He had picked that spot and that time and those two churches, and said: I’ve had enough – one day you go out alone and marry death. Matti Bonner was not saying he died because of politics, or economics, or because of a broken heart. He was saying that God had failed him in his despair. And so he risked the concept of everlasting mercy. I am not staying around, said Matti Bonner from the tree, I’ve had enough.

So, because of neighbourliness, or secret approval of his sense of courage and drama, or out of plain curiosity to see would the Catholics bury him in consecrated ground since it was rumoured that his church might not, Matti Bonner had a big funeral. People of most beliefs appeared, at least to walk the short distance behind the hearse. It was a time when all sects could attend each others’ funerals. Ecumenism was in the air, and the war had only just begun. Some of the more severe Presbyterians did disappear at some point on the street. They were still, for the moment, survivors. Others, the apologists, stood in the doorway of the chapel till the funeral Mass was over. Over the heads of the congregation they watched with fascination all that their forebears had forsworn take place on the altar. Lighted candles. Chalices. Beads in prayer. Instead of a supper that was a memorial, here was a feast that was a sacrifice. The ecumenical men looked on bemused at all the trappings, while others, like Jonathan Adams, watched with distaste the red gorge of the priest billow out like a frog’s as he drank the wine. His fingers fumble with the wafer. How he dusted his hands and knelt with a rustle and turned and blessed the congregation.

The just shall live by faith alone, Jonathan Adams said to himself.

The congregation could feel the priest’s embarrassment as he sprinkled holy water over the suicide and invited the soul to enter heaven. An eternity of the tabor. Four labouring men shouldered Matti high, and as the mourners walked behind, they looked at each other to see who was weakening. His death modified the Protestant strut, the Catholic lurch. The mourners did not grieve. Decency made it proper that they attend, not to grieve but to observe each other about their rituals. The warp of superstition attending this lone man into the grave. But then they were shocked to find that they were following the coffin of a man who by his death had belittled their existence. His suicide was preying on their minds.