Obedience and Betrayal

It had a name, a real name. It was shown in maps and official documents. Every village had a proper name, and so had ours. It was just not relevant: nobody ever used it. No one who was important, at least, only outsiders. For us, it was just "the village." It was our whole world. Usually, the only way to join was by being born in it, and the only way to leave it for good was to die.

We had, of course, heard about other places, but we were too isolated to know much about them. I often wondered what life in other places felt like: places that were not filled with hate and contempt. Places that weren't as damp, dark and cold as this one. Why did I have to be unlucky enough in the big lottery of life to be born in this hellhole? Some of us had visited other places, but I hadn't, and those who had didn't talk much about it.

Carla and I lived in one of the smaller less prestigious houses. Reflecting our social status in the village, you could even call it shabby. I was just returning to it, pondering how my feelings about it had changed. Once, it had been my sanctuary, a place for just Carla and me. It was small, but it was big enough to hold her, me and the affection we felt for each other. Those times were long gone. The tender things going on inside the house had cast a glorifying sheen on it. That had disappeared a long time ago. These days, it was just a small shabby house. I didn't look forward to returning home anymore, and sighed when I opened the door.

Carla sat in her favorite place at the window, as she usually did. As I expected her to, she held a book. She wore her frumpiest things, as she usually did when she was alone or it was just me around. It was almost as if she made herself as unappealing as possible in my presence.

Something was different this time, though. She actually looked at me. She hadn't done that in quite a while.

I would have been pleased about this new development if her look hadn't been so cold, calculating. No, not calculating. Was she observing me? Was she frightened of me? I had no idea, and again realized how little I knew my wife, anymore. Whatever it was, her look was odd. We looked at each other for what felt like an eternity. Why did she look at me this way?

"Gabriel is dead." It should have been shocking news, but she said it as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

I waited to see if there was more to come, but apparently there wasn't. She just continued to watch me, judge me, examine me. I should have been appalled by how unfazed she appeared, but I wasn't. Gabriel was dead. Carla wasn't shaken all that much, apparently, but to be honest, neither was I. Rationally, I knew that I should have felt something. Common decency demanded that, even if Gabriel and I hadn't been that close lately.

Instead of becoming emotional, I just remembered a few scenes from my life. Somehow, the burly bearded giant had always been there. I had spent my childhood and youth under his roof and he taught and guided me as a father might. Still, he had never let there be any doubt that he wasn't my real father. I couldn't remember my real parents, only Gabriel. Annette, his wife, had tolerated me in her usual cold and distanced way and had always made clear that she'd done so just to obey her husband. The words 'mum' and 'dad' were strictly forbidden.

He turned me into the damaged conflicted doubting man I was. He fed me and sheltered me, but I still bore the physical and mental scars he gave me. I knew that I should have felt something at his death. Grief, loss, compassion? Relief, glee, joy?

I felt nothing, just mild surprise that he was actually mortal.

Gabriel was a hard man. He demanded at least everything a person could give, and pushed mercilessly until he got it. He wasn't easy on himself, but he was downright cruel to others. He broke people until they submitted to his will.

Carla still watched me intently, not moving at all.

"Nothing to say?" she finally said, trying to sound as if all of this didn't affect her at all.

"How did he die?" I asked, mainly to say something, not because I was particularly interested.

She looked at me with an "as if you don't know" look, but answered nonetheless. "Head smashed in."

I just nodded, only mildly interested. It made no difference. Rationally, I knew that the fact that he was dead would change my life fundamentally, but I couldn't summon up the energy to care.

I stood up and moved towards her. She flinched and cowered, as if she was afraid of me. It confused me, but not enough to really think about it. What she felt wasn't really any of my business anymore.

Our marriage had been negotiated between Gabriel and her father and no one had bothered to ask for our opinion about it. We had never really talked about it, but I thought that Carla was at least content for a while. The affection we showed each other warmed my heart and made our house a home. I had hoped it might ripen into love, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Maybe I was just too eager to have the happy family I never had when I grew up, so I avoided looking too closely at things.

"Who did it?"

"You seem awfully calm about this, Simon."

As she did so often, she had totally ignored my question, but I realized that she was right.

Gabriel. It seemed as if my whole existence had somehow circled around him. It was as if he always had been some kind of giant, dominating my life, not just physically. There had been a time when I had adored and totally trusted him. I had given him everything I had, craving the slightest appreciative nod from him. Whatever I did, it was never enough. All I got was indifference when I did something well or punishment when I didn't.

There also had been a time when I had outright hated him. My blood had boiled whenever I saw him. My skin crawled whenever I heard his voice. He knew. He always knew, one way or other. He never seemed to care about it. I think he enjoyed letting my hatred drip off him like water from a duck, showing me how utterly powerless I was. He could have destroyed me any time he wanted to, and we both knew it.

So the bastard was finally dead. I could have been sad, because I'd just lost the only father figure I ever had. I could have been overjoyed to get rid of the man I hated most. Instead, I felt nothing, just a slight dissatisfaction about my own lack of response.

"Yes," was all I said. No use pouring out my heart to Carla. It felt as if I hardly knew her anymore, anyway.

This was the longest talk we'd had in quite a while. The whole village wasn't exactly loquacious, but Carla and I had taken it to the extreme.

She looked at me in silence and I wondered if she regretted what had happened between us. If she did, it wouldn't have made a real difference. Like with Gabriel, there had been a time when I had adored her. Later, there had been a time when I had hated her. Lately, all I felt was an empty indifference. She was still there and Gabriel wasn't. That was the only difference.

"You have any idea who did it?" she asked.

I knew what she was thinking, and I had to appreciate her ability to keep her neutral non-accusative tone. She still sounded as if she was talking about the weather.

"No."

"Simon..." Her facade suddenly cracked and something looking like compassion shone through. "Simon, we all know that there is some history... Between me and Gabriel."

Yes, she was right. Things had happened and we all knew. The whole village knew. Gabriel had made sure of that.

"So you think what happened warranted me killing him?"

"Simon..."

"After all this time?"

I realized that I would have liked to know the answer to that as well. Yes, my hate was long gone, so would I have been able to kill him, given the chance? She didn't respond immediately, but just looked at me intently again.

"The other men are there to take a look at the corpse. Will you go?" Again, she ignored my question and changed the topic before the cracks in her composure could widen. Still, for a short time, I had a small glimpse of a real person. This weakness disappeared as suddenly as if she'd put on a mask.

"Yes."

I sighed, not really wanting to return into the rain, just to look at the corpse of the only father I'd had. Not attending might raise questions, so I put on my worn-out boots and shabby coat again. I knew the weather would be bad, but I still looked forward to the few minutes of solitude the walk would bring. I didn't particularly like being alone, and I certainly didn't like the hard work in the woods, but I disliked most of the villagers even more.

As I dressed, Carla's eyes never left me. I had missed something; she was looking for something. Then it dawned on me. I didn't know where the corpse was and she wondered whether I'd ask. In her eyes, I was definitely a suspect and I couldn't blame her. In my eyes, I was one as well.

"Where?" I finally asked, relieving the tension.

He was lying on his back, almost as if he was sleeping. It had been raining for days, and the ground was soaked and muddy. His heavy body seemed to have sunk half way into the soft ground and I wondered if we should just leave him there until he vanished completely. The other male villagers were assembled around him, Felix and Lucas were holding torches. Nobody moved, nobody talked, everyone was looking at me as if I held the answer to this puzzle.

It was not a pretty scene. Darkness all around, heavy rain, shadows flickering with the torch lights, a corpse in front of us, everyone looking at me with thinly veiled accusation. All of them had once been neighbors, family, my whole world. Now, I was the outsider, the suspect. It was clear that they didn't trust me. I should have felt bad, but I didn't really care. I didn't trust me either.

For some reason, I suddenly remembered the day when he taught me to chop wood. Patiently, he showed me how to hold the axe. I remembered his big, looming presence behind me as he showed me how it was done by guiding my hands. I relished the safety of him taking care of me, teaching me, generally acting like a father. I felt a burning need to please him, to do it right.

I felt another burning sensation just a few minutes later, this time on my cheek when I missed the wood. He continued to hit me until I stumbled to the ground. I assumed the protective, fetal position, protecting myself as well as I could, while he kept kicking me and screaming obscenities. His sudden mood swings and his general unpredictability were hard to bear for a young boy who was desperately trying to please him enough to maybe be accepted as a real son one day.

There had also been good days, of course. We had repaired a fence together and it had been a glorious summer day. He had even asked me if I wanted to help him and I had jumped at the chance. We had worked together all day long, like a well-oiled machine. In the late afternoon, we suddenly realized that we were through. Sweaty and dirty, we had cheered and hugged each other. It was wonderful, one of the best days in my life. We had accomplished something together, I had gained his respect and felt as if I had made a huge step towards being a real son to him. Of course, that hadn't lasted long, and the bruises I acquired on the following day testified to this.

I snapped back to reality. Obviously, nobody had yet dared to touch him or even take a closer look: the ground next to him was undisturbed. It was as if they were all still afraid of him, the cowards, like I had been not too long ago. No one would seriously consider getting outside help for this. We had never included outsiders in our affairs, and I didn't expect that to change.

Clearly being the only one willing to do anything at all and not having a better idea, I decided to take a closer look. Sure enough, the side of his head was generously covered with blood. My instinct told me that it had been done with a hammer, mainly because there was one lying in the dirt next to the corpse.

"One hit, straight into the head," I said, pretending to know what I was talking about. I started to examine the corpse even closer, mainly because it seemed the right thing to do and nobody else seemed willing to do it.

I looked around, seeing a semicircle of insecurity. They were not used to this, they were drifting. They were used to being told by Gabriel what to do, what to think, what to believe, like mindless puppets. It had been instilled in them with systematic brutality.

Quite a few of them were looking towards the corpse, as if in a last effort to get the guidance that had suddenly been taken away from them. They were free, for the first time in their miserable lives, and they hadn't even realized it yet. Hell, they probably wouldn't even appreciate it once they had. They were so devoted to their cruel master that they wanted to obey him even after his death. I didn't despise them, I just pitied them.

Whenever they managed to pull their gaze away from their dead ruler, they looked at me warily. Paul, for example. The bastard. When we were kids, he had spent years to gain my trust. We had hung out together, using every opportunity to get away from the strict schedule of duties the asshole had imposed on us.

We had been young boys, and a certain amount of idiocy and testing the rules was inevitably connected to that. The little pranks we tried seemed absurdly harmless in retrospect, but still, the now dead giant had always been one step ahead of us. Sometimes he was benevolent enough to let us get away with things, more often he didn't. When he didn't, my punishment had always been especially hard. I had to sit in 'The Hole' for days. I took countless beatings. I was humiliated in public.

He said that he was especially hard on me because I was his boy and it was for my own good. The bastard.

How he always knew what happened remained a mystery until Gabriel himself told me that Paul had been his informant all along. Who plants a spy among a group of young boys? How paranoid and controlling does someone have to be?

Paul was watching me now, looking frightened. Maybe he thought that this was his chance to get the others to lynch me before I could kill him, now that Gabriel wasn't protecting him anymore. As if I'd have the slightest interest in that. He was as weak as the others and not worth the effort.

"Simon," he started, surprising me. Like the others, he wasn't one to talk without being prompted.

"What?" I replied sharply, making him flinch and take a step back.

"Let's meet at my house later and talk about things," Felix softly proposed and no one disagreed. Surprisingly, they all waited for my approval and after I nodded ever so slightly, the matter seemed settled. Felix's house had served as an impromptu meeting room and pub since forever.

At home, Carla was waiting for me, something I wasn't used to at all. Yet again, her eyes never left me, but she seemed more compassionate and open this time. I had absolutely no idea what was going on inside her head and felt no need to find out. Instead, I wondered if this was the way most marriages worked.

"Simon, I know that things haven't been easy between us for a while," she said softly.

"Really? What do you mean, Carla? We seem to get along just fine," I replied in a neutral tone and knew that the sarcasm wasn't lost on her. She tried to appear unperturbed, though. This clearly wasn't easy for her, but she still carried on. She was on some kind of mission; I just didn't know what.

"Simon..." she started, but seemed to run out of words. "I never really had a choice. You know that."

"Really?" I didn't believe that for a second, but kept my tone neutral.

"Simon... You might not know it, but he was afraid of you."

"Really?" Again, I doubted this.

"Yes. It might not have felt that way to you, but you were the only one who dared stand up to him."

"You're right, it didn't feel that way."

"You were his boy, he wanted to forge you into his successor, who would carry on his work after him. But you wouldn't. Instead, you were a constant source of irritation for him. Then even his punishments couldn't reach you anymore. I think he used me to change that."

Yes, forging me is the euphemism of the century. Some form of beating had certainly been involved.

"I don't see why this is important anymore..." I answered, as I still wasn't really interested in discussing this.

"Simon, I couldn't and nobody else could, either," she interrupted me, surprisingly passionate.

"Couldn't what?"

"Resist him."

"Ah, I see. You were powerless? That's going to be your excuse now? You were forced to..."

"Stop!" she interrupted me forcefully. "Let's not talk about what happened. Ever."

"Why not? He's dead."

"It doesn't matter. It's in the past. There has been too much hurt already."

"That's definitely true. I don't see why..."

"Stop. I have talked with the others. We have all agreed to never talk about this again. All the women in the village have agreed. No one will ever mention it. You won't be humiliated. Never. The husbands won't snicker. That never happened anyway."

"That is very considerate of you."

"Please, no sarcasm now. I know that our marriage hasn't been easy. I know that we haven't shared a bed for years. It's not too late for us, though. Not too late to mend things. We're still young and we were happy once."

Yeah, everybody knew whose bed she had shared for years. What she told me didn't change a thing. No one had ever talked about these things, anyway. No one had snickered. We were a good moral village. Bad things happened behind closed doors, mostly by one person, but talking about them was a complete taboo. Doing them seemed okay, as long as your name was Gabriel. He didn't even have to be too discreet. As long as he gave everyone the opportunity to look away and act as if nothing happened, it was enough.

Problem was, now there was a corpse lying around in plain sight. I wondered if anyone would actually dare to investigate a murder that couldn't be hidden, couldn't be swept under the rug. I wasn't even sure if anyone would have the balls to ask me directly if I had done it.

They should, as I clearly had a motive to kill the asshole. This was going to be interesting.

"Let's go to the meeting," I said in an unusually commanding way and instead of ripping my head off, Carla just nodded meekly.

Unsurprisingly, all adults were present, as this was by far the most life changing event that had ever happened in this hellhole. I didn't know what to expect. A mob eager to lynch me, an avalanche of accusations, a weeping widow, daughter and lover or a greedy mass of humanity, hungering for any kind of excitement?

None of that happened. The prevalent mood was insecurity. They actually looked to me for guidance, which seemed inappropriate, as I was the main suspect. Having a leader seemed clearly more important than morals. I shouldn't have been surprised.

"What now," Lucas asked, looking at me and obviously not expecting to get a proper answer, but just to start the discussion.

I looked at Annette, Gabriel's wife, and her 19-year-old daughter Leah. Neither seemed exactly grief-ridden, but looked at me as intently as Carla had. This irritated me a bit. Why weren't they angry? Why was no one accusing me? How could they just coldly enthrone the regicide? I suddenly despised them.

"What?" I practically shouted, making them jump. "Why are you all staring at me?" All gazes suddenly dropped towards the floor. Only Annette, the ever hard and closed up Annette, kept looking at me with her usual thin smile. I always suspected that somewhere beneath her hard and unfeeling shell, a hard and unfeeling core was hidden. Seen from a distance, she was rather attractive. Tall, lean and blonde, there was nothing to dislike. The nearer one got, the harder she appeared. Her whole face was dominated by sharp hard lines. This matched her cold grey eyes and her general personality.