|
Copyright © 1999 Mark Leon Collins.
All rights reserved and reproduction without written permission expressly prohibited.
The Losing
Two brothers dead and her mother and sister taken she found the stillness quite
unnatural now that the soldiers had gone. Her hope remained only in her father.
Although he was physically able he had somehow evaded any enlistment throughout the
war that had been raging even before she was born. Now for a moment she watched
him laying in bed with a young woman, a total stranger, quite different in appearance to
the weeping mother she had barely come to know. She wondered if, come her time, she
would herself be able to touch another man. Worse still, to be touched. She felt
repulsed as she saw the her father 's hand stroke the woman.
Recoiling she quickly walked away uncaring that she had sneaked a look through the
crack between the bedroom door and the wall. She doubted that her father would be
concerned overmuch if he knew, it was as the bombs had blown away all emotions of
tenderness. However much they did love one another, their entelechy was fragile, and
they were fearful that even this might be robbed. Their feelings remained very much
hidden. And it seemed to matter nothing that the war was over. The house and
everything in it was still dirty and grimy, their possessions were littered about nearly all
half-broken. Anyway, at least the soldiers would not be back again.
Outside in the street, the rows of battered buildings seemed to
teeter over a crowd of people gathered together. In their midst, nuns
and priests were ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of the
people. A group of disheveled children stood around an
elderly man whose hat was of a shade whiter than any white she had seen before. His
beard was long and blazing, grey, a darker shade than the texture of his sun-wrinkled
face.
Compelled, she drew over to join the children whose hearts raced at the
gentleness of his voice. He spoke of days to come, of the realities of really good things
to fill the years of their lives that were awaiting before them. It was almost as if the man
knew nearly everything, the mysteries of life that lay above the rubble of the decades of
torn deriliction.
His silky voice was like a mild spring rain upon a hot and sunny day, and she
looked up at the man half expecting war-planes to rip across the sky and shatter an
otherwise naive situation. At least, she thought in her own way, it ought to be unreal. It
was almost impossible that all could be so serene; the wind still, and with a certain
calmness in the air this mild winter's day.
He took a girl of the same age as she by the hand and leaning over her he blessed
her. She was soothed, her every wound of agony became pacified immediately. She
spoke and the children laughed, and the man himself smiled, a toothy grin for victory
and of peace. Now she wondered if it was not after all impossible for anything in life to
change, even when this man had gone, were others as wise as he? Her heart felt warm
and yet somehow still a sense of apprehension crept over her. Suddenly she felt very
frightened for how could any man protect them if everything after all would not change.
And yet she believed quite instinctively, somehow, that this man was not the only one
who would never see his death-bed as an aged character ruined by the ravages of a long-
forgotten war.
|
