A return after long wanderings was the inscription adorning the stone above Franz's grave. It can be interpreted in religious terms: the wanderings being our earthly existence, the return our return to God's embrace. But the insiders knew that it had a perfectly secular meaning as well. Indeed, Marie-Claude talked about it every day:
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The moment he received the telegram from the chairman of the collective farm, he jumped on his motorcycle. He arrived in time to arrange for the funeral. The inscription he chose to go under his father's name on the gravestone read: HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.
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He was well aware that his father would not have said it in those words, but he was certain they expressed what his father actually thought. The kingdom of God means justice. Tomas had longed for a world in which justice would reign. Hadn't Simon the right to express his father's life in his own vocabulary? Of course he had: haven't all heirs had that right from time immemorial?
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Franz, dear, sweet Franz! The mid-life crisis was just too much for him. And that pitiful little girl who caught him in her net! Why, she wasn't even pretty! (Did you see those enormous glasses she tried to hide behind?)
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But when they start pushing fifty (don't we know it!), they'll sell their souls for a fresh piece of flesh. Only his wife knows how it made him suffer! It was pure moral torture! Because, deep down, Franz was a kind and decent man. How else can you explain that crazy, desperate trip to wherever it was in Asia? He went there to find death. Yes, Marie-Claude knew it for an absolute fact: Franz had consciously sought out death. In his last days, when he was dying and had no need to lie, she was the only person he asked for. He couldn't talk, but how he'd thanked her with his eyes! He'd fixed his eyes on her and begged to be forgiven. And she forgave him.
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