‘I can’t promise you that, Doctor Budden. And I would like to ask you a personal question.’
‘Go ahead. I just asked you one.’
‘Why haven’t you turned yourself in? I mean, when you left prison, if you felt you hadn’t purged your crimes … well …’
‘In prison or dead I wouldn’t have been able to make amends for my evil.’
‘When it is beyond repair, what do you hope to make amends for?’
‘We are a community that lives on a rock that sails through space, as if we were always searching for God amid the fog.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m not surprised. I mean that you can always repair with one person the evil you’ve done to another. But you have to repair it.’
‘And you must not have wanted your name …’
‘Yes. I didn’t want that, it’s true. My life, since I left prison, has consisted of hiding and repairing. Knowing that I will never repair all the evil I’ve done. I’ve been carrying it around inside me for years and never told anyone.’
‘Ego te absolvo, etcetera. Right?’
‘Don’t laugh. I tried it once. But the problem is that my sin cannot be forgiven because it is too big. I devoted my life to atoning for it knowing that when you got here I would still be on the starting line.’
‘From what I remember, if the penitence is enough …’
‘Nonsense. What do you know!’
‘I had a religious education.’
‘What good did it do you?’
‘Look who’s talking.’
They both smiled again. Doctor Müss stuck a hand under his white coat and into his shirt. The other, quickly, leaned over the table and immobilised his arm, grabbing him by the wrist. The doctor, slowly, pulled out a dirty, folded rag. Seeing what it was, the newcomer released his wrist. The doctor put the cloth, which seemed to have been cut in half at one point, onto the table, and with vaguely ritualistic gestures, he unfolded it. It was a handspan and a half square and still had traces of the white and blue threads that made up the checks. The newcomer observed him with curiosity. He glanced at the doctor, who had closed his eyes. Was he praying? Was he remembering?
‘How were you able to do what you did?’
Doctor Müss opened his eyes.
‘You don’t know what I did.’
‘I’ve done my research. You were part of a team of doctors who trampled on the Hippocratic oath.’
‘Despite your profession, you are educated.’
‘Like you. I don’t want to miss my chance to tell you that you disgust me.’
‘I deserve the disdain of hitmen.’ He closed his eyes and said, as if reciting: ‘I sinned against man and against God. In the name of an idea.’
‘Did you believe in it?’
‘Yes. Confiteor.’
‘And what about piety and compassion?’
‘Have you killed children?’ Doctor Müss looked him in the eye.
‘I’m the one asking the questions.’
‘Right. So you know how it feels.’
‘Watching a child cry as you rip off the skin on his arm to study the effects of the infections … means you have no compassion.’
‘I wasn’t a man, Father,’ confessed Doctor Müss.
‘How is it that, without being a man, you were able to regret?’
‘I don’t know, Father. Mea maxima culpa.’
‘None of your colleagues have repented, Doctor Budden.’
‘Because they know that the sin was too large to ask for forgiveness, Father.’
‘Some have committed suicide and others have fled and hid like rats.’
‘I am no one to judge them. I am like them, Father.’
‘But you are the only one who wants to repair the evil.’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions: I may not be the only one.’
‘I’ve done my research. By the way, Aribert Voigt.’
‘What?’
Despite his self-control, Doctor Müss was unable to avoid a tremor through his entire body at just the mention of that name.
‘We hunted him down.’
‘He deserved it. And may God forgive me, Father, because I deserve it too.’
‘We punished him.’
‘I can’t say anything more. It is too big. The guilt is too deep.’
‘We hunted him down years ago. Aren’t you pleased to hear it?’
‘Non sum dignus.’
‘He cried and begged for forgiveness. And he shat himself.’
‘I won’t cry for Voigt. But the details you give me don’t make me happy either.’
The newcomer stared at the doctor for some time.
‘I am Jewish,’ he finally said. ‘I work for hire, but I put my all into it. Do you understand me?’
‘Perfectly, Father.’
‘Deep down, do you know what I think?’
Konrad Budden opened his eyes, frightened, as if he feared finding himself before the old Carthusian who stared at a crack in the wood of the frozen confessional. In front of him, this Elm, seated, looking him up and down, with his face already furrowed with the weight of many confessions, wasn’t looking at any crack: he was staring into his eyes. Müss held his gaze, ‘Yes, I know what you are thinking, Father: that I have no right to paradise.’
The newcomer looked at him in silence, concealing his surprise. Konrad Budden continued, ‘And you are right. The sin is so atrocious that the true hell is what I have chosen: assuming my guilt and continuing to live.’
‘Don’t think that I understand it.’
‘I don’t even try for that. I don’t take refuge in the idea that we followed or in the coldness of our souls that allowed us to inflict that hell. And I don’t seek forgiveness from anyone. Not even from God. I have only asked for the chance to repair that hell.’
He covered his face with his hands and said doleo, mea culpa. Every day I live the same feeling with the same intensity.
Silence. Outside, a sweet stillness overcame the hospital. The newcomer thought he could hear, muffled, in the distance, the sound of a television. Doctor Müss said, in a softer voice, hiding his distress, ‘Will it be a secret or will my identity be revealed once I’m dead?’
‘My client wants it to remain a secret. And the customer is king.’
Silence. Yes, a television. It sounded strange in that place. The newcomer leaned back in his chair. ‘Don’t you want to know who sent me now?’
‘I don’t need to know. You were sent by them all.’
And he put his hands flat on the dirty rag with a delicate, somewhat solemn, gesture.
‘What is that rag?’ the other man asked. ‘A napkin?’
‘I have my secrets too.’
The doctor kept his hands on the rag and he said if you don’t mind, I’m ready.
‘If you would be so kind as to open your mouth …’
Konrad Budden closed his eyes, piously, and said when you’re ready, Father. And from the other side of the window he heard the scandalous cackling of a hen about to roost. And further away, laughter and applause from the television. Then Eugen Müss, Brother Arnold Müss, Doctor Konrad Budden opened his mouth to receive the viaticum. He heard the bag’s zipper being opened briskly. He heard metallic sounds that transported him to hell and he assumed it as an extra penance. He didn’t close his mouth. He couldn’t hear the shot because the bullet had gone too quickly.
The visitor put the pistol in his belt and pulled a Kalashnikov out of his bag. Before leaving the room, he carefully folded that man’s rag as if it were a rite for him as well, and he put it in his pocket. His victim was still sitting, neatly, in his chair, with his mouth destroyed and barely a trickle of blood. He hadn’t even stained his white coat. Too old to have enough blood flow, he thought, as he took the safety off the automatic rifle and prepared to distort the scene. He calculated where the sound of the television came from. He knew that was where he needed to head. It was important that the doctor’s death go unnoticed but in order for that to happen he had decided that there’d have to be talk — a lot of talk — about the rest of it. Just part of the job.