Prince of Peace

by James Carroll

  The disembodied Gregorian music floating over the garden unsettled me. My eye traced the cruciform brick walks to the center of the garden, which was marked by a weathered white fountain, dry now. An adjacent plaque read "FROM THE REGION OF THE VOSGES, FRENCH (LORRAINE), LATE XV CENTURY. THE SHAFT AND PEDESTAL ARE MODERN."

  "The shaft is modern," I said dryly.

  Michael ignored me.

  What shaft? I wondered. I couldn't see what the plaque referred to.

  "So what do you think?" I asked vaguely. It was Michael and his mordant silence that was unsettling me, not the goddamn pseudo-monastery.

  He shrugged. "'To one man he gives the ability to speak with strange sounds; to another he gives the ability to explain what these sounds mean.'"

  "What the hell does that mean, Mike? You're acting weird, honest to God you are."

  He laughed abruptly and slapped my knee. "You know my problem?" He withdrew a small book from inside his army jacket. "I have this thing memorized, and phrases from it keep popping into my mind."

  "What is it?" But I knew what it was from the Murrow show.

  "A pocket New Testament. It's all I had with me."

  "You mean in China?"

  "Yes. That priest gave it to me. That chaplain." He handed me the small book.

  I opened it at random, automatically. But the impulse frightened me, as if there would be messages, and I refused to read. Instead I fingered the worn pages. "I see what you mean, Mike. Damn, no wonder you went religious on me."

  "I didn't 'go religious.'" He took it back and opened it as if he knew the exact page he wanted. When he read it was in a voice so full of animation, so much his own, that I heard the words as a personal statement. "'Make room for us in your hearts. We have done wrong to no one, we have ruined no one, nor tried to take advantage of anyone. I do not say this to condemn you, for as I have said before, you are so dear to us that we are together always, whether we live or die. I am so sure of you, I take such pride in you! In all our troubles I am still full of courage. I am running over with joy.'"

  "Don't stop."

  "He just goes on about Macedonia. Who gives a shit about Macedonia?"

  I wanted to touch his sleeve or something. "Hey, I'm the one who takes pride in you," I said.

  "Durk, let me be the one to say it for once, okay? I meant that about whether I lived or died. You were somebody I thought of."

  "I appreciate that, Mike. I really do. But mainly I'm just glad that ... you lived."

  He nodded somberly. "I keep slipping into moods. I can't forget some of it."

  "What?"

  "Not everybody lived." He opened his book again, had his place in an instant and read, "'I saw another angel coming up from the east with the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels to whom God had given the power to damage the earth and the sea. The angel said, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we mark the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads."'" Michael stopped reading and looked at me as if he'd proved something. My blank return look seemed to confuse him. He resumed reading. "'And I was told the number of those who were marked with God's seal on their foreheads; it was a hundred and forty-four thousand, from every tribe of the people of Israel. There were twelve thousand from the tribe of Judah marked with the seal; twelve thousand from the tribe of Reuben; twelve thousand...'"

  "Mike."

  "'...from the tribe of Gad...'"

  "Mike!"

  He looked at me, then dropped his head into his hands. The New Testament fell to the ground. "There was a guy named Pace in my platoon. Lennie Pace. He died in my arms. When I released him he had a mark on his forehead." Michael loosened his collar and pulled his dog-tag out of his shirt. "This," he said, "like a stamp, right on his forehead, only reversed. Michael Maguire. O-positive. Catholic. Do you know why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why my name was on his head?"

  "Because you pressed him so hard. You cared about him."

  "I got him killed. He would never have come with me, but I called him 'chickenshit.' He was a kid, he'd lied about his age. I mean he was like sixteen. I made him go someplace he didn't want to go, and then I let him down."

  "Jeez, Mike, you feel lousy about it, eh?"

  "I mean, I didn't kill him, I know that. But it seems ... I just feel very, very guilty, like I did something wrong." He looked up at me. "I survived."

  "That's not wrong."

  "It feels wrong though."

  "But it's not! It just isn't wrong, Mike."

  "I keep saying that to myself, Durk. I even think it was by God's grace. I say He spared me for a reason. 'But God in His grace chose me even before I was born, and called me to serve Him.'" "Maybe He didn't have a reason. Maybe He just likes you. And what's this 'serve Him' stuff? I mean, hell, if it was me I wouldn't have some condition on the thing, like you owed me your life or something."

  "I guess we owe it to Him anyway. I mean, at first I thought that the rest of my life was like a bonus. You wouldn't believe what Korea was like, Durk. I never thought I'd live through it. And then the camp ... I never, never thought I'd live through it. But I did. And then I realized that my whole damn life was a bonus to begin with. You know? I mean we didn't have to be here at all. Or anywhere. The whole frigging thing is, like, extra. You know?"

  "It's not how I usually think about it."

  "Me either."

  "But you sound kind of..."

  "What?"

  "I don't think you have to feel guilty because you survived something other guys didn't. And I don't think it leaves you with all this huge debt to God. You sound kind of beaten down by the whole thing, Mike. I think it's too bad the chaplain didn't give you a copy of Catcher in the Rye and let it go at that."

  "No, no. You're not getting it. This book saved my fucking life, Durk! It didn't beat me down! It's what let me beat them! 'Do not be afraid of anything you are about to suffer. Listen! The Devil will put you to the test by having some of you thrown into prison; your troubles will last ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.'"

  "Ten days, eh?" I poked him.

  "Give or take two and a half years." He laughed, and I realized it was his laugh that I had always loved most about him. His proud, dark-eyed, serious face became for a moment almost jaunty. Despite all of his anxiety, his edginess, it was apparent that his old self-acceptance undergirded him still. His laughter relieved me and made me feel bold.

  "Tell me about the bridge," I said. "The papers always make it sound like a movie."

  He shook his head and his genial countenance became severe again. "I can hardly think about it."

  "Why? I thought it was the good stuff. Right out of Gung Ho." "The papers never mention the women and children." He stopped as if his statement explained itself. After a moment he added, half wistfully, "Whom I blew up."

  "Chinese soldiers, I thought."

  "You don't expect the army to give a medal to a man for killing refugees, do you? The bridge was jammed with refugees. We couldn't keep them back." He took out his cigarettes. "You think we can smoke out here?"

  We both lit up. He stood and leaned on the wall facing the river. At first I thought he didn't want to be seen smoking by the monks. Or rather guards. Then I realized his gaze was fixed on the George Washington Bridge.

  "It looked something like that," he said, "smaller, of course, and there were several spans instead of one big one. But from the hills it gave you the same feeling. A bridge, you know? There's nothing like a bridge."

  We stared at the George Washington Bridge and smoked in silence. From that vantage the bridge seemed nestled in trees. A second hill, the promontory of the park, the site, in fact, of the original fort, rose up between us and the rest of the island. One would never have known we were in one of the largest cities in the world or that the bridge below us carried more traffic, practically, than any other bridge ever built. I tried to imagine it blowing up, cars
, trucks, buses, girders and people falling into the river. Women and children, he'd said. I could not picture it.

  "The thing is," he said slowly, "I can't figure out how to get going with normal life."

  "That's why you want to stay in the army?"

  "Oh God, Durk, you think I want that? The army? The fucking army? I just don't know what else there is." He flicked his cigarette and watched it arc into the shrubbery below. "It's like Paul says. To some men He gives the ability to explain. But not to me."

  "You were going to explain about the bridge."

  "What really knocks me out is how it didn't matter that much about the refugees. I mean we tried to keep them back and everything. That was my platoon's job. But it was like trying to keep back the wind or something. They just kept coming at us. At one point the lieutenant drove his jeep right into a bunch of them. Fucking creamed them! Right in front of me! Must have killed a dozen right there." He fell silent for a time, then resumed. "After the bridge blew we watched from the hill. I could see the people in the water. It was a fast current. It was freezing. They didn't have a chance. There were a bunch of Chicoms in little boats, a force that had been trying to take the bridge by sneaking up from the river. We expected them to beat the people down or shoot them. I mean those people were their enemy, but you know what? The Chicoms helped them. They pulled people in until those boats nearly swamped. I remember thinking, Jesus! The Reds are rescuing people, and we're blowing them up! How do you figure that? I mean the Reds were so ruthless, ruthless! But we just blew those poor people up! We just drove our jeeps right through them. How do you figure it, Durk?"

  "You know the answer as well as I do, Mike."

  "Sure. War is hell; you got to break some eggs to make breakfast, right. You know something? In the camp where I was, Chung Kang Djin, just across the Yalu, seven guys confessed. They were pilots. They said they were dropping germ bombs, trying to get the plague going in Asia; we wanted to spread cholera, cholera! The Reds put them on a platform and they made the whole camp listen to them, about five hundred guys. It was shit, just pure shit! Insect bombs! Plague bombs! Christ! Who'd believe that? But you know what? If they'd picked me, it would have been a snap for them. They wouldn't have had to ream my ass out at all. I'd have confessed. I'd have said we blew up a bridge full of toothless old ladies. We drove our jeeps into them. And we didn't give a shit. I mean nobody gave it a fucking thought."

  "You did."

  "Not at the time I didn't. At the time I just went from one minute to the next. I mean I was scared, Durk! I thought I was going to die. I don't know half of what I did. You get into like a trance. I got home and they gave me these medals and there was stuff in the citations I never heard of. Like it wasn't even me. You'd think they were talking about a different fucking bridge. The citation doesn't even mention the refugees. I mean I remember what happened to them. I can't forget! We were kicking these pathetic old people off the train. Bayonets! We had our fucking bayonets fixed, Durk! God knows what I did forget! I know I had the bayonet on my rifle. I don't know what I did with it though."

  "You didn't do anything with it, Mike. Come on."

  "I did enough. I just wish the Reds asked me to confess."

  "No, you don't."

  "I do too, Durk. I mean I really do."

  "That's what priests are for."

  Michael grunted cynically, and frankly I was relieved. The confessionals at Good Shepherd were made for whimpering admissions about masturbation and neglected night prayers. What Michael was doing right then with me was confession enough. But he said, "I wish Father O'Shea was around."

  I picked up the pocket New Testament from the ground. "For your penance he'd give you the Old Testament."

  Michael laughed and slipped the book into his tunic. "'"Go back home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how kind he has been to you!" So the man left and went all through the ten towns telling what Jesus had done for him; and all who heard it were filled with wonder.'"

  "What had Jesus done?"

  "He cast the man's demons out." The tale amused him and his eyes brightened as he told it. "He drove them into a herd of pigs and the pigs went crazy—two thousand in all, it says—and ran off a cliff into the lake and drowned. Of course everybody thought Jesus was great, but some poor bastard owned those pigs, and he was wiped out!" Michael laughed heartily. "Get it?"

  "No matter what good thing you try to do, somebody gets the shaft."

  "And you said the shaft is modern!"

  We laughed hysterically then, in that delicious, unpredictable way of which only adolescents are capable. Some of our worst moments in Good Shepherd had been our best ones when we'd cracked up and completely lost control of ourselves, bringing on the wrath of nuns and priests, laughing until our bellies and our faces ached. There'd been a time when we hadn't been allowed to serve Mass together because all one of us had to do was clink the cruets to destroy the other. One time the priest farted and Michael laughed so hard he had to leave the church before Communion was even served. I managed to stay but I had an open wound inside my cheek for days.

  So laughing in the Cloisters' garden like that rescued us. Only when we stopped did it seem awkward that we had thrown our arms around each other's shoulders. Michael withdrew his first. "Want to see something eerie?"

  I surveyed the garden with dramatic eyes. "Eerier than this?" He nodded and set off. I followed.

  Inside the museum it was no warmer. A guard watched us coming in and I was careful to close the heavy oak door softly. If it had banged, Michael and I would have begun laughing again.

  Despite our mutual inarticulateness, Michael had successfully indicated his plight to me, its range between fear and regret, but I was too young—the field of my concentration was cluttered with poses and insecurities—to understand that what he was in fact showing me was a crisis of conscience.

  Catholics are schooled to make much of conscience from an early age, although even our notion of it as the one faculty that sets the individual apart from the community derives from Luther. We learn at first to treat conscience like a domesticated animal, a house pet always ready to bark a warning but also slightly underfoot and often damned inconvenient. But there comes a time when conscience turns on us, clawing, and we are perhaps more shocked when that happens than our neighbors who never regarded conscience as a friend. That shock, of course, serves the Church's purpose, for likely as not we seek refuge from the attack in the Sacraments, and for a time the ritual of Confession rescues us, renewing the very world and reestablishing our cozy place in it. But eventually even the Sacrament of Penance falls short of what we need, and that crisp joy at being part of a total system that works—an answer for every question, a word of absolution for every sin—begins to fade. Some of us begin our serious drinking then: "Booze ain't my problem, Father. It's my solution." And some seek new shoulders or bosoms on which to lay their heads: "No one's ever really understood roe, darling, until you." And some rededicate themselves to the old ways. They continue to confess, but as an act no longer of renewal, but of nostalgia. Catholicism is the progression of conscience experienced first as childhood chum, then as irascible boss, then as the invincible enemy, then as the familiar adversary who loses to us now and again, and finally as the old acquaintance rarely brought to mind.

  I knew already that Michael was not going to be like the rest of us, accommodators, arrangers, moral amnesiacs. His conscience was no leprechaun on his shoulder or prick at the base of his spine; no fog of guilt rolling in after drink or sex or a particularly snide crack about the Jews. Conscience defined his capacity for grappling directly with life itself, including but not limited to what was flawed about it. Saint Thomas says that we are drawn instinctively toward the Good, like plants to light, and it was that trait, more than a dark moralism, though he had streaks of that too, that set Michael apart. At a certain point, later in his life for a brief moment, he became the compass rose for America herself because
he could make the right thing known as the only thing.

  Even as a kid in Korea he made his moves like the natural he was. He had the moral equivalent to the acute physical coordination that made him an exceptional athlete. Grace; he was a man of grace. It was impossible not to follow him—"Go, Michael, go!"—whether on a fast break toward the basket or, despite all one's inhibitions, into an act of civil disobedience. But that came later.

  Once in a heated argument I demanded to know how he could be so cocksure as to what was right and what was wrong. He said, "I'm sure because I breathe." Yes, his conscience was like his breath or the circulation of his blood. Despite what it cost him and others who were influenced by it, nothing could ever impede its steady rhythmic insistence. At various times he would be ignored—he was dismissed once by the exquisitely condescending New York Times as "a man of good conscience but bad judgment"—and even condemned. But for some of us the effect of his example was permanent. A compass rose? Perhaps he was more like Polaris itself. We understood what I sensed inchoately at the Cloisters that day. I glimpsed his determined struggle not to justify what he'd been part of or to excuse it or to condemn it even, but simply to shape it into the great point of reference—his own Polaris—by which he would steer for the rest of his life. Conscience? That cauldron into which he poured his considerable knowledge of killing and torture and despair and loneliness. Conscience? It overwhelmed every other faculty of his: intelligence, memory and feeling. It stripped him of his ability to moderate, as I learned both happily and not so happily, either his rage or his love. Conscience? We knew that Michael Maguire did not have a conscience. A conscience had him.

  It was the book of course, the small volume of tissue pages, that rooted him. At first I took his feat of memorization as mere memorization, the mind's equivalent of his fifteen hundred pushups every day. But it was far more than that. Over the two and a half years, he had copied the Gospel line for line, in Paul's phrase, on the fleshy tablets of his heart. As meaning is present in the word, so that book became present in him. It provided margins within which war and death and deprivation and the destruction of his own innocence could all be faced and, finally, used. It was an instance of what had happened to Israel herself when all at once, within a generation of Moses, its Book occupied, like an army occupies terrain, the center of her awareness. From then on every political, religious, aesthetic and personal judgment was submitted to what-was-written. Naturally writing implies the writer whom Michael was as reluctant as Israel to name.