No apology: A super-sensitive subject treated with a scientific mindset in Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. A review

Reposting from last year a Christmas chapter from the Life in the Barracks with modifications.

Laszlo Hopp: Love must keep them warm!

Last year around Christmas time I published on this site four installments of a chapter from my book "Live in the Barracks. I thought the chapter was appropriate for the season, since it describes Tibor's visit home for Christmas. In this past year I made changes to the book. In fact, the rewrite is still in (slow!!!) progress. In the spirit of the Christmas season, here is again the first of four parts from Tibor's reworked Christmas adventures with his Father.

(The brief introduction is the same as last year's.)

Short of a big advertising budget, I try to promote my book with what I have. I have winter and the Christmas season approaching and I happen to have a long chapter in the Life in the Barracks about Tibor visiting his father for Christmas of 1978. So, I decided to break down this chapter into a few manaegable sections and post them on this blog in the course of the next few weeks. Admittedly, my hope is that a few of those who stumble upon the blog may get inspired to purchase the book: either as a present for a loved one, or to surprise themselves and start reading the story in front of their fire place in the company of a cup of hot chocolate or fine winter liquer.

The chapter starts with Tibor elating about Zsuzsa, who apparently reciprocated his interest - in the previous chapter -. He is also happy because Christmas is getting close and he got permission to visit his father for the Holiday. Christmas has a special importance in Tibor's life: it symbolizes the warmth of his family he grew up with.

Chapter 9 Home for Christmas

The next two weeks flew by for Tibor. He was full of excitement to see his father and his little town with its long main street lined with horse chestnut trees. He wanted to see the river, almost certainly frozen solid this late in the year, and waiting to impress him with loud metallic crackles as the ice sheet expanded with the daytime warming.

The anticipation of going home was further enhanced by his elation over Zsuzsa. He knew it had just started, but it started so well! With the help of his vivid imagination and dreamy soul, Tibor felt Zsuzsa’s presence everywhere. When he made the short walk through the park to the infirmary, he held Zsuzsa’s hand in her oversized mitten. When Katona vexed him, he told Zsuzsa, You see what assholes I have to deal with? Or, toward the end of an exhausting afternoon clinic that stretched well into the early evening, he heard her soothing voice, as if she were sending encouraging subliminal messages to him.

He wanted to gush out his happiness to Keri but decided to hold himself back. He had frequently fallen into the trap of his own exuberance over new relationships. He would let his guard down and reveal his naked, undisguised feelings prematurely. He was convinced that his last relationship ended, painfully as it did, partly because of his torrential outpouring of emotions that overwhelmed his girlfriend. Although he knew he couldn’t change his natural instincts, he was determined to control how he revealed his inside fire. But when night came, nobody could interfere with his sigh before he’d fall asleep: One of those stars above the Owl’s Nest must have pitied me.

Unfortunately, the holiday season was very busy in Kisliget and Zsuzsa had to put in a lot of overtime at the café. For his part, Tibor had to finish his end-of-the-year reports in the infirmary before his Christmas furlough. They were both so busy that it wasn’t until a few days before his leaving for the furlough that Tibor could manage to visit the café. Zsuzsa smiled and waved when she noticed him. He asked for a chicken sandwich with cucumber, a beer, a coffee, and a creamy French pastry.

“Whoa, you’re going all out tonight, aren’t you?” Zsuzsa said. She came to his table more than usual and this kept Tibor’s heart pleasantly warm. He noticed that their usual cheerful bantering during Zsuzsa’s brief breaks took up a new air of amicability.

When Tibor was ready to pay, Zsuzsa put a thin worn book on the table along with the bill. The book contained two novellas by Stephan Zweig: The Royal Game and Amok.

“This will be good reading for you on the train.” she said. “I’ve been carrying this book since the dance, but you never came.”

“Not because of lack of wanting. You know how bureaucracy works, like an unwanted pregnancy: as the delivery day approaches, the burden one carries grows exponentially.”

“The end of year rush?” Zsuzsa said, smiling. “Didn’t you say that you have an administrator to do that for you?”

“Yes, Marosi, of course. But he gets overwhelmed very easily. He’s been hopelessly tangled up in the intrigues of those year-round statistics, accounts, and various registry statements the military is full with.

Thanks for remembering the book, though!” Tibor said and squeezed Zsuzsa’s hand as he handed her the payment.

When Zsuzsa saw the tip, she made a playful grimace and scolded him. “You’re a conscript now, not a doctor. Don’t be such a show-off!”

Tibor shrugged his shoulder.

Zsuzsa sneaked in brief kisses on his cheeks and whispered, “Enjoy your trip and be a good boy! I’ll see you in the New Year.”

“In the New Year?” Tibor exclaimed. “We can’t spend New Year’s Eve together?”

“Sorry, but no.” Zsuzsa said, her face lengthening like a child ready to burst into tears. “We are going to visit my uncle, who is turning 50 on New Year’s Eve. It’s a big family event. No way out.”

“Where does he live?”

“Budapest.”

“Oh!” Tibor sighed. “You’ll see the city at its best. How I envy you! The lights of the bridges, the splendor of the king’s castle, the jingle of the trams, fireworks at midnight ... and all those carefree, happy people flooding the streets ready for the holidays.”

“Shh!” Zsuzsa locked her lips with her finger. “I don’t want to hear complaints. You will be at home with your family. What more can you ask for?”

“True. What more?”

With a smile and a hug they parted for the rest of the Old Year.

***

A few days later, Tibor sat on the train heading home. Despite the approaching holidays, he was the only passenger in the compartment. When the conductor came to turn on the electricity, only one of the three lights flickered to life. Tibor didn’t mind. Zweig’s book was tucked in his luggage for his Christmas reading, and the manuscripts that he planned to work on during the trip lay untouched on the seat next to him. His head was filled with thoughts and memories. Words and faces jumped out unpredictably from hidden corners of his subconscious. Scenes from the past two months played out on richly embellished stages set inside his mind. His thoughts moved back and forth in time as if he were turning pages of a playbill with slow, aimless motion. In this imaginary playbill Vida was the leading man with the strongest performance during their dinner with Tibor. In fact, Tibor realized that since that night, Vida was not only the leading man but he also became the director of Tibor’s role on the stage of Kisliget. How much can he follow the director’s instructions? When does he have to start doubting Vida’s coaching? Does he, Tibor, have enough flair to remain his own director in a military stage play so odd to him? Can he flaunt himself as the naïve, altruistic doctor wanting nothing but the best of his patients while passing sentence on Vida for his unprofessional selfish greed?

The leading lady on that playbill was a far more agreeable character. Tibor’s heart thumped with excitement when Zsuzsa came to his mind. How is she going to spend the holidays? With whom? Who is she going to dance with on New Year’s Eve? Will their burgeoning relationship be put to test with the nearly two week separation?

Until nightfall, Tibor stared at the passing landscape: featureless, yet somehow fascinating for him as it spread out to the horizon under the thick white cover. His body rocked with the rhythm of the train. Fighting to stay awake, eyes half-closed, he stubbornly scanned the growing darkness outside. His breathing deepened as he sank into the twilight between sleep and consciousness. The monotonous clicking of the train’s wheels and the darkness that now took over the faint lights of dusk finally overcame his pensive thoughts, the rush of memories and childlike excitement over the train ride home. He drifted off into a dream.

He saw his younger self running alongside a train in the snow. Children pulled their sleds with him and yelled something at him. He waved back but didn’t stop running, trying to stay alongside one of the cars. He wanted to see the people behind the bright windows. They looked warm and comfortable and Tibor was delighted to observe their silent gestures and facial expressions. The scene reminded him of a bizarre comical pantomime act. He wanted to see how their faces changed during the animated discussion. He felt an insatiable curiosity to know who would get the slices of an orange that a woman in the compartment was peeling. But he could not keep up. The train passed him and in a blink of an eye only the two fading lights of the last car winked back at him mockingly from the distance.

Next in the dream, his mother showed up, sitting on a stool. She saw him on the verge of crying in frustration over the disappearing train and gestured for him to sit on her lap. They were transported to their old kitchen, and the two of them sat and stared out the window. Tibor knew they were waiting for the angels to bring the Christmas tree on that cloudless winter night. His father was in the living room, opening the windows so that the angels could get in. Tibor curled up in his mother’s lap and waited for the jingle that heralded the arrival of the tree with the presents.

His mother pointed at the star-covered black sky. “Do you see that angel there? She’s coming this way!”

Tibor strained his eyes. First, he didn’t see it. But then, finally he noticed the angel. There she was, riding on a bright streak of light. No doubt that’s her star. The wings of the angel were tightly closed next to her body and her long hair streamed behind her. Tibor couldn’t make out her halo though. With the tree and all those presents she can’t fly with her own wings. That’s why she’s using her star.

With grinding metallic sound the train pulled in the empty station and with a brief judder it came to a halt. Tibor woke and shook his head. He almost missed his stop.

This old memory with his mother on Christmas Eve came back in many of his dreams. Tibor always wondered whether he’d seen a comet or Venus had been visible on that long ago early Christmas night, giving him the vision of the angel with her star.

In a hurry, Tibor grabbed his luggage and left the warm compartment. As he descended on the icy steps, nippy wind cut into his face. Only a few other people got off the train. Nobody that Tibor knew. He stood there, on the open platform and breathed in the familial air. The wind carried the fragrances from the empty fields on one side of the station, mixed with the distinctive leathery discharge from the shoe factory. If one paid close attention, a delicate scent of the nearby river could also be detected.

Tibor waited until the train left. He wanted to see the stationmaster come out from the small office in his night-blue colored uniform and trapper’s hat to raise the crossing gate by the old fashioned mechanism. Since a child, Tibor liked to listen to the clicking and clacking of the old gate as it rose while the stationmaster turned the rusty wheel. Once done, clapping his hands and shivering with cold the stationmaster disappeared in his office. Tibor started off the mile-long walk home all alone. He could not notify his father of the arrival time. As he tried to keep balance on the unplowed narrow walkway, Tibor imagined his father’s beaming face at the open door. I’ll be an expected surprise tonight, he chuckled.

The footpath from the vacant train station to his home passed by the factory. The pride of the small town, the largest shoe factory in the country, worked in three shifts and this was the last shift before the holidays. The quiet humming of various assembly-line machines followed Tibor as he walked along in the cracking snow. Behind the factory’s brick fence one of the larger warehouses sore imposingly over the dark sky. Its small, bright windows resembled holes poked in black fabric, like the stars on the night with Zsuzsa at the ruins in Kisliget. Only there were no recognizable constellations. On the other side of the walkway ran the highway. The normally busy thoroughfare was eerily deserted now, as the latest snowfall leveled it with the empty fields alongside. Tibor walked listening to the crunchy snow under his heavy steps. In a distance, the lights of the town flickered invitingly. He knew that one tiny bright point among those lights was the window of their old apartment and that behind that window his father was busy preparing dinner. Tibor quickened his pace.

The familiar sound of their doorbell echoed in the stairway as he pushed the button next to his father’s nameplate. Almost immediately, as if he were waiting for this sound behind the door, his joyful father opened the door. Tibor gave him a warm hug.

“Good to be home, Father!”

“I figured you’d take this train,” his father said with a slight break in his voice. “Come in! I have dinner ready for us! But first let me see you in uniform, Mr. Second Lieutenant!”

Tibor had to leave the base in his uniform and his father found great pride in seeing him in the masquerade, as Tibor thought of it, of a junior officer.

Toward the very end of World War Two, his father had been enlisted to serve as a sort of “buffer” between the retreating German and advancing Russian troops. With tongue-in-cheek humor they called themselves the “bullet catchers.” The whole squad was captured and his father ended up spending two years in a Russian coalmine as a POW. Tibor was always surprised that after the painful years of war and captivity, his father could still show any enthusiasm at all for the military. Tibor had concluded a long time ago that it had to be the combination of nostalgia for youth and the healing power of time.

“Oh, enough of this, father. Let me change into decent civilian clothes!”
  

WILL CONTINUE!

Book available on Amazon.com by clicking on this link.

New section added to the Life in the Barracks

I may be stubborn. Even unreasonable. But, I am working on an improved and expanded new edition of the Life in the Barracks. Among other plans, I want to make the tension between Tibor and Vida more prominent. In this spirit, I added a new section to the end of Chapter 4: Dinner with Vida. Here Tibor writes a poem inspired by the dilemma he had to face after Vida proposed him to join forces. For Tibor, it is a Mephistophelean offer and he spends some time about his response.

Needless to say, any feed-back is welcome from the occasional visitor to this "Occasional Reflections" site!

So, we are at the end of the dinner:

...They both smiled.

“I expect an answer by the end of this week. We could start next Friday. I think Friday is a good day since many soldiers leave for weekend furlough.”

“Thanks, Feri. I’ll get back to you. And thanks for the dinner. You don’t need to drive me back, I’d rather walk. The fresh air will help to clear my head. This was a most unexpected conversation, I must admit, and I need to think about your offer.”

Tibor plodded along the road back to the barracks with his head full of vertiginous thoughts. The night was dark. Thick clouds covered the stars. The faint glow of the city behind him was multiplied by the snowy fields, giving Tibor just enough light to see the ditches on the road. When an occasional car passed by with bright lights on, he had to stop and wait until his eyes accommodated again to the near darkness. He had four kilometers to go; plenty of time to reflect.

Vida’s intellectual complexity stunned him. Yes, he’s a SOB, a selfish brute, but with a great practical sense. His intellect, no doubt, is far above most people Tibor knew. For a moment, Tibor thought of Vida as a devilish genius, a formidable opponent—one who could hurt him if he lets his guard down. But could he be a worthy ally too? Did Tibor hear a veiled invitation when Vida had said: “They are soldiers, not the kind of professionals you and I are.” Could Vida be his path to headquarters and perhaps even to the colonel himself? Isn’t he Tibor’s chance to cushion his life in this snow-bound hinterland? Tibor recognized that ahead of him laid the opportunity to heed his parents’ warnings: “You need to learn real life, Tibi.”

When Tibor got back, Kerekes wasn’t home. This didn’t surprise Tibor although he wished Kerekes’ round face would emerge from behind his door with a glass of wine in his hand and a warm invitation to join him. But, Tibor was alone. He sat down at the bare table and pulled a sheet of white paper from the drawer. It has been one of his old habits to put down his reflections in writing. It started in his early teen years and stayed with him ever since. At times, he would turn the diary, but frequently a hurriedly found piece of paper had to do. A few of his musings turned into poems. Not necessarily good ones, but faithful to his state of mind at the moment of writing—and now he had plenty of stirring thoughts to ponder.

An hour later Tibor had a newly sprouted poem. As he re-read the final version for a last time, the straggly rows stared back into his face like a mirror. A mirror of him not visible to anyone, not even to himself. A mirror, which the impulsively spilled words coming from some undiscovered depths of his soul had to clear. He named the poem: “Proud Castle.”



Proud castle with slender spire:
Where the screeching hawk builds her nest,
And into the wind a prankish chimney
Spouts grey stream of smoke that flies
Adrift toward blue mountain crests.

The weathervane's grinding
As it squeamishly turns into the breeze,
"Why wouldn't I dance with my friend?"
 He says, "Like the poplars around me
Do as they please?"

From a distance I marvel at the scene:
Oh, that splendor of the castle!
A vision takes me over softly,
Like my first dream at night,
To which I gently surrender.

But no! Go away dream!
Don't try your vile temptation on me!
You know I could never live in that castle!
You know that those dim walls
Would never let my heart soar free.

I am coming from an earth color hut
With the scent of clay and straw,
Where my mother with drawn face
Showed me how to remain man
Among hollering wolves.

The castle bathes in the fading light
Of the setting Sun. The windows glitter.
I train my curious eyes on the arched gate
As it opens and bolts, when
Brisk chaises enter.

… An old fairy, through the hedgerow
Smiles at me with peace!
“Is it you, Elder-Tree Mother?” I cry.
“That’s your house, Son, you like it?”
“No, I don’t! Please, give my hut back to me!”

*** 

Next day, Tibor woke up with a heavy head. His sleep was restless with agitated dreams about flying in bliss when, in mid-air, the terror of height struck him, or fleeing rapidly approaching chariots rumbling ever so close behind him. His eye half-open, he reached for last night’s poem and read it again. He liked it. He saw himself in the verses as if he were standing in front of a flawless Venetian mirror. A shudder of peace and contentment passed through him. I know where I am now. But where do I go from here?

This question preoccupied him the whole day in the infirmary. The others didn’t notice anything but Peter asked him.

“Tibor, you seem distant today, is everything alright?”

“Peter, have you ever heard the tale of the nightingale and the Chinese Emperor?”

“Now that is an odd question, Doc!”

“I know, but have you heard it?”

“Well, yes. I used to have a book of Anderson’s fairy tales. That’s the story where the real nightingale saves the life of the Emperor when the mechanical nightingale breaks down.”

“Very good, Peter! Now would you like to be the mechanical or the real nightingale?”

“The real, of course. The mechanical broke after all.”

And the real one could fly in and out of the Emperor’s window between her forest and the Emperor’s palace. And she still could sing for the Emperor!

*** 

That evening, by the time Tibor turned into the driveway of his barracks on the way home from the infirmary, he knew he had found the solution. I’ll ask the Asclepius representative if Vida’s patients could be enrolled into the study, he decided. Instead of simply working for Vida, this way I’ll continue my earlier research work for the benefit of all. I’ll have to ask Vida for a few weeks’ extension of his deadline, until a decision about my proposition is made at the study center.

Tibor felt that he’d reached a reasonable compromise with himself. Vida should also feel pleased about the possible study since no doubt it would improve his patients’ perception of him. Tibor heaved a sigh of relief as he climbed the dark stairs.

My thoughts a few days after the acceptance of Palestinian statehood by the UN and the Israeli retaliatory responses

Let's get in the mood for the Holidays with excerpts from the Life in the Barracks! Chapter 9: Home for Christmas - part 4; last part.

Picture credit: http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-winter-landscape-church-image17160397

In this last installment of the chapter Tibor decides to visit his mother's resting place in the columbarium of the local church on Christmas Day. Here, he addresses his mother in a silent monologue. After experiencing the soothing serenity of the church, he decides to pay a visit to a Catholic priest back in Kisliget.

CHAPTER 9 - closing section.

On Christmas morning they woke to a heavy blizzard. The windows squeaked and rustled under the relentless barrage of the howling wind carrying clouds of drifting powdered snow. When Tibor looked outside, he saw the usually noisy titmice huddled under their ruffled feathers in the recess of the window, ignoring the bacon Tibor’s father put out for them every day.

   “I want to go to Mother’s tomb,” Tibor told his father after breakfast. “Do you want to come with me?”
   “No, Tibor. She’ll want you to be there by yourself. You must have things to talk to her about.”
   “Can I take the flowers with me?” Tibor pointed at the centerpiece of their dining table.
   “Sure. They’re fresh. I bought them two days ago. Take water with you in a bottle. They closed down the tap water in the church to prevent the pipes from freezing.”
   When Tibor stepped outside, the cold wind cut into his face. It was 10 o’clock. The morning service was over and no one walked in the streets. The snowflakes transformed into crystal grains and beat his skin like millions of tiny needles. The church, the final resting place of his mother, was nearby. When the swirling snow momentarily calmed between gusts of wind, the steeple emerged from the haze like a looming giant.

   The sound of the heavy door slamming behind him echoed in the empty church. Tibor stamped his boots in the foyer to knock off the snow. He took the spiral steps down to the vaults and quickly found his mother’s resting place. Her picture on the marble plate, with a shy smile from happier days, seemed to brighten up for a moment.
   She knows I’m here!
   In front of the tomb, a fresh bouquet of red carnations stood in a plastic vase, his father’s latest offering.
   Too pretty to throw it away. I’ll just combine the two bouquets.
   He changed the water and arranged the flowers. The carnations blended in well with the blue violets and white snowdrops his father had gotten from the local greenhouse.
   Here. Your favorites. Tibor knelt down on the tiled floor. It was cold and hard on his knees but he owed this much inconvenience to his mother.
   It’s such a small space that you need now, mother. Don’t be claustrophobic in there! I know that your soul can fly out anytime. You probably come back here only when we visit you, right?
   I wonder where the spirit roads take you when you are left alone in this chilling crypt. To our old apartment with Father? To Heaven? To the vast emptiness among the stars? Or to the stars themselves!
   The stars. Are they Hell? Or Purgatory? Oh, what business would you have in those places, anyway?
   I bet you even visit me in Kisliget. Sometimes I feel your presence there. You still care about me, even though you’re gone. You know that lately I’ve hit a rough patch, don’t you? Do you have something to say now that I feel a little lost and less sure of myself?
   The eyes of his mother on the picture seemed to converge on him.
   I remember when you used to complain about a colleague of yours refusing to help lift the heavy crates in the factory storage. You didn’t want to report him. You said he had a bad back problem, so you did all the heavy lifting by yourself. And then, one day he came in complaining of how tired he was because he had sprayed his vineyard the day before. “His back can’t be too bad if he could spray his vineyard,” you said bitterly.
   And yet still you didn’t report him; you just did what you thought had to be done. You had that tillers’ discipline about you. The same that I always saw in my grandmother: the seasons came and the land demanded its dues. There was no room for bargaining.
   You couldn’t imagine failing in your duty either. I frequently heard you saying: “Tibor, sometimes you just have to do what is right. Even if it is hard.” And you did just that.
   Tibor lifted up his right hand and rested his face on it.
   Am I supposed to follow suit? To take it? Take the cynical self-importance of Katona? The soulless self-serving morals of Vida? The frame of mind that seems to justify everything I feel is wrong?
   No, Mother. You were at the bottom of the ranks. You carried heavy boxes under the supervision of a crook. But with your help, I rose. I don’t need to endure others stepping on me. Thanks to you and Father, I’ve amassed what it takes to stand up to the Vida-s, Irmai-s, and Katona-s. I’ve got the smarts and status to do that! I just have to find the way. Yes, that’s it! “Find the best path to follow,” father told me last night. My path is not Vida’s path. I swore to help people, not use them for my own, selfish purpose. If it leads me to confrontation, so be it!--But I sure hope that my plan will work with the drug trial.
   For a moment the shy smile on the picture seemed to have said: “That’s my boy!”
   Tibor rose. With a last glance he surveyed the dark, narrow catacomb. The dizzying array of rectangular marble plates with pictures, many of which were familiar to him, golden scriptures, and flowers in various stages of withering reminded him of a slaughterhouse they had visited during medical school as part of their public health rotation.
   Dozens of clueless cattle had been herded inside the confined space for slaughtering. A man with a semiautomatic rifle, loaded with plastic bullets, moved among the herd and kept placing his weapon between their muzzy eyes and fired in a slow, methodical way. After each shot a cow would fall first on its knees. Then it collapsed on its side still breathing with thick vapor steaming from its nostrils until another man hoisted it on a robotic pulley and a third one shoved a sword-sized knife deep into its chest. Within less than five minutes these unsuspecting, curiously sniffing, and mooing cows hung lifeless, dismembered, heads separated from their bodies, waiting for the tuberculosis survey. And after each fell, it was followed by the next already staring into the barrel of the cold and lifeless gun, surrounded by the peacefully ruminating oblivious herd.
   Why can’t we humans be like cattle: oblivious to and fearless of the fate that awaits us? Aren’t we paying too high a price for our superior intellect? But then, who knows, perhaps Heaven or Hell is waiting for us after all; or ... a parallel universe?
   Tibor climbed back up to the foyer and entered the church. The orderly rows of empty pews somehow reminded him of the perfectly arranged marble plaques in the basement.
   Many of those down there once occupied these nicely lined up pews on Sunday mornings, he thought.
   His eyes seized the sight of the cross on the main wall. The sanctuary glowed with a peculiar milky radiance as the diffuse light of the blizzard filtered through the glazed windows. The smell of frankincense from the morning mass still lingered in the air. An otherworldly sense of peace fell upon Tibor.
   I must find a church in Kisliget, he thought, and with that he stepped outside. The gusty wind nearly tore the heavy door from his hands.

Click on this link to get the book on Amazon!

Your comment about this chapter would be appreciated on this blog page.

If you want to comment about the whole book, please consider a review on Amazon.

Let's get in the mood for the Holidays with excerpts from the Life in the Barracks! Chapter 9: Home for Christmas - part 3.

Laszlo Hopp: Christmas Eve

Literary

In this section Tibor and his father celebrate Christmas Eve together. They get guests and the conversation turns into the politics of the days. Later, Tibor hears the full story of his father as a POW in post WW2 Russia. He understands his father's message with the story: "Don't give up and make compromises you can live with!"

CHAPTER 9. Home for Christmas, part 3    

The next day, Tibor and his father did everything exactly the same way as they had always done for Christmas Eve, for all twenty-six years of Tibor’s life.

    By the time darkness fell, the tree was ready to be unveiled in its full splendor. As usual, his father lit a few sparklers, jingled the little old bell, and Tibor came in the room to admire the glittering tree he had adorned with the familial trinkets earlier that afternoon. They listened to traditional church music on their outdated tape recorder while saying a silent prayer for those who were dear to them but could not be there. Then both of them looked for presents under the tree.

    Tibor had bought a leather-bound stamp album for his father, to encourage his newly budding hobby of stamp collection. His father, in turn, got him a Parker pressurized ball pen since he liked writing while lying on his back. Nagyi, his maternal grandmother, surprised him with an extended function handheld calculator: an “industrial marvel” and a dream come true for Tibor.

    They sat down to their modest Christmas dinner in remembrance of Tibor’s maternal great grandparents. Then the doorbell rang.

    “Must be your Aunt Molly and Uncle Jozsef,” Tibor’s father said. The two had been a permanent fixture in their past Christmas Eve gatherings. Their daughter also used to come, but now she had her own family to celebrate with. They remained frequently unannounced but never unexpected guests for the Christmas dinners. The food had always been plentiful, much like at the time of Iftar for those observing Ramadan.

    “Merry Christmas!” they yelled with festive cheer when Tibor opened the door.

    “Merry Christmas, aunty and uncle!” Tibor smacked a kiss on their cheeks. “Come in, you’re just in time for dinner!”

    “Tibor, let me see you in your uniform, you big lieutenant!” his uncle said.

    “Only a second lieutenant, uncle. And no uniform on Christmas Eve. I’ll show you a picture if you really want to laugh at me,” Tibor said.

    Aunt Molly, the youngest sister of Tibor’s mother, was a unique character in the family of six. She was a loud, jovial, rotund woman in sharp contrast to her more pensive and rather thin older siblings. Whenever she was around, the small apartment got filled with the sounds of her rattling laughter as if the walls could not contain her overflowing spirit. Tibor always felt infected with her buoyant good cheer. Uncle Jozsef, a skimpy, small-framed man, couldn’t have been more different from her. He came from a humble background, having grown up in the plains of Hungary in a landless peasant family. For a time he had served as the local Communist Party secretary. He had a habit of going on long political rants, and was of the opinion that only a miracle could prevent the third world war.

    “So, Tibor, now that you have firsthand experience with the army, do you think we could beat back NATO if they decided to attack us?” Uncle Jozsef asked towards the end of dinner, diving into his favorite subject.

    “To be honest, I don’t know if our trucks would start, uncle,” Tibor said jokingly, trying to prevent more weighty discussion. “I hope that the diplomats have gotten smarter since they let the demon loose before World War Two.”

    Uncle Jozsef pushed on with his agenda. “Perhaps they have, but human nature hasn’t changed. If one feels that he’s stronger, nothing will hold him back from moving in for the kill. That’s why the Russians have to keep up with the American military, that’s why you have to spend a year in the army even though you chose to be a doctor and not a military man.”

    “Damn the Yankees and the Russians!” cried Tibor’s father. “They should do what they had done in Biblical times. If Brezhnev and Carter have problems with each other, let them go and fight it out like David and Goliath did.”

Ever since Tibor was young, his father had maintained this sort of simplistic, idealized view of political affairs. Tibor had long since concluded that it must have stemmed from a sense of helplessness in changing the course of events in an ever more complicated and dangerous world.

    “Oh, those big politicians and generals; all the money they waste on those bombs and what-not should be spent on feeding the world,” said Aunt Molly.

    Hmm, feeding the world; hasn’t she looked into the mirror lately? Tibor mused, but remained quiet. Instead, somewhat caught in the trap of Uncle Jozsef, he asked. “Uncle, isn’t it written in the Communist Manifesto that ‘A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism.’? And this too: ‘Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution.’ So who is threatening who here?”

    “That is all just rhetoric! Those words were written 150 years ago by two middle-class Germans who had no clue what a realspecter looks like. They never experienced the two world wars. They couldn’t have had a clue that the ‘ghosts’ humanity can create would one day exterminate seventy million people in six bloody years or would be able to cause a Hiroshima-size catastrophe within a split second.” Uncle Jozsef narrowed his eyes, puckered his brow, and started gesturing. “Your father and I were part of the last war. We know what real specter is about. The Russians went through two grueling wars and lost twenty million people in World War Two alone. Twenty million, sixty times more than the Americans. They know what true suffering means! The Americans have not witnessed war on their soil for over a hundred years.”

    “Where are you going with this, uncle?” Tibor asked.

    “The Americans have no idea what war brings to people. The Russians will never attack first! The Russian people wouldn’t allow it! The American public, on the other hand, can easily be talked into any war frenzy as long they can watch it in the news on their color TV.”

    “Let’s turn on the TV,” Tibor’s father proposed in an attempt to cut off the boiling dispute. “Even if it’s only black and white.”

​They did.

    And, what a wonderful coincidence! A documentary had just started about a most unlikely event that took place on a Christmas Eve during World War One. They showed original footage, reports, and accounts of old survivors of the British, French and German armies who had called a temporary truce and come out of their snow-covered foxholes to celebrate Christmas together on a long ago night in the midst of a bloody confrontation—a moment of sanity in a world gone mad.

    Shortly after the documentary ended the guests gathered their belongings and said their goodbyes. After they left, father and son quietly sat at the dinner table, absorbed in their memories. The family was together again: Tibor, his father, and his mother’s framed picture where she normally would have sat, along with the freshly decorated Christmas tree. It stood in its usual corner of the room, glittering with the same sixteen electric candles that Tibor had grown up with.

    When Tibor was only five, he’d asked his parents, “How come the Little Jesus brought the same candles every year on the Christmas tree?”

    “It’s because he remembers which child got which candles and ornaments,” they reassured him.

    Many of the ornaments were older than Tibor. There was one, however, that was only a year old: a pair of porcelain bells with golden rims and a green ribbon that held them together. His mother had gotten them for last Christmas. She had bought a new ornament for every single Christmas ever since Tibor was born. This one was her last. There would be no more new Christmas ornaments on their trees.

    The table was clean now. The room still smelled of the sparklers his father had burned. In front of them were a bowl of Christmas sweets—testament to his father’s unexpected baking skills—and the traditional liquor that his father only made for Christmas.

    His father sat at the table, absentmindedly running his fingers around the rim of his shot glass. “So, Tibor, tell me honestly, how are you doing in Kisliget?”

    Tibor didn’t want to burden his father with his problems with Vida, Katona, and Irmai. He wanted to spare him from troubled thoughts about dilemmas he faced at the base. He didn’t want to talk about the sense of powerlessness that had been tormenting him and the difficulties he faced with providing the best possible care he had learned in medical school. He didn’t want to complain that his boss hardly ever showed up in the infirmary and thus he had to figure out everything pretty much on his own: starting with how to reconcile his perfect textbook knowledge with the reality of a military clinic, all the way up to the fine details of how to supervise and administer the over-regulated military health services. He didn’t want to get into his suspicion that the commander of the camp was in some inexplicable cahoots with Vida, his hunting buddy.

    He didn’t want to talk about Fazekas either. He hadn’t quite gotten over that near-tragedy or his self-reproach that he could have done more to prevent it. He blamed himself for not having noticed the clear signs of the poor tortured soul’s impending breakdown!

There were so many things he found unsettling about the infirmary. He felt that a showdown with Vida was in the air even though he hoped for a peaceful resolution, perhaps aided by his as yet unapproved plans for the drug trial. But Tibor had never dealt with a situation like this before, and he was still unsure whether his reticence to join Vida was naïve. Perhaps things would be much easier for him if he only cared for the goodwill of his boss. But was that how he was supposed to manage his life from now on? To do what he was told to do regardless of his own conviction? Was that how the real world was supposed to work?

    No, he did not want to tell his father about any of these brewing doubts about himself, his work, his whole life in the military, and perhaps even after the military.

    “I miss being close to you, father. I can’t come home more than once every three or four months at best. I know how lonely you are.”

    “I want to know how you feel, Tibor, not what you think about me,” his father insisted. Tibor took a swig from his glass and filled it again. “Shall I top off yours?” His father shook his head but said nothing. He was waiting.

    “You made it delicious this year.” Tibor breathed in deep and smacked his tongue. His father remained silent.

    “I don’t know how long I’ll last there,” Tibor finally said. He looked at his father, who showed no sign of surprise, as if he knew already what Tibor was trying to hide from him. He seemed deep in his thoughts for awhile, then started to talk.

    “Tibor, you know a few things about my captivity in Russia, don’t you? Or at least what I’ve told you. But you should know that I haven’t given you the whole account of those years. It was too painful to discuss. Only your mother knew why I woke up on so many nights with nightmares, drenched in sweat. Now, I will finish that story and you will understand why.”    

    Tibor saw his father’s struggle. Even thirty years after the events his eyes clouded over with fear as he remembered and yet he steeled himself and clenched his jaw. He spoke in a low, unwavering voice.

    “On May 9th, 1945, two days after Germany capitulated and the Second World War officially ended in Europe, the Russians captured me. You heard that part of the story already. I became a POW despite never having had live ammunition in a gun so old it wouldn’t have fired anyway. We were transported in freight cars to a small village in the Ukraine, close to the river Don, and I was billeted in the house of a local peasant.

My group was forced to work in a coal mine. Of course, you know that I have bad claustrophobia. Remember how many times you made fun of me because I couldn’t get into the elevator at your Aunt Ethel’s? Imagine the horror I felt every single day of those two years in the coalmine! Down in those deep, narrow, sooty, dark and incredibly hot tunnels.”

Tibor pictured it and shuddered.

    “Once I caught dysentery and they transferred me to an open tarp. They called that tarp the infirmary. We used to call it the morgue. They were waiting for me to die there, you see. Every day, the men in the ‘infirmary’ died and were wheeled out under white sheets. One died on the bed next to me. But, somehow I got lucky.” His father gave an acrid smile. “Would you believe it, I survived?”

    Tibor smiled. “I have to.”

    “Yet, when they took me back down the chute for the first time after my recovery, I cried. You wouldn’t believe it but I envied those who had died alongside me. I was so afraid down there.

I carried a picture of your mother in my boot in those days. Do you remember that portrait of your mother in the first page of our photo album? You may still smell the odor of my boots on that picture.”

Both cracked a faint smile and Tibor noticed with pleasure that his father still knew how to laugh at himself.

“You know, we weren’t married yet but I talked to her every night in my thoughts. I asked her to please wait for me because I’d come back to her. Wanting to see her—it’s the only thing that kept me alive.”

    “And she did wait for you,” Tibor interjected.

    His father approvingly shook his head then continued. “We survived on bread and cabbage soup loaded with lard for calories. That’s what we ate. That’s what the Russians in the house ate. There was no food for anyone there. Not even the villagers. The retreating Germans burnt and destroyed the land and everything they could put their hands on. I traded my cigarette ration for bread. The heavy smokers traded their food for cigarettes and they starved.”

Tibor’s father hesitated for a moment as he collected his thoughts. “When they finally decided to release me, they transferred me to a sort of ‘nutritional camp’ somewhere in Moldova. After a whole month of eating as much food as I wanted, food I’d only dreamt of in the coal mine, I came home weighing 130 pounds. I had weighed 180 pounds when I was captured.”

    His father paused. “I know what hardship is, Tibor: it’s a test of your determination, your will, your survival skills. If you set your mind to making it, you’ll find the best path to follow. Of course, it’s a lie that it always works, as some zealots try to convince us about the power of will and determination, but at least you’ll find your best chance. You’ll find out how far you can get. If you give up, you’ll never know what chances you missed.”

    Happy to be done with his painful reminiscence, his father looked Tibor in the eye. His own eyes sparkled now, as if some inside fire was burning through them.

    “I’m not sure that you’ve considered all your options, Tibor. Quitting isn’t the only option when you’re cornered—nor is slavishly submitting to the rules of those who cornered you. Look for your own ways or at least look for a compromise that you can live with.”

    Tibor was silent for a moment. He sipped at the Christmas liquor and felt it wash down his throat, warming his belly from the inside. “You read me very well, father,” he finally said.

His father smiled.

    Tibor stared at the candle, burning in the middle of the table. He remembered his mother saying many times that when the wick of a burning candle turned toward a person, it meant the person would die that year. Tibor had never believed this old superstition. But, he remembered vividly that the previous Christmas Eve the wick had leaned toward his mother. And now she was dead.

    The wick, curling up slowly as it burned toward its end, now turned toward his father. Tibor quickly reached out and turned the candleholder the other way. To his father it may have seemed only as nervous, aimless gesture.


If you have any questions or comments about this section, please comment on this post.
If you have any comments on the book, please post them on Amazon.

Life in the Barracks is available in soft cover or kindle format.

Let's get in the mood for the Holidays with excerpts from the Life in the Barracks! Chapter 9: Home for Christmas - part 2.