The Storyteller

by Antonia Michaelis

  “Bertil, sit down,” Frauke said.

  “Don’t … don’t order me around,” Bertil said with his heavy tongue. And with a sudden, flailing movement of his arm, he pushed Anna aside and stood face-to-face with Abel. Anna lost her balance, grabbed onto the bar behind her, and knocked over a glass; she heard it crash, and felt a lot of faces turn toward her.

  Staring at her and Abel and Bertil.

  Abel stood motionless, as if he were made of stone. Even his face had turned to stone. Bertil took another step forward and flicked some snow off Abel’s jacket, like he was attempting to clean it, a strange gesture.

  “Sure, I’ll never … never be as cool as T … Tannatek in his military jacket,” he slurred. “But listen here … you’re missing a button … a button on your jacket and … don’t you wanna cut your hair again? Your Nazi friends surely don’t … like you having it so l … long …” He reached out and plucked the black woolen hat from Abel’s head. Abel took it back from him. That was all he did. His face was stoney. They were extremely close now; Bertil was a little taller than Abel but not half as broad-shouldered. They stared at each other. The bar was silent.

  Then Bertil noticed the silence. He looked around, seeming to enjoy the fact that everyone was listening to him for once, and turned back to Abel. “If I had a … a weapon,” he said, “I’d just … I’d just shoot you. L … like my fa … father did with that dog. One shot, poof, and that … that would be the end of you.”

  When he said that, Abel suddenly came to life. He grabbed Bertil’s arm with his left, uninjured hand. Anna saw how tight the grip was, she heard Bertil gasp.

  “If you want to fight with me, Bertil Hagemann, we’ll go outside,” he said in a low voice.

  “Yeah. B-b-beating people up, that’s some … something you’re good at,” Bertil hissed. “Just words … words are not your spesh … speciality, are they? But maybe the girls l-l-like that … if a guy doesn’t talk much … but instead does oth-other things to them … maybe he’s good in bed, right, Anna? Why don’t you tell … tell us about it. We want all … all the details …”

  At that moment Abel’s right hand slammed into Bertil’s face. His left hand was still gripping Bertil’s arm, and Anna saw him flinch as pain shot through his right hand.

  “So,” Abel said, his voice still very low, “are you coming out with me or do I have to carry you?”

  “Hennes,” Gitta said, “do something.” Anna actually heard something like fear in Gitta’s voice. Or was it her own fear? “If someone doesn’t bring him to his senses,” Gitta went on, “Bertil will let the Pole beat him to a pulp.”

  Hennes got up from the sofa and stood next to Bertil. Hennes’s red hair shone, even in the darkness of the bar, even through the smoke; he stood as upright as always, in spite of the many colorful drinks, in spite of the joint. He put a hand on Bertil’s shoulder.

  “Let go of him, Tannatek,” he said, very calmly. “We’ll look after him. He’s had too much to drink. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Abel released Bertil and folded his arms across his chest. “I think he knows perfectly well what he’s talking about,” he said. “He’s more honest than you, Hennes.”

  “Of … of course, I know …” Bertil began.

  “Shut up, Bertil,” Hennes said. And then, in a very loud and clear voice, continued, “Tannatek wants to leave now.”

  Anna saw Abel’s eyes as he looked at Hennes. The blue in them had frozen, turned again into a solid block of ice.

  “That’s what I think, too,” the bartender called out to Abel, whom he seemed to know. “Do me a favor, will you? I don’t feel like throwing you out.”

  Abel took a deep breath, as if he wanted to say something, but then he turned around silently and left.

  “Okay, and when he’s far enough away, you see to it that your friend gets home,” the bartender said to Hennes. “And when he’s slept off his hangover, tell him I don’t ever wanna see him in here again, understand?” Hennes took his hand from Bertil’s shoulder, and Bertil slumped into a chair. “Shit,” he mumbled. “Holy fucking shit.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said tonight,” Anna said. Seconds later, she was running down the street, the same street she had just walked along with Abel. She caught up with him at the end of it, a few yards from the market square.

  “Abel!” she cried, reaching out. He swung round, and lifting up his hands, said defensively, “Don’t you dare touch me!”

  “I … I didn’t want that to happen!” Anna despaired. “I didn’t know Bertil was … that he was so drunk and … I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t want things to end like that!”

  “We’re not living in the Dark Ages,” Abel said. “Yeah, right. And not in India either. There’re no castes here. Ha.”

  “But the bartender threw Bertil out, too, same as you! And he told us he doesn’t want to see him there again! Of course, there are no castes! All men are equal!”

  “Do you ever listen to yourself when you’re talking such nonsense?” Abel asked.

  “No,” Anna said. “Abel. Can’t we go somewhere, away from the others? Where there is nothing and no one? No people, no bars, no schoolyards, no tower blocks …”

  He hesitated. Finally, he said: “The Elisenhain. The woods behind the village of Eldena. I promised Micha I’d take her there one day. She loves the woods when there is snow. We could go tomorrow.”

  “When tomorrow? Where can I meet you?”

  “The Russian store at the corner of the last street before the woods. At four.” He turned to go, and she heard him murmur, “I have to be fuckin’ out of my mind. Crazy.”

  “Wait!” Anna called. “Where are you going now? Can’t I come with you?”

  He turned back, and the look in his eyes was strange. “No, Anna,” he said. “Where I’m going now, you can’t come with me.”

  Linda was sitting in the dark living room, pretending she wasn’t waiting up, when Anna got home.

  “You can go to bed now,” Anna said and kissed her. “Sorry. I probably smell like a tobacco factory.”

  “You’re shivering,” Linda said. “Didn’t you wear warm enough clothes?”

  “I did,” Anna replied. “Even a borrowed sweatshirt. It’s not the cold. I think it’s rage.”

  “At what?” Linda asked, but Anna just shrugged.

  “Myself,” she said.

  The questions came the next day, all the questions that hadn’t been asked the night before. A billion questions that pierced her like tiny sharp needles. Frauke shot most of them at her, but rumors are quick to spread, and the looks of classmates started to get under Anna’s skin. Anna Leemann, at night, in the Polish peddler’s sweatshirt? Is it true she’s dating him?

  “Oh, how exciting,” Frauke said. “Tell us, Anna, what’s he like? I mean, deep down inside, under the military parka and the black sweatshirt and …” She giggled. “Underneath everything?”

  Anna didn’t answer. She didn’t answer anybody. Strangely, Gitta didn’t say anything.

  Abel was standing in the yard as always, in the freezing cold, his hands dug deep into his pockets. There was no fresh white snow today to cover the dirty old snow that wouldn’t melt.

  During lunch break, Bertil approached Anna, obviously unsure of himself. “I wanted to apologize,” he said. “For last night. I mean, I can’t really remember what I said … but judging from what the others told me, it can’t have been too nice. I should have drunk less.”

  “Children and drunk people always tell the truth,” Anna said.

  “I’m … I’m sorry!” Bertil repeated, in despair. “Can’t you forgive me?”

  “Not now,” Anna said. “And anyway, you’re asking the wrong person for forgiveness. You need to walk across the schoolyard to the bike stands to find the person you should apologize to.”

  “No way.” Bertil shook his head. “No, Anna … you’re not really dating him, are you? Tell me it’s not
true.”

  Anna walked away without another word and went across the schoolyard herself; she was fed up with the talk—she was fed up with everyone, all of them. She didn’t give a shit what they thought, and she couldn’t do anything about the wall that Abel was building around himself out here. She stood next to him and asked, “White noise?”

  He nodded.

  “Please,” she said, “can I have one of your earplugs? The others are making me ill. I can’t listen to their questions anymore. Their stupid comments.”

  He didn’t look at her. He handed her an earplug in silence. He seemed to have decided that it no longer made sense to pretend he didn’t know her. The white noise from the old Walkman enveloped them both; like a blanket of new snow, it draped itself over them, shutting out all the curious looks.

  And the world under the blanket was—surprisingly, wonderfully—absolutely quiet.

  • • •

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, the sign in front of the Russian store at the corner of Hain Street swung to and fro in the wind, like it always did, alternately revealing its Russian name one side and the German translation on the other. Russian candies in their gold paper boxes were fading in the window, as were the Russian Matryoshka dolls, piled high behind the window blind. Farther along the street, three figures walked next to each other, toward the woods.

  The beech trees towered against the winter sky in silence, their snow-covered branches like the work of fairies who had decorated the forest with a thousand tiny songbirds. The Elisenhain at four o’clock on a February afternoon seemed the most wonderful place in the world. A fairy-tale forest full of invisible stories, a storybook forest full of untold fairy tales, a forest full of fairylike tales …

  “Bertil apologized,” Anna said. They turned onto the old street, the one with the uneven cobblestones, on which you could still see the hollow tracks made by horse carriages in olden times. But now the cobblestones were buried deep in the snow. Micha was running ahead, like she usually did, counting the footprints of rabbits and deer.

  “Bertil,” Abel repeated. “Do me a favor, will you, and don’t mention that name for a while.”

  “He’s a sad person in his own way,” Anna said. “He …”

  “Is that it?” Abel asked bitterly. “Is that the reason you’re walking next to me? You’re collecting ‘sad’ people you feel sorry for and want to help?”

  “You know very well why I’m here,” Anna said, stopping to look at him. And she thought that maybe she should be the one to initiate a second kiss, if only to be sure there’d actually be one. She was afraid he’d back away after everything that had happened last night, afraid he’d had a change of heart. She looked up at the beeches, hoping for a sign, but the towering trees remained silent.

  So she threw her fear overboard and kissed him in spite of everything. And he didn’t back away, and she wondered if he had been waiting for her to make a move.

  “Hey,” he asked after quite a while, a little out of breath, looking at the top button of her coat, which had come loose, “are you still wearing my sweatshirt? I didn’t notice at school.”

  “I … I’ll give it back …”

  “Not now,” he said. “We should catch up with Micha.”

  He took her hand in his, and they started to run, along the old street, sliding on the ice-covered cobblestones that lay beneath the snow. It was like they were children, two children about to enter a fairy-tale forest. It could have been Christmas, Anna thought. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see tiny silver bells hanging from the branches and maybe polished red apples, too; to hear music coming from the treetops, very quiet music; or to find Gitta’s old sled with the red stripe waiting behind one of the trunks …

  “Catch me!” the third child called out, the child in the pink down jacket, as she fled into the woods, along a narrow path, through the giant columns of trees. A frozen rivulet wound its way along the path, meandering through the kitschy winter postcard scene; Micha jumped over the ice, giggling and carefree, running farther into the trees on the other side. Anna had fallen behind Abel after they’d let go of each other’s hands on the narrow path, but now he slipped and landed on the frozen brook, and she laughed and ran past him. She caught up with Micha at a fork in the path. But she didn’t stop. Instead, she ran past Micha, calling back over her shoulder, “Now you catch me!”

  A short way ahead, the path disappeared into a dense thicket of hazelnut bushes, covered with snow. Maybe this wasn’t the path after all but a deer trail … Anna looked behind her as she ran. But Micha hadn’t followed; she was still standing at the fork, strangely undecided. But now, Abel was coming. Anna ran on, toward the hazelnut thicket. She could dive into it and try to hide, she thought—though of course he would find her instantly. It was all a game, a children’s game … he caught up with her just before the thicket and pulled her to the ground; they lay in the snow, panting. Anna tried to get up, to slip through his fingers, and, giggling, to run on; but he wouldn’t allow it, and his grip was so firm it hurt. She looked up at him. His eyes were golden. No, she had imagined that, they were blue, like always. “Hey!” she said, “let go!”

  “This is the wrong path,” Abel said. “The woods are too dense in this direction.”

  “But it’s beautiful here! In spring, it’s filled with anemones. I often come to this part …”

  Abel pulled her back onto her feet. His grip was still iron. It was his right hand that held her; in his hurry to hold her back, he probably hadn’t remembered it was hurt. She could tell he was clenching his teeth with pain, but he didn’t let go. “In winter, there aren’t any anemones blossoming here,” he said. “Micha is afraid of the dark. Let’s go back; we’ll take the other path at the fork.” He was right. Micha was still there waiting for them. She hadn’t moved even a step in their direction.

  When they were back with her, Abel released Anna’s arm and took Micha by the hand. Her eyes were big and frightened. “I thought Anna would go in there,” she whispered, barely audible. “Into that part of the woods. You’re not allowed to go there, Anna. Did you know that? There are fallen trees back there; the trunks are hollow, and the invisible live inside. They’ve got sharp teeth that glow like hot iron. And they can bite you.”

  Anna followed them along the other path, which led back to the old street, and only when they had reached it did the fear in Micha’s eyes dissolve. “It’s much better here,” she said. “I shouldn’t ever have run down that path, I forgot … the invisibles … they bit Abel once … there was blood; his whole sleeve was covered in blood …”

  “Sometimes Micha tells fairy tales, too,” Abel said, tousling her pale, snow-blond hair. “But, today, I’m not going to tell you anything about the invisibles in the woods. Instead, I’ll tell you about the island of the beggar woman.”

  “The island of the beggar woman?” Micha asked.

  “Yes,” he said. Then he linked arms with Anna, and, still holding Micha by the other hand—the left one this time—started wandering back through the Elisenhain as Anna tried to forget the invisibles. She didn’t feel like thinking about their sharp teeth, which could bite your arms, and make them all bloody. Not now. She just wanted to walk through the forest with Abel and Micha and listen to a story and stop worrying for a little while.

  “The island of the beggar woman was the next island the ship came to,” Abel said. “There was just a single building on it: a tiny gray house that looked strangely ragged. The wind whistled through the crevices in the walls, and you could hear it far out at sea:

  “‘Don’t you have some coins for me?’ it whistled. ‘This house is all I own, you see, the curtains made of waves and foam, this is the beggar woman’s home.’

  “Next to the little house there was a bare tree, and the wind was whistling through its leafless branches, singing: ‘Don’t you have some bread for me? This tree is all I own, you see. It has no apples, has no pears; instead it grows a thousand cares.’


  “The wind whistled in the cold chimney: ‘Don’t you have some warmth for me? This hearth is all I own, you see. There’s no coal, no flames in it, my dreams are all I’ve ever lit.’

  “‘Let’s go ashore!’ the little queen exclaimed. ‘We have to bring that tree back to life and light a fire in the cold fireplace! Maybe my diamond heart can help the beggar woman! It has to be good for something, a heart of diamond!’

  “So they went ashore, and the beggar woman came running out of her gray house. She couldn’t believe that anyone was visiting her. Clad in rags, thin and gray and torn, she looked ancient, though she may have still been young.

  “‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ve always wanted a queen to visit my island! I can offer you nothing, though, for nothing is all I own … Do you see the island out there, on the horizon? That’s the island of the rich man. On clear days, you can see his palace. I’ve been writing letters to him for years, putting them into the bottles that wash ashore here. I’ve thrown a hundred bottles with letters into the sea, hoping the waves would carry them over to his island … In each and every letter, I have asked him for help, but I’ve never got an answer …’

  “The little queen laid her hand on the dead tree, and she asked her diamond heart to give it back its life. But the tree stayed cold. ‘It’s me,’ the beggar woman said sadly. ‘Whatever I touch turns gray and cold … I just don’t have the right touch for things.’

  “‘Come aboard with us,’ the little queen said. ‘We’ll take you to the island of the rich man.’

  “The beggar woman gave a deep sigh, for it is not easy to leave one’s home, even if it is only a cold hearth and dead tree.

  “But finally she allowed the rose girl to help her over the rail, and the green ship cast off. The rose girl saw the sea lion shake his head as he swam along next to them. ‘We don’t have time,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Don’t you see that the black sails are much closer again?’

  “He dove down into the waves, which were full of ice splinters; through the clear water, before he disappeared, the rose girl saw a circular wound on his right flipper.