“That’s not a sin, Rico. You loved her.”
“I loved her, Paolo . . . What do I say to Father Costantino?”
“When you kneel down you say, ‘Father, I have no sins. Please give me a blessing.’ Then you go up to the altar rail and say the prayers he tells you to say.”
“I will. But why doesn’t my father say his sins? Why doesn’t the soldier in the barn who, who . . .”
“Maybe your father goes to confession at the cathedral in Montepulciano, before Mass. Maybe he has no sins. About the soldier, I don’t know.”
“He hurt you. In the face.”
“Yes.”
There was a quick smattering of rain, the storm’s afterthought. The droplets, carried on a gust of wind, held the wet scent of sage. A rabbit dashed across the dirt in front of them.
“Have you done something bad, Paolo?”
“Many times.”
“Why?”
Paolo shrugged, allowed himself to remember the sight of the smoking metal and what remained of Brindisi’s body. The latest and worst, it seemed to him, in a long line of transgressions. “Because I thought, at the time, that I was doing something good.”
“Oh.”
Another shower.
“Paolo?”
“What?”
“Why did the soldier make Antonina dead with his gun? The blood came out of her mouth. Why did he?”
Paolo walked along for half a minute without answering. It seemed to him that he could feel Enrico working through the trauma in the barn, a subject he’d already raised many times that morning.
“There are things only God knows, Rico. We can’t know them until we die.”
Enrico nodded somberly. They were most of the way there before he spoke again. “Paolo?”
“Yes?”
“What do I say to Father Costantino?”
Paolo repeated the instructions. They stepped onto a paved road and climbed a last serpentine kilometer into the village.
The nave was empty except for Father Costantino, who was dusting pews outside the confessional. Wide-shouldered and strong, with a rectangular face that seemed cut from stone, he smiled when he saw them, and then, when Paolo asked for his sins to be heard, the priest obliged without complaint and ducked into the middle part of the wooden confessional. Paolo and Enrico took their places to either side, the old kneelers squeaking beneath their weight. Paolo could hear the boy working hard to pronounce the sentence he’d just been taught, twice. “Please give me the blessing. Then go up to the altar rail, Father. I haven’t done anything bad.”
“Yes, my son, I know. You go up to the altar rail, not me. You say one Ave Maria, and then you sit in the front pew and wait for Old Paolo, and think about something that makes you happy.”
“Yes, Father.”
The Latin absolution followed, and then Enrico said, “I can go now?”
“Yes, Enrico. Go with God.”
“And you go with Mary, Father.”
Father Costantino covered the screen on the other side, and half turned, and Paolo felt the words flow from him like a river in springtime. Quietly, one syllable tumbling upon the next. “First I broke one commandment, Father, and now another. Now I am a murderer. And last night the Germans came to us and killed the boy’s favorite horse. I am paying for my sins.”
“They didn’t find the deserters, I’m guessing.”
“No, Father.”
A long silence followed. Paolo could hear Father Costantino clearing his throat, swallowing, breathing, but he could see only a shadowy profile through the metal screen between them. “Two of the most important commandments,” Paolo added.
Father Costantino coughed. “Paolo,” he said, then paused again. “My understanding is that those sins of long ago have been confessed and forgiven in this very church. Am I correct?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Then to speak of them now, again and again, is the same as cutting your arm, having the wound heal, and then cutting it again on purpose. God doesn’t want that. God isn’t interested in guilt. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Then stop mentioning them.”
“Yes, Father.”
Paolo could hear Enrico at the altar rail, praying as loudly as if the sound of his words had to reach up past the stars and into heaven. “PRAY FOR US SINNERS, AMEN. AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH, AMEN!”
“And the most recent, Father?”
“Say three Hail Marys and imagine the world at peace.”