This piece is not meant to offend anyone, but to depict how I think the characters might feel. I also understand that Max was Jewish, but the reason he didn't go to a synagogue is I believe there were few to none in Germany shortly after WWII. Thanks
***A NOTE ON RELGION***
Humans have their artifices which help them endure this life
Some use them to give them hope
Others to justify their actions
And still others to justify their inaction…
As for me, all I have is the truth
Accept responsibility for your actions,
Life and even I are the result of human actions
Blame is not for a higher being
but instead humanity for what it has crafted…
Max has a tattered Bible tucked under one arm. One hand is hooked around the doorway as he struggles to hold himself up and lock the door. It's a bad day. Sometimes it just is. Usually there's some small clue that lets her on before it starts—one nightmare lasting longer than usual—late at night lying awake in the dark watching without him knowing as he traces the tattoo on his forearm.
But today it had been different, there wasn't anything, nothing to show that once again the carefully crafted facade he had built and sometimes was actually able to live had broken down.
One side of Max's face is bruised; a deep purple discoloration mars the skin around his other eye. The smell of liquor is wafting thickly off him. He never drinks—she can count the few times he has on her fingers—but when he does it's bad. All the self loathing, anger, grief, and every other emotion he's tried to bottle up is suddenly spilling out. It's an uncontrolled flood and all Liesel can try to do is stem the tide.
He crashes into a chair and books tumble to the ground. He's already kneeling trying to clumsily gather them. Liesel moves closer, no matter how much warning she gives he always flinches as she touches him. It hurts her, to imagine the pain a person has to have felt to always have the memory of it clawing at them.
His eyes are bloodshot and his lips struggle to form the words without slurring them, but she can understand them. Liesel wishes she couldn't.
"I'm a sinner"
Liesel swallows. It's just late, he's tired, and drunk and miserable and she doesn't know how to fix that. She knows she can never fix it…not really. In the morning he'll sober up, talk, maybe even smile, but he'll still be as broken as ever, only hiding it again. She ignores his attempts to pick up the books that keep cascading from his hands and instead pulls him up. "Come on."
He leans on her heavily, each step worse than the one before. Liesel turns to look at him as best she can when he whispers her name and then says again. "I'm a sinner."
Before she can figure out the words to counter his quiet confession, he's pulled away from her grasp and is doubled over heaving. The heavy scent of alcohol is mixed with the scant remains of the only food he's eaten all day.
He straightens up smelling worse and looking so miserable she feels tears pricking her eyes. They barely make it to the ragged couch in front room. Even years of starvation and near starvation haven't reduced his frame enough that she could hope to get him to their bed by herself. And he's not walking; he's not even talking anymore. He's staring at the book in his hand, and holding it so tightly his knuckles are white.
Liesel manages to get his dirty outer clothes off, covers him with a blanket, and cleans the mess on the floor. Throughout it all he never releases his grip on the Bible. With a shaking breath she blows out the two lamps, leaving only the dim fireplace light. Max barely glances at her as she settles next to him and silently strokes his hair.
"I'm a sinner." He whispers the words again, but this time she can hear the tears in his voice, she can feel them as they fall onto the hand she clasps to the side of his face.
There the sound of paper flicking, roughly pages tearing, ripping. And Max tells her the story and she tries to understand the halting, slurred words. "There's…supposed to be a God…I couldn't take it anymore…I stopped at the cathedral after work…"
Liesel smoothes his hair and scoots closer and he trembles and his voice catches. Hs voice is begging her to understand, and she wishes there was some way to convince him after all this time, that she is the only person who could understand and yet even she truly can't…nobody can ever do so.
"I just wanted somebody to know…I just wanted an answer…I told him…everything….and he…the priest… said it was God's will….That we were sinners who had to be punished…hell on earth before the final thing…that we all deserved to die…I deserve to die…I've sinned…we should beg for absolution…"
The broken pages of the book crackle as he whispers and she can see the images and thoughts plaguing his mind with every broken whisper as he starts reading a random passage.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
Lines of people marching without hope to the same end only with different paths. A hot tearing bullet and a spray of red. White gas billowing in clouds and graying corpses foaming at the mouth. Thick ropes twisted around the necks and mouth lolling open as eyes bulge.
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
Where was God when children died by the thousands in one day? Their bodies were piled so high the crematoriums couldn't began to dispose of them all. Where was God when countless people were dying at one another's hands?
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Sticks and whips raining down on their shoulders as they reached for each other in a crowded street. A broken Jew and a girl—almost—a woman struggling to hold back the inevitable moment when they would be pulled apart and most likely never see each other again.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
Shoving and pushing to get to the meager bread that was thrown to them. There was no kindness, no humanity, just a starving ragged mass of people desperate for something to soothe their craving and all the while knowing that it was hopeless, they were the walking dead.
thou anointest my head with oil;
Shears nicking his head. Clumps of black hair falling to the ground to mingle with the other colours already strewn across the courtyard. The harsh bite of cold against his knees and the sting of alcohol against his scalp.
my cup runneth over.
Water, cold fresh and clear and the most delicious thing after days spent in a crowded cattle car with nothing but a brackish pail of liquid for almost a hundred people. Cool drops on cracked lips, flowing down a parched throat.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
What goodness was there in a person who had left his family behind to die and saved himself? What mercy was there in a life that left that as the only choice that would allow him to live? What mercy was there in being spared countless times over but watching others die instead?
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
There couldn't be a God, there couldn't be anybody who cared. Why else would the world have nearly ended? There was nothing, but hell. Unending and continuous…he tried to forget but it was there every day, tugging at his soul, dragging him down…
"I'm a sinner."
Salty tears drip down his face; he tastes them on his lips. He doesn't know what to believe, he doesn't know what he wants to believe. He only knows the truth of those words. He is alive and it is so wrong.
There is no absolution, only quiet tears and even quieter repetitions of the same broken phrase until they became indistinguishable from the sobs that wrack his frame.
Liesel pulls him closer wrapping her arms around his shivering frame. She wants to tell him that it isn't true, but she feels like a sinner herself. Survivors are what other people would call them—they managed to survive all their families and friends. The survived a world that was crashing down around them.
She's heard people say they were lucky. Other says they were blessed. It's not a blessing.
Sinner and survivor the words feel the same.
They hurt the same, every minute of every day. The pain changes but it's always there.
The night lengthens. The fire burns down. Tears soak into their skin until there's no more left. Two bodies are wrapped around each other. Two people are holding each other together. Two minds have their own private torture.
Two souls scream for absolution.
***LASTLY***
There's no repentance for existence.
And there shouldn't need to be.
Life isn't something you require absolution for…
The psalm is 23rd Psalm from the Bible. The usage in this story was not meant to offend anyone's religion but to portray the events and characters in this story by using religious overtones as a subtext for a personal struggle against inner demons. After WWII some people believed that Hitler and the Nazis had been right in their attempted genocide, which is reflected in the priest comments to Max.
Also after traumatic and chaotic events in a person's life their religious and moral beliefs can be shaken or destroyed, because it's hard to reconcile what has happened with the belief of a higher being whose is supposed to prevent these things from happening.
Faith can be hard to retain in the face of evil and destruction.
Thanks for reading.
I write stories...you review...seems fair? If you're for author-reader equality click the little review button. ;)