Searching for Wallenberg Read Online Free PDF

imagination to bring the past to life”—then proceeded with his own imagination to create a new scene for his small portfolio:

    Raoul walked into the Adolph Fredricks Kyrkan in Stockholm, and when the pastor sighted him, he walked up the aisle to greet Raoul. “Well, it has been a while, Raoul,” said the graying pastor, in his sixties. “Five years?”
    “Probably more, Johann.”
    “Good of you to come in, Raoul. Your cousins will be pleased that you accepted my invitation. Let us go to my office. Your mother, she is well?”
    “As well as can be expected, thank you.”
    “I don’t see her often, you know.” He smiled narrowly, showing forbearance. “And I was sorry to hear about grandfather. But you are looking fit and handsome. Please sit.”
    Raoul nodded, and sat, holding his hat on his lap.
    “So, you must catch me up on so many things. You have been all over the map, haven’t you? America, Palestine, South Africa.” He laughed. “Where haven’t you been is the better question!”
    “Yes, I have been around, haven’t I?” Raoul mused, to himself as well.
    “And now I understand you are off again, to Budapest, yes?”
    Raoul nodded.
    “For the foreign ministry, yes?”
    “Yes,” he said, lighting up a cigarette.
    “I know these are difficult days in Hungary, and I know too that the Jews are in particular trouble over there, so you will have your hands full, Raoul.”
    Raoul nodded. “I am glad you keep up with things, Pastor.”
    “We may be neutral politically, but morally we have to stand firm.” The pastor smiled narrowly. “But I asked you in, to ask you, before you go, if you have thought more about your faith?”
    Raoul took up his hat and twirled it, hiding his impatience. “‘Thought more about it?’ That is an odd way to put it.”
    “But you know what I mean, son.”
    “Did my cousins—” Raoul smiled. “Yes, I do. But I am not sure I have thought much more about it than I did when I was younger.”
    The pastor, his neck straining in his white collar, leaned forward. “Do you not believe, even now, that Jesus died for your sins?”
    “Please, Pastor, I have not come for this sort of testing now.”
    “But Raoul, my son, this is crucial for you, as you are about to embark on this journey. It is a journey of danger as much as one of challenge.”
    Raoul nodded. “I think you are right.”
    “Please, then, you should come to terms with yourself, with your faith, with Christ, before you embark. This will be a comfort for you, in your trials ahead.”
    Raoul smoked, and said, rather casually, “You don’t really think that that man named Jesus actually died for my personal sins, do you, Pastor? Don’t you really think that that is an elaborate interpretation of that curious man’s death?”
    The pastor reddened. “Raoul, so you don’t have faith, after all these years?” He paused. “At your confirmation, I was worried, and now … I am dismayed.”
    Raoul restrained himself. “Oh, I think that would be an exaggeration to say that. I do have faith, sir, but it is not quite in the form, or frame, of your belief. My faith is in the human side of things, rather than in the divine. Or, the divine is rather subsumed under the human.”
    “ Subsumed? How strange a term to use here. What do you mean, Raoul?”
    “Well, if we bring Jesus into the argument, that he died for our sins, does that include all human beings, or just Christians?”
    “For all people, of course—once they are believers.”
    “But are Jews believers?”
    The pastor stood and rubbed his hands together. “Not in their present form, no. But certainly once they become believers—”
    “But supposing they don’t wish to become believers of Jesus as a God?”
    The pastor shook his head and spoke sternly, “You always were a rebel, Raoul, stubbornly rebellious. Rebellion for its own sake? I don’t know …” He strolled up and down in the office. “You are so different from the rest of your