Killing Auntie. Andrzej Bursa

why, my son? Why?”

      “I sought peace in crime.”

      “You can find peace only in prayer.”

      “I’m too young to waste my days on prayers.”

      “But, son …” the priest was irritated. “There are so many other sins …” He stopped abruptly. After a while he started again: “Are you feeling weak and abandoned?”

      “Oh, I am, Father.”

      “Then repent your sin and cry with me. Difficult years of prison, provided you spend them in remorse and penitence, will atone for your crime.”

      “I’ve no intention of going to prison.”

      “How have you managed to hide your crime?”

      “I haven’t. I’ve done it only this morning.”

      “What have you done with the corpse?”

      “For now it’s in my kitchen. I’ll try to get rid of it.”

      “How …” He bit his tongue, apparently realizing the question was not quite in keeping with his work as a confessor.

      “I’ve got a plan.”

      “I don’t want to know. Do you repent of your sin, my son?”

      “I can’t, Father.”

      “Repent, my son,” he pleaded with me tearfully. “Or you’ll go to hell.”

      “Is it horrible, Father?”

      “Oh, son!” the priest cried, grateful for my question.

      And he began to paint the picture. The way he did it told me he was just a catechist. But his picture of hell surpassed all the best religion lessons I could remember from childhood. My confessor was inspired. Throughout his life he had been unleashing the horrors of hell to scare small-time sinners for their pranks played on teachers, for masturbation or laziness, to have his efforts rewarded with today’s confession. The grand vision of inferno painted for the benefit of such an extraordinary criminal was the sweet fruit that fell into his lap in an empty church, out of the blue, on an afternoon one could expect nothing from. Necessity breeds inventors, necessity breeds heroes. Today I learned that necessity – or rather need – breeds artists. I had seen many reproductions of Old Masters depicting hell but none had come close to my confessor’s tirade. That was real hell. Seething, blazing, putrid. I easily forgave my confessor some catechetical naïveté for the sweeping power of his vision.

      The church was empty again. The monk had put out all the lights except for the little red lamp. There were only two of us, the hero’s golden arm and hell. At last the priest ran out of breath.

      “My son,” he pleaded, “repent your crime.”

      “I can’t, Father.”

      “Then I can’t give you absolution.”

      It all began to turn nasty.

      “Then I’ll walk away with hell in my heart.”

      I got on my feet, as if ready to leave. The priest rustled hurriedly inside the confessional.

      “No, son, don’t go away.” He lowered his voice and I heard in his words a playful note.

      “If you can’t find in yourself perfect remorse, the most pleasing to the Lord, then imperfect remorse will be enough … Think of all the horrors of hell, and fear the deed that condemns you to such torture. That will be enough.”

      The priest’s voice was so sympathetic I was ready to express my imperfect remorse. Still, I held back. Showing imperfect remorse would give my confessor paltry satisfaction. This extraordinary confession would have a very cheap and trivial epilogue in a common criminal’s fear of chains and fire. So I said:

      “Father, imperfect remorse will not atone for such a crime before the Lord.”

      The priest was delighted.

      “My son,” he said, “words like these suffice for remorse.”

      “It’s not worth much, though.”

      “Son, I am crying for your soul,” whispered the priest, “I truly am.”

      He felt his inspiration was waning but still could not let go of me. The confession got stuck in a dead end. I pitied the priest. Anxiously, I started looking for a way out of the impasse. In the end I suggested:

      “My crime is still fresh today. I’m still breathing blood. But tomorrow, or in a few days’ time, if God lets me live that long, perhaps the grace of remorse will come to me.”

      “Come tomorrow then, my son,” hurriedly advised the priest. “In the afternoon or evening. Between four and six. I will wait for you every day.”

      The priest was excited and joyous. He appreciated the chance I gave him. Today’s confession would be more than just a beautiful moment in his life. It would open a difficult, glorious path to the salvation of a murderer, a path full of terrible mysteries. I had elevated my cleric to the level of a missionary converting cannibals, of a Saint Hieronymus taming a lion. He was pleased like a child, and it pleased me too. When I rose from my knees, the priest reminded me once more:

      “Well then, between four and six, four and six in the evening.”

      His voice trembled with the anxiety of a parting lover.

      2

      EVERY TIME I OPENED MY EYES IN THE MORNING AUNTIE was already on her feet. Humming in her low alto voice, she bustled around the stove, preparing our breakfast. The simplicity and good nature of this woman was too much of an everyday occurrence to make any impression on me. Nevertheless, from time to time, there were moments it moved me, though more often recently it irritated me. Auntie earned her living as a sort of middleman in the local wool trade or some such business; I was never really interested in that. She worked like a dog.

      Apart from myself, a twenty-one-year-old loafer, Auntie also provided for her old mother and her crippled sister. Both lived in a remote small town in the mountains. They visited us more than four times a year. I hated those visits. When Granny, wrapped up in black frocks, her ears all smeared with some white pasty medicine, sat at the table, it was revolting. I felt even more disgust toward her daughter – a young apathetic hunchback with coke-bottle spectacles. They were both very devout and crossed themselves eagerly before every dish. Auntie, once a beautiful and worldly woman, with them suddenly remembered which church she belonged to. The dinners were better then, and that was the only upside to those visits.

      Auntie maintained that she would like to have her old mother and her crippled sister live with her but it was impossible because our flat was just too small. And she had to keep her eye on me while I was studying. It wasn’t true. I have no doubt she preferred to share the flat with her favorite nephew than with her half-dead mother and blockhead sister. I was the only person Auntie truly loved. She liked it when I whistled during my morning shave in the bathroom, or polished off her scrambled eggs with gusto. She knew I had to finish my studies and she spared no effort making sure I did. However, there was a limit to how much effort she could spare, and that limit was not far off.

      Auntie had reached the point when she needed quiet recuperation before the terminal advance of old age. And yet still she worked like a horse. She carried big packs of merchandise, went on business trips, often sleeping on the train. She paid for it with her heart, her liver, varicose veins. She was trying to cure them, visiting doctors and following their orders. But often life made this impractical. So Auntie suffered on, now and again letting out with a groan or a sigh, and who knows — perhaps that was the cause of the whole affair. Normally she bore her illnesses and old age with gallant heroism. She took care of herself, was not above a discreet touch of makeup and generally kept her spirits up, waking me up almost every morning with a joke. Truly, when I look back at those times, I have to admit she was indeed a very, very good woman.

      Certainly,