No, I wasn’t the secret room’s prisoner.
But then who was?
I went down into the yard.
The branches of the trees were full of green apples; soon they would turn red and fall to the ground. There was a swing hanging from one tree. I sat down on it and swung back and forth for a while, thinking to myself.
From here I could see both of the hall windows. And the wall between them, where the vine was growing with its blossoms that were white and so violet they almost looked black. A silent garden rat scurried through their stalks. No, there was no room.
No room and no barred window and no tower.
Mosquitoes were dancing in the sunlight, and in the distance a dove was cooing. From time to time, the ropes of the swing would squeak.
Otherwise it was totally silent.
It seemed like everything was waiting. The apple trees, the mosquitoes, the vast blue sky above me, and the tall grass. They were all waiting in silence.
“I don’t know,” I said to them. “You really think so? You think I should go back?”
The grass nodded and the mosquitoes buzzed in agreement.
“That’s easy for you to say,” I said. “You aren’t the ones who have to do it. You don’t have to open the door a second time and feel the cold and look at the iron bed.”
But eventually I sighed and got up from the swing.
A strange feeling had crept into my heart, a feeling that I was the only one who could do this. And as if it were important that it was done.
I made myself some bread with butter in the kitchen and ate it to calm the tingling nervousness in my stomach.
Holding the bread and a plate, I wandered through the kitchen.
I stopped in front of a small, framed photo on the wall. It was of a young woman with red hair and a small boy. The two of them were wearing red rubber boots and walking along a beach.
The woman was Ines, I recognized her right away, and the small boy—that had to be her son. I stepped a little closer to the photo. He had a large mole in the middle of his right cheek and bright green eyes. Ines’s red hair was blowing into her face, and you only had to glance at them to know that they were happy.
That’s when it happened.
I was so absorbed in the picture that the plate slipped out of my hands.
It fell onto the kitchen floor and—with a single, small crash—broke into a shower of tiny porcelain shards. For a while I couldn’t do anything but stand there and stare at them.
The inhaler in my pocket brought my breath back, but not the plate. It couldn’t bring that back.
What would Paul say when he came home?
I found a little broom in one of the cabinets. I pulled my sweater off and swept the broken glass into it, and then I knotted it carefully and ran upstairs to hide the bundle under my mattress.
Maybe no one would notice that a plate was missing.
But they probably would.
When I finally stood in front of the door with the silver handle again, my fear was gone. It had broken with the plate. The fact that I had broken it on my very first day in this house was so terrible that everything else suddenly seemed unimportant. Even if a monster were waiting for me behind the door, it didn’t matter now.
I opened the door very quietly and closed it just as quietly behind me.
The room was cast in the same surreal blue twilight as before. Nothing had changed.
But then I saw that something had changed after all.
Someone was standing at the window looking out.
He was about as tall as me and had his back to me.
He probably hadn’t noticed me come in, I thought. I took one step forward, and then another. When I was close to the window, I stopped.
The person had red hair that almost came down to his shoulders. He was wearing a white shirt that was too long for him—and nothing else. At first I thought it was a girl, but when he spoke it was with a boy’s voice.
“You’ve come back,” he said, without turning around.
I was shocked. “How do you know that I was already...? Have you been here the whole time?”
“Under the bed,” he answered.
“Under the bed?” I asked, confused.
He nodded. “I was hiding. I didn’t know who you were and whether I could trust you.”
“And now? Now you know you can trust me?”
What an extremely strange conversation, I thought. What an extremely strange way to first meet someone.
“I’m not sure yet,” he replied. “But I think so.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “This room, the window with the bars, what does it all mean? Who are you?”
“So you don’t know?” he asked.
Then he turned around. He had a large mole in the middle of his cheek and bright green eyes.
“I’m Arnim,” he said. “And you, you’re Achim, right?”
CHAPTER 3
In which I make a difficult decision
and learn to fly
“You only took me because my name is so close to his,” I said.
Paul slipped off his shoes and looked at me in confusion.
“To whose?” he asked.
“To your son’s, that’s whose!” I muttered and shoved my hands so deep into my pockets that they almost came out again. “Arnim.”
Paul hung his jacket up on a hook. “Did the neighbors’ kids tell you that?”
He put his hands on my shoulders.
“Achim,” he said. “We brought you here because we wanted you, and for no other reason. Do you understand? And why are you only wearing an undershirt?”
I turned away without a word and ran up the narrow stairs to the room that wasn’t mine at all, but the Ribbeks’. Or Armin’s.
I threw myself onto the bed and buried my face in Lucas, because Lucas belonged to me and me alone, and I could cry into him as long as I wanted.
The sweater with the broken glass in it made a small lump, and I could feel it on my shoulder.
From downstairs Paul was calling me, but I didn’t answer.
Later when I heard him clattering with pots and pans in the kitchen and whistling, I took Lucas under my arm and paced back and forth with him—like a beetle in a matchbox or a tiger in its cage or something.
Over the colorful rug, along the shelves, pacing back and forth, and all the while I told him about all the strange and peculiar things that Arnim had told me.
They were so strange and peculiar that I could hardly believe it myself.
I had been right: The tower really was a prison, Arnim’s prison—since the day he had been hit by the truck.
“I was crossing the street,” Arnim had said. “All of a sudden, tires squealed and I saw fireworks, an explosion. I was right in the middle of it all. The explosion was probably just in my head. When it was over, I was suddenly standing on the sidewalk, but I was lying in the street too. I could see myself lying there—perfectly still. Somehow I knew that I didn’t need my old self that was lying on street. I had left it behind—it had become totally unimportant, but Ines rushed up and cried my name.
“I wanted to run up to her, but before I could, everything around me went dark. It was as if I had fallen into a deep sleep. And when I woke up, I was here and saw that I was wearing one of Paul’s old shirts, nothing else, and that I couldn’t open the door. I pressed my ear to it and listened. I was surprised to hear Ines and Paul crying. At one point someone called, and Ines cried into the telephone. She said I had died. And I knew it was true because everything was different than before—I wasn’t hungry or thirsty anymore, and time also passed differently.
“So yeah, I had died, but I couldn’t leave Ines and Paul.
“As much as I wanted to. I wanted them to stop crying and wanted to get away from here... See the birds?” Arnim had asked and led me to the window where the iron bars divided the view into narrow strips.
“See how they’re gathering together to fly south
? They used to be people like you, and they died, like me. But they’re free. They can fly wherever they want. And believe me, there’s a lot more than just hills and grass down there. Every year in the summer, they come back for the ones who are ready to go with them.”
“And you? Why didn’t you turn into a bird? Why don’t you go with them?”
Arnim had paused for a long time. Then he had said, “I can’t. He’s there, you know, and he makes sure that I can’t.”
“Who’s he?” I had asked.
But Arnim had quickly put his finger to his lips.
“Let’s not talk about him. He can hear us. He’s big and powerful, and he doesn’t have a name. Sometimes the birds fly up here and talk with me. They told me he has lots of prisoners all over the world. Those people are longing to be free and fly away, and he’s using that longing to build his palace. That and the sadness of the people who think about us and can’t let us go. He’s building his palace out of black and white stones, and the birds say it’s just getting bigger and bigger. They’ve seen him on their travels; they should know. When he takes my longing, they say, it becomes white stones, and my parents’ sadness becomes black ones.”
“You mean he’s milking the sadness and longing from people like milk from a cow?”
Arnim had laughed a little, but not very happily.
“I don’t know how he does it. If I knew that, maybe I’d be free.”
Eventually Ines came home and put the record player on. The smell of onions and something a little burnt came from the kitchen.
I crept down the stairs and felt embarrassed to see that the table was already set and I hadn’t helped at all.
But no one seemed to notice but me.
“How was your day?” asked Ines when we were sitting at the table.
“Hm,” I said and stuffed some mashed potatoes into my mouth. With mashed potatoes in your mouth, you can’t say very much.
Paul served the fish sticks. “They used to be deep-frozen,” he said. “I think now they’re ultra-heated or something like that.”
Ines leaned over the table and kissed him on the nose.
“They’re burnt,” she said cheerfully. “That’s all. We’re going to eat them anyway.”
No one said anything about the missing plate.
I pushed the mashed potatoes back and forth on my plate and wondered how I could casually find out if Paul and Ines knew about the secret room.
“The door handles are nice here,” I said finally, feeling sort of stupid. “They’re actually all … they’re all the same?”
Ines gave me a funny look. “I’ve never met an eleven-year-old who was interested in door handles,” she said.
“Here’s someone who has taste,” said Paul. “You know, Ines wanted these terrible old ones made of brass and fake rust and stuff...”
“Shut your trap!”
Ines threw a tiny piece of burnt fish at him.
Really, I thought, maybe these Ribbeks were grown up. But very grown up, no, very grown up they were not.
“Anyway, I chose the red door handles,” Paul explained as he wiped the piece of fish off his cheek. “And even if you throw a whale at me, my dear wife, all the handles in this house will still be made of red plastic.”
“And there isn’t a single silver one?” I asked.
“Silver?” Ines laughed. “Maybe if Paul becomes a head chef and we get rich quick.”
“Hm,” I said. But I was thinking much more than “Hm.” I was thinking: They don’t know about the door.
“How did it go over there yesterday?” asked Ines the next morning as she took her hat off the hook. “With the kids ... I’m forgetting their names right now...”
“It was okay,” I said quickly, before she could ask what their names were.
“What did you do?” she wanted to know as she accidentally put the hat on backwards.
“Oh, this and that,” I said.
“Then it’s no problem for you to go back over?”
“No, no,” I said.
“And you definitely get along with them?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said.
“Dress warmly,” said Ines. “It’s starting to get cold outside.”
As soon as she was gone, I ran up the stairs and down the hall to the door with the round arch at the top.
I pressed the silver hand down and went inside.
Arnim was standing at the window talking to someone.
“You really think so?” I heard him say as I closed the door to the secret room behind me. “You think he could do it?” As he spoke, his fingers played nervously with the vine’s flowers.
I waited for the reply, but one didn’t come—just a bright chirping and what sounded like the flutter of wings, and then Arnim turned around.
“Achim,” he said. “There you are.”
As if he had been expecting me!
“Who were you talking to?” I asked.
“To one of the birds. Vierkattel. I talk to him a lot.”
I thought Vierkattel was a strange name for a bird—it was a strange name for anyone, but I kept that to myself.
Arnim sat down on the iron bed, and I sat down next to him.
The mattress was just as hard as you’d imagine one to be in prison. But maybe you didn’t notice it as much if you were dead.
I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. “It’s so cold in here.”
“It’s because of the Nameless One,” said Arnim. “He’s still building his palace. You remember what I told you?”
I nodded. “Out of their sadness and your longing,” I said, and he repeated: “Out of their sadness and my longing.”
Our words sounded solemn, like an incantation.
And then he took my hands and looked at me earnestly with his green eyes.
“Do you remember what else I told you? That I don’t know how he’s keeping me prisoner? That I don’t know why I can’t turn into a bird?”
And I nodded again. The solemn feeling had spread throughout the room and enveloped us like a heavy, damp cloud.
“The Nameless One’s palace,” Arnim continued, “is far, far away. That’s where he takes all the sadness and the longing, and the answer has to be there. I can’t leave this room. But you, you can.”
I swallowed.
“Achim,” he said. “In all these years, you are the only one who found me here. And you’re the only one who can go there for me.”
I jumped up and went over to the window. The vine was holding out a white blossom, and I took a deep breath of its sweet scent to calm myself down.
My heart was pounding like a hammer.
“I can’t get through the bars either!” I cried. “And even if I could get through, I’d fall seven stories to the ground!”
I turned to Arnim hopelessly.
He was still sitting on the iron bed, and his face was just as earnest as before.
“There is one way,” he said. “The birds told me. For a certain amount of time and by means of a certain magic—you could become one of them.”
“Me? Turn into a bird?” I asked in disbelief. “I—I mean, I can just do it? And you can’t?”
He nodded.
“Don’t forget—there’s a big difference between you and me. You can also go through that door. I can’t.”
“The difference is ... that I’m still alive?”
Arnim shook his head. “The difference is that you came of your own free will.”
I stared out the window at the rolling hills for a long time, thinking about what he said.
You can’t just say, “Okay, sure,” when someone asks whether you want to turn into a bird. And, even if you want to, fly to a palace and possibly be chopped up into little pieces of chicken meat by a powerful nameless creature.
What would Paul say if he came home from work that evening—and I wasn’t there?
I imagined him looking in all the closets for me.
“Achim!” he would call. “
Achim, where are you?”
But I would be far away and wouldn’t be able to answer. And then Paul would say to Ines: “I can’t find Achim. He probably ran away. He probably didn’t like it here. But he had only been here for two days.”
And eventually they would turn on the record player and eat jam and forget all about me.
And at that moment, a creature without a name might be tearing me to bits with its claws.
A thick lump formed in my throat. For the first time I realized that I really would have like to have stayed here—with the apple trees and the colorful rug and with Ines and Paul. I hadn’t even been to the ocean yet!
But then I thought about Arnim, who was sitting on the iron bed and waiting for me to make a decision.
“You’re the only one who can go for me,” he had said.
His longing for freedom must be enormous!
And Ines and Paul? What good would it do for me to stay with them if, deep inside, they were still just sad?
This might be the only way, I thought. Maybe I had to go so that their sadness could finally come to an end and Arnim could fly away.
I gave a heavy sigh and suddenly felt much older than eleven.
“Okay,” I said.
“Are you sure?” asked Arnim.
“Yes.”
And Arnim laid his cold hand on my shoulder and said something very peculiar.
He said: “Achim, my brother.”
The sound of those words ran through me like—well, a lot like the way the chocolate cereal at Sunday breakfast at the orphanage poured out of its plastic bag. Nice and crackly and special, somehow. Well, I thought, somehow Arnim was right. We were sort of like brothers.
“Then we can call them now,” he said.
And he stuck one of his arms through the bars and whistled a melody that I’d never heard before. It was beautiful and infinitely sad at the same time.
He hadn’t finished whistling when a large, dark blue bird with a long, curved neck landed on his hand, flapped his wings a couple of times, and tilted his head.
“You brought him,” said the bird. His voice didn’t sound like other birds’ voices. It wasn’t a squawk or a chirp. It sounded deep and full and would have suited a big, strong man with a big, wild beard. I wondered to myself if he had once been one.
The Secret Room Page 3