I saw Herr Düster only once more in my life. I wouldn’t have seen him at all, but for my father’s insistence. My mother was adamant that I should not have anything more to do with him. Even when it was clear that he was completely innocent of any kidnapping or killing, now or ever, she was still furious with him for taking me to the Eschweiler Tal, where I might have died of hypothermia-or worse.
In fact, in her mind the entire town was guilty by association. It was typical, she said, that every person in the whole place could spend all their spare time discussing other people’s business and still miss what was really going on under their very noses. The sooner she, Sebastian, and I were out of the place forever, the better.
Oma Warner didn’t add anything to this, but she pursed her lips and went about the place silently, folding things and shelving things and packing things up for the move. She and my father behaved as though they were ambassadors from hostile countries, too polite to indulge in open warfare, yet unable to be warm to each other, even at Christmas. Unexpectedly, however, she came out on my father’s side when I raised the question of whether I might see Herr Düster.
My mother said I was visiting him over her dead body, but both my father and Oma Warner thought it would be a good idea. Nowadays people like to use that American word closure, but Oma Warner just said she thought it would help me to put the whole thing behind me for good.
I wasn’t allowed to go to Herr Düster’s house. Instead he was permitted to come to our house, where my mother (who opened the door) eyed him suspiciously. She let him stand on the doorstep for a few seconds too long before she stepped back to let him in. Herr Düster doffed his hat and stepped somewhat gingerly into the hallway.
“Guten Tag, Herr Düster,” said my mother; she was unable to keep the chill out of her voice.
“Guten Tag, Frau Kolvenbach,” said Herr Düster politely. He didn’t try to win her over with smiles and compliments; charm was never his strong point, and anyway, my mother was distinctly unreceptive. She hardly said another word to him before she ushered him into the living room, where I was waiting.
“Pia? If you want anything, just… yell,” she said with heavy emphasis as she closed the door. I didn’t reply. I imagine if Herr Düster had lived in the town for much longer he would have had to become inured to innuendo-since Herr Schiller was not there, he was the only possible target for gossip and speculation. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire is the town motto: they should have engraved it on a crest and stuck it on the front of the Rathaus. I doubt Herr Düster’s reputation as town reprobate would have improved even if it had become known that he had grappled with half a dozen murderers single-handed and brought the lot of them to justice.
Herr Düster put his hat on the coffee table and sat on an armchair a little distance from me. He did not seem inclined to say anything.
“Herr Düster-thank you,” I blurted out in a rush.
A faint smile sketched itself on his gaunt features. “I hope you have fully recovered?”
“Yes-thank you.” I fell silent for a moment. There were so many things I wanted to ask him, but I could not think of any way to introduce the topics. If I had been a little older, as I am now, I might have known the way to do it. But at that time the tremendous age gap yawned between us.
“I’m very sorry,” said Herr Düster at last. I looked at him, wondering why he was sorry.
“Herr Düster?” I couldn’t help it; my voice was trembling. “Why do you think he did it?”
“My brother, Heinrich, was sick,” he replied gently. “I think he had been sick for a long time.”
“Yes, but why did he do it?”
Herr Düster sighed. “I don’t really think it is a suitable topic for a young lady…”
My heart sank; he was going to pull that favorite stunt of adults on me, and tell me that I was too young to understand.
“But I think all the same you have a right to know,” he finished. He gazed past me for a moment at a blank spot on the wall. I knew he was seeing things that had happened a long time ago.
“Did you know that Heinrich was married?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes, and he had a daughter. Frau Kessel said I looked a bit like her,” I added, and saw a shadow pass across Herr Düster’s face.
“A little, yes,” he said. “Gertrud was perhaps slightly thinner than you are. But that was the war, of course…” He paused, remembering. “Heinrich was never an easy person, not as a young man. He had a hardness in his heart somehow. Once he made up his mind to do something… he could be very hard on other people, too, if he made a judgment.”
I said nothing to this; none of it sounded like my Herr Schiller. But on the other hand my Herr Schiller would not have been in the Eschweiler Tal on a freezing night, trying to splash gasoline on the corpse of a young girl. I shivered.
“Hannelore-Heinrich’s wife-she was very beautiful, you know,” went on Herr Düster.
I thought of Frau Kessel, spitting venom in her kitchen: Both brothers were mad about the girl, but she chose Heinrich. Who can blame her?
“Is that a picture of her in your house?” I blurted without thinking.
Herr Düster looked at me. “No. I don’t believe there is a photograph of her anywhere in existence.” He did not say, Why should I have a photograph of her? I noticed. I thought there was a slight undercurrent of wistfulness in his voice, as though he should like to have had one.
“Heinrich-well, he made a mistake about Hannelore,” continued Herr Düster. He paused, and his gnarled fingers rubbed the arm of the chair, making little circles. “He thought she really wanted to leave him. He used to get-very angry with her. He had some idea that Gertrud wasn’t-that she was…” His voice trailed off. He was old, after all, incredibly ancient in my eyes, and I was only a child. He was of a different generation, one that thought unpleasantness was better not discussed in front of children. All the same, I thought I heard him say one single word in a very low voice: Meine. He thought she was mine. I said nothing.
“They say,” went on Herr Düster almost to himself, “that they might have to exhume Hannelore. They think perhaps it wasn’t natural causes.”
I remembered what Frau Kessel had said about the scene she had witnessed between Herr Düster and his brother’s wife. The ranting, the pulling away, Herr Düster trying to kiss Hannelore’s hand. He thought no one would see them, but I did. Had Herr Düster really cornered his unwilling sister-in-law and tried to kiss her? Or had the argument been about something else? About protecting Hannelore from her husband? I don’t know what it was she had… it could have been anything.
“And Gertrud?” I prompted tentatively.
“In the well,” said Herr Düster. He sounded weary, as though he would like to get the story told and over with. “They say it has to be verified, but yes, they think it is her. She was the first one, they think, the oldest…” He looked at me with bloodshot eyes. “How could he do it, that’s what everyone wants to know. How could he do it?”
“His own daughter,” I said, and the idea was horrible, nasty, framed in words I wanted to spit out as soon as possible, like the girl in the story from whose mouth toads dropped every time she spoke. His own daughter.
“Yes, but that was it, you see,” said Herr Düster softly. “He didn’t think she was his own daughter. He thought when she disappeared it would hurt me. He thought he was taking away any chance I had of ever…” He was silent for a few moments, then he went on: “Heinrich was not the man to support a child who was not his own, you know. Not to love a child, even if she called him Papa.”
“That’s horrible,” I exclaimed, and drew Herr Düster’s grave gaze to me.
“He was her father,” he said. His voice was helpless. “She was his daughter-and he killed her.” His eyes seemed to blur and brim over, and at last a single tear ran down one gaunt cheek.
We sat in silence for a while. It was late in the afternoon and the light was fading. It was becoming gloomy in the room, with its small windows. If I did not get up soon and put the lights on, we would be sitting in the dark.
“I don’t see what Katharina Linden had ever done to him,” I said eventually. “Or Julia Mahlberg, or anyone else.”
“They did nothing,” replied Herr Düster sadly.
“Then why-?”
“I think he was trying to get at me,” said Herr Düster. “I think he thought that every time another girl went missing, I would think of Gertrud. He-Heinrich-was very sick, you know. And of course he would have known what everyone was saying, about who was taking these girls.”
I did know what everyone had said, at least everyone as personified by Frau Kessel. Everyone thought Herr Düster had done it. He would have been lynched if a few more levelheaded people hadn’t insisted on letting the law take its course instead-people like my father. And then, when he had been driven out of the town, or even arrested for something he hadn’t done, someone would have searched his house, and there in the cellar they would have found all the evidence they needed. Herr Schiller had only to brick up the tunnel again and no one would have been any the wiser.
I heard later that the tunnel had been there for hundreds of years. Older residents of the town said it was not the only tunnel; the ancient streets were riddled with them, a rotten honeycomb underlying the neat rows of houses. There used to be a synagogue on the Orchheimer Strasse, where now there is nothing but a memorial to the Jewish community who vanished in the war. They think the tunnels enabled the Jews to go about on the Sabbath, when they were forbidden by their faith to go out into the street. How and when Herr Schiller came upon the one under his house, it is now impossible to say.
I was dazed by the enormity of what Herr Schiller had done. People did things I didn’t like, things I hated, every day. If I had heard that Thilo Koch had been trampled by wild horses or had fallen into the big cats’ enclosure at Köln Zoo and been rent limb from limb while screaming for mercy, I would not have been sorry. But I wouldn’t have pushed him in there. “I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why did he do it?”
Herr Düster was silent for so long that I thought perhaps he had not heard the question. Then he uttered just one word in a low voice. Hass. Hate.