The Storyteller

Not even she wanted to be his friend. Not even A

He took off his gloves, kneeled down, and burrowed his bare hands into the snow that covered the frozen bay. The snow was very cold. Sometimes he couldn’t fight the thought that it would feel good to lie down in it and to never have to move again. Just to lie there, in the whiteness. Forever.

ON MONDAY MORNING, THE BLUENESS OF THE LIGHT in the Leema

“It is my fault,” A

But there was another voice, a tiny little voice of reason, whispering to her. Your fault? asked this voice. Oh no. It wasn’t you who has destroyed anything. It was …

Please, said A

She took a long, hot shower and washed her hair several times. She hadn’t taken a shower the night before. If she had, Linda would have known that something had happened.

She’d been afraid she’d find Linda waiting up for her, in the living room, which would have been the end of her; A

A

“Is something the matter?” Magnus asked.

She shook her head. She nodded. She shrugged.

“Did the two of you fight about something?” Linda asked.

“Yes,” A

On the floor in the hall, beneath the mail slot in the door, she found a white envelope with her name on it. Abel’s writing. When she touched the envelope, it burned hot in her hands, like the glowing, smoldering tip of a cigarette. She tore it up into very tiny pieces and threw them into the trashcan outside.

She got onto her bike and rode to school like she did every day: there were two more weeks of classes before the reading period before finals. She still was in pain. On the bicycle seat, it came back, tearing at her insides. She rode past the turnoff to school. She couldn’t go there. She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Abel. She didn’t want to see his ice-blue eyes. His eyes would be her undoing. She wondered what she could have read in them last night, in the boathouse. She rode to the city, got off her bike, and wandered the streets aimlessly. She’d lost her hold on reality.

It had happened once before, after she’d been in Abel and Micha’s apartment the first time, but this time was different. Now it was really gone, and it felt as if it was gone for good. What was reality good for, anyway?

At some point, she found herself on the pedestrian bridge that led over the river. In summer, this part of the river, the city harbor, was full of big ancient ships. Now it was frozen, too; only the narrow path in the middle, which they kept open for the ships, was glistening like a trickle of unidentified body fluid. She rested her arms on the railing of the bridge and looked over at the restaurant-ship.

“If I could get my thoughts in order,” she said aloud, “if only I could get my thoughts in order … Maybe I have to talk so I can think. What happened? And what does it mean?”

She looked around; there was no one who could hear her.

“I’m afraid,” she said to herself. “I’m afraid again. I have to bring the right questions and answers together. It’s a puzzle. And the first question is, who is Abel Ta

A swan waddled over the ice. Dirty and white, swans aren’t beautiful, A

She still felt that warm, heavy weight on her. She felt the creature’s breath on her neck and the pain, and suddenly she felt sick. She crouched down, holding onto the railing of the pedestrian bridge, but her stomach was too empty. The wolf knew himself very well; he had warned her … it had been her fault. It had been her fault. But had it?

No, said the reasonable part of her. Of course not. Don’t you remember—you have heard men say this about girls, read it in cheap newspapers, and always thought, how stupid and how wrong: she asked for it, wearing those things, drinking too much, flirting … she asked for it, she wanted it. Don’t you remember how you talked about these things with Gitta once and how you both agreed …

But I did want it, said unreasonable A

Not this, said reasonable A

But he did try to warn me, interrupted unreasonable A

There’s no talking away what happened, said reasonable A

She remembered, of course. And you’d probably catch something nasty, too. And if she was right? A

What happened, Miss Leema

“And that’s what it was,” whispered reasonable A

“Who, Miss Leema

“He is … he was my …”

“He’s your boyfriend?”

“No,” she answered. “Not anymore, and maybe he’s a murderer, and it’s all over anyway. It’s over.”

She noticed that she was kneeling in the snow on the bridge. She was kneeling again.

“And I wonder,” she whispered, still caught up in conversation with a nonexistent person taking her blood in a nonexistent clinic, “I wonder … thinking about it now … he’s got a little sister, and I wonder how much he loves her really and in what way.”

When she heard her own words, the air became colder by a few degrees. “Maybe that,” she continued, “is why he doesn’t let anybody come near Micha. What if Sören Marinke suspected the same thing? And what if that was the reason he had to die?”

She thought of Micha in her pink down jacket with the artificial fur collar, of her pale blond braids, of Abel’s fingers ru