The Storyteller (14 page)

Bertil made a snowball and threw it as far as he could, out onto the ice, by now surely thick enough to bear the weight of the dog. He watched the silver-gray flash run over the frozen sea.

He was lucky they let him have the car so often. It had surprised him in the beginning, but with the car, he was less conspicuous; he became a part of the traffic, and she didn’t realize that he was following her, didn’t have the slightest idea how close he was. He knew even now where she was. He could have thrown a snowball over the Ryck and hit the window of the café, where she was sitting
at the table. She couldn’t escape him. She would come to understand how much she needed him. His presence. His care. She didn’t understand it now, but in time she would.

He wrote her name in the snow and knew he was being childish, ridiculous. But hers was such a beautiful name, a name that sometimes filled his whole head—and nearly burst it. ANNA.

THE STUDY DATE WITH BERTIL GOT POSTPONED TO
Saturday, and Gitta said that she would come, too. Couldn’t they work on math and physics? She could definitely use a little help with physics before the test next week, and Frauke, from Anna’s literature class, said that she could use some help as well—and in the end, they met at Anna’s house, which was in town and easier for most of them to get to.

“So, Bertil, it looks like you’re the rooster in the henhouse,” Gitta said, and Bertil grinned.

“I guess the hens aren’t clever enough to help each other out with math and physics,” he said good-naturedly, and he patiently answered their questions for three full hours. Anna watched him get absolutely lost in his role as professor (and rooster), and she tried to listen and to understand what he was saying. But that turned out to be difficult. Her mind was elsewhere.

Abel hadn’t spoken to her all week. On Wednesday, she had
tried to catch his eye in literature class because he wasn’t sleeping for a change, but she didn’t have any luck. Had the rose girl left the ship again, disembarking on an unknown, bare, and rocky island, where she could do nothing but watch the white sails disappear behind the horizon?

“My God, Anna.” Bertil shook his head, and his glasses slid down his nose. “You really don’t get this, do you? Musicians shouldn’t have trouble with math—they say the parts of the brain that process math and music are next to each other! Where’s your head today?”

Anna saw the friendly, indulgent professorial look in his dark eyes. But his look wasn’t just friendly, it was also curious; and she wondered if he really had followed her on Tuesday after all.

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand things like integrals,” she replied. “And to be honest, I don’t believe anyone in our class really does; they just act like they do. Let’s take a break.”

“Oh yes, please,” Gitta said. “Freaks like Bertil can go for three hours without oxygen, but I can’t. Who wants to join me in Anna’s perfect garden for a smoke?”

On the rosebush, in front of the wall with the winter-brown honeysuckle, a second rosebud had opened. The flowerbeds were covered in snow. Gitta’s voice was too loud for the robins, which fled deeper into the entangled branches. Anna, freezing in her sweater, thought, “If I were standing here with Abel, the robins would stay. Maybe even more of them would come. Robins from all over town. They would perch on the branches quietly, their little heads inclined thoughtfully, listening to his fairy-tale words …”

Magnus joined them and bummed a cigarette from Gitta. “Bertil,” he remarked, “you’re the rooster in the henhouse, today.” And everybody laughed, because this time, Bertil rolled his eyes.

“So what are all of you doing after graduation?” Magnus asked.

“I’ve got no idea,” Gitta replied. “My mother wants me to go to university, of course, but I’m not going to go just because she wants me to.”

“Well, it’s too bad, isn’t it, if you can’t do things that you might enjoy simply because you’ve got to be rebellious,” Magnus said, grinning.

“I’m going to stay here and study business administration,” Frauke said. Frauke’s parents had rebelled against their parents when they were young. Frauke had grown up in the chaos of a communal farm, and the most rebellious thing that she had ever done was to
not
be rebellious and to iron her shirts instead. Anna sighed.

“What about you, Bertil?” Anna asked, just to be friendly and also because she realized that she had never bothered to ask him before. “What are you going to do?”

“Army,” Bertil said as he blew a smoke ring into the winter air. All these people and all their strange reasons for doing things, Anna thought. Bertil, for example, probably smokes only because nobody expects him to.

“Come on, Bertil,” Gitta said. “The army? That’s not the place for you! You’ll be trampled to death there, poor lamb.”

“And have fun in Afghanistan,” Frauke added. “What was it someone said? All soldiers are murderers …”

“Tucholsky,” Bertil nodded. “He was right. Back then. In Germany. But you can’t compare now to then, Frauke. German soldiers are in Afghanistan to protect the civilians and to bring order to the chaos.”

“Oh, are they …,” Frauke said.

Magnus put out his cigarette in the ashtray that Anna had made of clay when she was a little girl and given to him for his birthday. It was supposed to be a bird, but it looked more like a hippopotamus. She loved her father for still using it. “You go ahead and solve the world’s problems without me,” he said, smiling on his way to the door. “I’m too old for discussions like this.”

“Seriously, Bertil,” Gitta said when Magnus had gone. “Do you really want to join the army? You wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone aim a weapon at someone.”

“Just because he’s in the army doesn’t mean he’ll be running around shooting people,” Anna said.

But Bertil ignored her. “Could
you
?” he asked Gitta, with a strange tone in his voice. “Could you ever aim a weapon at someone, Gitta?”

“Of course she couldn’t,” Frauke replied. “And you couldn’t either.”

“Oh, I’m not sure about that,” Bertil said, staring into the distance beyond the garden. “If it were someone I really loathed … someone who made me so angry I couldn’t breathe anymore … if I had good reason to hate that someone … it would probably give me some kind of kick to pull the trigger. To watch them fall.”

“But that doesn’t have anything to do with the army,” Anna said, getting uncomfortable.

Bertil looked at her. His glasses weren’t sliding down his nose anymore. “I know how to aim properly,” he said, “even if you don’t believe it. I’m not a bad shot.”

“You’re crazy,” Gitta said, “where would
you
have learned to fire a gun?”

“My father hunts,” Bertil replied. “He’s got a hunting lodge in the woods behind the village of Eldena, not far from your house,
Gitta. Right after finals, I’m getting my hunting license. Hunting isn’t as bad as you think. The animals you shoot … they don’t feel anything, nothing at all. They don’t even know, don’t understand; they suddenly just don’t exist anymore, and never had to be afraid. It’s much better than the slaughterhouse, where an animal hears other animals screaming and dying before it’s killed.”

“Bertil,” Gitta said. “Stop it. That’s horrible. I don’t even want to think about things like that. How come we’re even talking about slaughterhouses and death?”

The air in the garden wasn’t as blue anymore; something reddish had seeped into it. Anna thought that Bertil was trying to look taller and had ended up looking smaller instead—without realizing it.

“Death is definitely something you should think about from time to time,” he said. “Most people don’t, you know. And then they die, and it’s too late. Then there’s no time left to think … have you ever seen someone die?”

“No,” Anna said. The other two shook their heads. “What about you?” asked Frauke.

Bertil nodded. “Our dog. If you watch your dog die, it’s like watching a family member. Him and me, we kind of grew up together. In the beginning, he was friendly, but then he became aggressive. It wasn’t his fault—it was in his blood; the breed is just like that, no matter how you train them, but my father learned too late. The dog thought it was his job to protect us … he attacked a jogger when we were out on a walk. If my father hadn’t stopped him, he’d have killed the guy. Unforgivable. A child would have been killed instantly … my father shot the dog in our yard.”

For a while no one spoke. They were so quiet, the robins came back.

“I saw his eyes,” Bertil said. “When he died, they were golden. He knew that he was dying. In the end, he knew.”

“Golden,” Anna murmured. “A dog with golden eyes.”

“A Weimaraner,” Bertil said. “He had a silver coat and golden eyes. A beautiful dog. Some have blue eyes, though …”

“Let’s go back inside,” Frauke said. “It’s frickin’ cold out here.”

“And next cigarette break, we’re not discussing death …,” Gitta added on the stairs, with forced cheerfulness. “Instead, let’s talk about the very beginning of life.”

“Why, Gitta,” said Frauke, “are you going to become a midwife after all?”

“I’m not talking about midwifery,” Gitta replied. “I’m talking about sex.”

Later, in the growing darkness, they stood in front of the house, talking about meaningless things. Bertil was the first to leave. He had borrowed his parents’ car. He had turned eighteen quite a while ago and, unlike Gitta, had convinced his parents to pay for his driver’s license.

“Gitta’s right, what a freak,” Frauke repeated. “What was it he said about shooting people? Is Bertil Hagemann not who we think he is?” She lowered her voice. “Like, is he secretly a serial killer?”

“Bertil Hagemann just doesn’t like being Bertil Hagemann,” Gitta said matter-of-factly. “He was just acting. And he’s looking for a girlfriend. Desperately.” She looked at Anna. “Face it, little lamb. You won’t be getting rid of him anytime soon. But Anna’s got a university guy, you know.”

“I don’t
have
a university guy,” Anna said and congratulated
herself for her angry tone—it sounded very convincing. “I only had a cup of coffee with him. In the student dining hall.”

That wasn’t really a lie after all.

“How sweet,” Frauke said. “He invited you for a coffee?” She sighed. “We shouldn’t be thinking about math and physics and death. We should think about love instead. I’ve been wondering who to fall in love with for sometime now … there’s Hennes von Biederitz, but somehow that seems unimaginative. I mean, everybody’s in love with Hennes von Biederitz.”

Gitta cleared her throat.

“Just recently, I considered falling in love with someone, experimentally,” Frauke went on dreamily. “Somebody absolutely absurd. André.”

“Who is André?” Gitta and Anna asked at the same time.

“The Pole,” Frauke answered. “Our peddler with the pretty little pills. Isn’t his first name André?”

Anna bit her tongue.

“I’m a little afraid of him.” Frauke gave a little shudder, like a child on an amusement park ride. “But maybe he’s one of those guys with, you know, a rough exterior that conceals a heart of gold … if he wasn’t running around in those cheap clothes from the Polish market … actually, he’s quite a hot guy.” Anna felt nauseated. She was thankful when Gitta put on her helmet and got on her scooter. But Gitta didn’t leave.

“Don’t do that, Frauke,” she said. “Don’t fall in love with that one. I already dissuaded someone else. I know a few things about our Polish friend that you don’t.”

“Things? What kind of things?” Frauke asked, wide-eyed.

Gitta shrugged. “Not G-rated,” she said, winking, and Anna knew that she was making something up, like she’d done when they were children.

“A man with a secret,” Frauke whispered. “And such
beautiful
blue eyes. Dahling.”

“Gee, don’t forget to invite me to your thirteenth birthday party,” Anna said, teasing.

And that was the moment the call came.

Before heading inside with her cell phone, Anna saw Gitta ride away on her scooter and Frauke get onto her bike. At first, she didn’t understand who was talking to her. The connection was bad. It was a woman—or maybe a child. The woman or child was afraid of something.

“Anna?” she asked. “Anna, is that you?” A child. It was Micha. Anna didn’t know where Micha’d gotten her number, but that wasn’t important. She sat down on one of the old carved wooden chairs in the hall and put her finger in her other ear to hear better. “Micha?” she said. “Micha, is that you?”

“Yes,” Micha answered. “I …” She seemed not to be holding the telephone properly; there was a lot of noise in the background. Something seemed to fall and possibly break. The island, Anna thought. The island is sinking; the rocks are bursting.

“Micha, I don’t understand you!” she shouted. “Say it again! Louder!”

“… not, what should I do?” Micha’s voice said, and now it was clearer. “I locked the bathroom door with the key. They’re fighting, Anna. I can hear them. Mrs. Margaret is in the living room, but I guess she can’t do anything either …”

“Who is fighting?” Anna asked. “Micha … Slowly … Where are you?”

“In the bathroom,” Micha repeated. “I have to help him, but I’m afraid. I can’t. Anna, I don’t dare open the door … There’s a note stuck to the mirror … It says ‘Anna’ and ‘Emergency’ with your number on it, so …”