Page 191 - Eggs and Ashes pages

190 Eggs and Ashes

Seeing the face of Christ
(George’s story)

Luke 24:13–16

I met George when I was going to college and working part-time at a shelter for
homeless men. When I wasn’t busy, and he was free, we’d sit and talk together, about
art and classical music. As a young man, George had studied oil painting. He’d wanted
to learn to draw like the old masters, he told me. He loved the art of portraiture espe-
cially, and had dreamed of, just once, capturing a face so that it ‘mirrored the soul’.
At first it seemed a little surprising to be talking about art and music in the
cacophony of a night shelter, surrounded by bare, nicotine-yellow walls and ugly,
orange linoleum scarred with cigarette burns.
I’d heard that George had been a soldier, too, that he’d fought at Normandy and
in the Desert campaign, later again in Korea, but when I asked him about that
period of his life, he said he didn’t like to talk about it.
Once when Tommy was having a seizure, and lay writhing on the cold floor
like he’d been shot, I glanced up and saw George. He gazed down at Tommy and
kept shaking his head; it was like he was away some place else. His face expressed
infinite pity.
Blood drooled from the corner of Tommy’s mouth; his body kept flailing and
churning. ‘Gonna be alright Tom,’ said George. Tommy roiled and writhed, his
boyish, trenched face contorted, tortured-looking. George handed me his suit jacket,
balled-up for underneath Tommy’s head. I tried to keep Tommy over on his side
between attacks; with a tender, sore, caressing voice, George told Tommy that he was
going to be all right, that he was just going to see the nurses. ‘Just goin’ to see the
nurses,’ the crowd of tough, scared men started up in a chorus. ‘Tommy’s just going
to see the nurses.’ ‘Luck-y.’ ‘Some nice ones there, I’II bet ya.’ ‘Oh yeah, for sure.’
‘Be alright now, Tommy.’ ‘Tommy, be alright.’ And, finally, the ambulance screamed
up with a stretcher the paramedics rolled Tommy on to like a bag of loose sticks.
My colleague Phil, who’d been working on the front line for years, and knew
George better than anyone probably, said that George felt profound guilt for having
survived the wars – that George couldn’t understand why he’d lived when all his
good friends, and so many other good people, had been blown away or left crippled
for life, had been taken prisoner and tortured, had gone missing and never been
found … He carried the question like a cross, Phil said.
‘You see him alone sometimes, talking to himself, talking to God. Shouting at
the heavens, praying for peace.’