by André Costa
“I don’t get it, David. You should know from the Bible that ‘faith can move mountains.’”
“But that doesn’t mean you should suddenly turn readers into ‘materialistic gods,’ or worse yet, I don’t see how it would help us understand that we are all inseparable parts of the whole. These books also fail to explain how their ideal of individual infinite material abundance coexists with a planet of scarce resources…”
“Now you have a point, Father!” Jack had some objections in mind or at least some judgments, but he was happy that his friend was, at that moment, able to feel passionate about something. He decided to keep his ears anchored and his mouth shut. Jack started to wonder, however, whether part of David’s enthusiasm was not an unconscious effort to mentally detach himself from Marie’s departure.
“That’s why, my dear friend John Paul Elliot, I have to believe in miracles.”
Chapter VI
Jack had few professional prospects, and the only one that interested him was to return to Cape Town to do academic research at a local university. Since he had no titles and all of his considerable knowledge about anthropology and natural science had been diligently self-taught, his talent failed to be recognized outside of a small circle of professors at the institution. So, common sense dictated that he would return to his hometown unless new circumstances brought Andreas and Marie back to Namibia.
David, on the other hand, was lost without any options or brimming with a set of faulty possibilities, depending on how he looked at it. The first of the ill-fated choices would be to do absolutely nothing and remain in Namibia ad infinitum, waiting for news from Marie, or better yet, waiting to hold her in his arms. This non-option, if ever considered, had no assurance of being rewarded. A second possibility would be to accompany Jack back to his roots. Even though the invitation had been honest and enthusiastic, David could not see how he could be of any use to the young researcher. There would indeed be no room at his new place of work for an additional self-taught man. He knew the academic world to be far less tolerant and generous than the world of practical experimentation. This rather feeble option did, at least, assure him of the continued company of Jack.
There was, naturally, one single and reasonable option: returning home to Ireland. Out of the three, this was the most painful. He did not feel ready to face his old life, nor had he figured out the extent of the damage to his convictions. He was a gestating new being.
The next morning, David was the first to get up, not because he felt rested and renewed, but because of the exact opposite. His bed was the playing field of a maelstrom of uncomfortable thoughts. It was the same bed he had slept in the night before, but without the alcohol, it offered no comfort. So he decided to grab the day’s first hour by surprise in an act of dignity and self-love.
Sitting again by the porch, the fresh morning air and the intense sunlight were not enough to bring his mind back from the darkness. Something would have to happen, and that something happened right after he joined Jack in the dining room.
“You’re up early, David...”
“I’d have to have slept in order to wake up, but I feel better here than sitting in my bed.”
Not long after, Brigitte and her five brothers started laying the tables for breakfast. They arranged the cutlery and crockery to perfection, and even the baguettes were cut and placed in baskets as if for a storefront display. As Brigitte approached with a pot of freshly brewed coffee, David noted the contours and movements of her hands, graceful and qualified. Manual labor, he thought, would be the best response to his existential crisis. Immersed in it, the mind would not stray, and perhaps the soul would sooth itself.
“I’m leaving this afternoon, my friend. They’re already expecting me,” Jack said, aching to see David’s reaction.
Father Callaghan, however, did not react, at least not on the outside. Perhaps he had expected the news, or maybe he had grown accustomed to departures.
“Do you know what you’re going to do, David?” Jack asked.
With no satisfactory answer to give, the young priest simply smiled enigmatically. At that moment, David understood that there was a philosophical distance between the two of them. Jack was a well-adjusted holistic being, capable of recognizing an improbable linearity and making argumentative bridges between subjects as different as the certainties of anthropology, religious dogma, and the animism of the San people. David, on the other hand, was divided into different selves, each now with their own convictions and doubts.
“I think I’ll follow the grumpy option of returning to Ireland,” David said after a long pause.
“So, you’ve decided to face your own demons...”
“I’d have to know them first… No, Jack, I’m afraid I’m at an earlier stage.”
“Are you still considering if there is a way out for mankind?” asked Jack, certain that his friend needed a rescue floater. “The problem with pessimism, Father, is that it is born of the presumption that one knows reality, which is very unlikely.”
David did not say a word, silently wrapped in reflection about his own experience within a Christian community. He could see people growing distant from social interaction while morphing into increasingly eloquent avatars and alter egos in virtual circles. His own mother had been a frequent user of social media, posting messages and photos on a daily basis that omitted all signs of her terminal illness. In a world of denial, David thought, maybe spiritual leaders are no longer necessary… Vanity would fuel any truth.
Morning said goodbye as the two friends exchanged a long and tight hug, with promises of regular visits. Father Callaghan thanked Elliot for all his services, from his first contact at the diocese in Cape Town to his rescue in the Kalahari Desert. The most important part, however, the long hours of stimulating discussion on life and spirituality, remained unmentioned.
David recognized the omission in real time, but only reflected on the matter hours later. “Why do we have the habit of thanking people for external favors, but never for the inner changes they bring to us? Not once in the twelve years we knew each other did I thank Father Duane, except when he accompanied my mother to an operating table.”
After Jack’s departure, Father Callaghan remained in the company of Gretha and Brigitte for one more night, enjoying a candlelit dinner by the fireplace. It was an unusually cold night, even for that time of year. The two ladies warmed his heart with gentle looks and soft words. But somehow their conversation was no longer witty, reaching a point that David found quite uninspiring and flat. It certainly did nothing to alleviate the lack of news from Marie in his upset gut. He finally made his escape to the bedroom after the three conveyed a consensual yawn. Sunken in his pillow, he painfully pried his hopes from his thoughts, creating space for reason to settle in and clear the way for his decision to return to Ireland.
The next morning, with steady and dignified steps, he made his way through a sea of unfamiliar faces in the dining room, all gesticulating and flashing out their recent safari experience. He then left a two-page letter of gratitude signed by his heart at the reception. In a day born out of no expectation, David wished to at least retain in his memory the warmth of the two welcoming ladies upon his first arrival in Windhoek. Back in his hometown, life ought to be colorless and rotten. Karen’s ghost was still to be seen everywhere. In addition, another female figure promised to haunt him.
It must be said that next to the long farewell note on the counter, there was a newspaper whose cover story was of much interest to David. Quite a story! Having won his freedom with his bare hands, Benjamin had been found in reasonable health not among the Chinese poachers, but amidst his own people in a far-north village. Considered as a traitor by some of his fellows for dragging the villains to his homeland, however, the man was turned to the police, which still insisted on the charge of murdering Dr. Freeman.
Father Callaghan’s empathy for the driv
er’s misfortune was sincere, but it was soon abducted by a more significant amount of bitterness for the role the Herero man still played in Marie’s heart. By the time the plane was in the air and above the clouds, David was a shipwreck.
The disturbing anticipation of his life in Ireland and the enduring jealousy had overloaded his mind. He then remembered the meditation exercise that Jack had taught him. Inhaling and exhaling slowly, he tried to focus his mind on the flow of air from his nostrils to his lungs. It worked. When his thoughts returned to autopilot, they no longer consisted of images of an unpleasant future, but instead of a remote past.
PART 4
Chapter I
His childhood had been colored by pre-Christian mythology, in a land overlooked by Celtic gods and goddesses. Paganism and its legends, druid priests with their white robes and their “little beings”—fairies and leprechauns with their pots of gold—all of that had filled the mind of the Callaghans’ only son.
In his first school play, he had, in fact, played the role of a druid. According to the script, even the king feared the druids because of their magical powers. David fell in love, then, with both the robe and the priesthood, even though they were pagan.
He found it incredible that he had not talked to Jack about how the spirituality of his ancestors was similar to that of the San. To ancient Celts, gods were everywhere: over the clouds, in the mountains, trees, rivers, and lakes. Back in his seat on the plane, David rubbed his eyes and reached a conclusion: both the ancient Celts and the San saw a continuous and genuine whole from the physical to the immaterial domains. The divine could be found in all living beings, as well as in the immaterial ones.
When he was nine years old, he came to know in detail the saga of Saint Patrick, whose evangelical mission in the fifth century had pulled the island away from paganism, Christianizing it. The missionary’s feat was so epic and surprising that it gave rise to many legends. In one of them, Saint Patrick had driven out all the serpents from Ireland. “It was a metaphor,” David’s mother had explained. The saint had in fact driven the pagan gods away, since there had never been any serpents on the island. Young David had not quite understood the meaning of the word ‘metaphor,’ but Saint Patrick’s deeds stirred his mind. His dreams were never the same... Fairies sought exile, and the druids were excommunicated.
From that moment on, his playful inner world became increasingly Christian. All other plays were mostly depictions of Jesus’ birth and the Via Crucis during Christmas or Easter. Throughout this time, David also became more and more interested in the theatrical representations of the extraordinary life of Saint Patrick, who had been a masterful storyteller. And the writings of the saint, with time, became far more powerful than the druids’ power to read the future in the flight of birds.
They say that Ireland’s patron saint explained to this simple people how the Holy Trinity (God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost) was a “three in one” using the three-leafed clover. In the same way, David kept reasoning, the Celtic gods who had inhabited his island in times immemorial—Dagda, god of gods, who could resuscitate the dead; Dian Cecht, the healing god; Donn, god of the dead; Brigid, goddess of fertility, and others—had become one single almighty and all-seeing God thanks to Saint Patrick.
It did not take long for the monotonous hum of the plane and his thoughts to lull David’s body into a deep sleep, an expected reaction to the last seventy-two hours without proper rest. Upon arrival at Heathrow Airport in London, he left the plane like a zombie and dragged himself through immigration. From there, he caught his connecting flight to Dublin. An hour and a half after takeoff, David set foot back on his island.
He had pulled the same single piece of luggage to Departures less than a couple of weeks before and had worn the same dark blue blazer. Other than his tired walk, only the direction he was taking through the large foyer of Dublin Airport confirmed the passage of time. His conscience was full and his mind on the verge of collapse. With his soul sunken in his shoulders, David would have agreed to immediately rescue his body to a thermal spa, had it not been for his stoical ethics.
“Good God, what have they done to you, my man? This wound in your forehead?” said John Buckley as he welcomed his nephew with a hug at Arrivals.
“I missed you too, Uncle!” David muttered.
They walked through the main hall of the airport towards the parking lot without sharing another word. The young priest kept his head down as if the sight of humans would unleash unbearable memories.
When they found the small two-door Fiat, John slipped into the driver’s seat effortlessly—no small feat for a man of his size. His long legs were wedged under the steering wheel and his thick thigh pressed against the manual transmission. As a child, David had always thought his uncle’s ability to fit into tiny cars to be a trick of magic. Now, the young priest climbed into the passenger seat with a sigh, his equally long legs anticipating the discomfort of the three-hour journey to Newcastle West.
Because he was so anxious to talk—he had rehearsed many questions since sunrise—the usually eloquent Buckley could not formulate a single sentence. From time to time, he would look at his nephew and smile. By repeating this gesture, it soon lost its grace and became mechanical. David, who returned the smile each time, finally decided to put an end to the lifeless preamble.
“I thought I wouldn’t return for a year or so, and here I am. Absent for just a couple of weeks. It’s almost embarrassing.”
“I’m actually stunned by your prompt return.”
“The work I was engaged in was abruptly cut short, but that may change. Then who knows? I might not be here for long.”
“Are you going to extend your leave?”
The question Father Callaghan had dreaded had already been asked within the first hour of his return. There was no short answer without a lengthy explanation, and he was miles away from the right mood.
“Uncle, you have no idea how green this land is,” he said, looking out the window.
Buckley respected his nephew’s obvious attempt, and the rest of the journey was filled with local jokes and evasive answers. He knew how to make hours pass unnoticed, and quite often in his pub, he had to remind himself to shut up so that the regulars would remember their way home.
A fine rain fell on the autumn afternoon in Newcastle West as the car pulled up in front of the Court Bishop’s white house. Under a gloomy sky, Buckley deposited the luggage on David’s doorstep before bidding him farewell. He knew that it was not the time to dig for information. With any luck, his nephew would show up at the Old Boys’ later, he thought.
David dragged his luggage into the living room and inspected all the spaces in the house, including the uninhabitable attic. When he found everything in order, he concluded that the interior of the house resisted like a fortress. And he was grateful that it did, for in a little while the small town would become a wave of questions and speculations. Against the tide, David would entrench himself in the building and count on a home-delivery service to make it impossible even for his neighbors to spot him.
Over the next few days, Elizabeth O’Brien naturally became the one who resisted David’s self-imposed exile the most. And yet, just like John Buckley, she also sensed Father Callaghan’s need for isolation and did not dare disrespect his wishes. The old lady, however, did alter the route of her morning walks to pass by the Callaghans’ home and witness the well-kept front garden. She smiled at the sight of the neatly mowed lawn and trimmed shrubs and concluded that David must have been working in the garden at night.
“Oh, good Lord! His mood must certainly have improved,” she said to herself.
David’s disappearance in his own town gave rise to more speculation than his sudden trip to Africa had. Some people even questioned Buckley’s sanity, since he was the only one who could actually confirm Father Callaghan’s presence in Newcastle. Now and then, however, p
assersby reported seeing someone who looked very similar to the young priest, with a beard and dark sunglasses despite the pale light of late September.
Safe from all the speculation in his exiled cocoon, David spent most of his time navigating the Internet. He read mainly about the vanities of worldly life and petty celebrity gossip. He also surveyed social media sites and their promotion of the ego, taking careful note of the average frequency of the use of “I” and “me” in each paragraph.
This activity was in no way a pursuit of entertainment, but rather a conscious effort to try to understand mankind on the ‘eve of its doom,’ as he said it to himself. To have come as far as humanity had, David thought, homo sapiens ought to have developed some way of limiting the destructive ego.
A few more days of his search and exile, he turned his attention once more to his mother’s bookshelf. He then realized the great extent to which the quotations from self-help books had flooded the ocean of messages exchanged in virtual communities. To him, with few exceptions, they were maxims devoid of humanism, almost always encouraging the reader to save him or herself individually.
“How did I not notice this before?” he thought aloud. He quickly found recent scientific evidence from renowned academic institutions to support his solitary discovery. “The constant exposure to self-help and motivational messages, mostly selfish in nature, on a virtual platform, has made us cognitively and morally superficial beings, who make hasty judgments about the most trivial matters,” stated one publication.
In another study, David found a test in which the researchers asked students to rank, in order of importance, dozens of goals and core values. They found that participants who regularly used social media were more concerned with superficial things, as their appearance and having fun, than with significant issues, such as living honestly and being selfless.
