Read Online Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone: A Novel by Stefan Kiesbye - Free Book Online

fromthe manor house, Inge had stopped. “She was yelling at my father,” Friedrich said. “‘Hermann,’ she was yelling, again and again. And then she said that he was to blame for all her misery. That he had been only a stupid waiter, and that he had left us voluntarily to go to war. He had been nothing more than canon fodder and left us without money or help, and she had had to escape without him.”
    His mother had cried loudly and finally she had shouted, “Hermann! Where are you? What have you done to me, Hermann? What were you doing on the battlefield? You couldn’t even shoot properly. How could you be so dumb and die in a foreign country? What is going to happen to me? To your son? Come back, Hermann, come and help me. It’s all your fault. Come and help me!”
    Friedrich was too afraid to leave his hiding place. He was afraid for his mother, but he feared her wrath even more. Yet he kept watching her and suddenly became aware of a white figure among the trees along the parkway. It seemed to scurry from tree to tree without ever touching the ground. “Hermann?” Inge asked, and when the white figure approached her, she screamed, “Hermann!” and began to cry. “Forgive me. I didn’t want to wake you. Go back, Hermann, go back to sleep. I will manage on my own. Forgive me, Hermann, I will let you sleep. I won’t cry anymore, Hermann.”
    What had happened afterward, Friedrich couldn’t say. “I ran away,” he said quietly and without looking at me. With the tips of his shoes, he was drawing lines into the sand.
    “Was it really your dad?” I asked.
    He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t imagine all this.”
    “Maybe it was one of the von Kamphoffs,” I suggested. “Ormaybe Johann’s brother, the true heir. Maybe he escaped from the basement.”
    “Those are old wives’ tales,” said Friedrich.
    “They’re not,” I insisted.
    “In any case don’t tell my mother I told you,” he admonished me. “Don’t let on.”
    Together we stepped into their room. Mrs. Madelung slept and didn’t awaken when we tiptoed to her bed and made sure that her eyes were closed and that she was breathing regularly. Her cheeks looked all red, and her wrinkles had smoothed out. From time to time she snored a little.
    Friedrich pulled me back and cautiously opened a drawer and took out a photograph, which he showed me once we got outside. “It’s the only one we have,” he said, and let me hold it. It showed a man with thinning hair, wearing a dark suit. He had a fine smile and large, dark eyes. The edges and corners of the picture were bent and worn.
    “Was he an officer?” I asked.
    Friedrich shook his head. He blushed and said, “I lied.”
    “How did he die, then?”
    “We don’t know,” he said. “And my mother never visited Lithuania. We don’t even know where exactly he died. I can’t remember his face. Only this picture. When I was little, my mother told me a story about him trying to conquer a large city and dying during the attack. But I think she made that up. This morning she said that last night was a sign.”
    “Of what?”
    “That he keeps watch over us, and that everything will be fine.”
    I handed back the picture and promised not to tell anyoneabout it. That same night, though, when my mother came to my room and wouldn’t stop asking me about the Madelungs, I broke that promise. Friedrich had seen his father’s ghost, I told her; my cheeks were glowing with excitement. My mother listened greedily. She sat close to me, stroking my hair and listening intently. When I had told her everything I knew, her fingers trembled, and as though she was trying to gain control of her feelings, she bit her hand until she was bleeding. “A gift,” she said with a hoarse voice. “What a gift.”
    “She thinks it’s a good sign.”
    “My mother stared at me with wide-open eyes. “Certainly. Yes, there’s no question.”
    That night the wind turned and rattled our windows, and when I