Prince of Peace

by James Carroll

  He trembled. She was waiting. Ravished? Had she said ravished?

  He pulled away.

  She leaned against the door and turned her face from him. All he could see was the black of her habit.

  When he resumed driving, he used his old trick, reciting Scripture, but to himself. "No one hates his own flesh," Paul said. What the fuck did Paul know? "He nourishes and takes care of it as Christ cares for the church." Right. Sure he does. Oh yeah.

  Later, in a disembodied voice, he asked if it would be possible to see her paintings sometime, and she said yes, that very day, for there were several at the Holy Cross convent. She was polite about it. She'd love for him to see them. By the time they arrived at the parish they had their controls in place again. But it was different. Their shared embarrassment—they had a secret now—was what made them friends.

  The block party was an ethnic bash: refried beans on soda bread; Italian ice in waffle cones. Children had their faces painted. The fire hydrant at the far end of the block was open, and boys in underpants wildly dashed in and out of the geyser. On the church steps an accordionist and a fiddler rendered Irish jigs while a couple of dozen elderly men and women with bright Irish faces and slightly glassy eyes kept each other company, nodding to the music. The gents kept threatening to ask the wizened colleens to dance, but never did. In the street, in the center of the block, several nuns had organized a game of Red Rover. Ten or fifteen children were arranged on a side, and every time the line held there were great cheers.

  Michael felt that after years of pacing a room alone—for compared to this the seminary seemed that isolated, that pointless—he'd been released to the world. The festivity and the sun and the city itself all seemed to applaud not only him and not only Sister Anne at his side, but the two of them together. Now that they had their distance again, and in the context of the parish celebration, he dared to think that somehow they might yet find a way to ransom one another. He didn't leave her side. Not this time.

  In the schoolyard the older kids had yet another game of kickball going. A man in a white shirt with bunched sleeves was rolling the big balloonlike ball at the kicker; it was Father Mahon. Michael and Sister Anne made their way toward him. When he saw them he pulled out of the game and came over to embrace Anne warmly. He tugged her back down the block toward the church. Parishioners greeted her, though the nuns kept their distance. Michael was looking for Sister Rita because he knew that Anne would be looking for her too.

  A few moments later all the activity was suspended as the throng gathered at the foot of the church stairs. When Father Mahon had their attention he thanked the ladies who had prepared the food and the men who'd hung the decorations, and he said he hoped everyone would play games and dance in the street until dark. After that he hoped they wouldn't keep the fathers awake since everyone knew that priests in their rectories wept to bed early and often. They all laughed, the more so because he was poking fun at himself. Then he introduced Mrs. Heaney, the president of the Mothers' Club. She could hardly be heard, but that didn't matter because everyone knew what she was saying. It was her job to present Sister Anne Edward with the felt banner the mothers had made. The young nun was quite moved, but she managed to unfold the gift and hold it up so that everyone could see it. "Sister Anne Edward," it read, "you S'd our S. Thank you. With Love from the Parents and Children of H.C." The people applauded loudly and Sister, for the barest moment, buried her face in the banner.

  I was there. I stood on the edge of the crowd, utterly ignorant of the meaning of what had just happened, but nevertheless affected by it. That was the first time I'd laid eyes on Sister Anne Edward and I remember straining to see her because of the notoriety she'd received, and also because Michael had described the impression she'd made on him. As was arranged, I'd come uptown to pick up my car. Sister Anne was to return to Tarrytown with one of her fellow nuns that evening.

  While I made my way through the crowd toward Michael, I was thinking what happy people those parishioners seemed to be, so unlike the sullen freshmen for whom I was endlessly diagraming compound, complex and simple sentences on blackboards in those days. I hadn't expected to find myself envying Michael, but as I saw the open fondness with which the people of that neighborhood engulfed him, I did.

  I hooked up with him and his nun friend just as another nun did, the principal, Sister Rita. And so it was that I witnessed the awkward encounter between those two women, once so dear to each other. I could, of course, have had no idea how decisive that meeting would be not only for Sister Anne Edward, but for each of us.

  "Oh Anne, it's so good to see you," Sister Rita said, but she made no move to embrace her or to shake her hand.

  "Mother was kind to let me come," Anne Edward said stiffly, but even I sensed the power of her emotion. Was she afraid? Angry? Hurt? Was she going to cry?

  "We managed to get Monsignor Ellis to call her." The principal smiled awkwardly. "What old nun can refuse the pastor?" She paused, then added, "I wanted to write you."

  "I wish you had."

  Rita lowered her eyes. "I was advised against it," she said miserably.

  Then Michael noticed me, and he made the introductions. I knew I'd interrupted something, but it was clear even to me that the women needed more privacy than was available there for the talk they wanted to have. Michael described me as his oldest friend, and he draped his arm around my shoulder, but the tension between the nuns continued to dominate. They moved, as if to go off together. Sister Anne Edward said to Michael, "Thank you for coming for me. I enjoyed our talk."

  God, they're formal with each other, I thought. Like Mennonites. What did I know?

  Michael said, "Don't forget, before you go back, you're going to let me see your paintings."

  "That's right," Anne said, with a relief that first displayed to me her desire to be with him, and that flash of warmth unaccountably filled me with relief too.

  But the other nun interrupted. "I'm sorry, Sister, that's one of the things we have to talk about."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Your paintings are gone."

  "Gone?"

  "I had to send them to the Mother House. I sent all your things over a month ago."

  "But they never gave them to me. Not my paintings! What did they do with them?"

  "I don't know." Sister Rita lowered her eyes in exactly the way she had before. I realized it was a form of hers, an act of piety. There was even a name for it, I would learn: "custody of the eyes." Not even I believed that she didn't know.

  "You do know!" Sister Anne said, furious.

  "I'll tell you later."

  "Tell me now please, Sister."

  "All right." The nun spoke as I imagined nuns spoke to their confessors, with more whine than penitence. "Mother told me at first to destroy your paintings. She said she should never have allowed you to pursue it. I pleaded with her. She relented and told me to send them to her instead."

  "So that she could destroy them! Why didn't you call me? Oh Rita!"

  Sister Rita looked up sharply. "You know why I didn't call you!"

  "No I don't. I truly don't."

  The women were suddenly at a standoff. Each had unfurled what she thought of as the truth. I glanced at Michael who hinted at his own frustration with a quick upturn of his eyes. I mistook his attitude at that point for clerical or at least masculine condescension.

  Sister Rita abruptly turned away and cut through the crowd. Sister Anne Edward faced Michael. "Do you still want to see my work?" Her voice trembled with emotion. I recognized her defiance even without understanding it. And I sensed how large this moment was for her, without knowing why.

  "Yes, of course."

  "Can you drive me?"

  Michael looked at me. I'd been counting on my car, but I said, "No problem, go ahead, I'll see you later."

  Michael shook his head. "Come with us." He looked at her. "That would be okay, wouldn't it?"

  I sensed her disappointment; how could Michae
l want me along? But she said, "Sure. The more the merrier."

  And that is how it happened that I drove them that afternoon to her parents' house in Dobbs Ferry.

  That town struck me as a place brimming with happiness, or is that how those of us raised and still living in the grim corners of the crowded city always felt in our rare forays out to the posh suburbs? Her family's house was large, set on a carefully landscaped knoll and surrounded by elm trees, which made it seem more private than it probably was. It certainly seemed less hot than Manhattan had, though we arrived in the middle of the afternoon and the temperature must have been near a hundred. The trees cast a benign pattern of moving shadow over the house, but that was no relief. I could not imagine how Michael managed in that collar and suit of his, much less his nun friend in her habit. The relevant heat had seemed, of course, to be in her, that plugged volcano, and I sensed her fury and her hurt despite the inconsequential chatter my presence imposed on them. Our ride up the Saw Mill River would have been less awkward if they had sat together in the back seat of my car. That arrangement at least would have reflected the reality of our relationships and allowed them perhaps a snatch or two of real talk about the inflamed decisions they were coming to. As it was, Michael had insisted on her riding in the front with me. I didn't understand yet how desperate he was to get his distance from her. I only knew that I felt entangled between them at once and I didn't like it.

  The house, when we entered it, was cool. Sister Anne Edward ran ahead, calling for her parents. We followed as far as the entrance hallway which was dominated by an elaborately curving staircase with a gleaming mahogany banister. Michael grimaced at me and shrugged. We mirrored each other, slouching with our hands in our pockets, trying to seem casual, though obviously we felt like interlopers.

  "I'm sorry to drag you out here," he whispered.

  "No sweat." I pointedly ran a finger through the slick of perspiration on my forehead.

  "Look at this." He crossed behind me to a large painting of a barn wall in winter. In it snow was falling in a keen wind; icicles hung from a wrecked gutter and the gleam of frost defined the grain of the unpainted wood. The painting captured perfectly the sparkle of winter. "Just looking at it cools me off."

  "Is it signed?"

  The name C.P. Campbell was carefully printed in the corner, and the year, 1956.

  I stood back and said, "It's stunning."

  "Thank you," Sister Anne said, from behind me.

  We faced her. "It's yours?"

  She nodded and looked at it wistfully, as if remembering flakes of snow whirling around her canvas. She grinned. "That's the north wall of our barn at our farm in Vermont. I painted it in each of the seasons. My father says he keeps this one out here because he can't afford to heat it." She approached the painting, resting her fingers on its frame for a moment, as if to reassure herself that it, at least, existed. Then she brightened. "I'll show you others, but first come meet my parents. They're outside."

  We followed her through the narrow corridor that ran behind the staircase. The walls there were hung with several dozen family photographs, and I saw, displayed like treasures, the faces of children, a girl in a hammock, two boys clutching a dog, a man at the helm of a boat, a beautiful woman posed in a satin gown on the very staircase we had just left behind. They seemed creatures from a brighter world, and the flash of their smiles filled me with envy.

  The corridor led to a solarium, and its french doors opened on a broad stone terrace. A lawn sloped gradually down over a distance of about fifty yards to a blue and white island in the green, a swimming pool. A man and woman were reclining on chaises longues and they remained oblivious to our approach until Sister Anne clutched her rosary and her hem and broke for them, crying out, "Mommy! Dad!"

  "My God, it's Syr!" her father cried. "It's Syr!" He was up and running to meet her, a grinning, vigorous man in his fifties, tanned and muscular. When they embraced, I felt something of a jolt, as if the shock of their bodies colliding registered in me, but I think it was more the sight of that large, quite physical man clad only in his bathing suit taking that sternly garbed nun in his arms and whirling her around and around so that her black habit flew.

  Her mother, knotting a terry robe, quickly joined them. When they hugged the two women burst into tears.

  Michael and I stood oafishly by until her father noticed us. He approached Michael with his hand extended. "Hello, Father! Welcome! I'm Ed Campbell."

  "I'm Michael Maguire, Ed. And this is Frank Durkin."

  As Campbell shook hands with us he eyed his daughter. It was obvious something was wrong. She was sobbing against her mother's shoulder. When she realized we were watching she pulled herself together and brought her mother over to meet us.

  Mrs. Campbell was a slim, tanned woman whose hair was partly blond and partly gray. She had the posture of a tower and her face, though lined, seemed young. When I took her hand I felt drawn in by her, and my unease left me. Her name was Anne.

  Anne and Edward, I realized. Anne Edward. My first lesson in the naming of nuns.

  Ed Campbell offered us beers, but then a better idea hit him. "How about a swim, fellows?" Before we could respond he led the way back to the house, saying that between him and his two sons they had suits galore. As we followed, Michael looked back at Anne who watched us smiling, as if the pleasure for her in seeing her strong-willed generous father override us was enough. I glanced back at her once more as we went in the house and was struck by—I could say moved by—the mammoth sacrifice nuns make. She had forsaken herself, and even there in the embrace of her home the stigma of her clothing, of her choice, set her apart. No swimming for Sister.

  But I saw too, amazingly, why she'd done it. Only in that setting, heightening as it did the extremity of her situation, could I grasp its meaning. In her vowed life, in her hyperchaste body, in her loss of free will, she contradicted the world itself, its bondage to time and its steady quest for comfort. On that day in her merciless garments she contradicted the weather itself, and that act alone seemed transcendent. She was Crane's "wink of eternity," a spot of black in the glare on which it was possible for an instant to rest an eye. The great oppression is that things are what they seem and no more. Nuns deny it. How simple once one understands. And what fools they are unless the rest of us are wrong. Nuns teach us, if we let them, that we want to be wrong. If we don't let them, they're no bother unless your best friend gets involved with one.

  In her presence so far that day I had been uncomfortable, and I hadn't fathomed Michael's apparent attraction to her, but now I saw her as an image less of rejection than invitation. In her radical straining against the flow of things was there some meaning for me? For my sense-ridden but senseless life as an aging boy-wonder whose zeal for literature had been swamped in the backwash of classroom drudge-work, and whose once cherished, oh-so-modern belief in "the dearest freshness deep down things," in the "shining shook foil" of "experience" had grown stale, like bread left out on the table overnight? What began in the Village as a permanent "liberty" in the sailor's sense had become for my generation, or my crowd at least, even as we drifted from the great promise of school into rather ordinary jobs, the lockstep, nose-to-tail of canine heat. Even as I gave my stirring early lectures on "The Wreck of the Deutschland" (which Hopkins dedicated by the way to five Franciscan nuns), I was always half thinking of the weekend and of getting laid. This nun made me uncomfortable, I realized, because her chastity-on-display seemed addressed to the likes of me, and I could admit it only when I'd met her parents whose lively bond with each other seemed not Manichean, as one like me would expect in the progenitors of the celibate, but downright voluptuous.

  So Sister Anne Edward was straining against the flow of herself, as if her point wasn't at all that the world is evil, but that, even though it is good, it is far from enough. Life even in a loving family, even in a beautiful house, even as a promising artist, is not enough. How much less is it enough if life is among lonel
y Village girls who dream of Edna St. Vincent Millay and so believe us when we tell them that we part with our despair by parting our legs and whispering to each other like literary whores—give me "Baby, oh baby!" any day—"Death devours all lovely things," or "Love is not all; it is not meat or drink." After we have cheapened not only talk but good writing, no wonder the woman of silence reminds us that there is more, far more, not only than the worst, but than the best. That was why the radical denial implicit in Anne Edward's vocation had taken the form of a radical embrace. Had she been raised by lovers? Then she had to have for herself the Greatest Lover of them all. To my own surprise, I understood. In my last glimpse of her across the lawn I marked how she bent her head toward her mother and they laughed, and a rare affection fluttered above them.

  When, suited, we went back out and across the lawn to the pool, they were gone.

  Michael and I plunged into the water while Ed went back into the house for the beers. We rejoiced in the sheer release from the heat and I, for myself, felt momentarily freed of my Young Werther melancholy. The thrill of the wet cold enlivened me and I had, as it were, a brief foretaste of what was soon to come. Michael and I swam independently at first, then splashed one another boyishly, like a couple of Cooper Street kids away at camp for the first time.

  Michael noticed before I did. He stood up in the pool abruptly, the water at his waist, his strong chest dripping, and his jaw suddenly slack. I turned to see what caused this shock in him.

  She had just stepped off the terrace onto the lawn and was coming toward us in an unornamented, unskirted dark bathing suit of the sort competitors wore, but it registered as nudity, the simplified lines of her limbs, her long, elegant legs, her bare arms undulating sexually, as if to walk was an erotic act. Her cropped blond hair was short as a boy's, which made her long neck seem flaunted. Watching a lewd stranger coyly raise her nightgown at a window would not have been more electrifying than watching this virgin place one bare foot after the other in the grass. Her naked ankles! Her undraped thighs! She came not self-consciously but solemnly, as if taking possession of territory or enacting a rite of primitive religion. Drops of water clung to her. Had she just showered? To shave herself perhaps? Her skin was white as porcelain, cool, the Victorian ideal, but she seemed otherwise like a figment of the avant-garde, something out of Existentialist Paris, lacking only a cigarette and a hurt expression.