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for it, and he said I should stop talking nonsense, not to be so touchy, and if he went along with that kind of attitude he might as well eat turnip soup all his life. Believe me, he said, you need this pen more than a hundred sheepskins. He offered to take it home, wash it out, and put a good dose of people’s democratic ink into it, because I didn’t have any. And I soaked the pen in lukewarm water for a whole night to get the little pump working again; and it was already working for weeks but I still didn’t know what to do with it. Then somebody was going to Brussels, and from then on I used this pen to write my sister’s letters to my mother.
    .   .   .
    â€œHave you ever been here before?” asked the priest.
    â€œNo, I haven’t. But I’ll try to feel at home,” I said.
    â€œMost recently the place belonged to the workers’ militia,” he said.
    â€œLooks like they used it well,” I said.
    â€œThey had their rifle practice back there, in the apple orchard. At first, they used regular cardboard targets, but when the local dogcatcher joined the club, they also availed themselves of stray dogs. Of course, that seems like a children’s prank when compared to a priest annihilating his flock with sacred wafers.”
    â€œI’ll be straight with you, Father, I was hoping you harbored none of that clerical resentment,” I said.
    â€œCome on, clerical resentment left me a long time ago. Why do you think they transferred me to this godforsaken place from a cathedral in which kings had been crowned? By your criteria, I am a positively good priest.”
    I held the flashlight for him while he worked the key inside the lock, and then we stepped into the kitchen that used to be the gym and he turned on the light.
    â€œUnfortunately, they took the wall bars with them, but the springboards and the vaulting horses are still kept in the attic.”
    â€œOut in the world, one’s expectations are different.”
    â€œWell, what would you like, celery or liver dumpling soup?”
    â€œCelery.”
    â€œI could make some eggs.”
    â€œDon’t bother,” I said. “Your cook’s run away?”
    â€œYes, but let’s call her my wife. True, there was no marriage before God, but wife fits her more than any other description.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œNothing special. I taught geography, she physics, and then a new gymteacher came to our school. I don’t suppose I am adding anything new to the many moving tales of love. Luckily, there are no children.”
    â€œIn general, though, the road from divorce doesn’t always lead straight to joining the clergy.”
    â€œI was lucky. I might say I had a divine experience. My hand slipped in the school library and instead of The Golden Ass of Apuleius, I took Saint Augustine’s Confessions off the shelf.”
    â€œNot bad for a divine experience.”
    â€œMaybe a bit too much for a beginner. At first, I must have been more zealous than was necessary, because I was asked very soon to leave education. I calmed down and, at thirty, enrolled in theological studies. That’s about the size of it.”
    â€œAnd what did you take off the shelf once they transferred you to this Godforsaken place?”
    â€œAgain Saint Augustine’s Confessions .”
    .   .   .
    While the water for the celery soup was heating on the gas, we brought in some wood and built a fire in the guest room, in the weapons room, to be more exact; and to be even more exact, in the smoking room of one of the Weér counts of yore who, according to my calculations, must have been my great-great-granduncle or my great-great-great-granduncle, but in the worst case one of the cousins of my great-great-granduncle. I didn’t really have anything concrete on which to base my calculations, because as the family kept dwindling, as the family’s