They hadn’t let him go. He ought to have known, it was like that other time, back then. He’d spent his whole life trying to be God-fearing and respectable. Just like before, they’d taken him away and wouldn’t let him go again.
That boy, he’d always been getting underfoot, he was always in the way. And as for her, she’d spoilt him. It hadn’t been right of her. Hadn’t been right.
He paced up and down the cell, he couldn’t sit down. He couldn’t think straight, either.
Take up thy cross daily and follow me. The only difference was why. When it happened before, it had been his faith. He wouldn’t abjure it. He had stood firmly by his God.
‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death … though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …’
How did it go on? He couldn’t remember.
There was so much he couldn’t remember any more. It annoyed him, why was he suddenly so confused these days? He was beginning to mislay things, or find himself somewhere without knowing what he wanted to do there, or even where he was. Then he sat down and waited until it came back into his mind. Maybe they were right, and it had been him, but he wasn’t crazy. He stood up and went on walking around the cell.
*
They’d kept him for eight weeks that other time, and in the end they’d let him go. He hadn’t abjured, he had held fast to his faith. Ever since the day when he made his vow he had stood firmly by it. He could remember that, he wasn’t forgetful, and didn’t that prove it? It was all there, every detail, clear and distinct as if it had been only yesterday. He’d joined the Third Order even before the First World War. He’d been a young fellow at the time, and he had sworn to himself to lead a God-fearing life. Ever since then, he had worn the cord around his body as a sign of his membership of the Order. In the last year of the war he had married Theres. Her brothers had all fallen fighting, and her father and mother were long dead. She had no one now, and it was time he looked for a wife. Love comes with marriage. From then on they went through life together. She was no beauty, small, always too thin, but she was devout and modest. She’d already had four children before Afra was born, none of them survived more than two days, one was born dead before its time, another died while she was in labour. He began to doubt whether it had been right for them to marry, because they were blood relations, although at some distance. When they neither of them still expected God to give them a child, Afra came into the world. And then, from the first day on, it seemed as if the Lord wanted to test their faith by giving them a child like Afra. Afra had ideas of her own, she told lies, she went on lying even when he caught her at it. She brought him nothing but trouble. Was flirting with the boys from the neighbourhood at an early age. He beat her to make her stay on the straight and narrow path. She didn’t care, shook herself like a wet dog, and he suspected Theres of comforting her behind his back. As soon as Afra had finished school she went away. She very seldom came home, and if she did, it wasn’t for long. But she couldn’t have stayed in the house anyway. They had nothing, only just enough to live on. He worked on the railway, Theres sat at her sewing machine until late at night making edgings and braid for the farmers’ wives’ Sunday-best clothes. Although he thought poorly of their addiction to finery, customers came from all over the place, and they could do with every pfennig.
*
He walked and walked, he didn’t want to stop. He couldn’t remember the rest of the psalm, which made him furious. Why did it go out of his mind just now? He had always followed the path of righteousness. Always followed the straight and narrow path, all his life. He had prayed and worked, tried to be a good man and bring up his daughter in the fear of the Lord. He always knew his place, only once had he refused to obey authority, and he’d paid for that. Just after that brown-shirted gang came to power. He’d felt abandoned at the time, even the priest in the pulpit parroted what those folk said. But he went on reading the Bible every evening with his wife and child, so he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, he stood up before everyone and openly contradicted the priest, in front of the whole congregation. He had said that no upright Christian could be glad of what was happening, they’d all be led into misfortune, the priest and the bishop couldn’t allow it.
They came the very next day and took him away. He could remember Afra, still a small child at the time, standing beside her mother in the doorway. He could even say what clothes they were both wearing then. Yes, he remembered Theres stroking Afra’s head as the two of them stood there, watching him being taken away in the car.
They had taken him away and questioned him.
After eight weeks they’d let him go again. He survived the beatings, the mockery, the hunger and all the rest of the harassment, because the Lord God was with him. Before they let him go, he had to sign something saying he wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone about what he had seen, what he now knew, or they would come for him again, and this time they’d never let him go. And he hadn’t said a word about it to a living soul. Not even his wife. He forbade himself even to think of it, he rooted it out of his memory, for fear they might come back for him again. He kept his mouth shut, he learned never to protest, never to rebel again.
*
‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …’
He couldn’t remember. However hard he tried, the memory was gone. As if he had a big, black hole in his head, and if he didn’t watch out, even for a moment, it would swallow up all his thoughts and memories. He went on walking up and down, bracing his mind against oblivion.