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

“It’s not that.” With one of her white, short fingers, she’d traced the grinning demon, drawn in black ink in Shanghai two years before, and refused to hear the story of how and why he’d gotten it. From Alex I knew that Hilde insisted Olaf sleep in his sister’s old room, because his tossing and turning kept her awake at night. She showed him bruises from where he’d hit her in his sleep.

“Then what is it?” he asked.

“We were kids when we got married,” she said, but before he could hold her back, Hilde rushed off. Olaf saw that I had listened to their conversation and smiled, embarrassed, and shrugged. Even though it was nearly dark, I could see that he was blushing.

Finally the couple moved into the new house and shared the large bed Alex and his father had built together. And to please Hilde, Olaf had a large vanity shipped from Hamburg. Hilde showed it to all the women, and my sister, Birgit, couldn’t say enough about the gold-framed mirror. “You can watch yourself combing your hair, doing your makeup, and if I had a husband like Olaf to watch me, I would rub lotion into my skin all day and braid my hair.”

“Nonsense,” my mother replied. She wasn’t impressed by the vanity. “What do you need a golden mirror for? You hair is as coarse as straw, and no matter how much makeup you rub onto your face, you can’t hide those freckles.”

In late summer Alex applied for a job at the manor, but the only position his former brother-in-law offered him was that of substitute driver. With a special permit, he started the job in September. “If not for my dad, they wouldn’t even have hired me as a stable boy,” he cursed when I met him one day in full uniform in the village square.

I had bought a moped and was able to drive at night to Groß Ostensen. When we were thirteen, we believed owning a moped was the way into a girl’s heart, but the girls in Groß Ostensen didn’t care about my moped. As soon as I got off, they could smell Hemmersmoor on me. It was my gait, my face, my way of talking. I carried our village like a yoke.

“Don’t waste your time with the pretty ones,” Alex advised me. His hair was full of grease, his shined shoes were as large as the boats on the peat bog. “Only the ugly ones put out.” That made sense to me, and after two more girls complained that I didn’t have any hair on my chest and that my teeth were crooked, I got involved with Linde Janeke. I had kissed her a few times when we were younger, but not once since her accident. None of the girls could stand her, and she never came to any of the dances at Frick’s Inn, but after dark we drove out onto the moor. After dark the scars in her face vanished, and her skin glowed very white, and she wrapped herself around me and demanded that I slap her face or hit her with my belt. Only when I obeyed her did she allow me to unbutton my pants.

When we drove through the village at night, we could often see Olaf standing outside the inn or walking the streets. He always seemed to be alone. Hilde was nowhere to be seen, and I couldn’t imagine what kept him awake. Perhaps he was missing the sea, I told Linde, but she laughed at me.

“What else could it be?” I asked.

“Silly boy,” she said. “If you can’t figure it out, I won’t tell you.”

One night, when I was waiting for her outside the village, Olaf came walking toward me. He was carrying a bundle, and when he recognized me, stepped closer. It was almost midnight, my dad was making his rounds on his bicycle, but here he wouldn’t see us. Olaf asked how I was doing and looked at my moped, but my answers were all too short. I was afraid that Linde wouldn’t come if she saw him with me, and I hadn’t been with her in two days.

“Are you waiting for someone?” he finally asked and smiled.

I nodded, relieved. “What do you have there?” I asked and pointed to his bundle. I didn’t want to appear ungrateful.

“Oh,” he said. “Knickknacks. I have no use for them anymore.” He opened the package, and I recognized the Buddha, the blue scarab, the Statue of Liberty.

“Why do you want to get rid of them?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Hilde can’t stand them. And to me they look unreal now, as though I invented them. Souvenirs are supposed to remind you of things, but here they just look foreign to me. There are no other countries anymore.” He was silent for a few moments; then he said, “Here,” and put the bundle into my arms. “I wanted to bury them, but maybe you can keep them for me.”

“Sure,” I said, without knowing what I would do with Olaf’s treasures.

Olaf grinned lopsidedly. “Well, I’m gonna leave you now,” he said and continued his walk.

“Hey,” I shouted. “Thank you.”

He turned to look over his shoulder and waved at me.

What happened later at Frick’s Inn is often discussed in our village but never questioned. Some speculate that Olaf had fallen ill on one of his long journeys and could be a husband for Hilde no longer. Others suspect that Olaf met too many women in those foreign ports and could never again be happy with just one. A few claim that Olaf had always been a ne’er-do-well and that his father threw him out to prevent further disasters. Nobody tries too hard to find out the truth. The possibilities are too ugly.

That night I waited until Linde arrived, and together we drove to an old barn near Brümmer’s factory. “I’m not made from sugar,” she soon complained. I tore open her shirt and squeezed her breasts, which were as small as macaroons, their tips as dark as chocolate. Her first blow hit my right ear, and for seconds I could hear only a loud ringing noise. I tried to grip her arms, but her forehead hit my mouth, and I tasted blood and she laughed at me. “You’re like a drizzle—I don’t get wet.” Then she hit my shin, stomped with one of her heels onto my toes. This time I punched her in the face, right on the chin. I hit her harder and she fell quiet, froze. I tore her panties, slapped her thighs and her face. She trembled without making a sound, waited for my blows, and I obeyed. Finally she turned around, propped herself up on the seat of the moped and stuck her ass out for me. But the ground was sandy, and the kickstand gave way, and Linde and the moped fell down.

I pulled her up, pushed her aside, and inspected my moped. Was something bent, had Linde stepped on the spokes? I wiped off the handlebars with her panties, and everything still seemed intact. To be sure, I started the moped, but when the engine roared to life, I noticed that Linde was no longer inside the barn. I called her name, but she didn’t answer. In my ears I could still hear her laughter, her sneer. I didn’t go to the trouble of looking for her.

Shortly after handing me his bundle, Olaf returned home. At least that’s what Alex has told me. The whole affair disgusted him, he said, but he seemed hell-bent on telling me his story. And when I later jumped up and said he better shut his mouth, he insisted I hear him out.

He had arrived home from work in the evening, and was sitting at the bar, when Olaf entered the pub and joined him. The brothers didn’t say a word to each other, but shortly after his arrival, Olaf felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Shouldn’t you be at home with your wife?” It was Jan, smiling, holding a glass of beer in his right hand and touching Olaf with his new prosthetic left. Olaf disregarded the fact that Jan was not his friend. Perhaps his tongue wanted to get rid of the words that clogged his throat and mouth. “That’s just it,” he exclaimed. “Ever since I’ve come back, she treats me like a stranger.”

Alex got up to pour the men another shot of rye. Jan sat down next to Olaf, slumping over his glass of beer, looking up at the young sailor with sympathy. “You were gone for many years, a long time even for a godforsaken village like ours. You were gone more years than you were ever together.”