At the funeral, the pastor said Tod is alive because of Jesus rising from the dead. I don’t want to say the pastor is lying, but I saw Tod Carter in his living room and he was still dead. Maybe part of him is still alive in heaven, but is it the part that laughed and spun me through the air? And what about the drummer boy who was with the blue uniforms who killed Tod? What about Mattie? People don’t talk about animals living in heaven. When I asked Papa, he said that God loves the animals so much He must do something good with them, we just don’t know yet what that is. We have to trust, he said. I trust Papa, and I want to trust God, too, because I believe He is good like Papa. But so far as I can tell right now, all the ones I have loved who died are still dead, and all killed by Yankees. Except for Jesus, and people killed Him, too, even if He got to be alive again.
In front of the church is a big wooden cross like the one Jesus died on, but He is not on the cross anymore, and He wasn’t in the grave anymore, either—that’s what Papa read from Scripture last night before we went to sleep. So maybe Tod and the drummer boy aren’t in their graves anymore, either, or even Mattie, though she is a calf.
The pastor walks forward to preach the sermon to all these serious, sorrowing faces. They look tired, as if they have been working very hard but things are not going right. Are they all trying to understand as I am? But the pastor doesn’t read about the Resurrection like Papa did.
“…they crucified him…” the pastor reads. “Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”
There it is again, that same excuse that blue uniform gave when he shot Mattie. The same thing Mama said about the ones who killed our babies. They didn’t mean to. They didn’t know what they were doing. Can that make such a difference?
The pastor is silent for a long time. Mrs. Carter is crying. Mama is biting her lip. Then the pastor lights a candle and holds it up in front of us. He says, “Christ our Light, who forgives us all, is risen from the dead. He will give us the strength to forgive. He will raise us up to Himself.”
And that is all—the shortest sermon I have heard before or since, but it does something amazing. When everyone stands, they sing with power and their faces look bright.
The strife is o’er, the battle done; the victory of life is won;
The song of triumph has begun: Alleluia!
The pastor comes into the congregation, and lights the candles of the people in the front pews, and then each person lights another person’s candle until we are each holding light and singing alleluia. Singing, though we have lost so many bitter battles, lost a bitter war. In spite of everything, singing alleluia.
*****
SPRING, 1864
(ONE YEAR EARLIER)
Franklin, Tennessee
I wake in the middle of the night and go down to the kitchen for a glass of water, but I hear someone talking. It is Mama, kneeling in the parlor with her head bowed over her hands. I can guess what the matter is, so I go to her and put my arm around her shoulder.
“Are you praying for Julian and Julia, Mama?”
“No, child,” she says, and her voice is as still and deep as the dark night. “They were innocent babies. I am praying for the ones who killed them.”
“How can you do that, Mama? I hate them. I do not even want to forgive them, but even if I wanted to, I could not.”
“You cannot stop hating by yourself, Tillie, and neither can I—we are not strong enough. We need to ask for forgiveness. Then it can be given to us as a gift.”
*****
JANUARY 1, 1923
(TODAY)
Tata, Hungary
I had forgotten, but now I remember.
I’m sorry, little girl, the Yankee soldier said as I bent over Mattie’s body. I did not want to listen, but I heard most of it anyway, and it has never left my memory. He said that he had a daughter and he wouldn’t want anyone to make her cry. We didn’t mean to, he said. Probably he didn’t, probably they didn’t, those men brashly carrying out their orders, slaughtering their dinners, not watching where their bullets flew. Those soldiers—those human beings—each a world in himself, each flawed and yearning, like me.
I know now how I will portray the soldier in my painting. He will be wounded, as every soldier and every person is in some way wounded. He will be leaning on his horse, that simpler and more integrated creature that will carry him toward the viewer, out of the framework of the battle, toward a better life.
“Tillie, dear one, what is it?” Ferenc asks, rousing himself from his nap.
Only now am I aware that I have been weeping, perhaps quite loudly, not in sorrow but in wonder. I take Ferenc’s soft, leathery hand, warm and dear, and for once I am the one who reassures him. Even as I am experiencing and releasing years of pain, even as I am aware that this good battle is only beginning, I do not need to force myself to smile.
“All will be well, Ferenc. I have begun to take care of some unfinished work just now. No, not the paintings in Algiers. You are right; they are out of our hands. This is something even more important. I have more work ahead of me, but a new year is beginning right now, and I know that all will be well.”
*****
EPILOGUE
Matilda Lotz died in Tata, Hungary, on February 21, 1923. She did not recover her paintings, but fortunately, the world has recovered them. Some are privately owned, while others are in galleries or available for purchase at auction. Five paintings are displayed at her family home in Franklin, Tennessee—the Lotz House—now a museum open to the public. One of these is of a wolf, her earliest known painting, completed when she was only eleven years old.
*****
Lift My Eyes Page 16