This town!” my mother was shouting. “This town! That’s what the problem is!”
Sebastian and I, at the kitchen table, stared at each other and listened in silence to the argument. Sebastian’s eyes were round with astonishment. He was used to my mother’s occasional explosive outbursts of temper when they were directed at one of us children-when we had done something particularly annoying, such as the time Sebastian emptied a full pot of honey into the kettle to “make hot honey for Teddy.” To hear it directed at our father was quite different, and somehow chilling, like the first icy gust of wind that signals the end of summer. I looked at Sebastian and saw from his expression that his infant mind was also groping about, trying to imagine what Papa might have done that was so böse.
“This bloody town!” added my mother in English for good measure. She regarded my father balefully, a formidable sight in her plasticized apron, a stainless-steel frying fork brandished in her right hand for emphasis.
“Ach, this again,” retorted my father in disgust. I marveled at his courage; my mother looked as though she might beat him around the head with the frying fork.
“What do you mean, this again?” my mother demanded.
My father regarded her stolidly. “Everything is better in England,” he said.
“Well-” began my mother, but then obviously changed her mind, thinking that even for a raging Anglophile the riposte Well, it is better was overstating the case.
After the briefest of pauses she went on, “I know it isn’t perfect”-in tones that implied she knew the exact opposite-“but at least where I grew up kids didn’t get spirited away off the streets while their parents were two meters away.” This exaggeration was typical of my mother, and always infuriated my father, who like many Germans was completely oblivious to irony. The exaggeration was not what caught my attention about her little speech, though; it was the word weggezaubert, which literally means to be made to disappear by magic.
But before I had time to digest this notion, my mother was ranting on. “I don’t even want to let Pia out anymore. Wolfgang, when we moved here I thought we were at least doing the right thing for the children. A small town, everyone knows each other, countryside all around. Now it seems like we’re living in the middle of A Nightmare on bloody Elm Street!” She was back into English again, as she always was when she got really angry.
“You can’t blame the town for that,” protested my father. “These things happen everywhere.”
“Not everywhere,” snapped my mother. “And, anyway, this thing happened here, didn’t it? And haven’t you noticed what’s happening to Pia in your friendly little town?”
My father swung his not inconsiderable bulk around and regarded me briefly. “What is happening to Pia?”
“All her so-called friends are avoiding her. Well, all except Stefan Breuer, and he hasn’t exactly had an easy time here either, has he?”
“That’s hardly surprising when his father is drunk on the streets at lunchtime,” retorted my father.
“That’s what I mean!” rejoined my mother. “Always gossiping, and everyone judging everyone else.”
“I am not judging, I am telling the truth,” said my father. “He is drunk at lunchtime. It is not gossip; I have seen him myself.”
“Ooooh!” screeched my mother. “Why do you have to be so bloody German?”
My father regarded her expressionlessly. Then he said quietly, “And why do you have to be so bloody English?”
For a moment they looked at each other in silence. Then my mother opened her mouth to say something, but what it was going to be I do not know because at that precise instant we heard someone knocking loudly on the front door.
Now, when I finally come to tell the story of that strange premillennium year, I am years older, almost an adult myself. Even so, people often do things that I struggle to understand. Their motives are hard to fathom.
When I was ten, adult behavior seemed completely incomprehensible. You could say something apparently quite innocent, or repeat something that you had heard adults saying, and find that you had caused horrible offense. You could have something hammered into you by one set of adults and find another set apparently propagating the exact opposite.
Adults: they were so unpredictable that nothing they did should have been able to surprise me anymore. Still, that morning something did.
The knocking was Herr Schiller. My mother, still flushed from the argument, and still clutching the frying fork, opened the door and found Herr Schiller standing on the doorstep, as always looking as though he had been dressed by a personal valet.
“Guten Morgen, Frau Kolvenbach,” said Herr Schiller, making a very slight bow. He lifted his hat and extended a hand to my mother.
“Herr Schiller,” said my mother, sounding surprised, but remembering to take the hand and shake it politely.
Still sitting at the kitchen table, I heard the exchange of greetings and my heart sank. This could mean only one thing: I was in trouble. Herr Schiller must have come to make a complaint to my mother about my offensive behavior. I felt hot with guilt and embarrassment, and also a little indignation: after all, I hadn’t meant to upset him. If my mother had told me about his daughter beforehand, I wouldn’t have asked him about Katharina Linden.
At that moment I almost felt I hated him; it was so unfair, and so typically adult. I slipped down from the bench seat and was brushing crumbs from my trousers when my mother came back into the kitchen.
“Herr Schiller is here to see you,” she announced.
I was incredulous. To see me? I wondered whether this was some sly introduction to the inevitable scene. Did he want to make sure that the complaint was made in front of me? Unwillingly, I followed her into the living room.
Herr Schiller had been sitting in my father’s favorite armchair, but as we entered the room he stood up. As he did so, I noticed with surprise that he was carrying a little posy of spring flowers. For a second, the idea floated through my head that my mother had given them to him as some sort of reconciliatory gesture. Then I saw that he was holding out the flowers to me.
“Fräulein Pia, these are for you,” he said, and smiled. Behind me, my mother quietly slipped out of the room and went to investigate Sebastian’s progress with his breakfast. I merely stood and stared at my visitor, unsure how to react.
“Please, take them,” said Herr Schiller. He took a step toward me and there was nothing to do but accept the flowers. I stood there, bewildered, burying my nose in the soft petals, more to hide my embarrassment than to smell their delicate scent.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out at last, not quite daring to raise my eyes to his face. “I didn’t mean to…” My voice trailed off; I was not sure how I could complete the apology without straying onto forbidden ground. I’m sorry I mentioned disappearances… I didn’t know your daughter disappeared… I didn’t mean to upset you by talking about people disappearing… In the end I said nothing, but Herr Schiller came to my rescue.
“Please don’t apologize, Pia.” His voice was kindly. “It is I who should apologize, for asking you to leave so abruptly.”
I did look at him then, as it was so unexpected, an adult apologizing to a child like that, especially when the adult had reached such a respectably old age, whereas I was only ten years old and the school pariah to boot. Herr Schiller was smiling at me, the map of wrinkles on his ancient face all seeming to turn upward so that they looked like the tributaries of a spreading delta.
“I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to say anything wrong,” I ventured at last. “I didn’t know…”
The words sounded lame to me; in Bad Münstereifel everyone knew everyone else’s business, so ignorance was no defense.
“Of course not,” said Herr Schiller, a little sadly, it seemed to me. “You are a good child, Pia, a kind child.”
A little encouraged, I tried to explain myself: “I only asked you about-you know-because you know so much about the town… and about all the funny stuff that’s happened here in the past.”
“The past?” repeated Herr Schiller. He frowned slightly, and my heart seemed to lurch-did he think I was referring to his own past again?
“The miller and the cats… and the treasure in the well… and the one about the huntsman-all the strange things like that. So I thought you might have some clues…”
Herr Schiller stared at me for several seconds. Then, very carefully, he lowered himself back into my father’s armchair, his hands clutching the armrests for support. When he had settled himself, he said, “So, Fräulein Pia, you think that the witches took the little girl away, or something like that?”
I eyed him; it did not look as though he was making fun of me, as a lot of adults would have. It looked as though he was taking me seriously, actually considering the idea as a real possibility. Still, I replied rather carefully, “I don’t know.”
“But you think… maybe…?”
“Well, everyone-I mean, all the grown-ups-keeps saying to look out for anything seltsam,” I told him.
“Etwas seltsam,” he repeated thoughtfully, tapping the fingers of one hand on the arm of the chair. Then he fell silent again, as though drifting away on a tide of his own thoughts.
“Herr Schiller?” I said tentatively.
“Yes, Pia?”
“You’re not angry with me anymore?”
Herr Schiller made a noise that was something between a snort and a chuckle. “Of course I’m not angry with you, my dear. And you have some very interesting ideas.”
“Really?” I was both flattered and astounded.
“Yes, really,” said Herr Schiller. “You see patterns where other people see nothing.”
I was not sure what to say to this. If I had seen a connection between the disappearance of a little girl and the stories of hidden secrets, terrible fates, and eternal hauntings that Herr Schiller poured into my fascinated ears, it was not a pattern that any adult other than Herr Schiller was likely to take seriously. I was not even sure it made sense myself; and my mother would treat it as the domestic equivalent of wasting police time.
“Herr Schiller? Are there really any such things as ghosts?”
The old man did not even show surprise at the question. He heaved a sigh. “Yes, Pia, there are. But never the ones you expect.”
I pondered this. He had the answer down pat; but did it really mean anything? I had heard my mother with my own ears telling Sebastian that St. Nicholas was going to fill his shoes with presents on December 6, and up until fairly recently she had still maintained the pretense of the tooth fairy. I was reluctant to categorize my old friend with the mendacious majority of adults, but was he just humoring me?
“No, I mean really?” I persisted.
Herr Schiller smiled. “Pia, have you ever seen a ghost?”
“No…”
“Does that mean there aren’t any?”
“I don’t know…”
“Na, have you ever seen the great pyramid of Cheops?”
“No,” I said.
“And does that mean there isn’t one?”
“Of course not.”
“Well then.” Herr Schiller sat back in my father’s armchair with the look of one who has proved his case.
“I don’t think my parents believe in them,” I pointed out.
“Probably not,” agreed Herr Schiller equably.
“I just thought…” I paused. Would I be putting my foot in it again if I mentioned Katharina Linden? “I really want to help find Katharina,” I ventured.
Herr Schiller followed this somewhat crooked line of logic perfectly. “And you think, Fräulein Pia, that there is something unholy going on? And that is why the little girl disappeared?”
“She was weggezaubert,” I said; spirited away.
“Ach, so,” said Herr Schiller thoughtfully. He didn’t laugh at me, or tell me to stop talking nonsense.
Emboldened, I went on: “I want to see if I can find out what happened, that’s why I wanted to ask you about the weird things that have happened in the town, in case there was a clue.”
We looked at each other.
“What do you think?” I asked him cautiously.
“I think, Fräulein Pia, that you have discovered an angle that the police will not be covering in their investigation,” said Herr Schiller drily.
“Do you think so?” I asked eagerly.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then will you help me?”
Herr Schiller studied me for a few moments; his expression was unreadable, but his eyes twinkled. Then he lifted his gnarled hands. “I am a very old man, Pia. Too old for running all over this town looking for clues-or ghosts.”
“Oh, you needn’t do any of that,” I assured him enthusiastically. “I’ll do that-and Stefan,” I added as an afterthought.
“Then how can I help you?” inquired Herr Schiller.
“Well, can you keep telling us the old stories?”
“Sicher.”
“And we’ll come and tell you what we find, and you can help us work it out.”
“I should be delighted.”
There was no time for further dialogue because my mother put her head around the living-room door, and said, “I’m terribly sorry, Herr Schiller, would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No, thank you, Frau Kolvenbach,” said Herr Schiller. He rose from the armchair and stood there for a moment, his hat in his hand, beaming down at me. “And thank you, Fräulein Pia.”
My mother looked at him quizzically; what was there to thank me for? She was somewhat mollified on the subject of the offense I had given Herr Schiller, since he had obviously come to offer an olive branch, but she was still not convinced that I was not “bothering that poor old man.” In the end she settled for, “I hope you thanked Herr Schiller for the flowers, Pia.”
“Thank you, Herr Schiller,” I parroted obediently.
Herr Schiller extended one wrinkled hand toward me, and for once in my life I was happy to shake hands with an adult: it was not like being nagged into it by Oma Kristel; it felt more like we were co-conspirators.
“Auf Wiedersehen, Pia.”
“Wiedersehen, Herr Schiller.”