The Storyteller (19 page)

“‘Where does someone go when he dies?’ ‘When does fear end?’ ‘Where are all the single socks that disappeared in the washing machine?’

“The little queen didn’t know the answers to any of their questions.

“‘Help me!’ the little queen cried fearfully. ‘They will tear me to pieces!’

“Then the silver-gray dog appeared between the asking people. He snapped left and right with his teeth, and the asking people stepped back. ‘Why is he doing that?’ they asked. ‘Where does he come from? Is he good or bad?’

“The silver-gray dog plucked the little queen from their arms, like a bird from the air. Suddenly, she was sitting on his back, and he was running toward the ship, running through the passage the asking people had opened for fear of his teeth. Soon, the little queen was back on board. On the island, there was a crowd of asking people, who were still stretching out their dozens of arms and shouting hundreds of questions.

“‘Cast off!’ the sea lion called from the waves. ‘Quick! Too many questions can be dangerous!’

“So they pulled away from shore and headed over to the second island. But one of the asking people had managed to jump aboard and climb over the rail. ‘Can I come with you?’ he asked. ‘Are you sailing toward the mainland? What does the mainland look like?’

“‘Shut up,’ the white cat said. ‘How is anyone supposed to sleep when you’re asking so many questions!’

“They now approached another island, where there was also a crowd of people waiting and waving. The travelers could see that they were shouting something, but their words didn’t reach the island of questions.

“‘I wouldn’t be too surprised,’ the lighthouse keeper said, ‘if that was the island of answers.’

“When they were halfway between the two islands, a whirlpool took hold of the ship, turning it around and around in a circle, and they all lost their balance and fell down onto the deck. Finally, the lighthouse keeper managed to steer the ship out of the whirlpool and back on course toward the second island. The sea lion stuck his head out of a wave. ‘That was the place,’ he said, ‘where all the shouted words fall into the water. They’re too weak to make it from shore to shore. I saw the words underwater, millions of them; they’re lying there on the bottom of the sea, a whole load of wrecked sentences, sentences that never reached their destination, questions from one side and answers from the other …’

“‘How sad!’ the little queen exclaimed. ‘A cemetery of words!’

“‘Some are swallowed by the fish,’ the sea lion said, ‘and they start sprouting the strangest things. Sunfish and electric eels and even crossopterygians …’

“‘I do hope the answering people allow us to go ashore for a bit,’ the little queen sighed. ‘I’d really like to walk on solid ground again, just to feel that something exists.’

“But the shore of the island of answers was packed with too many people, too, all of them wanting to get rid of their answers.

“‘Seven o’clock!’ someone called out.

“‘That adds up to 529.7!’ another one shouted.

“The rose girl pushed the asking man gently to the rail. ‘Here, you will find answers to your questions!’ she said.

“‘But how will I know the correct questions if there are so many answers in my head?’ the asking man asked, his eyes full of tears. And he ran into the cabin and hid between the polar bear skins.

“‘To do good!’ one of the answering people shouted without being asked.

“‘Boil it for three minutes, then let it simmer in the hot water for ten more minutes,’ another one answered.

“‘I don’t think we want to go ashore here,’ the sea lion said. ‘We’ll go ashore when we reach the mainland.’

“Before they sailed away from the island of answers, one of the answering people jumped aboard the ship. He went straight to the cabin, where the asking man was hiding, and for a while all you could hear were questions and answers shooting back and forth: ‘Is he telling the truth?’ ‘On the thirteenth of March.’ ‘Is he good or bad?’ ‘Beneath the beeches, where the anemones grow in spring.’ And then the cabin door flew open and both the asking man and the answering man came running out, in a state of confusion. One of them fled to the stern and the other to the bow, and they climbed over the rail and clung to the ship’s hull from the outside, like two figureheads. Obviously they hoped never to meet again.

“In the meantime, the green ship set course once more for the mainland. The shipmates laughed for a good while about the asking man and the answering man. Then they turned and noticed that the black ship was very close now. So close that they could clearly see the four dark figures aboard. And they stopped laughing.”

• • •

Abel looked into his cup, stirred the cold chocolate, and then looked out the window, as if his thoughts were still lost inside the story.

“Those glasses,” Micha said. “I guess the lighthouse keeper just had them in his pocket. That happens to a lot of people. It happens to my teacher. She isn’t even really old or anything, just kind of old—thirty or something—but she always forgets where she puts her glasses. By the way, she asked me again when she can talk to Mama. I wonder why. But, Abel … when the red hunter came aboard the ship … I let him in, didn’t I? I mean, in reality?”

Abel nodded. “You did.”

“And now … now I shouldn’t let anyone in, right?”

“That’s right.”

Micha nodded. “I didn’t let that man in,” she announced in triumph. “Yesterday. I forgot to tell you.”

Abel sat up straight. “Who didn’t you let in, Micha?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Micha replied, “since I didn’t let him in. He’d already come up the stairs, he was on the landing, talking to me through the door.”

“What did he say?” Anna asked.

Micha thought for a while. “That he’s from some kind of office. Something with a shell and a sister. He said it several times, real clear, as if he thought I was half-deaf. Wait … it started with
so
… shell … a sister office? I think he was from an office for shells and sisters. And he wanted to talk to Mama, too. I didn’t say anything; I was perfectly quiet, as if I wasn’t there at all.”

“That’s good, Micha,” Abel said.

“Possibly … possibly I did say hello, very quickly, at the beginning,” Micha murmured, and Anna laughed, although she really didn’t feel like laughing.

“So-shell-a-sister-office,” she said. “Social assistance office—that’s it!” Micha exclaimed. “That’s where he came from.”

Abel lifted his cup and downed the rest of the chocolate like vodka. Then he covered his face with his hands, like he had done in the tower made of newspaper, in the literature classroom. As if he’d gone to a private room to calm down. When he took his hands away, he wore something resembling a smile on his face. It was a very strained smile.

“The black ship is still there,” he said. “But today … today, we wanted to celebrate, didn’t we, Micha?”

He got up and put on his jacket. “So let’s celebrate. We’ll … we’ll do something special, we’ll …” Behind his smile, the silhouette of a black ship loomed. She had to distract him, Anna thought. She had to make the black ship vanish before it came too close …

“I know what we’ll do,” she said. “We’ll have ice cream. Do you still have room for ice cream?”

“I think so.” Micha nodded. “We haven’t had lunch yet. But can you eat ice cream in winter?”

“Ice cream isn’t lunch,” Abel said. “We should eat something sensible.”

“Oh, come on.” Anna laughed. “Stop being sensible for a while, will you? Ice cream is the best lunch imaginable. When I was your age, Micha, we always went for ice cream when we had a reason to celebrate. Especially in winter. My father used to say that anybody can eat ice cream in summer—that’s no challenge—but we can do it in winter; then we’d go to the Italian restaurant at the market and get our ice cream cones and window shop and laugh at all the people who gave us strange looks. We still have a picture my mother took with an outstretched arm, of the three of us in the snow holding ice
cream cones. And if we felt cold after eating them, we went home and sat in front of the fireplace …” She stopped.

“Rose girl,” Abel said softly, “you must be awfully happy on your island.”

“No,” Anna replied. “There are too many thorns. I started feeling them. Like the little queen …”

The man at the Italian restaurant was surprised, of course, that they wanted ice cream cones to take away. But only a little. Maybe he remembered a little girl and her parents, who had come from time to time, to do the same thing—a father with broad shoulders, who could save you from every danger in the world, and a very gentle mother, who was almost invisible. Had he seen the rose branches beneath their clothes? Anna wondered. The petals? Maybe even the thorns?

Micha tried to order four scoops of ice cream, but Abel said “two,” and then, “okay … okay, three,” and Anna paid without his saying a word about it. And finally, they all stood outside in the snow-covered market square, in the icy wind, with their cones. Abel pulled his gray scarf tighter and shook his head. Then he started grinning. And then he headed down the street, walking without any particular aim or direction, as Anna had earlier. But now it was totally different. They walked next to each other, in silence, while Micha ran ahead, stopping at this or that window, saying what she would buy when she was rich; between the shops, she decorated the snow with brightly colored drips of her turquoise, Smurf-colored ice cream.

The street was full of people: people pushing strollers, people on bicycles, people with heavy bags or dogs on leashes, people who blended into an anonymous mass. Unimportant and, somehow,
almost invisible. The ice cream was long gone, but they just kept walking, walking slowly, without hurrying; Anna wondered whether they would walk to the end of the street, and on and on, to the end of the world, and whether there would be a blue ocean there and a green ship waiting for them. She thought about the very first time she had talked to Abel. How he had been sitting on the radiator in the student lounge, looking threatening. Back then, she never would have considered it possible to walk down the street next to him, in silence—and to think that for the moment, everything was all right.

When she had arrived at this point in her thoughts, she realized that her hand was in his. She was not sure how long it had been there, and she was afraid to move it even a millimeter, in case he shied away. Micha had run ahead; now she came back, looked at Abel and Anna, glanced at their hands and grinned. Anna thought he would pull his hand back then. But he didn’t. He squeezed her hand very quickly and very hard, and she squeezed back. Who had painted the snow golden?

Micha ran ahead again. They watched her draw something with her finger in the dirt on a shop window, then giggle and bounce away … a rubber ball with a fake fur collar and flying blond braids.

They stopped in front of the window; it was the window of a Chinese restaurant, and there was a red dragon painted on it. Next to that dragon Micha had written: “K IS EacH Oth ER.”

Abel looked at Anna. Anna looked at Abel.

“She is the little queen,” said Abel, “in our fairy tale, at least.”

“One must obey the queen,” said Anna.

Abel nodded seriously.

But, of course, we will walk farther now, Anna thought. And we will forget what was written on the window … It’s almost forgotten
already. Then, very suddenly, Abel pulled her into the doorway beside the shop window, into the smell of hot vegetable oil and MSG, next to a glass door with another red dragon on it, and kissed her.

Damn, thought Anna. I’m nearly eighteen years old, and I’ve never been kissed. Not properly, anyway. His lips were as cold as snow, but beyond the lips lay the warmth of a fairy-tale sun. She felt his tongue search for hers, and she thought of the wolf. And if it is true, she thought … if the fairy tale is true? A shot in the neck and a deadly bite in the neck. It all fits. And if I am kissing a murderer?

And if so? Then what?

A murderer, a wolf, a brother, an innocent, a fairy-tale teller. She rested her hands on the rough, cold material of his military parka and kissed him back. She closed her eyes; she no longer saw the red Chinese dragon on the door; she was aboard a ship, far out on the ocean. She heard the waves beat against the rail; she felt the rolling of the ship beneath her feet. If only one could spin a thread of the froth of the waves to make clothes … She tasted the fairy tale’s words on his tongue, not vanilla ice cream or chocolate or cigarettes. No. She tasted the words themselves, the ocean’s salt water and the wolf’s blood … and behind the words, winter. But behind the winter, there was another taste, a taste she only recognized after a while: the taste of fear. He was afraid, and he was not holding her—he was holding onto her. She was suddenly and completely aware of that. Fairy-tale teller, she thought, where is the ship in your fairy tale sailing to? Where does the fairy tale lead? Will there be more blood, flowing into the cracks between the deck planks? I don’t need anyone to protect me, she had said.

Oh yes, you do, Bertil had said. More than you think.

• • •

They wandered back on the broad street that had once been the city’s rampart. It was lined with tall old chestnuts, which in summer were covered in white and red blossoms. Now, there was only snow. They were holding hands again. For a while, Micha had walked between them, and they had swung her in the air as if she were a much smaller child. But then she had run ahead again, and they took each other’s hands. When they reached Anna’s bicycle, back at the market, somebody in a dark blue woolen sweater came out of the bank next door. Knaake. Again, Anna expected Abel to pull his hand away, and again he didn’t. He just nodded in greeting; Knaake nodded back, and Micha asked a little too loudly, “Who’s that?”

“The lighthouse keeper,” Anna answered. And suddenly, she remembered something. The white cat.

“Michelle,” she whispered. “Is it possible that Michelle had come aboard, too?”

“Who knows,” Abel said.

“The white cat who sleeps all the time and blocks out the world … Has she come back, Abel? Have you spoken to her?”