He sat down again, leaned forward, rapt in his own thoughts, and stared at the surface of my desk as he began to speak. ‘When she came to me, two years ago, she entered my life like an angel. Where there had previously been darkness, she brought light. Where there had been desert, she planted flowers. Where for years I’d been wandering alone and hungry, she was my manna 302from heaven. I’d lived alone for years and had never had any female acquaintances other than … friends, often older than me. Colleagues in the communities where I served, women who sought me in an official capacity. But I wasn’t without emotion. I, too, felt the lusts of the flesh awaken in me. From the outside, the Christian world may seem de-eroticised and unemotional. But it isn’t like that. If you read hymn poetry you’ll find many powerful declarations of erotic love; and in my life in Christian societies I’ve seen many a devoted couple whose mutual love – and desire – has shone like a sun around them both.’

Biblical metaphors not only coloured his speech, but also his face. A gleam of elation and rapture spread across his pale complexion and his eyes sparkled darkly. ‘Rebecca was … like that for me. She came to me at a difficult time. She talked to me about her worries, about her betrayal, she came to me with her bad conscience and fragile marriage and the fact that the man she was married to was one of my closest co-workers didn’t make any of this easier for me.’

He shot me a quick glance, then looked down. ‘So I gave her the comfort, the care and the advice she needed. I gave her the strength she needed to return to Jakob with an open mind and then … she went. Back. But in a way she stayed with me. Over me hung a shadow … of light – a reflection, I suppose I should say. She was in my thoughts, and I could circle around the chair where she had been sitting in my office – a very ordinary spindle-back chair, dark-brown wood with red leather on the seat and back – and I experienced this as … as though it had become a holy relic. That was all. Nothing else happened.’

I looked at him enquiringly. ‘Nothing?’

‘Not then,’ he added solemnly. ‘Not until the following year. Last year … it happened, the anguish for both of us. But first of 303all a great trust grew between us. After I’d managed to get her back on an even keel and steered her back to her marriage she used to drop in now and then. I realised that she felt alone and needed someone to talk to. A father, a brother, a … well.’ He hunched his shoulders and stretched out his hands.

‘So that was what I became for her. Her confidant. And she mine. There wasn’t a thing we couldn’t talk about. I’d never experienced anything like it – being able to speak to another person and, on top of that, a woman. So open and so without … barriers. And then perhaps we became too close…’ He searched for words. ‘In the end I invited her home. I wanted to make a fuss of her … I even made her waffles. Bought some liqueur. We … It just happened. We found each other.’ He looked up at me, his eyes begging me to understand so that he wouldn’t have to go into details.