The Storyteller (43 page)

He put his face back onto his arms, as if to leave her, to walk away, but she wouldn’t let him, she was shaking him again. “Where is she?” she shouted. “Where’s Micha?”

“At home,” he answered. “In bed. We were … we went on an outing … and now she’s in bed, sleeping. What did you think? Did you think I stopped looking after her?”

“If nothing matters anymore?”

He tried to focus on her but didn’t quite manage. “Go away,” he said. “Leave me alone. What do you want?”

“To bring you home.”

“Forget it,” he said and got up. He was unsteady … holding onto the table. “Leave me alone.” He pointed to a collection of empty bottles, letting himself fall back onto the bench. “See, I’ve got company. Ha.”

She moved closer, so close their shoulders touched. She didn’t want to shout anymore to be heard. He smelled like beer. She still didn’t know what he’d taken, but he was right, of course. It didn’t matter. He’d given up.

“I don’t know if this will get through to you,” she said. “Probably not. But in the event you’ve forgotten it tomorrow, I’ll just say it
again then. I’ve been searching for you, because I wanted to tell you that Bertil didn’t achieve anything with his announcement. He could have saved himself the trouble of recording your conversation. I know something now that I didn’t know before. So what?”

“But everybody … everybody knows everything,” Abel murmured. “Now. No, everybody knows nothing. Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows everything …”

“Can you hear yourself talking? Does it make sense?”

“What does make sense in life, anyway?” he asked. “Go away, princess. Leave your outlaw alone. You won’t … you won’t change him.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” Anna said decisively.

“God, look how they’re dancing!” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “How they’re dancing! Isn’t it insane? The world is turning the wrong way around, and they don’t notice … they’re just dancing! Do you want to know how the fairy tale continues?”

“Yes,” she said, “please.” And she leaned her head on his shoulder, where his jacket was wet with spilled beer, and watched the dancing … they were dancing … it was insane, true enough.

“The little queen and her crew saw the mainland … that evening,” Abel began, haltingly, stumbling over the words, tripping, falling, like a child learning to walk. But he got up each time he fell, and then the words came quicker. “And they cheered and hugged each other. ‘It won’t be long now!’ the rose girl said. ‘Maybe we’ll reach it tonight!’ the little queen exclaimed. ‘Where is the weapon?’ the asking man asked; ‘soon,’ the answering man answered, but this time it was obviously the wrong question and the right answer. High above them the silver-gray seagull shrieked, her shriek a shrill
warning, and at first they didn’t understand. They raced on their skates, toward the dark mass of land. And then the gull shrieked again, louder, and they came to a halt quite abruptly. One step ahead of them, the ice ended. They saw now how strong the ice was. It was nearly three inches thick, but then it suddenly stopped. Between the mainland and the edge, there was a wide stream, a roaring river of water that had been snow not long ago, an insurmountable monster of ice-cold water.

“They took off the skates and stood there at the edge of the ice silently. The silver-gray seagull landed in front of them, inclined her head, and squinted at them. The pupils in her golden eyes had nearly vanished, as if she were turning blind like the white cat. Maybe the wind up there above the sea had been too cold. The little queen bent down to pet the gull’s feather coat, but it was the silver-gray dog again, and her hand touched fur. He pressed against her legs, as if he was trying to find shelter from the cold, and then he barked loud and bared his teeth. He had sharp teeth, teeth like a wolf. The little queen followed his gaze, and the rose girl turned, too.

“‘Here she comes,’ she whispered. ‘The cutter with her sparkling tools. We have to swim.’

“But the raging current was too strong, too powerful.

“‘We will swim,’ said the little queen. ‘But if we swim, we will die. And I still don’t know what death is like. Our journey was so long, and I’ve met so many people, and nobody, not a single soul, has explained death to me.’”

“And?” Anna asked. “What happened then?”

“There’s no
then
,” Abel said, turning the beer bottle upside down, and a last drop fell down onto the table.

“But that’s not the end of the story,” Anna said. “The end takes place the day after tomorrow. Till then, we’ll find a way to get across the water. The sea lion can swim. He’s a strong swimmer. Come on.”

She took his arm and pulled him up, wanting to pull him with her, get him out of that corner, pull him around the table—and that was the moment he found his strength a second time. This time, he really did find it. He pushed her away … she staggered back and held onto a chair so as not to fall; she saw how he lifted his right arm as if to hit her. She ducked. There was no blow. He stood there looking at her for a second, arms hanging limply by his side, then he sank back onto the bench and closed his eyes. “Go away, Anna,” he said once more, in a voice too low to hear. She read the words on his lips, “Go away now. Far away. And don’t ever come back. The fairy tale doesn’t have a happy ending.”

She left. She left him alone, alone with the dancing crowd, where you could be lonelier than anyplace else.

“Little lamb,” Gitta said when she met her in the lobby of the dining hall, “didn’t you find him?”

“No,” Anna said. “I’ll find him tomorrow. Tomorrow, when he’s sober again and has had some sleep.”

“Yes, do,” Gitta said, and Anna saw that Hennes was standing behind her.

“Yes, do,” he repeated and pushed the red hair out of his face with that unbearable gesture. He was holding a glass, and the color of the liquid in the glass was beautiful, and the glass was beautiful, and the hand was slender and beautiful. Look, she thought, how they’re dancing. Insane. “Anna!” Hennes said. “Wait! What Bertil
did today … that conversation he recorded … I … I’m really … if I say anything now …”

“Then it will only be wrong,” Anna said. “Go, Hennes. Take Gitta inside and dance with her.”

That night she did not dream of flames. She dreamed of Ludwigsburg. Of the pines creaking in the snowstorm. And she knew who’d followed her. Who’d scared her.

“I passed you already,” Bertil had said. “I just had to find a place to turn the car …”

She hadn’t seen him come toward her from the big road, hadn’t seen him drive by, because he hadn’t. In her dream, she saw the three snow-covered cars in the parking lot, behind the restaurant, near the beach, at the very end of the little lane. And suddenly, she was sure one of them had been a Volvo. And suddenly, she thought she remembered the panting of a dog between the pines. And suddenly, she heard Gitta say again, don’t believe everything you hear. Gitta hadn’t told Bertil that she’d seen Anna ride out to Ludwigsburg. Oh no. He’d followed her. He’d followed her to Abel’s apartment back then—somebody has to look after you, he’d said, more than you think—and had kept following her, creeping after her. He’d scared her on purpose, out there, in the woods, so that he could save her.

He’d let her go ahead, let her push her bike through the storm, for a long, long time, until she was exhausted enough to let him rescue her. He’d been waiting, lurking … that was why the car hadn’t been warm—he’d been driving for only a few minutes. Of course. Of course. Of course.

When she awoke, it was late morning, nearly noon. She must
have slept hard. Outside the window, in the yard, the snow had nearly melted. The sun was shining in a new and golden way. She dressed hurriedly.

She knew what she had to do. Right now.

She’d go out to the woods, to the Elisenhain, to see if the anemones were already there, their little blossoms peeking through the leftover snow. And she had the feeling she’d find some. The feeling they’d be waiting for her. The anemones … and spring itself. She’d pick a bunch of them, a bunch of tiny white flowers, and then she’d ring Abel and Micha’s doorbell, and they would have breakfast together, a very late breakfast. And Abel and she would talk about everything. Since she’d known him, life had been a roller coaster, up and down. At one moment she was shouting in triumph, at another she was sunk in despair—even old Goethe had known the feeling—and this was a day for shouting in triumph. A day on which everything could and would be explained—and settled. A day made to talk about the future, a future in which he’d no longer have to do what he’d done to earn money. She’d tie him to a chair and slap him with Magnus’s money if she had to.

She knew a good place for anemones, the best; it was near that place where Micha’s invisibles lived, by the hazelnut bushes. She’d tell Micha that the invisibles had melted away with the snow.

That they didn’t exist in spring.

It was high time spring came. It was the twelfth of March.

THE WOODS WERE IN FLOWER—THEY WERE BLOSSOMING!

There was still snow between the high gray trunks of the beeches, silver-gray, Anna thought, but between the last patches of cold, new patches of white had come into being, as well as a few yellow and violet patches. Cowslips, liverworts, and of course her anemones—such a difficult word for such a tiny flower.

The path was muddy and brown. In some places, she sank up to her ankles, her boots getting caught in the marsh, and she laughed. Winter was over.

She left the path. She walked into the mud, into where it was the deepest, and spun around beneath the trees with her arms outstretched. She saw the hem of her winter coat fly like the hem of a dress … She had Linda’s old Cohen LPs in her backpack. And the flute. She had plans. She had great plans.

Micha could learn to play the flute if she wanted to. Or the
piano. The house of blue air was too big and the apartment at 18 Amundsen Street too small. They could move. And once Micha was settled in … maybe Abel would leave town with Anna, go somewhere, anywhere, to study. Someplace nobody knew him and nobody knew her, and they could visit Micha, all the time. But now that the snow was melting so fast, maybe he’d see certain things in a different light. And tomorrow, he’d be eighteen. From tomorrow on, he wouldn’t have to fear that someone could take Micha away. She hoped it would be as he thought. She could have asked Magnus. Magnus knew about things like that, law-related things, but she hadn’t asked. She’d feared his answer. No, she told herself, Abel is probably right. From tomorrow on, everything will be all right. We’ll reach the mainland. It’s so close already.

She passed a hunting blind, its four wooden supports standing in the mud like the legs of a giant creature stuck fast, and suddenly she thought of Bertil. These were the grounds where his father hunted. Maybe he’d been sitting in this blind not long ago, a gun propped up next to him. Did his father allow him to shoot, even though he didn’t have his license yet? Now that the ground was thawing, the deer were sure to come out of their hiding places. She saw their footprints in the mud; here, the animals weren’t shy. Gitta had told her that sometimes the deer and wild boar crossed Wolgaster Street and wandered into the yards in her housing development, where they ate the young sprouts off the bushes.

Something was rustling behind her, and she turned around. She didn’t feel like meeting a wild boar out here or, worse, a sow—when did they have their young? Now everything was quiet again. Probably just a bird looking for worms among the dry leaves. She could hear the first blackbirds and tomtits. It must have been a bird.

She returned to the path, the one she’d run along with Abel and Micha. She ducked and slipped through the still-bare branches of the hazelnut bushes, their buds almost green at the tips, about to open, to spill new life, new leaves into the world. Here … here was the fork in the path. Behind it, there weren’t any invisibles now, in spring.

Last spring, she’d picked flowers with Gitta here, in this very spot. Really. With Gitta, who’d never admit now that she picked flowers in the forest like a little girl. This was the best place in the whole of the Elisenhain. Anna parted the thicket. The narrow path was covered in deer tracks: deer and wild boar. She came out on the other side and stood in front of a vandalized stretch of mud. There weren’t any anemones left here, not this spring. The wild boars had really done a good job. She smiled. There would be enough anemones elsewhere in the forest.

But why, she wondered, why had they searched for food here, where there weren’t even many beeches? Strange. She wanted to walk around the trampled earth … and then she saw that the wild boars had been trying to unearth something. Something was there, in the mud, something multicolored—red and blue, fabric. There was the rustling sound again, a ways off, but still uncomfortably close. She looked up. Hadn’t the branches of that tree over there just moved? No. She was beginning to imagine things. Her imagination was still caught somewhere in Ludwigsburg, between the pines, in the middle of a blizzard. “But that was in the winter,” she whispered, “that was ages ago. Because now … now, spring is here. Back then, I was scared … but now …”