The Storyteller

  Abel lifted his cup and downed the rest of the chocolate like vodka. Then he covered his face with his hands, like he had done in the tower made of newspaper, in the literature classroom. As if he’d gone to a private room to calm down. When he took his hands away, he wore something resembling a smile on his face. It was a very strained smile.

  “The black ship is still there,” he said. “But today … today, we wanted to celebrate, didn’t we, Micha?”

  He got up and put on his jacket. “So let’s celebrate. We’ll … we’ll do something special, we’ll …” Behind his smile, the silhouette of a black ship loomed. She had to distract him, Anna thought. She had to make the black ship vanish before it came too close …

  “I know what we’ll do,” she said. “We’ll have ice cream. Do you still have room for ice cream?”

  “I think so.” Micha nodded. “We haven’t had lunch yet. But can you eat ice cream in winter?”

  “Ice cream isn’t lunch,” Abel said. “We should eat something sensible.”

  “Oh, come on.” Anna laughed. “Stop being sensible for a while, will you? Ice cream is the best lunch imaginable. When I was your age, Micha, we always went for ice cream when we had a reason to celebrate. Especially in winter. My father used to say that anybody can eat ice cream in summer—that’s no challenge—but we can do it in winter; then we’d go to the Italian restaurant at the market and get our ice cream cones and window shop and laugh at all the people who gave us strange looks. We still have a picture my mother took with an outstretched arm, of the three of us in the snow holding ice cream cones. And if we felt cold after eating them, we went home and sat in front of the fireplace …” She stopped.

  “Rose girl,” Abel said softly, “you must be awfully happy on your island.”

  “No,” Anna replied. “There are too many thorns. I started feeling them. Like the little queen …”

  The man at the Italian restaurant was surprised, of course, that they wanted ice cream cones to take away. But only a little. Maybe he remembered a little girl and her parents, who had come from time to time, to do the same thing—a father with broad shoulders, who could save you from every danger in the world, and a very gentle mother, who was almost invisible. Had he seen the rose branches beneath their clothes? Anna wondered. The petals? Maybe even the thorns?

  Micha tried to order four scoops of ice cream, but Abel said “two,” and then, “okay … okay, three,” and Anna paid without his saying a word about it. And finally, they all stood outside in the snow-covered market square, in the icy wind, with their cones. Abel pulled his gray scarf tighter and shook his head. Then he started grinning. And then he headed down the street, walking without any particular aim or direction, as Anna had earlier. But now it was totally different. They walked next to each other, in silence, while Micha ran ahead, stopping at this or that window, saying what she would buy when she was rich; between the shops, she decorated the snow with brightly colored drips of her turquoise, Smurf-colored ice cream.

  The street was full of people: people pushing strollers, people on bicycles, people with heavy bags or dogs on leashes, people who blended into an anonymous mass. Unimportant and, somehow, almost invisible. The ice cream was long gone, but they just kept walking, walking slowly, without hurrying; Anna wondered whether they would walk to the end of the street, and on and on, to the end of the world, and whether there would be a blue ocean there and a green ship waiting for them. She thought about the very first time she had talked to Abel. How he had been sitting on the radiator in the student lounge, looking threatening. Back then, she never would have considered it possible to walk down the street next to him, in silence—and to think that for the moment, everything was all right.

  When she had arrived at this point in her thoughts, she realized that her hand was in his. She was not sure how long it had been there, and she was afraid to move it even a millimeter, in case he shied away. Micha had run ahead; now she came back, looked at Abel and Anna, glanced at their hands and grinned. Anna thought he would pull his hand back then. But he didn’t. He squeezed her hand very quickly and very hard, and she squeezed back. Who had painted the snow golden?

  Micha ran ahead again. They watched her draw something with her finger in the dirt on a shop window, then giggle and bounce away … a rubber ball with a fake fur collar and flying blond braids.

  They stopped in front of the window; it was the window of a Chinese restaurant, and there was a red dragon painted on it. Next to that dragon Micha had written: “K IS EacH Oth ER.”

  Abel looked at Anna. Anna looked at Abel.

  “She is the little queen,” said Abel, “in our fairy tale, at least.”

  “One must obey the queen,” said Anna.

  Abel nodded seriously.

  But, of course, we will walk farther now, Anna thought. And we will forget what was written on the window … It’s almost forgotten already. Then, very suddenly, Abel pulled her into the doorway beside the shop window, into the smell of hot vegetable oil and MSG, next to a glass door with another red dragon on it, and kissed her.

  Damn, thought Anna. I’m nearly eighteen years old, and I’ve never been kissed. Not properly, anyway. His lips were as cold as snow, but beyond the lips lay the warmth of a fairy-tale sun. She felt his tongue search for hers, and she thought of the wolf. And if it is true, she thought … if the fairy tale is true? A shot in the neck and a deadly bite in the neck. It all fits. And if I am kissing a murderer?

  And if so? Then what?

  A murderer, a wolf, a brother, an innocent, a fairy-tale teller. She rested her hands on the rough, cold material of his military parka and kissed him back. She closed her eyes; she no longer saw the red Chinese dragon on the door; she was aboard a ship, far out on the ocean. She heard the waves beat against the rail; she felt the rolling of the ship beneath her feet. If only one could spin a thread of the froth of the waves to make clothes … She tasted the fairy tale’s words on his tongue, not vanilla ice cream or chocolate or cigarettes. No. She tasted the words themselves, the ocean’s salt water and the wolf’s blood … and behind the words, winter. But behind the winter, there was another taste, a taste she only recognized after a while: the taste of fear. He was afraid, and he was not holding her—he was holding onto her. She was suddenly and completely aware of that. Fairy-tale teller, she thought, where is the ship in your fairy tale sailing to? Where does the fairy tale lead? Will there be more blood, flowing into the cracks between the deck planks? I don’t need anyone to protect me, she had said.

  Oh yes, you do, Bertil had said. More than you think.

  • • •

  They wandered back on the broad street that had once been the city’s rampart. It was lined with tall old chestnuts, which in summer were covered in white and red blossoms. Now, there was only snow. They were holding hands again. For a while, Micha had walked between them, and they had swung her in the air as if she were a much smaller child. But then she had run ahead again, and they took each other’s hands. When they reached Anna’s bicycle, back at the market, somebody in a dark blue woolen sweater came out of the bank next door. Knaake. Again, Anna expected Abel to pull his hand away, and again he didn’t. He just nodded in greeting; Knaake nodded back, and Micha asked a little too loudly, “Who’s that?”

  “The lighthouse keeper,” Anna answered. And suddenly, she remembered something. The white cat.

  “Michelle,” she whispered. “Is it possible that Michelle had come aboard, too?”

  “Who knows,” Abel said.

  “The white cat who sleeps all the time and blocks out the world … Has she come back, Abel? Have you spoken to her?”

  Abel shook his head. “No. She just slipped into the fairy tale.”

  Anna wasn’t sure she believed him. Something about the Michelle story was strange. That day, when he hadn’t let her in … who had been in the apartment with him? Was Abel hiding his own mother? Protecting her? But from whom?

  He let go of her hand. “Time
to go home,” he said. “Take care of yourself, rose girl. They say it’s going to get even colder.”

  He watched them ride away on their bikes, ride away in separate directions. And he remembered the day he had seen them together for the first time, in the student dining hall. He smiled. Their outlines seemed to radiate light, seemed to sparkle. Like something dipped into liquid gold. How long had it been since he’d been part of a story outlined in gold? Except when he read literature? Too long. He remembered one golden story, the last one. He remembered the smell of her hair, the intoxicating smell of cheap shampoo; he’d bought her nice, expensive shampoo and later missed the smell of the cheap one … he remembered talking about things she hadn’t understood, things that had meant too much to him … he remembered the music from the old, scratched LPs. Dancing in a tiny living room. An old sofa and dreams that had broken into pieces, later.

  Dance me to the children who are asking to be born

  Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn

  Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn

  Dance me to the end of love

  Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

  Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in

  Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove

  Dance me to the end of love …

  And for a moment, he wished he were back there, young again, or younger—a little—so he could do everything over again and make different decisions … Faust. But no, no … no Gretchen questions … please, no.

  And then, as they left the market square, Abel and Micha taking one street and Anna taking another, he saw their shadows. He hadn’t noticed them before; he’d only seen the bright shining gold … their shadows were long and black. Of course, that was because of the setting sun; it didn’t mean anything. But suddenly he felt afraid. Afraid for these two young people.

  He didn’t have children. But if he had, he thought, they’d be Anna and Abel’s age now. And he’d worry about them. He wouldn’t sleep at night; he’d lie in bed, sleepless, worrying. He’d yell at them when they came home late, or maybe he wouldn’t; maybe he’d be silent and lose them in silence. It just wasn’t possible, he thought, to do right by your children.

  Better to be alone.

  Abel and Anna weren’t his children. They were only his students. Damn. Yet he still carried his fear for them home with him.

  Who’s that? That’s the lighthouse keeper.

  The lighthouse keeper? Why was he a lighthouse keeper? Which lighthouse did he keep, and what was it that kept him there?

  THAT NIGHT, ANNA SLEPT WITH THE FAIRY-TALE TELLER.

  Not in reality. In her dreams. She lay in her bed, in the house of blue air, and dreamed a pocket of time into Abel’s fairy tale, a time pocket that would never be told. It was night on the deck of the green ship. The little queen was dreaming, too, between her polar bear skins in the cabin below, Mrs. Margaret in her arms, the asking man and the answering man, who had finally come in to get some sleep, beside her. And the lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse keeper slept in his boots and his glasses, which were pushed up into the graying hair on his head. The little queen was smiling in her sleep. Maybe she dreamed of the reality beyond her fairy tale, of turquoise ice cream on a snow-covered market square, of letters in the dirt on a window.

  Anna was standing on the deck all alone, watching the stars. She found the Big Dipper and Ursa Major and Minor, but Ursa Minor looked like a dog, Ursa Major, like a wolf. She found Perseus, but he looked like a hunter with a long robe, and he wasn’t alone; there were five hunters altogether—four of them, she thought, are still on the black ship. Four of them are still following us. Four of them want to catch us before we reach the mainland. She stepped to the rail and saw the moonlight on the waves. Small pieces of ice danced within it. The sea would freeze. Maybe soon. From one of the waves, a head appeared, the head of the sea lion. She wanted to reach out her arms to pull him on board. And suddenly the sea lion lifted himself out of the water and flew across the waves in a spray of small drops; in the next instant, the wolf was standing next to Anna. But no, she was mistaken. It was the silver dog with the golden eyes—but no, no, it wasn’t the silver dog either. It was a human being. It was Abel, and yet, not Abel. His eyes were the wrong color; they were golden. He wore black, but not the black Böhse Onkelz sweatshirt she hated so much. He wore an ironed black shirt that looked strange on him; it was the kind of black shirt you wear to a funeral. She wanted to ask him whose funeral it was, and if he’d just come from it or was he headed to it later, but before she could ask, he had pulled her into his arms. It was like a weird ballet.

  The white sails that the red hunter had torn to pieces with his rapier were still heaped on deck. Anna saw that someone had started to mend them, probably she herself, the rose girl, who had also made clothes for everyone. She felt the red velvet on her skin. She felt the red velvet slide down. She was naked. For a moment she stood like that, in the moonlight, but she wasn’t cold. She undid the buttons of his black shirt—it was easy, like removing one’s own clothes—and the black material slid down, too, and got entangled with the red velvet; black and red like night and blood. She looked at Abel. She tried to smile. She was a little afraid.

  The round burn on his upper arm was shining like a second moon, or an eye.

  “Don’t look at it,” he whispered, as he pulled her down onto the deck, between the white sails that closed around them like a tent. It was completely dark in that tent; there was nothing to be seen, only to be heard and to be felt and to be tasted.

  “It’s a dream,” Anna whispered.

  “It’s a time pocket in the fairy tale,” Abel whispered. “That is what you wished for, isn’t it?”

  In a dream, in a fairy tale, nothing has to be explained, everything happens of its own accord. That night, Anna knew everything and understood everything and was familiar with everything; she thought of Gitta and had to laugh because Gitta didn’t understand anything—she only talked like she did. The tent made of sails became a cocoon and moved over the deck, rolling to and fro in the rhythm of the waves, an artwork by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, a package whose contents were no one’s business. Anna felt blood on her fingers; she wasn’t sure whose blood it was … maybe her own, maybe blood from the wound on Abel’s temple, or maybe just a memory—or the blood of a third person? No, she thought, there is nobody here. Just the two of us.

  And the cocoon, the artwork, the tent rolled over the deck, rolled over the rail, and sank into the icy waters of the night ocean, with Anna and Abel inside it. The white cat, who was lying on deck, silently shook her head at the sight.

  When Anna awoke, it was five o’clock in the morning, and she was out of breath. The white cat, she suddenly thought—wasn’t the white cat blind? She sat up in her bed and realized that she was shivering. Her bed seemed vast, and she was very alone in it.

  • • •

  “Check out our Polish peddler,” Gitta said on Monday, looking out the window. “If he keeps standing there, he’ll be covered in snow like a statue. I don’t get it. He’s been standing there since early morning; he wasn’t in French class—he’s just been standing out there with plugs in his ears.”

  “White noise,” Anna said.

  Gitta looked at her. “Excuse me?”

  “Maybe he hasn’t earned his daily wage.” Hennes laughed. He pushed his red hair back and nudged Gitta in a friendly way. “Hey, physics is over, and the math test tomorrow is the last one before finals … shouldn’t we celebrate? Tomorrow night … we could ask him if he’s got some weed. Or does he only sell pills?”

  “He’s a peddler.” Gitta put a suggestive hand on Hennes’s arm. “I’m guessing he can get almost anything. But if you ask him for weed, he’ll laugh. Weed’s easy—it’s for children. I’m sure he makes more selling other stuff.”

  “Today, I’m feeling generous,” Hennes said, grinning. “I actually feel l
ike tipping. What do you think, does our Polish peddler take tips?”

  He slipped into his ski jacket, and a moment later was walking across the yard, through the gently falling snowflakes. Gitta sighed and said, “Those snowflakes really look good in his hair. You could put that guy in a frame, hang him up on the wall …”

  “If he really wants to party … maybe he’ll let you hang him on the wall. You never know,” Frauke said and laughed.

  “Depends on what he arranges with the Pole,” Gitta said, “… and what he plans to smoke. Anna, do you want to come tomorrow?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Anna said.

  She saw Hennes standing at the bike rack next to Abel. She saw Hennes’s bright-colored ski jacket, his glowing red hair, his upright posture; she saw Abel beside him, hands dug deep into the pockets of his old parka, hat pulled down low, back bent—a dark lump of a human being, almost totally holed up in himself, nearly invisible, an ugly blotch in the immaculate white snow. She saw Hennes talking to Abel, who didn’t take the plugs out of his ears.

  “You know, it’s possible to party without weed,” Bertil said. Anna jumped. She hadn’t seen him there. He looked at her.

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m thinking,” Anna replied in a low voice, “that I don’t like Hennes von Biederitz.”

  The math test went well. At first, Anna thought she would be too distracted. All the words Abel hadn’t said to her since Monday were filling her head. She saw him sitting at his desk, his test in front of him. Halfway through, he pulled off his black sweatshirt and sat there in his T-shirt; she forced herself not to look at him too closely, not to search for the round scar, not to think of her dream. In the end, she managed to solve most of the test problems. She remembered Bertil’s patient explanations, the look behind his glasses, and his voice—the voice of an indulgent professor—and it was like Bertil was there, taking the test for her. She didn’t want to think that; she didn’t want to think of Bertil; she hated the way he kept sneaking up on her, seeming to appear out of nowhere, without a sound.