The Storyteller

by Antonia Michaelis

  At lunchtime, she left Gitta and wandered alone to the bakery, the one farther away from school. When she got there, she wondered why she had come. The gleeful signs for colorfully wrapped treats with Ikea-like names made her nauseous. She wasn’t even hungry. Next to the bakery, there was a kebab stand with several tall white plastic tables in front, empty despite the lunch hour. Anna felt drawn to its loneliness, compelled by the kebab seller shivering in his thin jacket. She bought a cup of lukewarm coffee from him and stood at one of the tables to drink it. His coffee was even worse than the coffee from the machine in the student lounge. She started sketching patterns into a coffee stain left on the table.

  “Anna,” somebody said. “Anna, I’m sorry.”

  She started and knocked over her cup, and when she looked up, she felt coffee trickling down her sleeve. It was Abel. “Ex-excuse me?” she said.

  He took a paper napkin from a plastic holder and handed it to her. “I’m sorry I made you leave,” he continued. “I didn’t know that Rainer … Micha told me. You didn’t want to leave her alone. I … I didn’t want … see, it’s not anyone’s business how we live and … I’m sorry, really.”

  She had never heard him search for words before. She smiled and fell back into reality with a bang, the veil of tears ripped; her sleeve felt very wet indeed.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re right. It’s not my business how you live. But, for the record, my room isn’t half as tidy.”

  “Did Micha take you on a tour of the ‘villa’?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t worry, I didn’t see the decaying dead bodies under the bed.”

  His face broke into a grin. “What about the suitcase full of stolen money or the smuggled uranium in the closet?”

  “No,” she said. “Though I did wonder what the gold ingots and the machine gun were doing in the drawer with the forks and knives.” It felt good to talk nonsense. It felt good to laugh about meaningless things with Abel, like uranium in the closet.

  “About the story … I’m sorry about that,” she said quickly. “We shouldn’t have read it by ourselves.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” Abel said, but he was smiling. “Rainer …,” he went on, and stopped smiling. “Micha’s father. He … he was gone for a while … out of town … at least I haven’t seen him for a long time. And now … you met him. You understand why I don’t want him to turn up, don’t you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Think a little more and then take the square of the result and you’ll have the truth. He’s known around here … in the cheap bars … Michelle was a departure for him. Usually his girlfriends are more like fifteen, sixteen. If they are even that old.”

  “Micha is six. That’s something different.”

  “Exactly.” He picked the used napkin up off the table and scrunched it up in his fist.

  “Do you really think he would … That’s a horrible accusation. If there was proof he did something like that, he would go to prison …”

  Abel looked up from the napkin. His eyes glowed with a blue fire. “If there was proof,” he repeated, “he would go to prison. People are talking. I know some things. I know very well. When I …” He stopped. “Would you take the chance?”

  Anna shook her head. “But there are agencies that could help, judges, court orders … custody rights … if he isn’t allowed to see her, he isn’t allowed to see her, and that’s that … there are institutions set up to protect children!”

  “Anna,” he said in a very quiet voice. “You didn’t understand a thing I said.”

  “No?”

  “I’m not eighteen. I don’t have custody rights. If Michelle really doesn’t come back, Micha is his. Like a piece of … flotsam. Like a stray dog. Like …”

  “Like a lost diamond,” Anna said.

  “And that’s why it is important that you keep your mouth shut,” Abel whispered. “Do you get that? We’re living with our mother in that apartment, everything’s fine, we don’t have any problems. Do you get that? Do you get that?” He grabbed her wrist, sounding as desperate as a helpless child. And somewhere in Anna, there was, for an instant, the sense that this was what he had once been, living in the same small apartment with Rainer, and she pushed the thought far, far away—to the dark side of the moon.

  “I get it,” she whispered. “I’ve never been in the apartment. And if I was … then I had a really nice talk with your mother. She and my mother listen to the same music, so that was what we talked about …”

  He let go of her wrist. Suddenly he seemed embarrassed about having touched her. He looked around, but there was no one who had seen. The lonely, cold kebab seller was leaning against his stand, playing with his cell phone, lost in a world of SMS emoticons.

  “I’m going to walk her home from school now,” Abel said.

  “You’re not going to math class?”

  “I’m going to pick up Micha,” he repeated. “This afternoon … around five … we’ll be in Wieck. Sometimes we sit in that café, out by the water, and have hot chocolate. When we have extra cash. We’ve got to do something with that stuff, don’t we?” The grin returned to his face. “And there is a green ship there that has to sail on … another island has appeared on the horizon …”

  “Around five,” Anna said.

  She didn’t remember Bertil’s existence till after math.

  “Anna,” he said with a smile in his too-narrow, earnest face. “You’re not looking as if you understood much.”

  “I did,” Anna murmured. “A few things … what?”

  “We could go over the rest at my place,” Bertil said. “I’ll try to explain a few more things to you, if you can explain that last formula … you’re looking at me like I’m a ghost.”

  “Yes,” Anna said. “Oh no. Shit. Bertil, I can’t come over today.”

  He hunched his shoulders, which were as narrow as hers. He was too tall for those shoulders. Anna liked Bertil with his dark, unruly hair and thoughtful expressions, but today she had no time for him. Or math formulas.

  “This was your idea,” he said. “You wanted to go over the formulas, not me.”

  “I know, and I still do.” Math was one of the things she really didn’t understand, and she was too Anna Leemann to accept getting a bad grade on a big test without putting up a fight. “But, Bertil, not today. It’s just not going to work today. Something’s come up.”

  Bertil pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Something or someone, Anna?” He looked so dead serious. As if he could read every single thought in her head, every sorrow.

  “Somebody,” she said. Nonsense. He didn’t know her thoughts. She smiled at him. “My flute teacher. She called me during lunch to tell me that we have to move this week’s lesson to today. I forgot all about it till now.”

  Bertil nodded. “Don’t forget to lower the saddle of your flute teacher’s bike,” he murmured. “It’s a quick release. Looked dangerous last time.”

  Anna shook her head. “Bertil Hagemann,” she said. “Take a break from studying. You’re mixed up.” She knew she’d turned red. Red like a child caught doing something she shouldn’t. Of course, she knew whose bike Bertil was talking about.

  Anna rode home first. She had the vague feeling that Bertil was somewhere nearby, watching her, even though she didn’t see him. She looked back a few times and told herself that she was getting paranoid. Why would Bertil follow her? Still, she’d put her backpack down in the hall at home and gone upstairs to get her flute and her notes. Paranoid. Absolutely. She rode in the direction of her flute teacher’s house for about two streets, though she wasn’t sure that Bertil even knew where her teacher lived. Paranoid. Stop it, will you! It was five minutes past five. She turned her bike onto Wolgaster Street and headed toward the water.

  When she reached the turn to Wieck, it began to snow again. The café lay on the other side of the drawbridge, where the breakwater led out to sea. It was just at the end of the … no, not the cliff but
the harbor arm, she thought. It looked a bit like a ship made of glass, that café, a ship full of chairs and tables and little lights on curious, bendable long necks. Anna hadn’t known it was even open in February, but the café was like a living being; it seemed to change its habits at any given time and without any reason. By the time Anna shook the snow from her hat, the big clock on the wall read five thirty. She had the sense that she was too late for the most important date of her life.

  The fairy tale had started without her; the little queen had sailed on, aboard her green ship, without waiting for Anna. Maybe she had sailed away for good … There they were, sitting at the back of the café, or at the front, depending on your perspective; they sat at the stern of the glass ship, where only a glass wall and a little terrace outside separated the tables from the water. Micha’s pink jacket hung over her chair in an untidy heap, and she had put her hands around her cup as if to warm them. Abel and she were sitting opposite each other, leaning forward like conspirators, whispering. There were a lot of small tables with two chairs, but they had chosen one with a third chair, and the chair was empty. When Anna saw that, something began to sing inside her, and she forgot her worries and her guilty conscience over Bertil and math—she walked over to the empty chair, walked through the crowd of winter tourists, her feet barely touching the floor.

  Abel and Micha looked up.

  “See,” Micha said. “I told you she’d come.”

  Abel nodded. “Anna,” he said, as if to make sure it was her and not somebody else.

  “I … I hurried,” she said, “but I couldn’t get here earlier. Hi, Micha. Good afternoon, Mrs. Margaret.”

  Mrs. Margaret was leaning against the sugar bowl, and Micha made her nod graciously.

  “Mrs. Margaret has been very impatient,” Micha explained. “Can we start now?”

  Anna sat down. They had been waiting for her. They had really been waiting for her.

  “Abel said, if you’re not here by six, we start without you,” Micha said. “And he said that you weren’t coming anyway and that …”

  “Micha,” Abel interrupted her, “do you want me to begin or not?”

  And then Micha said, “begin,” and Anna said, “yes,” and somehow she managed to order a cup of tea by signaling the waitress—and Abel, the fairy-tale teller, opened the door to a wide blue sea and a green ship whose name was as yet unknown.

  “The black ship with its black sails darkened the sky behind them. More and more, its darkness seemed to leak out into the blue.

  “‘One day, the sun will disappear,’ the little queen said, and at that moment the lighthouse keeper called out from the crow’s nest high up on the mast, ‘I can see an island! Can’t properly see it, mind you—my glasses are fogged up …’

  “Shortly after that, the little queen and Mrs. Margaret saw the island, too. And then—and then, they smelled it. All of a sudden, a smell from a thousand flowers in full bloom enveloped the ship. And the little queen’s diamond heart became light and happy. The black ship seemed to recede in the distance.

  “When they were very close to the island, it started snowing. The lighthouse keeper had lit a pipe, but now the pipe wasn’t working anymore.

  “‘It’s clogged with snowflakes …’ he said. ‘No, wait a second! It’s clogged with rose petals! It’s snowing rose petals!’

  “He was right. They weren’t snowflakes falling onto the planks of the green ship but the fragile petals of a thousand roses—white, red, and pink. Soon they covered the whole deck, and the little queen walked over a soft carpet of them to clear the ropes.

  “‘Little queen,’ the sea lion said, emerging from a wave, on which floated white petals instead of white foam. ‘Are you sure you want to go ashore here?’

  “‘Of course!’ the little queen exclaimed. ‘Look how beautiful the island is! It’s full of rosebushes, and they are all in bloom! This island is much more beautiful than my small island!’

  “The sea lion sighed. The little queen put Mrs. Margaret into her pocket, and she and the lighthouse keeper walked down the pier—a pier made of rosewood that led to a white beach. Behind them, the silver-gray dog with the golden eyes came out of the sea and shook the water from its fur. Then it sniffed the ground, gave three loud and angry barks, and returned to the sea.

  “‘Seems he doesn’t like it here,’ the lighthouse keeper said.

  “‘But I like it a lot!’ said the little queen, walking up the path on the other side of the beach with her bare feet. She passed under an arch of red roses, and the lighthouse keeper followed, smoking his unclogged pipe thoughtfully. Behind the arch made of roses, a group of people waited for them.

  “‘Welcome to Rose Island,’ one of them said.

  “‘We don’t get many visitors,’ another one added. ‘Who are you?’

  “‘I am the little cliff queen,’ the little cliff queen said, ‘but my kingdom—or was it a queendom?—has sunk into the sea. This here, in my pocket, is Mrs. Margaret, but there isn’t a Mr. Margaret, and this is the lighthouse keeper, but his lighthouse no longer has light. And who are you?’

  “‘We are the rose people,’ the rose people replied, and, actually, that was quite obvious. For all of them—men, women, and children—were clad in nothing but blossoming roses. Their skin was fair and their cheeks were a little rosy, too, and their hair was dark like the branches of the rosebushes. Their eyes were friendly, and they had dreamy expressions.

  “‘Come on, you must be hungry,’ a rose girl said, and the rose people led the little queen farther inland, till they reached a small pavilion filled with rosebushes. Inside, there was a big table, and on the table the rose people had laid out butter and bread, rose-petal jam, and tea made from rose hips.

  “‘Oh, how very, very nice!’ the little queen exclaimed, pressing Mrs. Margaret so hard to her chest that the doll’s face became wrinkled. The lighthouse keeper sat down at one of the chairs but quickly jumped up again. ‘They’re prickly!’

  “The rose people were very sorry about that. They themselves didn’t feel the thorns. They covered the chairs with white cushions filled with petals, which worked well. But after she had eaten enough bread with rose-petal jam and drunk enough tea, the little queen suddenly realized that her feet were hurting. The lighthouse keeper was wearing shoes, but she had walked to the pavilion barefoot. Now that she looked at the soles of her feet, she saw that they were covered with little red, burning dots.

  “‘Oh no,’ said the rose girl who had spoken to them before. ‘Those are from the thorns on the path! Sometimes the bushes stretch out their arms over the ground and onto the paths … one doesn’t see them under the fallen petals …’

  “And the rose people fetched a pair of wonderful white boots made of many layers of white silk for the little queen. ‘That’s silk from the rose caterpillar,’ the rose girl explained.

  “‘Such beautiful boots,’ the little queen said. ‘I’ve never seen such beautiful boots.’ Which was true, for she hadn’t seen any boots until then, not in her whole life.

  “After a while, the rose people left to get on with their work, cutting bushes, binding up branches, watering. Only the rose girl stayed with the little queen and the lighthouse keeper. She showed them around the whole island—showed them the rosewood houses and the lake, in which you bathed in rose petals instead of water.

  “‘It’s a little boring, you see,’ she said. ‘Roses everywhere and nothing else. I’m happy you have come. Some change at last!’

  “‘I wish I could stay,’ the little queen said, ‘but I can’t. The hunters on their black ship will come, and they will find me here between the rosebushes, no matter how deep I burrow in the leaves.’

  “‘But they can’t,’ the rose girl said. ‘Just climb up that ladder to the lookout, little queen, and you’ll see the black ship. It’s anchored out there, far offshore. It can’t come any closer. The scent of the roses keeps it away.’

  “So the little queen climbed the la
dder—the lighthouse keeper helped her up the wooden rungs—and she saw the black ship anchored far away. But she also saw something else. She saw a dark, narrow rowboat approaching the white beach, a boat in which a man with dark clothes was sitting, all alone. He gazed at the rose island with longing in his eyes, but he couldn’t manage to get his boat any closer than it already was.

  “‘There is somebody,’ the little queen said, ‘who needs my help.’

  “And she climbed down the ladder and ran over the island, down to the beach, as fast as she could. For she had a good heart, a heart made of diamond. When she stood on the white beach, she saw that the rowboat was delicately decorated: there were flowers carved into the dark wood, and the stern had a golden tip. Strange, the little queen thought, how the beautiful boat didn’t fit with the old sweater and fleece-lined vest of the man who was rowing it.

  “‘Can I help you?’ the little queen shouted. ‘Surely the two of us can pull the boat ashore!’

  “‘I don’t think so,’ the man replied sadly. ‘This island holds something against me and my rowboat. It’s as if the current wants to keep us from getting any closer … I guess I have to be content just to sit here and look at the island.’ Suddenly, he sighed. ‘It would be much nicer, though, if I had someone to sit with me.’

  “‘I’ll sit with you for a little while!’ the little queen said and started wading out into the water. ‘Take me with you, as you row along the shore!’

  “‘Oh yes, come with me!’ the man said happily. And he helped the little queen into the boat.

  “‘Sit here on this bench …’ He stroked his blond mustache and rolled up his sleeves, and then he started rowing. The boat shot forward like an arrow, but it also seemed to move away from the shore. ‘That’s the current,’ the man said. ‘It wants to push us away …’

  “‘Little queen!’ someone shouted from the beach. ‘Little cliff queen!’ It was the lighthouse keeper—and the rose girl. They were standing on the beach, waving.