I telephoned Hanna. I had not wanted to involve her while I still thought I might avoid the Achim problem; I knew she would push me to curse him. Now, however, that I had made up my own mind to do it I needed help. With my extra workload, it was not going to be easy to get away from the bakery for the hours it would take me to reach Gertrud’s house on foot. The only person I could think of who had their own car was Max, but I didn’t want to tell him what I was going to do. It would almost certainly lead to him making demands of his own and, worse, he would tell Jochen. I couldn’t face Jochen if he found out what I was up to; in fact, in truth I was a little afraid of what he might do. That was what Rote Gertrud’s magic had done for all of us: it had granted my wishes, but it had crept into the spaces between us like a weed thrusting itself up between stones and forced us apart. The only one of my friends who hadn’t demanded anything for themselves so far was Hanna and even then I suspected she was simply biding her time. My options were running out, though.
At any rate Hanna had a driver’s licence, even though she didn’t have her own car. I prayed she would be able to arrange something.
‘The bastard,’ was the first thing she said when I told her what Achim had done. The second was: ‘You’ve got to hex him.’
It was a relief in a way that she suggested it before I did, but all the same I felt a twinge of conscience. I knew Hanna was fascinated with what had been happening since that first night in the woods and also that there was something unhealthy about her fascination. I had seen it in the gleam in her eyes, the enigmatic smile on her lips. Involving her in this made me feel as though I was encouraging someone to do something they had better have left alone, like trying a dangerous drug or playing chicken on a railway line. Yet there was no other option, was there? I closed my eyes, my knuckles white around the telephone receiver.
‘I know. But Hanna, it has to be now. I can’t carry on like this.’ My voice was rising. ‘I need to get to – you know – there. But it takes hours to walk.’
‘We’ll ask Max.’
‘No!’ I almost shouted. With an effort I made myself calm down. ‘Not Max. Not anybody else. It has to be a secret.’
There was a pause. ‘OK. Give me some time. I’ll be over later with a car.’
‘Not Max’s,’ I said. ‘He’ll know we’re up to something.’
‘Not Max’s,’ she agreed, and hung up.
I went into my bedroom and rummaged through the drawer of the desk I had used for homework years ago. I found a small notepad and a couple of pens. I tested the pens on a piece of paper to check that they both worked. I wasn’t taking any chances; I was going to do this properly. I glanced around the room, at the fading posters and the discarded dolls propped up on a high shelf, at the slippery pile of magazines on the floor. An unlikely lair for a witch. I shut the desk drawer, a little too hard, and ran from the room.
Downstairs in the bakery all hell had broken loose. It looked as though a large coach party had turned up unannounced. Every table was crowded with customers. Some of them had already been served, but the majority were still waiting, some with arms crossed and furrowed brows. Bianca Müller and another waitress were moving about among them with harried expressions, like relief workers at an overcrowded refugee camp. As soon as I came in, their eyes turned towards me and I could read the message in them as clearly as if they had shouted it across the room: Where are you going? You should be helping us.
It was quite plain that I could not afford to leave the bakery for long. I could sense the querulous demands of the impatient customers and the harassed staff as powerfully as if they had been grabbing at me with their hands, trying to hold me fast. The short walk to the front door felt like running the gauntlet. I dared not stop to ask either of the waitresses whether they needed anything, or to tell them that I would not be long. It would be akin to steering a boat into the heart of a whirlpool: I would never manage to extricate myself once I was dragged in. I stepped out on to the doorstep, praying that Hanna would come soon, before someone – probably Bianca, who had looked thoroughly irked – had the idea of coming after me. I did my best to position myself at the corner of the bakery, out of sight of both the windows. I felt horribly guilty, but I told myself there was nothing for it. I had to get to the ruined house in the Eschweiler Tal; I had to do something about Achim. I knew that time was running out, like a gladiator who is astonished to find himself alive at the end of a bloody combat, but knows that tomorrow the beasts will have him for sure. If Achim were removed, I would be faced with the immediate problem of how to keep the kitchen running without him. If he stayed, with one hand on other people’s money and the other trying to worm its way down the front of their clothes, there would be no staff and no business left at all within a very short time. It has to work, I thought.