The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (23 page)

T
hat was not the end of it for me, of course; later in the evening Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf called at the house and spent a long time going over what had happened during the procession. I was glad it was him and not the granite-faced policeman whose impassive gaze made me feel as though I were guilty of absolutely everything you could name.

Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf was his usual kindly self, but unimaginably meticulous; he went over everything again and again, asking questions in an unvaryingly gentle voice, until I was too tired to answer them properly. Why had I decided to walk with Frau Diederichs’s class? Had someone suggested it? How did I know Lena Schmitz? Did I know Julia Mahlberg? Had I noticed her at any time during the procession?

My mother put Sebastian to bed and then she came down and sat next to me, stony-faced, silently holding my hand. At half past ten she simply said, “Enough.” She got to her feet.

“Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf, Pia has to sleep.”

“Frau Kolvenbach—” He didn’t get any further.

“Don’t tell me it’s important. I
know
it’s important. But she’s only a child and she’s exhausted. Look.”

I tried to look alert, but I could barely keep my eyes open. “I’m not
tired,” I started to say, and ruined it with a massive yawn. My eyelids felt as though they would slide shut under their own momentum like the roller shutters we had on our windows.

“She can’t possibly tell you anything else. You’ve asked her the same things at least twice, anyway.”

“Frau Kolvenbach,” began Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf doggedly, “I am sorry that your daughter is tired, but you must understand, the Mahlbergs have a daughter too. We must do everything possible to find her.”

“I know that,” snapped my mother. “So why don’t you get out onto the street and help look for her?”

At this piece of rudeness I was suddenly wide awake again. I was used to my mother’s occasional volcanic outbursts, but still I was stunned at her daring, telling the police their business. I looked at her; her face had a drawn-in look to it, with deep furrows between the brows and at the corners of the mouth. She looked suddenly older, witchlike.

Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf’s avuncular expression froze over in an instant. When he stood up, his movements were stiffly formal. “I will have to come again tomorrow,” he informed my mother coldly. She merely nodded, making no move to show him out. Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf looked at her for a moment, then picked up his cap and made his own way to the door, closing it softly behind him.

My mother took me upstairs in silence and helped me to get ready for bed. Her face still had that oddly puckered look, as though she was keeping something tightly under control. Still, she was gentle with me, brushing my teeth for me as I stood before her swaying a little with tiredness, and helping me into my nightdress. She even let me leave the bedside lamp in my room on, as though trying to keep off the night monsters that very small children fear. She sat by my bed for a while, and I think she was still there when I fell asleep.

I
don’t know exactly what time it was when I woke. I was lying on my back on the bed, with my comforter half on, half off my body, and my head flung back so that the light from the bedside lamp was shining directly on my face. I was dreaming of a wailing sound like a siren, rhythmic pulses of sound, and the light was so bright that it seemed to pulsate too, in time to the rising and falling of the wailing.

I opened my eyes, then shut them again instantly, dazzled. The siren sound was still going on, and for a moment I thought it was still part of a dream, that I was not properly awake. But it was real. As I sat up, blinking, I could hear my parents moving about outside on the landing, speaking in low voices.

“Mama?”

I felt strangely disoriented. Was there a house on fire or something? I slid my legs off the side of the bed, intending to get up and go to my parents. My mother forestalled me by opening the bedroom door; she was in her dressing gown, her hair spread over her shoulders in a dark mass.

“Pia, what are you doing awake?” she said, but her voice sounded vague rather than annoyed.

“I heard a noise.” My bare feet touched the floor; the boards were cold.

“It’s nothing.”

My mother came right into the room and picked up my comforter, intending that I should lie down and she should cover me up with it. But now I was wide awake. I glanced at the doorway and saw my father standing there. Unlike my mother, he was fully dressed in outdoor clothes—dark cord trousers, boots, and a down jacket.

“It sounded like the fire brigade—or the police,” I said.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” said my mother. She shook the comforter a little as though to encourage me back underneath it. “Get back into bed.”

“Do they want to ask me some more questions?” I wanted to know.

“No.” My mother glanced at my father. She plumped up my pillow, thumping it savagely. “Not tonight. Get in,” she added. I did so, reluctantly.

“Why is Papa dressed? Is it nearly morning?”

“He had to go out,” said my mother, then added tartly, “He thinks I don’t have enough to do, so he thought he’d tread mud right through the house.”

“I will clean it up,” said my father in an irritable voice.

“Good intentions,” snapped my mother. She pushed her hair back behind her ears, but it wouldn’t stay; unruly strands immediately fell forward over her eyes again. She looked different from the daytime Mama with her habitual ponytail: this mother looked younger, but somehow slightly wild.

“Did you find that girl, Papa?” I asked.

My father shook his head. “No, Pia. But the police are still looking.”

“So where did you go?” I was starting to feel sleepy again, but this was too interesting to miss: all three of us up in the middle of the night. I hoped Sebastian would not spoil it by waking up and howling.

“Castle Dracula,” snapped my mother. “That’s where he went.”

“Castle
Dracula?”

“Kate—” started my father, but my mother interrupted him.

“Well, he might just as well have been there. That’s where crowds of screaming peasants carrying pitchforks usually go when they want to lynch someone, isn’t it?”

She clawed her hair back from her face again and regarded my father mutinously.

“We didn’t want to lynch anybody, and they are not
peasants
,” he said in an ominous voice.

“Did I say—” started my mother sarcastically, and then stopped short, shaking her head in frustration. “Why do you always take everything so bloody literally?”

“And why do you say things if you don’t really mean them?” he countered.

“Well, that’s what it was, wasn’t it?” she demanded resentfully. “A lynch mob? Or did you knock on his door and try to sell him encyclopedias?”

“Whose door?” I asked, but the question was lost somewhere in the atmosphere crackling between my parents like electricity arcing between two points.

“If you want to know the truth,” said my father portentously, “we went there to make sure he
didn’t
get lynched.”

“That’s very good,” said my mother, nodding vigorously. My father looked at her suspiciously. “No, do go on,” she added. “I’m interested.”

“There are some people in this town who make very quick judgments,” began my father doggedly.

“You don’t say?”

“Kate, this is why you find it difficult here, if you always think the worst of people.” My father had become rather flushed in the face. He shook his head. “All I am saying is, there are some people who might jump to conclusions before they know the truth. We cannot just take the law into our own hands.”

“So you went there to make sure nobody
did
try to take the law into their own hands?”

My father nodded.

“And the thirty or so other concerned fathers, they were just some sort of UN peacekeeping force?” said my mother.

“You have to make fun,” said my father.

“I’m not making fun. I just can’t believe it. What, did you think he’d look out his front window and see you lot arriving and think,
Hey, I’m safe now?”

“Kate, that boy Koch, the one who had a brother in Pia’s class, he had already broken a window.”

“And where were the police?”

“Looking for the little Mahlberg girl. But they are there now, you know that.”

“Are you sure they didn’t take their time on purpose?”

“What do you mean?” asked my father.

“Breaking windows … it seems to me that some people in this town have been having their own little Kristallnacht,” said my mother.

There was a very long silence. The two of them were motionless, my father filling the doorway, my mother standing by my bed, one palm resting on the surface of my little dressing table as though for support. The silence was broken by the sound of her fingers rubbing back and forth across the painted wood.

“Sorry,” she said eventually.

My father looked at her, but his face was so still that I could not tell whether he was angry, or upset, or indifferent.

“There are good people in this town,” he said quietly.

“I know—”

“They don’t deserve insults like that—comparing them to Nazis.”

“I said I’m sorry, isn’t that enough?”

“No,” said my father. He turned away. “I will go and get a broom, and clean up this floor.”

“I can do it.”

“Not necessary,” said my father.

For a minute or so after he had disappeared downstairs, my mother continued to stand by my bed looking toward the doorway, like a person on a quay watching a ship disappearing into the distance. Her fingers brushed the surface of my dressing table again, making a whispering sound. When she spoke, it was from the corner of her mouth, her voice soft, her eyes never leaving the door.

“Go to sleep, Pia. Go to sleep.”

T
he following morning when I came downstairs my father had already left for work. My mother was in the kitchen making waffles, a rare treat for breakfast. Sebastian was chomping happily, a heart-shaped waffle with a crescent bitten out of it clutched in his chubby fingers. My mother closed the waffle iron with a hiss and a little puff of steam.

“Yours will be ready any second,” she said, and smiled at me. She sounded bright this morning, like a mother in a TV commercial, the sort who smiles cheerfully when her son gives her the whole team’s muddy football uniforms to wash.

I slid into my habitual place behind the table.

“Where’s Papa?”

“He had to leave early.” She opened the waffle iron and slid a frying fork under the waffle to lever it out.

“Oh.” I was disappointed; I had wanted to ask him about the night before. “Why did he have to go so early?”

“Oh, you know.” She put the waffle on a plate and set it on the table in front of me. “Work.”

“Hmmm.” I tried the waffle; it was warm and delicious. For a while I gave myself up to the enjoyment of it. Eventually, however, when the edge of my hunger had been dulled and I was starting to think that perhaps
waffles were not so wonderful after all, in fact more than six of them was positively off-putting, I said, “Mama? Where did Papa go last night?”

“Oh, Pia.” She yanked the plug of the waffle iron from the outlet before answering the question. “If you must know, and I suppose you’ll soon find out, considering what a hotbed of gossip this town is, your father went round to Herr Düster’s.”

“Herr Düster’s? Was it his windows that were broken?”

“Not
windows,”
said my mother. “One window. And yes, it was his. It was Jörg Koch who did it. Why am I not surprised?” she added with heavy irony.

“Why did Jörg Koch break his window? Was it an accident?”

“No.”

My mother picked up a cloth and began to wipe down the countertop, which was splattered with waffle batter. With her back to me, and her elbow working like a piston, she did not look very approachable. All the same, I persisted.

“Why did he break it?”

“Because he …” She paused, turned around, and looked at me. “Because some of the kind citizens of this delightful town have decided that Herr Düster is a criminal.”