The Diary of Caspar Kruse III, Executioner: Goslar, December 3, 1634 – Our Children

 Today we prepared the second nursery. Anna brought extra straw mattresses from the market, had new blankets made of coarse wool, and arranged the woodwork as if it were a feast. The room still smells of resin and fresh lime. The winter air hangs heavy over Goslar, yet in the house there is the laughter and babbling of two voices: Wilhelm and Hans Caspar.

Hans Caspar already runs like a young dog through the house — the wooden floor thunders, the old cupboard shakes when he bumps into it. His feet are often dirty from the street, his hair full of straw, his voice loud. Anna laughs when I urge them to be quiet.
“Let them live,” she says.
And I fall silent. For that is what they do: they live.
Without fear, without judgment. As if the shadow of my office did not touch them.

Anna says that I smile more these days when I come home from work.
Perhaps that is true. Perhaps I let fall part of the outer armor as soon as I close the gate and the scent of lentil porridge or fresh bread greets me.

Sometimes we all sit by the fire. Wilhelm on the rug, Hans Caspar with a stick he carries as a sword.
And I, the father with the hands of an executioner,
sit there like a man who does not understand something
and yet is grateful.

At night, when the house is still, I lay my hand upon their heads. One by one. I listen to their breathing — the soft rhythm that recalls running water.
My hands, with which I broke so many necks, wielded so many blades, opened so many wounds —
can also bless.

Is that grace?
Is it God who lets me feel this, this warmth, this fatherhood, despite what I do by day?
Or is it rather His irony — that the executioner can also be a father,
that a man who leads people to the fire can also rock a child to sleep?

Sometimes I pray softly, there in the dark, above their beds. No grand words, no psalms. Only:
“Lord, let them never become as I am.”
“Lord, keep them free from what rests upon me.”
“Lord, let not the work of my hands pass onto their soul.”

Anna then sleeps, in the room next door. She breathes deeply, and in her dream she sometimes smiles, like a woman who has made peace with the roughness of life.
She carries me.
As she promised on the day of our wedding.
And I try to be worthy of it.

The city of Goslar does not know who I am in this house. They know me only as the sword, the hood, the silence in the square before the fall of the axe.
But here, behind this door, I am
father.
husband.
man.
That alone —
may be the greatest miracle.




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