The Clowns of God by Morris West Read Free Book Online Page B

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