Prince of Peace (54 page)

She shrugged, downshifted efficiently to take a curve, then speeded up again. "One hundred twenty beds, five nurses, one permanent doctor and two doctors from Da Nang. We have six clinics in surrounding villages, but since the marines it is impossible getting to three. Those clinics are, so to speak, closed."

"Have the Communists taken them over?"

She nodded. "That can be possible."

"I heard the NLF is strong everywhere out here."

She laughed. "Not in the daytime."

It was difficult to talk in the open jeep. His questions tripped over one another in his brain, but he waited. He wanted to see her face more clearly when she answered him. He sat back against the worn seat and enjoyed the wash of air. The scenery was stunning. The lake amid the mountains, like water in a cup, reminded him of the lake at Bear Mountain up the Hudson where the priests of Good Shepherd took altar boys on camping trips.

Soon they approached the hospital compound.
"Voila"
she said, turning in.

Michael saw four whitewashed stucco buildings, only one of which was two stories high. Huge overarching palms cast delicate shadows and a breeze off the lake cooled the air. Between the buildings were makeshift shelters, palm branches stretched across bamboo frames, and under them were the inert forms of dozens of Vietnamese men and women. At first Michael gasped, thinking they were corpses.

Fraulein Holz noticed his reaction. "They are the families of our patients."

"But they look dead, like a massacre."

She shook her head. "It is siesta, Father. Even during war the people need siesta." When she'd brought the jeep to a halt and shut the engine off, she said, "I told you one hundred twenty beds. What I have not said is in each bed two patients, and in children's ward, three."

"Do you see burns in your hospital?"

"Not often."

"When I came over I was very conscious of napalm."

She shrugged, callously. "If all weapons were like napalm, Father, people like us would not be needed."

"Forgive me, but there is a question I must ask you. I was told your hospital and dispensaries supply the Viet Cong with medicine."

She seemed amazed. She said, "They steal our medicine. We can do nothing."

"Do you lock it?"

"Of course we lock. Our medicine is precious. We have to ship it in from Germany."

"The government doesn't supply you because you are considered partisans."

She reached across from the driver's seat and took the cigarette he offered. While she lit it from his match she shook her head. "The government does not supply us because we will not black market with the district chief. He asks always a quarter of our drugs."

"You don't treat the Viet Cong?"

"We treat diseases and wounds."

"V.C. wounds?"

Inge Holz smiled at him through her smoke. "Is this
Beichte,
Father? Confession?"

"I think you ought to know what I've been told. Your hospital would be closed if you weren't German nationals."

"We treat all people who come to us."

Michael stared at her, then nodded. "Good. Then I'll stick up for you. The Council of Volunteer Agencies was asked to withdraw its certification from you."

But she wasn't grateful. "You collect evidence? Why should I believe you are a priest?"

Michael smiled. "I am, really."

"But perhaps a priest with the CIA. Priests in this country work for the government. What will you do with me, some head-shaving, no?" Now she smiled, but cynically.

He shook his head. "Nothing so exciting. Just what I said in my letter. Just a survey of hospital facilities for the Council." He paused. "When I first came, it was to lay the groundwork for an evacuation of wounded children to the States, but I've had no luck with that."

"Luck!" She laughed, then looked at him bitterly. "Why should you have luck here?"

She got out of the jeep, flicking the cigarette away. He followed her, for his tour of her hospital.

 

Children ranging in age from perhaps eight to twelve years old were gathered on their haunches around Michael in the shadow of a palm tree in the hospital yard. It was late afternoon of the next day, and the children, having overcome their bashfulness, were helping the tall American practice his Vietnamese.

In his time Michael had mastered not many more than a dozen rudimentary phrases. He had no gift for language. But he'd won the children over with his animation, his flamboyant gestures, his great-hearted but finally laughable rendition of words they took for granted.

"
Chào ong
" he said earnestly.

The children laughed and clapped their hands at him because the phrase meant "good morning," and here it was afternoon. None of them dared correct him.

"
Tôi la, Père Michel."
My name is Father Michael. "
Tên ông la git
" What is your name? He repeated the question until one of the children answered him, a boy who said his name was Tran. Michael bowed to him. The other children grew silent. Everyone waited for Tran to speak, as politeness required.

"Ông sē ô lai bao lâu?"

Michael made him repeat it very slowly until he understood; how long will you stay?

"Thú-nam,"
he answered. Until Thursday.

Tran bowed, making it clear that the exchange satisfied what need he had to expose himself to the stranger. After that Michael found it impossible to draw out the children further. It was then, to prolong the encounter, that he began reciting all the phrases he could remember. He came to one that a boy in Pleiku had taught him. "
Doán thanh niên ta Vung lòng tâm tri."
We, the youth of the nation, must remain firm and determined.

Abruptly the children rose and scampered away, to rejoin their relatives under the bamboo shelters.

Inge Holz had been watching from the veranda of one of the buildings. Michael stood and crossed to her. "What happened?"

"They are afraid of that."

"Of that saying?"

"It is not a saying, Father. It is a line from the national anthem. The ARVN soldiers must sing it while marching, but in the villages singing this is dangerous crime. The NLF will cut out your tongue."

"I thought it was just a slogan."

"What is 'slogan'?"

"It's, well, just a saying."

"So. But here, nothing is just slogan."

Michael looked across the compound. The children had dispersed. He couldn't see them. He wanted to run after them and say he wasn't testing them. He wasn't trapping them. He wanted to apologize. He felt disgusted with himself.

He remembered the paper he was holding, a leaflet one of the children had given him. He held it up. "Is your Vietnamese good enough to translate this?"

She took it and read in a dead voice, but without stumbling, "The wicked Viet Cong have stored weapons and supplies in your village. Soon air force gunfire is going to be conducted on your village to destroy these Viet Cong supplies. We ask that you leave your village, as we do not wish to kill innocent people. And when you return to your village repel the Viet Cong so that the government will not have to fire on your village again."

Inge Holz handed the leaflet back to Michael and turned and walked away from him.

A
CROSS
from the hospital compound was the lake Michael had seen from the helicopter. Along its edge ran a sliver of a beach, and he was walking it, barefoot. It had been four days since he'd arrived. He'd visited the dispensaries that were still active there and he'd interviewed the Malta staff. It was time to move on, but Michael was in the grip of an unusual lethargy. He didn't understand anymore what he was doing there. His round of visitations seemed pointless.

The water lapped gently against the cuticle of sand, and Michael let it bathe his feet as he walked absently along. Perhaps half a mile from the compound he was startled to come upon a bather's towel stretched on the beach, and near it a tattered straw basket. A pair of pilot's sunglasses lay on the towel next to a propped-open book. He looked out at the water. In the glare it took a moment to spot the swimmer, a moving speck far out in the lake. Who was it?

He looked at the book. The title was in German and at first he assumed he wouldn't know it, but then he saw the author's name, Ignace Lepp, and recognized the title, in translation
The Christian Failure.
It was a book Michael had read in the seminary, an indictment of the German Catholic clergy for its willingness to cooperate with Hitler. He picked the book up. Inside the cover was written the name, in tight, European script,
Inge Holz.

Why is she reading this? he wondered. He stared out at the lake. She was so far away. As he watched the speck growing even smaller, he found himself imagining her body moving through the water, arms and legs working, head turning up for air, hair trailing. It was a surprise to him how easily he could call up her image—her body was lithe, not voluptuous, but lovely—and only then did he realize how her subtle womanliness had affected him.

Crazily he thought of the notorious Viet Cong ploy: maidens swimming naked in a lake, waving at passing GIs, beckoning them. The GIs drop their rifles, dash across the sand, undoing their webbelts, then fall suddenly through a punji trap, taking dung-coated razor spikes the length of their bodies. Seduce and destroy.

Michael shuddered and dismissed the image. What was happening to him?

He took off his shirt and his black chinos, stripping to his brown, army-issue boxer-shorts. Absently he touched Wiley's wooden cross at his chest as he walked into the water. When it was waist-deep he dove in and went after her. He was a strong swimmer, and before long he'd caught up with her, and simply fell into pace. They matched each other, stroke for stroke, until she turned over on her back. He did likewise and they began the return lap. They never looked at each other or spoke. Michael fixed his concentration on the fierce blue of the sky. By the time they reached the beach again they'd been swimming in sync with each other for twenty minutes. What a relief to have left behind the jarring edginess that had made their encounters so awkward. The fluidity of swimming, the instinctive common rhythm of their timing, made Michael feel as though they'd been intimate with each other.

She went ahead of him to her towel. He felt self-conscious about being in his underwear but stifled the impulse to pull on his chinos quickly, lest she think him prudish. The brown shorts in fact were perfectly modest. He sat on the sand a little apart and watched her drying herself. She wore an ordinary blue bathing suit. As she toweled her hair he saw the magical impress of her nipples through her suit; the sight stirred him, but also underscored his inexperience; nipples grew erect either through arousal, wasn't it, or cold?

Her hair was long, to her shoulders, half-brown, half-blond. It brushed at her shoulders, at her breasts. His eye fell to her deeply tanned legs, their subtle curves. He saw the flash of white between her thighs where she had not shown herself to the sun. She seemed oblivious to the effect on him of her drying herself. He stared at her as if he'd rarely seen the feminine form so displayed, which was true, of course. Inadvertently, naturally, she was outflanking his careful, measured, clerical reserve.

She offered him her towel. He declined.

She spread it again and sat.

To his regret she put on her sunglasses. He reached for his shirt, for his cigarettes. He offered her one and she accepted. He crossed to her, lit their cigarettes from one match, and then sat an arm's length and a little more away.

He couldn't think what to say. I admire your work? Why aren't you modeling fancy dresses in Berlin? Where'd you learn to swim so well?

He said finally, "I noticed your book."

She glanced at it and nodded.

"Not what I would call beach reading."

She pulled her knees close to her chest and linked her arms around them. "Difficult reading," she said, "for a German Catholic."

"Is that why you joined Malta? Is that why you are here?" How had Nicholas Wiley put it? To atone?

She shrugged, moved the book aside absently with her foot. "In Mainz, my own archbishop. He gave sermons at the cathedral. He said the Jews were termites."

"Termites?"

She thought she'd mispronounced it. "An insect that destroys a house by eating the wood.
Die Termite.
I remember the word distinctly. That week houses in Jewish Quarter of Mainz were for the first time burned."

"You remember that?"

"Yes."

They fell silent, smoking.

After a long time, Michael said, "So you're from Mainz. I'm from New York."

"Ah!" She buried the tip of her cigarette in the sand. "Cardinal Spellman."

"That's right."

"He came at Christmas to the air base at Da Nang. They wanted us to go there for his Mass. All the volunteers, to receive his blessing. To kiss his ring. I would not."

Michael stared at her. He sensed the depth of her feeling. Her strength. She reminded him of someone. Carolyn, of course.

She said, "To hear him preach against the termites."

"Cardinal Spellman doesn't speak for me on the subject of Vietnam, Fräulein."

"Oh? Who does?"

Michael had to think about it. "No one."

She nodded. "So it was with us."

He shook his head. "I understand your point of view. You think of me as just another marine, but I'm not."

"You think because you visit hospitals that makes you different. But you ride in their helicopters. You are friendly with the men who do these things." She looked at him sharply. The sun glinted off her dark glasses. "Forgive me, Father, but you are like the girls who wait outside their camps. When you are there they are happy about what they do. All the better if they can..." She shrugged instead of finishing.

"...screw me."

She laughed. "Yes."

"Am I so different from you? Anybody here who tries to soften the blows becomes part of the situation that makes them possible."

"I do not like your war, Father. I do not want that you Americans do these things here, and I think you should make a stop." In her anger her English grew more confused.