SAINT ANTHONY

There needn't be anything. What there was was the large
flat square table. On the table there was practically nothing
although he was a very busy man.

His secretary had taken his own chair and he was sitting
on the low couch that was drawn up along the opposite side and
her back was half turned toward me as I came in the door and
she did not swivel round in the chair but she kept on writing.
She was taking notes in a note-book. She was holding the note-
book, it was not flat on the table and he went on talking.

I crossed the room. That is Anthony Eden, I thought.
I thought, I would not disturb them and I really was surprised
when he got up and followed me across the room. The secretary
seemed to go on writing with her back half turned. He bent to
kiss me so that he was taller than I thought or I was smaller.
I was smaller. I was not a child but I was grown-up enough to
be frightened when he tugged at my dress and said, come over
to the couch. No, no, no, I said. I was not elated nor really
frightened and my dress was very pretty. That is, it was a
perfect dress, I did not notice it at all, except to think
afterwards, why that was a perfect dress, I did not notice it
at all.

2.

The dress fell to the floor, there was no feeling of a
collar, it was what we used to call an afternoon dress, I
suppose, or it was a summer dress in the days when we wore
summer dresses. It was a real dress and it had a colour, but
it was not green nor yellow. I did not wear a hat and my hair
was light brown, not gold, not brown, it was not long nor short,
it was tucked around in such a way that you would never think
of its falling down but it was up rather than down. Of course,
my dress was not red or blue; I mean when I say it was not
green, not yellow that it was that sort of intermediate colour
of leaves that leaves have when certain birch or beech leaves
are uncurled and out but not quite flat; they are a little
crinkled and gold-brown or rather green-gold where they will be
green. That is the way with the dress too, it was not crinkled
but there was that feeling. I had come out with it on. That
is, it showed what sort of thing I was, what sort of tree I
belonged to, what family perhaps of tree, because I can not
think of myself thinking in that large empty room of having
any family. Anthony Eden was not my family, his secretary was
not my mother.

---

What I thought was, this is a saint and I was very happy.
I knew of course that it was not Anthony Eden but I knew that

3.

it was Anthony and I knew that it was Eden. He was dark,
Spanish or Portuguese (the later Anthony) or burnt with the
desert, that other Anthony the Hermit. He was a saint in modern
dress of course, for that is how a saint would be.

By a very obvious series of associations he was Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, he was Anthony, he was Eden, he
was an important person. The State was not this British
Commonwealth or any State of that sort but some sort of state
of mind or spirit, and he was importantly associated with
Foreign Affairs. He was not in that sense English nor was he
in that sense American but his great wide room with the bright
dim light suggested one of those fabulous elaborately simple
rooms you see on the films, generally filled with a crowd of
Wall-Street potentates or diplomats. He was associated with
foreign things and he was foreign but for me he manifested himself
as of to-day, as of this city in which I live, or one of its
companion cities of America or even of South America.

The light seemed to indicate sunlight outside and though
there were no windows, there was yet the inference that if there
had been windows, there would have been no sort of curtain or
black-out curtain. The light filtered evenly into the room
and there were no apparent shadows. This of course I sensed,
my whole being was absorbing the room and its peculiar

4.

characteristics, its beauty of line, its length, its light,
its unbroken wall and long floor and the way the door had opened.

I did not float at all into the door, I opened the door
although I do not think I turned a handle and I did not knock.
It was the answer to knock and it shall be opened unto you, but
I had done the knocking before I went to sleep but I had not
actually named Anthony or maybe I had. I had a string of beads
that a friend had given me, they related to the orthodox rosary,
they were actually a rosary but the rosary I believe, originated
in Tibet so my rosary given me by this friend - who was, if
anything, a Buddhist by conviction - yet allowed my mind to
make this compromise, my heart could play over the beads and I
did not think any more, because I was middle-aged and tired of
thinking.

My mind had been shattered and I had tried various ways
and means of healing-thought and of expression and now at the
last, I just "played" my beads at night before I went to sleep.
If I named a saint it was as legendary a personality as any
wizard or good fairy out of folk-lore, yet I had named Anthony,
naming a person for every bead. Anyhow, I had named Anthony
and I had lighted tapers for him in the Kapuzinerkirche some
years before, in Vienna while Vienna yet was.

-----

5.

I lighted the tapers before the dingy shrine of Saint Anthony because the church was dark and it was cold and there was a cluster of beggars seated along the bench against the wall. They looked around when the flap before the inner door lifted or when there were footsteps in the outer corridor. I saw them doing it.

They had crept in for shelter, stealing a little rest on the benches and I had crept in out of curiosity and because an open church door always compels me to enter. There were bones, as I remember, under glass and a general air of rococco grandeur in decay. I knew that downstairs in the crypt, there were some mummies with imperial regalia but I did not feel that I could face them that day; it was Kapuzinerkirche, church of the Capucines, there was a statue of a monk in the Franciscan habit in the niche over the round window.

The round window was cut in the white plaster of the outer wall as if a cookie-tin had cut its circle in white rolled dough and there were the two oval side-windows exactly symmetrical, either side of the projecting outer porch or vestibule. That had its round circular topped door and the two smaller side doors with a small round window over each. There was a small cross over the door and a larger cross on top of the church, set in a ring like a weather-vane and there was the steeple with

6.

very narrow shuttered windows and its plain cross on the roof-
cone.

It was exactly a church a child might copy from a drawing-
card or drawing-book and I had copied it many times for I knew
this church and I could even put in the slight symmetrical
trimmings under the peak of the roof and over the door.

The fanlight over the door had six sticks if you count
the upper level of the door as two.

That was outside the church, you saw this as you crossed
the square or <u>platz</u>, whose name I can't remember. I remember
the faces of the beggars as they peered furtively around as I
pushed up the worn leather flap. Were they afraid of being
turned out? I walked around and came back to the beggars.

There were a few candles and I thought, I am a heretic
and this is a sort of stealing but if I light the candles be-
fore the shrine of Saint Anthony, I am lighting them for the
beggers because it will make the corner here a little brighter
and because after all I am a baptized Christian. I even dropped
to my knees on the cold stone as I saw the beggars turn from
the sight of the peculiarly devout lady who was lighting all
the candles. The beggars bowed their heads and I (just in time)
dropped to the stone floor, as a replica of the carved Franciscan
over the door outside, entered from somewhere behind the altar.
We were all praying like mad as his beads rattled past us and
out of the door.