The Storyteller

  “How can you drive in this weather?”

  “I can’t,” said Bertil. “I have to. You would have frozen to death out there … There’s the big road.”

  The turn was so treacherous that the Volvo skidded again. On the big road, there were other cars, and at first, Anna felt safer, but then a car in front of them skidded and stopped. Bertil cursed, loudly this time. The Volvo came to a halt a few inches from the other car’s bumper.

  “Somebody was following me,” said Anna. “Out there, in Ludwigsburg, between the pines. Maybe the person who killed those two men—Lierski and Marinke. You know who I’m talking about.”

  “Do I?” Bertil asked as he waited for the other car to drive on and then stepped on the accelerator again. Somewhere ahead of them, the orange lights of a snowplow and a tow truck were blinking. One side of the road was completely filled with snow, and only one lane was open. Bertil stopped again to let a car coming from the other direction pass them.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” Anna asked.

  He shook his head. “The worst that can happen is … what? That we get stuck? That we have an accident?” He looked at her. “The worst is always death. I don’t mind that. Then I’ll die in this car with you. That would be okay.”

  “Bertil, please … watch the road.” The dog was whining behind Anna. He had crouched down, his head beneath the front tire of Anna’s bike.

  “The road!” Bertil laughed. “What does the road matter. I love you.”

  “I know,” Anna said. “But watch the damn road!”

  “You know? You don’t know anything, Anna,” Bertil murmured, turning his attention back to the road. “I’m the one who’s always there, who’ll always be there for you. But I’m always second best. I’m the freak with the thick glasses, the too-tall freak who’s too cautious, the freak who’ll never be cool. The teachers say that I’m intelligent! Intelligent? Fuck intelligent. I’ve always wanted to be something else. If I had a choice, I’d choose to look like Tannatek. You can bet I would. I don’t, though. I don’t have a choice.”

  “Bertil …”

  “People like you always end up with guys like him, and later, they’re surprised by what happens … Do what you want, Anna Leemann. Do what you think you have to do, but whatever that is, I’ll be there, in case of emergency … I hate being the safety net, nothing more than the safety net. But if I can’t be anything else, I will be that.”

  There was another snowdrift. He braked too hard, the dog howled, and the Volvo lost its grip on the road. When Anna opened her eyes again this time, the car was turned around. “Shit,” Bertil said, for the umpteenth time. “The wheels are spinning again. We gotta put something under the front tires … I’ve got a blanket in the back …”

  He jumped out, and Anna stayed behind, alone in the car, in the tiny capsule of warmth. She turned to the silver-gray dog. “He’s mad,” she whispered. “He’s absolutely mad, you know that? I should love him for this, for getting me out of the storm, for wanting to take care of me, for the very fact that he loves me … but you can’t force yourself to love somebody. And it’s true, everything he says about himself. The world is so unjust. We …”

  Bertil opened the driver’s door, and an icy gust of wind blew a handful of snowflakes into the car. “Move over!” he shouted against the storm. “Into the driver’s seat! I’ll push. You drive!”

  “I can’t drive a car!” Anna shouted back, but she slid over anyway.

  He bent into the car, put her right hand onto the clutch. “Foot onto the left pedal, first gear, gas is on the right side!” he shouted. “You’ve never done this?”

  “I did once, with Magnus …”

  “If we wait any longer, it’s going to get worse, and we might never get the car going again. Come on! I’ll push!”

  He slammed the door shut, and Anna started the engine, but the tires still didn’t have a grip on the road, and outside, the snow was turning the world into a whirling chaos.

  “Abel,” whispered Anna. “Abel, I don’t want to freeze out here with Bertil! Where are you? Where are you?”

  And all of a sudden, she knew what she wanted. Very clearly. She wanted to be with him. If she made it out of this, she would go and find him … walk, run, pedal, let the wind blow her toward him … whatever. She couldn’t forgive him, for that was impossible. The cloak of love would be forever torn, never new and beautiful again, allowing the wind to blow through the holes, making her freeze in the cold. But she would live on wearing it for she couldn’t do anything else. And he couldn’t go back to being the Abel he was before the night in the boathouse, for that wasn’t possible either. He’d have to live on wearing the memory of what he did. And still … and still.

  Magnus had been right: in love there wasn’t rationality.

  But where would she find Abel? At school, sure, tomorrow, but it was impossible to talk to him at school, where the others were watching. She accelerated again, the car seemed to want to move and didn’t. The wheels were spinning. The dog behind her was whining, a high, desperate sound.

  If we lose each other in this endless icy winter, where will we find each other? she heard the little queen ask. And she heard the answer: Where it’s spring.

  The tulips. Red tulips in white vases in the café at the beginning of the pier in Wieck. “Here, spring has already arrived,” Micha had said.

  Anna pushed the accelerator once more, and this time, the car leaped forward. She let it roll, braked, and disengaged the clutch; I can do it, she thought, I can drive; if I have to, I can do anything. She slid back into the passenger seat, and the storm blew Bertil back into the car. His dark hair was full of white snowflakes, his glasses instantly fogged up in the warmth.

  “Cheers,” he said. “That driver’s license is all yours.”

  He leaned over, and Anna knew he was hoping for a kiss. For a moment, he seemed so full of hope, so happy—she kissed him on the mouth with closed lips, quickly. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get out of this.”

  When they saw the lights of Eldena, the neon advertising of the supermarket there, the street lamps of the new housing development, Anna felt a great relief. The snowdrifts in the fields were behind them. Here, the road was a road once more.

  Anna looked at the clock on the dashboard. Five thirty. It was as dark as midnight. “Can you let me out at the bridge in Wieck?” she asked. “Linda … my mother … she meets friends at the restaurant there every Wednesday. I can go home with her.”

  “Don’t you want me to take you home?”

  “You really don’t have to,” Anna said. “Just drive me to the bridge. That way you won’t have to go into the city. You can just go around it and avoid the traffic. You live on the other side of the city, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “Okay … you’re sure your mother’s there?”

  “Absolutely sure,” Anna replied. And she was sure that her mother was there. It just depended on what was meant by “there.” In Linda’s case, “there” was a house full of blue air in Greifswald. She would never do something as weird as meet her friends in a restaurant in Wieck every Wednesday. Bertil helped her get the bike out of the back.

  “You’re soaking wet,” he said. “You should get home fast.”

  “Yes,” she said. For a moment they stood there, facing each other through the snow, freezing. The wind had subsided a little, but the snowflakes were still falling steadily, as if they wanted to cover the whole world.

  “You said someone’s been following you,” Bertil said. “Are you sure about that? Did you see anyone?”

  “Yes. No. When I turned around, there was no one … What do you think? That I imagined the whole thing?”

  “I don’t know. I think I should stay close. The safety net.”

  “Thanks,” said Anna. “Thanks for getting me out of that storm. But I don’t need a safety net.”

  “Ha,” Bertil said.

  She flung her arms around him and hugged him very tight for a very shor
t second, thinking, I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry, Bertil, but it will never be the way you want it to be. And she turned around quickly, walked toward the door of the restaurant, and leaned her bike against some patio chairs. She lingered in the waiting area of the restaurant until she heard the Volvo leave. She counted to a hundred. The warmth in that tiny room was seductive—a part of her wanted to stay, wanted to sit down, wanted to order hot tea, wanted to call Magnus and ask him to come pick her up. She didn’t stay. She stepped out into the cold again, out into the snow. She ran the whole way over the bridge, skidding, slipping, nearly losing her balance twice. She ran along the river, to its mouth, ran till she reached the café, her wet pants sticking to her legs. She saw the lights inside as she approached it—pale, white lights—it wasn’t open anymore, probably they had closed at six, maybe they’d just locked the doors now. She ran even faster.

  The chairs on the terrace, chained together, were hardly perceptible under the snow. The glass window was towering over them like a glacier. And there, on the lee side of this glacier, someone was cowering. She saw the tiny orange glow of a cigarette. A single bike stood in front of the stairs that led up to the café. Anna stumbled over her own feet, rushing up the slippery metal steps; she fell, got up again, and saw the cowering figure get up as well. For a moment she was afraid it was someone else.

  It was no one else.

  It was Abel.

  He didn’t say anything. He ground out his cigarette and stood there, waiting until she caught her breath. He looked away, out over the ice lit by the floodlight on the side wall of the café.

  “If we lose each other, we’ll meet where it’s spring,” she said, finally. “How long have you been waiting for me out here?”

  “Since Monday,” he replied. “I’ve been waiting every afternoon since Monday.”

  “Since … Monday,” she repeated. “Every single afternoon?”

  He nodded. “It was cold.”

  “And … Micha?”

  “She was with me the first two days. Sliding over the ice, watching other people ice-skating. Now she’s got this idea in her head that she needs ice skates, too. Today, she’s visiting a friend she knows from school. I … I didn’t let her go anywhere for a long time, because I was afraid somebody else would come for her and take her away … but first graders do have to visit their friends, don’t they? You can’t forbid it forever … I’m going to pick her up now. It’s just about time.”

  He hadn’t looked at her while he spoke. His voice said, I’m talking about other things so that I don’t have to talk about this one thing. But to find each other again, Anna thought, they had to talk about it. They had to try at least.

  “What happened …” she began.

  “What happened can never be undone,” he said. “I wrote that to you. I don’t know if you’ve read the letters …”

  She shook her head.

  He nodded. “That’s good. They were stupid letters. Stupid words. Useless.” And at last he did look at her. There was snow in his eyebrows. He must have been waiting a very long time, here in the cold, where spring existed only behind the glass window of the café. “I don’t ask you to forgive me. What happened is unforgivable. It’s the worst … the worst of all things. It’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen.”

  She found his hands and for a moment she pulled back from the touch, her body remembering the danger of touches. But then she took them in hers. He wasn’t wearing gloves. How many hours had he been here, waiting? How many ice-cold, endless hours?

  “So let’s not forgive,” she whispered. “Nor forget. The night will remain there. Behind us.”

  “But still you’re here.”

  “But still I’m here.”

  She opened her arms to him, but he shrank back. “I’d rather not,” he said. “You shouldn’t touch me.”

  But she took his hands in hers again and held them for a long time, and the wind blew through the cloak of torn love and she was cold, very cold. They were cold together, inside all the impossibilities of the world. Behind the window of the café, the tulips were blooming in the dark.

  “I didn’t tell anybody about that … night,” she said and felt how he nodded.

  “I kind of concluded that from the fact that I’m still alive. Your father hasn’t killed me.”

  Together, they wandered back. He pushed his bike along with one hand. She said nothing about Bertil, nothing about her insane walk in Ludwigsburg, nothing about the talk she’d had with Knaake, nothing about being followed. What she said, after a long time of silence, was, “Let’s go skating. Tomorrow, after school. With Micha.”

  And then they got onto the bus, with their bikes, because it was still impossible to ride them. The bus moved so slowly that they could have walked. It didn’t matter. They stood there, holding their bikes, without talking, and Anna leaned against Abel very lightly. He didn’t draw back this time.

  When he got out, she stayed in the bus, singing to herself silently. There was no pain in her any longer, nowhere. The cloak she had put back on had covered everything like snow.

  “My God,” Linda said when Anna came in through the door, just in time for dinner. “You’re all wet. What happened?”

  “Everything,” Anna answered, shaking her hair like a dog. “The worst and the best. I need to take a hot shower. And I need to practice the flute after dinner, and … Linda … can I ask you something? Something important?”

  “Yes.” Linda sighed. “Whatever you want.”

  “Okay,” Anna said. “Are my old ice skates still in the basement?”

  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 co
nfuse 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.