‘Yes, I know, but there’s no one out and about at this time of night.’
‘There you are, then, there’s nothing for me to worry about. And you’d have to go all the way back on foot, and then I’d be worrying about you.’
She laughed when she said that. Suddenly I wasn’t sure if she was laughing with me or at me. So I just kissed her.
Then we got up from the bench and went over to the tram stop. We met Walter Schnabl there, he’s an old school friend of mine. He was standing at the stop too, with his girlfriend. I think the girlfriend’s name is Hilde, but I’m not sure. I only met her that one time. I was glad to think that they’d both be going at least a part of the way with Erna. Walter was taking his girlfriend home, and he said they’d be in the same tram as Erna as far as Marienplatz. At Marienplatz Erna had to change to a number 6 tram. I asked her again if she wouldn’t like me to see her home, but she just shook her head and laughed. Then the tram came along, and I saw all three of them getting in. Erna found a window seat and waved. I waved back, I stood there until the tram had left. It wasn’t
until the tram had turned the corner that I turned and went home on foot.
Have you heard? About Fräulein Schmidlechner? They say she’s missing. Our Erna.
She’s gone missing. She never came home on Saturday night. Her parents are frantic. They’ve been searching everywhere.
It was in the city. She met her fiancé there and then she never came home that evening.
Something must have happened to our Erna … Because she hasn’t come home. That’s not like her at all. She’s ever so conscientious. She works in the bookkeeping department at BMW. Just like her father and her brothers, they all work at BMW too. Her fiancé as well. So I’ve heard.
At first her parents thought she’d stayed overnight in town with her fiancé. Seems she often stayed the night there. In the city.
So that’s why they thought nothing of it at first when she didn’t come home. On Saturday night.
But when she didn’t go to the office on Monday, and neither her father nor her fiancé knew where she was, that’s when they went to the police.
They reported her missing, and since then everyone’s been looking for Erna.
They even want to search with dogs, because by now the police are assuming it’s a crime.
Seems there was a gentleman asked her now and then if she’d like a ride in his car. She told her mother about it, that’s what her auntie Frau Huber told me. Frau Huber from Rehstrasse, maybe you know her.
And I’ve heard it’s an act of revenge.
There’s a rumour it was her doing that some people from around here got sent to Dachau. Communists. She’s said to have denounced them. But no one knows anything for sure.
I don’t want to know all the details, you can easily get involved in something, and who knows, then you might end up in Dachau yourself. They’ll have had skeletons in their cupboards for sure, those folk.
Theresa Pirzer heard it first from her mother, they say, when she came home from shopping. ‘Erna Schmidlechner has gone missing. She hasn’t been home since Saturday. They’re looking for her everywhere. The police are even searching with dogs.’ She couldn’t believe it, she’d seen Erna on Saturday night. She went to Erna’s mother.
She wanted to know if the rumour was true, if Erna really hadn’t gone home. It was only then that she went to the police.
Yes, that was right, she’d seen Erna on Saturday. She’d been in the same tram, it was Line 6, she’d been on her way home around ten past one that night. Theresa Pirzer had been in the Winzerer Bierhalle dancing that Saturday evening,
and got into the same tram, that’s when she saw Erna.
Except for her and her husband and Erna there was just one other passenger in the tram to Milbertshofen, a man. She’s certain of that, she says. But she didn’t know who he was.
She sat down with Erna and had a word with her. Erna told them she’d been in town with her fiancé. They’d been out dancing, they had a really nice time.
At the terminus they all got off the tram. The man went the other way, Theresa’s sure of that too.
Right after they got out they said goodbye to Erna. Theresa and her husband fetched their bikes. They’d left them at the tram station so they wouldn’t have to walk home.
When they reached the old Milbertshofen cemetery they met Erna again, they cycled past her. Just as they were passing Erna, when they drew level with her, they saw a gentleman’s bicycle leaning against a lamp-post. Two men were standing a little way off. Theresa thought that was odd, so she turned and saw one of the two men speak to Erna. Theresa saw Erna turn her head to the men, but she went on without thinking any more of them.
The men would have been around thirty, so far as she could tell, but she can’t be sure of that.
When she reached the South German Brakes works, right by the snack bar, she looked round for Erna Schmidlechner again.
She saw Erna going off by herself towards her parents’ apartment. There was no sign of the two men any more.
Soon afterwards she met another family from the neighbourhood, on the way home with their baby in a pram.
Today, after she talked to Erna’s mother and before she went to the police station to make a statement, she looked in on that family specially. They too told her they’d seen a girl in a red dress. On her own, no one with her. It was a little way from the snack bar, they’re sure of that. She asked about the men, but they didn’t know anything about any men.
If anything’s happened to Erna, it could only have happened around the rubbish tip and gravel pit just behind South German Brakes, she’s sure of that. Because the whole way is well lit with the street lamps, and she can’t imagine that anyone, not those two men, would dare to attack someone in bright street lighting.
There he suddenly is standing in front of her, that fellow. Confronting her, legs planted wide apart. His flat cap pulled down over his face – and that horrible grin. It was even broader than before. Just now, not five minutes ago, the fellow had spoken to her. He was grinning then too. Standing beside the other man. There was no sign of the other man now. Only the one with the flat cap was there.
He’d called out something to her as she passed him. She hadn’t really heard it. Didn’t want to know what it was
either. But she’d turned, and he was grinning in her face.
Bastard, she thought to herself. She’d heard a laugh behind her back, and she walked faster. No, she wasn’t afraid. The street was brightly lit, and she wasn’t alone. Theresa Pirzer and her husband on their bikes were still within earshot.
But all the same, she suddenly wished she had Georg with her. She shouldn’t have told him not to come. But then he’d have had to go all the long way back. No, it would have been better to stay with him tonight. It would definitely have been better. She was sorry now she hadn’t.
Even as she was thinking of Georg, the other man, who was wearing a peaked cap, cycled past her. And when she came to the South German Brakes factory, she met that couple with their baby. She asked why they were out so late with their child. He was sitting in his pram. His mother was pushing it and his father walking along beside her. It was just before reaching the snack bar she met them.
She knew that snack bar well. She’d been a trainee in the factory. She bought herself something at the snack bar almost every time they had a lunch break. The other girls used to laugh at her. She always bought the same thing. Every day. A doughnut. Then she took out the middle of it. She removed the inside, the jam and the doughy bit round it, and always put it aside. After that she filled the doughnut itself with smoked sausage.
How odd to think of that just now. They’d fired her after
she finished her training, and she’d never bought a doughnut at that snack bar again. Now she buys her doughnuts in the works canteen. But she still hollows them out and fills them with smoked sausage. The girls in the bookkeeping department at BMW laugh at her and shake their heads, just the way they did at the South German Brakes factory.
With all this going through her head, she hardly noticed the fellow with the sporting cap. She never saw him leave his bike beside the snack bar and stand in her way.
Legs planted wide apart, and grinning.
‘Well, got time for me now? I sent my friend home.’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Now, now, not so much of your cheek! You come along and keep quiet, and then you won’t be hurt. I need it now, here, come on, don’t make such a fuss. You and your fat arse. Wow, I fancied that the moment I saw it.’
‘Leave me alone, you bastard. Go away! I don’t want anything to do with you!’
She tries to pass him.
When she’s level with him, right beside him, he grabs her by the throat.
So fast, so suddenly – she hadn’t been expecting it.
She defends herself. She’s not putting up with this. She flails out. He’s stronger. All the same, he has difficulty holding on to her. He pulls her down on the ground. ‘Stop that, you’re making me even wilder for it, slut!’
She tries everything. Twists and turns. Hits out. Tries to scratch him, bite him. Fight back, fight back, fight back, that’s all she can think.
‘Bastard. Let me go!.’
‘Keep still or I’ll finish you off! Keep still, will you?’
She won’t keep still. She doesn’t want to keep still. Feels something cold and metallic at the back of her neck. And then pain that almost makes her faint away.
She wants to go on fighting back. She wants to hit out. Not give in. In spite of the pain. She wants, she wants, she wants …
But neither her arms nor her legs will obey her any more. She can’t move, can’t move at all. She can’t move any more! Panic takes her in its grip. What has that bastard done to her? What has he done?
She screams. And screams. Screaming is all that’s left to her, the only thing she can do. She screams, lying there on the ground behind the kiosk. She’s screaming for her life. Because of the pain. In spite of the pain. Screaming as long as she can. Screaming and screaming.
The cyclists, the family – the mother, father and child – someone must hear her. Oh, surely they must hear her.
The man won’t let her go. She feels his body lying on hers.
Feels it heavy as a hundredweight. Can’t push him away. Can’t shake him off. Can’t move. Can’t move any more.
Bastard, bastard, bastard!
He has something in his hand. A piece of fabric. She recognizes it.
It’s the white fabric of her knickers.
That bastard has taken her knickers off.
He holds the fabric, he stuffs it far into her mouth with his hands.
She can’t defend herself any more. She just lies there, unable to fight back. He stuffs the knickers deep between her jaws. The screaming dies away.
She wants to retch. Feels the pain in her jaws. Realizes she can’t breathe any more. Desperately, she tries to get some air. Air, air! There’s less and less of it. She is fighting desperately for air. Air!
She can’t scream. Can’t scream. Can’t breathe. Nothing. No air. None.
T
he driver comes into Soller’s at eight-thirty. Half an hour before they arranged to meet. He’s keen to see the girl again. Hasn’t been able to settle to anything all day. If he began work on something he stopped again and put it off until later. Just after six he sets off from home. He goes all the way to Soller’s in the valley on foot. He doesn’t take the tram, doesn’t want to be even earlier.
Once he’s reached the inn he soon finds her. She’s sitting at the same table again. They’re all there, just like the day before, Hans sitting between Kathie and Mitzi. Even the blond man is in the same place, as if they had never left Soller’s at all.
He’s still in the doorway of the bar at Soller’s when she sees him. She jumps up at once and goes over to him.
‘Hello, why are you so early? I wasn’t expecting you yet. Come and join us.’ She doesn’t let him get a word in edgeways. She looks radiant, her eyes shining with delight. He feels her take his hand. Her hand is soft and warm in his. The driver hesitates just for a moment, slightly withdraws
his hand, but then he lets her lead him over to the others at the table. He sits down beside her.
Once again she talks to him all evening. The words spill out of her. She went to the Wiesn again today. Has he ever been out there himself? She rode on the roller coaster. It was lovely, she screamed out loud because you get such a funny feeling inside you when the car goes rushing down. Such a tingling feeling, she can hardly describe it. And then she went on the swingboats too. ‘I swung and swung. I swung right up to the sky. A little higher, I thought, and I’ll be flying into the clouds like a bird, I felt so light. Of course I know that wouldn’t happen, but when you swing up so high you feel you don’t weigh anything, you really think for a moment, just for the fraction of a second, just for the blink of an eyelid, that you could fly. It makes you feel so good!’
She gets quite heated with all this talking. Her cheeks are red, and her eyes are shining more than ever. She’d been on the swingboats before, at a fair when she went on a pilgrimage with her godmother. As a little girl. She tells the driver about it.
She and her mother had gone to see her godmother. She wasn’t yet ten. And then they went on from where her godmother lived to Eichelberg. ‘That’s quite a long way. We started early in the morning while it was still dark. We walked to the church through the night, and when we got there it was still dark.’ They’d gone into the church with all the other pilgrims. Out of the dark night right into the
church, which was brightly lit with candles. It looked as if heaven had opened. As if they were in Paradise itself, she tells him, it was all so bright. And then, after the church service, they went to the fair. She was allowed to ride the chairoplane and go on the swingboats. And then there were the stalls. She went from stall to stall with her auntie, she never tired of looking at them. She couldn’t decide which had been the best part of that day, the candles in church or the fair.