Pia,” 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.
“White with fear, he refused to go, so they laid hands on him and prepared to drag him to the door, but he fought them tooth and nail.
“‘Don’t put me outside!’ he screamed. ‘I don’t have the Fettmännchen, I have no money at all, and he will kill me!’
“‘You fool,’ said one of the others. ‘You offered him a coin, and you didn’t even have it?’ He would have struck the lad, but another youth stopped him.
“‘That’s no use,’ he said. ‘Turn out your pockets and find a coin, or we are all done for.’
“So they went through their pockets in desperation, and at last someone found a coin. Now there was no escape for the foolish young man who had made the boast in the first place; the others pushed the coin into his hand and then they stood behind him and thrust him toward the door with a strength born of terror.
“‘Here is your Fettmännchen!’ shouted one of them, and opened the door. Instantly the barn was lit up so brightly that they had to close their eyes-but they could still feel the heat on their faces; it was like leaning into a baker’s oven. The young man with the coin stood trembling like a rabbit, the Fettmännchen in his outstretched palm.
“‘The Fettmännchen you promised me,’ said the great voice that crackled as though the lips and the larynx and the lungs forming the words were themselves on fire.
“Then the young man felt a terrible heat and a searing pain in his hand, as though he had thrust it into the hottest part of the blacksmith’s furnace. He made a choking sound in his throat, and then he fell senseless to the floor, so that he did not see the Fiery Man striding away and the darkness closing in. They carried him home to his mother and put him to bed, where he lay like the dead until the next morning.
“Perhaps it was as well for him. The hand the Fiery Man had touched was charred right down to the bones, the crumbling and blackened ends of which protruded through the stumps of incinerated flesh. And that,” concluded Herr Schiller, “is the tale of the Fiery Man of the Hirnberg, and the consequences of speaking without thinking first.” He looked at me, unblinking.
“That,” I said, not without admiration, “was very horrible.”
“Bitte schän,” said Herr Schiller drily, inclining his head.