The Storyteller

But why, she wondered, why had they searched for food here, where there weren’t even many beeches? Strange. She wanted to walk around the trampled earth … and then she saw that the wild boars had been trying to unearth something. Something was there, in the mud, something multicolored—red and blue, fabric. There was the rustling sound again, a ways off, but still uncomfortably close. She looked up. Hadn’t the branches of that tree over there just moved? No. She was begi

Now, all of a sudden, she was scared again. She stepped toward the hole the wild boars had made. Clothes. There were clothes under the mud, clothes someone must have thrown away … a red shirt, a blue raincoat … she kneeled, close to the pit, too close. Hair, there was hair in the mud, long strands of tangled hair. A doll, she prayed … please, God, I haven’t prayed since I was a child in church on Christmas, but please, please … listen to me … please, let it be a doll.

She realized that she was shivering. Her teeth shattered uncontrollably, as if she had a high fever. She forced herself to take a branch, to free the clothes of leaves and sticks with it, to scrape the earth away. Look, look … don’t look away … you’ve got to look now. There weren’t only clothes. Of course not. Not only. There, under the earth, lay the body of a woman. It might have been lying there a long time or might have been buried hours ago. She couldn’t see it that clearly; everything was smeared with mud. And she was thankful for that, thankful that she couldn’t see the face beneath the layers of mud. The woman lay on her back—she could see that. Long blond hair … she thought of Micha’s teacher. Micha’s teacher, Mrs. Milowicz, the cutter, who wanted to form and thereby destroy the diamond—or so Abel thought. Mrs. Milowicz, with her spring-green coat. Maybe she owned a blue coat as well, or had owned one—she was the only one who’d followed the little queen to the end. She was her last threat. Everybody else had either been killed or fled. A

A

MICHELLE TANNATEK

12.4.1975–14.2.2012

A

A

She hadn’t ever left on a trip.

Or maybe she had, on a very, very long one …

“Why?” A

She opened her eyes, got up, realized that she was still dizzy, and staggered back. Then she doubled over and threw up. In her head, everything was tumbling into and onto each other—thoughts, words, sentences from the fairy tale. It had started with the doll, the doll she’d found under the sofa in the student lounge. Mrs. Margaret. Mrs. Margaret wore a white dress with a pattern of blue flowers. The hem of Mrs. Margaret’s dress was frayed, as if someone had torn off a piece of it. What for? For some kind of souvenir? For a greeting? And had he then tried to lose Mrs. Margaret so that he wouldn’t have to explain anything to Micha? Michelle couldn’t see that souvenir anymore, couldn’t ever understand the greeting. She was too fast asleep to ever wake up again.

What else had the answering man said? All these senseless answers he’d given, so a few of them hadn’t been senseless. Remember, A

She saw Abel standing in the bathroom again, searching for a Band-Aid, the box in his hand, angry that she’d followed him there instead of waiting in the living room. “No,” she whispered. “No, I … I don’t want this. I don’t want this to be true. I … I was so sure …”

And then she thought of Micha’s teacher. The last pursuer of the little queen. She dialed Linda’s number as she hurried back through the forest, stumbling, ru

“Hello.”

“Linda, it’s me. Have you got Micha’s teacher’s telephone number? Did she leave her number?”

“No, I …”

“Linda, you’ve gotta get it. Right now. It’s important. Call her. Tell her she has to be careful. No. Tell her not to leave her apartment. Tell her …”

“A

“Yes. No. I’m on my way there now. Call the teacher, Linda. Please. Do it now.”

Her hands were shaking so much she almost couldn’t unlock her bike. You could open the lock anyway, without knowing the combination, Abel had said that. But she, she couldn’t do that. She lived in a different world, and he’d been right about everything. Go away, princess. Leave your outlaw alone. You won’t change him … go away, A