William Monk 12 - Funeral in Blue

instead.
    Geissner looked up at him. “As well as fighting on the barricades, she was the one who took messages to other groups in different parts of the city. It was difficult, and became more and more dangerous. I don’t know if she was afraid. Naturally, I didn’t know her as I did the others. They were all Catholic, and she was Jewish.”
    “Are there many Jews in Vienna?”
    “Oh, yes. We have had Jews here for about a thousand years, but we have tolerated them only when it suited us. Twice we have driven them all out and confiscated their goods and property, of course, and burned at the stake those who remained. Although that is several hundred years ago now. We let them back in again when we needed their financial skills. Many of them have changed their names to make them sound more Christian, and hidden their faith. Some have even become Catholic, in self-defense.”
    Monk searched Geissner’s face but could see nothing in it to betray his feelings, either about someone who denied his faith and converted to that of his persecutors, leaving his roots and his heritage behind, or about the society which drove him to do it in order to survive. Did Father Geissner feel any guilt in that? Or was his own faith such that it held every means acceptable to bring more people to what was for him the truth? Monk found the thought repellent. But then he was not Catholic, at least not as far as he knew. In fact, he was not anything at all. But was there any truth he felt so passionately—a truth of mind, an honor, courage, pity or any other virtue—that he strove to share it with others, to preserve and pass it on at any cost to himself? Shouldn’t there be? If he had any beliefs at all, were they not to be shared, strengthened, widened with all men?
    Why was this occurring to him only now? He should surely have been conscious of the gap in his life, in his thought, where some kind of faith should have been.
    He forced his mind from himself back to the present, and the need for justice. “How did Hanna Jakob die?” he said again.
    If Geissner sensed the anger or the urgency in him there was nothing in his face to show it. “She was carrying a message of warning,” he replied. “She was captured by the army and tortured to tell them where part of Kristian’s group was and what they were planning. She would not reveal it, and she was killed.”
    “Was she betrayed?” Monk asked harshly. He wanted both the possible answers, and neither. If she had been, it might somehow explain Elissa’s murder, and yet it would be so repellent, so hideous a sin in his mind, that for Hanna’s sake, he could hardly bear it. And even more for the sake of whoever had done it. Surely the brave, idealistic Elissa could not have soiled herself with such an act of jealousy?
    “You know I cannot answer you with what I know from the confessional, Herr Monk,” Geissner said softly. “All that Hanna did was always a risk. She knew it, but she still went.”
    “They still sent her!” Monk challenged, his voice catching in his throat. He had expected Geissner to deny even the possibility of betrayal, firmly and with anger, and he had not. That was almost a confirmation in itself. Suddenly he was cold, shivery, sick inside.
    “Yes.” Geissner went on, breathing softly, his eyes down, away from Monk’s. “It was important, and she was the best at finding her way through the back streets, especially of Leopoldstadt, the old Jewish quarter. Had she been able to get through and warn the others, she believed it would have saved their lives . . . at least until next time.”
    “Believed?” Monk seized on the word. “Was it not true?”
    “Someone else warned them also.” The answer was so quiet Monk barely caught it.
    “So her death was unnecessary!” Monk found his fury choking him so he could not speak the sentence clearly.
    Geissner looked up, his eyes pleading not to be asked, and yet to be understood, so Monk might share with him a terrible truth without his betraying anyone by speaking it aloud.
    Monk stumbled towards it in growing horror. “She was in love with Kristian?” he said, repeating what Magda Beck had told him.
    “Yes.” Geissner said only the one word.
    “And could he have felt more deeply for her than only friendship and loyalty?” Monk asked him.
    “He did not say so to me,” Geissner replied, gazing at Monk steadily.
    Was that a deliberate omission, to imply that it had been so? For a long moment