SOMETHING LANDED ON Josef’s chest, and he reached down to brush it off. A moment later, something bigger seemed to land there, and he grunted, still half-asleep, and brushed this one away, too. It came back again, though, heavier this time and thumping his chest as it landed. Now Josef jerked his head up off its wooden pillow and moved to squash the creature once and for all.
But when he opened his eyes he found he’d grabbed not a bug, but the wrist of a man. The man was young and dark and wore a knee-length skirt and colorful patchwork shirt. He stood half a step back from the boat and, bending forward, he clasped Josef’s wrist in reciprocation, shaking it up and down and smiling as if Josef had just been initiated into an exclusive club.
It was Josef’s first encounter with an Indian, and before he had time to think anything else, all the monstrous tales about violent, savage cannibals leapt into his thoughts, and he pushed himself up in the boat, knocking his head against a mangrove branch. As if to confirm Josef’s fears, the Indian wiped the smile off his own face and drew a knife from his belt. He held the knife to Josef’s face, twisting it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. He still held Josef’s wrist with his other hand.
“What do you want?” said Josef, pulling the mail sack tightly to his side.
The Indian smiled again, seeing Josef was properly scared. He was a little taller than Josef and had pudgy cheeks and black hair parted in the middle. He let go of Josef’s wrist and, still standing back from the boat and careful not to touch the sides of it, he reached across with his knife hand and poked the sole of Josef’s right foot, which was still propped up on the boat bench.
Josef felt nothing but fear, since his foot was asleep. He tried to pull it in, at least get it off the bench, but to no avail.
The Indian prodded Josef’s toes again and then let out a laugh, pointing at Josef with his knife, throwing his head back and showing his big yellow teeth.
Finally, Josef’s leg began to make itself known, and he grabbed it in pain and pushed it to the floor of the boat. This sudden gesture startled the Indian, and he reached into the boat, still careful not to touch the edge, and yanked Josef out of it with surprising strength. For the first time, Josef realized he was onshore beside the inlet. He could not remember exactly how he’d gotten across it.
The Indian motioned with his knife and turned him toward a path through the mangrove swamp. Josef felt a little shove in that direction, but as he started forward, he noticed for the first time something odd on the Indian’s feet. He’d always thought of Indian men in loincloths and bare feet. But here was a man in a skirt whose feet fit snugly into a pair of black leather boots up to mid-calf. And there were rows and designs of pebbles and shells pasted all over them.
Josef didn’t have much time to think about this, though. With a hand on his shoulder, the Indian guided him down a twisting, low-ceilinged path. His legs and feet were stiff and aching, but he was glad to be in the shade.
They trudged through shallow swamp water and soon arrived at a small village on high ground surrounded on all sides by swamp. The path led directly between two rows of thatched huts, most without walls and held up by a single pole in the center. There were cooking fires burning and smoke rising up out of the mangroves.
Josef’s captor called to some of the other Indians in a language Josef couldn’t comprehend, and several young men came running to the path. They, too, wore leather boots, and when they approached Josef, they looked down at his bare feet and laughed. He couldn’t help feeling self-conscious. Why were his feet so funny to them? He tightened his grip on the postal sack; it felt now like a security blanket, a token of civilization among these savages.
People began to shout all over the camp, announcing the presence of the stranger. As they dashed out toward him from under their huts, Josef noticed their boots. It seemed that all of the men above puberty had fine-looking leather boots on their feet, some black, others brown, and all decorated with shells and stones, or else feathers. It was obvious that some did not fit their owners properly, that they’d not yet grown into them or had grown too big for them, so that many of them seemed to stumble over them as they walked, or else take small, gingerly steps with stalwart grimaces on their faces. The children were all barefoot, but some of the women wore boots, too, though not as elaborately decorated as the men’s. Even those barefoot members of the tribe could not contain their laughter at Josef’s feet, and Josef suddenly felt he’d exposed something private and shameful.
He was led into one of the walled huts and up to an elderly man sitting on a small stool and clothed in a bright, knee-length dress, silver jewelry, small animal skins dangling from his headwear and belt, and the most elaborately decorated boots of the tribe. Josef understood this to be the chief. His boots were so completely covered with shells and stones they looked rock stiff and impossible to walk in. Perhaps this explained why the chief did not leave his stool to greet Josef.
Other elders poured into the room, having gotten wind of Josef’s presence. They stood behind the chief, and Josef was separated from the group by a large bucket of water in the center of the room. Behind him were curious commoners, as many as could squeeze themselves into the room without crossing the invisible line that divided them from the elders. Those who could not get in the room stuck their heads through the doors and windows and jostled for a glimpse of the stranger.
The chief gave a sign and everyone but Josef immediately sat down on the dirt floor, the elders on woven rugs. Some words were spoken and several young women emerged from the crowd carrying palm fronds. They sat between Josef and the bucket of Water and waved the fronds over the top of it, circulating cooler air inside the hut. Josef was startled at the simplicity and ingenuity of this air-cooling device, and wondered, strange as it might seem, if these Indians were also working toward rebuilding Paradise. They seemed to have long ago recognized the problem Josef had made note of only yesterday, and they’d already developed this simple technique for solving it. Josef wondered how this could be implemented on a grander scale. Perhaps he’d found a place for these people in the New Paradise. A thousand of them at once could be sent just offshore loaded up with big palm fronds that they’d fan vigorously over the ocean, thereby creating a cool ocean breeze for those on land. A masterful plan. Not only would the air be permanently cooled, but all those floating rafts would serve as a barrier reef to break up the bigger Atlantic waves. Between the shore and the fan-rafts there’d be nothing but glassy green lagoon.
The chief eyed Josef carefully. Then he signaled for a young brave to sit between him and Josef on the equatorial line marked by the bucket.
“Español?” asked the brave.
Josef shook his head.
After speaking with the chief, another young brave was brought in to replace the first.
“English?” he asked.
Josef shook his head proudly. “American,” he said.
A third interpreter was brought forth out of the crowd.
“Yank,” he said.
Josef nodded.
The chief looked at Josef and spoke in a musical, vowel-laden tongue.
The interpreter listened, then turned to Josef.
“Why do you disgrace your people?” he said, speaking in an accent no worse than Josef’s. “Have they cast you out?”
“I don’t understand,” said Josef.
“Your feet. They are as bare as a child’s or an unmarried woman’s. It is shameful to look at.”
The chief turned his head away, refusing to look at Josef for a moment. Then a woman behind him brought forth a blanket and covered Josef’s feet.
Now the chief spoke again, and the interpreter did his work.
“Your swollen face and your bare feet show us that your people have scorned you. Yet whatever crime you have committed, they have not felt you worthy of a proper execution. And so neither do we. You are doomed to shame yourself as you walk the land, for we will not provide you even with sandals. Leave our sight.”
Josef was pulled back by the armpits.
“Wait!” said the interpreter, at the chief’s command. “Leave your sack. You must pay us something for bringing your disgrace to our village.”
Josef grasped the strap of the mail sack with both hands. “I cannot,” he said.
Some strong braves behind him yanked it out of his hands and threw it across the bucket to the chief. He inspected it carefully. When he turned it over, he saw the postal insignia and dropped the sack in front of him, gasping.
The elders crowded around, leaning over the chief and looking down at the sack. There were assenting small gasps, echoing the chief’s.
Even the interpreter looked over at the bag and swallowed deeply. “You are government,” he said. “Why do you keep this a secret?”
“It is no secret,” said Josef. “I am a United States Postal Carrier.”
The chief spoke. “Take your sack,” said the interpreter. “We may not touch it. We have been told by the white man. His gods forbid us to touch anything where the Great Eagle has left its mark.”
Dozens of eyes watched as Josef stepped over and picked up his mail sack, then returned to his spot. The chief looked at Josef with fear and utter amazement. He conferred with the other elders for a moment, and a heated conversation broke out among them.
Finally, the chief addressed Josef again.
“Tell us for true,” said the interpreter. “Are you a real white man?”
“I am,” said Josef.
“We have heard that Indians who touch the mark of the Great Eagle may turn white forever. We suspect you are one of the braves lost in the great storm of last year. We suspect you saved yourself by clinging to the boat of the Great Eagle, but now you are doomed to be a white man.”
Josef remembered the young brave’s reluctance to touch any part of the Postal Service boat. “No,” he said. “I am a white man from Brooklyn. I don’t know your people or customs.”
“Then how do you explain your uncovered feet?” At this, a woman reached over and covered Josef’s feet again, for the blanket had fallen away.
“We think the white man discovered your true nature and sent you away from their village without shoes. We know that the white man thinks our people walk without shoes, because we used to wear buckskin sandals, which the white man does not recognize as shoes. Perhaps this is why the white man thinks badly of us and wants to make war with us. But those days are over. We can no longer make war with the white man. We can only try to keep what’s left of our lands and our home. Many of our tribe have agreed to leave this land and live in the lands to the distant west, but our small group and perhaps some others have decided to remain, even if it means adapting to some of the white man’s ways. Not long after we cast ourselves out from the rest of the tribe, we came upon the wreckage of one of the white man’s boats. There were many crates cast up on the beach, and when we opened them we found the leather boots you see us wear today. We took this gift as a sign from our own gods that we were now to start wearing boots so the white man will respect us and our lands. Of course, we could not resist enriching their design with our own style. But you wear nothing. So you must have disgraced yourself among the white men.”
“No,” said Josef. “It’s because of one white man only that I do not wear shoes.” And suddenly inspired, he lost all his nervousness and told them the whole story of his childhood in Austria, of his coming to America, of his aunt and uncle and even his wife and their failed efforts to grow citrus in Figulus, and finally of his uncle’s death and the missing pair of loafers. “And so,” he concluded, “it is in honor of my deceased Uncle Mordy, who raised me as a son, that I have made this personal decision to walk my mail route barefoot.”
Josef waited while the interpreter paraphrased the entire tale for the chief. When it was over, the Indians broke out in great laughter.
It took a few minutes for the chief to regain his composure and address Josef again.
“We do not know if you are a red man or a white man, but we know now that you are a fool.”
Josef’s face turned a shade darker than any Indian’s. There was a brief silence and they all seemed to study him as a curiosity.
“You are all mixed up. You seek to do your fathers an honor. This is the way of our people; this is good. And yet you shame yourself in doing so, exposing your feet to laughter and the anger of the sun, who surely finds your gesture offensive. This is the way of white men, the way of fools. We think you do not know who you are.”
Josef had nothing to say in his defense. The elders conferred again.
The interpreter summed up the results of the conference. “By handing the chief the sack of the Great Eagle, you have exposed our tribe to dangers. The chief fears he might turn white. Or that the entire tribe will turn white. We must know your true nature so we can perform some precautionary rituals. The Great Eagle may have affected your head so that you no longer remember whether you are white or red. Yet you tell long stories about your white past. We question the truth of these stories. It may be that you know you were once one of us, and you are angered that you cannot return to the tribe of your blood, so you take out your anger on all red men—you seek to change us all into white. Our prophets have told us that one day the Great Eagle may swoop down from the skies, and as the tips of his wings touch us, one by one, we will all turn white, and our tribe and all of our history—our honor and our bravery, even our gods—will be forgotten forever. If you are the Great Eagle, we want you to have pity on us and tell us right now, so that we may kiss our wives and hold our children one last time before our memories are wiped clean.”
A flash of guilt illumined Josef’s mind to the injustice of his previous thoughts. If the Indians were to wave their fronds and cool the inhabitants of Paradise, who would cool the Indians? He hadn’t thought of their well-being; he hadn’t thought of them as full-fledged humans. But now he understood something of their plight and wondered whether certain animals could be trained to float behind the Indians and wave palm fronds to cool them as they cooled the white men on shore. Mules came to mind. Dogs, perhaps. But they would have to be bred big to hold the branches in their jaws all day. He didn’t have time to think it through now.
“I swear that I’m no Great Eagle,” he said. “I mean you no harm. I wish only to make prompt delivery of this sack and fulfill my duty to my government and my people.”
Another short conference took place among the elders.
“Your words have the sound of truth, man of unknown color. Still, we must be certain because the consequences of a deception could mean the end of our tribe. We must detain you here and observe you to see what blood runs in your veins.”
Everyone stood again, and Josef was led through the throng of curious Indians, which split to give him a wide berth. Though all but the very youngest of them had seen white people before, they were strangely fascinated by Josef. His face was still frighteningly swollen from his debacle in the postmaster’s restaurant. And his hair was darker than most other white men’s hair, his skin not quite so pale; to many people in the tribe, here was visual evidence that he’d once been one of them.
They spoke amongst themselves, bringing up names of men who’d disappeared from their tribe, but whose bodies had never been recovered. They examined Josef’s face, trying to decide which of their tribe lay under that puffy mask. Some thought it was Yaha-Chatee, the man who was lost in the great storm. Others thought it was Tustenuggee, the man who had disappeared in the river, whom they thought had been eaten by alligators. Still another faction agreed it was Emathla, the young scout who couldn’t wait until he’d grown up to explore the swamp, who one day twenty years ago had toddled out of his mother’s hut and into the wilderness forever. Or so they’d thought.
As Josef passed through the crowd, they shouted these names at him—“Yaha!” “Tuste!” and “Emathla!”—each faction hoping they could prove their theory by Josef’s reaction. Several members of the Emathla group felt that Josef had turned his head slightly at the sound of that name, but the other factions only laughed and said that the Emathla people had their eyes pointed at the backs of their heads and could only see the little pictures their brains made for them. They all laughed at each other, but they no longer laughed at Josef, because now that they looked at him closely, his blackened eyes and his swollen nose indeed gave him the appearance of an eagle, and his disgraceful bare feet suddenly took on mystical and cataclysmic qualities.
He was taken to a walled, unoccupied hut. As the crowd lingered outside, he was given a mat and told to sit down. They watched his motions carefully, especially the way he sat on the mat. A great bucket of cool water, like the one in the chief’s hut, was brought in and placed in the middle of the floor. Soon after, a trio of women appeared. Two of them carried bowls of food—some soup, meat, and fruit—while the third presented him with a steaming black drink, darker than coffee.
He was left alone, then, though he could see the skirts of two braves stationed outside his door, and passersby could not help but pause for a glimpse of the white Indian until the braves waved them off.
He was still too nervous to eat, but his lips and throat ached from the salty air. He sniffed the pungent black drink, which smelled of ginseng and a dozen other bitter herbs and roots he could not identify. He tried to sip it and his entire mouth seemed to tighten and collapse of its own accord. A shiver ran down his spine, and the small amount of liquid that squeezed itself down his throat felt like it was building a railroad as it went. He took a few bites of grapefruit just to wash it down.
Then he took a good look around him for the first time and spotted the reason he’d been given this hut. There was a small hole in the thatched wall, and someone had his eye to it, observing him, studying him. The eye saw him looking and moved away from the peephole. Josef turned his back to it. So that’s it, he thought, I’m to be studied like a caged animal. My behavior is to be noted and weighed as evidence in some kind of experiment.
Josef pondered his dilemma. If their changeling theory was proved correct, then he might be forced to remain with the tribe and “rehabilitated.” He couldn’t let that happen; he had a duty to the U.S. Postal Service and the nation at large to get his mail sack delivered, not to mention a duty to himself and his uncle to carry out his big plans as a pioneer. If he were somehow able to disprove their theory, he’d risk being seen as their destroyer and, though they’d probably think it would do no good in the long run, they’d want to kill him on the spot, on the slim chance that the Great Eagle was mortal or at least able to be wounded. Yet he could not think of a way to prove he was white.
He clutched the canvas mail sack in his hands, praying for guidance.
Soon some of the elders entered his hut and sat opposite him. There was no interpreter; they’d just come to observe. They studied the remains of the grapefruit he’d taken some bites of, inspecting the way he’d peeled off the skin, and the size and depths of his bites. One man held the meat in front of Josef’s nose, and Josef turned away, recognizing the smell of alligator meat that brought back painful memories from the postmaster’s restaurant.
The elders exchanged looks, each of them thinking, Yes, this is white man’s behavior, but neither did Yaha-Chatee favor the taste of alligator meat. Still, they could certainly rule out Tustenuggee, since he’d have eaten his own mother, had she been a gator. Of course, Tuste had been a tremendous jokester; if this white man was truly Tustenuggee he’d be lying for the simple pleasure of lying. Clearly, more tests were needed.
The elders left to consult with the chief, and they left Josef alone for the rest of the day, which Josef occupied with thoughts of his dear Lena. He slept little that night, for whenever he opened his eyes, there was that peephole, and though he could not definitely make out a staring eye, the hole seemed far too dark for a moonlit night.
WHEN THE ELDERS returned in the morning, they brought with them two braves who carried bows and arrows. Josef was led out of his hut, and the group traveled down a damp path out of the village and through the swamp to a cleared plot of high ground. Josef’s legs trembled as he walked; he thought he was being taken to his death. And what a terrible way to die! he thought. His body would be thrown into the swamp by these red men, and he’d never be heard from again. The mail would go undelivered and his wife and aunt back in Brooklyn would never get word of him. His great plans would go unrealized, the small progress he’d made thus far would be forgotten. He’d not even warrant a footnote in the great struggle to rebuild Paradise.
When they came to a stop on the island, the elders spoke and the two braves loaded their bows. Josef’s heart raced and his hands shook. He tasted the black drink returning to his throat. He closed his eyes, waiting for the end. But nothing happened. When he opened them again, he saw an opossum emerge from beside a mangrove some sixty feet away. The braves took careful aim, and an instant later the opossum was on its side, two arrows side by side in its neck.
The braves congratulated each other with a clasp. Josef wondered if this was to be his last supper—a filthy opossum eaten in the company of Indians.
Instead, one of the braves handed him his bow and an arrow, and the other brave tried to demonstrate how to use them. The elders observed gravely.
Somehow, Josef got the arrow loaded properly on the bow. His hands shook wildly. He knew his performance could mean the difference between life and death. Yet he didn’t know whether he preferred life as a captive to these Indians or an inglorious death at their hands. He didn’t have time to think about it, for now another opossum showed its pink nose. Josef couldn’t help but think this animal, too, had the heart of Satan, and he prayed that the opossum, along with the boar, would be excluded from Paradise, just as they’d done all in their power to exclude him from his role in its construction.
Josef pulled the bow back as far as he could, which wasn’t even half as far as the braves had done. The bow shuddered in his hands. He closed his eyes, and a moment later something hit him in the back of the head. He thought he’d felt his last earthly sensation.
But again, he opened his eyes and knew he was alive. He lay on the spongy earth, the bow resting on his chest, looking straight up into a tree, where the arrow he’d fired hung loosely from a branch.
The braves couldn’t keep from laughing as they helped him to his feet. The elders thought, Very convincing white man’s behavior, even for Yaha-Chatee. But it could be Emathla, since he disappeared while he was still too young to know the Way of the Arrow. Tustenuggee was a superior marksman, but this raises a new question: is it a man’s blood or his skin that determines his excellence in arrow shooting? Perhaps Tustenuggee lost his ability to shoot when his skin paled. If so, then is there a proportional relationship between arrowshooting ability and skin color, or is there a critical shading of skin below which a man cannot possibly achieve arrowshooting excellence?
The elders were intrigued. They agreed that once this man’s blood had been determined, they would call together all the best arrow shooters of the tribe and take measurements of their skin color to see if the two were positively correlated. Perhaps someday, thought one, we can match up men and women of the darkest skin color, thus producing a breed of the greatest warriors the tribe has ever known. Perhaps then the white men will run scared, and all of the tribe’s enemies will be defeated with great ease. As they walked back to the village, the elders pondered the exciting possibilities.
The elders remained in Josef’s tent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, studying him closely, speaking few words among themselves, and no words at all to Josef. With the men watching, Josef ate very little of his supper, some sort of thick gray stew with chunks of fish. Whenever he took a bite, the men would point at him and make comments, “a-ha” noises, and even quiet laughter. Josef had never felt more self-conscious in his life. Before the bowl was taken out of the hut, the elders huddled around it to inspect exactly how much he’d eaten and which of the vegetables and fish he’d eaten the most of. Worst of all, when they let him out of the hut to relieve himself, Josef thought he spotted someone watching him in the woods; and when he’d finished and headed back to the hut, he was certain there was someone poking around where he’d been, taking samples for later analysis.
The elders left his hut when it began to grow dark, but they weren’t finished with their experiments, for shortly after, a young squaw entered alone. Her dark skin and deep black eyes and hair reminded Josef of the tales he’d heard about native women in the South Pacific who drove dedicated seamen to heinous mutinies and greedy traders to abandon their business.
At first, the girl merely sat across from him and waved a palm frond over the water bucket to cool him. Josef thought the idea was for him to get some rest in preparation for another day of experimentation and close observation. The breeze she made with the palm frond was cool and refreshing, like the first breath of autumn that settled the dust and the tempers in the Brooklyn marketplace. His weariness at last overcoming his fears, he lowered himself to his side and closed his eyes.
He dozed off, and soon began to dream of a reunion with Lena. Back in Brooklyn, her cares would be few. There’d be nothing to trouble her mind and make her curl up in a distressed little ball at night, unresponsive to Josef’s affections. She’d open her arms to him unbegrudgingly, forgiving in a single gesture all that had come between them, all of his foolish plans and his pathetic failures and the dangers and discomforts to which he’d subjected her. Then at last their marriage would be consummated and all that had happened between the day of their wedding and the day of their consummation would be erased from their lives, as though it had never happened, as though he’d sent a letter to himself on his wedding day and, though the letter had traveled for months, down to Florida and back again, in the end there was nothing to mark the distance it had traveled or all the hands it had passed through but a simple postmark, and the time that had elapsed between would be collapsed into sheer, beautiful nothingness.
It all seemed so real and possible to Josef that he thought he felt his wife’s hands caressing his chest as he slept. She was nudging him, desiring his attentions, but still too bashful to tell him outright, he thought. He need not say anything, just reach for her hand, hold it in his, open his eyes and smile at the woman he loved. Or perhaps it was better not to look at her yet; he didn’t wish to embarrass her. Soon enough, she’d grow bold, and he’d find her astride his stomach, her beautiful naked body gleaming with twilight.
Yes, things would be well then, he could open his eyes and look deeply into hers. She’d slide his nightshirt off and massage oils onto his chest in slow, gentle circles, her small firm breasts only inches from his nose, and he’d reach up and hold them lovingly, smiling at this sexually playful, almost aggressive side to her he could never have imagined in the early days of their marriage. And yes, he could look at her then and see the love in her eyes. Just when he thought he could no longer bear the intensity of his desire he’d find himself shrouded in the deepest miracle of feeling that nature had to offer. And he’d let his body break into what felt like a million separate fragments of disconnected sensation, for each part of him to experience that feeling individually. They’d fall together again on their own, into a wholeness that seemed to make him more alive than the sum of all his parts. Like a breathing motion, the experience would repeat itself perfectly, and it dawned on him then that this was the gentle breath of Paradise, repeating itself since In the Beginning, like an echo that does not fade, waiting to be acknowledged by someone, and here he was like the Chosen One, accepting this gift and the knowledge of its supreme importance, the breath that would give life to his God-given Vision of Paradise. And all he had to do was open his eyes and bathe himself in the light of God, the light that was the eyes and the future of all mankind.
The breathing grew stronger then, until the world itself seemed nothing but breathing, each breath quicker and stronger than the last, and each time more and more of himself flying forth and investing itself into the individual fragments that seemed to conjoin with God, and taking longer and longer to pull himself back into a whole, each time losing just a little bit of the mortar that held him together, until he thought, If I let go this time, I’ll no longer be Josef Steinmetz, but a thousand particles of perfect and joyful beatitude scattered into the infinite breath of God. At that very moment, every sensation Josef had ever felt gathered into one and released itself in an explosive sensation the likes of which he’d never imagined possible, and in the vacuum created by that explosion, the fragments of himself were pulled all at once back into the center, in great disarray at first, but then gently and painlessly returning to their natural geometry.
Only then did he open his eyes and see the face of the squaw.
She wore no expression whatsoever and pushed herself off him, and when he looked up at her, he was reminded of that moment earlier in the day when he thought he’d died, only to open his eyes to the misfired arrow dangling from the branch above him, making a cruel joke of his fear and sadness.
The squaw dressed and left, but Josef could not watch her go. He could not turn his head; he hadn’t the will. I was asleep, he thought, and cruelly taken advantage of for the sake of these pagan superstitions. But there was this nagging feeling that he hadn’t been fully asleep, that maybe he’d known what was going on, and had let his baser desires get the best of him. He knew right then he’d never be able to fully convince himself of his innocence, and that if he ever tried to tell Lena, he’d falter terribly and make himself out to be even more of a monster than he considered himself at this very moment.
When he finally sat up, he looked across the room in the last light of day and saw the little peephole and the eye of an elder peering through it. And then he saw two more holes and two more unblinking eyes, and he wondered if he’d heard them making those holes and had paid no attention, or worse, that the three eyes had only fueled the fire of his perversion and the lie he told himself with his eyes closed and his mind pretending to be with God.
Hollow and ashamed, Josef felt like crying, though he held it back with all his strength; those eyes at the peepholes had seen enough.
He held his head in his hands for what seemed like hours, until his morbid and self-pitying thoughts were interrupted by the sound of gunshots.