“I think so,” I said.
“Then right this way.” He lumbered into the confessional off to the side of the altar. I followed him, and we each sat on our own side of the booth.
“Father, I need help,” I said.
“We all need help from time to time,” he rasped.
“No, it’s my feet, they’re freezing and I need somewhere to hide.”
The friar was quiet for a moment, and I didn’t say a word. The red chair smelled of incense.
“Your fellow soldiers will be able to help you,” he said.
“I am not one of them, Father.”
“Then what are you?”
What am I? That’s what I didn’t know anymore, what I hadn’t understood since the war began and everyone was forced to take sides. I was a cave-dweller. An animal in the twilight. A vagrant of the snow. A Dutchman. A Nazi. An orphan. I couldn’t answer. I scratched at the wood on the pew with my fingertips.
“My son, what can I do for you?”
“My feet,” I said. “I need someone to doctor them. Please.”
“Son, I think the other soldiers can help you.”
“Father, please. I’m not one of them.” I wanted to tell him about Janna and Mevi, but at the moment I thought they’d be ignored or worse for being Jewish and falling in his line of sight. “Just look at my feet.”
The friar stood up, opened his door, and then swung mine open. He stood there, imposing and as wide as the door frame. I’d made a mistake. I reached into my bag and rooted around for the Luger. The friar lifted his cassock and pulled out two Colt revolvers, one in each hand, that he slung from his belt line. By the time he had the guns leveled at my head, I hadn’t even grabbed the handle of the Luger.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Please, watch your mouth in here, young man.”
“You’re carrying guns in the church?”
“What are you reaching for?”
I slumped back. The bag fell to my feet. I didn’t see a way to get by him.
“Well, son. I guess you’d better let me have a look at your feet to judge for myself,” he said.
I kicked off my left boot and reached down to peel off the sock, and the friar let one gun drop to his side and lifted his other hand to block his nose from the stench. My second and third toes on that foot were solid black. There were red lines under the skin, leading across the top of my foot where the entire thing had become infected.
“Why haven’t you gone to the soldiers to have those taken care of?”
“I told you, I’m not one of them.”
“Is the other foot like that?”
“Only one of my toes on that foot is frozen.”
“Okay then,” the man said, holstering his guns under his cassock. “Who are you?”
“Someone who needs help, that’s all.”
“You have to understand, no one can be trusted in these times. The Gestapo dress up like downed airmen in order to infiltrate the escape lines. Even telling that story does damage. It makes people nervous. I can never be too careful.” He stroked his ginger-colored beard and looked at my rotting foot again. “Let’s see what we can do for you.”
“You’re not going to turn me in?” I asked.
“You’re not going to give me a reason to, are you?”
Specks of dust drifted through the rafters. The friar’s breathing was still labored.
“No. I’m out of options. I need your help.”
“Like I said, we all need help sometimes.”
“Then, I have friends too,” I said, and pointed to the back of the church where Janna was holding Mevi tight as if ready to dash from the church.
The friar led the three of us to a room behind the altar. “You stay here for a bit. When it’s dark, we’ll find you some help.”
We waited there for hours. I struggled to remember the ritual of a Mass. The standing, sitting, and kneeling. Lining up for communion. I couldn’t grasp finding solace in such a habit. I wanted no Christian bread or Jesus wafers now. After being alone with my thoughts for so long, I only wanted the hot breath of words. More words than I could take in. Anoint me with voices and the stories of those I love, an outpouring of everything they know. That alone would be worth falling to my knees in worship.
When the friar came back, he motioned for us to follow. We walked out the back of the church and through the park where we’d been sitting earlier. We cleared the park, and kept walking to the outskirts of town. When we passed people on the street, even soldiers, they nodded to the friar and didn’t stop us.
I asked him where he had gotten his guns.
“Maybe it’s best we know very little about each other,” he said.
“It’s only that I’ve never met such a heavily armed man of God before. Not even a poorly armed one.”
“Well, one of the guns is for any German who gets in my way, and the other is for me if I fail to hold them off.”
We continued in silence past the city limits. Painful kilometers, leading us through farmlands.
When we reached a farmhouse set off by itself, the friar knocked on the door and we waited until an old man opened. The man wore scuffed rubber boots, wool pants, and a brown sweater with a coarse collar popped to cover the back of his neck. His cheeks were pitted, and a purple filigree of veins webbed across his swollen nose. He looked at the four of us, and I saw he didn’t recognize the friar.
“May we warm up at your table for a minute, sir, before we carry on our way?”
The man hesitantly stepped aside. Inside, an old woman stood in the doorway. The old man had a laborer’s powerful hands. His wife was stern, upright, with big eyes that took us in. She gave a slight, sad smile to Mevi.
“Very cold out there tonight. We’re sorry to be a bother, but like I said, just a moment to warm up.”
The old man pulled out three roughly hewn chairs at his table for us to sit down. The friar looked around the house and then set his eyes on the old man. “A lovely house you have here, sir.” He pulled a torn playing card from his cassock and laid it on the table in front of him.
“Thank you,” the man said. He looked at the card, and then for a long moment at each of us. He stood up and walked to a cupboard behind him, and when the man turned his back the friar fingered the handle of one of the revolvers under his cassock, his white cord with three knots swung off the side of the chair. When the old man turned around, he brought the matching half of the friar’s torn card to the table.
“Very good,” the friar said, letting his hands slip away from his sides. “This young man here could use some help that is beyond me.”
“And who is this young man?” the old woman asked.
“I’m Dutch.”
“And?”