The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (19 page)

I
flew back to Germany a few days before the autumn term at my new school started, my English much improved and my bags laden with British delicacies that Oma Warner had insisted on packing for my mother—unpalatably strong tea and pots of gravy powder. My head was still full of the twitterings of Aunt Liz, who had impressed upon me not to say anything about moving to England to anyone; she had not actually come out and forbidden me, but she had gone on and on in such a wheedling tone that I had got the message. Somehow it did not make me feel any better. If it was just an idea, why the secrecy? But soon I had other problems to deal with, more immediate ones.

“Are you Pia Kolvenbach?”

I turned around and found myself looking at the front of a battered black leather cycle jacket; looking up, I saw a face upon which the adult features were already sketched: the big jaw, the heavy-lipped mouth, the beginnings of stubble. I didn’t know him, but he looked old enough to be in the upper end of the school, maybe the
Abitur
year. A faded gray backpack was slung over one shoulder by a fraying strap.
A cigarette—strictly forbidden in the school yard—dangled from thick fingers.

“Sorry?”

“Are you the Kolvenbach kid?”

I looked at him dumbly, and he shook his head impatiently.

“You deaf?”

“No.” I shook my head.

“Well,
are
you?” He flicked ash from the cigarette onto the ground between us. “Are you Pia Kolvenbach?”

“Yes.”

“The one whose grandmother exploded?”

“She didn’t—” I started, then stopped short. What was the use? If I said she had just burned herself by accident, or if I said she had spontaneously combusted, or even gone off like a Roman candle in a shower of multicolored sparks, what was the difference? I stood still and silent and waited for the inevitable.

“So what happened?”

I looked away, searching for a friendly face in the milling crowd of schoolchildren. Where was Stefan? He should be here. I risked a look back at the boy’s face; he was still looking at me, waiting to hear what I would say; you could see the avid spark of prurient interest behind those heavy features like a tea light burning in a jack-o’-lantern. I threw caution to the winds.

“It was a hand grenade.”

“A
what?”

“A hand grenade.” Now I had recovered my courage.
Um Gottes Willen
, I thought; it couldn’t make things any worse, whatever I said. “My Opa kept it from the war.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” I warmed to my theme. “He kept it in a box under the bed. When he died, Oma Kristel started carrying it around with her as—as a reminder of him.”

“Unbelievable,” said the boy incredulously. He looked as though he were about to start dribbling with excitement. The cigarette was burning down unnoticed in his fingers. “How did it go off?”

“Well …” I thought about it for a moment. “It was in her handbag. She
always
carried it around in there. She put her hand in to get her
keys out, and instead of the key ring she put her finger in the ring on the hand grenade, and pulled the pin out.” I put my head on one side. “And then it went off. Boom! Just like that.”

“Scheisse.”
I had succeeded in impressing a teenager. “Was there anything left of her?”

“Only her shoes and her left hand. That’s how they could tell who it was afterward, by her rings.”

“How could …” He shook his head. “That’s incredible. Wasn’t anyone else hurt?”

“My cousin Michel had his nose blown off.” How I wished
that
were true. “They had to make him a new one in the hospital.” I put a hand gently to my lips as though feeling the words as they came out, checking them for truth. “It looks as good as new, you wouldn’t know.”

“Did they find the nose?”

I shook my head. “A cat ate it.”

There was a long silence. The boy looked down at me, and I up at him. He flicked the long column of gray ash from the cigarette, took a last deep drag, and then dropped the butt on the ground, where he extinguished it under the sole of one grubby sneaker.

“Du bist pervers,”
he said at last:
you’re sick
. He turned and shambled off, leaving me standing there alone, with the sound of the school bell ringing in my ears.

That was my first day at the big school.

P
ia,” said Herr Schiller, peering around the door. “How kind of you.” He stepped back to let me into the house. Herr Schiller had been unwell; that was why he had declined my mother’s invitation to come and share coffee and cakes with us to celebrate my transition into the big school. Instead I had brought him a slice of cheesecake in a box.

“I’m sorry you had to miss the party,” I said shyly.

“I am sorry too, Pia,” said Herr Schiller. He raised his hands in a gesture of regret. “What can I say? The years are catching up with me.” Certainly he did look as though every one of his eighty-odd years was weighing him down today. Although his clothes were as dapper as ever, they seemed to hang off his broad shoulders; even the flesh of his face seemed to hang loosely, as though he lacked the energy to smile.

I looked up at him doubtfully.

“I brought you some of the cake.”

“
Danke
, Pia.” He held out a hand to indicate that I should go into the living room.

“Do you want the cake now?” I asked, plumping myself down in one of his armchairs.

“No, thank you.” Herr Schiller subsided into his favorite chair with a seismic effect on the springs. We regarded each other for a moment. He did look pale, I noticed.

“Herr Schiller …?” I said uncertainly.

“Yes, Pia?”

“You’re … I’m sorry you’re sick. You’re not …?”

“Dying?” supplied Herr Schiller in a dry voice. He chuckled slightly; in my imagination I saw puffs of dust coming out with each wheezing breath. “My dear Pia, we are
all
dying.” He must have seen my face, because his tone softened as he added, “I’m sorry, Pia. But when you are my age, you will see that everything comes to an end. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s nature.”

He patted the arm of his chair with a gnarled hand. His eyes were focused elsewhere, not on me; he was thinking. “The important thing to do,” he said eventually, “is to live every day as though it were your last one.” He looked at me. “I expect they tell you that at the children’s Mass, don’t they?”

I nodded, not liking to say that I never went to the children’s Mass.

“Live every day as though it were your last one,” he repeated. “You know what that means? It means if there is something you want to do, something you
have
to do, you should do it now, before the chance has gone away forever.”

“Mmmm,” I concurred uneasily. I could not think what else to say.

There was a long pause, and then at last Herr Schiller said in a brighter tone, “And how are you finding the
Gymnasium
, Pia?”

I stopped myself from saying
Scheisse
just in time. “It’s all right,” I said noncommittally.

“Just all right?” Herr Schiller raised his eyebrows.

“Well …” I hesitated.
“School
is all right. But some of the other kids … they’re mean.”

“Oh?”

I heaved a great sigh that sent strands of hair floating about my face. “They want to know about Oma Kristel. About … you know. Why can’t people just forget it? Why does everyone have to keep going on about it? Well—not you,” I added hastily.

“People have trouble letting the past go,” remarked Herr Schiller. He leaned over to the coffee table that stood between us and pushed the
box with the cheesecake in it toward me. “Perhaps you should eat this, Pia. I think it will do you more good than me.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“No.”

I opened the box and extracted the plastic fork that my mother had laid neatly alongside the slice of cake. Licking smears of cheesecake off the handle, I said, “Herr Schiller, would you tell me another story … please?”

“Well …” Herr Schiller seemed to consider. “What sort of story would you like?”

“Something
really
scary,” I announced. “Something …” I pondered, then with a sudden burst of petulant inspiration: “Something with a boy who says something stupid, and then something horrible happens to him.” I thought of cigarette ash drifting to the ground at my feet, grubby sneakers grinding out a butt on the stones. “Something
really
horrible.”

“Something really horrible …” repeated Herr Schiller. He leaned his head back against his chair for a moment and looked upward as though seeking inspiration. Then he looked at me, and his eyes were bright. “Did I ever tell you about the Fiery Man of the Hirnberg?”

“No,” I said. “Is it horrible?” I felt in the mood for a really terrifying story today: one with lots of rending and screaming. The fact was, I felt like doing some rending and screaming of my own.

“Pretty horrible,” said Herr Schiller drily, and I had to be content with that. Settling himself more comfortably in the chair, he began:

“You know where the Hirnberg is, don’t you?”

I did; it was a thickly wooded hill adjoining the Eschweiler Tal and crisscrossed with woodsman’s tracks.

“The Fiery Man dwells in the woods on the Hirnberg, in a cave lit by fires that burn deep within the hill, night and day.”

Herr Schiller reached slowly for his pipe and began stuffing it with tobacco. “He burns eternally and is never consumed by the flames, and if he embraces you with his fiery arms you will be burned to cinders in an instant.”

Herr Schiller struck a match, and for a second his craggy features were lit up by the spurting flame. He puffed at the pipe, keeping his eyes on me. Then he continued, “Now, what I am about to tell you happened
in the village of Eschweiler, to the north of Bad Münstereifel. One summer evening, many years ago—”

“When?” I interrupted.

“Many years ago,” repeated Herr Schiller, lifting his bushy eyebrows. “A
great
many years ago. One evening, the young people of the village were sitting out on the grassy hillside telling stories and eventually the discussion turned into something of a contest, with increasingly gruesome tales of ghosts, witches, and monsters. They spoke of treasure guarded by a specter on a glowing horse, and of the Fiery Man who is supposed to live in the Teufelsloch—the Devil’s Cave—on the Hirnberg.

“The contest went on until one lad stood up and announced recklessly, ‘Well, I would give the Fiery Man of the Hirnberg a
Fettmännchen
if he would come here and fetch it himself.’ A
Fettmännchen
, you know, was a small coin that they had in those days.

“The moment the words were out of the lad’s mouth he knew his mistake by the expressions on the others’ faces. The argument was forgotten; the merry chattering was finished, and the girls gathered their shawls around them and scurried away home like frightened mice, in spite of all that the young men said to try to make them stay.

“Well, it was coming into twilight now and the shadows were deepening, so it was not long before one of the young men noticed a light that was burning at some distance in the woods. Faint at first, it burned slowly more brightly, until it became clear that the light was not gaining in size but coming nearer.

“The young men watched it with growing dismay until it came out from under cover of the trees, and they could clearly see what manner of thing it was. It was a man—at least, it was something in the shape of a man—but it was all over molten fire, which blazed and spurted from every part of its body; and its eyes were two dark pits, like sunspots in the glaring sun of its face. Slowly it came on, wading through fire like a fisherman wades through flowing water, until the horrified young men could hear the sizzle of the burning feet as they charred the grass black.

“‘The Fiery Man! The Fiery Man!’ screamed one of the lads at last, and they took to their heels and ran for their lives. At length they crowded into a barn and with shaking hands barricaded the door, then
flung themselves down in the darkness, trembling and sweating like horses that had been driven too hard.

“For a little while all was black and silent, and then their eyes began to distinguish thin lines of white light in the darkness. It was the light of the Fiery Man, showing through the cracks between the door planks. Closer and closer he came, until the thin white lines were surrounded by a corona of dazzling light and the crackling of the fire could be heard right outside the door.

“Then a great voice called out, ‘The
Fettmännchen
, the
Fettmännchen
you promised me!’ and there was a mighty blow upon the door. No one dared move, much less open up. They lay on the floor of the barn, petrified and shivering, cursing the lad who had made the stupid boast, and praying to the holy saints for rescue.

“Then the Fiery Man gave a roar of fury, and laid both of his blazing palms on the door, intending to burn right through it. The door began to smoke and blacken, and the smell of charred wood pervaded the barn, the flames licking around the planks throwing an ugly orange light. Seeing this, the young men became desperate and told the lad who had made the boast that he must open the door and give the Fiery Man the coin he had promised.