The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (4 page)

“Herr Düster,” said Stefan under his breath. He had recognized that meager form too, in spite of the battered-looking hat that was pulled low over the eyes.

Herr Schiller descended the steps. As he passed me, his elbow thumped my shoulder, but I swear he didn’t notice. He approached Herr Düster like a man backing a dangerous animal into a corner, squaring his shoulders as though he wanted to herd Herr Düster away from us.

“Guten Margen,”
I heard him say, and although his words were polite his tone was accusatory.

Herr Düster raised his chin a little, so that his eyes glinted darkly under the brim of his hat. His gaze danced from Herr Schiller to us and back again. There was something threatening in it, yet at the same time wary, as though he were a feral animal driven by extreme hunger to consider attacking human beings. He growled something unintelligible, then very deliberately turned his back and slunk away. He had a curious gait, faintly furtive; he made me think of a crab creeping across the seabed. He slid past the front of the post office and disappeared around the corner.

“Come,” said Herr Schiller sharply, and we trotted after him.

I dared not ask him about Herr Düster. The old man was a legend among the schoolkids, rather like Herr Koch’s evil German shepherd, Troll, which would fling itself against the garden fence barking and snapping wildly if you passed by. Seeing Herr Schiller’s reaction somehow made Herr Düster more sinister. At that time, having to speak to Herr Düster, or meeting Troll when there was no fence between you, seemed liked the scariest things that could happen to you. Until, that is, Katharina Linden disappeared.

O
ddly enough, I have a very clear memory of seeing Katharina Linden that Sunday. I hardly knew her—she was in another class, with the other children from the outlying villages of Eicherscheid and Schönau, and I don’t think I had ever even spoken to her, but I knew her by sight.

I saw her standing by the fountain in front of the photographer’s shop. The fountain is a curious gunmetal gray creation with a statue of King Zwentibold of Oberlothringen gazing benevolently down from the top. Although it was February, and uncomfortably chilly, the sun was shining and Katharina was bathed in its cold pale glow. The memory is so sharp that sometimes I doubt myself—did my mind create this image because I
wanted
to see her, or was she really there?

She was dressed as Snow White—an instantly recognizable outfit because it had been based on the Disney costume: blue bodice, yellow ankle-length skirt, red cloak, a high collar, and a little red bow in her dark hair. I think that was why she or her mother had chosen that costume—Katharina had thick wavy hair that was almost jet-black, so she was the perfect Snow White, with her rather pale skin and dark eyes. When she vanished, it almost seemed like something from a fairy tale, as though she were one of Grimms’ twelve dancing princesses, who
somehow got out of a locked bedroom every night and came home in the morning with their shoes worn to flinders. But Katharina never came home at all.

I don’t know who first realized something was wrong. The procession started—as is traditional—at eleven minutes past two. All the Karneval floats were lined up in the road outside the Orchheimer Tor, the great gate at the southern end of the town. Full-volume Karneval music crackled through enormous speakers, competing with the shouts and cheers of the crowd.

As the first float passed under the Tor, Stefan and I with a dozen other children darted forward to gather up handfuls of the sweets and little trinkets being thrown out. The haul was always good and we were well prepared, with canvas shopping bags to carry our loot in. The actual floats themselves were of less interest than the gathering of the booty, but I remember there were several very impressive ones that year—a pirate ship with real cannons belching forth dry ice, and an undersea scene with fish and octopuses, surmounted by Neptune on his throne, attended by bare-shouldered mermaids shivering in the February air.

Nearly everyone was in costume: Marla Frisch passed by, dressed as Red Riding Hood, studiously failing to notice me. Thilo Koch appeared as an overweight pirate, his potbelly straining at the satin of his shirt. Much as I hated him, I could not help feeling envious: at least his mother had
bought
him a costume, a proper one.

My mother had never quite grasped the Karneval concept. She seemed to think that some kind of extra merit points would be awarded to parents who made their children’s costumes. Buying was cheating, in her book. She didn’t see how much I longed to be like Lena or Eva from my class, dressed up in a Barbie Princess costume or a fairy dress from Kaufhof.

This year she had dressed the family up as characters from the Wizard of Oz: she was the Tin Man, my father was the Scarecrow, and Sebastian was the Cowardly Lion (though you might have mistaken him for Toto, so vague was my mother’s representation of leonine anatomy). I was Dorothy, dragooned into a blue-and-white-checked pinafore dress with a frilly white blouse underneath and a pair of old pumps painted red and peppered with sequins. After Daniella Brandt had stopped, her head on one side, and asked me whether we were supposed to be the
Von Trapp family, my cup of bitterness overflowed and I resolved that next year I would
buy
a costume, even if I had to save up my entire pocket money between now and then.

Stefan was slightly better off; he had a clearly recognizable Spider-Man costume complete with face mask. We made an odd pair, Dorothy and Spider-Man, scuttling through the cobbled streets with our bags stuffed with candy, popcorn, and plastic toys. Still—Karneval is a time for strange sights, when sour-faced neighbors turn jolly for the day, and straitlaced old ladies dress up as vampires or French maids. It was also, as it turned out, the ideal time for someone—or something—else to stalk the streets, someone whose strangeness and inhuman intent went unnoticed in the general mayhem.

As the procession moved through the town, Stefan and I followed it, threading our way through the crowds together. I remember seeing Katharina Linden at the fountain as we reached the junction in the center of town. It must have been at about a quarter to three.

A little farther on I remember seeing Frau Linden, who was dressed as a clown in a kind of multicolored romper suit and a green curly wig. She was holding Nils—the younger of Katharina’s two brothers—by the hand. Nils was dressed as a ladybug, and looked thoroughly disgusted at the whole proceedings; he was swinging on her arm and complaining vociferously about something.

Perhaps that is why Frau Linden failed to notice her daughter’s disappearance at first; she was preoccupied with the much younger Nils. And, after all, Bad Münstereifel was a small town—everyone knew one another, and even during Karneval there were enough friendly faces around that you needn’t worry about your children. Or so everyone thought.

When the procession had reached the Werther Tor, we wandered back to the fountain where we’d passed Katharina Linden, and sat on the edge of the stone basin, full of candy and feeling contented in a slightly queasy way. The crowds were dispersing, and the floats had been replaced with a squat street-cleaning machine that growled over the cobblestones like an oversized vacuum cleaner, followed by a team of bored-looking men dressed in orange overalls and armed with trash bags.

I looked away, up toward the archway leading into the St. Michael
Gymnasium, and saw a flicker of color as someone dressed in a clown suit came hurrying out. It was Frau Linden, minus Nils. She moved quickly across the Salzmarkt and out of my line of vision. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but I was a little surprised when several minutes later she appeared from the alley at the side of the
Rathaus
, and came hurrying down the street toward us. I dug Stefan in the ribs with my elbow to make him look up.

“What?”

I nodded in the direction of Frau Linden, who was now making a beeline for us. I was formulating some silly remark when I saw her expression. Her face, normally warm and kindly, had a frigid, set look to it that sat oddly with her emerald-green wig. Instinctively sensing that something was wrong, I got to my feet as she came up to us.

“Have you seen Katharina?”

Her voice was taut, vibrating as though it would suddenly break and shatter her composure. I looked at her uncertainly.

“We saw her earlier on,” I told her.

“Where?” There was an unstable urgency in her voice. I found myself leaning backward, thinking that she might take me by the shoulders and shake me; she had that sort of look.

“Here,” I said. “By the fountain.” From her face I could see this was not the answer she wanted; I suddenly felt hot all over, as though I had told her a lie.

“Did you see where she went?” snapped Frau Linden.

“No,” said Stefan, and Frau Linden shot him a look, as if she had only just noticed him.

“No, sorry,” I said, echoing Stefan. We looked at each other uncomfortably.

Frau Linden suddenly seemed to sag a little, as though the energy that had drawn her toward us had drained out of her. Now she did reach out with one hand and touch my shoulder.

“Are you
sure?”
she asked me. “Are you really
sure
you didn’t see where she went?”

“No,” I said, then, realizing that this sounded ambiguous: “No, I didn’t see where she went.”

“She’s probably gone around to Marla’s or something,” suggested Stefan, trying to be helpful.

“She hasn’t,” stated Frau Linden bluntly. She looked about her in a preoccupied manner, as though she had left Katharina somewhere like a forgotten bag of shopping.

Then her arm dropped to her side, she turned and hurried back up the Marktstrasse, without even bothering to say goodbye. Stefan and I exchanged glances. This was odd behavior from an adult.

“Komisch,”
observed Stefan.

“Yes,” I agreed, shrugging.

It was getting chilly standing there in my gingham dress, and the curt exchange with Frau Linden had dissipated my holiday mood.

“I’m going home,” I said, and after a pause, “Do you want to come?”

Stefan just nodded. We picked up our bags of loot and set off for my house. I was sliding my key into the lock when my mother opened the door from the other side.

Typically for my mother, she did not waste time greeting Stefan and asking him all those mundane adult questions such as
How is school going?
or
How is your mother?
She launched straight in with “Has either of you seen Katharina Linden?”

We looked at each other. Had all the adults gone mad?

“No,” we both said in unison.

“Are you quite sure?”

“We saw her at the fountain earlier on, but she’s gone now,” I said. “We told Frau Linden that.” I looked at my mother doubtfully. “Why is everyone looking for her, anyway? What’s she done?”

“She hasn’t done anything,” said my mother. “She’s just disappeared.” She eyed me and Stefan dubiously, obviously reluctant to say anything that would alarm us. “Well, she’s probably just gone home with a friend,” she said eventually. “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

“Frau Linden said she’d already tried Marla Frisch’s house,” I pointed out. There was a silence. “Where’s Papa?” I asked.

“He’s out,” said my mother. She sighed. “He’s helping the Lindens look for Katharina.”

“We can help too,” suggested Stefan. He pulled the Spider-Man balaclava off his head to reveal sandy hair sticking up every which way in untidy clumps. His face looked eager; I wondered if he was letting the Spider-Man outfit go to his head. “We can look for her. We know loads of places, don’t we, Pia?”

My mother shook her head. “I think it would be better if you both stayed in now,” she said. “Let the grown-ups look for Katharina.” Her voice was mild, but the tone was unmistakably firm. Abruptly, as though changing the subject, she said, “Do you two want some hot chocolate?”

Five minutes later, Stefan and I were contentedly enthroned on the long bench behind the kitchen table, our mouths ringed with chocolate. For the time being, Katharina Linden was forgotten.