Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone: A Novel (13 page)

“Maybe,” Sylvia said. “Maybe when she was our age. Can you imagine her taking off her clothes now?” Sylvia wore a wreath of daisies in her flaxen hair. We’d played “Rapunzel,” yet without enthusiasm. It was hot and the skies hung low, and we sat on the remains of the church walls, which were made from large fieldstones, and our arms and legs were glistening with moisture. Little trees and bushes sprouted in cracks and fissures; we could hear the swallows cutting the air around us. We were
bored, and we hated Käthe for showing us every day of the week what might happen to us if we stayed in Hemmersmoor. When Anke suggested we arrange a rendezvous for Käthe, it was a done deal.

It wouldn’t be hard to give Käthe a letter and convince her that one of the village men had sent it through us. She was fat and ugly and terrified, but the barrettes in her wispy hair and the lace sewn to her shirts spoke volumes. Yet it was harder to decide on her suitor. Who would want to spend a night with Käthe? We had to be inventive.

“Jens Jensen,” Anke suggested. “He’s ideal. He’s a drunk and won’t know who he’s with anyway. His wife doesn’t care if he sleeps around. She’ll be safe from him for a day.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said. “Jensen is a good choice.”

Anke with her dark, shiny hair and smooth skin, Anke with her full lips and white teeth, smiled. Smiled and nodded.

“Let’s take the apothecary,” I said.

“His wife is jealous,” Anke objected. “He’ll never do it.”

“The apothecary,” I said. “We’ll take him.”

Sylvia shrugged. “We can try. But he’ll never go for Käthe. We’d have to pretend he’s meeting with someone else.”

“Heidrun Brodersen,” I said.

“Genius!” Heike shrieked, and for once I was happy for her presence. I had not expected her to agree, but she said her mother was ideal. “She’s as fat as Käthe. In the dark he won’t know it’s her until it’s too late.”

“In the dark?” Anke said.

“It’s got to be dark, for sure,” Heike said. “Oh boy, it’s going to be fun.”

Heidrun Brodersen was a good bet. Men loved her, and
rumors crept through Hemmersmoor about nights she did not spend at home and nights her husband spent at Frick’s making sure not to return home until after midnight, downing paid-for drinks until he was nearly dead. Yet I wasn’t interested in what happened to her or her reputation. I wanted the apothecary. How I would enjoy watching him in the arms of Käthe Grimm. I couldn’t wait.

The first task proved to be as easy as we’d anticipated. One morning, when the streets were empty beneath a blue sky that could convince anybody there had to be a world beyond Hemmersmoor, I found Käthe on a bench in the village square. She’d been at the bakery, buying sweet rolls and éclairs, and she sat smiling in the sun, taking a bite from a dry roll, then pushing part of an éclair into her already full mouth. Finally she took a third bite, from the roll again, and her cheeks were ready to burst. Only now did she start to chew, crumbs and flecks of custard raining down onto her shirt. The smile stayed on her lips even as she chewed.

“Here,” I said and handed her the letter. “A man gave it to me.”

Käthe stared at me, forgetting to work on the rolls and éclair. “Who?” she said.

I waited until she was done spitting and coughing before shrugging. “I can’t say.” Then I ran off.

The change in Käthe was tremendous. The rendezvous was not until Friday night, three days away, but by that afternoon she was already a different person. She still screamed, still talked nonsense about skeletons and maids milking the beams of cowsheds and potatoes flying through barns like swallows. Yet that first
afternoon after receiving the letter, she wore a yellow dress we’d never seen before, a ridiculous rag that didn’t fit the color of her skin or hair but which she presented to Hemmersmoor with an air about her as though she were the princess of Egypt.

Our second task was harder, and I tried to get out of it, but since I had suggested the apothecary as our male suitor, Sylvia, Anke, and Heike insisted. I had no choice.

It took me all afternoon to find him alone in his store. His wife, Rosemarie, often served customers who wanted bandages or cough syrup, and for two hours, I stood on the village square and watched Käthe showing off her yellow dress and talking gibberish. My heart wanted to force itself out of my throat, I was tempted many times to hurry home; only the sight of Käthe and her shiny pink skin and dull hair made me stay.

The bell above the door rang, announcing me. From behind the old counter, Friedrich Penck lifted his gaze. Around him glass jars were neatly arranged on dark wooden shelves. The shop smelled cleaner than anything else in our village, as if the foul air and low lives in Hemmersmoor were unable to touch it. If you closed the door and didn’t look at Frick’s or Meier’s across the square, you might have been in Hamburg, or even in a different country.

Penck wore metal-rimmed glasses and stood as erect as a large and curious bird. A strange calm smoothed his narrow face and commanded respect. I never heard anyone raise his voice to him.

He looked sternly at me and said, “Get out.”

I shook my head.

He touched his neatly trimmed beard, following its contours with two fingers. “I told you to never come to my store again.”

I nodded.

“So what do you want?”

I stayed silent, my face hotter than my hands. The letter I held was soaked with my sweat.

“I will call the
Gendarm
if you don’t leave,” he said politely.

“I didn’t steal,” I finally said, and was mortified by the shrill whine of my voice.

“Of course you did. Listen, Linde. I’m sorry about what happened to you, but you can’t take things. Leave now, please.”

I shook my head again and stepped forward. I thrust the letter onto the counter separating Penck and me. This made him raise his brows. His nose seemed to grow thinner and longer, as if he wanted to smell what was inside the purple envelope.

“What is this?” he asked flatly. “An apology? It’s not necessary. Children can be cruel, and I’m sure you thought my creams could solve your problems.”

“It’s a letter from someone,” I croaked. My scars were burning, hot lines cutting my face, fiery red lines that remembered the breaking glass and my face cutting through it, remembered the hand that held my hair and pushed, then pulled back and pushed again.

“From whom?” Mr. Penck said.

“I can’t say,” I said. “I’m sorry for what I did.” My tongue burned as much as my face; I could barely move it. But this needed to be said, my mission depended on it.

Before I reached the door, the apothecary called me back. He’d opened the letter and was putting it into his coat pocket so hastily that he crumbled the purple paper. “Wait,” he said again, and met me with a pot of cream in his hand. “I’m sorry too. I might have been too harsh.” He pressed the makeup into my
hand and briskly turned around, vanishing into the back of the store.

I could hardly breathe and closed my eyes to keep from crying. Last February Mr. Penck had caught me, taken me by the arm, and dragged me to my parents’ house. They had looked at each other with sad faces, and my dad had nodded silently. He had paid Penck for the makeup even though I no longer had it on me. Then he’d sent me to my room and never talked about the theft again. He knew the boys were still mocking me. “Mincemeat,” they called me.

I held the tub in my hands for a long time. Then I ran out, ran until I reached the Droste. I couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t distinguish the screams that ran through my head, the twitches within my body. Yet I hurled the pot as far as I could and yelled when it disappeared in the water. I had him. I had Friedrich Penck. He would see, he would see.

Friday night we climbed the walls of the old convent. Our faces were smeared with soot, our bodies draped in grotesque rags. We were the plague, the harbingers of the black death. We hid on what remained of the second floor, where we could see our victims but couldn’t be detected ourselves. This second floor was said to have housed the organ, which the Swedes had torn up and carried off. Now only a third of the wooden floor existed, and it wasn’t safe to walk on it unless you knew which beams could still carry weight.

We came at twilight, changed from summer dresses into ghoulish costumes, darkened our faces, and took our positions. The sun had not taken the heat with her, sweat smeared our fearsome paint. The air seemed full of wet smoke.

Käthe arrived first, just as we had planned, and just as we had instructed her in our letter, she installed herself in the shadows of the room below. She was muttering under her breath. Even though there wasn’t enough light left to see what she was wearing, we could smell her perfume from our high perch. Like lemurs, we hovered above her, watching her dark figure through cracks in the floor. She was a seer, but love had done its job and blinded her. Or maybe all she could see were ghosts, and our bodies were too young, our hearts beating too wildly, for her to detect us.

After fifteen minutes the apothecary approached the convent. We could see him cross the moor, a shadow darker than our liquid night. His feet soon scraped over the stone and steered toward the corner where Käthe was waiting for her alleged suitor.

For seconds I didn’t hear a thing, and even if the figures below had moved, I’m not sure I would have been able to hear them above the blood pounding in my ears. It is too dark, I told myself. It is too dark—I will miss out on my revenge. I raised my torso, ready to jump up and leave my lookout.

Just then we heard the apothecary’s voice. “Is it really you?” he said.

“Yes,” Käthe answered.

Maybe the apothecary understood immediately that it wasn’t Heidrun Brodersen who had come, because silence ensued. We couldn’t take any chances.

I gave the sign.

A torch lit up in Anke’s hand and she dropped it through the floor to the room below us, where dry branches and straw greeted and spread the flames.

“No,” Käthe shouted, clinging to the apothecary who tried to tear away from her grasp. “I’m here, I’m here!”

The fire ate its way toward them, and in the unsteady light our faces appeared above the fighting couple. “Lovebirds fly, spread your wings!” we howled. We ran along the walls, screeching and banging frying pans against the stone.

Finally Penck pushed the crying woman away and ran. “Run home to your wife,” we yelled and laughed after the fleeing apothecary.

Staggering after him, Käthe shrieked as much as we did. She wore a pink dress, one sleeve torn off from her struggle with Penck. She spun like a top, like a whirling dervish, but she couldn’t see us. The afterlife haunted her, but our faces, sooty and distorted, she could not read.

“Käthe,” we howled, “Käthe, run after your lover. Run or you’ll lose him.” We knew we were safe. “Käthe, where is your kiss?” We jumped off the walls and chased after her until we reached the first house of our village.

Käthe stayed hidden for a week, and when we saw her again in the street, words sprang from her mouth like frogs, hopping away in whichever direction, too fast and slick to be caught.

Yet I wasn’t satisfied.

I had imagined my revenge for so long, and I hadn’t seen Penck suffer enough. I had barely seen him.

For a week, I expected him to show up at our door, insisting to talk to my father, but he never did. Each day, our prank seemed more childish to me, and I was ashamed of the memory of our darkened faces, the silly shrieks, and of how wonderful I had felt as the girls waited for me to give the sign to start the mayhem.

After another week I knew what more I had to do to. Before I left the house that afternoon, I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder, turning me around. He traced my scars with one of his thick, rough fingers. “They’re red,” he said. “What are you excited about?”

“None of your business,” I said.

His finger kept running over my face, a spider weaving its web. “If I could undo it.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s all forgiven.”

In the village square, people were gathered, their voices high, their mouths watering, and I soon found out what had happened. Käthe had attacked the
Gendarm
, begging him to arrest nine dead children who followed her around all day. She had bitten Mr. Schürholz’s hand, and he had taken her away to the station. It was a good moment for my mission, because Rosemarie Penck stood with her nose pressed against the apothecary’s window.

The door’s bell caused her to abandon her lookout and stare at me in surprise. “What do
you
want? You’re a thief, Linde. You’re not welcome here.”

This time I didn’t try to make conversation. I gave her the letter.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s for your husband,” I said.

“From whom?” She turned the purple envelope this way and that, then glanced quickly toward the back of the store. Her fingers already twitched with curiosity.

“I can’t say.”

H
eidrun Brodersen was a charming woman, fat and gentle and with a way about her that turned heads and caused the men and boys of Hemmersmoor serious heartache. Our mouths were always running, but when she appeared, her big legs stepping as lightly as those of a child, perfume rising from her clothes, we stood silent, as though a deity we couldn’t grasp had touched us. One of her ancestors, she claimed, had been burned at the stake for bewitching the village and bringing on a drought. A toad was found at the bottom of the well, just as the dying woman confessed, and once it had been killed, water came rushing back to the village.

Heidrun had three daughters, Heike, Karin, and Waltraud, and we were after them, trying to grope them on their way home from school, pressing our noses against the Brodersens’ windows at night, sitting in the trees around their house. If we lucked out, one of the girls, who shared a bathroom on the second floor, would undress in front of us without closing the curtain of the small, slanted window. We liked to imagine they knew we were waiting in the dark and enjoyed performing for us. Heidrun kept large earthen flowerpots on one side of her
yard, with rosebushes climbing out of them and spreading over the old stone wall that separated their yard from the Hoffmanns’. Many times, after catching glimpses of bare shoulders and white skin, we broke off a few blossoms and laid them out on windowsills or the front steps.