The Ugly American (5 page)

The boy jerked his head up sharply, almost startled. The priest thought for a moment that he might be a Protestant and was embarrassed at the attentions of a Catholic.

Then the Marine spat, coolly and arrogantly. Finian realized that he had misjudged everything. The boy's eyes were cold and hard; and he spoke from a tight-lipped mouth.

"There isn't any God that's going to watch me or anyone else on that LCI, father. You know it, and so do I."

The Marine flicked his finger against the chaplain's gold cross. "I'm a Communist, father. And I'll go into that goddamned miserable island and chew hell out of those Japs . . . but not for you or those fat-assed Rotarians back in the States, but because Communism is worth it."

"My son, Communism. . .

"What you ought to be telling us, father, is why we haven't opened a second front. Tell us why a bunch of greedy capitalists don't want to go into Europe until Soviet Russia is bled white. Don't tell us about a make-believe god. He won't help. We have to help ourselves."

The hard-faced boy looked older, wiser, infinitely tougher than any man Finian had met before; he was utterly beyond the appeal of words or logic or sentiment.

Father Finian had never forgotten that incident. He had recognized that the zeal in the boy's eyes and the dedication in his face were what made saints of men. Yet this boy was dedicated to something evil.

After that meeting with the Marine, the priest oriented his energy. He began to read Communist literature. At first he merely read the speeches of Stalin and Bulganin and Zhukov as they were reported in the press, puzzling over their vulgarity, obviousness, and lack of subtlety. Their illogicality pained so well-trained a Jesuit as Father Finian; but apparently to millions of people the logic was flawless, the appeal intense.

Slowly the priest concluded that these Communist speeches were a form of secular ritual. The crude slogans were only symbols which meant much to the converted; the incredible promises of an abundant future were as real to them as the Stations of the Cross to a Catholic. Finian learned that the faith of a Communist was no more shaken by news of a bloody purge of "right-wing deviationists" than is the faith of a Catholic by the news that the Inquisition was brutal.

The discovery was decisive. The priest realized that here was the face of the devil. The Communists had duplicated the ritual, faith, dedication, zeal, and enthusiasm of the Church. There was the same emphasis upon training, the same apostolic energy, the necessity to see beyond facts to a greater truth. The only difference was that the Communists served evil. They served it so well that the priest knew that both faiths could not exist in this world at the same time.

Later he read Lenin's
What is to be Done?
and Stalin's
History of the Communist Party,
Engels'
Anti-Duhring,
and finally, Marx's
Das Kapital,
and much more. Through all the tedious reading through economics and politics, sociology and philosophy, the priest never wavered. Others might think that Communism was a result of class conflict, of long-range economic change or political fanaticism; but Finian
knew
that Communism was the face of the devil, altered slyly and shrewdly, but still the devil's face, put on earth to test again the morality of men. Finian meant to meet the test, even if he had to do it alone.

Finian was a practical, tough-minded, and thoughtful man. When he left for Burma he was well-armed. On his long trip via Manila, Saigon, Bangkok, and finally Rangoon, he crystallized his plan of attack. During his two-week stay in Rangoon and his journey up a thousand miles of the Irrawaddy River by slow launch, he studied the Burmans and reviewed his notes on the culture, the history, and anthropology of the country. There was nothing haphazard about Finian.

Because of the Burmese heat, the windows in the residence of the Archbishop of Mokthu had no glass. Instead they were covered by fine wire screens; at night, bamboo shades were lowered inside to assure privacy. Looking through the screens Finian saw many strange insects pressed against the wire mesh.

Beyond the bodies of the insects, which by some trick of the eye seemed to fill the middle distance, Finian saw the lush green rolling of the Mokthu Valley. At the edge of Mokthu Town the tin shacks, the roads, the tiny streams of sewage ended, and the jungle began, green and thick and threatening. It seemed as if the town balanced at the very edge of survival; and that at any moment the eternal, powerful, lazy jungle might come sweeping over the town and bury it like a soft and tropical Pompeii.

"I should like to get out into the country soon," the priest said, quietly. "I would appreciate whatever help you can give me. A jeep perhaps; a tent, a sleeping hammock, some food."

"You are going to stay out for more than a night?" asked the Archbishop.

"Yes. For a few months."

"Father, we have closed our three missions between here and China. The Communists burned one and threw phosphorous bombs into the other two. It is impossible to stay out there."

"Nevertheless, can you assist me?"

"Yes," the Archbishop said, stiffly. "If that is what you must do."

"With your permission, then, I will leave by the end of the week. For three months." Then, because he could not resist it, he added, "Nothing is really impossible." At once he felt a stab of guilt, for he had said it only to bait the Archbishop.

Finian drove north, bumping and slithering along the narrow cart road through the jungle. He knew he had to do three things very quickly. First, he had to find at least one native Catholic who was courageous. Second, he had to learn the language. Third, he had to learn to eat the food . . . which meant he might have to endure several weeks of agonizing dysentery while his intestinal tract developed an immunity to the bacteria in the native food.

Five weeks later Finian stood under a fir tree in the tropical jungle of the area where the Kachin plateau joins the mountains of Assam. The giant tree flung itself out of the steam and smell and heat of the jungle floor toward the clean, infinitely removed, aseptic blue-whiteness of the sky. He had vastly underestimated the difficulties of his three basic tasks.

He still had a fever from the dysentery, and he was forty pounds lighter. His face was white and sweated, as if his vitality had been leached out of his flesh. His bowels were tender and painful. When he moved, his viscera came together with a roughness that was incredibly painful. His tongue was dry from fever, and his teeth felt chalky. His bones ached, and once, in his delirium, he had imagined that the marrow had been replaced by gelatin.

But he could eat native food; at that very moment his overtender intestines were digesting two handfuls of rice, half of a mango, and a cup of very impure water. He knew that he would keep it down. He was immune.

Finian had also learned the language. He had chewed into it like a cold chisel driven into granite. From the first day in the up-country he spoke nothing but Burmese. He asked the name of every object he saw, by pointing at it. Leaf, tree, water, big, little, walk, hop, jump, down, sideways, lizard, river, sea, cloud, yes, no, fire, food, feet, nose, mouth ... he was astonished at how few were the essential words of a language. Even while he was sick with dysentery he practiced. The grammar came quite unconsciously; and in four weeks he was speaking simple sentences. He made no effort to learn complex or difficult expressions. He wanted complex needs to be put in simple sentences and was convinced it could be done. His Burmese was the only way he could search for dependable associates.

After he had found the first Burmese Catholic, it had been less difficult to find other good men. He had not required that they be Catholic; only that they be anti-Communist and that they be honest and have courage. "Come to think of it," Finian said to himself, "that was asking quite a bit."

He pushed himself away from the fir tree and felt the pain stab in his intestines. But pain or no pain, it was necessary for him to be standing when his eight new associates arrived. He thought for a moment of the difficulties he had had recruiting them. All his training as a Jesuit, all his alertness, every available trick and wile had been necessary; and he had had to look for them while he was still miserably sick. The main problem had been finding the first one, a Burman who was surely and beyond mistake a dependable man. His name was U Tien.

U Tien was a jeep driver on the staff of the Archbishop, and had been ordered to go with the priest. His home was in the north, in the mountains about fifty miles from the Chinese border. This was the area where the priest had decided to work. U Tien was thirty-nine years old, married, had three children and said that he was a devout Catholic. He said it evenly, without fervor; and Finian felt he was telling the truth. But still he had tested U Tien.

First Finian left his briefcase with U Tien while he went away on a short trip. Later, when he examined the briefcase, the thin almost invisible thread which he had twisted through the clasp was unbroken. So he knew, as a minimum, that U Tien was honest.

Secondly, he had told U Tien that he was thinking of negotiating with the Communists so that they would allow the mission schools to reopen. Finian had told him that they could re-open the schools on the condition that they would not teach anything against the Communists. U Tien's face showed no expression. Finian went on to say that Communism was politics and Catholicism was religion and there was no reason why they should conflict. Good Burmans could be good Communists as well as good Catholics, he said. There had been much misunderstanding; it was possible to be a good patriot and a good Communist and a good Catholic. What, he asked, did U Tien think of this?

Agony showed in U Tien's eyes. Finian knew that most Asians dislike saying anything that is unpleasant. Intuitively they say what they think their listener wants to hear. Finian also knew that a Communist would have hesitated, played for time until he could check with higher authority on what he should say. For what Finian was proposing was a capitulation. U Tien wet his lips.

"I think it would be a mistake," he said, and his voice was low and dejected. "I think it would not be possible to be a good Catholic and a good Communist. Somehow, in some way that I cannot tell you clearly, they are not things that can be mixed." He paused, seeking for the right words. "To say it differently: if one way is right, then the other cannot be. That is the best I can put it. I am sorry."

There had been other tests. Some of them were slight and quick, some more deliberate. Finally Father Finian had done what he knew was a cruel thing, but necessary. Finian had gone to the bazaar in Mokthu and had shopped industriously for a leather pouch. He had asked for such a pouch at four shops, and at each he had said, "It must be stout enough to hold a pistol and fifty rounds of ammunition. I want it for my driver so that he can guard the jeep in these troubled days."

The next day U Tien had been late for work. When he appeared, driving the jeep, his face was covered with a long purple welt that ran across his eye and down to his lower jaw. Blood was crusted in the corners of his mouth. Finian asked him what had happened.

"The Communists came last night and beat me," he said. "They thought I had a pistol and ammunition. They said they knew it for a fact. They almost destroyed my room searching for it." He paused and his eyes were bewildered and angry. "You have not been wise in what you have said, sir. It is not wise to say such things."

At that moment Finian dropped his air of innocence.

"It will not happen again, U Tien," he said, placing his hand on the man's shoulder. "This is the end of a time of testing. Now we know one another. It was necessary because there are spies everywhere. I had to find one man with whom I can trust God's work. Now, find out who the spies are."

Within a week U Tien told him. And he also told him who the dependable men were. Some of the dependable men were not Catholics, but they hated the Communists; and U Tien told him the reasons in each case.

"Now," said the priest, "we will start our work."

Four men, U Tien among them, came flitting through the trees, nodded at Finian, and stood quietly in front of him. They waited without talking; and in a few minutes four more men appeared. All nine of them crouched to begin talking.

Now it starts, Finian thought. Now the whole work and training of years comes to a point, as if one had worked endlessly on a nail and now, with a few blows, were trying it on tough wood. He felt calm. His physical weakness was enormous, a pervading and maddening softness. But the weakness was only something of the body, something that would yield before food and sleep and exercise. Otherwise he was strong.

He closed his eyes for a moment, asked for guidance so that his strength would not be misused, and then, opening his eyes, began to talk very slowly to the eight Burmans.

"This thing is hard to say," he began slowly, speaking the words he had distilled down from twelve years of work. "But it must be said." He paused. "In usual times the Church cares not what the State does. Each is concerned with different parts of man: one with his soul and the other with his political life. A great saint once said that as long as the sword of the Church is left free to fight sin, it will do nothing to tarnish the sword of the State."

He hesitated, wondering if St. Augustine would quite approve this way of putting it. "But these are not usual times. The men calling themselves Communists say that the soul and the state are identical. The price of being a Communist is that you must also give them your soul and your will. They are trying to make themselves gods on this earth."