The Last Western (43 page)

The commentators sometimes spoke of the great art masterpieces of Saint Peter’s basilica, and they sometimes showed films of cardinals and other electors arriving at the airport for the burial of the dead pope and the election of the new one, and sometimes they held interviews with individuals who were said to be experts on the subject of who the next pope would be, but there were many long stretches of silence and the music played on, and in the United States the fourth night of the telecast brought the largest viewing audience in the history of television.

The sun beat down on the piazza of Saint Peter and made it a cobbled grill, like the basin of an oven, and people fainted in the six-hour line and when they revived, they rejoined it because it was important to them to see the doll and tell others about it since the opportunity might never come again.

The body of the pope was like one of the statues and they regarded the body with awe and fear and delicious gratitude.

On his fifth night in Rome Willie went to the Vatican to register his arrival with the officials of the conclave.

An Italian monsignor, a worried-looking man, with large brown eyes and thinning hair, met him and introduced himself as Monsignor Taroni and said that he would be Willie’s guide.

The monsignor, touched by Willie’s sadness, gently steered him to the papal bier.

Willie wept a little, not for the doll-body of Pope Felix, but for the death-struck men and women coming forward in their numb procession.

The monsignor gestured towards a priedieu, but Willie did not notice; his eyes roved the arches and the columns. The shadowy figures of angels and saints and prophets and dead churchmen were grotesque illustrations, and the statues he saw were not masterpieces of art but only stick figures of the ancient lesson.

“A tomb,” he said softly. “A tomb after all.”

Monsignor Taroni, thinking the red-haired bishop wished to see the crypt that had been prepared for Pope Felix, took the sleeve of his jacket.

“This way, Excellency.”

But Willie could not move. His eyes were on the people and beyond the people, on those others he had left behind in the darkened streets, that other procession that did not stop to gaze at bodies costumed in gold cloth.

Suddenly over the shuffling sound of the crowd and the steady buzz of their whisperings came a soft, sweet, unexpected call—the cry of a child.

Willie turned around. Directly across from him, on the other side of the bier, a man was holding up a three-or four-year-old girl, holding her high in the air so that she might see the body of the dead man.

The father seemed to be saying, Isn’t it special? Isn’t it extraordinary?

The child cried out louder, either in delight at the giant flickering candles or the colors of the Swiss Guard, or in fright at the sight of the dead pope.

Willie quickly crossed the bier area and held out his arms to the child. She looked at him hesitantly, then smiled, returning his grin.

“Beautiful one,” he said, “did you say hello to Mr. Moon tonight?” He held out his arms for the little girl to come to him.

The father looked at him doubtfully, but now the child was holding out her arms. Willie took her.

Holding her in his arms, circling slowly in a little dance, he said some nonsense words and the child laughed.

The father attempted a smile, nodding his head, and then ‘ held out his arms for the return of his baby.

Monsignor Taroni, nonplused, spoke solemnly to the father.

“He is an American bishop.”

“Ah,” said the father.

Willie, jogging with the child now, held out his hand. The man took it. “Part of the program,” said Willie, nodding to the bier. “We have to accept it—but to pay it tribute!”

In nervous, very fast Italian the man said to the monsignor, “What’s he talking about?”

“He is an American bishop,” Monsignor Taroni repeated.

Still dancing with the child, Willie introduced himself. “I’m Willie.”

“Giovanni,” said the man, and then shyly indicating his daughter, “Felicita.”

“Felicita, Felicita, Felicita,” said Willie. “Such a pretty name.
Felicita
,” And he spun around very fast and the little girl shrieked with laughter.

The deathbound crowd had been watching the stir, and now the sound of Willie’s name went pulsing backward through the basilica.

“Giovanni,” said Willie, handing Felicita back to her father, “there is an ice cream store down the street. They have good ice cream I am sure. Maybe even moon-flavored ice cream. You and Felicita have some ice cream as a present from someone who is your friend.” Then Willie gave Giovanni all the money he had in his pocket, which was four dollars and thirty-six cents.

Monsignor Taroni, wearing a pained smile, led Willie away from the bier area to the
Confessio
before the high altar with its thick serpentine columns, which were considered wonderful works of art by all who saw them and which Willie found ugly at a glance.

They stood at a balustrade before the snake-works in the glow of eighty-nine burning lamps.

“It is here,” the monsignor said pointing down a flight of marble steps, “that the Apostle is buried.”

Willie could see the doors of gilded bronze and a statue of a holy-looking pope.

“It’s good they found a place to bury him,” he said.

The monsignor said, “You desire to inspect?”

Willie shook his head.

The crowds were streaming into the great vault, and the individual men and women were immediately small as they came into the presence of the alabaster and the porphyry and the bronze and the gold, into the place where Michelangelo and Raphael and Bernini had executed their paintings and statues and mosaics, which depicted important matters of consequence to everybody and which had the effect of making everybody use the words
masterpiece
and
genius
whenever they looked upon them, and it seemed to Willie that the people’s faces were like the faces of unhappy children being led to school after a long vacation.

Then Monsignor Taroni took Willie out of Saint Peter’s basilica, into the howling night of Rome. Going down the steps of the church, they passed under a great angry statue of Paul and they crossed the piazza of Saint Peter and entered a marble corridor where there were many other statues and paintings and a gloom that seemed designed.

They came to a great hall full of still more paintings and statues and full also of red-robed churchmen speaking in many languages and looking like they had stepped out of the paintings.

“Bishop Brother!” someone called, and Willie, glancing around, saw Cardinal Goldenblade coming toward him over a rug that looked like a tapestry.

“How good to see you again, dear Bishop Brother!”

“In Etherea, the people are starving!” Willie said. “We—”

“The conclave begins just after the funeral Mass. We gather in the Sistine. You are allowed two assistants—I would suggest Bishop Jim Casey and Bishop Phil Lee, both young fellows, grand golfers. Where are you staying?”

“In an apartment near the hospital.”

“You’re not sick, boy?”

“It’s Mr. Felder—he’s very ill. And in Angola, they gave us a promise—”

“We’re at the Excelsior, and if there is anything,
anything
you need, will you call me? I’ll offer my rosary for Mr. Felder tonight.”

“The officials in Angola—” Willie said, but Cardinal Goldenblade had walked away and struck up a conversation with Cardinal Tisch, a computer expert and the most powerful churchman in all of Germany.

A notary of the cardinal prefect, holding a clipboard, came up to Willie.

“The name of your conclavists?”

“Father Benjamin Victor.”

“Only one?”

Willie nodded, trying to get Cardinal Goldenblade’s attention but seeing now that he was moving into another room.

Monsignor Taroni showed Willie out of the palace and Willie found a cab and the cab took him past the old Forum where Julius Caesar had once walked and thought up many arrangements for the people he ruled, and as the cab raced nervously through the streets, Willie heard Death humming as he counted the take.

“You can have the tuition,” said Willie to Death. “We’ll take the students.”

Death went on humming and counting.

*  *  *

Later that same night in a small room of the second floor of the hospital of Saint Pius X, Herman Felder’s heart stopped beating.

Willie and Benjamin and Joto were at his bedside; Truman was at the apartment sleeping.

When they saw his breathing stop, they moved quickly, each to a different task. Joto pushed every button that the room held, Benjamin hurried into the corridor and called for help, Willie turned to the patient himself.

Tearing the oxygen tent away, he bent over Felder’s body, slipped his arms underneath and rolled him over. Then climbing on the bed he began to apply artificial respiration.

“Come on, Herman! Come on, we’ve had too much of this lately!” He pushed down hard, waited and pushed again.

“Come on, Herman! Play fair!”

Felder had been in the blizzard a long time now. He had seen the monkey man, one million years old, at the end of the cave. The monkey man was glazed with ice. It was when Felder saw that there was no way to get the monkey man to speak that his heart had stopped. Now forty seconds after the heart-stop, he heard a faint utterance from the thick frozen lips.

“Herman Felder, this is life calling!” Willie shouted.

Willie pushed down hard and sure, released, then pushed again.

When the emergency team arrived, shouting furiously, they dragged Willie off the bed, but Felder had groaned softly.

An intern applied an electrode to Felder’s chest. The juice went on, the body jerked.

Felder felt the slap of a huge fist.

Another intern stabbed Felder with a needle and emptied a cylinder of clear fluid into his upper arm.

The room was a tumult of waving arms, shouts, curses, groans.

“He’s coming around!” Willie shouted.

One of the doctors gave Willie to understand that his shouting was a distraction and a hindrance to his work. He placed his stethoscope over Felder’s heart, and at that moment Felder inhaled lightly, coughed a little, then breathed several times deeply.

Willie and Joto both shouted again and Felder opened his eyes.

His eyes were glassy and it was hard to tell if he could see but he seemed to look at them. They shouted to him. The medical team began muttering obscenities.

“We cannot work in such a climate,” one of the doctors said to Benjamin.

“If he hears our voices,” Willie said, “that will help him come back.”

One of the attendants said in Italian that Willie’s brain was made of yak dung.

Herman Felder’s brotherin-law, Lawson Thebes, came into the room, a handsome man of fifty, elegantly dressed. He was on his way to the nightly diplomatic cocktail party. He had an attache case with him.

When he saw Willie and Joto and Benjamin, his nose twitched and he asked the doctor if there had been a change in Felder’s condition.

“He died, in the technical sense,” said the chief doctor.

Thebes furrowed his handsome brow.

“But he’s going to be okay now,” Willie said. “He’s breathing and he opened his eyes.”

Thebes’s nose twitched again.

Felder seemed to breathe more easily all the time and once again he opened his eyes. His lips worked and Willie moved toward him but Lawson Thebes intervened, and bending very low, he spoke into Felder’s ear.

“This is Lawson, Herman. I want you to sign the papers.”

Felder’s eyes moved slowly to Lawson Thebes’s face. His lips were still working.

“The papers,” Thebes repeated.

Felder closed his eyes. He seemed to concentrate his every energy on something. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes and tried to make his mouth work. He managed to form four distinct words—a question: “How—melt—de—ape?”

The lips closed, then the eyes, and Felder went back to the ice world.

Outside in the corridor the chief doctor conferred with Willie, Benjamin, Joto and Lawson Thebes.

“It will happen again, alas,” said the doctor. “His heart is weak; his lungs do not operate; his liver is an abomination. The blood count is low. The stomach,” and with these words the doctor sucked in his breath.

“His mind is gone too?” said Lawson Thebes.

“Alas, yes,” said the doctor.

“His mind better,” said Joto. “Sees ape once more.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Thebes.

“What we have here, gentlemen,” said the doctor, “is the case of a man fighting for life. And losing.”

“No,” said Benjamin. “Brother Herman is fighting for death. The superficial symptoms you have just described are only signs of the underlying problem—the death messages sent by his spirit to the various organs of the body.”

“Alas, Father,” the doctor chuckled, “I am afraid what you call superficial symptoms are deep-down disorders in themselves and will bring about death.”

“There is no disorder any deeper than the will to die,” said Benjamin.

“You are referring to such things as the unfortunate drinking Mr. Felder indulged in before he came here?” said the doctor.

Benjamin shook his head. “The disappointment in life and the affair he began with death some time ago—the thing that brought about the drinking.”

“That is psychology,” the doctor said, chuckling still.

“Bad psychology,” said Thebes.

Benjamin shrugged. “You do not think men love death more than life? It happens very often. It is the sickness of sickness.”

Thebes twitched his nose and addressed himself to the doctor. “I have to have his signature upon certain papers.”

“You yourself see that his mind is gone,” said the doctor.

“Mind is present,” said Joto. “It is body that is gone.”

“You of course are a renowned diagnostician,” said Law-son Thebes to Joto.

“I am brother,” said Joto.

Thebes left, walking away with the doctor.

Willie, Benjamin and Joto went into a little sitting room and stood for a moment in the prayer of listening.

Soon Willie put his hand in the hands first of Joto, then of Father Benjamin. Then without a word he left them and went back into Herman Felder’s room.