Prince of Peace

by James Carroll

  O'Shea snorted and said to Michael under his breath, "Goddamn Prod! Typical! Trying to make religion the issue when it's just a run-of-the-mill turf fight. Shops all around him in that embassy are gearing up, military and agricultural development, health and sanitation. But he's just trickling along at the same old rate, surplus rice and CARE packages. He sees the boom coming and is afraid he'll be left out. He wants his hand on the spigot instead of mine. That's all."

  O'Shea was ranting, it seemed to Michael. He'd rarely seemed so agitated. Michael said, mainly out of loyalty, "You stopped him cold when you said Spelly would be meeting with Rusk."

  O'Shea nodded. "These guys are all alike. An eye forever cocked on that next promotion. I'll tell you something funny—he'd love to get shipped to Italy. Those Episcopalians just swoon for Italy." O'Shea slapped Michael's shoulder as if celebrating a victory over the old enemy, but Michael knew that Howe held them both in contempt. Michael was perplexed by his own inability to simply sweep the man aside, as O'Shea had. Was that because Howe was right? Or was it something else? Why did Howe appeal to him?

  O'Shea was still jabbering. "It's people like him who worry that Kennedy's going to put holy water in White House commodes. If you ask him what a commode is, he looks down his Brahmin nose and says, 'I don't know. I'm not a Catholic.'"

  "But he had a point, Tim."

  O'Shea stiffened. "Is that so?"

  "Only about wanting an American. It might make sense to have an American on the spot. You said yourself, Thuc has to know Spelly's watching. An American priest might keep him honest."

  "Goddamnit, Michael. He's an archbishop of the Church. He is honest."

  "He'll have pressures from his brothers, and you know it."

  "Forget it. Spelly leaves Thuc alone. Once the stuff leaves New York it's their show. That's the way it's always been."

  "Not with Dooley, it wasn't."

  "Tom Dooley was special, Father. The people over here worshipped him. He saved this nation's hide. Anyway, the CRS has guidelines. We use local clergy where possible. You know that."

  Michael nodded. He'd said enough. He looked across the room, blithely, hoping that O'Shea did not sense his surge of feeling. My God, he thought, an American! What an arena this would be. Not a desk in New York, not a parish in Queens. Not altar boys and Legion of Mary meetings. But a major role in what Kennedy called a "massive joint effort" to help democracy grow out of the ashes of conflict between colonialism and Communism. Here was a cause that mattered! How he wanted to alleviate suffering. Yes. But how, also, he wanted to leave behind the demeaning, petty restraints of the junior New York clergy! There was more, far more, to being a priest than the submissiveness of rectories, the banalities of parish life, and Michael Maguire, for one, was going to have it.

  He told O'Shea he was going for a fresh drink, but instead went after John Howe. He found him in the spacious palace foyer, by the entrance. A servant had just handed him his hat.

  "Mister Howe, just leaving? I was too." Michael fell into step with him. "Perhaps we could walk a bit." Howe eyed him for an instant, then nodded. The two men left the Governor's Palace together. Outside its gates the city was teeming. The press of the crowd made conversation difficult, so they moved through it in silence.

  The dedication was the occasion of a great festival in Quang Tri. Farmers and their families from the surrounding countryside had come to town, and so had fishermen from the coastal villages. The narrow streets were crowded with food stalls at which the pilgrims vied for their midday meal. The foodstuffs were exotic—bird's eyes, fish heads, little heaps of slimy grubs harvested from inside palm trees, and piles of vermicelli, "little worms" indeed, which Michael mistook for pasta. The two Americans slowly moved through the crowd, towering over them. Those Vietnamese who acknowledged them addressed Michael in singsong French, "Bonjour, mon pere!" Michael nodded, but Howe, as if addressed himself, returned their greeting in Vietnamese.

  Soon the crowd began to thin as townspeople drifted inside for siesta. A few blocks from the basilica the neat whitewashed buildings of the central district gave way to rows of corrugated-roofed shanties. Tens of thousands of refugees had yet to be settled, and these were some of them. Children surrounded Maguire, tugging at his soutane. Their dark eyes implored, and Michael realized with a shock that the children were hoping for rice. He was a priest, wasn't he? He looked helplessly at Howe, whom the children had pushed aside and ignored. "You see," Michael wanted to say, "this is the difference between us. This is why I became a priest."

  Michael pushed through the children, and he and Howe left them behind.

  "Good Lord," Michael said.

  "Shocking, isn't it, when you see it close."

  "Yes. They're so desperate. It's why we should find a way to work together, don't you think? They're the ones we're working for."

  "I couldn't agree more," Howe said. He looked at Michael with surprise. He hadn't expected conciliation.

  Michael let his curiosity about Howe show itself. "Where were you before Vietnam?"

  "The Congo two years. Before that Brazil."

  "Always in relief work?"

  Howe nodded.

  "You speak Vietnamese, I noticed."

  "Just a few words. I'm still learning."

  "I admire that. I'm lousy at languages. Except Latin." Michael grinned self-mockingly. He saw that this was the assignment Howe wanted. O'Shea had been unfair.

  At a hut farther along a family of six or seven hovered at the doorway. Two of the children, perhaps ten and twelve, each had a scar on one side of his head where there should have been an ear. Michael saw their parents in the shadows; their ears had been mutilated too. They watched from within their hovel with the peculiar, angled stance of the partially deaf. Michael had to look away. "Did you see that?"

  "Yes," Howe said. "They're from Bao Lak, a province in the North next to China. The Viet Minh there were notorious. It's said they had a special penalty for anyone caught listening to 'evil words.' They ripped your ear off with pliers even if you were a baby in your mother's arms. Do you know what the 'evil words' were? The Catholic Mass."

  "God."

  "I'm not indifferent to what Catholics suffered in the North, Father."

  "I know that," Michael said. "I saw the point you were trying to make to Monsignor O'Shea."

  "I couldn't believe his reaction, frankly."

  "I think he was trying to tell you that religion and politics don't mix."

  Howe stopped and faced Michael. "Forgive me, Father, but that's quite fatuous, and I think you know it. Religion is politics here. Why do you think this basilica was built in Quang Tri? To anchor the Catholic population by the border with the North, to discourage Ho Chi Minh from crossing, that's why! The archbishop claimed in his sermon that the basilica was built by the donations of all the people. I couldn't believe no one laughed. The basilica was paid for by lottery tickets that Diem's police made the whole population buy. Everyone knows that here but Spellman. Hell, Spellman doesn't even know this is a Buddhist country."

  "Yes, he does, Mister Howe." Michael reined his clerical defensiveness, which seemed banal compared to Howe's emotion.

  "Well, Diem and his people don't know it. The U.S. government shouldn't be playing to their weakness. And their weakness, Father, frankly, is a shocking level of intolerance toward the majority of Vietnamese, and that has a religious aspect. That's all I'm saying." As abruptly as he'd stopped, Howe began walking again, leaving Michael to catch up with him.

  Which accounted perhaps for the irritation he felt suddenly. Who the hell was Howe to lecture him? To club Spellman and O'Shea with his high-toned moral sensitivity? Wasn't his concern a bit overdelicate?

  But Michael realized something about Howe then, trailing him by a pace, watching him move intently through the streets without seeing them. Howe was used to moving in a world of ideals and principles. Wasn't that the point of a Harvard education? Didn't men like Howe always know how other people, oth
er nations, fell short of standards? Wasn't that—the moral shortfall of the other—their expertise? How angry it could make them, how impatient. "Hey, wait a minute!"

  But Howe kept up his stride, ignoring Michael.

  Maybe it was Howe's standards that appealed to Michael. Certainly his obvious dedication did. Michael admitted that the novelty of Howe's passionate idealism was stunning. So what that his own instincts, by nature and training, ran another way. Michael, like his kind, was pragmatic. The human condition was not a scandal to him, but a given. As far as Vietnam was concerned, in his opinion, religious pluralism could wait awhile. Democracy was the end, not the means. What mattered now was getting people fed. But Michael wasn't interested in debating his differences with the AID officer. What he was interested in, he admitted finally, was getting over here and playing on this team. Michael Maguire wanted off the bench.

  He grabbed Howe's arm. They faced each other.

  "You were also saying you could use an American priest."

  "What?"

  "As liaison between Archbishop Thuc and your office."

  The two men stared at each other. Michael was aware of a current between them that had nothing to do with their positions. This could have been happening on a football field or in a school corridor or in a barracks. Michael recognized Howe as a man he wanted to be with. But Howe, perhaps sensing it, looked away. And Michael felt foolish.

  "Yes," Howe said calmly. When he looked at Michael now it was with masterful detachment. "That would enable us to help with the relief effort."

  "And to monitor it." Michael could be cool too. "You'd like to make sure the distribution is equitable, that everyone gets what they need. That's fair enough. I agree with you. And I agree that an American priest could help open up some lines of communication. I'd like to be that priest...." Michael almost said "John" but he sensed that Howe would continue to call him "Father," and so he didn't use any address at all. "And you could help me get appointed."

  Howe shook his head. "I don't understand."

  "Cardinal Spellman and Monsignor O'Shea don't see the need as of yet. But I think if the suggestion originated at the upper levels of the State Department..."

  "You've gathered, I think, that my influence there is limited. If I had my way His Eminence wouldn't be involved in Vietnamese affairs at all."

  "Cardinal Spellman was involved in Vietnam when you and I were still in high school. It might help for both of us to keep that in mind. The point is, can't you make some recommendation? What if you compromised? What if you offered to support the distribution of relief through CRS, but with one condition. Wouldn't that carry weight?"

  "The condition being...?"

  "Me."

  "By name?"

  Michael shrugged. "Why not? You could tell them you discussed it with me, at your initiative, of course. I'd report as much to Monsignor O'Shea. You could say my background would be a particular asset."

  "What background?"

  "I was a POW in China for nearly three years." Michael smiled. "I know the Oriental mind."

  Howe stared at Michael, who read him. Hadn't he dismissed this priest only moments before? Now he was looking again, and for the first time he saw more than a Church functionary. There was a man here, with a history. Howe said with a certain deference, "That's the kind of thing they love at State."

  Michael nodded. "Spellman loves it too. It proves his priests are real men, you know?" Michael grinned. He often mocked himself, but it wasn't like him to mock the cardinal. That he also mocked Howe for his nod to the mystique of war prisoners was inadvertent. "The point is, if you make an issue of it, there's a good chance they'll do it. His Eminence wants this operation to go smoothly, and he also wants his people in the middle of it."

  Howe nodded. "All right. It could help, your being here." Howe hesitated, then added, "I think I could work with you."

  Michael smiled. Was that supposed to be a compliment? For a Catholic priest, he was okay.

  "May I ask you, Father, why you're interested?"

  What could Michael say? To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, preach the good news to the poor? He too had oblige, if not noblesse. He checked his resentment and said what men in ward rooms and officers' clubs always say. "This is the action, isn't it?"

  Howe's face broke into its first grin. For all their high-toned social concern, however differently expressed, this was the truth between them, what they had in common, and each saw it. "It sure is, Father. It sure is."

  FIFTEEN

  A MONTH later, Carolyn and I got married. I'd expected it to be awkward, having Michael as the priest, and so had Carolyn, I think, although we didn't talk about it.

  But it wasn't at all, mainly because, lo and behold, Michael carried the ceremony off like an old smoothie. You wouldn't have believed how cool he was, how relaxed, witty, outgoing, affectionate. The ceremony was in the tailored yard of the house in Dobbs Ferry, so there was none of the anxiety that comes so naturally to wedding parties in churches, and Michael led us through our vows with such grace, such patent joy for us that even Carolyn, I thought, conquered her reservation. Oh that fucking reservation! For myself, holding her hand and pronouncing my promise, while feeling the weight of her gaze upon me, I never expected to be happier. Hell, I guess, as it turned out, I never was.

  And what a relief it was to find Michael so excited about his own life. And with reason. As he described what he'd experienced—or rather discovered—in Vietnam, a great drama unfolding and a prospect that he would play an important role in it, I found myself thinking, God, Michael's world is going to be huge, so vastly larger than mine.

  "So what do you think?" he asked.

  "Sounds good," I said noncommittally. Was I just too much the cynic to respond to his enthusiasm? Was I jealous? Or was I simply unable to grasp what he was saying? What the hell did I know? Vietnam to me, as to almost everyone in 1961, was someplace near where Yul Brynner waltzed around with Deborah Kerr. Michael was whistling a happy tune, all right. And that was fine with me, though I suspect my eyes glazed over as he went on.

  The weary nations of Europe, with their empires collapsed and their Enlightenment secularity bankrupt, could look now to a rejuvenated Catholicism and an America on the move. The pope and the president, the two Johns, all that shit; he was convinced of it. And he told me—how he would blush when I threw this back at him later—that Diem was an Asian Thomas More. So who was Cardinal Wolsey? I wanted to ask. That was Thuc, of course, though no one knew that yet. In Michael's view the Ngos' promise was enormous, and that was why it was crucial to go to their support. Ngo Dinh Diem, having been nurtured by American Catholicism and sponsored by it, now embodied its triumph.

  Michael's triumph.

  It is almost impossible now, given how badly that project turned out—which puts it rather mildly, doesn't it?—to imagine that Vietnam could ever have embodied such a dream. But it did. Still, even then I sensed that Michael's conviction was also a matter of something else. I didn't understand what he was really telling me until I looked across at Carolyn; she winked at me, and I realized that, of course, he had to go out now and save the world. Only the world itself, redeemed at last, could fill the hole that the loss of that woman had cut in him.

  It was some months before Michael's assignment to Vietnam came through. Archbishop Thuc, of course, opposed having an American watchdog in his front yard, and he tried every way he could to get Spellman to change his mind. O'Shea had his reservations too. Was Michael seasoned enough? Would he walk with the roll of the place? But Spellman liked the idea and he liked having a priest who impressed the people at State. Michael arrived in Vietnam in January of 1962. He took up residence in the cathedral rectory in Saigon, but he had almost no contact with Archbishop Thuc from the very beginning. The first surprise was that the archbishop lived not at the cathedral but at Freedom Palace on Tu Do Street with his brothers. The second surprise was that his fellow priests had apparently been ordered to cooperate with
Michael to the minimum, and beyond that to have nothing to do with him. He made the round of orphanages, refugee centers and hospitals that were being supported by the CRS. The European and American volunteers welcomed him, but Vietnamese relief workers, including nuns and priests, reacted as if he'd come to spy on them. In a way, he admitted to himself with a certain shame, it was true.

  In Saigon he depended more than he'd have wanted on the Americans at the embassy for orientation. But, hell, the Vietnamese would hardly talk to him. And for some reason, John Howe didn't seem that anxious to school Michael in the local realities either. When they finally did get together, perhaps a month after Michael's arrival, it wasn't for a tour of AID projects or for briefings even. It was for tennis. Howe suggested it. Michael demurred. He didn't have a racket. It wasn't his game, really, he said. Howe insisted; he had two rackets. Michael knew the type. He liked to take on inferior partners now and then just to demonstrate the difference between pretty good and first rate, but what he said was, "If you're going to be in Saigon, you'll have to take it up. Everything important happens at the Cercle Sportif."

  The Cercle Sportif was the high-walled colonial-era tennis and swimming club that the French planters had built for themselves. Its glory days were past, but it was still the nearest thing to an elegant spa in Saigon, and the remaining French elite now shared it with select Vietnamese, European and American diplomats and, lately, to everyone's chagrin, the news photographers and reporters who were coming to Saigon in ever greater numbers.

  Michael met Howe at the front gate and was immediately embarrassed. Howe was decked out, scrupulously, in tennis whites. Michael was wearing black canvas basketball shoes, plaid Bermuda shorts and a blue sport shirt. He'd been afraid of this. Howe didn't flinch as they shook hands. Howe handed Michael his extra racket, and, as he followed him into the compound, Michael felt like Goofy the Dog.