The City Below

by James Carroll

  Two or three in back began drifting toward the door.

  "Hey, guys, come on," Terry said.

  But others joined them.

  The room suddenly reeked of fear and despair, and Terry's anger returned, not at the blindsiding pope but at these, his only friends. "What have all these years been for, if now we can't —"

  One of the exiting seminarians, having opened the door, gasped audibly and fell back On the other side of the threshold, where they'd obviously been listening, were two figures in black cassocks with red piping at the seams and broad red sashes, Monsignors Loughlin and Fenton, the chancellor and the rector. Behind them, even more dramatically outfitted in a crimson cassock and skullcap, a gold pectoral cross stuck in his sash, was stout, crimson-faced Bishop Cowley, the auxiliary.

  Doyle waited for them to show some sign of embarrassment, but there was none. The faces of the prelates were like a triple set of radar dishes sweeping across the stunned figures, pointedly avoiding Doyle to settle on the blackboard with its scrawl of interdicted words and phrases.

  Monsignor Loughlin, ice in his voice, broke the silence. "Gentlemen," he said. His gold cuff links flashed as he pulled at his sleeve. He was famously proud of his resemblance, especially in that getup, to the acetylene-eyed Fulton J. Sheen, but to Doyle, all he lacked were the steel-rim glasses and a cigarette held aloft in his fingertips to be the very incarnation of a Nazi. "To your rooms," he said, and it struck Terry as strange that he lacked a German accent. "Consider yourselves in magnum silentium room restriction until further notice."

  The men filed out of the classroom, abject and silent, like prisoners. Doyle was last to go. Great silence? Why then, as he walked past the three priests, was there that ringing in his ears?

  The next morning an index card appeared under his door. Report to me, it said, above the dread initials I. F. Terry opened his door quickly, but no one was there. He crossed the hall, rapped once on Jimmy Adler's door, waited for the grunt from within, then opened it He remained in the corridor, as the rule required.

  Adler was at his desk The long row of cassock buttons was half undone. Under the formal black garment, his dull white T-shirt seemed shabby.

  "Here it is," Terry said, holding up the index card. "I've been drafted."

  "Jesus Christ, Terry, be carefid, or you might be for real. That's what's waiting for us all out there."

  "We'll be okay, Jimmy. We just have to stick together."

  "I don't know."

  "What do you mean?"

  "There was a meeting of some of the guys this morning."

  "What?"

  "In the second-floor shower room, imagine that?"

  "A meeting?"

  "Guys who think we should just sign the damn thing."

  It alarmed Doyle to see Adler's freckles sink as the tide of color rose in his face.

  "How do you know?"

  "I was there."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "What would the point of that have been? You'd just —"

  "The point would have been, we'd be together! Shit, Jimmy, we can't start breaking into —"

  "You started it That's what they're saying."

  "How? How did I?"

  "The press release business. A lot of guys feel like —"

  "I can't hassle this now. I've got to get to Fenton's office:. But, goddamnit, my only chance was that we're all together."

  "Well ..."

  "Why were you at the meeting?"

  "I went to see what they're saying. I went for you. Rogers and Graham are taking the oath. So are a few others."

  "How many?"

  "Maybe a dozen."

  "Christ!" Terry slammed his palm against the doorjamb.

  "We still have the majority, but ..."

  "But what?"

  "Not a majority want the bruhaha."

  "The bruhaha comes with the act, Jimmy. We are saying no to the pope."

  Adler threw his hands up. "You don't have to convince me. I'm on your side, remember? You'd better go."

  "I know, I know ... It's just ..." Hurt and disappointment stabbed at Doyle. "Anyway, I'll let you know. Maybe he wants to tell me they're dropping the requirement, to avoid ..."

  Adler was shaking his head.

  Terry grinned. "No?"

  "Not a chance. Isn't that the nub? These guys don't back down."

  "Well, they trained us to be like them."

  "You didn't let me finish. They don't back down unless pressed from above. Then they collapse like a house of cards. We are not like them. If we were, we'd eat this shit." Adler stood, went to the threshold, and took Terry's arm, a rare gesture of the physical. "Go get him, tiger. We are with you."

  A few minutes later, Terry was at the rector's door, knocking briskly.

  "Come!"

  Terry had trouble turning the doorknob because of the moisture in his palm.

  "Come!" the monsignor repeated.

  For a moment Doyle thought he would have to pull his hand inside his sleeve, use the material of his cassock to grip the knob. Finally he managed it.

  Monsignor Fenton's office was an ascetic cubicle, monastic in feel. By contrast, Father Collins's room always looked like the library annex after an earthquake. This room featured two wooden chairs opposite a small, clean desk that held a telephone, an empty In box, and, centered, the priest's open breviary. Fenton sat with his hands palm-down on either side of the prayer book He was about fifty, bald and stout His Roman collar pinched his neck He sat peering over the tops of his rimless glasses, as he did from the altar when some student coughed too loudly during Mass.

  Terry had given himself a rigid set of instructions in how to do this —uncowed politeness —but now it required all his concentration just to get his heavy legs moving inside the tent of his cassock. "You wanted to see me, Monsignor?"

  Monsignor Fenton closed his prayer book, but he maintained his stiff upright posture. "Father Collins informs me that you knew full well what you were doing."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "That he conveyed my order to you in explicit terms."

  "What order, Monsignor?"

  "Not to call that meeting." Fenton's beefy face belied the impression his monkish room was intended to make. Students took turns serving food at the faculty table, and knew he was a man of undisciplined appetite, although in weekly spiritual conferences he loved to quote Merton. On the wall behind him was a crucifix, on another a portrait of the skeletal Cushing, and on a third of the roly-poly John XXIII, whom he resembled.

  "The meeting had already been called when Father Collins —"

  "You subsequently convened a second meeting."

  "Not a second one. We had adjourned for chapel and dinner, that's all. By then it wasn't up to me."

  "You met in secret."

  "No." But Terry cut his denial short, tacking. "My job as head student was to bring Monsignor Loughlin's statement before the men, make sure they understood it"

  "Not Monsignor Loughlin's statement. Cardinal Cushing's."

  "That's an issue, isn't it? We heard that our taking the oath was imposed on the cardinal, that he had no choice."

  "Where did you hear that?"

  Father Collins had thrown in with these bastards. Why did Terry feel obliged to protect him? He stood mute before the rector.

  "I'd like an answer to my question, Mr. Doyle."

  "We know that Cardinal O'Boyle in Washington, and the apostolic delegate —"

  "You know nothing!" Fenton hissed. "The requirement of this oath is Cardinal Cushing's, do you hear me?"

  "In that case, the deacon class would like a meeting with His Eminence to discuss —"

  "Out of the question!" The monsignor's left eye seemed to bulge, contorting the side of his face, which he immediately covered with his hand. "And you are not in here to make requests. Is that clear?"

  "Yes, Monsignor."

  Fenton faced away from Terry, fumbled in his robes for his handkerchief, applied it to his eye
for a moment When he'd regained his composure, he shook his head. "You would insult the cardinal to his face?"

  Doyle felt a concentration of heat in the back of his neck. "We'd like a chance to explain to Cardinal Cushing how we feel."

  "Feel? How you feel is not important"

  Such a simple statement, it would be so easy to remember. Doyle recognized it as the perfect summary of all his years here. He said nothing, staring at the red welt swelling on the crown of the rector's left cheekbone.

  Fenton slumped back in his chair. "Mr. Doyle." As the cloud of sadness moved in on his anger, his tone changed. "Terry ... Terry ... you were the cardinal's spes gregis."

  Hope of the flock Terry felt the heat in his neck spreading to his face. But we aren't a flock, he wanted to say. We aren't sheep.

  "You know what you mean to him, what with your grandfather."

  "Monsignor, I —"

  "No, let me say something. Something simple. Will you let me say it?"

  That Monsignor Fenton stopped and waited for an answer confused Terry. Then Terry guessed what was behind his hesitation: the cardinal wanted Ned Cronin's grandson straightened out, not fired. Fenton's notorious readiness to belittle and banish was unaccountably in check, but realizing why only increased the weight on Terry. He said, "Yes."

  Fenton nodded. "You've made several mistakes this week My job is to point them out. Your largest is the mistake of thinking that the issue here is birth control. That is not the main issue of the oath, or even of the encyclical. The issue is whether the Church will continue to tell the truth to its people, the basic truth that life is tragic, it is difficult, that we cannot live on this earth without pain and sorrow. The key to happiness is discipline,self-discipline. That's what we teach here. That's all we teach."

  "And I've learned it. I believe it."

  "Yet you prepare to join the chorus of false prophets who tell the people what they want to hear, that there are no consequences to their acts, that they can live for today without a care for tomorrow. Birth control is the perfect symbol of such irresponsibility, and that is why the Church opposes it, and why the Church is right to require its priests to oppose it too."

  "But with an oath, Monsignor? Doesn't that imply a breakdown of the trust that priests owe to one another? Our objection is to the oath."

  "The breakdown of trust, Terry?" Monsignor Fenton shook his head sadly while leaning to his left to reach into a lower desk drawer. "We trusted you." He pulled out a set of lined yellow pages covered with script. "Yet you betrayed that trust" He dropped the pages dramatically on his desk.

  "What is that?"

  "The complete record of your inciting to disobedience and to heresy."

  "Heresy?" The word hung in the air between them, fetid and musty, like an artifact hauled up from a tomb.

  Monsignor Fenton tapped the sheets of paper with a heavy forefinger. Its nail had been chewed. "From the Greek, literally 'a choice,' choosing a doctrine at variance with what the Church holds. What would you call it?"

  "I'm not choosing a doctrine." Terry craned over the desk, allowing himself to look at the pages he'd already recognized. He knew the cramped handwriting at once.

  "You've chosen to seek counsel with a Protestant minister on a matter of faith and morals?"

  "What?"

  "You saw him without permission. Reverend McKay."

  "Bishop McKay. You mean Bishop McKay." Strangely, Terry began to relax. Here was the worst thing that could have happened —speaking of broken trust The yellow notepad pages were Jimmy's. Only Jimmy knew about his visit to Joy Street Jimmy Adler, the other Charlestown kid, one of the only men at St. John's remotely like Terry. His closest thing to a friend.

  "Reverend McKay," Fenton insisted.

  "Cardinal Cushing does not hesitate to call him Bishop. Why should you?"

  "You don't know what Cardinal —"

  "'My fellow bishop,' I believe is how he put it at the ecumenical service at Trinity Church."

  Fenton shrugged. "His Eminence is famous for being the liberal ecumenist Technically, still, he's wrong, but I wouldn't think of correcting him in public. No loyal priest of Boston would embarrass His Eminence."

  "Bishop McKay is a personal friend of mine. I went to college with his son."

  "You went straight to his office on Beacon Hill after leaving the cathedral. This strategy of orchestrated defiance was his —"

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You can't say that, Monsignor. You're trying to blame this on Bishop McKay?" Now he saw the priest as a figure less of defensive foolishness than of real menace, an overweight, Deep South sheriff. "You're blaming an 'outside agitator'?" Terry's voice was cold and battering, imprudent and impudent both. He didn't care.

  Monsignor Fenton ignored Doyle to make notes in the margin of one of Jimmy's pages.

  So be it, Terry thought "The problem with swearing an oath is our problem. My classmates and I have a problem of conscience."

  "And the purity of your conscience," Fenton said, violating his clear intention to remain above this, "is more important than preserving the cardinal's room to maneuver, his ability to work behind the scenes to what could be the same end you claim to want By making a public controversy —"

  "The oath is what does that."

  "The oath was to be discreet, administered in private, only to satisfy Rome."

  "Yes. Private because it's shameful."

  "There is no shame in fulfilling our obligation in holy obedience to the vicar of Christ, a virtue no Protestant divine could be expected —"

  "Monsignor, is there no shame in setting your seminarians to spy on one another?" Terry let all his disgust and anger flow into the arm he threw toward the pages on the desk "Does Jimmy Adler get extra allowance next free day? What'll it be, thirty dimes or thirty quarters?"

  "You dare to compare yourself to the betrayed Christ?"

  "Monsignor, I never —"

  "Silence!"

  Doyle's mouth snapped shut He towered over the rector's desk, hands at his sides, coiled into fists.

  The skin of Fenton's face was all veins and splotches now, a mask of swelling conflagration. His eyes refused to blink as he hissed, "You are forbidden to discuss this matter with anyone, do you hear? You are restricted to your room except for meals, chapel exercises, and spiritual direction. You are to examine your conscience carefully, consider your choices as they weigh on the scales of eternity. And you are to present yourself to me Friday, immediately after matins, prepared to recite and sign the ordination affirmation. Now get out of my sight."

  Terry moved slowly back from the desk until he was at the door. "Restricted, Monsignor?" he said then. "Does that mean my pastoral work as well? I'm supposed to begin at BC tomorrow. Campus ministry is my deacon-year assignment." Deacon year? What could the future implied in that phrase, once so golden, possibly amount to now?

  Monsignor Fenton seemed not to have heard Doyle's question. He stared, as if flaunting his eyelid's refusal to drop.

  Terry's mind leapt from the rector's eyes to the image of the eyes of a foul shooter. He saw the open expanse of Roberts Gym, that gleaming stretch of floor, the crisp white nets of those indoor buckets, the glass backboards. Eyes dead on the front lip of the rim. First shot!

  Fenton had not said no. Terry turned away thinking, Silence means assent Fuck him. BC again, and therefore basketball! The smell of wintergreen and sweat, the squeak of sneakers, the feel of the pebbly leather on rosined fingertips. Terry's mind flew to the physical sensations of his sport, leaving his hurt behind, his anger, and also fear.

  His job as a deacon would be to hang out in the gym on Wednesdays, a "pastoral presence," imaging Christ among the players. It had been his idea, and once Coach Ryan had embraced it, the BC chaplain had approved instantly. And Monsignor Fenton, just now, had not said no. As he turned the doorknob and pulled, he took complete refuge —Jimmy! —in the idea of the only thing he'd ever been really good at Second shot!

  So he le
ft the rector's office —was this perverse, or miraculous? —feeling relieved. It was the evening of the same day that Squire came with his shamrock plant, and was sent away. Terry was never told of his brother's visit.

  The next afternoon, Terry went into the chapel to kneel for a few minutes alone. He was wearing black, but decidedly not a suit. Instead, Levi's cords and a short-sleeve clerical shirt with the little white tab that said into slots at the collar, marking him as a with-it version of what he'd spent so many years becoming. At BC, he knew, the college kids would think he was already a priest Usually he loved it.

  "Rejoice in the Lord," he began as always, "for he is near." He buried his face in his hands. "O Lord, make haste to help me." His lean, erect body was creased only at the knees. As he automatically recited antiphons that popped into his head —"Lord God, in your saving plan all things are ours, but we are Christ's, and Christ is yours" —he was at the mercy of a strange detachment, wondering if the usual consolation would come to him now. Soon the phrases from the psalter failed him, and in his mind he asked, as if of someone else, "What are you going to do?"

  What am I going to do? The question hit him as familiar, but not from the psalter or the saints. What am I going to do? Then he recognized the words as those he had attributed to Senator Kennedy after Bobby's death. What am I going to do now?

  Ted Kennedy: Terry Doyle's unlikely existentialist, his unlikely saint.

  He brought his face up out of his hands and, again automatically, his gaze went to the crucifix above him, the gnarled, twisted fist of a body. A lost human life. Of human life: how could that phrase have been made to seem so full of death? Looking right at Jesus, he asked his question again. What am I going to do?

  No answer.

  The faint ticking inside the chapel radiators. The fastidious chirping of some bird outside. The gold light sliding down the chute of rays from the upper windows. A glorious afternoon, the yellow energy of a world outside, its music slipping in through cracks in the wall.