The City Below

by James Carroll

  But not so fast.

  As they drew abreast of the statue, a cassocked figure stepped out from behind the rampant rhododendron and blocked their way. Father Collins, tired looking, rheumy-eyed as ever, stood with his hand up, less like a cop than a timid pupil. Terry had not seen him since leaving Dini's. "Wait a minute, fellows," he said.

  The group stopped. The men holding posters kept them face down. Terry met his eyes directly. "Father, we've thought it through. There's no point in —"

  "I'm not here to argue, Terry."

  Thirty yards beyond was the point where Cushing's driveway crossed the sidewalk of Comm. Ave. Out there, a group of men and women were peering toward them, perhaps a dozen. And a pair of Boston policemen stood by too. A blue-and-white was blocking the driveway, its lights flashing.

  Father Collins opened his hands as if saying Dominas vobiscum, an unconscious imitation of the posture of the sculpted Virgin behind him. "We were hoping you'd come in for a minute. That's all."

  "We?"

  "Me," the priest said, "and the cardinal."

  "Cardinal Cushing?"

  "No, Stan Musial."

  "We weren't expecting —"

  "Just a minute, Terry." Father Collins's eyes moved across the group. "What do you say, fellows?"

  This was what they'd wanted earlier in the week, but what was the point now? Still, Father Collins was the priest they'd all depended on.

  "I don't know, Father."

  "Just for a minute," Father Collins said with a note of pleading.

  Terry nodded. "Okay." He doubted no more than the priest that the decision was his to make. Father Collins led the way between the pungent shrubs, past Our Lady, to whom not one of the men raised his eyes.

  ***

  In all those years, they had never been inside that place. The ornate foyer, its polished marble floor and curved staircase sweeping up to the second story, put them in mind of a municipal building or the Museum of Fine Arts. Father Collins pointed to a small room off the entrance. "Do you want to leave your things there?"

  The posters, he meant, the leaflets. They did so.

  And then, single file, they followed him down the long corridor. Their footsteps echoed on the terrazzo. Oil portraits lined the walls, popes and prelates, expressions fixed in disapproval.

  At the far end of the corridor, Father Collins opened a door and stood aside. The men filed past, aware of his whiskey breath, into an opulent dining room. A multitiered Waterford chandelier overhung a long, gleaming table at which Doyle, and then each of his classmates, instinctively picked a chair to stand behind, as if this were the seminary refectory. One broad wall was paneled wood, mirrors, and crystal sconces. The other featured a bank of four ten-foot windows that overlooked the sweeping lawn and O'Connell's Gothic chapel on the hill. The airy vista and the manly dark elegance of the room were countered by its aroma, a stench of cigars, overcooked food, and the generalized odor —altar wine, sacristies, the musty drawers of vesting cases, the mold in old missals —that the seminarians had associated with priests since they were altar boys.

  Father Collins did not follow them into the room. For a few minutes nothing happened. Terry stared out the nearest window, wanting to finger his collar, but he felt observed and didn't move. Finally, at a stirring in the doorway, they looked toward it in time to see the startlingly red figure of Cardinal Cushing appear.

  He entered the room stiffly, but at a clip, and he was carrying a large white cardboard, holding it gingerly by the merest corner. The men, to their common horror, recognized it as one of their posters.

  Cushing was always taller than they expected, thinner and more physically agitated, his hands never settled, his eyes constantly darting about. His pockmarked complexion, sallow gauntness, and crooked teeth always amazed for combining somehow into a rough loveliness. The blue depth of his eyes pulled them in. He seemed in pain. There had been rumors: arthritis, migraines, something with his kidneys. Doyle and the others could not look at him without feeling a blast of guilt.

  "Sit down," Cushing said with no more than his usual gruffness. He remained standing at the head of the table. Collins had come into the room and now hovered in the corner behind the cardinal, like a waiter. Cushing did not speak at first He centered the poster flat on the table before him. Even upside down, the seminarians could read it: Honesty in the Church.

  At last he raised his face to look at them. "I got one thing to say to you fellows." Cushing fingered the poster, aligned it with the table edge, before adding quietly, "You're the damnedest..." His voice faltered. He glanced out the window. "You're the best damn men I've got" He brought his eyes back. "And I can't afford to lose you." He shook his head. "Not over this birth control, anyways." Then he banged the table with his fist. "I will not have it' Not from you, and not from them! Do you understand me?"

  He started, as if realizing only then where he was. He blinked, taking in the sight of several of them individually. "Listen to me. I told Father Collins to bring you in here because I haven't had a chance yet to ask you." He glanced back at Collins. "Did you talk to them?"

  "No, Your Eminence."

  "Listen, fellows." Cushing sat His hands moved awkwardly across the table, and Terry recognized fingers itching for a glass. "I'm in the pickle here, and now so are you. We got this thing in common. You got bosses leaning on you, so do I. The difference is, you fellows have one boss who's on your side." He leaned toward them. "Do you hear what I'm telling you? Do you?"

  His eye had fallen on Forrester, and so Forrester was the one who said, "Yes, Your Eminence."

  "Now listen —are you listening?"

  "Yes, Your Eminence."

  "I can't have my best men going out onto Commonwealth Avenue and telling the pope he's wrong, because then" —he shrugged —"it's out of my hands." He put his hands together, palms upward, "Like that Allstate ad." He pulled his hands sharply apart "You fall through. Is that what you fellows want? I send you packing? All these years down the tube? Your vocations lost? All the souls you would of saved? All the young people who'd have found the Lord because of you? Now they never will, and isn't that just so damn sad? And what's worse, when I fire you —and you go out there and talk to those TV snoops, and I do fire you —the ordinary laypeople in this archdiocese get the idea that / agree with this thing, which as you may have noticed I have not said I do. You guys are about to force my hand. And the result is, people are going to be even more confused. Do you get my point? Wiggle room —that's what I want to leave the laity in this thing, and their confessors too, the room where private conscience rules, which is where birth control belongs. That's what you believe, and that's what I believe. You guys are making it public, you see what I'm saying? Do you?"

  Moran said, "Yes, yes." The glow of relief on his face was enough to dry the tears he'd nearly shed.

  Whatever Cushing was asking for, Moran was ready to grant. So, Terry realized as he looked from face to face, were the others. "But the oath, Your Eminence," Terry said. "The oath is what forced the issue. Not what we're about to do, but what you already did."

  Cushing slowly brought his face around. "We haven't done nothing yet." He glanced at Collins. "Right?"

  "That's right."

  Then Cushing said to Doyle, as if he were the only person in the room, "I'm surprised I have to ask you like this, Terry."

  "Your Eminence, you don't have to —"

  "I even called up your grandfather."

  "I know."

  "And you were still marching out there."

  "I didn't ... I mean, I..."

  "Never mind now. Never mind. Hell, in the old days, I'd have just called the city desk and the newsroom and told the editors to call the bloodhounds off, and that would be that But this ain't the old days, I guess, huh?"

  Recognizing the cardinal's Mr. Blue Collar routine, Terry knew better than to be charmed by it.

  Cushing sat back "The oath, you said. Wasn't that your question?"

  "Yes."


  "I read it. I read it in Latin. Blazes, Terry, that's the canon lawyers talking, and the Curia and the theologians. I don't know about that stuff."

  "But Your Eminence, we can't —"

  Cushing brought his fist down on the table again, jolting it, so that every man felt the tremor of his anger. Was he always this erratic? "Let me make my point, will you?"

  "I'm sorry."

  "Thank you. Thank you very much."

  Collins had moved to Cushing's elbow, and Cushing now indicated him with the barest turn of his hand. "Father Collins is my theologian, my factotum, my peritum, and my all-purpose troubleshooter. Right, Joe?"

  "If you say so, Eminence."

  "He's my expert on the canons and the magisterium and all that ex cathedra crap." Cushing reached for the poster he'd carried in and lifted it by the corner. "Who wrote this?"

  No one answered.

  "Who?"

  "I did," Terry said finally.

  "Well, that's a damn good motto. When you get my chair, Terry, you can put it on your shield. Honestas in Ecclesiam." He squinted up at Collins. "Right?"

  "Ecclesia."

  The cardinal's show of counterfeit ignorance struck Terry as sinister, and it struck him that the old man had been faking so much for so long —that down-to-earth gruffness, that irreverence, that liberalism —that he'd lost touch with who he really was.

  "Anyway," Cushing said, "the oath is between you fellows, your own souls, and Almighty God, with a little help on the side from Father Collins here. 'Not a bad public, that,' as Thomas More said."

  Robert Bolt, Terry thought, as His Eminence surely knew.

  Cushing stood and crossed to the door. All eleven seminarians rose at once but remained at their places. "I'm leaving this to you fellows. Father Collins speaks for me, even though" —Cushing shot the priest a look —"I don't know what he's going to say. Private forum between the lads and yourself, right, Father?"

  "Indeed so, Your Eminence."

  And without a further look at the men, Cushing was through the door and gone. Collins's gaze went to a nearby mirror; in the reflection, he looked the men over. "Have a seat."

  They did.

  "I'll be in the small dining room across the hall. I want to see you one at a time, starting with you, Moose. And then come in order." He gestured along the line, a counterclockwise swoop, apparently casual, but indicating exactly how he wanted them to present themselves. Doyle would be last.

  Beginning with Moran, each man got up, left the dining room, and within a few minutes reappeared at the door just long enough to finger the next No one returned to his seat, and in a little while Terry was sitting at the huge dark table alone. The chandelier sparkled in the dull morning light. Outside it had begun to drizzle. He imagined taking a light airplane across the rolling lawn, its wheels leaving the ground and just clearing the ruined Roman columns, flying away. Inside his chest he felt a release of pressure, a loosening up, as if he were airborne now, making his escape.

  And where would he land? Along the strip of weedy turf between the projects and the piers in Charlestown? On the green apron of Monument Square, across from the high school? At the playground? He saw himself as fifteen or sixteen, in his white Converse high-tops, popping jump shots hour after hour by himself. His closest thing ever to flying, in fact, had been that timeless suspension in the air as his fingers let the ball go so delicately. He saw himself standing in the doorway of the Kerry Bouquet, his mother and grandfather exactly alike in refusing to look at him, his brother smirking, saying "asshole."

  "Okay, Terry." Forrester turned away quickly, refusing to make eye contact, to give him a clue. Terry left the room, aware that the poster was still on the table. Honesty...

  The small dining room was small only by comparison with the room he'd just left. Father Collins was sitting at a round table that had chairs for six people. Doyle took the one that was pulled out The priest had donned a thin purple stole, as for a sacrament. What a strange feeling, to be guarded before this man to whom he'd entrusted his deepest fears.

  On the table were a copy of the Bible and a sheet of creased paper that Terry recognized as a copy of the statement he and the others had prepared. Father Collins placed a hand on each and said, "Every man who has preceded you has understood the point I am going to make, and accepted my assurance in this matter."

  Terry nodded.

  "Cardinal Cushing is asking for your help. It's that simple. He is in a difficult position, and if you really care about changing the Church, instead of merely defying it, you will join him."

  "I was ready to do that before. It was only —"

  "The oath."

  "Yes."

  "That is the sticking point"

  "Yes."

  "The only one?"

  Suddenly Terry did not know. The only one? What about this feeling squeezing his chest once more? He said inanely, "Monsignor Fenton called us heretics."

  "That's nonsense. You know Fenton speaks for no one. Do you think Cardinal Cushing regards you as a heretic? Did you hear what he said?"

  "He said we're his best men."

  "And do you believe he means it?"

  "Yes."

  "That's the point, lad. And the cardinal has a special feeling for you. If he were young, you're the man he'd want to be."

  "I doubt that, Father."

  "It's how I feel."

  The affirmation, so surprising, froze Doyle.

  "You can forget about the oath, Terry."

  "What?"

  "You don't have to take it, or sign it."

  "How can you —?"

  "That's what I've told each one before you. But I'm speaking under the Seal here. You are to discuss this with no one, not even the other men who just left. And when others ask you, you simply say you won't discuss it Can you agree to that?"

  "Not discuss the encyclical?"

  "Only whether you swore to uphold it or not. We all have to discuss the encyclical. We can say what the cardinal has said, that it is a matter best left to the confessor and the penitent."

  "Like this."

  "Exactly."

  Terry saw it now: falling back on the Seal of Confession to avoid confronting the impossible. The solemnized private forum —the perfect venue for sanctioning troubled married couples to ignore the pope, the solution for dissenting seminarians. But if dissent is secret ... He stopped himself. This was a way out His buddies had taken it, and now he could.

  So say yes, asshole. The command came in the voice of his brother. You've won. Say yes.

  But he couldn't He was simply paralyzed. He stared at Father Collins.

  "What's the problem?" Collins asked.

  "I have to ask you —does the cardinal know what you are doing here?"

  "The cardinal is leaving this to me, which is what I want you to do."

  "How do you deal with Monsignor Loughlin about this? He pushed the oath on us. Wasn't he pushed by the nuncio?"

  "That's my problem, Terry. Not yours."

  "But I need to know, Father."

  "Jesus Christ, none of your classmates —"

  "Father, the cardinal and the others still expect us to have sworn, don't they?"

  "Yes." The priest leaned across the table. "All right, yes. And since you ask, I'll tell you."

  "You don't have to," Terry said. "I see it now."

  "You see me signing the oath for you."

  "Yes."

  "Signing your name."

  "Yes."

  "Forgery."

  "Yes."

  "And signing my own name, under pain of sin, as solemnizing witness. Is that what you see?"

  Honesty in the Church! The words rang inside Doyle as if some Luther had declaimed them. Others lie, he thought, recognizing the real meaning of the new morality, so that I don't have to. Once more he could say nothing.

  After a long time, Father Collins pushed back against the stout wood of his chair, never letting up on the gaze with which he'd pinned his
now former protégé. As if he had left his body to watch himself do this, he asked in a dead voice, "So you agree, or what?"

  And Doyle, similarly, answered entirely from outside himself: "Yes."

  ***

  The Nail was a tavern in City Square that went back to speakeasy days, and that was part of the reason Packy Nolan felt entitled.

  Nolan men had taken shit from nobody, certainly not from short greaser scumbags from across the river. For decades the knuckle draggers who had controlled the flow of booze in Boston had found it possible to deal respectfully with Packy, his father before him, and his grandfather who'd started the place. The Nolans had never quibbled about the covert fees involved in doing business, but they'd never been treated like dogshit before either. And they damn sure wouldn't start now, which was what Packy had told the new wop bagman who'd swaggered in the day before. And hadn't his jaw dropped at Pack/s "Fuck your cunt mother too!"

  Nolan's grandfather, a carpenter, had kept his table saw in front and served the bootleg hooch in back In commemoration, the raggedtoothed disk of a saw blade still hung on the wall behind the bar, although numbers, hands, and works had been added to make it a clock It had long since stopped running. A variety of old tools were displayed around the blade, including a six-inch nail.

  It was early Friday evening. The place was half full of cheesy men who'd done their duty at home —fish sticks and macaroni with the wife and kids —and who now aggressively fisted their beers. The pubsters ignored the ceiling television in the corner, a new color job, because the fights weren't on yet.

  Morley Safer, in ill-fitting combat clothing, including a too polished green helmet that jostled as he rattled off sentences into his hand, addressed no one in particular in that tavern, despite the emotional charge in his voice. He was describing the VC tunnels into which GIs had recently begun refusing to crawl, despite orders. Instead, Safer explained without hiding his contempt, U.S. soldiers had taken to tossing grenades into the holes without searching them first for women and children.

  Incredible. An incredible coincidence, which one or two of the drinkers at the bar would register later, having heard some of the report after all. Incredible because just then the Nail's large, cloudy plate-glass window had shattered when what they all took to be a rock came crashing through. It bounced into the middle of the wide-planked floor, spinning and hissing —not a rock, they saw then, but a hand grenade of their own, still cooking, emitting steam.