“Hurry up,” called Frau Diederichs, Lena’s class teacher; she was no doubt keen to get back into the Klosterplatz and unload her charges back into the care of their parents. She moved up and down the line of children, patting a shoulder here and there or stooping to peer into a well-muffled face. She jabbed me in the upper arm as she went past but did not see my look of indignation; she had already moved on.
As we turned into the square the bonfire was revealed in all its glory. The piled wood and kindling must have been three meters high, and the flames shot into the air above it in a great flaring corona, with sparks peeling off in all directions. I would have made a beeline for it and warmed my hands, which were aching with cold, but Frau Diederichs was shepherding her class determinedly toward the side of the square, where the drama of St. Martin was to take place.
“Do you want to come?” Lena asked me, and I nodded, glad to be included for once; who cared if it was with a class from the baby school? I glanced behind me. The substantial form of my father was still in tow, shadowing me like a bodyguard.
I crowded into the ranks of waiting children. St. Martin was before us, astride the chestnut horse, which was becoming a little restless surrounded by flaming torches and the shrill voices of several hundred children. As it moved, the sound of its iron-shod feet rang out on the cobblestones. St. Martin leaned forward and patted its neck.
The man who had used the bullhorn earlier in the evening addressed us again, not much more audibly than before, though we all knew the story so well that we hardly needed his commentary. St. Martin wheeled his horse about and rode it a little way, ascending the ramp at the side of the square so that we could all see him. He made a big deal of adjusting his fine crimson cloak for warmth; his golden helmet glittered as he moved. We all waited expectantly for the beggarman to appear.
Someone was pushing through the ranks of children; Lena was shoved into me, and trod on my toes.
“Ow.” I grimaced, then smiled at her sheepishly, not wanting to spoil the friendly atmosphere that had bloomed between us. Whoever it was who was shoving had created a ripple through the crowd of assembled children, like a Mexican wave. It caught Frau Diederichs’s eye, and she looked up disapprovingly.
A stout woman with a crop of henna-red hair, teased so that it stood upright like the spines of a hedgehog, was forcing her way through the crowd. I did not recognize her, but Frau Diederichs did. “Frau Mahlberg,” she said in a tone that balanced friendly recognition with mild disapproval; the woman was disrupting the class and blocking the view of St. Martin.
Frau Mahlberg’s head turned, and she began to wade toward Frau Diederichs through the ranks of schoolchildren as though through waist-deep water; indeed her brawny arms moved vigorously as though she would sweep them out of her way. When she reached Frau Diederichs she did not bother with any niceties.
“Where is Julia?” she demanded. Her voice was sufficiently strident that several of the children looked around and someone behind us hissed
I could not hear Frau Diederichs’s reply, but she seemed to be saying something placatory, and she made a small gesture, a sweep of her hand taking in the crowd of children.
I turned my gaze back to St. Martin for a moment; the beggarman had appeared, suitably dressed in rags, and was pantomiming cold and hunger, stooping and rubbing his hands up and down his upper arms. This was the part of the play that we all looked forward to: St. Martin would unsheathe his sword and cut his magnificent cloak in half. I saw him reach to his side and begin to slide the gleaming blade out of the sheath-and then suddenly I couldn’t see him at all, because someone had bumped into me again and I had staggered down on one knee, dropping my lantern in the melee. I snatched it up again as quickly as I could, but it was too late; it had already been trampled and the broadly smiling sun face had acquired an oddly sunken look.
“Frau Mahlberg, Frau Mahlberg!” That was Frau Diederichs, the teacher, now following behind and wringing her hands ineffectually. Behind us, more voices were raised in protest at the interruption to the play.
“Julia!” Frau Mahlberg was bellowing, oblivious to them. I glanced back at the ramp where St. Martin and the beggarman were posed in a tableau, looking rather nonplussed at the racket. I had missed the critical moment when the cloak was divided; half of it was now draped over St. Martin’s hands, which were frozen in the act of handing it down to the beggar. The other half, truncated, hung from his shoulders.
The man with the bullhorn said something, and then repeated it in a slightly irritated voice. Still St. Martin did not react, and eventually in a departure from tradition the beggar reached up and helped himself to the cloak. There was a crackle of interference from the loudspeaker, but the narrator was lost for words for once, perhaps stunned by the beggar’s rapacious behavior. Someone was approaching us; it was the granite-faced policeman I had seen with Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf.
“Hallo.”
It was a command, not a greeting. Frau Mahlberg whirled around and caught sight of him. She pounced like a vulture. For a moment I thought she was going to physically catch hold of him, but at the last moment he put up a hand and stopped her in her tracks.
“My daughter!” She gestured wildly at Frau Diederichs, flailing a brawny arm. “She’s supposed to be in charge of my daughter!”
“Well, I am, I…” Frau Diederichs was flustered; she could see that most of the people within earshot were no longer watching St. Martin and the beggarman, but were all listening to the exchange between herself and Frau Mahlberg.
“And you are…?” said the policeman.
“Frau Diederichs. I’m Julia’s class teacher.”
“Julia is my daughter,” said Frau Mahlberg.
“And she’s not here.” Frau Mahlberg’s voice was beginning to rise, hysterically. “This woman was in charge of her, and now she’s not here, and God only knows what’s happened to her.” She made a wild gesture in Frau Diederichs’s direction, as though to strike her. “After all that’s happened! How could she let my daughter wander off?”
“I didn’t let her wander off,” protested Frau Diederichs. “I’ve been with the children every single moment of the procession. I’ve counted them at least six times.”
“Where is she, then?” demanded Frau Mahlberg.
“Are you sure Julia isn’t here?” cut in the policeman. He glanced at Frau Diederichs, who was the less hysterical-looking of the pair.
“Well…” She pulled her coat closer around her body, as though she wished she could disappear down into it, and then she began to count the children again, stabbing the air with her finger as she did so. “One… two…”
“What was Julia wearing?” cut in the policeman as Frau Diederichs continued to count.
“A dark-blue jacket, a pink hat…” Frau Mahlberg screwed her face up as if the effort of staying calm was almost killing her. “… white woolen mittens…”
I turned to Lena, to say something about Julia, to ask her whether she had seen her, so for a moment I didn’t notice that Frau Diederichs had stopped counting. “Isn’t that her?” she said suddenly in a voice made tremulous with excitement. I looked up and saw that she was pointing at me. I looked at Lena and then half turned to look behind me. There were no children behind me, only the dark bulk of my father in his winter coat. I swiveled back to look at Frau Diederichs. She was still staring at me, and her hand was still outstretched.
“The pink hat,” she said.
Suddenly all eyes were upon me. The next second, Frau Mahlberg had stepped forward and with a sharp jerk of her hand had pulled the pink hat from my head, almost taking a handful of hair with it.
“Ow,” I said, but nobody heard me. Frau Mahlberg was screaming at the top of her voice, screaming like a stuck pig. She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me until my teeth chattered. “She’s not Julia!
