The Storyteller (9 page)

That’s none of your business, Anna wanted to say. Abel would have said that. She didn’t.

“Most days,” she answered. “Except Fridays.”

The young woman nodded. “Are you her sister?”

“No,” said Anna. “Her cousin. Has she left already?”

“Yeah. Yeah, she has,” the woman said thoughtfully, and Anna felt that the teacher had as many questions as she did. “She said she has to go out to the village of Wieck,” the teacher said. “To where the Ryck flows into the sea and all the ships are moored.
Has to
. So serious. She told me that she has to look at the ships. Today she was going on and on about ships in class … there was a green ship with yellow sails that she talked about.”

“Rudder,” Anna corrected. “With a yellow rudder. Thank you. Then I’d better go and see if I can find her in Wieck.”

“Well, you might meet her uncle out there,” the teacher said. Uncle, Anna thought. “He was hoping to find her today, too.”

Without bothering to reply, Anna ran back to Abel’s bike and pedaled away as fast as she could.

• • •

Gitta was swearing between clenched teeth. She wasn’t doing well on this test. The French sentences formed knots in her head, knots she couldn’t untangle, as the deeper meanings behind the words escaped her. She’d screw up this test, she knew it. She hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was doing—and, come to think of it, why she was even bothering.

She looked up, looked for a crown of red hair among the other heads, bent over their tests. When she found it, she smiled. God, she really had better things to think about than French essays. These fucking tests. She needed a cigarette. Hennes was writing; he didn’t lift his head. If she kept staring at him long enough, she thought, staring at him in a certain way, he’d notice, he’d feel his body getting warmer. All she had to do was concentrate … But it wasn’t Hennes who looked up a little later. It was someone sitting at the table next to him. Tannatek. He’d almost come too late to take the test; he’d sat down at the very last minute and been scribbling away frantically ever since. But now he stopped writing. He looked at her. His eyes were extremely blue. It wasn’t a pleasant kind of blue. Too icy.

Gitta narrowed her eyes and held his gaze. She thought of Anna, of Anna’s words: tell me about the Polish peddler …

It was as if they were having a conversation with their eyes, in the middle of a French test, in complete silence.

I’m not blind, you know, Gitta said. I mean, I don’t know exactly what is going on between you two … Anna and you … I don’t know what you hope to get out of it. But you do expect something, don’t you? You’re using her; you need her to accomplish something or you would never have talked to her.

Leave me alone, Abel said.

You leave Anna alone. She lives in her own world. Sometimes I envy her … she’s not like us; she’s different. So … so fragile, so easy to hurt. Keep your hands off her.

Excuse me? Have you lost it completely now? I don’t even know her.

And
she
doesn’t know
you.
That’s the point.

What do you mean?

Gitta sighed. I told you. I’m not blind. I know a few things I’m definitely not gonna tell Anna.

He lowered his head again, looked at his test; he’d ended the conversation. Had he really read what her eyes had said to him?

After the test, she stood in the schoolyard with Hennes and the others, smoking. Hennes’s red hair tickled her neck when he bent forward and reached past her to lend his lighter to someone. Oh, come on, why did she keep worrying about Anna? Hadn’t Anna told her that she had a crush on a university student? Everything was all right.

“Hey,” Hennes said in a low voice, “whose bike is our Polish peddler getting onto?”

“That’s Anna’s bike,” Gitta replied in the same low voice. And, in a whisper, just to herself, added, “A student? You don’t say, little lamb.” She crushed the half-smoked cigarette in a sudden burst of anger. “Shit,” she said, a little too loudly. “This isn’t going to end well.”

“Excuse me?” Hennes asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Gitta said lightly and laughed. “The test. The final exams. Anything. What ends well in life? You got another smoke for me?”

IN SUMMERTIME, SHIPS WERE PACKED TIGHTLY IN
Wieck, where the Ryck met the sea, and the harbor was crowded with sailors and tourists. Now, in February, the village and harbor were nearly empty. Only fishing boats were left. The fish caught here were sold in Hamburg or Denmark, and the fish sold in the store a block behind the harbor came mainly from the Netherlands, delivered by trucks in the night: there seemed to be a global fish exchange.

Little red flags on poles, markers for the fishing nets, were leaning against the boats in stacks now, the flags waving tiredly behind the falling snow. The railing of the old drawbridge was freshly painted with the white of the snow. On the bank of the river where Anna stood there was a path leading to the village of Eldena. It wound past the housing development where Gitta lived, in the house with the glass wall through which she couldn’t see the sea.

Anna leaned Abel’s bike against the fence outside a sleepy-looking
restaurant, a place caught in a limbo between open and closed. She followed the river, past fishing boats, looking for a pink down jacket. And then she saw it. Micha appeared from behind a pile of plastic boxes used to ship fish, stood there for a moment, apparently not sure what to do. It took Anna a while to figure out what the little girl was looking at: a sailboat, a single leftover pleasure craft still docked among the fishing boats. It was big and a bit clumsy looking. And dark green. Micha shook the braids so they fell down her back, and seemed to be talking to someone on board, to be calling out to someone … she was too far away for Anna to hear what she said. When the little girl stepped onto the rickety gangplank that connected the boat to the dock, Anna started running. She skidded and fell—snow on fish scales is a slippery combination, snow on dirt is, too, and there was snow in her eyes as well—got up, and ran on.

Something was wrong. Abel hadn’t mentioned anything about Micha boarding a dark green ship. The dark green ship belonged to the fairy tale, not to the harbor of Wieck. For several seconds, Anna feared the mysterious craft would cast off and sail down the broad part of the river, right before her eyes—out to the slowly freezing sea, into a wall of snow—and that she would never see Micha again.

The ship didn’t go anywhere, though. Anna stopped next to it. There was nobody to be seen on deck now, but she heard voices from inside the cabin. Micha’s voice and the voice of an adult. The cold carried the voices to Anna, the words clearly distinguishable now, as clear as if they’d been written on paper.

“It doesn’t have a yellow rudder?” Micha asked.

“No,” said the adult voice—a man’s voice. “Should it have a yellow rudder?”

“I think so. Abel said it would. Is the ship yours? All yours?”

“Yes, it is,” the man answered. “But if you want, it can also be yours. We could take a sailing trip on it together. This summer … if you like ships, that is.”

“Oh, I absolutely like ships,” Micha replied. “I just don’t know if Abel will let me. In my fairy tale, I have a ship, you know, and it nearly looks like this one. But only nearly. You don’t have a … a sea lion here?”

“A sea lion? No. None that I know of …”

“Abel said, on the green ship, there is a sea lion. Or swimming next to it. He fetched it. The ship. Or did he build it? I don’t remember.”

“Abel seems to say a lot,” the man said.

“Yes,” said Micha, and she sounded proud. “He’s my brother.”

“I know, Micha.” The man sighed. “I know.”

“You know?” Micha asked. “Who told you? And how come you know my name?”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the man replied. “I’ve been waiting for a long, long time. I knew you would find me one day. Maybe you really can come sailing with me this summer. I have been very lonely without you.”

In his voice, there was the sadness of all the lonely men of the earth. Anna didn’t like the taste of this sadness. There was too much cunning in it. She walked a few steps farther. The man was sitting at the stern. Micha stood beside him in her pink jacket, looking at him with big eyes, not really understanding what he meant. Anna could see that Micha felt sorry for a stranger. She was the kind of little girl who would take pity on a lonely man. She was the cliff queen, after all. She had healed the melancholy dragon.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” The sadness in the man’s
voice moved back and forth, deep and low, like a swing hung from a very high branch of a beech tree. Or—a rope. The sadness was faked, Anna thought. Definitely.

“No,” Micha said. “Who are you?”

“Oh, Micha,” the man said. “My little Micha.” He pulled up the sleeve of his jacket, and Anna could see that there was a tattoo on his bicep.

“But … that’s my name!”

The man pulled her gently, onto his knees, onto the swing of sadness. “Of course that is your name,” he said. “I am Rainer. Do you know who Rainer is? Rainer Lierski?”

“I’ve heard that name before,” Micha answered. “Who is that again?”

“Your father, Micha. I am your father. I wasn’t allowed to see you for a very, very long time. They forbid me to. Your mother and … Abel. He hates me. I don’t know why. Your mother … she’s gone, isn’t she?”

Micha nodded her head. “She’s on a trip. But she’ll be back soon.”

“Until she comes back you could live with me,” the man said. “I have a nice, big apartment. You’d have your own room there, a nice, big room with tall windows that let in lots of light … The apartment seems very empty at the moment. It’s sad to live in an empty place all by yourself, you know.”

Micha stood up. “No thank you,” she said politely. “I’d rather stay with Abel. Abel hasn’t gone away, you see, and he won’t, not ever, not without me. Promise not to tell my mother, but I love Abel best. Can I … can I go on a sailing trip with you, without having to move?”

“Sure,” the man said. “I’d be happy to have you along. But you still have to think about the nice, big apartment. I happen to know your apartment. It’s really tiny. I lived there once, you know. Only for two years. But you wouldn’t remember that. You’re going there now? Home? Do you want me to come with you?”

“I can find the way myself, thank you,” Micha said. “But … could I have a look at your ship before I go? Like … could I see what the cabin looks like from the inside? I’ve never been in the cabin of a ship.”

“Certainly,” the man said, getting up and putting an arm around Micha. That was enough. Maybe Anna had misjudged him; after all, it wasn’t his fault that he had a name like Rainer. Maybe she was sticking her nose into something that had nothing to do with her—but just the same, she didn’t like this guy. Everything about him seemed artificial, fake, creepy: his badly tailored jeans, his sneakers, his sweater beneath his thickly padded winter vest, even his hat. Through and through, Rainer Lierski seemed to be from a sale at Aldi. Anna doubted he owned the boat. Anybody can board a ship, especially in winter when no one’s around.

He was a liar.

“Micha!” she called out. “Micha!”

Micha looked up, and Rainer looked up, too. In his eyes, there was something like anger at being caught. His arm was still around Micha’s shoulders. “Who is this?” he asked.

“Oh, that is Anna.” Micha sounded as if it was the most natural thing in the world that Anna was here, as if she’d known Anna for years, which made Anna hurt with a strange pain from deep inside.

“You forgot your key!” she said. “I’ve got it with me! I’ll explain it to you later. Come on! It’s cold!”

“I just wanna look at the cabin!” Micha said. “I’ll come after that!”

“No!” Anna almost shouted. “You’re coming now. Right now.” She put as much authority into her voice as she could muster. It wasn’t enough.

“In a minute!” Micha said.

“Now!”

“It won’t take long, I promise!”

Rainer Lierski looked around as if someone might be watching them. Then he stepped forward to the dark green railing. “Anna,” he said. “So you are Anna. And who is this Anna who thinks she can tell my daughter what to do? Who are you?”

Anna cleared her throat. Who was she? A girl inside a bubble. The daughter of Magnus and Linda Leemann, from a nice district of Greifswald, from a house of blue air. High school student in her last year, musician, English au pair to be. Gitta’s squeaky-clean little lamb. No. She was someone who didn’t know yet who she was or would be. She cleared her throat again. Rainer in his cheap, ugly sweater from the Aldi sale frightened her more than Abel did. Micha had slipped away from him, but he pulled her back with his long arm and pressed her against his side. “She is my daughter,” he repeated.

“No,” Anna said. “No, she isn’t. Maybe … maybe in a biological sense.”

Rainer snorted. Micha looked from Anna to him and back again, uncertain. “And I don’t believe,” Anna challenged, “that this is your ship.”

“Of course it is,” Rainer said in a low, sharp voice, and his tone confirmed Anna’s suspicions. “Abel sent you, didn’t he? You can tell
him that I know about Michelle. She isn’t coming back, that one. Gone for good. Run away. I’ll take care of my daughter like every father should. And if he wants to hear that from me in person, he can come himself.”