Текст книги "The Storyteller"
Автор книги: Antonia Michaelis
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ANNA CLENCHED HER FISTS SO SHE WOULDN’T JUMP up from her chair. Never had she been so happy to see someone. She lowered her eyes, trying to hide her smile behind her hair. She heard the history teacher say something to Abel, tell him to take the last free desk at the far end of the room, and when she looked up again, Abel was walking back there, passing her desk. For a moment she looked into his eyes. And she got a fright.
The ice in his eyes had changed; it seemed to have become darker, like the dark, clear ice on a frozen lake whose depth suddenly becomes visible when the wind brushes the snow from the surface. It was an endless depth, bottomless, and almost totally black. She didn’t know which thoughts and creatures were swimming down there. They scared her. It was as if she were watching Abel drown in the waters of himself. She shook her head, trying to rid it of these thoughts. What had happened? Where had he been?
She turned to Gitta and Gitta shrugged. Their history teacher was distributing the tests now, densely printed with threatening instructions and questions. Concentrate, Anna thought. Read the text. Function.
And she did function. The facts were stored inside her head, reliable and secure—despite everything, she was still Anna Leemann, a good student. Her brain was complying, letting her fill it with things and then spitting them out as it was supposed to. She hurried, her pen gliding over the white paper, almost of its own accord. She felt strangely detached as she watched her small, tidy letters form on the paper in front of her. She didn’t look up again until after she finished the first set of questions—half the test. The others were bent over their desks, writing frantically. The history teacher was standing at the podium in front of them. There was a second teacher in the room as well, a proctor. It was a Latin teacher whom Anna knew only by sight. Now he consulted his watch and left the gym. He was replaced by another teacher, who entered through the same door. Knaake. Anna saw him search the room for something, someone, scanning the rows of desks. She knew whom he was searching for. She saw when he found him, saw him nod and start to walk past the desks thoughtfully, his hands folded behind his back. And now, finally, she dared to turn around, too.
Abel wasn’t writing. He was holding a pen; he had been writing, but now he looked at her and she read his eyes. This time they were easy to read. The message in them was not about the dark depth beneath the ice or about whatever had happened. It was about the history test. HELP ME, Anna read in those eyes. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE. And she nodded, barely perceptibly, or so she hoped. She put her hand into her pocket, found something that felt like a piece of paper. She slid a pen into her pocket as inconspicuously as possible, stood up, and went to the front of the room. The history teacher noted the time on a list and nodded at her; she had official permission to go to the ladies’ room. Her heart was racing. Of course, the history teacher couldn’t read her mind. Anna hadn’t done anything forbidden, not yet anyway.
A few minutes later, she was sitting on the lid of a white toilet, writing. The paper in her pocket had turned out to be a ten-euro note. Whatever. She was writing. She was writing tiny letters; she covered the bill with them, her fingers flying. She wrote down the answers for the first section in short keywords, noting dates and giving brief historical background. The thinking, the “Interpret this text in a historical context. Discuss the questions” part he had to do himself. She had already read the second set of questions on the test; she made notes for this part, too, giving more dates, jotting down half-finished sentences, which hopefully would help him to remember. At some point, he surely must have learned all this, too … She wasn’t writing fast enough. She didn’t have enough space on the bill. She thought about using toilet paper. She looked at her watch. She had to go back.
She folded the bill and fastened it under the lid of the toilet paper holder. Then she tore off a piece of toilet paper and stuck it into the door of the stall in which she’d been sitting. It was visible from outside if you were searching for it—a tiny white flag, a white flag made of snow …
She had to force herself not to run back to the gym; she tried hard to look as if she was sick and that was why she had spent so much time in the bathroom. She was feeling sick. She didn’t know what would happen if someone figured out she’d cheated. She’d fail the test—she was sure of that—but what else would happen?
When she returned to the gym, thirteen minutes had passed. Thirteen minutes on the toilet. Of course, they would realize something was wrong … of course, of course, damn, Knaake was sitting at the desk now. She didn’t see the history teacher anywhere.
“Mrs. Meyer’s gone for a cup of coffee,” Knaake said in a very low voice, looking up at her. Then he looked at his watch and noted the time on a sheet. “I just hope this watch is correct,” he mumbled. “Gotta reset it one of these days …”
She wanted to hug him. She just nodded. According to what he’d jotted down, she’d been gone for only five minutes.
She threw Abel a short glance before she sat down again. Seven minutes later, he got up. Possibly it was more than seven minutes later—at least by Knaake’s watch. She tried to concentrate on the second set of questions and to remember the answers she’d already written down in keywords on a ten-euro note. Abel had to find the right toilet now. He had to memorize the dates and facts, or to remember them if he’d already learned them once. He couldn’t take that bill with him; he’d have to destroy it. What would he do with it? Tear it up and flush it down the toilet? She’d never thought this could work … Abel returned a few minutes after the history teacher, who came back with a cup of coffee. Knaake noted the time before handing the sheet back to his colleague. Abel sat down without looking at Anna. She didn’t dare turn around to see if he was writing.
After the test, Anna stood outside in the cold schoolyard with Gitta and the others, watching them smoke. It would have been too conspicuous to walk over to Abel now. The others seemed to have forgotten Wednesday’s gossip; they were talking about the test. Hennes had his arm around Gitta’s leather-jacketed waist, Frauke was talking to Gitta, and Bertil came and stood with them.
“So how was it?” he asked.
Anna looked at him. She didn’t want to talk to him. But his question was honest, and it seemed like ages ago that he’d said the things in the Mittendrin that he shouldn’t have said. She searched for her anger but couldn’t find it anymore.
“It was all right,” she replied. “But I’m not feeling so well … I got sick in the middle of it …”
“Poor lamb,” Gitta said. “That’s why you were gone for so long. You’re pale, too.”
Anna hoped that Bertil didn’t see her wink. He didn’t. He put a hand on her arm, worried. “Maybe you should go home.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Probably it was just nervousness.”
“Sometimes it helps to get fresh air,” Bertil went on. “To clear your head, I mean. The sea has frozen totally now. I was thinking about going out to Eldena later … we could go together. If you want to.”
“The sea’s frozen?” Frauke asked. “Do you think it’s possible to walk to the other side of the bay, to Ludwigsburg?”
Bertil nodded. “Sure. I was at the beach yesterday, took our dog. He likes running over the ice. It’s nice to be at the beach alone, in winter, at dusk …”
“I thought your dog died,” Frauke said, giving a little shudder. “I thought your father shot him.”
“That was a long time ago,” Bertil replied, looking into the distance. “We have a new dog. Things are replaceable: dogs, friends, people … what do you think, Anna? Are you coming with me? I know you sometimes go for walks out there.”
“Not today,” Anna said quickly. “It’s too cold for me out there today.”
She thought of the black depth in Abel’s eyes. He was standing in his usual place. She saw him shake his head ever so slightly. Don’t come over here. Not now. Later, when the test isn’t floating around in the air like this anymore. He was right.
“Now that the last history test is history,” Hennes said, “we should keep our Polish peddler in business, don’t you think? I mean … seeing as how he’s bothering to hang around … Gitta, what are we doing Saturday night?”
“If you’re talking about you and me, we’re house-sitting,” Gitta answered. “My mother’s got the night shift. Someone has to make sure the leather sofa isn’t stolen, and I can’t possibly do that alone. Stop giggling, Frauke.” She lit another cigarette. “We don’t need the peddler for house-sitting,” she added.
“We don’t?” Hennes blew a strand of red hair from his forehead. “That’s too bad, actually.”
“I’ve got a stash somewhere,” Gitta said. “Leave Abel alone.”
Hennes whistled through his teeth. “Lately, the most astonishing people have first names. Listen, I just wanted to … you know … increase his salary, so to speak.”
Gitta nodded. “We applaud your social conscience, Herr von Biederitz, but at certain times, certain people don’t want to talk to certain other people. I’ll explain it to you later. And now, accompany me inside, please, to enjoy two more unbelievably boring lessons to prepare your lordship for graduation.”
Inside, Anna found herself next to Knaake in the crowd on the stairs. “Thanks,” she said in a low voice.
“For what?” he asked.
“For … nothing,” she said and understood that she’d better keep her mouth shut if she didn’t want to get the lighthouse keeper in trouble. There were too many ears here. She thought of their conversation on the phone, and suddenly something came into her head, just before they reached the top of the stairs.
“Do you know Michelle Tannatek?” she asked, without any preamble.
He lifted his graying eyebrows. “Who?”
“Abel’s mother.”
He stood at the top of the stairs and let the crowd move past. He shook his head slowly. “She’s never come to a parent conference, if that’s what you’re talking about.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Anna said, looking into his eyes. “Do you know her? Maybe from … a long time ago?”
“No,” said Knaake, and he began to search his pockets for something that probably wasn’t there. A memory, perhaps. She left him standing there alone, alone with his “No.” She wondered what it meant.
After sixth period, there was a figure standing in the schoolyard who wasn’t Abel … and who was obviously cold—a small figure in a pink down jacket. When she saw Anna, she started running toward her, and Anna caught her in her arms. The pink down jacket smelled of the wind and sea, and a little of cheap Polish tobacco, too.
“Micha,” Anna said. “Micha, where have you been, the two of you? I was at your place, looking for you … I tried to call … what happened?”
“We were on an outing,” Micha replied, but she seemed to know that it wasn’t normal to go on an outing on a weekday. “Abel made us leave really early; we were on a bus and then on a train. We went to that island, you know the one … Rügen. I didn’t have to go to school, because when you’re on an outing, you don’t have to go to school, do you … well … we had hot chocolate, and I hiked very far, with a backpack and everything … and a picnic … Where is Abel?”
“Here,” Abel said from behind Anna, pushing her aside very gently and putting an arm around Micha. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, they let us go early today,” she explained eagerly. “But I didn’t want to wait for you. Mrs. Milowitch always asks me questions … I like her, but she asks the same things that Mr. … that Mr. Matinke did. Things about Mama. So I came here, instead, even though it’s really far to walk. I’m a good hiker.”
“I think,” Abel said, “that today we won’t go to the student dining hall. We had our outing yesterday, and that was enough for a while. The train and everything … it was expensive. We’ll just go home and think about yesterday, okay?”
“Okay,” Micha said, looking down at her feet. “But … but couldn’t we go somewhere else? I don’t like being at home. I’m afraid Mr. Matinke will be at the door, and that he’ll take me away with him. Yesterday, I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about it. I dreamed that he had a net, like the kind you use to catch butterflies, except that it wasn’t to catch butterflies—it was to catch me. Like in our fairy tale. He was hunting for a diamond heart—that’s why he wanted to catch me.”
Abel kneeled in the snow in front of her and looked into her eyes. “He’ll never do that,” he whispered. “I promise you that he’ll never do that. You’ll see. We’ll invent something in the fairy tale to make him disappear.”
“You could come with me,” Anna said, hesitating. “Home, I mean. If you want to. Micha, you look cold. We have a fireplace to warm you. And I’ll be able to find something for lunch, I’m sure.”
“No,” said Abel.
“My parents aren’t there,” Anna explained. “Not during the day. My mom comes home in the evening. You could …”
“No,” said Abel.
“A fireplace!” Micha looked at him. “That must be really nice, don’t you think? If there’s snow outside and a fire inside, like in that book we read, and we could make hot chocolate …”
“No,” Abel said.
“That’s so unfair!” Micha stamped her little foot. “Yesterday, you wanted to go to Rügen, so we went; I’ve been hiking with you, in the cold, and I haven’t complained, or not really that much … and today I want to see Anna’s fireplace. Why can’t we do something I want to do for a change!” She stamped her foot again, her eyes flashing so combatively that Anna nearly laughed out loud. “You go home and wait for the Matinke guy,” she added, crossing her pink down-jacket arms. “And I’ll go by myself with Anna.”
Abel covered his face with both his hands, took a deep breath, and then looked at Anna. The dark, disturbing thing in his eyes had retreated a little, as if he had pushed it away with all his force. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Anna didn’t look over her shoulder as they left the schoolyard. But she guessed at least a few people were watching them. Bertil, for example. She pictured him walking his family dog on the empty beach of Eldena, pushing up his slipping glasses from time to time, alone, like the day before and most days, in the ice-cold air, in the wind, next to the frozen sea.
• • •
“You’re right,” Abel said in the hall. “The air is blue. I never really believed it.” He smiled.
He hadn’t said a word on the way here, but now he smiled.
“Yes,” Anna said, “yesterday, I nearly drowned in it.”
Micha was looking at the coatrack in the hallway, with its tiny wooden animal heads from some country they’d traveled to. Anna had forgotten which one it was. Finally, Micha found something that might have been a dog, stroked it gently with her forefinger, and hung her pink jacket on the hook next to it.
“You didn’t choose the dog?” Anna asked.
“If I put my jacket over him, he won’t be able to see anymore,” Micha replied with great earnestness. “And he has to see, doesn’t he … he’s jumped aboard the black ship.”
“Didn’t Abel tell you more of the story on your outing?” Anna asked.
Abel shook his head.
“But we built a snowman,” Micha said. “Oh, Anna, is that your living room? It’s so beautiful.”
“Yes,” Anna said. She watched as Micha pulled off her socks and walked over the Turkish kilim in bare feet, following the patterns, to and fro, through an endless labyrinth. Then she gave up on that game and ran to the glass door leading out to the little garden. “There are robins!” she exclaimed. “Loads of them! And two real rose blossoms! Like on the rose island in our story! But there weren’t any robins there. The robins have come to look at the roses, haven’t they? Oh, Abel, aren’t they pretty?”
Anna looked at Abel. He was still smiling.
“It’s very different … from your place,” she said. “Is that bad?”
Abel took her hand in his. “Thank you,” he said. “For history. For everything. You saved me. I had … I couldn’t remember anything, but I remembered when I read what you wrote.” He searched his pocket and took out the ten-euro note that she had filled with tiny writing from top to bottom.
“Are you crazy?” Anna whispered. “You didn’t destroy that thing?”
He shrugged. “I almost did, but then I couldn’t. I think I’ll keep it. It’s the only thing I …” He stopped. “Micha, I’m not sure you should be jumping on that sofa.”
“It’s okay,” Anna said. “I used to jump on it a lot when I was little. And I still do sometimes. That’s what sofas are for.”
“And your parents?”
“They only jump very rarely,” Anna said, grinning, as she kneeled in front of the fireplace. “I promised you a fire, I think. And something for lunch …”
“Those logs in the basket look quite tasty,” Abel said. “I guess they’re not totally done, though.”
When the flames were crackling in the open fireplace, it was as if all the worries and fears of the last twenty-four hours were burning to ashes, too. They sat in front of the fire, talking about how to prepare the logs for lunch, and Micha marveled at the sparks flying up from the pinewood. Everything was good. Anna wanted to ask Abel why he had gone to Rügen with Micha, why he hadn’t answered his phone, why he hadn’t told her anything before he left, but she didn’t. Instead, she went to the kitchen and warmed up leftover quiche, which Linda had made the day before. She whistled as she got out the plates. When she came back to the living room, Abel and Micha were sitting on the floor together. They were both bent over a book Magnus had given Linda for Christmas, a picture book full of photos of the desert.
“I … we …” Abel closed the book carefully.
“Don’t worry, you can look at it,” Anna said. “This isn’t a museum. My mother loves deserts. When I go to England, after finals, she said she’s going to compensate by visiting the desert.”
“Can I come, too?” Micha asked instantly. “I want to see a desert, too. I like sand, especially when it’s warm. You can let it run through your fingers. Maybe there’s a desert island in our fairy tale. What do you think, Abel? Why haven’t we ever gone to see a desert?”
“You’d have to go very, very far by plane for that,” Abel said. “I’m sure you don’t want to have to sit still in a plane for so many hours.”
“Of course, I do! I absolutely want to sit in a plane!” Micha exclaimed. “I’ve never been in a plane! Can we fly in one, Abel?”
“When we’ve finished this quiche, we’ll fly upstairs on foot, and you can look at my room,” Anna said quickly. “If you want, you can try to get a note out of my flute. It’s not easy, though.”
Micha didn’t get a note out of the flute, but she held its slim silver body in her hands for a long time. Then she lay in the hammock in Anna’s room and looked up at the ceiling and said she’d like to move in here, but, of course, she would miss her loft bed … and Anna and Abel just stood there and watched her.
“It will never be like this,” Abel said in a low voice. “It will never be this nice at our place.”
Anna put her arms around him and whispered, “It already is. Just not at first glance. Do you know that I sometimes feel better at your place? I thought about it yesterday … but, Abel … what happened to the silver-gray dog, after he jumped aboard the black ship? Is he okay?”
He ran his fingers through her hair, thoughtfully, and let his hand rest on her head for a moment, a strand of hair wrapped around his fingers. He had never touched her hair before. There were many parts of her body, she thought, that he had never touched. Suddenly she was very warm.
“The silver-gray dog,” he said, “crept along the rail, on soundless paws …”
Micha looked up from the old picture book that she was holding on her knees. “Is the fairy tale going on?” she asked, obviously forgetting all the picture books and all the hammocks in the world …
“Let’s go back downstairs, to the fireplace. You’ve gotta tell a fairy tale by the fire; that’s where fairy tales should be told.”
“The silver-gray dog crept along the rail, on soundless paws,” Abel repeated while Anna fed the fire more logs, “till he reached the stern of the black ship. Then the little queen couldn’t see him anymore. ‘I hope he takes care of himself,’ the lighthouse keeper grumbled.
“‘Who are those people?’ the little queen asked fearfully. ‘Those people on the black ship?’
“‘I recognized a few of them,’ the lighthouse keeper answered. ‘There is the jewel trader, for one. He collects all the jewels he can find, but he doesn’t lock them away like the red hunter. He resells them, scattering them all over the world, over the oceans … then, there are the haters. You saw that elderly couple, little queen? That’s them. The haters hate everything that is beautiful. They want to destroy the diamond. And last … there’s the big woman in the tracksuit. Do you know why she’s so fat?’
“‘No,’ the little queen replied, and her whole body shivered when she said that.
“‘She eats the jewels the jewel trader brings to her,’ the lighthouse keeper said.
“‘Then … then, she’ll eat my heart if he gets hold of it,’ the little queen whispered.
“At that moment, a blast of wind whipped over the ocean, blew the waves into towers, and made the little pieces of ice clink against one another. The shipmates lost their balance and fell onto the deck in a heap. The blind white cat complained that someone had landed on top of her.
“‘Sails down!’ the lighthouse keeper shouted. ‘There’s a storm!’
“The asking man and the answering man clung to each other fearfully and shouted senseless questions and answers into the howl of the wind: ‘Where is Michelle?’ ‘Maybe the lighthouse keeper!’ ‘Where does he come from?’ ‘In the box on top of the bathroom cupboard!’ ‘Who is his father?’
“The rose girl helped the lighthouse keeper lower the white sails—all but one. The black ship didn’t take down its black sails. Instead, a strange mechanism on its masts started moving, amid storm and waves: one of the black masts rotated, and the travelers could see that there was a huge net fastened to it. A wooden arm extended, and now the net hung exactly above the little green ship. And then someone working some gears or cranks began to lower it—and it became a deadly butterfly net.
“‘No!’ the little queen screamed and covered her eyes with her hands. But she looked through her fingers.
“It was the jewel trader who worked the gears, steered the net. He had rolled up the sleeves of his leather jacket so they could see the white sheepskin lining inside. The diamond eater in her tracksuit stood beside him. There was one blood-red, dyed strand of hair on her forehead. Behind her, the two haters held onto each other, their eyes aglow with destructive frenzy. And behind the haters, the silver-gray dog pressed his body against the rail. He was nothing but a secret shadow.
“‘The airship!’ the rose girl said. ‘We can still make it!’
“The little queen lowered her hands. Her eyes were big and dark with fear. ‘But the storm will blow us in the wrong direction!’
“The net was sinking, lower and lower. And then, something unexpected happened. There was a scream, a piercing, horrible, eardrum-tearing scream that made the waves stop waving for a second, as if the whole ocean had suddenly frozen. At the same time, the net was lifted up again, the wooden apparatus turned its arm, and the huge trap dropped onto the dark sails. The black ship had caught itself. It seemed to fight with itself now: it buckled and heaved—the waves weren’t still anymore; they pushed the ship around—ropes ripped, and sails fell down from masts like withered leaves from dead trees. One of them covered the fat diamond eater, and another one covered the two haters, who tried to free themselves with angry shouts. But where was the cutter?
“The green ship sailed on through the storm with its one remaining white sail, and the black ship stayed behind, tied up like a big beetle in a spider’s web.
“‘The silver-gray dog!’ the little queen shouted against the wind. ‘He’s still on the black ship! We have to help him!’
“She wanted to turn the yellow rudder, to turn the ship, but on her way to the rudder, she stumbled over the white cat, who had fallen asleep on the floor again, and fell. The rose girl helped her up. Now the ship swayed to and fro gently, for the storm was dying down.
“The last high wave carried something in its glittering embrace. It was a body. For a moment, they saw it clearly, before the sea pulled it down into its bottomless depths.
“‘The jewel trader!’ the rose girl whispered. ‘He’s dead!’
“‘Like the red hunter,’ said the little queen. She put her arms around the rose girl and began to cry, and her diamond heart hurt inside her. ‘So does everybody have to die?’ she sobbed.
“When the water was perfectly still again, something else floated toward them in the light of the setting winter sun. Another body. The body of the sea lion. The asking man and the answering man fished it out of the sea with their long arms. They carefully laid it on the planks, where it turned into the body of a dog, and the little queen dropped down next to him. He was breathing, but he didn’t open his eyes.
“‘My poor dog!’ the little queen whispered. ‘What happened on the black ship?’
“‘Let him sleep,’ the rose girl said. ‘He needs rest.’ She carried the dog in her arms down into the cabin and put him to bed on the polar bear skins. On his left foreleg, the fur was missing in two shiny, circular patches, like burns.”
“Two?” Anna asked. Micha had fallen asleep once more, lying on the sofa next to them.
Anna gently pushed up Abel’s left sleeve. It was true. There was a second round scar next to the first one. “What is it?” she asked. “Is it what I think it is?”
He nodded. “Cigarette burns. Cigarettes get pretty hot at the tips.” He pulled the sleeve back down.
“But who … who did that?”
“Is that important?” She looked at him. He sighed. “I did … Content now?”
“No,” she said. “Why? Why do you do it?”
“Has Micha been sleeping for long?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m not answering any questions,” he said, smiling. “I’m not one of the answering people. I’m the storyteller.”
She got up and walked over to the old record player to put on one of the LPs she’d found in Linda’s Leonard Cohen collection. She turned the volume very low so as not to wake Micha, returned to the sofa, and leaned against Abel.
Travelling lady, stay a while until the night is over
I’m just a station on your way I know I’m not your lover
.
Well I lived with a child of snow when I was a soldier
And I fought every man for her until the nights grew colder
She used to wear her hair like you except when she was sleeping
And then she’d weave it on a loom of smoke and gold and breathing …
“What does that mean?” Anna whispered. “What does all that mean?”
Abel ran his fingers through her hair again, and his hand wandered down and stayed on her throat. “It means everything,” he whispered back. “And nothing.”
And why are you so quiet now standing there in the doorway?
You chose your journey long before you came upon this highway …
Travelling lady, stay a while until the night is over
I’m just a station on your way I know I’m not your lover …
“I thought about not coming back,” Abel said suddenly. “Of disappearing. Somewhere.”
Anna nodded. “It wasn’t an outing. You ran away. From Marinke. Michelle never called. Of course she didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, did she?”
“I told you I’m not answering any questions.”
She took his hand in hers and made it glide lower, under her T-shirt. It was a surprisingly hesitant hand; it very nearly fought against hers. Then the hand lay on her left breast, and she wondered if she could somehow manage to get rid of her bra without destroying the moment. In movies, these things happened so naturally; people were never wearing impractical clothing; there were never any hooks and eyes or buttons to get in the way.
“Anna,” whispered Abel. “I’m not sure …”
“Isn’t it enough if I’m sure?”
“But Micha …” He gave up and kept his hand where it was. And then he kissed her. And she thought, this is our third kiss, and wondered if it would be possible to count all the kisses in a lifetime or if there would be too many after a while. Though, with Abel, there wouldn’t be much danger of losing track. She tasted blood in his mouth—her lips must have cracked with the cold—or was she just imagining that? She tasted the sea, in which he had been floating unconscious, as a sea lion, inside a fairy tale. She tasted the picture of a black net and of the sails that fell down like withered leaves … she wondered if she would ever meet him alone, without Micha.
With that guy, you’ll only have a relationship based on fucking, she heard Gitta say. Anything but, she thought. Oh, Gitta, anything but …
And then she heard the door—and voices in the hall. Never had a kiss ended so abruptly. Anna opened her eyes, looked at Abel, and smiled. He didn’t smile. He jumped up. She stood up, too, more slowly, and took his hand. “Wait,” she said quietly. “Don’t run away. Please. They don’t bite, you know.”
“I shouldn’t be here.”
“Of course you should,” she said.
Micha woke up and yawned. “What’s going on?” she asked sleepily.
“We gotta go,” Abel said.
He looked around, in a panic, as if he wanted to run out into the yard and flee over the roofs. He pulled his hand from Anna’s. He seemed totally lost in the big living room, in the blue air, lost in an ocean full of clinking pieces of ice.
The living room door opened, and Magnus and Linda came in at almost the same time. Linda stopped, surprised. Then she smiled.
“I see,” she said, and now, she wasn’t smiling anymore; she was laughing, a gentle, blue laugh. “Does that explain it?”
“What?” Anna asked.
“Your secretiveness,” Magnus answered, shaking his head, setting his bag onto an armchair. “Yep, looks like that explains it.”
Abel didn’t say anything; he looked from Linda to Magnus and back again, like an animal in a trap, his eyes flickering nervously.
