The Storyteller

by Antonia Michaelis

  And then she heard a strange and frightening sound, like the whimpering of a dog, very low … it lasted only seconds, but it was such a desperate sound, such an infinitely helpless sound, that she shuddered. “Abel,” she said again. She wanted to ask him something, but she didn’t know what. She just held him tight, and, finally, she fell asleep, still holding him in her arms.

  When she awoke in the morning, she was in bed alone. She walked over to the guest room barefoot. Abel and Micha were still asleep, together in one of the beds. She must have dreamed that encounter in the night. He’d never been outside.

  ““THE SNOW IS MELTING,” MAGNUS SAID AT BREAKFAST and pointed outside, where thick round drops were falling from the roof. “My robins will come back.”

  The sun was shining on the snow. It would take some time for the snow to go, but it was a beginning.

  Nobody said much at breakfast. It was a good kind of Saturday-morning sleepiness, Anna told herself. The silence didn’t mean anything. She went to the basement with Abel to take the dry clothes down from the line. Upstairs, they heard Micha trying to play the piano again.

  “She’d stay if I’d let her,” Abel said, smiling. “She’s already forgotten me, hasn’t she?”

  “Bullshit,” Anna said. “You’re a saint, remember?” And she hugged him with a shirt in her hand, which led to a weird kind of entanglement.

  “Last night,” she whispered. “Did you leave the house?”

  He hesitated. “Yes,” he answered finally. “Not for long, though. I had to … deliver something.”

  “And did you come to me afterward … or did I dream that?”

  He stroked her hair. “You dreamed that,” he said.

  “It wasn’t a nice dream,” Anna whispered. “In my dream you were unhappy …”

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s take the laundry upstairs. We should get going, or Micha will start to think that we live here.”

  “Wait,” she said on the stairs. “Did you actually think about it? About Magnus’s offer? The loan?”

  “Magnus …” Abel murmured. “He’s the only reasonable person here. Do you realize that? He would rather see me gone for good. I wonder what conditions are attached to his offer. He’ll name them sooner or later. Maybe one is that I go really far away to study …”

  “Nonsense,” Anna said, but she had a bad taste in her mouth as she said it.

  When she gathered Abel’s books from her desk, her fingers felt heavy as lead. Stay, she wanted to say. Stay here, with Micha. Don’t ever leave again. Don’t ever go out at night again. Stay. You don’t have to work nights. Forget those calls, those contacts, those deliveries. Forget the white cat’s magic fur. Throw away this world of the night; fling it into the river … Her cell phone was still lying on her desk. She remembered the call she hadn’t taken yesterday and checked the mailbox, without really listening, while Abel was packing his backpack.

  And then she did listen. It hadn’t been Gitta. It was Knaake’s voice.

  “Anna,” he said. “I might be on my way to finding out something. Call me as soon as you can.”

  She shook her head and pressed the send key to call him back. It would be better, she thought, to walk out of the room. Abel was still standing behind her … actually, it would be better not to call back at all. Maybe she didn’t want to know what he’d found out. Her heart was racing all of a sudden.

  “Fischer?” a female voice barked into the phone. She flinched.

  “I … I thought … I guess I have the wrong number.”

  “Or you don’t,” the voice said, a no-nonsense voice without an ounce of friendliness to it. “This is Heinrich Knaake’s phone.”

  “I … but … is he there?” Anna asked, confused. “Can I talk to him? I’m one of his students, and he left a message that I should call him …”

  “He’s here all right. But you can’t talk to him. He’s in a coma. In the ICU. I’m the doctor.”

  Anna closed her eyes and reopened them. “Excuse me?”

  “The cell phone was in his jacket pocket. It’s a miracle it’s still working. Tell me, do you know who should be informed? Is there family?”

  “No,” Anna answered and tried to swallow her confusion. “I … don’t know him that well. Not at all, to be honest. What … what happened?”

  “He fell through the ice,” the no-nonsense doctor said. “They pulled him out of the river last night, in the city harbor. We don’t know how long he was in the water. He was lucky someone came along and saw him. The person who did, though, didn’t pull him out. He called the fire department from a pay phone. The fire department! Now that was a bright idea! And then he hightailed it, our anonymous caller.” She laughed a hard, rough laugh—it was really more of a cough than a laugh. If you worked in the ICU, Anna guessed, you got that kind of a laugh—about these kinds of things, anyway.

  She was dizzy. She sat down in the chair at her desk.

  “Can we see him?”

  “If you don’t expect him to talk to you, then sure. We’re on Löffler Street. We’ll be here.” The doctor hung up. Probably she had a dozen other things to do.

  Anna stared at the cell phone. She should have taken the call last night, she thought. Could she have somehow stopped him from falling through the ice? What on earth had he been doing on the ice in the city harbor anyway?

  “Anna?” Abel asked. “What …?”

  She looked at him. The room was still spinning around her. “The lighthouse keeper,” she said.

  “Something has happened to the lighthouse keeper.”

  The room was white like the snow outside, much too white. The beeping of the machines made it unreal. Micha groped for Anna’s hand. With her other hand, she held on to Abel. They hadn’t wanted to take her, but she’d insisted.

  “I’m on the ice with him, don’t you remember?” she’d said. “With the lighthouse keeper! In the fairy tale!” Now, seeing him, in his white-snow bed, Micha shook her head in astonishment. “He’s not wearing skates,” she said. “We were skating, weren’t we?”

  The no-nonsense doctor left them alone. She was busy with other patients. There was a mind-numbing smell of disinfectant and plastic.

  They found three chairs, pulled them up to the bed, and sat down. The monitor above Knaake’s still form showed the narrow green line of his heartbeat. The face on the pillows was nearly as white as the pillows themselves. His eyes were closed. The sailor’s beard, which had turned him into a lighthouse keeper, seemed withered in a strange way. They sat there for a long time, silently.

  “He liked Leonard Cohen,” Anna said finally. “Like Michelle. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” Abel said. “And I know that Michelle had a fling with a teacher a long time ago. A long, long time ago. And that he was a lot older than she was.”

  “He told me he didn’t know her.”

  Abel nodded. “Easy for him to say. Maybe he doesn’t remember her.” He leaned forward and touched the limp hand from which an IV emerged—or, rather, into which it disappeared. He touched the hand very gently. “I wanted to ask him. Point-blank. I should have done it. Now …”

  “Ask him when he wakes up.”

  Abel nodded. But in his eyes, the ice was melting. Anna saw the water in them, and she knew that he was thinking the same thing she was: Knaake might never wake up again. The doctor had shrugged. “What do you want from me? Percentages? Chances? It’s darn cold in the water out there. Darn cold.”

  “The story,” Anna whispered. “Tell us how the story goes on. It’s important. The thirteenth of March is next Wednesday, and we’ve got to reach the mainland. I guess none of the crew slept well that night, bedded on the cold ice, with a traitor in their midst …”

  “None of them slept well that night,” Abel repeated. “For they slept on the cold ice, with a traitor in their midst. A traitor, thought the rose girl, and a murderer—was it one and the same person? Once, in the middle of the night, she’d thought she’d heard the sil
ver-gray dog whimper … very close.

  “But in the morning, the silver-gray dog was nowhere to be found. The lighthouse keeper wasn’t there either. And a thaw had set in. There were fissures, crevices, and deep clefts in the ice now—holes, through which you could make out the water, like dark, lurking eyes.

  “‘Oh no!’ whispered the little queen. ‘They haven’t fallen into one of these holes, have they?’ That was when they heard the cry of a bird, and a moment later a big gray seagull landed next to them. She started pecking the ice with her beak, over and over, as if she wanted to destroy it all by herself. No, the little queen thought, the gull is writing.

  “‘I found him,’ the little queen read aloud. ‘The lighthouse keeper. He must have gone away, alone at night. Come. Hurry.’

  “The seagull inclined her head and nodded, and only when she rose up into the air again did the little queen realize that her eyes were golden. They followed her over the ice till they reached one of the holes full of black water. In it, the lifeless body of the lighthouse keeper was floating. The rose girl helped the little queen pull him up onto the ice. But he still didn’t move. One of his fists was closed around something: a red thread.

  “‘It was him!’ the little queen whispered. ‘He showed the cutter the way!’

  “She looked up, and then she saw the dark figure standing at the top of the next snowdrift. The sharp ends of tools were sticking out of her coat pocket.

  “The little queen looked back at the lighthouse keeper. A tear fell on his breast, a royal tear, and, all of a sudden, he started breathing again.

  “‘But we can’t stay here!’ the rose girl urged. ‘We’ve got to go! Quick!’

  “A short while later, they were racing away on their skates, faster than ever, around crevices and more holes. Behind them, the cutter was gliding through the torn white desert on her own skates. She had worked on them all night. She had made them from pure gold, and at their tips she had left some space to put the pieces of diamond. The cutter didn’t stop when she passed the body of the lighthouse keeper.

  “Only the gray seagull hovered over him for a while before she stretched her wings and followed the small group of runaways.

  “In the distance, a narrow green line had appeared. The mainland. It was close. But not yet close enough.”

  Abel fell silent.

  “So the lighthouse keeper was our traitor,” Anna said in a low voice.

  Abel nodded. “He’s been following me. He thought I wouldn’t notice. It’s none of his business what I do at night … but I didn’t want anything to happen to him. Anna, I don’t know how he managed to fall through the ice. I … I wish he’d followed me last night. If he’d been where I was, he couldn’t have fallen through the ice … and if I’d been where he was, I could have pulled him out …”

  “It’s okay,” she said and put an arm around him. “It’s okay.”

  “I wonder,” Micha said, “what kind of creature this gull-wolf-sea lion-dog will turn into at the end. Possibly a prince who marries me?”

  “Definitely,” someone whispered, and Anna jumped. She nudged Abel and pointed to the pale face on the pillows. Knaake was still lying there with his eyes closed. But now he was moving his lips. “A prince,” he repeated.

  Anna bent over him, as close as she could, and laid a hand on his forehead.

  “Mr. Knaake!” she whispered—why was she whispering? “It’s me, Anna. Can you hear me? What happened? What were you doing in the city harbor, on the ice? Why did you go out there all alone?”

  He shook his head, very slowly. “I wasn’t alone,” he answered, barely audible. “There was someone else there, too. Someone with … a weapon. I took a step back … into the shipping channel … to avoid the bullet.”

  He opened his eyes now, carefully, as if his eyelids weighed tons; he looked at Anna, then at Micha, and then at Abel. And then he closed his eyes again.

  “Who?” Anna asked. “Who was there on the ice with you?”

  “I … can’t remember,” Knaake answered. “I really can’t remember.”

  He groped for Anna’s hand on the bed. She felt his cold fingers, felt that he wanted to tell her something, but she couldn’t tell what. She bent even lower.

  “Anna, Anna,” he whispered, “take care of yourself.” There it was again—that sentence so many people seemed to be saying to her lately.

  “You’re sure you don’t remember who it was?” she asked. “Please, you have to try …”

  But Knaake said no more. She wondered whether he’d fallen asleep or lost consciousness—or whether he just didn’t want to answer. The green line of his heartbeat shivered across the monitor, revealing nothing, and left her alone with her fear. She rose from her chair and turned to Abel, who’d risen as well. When he pulled her into his arms, she felt his cheek against hers, and it was wet. The water of the thaw.

  “He’s gonna make it,” he whispered, his voice soft with relief. “He’s not going to die. Someone who talks doesn’t die. He’s gonna make it. Anna, I … is it possible he thought he was following me last night but it was someone else? Someone who was even angrier about it than I was?”

  Micha pushed her way into their hug and looked up at them. “He’s gonna make it, and we will, too, won’t we?” she asked. “Reach the mainland? In time?”

  Anna visited the lighthouse keeper again on Sunday morning— without Abel. He didn’t talk to her this time.

  The no-nonsense doctor looked at her strangely when she told her he had spoken the day before. “Sometimes, if someone wants something badly enough,” she murmured, “one sees it happen for real.”

  “But he did open his eyes!” Anna insisted. “He did talk to us.”

  “Hmm,” said the doctor. “Well, he hasn’t spoken to us, that’s for sure. And to be honest, I don’t know if he’ll ever talk to anybody again.”

  Anna tried to concentrate on schoolwork all of Sunday, but her thoughts were elsewhere—wandering about the ICU; on the beach, where by now the police tape had probably been removed; and on to the Admiral, in front of which Rainer Lierski had been found on the street. Wandering to Abel. More than anything in the world she wished she could be with him now, that they could find out the truth together.

  Her cell phone rang twice, and she recognized Bertil’s number. Bertil of all people. She didn’t answer. In the evening, Abel called. They didn’t talk about Bertil; they didn’t talk about police tape; they didn’t talk about people falling through the ice. They talked about summer. About what they would do when it finally arrived. Maybe they would sail somewhere. Swim far out to sea. Forget the winter.

  “Tomorrow,” Anna said, “tomorrow, we’ll begin the last week of regular … mostly useless … classes … I wonder what will happen with Knaake’s class. Tomorrow … tomorrow we’ll see each other.”

  “Yes,” Abel said. “Micha said I should say hi, and tell Linda hi from her, too.”

  “Abel. It’s your birthday this week.”

  “Yes.”

  “On Wednesday they’re going to reach the mainland.”

  “It’s not Wednesday yet.”

  “No,” she said, smiling. “See you tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow,” Abel said.

  That night, Anna dreamed of blossoming red flames, of an inferno, of a burning house. No, it was a boathouse full of boats. The flames were everywhere, the heat was unbearable, and she was right in the middle of it. She saw herself from the outside. Or was the figure she was watching even herself? Was it Abel? In her dreams, the boundaries were blurred.

  And then Monday came. And she understood, too late, what the dream had meant.

  SHE WAS SITTING IN MATH CLASS WHEN THE ANNOUNCEMENT came on, over the loudspeaker.

  Math would be her third exam, required if you’d chosen music and arts as your intensive classes. One more week of lectures she didn’t understand and that she wasn’t interested in, and after that there’d be no more classes, just sitting at home, cra
mming formulas into her head … she knew she should listen, but the information just drifted by her. Abel was sitting in the back of the room; he’d been late again and looked tired, like he so often did. She bore the tedium for the sake of being able to talk to him afterward. She didn’t even know about what. She just wanted to talk to him.

  And then the announcement came on.

  “The students’ drama group,” the disinterested voice of the secretary said, “asks for a moment of your attention.”

  Anna put her pen down and leaned back. Every year there was an announcement like this at the end of the term. It was usually a short scene from the play they were doing, a friendly advertisement for their production. A welcome interruption to the lesson. Strange, that was Bertil’s voice. She hadn’t known Bertil was in the drama group. She glanced over at Gitta. Gitta shrugged and started to doodle things on the side of a folder. And suddenly, before Bertil’s words got through to her, Anna thought with surprising clarity: I have lost Gitta. Gitta was once my friend, no matter how different we were. But I’ve lost her.

  Only after she’d thought this did she hear what Bertil was actually saying. There was some noise in the background, people talking, music—it sounded like a club. What was playing had been prerecorded, and it wasn’t a good recording. The Bertil on the recording seemed to be repeating a question he’d already asked. “I said, ‘If I asked you, would you come with me as well?’”

  “Where to?” somebody else asked. And this other person was Abel. Anna sat up.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Bertil said, “and it doesn’t have anything to do with where. To my place, to your place … I don’t know where. Or do you already have an appointment with somebody here?”

  “Bertil,” Abel said and laughed a strange kind of laugh, “I don’t get what this is all about. You hate me.”

  “No,” Bertil said. It all sounded amazingly honest, but was it? When had this conversation been recorded? Where? And what were they talking about? “Hatred and love lie close to each other,” Bertil said, and that was the one sentence that did sound like a school drama production.