The Storyteller

  “This is bullshit,” Abel said. “Go away.”

  “I thought it was a matter of price,” Bertil said in a very low voice.

  “What do they usually pay you? I’ve got money, you know. Enough. You’d be my chance to find out something about myself. If I … until now, I thought I was … you understand …”

  “Yeah,” Abel said. “I understand. But I’m not interested.”

  “But you do go home with guys, don’t you?”

  For a moment there was nothing but the broadband noise of the recording and the background music.

  “It is,” Abel said finally, “a matter of price.”

  At this, Gitta got up and ran out. Anna sat there completely motionless. She’d turned to stone; she couldn’t move. She didn’t understand, yet she understood everything.

  Gitta knew she should have reacted more quickly. The sheer surprise had paralyzed her. Paralyzed her like Anna, or like Abel, who’d still been sitting, frozen, at his desk when she’d raced out. Never had Gitta run down the school corridors so fast, but she knew she wasn’t fast enough. Where was the damn secretary? Had she left Bertil alone with the microphone and walked out to do something else? That was the only possible explanation … Bertil was insane … insane … he was insane! Gitta forced herself to run even faster. Why didn’t anybody else do anything? Why was she the only one running? Why had no one tried to stop this announcement? It was reverberating from all the speakers in the school, and by this point everyone knew it had nothing whatsoever to do with the school play. She stumbled, recovered her balance, and raced up another flight of stairs, along another corridor …

  “Bertil,” Abel’s voice said through the speakers, blurred by the bad recording. Cell phone, Gitta thought. Bertil recorded this with a cell phone. Inconspicuously, secretly. He’s not stupid.

  “Bertil, I don’t know what it is you expect. I don’t do this on a daily basis. I’m not a … how do you call it? Not a professional. To find someone like that, someone who can … help you find out about yourself … show you stuff … for that, you’d have to go to Berlin or, I dunno, Rostock. Some bigger city. What I do is something that just … it happens when the opportunity arises. When someone asks me. And it’s usually older guys.”

  “What are you?” Bertil asked. “Bi?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Abel said. “But no. I’m one hundred percent straight.”

  “I don’t get it … you only go with guys.”

  “It’s a market. And it’s a matter of price. It’s not so hard to clench one’s teeth if it means money. Even though you probably wouldn’t understand that.” Abel’s voice was bitter like bile.

  “So, okay, thanks,” Bertil said. “I’m as one hundred percent straight as you. What I just said was … not totally honest, I’m afraid. It was more of a test. I just wanted to know. I mean, I did know—I’ve been watching you, but I wanted to hear it from you.”

  “So you’re happy now?” Abel asked. “You know, I almost felt sorry for you. Do we understand each other? You’re not gonna tell anybody about this conversation, right?”

  “Of course not,” Bertil answered. “I’m not suicidal.”

  But he obviously was, Gitta thought. Even though he’d kept his promise. Technically, he hadn’t spoken to anyone about this conversation. He’d just played the recording …

  When Gitta flung open the door, he was standing next to the secretary’s desk, alone, the cell phone in one hand, leaning forward and speaking one last sentence into the microphone, “I just thought,” he said, “that somebody should tell Anna.”

  Then Gitta’s fist landed in his face.

  But it was too late. She knew it was much too late.

  Anna turned. She was the last to turn. Everyone else had turned during Bertil’s announcement—they were all looking at Abel, every single one of them. The math teacher was standing at the blackboard and looking at him, too. She seemed absolutely helpless, as if she knew she had to say something. But what could she say?

  Abel stood up and left. Without a word. He walked through the aisle between the desks, his eyes lowered to the floor. He closed the door behind him very quietly, and somewhere a second door closed behind him, the school door, possibly forever. He walked across the schoolyard. They saw him walk away, leave a world he’d never really been part of. They saw him pull his hat down low and get onto his bike. He forgot the Walkman’s earplugs. Maybe, Anna thought, he didn’t need them anymore; maybe the white noise had finally made it into his head.

  She stuffed her books into her backpack and stood up. She felt that she was now the one the others were staring at. Some of them were whispering. Frauke threw her a glance so full of pity she could have thrown up. She covered her face with her hands, just for a moment, and took a deep breath. Then she walked down the aisle like Abel had, but she didn’t look down at the floor. She made herself look at the others, even at the teacher, at every single person in the room. Some of them averted their eyes. She walked upright, her head held high.

  She walked through the corridors of the school with her head still held high, she left the building with her head held high, she pushed her bike through the slush in the schoolyard with her head held high. She rode out to Wieck, rode over the old bridge, rode along the harbor till she reached the mouth of the river. Near the café, she got off her bike and walked out to the pier with her head held high.

  She saw that the ice was melting away. She saw that the bald coots were swimming in open water again, in the shipping channel, where the ice had first disappeared. She saw the dirty white swans. And suddenly, her legs gave way. She grabbed onto the white painted railing in order not to fall. She didn’t hold her head high anymore. She doubled up with something that wasn’t pain but was. Crouched down, she waited for the tears to come, but there weren’t any. She cried without tears.

  She understood now. She understood so much.

  She remembered how Abel had opened the door of the apartment, wearing a T-shirt, his hair tousled, and how he hadn’t let her in. She remembered the words he’d said. Can I come with you? No, Anna. Where I’m going now, you can’t come. I still have to go out … what I do is something that just … it happens when the opportunity arises. How often had the opportunity arisen since she’d known him? Which nights had he been standing in front of a bar, selling the fairy-tale fur of the white cats—and which nights had he been selling himself? Which mornings had he slept through literature class, with his head on his arms, because he’d gone with someone in the night, someone who’d paid the right price? She’d never thought that these things actually happened, not here, not in this tiny city. Maybe in Chicago, she heard Magnus say.

  “Of all the ways to earn money,” she whispered. “Abel, why did it have to be that one? Because the opportunity arose? When? When did you start to clench your teeth and is it …? Is it a symbol? A symbol of how far you’d go for the little queen? How far you’d go across the ice? You know, there’ll come a point … a point at which the ice will break …”

  She thought of the darkness in the boathouse. Of the broken flashlight. She started to understand what had happened that night. It had been a kind of revenge, revenge for all the clenching of teeth he’d had to do. Revenge taken on the wrong person.

  Maybe she’d really been the first woman … that was an amazing idea.

  When she closed her eyes now she saw images she didn’t want to see, images of cheap pornography. It’s usually older guys. Usually. Could you get used to anything? Did everything become a kind of routine in the end? She opened her eyes.

  Gitta, she thought. Gitta had known, right from the beginning. Gitta had kept her mouth shut. But now … now the whole school knew. And when he’d left, it looked as if he’d left for good.

  She had to find him.

  Bertil landed on the floor between the big desk and the wall, trapped, and Gitta stood over him for a moment, looking down on him. There was something like a delicate smile on his face. Behind
them, the door opened. Gitta looked up. The secretary, who should never have left in the first place, came back in and stood there, confused and a little frightened.

  Gitta turned back to Bertil. “My God, you’re sick,” she said. “Absolutely sick … insane. The only person you’ve exposed and unmasked with this is yourself.”

  “I have seen to it that the truth is brought to light,” Bertil answered.

  “Yeah, that’s what you did all right,” Gitta said. “And the truth is that you’re sick.” He was still lying on the floor below her—like an injured insect, fallen on its back—and rage boiled up inside her. She lifted her foot—and stopped. “No,” she said, “oh no. You’re not even worth kicking. I hope they throw you out of this school.”

  She slammed the door behind her and found herself standing in front of the headmaster and a couple of teachers. “Do it,” she said to them. “Throw him out. Expel him. Save the expense of the paper on which you’d have printed his diploma.”

  The headmaster grabbed her arm before she could walk away. “What’s really going on here?” he asked. “Is that story true? And whom are you talking about? Tannatek?”

  “Abel?” Gitta asked and snorted. “Abel has expelled himself from school today. You’ll never see him again. Me? I’m talking about Bertil Hagemann.”

  On the fourth floor of 18 Amundsen Street, nobody opened the door. Not even Mrs. Ketow came out when Anna passed her door. She’d heard her voice, amid the screaming and shouting of fighting children somewhere in her apartment. Mrs. Ketow had given up on Micha, Anna thought. She’d sailed back to her own island in a gondola beneath a balloon, that faded and worn-out island with its forest of too-orderly shelves and its pastures of colorless, cheerless, and comfortless wall-to-wall carpeting.

  Behind the door with Tannatek on the nameplate, everything was very quiet.

  Abel didn’t answer his cell phone. She rode back to the city, rode up and down the cobblestone streets, searching without a lead to follow. She didn’t find him. For a moment, she thought he would be sitting on a chair next to Knaake’s bed in the ICU, but nobody was sitting there. Knaake lay still, with his eyes closed, beneath the silent green line of his heartbeat.

  “Did you know?” Anna whispered. “About Abel? Was that what you’d found out and wanted to tell me?” And what if something else had happened between the two of them … between Abel and his teacher? No. Oh no, surely not. She refused to imagine it. She left the hospital to get rid of the thought.

  She rode out to the Seaside District again, this time to Micha’s elementary school. The schoolyard was empty. Idiot, she scolded herself. She should have come here right away. Now, it was twelve thirty, much too late; he’d picked up Micha long ago. He still didn’t answer the phone.

  “They’re on an outing,” she whispered into the thaw, into the air in the abandoned schoolyard. “On the island of Rügen. Or anywhere. They’ll be back. When they were gone last time, they came back. They’ll turn up somewhere, of course they will.”

  What had also turned up back then was Marinke’s dead body. What was it Bertil had said? I’m not that suicidal.

  She’d kept his number—why? She hesitated. But then she finally called him. The phone rang for a long time, and her knees went all wobbly … she reached his mailbox. She didn’t leave a message. She got back onto her bike and rode home, slowly.

  When she parked her bike near the front door, her phone rang.

  She grabbed it without looking at the display. “Yes?”

  “Anna,” said Bertil. “You called me; I saw your number …”

  “Yeah,” she said, relieved, and inhaled the warm air deeply. “I just wanted to know if you, if …” What should she say? If you’re still alive?

  “I’m sorry,” Bertil said, “for what I’ve done. Maybe it wasn’t the right way to … I just wanted the truth to be known.”

  “I want the truth, too,” Anna said, and suddenly, she felt light, weightless even. “And I know the truth now. I know who didn’t shoot Lierski and Marinke.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Was it you?”

  “Me? Have you lost your mind completely?”

  “That description better suits someone else in this conversation,” she said. “Just tell me if you shot them.”

  “Sure, I run around at night shooting people I don’t even know,” Bertil replied with a weird laugh. “Now, that’s logical.”

  “How did you know that Marinke was shot at night?”

  “I just assumed he was. In daylight, it would have been too hard to shoot someone at the beach of Eldena without a witness, wouldn’t it? But, Anna. I have nothing at all to do with this mess. The only person I know who’s connected to all three of them is Tannatek.”

  “Three,” said Anna. “So you know it’s three …”

  “Knaake’s accident … it’s all over school. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “He fell through the ice.”

  “He did?”

  “Bertil.” She nearly laughed. “Isn’t it strange? Everything you do achieves the exact opposite of what you intend. That car ride in the snow, for instance … you wanted to prove to me that I need you to save me, but you made me afraid of you. And now … now I know that Abel hasn’t shot anybody. I wasn’t sure until now, but now I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re talking to me at this very moment. Because you’re still alive after what you’ve done.”

  She hung up on him and unlocked the front door.

  There were voices coming from the living room. She stood there, listening. One of the voices was Linda’s, but the other one didn’t belong. It was the high-pitched voice of a young woman … Anna recognized it, but she couldn’t remember where from. She put away her coat and shoes and followed the voices.

  Micha’s teacher with the unpronounceable name was sitting on the sofa, next to Linda.

  “Anna,” Linda said. “This is my daughter.”

  “I know.” Mrs. Milowicz managed a strained smile. “We’ve already met.”

  The hand she reached out to Anna was smooth and cool. “What happened?” Anna asked.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Linda said.

  “No!” Anna felt panicked. “I want to know what happened!”

  Then she sat down, or rather dropped down into one of the armchairs, and stared at Micha’s teacher. She was so young, so blond, her light green blouse so springlike, and, all of sudden, Anna wondered what Michelle had looked like. She’d never seen a picture of her.

  “Why don’t you say something?” Anna asked. “Say something! Please! Where … where are they?”

  “Where are who … what?” Mrs. Milowicz asked.

  “Micha told her she lives here,” Linda explained. “It sounds like a white lie. Mrs. Milowicz has been asking her for her address so she could speak with Micha’s mother, and this is where she’s ended up.”

  “That’s … all?” Anna asked.

  Mrs. Milowicz nodded and blew a crumb from her spring-green blouse. “I’m worried about her. Her brother, who seems to take care of her, well he’s … well, he’s a little scary, to be honest. I find him a bit threatening. And the way he shields his little sister from … everyone … from me, for instance … in private, I mean … that is … I don’t know. It’s strange. But you’d know more. You know him. Your mother told me that … he might just make a bad impression … and that my worries are unnecessary.”

  Anna looked at Linda. Thank you, she thought. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  The light-green spring blouse wriggled into a light-green spring coat in the front hall. There was even a light-green spring hat made of felt and adorned with a blue flower. Micha’s teacher was pretty in her spring clothes. Anna would’ve liked to have had such a teacher, back then, when she’d been six years old. Not anymore, though, she thought.

  “I also planned to talk to Abel’s teacher,” Mrs. Milowicz said. “We had an appointment. But he didn’t s
how up.”

  “No,” said Anna.

  And then the door shut behind her, behind the burst of light-green spring.

  “Thank you,” Anna said to Linda, aloud now. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “And what,” Linda asked, “is going on now?”

  It took her all afternoon to explain. The words were too hard to say. She almost wished that Gitta were there so that she could tell Linda; Gitta had no problem with hard words.

  “Gitta would say …” she whispered in the end, “that he’s a hustler.”

  “I’d use another word,” Linda offered. “In the movies, he’d be known as a gigolo …”

  “No,” Anna said and looked down at the floor. “A gigolo is someone you call if you’re a woman, someone who provides a service in a professional way and doesn’t have a problem doing it … someone who may even have fun with you … especially in the movies. It’s not so negative, is it? This is different. It’s only guys, older guys. And we’re talking about someone who’s not gay. And I don’t know when he started the whole thing. It’s possible that he’s been doing it for a long time … He’s seventeen, Linda, like me … it’s all so wrong. It’s not so difficult to clench your teeth, he said, it’s not so difficult …”

  Linda tried to pull her into her arms, but Anna got up and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But please, don’t touch me. Not now. I have to find him, Linda. I have to find him, but I don’t know where to look anymore.”

  She stood at the window of her room for a long time and watched the drops fall outside. Right now, in the forest, she thought, the first anemones would be blossoming in the melting snow. She hadn’t told Linda anything about the boathouse, and she never would. She’d never tell anybody.

  When it was dark, Linda came in, silently as always, nearly invisible. “Anna,” she said. “Just one thing. Your father … I’m not going to tell him anything about this. And maybe it’s better if you don’t either.”