“You get angry, I get angry, everyone gets angry. What you seem to be talking about”—The Rabbi spoke in a crisp, accented voice—“is extraordinary anger, which I suspect has something to do with your war experiences, otherwise why would you bring that up in the first place?”

Decker didn’t answer.

The Rosh Yeshiva went over to his desk, pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. He poured a big one for himself, a smaller one for Decker, and said, “So, do you want to tell me about it?”

Decker held the glass, swirled the whiskey. “It’s hard.”

“Let me guess.” Schulman downed the first shot. “You killed someone. You probably killed more than one person, but one specific person is sticking in your mind. Notice I used the word ‘kill’ and not ‘murder.’ A war situation, Akiva, you cannot consider yourself a murderer…unless the killing was gratuitous.”

“I didn’t think so at the time,” Decker said. “I swear—”

“No shevuah, please,” the old man said. “Swearing is serious business.”

“I really thought that this girl—she was a sixteen-year-old girl—was enemy. I shot her at point-blank range. She…exploded all over me. Her blood was still warm…God, it was awful.”

“Sit,” Schulman demanded. Decker obeyed. The old man said, “Did you rape this girl before—”

“God no!”

“Just a question,” the old man said. “You’d be surprised what kind of confessions have come through this office.”

“I thought Jews don’t confess.”

“To God, we confess everyday,” the rav said. “But confession to man is not a part of our religion. Unofficially, however, my bochrim have told me things. Believe me, you’re not the first young man to tell me his dark secrets.”

He poured himself another shot and urged Decker to drink. “Since this isn’t confession in the Catholic sense—where a parishioner unburdens his soul and a priest listens and forgives in the name of God—I’m going to tell you one of my war stories.”

“Please,” Decker said.

“You know I was in the camps, nu?”

Decker nodded.

Schulman said, “I escaped in a very strange way. Only God could have fated such a rescue. I was young, but I came down with a very bad case of pneumonia. No use to the Nazis anymore. The Germans took a truckload of us out into the forest to be shot. Why out there, I don’t know. The grounds around Auschwitz were piled high with dead bodies, maybe they were running out of room.”

Decker winced, but Schulman was calm.