The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 51

The sermon on the fall of Rome

Aurélie sits beside the bed where her grandfather lies at rest. He can let himself go without fear into his obscure dreams of a dying man as she is keeping watch for death’s approach on his behalf and her sentinel’s eyes are not dimmed by weariness. The doctors have granted Marcel Antonetti the remarkable privilege of dying at home. They could fight against his illness but not against the demon of extreme old age, the ineluctable falling apart of an already ruined body. Blood rushes to his stomach. The heart gives way before the assault of its own beating. At each intake of breath the pure air sets the dried-out flesh on fire and it is slowly being consumed like resinous crystals of myrrh. Twice a day a nurse comes to change the drip and assess the rate of his decline. Virginie Susini brings meals from the bar that Bernard Gratas has prepared for Aurélie. Since yesterday Marcel has completely given up eating. Claudie and Matthieu have caught the plane and will be arriving during the course of the day. Aurélie would have preferred them not to come but Matthieu insisted. Judith would remain alone in Paris with the children for as long as was necessary. In eight years he has only returned to Corsica once, to give evidence at Libero’s trial, at the court in Ajaccio, but has never set foot in the village. He has not changed. He still believes looking the other way suffices to dispatch whole sections of his own life into nothingness. He still believes that what one does not see ceases to exist. If Aurélie had listened to her churlish heart she would have told him to stay put. It was all too late now. There was no need for him to bother coming here to act out the masquerade of redemption. But she said nothing and now she waits. In the bedroom the shutters are half closed. She does not want the excessively bright light to hurt her grandfather’s eyes. But nor does she want him to die in darkness. From time to time he opens his eyes and turns his head toward her. She takes his hand.

“My dear girl. My dear girl.”

He is not afraid. He knows she is there keeping watch on his behalf for death’s tranquil coming, and he sinks back into his pillow. Aurélie does not let go of his hand. Death may arrive sooner than Matthieu and Claudie, thus favoring this intimate communion of theirs, and, when it comes, along with Marcel, it will carry away the world that now lives on only in him. All that will remain of this world will be a photograph, taken in the summer of 1918, but Marcel will no longer be there to look at it. No child in a sailor suit now, no little girl of four, no mysterious absence, only a pattern of lifeless marks, with no one left to make sense of them. The truth is that we do not know what worlds are. But we can watch out for the signs of their coming to an end. The release of a shutter in summer sunlight, a tired young woman’s delicate hand resting on that of her grandfather, or the square sail of a ship sailing into the harbor at Hippo, bringing with it, from Italy, the inconceivable news that Rome has fallen.

For three days Alaric’s Visigoths had pillaged the city and trailed their long blue cloaks in the blood of virgins. When Augustine learns of this he barely pays attention to it. He has been battling for years against the fury of the Donatist heretics and is dedicating all his efforts, now that they are overcome, to bringing them back into the bosom of the Catholic Church. To those of the faithful who are still animated by the spirit of vengeance, he preaches the virtues of forgiveness. He is not interested in the collapse of masonry. For although he has cast out far away from himself, with horror, the heresies of his own culpable youth, he may yet have retained from the teachings of Manichaeus the profound inner conviction that this world is bad and does not merit the shedding of tears over its ending. Yes, the world is filled with the darkness of evil, he still believes this, but he now knows that no spirit animates this darkness, for that would challenge the unity of the eternal God, since darkness is only the absence of light, just as evil is simply the trace left when God withdraws from the world, an infinite distance separating the two, which only His grace can bridge in the pure waters of baptism. If men’s hearts will open to the light of God, let the world pass into darkness. But refugees are daily bringing the poison of their despair into Africa. The pagans accuse God of failing to protect a city even though it had turned Christian. From his monastery in Bethlehem Jerome immodestly broadcasts his lamentations throughout Christendom, unreservedly bemoaning the fate of Rome, now overcome by fire and the assaults of the