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.

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