It had worked every time. The family had their faith to fall back on and would immerse themselves in it. The dead child would be mourned and the living would be shielded. The story of Job’s faith under trial was their anchor.
And all around them, in the circles in which they moved, their explanation of the child’s disappearance would be that she had been ostracized. In this case, it would be easy to believe. Magdalena stuck out, she shone, and in their community this was no advantage. Her parents would say that she had been sent away to family. And the community would concern itself no more with the issue. He would be safe.
He smiled to himself.
Soon there would be one fewer of those who put God before man to pollute the world.
The dissolution of the pastor’s family occurred one day in winter, just weeks after his fifteenth birthday. In the months before, he had become aware that his body was changing, oddly and inexplicably. Sinful thoughts of the kind the community warned against had begun to pursue him. He saw a woman bend forward in a tight skirt, and that same evening he experienced his first, sudden ejaculation with her image on his retina.
He felt the sweat seeping from his armpits, and his voice trembled and lurched in all directions. The muscles of his neck became taut, and hair sprouted everywhere, dark and crinkly.
He felt like a molehill on a flat field.
When he made an effort, he could vaguely see himself in the boys of the congregation who had undergone the same transformation before him, but he had no idea what it was all about. The subject was never ever broached in the house his father referred to as “the home of God.”
For three years, his mother and father had addressed him only when it could not be avoided. They never saw the efforts he made, never noticed him trying hard to make amends at prayer meetings. To them, he was Satan’s image in the name of Chaplin. Nothing else. And whatever he might say or do could make no difference.
The congregation said he was strange and possessed, and they gathered in prayer so that no other child might become like him.
Only Eva stuck with him, and even she occasionally deserted him, and under pressure from their father would declare solemnly that he had spoken ill of his parents and wished not to obey them and heed the word of God.
Subsequently, his father had made it his second mission in life to break him down. Commands with no obvious point. A daily diet of ridicule and chastisement, with beatings and psychological terror for dessert.
To begin with, he had been able to seek comfort from one or two members of the congregation, but soon they too turned their backs on him. In such communities, the wrath of God towers tall above human compassion, and in its shadow the God-fearing individual looks only to the Lord and takes care of himself.
They chose sides and shied away. Eventually, all he could do was turn the other cheek.
Exactly as the Bible said.
And in this shadowy home in which nothing could breathe, the relationship between him and Eva slowly withered. How many times had she said she was sorry, and how many times had he turned a deaf ear?
Eventually, he no longer had even his sister, and on this day in winter everything broke.
“You sound like a squealing pig with that voice,” his father told him as they sat down at the table in the kitchen. “You look like one, too. A swine. Look at yourself. See how repulsive and fat you are. Use that ugly snout to sniff in your foul odor. Go and wash, you disgusting creature!”
Such was the baseness, such were the snide commands, one after another. Matters of little consequence, like this order to wash his hands before dinner, accumulated, until finally he felt he could no longer cope. And when his father’s outburst was over, he would no doubt have him scrubbing the walls of his room so that his smell might be purged.
So why not stand up to him?
“I suppose you want me to scrub my room with detergent before you’re satisfied and finished with all your ridiculous orders? Well, you can do it yourself, you old fart,” he spat.
And then his father began to perspire, and his mother to protest. Who was he to speak to his father like that?
His mother would try to drive him into a corner. He knew her. She would tell him to vanish from their lives, and when eventually he was exhausted by all their unreasonableness, he would slam the door behind him and stay away half the night. These were her tactics, and they had worked so often when things came to a head. But tonight they would fail.
He sensed his new body tighten, felt the blood pump in his veins, his muscles warming. If the clenched fist of his father should come too close, it would be met in kind.
“Leave me alone, you monster,” he warned. “I hate your guts. I hope you die, you bastard. Stay away from me.”
Seeing such a pious individual as their father disintegrate into a storm of invective only Satan could have delivered was too much for Eva. The retiring little girl who hid behind her apron and absorbed herself in her daily chores now leaped forward and pounded her fists against her brother’s chest.
He would not be allowed to ruin their lives more than he had done already, she screamed at her brother as their mother intervened to pull them apart, their father suddenly darting to produce two bottles from the cupboard under the kitchen sink.
“Get thee to thy room, Chaplin-devil, and scour thy walls with lye!” he hissed, his face flushed with rage. “And if you don’t, then mark my words I’ll make sure you can’t get out of bed for a week, do you understand me?”
And then his father spat in his face, pressing one of the bottles into his hand before standing back with a sneer to watch his saliva running down the boy’s cheek.
His son unscrewed the lid of the bottle and began slowly to pour its corrosive contents onto the kitchen floor.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, boy?” his father bellowed, snatching the bottle from his hand. And an arc of caustic soda sloshed into the air and splashed to the floor.
His father’s roar was deep and resonant. But it was nothing compared to the scream that came from Eva.
Her entire body shook, her hands flapping in front of her face as though she didn’t dare to touch. In the few seconds that passed, the caustic soda ate into her eyes and removed her sight forever.
And as the room filled with their mother’s cries and Eva’s screams, and his own horror at what he had done, his father stood and stared at his hands as they blistered from the alkali, his face changing from red to blue.
Then suddenly his eyes widened and he clutched at his chest, doubling up and staggering forward, gasping for breath, lips twisted in surprise and disbelief. And when finally he fell to the floor, the life they had known was over.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Almighty Father, I rest in Thy hand,” he rattled with the last of his breath, and then he was gone. Arms folded in a cross on his chest, a faint smile on his face.
He stood for a moment and stared at his father’s frozen death mask while his mother begged for God’s mercy and Eva howled.
The thirst for vengeance that had kept him going for so many months had lost its source of nourishment. His father was dead from a heart attack with a smile on his face and the word of God on his lips.