Prince of Peace (33 page)

"Hello, Father!" I said, grinning again and abandoning for once everything but the pride and affection I felt for him.

"'Call no man father,' you son of a bitch!" He laughed hilariously and clapped my shoulder. "Do it again and I'll break your arm." He was joking, but also making a point. Some priests are addressed as "Father" by everyone. If they were allowed to marry they'd be called "Father" by their wives.

To Carolyn he said more soberly, but with that broad smile, "I'm so glad you came." Obviously, he meant it. He took her hand.

"Congratulations, Michael," she said, then broke into a grin of her own. "Now they can't fire you."

"But I can't fire them either."

"What is all this about firing people?" I put in happily. His bondage was my freedom.

He turned her hand over in his own, fingering the modest diamond I'd given her.

He looked quickly at me and at last I saw a brief show of hurt in him. "My God!" he said, too stunned for the moment to veil his reaction.

All at once it seemed to me that every word Carolyn and I had said to each other and every tentative gesture of the flesh we'd shared were available to him as if now, ontologically indeed, he had mystic powers to penetrate our secrets. Could he know that not two hours before she'd ravished me?

I blushed and started to explain. "We'd have told you before..."

But he stopped me. He put an arm around each of us. His reaction was a denial of the visceral, an act of will and of generosity. But everything—particularly the solemn commitment he'd just made—required it. "I'm so pleased! I think it's wonderful! It makes me very happy." He crushed us together. "You can be my family."

For a moment we three held each other tightly. It was what I'd hoped for.

When we separated Carolyn brushed her pancake makeup from his cassock. She said to my utter amazement—we'd never discussed asking him—"Michael, we were hoping that you'd marry us."

"Of course I will," he said instantly. "I'd never forgive you if you didn't let me."

They stared at each other and for a moment they forgot that I was there. Carolyn had said in effect, "I came to your ordination; I want you at my wedding." I could sense the flow between them, the understanding, the effort to accept what was real, as well as the effort to transform their feelings into something new. But also I saw how they drew each other out of the world in which the rest of us lived, and I knew that I was forever banned from the deepest place in each of them. Of course I was wounded and jealous, but frankly I didn't know of whom. I wanted both of them the way they had each other.

"When are you planning it for?" he asked.

"August," Carolyn said.

Michael slapped his forehead. "August!"

"Why?"

"I haven't had a chance to tell you yet about my assignment."

What was to tell? Weren't priests always put in parishes? Our Lady of the Vouchsafe, Saints Maureen and Doreen, Saint Joseph by the Way. And weren't the new ones always put in charge of bingo and the altar boys and the annual picnic? But Michael's enthusiasm surprised me. Clearly the news of my engagement to Carolyn had not derailed him.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Do you remember Father O'Shea? That chaplain in Korea?"

The one whose life he'd saved, the one Michael had longed to talk to. Sure I did and said so.

"He's retired from the army. He's a monsignor now, and he's with the Catholic Relief Service here in New York; he runs the Far East Refugee Rescue operation. He's asked for me as his assistant. I'll be in a parish but only part-time. He and the cardinal are going over there this summer after the Eucharistic Congress in Manila. And I'm going with them."

"And you won't be back in August?" Carolyn asked.

"Not until September."

After a moment of rather awkward silence—Carolyn's mother had already begun making reservations, and Carolyn herself was prepared to take his unavailability as another rejection—I said, "We'll just do it in September then."

"Great!" Michael seemed to mean it, and it relieved me to see Carolyn's face soften toward him again.

At that moment people in the crowd behind Michael moved aside, opening an aisle. They fell silent, and craned to see the approaching figure. He was invisible to me because he was so short, but I knew it was Cardinal Spellman. It had to be. I exchanged a look with Carolyn. Who needed this? She was blushing, and I put my arm around her. I knew how vulnerable she felt. She'd been valiant, in my opinion, up to then.

Michael wore a stricken look too. It was for fear of this moment that he had not invited Carolyn to the ordination. He knew better than anyone what Spellman had done to her. And now he was sworn as Spellman's vassal. Or was it serf?

"Father Michael," Cardinal Spellman said, beaming up at him.

Michael bowed smoothly from his waist to kiss the prelate's ring, then said, stiffly, "Your Eminence, let me introduce you to some friends."

Carolyn and I each managed to kiss his ring. It was a gesture that couldn't have come less naturally to me, but Carolyn accomplished it smoothly, with a graceful half-curtsey. Still, she blushed furiously, and when Spellman, still holding her hand, said, "We've met before, dear, haven't we?" I thought she was going to faint.

What would have happened to Michael's new career if she'd said right then, "I'm Sister Mary Felony, Your Eminence. You saw my picture in the paper."

But she stammered, "You administered my Sacrament of Confirmation, Your Eminence." She forced a smile. "That was fourteen years ago."

Spellman put his hand on her forearm and asked, as if it was important to him, "What parish was that, dear?"

"Saint Peter's in Bronxville, Your Eminence."

He nodded. "And did I meet your parents?"

"Yes, you did, Your Eminence."

"And your mother is as beautiful as you are, if I recall." He smiled at her endearingly. He was like an old pol working the crowd, shuffling through what we all knew was his routine, but still we were affected, charmed even. His touch was light, and he held on to Carolyn's arm as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do so. He seemed benign, fatherly even, and I found myself softening toward him. I was nearly won over when he said to Carolyn with real feeling, "It is the great privilege of my position to administer sacraments to handsome young people like you. And then..." He grasped Michael's arm, while holding onto Carolyn's, an ironic if unintended linking. "...to think it is my honor to ordain God's new priests. Every night I get down on my knees to thank Him." He grinned suddenly. "Oh, but goodness, you don't want to hear an old priest boasting about being on his knees!" He looked at me. "And aren't you proud of Father Michael today!"

"Yes, I am," I said.

Spellman dropped Carolyn's arm to press Michael's with both hands. "We're proud of him too. It's not often the Church receives a man like Michael Maguire into her service." He was looking at me as he said that, but I sensed that Spellman was addressing Michael. He'd have been aware of Michael's war record, of course, and it would have carried great weight with a soldier-worshipper like Spellman. Now he was manifesting his attachment to Michael, though, of course, like all priests, he could only do so indirectly. "We expect great things from this young man." Spellman still did not look at Michael, or else he might have witnessed the look Michael exchanged with Carolyn. There was apology in it, as well as misery, embarrassment. Michael's standing was considerable, obviously. But it had begun with his refusal to stand by her. With his standing, he felt,
on
her.

"And has he told you what we've planned for him?" the cardinal asked.

I nodded. "About relief work?" I couldn't remember the name of the agency.

"The most important work in the Church," Cardinal Spellman said. "Father Maguire is going to pick up where Doctor Tom Dooley left off, aren't you, Father?"

"It would be an honor to think so, Your Eminence."

I knew that the heroic doctor had died only months before. Spellman had been at his bedside. Spellman had pronounced him a saint.

The cardinal said, with a sudden fierceness, "Tom Dooley's people are suffering more than ever, aren't they, Father?" Michael nodded.

"And Father Maguire is coming with me to see what can be done to help them."

"Where?" Carolyn asked, despite herself. Tom Dooley had worked in Laos or someplace. Hadn't Michael just said the Far East? But what was that to her?

Cardinal Spellman looked blankly at her. "Vietnam," he said.

I
T
was one of those steaming mornings of the monsoon when the air over the lush terrain grew hot faster than the air over the bordering South China Sea. When the resulting massive thermal draft began to rise it sucked at the wet sea winds which then moved steadily inland, across the low coastal hills to the rugged mountains that formed the spine of the country and separated it from the Kingdom of Laos. And everywhere the rain fell.

The convoy of seven black Citroens sped along the glistening paved road that would come to be called Route One when the Americans came, the only proper name for a north-south coastal highway. Affixed to the bumper of each automobile, although not to the escorting military vehicles, were two flags; the red-striped saffron flag of the Republic of Viet Nam, and the yellow-and-white flag, displaying the triple tiara and the keys of Saint Peter, of His Holiness the Pope. The tires of the automobiles hummed a steady sibilant, but the passengers for the most part remained silent.

They stared out the half-open windows and let the rain-soaked breeze refresh them, and they eyed the green blur of jungle, watching steadily. For wild animals? The spirits of ancestors? For friendly farmers? Every hundred or two hundred yards, even in the desolation of that countryside, a government soldier stood at present-arms, but with his back to the cars as they passed. No mere honor guard, those soldiers were outfitted for combat and charged with preventing an attack on that convoy. They had swept the highway for mines and booby traps. Now they were watching for signs of the guerrilla force that totally controlled the scummy swamp world in the delta region far to the south, around Saigon, making travel outside that city a nightmare. The guerrillas lived, as one of their slogans said, like owls in the night and foxes in the daylight, and they were known for striking, almost mystically, just when a traveler thought himself most safe. In addition to ambush those on foot had constantly to beware their punji traps, concealed pits with dung-encrusted bamboo spikes. Vehicles regularly tripped mines and hidden grenades, and once-innocent obstacles like fallen trees or collapsed culverts now certainly meant attack. In less than a year as an organized force the Communists had already assassinated more than four thousand village heads and district chiefs. But their random assaults were even more fearsome. On the road it didn't seem to matter whether their victims were women or children or even supporters of the Great Struggle, and that capriciousness only made the terror they inflicted more stunning. In Saigon in those days Americans were famous for refusing to leave the city. Government officials did so only with escorts, and the rich landlords who had to visit their holdings disguised themselves as peasants.

But here in the northernmost region between Hue and the border with North Vietnam, the population was loyal to the government and the guerrillas had yet to make an impact. But the three brothers who ruled South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem, his counselor, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and Ngo Dinh Can, the viceroy of Central Vietnam, were prudent men. The sentries they had posted all along the road from Hue to Quang Tri were members of their crack personal guard. The Ngos were taking no chances this morning, not on such a great occasion and not with such guests.

In the first car, but behind the military escort, Cardinal Spellman rode with his old friend, the fourth Ngo brother, Archbishop Thuc. Riding on the jump seat, facing them, was Monsignor Timothy O'Shea, and in the front seat, beside the driver, was Father Michael Maguire. The three Americans had arrived from Manila only the night before, and now they were speeding to Quang Tri, the northernmost city in South Vietnam, where Spellman and Thuc would preside at a ceremony attended by the elite of the country, marking the dedication of the huge new basilica of Our Lady of La Vang.

Archbishop Thuc, between puffs of his cigarette, said, "It will be like Lourdes,
Eminenza."
He spoke with a pronounced French accent, though the title he used to address Spellman was the Italian. "La Vang will be the spiritual bastion of the country."

"All you'll need are the miracles," Cardinal Spellman replied. Michael caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror, and looked for signs that he was being facetious. There were none. Thuc nodded smugly. The miracles would come.

"We have built this shrine," Thuc said, leaning toward Spellman, "with the donations of all the people, even peasants. They gave their
sous
to thank Our Lady for the deliverance of her Catholic children."

Michael wondered, Would these "peasants" be at the dedication? Not likely. He had an American's distaste for the word, and it told him what he didn't like about the Vietnamese prelate. He carried himself like an Oriental Richelieu, and in his thin, ascetic visage, his dark, brooding eyes it seemed to Michael there was something merciless.

Thuc touched Spellman's hand familiarly. "Who would have been thinking fifteen years ago we would be together today, with my brothers serving the people? We owe our success to you,
Eminenza."

Michael strained to hear what Spellman said. In Manila, just days before, he had heard an Australian priest refer to Ngo Dinh Diem as "Spellman's seminarian." The priest explained that Diem had been forced into exile in the late forties. Ho Chi Minh had murdered one of his brothers, so Diem was fiercely anti-Communist, but he wouldn't support the French either. He'd had nowhere to go until his brother Thuc intervened with Cardinal Spellman. Spellman liked Diem's personal style—he was a pious, ascetic Catholic who attended Mass daily and who'd taken a private vow of chastity—and he took him under his wing. The Australian priest claimed that Diem had lived in one of Spellman's seminaries from 1950 until 1954. Michael was skeptical and said so. Hadn't he begun his own seminary course in 1954? And in Spellman's diocese? But the Australian insisted it was true, and in fact it was. Though Diem spent most of 1954 in a Belgian monastery, before that he had lived at Maryknoll, just a few miles from Dunwoodie. It amazed Michael that he hadn't heard of Spellman's connection with Diem before. The Australian had seemed to think there was something sinister in it, but, if it was true, Michael thought well of it. What should the Church use its influence for if not to bring to power worthy politicians who were inured to corruption and dedicated to Christian moral principles? Michael had said as much to the priest.