The opening pages of Michael D. O'Brien's "The Father's Tale: A Novel"

The Opening Pages of The Father's Tale: A Novel | Michael D. O'Brien | Ignatius Insight | September 20, 2011

Prologue

In late February of a year not long past, Dr. Irina Filippovna, a physician, was crossing the interminable expanse of the taiga on the Trans-Siberian Railroad and happened to be an unwilling witness to a singularly odd event. Though the coach in which she rode was third class, the seat hard, and her fellow passengers in foul or despairing moods due to the recent disruption of rail service by ecology protestors, she had planned to sleep away much of the journey between Novosibirsk and Irkutsk. She had delivered a lecture on immunology at a medical institute in the former city and had hoped to disembark in the latter without undue trouble, and from there to make her way by bus and horse-drawn sleigh to her home village, where she maintained a small but necessary practice.

A handsome woman in her early forties, she was a widow with two sons to support. It was her custom to work with quiet determination to keep her life as simple as possible in order to bring what remained of her family through these times—the sociopolitical situation that now seemed more confused in some ways than it had been under the Communist regime. She had no love for anything that remained of the state's apparent omnipotence and its omnivorousness. Neither did she waste energy trying to understand the universe in other terms, for what might or might not lie beyond it could never be proved by science. She was in her own estimation a mother and a scientist. She often reminded herself that she had a good deal to be grateful for, especially her husband, whom she had loved as no other in her life, and her sons, who were now, if it might be expressed in this way, her very life. She was a person with a complicated but by no means unique personal history. An intellectual, though an impoverished one, she was neither political nor naïve. She entertained no sentimental illusions about her native land, yet in her soul she loved it fiercely, even as she doubted the existence of the soul.

It was her habit from time to time to adjust what she called her "Russian mask", the impenetrable neutral expression that projected an attitude of indifference and resignation, for it had a tendency to slip from her face at inopportune moments, usually those moments that she later dismissed as lapses "for humanitarian reasons". She was not indifferent and she was not resigned, but she had throughout her lifetime learned that it was best to hide the more personal elements of her character—and certainly before strangers. She was, she told herself, immune.

Thus, when from the corner of her eye she observed an unhappy man on the seat across the aisle, she noted the fact but attributed no significance to his presence. He appeared at first glance to be little different from several others in the coach, hunched as he was inside a dirty greatcoat, gaunt, haggard around the eyes, scowling, unshaven. He was about her age, perhaps a bit older. From time to time he lifted his left hand, favoring it as if it were sprained or burned, and pressed it to the frosted glass of the window beside him. Yes, a burn, she decided, assessing his wincing, the livid red disk on his palm, and the weeping blisters. She considered offering him an antibiotic salve from the medical bag at her feet but thought the better of it. His hair, dyed a glaringly artificial yellow, stood up in spikes, like that of a decadent American rock star. Not a few young Russians in the big cities affected the same appearance, but in a middle-aged man it was repulsive. She decided not to make contact. He might be drunk or a criminal, or both, but clearly he was a disturbed person, and the hundreds of versts yet to cross could all too easily degenerate into tribulation. The country was full of irrational, dispossessed people like him. Though she felt a momentary impulse to help, she warned herself against involvement and firmly put the poor fool from her thoughts.

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