Eminence by Morris West Morris West has lived in Rome and has friends and acquaintances in the Vatican. His plot, as always in his works, is based on thorough research. It is possible indeed quite probable that this book, too, may be prophetic. Fiction Also by Morris West Fiction MOON IN MY POCKET GALLOWS ON THE SAND KUNDU CHILDREN OF THE SUN THE BIG STORY THE CONCUBINE THE SECOND VICTORY THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE THE NAKED COUNTRY DAUGHTER OF SILENCE THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN THE AMBASSADOR THE TOWER OF BABEL SCANDAL IN THE ASSEMBLY (with R. Francis) THE HERETIC A play in three acts SUMMER OF THE RED WOLF THE SALAMANDER HARLEQUIN THE NAVIGATOR PROTEUS THE CLOWNS OF GOD THE WORLD IS MADE OF GLASS CASSIDY MASTER CLASS LAZARUS THE RINGMASTER THE LOVERS VANISHING POINT IMAGES AND INSCRIPTIONS An antholgy Non Fiction A VIEW FROM THE RIDGE Morris West EMINENCE THE HARVILL PRESS LONDON First published in Great Britain in 1998 by The Harvill Press 2 Aztec Row Berners Road London Nl OPW www.harvill-press. com Copyright Melaleuka East Investments Pty Ltd, 1998 Morris West asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1 86046 527 7 (hbk) ISBN 1 86046 528 5 (pbk) Designed and typeset in Galliard at Libanus Press, Marlborough, Wiltshire Printed and bound in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd at Selwood Printing, Burgess Hill CONDITIONS OF SALE All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser For Carol and David Ashley-Wilson, good companions, friends of the heart. Author's Note I offer a special word of thanks to my two editorial consciences, my personal assistant, Beryl Barraclough, and my wife, Joy, companion of many voyages, sharer in many literary enterprises. Between them, they have kept me as honest, consistent and self-critical as any man can be in a confusing world. "The Church in Argentina, and we its members, have many reasons to confess our sins and to beg pardon of God and society: for our insensitivity, for our cowardice, for our omissions, for our complicities in respect of illegal repression." Monsignor Jorge Novak, Bishop of Quilmes, Argentina Quoted in Politico." 29 April, 1995 "Where law ends, tyranny begins." William Pitt, Speech, 9 January, 1770 One HIS BAD DAYS AND THIS WAS ONE OF HIS WORST for a long time Luca Rossini fled the city. His staff were accustomed to his sudden exits and entrances. They could reach him at any moment on his mobile number. His peers, who could recite by rote his titles and offices, knew also that he was a special man commanded from the highest place. They accepted that he was charged with secrets. They had secrets of their own. They understood also that gossip was a dangerous pastime in this city, so they kept any resentments for private and comradely moments. His master, a curt man, never called him to account for his movements, only for his official transactions. He travelled widely and generally alone. Few were able to chart his movements or the reasons for them, yet wherever one turned one was conscious either of his presence or of his influence. His reports were laconic. His actions were brusque. The reasons he offered were clear and precise, but he declined to argue them with anyone except the man who commanded him. He could be agreeable in society but he committed himself rarely to intimacy. Before he left the city, he would change into jeans, walking boots, a scuffed leather jacket, an old cap. He drove an elderly Mercedes which he kept garaged at his apartment twenty minutes walk away from his office. His destination was always the same: a small holding in the foothills which he had bought twenty years before from a local landowner. The property, invisible from the road, was enclosed by an ancient stone wall, pierced by a heavy wooden gate studded with hand-forged country nails. Inside the walls was a small cottage, once a barn, with a roof of barrel tiles. It consisted of one large living space on to which he had built with his own hands a country kitchen and a paved bathroom. There was water and electricity and the gas was delivered in cylinders. The furniture was sparse: a bed, a dining table, a set of chairs, a battered sofa and armchair, a modern CD player with a large collection of classics, a bookcase over which hung an olive wood crucifix with a grotesquely agonised Christus. The garden contained a vegetable plot, a stand of fruit trees, a trellis of vines, a pair of rose bushes in pots. During his absences, which were many and long, the garden was kept by a villager whose wife cleaned the house. When he came, as he was coming today, he lived a hermit's life. When he departed he left money in an envelope propped against the table-lamp to pay the custodian. This was the one place in the world where there was no curiosity about his identity or his station in life. He was simply Signer Luca, il padrone. Heaven or Hell and sometimes he had wondered which it was! this was his true home. No one could look in on him. He could not see beyond his own garden wall, yet he recognised that this was a place of healing. The cure had been slow. It was not ended yet; perhaps it would never be ended; but as he pushed open the gate and walked into a garden rich with the first flush of autumn fruits, he felt a sudden surge of hope. His rituals began the moment the gate closed behind him. He walked into the house, laid out the few purchases he had made along the way: bread, cheese, wine, mineral water, sausage and ham. Then, he made the circuit of the room. It was clean, dusted every day as he required. There was fresh linen on the bed and towels in the bathroom. He tested the pressure in the gas cylinder and checked the pile of wood in the locker by the fireplace. He would have no need of it in this mild weather, but there was comfort in the thought that he could set and light the fire if he chose. He paused by the bookshelves and looked up at the twisted figure on the olive wood cross. He talked to it in a sudden burst of Spanish: "It still isn't settled between you and me! You're out of it out of it and into glory. That's what we claim anyway! I'm still here. I'm held together with string and sticking plaster. The moment I got out of bed this morning, I knew it would be a bad day. I'm in flight again. What else can I do? I'm still in the dark." He pushed aside the volumes on the top shelf of the bookcase. Behind them was a small steel safe let into the wall. The key hung around his neck. He opened the safe and took out a pile of letters held together with faded ribbon. He did not read them. He knew every line by heart. He held them in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over the thick paper as if he were handling an amulet. Then he put the letters back in the safe, relocked it and replaced the books. Isabel and he still corresponded; but her letters now were evanescent texts on a computer screen, read and erased, leaving only a trace of her in his memory, like the track of an insect in desert sand. The disc on the CD player was Mozart's Prague Symphony. He switched it on and let the music take hold of him. Then he moved to the bed. He stripped off his jacket and his shirt and laid them carefully on the bedspread. Although the air inside the house was warm, he shivered. He wrapped his arms around himself so that his finger-tips touched the first ridges of the scars that covered his back and reached around his rib case. He could not see them. He did not want to see them. He could only feel them. After a while, he released himself from his own embrace and walked out into the sunlit garden. Outside the door, a number of simple country tools were stood against the wall: a spade, a mattock, a fork, a rake. He picked up the mattock, feeling as he always did a pleasure in the touch of the rough handle. He laid the mattock over his shoulder and began to work his way around the garden grubbing out weeds between the lettuces and the bean rows, chopping back grass from the edges of the plots. All the time, he was aware of the sun upon his back, of the trickles of sweat along the raised surfaces of the scars. That, too, was a comfort but the greatest comfort of all was to be able to expose the scars and feel no shame, because here there was no witness to what, so many years before, had diminished him to a nothing. He worked for more than an hour, finding new tasks, even in the well-kept garden. He raked leaves and burned them. He clipped dead flowers and leaves from the rose bushes. He picked tomatoes and salad leaves for his supper. He inspected the ripened fruit and damped the ground under the vine trellises. By the end of it, his jangling nerves were quiet and his familiar demons had stopped their chattering. He was where he needed to be: in the quiet of a physical world far from politicians, philosophers and the contentions...
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