The Storyteller

“But that’s not the end of the story,” A

She took his arm and pulled him up, wanting to pull him with her, get him out of that corner, pull him around the table—and that was the moment he found his strength a second time. This time, he really did find it. He pushed her away … she staggered back and held onto a chair so as not to fall; she saw how he lifted his right arm as if to hit her. She ducked. There was no blow. He stood there looking at her for a second, arms hanging limply by his side, then he sank back onto the bench and closed his eyes. “Go away, A

She left. She left him alone, alone with the dancing crowd, where you could be lonelier than anyplace else.

“Little lamb,” Gitta said when she met her in the lobby of the dining hall, “didn’t you find him?”

“No,” A

“Yes, do,” Gitta said, and A

“Yes, do,” he repeated and pushed the red hair out of his face with that unbearable gesture. He was holding a glass, and the color of the liquid in the glass was beautiful, and the glass was beautiful, and the hand was slender and beautiful. Look, she thought, how they’re dancing. Insane. “A

“Then it will only be wrong,” A

That night she did not dream of flames. She dreamed of Ludwigsburg. Of the pines creaking in the snowstorm. And she knew who’d followed her. Who’d scared her.

“I passed you already,” Bertil had said. “I just had to find a place to turn the car …”

She hadn’t seen him come toward her from the big road, hadn’t seen him drive by, because he hadn’t. In her dream, she saw the three snow-covered cars in the parking lot, behind the restaurant, near the beach, at the very end of the little lane. And suddenly, she was sure one of them had been a Volvo. And suddenly, she thought she remembered the panting of a dog between the pines. And suddenly, she heard Gitta say again, don’t believe everything you hear. Gitta hadn’t told Bertil that she’d seen A

He’d let her go ahead, let her push her bike through the storm, for a long, long time, until she was exhausted enough to let him rescue her. He’d been waiting, lurking … that was why the car hadn’t been warm—he’d been driving for only a few minutes. Of course. Of course. Of course.

When she awoke, it was late morning, nearly noon. She must have slept hard. Outside the window, in the yard, the snow had nearly melted. The sun was shining in a new and golden way. She dressed hurriedly.

She knew what she had to do. Right now.

She’d go out to the woods, to the Elisenhain, to see if the anemones were already there, their little blossoms peeking through the leftover snow. And she had the feeling she’d find some. The feeling they’d be waiting for her. The anemones … and spring itself. She’d pick a bunch of them, a bunch of tiny white flowers, and then she’d ring Abel and Micha’s doorbell, and they would have breakfast together, a very late breakfast. And Abel and she would talk about everything. Since she’d known him, life had been a roller coaster, up and down. At one moment she was shouting in triumph, at another she was sunk in despair—even old Goethe had known the feeling—and this was a day for shouting in triumph. A day on which everything could and would be explained—and settled. A day made to talk about the future, a future in which he’d no longer have to do what he’d done to earn money. She’d tie him to a chair and slap him with Magnus’s money if she had to.

She knew a good place for anemones, the best; it was near that place where Micha’s invisibles lived, by the hazelnut bushes. She’d tell Micha that the invisibles had melted away with the snow.

That they didn’t exist in spring.

It was high time spring came. It was the twelfth of March.

THE WOODS WERE IN FLOWER—THEY WERE BLOSSOMING!

There was still snow between the high gray trunks of the beeches, silver-gray, A

The path was muddy and brown. In some places, she sank up to her ankles, her boots getting caught in the marsh, and she laughed. Winter was over.

She left the path. She walked into the mud, into where it was the deepest, and spun around beneath the trees with her arms outstretched. She saw the hem of her winter coat fly like the hem of a dress … She had Linda’s old Cohen LPs in her backpack. And the flute. She had plans. She had great plans.

Micha could learn to play the flute if she wanted to. Or the piano. The house of blue air was too big and the apartment at 18 Amundsen Street too small. They could move. And once Micha was settled in … maybe Abel would leave town with A

She passed a hunting blind, its four wooden supports standing in the mud like the legs of a giant creature stuck fast, and suddenly she thought of Bertil. These were the grounds where his father hunted. Maybe he’d been sitting in this blind not long ago, a gun propped up next to him. Did his father allow him to shoot, even though he didn’t have his license yet? Now that the ground was thawing, the deer were sure to come out of their hiding places. She saw their footprints in the mud; here, the animals weren’t shy. Gitta had told her that sometimes the deer and wild boar crossed Wolgaster Street and wandered into the yards in her housing development, where they ate the young sprouts off the bushes.

Something was rustling behind her, and she turned around. She didn’t feel like meeting a wild boar out here or, worse, a sow—when did they have their young? Now everything was quiet again. Probably just a bird looking for worms among the dry leaves. She could hear the first blackbirds and tomtits. It must have been a bird.

She returned to the path, the one she’d run along with Abel and Micha. She ducked and slipped through the still-bare branches of the hazelnut bushes, their buds almost green at the tips, about to open, to spill new life, new leaves into the world. Here … here was the fork in the path. Behind it, there weren’t any invisibles now, in spring.

Last spring, she’d picked flowers with Gitta here, in this very spot. Really. With Gitta, who’d never admit now that she picked flowers in the forest like a little girl. This was the best place in the whole of the Elisenhain. A