Helen Grant - The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

The headmistress, Frau Redemann, had called a meeting in the school hall for all classes. A good deal of elbowing and whispering went on while we waited for Frau Redemann. Even the first grade knew what had happened, though I doubt their parents would have been edified to hear the loving and entirely fictitious description Thilo Koch poured into their waiting ears, of how Katharina Linden’s corpse had been found in the Erft, chopped into such tiny pieces her own mother didn’t know her . By the time Frau Redemann appeared we had worked ourselves up into a fever pitch of anticipation.

“Good morning, everyone,” she began. “I am sure you all know why you are here this morning. Katharina Linden, from fourth grade, has been missing since the Karneval parade on Sunday. We are, of course, hopeful that Katharina will be found in the near future, safe and well.”

She paused, and some of the smaller children turned around to look at Thilo Koch rather dubiously. Thilo smiled smugly, like an odious policeman who has been first to discover the corpse.

“Obviously, this is an extremely worrying time for the Linden family. Daniel Linden is not attending school today. However, when he does return I do not want any of you mentioning Katharina’s disappearance in front of him. In particular, I do not wish to hear repeated any of the unpleasant and lurid stories that I have already heard being circulated in the school this morning.” At this, Thilo’s smile wavered a little. “I would also urge anyone who thinks they may have any genuine information about Katharina’s whereabouts to come and see me in the school office.

“I would like to add that until we know exactly what has happened, we should all take a little more care than usual.” Take care of what? I wondered. That Thilo Koch’s mad axeman doesn’t sneak up on us?

“I also ask all of you to remember: Never go with anyone you don’t know. Go straight home after school. Keep your parents informed of where you are going. And if you see anything that seems strange in any way, come and talk to me or to your teacher.”

Again that word seltsam . As we all trooped out of the hall, I wondered what Frau Redemann would say if I told her about Pluto’s sudden and sinister appearance, which now seemed like some sort of omen, a sign that something malevolent was afoot. However, I was not able to pursue this train of thought for very long before my own woes overtook me again.

“Look, it’s her,” said a voice from behind me that I recognized instantly as Thilo Koch’s. “The exploding girl.”

“The walking bomb,” said another voice, that of Thilo’s arch-ally Matthias Esch, a boy who was almost as tubby and malicious as Thilo himself.

I feigned deafness, but knew the reddening of the back of my neck would show them that I had taken in every word. I put my head down doggedly and began to mount the stairs to my classroom.

“The walking bomb,” repeated Thilo’s repellent voice from close behind me. There was a scuffle on the staircase as he jostled Matthias. “Hey, maybe that’s what happened to Katharina Linden. Maybe she just got too close to the exploding girl here, and she caught it.”

“Caught what?” Matthias Esch was as dim as he was nasty.

“The exploding, stupid.” Thilo’s voice was ecstatic; he had tapped into a new vein of spite and it proved to be a rich one. “Maybe that’s why they can’t find her. She just exploded-went off like a tonne of dynamite, and blew herself into such little bits you wouldn’t know it was her.”

“Klasse,” said Matthias, overcome with admiration for the concept so neatly described.

“We definitely shouldn’t have to sit next to her,” continued Thilo in a voice that probably traveled the length of the school. “It might be one of us next.”

“Yeah, sure,” cut in a voice. “It probably will be one of you two. Eat one more Wurst and you most definitely will explode, you Fettsack .”

It was Stefan; StinkStefan to the rescue. My heart sank further; it seemed it was still me and StinkStefan against the World.

The days ran on, and before you knew it we were at the end of a week and Katharina Linden had still not been found. As far as the adults’ conversations went, the gloves were now off, and her disappearance was being freely discussed on every street corner and in every boutique as an “abduction.”

Those of us who were still walking to school, as opposed to being driven by anxious parents, were treated to a gauntlet of photographs of our former schoolmate on the newsstands and the police posters scattered about the town. There was even a blurry one of Katharina in her Snow White costume under the terrible headline Who Gave Her the Poisoned Apple?

Green-and-white police cars appeared at every corner or cruised slowly past the school bus stops, and on Friday morning Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf, one of the local policemen, came to give us a talk at the school. His usually jolly face was sober as he went over the by-now familiar ground of not getting into anyone’s car and not talking to strangers.

Looking back, I don’t think at that stage anyone expected another child to disappear. The police cars, the escort to the school buses, the serious talks were all meant to make the local community think that something was being done. Even assuming that something sinister had happened in the first place and Katharina hadn’t fallen down a manhole or something, no one believed that anything else would happen.

My mother still allowed me to walk the short distance to school, but on the second or third morning, when I happened to glance back, I caught her hanging out of the front doorway to keep me in view until I had come safely to the corner of the street and within sight of the school gates.

School itself was dismal. Thanks to Thilo Koch I was even more of a leper than before. Home was little better, since my mother was reluctant to let me go out alone. I sometimes thought that were it not for the diversion of Stefan and my visits to Herr Schiller’s house to hear his gruesome tales, I would have died of boredom. As it was, though, I nearly wrecked my chances of going there again.

Tell us another story, Herr Schiller.” This was from Stefan, who was sitting on the edge of a claw-footed and overstuffed armchair that looked as though it had been made for Herr Schiller’s grandmother.

“Bitte,” I corrected him in a disapproving tone that Oma Kristel would have been proud of. Not that I was such a stickler for manners-but I knew people of Herr Schiller’s generation were.

“Please.” Stefan corrected himself. “The one about the cats was cool.”

Herr Schiller raised one eyebrow and regarded Stefan quizzically over the top of his spectacles. “I seem to remember that at the time you told me it was not scary at all, young man.” His expression was stern but his voice was cheerful.

Stefan looked down, temporarily at a loss, but when his head came up again he was smiling, rather shyly. He and Herr Schiller regarded each other in silence for several moments, and then I was surprised to see Herr Schiller’s craggy face break into a smile, too.

A little flush of annoyance ran through me, like a tiny electrical charge traveling along a wire. Sometimes the two of them made me feel like an unwelcome third. And besides (said a mean little voice at the back of my mind), who did Stefan think he was, anyway? He was still StinkStefan, the most unpopular boy in the class, if not the entire school.