The Werewolf of Mariahilf am Inn II.3
A Gothic Horror Novel
Book I, Chapter 3: The Brigade of Saint Florian
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It was the middle of the afternoon on November 4th, 1870, by the time the bullock cart Hermann and Walter were riding in reached the outskirts of Kohlendorf. The farmer driving the cart leaned back and called out to Hermann.
“I’m afraid once we’re in town, this will be a parting of the ways. We’re staying with kin there. But we’ll be at the south gate in minutes—well before the Prussian sentries close it for the night.”
Hermann and Walter glanced at each other when the farmer mentioned the Prussian sentries. “I think my son and I will get off here, if you don’t mind.”
“It’s nearly a kilometer to the gate.”
“We don’t want to enter that way.”
The sisters looked at one another in confusion.
“I’m worried the guards will take our tools,” Hermann lied. “Ever since the war started, iron has become dear. I’ve heard stories.”
“I don’t think they’d do that,” the driver said. “But suit yourself.” He stopped the cart.
Hermann looked at the elderly Flemish woman, who had earlier made it clear she wanted the dozen chicks in the basket Walter had been carrying. Hermann had proposed a trade. When the old woman offered two sacks of potatoes and onions, he had greedily changed the terms of the exchange, thinking he could get a better deal in town. But Walter needed food. The boy refused to eat the küken; and, truth be told, Hermann didn’t like the taste of them either. There would be no time for him to barter for a meal in town before it got dark—and the potatoes and onions would really hit the spot.
“Earlier I said I could only part with five chicks. I’ve changed my mind. I can give you all of them. But we can’t carry two of those burlap bags. Could we perhaps fill our basket with potatoes and onions, and make do with that?”
Hermann’s proposal was translated to the old woman, who nodded and issued commands to her granddaughters, who removed the chicks and filled the basket almost to overflowing. While this was done, Hermann and Walter stepped down from the cart. The three long-handled tools were removed from behind the wheat sheaves.
The weight of the basket now made it impossible for Walter to bear alone, so Hermann told him to carry the tin pail in one hand and the two of them would lug the basket between them.
Hermann thanked the farmer for bringing them this far. The driver nodded, bade them farewell, and the girls in the back waved and said goodbye as the wheels creaked and the cart lumbered forward. The old woman yawned and looked on.
Hermann and Walter disappeared into the woods bordering the town, heading toward a pair of red-brick structures 300 meters away on the other side of a thicket. On entering the clearing, it became apparent that the buildings had been a private estate of some sort with a factory attached to it. Both of the buildings had been damaged by fire. The window glass had been cracked or melted and the window frames were carbonized. But the roofs seemed more or less intact. Whoever had owned the property had simply abandoned it.
A pair of kilns stood on the far side of the yard, around which were heaped piles of bricks. Hermann concluded that the owner had been in the brickmaking business. A small private canal for transporting goods into town terminated near the kilns but there were no boats in it. They walked around the edge of the canal and entered the property.
Hermann cupped his hands over his mouth. “Allo?”
There was no response.
The memory of what had happened at the Allard Farm was still fresh in both their minds. But they were hungry and had been awake since dawn. They needed a place to bed down for the night. When they reached the front yard, they saw a carriage house and horse stable, both of which had burned entirely to the ground.
The first and larger of the brick buildings had been a combination storehouse and factory. The front half of its gabled roof had in fact fallen in. The interior was strewn with blackened rafters and shattered bricks. The atmosphere was hazy and oppressive due to the brick dust constantly blown about from the gusts sweeping through the apertures.
They left this building and entered the adjacent one, which had been the residence. The walls dividing the rooms had burned to the baseboards. A crescent-shaped hole in the ceiling above suggested the fire had been extinguished before it could gut the second story. But the charred staircase leading up to that level clung drunkenly to the west wall. The topmost ceiling shed flakes of ash that fell through the hole and whirled before they landed on the lower level.
Hermann went to the middle of the room, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to gauge whether it would be safe for them to sleep inside. His experience at the creosote factory had taught him that the preservatives used in wood could poison confined spaces if a fire spread. Hermann breathed twice. The smell of the conflagration lingered but was unlaced by the reek of tar. And the cool winds of autumn had tempered the acridity of the air.
“We’ll sleep here tonight,” Hermann said, untying the cloth strips that bound the three tools together that he had been carrying over his shoulder. “It won’t be warm, but we can build a fire and sleep next to it.”
He placed the mattock and rake against the wall, and, with the spade, scraped the ash and rubbish aside. The floor was made of brick, so he would only need to free it of detritus and the dead leaves that had blown in.
“Our clothes will get dirty,” Walter observed.
Hermann sniffed. “You mean dirtier. We can wash them in the canal in the morning.”
Walter went to a corner of the room and rummaged through the remains of a kitchen cupboard burned gray and white. He withdrew a skillet and shook ash from it. “Look!”
“Very good. We’ll have a decent meal tonight: grilled onions and potatoes. I can even cook up some apples if we have any left.”
“We do.”
It was obvious to Hermann that what had happened here had been an act of arson. The carriage house, the stables, the two brick buildings—they could not have independently gone up in flames. He decided not to distress Walter by sharing his suspicions with him, although the boy’s quick eyes were taking everything in and Hermann would not be surprised if his brain was already putting together a similar theory.
Why was this done? he asked himself. Business rivalry? Property assurance scheme? Crime of passion? He thought of his American friend, Marty P. Fitzsimmons, the self-proclaimed “mentalist and ratiocinative investigator.” He probably would’ve been able to touch the walls and suss out what had happened.
Hermann and Walter ate their fill and left the skillet unwashed when they were done. The crackle of the flames and the food in their bellies made them somnolent. They curled up together beside the fire and fell into a peaceful sleep. It was a quiet and unseasonably warm night with no bone-chilling breezes gusting through the doors or windows.
A twig snapped in the fire and Hermann woke. It was still dark. The flames had died down but still danced on the coals. He reached over Walter’s shoulder and grabbed a clutch of branches and leaves, casting them on the embers. Then he took the two-pronged fork they had found at the farm and stirred the kindling.
He felt the orphan’s fingers dig into his back. It had been a blessing to have Walter with him. His dreams had not been troubled since their flight from the Schorn Foundation. The paternal inclinations that had lain dormant in Hermann since the murder of his own children had been reawakened. But the boy was in danger. The straw idol and the grisly scarecrow they had encountered yesterday were omens that could not be ignored.
I should leave him now, he thought. If I step outside, he’ll think I’ve gone to answer a call of nature. Walter has nerve and sinew and will find a way to survive. He’ll profit from the tools we took from the farm. Then, if I am apprehended, I’ll be alone and he’ll be safe. And yet. . . I know nothing of his history. Did his parents die naturally? Were they murdered? Was he left on a doorstep by some poor girl who could not provide for him? What would it mean to have the only adult who’s ever shown you kindness—whom you’ve ever trusted—walk out on you without so much as saying goodbye, as if you were a worthless thing? What a betrayal that would be.
He thought of his father Moritz and of their final months in Mariahilf am Inn, when Papa had labored under so much strain and depression, as the villagers closed ranks and made dark insinuations. Their ire had not been directed against Moritz, but against his son. Hermann had been Walter’s age at the time. “I’m grown up, Papa,” he had said. “I’ll leave Mariahilf and find work.”
Hermann nuzzled Walter’s head beneath his chin and wept as he recalled the tears Moritz had shed when he had proposed this to him.
“Papa,” Walter said.
Hermann woke. The boy stood over him.
Walter pointed to the corner of the room. Hermann stood up and saw a woman with two children crouching amid the debris. A boy, a few years younger than Walter, cowered behind the woman. In her lap she held another boy, an infant, who stared unblinkingly at Hermann.
“Good morning,” Hermann said.
“Good morning,” the woman replied. By the vacancy in her eyes Hermann knew she was blind.
“We snuck in last night,” she said, “because the fire was warm and we smelled food. Could we have some?”
Hermann nodded to Walter, who took the basket to them and left it by the woman, so that they could choose from it what they wanted to eat.
“The onions are good raw,” Walter explained. “But I can cook them up with potatoes. The apples are also tasty. I only have two left, but you can have them.”
“You’re such a good boy,” the woman said.
“Yes, he is,” Hermann replied proudly. He crouched down and added a log to the fire.
The uncustomary praise had emboldened Walter. The boy went to the skillet and held it over the flames.
It had pleased Hermann to hear Walter say, “I” instead of “we”; it showed a healthy degree of independence, and suggested that the boy would adapt once on his own again.
The woman clawed at the skin of an onion and bit fully into it. Her eyes brimmed with tears, whether out of gratitude or the onion’s sharpness, Hermann could not tell.
“My oldest,” she said, indicating the boy who had been hiding behind her and had removed an apple, “saw you and your son come out of the woods. We heard you call out. But we were afraid. We hid behind the bricks by the kiln. “My son said you looked kind, so we came back to the house.”
“Is this your home?” Hermann asked.
“Was. . . ” she replied. “I would be obliged to share with you my sad story if you would permit me.”
“Please.”
“Not in the presence of the children. . .”
Her older son lifted his brother from her lap and carried him with difficulty to where Walter sat by the fire.
The stood and extended her disfigured hand in the direction from which she had heard the kind man speak. Hermann went to her and accepted it. He escorted her from the house. The sky was bright and cloudless; and, as they walked, their movement counteracted the chill of the dewless November morn.
“My husband and I were born and reared in the Baltic port city of Kiel. Brickmaking is common there; and it was the craft my husband was trained in from the time he was a boy.
“I brought to our marriage a substantial dowry. It was decided by my husband that, before we raised a family, we should leave the Jutland so that he could use our assets to establish a brickmaking corporation in the Rhineland, which he was optimistic would flourish and become part of a larger concern. The evidences of his success lie in ruins about us. Most of the town of Kohlendorf was built by bricks fired in our kilns.”
She lifted her sightless eyes to the sky.
“Gain engenders greed,” she said, “even in the noblest of souls. My husband entered into speculations and commercial alliances that had seemed (in his mind) to guarantee a lifetime of comfort, security and modest ease. But the war against France led to a catastrophic reversal of fortune. Within a month, my husband’s personal wealth had become as worthless as the paper it had been guaranteed upon.
“Our carriages and horses were taken from first—in a single afternoon. The following day, a banker arrived with a Prussian solicitor, alleging that the barge in our canal, which had been used to haul our wares to the rail-yards and depots in town, had never in fact belonged to us.”
She gasped and removed her deformed hand from Hermann’s tender grasp. She had been stricken by a lancing pain and massaged her fingers with the hand that was least scarred.
“My husband learned that he would spend the remainder of his days indentured to creditors in London and Hamburg. He confessed to me that he did not know how to go on. I told him that the riches of the earth were of no consequence to one who looked to the Kingdom of God. It was his duty, I averred, to his children and to me, to fulfill his obligation as the patriarch of our family. I rehearsed to him our matrimonial vows, affirming that I would stand by him, no matter the stress, no matter the grief or the hardship.”
Hermann touched her shoulder compassionately.
“Until one has experienced firsthand the might of the Arch Fiend,” she said, “his powers are as incomprehensible and abstract to one as the axioms of Euclid are to an infant.
Hermann realized that a great deal of money had been expended in educating the woman at his side. Although he could not understand the allusion she had made, he was able to intuit its import.
“I, too, have suffered under the Devil’s lash,” he remarked.
Now it was she who touched his arm in sympathy.
“I grow faint,” she said, “as I recall that October evening a fortnight ago. We dined on a humble, tasteless gruel that my husband prepared for us—and which I now suspect he infused with a soporific drug. No sooner do we retire to bed than, overcome by the vapors of fatigue, we are asleep. My husband descends the steps and exits our home. He sets fire first to the carriage house and stables.
“Entering the factory, he casts his lantern on the burlap bags and returns to the house, emptying a bucket of grease onto the lower steps before setting it alight. This done, the man who sired my children steps outside into the cold night air and blows his brains out with a pistol.
“I wake at the report; and, though my mind swims in a jelly, I grasp the threat to my children. We must flee the flames, which, even then, lick the topmost steps of the landing!” She clutched her chest and emitted a primal howl. “My two daughters! Gone!”
Hermann turned and saw the woman’s son standing at the threshold. He waved for the boy to go back inside.
When the trembling mother had composed herself, she resumed her narrative in a flat voice. “Lift your eyes to the end of the unpaved way leading out of the mad brickmaker’s yard. Do you see the brick structure beyond the trees?”
“I do.”
“It stands on the outermost edge of Kohlendorf. It houses a fellowship of Catholic firefighters. They are supported by the companies and businesses that jointly administer the affairs of the industrial town of Kohlendorf. They call themselves the Brigade of Saint Florian—”
“The patron saint of chimney sweeps and firefighters,” Hermann said. “He was an Austrian—martyred by Diocletian.” Saint Florian had been Hermann’s hero growing up.
“It is as you say,” the woman frowned. “I am a Lutheran and do not know such things. . . A member of the brigade had stepped out to fetch provender for the horses. He saw the burning carriage house; and by the time my husband had taken his own life, the brigade had mobilized. The bell rang out and I heard the whinnying of horses.
“I grab my youngest from the crib and wake the other children. We flee to my daughters’ bedroom overlooking the front yard. I shatter the glass and cry for help. Hearing this, the younger firefighters sprint ahead, some in nightshirts, all in steel helmets. Brandishing fire-hooks like spears, they ran into the fray, like the Spartans at Thermopylae. The water-wagon rolled down the path behind them; and the last thing I saw before the light of my eyes was doused forever was the whiteness of the ladders fastened to the wagon’s sides.”
Hermann looked up at the window at the top of the north-facing wall. What had happened that night? Had she, blind but with the aid of her daughters and older son, cast the toddler into the arms of the rescuers? Had the daughters collapsed and suffocated in the smoke? Had one of Saint Florian’s servants climbed the ladder, entered the window, and dragged the blind mother—shrieking—from her unbreathing daughters?
“I have lost my sight,” she sighed, “I have lost my husband. I have lost my daughters—and my home. But I have not lost my reason—nor my resolve to go on for the sake of my sons who survived. I can tell by the way you speak to your own boy, how much you love him. As Juvenal says: maxima debetur puero reverentia—before all else, reverence is due to the child.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Hermann replied. “Your situation places me under a new and rather hard obligation.”
“No,” she shook her head vigorously. “It does not. The kindness you have already shown me and my sons shall carry us through until my sister arrives. The brigade telegraphed my family in Kiel. My sister and her husband should arrive within the the week to collect us and take us back to the Jutland. But my sons and I had not eaten for days. We have been huddling in the ruins of the house since the catastrophe.”
Hermann looked at her incredulously. “But the brigade! They will help you. You must take your children to them. They will feed and shelter you. They’re right there!”
“I cannot ask them for more. The ignominy of what my husband has done is too great. The tenor of their voices the following day made it clear to me that they were wary of helping us, due to the circumstances. . .”
Hermann understood her plight. Even his grandmother, Oma Ingrid, had believed that the sons and daughters of suicides were cursed. For to take one’s own life was not simply to defy God but to despise Him: I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.
He led her back to the house. “Is there no advocate in Kohlendorf who could intercede on your behalf?”
“My husband’s ruin was total and complete. If there is an advocate, I do not know his name. But in Kiel, with my family’s assistance, I shall investigate these possibilities.”
“Surely some of your moveables survived. There is no furniture in the house.”
“The Brigade of Florian”—(it pained him that she did not call him Saint Florian)—“carted away some items and assured me that these would be put into pawn, and that the monies therefrom would be delivered over to me. But I have not heard anything since; and no one checks on us. My immediate concern is for the welfare of my boys. And yet, there are boundaries of religion and custom that I have no right to transgress.”
Hermann waited for her to step over the door-stone and back into the house. Walter sat by the fire. The infant and the older boy were eating with their fingers the cooked onions and potatoes in the skillet that the orphan had prepared for them.
Hermann went to the three long-shafted tools against the wall and tied the strips of cloth around them again. He quietly addressed the older boy. “Can you light a fire with a flint and stone?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Walter, give him the tinderbox.”
The orphan handed it to the younger lad.
“You don’t have to do that,” the woman said.
“We don’t need the kit,” Hermann remarked.
Then, Walter spoke up. “We’ll also leave the basket of food; and this fork. You need these things more than we do.”
Hermann nodded. “You heard. . . my son.”
“God bless you both,” the woman wept.
Having disencumbered himself of the basket, Walter was able to carry the tin pail in which Hermann had stuffed his shoulder satchel, his father’s shaving mirror, straight-razor, and wooden figurine. The orphan also took up the rope harness holding the sickle; and then he exited the house.
As Hermann placed the tools over his shoulder and turned to follow Walter out, he glanced down and saw a fragment of a girl’s bonnet. The woman’s older son knew what Hermann was looking at, and burst into tears.
“May the Virgin watch over you in your extremity,” Hermann said. There was no response as he turned and left.
They trudged up the path to the building the woman had indicated was where the Brigade of Saint Florian was headquartered. When they reached the front of it, Hermann told Walter to wait outside with the tools, which he rested against a tree.
Most of the edifice consisted of a carriage house linked to a modest wing that Hermann assumed to be the living quarters. Two broad doors stood open. The ample room contained a massive wagon supporting a domed copper tank. A rubber hose, which ran from couplings on the tank to a copper nozzle, was coiled up inside the wagon. Two white ladders hung from hooks on the lateral rails. A row of hatchets were clamped to the rear. A pair of tall horses were harnessed to the cart in the event of an emergency. One of the horses bobbed its head at Hermann. Two other horses stood behind green-painted doors. Helmets hung on pegs with name plates beneath each. Fire hooks on staves stood in a rack.
Four men sat in a circle, playing cards on a barrel top.
“Can I help you?” one asked.
Hermann went to them. “May I speak with your commander?”
They laughed.
“We just call him Hausleiter (chief of the house),” the same man replied.
The burliest of the group stood up and conducted Hermann through a corridor into a room with twenty cots. There were trunks at the foot of each. A door at the end of this room led into a white-washed office.
Behind a desk sat an elderly gentleman with bushy whiskers. A niche in the wall behind him held a painted statue of Saint Florian, kitted up in Roman armor and bearing a spear with a banner flapping from it.
“Someone to see you, chief.”
The elderly man rested his pen on the blotter and looked up. He sneered at the visitor’s degraded appearance. “Yes?”
Hermann removed his hat. “I just came from the house. . . ” he pointed vaguely in the direction of the brickmaker’s property. “The woman who lives there—she and her sons have no shelter; and they’re hungry.”
“What?!” the elderly man exclaimed. “Volker!”
“Jawohl, Hausleiter?!” The burly man executed what passed for a position of attention among the fellowship.
“Have you not checked on the widow and her children since the disaster?”
”They haven’t asked for help?”
“They shouldn’t have to! Mary, Mother of God!”
The man fidgeted. “But what her husband did. . .”
“The mother and her children are blameless in this affair. They must be treated with compassion. I don’t care if you have to quarter them in the stables like the Holy Family, they shall be sheltered and they shall be fed until her family arrives to collect them. Those are my orders. See they are carried out.”
“Jawohl, Hausleiter!” The man clicked his heels and departed.
“Thank you,” Hermann said.
“What is your name?” the fire chief asked.
“What?”
“I asked what your name is. I know everyone in this town. I don’t know you.”
“Moritz,” Hermann said.
“You are from Austria?” Hermann didn’t reply. “You have an Austrian burr. Or is it Bavarian? What were you doing at that widow’s house? Why did you not enter town through one of the gates? I must file a report with the Prussian authorities.”
The color drained from Hermann’s face.
The old man tilted his head and squinted at Hermann, before looking down at the forms on his desk. He exhaled and took up his pen. “I have enough paperwork as it is. When you leave here, your visit will be forgotten. However, I advise you to tread carefully. These are curious times. One misstep, and an unlettered rube such as yourself could wind up in prison or dead. Good day.”
Hermann left the office and returned to the room where the men had been playing cards. They had somehow lured Walter inside. A steel helmet was on the orphan’s head. The men were laughing at how ridiculous he looked.
“He’ll be as good as cannon fodder when they start conscripting the boys,” one commented. This elicited an outburst of hilarity.
“Come on,” Hermann said, removing the helmet and handing it to one of the jokesters.
When they had exited the firehouse, Hermann saw two carts standing against the wall. Both were filled with furniture, the edges of which were singed black. They were the items the brigade had “saved” from the brickmaker’s property and had vowed to put into pawn for the blind mother. Exposed to the elements for several days, the wood had become warped and split; and was useful now only as tinder to start a fresh fire.
You make good use of the necessity for Hermann and Walter to make their way across the communities and boundaries of the time to find their way to safety. We learn a lot about the competing movement of people of these regions, and about the rationing of compassion for those deemed different, unclean or some other way tainted. And how easy for authority to ignore or even encourage mistreatment until confronted and called on the lack of care or concern for fellow human beings.
The great saga continues!