“Was the man wounded?”
He looks at me as if I’m mentally defective. Obviously, he says slowly. Of course. How on earth would he not be? Ron stabbed him. With the butterfly! How could anyone not be wounded, I ask you? He looks over at the Ping-Pong table, then at the PlayStation, then leans forward and asks if I have a solution.
“Absolution?”
Yes, absolution. If he can get it from me. And should the police surface at his place, if I can corroborate that it wasn’t him that did the stabbing, that it was Ron. The other Ron. His friend.
“How could I corroborate that?”
I feel dizzy, and this time it’s not because of the heat. Is this really happening? No one has ever come to me in the confessional and admitted to an act of violence, that sort of thing just doesn’t happen, never mind if thriller writers and scriptwriters think it’s an everyday occurrence. I could call the police. But I’m not allowed to do that. Or do I have to anyway? Is what is going on here a confession at all? We’re not in the confessional, not even in a church. Am I obligated in any way to call the police? It’s all very complicated, and it’s so hot.
As if he’d read my thoughts, he begins to cry. Tears stream down his stubbled baby cheeks. Please, he says, please, Mister Priest!
On the other hand, I think, let’s accept this is a confession. I can decide, and I’m making it into one. In this case I may not go to the police. Canon law forbids it, and the law of the state protects me. That seems to settle the matter. And absolution? Well, why not! There is no God, obliged to forgive the boy just because I’ve made the sign of the cross. They’re words. They change nothing.
Ron wipes his tears away. Everything happened so quickly, he says, there was nothing he could do about it. And why did the snotnose have to get so full of himself?
I know I’m going to reproach myself, or rather I know I’ll have to forget it all, in order not to reproach myself. But since I’ve begun the gesture, I can’t break it off: I make the sign of the cross over him, from top to bottom and then right to left, and he starts to cry again, this time because he’s so moved, perhaps he really does believe he’s been spared the fires of hell, and I fend him off and say that he has to go to the police and tell them everything, and he says yes of course, of course he’ll do that, and I know he’s lying, and he knows that I know.
Thank you, he says again, thank you, Mister Priest!
“But go to the police. Tell them what—”
Of course! To the police. And then he wants to start all over again and tell me the whole dismal story a second time, but I’ve had enough. I jump to my feet.
Ron looks up at me — liberated on the one hand because he thinks I’ve taken the sin from him, and worried on the other, because he’s confided it to me. I look into his face, into his vague eyes, there’s fear in them, but also a mild flash of viciousness as he asks himself if I’m not someone who needs silencing.
I smile at him, he doesn’t smile back. “That’s all,” I say, and have no idea what I mean. I hold out my arm to him, he stands up, and we shake hands. His is soft and damp and he lets go again immediately. I have the sense that everything would be clearer, better, more right somehow, if only I could understand the slogan on his shirt. I turn away deliberately and indicate to Father Tauler that I have to go. He raises his eyebrows in surprise; I point to my watch and then the ceiling — the universally recognized gesture that means I’m being called upstairs.
“Mister Priest?” A young girl wearing a cross on a chain positions herself in front of me. “I have a question.”
“Talk to Father Tauler.”
Disappointed, she moves out of the way. I reach the door and the stairwell. I pant my way up, and, bathed in sweat, step into the marble coolness of the entrance hall.
“Friedland!”
He’s standing right there. At this exact moment. He’s thin and tall, his black robe is elegantly cut, his hair beautifully barbered, and his glasses by Armani. Of course he’s not sweating.
“Hello, Finckenstein.”
“It’s hot here.”
“You must be used to it by now.”
“Yes, summers in Rome are bad.” He crosses his arms, leans against the stone balusters, and eyes me with a vaguely amused expression.
“I’ve just heard someone’s confession. Imagine, he’s … I mean, what do you do if someone … what happens to the secrets of the confession if … doesn’t matter. Not now. Doesn’t matter.”
“Do you still play with your cube?”
“I’m practicing for the championship.”
“You mean there are still Rubik championships? Do you have some time, shall we go and get something to eat?”
I hesitate. I really don’t want to hear about his career, and his life in air-conditioned rooms, and his rise and success. “Love to.”
“Then come on. An early dinner, something light, it’s hard to get anything done in this weather.” He goes up the marble stairs, and I follow him hesitantly.
“Have you seen Kalm recently?” I ask.
“Still the same. He’ll soon be a bishop, God willing.”
“He’ll be willing.”
“I think so too. He’ll be willing.”
“Do you believe in God?”
He stops. “Martin, I’m the deputy editor in chief of Vatican Radio!”
“And?”
“You’re asking the deputy editor in chief of Vatican Radio if he believes in God?”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“No. But if I were asking seriously, what would you say?”
“I’d say it’s not the right question.”
“Why?”
“God is a self-fulfilling concept, a causa sui, because He’s conceivable. I can conceive of Him, and because He’s conceivable, He must exist, anything else would be a contradiction, so I also know that He exists even if I don’t believe in Him. And that’s why I believe in Him. And don’t forget, we act out His existence through the exercise of human love. We do our work. He becomes real through us, but we can only allow Him to become real because He must exist. How can one love human beings if one doesn’t see them as God’s creation, merely some chance form of life: successful zoological specimens, mammals with lousy digestions and back pains? How is one supposed to feel empathy for them? How is one supposed to love the world if it has not been willed into being by Him who is the very essence of Benevolent Will?”
I think about Ron again, it’s more important, I ought to talk about it. But something holds me back, it feels as if I’ve brushed against something greater and more malevolent than I can grasp right now; maybe it would be better to forget about it.
“And what does ‘believe’ mean anyway? The concept is logically hazy, Martin. When you’re sure of a proposition, then you know it. When you think that something might be so, but at the same time you know it maybe isn’t so, then you call that belief. It’s a speculation about probability. Belief means assuming that something is probable, although it might be otherwise. Lack of belief means assuming that something probably isn’t so, even when it absolutely could be so. Is the difference really that big? It’s all a matter of nuance. What’s important is that we do our work.”
We climb step by step. Our tread echoes through the stairwell.
“Did you mean it when you asked?”
“I was just curious.”
“And what do you believe?”
“I believe I should be in Rome too.”
“Yes, that’s an injustice. But you didn’t answer my question.”
We reach the second floor. The statue of a saint with virtuously steepled fingers fixes his eyes on us.
“What question?”
“The question of what you yourself believe.”