The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

loose handle again. But the visit proved futile. In the intervening time, someone had removed the old handles completely and replaced them with gleaming new ones, firmly screwed onto the doors and fastened with a padlock even bigger than the old one.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Pia?” said Herr Schiller. He was holding a small cup of coffee out to me.

“Sorry.”

I shook my head as though to clear it, wondering how long he had been holding the cup out, then carefully took it from him.

“You have a lot on your mind today, Fraulein,” said Herr Schiller drily.

“Mmm.” I sipped the coffee gingerly; I was anxious to consume it without visibly choking, but it was about as thick and pungent as I could bear.

“And how is life in the big school?”

“Umm…” I hesitated, wondering whether to give the standard answer, fine, or to tell the truth, which was: about the same-I’m still the girl whose grandmother exploded.

While I was pondering, Stefan sprang in with, “It’s good, but we have a lot of work.”

“Ah.” Herr Schiller looked at us both over his coffee cup, his bushy eyebrows raised. “A lot of fieldwork, oder?” Looking at our blank faces, he broke into a smile which creased his craggy face in a hundred places. “I have seen you farther up the street, examining the houses.”

I shot Stefan a glance. Had everyone in the entire street seen us outside Herr Duster’s house? I should have known it, of course-Bad Munstereifel is one of those towns where closed-circuit television cameras would be totally redundant. Hours of videotape could tell you nothing that the neighbors couldn’t.

“Oh,” said Stefan offhandedly. He shrugged. “We were thinking of doing a project about old houses… but it didn’t work out.”

“A pity,” said Herr Schiller, but he didn’t pursue it. That was another thing I liked about him-he didn’t harp on about things like other adults did. If we had told my mother the same thing she would have wanted to know why we were abandoning a project we had already started, and what the deadline was, and whether we had a suitable new project, and what the others in our class were doing for theirs…

“Herr Schiller?”

“Yes, Pia?”

“Have you told us all the stories there are about Bad Munstereifel? The ones with ghosts and things, I mean?”

“Why, are you going to do a project about those?” asked Herr Schiller.

“No,” I said. “I’m just interested.”

“Hmmm.” Herr Schiller leaned back in his armchair and felt about for his pipe. Fascinated, I watched him stuffing tobacco into the bowl of it. It looked disgusting, but he kept on smoking, so I supposed he must like it.

My gaze moved from the pipe up Herr Schiller’s face and I realized that his eyes were upon me. Between puffs, he said, “I haven’t told you all the stories there are about the town. I don’t suppose anyone can. But,” he added, perhaps seeing my face fall, “I can tell you one of the stories you haven’t heard already. If you have time, that is, between your studies.” There was an almost imperceptible twang of humor in his voice.

“Of course.” I was not eager to pursue the topic of my studies any further. I shuffled a little farther back into my chair and looked at him expectantly.

“This,” said Herr Schiller slowly, “is a story about our old friend Unshockable Hans.

“One evening, Hans was standing outside the mill with his pipe in his mouth watching the sun setting behind the hill, when he saw from a long way off a figure coming toward him. Oddly enough, it carried over its head a large basket, the sort they used to put fruit in.

“There was something about the figure that made Hans narrow his eyes and take a longer look. Perhaps it was the way that it seemed to glide through the wet grass without once sticking fast in the muddy earth or stumbling over a clump of weeds. Or more likely it was the way that basket sat so low upon the shoulders of the figure- unnaturally low, one might think, considering that the person’s head must fit underneath.

“Hans took his pipe out of his mouth and knocked out the ashes on the stone wall of the mill. Then he put it away, and stood there with his hands on his hips, waiting for the approaching figure to reach him. It was dressed in a curiously old-fashioned costume for that date. The fabric, indeed, had a rusty look about it, as though it had discolored from age and hard wear.

“‘Guten Abend,’ said Hans to his visitor.

“The stranger said not a word in return, but reached up with his hands and lifted off the basket that covered him. Now Hans saw the reason for the curious appearance of the basket, so low upon the man’s shoulders. He had no head. Where his shirt collar rose out of his rusty-looking jacket there was a nub of skin and flesh, like the stump of a chicken’s neck when its head has been cut off, and protruding from the middle there was a little nub of bone. But as to chin, face, or cranium, he had none. There was simply nothing there.

“Another man would have taken one look and fled shrieking back into the mill to bar the door. But Hans, as you know, was made of stronger stuff. He had heard his grandmother speak of the headless ghost of Munstereifel when she was a wrinkled crone of eighty and he a fresh-faced little boy of six or seven. Where another man might have died of fright, Hans was filled with simple curiosity. He determined to address the ghost and ask it its business.

“‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ he asked boldly.

“Then the ghost gave a great sigh, and it was a strange sound, because it came from the stump of his neck, and it seemed to echo deep within his torso.

“‘Dear Hans,’ he said in an oddly resonant tone, ‘for the sins of my lifetime I was condemned to wander Munstereifel, a fearful thing with no head, until some soul braver than the rest dared to ask me who I am and what I seek. Long have I wandered, knowing no rest. When I began to walk here, there was an ancient town and a castle high upon a hill with the flag of a feudal lord flying over it and soldiers marching along its battlements. The castle fell and the town dwindled, and the woods covered the ruins. Still I walked among the broken stones and the grass and weeds. At last a new town sprang up in place of the old one, and still I walked, and no one dared to speak to me.’

“‘Lieber Gott,’ said Hans. ‘What can you have done to deserve such a fate?’

“Then the ghost came closer to him, and told Hans his sins, and Hans, who feared neither man nor spirit, grew pale and silent to hear such a catalog of evildoing.

“‘I thought,’ said Hans at last in a low voice, ‘that no one could have done so much evil as to deserve such a punishment, but I see that I was wrong.’ And he crossed himself like the good Catholic he was. ‘I am sorry for you,’ he said.

“‘Do not pity me,’ said the voice of the ghost. ‘By speaking to me, and asking me who I am, you have freed me.’

“And then Hans saw that in his hands the ghost was holding a head, the head of a man of fifty winters, seamed with wrinkles, the features bearing the stamp of a long and wicked life. The ghost’s fingers were entwined in the grizzled hair. As Hans watched, the ghost lifted the head onto his shoulders and settled it there, and when he seemed quite satisfied that it had stuck fast, he made a low bow to Hans and vanished.

“And,” added Herr Schiller, “since that day he has never been seen again, so it seems that Hans really did free him.”

Stefan shifted restlessly in his chair. “He just vanished?”

“Doch.”

“And what were the sins that he told Hans?”

“Nobody knows,” said Herr Schiller. “Hans never told a soul what he had heard. The story goes that the ghost’s crimes were so terrible that they were better left between him and God.”

“Hmmm.” Stefan sounded disappointed.