The Confessor

pretended not to understand when they congratulated themselves on a very successful evening of work. And as they were leaving, I shook hands with the murderer named Luther and pissed the proffered ring of his accomplice, Bishop Lorenzi. I can still taste the bitterness on my lips.
    In my own room, I painstakingly transcribed the conversation I had just overheard. Then I lay awake in my bed until dawn. It was a night of perfect agony.
    lam writing this now on an evening in September in the year 1947. It is the eve of my wedding day, a day I never wanted. I am about to marry a man who I am fond of but whom I do not truly love. I am doing it because it is easier this way. How can I (ell them the real reason I am leaving? Who would believe such
    a story?
    I have no plans to tell anyone about that night, no plans to show anyone this document. It is a document of shame. The deaths of six million weigh heavily upon my conscience. I had knowledge, and I kept silent. Some nights they come to me, with their emaciated bodies and ragged prison clothing, and they ask me why I did not speak up in their defense. I do not have an acceptable answer. I was just a simple nun from the north of Italy. They were the most powerful people in the world. What could I have done? What could any of us have done?
    Chiara stumbled into the powder room. A moment later, Gabriel could hear her being violently sick into the toilet. Antonella Huber sat silently, her eyes blank and damp, staring out the French doors at the garden, which was twisting in the wind. Gabriel stared at the pages in her lap; at the careful, precise script of Sister Regina Carcassi. It had been a torturous thing to hear, but at the same time he was overwhelmed by a swell of pride. An amazing document, those few yellowed pages. It dovetailed perfectly with things he had learned independently already. Had not Licio, the old man from the convent, told him about Sister Regina and Luther? Had not Alessio Rossi told him about the mysterious disappearances of two priests from the Germany desk of the Secretariat of State, Monsignors Felici and Manzini? Did not Sister Regina Carcassi place those same two priests at the side of Bishop Sebastiano Lorenzi, official of the Secretariat of State, member of Crux Vera, friend of Germany? "And fortunately for you, Herr Luther, there is another true friend
    of the German people inside the Vatican--a man who outranks me significantly."
    Here was an explanation of the inexplicable. Why had Pius XII remained silent in the face of the greatest case of mass murder in history? Was it because Martin Luther convinced an influential member of the Secretariat of State, a member of the secret order known as Crux Vera, that a papal condemnation of the Holocaust would ultimately lead to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and Jewish control of Christian holy sites? If so, it explained why Crux Vera was so desperate to keep the meeting at Brenzone a secret, for it linked the order, and by extension the Church itself, to the murders of six million Jews in Europe.
    Chiara came out of the bathroom, her eyes damp and raw, and sat down next to Gabriel. Antonella Huber turned her gaze from the garden, and her dark eyes settled on Chiara's face.
    "You are Jewish, yes?"
    Chiara nodded and lifted her chin. "I am from Venice."
    "There was a terrible roundup in Venice, wasn't there? While my mother was safe behind the walls of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, the Nazis and their friends were hunting down the Jews of Venice." She turned from Chiara and looked at Gabriel. "And what about you?"
    "My family came from Germany." He said nothing more. There was nothing else to be said.
    "Could my mother have done something to help them?" She looked out the French doors once more. "Am I guilty too? Do I bear my mother's original sin?"
    "I don't believe in collective guilt," Gabriel said. "As for your mother, there was nothing she could have done. Even if she had defied the orders of the bishop and leaked word of the meeting at
    Brenzone, nothing would have changed. Herr Luther was right. The machinery was in place, the killing had begun, and nothing but the defeat of Nazi Germany was going to stop it. Besides, no one would have believed her."
    "Maybe no one will believe her now."
    "It's a devastating document."
    "It's a death sentence," she said. "They'll just dismiss it as a forgery. They'll say you're out to destroy the Church. That's what they do. That's what they