Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames

by Stefan Kiesbye

  “What’s going on?” Benno asked.

  Tim shrugged.

  “He doesn’t know any better. His body is huge, but he hasn’t really grown up.”

  Tim nodded impatiently. “I’m not stupid,” he said, and fell silent again. Together they watched Manfred as he diligently recorded things that they could not decipher. Finally Tim asked, “Is that contagious?”

  “What,” asked Benno.

  “Meningitis,” said Tim.

  “No.”

  “How do you get meningitis?”

  Benno only remembered the admonitions of his mother. “When you ride your bike in the winter and your hair is all wet, or if someone else has it and you get infected.” Maybe that was complete nonsense, but every answer was better than silence at this moment.

  “So it is contagious,” Tim replied in a low, firm voice.

  “Not with Manfred, not anymore. The illness is no longer contagious. Manfred is harmless.”

  “What are the symptoms?”

  “High fever and headaches. But I’ll keep an eye on you.”

  Tim seemed to think about it while he turned the tree in his hand. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Do you swear?”

  Benno raised three fingers. “I swear.”

  “Tell me,” muttered Tim. “Miracle Oaks don’t really exist, do they?”

  “No,” Benno said. “Not really.”

  2

  Strathleven was a collection of crooked streets and leaning houses and home to not even a thousand souls. It might have looked quite picturesque once, but modest wealth and new developments had eroded its charm.

  The hilly streets were named Village Street, Church Street, School Street and Mill Pond, but there was neither a mill nor a pond anymore. The mill had been demolished after the war and the pond had been filled in to make room for the new county road. The village had a Spar supermarket; the restaurant Zum Storch, which attracted the occasional visitor from Lübeck; and a car dealership, whose owner, Otto Friedrich, had promised Benno a good trade-in offer for his old VW Bug, should he ever need a new car. Then there was a John Deere dealer, which also sold lawnmowers and tools, a gas station, two pubs, two doctors, and a consignment store. Cakes and pastries people bought at the Spar market, and they were supplied by a large, commercial bakery in Lübeck. For everything else, the townspeople went to the nearby town of Grevenhorst. The only true eye-sore was a concrete-pipe plant outside of Strathleven, on the road toward Wegsten, but the factory stood surrounded by trees, and only the trucks and construction vehicles hinted at its existence.

  Even before he had set foot in the Spar market, all the villagers already knew Benno’s name. “What a disaster,” they said. “Not even here for a week, and already witnessed something so terrible.”

  After a few days he was no longer sure what the locals meant by those words. When a neighbor came to the door to ask if he could mow their lawn for a small fee—he already cut the widow Schmied’s grass twice a month—and Benno considered whether buying a lawnmower would be cheaper in the end, the neighbor shook his head in disgust. “Such a mess,” he said. “You’ve hardly arrived, and now this. You have to pay me in advance.”

  “Why?” asked Benno.

  Christensen didn’t answer, counted the money he was given and went to work. Benno watched him as he lifted the mower from a small trailer and pulled the starter. What had Christensen meant? Did these people believe that Benno had something to do with the murder?

  The mower sprang to life with a clatter and startled Benno. It couldn’t be. He hadn’t even known the woman. In fact, no one in the village had known her.

  After ten days, the summer holidays were over. A few crates and boxes remained unopened in the living room, but Benno’s study, which was located behind the kitchen and looked out on an overgrown garden, was ready. The electric typewriter sat like a small altar on his desk.

  Carolin had not been able to get a position as a physical education teacher. Tim’s school in Grevenhorst—Strathleven was too small even for a primary school—had no need for one, and no school in Lübeck had responded to her inquiries. At least she would be home when Tim came back from school in the afternoon.

  Tim started school on a Thursday, and Carolin bought him a large blue bag, shaped like a magician’s hat, and packed it to the brim with pens, sweets and colorful erasers. Tim walked very erect and with eyes wide open from the car to his new school, and Benno and Carolin stared after him. Would he settle in? Would the other boys tease him because he didn’t know their games and hiding places and said ‘bread roll’ instead of ‘bun’?

  After two hours, he came running back to the car, beaming. He had exchanged pencils and erasers with Daniel and Jens, who also lived in Strathleven. They had asked him if he wanted to ride his bicycle with them. Tim looked at his parents expectantly. “Please,” he said. “Can I get one?” Carolin and Benno exchanged glances and promised to think about it.

  The next morning they accompanied Tim down the road to the bus stop, where a group of children was already waiting. Benno and Carolin were the only adults. After Tim had stared intently at his shoelaces for a while, Carolin gave him a kiss on his hair and left with Benno.

  “Too late,” he said on the way home.

  “For what?”

  “We have destroyed his reputation. Daniel and Jens will laugh at him. Which ones were Daniel and Jens?”

  Carolin laughed coarsely. “And I even kissed him.”

  “This calls for punishment.”

  “Empty threats.” She smirked.

  That was the reason why Benno was late for work on his first day in Lübeck. Fortunately, the editor in chief had gone to visit a customer and arrived half an hour after him. Benno was in charge of the sports section and would also help out with the ads. It was not the job he had dreamed of, but he didn’t plan to grow old at the Strandkurier.

  The publisher, Jochen Hecht, introduced Benno to his new colleagues, who occupied three floors in an old building on Hüxstraße. He got his own cubicle, his own desk, his own electric typewriter. During the first hours of work, with a cup of coffee next to his phone, he felt very grown up. It almost seemed as though he had been born for this life and had always wanted to wear a tweed jacket. He was now responsible for a large apartment, a wife and child, a car, a job. He was 37 years old. He just had to keep from screwing up.

  Benno flipped through the pages of the Strandkurier, which was published three times a week and consisted mainly of ads. Yet he noticed that the dead woman had made headlines even in Lübeck. The article by Holger Wienast—which, as he told Benno with a broad grin, he had copied with only minor changes from another local paper—reported on the results of the autopsy. The woman had been raped, though some time before her death. The cuts and bruises, on the other hand, had been inflicted shortly before she died. She had bled to death, that much was certain, but the nature of the wounds was peculiar, as though the killer had stabbed her in his kitchen, using whatever he could find. Knives, forks, scissors. The tools had been dull, her death had come slowly.

  So far, no one had recognized the photo of the dead woman, and no one seemed to miss her. Her picture had been published in the regional press, but none of the calls to the police had revealed anything. At the end of Wienast’s article, it said that the coroner had determined that the woman was pregnant at the time of her death. “But where is the child?” asked Benno.

  “Not even the Gazette has an answer to that,” Holger, a small, dark-haired student who wore a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, replied. Comparative Literature. He was working on his dissertation and had been at the Strandkurier for four years. “It was cut out in the most brutal way. You can only hope she was dead by then.”

  On Saturday, Benno went to three soccer games in the area and became acquainted with coaches and colleagues.

  “Strathleven?” said the coach of SV Grevenhorst. “The only village that can’t get together a te
am.” His turquoise tracksuit gleamed in the sun. Few places, he told Benno, had either too few people or too little money to not at least join a regional beer-league. Yet money and people didn’t seem to be the problem in Strathleven. He laughed and said, “They are holier than thou. Their church is very peculiar. A little bit crazy. Are you one of them?”

  Benno shook his head. “We’re only here because of the fresh air.”

  “Baptist air,” he laughed. “Family?”

  Benno nodded.

  “Have you ever looked at the Miracle Beech? Is it still there?”

  “Oak. Miracle Oak. I haven’t found it yet. But I’ve heard of it.”

  “You should go see it,” said the coach, a man in his fifties with a remarkable belly. “My parents showed it to me once when I was a little boy. But perhaps the Christians have cut down the tree by now.”

  On Sunday morning they had breakfast at the restaurant at the inn, Zum Storch. The parking lot of the restaurant was already nearly full, and even a police car stood in front of the entrance. But Tim had eyes only for an old Jaguar. It was an E-type with the long hood, and the special feature of the car was that it hadn’t been painted, but was covered with a black material that looked like velvet. Before Carolin could admonish him, Tim ran his hands over the fenders. “Cool,” he said.

  Families sat in the crowded taproom. Young women in floral dresses, old women in beige dresses, all of them wearing perms. The men were talking shop. Grain prices were discussed, someone predicted that this year’s crop would be even worse than last year’s.

  “The March frost killed everything,” said a white-haired man in a plaid shirt at the next table.

  “Next year everything will be different,” said another. He also wore a plaid summer shirt, and looked like a younger version of the old man. “This is a new beginning, dad.”

  “Really?” asked his father scornfully. “Do you want to take the reins next year and make rain?”

  When Benno excused himself after drinking a second pot of coffee, he noticed that there was a third room between the taproom and the actual restaurant. Guests were seated at a large, round table, the air was full of smoke, and instead of coffee the men were drinking beer and liquor. Curious, Benno paused for a moment. He thought he had recognized the green uniform of a police officer. The next moment one of the men turned to look at him and waved. It was Friedrich, the car dealer. Benno waved back. He felt caught and hastily turned away. The group of men seemed too serious to be disturbed. As he paid at the counter, the waitress asked, “Aren’t you the new guy? The one who found the woman?”

  Benno nodded. He waited for a reaction, but after the waitress had given him his change, she left without another word.

  The rest of the day they spent together at the beach. It was sunny, the sky clear and blue. Tim built a sand castle and Benno thought he almost looked like an ordinary boy. He squinted through his straw hat into the sun, feeling the sand on his belly and legs. He and Carolin had made it; in the eyes of the other beach visitors, they had to look like a normal family.

  Around six o’clock they packed up their mats and towels and walked back to the car. Two kilometers before Strathleven, Tim suddenly yelled, “A wolf, a wolf!” Benno slowed. And really, not far from the road he saw something move in the tall grass. The animal seemed to have heard the approaching car and lifted its head. It did look like a wolf or a coyote. Benno’s heart still beat wildly after the animal had turned and disappeared into a cornfield.

  When he climbed into bed—he could still feel sand between his teeth, and his nose and neck were sunburned—he felt completely at peace. Carolin had a dreamy smile on her face, and the boy had had a wonderful day and was now snoring in the next room. Not a sound came through the open window. “I didn’t think you would enjoy the country life,” Carolin said. Her hand lay on his chest.

  During their first night together, she had told him that at age eighteen she had stopped going to the gym to train every day and started to drink and go out with men who beat her. Most of them had been alcoholics or drug addicts. For several years she hadn’t even had an apartment. Only after her pregnancy did she start seeing a psychiatrist.

  Benno had been lying in the darkness of her room, her mouth pressed against his ear, her body wrapped around his. He hadn’t wanted to start anything serious with her. Earlier that day, he had slept with another woman and arranged to meet her again. But Carolin’s whispered confession had a peculiar effect on him. Since that night he hadn’t cheated on her.

  Yet as he listened to the silence outside, he suddenly missed the rattles and squeaks of the S-Bahn, the rumble and roar of passing trains. His sense of peace was gone; instead he missed his studio in Wedding district, missed even the smoke that wafted up from the pub on the ground floor to the windows of his third-floor apartment. The Baltic coast was so disgustingly healthy.

  3

  “Come home immediately. Please, Benno. Please!”

  He apologized to the advertising customers, who sat across from him at his desk, and didn’t even think to grab his bag. He ran down to the lobby, cursed loudly, returned to the office to get his keys, and then ran to his car. Benno needed just 20 minutes to get to Strathleven. Carolin’s hoarse voice in his mind urged him on, and he suddenly felt cold. He had notified Holger that he would miss a District League volleyball game. Maybe he would lose his job in only his second week. But that didn’t matter now.

  As soon as he got out of the car in front of the old school, he heard several voices coming from inside the house. Carolin’s excited voice mingled with a very high one he hadn’t heard before, and with that of Pastor Cornelius. Someone was crying.

  As he stepped into the hallway, Carolin threw herself into his arms and the small group fell silent. A woman was standing at the table with a big cake in her hands. “They are still children,” she said in a pleading voice to Benno. “They just wanted to see. They didn’t want to harm him. They are just stupid.”

  Carolin turned around and screamed at the woman, “Just wanted to see? You call that ‘just wanted to see’?”

  “But Mrs. Stroth . . .” Mr. Cornelius bit his lip and swallowed whatever he had wanted to say.

  Carolin took Benno by the hand and led him to the sofa where Tim sat in silence, his face very white. He was wearing long pants since Carolin wouldn’t allow shorts anymore. His left shirtsleeve was pushed up, and when Carolin pulled away his right hand, Benno could see the cuts. There were two, forming a ‘T.’ They were red, deep, and clean.

  “Jens and Daniel! Her son did that,” shouted Carolin, pointing at Mrs. Stroth. “And now this woman comes into my house and offers me a cake. A cake!”

  “I just took it from the oven,” said the woman, setting the cake down on the table and wringing her bony hands. She looked haggard. She was wearing a flowered dress and a dark red cardigan. Her varicose veins were encased in brown pantyhose, her feet stuck in beige sandals.

  “What happened?” asked Benno.

  “The kids . . . they cut him,” said Cornelius and told him what had happened. After the school bus had dropped off the children, Daniel, Jens and Tim had made plans for the afternoon. Jens had received a kite for his birthday and wanted to try it out. But Tim didn’t own a bike and the boys had teased him and called him a mama’s boy. They couldn’t understand why Carolin was afraid of Tim getting hurt. Tim had tried to explain it to his friends, but then had become angry. Finally, Daniel had taken out a pocketknife and cut Tim’s arm. “I have no idea what got into them,” said the pastor.

  Benno turned to Tim. “Is that true?”

  Tim nodded. “Yes. But . . . it wasn’t bad.”

  “Not bad?” Carolin’s voice was shrill. “With your skin? Not bad?”

  “Did you tell Daniel and Jens about it?” asked Benno. “What would happen?” Tim was too quiet, his face without expression, or maybe defiant. Something was wrong. He avoided his mother’s gaze and nodded wordlessly.

  “Told them wh
at?” asked the pastor, but Benno ignored him.

  “Did you hold still?”

  Tim lowered his head and began to cry.

  “What?” asked Mrs. Stroth. “You allowed them to cut you?” She stepped slowly toward the boy. Tim’s open wound offered a strange sight. The cuts had narrowed and were no longer red, and the edges looked raised and were turning a light brown. Tomorrow there would be only two lines, as though two worms were crawling underneath Tim’s skin.

  “What is this?” She bent down and grabbed Tim’s arm. Carolin wanted to pull her away, but Benno stopped her. The boy let Daniel’s mother inspect the wound.

  “Is it always like this?” Her conciliatory tone had given way to a certain sharpness. She stared at the red ‘T.’ “That fast?”

  “It’s a rare disease,” Benno said.

  “Disease?” asked Mrs. Stroth and stood straight. Her back was no longer bent, her eyes sparkled. “A miracle is what it is! The boy was born with a caul!” She turned back toward Tim, took his arm and quickly pressed her lips to the cuts. Then she let go of his arm and ran out of the living room toward the entrance. At the door she turned her head one last time. “I guess we are done here,” she cried in a piercing voice. “Your son made them do it. And you yelled at me. Called my Daniel a criminal.” Then she opened the door and nodded at the pastor. “You enjoy the cake.”

  The next morning, Benno still had his job; Jochen Hecht had neither called nor fired him. Only Holger had called to ask if everything was okay. When Benno entered Tim’s room to remind the boy that they would have to leave in five minutes, it was empty. The sound of running water was coming from the bathroom.

  Tim had always called Benno by his first name. Carolin had never encouraged him to say “Dad,” although his real father had never even visited. The boy had been almost four years old when Benno and Carolin had met on the subway, both on their way to a seminar, and by then he had already been used to the sight of unknown men. After the first night that Benno had spent at Carolin’s place, the boy had hopped into their bed, sat down on Benno’s hairy chest and asked, “Did you bring me a present?”