The Public Prosecutor (10 page)
Read The Public Prosecutor Online
Authors: Jef Geeraerts
6
The telephone rang at four o’clock in the office of the university student residence Arenberg, which was located on the eighth and ninth floors of a modern apartment building on Tervuursevest 123 in Leuven. Paul Hersch, the forty-seven-year-old Opus Dei numerary who was responsible for the twenty-four students who lived in the building, answered the phone.
“Hello…”
“Résidence Arenbère?” a woman’s voice enquired.
“Yes… Who’s speaking?”
“The mother of Didier Savelkoul-de Vreux. I’m calling from Rome. May I speak to my son?’ She spoke Flemish with a French accent, a drawl the majority of Gallicized Flemish still considered evidence of their superiority.
“Didier is not here at the moment. Would you like to call back in, let’s say, an hour?” Hersch’s tone was cool and collected, professional, with only a hint of the contempt he harboured for all women, with the exception of his own mother.
“
Bon
,” the woman agreed abruptly. “
Merci
.”
Bon
,” the woman agreed abruptly. “
Merci
.”
He hung up and snorted. He was pretty sure why Baroness de Vreux, alias Madame Savelkoul, wished to speak to her son. He knew her sort down to a tee, but he wanted to let her suffer a little for the hesitation she had shown when asked to regularize the financial situation of her son, the new candidate numerary. The first thing that came to his mind was to call Hervé van Reyn, but he preferred to wait until after mother and son had spoken to one another on the phone. He intended to be present during the call, of course, listening in with the earphones.
Paul Hersch was a psychiatrist by profession. As Opus Dei numerary, he was “student mentor” in the Arenberg residence where he also lived and where tradition demanded a strict, almost monastic lifestyle. Though a numerary, he did not practise his profession full-time, except when he wanted to break into the soul of some young man or other, something he called “boring holes”. He was born into a doctor’s family in nearby Mechelen and had been a member of Opus Dei for all of twenty-three years, much to his parents’ chagrin. He hadn’t the least difficulty in describing their opposition in current Opus Dei jargon:
they had failed in their obligation to raise a Christian family
. He performed his duties with the utmost care, supervising the daily round of prayer and spiritual training that took place under permanent compulsion,
a support to perseverance
they called it. Rise at six thirty. Holy Mass, prayer and Communion in the chapel. Breakfast. Departure to the various faculties. At nine thirty, a team of female numeraries would arrive from the Steenberg Residence in Leopoldstraat to tidy the rooms, make the beds, collect the garbage, bring food for the evening meal, which was prepared collectively, and, last but not least, adorn the statues of the Virgin Mother and the Founder, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, with fresh flowers. The sober evening meal was followed by prayer in the dark, meditation and reading. A period of recreation was concluded at eleven o’clock with a decade of the rosary in front of the portrait of the Founder and bed. Students who wanted to stay out later than eleven were required to ask for special permission, the Nihil Obstat.
they had failed in their obligation to raise a Christian family
. He performed his duties with the utmost care, supervising the daily round of prayer and spiritual training that took place under permanent compulsion,
a support to perseverance
they called it. Rise at six thirty. Holy Mass, prayer and Communion in the chapel. Breakfast. Departure to the various faculties. At nine thirty, a team of female numeraries would arrive from the Steenberg Residence in Leopoldstraat to tidy the rooms, make the beds, collect the garbage, bring food for the evening meal, which was prepared collectively, and, last but not least, adorn the statues of the Virgin Mother and the Founder, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, with fresh flowers. The sober evening meal was followed by prayer in the dark, meditation and reading. A period of recreation was concluded at eleven o’clock with a decade of the rosary in front of the portrait of the Founder and bed. Students who wanted to stay out later than eleven were required to ask for special permission, the Nihil Obstat.
Hersch suddenly remembered that his assistant Didier Savelkoul was to give a lecture that evening entitled ‘No Christianity without the Cross’ and lead the discussion that was to follow. He was actually planning to talk about bodily mortification and self-castigation. Hersch picked out one of the folders from the pile on his desk. It contained the printed text Savelkoul had submitted for inspection. He changed his glasses and started to read.
Only those who are unfamiliar with the Church’s history are likely to be surprised about bodily mortifications such as fasting, sleeping on the floor, the use of the penitential girdle or the “cilice” and self-flagellation. Priests and members of religious communities had been using such means for centuries. The Curé d’Ars, for example, as well as Paul VI. In the monasteries and convents, where the members of Opus Dei purchase the cilice, bodily mortification is a daily routine.
The use of the same means by Opus Dei members, be they lawyers, journalists or professors, is a source of considerable misunderstanding. But even this is nothing new: Thomas More also used a penitential girdle. Are such methods outmoded? Every form of penitence will become a thing of the past on the day the cross of Christ becomes outmoded.
It is important to realize that bodily mortification enjoys only a secondary place in Opus Dei. The less significant mortifications are more important, in our daily tasks, in our interaction with others, and in the sobriety of our lifestyle, which often stands in shrill contrast to the norms of our consumption-based society. The irritation some express concerning such bodily mortification often conceals an ambition to live a Christian life without the cross. To use an image employed by His Holiness Pope John Paul II: there are many who want to rise with Christ, but few who are prepared to die with Him. There can be no Easter Sunday without Good Friday.
Just like the Church, Opus Dei is counter-cultural, sailing against the tide of a hyper-sensual society that often produces the bitterest of fruit, as a glance at the headlines or the evening news in our country will confirm.
Mortification and self-castigation must play their part in encouraging us to fulfil our primary task: to do our daily work with the greatest perfection. This is what the Founder, Blessed Josemaría Escrivá, called the supernatural motivation, the lamp that illuminates the way. It is thus that we prepare for our final goal in life: God, to whom we dedicate all our daily endeavours.
Working in the presence of God is the same as praying constantly, the pinnacle of Christian existence. As faithful apostles of the Lord, it allows us to engage in continual struggle against ignorance, God’s greatest enemy. Apostolate is and remains the essential element of the Christian vocation. It has to be permanent and intense, geared towards the obligations of our state in life and our daily work.
Hersch pursed his lips until they quivered, carefully returned the typed page to its folder, removed his glasses, glanced at the statue of Our Lady adorned with white roses on his desk, and folded his hands in a moment of prayer, something he did with regularity during the month of May, the month of Mary.
As was his custom when he sat at his desk (at least ten hours per day), Paul Hersch was wearing a black tracksuit and training shoes, which looked brand new because he never wore them outside. This was all part of his image and, as a psychiatrist, there was nothing accidental about the strategies he employed to deceive those around him. The Germans, with their renowned talent for clarity, referred to the phenomenon as
Sitzriese
or sitting giant. The voluminously lengthy torso rising behind the desk gave the impression he was a formidable figure of a man. But in reality, Hersch had abnormally short legs, although he was still impressive when standing upright, in spite of being five foot six. This was probably due to the intriguing smile that seemed painted, as it were, over his broad, pallid peasant face. His bald head was covered with freckles and he wore bulky-framed glasses that did not suit him. His light grey eyes were round and full and radiated what seemed to be dependable loyalty, leaving the people he met with the conviction that he was a sort of new Jesus. Many had fallen into this trap. A student resident once had an argument with him and had cursed him to his face as “the Devil with a smile”. The student was asked to leave the residence for good.
Sitzriese
or sitting giant. The voluminously lengthy torso rising behind the desk gave the impression he was a formidable figure of a man. But in reality, Hersch had abnormally short legs, although he was still impressive when standing upright, in spite of being five foot six. This was probably due to the intriguing smile that seemed painted, as it were, over his broad, pallid peasant face. His bald head was covered with freckles and he wore bulky-framed glasses that did not suit him. His light grey eyes were round and full and radiated what seemed to be dependable loyalty, leaving the people he met with the conviction that he was a sort of new Jesus. Many had fallen into this trap. A student resident once had an argument with him and had cursed him to his face as “the Devil with a smile”. The student was asked to leave the residence for good.
Hersch was also an adherent of the method promoted by the American professor Harding, who trivialized every psychological problem he came across and laughed it off. In Hersch’s case, however, this could take curious forms. He would roar with laughter when zapping away from an inappropriate TV programme with the same gusto as he did when someone came to him with a genuine problem. Together with Harding, he was also a strong proponent of the “blunt approach”. A student came to him one day grieving the loss of his sister. The young man was on the edge of depression. Hersch had asked him with his usual smile if he had had an incestuous relationship with his sister. The student ran off in hysterics. He would exhibit an additional facet of his disturbed personality during the
Praxis
, the application of the rules governing the Sacred Obligations. He had taken over a refined form of spiritual sadism from the Jesuits. His uncle, who had been novice master in the Jesuit noviciate in Drongen in the 1950s, had required aspirants, referred to as
fratres
, to perform a variety of tasks “intended to encourage the virtue of humility”: cleaning the corridors on one’s hands and knees with a worn-out dishcloth and a tiny basin of water, after which he would soil the place anew with mud-covered boots. On occasion, he would hide a pin in the sheets of one of the novices and then ask him if he had made his bed properly. He would check the bed, produce the pin, and hold it in front of the novice’s face. His uncle also thought very highly in those days of the
frater tortor
, a select novice who spent hours in a room with a bench vice, fashioning wire straps which the novices would fasten around the thigh when they walked in prayer through the monastery garden until the pain almost crippled them. The same novice also made disciplines, or miniature lashes, with which he and his fellow novices would flagellate themselves, kneeling at the side of their bed, when faced with temptations against blessed purity. Opus Dei had based itself on such practices, and those of the Founder, Blessed Josemaría Escrivá, himself a Basque, who was given to Spanish theatricality and regularly flagellated himself until the blood spattered the walls. Even the hotel rooms on his many journeys were not spared.
Praxis
, the application of the rules governing the Sacred Obligations. He had taken over a refined form of spiritual sadism from the Jesuits. His uncle, who had been novice master in the Jesuit noviciate in Drongen in the 1950s, had required aspirants, referred to as
fratres
, to perform a variety of tasks “intended to encourage the virtue of humility”: cleaning the corridors on one’s hands and knees with a worn-out dishcloth and a tiny basin of water, after which he would soil the place anew with mud-covered boots. On occasion, he would hide a pin in the sheets of one of the novices and then ask him if he had made his bed properly. He would check the bed, produce the pin, and hold it in front of the novice’s face. His uncle also thought very highly in those days of the
frater tortor
, a select novice who spent hours in a room with a bench vice, fashioning wire straps which the novices would fasten around the thigh when they walked in prayer through the monastery garden until the pain almost crippled them. The same novice also made disciplines, or miniature lashes, with which he and his fellow novices would flagellate themselves, kneeling at the side of their bed, when faced with temptations against blessed purity. Opus Dei had based itself on such practices, and those of the Founder, Blessed Josemaría Escrivá, himself a Basque, who was given to Spanish theatricality and regularly flagellated himself until the blood spattered the walls. Even the hotel rooms on his many journeys were not spared.
The tracksuit was also just for show. Hersch had never exercised in his life, but he insisted that the residents go for a seven-mile run in the nearby Heverlee woods every week, following the group in first gear behind the wheel of his car, and humiliating the stragglers.
He suffered from a phenomenon that was common among psychiatrists: the projection of his own problems onto his immediate environment, accompanied by the abuse of authority. But Paul Hersch’s main problem was his sexuality. Everything that had anything to do with sex (sins against the apostolate of celibacy as he called it) made him angry and paranoid. Every night before going to sleep, he took six drops of Frenactil in a glass of water, a powerful neuroleptic prescribed in psychiatric prisons for erotomania, exhibitionism, paedophilia and excessive masturbation. He warned the students at every opportunity about the dangers of temptation against the sixth and ninth commandments. He terrorized them with threats that every single sin, which “transformed the body into a rubbish bin”, had to be confessed the following morning before Holy Mass and Communion, otherwise one would commit a sacrilegious Communion, one of the worst sins imaginable. Every morning, after the students had left, he checked the sheets on every bed, just before the female numeraries, whom he treated as ordinary maids, arrived from Steenberg Residence. Even a wet dream was considered unforgivable. The student in question was obliged to sleep on the floor for a week, after he had sprinkled it with holy water. The showers were always cold in Arenberg and were to be taken in the dark, while praying aloud.
Prayer, prayer and more prayer. Penance, penance and more penance. This is what blessed Josemaría Escrivá had written after all in
The Way
. And recreation was to be filled with song and laughter and more song and laughter, as a sign of sacred joviality and childlike trust in the will of God.
The Way
. And recreation was to be filled with song and laughter and more song and laughter, as a sign of sacred joviality and childlike trust in the will of God.
Hersch grimaced, his lips disappearing in the process, tensed his back and held his breath as long as he could. He was convinced this sharpened the awareness that the body was an enemy that needed to be kept under permanent control.
He wondered if he could throw Didier Savelkoul off balance by asking him about his use of the word “ignorance”. Savelkoul was a complex case. During his studies at the faculty of law fifteen years earlier, he had spent four years in Arenberg, where he had emerged as an exemplary candidate supernumerary, capable of more prayer, penance and subjection to humiliation than Hersch had ever witnessed. This was doubtless due to his secondary-school studies with the Jesuits, who had almost managed to have him join the order. He worked a two-year internship at a large legal firm in Brussels after obtaining his master’s in law, but he didn’t seem to be cut out for a law career. While his knowledge of the law was second to none, he was obsessively scrupulous and this made him so insecure that he would even lose the most minor of cases by making elementary errors of logic in his long-winded pleas, something that drove presiding magistrates to despair. For the sake of appearances, however, he was still registered at the bar in Leuven.
He was his mother’s favourite - they were like two peas in a pod - but the reputation of his father and grandfather on his mother’s side was such a burden it only exaggerated his insecurity. The only way out after the spiritual support of the Jesuits was an “appointment” with Opus Dei, with a view to becoming a member after five years. On the advice of his mother and Regional Vicar van Reyn, who was distantly related to the de Vreux family, he had finally chosen to register for journalism and communication studies. Numeraries were preferably expected to have two university diplomas. He obtained his degree in three years and moved into Arenberg as candidate numerary and assistant to the mentor. Shortly thereafter, Baroness Amandine de Vreux became a supernumerary.
Hersch grabbed the telephone and did what had become his custom before dialling a number: he looked at his hands, which (and he knew this) put the fear of God into some of the students. His hands were striking to say the least, exceptionally broad, plump, unwieldy and above all ugly, with the knobbly fingers of someone with arthritis. He called them “lumberjack hands”, although he had never wielded an axe in his life. He could fold back his thumb so far that it no longer appeared to be part of his hand. According to the laws of palmistry, this was a sign of intransigence, lust for power and duplicity, character traits he admired, for example, in a number of Roman emperors.
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