Christian
Senda
“I saw
Maria come to wake me up. She said, ‘Wake up, Joseph, Jesus is waiting for you
in the chapel. So I got up and went to the chapel and there I saw them, all in
shining robes. And I believed until finally I got well.”
“Shut
up, crazy man! Why don’t you just die!” Congregation screamed. “He’s lying, Father!”
Advent
arrived. Beautiful flowers adorned the dyewood trees that flanked the thick Chapel
of Saint Theresia of Avilla in Usapi Sonbai. Sunday mass had just finished. The
visiting priest who tended the spiritual needs of the faitful in Usapi Sonbai was
now returning to Kupang. Members of the congregation were making their way home
as well, leaving the chapel with its thick stone whitewashed walls now being
watched by fresh dyewood flowers and a young man of twenty-five who served as
the accolyte for services at the chapel. His face was mournful, a stark contrast
to the freshness of the dyewood flowers.
For
December, the sun was shining much too strongly. Sharp tongues of light
penetrated the six stained glass windows in the wall at the rear of the chapel,
directly behind the altar. The shape of the Holy Spirit in the leaded glass
overhead, with its body penetrated by sunlight, appeared to be diving towards
the chapel floor, through gaps between flying clouds. The faces of the Holy
Mary and Jesus Christ, her beloved son, glowed and their exposed hearts looked
redder with the coursing of blood made hot by the shining sun. Another contrast
to the pallid look of the acolyte.
The
movement of figures in the six stained-glass windows that decorated the
opposite wall was much more subdued and harmonious. On that side of the chapel,
the southern side, there were no harsh rays of sunlight slapping the wall in
which the double doors to the chapel were fixed. Yet in the subdued light, the
figures in the windows appeared to be talking. Fingers touching, arms holding
one another, the characters were silently sharing stories about the most holy
creation.
The
activity of the stained glass window began to draw the attention of the young
man, the twenty-five year old acolyte who was kneeling, his body drooped in
apparent misery, at the at the end of one of the dark wooden pews. With
sweatdrops and tears bathing his face, he might have been protesting to God. Or
reciting a novena that he knew by heart. He stared in bewilderment at the brown-colored
tabernacle whose shape was that of an ume
kbubu, a traditional cone-shaped Timorese home, as he waited for an answer.
Two years ago Maria left me, without my blessing and without saying goodbye. She left me, our lovely home town of Usapi Sonbai, and all the precious tales we shared from our past together. She had stolen away, gone off to work in Malaysia as guest worker there.
“You
have to go and find your dream, Maria!” Such was the advice from the mouth of
her uncle who worked as a recruiter of guest workers. He spoke in an urgent
tone: “Your dream is in Malaysia, not here in Usapi Sonbai and especially not
with that altar boy who has no future. The kid is an an orphan. You’ll have
nothing to eat but shit if you hinge your life to his.”
Stories
of people from Usapi Sonbai who had turned their employment as guest workers
into a stepping stone for success served to bolster her uncle’s advice. And Malaysia
did indeed shine a guiding light on Maria and other people from Usapi Sonbai, but
not, unfortunately, on either my love for her or my status as a small farmer
and acolyte.
“Just
look at that Joseph of yours! He prays everyday, and takes care of God’s home
but lives in poverty with nothing to show. Is that what you want for yourself?”
Who
was it that told me, I can’t remember, but those heated words, spoken by his
uncle, eventually reached my ears. But by the time they did, it was too late
for me to act. Maria had gone and was already at work in Malaysia.
Did
she ever think about our custom of cleaning the chapel and working in the
garden together, I wondered. Or about when advent arrived and all the dyewood
trees that flanked the side of the chapel were in bloom, the many hours that we
spent sitting together, just the two of us, in the shade of those trees.
I
remember clearly the last time we spent together, three years agp. Beneath those
very same dyewod trees, I expressed my desire to marry her. I told here that
Father Agustinus, the priest from Kupang, was willing to lend me some capital to
get ahead. In my mind I had already imagined a small pig farm and a vending stall
where the two of us could sell everyday goods. Hearing my words, Maria looked
at me with glazed eyes. I didn’t detect in them the slightest bit of deceit or
an intent to deceive me. But I guess, maybe, the urgings of her uncle or
pressure from her parents to bring in an additional income for the family held
more persuasion.
Time
passed quickly enough after that, and it feels almost like yesterday that Maria
left, but the effect of her decision to was a painful scoring of my heart and a
burden I sometimes found almost too heavy to bear.
Three
times now the dyewood trees have bloomed and still I have received no word from
her.
Secretly, I feel that God is
treating me unfairly.
The
four weeks of advent had passed. Christmas arrived and the congregation
gathered at the chapel in their finest apparel. The children were happy because
the pockets in their shirts and skirts were full of candies and they had
sparklers in their hand. Their eyes shone doubly bright when after the mass was
over all the doors to neighbors’ homes were thrown open for visitation by
anyone and everyone. On the serving table, shaved ice with raspberry flavored
syrup and containers of cookies were ready for the taking. Christmas is owned
by all those who love happiness. But this year happiness was not something
Joseph felt. Too much time had passed.
At
Christmas and Easter time, an acolyte has to work extra hard. In the past,
Joseph had always carried out the extra burden of work with a broad smile. But
not this year, the third year since the dyewood trees had bloomed without Maria
there beside him.
He
was anxious when he awoke that morning. He had had a bad dream, of that he was,
but now he could not remember it. His mind was blank. Sweat damped his pillow.
But trying to recapture the vision he’d seen, he found only useless shards that
he could not possibly reconstruct as a memory. He anxiously wondered what it
could have been.
The
unknown dream haunted Joseph as he ate his breakfast and filled him with unease
on his trip to the forest where he cut down a small pine tree and gathered a
boxfull of moss and tendrils for use in decorating the the Nativity scene at
the chapel.
As
Christmas eve approached and the time for late night mass arrived, he suffered
from ever greater anxiety. Throughout the mass, Joseph moved like a downcast robot
that had been set on automatic in order to enable him to assist the priest and
go back and forth to the sacristry automatically.
Father
Agustinus had pronounced the closing prayer, when the cell phone in Joseph’s pocket
virbrated, signaling that atext message had arrived for him. The insistent
vibration of the cellphone was an electric bolt that shocked his robotic body,
bringing him back to life yet releasing in him an even stronger surge of fear. His
hand was shaking so much that the cell phone slipped from his fingers and fell to
the floor when he began to retrieve the message.
With
trembling fingers he picked up the battery that had been dislodged from the
body of the cellphone and put it back in its place, He then pushed the button
to reactivate the phone, doing so with a thunderous pounding in his chest. It
was all very strange, all very silent…. Suddenly his legs gave out beneath him
and he dropped, his knees crashing into the floor.
“Maria is dead. Raped and
killed. Inform her parent. Be strong, Joseph. GBU! Melky in Malaysia.”
The
choir was singing “Joy To The World” with great fervor and fanfare but in
Joseph’s ears, the sound was distorted, a warped and mournful sounding song.
Then, only silence and only the darkness that had enveloped him.
Secretly I feel that God is
not treating me fairly. My novena was useless!
After
Maria’s death, Joseph’s demeanor changed completely. He fell into depression
and began to distance himself from his beloved chapel. A month after Christmas,
he submitted his resignation from his duties as acolyte. Father Agustinus, as the
pastor of the main parish, was reluctant to allow his best acolyte resign and,
even more so, did not want to see the young man be crushed by hopelessness. And
so, although he honored Joseph’s request and began a search for a replacement,
he asked that Joseph continue to live at the chapel and to tend to the gardens
on his own good time.
“Thank
you, Father,” Joseph told the priest, “but I would prefer to live in my hut in
the orchard. I don’t feel comfortable living in the chapel anymore.”
Scretly I feel that God is not
treating my fairly.
Father
Agustinus finally relented and allowed Joseph to move but secretly asked Guido,
the young man he had found to replace Joseph, to keep an eye on Joseph and what
he was doing. As the priest at the main parish in Kupang, he himself was only
able to visit Usapi Sonbai once a month.
It
was little more than a week later that Guido sent word to Father Agustinus that
Joseph had gone mad. One day Guido found Joseph on the ground beneath one of the
dyewood trees next to the chapel, raving and delirious. Another time, he found
Joseph hugging the trunk of a tree and talking to it as if it were a living
person.
Worse
still, Joseph’s symptoms of madness worsened. When the blooms of the dyewood began
to fall, he was found pounding his fists on the trunk of a tree, screaming and
shouting at it, “Don’t go! Don’t go!” He screamed and cried until he fell
senseless and finally slept.
Near
the corner of the wall of the chapel, where the sunlight fell on a stainglassed
window, there appeared a glow that took on a human shape, a beautiful woman who
walked towards the dyewood tree where she found beneath it a young man sleeping
soundly.
“Wake
up, Joseph,” she said to him. “Jesus is waiting for you inside…”
She
then left the site of the dyewood tree whose blooms were starting to fall, with
the hope that Joseph would soon be back in good health.
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