Prince of Peace (40 page)

"I can't," Howe said evenly, coldly. "People with my point of view have been shut out, and you know it."

"Maybe you shut yourself out, John. You look down your damn nose at everybody. You slug us with your offended sensibility. You're surrounded by moral pygmies, aren't you? Who isn't your inferior, John?"

Howe flinched, but that was all, and Michael regretted at once having cast the issue in terms of inferiority, or rather, having admitted that those were the terms that mattered. He regretted especially having so exposed his feelings, and therefore having underscored once more how they were different.

Howe sat at his desk, immobile, staring back at Michael. He wasn't going to speak.

Michael said, more to cover his embarrassment than to press the point, "If this was Africa and the Ngos were a clan of Ashanti chieftains at war with another tribe, you'd be much more tolerant. You'd still be horrified by the killing, but you wouldn't take it personally."

Howe said in a steely, cold voice, "How much more has to happen in the streets and villages of this country, Father, before you take
that
personally instead of the petty slights you imagine having suffered from me?"

 

The answer would come soon enough. First, President Diem declared the nation's pagodas closed and he sent troops to surround them, though not just any troops. The raids on the pagodas in which dozens of monks were murdered and scores more wounded were carried out by the elite Catholic units modeled on the American Green Berets. Diem claimed that the pagodas had been taken over by Communists.

By the next morning, word spread through Saigon that thirty monks in the Xa Loi pagoda near Freedom Palace where the Ngos lived had been shot by government troops. When Michael heard of it he tried to call Howe, but he couldn't get through. Later he would learn that Nhu's agents had cut the embassy telephone lines. The Americans would know less than ordinary citizens, and they would not be able to protest until it was too late.

Michael went at once to the Vinh Hoa Dao pagoda across Saigon. It was easy to get there that day because for a change the streets of the city were empty. The Saigonese knew when to stay at home. The broad, sweeping staircase leading up to the temple, usually so crowded with refugees and knots of students, monks and nuns, was utterly deserted. As he ascended the stairs in the eerie quiet, he slowed his pace and resolved to take in every detail of what he was about to see. He knew before he saw it.

The magnificent pagoda had been ransacked and half-burned. The great gilded-wood figure of Buddha in the sanctuary had been toppled, and its face had crashed into the floor. Benches were splintered, shrines demolished. The charred heavy curtain along the far wall still smoldered, and the roof above that quarter of the pagoda had been consumed by the fire. Apparently a rainfall had doused the flames once the flames had opened the roof to the sky.

Michael walked through the far doorway, through the series of small rooms, into the familiar courtyard, as he had done dozens of times coming to see Thic Nhat Than. The garden had been wrecked too; plants were uprooted and strewn about, large palm trees had been felled and lay now like great timbers across the ruins. Statues had been smashed to bits. As he walked he expected to come across corpses, but he didn't, and that made the chaotic scene all the more bizarre, all the more ominous.

As he approached the veranda where he'd met Nhat Than, where they'd talked, each in his broken French, and where he'd allowed himself not only to share the Buddhist elder's dream for Vietnam, but also to feel the spell of his holiness, Michael was slowed by an awful stench. It was an odor unlike any he'd smelled before, and it made him feel sick. He thought of stopping, turning around and running away. I'd have gotten the hell out of there myself. But he didn't.

He mounted the three stairs and pushed a tottering rice-paper screen aside.

Thic Nhat Than, the Venerable, the Beloved, the Spiritual Master, was lying in two pieces before Michael. Only a foot-long deep purple river of coagulated blood joined his head to his body. On his severed face was frozen a look of pure horror.

"So he had John beheaded in prison..." Michael slammed his eyes shut against it. "...and the head was brought in on a plate."

Michael knelt. Instead of praying for the monk or uttering the Catholic words—he was instinctively respectful and would have observed only the Buddhist rubric if he'd known it—he stifled his infinite repugnance and picked up the old man's head and placed it against the trunk of his body. Instead of praying for him then, he began reciting the Act of Contrition for himself and for us, his people, for we had done this. But even that reciting he did automatically, a reaction in shock. In his mind other words replayed themselves, words he had not thought of in years, Tim O'Shea's words, in that faintly accented Irish voice saying, over and over, "God will not have his work made manifest by cowards."

When at last Michael stood, a man behind him said, "Amen."

It was Howe.

They stared at each other blankly. Michael just shook his head.

Howe said nothing, not "I told you so." Not, "Are you satisfied?" Not, "Now do you understand me?" Not, "This is why I wanted you here."

Michael said, "I'm going to New York. I'm going to tell them."

"Good."

"But first..." He looked down at the remains of Thic Nhat Than again, then around the garden. His voice cracked as he said, "Do you think we should bury him?" There were no shovels but Michael realized that, given his emotion at that moment, he could have dug forever with his bare hands, through gravel, through stone. He wanted to rip out the hearts of Thuc and Nhu and Diem. He wanted to twist their heads off with his hands.

"No. His people will be back. They're the ones to look after him."

"Why did they leave?"

Howe shrugged. "They were afraid." He looked down at the corpse. "Not many men would have defied them by staying like this." He looked up sharply. "Would you have?"

Michael shook his head, no.

"Me either," Howe said. When he looked at Michael it was with an admission: I'm a man like you, just like you. All he said, though, or needed to say was, "Let's go."

They started across the ruined garden. Michael stopped and picked up a large fallen palm frond. He retraced his way to the veranda and placed it gently on Nhat Than's body, to cover him.

 

Michael had the airport cab drop him off at the Empire State Building, where the CRS offices were. But Monsignor O'Shea was not there.

Michael was exhausted. He'd been traveling, space available, on MATS flights for two and a half days. It would have made sense to sleep, but in his mind by then the situation in Vietnam had become even more anarchic, more violent, and his mission, therefore—for that is what it was to him—was urgent. He shaved in the office washroom, borrowed a fresh collar from one of the CRS priests, left his bag there and set out for the cardinal's house on Madison Avenue.

The walk took Michael up the best stretch of Fifth Avenue, and after a year and a half, it was a foreign world to him, one to which, in his state, he had no particular reaction. He passed mannequins and travel posters, windows full of books. He cut between secretaries and shoppers with painted toenails and high-heeled sandals, the girls in their summer dresses, as the early Irwin Shaw so exactly put it. Taxicabs gunned at him as he crossed the streets and pretzel-sellers hawked. But he was indifferent to it all. Even as he cut down Fiftieth Street, which runs between St. Patrick's and Saks, that cathedral for consumers, he remained mentally and emotionally clutched, as if a lump of dough had congealed in his lungs.

The cardinal's residence was a gray, neo-Gothic mansion, one of the city's great houses, but the fact that it abutted the cathedral on one side and on the other faced the Villard Mansions, one of the great houses in the world—though in those days a major publisher and the chancery of the archdiocese occupied its separate wings—made the cardinal's own four-story abode seem modest, though not particularly friendly. Michael tried to shake himself from his strange, almost panicky mood by taking its halfdozen stairs jauntily, and swinging the door open as if he did it every day. In fact, like the vast majority of New York priests, he had never been in the cardinal's house, and he had never expected to be. Even the cardinal's own staff lived down the block in another building, with the cathedral staff. For other prelates, dignitaries, grand marshals of parades, the cardinal's residence was the setting for receptions catered by the Waldorf Astoria; for would-be mayors, governors and even presidents, it was the source of an invaluable benediction. But for common clergy, the cardinal's house was trouble.

It was unheard of that a priest should go there unsummoned, and Michael hadn't even called ahead. After the bright morning sunshine, the dark, paneled entrance foyer closed on him like night, and it was only a voice from a room to his left that gave him a clue to protocol.

"Yes? May I help you?"

Michael pushed the door open. An elderly woman sat at a typewriter. The room was cluttered in a Victorian way, overcurtained, overfurnished, ill-lit. The woman herself, with pinned hair and a doily-lace collar, seemed musty, left behind by another time.

"I'm here to see the cardinal. I'm Father Maguire from the CRS."

"CRS?" She was not impressed by his collar.

"Catholic Relief Service."

"Oh." She picked up the phone and dialed. "Monsignor, there's a young priest here. He says he has an appointment, but not that I know of." She listened, then squinted at Michael. "What did you say your name was?"

"Father Maguire."

"Father Maguire, he says. From the CFM."

"CRS," Michael corrected, but she ignored him.

She hung up the phone. "Monsignor Dugan's office is on the second floor. You should take the elevator there. His office is right next to it."

"I'll just walk up. The stairs...?"

"Take the elevator, if you please, Father. Monsignor said you should take the elevator."

They didn't want outsiders wandering around the building. The elevator would enable them to track him. He thanked the old lady, who only stared at him glumly.

The: elevator was closet-sized, and the clunking of the manually operated doors reverberated through the walls of that part of the building. The engine thunked into gear when he pressed the number, and then whirred piercingly as the cubicle rose. A time machine, he thought, out of H. G. Wells. When it stopped, the doors opened. Monsignor Dugan, the cardinal's secretary, a man as short as Spellman but thin and sharp-featured, was standing opposite Michael with an open show of quizzical irritation. For a moment Michael thought he wasn't going to let him out. Michael recognized him as the priest who'd served as master of ceremonies at his ordination, where he'd proved himself a virtuoso of the profound bow and the obeisance. Michael felt suddenly like an altar boy who was about to be rebuked for his slothful genuflections.

"Father Maguire?"

"Hello, Monsignor." Michael put his hand out.

Monsignor Dugan shook it, not limply but not firmly either. His quizzical look made it clear he was trying to recall if anyone had told him that Father Maguire was returning from Vietnam. He cocked an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation.

Michael could not assess at first what he was up against, though Dugan had the reputation of being impossible to get by. Priests often said it would be easier to get in to see Mayor Wagner or Senator Javits or even Governor Rockefeller than the cardinal, not that any of them wanted to.

"Miss Leonard says you have an appointment?"

"Her mistake, Monsignor. I told her that I'd come to see the cardinal. She assumed I had an appointment. But I don't."

"Well, Father, surely you understand that it's impossible. I'd have had Miss Leonard say as much to you, but it would have embarrassed her to do so. We don't have priests coming in off the street and expecting His Eminence to drop everything to see them."

"I understand that, Monsignor. I would not think of doing such a thing myself, but I arrived within the hour from Vietnam. It is urgent that I see His Eminence at once."

"About what?" Dugan asked carefully.

"About Ngo Dinh Diem."

Dugan stared at Michael. What he knew about were parishes, the ones in hock, and priests, the ones who drank too much. He knew about the schools, the efforts of the lay teachers to unionize, and the seminaries, that certain professors were spouting the ultraliberalism of that Swiss heretic, Kung. He knew about the downtown bankers who could get broker's fees cut and city hall hacks who could get the building code waived and the Aqueduct regulars who tracked the big bettors. He didn't know about Vietnam. Suddenly he realized that this young priest occupied a square on which Spelly, against advice, had placed a stack of chips. He knew the stack was teetering. "Come with me," he said, leading the way into his office, "and I'll check the cardinal's calendar."

"I have to see him right now, Monsignor."

"That's impossible." Dugan faced Michael. He stood with his back to his desk.

"Would you ask him?"

Monsignor Dugan had been vaguely aware of the furor over recent events in Vietnam, but if there were implications for the archdiocese in that madness, he had missed them. "Are you here to discuss your work with the CRS? Is that the point?"

"Yes."

"Well, then..." He sat back on the edge of his desk. Only now that he saw how to deal with this did he allow himself a hint of kindliness. "Then the appropriate thing for you to do is to take it up with Monsignor O'Shea or Bishop Swanstrom. If need be, they will approach the cardinal."

Michael shook his head and said firmly, "I'm the one who's here, Monsignor. I'm the one who wants to talk to him. I've traveled for two and a half days to talk to him. If he won't see me, all right. But I'd like you to ask him."

Neither man would look away. Finally the secretary softened. "Shall I put it that a brother priest seeks a word of counsel?"