The Storyteller

“Micha told her she lives here,” Linda explained. “It sounds like a white lie. Mrs. Milowicz has been asking her for her address so she could speak with Micha’s mother, and this is where she’s ended up.”

“That’s … all?” A

Mrs. Milowicz nodded and blew a crumb from her spring-green blouse. “I’m worried about her. Her brother, who seems to take care of her, well he’s … well, he’s a little scary, to be honest. I find him a bit threatening. And the way he shields his little sister from … everyone … from me, for instance … in private, I mean … that is … I don’t know. It’s strange. But you’d know more. You know him. Your mother told me that … he might just make a bad impression … and that my worries are u

A

The light-green spring blouse wriggled into a light-green spring coat in the front hall. There was even a light-green spring hat made of felt and adorned with a blue flower. Micha’s teacher was pretty in her spring clothes. A

“I also pla

“No,” said A

And then the door shut behind her, behind the burst of light-green spring.

“Thank you,” A

“And what,” Linda asked, “is going on now?”

It took her all afternoon to explain. The words were too hard to say. She almost wished that Gitta were there so that she could tell Linda; Gitta had no problem with hard words.

“Gitta would say …” she whispered in the end, “that he’s a hustler.”

“I’d use another word,” Linda offered. “In the movies, he’d be known as a gigolo …”

“No,” A

Linda tried to pull her into her arms, but A

She stood at the window of her room for a long time and watched the drops fall outside. Right now, in the forest, she thought, the first anemones would be blossoming in the melting snow. She hadn’t told Linda anything about the boathouse, and she never would. She’d never tell anybody.

When it was dark, Linda came in, silently as always, nearly invisible. “A

“Okay,” A

“Do you want me to come with you?” Linda asked. She was serious.

A

Strange, she thought, when she left the house. Hadn’t it always been the other way around? Tell Linda that I’m fine … tell Linda that she doesn’t have to worry … let’s not tell Linda about it, she’ll just be alarmed. Nothing seemed to stay the way it had been since she had met Abel. He still didn’t answer the phone.

He wasn’t there. He was nowhere. He’d vanished, dissolved, disappeared into thin air, melted away like the snow in the thaw. She’d never been in so many bars in a single night. She hadn’t known that there were so many. Students’ town, she thought. She wouldn’t study here; she hadn’t ever pla

After a while, she got better at walking into a bar and looking over the heads in the crowd as if searching for someone. Well, she was … she was searching for someone. She forced herself to ask. People knew him, of course. Some of them gave her a smile of pity. Poor little girl, was written in their faces, you’re searching for that guy? You don’t think he’s waiting for you, do you? What kind of adventure do you think you’re having? She wondered how many of them knew. Did the whole city know more than she did? The part of the city that existed beyond well-lit school desks … beyond the blue air and the robins in nice little backyard gardens … far away from the freshly painted, sleek fronts of old, renovated houses?

It was after two when she reached the student dining hall. The student dining hall offered music on Thursday and Saturday nights, but today was Monday … still, she heard music spilling out onto the street. Obviously, there was some kind of party going on down there, some kind of unscheduled event. She was tired. She wanted to go home. She would have just walked past the dining hall, but somebody called her name. Gitta. And suddenly, she was thankful for Gitta’s presence. She drifted through the darkness toward her, as if she were a safety buoy.

Gitta was standing in the black night in her black clothes, smoking. Next to her were a group of other smokers whom A

“Little lamb,” she said. “I fucked up. I was too late. I’m sorry.”

Hadn’t she lost Gitta? Or had Gitta forgiven her for not letting her in, for shutting the door in her face, for hardly talking to her anymore …?

“I should have been faster,” Gitta went on. “He’d just said his last insane sentence when I got to the secretary’s office. I was so mad, I knocked him down. Don’t you ever get mad?”

“Yes,” A

“About Abel?” She drew on her cigarette. “Possibly. Is that important?”

“Yes,” A

“Don’t you go and say ‘I love him’ now or I’ll start crying,” Gitta said. Then she hugged A

“You haven’t found him, have you?” she asked, her voice a little hoarser than usual.

“No.”

Gitta pointed to the black hulk of the student dining hall with her cigarette. “Try in there, my little lamb.”

At first, they didn’t want to let her in. The bouncers wanted to see her ID. A

She felt his eyes following her. He hadn’t pla