After that, I was alone. I had only confused ideas about what the long remainder of life might consist of, and I went in search of answers. I talked to people I met, but they didn’t speak to me. I stood for hours at my parents’ grave, and they certainly didn’t speak to me. I sat at the bar in the Golden Moon, but the schnapps and the dullness of my thoughts just made me feel sick. I got on the bus and travelled out across the fields to the terminus and back again. I leaned my forehead against the window and saw the passing landscape disappear behind my cloudy breath, but apart from that nothing happened.

One day I went into the church. I sat in the seat where I had let things take their course all those years ago. I remembered feeling safe between the bodies of my parents. My mother’s warmth. My father, who was so big, yet only one of many. And I remembered that forbidden, uncontrollable urge, and my salvation, accompanied by shame and desire.

From then on I came every day, and eventually the priest noticed me. I’d always made sure I was alone; I usually came at midday, as not even the oldest, loneliest people strayed into the church at that time. So it was all the more of a shock when he was suddenly standing beside me. He was short, and in the soutane with the black cincture around his stomach his figure seemed delicate and feminine. I felt as if I’d been caught red-­handed, and when I glanced up and looked into his face, the tears sprang to my eyes.

I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.

Although it was this priest’s affection that prepared the way for me, I don’t remember his name. Nor do I remember ever having heard it. He once said that only offices and authorities were interested in names; before God we were all just humankind. That pleased me. I liked him a lot. And right after our first meeting, after he wrote the Word on my forehead with his thumb and I stepped out of the shadowy church into the bright sunlight, I decided that I would emulate him and choose the priesthood as my profession. My search was at an end. He had found me. Overcome with anticipation and joy, I laughed across at the construction workers sitting on their scaffolding on the other side of the street. They said nothing, just bit silently into their rolls. Beer sloshed in their bottles.

The seminary was a long way from home; I felt like an outsider there, and was considered odd. I had neither friends nor enemies. I wasn’t interested in the others. Their aspirations and mine had nothing in common. While they played football or recited psalms in the evenings, I knelt in my room and prayed up against the wall until I saw the star-­studded cloak of the Mater ter admirabilis in the cracks in the plaster.