Tell us another story, Herr Schiller.” This was from Stefan, who was sitting on the edge of a claw-footed and overstuffed armchair that looked as though it had been made for Herr Schiller’s grandmother.
“Bitte,” I corrected him in a disapproving tone that Oma Kristel would have been proud of. Not that I was such a stickler for manners-but I knew people of Herr Schiller’s generation were.
“Please.” Stefan corrected himself. “The one about the cats was cool.”
Herr Schiller raised one eyebrow and regarded Stefan quizzically over the top of his spectacles. “I seem to remember that at the time you told me it was not scary at all, young man.” His expression was stern but his voice was cheerful.
Stefan looked down, temporarily at a loss, but when his head came up again he was smiling, rather shyly. He and Herr Schiller regarded each other in silence for several moments, and then I was surprised to see Herr Schiller’s craggy face break into a smile, too.
A little flush of annoyance ran through me, like a tiny electrical charge traveling along a wire. Sometimes the two of them made me feel like an unwelcome third. And besides (said a mean little voice at the back of my mind), who did Stefan think he was, anyway? He was still StinkStefan, the most unpopular boy in the class, if not the entire school.
“I don’t want to hear a story today, actually,” I cut in, and instantly felt self-conscious at the edge in my voice. Still, it worked; both their heads had turned my way and they were now looking at me, Stefan with a look of irritation at the interruption and Herr Schiller with a smooth expression that betrayed no recognition of my rudeness.
“I wanted to ask Herr Schiller something,” I declared.
Stefan sighed. “Go on, then.” The suffix dummy hung unspoken in the air.
“Well…” Now that I had center stage I was not at all sure I wanted to deliver my soliloquy. But I saw one of Herr Schiller’s bushy white eyebrows starting to lift as though being drawn up his forehead by an invisible string, and so I plunged ahead.
“I wanted to ask you about… well, about the things that have been happening.”
“The things?”
“Yes, well, you see, my mother said we should look out for anything that was seltsam, and then I started to think about all the stuff you told me about, about the cats and everything, and how they just went through the walls, and how Pluto did it too. I don’t think it’s right-I think there’s something strange going on, Herr Schiller, and since you know so much about all that kind of thing I thought maybe you might know who or what did it, and where we should start looking.”
This was a relatively long speech for me, and I had got to the end before I realized that Herr Schiller was looking at me with an expression of total and bemused noncomprehension.
“Start looking for what?”
“Katharina Linden,” I said, as though it were self-evident.
There was a long silence.
“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” said Herr Schiller at last.
“You know,” I persisted uncomfortably. “The girl from my school who disappeared.”
Embarrassment loosened my tongue and I found myself running on uncontrollably. “The thing is, she was there by the fountain, we all saw her, and then she wasn’t there anymore and Frau Linden said she couldn’t find her and had we seen her? And no one just vanishes into thin air, so it’s obvious it must have been…”
My voice trailed off and I fell silent without finishing the sentence.
“It must have been…?” prompted Herr Schiller, but I was unable to complete the phrase. I had been going to say magic, but I now realized how stupid that sounded.
“It just didn’t seem right,” I finished in a small voice.
Herr Schiller regarded me for a very long moment. His lips were tight shut but I could see a little muscle in his jaw working, as though words were struggling to get out. Looking at him with my cheeks reddening, I was suddenly struck by how ancient he looked. The lines in his face looked as though they had been carved there, the bright-blue eyes sunken into shadowy hollows.
Then he turned to Stefan and made an odd little movement like a bow. “Young man,” he said, in a tone that had joviality smeared all over the stiffness underneath like greasepaint. He turned back to me. “Fräulein Kolvenbach.” He sighed. “Forgive the rudeness of a very old man. I am very tired and I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
I gaped at him. Behind Herr Schiller I could see Stefan making you idiot faces at me.
I was not sure what I had done, but I had evidently put my foot in it to a cataclysmic extent. “I’m really sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to-”
“Please don’t apologize,” said Herr Schiller in a weary voice. “I am simply tired, my dear. I am over eighty, you know.” At that precise moment he looked more like a hundred and ten. “Go now, but come and see me again soon, won’t you?”
Stefan and I got to our feet, and before we knew it we were once again out in the frigid air, with cobblestones under our feet and a firmly closed door at our backs.
“Nice one, Pia,” said Stefan with heavy irony.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said defensively.
“You must have,” Stefan pointed out. “You must have offended him really badly or he wouldn’t have asked us to leave.” He looked at me speculatively. “What were you trying to ask him, anyway?”
Now that I had to put it into words again, it really sounded stupid. “Well, since he’s an expert on all that sort of stuff, I thought he might know something about people disappearing.”
“All that stuff? You think a witch got Katharina or something?” he said incredulously.
“Shut up,” I told him helpfully. I glanced around me, as though looking for someone more interesting to talk to. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m going home now, anyway.”
Stefan shrugged. “All right. See you tomorrow.”
I didn’t reply; I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that I would be hanging around with him for yet another day of social leprosy, even though we both very well knew I would be. In defiance of my mother’s instructions to stay together, I walked off, once again leaving him standing alone.
“You’re home early,” said my mother as I let myself into the house.
“Hmm,” I said discouragingly. Of course, my hangdog looks and low state of mind did not pass unnoticed under the maternal radar. My mother was out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel and ready for action, before I had made it to the foot of the stairs.
“What’s up?” Her tone was brisk. I sighed and shrugged my shoulders.
“Nothing, really. I just… Herr Schiller…” My voice tailed off. There was no way to explain without my mother reaching the inescapable conclusion that I had somehow been rude to the old man.
“Herr Schiller what?”
“Oh…” I shuffled my feet uncomfortably on the wooden floorboards. “We had to leave, that’s all. He said he wasn’t feeling well.”
I must have sounded unconvincing because my mother cocked her head and said, “Have you two been making a nuisance of yourselves?” I did not reply. “Herr Schiller is over eighty, you know,” she went on. “I’m not sure he can cope with two youngsters for hours on end.”
“It wasn’t that,” I said defensively, and then instantly realized that I had dropped myself in it.
“So what was it?” was my mother’s immediate riposte.
I gave a deep sigh. “I think I-I think he was upset about something I said.” I looked at her earnestly. Her lips were pursed. “I didn’t mean to upset him. I mean, I’m still not sure what was wrong.” By this time my mother’s mouth was drawn so far to one side of her face by skepticism that she looked as though she had been painted by Picasso.
“Pia.” The word was heavily loaded with reproach. “What did you say? Tell me exactly what you said.”
“Mama…”
“Pia, what did you say?”
“Well, I didn’t say anything rude. Honestly, I didn’t. I just asked him about the stuff that’s been happening in the town. You know, about Katharina Linden.”
“Oh, Pia.” Now her lips relaxed but her brows were knitted and her chin drawn back, as though she were seeing something shockingly sad. Then she sighed very heavily and reached out a hand to touch my shoulder. “Well, I suppose you couldn’t have known.” She shook her head. “Come into the kitchen for a minute.”
Mystified, I followed her, wondering what I had done. Were Katharina Linden and Herr Schiller somehow related?
“Sit,” said my mother, indicating the bench seat by the table. Obediently I sat, as she settled herself on the other side. So it was clearly going to be another little talk; two in one week was a record even for me.
“Look, Pia, perhaps I should have told you this before, but I didn’t think it would be helpful. I’m not surprised Herr Schiller was upset when you asked him about Katharina Linden’s disappearance. Did you know that he had a daughter who disappeared?”
“No.” I was genuinely shocked.
“Well, he did, so obviously it’s not the best topic to discuss with him. That’s partly the reason I didn’t mention it before. I was afraid you might be curious and ask him about it.”
I was indignant at this-how could she think I would do such a thing?-but to be honest, if I had known about it, I would have been consumed with curiosity. It might have been difficult to stay right off the topic, and a ten-year-old’s attempts to approach the subject in a subtle, roundabout way would have been picked up a mile off by someone as sharp as Herr Schiller. Still, the cat was out of the bag now; I might as well ask my mother all the questions that were seething to the surface of my mind.
“Is Herr Schiller married?”
“He’s a widower,” explained my mother.
“When did his wife die?” I wanted to know.
“Oh, I’m not sure…” A funny look passed across my mother’s face; I’m almost sure she was about to say, You’ll have to ask Oma Kristel, and stopped herself just in time. “I think it was during the war.”
“How old was the little girl?”
“Oh, Pia. I really don’t know that. I only know what Oma Kristel told me a long time ago. I think the little girl disappeared after her mother died, but I don’t know what age she was.”
“Did they ever find her?”
“No,” said my mother. She seemed lost in thought for a moment.
“What happened to her?” I persisted.
“Nobody knows,” my mother said. “She just… vanished. It was wartime, you know. All sorts of awful things happened. Your granny”-by this she meant her own mother in England, Granny Warner-“told me a house in her street was hit by a bomb and they never found a body at all. It must have been vaporized.” She glanced at me. “This is rather a gruesome topic, isn’t it? Shall we change the subject?”
But I wasn’t finished yet. “Was she in a house that got bombed?”
“No, she wasn’t. It wouldn’t be a disappearance if they knew what had happened, would it?” said my mother. She sounded a little impatient. “Why don’t you ask-no, listen, Pia, this was precisely the reason I didn’t tell you about it in the first place. You can’t start asking questions about it. You’ll hurt Herr Schiller terribly.” She shook her head again. “It sounds as though you have already offended him by asking about Katharina Linden.”
“I didn’t mean to…”
“I know you didn’t, but I think you have offended him. Perhaps I should call him and apologize…”
In fact she did try to telephone him later that evening, but although she let the phone ring twenty times there was no reply. At length she decided to leave well enough alone; after all, what could she say to apologize that would not include mentioning the taboo topic? And I-I sat upstairs in my room with a book I was not really reading and a cup of cocoa that went cold on the top of my bedside table, staring out the window at the dark and mourning the sure end of a friendship.