After that, the house took on the appearance of a vast military camp in the process of packing up and moving on, my mother playing the grim general who strode about among the crates and boxes, overseeing everything. We were not actually to move until the new year; a family with school-age children cannot be transferred from one country to another in a day or two, and furthermore my mother had agreed to stay in Germany for Christmas.
“That much she has agreed,” said my father dolefully.
At school, the news that Pia Kolvenbach was moving to England and that her parents were divorcing had circulated with lightning speed. Suddenly I was no longer ostracized for being the Potentially Exploding Girl, but the new attention was worse. I could tell that the girls who sidled up to me and asked with faux-sympathetic smiles whether it was true were doing it on the basis of discussions they had heard between their own parents, to whom they would report back like scouts. Soon there would be nothing left of me at all, nothing real: I would be a walking piece of gossip, alternatively tragic and appalling and, worst of all, a poor thing.
“Why’s your mother doing it?” Stefan asked me one morning. We were the last to leave the classroom after a hefty session of algebra. The winter sunlight streaking through the windows was white and cold. “Has she got someone else?”
I looked at him stupidly for a moment, momentarily wondering what he meant; did he mean my mother had got other children?
“Someone else?”
“You know,” said Stefan offhandedly. “Another man.”
“No,” I said emphatically, although I had never even considered the idea up until that moment. “Well, why’s she going?”
“I don’t know. Can you shut up about it?”
“Sorry.”
I shoved my math books into my schoolbag. “She says she hates Germany and she hates Bad Münstereifel.”
“Na, I hate it too sometimes.”
“Well, she really hates it,” I said, straightening up. “But I hate England, and I can’t see why I have to go and live there, just because she…” I bit my lip, willing myself not to burst into humiliating tears.
“It’s Scheisse,” agreed Stefan sympathetically. He hefted his bag onto his shoulder, and cocked his head toward the door. I trailed out after him, disconsolately. As we walked across the courtyard, he said, “Have you told Herr Schiller yet?”
I shook my head. “He probably knows.” Resentfully, I added, “Everybody in the entire town seems to.” It was true. Even though the adults were not quite as shameless as my schoolmates in approaching me with questions, I could tell that they were thinking about it when they looked at me. The attention was almost unbearable. When Frau Nett in the bakery gave me a free ice cream, an unprecedented piece of kindness, I knew it was just because she was thinking Poor Pia Kolvenbach. I would rather have dispensed with both the ice cream and the sympathy.
Walking up the Orchheimer Strasse, Stefan said, “We have to do something about… you know.” He threw a significant glance toward Herr Düster’s house.
“Stefan.” I felt exhausted. “I’m going. Don’t you understand? I’m going to stupid verflixten England.”
“That’s exactly why we have to do something.” Stefan sounded excited.
Without even looking at him, I knew he would have that eager expression that I found exciting and infuriating by turns, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. “We have to do something now, otherwise you’ll never know what happened.”
“I am never going to know,” I said bitterly.
“We have to find out before you go,” said Stefan.
“Oh, what does it matter?”
I looked up at the leaden skies, rolling my eyes in frustration. Our futile investigation, which now seemed like a child’s game in comparison to the fresh woes descending upon me, was just one more item on the long list of things I was never going to finish in the town where I had always lived. I was never going to sing at the school concert in the spring, I was never going to start a new school year at the Gymnasium, I was never going to take part in another St. Martin’s procession.
All the things that seemed so reassuringly solid around me were going to vanish like a dream, be rolled up like a map and stuffed into the storage space of my mind. When I was far away and in my unimaginable new life I could take the map out and unroll it and pore over the marks on it, the shapes, the figures, the landmarks, but they would all be theoretical, like something in a book about dead cultures. I would come back at some time in the future and visit the town, but my friends would be grown up, and I-I would be like Dornröschen, the sleeping beauty, who had slumbered for a hundred years while everyone outside the castle grew old and died, and the hedge of thorns grew higher and thicker until there was no way through it anymore. When at last I came back to the world I had known before there would be nothing to recognize.
“Pia?”
I realized I was crying and hurriedly began to search through my pockets for a tissue.
“I’m all right,” I said crossly. I blew my nose and we resumed walking.
For a while Stefan said nothing, then: “Pia, if you don’t want to come, I’m going on my own.”
I did not reply.
“We have to do something.”
“Why is it always we?” I retorted. “Why don’t the police sort it out, or someone else?”
“They aren’t getting anywhere with it,” Stefan pointed out.
“And what makes you think we’re going to get anywhere with it?” I realized I had said we, as though I were still involved with the whole idea, and winced.
“We have to try.”
“We don’t have to try,” I snapped. I rounded on him. “The whole idea is Scheisse. Supposing he did do it? Then it’s crazy to even think of going in his house. We might be next.”
“Not if you come with me. The kids who’ve disappeared, they were all on their own.”
“Look,” I said irritably, “it’s absolutely crazy to even think about it. He’s put a new lock on the cellar door, anyway. So what are we going to do-walk up to his door, knock on it, and ask if we can come in?”
“Of course not.” Stefan sounded offended.
“Well, what?”
“We wait until after dark when everyone’s gone to sleep, and then we-”
“No,” I said emphatically, shaking my head. “No way.” I glared at him. “You really are stupid. I can see why-”
I was going to say I can see why they call you StinkStefan, but in spite of my anger something held me back, the muffled voice of conscience telling me that none of this fury I felt was really Stefan’s fault at all. My voice trailed off for a moment, and then I rallied. “Anyway, maybe your mother lets you wander all over town at night, but mine certainly doesn’t.”
I saw a shadow cross Stefan’s face and realized that I had hit a nerve with my gibe about his mother’s lack of interest, but I was feeling too raw myself to apologize.
Stefan looked at me for a long moment. When at last he spoke, his voice was low and urgent and not angry at all.
“Why do you care what your mother thinks anymore?” he said.