The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

Unwillingly, I allowed myself to be dragged to the telephone while my mother dialed Oma Warner’s number; perhaps she thought my father might manage to talk her out of the idea if she did not settle everything right away.

“Mum? It’s Kate.” The voice at the other end of the line said something tinnily, and my mother held lightly on to my shoulder as though to prevent me from running away. “Yes, I’ve spoken to Wolfgang”- spoken seemed an understatement considering the haranguing she had been giving my father when I came home-“and she’s definitely coming.” There was another explosion of crackling at the other end. “Would you like to speak to her?”

Now I stood in my mother’s clutches in resigned dejection; she was going to make me talk English to Oma Warner on the telephone. There was no escape.

“Pia?” My mother handed me the receiver and I put it gingerly to my ear.

“Hallo, Oma.”

“Oma?” said my grandmother. “Who’s Oma? Omar Sharif?” She always said this, and I was never sure whether I was supposed to laugh or not.

“Ich meine… Grossmutter,” I managed uncertainly.

“Granny,” prompted my mother, poking me in the shoulder with a finger.

“Granny,” I repeated dutifully.

“That’s better, darling,” said Oma Warner, chuckling. She clucked with her tongue. “Ooh, you do sound German, Pia.”

“Yes,” I said seriously. “I am German.”

“Dear me,” said my grandmother. “So you’re coming to see your old granny?”

I tried very hard not to heave the sigh I could feel coming.

“Yes,” I said.

Chapter Twenty-one

After lunch, which was a decidedly stiff affair, I dashed through my homework and then announced that I was going to visit Herr Schiller. I was looking forward to seeing my old friend, although I was still not sure whether I should tell him about what Stefan and I had seen on the Quecken hill. One moment I was full of an icy excitement, believing that we had found a clue to the strangeness that seemed to be overwhelming the town; the next I was convinced that it was nothing, just kids’ imagination: the world was still the reassuring one of homework and my mother’s cooking and Sebastian under my feet all day long.

I was not sure I even wanted to know what Herr Schiller would make of the affair; if he laughed, it would be awful, we would feel like idiots-but if he took it seriously, wouldn’t that be worse? I was still cogitating the matter when I literally bumped into someone. It was Frau Kessel.

“Vor-sicht!” she screeched, then saw it was me. “Pia Kolvenbach.” She studied me disapprovingly over the glinting moons of her spectacles.

“Tut mir Leid, Frau Kessel,” I said, doing my best to sound contrite.

“You shouldn’t be running in the street like that,” she informed me severely.

“Um.” I looked at my shoes.

“Where were you going in such a hurry, anyway?”

“Nowhere,” I said mendaciously.

“Hmm,” sniffed Frau Kessel. She regarded me speculatively. “Well, if you really have nothing to do, you can help me carry my shopping.”

“Aber…” I began, but then stopped. Why not? I could never get to Herr Schiller’s undetected now anyway, and besides, there were dozens of questions I had been dying to ask her the day she came over to tell my parents about Herr Duster. In her way, Frau Kessel was just as much of an expert on local folklore as Herr Schiller, although all her stories definitely emanated from the Dark Side. If the story of any of the subjects of her much-retailed gossip had appeared to be coming to a happy end, she would have disapproved it out of existence for sure.

I took the basket that Frau Kessel offered me with one beringed claw; it was packed with brown-paper parcels that appeared to be filled with stones, judging by the weight. Frau Kessel herself, who was a head taller than me and considerably heftier, loaded herself down with a folded copy of the Kolner Stadtanzeiger and a very small handbag.

Having accomplished this, she lifted her chin a little and proceeded in a majestic fashion across the cobblestones. I think she could only have been more pleased with herself had I been a little Moorish boy in satin knickerbockers and a jeweled turban, following her with a peacock-feather fan. We called in at the baker’s on the Salzmarkt, where Frau Kessel purchased a small loaf of gray bread, and then to the grocery store on the opposite corner for a half liter of full-cream Eifel milk.

After that, Frau Kessel had finished her shopping, and she headed for home, with me staggering along behind her. When we arrived at her home, a very narrow traditional half-timbered house jammed between two others in a corner of the Orchheimer Strasse, she favored me with another of those looks over her spectacles.

“You’d better come in,” she informed me, and when I hesitated she said rather tartly, “Don’t just stand there. I won’t eat you.” I followed her inside with slight trepidation; the idea of being eaten had not occurred to me, but now I found myself wondering whether Frau Kessel had had anything to do with the disappearance of the two girls. Perhaps she lured them home by asking them to carry her shopping, and then kept them locked up indoors, slaving away forever, like some sort of evil Frau Holle.

“You can put the basket on the table,” said Frau Kessel, leading me into the kitchen, which was excruciatingly neat and decorated in unrelenting shades of brown. A crucifix hung over the countertop; even the Jesus on it looked unnaturally clean-cut.

“I expect you would like a glass of milk and a cookie?”

I dared not say no, and the milk and the cookie were produced. I sat at the table trying very hard not to make crumbs or drip milk on anything. The cookie was soft and seemed to expand to fill my mouth; I tried to smile but it was difficult, like trying to grin with a mouthful of cotton wool. Eventually I managed to wash the cookie down with the milk.

“Frau Kessel?” I said as politely as I could.

“There aren’t any more cookies,” was the instant reply.

“I didn’t want another cookie,” I said hastily, then: “It was very nice, though.” I cleared my throat. “I just thought… it was very interesting what you were telling Mama and Papa when you visited us.”

“Hmm, and what was that?” inquired Frau Kessel. She was poised with the jug from the coffeemaker in one gnarly hand.

“About the town… after the war. And Fraulein Schiller.”

“Hmph,” said Frau Kessel. “Well, she was actually Gertrud Duster, of course. Herr Schiller changed his name afterward, after it all happened.”

“What was she like? Can you remember her?” I asked.

“Meine Gute, I’m not senile,” snapped Frau Kessel. “Of course I remember her.” She sniffed. “She was about your age when she disappeared.” She eyed me thoughtfully. “She was not unlike you, Pia Kolvenbach; she had the same brown hair, although she always wore it in Zopfe, little braids, which she had fastened on top. It’s such a shame these things went out of fashion. Why, there’s that little Meyer girl who has her hair cut short, like a boy’s! What her mother was thinking of, I can’t say.”

“And Gertrud Duster…?” I prompted.

“Tsk!” clucked Frau Kessel in irritation. “I was just getting to that. She was a very pretty little girl, the image of her mother. Hannelore-that was the mother’s name-well, she was a very beautiful woman. There were a few hearts broken when Hannelore married Heinrich, or so my mother used to say.

“She also told me that Herr Duster, and I mean the current Herr Duster, not poor Heinrich, was one of the ones whose hearts were broken. Both brothers were mad about the girl, but she chose Heinrich.” She sniffed again. “Who