‘Feast?’
‘Yes, the Biikebrånen. It’s next week.’
The German woman hadn’t spent a winter on the island yet and was therefore unaware of this particularly Frisian tradition, which probably dated back to heathen times: On the night of 21 February, people wander down to the shore, where each village builds its bonfire or biike. They sing and dance and also burn a straw man, which some consider the symbol of winter; torching him was meant to reawaken the spring from the earth. Maike’s grandfather told us that in the past, women used to light the bonfire to say goodbye to their men as they headed out to hunt whales. Her grandmother jokingly added that this was Frisian women’s way of letting the lads know that there were no men on the island.
‘Are people really going to light fires on the beach? That’s just like ordering missiles from the Brits,’ Frau Baum said, leaning back on her chair with her legs wide apart, sweating in her apron, and shaking her head.
‘Mum, what’s misfiles?’ her daughter, a little blond flower with weather-beaten rosy cheeks, asked.
‘Missiles are bombs that bad men who live in England drop out of their planes to blow up houses and make people die,’ Heike answered swiftly.
‘Why do they want people to die?’
And then I said: ‘Because they speak German and not English.’
‘Mum, I don’t want to die. I want to speak English!’ said the little girl, starting to cry. Her mother’s face burst into a blaze.
‘Why did you say that to her?! What kind of bleeding nonsense is that! And I don’t want you lot going around the village speaking fri… frigging Frisian! You’re in germany, you go to a german school, so you should speak german!’
‘No, Mother, I want to speak English,’ the little one whined.
Although we were only eleven years old, our feminine intuition understood the woman’s hysterical outburst. The woman’s heart was trapped on an alien island in a frightful meltdown. Her fury had nothing to do with us; it was about something else, something bigger. We couldn’t take it personally. Earlier that day I had read a letter from Mum, which was also full of exclamation points. ‘Oh, if only I had you here beside me! I miss you so much, Herra, love! Remember to pray for your father!’
Men fight, women take fright.
Frau Baum wasn’t the only person who was anxious about the imminent bonfire. It was being discussed all over Norddorf. The other Germans in the village, the Tieck crowd, were fuming. Their daughter Anna raised the issue at school and warned them that anyone who went to the bonfire would be shot by English bullets. Heike furrowed her brow. Finally an order came from Berlin banning the lighting of any fire on the shores of the Third Reich. On the other hand, there were no swastika officials in this little village, and it says a lot about the pluck of those free-spirited Frisians that they fearlessly built their bonfire regardless, as they had done every February for thousands of years.
Heike dropped out of the Fris-Icelandic club and berated me under the cold quilt back home for getting carried away by this nonsense.
‘It’s true what Frau Baum says. Old traditions have to go. We have to stand together.’
‘But we’re not responsible for this. We’re just… watching.’
‘Herra, we’re at war. Neutrality is cowardice. Those fires are a threat to the German Reich.’
‘Yeah, let’s go and try to put them out, then. Are you coming with me?’
She didn’t answer. And was silent as she had been when Maike and I discussed Biikebrånen. We were full of both fear and excitement. And pride. Because we had obviously left our mark. Every shoe that walked the dull grey streets of this humdrum village shone like obsidian in the sun. And in that very same week things got even better when we discovered two silvery metallic containers on the shore, the size of suitcases. Heike and Maike strictly forbade me to go anywhere near them and pointed out that our dear hunting dogs, the seagulls, were keeping well away from them.
‘That’s only because there’s no smell from the boxes. There’s no food in them,’ I said.
‘Yes, exactly! Bombs don’t have a smell!’
But my Icelandic nature refused to submit. My reckless, stupid curiosity compelled me to peep into the boxes. The girls held themselves at a screaming distance as I crept up to the metallic cases and finally undid their simple latches. Oh yes, there were bombs in them all right: thousands of tubes of war-red lipstick. I yelled triumphantly and called the girls over. And after trying several colours out and laughing ourselves silly, we filled our pockets with these treasures and dragged the silver boxes out of view, burying them behind a dune.
On Biikebrånen Night every woman arrived at the ball with shiny black shoes and fiery-red lips.
48
The Man from the Sky
1941
Frau Baum forbade her girls to go to the bonfire and locked us into the bedroom to be certain. The German Heike agreed with the mistress of the house, and we argued bitterly from our beds as the evening twilight gradually filled the room. I was dead set on going. A Reich that couldn’t put up with one bonfire could never last a thousand years. Maike and I had worked hard on lending a hand and carried many logs to the pile, which had grown into a tall and impressive mound. I wasn’t about to miss it.
‘Do you want to get yourself killed?’
‘Killed?’
‘Yes, it’ll end with an air raid when the Brits see the bonfire.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Don’t care? Do you really want to get yourself killed?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Why?!’
‘Because… because I’m curious! Icelandic!’
Maike knocked on the pane. After a brief scuffle, I managed to free myself of Heike and crawl out the window. Maike and I ran down towards the beach and reached it just before the fire was lit.
It was a cold and still night. Frost hung in the air, but there was no snow on the ground. The sky glowed with all its candles in a silence that was as thick as the sand and the darkness, until an old fireman ignited the fire with three sprays of petrol. About a hundred people had ventured out of their houses and stood there by the crackling flames and sighing sea. Naturally, there was some apprehension in the crowd, but the tensions of the past months had drawn them closer together. Finally someone started to sing. Men and women joined in, slipping their hands onto the next person’s shoulders and swaying together to the rhythm of the waves, fire and song. It felt like a cosy scout bonfire or even a Christmas dance, but there was a strange sexual energy in the air. The women, who had dolled themselves up with red lipstick and shiny shoes, looked like Spanish flamenco dancers. The twin blond sisters from next door, who always walked around stooping under the weight of their new budding breasts, radiated with joy in the glow of the fire. Furtive glances shot back and forth like sparks out of the fire before dying in the dark of the night; there were no inflammable young men here to transform those sparks into flames. They were all far away, in Ljubljana or Libya, stuffing themselves with horsemeat sausages in the open carriage of a goods train. The only males left here were old-timers who swayed between virgin and motherly breasts, letting the last rays of their sexual sun lick the peaks where they once stood.