The Vanishing of Katharina Linden Read Online Free PDF Page B

smear of
Leberwurst
. My father’s choice of words struck me as odd even at this stage: he didn’t think Herr Linden would
find much
, as though he were not looking for a person but a thing, or worse, pieces of a thing.
    “I wonder what—” my mother began, then glanced back into the kitchen to where I was sitting and hastily added, “I expect she’s gone home with one of her friends and forgotten to call her mother.” Thenshe and my father went through into the living room and closed the door.
    Their voices resumed, but at such a low level that I couldn’t have made sense of any of it unless I had pressed my ear to the door, which would have been far too risky. I looked down at my piece of
Leberwurst-
coated bread, with a neat semicircle bitten out of it in the shape of my teeth. I wondered whether Katharina Linden really
was
at a friend’s house. If not, where was she? It didn’t make sense.
People don’t just disappear
, I thought.
    The next morning being Rosenmontag, there was no school. My parents had half promised to take Sebastian and me to another parade some kilometers away, but when I got up at half past nine it was to discover that my father had already gone out. My mother was in the living room, dusting the furniture with a grim expression. I didn’t need to ask whether our excursion was off. My mother was attacking the cleaning with the zeal of someone gritting their teeth and undergoing some particularly unpleasant therapy.
    “Where’s Papa?” I asked.
    “Out,” said my mother tersely. She straightened up, rubbing the small of her back. “He’s gone to help someone with something.”
    “Oh.” I wondered whether he was going to look for Katharina Linden again. “I think I might go around to Stefan’s after breakfast and see if he can come out. Is that OK?”
    My mother paused for a moment. “How about you stay here today, Pia?”
    “But, Mama …” I was dismayed.
    “Pia, I really think it would be best if you stayed home.” My mother sounded weary but firm. “If you can’t think of anything to do, you can help me with the cleaning.”
    “I’ve got homework,” I informed her hastily, and beat a retreat to the kitchen before she could rope me into anything.
    The day dragged by horribly slowly. I wondered what Stefan was up to. Was he outdoors somewhere, or had his parents also imposed a curfew on him? I wondered if it had anything to do with the Katharina Linden thing that seemed to be sending all the adults temporarily weird.
    At five o’clock, when it was dark, my father came home and almost instantly disappeared into the living room again with my mother. They were in there for about half an hour, after which my father went upstairs for a shower and my mother came looking for me, with a serious expression on her face. I recognized this as her
here-comes-a-little-talk
look. I was sitting on the living-room floor with a magazine; she came in, sat down carefully on the sofa, and patted the cushion next to her. With an inward sigh, I got up and went to sit next to her.
    “What?” I said.
    “Don’t say ‘what?’” said my mother automatically.
    “Sorry,” I said, equally automatically; it was an exchange we had had a thousand times. “Is it about Katharina Linden?” I asked immediately.
    My mother cocked her head on one side. “Yes. I’m telling you about this because you’re bound to hear about it when you get back to school,” she began.
    “They haven’t found her, have they?” I said.
    “Well, no, they haven’t, not
yet,”
said my mother, laying emphasis on the last word as though to imply perfect confidence that Katharina would be found at any moment. “But I hope they
will
find her, very soon.” She sighed. “There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. Perhaps she went home with a friend and didn’t tell anyone.”
    She stayed overnight and still didn’t tell anyone?
I thought skeptically.
    “All the same,” my mother was going on, “we should all