Anna Hierl, age 24, formerly maid at the Danner farm

I saw it coming. Was I surprised? No, not me. Shaken, yes, I knew them all, I lived under the same roof with them for a while. But surprised, no, I wasn’t surprised. Somehow I’d always been expecting some such thing.

Old Danner liked to hire drifters to help with the harvest, you know.

Why? Well, he paid them less. Simple. You can pay a man less if he has a record and don’t fancy being reported to the police.

A fellow like that, there’s times he’s glad to have a roof over his head and a hot meal. And Danner was glad, too, on account of he didn’t have to pay them much. That was old Danner for you. Sly as a fox, and a skinflint.

I remember the old man showing one of those good-for-nothing deadbeats all over the farm. Now that’s something I can’t understand. Gave him a guided tour. Strutting around proud as a cockerel, chest swelling, backbone straight like he’d swallowed a poker.

He’d take those vagabonds all around the house and the farmyard.

Showed them all the machinery, so no wonder if one of them happens to vanish a couple of days later, together with some of the household goods.

I always locked the door of my room when one of those gallows birds was around on the farm.

There was one of them at the place once. Karl, that was his name, I think. Yes, I’m sure it was Karl. None of that lot liked giving a surname.

Easy to see why.

This Karl helped the old man get timber in from the woods.

It was right after the big storm in June last year.

They were getting in the trees that had keeled over in the storm. That’s not easy work. It’s been known for a man to be killed by a tree, or lose a leg. After a storm like that the trees are lying around all over the place. Sometimes stretched so taut, they spring right back when they’re felled.

Well, after less than a week, off went Karl. Disappeared without trace, and a couple of chickens along with him, not to mention some clothes and shoes.

And when someone tried breaking into the farm late last year I’d had enough. I looked around for a new job.

What happened then? I wasn’t at the farm myself, it was Barbara, Danner’s daughter, told me next day. I was visiting my auntie in Endlfeld, she was sick.

It was a Sunday, imagine that, a Sunday. While God-fearing folk are at church. I went to see my auntie straight after going to church. Barbara Spangler and her family, they went out into the graveyard after the service and then home.

When they got close to the front door, they saw that someone had tried forcing it. You could see the marks on the wood of the door, scratches everywhere. Like they were made by a chisel. It’s a wonder the burglar didn’t break the door right down.

Seems he’d been disturbed and ran for it. Just took to his heels and scarpered.

A thing like that didn’t surprise me, I mean any of the deadbeats that worked at the farm knew very well there was plenty to be had at Danner’s place.

Not just chickens neither. He always had plenty of cash stashed away in the house. That was an open secret. Anyone who ever worked at the farm knew it.

So well, like I said before, after that I didn’t fancy staying on at the farm anymore.

I was afraid the housebreaker might try it again, maybe at night next time. You hear about such things every day.

I mean, the farm’s very isolated. Ever so lonely.

So I didn’t want to be out there with them when winter came, not on your life. Twilight starts falling at three-thirty then, and by four o’clock it’s dark. You can’t see or hear a thing. So I packed up my belongings and went off. I found a new place right away.

If I hadn’t left the farm then, who knows, I might well be dead now too. No thanks. I fancy living a little longer, I like life far too much.

Otherwise I could have got on all right with old Danner and his family. I know the rumors. He was odd, so folk say. Him and his whole family.

Maybe that’s true, but I got along well enough with them. I did my work, and on my days off I went dancing or I visited my family.

Work’s work. You always have to work. No one’s going to pay you for idling around. A maid has to be able to work hard, and I like the work, too. Then on my free days I make sure I go out and have a good time.

No, I was never pestered by old Danner. But I’d have known how to deal with that, believe you me. I don’t let anyone take liberties with me.

What was the relationship like between Danner and his daughter Barbara Spangler?

Ah, I see what you’re getting at.

Well, I can’t really say, I didn’t let it bother me, and anyway I wasn’t at the farm all that long, just from spring to autumn.

Did Barbara Spangler sleep in the same bedroom as her father, like some people say? I can’t swear to anything of that kind.

People talk a lot. I can only say what I saw. And it was only once I saw the two of them together, in the barn. I’m not even quite certain of that.

I went in and there was the two of them lying in the hay. Barbara jumped up just as I came into the barn. If she hadn’t jumped up I wouldn’t have seen her.

I acted like I hadn’t noticed anything, and I didn’t either. Nothing precise anyway.

None of my business, you see. Am I the priest or a judge? What’s it got to do with me?

Barbara was ever so embarrassed by the whole thing, she said if she’d known I was going to go into the barn again she wouldn’t have gone out.

Do I think those children are her father’s? Well, what a question to ask!

You want me to be honest, yes, I do, but of course I can’t know for sure. I mean, I wasn’t there, was I? But I did hear Danner telling that deadbeat Karl how his daughter didn’t need any husband. She had him, he said. I heard that with my own ears.

It was because that Karl asked about Barbara Spangler’s husband. Where was he, he asked? Maybe he had his eye on Barbara. Well, he’d have gotten nowhere with her.

Neat and smart, Barbara looked, but she was a proud one, too. Took after her father.

As for Barbara Spangler’s mother, she never said much.

Grumpy, some called her. That’s not right, though. Worn out by troubles, disappointed by life, that’s what she was.

She just looked after her grandchildren and did the cooking. In the evening she always sat holding her prayer book. It was a very old prayer book, all shabby and worn. She always sat there holding that book and muttering to herself.

But once old Frau Danner did tell me her daughter’s husband was a terrible scoundrel and had emigrated to America.

He got the money for it from old Danner. I still remember how surprised I was the old lady told me that, because she hardly ever said anything at all.

There she sat, and she started talking. At first I didn’t even realize she was talking to me. She spoke so softly I thought, oh, she’s praying, and she couldn’t look you in the eye when she spoke to you.

Except with her grandchildren. She was a really loving grandma to those kids. I guess they were her only joy. Marianne and little Josef.

She can’t have had a good life with that husband of hers, that’s for sure.

He was a bit younger than her, and I’m sure he just married her for the farm. It belonged to the old woman, you see, and Danner married into it. I think she was sometimes afraid of him, because otherwise a person can’t keep her mouth shut all her life, can she? She must have been afraid of her husband, bad-tempered as he was. There was many a day when he didn’t have a kind word for his wife. He snapped at her, and she always took it lying down. I never heard her raise her voice to him once, not once. Not even the time when he threw the food all over the floor just because he said her “eternal praying” was getting on his nerves. He swept the dish off the table with his arm, and the food splashed all over the room. Old Frau Danner stood there and then cleaned it all up without saying anything. Just stood there like a beaten dog. And Barbara watched as she mopped it up. Me, I wouldn’t have put up with that.

And now I guess you want to hear the story about Hauer, too, am I right? Yes, I thought I knew what you were after straight away.

Well, Hauer, he’s their nearest neighbor. You can see his farm from the attic window. Yes, from the Danner farm they can look right across to Hauer’s property. It lies on the other side of the meadows. A fine place it is.

Ten minutes on foot, I should say, if you walk fast. I never timed it.

Like I said, from the attic window you can see it, but only from there, that’s the only place.

Hauer was chasing after Barbara. Very keen on her, he was. The little boy’s supposed to be his. At least, he claimed to be the father.

Well, what I mean is he had himself entered as Josef’s father at the registry office, in the register of births.

Barbara Spangler’s husband left right after their wedding, you see. Marianne wasn’t born yet. That’s what Hauer told me. Said he disappeared overnight. Here one day, gone the next.

Anyway, that’s what Hauer said, but no one at the farm ever mentioned it.

Hauer’s wife died three years back. She’d been ill for quite a long time. He told me so himself, and I heard it from people in the village, too.

She had cancer, it seems, and she lingered on for a long time.

Just as soon as his wife was dead, Hauer started his affair with Barbara Spangler. She was in love with him to start with, mad for him, she positively pressed herself on him soon after his wife died, he said.

Whether that’s true I don’t know. I don’t get the impression that Hauer would be much of a ladies’ man.

I’m only telling you what he told me himself. Hauer can get quite talkative when he’s had a beer too many.

Barbara must have fallen pregnant right after they got together. Then, once the little boy was born—little Josef, that was—she suddenly didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. He just had to register that he was the father, and after that she gave him the brush-off, or leastways that’s what he told me. He wanted to report Barbara and her father, so as their relationship would be brought out into the light of day. Because it’s a mortal sin, he said, it’s against nature, and so on and so forth.

But then Hauer had had one too many when he told me the story. At the church dedication festival, it was. He told me all the ins and outs of it.

I wasn’t really listening to the whole palaver, and I didn’t understand most of it either, he was so drunk.

I just happen to have seen for myself how once old Danner wouldn’t let Hauer see Barbara, you could say he hid her from him. He said she wasn’t at home. Although she was sitting in the little room next to the kitchen all the time.

If you want more details you’ll have to talk to Hauer himself. I’m not saying any more about it, you just get involved in tittle-tattle that way.

Well, if there’s no more questions you want to ask, I’ll go back to my work now, Like I said, no one gets paid for idling around.