Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone: A Novel Read online

  Acclaim for

  Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone

  “Full of dark folk magic and frightful, lurid wonder. It casts a spell, winking all the way through every grim detail and shadowy secret.”

  —Paul Elwork, author of The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead

  “Creepy in a way that actually made me quite nervous.”

  —Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

  “A brilliant amalgam of Faulkner, the Brothers Grimm, and Günter Grass as if condensed for intensity.”

  —Josip Novakovich, author of Fiction Writer’s Workshop and Writing Fiction Step by Step

  “The characters are all doomed. ‘Doomed to what?’ is the only question, and you won’t put the book down until you find out.”

  —Christopher Buehlman, author of Those Across the River and Between Two Fires

  “[A novel] with a chilling twist here and there, a sly, stark wit, and a fascinating cast of lost boys and girls.”

  —Timothy Schaffert, author of The Coffins of Little Hope

  “Stefan Kiesbye would be a writer to watch out for if he had not so clearly already arrived.”

  —Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STEFAN KIESBYE has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. Born on the German coast of the Baltic Sea, he moved to Berlin in the early 1980s. He studied drama and worked in radio before starting a degree in American studies, English, and comparative literature at Berlin’s Freie Universität. A scholarship brought him to Buffalo, New York, in 1996. Kiesbye now lives in Portales, New Mexico, where he teaches creative writing at Eastern New Mexico University. He is also the arts editor of Absinthe: New European Writing. His stories and poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and his first book, Next Door Lived a Girl, won the Low Fidelity Press Novella Award and was praised by Peter Ho Davies as “utterly gripping,” by Charles Baxter as “both laconic and feverish,” and by Robert Olmstead as “maddeningly powerful.”

  Your House Is on Fire,

  Your Children All Gone

  a novel

  Stefan Kiesbye

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Penguin Books 2012

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Stefan Kiesbye, 2012

  All rights reserved

  Pages 21–30 appeared in different form under the title

  “Rico’s Journey Through Hell” in Hobart in 2007.

  Pages 93–103 appeared in different form under the title

  “The Mill” in Fickle Muses in 2007.

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Kiesbye, Stefan.

  Your house is on fire, your children all gone : a novel / Stefan Kiesbye.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-60363-5

  1. Older people—Fiction. 2. Early memories—Fiction. 3. Villages—Fiction.

  4. Germany—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3611.I4464Y68 2012

  813’.6—dc22 2012023841

  Printed in the United States of America

  Set in Adobe Garamond

  Designed by Elke Sigal

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  For Sanaz Kiesbye, Nils Fahrenholz,

  and Don Mitchell

  We’re a lukewarm people for all our feast days and hard work. Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision. Our children frighten us in their intimacy, but we make sure they grow up like us. Lukewarm like us. On a night like this, hands and faces hot, we can believe that tomorrow will show us angels in jars and that the well-known woods will suddenly reveal another path.

  —JEANETTE WINTERSON,

  The Passion

  It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside…. Look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.

  —SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE,

  “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Martin

  Christian

  Linde

  Christian

  Martin

  Linde

  Martin

  Linde

  Martin

  Anke

  Linde

  Martin

  Anke

  Christian

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Time is of no importance. I have returned to Hemmersmoor to live in the same house in which I grew up, the same cramped house in which my father and my sister Ingrid died when I was a schoolboy. I pour water from silver ewers onto their graves and pull weeds and put sweet williams into the soil. From time to time, one of the old villagers asks about them and remembers the incidents from forty years ago. Then their noses start to twitch, as if they smell a fire. Their lips tremble, but the words won’t come and they drop the topic immediately. Nobody has ever bothered me about their deaths. I never had anything to hide.

  Our village has grown—rich people from Bremen have built vacation homes here, and their immaculately polished cars park every morning in front of Meier’s bakery. The noise seems foreign, life seems to have quickened. When I was a boy in Hemmersmoor, our village consisted of the main street and a few alleys and
dirt roads. The houses were old and stooped—the doors and windows narrow and low, the beams twisted by rheumatism. The cobblestone was full of humps and holes, and nobody drove through our village just for pleasure. Even the sunlight seemed different, darker, never without suspicion.

  When I learned of my mother’s death, I lived in Buffalo, New York. I had retired from my work the year before and hadn’t heard from my family in decades, had pushed them to the outer limits of my memory and caged them there like wild animals.

  The solicitor’s letter from Groß Ostensen did not reach me in time to come to the funeral. I’ve learned that not even my sister Nicole made the trip, and she has not visited the village since. Why I returned, I cannot say or even think. It might have been my wife’s death. It was she who gave me a home in the New World. She was my continent, and without her, I was uprooted a second time. Perhaps it was the prospect of stepping into my father’s house as its owner. Perhaps I thought the wild animals had died with my mother and I was safe from them now. I had planned to return to the States after two weeks.

  Alex Frick, a friend of mine from the past, also lives in Hemmersmoor once again. The sins of his early years are forgiven—or perhaps only forgotten. He is running his father’s tavern and is an important man. We are now the old people here, nobody but us remembers his years in the correctional facility, or his brother, Olaf, who almost cost him his inheritance and who one day disappeared forever.

  When we meet in the streets, Alex nods. We don’t talk much about the past, there’s no reason for it. Our secrets in Hemmersmoor were always open and always kept safe. These days the two of us safeguard the stories of our village; we are their caretakers and can change them at any given time. Alex remembers me, Christian, the pale boy whose eyebrows were so light that his face seemed completely naked. He remembers my father, who drank himself to death and whose daughter gave birth to a bastard child. Alex knows that much remains unsaid, but he has better things to do than to rummage through old stories. He expects me to return his favor.

  The young people in the village work in factories in Bremen or in stores and factories in Groß Ostensen. The farmers have given up, and the boats that once sailed our canals are now tourist attractions. Hemmersmoor looks colorful and immaculate, as if we were put here for the sake of the hobby photographers. Potters and painters are offering their wares.

  The pharmacy, which even decades ago was always freshly painted, still overlooks the village square. The old schoolhouse is still standing, but two families are living there these days. The once sandy school lot is now a multipurpose garden, and a young woman grows vegetables there. Her children’s voices tear the silence to shreds.

  Just outside the village, near the Droste River, stood Brümmer’s tool factory. It was a low-slung building that had served as an ammunitions factory during the last war. In front of Brümmer’s, the only railroad track ever to reach Hemmersmoor ended, and in the afternoons the other boys and I sat by the buffer that prevented the cars from rolling into the river and waited for a train to appear.

  There was no set timetable, and most days we waited in vain. But still, the mere prospect of catching a glimpse of the small, black steam engine and two or three cars kept us enthralled.

  The factory now stands empty; the tracks are covered by tall weeds. A few years back, a fire destroyed what was left of Otto Nubis’s workshop. What lay beyond the factory, outside our village, we all have dutifully forgotten. The county is trying to open a museum there, but who is going to buy our paintings and clay souvenirs if their plan is successful? The villagers are shaking their heads. Why should we have to suffer again? We had nothing to do with it.

  Time is of no importance. I was young and didn’t know a thing about our time. There had never been a different one in Hemmersmoor. In our village time didn’t progress courageously. In our village she limped a bit, got lost more than once, and always ended up at Frick’s bar and in one of Jens Jensen’s tall tales.

  Yet now time has made a daring leap. No matter how much I look for them, the dark corners of Hemmersmoor are freshly scrubbed, the wrinkles have been smoothed over, and my memories lead me astray. I have returned, but not to the village I once left. That village doesn’t exist anymore, survives in only my memories and dreams. When I walk through our streets at night, blue flickering light can be seen behind every window. I haven’t lived under a rock these past decades, but when I think back to my boyhood, there’s no room for television.

  Now that our village belongs to the ordinary world around it, the pale boy from the past looks like a ghost. Maybe it’s for the better, maybe this is what allows me to stay. Maybe I would choke otherwise. But the absence of what I can still see so clearly in front of me makes it hard for me to breathe anyway.

  The Big House stands upon the sandy hill that marks the grave of Hüklüt the Giant. He carried a large sack of fine sand, to avoid sinking into the treacherous moor. Yet it didn’t matter, and the manor of the von Kamphoff family is his headstone. The gables and turrets, the yellow stone and the gravel driveway—they remain incomprehensible to the villagers.

  It’s the first time I’m driving out to the Big House. The spring day is a puppy, unconcerned and playful, and I roll down a window, and the air is soft and ticklish, and I rub my face again and again. Clouds hang low above the moor. It may rain later on but they’re still shimmering faintly pink. The grass along the road is already green again.

  When my family still lived in Hemmersmoor and Johann von Kamphoff still reigned over the manor, only very few villagers had the pleasure of walking through the gardens or entering the house. From time to time, the von Kamphoffs’ black sedan arrived in our village, which seemed much too small for such a car, and most of the time it was Rutger, the old master’s grandson, who stepped out of the car and onto our cobblestones to go after one girl or another.

  The gardens of the manor are neglected, but the vastness of the property proves the old legend right. The bushes are covered with bright-green spots, and the lawns don’t seem to end. In the distance I can make out the maze. Guests at Frick’s Inn often whisper that people have disappeared inside; its hedges are thick and impenetrable and higher than the tallest man.

  Alex Frick’s Opel stands in the gravel courtyard, and he leans against its fender and smokes a cigarette. He’s a tall man, a bit stooped by now, bulky but not cloddish. His dark suit is custom tailored; his tie is made from silk. Alex is taking care of his brother’s widow, has been married to her for many years, and together they have expanded Frick’s Inn. In the summer you can see vacationers on the new terrace, where they sit over strawberry cake and coffee and talk about the picturesque backwater. Alex’s eyebrows have grown together, and are almost white, but his face remains boyish. A smile is playing in the corners of his fleshy lips.

  “Are you trying to push up the price and jeopardize my business?” he asks and laughs. “You know you can’t outbid me. Don’t make life harder for me than it already is.”

  I shake my head. “Are we the only ones?”

  He nods toward the road leading down to our village. A small van becomes visible in the distance and slowly makes its way toward us. I know the van. It belongs to our schoolfellow Martin Schürholz. His father, Klaus, once our country constable, is long since dead, and Martin runs a small store in the village, where he sells souvenirs and paintings by local artists.

  The manor must have been impressive once, but the courtyard is full of weeds, and weeds and moss are climbing the walls. The yellow stone has blackened and crumbled in places. Some of the windows are missing, and the holes have been filled with cardboard and trash bags. The stables, which stand to our left, have collapsed. “She must have had money enough,” I say and shake my head.

  Alex gives a short laugh. It sounds like a bark. “Always paid her bill. God knows where she kept that money hidden. In twenty years she never once left the house.” I have heard the rumor too, the one about the money still being hidden somewhere, but
also the whispered suspicion that Alex is trying to buy the manor only because of the secret treasure.

  Martin parks his rusty van and gets out, nodding at us. His hair is red, parted neatly, and he’s wearing round wire-rimmed glasses. He joins us reluctantly and accepts the cigarette Alex offers only after a moment of hesitation. Martin is our age, but his trim body makes him look like a schoolboy next to Alex. Sometimes I see him running through the village in yellow trainers. He and his wife never visit Frick’s Inn, and they avoid Alex, even though they are invited to every event at his house. Whenever seeing Alex is unavoidable, Martin shows up by himself.

  But today we are paying our respects to our old friend Anke, and together we wait for the hearse from Groß Ostensen. After a few empty exchanges about business and the weather, we fall silent and stare at our cigarettes, as though they contained answers to life’s mysteries.

  Anke was a proud woman, and she was one of us. She went to school with us, and her mother participated every year in Hemmersmoor’s cooking contest. Already as a young girl she had wanted to move into the Big House, and no advice, no tragedy, and no friendship could keep her from reaching that goal. Just like me, she escaped our village, and although the manor was only a few kilometers outside of Hemmersmoor, it was always very much its own world.

  After a few minutes, during which Alex has walked around the house and stooped here and there to inspect the walls, a distant roar and rattle startles us out of our thoughts. We haven’t expected her, but Linde Janeke is driving toward us in her old Volkswagen. Her hair hasn’t been brown for a long time, and her features have suffered just like ours and have lost their sharpness. Yet in Linde’s case, her wrinkles hide the scars that once disfigured her. Her dark eyes still sparkle. “Can’t complain,” she says when Alex asks about her well-being, yet it sounds like a complaint. She looks at Martin and sneers. “You too, Professor? Is Anke really worth such fine company?” Then she squints at the house and the blind-and-broken windows. “What a tragedy,” she says and almost looks happy.