14. Candle
From 'Passages' by Jean de Lier
Dieter von Alfonsberg had been obliged to join the Hitler Youth Movement, for which he had little aptitude, let alone appetite. Just before the end of the war, as an able-bodied sixteen year old boy he had also been obliged to join the army, but the war ended before he fired a shot. He was able to go back to school and University but when he took a job in New York he was not in truth totally surprised that he encountered some prejudices against him. In other circumstances his appearance might have helped and it probably did help, but he did look the perfect Aryan, tall, elegant, slim, well spoken, sparkling forget-me-not blue eyes and blond hair.
His eyes of course are still blue and sparkling and his impeccable manners have not deserted him. And though life has not been quite kind, he still has some joie-de-vivre with old friends. His hair is now rather grey than blond, and his skin is not so smooth. But he is good company, impeccably well educated, cultivated and au fait with every cultural event in the City. Those who know him seek him out when they visit Paris.
His short but glittering Diplomatic Career was interrupted for personal reasons and also for disagreements with his then immediate superior. And, possessed of adequate, though certainly not lavish means, he retired early, working for charity and doing various jobs which paid a little and demanded a lot. Now he lives in what he describes as a tiny flat on the fifth floor of a beautiful house in the Place des Vosges, crammed with works of art and artefacts collected over a lifetime. He claims that the five flights to his apartment keep him alive and an unbiased observer would reckon the flat not so small if it were not so full of his collections.
Be that all as it may, it is a sad fact that the number of his visitors has other reasons than popularity for its decline. As the years take their toll, not only of life but of mere mobility, he treasures his friends the more when they do come, and he still visits quite assiduously himself, though alas not so much as before either. He also corresponds well and of course the increase in modern communications and especially the reduced expense of telephony have kept him in contact with many who might have fallen a way.
For all these reasons, and because he is a sympathetic and sensitive soul, and because after a certain age all intimations of mortality seem to touch one personally, he reacted strenuously when a dear friend phoned him from a distant State of the Union and said that her husband was mortally ill with cancer. He could not immediately fly the Atlantic and anyway he could not do much if he got there. “No, No of course not, there is nothing else to be done, nothing you can do. He has had the best, best, best medical help and advice and treatment but he is desperately weak and may or may not pull through” Then “All you can do is pray”.
Dieter is not religious, barely even a believer if he is a believer at all. “How can I pray?” he protested, but she would hear no contradiction. “Only prayer can help now” she insisted “and whether you believe in God or not, whether your parental Northern Protestantism abhors superstitions, promise me, swear to me for the sake of the love you bear me, of the love your bear my husband and for the love I bear for my husband, you will go every single day to church, any church, starting today, and light a single candle for Teddy.” He swore.
He swore because the couple were really very close friends, because there was nothing else he could do at 3000 miles distance, and because of her insistence. And having sworn and being a man of honour he went each day to the Church of St. Stephen the Martyr round the corner, which happened to be built in the 12th century and was anyway very beautiful. He lit a candle and left again. It cost him one €uro each time.
In this state of mind he was visited by his old friend Pieter, climbing the stairs and puffing all the way up. They talked of many things as old friends do, ate a snack lunch of an excellent quiche provided by the local traiteur and drank some excellent white wine from the same source. Among other things Pieter was told about the curious circumstance that the unbelieving Dieter was going to church each day to light a candle. He smiled indulgently, being a most fervent atheist himself, but was rather touched all the same and understood the logic perfectly well.
Later, on his way to the Metro, Pieter passed a 12th century church and decided this must be the one his friend was patronising. On a whim he went in and looked round at the sparse, stark beauty of the Romanesque building. And to the right of the high altar he bought and lit a candle “for the friend of Dieter”, he said to himself, the nearest he could get to a prayer.
Pieter visits churches relatively often for a non believer, but not to pray. He wants to see if there is any altarpiece or carving, any art worth a detour. Once he found the famous tomb of a French King and Queen by accident at Brou. Sometimes he attends a concert in a church; there is one near his office that has regular and sometimes congenial lunchtime concerts and if he can spare the time he may drop in. But since the events described he has always lit a candle, at first always with the prayer (is it a prayer?) “for Dieter’s friend”. He does not know whether the friend is dead by now, or indeed cured.
More recently he went to Einsiedeln, in Switzerland not far from Zürich, a beautiful Baroque church with free range Putti and all squiggly rococo patterns and side altars and sculpture by Diego Carlone (brother of Carlo). Very different from the austere grandeur of St Stephen’s: he lit a candle. He went to Vienna and lit a candle in another St.Stephen’s, the Cathedral and another candle in St Marks in Venice. He could not light candles in front of the Issenheim Altar in Colmar because it is a museum, even if it is housed in an old church, nor in Exeter Cathedral on Easter Saturday, because for theological reasons there are no candles between the crucifixion and the resurrection. But those are the only exceptions.
Some weeks later he went to his own parents grave. The grave lies in an inconvenient location in a foreign country and he placed two pots of flowers on the grave, for himself and on behalf of his only sister, who visits less often even than he. But unable to pray or even believe that they could know of his visit, he set to wondering why he always put flowers on the grave. For the local villagers? Why go to the grave? What was he doing there? He phoned his sister on the mobile from beside the stone and told her. This hardly seemed enough. He stood there for a moment and thought of them. But he could and often did do that from his home, and he accepted that he was really only there because his way led him past with some time to spare.
The flowers are his candles. Clearly if Dieter lit a candle for his friend, he did so at Einsiedeln for himself, in homage to the art, and out of gratefulness for the faith of others who built so fine an edifice. And so also he stood at the graveside and walked round the little, tawdry village graveyard, only for himself. It is the living that have need of succour and remembrance. As a matter of fact, even if he were religious he said to himself, he would be unable to conceive of a god who so set things that his little action would be in any way beneficial, or that the flowers he placed there were somehow good for their souls or his. He had gone to some trouble to get them. He was surely doing it only for himself, it is he who had need to do something and this trivial ‘sacrifice’ is all he can think of.
He set to wondering what a devout Catholic actually thought the candle meant. Brought up in that faith, he really didn’t know. Something seemed to echo in his brain that the prayer offered at the same time as the candle will last as long as the candle burns – a sort of automated praying, like the Tibetan prayer wheel driven by the wind. Is this true?
He stayed the night locally, ate an excellent Michelin starred dinner and the following morning, Sunday, went into a little fifteenth century basilica. There was no sign of a Mass, maybe later, or indeed earlier, but he would not have sat through it anyway. He shuddered at the ugly over-painted little black Madonna image (claimed to be 13th century) but lit a candle none the less.
Then he drove back home.
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