The Flight of the Veil by Bruce J. Berger

Author:Bruce J. Berger
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2020-10-07T22:00:00+00:00

. . . . .

After her family left, the dishes cleared and washed, the kitchen put in order, Helen and Nicky sat quietly in her living room, sipping Sabra. After a few minutes, she raised a new topic, one Nicky had been anticipating ever since he’d spoken at dinner of his ideas about the trip.

“I should’ve known, when you gave me those books, you intended more than just going to the monastery. I’m fine with seeing the rest of Greece, too, as long as I’m going, but do you think it’s wise for you to go back to all those places?”

Her question was one he’d asked himself repeatedly. When he wanted to, he felt he could almost see those battle-scarred towns and roads in his mind, just as they’d been forty-plus years before, and he wondered what good could come of seeing them again. It could well be so much had changed that the places he wanted to see would be unrecognizable, and he wasn’t even sure he could find those that tormented him most. Even the church in Ioannina, if it still existed, was one of scores that looked alike, and perhaps he’d only imagined that the grenade episode had taken place in a church. He hadn’t been thinking clearly in the weeks after the girl in the yellow smock. He’d murdered her in a church, but his memories of the fighting after that small town, whose name he couldn’t recall, were sketchier. And yet, despite his doubts, some inner force tugged at him to make expiation for his sins by guiding him back and forcing him to look again at the things he’d done. The weight of guilt had grown enormous and suffocating, as if he were struggling to breathe under an avalanche of snow and ice.

“I need to see those places again,” he said uncertainly.

“To beat yourself up?”

“No. To help me process memories, to help me get them out of my system. And I want you to be there with me.”

“You want me to make sure you don’t blow your brains out?”

“I’d never blow my brains out.”

Helen’s blunt comment startled him. Bluntness, he was learning, was her way, and he’d told her about his two suicide attempts, one with his t’fillin and one with his Mauser, both attempts defeated by the purest luck. She knew as well, from the time she’d befriended him in 1946, that he could be impetuous, injudicious, and swept up by enormous waves of emotion. Even as he promised to Helen not to kill himself, at least with a gun, he felt unsure. The idea of taking his own life periodically surfaced during his bouts of depression. Could he keep such a promise?

“Forget I said that, it was rude.” Tears glistened in her eyes as she leaned over to kiss him.

“It’s all right.”

“I need to learn better to think before I open my mouth. Look, let’s get a calendar and pick the exact dates.

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