I think that’s what attracted me to the story of Unshockable Hans, the intrepid miller who was supposed to have lived in the Eschweiler Tal, the valley to the north of the town. If you believed all the local legends, that valley had to be the most haunted place on earth-it was simply chock-full of ghosts-and Hans was the only one who dared live there. That-and his singular name-made Hans a far more real character to me than any of the local historical figures such as Abbot Markward, about whom we completed endless dreary projects at school.
The idea of a person who could face down witches and ghosts without turning a hair was inordinately attractive to someone who was dragging a lurid family history around with them like a ball and chain. Now that I am nearly old enough to be considered an adult myself, perhaps I could face the gossip and the teasing more easily; at ten, being the girl whose grandmother exploded felt like the worst thing in the world, and the loneliest.
Unshockable Hans wouldn’t turn a hair if every single member of my extended family had exploded, of that I was sure. I imagined him as a big, deep-chested man, dressed in the traditional woodsman’s jacket, leaf green with horn buttons. He would have a broad, pleasant face, a bushy beard with streaks of gray in it, and twinkling blue eyes. He would have heard the story of my grandmother’s demise, of course, like everyone else within a ten-kilometer radius. Still, he would greet me in a friendly but grave manner, not referring to the incendiary finale of my aged relative.
If anyone mentioned it, any of those old harridans who haunted the streets of the town like vampires looking for unprotected throats, he would simply look at me with those twinkling eyes, ruffle my hair, and say, “Ach, Kind,” as though it were merely some childish piece of tomfoolery that was under discussion. As though it were not the hottest topic in the town for the last fifty years, and the social equivalent of a leper’s bell for me.
I didn’t go back to school on the Monday and Tuesday after Oma Kristel’s accident. The school didn’t bother to telephone when I failed to appear; Frau Müller, who worked in the school office, occupied the house opposite ours, and had been out in the street with her antennae twitching the moment the ambulance siren was heard.
As is usual in these situations, a classmate was delegated to bring the homework to me. Perhaps I should have smelled a rat when it was Thilo Koch who brought it on Monday, and Daniella Brandt on Tuesday. Neither of them were friends of mine.
Thilo was one of the oldest children in our class, having started school at seven; he was tall for his age, already carrying a large belly, and with savagely short hair and eyes sunk into the flesh of his chubby face like buttons on an overstuffed sofa cushion. Generally I kept away from Thilo, as you do from a bad-tempered animal.
Daniella Brandt was not as openly imposing as Thilo, but she could be just as dangerous in her way. She had a sharp-boned pale face and a thin, pointed nose like a beak, as though she wanted literally to peck at other people’s weak spots. Neither Thilo nor Daniella had ever shown the slightest inclination to do anything to help anyone else, nor were they the obvious choices for such an errand; Marla Frisch, who lived three houses down from us, would normally have dropped off my homework, as she did when I had chicken pox in the first grade.
Thilo didn’t actually get into the house, as it was my father who opened the door. Thilo was that stereotypical creature, the bully with a broad streak of yellow; he took one look at my father, who was red-eyed but still imposing, and decided not to argue the toss, although he did thrust his close-cropped head as far around the doorframe as he dared, hoping perhaps for a glimpse of sooty ceiling or blackened tablecloth. My father took the homework papers out of Thilo’s chubby hands, pushed him gently out, and closed the door.
The following day Daniella Brandt turned up and actually managed to get in. My mother, who answered the door, assumed she was a school friend. I was sitting in the living room, curled up in my father’s favorite armchair with a book I was unable to read owing to the memories that kept running through my head like a short video clip on an endless loop.
The door opened and my mother appeared. Daniella was behind her, her pointed face a white triangle in the gloom.
“Look who’s here,” my mother said in a vague-sounding voice. Her gaze seemed to trickle over me, then slide away. She was still numb. My father had been able to cry, but my mother had still not taken in Oma Kristel’s death; for days afterward she wandered around like someone in a dream, carrying the same Christmas ornaments between rooms as though preoccupied. She brushed her hands against her apron and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
Daniella slipped into the room with the speed of a weasel. Where my mother’s gaze lingered distractedly, Daniella’s seemed to stab the air. Her eyes were everywhere; I could have sworn her long thin nose was twitching too.
“I’ve brought your homework, Pia,” she told me, but her eyes did not meet mine; she was glancing at every corner of the room with barely concealed curiosity.
“Thanks,” I said tersely. I did not put the book down; pointedly I waited for her to go.
There was a long pause.
“I’m sorry about… you know,” she said eventually.
“About what?” I said sharply. I turned one of the pages so brusquely that it tore.
Daniella gave a little laugh, like the short bark of a vixen. “About your grandmother,” she said in her best what, are-you-stupid? voice. She drew a line along the floorboards with the toe of her shoe, then shook back her mousy hair from her face. “Everyone’s talking about it,” she informed me. “We just couldn’t believe it, you know?” She lowered her voice conspiratorially, with a glance toward the door in case my mother was within earshot. “Was it here that it happened, in this room?”
I did not look up. “Go away or I’ll scream,” I said.
“Don’t be silly,” said Daniella in an offended tone. She breathed a heavy sigh, as though talking to the terminally stupid. In my place she would have been lapping up the attention, that was for sure; it would have been worth losing both grandmothers and perhaps an aunt or two as well, just to be center stage for once. “Come on, Pia…”
“Go away or I’ll scream,” I repeated.
She gave that little affected laugh again. “There’s no need to be-” She didn’t get any further because I suddenly put my head back and did scream, repeatedly, at the top of my lungs. Before Daniella had time to react, the door crashed back on its hinges as my mother charged into the room like a rhinoceros defending its young. Incongruously, she still had a blue-and-white-checked oven mitt on one hand.
“My God, Pia! What’s happened?!”
I shut my mouth abruptly and regarded Daniella balefully. My chest was heaving with exertion. My mother looked from me to Daniella and back to me again. Then, very gently, she took Daniella by the shoulder and started to steer her out of the room.
“I think you’ll have to go, dear. Pia’s rather upset,” she told the stunned girl as she opened the front door with the gloved hand. “Thank you for bringing the homework,” she added. “It was very kind of you.”
A moment later she drifted back into the living room; her sudden burst of energy appeared to have dissipated, and she looked distracted again. She came over and knelt down in front of me, as though I were a toddler.
“Did your friend say something that upset you?” She might as well have said your little friend.
“She’s not my friend,” I announced.
“Well, it was nice of her to bring your homework,” said my mother.
“It wasn’t nice at all,” I told her, feeling as though another scream might well up at any moment. “She wanted to know if this was the room where Oma Kristel… you know.”
“Oh,” said my mother. There was a very long pause while she considered. At last she patted me on the shoulder. “Never mind, Pia. It’ll be a nine days’ wonder. They’ll soon get sick of talking about it.”
My mother was right about a lot of things, but on one topic she was spectacularly wrong, and that was the fascination with Oma Kristel’s death. Even now, so much later, and after all that happened that terrible year, I am quite convinced that if you mentioned the name of Kristel Kolvenbach to anyone in Bad Münstereifel, they would instantly say, “Wasn’t she the woman who exploded at her own Advent dinner?” A nine days’ wonder it most certainly was not.