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hung on one wall. The Virgin herself looked down on him, a smile of compassion on her lips. And there was Saint Francis, his hands extended towards the birds, and another saint whom he did not recognise, a finger raised in silent admonition, as if of von Igelfeld himself.
    He spotted the confessional and moved towards it. He was not a Catholic – the von Igelfelds had always been Lutheran – but he was familiar with the procedure. You went in and sat on a small bench and spoke to the priest behind the grille. It did not matter whether you were a member of the Church; the priest was there for all manner and conditions of men – mendacious philologists not excepted.
    He moved the curtain aside and slipped into the box. There was indeed a small grille and a sound behind it, a rustling of a cassock perhaps, told him that the priest was in.
    ‘Good evening,’ whispered von Igelfeld.
    ‘Hello,’ said a disembodied voice from behind the grille. ‘How are you this evening?’
    ‘Not very well,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘In fact, I am feeling very bad about a terrible thing that I have done.’
    The priest was silent for a moment, as if digesting the information. Then he spoke: ‘Terrible? How terrible, my son? Have you killed a man?’
    Von Igelfeld gasped. ‘Oh no! Nothing that bad.’
    ‘Well then,’ said the priest. ‘Most other things can be undone, can’t they? Tell me what this terrible thing is.’
    Von Igelfeld drew a deep breath. ‘I lied,’ he said.
    ‘Lied?’ said the priest. ‘Lied to the police? To your wife?’
    ‘To a psychoanalyst,’ said von Igelfeld.
    There was a strange sound from behind the grille, a sound which was rather difficult to interpret, but which sounded rather like disapproval.
    ‘That is
very
bad,’ said the priest. ‘Psychoanalysts are there to help us. If we lie to them, then we are lying to ourselves. It is a terrible thing.’
    ‘I know,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I told him all sorts of lies about my past. And I even made up words in the free association.’
    ‘Both of those things are sins,’ said the priest firmly. ‘Free association is there to help the psychoanalyst unlock the secrets of the mind. If you mislead in that respect, then the analysis is distorted.’
    ‘But worse than that,’ went on von Igelfeld. ‘I told lies about my colleague, Unterholzer. He had published an attack on my book and I wanted to ruin his analysis.’
    ‘I see,’ said the priest. ‘And now you are feeling guilty?’
    ‘Yes,’ said von Igelfeld.
    ‘Guilt is natural,’ said the priest quietly. ‘It is a way in which the Super-ego asserts itself in the face of the primitive, anarchic urges of the Id. Guilt acts as a way of establishing psychic balance between the various parts of the personality. But we should not let it consume us.’
    ‘No?’ asked von Igelfeld.
    ‘No,’ said the priest. ‘Guilt fuels neurosis. A small measure of guilt is healthy – it affirms the intuitive sense of what is right or wrong. But if you become too focused on what you have done wrong, then you can become an obsessive neurotic.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘I truly am sorry for what I have done. Please forgive me.’
    ‘Oh, you’re absolved,’ said the priest. ‘That goes almost without saying. God is very forgiving these days. He’s moved on. He forgives everything, in fact. What you have to do now is to repair the damage that you have caused. You must go and see this Unterholzer and say to him that you are sorry that you have lied about him. You must ask his forgiveness. Then you must write to Dr Hubertoffel – I assume that you’re talking about him, by the way – and tell him what you told him about the military academy was untrue. I went to a military academy, incidentally.’

    ‘Oh?’ said von Igelfeld. ‘Were you unhappy there?’
    ‘Terribly,’ said the priest. ‘We were crammed together in dormitories, sharing everything, and they made us take cold showers