Prince of Peace (57 page)

The Saigonese, on the other hand, were cynical and indifferent. As long as the generals kept the war in the country, and as long as the Americans stayed in the Cowboy Bars on Tu Do Street and the MPs kept the drunken soldiers away from their daughters, they ignored the government. They did business, that was all. On this day they closed their shops, though, and strolled the city as if it were Paris.

The Buddhist Struggle Movement, which had turned out hundreds of thousands of protesters against Diem, and which in a year, in 1966, would bring Saigon to the brink of chaos, was quiescent now. Thousands of its leaders were still in jail, and the Catholic opposition was wielding its power more subtly. Only students could be rallied in numbers that summer, and to them the condition of a divided Vietnam was less a National Shame than a fact of political life they had grown up with. A day of protest against the government that protected their draft-exempt status and against the Americans who brought them their beloved Everly Brothers and blue jeans was more a lark than an act of conscience.

In sum, if you weren't looking that day, you might not have noticed the earnest demonstrators, though two small groups of them were easily identifiable. A single file of saffron-robed monks snaked through throngs of white-suited men and ladies in flowing
ao-dai
dresses on Lam Son Square before the Continental Palace Hotel. Some of the monks struck shoulder-drums and others carried signs saying, "Vietnam for the Vietnamese" and "Down with U.S. Intervention in Vietnamese Internal Affairs," and "One Vietnam" and "All Life Is Suffering." The Buddhists and the students, perhaps one thousand all together, were going to spend the day chanting and praying in front of the American embassy.

The Catholic priests did not want to be taken as an adjunct to the Buddhist demonstration, as, being so few, they would have. So they changed their plan. They would avoid the embassy. It was Michael who suggested that instead they take their procession to the MACV Headquarters which that summer were still in a three-story French villa in a residential neighborhood. In fact it was a better place to make their point since their objection was not to America or Americans, but to the American military buildup. They did not know it, but no demonstrations had been conducted at the headquarters before, and because of what they started that day, it would be moved soon to a secure concrete building in the middle of Tan Son Nhut.

At the Presidential Palace they prayed the rosary in Latin before the huge elaborate gates on the other side of which deferential guards watched nervously. The guards were obviously relieved when the priests set off, in single file like the Buddhists, but behind the tall American. Michael carried the procession cross. Pham carried their only sign, which said in English and Vietnamese, "We Pray For Peace. Stop Killing Our People." Each of the other priests carried a candle and his breviary. As they walked they recited the Psalms.

The procession took them down Thong Nhut Street, a broad boulevard that had until recently been lined with graceful elms. But it was a bald street now and had a ravaged look. It had not been bombed, but the elms had been cut down early in the summer to accommodate the huge American trucks that were bringing soldiers and supplies in from Tan Son Nhut, which by July was, and would remain for years, the busiest airport in the world. "Thong Nhut" meant unification, and at the opposite end of the boulevard from the palace was the National Zoo, which gave rise to a Saigon joke; what Unification Street unified were not the halves of the country but the monkey houses at its either end.

The crowds who were long accustomed to demonstrations of Buddhist monks could not ignore these Catholic priests, not even a mere dozen of them. The people eased aside for them and craned to read their sign. The priests walked solemnly past stymied pedicabs and boys who were forced by the crush to push their Lambrettas along the sidewalks. It may have been the National Day of Shame, but in Saigon—wasn't this typical?—it had the look of a festival. The shops were closed, but at improvised stands along the curb, sellers hawked flowers, decorations and black-market goods—transistor radios, Zippo lighters and Timex watches. Even these cagey merchants gawked when the priests went by. The street urchins—the Vietnamese called them
bui doi,
the dust of life— who pestered browsers for coins or, when they dared, picked their pockets, stood back. Catholic priests rarely left their churches or appeared in public in groups, and they never criticized the war. Old men pointed to the sign Father Pham carried and then fell to arguing about what they'd seen. Was it the funeral procession of a Spiritist sect? Were they Palm Tree Prophets? Was the man in front Caucasian? As word spread ahead of them that they were coming, people both came to the street to see and moved away from it out of certainty that such a demonstration would soon draw government riot police.

For his part Michael felt that he was enacting a dream he'd had years before. He remembered walking in single file with other POWs from one camp to the next, through Korean and Chinese villages, until finally they were brought to the prison camp at Chung Kang Djin across the Yalu. Asian faces had stared at him all along the way. In some towns they had jeered and hated. Now they were staring again, and again it was their hatred he was aware of, though no one cursed him or raised a fist. But they would have if they'd known! They'd have screamed at him and torn at his clothing. They'd have spit. "What are you doing in Asia again? Why can't you leave us alone?"

He remembered the mob of refugees rushing at him. He'd been ready with his bayonet, but had been spared using it. Once all the Americans—the Occidentals—were safe, he'd blown the Asians to smithereens. And now, fifteen years later, more powerfully than before, sorrow flowed from him. This procession was an act of penitence. This should have been Good Friday. "O my people, what have I done to thee?"

When he'd first come home from Korea, Michael had struck me as Ransom's "Tower unleaning." He was so erect, so spare, so stripped of the superfluous, so radical, so rooted! But wasn't he still? The impression those twelve priests made as they moved slowly through Saigon's streets was in large part an impression
he
made, towering above everyone in sight, setting the pace for the others with his steady cadence and holding at the level of his brow the ornate brass crucifix, the racked body of Jesus facing away from him and toward the city, toward the people and toward the army offices to which they marched.

Now they were reciting, in Latin, the Second Psalm. "Why do the nations rage and the peoples utter folly? The kings of the earth rise up, and the princes conspire together against the Lord and against His Anointed: 'Let us break their fetters and cast their bonds from us!' He who is throned in heaven laughs; the Lord derides them."

It was a new idea. To Michael Maguire the kings of the earth against whom the Scriptures railed incessantly had never included the leaders of his own country. But now that he had heard the words of the prophets as addressed to
him
and to
his
people—as opposed merely to, say, the Sodomites—revelation occurred as for the first time. America was not exempt from the judgment of God. Nor, for that matter, was the Church! The kings of the earth and the princes conspire! Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Van Thuan! Lyndon Baines Johnson and Francis Cardinal Spellman!

"Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice before Him; with trembling pay homage to Him, lest He be angry and you perish from the way when His anger blazes suddenly. Happy are all who take refuge in Him!"

Michael Maguire embodied in himself, without knowing it, the end of the great American Catholic Success Story. He was, first, its crowning achievement—a Silver Star Priest. His Catholic Faith had never seemed more glorious than when it enabled him to withstand the pressures of a Chinese prison. His Catholic Faith had made him a patriot and a hero, and the Church celebrated him as if the purpose of the Incarnation was to make us better American citizens. Michael Maguire was what all those seminary estates up the Hudson and along Lake Michigan and in the hills of California were trying to, in their word, "form." He was the man with twin loyalties,
Deus et Patria,
and they were equal, matched, one at the service of the other.

But the seminaries, not understanding the risks in such exposure, had confronted him with the Word of God. It was a domesticated Word, to be sure, one that had left unmoved and unchanged generations of seminarians before. But Michael Maguire, thanks to the chance gift of Timothy O'Shea, had begun his confrontation with the Word of God in the Chinese prison, and a seed was planted well before he entered the "seed bed." It would take years to bear fruit, but when it did, it would set him apart from almost all his brothers.

He understood inchoately that the Word of God was what kept him free in prison, and that taught him that the Word of God is freedom itself. "You cannot imprison the Word of the Lord." Paul's antiphon came back to him. You cannot imprison the Word of the Lord in a phrase like
Deus et Patria,
for the Word has nothing to do with America. Michael's anger blazed suddenly at all he'd been taught, at all he'd believed, at all he'd built his life around. His anger blazed, purifying, cauterizing.

You cannot imprison the Word of God in a national purpose, in a Cause, in a culture, in narrowly defined—nationally defined—religion. By walking in that procession with those Vietnamese priests, speaking not for Communism or Buddhism or the reunification of Vietnam or the defeat of the Dominoes—speaking only for the sacred right of innocent people not to have fire poured on their heads, Michael, having been captured by the Word, had become its instrument.

"The Word of God," Paul says, "is something alive and active. It cuts like any double-edged sword, but more finely. It can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from marrow."

It can even slip between the words "America" and "Catholic," and can declare that from now on they should be presumed to have nothing to do with each other. What had seemed our moment of glory—this is what Michael saw—had been the beginning of our disgrace. John Kennedy embodied both when he said in his great Inaugural—how we cheered him for it; these words more than any prepared us for Vietnam—"On earth God's work must truly be our own."

The eyes of every Asian that fell on Michael Maguire, who hid his own behind the blurring crucifix, flared with hatred. He seemed to hear their voices sputtering.

What has "God's work" to do with firestorms above our cities? What has "God's work" to do with throwing our sons out of helicopters? What has "God's work" to do with cutting off our ears? With herbicides, defoliants, white phosphorus or napalm? What has "God's work" to do with body-counts or "Cong catchers"? With forcing live flare rods into the orifices—mouths, anuses and vaginas—of men and women, the sons and daughters—even if you despise us as Slopes, Slant-Eyes and Gooks—of the Almighty, Everlasting, Vengeance-seeking, Justice-loving Lord God! You dare call what you do "God's work"! You dare invoke that Name! That Word! You scum! You worm! Leave! Begone! Get out! Let my people go! Yes,
my
people! It is Yahweh who speaks! The Lord of History, Creator of the Universe, Absolute Future toward Whom all time pulses, God!

 

The Military Assistance Command—Vietnam Headquarters was easily distinguished from the other turn-of-the-century villas in which the French colonial elite had lived, because from its roof sprouted a forest of antennae. White and silver communications disks tilted toward the dull sky, which seemed lower. Rain was closer.

In front of the villa a sandbag barrier four feet high blocked half the street, keeping traffic in the far lane. There were no crowds on the sidewalk here, though curious, perhaps foolhardy, Saigonese were trailing along behind the procession now.

The two MPs at the villa gate saw them coming and called for reinforcements.

The priests now recited the
Te Deum,
the hymn of praise that every Catholic priest of that generation and before knew by heart because he recited it as a prayer of thanksgiving as he left the altar after Mass. "You overcame the sting of death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. You are seated at God's right hand in glory. We believe that you will come and be our judge. Come, then, Lord, sustain Your people, bought with the price of your own blood, and bring us with your saints to everlasting glory."

Death,
mors.
Blood,
sanguis.
Judge,
judex.
Your people,
tuus populus.

The words reverberated in that space between their souls and spirits, between their bones and marrow, as they closed the last distance to the American building.

By the time they reached the sandbag barrier, two squads of combat-ready American soldiers were filing out of the villa, rifles at exact angles across their breasts, obscuring their faces so that they need not look the demonstrators in the eyes.

What Michael fixed upon were the gleaming bayonets; he remembered his own and what he'd have done with it, all too willingly. A fresh wave of feeling flowed in him, but now for the first time that morning, his sorrow and anger having kept it at bay, it was fear. It flowed as cleanly as blood would once a rifle's blade had pierced him.

He began to pray, reciting numbly, "Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people. Enkindle in them the fire of your love." Then in his own voice, he whispered, "Oh Christ, help me do this."

The soldiers marched out of the compound, into the street, and as the priests stopped in a single line in front of the barrier, the soldiers split into two files and surrounded them. They were uniformly tall and burly, physically intimidating. The first blow was their appearance. There were perhaps fifty, and more than half were black men.

The sergeant barked an order, and the soldiers froze, ready.

Then a Vietnamese officer addressed a command to the priests. Disperse at once. Michael fixed his eyes upon the brass cross. It hadn't occurred to him that they wouldn't be allowed to stand peacefully in the street, for a time at least. The Buddhists conducted their demonstrations with impunity. But of course the government had learned to live with Buddhists, and the news media had long since ignored them. But Catholics! And priests! And an American!