Stefan Kiesbye - Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone

“How lovely,” she cried out.

“Isn’t she something?” Anna said, and her face became almost beautiful. “You want to hold her? Charlotte, say hello.”

I only realized that Anna had been talking to me, not Linde, when she thrust the baby in my arms. I looked at the little thing and cradled it as I had seen Anna do, and the baby stretched out its arms and yelped.

“She’s such a charmer.” Anna laughed with delight. “She could even charm that beggar woman,” she said, before putting a hand over her mouth. “I’d better watch what I say,” she explained in a whisper. “The village is all worried after what happened to that girl.”

We nodded. The beggar woman had been the talk of Hemmersmoor since the end of winter, and many young mothers were afraid for their offspring. “It’s been bad,” Linde said.

Anna sighed and switched topics. “I hardly see anyone anymore,” she said. “What with the baby and the fine people coming over from Bremen and the dinners. This house doesn’t belong to Hemmersmoor at all, it seems. It’s its own small world. We make our own time here—but don’t worry, I’m not yet one of them.” She spoke of her new home in a low voice, as if someone might overhear our conversation. Her feet were bare and pink. “Let me get Rutger,” she finally said, and strode out into the hall.

I still held little Charlotte, and I have often wondered why Anna walked away without her child. Was she a bad mother? Or did she just act foolishly, without thought? Again and again I come to the conclusion that her carelessness didn’t mean anything. She knew us well—we were from the same village. We were all Hemmersmoor girls and destined to be mothers. Anna didn’t suspect that when little Charlotte grabbed my chest and pulled on my necklace, I would cry out and let her slip. Charlotte fell.

Linde gasped, then picked her up and immediately the child began to cry. The more Linde tried to calm her, the more she screamed. Soon the old maid appeared in the door, no doubt alarmed by the noise, and behind her Rutger von Kamphoff and Anna.

“Oh, oh, what is with my little darling?” she cooed. “Look, I’m here.” Anna took her baby from Linde’s hands and rocked it gently. Yet the screaming got only louder.

Anna carried her daughter to a table in front of one of the tall windows and sang, “Are you wet, my darling Charlotte, are you wet?”

I thought the scare was over and breathed calmer, but just as Rutger turned to Linde to introduce himself, Anna shrieked, “What happened?” As though she’d been bitten, she took a step away from the child. Charlotte’s left arm hung at an awkward angle, lifeless it seemed.

“What happened?” Anna turned on us, demanding an answer.

What I did next altered who I was and who I would become. I broke out in tears, and from behind those tears I saw Ernst Habermann coming to my door to pick me up for a dance. Would I have to tell him? And how would I describe the Big House to my mom without mentioning how I had disgraced myself? Already I saw her face darken with disappointment.

When my mouth opened to find words for my sin, only one appeared clearly in my mind. Just one, and I knew by some dark instinct that it was the right word. “Linde…,” I said, then nothing else.

If I tried to talk to Linde on the way home, or if she addressed me, I cannot say. It seems we were in the car for a long time, and in my memory I don’t hear a sound. I stared out the window, keeping my eyes from venturing to the left, where Linde sat shrunken in her corner.

I’ve lost all memory of whom we passed or who was working on the peat bog or in the fields. I recall only the yellow light, thick as honey, and my legs sticking to the brown leather seats. I remember that drive as though we went too fast for me to hold on to a single thought, although speed on our backwater roads was hardly possible. Linde hadn’t protested, too perfect had my pitch been. After all, she was holding the baby when Anna entered, and how could she deny my accusation? Any words she might have spoken in her defense would have sounded hollow, would have made her case only worse. She must have understood, for she kept her silence. I was afraid of that silence, but it didn’t enter my mind to apologize. I didn’t want to trade places with her.

I was dropped off at my house; the chauffeur held open the door. Then Linde, without looking my way, disappeared from my view. In the evening I went to her house, but her mother said that Linde felt sick and was asleep. She avoided me for the rest of the summer, and as my bad conscience was slowly undermined by Ernst’s show of affection, I resigned myself to my new adult role. Love was still new.

Linde and I might even have become friends once again had the fall not brought new changes. In October Mr. Brinkmann took me aside and said that I had been awarded the von Kamphoff scholarship, Rutger von Kamphoff himself had intervened on my behalf. Mr. Brinkmann told me that my heartfelt sympathy for my friend’s failure and for Charlotte’s accident had touched the young heir. He had requested to see my grade sheets and regarded me as an ideal candidate. Here Mr. Brinkmann broke off and cleared his throat. I didn’t need to see the bright smile on my mother’s face to know that the teacher’s words hinted at bigger, still unthought and unsaid, promises.

I accepted the scholarship. It was lost for Linde; I couldn’t see any benefit in forgoing the opportunity.

The New Year bore down on Hemmersmoor, freezing shut the Droste, and our fathers could no longer sail the many canals of the peat bog. Last summer Heidrun Brodersen had been arrested, and her house still stood empty. “A child murderess,” the people in our village had lamented. “Who would have thought?” Yet in the meantime they had found a new topic and asked themselves who had ratted Heidrun out to the authorities. Klaus Schürholz had given her up, some said, to silence his wife. At least two of the children had to be his. And Rosemarie Penck, the apothecary’s wife, was also a prime suspect. It was she who had hit Heidrun in the face and called her a whore in front of a crowd in the village square. It had to be Rosemarie—she was the traitor. Whenever my mother and her friends discussed this question, I nodded without opening my mouth or contradicting them. Rosemarie Penck. Of course. There was no doubt.

These same friends also reported that you could hear peculiar noises inside Heidrun’s house, and our neighbors swore they had seen lights on the upper floor. I laughed at the women, my throat constricted and hoarse. It couldn’t be. How could they believe these rumors? I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to believe them.

Our neighbor’s daughter, Ilse Westerholt, was sick with the flu when the year changed, and her recovery was slow. I had never had any siblings, but Ilse had treated me like a sister, and so I didn’t heed my mother’s warnings and ran over to Ilse’s house to keep her company. Her sister, Irene, slept in the attic, so she wouldn’t have to suffer through the same agonizing weakness, and we had the bedroom to ourselves. And there I was safe from the gossip about Heidrun Brodersen, because in Ilse’s mind the murders were just too awful; she couldn’t talk about them. Instead she made me carry up books from the living room, and when I read to her about the werewolves, as the citizens who had defended their families during the Thirty Years’ War were called, she stuffed a pillow in her back and listened intently.

“Red hair?” she said about one of the heroines of the tale. “Oh, Linde, how I would love to have red hair. But no freckles. Freckles are provincial.” She screamed in delight when one of the women took up arms and joined the battles. She waved with her arms, clenched her fists, and cried, “That’s it.” I was almost fifteen, Ilse nineteen, old enough to be married. Her father wanted her out of the house, but he had no dowry to offer, no land to spare, and he had made up his mind to hand her over to some poor devil.