The Storyteller

  “Hey,” Hennes said in a low voice, “whose bike is our Polish peddler getting onto?”

  “That’s Anna’s bike,” Gitta replied in the same low voice. And, in a whisper, just to herself, added, “A student? You don’t say, little lamb.” She crushed the half-smoked cigarette in a sudden burst of anger. “Shit,” she said, a little too loudly. “This isn’t going to end well.”

  “Excuse me?” Hennes asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” Gitta said lightly and laughed. “The test. The final exams. Anything. What ends well in life? You got another smoke for me?”

  IN SUMMERTIME, SHIPS WERE PACKED TIGHTLY IN Wieck, where the Ryck met the sea, and the harbor was crowded with sailors and tourists. Now, in February, the village and harbor were nearly empty. Only fishing boats were left. The fish caught here were sold in Hamburg or Denmark, and the fish sold in the store a block behind the harbor came mainly from the Netherlands, delivered by trucks in the night: there seemed to be a global fish exchange.

  Little red flags on poles, markers for the fishing nets, were leaning against the boats in stacks now, the flags waving tiredly behind the falling snow. The railing of the old drawbridge was freshly painted with the white of the snow. On the bank of the river where Anna stood there was a path leading to the village of Eldena. It wound past the housing development where Gitta lived, in the house with the glass wall through which she couldn’t see the sea.

  Anna leaned Abel’s bike against the fence outside a sleepy-looking restaurant, a place caught in a limbo between open and closed. She followed the river, past fishing boats, looking for a pink down jacket. And then she saw it. Micha appeared from behind a pile of plastic boxes used to ship fish, stood there for a moment, apparently not sure what to do. It took Anna a while to figure out what the little girl was looking at: a sailboat, a single leftover pleasure craft still docked among the fishing boats. It was big and a bit clumsy looking. And dark green. Micha shook the braids so they fell down her back, and seemed to be talking to someone on board, to be calling out to someone … she was too far away for Anna to hear what she said. When the little girl stepped onto the rickety gangplank that connected the boat to the dock, Anna started running. She skidded and fell—snow on fish scales is a slippery combination, snow on dirt is, too, and there was snow in her eyes as well—got up, and ran on.

  Something was wrong. Abel hadn’t mentioned anything about Micha boarding a dark green ship. The dark green ship belonged to the fairy tale, not to the harbor of Wieck. For several seconds, Anna feared the mysterious craft would cast off and sail down the broad part of the river, right before her eyes—out to the slowly freezing sea, into a wall of snow—and that she would never see Micha again.

  The ship didn’t go anywhere, though. Anna stopped next to it. There was nobody to be seen on deck now, but she heard voices from inside the cabin. Micha’s voice and the voice of an adult. The cold carried the voices to Anna, the words clearly distinguishable now, as clear as if they’d been written on paper.

  “It doesn’t have a yellow rudder?” Micha asked.

  “No,” said the adult voice—a man’s voice. “Should it have a yellow rudder?”

  “I think so. Abel said it would. Is the ship yours? All yours?”

  “Yes, it is,” the man answered. “But if you want, it can also be yours. We could take a sailing trip on it together. This summer … if you like ships, that is.”

  “Oh, I absolutely like ships,” Micha replied. “I just don’t know if Abel will let me. In my fairy tale, I have a ship, you know, and it nearly looks like this one. But only nearly. You don’t have a … a sea lion here?”

  “A sea lion? No. None that I know of …”

  “Abel said, on the green ship, there is a sea lion. Or swimming next to it. He fetched it. The ship. Or did he build it? I don’t remember.”

  “Abel seems to say a lot,” the man said.

  “Yes,” said Micha, and she sounded proud. “He’s my brother.”

  “I know, Micha.” The man sighed. “I know.”

  “You know?” Micha asked. “Who told you? And how come you know my name?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” the man replied. “I’ve been waiting for a long, long time. I knew you would find me one day. Maybe you really can come sailing with me this summer. I have been very lonely without you.”

  In his voice, there was the sadness of all the lonely men of the earth. Anna didn’t like the taste of this sadness. There was too much cunning in it. She walked a few steps farther. The man was sitting at the stern. Micha stood beside him in her pink jacket, looking at him with big eyes, not really understanding what he meant. Anna could see that Micha felt sorry for a stranger. She was the kind of little girl who would take pity on a lonely man. She was the cliff queen, after all. She had healed the melancholy dragon.

  “You don’t know who I am, do you?” The sadness in the man’s voice moved back and forth, deep and low, like a swing hung from a very high branch of a beech tree. Or—a rope. The sadness was faked, Anna thought. Definitely.

  “No,” Micha said. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, Micha,” the man said. “My little Micha.” He pulled up the sleeve of his jacket, and Anna could see that there was a tattoo on his bicep.

  “But … that’s my name!”

  The man pulled her gently, onto his knees, onto the swing of sadness. “Of course that is your name,” he said. “I am Rainer. Do you know who Rainer is? Rainer Lierski?”

  “I’ve heard that name before,” Micha answered. “Who is that again?”

  “Your father, Micha. I am your father. I wasn’t allowed to see you for a very, very long time. They forbid me to. Your mother and … Abel. He hates me. I don’t know why. Your mother … she’s gone, isn’t she?”

  Micha nodded her head. “She’s on a trip. But she’ll be back soon.”

  “Until she comes back you could live with me,” the man said. “I have a nice, big apartment. You’d have your own room there, a nice, big room with tall windows that let in lots of light … The apartment seems very empty at the moment. It’s sad to live in an empty place all by yourself, you know.”

  Micha stood up. “No thank you,” she said politely. “I’d rather stay with Abel. Abel hasn’t gone away, you see, and he won’t, not ever, not without me. Promise not to tell my mother, but I love Abel best. Can I … can I go on a sailing trip with you, without having to move?”

  “Sure,” the man said. “I’d be happy to have you along. But you still have to think about the nice, big apartment. I happen to know your apartment. It’s really tiny. I lived there once, you know. Only for two years. But you wouldn’t remember that. You’re going there now? Home? Do you want me to come with you?”

  “I can find the way myself, thank you,” Micha said. “But … could I have a look at your ship before I go? Like … could I see what the cabin looks like from the inside? I’ve never been in the cabin of a ship.”

  “Certainly,” the man said, getting up and putting an arm around Micha. That was enough. Maybe Anna had misjudged him; after all, it wasn’t his fault that he had a name like Rainer. Maybe she was sticking her nose into something that had nothing to do with her—but just the same, she didn’t like this guy. Everything about him seemed artificial, fake, creepy: his badly tailored jeans, his sneakers, his sweater beneath his thickly padded winter vest, even his hat. Through and through, Rainer Lierski seemed to be from a sale at Aldi. Anna doubted he owned the boat. Anybody can board a ship, especially in winter when no one’s around.

  He was a liar.

  “Micha!” she called out. “Micha!”

  Micha looked up, and Rainer looked up, too. In his eyes, there was something like anger at being caught. His arm was still around Micha’s shoulders. “Who is this?” he asked.

  “Oh, that is Anna.” Micha sounded as if it was the most natural thing in the world that Anna was here, as if she’d known Anna for years, which made Anna hurt with a strange pain from deep inside
.

  “You forgot your key!” she said. “I’ve got it with me! I’ll explain it to you later. Come on! It’s cold!”

  “I just wanna look at the cabin!” Micha said. “I’ll come after that!”

  “No!” Anna almost shouted. “You’re coming now. Right now.” She put as much authority into her voice as she could muster. It wasn’t enough.

  “In a minute!” Micha said.

  “Now!”

  “It won’t take long, I promise!”

  Rainer Lierski looked around as if someone might be watching them. Then he stepped forward to the dark green railing. “Anna,” he said. “So you are Anna. And who is this Anna who thinks she can tell my daughter what to do? Who are you?”

  Anna cleared her throat. Who was she? A girl inside a bubble. The daughter of Magnus and Linda Leemann, from a nice district of Greifswald, from a house of blue air. High school student in her last year, musician, English au pair to be. Gitta’s squeaky-clean little lamb. No. She was someone who didn’t know yet who she was or would be. She cleared her throat again. Rainer in his cheap, ugly sweater from the Aldi sale frightened her more than Abel did. Micha had slipped away from him, but he pulled her back with his long arm and pressed her against his side. “She is my daughter,” he repeated.

  “No,” Anna said. “No, she isn’t. Maybe … maybe in a biological sense.”

  Rainer snorted. Micha looked from Anna to him and back again, uncertain. “And I don’t believe,” Anna challenged, “that this is your ship.”

  “Of course it is,” Rainer said in a low, sharp voice, and his tone confirmed Anna’s suspicions. “Abel sent you, didn’t he? You can tell him that I know about Michelle. She isn’t coming back, that one. Gone for good. Run away. I’ll take care of my daughter like every father should. And if he wants to hear that from me in person, he can come himself.”

  His arm was still bared, and Anna saw him flex his muscles under his tattoo. And then she knew. She knew what it was she had to say. She found the ace up her sleeve.

  “Micha,” she said, “do you remember what the white mare told you? Before the island sank?”

  She saw Rainer’s expression glide into incomprehension. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked angrily. “What is this? Some kind of stupid code?”

  “The white mare?” Micha asked. “She said I’d die … oh, that part was horrible … and that I must run fast, to the highest cliff … and if I meet a man who’s wearing my name …”

  Anna pointed to Rainer’s bicep. The word “Micha” was tattooed across it in big, dark blue letters. Micha understood. For someone who was only six years old, she understood quickly.

  “I … gotta go now,” she said and pulled free from Rainer a second time, this time for good. “I’ll look at the cabin another day. Good-bye.”

  “Wait!” Rainer shouted, but Micha was racing along the deck, quick as a weasel; she bounded out of the ship like a small rubber ball, and took the hand Anna held out to her.

  “Let’s run together,” Anna said. “Whoever gets to the bridge first wins. One, two …”

  And then they ran. Anna let Micha win. She didn’t turned around until they had reached the drawbridge. Rainer wasn’t following them.

  “Anna?” Micha asked, trying to catch her breath. “Is it true? Did Abel send you?”

  “Yes,” Anna said. “He lent me his bike. And you shouldn’t believe a word of what that man said, do you hear me? Michelle … your mother … she will be back soon, I’m sure of it. I know it, because … because Abel told me. I’ll take you home.”

  “But the ship,” Micha said, already perched on the carrier of the bike. “Anna, the ship … it was nice, wasn’t it? And, actually, he was nice, too. Maybe he would have given me candy, down there in the cabin. He looked like someone who would have candy.”

  “Exactly,” Anna said, shivering. “That’s what he looked like.”

  Secretly she wondered if Michelle would come back. Abel didn’t think so. Rainer didn’t think so. Did they know more about Michelle’s whereabouts than they cared to admit?

  Anna could have just dropped off Micha at the right tower block. Given her the key. Waved good-bye. Gone back to school for the second half of music class. Or gone home. She could have said, “Don’t let anybody in” and “Abel will be here in a moment,” or a thousand other things.

  Instead, she said, “Is it okay if I come up with you and make lunch?”

  The blocks with entrances 18, 19, and 20 were on one side of a huge courtyard, where dead grass had turned to winter mud. Anna felt hundreds of pairs of eyes watching her through hundreds of curtained windows around the courtyard as she waited for Micha to answer. Hundreds of pairs of eyes and hundreds of minds wondering what she was doing here, where she so obviously didn’t belong.

  “Can you do that?” Micha asked. “Make lunch?”

  Anna laughed. “I am guessing you have something I can make lunch with, right? It can’t be too hard.”

  Micha frowned as she unlocked the main door of tower number 18. “Mama couldn’t … she couldn’t make lunch. She always forgot, anyway; or she had other things to do or other places to go.” Then she added hastily, “But she was nice. She should come back.”

  “She’ll come back,” Anna said softly. “Definitely. Just not today.”

  The staircase was dark and narrow, the concrete steps old and gray and full of muddy footprints. The banister didn’t look like anything anyone should touch. Micha didn’t touch it. There was no elevator—seven floors without an elevator! Good exercise, Anna thought sarcastically, cheaper than a gym.

  Micha and Abel lived on the fourth floor. There were windows in the staircase; on the second floor, the window had broken—or been broken by somebody. On the fourth floor, there was a dead potted palm on the windowsill, the kind of houseplant that doesn’t belong to anybody in particular, a stray plant, so to speak, dead of thirst in the end without anybody noticing. When Anna passed the plant, a door downstairs opened, and someone called up, “Micha? Is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me!” Micha called back, and to Anna, in a low voice, she said, “That’s Mrs. Ketow. I don’t like her. She has three little kids … they’re not really her kids. They’re always crying and screaming, and then she starts screaming, too, and it’s very loud in her place.”

  “Your mother come back?” Mrs. Ketow bellowed.

  A fat arm in a striped tracksuit top, draped across the banister on the ground floor, was all that Anna saw of Mrs. Ketow.

  “No,” Micha said. “This is Anna.”

  “And who is Anna?” Mrs. Ketow shouted. “Is she taking care of you now?”

  Micha didn’t answer. She hurried and unlocked the door of the apartment. Anna followed behind her and stepped into the odor of old damp carpets and ancient gas heating.

  “You have to put your shoes here,” Micha said. “See that picture? I made that. That one, too.” The wall was covered with her artwork. Micha could draw apple trees but not horses. She could draw houses with only one room but not canopy beds. She could do sea lions but not men. “This one here in the kitchen, I just drew it yesterday,” she said proudly, pulling Anna into a room that wasn’t much bigger than a bathroom. Above the gas stove, there was a picture of some kind of round thing with a lot of confusing pencil lines inside, lines that didn’t seem to know where they wanted to go.

  “That’s the diamond,” Micha explained. “The heart, remember? The heart of the little cliff queen.”

  The kitchen was tidy, yet it made Anna sad. There was the same desolateness she felt in Micha’s schoolyard on Friday, after everyone had gone home. The pictures, obvious attempts to overcome the bleakness, only served to emphasize it. The thin veneer of the cupboards on the wall was peeling at the edges, exposing the bare chipboard beneath. A handful of faded photos were stuck to the door of the wheezing fridge. They couldn’t possibly be as old as they looked. Anna glanced at a picture of a boy, probably about twelve years old, hold
ing a small girl in his arms, stubbornly looking away from the camera. There were more pictures of the girl, on a playground, as a pink-clad baby in a carrier, standing in line with some other kids from a kindergarten group. There were no photos of their mother. Anna turned away. She located flour and eggs and a pan; she found sugar and oil. She ended up making pancakes on the gas stove while Micha sat on top of the counter watching her. Legs pulled up and back bent, she was perfectly formed to fit under the overhanging cupboard.

  “Abel,” she said, “always flips them in the air.”

  “And today,” Anna said, “he nearly missed a test. But I didn’t let him.”

  “Those will get burned,” Micha cautioned, leaning forward. “Doesn’t matter, though. When I’m alone, I eat bread and butter. Anna, I’m still thinking about Rainer. Is he really my father or isn’t he? ‘Biological,’ you said. What’s that mean?”

  “That means …” Anna scraped the blackened pancake off the pan, “that your mother and he …”

  “I see,” Micha said. “That he fucked her?” Then she quickly put her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell Abel I said that word,” she whispered. “He pretends that I don’t know it.”

  “Do you know what it means?” Anna asked.

  “Well … not really.”

  “You’ll learn eventually,” Anna said. “Someday. When I learn how to make proper pancakes. If I ever do. Do you have jam?”

  “Strawberry,” Micha offered.

  They sat in the living room, which was as tidy and dreary as the kitchen, at a tiny, dark table, on a gray corduroy couch leftover from the sixties or seventies, probably scavenged. Next to the couch there was a huge old TV. The wallpaper was bubbling. The pattern of mustard-colored flowers was typical of the German Democratic Republic. Probably worth something by now, Anna thought, if you could get it down in one piece.

  The strawberry jam was 110 percent chemicals and 2 percent artificial sweetener. Micha ate three pancakes, black edges and all, and, in the process, managed to distribute the jam over most of her grinning face. “You can make those more often,” she said approvingly.