The Storyteller

by Antonia Michaelis

  “But nobody’s holding you,” Anna said. “Did they say that they believe that you …?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.” Damocles, she thought, had returned.

  He put both arms onto the white metal rail and looked down onto the ice, where countless traces of life had marked the thin layer of snow: footprints of bald coots and ducks, swans and mergansers. And somewhere on the ice, Anna wondered, were there also traces of death—footprints of a murderer?

  “It must be someone who’s somehow connected to me,” Abel whispered. “That only makes sense. I mean, why would anybody shoot Rainer Lierski and then Sören Marinke? And … who will be next?”

  Anna shook her head. “Nobody. Because we’ll figure this out before that. We’ll find out who … or what … is going on here. I’m going to help you. I can keep my eyes and ears open … if you just tell me, where and when …”

  He turned to her abruptly. The ice in his eyes gleamed in the sunshine. “No,” he said. “Don’t do that. Promise me you’ll keep out of this mess. This isn’t a game or a history test. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Thanks,” Anna replied angrily. “I just turned five last week.”

  Abel put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her even more intensely, as if he wanted to burn a hole into her. “They’re dead, Anna,” he whispered. “They’re both dead. Dead as stone. Don’t you get that?”

  “I do.” She looked down at her feet.

  “If you two could stop fighting,” Micha said, “it would be good, because right now we’re supposed to wake the dog with the flute, remember?” She had been busy climbing on the railing but now stood next to them, her cheeks reddened, her pigtails half-undone. Nothing about her suggested the word death.

  So Anna pushed her thoughts about Marinke aside and took out her flute. It was cold, of course, and it was out of tune, but a dog probably wouldn’t hear the difference. “What do you want me to play?”

  “I dunno,” Micha said. “Something nice.”

  Abel nodded; leaned against the green, painted post, on which the light for the ships was attached like a traffic light; and started to roll a cigarette. “We should see if we can do something about that dog,” he said. “He isn’t well. His wounds are deep, and his sleep is even deeper. He had almost given up when they pulled him out of the water …”

  Anna made a list in her head of all the pieces of music she could play by heart, from the easiest to the most difficult. She thought of all sorts of complicated melodies, but none seemed good enough to wake a wounded dog living inside a fairy tale. In the end, she closed her eyes and imagined that she was standing on the deck of the green ship. On the horizon, she saw the black sails of their persecutors, who hadn’t yet given up. The little queen was standing there with her, and before them, in the cabin, lay the motionless body of the dog. Next to him, a blind white cat gave a bored yawn. And then she knew what to play.

  She put the cool silver to her lips and asked the flute for a simple melody, one without ornamentation, a melody whose text you could read in the air … if you knew it:

  There’s a concert hall in Vienna

  Where your mouth had a thousand reviews

  There’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking

  They’ve been sentenced to death by the blues

  She heard Abel humming next to her, and she was pretty sure she’d heard the words before; it was a song from one of Linda’s old LPs, and it was probably on one of Michelle’s cassettes, too … the cryptic, dark poetry of an old Canadian.

  Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture

  With a garland of freshly cut tears

  Take this waltz, take this waltz,

  Take this waltz, it’s been dying for years …

  “The little queen bent down to pet the silver-gray dog,” Abel said. “And in this very moment, the dog blinked. He lifted his head ever so slowly, looked at her with his golden eyes, and wagged his tail. Then he rose, crept out of the cabin, and jumped into the water. A little later, a sea lion was swimming in the waves, next to the green ship. But the waves had almost stopped moving, and the lighthouse keeper scratched his ear with the arm of his glasses. “Soon, soon the sea will freeze,” he said, “and we won’t be able to sail on any longer. And what will we do then?”

  Anna put down the flute. For a moment, she thought she’d seen something out there, in the water, something in the middle of the mouth of the river, which was kept free of ice so the fishing boats could pass. It was a round, dark head with glittering black eyes. Nonsense. Later, she would think that it hadn’t been a sea lion’s head at all but, instead, the head of a man—and a vision of something that would happen much later, but, of course, that was even more nonsense.

  Abel took her free hand and led her off the pier, back to the café. Micha ran along beside them like a little dog.

  “‘The sea hasn’t frozen yet, has it?’ the little queen said. ‘But what’s that over there? Another island? Shouldn’t we go there and have a look?’

  “‘No, we shouldn’t,’ the lighthouse keeper replied. ‘For that, my little queen, is the island of the murderer.’

  “‘I don’t believe that,’ the little queen said, shaking Mrs. Margaret so hard that her blue flowered dress flew up and down. ‘Mrs. Margaret is shaking her head, do you see? I want to go there and find out for myself who lives on that island.’

  “The lighthouse keeper heaved a deep sigh and steered the ship toward the island. It was a tiny island, tinier than all the islands they had visited so far. On one side, somebody had erected a sign that read: ISLAND OF THE MURDERER.

  “‘Huh!’ the little queen exclaimed. ‘Who writes signs like that? Stop! I want to go ashore!’

  “‘Ashore?’ the lighthouse keeper, the rose girl, the blind white cat, and the asking man asked in a neat choir. Only the answering man answered, murmuring something about ‘seven times daily.’

  “‘You can’t go ashore on an island where a murderer lives,’ the rose girl said.

  “‘Oh yes, I can,’ the little queen said. ‘A queen with a diamond heart can go ashore on any island. Maybe the murderer doesn’t want to be a murderer anymore but, instead, someone else, something opposite, like … a savior, for example. He needs someone to tell him how he can change.’

  “And with these words, she climbed over the rail and jumped onto the cliffs of the tiny island.

  “‘Wait!’ the rose girl called and jumped after her. The lighthouse keeper, the asking man, and the answering man followed her. Only the blind white cat, licking her paws, stayed on deck, and the sea lion was nowhere to be found … in any of his forms.

  “The little group began to wander over the tiny island. It wasn’t just the tiniest, it was also the barest island they had seen. There were no trees, no bushes, no grass—not even a house. But the murderer who lived there … where was the murderer? Where was he lurking?

  “‘He is here,’ the little queen whispered after a while. ‘Very near. He can see us. I can feel his eyes on me. But he doesn’t want to talk to us. How can I help him turn into something different if he doesn’t show himself?’

  “‘Let’s go,’ said the lighthouse keeper. ‘Let’s leave this creepy island before one of us is murdered.’

  “‘No,’ the rose girl said. ‘No, I don’t think the murderer is here anymore. He must have left a long time ago. Or swam away.’

  “‘But where is he then?’ the little queen whispered uncomfortably. ‘Maybe … maybe he is on board? Maybe he has been on board for a long time?’

  “‘Where—on board what?’ the asking man asked.

  “‘On the thirteenth of March,’ the answering man answered, though this answer didn’t fit the question, of course.

  “‘The black ship,’ the little queen said doubtfully. ‘He’s already turned into someone else. We just don’t recognize him. Or … is he on board our own ship?’

  “When she said this, everybody looked at each other:
the lighthouse keeper looked at the rose girl, the rose girl looked at the asking man, and the asking man looked at the answering man. The answering man looked back to the ship, where the white cat was still grooming.

  “When the green ship cast off a little later, distrust was creeping over the deck like an unwanted passenger who had come aboard at the tiny island. Maybe, each of them thought, one of them was a murderer. Maybe someone they had previously trusted was someone who murdered because he or she was born on an island with a sign saying ‘Island of the Murderer.’

  “The waves looked like dark green honey. It must be the distrust. They were stuck in a sea of suspicion, hardly moving anymore. If things stayed like this, they would never reach the mainland.”

  Abel fell silent, and Anna had to force herself to resurface from the honey ocean so that she could see where they were. They were standing in front of the café. But that wasn’t the reason Abel had brought the story to a halt. The reason was a figure approaching them along the harbor: a figure with his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket, now scratching his ear with the arm of his glasses.

  “Knaake,” Abel said in a low voice. Anna nodded.

  “Let’s go in,” Abel said.

  “Why? You don’t want to see him?”

  “I want to see what he does,” Abel answered. “Where he goes and how he behaves. Just … so … Come on.”

  “Will you tell the fairy tale inside, and will there be hot chocolate, and can I have a piece of cake with it?” Micha asked as she raced up the stairs without waiting for answers. She was a little queen. Of course there would be hot chocolate and cake.

  Anna didn’t think they would find a table, but they were lucky— there was a couple just leaving one next to the window overlooking the mouth of the river, and Micha snatched their spot like a cat would a mouse. The young man helped the young woman into a long black leather coat, and then he slipped on his own coat, which made the words cashmere and smooth pop into Anna’s head. He was wearing a gray silk scarf and his hair was red, nearly golden … then he turned and, of course … of course, it was Hennes. And, of course, the young woman in the black leather coat was Gitta.

  “Seems like everyone’s here today,” Abel said in a low voice.

  It was a weird situation: They looked at each other, two versus two, here versus there, this side versus the other.

  “So, little lamb,” Gitta said finally, “here you go, have our table. Have you been over there? At the beach? You heard what happened, right? It was all over the news …”

  Anna nodded slowly. “We haven’t been there … no. Have you?”

  “Yeah,” Gitta said. “It was kinda creepy. I mean, that guy found the dead body, just this morning, and it had been there for a day or so … in our neighborhood, all hell’s broken loose, police driving by regularly … I actually started wondering if it might be a good idea to open up a snack bar, you know, for anyone who’s coming by to look … Hennes insisted on going down to the beach—he thought he’d find footprints that haven’t been trampled … the great bloodhound …”

  She pressed her body, in a black leather coat, against him, and he tried to pull her away. “Come on, didn’t we want to …”

  “He’s also good at finding footprints in the woods,” Gitta went on, winking at Anna. “I guess I’ll have to learn sooner or later … how to track. Maybe I’ll even take up hunting. Those blinds you hide in look pretty cozy to me …”

  “Wait a sec,” Anna said. “That sounds like Bertil, not like Hennes. Hennes, do you hunt, too?”

  Hennes rolled his eyes. He even looked charming when he was rolling his eyes. Hell.

  “Come on, Gitta,” he repeated. “Let’s get going. Now.”

  “The family von Biederitz has a hunting lodge out at Hanshagen, didn’t you know that?” Abel said. “They probably own the town, too.”

  “No,” Anna said. “I didn’t know that.” She watched as Hennes pulled Gitta away by her arm, a little too possessively. Gitta in her black biker gear; Gitta, who despite her clothes could only afford an old scooter; Gitta with her hated, overly hygienic mother didn’t fit in with Hennes’s family any better than Abel did with Anna’s. Anna imagined Gitta sitting in a hunting blind in her leather coat, trying not to move … a majestic stag on the clearing in front of her … as she raises her gun, the leather jacket rustles, and the stag flees. Or maybe it chokes while laughing. Or Gitta sidles up to it instead, and propositions it …

  “What are you laughing at?” Abel asked.

  Anna shook her head. “Weird thoughts,” she answered. “It’s good to laugh.”

  “I ordered three hot chocolates and a piece of cake, all by myself, without any help,” Micha said proudly. “I’m just telling you because you didn’t see me do it. And look! In here, it’s already springtime.”

  She was right. On each of the tables in the café, a single red tulip stood in a narrow white vase. “Yeah, it’s spring in here,” Abel said. “I wonder if it’ll ever be spring out there.”

  Outside, in the eternal winter, Knaake was walking out onto the pier with thoughtful steps. He stood at the green pole with the light on top, and it looked as if he were listening to some long-forgotten melody still hanging in the air at the end of the pier. Then he reached into his pocket and took something out, which he held to his eyes—a small pair of binoculars.

  “Didn’t you say that’s the lighthouse keeper?” Micha asked. “He’s looking for the ship. The black one. He’s looking for the last person on it, I mean, apart from Mrs. Ketow and the haters, Uncle Rico and Aunt Evelyn. For, you know, I don’t think those three are really dangerous. Uncle Rico—definitely not—he doesn’t even want to have me. He might have to take me in because he’s my only close relative. If another guy from shells and sisters comes and says …”

  Micha kept on talking about the ship and about “shells and sisters,” which by now sounded like the name of a grocery-store chain to Anna, but she wasn’t listening very carefully. She saw Knaake turn around with his binoculars. He wasn’t scanning the horizon anymore. Instead, he was looking at the beach of Eldena, opposite the pier, on the other side of the mouth of the river. Was he able to see the police tape from where he was standing? Could he make out the faces of the curious people who were prowling around like stray cats on the lookout for food? Next, Knaake aimed his binoculars at the café. Maybe he saw them. What else did he see? What else did he expect to see?

  Anna followed his gaze to the café terrace, where people were giving up and starting to leave—it was just too cold out there. Someone with a big gray dog walked past. Anna put a hand on Abel’s arm and pointed.

  The person with the dog stopped at the beginning of the pier, looked out over the frozen sea for a few moments, turned, and walked his dog back along the river. He was pushing a bicycle, too, with one hand.

  “Bertil,” Anna said. Abel nodded. Had he seen them? He’d seen Knaake, who was still standing out there at the end of the pier … that much was sure—he had seen him and turned the other way.

  “So did the sea stay thick?” Micha asked, gently stroking the red tulip on their table with her index finger. “Or did it turn more liquidy again? Did they find out which one of them was the murderer?”

  Abel sipped a little of his hot chocolate, covered his face with his hands, and took a deep breath. “That sea …,” he said after lowering his hands, “… that sea stayed thick and green. Worse, it became thicker and thicker. And, finally, it stood still. The waves weren’t moving anymore. The ship had stopped.

  “Then, there was a cracking sound right in front of the green ship. One of the motionless waves broke like glass, and, in a rain of splinters, the sea lion heaved himself out of the ocean, onto its rigid, shining green surface.

  “‘The sea,’ he declared—and the tone of his voice had something very final to it—‘the sea has frozen.’

  “‘But how … how can we go on?’ the little queen asked in despair.

  “‘On fo
ot,’ the rose girl answered. ‘We’ll have to walk.’

  “So they all climbed over the rail, one after the other: the asking man, the answering man, the lighthouse keeper, the rose girl, the little queen with Mrs. Margaret in her arms, and the blind white cat. They walked a little ways away from the ship; then they stood, hesitating, a pitiful cluster of figures in the middle of shining, dark green endlessness.

  “‘What will we do if we get lost in this eternal winter?’ the little queen asked timidly. ‘If we lose each other? Where will we find each other again?’

  “‘We’ll meet wherever spring is,’ the rose girl replied.

  “And then they started wandering over the ice. Just once, they turned to look back at their green ship with the yellow rudder; the lighthouse keeper got out a small pair of binoculars, the existence of which he had forgotten until that moment, and he looked through them.

  “‘Now I can see it!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can see the ship’s name! It’s painted on her bow, right above the waterline; we just didn’t realize it was there!’

  “He gave the binoculars to the little queen, and she, too, saw the blue letters on the green hull of the ship.

  “‘What’s she called, then?’ the asking man asked.

  “‘Thanks, same to you,’ the answering man answered.

  “‘She’s called Hope,’ the little queen said. ‘Our ship is called Hope.’

  “The rose girl sighed. ‘And now we’re leaving her behind,’ she whispered.”

  Abel took hold of his cup and leaned back in his chair.

  “Is that all?” Micha asked.

  “For today, yes. Before I can go on telling you what happens, the little queen’s crew has to continue on foot for a while over the ice.”

  “But look! Out there, they are walking over the ice, too, just like in the story!” Micha called out. “See? Over there? I want to do that, too! There’s even a woman with a stroller!”