The Devil's Opera(200)

“Yah,” Gotthilf nodded.

“Well, this comes under that heading.”

Byron sat down in his chair and leaned back. “And let me introduce you boys to a piece of gen-u-ine hillbilly wisdom: if Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

Gotthilf considered his family; particularly his own mother.

“Point.”

* * *

Simon left Frau Zenzi’s with his usual roll. He didn’t need the rolls now like he used to. Between his improving earnings as a messenger and the money that Ursula had, neither of them went hungry anymore. But Frau Zenzi insisted, and to make her happy he did it. Besides, he thought as he took another bite of the roll, it was still some of the best bread around.

Schatzi appeared from around the corner of a building, and stopped close to him, tail wagging slightly. Simon took one last big bite, then tossed the rest to her. She caught it out of the air, and wolfed it down before he could even chew his piece twice. He laughed around the bite. She looked at him with her head tilted for a moment, then turned and headed back the way she came.

Simon was still chuckling when he started back down the street. He wasn’t quite ready to go back to the rooms yet, so he just wandered for a while.

In the days since Hans’ death, he had passed through what Pastor Gruber assured him was a cycle of emotion that almost everyone encountered. He had gone from being numb, to angry, to questioning, and he was finally arriving at acceptance. Oh, he still had days where he was angry with Magdeburg, with the Polizei, with himself. But he had come to see that Hans had made the choices that took him to that end. And like it or not, at that end, Hans had willingly paid that price.

Consequences.

That word had been rolling around in his mind ever since that night. But now, instead of thinking about Hans and his consequences, he had started thinking about his own.

He could see that he had choices to make. And he wanted to be wise in making those choices. He had no desire to come to the same end as Hans. At the same time, he had no desire to remain a crippled orphan. For the first time in his life, he had developed an ambition to do more than just stay alive another day.

There were four men who had recently made a difference in his life. Four men representing four choices. He had been considering them for days now, and he was still considering them.

Before long he found himself standing outside St. Jacob’s church. The evening light made the front of the church almost seem to have a golden glow. Small and old and shabby it might be, but at that moment it was a beautiful building.

At that moment, Simon made a decision; one that he had been weighing for some time. He went to the small side door and knocked. There was the sound of movement behind the door, then it was opened. Pastor Gruber stood in the opening.

“Yes, who is…Oh, it’s you, Simon. Come in, my boy.”

The old pastor ushered him back into the same crowded little room they had last used.

“Well, what can I do for you, Simon? Do you have an interesting question today?”

The pastor’s gnarled hand reached into the breast of his coat and pulled out his old worn Bible, in expectation.

Simon leaned forward on his stool.

“I need to make a choice, Pastor, about what I want to do with my life, now that Hans is gone.”

“I see,” Gruber stroked his beard. “And what are you considering?”

“You know what I have lived through, what I have felt, over the last few months. You know the men who I have been around.” Simon waved his hand in an all-encompassing gesture. “You know what has happened.”

The pastor nodded. “Go on, lad,”

“Hans was my first friend,” Simon whispered. “And for long, he was my only friend. I learned how to be a friend from him. And I miss him.”

Simon swallowed. “But I don’t want to be hard like him. I can’t fight. I can’t work like he could. I don’t want to be a Samson. I want to be something other, something more.”

“I understand,” Pastor Gruber murmured.

“Andreas Schardius.” Simon’s eyes narrowed to slits as he hissed that name, feeling the anger flare in his soul. “From him I learned what an enemy truly was. I learned how to despise people, and look on them as prey. From him I learned the kind of person I definitely do not want to be.”

“Commendable.”

“Gotthilf Hoch.” Simon sat back and held his hand palm up before him. “A good man, a just man, a fair man. I like him, and I’m glad he’s going to marry Ursula. From him I learned that every person is worth something. Even me. And if it wasn’t for this,” he shrugged his right shoulder, “I might want to be one of the Polizei like he is. But they would never take me with only one arm. And I’m not sure I would want to be in a job where I might have to shoot someone.”