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The Opening Pages of The Father's Tale: A Novel | Michael D. O'Brien | Ignatius Insight | September 20, 2011  Print-friendly
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Prologue In late February of a year not long past, Dr. Irina Filippovna, a physician, was crossing the interminable expanse of the taiga on the Trans-Siberian Railroad and happened to be an unwilling witness to a singularly odd event. Though the coach in which she rode was third class, the seat hard, and her fellow passengers in foul or despairing moods due to the recent disruption of rail service by ecology protestors, she had planned to sleep away much of the 
journey between Novosibirsk and Irkutsk. She had delivered a lecture on
immunology at a medical institute in the former city and had hoped to disembark
in the latter without undue trouble, and from there to make her way by bus and
horse-drawn sleigh to her home village, where she maintained a small but
necessary practice.A handsome woman in her early forties, she was a widow with two sons to support. It was her custom to work with quiet determination to keep her life as simple as possible in order to bring what remained of her family through these times—the sociopolitical situation that now seemed more confused in some ways than it had been under the Communist regime. She had no love for anything that remained of the state's apparent omnipotence and its omnivorousness. Neither did she waste energy trying to understand the universe in other terms, for what might or might not lie beyond it could never be proved by science. She was in her own estimation a mother and a scientist. She often reminded herself that she had a good deal to be grateful for, especially her husband, whom she had loved as no other in her life, and her sons, who were now, if it might be expressed in this way, her very life. She was a person with a complicated but by no means unique personal history. An intellectual, though an impoverished one, she was neither political nor naïve. She entertained no sentimental illusions about her native land, yet in her soul she loved it fiercely, even as she doubted the existence of the soul. It was her habit from time to time to adjust what she called her "Russian mask", the impenetrable neutral expression that projected an attitude of indifference and resignation, for it had a tendency to slip from her face at inopportune moments, usually those moments that she later dismissed as lapses "for humanitarian reasons". She was not indifferent and she was not resigned, but she had throughout her lifetime learned that it was best to hide the more personal elements of her character—and certainly before strangers. She was, she told herself, immune. Thus, when from the corner of her eye she observed an unhappy man on the seat across the aisle, she noted the fact but attributed no significance to his presence. He appeared at first glance to be little different from several others in the coach, hunched as he was inside a dirty greatcoat, gaunt, haggard around the eyes, scowling, unshaven. He was about her age, perhaps a bit older. From time to time he lifted his left hand, favoring it as if it were sprained or burned, and pressed it to the frosted glass of the window beside him. Yes, a burn, she decided, assessing his wincing, the livid red disk on his palm, and the weeping blisters. She considered offering him an antibiotic salve from the medical bag at her feet but thought the better of it. His hair, dyed a glaringly artificial yellow, stood up in spikes, like that of a decadent American rock star. Not a few young Russians in the big cities affected the same appearance, but in a middle-aged man it was repulsive. She decided not to make contact. He might be drunk or a criminal, or both, but clearly he was a disturbed person, and the hundreds of versts yet to cross could all too easily degenerate into tribulation. The country was full of irrational, dispossessed people like him. Though she felt a momentary impulse to help, she warned herself against involvement and firmly put the poor fool from her thoughts. Hoping to nap a little before the next jarring rumble across the next nameless frozen waterway that drained the limitless void, she closed her eyes. She had just succeeded in dozing off when his voice brought her fully awake again. He was now declaiming in a strange accent, quoting poetry. A closer inspection of the pathetically intense monologist revealed that his features did not precisely fit any templates of the numerous racial groups in the country. What was he? Where was he from? Well, no matter; it was not her concern. Feeling more irritated than disgusted, she noted that he was reciting to a very pretty girl seated opposite him and that she was crying. The foreigner, succumbing to infatuation or desire or simple madness, was trying to console her with verse. Then he reached into his pocket and, to the astonishment of all the surrounding passengers, suddenly burst into flames. Yes, fire and smoke. An enterprising old man threw a cup of water onto the fellow's pants, and the fire went out. Now the fool was convulsing in agony. Collapsed onto his seat, he was grimacing in extreme pain. Dr. Filippovna sighed, shook her head, and reached into her medical bag. 
I. The End of His Life On the first Sunday of Advent in the previous year, a man named Alexander Graham said a prayer that was to have unforeseen consequences. He lived on Oak Avenue in Halcyon, a town of twelve hundred souls situated in the forested hill country north of Lake Ontario. Because his home was only a few blocks from his parish church, he went out that evening into a snowstorm and trudged up the street with the intention of making a brief visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Although he was not an exceptionally pious person, he had of late been haunted by a sense that his life was over, or soon would be, and he wished to speak to God about it. The church windows were dark, but he found the side door unlocked. Inside the vestibule he stamped his feet on the slush mat to rid his boots of snow and blindly located the door into the nave. The interior was warm, lit only by the flicker of amber vigil lights ranked in front of statues and by the ruby tabernacle lamp hanging over the high altar. They cast a subdued glow, enough for him to see his way down the aisle to his customary pew. This was on the left side, halfway to the front, beside a pillar. The soft mutter of candles, the scent of beeswax and incense hanging in the air, the faint echoes in the dome, the audible hush—these were, for him, the atmosphere of an entire world. He had been baptized in this church and had never worshipped in another. Its every detail was so deeply embedded in him that he could not have imagined life without it. A quiet and dignified man, in his late forties, he was accustomed to living his life without attracting undue notice. In fact, he preferred it this way. If there had been any other parishioners present in the church, they would have felt little inclination to wonder why he was there, still less to approach him. He sensed that his relationship with God was much the same as his relationship with his fellow human beings. He knelt, made the sign of the cross, and began to recite the prayers that were habitual to him. He said them mentally, carefully, trying as best he could to mean each word. It was a rare thing for him to experience any feeling connected to prayer, and indeed, if he had wanted to recall such scattered incidents, he would have had to reach back many years in search of the most recent memory. It did not matter to him. Emotions, he was certain, were unreliable and irrelevant to the labor of religious faith. Nevertheless, on this particular evening, an errant mood took hold of him. Perhaps because he was tired and feeling the weight of his solitude, his attention drifted and the formal prayers fell silent. At any other time, he would have reengaged his will and resumed praying, but for some reason he could not. He bowed his head and rested his forehead in one hand, remaining motionless for several minutes without a single thought or image occupying his mind. Eventually he stirred and sighed. "I think", he whispered to the Presence in the tabernacle, "my life is over." He did not expect a response, and he heard none. He was not pessimistic by nature, nor was he prone to depression, and so this vague sense of termination, or completion, was not the result of morbidity. He had no desire to die, though it must be said that he was not excessively attached to life. Since the death of his wife some years before, and the departure of his two sons to college, he had become less and less connected to other human beings. He had been a virtuous husband and a conscientious and affectionate father, though a somewhat distracted one. And now the life of his small family had reached that phase when its form begins to be absorbed into the larger community. He missed his deceased wife very badly at times, but there was no bringing her back. He missed his sons, but they were launched into the world, busily making their own lives. They would revisit Halcyon from time to time, but the law of return, he knew, was not eternal. He supposed that, for his sons, home now represented a fixed node in a wheeling universe, an anchor, or a kind of icon they occasionally touched and perhaps even reverenced, as one respects a tradition that had once been useful but has lost its mystique. They loved him, yes, but their temperaments were those of a different generation—active, enthusiastic, plunged into the stimuli of life in a way that he had never been. Thus, he was alone. That he had loved, and loved with a measure of sacrifice, he did not question. He had given them what he had to give. But he now felt some regret that he had not known them as well as he might have. Nor had they understood him, for he was a relatively silent man, bookish and dutiful. He wondered if the old time bomb in his chest was nearing its long-expected detonation. For more than thirty years he had lived under its threat, and to tell the truth, he had long ago ceased to be worried about it. Was this sense of impending finality a hint from God? Get ready, Alex, tidy your books, make the last notations in your records, for the account is about to be closed. Looking up at the tabernacle, he said, "Do whatever you want with me." 
Michael D. O’Brien is the former editor of the Catholic family magazine,
Nazareth Journal. He is also the author of several books, including
his seven-volume series of novels published by Ignatius Press, notably the
best-selling Father
Elijah. For more than thirty years he has been a professional artist.
Michael and his wife Sheila have six children. He writes and paints full-time at his home near Combermere, Ontario. His paintings and published articles can be seen at his gallery website: www.studiobrien.com. Visit Michael's author page at IgnatiusInsight.com If you'd like to receive the FREE IgnatiusInsight.com e-letter (about every 2 to 3 weeks), which includes regular updates about IgnatiusInsight.com articles, reviews, excerpts, and author appearances, please click here to sign-up today! |
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