Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone: A Novel

by Stefan Kiesbye

  When Ernst invited me to a dance in July, my mother, more eager than myself, bought me a sky-blue dress and white shoes. I was her only daughter; my three brothers had no need for frills. On Friday night she braided my hair, pulled new stockings from her dresser, and applied rouge to my cheeks and kohl to my eyes.

  A stranger stared back at me from the mirror on my mother’s dressing table, somebody who looked laughable and breathtaking at the same time. I stood horrified in my parents’ bedroom. I feared a false step or a sudden movement of my face would make this apparition crumble. If it had been in my powers, I would have stopped my heart.

  My mother embraced me carefully and kissed my hands. She was thin, her back round, and her face drawn. Only our hair had the same dark-brown shade. “Don’t waste your time on nobodies,” she said in an urgent whisper. “Choose wisely. Only a man you can look up to will do. Don’t go for looks, they fade. Your own father wasn’t all that pretty, but I knew he’d provide for a family.”

  “Ernst comes from a good family,” I said. “He wants to become a doctor just like his dad.”

  “Yes,” my mother replied, “but be careful. If he takes after his dad, he might look down on you. Your dad has no degree. He’s a farmer. Today you’re pretty. Today Ernst thinks he’s in love with you. But he’ll leave our village, and do we know if he’ll take you with him?”

  “He likes me,” I said.

  “We’ll see how much. Don’t agree to anything. Don’t spend all you have. You won’t be worth a thing once you let him have what he’s after.”

  My mother’s warnings were disturbing and yet seemed hollow. This person I saw reflected in her mirror, in the blue dress and white shoes, could have and give everything. Nothing was too good for her, and nothing could be withheld from her.

  Before Ernst arrived, Linde came to our house, beaming. “Oh, you’re so pretty,” she said, stepping away from the door to take a look at me. “Anke, you look…old.” She giggled, and I laughed too. “All grown up. And look at me,” she added. “I’m the ugly duckling.” The light in her eyes dimmed for a second before returning. “But guess what? I’ll be going to the gymnasium in Groß Ostensen next year.”

  I tasted the news from behind a smile and tried to decide whether or not I could swallow it without bitterness. “You received the scholarship, then,” I said, buying time.

  “Yes. Mr. Brinkmann recommended me to the von Kamphoffs, and I’ll have to interview with them next week. If I make a good impression, Mr. Brinkmann said, they’ll pay for my books and clothes until I graduate.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “I will lose you, then.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll be still living here. And,” she continued, “you’ll be too busy with boys to notice.” She winked and ran off. “Have fun tonight.”

  By the end of the dance I had forgotten about Linde. The strange person that had been created in my mother’s bedroom was a success, and when Ernst walked me home after midnight, he pulled me into the school playground and hoisted me onto one of the swings. His fingers crawled up my legs like caterpillars, tickling me and causing me to laugh.

  “Am I a klutz?” he asked, his voice suddenly flat.

  I jumped off the swing. “Silly you are,” I said without thinking. I understood my role without rehearsals.

  “Can I try again?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” I said and ran. He caught me in front of my parents’ house and pressed a kiss on my neck. He was hooked, yet my powers depended on a boy’s willingness to hand them to me. I was dying for his next move.

  On Wednesday Linde asked me to accompany her to the Big House for her interview. I agreed, looking forward to a close look at the splendor of the mansion. I hadn’t been to the manor since I was a child, and Mother made me promise to tell her everything about it. How did the new mistress dress? How would she act toward us? Was she still a country bumpkin?

  The whole village had been invited to Rutger von Kamphoff and Anna Frick’s wedding, but my parents, who hadn’t set foot inside Frick’s Inn since my brother’s death, had refused to attend. “The von Kamphoffs wouldn’t have let that girl enter by the back door,” my mother said, “if Rutger hadn’t filled her belly. What a sly cow.” She was right. Anna’s belly was so swollen that she looked impossible in her white dress and couldn’t even dance with the groom. The old owner of the inn, however, hadn’t skimped on a thing and put on the biggest wedding the villagers were able to remember. Every girl in Hemmersmoor would have sold her soul to be in Anna’s stead.

  The von Kamphoffs’ driver picked us up from Linde’s house. The kids in the street were gawking and pointing fingers. It wasn’t often that a car like this made it into Hemmersmoor. Linde was proud and nervous, biting her lips until I scolded her. Blood trickled onto the handkerchief I gave her.

  “What are you worried about?” I asked. “Your father has served them well all his life.”

  “That’s the problem.” Again a shadow passed over her face. And then she told me about the incident two years before, when she had encountered the real heir in the manor’s maze, and how her father had been fired because of her. “And they rehired him only two weeks later,” said Linde. “He’s afraid they haven’t forgotten.”

  “The real heir. Then the legend is true?” I asked.

  “You can’t tell anyone about it. Not even your mom and dad. Swear by your own happiness.” Her face grew dark, and her scars turned bright red. “Not anyone.”

  “Your face,” I said. “Is that why…? Was it…?”

  “Swear it,” she hissed without answering my question.

  I swore, and she seemed to calm down a bit. But we sweated into the leather seats, too afraid to ask the driver to open a window. He was a young man, no one from the village, and he wore a uniform as black as the car’s paint, and a cap.

  For the last few hundred meters, the car seemed to float toward the Big House. It stood on the hill the giant Hüklüt had left before sinking and dying in the moor. Even though we knew it was only a legend, it made the mansion all the more impressive. The building was larger than our school, larger even than our church, and instead of red brick the workers had used yellow stone. And just like royalty, we were driven to the front entrance, where the driver got out and opened the doors for us.

  We were greeted by an old woman in a maid’s uniform, who promised that our hosts would soon be with us. She led us up the steps to the double-winged doors, which alone seemed higher than my parents’ house, and from a churchlike hall into a chamber that seemed to serve as a waiting room. The ceilings were higher than those in any house I knew, and the room was four or five times the size of my parents’ parlor. Light came rushing in through tall windows.

  No sooner had the maid left than a door on the opposite end of the chamber opened and Anna Frick, now Anna von Kamphoff, walked in. She seemed baffled by our presence, and for several seconds stood staring at us as though she were seeing ghosts. Her shirt stood open, and her infant daughter babbled in her arms.

  “Oh my,” Anna said. “Uh-oh. I think I, darn… I didn’t… Does Rutger…?” Then a slight smile crept over her face, which was rounder than I remembered and pasty. “Hey there. It’s Linde and Anke. You must be here for the interview?”

  Linde nodded, curtsying, as though we hadn’t attended the same school with Anna. “Hello, Mrs. von Kamphoff.”

  Now Anna’s face dropped all expression before exploding in laughter. “It’s me, girl, don’t you remember me?” She stepped toward us, bobbing her baby in her arms. “She just drank,” she explained. “I’m waiting for her to burp.” She turned sideways the way mothers do, to allow us a good look at the baby. The girl had wispy blond hair and a face that resembled a potato. My motherly instincts had not been awakened yet, and I found it hard to fathom why Linde’s expression changed and her face started to glow as though she had spied a heavenly treasure.

  “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.

  Linde

  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.

  Ilse was thin and her hair was as black as soot. Her skin was white and soft, and she complained every day about her large hands and feet. “Ladles,” she said and spread her long fingers in front of my face. They were rough and red from work in the garden and kitchen, and every night she rubbed creams and balm into her skin. Every morning Ilse forced her feet into the tiniest shoes and suffered the pain; she didn’t want to look like a clown.

  Her hea
rt beat for Rutger von Kamphoff, and his for Ilse. Yet his parents owned the Big House outside of Hemmersmoor; they were rich farmers and had different plans for their firstborn. Before her illness, they’d met on the moor every week, and now she hadn’t seen him in twenty days. The rumors that Rutger had a new girl every time he came to the village had never bothered her, but the longer she had to stay in bed, the moodier she became. She had dark shadows under her eyes, and her skin had a greenish shimmer.

  One night not long after Epiphany, when her parents were out visiting a neighbor, the doorbell rang. I had read to Ilse, as usual, and now shouted for Irene, who came down the stairs to see who was at our step. Very soon after, she poked her head into the room and said, “Just a beggar woman with her two children.”

  “What did she want?” Ilse asked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Irene replied. “She said her children were cold and they were looking for a roof over their heads for the night.”

  “Did you open the barn for them?” Ilse asked.

  “I sent them away. Mother and Father are gone. I can’t decide such things.”

  After Irene left, Ilse and I hurried to the window, but although the night was clear, we couldn’t see the woman. “We should have offered her something warm to drink and let them sleep in the barn,” she said, yet just the few steps to the window had exhausted her. She felt dizzy and her knees buckled.

  Two nights later she sent Irene to the manor house with a message for Rutger, then wrapped herself into a thick wool coat, and even though her forehead was still burning hot, she ran out onto the moor, waiting for her lover. The weather had changed again, snow was whirling around her, and she couldn’t see but a few yards in front of her. Her heart was beating as if it wanted to jump right out of her chest and kill her. She waited at their old meeting place for an hour; then the cold drove her away and back to the village.