Non fiction

Jigsaw

You are nothing more than fragments of a jigsaw puzzle

In my mind, of pictures, words and places.

He broke you into pieces,

In an effort to keep you

From the skylights in your view.

The laughter in your head,

The movement in your legs,

Will never be anything more

Than fragments of a jigsaw puzzling my mind,

For you will never be whole again.

If you have ever taken the route from Munich to Füssen, you will know it is spectacularly more scenic than the train journey from Sheffield to Doncaster. In summer, sunlight blinks at you through trees, suddenly to shine on lakes in open meadows.  As you approach Füssen, you become aware of mountains in the distance that erupt seemingly from nowhere. For the rest of the journey they loom towards you, magnificent and menacing. There is a white dot that can just be made out at the lower end of one of these mountains. It is this dot that people come to see.

      Füssen is at the end of the line.  It is a dead-end station with two platforms, a gift shop and a woman behind a counter selling train tickets. She is competing with a complicated machine that stands opposite and charges two Euros less than her. The bus stop to Hohenschwangau is just behind this decrepit station. As I get on the bus, the driver speaks to me in English: ‘You want the castles?’ I knew I was on the right bus. I got out where tourists gather at the bottom of a hill that puts Conduit to shame. That was the hill I sped down on the way to work and dragged my bike up when I returned early in the evenings, weaving between tourists and horse-drawn carriages. That was the bike Anna had ridden before she bought her shining replacement. It had now been passed on to me for the short commute to the next village. It was red and had a basket, which Anna had herself had bought. I remember her telling me this.

      I struggled with my backpack up this hill, determined and optimistic, and arrived at the Swan hotel. I explained in clumsy, out-of-breath German that I was a new employee. ‘Ausweis bitte!’ Sorry? ‘We need to see your passport.’ This wasn’t going well: they were already resorting to English and I hadn’t even started work yet. Eventually the girl behind reception showed me to my room, which was found in a yellow house diagonally opposite. This is where summer slaves are confined and where my mother stayed in the summer of 1975 and 1976, as she often reminds me. In my room there was a skylight, just like the one in that poem from fresher’s week, and the ceiling and floor were made from planks of pine, which had the most beautiful smell in the sunlight. I had a table, a bed and a wardrobe. I have pictures of this wardrobe. It is green with flowers painted on the doors with thick, red brush strokes. I opened it up. On the inside various people had etched away at the surface, giving words of encouragement and even more words of discouragement.

      The next day it rained, as it often does in Hohenschwangau. It catches the tourists off guard and I spent many hours over that summer watching them from the safe confines of my room as they scuttled and, in the case of some of the American tourists, wobbled down the street under the highest quality plastic ponchos. I had lunch and dinner in the staff canteen, which was home to such classics as sauerkraut on pasta and thick potato dumplings with gravy. The meals were leftovers, sent across from the hotel kitchen in a silver contraption on wheels. This was the room where I made my friends and where it is an unwritten custom that you say ‘Mahlzeit’ as you enter and leave. It is the password to acceptance in Bavaria.

      The hotel where I worked was a signet of the Swan hotel. It was a small B&B for busloads of tour groups and budget motoring families. This was where I served scrambled eggs to Japanese tourists and watered purple flowers on balconies that were attached to en-suite rooms.  On the first day I met a Swiss lady with broad shoulders, which seemed to be made for carrying luggage up stone staircases. Her accent included more post alveolar fricative sounds than any German I had encountered before and she learnt to expect to see confused creases in my forehead when she gave me instructions in the weeks that followed.

      On that first day Anna arrived on reception. If you read the newspaper articles about her they will tell you she was born in Thailand, had been adopted in Germany and was twenty-three. She was fretting because some money was missing from the Kasse, the small money box that was kept in the safe. She had been told by our boss that this money would have to be taken from her wages. I don’t know if this ever happened. A few minutes later, Anna turned her attention towards me and asked me where I was from. She wore a black Dirndl over a white blouse, and black sandals with thick German socks that spilled out at the sides. Although her hair was tied back, wisps of it had escaped, so that it framed her face unevenly.

One thing you may have experienced from Germans is their upfront manner, which a British person may confuse with rudeness.  Anna was no exception.  She considered me for a few moments and told me bluntly to stand up straight, because I looked like a hunchback. She then took me by the shoulders in an effort to make me stand up taller, so that I towered awkwardly above her.     

      I had more encounters with Anna in the first month of my summer job. She would often start work on reception when I had finished a long day of cleaning rooms and making beds. One day I had forgotten to make up one of the rooms to the dismay of one of the arriving families. While they went out sightseeing, Anna helped me. There was a technique to be learned with making beds, so that the pillows would stand upright with pointed corners. To Anna, my pillows just weren’t up to scratch. She slipped her hands inside one of the white pillowcases, and pushed the corners out from the inside. I copied and stood my pillow upright, so that it toppled only slightly. She praised me in the same way you might a child for the most basic of achievements.

      Anna was also there the day I dropped a whole tray full of plates and cups and saucers. She laughed sympathetically and told me she had dropped plenty in her time working there. She helped me pick up the pieces of broken china before we set the tables for the next day’s guests. She showed me how to put on the tablecloths in one swift movement, so they landed smoothly and evenly in place. The last time I saw Anna was just after that. I still had over a month left working in Germany, but Anna was getting out. She had finished her hotel apprenticeship and was going to go on holiday with her grandma. I never found out if she went on that holiday.

In between clearing plates, topping up coffee and refilling bread rolls, Anna talked to me. I asked her about what she wanted to do once she got back from her holiday. She was going to move out of her boyfriend’s house to live with a friend, or perhaps to a different part of Germany. She told me she would like to work abroad. She liked that I had done that. She thought about working in London, or somewhere in the English countryside. I encouraged her. Anna and I parted ways and I gave her a hug. I thought about taking her email address, but I never asked her for it. I found out a month later that it didn’t matter.

      My boss came to tell me the news:

‘Sie haben eine Leiche im Wald gefunden.’ 

I didn’t see how this could possibly relate to me.

 ‘Sie haben einen Torso gefunden.’ 

I still didn’t understand.

‘Hast du die Anna erkannt?’

Yes, I replied. I had known her.

I was waiting for the explanation that would link Anna to this terrible event. After a few moments of silence, I knew. After my boss left to down a bottle of Schnapps, I sat down and stared at the floor.

She was found in fragments around Füssen: in the forest, and at the roadside behind the supermarket. The limbs that could no longer walk were stuffed into plastic bin liners, along with lifeless arms. Her head was found by someone who used to drive her to work. He wasn’t there the next day. In the canteen, Anna was the topic of conversation. I only caught snippets of the Cluedo game that was in play. There was talk of a Badewanne. I cleaned bathtubs, imagining Anna sinking beneath the surface of the water, struggling for air. I imagined water turning red. Her hair was stuck to her face with blood. She was still wearing her glasses.

They found out a few days later it was her boyfriend.  He had confessed to the police and shown them where he had left the unturned pieces of the human jigsaw. Anna had been strangled by him and sawn to pieces in the bath. That week Anna’s bike broke. I stopped riding it. When I finished my last day of work I got the train back to Munich and watched the mountains disappear in the distance. I haven’t been back since.

Catriona Stephenson