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

My family, too, had been invited to the wedding, the only day I recall that Frick’s Inn closed its doors to thirsty workers and farmers, and the first time the von Kamphoffs came to Hemmersmoor to celebrate. Many stared with hostility or bemusement at the chauffeur who held open the doors and the family that extracted itself from the black car that seemed too long and too wide for our streets. I accompanied my parents and saw Anna and Rutger open the dancing that night, and just like everybody else I saw how the new life inside her belly made her dress bulge. Right after she took the first steps, the bride had to be led back to her table; her burden was that heavy. Ilse sat next to her parents and refused to dance that night. Not once did she take her eyes off Anna.

Anna moved into the Big House, where she soon gave birth to a girl. Her husband, with a trusted steward and plenty of hired help, kept close watch over his new family, and no one in the village was able to catch a glimpse of them. Yet during the last days of summer, I received word from our teacher, Mr. Brinkmann, that I would be awarded the von Kamphoff scholarship. For a few short days, I forgot the scars that ran over my face. This was my happiest time in Hemmersmoor, a time when I believed I would escape the village. I wanted to warm myself in the glow of the Big House. I wanted to study and step out into the world. I didn’t want to share Ilse’s misery anymore. Yes, Rutger had betrayed her, but his family would pay for my studies. Ilse had failed to win Rutger’s heart, she would never move into the manor house, but I would be a welcome guest there. I would leave behind Anke and stupid dresses and bows and her saucer-eyed admirers.

For a few short days, I seemed too tall for the low houses in our street. I was able to look down on Ilse and Anke and all the women and men in our village square. For a few short days, I was somebody special.

Then when Anke betrayed me, my world imploded, and when she was offered my scholarship, I knew that I would never leave Hemmersmoor. I still remember our drive home. Every sound seemed amplified, and I can still smell my cheap perfume and the leather of the hot car seats. I saw the green and brown fields, the hard grasses along the road, and I saw how my life was suddenly cut in two. Here I sat, Linde Janeke, on my way back to the village. Full of rage, shame, and without the least bit of hope that I might leave Hemmersmoor. And in another car that looked exactly like ours sat another Linde, whose return to the village was only the start to a new life, a life in which she would travel to foreign cities and countries, a life that lay even beyond her father’s dreams. I could see this other Linde, feel what she felt, but then she waved at me and slowly receded, very slowly, until she was driving alongside our car and turned right at the next intersection, onto the road to Groß Ostensen, and disappeared quickly from my view. I’ve never met that other Linde again.

In the fall I didn’t go back to school. In the eyes of my parents I had heaped shame on them once again. My father didn’t dare show his face at the manor anymore and found work stocking shelves in a grocery store in Groß Ostensen. Toward evening he left our house in his old truck and returned early the next morning.

While he slept and everything had to be quiet inside the house, I went to see Ilse and spent my days with her. She was the only friend who would still talk to me, and our misery brought us close again. I hadn’t wanted to share her misfortune any longer, but now I shared mine with her, and she seemed to welcome my company. Both of us had been betrayed by the Big House and by Rutger.

Anke I saw only from afar. I wanted to break her neck, tear out her brown hair, cut her skin with glass shards, but as soon as I saw her in the street, I lost all courage. In those moments I myself believed that I had dropped Anna’s small girl.

Yet Rutger I hated even more. It was he who had readily believed Anke’s lie. It was he who had dropped me after all the years my family had worked for his. Rutger and Anna had sealed my fate. They had betrayed me.

“Wouldn’t it be marvelous if you could take revenge?” Ilse asked one day.

I had no hope. What could I do against the von Kamphoff family? “But how?” I asked.

Ilse sighed but didn’t reply.

In the fall she took me out into the fields, where kids were flying their kites. “They look so pretty,” my friend said. We watched them until dusk, until even the last straggler took his kite and went home. When one of the boys passed by us, he looked at us curiously.

“Hi there,” Ilse said.

The boy stopped, but didn’t say a word.

“Are you afraid of us?” Ilse laughed.

The boy stuck out his tongue. “You are stupid,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Why are you on your own? Aren’t you afraid of the beggar woman’s curse?”

The boy took a few steps back. “My father says you’re a spinster. And you,” he told me, “you are a thief and so ugly that no one wants you.” Then he ran off as quickly as his legs would carry him.

I was wearing my father’s clothes, his heavy boots, his hat. Ilse had insisted. “He mustn’t recognize you. He’ll think you’re a man.” She smiled at me, said how happy she was to have me by her side. “I’m afraid of his rage. If I were by myself, he might harm me.” She had sent Rutger a message asking for one last meeting. She had threatened to visit the Big House should he fail to appear on the moor at the agreed hour.

“What will you tell him?” I asked Ilse.

“He only has to listen to me. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him in all these months. It’s as though we’d never met. But he should hear that I haven’t forgotten him.”

Despite the cold November night, I was sweating in my father’s heavy clothes, and my feet slid around in the large boots. “If he recognizes me, he’ll make my parents’ life a living hell.”

“Just keep your distance,” Ilse said. “But I need your eyes and ears. You shall be my witness. Just make sure he doesn’t hurt me.”

We were early, but as soon as we arrived at our meeting point, a dark figure came rushing toward us. My heart hammered terribly. How could I keep Rutger from harming Ilse? Only then did I fully realize how stupid I had been to follow my friend onto the moor.

Yet it wasn’t Rutger who approached us. With bafflement I recognized that it was Anna, who walked toward us with a bundle in her arms. Her coat was made from fur, her boots from shiny leather. On her head she was wearing a round fur hat, and her gloves were thin and elegant.

“What is she doing here?” I asked Ilse, but she motioned for me to keep quiet.

Anna didn’t seem afraid of Ilse, but when she noticed me, her steps slowed. “Who’s that?” she asked.

“A friend,” Ilse said. “He has to help with the magic.”

Now she came close, and I saw that the bundle she was bearing was her daughter, Charlotte. “I’ve worried myself sick since the shadow of the beggar woman was seen over the Big House. It’s so scary. All these small children. They are not to blame.” She was cradling sleeping Charlotte.

I had no idea what was happening. Magic? What did I have to do with the curse of the beggar woman? What did Ilse claim to know about it? Confused, I stepped closer to the two women, and when Anna looked up from her daughter, she barked, “It’s you?”

“I… I didn’t…,” I stuttered. This was the first time I’d seen Anna since that fateful summer day at the Big House, and no words would come. “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me,” was all I could say.

Anna looked at me in exasperation. “What a bunch of hogwash,” she said. Yet before Anna could turn away, Ilse stepped forward, tore the fur hat from her head, grabbed her by the hair, and pressed one of her large hands over Anna’s mouth. The girl dropped her bundle, flailed her arms, but even though she tried to fight off Ilse, she couldn’t make a sound.