The Storyteller (34 page)

Anna managed to hold herself together. She managed to drink a cup of horrible coffee from the broken coffee machine with Frauke and to talk about nothing for five whole minutes, or rather, to let Frauke talk and pretend she was listening. She’d turned her back on Abel but felt his presence.

At lunchtime, he was standing at his usual place near the bike
racks. Anna saw him from the window—black hat down over his ears, hands in pockets, earplugs in his ears. He’d shut out the world. At one point he talked to two guys—maybe he sold them something; she didn’t see.

He wasn’t Abel anymore. He’d turned back into Tannatek, the Polish peddler, whose presence at school was a riddle to everybody and whom most people were a little afraid of.

She wondered if that was it. If things had turned back to an earlier point, if everything was now as it had been before, and if she could just act as if she’d never known him.

No. Things weren’t how they’d been before. Rainer Lierski was dead. Sören Marinke was dead. And a small girl with pale blond braids and a pink down jacket was wandering over the ice, in a fairy tale, helpless in wind and weather. The weather forecast said there would be a snowstorm.

“Little lamb,” Gitta said, turning up at Anna’s door in the afternoon, very real now, not just a voice in her head. “Little lamb, what’s wrong?”

“I’m poring over my books,” Anna replied, standing in the doorway, refusing to let Gitta in. “Why should anything be wrong?”

“Oh, come on,” Gitta said. “Something’s happened. Between you and Abel. You’re not talking anymore. Do you think we’re all blind? We’re worried about you.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Anna asked.

Gitta brushed the question aside with her hand and searched for her cigarettes. “If you won’t let me in, then I’m going to smoke,” she said. “And the smoke will get into the house through the door.”

Anna shrugged.

“But you won’t get rid of me so easily. So things didn’t work out, did they? With Abel? The whole thing has run up against a brick wall.”

“So what?”

Gitta blew a smoke ring into the cold air. “What do you know about him?”

Anna narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, what do I know about him?”

“I mean it just as I said it. What do you know about Abel Tannatek?”

“Maybe,” Anna said, “the question is what do
you
know about Abel Tannatek? Is there something you want to tell me? Is that the reason you came?”

Gitta smoked in silence for a moment. “No,” she said finally. And then, “Sometimes I find myself thinking about that police tape on the beach. It pops into my head that …”

“Oh, does it,” Anna said, suddenly defensive, “and do you know what sometimes pops into my head? Hennes von Biederitz. And Bertil Hagemann. One of them bragging about what a good shot he is, the other trying not to talk about the fact that he’s probably a good shot, too. Hunting. Bertil was out there on the beach both days before Marinke’s death. He said so himself. As to where Hennes was … I guess you’d know better than I would. Or maybe you wouldn’t?”

Gitta stared at her, perplexed. “What do these two have to do with anything?”

“That,” Anna said, “is exactly what I’m wondering.” And she closed the door.

• • •

On Wednesday, there was a third white envelope in the hall. When she touched it, it wasn’t glowing like the first one. She would tear it up like the two other envelopes. She would … she saw her fingers opening the envelope, knowing these were the fingers of unreasonable Anna. The paper was filled with tiny haunted letters. There was her name.

Anna. Anna, are you reading this? I’m not going to stop writing to you.

I have nothing, only words. I am a storyteller.

I want to explain something to you. But I can’t. Later, maybe later.

The words that I will have to find for that explanation will be sharp and they will hurt, much worse than the thorns of roses. There is a reason for what happened. I can’t be forgiven so I am not asking you for forgiveness. We lost each other, and we will never find each other again. Rose girl, the sea is cold and …

She put the letter back into the envelope and tore it up, into even smaller pieces than the other envelopes. The icy wind took the scraps from her fingers and carried them away with it, high up into the sky like snowflakes falling up instead of down. There were tears burning in her eyes. We will never find each other again. No, she thought, we won’t. Ever.

The situation at school grew even more impossible. Anna forced herself to go to her literature intensive class. Abel seemed to have forced himself, too. He was even on time and was already sitting at his desk when she came in. Who’d had the bright idea to shape the desks into a U? They sat opposite each other but didn’t look at each other; they looked everywhere else. There were three yards between them, three yards of glass splinters, fleeing footsteps, pain, blood, a
hand covering someone’s mouth, the weight of a body, the breathing of an animal. There were two dead bodies between them.

Once, she looked at him. He’d taken off his sweater. He was sitting there in his T-shirt, and she saw the two circular scars on his upper arm. But now there weren’t just two. There were three. The third one was bigger, or actually longer—a broad line. She looked away, looked again. The line was not a line. It was a row of single, circular wounds so close to each other that they melted into one. She tried to count them, but Abel turned his head, and she lowered her eyes.

The pain, she thought. The pain is the same as mine, just in a different place.

After the unbearable double lesson, she waited until everybody had left. Abel was the first to go. Knaake still sat at his desk. Then he looked at Anna, stood up, closed the door, and sat down again. He didn’t say anything. He took a thermos full of tea from his bag and poured tea into a cup. He was in no hurry.

“I have to talk to someone,” Anna said. He nodded.

“Let’s just assume something happened,” Anna began. “Something … bad, between Abel and me. Something that has to do with … trust …” She put her hands to her cheeks and felt a feverish heat there. She hated herself for the fact that she blushed. “Something I can’t talk about … let’s assume it was my fault, in a roundabout way.”

“Let’s not assume that,” he said softly. Did he know what she was talking about? No, he couldn’t.

“Okay, let’s assume it was
not
my fault … I mean, I
did
trust him,” Anna said in a low voice, without looking at Knaake. “But I don’t know what to think anymore. You know … about the two
murders … Lierski … he was Abel’s little sister’s father. Abel hated him. He was afraid that he would … that he would do something to Micha. I think he was kind of known as … for being a pedophile. Maybe it wasn’t true, but Abel was sure. They’ve arrested someone for Lierski’s murder, someone who owned the right kind of weapon and who knew him, but I don’t know if it really was him after all … and then Sören Marinke, at the beach … you heard it on the radio. He was the social worker who’d turned up at Abel and Micha’s apartment … Abel isn’t eighteen yet—you know that—so in theory, he shouldn’t have custody of Micha. She should go live with relatives or a foster family, but Abel refuses to let that happen … their mother, Michelle … whom you don’t know …”

She looked up. He was shaking his head. “No, Anna. I don’t know her.”

Yeah, right, Anna thought. And where did Michelle get those old Leonard Cohen cassettes … How many people in town listened to stuff like that? She knew of only three: Michelle, Linda … and Knaake.

“Michelle disappeared,” Anna said, “a few weeks ago. She just up and left. But she can’t be far. She’s drawn money from the household account. From an ATM in Eldena.”

Knaake was staring into his cup, as if he could find Michelle Tannatek in there, if he only looked hard enough. Like he knew exactly what the woman whom he was searching for looked like.

“There is this fairy tale,” Anna whispered. “A fairy tale Abel is telling his little sister. Sometimes there are people in it who really exist. Sometimes I recognize them too late. I recognized Sören Marinke too late. He also died in the fairy tale. The bad guys all die. But who decides that they’re bad? I’m … I’m afraid … afraid
that someone else will be found dead beneath the snow. Someone else who’s been shot in the neck.”

“But you haven’t gone to the police.”

“No. I …” She didn’t say, I love him. It would have sounded so trite.

Knaake got up and went over to the window, cup in hand. “There are many possibilities,” he said. “An infinite number of possibilities. I’m no detective. But maybe there are more possibilities than you’re seeing.”

She lifted her head. “Yes?”

“Possibility number one is the simplest,” Knaake said. “Abel Tannatek shot both men, the first because he hated him and the second because … tell me, why would he have shot the second one? Does it make sense to kill a social worker? A social worker is just a government agent … if you shoot one, another will take his place.” He laughed grimly. “It’s like a computer game.”

“And the second possibility?”

“Possibility number two: Somebody else shot them. And here we have two possibilities again. Somebody did it to help Abel. Or … somebody did it to make people think that Abel did it. But that all sounds a bit too much like an old black-and-white Mafia movie.”

“But are there other possibilities?”

“Sure. Dozens. For example, why do we think that it was the same murderer? Because of the shot in the neck? A nasty way to kill someone, by the way. The Nazis were known for this practice. Executions.”

Anna caught her breath. “You think … you think it might have been two different people?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it? The second murderer copied the handwriting of the first.”

“You
are
a detective.” Anna smiled. She stood up and went over to the window to stand next to him. Knaake smiled, too.

“A bad one. I hold this literature intensive class, but I read my share of crime thrillers too, you know. So let’s assume … assume Abel did kill Rainer Lierski. If things are as you said they are, he had a reason.”

“And somebody else killed Marinke? To make it look like Abel did?”

“Maybe. Or else … maybe the truth lies elsewhere. Maybe there’s someone out there acting absolutely irrationally. Someone who actually thinks she can solve a problem by killing a social worker. Who wants to protect Abel and Micha but doesn’t understand anything. A person who’s messed up her life completely and thinks she can only help from the shadows, a person who also hates Lierski for something he did … a person who drowned her intellect and her charm in alcohol a long time ago …”

Anna pressed her nose against the cold windowpane. Down there, in the yard, a dark figure was standing near the bike rack, hands dug deep in his pockets as always.

“Somebody acting absolutely irrationally,” Anna repeated in a whisper. She looked at Knaake. “Who?”

“Michelle,” he said.

The thought was new and strange, and Knaake shook his head right after he’d spoken the name. “Of course, these are only wild speculations.” He went back to his desk and screwed the lid back onto his thermos. “Like I said before, I don’t know Abel’s mother. But if you want … I could try to find out some things. It would be
like a game … a change from gathering dust between high literature and stupid detective stories.” He shook his head again, as if to shake the dust out of his nearly gray beard.

“A dangerous game,” Anna said.

“I’d prefer to play it myself, however … instead of your playing it.” And then Knaake put a hand on her arm, all of a sudden. “Anna, you’re not the only one I’m worried about. There’s someone in the schoolyard, someone suffering in a horrible way. I’m sorry … how stupid … I don’t know what happened between the two of you. I don’t know if it can be forgiven. The hardest thing always is to forgive yourself.”

Knaake tucked his leather briefcase under his arm and opened the door. “Take care,” he said. “I’m not sure we’ll be having school tomorrow. They said there’ll be a big storm tonight. Get home safely.”

“I can’t go home yet,” Anna murmured. “I may ride out to the bay before the storm comes. I need to think.”

“Don’t stay out too long,” Knaake said as she left.

A big storm? Actually, a thaw had set in. Outside, drops were quietly falling from the trees and the sun shone warm and bright.

The hardest thing always is to forgive yourself …

He doesn’t mean me. He means Abel. But Abel already told me that that’s not possible, he said so in that letter, and maybe in every letter he wrote.

Abel wasn’t standing by the bike racks anymore. It was as if he, too, had melted away. Anna got onto her bike, still feeling the pain between her legs, a hurt that might never leave her, but she didn’t ride home. The wind was refreshing and warm; it blew her out of
town, down the bike path along Wolgaster Street, past the Seaside District, past the turn leading to Wieck and the harbor, past the woods of the Elisenhain, past the new housing development—around the bay to Ludwigsburg. In summer, the beach near the village was crowded, but not as crowded as Eldena. There was no entrance fee and no fence. The beach out here was much narrower, wilder, and longer—a beach full of mysterious corners and secret hiding places in the tall beach grass. Anna left her bike near the long building housing the old café. There was snow on its thatched roof now.

She walked between the wind-bent pines down to the beach. Out on the ice, white swans and black bald coots were huddled in weird lumps. You could walk across the bay to Wieck—the café lay exactly opposite. Today, there was no one on the ice.

She wandered along the beach, the wind at her back. She stepped over ice floes the sea had stacked, one on top of another, into strange works of art. She realized she’d stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat and pulled her hat down low on her face. As if she was him, she thought. All she lacked now were the earplugs of the old Walkman, full of white noise. But no, she didn’t need those—the wind produced its own white noise, and she was at the very center of it.