  The
formal 'we' was used throughout, not merely to express the dignity of
the Pontiff but to connote a community and a continuity in the office
and in the teaching.  The implication was plain: the Pope taught
nothing new; he expounded an ancient and unchangeable truth, simply
applying it to the needs of his time.

At one stroke Jean Marie Barette had broken the pattern.

He had abrogated the role of exegete and assumed the mantle of the
prophet.

"I, Gregory, am commanded by the Holy Spirit..  ."  Even in the formal
Latin, the impact of the words was shocking.  No wonder the men of the
Curia had blanched when they read them for the first time.  What
followed was even more tendentious: .  The comfort which I offer you is
the abiding promise of our Lord Jesus Christ: "I will not leave you
orphans.  Behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world."
The warning I give you is that the end is very near, that this
generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled ... I do
not tell you this of myself, or because I have predicated it upon human
reason, but because it was shown to me in a vision, which I dare not
conceal but am commanded to tell openly to the world.  But even that
revelation was no new thing.  It was simply an affirmation, clear as
sunrise, of what was revealed in the Holy Scriptures .. .

There followed a long exposition of texts from the Synoptic Gospels,
and a series of eloquent analogies between the Biblical 'signs' and the
circumstances of the last decade of the twentieth century: wars and
rumours of wars, famines and epidemics, false Christs and false
prophets.

To Carl Mendelius, deeply and professionally versed in apocalyptic
literature from the earliest times to the present, it was a disturbing
and dangerous document.  Emanating from so high a source it could not
fail to raise alarm and panic.

Among the militant it might easily serve as a rallying-cry for one last
crusade of the elect against the unrighteous.  To the weak and the
fearful it might even be an inducement to suicide before the horrors of
the last times overtook them.

He asked himself what he would have done had he, like the secretary,
seen it, new-written, on the Pontiff's desk.  Without a doubt he would
have urged its suppression.  Which was exactly what the Cardinals had
done: suppressed the document and silenced the author.

Then a new thought presented itself.  Was not this the fate of all
prophets, the price they paid for a terrible gift, the bloody seal of
truth upon their soothsaying?  Out of the welter of biblical eloquence
another text echoed in his mind;

the last lamentation of Christ over the Holy City.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kill est the prophets and stone st them
that are sent to thee!  How often would I have gathered thy children as
a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but thou wouldst not!  .. .
Therefore the day will come when thine enemies will cast a trench about
thee, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in
thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because
thou hast not known the things that are to thy peace!

It was an eerie thought for the midnight hour, with the moonlight
streaming through the leaded windows and the cold wind searching down
the Neckar valley and round the alleys of the old town where poor
Holderlin died mad and Melanchthon, sanest of men, taught that "God
draws; but he draws the willing ones."

All his experience affirmed that Jean Marie Barette was the most
willing, the most open of men, the least likely to fall victim to a
fanatic's illusion.

True, he had written a wildly imprudent document.  Yet, perhaps this
was the core of the matter: that in the hour of extremity only such a
folly could command the attention of the world.

But command it to what?  If the final catastrophe were at hand, its
date computed irrevocably into the mechanism of creation, then why
proclaim it at all?  What counsel could prevail against the nightmare
knowledge?  What prayer had potency against a rescript written from
eternity?  There was a deep pathos in Jean Marie's response to the
questions:

My dear brothers and sisters, my little children, we all fear death, we
shrink from the suffering which may precede it.  We quail from the
mystery of the last leap, which we must all make, into eternity.  But
we are followers of the Lord, the Son of God who suffered and died in
human flesh.  We are the inheritors of the good news which he left with
us: that death is the gateway to life, that it is a leap, not into
darkness, but into the hands of Everlasting Mercy.

It is an act of trust, an act of love, by which, as lovers do, we
abandon ourselves to become one with the Beloved.

The knock at the door startled Mendelius.  His daughter, Katrin,
entered, hesitant and timid.  She was in her dressing gown, her blonde
hair tied back with a pink ribbon, her face scrubbed clean of make-up,
her eyes red with weeping.  She asked: "May I talk with you, Papa?"

"Of course, sweetheart."  He was instantly solicitous.

"What's the matter?  You've been crying."  He kissed her gently and led
her to a chair.

"Now tell me what's bothering you."

"This trip to Paris.  Mother's still very angry about it.  She says I
have to discuss it with you.  She doesn't understand, Papa truly she
doesn't.  I'm nineteen.  I'm a woman now, just as much as she is and
..."

"Take it easy, little one!  Let's start from the beginning.

You want to go to Paris for the summer.  Who's going with you?"

"Franz, of course!  You know we've been going together for ages now.
You said you liked him very much."

"I do.  He's a very nice young man.  A promising painter, too.  Are you
in love with him?"

"Yes, I am."  There was a note of defiance in the answer.

"And he's in love with me!"

"Then I'm very happy for you both, little one!"  He smiled and patted
her hand.

"It's the best feeling in the world.  So what comes next?  You've
talked about marriage?  You want to become engaged?  Is that it?"

"No, Papa."  She was very firm about it.

"Not yet, anyway.  And that's the point Mama refused to understand."

"Have you tried explaining it to her?"

"Over and over!  But she just won't listen."

"Try me then," said Mendelius gently.

"It's not easy.  I'm not good with words like you.  The thing is, I'm
afraid; we're both afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of always .. . just that.  Of getting married and having children and
trying to make a home, while the whole world could tumble round our
ears in a day."  Suddenly she was passionate and eloquent.

"You older ones don't understand.

You've survived a war.  You've left us!  All along the borders there
are rocket launchers and missile silos.  The oil's running out so we're
using atom power and burying the waste that will one day poison our
children.  You've given us everything except tomorrow!  I don't want my
baby to be born in a bomb shelter and die of radiation sickness!  All
we've got is today and loving each other and we think we've got a
right, at least to that!"

Her vehemence shocked him like water dashed in his face.

The little blonde madchen he had dandled on his knee was gone for ever.
In her place was an angry young woman, filled with a deep resentment
against himself and his whole generation.  The grim thought struck him
that perhaps it was for her and all the others like her that Jean Marie
Barette had written his prescription for life in the last days.
Certainly it was not the young ones who had suppressed it, but the men
of his generation, the elders, the seeming wise, the perennial
pragmatists, living, in any case, on borrowed time.  He breathed a
silent prayer for wisdom of the tongue and began softly and tenderly to
reason with her.

"Believe me, little one, I understand how you feel, both of you.  Your
mother understands, too, but in a different way, because she knows how
a woman can be hurt, and how the consequences can be longer for her
than for a man.  She fights with you because she loves you and she's
afraid for you.  You see, whatever mess the world's in and I've been
sitting here reading how much more horrible it may get!  you've had the
experience of loving and being loved.  Not the whole experience, yet,
but some of it; so you do know what loving's about: giving and taking
and caring and never grabbing the whole cake for yourself.  Now you're
beginning the next chapter with your Franz, and only the pair of you
can write it, together.  If you botch it, the best your mother and I
can do is dry your tears and hold your hand until you're ready to begin
living again.  We can't tell you how to arrange your emotional lives,
or even your sexual lives.  All we can tell you is that if you waste
your hearts and waste that special joy that makes sex so wonderful,
it's something you can't renew.  You can find other experiences, other
joys, too, but never again that first, special, very exclusive ecstasy
that makes this whole confusion of living and dying worthwhile.  What
more can I say, little one?  Go to Paris with your Franz.  Learn your
loving together.  As for tomorrow?  How's your Latin?"

She gave him a tearful smile.

"You know it's always been terrible."

"Try this.

"Quid sit futurum eras, fuge quaerere."  Old Horace wrote it."

"It still means nothing."

"It's very simple.

"Forbear to ask what tomorrow may bring."  If you spend your whole life
waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine."

"O Papa!"  She threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"I love you so much!  You've made me very happy."

"Go to bed, little one," said Carl Mendelius softly.

"I've still got an hour's work ahead of me."

"You work too hard, Papa."

He gave her a small admonitory pat on the cheek and quoted lightly: "A
father without work means a daughter without a dowry.  Good night, my
love.  Golden dreams!"

When the door closed behind her, he felt the prickling of unbidden
tears tears for all the youthful hope in her, and all her threatened
innocence.  He blew his nose violently, picked up his spectacles and
settled back to his reading of Jean Marie's apocalypse.

It is clear that in the days of universal calamity the traditional
structures of society will not survive.  There will be a ferocious
struggle for the simplest needs of life food, water, fuel and shelter.
Authority will be usurped by the strong and the cruel.  Large urban
societies will fragment themselves into tribal groups, each hostile to
the other.

Rural areas will be subject to pillage.  The human person will be as
much a prey as the beasts whom we now slaughter for food.  Reason will
be so clouded that man will resort for solace to the crudest and most
violent forms of magic.  It will be hard even for those founded most
strongly in the Promise of the Lord, to sustain their faith and
continue to give witness, as they must do, even to the end.

How then must Christians comport themselves in these days of trial and
terror?

Since they will no longer be able to maintain themselves as large
groups, they must divide themselves into small communities, each
capable of sustaining itself by the exercise of a common faith and a
true mutual charity.  Their Christian witness must be given by
spreading that charity outwards to those who are not of the faith, by
aiding the distressed, by sharing even their most meagre means with
those who are most deprived.  When the priestly hierarchy can no longer
function, they will elect to themselves ministers and teachers who will
maintain the Word in its integrity, and continue to conduct the
Eucharist.

"God Almighty!  He's really done it now."  Mendelius heard his own
voice echo round the attic room.  Fiction or predestined fact, this,
from the pen of a Pope, was the unsay able the absolutely unprintable.
If the press of the world got hold of it, they would make Jean Marie
Barette look like the maddest of mad mullahs, the craziest of all
prophets of doom.  And yet, in the context of an atomic calamity, it
was a matter of simple logic.  It was a scenario which, in one form or
another, every national leader kept locked in his most secret files,
the script for the aftermath of Armageddon.

Which brought Mendelius, by a round turn, to the third and final
document: the list of those who, Jean Marie thought, would be prepared
to believe his message and his messenger.  This was perhaps the most
startling deposition of all.  Unlike the letter and the encyclical it
was typewritten, as if it had once formed part of an official file.  It
contained names, addresses, titles, telephone numbers, methods of
private contact, and terse, telegraphic notes on each individual. There
were politicians, industrialists, churchmen, leaders of dissident
groups, editors of well-known journals, more than a hundred names in
all.  Two sample entries set the tone of the record.

U.S.A.

Name: Michael Grant Morrow Title: Secretary of State Private Address:
593 Park Avenue, New York Telephone: (212)689-7611 Religion:
Episcopalian Met at presidential dinner.  Firm religious convictions.

Speaks Russian, French and German.  Respected in Russia but Asian
relations weak.  Deeply aware of hair-trigger situation on European
frontiers.  Has written a private monograph on the function of
religious groups in a disintegrating social framework.

USSR.

Name:

Title:

Private Address:

Telephone:

Sergei Andrevich Petrov Minister for Agricultural Production Unknown
Moscow 53871 Private visit Vatican with nephew of Premier.  Aware of
need for religious and ethnic tolerance in USSR.  and satellites, but
unable make headway against party dogmatists.  Concerned that Russia's
problems with food supplies and oil may precipitate conflict.  Close
friends in high military; enemies in KGB.  Vulnerable in event bad
harvests or economic blockade.

On the last page was a note in Jean Marie's own handwriting:

All of the people on this list are known to me personally.

Each in his own fashion has demonstrated an awareness of the crisis,
and a willingness to confront it in a spirit of human compassion, if
not always from the standpoint of a believer.  Whether they will change
under the pressure of coming events, I do not know.  However, each has
reposed a degree of trust in me and I have tried to return the gesture.
As a private person you will be regarded at first with suspicion and
they will be much more reserved with you.  The risks of which I have
warned you will begin at your first contact, because you will have no
diplomatic protection, and the language of politics is contrived for
the concealment of truth.  J.M.B.

Carl Mendelius took off his spectacles and tried to palm the sleep out
of his eyes.  He had read his brief with the devotion of a friend and
the care of an honest scholar.  Now, in this lonely hour after
midnight, he must pass judgment on the text, if not yet on the man who
had written it.  A sudden cold fear took hold of him, as if the shadows
of the room were haunted by old accusing ghosts: the ghosts of men
burned for heresy and women drowned for witchcraft and nameless martyrs
bewailing the vanity of their sacrifice.

In these sceptical years of middle age, prayer did not come easily to
him.  Now he felt the need of it; but the words would not come.  He was
like a man locked in darkness so long that he had forgotten the sound
of human speech.

"Now, we're really in cloud-cuckoo-land!"  Anneliese Meissner munched
on a pickled gherkin and washed it down with red wine.

"This so-called encyclical is a nonsense a hotchpotch of folk-lore and
fake mysticism!"

They were sitting in her cluttered apartment, with the documents spread
before them on the table and a bottle of Assmanshausen to keep down the
dust that lay everywhere.

Mendelius had refused to let the documents out of his sight, while
Anneliese had demanded, with equal vehemence, the right of the assessor
to read every line of evidence.  Mendelius protested her curt dismissal
of the document.

"Let's stop right there!  If we're going to debate the issue let's be
scientific about it.  First of all there's a whole body of millenarian
literature from the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament to Jakob Boehme
in the seventeenth century and Teilhard de Chardin in the twentieth.
Some of it is nonsense yes!  Some of it is high poetry like that of the
Englishman, William Blake.  Some of it represents a critical
interpretation of one of the oldest traditions in the world.  Second,
any serious scientist will tell you that there may well be a term, by
evolution or catastrophe, to human existence as we know it on the
planet.  What Jean Marie has written falls well within the saner
confines of the codex.  The scenario of catastrophe is already a matter
of informed speculation by the scientists and military strategists."

"Agreed.  But your man still makes amish-mash of it!

Faith, hope and charity while the wolf-children are snarling at the
gates!  A loving God brooding over the chaos he himself has engineered.
Balls, Professor!"

"What would happen if the text were published?"

"Half the world would laugh it out of court.  The other half would
catch the dancing madness and go waltzing out to meet the redeemer on
his 'cloud of glory'.  Seriously, Carl, I think you ought to burn the
damned thing and forget it!"

"I can burn it; but I can't forget it."

"Because you're a victim of the same God-madness!"

"What about this third document the list of names?"

"I don't see that it has any significance at all.  It's an aide memoire
pulled out of the filing cabinet.  Every politician in the world keeps
records like that.  What does he expect you to do with it?  Trot round
the world visiting all these people?

What will you say to them?

"My friend, Gregory XVII, the one they tossed out of the Vatican,
believes the end of the world is coming.  He's had a vision about it.
He thought you should have advance notice."  Come on, Carl!  They'd
have you in a strait-jacket halfway through the first interview!"

Suddenly he saw the funny side of it and laughed, a great bellow of
mirth that subsided finally into a helpless giggle.

Anneliese Meissner splashed more wine into the glasses and lifted her
own in salute.

"That's better!  For a while I thought I'd lost a good colleague."

"Thank you, Frau Beisitzer."  Mendelius took a long swallow of wine and
set down his glass.

"Now let's get back to business.  I'm going to Rome in a couple of
weeks."

"The hell you are!"  She stared at him in disbelief.

"And what good do you expect to do there?"

"Have a holiday, give a couple of lectures at the German Academy, talk
to Jean Marie Barette and people who were close to him.  I'll make
tapes during or after each interview and send them back to you.
Afterwards, I'll decide whether to drop the affair or not.  At least
I'll have discharged my duty as a friend and I'll have kept my assessor
honest, too!"

"I hope you realise, my friend, that even when you've done all that,
your evidence will still be incomplete."

"I don't see why it need be."

"Think about it."  Anneliese Meissner speared another gherkin and waved
it under his nose.

"How are you going to talk to God?  Will you put him on tape, too?"

He was a tidy man by nature and he prepared for his visit to Rome with
finical care.  He made telephone calls to friends, wrote letters to
acquaintances, armed himself with introductions to Vatican officials,
made dates far in advance for lunches, dinners and formal interviews.
He was careful to stress the overt purpose of his visit: a search in
the Vatican Library and the Biblical Institute for fragments of
Ebionite literature and a short series of discourses at the Academy on
the Apocalyptic Tradition.

He had chosen the subject not only because it provided a cue on which
to begin his enquiries about Jean Marie, but because it might elicit
from his Evangelical audience some emotional response to the millennial
theme.  In his younger days he had been deeply stirred by the Jungian
idea of the 'great dreaming', the persistence of tribal experience in
the subconscious, and its perennial influence on the individual and on
the group.  There was a striking similarity between this notion and
that which the theologians called the "Infusion' and the "Indwelling of
the Spirit'.  It raised also the question of Anneliese Meissner, his
Beisitzer, and her obdurate rejection of any transcendental experience
whatsoever.  Her gibe about talking to God still rankled the more
because he had found no adequate answer to it.

He spent a long time over a letter to the Abbot of Monte Cassino, who
was now Jean Marie's religious superior.  This was a most necessary
courtesy.  Jean Marie had placed himself under obedience, and the
exactions of authority could extend to his physical movements and even
to his private correspondence.  Mendelius, a one-time subject of the
system, had a nice perception of religious protocol.  His letter told
of his long friendship with Jean Marie Barette, his diffidence about
intruding upon his present privacy.  However, if the Abbot had no
objection and the former Pontiff were willing to receive him, Professor
Carl Mendelius would like to pay a visit to the monastery at a mutually
convenient date.

He enclosed a note which he begged the Abbot to deliver into the hands
of Jean Marie Barette.  This, too, he had composed with studious
discretion.

My dear friend, Please forgive the informality, but I am ignorant of
the protocol for correspondence with a retired Pope, who has made
himself a humble son of Saint Benedict.

I have always regretted that it was not possible for me to share the
burdens of your final days in the Vatican; but German professors are
two marks a dozen and their sphere of influence seldom extends beyond
the lecture hall.

However, I shall soon be in Rome still researching the Ebionites and
giving some lectures on the doctrine of the Parousia at the German
Academy and it would give me a great pleasure to see you again, if only
for a little while.

I have written to the Father Abbot asking his permission to visit you,
provided always that you are in the mood to receive me.  If we can meet
I shall be grateful and happy.  If the time is not opportune, please do
not hesitate to say so.

I trust you are well.  With the world in such a mess I think you were
wise to retire from it.  Lotte sends you her most affectionate
greetings and my children their respectful salutations.  As for myself,
I remain always Yours in the Fellowship of the Lord, Carl Mendelius The
answer came back in ten days, delivered by a clerical messenger from
the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich: the Very Reverend Abbot Andrew would
be happy to receive him at Monte Cassino, and, if his health permitted,
the Very Reverend Jean Marie Barette, O.S.B."  would be delighted to
see his old friend.  He should telephone the Abbot immediately upon his
arrival in Rome, and an appointment would be arranged.

There was no response at all from Jean Marie.

The evening before he left for Rome with Lotte he asked his son,
Johann, to have coffee with him in his study.  They had been uneasy
together for a long time now.  The boy, a brilliant student in
economics, was uncomfortable in the shadow of a father who was also a
senior member of the faculty.  The father was often clumsy in his
eagerness to foster so obvious a talent.  The result was secrecy on the
one side, resentment on the other, with only a rare display of the
affection that still existed between them.  This time Mendelius was
determined to be tactful.  As usual he managed only to be heavy-handed.
He asked:

"When do you leave on your trip, son?"

"Two days from now."

"Have you planned a route yet?"

"More or less.  We go by train to Munich, then start hiking through the
Obersalzburg and over the Tauern into Carinthia."

"It's beautiful country.  I wish I were coming with you.  By the way,"
he fished in his breast pocket and brought out a sealed envelope, "this
is to help with the expenses."

"But you've already given me my holiday money."

"That's something extra.  You've worked very hard this year.  Your
mother and I wanted to show our appreciation."

"Well .. . thanks."  He was obviously embarrassed.

"But there was no need.  You've always been generous with me."

"There's something I want to say to you, son."  He saw the boy stiffen
immediately.  The old mulish look came over his face.

"It's a personal matter.  I'd rather you didn't discuss it with your
mother.  One of the reasons I'm going to Rome is to investigate what
brought about the abdication of Gregory XVII.  As you know he was my
dear friend."  He gave a small wry smile.

"Yours, too, I suppose, because without his help your mother and I
might never have married and you wouldn't be here.  However, the
enquiries may take a long time and entail a great deal of travel. There
may also be certain risks.  If anything happens to me, I want you to
know my affairs are in order.  Doctor Mahler, our lawyer, holds most of
the documents.  The rest are in the safe over there.

You're a man now.  You would have to step into my shoes and take care
of your mother and sister."

"I don't understand.  What sort of risks are you talking about?  And
why do you have to expose yourself to them?"

"It's difficult to explain."

"I am your son."  His tone was resentful.

"At least give me a chance to understand."

"Please!  Try to relax with me.  I need you now, very much."

"I'm sorry, it's just that ..."

"I know.  We rub each other the wrong way.  But I love you, son.  I
wish I could tell you how much."  Emotion welled up in him and he
wanted to reach out and embrace the young man, but he was afraid of a
rebuff.  He went on quietly, "To explain, I have to show you something
secret and bind you on your honour not to reveal it to anyone."

"You have my word, father."

"Thank you."  Mendelius crossed to the safe, took out the Barette
documents and handed them to his son.

"Read those.

They explain everything.  When you're finished, we'll talk.

I've got some notes to write up."

He settled himself at his desk while Johann sat in the armchair, poring
over the documents.  In the soft glow of the reading lamp he reminded
Mendelius of one of Raphael's young models, obedient and immobile,
while the master made him immortal on canvas.  He felt a pang of regret
for the wasted years.  This was the way it should have been, long
ago:

father and son, content and companionable, all childish quarrels long
forgotten.

Mendelius got up and refilled Johann's coffee cup and brandy glass.
Johann nodded his thanks and went on with his reading.  It was nearly
forty minutes before he turned the last page, sat for a long moment in
silence, then folded the documents deliberately, got up and laid them
on his father's desk.  He said quietly:

"I understand now, father.  I think it's a dangerous nonsense and I
hate to see you involved with it; but I do understand."

"Thank you, son.  Would you care to tell me why you think it's a
nonsense?"

"Yes."  He was firm but respectful.  He held himself very erect, like a
subaltern addressing his commander.

"There's something I've wanted to tell you for a long while.  Now seems
as good a time as any."

"Perhaps you'd like to pour me a brandy first."  Mendelius smiled at
him.

"Of course."  He refilled the glass and set it on the desk.

"The fact is, father, I'm no longer a believer."

"In God, or specifically in the Roman Catholic Church?"

"Neither."

"I'm sorry to hear it, son."  Mendelius was studiously calm.

"I've always felt the world must be a bleak place without some hope of
a hereafter.  But I'm glad you told me.  Does your mother know?"

"Not yet."

"I'll tell her, if you like but later.  I'd like her to enjoy this
holiday."

"Are you angry with me?"

"Dear God, no!"  Mendelius heaved himself out of his chair and clamped
his hands on the young man's shoulders.

"Listen!  All my life I've taught and written that a man can walk only
the path he sees at his own feet.  If you cannot honestly assent to a
faith then you must not.  Rather you should consent to be burned like
Bruno in the Field of Flowers.  As for your mother and me, we have no
more right than anyone else to dictate your conscience .. . But
remember one thing, son.  Keep your mind open, so that the light can
always come in.  Keep your heart open so that love will never be shut
out."

"I - I never thought you'd take it like this."  For the first time his
control cracked and he seemed about to burst into tears.  Mendelius
drew him close and embraced him.

"I love you, boy!  Nothing changes that.  Besides .. .

you're in a new country now.  You won't really know whether you like it
until you've spent a winter there.  Let's not fight each other any
more, eh?"

"Right!"  Johann disengaged himself from the embrace and reached for
his brandy glass.

"I'll drink to that."

"Prosit," said Carl Mendelius.

"About the other thing, father."

"Yes?"

"I can see the risks.  I know what Jean Marie's friendship means to
you.  But I think you have to get the priorities right.

Mother has to come first; and, well, Katrin and I need you, too."

"I'm trying to keep things in their right order, son."

Mendelius gave a small, rueful chuckle.

"You may not believe in the Second Coming, but if it happens, it will
change the priorities somewhat .. . no?"

From the air the Italian countryside was a pastoral paradise, the
orchards in full bloom, the meadows with wild flowers, the farmland
flush with new green, the old fortress towns placid as pictures from a
fairy tale.

By contrast, Fiumicino airport looked like a rehearsal for final chaos.
The traffic controllers were working to rule; the baggage handlers were
on strike.  There were long queues at every passport barrier.  The air
was filled with a babel of voices shouting in a dozen languages. Police
with sniffer dogs moved among the harassed crowd looking for drug
carriers;

while young conscripts, armed with machine-guns, stood guard at every
exit, watchful and uneasy.

Lotte was near to tears and Mendelius was sweating with anger and
frustration.  It took them an hour and a half to barge their way
through to the Customs room, and out into the reception area, where
Herman Frank was waiting, dapper and solicitous as always.  He had a
limousine, a vast Mercedes borrowed from the German Embassy.  He had
flowers for Lotte, an effusive welcome for the Herr Professor and
champagne to drink during the long ride back to town.  The traffic
would be hell as always; but he wanted to offer them a small foretaste
of heavenly peace.

The peace was granted to them at last in the Franks' apartment, the top
floor of a seventeenth-century palazzo with high frescoed ceilings,
marble floors, bathrooms large enough to float a navy and a stunning
view over the roof-tops of old Rome.  Two hours later, bathed, changed
and restored to sanity, they were drinking cocktails on the terrace,
listening to the last bells and watching the swifts wheeling around the
cupolas and attics, russet in the sunset glow.

"Down there it's murder."  Hilde Frank pointed at the cluttered
thoroughfares jammed with automobiles and pedestrians.

"Sometimes real murder, because the terrorists are very bold now and
the crust of law and order has worn thin.  Kidnapping is the biggest
private industry.  We don't go out at night as we used, because there's
always danger from purse-snatchers and motor-cycle gangs.  But up
here," her gesture embraced the whole ancient skyline, "it's still the
same' as it's been for centuries: the washing on the lines, the birds,
the music that comes and goes, and the calls of the women to their
neighbours.  Without it I don't think we could bear to stay any
longer."

She was a small dark woman, bubbly with talk, elegant as a mannequin,
twenty years younger than the white-haired husband who followed her
every movement with adoration.

She was affectionate too, cuddlesome as a kitten.  Mendelius caught the
flash of jealousy in Lotte's eyes, when Hilde took his hand and led him
to the corner of the terrace to point out the distant dome of Saint
Peter's and the Castle of Sant'Angelo.  She told him in a loud stage
whisper:

"Herman's so happy you've agreed to lecture for him.  He's getting near
to retirement and he hates the idea.  His whole life has been wrapped
up in the Academy both our lives really, because we've never had any
children.  Lotte looks very well.

I hope she likes shopping.  I thought I'd take her to the Condotti
tomorrow while you and Herman are at the Academy.  The seminar people
haven't arrived yet but he's dying to show you the place."

"And we've got fine things to show this year!"  Herman Frank, with
Lotte on his arm, walked into their talk.

"We're giving the first comprehensive exhibition of Van Wittel ever
held in this country, and Piero Falcone has lent us his collection of
antique Florentine jewellery.  That's an expensive venture because we
need armed guards all the time.  Now let me tell you who's coming to
dinner tonight.  There's Bill Utley and his wife, Sonia.  He's the
British Envoy to the Holy See.  Bill's a dry old stick but he really
knows what's going on.

Also he speaks good German, which helps things along.  Sonia's a
cheerful gossip with no inhibitions.  You'll enjoy her, Lotte.  Then
there's Georg Rainer, who's the Rome correspondent for Die Welt.  He's
a relaxed fellow who talks well.  It was Hilde's idea to invite him
because he's got a new girlfriend whom nobody's seen yet.  A Mexican, I
believe, and reputed to be rich!  We'll sit down about nine-thirty.  By
the way, Carl, there's a pile of mail for you.  I asked the maid to
leave it in your room."

It was the warmest of welcomes and a reminder of happier times before
the oil war began, and the Italian miracle turned sour, and all the
bright hopes of European unity were tarnished beyond repair.  By the
time the dinner guests arrived Lotte was completely relaxed and
chatting happily with Hilde about a trip to Florence and another to
Ischia, while Carl Mendelius outlined, to an enthusiastic Herman, the
schema of his discourses to the Evangelicals.

Dinner was a comfortable meal.  Utley's wife was a scandalously
entertaining talker.  Georg Rainer's girl, Pia Menendez, was an instant
success a stunning beauty who knew how to defer graciously to the
matrons.  Georg Rainer wanted news;

Utley liked to reminisce; so it was easy for Mendelius to steer the
talk to recent events in the Vatican.  Utley, the Englishman, who in
his mother tongue had elevated obscurity to a fine art, was very
precise in German.

"... Even to the outsider it was plain that Gregory XVII had everyone
in a panic.  The organisation is too big and therefore too fragile to
support an innovator or even a too flexible man at the top.  It's like
the Russians with their satellites and their comradely governments in
Africa and South America.  They have to preserve, at any cost, the
illusion of unanimity and stability.  So Gregory had to go."

"I'd be interested," said Carl Mendelius, "to know exactly how they got
him to abdicate."

"Nobody's prepared to talk about that," said Utley.

"This was the first time in my experience when there were no real leaks
from Monte Vaticano.  Obviously there was some very rough bargaining;
but one got the impression there were some very uneasy consciences
afterwards."

"They blackmailed him!"  said the man from Die Welt flatly.

"I had the evidence; but I couldn't publish it."

"Why not?"  The question came from Utley.

"Because I got it from a medical man, one of the doctors they called in
to examine him.  Obviously he was in no position to make a public
statement."

"Did he tell you his findings?"

"He told me what the Curia wanted him to find: that Gregory XVII was
mentally incompetent."

"Did they put it as bluntly as that?"  Mendelius was surprised and
dubious.

"No.  That was the problem.  The Curia were very subtle about it.  They
asked the medicos there were seven in all to establish, beyond
reasonable doubt, whether the Pontiff was mentally and physically
competent to carry on the duties of his office in this critical
time."

"That's a catch-all brief," said Utley.

"Why did Gregory fall for it?"

"He was caught in a trap.  If he refused, he was suspect.  If he
accepted he was subject to the medical consensus."

"And what was that?"  Mendelius asked.

"My man couldn't tell me.  You see, that was the other smart thing they
did.  They asked each doctor to render an independent opinion in
writing."

"Which left the Curia free to write its own assessment afterwards."
Bill Utley gave a small dry chuckle.

"Very smart!  So what was your man's verdict?"

"Honest, I believe; but not very helpful to the patient.  He was
suffering from gross fatigue, constant insomnia and elevated, though
not necessarily chronic, blood pressure.

There were clear indications of anxiety and alternating moods of
cheerfulness and depression.  Obviously if these symptoms persisted in
a man of sixty-five, there would be reason to fear graver
complications."

"If the other reports were like that ..."

"Or," said Mendelius softly, "if they were less honest and a shade more
slanted ..."

"The Cardinals had him in checkmate," said Georg Rainer.

"They picked the choicest bits of the reports, constructed their own
final verdict and presented Gregory with an ultimatum: go or be
pushed!"

"Loving God!"  Mendelius swore softly.

"What choice did he have?"

"A beautiful piece of statecraft though."  Bill Utley chuckled wryly.

"You can't impeach a Pope.  Short of assassination, how do you get rid
of him?  You're right, Georg, it was pure blackmail!  I wonder who
dreamed up the ploy?"

"Arnaldo, of course.  I do know he was the one who instructed the
physicians."

"And now he's the Pope," said Carl Mendelius.

"He'll probably make a very good one," said Utley with a grin.

"He knows the rules of the game."

Reluctantly, Carl Mendelius, the one-time Jesuit, was forced to agree
with him.  He also thought that Georg Rainer was a very smart
journalist and that it would pay to cultivate his acquaintance.

That night he made love with Lotte in a huge baroque bed which, Herman
swore on his soul, had belonged to the elegant Cardinal Bernis. Whether
it had or it hadn't made small matter.  Their mating was the most
joyous in a long time.  When it was over, Lotte curled up in the crook
of his arm and talked in drowsy contentment.

"It's been a lovely evening everybody so bright and welcoming!  I'm
glad you made me come.  Tubingen's a nice town but I'd forgotten there
was such a lot of world outside."

"Then let's start seeing it together."

"We will, I promise.  I feel happier now about the children.

Katrin was very sweet.  She told me what you'd said to her and how
Franz had taken the news."

"I didn't hear about that."

"Apparently he said: "Your father's a big man.  I'd like to bring him
back one good canvas from Paris."" "That's nice to hear."

"Johann seemed happier, too; though he didn't say very much."

"He got a few things off his chest, including the fact that he wasn't a
believer any more."

"Oh dear!  That's sad."

"It's a phase, dear."  Mendelius was sedulously casual.

"He wants to find his own way to the truth."

"I hope you made him aware that you respected his decision."

"Of course!  You mustn't worry about Johann and me.  It's just the old
bull and the young one sparring with each other."

"Old bull is right!"  Lotte giggled happily in the darkness.

"Which reminds me, if I catch Hilde playing pat-hands with you too
often, I'll scratch her eyes out!"

"Nice to know you're still jealous."

"I love you, Carl.  I love you so very much."

"And I love you, darling."

"That's all I need to finish a perfect day.  Good night, my dear, dear
man!"

She rolled away from him, curled herself under the covers and lapsed
swiftly into sleep.  Carl Mendelius clasped his hands under his head
and lay a long time staring up at the ceiling, where amorous nymphs and
rapacious demi-gods disported themselves in the darkness.  For all the
sweet solace of loving, he was still haunted by what he had heard at
dinner and by the last letter in the pile which the maid had left on
his dressing-table.

It was in Italian, handwritten on heavy note-paper, embossed with the
official superscription of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith.

Dear Professor Mendelius, I am informed by our mutual friend the Rector
of the Pontifical Biblical Institute that you will shortly be visiting
Rome for the purpose of scholastic research, and that you will be
delivering some discourses at the German Academy of Fine Arts.

I understand also that you plan to pay a visit to the recently retired
Pontiff at the Monastery of Monte Cassino.

Since I have always had the greatest admiration for your scholarly
work, it would give me great pleasure to entertain you to coffee one
morning in my private apartment in Vatican City.

Perhaps you would be kind enough to call me at the Congregation any
evening between four and seven so that we may arrange a mutually
convenient day, preferably before you go to Monte Cassino.

I send you my salutations and my best wishes for a pleasant sojourn.

Yours in Christ Jesus, Anton Drexel, Cardinal Prefect It was
beautifully done, as always: a courteous gesture and a tart reminder
that nothing, but nothing, that went on in the sacred circle escaped
the watchdogs of the Lord.  In the old days of the Papal States they
would have sent a summons and a detachment of gendarmes to enforce it.
Now it was coffee and sweet biscuits in the Cardinal's apartment and
sweet seductive talk afterwards.

Well, well!  Tempora mutanturl He wondered which the Cardinal Prefect
wanted more: information or an assurance of discretion.  He wondered
also what conditions might be laid down before they would permit him to
visit Jean Marie Barette.

Herman Frank had good reason to be proud of his exhibition.

The press had been generous with praise, compliments and illustrations.
The galleries of the Academy were thronged with visitors Romans and
tourists and there was a quite astonishing number of young people.

The works of Caspar Van Wittel, a seventeenth-century Dutchman from
Amersfoort, were little known to the Italian public.  Most of them had
been jealously preserved in the private collections of the Colonna, the
Sacchetti, the Pallavicini and other noble families.  To assemble them
had taken two years of patient research and months of delicate
negotiation.  The provenance of many was still a closely guarded secret
witness the large number still denominated 'raccolta privata'. Together
they constituted an extraordinarily vivid pictorial and architectural
record of seventeenth-century Italy.  Herman Frank's enthusiasm had the
rare and touching innocence of childhood.

"Just look at that !  So delicate yet so precise!  Almost a Japanese
quality in the colour.  A magnificent draughts man a complete master of
the most intricate perspective .. . Study these sketches.  Notice how
patiently he builds the composition.  Strange!  He lived in a dark
little villa out on the Appia Antica.  It's still there.  Terribly
claustrophobic.  Mind you, it was all meadowland in those days, so
probably he had all the space and light he needed."  He broke off,
suddenly embarrassed.

"I'm sorry, I'm talking too much; but I love these things!"

Mendelius laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"My friend, it's a delight to listen to you!  Look at all these young
people!  You've lifted them out of their resentments and confusions and
set them down in another world, simpler, more beautiful, with all its
ugliness forgotten.  You have to be proud of that!"

"I am, Carl.  I confess it.  But I'm also scared of the day when all
these canvases are down, and the packers arrive to ship them back to
their owners.  I'm getting old.  I'm not sure whether I'll have the
time, or the energy the luck for that matter!  to do anything like this
again."

"But you'll still be trying.  That's the important thing."

"Not for long, I'm afraid.  I retire next year.  I won't know what to
do with myself.  We can't afford to go on living here;

and yet I hate the idea of going back to Germany."

"You could take up writing as a full-time occupation.

You've already got an established reputation as an art historian.  I'm
sure you could get a better publishing deal than you've had.  Why don't
you let me talk to my agent and see what he can set up for you?"

"Would you?"  He was almost pathetically grateful.

"I'm not very good at business and I worry about Hilde."

"I'll call him as soon as we get home.  Which reminds me, can I use
your telephone now?  There is a call I must make before midday."

"Come to my office.  I'll have some coffee sent in.  Oh, before you go
you simply must look at this view of the Tiber.

There are three versions of it: one from the Pallavicini collection,
one from the National Gallery and this one came from an old engineer
who bought it for a song in the flea market..  ."

It was another fifteen minutes before Mendelius was free to make his
call to the Monastery of Monte Cassino.  It took an unconscionable time
to find the Abbot and bring him to the telephone.  Mendelius fumed and
fretted and then reminded himself that monasteries were designed to
separate men from the world, not to keep them in touch with it.

The Abbot was cordial, if not exactly effusive.

"Professor Mendelius?  This is Abbot Andrew.  Kind of you to call so
promptly.  Would you be able to arrange your visit for Wednesday next?
It's a feast-day for us, and so we shall be.

able to offer you a little more generous hospitality.  I suggest you
arrive about three-thirty and stay to dinner.  It's a long drive from
Rome; so if you care to remain over-night we'll be happy to accommodate
you."

"That's very kind.  I'll stay then and drive back on Thursday morning.
How is my friend Jean?"

"He's been unwell; but I hope he will be recovered in time for your
visit.  He looks forward to seeing you."

"Please give him my most affectionate greetings and say that my wife
asks to be remembered to him."

"I'll do that with pleasure.  Until Wednesday then, Professor."

"Thank you, Father Abbot."

Mendelius put down the receiver and sat a moment lost in thought. There
it was again: the courteous response, the veiled caution. Wednesday was
a week ahead more than enough time to cancel the invitation, should
circumstances change or authority intervene.  Jean Marie's illness,
real or diplomatic, would provide an adequate excuse.

"Something wrong, Carl?"  Herman set down the coffee tray and began
pouring.

"I'm not sure.  It seems the Vatican is more than a little interested
in my activities."

"I would have thought that was natural enough.  You've given them a few
headaches in the past; and every new book causes a flutter in the
pigeon-loft.  Milk and sugar?"

"No sugar.  I'm trying to lose weight."

"I've noticed.  I noticed also you were pushing a little last night,
for information on Gregory XVII."

"Did it show that much?"

"Only to me, I think.  Was there any special reason?"

"He was my friend.  You know that.  I wanted to find out what really
happened to him."

"Didn't he tell you himself?"

"I hadn't heard from him in months."  Mendelius hedged his answer.

"I imagine he had little time for private correspondence.  " "But
you'll be seeing him while you're here?"

"It's been arranged.  Yes."

The answer was a shade too curt.  Herman Frank was too tactful a man to
press the matter.  There was an awkward moment of silence; then he said
quietly: "Something's been puzzling me, Carl.  I'd like your opinion on
it."

"Tell me, Herman."

"About a month ago I was called to our embassy.  The ambassador wanted
to see me.  He showed me a letter from Bonn: a circular instruction to
all academies and institutes abroad.  Many of them, as you know, have
valuable material on loan from the Republic: sculptures, pictures,
historic manuscripts, that sort of thing.  All directors were told to
arrange secret safe-deposits in the host countries where these things
could be stored in the event of civil disorder or international
conflict.  We were all given a budget, available immediately, to buy or
lease suitable storage."

"It sounds like a reasonable precaution," said Mendelius mildly.

"Especially since you can't insure against war or civil violence."

"You miss the point."  Herman Frank was emphatic.

"It was the tone of the document that worried me.  There was a note of
real urgency, and a threat of stringent penalties for neglect.  I got
the impression our people are genuinely worried that some terrible
thing may happen very soon."

"Do you have a copy of the instruction?"

"No.  The ambassador was very firm that it must not leave the embassy.
Oh, and that's another thing.  Only most senior staff were to know its
contents.  I thought that was rather sinister.  I still do.  I know I'm
a worrier; but all the time I think of Hilde and what might happen to
her if we were separated in some emergency.  I'd like your honest
opinion, Carl."

For a moment, Mendelius was tempted to put him off with some facile
encouragement; then he decided against it.  Herman Frank was a good
man, too soft for a rough world.  He deserved a sober and honest
answer.

"Things are bad, Herman.  We're not at panic stations yet;

but very soon we may be.  Everything points that way: public disorder
the breakdown of political confidence, the huge recession and the fools
in high places who think they can solve the problem by a well-timed but
limited war.  You're right to be concerned.  What you can do about it
is another matter.  Once the first missiles are launched there's no
safe hiding place anywhere.  Have you talked to Hilde about it?"

"Yes.  She doesn't want to go back to Germany, but she agrees we ought
to consider moving out of Rome.  We've got that little farmhouse in the
Tuscan hills.  It's isolated; but there's fertile ground around it.  I
suppose we could survive just on what we grew ourselves.  But it seems
an act of despair even to contemplate such a thing."

"Or an act of hope," said Mendelius gently.

"I think your Hilde's a very wise girl and you shouldn't worry about
her as much as you do.  Women are much better at survival than we
are."

"I suppose they are.  I've never thought about it that way.

Don't you wish sometimes we could find a great man to take control and
lead us out of the filthy mess?"

"Never!"  said Carl Mendelius sombrely.

"Great men are dangerous.  When their dreams fail, they bury them under
the rubble of cities, where simple folk once lived in peace!"

"I want to be open with you, Mendelius.  I want you to be open with
me."

"How open, Eminence?  And on what subject?"

The courtesies were over now.  The sweet biscuits were all eaten.  The
coffee was cold.  His Eminence, Anton Cardinal Drexel, grey-haired,
straight as a grenadier, stood with his back to his visitor, looking
out on the sunlit gardens of the Vatican.  He turned slowly and stood a
moment longer, a faceless silhouette against the light.  Mendelius
said:

"Please, Eminence, why don't you sit down?  I'd like to see your face
while we talk."

"Forgive me."  Drexel gave a deep growling chuckle.

"It's an old trick and not very polite.  Would you prefer we speak
German?"

In spite of his name, Drexel was Italian, born in Bolzano, long a
territory in dispute between Austria and the Italian Republic.
Mendelius shrugged.

"As your Eminence pleases."

"Italian then.  I speak German like a Tyrolese.  You might find it
comical."

"The mother tongue is the best one to be honest in," said Mendelius
drily.

"If my Italian fails me, I'll speak German."

Drexel moved away from the window and sat down facing Mendelius.  He
arranged the folds of his cassock carefully across his knees.  His
seamed face, still handsome, might have been carved from wood.  Only
his eyes were alive, vivid blue, amused yet appraising.  He said, "You
always were a tough customer."  He used the colloquial phrase: 'un tipo
rohusto'.

Mendelius smiled at the left-handed compliment.

"Now, tell me.  How much do you know about what happened here
recently?"

"Before I answer that, Eminence, I should like an answer from you.  Do
you intend to set any impediment to my contact with Jean Marie?"

"I?  None at all."

"Does anyone else, to your knowledge?"

"To the best of my knowledge, no one; though there is obviously an
interest in the encounter."

"Thank you, Eminence.  Now, the answer to your question: I know that
Pope Gregory was forced to abdicate.  I know the means that were used
to exact his decision."

"Which were?"

"A series of seven independent medical reports, which were then
consolidated by the Curia into a final document designed to cast grave
doubts upon the mental competence of His Holiness.  Is that
accurate?"

Drexel hesitated a moment and then nodded assent.

"Yes, it's accurate.  What do you know of my own role in the matter?"

"It is my understanding, Eminence, that while dissenting from the
decision of the Sacred College you agreed to convey it to the
Pontiff."

"Do you know why they reached their decision?"

"Yes."

There was a flicker of doubt in DrexePs eyes; but he went on without
hesitation.

"Do you agree with it or not?"

"I think the means of enforcing it were base: flat blackmail.

As to the decision itself, I find myself in a dilemma."

"And how would you express that dilemma, my friend?"

"The Pope is elected as Supreme Pastor and Custodian of the Deposit of
Faith.  Can that office be reconciled with the role of prophet
proclaiming a private revelation, even if that revelation be true?"

"So you do know!"  said the Cardinal Prefect softly.

"And, fortunately, you understand."

"So where does that leave us, Eminence?"  asked Mendelius.

"Facing the second dilemma: how do we prove whether the revelation is
true or false?"

"Your colleagues have already resolved that one," said Mendelius
tartly.

"They judged him a madman."

"Not I," said Anton Cardinal Drexel firmly.

"I believed, I still believe, his position as Pontiff was untenable.
There was no way he could have functioned in the face of so much
opposition.  But mad?  Never!"

"A lying prophet, then?"

For the first time Drexel's mask-like visage betrayed his emotion.

"That's a terrible thought!"

"He asked me to judge him, Eminence.  I had to consider every possible
verdict."

"He is not a liar."

"Do you think he is deluded?"

"I would like to believe it.  Everything would be so much simpler.  But
I cannot; I simply cannot!"

Suddenly he looked exactly what he was: an old lion with the strength
ebbing out of him.  Mendelius felt a surge of sympathy for the anguish
scored in his face.  Still he could not relent in his own inquisition.
He asked firmly, "How have you tested him, Eminence?  By what
criteria?"

"By the only ones I know: his speech, his conduct, his writings, the
tenor of his spiritual life."

Mendelius chuckled.

"There speaks the Hound of God."

Drexel smiled grimly.

"The wounds still smart, eh?  I admit we gave you a rough time.  At
least we taught you to understand the method.  What do you want to know
first?"

"It was the writing that finally damned him.  I have a copy of the
encyclical.  How did you read it, Eminence?"

"With great misgiving, obviously.  I had not a doubt in the world that
it must be suppressed.  But I agree it contains nothing, absolutely
nothing, that is contrary to traditional doctrine.  There are
interpretations that might be considered extreme, but they are
certainly not heterodox.  Even the question of an elective ministry,
when ordination by a Bishop is totally impossible, is a very open one
if rather delicate for Roman ears."

"Which brings us to the tenor of his spiritual life."  There was a
faint hint of irony in Mendelius' tone.

"How did you judge that, Eminence?"

For the first time, Drexel's harsh face softened into a smile.

"It measured better than yours, my dear Mendelius.  He remained
faithful to his vocation as a priest.  He was a totally unselfish man,
all of whose thoughts were directed to the good of the-Church and of
human souls.  His passions were under control.  In high office he was
humble and kind.  His anger was always against malice and never against
frailty.

Even at the end he did not rail against his accusers, but went with
dignity and accepted the role of a subject without complaint.  I am
told by the Abbot that his life in Monte Cassino is a model of
religious simplicity."

"He is also silent.  How does that conform with the obligation, which
he says he has, to spread the news of the Parousia?"

"Before I answer that," said Drexel, "I think we should clear up one
question of fact.  Obviously he wrote to you and sent you a copy of the
suppressed encyclical.  Correct?"

"Correct."

"Was this before or after his abdication?"

"He wrote it before.  I received it after the event."

"Good!  Now let me tell you something which you do not know.  When my
brother Cardinals had secured Gregory's consent to abdication, they
were sure they had broken him, that he would do whatever they wanted.
First they tried to write into the instrument of abdication a promise
of perpetual silence on any issue affecting the public life of the
Church.  I told them that they had neither a moral nor a legal right to
do so.  If they persisted I would fight them to the death.  I would
resign my office and make a full public statement on the whole sorry
affair.  Then they tried another tack.  His Holiness had agreed to
enter the order of Saint Benedict and live the life of a simple monk.
Therefore, he would be bound to obey his religious superior. Therefore,
said my clever colleagues, the Abbot would be instructed to bind him to
silence under the vow."

"I know that one," said Carl Mendelius with cold anger.

"Obedience of the spirit!  The worst agony you can impose on an honest
man.  We've taught it to every tyranny in the world."

"So," said Drexel quietly, "I was determined they should not impose it
on our friend.  I pointed out that this was an intolerable usurpation
of the right of a man to act freely in the light of his private
conscience, that the most stringent vow could not bind him to commit a
wrong, or to stifle his conscience in the name of good.  Once again I
threatened exposure.  I bargained with my vote in the coming conclave
and I instructed Abbot Andrew that he, too, was bound under moral
sanction to protect the free conscience of his new subject."

"I'm happy to hear it, Eminence."  Mendelius was grave and
respectful.

"It's the first light I've seen in this dark affair.

But it still doesn't answer my question.  Why is Jean Marie still
silent?  Both in his letter to me and in the encyclical, he speaks of
his obligation to proclaim the news that he claims has been revealed to
him."

Drexel did not answer immediately.  Slowly, almost painfully, he rose
from his chair, walked to the window and stood again, staring out into
the garden.  When he turned finally, his face was in shadow as before;
but Mendelius made no protest.

The man's distress was all too evident in his voice.

"The reason, I think, is because he is now undergoing the experience of
all the great mystics, which is called 'the dark night of the soul'. It
is a period of utter darkness, of howling confusion, of near despair,
when the spirit seems bereft of every support, human or divine.  It is
a replica of that terrible moment when Christ Himself cried out: "My
God!  Why have you abandoned me?"  .. . This is the news I hear from
Abbot Andrew.  This is why he, and I, wanted to speak with you before
you see Jean Marie.  The fact is, Mendelius, I think I failed him,
because I tried to compromise between the promptings of the Spirit and
the demands of the System to which I have been committed for a
lifetime.  I hope, I pray, you may prove a better friend than I."

"You talk of him as a mystic, Eminence.  That seems to predicate a
belief in his mystical experience," said Carl Mendelius.

"I'm not ready for that yet, much as I love him."

"I hope you will tell him that first and ask your questions afterwards.
Perhaps you'll be kind enough to call me after you've seen him?"

"You have my promise, Eminence."  Mendelius stood up.

"Thank you for inviting me here.  I hope you'll forgive me if I seemed
rude at the beginning."

"Not rude, just robust."

The Cardinal smiled and held out his hand.

"You were much less reasonable in the old days.  Marriage must be good
for you."

* * *

Lotte and Hilde had driven out to Tivoli for lunch, so he was treating
himself to a solitary meal in the Piazza Navona.

When he left the Vatican it was a quarter to midday; so he decided to
walk.  Halfway down the Via-della Conciliazione he stopped and turned
back to look at the great basilica of San Pietro, with the encircling
colonnades that symbolised the all embracing mission of Mother
Church.

For half a billion believers this was the centre of the world, the
dwelling-place of Christ's vicar, the burial-place of Peter the
Fisherman.  When the I.B.M.s were launched from the Soviet perimeters,
it would be obliterated in the first blast.

What would happen to the half-billion faithful once this visible symbol
of unity, authority and permanence were destroyed?

They had been conditioned for so long to regard this timeworn edifice
as the navel of the world, its ruler as the sole, authentic legate of
God to men; to whom would they look when the house and the man were
reduced to a glaze on the pavement?

These were no idle questions.  They were possibilities v 67 hideously
imminent to Jean Marie Barette, to Anton Cardinal Drexel, to Carl
Mendelius, who knew the apocalyptic literature by heart and saw it
rewritten in every line of the daily press.  He felt sorry for Drexel,
old, still powerful, but bereft of all his certainties.  He felt sorry
for all of them:

Cardinals', Bishops, curial clerics, all trying to apply the Codex
Juris Canonicus to a mad planet, whirling itself towards extinction.

He turned away and strolled, in leisurely fashion, through the crowd of
pilgrims, across the Victor Emmanuel Bridge and down the Corso. Halfway
along the thoroughfare he found a bar, with tables spread along the
pavement.  He sat down, ordered a Campari and watched the passing
show.

This was the best time in Rome: the air still soft, the flowers fresh
on the vendors' stalls, the girls flirting their new summer finery, the
shops filled with bright baubles for the tourist season.  His attention
was caught by a young woman standing on the kerb a few paces to his
left.  She was dressed in dark blue slacks and a white silk blouse that
displayed high tilted breasts.  Her black hair was held back by a red
scarf.  She looked like a southerner, slight and olive-skinned; with a
calm, madonna-face, singularly beautiful in repose.  She carried a
folded newspaper in one hand, and in the other a small handbag of blue
leather.  She seemed to be waiting for someone.

As he watched, a small red Alfa backed into the space near her.  The
driver parked it awkwardly, with the nose pointing out into the
traffic.  He opened the door and leaned across to speak to the girl.
For a moment it looked like a pick-up; but the girl responded without
protest.  She passed her handbag to the driver and, still holding the
newspaper, turned back to face the pavement.  The driver waited, with
the door open and the engine running.

A few moments later a man, middle-aged, fashionably dressed and
carrying a leather brief-case, walked swiftly down the Corso.  The girl
stepped forward, smiled and spoke to him.  He stopped.  He seemed
surprised; then he nodded and said something which Mendelius could not
hear.  The girl shot him three times in the groin, tossed the newspaper
into the gutter and leapt into the car, which roared away down the
Corso.

For a single, stunned moment, Mendelius sat shocked and immobile; then
he lunged towards the fallen victim and rammed his fist into the man's
groin to stanch the blood pumping from the femoral artery.  He was
still there when the police and the ambulance men pushed their way
through the crowd to take charge of the victim.

A policeman dispersed the gaping onlookers and the photographers.  A
street-sweeper cleaned the blood from the pavement.  A plain-clothes
man hustled Mendelius into the bar.  A waiter brought hot water and
clean napkins to mop his bloody clothes.  The proprietor offered a
large whisky with the compliments of the house.  Mendelius sipped it
gratefully as he made his first deposition.  The investigator, a young,
poker-faced Milanese, dictated it immediately over the telephone to
headquarters.  Then he rejoined Mendelius at the table and ordered a
whisky for himself.

"That was most helpful, Professor.  The description of the assailant,
detailed and closely observed, is very useful to us at this early
stage.  I'm afraid, however, I'll'have to ask you to come to
headquarters and look at some photographs maybe work with an artist on
an identikit picture."

"Of course.  But I'd like to do it this afternoon if possible.

As I explained, I have engagements to fulfill."

"Fine.  I'll take you down when we've finished our drinks."

"Who was the victim?"  asked Mendelius.

"His name's Malagordo.  He's one of our senior Senators, socialist and
Jewish.  A filthy business, and we're getting more of it every week."

"It seems so pointless a gratuitous barbarity."

"Gratuitous, yes; but pointless, no!  These people are dedicated to
anarchy, a classic and total breakdown of the system by a destruction
of public confidence.  And we're getting very close to that point now.
You may find this hard to believe, Professor.  At least twenty other
people saw the shooting today; but I'll bet a month's salary yours will
be the only deposition that tells us anything concrete .. . and you're
a foreigner!  The others have to live in this mess; but they won't lift
a finger to clean it up.  So," he shrugged in weary resignation, "in
the end they'll get the country they deserve.

Which reminds me, you'd better be prepared to see yourself spread all'
over the newspapers."

"That's the last thing I need," said Mendelius glumly.

"It could also be dangerous," said the detective.

"You will be identified as a key witness."

"And therefore a possible target.  Is that what you're telling me?"

"I'm afraid so, Professor.  This is a propaganda game, you understand
black theatre.  They have to shoot the leading man.  The girl in the
ticket-office has no publicity value.  If you take my advice you'll
move out of Rome, preferably out of Italy."

"I can't do that for at least a week."

"As soon as possible then.  Meantime,change your address.

Move into one of the bigger hotels where the tourists congregate.  Use
another name.  I'll arrange the passport problem with the
management."

"It wouldn't help much.  I'm booked for lectures at the German Academy.
So I'm still exposed."

"What can I say then?"  The detective shrugged and grinned.

"Except watch your step, vary your routine, and don't talk to pretty
girls in the Corso!"

"No chance of police protection, at least for my wife?"

"Not a hope.  We're desperately short of manpewer.  I can give you the
name of an agency that hires bodyguards; but they charge millionaire
rates."

"Then to hell with it!"  said Mendelius.

"Let's go look at your photographs."

As they drove through the midday chaos, he could still smell the blood
on his clothes.  He hoped Lotte was having a good lunch at Tivoli.  He
wanted her to enjoy this holiday;

there might not be too many more in the future.

Later in the afternoon, while he waited for Lotte and Hilde to return
from their outing, he sat on the terrace and taped a memorandum to
Anneliese Meissner.  He set down the new facts he had learned from
Georg Rainer and from Cardinal Drexel and only then added his own
comments.

Rainer is a sober and objective reporter.  His medical evidence though
second-hand proved reliable.  Clearly Jean Marie Barette was under
great mental and physical strain.

Clearly, too, there was no consensus on his mental incapacity.  As
Rainer put it: "Had they wanted to keep him, the most he would have
needed was a decent rest and a reduction of his work-load."

Cardinal Drexel's point of view surprised me.

Remember I was under inquisition for a long time, and I knew him as a
formidable and quite relentless dialectician.

However, even in our worst encounters, I never had the slightest doubt
of his intellectual honesty.  I would love to see you and him lock
horns in a public debate.  It would be a sell-out performance.  He
rejects utterly any idea of insanity or of fraud on Jean Marie's part.
He goes further and puts him in the category of the mystics like Teresa
of Avila, John of the Cross and Catherine of Siena.  By inference,
Drexel commits himself to a belief not yet clearly categorised in the
authenticity of Jean Marie's visionary experience.  So now it is I who
am the sceptic or, at least, the agnostic.

I am to see Jean Marie next Wednesday and Thursday and I shall report
to my assessor after those meetings.  I give my first Academy lecture
tomorrow.  I am looking forward to it.  The Evangelicals are an
interesting group.  I admire their way of life.  And, of course,
Tubingen has always been one of the heartlands of the Pietist
tradition, which has had such a huge influence in England and the
United States.  But I forget.  You are tone-deaf to this music.  None
the less I trust you and am glad to have you as my Beisitzer.  My most
affectionate salutations from this wonderful, but now very sinister,
city.  Auf Wiedersehen.

The audience was already seated when he entered the auditorium;
twenty-odd Evangelical pastors, most of them in their early thirties, a
dozen wives, three deaconesses, and half a dozen guests whom Herman
Frank had invited from the local Waldensian community in Rome.  Carl
Mendelius felt comfortable with them.  The theological faculty at
Tubingen had been one of the early forcing-grounds for the Pietist
Movement in the Lutheran Church; and Mendelius was personally attracted
by its emphasis on personal devotion and works of pastoral charity.  He
had once written a long paper on the influence of Philipp Jakob Spener
and the "College of Piety' which he founded in Frankfurt during the
seventeenth century.

When Herman Frank had finished his introduction and the applause had
subsided, Mendelius laid out his papers on the lectern and began to
speak.  His manner was relaxed and informal.

"I don't want to give a lecture.  I should prefer, if you agree, to
explore our subject in a Socratic dialogue, to see what we can tell
each other, and what the historical evidence can tell us all.  In broad
terms we are dealing with eschatology, the doctrine of last things: the
ultimate destiny of man, of social organisations and of the whole
cosmic order.  We want to consider these things in the light of both
Old and New Testament writings, and the earliest Christian
traditions.

"There are two ways of looking at the doctrine of last things.  Each is
radically different from the other.  The first is what I call the
'consummatory view'.  Human history will end.  Christ will come a
second time, in glory, to judge the living and the dead.  The second is
what I call the modificating view.  Creation continues, but is modified
by man working in concert with his Creator, towards a fulfilment or
perfection, which can be expressed only by symbol and analogy.  In this
view Christ is ever present, and the Parousia expresses the ultimate
revelation of His creative presence.  Now I'd like to know where you
stand.  What do you tell your people about the doctrine of last things?
Show hands if you want to answer and let's hear your name and your
home-place.  You sir, in the second row ..."

"Alfred Kessler from Koln ..."  The speaker was a short sturdy young
man with a square-cut beard.

"I believe in continuity and not consummation for the cosmos.  The
consummation for the individual is death and union with the Creator."

"How then, Pastor, do you interpret the Scriptures to the faithful? You
teach them as the Word of God at least, I presume you do.  How do you
expound the Word on this subject?"

"As a mystery, Herr Professor: a mystery which, under the influence of
divine grace, gradually unfolds its meaning to each individual soul."

"Can you clarify that perhaps express it as you would to your
congregation?"

"I usually put it this way.  Language is a man-made instrument and
therefore imperfect.  Where language stops, music, for example, takes
over.  Often a hand's touch says more than a volume of words.  I use
the example of each man's personal consummation.  Instinctively we fear
death.  Yet, as all of us know from pastoral work, man becomes familiar
with it, prepares himself, subconsciously, for it, understands it
through the universe about him the fall of a flower, the scattering of
its seeds on the wind, the rebirth of spring.

In this context, the doctrine of last things is, if not explainable, at
least conformable to physical and psychic experience."

"Thank you, Pastor.  Next ..."

"Petrus Allmann, Darmstadt."  It was an older man this time.

"I disagree totally with my colleague.  Human language is imperfect,
yes; but Christ the Lord used it.  I think we err when we try to turn
His utterances into some kind of doubletalk.  Scripture is absolutely
clear on this subject."  He quoted solemnly: ""And immediately after
the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened and the moon
shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from the sky and the
powers of heaven shall be moved.  And then shall appear the Sign of the
Son of Man in Heaven .. ."  What else does that mean but consummation,
the end of temporal things?"

There was a surprising burst of applause from one section of the
audience.  Mendelius let it run on for a moment then held up his hand
for silence.  He gave them a good-humoured smile.

"So now, ladies and gentlemen, who would like to decide between these
two men of good-will?"

This time it was a grey-haired woman who held up her hand.

"I am Alicia Herschel, deaconess, from Heidelberg.  I do not think it
matters which colleague is right, I have worked as a missionary in
Muslim countries and I have learned to say "Inshallah'.  Whatever is
the will of the Lord will be done, however we humans read his
intentions.  Pastor Allman quoted from Matthew twenty-four; but there
is another saying in that same chapter: "But of that day and hour no
one knoweth; no, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone."" She
was an impressive woman and there was more applause when she sat down.
She was followed by a young man from Frankfurt.  This time he addressed
a question to Mendelius.

"Where do you stand on this question, Herr Professor?"

He was pinned now, as he had expected to be; but at least it forced him
to some kind of definition.  He paused a moment, collecting his
thoughts, then outlined his position.

"As you know, I was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church.
However, I left the ministry and engaged myself in academic work.  For
a long time, therefore, I have been absolved from the obligation of
pastoral interpretation of scripture.  I am now an historian, still a
professing Christian, but dedicated to a purely historical study of
biblical and patristic documents.  In other words, I study what was
written in the past, in the light of our knowledge of that past.

So, professionally speaking, I should not make predications on the
truth or otherwise of prophetic writings, only on their provenance and
authenticity."

They were silent now.  They accepted his disclaimer; but if he ducked
the issue of a personal testimony they would reject him out of hand.
The knowing was not enough for them.

True Evangelicals, they demanded that it be fruitful in word and
action.  Mendelius went on.

"By temperament and training I have always been inclined to interpret
the future in terms of continuity, modification, change.  I could not
come to terms with consummation.

Now, however, I find myself drawn to the view that consummation is
possible.  It is an experiential fact that mankind has all the means to
create a global catastrophe of such dimension that human life as we
know it would be extinguished on the planet.  Given the other
experiential fact of man's capacity for destructive evil, we are faced
with the fearful prospect that the consummation may be imminent."

There was an audible gasp from the audience.  Mendelius added a
footnote to the affirmation.

"But whether it would be wise to preach such a message is another
question altogether, and I confess that, at this moment, I am not
competent to answer it."

There was a moment of silence and then a small forest of hands shot up.
Before he called for more questions Mendelius reached for the water
glass and took a long swallow of liquid.

He had a sudden incongruous vision of Anneliese Meissner peering at him
through her thick spectacles and grinning all over her ugly face.  He
could almost hear her mocking verdict.

"I told you, didn't I, Carl?  God-madness!  You'll never be cured of
it!"

The session was scheduled to end at midday, but the discussion was so
lively that it was a quarter to one before Mendelius was able to escape
for a pre-lunch drink in Herman Frank's office.  Herman was lavish with
compliments; but Mendelius was less than happy with the headlines in
the newspapers stacked on his desk.

They ranged from the extravagant to the malicious: "Hero of the Corso';
"Distinguished scholar in shooting affray'; Ex Jesuit chief witness
against terrorist brigades'.  The photographs were lurid: Mendelius
spattered with blood kneeling beside the victim, Malagordo being
hoisted into the ambulance, Mendelius and the detective huddled in talk
over their whisky.  There was also an identikit picture of the
assassin, carefully captioned: "Impression of the assassin by Professor
Carl Mendelius of Tubingen University'.  The copy was orchestrated in
Italian operatic style: grandiloquent horror, high heroics and heavy
irony.

"It is, perhaps, not without a certain poetic justice that a Jewish
Senator should owe his life to a German historian."

"God Almighty!"  Mendelius was pale with anger.

"They've set me up like a decoy duck!"

Herman Frank nodded unhappily.

"It is bad, Carl.  The embassy called to warn you that there are strong
links between local terrorists and similar groups in Germany."

"I know.  We can't stay at your place any longer.  Call back to the
embassy, get them to use their influence to book us a double room in
one of the better hotels, the Hassler perhaps or the Grand.  I
absolutely refuse to expose you and Hilde to danger on my account."

"No, Carl!  I will not bend to this kind of threat.  Hilde would never
permit it either."

"Herman, please!  This is no time for heroics."

"It's not heroics, Carl."  Herman was surprisingly resolute.

"It's simple common sense.  I refuse to live underground like a mole.
That's what these bastards want!  Besides, it's only for a week.  The
girls can go to Florence as they planned.  A couple of old stagers like
you and me should be able to look after ourselves."

"But listen!"

"No buts, Carl.  Let's put it to the girls over lunch and see how they
feel."

"Very well.  Thanks, Herman."

"Thank you, my friend.  This morning was a special triumph for me.  In
all my years at the Academy, I've never seen such an animated debate.
They can't wait for your next appearance.  Oh, I almost forgot.  There
were two telephone calls for you.  One was from Cardinal Drexel.  He'll
be in his office until one-thirty.  The other was from the wife of
Senator Malagordo.  She'd like you to call her back at the Salvator
Mundi hospital.  Those are the numbers.  Make the calls now and get
them off your mind.  I'd like you to enjoy your lunch."

As he dialled Drexel's number, Mendelius was filled with misgivings.
The Vatican placed a high premium on discretion.

Drexel might well see the threat to Mendelius as a threat to the
privacy of Jean Marie Barette.  He was surprised to find the old
warrior cordial and solicitous.

"Mendelius?  I presume you've seen this morning's papers?"

"I have, Eminence.  I've just been discussing them with my host.  An
embarrassment, to say the least."

"I have a suggestion.  I hope you'll accept it."

"I'd be happy to consider it, Eminence."

"For the rest of your stay I'd like you to have the use of my car and
my driver.  His name's Francone.  He used to be in the Carabinieri.  He
understands security work and he's alert and capable."

"It's a kind thought, Eminence, but I can't really accept."

"You can.  You must.  I have a vested interest in your safety, my
friend.  I propose to protect it.  Where are you now?"

"At the Academy.  I'm going back to the Franks' for lunch.

The address is ..."

"I have the address.  Francone will report to you at four and will
remain at your disposal during the rest of your stay.  No arguments
now!  We can't afford to lose the Hero of the Corso, can we?"

Much lighter in heart, Mendelius called the Salvator Mundi hospital and
asked for the wife of Senator Malagordo.  He was put through first to a
very brusque German nun and then to a male security man.  After a long
silence the Senator's wife came on the line.  She wanted to tell him
her thanks for saving the Senator's life.  He was badly hurt but his
condition was stable.  As soon as he was in a condition to receive
visitors he would like to see the Professor and offer his thanks in
person.

Mendelius promised to call later in the week, thanked her for her
courtesy and rang off.  When he heard the news, Herman Frank was happy
again.

"You see, Carl!  That's the other side of the medal.  People are kind
and grateful.  And the Cardinal's a canny old fox.

You probably don't know it, but the Vatican has a staff of very tough
security boys.  They have no inhibitions about breaking heads in the
service of God.  This Francone is obviously one of them.  I feel better
now much better!  Let's go home to lunch."

During the meal, Lotte was very quiet; but afterwards, when the Franks
had retired for their siesta, she made her position plain.

"I'm not going to Florence, Carl, not to Ischia or anywhere out of Rome
unless you're with me.  If you're in danger I have to share it;
otherwise I'm nothing but a piece of furniture in your life."

"Please dear, be sensible!  You don't have to prove anything to me."

"Have you never thought I might have to prove it to myself?"

"Why, for God's sake?"

"Because, ever since we married, I've been on the comfortable side of
the bed; the wife of a notable scholar first, and then the Frau
Professor at Tubingen.  I've never had to think too much about
anything, except having my babies and running the house.  You were
always there, a strong wall against the wind.  I've never had to test
myself without you.

I've never had a rival.  It was wonderful, all of it; but now, looking
at other women my age, I feel very inadequate."

"Why should you?  Do you think I could have made this career without
you, without the home you provided, and all the loving inside it?"

"I think so, yes.  Not quite in the same way perhaps but yes, you'd
have made it without me.  You're not just a stuffy scholar.  There's an
adventurer in you, too.  Oh, yes!  I've seen him peeping out sometimes
and I've shut the door on him because he frightened me.  Now, I want to
see more of him, know him better, enjoy him before it's too late."

She was weeping now, quiet tender tears.  Mendelius reached out and
drew her to him, coaxing her softly.

"There's nothing to be sad about, darling.  We're here together.  I
don't want to push you away.  It's just that suddenly, yesterday, I saw
the face of evil real evil!  That girl she couldn't have been much
older than Katrin looked like one of Dolci's Madonnas.  But she shot a
man in cold blood, not to kill him but to maim him in his manhood ... I
don't want you exposed to that sort of cruelty."

"But I am exposed to it, Carl!  I'm part of it, just as much as you
are.  When Katrin went off to Paris with her Franz, I wished I were
young again and going in her place.  I was jealous; because she was
getting something I never had.  When you and Johann used to fight, a
part of me was glad, because he would always turn to me afterwards.  He
was like a young lover with whom I could make you jealous.  There! It's
out now; and if you hate me I can't help it."

"I can't hate you, darling.  I've never ever been able to be angry with
you for very long."

"That's part of the problem, I suppose.  I knew it and I needed you to
fight me."

"I still won't fight you, Lotte."  Suddenly he was sombre and remote.

"Do you know why?  Because, all of my early life, I was bound by my own
choice, I agree but bound nonetheless.  When I became free I prized it
so much, I couldn't bear to impose a servitude on anyone else.  I
wanted a partner, not a puppet.  I saw what was happening, but until
you saw it yourself, and wanted to change it, I couldn't, I wouldn't
force you.  Right or wrong, that's how I felt."

"And now, Carl?  What do you feel now?"

"Scared!"  said Carl Mendelius.

"Scared of what may be waiting for us out there in the streets; even
more scared of what's going to happen when I meet Jean Marie."

"I was asking about us you and me."

"That's what I'm talking about, my dear.  Every way we move now, we're
at risk.  I want you with me; but not to prove something to me or to
yourself.  That's like having sex just to show you can do it.  It may
be magnificent but it's a long way from loving.  In short, it's up to
you, darling."

"How many ways do I have to tell you, Carl.  I love you.

From now on, where you go, I go."

"I doubt the monks will offer you a bed in Monte Cassino;

but apart from that, fine!  We go together."

"Good!"  said Lotte with a grin.

"Then come to bed, Herr Professor.  It's the safest place in Rome!"

In principle, it was an excellent idea; but before they could put it
into practice the maid knocked on the door to tell him that Georg
Rainer was on the line from the bureau of Die Welt.  Rainer's approach
was good humoured but crisp and business-like.

"You're a celebrity now, Carl.  I need an interview for my paper."

"When?"

"Right now, on the telephone.  I have a deadline to meet."

"Go ahead."

"Not so fast, Carl.  We're friends of a friend, so I'll give you the
ground rules, once only.  You can decline to answer;

but don't tell me anything off the record.  Whatever you give me I
print.  Clear?"

"Clear."

"This conversation is being recorded with your consent.

Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"We're running.  Professor Mendelius, your prompt action yesterday
saved the life of Senator Malagordo.  How does it feel to be an
international celebrity?"

"Uncomfortable."

"There have been some rather provocative headlines about your act of
mercy.  One calls you the "Hero of the Corso'.

How do you feel about that?"

"Embarrassed.  I did nothing heroic.  I simply applied elementary first
aid."

"What about this one: "Ex-Jesuit chief witness against terrorist
brigades'?"

"An exaggeration.  I witnessed the crime.  I described it to the
police.  I presume they have taken testimony from many others."

"You also gave them a description of the girl who fired the shots."

"Yes."

"Was it accurate and detailed?"

"Yes."

"Did you not feel that you were taking a big risk by giving that
evidence?"

"I should have taken a much bigger one by remaining silent."

"Why?"

"Because violence can only flourish when men are afraid to speak and
act against it."

"Are you afraid of reprisals, Professor?"

"Afraid, no.  Prepared, yes."

"How are you prepared?"

"No comment."

"Are you armed?  Do you have police protection, a private bodyguard?"

"No comment."

"Any comment on the fact that you are German and the man whose life you
saved is a Jew?"

"Our Lord Jesus Christ was a Jew.  I am happy to have served one of His
people."

"On another matter, Herr Professor, I understand you gave a very
dramatic lecture at the German Academy this morning."

"It was well received.  I shouldn't have called it dramatic."

"Our report runs as follows and I quote: "Asked by one questioner
whether he believed that the end of the world as foretold in the Bible
was a real and possible event, Professor Mendelius replied that he
considered it not only a possibility but an imminent one."" "How the
hell did you get that?"

"We have good sources, Professor.  Is the report true or false?"

"It's true," said Mendelius.

"But I wish to God you wouldn't print it."

"I told you the ground rules, my friend; but if you'd like to amplify
the statement I'll be happy to report you verbatim."

"I can't, Georg.  At least not at this time."

"And what's that mean, Herr Professor?  Did you really take yourself so
seriously?"

"In this case, yes."

"All the more reason then to print the report."

"How good a journalist are you, Georg?"

"I'm doing all right so far, aren't I?"  Rainer's laugh crackled over
the wire.

"I'm offering you a deal, Georg."

"I never make them well, hardly ever.  What do you have in mind?"

"Kill the end of the world story and I'll give you a much bigger
one."

"On the same subject?"

"No comment."

"When?"

"A week from today."

"That's a Friday.  What do you expect to give me the date of the Second
Coming?"

"You get lunch at Ernesto's."

"And the story exclusive?"

"That's a promise."

"You have your deal."

"Thanks, Georg."

"And I still have the tape to remind us of it.  Auf Wiedersehen, Herr
Professor."

"Auf Wiedersehen, Georg."

He put down the receiver and stood, brooding and perplexed, under the
indifferent gaze of the fauns and shepherdesses on the ceiling.
Unwittingly he had walked into a minefield.  One more incautious move
and it would explode under his feet.

Domenico Giuliano Francone, chauffeur and man of confidence to His
Eminence, was, in looks and character, an original.  He was six feet
tall, with an athlete's body, a grinning goat's face and a mop of
reddish hair kept sedulously dyed.  He claimed to be forty-two years
old, but was probably on the wrong side of fifty.  He spoke a German he
had learned from the Swiss Guards, an atrocious Genovese French,
English with an American accent and Italian with a Sorrentine singsong
lilt.

His personal history was a litany of variables.  He had been an amateur
wrestler, a champion cyclist, a sergeant in the Carabinieri, a mechanic
of the Alfa racing team, a notable boozer and wencher until, after the
untimely death of his wife, he had found religion and taken a job as
sexton in the titular church of His Eminence.

His Eminence, impressed by Francone's industry and devotion and
possibly by his raffish good humour had promoted him into his personal
household.  Because of his police training, his skill as a driver, his
knowledge of weapons and his experience in hand-to-hand combat, he had
assumed, almost by natural right, the duties of bodyguard.  In these
rough and godless times, even a Prince of the Church was not safe from
the sacrilegious threats of the terrorists.  While a religious man
dared not show himself afraid, the Italian government made no secret of
its fears and demanded commonsense precautions.

All this and more Domenico Francone elaborated eloquently, as he drove
the Mendeliuses and the Franks' on a Saturday afternoon excursion to
the Etruscan tombs of Tarquinia.  His authority established, he then
laid down the rules:

"I am responsible to His Eminence for your safety.  So you will please
do as I say, and do it without question.  If I tell you to duck, you
get your heads down fast!  If I drive madly, you hang on tight and
don't ask why.  In a restaurant you let me pick the table.  If you,
Professor, go on foot in Rome, you wait until I have parked the car and
am ready to follow you.

That way you keep your mind on your own affairs and let me do the
worrying.  I know the way these mascalzoni work."

"We have every confidence in you," said Mendelius amiably, "but is
there anyone following us now?"

"No, Professor."

"Then perhaps you'd take it a little more slowly.  The ladies would
like to look at the countryside."

"Of course!  My apologies!  .. . This is a very historic zone, many
Etruscan tombs.  There is, as you know, a ban on excavation without
permission, but still there is looting of hidden sites.  When I was in
the carabinieri ..."

The torrent of his eloquence poured over them again.  They shrugged and
smiled at each other, and drowsed the rest of the way to Tarquinia.  It
was a relief to leave him standing sentinel by the car, while they
followed a soft-voiced custodian through the upland wheat fields to
visit the people of the painted tombs.

It was a tranquil place, filled with lark-song and the low whisper of
the wind through the ripening wheat.  The prospect was magical: the
fall of the green land to the brown villages, with the blue sea beyond,
and the scattered yachts, spinnakers filled with the land-breeze,
heading westward to Sardinia.  Lotte was entranced, and Mendelius tried
to recreate for her the life of a long-vanished people.

"They were great traders, great seafarers.  They gave their name, the
Tyrrhenian, to this part of the Mediterranean.

They mined copper and iron and smelted bronze.  They farmed the rich
lands from here to the Po valley and as far south as Capua.  They loved
music and dancing and made great feasts; and, when they died, they were
buried with food and wine and their best clothes, and pictures of their
life painted on the walls of their tombs."

"And now they're all gone," said Lotte quietly.

"What happened to them?"

"They got rich and lazy.  They hid behind their rituals and trusted to
gods who were already out of fashion.  Their slaves and commoners
revolted.  The rich fled with their wealth to buy the protection of the
Romans.  The Greeks and the Phoenicians took over their trade routes.
Even their language died out."  He quoted softly the epitaph: ""O
ancient Veii!

Once you were a kingdom and there was a golden throne in your forum.
Now the idle shepherd plays his pipes within your walls; and, above
your tombs, they reap the harvest of the fields!"" "That's pretty.  Who
wrote it?"

"A Latin poet, Propertius."

"I wonder what they'll write about our civilisation?"

"There may not be anyone left to write a line," said Mendelius moodily,
"and there certainly won't be pastorals painted on the side of our
sepulchres.  At least these people expected continuity.  We look
forward to a holocaust.  It took a Christian to write the Dies Irae."

"I refuse to think any more gloomy thoughts," said Lotte firmly.

"It's beautiful here.  I want to enjoy my day."

"My apologies."  Mendelius smiled and kissed her.

"Get ready to hide your blushes.  The Etruscans enjoyed sex, too, and
they painted some very pretty reminders of it."

"Good!"  said Lotte.

"Show me the naughty ones first.  And make sure it's my hand you're
holding, not Hilde's!"

"For a virtuous woman, my dear, you have a very dirty mind."  "Be glad
of it, my love."  Lotte giggled happily.

"But for God's sake don't tell the children!"

She took his hand and trotted him up the slope towards the beckoning
custodian.  He was a young fellow with agreeable manners, a recent
Laureate in Archaeology and full of enthusiasm for his subject.  Awed
by the presence of two distinguished scholars, he devoted his attention
to the women, while Mendelius and Herman Frank chatted quietly in the
background.  Herman was in the mood for confidences.

"I've talked things out with Hilde.  We've decided to take your advice.
We'll shift ourselves out to the farm gradually of course and I'll work
out a programme of writing.  If I could get a contract for a series of
volumes, it would give me a continuity of work and some sense of
financial security."

"That's what my agent recommends."  Mendelius encouraged him.

"He says publishers like that sort of project because it gives them
time to build a readership.  When we get back to Rome, I'll call him
and see what progress he's made.

He always spends weekends at home."

"There's only one thing that worries me, Carl ..."

"What's that?"

"Well, it's slightly embarrassing ..."

"Come on!  We're old friends.  What's the problem?"

"It's Hilde.  I'm a lot older than she is.  I'm not as good in bed as I
used to be.  She says it doesn't worry her and I believe it probably
because I want to, anyway.  We do have a good life in Rome: lots of
friends, many interesting visitors.  It... well, it seems to balance
things out.  Once we leave, I'll have my work; but she'll be stuck in a
cottage in the hills like a farmer's wife.  I'm not sure how that will
work out.  It would be easier if we had children or grandchildren; but
as things are it would kill me to lose her, Carl!"

"What makes you think you will?"

"That!"  He pointed ahead to the two women and the custodian, who was
just unlocking the next sepulchre.  Hilde was joking with him and her
high bubbling laugh echoed across the quiet hills.

"I'm an old fool, I know; but I get jealous and scared!"

"Swallow it, man!"  Mendelius was curt with him.

"Swallow it and keep your mouth shut.  You have a good life together.
Hilde loves you.  Enjoy it, day by day!  Nobody gets eternal
reassurance.  Nobody has a right to it!  Besides, the more scared you
get, the worse you'll be in bed.  Any physician will tell you that."

"I know, Carl.  But it's rough sometimes to ..."

"It's always rough."  Mendelius refused to bend to him.

"It's rough when your wife seems to pay more attention to the children
than she does to you.  It's rough when the kids fight you for the right
to grow up in a different way from yours.  It's rough when a man like
Malagordo walks out to lunch and a pretty girl puts a bullet in his
balls!  Come on, Herman!  How much sugar do you need in a cup of
coffee?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be.  You've got it off your chest.  Now forget it."

He leafed through his catalogue.

"This one's the Tomb of the Leopards, with the flute player and the
lutanist.  Let's go in and join the girls."

As they stood inside the ancient chamber, listening to the custodian
expound the meaning of the fresco, Mendelius pondered another random
thought.  Jean Marie Barette, lately a Pope, was driven to proclaim the
Parousia; but did people really want to know about it?  Did they really
want to listen to the gaunt prophet shouting from the mountain-top?
Human nature had not changed much since 500 B.C. when the old Etruscans
buried their dead to the sound of lutes and pipes, and locked them in a
perpetual present, with food and wine and a tame leopard for company,
under the painted cypresses.

That night Mendelius and Lotte dined out in a trattoria on the old
Appian Way.  The garrulous Francone drove them there, and when they
protested his long hours he silenced them with the now familiar phrase:
"I am responsible to His Eminence."  He ordered them to sit with their
backs to the wall, then retired to eat in the kitchen, whence he could
survey the yard and make sure no one planted a bomb under the
Cardinal's limousine.

Their host for the evening was Enrico Salamone, who published
Mendelius' works in Italy; a middle-aged bachelor with a taste for
exotic and preferably intelligent women.  His escort for this time was
one Madame Barakat, the divorced wife of an Indonesian diplomat.
Salamone was a shrewd and successful editor who admired scholarship but
never disdained a topical and sensational subject.

"Abdication, Mendelius!  Think about it.  A vigorous and intelligent
Pope, still only in his mid-sixties, quits in the seventh year of his
reign.  There has to be a big story behind it."

"There probably is."  Mendelius was elaborately casual.

"But your author would break his back finding it.  The best journalists
in the world got only stale crumbs."

"I was thinking of you, Carl."

"Forget it, Enrico!"  Mendelius laughed.

"I've got too much on my plate already."

"I tried to tell him," said Madame Barakat.

"He should be looking outward.  The West is a small and incestuous
world.

Publishers should be opening new windows to Islam, to the Buddhists, to
India.  All the new revolutions are religious in character."

Salamone nodded a reluctant agreement.

"I see it.  I know it.  But where are the writers who can interpret the
East to us?  Journalism is not enough; propaganda is a whore's trade.
We need poets and story-tellers steeped in the old traditions."

"It seems to me," said Lotte ruefully, "everyone shouts too loud and
too often.  You can't tell stories in a mob.  You can't write poetry
with the television blaring."

"Bravo, darling!"  Mendelius squeezed her hand.

"It's true!"  She was launched now and ready to engage in combat.

"I don't have many brains, but I know Carl's always done his best work
in a quiet, provincial situation.  Haven't you always told me, Carl,
too many people argue their own books out of existence?  You, too,
Enrico!  You said once you'd like to lock your authors up until they
were ready to walk out with a finished manuscript."

"I said it, Lotte.  I believe it."  He gave her a swift sidelong
grin.

"But even your husband here isn't the hermit he pretends to be.  What
are you really doing in Rome, Carl?"

"I told you: research, a couple of lectures, and having a holiday with
Lotte."

"There's a rumour," said Madame Barakat sweetly, "that you were given
some kind of mission by the former Pope."

"Hence my suggestion for a book," said Enrico Salamone.

"Where the hell did you pick up that nonsense?"  Mendelius was
nettled.

"It's a long story."  Salamone was amused but wary.

"But I assure you it is authentic.  You know I'm a Jew.  It's natural
that I entertain the Israeli Ambassador and any visitors he wants to
present in Rome.  It's also natural that we talk about matters of
mutual concern.  So now!  .. . The Vatican has always refused
diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel.

The refusal is pure politics.  They don't want to quarrel with the Arab
world.  They would like, if they could, to assert some kind of
sovereignty over the Holy Places in Jerusalem.

Echoes of the crusades!  There was hope that this position might change
under Gregory XVII.  His personal response to diplomatic relations with
Israel was believed to be favourable.

So, early this spring, a private meeting was arranged between the
Israeli Ambassador and the Pontiff.  The Pope was frank about his
problems, inside his own Secretariat of State and outside, with Arab
leaders.  He wanted to continue exploring the situation.  He asked my
Ambassador whether a personal and unofficial envoy would be welcome in
Israel.  Their answer was naturally in the affirmative.  Yours was one
of the names suggested by the Pontiff."

"Good God!"  Mendelius was genuinely shocked.

"You have to believe me, Enrico.  I knew absolutely nothing about
it."

"That's true!"  Lotte was instant in support.

"I would have known.  This thing was never, never mentioned not even in
his last ..."

"Lotte, please!"

"I'm sorry, Carl."

"So there was no mission."  Madame Barakat was soothing as honey.

"But there was communication?"

"Private, madame," said Mendelius curtly.

"A matter of old friendship .. . And I'd like to change the subject."

Salamone shrugged and spread his hands in surrender.

"Fine!  But you mustn't blame me for trying.  That's what makes me a
good publisher.  Now tell me, how's the new book coming?"

"Slowly."

"When can we expect the manuscript?"

"Six, seven months."

"Let's hope we're still in business by then!"

"Why shouldn't you be?"

"If you read the papers, my dear Professor, you'll know the great
powers are talking us all into a war."

"They need another twelve months," said Madame Barakat.

"I keep telling you, Enrico.  Nothing before twelve months.  After that
..."

"Nothing ever again," said Salamone.

"Pour me the rest of the wine, Carl!  I think we could use another
bottle!"

The bloom was already off the evening; but they had to sit it out to
the end.  As they drove home through the sleeping city, they sat close
and talked softly, for fear of rousing Francone to another oration.

Lotte asked: "What was the meaning of all that, Carl?"

"I don't know.  Salamone was trying to be smart."

"And Madame Barakat is a bitch!"

"He does collect some odd ones, doesn't he?"

"Old friends and new bed-mates don't mix."

"I agree.  Enrico should have known better."

"Do you think it was true about Jean Marie and the Israelis?"

"Probably.  But who knows?  Rome's always been a whispering gallery.
The hard thing is to put the right names to the voices."

"I hate that kind of mystery-making."

"I, too, my dear."

He was too tired to tell her how he truly felt: a man caught in toils
of gossamer, the trailing wisps of a nightmare from which he could
neither flee nor wake.

"What are we doing tomorrow?"  asked Lotte drowsily.

"If you don't mind, I thought we'd go to Mass in the Catacombs; then
we'll go out to Frascati for lunch.  Just the two of us."

"Couldn't we hire a car and drive ourselves?"

Mendelius gave a rueful chuckle and shook his head.

"I'm afraid not, darling.  That's another lesson you learn in Rome.

There's no escape from the Hounds of God."

Garrulous he might be, but Domenico Francone was a very good watchdog.
He drove twice around the block before dropping them at the Franks'
apartment, then stood watch until the ancient door closed behind them,
sealing out the dangers of the night.

In the garden of San Callisto the bougainvillaea was in flame, the
rose-gardens in first flush and the doves still fluttered in their cote
behind the chapel, all just as he remembered it from his first visit,
long years before.  Even the guides still looked the same: old devotees
from a dozen countries, who dedicated their services as translators to
the pilgrim groups who came to pay homage at the tombs of ancient
martyrs.

There were no ghosts in the tiny chapel, only an extraordinary
tranquillity.  There were no baroque horrors, no mediaeval grotesques.
Even the symbols were simple and full of grace: the anchor of faith,
the dove carrying the olive twig of deliverance, the fish that bore the
loaves of the Eucharist on its back.  The inscriptions all spoke of
hope and peace:

"Vivas in Christo'.  "In pace Christi'.  The word "Vale' farewell was
never used.  Even the dim labyrinths below held no terrors.  The
loculi, the wall-niches where the dead were laid, held only shards and
dusty fragments.

In the Chapel of the Popes, they attended a Mass said by a German
priest for a group of Bavarian pilgrims.  The chapel was a large,
vaulted chamber, where, in 1854, Count de Rossi had discovered the
resting place of five of the earliest Pontiffs.

One had been deported as a mine-slave to Sardinia and died in
captivity.  His body was brought back and buried in this place. Another
had been executed in the persecution of Decius, yet another was put to
the sword at the entrance to the burial place.  Now, the violence in
which they had perished was almost forgotten.  They slept here in
peace.

Their memory was celebrated in a tongue they never knew.

As he knelt with Lotte on the tufa floor, responding to the familiar
liturgy, Mendelius remembered his own priesthood and felt a pang of
resentment that he should now be debarred from its exercise.  It had
not been so in the early Church.  Even now, the Uniats were permitted a
married clergy; while the Romans clung obstinately to their celibate
rule, and reinforced it with myth and historic legend and canonical
legislation.  He had written copious argument about it, still fought it
in debate; but, married himself, he was a discredited witness, and the
law-makers paid no heed to him.

But what of the future the near future when the supply of celibate
candidates would dry up, and the flock would cry out for ministry by
man or woman, married or single, it made no matter, just so they heard
the Word and shared the Bread of Life in charity?  Their Eminences at
the Vatican still ducked the issue, hiding behind a carefully edited
tradition.

Even Drexel ducked it, because he was too old to fight and too well
drilled a soldier to challenge the high command.  Jean Marie had faced
the question in his encyclical and this was yet another reason for
suppressing it.  Now the dark days were coming again.  The shepherd
would be struck down, the flock scattered.  Who would bring them
together again and hold them in love, while the rose-trees of the world
toppled about them?

When the celebrant raised the host and the chalice after the
Consecration, Mendelius bowed his head and made a silent, heartfelt
prayer: "O God, give me light enough to know the truth, courage enough
to do what will be asked of me!"

Suddenly he found himself weeping, uncontrollably.  Lotte reached out
and took his hand.  He held to her, mute and desperate, until the Mass
was ended and they walked out into the sunlight of the rose-arbour.

Early on Monday morning, while Lotte was taking her bath, Mendelius
telephoned the Salvator Mundi hospital and enquired about the progress
of Senator Malagordo.  He was passed, as before, from reception to the
ward sister, to the security man.  Finally he was told that the Senator
was much improved and would like to see him as soon as possible.  He
made an appointment for three that same afternoon.

He was getting restless now more and more convinced that his Wednesday
meeting with Jean Marie would be some kind of turning point in his
life.  If he could not accept Jean Marie's revelation, their
relationship would change irrevocably.  If he did accept it, then he
must accept the mission as well, no matter what form it might take.
Either way, he must soon be gone and he wanted as few social
encumbrances as possible.

He had done some research, but he was too preoccupied to concentrate on
the new material, which, in any case, was fragmentary and of little
importance.  Tuesday would see him out with the Evangelicals.  He was
still irritated by the leaking of conference material to the press; but
he needed to test the reaction of a Protestant audience to certain of
Jean Marie's propositions.  He still had to make good his promise of a
news story for Georg Rainer.  So far, he had no idea in the world what
he would tell him.

Lotte was still bathing, so he gathered up his notes and walked out to
breakfast on the terrace.  Herman had left early for the Academy. Hilde
was alone at the table.  She poured his coffee and then announced
firmly:

"Now, you and I can have a little talk.  Something's bothering you,
Carlo mio.  What is it?"

"Nothing I can't deal with."

"Herman looks at pictures.  I read people.  And there's trouble written
all over your face.  Is everything all right with you and Lotte?"

"Of course."

"Then what's the matter?"

"It's a long story, Hilde."

"I'm a good listener.  Tell me!"

He told her, haltingly at first, then in a rush of vivid words, the
story of his friendship with Jean Marie Barette and the strange pass to
which it had led him.  She listened in silence;

and he found it a relief to express himself without the burden of
reasoning or polemic.  When he had finished he said simply: "So that's
it, my love.  I won't know anything more until I meet Jean Marie on
Wednesday."

Hilde Frank laid a soft hand on his cheek and said gently:

"That's a hell of a load to carry around even for the great Mendelius!
It helps to explain some other things too."

"What things?"

"Herman's romantic idea of living on beans and broccoli and goat cheese
up in the mountains."

"Herman doesn't know what I've just told you about Jean Marie."

"Then what the devil is he talking on about?"

"He's scared of a new war.  We all are.  He worries about you."

"And how he worries!  You know his latest idea?  He wants to rush off
to Zurich for a hormone implant, to improve our sex life.  I told him
not to bother.  I'm perfectly happy the way we are."

"And are you happy, Hilde?"

"Would you believe, yes!  Herman's a dear and I love him.

As for the sex part, the fact is I'm not really good at it myself never
have been.  Oh, I love the warm snuggly part, but the rest of it I'm
not frigid but I'm slow and hard to rouse, and what I get at the end is
hardly worth the bother.  So you see, Herman's really got nothing to
worry about."

"Then you'd better tell him as often as you can."  Mendelius tried to
be casual about it.

"He's feeling very uncertain of himself just now."

"Forget about us, Carl.  We'll work it out.  I've been managing Herman
ever since we married.  Let's get back to your story."

"I'd like to hear your reaction to it, Hilde."

"Well, first, I've lived in Italy a long time so I'm sceptical about
saints and miracles and weeping virgins and friars who levitate at
Mass.  Second, I'm a pretty contented woman, so I've never been drawn
to fortune-tellers or seances or encounter groups.  I'd much rather be
doing fun things.

Finally, I'm pretty self-centred.  So long as my little corner of the
universe makes sense, I put the rest out of my mind.

There's nothing I can do to change it anyway."

"Let's put it another way, then.  Suppose I come back on Thursday from
Monte Cassino and say: "Hilde, I've just seen Jean Marie.  I believe
he's had a true revelation, that the world is going to end soon and the
Second Coming of Christ will occur."  What will you do?"

"Hard to say.  I certainly wouldn't go rushing off to church, or
hoarding food or climbing the Apennines to wait for the Saviour or
watch the last sunrise.  And you, Carl?

How will you react?"

"I don't know, Hilde my love.  I've thought about it every day, every
night, since I read Jean's letter; but I still don't know."

"There's one way to look at it, of course ..."

"What's that?"

"Well, if somebody's really going to shut down the world, everything
becomes pointless.  Rather than wait for the last big bang, why not buy
a bottle of whisky and a big bottle of barbiturates and put ourselves
to sleep?  I think a lot of people would decide to do just that."

"Would you?"  asked Mendelius softly.

"Could you?"

She refilled their cups and began calmly buttering a croissant.

"You're damn right I could, Carl!  And I wouldn't want to wake up and
meet a God who incinerated His own children."

She said it with a smile; but Carl Mendelius knew that she meant every
word.

As they drove out to the Salvator Mundi hospital, Domenico Francone,
the garrulous one, was taciturn and snappish.  When Mendelius pointed
out that they seemed to be taking a complicated route, Francone told
him bluntly:

"I know my business, Professor.  I promise you will not be late."

Mendelius digested the snub in silence.  He himself was feeling none
too happy.  His talk with Hilde Frank had raised more and deeper
questions on the veracity of Jean Marie and the wisdom of his
encyclical.  It had also cast new light on the attitude of the
Cardinals who deposed him.

All through the literature of the apocalyptic, in the Old and the New
Testament, in Essene and Gnostic documents, one special theme
persisted: the elect, the chosen, the children of light, the good seed,
the sheep beloved by the shepherd who would be separated for ever from
the goats.  Salvation was exclusive to them.  Only they would endure
through the horrors of the last time, and be found worthy of a merciful
judgment.

It was a perilous doctrine, full of paradoxes and pitfalls, easily
appropriated by fanatics and charlatans and the wildest of sectaries. A
thousand of the elect had committed ritual suicide in Guyana.  Ten
million of the elect made up the Soka Gakkai in Japan.  Another three
million were chosen for salvation in the Unification Church of the
Reverend Moon.

All of them and other millions, in ten thousand exotic cults, believed
themselves the chosen, practised an intense indoctrination, a fierce,
exclusive and fanatical bonding.

In the event of a universal panic, such as the publication of Jean
Marie's encyclical might raise, how would such sectaries perform?  The
history of every great religion offered only the gloomiest forecast. It
was not so long ago that Mahdist Moslems had occupied the Kaaba in
Mecca and held hostages and spilt blood in the holiest place of Islam.
It was a nightmare possibility that the Parousia might be preceded by a
vast and bloody crusade of the insiders against the outlanders. Against
such a horror, a swift and painless suicide might seem to many the most
rational alternative.

This was the nub of the problem he must thresh out with Jean Marie.
Once you invoked private revelation, reason was out the window.  To
which the rationalists would reply that once you invoked any kind of
revelation however hallowed by tradition you were committed to an
ultimate insanity.

Francone swung the car into the circular drive of the Salvator Mundi
and stopped immediately outside the entrance.  He did not get out, but
simply said: "Go straight inside, Professor.  Move fast."

Mendelius hesitated a split second then opened the near side door and
went straight into the reception area.  When he looked out, he saw
Francone park the car in the space reserved for medical staff, get out
and walk briskly to the entrance.  Mendelius waited until he was
inside, then asked:

"What was all that about?"

Francone shrugged.

"Just a precaution.  We're in an enclosed space, nowhere to run.  You
go upstairs and see the Senator.  I have a phone call to make."

An elderly nun with a Swabian accent escorted him to the elevator.  On
the fifth floor a security man checked his papers and passed him to the
ward sister, a very brusque lady who clearly believed that the sick
were best healed by the firm hands of authority.  She told him he might
spend fifteen minutes, no more, with the patient, who must not, in any
case, be excited.  Mendelius bowed his head in meekness.  He, too, had
suffered under the hand-maidens of the Lord and knew better than to
argue against their resolute virtue.

He found Malagordo propped up on his pillows, with a ;lucose drip
strapped to his left arm.  His lean, handsome face it up with pleasure
at the sight of his visitor.

"My dear Professor!  Thank you for coming.  I wanted so much to see
you."

"You seem to be making a good recovery."  Mendelius pulled a chair to
the bedside.

"How do you feel?"

"Better each day, thank God.  I owe you my life.  I understand you are
now in danger because of me.  What can I say?  The newspapers can be so
irresponsible.  May I order you some coffee?"

"No, thank you.  I had a late lunch."

"What do you think of my sad country, Professor?"

"It was mine, too, for a number of years, Senator.  At least I
understand it better than most foreigners."

"We have gone back four centuries, to the bandits and the condottieril
I see small hope for betterment.  Like all the other Mediterraneans, we
are lost tribes, squabbling on the shores of a putrid lake."

The threnody had a familiar ring to Mendelius.  The Latins were great
mourners of a past that never existed.  He tried to lighten the
conversation.

"You may be right, Senator; but I must tell you the wines are still
good in Castelli, and Zia Rosa's spaghetti alia carbonara is
magnificent as always.  My wife and I lunched there on Sunday.  The
nice thing was she remembered me from my clerical days.  She seemed to
approve the change."

The Senator brightened immediately.

"I'm told she used to be a great beauty."

"Not any longer.  But she's a great cook and she rules that place with
an iron fist."

"Have you been to the Pappagallo?"

"No."

"That's another very good place."

There was a moment's silence, then Malagordo said with wry humour: "We
talk banalities.  I wonder why we waste so much life on them."

"It's a precaution."  Mendelius grinned.

"Wine and women are safe topics.  Money and politics lead to broken
heads."

"I'm retiring from politics," said Malagordo.

"As soon as I get out of here, my wife and I are emigrating to
Australia.

Our two sons are there, doing very well in business.  Besides, it's the
last stop before the penguins.  I don't want to be in Europe for the
great collapse."

"Do you think it will collapse?"  asked Mendelius.

"I'm certain of it.  The armaments are nearly all ready.  The latest
prototypes will be operational in a year.  There's not enough oil to go
round.  More and more governments are in the hands of gamblers or
fanatics.  It's the old story: if you're faced with riots at home,
start a crusade abroad.  Man is a mad animal, and the madness is
incurable.  Do you know where I was going when I got shot?  To plead
for the release of a woman terrorist who is dying of cancer in a
Palermo gaol!"

"God Almighty!"  Mendelius swore softly.

"I think He'll be happy to see this race of imbeciles eliminate
itself."  Malagordo made a wry mouth as a sudden pain took hold of
him.

"I know!  From a Jew that's blasphemy.  But I don't believe in the
Messiah any more.  He's delayed too long.  And who needs this bloody
mess of a world anyway?"

"Take it easy," said Mendelius.

"If you get excited, they'll have me thrown out.  That ward sister is a
real dragon."

"A missed vocation."  Malagordo was good humoured again.

"She's got quite a good body under all that drapery.

Before you go .. ."  He reached under his pillow and brought out a
small package wrapped in bright paper and tied with a gold ribbon.

"I have a gift for you."

"It wasn't necessary."  Mendelius was embarrassed.

"But thank you.  May I open it?"

"Please!"

The gift was a small gilt box with a glass lid.  Inside the box was a
shard of pottery inscribed with Hebrew characters.

Mendelius took it out and examined it carefully.

"Do you know what it is, Professor?"

"It looks like an ostracon."

"It is.  Can you read the words?"

Mendelius traced them slowly with his fingertip.

"I think it spells Aharon ben Ezra."

"Right!  It came from Masada.  I am told it is probably one of the
shards which were used to draw lots when the Jewish garrison killed
each other, rather than fall into the hands of the Romans."

Mendelius was deeply moved.  He shook his head.

"I can't take this.  Truly, I can't."

"You must," said Malagordo.

"It's the nearest I can get to a proper thank you all that's left of a
Jewish hero, for the life of a lousy senator, who isn't even a man any
more.  Go now, Professor, before I make a fool of myself!"

When he reached the ground floor he found Francone waiting for him.  As
he moved towards the exit Francone laid a restraining hand on his
arm.

"We'll wait here for a few minutes, Professor."

"Why?"

Francone pointed out through the glass doors.  There were two police
cars parked in the driveway and four more outside in the road.  Two
orderlies were loading a stretcher into an ambulance under the eyes of
a curious crowd.  Mendelius gaped at the scene.  Francone explained
tersely.

"We were followed here, Professor.  One car.  Then a second one arrived
and parked just outside the gates.  They had both entrances covered.
Fortunately I spotted the tail just after we left town.  I telephoned
the Squadra, Mobile as soon as we arrived.  They blocked both ends of
the street and caught four of the bastards.  One's dead."

"For God's sake, Domenico!  Why didn't you tell me?"

"It would have spoiled your visit.  Besides, what could you have done?
Like I told you, Professor, I know how these mascalzoni work."

"Thanks!"  Mendelius held out a damp and unsteady hand.

"I hope you won't tell my wife."

"When you work for a Cardinal," said Francone with grave condescension,
"you learn to keep your mouth shut."

"Dear colleagues," Carl Mendelius, smiling and benign, adjusted his
spectacles and surveyed his audience.

"I begin today with a mild censure on person or persons unknown "I know
that travel is expensive.  I know that ministers of the gospel are paid
very little.  I know that it is a common practice to supplement one's
income, or one's travel allowance, by supplying conference reports to
the press.  I have no objection to the practice, provided it is open
and declared;

but I think it is an abridgment of academic courtesy to file press
reports in secret and without notice to colleagues.  One of our members
has caused me considerable embarrassment by reporting to a senior
journalist that I believed the end of the world could be imminent.
True, I said so in this room;

but, out of the context of our assembly and its specialist discussions,
the statement could be interpreted as frivolous or tendentious.  I do
not ask for a confession from the reporter.  I do, however, seek an
assurance that what is said here today will be reported only with our
full knowledge.  Will all those who agree please raise their hands?
Thank you.  Any dissenters?  None.  Apparently we understand each
other.  So let us begin.

"We have talked about the doctrine of last things:

consummation or continuity.  We have expressed differing views on the
subject.  Now let us accept, as hypothesis, that the consummation is
possible and imminent: that the world will end soon.  How should the
Christian respond to that event?  .. . You, sir, in the third row."

"Wilhelm Adler, Rosenheim.  The answer is that the Christian or anyone
else for that matter cannot respond to a hypothesis, only to an event.
This was the mistake of the school men and the casuists.  They tried to
prescribe moral formulae for every situation.  Impossible!  Man lives
in the here and the now, not in the perhaps."

"Good!  But does not human prudence dictate that he should prepare for
the perhaps?"

"Could you give an example, Herr Professor?"

"Certainly.  The earliest followers of Christ were Jews.

They continued to live a Jewish life.  They practised circumcision.
They observed the dietary laws.  They frequented the synagogues and
read the Scriptures .. . Now Paul Saul that was of Tarsus embarks on
his mission to the Gentiles, the non-Jews, to whom circumcision is
unacceptable and the dietary laws are unexplainable.  They see no point
in bodily mutilation.  They have to eat what they can get.  Suddenly
they are out of theory into practice.  The question simplifies itself.
Surely salvation does not hang on a man's foreskin; nor does it depend
on his starving himself to death."

They laughed at that and applauded the rabbinical humour.

Mendelius went on.

"Paul was prepared for the event.  Peter was not.  In the absence of
scriptural dictate, he had to find justification for his new position
in a vision "Take and eat' remember?"

They remembered, and gave a murmur of approval.

"So now, our 'perhaps'.  The last days are upon us.  How prepared are
we?"

They hung back now.  Mendelius offered them another example.

"Some few of you here are old enough to remember the last days of the
Third Reich; a country in ruins, a monstrosity of crimes revealed, a
generation of men destroyed, a whole ethos corrupted, the only visible
goal, survival!  To those of us who remember, is it not at least a fair
analogue of the millennial catastrophe?  But you are here today
because, somewhere, somehow, faith and hope and charity survived and
became fruitful again.  Do I explain myself?"

"Yes."  The answer came back in a muted chorus.

"How then ..."  He challenged them strongly.

"How do we ensure that faith and charity survive, if and when the last
days come upon us?  Forget the last days if you must.  Suppose that, as
many predict, we have atomic war within a twelvemonth, what will you
do?"

"Die!"  said a sepulchral voice from the back; and the room dissolved
into a roar of laughter.

"Ladies and gentlemen!"  Mendelius chuckled helplessly.

"There speaks a true prophet!  Would he like to come up here and take
my place?"

No one stirred.  After a few moments the laughter died into silence.
More quietly now, Mendelius went on.

"I should like to read to you now an extract from a document prepared
by a dear friend of mine.  I cannot name him.  I ask you to accept that
he is a man of great sanctity and singular intelligence; one, moreover,
who understands the usages of power in the modern world.  After the
reading I shall ask for your comments."

He paused to wipe his spectacles and then began to read from Jean
Marie's encyclical:

It is clear that in the days of universal calamity the traditional
structures of society will not survive.  There will be a ferocious
struggle for the simplest needs of life: food, water, fuel and shelter.
Authority will be usurped by the strong and the cruel.  Large urban
societies will fragment themselves into tribal groups.

He felt the words take hold of them, the tension begin to build again.
When the reading was done the silence was like a wall before him.

He stepped back from the rostrum and asked simply: "Any comments?"

There was a long pause and then a young woman stood up.

"I am Henni Borkheim from Berlin.  My husband is a pastor.  We have two
young children.  I have a question.  How do you show charity to a man
who comes with a gun to rob you and take the last food from your
children?"

"And I have another!"  The young man next to her stood up.

"How do you continue to believe in a God who contrives or permits so
universal a calamity and then sits in judgment on its victims?"

"So perhaps," said Carl Mendelius gravely, "we should all ask ourselves
a more fundamental question.  We know that evil exists, that suffering
and cruelty exist, that they may well propagate themselves to extremity
like cancer in the body.

Can we really believe in God at all?"

"Do you, Professor?"  Henni Borkheim was on her feet again.

"Yes, I do."

"Then will you please answer my question!"

"It was answered two millennia ago.

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!"" "And that's
the answer you would give?"

"I don't know, my dear."  He was about to add that he had not yet been
crucified; but he thought better of it.  He stepped down from the
rostrum and walked down through the audience to where the girl was
sitting with her husband.  He talked calmly and persuasively.

"You see the problem we get when we demand a personal testimony on
every issue?  We do not, we cannot, know how we will act.  How we
should act, yes!  But how we will, in an immediate situation, there is
no way to know in advance.  I remember as a youth in Dresden my mother
talking to my aunt about the coming of the Russians.  I was not
supposed to hear; but I did.  My mother handed her a jar of lubricant
jelly and said: "Better relax and survive than resist and be murdered'
.. . Either way it's rape, and there is no miracle promised to prevent
it; no legislation to cover the time of chaos."  He smiled and held out
his hand to the young woman.

"Let's not contend; but discuss in peace."

There was a small murmur of approval as they joined hands; then
Mendelius put another question:

"In a plural world, who are the elect?  We Romans, you Lutherans, the
Sunnis or the Shi'ites in Islam, the Mormons of Salt Lake City, the
Animists of Thailand?"

"In respect of the individual, it is not for us to distinguish."

A grey-haired pastor rose painfully to his feet.  His hands were
knotted with arthritis.  He spoke haltingly but with conviction.

"We are not appointed to judge other men by our lights.  We are
commanded only to love the image of God in our fellow pilgrims."

"But we are also commanded to keep the faith pure, to spread the good
news of Christ," said Pastor Allmann of Darmstadt.

"When you sit down at my table," said the old man patiently, "I offer
you the food I have.  If you cannot digest it, what should I do choke
you with it?"

"So, my friends!"  Mendelius took command of the meeting again.

"When the black night comes down,in the great desert, when there is
neither pillar of cloud nor spark of fire to light the path, when the
voice of authority is stilled, and we hear nothing but the confusion of
old argument, when God seems to absent himself from his own universe,
where do we turn?

Whom can we sanely believe?"

He walked slowly back to the rostrum and, in a long hush, waited for
someone to answer.

"I'm scared, darling!  So damn scared, I'd like to walk out of here and
take the next plane back to Germany!"

It was thirty minutes after midday and they were eating an early lunch
in a quiet restaurant near the Pantheon, before Mendelius left for
Monte Cassino.  Two tables away, Francone shovelled spaghetti into his
mouth and kept a vigilant eye on the door.  Lotte leaned across to
Mendelius and wiped a speck of sauce from the corner of his mouth.  She
chided him firmly:

"Truly, Carl, I don't know what the fuss is about!  You're a free man.
You're going to see an old friend.  You don't have to accept any
commission, any obligations, beyond this one visit."

"He's asked me to judge him."

"He had no right to demand that."

"He didn't demand he asked, begged!  Look, my dear.

I've thought round and round this thing.  I've talked it up and down;
and still I'm no nearer to an answer.  Jean Marie's asking for an act
of faith just as big as ... as an assent to the Resurrection!  I can't
make that act."

"So tell him!"

"And do I tell him why?

"Jean, you're not mad; you're not a cheat; you're not deluded; I love
you like a brother but God doesn't have dialogues in country gardens
about the end of the world; and I wouldn't believe it if you came
complete with the stigmata and a crown of thorns!"" "If that's what you
mean, say it."

"The problem is, I think I mean something else altogether.

I'm beginning to believe the Cardinals were right to get rid of Jean
Marie."

"What makes you say that?"

"It arises out of my dialogues at the Academy and even a talk I had
with Hilde Frank.  The only finality people can cope with is their own.
Total catastrophe is beyond their comprehension and probably their
capacity to deal with.  It's an invitation to despair.  Jean Marie sees
it as a call to evangelical charity.  I think it would lead to an
almost complete breakdown in social communication.  Who was it who
said: "The veil that hides the face of the future was woven by the hand
of Mercy'?"

"Then I think," said Lotte firmly, "you have to be as honest with Jean
Marie as you're trying to be with yourself.

He asked you for a judgment.  Give it to him!"

"I want to ask you a straight question, darling.  Do you think I'm an
honest man?"

She did not answer him directly.  She cupped her chin on her hands and
looked at him for a long time without speaking.  Then very quietly she
told him:

"I remember the first day I met you, Carl.  I was with Frederika
Ullman.  We were walking down the Spanish steps, two German girls on
their first visit to Rome.  You were there, sitting on the steps next
to a lad who was painting a very bad picture.  You were dressed in
black pants and a black roll-necked sweater.  We stopped to look at the
picture.  You heard us talking in German and you spoke to us.  We sat
down beside you, very glad to have someone to chat with us.

You bought us tea and buns in the English Tea Shop.  Then you invited
us to go for a ride in a carrozza.  Off we went, clip-clopping, all the
way to the Campo dci Fiori.  When we got there you showed us that
marvelous brooding statue of Giordano Bruno and told us about his trial
and how they burned him for heresy on the same spot.  Then you said:

"That's what they'd like to do to me!"  I thought you were drunk or a
little crazy until you explained that you were a priest under suspicion
of heresy.  You looked so lonely, so haunted, my heart went out to you.
Then you quoted Bruno's last words to his judges: "I think, gentlemen,
that you are more afraid of me than I of you."  I'm looking at the same
man I saw that day.  The same man who said: "Bruno was a faker, a
charlatan, a muddled thinker, but one thing I know: he died an honest
man!"  I loved you then, Carl.  I love you now.  Whatever you do, right
or wrong, I know you'll die an honest man!"

"I hope so, dear!"  said Carl Mendelius gravely.

"I hope to God I can be honest with the man who married us!"

At three-thirty precisely Francone set him down at the portals of the
great monastery of Monte Cassino.  The guest master welcomed him and
led him to his room, a plain whitewashed chamber furnished with a bed,
a desk and chair, a clothes-closet and a priedieu over which was hung a
crucifix carved in olive-wood.  He threw open the shutters to reveal a
dizzying view across the Rapido valley to the rolling hills of Lazio.
He smiled at Mendelius' surprise and said:

"You see!  Already we are halfway to heaven!  I hope you enjoy your
stay with us."

He waited while Mendelius laid out his few belongings and then led him
along the bare, echoing corridors to the Abbot's study.  The man who
rose to greet him was small and spare with a lean, weathered face and
iron-grey hair and the smile of a happy child.

"Professor Mendelius!  A pleasure to meet you!  Please, sit down. Would
you like coffee, a cordial perhaps?"

"No, thank you; we stopped for a coffee on the autostrada.

It's very kind of you to receive me."

"You come with the best recommendations, Professor."

There was a hint of irony in the innocent smile.

"I don't want to keep you too long from your friend; but I thought we
should talk first."

"Of course.  You told me on the telephone he had been ill."

"You will find him changed."  The Abbot chose his words carefully.

"He has survived an experience that would have crushed a lesser man.
Now he is going through another more difficult, more intense, because
it is an interior struggle.

I counsel him as best I can.  The rest of the brethren support him with
their prayers and their attentions; but he is like a man consumed by a
fire inside him.  It may be he will open himself to you.  If he does
not, let him see that you understand.  Don't press him.  I know that he
has written to you.  I know what he has asked.  I am his confessor and
I cannot discuss that subject with you, because he has not given me
permission to do so.  You, on the other hand, are not my subject and I
cannot presume to direct your conscience either."

"Perhaps, then, you and I could open our minds to each other."

"Perhaps."  Abbot Andrew's smile was enigmatic.

"But first, I think you should talk to our friend Jean."

"Certain questions arise.  Does he truly want to see me?"

"Oh, yes, indeed."

"Then why, when I wrote to you both, did he not write back as well as
you?  When I called on the telephone, why did you not invite him to
speak with me?"

"It was not discourtesy, I promise you."

"What was it?"

The Abbot sat silent for a long moment, studying the backs of his long
hands.  Finally he said, slowly: "There are times when it is not
possible for him to communicate with anyone."

"That sounds ominous."

"On the contrary, Professor.  It is my belief, based on personal
observation, that our friend Jean has reached a high degree of
contemplation, that state, in fact, which is called 'illuminative', in
which, for certain periods, the spirit is totally absorbed in
communication with the Creator.  It is a rare phenomenon; but not
unfamiliar in the lives of the great mystics.  During these periods of
contemplation, the subject does not respond to any external stimuli at
all.  When the experience is over, he returns immediately to normality.
But I am telling you nothing you don't know from your own reading."

"I know also," said Carl Mendelius drily, "that catatonic and
cataleptic states are very well known in psychiatric medicine."

"I, too, am aware of it, Professor.  We are not altogether in the Dark
Ages here.  Our founder, Saint Benedict, was a wise and tolerant
legislator.  It may surprise you to know that one of our Fathers is a
quite eminent physician with degrees from Padua, Zurich and London.  He
entered the order only ten years ago after the death of his wife.  He
has examined our friend.  He has, on my direction, consulted with other
specialists on the matter.  He is convinced, as I am, that we are
dealing with a mystic and not a psychotic."

"Have you so informed the people who declared him a madman?"

"I have informed Cardinal Drexel.  For the rest .. He gave a small
chuckle of amusement.

"They're very busy men.  I prefer not to disturb them in their large
affairs.  Any more questions?"

"Only one," said Mendelius gravely.

"You believe Jean Marie is a mystic, illuminated by God.  Do you also
believe that he was granted a revelation of the Parousia?"

The Abbot frowned and shook his head.

"Afterwards, my friend!  After you've seen him.  Then I'll tell you
what I believe.  Come!  He's waiting in the garden.  I'll take you to
him."

* * * He was standing in the middle of the cloister garden, a tall slim
figure in the black habit of Saint Benedict, feeding crumbs to the
pigeons that fluttered at his feet.  At the sound of Mendelius'
footfall he turned, stared for a single moment, and then hurried
towards him, arms outstretched, while the pigeons wheeled in panic
above his head.  Mendelius caught him in mid-stride and held him in a
long embrace, shocked to feel, even through the coarse stuff of the
habit, how thin and frail he was.  His first words were a stifled
cry:

"Jean .. . Jean, my friend!"

Jean Marie Barette clung to him, patting his shoulder and saying over
and over:

"Grace a Dieu .. . Grace a Dieu!"

Then they held each other at arm's length looking into each other's
faces.

"Jean!  Jean!  What have they done to you?  You're as thin as a
rake."

"They?  Nothing."  He fished a handkerchief from the sleeve of his
habit and dabbed at Mendelius' cheeks.

"Everybody's been more than kind.  How are all your family?"

"Well, thank God.  Lotte's here in Rome.  She sends you her best
love."

"Thank her for lending you to me.  I prayed you would come quickly,
Carl!"

"I wanted to come sooner; but I couldn't leave Tubingen until end of
term."

"I know ... I know!  And now I read that you are involved in a
terrorist shooting in Rome.  That troubles me."

"Please, Jean!  It's a nine-day wonder.  Tell me about yourself."

"Shall we walk awhile?  It's very pleasant here.  One gets the breeze
from the mountains, cool and clean, even on the hottest day."

He took Mendelius' arm and they began to stroll slowly round the
cloisters, making small tentative talk, as the first rush of emotion
ebbed and the calm of an old friendship took hold of them.

"I am very much at home here," said Jean Marie.

"Abbot Andrew is most considerate.  I like the rhythm of the day; the
Hours of the Office sung in choir, the quiet work.  One of the fathers
is an excellent sculptor in wood.  I sit in his workshop and watch.  I
love the smell of wood-shavings!  It's a feast-day today.  I prepared
the dessert you will be having for supper.

It's an old receipe my mother used.  The fruit is from our own orchard.
In the kitchen they have decided I'm better as a cook than as a Pope.
And how is life with you, Carl?"

"It's good, Jean.  The children are beginning to make their own lives.
Katrin is head over heels in love with her painter.

Johann is brilliant in economics.  He's decided he's not a believer any
more.  One hopes he will grope his way back into the faith; but he's a
good lad just the same.  Lotte and I, well, we're just beginning to
enjoy being middle-aged together.

The new book's moving ahead.  At least it was, until you put it all out
of my head.  I don't think there's been an hour when you were absent
from my thoughts."

"And you were never far from mine, Carl.  It was as if you were the
last spar to which I could cling after the shipwreck.  I dared not let
you go.  I look back on those last weeks in the Vatican with real
horror."

"And now, Jean?"

"Now I am calm if not yet at peace, because I am still struggling to
divest myself of the last impediments to a conformity with God's will.
You cannot believe how hard it is, when it should be so simple, to
abandon yourself absolutely to His designs, to say and mean it: "Here I
am, a tool in your hands.  Use me any way you want."  The trust has to
be absolute; but always one tries without even knowing to hedge the
bet."

"And I was part of the hedge?"  Mendelius said it with a smile and a
hand's touch to soften the question.

"You were, Carl.  I suppose you still are; but I believe also that you
are part of God's design for me.  Had you not written, had you declined
to come, I would have been forced to think otherwise.  I prayed
desperately for strength to face the possibility of a refusal."

"It's still a possibility, Jean," said Mendelius with grave
gentleness.

"You asked me to judge you."

"Have you reached a verdict yet?"

"No.  I had to talk to you first."

"Let's sit down, Carl.  Over there, on the stone bench.

That's where I was sitting when it happened.  But, first, there are
other things to tell you."

They settled themselves on the bench.  Jean Marie scooped up a handful
of pebbles from the path and began tossing them at an imaginary target.
He talked casually, in a tone of wry reminiscence.

"Let me say outright, Carl, that in spite of all the ritual disclaimers
and the public acts of humility, I really wanted to be Pope.  All my
life I had been a careerist in the Church.  I use the word in the
French sense.  I was built for what I did.  As a youth I fought with
the Maquis.  I came to the seminary a man, sure of his vocation and of
his motives.  More, I understood instinctively how the system works.
It's like Saint Cyr or Oxford or Harvard ... If you know the rules of
the game, the averages are in your favour.  There's no discredit .
that's not what I'm saying.  I simply point out that there is, there
has to be, an element of ambition, an element of calculation.  I had
the ambition.  I also had a good, tidy French mind.

"So, I was a good priest, a good diocesan bishop.  I mean that!  I
worked hard at it.  I spent a lot of love.  I held the people together,
even the young.  I set up social experiments.

I was attracting vocations to the ministry while others were losing
them.  My people told me they felt a sense of unity, of religious
purpose.  In short, I had to be, sooner or later, a candidate for the
red hat.  In the end it was offered to me, on condition that I came to
Rome and joined the Curia.  Naturally, I accepted.  I was appointed
Prefect of the Secretariat for Christian Unity and Sub-prefect of the
Secretariat for NonBelievers.  These were minor offices as you know.
The real power was vested in the important Congregations: Doctrine of
the Faith, Episcopal and Clerical Affairs.

"Still I was very happy.  I had access to the Pontiff.  I had an open
brief, the opportunity to travel, to make contacts far outside the
Roman enclave.  This was when we met, Carl.

You remember the excitements we shared.  It was like having a box at
the opera!  .. . And there were good and great things to be done .. .

"But, then, slowly I began to see how very little I had accomplished or
could ever accomplish for that matter.  At home, if I founded a school
or a hospital, the results were there, tangible and consequential.  I
saw the dying comforted by the Sisters.  I saw the children taught in a
religious tradition.  But as a Cardinal in Rome what?  Plans and
projects and discussions and a new printing press to roll out the
documents, but between me and the people a wall was thrown up.  I was
no longer an apostle.  I was a diplomat, a politician, a go-between,
and I did not like the man who walked in my shoes.  I liked the system
even less: cumbersome, archaic, costly and full of cosy corners where
slothful men could sleep their lives away and intriguers flourish like
exotic plants in a hot-house.

"However, if I wanted to change it and I did, believe me!

- I had to stay inside the Curia.  I had to work within the limits of
my own character.  I am a persuader, not a dictator.  I hate rudeness.
I have never pounded a table in my life!

"So when my predecessor died and the conclave was deadlocked, they
chose me, Jean Marie Barette, Gregory XVII, Successor to the Prince of
the Apostles!"  He tossed the last pebbles on to the pathway and eased
himself painfully to his feet.

"Do you mind, Carl, if we go to Father Edmund's workshop?  It's warmer
there, and we can still be private.

When evening comes I feel the cold."

Inside the workshop, amid the cheerful clutter of wood billets and
shavings and tools and a shaggy Baptist half-born from a block of oak,
they perched themselves like schoolboys on the bench while Jean Marie
continued his story.

"And there I was, my dear Carl, suddenly as high as man could climb in
the City of God.  My titles assured me of my eminence and my authority:
Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate
of Italy .. . et patati et patataV He gave a laugh of genuine
amusement.

"I tell you, Carl, when you stand for the first time on that balcony
and look across Saint Peter's Square and hear the applause of the
crowd, you really believe you're someone!  It's very easy to forget
that Christ was a wandering prophet who slept in caves, and Peter was a
fisherman from a lakeside in Galilee and John the Precursor was
murdered in a prison cell.

"After that, of course, you learn very fast.  The whole system is
designed to surround you with the aura of absolute authority, and
resolutely to obstruct your use of it.  The long liturgical ceremonies
and the public appearances are theatre pieces in which you are
stage-managed like an actor.  Your private audiences are diplomatic
occasions.  You talk banalities.  You bless medals.  You are
photographed for the posterity of your visitors.

"Meantime, the bureaucracy grinds on, filtering what comes to your
desk, editing and glossing what you hand down.  You are besieged by
counsellors whose sole object seems to be to delay decision.  You
cannot act except through intermediaries.  There are not enough hours
in the day to digest a tenth of the information presented to you and
the language of Curial documents is as carefully designed as American
officialese or the double-talk of the Marxists.

"I remember speaking about this to the President of the United States
and, later, to the Chairman of the People's Republic of China.  Each
told me the same thing in different words.  The President, a very salty
fellow, said: "They geld us first and then expect us to win the
Kentucky Derby."  The Chairman put it rather more politely: "You have
five hundred million subjects.  I have nearly twice that number.  That
is why you need hellfire and I need the punishment camps and death
takes us both before the work is half-done."  That's the other thing,
Carl, our own mortality makes us desperate; and desperate leaders are
very vulnerable.  We either surround ourselves with sycophants or we
weary ourselves in a daily battle with men as resolute as we are."

"Or we are tempted to create them."

Jean Marie gave him a swift shrewd look.

"The politicians have their propaganda pieces.  The Pope has his wonder
workers  That's what you're really saying, isn't it, Carl?"

"It's a point at issue, Jean.  I had to put it to you."

"The answer's simple.  Yes, you wish for miracles.  You pray for God to
show His hand sometimes on this cruel planet.  But to create them for
yourself, or find yourself a ready-made magus, or adopt one from the
annual crop of soidisant saints no, Carl!  Not I!  What happened to me
was real, and uninvited.  It was a torment and not a gift."

"But you did try to exploit it?"

"Do you believe that, old friend?"

"I ask because others believe it still others could say it in the
future."

"And I can offer no proof to the contrary."

"Precisely, Jean!  To use the terms of biblical analysis, you claim a
private disclosure experience, but you cannot ask for an act of faith
in your unsupported testimony.  Therefore, there has to be a legitimi
sing sign.  The Cardinals were scared you would get it by invoking the
dogma of infallibility.  They were desperate to get rid of you before
you could do it."

Jean Marie frowned over the idea for a moment, then nodded agreement.

"Yes, I accept your definitions.  I claim a disclosure experience.  I
lack a legitimi sing sign which authorises me to proclaim it."

"Correction."  Mendelius frowned over the phrase.

"Which authorises you to proclaim it as Pontiff of the Universal
Church."

"But look at our Baptist here."  Jean Marie ran his hand over the
half-finished sculpture.

"He came out of the desert, preaching that the Kingdom of God was at
hand, that men should repent and be baptised.  What was his patent of
authority?  I quote:' "The word of the Lord came to John the Son of
Zachary in the desert."  He smiled and shrugged.

"At least there are precedents, Carl!  But let me go on.  We were
talking about power and its limitations.  One thing I did have as Pope
was access to information and from the highest sources.  I travelled. I
talked to heads of State.  They sent emissaries to me.

"All of them, without exception, faced the same dreadful dilemma.  They
were appointed to service a national interest.

If they failed to do that, they would be deposed.  But they knew that
at some point they had to compromise national interest with other
interests, equally imperative; and, if the compromise failed, the world
would be plunged into an atomic war.

"They knew more, Carl, more than they ever dared to make public: that
the means of destruction are so vast, so deadly, so far beyond
antidote, that they can obliterate mankind and make the planet itself
unfit for human habitation.  What these high men told me was the stuff
of nightmares and I was haunted by them, day and night.  Everything
else became petty and irrelevant: dogmatic disputes, some poor priest
hopping into bed with a housemaid, whether a woman should take a pill
or carry a little card to count her lunar periods to avoid making
gun-fodder for the day of Armageddon.  Do you understand, my friend? Do
you really understand?"

"I understand, Jean," said Mendelius with sombre conviction.

"Better than you, perhaps, because I have children and you have not. On
this matter we are not at odds.  But I have to put it to you that you
didn't need a vision to show you the last disaster.  It was already
burned into your brain.  You, yourself, called it the stuff of
nightmares and you can have those, waking or sleeping!"

"And the rest of it, Carl?  The final deliverance, the last
justification of God's redeeming plan, the Parousia?  Did I dream that,
too?"

"You could have."  Mendelius pieced out his answer slowly.

"I tell you as an historian, I tell you as a man and as a student of
mankind's beliefs, the dream of the last things haunts the folk-memory
of every race under the sun.  It is expressed in every literature, in
every art, in every death ritual known to man.  The forms are
different; but the dream persists, haunting our pillows in the dark,
forming itself by day out of the storm-clouds and the lightning flash. 
I share the dream with you; but when you say, as you do in your
encyclical: "I ... am commanded by the Holy Spirit to write you these
words', then I have to ask, as your colleagues did, whether you are
speaking in symbol or of fact.  If of fact, then show me the rescript
and the seal; prove to me that the message is authentic!"

"You know I can't do that," said Jean Marie Barette.

"Exactly," said Carl Mendelius.

"But if you admit that the doctrine of last things is an authentic
dream of all mankind and a clear tradition in Christian doctrine, why
should I not say so vision or no vision?"

"Because you determine it!"  Mendelius was implacable.

"You determine it by circumstance, by approximate time.

You demand immediate and specific preparations.  You close out all hope
of continuity and you lock yourself into so narrow a doctrine of
election that it will be rejected by most of the world and half our own
Church as well.  For those who accept it the consequences may be
disastrous mass panic, public disorders, and most certainly a rash of
suicides."

"My compliments, Carl!"  Jean Marie gave him a smile of ironic
approbation.

"You've made a splendid case, better even than my Cardinals
presented."

"I rest it there," said Carl Mendelius.

"And you expect me to answer it?"

"You asked me in your letter to spread the message which you could no
longer proclaim.  You have to prove to me that it is authentic."

"How, Carl?  What evidence would convince you?  A " ;!

burning bush?  A rod turned into a serpent?  Our Baptist here, stepping
alive out of this block of wood?"

Before Mendelius had time to frame an answer the monastery bell began
to toll.  Jean Marie slipped off the bench and dusted the sawdust from
his robe.

"It's a feast-day.  Vespers are half an hour early.  Are you going to
join us in the Chapel?"

"If I may," said Mendelius quietly.

"I've run out of human answers."

"There are none," said Jean Marie Barette, and quoted softly: ""Nisi
dominus aedificaverit do mum .. . Unless the Lord build the house, the
builders labour in vain!"" In the Chapel, the ancient hierarchic order
still prevailed.

The Abbot sat in the place of honour with his counsellors about him.
Jean Marie, lately a Pope, was seated with the juniors.  Carl Mendelius
was placed among the novices, with a borrowed breviary in his hands. It
was a strange, poignant experience, as if he had stepped back thirty
years, to the old monkish life in which he had been trained.  Every
cadence of the Gregorian chant was familiar.  The words of the Psalms
called up vivid pictures of his student days; lectures and disputations
and long, painful discussions with superiors in the period before his
exit.

"Ad te do mine clamabo .. . ," the choir intoned.

"To thee O Lord I will cry out.  O my God be not silent to me, lest, if
thou be silent to me, I become like those who go down into, the pit.
Hear O Lord the voice of my supplication, when I pray to thee, when I
lift up my hands to thy holy temple."

The invocations had a new meaning for him as well.  The silence which
had fallen between himself and Jean Marie was sinister.  Suddenly they
were strangers, met in a no man's land, each speaking a language alien
to the other.  The God who spoke to Jean Marie was silent to Carl
Mendelius.

"According to the works of their hands ..."  the chant echoed through
the vaulted nave, "render to them their reward."  And the response came
back, sombre and menacing:

"Because they have not understood the works of the Lord .  thou shalt
destroy them and not build them up."

But .. . but against the counterpoint of the psalmody Mendelius
wrestled his way through the argument whose understanding was the right
one?  If the leap of faith were not a rational act, it became an
insanity, to which he could not commit, even if his refusal meant the
rupture of the bond between himself and Jean Marie.  It was a thing sad
to contemplate late in life, when the simple abrasion of time wore out
so many cherished relationships.

He was glad when the service was over and he joined the community for
the feast-day meal in the refectory.  He could laugh at the small
community jokes, applaud Jean Marie's dessert, discuss with the Father
Archivist the resources of the library, and with the Abbot, the quality
of the wines of the Abruzzi.  When the meal was over and the monks
moved into the common room for evening recreation, Jean Marie
approached the Abbot and asked:

"May we be excused, Father Abbot?  Carl and I still have things to
discuss.  Afterwards we'll read Compline together, in my cell."

"Of course .. . But don't keep him up too late, Professor!

We're trying to get him to take care of himself."

Jean Marie's cell was as bare as the guest-room.  There were no
ornaments save the crucifix, the only books were the Bible, a copy of
the Rule, a Book of Hours and a French edition of The Imitation of
Christ.  Jean Marie took off his habit, kissed it and hung it in the
closet.  He pulled a woollen jersey over his shirt and sat on the bed
facing Mendelius.  He said with a touch of irony:

"So here we are, Carl!  No popery, no monkery; just two men trying to
be honest with each other.  Let me ask you some questions now.  Do you
believe I am a sane man?"

"Yes, I do, Jean."

"Am I a liar?"

"No."

"And the vision?"

"I believe the experience you described in your letter was real to you.
I believe you are totally sincere in your interpretation of it."

"But you will not commit yourself to that interpretation."

"I cannot.  The best I can do is keep an open mind."

"And the service I asked of you?"

"To spread the word of the catastrophe and the Coming?  I cannot do it,
Jean.  I will not.  Some of the reasons I've explained to you; but
there are others as well.  You abdicated over this issue!  You wore the
Fisherman's ring.  You held the seal of the Supreme Teacher.  You
surrendered them!  If you could not proclaim as Pope what you believe,
what do you want of me?  I'm not a cleric any more.  I'm a secular
scholar.  I am deprived of authority to teach in the Church.  What do
you expect me to do?  Go round forming little sects of millenarian
Christians?  That's been done before, as far back as Montanus and
Tertullian and the consequences have always been disastrous."

"That's not what I mean, Carl."

"It's what would happen!  Like it or not, you'd have charismatic
anarchy."

"There will be anarchy in any case!"

"Then I refuse to contribute to it."

"I will tell you something more, Carl!  The mission you refuse now, you
will one day accept.  The light you cannot see will be shown to you.
One day you will feel God's hand on your shoulder, and you will walk
wherever it leads you."

"For the love of God, Jean!  What are you?  Some kind of oracle?  You
can't pile prophecy on prophecy and make anything but a madness.  Now,
listen to me!  I'm Carl Mendelius, remember?  You asked me to make a
judgment.  So I make it!  I judge that you tell us too much and too
little!  You were the Pope.  You say you had a vision.  In the vision
you were called by God to proclaim the imminence of the Parousia.  Now,
face this fact.  You did not proclaim it!  You bent to a power group.
Why did you let them silence you, Jean?  Why are you silent now?  You
abdicated the one rostrum from which you might have spoken to the
world!

Why do you expect a middle-aged professor from Swabia to recover what
you threw away?"  Mendelius' anger and frustration vented itself in a
final, bitter tirade.

"Drexel tells me you've become a mystic.  That's a fine, traditional
thing to be and it saves the Establishment a whole lot of trouble,
because even the newspapers shy away from God-madness!

But what you wrote in your encyclical signified life or death for
millions on this small planet.  Was it fact or fiction?  We need full
testimony!  We can't wait around while Jean Marie Barette plays hide
and seek with God in a monastery garden!"

The moment the words were out he was ashamed of his brutality.  Jean
Marie was silent for a long moment, staring down at the backs of his
hands.  Finally he answered with wintry restraint.

"You ask me why I abdicated.  The conflict between me and the curia was
more desperate than you can imagine.  If I had decided to stay in
office, there would almost certainly have been a schism.  The Sacred
College would have deposed me and elected a rival.  Our claims would
have been disputed for half a century.  Popes and anti-popes are an old
story, which could have been repeated in this case.  But, to live and
die with that on my conscience no!  Just now you used a savage
metaphor: "Jean Marie playing hide and seek with God in a monastery
garden."" "I'm sorry, Jean.  I didn't mean ..."

"On the contrary, Carl, you meant exactly what you said;

but you missed the point.  I am not playing hide and seek.  I am
sitting very still, waiting for the Lord to speak again and tell me
what I must do.  I know the need for a legitimi sing sign but I can't
give that sign myself.  Again, I wait.  We talked about miracles, Carl
signs and wonders!  You asked whether I had ever prayed for them.  Oh,
yes!  When the Cardinals came to argue with me, day after day, when the
doctors came, all grave and clinical, I prayed then: "Give me something
to show them I am not crazy, not a liar."  Before you came, I begged
and begged: "At least make my Carl believe me."

Well!  .. .

He smiled and gave a very Gallic shrug.

"It seems I must wait longer to be legitimised.  Shall we read Compline
now?"

"Before we do, Jean, let me say one thing.  I came as a friend.  I want
to leave as a friend."

"And so you shall.  What do we pray for?"

"The last wish of Goethe Mehr Licht, more light!"

"Amen!"

Jean Marie reached for his breviary.  Mendelius sat beside him on jhe
narrow bed and, together, they recited the psalms for the last
canonical hour of the day.

In the morning it was easier to talk.  The hardest words had been said.
There was no ground of contention, no fear of misunderstanding.  In the
garden of the vision, the gardener swung his mattock.  The Father
Sacristan cut new roses for the altar-bowls; while Jean Marie Barette,
lately a Pope, tossed breadcrumbs to the strutting pigeons and Carl
Mendelius stated his own position.

"In the matter of your private revelation, Jean, I am agnostic.  I do
not know.  Therefore I cannot act.  But in the matter of us old friends
of the heart!  if I have little faith, I still have much love.  Believe
that, please!"

"I believe it."

"I cannot accept a mission in which I do not believe and on which you
have no authority to send me.  But I can do something to test your
ideas of an international audience."

"And how would you propose to do that, Carl?"

"Two ways.  First, I could arrange with a Georg Rainer, a journalist of
authority, to publish an accurate account of your abdication.  Second,
I myself would write for the international press a personal memoir on
my friend, the former Gregory XVII.  In this memoir I should draw
attention to the ideas expressed in your encyclical.  Finally, I could
ensure that the two pieces were brought to the notice of the people on
your diplomatic list.  Understand what I am offering, Jean.  It is not
an advocacy, not a crusade, but an honest history, a sympathetic
portrait, a clear exposition of your ideas as I have understood them ..
. with a chance for total disclaimer if you don't like whatever is
written."

"It's a generous offer, Carl."  Jean Marie was touched.

Mendelius cautioned him.

"It falls far short of what you asked.  It will also expose the gaps
and weaknesses in your position.  For instance, even to me in this
meeting you have explained very little of your spiritual state."

"What can I tell you, Carl?"  The implied challenge seemed to surprise
him.

"Sometimes I am in a darkness so deep, so threatening, that it seems I
have been stripped of all human form and damned to an eternal solitude.
At other times I am bathed in a luminous calm, totally at peace, yet
harmoniously active, like an instrument in the hands of a great master.
I cannot read the score; I have no urge to interpret it, only a serene
confidence that the dream of the composer is realised in me at every
moment.  The problem is, my dear Carl, that the terror and the calm
both take me unaware.  They go as suddenly as they come, and they leave
my days as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.  Sometimes, I find myself
in the garden, or in Chapel or in the library, with no idea how I came
there.  If that is mysticism, Carl, then God help me!  I'd rather plod
along in the purgative way like ordinary mortals!  How you explain that
to your readers is your affair."

"Then you do agree to the kind of publication I suggest?"

"Let's be very precise about it."  There was a mischief in his eyes.

"Let's be very Roman and diplomatic.  A journalist does not require my
permission to speculate about current history.

If you, my learned friend, choose to memorialise me or my opinions, I
cannot prevent your doing so.  Let's leave it like that, shall we?"

"With pleasure!"  Mendelius chuckled with genuine amusement.

"Now, one more question.  Could you, would you, consider coming to me
for a vacation in Tubingen?  Lotte would love to have you.  For me, it
would be like having a brother in the house."

"Thank you, dear friend; but no!  If I asked, the Abbot would be
embarrassed.  The diplomatic problems would be far too delicate too
handle.  Besides, we can never be closer than we are at this moment.
You see, Carl, when I was in the Vatican, I saw the world in panorama a
vast planet with its teeming millions, labouring and fearful, under the
threat of the mushroom cloud.  Here, I perceive everything in little.
All the love and the longing and the caring that I have is concentrated
on the nearest human face.  At this moment it is your face, Carl; you
in all and all in you.  It is not easy to express but that was the
agony I experienced in the vision:

the stark simplicity of things, the splendid, terrifying oneness of the
Almighty and His designs."

Mendelius frowned and shook his head.

"I wish I could share that vision, Jean.  I can't.  I think we have
enough terrors without the God of the final holocaust.  I have met good
people who would prefer eternal blackness to the vision of Siva the
Destroyer."

"Is that how you see Him, Carl?"

"Back in Rome," said Mendelius quietly, "there are assassins waiting to
kill me.  I am less afraid of them than of a God who can slam the lid
on His own toy-box and toss it into the fire.  That's why I can't
preach your millennial catastrophe, Jean .. . not if it is inevitable,
a horror decreed from eternity."

"It is not God who is the assassin, Carl not God who will press the red
button."

Carl Mendelius was silent for a long moment.  He took the breadcrumbs
from Jean Marie's hands and began pitching them to the birds.  When,
finally, he spoke again it was to utter a banality.

"Cardinal Drexel asked me to call him after this visit.  What do you
want me to say?"

"That I am content; that I bear no one any ill-will; that I pray for
them all each day."

"Pray for me too, Jean.  I am an arid man in a darkening desert."

"The darkness will pass.  Afterwards you will see the dayspring and the
well of sweet water."

"I hope so."  Mendelius stood up and stretched out a hand to lift Jean
Marie to his feet.

"Let's not linger on the farewells."

"Write to me sometimes, Carl."

"Every week.  I promise."

"God keep you, my friend."

They held to each other in a last silent embrace.  Then Jean Marie
walked away, a frail dark figure whose footsteps rang hollowly on the
pavement of the cloister.

"You asked me a question, Professor."  The Father Abbot was walking him
to the monastery gate.

"I told you I would give you my answer today."

"I am curious to hear it, Father Abbot."

"I do believe that our friend was granted a vision of the Parousia."

"Another question, then.  Do you feel obliged to do anything about
it?"

"Nothing special," said the Abbot mildly.

"After all, a monastery is a place where men come to terms with the
last things.  We watch; we pray; we hold ourselves ready, according to
the commandment; we dispense charity to the community and to the
voyager."

"You make it sound very simple."  Mendelius was unimpressed.

"Too simple, too bland."  The Abbot gave him a quick sidelong look.

"That's what you really mean, isn't it?  What would you suggest I do,
my friend?  Send my monks out into the mountain villages to preach the
apocalypse?  How many do you think would listen?  They'll still be
watching Lazio play football when the last trumpet sounds!  What will
you do now?"

"Finish the vacation with my wife.  Go back and prepare for next year's
lectures .. . Look after Jean for me."

"I promise."

"With your permission I'll write to him regularly."

"Let me assure you your correspondence will be private."

"Thank you.  May I leave an offering with the guest master

"It would be appreciated."

"I'm grateful for your hospitality."

"A word of advice, my friend."

"Yes?"

"You cannot wrestle with God.  He is too large an adversary.  You
cannot manage His universe either, only the small garden He has given
you.  Enjoy it while you can."

"This has been a very painful episode for you."

Drexel poured the dregs of the coffee into Mendelius' cup and handed
him the last sweet biscuit.

"Yes, it has, Eminence."

"And now that it is ended?"

"That's the problem."  Mendelius heaved himself out of the chair and
walked to the window.

"It isn't ended at all.  For Jean Marie, yes!  He has made the final
acts of a believer: an act of submission to his own mortality, an act
of faith in the continued beneficent working of the Spirit in human
affairs.  I have not come to that yet.  God knows if I ever shall.  I
hated coming back to the Vatican today.  I hated the pomp and the
power, the historic impedimenta of Congregations and Tribunals and
Secretariats, all dedicated to what?  The most elusive abstraction:
man's relationship to an unknowable Creator!  I am glad Jean is quit of
it all."

"And you, my friend."  The Cardinal's tone was very gentle.

"Do you want to be quit of it too?"

"Oh, yes!"  Mendelius swung round to face him.

"But I cannot, any more than I be quit of my mother or my father or my
furthest ancestors.  I cannot dispense with the traditions, that have
shaped me.  I cannot leave it and I will not traduce it.

So I wait."

He made a shrugging gesture of defeat, and then stood, bowed and
silent, staring out at the placid garden.

"You wait," Drexel pressed him, "for what, Mendelius?"

"God knows!  The last day-spring before the holocaust.

The fiery finger writing on the wall.  I wait, that's all!  Did I tell
you no, I must have forgotten Jean Marie made a prophecy about me,
too?"

"What did he say?"

"He said," Mendelius quoted the words in a flat voice, "

"The mission you refuse now, you will one day accept.  The light you
cannot see will be shown to you.  One day you will feel God's hand on
your shoulder and you will walk wherever it leads you."" "And did you
believe him?"

"I wanted to.  I could not."

"I believe him," said Drexel quietly.

Mendelius' control snapped and he challenged Drexel harshly.

"Then why in God's name didn't you believe the rest of it?  Why did you
let the others destroy him?"

"Because I could not risk him."  There was an infinite pathos in his
voice.

"Like you more than you perhaps I needed the reassurance of being what
I am, a high man in an old system that has stood the test of centuries.
I was afraid of the dark.  I needed the calm cool light of tradition. I
wanted no mysteries, only a God I could cope with, an authority to
which, in good conscience, I could bend.  When the moment came I was
unready.  I could neither repeal the past nor abdicate my function in
the present.  Don't judge me too curtly, Mendelius!  Don't judge any of
us.  You are more free and more fortunate."

Mendelius bowed to the reproof and said, with bleak humility; "I was
rude and unjust, Eminence.  I had no right to .. ."

"Please!  No apologies!"  Drexel stayed him with a gesture.

"At least we have managed to be open with each other.  Let me explain
something more.  In ancient days, when the world was full of mystery,
it was easy to be a believer in the spirits who haunted the grove, in
the God who cast the thunderbolts.  In this age we are all conditioned
to the visual illusion.

What you see is what exists.  Remove the visible symbols of an
established organisation the cathedrals, the parish church, the bishop
in his mitre and the Christian assembly, for many, ceases to exist. You
can talk until you're blue in the face about the abiding Spirit and the
Mystical Body; but even among the clergy, you'll be talking to the
deaf.  Subconsciously they associate these things with the cultists and
the charismatics.  Discipline is the safe word discipline, doctrinal
authority and the Cardinal's High Mass on Sunday!

There's no place any more for wandering saints.  Most people prefer a
simple religion.  You make your offering in the temple and carry away
salvation in a package.  Do you think any cleric in his right mind is
going to preach a charismatic church or a Christian diaspora?"

"Probably not."  Mendelius gave a small reluctant smile.

"But they do have to come to terms with one fact."

"Which is?"

"We all belong to an endangered species: millennium man!"

Drexel pondered the phrase for a moment and then nodded approval.

"A sobering thought, Mendelius.  It merits a meditation."

"I'm glad you think so, Eminence.  I propose to include it in my essay
on Gregory XVII."

Drexel showed no surprise.  He asked, almost as if it were a matter of
academic interest: "Do you think such an essay is opportune at this
moment?"

"Even if it were not, Eminence, I believe it is a matter of simple
justice.  The meanest functionary is memorialised on his retirement,
even if only by five lines in the Government Gazette.  I hope I may be
free to consult your Eminence on matters of fact perhaps even coax you
into an expression of opinion on certain aspects of recent history."

"On matters of fact," said Drexel calmly, "I am happy to assist, by
directing you to appropriate sources.  As for my opinions I'm afraid
they are not for publication.  My present master would hardly approve.
But thank you for the invitation.  And good luck with your essay."

"I'm glad you like the idea."  Mendelius was bland as honey.

"I didn't say I liked it."  Drexel's craggy face was lit by a fleeting
smile.

"I recognise it as an act of piety, which, morally, I am bound to
commend."

"Thank you, Eminence," said Carl Mendelius.

"And thank you for the protection you have afforded me and my wife in
this place."

"I wish I could extend it," said Drexel gravely.

"But where you are going my writ does not run.  Go with God,
Professor!"

* * * It was five in the afternoon when Francone dropped him off at the
apartment.  Lotte and Hilde were at the hairdresser;

Herman had not yet returned from the Academy; so he had time and
privacy to bathe, rest and set his thoughts in order before reporting
to the others his experiences at Monte Cassino.  He was happy about one
thing: he was no longer bound to secrecy.  He could discuss the issues
involved; test his opinions against those of devotees and cynics alike,
talk out his puzzlements in the language of simple folk, instead of the
loaded dialect of the theologians.

He was still far from satisfied by the explanations Jean Marie had
given him.  The description of his mystical states, which obviously
others had witnessed, seemed too bland, too familiar, too he groped for
the word too derivative from the vast body of devotional writing.  Jean
Marie was precise about the possibilities of catastrophic conflict.  He
was, even in visionary terms, vague about the nature of the Parousia
itself.  Most apocalyptic writings were vivid and detailed.  The
revelation of Jean Marie Barette was too open and general for
credence.

In psychological terms there was a contradiction, also, between Jean
Marie's view of himself as a natural careerist and his tragic failure
to exercise power in a crisis.  His willingness, not to say his
eagerness, to accept even a partial defence in the popular press was
sad, if not faintly sinister, in a man who claimed a private dialogue
with Omnipotence.

And yet, and yet... as he stepped out into the sunset glow on the
terrace Mendelius was forced to admit that Jean Marie Barette was
easier to damn in absence than to demean face to face.  He had not
retreated one pace from his claim of a disclosure experience or from
his calm conviction that the legitimi sing sign would be given.  Beside
him, Carl Mendelius was the small man, the courier who carried secrets
of state in his body belt, but had no personal convictions beyond the
state of the beds and the cost of the wine in the post houses

All this and more Mendelius talked out eagerly with Lotte and the
Franks over cocktails.  He was surprised that they all put him under
rigid inquisition.  Herman Frank was the most anxious questioner.

"Aren't you really saying, Carl, that you believe half the story at
least?  Discount the vision, discount the Second Coming, which is a
primitive myth anyway; but the catastrophe of global war is very close
to us."

"That's about the size of it, Herman."

"I don't think it is."  Hilde's smile carried more than a hint of
irony.

"You're still a believer, Carl.  So you're still plagued by the
presence of a God in every proposition.  You've been like that as long
as I've known you half rationalist, half poet.  That's true, isn't
it?"

"I suppose so."  Mendelius reached for his drink.

"But the rationalist says all the evidence isn't in yet and the poet
says there's no time for versifying when the assassins are at the
gates."

"There's something more."  Lotte reached out and stroked his wrist.

"You love Jean Marie like a brother.  Rather than reject him outright,
you are prepared to split yourself in two.

You've told him you will write this memoir about him.  Are you sure you
can do it with such a divided mind?"

"No, I'm not, darling.  Rainer will do a good job on his part.  It's a
plum for any journalist a big exclusive that will go round the world.
As for my part the personal portrait, the interpretation of Jean's
thoughts I'm not at all sure I can do it right."

"Where will you work on it?"  asked Hilde.

"You're welcome to stay with us as long as you like."

"We must get home to Tubingen."  Lotte was a shade too anxious.

"The children will be back early next week."

"Carl could stay a while longer."

"It's not necessary."  Mendelius was firm.

"Thanks for the offer, Hilde; but I'll work better at home.  I'll talk
to Georg Rainer on Friday.  We'll leave on Sunday for Tubingen.  This
place is too seductive I need a strong dose of Protestant common
sense."

"Delivered in a Swabian accent!"  said Herman with a grin.

"As soon as summer's over, Hilde and I will start preparing our place
in Tuscany."

"Take "it easy, Herman."  Hilde sounded irritable.

"Nothing's going to happen that fast.  Is it, Carl?"

Mendelius grinned and refused to be drawn.

"I'm married too, girl!  We males have to stick together sometimes. I'd
be inclined to get your place in order as soon as you can.  If there's
a whiff of crisis, materials and manpower will double in price
overnight.  Besides, you'll need to plant this winter for the next
summer harvest."

"And what are you going to do, Carl?"  Hilde asked pointedly.

"Your friend Jean Marie is safe in his monastery.

If anything happens, Germany will be the first battle-zone.

What are you going to do about Lotte and the children?"

"I haven't really thought about it."

"Tubingen's only a hundred and eighty kilometres from the Swiss
border," said Herman.

"It would pay you to have some of your royalties accumulate there."

"I refuse to talk about this any more."  Lotte was suddenly close to
anger.

"These are our last days in Rome.  I want them to be happy ones."

"And so they shall be!"  Herman was instantly penitent.

"So we dine here.  Afterwards we go listen to folk music at the
Arciliuto.  It's a quaint place.  They say Raphael kept a mistress
there.  Who knows?  At least it proves the Roman talent for
survival."

There were still loose ends to be tucked away before Lotte and he could
pack and be gone.  He spent all of Friday morning preparing his final
tape for Anneliese Meissner: an account of his visit to Monte Cassino,
a frank admission of his own perplexities and a somewhat terse envoi:

You now have the full record as honestly as I can set it down.  I want
you to study it carefully before we meet again in Tubingen .. . There
is much more to tell; but it will keep.  See you soon ... I am sick of
this febrile and inbred city.  Carl.

He packed the tapes carefully and instructed Francone to deliver them
to a courier service which plied daily between Rome and various German
cities.  Then Francone drove him to his luncheon appointment with Georg
Rainer.  At one o'clock, tucked into a private booth at Ernesto's, he
began the ritual fencing match.  Georg Rainer was a very practised
performer.

"You've teen a busy man, Mendelius.  It's hard to keep track of your
movements.  That affair at the Salvator Mundi, when the police shot one
man and arrested three others.  You were at the hospital?"

"Yes.  I was visiting Senator Malagordo."

"I guessed as much.  I didn't print anything because I thought you
shouldn't be exposed any more."

"That was generous.  I appreciate it."

"Also I didn't want to spoil today's story .. . You do have one for me,
I hope?"

"I do, Georg.  But before I give it to you, I want to see if we can
agree some ground rules."

Rainer shook his head.

"The rules are already in operation, my friend.  What you give me I
check first and then put it on the telex.  I guarantee an accurate
rendering of the facts and the quotes and I reserve the right to make
whatever comment I choose for the guidance of my editors.  I can't
guarantee your immunity from editorial emphasis, dramatic or misleading
headlines, or distorted versions of the same story by other hands. Once
we start this interview you're on the witness-stand and everything you
say goes into the court record."

"In this case," said Mendelius deliberately, "I'd like to see if we
could agree the way the story is to be presented."

"No," said Georg Rainer flatly.

"Because I can make no agreement about what happens after the copy
leaves my office.  I'm happy to show you what I file, and I'll gladly
change any rendering that seems inaccurate.  But if you're thinking
there's some way to control the consequences of a news release, forget
it!  It's like Pandora's box: once you open it, all the mischiefs fly
out.  Why are you giving me this story anyway?"

"First, you kept your word to me; I'm trying to keep mine to you.
Second, I want the truth about a friend put on public record before the
myth-makers get to work.  And, third, I want to do a companion piece to
your story in the form of a personal memoir.  I can't do that if your
version goes wildly off the rails.  So, let me frame my question
another way.  How can we get together to meet my needs and yours?"

"Tell me the name of the story first."

"The abdication of Gregory XVII."

Georg Rainer gaped at him in undisguised amazement.

"The true story?"

"Yes."

"Can you document it?"

"Provided we can agree an appropriate use or non-use of the documents,
yes .. . and to save you further trouble, Georg, I've just spent
twenty-four hours with Gregory XVII in the monastery of Monte
Cassino!"

"And he agrees to the disclosures?"

"He offers no impediment, and relies on my discretion in the choice of
a reporter for the exclusive story.  We have been close friends for a
long time.  So you see, Georg, I have to be very sure of the ground
rules before we start," A waiter hurried up flourishing his pad and
pencil.

Georg Rainer said: "Let's order first, shall we?  I hate waiters
hovering around while I'm doing an interview."

They settled for a pasta, saltimbocca and a carafe of Bardolino.  Then
Georg Rainer laid his miniature tape recorder on the table and pushed
it towards Mendelius.  He said quietly:

"You handle the recording.  You keep the tape until we've agreed a
final text.  We'll work on it together.  All out-takes will be
destroyed immediately.  Satisfactory?"

"Fine!"  said Mendelius.

"Let's begin with two documents, handwritten by Gregory XVII and
delivered to me by personal messenger.  The one is a letter to me
describing the events which led to his abdication.  The other is an
unpublished encyclical which the Curia suppressed."

"Can I see them?"

"At an appropriate time, yes.  Obviously I don't carry them around."

"What is the key message?"

"Gregory XVII was forced to abdicate because he claimed to have had a
vision of the end of the world the holocaust and the Second Coming.  He
believed he was called to be the precursor of the event."  He gave a
wry-mouthed grin and added: "Now you understand why I ducked the story
on the end of the world.  I was testing the theme on an audience of
Evangelical clerics before I went to Monte Cassino."

Georg Rainer sipped at his wine and munched a crust of dry bread.
Finally he shrugged, like a losing poker-player, and said, "Now of
course it all makes sense.  The Curia simply had to get rid of him. The
man's a lunatic."

"That's the problem, Georg."  Mendelius poured more wine and signalled
the waiter to remove the pasta plates.

"He's as sane as you or I."

"Who says so?"  Rainer stabbed a finger at his chest.

"You, his friend?"

"I, yes.  And Cardinal Drexel and Abbot Andrew, who directs his life at
Monte Cassino.  These two accept him as a mystic like John of the
Cross.  Drexel's going through a crisis of conscience because he didn't
defend him against the Curia and the Sacred College."

"You've talked to Drexel?"

"Twice.  And twice to the Abbot of Monte Cassino.  The odd thing is
they're the believers and I'm the sceptic."

"Which is just the way they want it," said Rainer with tart humour.

"They've removed a troublesome Pope now they can afford to praise his
obedient virtue.  You know, Mendelius, for a notable scholar you're
sometimes very naive.

You even accept to be driven around by the Cardinal's chauffeur in the
Cardinal's car; so Drexel knows every move you've made in Rome
including this lunch with me."

"The point is, Georg, I don't care a curse what he knows."

"Does he know you've got the documents?"

"Yes.  I told him."

"And?"

"Nothing."

"You don't think he might drop a word to have them recovered or
diverted to more orthodox hands?"

"Frankly, I can't see Drexel as a spymaster or a receiver of stolen
manuscripts."

"Then you're more trusting than I am."  Rainer shrugged.

"I read history, too, and the usages of power don't change in the
Church or anywhere else.  However .. . let's talk about Gregory XVII.
How do you judge him?"

"I believe he's sane and sincere in his own convictions."

"There's nobody more dangerous than a sincere visionary."

"Jean Marie recognised that.  He abdicated to avoid a schism.  He is
silent because he has no legitimi sing sign to prove his vision
authentic."

"Legitimising sign?  I don't recall the expression."

"It's a term that's become unpopular in modern biblical analysis.
Basically it means that when the prophet or the reformer claims to
speak in the name of God he needs to show some patent of authority."

"Neither you nor I can give him that."

"No; but between us we should be able to guarantee him an honest
publication of the facts and an enlightened interpretation of his
message.  We can set down the events that led to the abdication.  The
documents will demonstrate the why of the matter.  We can record what
Jean Marie Barette has told me about his alleged vision."

"So far so good.  But that vision deals with mighty matters:

the end of the world, the Second Coming, the Last Judgment.

What can you and I tell our readers about those things?"

"I can tell them what people in the past believed and wrote about these
things.  I can direct their attention to the existence of millenarian
sects in today's world."

"Nothing else?"

"After that, Georg, it's your turn.  You're the man who writes the
bulletins about the state of the nations.  How close are we now to
Armageddon?  The world is full of prophets.

Could any one of them be the One who is to come?  If you look at it in
concordance with all the crazy social phenomena, Jean Marie's
prediction is far from irrational."

"I agree."  Rainer was thoughtful.

"But to get this story into readable shape will take a hell of a lot of
work.  Can you stay on in Rome?"

"I'm afraid not.  I have to prepare for the opening of the
University.-What's the chance of your spending a few days in Tubingen?
You'd be very welcome to stay in my house.  We could work better there.
I have all my texts and filing systems."

"I need to work fast.  It's my training to grab the idea, test the
logic and write it for the telex the same day."

"I'm probably much slower," said Mendelius, "but I at least am prepared
in the subject.  Anyway, I'll leave here Sunday and begin work the next
day."

"I could be with you by Wednesday.  I'll get a stringer to cover for me
here.  But I don't want to discuss this story with my editor until you
and I have written irtogether and tested every phrase of it.  So I'll
have to work up an excuse for a few days' absence."

"There's one thing we should discuss," said Mendelius.

"You and I have to act jointly.  There should be a contract between us.
And I'd like to use my agent in New York to arrange our joint contracts
with publishers."

"That's fine."

"Then I'll call him tonight and ask him to meet us both in Tubingen."

"Can I give you a piece of advice, Mendelius?  For God's sake be
careful with those documents.  Lodge them in the bank.  I know people
who'd kill you to get hold of them."

"Jean Marie warned me of that in his letter.  I'm afraid I didn't take
him too seriously."

"Then you'd better be very serious from now on.  This story will make
you just as famous or notorious as the shooting on the Corso.  Even
when you're back in Tubingen, watch your step.  You're still a key
witness against the girl, and you've cost the underground four men.
These operators have long arms and long memories."

"The terrorist thing, I understand."  Mendelius was genuinely
puzzled.

"But the documents a private letter to me, an unpublished encyclical I
can see their news value, but they're certainly not worth a man's
life."

"No?  Look at it another way.  The encyclical brought about a papal
abdication.  It could equally have brought about a schism or caused
Gregory XVII to be certified insane."

"True, but ..."

"So far," Rainer silenced him brusquely, "all you've thought about is
your personal reaction to this affair and your concern for your friend.
But what about all the thousands of other people with whom Gregory XVII
had dealings during his pontificate?  How have they reacted?  How might
they react if they knew the true facts?  Some of them must have had
very close relationships with him."

"They did.  He sent me a list."

"What kind of list?"  Rainer was instantly alert.

"People in high places all over the world, who he believed would be
receptive to his message."

"Can you give me some of the names on it?"

Mendelius thought for a moment and then recited half a dozen names
which Rainer wrote in his notebook.  Then he asked: "Has any one of
these tried to contact him in Monte Cassino?"

"I don't know.  I didn't ask.  However, they'd certainly be thoroughly
screened before they got through.  I was.  In fact I never did speak to
Jean Marie on the telephone.  There were moments when I thought I was
being carefully steered away from him; but Drexel was definite.  There
were no impediments to my visit, just a lot of official interest."

"Which is hardly likely to wane, now that they know you've talked to
me."

"Let's be fair, Georg.  Drexel didn't enquire what I proposed to do. He
didn't make any further mention of the documents and he took some very
rough talk from me."

"So what does that prove?  Nothing except that he's a patient man. And,
remember, he was the one the Cardinals chose to be their messenger. 
Think about that!  As for other friends or acquaintances of Gregory
XVII, I'm going to be doing some digging on my own account before I
come to Tubingen .. . No!  No!  I'm paying for lunch.  I'm going to
make so much money out of you it's almost obscene!"

"You'll work for it, my friend."  Mendelius laughed.

"Two things I learned from the Jesuits were the rules of evidence and a
respect for stylish writing.  I want this to be the best story you've
ever delivered!"

As soon as he reached the apartment, Mendelius made a guarded telephone
call to his agent, Lars Larsen, in New York.  Larsen's immediate
reaction was a whistle of excitement and then a howl of anguish.  The
idea was wonderful.  It was worth a mint of money but why the hell did
Mendelius have to share it with a journalist?  Rainer had nothing to
contribute but his connection with a 'big German news empire.  This
story should be launched from America.

And so on, and so on, for ten minutes of impassioned pleading, after
which Mendelius explained patiently that the whole purpose of the
exercise was to present a sober account of recent events and direct
serious attention to the core of Jean Marie's last message.  Therefore,
would Lars please come to Tubingen and discuss the matter with the
gravity it deserved?

Lotte, listening to the one-sided conversation, tut-tutted unhappily.

"I warned you, Carl!  All these people have personal concerns that must
conflict with yours.  The agent smells big money.  Georg Rainer's
reputation as a newsman will be enormously enhanced.  But you .. .
You're writing about a friend.  You're treating a subject which you
know has haunted man through his history.  You can't let yourself be
treated like an overnight film star.  You hold the trump card: the
documents.  Don't display them to anyone until you've got all the terms
you need to protect yourself and Jean Marie."

Later, cradled in his arms in the big baroque bed, she mused
drowsily:

"It's ironic really.  In spite of all your scepticism, you've given
Jean exactly what he asked in the first place.  Because you're his
friend you can't fail to give him sympathetic treatment.  Because
you're a scholar of world repute, your commentaries will protect him
from the clowns.  If Anneliese Meissner is willing to go into print
with you, she'll at least be clinically honest.  All in all, my love,
you're making a handsome payment on our debts to Jean Marie .. . By the
way, I bought a gift today for Herman and Hilde.  It was rather
expensive but I knew you wouldn't mind.  They've been so generous with
us."

"What is it, darling?"

"A piece of old Capo di monte, Cupid and Psyche.  The dealer said it
was quite rare.  I'll show it to you in the morning.  I hope they'll
like it."

"I'm sure they will."  He was grateful for the quiet aimless talk.

"Oh, and I forgot to tell you.  Katrin sent us a card from Paris.  It
doesn't say much except: "Love is wonderful.  Thanks to you both from
both of us."  There's also a long letter and some colour prints from
Johann."

"That's a surprise!  I thought he'd be the one to send the postcard."

"I know.  Funny, isn't it?  He's quite lyrical about his vacation. They
didn't get very far, though not even into Austria.  He and his friend
discovered a little valley high up the Bavarian Alps.  It has a lake
and a few ruined cabins .. .

not a soul for miles around.  They've been camping there ever since,
just going into town for supplies."

"It sounds wonderful.  I wouldn't mind changing places with him.  I
don't want to see Rome again for a long, long time.  I'll write to Jean
Marie as soon as we get back to Tubingen.  By the way, we must do
something for Francone.

I think a gift of money would be best.  I don't imagine he gets paid
too much.  Remind me, will you, my dear?"

"I will.  Close your eyes now and try to sleep."

"I'll drowse off in a little while.  Oh, that's another thing.  I have
to send Cardinal Drexel a thank-you note for the use of the car and of
Francone."

"I'll remind you.  Now go to sleep.  You looked absolutely worn out
tonight.  I want you around for a long while yet."

"I'm fine, dear, truly.  You mustn't worry about me."

"I do worry.  I can't help it.  Carl, if Jean Marie is right, if there
is a last great war, what will we do?  What will become of the
children?  I'm not being foolish.  I just want to know what you
think."

There was no way he could qualify the answer and he knew it.  He heaved
himself up on his elbow and looked down at her, glad of the dark that
hid the pain in his eyes.

"This time, my love, there will be no banners and no trumpets.  The
campaign will be short and terrible; and afterwards no one will care
where the frontiers used to be.  If we survive, we'll try to hold
together as a family; but you have to remember we can't dictate what
our children do.  If we're separated from them, then we gather some
good souls together and do what we can to hold out against the
assassins in the streets!  That's all I can tell you."

"It's strange!"  Lotte reached up to touch his cheek.

"When we first talked about this, before we came away, I was afraid all
the time.  Sometimes I wanted to sit in a corner and cry about nothing
at all.  Then, while you were in Monte Cassino, I took out that little
piece of pottery the Senator gave you and held it in my hands.  I
traced the name that was written on it.  I remembered how the lots were
drawn to see who would die, and who would perform the act of execution,
on Masada.

Suddenly I felt very calm fortunate somehow.  I understood that if you
hold too tightly to anything even to life you become a captive.  So you
see, you mustn't worry about me either.  Kiss me good night and let's
go to sleep."

As he lay wakeful through the small, cold hours, he wondered at the
change in her: the air of new confidence, the curious calm with which
she seemed to accept an unspeakable prospect.  Had Aharon ben Ezra
bequeathed a last magical courage to the potsherd which bore his name?
Or was it perhaps a small wind of grace blown from the desert, where
Jean Marie Barette communed with his Creator?

It was good to be home.  In the countryside the harvest was safely
gathered; the blackbirds were pecking contentedly over the brown
stubble.  The Neckar flowed silver under a summer sky.  Traffic was
sparse in the city, because the holiday makers had not yet returned
from their sojourn in the sun.

The halls and cloisters of the University were almost empty.

The rare footfalls of janitor or colleague sounded hollow in the hush.
It was possible to believe provided one read no newspapers, switched
off radio and television that nothing would ever change in this quiet
backwater, that the old Dukes of Wurttemberg would sleep for ever in
peace under the floor-stones of the Stiftskirche.

But the peace was an illusion, like the painted back-drop of a
pastorale.  From Pilsen to Rostock the armies of the Warsaw Pact were
arrayed in depth: shock troops and heavy tank formations and, behind
them, the rocket launchers with tactical atomic warheads.  Facing them
were the thin lines of the NATO forces, prepared for a fall-back under
the first onslaught, trusting, but none too confidently, that their own
tactical warheads would hold up the advance until the big bombers came
in from the British Isles and the I.B.M."s were launched from their
silos on mainland United States.

There was no mobilisation yet, no call-up of reserves, because the
crisis had not matured to the point where democratic governments could
rely on their depressed and uneasy populations to answer a call to
arms, or respond to the rhetoric of the propaganda machine.  German
industry still depended on guest-workers, who, deprived of tenure and
citizenship, could hardly be expected to render liege service in a lost
cause.  At the other side of the world a new axis had been formed:
industrial Japan was pouring plant and technical experts into China, in
return for oil from the northern fields and the new wells in the
Spratleys.  Islam was in ferment from Morocco to the high passes of
Afghanistan.  South Africa was an armed camp, beleaguered by the black
republics.  No leader, no junta, no parliamentary assembly could
compass or control the complex geo-polity of a world haunted by
depletion and the debasement of every currency of human intercourse.
Reason rocked under the barrage of contradictions.  The corporate will
seemed frozen in a syncope of impotence.

After the first relief of homecoming, Carl Mendelius found himself
tempted to the same despair.  Who would hear one small voice above the
babel-cry of millions?  What was the point of propagating ideas which
would immediately be swept away like sand-motes in a tempest?  What was
the profit in expounding a past that would soon be as irrelevant as the
magical animals of the cavemen?

This, he understood clearly, was the syndrome that produced spies,
defectors, fanatics and professional destructors.

Society is a stinking slum; blow it up!  Parliament is a nest of
nincompoops and hypocrites; destroy the filthy brood!  God is dead;
let's polish up Baal and Ashtaroth, call back the Witch of Endor, to
make the spells we need.

The best remedy was the sight of Lotte, busy and cheerful, dusting and
polishing and chatting with women friends on the telephone, knitting a
winter jersey for Katrin.  He had no right to trouble her with his own
dark dreaming.  So he retired to his study and addressed himself to the
pile of work that had accumulated in his absence.

There was a stack of books, which he was begged to read and recommend.
There were student reports to be assessed, revisions to be made in his
lecture text, the inevitable bills to be paid.

There was a note from the President of the University, inviting him to
an informal meeting with a few senior colleagues on Tuesday forenoon.
The President's 'informal meetings' were well known.  They were
designed to pre-empt any problems before they were raised at the full
meeting of the faculties in mid-August.  They were also intended to
persuade the gullible that they were privileged members of an inner
cabinet.  Mendelius had small taste, but a reluctant admiration, for
the President's skill in academic intrigue.

The next letter was a communication from the Bundeskriminalamt, the
Federal Criminal Bureau in Wieshaden.

We are informed by our Italian colleagues that as a result of recent
incidents in Rome you may become the target of attack either by foreign
terrorist agents or by local groups affiliated with them.

We advise you, therefore, to take the precautions outlined in the
enclosed pamphlet, which we circulate normally to government officials
and senior executives in industry.  In addition, we advise you to
exercise special vigilance within the precincts of the University,
where political activists may easily conceal themselves in a large
congregation of students.

Should you notice any suspicious activity, either in your neighbourhood
or at the University, please contact the Landeskriminalamt in Tubingen
without delay.  They have already been apprised of your situation.

Mendelius read the pamphlet carefully.  It told him nothing he did not
know; but the final paragraph was a chill reminder that violence was as
infectious as the Black Death.

These precautions should be strictly observed, not only by the subject,
but by all members of his household.  They too are under threat,
because the subject is vulnerable through them.  A common and concerted
vigilance will reduce the risk.

There was a brutal irony in the fact that an act of mercy in a Roman
street should expose a whole family to violent invasion in a provincial
town in Germany.  There was an even grimmer corollary; that a shot
fired on the Amur River in China could plunge the whole planet into
war.

Meantime, there were more pleasant thoughts to distract him.  The
Evangelicals had written a joint letter expressing their thanks for 
yur openness in discussion and your emphatic affirmation of Christian
charity as the binding element in our diverse lives'.  There was also a
second letter from Johann, addressed to him personally.

Before I left on this vacation I was in deep depression.

Your gentleness about my religious problem helped very much; but the
rest of it I couldn't explain.  I was worried about my career.  I
couldn't see any point to what I was doing.  I didn't want to join some
big company, planning the economics of a world that could blow up in
our faces.  I was afraid of being called up for military service in a
war that would produce nothing but universal disaster.  My friend Fritz
felt exactly the same way.  We were angry with you and your generation
because you had a past to look back on, while we had only a question
mark before us.

Then we found this place Fritz and I and two American girls we met in a
bier keller in Munich.

It's a small valley, with only a footpath leading into it.

There are high cliffs all around, covered with pines to the snow-line.
There is an old hunting lodge and a few cabins grouped around a lake,
surrounded by lush meadows.

There are deer in the woods and the lake is full of fish.

There's an old mine tunnel that goes a long way into the mountain.

Fritz, who is an amateur archaeologist, says it was worked in the
Middle Ages for bloodstone.  We've found broken tools and a leather
jerkin, and a pewter drinking mug and a rusted hunting knife.

Last time we went into town I made enquiries and found that the place
is private property, owned by a very old lady, the Grafin von Eckstein.
Her husband used to use it as a hunting preserve.  We traced her to
Tegernsee and went to see her.  She's a spry old girl, and after she
got over her surprise at being invaded by four young people she'd never
met before, she gave us English tea and cakes and told us she was happy
we were enjoying the place.

Then, purely on impulse, I asked her whether she'd consider selling it.
She asked what for.  I told her it would make a wonderful holiday place
for students like us.  At the beginning it was just something to talk
about; but she took it quite seriously.

Anyway, the upshot of it all was she named a price a quarter of a
million deutsch marks  I told her there was no way we could raise money
like that.  Then she said, if we were serious, she'd consider leasing
it to us.  I said we'd think about it and get back to her.

I'd love to do it.  It's so quiet, so remote from today; and it could
be made to pay for itself.  It's one of the things we've talked about
often in class: the small, self-contained economy where a quality of
life can be preserved.  When we come back I'd like to talk to you about
it and see what you think.

I spend my nights by lamplight trying to set down a plan.  I find it a
much more satisfying exercise than the currency problems of the
European community or the relations between the oil-producers and the
industrial economies and the agricultural nations.  Somehow, as Fritz
says, we have to scale things down to human size again, otherwise we
all go mad, or become indifferent robots in a system we can never
control.  I'm running on, I know; but this is the first time I've felt
free to open myself to the father I truly love.  It's a pleasant
sensation.

Later, as they ate supper together, Mendelius read the letter to Lotte.
She smiled and nodded approval.

"That's good!  He's coming out of the dark forest, at last.  It isn't
easy to be young these days.  I'd encourage the idea, Carl; even if
nothing comes of it.  We can't afford money like that; but still ..."

"We might," said Mendelius thoughtfully.

"We just might.

I've got some big royalties due in September; and once the new book is
delivered .. . Besides, Johann isn't the only one with a private
dream."

Lotte gave him a swift reproachful glance.

"You wouldn't care, perhaps, to share yours with your wife?"

"Come on, dear!"  Mendelius laughed.

"You know I hate talking about things until I've got them clear in my
head.  This one's been simmering for a long time.  What happens to
elderly professors when they give up the chair?  I can go on writing, I
know; but I'd like to go on teaching, too, with small, selected groups
of advanced students.  I've had thoughts of founding a private academy,
offering annual specialist courses to postgraduates.  Musicians do it
all the time violinists, composers, conductors.  A place like the one
Johann describes could be ideal."

"It could."  Lotte was dubious.

"Don't misunderstand me.

I love your idea, Carl; but it would be a mistake to mix it up with
Johann's project.  Show him you're interested; but don't meddle.  Let
him follow his own star."

"You're right, of course."  Mendelius leaned across and kissed her
cheek.

"Don't worry!  I'll keep my big hands out of the pie-dish.  Besides,
we've got another problem to face."

He told her about the letter from the police in Wieshaden.

Lotte frowned and sighed unhappily.

"How long will we have to live like this, always looking over our
shoulders?"

"God knows, darling!  But we can't panic.  We just have to make it a
routine like watching traffic lights and locking the house at night,
and driving within the speed limit.  After a while it will become
automatic."  He changed the subject abruptly.

"Georg Rainer called.  He's arriving Wednesday evening.  Lars Larsen
arrives in the morning from Frankfurt.

That gives us a chance to talk before Rainer gets here."

"Good!"  Lotte nodded a vigorous approval.

"You must see the terms are right before you go one step further with
Rainer."

"I will.  It's a promise.  Do you need any extra help in the house?"

"I've got it.  Gudrun Schild is coming in each day."

"Good.  I wonder what our noble President has in mind for Tuesday's
meeting?"

"He worries me, that one."  Lotte was terse.

"He's a conjuror.  He makes you think he's pumping wine out of his
elbow.  What you really get is ..."

"I know what you get, darling," said Mendelius with a grin.

"The trick is never to drink the stuff."

The President's notion of an informal gathering was strictly Old
Empire.  Each colleague was treated to a firm handshake, a solicitous
enquiry about his wife and his family, a cup of coffee and a slice of
apple cake, freshly baked by the President's wife and served by a maid
in a starched apron.

The ceremony was a careful contrivance.  With a cup of coffee in one
hand and a plate in the other, the guests had to sit down.  The chairs,
each with a tabouret table beside it, were arranged in a semi-circle
facing the President's desk.  The President did not sit down.  He
perched himself on the edge of the desk in an attitude intended to
suggest informality, intimacy and openness among colleagues.  The fact
that he spoke from three feet above their heads and had his hands free
for gestures and punctuation was only a gentle reminder of his primacy.
His speech was unctuous and usually banal.

"I am in need of your expert advice.  The ah responsibilities of my
office preclude me from the day-to-day contact which I should like to
have with the junior faculty and the students.  I look to you,
therefore, to interpret them to me and me to them."

Brandt, from Latin Language, leaned across to Mendelius and whispered:
"He's thefons et origo and we're the bloody water carriers."

Mendelius stifled a grin behind his paper napkin.

The President went on: "Last week I was invited, with the heads of
other universities, to a private meeting with the Minister of Education
and the Minister for the Interior, in Bonn.  The purpose of the meeting
was to discuss the ah academic implications of the present
international crisis."

He paused a moment to let them consider the solemnity of the occasion
in Bonn and what the ah academic implications might be.  They were
startling enough to dispel any boredom in his audience.

"In September this year the Bundestag will authorise full mobilisation
of both men and women for military service.  We are asked to prepare
recommendations for exempted categories of students, and to supply
lists of those with specialist qualifications in physics, chemistry,
engineering, medicine and related disciplines.  We are further asked to
consider how courses in these subjects may be accelerated to meet the
needs of industry and the armed services.  We have also to face the
depletion of students and junior staff as a result of the call-up."
There was a ripple of surprise in the audience.  The President hushed
it with a gesture.

"Please, ladies and gentlemen, let me finish!  There will be time for
discussion afterwards.  In this matter we have no choice.  We, like
everyone else, will have to comply with regulations.

There' is, however, a more contentious issue."  He paused again.  This
time he was obviously embarrassed and groping for the right words.

"It was raised by the Minister for the Interior, prompted, I believe,
by pressure from our NATO allies.  It is the question of internal
security, of protection against subversion, espionage, and ah the
activities of disaffected elements, in the student body ..."  The only
reaction was a hostile silence.  He took a deep breath and hurried
on.

"In short, we are asked to co-operate with the security service by
supplying them with copies of student dossiers and any other
information which may be required from time to time, in the interest of
public security."

"No!"  The sound erupted from the gathering.  Someone dropped a coffee
cup which shattered on the parquet.

"Please!  Please!"  The President pushed himself off the desk and
raised his hands in a pleading gesture.

"I have conveyed the Minister's request.  It is now open for
discussion."

Dahlmeyer from Experimental Physics was the first on his feet, a big
shaggy fellow with a jutting jaw.  He challenged the President
harshly.

"I think we have a right to know, sir, what response you made to the
Minister."

There was a chorus of approval.  The President shuffled uneasily.

"I told the Minister that while we were all conscious of the need for
ah adequate security in a critical time, we were ah at least equally
concerned to preserve the ah principles of academic freedom."

"Oh, Christ!"  Dahlmeyer exploded.

There was an audible groan from Brandt.  Mendelius stood up.  He was
white with anger but he spoke with quiet formality.

"I wish to make a personal statement, sir.  I hold tenure to teach in
this place.  I do not hold, nor will I accept, a commission to
investigate the private lives of my students.  I am ready to resign
rather than do so."

"I would point out, Professor," the President was cold, "that I have
conveyed a request, not a ministerial order;

which would, in the present circumstances at least, be illegal.

However, you must understand that in conditions of national emergency
the situation may change radically."

"In other words," Hellman from Organic Chemistry was on his feet, "we
have a threat, as well as a request."

"We are all under threat, Professor Hellman the threat of armed
conflict, when civil liberties must inevitably be curtailed in the
national interest."

"There's another threat, which you should also consider," said
Anneliese Meissner.

"Student revolt, expressing total loss of faith in the integrity of the
academic faculty.  I remind you of what happened to our universities in
the thirties and forties when the Nazis ran the country.  Do you want
to see that again?"

"Do you think you will not see it when the Russians come?"

"Ah!  So you have already committed yourself, sir."

"I have not."  The President was fuming now.

"I told the Minister I would refer the request to my staff and report
their reactions."

"Which puts us all straight into the computer bank of the security
service.  Well, so be it!  I'm with Mendelius.  If they want me to spy
on my students, I'm out!"

"With respect to the President and to my esteemed colleagues."  A small
mousy fellow stood up.  It was Kollwitz, who taught Forensic
Medicine.

"I suggest that such a situation can be avoided very simply.  The
President reports that his senior faculty is unanimously against the
proposed measure.  He does not have to give names."

"It's a good idea," said Brandt.

"If the President himself stands firm with us, then we're in a strong
position: and other universities may be encouraged to follow suit."

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen."  The President was obviously
relieved.

"As usual, you've been most helpful.  I'll give some thought to ah an
appropriate answer to the Minister!"

After that no one had very much to say and the President was eager to
be rid of them.  They left the coffee dregs and the last of the apple
cake and straggled out into the sunlight.

Anneliese Meissner fell into step beside Mendelius.  She was snorting
with fury.

"God Almighty!  What an old humbug!  An appropriate answer to the
Minister!  .. . Balls!"

"They've got his balls in a nut-cracker," said Mendelius with a sour
grin.

"He's only two years off retirement.  You can't blame him for trying to
compromise.  Anyway, he's got a united faculty behind him.  That has to
give him some courage."

"United?"  Anneliese snorted again.

"My God, Mendelius!

How simple can you get?  That was just choir practice all of us noble
souls chanting "A Mighty Fortress is our God'!  How many will stand
firm when the security boys really put the pressure on?

"Isn't it true, Professor Brandt, that you've been laying little Mary
Toller?  And you, Dahlmeyer?  Does your wife know about your Saturdays
in the Love-Hotel in Frankfurt?  And for you, Heinzl, or Willi, or
Traudl, if you don't co-operate we've got some lovely filthy jobs like
sanitation scientist or bath attendant in the nut-house!"  Don't make
any mistake, my friend.  If we get three out of ten in the final count,
we'll be damn lucky."

"You're forgetting the students.  The moment they hear of it, they'll
be up in arms."

"Some, yes!  But how many will still be standing up after the first
baton charge, and the tear-gas and the water cannon?

Not too many, Carl!  And there'll be fewer still when the police cut
loose with live ammunition."

"They'll never do it!"

"What have they got to lose?  Once the propaganda machine starts
blaring, who will hear the shots in the alley?

Besides, one itty-bitty atom bomb on Tubingen and the slate is wiped
clean.  Will you have lunch with me?  If I eat alone I'll probably get
drunk."

"We can't have that, can we?"  Mendelius hooked his arm through hers
and drew her thick body close to him.

"There's only one consolation, girl: every university in the world is
probably facing the same pressure at this moment."

"I know!  Philistines of the world, unite!  The egg-heads will be
crushed at last!  My God, Carl!  Your Jean Marie wasn't too far
wrong!"

"Have you listened to the tapes I sent you?"

"Over and over.  I've been doing a lot of reading too."

"And?"

"And I'm not going to say another word until I've got a big drink
inside me.  I'm a bitch, Carl cynical and old and too ugly to believe
in a God who makes monsters like me.  But now, I'm so damned scared I
could cry."

"Where do you want to eat?"

"Anywhere!  The first bier keller we find.  Sausage and sauerkraut,
beer and a double schnapps!  Let's join the happy proletariat!"

He had never seen her so upset.  She ate ravenously and drank with a
desperate determination; but even after a litre of beer and two very
large schnapps she was still cold sober.  She called the waitress to
clear the dishes and bring another shot of schnapps, then announced
that she was ready for a rational discussion.

"About you first, Carl ..."

"What about me?"

"I understand you better now.  I like you more."

"Thank you."  Mendelius grinned at her.

"I love you, too!"

"Don't make fun of me.  I'm not in the mood for it.  Those tapes shook
me up.  You sounded so damned desperate, trying to come to terms with
the impossible."

"What about Jean Marie?"

"Well, now, that was another surprise.  Your portrait of him was too
vivid to be a fake.  I had to accept that it was authentic ... I saw
him.  I felt him."

"How did you judge him?"

"He's a very lucky man."

"Lucky?"

"Yes!  I spend half my life dealing with sick minds.  Leaving aside
organic defects, most cases boil down to a fragmentation of the
personality, a loss of identity.  Life interior and exterior is a
jigsaw, with the pieces scattered all over the table.  The clinician
spends his time trying to create a condition of self-recognition a
condition in which even the confusion makes sense.  The patient has to
see that the jigsaw is designed to make you work at putting it
together.  Whatever happened to your Jean Marie had just that saving
effect.

It made sense of everything conflict, failure, your rejection, even his
present darkness.  God!  If I could do that with my patients, I'd be
the greatest healer in the world.  If I could do it with myself, I'd be
a hell of a lot happier than I am now."

"I'd say you were a pretty integrated personality."

"Would you, Carl?  Look at me now half drunk on cheap liquor, because
I'm scared of tomorrow and I hate the fat frog my mother brought into
the world!  I've learned to live with me, but not to like me not
ever!"

"I'm proud to know you, Anneliese," said Carl Mendelius gently.

"You're a dear friend and a great woman."

"Thanks!"  She closed up again instantly.

"I told you I've been doing a lot of reading: comparative religion, the
basis of mystical experience in various cults.  It's still strange
country to me; but the idea of salvation begins to make sense.  We all
experience pain, fear, injustice, confusion, death.  We struggle to
stay whole through the experience.  Even when we fail, we try to
salvage our selves out of the wreckage.  We can't do it alone.  We need
support.  We need more a module or exemplar to show us what a whole
human being looks like.

Hence the prophet, the Messiah, the Christ figure.  The same thing
applies to the communities of believers.  The Church whatever Church!
says: "Truth is here; light is here; we are the chosen; join us!"  Yes
or no, Professor?"

"Yes," said Mendelius.

"But the important question is, which module do you choose, and why?"

"I don't know yet," said Anneliese Meissner.

"But I do know that the final assent is simple, as it was for your Jean
Marie.  The catch is that you have to be absolutely desperate before
you make your submission.  The patient I can help quickest is the
desperate one who knows he's sick.  The best candidate for the cults is
the person at the end of his rope."

"Which brings us to the next problem."  Mendelius reached out to touch
her hand.

"What are we going to do, you and I, about the situation at the
University?  If the President sells us out to the politicos, as he
probably will, if half our colleagues surrender to the witch-hunters,
what then?"

"We go underground."  Anneliese Meissner had no doubts on that score.

"We start organising for it now."

"You see?"  Mendelius chuckled and lifted his glass in salute.

"Even you, Frau Professor, are prepared to bury the sacred scrolls and
take to the mountains!"

"Don't count on it, Carl.  It's the drink talking."

"In vino veritas," said Mendelius with a grin.

"Oh, Christ!"  Anneliese Meissner glowered at him.

"We've had more than enough cliches for one day!  Let's walk awhile.
It's stifling in here."

As he strolled homeward through the placid streets of the old town,
Mendelius found himself faced with a new dilemma.  In a pointless
conflict, a war that would be fought to extinction, where did all man's
loyalties belong?  To the blasted, sterile earth that had once been a
home-place?  To the men who rode the Juggernaut chariot, heedless of
the victims under its wheels?  To the nation-state, soon to be as
meaningless to the living as to the dead?  To race, blood, tribe,
tradition, Gott und Vaterland?  If not to these, then to what?

And when should Carl Mendelius begin to disengage himself from the
system of which he had been so long a beneficiary?

Katrin and Johann would be called to the colours before the year was
out.  How should he advise them to answer?  Yes, to the mad imperative?
Or no, we will not serve, because there is no possible end but
catastrophe?  Once again, childhood memories rose up to haunt him: the
bodies of boy soldiers hanged from lamp-posts in Dresden because they
had given up a hopeless cause, in the last days of a crazed despot.

Now he was truly caught in the closed circuit of Jean Marie's
predetermined cosmos.  So long as you could still flip a coin on a
fifty-fifty chance, you could live, at least, in hope.

But once you discovered that the coin had two heads and the Creator
wasn't offering any odds at all, then you were in a gull's game, and
the quicker you got out, the better.  So which do you think it is, Herr
Professor?  Continuity or chaos?  And if you opt out of coming chaos,
on what far planet and with what remnant creatures will you build your
new Utopia?

It was a treadmill argument and he was soon weary of it.

He needed distraction; so he turned down a narrow lane, pushed open a
worm-eaten door and climbed three flights of stairs to the studio of
Alvin Dolman, one-time master sergeant in the U.S. Army of the Rhine,
one-time husband of the Biirgermeister's daughter, now happily divorced
and working as an illustrator for a local publisher.  He was a big,
laughing fellow with ham fists and a game leg, the result of an
accident on the autobahn.  He also had a shrewd eye for old prints; and
Mendelius was one of the regular clients to whom he served Rhine wine,
knackwurst and gratuitous advice on women, politics and the art
market.

"You've come at the right time, Professor.  Trade is so goddam slow,
I'm thinking of going into the porno business.

Look at these!  I spotted them in a junk shop in Mannheim three pen and
ink drawings by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld .  See!  There's the
signature and the date, 1821.  Beautiful draughts man isn't he?  And
the models are pretty, too.  How about five hundred marks for the
lot?"

"How about three hundred, Alvin?"  Mendelius munched happily on his
knackwurst.

"Four and it's a steal!"

"Three fifty they're foxed anyway."

"You're taking the bread out of my mouth, Professor!"

"I'll throw in a rye loaf."

"You've got a deal.  Do you want 'em framed?"

"The usual price?"

"Would I steal from a friend?"

"His wife, maybe," said Mendelius with a grin.

"But not his watch.  How is life with you, Alvin?"

"Not bad, Professor!  Not bad!"  He splashed wine into his glass.

"How's the family?"

"Fine!  Fine!"

"That young fellow your daughter's boyfriend he's got the makings of a
good artist.  I've been giving him lessons in dry-point.  He learns
fast.  It's a shame, though, what's going to happen to these kids."

"What is going to happen, Alvin?"

"I only know what I hear, Professor.  I keep in touch with our
soldier-boys in Frankfurt, sell 'em a print or two occasionally, when
they're drunk enough.  There's lots of war talk.  They're filtering in
fresh troops and new equipment.

Back in Detroit they're switching to military vehicles.  I'm thinking
of pulling up stakes and heading home.  It's nice to be the
artist-in-residence in a university town but hell!  who wants to get
his ass shot off for the sake of the frauleinsl If anything happens,
Tubingen will be a battle-zone inside a week.  But then, so will
Detroit, I guess.  Help yourself to the wine.  I want to show you
something."

He rummaged in a cupboard and brought out a small square package,
wrapped in oilcloth.  He unpacked it carefully to reveal a small duplex
portrait of a sixteenth-century nobleman and his wife.  He set it on
the easel and adjusted the light.

"Well, Professor, what do you say?"

"It looks like a Cranach."

"It is.  Lucas Cranach the elder.  He painted it in Wittenberg in
1508."

"Where the devil did you get it?"

Dolman grinned and laid his forefinger along his nose.

"I smelt it, Professor in a woman's bedroom if you want to know.  She
was so happy with my company she gave it to me.  I cleaned it up and
presto!  - a ready-made insurance policy!  No way I'm selling it in
Germany though.  It goes home with me."

"What about the lady?  Doesn't she share the profits?"

"Hell, no!  She's beautiful but dumb; and her husband's got money
running out of his ears.  Besides, it was a fair trade.  I made her
very happy."

"You're a rogue, Alvin."  Mendelius chuckled.

"Aren't I though!  But with inflation the way it is, an army pension
hardly buys pretzels!"

"If things get bad, maybe they'll pull you back into the Army."

"No way, Professor!"  Dolman began rewrapping his treasure.

"I'm out and I'm staying out!  Next time it won't be a war, jxist one
big fire-storm and then bingo!  - I'll be back to painting buffalo on
the walls of a cave!"

Mendelius was at his desk writing, while Lotte sat quietly knitting in
the corner and listening to a Brahms concerto, broadcast from Berlin. 
. The fear is everywhere, Jean.  It is like a dark mist rising from the
marshes, spreading through the streets, permeating every dwelling
place.  It taints the most casual talk.  It enters into the simplest
domestic calculation.

Our faculty members are now asked to report to the security service on
the political affiliations of our students.

So, this most elementary of relationships is corrupted and may be
utterly destroyed.  I have already given notice that I shall resign if
the request is made an order.  But you see how subtly the corruption
works: if I rely on the police for personal protection, how can I, with
sound reason, refuse them my co-operation in a national emergency?  The
answer is clear to me.  It will be clear to very few others, when the
propagandists raise what Churchill called 'the bodyguard of lies'.

But if fear is an infection; despair is a plague.  Your vision of the
end of temporal things obsesses us all; but the rest of it the final
redeeming act, the ultimate demonstration of Divine justice and mercy
how does one express these, in terms that will keep human hope alive?
Your closed-out cosmos, my dear friend, will be a terrible place
without it.

The telephone rang.  Lotte laid down her knitting to answer it.  Georg
Rainer was on the line.  When Mendelius picked up the phone Rainer
launched immediately into monologue.

"I'm in Zurich.  I flew up just to make this telephone call.  I
couldn't trust the Italian circuits.  Now, listen carefully and don't
make any comments at all.  Do you remember, at our last meeting, we
discussed a list?"

"Yes."

"Do you have it close by?"

"Upstairs.  Hang on."

Mendelius hurried up to his study, unlocked the old safe and fished out
Jean Marie's list.  He picked up the receiver.

"Right.  I have it in front of me."

"Is it arranged by countries?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to mention four names from four countries.  I want to know
whether the names are on your list.  Clear?"

"Go ahead."  :

"USSR.  Petrov?"

"Yes."

"U.K. Pearson?"

"Yes."

"U.S.A. Morrow?"

"Yes."

"France.  Duhamel?"

"Yes."

"Good.  That means my informant is reliable."

"You're talking in riddles, Georg."

"I sent you a letter from the General Post Office in Zurich.

It will explain the riddles."

"But you're coming here on Wednesday."

"I know.  But I'm a pessimist.  I hope for the best and prepare for the
worst.  Somebody's had a tail on me since Saturday.  Pia thought she
spotted a changeover at the airport which means we could be under
surveillance in Zurich as well.  So we're going to try a little evasive
action and come overland instead of by air.  Can you accommodate both
of us?

There's no way I can leave Pia alone in Rome."

"Of course!  This is all very sinister, Georg!"

"I warned you it might be.  Sit tight and light a candle for us.  Auf
Wiederseben."

Mendelius set down the receiver, and began absently leafing through the
typewritten pages of Jean Marie's list.

Right from the beginning he had accepted Anneliese Meissner's
dismissive description of it as 'an aide-memoire pulled out of a filing
cabinet'.  He had given no thought at all to the strength and potency
of friendship between high men.  But Rainer had understood its
importance; Rainer had opened a whole new area of investigation and was
now at risk because of it.

Lotte stuck her head around the door and asked: "What did Rainer
want?"

"He was rather cryptic.  He wanted me to confirm that four names were
on this list from Jean Marie.  He also wanted to tell me he was coming
overland to Tubingen and bringing Pia with him."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that Rainer was under
surveillance but he thought better of it.

"Oh, dear!"  Lotte was instantly the housewife.

"That does make complications.  I'll have to change the rooms about. Do
you think we could put Lars Larsen up here in the study?"

"Whatever you want, dear .. . Any chance of some coffee?"

"Chocolate," said Lotte firmly.

"I don't want you tossing about all night."  She kissed him and went
out.

Mendelius turned back to his letter.  He was tempted to make reference
to Rainer's phone call and ask for a further explanation of the
significance of the list, but he thought better of it.  Italian mail
was never secure and he did not wish to be too specific.  So I find
myself returning again and again to your letter and annexures and I am
exercised by the problem of presenting your ideas in open forum.  I
wonder how you would wish them presented, for example, to the people on
your list .. .

In what terms do we discuss the Parousia with a twentieth-century
audience of believers and non-believers?  I ask, my dear Jean, whether
we have not corrupted its meaning out of all recognition.  We talk of
triumph, judgment, 'the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with
great power and majesty'.

I wonder whether the power and the majesty and the glory may not
demonstrate themselves far otherwise than we expect.  I remember the
phrase in your letter: 'a moment of exquisite agony' and how you
explained it as a sudden perception of the oneness of all things.  Like
the dying Goethe, I cry still for more light.  I am a sensual man,
burdened with too much learning and too little real understanding.  At
the end of a long day, I know I am very content with Lotte's hot
chocolate and her arms around me in the dark.

Lars Larsen, brusque, dapper and voluble, arrived an hour before midday
after a night flight from New York and a break-neck drive from
Frankfurt.  Within fifteen minutes he was closeted with Mendelius,
reading him the facts of life within the literary establishment.

"Yes, I'll represent you and Rainer but not until I've worked out a
satisfactory contract between you both and that has to be at least
sixty-forty in your favour.  Before we even get that far Rainer has to
disclose his arrangements with Die Welt.  If he's a staff man, pure and
simple, the Springer group can claim full ownership of anything he
contributes to this project.  So, first I talk to Rainer alone.  You
stay away until I'm ready.  Now, don't give me any arguments, Carl.

Fifty-fifty just isn't acceptable.  You have to control this thing, and
you can't do that unless you own the votes.

Besides, it's you the customers want to buy.  I've got three bids for
world rights to serial and book publication with a million and a half
up front and that's on your name, and your association with Gregory
XVII, not on Rainer!  Once I see what you've got we can probably raise
the floor to two million .. . plus a whole lot of healthy spin-offs. So
get it clear, Carl!  You're making Rainer a wealthy man.  You don't
have to apologise for the terms."

"I wasn't thinking about Rainer."  Mendelius was suddenly moody.

"I was thinking about myself.  When this story is published, a lot of
people will want to discredit me as they discredited Jean Marie.  Two
million dollars could make me look like a very expensive Judas."

"If you do it for nothing," said Lars Larsen, "they'll think you're a
schnook too crazy to be believed.  Money always smells clean.  However,
if it bothers you, talk to your lawyer, maybe he'll advise you to set
up a benefice for fallen women!

That's not my problem.  The money I get you guarantees that your
publishers have to get you a big readership .. . and that, in the end,
is what you want.  Now, can I look at the documents, please?"

Mendelius unlocked the old safe and brought out the envelope containing
Jean Marie's letter and the encyclical.  Larsen glanced at the
documents and then asked bluntly:

"These are genuine?"

"Yes."

"You can authenticate the handwriting?"

"Of course and I've verified them in personal discussion with the
author."

"Good.  I'll want a notarised deposition to that effect.  I'd also like
to phot graph some specimen passages .. . not necessarily the important
ones.  For this kind of money the clients demand boiler-plate
protection.  And the last thing they want is a run-in with the Vatican
over phony attributions."

"I've never known you so careful before, Lars."

"We're only at the beginning, Carl."  Larsen was not amused.

"Once this story breaks, your past and present will be under the
microscope.  So will Rainer's and professionally, at least, he'd better
be squeaky clean.  Now do you think you could get me another cup of
coffee and leave me alone to study this stuff."

"While you're doing it," said Mendelius with a grin, "make a few notes
on the internal evidence: the handwriting, the polished French style,
the quality of the reasoning and the rendering of personal emotion."

"I know about internal evidence," said Larsen tartly.

"One of my earliest clients was a master plagiarist.  He was sued for a
million and lost.  I had to return my commissions.  Now, what about
that coffee?"

When he came down to lunch at one-thirty, Larsen was a different man,
shaken and subdued.  He picked at his food, and talked disjointedly.

"I'm usually detached when I read.  I have to be.  No one can sustain
the impact of all those student personalities clamouring at you from
the manuscripts.  But that letter, Lotte!  It had me in tears.  I never
go to church except for weddings and funerals.  But my grandfather, on
my mother's side, was an old-fashioned Swedish Lutheran.  When I was
little he would sit me on his knee and read the Bible to me.

Upstairs, it was as if I were listening to him again."

"I know what you mean."  Lotte picked up the discussion eagerly.

"That's why I keep saying to Carl that this account of Jean Marie must
be done with love and fidelity.  No one must be allowed to make it
cheap or vulgar."

"How do you feel, then, about Georg Rainer?"

"I don't know him very well.  He's charming and witty.  I think he's
very knowledgeable about Italy and the Vatican.

However, I do say Carl must stay in control of this project."

"Let's be clear about this."  Mendelius was suddenly edgy and
irritable.

"Georg Rainer arrives here this afternoon as our guest.  The important
thing is that he and I work happily and productively together.  I don't
want any arguments about money to spoil that.  And I don't want to
offer him a halfhearted welcome, either."

"Jawohl, Herr Professor!"  Lotte made a mocking mouth at his
solemnity.

"Trust me, Carl."  Lars Larsen grinned at him.

"I'm a very good surgeon.  I cut clean and all my patients recover! Now
I want to tie up your phone for a couple of hours.  They're open for
business in New York; and after what I've read oh, boy!  do we have
business!"

Afterwards, in the kitchen, Lotte giggled helplessly to Mendelius.

"Lars is so funny!  As soon as he starts talking money, you can feel
the electricity.  His eyes sparkle and you almost expect his hair to
stand on end.  I'm sure he'd be shocked if you told him; but he's like
the fat man at the circus gate, shouting his head off, selling tickets
for Judgment Day!"

Lars Larsen's sales campaign went on all the afternoon.  At
five-thirty, with the bidding at two and a quarter million, he closed
the market.  As he explained to Mendelius, he now had a handsome cash
guarantee with which to begin discussions with Georg Rainer.  But Georg
Rainer was late.  At seven, he called in from a road-house twenty miles
south of Tubingen.

He explained that they had been followed out of Zurich, that he had
shaken the surveillance team before the border post, and then driven
half the country roads in Swabia to make sure they had not been picked
up again.  At eight-thirty he arrived with Pia, wind-blown and
travel-worn.  An hour later, relaxed over Lotte's ample supper, he
explained the melodrama.

"The most extraordinary thing about the abdication was the secrecy with
which it was accomplished.  Nobody, but nobody, was willing to talk.
Which prompted us in the press corps to believe that Gregory XVII must
not only have made powerful enemies, but also alienated most of his
friends inside and outside the Vatican.  We knew him as you did, Carl,
for a man of singular charm.  So where had all his friends gone?

Then you told me about this list and it seemed to me that it must have
a special importance.  You said it was typewritten.

So it had to have come from a file.  I asked myself who would know
about Gregory XVII's private file.  I came up with his private
secretary.  In my records he was listed as Monsignor Bernard Logue,
who, in spite of his Irish name, is a Frenchman, a descendant of one of
the wild geese who fled to France to fight the English.  I enquired
what had happened to him after the abdication."

"That was clever of you, Georg.  Logue was the man who denounced the
encyclical to the Curia and started the whole affair.  I never thought
to ask how he was rewarded."

"Apparently not well.  He was moved out of the Papal Household into the
Secretariat for Public Communications.  I had been told he was a rather
unhappy fellow who might be prepared to air his grievances.  On the
contrary!  He was the perfect clerical functionary precise,
patronising, absolutely convinced that the finger of God guided every
scribe in Vatican City.  Clearly he was not about to spill secrets on
my plate.  So, I told him I was working on an account of the last days
of Gregory XVII, in which he, Monsignor Logue, had played a key role.
That shook him.  He asked me to define the role he was supposed to have
played.  I told him that he had informed the Curia of the contents of
Gregory XVII's last unpublished encyclical.  That really upset him.  He
denied any such act.  He disclaimed knowledge of any encyclical.  Then
I mentioned the list and quoted from it the names which you had
confirmed to me.  He demanded to know where I had seen that document. I
told him I had to protect my sources;

but clearly, I might be prepared to trade some information with him. He
told me he knew about the list but he had never seen it.  He went on to
explain Gregory XVII was a great believer in personal diplomacy.  He
was altogether too vulnerable to gestures of friendship.  The
Secretariat of State saw great dangers also in his attitude towards Les
Amis du Silence."

"The what?"  It was almost a shout from Mendelius.  Rainer threw back
his head and laughed.

"I thought that would get to you, Carl!  It certainly did to me.  Who
were the Friends of Silence, I asked.  But our little Monsignor
realised that he had made a big blunder and urged me to forget that I
had ever heard such a phrase.  I tried to reassure him.  He refused to
be comforted.  The interview was over.  I was left with the four names:
Petrov and the others and something called "Les Amis du Silence'.  That
night, Saturday, I took Pia to dinner at Piccola Roma and afterwards to
a discotheque.  We left about two in the morning.  The streets were
almost deserted.  That was when we realised we were being followed.
We've been under surveillance ever since."

"But no mischief?"  asked Larsen.

"No violence?"

"Not yet," said Rainer dubiously.

"But once they know where the list is ..."

"Who are 'they'?"  asked Lotte.

"I have no idea."  Rainer's gesture was one of weary puzzlement.

"Unlike Carl here, I am not surprised by anything the Vatican does. But
in this case we are dealing with a single cleric, a zealot, a known
informer, who was willing to topple his own master.  He may be serving
other interests than the Vatican.  Pia has her own opinion."

"Please!"  Mendelius urged her into the discussion.

"We could use some fresh thoughts."

Pia Menendez hesitated for a moment and then explained quietly: "My
father was a diplomat.  He used to say that diplomacy was possible only
between established institutions, good or bad.  In a revolutionary
situation you could not negotiate, only gamble.  Now, from what Georg
has told me, Gregory XVII believed that a world-wide revolutionary
situation would follow an atomic catastrophe and that he or others
would have to gamble on men of good-will inside and outside the Church.
They might be presently obscure, but such as could survive into
positions of power."

"Men presently obscure."  Larsen seized on the phrase.

"Or perhaps out of favour, or even considered dangerous to existing
regimes.  That would make another reason for pushing Gregory XVII off
the throne."

"But it doesn't tell me who is having us shadowed," said Georg
Rainer.

"Let's reason a little."  Mendelius entered the talk again.

"Monsignor Logue said he had never seen the list.  That's possible.
Once Jean Marie knew him for an informer he would obviously try to
protect his documents.  But Logue knew the list existed.  Once he knew
you had access to it, Georg, whom would he tell: his present masters in
the Vatican or those other unspecified interests?  Round-the clock
surveillance doesn't sound like a Vatican tactic.  As Pia points out,
they, above all, play the institutional game.  So, my guess is the
outside interest.  What's your view on that, Georg?"

"None until I've read all your documents.  I'd like to take them to bed
with me."

"Before you go to bed," said Lars Larsen hastily, "I'd like a short
chat about contracts."

"I'll save you the trouble," said Georg Rainer with a grin.

"Mendelius is the Jesuit among us.  If your contracts satisfy his sense
of justice, I'll sign "em."

"I'll get the stuff Jean Marie sent me," said Mendelius.

"I

warn you, it will keep you awake ill night."

"For once," said Pia, the diplomat's daughter, "I'm happy to be
sleeping alone!"

That night Mendelius lay wakeful, long into the small, sinister hours
after midnight, trying, as any good historian should, to think himself
back into the ancient battles of Christendom: the battle to establish a
codex of belief, a constitution for the assembly and to hold them
secure against the encroachments of the fantasists and the forgers.

The battles were always bitter and sometimes violent.  Men of good-will
were sacrificed without mercy.  Complacent rogues flourished under the
umbrella of orthodoxy.  Marriages of convenience were made between
Church and State.

There were harsh divorcements of nations and communities from union
with the elect.

The battle continued still.  Jean Marie Barette, lately a Pope, was one
of its casualties.  He had invoked the Spirit; the Cardinals had
invoked the Assembly and the Assembly had won, as always, by the weight
of numbers and the strength of the organisation.  This was the lesson
the Romans had taught the Marxists: keep the codex pure and the
hierarchy exclusive.  With the one you smoke out the heretic; with the
other you crush him.

Which brought Mendelius by swift turnabout to this question: who were
the Friends of Silence?  It was tempting to adopt Pia Menendez' theory
of men waiting in the shadows to be called to salvage a situation of
revolution or catastrophe.

On the other hand, he remembered a letter from the long-ago when Jean
Marie, still a Cardinal, had inveighed against elitist movements in the
Church.  I distrust them, Carl!  If I were Pope I should discourage
actively anything that remotely resembled a secret society, a hermetic
association, a privileged cadre in the Church.  Of all societies, the
assembly of the people of God should be the most open, the most
sharing.  There are enough mysteries in the universe without our
fabricating any more.  But the Romans love their whispers and their
gossip in the corridors and their secret archives!

It was hard to believe that the man who had written those words would
set up his own elite club and give it so obvious a name.  Was it not
more probable that Les Amis du Silence was an outside group whose
French title was designed to create the impression of approval by a
French Pope.  Years ago the Spaniards had set the example when they
created their own authoritarian elite and called it Opus Dci God's
work.

Still restless, Mendelius began rummaging in his memory for anything
that would associate with the Friends of Silence.

The word 'friends' produced some odd correlatives: from the Society of
Friends, to amicus curiae, and the Marquis de Mirabeau's "Friend of
Man'.  The word 'silence' produced a greater variety of associations.
In the Mamertine Prison in Rome a dusty lamp burned in memory of the
"Church of Silence': the faithful denied the liberty to worship or
persecuted for their adherence to the old faith.  There was the
Amyclean Silence, which forbade the citizens of Amyclae to speak of the
Spartan threat, so that when the invasions did come, the city fell easy
prey.  There was the sinister Italian proverb: "Noble vengeance is the
daughter of deep silence."

Drowsy at last, Mendelius decided that this might be the occasion to
test Drexel on his promise to supply reference points on matters of
fact.  Lotte stirred and reached out in the dark for reassurance.  He
folded himself into her warmth and lapsed swiftly into sleep.

There were unexpected problems in Georg Rainer's contract with Die
Welt, so immediately after breakfast Lars Larsen left for Bonn and
Berlin to talk with executives of the Springer group.  He was jaunty
and confident as always.

"They have to play ball.  No agreement, no newsbreak and Georg resigns!
Leave it to me.  You guys settle down and put the story together.  I
want to carry it back by hand to New York."

Mendelius and Rainer closed themselves in the study to set their
materials in order: Rainer's files on the pontificate of Gregory XVII,
Mendelius' private correspondence with him, before and during his
reign, lecture notes and bibliography on the millennial tradition, and,
for corner-stone to the edifice, the three most recent documents: the
letter, the encyclical and the list of names.  On these last Georg
Rainer rendered a curt judgment.

"If you're not a believer and I'm at best a vestigial Lutheran the
letter and the encyclical are like poetry, beyond rational discussion.
Either you feel them or you don't.  I felt the man's agony.  However,
for me, he was walking on the moon, far out of reach.  But the list of
names that was a different matter.  I recognised most of them.  I knew
enough about them to observe certain common factors, and guess that a
computer run might show even more.  I want to work through the list
again this morning before I commit to any conclusions."

"Can you see them as "Friends of Silence'?"

"No way at all.  They've all been very vocal people, some of whom have
suffered checks in their careers and may or may not recover."

"I'm going to try the name on Drexel."

Mendelius reached for the phone, dialled the number of Vatican City and
asked to be connected with Cardinal Drexel.  His Eminence sounded
surprised and a little wary.

"Mendelius?  You're stirring early.  What can I do for you?"

"I am working on my memoir.  You were kind enough to offer your
assistance on matters of fact."

"Yes?"

"Who are Les Amis du Silence?"

"I'm sorry."  Drexel was brusque.

"I can give you no information at all on that question."

"Can you refer me, as you promised, to any other source?"

"That would not be opportune."

"Others have informed me that the subject may be dangerous."

"As to that, I can offer no opinion."

"Thank you, Eminence, at least for accepting my call."

"My pleasure, Mendelius.  Good morning!"

Rainer was not surprised.

"No luck?"

Mendelius gave a snort of disgust.

"The subject is inopportune!"

"I love that word!  They use it to bury all sorts of bodies.

Why not ring Monte Cassino and ask your friend for clarification?"

"Because I don't want him to bear any responsibility for what we write.
You're the reporter.  Where else can we try?"

"I suggest we forget it for the moment and block out the argument of
the piece.  As I see it we start with the abdication itself, a large,
consequential act, the reason for which is still a mystery.  We have
now accumulated enough evidence to affirm that the members of the
Sacred College engineered the situation.  We demonstrate how it was
done.  Finally we come to the why; which depends on your testimony, the
final three documents and your interviews with Drexel in Rome and the
former Gregory XVII in Monte Cassino.  I report all that and cite the
evidence.  Immediately our readers make judgments.

The cynics say the man was mad and the Cardinals were right to get rid
of him.  The devout rest tranquil on the official line that whatever
happened, the Holy Spirit will make it come right in the end.  The
curious and the critical will want to know more.  Which is where you
take up the narrative with a portrait of the man and an examination of
what he said and wrote.  I know you're a very lucid writer, but this
time you'll really have to spell things out in simple language even for
our sub-editors!  Well, do you agree the form?"

"As a beginning, yes.  Let's see how it looks in typescript.

You make yourself comfortable.  I'm going to take a walk before I start
work."

As he was walking through the lounge the telephone rang.

The man on the other end of the line identified himself as Dieter
Lorenz, senior investigator with the Landeskriminalamt.  A matter of
some importance had come up; he would like to discuss it with the Herr
Professor.

He arrived ten minutes later, a gangling shabby-looking fellow dressed
in blue jeans and a leather jacket.  While Lotte prepared coffee he
displayed to Mendelius a grubby sheet of mimeograph paper on which was
a line-drawn portrait of Mendelius with his name, address and telephone
number.

The paper was folded several times as if it had been carried in a
wallet.  Lorenz explained its provenance.

"There's a beer-hall frequented by Turkish workmen from the paper
factory.  It's one of the centres for drug traffic in the city and
among the students.  Last night there was an affray between some Turks
and a bunch of young Germans.  A man was knifed.  He was dead before
they got him to hospital.

We've identified him as Albrecht Metzger, one-time clerk at the
paperworks, sacked six months ago for petty theft.  We found that paper
in his wallet."

"What does it mean?"

"In brief, Professor, it means you are under terrorist surveillance.
The sketch is mimeographed, which indicates it has been circulated to a
number of people.  The paper is German.  The drawing was probably done
in Rome.  It was made from one of the photographs of you which appeared
in the Italian press.  The rest of the story is not yet clear.  We do
know that some underground groups finance themselves by trafficking in
drugs which originate in Turkey.  There are 20,000 students at the
University so that's a highly significant market for the dealers.  The
dead man was not on any of our wanted lists.  However, the terrorist
groups do use fringe operators, paid in cash, in order to protect the
central organisation.  The way things are now with high unemployment
and social unrest there's no trouble finding pick-up labour for jobs
like this."

Lotte brought the coffee and while she served it Mendelius explained
the situation.  She took it calmly enough; but her face was pale and
her hand trembled as she set down the coffee-pot.  Lorenz continued his
exposition:

"You have to understand how the terrorist system works.

Using people like our deceased friend Metzger we call them 'spotters'
they build up a picture of the habits and movements of the intended
victim.  In a big city it's more difficult;

but in a small one like Tubingen and with a professional man like
yourself, it's comparatively easy.  You go always to the same place of
work.  You shop at the same stores.  You can't introduce too many
variations.  So you get inattentive and careless.  Then, one day, they
move in a hit team, three, four people, with a couple of vehicles, and
pouf!  the thing is done."

"It's not a very hopeful picture, is it?"  Lotte's voice was
unsteady.

"No, dear lady, it is not."  Lorenz offered no comfort at all.

"We can give your husband a pistol permit; but unless he's prepared to
take small-arms training, it's not much use.  You can hire bodyguards,
but they're ruinously expensive unless of course your students are
prepared to help."

"No!"  Mendelius refused flatly.

"Then the only answer is personal vigilance, and constant contact with
us.  You must report even the most trivial incident that appears
strange or out of the ordinary.  I'll leave you my card.  Call that
number at any time, day or night.

There's always a man on desk-duty."

"One thing I can't understand," said Lotte.

"Why do they pursue Carl like this?  He made his depositions in Rome.
The information is already on file.  Dead or alive he can't change
that."

"You miss the point, dear lady."  Lorenz explained patiently.

"The whole object of terror is to create fear and uncertainty.  If the
terrorist does not exact retribution, he loses his influence.  It's the
old idea of vendetta, which never stops until one side is wiped out. In
a settled society, our job as policemen was easier.  Now it gets harder
every day dirtier, too!"

"That's what bothers me," said Mendelius moodily.

"You know, I presume, that the University staff may be asked to supply
security information on our students?"

Lorenz gave him a swift hooded glance and nodded.

"I

know.  I gather you don't like the idea."

"I loathe it."

"It's a question of priorities, isn't it?  How much are you prepared to
pay for safety in the streets?"

"Not that much," said Carl Mendelius.

"Thank you for your help.  We'll keep in touch."

He handed back the sketch.  Lorenz folded it carefully and put it back
in his wallet.  He gave Mendelius his card and repeated:

"Remember!  Any time, day or night.  Thank you for the coffee,
ma'am."

"I'll walk you to your car," said Mendelius.

"Back in a minute, dear.  I want to walk a while before I begin work
with Georg."

"Who is Georg?"  The policeman was suddenly cautious.

"Georg Rainer.  He's the Rome correspondent for Die Welt.  We are doing
a story together on the Vatican."

"Then please don't let him print this story.  There's too much
attention focused on you already."

As they strolled up the Kirchgasse towards the Old Market, Dieter
Lorenz added a brusque afterthought to their discussion.

"I didn't want to say this in front of your wife.  You've got two
children.  From the terrorist point of view kidnapping is an even
better bargain than murder.  It gives them a huge press and it puts
them in funds.  When your kids get back from vacation, you'd better
teach them the drill too."

"We're really getting back to the jungle, aren't we?"

"We're deep inside it," said Dieter Lorenz drily.

"This used to be a nice quiet town; but if you could see some of the
stuff that crosses my desk, it would make your hair stand up."

"What's the answer?"

"Christ knows!  Maybe we need a good war to kill off some of the
bastards and let us start clean again!"

It was a wild sad thought from an over-worked man.  It did nothing to
allay the prickling fear that filled Mendelius as he walked down to the
news-stand, that made him jump when a housewife jostled him and a boy
on a motorcycle roared past with an open exhaust.  There was no
Francone now to shepherd him.  Point, flanks and rear, he was exposed
to the silent hunters, who carried his image like a juju doll wherever
they walked.

Rainer was a fast worker, trained to meet daily deadlines with clean,
accurate copy.  Mendelius was accustomed to the ambling gait of an
academic author.  He finicked over points of style, argued over the
refinement of a definition.  He insisted on writing his copy in
long-hand; his corrections demanded two or three drafts of
typescript.

In spite of their apparent incompatibility they produced, at the end of
four days, the first and most important stage of the project a
twenty-thousand word version for immediate serial publication in
newspapers and magazines.  Before handing it over to the translator an
English version being mandatory under the contracts they had it read in
turn by Lotte, Pia Menendez and Anneliese Meissner.  The readings
elicited some frank and unexpected comments.

Lotte tried hard to be gentle but succeeded only in devastating the
scribes.

"There's something wrong.  I can't say exactly what it is, or perhaps I
can.  I know Jean Marie.  He's a warm man, complex and always
interesting to a woman.  I don't feel him in anything that you've
written there.  It's too detached, too.  I don't know!  I'm quite
uninterested in the character you've described!  I don't really care
what happens to him."

Pia Menendez weighed in with a qualified agreement and an
explanation.

"I think I see what has happened.  I know how Georg's mind works.
You've always said, darling, that you're reporting from Rome for
believers and unbelievers alike.  You can't indulge the one for fear of
alienating the other.  So you have to show a touch of the cynic.  I
think Professor Mendelius has fallen into the same trap.  He's trying
so hard to be detached from a dear friend that he sounds like a censor
of morals.  And he's trying so hard to be scholarly about the Doctrine
of Last Things that it sounds like an exercise in higher mathematics. I
don't mean to be rude, but ..."

"Don't apologise!"  Anneliese Meissner was brusque as always.

"I agree with you and Lotte.  We've lost the man who is, after all, the
centre-point, the pivot of this whole historic episode.  In his
discussion of a prophet Carl has abdicated poetry for pedantry.  I've
got another complaint, too, Carl!  I believe this one may be very
important.  In your discussion of the Last Things you duck two
important questions: the nature of evil, the presence of evil in a
man-made cataclysm, and the nature of the Parousia itself.  What are we
going to see?  Or, more accurately, what do the apocalyptic prophets
Jean Marie among them promise that we will see?  What will distinguish
the Christ from the Antichrist?  I'm your reader now, even if I'm not a
believer!  Once you open the box, I'm as anxious as anyone to see
what's inside."

Mendelius and Rainer looked at each other in dismay.

Rainer grinned and made a gesture of defeat.

"If the readers don't like us, Carl, we're dead.  And if we can't move
them to pity and terror with this subject, we deserve to be dead."

"Back to the desk then."  Mendelius began restacking the manuscript.

"Not tonight!"  Lotte was very firm.

"I've booked dinner for the five of us at the Holderlinhaus.  The
food's good and the atmosphere seems to do something for Carl.  It's
the only place I've seen him tipsy enough to recite Empedocles on Etna
with the roast and sing Schubert with the dessert.  Both very well, I
might add!"

"I might get drunk again tonight," warned Mendelius.

"I'm profoundly discouraged.  I'm only glad Lars Larsen didn't read
this version."

"A word of advice, then," said Anneliese Meissner.

"Scrap your part of the piece, Carl!  Start from the beginning.  Let
your heart speak as it did on the tapes you sent me from Rome!"

"Bravo!"  said Lotte.

"And if a little drinking helps the heart to speak, I'm all in
favour!"

"And what's your prescription for me?"  asked Georg Rainer.

"For you it's less difficult," said Anneliese Meissner boldly.

"I think you'll do better if you stick to the history of the event,
leave the interpretation to Carl and then simply swing back at the end
with a straight question that makes the readers judge and jury."

Georg Rainer thought about it for a moment and then nodded agreement.

"You could be right.  I'll try it... But tell me one thing, Frau Doctor
Meissner.  You're a non-believer.

You deal with the sick and the deluded.  Why do you care so much about
this piece of religious history?"

"Because I'm scared," said Anneliese Meissner curtly.

"I

read the omens in every newspaper.  I hear the distant drums and the
mad trumpets.  I think we'll have our Armageddon.  I dream about it
every night and I wish I could find a faith to comfort me in the
dark."

The air was still soft with summer.  The Neckar flowed tranquil under
the willows, while the lovers plied their lazy traffic of punts and
row-boats under the windows of the Bursa and the Old Hall, where once
Melanchthon had taught and the great Johannes Stoffler had lectured in
Astronomy and Mathematics and designed the Town Hall clock.

The Holderlinhaus was a small antique villa with a round tower that
looked across the river to the botanical gardens.

Friedrich Holderlin had died there in 1843, a sad, mad genius
overshadowed by his contemporary Uhland, in whom, as Goethe had
prophesied, the politician would gobble up the poet.

The alleys were quiet now, because the University was still in recess;
but the restaurant was busy with a dinner party for staff from the
Evangelical Institute and another for a group of actors in town for
rehearsals at the University theatre.

Mendelius presented Georg Rainer and Pia to his colleagues, and as the
meal went on and the wine flowed, there were constant exchanges of talk
between the three tables.

As the well-known correspondent of a famous newspaper, Rainer was the
centre of attention and Mendelius noted with admiration how skilfully
he drew the scholars into talk, baiting them with scraps and snippets
of information about the Roman scene.  Finally, in a sedulously casual
aside, he asked:

"Has any of you ever heard of an organisation called the Friends of
Silence?"  He did not use the original French phrase but the German
one: "Die Freunde des Schweigens'.

He was talking to the academics; but a response came in startling
fashion from the actors at the other table.  A tall, cadaverous young
man stood up, and in a ceremonious announcement introduced himself and
his troupe.

"We," he told them, "we are the Friends of Silence.  To understand us,
you must be silent, too.  We will, in silence still, tell you a tale of
love and fear and pity."

And there, in the old room, where poor Holderlin had tried to grasp the
last tatters of his dreams, they played out a mimed version of the man
who lost his shadow and the woman who gave it back to him again.

It was one of those strange, spontaneous encounters that turn a sober
evening into a magical event, that went on with wine and singing and
tale-telling until Master Stoffler's clock struck two in the morning
from the tower of the Town Hall.

As they were saying their good nights an elderly colleague from the
Institute tugged at Mendelius' sleeve and volunteered a suggestion.

"Your friend Rainer really didn't get an answer to his question.  We
were all distracted by those talented young people.  You take the
Review of Patristic Studies, don't you?

There's an article in the April issue on the Discipline of the Secret.
It makes a couple of references that may help his enquiry."

"Thank you.  I'll look them up in the morning."

"Oh, and there's one more thing, Mendelius ..."

"Yes?"  He was anxious to be gone.  Lotte and the others were already
drawing away.

"I heard about your stand on the question of student surveillance.  I
agree with it; but you should be warned; the President is less than
happy.  He claims you affronted him.

My guess is he's scared of a faculty revolt which is the last thing he
needs before his retirement.  Well .. . good night, my dear fellow.
Walk carefully.  A man can break an ankle on these damned cobbles."

At three and at four in the morning Mendelius was still tossing
restlessly between sleep and waking.  At five he got up, made himself
coffee and settled himself at his desk with the April edition of the
Review of Patristic Studies.  The edition had been published before the
abdication and clearly had been in preparation several months before.

The article on the Discipline of the Secret was datelined "Paris' and
signed by someone called Jacques Mandel.  It dealt with a practice in
the early Christian communities called disciplina arcani.  The phrase
itself was not coined until the seventeenth century; but the discipline
was one of the earliest in the Christian community a mandatory
concealment of the more mysterious rites and doctrines of the Church.
These were never to be mentioned to the unbeliever or even to aspirants
under instruction.  Any necessary reference was to be made in cryptic,
enigmatical or even misleading terms.  The most famous example of such
language was the inscription discovered at Autun in 1839: "Take the
honey-sweet food of the Saviour of the holy ones; eat and drink holding
the fish in your hands."  The word 'fish' was an anagram for Jesus
Christ, Son of Saviour.  The 'honey-sweet food' was the eucharist.

The first part of Mandel's article was a scholarly assessment of
evidence on the practice and the resulting scarcity of early Patristic
evidence on doctrinal and sacramental matters.

However, there was nothing new in it beyond one or two curious
sidelights on the Synod of Antioch, where the orthodox condemned the
Arians for admitting catechumens and even pagans to a discussion of
'the mysteries'.  Mendelius found himself wondering why the writer had
taken the trouble to write a rehash of such old material.  Then
suddenly the tenor of the writing changed.  Jacques Mandel, whoever he
might be, was using the Discipline of the Secret as a text on which to
hang a very modern argument.

He claimed that within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church,
there existed a powerful group who wished to stifle all debate on
doctrinal matters, and impose a twentieth-century version of the
Discipline of the Secret.  He pointed to the suppressive action taken
against certain Catholic theologians in the seventies and early
eighties and the rigorist attitudes of certain contemporary bishops in
France and elsewhere.  He wrote:

One has heard that there exists a clandestine fraternity of these
bishops, who have high friends in the Curia, and are able to bring
great pressure to bear even on the Pontiff .. .

So far, Gregory XVII, himself a Frenchman, has navigated successfully
between the rigorists and the innovators; but he makes no secret of his
disapproval of what he calls 'a freemasonry of senior clerics, the
friends of silence and of darkness'.  The author has seen a copy of a
letter from the Pontiff to a senior Archbishop in which these terms of
censure are used.

They were blunt words for such a sober and specialist journal; but
Mendelius understood their import.  Jacques Mandel was flying a kite to
see who would shoot at it or who might salute it.  But, clearly, he had
information that explained much of the background to the abdication.

Long before the vision and the abdication, Jean Marie had been under
enormous pressure.  The possibility of schism had been real.  Bishops
were powerful men both in the religious and in the secular orders.  In
the one they were leaders of large congregations.  In the other they
were a discreet but potent force, controllers of a confessional vote on
contentious issues.

In the outcome because the Cardinals would not have moved without
majority support from the Bishops they had proved strong enough to
topple a Pope.

In the light of this new information, Georg Rainer's story of
surveillance and pursuit made a certain grim sense.  Not all clerics
were divorced from politics.  Not all were strangers to its more
violent practices.  History was full of shabby deals made by high men
for holy purposes.  And, sitting in his own high place, Jean Marie knew
the mischiefs that could be concealed or condoned under the Discipline
of the Secret or within a confraternity of silence.

Mendelius marked the relevant passages in the article and scribbled a
memo for Georg Rainer.

This isn't evidence; but add it to the indiscretion of Monsignor Logue
and we have a strong indicator as to the nature of the Friends of
Silence.  My feeling is to incorporate a reference into our story as
Mandel has done and see what reactions we get.  I'm going to draft a
small section on another aspect of the phenomenon: that in times of
acute crisis, the public leans always to dictators and juntas as the
sick man leans to the reassuring doctor however incompetent he may be.
If I'm not here when you start work, you'll find the new stuff on my
desk.

He pinned the note to Rainer's copy of the draft, then drew his own
copy of the manuscript towards him and, under the heading "The
Time-frame of Gregory XVII' he began to write:

Psychic epidemics are no new phenomenon in human history.  The germs
which cause them lie encapsulated, like the anthrax bacillus, until
conditions are ripe for their rebirth.  These conditions are fear,
uncertainty, the breakup of social systems too fragile for the loads
imposed on them.  The symptoms are as various as the illusions of
mankind: the self-mutilation of the flagellants and the castrate
priests, the murderous fury of the sicarii, the sexual perversion of
the witch-hunters, the methodical madness of the inquisitors who think
to confine truth in a phrase and burn any contumacious fellow who dares
dissent from their definition.  But the effects of the disease are
always the same.  The patient becomes fearful and irrational, subject
to nightmare terrors, addicted to pleasurable illusions an easy prey to
pedlars of nostrums, magical incantations, and the collective follies
of the other afflicted ones.

To chart the origin and the course of the disease is one thing; to cure
it is quite another.  The most drastic remedy is extermination.  The
only problem is that you are never sure who will emerge from the
slaughter-house: the lunatics or the sane.  Propaganda is another
potent medicine.

You pump the patients full of healing thoughts from dawn to dusk, and
even through their sleeping hours.  You tell them, over and over, that
all is for the best in this most benign of all creations.  And they
will believe you too, gladly and gratefully until the day when they
first smell fire in the wind and see blood on the altar-stone.  Then
they will turn and rend you limb from limb in a manic fury of
resentment.

It was for this reason that the Sacred College decided to silence Jean
Marie Barette and suppress the account of his vision.  They knew that
the backlash of a millennial proclamation could be enormous.  Yet it
was for exactly the same reason that Jean Marie proposed in his
encyclical a preparation of.  the spirit against an inevitable period
of social insanity.  He wanted physicians and places of asylum already
established before the epidemic took hold.  And, in principle, at
least, I believe he was right.

Even in ancient times asylum was a mystic word.  It connoted a sacred
place, a temple, a shrine, a forest grove where a criminal or a runaway
slave would find sanctuary from his pursuers and sleep safe under the
numen of the resident god.  It was not merely the in gathering which
was important.  It was the outgoing as well; the outgoing of the power,
the hope, the life-thrust, which sustained the panting fugitive for the
last mile as the hounds bayed closer and closer at his heels.

A new thought took hold of Mendelius.  He laid down his pen to meditate
on it.  Everything he had just written about the causes and symptoms of
psychic epidemic might be applied with equal justice to Jean Marie.  He
had abdicated reason for the wildest of revelations.  He had abdicated
the place from which, alone, power could be exercised.  He offered
no hope, only a cataclysm and a final judgment on the survivors.  His
adversaries, whatever they called themselves, had at least pragmatic
common sense on their side.  Traditional organisations had been tested
by time and had survived the vast stresses of the centuries.
Traditional interpretations commanded respect, if only for their
antiquity and durability.

When the roof was falling in you needed a tiler and not a prophet.

And here precisely was the weakness which Lotte, Anneliese and Pia had
all found in his portrait of Jean Marie.

It carried no conviction because its author had none.  It excited no
passion because it was bathed in the flat white light of pure reason.
Or perhaps, as Anneliese Meissner had warned him long ago, he was still
too much the Jesuit to embarrass the family of the faith with an
unpopular truth!

Enough then!  He picked up a red pencil and began savagely and
methodically to cut his copy of the manuscript to pieces Then he pulled
a clean brief-pad towards him and began again with a simple stark
testimony.

I write of a man I love.  I am, therefore, a suspect witness.  For this
reason, if for no other, I offer only such testimony as may be accepted
under the strictest rules of evidence.  Where I present an opinion I
call it so.  I express my doubts as honestly as my certainties.  But, I
repeat, I am writing of a man I love, to whom I am in debt for some of
the best things in my life, who is closer to me than a brother and
whose present agonies I have been unable fully to share.

Suddenly, it was as if he were endowed with a grace of eloquence.  He
knew exactly what he must say about Jean Marie and how he must say it
to touch the hearts of the most simple.  When he came to expound the
doctrine of Last Things and how closely Jean Marie adhered to it, he
was lucid and persuasive.  Jean Marie had been silenced without a
hearing.  Now, said Mendelius, the unwilling advocate, he must have
open judgment.

But when he came to answer the questions which Anneliese had asked: the
nature of evil and the mode of the Second Coming, he was forced to a
moving admission.  I know that evil exists.  I am already marked as a
victim of its destructive power.  I pray daily to be delivered from it.
I do not know why there is evil and pain in a world designed by a
beneficent creator.  The vision of Gregory XVII described only the
effects of that evil; it cast no light upon the mystery of its
existence.  So, too, with the Second Coming.  He tells us nothing of
the how, the when, the where of the event, which Christians believe is
implicit in and irrevocably guaranteed by the doctrine of the
Resurrection.  So it would be quite just to say that the vision of
Gregory XVII tells us nothing that we do not know already.  But this
does not discredit the vision or the visionary, any more than a painter
is discredited because he shows us light and landscape as we have never
seen them before.  I wish I could interpret the meaning of my friend's
moment of private rapture.  I cannot.  The best I can do is to show how
for good reasons or bad Jean Marie Barette, Pope Gregory XVII, was
prevented from offering his own interpretation to the world.  Are we
the richer or the poorer?  Only time will tell.

Three days later, with the help of four typists and two translators,
the thing was done.  The English and the German versions were boxed for
the couriers.  The affidavits and the photographic copies of the
documents were all attested.  Lars Larsen was making a farewell toast
before driving to Frankfurt to pick up his flight to New York.

"Always, when I've sold a big one like this, I'm scared.  My head's on
the block.  If my judgment's discredited, I'm out of a job.  If my
author delivers me a turkey, what do I say to the publishers?  But this
time, I can drop a package on the publisher's desk and swear on my
mother's memory he's getting his money's worth.  We've got world-wide
agreement.

Simultaneous publication next Sunday.  After that, sit tight for the
backlash.  But you're sturdy fellows, you'll weather it well.  When the
going gets rough, remember every television interview is dollars and
deutsch marks and yen in the bank.

Georg, Carl, I take off my hat to you both.  Lotte, my love, thanks for
your hospitality.  Pia, may your man bring you to New York.  And you,
Professor Meissner, it's been a pleasure to know you.  When I finally
crack under the strain I hope you'll undertake my treatment."

"You'll never crack."  Anneliese Meissner gave him her most wolfish
smile.

"Not until they abolish money and go back to barter!"

"Be glad of me!"  said Lars Larsen cheerfully.

"I like the game, so I play it well.  I hope you fellows get as much
fun out of spending the money as I had getting it for you.  Cheers!"

It was a good exit line and Mendelius gave him full marks for it.  Even
Anneliese offered amends and asked whether Larsen would consent to
represent her works in the American market.  Georg Rainer admitted that
feeling rich was a novel and pleasant experience.  He was reluctant to
agree with Pia that there was now no impediment to his getting married
preferably to her.  He changed the subject hastily.

"There's a couple of matters that still bother me, Carl.

We've mentioned the Friends of Silence.  We've introduced Gregory
XVII's list of sympathetic politicians; but we've offered no firm
conclusions about either.  Sooner or later we're going to be questioned
in these areas.  So, I'll continue digging in Rome and if I get
anything new I'll call."

"I'll be more interested to know if you're still under surveillance
when you get back to Rome."

"So will I. The dumbest spy has had time to trace me here.

But now that the story's written and with so many copies in
circulation, I don't see what anyone can do about it.  I'm taking Pia
to Bonn to deliver a safety-copy.  Even if they hijacked that, the news
would still break.  I'm not worried .  just curious.  I hate loose
ends."

After that, there was a flurry of farewells and the inevitable
anti-climax.  Anneliese left to keep appointments at the clinic.

Lotte was impatient to get to her housekeeping so that the place would
be shining for the return of her brood.  Mendelius took one look at his
littered study and opted for a walk in the botanical gardens to feed
the ducks and the swans.

The next day the children came home.  Katrin, bubbling with happiness,
arrived in the morning.  She presented her mother with an expensive
scarf and Mendelius with the promised picture from Franz a fully worked
canvas of the Place du Tertre.  Then she took a deep breath and
delivered the big news.  She and Franz had decided to set up house in
Paris.  They would be independent and modestly prosperous.

Franz had been taken up by a well-known art-dealer.  She herself would
be employed by a German import house in Paris.  Yes, she and Franz had
discussed the question of marriage.  They both agreed it would be wiser
to wait awhile and please!  please!  would Mutti and Papa try to
understand!

Lotte was shaken, but managed to retain her composure.  It was
Mendelius who tried to reason with Katrin the problems of an unmarried
couple, living in a foreign country in a period of impending disorder.
Yet, somehow, the arguments lacked conviction.  At bottom he was glad
to see her removed from the threat which hung over them all in
Tubingen.  He wanted her to enjoy what happiness she could before the
dark times came and the world fell apart.

In the end, it was agreed that Lotte would go with her to Paris to help
her find an apartment and see her settled and that Mendelius would
provide a personal capital fund which would sustain her if the love
affair turned sour.  All three of them were aware though none dared put
it into words that it was at bottom a cold-blooded talk about survival,
and the best terms that could be arranged to hold the family together
and let the leaven of the old pieties continue to work in an
unsatisfactory situation.

Afterwards, while Katrin was unpacking, Lotte wept quietly and
Mendelius groped for words of comfort.

"I know you're disappointed, darling; but at least this way the family
holds together and she will still turn to us in the bad times.  I know
you'd love a white wedding and a grandchild the first year afterwards.
I'm afraid I wouldn't.

I'm glad to see her still free.  And I'm glad we now have enough money
to make her independent."

"But she's so young, Carl and Paris seems so far away."

"The farther the better at this moment," said Mendelius bitterly.

"You and I can look after each other; but the last thing I want is our
children taken hostages.  Dry your eyes now.  Go upstairs and talk with
her.  She needs you just as much as you need her."

By the time Johann arrived they were all calm again and ready to
interest themselves in the account of his Alpine retreat.  He showed
them his photographs, and enthused about the possibilities of
development.

"The entrance is hidden at the end of a timber cutter's track.  It's a
long, narrow defile that opens into this strange valley, which is like
an axe-cut, straight down the centre of the ridge.  All around the lake
are meadows a metre deep in good soil.  The woods are full of deer but
they need culling.  The waterfall is here, and to the left of it is the
entrance to the old mine workings, which are nearly half a mile long,
with lots of natural passages which we didn't explore, because we're
not trained and we hadn't the proper equipment."

Mendelius let him talk himself out and then put the blunt question:

"Are you still interested in acquiring the place and developing it?"

"Interested sure!  But it would cost a mint of money to develop.  You
need labour for farming and building.  You need expert advice on
engineering, plumbing and even on Alpine cultivation.  I got out some
figures.  Even if we leased the place, it would still take something
like three hundred thousand deutsch marks to make it a going concern. 
I know we can't come up with that sort of money."

"Suppose we could.  What then?"

Johann considered the question and then asked another.

"Have I missed something while I've been away?"

"Quite, a lot," Katrin told him ruefully.

"These parents of ours have been embroiled in some rather explosive
affairs.

You'd better tell him from the beginning, Papa."

Mendelius told him.  Johann listened intently, asking few questions,
masking his feelings, as he always did.  Finally Mendelius came to the
postscript of his tale.

"As a result of what I have written about the abdication of Gregory
XVII, I've made a lot of money.  Therefore we're able to think more
freely about our immediate futures.  But there are certain things
beyond our control.  We may well be at war within the next twelve
months.  You and Katrin will be liable for military call-up in
September."

"If we are," said Johann grimly, "there won't be much future to
discuss."

"There may be," said Mendelius with bleak humour, "if you're interested
in becoming an Alpine farmer.  Agricultural workers and proprietors are
normally exempt from military service.  If you're still keen to acquire
that property in Bavaria, do it now.  Start to develop it immediately.
It could be a refuge as well as a productive property."

"It's a hell of a price to pay for a bomb-shelter."  Johann was
thoughtful.

"Not to mention the development costs.  But, yes, it bears thinking on.
Mother could come there and Franz and Katrin.  We need labour
anyway."

"Tell him the other thing, Carl!"  Lotte cut in to the talk.

"This can wait."

"What other thing, father?"

"There are people who want to kill me, son.  So long as we are here
together in Tubingen we are all in danger.  That's why I think we
should disperse for a while.  Your mother's going to Paris to get
Katrin settled.  If you take up my offer on this property that gets you
out of the way."

"And you, father?  Who takes care of you?"

"I do," said Lotte, "and I've changed my mind about Paris.

If Katrin's old enough to take a lover instead of a husband, she's old
enough to find and furnish her own lodgings.  You and I will stay here,
Carl .. . Johann can make his own decisions."

"Frankly, son, I'd much rather you were out of the University."
Mendelius was suddenly eager to persuade him.

"Things are going to get rough.  There's a move to have security
dossiers on all students.  Faculty members will be required to
contribute information.  I've refused to go along.

That means sooner or later if I survive the assassins I'm under fire
from the security boys."

"It seems to me," said Johann deliberately, "all this is predicated on
a belief that war is inevitable global war!"

"That's right.  It is."

"And do you truly believe mankind will commit to that monstrosity?"

"Mankind will have very little to do or to say about it," said
Mendelius.

"According to Jean Marie's vision, war is already written into our
futures.  That's why I found myself at odds with him in Rome.  On the
other hand, everything I see and hear tells me that the nations are
hell-bent on a confrontation over fuel and resources, and that the risk
of conflict grows greater every day.  So, what can I say to my adult
children?  Your mother and I have lived the best part of our lives.
We'd like to offer you free choice about the disposition of your
own."

"You are part of our lives.  We can't just go about our own affairs as
if you both didn't exist.  I'm very grateful for your offer, father,
but I want to think about it very carefully.  I want to talk with you,
too, little sister.  There are things I have to arrange with your
Franz!"

"Franz is my business."  Katrin was instantly defensive.

"I

don't want a fight between you two."

"There'll be no fight," said Johann calmly.

"But I want to be sure Franz knows what he's getting into and what
he'll have to share by way of a family responsibility.  It would be
good, for instance, if we could recruit some sort of bodyguard for
father and mother, from within the student body."

"Absolutely not!"  Mendelius was very emphatic.

"That's an immediate gain for the terrorist.  He has disrupted our
lives, forced us to take public precautions.  Therefore he is
important, potent and to be feared.  No!  No!  No!  Your mother and I
and you, too, so long as you are here will protect each other.  The
handbook the police gave us is very good.  I want you both to read it
and ..."

The doorbell rang.  Mendelius went to answer it.  Johann followed him.
Mendelius recited the simple drill.

"Always use the spy hole in the door.  If you cannot identify the
caller, leave the chain-bolt on when you open the door.  If you receive
a package you are not expecting, or an especially bulky letter, call
the Kriminalamt and ask for a bomb expert to examine them.  You may
feel foolish if the packages are harmless but it's better than opening
a booby-trap which will blow your face off."

This time the caller and his package were both harmless.

Alvin Dolman had come to deliver the framed prints.  While Mendelius
poured his drink he displayed them proudly to Lotte and the family.

"They look good, eh?  I had a fellow in my studio yesterday who offered
three times the price you paid.  You see, you do get favoured-nation
treatment, Professor!"

"With this family, I need it, Alvin."

"Be glad of this family, Professor.  I wish I had one like it.

I'm getting too old for hunting in the wildwood!  Which reminds me, I
was at a party last night in honour of the mime troupe.  Your name came
up.  The leading man said they had performed for you and some
journalist fellow at a party in the Holderlinhaus."

"That's right.  It turned into a long night."

"Anyway, I mentioned that I knew you and your family.

Everybody seemed to know about your adventure in Rome.

Then this girl buttonholed me and started asking questions" "What
girl?"  Mendelius frowned.

"What sort of questions?"

"Her name is Alicia Benedictus.  She works for the Schwabisches
Taghlatt.  She said she was writing a profile on you for the paper."

"Did she offer any identification?"

"Why should she?  We were both guests at the same party.  I took her at
face value and the value was pretty good, believe me!"

In spite of his concern, Mendelius laughed.  The light of lechery in
Alvin Dolman's eyes was beacon-bright.  Mendelius repeated his query.

"What sort of questions did she ask?"

"Oh, the usual stuff: what sort of man you were; how were you regarded
in the town; who were your most important friends .. . that sort of
thing."

"Strange!  If she works for the Tagblatt, she has a file full of that
material.  I think I'd like to check her out."

"Why, for God's sake?"  Dolman was completely at a loss.

"This was cocktail talk.  I just thought you'd be interested that
someone was doing a piece on you."

"I'm very interested, Alvin.  Let's call the paper now."

He leafed through the directory and made the call, while Dolman and the
family looked on.  The call was brief; the information negative.  There
was no one on the staff called Alicia Benedictus.  No one had been
assigned to do a feature on Carl Mendelius.  Mendelius put down the
receiver and told them the news.  Dolman gaped at him.

"Well, how do you like that?"

"I don't like it at all, Alvin.  I'm calling Inspector Dieter Lorenz in
the Kriminalamt.  He'll want to see us both."

"The police?  Hell, Professor!  I live a nice quiet life here.  I'd
like to keep it that way till I go home.  Why do you need the
police?"

"Because there's a contract out on my life, Alvin.  I was a key witness
to a shooting in Rome.  We know the terrorists have spotters covering
me and my family in Tubingen.  This girl could be one of them."

Alvin Dolman shook his head as if he were trying to clear it of
cobwebs.  He swore softly: "Christ!  Who'd have believed it?  They're
gunning for academics now and in Tubingen yet!  O.K."  Professor, let's
call the cops and get it over with."

Fifteen minutes later they were in the office of Dieter Lorenz at the
Landeskriminalamt.  Lorenz put Dolman through a lengthy interrogation,
then settled him in an interview room with a cup of coffee, a
sketch-pad and an instruction to produce a likeness of the girl who
called herself Alicia Benedictus.  Then, back in his own office, he
asked Mendelius:

"How close are you to this Dolman?"

Mendelius shrugged.

"Not that close; but I've known him for years.  I've had him to drinks
many times but rarely to dinner.  I buy prints from him.  I drop in at
his studio sometimes for a glass of wine and a chat.  I find him an
agreeable jester.  Why do you ask?  Do you have anything against
him?"

"Nothing."  Lorenz was frank about it.

"But he's one of those characters who always bother a policeman in a
provincial town like this.  A criminal you can deal with.  You can ship
home a guest-worker who gets into trouble.  But this type is different.
You can see no good reason why he stays.

He's an American.  He's divorced from a local girl.  He's gainfully
employed but there's no way he can make a reputation or a fortune. Also
he's a raffish type.  When he gets bored, you find him in the boozy
bars and the wilder student nightclubs.  His house-parties make a lot
of noise, and we get complaints from neighbours.  So, because he's
popular and a bit rowdy and a high spender, we wonder if he's got any
sidelines like hash or heroin or receiving stolen goods.  To this point
he's clean.  But I still have to ask whether he could be spotting for
the group that is out to get you or whether he's connected with these
mysterious folk who, you told me, were supposed to be shadowing Mr.
Rainer."

"It sounds a little far-fetched to me," said Mendelius.

"It probably is," Lorenz agreed patiently.

"But sometimes in this business you get nasty surprises.  Dolman's an
artist.

We've found a sketch of you in the pocket of a dead man.

Wouldn't it be odd if it were done by Alvin Dolman?"

"Impossible!  I've known the man for years!"

Lorenz shrugged off the objection.

"It's the impossible that happens every day.  Anyway, he's making
another sketch now.  It will be instructive to compare the two."

Mendelius was suddenly edgy and irritable.

"You've put me in an intolerable position, Inspector!  I can't continue
to be friendly with Dolman and not tell him what you've told me."

"I don't mind your telling him."  Lorenz seemed mildy surprised.

"It helps me.  If he's innocent, he'll go out of his way to co-operate
and he's got a lot of useful contacts in town.  If he's guilty, then
he'll get restless and begin making mistakes."

"Don't you ever get sick of this game, Inspector?"

"I like the game, Professor; I dislike the people with whom I have to
play it.  Excuse me, I'll see how Dolman's coming along with his
artwork."

As they left the police station and strolled homewards through the warm
summer air, Dolman seemed philosophic about his situation.  He brushed
aside Mendelius' apologies with weary humour.

"Don't fret about it, Professor!  I understand Lorenz and his kind. I'm
a fringe operator, always have been, even in the army.  The only time
I'm surprised is when someone drops a coin in the blind man's hat
instead of kicking him in the teeth.

However, just between you and me, I have no interest in getting you
knocked off and no connection with any group.

I'm strictly a loner and I'm sure Lorenz is bright enough to see it.
What he figures is that because I get around and meet a lot of
odd-balls, I might stumble on some useful information.

Because it's you that's involved, I'm prepared to co-operate.

Also, I don't like being played for a sucker which is what Miss Alicia
Benedictus tried to do.  All in all, Professor, this has been one lousy
day.  This used to be a nice cosy town.

You could wrap it round yourself like strudel pastry.  Now?  I don't
like it any more.  I think I'll start packing very soon.

You go on home, Professor.  I know a girl who keeps a bottle of brandy
warm just for Alvin Dolman!"

He turned away and strode across the bridge, a big, aggressive man
thrusting heedless through the shoppers and the loiterers.  Mendelius
turned down the path that led to the gardens.  He did not want to go
home yet.  He needed time and quiet to set his thoughts in order.  The
family needed privacy to discuss the radical proposals he had made to
them.

It was a warm, bright day and the burghers of Tubingen were sunning
themselves on the lawns.  Down by the lake a small crowd had
gathered to watch the theatrical troupe working with a group of very
young schoolchildren.  It was a charming scene the youngsters wide-eyed
and wondering, totally absorbed in the tale of a sad clown who blew
beautiful bubbles but could never coax one of them to rest on his
hand.

The clown was the cadaverous fellow who had entertained them at the
Holderlinhaus.  The rest of the troupe played the bubbles who mocked
his efforts to catch them.

Mendelius sat on the grass and watched the small, innocent opera,
fascinated to see how the children, timid at first, were drawn to
participate in the mimicry.  After the grim and grandiose debates in
which he had been engaged, this simple experience was a matter of
strange joy.  Unconsciously he found himself aping their smirks and
bows and fluttering gestures.  The clown noticed him and, a few moments
later, began to mime a new story.  He summoned the other players and
their attendant children and conveyed to them in dumb show that a new,
strange creature was in their midst.  Was it a dog?  No.  A rabbit? No.
 A tiger, an elephant, a pig?  No.

Then they must inspect it but very, very cautiously.  Finger to lips,
walking on tiptoe, he led them, single file, to examine this
extraordinary animal.

The audience chuckled when they saw that the butt of the joke was a
middle-aged fellow running to fat.  Mendelius, after a moment of
uncertainty, decided to join the comedy.

As the actors and the children circled him he played back to them as he
had once played charades with his own children.

Finally, he revealed himself as a big stork standing on one leg and
looking down his long beak.  The audience applauded.

The children laughed excitedly at their triumph.  The clown and his
troupe mimed their thanks.  A tiny girl caught at his hand and told
him:

"I knew before anybody.  I really knew you were a stork!"

"I'm sure you did, liehchen."

And as he bent to talk to the little mite, Mendelius had a sudden
sickening thought of what she would look like after the first blast of
radiation, or a lethal infection of anthrax.

That evening at supper Katrin and Johann dominated the talk, reading an
unexpected lesson to their parents.  Katrin's argument was very
simple.

"Mother has said it.  If I'm old enough to go off with a man, I'm old
enough to manage my own affairs.  Franz and I have to improve our
relationship before we can think of getting married.  In spite of his
success with the gallery he's still very uncertain of himself .. . and
I have to find a few pieces of me, too.  I'm lucky.  Thanks to Papa
I've got financial security.

But for the rest I always do better if there's no one holding my
hand."

"But Franz wants to marry you," Lotte objected.

"He told me he's asked you several times."

"I know he does; but he wants a kaus frau someone to make him feel safe
and well nourished and reassure him that he's a genius.  I don't want
that role and I don't want him to get stuck in his dependence either.
He has to learn that we're partners as well as lovers."

"And what will happen," asked Johann with a grin, "if he doesn't learn
as fast as you'd like, little sister?"

"Then, big brother, I find someone else!"

Lotte and Mendelius exchanged the rueful looks of parents who find
themselves left far behind in argument.  Mendelius asked:

"And you, Johann?  Have you given any thought to my proposal?"

"A lot of thought, father and I'm afraid the idea doesn't work for
me."

"For any special reason?"

"One and one only.  You're offering to buy me out of a situation I have
to handle for myself.  I hate the idea of war.  I see it as a vast,
horrible futility.  I don't want to be conscripted for gun-fodder but
I've never felt special enough to ... well, to be exempted from the
destiny of my own peer group.

I've got to stay with it, at least long enough to decide whether I
belong there or in opposition.  I'm not explaining this very well.  I
appreciate your care for me; but in this case, it goes further than I
want or need."

"I'm glad you can be honest with us, son."  Mendelius was hard put to
conceal his emotion.

"We don't want to run your life.  The best gift we can give you is
liberty and the conscience to use it.  So let me ask all my family a
question.  Does anybody object if I buy the valley?"

"What would you use it for?"  Johann stared at him in surprise.

"Your father has a dream of his own."  Lotte reached out to touch
Mendelius' hand.

"When he retires he'd like to found an academy for postgraduate studies
a place where senior scholars can meet and share the learning of a
lifetime.  If he wants to try it then I support him."

"I think it's a wonderful idea."  Katrin was full of enthusiasm.

"I keep saying to Franz that everybody has to keep reaching out all the
time.  If you get too secure you go stale and fusty."

"You've got my vote, father."  Johann looked at Mendelius with a new
respect.

"If I can help to get the place started, count on me.  And if things
get too rough at the University, you can always opt for early
retirement."

"I'll call the lawyers first thing in the morning.  They should start
negotiating with the Grafin: Next week I'll go down and look at the
property.  I'd like you to come with me, Johann."

"Of course."

"What about you, Lotte?  Would you like to come?"

"Later, Carl.  This time you and Johann should go together.  Katrin and
I have our own things to do."

"I'm really excited."  Mendelius expounded his plan.

"I'd like to talk to a good architect a special kind of man with an
interest in the ambience of living."

"We're all being very calm and logical," said Lotte abruptly.

"But I've got the terrible feeling life won't turn out quite the way
you expect."

"Probably it won't, darling; but we have to hope and act as if it will.
In spite of Jean Marie's prophecies I still believe we can influence
the course of human events."

"Enough and in time to prevent a war?"

There was a hint of hidden desperation in Lotte's question.  It was
almost as if she expected her children to be snatched suddenly from the
dinner table.  Mendelius gave her a swift worried look and said, with
more confidence than he felt:

"Enough and in time, yes.  I'm even hopeful that the publication of our
piece on Sunday will focus world attention on the urgency of new
initiatives for peace."

"But," Johann objected, "half the world will never see what you've
written, father."

"All the leaders will," Mendelius persisted, if only to shake Lotte out
of her black mood.

"All the intelligence services will read and evaluate the material.
Never underrate the diffusion of even the simplest news item.  Now, why
don't we clear the table and get the washing-up done.  They're doing
The Magic Flute on television.  Your mother and I would like to watch
it."

Halfway through the performance the telephone rang.

Georg Rainer was on the line from Berlin.

"Carl?  I think I've made sense of our amateur spies.  It's clear now
that Monsignor Logue passed the word that I would be working on this
story.  I think the surveillance was organised just to establish that
fact.  Now the Vatican has decided to issue its own account of the
abdication.  There will be a formal statement running to about three
thousand words in next Tuesday's edition of Osservatore Romano.  That
means we'll be out first, and there'll be some red faces over the
mistake in timing!  I understand the text of the Vatican release will
be made available in the secular press on Monday afternoon.  I'll call
you if there's anything in it that affects our position."

"How do your editors feel about our piece, Georg?"

"Everyone's excited about it.  Interesting, though, there's a lively
betting market on the kind of reaction we'll get from the public."

"How are they phrasing the bet?"

"Who will come out best in the popularity stakes the Vatican or the
one-time Pope?  Listening to the office talk, I'm not sure any more.
I'll be back in Rome on Monday morning.  I'll call you from there. Love
to Lotte."

"And to Pia."

"Oh, I almost forgot.  We've decided to become engaged.

Or at least Pia did and I gave my reluctant consent."

" Congratulations!"

"I'd rather be poor and free!"

"The hell you would!  Thanks for calling, Georg."

"Do you want me to place a bet for you in the papal sweepstake?"

"Ten marks on Gregory XVII.  We have to support our own candidate!"

* * * A week later the verdict was in.  The Rainer/Mendelius account of
the abdication was received with lively interest by the public, and by
the pundits with qualified respect.  There was a reluctant agreement
that it 'clarified many issues left diplomatically vague in the Vatican
account'.  There was question whether the authors 'may not have
inflated a crisis in the religious bureaucracy to the dimension of a
global tragedy'.

The London Times provided the most judicious summing up in a leader
written by its Roman Catholic editor.  . The authors, each within his
own competence, have written an honest brief.  Their history is
carefully documented; their speculations are based on sound logic.

They have illuminated some of the dark byways of Vatican politics.  If
they have tended to exaggerate the importance of a papal abdication in
twentieth-century history, it must be said in their defence that the
ruined majesty of Rome can play tricks with the soberest imagination.

What they do not exaggerate, however, is the perennial power of a
religious idea to rouse men's passions and incite them to the most
revolutionary action.  It says much for the collective wisdom of the
hinge-men of the Roman Catholic Church that they were prepared to act
promptly and in unity against what they saw as a revival of the ancient
Gnostic heresy.  It says even more for the deep spirituality of Pope
Gregory XVII that he chose to retire from office rather than divide the
assembly of believers.

Professor Carl Mendelius is a sober scholar of world repute.  His
tribute to his patron and long-time friend reveals him as an ardent and
loyal man with more than a touch of the poet.  He is wise enough to
admit that human polity cannot be directed by the visions of the
mystics.  He is humble enough to know that the visions may contain
truths which we ignore at our peril.

It was the misfortune of Gregory XVII that he seemed to be writing
prematurely the epitaph of mankind.  It is his fortune that the
memorial of his reign has been written with eloquence and with love.

Mendelius was too intelligent a man not to see the irony of the
situation.  With Georg Rainer's help he had raised a monument to an old
friend; but the monument was a gravestone, beneath which lay buried for
ever the last vestiges of influence and power which Jean Marie might
have exercised.  No man could have served the new Pontiff and his
policies better than Carl Mendelius.  It was fitting that his labours
should have made him a millionaire and given him a reputation far
beyond the merits of his scholarship.  But the most bitter irony of all
was a note of thanks from Jean Marie in Monte Cassino.

I thank you both from the bottom of my heart for what you tried to do.
No man could have had better advocates or more gallant friends.  The
truth has been told with understanding and compassion.  Now the chapter
can be closed and the work of the Church can proceed.

So, you must not talk as though all is lost.  The yeast is working in
the dough; the seed, scattered on the wind, will germinate in its own
time.  As for the money, I grudge you not a centime of it.  I trust you
will spend some of it happily on Lotte and the children.

Be calm, dear friend, and wait for the word and the sign.

Yours always in Christ Jesus, Jean Marie Lotte, reading the letter over
his shoulder, rumpled his hair and said quietly:

"Leave it now, my love!  You did your best and Jean knows it.  The
people in this house need you, too."

"I need you also, dear."  He took her hands and drew her round to face
him.

"I've meddled long enough in the big world.  I'm a scholar not a
gad-fly journalist.  I'm glad we start lectures again tomorrow."

"Have you got all your stuff together?"

"Most of it."  He held up a wad of typescript and laughed.

"That's the-first subject for this term.  Look at the title: "The
Nature of Prophecy'."

"Talking of prophecy," said Lotte.

"I'll give you one.

We're going to have a great season of gossip in town when Katrin goes
off to Paris with her Franz.  How are we going to deal with it?"

"Tell the old girls to jump in the Neckar!"  said Mendelius with a
grin.

"Most of them gave up their own virginity in a punt under the
willows!"

Every day during term time Carl Mendelius left his house at
eight-thirty in the morning, walked down the Kirchgasse to the market,
where he bought himself a boutonniere from the oldest character in the
square: a raw-tongued grandmother from Bebenhausen.  From there it was
a short two blocks to the Illustrious College, which he entered always
by the south-east gate under the Arms of Duke Christoph and his motto:
"Nach Gottes Willen' According to God's Will.

Once inside he went straight to his study and spent half an hour
checking over his notes, and the daily stack of memoranda from the
administration office of the University.

At nine-thirty precisely he was on the rostrum in the aula with his
notes stacked neatly on the lectern.

Before he left the house on this first Monday of term, Lotte reminded
him of the police warning to vary his route and his procedures.
Mendelius shrugged impatiently.  He had three streets to choose from;
and lectures always began at nine thirty  There weren't too many
permutations to be made.

Anyway, at least on his first morning, he wanted to sport a flower in
his buttonhole.  Lotte kissed him and shoved him out of the house.

The ritual of arrival was accomplished without incident.

He spent ten minutes chatting in the quadrangle with the Rector of the
College, then went up to his study, which, thanks to the ministrations
of the housekeeper, was immaculately tidy and smelt of beeswax and
furniture polish.  His gown hung behind the door.  His mail was stacked
on the desk.  The term schedules were penned on his message rack.

He felt a sudden sense of relief, almost of liberation.  This was home
country.  He could walk it blindfold.

He unpacked his brief-case, checked the texts of his day's lectures,
then addressed himself to the mail.  Most of it was routine material;
but there was one rather bulky envelope with the President's seal on
it.  The superscription was faintly ominous: "Private and Confidential
Urgent Deliver by Messenger'.

Since the faculty meeting the President had been studiously silent on
all matters of contention, and it was not at all impossible that he
wanted to stage a set-piece battle with every order in writing.
Mendelius hesitated to open the missive.  The last thing he wanted was
to be distracted before the first lecture of term.  Finally, ashamed of
his timidity, he slipped a paper-knife under the flap of the
envelope.

When his students came running after the explosion, they found him
lying on the floor with his hand blown off and his face a bloody
mess.

BOOK TWO

The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

"Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths."

Isaiah Ch.  XL, verse 3 His Holiness Pope Leo XIV settled his bulky
body deeper in the chair, propped his gouty foot on the stool under his
desk and surveyed his visitor like an old and ill-tempered eagle.  He
announced in his harsh Aemilian accent:

"Frankly, my friend, you are a great nuisance to me."

Jean Marie Barette permitted himself a wintry smile and agreed.

"Unfortunately, Holiness, it is easier to be rid of redundant kings
than supernumerary Popes."

"I don't like the idea of your visit to Tubingen.  I like even less the
idea of your cantering around the world like some fashionable Jesuit
intellectual.  We made a bargain over your abdication."

"Correction," said Jean Marie curtly.

"There was no bargain.  I signed the instrument under duress.  I put
myself voluntarily under obedience to Abbot Andrew and he has told me I
must in charity visit Carl Mendelius and his family.  Mendelius is
critically ill.  He could die at any moment."

"Yes, well!"  His Holiness was too seasoned a bureaucrat to court a
confrontation.

"I will not interfere with your Abbot's decision; but I remind you that
you have no canonical mission.  You are expressly debarred from public
preaching or teaching.  Your faculties to ordain clergy are suspended
but you are not of course prohibited from the celebration of Mass or
the sacraments."

"Why are you so afraid of me, Holiness?"

"Afraid?  Nonsense!"

"Then why have you never offered to restore to me the functions of my
bishopric and my priesthood?"

"Because it seemed expedient for the good of the Church."

"You realise that so far as my apostolic vocation is concerned, I am
reduced to impotence.  I believe I have a right to know when and in
what circumstances my faculties may be restored, and I may be given a
canonical mission."

"I cannot tell you that.  No decision has yet been made."

"What is the reason for the delay?"

"We have other concerns, more pressing."

"With great respect, Holiness, whatever your concerns, even you are not
dispensed from natural justice."

"You reprove me?  Here in my own house?"

"I, too, lived here once.  I never felt like an owner, but rather like
a tenant which as events proved, I was."

"Let's get to the point of this visit.  What do you want of me?"

"Dispensation to live in the lay state, to travel freely and exercise
my priestly functions in private."

"Impossible!"

"What is the alternative, Holiness?  Surely it would embarrass you more
to keep me a prisoner on my own parole at Monte Cassino."

"This whole situation is a mess!"  His Holiness winced as he moved his
gouty foot on the stool.

"I offer you a way out of it.  Look!  Rainer and Mendelius published an
honest account of the abdication.  They thought they were defending me;
but what was the real result?

Business as usual in the Church; and you settled beyond attainder in
the Chair of Peter!  If I tried to change that situation which, believe
me, I have no desire to do I should make a public idiot of myself.
Please!  Can you not see that far from being a threat or a nuisance I
may even be able to help you?"

"You can't help me by propagating these lunatic ideas about the Last
Days and the Second Coming!"

"Do they look so lunatic from where you sit now?"

His Holiness shifted uneasily in his chair.  He cleared his throat
noisily and dabbed at his cheeks with a silk handkerchief.

"Well!  I'll admit we're approaching a highly critical situation; but I
can't give myself nightmares about it.  I go on doing what falls to my
hand each day and ..."

He broke off, embarrassed by the cool scrutiny of the man he had
ousted.  Jean Marie said nothing.  Finally His Holiness found voice
again.

"Now let me see, where were we?  Oh, this request of yours!  If your
situation at Monte Cassino isn't satisfactory, if you do want to return
to private life, why don't we make an interim arrangement, in pet to as
it were, without any documents or formalities.  If it doesn't work out,
then we both have other recourse.  Does that make sense?"

"Very good sense, Holiness."  Jean Marie was studiously grateful.

"I shall make sure you have no cause to regret it.

Presumably the arrangement begins now."

"Of course."

"Then I leave for Tubingen in the morning.  I've procured myself a
French passport and returned the Vatican document to the Secretariat of
State."

"That wasn't necessary."  His Holiness was relieved enough to be
magnanimous.

"It was desirable," said Jean Marie Barette mildly.

"As a man without a canonical mission I should not want to give the
impression that I had one."

"What do you propose to do with yourself?"

"I'm not quite sure, Holiness."  His smile was limpid as a child's.

"I'll probably end up telling the Good News to children at the
crossroads.  But first I must visit my friend Carl."

"Do you think ..."  His Holiness seemed oddly embarrassed.

"Do you think Mendelius and his family would like me to send them a
papal blessing?"

"Mendelius is still critically ill; but I'm sure his wife would
appreciate the gesture."

"I'll sign the scroll and have my secretary post it first thing in the
morning."

"Thank you.  Do I have your Holiness' leave to go?"

"You have our leave."

Unconsciously he had slipped into the antique form.  Then, as if to
make amends for an unnecessary formality, he struggled painfully to his
feet and held out his hand.  Jean Marie bent over the ring which once
he had worn in his own right.  For the first time Leo XIV seemed
touched by a genuine regret.  He said awkwardly:

"Perhaps .. . perhaps if we'd known each other better, none of this
need have happened."

"If this had not happened, Holiness, if I had not reached out for
support in my solitude, Carl Mendelius would now be healthy and whole
in his own house!"

That same evening Anton Cardinal Drexel entertained him to dinner and
their talk was of a far different kind.  Jean Marie explained eagerly
what he had concealed so carefully in his interview with the Pontiff.

"When I heard what had happened to Carl, I knew beyond all shadow of
doubt that this was the sign and the summons I had been waiting for.
It's a terrible thought, Anton, but the sign is always of
contradiction: man in agony begging to be released from it.  Poor Carl!
Poor Lotte!  It was the son who sent me the telegram.  He felt his
father would wish me near him and his mother begged me to come.  I was
terrified that our Pontiff would refuse permission.  Having gone so far
in conformity I did not want a battle at this stage."

"You were lucky," said Drexel drily.

"He hasn't yet seen this stuff.  Georg Rainer sent it round by
messenger this afternoon."

He reached behind him to the buffet and picked up a large manila
envelope filled with glossy press photographs.  All of them were from
Tubingen.  They showed a city caught in a medieval fervour of pageant,
piety and plain riot.

In the hospital Mendelius was shown bandaged like a mummy, with only
his mouth and nostrils visible, while a nurse kept vigil by the bed and
armed police stood guard at the door.  In the Stiftskirche and the
Jakobskirche, men, women and children knelt in prayer.  Students
paraded on the campus carrying crude banners: "No foreign killers!"

"Guestworkers, guest-murderers!"

"Who silenced Mendelius?  Why are the police silent too?"

In the industrial sectors of the suburbs, local youths battled with
Turkish labourers.  In the market place a politician addressed a
lunchtime crowd.  Behind him a four-colour poster screamed the slogan:
"If you want safety in the streets, vote Muller."  Jean Marie Barette
studied the pictures in silence.

Drexel said: "Incredible, isn't it?  It's almost as if they've been
waiting for a martyr!  And the same demonstrations are being made in
other German cities."

Jean Marie shivered as if some squamous creature had touched him.

"Carl Mendelius in the role of Horst Wessel!  It's a horrible thought.
I wonder what the family thinks of all this?"

"I asked Georg Rainer.  He told me the wife is deeply shocked.  She is
rarely seen.  The daughter looks after her at home.  The son gave an
interview in which he said that his father would be horrified if he
knew what was being done.

He claimed that the tragedy was being stage-managed to create a social
vendetta."

"Stage-managed by whom?"

"Extremists of the left and the right."

"Not very specific, is it?"

"But these," Drexel tapped the photographs spread on the table, "these
are terribly, dangerously specific.  This is the old black magic of the
manipulators and the demagogues."

"It is more than that."  Jean Marie Barette was suddenly sombre.

"It is as if the evil that lurks in man has suddenly found a focus in
this little provincial town.  Mendelius is a good man.  Yet he, in his
extremity, is made the hero of this this witches' sabbath!  That's
gallows humour, Anton, and it frightens me."

Drexel gave him a shrewd, sidelong look and began replacing the
photographs in the envelope.  He asked, casually enough; "Now that you
are free and able to be anonymous, do you have any plans at all?"

"To visit old friends, to hear what they say about our sorry world but
always to wait for the hand's touch, to listen for the voice that will
tell me where I am commanded to be.  I know it sounds strange to you,
but to me it seems perfectly natural.  I am Pascal's thinking reed,
waiting for the wind to bend me in its passing."

"But in the face of this evil," Drexel tossed the package of
photographs on to the bureau, "in the face of the other evils that will
follow, what will you do?  You cannot bend to every wind or leave every
shout unanswered."

"If God chooses to borrow my vagrant voice, he will find the words for
me to use."

"You talk like an Illuminist!"  Drexel smiled to take the edge off the
allusion.

"I'm glad our colleagues in the Congregation can't hear you."

"You should tell our colleagues."  There was a ring of steel in Jean
Marie's answer.

"They will soon hear the battle-cry of Michael the Archangel.

"Quis sicut Dens?  Who is like to God?  For all their syllogisms I
wonder how many will rise to the challenge and confront the Antichrist?
Have any of the Friends of Silence denounced the excesses in Tubingen
and elsewhere?"

"If they have" Drexel shrugged "we haven't heard of it.

But then, they are prudent men.  They prefer to let passions cool
before they speak.  However, you and I are too old to mourn over the
follies of our brethren and we're too old to cure them, either.  Tell
me something, Jean.  It may sound an impertinent question; but the
answer is important to me."

"Ask it then."

"You're sixty-five years old.  You've risen as high as a man can go.
Today you've put yourself back to zero.  You have no calling, no
visible future.  What do you really want?"

"Enough light to see a Divine sense in this mad world.

Enough faith to follow the light.  That's the core of it all, isn't it?
Faith to move mountains, to say to the cripple; "Arise and walk!"

"We also need some love to make the darkness tolerable."

"Amen to that!"  said Jean Marie softly.

"I must go, Anton.

I've kept you up too late."

"Before you leave .. . how are you placed for money?"

"Well enough, thank you.  I have a patrimony, administered by my
brother who is a banker in Paris."

"Where are you staying tonight?"

"There's a pilgrim hostel over by Santa Cecilia.  I lodged there when I
first came to Rome."

"Why not stay here?  I have a spare room."

"Thank you, Anton, but no!  I don't belong here any more.

I have to acclimatise myself to the world.  I may want to sit late in
the piazza and talk to the lonely ones."  He added with an odd humorous
pathos: "Perhaps, in the last cold hour before the day-spring, He may
want to talk to me.  Please understand and pray for me."

"I wish I could come with you, Jean."

"You were made for better company, old friend.  I was born under a
falling star.  Almost, it feels as if I were going home."  He gestured
towards the lights that marked the papal apartments.

"Stay close to our friend upstairs.  He is named for a lion but he is
really a house-trained pussy-cat.  When the bad times come he will need
a strong man at his side."

A handshake, a brief farewell, and he was gone, a lean, frail figure
swallowed up in the shadows of the stairwell.  Anton Cardinal Drexel
poured himself the last of the wine and pondered wryly on the aphorism
of another Illuminist, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin: "All mystics speak
the same language because they come from the same country."

The journey to Tubingen was a lesson in his own inadequacy.  For the
first time in forty years he wore civilian clothes and it took him half
an hour to adjust the cravat under his summer shirt.  In the monastery
he had been cushioned by a familiar routine.  In the Vatican his every
move had been attended.  Now he was totally without privilege.  He had
to shout for a taxi to take him to the airport, argue with the bustling
Roman who claimed to have called it first.  He had no small notes for
the tip and the driver dismissed him with contempt.  There was no one
to direct him to the counter where he must pick up his ticket for
Stuttgart.  The girl had no change for his large banknotes, and he had
never owned a credit card in all his clerical life.

In the Vatican the bodily functions of the Pope were carried on in
sacred privacy.  In the airport urinal he stood in line, while the
drunk next to him sprayed his shoes and his trouser-leg.  At the bar,
he was jostled and had coffee spilt on his sleeve; and, for a final
indignity, the aircraft was over booked and he had to argue his way
into a seat.

On board he was faced with a question of identity.  His neighbour was
an elderly woman from the Rhineland, nervous and voluble.  Once
betrayed into speaking German, he was drowned in the torrent of her
talk.  Finally, she asked him what he did for a living.  It took him a
good ten seconds to frame the obvious answer.

"I am retired, dear lady."

"My husband's retired.  He's become quite impossible.

How does your wife take to having you round the house all the time?"

"I'm a bachelor."

"Strange that a handsome man like you never married."

"I'm afraid I was married to my career."

"What were you?  A doctor?  A lawyer?"

"Both," Jean Marie assured her solemnly and solaced his conscience with
a casuist's logic.  He had indeed been a doctor of souls; and there was
law enough in the Vatican to choke Justinian.

When he arrived in Stuttgart, he was met by Johann Mendelius, eager to
welcome him, but somehow dour and strained like a junior officer come
from his first battlefield.

He called Jean Marie 'sir', avoiding all clerical titles.  He drove
carefully round the hill roads, taking the longer route into Tubingen
because, as he put it, there were things to be explained before they
arrived.

"Father is still desperately ill.  The explosive in the letter bomb was
sandwiched between wafers of aluminium and impregnated with tiny
ball-bearings.  Some of these are embedded in one eye-socket, very
close to the brain.  We know he has lost the sight of that eye and may
lose the other.

We haven't seen his face; but it is obviously much mutilated, and, of
course, he has lost his left hand.  Other operations will be necessary,
but not until he is much stronger.  There is still a dangerous
infection in the arm and the eye-socket and the range of antibiotics
that he can tolerate is very limited.  So we wait.  Mother, Katrin and
I visit the hospital by turns.  Mother is holding up extraordinarily
well.  She has courage for all of us; but don't be surprised if she
gets very emotional when she sees you.  We've told no one else you are
coming except Professor Meissner.  She's father's closest friend on the
faculty.  The way things are now, everyone in Tubingen is Eeddling some
gossip or other.  As soon as father recovers if e does I'm moving him
far away."

The undertone of anger and bitterness was not lost on Jean Marie
Barette.  He said: "I heard about the demonstrations.

Georg Rainer sent photographs to the Vatican.  Apparently feelings are
running high."

"Too high!"  The rejoinder was abrupt.

"My father was well known and respected, yes!  But he was never a very
public man.  These parades and demonstrations were not spontaneous;
they were subtly and carefully organised."

"In so short a time?"  Jean Marie was dubious.

"By whom?

And for what reasons?"

"As a propaganda piece to hide the real authors of the attempt on my
father's life."

"If you will kindly pull in to the next lay-by," said Jean Marie
Barette firmly, "we'll talk this out before we get to Tubingen.  Unlike
your father I have been a very public man and I do not want to walk
into any surprises!"

Half a mile farther on they parked between a meadow and a pine wood and
Johann Mendelius gave his reading of the attempted assassination.

"We begin in Rome.  By pure accident, father is a witness to a
terrorist killing.  Big headlines, big warnings: there may be attempts
to silence him or exact reprisals on him and his family.  All that is
clear, simple and logical.  Father and mother come back to Tubingen.
The criminal police contact them with renewed warnings.  A drawing of
my father is found in the pocket of a man killed in a bar-brawl.  More
words of caution.  Meantime, the President of the University tells his
senior faculty to expect a military call-up, to be ready to supply
scientific specialists for the armed services and to cooperate in
security surveillance of the student body.  My father objects very
strongly to the surveillance.  He threatens to resign if it is
enforced.  On top of that he writes the account of your abdication and
is suddenly known all over the world.

There is a smell of politics about the question which is not lost on
our German ministries.  My father is no longer simply an academic he is
an international figure.  In a time when the men at the top are gearing
up to sell a war to the unwary public, my father could be considered
dangerous."

"And as he is already under threat from an underground group, there is
splendid cover for an officially sanctioned assassination!"

"Exactly," said Johann Mendelius.

"And when the attempt is made, the whole town is manipulated into a
protest.

There's a bonus, too!  Demonstrations against the guest workers hasten
the day when they can be shipped home or turned to forced labour in a
wartime situation!"

"You've read me the hypothesis," said Jean Marie Barette calmly.

"Now show me the proof!"

"I don't have proof, only grounds for very deep suspicion."

"For instance?"

"You say you saw photographs of student demonstrations.

I saw the demonstrators themselves and I'm certain most of them never
saw the inside of a lecture hall.  The newspapers published a diagram
of the letter-bomb, supposedly supplied by the police forensic
department.  The real bomb was something quite different a highly
sophisticated device fabricated with laboratory precision."

"Who told you that?"

"Dieter Lorenz.  He was my father's contact in the Kriminalamt.  Two
days after the event, he was promoted and transferred to Stuttgart off
the case!"

"Anything else?"

"Lots of small things; but they only make sense in the context of this
special town of ours.  I'm not the only one who thinks like this.
Professor Meissner agrees with me and she's a very bright lady.  You'll
meet her at our house this evening."

"One more question.  Have you said anything of this to your mother?"

"No.  She has enough to worry about; and the sympathy of the
townspeople helps her."

"Your father, of course, knows nothing?"

"We have no idea how much he knows."  The young man made a weary
gesture.

"He can make sounds of recognition;

he squeezes our hands to acknowledge what we say; but that's all.
Sometimes I think death would be a mercy for him."

"He will survive.  His real work has not begun yet."

"I wish I could believe that, sir."

"Do you believe in God?"

"No."

"That does make life difficult."

"On the contrary, it simplifies it very much.  However brutal the facts
may be, you don't complicate them with religious fiction."

"You've just told me a story which, if it is true, is as near to pure
evil as it is possible to get.  Your father is mutilated, may yet die,
in an assassination attempt by agents of your own country.  What is
your remedy against those who treat murder as a simple political
expedient?"

"If you really want the answer to that, sir, I'll show it to you
tomorrow .. . May we go now?"

"Before we do, I want a favour from you, Johann."

"Ask it, please!"

"You are the son of my dear friend.  Please don't call me sir.

My name is Jean Marie."

For the first time the young man relaxed and his taut features twitched
into a smile.  He shook his head.

"That won't work, I'm afraid.  Mother and father would be shocked if I
used your Christian name."

"How about Uncle Jean?  It will save a lot of unnecessary explanations
when you introduce me to your friends."

"Uncle Jean ..."  He tested the phrase once and again, then he grinned
and nodded agreement.

"So, Uncle Jean, let me get you home.  We are to have an early lunch
because mother wants to take you to the hospital at three this
afternoon."  Johann eased the car out on to the highway and slipped
ahead of a big haulier with a load of pine logs.

"How long will you be able to stay with us?"

"Only a day or two; but long enough, I hope, to be of some use to your
father and your mother perhaps also to make the acquaintance of the
noonday devil who has come to live in your town."

"The noonday devil!"  Johann Mendelius gave him a sidelong tolerant
smile.

"I haven't heard that since Bible Class."

"But you're not afraid of him?"

"Yes, I'm afraid."  His answer was swift and simple.

"But not of devils and spirit adversaries.  I'm frightened of us men
and women and the terrible destructive madness that takes hold of us
all.  If I knew for certain who did this to my father I would kill him
without a second thought."

"To what end?"

"Justice to set the balance straight again, deter the future
adversary."

"It's your father who is the victim.  Would he approve?"

"Wrong, Uncle Jean!  Father's not the only victim.  What about mother,
Katrin, me all the folk in the town who have been infected by this
single act?  Nothing will ever be the same again for any of us."

"It seems to me," said Jean Marie deliberately, "you have a very clear
idea of the nature of evil and of the evil one as adversary.  But what
about good?  How does that present itself to you?"

"Very simply!"  His voice was suddenly tight and hard.

"My mother is good.  She's brave and she's not a woman who finds it
easy to be so.  She thinks of us and father before she thinks of
herself.  By me that's goodness.  Father is good too.

You look in his face and you see a mensch, and there's always enough
love to get you through the bad times.  But you'll see what's happened
to these good people!  And I'm glad you're coming as plain Uncle Jean;
because I don't think I'd have wanted to know you as Pope."

"That's the worst piece of logic I've ever heard."  Jean Marie gave a
wry chuckle.

"You'd have been very flattered to know me.  I was a much more
agreeable fellow then than I am now.  When I was elected one journalist
called me the most personable of modern princes!  Remember, it isn't
always the prince who is the evil-doer.  Generally he's not clever
enough to be a Satan.  The real adversary is the one who whispers
malice in his ear and offers to do his dirty work and keep him immune
from bad report."

"But whichever is the evil one, we get him because we deserve him."
Johann drove with deliberate care, as if he feared the discussion might
excite him to some dangerous manoeuvre.

"We want to be always innocent and out of the reach of malice.  Father
took the precautions he was told to take, but no more: an excessive
care was beneath his dignity.

He saw it as a triumph for terror.  I don't see it that way.  I walk
very softly.  I watch, I listen and I carry a gun that I'm not afraid
to use.  Does that shock you, Uncle Jean?"

"No, it doesn't.  It just makes me wonder how you will feel when you
kill your first human being."

"I hope I never have to do it."

"Yet you go constantly prepared for that sole act.  The man who tried
to kill your father did it at a distance, mechanically, like blasting
rock in a quarry.  But with a pistol you will kill face to face.  You
will hear the cry of the victim in agony.  You will see death in his
eyes.  You will smell blood.  Are you ready for that?"

"As I told you," said Johann Mendelius with wintry simplicity, "I hope
the moment never comes; but, yes, I am ready for it."

Jean Marie Barette said nothing.  The matter was beyond argument.  He
hoped it was not beyond the saving power of grace.  He remembered the
stark empty landscape of the vision, the planet from which mankind had
obliterated itself, so that there was nothing and no one left to
love.

His meeting with Lotte was strange at first.  There was a moment of
shock, almost of disappointment, when she saw him dressed in a layman's
clothes.  A sudden embarrassment held her back even from a hand's
touch.  He had to take her arms and draw her to him.  For a split
second it seemed that she would reject the embrace; then her control
snapped and she clung to him, sobbing quietly, while he soothed her
like a child, with small and tender words.

Katrin came home at that moment.  Johann presented her to Uncle Jean,
and after the first flurry of embarrassed talk, they were able to be
calm together.  Katrin had the morning's report on her father.

"I saw Doctor Pelzer.  He's not very happy.  The fever has flared up
again.  Papa doesn't respond to talk as well as he did yesterday.  You
know how he presses your hand when he understands something?  Well,
this morning I could only get an occasional response.  The rest of the
time he seemed to be unconscious.  Doctor Pelzer said I could leave. If
there's any sudden change, we'll be called."

Lotte nodded and turned away to busy herself with the luncheon
preparations.  Katrin followed her out to the kitchen.  Johann said
brusquely: "This is what it's like.  We're all on a seesaw: up one
moment, down the next.  That's why I don't want to build up false hopes
for mother or Katrin.  I don't want them clutching at cobwebs."

"You're afraid I may try to give them false hope?"

"You told me father would live."

"I'm sure he will."

"I am not sure; so I'd rather mother and Katrin learned to live with
uncertainty.  There'll be grief enough whether father lives or dies."

"I'm your guest.  Of course I'll respect your wishes."

At that moment Lotte came in carrying a linen cloth and napkins.  She
handed them to Johann and asked him to lay the table.  She took Jean
Marie's arm and led him into the next room.

"Katrin's doing the lunch.  We can be quiet for a few minutes.  It's
funny.  I can't get used to seeing you like this.

You always looked so grand in Rome.  It's strange to hear the children
calling you Uncle Jean."

"I'm afraid Johann doesn't entirely approve of me."

"He's trying so hard to be the man of the house that he gets mixed up
sometimes.  He can't get it out of his head that you were somehow
responsible for what has happened to his father."

"He's right.  I am responsible."

"On the other hand, he knows how much Carl loves you and respects you,
but he can't walk on that sacred ground until you or Carl invite him
in.  That's difficult.  I understand, because it was difficult for me,
too, at first.  Add to all that the fear of war, the resentment that
he, like so many millions, will be called to fight for a cause already
lost.  Be patient with him, Jean!  Be patient with us all.  Our little
world is tumbling round our ears and we are groping for something solid
to hold."

"Look at me, Lotte!"

"I am looking at you."

"Now close your eyes tight.  Don't open them until I tell you."

He fished in his breast pocket and brought out a small jewel case in
red morocco.  He laid it open on the small table at Lotte's elbow.  It
contained three objects, wrought in gold in the style of the
Florentines of the sixteenth century.  There was a small round box, a
tiny flagon and a cup hardly bigger than a thimble.

"Open your eyes."

"What am I supposed to see?"

He pointed to the case.

"They're beautiful, Jean.  What are they?"

"One of the privileges of the Pope used to be that he could carry the
Eucharist constantly on his person.  That's how he did it.  The box was
for the consecrated Host.  The flask and the cup were for the wine.
There's a tiny damask handkerchief folded in the lid for the cleansing
of the vessels.  The people of my first parish gave me the set as a
personal gift on the day of my election.  When I was leaving Rome to
come here, I felt ashamed.  I had nothing to bring to you who were
suffering so much on my account.  So I got to Fiumicino early, said a
private Mass in the airport chapel, and brought the Eucharist with me
for you and Carl.  I'll give you both Communion at the hospital
today."

Lotte was deeply moved.  She closed the case and handed it back to Jean
Marie.

"That says it all, Jean.  Thank you.  I only hope Carl will be
conscious enough to understand."

"Sleeping or waking, God holds him in the palm of his hand."

"Luncheon is served," said Katrin from the dining room.

As they were seating themselves Lotte explained to her children the
graceful gift Jean Marie had brought.  Johann said with apparent
surprise:

"I thought father had been given the Last Rites."

"Of course," said Lotte, "but the Eucharist is a daily thing - a
sharing of food; a sharing of life.  That's right, isn't it, Jean?"

"That's right," said Jean Marie.

"A sharing of life with the source of life."

"Thank you."  Johann acknowledged the information without comment and
asked with studied politeness: "Would you like to say a blessing for
us, Uncle Jean?"

At the hospital, Lotte introduced him to Doctor Pelzer.

She begged the good doctor to explain the medical situation to this old
friend of the family.  So it came to pass that Jean Marie Barette saw
Carl Mendelius first in a series of X-ray photographs.  The head which
had once held the history of twenty centuries was reduced to a
skull-case with broken jaws, a smashed septum and a scatter of opaque
pellets embedded in the bony structure and in the surrounding film of
flesh and mucous tissue.  Doctor Pelzer, a tall, powerful fellow with
iron-grey hair and a wary diagnostic eye, gave a commentary:

"A mess, as you see!  But we can't go probing for all those foreign
bodies until we have the poor devil stabilised.  There's more of that
rubbish in the rib-cage and the upper abdomen.

So a prayer or two would help and don't let the family expect too much,
eh?  Even if we save him, he'll need a lot of supportive therapy."

His next view was of the living man, hooked up to the drip bottles, the
oxygen tap and the cardio-monitor.  The head was swathed in bandages.
The damaged eyes were mercifully hidden.  The nasal and oral cavities
were open and motionless.

The stump of the severed hand lay like a large cloth club on the
counterpane.  The good hand twitched weakly at the folds of the
sheets.

Lotte lifted it and kissed it.

"Carl, my dearest, this is Lotte."

The hand closed over hers.  A gurgling murmur issued from the mask of
bandages.

"Jean Marie is here with me.  He'll talk to you while I go and give a
little thank-you gift to the ward sister.  I'll be back shortly."

She tiptoed from the room, closing the door behind her.

Jean Marie took Mendelius' hand.  It was soft as satin and so weak it
seemed that if one pressed too hard, the bones might crack.

"Carl, this is Jean.  Can you hear me?"

There was an answering pressure against his palm and more helpless
gurgling as Mendelius tried in vain to articulate.

"Please, don't try to talk.  We don't need words, you and I. Just lie
quiet and hold my hand.  I will pray for both of us."

He said no words.  He made no ritual gestures.  He simply sat by the
bed, clasping Mendelius' hand between his own, so that it was as if
they were one organism: the whole and the maimed, the blind and the
seeing man.  He closed his eyes, and opened his mind, a vessel ready
for the in pouring of the Spirit, a channel by which it might infuse
itself into the conjoined consciousness of Carl Mendelius.

It was the only way he knew, now, to express the relationship between
creature and creator.  He could not make petitions.  They were all
summed up in the original fiat: let your will be done.  He could not
bargain life for life, service for service because there was no vestige
of self left to which he attached any importance.  The important thing
was the body and the agonised spirit of Carl Mendelius for whom he was
now the life-line.

When at last the in pouring came, it was simple and extraordinarily
sweet, like a waft of perfume in a summer garden.  There was light and
a strange awareness of harmony as though the music was not played but
written into the texture of the brain.  There was a calm so powerful
that he could feel the fevered pulse of the sick man subside like sea
waves after a storm.  When he opened his eyes, Lotte was in the room
again, staring at him in fear and wonderment.  She said awkwardly:

"I didn't mean to interrupt, but it's nearly five o'clock."

"So late?  Would you like to receive Communion now?"

"Please, yes; but I don't think Carl can swallow the wafer."

"I know; but he can take a sip from the chalice.  Are you ready,
Carl?"

A pressure on his palm told him that Mendelius had heard and
understood.  While Lotte sat by the bedside, Jean Marie laid out the
small golden vessels and put a stole around his neck.  After a brief
prayer he handed the consecrated wafer to Lotte and then held the tiny
chalice to Mendelius' mouth.  As he pronounced the ritual words:
"Corpus domini', Lotte said:

"Amen' and Mendelius raised his hand in a feeble salute.

Jean Marie Barette cleansed the pyx and the chalice with the damask
handkerchief, folded his stole, put the case and the stole in his
pocket and tiptoed out of the room.

As he stepped past the armed guards in the corridor he was accosted by
a squat, ugly woman of indeterminate age, who introduced herself
abruptly as Professor Meissner.

"We're dining together tonight at the Mendelius house; but I told Lotte
I needed an hour alone with you.  Will you come to my place for a
drink?"

"I'd be delighted."

"Good!  There's a lot to talk about."

She took his arm, bustled him into the elevator, rode the three floors
down in silence, then hurried him out into the late sunshine.  It was
not until they were outside the confines of the clinic that she
slackened her pace and began a leisurely stroll down the hill towards
the old town.  She was more relaxed now; but her talk was still
forthright and rasping.

"You know that Carl called me in for clinical advice on your letter and
your encyclical?"

"He didn't put it that way; but, yes, I knew you were involved."

"And you read my quotes in his article?"

<"V

Yes.

"There was one they didn't use.  I'm going to give it to you now.  I
think you're a very dangerous man.  Trouble will follow you wherever
you go.  And I understand why your colleagues in the Church had to get
rid of you."

The raw brutality of the attack left him speechless for a moment.  When
he found voice, all he could say was, "Well .  what do I answer to
that?"

"You could tell me I'm a bitch and I am!  But it wouldn't budge me from
the proposition.  You are a very dangerous man!"

"I've heard the charge before," said Jean Marie quietly.

"My brothers in the Vatican called me a walking time-bomb.

But I'd like to know how you see the danger which I represent."

"I've thought about it a long time."  Anneliese Meissner was more
gracious now.

"I've done a lot of reading.  I've listened to a lot of tapes from
colleagues who have clinical experience of religious manias and cultist
influences.  At the end of it all, I am forced to conclude that you are
a man with a special perception of what Jung calls the collective
unconscious.  Therefore, you have a magical effect on people.  It is as
if you are privy to their most intimate thoughts, desires, fears as
indeed you are on this question of the Last Things.  This subject is
rooted in the deepest subsoil of the race memory.

So, when you talk or write about it, people feel you inside themselves,
almost as a function of their own egos.  As a result, everything you do
or say has profound and sometimes terrible consequences.  You are the
giant dreaming under the volcano.  When you turn in your sleep, the
earth shakes."

"And what do you think I should do about this dangerous potency?"

"You can do nothing," said Anneliese Meissner baldly.

"That's where your Cardinals made the mistake.  Had they left you in
power, the very weight of the office and its traditional methods would
have damped down the magical manifestations.  You would have been held
at a safe distance from common folk.  Now there is no damping effect at
all.

There is no distance.  Your impact is instant and it may become
catastrophic."

"And you see no good in the power or in me?"

"Good?  Oh, yes!  But it's the good that comes out of disaster, like
battlefield heroism, or the dedication of nurses in a pest-house" "You
call it magic.  Have you no other name for it?"

"Use any name you like," said Anneliese Meissner.

"Whatever you call yourself, priest, shaman, juju man, whomever you
claim to serve the spirit of the grove, the God-man or the Eternal
Oneness, you'll always be at the epic entre of an earthquake ....
Here's where I live."

They were nearly at the top of the Burgsteige, outside an old
sixteenth-century house, built of oak beams and handmade bricks.
Anneliese Meissner unlocked the door and led him up two flights of
stairs to her apartment, whose narrow windows looked out on the turrets
of Hohentiibingen and the marching pines of the Swabian uplands.  She
swept a pile of books off an armchair and gestured to Jean Marie to sit
down.

"What will you drink?  Wine, schnapps or scotch?"

"Wine, please."

As he watched her polishing a pair of dusty glasses, uncorking a bottle
of Moselle and opening a jar of nuts, he was touched by the pathos of
so much intelligence, so much hidden tenderness, locked in so ugly a
body.  She handed him the wine and made a toast:

"To Carl's recovery."

"Prosit."

She tossed off half the wine at a gulp and set down the glass.  Then
she made a bald and seemingly irrelevant announcement.

"At the clinic we have central monitoring of all intensive-care
patients."

"Indeed?"  Jean Marie was politely interested.

"Yes.  All vital signs are transmitted constantly to the monitor room,
where a senior nurse is on duty all the time.

While you were with Carl, I was in the monitor room with Doctor
Pelzer."

Jean Marie Barette waited.  He could not be sure whether she was
embarrassed or reluctant to continue.  Finally he had to prompt her.

"Please!  You were in the monitor room.  So?"

"When you arrived Carl had a temperature of 103 ; a pulse rate of 120
and a pronounced cardiac arrhythmia.  You were with him nearly two
hours.  During all that time, except for a few opening sentences, you
did not utter a single word until Lotte came back into the room.  By
then, Carl's temperature had dropped, the pulse rate was nearly normal
and the rhythm of the heart-beat was restored.  What did you do?"

"I prayed, in a fashion."

"What fashion?"

"I suppose you could call it meditation.  But if you are trying to
attribute some kind of miracle .. . please, no!"

"I don't believe in miracles.  I am, however, curious about phenomena
that go beyond the norms.  Besides ..."  She gave him an odd sidelong
glance as if she were suddenly afraid to commit herself; then she
plunged ahead.

"You might as well know it; everything that touches Carl, touches me.
I've been in love with him for ten years.  He doesn't know it and he
never will.  But right now, I've got to cry on someone's shoulder and
you're elected, because you're the one who got him into this mess! Carl
always said you had the grace of understanding.  Then, maybe, you'll
understand that for me, the fairy tale was reversed.  It wasn't the
beautiful princess and the frog-prince.  It was the girl-frog waiting
for the prince to kiss her and make her beautiful.  I know it's
hopeless and I've learned not to care too much.  I'm no threat to
anyone, certainly not to Lotte.  But when I see poor Carl hooked up to
those life-support systems, when I know how much stuff they're pumping
into him, just to keep him sedated and his body functioning, then I
wish I believed in miracles."

"I believe in them," said Jean Marie gently.

"And they all begin in an act of love."

"But love is terrible the same way you're terrible.  If you bottle it
up too long, it can blow the top of your head off.

Hell!  I didn't bring you here to bitch you or tell you about my
love-life."  She poured more wine and then told him:

"Johann Mendelius is in big trouble."

"What sort of trouble?"

"He's putting together an underground group of students to resist
military call-up, obstruct security surveillance and provide escape
routes for deserters from the armed forces."

"How do you know this?"

"He told me.  His father had mentioned that I would be prepared to
support an underground organisation among the faculty.  But these kids
are so naive!  They don't realise how closely they're watched, how easy
it is to penetrate their ranks with spies and provocateurs.  They're
buying and storing arms, which is a criminal offence .. . It's only a
matter of time before the police get wind of what's going on.

They may know already and be waiting until all the fuss over Carl dies
down."

"Johann promised he would show me what form his protest was taking.
Perhaps he's thought of taking me to a meeting of this group."

"Possibly.  It's because you're a Frenchman that they've named the
group the "Jacquerie', to recall the French peasants' revolt during the
Hundred Years' War .. . But if you take my adivce, you'll stay well
away."

"I'd like to keep an open mind on that.  I may be able to talk some
sense into Johann and his friends."

"Don't forget what I told you at the beginning.  You are a very special
man.  Without knowing how or why, you make a potent magic; and youth is
most susceptible to the witchcraft .  Now I want you to listen to a
tape."

"What's on it?"

"Part of a clinical interview with one of my patients.  I am
communicating it to you under professional secrecy as Carl communicated
your material to me.  Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"The woman is twenty-eight, a childless divorcee, the eldest daughter
of a well-known local family.  The marriage lasted three years.  She
has been divorced for one year.  She shows acute depressive symptoms,
and there have been some hallucinatory episodes which are probably the
sequelae of some experiments with LSD.  in which she admits to have
taken part during her marriage.  This tape was made yesterday.  It is
part of a session that lasted an hour and twenty minutes."

"And what will it tell me?"

"That's what I want to find out.  It tells me one thing.  It may tell
you quite another."

"My dear Professor."  He gave a chuckle of genuine good humour.

"If you really want a profile of my character, why not start with
something simple, like a Rorschach blot?"

"Because I have your profile already."  The response was curt and
irritable.

"I've had you in my case-book for weeks now.  You're a frightening
phenomenon: a resolutely simple man.  You say what you believe.  You
believe what you say.

You live in a universe permeated by an immanent God with whom you have
a direct and personal relationship.  I don't live in such a universe,
but we are both here in this room, with this tape.  I want to know your
reaction to it.  You'll indulge me, please?"

"At your service."

"The location is my consulting room.  The time: four in the afternoon.
This passage occurs after forty minutes of discursive and defensive
talk by the patient."

She switched on the machine.  A woman's voice, lowtimbred, and with a
pronounced Swabian accent, picked up what was obviously a new theme in
the narration:

"I met him one morning in the Marktplatz.  I was buying grapes.  He
picked one from the stall and popped it in my mouth.  Even though I
knew how awful he could be, it made me laugh.  He asked me would I like
a cup of tea.  I said yes I would and he took me down to that tea shop
near the Nuns' House .. . you know .. . the place you can buy teas from
all over the world, even mate from Argentina.  He was very pleasant.  I
didn't feel threatened at all.  The people in the shop were in and out
the whole time.  I agreed to try something I'd never had before: a
special infusion from Ceylon.

"I thought it was pleasant, but nothing to rave about.  We talked of
this and that: his work, my parents, how he was off women for a while.
I wondered if he'd caught anything from the last one, who was a cheap
little tart from Frankfurt.  I didn't say a word, but I knew he'd read
my thoughts.  He threw the cup of tea in my face.  It splashed down my
blouse.  He tore the blouse off, while the people in the tea shop stood
by, laughing.  The next thing we all joined hands and danced round the
shop singing "Boom Boom Boom', while the big tin tea-caddies began
exploding all over the place.  But it wasn't tea; it was fireworks,
blue and green and lots and lots of red!  .. . Then we were out in the
street.  I was naked and he was dragging me behind him and telling all
the people .. . "Look what the Turks did to my wife!  Monsters!  Bloody
rapists!"  But when we got to the hospital there were police at the
door and they wouldn't let me in because they said I had clap and the
secret service never employs people with social diseases.

They said he could kill me too if he wanted; but he said I wasn't
important enough and I started to cry.

"After that he took me to my house and told me to clean myself up.  I
had a long hot bath, then I powdered myself and put on perfume and lay
on the bed, naked, to wait for him.  Only it wasn't my bed.  It was a
beautiful circular one, soft and comfortable and smelling of lavender.
After a while he came in.

"He went into the bathroom and when he came out he was naked and clean
like me.  He kissed my breasts and excited me with his hands and then
he came inside me and we had a big climax which was like the tin
caddies exploding in the tea shop.  I always close my eyes when I have
a climax.  This time when I opened them he was lying beside me, all
bloody.  His hand was on my breast, but it was just a hand with no arm
or body.  I tried to scream but I couldn't.  Then I saw his face, it
was just empty like a big red saucer.  Then the bed wasn't a bed any
more, but a big black box with both of us inside it."

Anneliese Meissner switched off the machine and said:

"Well, that's it!"

Jean Marie Barette was silent for a long moment, then he asked: "Who is
the man in the dream?"

"Her ex-husband.  He still lives in the town."

"And you know him?"

"Not very well; but, yes, I know him."

Jean Marie said nothing.  He held up his glass.  She refilled it for
him.  Then she asked tentatively:

"Any comment on what you've just heard?"

"I'm not an expert on the decipherment of dreams; but the tape did tell
me something.  The woman is haunted by guilt.

She has knowledge which she is afraid to share with anyone else.  So
she dreams it, or constructs a dream about it and tells it to you.
Whatever she knows is connected in some way with the Mendelius affair.
How am I doing so far, Frau Professor?"

"Very well.  Please go on!"

"I think," said Jean Marie deliberately, "I think that you have the
same problem as your patient.  You know something which you're
unwilling or unable to disclose."

"I'm unwilling because I'm not sure of my conclusions.  I'm unable
because it involves my professional integrity.  You'd have the same
problem with a confessional secret."

"They're both good reasons for reticence," said Jean Marie drily.

"There are others."  Now she was irritable and combative.

"Please!  A moment!"  Jean Marie held up a warning hand.

"Let's not get heated.  You invited me here.  I have given you my
guarantee of secrecy.  If you want to tell me what's bothering you,
I'll listen.  If not, then let's enjoy the wine!"

"I'm sorry!"  It was hard for her to express any sort of penitence.

"I'm so used to playing God in the consulting room that I forget my
everyday manners.  You're right.  I'm desperately worried.  I don't see
what I can do about it, without opening a whole new nest of vipers.
Anyway, here's item one.  The woman on that tape is both vulnerable and
acquisitive.  A young divorcee in a university town, she's had more
affairs than she knows how to cope with.  One of her more serious
romances was with Johann Mendelius.  It was finished only this summer
before he left on vacation.  Fortunately, neither Carl nor Lotte got
wind of it.  But I knew because she was my patient and I had to listen
to the whole big drama.  Item two is where I stumble.  Her ex-husband
is a man how shall I explain it?  - a man so improbable that he has to
be authentic.  I have a whole series of tapes on their relationship.
He's the one who's selling guns to Johann and his group; and if that
tape means what I think it does, he's the one who sent the letter-bomb
to Carl.  I know it sounds absurd but ..."

"Evil is the ultimate absurdity," said Jean Marie Barette.

"It is the last sad buffoonery: man sitting in the ruins of his world,
daubing himself with his own excrement."

It was nearly six-thirty when he left Anneliese's apartment.

As he closed the front door behind him, his attention was caught by a
plaque on the building opposite, a sturdy hostelry built in the first
half of the sixteenth century where the burghers of Tubingen still came
to eat and drink.  The plaque announced in Gothic script: "The Old
Schloss Keller.  Here lived Professor Michael Maestlin of Goppingen,
teacher of the astronomer Johannes Kepler."

The inscription pleased him, since it celebrated the lesser known
master before the effulgent pupil.  It reminded him, too, of the fear
that had haunted his predecessor: that Tubingen might become the centre
of a second anti-Roman revolt.  He himself had never had such fears. It
had always seemed as fruitless an exercise to impeach a scholar for
heresy as to hang out the bloody sheets after a bridal night.  It
further occurred to him that he ought to provide the wine for the
evening meal.  So he pushed open the heavy nail-studded door and went
inside.

Half the booths were full of student drinkers, and a dozen burly
countrymen propped up the bar.  Jean Marie Barette made himself
perfectly understood in Hochdeutsch but was totally confused by the
names of unfamiliar vintages which the barman reeled off in dialect.
Finally he settled on a pleasantly dry white from the Ammertal, bought
two bottles and made for the exit.  A call from a corner booth stopped
him in his tracks.

"Uncle Jean!  Over here!  Come and join us!"  Johann took the bottles
and pushed his companions along the benches to make room for Jean
Marie.  He made the introductions briskly: "Franz, Alexis, Norbert,
Alvin Dolman.  This is my Uncle Jean.  Franz is my sister's boyfriend.
Alvin's an American and a very good friend of father's."

"I'm happy to meet you, gentlemen."  Jean Marie was cordiality
itself.

"May I buy you a drink?"

He signalled the waitress and ordered a round for the company and a
glass of mineral water for himself.

Johann asked: "What are you doing up this end of town, Uncle Jean?"

"Visiting Professor Meissner.  We met at the hospital.  I walked home
with her."

"How was father this afternoon?"

"The doctor says he's improved.  His temperature is down, his pulse
steadier."

"That's great news; great!"  Alvin Dolman seemed a little gone in his
cups.

"Let me know when I can see him, Johann.

I've found something he'll like.  It's a carving of Saint Christopher,
early gothic.  This he gets for free, as soon as he's sitting up and
taking nourishment."

Jean Marie was instantly intrigued.

"You are a collector then, Mr.  Dolman?"

"No, sir, a dealer!  But I've got the eye for the game.

You've got to have the eye."

"Indeed, yes.  You live here?"

"I live here, work here.  Once I was married here son-inlaw to the
Burgermeister yet!  But that didn't last.  Old dogfaces like me
shouldn't marry.  We're reject china, you might say.  Matter of fact,
your Professor Meissner was a great friend to my wife.  Helped her to
straighten out after the divorce."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Jean Marie.

"And what kind of work do you do, Mr.  Dolman?"

"I'm an artist a technical illustrator, if you must spell it out.  I
work for educational publishers up and down the Rhine.  On the side I
deal in antique art..  . in a small way, of course.  I don't have money
for the big stuff."

"I thought the company supplied the funds."

"Please?"

It was the minutest reaction hardly the flicker of an eyelid; but Jean
Marie had dealt with too many clerics and too many other subtle fellows
to miss it.  Alvin Dolman smiled and shook his head.

"The company?  I'm afraid you've misunderstood me.  I'm strictly
freelance.  I accept commissions just like a portrait painter.  No,
sir!  The only company I've ever worked for is good old Uncle Sam."

"Forgive me."  Jean Marie smiled an apology.

"One speaks a foreign language, but always one makes mistakes in the
simplest things.  Johann, what time do we sit down for your mother's
dinner?"

"No later than eight.  Let's finish our drinks and I'll walk back with
you.  We're only five minutes away."

"I should be moving, too," said Alvin Dolman.

"I've got a date in Stuttgart.  While I'm there I'll see what I can do
for you guys.  But remember, it has to be cash on the line!

Wiedersehen all!"

He climbed awkwardly to his feet and Jean Marie had to rise to let him out of the booth.  As he moved to the door Jean Marie followed him.  When they came out into the nearly deserted street he said in English:

"A word with you, Mr.  Dolman."

Dolman swung round to face him.  His smile was gone now.  His eyes were
hostile.

"Yes?"

"I know you," said Jean Marie Barette.

"I know who you are, and what company employs you and whose is the evil
spirit that inhabits you.  If I tell them inside, they will kill you
with the same guns you have sold to them.  So, keep your life and go
from this place.  Go now!"

Dolman stared at him for a moment and then laughed.

"Who do you think you are God Almighty?"

"You know who I am, Alvin Dolman.  You know everything that has been
said and written about me.  And you know it is true.  Now, in the name
of God, go!"

Dolman spat in his face, then he turned on his heel and went limping
hurriedly down the cobbled slope.  Jean Marie wiped the spittle from
his cheeks and went back into the Schloss Keller.

"Get rid of the guns!  Everyone of them is marked to convict you.
Disband the Jacquerie.  You are blown anyway.

Dolman made you the victims of the classic intelligence plot:

concentrate all the dissidents in one group, then knock them off at
leisure.  Meantime he was using you to cover up his own tracks as an
assassin."

It was one in the morning and they were alone in Mendelius' study under
the roof-tops.  Outside, the first chill wind of early autumn keened
around the belfry of the Stiftskirche.  On the floor below, Lotte and
Katrin slept peacefully, unaware of the mystery play which had been
enacted around them.  Johann, for all his shame and weariness, could
still not abandon the debate.

"But it doesn't make sense.  Dolman's a huckster who'll trade you
anything.  He's a clown who laughs when an old lady falls from a bus
and shows her drawers.  But an assassin no!"

"Dolman is the perfect agent-in-place."  Jean Marie admqnished him
patiently.

"As Professor Meissner says, he's so improbable he has to be authentic.
More!  As an agent of a friendly power, concerned with Germany as its
eastern frontier, he's the perfect instrument for dirty jobs like the
bomb-strike on your father.  But that's not all!  I have known men
highly practised in violence, who are not half as evil as their deeds.
They are conditioned, bent like twigs beyond straightening.  In some, a
key component has been lost, so that they can never be otherwise than
what they are.  But Dolman is different.  Dolman knows who he is and
what he is and he wants to be just that.  He is, truly, in the old
phrase, a habitation of evil."

"How can you know that?  You met him only once.  I can understand
Professor Meissner having an opinion about him, because she's heard all
the stories from his wife.  I heard them, too, many a time, in her bed;
but I didn't believe them, because Dolman knew I was having her, and he
encouraged me to enjoy it and prepared me to get out when the fun was
over.  But you?  One meeting?  I'm sorry, Uncle Jean.  It doesn't make
sense unless you know something more than you're telling me."

"I know less than you about Alvin Dolman but much, much more about the
noonday devil."  He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned far
back in Mendelius' armchair.

"In the high places where I used to live he was a very frequent visitor
and most beguiling company!"

"That's too easy, Uncle Jean.  I don't accept it."

"Very well.  Let me put it another way.  While you were playing
love-games with Dolman's wife, would you have invited a child to
witness them?"

"Of course not."

"Why not?"

"Well, because ..."

"Because you recognise innocence, even if you can't define it.  You
recognise evil, too; but you close your eyes to it.

Why?"

"I ... I suppose because I don't want to recognise the evil in myself
either."

"At last we come to it.  Now will you take some advice from your Uncle
Jean?"

"I'll try."

"As soon as your father can travel, move away from here.

If you can complete the purchase of the Alpine property and make it fit
for habitation, go there.  Try to keep the family together: your mother
and father, Katrin, her man too, if he will go with you.  Dolman is
gone.  He will not come back; his company will not use him again in
this region; but the company is still in business and always in
partnership with the noonday devil!"

"And where will you go, Uncle Jean?"

"Tomorrow to Paris to see my family and arrange my financial affairs.
After that .. . Who knows?  I wait on the calir Johann was still uneasy
and irritable.  He objected: "So we're back to private revelation and
prophecy and all that?"

"Well?"

"I don't believe in it.  That's all!"

"But you believed in a man who tried to kill your father.

You didn't believe the truths his wife told you in bed.  You don't know
how to smell evil from good.  Does that tell you nothing about
yourself, Johann?"

"You really strike for the throat, don't you?"

"Grow up, boy!"  Jean Marie Barette was implacable.

"We're talking about life, death and the hereafter.  No one gets an
absolution from reality!"

That night Jean Marie Barette had a dream.  He was walking in the
Marktplatz of Tubingen.  He paused by a fruit stall selling beautiful
black grapes.  He tasted one; it was sweet and satisfying.  He asked
the stall-holder to weigh him out a kilo.  She gaped at him,
horror-struck, raised her hands in front of her face and backed away.
All the people in the market place did the same until he stood,
isolated in a circle of hostile humans, holding a bunch of grapes in
his hand.  He spoke peaceably, asking what was the matter.  No one
answered.  He took a few steps towards the nearest person.

His way was barred by a big fellow with a butcher's knife.  He stopped
in his tracks and cried out:

"What's the matter?  Why are you afraid of me?"

The big fellow answered: "Because you're a Pesttrager - a
plague-carrier!  Get out before we kill you!"

Then the crowd began to close in, forcing him inexorably towards the
mouth of the alley down which, he knew, he must turn and run for his
life .. .

In the morning, red-eyed and un rested he had an early breakfast with
Lotte and then went with her to the hospital to say his farewells to
Carl Mendelius.  There, in a final quiet moment, he told them both:

"We will meet again.  I'm sure of it; but where and how, God knows!
Lotte, my dear, don't cling to anything here.

When Carl is ready, just pack and go!  Promise me!"

"I promise, Jean!  It won't be hard to leave."

"Good!  When the call comes, Carl, you will be ready for it.  For the
present, resign yourself to a long convalescence.

Help Lotte to help you.  Tell her you'll do that."

Carl Mendelius raised his good hand and stroked her cheek.  She drew
the hand to her lips and kissed the palm.  Jean Marie stood up.  He
traced the sign of the cross with his thumb on Mendelius' forehead and
then on Lotte's.  His voice was unsteady.

"I hate farewells.  I love you both.  Pray for me."

Mendelius clutched at his wrist to stay him.  He struggled to speak.
This time, painfully but clearly, he managed to articulate the words:

"The fig-tree, Jean.  I know now.  The fig-tree!"

Lotte pleaded with him.

"Please, dearest, don't try to talk."

Jean Marie said soothingly: "Dear Carl, remember what we agreed!  No
words, no arguments.  Let God make the trees grow in his own good
time."

Mendelius relaxed slowly.  Lotte held his hand.  Jean Marie kissed her
and, without another word, walked out of the room.

He was halfway to Paris, flying blind through storm clouds, when
Mendelius' words made sense to him.  They were an echo of the text from
the gospel of Matthew that had fallen open in his hands on the day of
the vision:

"And from the fig-tree learn a parable.  When the branch Js tender and
the leaves come forth you know that summer is near.  So, when you see
all these happenings you will know that the end things are very near,
yes, even at the gates!"

He felt a strange surge of relief, almost of elation.  If Carl
Mendelius believed at last in the vision, then Jean Marie Barette was
not left utterly alone.

In Paris the dream of the plague-carrier came true.  His brother, Alain
Hubert Barette, silver of hair, silver of tongue, a pillar of the
banking establishment on the Boulevard Haussmann, was shocked to the
soles of his handmade shoes.

He cherished Jean Marie.  He would somehow make adequate financial
provisions; but to open up a forty-year-old trust, and dismantle the
most complicated international arrangements pas possihlel Jean had come
at a most inconvenient time.  It would be most difficult to lodge him
with the family.

They had the decorators in.  Odette was in a constant state of near
hysteria.  And the servants my God!  However, the bank would be most
happy to let him use its suite at the Lancaster until he was able to
make other arrangements.

How was Odette apart from the hysteria?  Well enough, but shocked
devastated indeed by the abdication!  And, of course, when Cardinal
Sancerre, Archbishop of Paris, came back from the consistory and began
spreading all those odd stories that was truly an intimate distress for
the whole family.

Political contacts?  Diplomatic encounters?  Normally Alain Hubert
Barette would have been happy to act as host to such meetings; but in
this precise moment eh!  one counselled a great discretion.  One did
not want to risk a snub, by too direct an approach to the President or
even to the high gentlemen at the Quai d'Orsay.  Why not come tomorrow
night for dinner with Odette and the girls and then discuss the whole
question?

Meantime, the money problem.  The bank would grant Jean Marie a
substantial credit line, guaranteed by the trust, until such time as it
was possible to reconstitute the arrangements.

"Now, let's get some documents signed so that you can have funds
immediately.  I suggest strictly between loving brothers!  that a good
tailor is a first requisite and a decent shirt maker  After all, you
are still a Monseigneur and even the garments of a layman should
indicate the hidden dignity."

It was one idiocy too many.  It put Jean Marie in a cold, Gallic
rage.

"Alain, you are a fool!  You are also a snob and a tasteless, greedy
little money-changer!  I will not come to your house.  I do not wish to
have the apartment at the Lancaster.  You will provide me immediately
with the money I need.  You will call a meeting of the trustees for ten
in the morning and we will discuss in detail their past administration
and their future activities.  I have little time and much travel to do.
I will not be inhibited by the bureaucratic nonsense of your bank.  Do
I make myself clear?"

"Jean, you misunderstand me.  I did not intend to ..."

"Be quiet, Alain!  The less said the better.  What documents do I have
to sign for the immediate funds I need?"

Fifteen minutes later it was done.  A very subdued Alain made the last
call to summon the last trustee to the next morning's meeting.  He
mopped his hands with a silk handkerchief and delivered himself of a
carefully modified apology.

"Please!  We are brothers.  We should not quarrel.  You have to
understand: we are all under a strain now.  The money markets are going
mad.  We have to defend ourselves as if it were against bandits.  We
know there will be a war.  So how do we protect the bank's assets and
our own?  How do we arrange our personal lives?  You have been away so
long, protected so long ..."

In spite of his anger Jean Marie laughed a gusty chuckle of genuine
amusement.

"Eh-eh-eh, little brother!  I bleed for you!  For my part, I should not
know what to do with all those trunks and strongrooms full of paper and
coinage and bullion.  But you're right.

It's too late in the day to quarrel and it's also too late for all that
silly snobbery!  Why don't you see if you can get Vauvenargues on the
phone for me ..."

"Vauvenargues?  The Foreign Minister?"

"The same."

"As you wish."  Alain shrugged resignedly and consulted his
leather-bound desk directory.  He switched to a private line and tapped
out a number.  Jean Marie listened with cool amusement to the one-sided
dialogue.

"Hullo!  This is Alain Hubert Barette, Director of Halevy Freres et
Barette, Banquiers.  Please connect me with the Minister .. . Apropos
of the fact that an old friend of his has arrived in Paris and would
like to speak with him.  The friend is Monseigneur Jean Marie Barette,
formerly His Holiness Pope Gregory XVII.  Oh, I see!  Then perhaps you
will be kind enough to pass the message and have the Minister call back
to this number.  Thank you."

He put down the receiver and made a grimace of distaste.

"The Minister is in conference.  The message will be passed.

You've been there, Jean!  You know the routines.  Once you have to
explain yourself and your current identity, you're diplomatically dead.
Oh, I'm sure the Minister will return the call; but what do you want
with a limp handshake and some words about the weather?"

"I'll make the next call myself."  Jean Marie consulted his pocket-book
and spelt out the private number of the most senior presidential
counsellor, a man with whom, during his pontificate, he had maintained
a constant and friendly relationship.  The response came immediately:

"ThisisDuhamel."

"Pierre, this is Jean Marie Barette.  I am in Paris for a few days on
private business.  I'd like to see you and your master!"

"And I you.  But it has to be in private.  As to the master my regrets,
but no!  The official word is out.  You are untouchable."

"Where does the word come from?"

"From your principal to our principal.  And the Friends of Silence have
been busy at all the lower levels.  Where are you staying?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Outside the city is better.  Take a taxi and drive out to
L'Hostellerie des Chevaliers.  It's about three kilometres this side of
Versailles.  I'll telephone ahead and book the accommodation for you.
Sign yourself as Monsieur Gregoire.  They won't ask for documents. I'll
call there on my way home about eight.  I must go now.  A bien tot

Jean Marie put down the refeiver.  It was his turn to apologise.

"You're right, little brother.  Diplomatically, I am dead and buried.
Well, I should be going.  Give my love to Odette and the girls.  We'll
try to arrange a meal together before I leave."

"You don't want to change your mind about the Lancaster?"

"Thank you, no.  If I'm a plague-carrier I'd rather not spread the
infection to my family.  Tomorrow at ten, eh?"

The Hostellerie des Chevaliers was a pleasant surprise, a cluster of
ancient farm buildings converted into an agreeable and discreet hotel.
There were manicured lawns and quiet rose-arbours, and a millstream
that meandered under a drapery of willows.

The patron was a handsome woman in her mid-fifties who waived all the
formalities of registration and led him immediately to a pleasant suite
with a view on to a private enclave with its own green-sward and a
lily-pond.  She pointed out that he might make his telephone calls with
full security, that the refrigerator was stocked with liquor and that,
as a friend of M. Duhamel, he had only to raise a finger to command the
total service of the Hostellerie.

As he unpacked his one suitcase he was amused and a whit surprised to
see how lightly he was travelling: one suit, a raincoat, a
sports-jacket and trousers, a pullover, two pairs of pyjamas and half a
dozen changes of shirts, underwear and socks constituted his whole
wardrobe.  His toiletries, his mass kit, a breviary, a missal and a
pocket-book made up the rest of his impedimenta.  For sustenance he had
a day's supply of cash, a folder of travellers' cheques and a circular
letter of credit from Halevy Freres et Barette.  For these he was a
debtor to the bank until the trustees released some of the funds from
his patrimony.  At least he was free to move quickly once the call
came, as it had come centuries before to John, the son of Zachary, in
the desert.

What troubled him now was a growing sense of isolation and of his
precarious dependence on the good-will of friends.

No matter that at the centre of himself was a great pool of calm, a
place, an estate, where all opposites were reconciled;

he was still a man, subject to all the chemistries of the flesh, all
the unstable physics of the mind.

The weapon of estrangement had been used against him in the dark and
bitter days before his abdication.  Now it was being used again, to
render him impotent in the political arena.  Pierre Duhamel, long-time
counsellor to the President of the Republic, was not prone to
exaggeration.  If he said you were dying, it was indeed time to call
the priest; if he said you were dead, the stone masons were already
carving your epitaph.

That Pierre Duhamel had been so prompt to suggest a rendezvous was
itself an indication of crisis.  In all the years of their
acquaintance, Duhamel had observed a singular and Spartan code: "I have
one wife: the woman I married.  I have one mistress: the Republic.
Never tell me anything you do not want reported.  Never try to frighten
me.  Never offer me a bribe.  I give patronage to none and my advice
only to those whom I am paid to counsel.  I respect all faiths.  I
demand to be private about my own.  If you trust me I shall never lie
to you.  If you lie to me, I shall understand, but never trust you
again."

In the days of his pontificate, Jean Marie Barette had had many
exchanges with this strangely attractive man, who looked like a prize
fighter, reasoned as eloquently as Montaigne and went home to cherish a
wife who had once been the toast of Paris and was now a ravaged victim
of multiple sclerosis.

They had a son at Saint Cyr and a daughter somewhat older, who had
earned a good reputation as a producer of programmes for television.
For the rest, Jean Marie made no enquiry.  Pierre Duhamel was what his
President claimed him to be a good man for the long road.

Jean Marie picked up his breviary and stepped out into the garden to
read the vespers of the day.  It was a habit he cherished: the prayer
of a man walking, at day's end, hand in hand with God in a garden.  The
day's psalmody began with the canticle he had always loved: "Quam
dilecta' - "How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts.  My soul
longeth and fain teth for the courts of the Lord.  My heart and my
flesh have rejoiced in the living God.  For the sparrow hath found
herself a house and the dove a nest for herself where she may lay her
young ones .. ."

It was the perfect prayer for a late summer evening, with the shadows
long, the air still and languorous with the perfume of roses.  As he
turned do-mi a gravel led pathway towards another stretch of lawn, he
heard children's voices, and a moment later saw a group of little
girls, all dressed alike in gingham dresses and pinafores, playing a
simple catching game with a pair of young teachers.  On a bench nearby
an older woman divided her attention between the group and a piece of
embroidery.

As Jean Marie passed along the gravel led walk, one of the children
broke away from the group and ran towards him.

She slipped on the verge and fell almost at his feet.  She burst into
tears.  He picked her up and carried her to the woman on the bench, who
dabbed at her grazed knee and offered her a lollipop to soothe her.  It
was only then that Jean Marie noticed that the child was a mongol as
indeed were all the others in the group.  As if sensing his shock, the
woman held the child towards him and said with a smile:

"We are all from the Institute across the road.  This one has just come
to us.  She's homesick; so she thinks every man is her papa."

"And where is papa?"  There was a touch of censure in the question.

The woman shook her head.

"Oh, no, it isn't what you think.  He's been recently widowed.  He
feels, quite rightly, that she is safer here with us.  We have about a
hundred children in the Institute.  The patron lets us bring the little
ones here to play.  Her only child was mongoloid but it died early."

Jean Marie held out his arms.  The child came to him willingly and
kissed him, then sat in his lap and began playing happily with the
buttons of his shirt.

He said: "She's very affectionate."

"Most are," the woman told him.

"People who are able to keep them in the family group find that it is
like having a new baby in the house all the time.  But, of course, it
is when the parents age and the child comes to adolescence and maturity
that the tragedies begin.  The boys may become very rough and violent.
The girls are easy victims to sexual invasion.  The future is dark for
both parents and children.  It's sad.  I am so very fond of them."

"How do you maintain the Institute?"

"We have a grant from the government.  We ask fees from parents who can
pay.  We solicit private charity.  Fortunately we have some wealthy
sponsors like Monsieur Duhamel, who lives close by  He calls the
children 'les petites bouffonnes du bon Dieu' .. . God's little clowns
..."

"It's a gentle thought."

"You know Monsieur Duhamel perhaps?  He's a very important man, the
President's right hand, they say."

"By repute," said Jean Marie carefully.

The child slipped from his knee and began tugging his hand to make him
walk with her.  He asked: "May I take her down to the pond to see the
fish?"

"Of course.  I'll come with you."

As he moved away his breviary fell from his pocket on to the bench. The
woman picked it up, glanced at the title-page, then laid aside her
embroidery and followed him, book in hand.

"You left your breviary, father."

"Oh!  Thank you."

He shoved it back in his pocket.  The woman took the child's other hand
and fell into step with Jean Marie.  She said:

"I have the strange feeling I've seen you somewhere before."

"I'm sure we haven't met.  I've been away from France a long time."

"A missionary, perhaps?"

"In a way, yes."

"Where did you serve?"

"Oh, several countries, but mostly in Rome.  I'm retired now.  I came
home for a vacation."

"I thought priests never retired."

"Let's say I'm on retreat for a while.  Come on, little one!

Let's go see the goldfish."

He swung the child up on his shoulder and began singing a song from his
own childhood as he marched her down to the pond.  The woman dropped
back and stood watching them from a distance.  He seemed a most
pleasant man, obviously a lover of children but when a priest, still
vigorous, was retired so early, there had to be a reason.

Punctually at eight, Pierre Duhamel was knocking on the door of the
suite.  He must be gone by eight forty-five, since he never failed to
have dinner at home with his wife.

Meantime he would drink a Campari and soda with Jean Marie, whom he
seemed to regard with bleak amusement as a highly memorable survivor,
rather like the hairy mammoth.

"My God!  They really pegged you out and ran the steamroller over you!
Frankly, I'm astonished to see you looking so healthy.  What have you
done now that makes them lean so hard on you?  Of course, that big
splash in the press didn't make you any more popular with the French
hierarchy.  The Friends of Silence are very strong here.  Then I heard
that your friend, Mendelius, had been the victim of a terrorist bomb
attack."

"A bomb attack, yes.  A terrorist action, no.  The thing was planned
and executed by an agent of the C.I.A."  Alvin Dolman."

"Why the C.I.A.?"

"Why not?  Dolman was their agent-in-place.  I think it was a neat
piece of work by the Americans for the Bundesrepublik.  It was designed
to rid them of an influential academic who was bound to cause trouble
once the call-up for military service was implemented."

"Any proof?"

"Enough for me.  Not enough to raise a public outcry."

"Very soon," Pierre Duhamel stirred the drink with his finger, "very
soon you'll be able to boil your mother in oil on the Pont Royal and
nobody will blink an eye.  What is being done to you is only a pale
shadow of what is being planned for the repression of persons and the
suppression of debate.

The new propaganda chiefs will make Goebbels look like a schoolboy
amateur.  You haven't been back in the world long enough to feel the
impact of their methods but my God, they're effective."

"Which means you agree with them?"

"Sad to say, I do.  You see, my friend, on the premise that an atomic
war is inevitable and that's our military projection and your own
prophecy, remember!  the only way we can control and offer any sort of
protection to large masses of people is by an intense conditioning
programme.  There's no way we can protect the people of Paris from
blast and radiation or nerve gas or a lethal virus.  If we announce
that nasty fact, tout court, we'll have instant panic.  So we have to
keep the cities working as long as we can at all costs.  If that means
sweeping the streets with tanks twice a day we'll do it.

If it means pre-dawn raids on dissidents or too-vocal idealists we'll
have them out in their night-shirts and shoot a few to admonish the
rest.  Then if we need some diversions bread and circuses and orgies on
the steps of the Sacre Coeur we'll turn those on, too!  And there'll be
no debate about any of it!

We'll all be Friends of Silence then; and God help anyone who opens his
mouth at the wrong moment.  That's the scenario, my friend.  I don't
like it any more than you do; but I recommended it to my President just
the same."

"Then for pity's sake," Jean Marie pleaded with him, "don't you think
you should look at the scenario I suggested?

Surely anything would be better than the primitive brutality and
bacchanalia you're prepared to offer."

"We've done our homework," Pierre Duhamel told him with wintry
humour.

"We're assured on the best psychiatric authority that the oscillation
of tactics between violence and bacchic indulgence will have the effect
of keeping the public both puzzled and amenable to authority especially
as the facts can only be evidenced by hearsay and not by reliable
report in the press or on television."

"That's monstrous."  Jean Marie Barette was furious.

"Of course it's monstrous."  Pierre Duhamel gave an expressive shrug.

"But consider your alternative.  I have it with me."

He took out his wallet, extracted a carefully folded square of
newspaper and smoothed it open.  He went on: "This is you, as Gregory
XVII, quoted in the Mendelius article.  I have to presume the quote is
authentic.  This is what it says:

"... It is clear that in the days of universal calamity the traditional
structures of society will not survive.  There will be a ferocious
struggle for the simplest needs of life food, water, fuel and shelter.
Authority will be usurped by the strong and the cruel.  Large urban
societies will fragment themselves into tribal groups, each hostile to
the other.

Rural areas will be subject to pillage.  The human person will be as
much a prey as the beasts whom we now slaughter for food.  Reason will
be so clouded that man will resort for solace to the crudest and most
violent forms of magic.  It will be hard, even for those founded most
strongly in the Promise of the Lord, to sustain their faith and
continue to give witness, as they must do, even to the end.  How then
must Christians comport themselves in these days of trial and terror?

"Since they will no longer be able to maintain themselves as large
groups, they must divide themselves into small communities, each
capable of sustaining itself by the exercise of a common faith and a
true mutual charity."

"Now, let's see what we have in that prescription.  Large scale
disorder and chaos in social relations, to be balanced by what?  Small
communities of the elect, making seminal experiments in the exercise of
charity and the other Christian virtues.  Is that a fair summary?"

"As far as it goes, yes."

"But whatever government or leadership still exists at that time will
have to take account of the barbarians first.  How is it going to do
that, except by the violent measures we envisage?  After all, your
elect not to mention the elect of all other cults!  will take care of
themselves; or the Almighty will!  Let's face it, my friend, that's why
your own people cast you out.  They couldn't argue with the principle.
It's a beautiful thought: God's people planting their garden of graces,
as the monks and nuns of old did in the dark ages of Europe.  But, at
bottom, your Bishops are cold pragmatists.

They know that if you want law and order, you must demonstrate how bad
chaos can be.  If you want morality back again, you have to have Satan
in the streets, large as life, so you can shout him down in full view
of the terrified populace.  In every country in the world it's the same
story;

because no country can prosecute a war without a willing and conforming
public.  Your own Church has adopted the siege mentality: no debate,
back to the simple kitchen moralities, and let's have everyone at Mass
on Sunday so that we give public witness against the ungodly!  The last
thing they want is some wayward prophet howling doom among the
gravestones!"

"Even though they know the doom is coming?"

"Because they know it!  Precisely because they know it!

They cannot, any more than we, cope with the unbearable before it
happens.  That's the whole reason for the Friends of Silence and their
counterparts in secular government!"  Suddenly he was laughing.

"My friend, don't look so shocked!

What did you expect from Pierre Duhamel a tranquilliser and a spoonful
of soothing syrup?  The Roman Catholics aren't the only ones who are
opting for conformity.  All the other big cults which have membership
and property in the Republic have assured the government of their
loyalty in the event of national emergency.  The reason they're all
holding to the old models of experience and culture is because they
have no time now to test new ones, or accustom their people to live
with them."

Jean Marie was silent for a long moment.  Finally he said quietly:

"I accept what you tell me, Pierre.  Now answer me one question.  What
preparations have you, personally, made for the day when the first
missiles are launched?"

Duhamel was not smiling now.  He took time to frame his answer.

"This is a day in our scenario called R Day R for Rubicon.  If any one
of half a dozen actions is taken by any major powers, then the
chemistry of conflict will become irreversible.  War will be declared.
A global conflict will follow.  On R Day I shall go home.  I shall
bathe my wife.  I shall cook her favourite meal, open the best wine in
my cellar and take a long time to drink it.  Then I shall carry my wife
to bed, lie down beside her and administer a poison pill to us both.
We're agreed.  Our children know.  They don't like the idea.  They have
other plans and other reasons; but they respect our decision.  My wife
has suffered enough.  I would not want her to endure the horrors of the
aftermath and to face them without her would be, for me, a pointless
masochism."

He was being challenged and he knew it.  It was the same challenge Carl
Mendelius had made to him in the garden at Monte Cassino: "I have met
good people who would prefer eternal blackness to the vision of Siva
the Destroyer."  Pierre Duhamel was an even more formidable inquisitor,
because he had none of Mendelius' inhibitions.  He was still waiting
for his answer.

Jean Marie Barette said calmly: "I believe in free will, Pierre.  I
believe a man is judged by the light which has been given him.  If you
choose a stoic end to an intolerable situation, I may condemn the act;
but upon the actor I can pass no verdict at all.  I would rather trust
you, as I trust myself, to the mercy of God.  However, I have one
question."

"Ask it," said Pierre Duhamel.

"For you and for your wife, everything ends on Rubicon Day.  But what
about the helpless ones your little Clowns of God, for example?  Oh
yes, I saw them in the garden this afternoon!  I talked with their
gouvernante who told me you were one of their most important sponsors.
So, in the bad times, what will you do?  Leave them to die like
chickens in a barn-fire, or toss them out as play-things for the
barbarians?"

Pierre Duhamel finished his drink and set down the glass.

He fished out a handkerchief and dabbed at his lips.  He said, with
rueful formality:

"You are a very intelligent man, Monseigneur; but even you do not see
the whole future.  My little clowns are already provided for.  Under a
series of most secret political directives, persons who, by reason of
insanity, incurable infirmity or other gross disability, will be a
burden on the wartime state, will immediately on the outbreak of
hostilities be discreetly eliminated!  Hitler gave us the blueprints
for that one.  We have updated them to include a compassionate rather
than a brutal disposal.  I shock you, of course?"

"What shocks me is that you can continue to live with this secret."

"What do I do?  If I try to publicise it, I am branded a madman like
you with your vision of Armageddon and the Second Coming.  You see, we
are both in the same sad galley."

"Then let us see how we get out of it, my friend."

"First," said Duhamel, "let's look at your problem.  You are, as I
said, officially untouchable.  You will find it increasingly difficult
to circulate.  Certain countries will hesitate to give you a visa.  You
will be harassed at every point.  Your bags will be rifled.  You will
have lengthy sessions with frontier officials.  You will be surprised
at how uncomfortable life can be.  So, all in all, I think we have to
get you a new passport in a new name."

"Can you do that?"

"I do it all the time for people on special assignment.  You are not on
assignment but you are most certainly a special case.  Do you have any
recent photographs of yourself?"

"I have a dozen copies of the one in my present passport.  I was told
some countries require them for visa applications."

"Give me three of them.  I'll have your passport delivered here
tomorrow."

"You're a good friend, Pierre.  Thank you."

"Please!"  Pierre Duhamel gave him a sudden boyish grin.

"My master, the President, wants you out of the country.  I am
instructed to do everything possible to set you on your way."

"Why should he care so much?"

"He understands theatre," said Pierre Duhamel drily.

"One man walking on the water is a miracle.  Two is quite
ridiculous."

The image amused them both.  They laughed and the tension was broken.
Pierre Duhamel dropped his pose of defensive irony and began to talk
more freely.

"When you see the battle plans laid out, it is like a vision of the
inferno.  No horror is absent.  There are neutron bombs, poison gas,
spray-borne deadly diseases.  In theory of course it is all based on
limited action; so that the greatest horrors are held as deterrents in
reserve.  But, in fact, once the first shots are fired, there will be
no limit to the escalation.  Once you've done one murder, the rest are
easy, because you have only one life in jeopardy to the hangman."

"Enough!"  Jean Marie Barette stopped the conversation abruptly.

"You have talked yourself and your wife into a suicide pact with a
surfeit of horrors!  I refuse to surrender this whole planet to evil.
If we can hold one corner of it for hoping and loving then we'll do it.
Pierre, you hate what is being plotted.

You hate your impotence in the face of the vast unreason.

Why not make one last act of faith and step up to the firing line with
me?"

"To do what?"  asked Pierre Duhamel.

"Let's shock the world into listening to us.  Let's tell them first
about God's little clowns and what will happen to them on Rubicon Day.
You get hold of the document.  I'll get Georg Rainer to arrange the
press conference and we'll face it together."

"And then?"

"Dear God!  We'll rouse the conscience of the world!

People always rise up against the evil done to children."

"Do they?  We're nearly at the end of the century and there's still
child labour in Europe, not to mention the rest of the world.  There's
still no effective legislation against child abuse; and women are still
fighting each other and their legislators over the killing of the
near-term foetus.  No, my dear Jean!  Trust in God if you must, but
never, never in man.

If I did what you suggest, the press would black us out and the police
would have us in the deepest cachot in the country inside half an hour.
I'm sorry.  I am a servant of what is.

When what is becomes unbearable, I make my exit.  La come die est
finie. Give me those photographs.  You'll have a new passport and a new
identity tomorrow."

Jean Marie took the photographs out of his wallet and handed them over.
As he did so he grasped Duhamel's hand and held it firmly.

"I won't let you go like this!  You're doing a terrible thing.

You're closing your ears and your heart to a clear call.  It may be the
last one you get."

Duhamel disengaged himself from the grip.

"You have it wrong, Monseigneur."  There was a remote wraith-like
sadness in his voice.

"I answered my call a long time ago.  When my wife fell ill and the
doctor gave me the prognosis, I walked to Notre Dame and sat all alone
in front of the sanctuary.  I didn't pray.  I gave the Almighty an
ultimatum.  I said: "Eh hienl Because she's got to wear it, I'll wear
it too.  I'll make her as happy as I can for as long as she's alive.
But understand, enough is enough!  If you push us any more, I'll hand
back the keys to the house of life and we'll both walk out."  Well,
He's done it, hasn't He?  Even to you He didn't say: "Tell them to
reform the world or else!"  You got the same message as I get every day
in the presidential despatches.  Judgment Day is round the corner.
There's no hope!  There's no way out!  So, for me, all bets are off.
I'm sorry for my little clowns; but I didn't beget them and I wasn't
around on creation day.  I didn't mix the whole bloody explosive mess
of the universe.  Do you understand, Monseigneur?"

"Everything," said Jean Marie Barette, "except one item.

Why are you taking all this trouble over me?"

"God knows!  Probably because I admire the courage of a man who can
take life and all the filth of it without any conditions at all.  My
little clowns are like that; but only because they haven't the brains
to know better.  At least they'll die happy."  He scribbled a number on
the pad beside the phone.

"That's my home telephone.  If you need me, call.

If I'm not available ask for Chariot.  He's my major-domo and very good
at improvising tactical operations.  However, you should be safe here
for a day or two.  After that, please be very careful.  People don't
see them; but the dagger-men are already in the streets!"

When Duhamel had gone he fell prey to a winter fear: the prickling
dread of the lone traveller who hears the wolf-howls from the
timber-line.  He could not bear the solitude of his room; so he went
down to the restaurant, where the patron found him a table in a quiet
angle, from which he could survey the rest of the company.  He ordered
a piece of melon, a small entre cote a half-bottle of the house wine,
then settled down to enjoy the meal.

At least there was no menace here.  The lighting was restful;

there were fresh flowers on every table.  The napery was spotless, the
service discreet.  The clients, at first glance, were affluent business
men and bureaucrats with their assorted women-folk.  Even as he made
the judgment, he caught sight of himself in a wall-mirror, and realised
that he, who had once worn the red of a Cardinal and the white of a
Pope, was now just one more grey-haired fellow in the uniform of the
bourgeoisie.

The very ordinariness of his own image reminded him of one of Carl
Mendelius' earliest lectures at the Gregorian.  He was explaining the
nature of the gospel parables.  Many of them, he said, were records of
Jesus' table-talk.  Their metaphors of masters and servants and meals
were prompted by immediate and commonplace surroundings.  Then he added
a rider to the proposition: "However, the familiar stories are like a
minefield, full of traps and tripwires.  They all contain
contradictions, alienating elements, which bring the listener up short
and make him see a new potential, for good or evil, in the most banal
event."

In his own encounter with Pierre Duhamel, he had been quite unprepared
for the finality of the man's despair.  It was the more terrible
because it was quite passionless.  It could compass, without a tremor,
the most monstrous perversities;

but it would not find room for the smallest hope or the simplest joy.
It was so rational a madness that one could neither cure it nor argue
against it.  And yet, and yet there was more than one tripwire in the
minefield!  Pierre Duhamel might despair of himself; but Jean Marie
Barette must never despair of him.  He must still believe that so long
as life lasted, Pierre Duhamel was still within the reach of
Everlasting Mercy.  Jean Marie must still make prayer for his soul,
must still reach out warm hands to unfreeze his stubborn heart.

The steak was tender and the wine was smooth; but even as he savoured
them, Jean Marie was preoccupied by the challenge that now presented
itself.  His credibility was at stake not as a visionary, but as a
simple bearer of God's good news to man.  He had accused Duhamel of
rejecting the good news; but was it not rather Jean Marie Barette once
a Pope and servant of the servants of God who had failed to present it
with faith and love enough?  Once again, he was urged imperatively to
open himself to a new in pouring of strength and authority.  His
reverie was interrupted by the patron who paused at his table to ask
how he was enjoying the food.  He complimented her with a smile.

"I've been fed like a king, madame."

"In Gascony we would say 'fed like the Pope's mule'."

There was a gleam of mischief in her eyes, but Jean Marie was in no
mood to embroider the joke.  He asked: "Can you tell me, is it far from
here to Monsieur Duhamel's house?"

"About ten minutes by car.  If you want to go there in the morning I
can have one of the staff drive you.  But you should telephone first.
The place is guarded like a fortress by security men and dogs."

"I am sure Monsieur Duhamel will receive me.  I should like to go there
immediately after dinner."

"In that case, let me call a taxi.  The driver can wait and bring you
back."

"Thank you, madame."

"Please!  It is my pleasure."  She made a show of brushing a few crumbs
from the cloth and said softly: "Of course, I would much rather be
feeding the Pope than his mule."

"I'm sure he'll be happy to visit you, madame once I can assure him of
your absolute discretion."

"As to that," said madame sweetly, "all our clients trust us.

We learned very quickly from Monsieur Duhamel that silence is golden!
.. . For dessert may I recommend the raspberries.

They come from our own garden."

He finished the meal without haste.  It was almost as if he were an
athlete, running with a pace-maker who would, at a given moment, hand
the race over to him.  His conscious attention began to shift from
Duhamel to his invalid wife.  It was as if she were stretching out her
hand to reach him.  He finished his coffee, walked to the booth and
telephoned Duhamel's private number.  A male voice answered.

"Who is speaking, please?"

"This is Monsieur Gregoire.  I should like to speak to Monsieur
Duhamel."

"I'm afraid that is not possible."

"Then will you please tell him I shall be at his house in fifteen
minutes."

"That will not be convenient.  Madame is very ill.  The doctor is with
her now; and Monsieur Duhamel is in conference with an overseas
visitor."

"What is your name, please?"

"Chariot."

"Chariot, two hours ago Monsieur Duhamel named you to me as a man of
confidence to whom I should turn in an emergency.  This is an
emergency, so will you please do exactly as I ask and let Monsieur
Duhamel decide whether my visit is opportune or not?  I shall be with
you in fifteen minutes."

The taxi arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm.  The driver was a
laconic fellow who announced his contract terms for this sort of job
and, once they were accepted, lapsed into silence.  Jean Marie Barette
closed his eyes and disposed himself to what would be demanded of him
in the coming encounters.

The house of Pierre Duhamel was a large country mansion in the style of
the Second Empire, set in a small park, behind a tall fence of iron
spikes.  The front gate was closed and a police car with two men in it
was parked outside.  Immediate dilemma!  On the telephone he had
identified himself as Monsieur Gregoire.  If the police demanded his
papers he would be revealed as Jean Marie Barette, a most compromising
visitor.  He decided to bluff it out.  He rolled down the window and
spoke to the nearer police officer.

"I am Monsieur Gregoire.  I have an appointment with Monsieur
Duhamel."

' "Wait a moment!"  The policeman picked up a pocket radio and called
the house.

"A certain Gregoire.  He says he has an appointment."

Jean Marie could not make out the answer but apparently it satisfied
the policeman, who nodded and said:

"You're expected.  Identification, please!"

"I was instructed not to carry it on this occasion.  You may check that
with Monsieur Duhamel."

The policeman called again.  This time there was a longish interval
before clearance was given.  Then, the gates opened electrically, the
policeman waved him through and the gates closed again.  The taxi had
hardly reached the portal when the front door was opened by Pierre
Duhamel himself.  He was shaking with anger.

"For God's sake, man!  What is this?  Paulette has collapsed.

There's a man from Moscow in my drawing-room.  What the hell do you
want?"

"Where is your wife?"

"Upstairs.  The doctor's with her."

"Take me to her!"

"Look!  She's desperately ill."

"Take me to her."

Pierre Duhamel stared at him as if he were a stranger, then he made a
small shrugging gesture of surrender.

"Very well!

Follow me, please."

He led the way upstairs and pushed open the door of the bedroom.
Paulette Duhamel, a pale, shrunken figure, was lying propped about with
pillows in the big four-poster bed.

The doctor stood holding her limp wrist in his hand counting the
pulse-beats.

Duhamel asked: "Any change?"

The doctor shook his head.

"The paraplegia has extended itself.  The reflexes are weaker.  There
is fluid in both lungs, because the muscles of the respiratory system
are beginning to fail.  We may do a little better for her in hospital
but not much.  Who is this gentleman?"

"An old friend.  A priest."

"Ah!"  The doctor was obviously surprised but tactful.

"Then I shall leave you with her for a while.  She drifts in and out of
consciousness.  If there is any marked change, please call me
instantly.  I shall be just outside."

He went out.

Pierre Duhamel said with cold anger: "I want no rites, no mumbo-jumbo.
If she could speak she would refuse them, too."

"There will be no rites," said Jean Marie Barette gently.

"I

will sit and hold her hand.  You can wait if you wish unless your
visitor is impatient."

"He'll be patient," said Pierre Duhamel harshly.

"He needs me.  He's got famine on his hands this winter."

Jean Marie said nothing.  He drew a chair to the bedside, sat down,
picked up the woman's slack wasted hand and held it between his own.
Pierre Duhamel, standing at the foot of the bed, saw a curious
transformation.  Jean Marie's body became quite rigid; the muscles of
his face tightened, so that, in the half-light of the sickroom, his
features looked as though they had been carved from wood.  Something
else was happening too, which he could not put into words.  It was as
if all the life inside the man were draining away from the peripheries
of his body into some secret well at the centre of himself.  All the
while Paulette lay there, a sad, shrunken wax doll, her eyes closed,
her breathing shallow and full of rales, so that Duhamel wished with
all his heart it would stop and she that special and essential she whom
he had loved for a lifetime might be released like a song-bird from its
cage.

The wish was so poignant it seemed to put a stop on time.

Whether he stood for seconds or minutes or hours Duhamel did not know.
He looked again at Barette.  He was changing again the muscles
softening, the taut features relaxing into a momentary smile.  Then he
opened his eyes and turned to the woman on the bed.  He said quite
casually:

"You can open your eyes now, madame."

Paulette Duhamel opened her eyes and instantly focused them on her
husband at the foot of the bed.  She spoke plainly, in a weak but
unwavering voice.

"Hullo, cheri.  I seem to have been foolish again."

She raised her arms to embrace him and the first thing Duhamel noticed
was that the constant tremors which characterised the late stage of the
disease had ceased.  He bent to kiss her.  When he disengaged himself,
Jean Marie Barette was standing at the open door, chatting quietly with
the doctor.

The doctor moved to the bed, took Paillette's pulse count and
auscultated her chest once more.  When he straightened up, he was
smiling uncertainly.

"Well, well!  I think we may all relax a little, especially you,
madame.  This nastiness seems to be over for the moment.

However, you must stay very quiet.  In the morning we can think about
clearing up that respiratory problem.  But for now Grace a. Dieul we
are out of crisis."  As he walked down the hall with Pierre Duhamel and
Jean Marie he became more expansive and voluble.

"With this disease one never knows.  Sudden collapses are not too
common, but they can happen, as you saw tonight.  Then, with equal
suddenness, there is remission.  The patient returns to a euphoric
state and the degeneration slows down.  I have noticed often that a
religious intervention, like yours tonight, Father, or the
administration of the Last Rites, may produce in the patient a great
calm, which is in itself a therapy.  You will remember that on the
ancient island of Cos ..."

Duhamel steered him diplomatically to the exit and then came back to
Jean Marie.  He was like a sleepwalker waking in a strange countryside.
He was also most oddly humble.

"I don't know what you did or how you did it, but I think I owe you a
life."

"You owe nothing to me."  Jean Marie spoke with a spartan authority.

"You are in debt to God; but since you are in contest with him, why not
make the payment to your little clowns?"

"What made you come tonight?"

"Sometimes, like all the mad, I hear voices."

"Don't mock me, Monseigneur!  I'm tired; and my night isn't half
over."

"I'll be going now."

"Wait!  I'd like you to meet my visitor."

"Are you sure he wants to meet me?"

"Let's ask him," said Pierre Duhamel and walked him into the library to
meet Sergei Andrevich Petrov, Minister for Agricultural Production in
the USSR.

He was a short man, bulky as a barrel, part Georgian, part Circassian,
who was born into the subsistence economy of the Caucasus, yet
understood as if by animal instinct the problem of feeding a continent
that stretched from Europe to China.  He greeted Jean Marie with a
bone-crushing handshake and a rough joke.

"So Your Holiness is out of a job.  What are you doing now?  Playing
grey eminence to our friend Duhamel?"

His smile took the sting out of the remark but Duhamel rounded on him
sharply.

"You're out of order, Sergei."

"A bad joke!  I'm sorry.  But I have to have answers for Moscow.  Do we
eat this winter, or are we on short rations?

Our discussion was interrupted; so I am sharp-tempered."

"It's my fault," said Jean Marie.

"I came uninvited."

"And made me a private miracle," said Pierre Duhamel.

"My wife is past the crisis."

"Perhaps he will make one for me.  God knows I need it."

Petrov swung round to face Jean Marie Barette.

"For Russia, two bad seasons make a catastrophe.  When there's no feed
grain we have to slaughter the livestock.  With no reserves of bread
grains we have to ration civilians to feed the armed forces.  Now the
Americans and Canadians are cutting off supplies.  Grain is classified
as war material.  The Australians are selling all their surplus to
China.  So, I'm running round the world offering gold bullion for
wheat.  And, would you believe it, I can hardly find a bushel?"

"And if we sell it to him," Duhamel added the sour afterthought, "we
are perfidious France breaching the solidarity of Western Europe, and
exposing ourselves to economic sanction by the Americans."

"If I don't get it somewhere, the Army has the final excuse it needs to
precipitate a war."  He gave a humourless chuckle and flung out his
hands in a gesture of despair.

"So, there's a challenge to a miracle-worker!"

"There was a time," said Jean Marie, "when my good offices might have
meant something among the nations.  Not any more.  If I attempted now
to intervene in affairs of state, I should be written off as a
crank."

"I'm not so sure," said Sergei Petrov.

"The whole world's a madhouse these days.  You're original enough to
provide some diversion.  Why don't you call me tomorrow at the Embassy?
I'd like to talk with you before I go back to Moscow."

"Better still," said Pierre Duhamel, "why don't you call him at the
Hostellerie des Chevaliers?  I wouldn't trust a laundry-list to your
Embassy switchboard and I'm trying to protect our friend as far as I
can .. . Now, if you'll excuse us, Jean.  We've got a long night
ahead."

He pulled the bell-rope by the fireplace and an instant later Chariot
was at the door, ready to conduct the guest to his taxi.  Jean Marie
shook hands with the two men.

Petrov said with a grin: "If you can multiply loaves I'll give you my
job tomorrow!"

"My dear Comrade Petrov," said Jean Marie Barette.

"You can hardly write God out of the Communist Manifesto and then
expect him to show up every harvest time!"

"You asked for that, Sergei!"  Pierre Duhamel laughed and said to Jean
Marie: "I'll pass by tomorrow with the documents.  Perhaps by then I'll
have found words to thank you."

"I have a meeting at my brother's bank in the morning.  I expect to be
back by early evening.  Good night, gentlemen."

The impassive Chariot conducted him to the door.  The taxi driver was
drowsing in his cab.  The police car was still parked at the gate.  Far
away in the garden he heard the baying of hounds, as the security men
checking the perimeter flushed a fox out of the shrubbery.

By the time he had finished his prayers and his preparations for bed it
was one in the morning.  He was desperately tired;

but he lay a long time, wakeful, trying to understand the strange
other-worldly logic of the evening's events.  Twice now once with Carl
Mendelius and again with Paulette Duhamel he had experienced the in
pouring the offering of himself as a conduit, through which a gift of
comfort was made available to others.

It was a sensation quite different from that associated with the
rapture and the disclosures of the vision.  Then he had been literally
snatched out of himself, subjected to an illumination, endowed with a
knowledge which he had in no way solicited or desired.  The effect was
instant and permanent.  He was marked and burdened by it for ever.

The in pouring was a transient phenomenon.  It began with an impulse of
pity or love, or a simple understanding of another's profound need.
There was an empathy a mode of identity between himself and the needy.
It was himself who urged mercy upon the Unseen Father, through the
merit of the incarnate Son, and he offered the same self as the vessel
through which the gifts of the Spirit might be passed.  There was no
sense of miracle, of magic or thaumaturgy.  It was an act of love,
instinctive and unreasoned, through which a gift was passed or
renewed.

But though the act was a free dedication of himself, the impulse that
prompted it came from elsewhere.  He could not say why he had offered
himself as a mediator for Paulette Duhamel and not for Sergei Petrov,
upon whom depended matters of vast consequence: famine and the
pestilence of war.  Petrov made jokes about miracles but he wanted one
desperately.  Offer him half a loaf on the winter ration and he would
happily sing the Doxology with the Patriarch in Moscow.

So why the difference?  Why the prompting towards the frail one, the
facile refusal of the other?  It was not an act of judgment, it was an
unreasoned response the reed bowing to the wind, the migrant goose
responding to the strange primal prompting that bade him begone before
the winter.

Once, a long time ago, while he was still a junior in the Sacred
College, he had strolled with Carl Mendelius in a villa garden
overlooking Lake Nemi.  It was one of those magical days, the air
vibrant with the hum of cicadas, the grapes full on the vine, the sky
washed clean of clouds, the pines marching like pike-men across the
ridges.  Mendelius had startled him with a strange proposition:

"All idolatry springs from a desire for order.  We want to be neat,
like the animals.  We mark out our territories with musk and faeces. We
make hierarchies like the bees and ethics like the ants.  And we choose
gods to set the stamp of approval on our creations.  What we cannot
cope with is the untidiness of the universe, the lunatic aspect of a
cosmos with no known beginning, no visible end and no apparent meaning
to all its bustling dynamics.  We cannot tolerate its monstrous
indifference in the face of all our fears and agonies.  The prophets
offer us hope; but only the man-god can make the paradox tolerable.
This is why the coming of Jesus is a healing and a saving event.  He is
not what we should have created for ourselves.  He is truly the sign of
peace because He is the sign of contradiction.  His career is a brief
tragic failure.  He dies in dishonour; but then most strangely, He
lives.  He is not only yesterday.  He is today and tomorrow.  He is as
available to the humblest as to the highest.

"But look what we humans have done with Him.  We have bloated His
simple talk into a babble of philosophies.

We have inflated the family of His believers into an imperial
bureaucracy, justified only because it exists and cannot be dismantled
without a cataclysm.  The man who claims to be the custodian of His
truth lives in a vast palace, surrounded by celibate males like you and
me, Jean!  who have never earned a crust by the labour of their hands,
never dried a woman's tears or sat with a sick child until sunrise.  If
ever they make you Pope, Jean, keep one small part of yourself for a
private loving.  If you don't, they'll turn you into a Pharaoh,
mummified and embalmed before you're dead."

The summer landscape of the Alban hills merged into the contours of the
dream country.  The sound of Mendelius' voice faded behind the piping
of the nightingales in the garden of the Hostellerie.  Jean Marie
Barette, dispenser of mysteries beyond his own frail grasp, lapsed into
sleep.

He woke refreshed and immediately regretted his involvement with the
money-men.  He reached for the telephone to call Alain at the bank and
cancel the meeting of trustees; then he thought better of it.  New in
the world, already in quarantine as a plague-carrier, he could not
afford to lose any line of communication.

In this last decade of the century, bankers were better equipped than
any other group to chart the progress of mankind's mortal disease.  At
every day's end their computers told the story and no amount of
rhetoric could change the grim passionless text: gold up, the dollar
down, rare metals booming, futures in oil and grain and soy beans
climbing through the roof, equities on the seesaw, confidence eroding
every week towards the panic point.

Jean Marie Barette remembered his long sessions with the financiers of
the Vatican, and how bleak a picture emerged from all their cabalistic
calculations.  They bought gold, but sold mining shares, because, they
said, that was market advice.  The real story was that the black
guerrillas in South Africa were strong, well trained and well armed. If
they could blow up an oil refinery they could certainly explode the
deep tunnels of the mines.  So you bought the metal and got rid of the
threatened asset.  One of the most potent arguments against the
publication of his encyclical had been that it would put the markets of
the world in a panic and expose the Vatican itself to enormous
financial loss.

Jean Marie had come out of every meeting wrestling with his conscience,
because his clerical experts, like all others of their ilk, were forced
to speculate, without distinction, upon the moralities and immoralities
of mankind.  It was one domain of the Church's life where he approved
of secrecy if only because there was no way he could justify or even
explain the faint bloodstains on every balance sheet, whether they came
from exploited labour, a rough bargain in the market, or a reformed
villain buying a first-class ride to Heaven.

The trust which his father had set up to preserve the fortune he had
accumulated for his family was a substantial one.  Jean Marie's share
of the funds was administered in a special fashion.  The capital
remained untouched, the increment was at his disposal.  As a parish
priest and later as a bishop he had dedicated it to works connected
with the welfare of his flock.  As Pope he had used it for charities
and gifts to people in personal crisis.  He still believed that, while
social reform could only be accomplished by effective organisations
soundly financed, there was still no substitute for the act of
compassion, the secret affirmation of brotherhood in affliction.  Now,
he himself had to make claim for sustenance.

He was sixty-five years old, statistically unemployable and in need of
a minimal liberty to spread the word that had been given to him.

There were four trustees with whom he must deal.  Each was a senior
official of a major bank.  Alain introduced them with appropriate
ceremony: Sansom from Barclays, Winter from the Chase, Lambert from the
Credit Lyonnais, Madame Saracini from the Banco Ambrogiano all'
Estero.

They were all respectful, all a trifle wary.  Money lived in strange
houses; power was controlled by unlikely hands.

Besides, they were being called to account for their stewardship and
they wondered how well this one-time Pope could read a balance sheet
and a profit and loss account.

Madame Saracini was their spokesman: a tall, olive-skinned woman in her
late thirties, dressed in a suit of blue linen, with lace at her throat
and wrists.  Her only jewellery was a wedding band, and a gold jabot
brooch set with aquamarine.

She spoke French with a faintly Italian ate lilt.  She also had a sense
of humour and was obviously prepared to exercise it.

She asked innocently:

"Forgive me, but how do you like to be addressed?  It can't be
Holiness.  Should it be Eminence or Monseigneur?  It cannot possible be
Pere Jean."

Jean Marie laughed.

"I doubt there's any protocol.  Celestine V was forced to abdicate and
after his death they canonised him.  I'm not dead yet so that doesn't
apply.  I'm certainly less than an Eminence.  I've always thought
Monseigneur was an unnecessary relic of monarchy.  So, since I'm living
as a private person, without a canonical mission, why not just
Monsieur?"

"I don't agree, Jean."  Alain was upset by the suggestion.

"After all ..."

"After all, dear brother, I have to live in my skin and I do like to
feel comfortable.  Now, madame, you were going to explain the mysteries
of money."

"I'm sure," said Madame Saracini with a smile, "you understand there
are no mysteries at all only the problems of maintaining a firm capital
base and an income that keeps ahead of inflation.  This means that
there is need of an active and vigilant administration.  Fortunately
you have had that, since your brother is a very good banker.  The
capital, valued at the end of the last financial year, is some eight
million Swiss francs.  This capital, as you will see, is divided in a
fairly stable ratio: thirty per cent real estate, both urban and rural,
twenty per cent equities, twenty per cent prime bonds and ten per cent
in art-works and antiques and the remaining twenty per cent liquid in
gold and short-term money.  It's a reasonable spread.  It can be varied
at fairly short notice.  If you have any comments, of course ..."

"I have a question," said Jean Marie mildly.

"We are threatened with war.  How do we protect our possessions?"

"So far as commercial paper is concerned," said the man from the Chase,
"we all have the most modern storage and retrieval systems, triplicated
and sometimes quadruplicated in strategically protected areas.  We've
hammered out a common code of inter-bank practice that enables us to
protect our clients against document loss.  Gold, of course, is a
strongroom operation.  Rural land is perennial.  Urban developments
will be reduced to rubble, but, again, war-risk insurance favours the
big operators.  Art-works and antiques, like gold, are a storage job.
It might interest you to know that for years now we've been buying up
disused mine-workings and converting them for safe deposits."

"I am comforted," said Jean Marie Barette with dry irony.

"I wonder why it has not been possible to invest similar money and
similar ingenuity for the protection of citizens against fallout and
poison gas.  I wonder why we are so much concerned with the retrieval
of commercial paper and so little with the proposed mass murder of the
infirm and the incompetent."

There was a moment's stunned silence and then, with cold anger, Alain
Hubert answered his brother.

"I will tell you why, brother Jean!  It is because we, unlike many
others, keep the bargain we have made with our clients of whom you are
one.  Others may do ill monstrously ill!  but you cannot blame us
because we do well!  I think you owe me and my colleagues an
apology!"

"You're right, Alain."  Jean Marie responded gravely to the reproof.

"I beg your pardon yours, too, madame, gentlemen!  .. . But I hope you
will permit me to make an explanation.  I was shocked yesterday,
shocked to the marrow, to learn that in this my homeland there are
plans for the elimination of the handicapped, immediately war breaks
out.

Do any of you know of this matter?"

The man from the Credit Lyonnais pursed his lips as though someone had
put alum on his tongue.

"One hears all sorts of rumours.  Some of them are based on fact; but
the facts are not fully understood.  If you calculate to kill a million
people with a single atomic blast, and contaminate a huge peripheral
area, then you have to count on some form of mercy killing for
survivors beyond hope.  In the general chaos, who's going to draw the
lines?  You have to leave it to the officer in charge of the area,
whoever he turns out to be."

The man from Barclays was a mite more subtle and urbane.

"Surely, my dear sir, the scenario for chaos which you set down in your
own writings is almost the same as that prepared by our secular
governments.  The difference is that they are called upon to provide
practical remedies and they do not have the luxury of moralising about
them.  Even you cannot moralise about triage in a front-line hospital.
The surgeon, walking down the line of wounded, is the sole arbiter of
life and death.

"Operate on this one, he will survive!

This one is second on the list, he may survive.  Give that one a
cigarette and a shot of morphine, he will die!"  Now, unless you are
under the enormous stress of that adjudication, I submit, sir, that you
have no standing in the immediate case."

Before Jean Marie had time to rebut the argument, Madame Saracini came
to his rescue.  She said with bland humour:

"You see, my dear Monsieur Barette, you have, until this moment, lived
a very sheltered life.  You must understand that God gave up making
land millions of years ago.  So, if you've got a piece of real estate
you hang on to it.  The oil's running out with the rest of the fossil
fuels.  So, you have to fight to get your share.  Rembrandt's dead and
so is Gauguin.  So, there aren't any more of their pictures.  But human
beings pouf!  There are too many of us already.  We're due for a little
genocide; and if the overkill is exaggerated then we can soon start
breeding again with some help from the sperm banks, which are housed in
our vaults."

She made such a black comedy of it that they had to laugh;

then, when the tension had relaxed, she pushed straight ahead into the
trustees' report, which showed that Jean Marie Barette could live like
a prince on his income.  He thanked them for the courtesy, apologised
for his lapse of manners and told them that he would draw on them only
for his personal needs and let the trust pile up until Judgment Day.

The men from Barclays and the Credit Lyonnais and the Chase took their
leave.  Madame Saracini stayed behind.  Alain had invited her to make a
foursome at lunch with Odette, Jean Marie and himself.  While they were
waiting for Odette, Alain served sherry and then left them, while he
took a telephone call from London.  Madame Saracini raised her glass in
a silent toast and then delivered a cool reproof.

"You really were quite unpleasant to us.  Why?"

"I don't know.  Suddenly I was seeing two images on a split screen: all
those whirring computers in their underground caverns and, above, the
bodies of children burned in front of an ice-cream parlour."

"My colleagues won't forgive you.  You have made them feel guilty."

"Will you?"

"I happen to agree with you," said Madame Saracini, "but I can't make
frontal attacks.  I'm the girl who makes them laugh first and see sense
afterwards when their manhood isn't threatened."

"Is my information right or wrong?"

"About euthanasia for the incompetents?  It's right, of course; but
you'll never prove it; because, in a strange subconscious fashion, all
Europe is consenting to the conspiracy.  We want an exit for ourselves
and our loved ones when things get too horrible to bear."

"Do you have any children, madame?"

"No."

"And your husband?"

"He died a year after our marriage."

"Forgive me!  I didn't mean to pry."

"Don't distress yourself.  I'm glad you were interested enough to ask.
As a matter of fact, I believe you know my father."

"Do I?"

"He is called Vittorio Malavolti.  He's serving twenty years in prison
for bank fraud.  As I remember, he handled a great many transactions
for the Vatican cost you a lot of money, too!"

"I remember.  I hope you have been able to forget."

"Please!  Don't be facile with me!  I don't want to forget.  I love my
father.  He is a financial genius, and he was manipulated by a lot of
men whom he still protects.  I worked with him.  He taught me all I
know about banking.  He set me up clean with clean money.  I bought the
Banco Ambrogiano all' Estero when it was a hole in the wall in Chiasso.
I cleaned it up and built it up and made some strong alliances and
every year I pay five per cent of my father's personal debts, so that
when he conics out if he comes out!  he'll be able to walk down the
street like a man.  And that reminds me.  Don't you dare patronise your
brother!  He helped me get started.  He pushed me into situations like
this trusteeship.  If he sometimes looks like a fool, it's because he
married the wrong woman.  But Pope or no Pope, he put you down this
morning when you deserved it!  That makes for respect!"

He was startled by her vehemence.  Her hand was unsteady and a little
runnel of liquid slopped over the side of her glass.

He gave her the handkerchief from his top pocket to mop it up.  He
asked mildly: "Why are you so angry with me?"

"Because you don't know how important you are especially now that
you're out of office.  Those articles in the newspapers made people
love you.  Even those who didn't agree respected you and paid
attention.  Sansom, the Barclays man, quoted your writings back at you
this morning and, believe me, he hardly reads anything but the
financial pages!  So, when you do something unpleasant, you disappoint
a lot of people."

"I'll try to remember it," said Jean Marie, and added with a grin:
"It's a long time since I've had my knuckles rapped."

She blushed like a schoolgirl and made an awkward apology.

"I've got a sharp tongue, too and a sort of proprietary interest."

"Have you indeed?"

"Way back in the fourteenth century both my husband's family and mine
were friends and correspondents of the Benincasa and of Saint Catherine
herself.  They supported her in her efforts to get your namesake,
Gregory XI, back from Avignon.  It's a long time ago, but we Sienese
are jealous of our history and sometimes a little mystical about it."
She put down the glass, fished in her handbag and brought out a
notebook.

"Give me your address and telephone number.  I want to talk to you
again."

"About anything in particular?"

"Would my immortal soul be important enough?"

"Most certainly."  He acknowledged defeat with a smile and gave her the
information.

And that, for the moment, was the end of their talk..  Alain came in
with Odette, elegant, expensive, dropping names like summer raindrops.
Alain gave Jean Marie a conspiratorial wink and then left him to carry
the burden of Odette's monologue until they arrived at the restaurant.
Luncheon was an uneasy meal.  Odette dominated the talk, while Alain
remonstrated feebly against her more obvious snobberies.

Madame Saracini left before the coffee.  Odette sniffed and pronounced
a disdainful valediction:

"Extraordinary woman!  Quite attractive in an Italian sort of way.  One
wonders what domestic arrangements she's made since her husband
died."

"It's none of your business," said Alain.

"Let's be family for a while.  What are your plans from this point,
Jean?  If you propose to stay in France you'll need some kind of
permanent establishment: an apartment, a housekeeper ..."

"It's too early for that.  I'm still too public a figure and obviously
embarrassing to old friends.  It's best I keep moving for a while."

"You should also keep silent for a while," said Alain moodily.

"You are used to making big pronouncements from the top of the ladder;
but, you can't do that any more.  What you said at our meeting will be
all over town by evening.

That's why I attacked you.  I can't afford to be associated with
subversive talk .. . It's much more dangerous than you realise."

Odette chimed in, positive and omniscient as always.

"Alain's right!  I was talking to the Defence Minister the other night.
He's a very attractive man; though his wife is quite impossible.  He
said that what we needed now was not controversy but sound,
businesslike diplomacy and quiet negotiation while the armed forces
prepare themselves."

"Let's all understand something," said Jean Marie Barette firmly.

"I became a priest to preach the word, to tell the good news of
salvation.  That's not something I can be prudent about, or safe, or
even kind!  And I have to give you the same message as I preach to the
rest of the world.  The battle between good and evil is already joined;
but the good man looks like a fool, while evil wears a wise man's face
and justifies murder by impeccable statistics!"

"Our Cardinal doesn't say that."  Odette was ready, as always, for an
argument.

"Last Sunday he gave the television sermon on the Coin of the Tribute.
He said it's a matter of priorities.  We obey the law as a means of
serving God and even if we make mistakes in good faith, God
understands."

"I'm sure He does, my dear," said Jean Marie.

"And I'm sure the Cardinal has his own reasons for being so bland but
it isn't enough!  It isn't half enough!"

"We should go," said Alain diplomatically.

"I have a two thirty appointment with the Finance Minister.  He's
seeking our advice on the best way of launching a Defence Bond Issue!

He had promised himself an afternoon of simple and private pleasures an
hour of book hunting along the qua is a stroll among the artists in the
Place du Tertre.  He had been away so long, and this was home.  Even if
the family were difficult he should be able to take his ease in his own
natal place.

The book hunt was rewarding.  He found a first edition of Verlaine's
Fetes Galantes with an autographed quatrain pasted inside the cover.
Verlaine had always haunted him: the sad, lost drunk who wrote angel
songs and lived in hell with Rimbaud, and who, if there were any
justice in the universe, must be singing canticles of joy at the
footstool of the Almighty.

The Place du Tertre was at first a disappointment.  The painters had to
eat and the tourists had to take home a piece of Paris and the canvases
were cynically vulgar.  But, in the least favoured corner of the Place,
he came upon a curiosity: a twisted, dwarfish girl, hardly more than
twenty, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, etching on a glass plate
with a diamond point.  On the table beside her were specimens of her
work: a goblet, a mirror, a punchbowl.  Jean Marie picked up the goblet
to examine it.  The girl cautioned him roughly:

"If you drop it you pay for it!"

"I'll be very careful.  It's beautiful.  What does the design
represent?"

She hesitated for a moment, as if afraid of mockery, then explained: "I
call it a cosmos-cup.  The goblet's a circle, the sign of perfection.
The lower part is the sea, waves and fishes.

The upper is the land, wheat and vines.  It's a representation of the
cosmos."

"And where are the humans in the cosmos?"

"They drink from the cup."

The conceit pleased him.  He wondered how far she would embellish it.
He asked again: "Does God figure in the design?"

She gave him a swift, suspicious look.

"Is it important?"

"It's interesting, at least."

"Are you a Christian?"

Jean Marie chuckled.

"I am, even if I don't look like one."

"Then you'll know that the fish and the vine and the wheat are symbols
of Christ and the Eucharist."

"How much is the piece?"

"Six hundred francs."  Then she added defensively:

"There's a lot of work in it."

"I can see that.  I'll take it.  Can you pack it safely for me?"

"Yes.  It won't be elegant, but it will be safe."

She set down the work she was doing and began packing the goblet in a
stained cardboard box filled with plastic pellets.  Watching her, Jean
Marie noticed how thin she was, and how, with the small effort, the
sweat broke out on her forehead, and her hands fumbled unsteadily with
the fragile piece.  As he counted out the money he said:

"I'm a sentimental collector.  I always like to celebrate with the
artist.  Will you join me for a drink and a sandwich?"

Again she gave him that wary sidelong look and said curtly:

"Thanks, but you paid a good price.  You don't have to do me
favours."

"I was asking you to do me one," said Jean Marie Barette.

"I've had a rough morning and a nervous lunch.  I'd be glad of someone
to talk to.  Besides, it's only three steps from here to the cafe."

"Oh, very well."

She shoved the parcel into his hands, called to a nearby painter to
watch her table, then walked with Jean Marie to the cafe at the corner
of the Place.  She had a curious, hop pity gait which slewed her almost
in a half-circle with every pace.  The spinal curvature was grossly
pronounced, and her head, elfishly beautiful, was comically mismatched,
as if set askew by a drunken sculptor.

She ordered coffee and a cognac and a ham roll and a hardboiled egg.
She ate ravenously, while Jean Marie toyed with a glass of Vichy water
and tried to keep the conversation alive.

"I had another piece of luck this afternoon: a first edition of
Verlaine's Fetes Galantes."

"You collect books too?"

"I love beautiful things; but these are gifts for other people.

Your goblet will go to a lady near Versailles who has multiple
sclerosis.  I'll write and explain the symbolism to her."

"I can save you the trouble.  I typed up a little piece about it.  I'll
give it to you before you go.  Strange you should ask me where God came
in."

"Why strange?"

"Most people find the subject embarrassing."

"And you?"

"I gave up being embarrassed a long time ago.  I accept that I'm a
freak.  It's easier for me, it's easier for people if I take my oddity
for granted.  Sometimes it's hard though.  Up here on the Place you get
all types.  There are some weird ones who want to sleep with crippled
women.  That's why I was a bit sharp with you.  Some of the weird ones
are even older than you."

Jean Marie threw back his head and laughed till the tears ran down his
face.  Finally he managed to splutter: "Dear God!  And to think I had
to come back to France to hear it!"

"Please!  Don't make fun of me!  Things can get very rough up here,
believe me!"

"I do believe you."  Jean Marie recovered himself slowly.

"Now, would you mind telling me your name?"

"It's signed on the piece -Judith."

"Judith what?"

"Just that.  In the community we use only first names."

"The Community?  You mean you're a nun?"

"Not exactly.  There are about a dozen of us women who live together.
We're all handicapped in one way or another not all physically!  We
share what we earn.  We look after each other.  We're also a kind of
refuge for young girls of the quarter who get into bother.  It sounds
primitive, and it is; but it's very satisfying and we feel it puts us
close to the early Christian idea.  After what you paid for the
cosmos-cup you deserve to be remembered tonight at the meal prayer!
What's your name work."

I like to keep a list of people who've bought my "Jean Marie
Barette."

"Are you anybody important?"

"Just remember me in the meal prayer," said Jean Marie Barette.

"But tell me one thing.  How did this this community of yours start?"

"That was strange.  You remember some months ago the Pope abdicated and
a new one was elected.  Normally it wouldn't have meant very much. I've
never met anyone higher than a parish priest.  But that was a bad time
for me.

Nothing seemed to be going right.  There seemed to be a connection
between that event and my life.  You know what I mean?"

"I know very well," said Jean Marie with feeling.

"A little while afterwards I was working in my studio.  I had a little
mansard apartment down the road from here.  A girl I know, a model who
works for some of the painters, staggered in.  She was drunk and she'd
been raped and punched about and her concierge had thrown her out.  I
sobered her up and took her to the clinic to be patched up, then I
brought her back to my place.  That night she turned very strange
remote and hostile and how do I say it?  disconnected.  I was
frightened to be near her and yet I didn't dare to leave her.  So, just
to get her interested in something, I started carving a little doll out
of a clothes peg.  I made three altogether; then we sat down and made
dresses for them, as though I were the mother and she the child.  That
night she slept quietly in my bed, holding my hand.  Next day I got two
friends to share the day with her; and so it went on until she came
back to normal.  By then we had a little group and it seemed a pity to
break it up.  We worked out that we could save money and live more
comfortably if we lodged as a family.  The religious part?  Well, that
seemed to come in quite naturally.  One girl had been in India and had
learned meditation techniques.  I'd been brought up in a convent and I
rather liked the idea of meeting for family prayer.  Then one of the
girls brought home a worker priest she'd met in a brasserie.  He talked
to us, lent us books.  Also, if we were bothered at night we'd
telephone him and he'd arrive with a couple of his friends from the
factory.  That was a help I promise you!  Well, after a while, we
managed to work out a pattern of living that suited us.  Few of us were
virgins.  None of us is sure whether we're ready for a long-term
relationship with a man.  Some of us may get married.  But we're all
believers and we work at trying to live by the Book.  So there we are!
I'm sure it doesn't mean too much to you, but for us, it's a
peace-giving thing."

"I'm very glad to have met you," said Jean Marie Barette.

"And very proud to have your cosmos-cup.  Would you accept a gift from
me?"

"What sort of gift?"  The old wary look was back.

He hastened to dispel her fears.

"The Verlaine I found today.  There is a line in it that might have
been written about you.  It's in the poet's own handwriting."  He took
the small volume from his pocket and read her the quatrain pasted
inside the jacket..  . ""Votre ame est unpaysage choisi..."."

He asked very humbly: "Will you accept it please?"

"If you'll dedicate it for me."

"What sort of dedication?"

"Oh, the usual.  Just a little word and your autograph."

He thought about it for a moment and then wrote:

For Judith, who showed me the universe in a wine cup Jean Marie
Barette, lately Pope Gregory XVII The girl stared, unbelieving, at the
classic script.  She looked up, searching for mockery in his smiling
face.  She said tremulously:

"I don't understand I .. ."

"I don't understand either," said Jean Marie Barette.

"But I think you have just given me a lesson in faith."

"I don't know what you mean," said the small, twisted girl.

"It means that what I was trying to tell the world from Vatican Hill,
you have accomplished from a mansard in Paris.

Let me try to explain ..."  .  And when he had finished telling her the
whole long story, she stretched out an emaciated hand, rough from the
etcher's tools, and laid it over his.  She said with an urchin grin:

"I hope I can tell it to the girls the way you've explained it to me.
It would help if I could.  Every so often they get fed up, because our
little family seems so pointless and disorganised.  I keep saying that
there's one good thing about hitting rock bottom.  The only place to go
is up!"  Her smile faded and she added gravely: "You're down there now;
so you know.  Would you like to come home to dinner?"

"Thank you; but no!"  He was careful not to disappoint.

"You see, Judith my love, you don't need me.  Your own hearts have
taught you better than I ever could.  Already you have Christ in the
midst of you."

The evening traffic was murderous; but he rode back to the Hostellerie
on a white cloud of serenity.  Today, if ever in his life, he had seen
how the Spirit preempted all the plans of high men.  This tiny group of
women, maimed and threatened, had made themselves a family.  They had
asked no patent, no rescript.  They had love to share and they shared
it.

They needed to think; they thought.  They found an impulse to pray;
they prayed.  They found themselves a teacher in a workers' bar; and
girls in trouble came to them, because they felt the warmth of the
hearth-fire.

The group might not be stable.  It had no guarantees of continuity.
There was no constitution, no sanction to give it legal identity.  But
what matter?  It was like the camp-fire in the desert, lit at
nightfall, quenched at dawn; but while it lasted it was a testimony to
human sojourn to the God who visited man in his dreams.  Once again the
voice of Carl Mendelius wove itself into his reverie: '..  . The
Kingdom of God is a dwelling-place for men.  What else can it signify
but a condition in which human existence is not only tolerable but
joyful because it is open to infinity .. ."

How better could one express the phenomenon of a small, twisted girl
who engraved the cosmos on a wine glass and made a family for hurt
women under the roof-tops of Paris?

When he arrived at the Hostellerie his first act was to telephone
Tubingen.  Lotte was at the hospital but Johann was at home.  He had
good news.

"Father's condition is stable.  The infection is under control.  We're
still not sure about his sight; but at least we know he'll survive. Oh,
another piece of news!  The valley's ours.

The contracts were signed today.  I'm going down next week to talk to
surveyors and architects and engineers.  And I've been deferred from
military service on compassionate grounds!  How are things with you,
Uncle Jean?"

"Good, very good!  Will you give a message to your father?

Write it down like a good fellow."

"Go ahead."

"Tell him from me: "Today I was again given a sign.  It came from a
woman who showed me the cosmos in a wine glass."

Repeat that please."

"Today you were again given a sign.  It came from a woman who showed
you the cosmos in a wine glass."

"If ever you get a message that purports to come from me, it must carry
that identification."

"Understood!  What are your movements, Uncle Jean?"

"I don't know but they may be hurried.  Remember what I told you.  Get
your family out of Tubingen as soon as you can.  My love to you all!"

"And ours to you.  What's the weather like in Paris?"

"Threatening."

"Same here.  We disbanded our club as you suggested."

"And got rid of the equipment?"

"Yes."

"Good!  I'll be in touch whenever I can.  Remember me kindly to
Professor Meissner.  Auf Wiedersehen."

He had hardly set down the receiver when Pierre Duhamel came to deliver
his new passport, and a new identity card, inscribed to J. M. Gregoire,
pasteur en retraite.  He described to Jean Marie their uses and
limitations.

"Everything is authentic, since you once bore the name Gregory.  You
are a minister of religion.  You are pensioned off.  The numbers on the
documents belong to a series used for special categories of government
agents so no French immigration officer will want to ask questions.
Foreign consulates will not raise too many problems about granting a
visa to a retired clergyman travelling for his health.  However, try
not to lose the documents, try not to get into trouble and have them
impounded.  That could be embarrassing to me.

Apropos of which, my dear Monseigneur, you opened your mouth very wide
with the bankers this morning.  The lines were buzzing as soon as they
got back to their offices.  Once again you are named as a dangerous
gad-fly."

"And you, my dear Pierre, are you of the same mind about me?"

Duhamel ignored the question.  He said simply:

"My wife sends you her thanks.  She is in remission again and more
comfortable than she has been for a long time.  The curious thing is
that even though she appeared to be unconscious, she remembers your
visit and describes what you did, most vividly, as a 'caress of life'.
Under other circumstances I would be very jealous of you."

Jean Marie ignored the tiny barb.

"I bought a small gift for you both."

"There was no need."  Duhamel was touched.

"We are already in your debt."

Jean Marie handed him the cardboard box and made a smiling apology.

"I wasn't able to have it gift-wrapped.  You can open it if you
want."

Duhamel snapped the string, opened the box and took out the goblet.  He
examined it with the care of a connoisseur.

"This is lovely.  Where did you find it?"

Jean Marie recounted his meeting with Judith, the maimed one, in the
Place du Tertre.  He gave him the paper which explained the symbolism
of the design, and told of the curious little community of women.

Pierre Duhamel listened in silence and made only a single terse comment:
"You're working very hard to convert me."

"On the contrary," said Jean Marie firmly.

"I'm called to give witness, to offer the gifts of faith and hope and
loving.

What you do with them is your most private affair."  His tone changed
to one of pleading and desperate persuasion.

"Pierre, my friend, you've helped me.  I want to help you.  What your
wife called the 'caress of life' is something very real.  I felt it
today when this girl, who looks like a caricature of womanhood, laid
her hand on mine and invited me into her special world.  This great
stoic courage of yours is so so barren, so desperately sad!"

"I'm in a sad business," said Pierre Duhamel with arctic humour.

"I'm a funeral director, preparing the obsequies of civilisation.  That
demands a certain grand style .. . Which reminds me.  Tomorrow I shall
be asked to sign a document requiring Grade A surveillance of a certain
Jean Marie Barette."

"Classified as what?"

"Anti-government agitator."

"And you will sign it?"

"Of course.  But I'll hold it up for a few hours so that you can make
suitable arrangements."

"I'll leave here tomorrow morning."

"Before you go," Duhamel handed him a slip of paper, "call this number.
Petrov wants to talk to you."

"About what?"

"Bread, politics and a few fantasies of his own."

"When we met in Rome I liked him.  Can I still trust him?"

"Not as far as you can trust me.  But you'll find him much more
agreeable."  For the first time he relaxed.  He held the cosmos-cup in
his hands and turned it round and round, studying all the details of
the etching.  Finally he said; "We will drink from it, Paulette and I.
We'll think of you and the little bossue on the Place du Tertre.  Who
knows?  It's good enough theatre to suspend our disbelief.  But, you
understand, this is the bad time the day of the black battalions.  If
you fall into their hands, I can't help you at all."

"What does your President think of all this?"

"Our President?  For God's sake!  He's the same as every other
president, prime minister, party leader, duce or caudillo.  He's got
the flag tattooed on his back and the party manifesto on his chest, if
you ask him why we have to go to war, he'll tell you that war is a
cyclic phenomenon, or you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs
or God rot him in hell war is the archetypal orgasm: agony, ecstasy,
and the long, long quiet afterwards.  I've often wondered why I
shouldn't kill him before I kill myself."

"Why do you stay then?"

"Because if I weren't there, who else would get you your passport and
who else would tell what goes on in the madhouse?  I must go now!  Make
sure you've gone too, before midday tomorrow!"

Jean Marie Barette reached out and clamped firm hands on Duhamel's
broad shoulders.

"At least, my friend, give me time to thank you."

"Don't thank me," said Pierre Duhamel.

"Just pray for me.

I'm not sure how much more I can take!"

When he had gone, Jean Marie dialled the number for Sergei Petrov.  A
woman's voice answered, in French.  A moment later Petrov was on the
line.

"Who is this?"

"Duhamel gave me a message to call you."

"Oh yes!  Thank you for being so prompt.  We should meet and talk.  We
have interests in common."

"I believe we may have.  Where do you suggest we meet.  I may be under
surveillance.  Does that bother you?"

"Not greatly."  The news did not seem to surprise him too much.

"So, let me think!  Tomorrow at eleven, does that suit you?"

"Yes."

"Then let's meet at the Hotel Meurice, Room 580.  Come straight up.
I'll be waiting for you."

"I have all that.  Until tomorrow then."

But over the rest of tomorrow and all the days afterwards there was
still a very large question mark.  Before the surveillance began, he
had to find himself a bolt-hole, a place where he could sleep secure,
from which he could communicate and travel quickly.  Alain could help;
but that relationship was already uneasy, and Odette was no model of
discretion.  He was still ruminating over the problem when the
telephone rang.  Madame Saracini was on the line.  She was cheerful and
abrupt.

"I told you I wanted to talk to you again.  When and where can we
meet?"

Jean Marie hesitated for a moment and then told her: "I've been
informed by a reliable source that as of tomorrow I shall be under
Grade A surveillance as an anti-government agitator."

"That's madness!"

"It is, however, a fact.  So I need a secure place to stay for a while.
Can you help me?"

The answer came back without a second's hesitation.

"Of course!  How soon could you be ready to move?"

"In ten minutes."

"It will take me forty-five minutes to get to you.  Pack your bag.  Pay
the bill.  Be waiting at the front entrance."

Before he had time to thank her, she had rung off.  He packed his few
belongings, explained to the patron ne that a sudden change in his
personal situation dictated his brusque departure, paid his account,
then sat down to read his breviary until Madame Saracini arrived.  He
felt very calm, very trustful.  Step by step he was being led to the
proving ground.  By a curious trick of association Saracini, Malavolti,
Benincasa, we Sienese he was reminded of the words which the
twenty-five-year-old Catherine had written to Gregory XI at Avignon:
"It is no longer time to sleep, because Time never sleeps, but passes
like the wind ... In order to reconstruct the whole, it is necessary to
destroy the old, right down to the foundations .. ."

The woman who picked him up at the entrance to the Hostellerie looked
ten years younger than Madame Saracini, president of the Banco
Ambrogiano all' Estero.  She wore slacks and a silk blouse and a
headscarf, and drove a convertible, custom-built by the most famous
Italian designer.  She locked his suitcase into the trunk and whisked
him away with a scream of tyres, before any curious guest had time to
notice the car or its owner.  Once on the road, however, she drove with
studious care and a sharp eye for police traps, while she instructed
him briskly in her plans.

"The safest place in Paris for you is my house precisely because it is
a house.  There are no other tenants, no concierge and I can guarantee
the loyalty of my domestic staff.  I entertain a lot; so there's a
constant coming and going of people.  Any visitors you have will pass
unnoticed.  You will have your own apartment a bedroom, a study and a
bathroom.  It has a direct telephone line and its own private stairway
to the garden.  My staff are underemployed; so they can easily look
after your needs."

"This is most generous of you, madame; but ..."

"There are no buts.  If the arrangement doesn't work, you leave.
Simple!  And would you please call me by my given name, Roberta!"

Jean Marie smiled to himself in the darkness and said:

"Then, Roberta, will you let me point out that there are certain risks
in harbouring me."

"I'm happy to accept them.  You see, I know you have work to do.  I
want to be part of it.  I can help more than you realise at this
moment."

"Why do you want to help?"

"That's one question I'm not prepared to answer while I'm driving; but
I will answer it, when I get you home."

"Try this one then.  Do you think it's good for your reputation to have
a man in residence?"

"I've had others, far more scandalous," she told him bluntly.

"It's twenty years since my husband died.  I didn't live like a nun all
that time.  But, things happened to make me change.  My father went to
prison.  I went through a very bad patch with someone I loved very much
and who one night went crazy in my arms and nearly killed me.  Then
there was you.  When you were Pope, I felt the same way about you as my
father used to feel about the good Pope John.  You had style.  You had
compassion.  You didn't go round shouting discipline or damnation. Even
when I was living pretty wildly I always felt there was a way back, as
there was with my father when I'd been a naughty girl.  Then, when you
abdicated and I heard some of the inside story from your brother,
Alain, I was furious.  I thought they'd broken you;

until your friend what's his name?  wrote that wonderful piece about
you."

"Mendelius?"

"That's it!  ... And then somebody passed him a letter bomb  It was
then that I began to see how things fitted together.  I started to go
to church again, read the Bible, pick up friends that I'd dropped in
the wild days because they seemed too earnest or stuffy.  But we're off
the track.  First we install you in your apartment; then we feed you.
Afterwards we talk about the future and what you need to do."

He was tempted to chide her, tell her that, while he needed help, he
was not prepared to be managed.  He thought better of it.  He changed
the subject.

"I've been provided with a second passport and an identity card in the
name of Jean Marie Gregoire.  It's probably best if we use that name
with your staff."

"I agree.  There are three altogether: a man and wife and a daily maid.
They've all been with me a long time.  We're nearly home now.  My place
is just off the Quai d'Orsay."

Three minutes later she stopped in front of a portecochere closed by a
steel gate, which opened to a radio signal.

The garage was on the left of the entrance and an interior stairway led
to the floors above.  His suite was a pair of rooms, the one a large
studio lined with books, the other a bed-sitting room with a bathroom
between.  Outside was a balcony from which he could look down on the
central atrium, which had been converted into a rock garden with a
fountain in the centre.

"It's not quite the Vatican," said Roberta Saracini.

"But I hope you'll be comfortable.  Dinner in thirty minutes.  I'll
send someone to fetch you."

She came in person, dressed in a house gown of some rich brocaded
material, stiff as a benediction cope.  She led him into the dining
room, a small but beautifully proportioned room, with a coffered
ceiling and refectory furniture of Spanish mahogany.  The meal was
simple but exquisitely cooked, a country pate, a filet of sole, a
mousse of blueberries.  The wine, he told her, was much too good to
waste on Monsieur Gregoire, pasteur en retraite.  To which she answered
that the pastor was in retirement no longer and it was time to discuss
what he wanted to do.

"I know what I must do: spread the word that the last days are upon us
and that all men of good-will must prepare for them.  I know also what
I must not do: make confusions or dissensions among honest believers,
or undermine the principles of legitimate authority in the Christian
community.  So, first question: how do I resolve the problem?"

"It seems to me you've already found the solution: a new identity.
After all, it's the message that's important, not the man who proclaims
it."

"Not quite.  How does the messenger establish his authority?"

"He shouldn't try," said Roberta Saracini.

"He should put the word about, as the early disciples did, and trust to
God to make it fruitful."

There was more than piety in the way she said it.  There was a total
confidence, as if she had herself made proof of the proposition.

He told her: "I agree with the principle; but how do I, a man unwelcome
in his own country, deprived of a canonical mission, preach the word
without a breach of the obedience which I owe to the Church?"

Roberta Saracini poured coffee and handed the cup to him across the
table.  She offered brandy.  He refused it.  She explained carefully:

"I'm a banker, as you know.  As a banker I have holdings in a lot of
diverse enterprises: mining, fabrication, travel, advertising,
entertainment, communication.  So, once you are sure of what you want
to say ..."

"I have always been sure of that."

"Then we can find a hundred ways, a thousand voices, to spread the
news."

"That will cost you a fortune."

"What if it does?  Who's going to keep accounts after Rubicon Day?"

"How do you know about Rubicon Day?"

"I have my sources.  You don't think I gamble blind in the market?"

"I suppose not."

He was still uneasy, though the explanation made sense enough.  He
himself would not name his sources, even to a close friend.

"There are ample funds available for whatever you want to do.  I'd like
to introduce you to some of my people in publishing, television and
advertising.  Consider them as your voices.  Tell them what you want to
say.  You'll be surprised what ideas emerge.  You're looking dubious.
Why?  Where would the modern papacy be without television or the
American presidency for that matter?  Isn't it a moral duty to use all
the gifts that are placed at our disposal?"

Once again, most strongly, he was reminded of that young Sienese woman
of the fourteenth century who had written to Pierre Roger de
Beaufort-Turenne, Gregory XI ... "Siatemi uomo, virile e non timoroso
.. ."  Be a man for me, virile and not a coward!

He was silent for a moment, considering his decision.

"How soon can I meet your experts?"

"Tomorrow evening."

"And how far can I trust them?"

"The ones who sit at this table you can trust, as you trust me."

"Then, will you answer the question I asked on the way here: why do you
want to help a man who is foretelling the end of the world?"

She did not fumble with the answer; she gave it to him, flat and
unadorned.

"Because he is a man, just that!  All my life I've been waiting for
someone who will stride out into the storm and shout against the wind.
I watched you this morning at the bank.  You were so angry I thought
you would burst; but you had the grace to say you were sorry for bad
manners.  For me that's reason enough."

"Not for me," said Jean Marie Barette.

"Nobody's so strong all the time.  Nobody lasts so long.  The man I
followed as Pope I stood by his death-bed and watched him puking up his
life-blood and crying, "Mamma, Mamma, Mamma!"

The newspapers said he was calling on the Virgin Mary.  He wasn't.  He
was calling for his mother in the dark.  Don't build on me, Roberta!
Build on yourself!  You're not some sad devote in the middle of the
menopause.  I'm not some troubled priest wondering why he's wasted his
whole life in celibacy."

"Tell me what you are then!"  said Roberta Saracini with sudden
anger.

"Let's be good Jesuits and define the terms!"

"I have been given a call to proclaim the Last Things and the Coming of
the Lord.  I have answered the call.  I seek the means to make the
proclamation.  You have offered me shelter and funds and experts to
help me.  I have accepted with gratitude; but I have nothing to give in
return."

"Have I asked for anything?"

"No, but I have to warn you and believe me it is an act of love!  you
must never expect to possess any part of me or hope to manage me in any
fashion."

"For God's sake!  Why do you think you have to warn me?"

"Because when we first met you talked of being mystical about your own
past, about your family connection with Saint Catherine of Siena.  It
seemed to me a very significant prelude.  You were offering me the same
kind of support that she had offered Gregory XI, to bring him back from
Avignon to Rome.  But one can't repeat history and one can't duplicate
relationships.  That Gregory was a mincing man, a vacillator and a
coward.  I have many faults, but I am not such a man.  I am called to
walk a desert road."  She started to protest but he stayed her with a
gesture.

"There is more, so please let me say it.  I am not ignorant of the life
and works of your little Saint.

I wrote my doctoral thesis on the great women mystics.  I have read the
Dialogo and the Epistolario.  Catherine wrote much and beautifully
about love, human and divine.

Nevertheless, there are dark passages in her relationships that none of
her biographers has wholly explained.  She is too exotic for my taste;
possibly because I am French and she never liked the French.  But I
think that once or twice she pushed the young men of her cendcolo too
far.  She was dreaming divine love when they were still struggling to
make sense of the human variety and that's when the tragedies occurred.
So ..."  He smiled and shrugged.

"Like good Jesuits we have defined the terms and spelt out the rules of
the game.  Am I forgiven?"

"Yes.  But not easily."  She raised her glass in a silent toast and
tossed off the rest of the wine.

"It's late.  I have to be at work early in the morning."

"I have to go out, too.  I have a meeting with the Russian Minister for
Agricultural Production."

"Petrov?  I've had bank dealings with him.  He's tough but decent.
However, he's in a desperate position.  If he can't get enough grain
for winter, he's a ruined man."

"And our world is one hour closer to midnight."

He rose and held back her chair.  When she stood up she turned and took
his hand and kissed it in the old-fashioned style.

"Good night, Monsieur Gregoire."

He accepted the gesture without comment.

"Good night, madame, and thank you for the shelter of your house!"

In Room 580 of the Hotel Meurice, Jean Marie Barette, once a Pope,
talked with Sergei Andrevich Petrov, Minister for Agricultural
Production in the USSR.  Petrov looked tired and crumpled, as if he had
shed his clothes on the bedroom floor and climbed into them the next
morning.  His eyes were red and rheumy.  His voice was hoarse and his
skin exuded a smell of stale liquor.  Even his sense of humour was
wearing thin.

"You think I look a wreck?  I am.  Twelve, fifteen hours a day for
weeks now, I'm travelling, talking, pleading, squawking for husks of
grain like a starving parrot!  But no one wants to sell to me.  So I
walk down the ladder to stage two.  What do I ask for now?
Intervention, mediation what they call in the trade 'good offices'.  It
occurred to me you might be willing to help."

"Willing, yes," Jean Marie answered without hesitation.

"How useful is another matter.  In the democracies the Leader of the
Oppositon still has a strong voice and a lot of bargaining power.  With
me it's different.  I'm just zpasteur en retraite.  Put it another way.
How would you react if I came asking favours from you in Moscow?"

"Better than you think.  You have.  much respect everywhere.  Will you
try to help?  The position is desperate.

Famine is the horror nobody understands until it happens.

Look at Africa!  The warnings had been there for years, but nobody paid
any heed!  From the Sahara to the Sachel to the Horn, suddenly
thousands were dying.  Now that threat hangs over us except that for us
it's dearth in winter!  We'll just about get through it; and then, as
soon as the thaw comes, I promise you the rockets will be launched and
our armies will move south towards the oilfields of the Gulf, west
through the great Hungarian plain, by sea towards India, the
Philippines and Australia.  It's like an axiom of mathematics.

The only way to stave off disorder at home is to march against the
enemy abroad.  The Western powers and the Chinese are playing that
dangerous game the English call brinkmanship.

Well, it's not a sport that you enjoy with an empty belly.  So, once
again, will you try to help?"

"Yes, of course I will try; but I can't work in a vacuum.  I need a
briefing.  I need a list of trading points which your people are
prepared to concede in return for urgent supplies.

You too play the game on the edge of the precipice and you can be just
as stupid as any in the West!  So, I need a piece of script, however
elementary, that gives me authority to act as broker in the market."

"That may be difficult."

"Without it, the rest is impossible.  Come, Comrade Petrov!  I can make
press statements, sermons, appeals.  I did it every Sunday in Saint
Peter's Square!  I made special diplomatic speeches on every tour.  But
that's the same as you making a May Day Speech on Marxist-Leninist
ideology and the solidarity of the People's Soviets!  It puts no meat
in the stew!

But with a brief in my hand, one that you can repudiate if I botch it
Bien!  At least I will be received as an emissary with respect."

"Would you be prepared to come to Moscow?"

"Yes provided I get a friendly invitation from the men at the top and
I'm not harassed at every step by the KGB."

"That won't happen, I promise you."

"When would you want me there?"

"As soon as possible; but I have to stick my toe in the water just to
see that there are no crabs waiting to bite it off.  How can I get in
touch with you?"

"Through my brother, Alain, at the bank, Halevy Freres et Barette."  He
scribbled the address on a desk-pad and passed it to Petrov.

"Alain won't know where I am; but I'll be in touch with him from time
to time."

Petrov folded the paper and put it into his pocket-book.

He said: "Would you join me in a drink?"

"Thank you, but it's a little early for me."

"I need one.  I know I've been hitting it hard the last few weeks; but
what's a man to do at the end of another lousy day with the begging
bowl?  You don't get any medals for effort in this business just
fish-eyed stares and 'tut-tut, Comrade, there must be something
constructive you can do!"  I know there isn't and they know there
isn't; but they're safe in the Kremlin shuffling their papers while I'm
wearing out shoe leather and patience."

"I thought you had some hope with Pierre Duhamel."

"So far that's all it is hope!  He's trying to work out some
complicated scheme by which we purchase cargoes while they're in
transit and divert them to Baltic ports.  It's the size of the
operation that's the problem unless Duhamel is playing dirty.  What do
you think of him?"

"I think he's trying to play clean in a dirty game."

"It could be.  What about that drink?"

"Suggestion," said Jean Marie Barette.

"Let's hear it."

"Forget the drink.  Order coffee for two.  Give me your size and I'll
go down and buy you a new shirt and underwear.

Then you send your suit out to be pressed and take a long, hot bath
while you're waiting for it."

Petrov stared at him in disbelief.

"You're telling me I'm unclean?"

"I'm telling you, dear Comrade, that if I were under the gun as you
are, I'd change twice a day, never drink till after sundown and let it
be known that anyone who thinks he can do my job better is welcome to
it."

"Only one problem with that prescription."

"What's that?"

"Whoever takes my job will want my head as well and I don't want to
part with it just yet.  But you're right about the rest of it.  I'm
size 40.  You go buy the clothes.  I'll order the coffee.  It usually
takes a while to get room service anyway."

"I thought you were staying at the Embassy," said Jean Marie Barette.

"I am," said Sergei Petrov.

"I keep this place for private contacts."

"Are you sure they are private?"

"As sure as I can be.  I know the room is not bugged.  On the other
hand, that scares me more than anything."

"Why?"

"Because it could mean nobody really gives a damn what I do.  I could
be a sitting duck, just waiting for someone to knock me off.  Not that
it would matter very much.  The whole human race has a pretty limited
run anyway."

"Precisely how long do you give it?"

"Let's see.  We're now in September.  If I can't get grain before the
winter, the Army will march immediately after the spring thaw.  If I
get it, then there's a breathing space, but not too long, because
there's still the problem of fuels and energy, and every big nation has
a plan for pre-emptive strikes if the oilfields are threatened.  At
worst we've got six to eight months, at best, eighteen.  It's not a
pretty thought, is it?"

"I'll go buy the clothes," said Jean Marie.

"Any preference in colours?"

Sergei Andrevich Petrov burst into a bellow of laughter.

"I wish the old comrades could see me now!  Ever since the revolution
the Vatican has been a burr in our breeches.  Now I have the Pope
buying my underwear!"

"And what's odd about that?"  asked Jean Marie with bland innocence.

"The first one peddled fish in Israel."

As he went about the simple business of buying socks and underwear, he
was struck not only by the comedy of the situation but by the macabre
recklessness of it.  Born in the mid-twenties, he had been too young
for military service with the French Army, and he had been forced to
flee to the mountains to avoid conscription for forced labour under the
Germans.  He had fought with the Maquis and begun his seminary training
a year after the end of hostilities.  But one of his most vivid
memories was the nightmare period when the Germans began to pull out
and the whole edifice of occupation began to collapse.  It was like a
Walpurgisnacht of drunkenness, cruelty, heroism and complicated
insanities.

Now he was seeing the same thing again the operatic disorders in
Tubingen, assassination by decree, Pierre Duhamel, the trusted servant
of the Republic, conniving at secret horrors in the vain hope of
preventing greater ones, and now Sergei Petrov, trying to break a
blockade of the grain market and drowning his despair in vodka.  It was
the madness-in-little which was the most sinister of all.  Famine in
the Horn of Africa?  Eh!  What was it?  A natural purge of surplus
population from marginal land that is, until you picked up a child with
a belly like a balloon and arms like matchsticks and hardly enough
heart-beat to pump air into its lungs.  Then you cursed God and cursed
man, his errant creature, and primed the bombs to blast the whole mess
into oblivion!

Whereupon, with sublime irrelevance, he decided that brother Alain was
right.  He did need some new clothes.  If he were shopping for Petrov
he might just as well spend a little care on himself.  There was no
point in going badly dressed to one's own funeral.

* * * That night, Roberta Saracini had three guests home to dinner.
They came in work clothes and brought brief-cases, an artist's folio
and a video tape machine.  They had the purposeful air of professionals
who knew exactly what they were about and needed no advice from the
unskilled.  The oldest of the three was a big, florid-faced fellow with
a broad smile and a shrewd eye.  Roberta introduced him as Adrian
Hennessy.

"No relation to the cognac.  He's American, speaks seven languages, and
makes expensive sense in all of them.  He arrived from New York this
morning.  If you and he can get along he will direct our operation."

The second guest was a mannish young woman whose features looked
vaguely familiar.  This one was the surprise packet.

"Natalie Duhamel, our expert on films and television.  I believe you
know her father."

"I do."

Jean Marie was nonplussed.  The young woman gave him a cool smile and a
well-rehearsed definition.

"My father and I have an excellent relationship.  He doesn't produce my
shows and I don't write his reports to the President.  In matters of
confidence, he doesn't ask, I don't tell and vice versa!"

"It's a very precise arrangement," said Jean Marie Barette.

"And this," Roberta Saracini presented her third guest, a stripling
youth who might have modelled for the Delphic charioteer, "this is
Florent de Basil.  He designs, he paints, he makes beautiful songs."

"In short, a genius."  He had the ready innocent smile of a child.  He
took Jean Marie's hand and kissed it.

"I can't tell you how much I've wanted to meet you.  I hope you'll be
able to give me time to do a portrait."

"First things first, my love," said Roberta Saracini.

"It's half an hour to dinner.  Why don't we start work over
cocktails?"

Adrian Hennessy opened his brief-case and brought out a tape recorder.
Florent de Basil produced a sketch-pad.

Natalie Duhamel sat placidly watching.  Hennessy took a swallow of
liquor and stated categorically:

"We talk off the record first.  If we don't agree the terms of
reference we enjoy our dinner and call it a day.  If we agree, then we
start work forthwith.  First item.  How do we call the subject?  That's
you, sir.  Remember, certain materials like notes and tape recorders
have to be carried around, therefore, they can be lost.  So, we don't
want real names."

"My name is Jean Marie ..."

"Then let's change it to American: John Doe.  Next, the aim of our
project.  As Roberta has explained it, you have a message which you
wish to deliver to the world.  You are concerned, however, that you
should not be seen to propagate this message as an official teacher of
the Roman Catholic Church."

"That's an accurate summary.  Yes."

"But it is still incomplete.  It ignores the heart of the problem: that
as a one-time Pope you still wear the aura of your office.  There is no
way you can make public declarations without coming into conflict with
the present incumbent who, by the way, is the least inspiring of
oratOES*J o*-the question is: how far are you prepared to risk that
conflict?"

"Not by a single step," said Jean Marie Barette.

"I like a man who knows his own mind," said Hennessy with a grin.

"But a message has to be delivered by someone;

and that someone has to have some authority.  After all, you don't read
the letters of John Doe in church .. . You read Saint Paul and Saint
Peter and Saint James ..."

"I don't agree," said Jean Marie.

"I'm sorry; but I've had this argument ad nauseam.  I almost ended
believing it.  Not now!  Not ever again!  Listen."  Suddenly he was a
man on fire.

The listeners hung on his every word and gesture.  Hennessy reached
forward and switched on the tape recorder.

"If each of us were locked in a silent room, deprived of all sensory
reference, we should very soon become disoriented and, finally, insane.
The person who would probably endure longest would be the one who was
practised in withdrawal, in meditation, whose life had an outside
reference to God.  I met several such people during my pontificate,
three men and one woman who had been confined as religious agitators
and tortured by sensory deprivation.  The fact is that we live only in
communion not only with our present but with the past and the future as
well.  We are haunted by a whole poetry of living, by lullabies
half-remembered and the sounds of train whistles in the night and the
scent of lavender in a summer garden.  We are haunted by grief, too,
and fear, and images of childhood terror and the macabre dissolutions
of age.  But I am sure that it is in this domain of our daily dreaming
that the Holy Spirit establishes His own communion with us.  This is
how the gift is given, which we call grace: the sudden illumination,
the sharp regret that leads to penitence or forgiveness, the opening of
the heart to the risks of love.

Authority is irrelevant here.  Authority is the one-eyed man in the
kingdom of the blind!  It can command us to everything except love and
understanding.  So what am I trying to tell you?"  He gave them a grin
of self-deprecation.

"Peter is dead and Paul is dead and James the brother of the Lord.
Their dust is blown away by the winds of centuries.  Were they large
men, little men, fair or dark?  Who knows?  Who cares?  The testimony
of the Spirit, made through them, still endures."

He quoted softly, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels
and have not charity, I am become like a sounding brass or a tinkling
cymbal."

There was a long silence in the room.  Jean Marie looked from one to
the other seeking a response.  Their faces were blank, their eyes
downcast.  Finally it was Hennessy who spoke.  He switched off the
tape.  He addressed himself not to Jean Marie but to his colleagues.

"I don't need to see the man who said that.  I can read it, listen to
it, and make my own image, Natalie."

"I agree, totally.  Imagine that with lights, make-up, cues all the
mechanics.  He'd look like a whore playing a virgin with all respect to
you, Monseigneur!  What do you think, Florent?"

The young man was curiously subdued.  He said: "No images, certainly. I
found myself hearing music something very simple, like the old ballads
that told about love and knightly deeds .. . Perhaps I should modify
that.  The image should not be of the speaker.  It could be of his
audience.  Can we think about it for a while?"

"I'm a banker," said Roberta Saracini.

"But you gave me a thought, Adrian.  You said, "You don't read the
letters of John Doe in church."  Would you read a letter from this John
Doe?  Would you listen if he sent you a message on tape?"

"You're damn right I would!"  He scribbled a note on his pad.  Then he
turned to Jean Marie and made a rueful apology.

"I know this must sound very impertinent treating you like some kind of
puppet to be manipulated."

"I'm used to it," said Jean Marie equably.

"Our people at the Vatican are experts in high theatre; and some of our
masters of ceremonies were real tyrants.  Don't worry!  I'll let you
know when I've had enough!"

"Letters!"  said Natalie Duhamel.

"They used to be a very fashionable form of literature."

"Still are," said Hennessy.

"Letters of Junius, Lettres de mon Moulin, Letters to The Timesl
Trouble is to find editors with guts enough to run them in spite of
present censorship.

We could certainly find enough book publishers to run a series.  Could
you write them, Monseigneur?"

"I've been writing them all my clerical life," said Jean Marie.

"Pastoral letters, encyclicals, letters to clergy and conventual nuns.
I'd welcome a change of style."

"You could also talk them on to tape?"

"Of course."

"I'm scared," said Natalie Duhamel.

"Who's going to listen to sermons?"

"Was that a sermon?"  The young man pointed dramatically at the tape.

"No, but can he sustain the style?  Can you, Monseigneur?"

"I'm not aware of style."  Jean Marie was crisp and definite.

"I have things to say, about living and dying.  They have to be spoken
heart to heart."

"If you write letters," said Hennessy boldly, "to whom do you address
them?  That's where you come back to authority.

The editor asks: "Who is this fellow?"  The public asks: "What the hell
does he know?"" "And you may not be dealing with editors at all," said
Natalie Duhamel.

"You may have to go back to the samizdat and the underground press or
even to the wall posters of China!  But Adrian's right.  A letter
begins "Dear X."  Who is X in this case?"

"If you're writing about the end of everything," said Florent de Basil,
"it seems a pointless self-contradictory exercise.  Who can do anything
about the final event?"

"You're right," Jean Marie agreed with apparent good humour.

"With whom do you correspond then God?"

"Why not?"  Jean Marie savoured the thought for a moment.

"Where else do we turn at world's end?  It's what a child might do:
write letters to God and post them in a hollow tree.  You could call
them: Last Letters from a Small Planet!"

"Stop right there!"  Hennessy's command was like a whip crack  He
looked around at the small assembly.

"Don't anybody say a word until I ask for it.  The title is beautiful.
I love it."  He turned to Jean Marie and asked: "Could you write those
letters?"

"Of course.  It's not difficult."  He made a small joke of it.

"After all, I do talk to the Almighty every day.  I don't have to learn
a new language."

"How soon could you begin putting something on paper?"

"Tonight, tomorrow morning, whenever."

"Then please!  One letter a day a thousand to twelve hundred words
until further notice.  Leave it to us to find the hollow tree and an
international distribution."

"One elementary question."  It was Natalie Duhamel who asked it.

"Who will be the author of these letters?  What character and under
what name?  That's basic to our promotion.  " Jean Marie offered a
half-serious suggestion.

"I can't be a child again; but I've often felt small.  Why don't I sign
myself Jcannot .. . Little John?"

"It sounds a little clownish to me, " said Roberta Saracini.

"Then let's go the whole way!  Let's admit that there is such a thing
as a divine folly.  I'll sign myself Jeannot le Bouffon\ Johnny the
Clown."

"Why demean yourself?"  Roberta was still unhappy.

"Why step so far out of character that no one will know who you really
are?"

"Because then no one can accuse me of ambition or rebellion.  And, who
but a child or a clown would write letters to the Almighty?"

"I agree with the man!"  said Hennessy.

"And if we can't make Johnny the Clown a household name around the
globe, I'll blow my brains out.  What do you say, Natalie?"

"I can see a way to visualise the whole thing if Florent can come up
with a logo."

"A logo and the music, my love and even a counterpoint theme: "Johnny
the Clown is so simple.  Why are the rest of us so complicated?""
"Let's not talk it into the air," said Hennessy.

"And let's not distract the author!  He's the inspired one.  We're the
technicians .. . How long to dinner, Roberta?  I'm starving!"

He could not believe it was so easy to write the letters.  As Pontiff
he had been forced to weigh every word, lest it deviate by a hair's
breadth from the definitions of ancient councils:

Chalcedon, Nicaea, Trent.  He could not discredit the decretals of his
predecessors, however much he disagreed with them.  He must not
speculate; he could only hope to illuminate the traditional formulae of
faith.  He was the fount of authority, the final arbiter of orthodoxy,
the looser and the binder himself more stringently bound than any, a
tomb-slave to the Deposit of Faith.

Now, suddenly, he was free.  He was no longer Doctor et Magister but
Johnny the Clown, wide-eyed among the mysteries.  Now he could sit and
smell the flowers, watch the waterspout and, the fool of God, safe in
his buffoon dress, dispute with his Maker.  ' Dear God, I love this
funny world; but I have just heard the news that you are going to
destroy it; or, worse still, you are going to sit up in heaven and
watch us destroy it, like comedians wrecking a grand piano, on which
great masters have played Beethoven.  I can't argue with what you do.
It's your universe.  You juggle the stars and manage to keep them all
in space.  But please, before the last big bang, could you explain some
things to me?  I know this is only one tiny planet; but it's where I
live and, before I leave it, I'd like to understand it a little better.
I'd like to understand you too as far as you'll let me but for Johnny
the Clown, you'll have to make it all very simple.  . I've never really
got it clear in my mind where you fit in.  No disrespect, truly!  But
you see, in the circus where I work, there's an audience and there's
us, the people who do the tricks, and there are the animals, too.

You can't leave them out because we depend on them and they on us.

Now, the audience is wonderful.  Most times they're so happy and
innocent you can feel the joy coming out from them; but sometimes you
can smell the cruelty, too, as if they want the tigers to attack the
tamer, or the aerialist to fall from the high trapeze.  So, I can't
really believe you're the audience!

Then there's us, the performers.  We're a mixed bunch:

clowns like me, acrobats, pretty girls on horseback, the people on the
high-wire, the women with the performing dogs and the elephants and the
lions and oh, all of it!

We're a grotesque lot really: good-hearted, yes, but sometimes crazy
enough to murder each other.  I could tell you tales .. . but then you
know, don't you?  You know us like the potter knows the vase that he's
turned on his own wheel.

Some people say you're the owner of the circus and that you set up the
whole show for your own private pleasure.  I could accept that.  I like
being a clown.  I get as much fun as I give.  But I can't understand
why the owner would want to cut the ropes of the big top and bury us
all underneath it.

A mad person might do that, a vengeful villain.  I don't believe you
can be mad and make a rose, or vengeful and ;

create a dolphin.  So you see, there is a lot of explaining to do.

The more he wrote, the more he wanted to write.  It was not a literary
exercise.  He was not teaching anyone.  He was engaged in the most
primitive pastime of all, the contemplation of paradox, the reasoning
of a simple man with Ultimate Mystery.  He was expressing himself with
a peasant's vocabulary, far different from that of the philosophers and
the theologians.  He did not have to invent new symbols or new
cosmogonies like the Marcians and the Valentinians.  He was a man in
love with old and simple things ripe grain rubbed in the hands, apples
picked fresh from the tree, the first sweet savour of spring love. They
were the more precious, because they would soon be lost in the doomsday
chaos.  As Pope he had written for women mandates, prescriptions,
counsels.

Never before, in all his clerical career, had he written so tenderly
about them.  . They tell me their secrets because I'm a clown with big
boots and baggy pants and I'm always afraid.  They're not ashamed to
admit that they're afraid, too.  They don't feel ridiculous either even
when they've made fools of themselves with a man.  I'm much more
foolish than they'll ever be, with my big mouth and my cry-baby eyes.
They just want to love and to be loved, and nest like the birds and
make beautiful children.  But they hear the ghostly horsemen riding in
the night war, plague, famine and they ask why they should breed babies
to die at a dry breast or burn up in a bomb-flash.  They cannot walk
safe in the streets; so they learn to fight like men and carry weapons
against rape.  They watch the men making war dances and they despise
them.  When the men get angry, they despise them the more; and the
loving becomes sour or strange.

They want to know what's gone wrong with your world and why they don't
see you sometimes on the street corner where your son used to be
centuries ago, talking to the passers-by, telling the truth in fairy
tales.  What can I tell them?  I'm just Johnny the Clown!  The best I
can do is make them laugh by falling flat on my face or walking slap
bang into a custard tart!

Will you think about all these things and try to give me some kind of
answer?  I know we've talked often.  Sometimes I've understood.
Sometimes I haven't.  But right now I'm scared and I'm tripping over my
big boots to run and hide.

This letter will be posted in the hollow oak at the bottom of the
meadow right near the place where we keep the circus horses.

I'll keep writing because I have a lot more questions to ask.  These
may be the last letters you'll ever get from our small planet; so,
please don't shut down the world before I can make some sense of it.

Your puzzled friend, Johnny the Clown By evening he had written five
letters, twenty pages of script in all, and it was only sheer physical
fatigue that made him stop.  It was still early.  It would be pleasant
to take a stroll along the Quais.  Then, with a small shiver of fear,
he remembered that now he was the subject of Grade A surveillance and
the trackers would be casting about to pick up his scent.  He could not
risk compromising Roberta Saracini by a trifling act of
self-indulgence.  Instead he called Adrian Hennessy.

"If you have time this evening, I'd like you to see what I've
written."

"How much have you got?"

"Five letters.  Something better than six thousand words."

"My God!  You are industrious.  I'll be over in twenty minutes."

"Would you do me a favour?  On your way, pick up a basket of flowers
for Roberta and a card to go with them.  I'd do it myself, but I'm not
supposed to leave the house."

"Better still: let me have them delivered direct from the florist. What
do you want to say on the card?"

"Just: "To say my thanks, Jeannot le Bouffon'."

"Got it!  I'm on my way."

In eighteen minutes he was at the door, brisk, blunt and businesslike.
Before he read a line of the manuscript he laid down another set of
ground rules.

"This is the big game: no compliments, no concessions.  If it's good I
say so.  If it's bad we burn it.  In between?  Well, we think about
it."

"Very proper," said Jean Marie placidly, "except you can't burn
anything you don't own!"

Hennessy glanced quickly through the manuscript.

"Good!  For a start it's legible.  Why don't they teach handwriting
like this any more?  I want to be alone for half an hour.  That will
give you time to read vespers in the garden.  You might remember me
when you come to the Domine Exaudi."

"With pleasure."

He was hardly out of the door before Hennessy was deep in his reading.
Jean Marie chuckled quietly to himself.  He felt like a scene-shifter
in a Japanese play; he was dressed in black and therefore to be
ignored.  He did, however, make remembrance of Adrian Hennessy at the
Domine Exaudi.  He said, "Please!  Let me be able to trust him!  I'm
not sure in my judgments any more."

The judgment that Hennessy passed on the manuscript was brief and
final.

"That's what you promised.  You moved me and I've got boiler plate
around my heart."

"So what happens now?"

"I take these, have them copied and a couple of file copies sent to
you.  I retain the original holographs in case we have to authenticate.
Natalie and Florent read them and come up with ideas for special
audio-visual treatments.  Meantime, I'm looking for newspaper, magazine
and book outlets in all languages.  You will continue writing and may
God guide your pen!  As soon as we've got concrete situations, we'll
present them to you for approval.  Your flowers are ordered.

Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"I'm under Grade A surveillance as a political agitator or at least I
will be as soon as my whereabouts are known.  I'd like to get out and
stretch my legs, eat in a restaurant; but my face is too well known.
Any suggestions?"

"Easiest thing in the world."  Hennessy consulted his pocket-book and
then made a telephone call.

"Rolf?  Adrian Hennessy.  I've got a job for you.  Immediate.  Highest
scale for payment.  Let me see .. . I'll read him off to you.  Age:

sixty-five, grey hair reasonably abundant, fair complexion, features
thin but fine-boned, eyes blue, very slim.  Well, the point is he's
anchored to the house and he'll soon be chewing the carpet.  Yes, he is
well known, so it's a whole transformation scene .. . but not the
Hunchback of Notre Dame, for God's sake!  He still wants to eat in a
public place.  Have you got a pencil?  I'll read you the address.  How
long will it take you to get here?  .. . Fine, I'll wait.  That's
right.  He's one of mine and very close!"  He put down the receiver and
turned to Jean Marie.

"Rolf Levandow, Russian-Jewish, best makeup man in the world.  He'll be
here in half an hour with his box of tricks.  When he's finished, your
own mother wouldn't know you without a voice-print."

"You amaze me, Adrian Hennessy."

"I am what you see.  I give what I'm paid for: total service!

That's the chalk-line.  Nobody steps over it unless I ask them even
you, Jeannot le Bouffon!"

"Please!"  Jean Marie held up his hands in protest.

"I wasn't asking to hear your confession!"

"You've heard it, anyway."  Adrian Hennessy was suddenly strange and
far away.

"I know how to arrange any service you want, from a lipstick promotion
to a liquidation.

I walk some pretty wavy lines; but I don't cross up my clients, and
nobody owns enough of me so that I can't toss the contract back on the
desk and walk out.  But let's talk about you for a moment.  A couple of
months ago you were one of the high men, spiritual leader of half a
billion people, absolute monarch of the smallest but most important
enclave in the world.  That's an enormous power base.  With it, you had
a whole, world-wide organisation of clergy, monks, nuns and parochial
laity.  Yet you surrendered it all!..  . Now look at you!  You can't go
for a stroll except in disguise.  You're the houseguest of a lady
lion-hunter.  You're depending on her to buy you print-space and
air-time that once you could have had for free.  I have to ask myself
what sense this makes to you."

Jean Marie considered the question for a moment and then shook his
head.

"Let's not play dialectic games, Mr.  Hennessy.  An eagle can talk
sense with a canary but a canary with a goldfish, never!  They live by
diverse modes in diverse elements.  I have had an experience which has
changed me completely for better or worse is not the question.  It is
simply that I am different."

"How?  In what particulars?"  Hennessy, cold-eyed, pressed the
question.

"I need to know the man I'm serving."

"I can tell you only by simile," said Jean Marie quietly.

"Do you remember the gospel story of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus
from the dead?"

"I remember it."

"Think about the details: the sisters in grief, in fear of what might
be revealed when the tomb was opened.  lam foetet, they said.

"Already he stinks!"  Then the tomb opened.  Jesus called.  Lazarus
stepped out, still wrapped in the cerecloths.

Have you ever thought how he must have felt, as he stood blinking in
the sunlight, looking anew on a world from which he had taken his last
leave?..  . After what happened to me in the garden at Monte Cassino, I
was like Lazarus.  Nothing could ever be the same as it was before."

"I think I understand," said Hennessy dubiously, "but even if you've
changed, the world hasn't.  Never forget that!"

"Why do you call Roberta Saracini a lion-hunter?"

"Because I'm trying to be polite."  Hennessy was suddenly snappish.

"In my country they use a dirtier word for women who chase male
celebrities.  Don't mistake me!  She's a good client and you need her!
But part of me is an old-fashioned Irishman and I hate to see a priest
tied to a woman's apron strings  " "You have bad manners and a dirty
mouth!"  Jean Marie was angry and harsh.

"I presume you said all this to Madame Saracini before you began taking
her money?"

"I did."  Hennessy was unmoved.

"Because it's my job to point out the land mines before you both step
on them.  Since her father was put away, Roberta's got religion.  She
works at it, as she works at everything else.  It helps her and I'm
glad.

But before that and I know!  cocktails with Roberta meant breakfast in
bed as well.  So, you, Monseigneur, can very easily get caught in the
slipstream of her past.  You're under Grade A surveillance, because the
government is looking for nails to put in your coffin.  If you think
I've got a dirty mouth, wait till you hear the government brand of
pornography!  .. . Simple example!  You ordered flowers for Roberta.

A gentleman's gesture to his hostess; no harm in it at all!  But how
would you feel if someone planted a gossip item: "What high Catholic
dignitary is sending flowers to what lady banker whose daddy once took
the Vatican for a reputed fifteen million?"  That's only one of the
risks."

"I am grateful for your care," said Jean Marie with mild irony.

"But I suggest that there is no recourse against malice and evil
report."

"Don't patronise me!"  Hennessy was suddenly furious.

"It happens I do care!  I believe what you say!  I want it heard!  But
I don't want my Church shamed in the city square."

"Forgive me!"  Jean Marie made a rueful apology.

"I

warned you.  I haven't changed for the better."

"At least you've got fire in your belly," said Hennessy with a sour
grin.

"Next time I'll choose my words more carefully."

The make-up man arrived a big, swart, bearded fellow who looked like an
Old Testament prophet and was just as eloquent and peremptory.
Disguise, he explained at length, was a matter of illusion. Complicated
make-up was for the stage or the screen.  Very few women knew how to
use cosmetics properly, even though they applied them every day.  Rolf
Levandow would certainly not trust an elderly gentleman of sixty-five
to do a successful maquillage.  So, let's see!  Head this way, head
that!  A pity to change the hair.  It would be a kind of mutilation. 
Presumably Jean Marie was not entering himself for a concourse of
elegance.  On the other hand, he could not pass for a workman not with
those thin shoulders and flat belly and soft hands. Well then!  A
retired professor, a magazine critic, something in the arts!  Again the
idea was to create a local identity; so that the man behind the bar and
the girl at the newspaper kiosk and the waiter in the brasserie would
swear that he was familiar and safe.  Finally, Jean Marie found himself
looking into a mirror at a slightly seedy scholar, who wore a basque
beret, gold pince-nez with a moire ribbon and a pair of gum-pads that
gave him a rabbit faced look.  As the make-up man explained, a literary
magazine under the arm would help; an inexpensive cane was optional;
and a certain air of parsimony was recommended, like counting out his
coins from a little leather purse.  Practice would suggest other
embellishments.  He should try to enjoy it as a game.  If he wanted a
change for any reason, then it could be arranged. Frequently one found
the subject got bored with a single identity.  He would leave his card
.. .

"Break it up, Rolf!"  said Hennessy.

"My friend and I have lots of work to do.  I'll walk you to the taxi
rank."

When he came back Jean Marie was still studying himself in the mirror.
Hennessy laughed.

"It works, doesn't it?  I told you he was the best.  And it would pay
you to keep in touch with him for more reasons than make-up."

"Oh?"

"He's an Israeli agent, a member of Shin Beth.  This job is a useful
cover.  He travels a lot with film people and does regular work for
French television.  He recognised you instantly.  He says the Israelis
are well disposed towards you.

They understand prophets in exile!  Who knows, you may find him
helpful.  I should be on my way."

"When will I hear from you?"

"As soon as there's anything to report.  You keep working on the
letters."

"I will.  Could I ask a small service?"

"Sure!"

"Let me walk with you as far as the quai.  I have to get used to this
new fellow with the pince-nez and the beret!"

It was the simplest of pleasures to stroll along the river, watch the
hopeful anglers and the lovers hand in hand and the tourists in the
bateaux mouches and the sunset splendours drenching the grey pile of
Notre Dame.  There was a childlike fun, too, in the disguise game.  He
bought, for a few francs, a battered volume of Les Trophees and a cane
with a dog's-head handle.  Thus protected, as if by a cloak of
invisibility, he sauntered along, happy as any literary gentleman who,
even if he were pinched by inflation, still got the best out of his
autumn years.

It was an agreeable fantasy and it carried him through to the last
ceremony of the afternoon, when he settled himself under the awning of
a pavement cafe, ordered coffee and a sweet pastry and divided his
attention between the passers-by and the lapidarian verse of Jose Maria
de Heredia.  He found that the old Parnassian had worn well and that he
himself could still be moved by that last poignant moment between
Antony and Cleopatra on the eve of the battle of Actium.

Et co urbe sur elle, I'ardent imperator Voyait dans ses yeux clairs
etoiles de points d'or, Toute nne mer immense ou fuyaient des gale
res

The grave and fateful beauty of the image matched his own mood of
elegy.  It seemed a blasphemy even to contemplate the ruin of Paris,
this so-human city, the extinction of all its serene beauties.  And
yet, come Rubicon Day, the sentence would be irrevocable and any man
who had lived in Rome knew how fragile was the fabric of the greatest
empire and how quiet the dead were in their urns and catacombs.  Then
he heard the voice.  It was close and to his left, a hearty American
baritone expounding the art of bouquinage:

"You don't go at it as if you're turning out grandmother's attic.  You
decide on one set of prints you'd really like to own.

It doesn't matter if they're as rare as hens' teeth.  That's just the
starting point.  It tells the man you're serious, that you've got money
to spend and it will pay him to take time and show you what he's hiding
under the counter.  That's the way I worked in Germany and ..."

As the monologue rolled on, Jean Marie fished for money in his wallet
and turned his head slowly as if to signal a waiter.

He remembered the dictum of Rolf Levandow.  Disguise was illusion. Even
if someone thought he recognised you, he was still put off by the
unfamiliar features.  You had to capitalise on that, stare him down,
snub him if he greeted you.

Alvin Dolman was seated at the next table, deep in talk with a young
woman dressed in bright summer cotton.  As Jean Marie raised his hand
to signal for the check, Dolman looked up.  Their eyes met.  Jean Marie
remembered that he was wearing pince-nez and that, very probably,
Dolman could not see his eyes.  He turned away slowly; then, as if
impatient to be gone, shoved a ten franc note under the saucer,
gathered up his book and cane and edged his way past Dolman's table
towards the street.  Mercifully, Dolman had not paused in his
monologue.

"Now you have to remember the kind of things that usually turn up on
the book stalls  I met a guy today the one next to where you were
standing who specialises in ballet designs.  That's not my line, but
..."  .  But the noonday devil was in Paris and Jean Marie Barette
could make some disturbing guesses at his current employment.  Ten
paces away from the cafe he let his book fall to the pavement.  As he
bent to retrieve it, he looked back.

Alvin Dolman was still deep in talk with the girl.  He seemed to have
made some progress.  He was now holding her hand.

Jean Marie Barette hoped she would be responsive enough to keep him
interested at least until he himself was safe in his own bolt-hole.

There was a message waiting for him.  Madame would be late home.  He
should order whatever he wanted for dinner.

He settled for coffee and a chicken sandwich, to be served in his room.
Then he bathed, put on pyjamas and dressing gown and began work on
another letter.  Now he was dealing with that most contentious of
subjects: the divisions on matters of faith between men and women of
good-will.

Dear God, If you're the beginning and the end of it all, why didn't you
give us all an equal chance?  In a circus, you know, our lives depend
on that.  If the riggers make a mistake, the trapeze artists die.  If
the man with the thunder-flash doesn't do it right, I lose my eyes.

But, you don't seem to look at things that way.  A circus travels, so
we get to see how other people live and I mean good people who love
each other and love their children and really deserve a pat on the head
from you.

Now, here's the thing I can't understand.  You know it all.  You made
it all.  But everyone sees you differently.

You've even let your children kill each other; just because they each
have a different description of your face at the window!  .. . Why do
we all use different marks to tell us we're your children?  I was
sprinkled with water because my parents were Christians.  Louis, the
lion-tamer, had a little piece cut off his penis because he's a Jew.
Leila, the black girl who handles the snakes, wears an ammonite around
her neck, because this is the magical snakestone.

And yet, when the show is over and we all sit at the supper table tired
and hungry, do you see much difference between us?  Do you care?  Are
you really very upset when Louis, who is getting old and scared, creeps
into Leila's bed for a little comfort, and Leila, who is really quite
ugly, is glad to have him?

I seem to remember that your Son enjoyed eating and drinking and
chatting with people like us.  He liked children.  He seemed to
understand women.  It's a pity nobody bothered to record very much of
his talk with them a few words with his mother, the rest was mostly
with girls who were on the town, one way and another.

What I'm trying to say is that you're shutting down the world without
really giving us a chance to overcome the handicaps you've given us.  I
have to say that.  I wouldn't be honest if I let the matter pass.
Somewhere up near the North Pole there's an old woman sitting on an
ice-floe.

She's not suffering.  She's fading slowly away.  Her family have put
her there.  She's content, because this is the way death has always
been arranged for the old.  You know she's there.  I'm sure you're
making it easy more easy perhaps than for some other poor old dear in a
very expensive clinic.  But you've never told us very clearly which
situation you prefer.  I like to believe it's one with the more loving
in it!

On the other hand, I have to tell you this. I sat today in a cafe.  Next to
me was a man I know to be truly inhabited by a spirit of evil.  He's
treacherous.  He's destructive.  He's a murderer.  How will you judge
him?  How will you make the judgment known to all the rest of us?  We
do have a right to know.  I don't have children, but if I ever had any
they wouldn't be just play-things would they?  Life itself would confer
rights on them at least according to our small standards.  I'd hate to
believe that yours were any lower.

So please I know I'm pushing hard tonight, but I'm tired and I'm scared
of that evil man with the happy voice and the sweet smile please tell
me how and when you're going to hear the case of Creator versus
Creature or should it be the other way round?  Or perhaps you could
call the whole thing off and turn it into a love-feast?

That's strange!  I've never thought to ask before.  Can you, God,
change your mind?  If not, why not?  And if you can, why didn't you do
it before we all got into such a terrible mess?  I'm sorry if I sound
rude.  I don't mean to be.

Once again, without warning, he was on the high peak, among the black
mountains of the dead planet.  Once again he was empty, alone, prey to
an unendurable sadness, a shame, as if he alone were the author of all
the desolation about him.

There was no respite, no appeal, no forgiveness.  There would be no
rapture, no fiery whirlwind, no exquisite agony of union with the
Other.  He himself was the dead centre of a dead cosmos.  He could not
weep.  He could not rage.  He could only know that this was all there
was to know: himself anchored to a barren rock in the desert of
eternity.

Suddenly he felt a touch on his flesh, a tug at his dangling fingers.
He looked down.  It was the little girl from the Institute, the little
clown of God, with her vacant, trusting smile.  His heart melted to
her.  He snatched her up and held her close.  She was his life-spark.
He, her last protection against the vacancy of a cold planet.

They could not stay here on the peak.  There must be caves to shelter
them.  He began to walk, stumbling down the dark, stony slope.  He felt
the child's cheek against his own, her warm breath, like a tiny wind,
ruffling his hair.  As he walked, the well-spring of emotion began to
flow again.  He was aware of pity and terror and tenderness and a
fierce rage against the Other who had dared to desert this tiny
helpless creature in a place which was no-place.

Finally he came to the mouth of a cave, within which, most strangely,
he could see a tiny light, like a star reflected in the black water of
a tarn.  He held the child closer and closer, as if to cover her with
the armour of his own skin, and strode towards the light.  It grew
larger and brighter until it dazzled him and he was forced to close his
eyes and stand quite still like a blind man in a new place.  Then he
heard the voice, strong and calm and gentle.

"Open your eyes."

He did so and saw, seated on an outcrop of rock, beside a small fire, a
young man of the most extraordinary comeliness.

He was naked except for a breech-cloth and sandals.  His hair, golden
and abundant, was caught back with a linen band.

Beside him on the rock was a platter of bread and a cup of water.  He
held out his arms and said:

"I'll take the child."

"No!"  Jean Marie felt a sudden lurch of fear and stepped back against
the farther wall.  He eased himself down into a sitting position and
cradled the child in his arms.  The young man stood up and offered the
bread and the cup.  When Jean Marie refused he began feeding the child
morsels of the loaf and tiny sips of liquid.  From time to time he
stroked her cheek and smoothed the hair away from her eyes.  He asked
again:

"Please, let me hold her.  She will come to no harm."

He took the child and made a little dance with her, until she laughed
and fondled his face and kissed him.  Then suddenly she was not a
mongol any more, but perfect and beautiful like a princess doll.

The young man held her up to be admired.  He smiled at Jean Marie and
told him:

"You see!  I make all things new!"

"Where are all the rest?  The flowers, the animals, the people?"

"Here!"

He held the child up above his head.  She stretched out her hands.  The
walls of the cave dissolved into a prospect of meadows and orchards and
streams, silver in the sun.  The young man said chidingly:

"You have to understand.  The beginning and the end are one.  The
living and the dying are a single act because life is renewed by
death."

"Then why must the dying be so terrible?"

"Man makes his own terrors, not I."

"Who are you?"

"I am who I am."

"I've never understood that."

"You should not try.  Does the flower contend with the sun, or the fish
with the sea?  That's why you're a clown and you break things and I
have to put them together again."

"I'm sorry.  I know I make a mess.  I'll go now."

"Don't you want to kiss your daughter?"

"Please!  May I?"

But when he reached out his arms to take the beautiful child, she was
not there.  The man and the girl and the cave and the magical meadows
were all gone.  He was back in his own room.  Roberta Saracini was
standing by the desk with a tray in her hand.

"I saw the light under your door.  I thought you'd like some hot
chocolate before you went to bed.  When I came in you were asleep at
your desk."

"I had a big day one way and another.  What time is it?"

"Just after ten."

"Thank you for the chocolate.  How was your evening?"

"Most interesting!  We've been invited to share in the financing of a
new industrial project in Shanghai.  The Chinese financial delegation
entertained us at the embassy.  Ours is a mixed group: British, Swiss,
American and, of course, a consortium of bankers from the European
Economic Community.  The Chinese are very shrewd.  They want as wide a
spread of investment as possible.  They also believe that war is
inevitable and they have crash programmes for enterprises that can make
military materials.  Your name came up in the war talk."

"How?"

"Let me see if I can remember exactly.  Oh, yes.  The Americans were
talking about danger periods and trigger incidents that could set off a
war Rubicon Day in fact!  They make no secret of the fact that they
regard the Chinese as their natural allies.  In fact, I'm sure one or
two of their delegation were intelligence people.  Anyway, a man named
Morrow, who used to be Secretary of State but is now with Morgan
Guaranty, mentioned your prophecies and the articles about your
abdication.  He asked the Chinese how accurate they thought you were.
One of them a director of the Bank of China laughed and said, "If he is
a friend of the Jesuits he is very accurate indeed."  He reminded us
that it was the Jesuit Matteo Ricci who first introduced into China the
sundial, the astrolabe and the method of extracting square and cube
roots from whole numbers and fractions.  He was very interested when I
told him that I knew you and was, in fact, a trustee of your estate."

Jean Marie mourned silently over the indiscretion.  He wanted to say
something but he was tired and the milk was already spilt anyway.

Roberta Saracini went on: "Morrow said he would like to see you again.
Apparently you had dealings together at the Vatican.  I told him you
were in touch with me from time to time and I would pass the
message."

"My dear Roberta!"  He had to speak now and he could not temper the
words.

"I'm deeply grateful for all your help; but you have just committed a
monumental folly.  The French want me under surveillance.  This
afternoon I stood within a pace of the C.I.A. man who tried to kill
Mendelius.  I still don't know whether he recognised me.  Now you, at a
diplomatic gathering, announce that you are my trustee and I am I
quote!  in touch with you from time to time.  From tomorrow your phone
will be tapped and your house watched.  I have to move!  Tonight!  How
long will it take to get to the airport?"

"At this hour forty minutes.  But where?"

"I don't know and it's better you don't either.  First thing in the
morning get in touch with Hennessy and my brother Alain.  Tell them
I'll make contact as soon as I can.  I've got to pack."

"But the letters, the whole project ..."

"Depend on me!  So I need a safe place and secure communications.  Will
you drive me to the airport?  Taxi calls can be traced."

"At least let me say I'm sorry."

She was near to tears.  He took her face in his hands and kissed her
lightly on the cheek.

"I know you didn't mean it.  I've put you in a dangerous game and you
can't be expected to know all the rules.  When I'm settled we'll find a
safe way to communicate.  I still need your help."

"I'll get the car out.  Hurry with your packing; the last planes leave
at midnight."

On the face of it, a midnight flight to London was a folly of
desperation, but if he could arrive without detection he could be safe
while he worked on the Letters and cast about among old friends for any
who might believe in his mission and be prepared to co-operate in it.

He had always admired the British, though he had never wholly
understood them.  The subtleties of their humour often escaped him.
Their snobberies always irritated him.

Their dilatory habits in commerce never failed to amaze him.

Yet they were tenacious of friendships and fealties.  They had a sense
of history and a tolerant eye for fools and eccentrics.

They could be land-greedy and money-mean and capable of extraordinary
social cruelties; yet they supported great charities; they were humane
to fugitives; and they counted privacy a right and not a privilege.
Give them a cause they understood, put liberties they valued at risk,
and they would take to the streets by thousands or walk in solitary
dignity to the headsman's block.

On the other hand and he admitted it with wry humour as Gregory XVII he
had never been a great success with the British.  They had, over the
centuries, developed a working relationship with the Italians, whose
arts they bought, whose fashions they aped, whose talent for high
rhetoric and lowkeyed compromise was akin to their own.  On the other
hand, they looked on the French as a prickly lot, stiff-necked, uppish
and politically immoral, who lived too close by for comfort, had an
uncomfortable taste for grandeur and a cynical skill in pursuing it.

So, to his singular regret and occasional irritation, Jean Marie had
made good friends but exercised small influence in the British Isles.
In the end, he had been happy to leave the conduct of the local Church
to Matthew, Cardinal Hewlett, who, as one of his Curial colleagues put
it, 'is probably the least risky man for the job.  He has zeal without
fire, intelligence without talent, never makes an argument if he can
avoid one, and has no redeeming vices at all."  Hewlett had never
joined the Friends of Silence; but at the fateful consistory he had
cast his vote for abdication and justified it with a characteristic
quip.

"If our Pontiff is a madman we're well rid of him.  If he's a saint we
won't lose him.  I see no problem at all.  The sooner he's out, the
better!"

All in all, Matthew Cardinal Hewlett was not quite the man to call at
two in the morning and ask for bed and breakfast.

So, with the help of a taxi driver, Jean Marie Barette found lodging in
a reasonable hotel in Knightsbridge and slept dreamlessly until noon.

There were peacocks on the lawn and swans on the lake and the gold of
early autumn in the woodlands as Jean Marie Barette walked in the manor
garden with a man in whom he had confided much during his papacy, and
who now was to be his first publisher in the English language: Waldo
Pearson, old-time Catholic, one-time Foreign Secretary in the
Conservative Cabinet, now Chairman of the Greenwood Press.

Adrian Hennessy was there as well, with his folio of illustrations,
recordings of the Letters in French and English, and fully orchestrated
tapes of the theme for Johnny the Clown, composed by Florent de Basil.
He had also brought a certified document from the Banco Ambrogiano all'
Estero, guaranteeing an initial half-million sterling, to be spent on
the promotion and exploitation of Last Letters from a Small Planet.
Jean Marie ventured the wry comment that perhaps the money was more
eloquent than the author.  Waldo Pearson uttered a frosty disclaimer:

"We are very close to the time when money will have no meaning any
more.  In a nuclear conflict, we stand to lose two-thirds of the
population of these islands.  No government can come to terms with that
catastrophe no Church either, as you have found!  So they choose, as a
matter of policy, to ignore it.  In the Letters, you have found a way
to discuss the terror that confronts us without creating panic or
contention.

You will be judged as a prophet and not as a banker."

"And glad I am to hear you say it, Waldo!"  Hennessy put on his most
syrupy brogue.

"Because it's me that represents the bankers and devil a dollar will
you get until you've demonstrated the quality of your own publishing
and promotion!"

"I've told you before."  Pearson was determined to have all his
reservations on the record.

"We're confident of an exceptional distribution.  The advance we're
paying reflects that.  The newspaper serialisation will help, too and,
of course, the advertising funds you're providing.  But you're still
asking me to fight with one hand behind my back!  No television, no
press interviews, no revelation at all of the author's identity!  I see
no sense in that."

Before Hennessy had time to answer, Jean Marie stepped into the
argument.

"Please!  There are good reasons.  If my identity is known, I may seem
to put myself in conflict with the present Pontiff.  I do not want
that.  More: I am writing in response to what I believe to be Divine
command.  I have to rest on that act of faith and be content that the
tree be recognised by its fruits.

Finally, the only thing I can control is the integrity of the published
text.  I cannot put myself at the mercy of interviewers who may distort
my message by false, biased or incompetent report."

"In short, Waldo," Hennessy grinned like a happy leprechaun, "no way!
No how!"

Waldo Pearson shrugged.

"Well, it was worth a try!  When may we expect the finished
manuscript?"

"In two weeks."

"Good!  Is the author satisfied with the English translations?"

"I am, yes.  They are both fluent and accurate.  May we change the
subject a moment?  There is something else on which I should like your
advice."

"Please!"

"There are several people in England whom I received while I was in
office.  Could you arrange for me to meet them again and would you
permit me to have the meetings here in your house?"  Before Pearson had
time to answer, he went on to explain.

"I live in a modest hotel under an assumed name.  I cannot invite known
personages to such a place; but I still believe I can be of service in
the crisis that faces us all.

For example, Sergei Petrov has asked me to mediate in the matter of the
grain embargo.  However, I have no means of knowing whether I am
acceptable to any other parties.  You have held cabinet rank, Mr.
Pearson; how would you react to me?"

"Difficult to say."  Pearson, the politician, was a more prickly animal
than Pearson, the publisher.  He began to reason aloud.

"Let's take it by debit and credit.  You're a defeated leader, a Roman
Catholic cleric, a Frenchman, a selfstyled prophet all handicaps for a
political negotiator in today's market!"

Jean Marie laughed, but made no comment.  Pearson went on with his
accounting.

"On the credit side, what do we have?  You're a practised diplomat. You
can have no personal ambitions; your good behaviour after the
abdication did not pass unnoticed!  You're a free agent.  The memorial
which Rainer and Mendelius wrote about you took some of the mist out of
your mysticism."  He chuckled over his own schoolboy pun.

"So, let's sum it up.  If I were Foreign Secretary I should most
certainly receive you.  If you told me the Russians had invited you to
mediate a case with me, I'd be very sceptical.  I'd reason like this.
You are, prima facie, an honest broker.  Conversely or obversely, I'd
wonder whether the Russians had turned you, or why they hadn't picked
someone with more muscle in the market.  Then I'd argue that if they
were desperate enough to use an outsider like you, we ought to be able
to drive a hard bargain.  So, all in all yes!  I'd receive you with
interest and bypass you as soon as possible!"

"That makes good sense," said Jean Marie.

"Now back to my first question.  Would you be willing to arrange a few
meetings for me here in your house?"

"Of course!  You tell me whom you want and I'll invite them down.
Please remember that you yourself are welcome here at any time."

"There's something else to remember."  Hennessy was uneasy.

"If you don't want to reveal yourself as the author of Last Letters,
how are you going to explain your presence in the house of a prominent
British publisher?"

"We explain nothing."  Pearson cut in briskly.

"I let drop the information that we're discussing a possible book.  I'd
certainly like to raise the question of an autobiography."

"I'm afraid," said Jean Marie, "that's a project for which I should
have neither the taste nor the time."

"There are others that may interest you.  I've been trying for years to
find someone who can do me a clear and un rhetorical book on the nature
of religious experience.

We're seeing a phenomenon in England which deserves more notice than
it's getting.  While the traditional churches are losing clergy and
congregations at an alarming rate, the cults are flourishing.  Let me
show you something."  He walked them round the corner of the house to
where the woodland opened on to a vista of hill pasture, at the end of
which, perched on a rounded knoll, was a large mansion in the Palladian
style.  Pearson's commentary was spirited but unhappy.

"That place for instance!  It used to belong to a good friend of mine.
Now, it's the headquarters of a group who call themselves the Family of
the Holy Ones.  They're a cult like the Moonies, the Soka Gakkai, the
Hare Krishna.  They proselytise actively.  They have a very strong
conditioning regimen, based on excessive labour and constant
surveillance of the neophyte.  Lots of young people are attracted to
them.

They're very rich.  Like some of the other groups they are now arming
themselves, stock-piling food, medicines and weapons against Armageddon
Day.  If they survive, they and others like them could be the warring
barons of the post nuclear age.  That's what the Catholic hierarchy
were afraid of when you wanted to publish your encyclical.  Matt
Hewlett brought back a copy from Rome.  He came down especially to talk
to me about it.  He stood just where you're standing now and said:
"That's where Gregory XVII is going to lead us, whether he understands
it or not.  Cromwellian Christianity, pikes, muskets and all!"" "And
did you believe him?"  asked Jean Marie quietly.

"At the time, yes."

"What has happened to change your mind?"

"Several things.  Having been in politics and seen how hard it is to
make democracy work, I've often been tempted towards dictatorships of
one kind or another.  As a publisher I've seen how people can be
conditioned to habits and points of view.  To my regret I've often been
seduced into manipulative exercises in politics and commerce.  Then
Hennessy brought me your first letters.  There's a passage in the
fourth one which I learned by heart .. . "When a man becomes a clown he
makes a free gift of himself to the audience.  To endow them with the
saving grace of laughter, he submits to be mocked, drenched, clouted,
crossed in love.  Your Son made the same submission when He was crowned
as a mock king, and the troops spat wine and water in his face .. . My
hope is that when He comes again, He will still be human enough to shed
a clown's gentle tears over the broken toys that once were women and
children."" Pearson broke off as if- embarrassed and stood a long time
staring across the green folds of the land towards the Palladian
mansion.  Finally he admitted with odd emotion:

"I suppose you could say that was the moment of my conversion.  I've
always been a communicating Christian but only because I kept my mind
resolutely shut against some of the more horrifying consequences of
belief: like a universe where the animals devour each other to live,
and torturers are public servants, and the best offer to agonised
mankind is, "Take up your Cross!"  .. . But somehow your words managed
to release me from that credal despair and set me wondering again,
looking with new eyes at an upside-down world!"

Adrian Hennessy said nothing.  He reached for a handkerchief and began
to polish his spectacles vigorously.

Jean Marie Barette said with grave gentleness: "I know what you feel;
but it's a very fragile joy.  Don't lean on it too hard; otherwise it
may snap under your weight."

Pearson gave him a swift, probing look.

"You surprise me!

I should have thought you'd want to share the joy, however fragile."

Jean Marie held up a hand in deprecation.

"Please don't misunderstand me!  I am truly happy when anyone is
granted the kind of insight that gives new meaning to his profession of
faith.  I was simply warning you, out of my own experience, that the
comfort you now feel may not last.  Faith is not a matter of logic; and
the moment of intuition does not always repeat itself.  One has to
expect long periods of darkness and, often, a destructive confusion!"

Waldo Pearson was silent for a moment; then, with surprising bluntness,
he said to Hennessy: "Adrian, I want to talk privately with our friend.
Why don't you leave us for a while?"

"No problem!"  Hennessy seemed unperturbed.

"I'll take the car and drive down to the Nag's Head for a drink with
the locals!  Talk anything you like except contracts.  That's my
business!"

Waldo Pearson led Jean Marie down to the edge of the lake, where a pair
of white swans floated serenely in and out of the reed beds.  He
explained himself haltingly:

"We're at the beginning of well a fairly intimate relationship.  Author
and publisher can never live satisfactorily at arm's length at least
not an author like you and a publisher like me.  Just now I felt
rightly or wrongly that something important was being left unsaid
between us.  It seemed strange that you felt the need to utter a
warning about my my spiritual health."

"I was equally concerned with my own," said Jean Marie.

"It would not take much at this moment to convince me that I am
suffering from a monstrous delusion."

"I find that hard to believe.  You've been so adamant in your
convictions.  You've given up so much.  You write with such deep
emotion."

"Nevertheless, it is true."  Jean Marie plucked a reed from the
lakeside and began to shred it restlessly as he talked.

"I

have been in England three weeks now.  I live in a comfortable hotel
that looks out on an old-fashioned square, with a garden in the middle
where children play and young mothers bring their babies.  I work in
the mornings.  In the afternoon, I walk.  In the evenings I read and
pray and go to bed early.  I am very free, very relaxed.  I have even
made friends.  There is an elderly Jewish gentleman who brings his
grandson to play ball in the garden.  He is a fine scholar in the
Rabbinical tradition.  When he found that I knew Hebrew he was ready to
dance with joy.  Last Friday I went to a Sabbath supper in his house.
Then there is the concierge, who is Italian and talkative and always
ready for a little gossip.  So you see, my life is pleasant and I am
almost converted to this extraordinary equanimity of the British .. .
some of whom really do believe that God is an Englishman of impeccable
taste who never lets any mess get quite out of hand.  But, suddenly, I
have realised that this is a quite insidious temptation.  I can be
silenced, not by enemies, not by authority but by my own comfortable
indifference!  I can believe that just because I have written a few
pages which will be widely published, I have given full witness and
earned the right to dream out the rest of time until Judgment Day.
That's one side of the medal.  The other is equally sinister, though in
a different way.  As I write the Last Letters from a Small Planet, I am
expressing myself, my relationships with God and the human family.  I
am not teaching a body of doctrine.  I am not proposing a theological
argument.  I am not a pastor concerned for the well-being of his flock.
I am out of office you see; I am half-laicised; I even celebrate the
Eucharist for myself alone; which really makes little sense of the
sacramental act... Now, without warning, a pit opens under my feet.
Even as I wrote the lines that so moved you I was thinking: "Is this
true?  Is that what I really believe?"  .. . The end of civilisation I
do see as possible and proximate.  But the Parousia, the Second Coming,
that will make all things new?  I do not know how to come to terms with
the concept of a God-Man, risen and glorified, presiding in eternal
calm over the agonising dissolution of our earthly dwelling-place.
Whenever, now, I try to reason about it, I smell blood and see
demon-faces from the frescoes of ancient temples.  I wish, sometimes, I
could forget it all and talk to my old Rabbi while we watch the
children play..."

"And yet," said Waldo Pearson quietly, "that isn't what you write. What
appears on the page is the talk of a confident child with a loving
father."

"So which am I?"  asked Jean Marie with an odd half humorous pathos.

"The equable Englishman, doubting Thomas, the deluded prophet, or the
clown who is himself a child at heart?  .. . Or, perhaps, I am none of
these, but something quite different."

"What, for instance?"

Jean Marie crumpled the last shreds of the reed in his fist, tossed
them into the water and watched them bobbing in the wake of the regal
swans.  It was a long moment before he answered the question.

"I set out to make myself a thinking reed, pliant to the wind of the
Spirit; but a reed is also a hollow tube through which other men may
pipe a music alien to me."

Waldo Pearson took his arm and guided him away from the lake towards an
old-fashioned hot-house set against the weathered brick wall of the
garden.

"Our grapes are ripe.  I'm very proud of them.  I'd like you to try a
bunch."

"Do you make your own wine?"

"No.  These are table grapes."  As casually as he had slid off the
subject Pearson came back to it again.

"It seems to me what you are trying to explain are the symptoms of an
identity crisis.  I understand that.  I've been through it.  After
twelve years in the House, five of them in Cabinet, I felt lost,
disoriented, empty and, I suppose, open to manipulation.

It's a little frightening; but I didn't feel, as you seem to do, that
it was a situation tainted with evil."

"Did I say that?"  Jean Marie swung round to face him.  He was puzzled
and concerned.  Pearson, however, did not retreat.

"Not in so many words; but you seemed to imply it.  You said 'a music
alien to me'."

"You're right, I did.  That's the core of the matter.  All apocalyptic
literature refers to false prophets deceiving the elect.  Can't you
feel the horror of the idea?  .. . What if I were one of them?"

"I don't believe it for an instant," said Waldo Pearson firmly.

"Otherwise I would not publish your book."

"I don't believe it either," said Jean Marie.

"But I do feel myself to be a battle-ground, still in dispute.  I am
drawn to a safe indifference.  I am tempted to lose all faith in a
loving Deity.  I am afraid that my new and very fragile identity may
suddenly explode into fragments."

"I wonder," said Waldo Pearson as he opened the glass door of the
orangery.

"I wonder if your so-rigid obedience isn't a mistake.  Contention is
healthy and necessary even in the Church, and self-imposed silence can
be very de moralising  I found that in Cabinet.  You had to speak up or
be killed."

"There's a difference."  Jean Marie relaxed into good humour again.

"You didn't have to deal with God in the Cabinet Room."

"The hell we didn't!"  said Waldo Pearson.

"He was sitting right there in the P.M."s chair."

They both laughed.  Pearson snipped a bunch of big black grapes,
divided it and offered a handful to Jean Marie, who tasted them and
nodded approval.

"I've got a proposal to make to you."  Pearson was adept at swift
changes of subject.

"You need a forum and some access to the decision-makers in this
country.  I need a substitute speaker for dinner at the Carlton Club. I
did have the Prime Minister but he has a summit meeting in Washington. 
I need someone with weight and interest.  It's three weeks from now.

You'll probably be finished the Letters.  It's a closed function.

Everything said is off the record and the rules have never been broken.
The members all belong to what you call in France, "Le Pouvoir' though
they're rather less drastic in its exercise.  Please?  You'd do me a
favour; and you can certainly propagate the message."

"What should I talk about?"

"Your abdication.  The reasons and the aftermath.  I want to see my
colleagues' faces when you tell them that God spoke to you!  I'm not
joking.  They all invoke Him.  But you're the only man I know who
claims a private revelation and has put his head on the block to give
witness to it.

They'll be expecting some wild-eyed zealot!  Tell me you'll do it!"

"Very well.  If I'm to speak in English I'll need to write a text. Will
you check it for me?"

"Of course!  I can't tell you how happy I am.  And are we agreed the
reason for your presence is that we are discussing plans for a book,
possibly several books?"

"Agreed."

"Splendid!  Now let me tell you about these grapes.  The vine was
struck from cuttings taken from the Great Vine at Hampton Court ..."

It was all so especially British and understated that Jean Marie missed
the significance of the invitation.  Because he was more interested in
the folk-lore of Waldo Pearson's estate, he forgot to tell Adrian
Hennessy about the Carlton Club until they were halfway back to London.
Hennessy was so startled that he almost slewed the car off the road.

"My God!  The innocence of the man!  Don't you understand what's
happened to you?"

"I've been invited to speak at dinner in a gentlemen's club," said
Jean' Marie amiably.

"I assure you I'll cope with the occasion.  It's not nearly so
formidable as a public audience in Saint Peter's or a papal visit to
Washington!"

"But it can be a hell of a lot more important for you," said Hennessy
irritably.

"Pearson's a shrewd old fox.  He invites you to the Carlton Club, the
stronghold of Conservative politics.  He sets you as substitute speaker
for the Prime Minister at one of the three most important political
dinners of the year.  That's as close as you'll ever get to
canonisation by the English.  If you make a good speech and if you
don't fall down drunk or toss chicken-bones at the chairman you're
made!  You can lift a telephone and talk to anyone any time in
Whitehall or Westminster and you won't be nearly as vulnerable as you
are now!  The word will be around the chanceries that in Britain you're
a protected species.  That will have an immediate effect in France;
because whatever happens in the Carlton Club is studied very carefully
on the other side of the Channel.  Petrov's going to hear about it,
too; and the Americans.  The members of the Carlton bring the guests
they want to educate."

"Hennessy, my friend, if ever I am re-elected, you'll be my Cardinal
Camerlengo!"

"Not unless you change the rules on celibacy!  I'd have done well in
the Renaissance; but not in this day and age!  .. .

Which reminds me What are you going to wear to the Carlton Club
dinner?"

The question took Jean Marie by surprise.

"What am I going to wear?"

"Precisely.  All the other gentlemen will wear dinner jackets and black
ties.  How are you going to present yourself as a cleric or a layman?
If you go as a cleric, will you wear any sign of rank?  A red stock, a
pectoral cross?  If you go as a layman, you certainly can't go in
hand-me-downs from a rental company.  I see you laughing, Monseigneur;
but the question's important.  French protocol is clear and
trenchant:

tic-tac and you know who's who in the pecking order!  But the English
God bless their cotton socks!  do it differently.

You can be elegant and despised, shabby and admired, eccentric and
respected.  If you're a genius you can even wear last year's soup on
your lapels!  They'll be watching you like a hawk to see how you
perform in costume drama!"  He swung out to overtake a juggernaut
trailer.

"The fate of nations may hang on the cut of your smoking."

"Then let's give it the attention it deserves," said Jean Marie Barette
cheerfully.

"Can you find me a good Italian tailor?  I need someone with a sense of
theatre."

"The best," said Hennessy.

"Angelo Vittucci.  He can make a fat Bacchus look like Mercury in
tights!  I'll take you to see him tomorrow.  You know, Monseigneur ..."
He pulled the car on to the motorway and pushed down hard on the
accelerator.

"I'm beginning to get very fond of you!  For a man of God you've got a
good worldly sense of humour!"

"You know what Pascal said: "Diseur de bons mots mauvais caracterel'"
"Why?"  asked Hennessy with enormous gravity.

"Why do bad characters make good company?"

"We're the mustard on the meat!"  said Jean Marie with a grin.

"It would be a dull world if nothing needed mending and nobody needed
saving!  We'd both be out of a job!"

"If you'll pardon the expression," Hennessy, with a clear road ahead of
him, was prepared to enjoy himself, "you're the one who's out of a job!
I'm trying to get you gainfully employed.  Now sit back and listen to
this song again.  I really believe it could be a hit!"  He slipped a
cassette into the tape deck and a moment later they were hearing
Florent de Basil's theme-song, "Johnny the Clown'.  The tape was
designed to demonstrate several different treatments of the song.  It
stood up solidly under all of them.  The words were simple, the rhythm
catchy; but the melody had an odd plangent quality that tugged at the
heart-strings.

"Big boots, floppy clothes, Painted face, button nose, That's Johnny
the Clown.

"Johnny, Johnny, bounced and humbled, Johnny, Johnny, trounced and
tumbled, Johnny kicked and Johnny clouted, Johnny chased and Johnny
routed, Who says thanks for all the laughter, Gives you hugs and kisses
after?

Johnny, are you lonely too?

"Comic smile, goggle eyes, Who knows if he laughs or cries?

Just Johnny -Johnny the Clown!"

When the song ended Hennessy switched off the tape and asked: "Well,
how does it sound this time?"

"Still charming," said Jean Marie.

"Haunting, too.  How do you propose to use it?"

"We're discussing a contract now with one of the biggest recording
companies.  They'll do a special production with one of their singing
stars and launch it just before the book is published.  Then, if my
guess is right, the song will be picked up by other singers and should
go climbing up the charts.  It will provide an immediate audio link
with the visual publicity the book."

on "Our young friend Florent has a very attractive talent;

perhaps instead of my speaking at the Carlton Club, we should send him
to sing there."

"First lesson in show business," Hennessy admonished him.

"Never pass up a good booking.  You may not get asked again!"

* * * Two days later, alerted by telephone to the change in Jean
Marie's circumstances, brother Alain arrived in London.  As usual he
was full of irrelevant solicitudes.  Was not Jean's hotel a shade too
modest?  Should he not.  entertain some of the old Catholic nobility,
like the Howards of Arundel and Norfolk?  If it could be arranged for
the French Ambassador to be invited to the Carlton Club, the climate in
Paris would change immediately.

Jean Marie listened patiently and agreed to take these momentous
matters under advisement.  He was grieved to hear that Odette had been
stricken with the grippe, delighted that one of his nieces would soon
announce her engagement and that the other had taken up with a young
man of excellent prospects who worked in the Ministry of Defence.  It
was not until they were halfway through dinner at Sophie's - a small
retreat in a cul-de-sac off Sloane Street that Alain began to talk
freely about his personal concerns.

"I tell you, Jean, the money markets have gone mad.  There is a
mountain of gold in Swiss vaults and the price has gone through the
roof.  We are covering commodity deals all round the globe base metals,
rare metals, mineral oils, vegetable oils, beet sugar, cane sugar,
timber and co king coal.  There aren't enough ships to carry the stuff;
so we're making loans on bottoms that should have rusted through years
ago and the insurance companies are charging mad money to insure the
vessels and the cargoes.  Even so, how do you make the payments with
currencies swinging ten per cent in a day?  .. .

God should not hear the words I say, Jean; but we need a war, just to
halt the nonsense."

"Never fear, little brother!"  Jean Marie was in a winter of sadness.

"We're going to have one!  Paris will be a priority target.  Have you
thought what you're going to do about Odette and the girls?"

Alain was shocked by the question.

"Nothing!  We conduct our normal lives."

"Bravo!"  said Jean Marie.

"I'm sure you'll end with pure hearts and blank minds, still believing
the blast that hit you was hot air from a hair dryer.  Get out of
Paris, for pity's sake, even if you have to rent a hut in the Haute
Savoie!"

Alain was a picture of dignity affronted.

"We can't all join the panic of the Gadarene swine!"

Once again, Jean Marie had to reproach himself for the old sibling
rivalry.

"I know!  I know!  But I love you, little brother, and I'm concerned
for you and your family."

"Then you must try to understand where our concerns lie.

Odette and I have had our bad years.  At one stage we were seriously
thinking of breaking up."

"I didn't know that."

"I took care you didn't!  Somehow we both managed to hold on.  We're
solid now.  The girls are older and they've paired off with decent
fellows.  That's a satisfaction, if not a triumph.  So far as Odette
and I are concerned, there isn't too much to interest us in a refugee
life in the mountains!  We'd rather enjoy what we have and take our
chances with the rest of Paris."

Jean Marie shrugged agreement.

"It makes sense.  I should not try to prescribe anyone else's life."

"I think you ought to take an interest in Roberta's."  He said it in so
flat and peremptory a fashion that Jean Marie was startled.

"What sort of interest?"

"Compassion, for a start.  Her father died three days ago in prison."

"I didn't know.  Why didn't someone tell me?"

"I didn't know myself until a couple of hours before I left Paris.  I
didn't want to throw it at you the moment I arrived.

The terrible part is that he was murdered, stabbed by another inmate.
The general belief is that the killing was organised from outside,
probably by accomplices in the bank fraud."

"Dear God!  How is she taking it?"

"According to her assistant, very badly.  She'd built everything on the
fact that she was paying off her father's debts and giving him a chance
of an honourable life later.  I think you should call her and, if you
can, persuade her to come to London for a few days."

"I hardly think that's appropriate!"

"To hell with appropriate!"  Alain was angry.

"You owe it to her!  She took you into her house.  She's financing your
project with her own money.  She adores the ground you walk on!  ... If
you can't pick her off the floor, dry her tears and play Dutch uncle
for a few days, then frankly, brother Jean, you're a fraud!  I've heard
you say a hundred times, charity isn't collective.  It's thou and I ...
one to one!  And if you're worried about some kind of sex scandal at
sixty-five, then all I can say is you're more fortunate than I am!"

Jean Marie gaped at him for a moment in utter disbelief.

Then, without a word, he got up and walked across to the cashier's
desk.  He laid a ten-pound note on the counter and asked if he might
make an urgent call to Paris.  The girl handed him the phone.  He
tapped out Roberta's number.  A few moments later her manservant
answered.  He regretted most deeply that Madame was indisposed and was
accepting no calls.

"Please!"  Jean Marie pleaded with him.

"This is Monsieur Gregoire.  I am calling from London.  Will you beg
her to speak with me."

There was a long, ominous silence and finally Roberta Saracini came on
the line.  Her greeting was pale and distant.

He told her:

"Alain is with me.  He has just told me the news of your father.  I
imagine your line may be tapped.  I don't care.  I know how you must be
feeling.  I want you to come over to London.  Immediately!  Tonight if
you can make it.  I'll book you a room at my hotel.  Yes, the same
address Hennessy gave you.  No, I do not agree!  This is no time to be
alone; and with me at least you don't have to spell the words.  Good!
I'll wait up for you!  .. . A tout a I'hettrel" He put down the phone,
then called his own hotel to reserve a room.  The cashier gave him his
change.  He walked back to the table and answered Alain's unspoken
question.

"She's coming over tonight.  I've booked her into my hotel."

"Good!"  said Alain brusquely.

"And don't waste too much time over the obsequies!  Show her the town.
She loves pictures.  There seem to be some good theatres."

"Why not let me plan my own tour, little brother?"

Alain Barette seemed suddenly to have turned into a wit.

He raised his glass in an ironic salute.

"Well, you're not really used to going about unchaperoned, are you?"

Jean Marie burst out laughing.

"You and I have a lot to learn about each other!"

"And not much time to do it."  Alain was moody again.

"There's something else.  Petrov came to see me.  He wants a talk with
you.  I told him you were out of the country and any meeting would have
to be outside the frontiers.  I offered to carry a message.  This is
what he told me.  The project for your visit to Moscow is under
consideration at the highest level.  So far, reactions are favourable.
Once a decision is made he will contact me and I will pass the message
to you."

"How does he look?"

"Ragged!  He's under enormous strain."

"I wonder how long he can hold up," said Jean Marie thoughtfully.

"When you get back, arrange another face-to face meeting with him. 
Tell him of my engagement to speak at the Carlton Club.  Explain that
it may give me an opportunity to explore the situation on the grain
embargo with people in positions of influence.  At least they will tell
me whether it is possible to reopen a dialogue.  How much success has
Petrov had with Duhamel?"

"He thinks it may be possible for Duhamel to divert a Canadian shipment
of about a quarter of a million bushels of hard wheat, originally
intended for France.  That's a drop in the bucket and the ship is still
in mid-Atlantic.  So, who knows if it's just a delaying tactic. Duhamel
is a champion at that game."

"Have you spoken with Duhamel?"

"Briefly, to let him know I was coming to visit you.  He sent round a
note which he asked me to put into your hands."

He handed an envelope across the table.  Jean Marie opened it.  The
message was written in DuhamePs impatient script.

My friend, Each day we come closer to the Rubicon.  Our plans for the
day of the crossing are unchanged, even though Paulette's remission
continues and we are able to enjoy more together.  We are grateful
beyond words for this privilege.  We cannot, however, accept it as a
bribe for an act of submission which we are not yet prepared to make.

You are still listed for Grade A surveillance in France.

The Americans have also become interested in you.  Our people have had
requests for information from a C.I.A.

operator named Alvin Dolman.  He left last week for the United Kingdom.
His cover is that of personal assistant to former Secretary of State
Morrow, who now works for Morgan Guaranty.

I asked a friend of mine in British intelligence to run a check on
Dolman, as I thought he might be a double.  We know he isn't; but it
helps to muddy the waters.

Paulette sends her love.  Take care, Pierre Jean Marie folded the note
and shoved it in his breast pocket.  Alain watched him with sombre,
brooding eyes.

"Bad news?"

"I'm afraid so.  The man who tried to kill Mendelius is in London. He's
a C.I.A. man called Dolman.  They have planted him with Morrow of
Morgan Guaranty."

"I shall call Morgan Guaranty and tell them about it."  He announced it
so pompously that it sounded like a line of bad comedy.  Jean Marie
noted, with some surprise, that brother Alain was getting drunk.  He
said with a laugh: "Truly, little brother, I don't recommend it."

Alain's sensibilities were wounded.

"I don't want to find myself sitting next to a killer at a banker's
conference."

"I wonder how often you've done it, unaware."

"Touche."  Alain acknowledged the point with a salute and then
signalled the waiter for more wine.  He asked, "And what are you going
to do about the Dolman fellow, Jean?"

"Tell Hennessy and Waldo Pearson then forget it."

"Hoping that one or the other will provide you with some protection or
remove Dolman from the scene."

"In some fashion, yes."

"So, when he is found dead in his apartment or run down by an
automobile, how much guilt will you carry?  Or will you turn away like
Pilate and wash your hands?"

"You're playing rough games tonight."

"I'm trying to see what you're made of after all, we haven't spent much
time together these last thirty years."

Again there was a surprise for Jean Marie.  Brother Alain could be
morose and maudlin in his cups.

"You've always been the high one parish priest, Bishop, Cardinal,
Pope!

Even now, people defer to you because of what you used to be.  I see it
all the time in my business.  Prince Cul de Lapin, who's never done a
day's work in his life, gets better treatment than a successful
tradesman with half a million francs in his account."  He was having a
little difficulty now, getting the words out.

"What I mean is, it's like ancestor worship.  Great-grandpa is the wise
one, he's dead!  You're not dead; but God!  you do pronounce on a lot
of things you don't really understand."

"I'm going to pronounce on you, brother mine!  T'es soul comme tine
grivel You're drunk as a thrush.  I'm taking you back to the hotel."

Alain was near toppling as Jean Marie paid the bill and hurried him
outside.  They walked two blocks before Alain was able at last to get
his feet in rhythm.  Back at the hotel, Jean Marie helped him to his
room, undressed him down to his under-things, rolled him on to the bed
and covered him with the counterpane.  Alain submitted to the whole
performance without a word; but, as Jean Marie was about to let himself
out, he opened his eyes and announced, apropos of nothing at all:

"I am drunk; therefore I am.  The only time I can prove it is when I'm
away from Odette.  Don't you find that curious, Jean?"

"Much too curious to debate at midnight.  Go to sleep.

We'll talk in the morning."

"Just one thing ..."

"What?"

"You've got to understand Roberta's problem."

"I do."

"You don't.  She had to believe her father was some kind of saint,
doing penance for other people's sins.  Fact is, he was a real bastard.
He never had a thought for anybody but himself.  He ruined a lot of
people, Jean.  Don't let him ruin her from the other side of the
grave."

"I won't.  Good night, little brother.  You're going to have a
beautiful hangover in the morning."

He tiptoed out and went downstairs to wait for Roberta Saracini.

* * * Her appearance shocked him.  Her skin was dry and opaque.  Her
eyes were red, her features pinched tight over the bone structure.  Her
movements were jerky, her speech hurried and voluble as if silence were
a trap to be avoided at all costs.

He had reserved a small suite for her on the same floor as his own.  He
ordered coffee for two and waited in the salon while she freshened
herself after the journey.  She came back on a new flood-tide of
talk.

"You were right, of course.  It's crazy to stay shut up in that big
house!  It's amazing the number of people who take those late-night
flights.  Where's Alain?  How long is he staying?  He's worried as we
all are about the fluctuation in the currency market.  I suppose he's
told you that."

"He told me," said Jean Marie gravely, "that you were in deep distress.
I see that you are.  I want to help.  Will you let me, please?"

"My father's dead murdered!  You can't change that.

Nobody can.  I have to get used to the idea, that's all!"

She said it defiantly, as if daring him to pity her.  She was tight as
a fiddle-string, ready to snap under the first touch of the bow.  Jean
Marie poured coffee and passed her a cup.  He talked on, gentling her
down from the high pitch of near hysteria

"I was so grateful when you agreed to come.  It told me you were
prepared to trust me.  It gave me the opportunity to say my thanks for
what you are doing, also to share with you some exciting things: the
last stages of the Letters, the speech I'm to make at the Carlton Club,
and new friends I've made in London.  I want to go to the Tate and the
Royal Academy and Tower of London, and Cardinal Wolsey's palace at
Hampton Court and oh, so many other places.  We'll do it together."

She gave him an odd, wary look.

"You talk as if I were a little girl.  I'm not.  I'm a grown woman,
whose father was stabbed in a gaol corridor.  That makes me bad company
for man or beast."

"You're hurt and lonely," said Jean Marie firmly.

"I have no practice with women; so I'm probably going about this all
the wrong way.  I'm not trying to pat you on the head like a bishop or
give you a papal blessing which I'm not entitled to do anyway.  I'm
offering you an arm to hold when you cross the street and a shoulder to
cry on when you feel like it."

"I haven't shed a tear since I heard the news," said Roberta
Saracini.

"Does that make me an unnatural daughter?"

"No, it does not."

"But I'm glad he's dead!  I hope he's burning in hell!"

"Because you've already judged him," said Jean Marie with crisp
authority.

"And you have no right to do that!  As for burning in hell, that's
always bothered me, like a pebble in my shoe.  Sometimes in the press
I'd read about parents maltreating little children, breaking their
bones, burning them on hot stoves, for some naughtiness, real or
imagined.

I've never been able to imagine God our Father, or His so human Son,
damning his children to burn in eternal fire.  If your father were here
now for judgment, and his fate were in your hands, what would you
decide for him, for ever and a day?"

Roberta Saracini said nothing.  She sat, tight-lipped, eyes downcast,
clasping her hands together to stop their trembling.  Jean Marie
pressed her.

"Think of the worst crimes that have ever been committed the massacres
of the Holocaust, the genocide in Kampuchea and Brazil.  Can they ever
be expiated, even by an infinity of similar terrors?  They cannot.  The
prisons of this world and the next could not accommodate the
malefactors.  I believe and I have been shown only the faintest glimmer
of what is to be that the final Coming and the final Judgment itself
must be acts of love.  If they are not, then we inhabit a chaos created
by a mad spirit, and the sooner we are released from it into
nothingness, the better."

Still she did not answer.  He went and sat beside her on the floor.  He
took her hand and held it firmly in his palm and said: "You haven't
been sleeping very well, have you?"

"No, I haven't."

"You should go to bed now.  We'll meet at breakfast and start our
holiday immediately after."

"I'm not sure I want to stay."

"Will you say a small prayer with me?"

"I'll try."  The answer was low and tremulous.

Jean Marie gathered himself for a moment and then, still holding her
hand, intoned the prayer for the departed.

"God, Our Father, We believe that your Son died and rose to life.

We pray for our brother, Vittorio Malavolti, Who has died in Christ.

Raise him at the last To share the glory of the Risen Christ.

Eternal rest give to him O Lord, And let perpetual light shine upon
him."

"Amen," said Roberta Saracini and began to weep, quiet healing tears.

For the next five days they played tourists, gorging themselves on the
simpler pleasures of London.  They strolled by the Serpentine, watched
the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, spent a morning at the
Tate, an afternoon at the British Museum, an evening at a Beethoven
concert in the Albert Hall.  They took a river excursion to Greenwich
and another to Hampton Court.  They went window-shopping in Bond
Street, spent a morning with Angelo Vittucci who promised to design
Jean Marie a suit 'so discreet that a cherub could not be scandalised,
yet so beautifully fitted you will think you have grown a new skin!"

Roberta Saracini was, at first, desperately moody happy as a child one
moment, the next, buried in a deep pit of depression.  He learnt
quickly that logical talk made no impression on her: that gentleness,
distraction and an occasional curt chiding were the best remedies.  He
made discoveries about himself, too: how far he had travelled from
Vatican Hill, how many small joys had passed him by when he was the
puzzled shepherd of a faceless flock.  The Letters, on which he worked
late at night, became more poignant, as each Arcadian day made time and
tenderness and the tears of things more precious.

Roberta had decided that she would stay out the week, leaving London
late on Sunday evening so that she could be back at work on Monday
morning.  The forecast promised fine weather a brief extension of the
Indian summer before the first frosts came in.  Roberta suggested a
picnic.  She would hire a car, pack her luggage in the trunk.  They
could spend the whole day in the country.  Jean Marie could drop her
off at the airport on the way back to London.  So, it was agreed.

Early on Sunday morning, Jean Marie said Mass at a side chapel in the
Oratory Church, where the sacri stan had come to know him simply as
Pere Gregoire, an elderly French priest who wore a beret and looked
rather like a benevolent rabbit.  Then, with Roberta at the wheel and a
picnic basket made up by the hotel, they drove out to Oxford, Woodstock
and the Cotswold country beyond.

It was still early and the Sunday traffic had not yet begun to build
up; so they were able to turn off the highway and meander through small
villages still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, and rolling
farmland brown with the last stubble or dark after the first ploughing.
Their pleasure was in the small wonders: the ribbon of mist that lay
along a hillside, the grey tower of a Norman church, climbing out of
the huddle of a tiny hamlet, an apple-tree by the roadside laden with
red ripe fruit, free to the passer-by, a child perched on an ancient
milestone, nursing a doll.

Somehow, it was easier to talk while they were driving.

They did not have to look at each other.  There was always a new
distraction to bridge the betraying silence.

Roberta Saracini touched his arm and said: "I feel so much better than
when I arrived.  Things make more sense.  I can cope better.  I have
you to thank for that."

"You've been good for me, too."

"I don't know how; but I'm glad anyway."

"How do you feel about your father now?"

"I'm not sure.  It's all a sad kind of mess; but I know I don't hate
him."

"What holds you back?"  He prompted her firmly.

"You love him; no matter what he was or what he did, he paid his own
price and he gave you enough to get started, too.  Say it!  Say you
love him!"

"I love him."  She resigned herself to the proposition with a smile and
a sigh which might have been relief or regret.  Then she added the
postscript.

"I love you, too, Monsieur Gregoire."

"And I love you," said Jean Marie gently.

"That's good.

That's what it's all about.

"My little children, love one another."" "I hope," said Roberta
Saracini, "you didn't have to be commanded to it."

"On the contrary," said Jean Marie and left the rest of it unsaid.

"How do you feel about women not necessarily me, in particular?  I
mean, you've been a celibate all these years and .. ."

"I've had a lot of practice at it."  Jean Marie was douce but very
firm.

"And part of the practice is that you don't flirt and you don't play
dangerous games and, most important of all, you never tell lies to
yourself.  I feel about you as any man feels about an attractive woman.
I've been happy in your company and flattered to have you on my arm.
There could be more; but precisely because I love you, there won't be.
We were set to walk on separate paths.  We've met most pleasantly at
the cross-roads.  We'll part, each a little richer."

"That's quite a sermon, Monseigneur," said Roberta Saracini.

"I wish I could believe half of it."

He glanced across at her.  She was driving steadily, eyes fixed on the
road, but there were tears on her cheeks.  She turned to him and asked
bluntly:

"What made you become a priest in the beginning?"

"That's a long story."

"We've got all day."

"Well!  ..."  Immediately he was closed-in and reluctant.

"The only person to whom I've ever told that was my confessor.  It's
still a painful subject."

"It was" tactless of me to ask.  I'm sorry."

They drove the next half-mile in silence; then, without further
prompting, Jean Marie began to talk, slowly, musingly, as if he were
putting together in his mind the pieces of a puzzle.

"When I first joined the Maquis I was very young just arrived at
military age.  I wasn't religious.  I was baptised, communicated and
confirmed in the Church; but there it stopped.  There was a war; life
was catch-me-if-you-can.

With the Maquis I was a man overnight.  I carried a rifle, a pistol and
a killing knife.  Unlike the older ones who could sometimes slip into
town, I was forced to stay out in the hills and the countryside;
because if I got picked up in a city raid I'd be shipped out to forced
labour in Germany.  I did courier duty at night, of course; because I
was young and could move fast and outrun the curfew patrols.  Before, I
had had girlfriends and some experience of sex just enough to make me
want more.  Now I was without a woman and my companions mocked me, as
older men do, calling me the little virgin and the choirboy.  Old,
bawdy stuff, harmless enough, but very difficult for a youth who knew
he might never live to enjoy a manhood.

"Well, one of my regular courier routes took me to a farmhouse near a
main road.  All troop movements in the area had to pass the place; so
the farmer's wife kept a list, which we collected every three days and
passed on to Allied Intelligence.  I never went to the house.  There
was a shepherd's hut and a sheep pen about half a mile away, on the
brow of a hill.  I'd lie up there and tie a rag to a sapling for a
signal.  After dark, the woman would come up with the messages and food
for me and for the boys in the hills.  Her name was Adele, she was
somewhere in her thirties, childless;

and her husband was missing since the first days of the blitzkrieg .. .
She ran the farm with two old men and a couple of sturdy girls from
nearby families.

"On this particular day I arrived late.  I was scared and shaken. There
were lots of German patrols out, and twice I was nearly picked up.  To
make matters worse, I'd gashed my leg on some barbed wire, and I was
scared of tetanus.  An hour after sunset Adele came.  I was never so
glad to see anyone in my life.  She, too, had had a bad day, no less
than three raids with troops stamping in and turning over the place.
She washed my leg with wine, and bandaged it with strips from her
petticoat.  Then we drank the rest of the wine and ate supper together
and afterwards made love on the straw mattress.

"That I remember as the most wonderful experience of my life a mature
passionate woman and a frightened youth, in a single ecstatic hour, in
a world full of monsters.  Whenever afterwards I have talked about
charity, the love of God for man and man for God and woman for man, I
have done it in the light of that single hour.  From curate to Pope I
have remembered Adele every morning in my Mass.  Whenever I have sat in
the confessional box and heard sad people tell the sins of their
love-lives, I have remembered her and tried to offer my penitents the
gift of knowing that she gave to me."

He fell silent.  Roberta Saracini swung the car into a lay-by, from
which the land dropped away into a vista of farmland, and scattered
coverts and walls of weathered ashlar.  She wound down the window and
stared out on the tranquil scene.  Not daring to look at Jean Marie,
she asked with singular humility: "Do you want to tell me the rest of
it?

Where is Adele now?"

"Dead.  She left me before midnight.  When she got home there were
Germans in the house again.  They were drunk on her wine.  They raped
her and nailed her to the table with a kitchen knife.  That was how I
found her when, eager to renew the night's loving, I broke all the
rules and crept down the hill to see her at six in the morning!

"That was the day I decided I had a debt to pay.  Later, much later, I
decided that the exercise of the whole office of the priesthood was the
best way to do it.  The passion of Christ became very real to me as a
drama of brutality, love, death and living again.  I have never
regretted the choice; nor, in spite of the horror that followed, have I
been able to regret the wonder that Adele and I shared.  My confessor,
who was a wise and gentle man, helped me to that.  He said, "The real
sin is to be niggardly in love.  To give too much is a fault, easily
forgiven.  What you knew, your Adele knew, too that you had shared a
moment of strange grace.  I am sure she remembered it at the end."  ..
. Look at me, Roberta!"

She shook her head.  She was sitting, chin on hand, eyes averted,
staring out at the sun-dappled countryside.  He reached out and turned
her tearstained face towards him.  His eyes were tender, his voice full
of compassion.  He admonished her gently.

"I'm old enough to be your father so you can adopt me as a Dutch Uncle
if you like!  For the rest, remember what I told you at the beginning.
On ne badine pas avec I'amour.  One doesn't trifle with love.  It's too
wonderful and too terrible!"

He handed her his pocket handkerchief to dry her eyes.  She accepted
it, but faced him with a last blunt question.

"After all that, how is it possible that your best friend, Carl
Mendelius, is a German?"

"How is it possible," asked Jean Marie, "that you and I are sitting
here, because your father cheated the Vatican out of millions and was
killed in a prison corridor?  The biggest mistake we've all made
through the ages is to try to explain the ways of God to men.  We
shouldn't do that.  We should just announce Him.  He explains Himself
very well!"

The day before the function at the Carlton Club he went with Adrian
Hennessy to deliver the manuscript of Last Letters from a Small Planet.
He laid it on Waldo Pearson's desk and said: "There you are.  It's
done.  Good or bad, it's a heart-cry.  I hope someone hears it."

Waldo Pearson weighed the package in his hands and said that he was
sure, yes, very sure, that someone would hear the heart-cry.  Then he
handed Jean Marie the typescript of the English version of his speech
for the Carlton Club.

Jean Marie asked him: "What do you think of it?  Does it make sense?"

"It makes frightening sense.  It makes wonderful sense.  I cannot say
how the audience will take it."

"I've read it," said Adrian Hennessy.

"I love it.  I'm also scared.  There's still time to make changes if
you will consent to them."

He glanced at Jean Marie, who nodded agreement.

"I

know I am talking to new people in a new idiom.  Be honest with me!  I
am your guest at your club.  If I am overstepping the proprieties of
the occasion, I must know."

"There is no breach of the peace or the decencies," said Waldo
Pearson.

"Hold to the text!"

"Will there be questions afterward?"

"There may be.  We generally allow them."

"Will you please make sure I understand them before I answer?  I am
fluent in English but sometimes, in moments of stress, I think in
French or Italian."

"I'll see you through it.  There's a lot of interest."

"Do you have a guest list?"  Hennessy asked the question.

"Afraid not.  When there's a big attendance, as there will be this
time, the members have to ballot for guest places.  I have, however,
invited the Soviet Ambassador and Sergei Petrov, if he should happen to
be in London.  If he appears it will be a sign that he is still viable
politically.  I have also invited Morrow, because I knew him when he
was my opposite number in Washington.  I suggested he might like to
bring a colleague which leaves it open for him to present Dolman if he
chooses.  For the rest, it's an impressive list: members of Cabinet,
diplomats, heads of industry, press barons.  So you'll have a wide
sampling of religions, nationalities and moralities as well."

Hennessy added an ironic footnote.

"Maybe the Holy Ghost will give you the gift of tongues."

"I used to talk about that with Mendelius."  Jean Marie picked up the
joke and embellished it.

"He used to say that it was probably the least useful of all the gifts
of the Spirit.  If a man was a fool in one language, you'd never make
him wise in twenty!"

They all got a laugh out of that.  Waldo Pearson produced champagne.
They drank a toast to Last Letters from a Small Planet and to a quondam
Pope who was about to be tossed to the lions in the Carlton Club.

Jean Marie Barette gripped the edges of the table lectern and surveyed
his audience, packed into the principal dining room of the Carlton
Club.  He had met only a few of them a privileged group entertained by
Waldo Pearson to sherry in the committee room.  Waldo, he found, ruled
the Conservative stronghold with an iron fist.  He would not have his
most exotic guest mauled and put upon in the vacuous preambles of
cocktail time.  He had professed himself delighted with Jean Marie's
choice of dress a black jacket buttoned to the neck, with a minimal
display of Roman collar and a simple silver pectoral cross.  The dress
expressed the import of his opening words.

"I stand before you a private man.  I am a cleric ordained to the
Ministry of the Word in the Roman Catholic Church.  I have, however, no
canonical mission; so that what I say to you in this assembly is my
private opinion and must not be construed as either the official
teaching of the Church or as a statement of Vatican policy."

He gave them a grin and a Gallic gesture to take the weight off the
words.

"I am sure you will need no elaboration of this point.  You are all
political men; and how do you say it in English?  - a wink tells as
much as a nod to a blind mule."

They gave him a small chuckle to warm him and to tempt him, too.  If he
were fool enough to trust this audience, he would not be worth anyone's
attention in the morning.  His next words jolted them out of their
complacency.

"Because I am a man, I have experience of fear, love and death. Because
I have been, like you, a political man, I understand the usages of
power and its limitations, too!

Because I am a Minister of the Word, I know that I am peddling a folly
in the market place and that I risk to be stoned for it.  You, too, my
friends are peddling follies monstrous insanities and all of us risk to
perish by them!"

There was a deadly quiet in the room.  For this single moment he held
them hypnotised.  They understood the arts of the forum.  They knew
that this man was a master; but if his thought proved unworthy of his
orator's talent, they would shout him down as a mountebank.  Jean Marie
thrust forward with his argument.

"Your folly is to promise a possible perfection in the affairs of men
an equitable distribution of resources, an equal access to seaways,
airways and strategic land-routes, a world, in short, where every
problem can be solved by an honest broker, an inspired leader, a party
apparat.  You make the promise as a necessary step to power.  You
choose to ignore that you are playing with dynamite.

"You raise illusory hopes.  You excite expectations you cannot fulfill.
Then, when you see that the deluded people are turning against you
presto there is a new solution: a cleansing war!  Now, suddenly, you
are not givers of gifts.

You are janissaries imposing the edicts of the Sultan.  If the people
will not obey the dictate, then you will make them do it!  You will lop
them, limb by limb, like Procrustes, until they fit the bed on which
they writhe tormented.  But they will never fit it.  The golden age you
have promised will never come.

"You know it!  In a most terrible act of despair you are resigned to
it!  Already you have counted the cost: so many millions in New York,
in Moscow, in Tokyo, in China, in Europe.  The aftermath, the desert
which will be called peace, you have elected to ignore, because who
will be left to care?

Let the bandits subdue the populace.  Let the casualties die.

There will be a new dark age a new Black Death.  In some far distant
future there will, perhaps, be a renaissance; but who cares, because we
shall never see the wonder of it.

"Do you think I exaggerate?  You know I do not.  If the embargo on
grain is not lifted, the Soviet Union will come near to starvation this
winter and her armies will march at the first thaw.  Even if they do
not, a movement by any power towards the oilfields in the Middle East
or the Far East will precipitate a global conflict.  I do not know the
battle order, as some of you do; but you will recognise that I touch
close to the core of the matter.  I make no plea to you.  If your own
good sense, the promptings of your own hearts when you look at your
children and your grandchildren, do not move you to action to avert the
holocaust, then amen!  So be it!

Ruat caelum let the heavens fall!

"I have sought only to define your folly; which is to believe that man
can construct for himself a perfect habitat, and that every time he
fails, he can destroy what he has done like a sand-castle and begin
again.  In the end the constructive impulse is overmastered by the
destructive one.  And all the time the tide creeps in relentlessly, to
obliterate the small beach-head on which we play!  ..."

He could not tell whether they approved or disapproved.

All he knew was that the silence still held and their ears, if not
their hearts, were still open to him.  He went on, more quietly and
persuasively.

"Now let me tell you of my folly, which is the reverse of yours, but
which served only to compound it.  When I was elected Pope, I was both
humbled and elated.  I believed that power had been placed in my hands,
the power to change the lives of the faithful, to reform the Church, to
mediate perhaps in the quarrels of nations and help to maintain the
precarious peace we enjoy.  All of you know the feeling.  You
experienced it when you were first elected to office, given your first
embassy, your first Cabinet post, or when you bought your first
newspaper or television station.  A heady moment, is it not?  And the
headaches are all in the future!"

There was a small chuckle of assent.  They were glad of the relief. The
man was more than a rhetorician.  He had a saving grace of humour.

"There is a catch of course a trap into which we all step.

What we have is not power but authority which is a horse of a different
colour.  Power implies that we can accomplish what we plan.  Authority
signifies only that we may order it to be accomplished.  We pronounce
-fiat.  Let it be done!  But by the time the ordinance filters down to
the peasant in the rice-paddy, the miner at the coal face, the slum
priest in the favela, it has lost most of its force and meaning.  The
definitions in which we enshrine our dogmas and our moralities are
touchstones of orthodoxy.  Whether we be Popes, ayatollahs or party
preceptors, we dare not abrogate them; but their relevance to man in
his extremity is minimal.

What theology can I teach to a girl who is dying with a septic
abortion?  All I can give her is pity, comfort and absolution.

What do I say to the boy revolutionary in Salvador whose family has
been shot by the soldiers in the village square?  I can offer nothing
but love, compassion and an unprovable proposition that there is a
Creator who will turn all this madness into sanity, all this sorrow
into eternal joy.  So you see, my folly was to believe that somehow I
could exercise at once the authority which I had accepted, and the
beneficence to which my heart prompted me.  It was an impossibility, of
course just as it is impossible for a foreign minister to denounce the
obscenities of a dictator who supplies his essential raw materials.

"It is in this context that I want to explain my abdication, which,
painful as it was at the time, I now neither mourn nor protest.  In an
experience which came unbidden and unexpected, I was given a revelation
of the Last Things.  I was given a command to announce them as
imminent.  I myself was and am absolutely convinced of the authenticity
of this experience; but I neither had nor have any means of proving it.
So, my brother bishops decided that I could not legitimately hold the
office of Pontiff and, at the same time, assume the role of a prophet
and proclaim an unauthenticated private revelation.  I say nothing of
the means they took to procure my abdication.  These are at most a
footnote to a history that may never be written.

"I do, however, say this.  I am glad, now, to have no authority; I am
glad to be no longer obliged to defend the formulae of definition;
because the authority is too limited, the formulae too narrow to
encompass the agony of mankind in the Last Days and the magnitude of
the Parousia the promised Coming.

"It may be that there are those among you who, like me, have become
conscious of the limitations of power and the folly of mass murder.  It
is to these that I'm ..."

Suddenly he was aware that the words he was saying were not words at
all, but a single childish sound, repeated over and over: "Ma ... ma
... ma ... ma."  He felt something tugging at his trouser-leg.  He
looked down and saw his left hand flapping helplessly against his
thigh.  His vision was blurred.  He could not see the audience.  Then
the room canted and he lurched forward across the table.  After a
certain confusion of motion and time he heard two voices very close to
him.  One of them was Waldo Pearson's.

"That was quite eerie.  It sounded like glossolalia.  Only yesterday
we'd been talking about the gift of tongues."

"It's a typical symptom of C.V.A."

"What's C.V.A.?"

"Cerebro-vascular accident.  The poor devil's had a stroke!  .. . That
ambulance is taking a hell of a time!"

"Midday traffic," said Waldo Pearson.

"What are his chances?"

"Ask me in three days."

The words reminded Jean Marie of resurrection.  Instead he lapsed into
darkness.

BOOK THREE

Believe not in every spirit, but test the spirits to know if they be of
God; for many false prophets are about in the world.

First Epistle of St.  John Ch.  IV, verse 1 Now he was another man in a
strange country.  The country was very small.  It had four white walls,
two doors and a window.  There was a bed, on which he lay, a small
table beside it, a chair, a chest of drawers with a mirror above it in
which the man in the bed was reflected.  He had a curiously lop-sided
look, like a before-and-after advertisement for liver salts.  One side
of his face was mobile and up-turned, the other dragged slightly
downward into an expression of dolour or distaste.  One hand lay
motionless on the white counterpane.  The other roved restlessly,
exploring contours and textures and distances.

There was at least one other inhabitant of this new country:

a rather plain young woman in a nurse's uniform who appeared often to
take his pulse and his blood pressure and listen to his chest.  She
asked him always the same simple questions: "How do you feel?  What is
your name?  Would you like a drink?"  The strange thing was that while
he understood her perfectly, she did not seem to comprehend a word he
said although she did give him a drink, holding him up so that he could
suck the liquid through a plastic straw.

And she held a bottle to his penis so that he could make water.  When
he did so, she smiled and said: "Good, very good', as if he were a baby
learning the act of peeing.  She always used the same exit line:
"Doctor will be back to see you soon."  He tried to remember who the
doctor was and what he looked like; but the effort was too great, so he
closed his eyes and tried to rest.

He was too disturbed to sleep; not disturbed about anything in
particular, but anxious, as though he had lost something precious and
were groping for it in a fog.  Every so often he would feel that he was
close to it and close to knowing what it was; but the moment of
discovery never came.  Then he would feel like a man in a cellar with
the trapdoor locked above his head.  Finally, the doctor arrived, a
lean grey-haired fellow who displayed a kind of off-hand concern.

"My name is Doctor Raven.  Can you repeat it for me?

Raven."

Jean Marie tried several times but succeeded only in saying:

"Ra..  . Ra..  . Ra .. ."

The doctor said: "Never mind.  You will do better soon.

Just nod if you understand me.  I am speaking English.  Do you know
what I am saying?"

Jean Marie nodded.

"Can you see me?"

A nod.

"Smile at me.  Let me see you smile."

Jean Marie tried.  He was glad he could not see the result.

The doctor looked into his eyes with an ophthalmoscope, tested his
reflexes with a little rubber mallet, checked his blood pressure and
auscultated his chest.  Then he sat on the edge of the bed and
delivered himself of a small lecture.  Jean Marie was reminded of the
discourse with which the Rector of his Seminary used to greet each
batch of newcomers.

"... You are a lucky man.  You are alive.  You are rational and you
have some of your faculties intact.  It is too early to know what
damage has been done inside your skull.  We have to wait two or three
days before we know whether this is one episode or whether others may
follow.  You have to trust us and try to accept that for a little while
you are helpless.  This is the Charing Cross Hospital.  Your friends
and relatives know where you are.  But they know you must have no
visitors and no disturbance at all until we get you stabilised.  Have
you understood that?"

"Ma .. . ma .. . ma .. . most," said Jean Marie, and was absurdly
pleased with himself.

The doctor, too, gave him a smile and a pat of approbation.

"Good!  That's promising.  I'll be back to see you in the morning.
Tonight they'll give you something to help you sleep."

Jean Marie tried to say thank you.  He found he had forgotten the words
in English.  In French he could only get as far as "mer ..."  He
struggled with it until he wept in frustration and the nurse came in to
pump an opiate into his arm.

* * * siAfter four days it seemed he had made enough progress for them
to initiate him into the games of the new country.  But first they had
to find him a French-speaking assistant to teach him the rules.  He was
having enough trouble with phonic jumbles and word blocks, without
launching him into a mania of mixed tongues.

The assistant was a handsome fellow in his early thirties, trim as an
athlete, with the olive skin of a Mediterranean man, and an incongruous
head of golden hair that looked as though it had been inherited from
some long-dead Nordic crusader.

He came from what he vaguely described as the Middle East.

He confessed to being fluent in English, French, Arabic, Hebrew and
Greek.  He had built himself a modest career in medical circles in
London by acting as interpreter, male nurse and physiotherapist to the
polyglot groups who inhabited the metropolis.  The neurologist
introduced him as Mr.  Atha.

Together they began a series of games, all designed to map the damage
to the sensorium, the part of his brain which perceived sensations. For
a man who had once been, by dogmatic definition, the infallible
interpreter of God's message to men, it was shocking to find how
fallible he was, and in how many simple matters.

Asked to close his eyes and raise both arms horizontally in front of
him, he was amazed that only one arm obeyed him fully while the other
stayed, like the hand of a stopped clock, at twenty-five minutes to the
hour.

Asked to tell where he was pricked with both points of a pair of
dividers, he found some of his identifications were wildly astray.
Worse, he could not even find the tip of his nose with his left hand.

However, there were some hopeful signs.  When his feet were tickled his
toes turned in.  This, Mr.  Atha explained, showed that his Babinski
reflex was functioning.  When the inside of his thigh was tickled, his
scrotal sac contracted.

This, he was told, was also good because his cremaster reflex was in
working order.

Then came a most unhappy moment.  Mr.  Atha asked him to repeat for the
neurologist the words of the old song: "Sur le font, SHT le pont, Sur
le pont d'Avignon."  He found, to his horror, that his mouth was full
of treacle, and what came out was a burble of phonic nonsense.

Once again he began to cry.  The neurologist admonished him firmly.  He
was lucky to be alive.  He was twice lucky to have suffered so little
impairment.  The prognosis was hopeful, provided he was prepared to be
patient, co-operative and courageous virtues quite beyond his capacity
at that moment.

Mr.  Atha translated it all into more soothing French and volunteered
to stay with him until he was calm again.  The neurologist nodded
approval of the idea, patted Jean Marie's good hand and went about his
other business; which, as Mr.

Atha explained, included many patients far worse off than Jean Marie.

"I work with them, too; so I know what I am talking about.  You can
swallow.  You have no double vision.  You have control of your bowels
and your urine.  Eh!  Think how much that means!  Your speech will
improve; because you and I are going to practise together.  You see,
with the doctor, you are trying to show that you are not damaged.  You
are determined to prove it by a sudden burst of oratory.  When it
doesn't happen, you despair.  We're going to start from the fact that
you are damaged.  We are going to repair the trauma together."

He was not only persuasive; he had an enormous quality of repose.  Jean
Marie felt the weight lifting off the top of his head, the fog
dissipating from inside his skull-case.  Mr.  Atha talked on quietly.

"You used to be Pope, they tell me.  So you must remember the
Scripture: "Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter
the Kingdom of Heaven."  Well, you're like a child now.  You have to
learn simple things from the beginning.

You have to admit that you can't cope with complicated ones for a long
while yet.  But in the end you will grow up again, just as a child
does.  You're in kindergarten now.  As the weeks go on, you'll climb
through the grades.  You'll learn to dress yourself, get your bad arm
and leg moving again and above all, you'll talk.  You can talk now, if
you take it slowly.

Let's pick something very simple: "My name is Jean Marie."

Now, one word at a time."

Somewhere in the long night hours, when the only sounds were the
footfalls of the night-nurse and the only light was the beam of her
torch focused on his face, he learned another lesson.  If he tried to
remember things, they always eluded him.  If, however, he lay quietly,
making no effort at all, they crept up on him, and sat about him like
woodland animals in a child's picture-book.

They were not always in the right order.  Drexel was next to the little
mongol child.  Mendelius was mixed up in some bishops' conference in
Mexico, Roberta Saracini was drinking out of the cosmos-cup; and the
little twisted girl was selling prints to Alvin Dolman.  But at least
they were all there.  He had not lost them like an amnesiac.  They were
pieces of a pattern in a kaleidoscope.  One day they would shake
themselves into a familiar order.

There was something else, too.  As with the vision in the monastery
garden, he was aware of it in a fashion that escaped verbal definition.
Somewhere at the deep core of himself that sorry fortress so beset and
bombarded and ruined there was a place of light where the Other dwelt,
and where, when he could withdraw to it, there was communion of love,
blissful but all too brief.  It was like what was it like?  deaf
Beethoven with his head full of glories, Einstein bereft of mathematics
to express the mysteries he understood at the end.  There was another
wonder, too.  He could not command his limp hand or his numb leg, and
only sometimes his halting tongue; but, in this small place of light
and peace, he could command himself, dispose freely of himself, as a
lover to the beloved.  It was here that the pact was made.

"Whatever you have laid on me I accept.  No questions, no conditions!
But please, come Rubicon Day, give light and a taste of joy to my
friend, Duhamel, and his wife.  He is a good one.  He has been
niggardly only to himself!"

The first danger point was past, the neurologist told him.

Fingers-crossed-and-pray-a-little, this was a one-off episode and he
should make a good recovery.  There would be sequelae, of course,
handicaps and inhibitions of one kind and another; but, in general,
there were good hopes that he could return to a normal life.  But not
yet!  Not nearly yet!  He must be trained, harder than any athlete. Mr.
Atha would not only explain, but would drive him through the
exercises, hour after hour, day after day.  Visitors?  Well, wouldn't
it be better to wait awhile, until he could display to them a certain
competence?  Sometimes visitors got more distressed than the
patients.

"Besides," Mr.  Atha added his own good reasons, "you're an important
man.  I'd like to feel proud of you the first day you go on display.  I
want you dressed right, talking right, moving right .. . with panache,
yes?"

"Panache!"  said Jean Marie and the word came out clear as a
bell-note.

"Bravo!"  said Mr.  Atha.

"Now let's get the nurse in.  The first thing we have to do is teach
you to sit on the edge of the bed and then stand by yourself."

It sounded so simple that he could not believe the effort and the
humiliation of it.  Time after time, he crumpled like a rag doll into
the arms of Mr.  Atha and the nurse.  Time after time, they stood him
up and gradually withdrew their support until he was able to remain
erect for a few moments.

When he was weary they sat him back on the bed and showed him how to
roll himself into a recumbent position and ease himself off the
pressure points where bed-sores might begin.

When he had mastered the overture, they began to teach him the opera:
how to walk with tiny shuffling steps, how to exercise his left hand
with a rubber ball, a whole series of operations with mechanical
equipment in a large gymnasium.

It was here that he understood, as Mr.  Atha had told him, just how
fortunate he was.  He noted something else, too: the boundless patience
which Atha dispensed to his motley group, and how quickly they reacted
to his smile and his words of encouragement.

Atha made him participate in the small, disjointed community life of
the gymnasium by tossing a ball to one, making halting conversation
with another, demonstrating to a third a movement which he himself had
mastered.  Brief as they were, these social interludes left him
exhausted; but Atha was adamant.

"You will renew your own resources only by sharing them.

You cannot expect to spend all this time of healing in a hermetic world
and then emerge a social animal.  If you get tired of talking, touch
people, smile, share your awareness of things like that pair of pigeons
cooing on the window-ledge.

It may not worry you; but half the people here are terrified that they
will no longer be attractive to those who love them, that they will be
sexually impotent or even, in the end, a hateful burden to their
families."

"I am sorry."  Jean Marie managed to get the words out.

"I

will try to do better."

"Good!"  said Mr.  Atha with a smile.

"You can relax now.

It's massage time!"

There was one set of games which gave him real pleasure.

The neurologist called them gnostic sensibility tests.  In fact, they
meant the recognition, by touch alone, of textures and weights, shapes
flat and solid.  The pleasure in this game was that the sensibilities
did become perceptibly sharper and his guesses came closer and closer
to the objects that produced the sensation.

His attention span became longer, too, and he was able to enjoy the
mass of letters and cards which had piled up, unread, in the top drawer
of his bureau.  When his concentration lapsed, Mr.  Atha would read
them to him and help him to frame a simple reply.  He would not write
it, however.  Jean Marie must do that himself.  Mr.  Atha would supply
the words and phrases that lost themselves momentarily from his
vocabulary or jumbled themselves with others in some synaptic
short-circuit.

Now he had newspapers delivered English and French and enjoyed scanning
them, though he retained lamentably little of what he read.  Mr.  Atha
consoled him in his calm fashion.

"What do you want to retain?  The bad news that tells you man is
dismantling civilisation brick by brick?  The good news is here, right
under your nose!  The blind see.  The lame walk.

Sometimes even the dead are jolted back to life .. . and if you listen
hard enough, you'll hear echoes of the Good News."

"You .. . you are a ... different man!"  said Jean Marie in his halting
fashion.

"You meant to say 'strange'."

"So I did."

"Then say it now."

"Strange," said Jean Marie carefully.

"You are a very strange man."

"I also bring good news," said Mr.  Atha.

"Next week you may begin having visitors.  If you tell me whom you want
to see I'll make a list and get in touch with them for you."

Brother Alain was invited first, because Jean Marie felt that the
family tie should be respected and now there was no reason left for
sibling jealousy.  They embraced awkwardly, because of Jean Marie's
useless arm.  After the first verbal exchanges, Jean Marie made it
plain that he would rather listen than talk; so Alain hurried through
the family news until he came to where his own heart was anchored: the
Bourse, with all its transactions and its rumours.

"Now we are in the big-scale barter business.  Oil for grain, soy-beans
for coal, tanks for iron ingots, meat for yellow powder uranium, gold
for everything!  If you've got commodities we can find a buyer for
them.  But why am I running on like this?  How long do you expect to be
in this place?"

"They do not say."  Jean Marie had found by now that he did better with
simple announcements, fabricated in advance.

"I don't ask.  I wait."

"When you do get out, you're welcome to come to us."

"Thank you, Alain.  No!  There are places for ... for ..."

He groped for the word and almost grasped it.

"Rehab .. .

rehab ..."

"Rehabilitation?"

"Right.  Mr.  Atha will find me one."

"Who is Mr.  Atha?"

"He works here with stroke victims."

"Oh!"  He was not callous or indifferent.  He was simply a stranger in
a strange country.

"Roberta sends her love.  She'll be over in a few days."

"Good.  Glad to see her."

It was the most he could manage.  Alain, too, was glad to be dispensed
with.  After a few more exchanges and some long silences they embraced
again and parted, each wondering why he had so little to say to the
other.

The next day Waldo Pearson came.  He was attended by a manservant,
laden with unexpected treasures: six author's copies of Last Letters
from a Small Planet, one leather-bound volume for the author himself, a
tape recorder and two best selling versions of "Johnny the Clown', one
by a male vocalist, the other by a well-known female singer with full
chorus.  He also brought a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, a bucket of ice, a
set of champagne glasses, a jar of fresh caviar, toast, butter and the
full text of Jean Marie's speech at the Carlton Club, also bound in
leather.  Waldo was in his best come and-he-cometh-go-and-he-goeth'
mood.

"My father had two strokes they didn't call them cerebrovascular
accidents in his day!  so I know the form.

Chat when you want.  Be silent when you feel like it.  Do you like the
book?  .. . Handsome, isn't it?  The subscriptions are rolling in. It's
the biggest thing we've had in twenty years.  We're assured of rave
reviews and big ones, too!  I'm only sorry we can't have you at our
launching party.

Hennessy called.  He tells me the reaction in the Americas and on the
Continent is the same.  He says he'll see you on his way back from New
York.  You've really touched a nerve.  And everyone's whistling the
song.  I even sing it in my bath.

Champagne?  Can you manage the caviar, too?  That's very good!  You
really do cope.  I was determined you'd have champagne and caviar if I
had to feed it to you with an eyedropper.  " "I'm very touched.  Thank
you."  Jean Marie was surprised at his own fluency.

"I'm sorry I made such a scene at the Club."

"That was most curious."  Pearson was instantly grave.

"Some of the audience were hostile.  Many were deeply moved.  None was
able to be neutral.  I sent copies of the full text of your address to
all members and to their guests.  The replies, pro and con, were
illuminating.  Some expressed fear;

others spoke of a religious impact; yet others spoke of the contrast
between the power of your message and the modesty of your personal
demeanour.  By the way, did you hear from Matt Hewlett?  He said he was
going to write.  He thought you might be embarrassed if he came to see
you."

"He wrote.  He told me he had offered nine days of masses for me.  The
Pontiff cabled and some members of the Curia.

Drexel wrote a long .. . long .. . long .. . Forgive me.  The simplest
words fail me sometimes."

"Relax!"  said Waldo Pearson.

"I'm going to play you the song.  I prefer the woman's version.  See
what you think."

"Can you get me a copy for Mr.  Atha?"

"Of course; but who is he?"

"He's a ther .. . therapist.  I can't tell you what he does for all of
us.  He's a God .. . Godsent man!  I must autograph a book for him.
Does it matter now if I'm known as the author?"

"I don't believe it matters a damn any more," said Waldo Pearson.

"The charitable will find God in the book.  The bigots will be sure
you're stricken for your sins.  So everyone will be happy."

"Did .. . did Petrov get his grain?"

"Some, but not enough."

"I've lost count of time.  I can't remember events ..."

"Be glad!  The times are out of joint.  Events outrun our control."

Jean Marie reached out to grasp his hand.  He needed the reassurance of
human contact.  The thought he had been trying to grasp for weeks was
finally clear to him.  He pieced it out with desperate care.

"He showed me the Last Things.  He told me to announce the Parousia.  I
gave up everything to do it.  I tried.  I truly tried.  Before I could
get the words out, He struck me dumb!  ... I don't know what He wants
now.  I am so confused."

Waldo Pearson held the frail hand between his palms.  He said gently:

"I was confused, too.  I was angry.  I found myself shaking a fist in
His face and demanding to know, why, why?  Then I read Last Letters
from a Small Planet, and I realised that was your testimony.  It was
all there in black and white.  Whatever you said or failed to say at
the Carlton Club was postscript and dispensable.  I remembered
something else, too.  The first precursor, John, called the Baptiser,
came to a strange end.

While the Messiah, whom he had announced, was still walking free in
Judaea, he was murdered in Herod's dungeon and his head presented on a
dish to a belly-dancer.  All he had from his Messiah was a praise that
became an epitaph.

"Among men that are born of women there is none greater than John the
Baptiser .. ."" "I'd forgotten that," said Jean Marie Barette.

"But then I forget so many things."

"Have some more champagne," said Waldo Pearson, "and let's listen to
the music."

The next day, new plagues afflicted him.  He was sitting in his
wheelchair, scanning the headlines in the morning paper, when Mr.  Atha
came in to say that he would be absent for a while.  He had to go
abroad to deal with some of his father's affairs.  Jean Marie's therapy
session would be conducted by a woman assistant.

"And when I come back," said Mr.  Atha, "I want to see a vigorous,
vocal man."

Jean Marie was a prey to sudden panic.

"Where .. . where are you going?"

"Oh, a number of capitals.  My father's interests are extensive.  I'm
taking your book to read on the aircraft.  Come now!  Don't look so
glum!"

"I'm afraid!"

He blurted out the word before it eluded him.  Mr.  Atha would not bend
to the appeal.

"Then you must confront the fear!  All the work we have done together
is to one end: to make you walk, talk, think and work for yourself.
Courage now!"

But, the moment Mr.  Atha walked out the door, his courage deserted
him.  Depression, black as midnight, settled over him.  Even the place
of light was blotted out.  He could not find his way back to it.  As
the day went on, he found himself sinking deeper and deeper into a
condition of despair.

He would never get well.  He would never leave the hospital.

Even if he did, where would he go?  What would he do?  What was the
point of all these efforts, if they produced nothing but the ability to
put on a jacket, talk elementary inanities, shuffle along a straight
line on a concrete pavement?

For the first time he began to contemplate death, not merely as a
release from misery, but as a personal act of termination to an
intolerable situation.  The contemplation produced an extraordinary
calm and a mind clear as the long, cold light of the northern
latitudes.  It was simple logic to proceed from the contemplation of
the act to a speculation on the means by which it might be
accomplished.  Only when the nurse came in did he realise, with a shock
of guilt, how far his morbid reverie had taken him.

He was sufficiently scared by the experience to mention it to the
doctor when he looked in on his evening round.  The doctor perched
himself on the edge of the bed and talked round the subject.

"I was beginning to think you'd been lucky and sidestepped this
particular crisis.  It was clear to all of us that your religious
background had given you resources which most people don't possess. But
there's no telling how, or when, a depressive illness is going to
strike."

"You mean I have another sickness?"

"I mean," the neurologist explained patiently, "you have just described
the classic symptoms of acute depression.  If these symptoms are
allowed to pass untreated, the depression will develop into a chronic
condition, constantly aggravated by your present handicaps.  The
departure of Mr.  Atha was simply a trigger incident.  So we're going
to intervene before things go too far.  We'll try you with moderate
doses of a euphoric drug.  If it works fine!  If not, there are other
prescriptions.  However, if you can beat the black devils without too
much psychotropic intervention, so much the better; but don't try to be
brave or bold.  If you feel tearful, unable to cope, tell the nurse,
tell me, immediately.  Promise me!"

"I promise."  Jean Marie said it firmly and clearly.

"But it is hard for me to feel so dependent."

"That's also my biggest problem as a doctor.  The patient is at odds
with himself."  He hesitated and then offered a curious question.

"Do you believe man has a body and a soul, which get separated at the
moment of death?"

Jean Marie pondered the question for a moment, fearful that a new
fog-swirl might obscure the answer for which he was reaching; but God
be thanked!  the light held.  He said with surprising fluency:

"That's the way the Greeks expressed man: spirit and matter, dual and
divisible.  As a module it served very well for a very long time.  But,
after this experience, I don't know .. .

I'm not aware of myself as two elements: a musician playing a piano
with notes missing, or, conversely, a Stradivarius violin played badly
by a schoolboy.  I'm me one and undivided!

Part of me is half-dead; part of me is totally dead and will never work
again.  I'm ... de ... de ..."

"Defective," said the neurologist.

"Yes," said Jean Marie.

"Defective."

The doctor reached for the chart clipped to the end of the bed and
scribbled a prescription for remedy against the black devils.

In a rare flash of his old humour, Jean Marie said: "Don't you offer an
incantation to go with the medicine?"

Against what happened to him next, no medicine and no incantation
availed.  Two days after Mr.  Atha's departure, an hour before noon,
Waldo Pearson and Adrian Hennessy came to see him.  Their enquiries
about his progress were solicitous but brief.  Waldo Pearson offered an
apology.

"I'd hoped to spare you this; but it was impossible.  We have to seek
injunctions in Great Britain, on the Continent, in the United States
wherever else we can get them.  We need your signature on the bills of
complaint."

Jean Marie looked from one to the other in puzzlement.

He asked: "What am I complaining about?"

Adrian Hennessy unlocked his brief-case.

"Brace yourself for a shock, Monseigneur!"

He laid on the bed a large scrap-book and a paper-bound volume.  The
title was The Fraud.  The author was one Luigi Marco.  The jacket was
stamped "Uncorrected Proof Copy'.

The publisher was Veritas S.p.a."  Panama.  Hennessy held up the
book.

"This little confection has been circulated to all international press
agencies.  It is due to be published world-wide, in twenty languages,
on the day that we publish Last Letters in each country.  We want to
get injunctions to stop publication.

However and this is the nasty one!  some of the gutter-press have
already picked up the serial rights and are running the juicier
sections of the story.  The serious newspapers and the television
networks can't ignore the fact of publication.  They stand on their
right to comment on the material.  We have to file libel suits to
prevent a further spread of the scandal."

"But what is the scandal?"

Waldo Pearson took up the burden of explanation.

"The book, appropriately titled The Fraud, purports to be the true
story of your career, from your earliest youth until now.  It is a
careful and very skilful blend of fact, fiction and scurrilous
innuendo.  The author's name is, of course, a pseudonym.

The whole thing is a highly professional smear job, like those
so-called documentaries about spies and defectors or political scandals
which rival propaganda services turn out to discredit each other.  The
publisher is a hollow corporation registered in Panama.  The printing
was done in Taiwan by one of the houses that produce such things on
contract.  Bound copies of the book were then air-freighted to major
countries.  Someone has laid out a mint of money on research, writing,
translation and manufacture.  Some of the photographs were taken with a
telescopic lens, which indicates that you were under professional
surveillance for a long time."

"What sort of photographs?"  Again Jean Marie had to explode past the
phonic block.

"Show him!"  said Waldo Pearson.

Hennessy, with obvious reluctance, flipped through the press cuttings
in the scrap-book.  There was a shot of Jean Marie with the twisted
girl in the Place du Tertre.  The angle was such that his face was
close to hers and it was easy to assume that they were lovers
tete-a-tete.  There were several shots of Roberta Saracini and himself
arm-in-arm, in Hyde Park, on the river boat, and strolling in the
gardens at Hampton Court.  There was one shot of himself and Alain
emerging from Sophie's restaurant, looking like a pair of elderly
drunks.  A black fury took possession of him and he almost choked on
the question:

"What .. . what about the text?"

Waldo Pearson shrugged helplessly.

"What you might expect.  They've done a very thorough job of research
and a very clever job of muck-raking, so that you show -up as a
thoroughly bad type who is also a little crazy.  On that point they've
managed to get hold of two reports from doctors who examined you before
your abdication.  There are also various other exotic details."

"For instance," Hennessy leafed through the volume.

"They found someone who served with you in the Maquis.

There was some story about you and a farmer's wife who was later found
raped and murdered.  Of course, the locals blamed it on the Germans;
but .. . They're very good with the 'buts'.  Your best friend is Carl
Mendelius of Tubingen but the suggestion is that you helped to procure
his release from the priesthood because of a homosexual association.
The fact that you defended him against charges of heresy and officiated
at his wedding only reinforces the innuendo.  That's the horrible thing
about this kind of job.  The scandal-monger doesn't have to prove
anything.  He just plants the dirty idea.

If you kiss your mother at a railway station it has to be incest."

"What do they say about Roberta?"

Hennessy frowned with distaste.

"Her father swindled the Vatican Bank out of millions.  The funds were
never traced.  You are known to have a substantial patrimony, of which
Roberta Saracini is the trustee.  Trusteeships in France are a matter
of public record.  When you went to Paris you lodged in her house.
After that you're photographed in England holding hands with her in the
park and you're living here under an assumed name.  Do you want any
more?"

"No.  Who did all this?  Whose idea was it?  How did they get all this
information?  Why?"

"Let's reason through it."  Waldo Pearson tried to calm him.

"Adrian and I have talked to a lot of well-informed people and we
believe we've come up with an explanation that fits all the available
evidence .. . Are you sure you're up to this?"

"Yes!"  Jean Marie was clearly under strain but he forced the words
out.

"Take no notice of me!  Just talk!"

Waldo Pearson talked on in the monotone of a man who brings bad news.

"From the moment you claimed a private revelation of the Last Things
and made moves to publish it in a letter to the faithful, you were a
dangerous man.  You know what happened in the Church, and how bitter
the Friends of Silence became.  But outside, where the nations were
actively preparing for a nuclear war, it was much worse.  You, with
your visions of horror and of judgment, became an instant threat to the
myth-makers.

"They were preparing the public to participate in a competition of
nuclear destruction, a game, a diabolical game, in which each side
commits the same butchery for the same non reason

"Your vision, which made you seem a madman, was, in fact, the only
available sanity.  You saw the horror.  You told it!  Before the public
grasped the thought, you had to be silenced.

"But that was not so easy.  You were an active, contentious man.  In
Germany, you blew the cover of a C.I. A. operative, an important
agent-in-place.  In France, your own country, you were instantly in the
Black Book, under Grade A surveillance.  You were watched in England,
too; but I was a fairly respectable patron; and I stood surety for you
with our government.

"All the time, however, you were a burr in the breeches of the mighty;
because just when the war drums were booming, you might shout out that
the king had no clothes and after the first big bang, he might not have
any subjects either.

"There was a question, as both Adrian and I discovered from different
sources, of having you liquidated.  It was a fairly unanimous
recommendation.  When it was known that your book was in preparation,
the decision to liquidate you was rescinded.  Another plan was made: to
discredit you utterly.  You have seen how it was done."

"How did they manage to get all this material so quickly?"

"Money!"  said Adrian Hennessy brusquely.

"Put enough operatives in the field at once, hand out enough spending
money, and you can have anyone's secret life in a month.

Given a hostile situation in the Church, given top-level cooperation
from governments, the job is as easy as boiling an egg-" "But who
organised it?"

"Dolman was the boy who put it together and he had a special reason for
making it work.  You knew he had tried to kill Carl Mendelius."

"It makes sense, all of it."

"It also raises a problem."

"Please!"  said Jean Marie with absolute clarity.

"Please do not hold anything back."

"Even if we get restraining injunctions," said Adrian Hennessy, "we'll
have only temporary relief.  We'll have to fight a series of court
cases in the major countries.  That will cost a lot of money.  You'll
have to pay most of it out of your own resources.  And, since we're now
in the dark ages and will soon be living under emergency regulations,
there's no guarantee, even in England, that you'll get a fair trial
from either the jury or the judiciary!"

Jean Marie thought for a moment and then said slowly:

"I have the funds.  If it takes my last sou, we must fight this
obscenity on any battleground we can find!  I am not so naive as to
believe we can win; but we have to be seen to fight and with my money
and no one else's.  Waldo, I only hope this will not damage your
publication of Last Letters, "No!"  said Waldo Pearson.

"If anything we'll get more press space, more lively debate.  In the
end it will come down to a private judgment in each reader's mind:
could the author of the Letters possibly be the same rascal who is
portrayed in this piece of garbage?"

"Meantime, we should get the documents signed."

Hennessy was fishing them out of his brief-case.

"Unless you want to read through a mountain of legalese, you'll have to
take our word that the papers are well drawn by the best legal talent
in England, France and the United States."

"I take your word."  Jean Marie was already signing the first pages.

"But look!  To provide all the background for this libel, many people
who knew me well must have supplied information."

"Obviously!  said Waldo Pearson.

"But the mere fact that they gave information to an interviewer doesn't
make them your enemies.  You don't know what fiction was employed to
make them talk.  They may have thought they were doing you a favour.
They could have been simple gossips.  The Vatican is full of those!
Hennessy and I are your allies; but we talk about you!  I'm sure we've
dropped phrases and opinions that found their way into this false
indictment!  .. .I'm afraid you just have to accept what's happened,
make the best fight you can and then tell the bastards to go to hell.
You can't afford to become paranoid."

"I am defective," said Jean Marie.

"I am not paranoid.  On the scale of the Last Catastrophe I am a
minimal quantity.

What happens to me is a non-event.  I am troubled for people like
Roberta, who will suffer hurt because their names are linked with mine
in this libel.  When I was Pope, everyone I touched felt blessed.  Now,
I am truly a plague-carrier infecting even my closest friends ..."

That night, for the first time, he asked for a drug to make him sleep.
In the morning he woke later than usual, but refreshed and
clear-headed.  At the therapy session he found that he was walking more
confidently, that his damaged arm was responding quite well to messages
from the motor centres.  His speech pattern was consistently clear and
he had rarely to grope for a word.  The therapist encouraged him.

"This is the way it happens in cases with a good prognosis.

They improve rapidly; they seem to drag for a long while;

then there is another major improvement which generally continues along
a regular up-grade.  I'll report to your doctor.

He'll probably order a series of new tests.  Then .. . Well, let's not
rush things!  The trick, now, is to enjoy the improvement, but not push
yourself too hard.  You're still not ready to play football; but come
to think of it!  we could start you swimming!"

Jean Marie walked back, unaided, to his room.  When he got there he was
tired but triumphant.  Whatever terrors he had to face now, at least he
could confront them on his own two feet.  He wished Mr.  Atha were
there to share this first, real victory.  He lay on his bed and made a
series of telephone calls to tell the good news.  He drew a blank on
every one.

Carl Mendelius' phone was disconnected; Roberta Saracini was in Milan;
Hennessy was back in New York; Waldo Pearson was in the country for a
few days.  Brother Alain was available, but preoccupied.  He was happy
to hear of Jean Marie's progress.  The family would be happy, too.
Please, please, keep in touch!  .. .

Which brought Jean Marie, by a round turn, face to face with the
problem of his own future.  However much he was improved, however small
his residual disabilities, he was still a man of sixty-five, rising
sixty-six, victim of a cerebral episode, liable to another at any
time.

Whatever the outcome of the court cases, he would emerge discredited
more so than if he were guilty of all the misdemeanours and
misfeasances attributed to him.  The world was fond of rascals; it had
no patience with incompetents.  On the face of it, therefore, Jean
Marie Barette would be exactly what his passport called him: 'pasteur
en retraite', a retired priest, whose best expectation would be a
chaplaincy in a hospital or a cottage in the country, where he could
amuse himself with his books and his garden.  By evening the black
devils were at him again and the doctor had to read him a lecture on
manic-depressive swings and how to handle them.  The lecture ended with
a surprise.

"I've ordered an encephalogram for the day after tomorrow.  If that
reads the way I hope it will, we could think about discharging you
within a few days.  There's not too much more we can do for you. You'll
need quarterly check-ups, regular exercise and, for the beginning at
least, some reasonable support in your domestic situation. You might
care to think about that.  We'll chat again tomorrow, eh?"

When the doctor had gone, he checked the calendar in his notebook.  It
was the fifteenth of December.  In ten days it would be Christmas.  He
wondered where he would spend it, and how many more Nativity days the
world might see, because Petrov had not had his grain and the Soviet
armies would move at the first thaw.

He chided himself.  Not five minutes ago the doctor had told him he
must not sit brooding.  It was nearly visiting time.

He tidied himself with great care, changed into fresh pyjamas just to
prove that his new skills were not an illusion put on a dressing gown
and slippers, picked up his stick and began a careful but ostentatious
promenade down the corridor, waving greetings at his companions from
the therapy sessions.

What was it Mr.  Atha had said?  We must have panache!

The English always translated it as style, but it had much more
flourish than mere style.  Flourish!  That was good!  Now he was
co-ordinating two languages.  He should try to get a little practice in
German, too, before he met again with Carl Mendelius.  Lotte's last
letter when was it dated?  What had she said about their plans and
movements?  He retraced his steps along the corridor, acknowledging the
compliment of the night-nurse: "Well!  Aren't you the clever one!"  and
the salute from the Jamaican orderly: a hop, a step, a shuffle and the
invitation "Come dancin, man!"

He rummaged in the drawer of the bureau, found Lotte's letter a whole
sequence of small movements executed without trouble!  then sat down in
his wheel-chair to read it.

The date was December 1st.  . Our dear Carl gets stronger every day. 
He has become very skilful with the prosthetic device which replaces
his left hand and there is very little he cannot do for himself.

Unfortunately he has lost the sight of one eye and he now wears a black
patch.  This, with the other damage to that side of his face, gives him
the look of a very sinister pirate.

We have a family joke.  When we need money, we can put Papa in a
television serial like "Treasure Island' or The Spanish Main'!

Johann and Katrin and a small party of their friends have been down in
the valley for a month now.  They are trying to make the main buildings
habitable and stock up with essential supplies before winter closes in.
Carl and I will go down next week to join them.  We have sold our house
here, fully furnished; so all we shall have to take with us are Carl's
books and the few personal things that still mean something in our
lives.  I thought it would be a wrench to leave Tubingen after all
these years; but it isn't.  Wherever we go now Bavaria or the South
Seas it doesn't matter too much.

And how are you, dear friend?  We have all your cards.

We trace your progress by the handwriting and, of course, we have the
messages from your kind friend in England, Waldo Pearson.  We can't
wait to get a copy of your book.  Carl is dying to talk to you about it
but we understand why you are timid about using the telephone.  I am
always so, especially when foreigners are on the line.  I stammer and
stutter and shout for Carl.

When will they let you out of hospital?  Carl insists, and so do I,
that you come straight to us in Bavaria.  We are your family and
Anneliese Meissner says it is most important that you move directly
from hospital into a secure environment.  She, too, may spend some of
the winter vacation with us in Bavaria.  She is very attached to Carl.
They are good for each other and I have learned not to be jealous of
her, as I learned not to be jealous of you.

As soon as you know when you are to be discharged, send a telegram to
the Bavarian address we gave you.  Fly straight to Munich and we shall
pick you up at the airport and bring you to the valley.

Carl gets anxious sometimes.  He is afraid the frontiers may be closed
before you are ready to come to us.  There is great tension everywhere.
More and more British and American troops are being moved into the
Rhineland.  One sees many military convoys.  The tone of the press is
frankly chauvinist and the atmosphere at the University is very
strange.  There is a constant recruitment of specialists and, of
course, all the security surveillance which Carl and Anneliese so
feared.  The extraordinary thing is that so few students object.  They
too are affected by the war-fever, in a way one would never have
expected.  It is a shock to hear all the old cliches and slogans!  I
thank God every day Johann and Katrin are out and away.  The madness
infects us all.

Even Carl and I find ourselves using phrases we have heard on radio or
television.  It is as if all the old dark Teuton deities were being
called up from their caverns; but then I suppose every nation has its
underground galleries of war gods .. .

A raw, transatlantic voice interrupted his reading.

"Good evening, Your Holiness!"

He looked up to see Alvin Dolman, leaning against the door-jamb and
grinning down at him.  Dolman, too, was dressed in pyjamas and dressing
gown and he carried a package wrapped in brown paper.

For a moment Jean Marie was stunned by the sardonic insolence of the
man.  Then he felt a wild rage boiling up inside him.  He fought it
down with a brief, desperate prayer that his tongue would not fail him
and leave him shamed before the enemy.  Dolman moved into the room and
perched himself jauntily on the edge of the bed.  Jean Marie said
nothing.  He was in command now.  He would wait for Dolman to declare
himself.

"You look well," said Dolman amiably.

"The ward nurse tells me you'll be discharged very soon."

Jean Marie was still silent.

"I came to bring you a bound copy of The Fraud," said Dolman.

"Inside it you'll find a list of the people who were really happy to
sell you out.  I thought you might get a kick out of that.  It won't
help you in court; but then nothing helps in a case like this. Whatever
verdicts you get, the mud will stick."  He laid the package on the
bedside table; then, he picked it up again and partially unwrapped
it.

"Just to prove it isn't booby-trapped, like the one I sent to
Mendelius.

There's no need for that in your case, is there?  You're out of the
game for good."

"Why have you come?"  Jean Marie's voice was cold as hoar-frost.

"To share a joke with you," said Alvin Dolman.

"I thought you'd appreciate it.  The fact is, I go into surgery
tomorrow morning.  This was the only hospital in London that could take
me in a hurry.  I've got a cancer on the large bowel; so, they're going
to cut out a part of my gut and give me a little bag to carry around
for the rest of my life.  I'm just tossing up whether it's really worth
the sweat.  I've got all the tools for a quick, painless exit.  Don't
you think it's funny?"

"I ask myself why you hesitate," said Jean Marie.

"What is there in your life or in yourself that you find so
valuable?"

"Not too much," said Dolman with a grin, "but we're building up to one
hell of a drama the big bang that wipes out all our past and maybe the
future, too!  It might be worth waiting around for a grandstand seat. I
can still opt out afterwards.  You're the man who prophesied it. What
do you think?"

"For the little my opinion is worth," said Jean Marie, "this is what I
think.  You are scared so scared that you need to play this silly game
of mockery!  You want me to be afraid with you of you!  I am not!
Rather I am sad; because I know how you are feeling, how pointless
everything looks how useless a man can seem to himself!  This is only
the second time we have met.  I know nothing about the rest of your
life or what you have done to other people.  But how do you feel about
what you did to Mendelius and to me?"

"Indifferent!"  The answer was prompt and definite.

"That's line-of-duty stuff.  It's what I'm trained for; it's what I do.
I don't question the orders I get.  I make no judgments about them good
or bad, sane or insane.  If I did, I'd be in the loony-bin! Mankind is
a mad tribe.  There's no hope for it.

I found a profession in which I could profit from the madness.  I work
for what is, with what is.  I deliver on every contract.  The only
things I don't deal in are love and resurrection!  But in the end, I'm
at least as well off as you are.

You've been peddling salvation through the Lord Jesus for two thousand
years and look at where it's got you!"

"You are here, too," said Jean Marie mildly.

"And you came by your own choice.  That argues more than indifference.
" "Curiosity," said Alvin Dolman.

"I wanted to see how you were looking.  I must say you've worn pretty
well!"

"Still not enough!"

"O.K. Here it is!"  Dolman cocked his head to one side like a predatory
bird surveying its victim.

"When all this started, I was the one who recommended killing you.  I
put up a dozen simple plans.  Everybody shied away, except the
French.

They've always believed in quick, painless solutions.  However, Duhamel
intervened.  He gave you a special passport and put the word about that
he'd chop anyone who tried to chop you.  Once you were in England
liquidation seemed a less profitable solution.  When you had your
stroke it was clearly unnecessary.  The argument was that it would be
better to discredit you than to make you a martyr.

"I never thought so.  When I got the news yesterday that I'd have to
have surgery and that I'd be carrying around my own excrement for the
rest of my life, I thought, why not kill two birds with the one stone
you first, me afterwards?

"I remembered that evening in Tubingen when you said you knew me and
the spirit that dwelt in me.  I don't think I've ever hated anyone so
much as I hated you at that moment."  He fished in the pocket of his
dressing gown and brought out a gold pen.  He displayed it to Jean
Marie.

"This is death in one of his more elegant dresses a capsule of lethal
gas sufficient to carry us both off unless I cover my nose like this
while I blow the stuff at you."

He covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and extended the pen,
point forward, towards Jean Marie's face.

Jean Marie sat very still, watching him.  He said quietly, "I came to
terms with death a long time ago.  You are doing me a kindness, Alvin
Dolman."

"I know."  Dolman stuffed the handkerchief and the pen back in his
pocket and made a comic gesture of resignation.

"I

guess I just needed to prove it to myself!"  He reached out and picked
up the half-opened packet from the table.  He said with a shrug, "It
was a bad joke anyway.  I'll be getting back to my room."

"Wait!"  Jean Marie heaved himself slowly out of his chair and stood
up.

"I'll walk to the elevator with you."

"Don't bother!  I can find my own way."

"You lost your way a long time ago."  Jean Marie's tone was sombre.

"You will never find it by yourself."

Dolman's face was suddenly transformed into a pale mask of rage.

"I said I'd find my own way back!"

"Why are you so angry over a courtesy?"

"You should know that!"  Dolman was grinning now, a rictus of silent
glee that was more terrible than the laughter.

"You told me in Tubingen you knew the name of the spirit that dwelt in
me!"

"I do know it."  Jean Marie spoke with calm authority and an odd quirky
humour.

"His name is Legion.  But let's not overplay the drama, Mr.  Dolman.
You are not possessed by devils.  You are a habitat of evils too many
evils for one ageing man to carry inside himself!"

The taut grinning mask crumpled into a tired, middle-aged face the face
of an ageing clochard who had used up all his chances and now had no
place to go.

"Sit down, Mr.  Dolman," said Jean Marie gently.

"Let's treat with each other like simple human beings."

"You miss the point," said Alvin Dolman wearily.

"We call up our own devils because we can't live with ourselves."

"You're still alive.  You are still open to change and to God's
mercy."

"You're not hearing me!"  The tight, twisted grin was back again.

"I may look like everyone else; but I'm not.  I'm of a different breed.
We're killer dogs.  Try to change us, try to domesticate us, we go mad
and tear you to pieces.  You're lucky I didn't kill you tonight."

He walked out without a word of farewell.  Jean Marie went to the door
and watched him limping down the long corridor with the brown paper
parcel under his arm.  He was reminded of the old tale of the lame
devil who roamed the city at night, lifting the roofs off houses, to
display the evil that dwelt there.  So far as he could remember, the
lame devil never found any good anywhere.  Jean Marie wondered sadly
whether the lame devil was purblind or just too clear-sighted to be
happy.  Unless one believed in a beneficent creator and some kind of
saving grace, the world was a good place to be out of especially if you
were a middle-aged killer with a cancer in the gut.

That night he offered his comp line prayer for Alvin Dolman.  Next
midday he telephoned Dolman's ward nurse, only to be told that Mr.
Dolman had died during the night of an unexplained cardiac arrest and
that an autopsy was being arranged to establish the cause of death. His
papers and his personal effects had already been retrieved by an
official from the United States Embassy.

Jean Marie could not deal so curtly with a man who, however evil, was
an element in the Divine economy.  Lives had been terminated, lives
damaged, lives perhaps enriched, however momentarily, by Dolman's
presence on the planet.

It was not enough to pass the loveless judgment of the puritans:
"Pardon was offered; pardon was rejected; he took the inevitable walk
to the Judas-tree."

Jean Marie Barette once a Pope had too much experience of paradox to
believe that the Almighty dispensed frontier justice.  Whatever the
Scriptures said, it was not possible to divide the world into white
hats and black hats.

He himself had been granted a revelation and been reduced to a
cold-eyed contemplation of suicide.  He had been given a mission to
proclaim the Last Things and, at the moment of announcement, had been
struck dumb.  So, perhaps it was not too strange to see in Dolman's
suicide an act of repentance, and in his visit, a victory over the
killer who lived in his skin.

Were there not the tales old grandfather Barette used to tell, of men
bitten by mad dogs?  They knew that death was inevitable; so, rather
than infect their families, they blew their brains out with a hunting
gun or locked themselves in a mountain cabin and howled themselves to
death.

Once again Jean Marie was back to the dark, terrifying mystery of pain
and evil and who was saved and who was not and who was ultimately
responsible for the whole bloody mess.  Who spawned the man who trained
the killer dog?  And what cosmic emperor looked down, in everlasting
indifference, on the baby-child which the dog tore to pieces?  .. .

It was still only noonday; but the midnight blackness enveloped him
again.  He wished Mr.  Atha were there to walk him to the gymnasium and
talk him out of the darkness towards the centre of light.

Mr.  Atha stepped back into his life as casually as he had stepped out
of it.  That evening, while Jean Marie was eating supper, he walked in,
looked Jean Marie up and down like an exhibit at a flower show and
smiled his approval.

"I see you've made splendid progress."  He laid a small package on the
tray.

"That's your reward."

"I missed you."  Jean Marie held out both hands to greet him.

"Look!  Both working!  Did you have a successful trip?"

"It was busy."  Mr.  Atha was as evasive as ever about himself.

"Travel is very difficult now.  There are delays at every airport and
much intervention by the police and the military.  People are
mistrustful and afraid.  Look at your present."

Jean Marie unwrapped the package and found a pouch of soft leather,
inside which was a small silver box, intricately engraved.

Mr.  Atha explained: "The design is made up of the invocations to
Allah.  There is an old man in Aleppo who used to make them.  Now he is
blind.  His son engraved this one.

Open it."

Jean Marie opened the box.  Inside, nestling in a bed of white silk,
was an ancient ring.  The setting was gold, the stone a pale emerald
with the head of a man carved on it, cameo-fashion.  The stone was worn
and scratched like a pebble abraded by the sea.  Mr.  Atha told him the
story.

"This was given to me by a friend in Istanbul.  He says it is certainly
of the early first century and it probably comes from Macedonia.  There
is a half-effaced inscription in Greek on the back of the stone.  You
need young eyes or a magnifying glass to make it out; but it says,
Timothy to Sylvanus.  Peace!"  My friend thought it might have some
connection with the Apostle Paul and his two companions Sylvanus and
Timothy.

Who knows?  I had the whimsical idea that since you gave up the
Fisherman's ring, you might like to have this one instead."

Jean Marie was deeply moved.  Behind Mr.  Atha's 'whimsical idea' there
was so much and so gentle a care.  Jean Marie slipped the ring on to
his finger.  It fitted comfortably.  He took it off and laid it in the
silver box.  He said:

"Thank you, my friend.  If my blessings count for anything, you have
them all."  He gave a small, unsteady laugh.

"I suppose one does need a certain amount of faith; but wouldn't it be
wonderful if it really were a gift from Timothy to Sylvanus?  They were
in Macedonia together.  It's clear from Paul's letter to the
Thessalonians.  Let me see if I can remember it.

"Paul and Sylvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians: in
God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."  He frowned, fumbling for
the next words.

"Sorry, I'm blocked on the rest of it."

"'..  . Grace to you and peace!"" Mr.  Atha completed the quotation.
""We give thanks to God always for you all."" Jean Marie stared at him
in surprise.  He said, "I knew you were a believer.  You had to be."

He used the French word croyant.  Mr.  Atha shook his head.

"No, I am not a believer.  It happens that I was brought up in the
Jewish tradition; but the act of faith is not one I personally can
make.  As for the passage in Thessalonians, I looked it up when my
friend told me the provenance of the ring.  It seemed so very
appropriate: "Grace to you and peace!"  .  Now, let us talk about you.
You've had all your tests and the results are good."

"Yes, thank God!  The doctors say they could discharge me immediately.
However, they'd prefer I stay here for three or four more days.  I can
go out in the day-time and return in the evening.  That way they can
monitor my first reactions to physical and psychic stress."

"And you'll be surprised how much of both you'll get," said Mr. Atha.

"Will you stay with me?  Take me about in London perhaps fly with me to
Munich and hand me over to my friends?  I want to be with them for
Christmas.  I'm sure they'd be glad to have you, too.  I don't want to
take you away from other people who need you; but I'm out of practice
in the simplest things."

"Enough!"  said Mr.  Atha.

"You have me!  I'd always intended to stay with you until you were
properly recovered.

You're a rather special client in spite of your bad reputation!"

"That has to mean ..."

"Yes, I've read the other book, too," said Mr.  Atha.

"It has, I understand, been suppressed by injunction in some countries;
but where I've been it was freely available and selling well!"  The
thing is a disreputable caricature."

"Even so, it will harm a lot of people," said Jean Marie moodily.

"Especially Roberta."

"Not too much," said Mr.  Atha.

"It will be forgotten before the year is out."

"I wish I felt so confident."

"It is not a matter of confidence, but of simple fact.  Before New
Year's Day we shall be at war."

Jean Marie gaped at him in total amazement.

"How can you say that?  Every estimate I ever heard gave us at least
until spring, possibly well into the summer."

"Because," Mr.  Atha explained patiently, "all the estimates were based
on text-book evaluations a conventional war by land, sea and air,
escalating to a limited use of tactical nuclear weapons with the big
ones held in reserve for bargaining.

The logic of history says you don't start that kind of war in the
winter certainly not between Russia and Europe or Russia and China! But
I'm afraid, my friend, that the logic of history is already out the
window.  This time they will start with the big fire-crackers, on the
premise that whoever hits first wins and that the outcome will be
decided in a week .. .

How little they know!"

"How much do you know?"  Jean Marie was wary now.

There was a sharp edge to his question.

"What proof can you offer?"

"None," said Mr.  Atha calmly.

"But then, what proof could you offer for your vision or even for what
you wrote in Last Letters from a Small Planet?  Believe what I tell
you!  It will happen and there will be no warning.  What we are seeing
now troop movements, civil defence exercises, meetings of ministers is
all grand opera.  It's tradition; people expect it; so their
governments are giving it to them.  The reality is much different: men
in concrete caverns, far below the earth, men in capsules far above it,
waiting on the last fatal command.  Did you hear the evening news?"

"No, I missed it."

"The French President arrives here tomorrow, for emergency talks at
Downing Street.  Your friend, Duhamel, will be with him."

Jean Marie set down his fork with a clatter.

"How do you know Duhamel is a friend of mine?"

"He is mentioned in The Fraud."

"Oh!"  Jean Marie was embarrassed.

"I've never read the book.  I wonder if Duhamel would agree with your
interpretation of global events."

"I hardly think it matters."

"It matters to me," said Jean Marie testily.  Then instantly he
apologised.

"I'm sorry; that was rude.  There's a long story between Duhamel and
myself.  I don't want to bore you with it."

"I am never bored," said Mr.  Atha.

"I am too much in love with this small world.  Tell me about
Duhamel."

It took a long time in the telling, from the moment of his first call
from brother Alain's office, to Duhamel's resolve to end it all on
Rubicon Day and the cosmos-cup that was the symbol of the bond between
them.

When the story was ended, Mr.  Atha added his own footnote.

"So now you'd like it all tidy and tied with a pink ribbon: Duhamel and
his wife safe in the arms of Everlasting Mercy.  Yes?"

"Yes!"  said Jean Marie flatly.

"It would be good to know something was tidy in the economy of
salvation."

"I'm afraid it never is," said Mr.  Atha.

"The mathematics are too complicated for human calculation ... I must
leave you now.  I'll pick you up here at ten-thirty in the morning,
clothed and in your right mind!"

It was extraordinary how, in the shadow of Mr.  Atha's prediction, the
simplest pleasures became exquisitely precious: the sight of children
playing in the park, the faces of women window-shopping, the tinsel and
the glitter of Christmas decorations, even the grey drizzle that drove
them to seek shelter in the snuggery of an English pub.

With Mr.  Atha he felt the same kind of companionable ease that he had
enjoyed in the early years of his friendship with Carl Mendelius.  Yet
there was a difference.  With Mendelius there were always the explosive
moments of anger at an injustice, of excitement at some newly grasped
idea, of emotion at a glimpse of hidden beauty.  Mr.  Atha, on the
contrary, was inexorably calm, like a great rock in a turbulent sea. He
did not communicate emotion.  He understood it.  He absorbed it. What
he gave back was an almost physical sensation of peace and repose.

If Jean Marie were surprised, Atha would somehow enlarge the surprise
to wonder, the wonder to a serene illumination.  If Jean Marie were
saddened as he was by moments at the sight of a derelict sleeping rough
in an alley, a youth soliciting on a street corner, a child with the
marks of cruelty or neglect, Mr.  Atha would transmute the sadness into
a hope which, even under the threat of Armageddon, seemed not
incongruous.

"In poorer and simpler countries we respect beggars and honour madmen.
The beggars remind us of our own good fortune and the madmen are
blessed by God with visions denied to others.  We experience cataclysms
but see them in terms of continuity rather than of termination.  The
strange thing is that men who have unlocked the secrets of the atom and
of the spiral helix will now use those secrets to destroy themselves
..."

"What is in us that brings us inevitably to the precipice?"

"You were taught it from a child.  Man is made in God's image.  That
means he is a creature of almost unbelievable resources, of frightening
potential."

"Which he always misuses."

"Because he will not come to terms with his mortality.

Always he believes he can cheat the hangman."

"I thought you told me you were not a believer."

"Nor am I," said Mr.  Atha.

"Belief is impossible to me.

"Relatively or absolutely?"  Jean Marie teased him with a theologian's
question.

"Absolutely," said Mr.  Atha.

"Now, let's take a taxi.

Waldo Pearson wants you at the Carlton Club at twelve forty-five
precisely."

"You were invited, too."

"I know.  I'm duly flattered; but I'm sure Pearson and Duhamel would
like to have you to themselves."

"Duhamel?  I didn't know he was going to be there."

"I suggested it," said Mr.  Atha amiably.

"After all, it is a farewell meal.  I'll pick you up at two-thirty."

It was strange to be back in the room where he had been stricken, a
little embarrassing to exchange nods or greetings with the men who had
witnessed his collapse.  This luncheon was another moment of testimony,
given in the understated English fashion, but trumpet-clear to everyone
familiar with the rituals of the realm.  Waldo Pearson was saying:
"This man is still my friend; the things you have read about him are
lies;

if any of you thinks otherwise let him raise his voice and tell me
so!"

The presence of Pierre Duhamel was also a potent witness to his good
character.  The President of the Republic was lunching at Downing
Street.  His most trusted counsellor was very visible at the Carlton
Club, giving the lie to a libel about Jean Marie Barette.  But Duhamel
dismissed the issue over the soup.

"Pouf!  A nothing!  A graffito on the ruins, with no one left to read
it!  Don't you agree, Waldo?"

"Regrettably, I do," said Waldo Pearson.

"We're facing a grim Christmas and a very dubious New Year.  You could
be as villainous as the Borgias now, Jean, and no one would give a
damn."

"I am told," said Jean Marie carefully, "that we may not see a New
Year."

Pearson and Duhamel exchanged anxious glances.

Duhamel asked with dry irony, "Another vision?"

"No," said Jean Marie with a shrug of deprecation.

"This time it was Mr.  Atha, my therapist."

"In that case," said Waldo Pearson with obvious relief, "we can enjoy
lunch.  I recommend the rack of lamb and a bottle of the club's
Burgundy.  I chose it myself and you won't get better at the
President's table."

Jean Marie was not to be put off so blandly, even by Waldo Pearson.  He
turned to Pierre Duhamel and put the barbed question, "How far are we
from Rubicon Day?"

"Not very far."  Duhamel answered without hesitation.

"Troops of the Warsaw Pact are already mobilised in Europe.

Soviet troops are also deployed in depth along the frontiers with
China, Iran, Iraq and Turkey.  The dispositions and strengths
correspond with their known battle order and stage two of combat
readiness."

"And what is stage two?"  asked Jean Marie.

"Basically it means they're ready to meet any attack during winter and
can be quickly reinforced for an offensive in early spring.  Which is
what we all expect."

"They're following the text-book," said Waldo Pearson.

"Right down to the small print."

"But just suppose there's a different text-book," said Jean Marie
quietly.

"The order of battle is reversed and the big bang comes first?"

"The way the Russians are disposed indicates they won't do that." Waldo
Pearson spoke with solid John Bull conviction.

"What if we are the ones with the different text-book?"

"No comment," said Pierre Duhamel.

The waiter presented the wine, Waldo Pearson sniffed it, tasted it,
announced that he was still proud of it and ordered it to be poured. He
raised his glass to toast Jean Marie.

"To your continued good health and the continued success of the
book."

"Thank you."

"I read it."  Pierre Duhamel was eager in his praise.

"Paulette too!  She laughed and wept over your little clown.

Me?  I began by admiring the cunning of your invention and the elegance
of your style.  Then I found myself arguing with your J cannot
sometimes for him, sometimes against.  In the end well, how does one
say it?  the book didn't solve the problems of this lousy twentieth
century, but it did leave a good taste in my mouth .. . Like your wine,
Waldo!"

"My thanks to you both."  Jean Marie raised his own glass.

"I am blessed in my friends."

"The lamb!"  said Waldo Pearson.

"We get the first cut!

That's why I like to be here right on time."

Jean Marie was bemused.  Pearson's insistence on the trivia of the
meal-table seemed odd and out of character for a man so forceful and
intelligent.  But when Pearson left the table to take a telephone call,
Duhamel explained it with a very Parisian aside.

"So British!  He knows this is goodbye.  He doesn't know how to say it.
So he talks about the rack of lamb!  Dear loving God!  What a race."

"I'm an idiot," said Jean Marie; and to cover his embarrassment he
asked hastily, "What do you hear of Roberta?"

"Nothing.  She is always away."

"If you see her, give her my love."

"I will."

"And to Paulette, too."

"Jean, my friend, let me give you one last piece of advice."

"Go ahead!"

"Think of yourself!  Don't worry about me, Roberta, Paulette, anyone
else!  We all have a telephone line to our private God whoever He may
be!  If He's there, He'll talk to us.  If not, the whole game's a
blague.  Here!  Have some more wine!  ..."

:;- :!- Was it a good lunch?"  asked Mr.  Atha.

"It was goodbye," said Jean Marie Barette.

"We walked out.  We shook hands.  I said, "Thank you for a pleasant
meal."

Waldo said, "Delighted to have you, my dear chap."  Duhamel said, "What
horrible exit lines!"  We laughed and went our separate ways."

"It sounds appropriate," said Mr.  Atha.

"I've picked up our plane tickets and booked a car to take us to the
airport.

The flight leaves at eleven.  Allowing for the normal hour's delay, we
should be in Munich by two in the afternoon.

When we get back this evening I'll get you to sign cheques for the
medical bills and for staff gratuities.  That way you won't be fussed
in the morning."

"And then it finishes!  Another chapter of my life closed just like
that!"

Mr.  Atha shrugged.

"Going away is dying a little and dying is very simple.  There is a
saying among the desert people:

"Never wave goodbye to the caravan.  You will follow it soon."  .. .
Now, we have to buy you some warm clothes;

otherwise you'll freeze in that Alpine valley."

It was snowing hard when they landed in Munich, the last plane in
before the airport closed.  There was a long queue at passport control.
The frontier police were checking meticulously on all foreigners. Jean
Marie wondered whether his name was listed in the black-book of
undesirables; but finally he was waved through the barrier into the
customs hall, where there was another pile-up of harassed travellers.
Mr.

Atha steered him to the exit and then went back to wait for the
baggage.  A moment later Jean Marie was caught in a bearhug embrace by
Johann Mendelius.

"Uncle Jean!  You made it!  You look wonderful!  Mother and father
wanted to come in but the roads are bad; so I had to bring the jeep and
use chains to get through the pass."

Jean Marie held him at arm's length and looked at him.

There was no boy left in him now.  He was a man, all muscle and sinew.
His face was weather-beaten, his hands hard and calloused.  Jean Marie
nodded his satisfaction.

"Yes, you'll do!  You look like a real countryman!"

"Oh, I am!  Peasant to the boot soles!  We've had a big scramble to
make the place habitable for the winter; but we did it!  Don't expect
anything too grand though.  All we guarantee is country cooking and
warm shelter."

"You'll find me easy to please," said Jean Marie.

"All your people arrived safely."

"My people?"

"You know; the ones you sent with your password: 'the cosmos in a wine
glass'.  There were three groups, nine people in all.  They've settled
in very well."

Some elemental instinct warned Jean Marie not to make a discussion
about it.  The mystery would explain itself as soon as he arrived in
the valley.  He simply nodded and said, "I'm glad they caused no
trouble."

"On the contrary."

"How are your mother and father and Katrin?"

"Oh, they're fine.  Mother's gone rather grey; but it suits her. Father
tramps around like a captain on the quarter-deck, inspecting everything
with his one good eye, and learning to hold tools with that mechanical
grip of his.  Katrin's two months pregnant.  She and Franz decided to
wait and ask you to marry them."

Mr.  Atha pushed through the crowd with a trolley of baggage.  Johann
stared at him gape-mouthed, and then burst into laughter.

"I know you!  You're the one who .. . Uncle Jean, this is quite
extraordinary.  This man ..."

"Don't tell him now!"  said Mr.  Atha.

"Save it awhile.

Surprises are good for him."

"I agree!"  Johann laughed again and took Jean Marie's arm.

"It really is worth waiting for."

Together they shepherded Jean Marie through the crowd and out to the
pick-up zone.  When Johann hurried off to bring the jeep from the
parking area, Jean Marie faced Mr.

Atha with a veiled reproof.

"I think, my friend, there are lots of things about you that need
explaining."

"I know," said Mr.  Atha in his easy fashion.

"But I'm sure we'll find a better time and place to do it ... That's a
fine young man!"

"Johann?  Yes.  He's matured so much since I last saw him."

A sudden thought struck him.  He groaned aloud.

"It's Christmas Eve!  I've been so preoccupied with myself I forgot to
buy any presents for the family or for you.  I feel very bad about
that."

"I don't need presents and you pay me to remember!  I bought some
things before we left.  They're wrapped.  All you have to do is write
on the cards."  He smiled and added, "I hope I chose the right
things."

"I'm sure you did; but this time I'd rather not have any surprises.
What did you buy?"

"For Frau Mendelius, head scarves and lace handkerchiefs;

for the young man, a ski-sweater; for the girl, perfume; for the
Professor, a prismatic magnifier for easy reading.  Did I do right?"

"Magnificently.  You have my eternal gratitude.  But you are still not
dispensed from explanations."

"I promise you will get them.  I hope you will understand," said Mr.
Atha.

"Here's Johann."

They helped Jean Marie into the jeep, bundled him up in a blanket and a
sheepskin pelisse and set off along the autobahn to Garmisch.

Johann talked eagerly about the small community in the valley: "Our
intentions were vague.  Papa had this idea of founding a postgraduate
academy.  I thought of it as a place where my friends and I could hide
out, if we got into trouble with the authorities.  You'll remember that
was in the days when we were buying arms from Dolman and setting up an
underground at the University.  Then, of course, everything changed. We
had to help Papa rebuild his life and this seemed a good place to do
it.

"Eight of us came down to start making the buildings habitable.  We
camped in the lodge and worked from sun-up to sunset.  The place is far
off the trunk routes as you will see.

So we didn't expect many visitors.  But they started dribbling through
young people mostly, but some older ones.  We put it down to the fact
that Bavaria is full of tourists in the fall.

There's the Bierfest and the Opera and all the fashion shows.

So we got all sorts of callers: Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs,
Vietnamese, Poles, Americans, Japanese.  They said they'd like to stay
and help.  That was great.  We were terribly short of labour.  We made
a simple rule: work and share.  It's amazing!  So far we've held
together and we're quite a mixed community, as you'll see!"

"Did people offer any special reason for joining you?"

asked Jean Marie.

"We don't enquire," said Johann.

"If they want to talk, we listen.  I suppose it would be true to say
that most of them have some hidden scars."

"And they'd like to be born again without them," said Mr.

Atha.

"Yes, you might put it like that," said Johann thoughtfully.

When they reached the first Alpine foothills, Johann turned south and
began a long, winding ascent along a country road already deep in snow.
Just before the road ran out and became a rutted timber-track through
the pine woods there was a small wayside shrine, the usual carved
wooden crucifix with a gabled canopy above it.  Johann slowed the
car.

"That's where we first met Mr.  Atha, when we were hiking through here
on our way to Austria.  We asked him if he knew a good camping spot. He
pointed us up the track we're taking now.  Hang on, Uncle Jean!  It
gets rough from now on!"

It was, in fact, fifteen minutes of jolting and jerking that threatened
to shake the teeth loose from their heads; but when they broke out of
the timber, they saw a high black wall of rock, with snow piled white
in the crevices, and through it a defile, cut clean as if with a giant
axe.  The defile was perhaps a hundred metres long.  The far end was
closed with a palisade of split logs hung on huge hinges of hand-forged
iron.  Johann got out of the jeep, swung the palisade open and drove
through it into a large saucer-shaped depression fringed with black
crags that gave place, tier by tier, to pine woods and the wilder
growth of the lowlands round the lake.  Johann stopped the jeep.  Mr.
Atha got out to close the barrier.

Johann pointed down through the snow-swirls.

"You can't see much in this murk.  The lake is bigger than it looks
from up here.  The lights you can see through the trees come from the
main lodge and the cabins which are strung out on either side of it.
The waterfall is on the far side and the old mine entrance about fifty
yards to the left.  There's such a lot to show you.  But let's get you
home.  Father and mother will be biting their fingernails!"

Mr.  Atha climbed into the jeep and they jolted down a deer track
towards the sparse yellow lights.

"We have you to ourselves until dinner-time," Lotte told him happily.

"Carl laid it down like the laws of the Medes and Persians!  No
reception committee!  No visitors!  No interruptions until we had had
our own time with our own Jean Marie!  Johann promised to entertain
your Mr.  Atha.

The others are busy decorating the Christmas tree, cooking for the
dinner tonight.  We've all had to get used to less houseroom and less
privacy; but, at Christmas, it's rather pleasant and tribal."

They were sitting round an old porcelain stove in what had once been
the servants' sitting-room in the lodge.  The furniture consisted of a
small pine table, piled high with books, a wooden stool and three
battered armchairs.  They were drinking coffee laced with brandy and
nibbling on cupcakes, hot from the oven.

Lotte had aged rapidly in a few short months.  The last traces of youth
were gone and she was now a silver-haired matron with soft, motherly
features and the ready smile of a woman at peace with herself and her
world.  Mendelius had slimmed down; but he was still a solid, vigorous
man.  One side of his face was ravaged scarred and stained by tiny
fragments which had ruptured the vesicles; but his black eyepatch gave
him a raffish air and there was humour still in his lopsided smile.  He
professed himself not unhappy with Jean Marie Barette.

"The limp is a nothing!  It's just enough to make you look like a
distinguished war veteran!  The face?  Well, I wouldn't know you'd had
a stroke.  Would you, Lotte?  Anyway, beside me, you look like
Donatello's David!  .. . Still, there's a lot of life left in us both,
old friend!  What do you think of this place?  Of course, you can't see
a thing with the snowstorm; but it's all very exciting.  We've got
forty people here now, including four children.  You'll meet them
before dinner.  And it will be a good dinner, I promise you!  Johann
and his boys hauled in nearly fifty tons of supplies last month.

The woods are full of deer.  We've got four milch cows in the barn.
You'll smell them tonight, because your room is right over the byres.
You'll say Midnight Mass for us, of course.

Not everybody's Christian.  We get over that by what we call 'a
communion of friends' at the evening meal.  Anybody who feels uneasy
can avoid it by coming late.  The rest of us sit together and hold
hands in silence.  If anyone feels like saying a public prayer, he or
she says it.  If someone wants to make a testimony or ask for an
accounting of our common day, this is the time to do it.  We end with
the recitation of the "Our Father'.  Most people join in.  Then we
dine.  It seems to work.

There's something else you should know."  Mendelius straightened up in
his chair.  His tone was a shade more formal.

"The deeds of the valley are in my name and Lotte's, with reversion to
the children.  However, we felt that since most of our people are
young, I was no longer appropriate as a leader; so, by common consent,
Johann is the head of the community."

"It works very well," said Lotte eagerly.

"There is no longer a rivalry between Carl and Johann.  They respect
each other.  Johann constantly seeks advice from Carl and me.  He
listens carefully but in the end he makes the decisions.

However, we'd all like you to take the place of honour, sit at the head
of the table, that sort of thing!"

"No, my dear Lotte!"  Jean Marie reached out to touch her cheek.

"You have it wrong.  I am the servant of the servants of God.  I'll sit
with you and Carl old friends, wise enough to let the young cut their
teeth on the barbed wire!"

Suddenly, as if a fuse had blown, the affectionate talk was over.
Mendelius reached out his good hand and gripped Jean Marie's wrist.  He
said grimly:

"This is all too bland, Jean!  We both know it.  I hear the same kind
of chat every day among our people here.  Everything's sweetness and
light.  God help us!  You'd think we were young lovers building our
dream houses!"

"Carl, that's not fair!"  Lotte was indignant.

"We talk simple things to take our minds off the terrible ones we can't
control.  And why shouldn't we enjoy what we're doing here?

There's a lot of sweat going into this place and a lot of love, too.
Only sometimes you're too crotchety to see it!"

"I'm sorry, darling.  I don't mean to be bad-tempered.  But Jean
understands what I'm trying to say."

"I understand you both," said Jean Marie.

"The short answer is that all the news is bad.  The best hope is that
hostilities will not begin until spring.  The worst prediction, made by
my friend Mr.  Atha, and half-confirmed by a 'no comment' from Pierre
Duhamel, is that the Americans might attempt a pre-emptive strike with
the big missiles, even before the New Year."

There was a long moment of silence.  Lotte stretched out her hand to
touch her husband.

Carl Mendelius said: "If that happens, Jean, then everything will be
tossed into the witches' cauldron: nerve gas, germs, lasers, every
weird horror in the arsenals of the world."

"True," said Jean Marie.

"Even so, you could be safe here for a very long time."

"But that's not the point, is it, Jean?  That's not where all this
began as a plan for mere survival.  If it were, I don't think Lotte and
I would have taken the trouble.  I don't think you would either.  We've
both become familiar with Brother Death; and he's not half the
terrifying fellow he's made out to be.  All this began with your vision
and the message they wouldn't let you proclaim: centres of hope,
centres of charity for the aftermath.  Well, now that you're here, what
do we do?"

"Carl, he's only just arrived!"  Clearly Carl Mendelius' frustrations
were no new thing to Lotte.

"But we can tell him what we've been doing.  You said it yourself: you
can't give water from an empty bucket.  So we're all preparing
ourselves for the services we can best offer in no matter how small a
way.  Anneliese Meissner is training some of the young men and the
girls in practical medicine even in homeopathic remedies which are
available from local plants.  She has them fired with enthusiasm by the
example of the barefoot doctors in Chinese rural areas.  One of the
people Johann brought in is a young engineer who is working on a scheme
to use the waterfall for generating power.  I've started classes for
the children, and Carl is working on an idea for preserving a record of
what we do here and the problems we encounter.  I know it's all small
and elementary but it's .. . it's shareable!

Even if the world does fall apart, sooner or later we'll have to try to
make contact with the remnants near us.  When we do, we must have
something to offer; otherwise hope's dead and charity's empty!"

It was the longest speech Jean Marie had ever heard her make, and the
finest affirmation of all she had learned as a woman.

"Bravo, Lotte!  You should be proud of this girl, Carl!"

"I am."  Carl Mendelius was good humoured again.

"I just get jealous because she's so much more useful than I am.  I
mean it!  I'm a very learned fellow.  But what's it worth beside a
woman who can make medicine from herbs or a man who can make
electricity from a waterfall."

"Oh, I'm sure there's some use we can make of you."  Lotte stood up and
kissed Mendelius on the forehead.

"I'm going to see what progress they're making in the kitchen."

When she had left, Jean Marie asked him a question.

"Where would you say the name Atha comes from?"

"Atha?"  Mendelius repeated the word a few times and then shook his
head.

"Truly, I've no idea.  This is the friend who came with you?"

"Yes.  He's very vague about himself and a lot of other things as well.
He says he comes from the Middle East.  He was brought up in the Jewish
tradition and he's a nonbeliever.  But Carl, he's a unique man. He's
young, as you see.  He can't be older than the mid-thirties.  Yet he
has so much maturity, so much inner endurance.  When I was at my
lowest, I clung to him like a drowning man.  I felt he was carrying me
to safety on his back.  It was very strange.  He slipped so easily into
my life that it was as if I had known him for ever.  One gets the
impression of immense knowledge and most varied experience.  Yet he
never exposes any of it.  I'll be very interested to see how you react
to him."

"Atha .. . Atha ..."  Carl Mendelius was still toying with the name.

"It certainly isn't Hebrew.  But it does ring a faint bell somewhere. I
don't know why; but ever since I've been in hospital, my memory isn't
nearly as good as it used to be."

"Mine isn't either," said Jean Marie.

"The only consolation is that there are lots of things we need to
forget!"

Mendelius pushed himself out of his chair and held out a hand to pull
Jean Marie to his feet.

"Let's take a stroll and see who's around.  Then you won't have to face
a long line of new faces at dinner-time."

In what had once been the dining room of the lodge, a big log fire was
blazing and advent candles in their sprays of greenery were set at the
windows.  In one corner there was the traditional Nativity tableau:
wooden figures of the Virgin, Joseph and the Christ-child with the
shepherds and the animals watching about the manger.  Opposite was a
large Christmas tree dressed with tinsel and baubles.  The rest of the
room was taken up by benches and trestle tables where bustling young
men and women were setting places for dinner.  Mendelius, fumbling for
names, settled for an offhand introduction:

"Friends, this is Father Jean Marie Barette.  He'll be available later
for confessions, counsel or just agreeable company!  You'll have plenty
of time to get to know him."  In an aside to Jean he added, "I know
it's a comedown; but we're too small to afford a Pope or even a Bishop!
And we don't want to frighten off the customers!"

Jean Marie finished the old, clerical joke for him, "Not before we
collect the Christmas offerings!"

The kitchen boasted a large, ancient wood oven and a halfdozen eager
cooks preparing poultry, vegetables and sweetmeats.  One of them was
Katrin, covered in flour to her elbows.  She held up her face to be
kissed and made a joke of her condition.

"Would you believe it!  Me of all people!  At first I was
panic-stricken but now I'm really happy.  So is Franz.  You'll see him
later.  He's sawing logs in the barn.  You will marry us, Uncle
Jean?"

"Who else is there?"

"Well, if you hadn't come, we were going to have a kind of public
binding."

"It's the same thing," said Jean Marie, "except mine comes with benefit
of clergy."

In the far corner, Anneliese Meissner was mixing a concoction in a
large copper pot.  Jean Marie said his greetings and then stuck his
fingers in the pot.

"Punch!"  she told him.

"My own recipe.  Not to be served to anyone under eighteen or persons
not covered by life insurance."  She held the ladle up for him to
taste.

"Well?

What do you think?"

"Lethal!"  said Jean Marie.

"You get one small glass, no more.  I hope you're doing all the things
you were told."  She fixed him with a shrewd professional eye.

"You look pretty good.  Only the tiniest touch of facial pare sis  Give
me your left hand.  Grip hard!  .  You'll do.  I'll check you over
tomorrow, when I've recovered from the hangover I shall undoubtedly
have.  It's good to see you!"

It was still snowing but Carl Mendelius was eager to keep moving.  He
handed Jean Marie a sheepskin coat and a pair of snow boots, then took
him out to give him a quick look at the contours of the tiny
settlement: the lake frozen and snowcovered, with an upturned boat on
the strand, the waterfall still flowing but festooned with icicles, the
mouth of the ancient mine-tunnel.

"It goes in a long way," Mendelius explained.

"There are still some large outcrops of bloodstone.  We've got all our
stores in there: canned goods, seed stocks, tools.  It's the best
possible protection against blast or direct radiation.  The fallout, of
course, depends on the winds.  I would guess Munich must be the nearest
big target.  Would you like to meet the children?  They're in this
cabin.  Some of the women are looking after them.  We don't want to
spoil the surprise of the Christmas tree."

But when Mendelius pushed open the door and stood aside to let him
enter the cabin, Jean Marie had his own big surprise.  Mr.  Atha was
seated in a chair with his back to the door.  He had a small child on
his lap.  Three others were seated on the floor in front of them and
behind the children were four women, all absorbed in the story.  One of
them made a hushing signal with her hand.  Mendelius and Jean Marie
crept in on tiptoe and closed the door silently.  Mr.

Atha went on with his story.

"You haven't been there; but I have.  This place where the shepherds
were watching their sheep is a hillside, very bare and cold.  It didn't
have trees like you have here.  Just stones and coarse grass, hardly
enough to feed the sheep.  The shepherds were lonely.  I've spent a lot
of time in the desert and I can tell you it is very frightening at
night.  So, one shepherd sang a little, and the one farther away picked
up the song, and then another one, until they were all singing together
like angel voices.  Then they saw the star.  It was big big as a melon!
and it hung so low that they could almost reach up and pick it out of
the sky.  It was bright too; but soft bright so that it didn't hurt
their eyes.  And it hung right over the cave where the baby had just
been born.  So the shepherds walked towards the star, still singing,
and they were the first visitors that little family of Jesus, Mary and
Joseph ever had in Bethlehem of Judah."

There was a momentary hush and a big "Ah!..."  from the children as the
story ended.  Then Mr.  Atha stood up and turned to greet the
newcomers.  The child in his arms was the little mongol from the
Institute at Versailles.  One of the women was the patron ne of the
Hostellerie des Chevaliers;

another was Judith, the little twisted one who made the cosmos-cup.

Jean Marie was struck dumb with shock.  He stammered and stuttered, as
he had after the palsy.

"How .. . how did you get here?"

"You sent for us," said Judith.

"Mr.  Atha brought the message."

Jean Marie turned to Mr.  Atha.

"How did you know the password?  I told it to no one except Johann."

"Take the child," said Mr.  Atha.

"She wants you."

He handed the little girl to Jean Marie and immediately she began
fondling him, gurgling with pleasure.  He found voice again as he
crooned to her.

"Eh, my little clown!"

It was only then that he was able to greet the others, and he embraced
them like a father parted too long from his family.

To the patron ne he said, "Now, madame, you really have the silly mule
and not the Pope!"

Mr.  Atha's voice steadied him against the rush of emotion.

"These folk are my Christmas gifts to you.  I invited others, too, in
the same way.  You'll meet them later, but you won't know them.  They
were clients of mine who needed special help.  I hope you don't mind my
small stratagem, Professor Mendelius."

"It's Christmas."  Mendelius was laughing at Jean Marie's happy
discomfiture.

"It's always been open house at our place!"

"Thank you, Professor."

"Your name interests me, Mr.  Atha.  It's not Hebrew.

What is its origin?"

"Syriac," said Mr.  Atha.

"Oh," said Carl Mendelius, and was too polite to ask any more questions
of so laconic a guest.

Dinner began with a ceremony of children.  Jean Marie carried the
little clown girl in his arms to show her the Christmas tree and the
Nativity stable and the sparks dancing from the big pine logs.  She
would not leave him; so, before the meal could begin, her high chair
had to be placed next to him.

Johann stood at the head of the table with his mother on his right and
Anneliese Meissner on his left.  Carl Mendelius was next to Lotte; Jean
Marie sat next to Anneliese with the child beside him.  Opposite him on
the other side of the table was Mr.  Atha, with Judith on one side and
Katrin Mendelius on the other.  Johann opened the proceedings with a
formal request.

"Will you give us a blessing, please, Uncle Jean."

Jean Marie crossed himself and recited the grace, noting as he did so
that Mr.  Atha did not make the sign of the cross, as some did; though
he did chime in with the "Amen' at the end of the prayer.

Then the feast began, ample, cheerful and noisy, with everyone primed
on Anneliese's punch and fuelled with Rhine wine.  It was arranged,
Johann had told Jean Marie, to come to the coffee by ten-thirty, so
that the children could be got to bed and the adults have a chance to
sober themselves before the Christmas Mass at midnight.  By ten the
assembly had settled into a sentimental mood.  Johann Mendelius stood
up and rapped on his glass for attention.  Even in the afterglow of the
wine he had an air of confidence and authority.

He said:

"My friends, my family.  This won't be a long speech.  I want first to
wish you all the best of good things for Christmas and our life
afterwards in this valley.  I thank you all for the hard work you did
to get us ready for winter.  Next I want to welcome Uncle Jean and tell
him how glad we are to have him.  When I saw him last, months ago, I
had reservations about all the things he stood for.  Now, I'd like him
to know I have fewer reservations and a lot more convictions about what
makes a good man.  Finally, I'd like to say thank you to Mr.  Atha, who
first pointed me up the track to this place and now has brought us, not
only our most distinguished, but also our most beloved citizen."  He
gestured towards Jean Marie and the child in the high chair beside
him.

There was a small burst of applause.  He went on, "From a chance remark
which he made while we were chatting this afternoon, I gather that Mr.
Atha is one of those unfortunate people whose birthday falls on
Christmas Day.  Normally he gets only one present instead of two. Well,
this time, we'll make sure he gets two presents!"  He held up a bottle
of red wine and a bottle of white and passed them down the table with a
greeting.

"Happy birthday, Mr.  Atha!"

There was cheering and clapping and calls for a speech.  Mr.

Atha stood up.  In the glow of the candles and the firelight he looked
like a figure from some ancient mosaic, revealed in a sudden splendour
of bronze and gold.  Abruptly there was silence.  He spoke not at all
loudly; but his voice filled the room.  Even the little buffoon child
was still, as if she understood every word.

"First I have thanks to give.  Tomorrow is indeed my birthday and I am
happy to celebrate it here with you tonight.

I have promised explanations to my friend, Jean Marie, and it is proper
that you should hear them, too, because you are sharers in the same
mystery.  First, you should know that you are not here by your own
design.  You were led here, step by step, on different roads, through
many apparent accidents;

but, always, it was the finger of God that beckoned you.

"You are not the only community thus brought together.

There are many others, all over the world: in the forests of Russia, in
the jungles of Brazil, in places you would never dream.  They are all
different; because men's needs and habits are different.  Yet they are
all the same; because they have followed the same beckoning ringer, and
bonded themselves by the same love.  They did not do this of
themselves.  They could not, just as you could not, without a special
prompting of grace.

"You were prompted for a reason.  Even as I speak, the Adversary begins
to stalk the earth, roaring destruction!  So, in the evil times which
are now upon us, you are chosen to keep the small flame of love alight,
to nurture the seeds of goodness in this small place, until the day
when the Spirit sends you out to light other candles in a dark land and
plant new seeds in a blackened earth.

"I am with you now; but tomorrow I shall be gone.  You will be alone
and afraid.  But I leave my peace with you and my love.  And you will
love one another as I have loved you.

"Please!"  He urged them to cheerfulness.

"You must not be sad!  The gift of the Holy Spirit is gladness of
heart."  He smiled and the room seemed to light up.  He joked with
them.

"Professor Mendelius and my friend, Jean Marie, are puzzled about my
name.  So much for scholarship, my dear Professor!

And how quickly even Popes forget their Scripture!  You were looking
for one word.  There are two.  You will know them when I remind you.
Maran Atha .. . The Lord comes!"

Jean Marie was instantly on his feet.  His voice was a high
challenge.

"You lied to me!  You said you were a non-believer!"

"I did not lie.  You have forgotten.  You asked was I a believer.  I
answered that I was not.  I said at another time that the act of faith
was impossible for me.  True?"

"True."

"And still you do not understand?"

"No."

"Enough!"  Carl Mendelius spoke out angrily in defence of Jean Marie.

"The man is tired.  He has been ill.  He is not ready for riddles!"  He
turned to Jean Marie.

"What he is saying, Jean, is that he cannot believe because he knows.

They taught you that in first-year theology.  God cannot believe in
Himself.  He knows Himself as he knows all the work of His hands."

1 395 "Thank you, Professor," said Mr.  Atha.

Jean Marie stood silent, as the full meaning of the words dawned upon
him.  Once again he challenged the man across the table.

"You have called yourself Mr.  Atha.  What is your true name?"

"You have to tell me!"

There was, again, the odd, abrupt silence.  Out of it Jean Marie
spoke.

"Are you the promised one?"

"Yes, I am."

"How do we know?"

"Sit down, please!"

Mr.  Atha sat down first.  Without a word he drew a trencher of bread
towards him and poured wine into a cup.

He broke a piece off the bread and held it in his hands over the cup.
He said, "Father, bless this bread, fruit of Your earth, the food by
which we live."  He paused and then began again.

"This is my body ..."

Jean Marie stood up.  He was calm now and respectful, but still
undaunted.

"Sir, you know that these are very familiar words, most sacred to us
all.  You know enough of our Scriptures to remember that the early
disciples recognised Jesus in the breaking of bread.  You could be
using that knowledge to deceive us."

"Why should I do that?  Why are you so mistrustful?"

"Because our Lord Jesus himself warned us: "There will arise false
Christs and false prophets who will show great signs, so as to deceive
even the chosen."  I am a priest.  The people ask me to show them Jesus
Christ.  If you are He, you must give me what you gave your first
disciples, a legitimi sing sign!"

"Isn't all this enough?"  The gesture embraced the whole room and the
valley.

"Doesn't this legitimi se me?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Because there are communities which call themselves godly, but which
exploit people and twist them into hate.  We are not tested yet.  We
do not know if the gift is true or treacherous."  it There was a long
silence; then the man who called himself Jesus held out his hands.

"Give me the child!"

"No!"  Even as he recoiled in fear, Jean Marie knew it was e all
presaged in the dream.

"Please let me hold her.  She will come to no harm."

Jean Marie looked around the assembly.  Their faces told him nothing.
He lifted the child out of the high chair and passed her across the
table.  Mr.  Atha kissed her and sat her on his knee.  He dipped a
crust of bread in the wine and fed it to her, morsel by morsel.  As he
did so, he talked, quietly and ,e persuasively.

"I know what you are thinking.  You need a sign.  What better one could
I give than to make this little one whole and new?  I could do it; but
I will not.  I am the Lord and not a conjuror.  I gave this mite a gift
I denied to all of you eternal innocence.  To you she looks imperfect
but to me she is flawless, like the bud that dies unopened or the
fledgling that falls from the nest to be devoured by the ants.  She
will never offend me, as all of you have done.  She will never pervert
or destroy the work of my Father's hands.  She is necessary to you. She
will evoke the kindness that will keep you human.

Her infirmity will prompt you to gratitude for your own good fortune.
More!  She will remind you every day that I am who I am, that my ways
are not yours, and that the smallest dust mote whirled in darkest space
does not fall out of my hand.  I have chosen you.  You have not chosen
me.  This little one is my sign to you.  Treasure her!"

He lifted the child from his lap, and passed her back across the table
to Jean Marie.  He said gently:

"It is time to give witness, my friend.  Tell me!  Who am I?"

"I am not sure yet."

"Why not?"

"I am a fool," said Jean Marie Barette.

"I am a clown touched in the head.  Truly!"  He looked around at the
little company.  He tapped his skull.

"A little part of me up there doesn't function any more.  I limp, like
Jacob after his wrestle with the Angel.  I drop things.  Sometimes I
open my mouth and nothing comes out.  I chase the words as a child
chases bu bu ..."  At the last moment he seized on the word,
"butterflies!  So you must be simple with me.  Tell me: Can you really
change your mind?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Abraham bargained with God for Sodom and Gomorrah.

He said: "If there be a hundred or twenty or ten just men in the
cities, will you spare them?"  And God, so the Scripture said, was very
reasonable about the whole affair.  Our Jesus who was of the seed of
Abraham said that whatever we ask will be given us.  We should knock at
the door and clamour to be heard.  But there's no point in that if
there's no one inside or if the one inside is a mad spirit whirling
heedless with the galaxies!"

"Ask then!"  said Mr.  Atha.

"What do you want?"

"Time."  Jean Marie Barette held the child close to him and pleaded as
he had never pleaded in his life before.

"Enough to hope, work, pray, reason a little longer together.  Please!
If you are the Lord, do you want to march into your world like the old
barbarians on a carpet of dead bodies?  That would be surely an
unworthy triumph.  This child is a great gift; but we need all the
children and time enough to deserve them.

Please!"

"And what can you offer me in return?"

"Very little," said Jean Marie with bleak simplicity.

"I am diminished now.  I have to think in small ways; but, such as I
am, you can have me!"

"I accept," said Mr.  Atha.

"How much time will you give us?"

"Not too much but enough!"

"Thank you.  Thank you from us all."

"Now are you ready to testify?"

"Yes, I'm ready" "Wait!"  It was Carl Mendelius who uttered the final
challenge.  For all his ravages and his wounds he was still the doughty
old sceptic of Rome and Tubingen.

"He has promised nothing, Jean.  He has uttered only words familiar to
us for centuries.  I can list their sources for you, every one!  He
talks as though time is in his gift.  You abdicated because you had no
patent of authority for your prophecy.  Why do you accept less from
this man?"

There was a murmur of approval from the small assembly.

They looked first at Mr.  Atha sitting calm and composed in his place,
then at Jean Marie, clasping the child close to him and rocking back
and forth in his chair.  Lotte Mendelius got up from her place to take
the child from him.  She said, so softly that only he could hear:

"Whatever you decide, we love you."

Jean Marie patted her hand and surrendered the little girl.

He gave Carl Mendelius the old sidelong grin which acknowledged all the
things they had shared in the bad times in Rome.  He said, "Carl, old
friend, there's never enough evidence.  You know that.  You've been
digging for it all your life.  We make do with what we have.  From this
man I have had nothing but good.  What more can I ask?"

"The answer, please."  Mr.  Atha prompted him firmly.

"Who am I?"

"I believe," said Jean Marie Barette, and prayed for a steady tongue.

"I believe you are the Anointed One, the Son of the Living God!  .. .
B-but ..."  He stumbled and recovered himself slowly.

"I have no mission, I have no authority.  I cannot speak for my
friends.  You will have to teach them, as you have taught me."

"No!"  said Mr.  Atha.

"Tomorrow I shall be gone about my Father's other business.  You must
teach them, Jean!"

"How .. . how can I with this halter on my tongue?"

"You are a rock of a man!"  said Mr.  Atha.

"On you I can build a small standing place for my people!"

EPILOGUE

Pierre Duhamel stood at the window of the President's chamber and
watched the snow falling over Paris.  He fumbled in the pocket of his
jacket and his fingers closed round the tiny enamelled comfit box,
which held the two gelatine capsules: the passport to oblivion for
Paulette and himself.

The sensation gave him a weary kind of comfort.  At least Paulette
would not need to suffer any more and he himself would be spared the
sight of Paris in the aftermath.  He wanted to be quit of this long,
despairing death-watch and go home to bed.

The man he had served for twenty years sat behind him at the great
desk, chin propped in his hands, staring sightlessly at the documents
in front of him.  He asked, "What time do you make it?"

"Five minutes to midnight," said Pierre Duhamel.

"It's a hell of a way to spend Christmas Eve."

"The President promised to call me from the White House the moment he'd
reached a decision."

"I think he's reached it already," said Pierre Duhamel.

"He'll tell us just as they're pushing the last button."

"Nothing we can do about that."

"Nothing," said Pierre Duhamel.

Out of the silence that followed the telephone shrilled.  The man at
the desk snatched it up.  Duhamel turned back to the window.  He did
not want to hear the death sentence read.  He heard the phone replaced
and then the long exhalation of relief from his master.

"They've called it off!  They think they see a breakthrough with
Moscow."

"What's the next deadline?"

"They haven't set it yet."

"Thank Christ!"  said Pierre Duhamel.

"Thank Christ!"

Somehow it sounded like a prayer.

Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1916 of an Irish mother and a father
who was a travelling salesman, Morris West was the eldest of six
children.  After completing secondary studies in Melbourne he joined
the Order of Christian Brothers, took his first vows and spent eight
years as a teaching monk.

Just before he was due to take his final vows, he left the Order and
joined the Army, becoming a cipher expert.  His first book, Moon in my
Pocket written under a pseudonym, was published in Australia at this
time.  After a short spell as a publicist and private secretary to
William Morris Hughes, former Australian prime minister, he joined the
Murdoch newspaper chain as publicity manager and learned how to write
and produce radio plays.

A year later, he set up his own production unit to create radio serials
and dramas, an enterprise that grew successful and occupied the next
ten years.

Eventually he sold out but it was not until faced one day with an
unpaid tax bill that West decided to write a book.  The novel, his
first under his own name, Gallows in the Sand, has since sold millions
of copies.  It was followed by Kundu and then Children of the Sun which
became a best-seller in England and on the Continent.  Since then he
has written many hugely successful novels, most notably, The Devil's
Advocate, The Shoes of the Fisherman, The Ambassador, Summer of the Red
Wolf, The Tower of Babel, The Salamander, Harlequin, The Navigator and
Proteus.

Jacket design and photograph: Melvyn Gill Model by Iris Jenkinson
Author photograph: Godfrey Argent

HODDER AND STOUGHTON