Father Bianchi raised his eyes from the unhinged letters. Benno and his father had more to endure. A week later it was Peppa, the mother. With sticks in anus and vagina. Miserably bled to death. Again the word “Foul” written in blood. Then the chickens. Torn to shreds by the fox. Only that someone had let the fox in. Benno wrote that it could not possibly have been only one animal, since he and his father had immediately run out when the cackling and screaming had started. But by then it had already been too late. Eight out of eleven animals were dead and not a single fox was to be seen. The word ‘Foul’ was missing this time. But Bianchi had to agree with Benno. He remembered the football match and that Toni completely freaked out that day. He hadn’t taken the incident seriously enough. He was particularly concerned about Benno’s first line. If it wasn’t a sin I’d kill Toni.
If the weight of the commandments was really the only thing that kept the boy from committing a murder, he had to increase their presence in his sermons. But that was just one of the problems he had. Benno’s report also contained something else that was at least as worrying as the matter with the foal. At first Benno had kept his suspicion to himself, but after the dead chickens he had finally told his father what he thought he knew. What he in fact knew, Bianchi admitted to himself, because after all he had learned, after he was done with the reports, it just had to be like that.
Toni Da Silva was a sick boy. And a threat.
Benno and his father then had gone to the Da Silva’s house. Toni’s mother had opened the door, listened to what Benno and his father had to tell and closed the door without saying a word.
That wasn’t the weird thing. Not the menacing. Benno had peered past her and into the house. He had seen a man he didn’t know. A stranger. He stood back in the hallway listening to them. And grinned. This was a little town where everyone literally knew everyone. No one had seen a stranger come or leave. Benno had asked around in the immediate vicinity, which of course did not help Mrs. Da Silva’s reputation. But that was already heavily burdened by her drunkenness anyway and he could not blame the boy for not giving a damn. The terribly amazing thing was that actually nobody, not a single soul, knew anything about the man. That was actually impossible. Was it really only Benno who was supposed to have seen this stranger and nobody else? Father Bianchi decided to question Benno’s father the next day.
He had two more reports in front of him in the second run through. Pietro and Fillipe’s. Pietro’s began with these words:
It was a note. I found it in my history book. Between the two world wars. There was only one name on it. Luca. I didn’t think anything of it and threw away the note or took down my homework on it or something. Then another note. In my left shoe after gym class. Just the name again. Luca. Luca
and I weren’t exactly friends at the time. Not like now. In any case, I didn’t tell him about it at the time. I thought the first note was a coincidence or something. But the second piece of paper made me watch Luca more closely. He was in the same row as I was, two places to the right. But you know the seating arrangements. I didn’t notice anything about him. He acted like always. Then, the next day ...
The priest looked at his watch. It was getting late. He was tired of the wine and the terrible things he had come to know today. He decided to continue the next day. It would probably be best to go on with the lessons as usual. But he’d keep an eye on them. On the four boys and especially on Toni Da Silva. He still couldn’t quite understand it. The boy was certainly not as innocent as he initially thought. If all this was true, and Father Bianchi did not doubt it, he was really ... well ... then he was dangerous.
The four boys he at first identified as evildoers had good reasons for their behavior - understandable reasons, but of course no excuses. And as it turned out, the priest couldn’t see a reason to doubt the truth of their statements. Luca and his sister’s underwear. Benno and his foal.
Foul.
He had to think of Shakespeare’s witches.
Pietro had been manipulated into an argument with Luca with the help of the notes and Fillipe - now that was a really ugly thing.
Father Bianchi didn’t sleep well that night. The next morning, he felt whacked. Of course, it was the wine. Although, no, actually, the wine couldn’t help it. No one forced me to drink that much of it, right?
His lessons on this day were dull and sluggish, so it seemed to him. He had his class do a lot of reading and a lot of writing, which gave him the opportunity to observe the four boys and Toni, who was back today. Toni was highly concentrated and focused, as always. His victims, or his punishers, depending on how one wanted to look at it, were less concerned. Again and again some of them turned back to Toni, who was sitting in the back row, and threw a suspicious look at him. The boy had an mean-looking black eye and two knuckles on his left hand were scraped open. He obviously fought back. During the lessons and during the break Toni did not even give any of the four a look. But after all that the priest had read in the reports, terrible fantasies of vengeance had to boil in the boy’s mind. The Father knew it was his job to prevent worse.
Well. Yesterday, after class, he kept the four with him. So it seemed only fair, to do the same with Toni today. Toni had no idea Bianchi had summoned the boys who had beaten him up and tied him to the ox statue. After he was untied, he did not go to school, but went straight home.
The Father wanted to leave it like this for now. But he would ask about Toni’s well-being and try to get a little closer to the adolescent, trying to establish a relationship of trust. The Father was still particularly concerned about the side note in Benno’s essay, which revealed that an unknown man was with Toni and his mother. Not that he condemned such illegitimate relationships, he was not that dogmatic and unworldly. But in regard of Toni’s inclinations and his mother’s drunkenness, this could be an additional factor that drove Toni towards his evil games. Bianchi also suspected that the man might have something to do with the sexual component of Toni deeds. Toni was very young. Too young for things like this. But whether this was true or not, this whole matter had to be clarified and resolved. The Father knew only too well what a spiral of violence was. Somehow he had to succeed in interrupting it.
The class was over and Toni Da Silva’s face froze to ice when the priest told him that he wanted him to stay for a word. Bianchi didn’t really know how to start. His fingers slipped over the attachments on the teacher’s desk. When the silence became uncomfortable, Toni asked:
“Did I do something wrong?”
The Father did not know how to answer this question.
“You tell me. I noticed you were in trouble yesterday. I want to help you.”
“I don’t need any help. Please, I have to go back to my mother,” Toni said.
“I’m afraid this is necessary. I’m very worried about you.”
“But I can’t stay. I don’t want to.”
“I’m afraid you have to. Can’t let you go so easily. Tell your mother it’s my fault.”
Father Bianchi put one hand on Toni’s shoulder and forced him to look him in the face.
“I know the others are mean to you. I really want to help you, Toni. But I need to get to know you better. Tell me about yourself. How is it at your house?”
“Good,” he said quietly.
And that’s all he said.
In the two hours that Father spoke to him afterwards, he did not say another word. He didn’t look at Father either. While Bianchi’s voice echoed in the classroom and unwound every facet and trick of the clergyman’s pedagogical arts, reaching from anger to gentle forcefulness, the boy looked out of the window with an unmoved face. The Father bombarded him with questions, tried to provoke him, even threatened him with punishments and then even with eternal purgatory. But the boy just disobeyed. He didn’t say a word. It was not the priest’s way to impose his will with a beating, but towards the end of the two hours he was not far from doing so. Only the fact that Toni had already been roughed up real badly the day
before prevented him. He almost let himself be carried away into telling him about the essays, what he had actually wanted to avoid at that time.
Not a good idea. Good thing I didn’t give in to this impulse.
Inwardly boiling with rage and struggling for self-control, Bianchi looked at the mask-like face of his prisoner. All his efforts had been unsuccessful and the means of torture did not seem appropriate to him. He’d have to let his delinquent go. But not yet. Not without a lesson. The Father decided to give Toni some penalty labor.
“Okay, Toni. This is on you and only you. Write twenty Our Fathers in your best handwriting. If I find a mistake once you’re done, you start all over again, understand?”
Toni Da Silva still didn’t say anything, just nodded and went to work. The Father went outside. He felt like having a cigarette. He rarely indulged in this vice. But today was definitely a day to smoke one of his flavored cigarillos and watch Toni from the schoolyard as he sat concentrated over his notebook. Sweet-smelling wafts of tobacco floated in the air between the father and the window through which he observed Toni.
“Well, Father? Have I caught you again?”
Father Bianchi quickly turned around. He had already recognized the voice of Provost Costa at the first word, but nevertheless was startled. He quickly pulled himself together and now held the cigarillo demonstratively in the air.
“It’s just a little sin. A little Lord’s Prayer is enough to make up for it.”
The head of the village grinned, lit a stump of his own and for a while they smoked and joked halfheartedly with each other. Then Costas face became a little more serious again.
“We never know what goes on in our children’s minds for sure. They say yes and amen and then do the opposite of what has just been agreed on. Rarely do we know what they really think. Have you made any progress with Toni?”
“No. But I am on it. A strange child.”
Father Bianchi nodded backwards towards the school.
“I kept Toni here to check him out. He won’t come out with nothing.”
The Father was wondering if he should ask Costa about the strange man in Toni’s house. Just before he could make a decision, the head of the village interrupted him.
“He just got up.”
“What?”
When Father Bianchi and the Provost were back in the classroom, it was already too late. The boy had taken the notebooks from the priest’s desk in a lightning-fast raid and, while the two men were storming around the building into the classroom, he had opened the window, climbed through and ran away.
Hot anger and panic ran through Father Bianchi when he noticed the loss of the reports. On the other hand, he calmed himself, there was nothing in the notebooks of the four boys that Da Silva did not already know. Perhaps, the priest thought, it would even help him to understand why they would pick on him like that if he could read it again in black on white. On the other hand, the escape through the window on the other side of the classroom of course suggested that the boy was extremely upset.
Of course he is.
Hadn’t he insisted that he had to go home immediately right at the beginning of his questioning?
Was his escape merely an attempt to alleviate a punishment that might await him at home?
That was probably the case. Toni did not have had time enough to read the reports before he fled.
“Regarding him having been beaten up and tied to the oxen yesterday, he can move pretty fast today,” said the village leader at the back of the priest.
Bianchi refrained from commenting. If the stupid provost hadn’t distracted him, he might have been able to prevent it - or at least to observe - and would have been able to react more quickly. Father Bianchi ended the conversation abruptly and he did not care whether this did upset the Provost or not. This whole thing started to get to him more and more.
When the evening came, the preacher strolled through the small village, greeted and nodded at the few passerby, taking much time to reach the Da Silva’s house. When he came close he sat down on the bench under the lime tree and folded up his newspaper. He only pretended to read and felt ridiculous. In fact, he kept a close eye on the house. So he sat for a few hours. Again and again he forgot to turn the pages of his newspaper and hastily made up for this when he noticed. His thoughts were on a journey. He was aware that he was behaving in a very unusual way and hoped that neither the Provost nor any of his flock would take notice. Getting involved in a conversation was the last thing he needed right now. Then he remembered that it was a Thursday and probably most of the inhabitants of the small village, if they weren’t having dinner right now, would be at the inn to bowl or listen to the rehearsal of the choir in the back room. This assumption proved to be correct. He was not bothered by anyone on his lonely watch.
However, this watch also did not lead to results. There were no signs of life in the house. After observing it for another hour, he took a heart and went a little closer. There was no indication of the presence of a man. The pieces of laundry hung on the linen stretched in the front garden only pointed to a woman and a boy. The fact that the house, the garden and the facade seemed generally neglected also suggested that the Da Silva lacked a strong hand. The Father considered briefly whether he should perhaps search the garbage of the family, in addition to his observation and in order to find further clues. However, he immediately rejected the thought after it came to his mind.
What I’m doing right now is ridiculous enough, he said to himself.
Just when it was slowly getting darker and he had difficulties to recognize the small letters of the newspaper did Bianchi notice a first sign of life in the house. In the kitchen the light was switched on and he saw the slender silhouette of Mrs. Da Silva. Judging by the movements, she was preparing dinner. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell whether she was doing it for two or three people. He thought for a moment. She attended his sermons quite regularly. Maybe a little less lately, when he thought about it. Would she be open to a serious conversation about her son? He would wait until he would see him through the illuminated kitchen window, too. Then he would knock.
When Toni’s figure finally appeared as a silhouette in the window and father Bianchi had walked over to the door to make his plan come true, he discovered something else. Next to his right foot was a cellar window slightly below knee height.
Just a moment ago it had been dark. Now light was flickering down there too. No light, as it came from an electric lamp, but light, as it was created when something was burning. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t very bright, maybe like a candle or maybe two. A faint smell drew up to him. There was a little wood in it, a little smell of burnt alcohol and a little bit of burnt leaves, and there was yet another component.
Paper.
For a second, Father Bianchi had to think of the essays that Toni had stolen. But then something completely different burned through his mind. Benno must have been right. Since Toni and his mother were busy in the kitchen, a third person had to be responsible for the sudden light. For a short moment, the preacher wondered how strange it might have seemed if he had been observed kneeling in front of the Da Silva’s cellar window to peep through it - and then he did it anyway.
Due to the steep angle, he could only partially scan the cellar room with his gaze and had to realize that this one second of hesitation, of vanity, had been one second too much. He couldn’t see anyone. Only a tiny little wood stove from which the smoke and the diminishing light were emitted. In his mind he cursed in a most unchristian way. Even though he had not seen the man, he took this event as a confirmation of Benno’s testimonies. The man existed. He rose again and knocked dust and little stones off his pants. Only then did he look around for a moment. There had been no one around who could have observed his indiscreet kneeling, he noted with relief.
For a moment he stood idle, then he went to the door and knocked three times loudly and audibly. Noises came out of the kitchen window. Surprised murmuring, the clatteri
ng of crockery. A chair was pushed back, then steps. Five seconds later, the door was opened a crack wide. However, the thick steel chain that connected the door to the frame was not removed. The priest took a step back so as not to be too offensive and folded his hands in front of his belly. He could see half of Mrs. Da Silva’s face. A single eye crowned by wrinkles and crow’s feet, a coarsely porous red bridge of the nose and the mouth of an old woman.
Strange. She’s not that old, Father Bianchi thought.
Then he improved in silence. Mrs. Da Silva had always looked older than she actually was. Her early widowhood and the subsequent drunkenness probably took their toll. And Toni, as he had recently got to know him, certainly did the rest to deepen the wrinkles in his mother’s face.
“Father Bianchi! What brings you here?”
She didn’t sound surprised.
“Good evening, Mrs. Da Silva. Toni didn’t tell you? You must have heard what happened yesterday. I just ...”
“Yes, yes. Of course. But... Father, I’m sorry, I don’t have time for you right now.”
“I beg you, Mrs. Da Silva. What happened to your son can’t happen again. And there are other things I want to talk to you about. You should really take the time.”
“Father, please go. I’ll get in touch with you. I promise.”
“But Mrs. Da Silva, it won’t get better just because you act like there’s no problem. Toni is in trouble in more ways than one. It is not just about the boys, I’m worried about his soul too. I...”
The expression on Mrs. Da Silva’s face darkened. While it had just reflected a mixture of concern and embarrassment, Bianchi could now see signs of anger.
“Father! My son’s soul is none of your business. Do you understand that? Not of your business! Go away.”
The Rats of Frankfurt: The Gospel of Madness (Book 1 of 6) (The Gospel of Madness - (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Series)) Page 2
