The Storyteller

by Antonia Michaelis

  “If you’re talking about you and me, we’re house-sitting,” Gitta answered. “My mother’s got the night shift. Someone has to make sure the leather sofa isn’t stolen, and I can’t possibly do that alone. Stop giggling, Frauke.” She lit another cigarette. “We don’t need the peddler for house-sitting,” she added.

  “We don’t?” Hennes blew a strand of red hair from his forehead. “That’s too bad, actually.”

  “I’ve got a stash somewhere,” Gitta said. “Leave Abel alone.”

  Hennes whistled through his teeth. “Lately, the most astonishing people have first names. Listen, I just wanted to … you know … increase his salary, so to speak.”

  Gitta nodded. “We applaud your social conscience, Herr von Biederitz, but at certain times, certain people don’t want to talk to certain other people. I’ll explain it to you later. And now, accompany me inside, please, to enjoy two more unbelievably boring lessons to prepare your lordship for graduation.”

  Inside, Anna found herself next to Knaake in the crowd on the stairs. “Thanks,” she said in a low voice.

  “For what?” he asked.

  “For … nothing,” she said and understood that she’d better keep her mouth shut if she didn’t want to get the lighthouse keeper in trouble. There were too many ears here. She thought of their conversation on the phone, and suddenly something came into her head, just before they reached the top of the stairs.

  “Do you know Michelle Tannatek?” she asked, without any preamble.

  He lifted his graying eyebrows. “Who?”

  “Abel’s mother.”

  He stood at the top of the stairs and let the crowd move past. He shook his head slowly. “She’s never come to a parent conference, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Anna said, looking into his eyes. “Do you know her? Maybe from … a long time ago?”

  “No,” said Knaake, and he began to search his pockets for something that probably wasn’t there. A memory, perhaps. She left him standing there alone, alone with his “No.” She wondered what it meant.

  After sixth period, there was a figure standing in the schoolyard who wasn’t Abel … and who was obviously cold—a small figure in a pink down jacket. When she saw Anna, she started running toward her, and Anna caught her in her arms. The pink down jacket smelled of the wind and sea, and a little of cheap Polish tobacco, too.

  “Micha,” Anna said. “Micha, where have you been, the two of you? I was at your place, looking for you … I tried to call … what happened?”

  “We were on an outing,” Micha replied, but she seemed to know that it wasn’t normal to go on an outing on a weekday. “Abel made us leave really early; we were on a bus and then on a train. We went to that island, you know the one … Rügen. I didn’t have to go to school, because when you’re on an outing, you don’t have to go to school, do you … well … we had hot chocolate, and I hiked very far, with a backpack and everything … and a picnic … Where is Abel?”

  “Here,” Abel said from behind Anna, pushing her aside very gently and putting an arm around Micha. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, they let us go early today,” she explained eagerly. “But I didn’t want to wait for you. Mrs. Milowitch always asks me questions … I like her, but she asks the same things that Mr. … that Mr. Matinke did. Things about Mama. So I came here, instead, even though it’s really far to walk. I’m a good hiker.”

  “I think,” Abel said, “that today we won’t go to the student dining hall. We had our outing yesterday, and that was enough for a while. The train and everything … it was expensive. We’ll just go home and think about yesterday, okay?”

  “Okay,” Micha said, looking down at her feet. “But … but couldn’t we go somewhere else? I don’t like being at home. I’m afraid Mr. Matinke will be at the door, and that he’ll take me away with him. Yesterday, I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about it. I dreamed that he had a net, like the kind you use to catch butterflies, except that it wasn’t to catch butterflies—it was to catch me. Like in our fairy tale. He was hunting for a diamond heart—that’s why he wanted to catch me.”

  Abel kneeled in the snow in front of her and looked into her eyes. “He’ll never do that,” he whispered. “I promise you that he’ll never do that. You’ll see. We’ll invent something in the fairy tale to make him disappear.”

  “You could come with me,” Anna said, hesitating. “Home, I mean. If you want to. Micha, you look cold. We have a fireplace to warm you. And I’ll be able to find something for lunch, I’m sure.”

  “No,” said Abel.

  “My parents aren’t there,” Anna explained. “Not during the day. My mom comes home in the evening. You could …”

  “No,” said Abel.

  “A fireplace!” Micha looked at him. “That must be really nice, don’t you think? If there’s snow outside and a fire inside, like in that book we read, and we could make hot chocolate …”

  “No,” Abel said.

  “That’s so unfair!” Micha stamped her little foot. “Yesterday, you wanted to go to Rügen, so we went; I’ve been hiking with you, in the cold, and I haven’t complained, or not really that much … and today I want to see Anna’s fireplace. Why can’t we do something I want to do for a change!” She stamped her foot again, her eyes flashing so combatively that Anna nearly laughed out loud. “You go home and wait for the Matinke guy,” she added, crossing her pink down-jacket arms. “And I’ll go by myself with Anna.”

  Abel covered his face with both his hands, took a deep breath, and then looked at Anna. The dark, disturbing thing in his eyes had retreated a little, as if he had pushed it away with all his force. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Anna didn’t look over her shoulder as they left the schoolyard. But she guessed at least a few people were watching them. Bertil, for example. She pictured him walking his family dog on the empty beach of Eldena, pushing up his slipping glasses from time to time, alone, like the day before and most days, in the ice-cold air, in the wind, next to the frozen sea.

  • • •

  “You’re right,” Abel said in the hall. “The air is blue. I never really believed it.” He smiled.

  He hadn’t said a word on the way here, but now he smiled.

  “Yes,” Anna said, “yesterday, I nearly drowned in it.”

  Micha was looking at the coatrack in the hallway, with its tiny wooden animal heads from some country they’d traveled to. Anna had forgotten which one it was. Finally, Micha found something that might have been a dog, stroked it gently with her forefinger, and hung her pink jacket on the hook next to it.

  “You didn’t choose the dog?” Anna asked.

  “If I put my jacket over him, he won’t be able to see anymore,” Micha replied with great earnestness. “And he has to see, doesn’t he … he’s jumped aboard the black ship.”

  “Didn’t Abel tell you more of the story on your outing?” Anna asked.

  Abel shook his head.

  “But we built a snowman,” Micha said. “Oh, Anna, is that your living room? It’s so beautiful.”

  “Yes,” Anna said. She watched as Micha pulled off her socks and walked over the Turkish kilim in bare feet, following the patterns, to and fro, through an endless labyrinth. Then she gave up on that game and ran to the glass door leading out to the little garden. “There are robins!” she exclaimed. “Loads of them! And two real rose blossoms! Like on the rose island in our story! But there weren’t any robins there. The robins have come to look at the roses, haven’t they? Oh, Abel, aren’t they pretty?”

  Anna looked at Abel. He was still smiling.

  “It’s very different … from your place,” she said. “Is that bad?”

  Abel took her hand in his. “Thank you,” he said. “For history. For everything. You saved me. I had … I couldn’t remember anything, but I remembered when I read what you wrote.” He searched his pocket and took out the te
n-euro note that she had filled with tiny writing from top to bottom.

  “Are you crazy?” Anna whispered. “You didn’t destroy that thing?”

  He shrugged. “I almost did, but then I couldn’t. I think I’ll keep it. It’s the only thing I …” He stopped. “Micha, I’m not sure you should be jumping on that sofa.”

  “It’s okay,” Anna said. “I used to jump on it a lot when I was little. And I still do sometimes. That’s what sofas are for.”

  “And your parents?”

  “They only jump very rarely,” Anna said, grinning, as she kneeled in front of the fireplace. “I promised you a fire, I think. And something for lunch …”

  “Those logs in the basket look quite tasty,” Abel said. “I guess they’re not totally done, though.”

  When the flames were crackling in the open fireplace, it was as if all the worries and fears of the last twenty-four hours were burning to ashes, too. They sat in front of the fire, talking about how to prepare the logs for lunch, and Micha marveled at the sparks flying up from the pinewood. Everything was good. Anna wanted to ask Abel why he had gone to Rügen with Micha, why he hadn’t answered his phone, why he hadn’t told her anything before he left, but she didn’t. Instead, she went to the kitchen and warmed up leftover quiche, which Linda had made the day before. She whistled as she got out the plates. When she came back to the living room, Abel and Micha were sitting on the floor together. They were both bent over a book Magnus had given Linda for Christmas, a picture book full of photos of the desert.

  “I … we …” Abel closed the book carefully.

  “Don’t worry, you can look at it,” Anna said. “This isn’t a museum. My mother loves deserts. When I go to England, after finals, she said she’s going to compensate by visiting the desert.”

  “Can I come, too?” Micha asked instantly. “I want to see a desert, too. I like sand, especially when it’s warm. You can let it run through your fingers. Maybe there’s a desert island in our fairy tale. What do you think, Abel? Why haven’t we ever gone to see a desert?”

  “You’d have to go very, very far by plane for that,” Abel said. “I’m sure you don’t want to have to sit still in a plane for so many hours.”

  “Of course, I do! I absolutely want to sit in a plane!” Micha exclaimed. “I’ve never been in a plane! Can we fly in one, Abel?”

  “When we’ve finished this quiche, we’ll fly upstairs on foot, and you can look at my room,” Anna said quickly. “If you want, you can try to get a note out of my flute. It’s not easy, though.”

  Micha didn’t get a note out of the flute, but she held its slim silver body in her hands for a long time. Then she lay in the hammock in Anna’s room and looked up at the ceiling and said she’d like to move in here, but, of course, she would miss her loft bed … and Anna and Abel just stood there and watched her.

  “It will never be like this,” Abel said in a low voice. “It will never be this nice at our place.”

  Anna put her arms around him and whispered, “It already is. Just not at first glance. Do you know that I sometimes feel better at your place? I thought about it yesterday … but, Abel … what happened to the silver-gray dog, after he jumped aboard the black ship? Is he okay?”

  He ran his fingers through her hair, thoughtfully, and let his hand rest on her head for a moment, a strand of hair wrapped around his fingers. He had never touched her hair before. There were many parts of her body, she thought, that he had never touched. Suddenly she was very warm.

  “The silver-gray dog,” he said, “crept along the rail, on soundless paws …”

  Micha looked up from the old picture book that she was holding on her knees. “Is the fairy tale going on?” she asked, obviously forgetting all the picture books and all the hammocks in the world …

  “Let’s go back downstairs, to the fireplace. You’ve gotta tell a fairy tale by the fire; that’s where fairy tales should be told.”

  “The silver-gray dog crept along the rail, on soundless paws,” Abel repeated while Anna fed the fire more logs, “till he reached the stern of the black ship. Then the little queen couldn’t see him anymore. ‘I hope he takes care of himself,’ the lighthouse keeper grumbled.

  “‘Who are those people?’ the little queen asked fearfully. ‘Those people on the black ship?’

  “‘I recognized a few of them,’ the lighthouse keeper answered. ‘There is the jewel trader, for one. He collects all the jewels he can find, but he doesn’t lock them away like the red hunter. He resells them, scattering them all over the world, over the oceans … then, there are the haters. You saw that elderly couple, little queen? That’s them. The haters hate everything that is beautiful. They want to destroy the diamond. And last … there’s the big woman in the tracksuit. Do you know why she’s so fat?’

  “‘No,’ the little queen replied, and her whole body shivered when she said that.

  “‘She eats the jewels the jewel trader brings to her,’ the lighthouse keeper said.

  “‘Then … then, she’ll eat my heart if he gets hold of it,’ the little queen whispered.

  “At that moment, a blast of wind whipped over the ocean, blew the waves into towers, and made the little pieces of ice clink against one another. The shipmates lost their balance and fell onto the deck in a heap. The blind white cat complained that someone had landed on top of her.

  “‘Sails down!’ the lighthouse keeper shouted. ‘There’s a storm!’

  “The asking man and the answering man clung to each other fearfully and shouted senseless questions and answers into the howl of the wind: ‘Where is Michelle?’ ‘Maybe the lighthouse keeper!’ ‘Where does he come from?’ ‘In the box on top of the bathroom cupboard!’ ‘Who is his father?’

  “The rose girl helped the lighthouse keeper lower the white sails—all but one. The black ship didn’t take down its black sails. Instead, a strange mechanism on its masts started moving, amid storm and waves: one of the black masts rotated, and the travelers could see that there was a huge net fastened to it. A wooden arm extended, and now the net hung exactly above the little green ship. And then someone working some gears or cranks began to lower it—and it became a deadly butterfly net.

  “‘No!’ the little queen screamed and covered her eyes with her hands. But she looked through her fingers.

  “It was the jewel trader who worked the gears, steered the net. He had rolled up the sleeves of his leather jacket so they could see the white sheepskin lining inside. The diamond eater in her tracksuit stood beside him. There was one blood-red, dyed strand of hair on her forehead. Behind her, the two haters held onto each other, their eyes aglow with destructive frenzy. And behind the haters, the silver-gray dog pressed his body against the rail. He was nothing but a secret shadow.

  “‘The airship!’ the rose girl said. ‘We can still make it!’

  “The little queen lowered her hands. Her eyes were big and dark with fear. ‘But the storm will blow us in the wrong direction!’

  “The net was sinking, lower and lower. And then, something unexpected happened. There was a scream, a piercing, horrible, eardrum-tearing scream that made the waves stop waving for a second, as if the whole ocean had suddenly frozen. At the same time, the net was lifted up again, the wooden apparatus turned its arm, and the huge trap dropped onto the dark sails. The black ship had caught itself. It seemed to fight with itself now: it buckled and heaved—the waves weren’t still anymore; they pushed the ship around—ropes ripped, and sails fell down from masts like withered leaves from dead trees. One of them covered the fat diamond eater, and another one covered the two haters, who tried to free themselves with angry shouts. But where was the cutter?

  “The green ship sailed on through the storm with its one remaining white sail, and the black ship stayed behind, tied up like a big beetle in a spider’s web.

  “‘The silver-gray dog!’ the little queen shouted against the wind. ‘He’s still on the black ship! We have to help him!’

 
; “She wanted to turn the yellow rudder, to turn the ship, but on her way to the rudder, she stumbled over the white cat, who had fallen asleep on the floor again, and fell. The rose girl helped her up. Now the ship swayed to and fro gently, for the storm was dying down.

  “The last high wave carried something in its glittering embrace. It was a body. For a moment, they saw it clearly, before the sea pulled it down into its bottomless depths.

  “‘The jewel trader!’ the rose girl whispered. ‘He’s dead!’

  “‘Like the red hunter,’ said the little queen. She put her arms around the rose girl and began to cry, and her diamond heart hurt inside her. ‘So does everybody have to die?’ she sobbed.

  “When the water was perfectly still again, something else floated toward them in the light of the setting winter sun. Another body. The body of the sea lion. The asking man and the answering man fished it out of the sea with their long arms. They carefully laid it on the planks, where it turned into the body of a dog, and the little queen dropped down next to him. He was breathing, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  “‘My poor dog!’ the little queen whispered. ‘What happened on the black ship?’

  “‘Let him sleep,’ the rose girl said. ‘He needs rest.’ She carried the dog in her arms down into the cabin and put him to bed on the polar bear skins. On his left foreleg, the fur was missing in two shiny, circular patches, like burns.”

  “Two?” Anna asked. Micha had fallen asleep once more, lying on the sofa next to them.

  Anna gently pushed up Abel’s left sleeve. It was true. There was a second round scar next to the first one. “What is it?” she asked. “Is it what I think it is?”

  He nodded. “Cigarette burns. Cigarettes get pretty hot at the tips.” He pulled the sleeve back down.

  “But who … who did that?”

  “Is that important?” She looked at him. He sighed. “I did … Content now?”