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

“So what’s new in the village?” Olaf said.

“Are you staying for good?” I asked instead of answering him.

“Are you trying to get rid of me already?” he asked and laughed.

“No, but…” I couldn’t go on. “But maybe you need…” I stopped again. I decided it was still too early to ask him for work. “Right now everybody in the village is talking about you and your family.”

“Is that right?” Olaf seemed curious.

“Anna’s… Anna…” I bit my tongue, and underneath my shock of red hair my face turned red too. I was almost a head shorter than Olaf and didn’t have his broad shoulders, but my hands were as big as his. With a broad nail I scratched my cheeks and was happy to feel some stubble. Then I said quickly, “People wonder if Jan will try to get back at you.”

Olaf shook his head. “Is he still mad?”

“Once, when he ran into Hilde, he said you wouldn’t return, but if you ever should, he’d take care that you left again—on your own feet if you were quick, in a coffin if you weren’t. He was drunk though. Your father punched him.”

“He didn’t tell me,” Olaf said.

“Now you know,” I said stupidly. “People didn’t like it. They said you don’t punch a cripple. But if you ask me, Hilde was lucky your dad was there.”

Olaf nodded. “What else happened in those seven years?”

“Heidrun Brodersen was arrested for child murder, and Käthe Grimm disappeared.”

“Käthe? Crazy Käthe?”

“She went out one night and never returned. She got lost on the bog, for sure.”

Olaf cocked his head. “And what have you been up to?”

I shrugged my shoulders, took a deep breath, and said, “I want to buy a moped.”

Olaf laughed heartily. “Well, maybe I can help you.”

All spring and summer Olaf and Alex worked on the addition to the house, and I helped them in the afternoons after school. On slow days in the pub, even Olaf’s father stepped outside, and together we cut wood and hauled and laid bricks and interrupted our work only when Hilde served us a cold supper.

“We missed you,” Bernd Frick said one day in June. He wore no shirt, but his muscles were still firm. He wiped his chest with a handkerchief. “Sometimes I wondered whether you would ever return.”

“I sent postcards,” Olaf said.

“Seven years, thirteen cards. That wasn’t much to go on.” Bernd wiped his nose and fell silent, but Olaf could see that he wanted to say more and waited patiently.

“You know,” his father began, “I always wondered if the stories about the sea, about sailors, were true.” He laughed quietly. “You know, a girl in every port, that sort of thing.”

Olaf shook his head. “For some, maybe.”

“It was a long time. No one would fault you. I for one would not.”

“There was hardly enough time to get drunk,” Olaf said. “And I had a goal.”

“You never wavered? See, I was married for over thirty years, but I faced a few temptations in my time. I’ve known many who failed.” He sighed. “You must have seen many pretty girls in those strange cities. They must have liked a good-looking fellow like you.” His words came slowly now, and the smile could no longer hold its place. “Do you have anything you should tell me?”

Olaf swallowed. “Sailors are no angels, and when you’re locked up for months, some men go crazy…”

“Yeah, some go crazy,” Bernd finally said, and laughed and took a long sip from his beer. “I’m glad you finally made it back.”

Olaf’s first meeting with Jan was a few days later, one evening in front of Frick’s Inn. When it got too dark for us to work any longer, Jan suddenly appeared in back of the inn and inspected the half-finished addition. Silently the men looked at each other, and Alex and I took a few steps back; we anticipated a fight. But after another tense moment, Jan shrugged his shoulders, grinned, and said, “Hey, Sailor, how about some booze?”

Olaf invited us all; never had I felt so grown up. At the tables around us sat workers from Brümmer’s factory, who laughed boisterously about something old Jens Jensen had just told them. Alex and I drank beer; our clothes were stained and reeked of sweat. We had earned our place among the men, and I earned enough money to have biked to Groß Ostensen two weeks before, to stand in front of the motorcycle dealer’s windows and ask for a catalog.

“I’m ugly as hell,” Jan said as he took his glass from the bar and sat down at our table. “But I’m not holding a grudge. It’s done. Glad you didn’t take off my whole arm.” The stump was now covered in leather, and Jan said he might be fitted for an artificial hand.

Alex frowned at Jan’s words and seemed ready to pounce on him if necessary. He was taller than Olaf and the strongest among us. Yet no fight broke out. Jan and Olaf did not become friends, but they kept the peace. Jan had been allowed to stay at Brümmer’s, and even suggested Olaf apply once more. Yet Olaf had talked to the owner of the local repair shop, and since he wasn’t getting any younger and had recently lost his best repairman, he’d agreed to sell his business to Olaf once the addition to the inn was finished.

The village made it easy on him—the young girls stopped after school to gawk at the strange drawings on Olaf’s arms and back, the neighbors came to lend a hand, and Liese Fitschen often brewed coffee for Olaf or cut him slices from the cakes she baked twice a week.

“Just like in the old days,” he said. As a boy he had liked the Fitschens almost better than his own parents, and Liese had given him cookies and candy as often as he came to their door.

“Yes,” Liese answered. “You were such a rascal, and now look at you.”

Veronika, the youngest of Liese’s girls, sometimes stopped at the hedge that separated the two lots, looking up at Olaf without saying a word. Olaf waved each time he spotted the girl, and each time the kid ran off. Olaf laughed and said, “She will still be young enough to play with my own kids.”

Veronika’s older brothers were more outspoken. Olaf had known them when they hadn’t been old enough to attend school, but now he caught them smoking cheap cigars and making passes at girls.

“Did you see the Klabautermann ?” they wanted to know. “How big was it? Did you see the maelstrom? How did you escape? Did you have many women? How are black women? Yellow ones? Are there really islands where everyone walks about naked?”

The house was finished in July, after school recess had begun, and Liese’s children had all day to watch Olaf and bombard him with questions despite their mother’s admonitions. Every morning Liese took her youngest to the bakery and let the girl carry the bag with fresh rolls and bread, and shortly afterward the whole family spilled onto the lawn and into the village.

I felt very proud when the topping-out wreath swayed in the light breeze. I stood with a beer in my hand, and my dad patted my back and offered me a cigarette. Bernd Frick seemed satisfied with the work—he poured rye for the neighbors and let himself be photographed with Olaf, Alex, and Hilde. His children had caused him so much pain, but that July night everything seemed changed. Alex and Olaf had come back to Hemmersmoor, and they would finally make him proud.

Only Hilde’s face had not brightened when the bottle of rye had been passed around, and she kept to herself all evening. The joyful atmosphere didn’t seem to lift her mood, she made a dour face.

“Is it not what you wanted?” Olaf asked.

“It’s nice enough,” she answered. “I just have to get used to it.”

“Do you not love me anymore?” he asked with a smile.