Prince of Peace (38 page)

 

The month that Carolyn and I got married, September of 1961, the Communists took over a provincial capital just outside Saigon. They held it long enough to flaunt their impunity and underscored it by decapitating the Catholic province chief. Though we heard nothing about it in America, the raid was the beginning of a new level of terror. It frightened the people of Saigon, and the method of mutilation terrorized even the sophisticates and the Catholics. As Vietnamese they still believed that a decapitated person is condemned to an eternity of headless exile, the worst of all possible fates.

The Communists proceeded with their hit-and-run terror among the rural population and with their brutal assassinations of local officials. And it worked. The illusion of Diem's control collapsed. By the time Michael had arrived in Vietnam that winter it was obvious at once that the CRS estimates of the numbers of refugees, displaced persons and orphaned children were already outdated. The relief program he'd come to help administer, once seen as mammoth, would barely touch the surface of the problem. Michael assumed at first that that was the result of the new Communist-sponsored violence. Indirectly, it was. But the immediate cause of the people's misery was a tactic that had been adopted by the Diem government, the elaborate fortification of central villages, "agrovilles" or "strategic hamlets." It was a tactic that had worked against Communists in Malaya; in Vietnam the French had tried to hold every village and had failed. So now most villages were evacuated; it was a second mass-movement of Vietnamese under Diem. But these people were not Catholics and they were not willing, so their resettlement had to be forced. The Americans called it "Operation Sunrise," and Maxwell Taylor referred to the program as "a great national movement." But in practice it was violent and brutal, and the supposedly idyllic "agrovilles" were in fact concentration camps. By the end of 1962 ten million peasants had been confined to these heavily guarded centers, working their fields and paddies in the daytime and returning to the "hamlets" at night. Thousands of peasants who resisted this resettlement were thereby branded Communist and killed. Hundreds of thousands of others, terrified by the awful, alien crossfire they found themselves in, crowded into the cities, burdening them impossibly. Almost overnight Diem, as if ignorant of the sacrosanct character of the tie between the Vietnamese and his home village, the village of his ancestors, had created a grave crisis of personal and spiritual identity for his own people. He had made them into exiles in their own country. In the beginning his problem had been that they didn't know him. Now it was that they hated him. And exactly as he expected the American government to provide his army with weapons to enforce his policies, he expected the Church to provide his displaced and demoralized population with food, clothing and medical care.

It was an impossible job and Michael Maguire was one of the people who had it. The longer he was in Vietnam the more his focus narrowed. No longer did rhetoric about a new polity, a
via media
between right and left, appeal to him. His days were taken up with endless rounds of meetings with the various volunteer agencies and Church officials who were responsible for getting the supplies out to the countryside. In fact, Michael, whose duties had been only vaguely defined when he'd arrived, became a kind of troubleshooting dispatcher. He was the guy who ran from one logjam to the next, kicking them loose, from bureaucracy to ministry, from dockside to truck depot, from the American embassy to the offices of the archdiocese.

And most of the time, like all Americans, he was in Saigon. And from Saigon, as refugees poured in by the thousands with their horrible stories, it was impossible not to believe that the Communists had gone from their ruthless assassinations to a policy of mass murder. Ironically, when reasons began to appear for hedging his support of Diem, Michael, like the leaders in Washington, stiffened it. The more of the victims' suffering he saw, the more he accepted the arguments of the anti-Communists. And he accepted the government's position that until order was restored, even if that meant extreme defensive measures, like the "agrovilles," nothing else could happen. Given the urgency of the situation, concerns about Catholic predominance seemed irrelevant. It was just as well he wasn't seeing Howe. If the AID officer came at him about the Ngos' religious intolerance, Michael would have reacted as O'Shea had, spouting the old chestnut that anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of liberal Episcopalians.

But then one day Howe showed up. He burst into Michael's office without knocking. Michael was on the phone with a French warehouse owner who'd been looking the other way while his workers pilfered rice to sell on the black market. Obviously they'd done so at his behest.

Howe said, "Can you come with us, Father? I think you should."

Michael held his finger up and repeated his threat to the Frenchman, and promised a visit, then hung up. He looked at Howe. "What?"

Howe calmed himself by wiping the perspiration from his hands on his khaki trousers. He wore an open-necked short-sleeve white shirt and no coat. On his head was a baseball cap with a B on it, Boston. "Come with us. Right now," Howe said. He let his agitation show, an amplification of his abrupt demand.

"All right." Michael stood and buttoned the black soutane he wore most of the time, as the Vietnamese clerics did. He picked up the stiff linen collar from his desk and fitted it around his neck as he followed Howe out into the brutal midday heat.

Howe had an embassy car, a Ford or something, and Michael sat beside him in front. In the back was the striking figure of a saffron-robed Buddhist monk, an elderly man. His bronze skin was tight on his shaved skull and his eyes were fixed on a point beyond. Michael glanced back at him but the monk did not speak and Howe did not offer to introduce them. Throughout the time it took them to clear the city and drive well into the countryside, the three maintained their silence, and by then it had come to seem natural.

My Tho was a river settlement in the delta region south of Saigon, formerly a fishing center but now one of those towns that had been swamped by refugees. It took two hours of fast driving through unsafe country to reach its outskirts where they were impossibly slowed by the thick traffic of carts and staggering families. One never saw Americans in the smaller towns in those days; the American command was only about twelve thousand strong.

Michael said, "It reminds me of Korea," though for the first time he noticed that the Vietnamese had no equivalent of the Korean A-frames for carrying their loads. The people carried their bundles or their children in their arms, and seemed doubly burdened.

"I hate to do this, but..." Howe leaned on the horn and gunned the engine threateningly. The refugees made way.

Howe addressed the monk in Vietnamese. The monk responded and made a pointing gesture. The monk, Michael understood, was the one giving directions. After winding through several blocks' worth of crowded streets, they pulled into a broad, open square, and the scene they came upon disturbed Michael because of the suffering it implied, but it also filled him with pride.

An outdoor food line was in progress. Old men and women, children, the parents of families, refugees of all kinds were waiting patiently for their turn at the huge vats of rice from which Vietnamese Catholic nuns were scooping ample bowls full. Beyond the vats, small sacks of rice, enough to sustain a family for a week, were being distributed. The refugees had the blank look of the displaced, but that was normal. A nurse was moving among them, checking their sores and wounds.

Michael looked at Howe for his explanation.

Howe said, "Don't you notice something?"

Michael looked at the scene again. It was all as it should have been. There were government soldiers behind the rice vats with their weapons ready, but that was standard too. No one was being bullied. And food was being given indiscriminately to everyone.

"What am I missing?" Michael asked.

"Look at the line."

Michael traced the line as it snaked back and forth across the square. Hundreds of people were waiting. Then he saw it. The line of refugees, each with his personal bowl, was issuing from the open portal, like tape from a roll, of the church on the far side of the square. The Catholic church. Michael crossed toward it, with Howe and the monk behind him. And as he did he suddenly felt an ominous dread. What could he possibly find in there? He began pushing through the crowded square more roughly, though ordinarily he was most gentle with people in that situation. The closer he came to the church the faster he went. At the entrance he pushed a man aside. At first, because of the dark, he couldn't see. He felt the cool air rushing over him. Then his eyes adjusted. He saw that the line of refugees wound into the church through a door opposite and down the far side aisle to the sanctuary, then up the center aisle to where he was standing. In one way, out the other. Apart from a pair of crying children, the people were silent.

He walked into the church and crossed to the third aisle, which was not being used. As he walked forward he stared as hard as he could toward the sanctuary. What was happening up there? He saw a priest, no, two priests, one vested in cope and alb, the other in alb and stole. Acolytes stood by with candles, and candles flickered on the high altar. The priest was speaking to each refugee in turn, and the refugees were bowing. And then...

No! Michael stopped where he was. The refugees were not bowing. Each was in turn putting his head over a basin. A basin to catch the water which the priest was pouring over each one's head. The priest was baptizing them.

"No!" This time he said it aloud.

I simply must put in here what every kid in Good Shepherd grew up knowing, that the crime of the British against the Irish was embodied in the fact that the thin soup the government offered to the starving victims of the Great Hunger came at a price: only those who renounced their Catholicism were fed. As here only Buddhists who submitted to it were.

"No!" he cried. He was running down the aisle, then across the transept, pushing the Buddhist refugees aside to get at the priests. The acolytes scattered, splashing candle wax on themselves. Michael upended the table on which the basin sat, splashing water about, and he snatched the Sacramentary, the book from which the celebrant read the ritual words, out of the hands of the assistant priest. Then he took folds of the main priest's golden cope in his hands, and he shook the man, a frail, pathetic Vietnamese who tried to hide his face behind the stylized silver scallop shell he'd been using to scoop the water. The shell fell to the floor. When he released the priest, Michael had to clasp his hands together to keep from striking him.

 

Archbishop Thuc refused to give him an appointment. But Michael expected that. A few days later it was Ash Wednesday. Michael went into the cathedral well before dawn to pray, but not only to pray. He wanted to be kneeling, cassocked, in the front pew before the president's bodyguard arrived from the palace to secure the cathedral. The Ngos would be attending the early-morning Mass; they would wear their ashes on their foreheads, like flags, all day. And the archbishop would preside.

When the security people arrived, they ignored Michael, a priest at his breviary, an American. He was conscious of the movement behind him as the churchgoers who had to identify themselves with special passes began to arrive and fill up the pews. There was a stir about twenty minutes before the Mass was scheduled to begin. Michael turned and saw Madame Nhu striding down the center aisle, dressed in black, her head suitably veiled with the traditional mantilla. She clasped a white prayer book at her breast. Her long red fingernails shone like blood against the white book cover. Her eyes were downcast, as if she was approaching for Communion. Behind her were a pair of bodyguards. She'd have ridden over from the palace with Thuc. Diem and Nhu would come together at the last minute.

Michael closed his breviary, rose, genuflected, opened the communion rail and went into the sanctuary. He genuflected again, then crossed to the far left corner, to the sacristy door. He used his key on it, and went in.

Thuc was standing at the vestment case with the amice in his hands, a small white kerchief, the first of several pieces of ceremonial clothing the priest dons. Next to him was an assistant priest, holding the alb ready. In the corner beyond stood a mean-looking Vietnamese in a tan suit, the archbishop's bodyguard.

Before anyone could react, Michael crossed to Thuc and said, "Your Excellency, Cardinal Spellman has asked me to give you a message."

Thuc stared at him, frozen. Then abruptly he turned and addressed his assistant in Vietnamese. Michael thought at first that his ploy hadn't worked, but the assistant hung up the alb, turned and left the sacristy by the hallway door, followed by the bodyguard. Then Thuc looked Michael in the eye.

Michael said, "I was in My Tho three days ago. I was at the church of Sainte Hélène."

Thuc's expression was blank, though Michael was certain he'd been briefed.

"Refugees were being offered food and medical care on the condition that they accept baptism in the Catholic faith. By the time I arrived, hundreds had already been put through the form of the sacrament."

Thuc's eyes widened. "But that is a violation of canon law."

"Indeed so, Your Excellency. That's why I stopped it. And why I am talking to you about it today."

Thuc shook his head sadly. "The curé of Sainte Hélène is a man of no judgment. I shall, of course, remove him."

"Your Excellency, I am informed that churches at Long Xuyen, Can Tho, Dalat and Nha Trang are conducting similar mass baptisms in conjunction with the distribution of food."

Thuc looked shocked. "Impossible." He waited, perhaps to see if Michael could produce evidence, then reiterated. "No, impossible! Père Theiu at Sainte Hélène could perhaps behave in this way, thinking in his confused situation that we want this, but no one else. I'm sorry, Father. It is impossible."