The Storyteller (37 page)

THE ICE WAS SMOOTH AND WIDE, AND IT LAY HIDDEN
under the snow like a secret thought.

Where the sea met the beach, the waves had piled the ice floes on top of each other, exactly as they had been piled on the opposite side of the bay, in Ludwigsburg, forming strange figures you couldn’t take apart, like a puzzle or a riddle. The three of them had climbed over the piles of ice floes to reach the plain, smooth ice behind them, but somehow Anna felt as if she were still standing between those surrealistic figures, in an inexplicable, multilayered chaos …

“Anna? Anna!” Micha said and pulled her sleeve. “Are you dreaming?”

“Yeah,” Anna replied, “I am … a dream about finding out how everything fits together.”

“But can we start now? You’ve got the skates with you, haven’t you? The ones I can wear?”

She nodded and kneeled down to open her backpack. Abel had
walked ahead of them and was standing near the orange buoy, a relic from summer. He was looking out at the horizon. Maybe he had to be alone for a moment.

Anna thought about school while she helped Micha put on two pairs of socks and her old skates. She thought of the others’ faces. Of Bertil’s when he’d come into the student lounge and seen them sitting on the radiator in the corner, she and Abel, silent and together. He’d nodded and said, “Of course. Of course.” Then he’d turned on his heels and left. But in the doorway, he’d turned back and said, “Take good care of yourself, Anna Leemann. Think of the snowstorm and the shadow out in the woods. And don’t believe everything you hear …”

And Abel had looked at her, questioning, but she’d just shaken her head. She would tell him later. Maybe.

The strange thing was that Gitta had said something similar after Abel had disappeared into class. “Good to see the two of you together again,” she said. “Though it’s weird. Neither of you seems happy about it. Bertil told me he plucked you out of that snowstorm yesterday.”

“He found me because you told him that you’d seen me head out. That’s what he said anyway.”

Gitta had nodded. “Take care of yourself, Anna. And don’t believe everything you hear …”

There wasn’t literature class that day, but she’d passed Knaake in the corridor. “I’m on it,” he said walking by her, winking. “But I don’t know what I think yet. One shouldn’t believe everything one hears …”

Had they all gotten together to confuse her? Whom and what shouldn’t she believe?

“Now,” Micha said, closing the last plastic clasp. “With these skates, I’ll be so fast I’ll arrive at the mainland before the thirteenth of March. In the fairy tale, you know.” She held onto Anna’s arm, stood up, and started marching over the ice. Then she took bigger steps, and then she started to glide. Anna watched her glide away. She hadn’t known that Micha could skate; she’d figured she’d have to teach her. But the pink down jacket was all but flying now. Micha threw her arms up into the air and gave a scream of joy and made a pirouette without losing balance, like a true little queen.

“We don’t give children enough credit,” Anna murmured. “They can take perfect care of themselves. But what … what will happen on the thirteenth of March?”

She slowly walked over to Abel, and he looked surprised, too. “I didn’t know Micha knew how to skate.”

“What about you?” Anna asked. “Can you skate?” She bent down and got her own skates out of the backpack. And another pair that belonged to Magnus.

Abel shook his head. “I’ve never tried. I’m just gonna stand here and watch you two.”

“Oh no,” Anna said. “We’re not doing this without you.”

A little later Abel stood next to her on the ice, unsteady on his legs, helpless like a newborn foal, and she laughed. Neither of you seems happy, Gitta had said. But on that day, happiness came creeping back, it was an in-spite-of-everything-happiness, a childish, stubborn happiness, and Anna welcomed it with open arms. She took Abel’s hands and skated backward, pulling him along through the snow, far, far out onto the ice. “You just have to move along!” she shouted. “Your knees! You’ve gotta bend your knees! You’ve got joints there, haven’t you? It’s easy!”

“No!” he shouted back. “I don’t have knee joints … I’m sure I don’t! I …” And they ended up in a heap on the ice, and Micha came flying and landed on top, because she couldn’t resist, and, somehow, they sorted out their arms and legs and got up again. They each took one of Abel’s hands; they tried to push him, tried to pull him, tried to leave him alone and tell him from a distance what he had to do—it was impossible to teach Abel to skate. It was a disaster … It was the most wonderful thing in the world.

Anna’s stomach hurt from laughing so hard. She had snow in her hair, snow in her mouth, snow in her shoes … what did it matter? In her head, the sun was shining so brightly she could barely see. Later, she would think that these days—this one and the next—had been their best. She would always remember the light playing in Abel’s and Micha’s pale blond hair. She’d always hear their laughter. It was such happy and unburdened laughter, laughter from a world without dead bodies or social services, a world in which no one ever disappeared.

And then they were lying on the ice next to each other, flat on their backs, the three of them, and Abel said, “In summer, you know … in summer, I want to swim with you, right here. We’ll lie in the water just like this, only the sky will be a different color then. And the water will be warm and blue, and the sailors will pass us on their way out to the island of Rügen.”

“And we’ll eat loads of ice cream,” Micha added.

“Definitely.” Abel rolled onto his stomach. “And then we’ll lounge around on the beach all lazy, and we’ll build sandcastles …”

“With sea grass for decoration and pinecones for inhabitants,” Anna said.

Abel nodded. “When summer comes, there’ll be no more black
ship. And no problems. When summer comes, I’ll be eighteen.”

“The thirteenth of March …” Anna began.

“That’s the day we’re going to reach the mainland,” Abel said, smiling.

“And we’re gonna celebrate,” Micha said. “We’re gonna celebrate Abel’s birthday. On that day, he’ll be a grown-up. Just like that, bang … and then he can be my father for real. It won’t be long now, Anna. Next Wednesday.”

Anna wanted to say that she wasn’t at all sure about the laws and that it was probably a lot more complicated than Abel and Micha imagined. But she didn’t say so. She said instead, “There’s hot chocolate in the thermos in my backpack.”

“Oh yeah, and we brought cookies!” Micha jumped up, and they started pushing and pulling and shoving Abel back toward the beach. And then they got rid of their skates and had a picnic between the piled-up ice-floe puzzles.

“Be a bit careful with that hot chocolate,” Abel said to Micha. “Better close that jacket again. We don’t want to wash another sweater. Remember, the washing machine is broken …”

“You said we can still wash things by hand,” Micha said.

“Yeah, we can.” He sighed. “Tomorrow is washing day, like in the olden days, in the days of real fairy tales. But washing takes time, Micha. It takes time. And we’ve already got enough washing.”

“Can’t you get someone by to … repair your machine?” Anna asked.

Abel shook his head. “The thing is old enough for a museum. We’ll have to buy a new one. And I will, some day … but for that, I’d have to use our savings for school, and it’ll take me a while to bring myself to do that.”

Anna thought about the house full of blue air and the washing machine in the basement, which would just be replaced if it broke. When you were ironing shirts on the big old wooden table down there, you could hear the robins at the window.

“While you’re waiting to buy a new machine,” she said, “you could just do your laundry at my house. It won’t take long. We’ve got a dryer, too. You could come by tomorrow afternoon and bring your clothes; we’ll put them in the machine; and in the evening, you can take everything home with you, clean and folded. It would save a lot of time … time that you could use to get some studying done.”

“Oh, please, let’s do that!” Micha exclaimed. “I can look at Anna’s books again and blow into her flute and watch the fire in the fireplace and …”

“And your parents?” Abel asked.

“They might be home,” Anna answered. “And will bite no one.”

She looked at him, and he avoided her eyes. Finally, he covered his face with his hands, breathed in heavily, and then lowered his hands again. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, we’ll come.” He stood up and shook the snow off of his jeans. “I’m doing a thousand new things in spite of myself,” he said. “It’s not easy, you know, to jump over your own shadow.”

“As long as you’re better at it than skating …,” Anna said and stood up too. She wanted to say more, but that wasn’t possible because he was kissing her. Reasonable Anna wanted to draw back: the danger of touch. But unreasonable Anna welcomed the kiss like happiness. Maybe, she thought, it’s better to take these moments when you get them—there might not be too many in life.

• • •

The most wonderful days. There were only two of them. The day on which Abel didn’t learn to ice-skate and the day on which the laundry didn’t dry.

They went to pick up Micha from school together that Friday. The teacher Anna had talked to before was standing in the yard with Micha when Abel and Anna came skidding through the snow on their bikes. It was still snowing, and the streets were as bad as they’d been the day before. “Abel Tannatek,” the teacher said to Abel. “My name is Milowicz. I’m Micha’s teacher. And you’re her brother, aren’t you?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Abel answered, “and we’ve got something we’ve got to do.”

“Wait.” She reached out for him but didn’t dare detain him physically. “I’d really like to talk to your mother. I’ve been trying to reach her for a long time …”

“Are there problems?” Abel asked. He’d taken Micha’s little hand. “Problems in class?”

“No, that’s not it, it’s just … Micha told me her mother has gone on a trip, and it seems to be such a long trip … is it true she’s away, traveling?”

“Yes,” Abel said. “Yes, that’s true.”

“And who looks after Micha?”

“Santa Claus,” Abel growled and helped Micha onto the carrier of his bike. Mrs. Milowicz was still staring after them when they left the schoolyard, her face puzzled.

“How can she understand?” Anna asked. “You’re being unreasonable. I mean, it’s not her fault, is it? She hasn’t done anything wrong … she’s just a teacher and she’s worried.”

“She’s too curious,” said Abel. “Maybe she put the social worker
onto us. Maybe it wasn’t Mrs. Ketow after all. By the way, we’re still waiting for the next social worker to turn up. It looks like no one’s taken over Marinke’s cases yet … who knows, we might get lucky and they won’t remember us until after the thirteenth of March.”

Anna had hoped that Magnus and Linda would be late, like they were last Friday, but Fridays weren’t regular days in the house of blue air, and both of them were already home. She had warned them, of course, because of the laundry. She wondered if that was the reason they were there. They both said they’d just happened to finish work early. Naturally.

Anna saw Abel flinch as he hung his jacket on the coatrack in the hall and heard Magnus’s voice from the first floor. He flinched like a frightened dog. Anna put a hand on his arm. “Stay,” she said, as she would to a dog, and felt stupid. She thought of the dog that belonged to Bertil’s family, in the backseat of the Volvo, the dog that bore an uncanny resemblance to the animal in the fairy tale. She could still hear his whining in the snowstorm.

“How nice to have visitors,” Linda said. “I thought we could have lunch together …”

Abel was sitting at the table like an animal ready to jump up and run. Everything he said was distilled, ice-cold politeness, and Anna was close to kicking him under the table, but she didn’t. Micha had no trouble with the situation. She told Linda everything about her school and the friend she’d visited on Wednesday … that they’d built an igloo together … that she wanted a dog when she got older, or actually, a dog and a white horse. The horse had to stand in the middle of a garden full of apple trees, of course.

“Yes, I agree,” Linda said. “That’s where white horses belong.”

Toward the end of their lunch, Abel was sitting in his chair, a little calmer, and his eyes had stopped darting around the living room as if it were a trap he had to escape.

“And now it’s probably best if you just throw your clothes into the machine,” Linda said, “and I’ll see to it that they get cleaned and folded. I think I’ve already been introduced to one of your sweatshirts …”

“Then Linda has a lot to do for her university classes,” Magnus said, throwing a glance at Linda. “And I’m very busy with a mountain of patient files.”

Anna had to keep herself from grinning. But listen you will, she thought, oh, you will, despite all your efforts to melt into the background. Well, go ahead and listen …

“We got something important, too,” Micha said. “We’re going to hear the next part of a certain fairy tale …”

Anna led the two of them up to her room. All you could see from the window now was a strange and distant memory of the garden. The roses had completely disappeared under the snow, and a single lonely robin was waiting for Magnus on top of the birdhouse.

They sat on the floor with their backs against the big bookshelf, watching the snowflakes gently floating down from the sky outside, and Abel said, “Let’s see … the fairy tale … In the fairy tale, the little queen and her crew are just now starting to walk over the ice. The ice is smooth and wide, lying beneath the snow like a secret thought. But at the shore of the murderer’s island, the waves have piled the ice floes on top of each other. The secret thought had broken into big splinters, interlinking with each other and forming strange figures you couldn’t take apart, couldn’t sort, like a puzzle or a riddle.”

He put one arm around Micha and then, after a moment’s
hesitation, one around Anna, and, although it was quite uncomfortable, Anna left the arm there. “It was difficult to walk over the ice. They kept slipping, losing their balance, falling, standing up again, walking on. When the ship had shrunk to the size of a child’s toy behind them and then become nothing more than a tiny green spot, they stopped again and looked through the binoculars, one after another. It had started to snow.