The Gospel Of Judas Read online

  ‘Oh yes, of course. Malaria.’ Herr Huber’s tone is faintly sceptical. He is an imposing figure: tall and slender, with an elegant awkwardness about his movements as though he has spent a lifetime trying without much success to fit his limbs into the confines imposed on him by a shorter world. He takes a cigarette from a silver box and taps it briskly on the desk in front of him. ‘A cigarette?’ But the young man declines the offer. There is a pause as Huber lights the cigarette, holding it almost tentatively between the tips of his second and third fingers, tightening his lips as he takes the end of it into his mouth, drawing deeply on it and letting the smoke out in a thin blue stream. ‘Tell me, Francesco. What do you think will happen?’

  The use of his Christian name is carefully noted. ‘Happen, Herr Huber?’

  ‘To your wretched country …’

  The younger man shrugs. ‘It is difficult. I don’t see …’

  ‘You may be honest with me,’ Huber reassures him. ‘I have been a diplomat all my life, and a diplomat learns to do two things – represent his country whatever his country may do, and protect his sources as a priest protects those who confess to him. Consider yourself under my protection.’

  Francesco smiles, as though he has been paid a great compliment.

  ‘So tell me. Now that the war is on Italian soil, what will happen?’

  ‘I think …’

  ‘What do you think?’ Huber gets up and strolls round the desk, until he is standing directly behind Francesco. He places his left hand on the younger man’s shoulder in an ambiguous gesture that blends friendship and coercion and a certain, tense intimacy. ‘Tell me what you think.’

  ‘I think Italy is just a pawn.’

  ‘And which player will take the pawn?’

  ‘The Americans are very powerful.’

  The two men, the one standing tall and slender behind the other, stare across the desk at the portrait on the wall of the man who, they both suppose, is the other player. Then Herr Huber reaches forward over Francesco’s shoulder and, like someone laying out a hand of cards, places six photographs on the desk before him. ‘These,’ he says. ‘Do you know them? I need their names.’

  Ah, names. Always names. Names and photographs, culled often enough from some family collection snatched from a battered wallet, a bedside table, a desk drawer: young men and young women staring out of the lacquered paper with bright enthusiasm or solid determination, or snapped whilst astride a bicycle or standing beside a car or sitting at a table. White shirts, grey trousers, bright, floral frocks. Eyes narrowed against the sun. Brave, bright faces without any concept of the future.

  ‘Well that one, certainly,’ Francesco says, pointing. ‘That is Buozzi. Bruno Buozzi.’

  Herr Huber makes a noncommittal sound, a mere grunt. He knows that the photograph shows Buozzi (shirt-sleeves, collarless, sitting at a restaurant table), and the young man knows that he knows. The question is this: how much longer can he guarantee only to betray those who have already been betrayed? It is a nice problem. The photograph of Gretchen laughs back at him as though amused at the dilemma.

  ‘And this one?’

  The young man shrugs. ‘I don’t think––’

  ‘But you do know him,’ says Herr Huber quietly. Herr Huber’s voice is remarkably soft for his bulk. You might expect a loud, barking voice from such an imposing figure. The gentle, caressing sound is almost a surprise, like small, neat feet on a large man. He squeezes Francesco’s shoulder, as though to remind him of the possibility of pain.

  ‘Is this a trick?’

  Herr Huber smiles humourlessly. Of course it is a trick. Every single question is a trick. The photograph shows two men and a woman standing against some railings, with a lake in the background. Francesco’s eyes narrow, as though he is struggling to remember, when in fact he is struggling to forget. Socialist Party meeting in Geneva, 1937. ‘Unless … I don’t know the woman, but I think that man must be Pertini. It’s not a very good photo. The other is Paolucci. I think. Giulio Paolucci. He was some kind of official. I’m not sure what – provincial secretary for somewhere in Lombardy, I think …’

  Herr Huber nods. He keeps his grasp of Francesco’s shoulder. The question is, does he nod because the identification is correct and the test has been passed, or does he nod because he has gained a further piece of information? Pertini is nothing, of course. Herr Huber knows Pertini. But the wretched Paolucci? – is he even now languishing in a cell in Via Tasso, with an assumed identity that is about to crumble? Has Francesco Volterra, known to his intimates as Checco, signed another death warrant?

  The game continues. Chess? Cat and mouse? Choose your metaphor. Herr Huber smiles occasionally, frowns occasionally, and at the end gives a great sigh as though he has just completed a demanding physical task. ‘Enough,’ he says, gathering up the photographs and consigning them to the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Enough. Let’s talk about other things.’ He releases the young man’s shoulder and crosses the room to the windows to look out across the formal garden, the Italian garden, a complex geometric construct of paths and hedges, boxes of box, triangles and spirals of box, like the intricate cells of an organic whole. ‘Let us talk about young Leo. How is he doing?’

  ‘He’s an intelligent child.’

  ‘And he works hard?’

  ‘Hard enough.’

  A glance round. A rather stiff smile. ‘You are covering up for him. He is a lazy child.’

  ‘But clever.’

  ‘You are fond of him?’

  ‘We get on well.’

  ‘And Gretchen. You get on well with Gretchen.’ The use of her Christian name, the diminutive form of her Christian name, is disconcerting. Francesco shifts uneasily in his chair. It is warm in the room and beads of sweat glisten on his forehead. The Gretchen of the photograph seems to laugh at his discomfiture, tilting her head back and laughing derisively.

  ‘With Frau Huber, as well. It is, perhaps, that we share a fondness for Leo.’

  Herr Huber nods. ‘You are a Catholic, aren’t you?’

  Francesco agrees that, yes, he is a Catholic. All good Italians are Catholics. Although perhaps he is not a very strong believer.

  ‘Gretchen is also a Catholic, a devout Catholic, did you know that? I expect she has told you. Her mother was English, a governess. Do you understand the word?’

  ‘Una tata?’

  ‘Is that the Italian word? Someone employed to look after the children, a respectable girl from a respectable bourgeois family, and when the mistress of the house died suddenly – a riding accident of some kind – there was the young governess ready to hold the mourning husband’s hand. A clever move, don’t you think? Clever also to convert to Catholicism and claim moral purity rather than allow the widower to have her as a mistress. And cleverer still to get herself pregnant so quickly, to provide a half-sister for the children for whom she had been caring.’

  Francesco perches on the edge of his chair, looking for escape.

  ‘So, despite seeming so beautiful, so perfectly Aryan, Gretchen is actually a mongrel,’ Huber says. ‘She is a cross-breed, a genetics experiment from the place where the father of genetics was born.’ He laughs, and expects Francesco to laugh with him. ‘While I, on the other hand, am of pure German stock. Like her I was born a Catholic, but unlike her I do not believe. And you say that you do not believe either …’ He smiles at the young man, indulgently, like an uncle smiling at a favourite nephew.

  ‘I believe that there might be a God. Maybe I believed more strongly once, that is all.’

  Huber shakes his head. ‘It seems an ever more unlikely proposition, doesn’t it? The existence of God, I mean. Nietzsche declared the death of God. For me as for Nietzsche, there is no God, only blood and race. But Gretchen believes and, to make her happy, I accompany her and Leo to church.’ He looks thoughtfully away from Francesco, towards the window and the garden, and then suddenly, sharply, back. ‘And in the last weeks she has ceased to take communion. Now why
do you think that can be?’

  ‘I wouldn’t even try to imagine.’ There is a rivulet of sweat running down Francesco’s temple. ‘It would be an impertinence, an affront to Frau Huber’s privacy even to think about it.’

  ‘But I try to imagine.’ The tall man’s voice is quiet, almost reflective. The accent is on the personal pronoun, as though he has a right to know what goes on in the heart and mind and soul of his wife. ‘I try to imagine what the reason might be.’

  In the schoolroom young Leo, wearing knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket (we must always keep up appearances, even when there is no one to appear to), bends over his exercise book and copies out copious notes about the life of Christ – Christ beating the money-changers out of the Temple, Christ arguing with the Pharisees on the Sabbath, Christ being led before Pilate. He looks up at Francesco, blue eyes looking from beneath blond hair at the dark-skinned Italian.

  ‘Explain this paradox to me,’ the boy says. He has recently learned the word paradox and enjoys using it. It sounds absurd coming from the mouth of a child as young as he, absurd and pretentious. ‘Jesus was a Jew. How could it be that He was so intelligent?’

  Francesco shrugs. ‘It isn’t that the Jew lacks intelligence. He may be highly intelligent – for example, look at his well-known prowess at chess. What the Jew lacks is the creative faculty.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Some book I read. But I don’t believe any of it. For example, Mendelssohn was a Jew. He didn’t lack the creative faculty, did he?’

  ‘Mutti no longer plays Mendelssohn. He is not creative, that is what they say now. He is derivative.’ Leo frowns at the word, as though he is not quite sure of the meaning. ‘Yet wasn’t Jesus creative? Didn’t He create the true religion for the whole of mankind?’

  The Italian considers the conundrum for a moment, and then smiles. ‘It was not Jesus who created it, but God.’ There is a thoughtful silence. Through the windows come the outside sounds of the garden – crickets, a blackbird singing, a gardener clipping a hedge in the Italian garden below.

  ‘But Jesus was God, that is what Father Berenhoeffer says. So God Himself must be a Jew …’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘You expect so? This is a very dangerous thing to say, signor Francesco.’ The child looks at him with disapproving eyes, and, having caught him out, a glint of triumph. ‘Judas I can understand. Judas has all the untrustworthy qualities of the Jew. But Jesus? It is too much …’

  ‘I think perhaps you should get on with your work, young man. Or I will report your idleness to your father.’

  The lesson continues in the bright, sunny room while a fly circles beneath the ceiling light and signor Francesco reads a book.

  After a while the boy looks up again.

  ‘Why do you always look at my mother?’

  Francesco feigns surprise. ‘Why do I what?’

  ‘You look at her all the time. Are you perhaps in love with her?’ The boy’s expression is quite serious: all the seriousness and thoughtlessness of childhood is there.

  ‘I like your mother very much. She is a good woman, and she is very much in love with your father.’

  ‘I know that, but that is not what I asked.’

  The office is in shadow, the heavy drapes drawn to keep out the sun. A clock ticks on the mantelshelf. A fly buzzes mindlessly against a windowpane, trapped between curtain and glass, like a specimen in a collection that has suddenly and desperately come alive. From the wall the Führer stares petulantly into the shadows. On the desk there is the silver-framed photograph of Leo in the uniform of the Jungvolk, and the picture of Gretchen wearing a dirndl.

  Francesco is at the desk, with the drawers open and papers laid out before him. Francesco is a thief. The question is, what is he stealing? And for whom?

  5

  ‘They don’t warn you about it when you join the priesthood, do they?’

  ‘Warn you about what?’

  ‘The loneliness and the boredom.’

  ‘I’m not bored. What makes you think I’m bored?’

  Her sharp laugh. ‘You’ve just admitted to being lonely.’

  Jack watched, faintly amused. He sat in his favourite armchair, detached from the two of them on the sofa, and he laughed at his wife in the manner of someone amused by a precocious child. ‘Let him be, Maddy. What did poor Leo do to deserve this?’

  ‘Leo the lion,’ she said, ignoring her husband. ‘But you’re feline, not leonine. You’re just like Percy.’ Percy was the cat that the Brewers had inherited from the previous occupants of their apartment. It was a grey, solemn beast that sat in the middle of the carpet and did nothing. His Staffordshire pottery act, was what Madeleine called it. The cat was an exemplar, a paradigm. ‘Just watch him. Not asleep, just sitting. He’s like Leo. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to, nothing going on in his mind.’

  The cat had been, of course, castrated, but Madeleine never referred to that aspect of the analogy.

  ‘He’s waiting for mice,’ Leo said.

  ‘And you? Leo the lion? Waiting for gazelles?’

  ‘I’m not predatory.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Precisely, what? What do you mean, precisely?’

  ‘There you are: you’re reduced to semantic arguments. That’s all there is. If you’re not careful, you’ll slide on into old age and semantics is all you’ll have. You’ll sit there just like the cat and words will go round in your head and there’ll be nothing else.’

  ‘Your analogy is breaking down. The cat’s mind is empty, you just said so yourself.’

  ‘I bet you even rationalise your faith, don’t you? I bet you don’t feel it any longer, not with your emotions, not with your body. I bet it’s just words. Liturgy, dogma, creed, words. Sterile. Tell me what you think.’

  ‘What I think about what?’

  ‘You, your life, your vocation. What’s it for?’

  Conversations like this gave him a sharp and curious sense of delight – something that was almost physical, like a guilty pleasure. On occasion he provoked them, willed her to produce these outbursts. ‘Why on earth do you live in these dreadful rooms, Leo?’ she asked when she and Jack visited him in the Institute. ‘What’s to stop you moving out, getting a place of your own? If you’re not careful you’ll end up evolving into a dreadful old fossil just like all these other priests.’

  ‘I don’t think you evolve into a fossil,’ he answered her. ‘I think you’ve mixed your metaphors. Again.’

  ‘There!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘That’s just what I mean.’ She became, of course, the negation of her own argument, his escape from the very evils she accused him of. Her tone, her presence, her manner conspired against him, jostled him out of complacency and compliance. Consciously, unconsciously, he began to change. A metamorphosis. Celibacy is the enemy of change but Leo Newman, Father Leo Newman, began to ease himself reptile-like out of the dry skin of his old life.

  ‘How do you know a princess, for goodness’ sake?’ Madeleine asked when he told her his plans. She bubbled with laughter at the idea. ‘How on earth do you know a princess?’

  ‘She was a friend of my mother’s.’

  ‘Your mother’s? I thought your mother was a piano teacher.’

  ‘Can’t a piano teacher know a princess?’

  ‘A cat may look at a queen,’ Madeleine said. It was what Leo had come to label one of her ‘Irish’ replies.

  She went with him to visit the princess in her castle, the eponymous Palazzo Casadei, a mouldering Roman palace that had belonged to the family since the sixteenth century. The family had survived popes and kings, dictators and presidents. It had lived there when Benvenuto Cellini was a prisoner in Castel Sant’Angelo, and when Keats was a young hopeful dying of consumption in a boarding house not far away. It had watched the Garibaldini celebrating in the streets and the French troops marching in to restore the papacy. It had weathered theocracy and monarchy, oligarchy
and tyranny but now looked as though it might well not survive democracy. The principessa lived on the piano nobile amidst the fantastic wreckage left behind by bands of marauding visitors: the portrait of the family pope, the paintings of long-dead ancestors, the gilt and guilt of those five hundred years’ survival. She resembled her surroundings as a pet resembles its master: she was ancient and decaying, the edges frayed and the prominences shiny and threadbare.

  ‘Conoscevo tua madre,’ she said to her visitors from the outside world. I knew your mother. She used the familiar form of the pronoun, tua, as though Leo were a child. ‘Una bellissima donna.’ The old woman nodded as though confirming the fact to herself and the fog of memory seemed to disperse for a moment to show distant scenes, forgotten people. ‘I remember hearing her play, do you know that? She played like an angel. Schubert, Liszt, Beethoven, those great Germans. Ah, die gute alte Zeit. And I remember you, oh yes, I remember you. Young Leo, isn’t that it?’

  Leo and Madeleine sat awkwardly on a threadbare sofa from the last century, an uncomfortable thing with tortured legs and twisted arms. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘that’s it.’

  ‘And she is dead now?’

  ‘She died eight years ago.’

  The principessa shrugged. What else could one expect? They were all dead, her friends just as much as her enemies. All dead, just as she herself appeared almost to be dead, or at least to occupy some state between the living and the dead, a kind of limbo. She pointed her clawed finger at Madeleine. ‘And who is this?’

  ‘She is a friend.’

  ‘She is not your wife?’

  ‘I have no wife. I have never been married.’

  The old woman’s laugh had within it a rich bubble of corruption. ‘Why should you? I was never married. I had many friends but I was never once married. Many friends, many lovers.’ They were there all around her, framed in silver – beautiful young men in wide-lapelled suits and two-tone shoes, beautiful women with wide shoulders and pomaded hair. Edda Mussolini, wearing some kind of turban, smiled out of one frame and greeted mia cara Eugenia, con affetto. ‘And you want to come and live here? You have seen the apartment?’