The Storyteller

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 begi

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 A

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

“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. A

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, A

A

“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 A

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. A

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, gri

“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. A

“What about you, Bertil?” A

“Army,” Bertil said as he blew a smoke ring into the winter air. All these people and all their strange reasons for doing things, A

“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 A

“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 ru

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,” A

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. A

“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?”