The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

sitting cozily around Frau Kessel’s kitchen table she would let fly with a torrent of local gossip, out of which deluge we would pick some critical nuggets of information, like miners panning for gold. Instead the conversation seemed to be grinding to a halt. Frau Kessel looked at each of our faces in turn, her eyes bird-bright behind her spectacles, her arms folded ominously across her brown woolen bosom.

“Suppose you show me that file,” she said eventually.

“Which file?” said Stefan.

“The one with your school project in it.”

Instinctively Stefan clutched the top of his schoolbag, holding it closed. “Umm… it’s not finished.”

“I know it’s not finished,” said Frau Kessel acidly. “Nevertheless, give it to me, please.”

For a moment I almost thought Stefan might reach into his bag and extract a ring binder full of notes about the old buildings in Bad Munstereifel; up until now he had seemed so confident, so in control, that I could imagine him having prepared the whole thing as backup. Instead he just sat there gaping at her.

“I thought so,” said Frau Kessel. She leaned toward us like an ancient eagle craning forward on its perch. “There is no project, is there?” Her voice was steely. “I may seem old to you, but I’m not stupid. What did you think you were going to get out of me?”

“Nothing,” stammered Stefan. “I mean… we just wanted to ask you some things, that’s all.”

“About my house?”

“Well…”

“I don’t think so.” The lenses of Frau Kessel’s glasses glittered; I could not see her eyes behind them. “You wanted to know about Herr Duster, didn’t you?”

Reluctantly, Stefan nodded.

“Well, I’ll tell you all I know about him.” Frau Kessel squeezed her bony hands together, as though crushing something between her palms. “But first I want to know something. I want to know why you were trying to break into his house.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

Stefan was the first to recover. When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly clear and strong.

“We weren’t trying to break in, Frau Kessel.”

“So what were you doing, trying to open the lock on the cellar doors?” she cast back at him tartly. “Don’t think I didn’t see that, young man. You wanted to get in, didn’t you?”

“We wouldn’t really do that, Frau Kessel,” I butted in. The basilisk eyes were instantly upon me, but with an effort I kept my cool. “We were just… thinking about it. We wouldn’t really do it. It was just… a game.”

“Quatsch,” she snapped back. “You know,” she added, and her voice was low and poisonous, “I really should report you to the school. Or perhaps the police.”

“Please, Frau Kessel-”

“But I’m not going to,” she went on, without acknowledging me. “And do you know why? Because someone ought to break into that house. It’s about time that old”-(and here she used a word that actually shocked me; I had heard it from Stefan’s cousin Boris but had never expected to hear it from someone of her age)-“had his comeuppance.”

She tilted her head back self-righteously. “So if you want to know about that man, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell anyone who asks me. And then, finally, maybe someone will do something.” Abruptly she fell silent.

Neither Stefan nor I spoke; what was there to say? I was not about to admit that we had really been thinking of trying to get into Herr Duster’s house, but still I wanted to know what Frau Kessel could tell us. Underlying my curiosity was the uncomfortable knowledge that my mother had expressly forbidden me to listen to any more of the old lady’s gossip. If she knew we were sitting in Frau Kessel’s kitchen listening to the old woman’s venomous outpourings I would be grounded for weeks. I could just imagine her telling me how disappointed she was that I had disobeyed; the thought made me squirm.

“He was in love with Hannelore,” said Frau Kessel, plunging without prelude into her story.

Hannelore? Stefan shot me a puzzled glance.

“Hannelore Kurth,” said Frau Kessel. “Beautiful girl, the beauty of the town. She was the May Queen two years before she married Heinrich Schiller.” Stefan still looked confused; she gave him an impatient look. “Even then, that other one was making trouble. Two May trees outside the house! He should have stood back and let the better man win.” She pursed her lips, her shoulders stiff. “As though she would look at him.”

“Was he ugly?” I asked.

“Oh, I suppose he had looks in a superficial sort of way,” replied Frau Kessel derisively. “I imagine that is why he fancied Hannelore would look at him. But she had better sense.”

She spoke with authority, as though she had been privy to Herr Duster’s every unwelcome move. But when she had told me about Herr Duster and Hannelore that first time, when I had carried her shopping home for her, hadn’t she said her mother told her all about it? I found myself staring at her. Was she older than she made out? Or had she started out very early on her prurient quest for information about other people’s lives? I rather thought it was the latter. It was not difficult to imagine that face as a pale spiteful moon framed by brown hair yanked into plaits, eyes narrowed to slits as she inhaled the heady and poisonous incense of gossip. A whisperer in the back row of the classroom, a peeper around corners.

“When she married his brother, he was supposed to have been heartbroken. Some people in this town think that’s when he went to the bad.” She did not say what people. “But he was bad long before Hannelore Kurth turned him down. She was right to do it, but he wouldn’t leave it alone. There were dozens of young women in the town, but it had to be her.”

Something flickered in Frau Kessel’s wrinkled face like a lizard looking out from a hole in a stone and whisking back inside again. I saw it, but at the time I could not think what it meant. Now I think of the clawlike hands with every finger encrusted with rings except one, and I think perhaps I know.

“I saw them together,” she hissed.

“Saw who?” I was confused.

“Hannelore and that man. You’d think when it was his own brother’s wife… and she had the child by then. Gertrud.”

“What were they doing?” asked Stefan.

“Doing? Hannelore wasn’t doing anything. You don’t think she’d meet him on purpose? But him… he was ranting away like a mad thing. Taking her hand, and trying to kiss it…” Frau Kessel sounded as though she had just bitten into something disgusting. “She wanted to get away, but he wouldn’t let her. Oh, he was sly, cornering her there. He thought no one would see them, but I did.”

The venom in Frau Kessel’s voice was making me feel queasy. She did not say where she had seen Hannelore with Herr Duster, but the picture was plain enough in my head: the two of them altercating in some secluded spot, and the teenaged Frau Kessel watching them unseen, her eyes glinting with malice. Had she followed them? I wondered. Had she hidden on purpose?

“I’ve never told anyone that before.” Frau Kessel’s hand strayed to her bosom and the bony fingers clasped the spiked Edelweiss brooch. Her eyes were impenetrable behind the reflective lenses of her glasses. “But it always comes out. Everything comes out in the end.”

“Yes,” said Stefan politely; it was impossible to do anything but agree with her. She was hardly even talking to us anymore; she was lost in the plot of a story that had been told more than half a century before.

“Then Hannelore died,” said Frau Kessel. “And he couldn’t get at her anymore. There was only Gertrud. His brother’s daughter-his own niece. When she disappeared, it was all equal, don’t you see? Herr Schiller lost the only person he cared about, the same as that Duster lost the woman he wanted. I wonder if he was happy then.” Her voice was hard.