We all believed the bad years were behind us at last, life was gradually getting back on an even keel. By now everyone who came from this village is home again. Life had returned to normal—and now this murder. Suddenly there’s fear abroad once more, people question everything. We see how deceptive appearances can be in everyday life. But let’s not talk about that.

You want to ask me about the Danner family, I’m sure. Ah yes, the Danner family. What the Danners were like. Well, I think old Frau Danner was a good Christian soul. A simple woman, but very devout. She often sought and found comfort in prayer. She was very reserved, and latterly her reserve was if anything more marked. I think she had already come to the end of her journey, and was preparing herself inwardly for life after death. As far as I can judge, she was loving to her grandchildren.

Her husband was a patriarch in all senses of the word, good and bad. What he said was law in the family. No one was to rebel against him, no one. No one was to go against his will. He was certainly a believer, if in his own way. I’d say he was a man of the Old Testament. Hard on himself, hard on his family.

His daughter, Barbara. I thought for a long time she was suffering from her father’s autocratic ways. But now I’m not so sure. Barbara had been greatly influenced by her father. I’d say the two of them were bound by a love-hate relationship.

On the one hand she admired her father. In her brusque way she was often very like him. On the other hand, I can’t shake off a feeling that she detested him. Truly detested him.

She would never confide in me, although I tried to induce her to do so several times. But there was the way she sometimes looked at him when she thought she was unobserved. To me, as a man of God, it was very strange. There was hatred in her eyes. Not love, no: hatred.

As a priest one is confronted with all aspects of human life. And you may believe me when I say I have seen and known much. It was recently in particular that I more and more often saw dislike, indeed venom, in her eyes.

The child Marianne was a dreamer, a little dreamer. I taught her Religious Instruction at school. She was very quiet and dreamy. A pretty little girl with blond braids. I cannot bear to think that she too fell victim to the murderer’s hand. She and little Josef. Why, I ask myself, why can such a thing happen, why are two innocent children victims of such a wicked deed?

The mills of God grind slowly, but I do firmly believe that this deed cannot remain unatoned for. If no sentence is passed here and now on the murderer or murderers, then he or they will still not escape just retribution.

I am firmly of the opinion that none of us here can be the murderer. I wouldn’t believe such a thing of any member of my congregation. No right-minded Christian can have committed such a diabolical crime.

What became of Barbara’s husband? You mean Vinzenz?

There’s a rumor that he emigrated to America. But the only certain fact is that he isn’t here anymore. He disappeared overnight. Vinzenz was one of those refugees uprooted from their homes who came to us in the weeks and months after the end of the war, in search of a new homeland, a new place where they could live and survive.

He found work on the Danner family’s farm. It wasn’t until Barbara was pregnant that she married Vinzenz.

I can’t approve, of course, but directly after the collapse of the regime ideas of morality and order were in some confusion. After that terrible inferno, people were hungry not just for food but for physical closeness too.

It was one of the first wedding services I conducted in my new parish. Why did the marriage not last? Well, people may come together in turbulent times when in other circumstances they would never have done so. Many of these unions last, in spite of the problems of daily life, but others break under the stress of them.

Vinzenz Spangler was no farmer, and he couldn’t get used to life on the farm. In particular he had a very difficult relationship with his father-in-law, and so he left.

Two years ago Barbara became pregnant again. Georg Hauer was entered in the baptismal register as little Josef’s father. I wasn’t going to condemn anyone.

The week before her terrible death, Barbara came to see me in the presbytery. She wanted to confess, she said. But then the next moment she thought better of it. She seemed agitated, nervous. There was something on her mind. I told her to lighten her conscience.

At that her mood changed, she became defiant, almost aggressive. She had nothing to confess, she said. She didn’t have to ask forgiveness for anything, she had done nothing wrong. Then she turned to go. I stopped her, because she had left an envelope lying there. I could have that for the church, she said, or for needy souls.

“Do as you like with it. It’s all the same to me.”

And then she left the house quickly, without another word. There were 500 marks in the envelope. I still have them in my desk drawer.

There is perspiration on Barbara’s forehead. In spite of the cold, in spite of the chilly wind blowing in her face, she is sweating. She hurries up the road to her property. Her property. Her father has transferred the farm over to her. She’s her own mistress now. Her own mistress.

She has been to see the priest. She entered his room with some hesitation. She looked for an excuse. Wanted to speak to him, to ease herself and her conscience.

But then, when she was facing the priest, she stood there like a schoolgirl, couldn’t get out the words she had been planning to say. He sat there behind his desk.

What brought her to him? Was there something weighing on her conscience?

And there was a smile on his lips. That omniscient, self-satisfied smile.

His request for her to lighten her conscience, and that smile, too, the look in his eyes, had been enough to silence her completely.

Why should she do it?

Was this man to be her judge? Was he to sit in judgment on her life and what she had done? No, she didn’t want to talk to him about it. Didn’t want to receive absolution from any man. What absolution, why should she?

She had done nothing wrong. Wrong had been done to her. Wrong had been done to her since she was twelve years old.

For years she had fought against her feelings of guilt, had always done as she was told.

At school they were taught that Eve gave Adam the apple, and so both were guilty of original sin and were driven out of Paradise.

She hadn’t driven anyone out of Paradise. She had been driven out of it herself.

To this day she sees her father before her. Her father, whom she had loved so much. She remembers feeling his hands on her body, those groping hands.

She had lain there perfectly rigid. Incapable of moving. Frozen. Hardly daring to breathe.

Eyes tight shut, she lay there in her bed. Not wanting to believe what was happening to her. Her father’s breath on her face. His groans in her ears. The smell of his sweat. The pain that filled her body. She kept her eyes shut, tight shut. As long as she didn’t see anything, nothing could be happening.

Only what I see can happen to me, she had told herself.

Next morning her father was the same as usual. For weeks nothing more happened. She had almost forgotten the incident. Had suppressed the memory of her father’s smell, the smell of his sweat, his groan, his lust. It was all hidden behind a thick veil of mist.

She still wanted to be “a good daughter.” Just that, a good daughter. She wanted to honor her father and her mother. As the priest always said they must in Religious Instruction. Everything her father did was right. He was the center of her life, he was Lord God Almighty on the farm.