16 “Then why do you blame yourself?”

The human heart is a mystery that not even the most devoted priest or the best psychologist can penetrate. It is an appealing, fascinating and... dangerous mystery.

Dangerous for those who want to explore it, but also for those who hide it. Feelings of guilt and loss can be the most dangerous factors that drag such a heart into nothingness.

Hubert knew such people. Siegfried was a fireman who always pushed himself into the biggest fire - not for the thrill, not because he wanted to be a hero, he just didn't care if he survived. He lived, but nightmarishly mutilated by the flames, waiting for another skin transplant operation.

After his girlfriend died, Knut was employed by a private American security firm and moved to the Middle East. After two years, he stood trial for torturing civilians. He wasn't a bad man and Hubert was surprised when he read about him in the papers, but his eyes and Siegfried's eyes had the same cloudy expression.

Adam's eyes were similar.

You don't have to commit suicide to destroy your life.

Somewhere at the bottom of every man's heart lay the most terrible emotion possible - desperation. The man who discovered it in himself was the most tragic of men.

When Piotr mentioned Adam to him asking for help with his case, he told him much, but did not reveal all the details. Therefore, when approaching him that first night Hubert didn't quite know what to expect. He wasn't planning anything, he just wanted to test the ground.

After taking Adam's hand to help him up, for some reason Hubert couldn't let it go. He had a feeling that if he did, this man would once again return to the lakeshore and, succumbing to the spell of some Aquarius, allow himself to be pulled down into the depths, all the way down.

Adam's hand was warm. It pulsed with life. It was a wonder that above it, on his wrist, were scars forever reminding him of a painful past.

Hubert hadn't seen them, then or now, sitting around drinking vodka. Adam had hidden them under tasteful leather bracelets. Maybe he wanted to avoid awkward questions, or maybe he just didn't want to remember.

Then as now, Hubert had no plans, but the longer he was next to the man, the more he wanted to touch him with a warm gesture and show him that life didn't have to be lonely and scary.

"A banal reason, no?" Adam asked. "To believe someone just because he is gay. And yet it's clear that the boys were killed by a gay man."

"I thought a lawyer shouldn't confuse terms."

"Confuse terms?"

"Pedophile, not gay. If someone molests girls he isn't said to be straight only pedophile, am I right?"

Adam didn't engage in the discussion, which was not a good sign.

"So you thought he was treated unfairly because he was homosexual?" Hubert Raymund tried to get something more out of him.

"Because of that, he fell under the police radar. He lived in the same neighborhood as the first victim. He knew that boy at least by sight. He was single, between forty and fifty years old, worked manual labor, and was gay. Once it was the Jews who kidnapped children to make matzah out of their blood, now it was the faggots who kidnapped them to remake them in their own fashion," Adam declared bitterly, unable to believe how absurd prejudices and stereotypes were circulating among people in the past as now.

"I have not heard that. The one about the Jews" Hubert smiled trying to turn his statement into a bad joke.

The lawyer ignored him. Instead, he was interested in the bottle and meticulously filled his glass. He emptied it with equal precision.

"Have you been in a lot of trouble because you're not straight?"

Adam shook his head, making his light hair more messy.

"People don't know. Only a few people."

"Because of your past?"

"Did Piotr tell you?"

"Just a little."

The lawyer squirmed, but the vodka resolved his tongue.

"When to your own parents your existence is nothing more than a source of shame, you may have trouble trusting people in the future. Still, you want to survive, right? What about you, no dark past? Everything cool?"

"Everything is fine," he admitted. "In college I went to Sweden and that's where I discovered my orientation. There are no problems with that in Scandinavia, and that is where I work and live."

"And the family?"

"My father died in a mine before he found out. My mother thinks it's a whim or a fad and that I'll get over it when I go back to my country and meet a nice girl. My siblings don't give a damn, or at least that's what they say. Do yours still not accept you?"

"I don't know. I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, I don't have parents anymore."

How badly he must have been hurt by them if he completely cut himself off from them, Hubert wondered.

"So all you have from your family is Piotr? What about his parents?"

"I send them cards for Christmas. Not because I particularly like them. Piotr likes them."

Maybe it's true that family is best seen in photos, but living so completely without it certainly wasn't easy, especially since they parted on such bad terms. For a teenager to distrust his family so much after a suicide attempt, never to return home again! Adam then had to cut not only his wrists, but also his heart.

"And those people who know?" Hubert returned to the previous topic. "One of them is Piotr, that's for sure."

"My mentor's daughter. She fell in love with me when I was her tutor. I wanted to dispel her illusions. She was a little disappointed, but she didn't stop liking me. We are friends, I guess you could call it that. I think her father knows too, although we never talked about it. At some point he just stopped joking about me becoming his son-in-law. He still treats me very well, maybe even better. That's why I think he knows."

"So as a boss, he doesn't make an issue out of it. A tolerant guy."

"I think everyone in the company is like that. Well, maybe not everyone, but I wouldn't feel bad about it. I just don't want my privacy to become public."

Adam squirmed and drank another glass of vodka. Hubert got the impression that his problem lay not in his orientation per se but in his experiences as a teenager. It doesn't matter if you're straight or gay, if someone has hurt you, you suffer.

If Adam had hooked up with the wrong girl, whom his parents didn't approve of, and she had simply left him one day despite assurances of love, he would have suffered too. Many teenagers hurt themselves because of the disappointment of love and lack of acceptance from their family. It doesn't matter if they are same-sex loving or different-sex loving. Lots of kids run away from home and end up on the streets and not at all because they are homosexual.

"They are the only ones in my life at this point. The other few... better forget them."

So it wasn't just the parents, Adam generally didn't trust people. So why did he believe this murderer?

"That's what I'm wondering... You don't seem like someone who would believe someone just because they're gay. I guess there was more to it than that?"

"It's not about what there was, but what there wasn't. Maybe you don't know, but in Polish law a person is innocent until a final court verdict. It is the duty of the prosecution and the police to provide evidence of guilt and the defense to challenge it."

Adam didn't even remember that he had repeated almost word for word what Niedziałek had told him.

"The prosecution had no solid evidence. That's why I believed the defendant" he added.

"Wait, wait, it's not like the defendant told you some fairy tales and convinced you of his innocence. You assumed he was innocent and no one convinced you otherwise. On the contrary, they convinced you that they arrested the first guy they could find who somehow suited them, coerced a confession out of him, and put him in jail. Am I getting this right?"

The lawyer looked at him clearly trying to follow his train of thought, but the alcohol was slowing his thoughts.

"Actually..." he admitted reluctantly.

"Then why do you blame yourself?"

"Well, because..."

Adam closed his mouth. His alcohol-soaked cogs were working with difficulty.

"It's like handing a murderer a knife" he concluded. "You didn't stab the victim yourself, but you gave someone else the murder weapon."

"Why did I give him the knife?" Hubert took up his analogy game. "Did I know he would use it to kill a man? Or did I think he wanted to cut a slice of bread? What more could I have expected?"