Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames

by Stefan Kiesbye

  New Year’s Eve fell on a Saturday, and even in a small town like Strathleven Benno heard firecrackers all through the day. When he stepped outside in the afternoon, he even thought he smelled gunpowder in the air.

  The temperatures had dropped further and the icy air penetrated his clothes. Firecrackers and rockets had been off-limits for Carolin since Tim’s early childhood. In Berlin, they’d only had champagne together and listened to albums or watched television. She had refused to leave the house after five o’clock in the afternoon. The risk was too great for Tim.

  For this night they had nothing planned, and it was okay with Benno. They hadn’t received or given any invitations, and anyway he didn’t feel in the mood for a celebration. Around ten o’clock they went to bed, despite Tim’s protests. “I want to see the rockets,” he begged, but Benno and Carolin refused. Within fifteen minutes he was asleep, and a short time later they switched off the lights in their bedroom.

  In his dreams, Benno heard the church bells ring, and a fraction of a second later he was sitting up in bed. The ringing didn’t stop. What time was it? Had a fire broken out? Was it only a New Year’s greeting?

  He switched on the light. When he saw that it was still ten minutes to midnight, he put on his clothes.

  “That doesn’t sound right.” Carolin was still looking for her glasses. “They’ve never sounded like that.”

  She was right: it didn’t sound like the ringing on the hour, nor like the bells before Sunday mass. It was louder and more hectic than usual.

  Benno ran barefoot out into the hallway. Tim’s door was open, as always, but light came from his room, and when Benno checked on the boy, the bed was empty.

  “Hurry,” he called to Carolin, and ran down the stairs.

  Tim stood in coat and winter boots in the front yard, Rasmus by his side. Under the coat he was wearing his pajamas, and he stared up at the bell tower. The dog pulled frantically on the leash, and Tim had trouble standing his ground. In the dark, Rasmus looked twice as large, and he barked without pause. The sky was full of shredded clouds. Fireworks could be heard from the village and from surrounding farms, even through the ruckus of the church bells.

  In the belfry, Benno saw a light. It flickered on, seemed to go out, only to reappear seconds later at a different angle. Benno could see dark figures moving about the narrow space. The place seemed to swarm with them. At that moment the pastor came storming out of his house.

  “The ladder,” he shouted in Benno’s direction. “Pull away the ladder!”

  “Go back inside the house,” Benno told Tim, but the boy made no move to leave his observation post. “Well, don’t leave this spot!” Rasmus wouldn’t let anyone touch the boy.

  “They’ve come to get me,” Tim said.

  “Nonsense.” Benno rushed towards the steeple, at the heels of the pastor, who ran around the tower to the north side of the church. And really, there was a ladder leaning against the wall, extending up to the roof. As Benno and the pastor approached, four figures materialized in front of them. Where they had come from, Benno couldn’t tell—maybe they had been hiding in the shadow of the church wall or in the cemetery. All four raised their arms, and Cornelius exclaimed, “Why have you come here? This is a house of God.”

  Laughter answered him. Two of the figures were carrying axes, one was holding a scythe, and the fourth a pitchfork. Their faces were smeared with soot, and they wore ski masks and caps.

  “We’ll call the police,” shouted Benno, but that earned him only more laughter. He pulled on Cornelius’ sleeve, wanted to drag him away, but the pastor wouldn’t have it.

  “You won’t get away with this,” he said in a trembling voice. “What have I done to you? What is this supposed to mean? I am not your enemy. I want to make peace.” When the four men took another step toward him, he didn’t back away. “God’s kindness is everlasting, he will crush your old world and wash it away.” Cornelius was only a meter away from his attackers. The bells were barking above their heads.

  One of the men shouted, “Your God has no say here.” The voice was hoarse, but Benno thought he’d heard it before. He did not immediately remember when or where, but it was an unpleasant memory, of that he was certain.

  “Come on!” Benno grabbed the pastor, but just when he thought Cornelius would follow him, the pastor pushed him away and walked with his raised hands toward his attackers. Benno saw the blunt end of an axe come down on Cornelius shiny head, causing him to sink to the ground without a noise.

  Benno ran. Scornful laughter followed him. He had to call the police, he had to carry Tim to safety. The pastor was beyond his help now, he told himself.

  When he had rounded the tower and again stood in the front yard of his home, Tim was nowhere to be seen. ‘They have come to get me.’ Had the boy been right? “Carolin,” he shouted and stormed into the house. There was no one in the living room or the kitchen. “Carolin,” he shouted once more, but received no answer.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the emergency number. When, after the sixth ring, no one had answered yet, he hung up and ran outside again.

  “Come over here,” hissed a voice from the adjacent door. It was Gustav Heintz, who waved him inside. “Your family is with me.”

  Benno walked cautiously toward the dark entrance. “What is all this?” The church bells still rang, and they sounded now as though somebody were hitting them with hammers.

  “Come already. I don’t want to stand here forever.”

  “The pastor . . .”

  “. . . is a fool. Will you finally come inside?” The old man stepped out of the shadows and pulled Benno into the house. “Don’t be stupid, my goodness.”

  Everyone had gathered in Heintz’ small kitchen. A candle on the table threw flickering shadows on the frightened faces of Mrs. Schmied, Manfred, Tim and Carolin. They all stared at the newcomer with concern.

  “The police . . .” said Benno.

  “. . . know exactly what’s going on.”

  “They have killed the pastor,” he said. “At least he’s unconscious.”

  “As I said, he’s a fool,” Heintz said bitterly. “He knew exactly what he did. Such a moron. Well, at least they didn’t get to you.”

  “What’s going on out there?” Benno asked again.

  “Do you still not understand?” snapped Heintz.

  “Gustav,” admonished the widow.

  “But it’s true. How often do I have to tell him about the Twelve Nights? And this year it’s different, almost like old times. People stay home, don’t go out at night. Especially when they’re living next to this silly church.”

  “Gustav,” the widow admonished him again.

  “Yes, yes,” he muttered to himself. Then he turned to Benno again. “You want a drink?”

  Benno nodded. “And who exactly is out there? I think one of them was the young Wehrke.”

  Heintz seemed not to have heard him, or maybe he simply chose to play deaf. He said, “Someone. It’s nothing.”

  “The pastor was attacked in front of my eyes, and it shouldn’t concern me? Harald Wehrke strikes Cornelius, and everything is fine because it happened during the Twelve Nights? Have you called the police?” Benno was getting furious. What was this old man up to?

  “The phone is in the hallway,” Heintz said curtly and handed him a full glass.

  Benno stood up, angry at Heintz and his Twelve Nights, but Tim’s voice stopped him.

  “Don’t you see that they’ve come to take me away?”

  Everyone stared at the boy, whose face was completely white except for his cheeks glowing crimson. He didn’t look at anyone, just stared down at the table. “I’m the king, and they’ll soon be here and they’re going kill me.”

  Carolin was about to put a hand on Tim’s shoulder, but he dodged it. “Stop it,” he shouted at his mother. “You are all blind. I got the crown and I am the one who has to die.” He flung the words at the adults, and no one contradicted him. Rasmus yelp
ed. Even Heintz seemed to have forgotten the bottle of liquor in his hands. All of a sudden Tim’s body began to tremble, and seconds later he burst into tears. This time he let his mother put her arms around him. “Nothing will happen to you,” he wailed. From outside, the sound of the bell reached them.

  “You’re safe here,” said Carolin in a shaky voice, but her words did nothing to soothe Tim.

  “Nobody’s going to hurt you,” Manfred said, furrowing his brow. “Isn’t that right, Mom?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Schmied said firmly.

  Only now did Heintz remember his bottle, poured himself another drink and emptied it. With a brief nod he suggested Benno follow him into his workshop.

  “Close the door,” he said as he turned on the light and sat down on a roughly hewn stool. “You want another one?”

  Benno held out his glass. “Are we safe here?” he asked.

  “From what?”

  “Those people out there.”

  “As long as you don’t venture outside.” Heintz frowned and poured himself another shot. He thoughtfully looked at the clear liquid, then emptied the glass and poured some more. “You don’t know the village.”

  “And?”

  “Some people take the old customs very seriously. Perhaps too seriously. For a few years it might look as though we may forget them, but then they come back. A bad harvest, too much rain, a drought—and suddenly the old ghosts rise again. There’s little to be done about it.”

  “The police in Grevenhorst . . .”

  “. . . don’t give a damn about us. They tried that in the sixties. Thought we should join in what they said was progress. Two of the officers almost died. After that, they never bothered us again.”

  “In the sixties.”

  “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “The year Friedrich’s father was killed?”

  Heintz looked at him with narrowed eyes. “In March of 1965. What do you know about that?”

  Benno drained his glass and held it out again. The old man refilled it without hesitation. “It wasn’t suicide?” He sipped his schnaps and turned to inspect the walls with the many hand-painted figurines, which all seemed to stare at him. He thought of the pastor and wondered if Cornelius was still lying on the ground. And how strange it was to be here in the carpenter’s workshop and drink liquor and not intervene, while a few hundred meters away a crime had been committed. Wasn’t it normal to call the police and to provide first aid?

  “Do you have a basement? The . . .” Benno broke off; he didn’t want to betray Manfred to his ‘uncle.’

  “What should I do with a basement?” Heintz was visibly irritated.

  And while Benno still thought of the dark figures and the weapons in their hands, he realized that he had just noticed something unusual among the wooden figurines. He was dizzy for a second, but then discovered the desired one, took it off the hook and held it out to Heintz. “The Brothers Grimm write nothing about this one.” The figurine showed a young man in a fur-trimmed coat. In one hand he held a scepter, in the other instead of an orb, two ravens. On his head sat a simple gold crown, which Benno recognized as the one Tim had received on Christmas Eve. “Who is the king?”

  Heintz slowly opened his mouth, clicked his tongue, and seemed about to give an explanation, but then he shook his head. “The hell you know.”

  17

  There was no mention of the New Year’s Eve attack in the local paper. In Grevenhorst a man had lost his hand to an M-80, in Lübeck, a car had burnt out. The pastor was now wearing a bandage around his head and a felt hat to cover it as well as possible.

  Benno went back to work, and Otto Friedrich kept his promise and repaired the car for free. The Ford looked as good as new.

  The bustle in the office of the Strandkurier made Benno happy. He could focus again on handball, basketball, and hockey. Restaurants wanted to advertise with coupons and department stores announced their winter sales.

  But after a week, his curiosity returned, like a small, persistent, and ugly creature. He could still hear the hoarse voice of one of the attackers. ‘Your God has nothing to say.’ Benno was certain now that he recognized it as Harald Wehrke’s. What did he have against the pastor? And what had happened during the bazaar? What had enraged the pastor back then? Had the young man been seeking revenge?

  Also, the old Friedrich’s suicide still occupied him. Heintz hadn’t given him any more details on New Year’s Eve, but Benno was convinced that Friedrich’s death had made headlines. And if his neighbor’s story was true, and two police officers had almost lost their lives, then somebody must have reported it.

  “That didn’t take too long,” Hanne said slowly when Benno visited the third floor of the library. Today she sat behind the information desk, multiple stacks of bound journals spread around her. “A friendly visit or a request for help?”

  “Both?”

  “Help then.” She laughed at him. “What can I do?”

  “Newspaper archives. From 1965. Microfiche, hopefully.”

  “A specific paper?”

  “All the local ones.”

  A separate room had been set up on the second floor, with three Microfiche readers. The folders of the Lübecker Nachrichten stood on the shelves, and Hanne promised to send for the Grevenhorster Anzeiger. “We close at seven o’clock today,” she said. Benno looked at his watch. It was only half past five, so he still had an hour and a half.

  “I need to be at a hockey game later,” he said.

  She looked at him curiously, as if he had said something inappropriate, and Benno didn’t know himself why exactly he had mentioned it.

  One folder contained the year 1965, but if Heintz had been right, he could focus on March. If the news had reported the incident, it had to be in the East Holstein section. At least he could start his search there.

  A Jack Russell Terrier had been abandoned in Eutin, hail had caused property damage in Malente, and mayoral elections in Glasau had been moved to an earlier date. Long after six o’ clock he had only managed to look through half a month, and the two policemen from Grevenhorst had not been mentioned.

  About twenty minutes later, just as he was looking at March 22 on the grainy screen in front of him, Hanne returned.

  “The Anzeiger,” she said, and put the folder on the table. “Any luck?”

  “What was your Christmas present to yourself?” he asked. He didn’t want her to feel used, but it felt good to play this little game. To feel that someone was interested in him. Not as breadwinner, father or reporter, but interested in himself, his thinning hair, his thin arms.

  “You serious?” she asked, as if he had just revealed his thoughts.

  “Yes.” He could hardly take back his question. Didn’t even want to.

  “Got time for a visit?”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “For you?”

  “For you?”

  “Do you really think of me? Or more about what you could lose? Or about the possibility that you’re not really serious? That you might like to look at my breasts, because you’re vain and narcissistic, but cannot love a fat woman?”

  “No idea,” he said defiantly.

  “Not a bad answer,” she said.

  “Do you judge all your friends? Do you judge what they say and think and do?”

  She cocked her head. “Ouch. And yes, I do. Quite often. So?”

  “I really need to make that hockey game.”

  She turned on her heel and left him with the Grevenhorster Anzeiger.

  Benno sighed and returned to March 22, 1965, and the triplets who had been born that day. He had to hurry.

  On March 27, a Sunday, shots had been fired on two policemen. Benno’s eyes were tired and dry, and he rubbed them and could feel how red they had to be. But his pulse quickened—Gruber had been one of the cops. He and his former supervisor, Sergeant Reuter, had been on their way to Strathleven. The perpetrator or perpetrators hadn’t been caught, but had fired on the pol
ice car from a hiding spot near the psychiatric hospital Huginwalde. The shooter or shooters had apparently fled on foot. The police officers had not seen anybody.

  Gruber. He must have been a young man at that time, thought Benno. He had suffered a flesh wound. His colleague, who had been behind the wheel, had escaped unharmed, but had lost control of the car and hit a tree.

  The motive of the perpetrator remained unclear. Benno was looking for other entries, but could not find anything further. Lübeck had apparently lost interest in the story.

  He closed the folder, made a few notes and was about to open the Grevenhorster Anzeiger, when the speaker system was turned on, and a woman’s voice announced that the library would close in half an hour. A short time later Hanne came into the reading room.

  “How’s it going in here?”

  Benno groaned. “I need more time.”

  “But you have to be at your hockey game.”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “Not even funny.”

  “They expect a report tomorrow.”

  “I can help you.”

  “We only have twenty minutes.”

  She looked at him with pity. “I’m the librarian here.”

  “And you can just stay?”

  She shrugged. “You have to catch a game.”

  “And if I cancel?”

  “Are you not going to be missed?”

  He shook his head.

  She looked at him for a long time. Her voice was very quiet, without any expression, when she said, “That won’t be cheap.”

  Benno exhaled, looked from her face to the microfiche folder.

  “Let’s stay then.”

  “Not that way,” she replied.

  He looked at her in confusion.

  “You have to ask me. I’m not making you do anything. You have to want it.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes for a second and realized he was holding his breath. He nodded again, and his voice croaked. “Please stay.”