by Jaume Cabré
‘Bebenbeleke,’ he said in a tone that left no room for a reply.
‘Where the heck is the hospital?’
The taxi driver pointed with his nose towards the reddish sun. Four planks in the shape of a house. It wasn’t as hot as at the airport.
‘When should I come pick you up?’ he said.
‘I’ll walk back.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Yes.’
He grabbed his bag and walked towards the four poorly positioned planks without turning to say goodbye to the taxi driver, who spat on the ground, happier than ever because he could still go through Kikongo to visit his cousins and try to drum up some unlikely passenger to Kikwit, and he wouldn’t need to work again for four or five days.
Without turning around, he waited for the sound of the taxi to completely vanish. He headed towards the only tree around, a strange tree that must have had one of those impossible names, and he picked up a bulky bag of military camouflage fabric, which seemed to be waiting for him, leaning against the trunk like someone having a nap. Then he turned the corner and found what could be the main door to Bebenbeleke. A long porch where three women sat in deckchairs of some sort, carefully observing the passing of the hours in silence. There was no actual door. And inside there was no reception area. A dimly lit corridor with a bulb that gave off a shaky light, from a generator. And a hen that ran outside as if realising she’d been caught red-handed. He went back to the porch and addressed the three women, in general.
‘Doctor Müss?’
One of the women, the oldest, pointed inside with a nod of her head. The youngest corroborated it by saying, to the right, but he’s with a patient now.
He went back inside and took the hallway to the right. Soon he found himself in a room where an old man wearing a white coat, which was impeccable even amid so much dust, was listening to the torso of a child who wasn’t so sure about the whole examination and wanted to be rescued by his mother, who stood beside him.
He sat down on a bright green bench next to two other women, who were excited by something breaking the routine in Bebenbeleke that had them repeating, like a litany, the same words over and over for quite some time. He put down the larger bag beside his feet, making a metallic noise. It was getting dark. When Doctor Müss finished with the last patient, he looked up at him for the first time, as if his being there was the most normal thing in the world.
‘Do you need a check-up as well?’ he said in greeting.
‘I just wanted to confess.’
The newcomer now realised that the doctor wasn’t old: he was beyond old. From the way he moved it seemed he had an inexhaustible inner energy, and that was deceiving. His body was what it was, that of a man over eighty. The photo that he had been able to lay his hands on was of a man in his sixties, at most.
As if a European showing up at dusk to the Bebenbeleke hospital asking for confession was a common occurence, Doctor Müss washed his hands in a sink that, miraculously, had a tap with running water and he gestured for the newcomer to follow him. Just then, two men with dark glasses and cocky attitudes sat on the green bench they’d just shooed the excited women off of. The doctor led the visitor to a small room, perhaps his office.
‘Will you be staying for dinner?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t make long-term plans.’
‘As you wish.’
‘It took me a lot of work to find you, Doctor Budden. I lost your trail in a Trappist monastery and there was no way to find where you’d gone.’
‘How did you do it, then?’
‘By visiting the main archives of the order.’
‘Ah, yes, their obsession with having everything documented and archived. Were they helpful?’
‘They probably still don’t know I visited their archives.’
‘What did you find there?’
‘Besides the false lead on the Baltic, there was a reference to Stuttgart, to Tübingen and to Bebenhausen. In that small town I was able to tie up some loose ends with the help of a very kindly old lady.’
‘My cousin Herta Landau, right? She’s always been a windbag. She must have been overjoyed to have someone to listen to her. Forgive me, go on.’
‘Well, that’s it. It took me years to fit the pieces together.’
‘That’s for the best: it’s given me time to make amends for a fraction of the evil I’ve done.’
‘My client would have liked me to have found you sooner.’
‘Why don’t you arrest me and take me to trial?’
‘My client is old: he doesn’t want any delays because he is going to die soon, according to what he says.’
‘Right.’
‘And he doesn’t want to die without seeing you dead.’
‘I understand. And how did you manage to find me?’
‘Oh, a lot of purely technical work. My trade is very boring: long hours of poking around in different places until you finally put the pieces together. And like that, for days and days, until I understood that the Bebenhausen I was looking for wasn’t exactly in Baden-Württemberg. At some points I even thought that it was some sort of a clue left for someone who might be wanting to follow your trail.’
He realised that the doctor was repressing a smile.
‘Did you like Bebenhausen?’
‘Very much.’
‘It is my lost paradise.’ Doctor Müss shook off a recollection with a wave of his hand and now he did smile: ‘You took a long time,’ he said.
‘As I said … When I took on the assignment you were very well hidden.’
‘To be able to work and make amends.’ Curious, ‘How do these assignments work?’
‘It’s very professional and very … cold.’
Doctor Müss got up and, from a small cabinet that seemed to be a refrigerator, he pulled out a bowl of something vague and possibly edible. He put it on the table, with two plates and two spoons.
‘If you don’t mind … At my age I have to eat like a sparrow … little and often. Otherwise, I might faint.’
‘Do people trust such an old doctor?’
‘They have no other options. I hope they don’t close the hospital when I die. I am in negotiations with the village authorities in Beleke and Kikongo.’
‘I’m very sorry, Doctor Budden.’
‘Yes.’ About the vague contents of the bowl: ‘It’s millet. It’s better than nothing, believe me.’
He served himself and passed the bowl to the other man. With his mouth full: ‘What did you mean by that, that it’s a very cold, very professional job?’
‘Well, things …’
‘No, please, I’m interested.’
‘Well, for example, I never meet my clients. And they never meet me either, of course.’
‘That’s seems logical. But how do you organise it?’
‘Well, there’s a whole technique. Indirect contact is always a possibility, but you must be very meticulous to ensure that you are always connecting with the right person. And you have to learn how to not leave a trail.’
‘That seems logical as well. But today you came in Makubulo Joseph’s car. He’s an incorrigible gossip and by now must have told everyone that …’
‘He’s telling them what I want him to tell them. I am giving up a false lead. You’ll understand that I can’t go into details … And how did you know who my taxi driver was?’
‘I founded the Bebenbeleke hospital forty years ago. I know the name of every dog that barks and every hen that cackles.’
‘So you came here straight from Mariawald.’
‘Does that interest you?’
‘It fascinates me. I’ve had a lot of time to think about you. Have you always worked alone?’
‘I don’t work alone. Before day breaks there are already three nurses seeing patients. I get up early as well, but not that early.’
‘I’m very sorry to be keeping you from your work.’
‘I don’t think the interruption is very importan
t, not today.’
‘And do you do anything else?’
‘No. I devote all my energy to helping the needy during every hour of life I have left.’
‘It sounds like a religious vow.’
‘Well … I’m still somewhat of a monk.’
‘Didn’t you leave the monastery?’
‘I left the Trappist order; I left the monastery, but I still feel that I am a monk. A monk without a community.’
‘And do you lead mass and all that stuff?’
‘I’m not a priest. Non sum dignus.’
They used the silence to take a sizeable chunk out the plate of millet.
‘It’s good,’ said the newcomer.
‘To tell you the truth, I’m sick of it. I miss a lot of foods. Like Sauerkraut. I can’t even remember what it tastes like, but I miss it.’
‘Aw, if I’d known …’
‘No, I miss them but I don’t …’ He swallowed a spoonful of millet. ‘I don’t deserve Sauerkraut.’
‘Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration … I mean, I’m no one to …’
‘I can assure you full well that you are not no one.’
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and brushed his still immaculate white coat. He pushed aside the tray of food without asking the other man and they remained face to face, with the bare table between them.
‘And the piano?’
‘I gave it up. Non sum dignus. Even the memory of the music I used to adore makes me heave.’
‘Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?’
‘Tell me your name.’
Silence. The newcomer thinks it over.
‘Why?’
‘Curiosity. I have no use for it.’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Your call.’
They couldn’t help it: they both smiled.
‘I don’t know the client. But he gave me a key word that will give you a clue, if you are curious. Don’t you want to know who sent me?’
‘No. Whoever it was who sent you, you are welcome.’
‘My name is Elm.’
‘Thank you, Elm, for trusting me. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have to ask you to change your profession.’
‘I am doing my last few jobs. I’m retiring.’
‘I’d be happier if this were your last job.’
‘I can’t promise you that, Doctor Budden. And I would like to ask you a personal question.’
‘Go ahead. I just asked you one.’
‘Why haven’t you turned yourself in? I mean, when you left prison, if you felt you hadn’t purged your crimes … well …’
‘In prison or dead I wouldn’t have been able to make amends for my evil.’
‘When it is beyond repair, what do you hope to make amends for?’
‘We are a community that lives on a rock that sails through space, as if we were always searching for God amid the fog.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m not surprised. I mean that you can always repair with one person the evil you’ve done to another. But you have to repair it.’
‘And you must not have wanted your name …’
‘Yes. I didn’t want that, it’s true. My life, since I left prison, has consisted of hiding and repairing. Knowing that I will never repair all the evil I’ve done. I’ve been carrying it around inside me for years and never told anyone.’
‘Ego te absolvo, etcetera. Right?’
‘Don’t laugh. I tried it once. But the problem is that my sin cannot be forgiven because it is too big. I devoted my life to atoning for it knowing that when you got here I would still be on the starting line.’
‘From what I remember, if the penitence is enough …’
‘Nonsense. What do you know!’
‘I had a religious education.’
‘What good did it do you?’
‘Look who’s talking.’
They both smiled again. Doctor Müss stuck a hand under his white coat and into his shirt. The other, quickly, leaned over the table and immobilised his arm, grabbing him by the wrist. The doctor, slowly, pulled out a dirty, folded rag. Seeing what it was, the newcomer released his wrist. The doctor put the cloth, which seemed to have been cut in half at one point, onto the table, and with vaguely ritualistic gestures, he unfolded it. It was a handspan and a half square and still had traces of the white and blue threads that made up the checks. The newcomer observed him with curiosity. He glanced at the doctor, who had closed his eyes. Was he praying? Was he remembering?
‘How were you able to do what you did?’
Doctor Müss opened his eyes.
‘You don’t know what I did.’
‘I’ve done my research. You were part of a team of doctors who trampled on the Hippocratic oath.’
‘Despite your profession, you are educated.’
‘Like you. I don’t want to miss my chance to tell you that you disgust me.’
‘I deserve the disdain of hitmen.’ He closed his eyes and said, as if reciting: ‘I sinned against man and against God. In the name of an idea.’
‘Did you believe in it?’
‘Yes. Confiteor.’
‘And what about piety and compassion?’
‘Have you killed children?’ Doctor Müss looked him in the eye.
‘I’m the one asking the questions.’
‘Right. So you know how it feels.’
‘Watching a child cry as you rip off the skin on his arm to study the effects of the infections … means you have no compassion.’
‘I wasn’t a man, Father,’ confessed Doctor Müss.
‘How is it that, without being a man, you were able to regret?’
‘I don’t know, Father. Mea maxima culpa.’
‘None of your colleagues have repented, Doctor Budden.’
‘Because they know that the sin was too large to ask for forgiveness, Father.’
‘Some have committed suicide and others have fled and hid like rats.’
‘I am no one to judge them. I am like them, Father.’
‘But you are the only one who wants to repair the evil.’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions: I may not be the only one.’
‘I’ve done my research. By the way, Aribert Voigt.’
‘What?’
Despite his self-control, Doctor Müss was unable to avoid a tremor through his entire body at just the mention of that name.
‘We hunted him down.’
‘He deserved it. And may God forgive me, Father, because I deserve it too.’
‘We punished him.’
‘I can’t say anything more. It is too big. The guilt is too deep.’
‘We hunted him down years ago. Aren’t you pleased to hear it?’
‘Non sum dignus.’
‘He cried and begged for forgiveness. And he shat himself.’
‘I won’t cry for Voigt. But the details you give me don’t make me happy either.’
The newcomer stared at the doctor for some time.
‘I am Jewish,’ he finally said. ‘I work for hire, but I put my all into it. Do you understand me?’
‘Perfectly, Father.’
‘Deep down, do you know what I think?’
Konrad Budden opened his eyes, frightened, as if he feared finding himself before the old Carthusian who stared at a crack in the wood of the frozen confessional. In front of him, this Elm, seated, looking him up and down, with his face already furrowed with the weight of many confessions, wasn’t looking at any crack: he was staring into his eyes. Müss held his gaze, ‘Yes, I know what you are thinking, Father: that I have no right to paradise.’
The newcomer looked at him in silence, concealing his surprise. Konrad Budden continued, ‘And you are right. The sin is so atrocious that the true hell is what I have chosen: assuming my guilt and continuing to live.’
‘Don’t think that I understand it.’
‘I don’t even try for that. I don’t take refuge in the
idea that we followed or in the coldness of our souls that allowed us to inflict that hell. And I don’t seek forgiveness from anyone. Not even from God. I have only asked for the chance to repair that hell.’
He covered his face with his hands and said doleo, mea culpa. Every day I live the same feeling with the same intensity.
Silence. Outside, a sweet stillness overcame the hospital. The newcomer thought he could hear, muffled, in the distance, the sound of a television. Doctor Müss said, in a softer voice, hiding his distress, ‘Will it be a secret or will my identity be revealed once I’m dead?’
‘My client wants it to remain a secret. And the customer is king.’
Silence. Yes, a television. It sounded strange in that place. The newcomer leaned back in his chair. ‘Don’t you want to know who sent me now?’
‘I don’t need to know. You were sent by them all.’
And he put his hands flat on the dirty rag with a delicate, somewhat solemn, gesture.
‘What is that rag?’ the other man asked. ‘A napkin?’
‘I have my secrets too.’
The doctor kept his hands on the rag and he said if you don’t mind, I’m ready.
‘If you would be so kind as to open your mouth …’
Konrad Budden closed his eyes, piously, and said when you’re ready, Father. And from the other side of the window he heard the scandalous cackling of a hen about to roost. And further away, laughter and applause from the television. Then Eugen Müss, Brother Arnold Müss, Doctor Konrad Budden opened his mouth to receive the viaticum. He heard the bag’s zipper being opened briskly. He heard metallic sounds that transported him to hell and he assumed it as an extra penance. He didn’t close his mouth. He couldn’t hear the shot because the bullet had gone too quickly.
The visitor put the pistol in his belt and pulled a Kalashnikov out of his bag. Before leaving the room, he carefully folded that man’s rag as if it were a rite for him as well, and he put it in his pocket. His victim was still sitting, neatly, in his chair, with his mouth destroyed and barely a trickle of blood. He hadn’t even stained his white coat. Too old to have enough blood flow, he thought, as he took the safety off the automatic rifle and prepared to distort the scene. He calculated where the sound of the television came from. He knew that was where he needed to head. It was important that the doctor’s death go unnoticed but in order for that to happen he had decided that there’d have to be talk – a lot of talk – about the rest of it. Just part of the job.