Helen was clearly astonished that Dennis McLaughlin, the great intellectual revolutionary, could be so naive. “You’re sure he isn’t lying?” Then she turned conspiratorial. “Maybe he’s found out your - arrangement with Leo.”
Dennis looked nervously around them. In the semicircle of Cardinals, Matthew Mahan was chatting amiably with John Dearden. “I don’t think so,” he said.
People continued to pour into the room and edge their way into the crowd around the Cardinals. The spectators were soon jammed together like passengers in a crowded bus or subway. Dennis could feel Helen’s right breast against his arm. The temperature rose, and the oxygen supply continued to fall. Panic and anger mingled in Dennis’s chest. It was impossible. He was always being pushed this way or shoved that way, frozen into one position or another, forced to feel when he did not want to feel.
“I’ve got an appointment at the Congregation for the Religious this afternoon,” Helen said.
It was absurd, a charade, his entire life was a charade. He thought of his father silent beneath the white cross in the spring sunshine at Nettuno.
“I’m staying at the Pensione Christina, Largo Antonio Sarti
Eight. It’s run by two Austrians. There’s a beautiful terrace overlooking the Tiber.”
The choice his father had made, the simple act of bravery, life like an arrow’s trajectory from the happiness of home, the happiness of marriage, to the hero’s grave. Wasn’t that better than this comic stumble, this daily travesty that eventually drove everyone to his knees?
“Sister Agnes says I mustn’t miss the Church of the Quattro Santi Coronati. You go through two courtyards to get to it, and you ring a bell. A nun comes out and shows you around a tiny cloister full of flowers and not a sound except the noise of a fountain. Have you been there?”
He shook his head. Matthew Mahan was not beaten to his knees. None of these relaxed, composed men, these Princes of the Church, showed the slightest sigh of inner anguish. What was their secret? Was it simply being born at the right time? Was the answer that simple?
“Hello, Dennis,” whispered a rather sexy feminine voice into his right ear. He turned and found himself practically embracing Madeline McAvoy. She was wearing a stylish blue and white suit and startling oversized green sunglasses. “Jim’s down with one of those Roman viruses. I need someone to tell me what’s happening here.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much more than the average spectator,” Dennis said. “Bishop Cronin is the one with all the inside gossip.”
Madeline laughed lightly. “Jim told me
not
to talk to him. An order which I have no intention of obeying.”
Dennis tried to take a deep breath and inhaled nothing but Mrs. McAvoy’s perfume. Where had he read that perfume testers, noses, as they were called in the trade, all died of cirrhosis of the liver? Another deep breath, and he would be on his way to a similar fate.
“Who’s she?” Helen whispered jealously in his other ear, as Madeline McAvoy looked past Dennis in search of Cronin.
“Don’t worry,” Dennis whispered out of the corner of his mouth, “she’s well married. Six kids.”
From somewhere behind them, a voice began calling orders in Italian. Since there were very few Italians in the hall, nothing happened. Then an American voice, which Dennis recognized as Terry Malone, began bawling, “Make way, make way. Please make an aisle here.”
Monsignor Malone and two equally large American monsignors brusquely elbowed and shouldered their way through the crowd. In their wake came a small, solemn-faced man in the red robes of a Cardinal with a sheaf of parchment-like papers in his hand.
“Who’s he?” asked Madeline McAvoy.
“I don’t know,” Dennis said, “but he’s carrying the
biglietti,
the official letters from the Pope, making them Cardinals.”
Standing in the center of the semicircle, the Italian Cardinal read the official notification from the Pope and then summoned each man forward to receive his individual
biglietto.
He started with the non-American Cardinals at the left end of the line. As they walked forward one by one to receive their letters, Dennis found himself thinking about his high school and college days, when he and the other bright boys paraded to the platform at every convocation to get their first honor cards and other scholastic prizes.
Matthew Mahan was the last prelate to receive his letter. “Oh my God,” said a deep feminine voice a few feet away from Dennis, “he’s the thirteenth.”
He turned his head and saw it was Mrs. Dwight Slocum speaking.
“Do you really think that’s bad luck?” Madeline McAvoy asked the city’s reigning WASP.
“I once gave a dinner party for thirteen people. The thirteenth guest died within a week. Is there better proof than that?”
“As usual,” Dennis whispered in Madeline McAvoy’s ear, “the Protestants argue from religious experience.”
Cardinal Derrieux stepped forward to reply to the Vatican messenger. He spoke in Latin and Dennis could only pick up a few scattered phrases. Words such as
honoris
and
sancto pater
gave him the drift of the speech. It was a flowery tribute to the Holy Father for conferring this great honor on him, who was thoroughly unworthy of it, as well as on his fellow Cardinals, who were much more deserving. Studying Derrieux as he spoke, Dennis found himself sharing some of Cronin’s dislike. Aside from the thickness of the compliments, there was a primness around his mouth as he spoke, coupled with a nervous intensity, a humorlessness that struck a jarring note at this happy occasion. The new Cardinal looked haggard, as if he had stayed up all night memorizing his speech. Dennis wondered if he was on the edge of the classic Jesuit syndrome of late middle age, a nervous breakdown.
“What’s he saying?” asked Madeline McAvoy.
“He’s announcing that all Catholic mothers with six or more children are going to get hand-illuminated copies of
Humanae Vitae.”
“You’re terrible,” Mrs. McAvoy said. But she obviously loved it.
“He’s burying Pope Paul in compliments.”
“Do you think it will work?”
Cardinal Derrieux finished his speech and stepped back into the ranks. Now the photographers took over. They burst from the crowd like a bunch of chorus boys and began snapping pictures from all angles. One even stretched out on the floor, hoping, perhaps, to make the American Cardinals resemble the faces on Mount Rushmore.
Next came the radio reporters with their tape recorders, thrusting their microphones into the faces of some new Cardinals and ignoring others. In the American contingent, Dearden and Cooke got most of the attention. Only one microphone accosted Matthew Mahan, and he spoke politely into it for a few minutes. The man seemed to cut him off in mid-sentence and hustled down the line to interview Derrieux.
“Is it all over?” asked Mrs. McAvoy, with evident dismay.
“No,” said Dennis, “the next two ceremonies take place in St. Peter’s. On Wednesday evening, they get their red birettas from the Pope. On Thursday, they concelebrate mass in St. Peter’s and get their rings.”
“Oh good,” said Mrs. McAvoy. “Jim ought to be back on his feet by then.”
“This afternoon, they have
ad calorem
visits from other Cardinals, diplomats, officials, friends.”
Mrs. McAvoy looked puzzled but was too proud to ask for a translation.
“Calorem
refers to the warmth of the visit,” Dennis explained.
“I thought they were going to get their red hats right here,” said Mrs. Slocum.
Madeline McAvoy turned to her and began explaining the routine. Dennis seized Helen’s hand and edged away from them into the stream of people who were moving toward the door. Many were obviously baffled and a little annoyed by the undramatic ceremony. Dennis heard snatches of conversation swirling around him.
“Couldn’t they send it to his hotel?”
“It’s an old Roman custom, I hear.”
“In those days, each Cardinal had his own palace.”
On one of the eddies of the crowd, Andy Goggin turned up beside Dennis. He smiled down at them and said, “Doesn’t it remind you of first-century Christianity down to the last little detail?”
“Absolutely,” said Dennis. “The only thing I missed was a Christian or two coated with pitch and turned into a human torch.”
“They do that tomorrow at the Vatican.”
Dennis introduced him to Sister Helen, and she made a great fuss over him. “I’ve heard Dennis talk
so much
about you, the great biblical scholar.”
Goggin gave him a suspicious look, and Dennis could only shrug wryly and murmur about his weakness for hero worship.
The next event on the schedule was a luncheon at the North American College for the five American Cardinals. The rector, perhaps the Cardinals themselves, would orate. “It makes me lose my appetite, just thinking about it,” said Goggin. “I’m sure we could write out every cliché in advance.”
“Do you have to go?” Sister Helen asked Dennis.
“Of course,” he said. “If the Cardinal forgets a line, I’ve got to be on hand to whisper it to him.”
Helen smiled. This was the Dennis she knew and loved. You will do anything, literally anything, to get laid, won’t you? mocked his ironic angel. Goggin, obviously scenting blood, declared it was a point of honor for a Jesuit to avoid the portals of the North American College. Members of the order had been known to disappear into its labyrinthine politics, never to be heard from again. Sister Helen suggested lunch at her pensione. Goggin instantly accepted for both of them. Less than a half hour later, they were enjoying an aperitif on the terrace above the Tiber.
As Dennis stared across the river at St. Peter’s dome, something stirred in his mind, an idea or the premonition of an idea that carried him back to the beach at Nettuno. Instinctively, his hand went into his pocket, and he found himself fingering his moon shell souvenir. Was a dome the same as a spiral? A dome pretended to infinity but only achieved immensity, dwarfing the human. It was not a natural; it was even an unnatural symbol.
While he brooded, Helen was interrogating Goggin. He refused to take her seriously and fielded questions about biblical studies and his work on the Vatican Radio with deft irony. A little puzzled, she began asking him if he agreed with the revolutionary vision of the once and future church as foretold by Dennis McLaughlin.
“I stopped smoking that stuff about a year ago,” Goggin said. “I thought he did, too.”
He leered deliberately at Dennis, who could only squirm and smile. With humiliating, almost maternal approval, Helen began telling Goggin what Dennis was doing to betray the inner secrets of Matthew Mahan’s regime. Their food arrived. Like good young clerics, they had chosen the cheapest thing on the menu, spaghetti. Dennis found his portion practically inedible, but he suspected it was not the cook’s fault. The more Helen talked, the more his appetite dwindled. The whole thing sounded so incredibly childish, compared to the reality of Matthew Mahan, the memories that he now possessed, unavoidably, indelibly. The weary bedside watcher at 5:00 a.m. with the oxygen mask in his hand, the calm comforter among the white crosses at Nettuno.
With almost diabolical directness, Goggin proceeded to insert a verbal needle in this exposed nerve. “All this destruction that your friend Dennis talks about. Don’t you think it breaks the first law of Christianity, love one another?”
“I think -” Helen looked hopefully toward Dennis for help and saw that none was forthcoming. “I think we’re mainly interested in destroying phony titles. Misused, abused power.”
“What if you can’t destroy an idea without destroying the man who believes it? Titles, power, are equally difficult to separate from the human beings who possess them.”
“A certain amount of suffering is inevitable,” said Sister Helen. “Jesus said he came to spread fire on the earth.”
“Jesus said a great many things, about half of which contradict the other half or mean nothing. He was a rabbi, you know, trained in the art of finding verbal solutions to any problem. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s, for instance. Stop and think about that one for a moment. Are you any closer to a solution after you hear it? Does it tell you anything you didn’t know before you asked the question?”
“What’s wrong with him?” Sister Helen asked Dennis.
“I told you he was unique,” he said. “Uniquely intelligent and uniquely perverse.”
As espresso was poured, the sunny sky began to grow murky. An April shower was on its way. Sister Helen glanced at her watch and hurriedly drained her small cup. “I have a date at the Vatican,” she said. She jumped up and gave Dennis an anxious look “Do what you can to change this great man’s mind, please,” she said.
She strode away from them through the fading sunshine, those lovely scissoring legs tormenting Dennis’s eyes. The quintessential American girl, exuding health, vitality, self-confidence. Goggin stirred some sugar into his espresso. Dennis emptied his cup in a single swallow and poured another one.
“Do you take her seriously?” Goggin asked.
“To answer that question would involve me in a one-hour disquisition on the nature of love.”
Goggin’s laugh was a little forced. “Really, I wasn’t trying to undo the romance. I was only talking to hear myself.”
“You can be so damn cruel, do you know that? We both have a talent for it. So far we haven’t used it on each other.”
Goggin leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. He cradled his face in his hands and said, “Do you want me to say I’m in love with you, not queerly but sacredly? Do I have to spill my guts too? I’m in love with you as a priest and, finally, with the idea of the Church. With Mother Church eventually creating the mystical body of Christ that embraces the entire human race. A body, an organism, with a hierarchy of powers that fulfills the hierarchy of human needs. That’s what I’m m love with. That’s what I thought you were in love with. But I begin to think that you’re really in love with your cock.”
Goggin strode out of the restaurant, leaving Dennis alone at the table. He sat there for a long time staring at the vile-looking Tiber. It was ocher-colored, a river of foul sludge. If you threw a match into it, Dennis wondered, would it catch fire like the Cayahoga or the Volga? Was thinking such thoughts a way of avoiding his loneliness?