Letter from a Desperate Father (2 page)

At the time, it seemed like
the darkest moments of my life, to have such separation from them.
Both wife and son rejected my comfort, although I needed
their
comfort just as
much. I had no idea how much worse it could get.

My wife spoke in her native tongue when
she was ill. Delirious with fever, she addressed phantoms I
couldn’t see in a language I didn’t understand. She had taught our
son some of it, but he couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, translate for
me. Unlike the incident with the goat, he didn’t cry when his
mother fell ill. Instead, he sat or stood very still, with none of
the fidgeting typical of nine-year-old boys. His mouth was a sharp,
unbroken line and his eyes were wide and unblinking.

When my wife finally passed, I wept and
held my boy to my chest. He still didn’t cry, although his body
shook and he clung to me tightly. I buried her in the yard near the
oleander bush she loved and burned her sheets and
clothes.

I put my boy to bed and sat at the
kitchen table until exhaustion took me. Some time later, I woke to
the sound of moaning. I thought it was my wife at first, but then I
remembered she was gone. When I realized it was my son, I rushed to
his room. He was covered in sweat, and his skin was warm as rocks
in the sun. This wasn’t how my wife’s illness began, but I know
symptoms can differ from one person to the next. I despaired at the
thought of losing both wife and son.

Eyes open, staring at nothing, he
cried, “No! I don’t want to—” He shook his head.

I tried to give him water, but he
trembled violently and locked his teeth. It was such a sudden
sickness! My wife’s symptoms had progressed gradually, whereas my
son was completely fine the day before. Could grief hasten an
illness?

I wanted to fetch the physician, but I
couldn’t leave my son. I considered carrying him, but he started
spasming—like an epileptic fit—when I tried to lift him. Shortly
after sunrise, he fell unconscious. He breathed steadily, so I
judged it to be sleep. I stayed by the bed, hoping rest would help.
Eventually I fell asleep, gripping his hand in mine.

The movement of his hand woke me. I
became alert instantly. He was no longer sweating and his skin had
cooled. From his position on the bed, he surveyed the room with
analytical eyes. He wore a distant expression that didn’t change
when I called his name.

When he faced me, he seemed older. More
thoughtful. He was quiet. I asked him how he felt, but he didn’t
answer. He understood me, yet chose not to speak. Happy to see him
without fever, I accepted it without question. I rose to get water
and food, assuring him I’d return shortly.

I grabbed bread and water, then rushed
back to him. I tore a small chunk from the loaf and softened it in
the water, then held it to his lips. My son sat up and took it from
me with a steady hand. He fed himself. He was well! That was all
that mattered to me.

When he finished eating, I tried
helping him from the bed, but he shook his head at my offer of
assistance. I let him rest while I completed the day’s chores with
the enthusiasm of a man granted a second chance. It wasn’t until
supper that I suspected something was wrong. My boy had always been
more quiet and mild-mannered than other youth, particularly other
boys. We often passed the time in companionable silence together.
Like I said, his disposition took after mine. What struck me that
evening was how erect he held himself while we ate. He was like a
man of authority, with his chin high and his gaze
direct.

“Are you all right?” I
asked.

He nodded.

I tried to draw him out, to get him to
speak. “You fell sick so fast. Do you remember the first moment you
felt ill?”

He shook his head.

“And how do you feel now?”

“Better.”

Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t
pinpoint it, but it made me uneasy.

After supper, we sat by the hearth. I
asked him to read to me while I repaired a bit of tack, a common
evening activity for us. He looked at me, emotionless, as if
considering whether to indulge me. He stood and walked across the
room, picked up our well-worn book of children’s tales, sat by the
fire, and began to read.

Not two sentences in, I
realized what was different. His voice was not his voice. Well,
it
was
his voice,
but only in sound. The intonation and pauses were all
wrong.

It reminded me of his
mother.

The change in my boy bothered me, but I
didn’t know what to make of it. The most sensible explanation, and
the simplest, was that his brief illness had affected his throat.
Perhaps a lingering lethargy was also affecting him. I said
nothing—what was there to say?—but I observed him more carefully
the next few days.

Well, he had no lingering lethargy. In
fact, he showed more spirit and energy than previously. He pushed
his body to the limit, like he wanted to take full advantage of his
youth. Once I caught him up in a tree, crawling from its branches
to those of the tree next to it. I envied his boyish stunts, but I
remained concerned. His voice continued to sound
different.

He showed less interest in the animals
and more interest in our herb garden. He carried out his chores,
though I sometimes caught him making a face of derision, as if his
chores were beneath him. But he would finish them without
complaint, then run off to the Milwood Forest to play.

Without my wife to help, my daily tasks
became burdensome. I was still mired in grief, and it was made
worse by having less time with my boy. One day, I limited myself to
only the most essential tasks so I could finish early. Satisfied
with my work, I wandered off to the Milwood Forest in hopes of
playing a game with my son.

I heard him singing, and his carefree
joy heartened me. He sang in his mother’s native tongue, which was
not unusual. They’d shared many songs together. I called out to him
as I approached.

He spun around with wide eyes,
startled. He held his palm to his heaving chest and said, “Silly
man! You scared me.”

Now it was my turn to be startled. He’d
addressed me as his mother had.

His back straightened with purpose. “Is
something wrong, Papa?”

“I—No. Nothing is wrong. I just
finished my work early and thought we might play a game
together.”

“Can we play hoop and
stick?”

“Yes.”

It was my son’s favorite game. He
cheered and ran to my side. He took my hand in his and pulled me
back toward home. “Come on, Papa.”

I was dazed and slow to
respond. He behaved like himself now, but his earlier words had
evoked a specter of his mother. My eyes saw my son. Obviously, it
was him standing next to me. But it
felt
like my wife was
present.

As we walked back home, I
recalled his behavior these past three days. Now that I thought
about it, he
had
acted more like his mother than himself. Was this how he
expressed his grief? Did imitating his mother lessen the pain of
her absence?

I paid close attention to his
mannerisms over the next week. His face and hair had always
resembled his mother’s, and now his demeanor was like hers as well.
However, I continued interpreting it as a child coping with
loss.

Until the incident with the
goat.

I was chopping wood while my boy milked
one of our goats. She was a temperamental creature, and she was not
having a good day. Perhaps my boy tugged on her too roughly, for
she bleated and snapped in his direction.

“You stupid beast!” he cried. He
smacked her rump with his fist, and she ran off noisily.

That
was not my son. Granted, boys can show an undisciplined streak
as they age, but tenderness toward animals had always been a
distinctive part of his temperament.

Was it grief? Aging? Influence from
other children? Or was it something more pernicious?

I’d heard of possession and exorcism,
and it shamed me to wonder if my son’s spirit was under another’s
control. I’m a religious man, but also a practical one. I tried
dismissing the thought, but I couldn’t. I tested my boy by
mentioning events he and I had experienced with no one else
present. His memory of them was poor, but children are known to
have poor memory. The true test would be how well he remembered
events when his mother had been present—events from the same period
as those he’d apparently forgotten.

He remembered those events just
fine.

The most troubling of these tests
concerned our lame goat, Elizabeth. His recent harshness with the
temperamental goat affected me deeply, so I was eager to see what
he’d say about Elizabeth.

“Do you remember Elizabeth?” I asked
casually while he peeled potatoes and I chopped carrots.

“Elizabeth? Was she a friend of
mine?”

“She was a goat.”

“Oh, yes.” He continued peeling. The
topic didn’t interest him.

“Do you remember what happened to
her?”

He wrinkled his nose and took a breath
before responding, as if he were schooling his impatience. Indeed,
he seemed tired of my frequent memory games.

“We sold her, didn’t we?”

“No.”

“She was sick, then?”

“Injured. You found her.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t
remember.”

It could still just be the sieve of
childhood memory, but I became more and more convinced that my boy
was no longer my boy. Who was he, then? Incredible and horrifying
as it seemed, I thought he was my wife. As I said, I was
embarrassed to have these suspicions. I tried dispelling them with
cold logic, but in my gut, I was sure it was so.

On my next trip to town, I visited the
same priest who married me to my wife. Clutching my hat in my
hands, I explained my suspicion and the evidence for it. I
beseeched him for an exorcism.

“Has your son behaved violently?” he
asked.

“No, not aside from smacking the
goat.”

“So it is merely a change in his
demeanor?”

“Yes.”

“Remind me, how old is he?”

“Nine.”

The priest sighed. “Boys grow, and the
transformation is not limited to their bodies. It’s hard for
parents to accept the changes of adolescence, but it’s a natural
part of life.”

My face burned. Yes, I felt some doubt
and shame, but I knew I wasn’t mistaken. There was more to my boy’s
behavior than simple aging.

One night, I crept into his room while
he slept. I spoke my wife’s name as if I were trying to catch her
attention. He snapped awake, his eyes immediately finding mine.
There was an awareness in them, an awareness we both
shared.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice
trembling.

He—
she
—hesitated, as if deciding whether
to maintain the ruse. In that moment, my entire existence felt
suspended, like the Catholic idea of limbo.

“Yes.”

My heart skipped a beat. It took a few
moments to recover my speech.

“Where is my son?”

Silence.

My energy abruptly returned in the form
of anger. “Where is my son?” I shouted.

“He is with me.”

I fell to my knees. “What do you mean?”
I cried, clenching my fists. “Can he hear us now?”

“No, but he is not gone.”

Dizziness threatened my ability to
stand. For all my earlier suspicion, I couldn’t believe it was
true.

“Why did you take him?” I asked, my
voice choked with pain.

“I wasn’t ready to go,” she answered
simply.

I rose my hands to my face and wept.
Who was my wife, that she would take our son? I had grieved for
her—I loved her—but this was far worse than her dying.

Eventually I composed myself. “Can I
speak to him?”

She shook our son’s head. “No. It is
best for him to stay asleep.”

My son was gone! She’d taken his body
for herself. He would never live to enjoy adolescence or adulthood.
My sweet, gentle boy who had never harmed anyone in his short
life—he was lost to me!

“Let him go,” I demanded. She tensed.
“Let him go!” I repeated, yelling this time.

She sensed my anger and scooted toward
the wall. I sprang to my feet, and she kicked away the blanket to
escape the bed.

I was faster. I grabbed my son’s calf,
yanking his body back to me. She fought, but I overpowered her.
With my son’s body thrashing in my grip, I left our cottage and
hurried down the lane toward town.

It was the dead of night, and she
shrieked and kicked violently the whole twenty minutes into town. I
would find the priest. I would have him exorcise my wife. I would
get my son back.

“You leave my son!” I roared,
struggling to maintain my hold on her.