The Storyteller

by Antonia Michaelis

  “What are you studying?” the other one asked. “I haven’t seen you before.”

  “Gardening, third semester,” Anna murmured, and a strange thought popped up in her head. I’m collecting male students. Gitta’d be surprised.

  When she finished cleaning up and went to put the pieces of the cup into the trash, someone took the dustpan from her. But it wasn’t one of the students she’d been talking to—it was someone in a green military parka.

  “Abel?” she asked, sounding as surprised as possible. She looked from Abel to Micha, who stood next to him with her fresh cup of hot chocolate and a broad grin—and back to Abel. “What a small world. Are you … is this … your sister?”

  One of the guys who’d been helping her placed a coffee tray in her hands. “You better take this and go now,” he said. “Otherwise, our friend at the counter will totally lose it.” Anna smiled a thank-you. Now I’m stuck with one of these students, she thought, and Abel will leave. Maybe that’s better anyway … but Abel didn’t leave.

  “You’ll get the money back,” he said. “Thank you. I didn’t see what happened exactly …”

  “Oh, some stupid thing with the straws,” Anna answered. “Forget about the money. You must be … Micha?”

  Micha nodded.

  “Is your doll okay?” Anna asked politely. “She was lost at our school. Underneath a sofa. I found her, accidentally.”

  “Mrs. Margaret,” Micha said. “Yes, I think she’s fine. She’s at home now. We’re not allowed to bring dolls to school, and anyway she always wants too much dessert when we come to the dining hall. Can I keep my euro then, for ice cream?”

  “Sure,” Anna said.

  “No way,” Abel shook his head. “You’ll give that euro to Anna. Now.” And to Anna he said, “Take it. We’re against antiauthoritarian education here.”

  “What?” Anna asked, confused, and then they both followed Micha, who’d worked the small wonder of discovering an empty table. And Abel asked, “Why are you wearing a head scarf?”

  “Oh, this, well, um,” Anna said and took it off. “It’s … uh, kind of a replacement for a hat I lost and … um, it’s a long story. So, um, have you seen Gitta? We were supposed to meet here and she’s fifteen minutes late …”

  Abel looked around, but of course there was no Gitta. “Hmm, I guess I’ll have to keep waiting,” Anna said. “Does Micha have enough straws for her hot chocolate now?”

  “Five. I’ll tell her that she shouldn’t—”

  “Tell her that she can bend them when they’re warm,” Anna said quickly. “You can curl them like hair. And make people, too. But I guess she knows that already.” With those words, she sat down at the next table—even though there was room for her at the table that Micha had found.

  She took a yellow paperback from her backpack: Faust II, one of the books they had to read before finals. As she opened the thin pages with the tiny letters on them, she thought about a small island in a blood-red sea. She didn’t read Faust II. She hadn’t really planned to. Instead, she listened to the conversation at the table behind her, just as she’d done before. Eventually, Anna thought, her ears would turn around and slowly migrate to the back of her head. And what would that look like?

  “Go on,” Micha said. “I will make a cliff with this straw. The island reappeared the next day, didn’t it? And the mare was still there and everything, right?”

  “No. The little cliff queen sat on her cliff for a long time, shivering in the cold. When dawn broke, the sea was blue once more. But the sun that rose over the sea that day was a cold winter sun, and it didn’t warm the little queen.

  “‘Mrs. Margaret,’ the little queen said. ‘Maybe we’ll die.’ Mrs. Margaret said nothing. She always listened but never spoke. ‘I don’t know what it feels like to die,’ the little queen went on. ‘Nobody ever explained death to me. Not the birds and not the white mare, either. I think they were afraid to talk about it …’ At that moment the water next to the cliff stirred. The little cliff queen grew frightened. A dark round head emerged from the waves, a head with whiskers and glittering sea eyes.

  “‘Who are you?’ the little queen asked. ‘Are you death?’

  “‘No,’ the something in the sea said, and then he laughed a deep, bass laugh. ‘Death is much bigger than I am. I am a sea lion. Or let’s say: I am the sea lion. The others swam away so long ago that I don’t remember if there were others.’

  “‘What is a sea lion?’ the little cliff queen asked and leaned forward to see the creature better.

  “‘A sea lion is something that knows the depths,’ the sea lion answered. ‘Something that can swim for miles on end without getting tired. Something that comes from the sea and always returns to the sea. But these descriptions are useless, for there are many creatures who can swim miles on end without getting tired. What a sea lion really is, a sea lion can never know. The others—they can learn it, but he cannot. You can learn it, maybe, if you stay with me.’

  “‘But I can’t swim miles on end!’ the little queen sighed. ‘I will drown.’

  “‘You don’t have to swim,’ said the sea lion. ‘You own a ship. It’s been lying in the water waiting for you since you were born; it lies hidden in a secret cove, and I have been watching over it. I saved it last night. I pushed it away from the edge of the cliff with my nose so that it wouldn’t be destroyed by the falling rocks. But even I couldn’t do anything to save the island or the apple trees or the poor white mare. I will bring you your ship now and show you how to catch the breeze in its white sails. You must trust me, though. We have to reach the mainland before winter comes. On the mainland, you will be safe.’

  “‘Safe from what?’ asked the little queen.

  “The sea lion didn’t answer. He swam out a little and disappeared around the next cliff and then returned, pushing the little ship with his flippers. It was green like the summer meadows on the sunken island had been; its three white sails were white like the bed covers of the sunken canopy bed; and the rudder was yellow like the pears on the sunken pear trees.

  “‘Come aboard,’ the sea lion said.

  “So the little queen jumped onto the ship’s deck. Its planks were golden brown like the floor planks of the sunken castle. From the water, the sea lion told her how to raise the sails and steer the ship, and, as the white sails gathered the wind, the ship moved out to sea.

  “The little queen stood at the stern with Mrs. Margaret in her arms and watched the last cliffs of the island disappear.

  “‘I’ll never see my island again,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll never lie in the canopy bed and watch the stars again. I’ll never ride through a field of summer flowers on the white mare again …’

  “‘There will be other summer flowers on the mainland,’ said the sea lion. ‘Flowers more beautiful than the ones on your island. There will be other white mares.’

  “‘But none of them will be my white mare,’ the little queen said.

  “She wanted to cry, but then she spied another ship just over the horizon. A ship a lot bigger than hers. And suddenly, she shivered, even though her down jacket had dried by now. The big ship was all black, as if it had been cut from construction paper. It had black sails and a black hull, black lines and a black cabin.

  “‘Those are the hunters,’ the sea lion said. ‘They hunt by day and by night, in the rain and the wind. Don’t turn to look at them too often, little queen.’

  “‘What is it they want?’ the little queen whispered. ‘What are they after?’

  “‘They are after you,’ the sea lion replied. ‘There is something you should know. Your heart, little queen … it’s not like other hearts. It’s a diamond. Pure and white and big and valuable like no other diamond in the world. Should someone pluck this diamond from your breast, it would shine as brightly as the sun.’

  “‘But it’s not possible to pluck it from my breast, is it?’ the little queen asked.

  “‘No,’ the sea lion said. ‘Not as l
ong as you are alive.’”

  IT WAS QUIET THEN. OF COURSE, IT WASN’T REALLY quiet. Dozens of people were talking and laughing, and because they were young people, they were talking loudly. Plates clinked against each other; the door of the ladies’ room slammed shut; the pages of books, of notepads, of newspapers were turned. Jackets were put on or off with a rustle; here someone sneezed; there someone blew his nose noisily; two people were kissing; and someone had turned up the volume of his MP3 player too loud.

  But still it was quiet. The silence at the table behind Anna muffled every other noise in this whole lively, chaotic, bustling student universe. It was the silence of a story ending. It wouldn’t go on here; the period at the end of that last sentence had been definitive—a well-thought-out cliff-hanger.

  Then Micha broke the silence. “She won’t die, will she?” she asked. “She will reach the mainland, right? Do you think she will? Before it’s too late?”

  Anna waited for an answer from Abel, but none came. “Tell me!” Micha said with fearful impatience. “What do you think? You listened, too, didn’t you!”

  Only then did Anna understand that it wasn’t Abel Micha had asked. It was her. She thought about acting like she hadn’t listened at all and that she didn’t know what the little girl was talking about. She thought about it for a split second but realized it was no good. Micha’s question was too direct, too innocent, too loud. She turned to look, but not into Micha’s face—into Abel’s. He’d been sitting with his back to her. Now he turned and he was too close, much too close. The blues of their eyes, his and Micha’s, were not the same. His eyes were colder. Their cold was the cold of a deep freezer, an artificial and necessary cold—necessary to keep something functioning. Cold that needed energy. He didn’t smile.

  “Tell me!” Micha repeated from the other side of the little round table.

  “I admit, I was listening,” Anna said and tried to smile. “What I’m reading is not especially … comprehensible. Besides, Gitta doesn’t seem to be coming,” she added. “That is why I listened. Was it … was it a secret story?”

  Micha looked from Anna to Abel, suddenly worried. “Is it a secret story?” she wanted to know.

  Abel didn’t say anything.

  And because something had to be said, Anna said, “No. I don’t think she will die, no way. She’s going to make it. The sea lion will help her.”

  “But what can a sea lion do against a huge black ship full of diamond hunters?” Micha asked, not without logic.

  “Well, it’s a fairy tale, isn’t it? Maybe the sea lion can … change.”

  “Change? Into what?”

  Anna shook her head. “It’s not my fairy tale. I can’t tell you how it will end. I’m not in it.”

  She put Faust II back in her bag and stood up. “I don’t think Gitta’s going to make it, and I can’t spend all day waiting for her. I need to get going.”

  Abel got up from his chair as well. “We’re also leaving. Micha? Take the empty cup back.”

  “But not the straws,” Micha said and held them up, five brightly colored straws, bent in the heat, twisted into knots, into … something.

  “I made a sea lion,” she said.

  Anna nodded. “I see.”

  They left the cafeteria together, then passed through the revolving door and out into the cold. And Anna kept thinking, he hates the fact that I listened. He hates it. He hates me, maybe. He knows I’m spying on him.

  Outside, Abel stood at the top of the steps in front of the dining hall while Micha ran sliding over the frozen puddles—back and forth, back and forth …

  Anna stood there, too, not knowing what to do. Abel took a pouch of tobacco and some papers out of his pocket and started rolling a cigarette, but he stared at her the whole time, and she couldn’t leave with him watching her. It was like leaving in the middle of a conversation.

  “You don’t smoke, do you?” Abel asked. She shook her head and he lit up.

  Micha kept sliding.

  “Abel,” Anna said, finally. “Abel Saint-Exupéry.”

  “Yeah, it was a bit too much like Saint-Ex,” Abel said, as if he knew Saint-Exupéry personally.

  Anna nodded. “Literally. Nearly. ‘None of them will be my white mare …’”

  “The rose in Saint-Exupéry. Of course. I couldn’t predict that you’d be listening.”

  “I didn’t come to listen,” Anna said and thought, Well, that’s the lie of the day. “I … had to listen. It … is a wonderful story. Where do you get all those words from? All those pictures?”

  “From reality,” Abel said. “That’s all we got.”

  She realized he wasn’t wearing the black hat. The sunlight caught his thick blond hair. He stood straighter than he did in the schoolyard. And suddenly he was near, not physically but mentally. “Literature,” Anna began. “Lit class. Not that it’s important …”

  “It is important,” he said. “That is why I am in literature class. That is what I want to do. Tell stories. Not only to Micha. Later—I want to …” He stopped. “That … about Micha … it’s no one’s business. And the stories aren’t either.”

  “Yes,” she said. “No. What about Micha?”

  Abel contemplated the glowing tip of his cigarette. “That isn’t your business either.”

  “Okay,” she said. But she didn’t leave.

  Abel tossed the half-smoked cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. “What if I tell you that I’m not her brother but her father?” He laughed suddenly. “You can stop calculating … Not in the biological sense. I’m taking care of her. There are too many bad things out there. Somebody has to take care of her. You know I miss a lot of classes. Now you know why.”

  “But … your real father …?” Anna asked.

  He shook his head. “Haven’t seen mine for fifteen years. Micha’s got a different father. I don’t know where that guy is, but it’s possible he’ll turn up sooner or later, when he learns that Michelle has disappeared. Our mother. He’ll come looking for Micha then. And I know two people who won’t be at home.”

  Anna looked at him, questioningly. “Don’t ask,” he said. “There are some things you don’t want to know.” And suddenly he grabbed Anna’s arm, hard. “Don’t tell anyone at school about Micha,” he said. “Not even Gitta. None of those friends of yours. If you tell anyone …”

  “You don’t know me,” Anna said. She didn’t try to pull her arm free because she knew that that was what he expected. She held still. Her fear of him had drowned in the sea he had invented, with the island and the white mare and the castle with one single room. Strange.

  “You have no clue,” she repeated. “I don’t hang out with those people much. They’re not my friends. And … Abel? Put the hat back on. You look much more frightening when you’re wearing your black hat.”

  Later, she lay on her bed and looked out the window, down into the backyard garden. The rose was still in bloom.

  She had just walked out. She had made the comment about the hat and walked out. She hadn’t even said good-bye to Micha; she had behaved like some stupid girl in a chick flick.

  But she had been so angry that he thought she was like the others. Of course, she was like the others—a little. Surely everybody was, at eighteen. But how could she avoid telling Gitta …

  She grabbed the phone off the antique nightstand she had once, on a too-gray day, painted green. She dialed Gitta’s number—to get it over with.

  “Gitta?” she said. “Remember we were talking about Abel?”

  “Who?”

  “Tannatek. Abel is his first name … whatever. And you said maybe it’s not true that he has a little sister and everything was a lie …”

  Gitta, stuck in the middle of a formula she was trying to understand or at least learn by heart for a physics test, was slow to react. “Yeah … I remember,” she said finally. “Your fuck buddy.”

  Anna wasn’t going to let Gitta annoy her, not this time. Gitta was ridiculous. She had so
mething to tell Gitta, and she was going to tell it. “You were right,” she said. “He doesn’t have a sister. It was a lie.”

  “Excuse me, what? How do you know?”

  “Never mind,” said Anna. “You were right about something else. You said I was in love with him … it’s true. Was true. But now I am in love with someone else.”

  “That’s good,” Gitta said. “Little lamb, you know I’d love to talk longer, but physics is calling …”

  “Sure.” Anna cut her off and hung up. She covered her face with her hands and sat like that for a while, in self-made darkness. She would have to invent a crush now, for Gitta. But on whom? Bertil, Anna thought. But if Gitta told Bertil, he would be happy about it, and it wouldn’t be fair to him. One of the university students maybe. She got up and took her flute from the music stand. When she held it to her ear, just to check, she heard the white noise, like the sound of a radio between channels. She lifted the flute to her lips and played the first notes of “Suzanne” into the white noise, or from the white noise, or entwined with the white noise: “Suzanne takes you down—to her place near the river—you can hear the boats go by—you can spend the night beside her …”

  What an old song. Where did someone like Abel’s mother get a cassette of Leonard Cohen? Michelle—he’d called her Michelle. How had Michelle, who didn’t speak a word of English, who at most learned Russian at school—like they did back then—how had she come by that particular cassette? And where, Anna wondered all of a sudden, was Michelle?

  Anna was standing in front of the glass door leading out to the fading light of the garden when her mother came home. She’d been staring at her own figure reflected in the glass: the outline of her narrow shoulders, her long dark hair—a see-through person full of winter shrubs. People told her she was pretty; grown-ups said it with the approving tone they seemed to reserve for young girls whom they also considered “nice” and “well-bred.” Adults were always quick to tell her how much she looked like her mother, and how little like her father. Though Anna thought that on the inside she was much more like him … there was this strong, unbreakable will in her to fight for something … somewhere … but where? For what? And against whom?