He’d been trying to get me to do this since I’d met him—to be honest with him. But I’d learned long ago that no confession was safe. Yet as I heard his soft breathing, saw the shape of his hands through the screen, the sadness and rage and loneliness I’d donemy best to keep locked tight spilled out of me, a dam finally breaking.
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.” The words tumbled into the darkness. “I say the prayers, I attend Mass, but…I fear every day that God has forsaken me. Has forsaken this city.
Heinrich was quiet, letting me continue.
“And yet I still find myself praying. Every night. I pray, hoping he will hear me. I ask…” I pressed my palms against my eyes. I couldn’t say that—not aloud, not to him.
“I am here to listen, Katharina, not to judge.”
It weighed on me like lead—these desires. The desire to live in the light. To offer my knowledge without constant fear. The desire to have more than a threadbare dress and flattened shoes. The desire to have him wrap his arms around me and hold me tight, not as priest and flock, but as man and woman. To have his lips open to mine, to feel the heat of him against this damned cold that never went away, even in the height of summer.
“Katharina.” He didn’t sound impatient. He never did. “Do you know what Christ did when they brought him the adulteress? He said, ‘Let him without sin cast the first stone.’”
I swallowed hard. “But I am not without sin, Father. That is the problem.”
“None of us are.” His voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “And yet we torture ourselves for wanting the things that make us human. We flagellate our hearts for daring to desire connection and purpose. The Church teaches that desire is the enemy of holiness, but I wonder sometimes…” He trailed off, and I heard him shift behind the screen.
“Wonder what?”
“If perhaps desire is simply love that hasn’t found its proper home yet. If wanting—truly wanting—is not a sin but a compass pointing us toward what we were made for.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “And the guilt? What of the guilt that follows every wanting?”
“Guilt is a manacle, Katharina—one the Church has become very skilled at forging.” He exhaledslowly. “I have heard a thousand confessions in this box. Women who weep because they felt a moment of joy. Men who punish themselves for feeling compassion. Children—children—who believe they are damned because they wished for a full belly or a mother’s embrace.” His voice roughened. “None of that is God’s design.”
I’d never heard him speak so freely. “You don’t think desire is a sin?”
“I think sin is watching suffering and doing nothing when you have the power to help.” He paused. “I know God’s love isn’t found in scripture or behind altars, but in the hearts and hands of those who serve others.”
My breath caught. “If anyone heard you say such things?—”
“Then I would burn as a heretic. And perhaps I am one. Because I cannot reconcile the God I feel in my heart—the one who made…clever minds and gentle hands—with the one the Bishop claims to serve.”
Through the screen, our eyes met. For the first time since I was young, in the darkness of the confessional, the truth rose to the surface.
“I dream about her, my mother,” I admitted. “Not just the burning. The things she taught me—how the garden and its bounty were a blessing from God himself, and how we served him by understanding its purpose. She said knowledge was its own prayer.” My throat tightened. “But knowledge killed her.”
“No,” Heinrich said firmly. “Fear killed her. Fear of women who didn’t need men to interpret God for them. Your mother died for the same reason Christ did—for showing people they had power the authorities didn’t want them to know about.”
“Sometimes I…I’m so afraid, Heinrich. I don’t want to burn. I think of just being the obedient, invisible creature they want.”
“And?” He was always so patient.
“And then I think of Leibchen.” Fresh tears slipped down my cheeks. “How quickly they disposed of her once she stopped producing. How her years of service meant nothing once herbody failed. That’s all women are to them—bodies that produce until they don’t, then fodder for fire.”
“You’re angry.”
“Yes.” The word hissed out. “Is that a sin too?”
“Christ overturned the moneylenders’ tables. Even God’s Son knew righteous anger.” The wooden bench creaked as he shifted, the smile evident in his voice. “Though perhaps don’t overturn any tables just yet.”
Despite everything, I laughed—a watery, broken sound, but real.
I took a shaky breath. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have desires I cannot rid myself of. No matter what I do, they linger in my heart.”
“These are not sins. But if they were, you would be absolved. God sees your heart, and it is pure.”
“Heinrich—”
