Guilt Read Online Free PDF Page A

neck and pulled it up to a hook in the ceiling using the old winch; Henry’s toes could barely touch the floor. One of the boys read out the great exorcism, the Rituale Romanum, the papal instructions written in Latin in 1614. His words rang out in the room; nobody understood them. The boy’s voice cracked; he was being carried away by himself. They really believed they were purifying Henry of his sins.
    Henry didn’t freeze. This time, this one time, he’d done everything right; they could no longer reject him. One of the boys swung at him with a whip he’d made himself, with knots in the leather. It wasn’t a hard blow, but Henry lost his balance. The rope was made of hemp; it cut into his throat and blocked his air passages, he tripped, his toes could no longer find the floor. And then Henry got an erection.
    A person being slowly hanged suffocates. In the first phase the rope cuts into the skin, the veins and arteries in the neck are closed off, and the face turns violet-blue. The brain is no longer supplied with blood, consciousness is lost after about ten seconds; only if the windpipe is not totally blocked does it take longer. In the next phase, which lasts approximately one minute, the breathing muscles contract, the tongue protrudes from the mouth, and the hyoid bone and the larynx are damaged. This is followed by powerful, uncontrollable cramps; the legs and arms thrash eight or ten times, and the neck muscles often tear. Then suddenly the hangedman seems peaceful, he’s no longer breathing, and after one or two minutes the last phase begins. Death is now almost inevitable. The mouth opens, the body gasps for air, but only in individual panting spasms, no more than ten in sixty seconds. Blood may issue from the mouth, nose, and ears, the face is now congested, the right ventricle of the heart is distended. Death comes after approximately ten minutes. Erections during a hanging are not uncommon: in the fifteenth century people believed the mandrake, a solanaceous herb, grew from the sperm of hanged men.
    But the young men knew nothing about the human body. They didn’t understand that Henry was dying; they thought the blows were arousing him. The boy with the whip became furious, he struck harder and roared something that Henry didn’t understand. He felt no pain. He remembered finding a deer on a country road as a child that had been hit by a car. It was lying there in its own blood in the snow, and when he tried to touch it, it jerked its head round and stared at him. Now he was one of them. His trespasses had been wiped away, he would never be alone again, he was purified, and finally he was free.

    The road from the art teacher’s house to the only gas station in the village ran between the monastery and the old slaughterhouse. She wanted to buy cigarettes there, and set off on her bike. She saw the light from the candles in the slaughterhouse and knew that no one was allowed to be there. She had been a teacher her whole life, she had supervisedchildren and brought them up; it was probably this sense of responsibility that made her stop and climb the five worn steps. She opened the door. She saw the candles, she saw Henry, naked with a stiff penis, half-hanged in the noose, and she saw the three boys in their monk’s hoods, one of them with a whip in his hand. She screamed, backed away, missed the stair, lost her balance, and hit the nape of her neck on the edge of the bottom step. Her neck snapped and she died immediately.
    The rope round Henry’s neck was made fast to an iron chain that ran over a pulley in the ceiling and then to the winch. When he heard the teacher scream, the boy let go, the rope gave way, and Henry fell to the floor. The heavy chain raced over the pulley, yanking the plaster off the ceiling, and its weight shattered a flagstone next to Henry’s head. While the boys ran into the school to fetch help, Henry lay there, then he slowly pulled in his knees, breathed, and when he