You’ve heard it from time to time, right? Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. It is a phrase taken from the Gospels that sounds good, very good, what do I know, like the intermezzo of the Cavalleria rusticana, a work by Pietro Mascagni. If you are curious and don’t know that passage, look it up. You will see that I am not lying to you, it sounds wonderful. What I was telling you, the phrase on the cross sounds glorious, nothing to do with the way of asking for forgiveness from the woman who for a few hours put Bilbao in a trance and a specific family on the cliffs of despair. “It wasn’t my intention,” the woman says now, when she has found herself between a rock and a hard place. She gives the impression that she uses forgiveness as an escape route.
The kidnapper suggests that hers was an outburst, that she was not in her right mind. But she did seem to be when she dressed in a white coat to access the room from which she took the child or when she took the hidden newborn away. Or when she kept, like a white-collar thief, the stage plans. Or when she abandoned the child on a doormat instead of handing him over, and turning herself in, to the police. The British poet and painter William Blake said that it is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. It will not be easy for her parents to forgive her, because she is such an enemy of her that she seems like the woman who now moves between the courts with the same ease with which she moved through the hospital corridors. Old William’s phrase is accurate and profound, I know. But it may also come from deception. Not in vain, Blake spoke with God and demons. At his time he was considered a cursed artist, a madman who would only be understood and appreciated years later.
Nor will they understand the woman who stole the child, no matter how much punishment she invokes. Saying “I’m sorry” won’t fix what’s broken. It cannot undo the time of anguish experienced by the parents, nor undo the damage nor change anything that happened. This is not meant to be a criticism of forgiveness, but rather a call for attention that goes beyond the specific case at hand. Sometimes, in addition, confusion appears. The excuse is used as an apology. “She wasn’t in my right mind,” the woman insists. Neither was Hitler and it is no justification. It must be the harsh law that judges him and not the soft hearts of human beings.
