The Pastor

From the cycle “The Limbo Zone”, Story Five

On the night the Russians entered Breslau, Pastor Martin Schäfer saw the light.

It was neither a miracle nor a revelation. It was an ordinary lantern on a long handle, clanking, with a round window in a copper plate — held by an orderly. The lantern illuminated a cart standing before the hospital gates, and upon the cart lay a man.

The man lay on the boards, covered with gray sackcloth, as the dead lie. But Schäfer saw that the sheet was moving — slowly, steadily, as a sleeper breathes — and he understood that the man was alive. He approached because he was a pastor, and a pastor has no choice. Choice is a luxury for those who have not taken a vow.

The orderly did not interfere. The orderly was smoking. He had a list: the dead to the cemetery, the wounded to the hospital. This one lay between — in that interval which the orderly did not bother to remember, because intervals were not recorded in the lists.

Schäfer pulled back the sheet.

The face was pale, with a deep wound on the forehead bound with a dirty bandage. The mouth was half-open. The eyes were closed. Beside him lay a brown briefcase, clutched in his hand as one clutches the hand of a child when being taken to a foreign city.

“Who is this?” asked Schäfer.

The orderly shrugged.

“From the woods. They brought him a week ago. Shell-shock, a wound. At the hospital, they said it was dangerous for him there. They said — take him to the kirk. They said — let God decide.”

“God?” said Schäfer.

“Well, you,” said the orderly. “The pastor.”

He crushed his cigarette. The lantern swayed.

“You decide.”

And he left.

Schäfer stood and looked at the man without a name. A few weeks earlier, this man could have been the one checking documents at a checkpoint. Or the one riding in a Kübelwagen through the Warsaw Ghetto. Or the one whose hands — clean, thin, without calluses — slid over paper, compiling lists. Schäfer did not know. He saw only a face — pale, limp, a shell from which someone had removed the contents — and a briefcase, and a wound, and this transitional, looking-glass status: neither alive nor dead, neither here nor there.

He took him in.

Not because he believed in forgiveness. Not because he knew who he was. But because thirty years of sermons had taught him one thing: before God, categories do not exist. There is only the body. Which breathes. And which will stop breathing if left on the cart.

Later — at night, in the sacristy, as he dragged the body onto a cot — he noticed something.

The briefcase. The monogram KL. The leather was soft, expensive. A copper clasp. He did not open it. But as he lifted it, he felt a weight — not physical, but that special weight possessed by documents containing something that makes the blood run cold.

He placed the briefcase at the foot of the cabinet.

Three days later, when he found an envelope with documents in the pocket of the uniform — Hans Weber, Bremen, sales representative — he understood everything. Not the facts. Not the profession. Not the rank. He understood the category. He saw the hands: thin, pale, without calluses. The hands of a man who never did anything himself. The hands of a man who signed. Who compiled. Who watched.

He burned the uniform. Then he sat on a chair by the window and thought.

For three hours. The lantern on the wall ticked. The bell was silent.

He had nothing to think about — yet he thought, and the thought was a single question: why?

Not why he burned it. That was clear — the uniform, if found by the Russians, meant death. Not why he took him from the cart — that was also clear: the body breathes, which means God has not yet said the final word. No. The thought was about something else: why did he let him stay?

Left him alive. Left the briefcase. Left the man with the metallic runes to lie in the sacristy, three steps from the crucifix, to eat soup, to listen to the bell, to recover.

And he knew the answer. He knew it as one knows that rain will fall — by the smell of the air, by the pressure in the temples.

He left him because he believed.

He believed —not in God, no, he had always believed in God. He believed in something else: that a person can change. That the soul is not a mechanical thing, not a cog in a machine, but a living creature capable of pain, and pain is a cross, and the cross leads to repentance, and repentance leads to salvation.

He believed in mercy.

Thirty years of sermons. Three hundred funerals. Fifty baptisms. A thousand confessions. He had heard sins — small and enormous, drunken and serious, tragic and comic — and to each, he answered the same: “God forgives. But you must ask. And you must — change.”

And he believed that it worked. That mercy was not a weakness, but a tool. That if you give an executioner the chance to feel that he is not a monster, but a human, then the human in him will wake up and displace the monster. That the soul is like the earth: if you water it, it will grow.

He thought this way because he was a pastor. And because he did not see what he would have seen if he stood on the other side.

Fritz Lang recovered. He left. He took the briefcase.

And the pastor remained.

And continued.

…

November passed. Then December.

Breslau was healing — as fractures heal: crookedly, with a crunch, with growths that would later have to be broken again. The Russians restored electricity to half the city. Water supply to a third. The railroad — as far as Berlin. A newspaper — Volkswille, «The People’s Will,» with a portrait of Stalin on the front page. The portrait was old — from thirty-two — and in it, Stalin was younger than those who hung it — another impossibility to which the townspeople grew accustomed as quickly as one grows accustomed to the smell of gunpowder in the air: after three days, you stop noticing.

Schäfer worked. Fed refugees. Buried the dead. Read prayers. And accepted.

First one. Then two. Then a whole group.

They came at night. Quiet, short-haired, in civilian clothes, in coats that didn’t fit, with shaven bald spots that showed through their caps — as skulls show through skin. Schäfer did not ask for names. He did not look at documents. He saw only eyes—and in the eyes, he saw what he had known for forty years: fear.

Fear of death. Fear of judgment. Fear— not of God, no, God had long since stopped frightening these people—fear that there was nothing ahead. Emptiness. Darkness. Nothingness.

Schäfer received them in the sacristy. Fed them. Gave them dry clothes. Listened to short, sparse, truncated stories: how they left, how they fled, how they lost everything, how they ended up here, in this city that — to the east — was no longer their city, and — to the west — had not yet become anyone’s.

And each time, the same thing. Every story ended identically: “I want to live. I just want to live.”

And Schäfer believed. He believed as doctors believe in recovery—not because they are convinced, but because without faith, healing is impossible. He believed that each of these people — frightened, broken, driven into a corner — was capable of starting anew. That mercy has no statute of limitations. That God looks at the heart, not the personnel file.

In January, he received a call.

The call was strange — not from the city, but from somewhere far away, beyond borders, beyond the cold. The voice was low, calm, with an Italian accent. It spoke German as people speak who have learned the language from books — purely, without dialect, without errors, but with that special intonation that betrays a stranger:

“Pastor Schäfer?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Father Benedetto. The Vatican. I know of your work. We want to help.”

“Help?” repeated Schäfer.

“The people,” said the voice. “Those who want to start anew. We have paths. Documents. Routes. South America. Argentina. Paraguay. We will help those who have repented. Who want to live.”

A pause.

“We call them ‘ratlines’,” said the voice with a slight, almost shy chuckle. “Not the most noble term. But an accurate one. These are paths for those who must not be seen. Who leave so that no trace remains. You are a point on the route. An intermediate one. Breslau is the last German city in the red zone. We ask you to receive. Feed. Pass them on. The next point is Munich. Then — Rome.”

Schäfer was silent. The telephone wire crackled. Outside the window was a blizzard, such as he had not seen in thirty years: snowy, thick, erasing outlines, turning the city into a blank sheet on which nothing was written.

“Are you the Church?” asked Schäfer.

“We are Caritas,” the voice replied. “Christian love in action. Helping those who have gone astray. Is that not your calling?”

Schäfer thought. He thought of Hans Weber, who had left with Fritz Lang’s briefcase. Of the people he had received. Of the elderly man with faded eyes and trembling hands who had said once: “I did nothing. I only guarded. I stood at the gate. I checked documents. I did not shoot.”

“I did not shoot”—a phrase he heard every time. A phrase that became a synonym for innocence: I didn’t do it, I only stood there, I only watched, I only signed, I only followed orders.

And each time, Schäfer believed. Because he was a pastor. Because faith was his craft.

“Very well,” he said. “I will help.”

They began to flow.

Not all at once — first a drop, then a trickle, then a river. Individuals. Couples. Families with children — quiet, pale, with eyes that held nothing but hunger and silence. Men — young, middle-aged, old— in clothes that weren’t tailored, with documents issued by someone else, with faces that were foreign.

Schäfer received them. Fed them. Laid them on the cots in the sacristy — where Fritz Lang had lain for three weeks, under the same crucifix, with the same patience of the wood that watches. Gave them dry clothes. Listened to stories. Read prayers.

And sent them further.

Every week — one by one, two by two, sometimes five — through the Breslau station, on a train to Munich, from there to Rome, from there via Genoa, by sea, to Buenos Aires. The documents came by mail — envelopes without a return address, thin, with labels that were opened in one movement. Schäfer passed them on — accurately, precisely, without unnecessary questions. He was a link. An intermediate point. A station on the ratline.

And he saw.

Not at once — at first, he didn’t notice. Then he began to notice. Then — he could not help but see.

They did not repent.

That was the first thing. They came — not broken, but rebuilt. Not lost, but recalibrated. Their fear — real, deep, physical — was not fear of God. It was fear of men. Of the court. Of the cell. Of a line in a newspaper. They did not fear hell —they feared their destination.

And they were being saved. Not in the theological sense — in the bureaucratic one. They had documents, routes, tickets, contact persons. They had systems.

The very same system that had worked in thirty-three. The same logistics. The same hierarchy. The same faith that everything can be arranged if there are routes, documents, and people who know where to lead.

Schäfer saw this. He saw it — and turned away.

He turned away because he could not reconcile it. He could not reconcile the person — living, breathing, shaking from the cold — with what that person had been. He could not imagine that the hand taking a piece of bread was the same hand that had signed an order. He could not imagine that the voice saying “thank you” was the same voice that had shouted on the parade ground.

He could not — because he believed.

He believed in the human. He believed that a person is not a collection of deeds. He believed that the soul is greater than the body, and the heart greater than memory, and God — greater than everything.

And faith was his craft.

And the craft did not fail him.

…

In February, the commander came.

Schäfer recognized him immediately.

Not by his face — the face was common: smooth, elongated, gray from the cold and the road, the face of any fifty-five-year-old man who had lost everything except the inertia of survival. Not by his hands — the hands were ordinary, with calluses that hadn’t been there before, with scraped knuckles. Not by his voice — the voice was quiet, polite, the voice of a man accustomed to asking.

Schäfer recognized him by the scale of his silence.

An ordinary person’s silence is small. It fits into a pause, a yawn, a sigh. This man’s silence was enormous. It occupied the entire room. It hung like a scent, and in it was not emptiness, but density. A silence behind which stood so many screams that it became louder than any sound.

Schäfer knew who he was.

In thirty-seven and thirty-eight, this man’s name had appeared in the newspapers — not often, but every time the same: “Commandant of the new industrial processing camp.” No photographs, no details. Only a name — “Hansa-Werk” — and numbers that he did not remember, but which settled somewhere in the subconscious, as dust settles on a bookshelf: unnoticeably, but forever.

He entered the sacristy in the evening. Alone. Without companions. With a small suitcase — and with a girl.

The girl was about five. Maybe six. Dark-haired, with large eyes, with a doll-like face — the kind of face children have who have endured much but did not understand exactly what. She held her father’s hand — and held it as one holds a rope: firmly, with a death grip from which they do not let go.

“Pastor Schäfer,” said the commander. He hesitated. “My name is… Walter. Walter König.”

He was lying. Lying poorly — with that professional deficit found in people accustomed to not lying: they lie honestly, as they did everything else honestly.

“Come in,” said Schäfer. “Take off your things. Sit down.”

He put on the kettle. Brought out bread, sausage. Sliced it. Put it on a plate.

The girl sat on the chair, bent her legs, wrapped her arms around her knees. She watched. Without blinking. Eyes — large, dark, the eyes of a child who watches because she doesn’t understand, and not understanding is more frightening than understanding.

“Who is she?” asked Schäfer, pointing to the girl, who, taking advantage of the moment, took a piece of sausage and hid it under her hem.

The commander — Walter — looked at her. And in that gaze was something — not tenderness, no, but something more complex — astonishment, perhaps. The astonishment of a man who found an object in his pocket that he hadn’t put there.

“She is from the camp,” he said.

A pause.

“From your camp?” asked Schäfer.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Walter was silent for a long time. Then he said:

“Her mother…”

He fell silent. Then again:

“Her mother asked. Before…”

He did not finish. He sat down. Lowered his head. Hands on his knees, calloused, with scraped knuckles.

Schäfer stood by the stove and looked at the man who had taken a child from the camp. Not saved — no. The word “save” did not belong here. It was something else: he took her. As one takes an object. As one takes a trophy.

Or not.

Or he didn’t know. He couldn’t know. He didn’t understand why he had done it — perhaps he didn’t know himself. Perhaps it was the only gesture he could make in a world where all other gestures were exhausted. Perhaps the mother really had asked. Or perhaps, for the first time, he had chosen.

Or not.

Schäfer did not know.

The girl sat and remained silent. Drank tea. Ate bread. Did not ask where they were going. Did not cry. She sat quiet, as animals sit that are beaten and have learned not to make a sound.

At night — when Walter fell asleep on the cot and the girl on the chair, curled up in a ball with her legs tucked in — Schäfer went out into the yard.

Stars. Cold. Silence.

He stood and thought.

He thought of Hans Weber, who had left with the KL briefcase. Of Walter, who had taken a child from the camp. Of the system that continued to work — despite the capitulation, despite the bans, despite the red flags over the Reichstag. A system that — like rats in a basement — does not disappear, but flows. From one basement to another. From one city to another. From one life to another.

And he — the pastor — was a part of this system.

Not out of malice. Not out of greed. Not out of fear. But out of mercy.

Mercy. A word he had uttered for thirty years. A word that was his. His cross, his craft, his faith.

And now — his chain.

He returned to the sacristy. Sat on the chair. Sat. Looked at the sleepers.

Walter slept as people sleep who have lost everything: quietly, motionlessly, face to the wall. The girl slept as children sleep: face to the light, to the door, to the exit.

The crucifix on the wall looked at both.

And Schäfer — for the first time in thirty years — did not know what to say.

In the morning, he called the Vatican.

The same voice. Father Benedetto. Low, calm, with an Italian accent.

“Father Schäfer? Is there a new contingent?”

“Yes,” said Schäfer. “One man. And a girl.”

A pause.

“A girl?” repeated the voice. “That is unusual. We usually… only adults.”

“She is with him. He is the father. Or not. I don’t know. But she is with him.”

A long pause.

“Very well,” said the voice. “We will accept. But quickly. Tomorrow, a train to Munich. In Munich, a contact awaits. Then Rome. From Rome, by sea.”

“Where?” asked Schäfer.

“Into the silence,” said the voice. “A place where no one looks for them.”

Schäfer hung up the phone. Stood. Thought.

Silence. A place where no one looks for them.

This was not forgiveness. It was relocation. A transfer from one point in space to another. From one jurisdiction to another. From one reality—into another.

Or into the same one.

He returned to the sacristy. The girl was sitting on the chair. Eating the remnants of the sausage. Without bread. Looking at him.

“Are you the pastor?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And my father? What is he?”

“What…”

Schäfer looked at Walter. He was standing by the window, smoking—a thin, trembling cigarette, and the smoke rose up and dissolved, and his face was open, the way faces are when a person has forgotten to put on a mask. On this face was something — not repentance, no — bewilderment. The bewilderment of a man who does not understand how he ended up here.

“He is my parishioner,” said Schäfer.

The girl nodded. Returned to the sausage.

And Schäfer thought: a parishioner. A person who comes. Who is here. Who has not yet left. Who still can.

And faith — his faith — instantly plugged the hole in his consciousness, as one plugs a hole in a boat with a rag: quickly, clumsily, but effectively. For a while. For today. For now.

Tomorrow will be tomorrow.

Tomorrow, he will send them both away.

…

In March, Schäfer went to Rome.

He didn’t want to go. He didn’t plan to. He wasn’t going to. But Father Benedetto called and said: “You must come. We want to introduce you. To show you how it’s arranged. To show the routes.”

And Schäfer went.

The trip took four days: Breslau — Munich — Vienna — Rome. The train to Munich was Soviet, overcrowded, smelling of machine oil and onions. The train from Munich was Austrian, quiet, with white tablecloths in the dining car where they served coffee with milk and small cheese sandwiches. The train from Vienna was Italian, fast, scheduled to the minute, with conductors in white gloves.

Each car — its own reality. Each border — its own universe. Each transition — a step from one world to another.

Schäfer sat by the window and watched how the land changed: gray, destroyed, Breslau-like — into green, well-kept, Bavarian — into mountainous, snowy, Tyrolean — into flat, yellow, Roman. And he thought: a ratline. A trail along which run those who must not be seen. A trail that is hidden — not in the forest, not in the mountains, but in the schedule. In white tablecloths. In coffee with milk. In conductors in white gloves.

Normalcy itself as a mask. As skin. As documents.

In Rome, he was met by Monsignor Piazza.

Small, round, with the face of a cherub and the eyes of an accountant. Dressed impeccably: a black cassock, a white clerical collar, a thin silver chain with a cross on his chest. He met him warmly, as one meets a partner: with a smile, with a handshake, with a slight bow of the head.

“Father Schäfer. Thank you for coming. Please, follow me.”

He led him—not into the cathedral, not into the office, not into the papal chambers, but down. Down the stairs. Stone, narrow, with a handrail polished by thousands of hands. Down. Into the cellar.

The cellar smelled.

Of incense. Of old stone. And of formalin.

Schäfer slowed his pace. Monsignor Piazza — did not. He walked lightly, confidently, as people walk who know every stone. The corridor — long, low, with arched vaults, lit by lamps hanging on chains — led ever deeper, and the temperature dropped, and the air became thicker, denser, as air becomes in a cellar where no one has descended for many years.

“Here is the quarantine,” said Piazza, and in his voice was nothing but business. “People arrive — dirty, sick, hungry. We wash them. We treat them. We feed them. Then, documents. Photographs. New names.”

He opened the door.

Beyond the door was a hall. Large, stone, with columns, like catacombs. In the walls were niches. In the niches—people.

They sat, lay, stood. Men — from twenty to sixty. In someone else’s clothes: in civilian suits, in cassocks, in medical gowns. Faces shaven. Hair trimmed. Eyes empty.

Schäfer looked at them.

And he saw.

Not people. No— people were there. Bodies — living, breathing, warm. But over them — over the faces, over the skin, over the bodies — was something: like an overlay, like that same double exposure when two images are superimposed on each other, and neither can be switched off.

Under the candles — and candles stood everywhere, hundreds of candles, burning quietly, without smoke, with that special church light that makes faces warm and inhuman at the same time — the faces of these people changed. Noses lengthened. Eyes became small, glittering, black. Chins sharpened.

Schäfer blinked. Then looked again.

Faces. Noses. Chins. Eyes… The eyes not of humans, but of creatures that know they must not be seen, and therefore look through things — into the darkness, into crevices, into the sewers.

Muzzles.

Rat muzzles.

Schäfer stepped back. Stepped back. Bumped into the wall.

“What…” he began.

“It is normal,” said Piazza. He did not turn around. He spoke calmly, like a doctor. “Some see it that way. It is an effect of the light. Underground rooms. A candle. The formalin we use for disinfection. The eyes are deceived. It is physiology.”

“No,” said Schäfer.

“No?”

“It is not physiology.”

Piazza, for the first time, stopped. Turned. Looked at Schäfer. And in his gaze — the eyes of an accountant, the eyes of a cherub — was something new: engagement. Not sympathy. Not pity. Engagement — as one is engaged in a procedure: they know what they are doing and do it systematically.

“Are you a believer, Father Schäfer?”

“Yes.”

“Then understand. God has not abandoned this world. He simply locked the door — from the other side. And the keys He gave to those who know how to run through the sewers.”

He said this calmly, stating a fact. As one states the weather. As one states death.

“We prefer to call it not ‘salvation,’ but an ‘inventory of remains’,” Piazza noted gently. “The Lord is a great master, Schäfer, but even in His warehouse, there is sometimes a misallocation. We are simply helping Him write off the non-performing assets to other regions.”

“We are the keys,” Piazza continued. “We are those who open. Not to heaven. Not to hell. To the way. Just to the way. From one point to another. From one world — to another. From the past — to the future.”

He approached a niche. Sat down next to a man — middle-aged, with a sharp face, with glittering black eyes.

“This man,” said Piazza, “was an accountant. Ledgers. Figures. Columns. He did not shoot. He did not strike. He did not do. He calculated. And signed. And passed on. Now he will calculate in another place. In another country. In another life.”

He paused.

“It is not an escape. It is a retraining.”

Schäfer was silent. Stood. Breathed.

And he saw.

Saw rats — no, people — no, creatures — like an underground river, like a system, like a mechanism that works steadily, uninterruptedly, with that bureaucratic perfection that used to work differently: there — lists, convoys, furnaces, smoke; here — documents, routes, cars, the sea, silence.

The very same system. With different exits. And with different results.

And Schäfer understood.

Understood what he had been doing all these past months. What he had done. A pastor. With clean hands. With a clean conscience. With faith.

He had fed the rats. He had treated the rats. He had sent the rats—along the ratlines — into the rat holes.

And he had believed.

Believed that mercy was a tool.

But mercy was the lubricant. The lubricant for the gears.

Of that very machine he thought he had stopped.

…

He returned to Breslau.

For three weeks he was silent. Did not receive anyone. Did not call. Sat in the sacristy. Read the Bible. Prayed.

Prayed quietly. Not loudly, as before, standing at the altar, facing the parishioners. Quietly — alone, on his knees, before the crucifix, with his eyes closed, with his hands pressed to his chest.

And he heard no answer.

Silence. Deep, stone, underground silence — such as in a cellar where it smells of incense and formalin.

April.

The parishioners stopped coming. Not at once — gradually. First, the woman who brought flowers every Sunday — snowdrops, then daffodils — stopped coming, then — nothing. Then, the old man who sat in the back row and was silent — so silently that the silence became a sermon — stopped coming. Then everyone disappeared.

They didn’t leave. They didn’t run away. They disappeared — as objects disappear that have ceased to be useful: soundlessly, naturally, unnoticeably — for everyone except the one who had placed them.

Schäfer stood at the altar.

The kirk was empty. The pews were empty…

The organ was silent. The candles did not burn. The crucifix hung there. Patiently. Eternally. As objects hang that know everyone will leave.

He looked at Christ.

Christ looked at him.

And said nothing.

Schäfer opened his mouth to pray. The words came. But they were not his. They were from manifestos. From stamps. From whispers in corridors. The words he had heard for two, three, four months — every week, every time he opened the door of the sacristy and let in another person without a name.

“I want to live.”

“I did nothing.”

“I only followed orders.”

“I repent.”

And “I repent” sounded the same as “I followed.” In the same tone. With the same intonation. Like a formula. Like a form. Like a key.

He closed his mouth.

Stood there.

The crucifix hung.

Outside the window were the children. The same ones. Five or six—in clothes that didn’t fit, in someone else’s boots, in someone else’s coats—standing in a circle and shouting:

“Wake up, Awaken, And look around. You are me, I am you…”

Schäfer listened. Listened as one listens to a diagnosis—not interrupting, not objecting, because one cannot object to a diagnosis.

And he remembered — suddenly, vividly, as a match flares in the dark — Piazza’s phrase. The phrase that for three months had lived in him like a splinter: unnoticeably, but constantly.

“God has not abandoned this world, Martin. He simply locked the door—from the other side. And the keys He gave to those who know how to run through the sewers.”

And he finally realized.

The ratlines did not lead to South America. Did not lead to Argentina. Did not lead to Paraguay. They led in a circle. To nowhere. Into that space where time stands still, where names are erased, where the crime has not been committed, but the memory — physiological, uncancelable — grows through the masonry, like roots through a foundation.

Mercy, torn from truth, becomes a lubricant. It does not stop the gears. It makes them turn more quietly. More smoothly. Without a squeak.

He was not a shepherd. He was a path. He was that very place between. Between a name and namelessness. Between forgiveness and complicity. Between November and April. Between those he saved and those he — in this world — did not save.

He sank to his knees. Not to pray. To listen.

The bell of Saint Anne struck three times. Three in the afternoon. The strike hung in the air and slowly melted. The same bell that had rung when he took Fritz Lang from the cart. The same sound. The same note. The same God.

Or not?

Or God was tired. Tired of watching. Tired of waiting. Tired — of listening to prayers that had long since ceased to be prayers and had become — transit passes. Keys. Documents. Routes.

Schäfer opened his eyes.

The crucifix still hung. But now it did not look at him. It just hung there. An object among objects. Wood among wood.

It hung tiredly.

And outside the window, the children sang. And the singing was the same — the one that sounded in Fritz Lang’s delirium, the one that sounded in the parish of Saint Anne, the one that sounded everywhere, always, in every city, in every basement, in every camp, in every house, in every kirk, in every person who forgot, or didn’t know, or knew but remained silent:

“Here is the devil before me, In his eyes my own pain, Born of darkness, Born of me…”

Schäfer listened.

And then — quietly, in a whisper, covering his face with his hands, on his knees, before the silent crucifix, before the beautiful April world in which nothing had happened — he said:

“Lord.”

And fell silent.

← The Limbo Zone. Prologue