This time I insisted on going to Rote Gertrud’s house in broad daylight, which meant waiting for Sunday afternoon. Max was not happy; being his usual impulsive self, he would have preferred to go as soon as Hanna had called him on Thursday evening, regardless of the oncoming night. Then he argued for Saturday, but Hanna couldn’t come that day, and I wasn’t prepared to go alone with Max. Since the incident with Kai I had been prey to all sorts of morbid suspicions, not helped by the fact that Achim Zimmer’s insinuating manner had been cranked up another notch, until he seemed marinated in his own slime like an octopus in its own ink. I was afraid that someone – and by someone I was thinking chiefly of Frau Kessel – would see me out and about with yet another man and draw their own conclusions.
I was also afraid of what Kai might have told Max about me. Max and I had met each other when we were both in kindergarten and in theory he should have known me well enough to realize that I was not the femme fatale of Bad Münstereifel. All the same, I remembered that look he had given me the day he saw me feeding the ducks, the broad grin showing all those gleaming white teeth, and I thought that I would not like to stake my peace of mind on it. For once I stuck to my guns and insisted on Sunday afternoon.
Two days passed between declaring my resolve to Hanna and actually going to Gertrud’s house to put it into action. It was long enough for me to have changed my mind, to let common sense talk me down from the ledge I had climbed on to. But there were forces driving me towards action, as surely as a savage dog nipping at a sheep’s ankles can drive it towards a cliff edge. I would be serving in the cafe and someone would come in, an old woman of Frau Kessel’s age or thereabouts, and while I was serving her coffee and cakes she would be looking me up and down with a speculative eye, wondering. Or I would step outside to clear one of the tables and see a green-clad figure at the end of the street, and whether it was Frau Kessel or not my stomach would lurch horribly. Was she talking about me, even at this very minute, spreading her poison through the town like a terrorist dropping toxins into the water supply? I would glance at my mother, neat in her dirndl, and wonder if it was my imagination that she looked suddenly older, more tired.
On Saturday night there were only four of us hanging around the snack bar. Izabela and Timo had gone off somewhere together, in a break from our long-established habit. He had never done that with me, I reflected rather sadly. It was not that I envied Izabela her catch, but it was dispiriting to think that in all our three years he had never been that desperate to get me alone.
That left Max, Hanna, Jochen and me, and since Jochen was the only one excluded from our plans for Sunday, the evening dragged. Max, Hanna and I were unable to talk freely and Jochen was still offhand with me. It was a relief when the evening was over and I was able to go home.
The following afternoon at three we were struggling uphill through the woods once more. It had not rained again but the ground was still spongy underfoot. I was determined to keep up with Max, although his legs were longer than mine; they scissored across the rough ground with the savage speed of a tailor’s shears hacking through cloth. My heart was thumping wildly and I was horribly out of breath, but I forced myself to keep pace with him. I was imagining what would happen if either he or Hanna made it into Gertrud’s house before I did and opened the box first. The inevitable questions. Max’s grin when he discovered my failed attempt to wipe out Kai von Jülich, which he surely would. Kai had left, not died, so I supposed my message would still be there in the box, untouched. I picked up speed.
‘Whoa,’ said Max, but I ignored him.
When I finally stumbled into the ruined house my lungs felt as though they were about to burst, but I didn’t stop to catch my breath. I was already on my knees, fumbling the little carved box open. I thought I would grab the scrap of paper with my last wish scrawled on it and tear it into tiny pieces, or even swallow it if necessary; anything so long as Max didn’t read it. I rifled through the papers, raising my eyebrows as I read Max’s wish, wincing as I read Jochen’s. But my wish had gone. I counted the pieces of paper and there were only five. I looked down, wondering if the sixth had fluttered out, but there was nothing to see. On that brown and mulchy floor a piece of white paper would have stood out like a patch of snow.
OK, keep calm. I counted the pieces of paper again. Five. I stood up, the box in my hands, and looked all around me. No paper on the floor, not unless you included a chocolate bar wrapper, torn and faded.
‘What’s the matter, Steffi?’ asked Max, with that taunting grin on his face.
Sometimes I almost hated him. I imagined him opening his closed hand to show me that he had had the missing piece of paper all the time. I would have liked to fly at him with my nails, but instead I waited, frowning and chewing my lip. He did nothing. His hands were empty.
‘What’s up?’ said Hanna in a more sympathetic voice, nudging my arm.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘My wish has gone, that’s all.’ I shrugged, trying to look unconcerned.
‘You got your wish,’ said Hanna.
‘Yes,’ I said, not wanting to explain. Kai had gone, that was the main thing, and nobody needed to know that I had wished him away.
I gazed up at the sky through the open space where there had once been rafters and tiles. Far above a red kite was drifting lazily on the warm air currents, searching the ground for prey. I watched it follow a great arc across the visible sky and then disappear over the treetops to the north-east.
‘Come on, then,’ said Max, close to my ear.
‘In a minute,’ I said, still looking upwards. I was thinking that I would have liked to fly away like that. People imagined witches turning into cats or hares; I thought I would have given anything to soar away into the formless spaces of the sky, to look back over my shoulder and see my old life dwindling away in the distance.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Max mockingly. ‘You have to feel the power or something?’
‘Shut up, Max,’ said Hanna, but it was almost a reflex, like slapping a biting insect. She didn’t sound interested.
I walked slowly around the interior of the house, putting a hand out so that my fingertips brushed the rough surface of the wall as I passed. I heard Max mutter something under his breath and Hanna telling him to be quiet. She sounded slightly indignant that he dared to interrupt me. She’s really getting into it, I thought. She thinks I’m communing with Rote Gertrud or something. I didn’t react. I walked on, stepping over a fallen chunk of masonry, kicking aside a cluster of twigs. Hanna was right in a way; I was looking for something, but not an ephemeral connection with the dead witch. I was looking for my sister’s wish.
I knew the chances of finding it weren’t good. There were so many messages scrawled on those walls and I was relying on a memory that was a decade old to tell me where to look. In some places the scratched words were easy enough to read, but in others they were smothered with lichen or moss. Even if I found Magdalena’s wish, would I recognize it?
I worked my way around to the far corner. The inscriptions were well preserved here; the tottering chimney stack had offered a little protection from the corrosive effect of the elements. S.A., come back, I read. D.N., love. C.L., die. Someone had added FUC before giving up.
It was impossible to link any of the messages to my sister. The way the letters had to be scored into the stone meant that they were composed of little slashes, like Chinese characters. Handwriting was rendered unrecognizable. Unless Magdalena had written an entire sentence and signed it with her full name, how would I ever know which inscription was hers? I was tempted to give up.
Then I saw it. It was almost impossible to miss: a large and deeply scored K. Whoever had scratched that on to the stone had meant it to be seen. I leaned closer, touching the wall gently with my fingers. E.K., ran the inscription, die. And then a date, half legible, ending with 8.1998.
Of course I knew what Frau Kessel’s first name was, although I thought there was probably nobody in Bad Münstereifel who dared use it, not since Frau Kessel’s great friend and ally old Frau Koch had died. If I guessed rightly, the complete message, had it been unabbreviated, would have read: Eva Kessel, die by 31.8.1998.
Had my sister carved these characters into the stone? Had she struggled up here to the ruined house, pregnant as she was, dragging her unwilling little sister with her? It was impossible to be sure. The initials might refer to some other E.K., though in my heart of hearts I knew they didn’t. Even if my sister hadn’t carved these letters, there must have been so many people with cause to hate Frau Kessel, the troll who lurked at the town’s heart, crunching up the raw and bloody bones of other people’s lives. Someone had wished her to the Devil and now so would I.
I stood up and turned to face Max.
‘Let’s get on with it,’ I said.