I immediately understood why Saint Nectarie and his greatly honored guests gathered here. The saints of the prisons found their human mirrors in our time. Here are the imprisoned of the day. There still exists somewhere a perfidious system that arrests without warning, binds arms, whips, and throws the innocent into narrow cells, untried.
The difference is that the detained souls gathered before me were kept in isolation in a sparkling clean cell and wore smocks with little mushrooms, rarely with stripes. The intravenous drip lines served as handcuffs at their wrists; every trace of muscle had vanished from their arms and necks, from so much suffering and fasting; their heads rested weakly against the chair. Yet they spoke clearly, purely, showing you the joy of Visiting Day. Those who didn't have a suitable wheelchair to be brought, I sought them in their little rooms, tiptoeing, asking permission. The reaction I encountered in them was a fairy tale in itself. They, at first glance, behaved with the holy relics as if at a pre-arranged meeting. They recognized each other. They cried, throwing themselves into each other's arms, like during great reunions.
I told them that one of the traveling bones had started to release myrrh, and they eagerly grasped at the life slowly escaping their chests. But I myself could only collect it, I couldn't provoke it in any way with my touch. But my mind led me to try a trick.
I opened a baby's clenched fist, stiff with pain. It rang out long, diaphanous, and orange, exactly like the rustling of a mandarin-virgin when you open it and separate its segments. Those transparent fingers, in their spasm, had adhesive tape rings and embedded needles ‒ I took a phalanx and affectively "bombed" the holy bone, which had become timid. I knocked at the Gate. Upon touch, it intensely sprayed, in view of everyone, the tear of liberation. I did the same with other children, with the smallest ones. With Cristian, with Andrei. From them, it gushed. I used them as myrrh-mine workers.
The one who sent me never knew, but on the wax pillow where he had placed his collection, these little ones occasionally left, in exchange, the coin of their exhaustion. So that we might spring forth for all the sick, behold, the babies, the chosen ones, would trickle a thread of blood, escaped from the embedded cannulas, which mixed on the bone with the myrrh. I am still afraid of what I did. I still don't know if I also did harm.
Otherwise, around them, we were a powerless gathering of adults without solutions. From doctors to physical parents, from caregivers to gawkers, like me. In front of us, pain unfolded unheard scream-symphonies, their sparrow-claws of hope climbed on us and tore at our souls and our minds devoid of ideas. They begged for hope at the crossroads. We were empty. You couldn't concretely promise anything.
What my mind immediately implored was the invocation of a case, the search for an ancient image. I closed my eyes, cleared all the furniture and carpets from the hallway between me and God, so I could multiply the emptiness and echo, and I cried out with a voice fit for a herald: "My Lord and my God, we walk blind, carrying many beds on our backs above the room where you speak. Let us somehow see the roof through which we can lower them to You, with ropes, these ones!"".
I said it many times. It is the most concentrated prayer for children with incurable diseases that I could invent on the spot. I am sure that, one day, it will truly be revealed to someone. The breach in the roof towards Christ. To someone pure, who will study much, who will pray much. They will find the answer and the healing.
Oh... But do you know how the children experienced the surprise hosting? Exactly like you, as an adult, are tense before the first date with your beloved, and you fret whether or not she'll let you timidly and seemingly by chance run your palms over her face... The sensation was that of a flirtation's thrill. I'll tell you right away. Something like how you'd blink often and playfully endear yourself to God. Even you, as an observer, in their presence and embraced by their smile, thinned by the grace of suffering, were constantly in a flirtation. A harmless flirtation with Christ.
I introduced myself politely on the surface, subtly cunning within, hoping they would remember my name. It was more valuable than any mere mention, for at least one of them to know you by name! They would have called me from the crowd later, if needed, when my late hour came. Because of the persistence of ones like these, I strongly believe that God can mercifully remove you from the flock of goats.
This is how I discovered Ionuț. He introduced himself simply, with a small voice, after first looking at the unopened, encrusted boxes on the threshold: 'Mmmm, holy relics, wow.' 'I am Ionuț and I am thirteen years old.' I was looking at him. From the prison of trouble that had swallowed his body, it wasn't clear whether the one who had spoken to me was a thirteen-year-old pain or a person of the same age. This Ionuț, I'll tell you, is one of the people who changed me. In his presence, during the few moments I visited him, I was compelled to transfigure myself. I became a fig tree forced by the evidence of meeting God to ripen some fruits before their time.
(to be continued)
Cosmina Dragomir
Photography by Noemia Prada
See the other episodes here: The Beautiful Emaciated