大象传媒

In Italy
Madonna of Messina
by Cyril Frederick Perkins

The Saint Christopher medallion slipped out of my wallet bounced on the linoleum floor and came to rest beside the leg of the chair in which my son was reclining. He stooped to retrieve it turned it over a couple of times in his hands and with a disdainful expression on his usually cheery face handed it back to me.
Why do you bother to carry that thing around with you'? he asked.
'That thing' was a little bit of history - my history - not as grand perhaps as the Ancient History that had led him towards an Honours Degree but a little bit of history for all that and in a way it was a part of his history too.
Our family history had never claimed much of his interest or attention it seemed as if the strengths of his forebears might prove to be a bothersome burden and their weaknesses skeletons better left hidden in the family cupboard. Of course he knew that both his mother and I had served in the Armed Forces during World War II and that I had seen active service overseas for a couple of years but we had seldom spoken of our experiences during that time and he had never asked about them.
On the few occasions the subject had arisen it had invariably been accompanied by an embarrassing silence and quickly changed to a more contemporary topic.
I held the medallion in the palm of my left hand where I had first looked upon it so many years before. Time seemed to melt away and once again I was seated in the front cab of a GunTowing Vehicle waiting in Regimental convoy for our turn to cross the Straits of Messina into mainland Italy. It had been a long hot trek across the Catania Plains with the heat dust and flies driving us all to near distraction. All of us it seemed excepting for Tommy Allen my driver who at that particular point in time presented a picture of complete tranquillity and peace.
Tommy was an ardent student of Yoga and in the confined space of the driver's cab he had adopted a posture that was as close to a Lotus position as he could get. His legs were draped gracefully around the gear levers his head rested lightly on a rolled up gas cape and his hands with palms uppermost nestled gently upon his thighs.
I had no immediate need nor desire to disturb him and break the spell of transcendental meditation he had woven around himself but how I envied him that state of relaxed euphoria. My eyes were heavy and the sweet oblivion of sleep was taunting and desirable but the responsibilities of command demanded my attentions and such a luxury was for me still some way off. I was to wonder some time later if I had in fact dozed for a moment or two for suddenly I looked down and she was standing there.
A lady dressed almost entirely in black with just her eyes visible from beneath her shrouds penetrating eyes penetrating and pleading. She raised a scrawny arm up to me and pressed the Saint Christopher medallion into the palm of my hand but when I had looked up to thank her she had gone. I jumped down from the truck searched first one way and then another asking if others had seen her too but receiving only questioning glances in return. But for the medallion I would have been as equally sceptical and might have convinced myself it had all been a dream but I held the gift she had given me and I knew it was no dream.
Since that day I have travelled safely through war and peace by land sea and air over many thousands of miles with the image of that emblem ever near.
I wondered for a brief moment if my son would be really interested to know my story or if his question had simply been a knee jerk reaction to a passing curiosity. I tried to catch his eye prepared and ready to divulge my little bit of history but alas the moment had passed. He had reached for a remote control unit and soon I knew my little bit of history would be swept aside by some noisy intrusive nonentity of the moment. I carefully tucked the Saint Christopher medallion back inside my wallet still musing on my lady in black and wondering as Ihad wondered many times before - was she smiling beneath her shroud - my Madonna of Messina.?

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