Aiding and Abetting Read Free Page B

marks, was not even enclosed in a wallet. Beate coveted this money. She would have stolen had she been able to do so without detection. She was tired, tired. Still in her twenties, she felt worn out. Her need for money was continual. Her boyfriend was a theological student, of the Protestant faith. He spoke English fluently, made her speak to him in English so that she could read the English-language textbooks in psychology. He would have loved to be a Catholic, the churches were so much more cheerful than any others, so full of color and glitter, incense and images.
    One day on a Saturday when she was not visiting the farm, her boyfriend, Heinrich, came to visit her. It was three in the afternoon. He had a key. He found her on the bed covered in blood. She was having a menstrual hemorrhage. Blood all over the sheets, the floor, her hands. Heinrich ran for the landlady, who screamed when she saw Beate. Meanwhile the young man located a doctor who came and gave Beate an injection and the landlady orders to clean up the mess. Heinrich took over the job from the trembling woman who was also concerned about her bed sheets and the curtains, for blood had even spread to the windows, somehow. Much later Beate was able to sit up. The landlady, to Beate’s surprise, was now sympathetic and brought her some soup which Heinrich heated up on the spirit stove in the corner of the room. “You reminded me,” said the landlady, who was a Catholic, “of a picture I saw as a child of Sister Anastasia of the Five Wounds. She was a stigmatic. She worked miracles, so they said. But the Church never recognized her as a saint. When the Bishop came to visit the churches in the diocese we had to run and put the picture out of sight. But we often had a collection for Sister Anastasia. She was good to the poor.”
    This was how Beate got her idea of being a holy stigmatic. She changed her address. Every monthly menstrual cycle she covered herself in blood and bandaged her hands so that blood appeared to seep through. She was stricken every month, as the phenomenon is traditionally represented, with at least one of the five wounds of Christ (a nail wound on each hand and foot, and a sword wound in the side). In between the cycles she wrote out testimonies to her healing powers, aided and abetted by Heinrich who appeared so much to believe in Beate’s claims that possibly, on interrogation, it would have emerged that he truly believed them. The nature of belief is very strange.
    Beate had arranged for thousands of leaflets to be printed:
    blessed Beate Pappenheim
    the stigmatic of Munich
    Please repeat the following prayer seven mornings a week for seven weeks. Beate Pappenheim prays and suffers for you.
    O Lord, bless us through the good offices of our sister Beate Pappenheim. We Beseech Thee to hear her prayer on behalf of our sick/suffering brother/sister [delete as appropriate] N. In the name of the Five Wounds of Jesus Christ Our Lord.
    Underneath was a picture of Beate holding up her blood-stained hands.
    Below this was printed a brief biography of Beate with emphasis on her churchgoing insistence from childhood upwards.
    The pamphlet concluded:
    I enclose the sum of ……… for the aid of Beate Pappenheim’s Poor. Please send what you can afford. No gift is too small.
    Heinrich had some friends in the theological college on whom he tried this pamphlet. “She really works miracles.”
    Nearly all of them laughed it off. But not all. After a while the news of Beate’s miracle-working reached the nursing profession and somehow or other got to the shores of Ireland, the great land of believers. There it exploded into a real cult, so that when eventually (it took eight years) she was exposed as a fraud by analysis of her menstrual blood, more money in Irish currency than any other was found to have been placed in her account. Meanwhile, she had escaped, disappeared.
    Beate during that time had been able to live in comfort. Every month she took