Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames

by Stefan Kiesbye

  Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames

  KNIVES, FORKS, SCISSORS, FLAMES

  STEFAN KIESBYE

  Copyright 2016 by Stefan Kiesbye

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  21 20 19 18 17 16 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016907060

  ISBN 978-0-9916404-2-3

  Panhandler Books

  Department of English and World Languages

  Building 50

  University of West Florida

  11000 University Parkway

  Pensacola, FL 32514

  http://www.panhandlermagazine.com

  For Michael, Jo, and Sanaz

  “Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames, have no place in children’s games.”

  —German Nursery Rhyme

  PROLOGUE

  When the children found her, the oldest boy broke a branch off the tree under which she lay and pressed the tip to the dark nipple. Then he shook the chest, and even the girls laughed, it just looked too silly. But the countless cuts and bruises made them quickly fall silent. They knew the signs, even if they were too young to have ever seen them before. Everyone in the village knew them.

  The smell coming from the dead woman was very strong; something was sticking out of her belly. A boy muttered, “They have to find a new king.” The others nodded in agreement.

  They couldn’t see the village behind them, not even the church tower. Probably no one would have found the corpse in the next few hours or even days, had Sybille Antler not encountered the pastor in his red jogging suit and given in to her guilty conscience. She broke her promise never to tell anyone about what she had found.

  1

  Benno was in the garden, trying to repair the rickety swing set. He had been finding ways to avoid Carolin’s tight-lipped zeal since morning. It was quiet around him, so quiet that he could hear her cleaning the cupboards in the kitchen. He looked at the old thatched schoolhouse, half of which now belonged to them, and wiped the sweat from his brow. Parsonage and school stood together on a small hill, encircled by several old houses, and when Benno looked through the trees, he could see the road to Grevenhorst and the car dealership glittering in the sun. The next moment he heard the hasty and irregular steps of the pastor running toward the church. The stout man suddenly stopped, walked up to Benno, and with some difficulty said, “Something very bad happened. The children . . . Sybille . . . they’ve found . . . do you have a car?”

  Benno looked at Mr. Cornelius and nodded. “Sure. Right now?”

  When the pastor returned from his house, Benno was already waiting by the curb. Cornelius’ wife had taken the kids to a soccer practice or a track and field event, the pastor couldn’t remember. “We have to get there as fast as we can,” he said. His forehead and thinning hair glistened with sweat. “Before anyone else does. How in the world did she get out? Wait, I must call the police.”

  Benno didn’t understand what the pastor meant; Cornelius hadn’t told him yet why and where they were taking the car. But he remained silent and followed Cornelius’ instructions. He had decided to embrace whatever kind of life this new place had to offer. Carolin had insisted.

  Strathleven meant a new beginning, a life without smog, subways, bums and gangs. No trash in the streets and no sidewalks full of dog shit. No Wall. Her son Tim was seven years old, and would soon have to enroll in school. It was time, Carolin had decided, to move away from Berlin. She had said it over and over again. Benno had been forced to choose between city and family. And with Strathleven they appeared to have made a good choice: the place was just twenty minutes away from the beach, and he could drive to Lübeck in a little more than half an hour.

  And so it came to pass that Benno was one of the first to learn of the dead woman. He parked the car at the edge of the sandy path and then hurried after the pastor over grassy lots and meadows until they stood in front of the corpse, Cornelius’ red windbreaker partly covering her chest and face. Benno was out of breath, the air was humid, and mosquitoes buzzed around his face. During the drive, the pastor had only given Benno confused hints and spoken of a disaster. The sight that greeted him now was strangely disappointing. He felt neither fear nor disgust while he spread the cheap plaid polyester blankets that Cornelius had brought over the naked body. Out here in the pasture murder made no sense. It was a sunny afternoon, a perfect day for swimming; he thought he could smell the sea. The body simply did not fit the scene.

  Cornelius picked up his jacket with two fingers and stared at the woman with his head bowed. His lips moved, perhaps speaking to her or his God. She hardly looked human anymore.

  The woman lay twisted; she could not have been very tall. The eyes were half closed, as if she were still squinting into the sun. She was maybe 35 or 40, the hair stuck to her head, thick and sandy-colored, her features harsh and clear. The pale skin was covered with cuts and bruises that looked almost black and had bluish edges. The stench was pronounced, and her toes were swollen.

  Cornelius took Benno aside and made him promise to say nothing of Sybille Antler and the other children, who had initially found the body, because they should not get dragged into a police investigation. He alone had found the corpse.

  Benno nodded, though he didn’t understand what Cornelius was asking of him. Sybille Antler? What about the other children? What had they done? How long had they lingered here and examined the body? Silently, he stood with the pastor at the edge of the cow pasture and waited until the blue lights of the police and ambulance appeared out on the county road. The sirens had not been turned on, hurry was no longer needed. Crows or ravens—Benno could not tell them apart—hopped around nearby. Perhaps they felt cheated when the body was placed in a plastic bag and carried off.

  A young, bear-like policeman asked him questions and took a report. No, Benno had never seen the woman before. No, he had no doubt about that, he was new here, he didn’t know anyone in the village. The next day, his name appeared next to the pastor’s in the regional paper and not just in the local section that probably no one outside of Strathleven ever read. This time the village had made it onto the front page.

  At night Carolin asked him about the woman. Her voice was breathy because they had to leave the door open. Tim was suffering from laryngeal spasms, and she had to be able to hear him at all times. What the boy overheard of their talks, Benno couldn’t tell. He often felt as though the boy lay awake at night to snap up their every word, their every sigh. Sometimes Benno could hear Tim snoring softly—he could never get quite enough air through his nose—but maybe the boy was a lot smarter and more cautious than his mother and stepfather. Maybe his ears were better than those of Benno and Carolin, and maybe he shared in their secrets.

  “What did she look like?” asked Carolin. Her breath tickled his ear, one of her small, powerful hands stroked his arm. In her youth she had been a gymnast and won prizes and medals. The pregnancy hadn’t touched her lines.

  Benno gave her an approximate description and tried to sound sad and concerned. But he kept quiet about the blackened wounds. “And we only just arrived,” he added, “in this small, clean, decent dump.” He couldn’t help himself.

  “This has nothing to do with Strathleven,” Carolin hissed in his ear. “Somebody just dropped the body in the field.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “Otherwise, you would have found her clothes.”

  “The murderer could have taken them,” Benno said. “In Berlin, I never found a corpse. And I lived there for eighteen years.”

  In response Carolin punched him in the kidney, and he stifled a groan. “You’ve got me a
nd Tim,” she said. “Isn’t that enough?” Her chest pressed against his shoulder. “Did that hurt?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Next time I’ll hit you harder,” she whispered. Not a sound could be heard from Tim’s room.

  Tim cut out the article that mentioned Benno’s name, pasted it into a new composition book, and stared at the columns through a magnifying glass, as though somewhere in the small print he could find the solution to the murder case. He insisted on being driven to the spot where the body had been found, and Benno finally gave in, after making him promise not to tell his mother.

  It was hard to find the exact location again. Benno got lost on the country roads, and when he finally found the spot where he had parked that afternoon, he was not sure which direction the pastor had taken. Yet Tim didn’t mind and followed him patiently. Finally Benno stopped at the edge of a grassy pasture, and said, “This is it.” Grazing cows watched the two of them quietly.

  Tim crawled through the bushes and tall grass trying to discover evidence. Benno reminded him not to scratch his skin on branches or fence posts or some rusty barbed wire. Every little gash would scar and disfigure him. The boy nodded, but hardly seemed to have heard Benno’s admonitions. He wasn’t even disappointed when he didn’t find a thing.

  If you glanced at Tim in passing, the boy didn’t look unusual—a seven-year-old with the flaxen hair of his mother, the same bad eyes, the same thick glasses. But maybe because of his biological dad, or maybe because of some random incident, he had this illness nobody could explain, and for which there was no entry in the medical textbooks. Not even a name. Carolin had consulted every specialist in Berlin, and doctors at the University Hospital had analyzed blood and skin samples and shaken their heads. They hadn’t been able to do or explain anything. Whenever Tim cut his skin, it healed all too quickly, and a second layer of skin seemed to spread over the wound. With every scratch his skin grew visibly thicker. Six months ago, he had fallen from his bike, broken his glasses and received a cut just below his right eye. A scar had formed almost immediately, and made his right eye appear slightly narrower than the left. They had sold the bike before leaving Berlin.

  Carolin blamed herself for Tim’s illness. She hadn’t wanted to get pregnant, “especially not by that guy.” She’d never told Benno the father’s name. “I really believed Tim was eating me from the inside, I wanted to stab him with a screwdriver.” Benno had tried to convince her that her feelings had nothing to do with Tim’s condition, but to no avail. “He must have felt the hatred. Just look at him!”

  The old school where they lived belonged to the widow Schmied who lived with her son Manfred on the second floor. She had to be in her sixties, always wore gray skirts and gray jackets, together with white, starched blouses. Her hair was tied back in a bun. Even Manfred only wore gray suits, and they always seemed two sizes too small, making him appear like a giant. His skin and face were always flushed, his voice loud, as though he were nearly deaf, and he didn’t seem to be aware of his size and strength.

  A few days after the publication of the newspaper article, the widow came to Benno and Carolin’s door to tell them of the scheduled heating oil delivery, when Manfred suddenly appeared behind her. With childlike curiosity he pushed his mother aside to gawk at the unknown family. “Good morning,” he said in his booming voice. Then he stared at Tim, extending his hand.

  Mrs. Schmied lost her balance, and before Benno could catch her, she yelped and fell to the ground. Manfred didn’t move from his spot, seemingly unaware of his mother’s fall.

  Mr. Heintz, who lived next door on the first floor, must have heard the cry, or maybe he’d been in the garden and had seen the accident, because a moment later he appeared at the door in a blue coat and shouted at Manfred as though he were a little boy. “Go, you silly boy,” he exclaimed. “Come on. Get out of here.”

  Manfred stared at him with a blank face, then finally hung his head and left.

  “He means well, he really does,” said Mr. Heintz as he helped Mrs. Schmied to her feet. He was a short, stocky man, shorter than the widow, with a broad face and rough hands. Benno and Carolin had never talked to him before and had only seen him once or twice on their way to the car. He didn’t seem to leave the house very often. “He’s just a little slow. He still thinks that he is your son’s size.”

  Benno nodded in agreement.

  “I haven’t even introduced myself yet,” Mr. Heintz said. “How do you like it in Strathleven?”

  “We like it,” Benno replied. “It’s very nice here.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m the new sports editor at the Strandkurier,” Benno said, taking Mrs. Schmied’s other arm. Her hair was a mess, she’d lost several of her pins, but she didn’t seem to have injured herself. “I’m not that good on my feet anymore,” she said apologetically.

  Mr. Heintz turned to Tim and asked, “Would you like to have a look at my workshop? Of course, you are all welcome to come along,” he added.

  The boy hesitated, looked questioningly at his mother, then at Benno.

  “What kind of workshop do you have?” he asked.

  The wood workshop took up almost the entire apartment, leaving only a small room in back furnished with a table, a bed, and two chairs. It smelled of cigars, fresh wood, and fresh paint. The wallpaper was old and had a gold pattern. “I used to make furniture, when there was still a small factory in town, but I’ve since retired.” He scratched his bald head. “Now I’m only doing these here.” ‘These here’ were neatly sawed and sanded wooden figurines, and Heintz painted each and every one by hand. They covered most of the walls, there seemed hardly any space left for new ones. There were fairy-tale characters—Hans in Luck with his lump of gold, Cinderella, who had lost a shoe, Mother Holle shaking out the beds—and sailing ships, moons with friendly faces and nightcaps, churches, and legendary deities with four faces.

  Tim ran from room to room and marveled at the curious collection.

  “Do you sell them?” asked Benno.

  “Every now and then,” Mr. Heintz said.

  “He is too modest,” said Mrs. Schmied, who sat down on a chair and tied up her hair again. “He supplies all the souvenir shops in the area.”

  “What’s that?” Tim asked, pointing to a tree on the wall that seemed to have a hole in the middle.

  “Please,” Carolin corrected him.

  “Please,” Tim repeated.

  “Superstition,” Mrs. Schmied replied in a firm voice. “He shouldn’t make those. It’s sinful.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Heintz. “It’s quite harmless.” Then he bent down to Tim and said, “That is the Miracle Oak. The ones who manage to crawl through its opening will be cured of any disease. Whether you’re blind or crippled, the Miracle Oak can heal you.”

  “Does it really exist?” asked Tim.

  “It really does. Here in Strathleven.”

  “Where?”

  Mr. Heintz stood up with a groan. “Just keep your eyes open. Here,” he took the Miracle Oak off the wall, “take one with you.”

  Carolin was preparing dinner in the kitchen, and the smell of her beef stir-fry wafted like a childhood memory through the rest of the house. Benno looked around—the light that came from a single lamp in the dining area illuminated Tim’s face as he sat at the table and kept humming to himself, the sound mixing with that of the rain pounding the windows—and he realized that he knew this picture only from the movies. He wanted to hold on to this image, hang it on the wall or lock it away in a safe. Benno’s childhood had not been idyllic, and he had spent it in constant fear of an unpredictable mother.

  This was still a sore point between him and Carolin. He no longer spoke to his parents, had not called them in years and discarded their letters unread. She respected his decision, but she didn’t understand it. Her own parents had died early. Both had been diagnosed with cancer at almost the same time, as though they had eaten it from a shared plate. He
r mother had survived her husband by two months.

  “No family is perfect. You must be able to forgive,” Carolin had said more than once. But he couldn’t. His parents had always treated him like a talented and entertaining dog. When at age fifteen he had met his first girlfriend, his mother had called and visited the families of two ex-boyfriends to inquire about the girl’s character. His father had initially seemed more sensible—and then flirted with the girlfriend, jokingly, as he claimed. But Benno knew better.

  “Can you help me with the meat?” Carolin’s voice sounded annoyed. As soon as he entered the kitchen, he was in the way. The stubborn chunks of meat cheered him on, he was glad that the little moment of perfection was over.

  Later in the evening, when Benno came out of the upstairs shower, he saw Tim in his room, standing by the window. The boy had a pair of binoculars lying on the windowsill to watch birds and squirrels. In the garden stood the repaired swing, an old slide, and a large sandbox, and Tim looked silently down at his little kingdom and did not seem to be happy with it.

  The floor of his room was strewn with school supplies, sports gear and newspapers, but the desk was perfectly clean. A dictionary stood on the right, along with a book about the local birdlife. A huge monthly planner took up almost the entire surface of the desk, and an old- fashioned pencil sharpener stood on the left side. Homework assignments were neatly entered into the boxes for each day, along with birthdays and afternoon activities. Paper clips, pencils, pens, and erasers were arranged in separate containers.

  The walls, however, were just as chaotic as the floor: posters and newspaper clippings of bands and actresses fought for space. A huge image of a submarine hung above Tim’s own drawings, and plastic figurines—cowboys, superheroes, and dinosaurs—were taped to the wall in-between.

  Perhaps he hadn’t noticed Benno. His shoulders drooped, and in his right hand he held the Miracle Oak that Mr. Heintz had given him. Benno came up to the boy and his eyes followed his gaze outside, where Manfred sat on the edge of the sandbox and was writing in the wet sand with a stick.