The Confessions a Priest Should Never Hear

Father Tadeo Wisniewski was born in 1938, in a village near Wrocław, when the tanks were already roaring at the border. His mother gave birth to him in a cellar while the first bombs fell; his father never came back from Gdańsk. He grew up among ruins, hungry, stealing potatoes and praying at the same time, convinced that God understood necessity.

In adolescence, the flesh began to speak louder than hunger. He fell madly in love with a blonde girl named Wanda, the daughter of a partisan. They kissed behind the ruined church, among rubble and nettles. She smelled of cheap soap and woodsmoke. One afternoon in August she let him slide his hand beneath her blouse, and Tadeo discovered the weight of a young breast in his palm, the nipple hard as a seed against his thumb, Wanda’s pulse beating in her neck while he, clumsy and blinded by desire, rubbed himself against her thigh until he stained his trousers. Then he felt, for the first time, that desire was stronger than fear. When she left with a Soviet officer, he decided that only God could fill that void. He entered the seminary at seventeen, almost running away.

They were years of fierce discipline. He learned Latin, theology, and how to master the body. But the body, stubborn, remembered: on winter nights he would wake sweating, dreaming of curves beneath Sunday blouses, with his cock hard against the palliasse and his hand slipping on its own between his legs until he came into the grey sheets of the novitiate. He whipped himself with the belt of his habit until guilt and relief became indistinguishable.

Ordained at twenty-six, he served in poor parishes in Silesia. Decades later they called him to Rome “for his quiet fidelity” and assigned him to Santa Croce, in the Monti district, a baroque church full of tourists and Roman women who smell of vanilla and sin.

At eighty-seven, Tadeo is still tall, only slightly stooped, with large hands and faded blue eyes that still shine when some young parishioner kneels in the confessional. Sometimes, on hearing “bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” his mind betrays him: he imagines the brush of a knee against the grille, warm breath fogging the wood, perfume seeping through the slats. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood and answers in a calm voice: speak, my daughter.

***

The grille creaks faintly. A perfumed shadow kneels.

—Ave Maria Purissima… —Tadeo begins, in a voice of old velvet.

—Conceived without sin —she replies, and the priest recognizes at once that hoarse timbre, half cigarette, half summer night. It is Marta, twenty-seven, the Pilates instructor who comes on Sundays in leggings that look painted on and a high ponytail that sways like a challenge.

Silence. He hears her breathing, quick.

—Father… it’s been three weeks since my last confession.

—God is glad to see you, daughter. —And so am I, he thinks, and bites his tongue.

—I have sinned in thought, word, deed, and omission. Mostly deed.

Tadeo swallows.

—Tell me, no hurry.

—I’m married, Father. Bruno is good, he works hard… but for six months now I’ve been seeing another man. Two, really. Sometimes the three of us together. —Marta’s voice drops until it becomes a hot whisper that slips through the grille’s tiny holes like fingers—. The first is one of my Pilates students. His name is Andrea. Thirty-two years old, body like a statue. The last class on Thursday he booked for himself alone. When I closed the gym shutter, he asked me to show him “the psoas stretch” on the mat. He lay me face down, sat astride my ass, and started pulling down my leggings with his teeth, Father. With his teeth. My face was pressed into the rubber and all I could hear was my own breathing and the fabric cracking as it gave way.

Tadeo feels his cassock cling to his back. He presses his thighs together beneath the seat.

—He spread my ass cheeks with both hands and licked me everywhere. He started with my cunt and worked upward, very slowly, to the other hole. He put his tongue in there and I grabbed the mat as if I were about to fall from the tenth floor. Then he turned me over, opened my legs wide, and looked at me the way you look at a dish you’ve been waiting for for weeks. He said, “You’re going to be quiet, aren’t you, teacher?” I nodded. He took out his cock — it’s thick, Father, thick and curved upward — and laid it on my stomach so I could see the size before he put it in me.

A muffled gasp escapes Tadeo. Marta goes on, her voice lower, hotter:

—He drove it into me in one thrust, all the way, to the root. I arched from the impact. He started fucking me hard, very hard, with his hands on my knees, folding me like one of my students when I correct their bridge posture. The gym mirrors showed everything back to us: my body open, his ass clenching with every thrust, my cunt swallowing him whole again and again. When I started moaning too loudly, he covered my mouth with his left hand while his right squeezed one breast so hard it hurt. And Father, I’m going to say it plainly: I like having my mouth covered. I like not being able to scream. I like a man using me as if I were his.

Tadeo grips the crucifix until the points dig into his palm.

—Then he put me on all fours, with my face against the big mirror on the wall, so I could see my face clearly while he fucked me from behind. He spat on my ass and shoved his thumb in there while he kept pounding my cunt. He came inside me, Father, all of it. I felt the last lashes of his cock, one, two, three, and then the warm seed running down my thighs when I stood up. I went home like that, with my panties soaked through. Bruno hugged me when I got in and asked if I’d done weights. I told him yes.

Tadeo swallows with difficulty. He feels the treacherous erection, old but insolent, pushing against the cassock. He digs his nails into his palms and manages only a thread of a voice:

—And… the second, my daughter?

—The second is his best friend. His name is Pietro. He’s the opposite of Andrea: short, dark, with a beautiful mouth and a tongue… Father, that tongue is from another planet. One night I invited them both over while Bruno was in Turin. I opened a bottle of Barolo and ten minutes later they were kissing me at the same time, one in front and one behind. Andrea was tonguing my mouth while Pietro licked the back of my neck and unfastened my bra. They stripped me between them, in the hallway, before we even reached the bedroom. Andrea knelt and ate my cunt while Pietro squeezed my breasts from behind and bit my nipples from above. I held myself against the wall, my legs trembling, and I pulled Andrea’s hair so he wouldn’t stop.

—My daughter… —Tadeo tries, but the words choke him.

—Then they took me to the bedroom, Father. The marital bedroom, with our wedding photo on top of the dresser. They put me in front of the big mirror, standing up. Pietro sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me back until I was sitting on him, his cock inside my cunt. And Andrea stood behind me, spread my ass cheeks, and put it in my ass, Father. The two of them at once. Both inside me at the same time. I looked in the mirror and saw that woman split in two, mouth open, unable even to scream from how full I was. They fucked me in rhythm, one thrust each, alternating, as if they’d agreed on it beforehand. I could feel them rubbing against each other inside me, separated only by a thin skin, and that friction was driving me mad.

A gasp escapes the priest, disguised as a cough. The image explodes behind his eyelids: Marta’s long legs tangled in other legs, her mouth half-open, sweat gleaming between her breasts, two men moving inside her.

—And when they were about to come, Father, they pulled me out of the bed, put me on my knees on the rug, and one after the other shoved it into my mouth. I opened my throat as wide as I could. Andrea grabbed my hair and fucked my face without mercy; I felt his cock hitting my uvula. Pietro waited beside us, his in his hand, aiming it at me. They came all over my face, my lips, my tongue, my breasts. I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue like a good little girl waiting for the slap. Then Pietro took out his phone and took a picture of me like that, drenched in semen. I still have it saved, Father. I look at it when Bruno falls asleep, and I make myself come with two fingers, in silence, looking at myself.

Tadeo’s heart beats so hard he fears she can hear it.

—And the worst part, Father… is that confessing it to you excites me. Knowing that you’re there, listening, imagining me. Can you imagine it, Father? Can you imagine me naked, open, soaked through? Can you imagine slipping those long fingers you have under the cassock?

Tadeo clutches the edge of the seat with both hands. The confessional smells of old incense, warm wood, and now his own repressed desire, of old man’s sweat mixed with her sweet perfume.

—My daughter… —he begins, his voice rough—. What you’re describing is grave indeed. Multiple adultery, sodomy, lust… do you repent?

Marta is silent for a second. Then, almost in a naughty child’s whisper:

—I repent… that you weren’t watching.

Tadeo grips the edge of the seat. The confessional smells of old incense, warm wood, and now his own repressed desire.

—You will pray three Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. And promise me you will not go back to…

—And if I come back next week, Father? Will you punish me harder? Will you make me kneel in front of you and tell it to you slowly?

He breathes in deeply, counts to five, remembers the flagellation, the blood.

—Go in peace, Marta. And may the Lord… give you strength.

He hears the rustle of knees rising, the slow click of heels, the church door closing. Tadeo is left alone, trembling. He loosens his clerical collar, as if it burned, and murmurs toward the empty grille:

—My God… next time tell her to confess on her knees and in a short skirt. Amen.

***

The bench creaks under a different weight, heavier, more tired. It smells of black tobacco and three-day-old aftershave.

—Ave Maria Purissima…

—Conceived without sin, Father —answers a hoarse voice, cracked by years of grappa and stadium shouting.

It is Cosimo, seventy-six, widowed for twelve years, former tram driver, always in the third row on Sundays, with his cap pulled low even indoors. Tadeo knows him well: he brings him Communion at home when arthritis leaves him stiff as a board.

—It’s… it’s been a long time since my last confession, Father. Since we buried my Carla, I think.

—God was waiting for you, Cosimo. Speak when you’re ready.

Long silence. He can hear him sniffling.

—I have a granddaughter… Elena. She just turned eighteen last month. She’s lived with me since her mother went to Belgium with that worthless bastard. She’s… she’s beautiful, Father. Looks like one of those actresses from old films. And I’m an old pig.

Tadeo straightens slowly. His throat goes dry.

—Go on, son.

—At first it was normal. I’d see her in her pajamas in the morning, in those short T-shirts… she’d joke with me, hug me hard, sit on my lap like when she was little. I knew she wasn’t little anymore, Father. I felt the weight of her hips, the smell of her freshly washed hair, the soft breast against my shoulder, and I hated myself. I’d go to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and ask Carla’s forgiveness out loud.

—Continue.

—One July night, with the heat keeping us awake, I heard her in her room. She was moaning softly, saying my name. “Nonno… nonno…” I thought she was dreaming, but no. I went in. She didn’t cover herself. She was naked on top of the sheet, legs open and her hand there, moving. She looked at me with her grandmother’s green eyes and said, “Come here, I’m hot.” Father, the world came crashing down on me. I knew I had to turn around. Instead, I shut the door behind me.

Cosimo breathes as if an anvil weighed on him.

—I sat on the edge of her bed, trembling like a kid on his first time. She took my hand and put it there, between her legs. She was wet, Father. Soaked. She guided my fingers herself so I’d touch her where she liked. I, who hadn’t touched a woman in twelve years, couldn’t bring myself to pull my hand away. I put one finger in first, then two, and she arched and bit the pillow so as not to wake anyone. She came like that, squeezing my fingers inside her with that force young women have. Then she undressed me. Took off my old T-shirt, my briefs, and looked at me the way you look at treasure. “Nonno, you’re still so handsome,” she told me. And I got hard like I hadn’t since I was sixty, Father. Hard, hard as stone.

Tadeo feels cold and heat at the same time. The image is brutal: Cosimo’s old, wrinkled body and that peach-skinned girl, the two of them tangled beneath the same sheet that had smelled of Carla for half a century.

—She got on top of me, Father. She did it herself. Sat down slowly, guiding me in with her hand. I was crying. Crying from pleasure and disgust, all mixed together. She moved on me, very slowly, looking me in the eyes, her small breasts swaying in front of my face. She said “nonno” on each downstroke, “nonno, nonno,” like it was a prayer. When I came inside, she fell onto my chest and hugged me like when she was a child, with the same hug, Father, the same one. And I cried even harder.

Cosimo wipes his nose on his sleeve.

—And it wasn’t just once, Father. I lock the door and she comes and gets into my bed and treats me like I’m thirty years old. She sucks my cock, Father, takes all of it into her mouth and looks up at me with those green eyes while she sucks me. She gets on all fours on the matrimonial bed, in the place where Carla used to sleep, and asks me to fuck her from behind. I have to hold onto the headboard so I don’t fall over, but I put it in, I put it in and she screams softly into the pillow. She says “nonno” while she comes apart, and I cry from pleasure and shame. Yesterday she asked me to record her with my phone… so she can watch it when she’s alone at university. And I did it. I have three videos, Father. Three. In one she opens her cunt with her fingers and tells me, “Look what you’ve got, nonno.” And I look. I look at night when I can’t sleep, and I jerk off, and I hate myself.

—Do you repent, Cosimo?

—I do and I don’t, Father. I’m terrified of dying and burning forever… but I’m also terrified she’ll go to university and leave me dry and alone. I’m a monster, aren’t I?

The old man is crying openly now, snot and tears. Tadeo closes his eyes. He thinks of his own traitorous flesh, of Marta, of the grille that cannot protect anyone. He speaks slowly, with a voice that trembles only a little.

—Listen to me carefully, Cosimo. What you’ve done is very grave. It’s incest, it’s abuse of your authority over her… even if she wants it, even if she seeks you out. God’s law is clear. And man’s law would tear you apart too.

Silence.

—But God is greater than our sin. Go home, erase those videos —all of them, the last one too—, sit down with Elena and tell her this ends today. Tell her her grandfather is sick in soul and needs help. You’ll take her to speak with a psychologist, with her aunt, with whoever… but away from your bed. And you’ll come here every day to pray the full rosary until I tell you otherwise.

—And absolution, Father?

—I’ll give it to you… when I see that you’ve begun to repair the harm. For now, pray three acts of contrition with me. Then go home and lock your door tonight. For the love you bore Carla, do it.

The murmur of prayers was heard, broken by sobs. When Cosimo stood up, his knees cracked like old wood. Before leaving, he pressed his forehead against the grille.

—Thank you, Father. Even if I’m damned, thank you.

The church door slammed shut. Tadeo put a hand to his chest, as if he could stop the furious beating there. Then, almost voicelessly:

—Lord… how easy it is to judge when no one at home calls you “nonno” in the dark.

***

The grille moves faintly, as if whoever kneels there weighs very little and, at the same time, too much. It smells of starch, Marseille soap, and something else, something sweet and forbidden seeping between the bars.

—Ave Maria Purissima…

—Conceived without sin —answers a very soft voice, almost childlike, but betrayed by an adult tremor.

Tadeo recognizes the habit: Sister Inés, thirty-three, from the Carmelite convent in Garbatella. She comes to confession once a month, always at the same time, always with the same excuse: “errands for Mother Abbess.” She is petite, with porcelain skin and huge black eyes that drop too quickly when they meet his.

—Father… I’ve fallen again. Worse than ever.

—Speak, daughter. The Lord already knows. —And I’m beginning to suspect it, Tadeo thinks, feeling a sting below the navel.

Silence. He hears the brush of the veil against the wood.

—There’s a new novice at the convent. Her name is Renata. Nineteen, from Bari. She has the most beautiful mouth I’ve ever seen. Red, always moist. And when she prays Psalm 51, her lips move as if they were kissing me.

Tadeo shifts on the seat. His cassock sticks to him.

—One night, after Compline, I stayed in the chapel to pray penance. She came to ask me for help with discipline: she said she didn’t dare do it to herself. I lifted her habit… and underneath she wasn’t wearing anything, Father. Nothing. Not even the twill bloomers the Rule requires. Just white skin, whiter than white, and black hair between her legs. She looked at me over her shoulder and whispered, “Teach me to suffer for love.”

A very faint gasp, almost a sigh of pleasure disguised as tears.

—I laid into her with the cord. Hard. On the ass, on the backs of her thighs. She arched with each blow and gasped, Father, gasped as if it were something else. Her skin turned red, then purple in stripes. And I got so turned on I had to sit on the bench to keep from falling. I dropped the cord. I knelt behind her, pressed my cheek against her hot, marked ass, and kissed it there. I kissed every stripe I’d made, one by one, very slowly, with my tongue. She was crying but spreading her legs for me. She guided my face with her hand, without a word, until I had her all against my mouth.

Tadeo runs his tongue over dry lips.

—I licked her, Father. I licked her whole cunt, hungry, as if I had never eaten in my life. She tasted of salt, soap, and something sweeter, like overripe apple. I put my tongue in as far as I could, moved it in circles where she tensed, sucked that hard little bud until she grabbed the confessional grille in Father Girolamo’s booth, in front of us, so she wouldn’t fall. She came against my mouth, twice in a row. I swallowed and she shook and told me, “Sister, don’t stop, sister, for God’s sake.” And I didn’t stop.

A muffled gasp escapes Tadeo.

—Now we meet in the linen room, among the sheets the whole community will later use. I lie on top of the folded sheets, she sits on my face and rides me, Father, she rides me like an Amazon. Her thighs cover my ears and all I hear is the pulse of her cunt in my mouth. When she comes, she falls back and looks for me. She sinks three fingers into me, then four, and opens me with her other hand, very slowly, while she whispers all the psalms she knows in my ear. She makes me come while praying, Father. She makes me come with David’s words coming out of her mouth.

Dense silence.

—Sometimes I wake up with her taste still in my mouth and relieve myself by praying the office. And sometimes I relieve myself with my hand, in my cell, the crucifix in front of me, imagining her. I come whispering “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” and then I hate myself… but the next day I go looking for her again. And she looks for me.

Tadeo speaks with difficulty.

—Inés… what you’re saying is very grave. Profanation, impure acts, scandal in a sacred place… You’ve broken all three vows at once.

—I know, Father. That’s why I come to you. —And she lowers her voice even more, almost a warm breath against the grille—. Because when I confess to you… I imagine it’s your tongue that punishes me. That you put me on my knees over the kneeler, lift my habit, and force me to pray the rosary while you put it in me. Forgive me, Father. I’m telling you because it’s true.

The old priest closes his eyes tightly. He feels the painful, shameful erection, impossible to hide under the wood. His ears burn.

—Daughter… kneel outside the confessional. Now.

Sister Inés obeys at once. He hears the rustle of the habit, the scrape of knees on stone. Tadeo opens the little door just enough to see her pale face, eyes shining with tears and desire.

—Look at me —he orders, in a voice that no longer sounds like a priest’s—. Repeat after me: never again. You will never touch that girl again. You will never profane God’s house again. If you fall again, I’ll report you myself to Mother Abbess. Understood?

Sister Inés nods, trembling.

—Now go. And for every night you spend without sinning, you’ll pray fifteen decades of the rosary kneeling on chickpeas. Until you learn to suffer for real.

She bows, kisses the floor in front of his black shoes, and whispers:

—Thank you, Father… never has a punishment pleased me so much.

Tadeo slams the door shut. He remains inside, panting, his forehead against the wood.

—Holy Virgin… if all nuns sin like that, no wonder the convents are full.

***

The church door opens and a blast of cold November air comes in. High heels, confident, echoing like verses on marble. Then silence. The shadow kneels with feline grace.

—Ave Maria Purissima…

—Conceived without sin, Father —answers a fresh, cultured voice, with that Piedmontese accent that sounds like aged wine and an old library.

Tadeo already knows her by sight: Donatella, twenty years old, very long black hair, cat’s eyes, always with books under her arm and skirts that end exactly where trouble begins. She lives in an attic near the station and comes to Mass now and then “for aesthetics,” she says.

—Father… I have a long list. Do you have time?

—All the time you need, daughter. —And I can already feel I’ll have too much blood in my veins, he thinks.

Donatella sighs, almost amused.

—I study Philosophy at the university. The scholarships aren’t enough, the rents are a scam… so I found sponsors. Very generous ones. Professors, mostly. And a professor. And classmates who pay to watch.

A playful silence.

—I started with the Contemporary Literature professor. Sixty-two years old, married, highly decorated. He asked me in to “talk about my work,” closed the office door, and lifted my skirt without asking permission. He sat me on the desk, among the corrected papers, ripped off my panties —black lace, Father, I wore them on purpose— and buried his face between my legs before I had time to say anything. He ate pussy as if it were his last supper. With an old man’s hunger. I clutched the desk lamp so I wouldn’t fall and he licked me, licked me, and slipped in two fingers and searched me from behind with his thumb. He made me come twice with his mouth. When he lifted his face, it was shining all over. Then he took out his cock —thin, long, with marked veins— and fucked me standing up, my legs over his shoulders, never stopping whispering Montale verses in my ear. He came inside me, Father, all of it. When he was done, he left five hundred euros on top of a book of poems: “for inspiration,” he said.

Donatella laughs softly.

—Then came the Philology professor. Her name is Livia, forty-eight, divorced, with green eyes that cut. She invited me to her house to correct my thesis. She opened a bottle of champagne, sat me on the sofa, and looked at me for so long that my nipples hardened under my sweater. She tied my wrists with her silk scarf to the wrought-iron headboard of her bed, and stripped me naked very slowly, biting every piece of skin she uncovered. She made me come apart three times while reciting verses in French. The first with her mouth; she kept her tongue in me for so long I lost track of time. The second with a toy she took from a drawer, purple, thick, that she put in and out of me while calling me “cochonne, ma petite cochonne.” The third with her whole hand, Father; yes, with her whole hand, closing it into a fist slowly, until I lost my mind and screamed so much her neighbors are probably still wondering what happened. Then she untied me, kissed my forehead, and filled my backpack with Marguerite Duras books.

The old priest feels his face burning.

—Now I have a group. Five boys and two girls from my course. They pay the entrance fee to see me with whoever I want. Last week it was twelve hundred euros in a single night: we rented an attic, they turned off all the lights except one and laid me out on a big table, naked, with my hands over my head. They took turns one by one. First the three who’d paid for the “full” turn: one put it in my mouth, another in my cunt, and the third spread my ass and put it in from behind. When the first came in my mouth, another one came in. When the one in my cunt came inside, another one came in. And so on, Father, one after another, while the ones who’d only paid to watch relieved themselves in a corner, filming everything on their phones. By the end there was semen in my hair, on my breasts, sliding down my thighs, dripping from everywhere. Then the two girls wanted to clean me. They knelt between my legs and licked up everything the boys had left. I stared at the ceiling and counted the beams so I wouldn’t come too soon. I like being filmed, Father. It excites me to know they later get off watching me.

The old priest imagines that milk-skinned girl, naked, surrounded by young bodies, books scattered on the floor, moans mixed with quotations from dead poets.

—And don’t you feel… ashamed, Donatella?

—Not ashamed, Father. Pleasure and pride. My body is my best text. And thanks to it, I’m going to graduate with honors without asking my father for a cent. —She leans closer to the grille; Tadeo smells her perfume, something expensive and citrusy—. Sometimes I think of you while I’m doing it. I imagine it’s your voice giving me orders. That you tell me “spread your legs” and I spread them. That you tell me “swallow” and I swallow. Would you like to see me, Father? I’ll pay, for once.

Tadeo’s heart lurches so hard he thinks it may burst out through his mouth.

—Donatella… —his voice comes out rough, almost a growl— what you do is prostitution. Serious, habitual, and scandalous. You’re selling what God gave you for free.

—God gave it to me to use, Father. And I use it in style.

Dense silence. Tadeo breathes deeply, clutches the crucifix at his neck.

—Listen carefully. You will shut that group down today. You will delete the videos. You will find a decent job, even if it’s scrubbing stairs. And you’ll come here every Friday to confess until I see you’ve stopped. If not, I’ll speak with the dean of your faculty. I know half the department.

Donatella stays quiet for a second. Then, in a sweet, dangerous voice:

—And if instead of punishing me you give me Communion on my knees, Father? I’ll open my mouth and stick out my tongue, as God intended. Or as God no longer intends?

Tadeo closes his eyes. He feels the cassock rise on its own, traitorous.

—Go, Donatella. And pray a hundred Hail Marys thinking of every bill you’ve earned with your body. May your knees hurt for real.

He hears her heels moving away, slow, provocative. Before leaving, she whispers back:

—They’ll be raw next Friday, Father. I promise.

***

The final “ego te absolvo” fades into the empty church. Tadeo stays one more minute, leaning against the confessional wall, breathing like a man surfacing from a shipwreck. His knees tremble. The cassock smells of old sweat and someone else’s desire.

He comes out slowly, locks the little door —today more than ever he needs no one to enter—. He turns off the lights one by one; only the candles on the high altar remain, flickering as if they too were ashamed. He kneels before the tabernacle. He does not pray. He only looks at the crucifix and says, in Polish, very softly:

—Forgive me, Lord… but sinners do it so well.

He rises, makes the sign of the cross with holy water that burns his fingers. He takes the long black overcoat, puts it over his wrinkled cassock, and steps out into the now-dark square, cold, smelling of roasted chestnuts and river water. He walks slowly to the bridge, stops in the middle, rests his elbows on the railing. Rome shines below, dirty and beautiful.

He takes the rosary from his pocket, but he does not pray. He simply lets the beads slide through his fingers while he thinks of Marta spread-eagled on the mat with two cocks inside her at once, semen sliding down her face; of Cosimo shattered by his own granddaughter calling him “nonno” while she rides him and empties him out; of Sister Inés with her face smeared with the novice’s sex, whispering psalms between her legs; of Donatella lying on a table, counting bills in her head while seven people use her. He sighs, deeply, almost a moan, and smiles faintly, with the smile of an old wolf who no longer hunts but still scents the prey.

He puts away the rosary. He looks up at the black, starless sky.

—Until the next batch, Lord —he murmurs—. May they be just as sinful… or worse.

He straightens his clerical collar and disappears into the alleys, heading for the parish house. Tomorrow there will be eight o’clock Mass. And at four, the confessional will open again. He pours himself a finger of Polish grappa he keeps for special occasions and, before sleeping, whispers into his pillow:

—Good night, my dear sinners… dream of me.

And turns off the light.