‘But enough about us,’ said Luciana. ‘How about you? My cousin Rui is visiting in a couple of weeks – I think you would like him. We could go out together, the four of us.’
‘Oh, thanks, but I’m . . .’ She knew she had to kill this plan as quickly as possible. ‘. . . I’m already seeing somebody.’
‘Hey, that’s great,’ Luciana’s eyes shone with real delight. ‘Tell me all about him.’
Madalena felt her life draining from her body, but somehow she found the energy to appear sprightly as she told Luciana all about the boy she was supposedly seeing. For some reason, she had no idea why, she called him João.
When Mauro returned to the table Luciana started telling him about Madalena’s João, how they had met at college and been friends for a while, and how they had secretly liked each other for a long time and had been out on three dates, and how it all seemed to be going very well.
‘That’s fantastic,’ said Mauro, thrilled by the news. ‘Let’s all go out, the four of us.’
Madalena shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not yet. It’s early days, and I don’t want to frighten him. Maybe in a few weeks.’
‘Oh, go on,’ said Luciana. ‘It’ll be fun.’
‘Well . . . why not?’ She was desperate for this assault to end. She had gone bright red, and at last they stopped asking her about this João, believing her blushes to be a symptom of blossoming love. She hated that they were so happy for her. She had never felt so stupid. Now the only person she wanted to throw acid over was herself.
She lay on her bed, and picked up the magazine that Mauro had given her. She turned to a photograph of Luciana. The thought of what she had wanted to do to her made her stomach feel as if it was shrivelling to the size of an artichoke heart. She ran to the sink, and vomited. She hadn’t eaten for hours, and spatters of what was left inside burned her throat. She cupped her hands beneath the cold tap and took a drink of water. She rinsed the sink, and tried to tell herself that she would never have gone through with it, that all she had done was cling to the idea that she
could
do it so she wouldn’t feel powerless in the face of such perfection. She had no way of knowing if this was true, but she couldn’t hide from the knowledge that she had made a detailed plan to disfigure somebody, and that was all she needed to know for sure that she was a horrible person. She covered her face with her hands as it came back to her that she had invented a boyfriend. She had given him a name and a life, when really there was nobody. She was dangerous
and
ridiculous.
She lay back on the bed and opened the magazine, looking from one picture of Luciana to the next, and hating her so much it hurt. When she couldn’t stand it any longer she turned to a random page. Here there were no pictures of beautiful women, just an item called
It’s a Crazy World!
, a collection of oddments sent in by readers on their travels. One of the items caught her eye. It was a paragraph about a museum in Germany. The magazine seemed to be making fun of the place, but she didn’t see what there was to joke about.
She wanted to go there. She had to go there. She needed the museum to tell her that the decision she had made was the right one. She had no idea how long it would take to get there, but she started packing a small bag. Once again she set her alarm for early morning. She would make sure she was on the first train out of the city.
V
The certainty of her damnation became too great a burden for Hulda to bear on her own. She was determined, though, that it must not dominate her days, that life must go on in spite of her inevitable destination. She knew she needed to find ways of making sure she never allowed the despair to defeat her, and she decided that the best thing to do would be to approach the wisest-looking member of her congregation and ask for advice. One Sunday not long after her eighteenth birthday, she had caught up with him as they filed out of the church. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, ‘but I wonder if I could talk to you about something.’
‘Of course.’ He smiled kindly through his large, white beard, and Hulda knew at once that she had found a friend.
They walked a short distance to a small park in the shadow of the castle, where they sat on a bench. He listened to her story, and when it was over he confirmed that she was beyond all hope of salvation. ‘But you are by no means alone,’ he said. ‘There are more of us than you will ever know.’
‘More of
us
?’
He nodded. ‘Many years ago I made the same mistake as you, young Hulda. That’s right,’ he chuckled, ‘even I, even old Herr Friedleben, shall be heading downwards when the time comes.’ He told her that his circumstances had not been as dramatic as hers, that he had merely been a wayward young man with a loose tongue, who drank and cursed with little thought for the consequences. By the time he realised what he had done it was too late. ‘Just as it was for you, the moment the first unforgivable blasphemy passed my lips I was lost.’
Hulda felt awful for him, but she knew he was not inviting pity. ‘Maybe I will see you down there,’ she said.
He sighed, and shook his head. ‘I don’t think the Devil will allow us such comforts as glimpses of familiar faces. It’s best to be realistic, Hulda: Hell will be an eternity of unremitting agony for both of us.’ She nodded sadly, and he took what looked like a business card from his pocket, and began to write. ‘I am going to invite you to a meeting. Twice a month a few people with our difficulty have a little get-together. We have all accepted that we have no chance of getting into heaven, but we share a determination not to fall into the trap of living our lives the wrong way. As we lie dying we shall know in our hearts and minds that we have not allowed Satan to be our master until the very last moment. This way we shall leave with a small sense of triumph. These meetings help us to maintain our resolve in the face of temptation and despair, but more importantly than that, they give us a good excuse to eat biscuits.’
He handed over the card, and smiled. ‘We are called the Union of the Damned. We don’t like to draw attention to ourselves, and I am sure you understand the value of discretion, so please tell nobody.’
Hulda looked at the card. Herr Friedleben had written an address, a date and a time. She turned it over, and on the other side were the words that had become so familiar:
Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.
Mark 3:29
‘I leave them lying around here and there,’ he said. ‘You never know, maybe one day somebody will see one and be saved. It’s just a little idea of mine.’ With the help of his stick, he rose to his feet. ‘Please do come along. And remember – bring biscuits.’
Hulda watched him walk away. She thought he was a lovely man. She only wished he wasn’t going to Hell. She knew it was selfish to think this way, but she also wished he had given her better news. Still, the sky was blue. That was something.
Biscuits aside, she had no idea what to expect. She worried that the meeting would be all candles, robes and incantations, but when she arrived at the address on the card she found a very ordinary suburban home. A dozen people were sitting on sofas and dining chairs, making light conversation about any subject but perpetual suffering. Herr Friedleben greeted her warmly, and called the meeting to order.
Each member took a turn to speak. The first admitted that since their last get-together he had fallen prey to thoughts of how unfair it seemed that murderers could be granted forgiveness, while good people who had made a single mistake would remain beyond hope of redemption. He said he had felt angry with God for refusing to accept his heartfelt apologies, and had even come close to repeating his fateful transgression. This was greeted with words of understanding, and Hulda was comforted to find it was a familiar problem. She had fought this anger too, and there had been times when she had felt a sense of injustice at the knowledge that her stepfather, the man who had pushed her into the arms of the Devil, would have the opportunity to make his peace and spend eternity in heaven. The next man to speak told everybody he had been having difficulty sleeping for fear of what awaited him, and she empathised with this as well. Next, an attractive young woman confessed that she had been facing a battle to remain faithful to the Lord. She had been wondering why, when nothing she could do would ever change her destiny, she should not sink into a life of sin. She explained that she had sinned a lot in the past – predominantly fornication – and had found it very enjoyable. ‘Every day opportunities arise,’ she said, ‘often with very handsome men, and sometimes the temptation is almost too much to resist.’
Such opportunities never arose in Hulda’s life, but even though she couldn’t empathise with the woman’s situation she thought it was nice that nobody rushed to condemn her for having had these urges; instead they congratulated her for having been strong enough to keep her resolve.
Hulda’s turn came, and for only the second time she told the story of her darkest night. When she was finished she received many kind words, and she smiled at Herr Friedleben, grateful to him for having introduced her to such pleasant people.
After a short biscuit break the mood of the meeting changed, and they began discussing the good things they had done since their last meeting, things which, when the time came, would help them to look the Devil in the eye. One of the men had raised money for charity by running a half marathon, another had accompanied a group of disadvantaged children on a kayaking trip, and the attractive woman received a very warm response to her announcement that she would soon be leaving her bank job to start training as a paramedic. Hulda was very impressed with all these tales of human decency, and for a moment she wondered whether only the damned could be truly good, knowing that there would be no reward beyond the passing satisfaction of having scored a small victory against their future tormentor. She stamped on this thought, knowing she must never consider herself to be in any way superior to people who had not taken the same wrong turning as her.
Not long after this meeting she was offered the job at the museum, and she accepted it without hesitation, delighted to know that she would be playing a small role in an establishment that brought hope and comfort to the wretched. She told her fellow members of the Union of the Damned how thankful she was to them for having guided her in the right direction.
One evening she turned up to find no sign of Herr Friedleben. There was no discussion that meeting, they just sat in quiet contemplation. There were tears and there were sobs, but most of all there were biscuits. The plates kept going around, and they ate and ate and ate. They knew he would have wanted it that way.
For all her participation in these sessions, Hulda never found the right moment to talk about her plan to vanquish the Devil. Night after night, as she waited to fall asleep, she nurtured the idea of marrying, and of having at least two children and raising them, from their very first day, not to do as she had done. Satan would be getting her soul, but if she could provide at least two servants for the Lord, then she will have added to the overall stock of good in the world, and as her life slips away she will know that for all her wailing and gnashing of teeth, she had been the true victor. What she needed to set this plan in motion was to find somebody to love, and who loved her in return. Her thoughts kept returning to Pavarotti, and the possibility of him having a brother who was like him in every way. She hoped that one day she would find the courage to ask.
In the meantime she would keep on smiling.
VI
When the finer points of the doctor’s activities are revealed, only one person from his life will be prepared to speak out in his defence. In a long letter to a newspaper, Ute’s mother will write that anybody who had truly known her daughter would understand how this poor man had come to lose his mind. She will beg all those who are condemning him to transfer the blame to her own shoulders, saying that the moment the child was pulled from a slit in her belly and dangled before her she had known that she would leave only misery in her wake. The dread only intensified with time, but her love for her daughter was so overwhelming it had left her weak, helpless even, and she had not known what she could do except hope that one day the girl would stop being the way she was. She will go on to say that she should have heeded her misgivings and stopped the wedding, or after the funeral she should have stayed in contact with the doctor, maybe even marrying him herself so she could monitor him and make sure his suffering was not manifesting itself in destructive ways. She should have done
something
, then all this would never have happened. But it
had
happened, and she will finish by declaring that she wishes with all her heart that she had wrestled the child from the midwife’s hands, and dashed her brains out on the hospital wall.
The trainee who opens this letter will assume it had been written by a crank, and put it in the
no
pile.
Doctor Fröhlicher was eking things out. He was nearing the end of his penultimate body, and had less meat than usual on his plate. He wondered whether in going to the museum he had crossed a line. As he ate on, he reassured himself that he needn’t worry, that with his good work, his charitable donations, his ethical shopping choices and his decision to bequeath all his possessions to the poor, he had built up so much moral credit that he could afford to allow his behaviour to drift into a grey area every once in a while. And besides, he told himself, this area was only a very pale grey; all he had done was suggest that the old man might wish to encourage people to end their lives in the comfort of the museum rather than elsewhere. As a place to spend final moments it was certainly preferable to a bridge, or a garage, or a railway line, and he supposed this was why it was such a popular spot. These were unhappy people whose minds were already made up; if they were to lose courage and carry on living they would only continue to be unhappy. The old man would be doing them a favour by helping them to leave their misery behind sooner rather than later.