Rumbling in the jungle
Harriet Waugh
STRANGE GODS by John Cornwell Simon & Schuster, f14.99, pp. 262 John Cornwell is probably best known for A Thief in the Night and Earth to Earth, but he is also a novelist, and Strange Gods is his third novel. For those who have read Brian Moore's Black Robe there will be an added interest; one aspect of Strange Gods reverses the sensibility of the former novel. Black Robe, set at the beginning of the 17th century, follows the cultural and religious clash between a Jesuit priest sent to con- vert the Heron Indians in the wilderness of Canada and the Indians themselves, on whom his safety depends. It is a savagely inhospitable book in which nobody loses their human identity.
Strange Gods, however, is even more inhospitable. Set contemporaneously, its venal, self-indulgent, unlikeable Jesuit hero, Nicholas Mullen, goes out, as a last gesture to his fading faith, to Peru to join an inspirational Jesuit of his youth, Father Christian O'Rourke on his mission to con- vert an unknown tribe in the heart of the jungle. Father O'Rourke is a fundamental- ist, uncontaminated by western materialism or its liberal humanity. In fact he could be a 17th-century Jesuit sent out to save souls with his religious and imperial certainties intact. Instead he is mad. It is a neat con- ceit.
Early bagpipes Among his many other failings Father Mullen suffers from one of the Seven Deadly Sins, accidie or sloth, interpreted by St Thomas Aquinas as `tristitia de bono spirituals' and enlarged on by Evelyn Waugh in his Sunday Times essay in the 1960s thus:
Sloth is the condition in which a man is fully aware of the proper means of his salvation and refuses to take them because the whole apparat,us of salvation fills him with tedium and disgust.
So we watch through Father Mullen's intel- ligent but slothful gaze Father O'Rourke's destruction of the tribe. It is horrifying.
In fact Father Mullen's character is a study in accidie. When we meet him he is 47. He lives in the Mayfair headquarters of the Jesuits in England and is a successful fund-raiser for their missions. He has plen- ty of money at his disposal, wines and dines the rich in quest for donations, sports a Rolex and owns a Rover 2300. He woos his mistress into bed with flowers, champagne, caviar and good restaurants. Within hours of leaving her he is consecrating the host at daily mass. As far as he tries to justify his behaviour it is by the worldly assumption that countless other priests in the modern church sin likewise.
Although his self-indulgence is uncom- promised by any restraint, he is not happy. He is unable to give himself in love to his mistress, is in therapy and on lithium.
Yet in rare calm moments of recollection I was convinced that my condition was of my own making, that the cure was obvious and ready to hand; that I was reaping the reward of my secret sins. In the early hours I would plead with Him to cleanse me of my hidden sins against poverty, obedience and above all, chastity.
The decision to try to renew his faith by working in the missions is made easier because of the unpleasant surprise of his mistress's pregnancy. Any intention of renewing his vocation is abandoned the instant he meets Christian O'Rourke, and instead he falls into squalid sex with a frighteningly unbalanced, left-wing Peru- vian woman who is possibly a member of the Shining Path. There is a third priest in the mission to counterbalance Mullen's self-indulgent defeatism and O'Rourke's fanaticism. Father Felix MacDonagh repre- sents those who have dedicated themselves to unselfish good works rather than to God. His stance can best be described by this passage:
I get sick to the back teeth of the fucking Pope and those poofter curial bastards in Rome, prancing around dressed up like something in Star Wars, and all the crap they're teaching kids in school and the semi- naries with no bearing on the real world . . . You won't find Christ in the Vatican and He's not in some enclosed monastery or nun- nery; and He's not up a bloody creek some- where with Christian O'Rourke packing his bags for the Second Coming! So don't give me your knowing, sophisticated quips when you've only just climbed off the fucking plane . . Welcome to the fucking Third World, chum!
So we follow our three unengaging pro- tagonists, as well as a seriously committed nun, up the jungle on their ill-fated expedi- tion. How Father Mullen's spiritual malaise is resolved is dramatically convincing. Nor- mally when it is impossible to have any sympathy with the characters in a novel it is hard to care about the outcome, but John Cornwell forces one's engagement, almost against one's will, maintaining the impetus through tense, atmospheric prose to its vio- lent climax. The same could be said for his two previous novels The Spoilt Priest and Seven Other Demons, written more than a decade ago. All three make uncomfortable reading — particularly for Catholics — but grip one regardless.
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