The White Dominican (8 page)

It is true that there are people who may justifiably bear the title of ‘artist’, and yet are possessed by a dark force which you, from your standpoint, can certainly designate as the ‘Devil’. Their creations resemble the Christians’ conception of the Devil’s infernal kingdom, down to the last jot and tittle; their works give off the icy breath of the frozen north, which from earliest antiquity has been seen as the home of the demons that hate mankind. The means of expression their art uses are pestilence, death, madness, murder, blood, despair and depravity.

How can we explain this kind of artistic temperament? I will tell you. An artist is a person in whose mind the spiritual, occult side of man has achieved dominance over the material side. That can come about in two ways: on the one hand there are those, let us call them the ‘satanic ones’, whose brain is beginning to degenerate through excess, through syphilis, through inherited or acquired vices; as a consequence it weighs lighter, so to speak, in the scales, with the result that the spiritual side is automatically made ‘heavier and manifest in the world of appearances’. It is only because the other side has become lighter that the pan of the scales with the occult faculties sinks, and not because it has become heavier itself. In such cases the works of art are suffused with a putrid odour. It is as if the spirit were wearing a garment which shone with the phosphorescence of decay.

In the other artists – I like to call them the ‘anointed ones’ – the spirit has, like St. George, attained mastery over the animal. In them, the pan with the spirit sinks into the world of appearances thanks to its own weight. In such cases the spirit wears the golden garment of the sun.

In both kinds of artist, however, the balance of the scales has been tilted in favour of the occult, whilst in the average person it is the animal alone that has weight; both the ‘satanic’ artist and the ‘anointed’ artist are moved by the wind from the invisible realm of eternal abundance, the former by the north wind, the latter by the breath of dawn. The average person, on the other hand, is as unyielding as a solid block of wood.

What is that power that uses the great artists as an instrument to preserve the symbolic rites of magic for those that come after?

I tell you, it is the same power that once created the Church. It builds two living columns at the same time, the one white and the other black; two living columns, which will hate each other until they realise that they both support the same triumphal arch.

Remember the place in the Gospels where St. John says, ‘And there are many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.’ Now, Father, how can you explain that, according to your belief, it was the will of God that the Bible came down to us, but not those ‘other things’? Have they been ‘lost’, just as a boy ‘loses’ his pocket-knife?

I tell you, those ‘other things’ are still alive, they have always been alive, and will live on, even if all the lips to tell them, and all the ears to hear them, should die. The spirit will keep whispering them into life, and it will create more and more artists, with minds that vibrate when it wills it, and more and more hands, that will write as it commands. Those are the things that St. John knew of and knows of, the mysteries that were with ‘Christ’, and which he included when he made his instrument, Jesus, say, ‘Before Adam was, I am’.

I tell you – whether you cross yourself or not – the Church began with Peter, but will only be completed by John. What does that mean? Try reading the Gospels as if they were a prophecy of what will become of the Church. Perhaps if you look at them from that point of view you will see what it means that Peter denied Christ thrice and was angry when Jesus said of John, ‘I will that he tarry till I come.’ For your comfort, I will add that though I believe the Church will die – I can see it coming – it will rise from the dead, and it will be as it should be. Nothing, nor any person, not even Jesus Christ, has risen from the dead without dying first.

I know you too well as an honest man who takes his duty very seriously for me to harbour the least doubt that you have often asked yourself how it is that among the clergy, even among the Popes, there could be criminals, men unworthy of their position, unworthy to bear the name of monk? I know, too, that if anyone were to ask you for an explanation of such facts, you would say, ‘It is only the office that is free of sin, and not the man who holds the office.’ Do not think, my dear friend, that I am one of those who would mock such an explanation, or who think themselves too clever to be taken in by what they see as a piece of glib hypocrisy. My conception of a priest’s mission is too deep for that.

I know well, perhaps even better than you do, just how many Catholic priests there are whose hearts are filled with fearful doubt. ‘Can it really be the Christian religion’, they ask, ‘that is called to redeem mankind? Do not all the signs of the times indicate that the Church is decayed. Will the millennium really come? It is true that Christianity is growing like a huge tree, but where are the fruits? Day by day the number of those that call themselves Christians is increasing, but fewer and fewer are worthy of it!’

Where do these doubts come from, I ask you? From weakness of faith? No. They come from the subconscious recognition that there are too few among the priests whose sense of mission is fiery enough for them to seek the path of sanctification, as the Yogis and Sadhus do in India. There are too few to take heaven by force. Believe me, there are more paths to the resurrection than the Church dreams of. But a lukewarm hope of ‘grace’ is not one of them! How many are there among your fellow priests who can say of themselves, ‘As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God’?

They are all secretly hoping for the fulfilment of the apocryphal prophecy, which says that fifty-two popes will appear, each one bearing a hidden Latin name, which alludes to his work on earth; the last one will be called ‘flos florum’, that is the ‘flower of flowers’, and it is under his sway that the millennium will dawn.

I will make you a prophecy – I, who am more of a heathen than a Catholic – that he will be called John and will be a mirror-image of John the Evangelist; from John the Baptist, the patron saint of the Freemasons, who preserve the mysteries of baptism with water without knowing them themselves, he will be given power over the lower world.

Thus will two pillars come to bear a triumphal arch!

But if, today, you were to write a book and say, ‘To lead mankind we need neither a soldier nor a diplomat, neither a professor nor a … blockhead, but a priest and no one else’, its publication would be greeted with a scream of rage. And if you were to go on to write, ‘The Church is only one half of a sword that has been broken in twain, and its measures will only be half measures until Christ’s representative is at the same time the Vicar of Solomon, the head of the Order’, the book will be burnt on a bonfire.

Of course, the truth could not be burnt or crushed. It is becoming more and more manifest, like the inscription over the altar in our St. Mary’s Church, where the painted board they put there to cover it up keeps on falling off.

I can tell from your expression that you object to the idea that there might be a sacred mystery belonging to the opponents of the Church that the Catholic Church knows nothing of. Yet that is the case, though with the crucial restriction that those who guard it can make no use of it, their community is the other half of the ‘broken sword’ and cannot comprehend its meaning. Truly, it would be more than grotesque to imagine that the respectable gentlemen who founded the Gotha Life Insurance Company should possess a magic arcanum for the overcoming of death.”

There was a long pause. The two old gentlemen seemed to be lost in thought. Then I heard the clink of glasses, and after a while the Chaplain said, “Where on earth do you get all this strange knowledge from?”

The Baron was silent.

“Or do you not like talking about it?”

The Baron avoided a direct answer, “Hmm. It depends. Some of it is connected with my life, some just came to me and some I … er … inherited.”

“That one can inherit knowledge is new to me. However, people still tell the oddest stories about your late father.”

“What, for example?” said the Baron, a smile on his face. “I would be very interested to hear.”

“Well, people say he was … he was …”

“A fool!” said the Baron genially.

“Not exactly a fool. Oh no, not at all. But an eccentric of the first order. He is supposed – so people say, but you mustn’t imagine I believe this kind of talk – he is supposed to have invented a machine to inculcate a belief in miracles in … well … in hounds.”

“Ha ha ha!” the Baron burst out laughing. He laughed so loud and so long and so heartily that I, in my bed in the next room, found it infectious and had to clench my teeth on my handkerchief so as not to betray to them that I was listening.

“I knew it was all nonsense”, the Chaplain apologised.

“Oh!” – the Baron was still gasping for breath – “oh, not at all. It’s quite correct. Ha ha! Just a moment please, I must get this laughter out of my system. That’s better. You see, my father was a character such as you don’t seem to find any more nowadays. He had an immense store of knowledge, and if there was anything the human mind was capable of thinking up, he thought it up. One day he gave me a long look, snapped shut the fat tome he had been reading, threw it to the ground (since that day he never looked into another book) and said to me, ‘Bartholomew, my lad, I have now realised that everything is nonsense. The brain is the most superfluous gland we humans possess. We should have it removed, like our tonsils. I have determined to start a new life from today.’

The very next morning he moved into a small castle we owned at that time in the country, and spent the rest of his days there. It was only shortly before his death that he returned home, to die here, peacefully, on the floor below.

Whenever I went to visit him in the castle, he would show me something new. Once it was an enormous, intricate spider’s web on the inside of a window-pane, that he looked after as if it were the apple of his eye. ‘You see, my son,’ he explained, ‘in the evening I set a bright light here, behind the web, in order to attract the insects outside. Swarms of them come whizzing along, but they can’t get caught in the web because the window is in between. The spider, who naturally has no idea what glass is – where would it find something like that in the natural world? – cannot understand what is happening, and is probably shaking its head in disbelief. But the fact is that every day it weaves a finer and finer web – without that having any effect on the problem whatsoever! In this way I want to cure the beast of its unhesitating trust in the omnipotence of understanding. Later on, when, through reincarnation, it has become a human being, it will thank me for such far-sighted education, for it will have a subconscious hoard of experience, which can be of great value to it. It is clear to me that when I was a spider, I lacked such an educator, otherwise I would have thrown away my books when I was a child.’

Another time he took me to see a cage full of magpies. He threw masses of food to them, and they all pounced on it greedily and, fearing the others might eat more quickly, stuffed their beaks and crops so full that they could not swallow.

‘I am letting these creatures satisfy their greed and selfishness until they are nauseated by it’, he explained. ‘I hope that in their later lives they will then avoid the barrenness of parsimony, the quality above all others which renders man ugly.’

‘Or’, I objected, ‘they will invent pockets and purses!’ At this my father grew thoughtful, then without a word he opened the cage and set the birds free.

‘I hope you won’t have any objections to this at least’, he growled, leading me to a balcony on which stood a ballista, a machine for hurling stones. ‘Do you see all those curs in the meadow down there? They lie around all day in ungodly idleness without a care in the world. I’ll soon put a stop to that.’ He took a pebble and hurled it at one of the dogs, which immediately leapt up in fright and peered round on all sides to see where the missile might have come from; then it gazed up at the sky in bewilderment and padded about restlessly before it settled down again. To judge by its perplexed behaviour, it must quite often have been the victim of such mysterious attacks.

‘Used with patience, this machine will unfailingly plant the seed of a future belief in miracles in any hound’s heart, however godless it may be’, said my father proudly. ‘Don’t laugh, presumptuous boy! You name me one calling that is more important. Do you think the way Providence treats us is any different from what I do to these curs?’

So you see, my father was a complete oddity, and yet full of wisdom”, the Baron concluded.

They had both had a long laugh, then he continued, “A remarkable destiny is handed down from generation to generation in my family. But do not imagine, even if my words should sound somewhat arrogant, that I consider myself something special, even one of the elect. I do have a mission, it is true, but it is a very modest one, even if for me it is important and one that I hold sacred.

I am the eleventh in the generations of the Jöchers. Our founding father we call the root; we other ten, the Barons, are the branches. All our first names begin with ‘B’, for example Bartholomew, Benjamin, Balthazar, Benedict and so on. Only the root, our founding father Christopher, has a name beginning with ‘C’. In our family chronicle it says that our forefather prophesied that the twelfth branch, the crown of the family tree, would once more be called Christopher. ‘It is strange’, I often used to think to myself, ‘everything he foretold has come true, word for word; only the last seems to be wrong, for I have no children. Then a strange thing happened; I heard about the child in the orphanage, whom I have now adopted, and took him in solely because he walked in his sleep, something which is characteristic of the Jöchers. When I learnt he was called Christopher, it was like an electric shock, which so took my breath away, that I was gasping for air all the way home. In our chronicle the family is compared to a palm-tree, from which a branch falls off to make way for each new one that appears, until finally all that is left will be the root, the crown and the smooth trunk, which will send out no side-shoots, so that the sap can rise freely from the ground to the tree-top. None of my ancestors has had more than one son, and none any daughters at all, so that the palm-tree symbol retains its full force.