“So you’re a student, you say?”
She had a delicious accent, which slid over her words and gave them all, the pretty ones as well as the ugly ones, a discreet highlight. We were circling the lake for the third time, walking along the Elsi Promenade. We weren’t alone. There were other couples like us, groups of two people looking at each other a great deal, speaking little, laughing for no reason, and falling silent again. With the three pennies I’d borrowed off Ulli Rätte, I bought a sizzling hot crêpe from the vendor whose stall was next to the skating rink. He poured a generous extra spoonful of honey over the crêpe and held it out to us, saying, “For the lovers!” We smiled, but we didn’t dare look at each other. I offered the crêpe to Amelia. She seized it as though it were a treasure, cut it in half, and handed me my portion. Night was falling, and with it the icy air that turned Amelia’s cheeks even rosier and made her hazel eyes shine all the more brightly. We ate the crêpe. We looked at each other. We were at the very beginning of our life.
With a long, drawn-out whine, Ohnmeist brought me back to the village. He rubbed his head against me one more time and then went away, taking little steps and wagging his tail as if waving good-bye. I followed him with my eyes until he disappeared behind the woodshed that stands beside the workroom in Gott’s smithy. He’d probably found some shelter there for the winter.
I hadn’t noticed how much distance the dog and I had covered. We’d gone all the way to the end of the village, close to the church and the cemetery. The snow was coming down as thickly as before. The edge of the forest was invisible, even though it began barely thirty meters away. When the church came into sight, I thought about Father Peiper, and the light in his kitchen window made me decide to knock on his door.
XIX
—
spoke and Peiper listened, steadily refilling his glass. I spilled my guts. I went on at length. I didn’t talk about the pages I’m writing alongside the Report, but I discussed everything else. I revealed all my doubts and fears. I told him how odd it felt to have fallen into a trap and to be unable to understand who had woven it, who was holding the cords, why I had been pushed into it, and especially how I might manage to get out of it. When I finally stopped, Peiper let a little while pass in silence. Talking had done me good.
“Who are you confiding in, Brodeck? The man, or what’s left of the priest?”
I hesitated to reply, simply because I had no idea what my reply should be. Peiper sensed my confusion and said, “I’m asking the question because the two aren’t the same. You know they aren’t, even though you no longer believe in God. I’m going to help you a bit, and I’ll start by telling you something in confidence: I hardly believe in God anymore, either. I spoke to Him for a long time, for years and years, and throughout those years, He really seemed to listen to me and to respond as well, with little signs, with the thoughts that came to me, with the things He inspired me to do. And then, that all stopped. I know now that He doesn’t exist or He’s gone away forever, which comes to the same thing. So there it is: we’re alone. Nevertheless, I go on with the show. I play my part badly, no doubt, but the theater’s still standing. It causes no one any harm, and there are some elderly souls in the audience who would be still more alone and still more abandoned if I closed the place down. You see, every performance gives them a little strength, the strength to go on. And there’s another principle I haven’t repudiated: the seal of confession. It’s my cross, and I bear it. I shall bear it to the end.”
All at once, he grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly. “I know everything, Brodeck. Everything. And you can’t even imagine what that Everything means.”
He stopped talking, having just realized that his glass was empty. He rose to his feet, trembling, and cast anxious looks at the bottles that littered the room. He moved five or six before finding one that still held a little wine. He smiled and clasped the bottle in his arms, the way you embrace a loved one you’re happy to see again. He returned to his chair and filled his glass. “Men are strange. They commit the worst crimes without question, but later they can’t live anymore with the memory of what they’ve done. They have to get rid of it. And so they come to me, because they know I’m the only person who can give them relief, and they tell me everything. I’m the sewer, Brodeck. I’m not the priest; I’m the sewer man. I’m the man into whose brain they can pour all their ordure, all their filthy deeds, and then they feel relieved, they feel unburdened. When it’s over, they go away as though nothing’s happened. They’re all new and clean. Ready to start afresh. They know the sewer has closed over what they dumped into it and will never repeat what it’s heard to anybody. They can sleep in peace, Brodeck, and at the same time I’m all awash, I’m overflowing, I can’t take any more, but I hold on, I try to hold on. I’ll die with all these deposits, these horrors, in me. You see this wine? It’s my only friend. It puts me to sleep and makes me forget, for a little while, the great, vile mass I carry around inside, the putrid load they’ve all entrusted to me. I’m not telling you this because I want your pity. I just want you to understand. You feel alone because you must write about hideous things; I feel alone because I must absolve them.”
He stopped, and in the multiple, moving light of the candles, I distinctly saw his eyes fill with tears.
“I didn’t always drink, Brodeck, as you well know. Before the war, water was my daily beverage, and I knew that God was at my side. The war … maybe the peoples of the world need such nightmares. They lay waste to what they’ve taken centuries to build. They destroy today what they praised yesterday. They authorize what was forbidden. They give preferential treatment to what they used to condemn. War is a great broom that sweeps the world. It’s the place where the mediocre triumphs and the criminal receives a saint’s halo; people prostrate themselves before him and acclaim him and fawn upon him. Must men find life so gloomy and monotonous that they long for massacre and ruin? I’ve seen them jump up and down on the edge of the abyss, walk along its crest, and look with fascination upon the horror of the void, where the vilest passions hold sway. Destroy! Defile! Rape! Slash! If you had seen them …”
The priest snatched my wrist and pressed it hard. “Why do you think they tolerate my incoherent sermons and my drunken Masses, my cursing and raving? Why do they all come to church? Why hasn’t anyone asked the bishop to recall me? Because they’re afraid, Brodeck. It’s as simple as that: they’re afraid of me and of all the things I know about them. Fear is what governs the world. It holds men by their little balls. It squeezes them from time to time, just to remind their owners that it could annihilate them if it so desired. I see their faces in my church when I’m in the pulpit. I see them through their masks of false calm. I smell their sour sweat. I smell it. It’s not holy water running down the cracks of their asses, believe me! They must curse themselves for having told me so much … Do you remember when you were an altar boy, Brodeck? Do you remember serving when I said Mass?”
I was very small, and Father Peiper made a great impression on me. He had a deep, silky voice, a voice that wine-bibbing hadn’t yet worn down. He never laughed. I wore a white alb and a bright-red collar. I closed my eyes and inhaled the incense, believing God would come into me more readily if I did that. My happiness, my bliss was without flaw. There were no races, no differences among men. I’d forgotten who I was and where I’d come from. I’d never thought about the bit of flesh missing from between my thighs, and no one had ever reproached me for it. We were all God’s people. At the altar in our little church, I stood at Father Peiper’s side. He turned the pages of the Holy Book. He brandished the host and the chalice. I rang the little bells. I presented him the water and the wine and the white linen cloth he used to wipe his lips. I knew there was a Heaven for the innocent and a Hell for the guilty. Everything seemed simple to me.