Free To Mervas by Elisabeth Rynell Page B

make myself enter the room. It wasn’t only the unpleasantness or fear of meeting him. I also didn’t want to interrupt the picture, to upset it, because there was something peaceful about it, something beautiful. It affected me somehow, like a miracle-making icon. My father’s slightly lifted face expressed a simple tenderness that I’d never seen before. I sensed more than I could see that he felt a deep concentration; something in his face flowed through his arm to his fingers, which clasped the boy’s small hand. The boy seemed focused too; his gaze exuded a pure and direct presence steadily directed at my father.
    The tears running down my cheeks brought me back to the present moment. Annoyed, I wiped my face with the sleeve of my jacket and looked around, suddenly aware that anyone could pass by and see me. I didn’t want to stand there crying in the corridor. What I ought to do was go and ask my father what he was doing here with my son. What right did he have to be here, and why was he sitting there like an idiot with his eyes closed, holding the boy’s hand? But I couldn’t. I just wiped away my tears and stood there. I didn’t know what to do. You can’t love a father like mine. It’s not possible.
    At last, Dad opened his eyes; he probably felt he was being watched.I quickly moved away from the window and half-ran to the bathroom. I closed the door behind me without a sound and locked it, but I didn’t turn on the light. Instead, I sat in the dark with my head in my hands and allowed everything that wanted to tear me apart to rise to the surface. Tear me into pieces, I thought, tear me into a million different pieces. I can’t hold myself together anymore.
    I sat there for a long time before I turned on the light. Then I carefully washed my hands and face before I opened the door and went out again, firmly determined to go in to the boy whether my father was there or not.
    But he’d already left. Perhaps there was something of him left in the room when I entered it; a scent, a presence, I couldn’t quite tell. Later, I thought that maybe everything I’d seen that day might have been a dream. I could have asked the nurse about it, but I didn’t. It felt best if it remained a dream vision.
    The next time I found an envelope with my dad’s handwriting on the hallway floor underneath the mail slot, my first impulse was to throw it away. But instead, I put it unread in the drawer where I kept all my letters. Not until many years later, when I learned from my brother that Dad was dying of cancer, did I read it.
    â€œDearest Marta,” it began. “I don’t want you to be angry with your old father if he were to tell you that he has visited your son in the hospital without asking your permission.”
    It was a real letter this time, not just a greeting on a note card.
    â€œBut I did it because I’d heard that your little boy was very sick. In a lecture on the radio, I’d heard the theory that a person can transfer their strength and health to another human being if only they want it wholeheartedly and if they hold the other’s hand and put all their energy into it when they meet. I don’t want you to think that your father has gone and lost his wits. Dear Marta, I wanted so much for your son toheal that I was willing to try everything! Perhaps this may seem to you like I’m trying to redeem myself too late, but I want my girl to know that her father deeply regrets the ill deeds he exposed his beloved family to. He understands fully that he can never be forgiven for such acts. But I want you to know, Marta, that I regret what I did, every day, all the time.” It would have been simpler if I’d been able to hate him completely and fully, if I’d been able to feel nothing but hate, the way my sister did. Nor did she ever understand what God had whispered in my ear when we were young – that I had to look,