In the confession booth.
“Father forgive me for I have sinned.”
“Go on my daughter. Confess”
“Okay where shall I start? Okay I know. here”
* * * * *
“I can confess, some things can never be forgotten, while others are saturated with prayer … to be erased from our heads, forever. There are no delete buttons in life, unless you do what Mike did. “
“What did i do?”
Exactly.
He doesn’t even remember.
* * * * *
“Remember to read her a story before she falls asleep.” his wife told him after dinner.
A father begins to read his seven year old daughter a bedtime story. He carefully tucks her in until she feels comfortable, turns the nightlight on and proceeds to pick a book.
“Daddy, please, can you read my favorite one today?” she asks
“For you my princess, I can’t refuse. Here is a chocolate for you”
“Once upon a time in the land where all the unicorns died of global warming, there was a group of very organized individuals called the Nazis. They were obviously very good at math. And you should be too, my princess. Their extracurricular activities included torturing little rodents, pissing their bed at night and refusing to eat their veggies. They had this belief that people with blond hair, blue eyes and lots of heavy German artillery could do such things as cut lines in the school cafeteria, bully the smart kids and commit massive genocides. Here you go … the rest will be later. Now go to sleep.”
And she fell asleep.
* * * * *
“Asleep? What” said police officer. “You are trying to tell me that your son …?”
“
Yes officer, I am telling you exactly that. My son, you see he has a condition. When he goes to sleep, he well, he sleepwalks.”
“Lady, you are trying to tell me that your son went to sleep last night, woke up, or whatever that sleepwalking thing is, walked down to the kitchen, ate an entire box of cereal, then went outside broke into your neighbor’s house, broke all of their dogs ribs and raped their daughter, and all that is because he was sleepwalking? Is that what you are trying to tell me?
“Yes officer, that Is what happened”
* * * * *
“That is what happened”
“I remember Johan came back in the rain” she put handkerchief on her face.
She wanted to hide the tears. “Daddy he came back alive from that awful war … daddy you know how long I waited for him? … How long I desired to hear his footsteps on our porch again. I just didn’t know what to do. The war … it took him away from me!” said Marta, wife of Johan.
They were married five years prior to his enrollment in the German army. Before war, Johan managed to save some money working at his father’s shop to buy him and his new family a nice little house located at the center of a good neighborhood. Johan was always a very calculating man; he counted every single mark in his wallet and nothing went to waste with him. He attended church every Sunday, but after the Nazis took control of government most churches were closed
and service was looked down upon. He was drafted into 3rd artillery division on March 3, 1941.
“You clean the latrines soldier” said his superior with pointy mustache. “Yes sir” he answered.
His wife and his newborn son saw their father and husband depart from the train station the same night with a rucksack on his shoulder and a smile on his face. “I will be back a hero. Take care of Johan Jr.” he said with optimism in his eyes.
Today he was gone.
* * * * *
“Today in class we will discuss post-war Germany. It’s in and outs” said Prof Carina
“I want to discuss her in and outs” said Peter and class laughed. “You should of seen this bitch I fucked last night. Her tittles, size of a fucking melon. Look”
“Peter! You think its funny? Millions of people died during the war, innocent people, this subject is not trivial, you know. So please show some respect, this is not high school, i hold you to a higher standard of maturity” “There was a massive study of post-war mindset by psychologists right after the war, targeting primarily the male population of discharged soldiers.”
Anna raised her hand. “Yes Anna” “Like you are trying to say that the … ah . .. soldiers came back from war to their families?”
“Exactly Ann. Think about it. When the war was over the soldiers were dispatched. They had nothing to do anymore so they went back to their homes, wives families. That is, only those who escaped the Nuremburg trial of course and were not executed for crimes against humanity.”
“But how could the world government … like ever find out what crimes they committed?”
“That is an outstanding question. You see Ann, Nuremburg trials conducted a careful and organized investigation after they got hold of military files after the war, when the Reich fell that …
” She was interrupted by a curious student. “Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Jeez these fucking freshman” she thought to herself. “Yes go ahead John”
The chubby student squeezed out of his seat, which was obviously making him uncomfortable, and quietly left the room.
“So where did i leave off? Oh yeah the aftermath”
* * * * *
The aftermath came like a slow erection.
Three years later Johan’s size ten military boots stepped on the surface of what was his home. They made exactly the same sound as when they left. They left the same dirt imprint on the nicely furnished wood. They felt the same. fit the same, but the person in them has changed.
“Johan! Come here boy!” Marta cried in rapture.
“Your father is back!”
Now the casual dinners in the evening and yard work in the afternoon resumed its precious course and everything looked quite form the outside. But as Johan came back to his community, the stares began. The stares, that asked “did he do it?”, “was he a part of it?”. There were rumors going around and all the old ladies who congregated by the dry sun seed stand began once again to weave their stories.
“I hear that he killed many Jews in war” said one of them. She was as old as dry wood, ready to crack and die. “You are a stupid harlot, Johan was not a part of that, he can barely hold a weapon.
I know his father, he raised him well” said another with a bug-sized mole on her upper lip.
“Anyway, he is still as handsome as when he left. But his face … it looks a little contorted.”
“That it is. Maybe it is that tomato soup they fed them . I heard it was very spoiled.” “You are one stupid hag, you know that. A soup? Really? Ohh”
Marta did not know the truth, for truth comes down crashing. She pretended that everything was right, that nothing has happened. For her, raising her sun was a priority, and as a loving mother she made sure that all of his needs were met. At night when she and her husband got under same sheet together she would restrain herself asking him about the war times. She knew that is was a sensitive subject for him. And he, a calculated man, baby boy, he kept quite, like a mouse, but the wolf inside of him had no rest, saw no sleep.
* * * * *
Sleep. I don’t remember a peaceful dream even if I had one in the past.
Johan had reoccurring dreams. They were more like nightmares. “I would wake up in a dark, moist place, most likely inside a dirty, moist grave, the stench of dead bodies would fill my lungs. There were maggots everywhere, but no bodies. No there were no bodies, only rotten pears, lying all around with maggot in them. I would look up and see the moon, with swastika in the middle. My friends would stand at the sides of the grave and laugh at me. They laughed at me lying in a pile of rotten peaches. They did not help me out to get out of the grave but would just stand there and laugh at me. And i would fall, through the peaches. Then complete darkness. I am always scared, always in fear. Until there is light at the end. Then i clearly see the tunnel and the light at the end of it. It is coming close. And i feel the big burden being lifted from my chest, there are butterflies around me, fluttering. I am about to be taken by Jesus. I look at the light, it is blinding. I open my arms, and pray to Jesus, but the light in the end of the tunnel … it is not Jesus … it is a locomotive going 200mph and i am in the middle, nowhere to go. God! I wished it was Jesus.
* * * * *
” Jesus Christ! Ever since he came back from that war he has not attended church even once” said his father, who was a pious and kind man. He served as a pastor at the nearby parish.
“There must be something bothering him. I am concerned. I must confront him.” One morning when Johan was chopping wood his father approached him. “Son, he said. It is about we have a talk. You have changed, and I know how war can change people.”
“You know nothing, alright! You can’t just come here ask me about how many people I killed in the war and think that everything will be erased. I wish I could forget things. You just don’t understand, they haunt me.”
“Who haunts you son?”
“Memories, people, dead people, who I have killed. I laughed when I would kill them, looked them straight in the eyes. God I did awful things, awful and unholy father” he fell on his knees and kissed his father’s feet. “There was a family father … they had a baby. They said if I wouldn’t do it they would throw me in the ditch with them. So I had to, father I had to.”
“I understand son”
“And there was this mime, an actor. He liked peaches. So we fed him for making us laugh. He would look at us and smile,always smile. We buried his family alive, we tortured everyone, but he … he never cried. He just kept on smiling, going on as he was, until this one day when we received orders to kill him. He began to beg us to spare his life. He showed us tricks with this watch … haha … the one he did not have. He would look at his arm and pretend as though he had a watch, and then he would kick this imaginary dog. Father I liked that man. I don’t know why, he made us laugh I think. Oh Good I am such a sinner! Father do you forgive me?”
“I forgive you my son … I forgive you”
One morning there was a knock on their door. Johan opened it and suddenly a rush of fear came into his heart. It was the mime. He survived. He came back to confront his killer. He looked the same, wore the same clothing and had that wide smile on his face. But now the smile came off and trails of silent, slow tears appeared on the sides of his cheeks.
“I have nowhere to go” he said with his head hanging low. “So I came here”
Johan was speechless; the terrible emotion was tearing his soul to pieces. He had something in his throat that prevented him from saying anything. In front him stood that man who witnessed the murder of his entire family with his eyes by the hand of a well-calculated man who was just good at math. He witnessed entire towns carried away in carts and wagons.
The mime began talking. “I am not going to stay here long Johan. I came here to say one thing to you”
Johan looked at his visitor like a mute.
“I forgive you”
Said the mime and the smile slowly returned on his face as the walked back, disappearing into the forest.
Next day Johan’s young son found his father hanging in his workshop, dead.
No one in town ever heard of visiting mime, nor has anyone seen him.
* * * * *
Once upon a mime there was time during which mimes people were sent to work in camps. His name was Marcel Marceau. He was a funny fellow. Funny enough to survive the purge. When the Nazis were marching with their leather boots, Marcel would mimic their moves, sending the brigade into dying laughter. This way he found a way to avoid the devouring fire of concentration camps. Later on in his life he released a musical record that featured a 19 minute song of silence following a 2 minute storm of applause. Behold the silent comedy. It was is a marvelous album. The mime was laughing.
* * * * *
“You call this music. This is shit” said Bill to his son, holding Marcel’s album in his hands. “First its abstract art, and now its this existential crap, whoever wrote this garbage deserves to be shot”
* * * * *
“Father, I told you about my sin. It has caused a lot of trauma to my family and to my husband.
Do you forgive me my sins father? Please say you do, because I am late for the yoga class?”
Half-asleep father was definitely taking a nap during her confession. He suddenly sprung up from his seat, yawned, wiped his eyes and began.
“In the name of the father, son and holy spirit.
Go now you are forgiven
