Do you feel it, the pain, the cry that comes from within? Locked out, unable to serve, it’s impossible for me. I’m not fit enough, I’m not a witness enough … How long does a man have to endure before he breaks down? How much pressure does he have to put under, before it breaks him? I have done horrible things in the past, I know, but I did it only for the sake of justice. They say that the world does not care about executioners like me, that I do more damage than anything else. I have never wanted anything other than this, that to make myself useful, to be at the service in the way most congenial to me … instead, I find myself alone again. I don’t have a wife, not even a girlfriend, I’m over fifty and my golden age has passed, not even a village parish to which I can turn for company or comfort, or groups of friends to have a beer within the evening. My desire to be a vigilante has brought me nothing but misery …
So what am I supposed to do, I wonder? Change job and career, when I have more than fifty years, try to have a family with what I have left, change my history as long as I can? Why can’t I try, even just for a while, to do things right?
I want to redeem myself, that’s the truth, I want to redeem the mistakes that have made me ostracized from service, and I can’t do it with this anger and this monstrous resentment that corrode my veins. I have to find a way to vent all this, to become a model citizen …
I look at myself in the mirror. These thoughts have been echoing in my head for months, ever since I decided to take action, to seriously change my life. My blond hair, instead of being rebellious as it was before, is neatly combed to the side, and my blue eyes are not the bizarre and unregulated flashes of a man ready for war, but those of one ready to be a bringer of peace: of my past life I have only my black leather jacket left, but this is too important to leave behind, it is really the symbol of all those things that I carry with me with pleasure from here. Now that I am ready, I can put aside the badge forever and put on the ecclesiastical collar that from today is due to me.
From now on, I will be Don Matteo. What was in Brazil will remain in Brazil, and only the bishop will know about my history. I have twenty, maybe thirty years of service ahead of me to make my life something that really has value. I will not miss this opportunity.
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