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are the angels of purity who obey God's word
to the letter, question none of His commandments, never rebel
against Him and can look at the apples on the Tree of Knowledge
without coveting a bite.
    I couldn't do that. Easily led astray, I was a weak, sinful little
creature unable to control the desires aroused in me and covetous
of all I set eyes on. And Grit Adigar, or so I thought, had no wish
to live under the same roof as such a person.
    That was why I had to say "Mother" to a woman I disliked and
"Father" to the man who lived in our house. But him I was very
fond of. He was a sinner like me. Mother often called him that.
    I carried my sin around inside me. Father's was on the outside. I
often saw it when lie relieved himself while I was sitting in the bathtub. I don't know how I came to believe that that appendage was his
sin. Perhaps because I didn't possess such a thing, nor did Kerstin
and Melanie Adigar. Because I considered myself entirely normal,
Father's bit extra meant that he wasn't. It made me feel sorry for him,
and I often got the impression that he wanted to get rid of the thing.

    We slept in the same room, and one night I woke up because he
was so restless. I think I was three years old; I can't recall exactly.
I was very fond of Father, as I said. He used to buy me new shoes
when the old ones pinched, tuck me up at night, sit with me till I
went to sleep and tell me stories of long ago, when Buchholz was
still a wretched little moorland village. Just a few farmsteads, and
the soil so poor and the cattle so emaciated they couldn't make
their own way to pasture in springtime and had to be hauled there
on wagons. And then the railway came, and everything got better.
    I liked those stories. There was something hopeful, almost
promising, about them. If a wretched little moorland village could
develop into a nice little town, everything else could get better too.
    On that particular night Father had told me about the Black
Death, so when I woke up and heard him groaning I immediately
thought of the plague and was afraid he'd caught it. But then I saw
he was holding his sin in his hand. To me it looked as if lie was
trying to yank it off. He didn't succeed.
    If both of us yanked together, I thought, I was sure we'd manage
it. I told him so and asked if I could help. Father said there was no
need. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. There was a
big pair of scissors in the bathroom, so I thought he meant to cut
it off.
    But a few days later I saw it was still there. Well, I would also have
been scared to cut off something so firmly attached to me. I wished
with all my heart that it would fall off by itself or go bad and be
washed out by pus like the splinter in my palm.
    Father smiled when I said this. Stowing it away in his pants, he
came over to the bathtub and soaped me. "Yes," he said, "let's hope
it falls off. We could pray that it does."
    I can't recall if we did, but I expect so. We were forever praying
for things we didn't have or didn't want to have, like a craving for
lemonade. That often tormented me.
    Which reminds me of an occasion when I was in the kitchen with
Mother - I must have been four. I still didn't believe she was really
my mother. Everyone said so, but I already knew how to lie and
thought everyone did.

    I was thirsty, so Mother gave me a glass of water. Just ordinary
tap water, and I didn't want it. It tasted of nothing. Mother took
the glass away. "In that case," she said, "you can't be thirsty."
    I was too, and I said I'd sooner have some lemonade. Grit always
had some lemonade. Mother didn't like me going over there, but
she didn't have time to worry about what I got up to, so I seized
every opportunity to escape from her and spend time with my real
family.
    I'd been playing next door that day too, but Grit wanted to pay
someone a visit. She had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances.
A lot of people invited her over because