The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis Page B

blow. She ran down the stairs without stopping. On the ground floor Mrs. Ketow had opened her door just a little, to listen. Anna slammed the outer door shut behind her. She was crying. Shit, she was really crying. Searching for a tissue, she found the blister pack with the white pills in her pocket. Maybe, she thought, she should take one, just so … She pressed one of the pills out of the foil and put it in her mouth. It tasted bitter. She spit it out, a white pill in white snow—likewhite paper waiting for letters, for words, for the next part of a fairy tale. He had locked her bicycle with the useless combination lock. She unlocked it and rode home, her head empty … white paper, white snow, white ice on a white street, white sails, white noise.
    When she closed her eyes, she saw a diamond embroidered in white, embroidered onto the sleeve of a blood-red coat. Or was it tattooed onto Rainer Lierski’s bicep?

 
    THAT NIGHT, ANNA COULDN’T SLEEP. SHE PUT HER clothes back on and went downstairs to the living room, where Magnus was still sitting in his old armchair reading the newspaper, another sleepless person, but one of the steadier sort. She looked at his big, broad figure in the big, broad armchair; they were at one, he and his chair, a rock, unshiftable, unyielding, strong. When she’d been small, she had thought her father could protect her from everything. Everything in the whole world. Children are stupid.
    Next to Magnus, on the small parquet table, a relic of some trip to the Middle East, there was a bottle of red wine and a glass. Anna took another glass from the cupboard and poured herself some wine. Then she sat down on the second armchair. For a while they drank and shared the silence, Magnus focused on his newspaper and Anna on her thoughts. Finally, he folded the paper.
    “What’s on your mind?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” she replied. He looked at her. She shrugged hernarrow shoulders. She was so much narrower than him, a slender branch in the wind. “The world,” she said.
    “Yes. That’s what you look like. As if you have the world on your mind.”
    “Why are people so different? Why are some happy and others unhappy? Why do some people have money and others … I know,” she sighed, “this sounds childish.”
    “You could study the answers,” Magnus said, wineglass in hand. “Philosophy. Or, no … economics.”
    “I need a sick note,” Anna said. “For my music class today. Two to four o’clock … about.”
    Magnus raised an eyebrow. He didn’t say anything.
    “When I was your age,” he started, “I also …” Then he stopped.
    “Thank you,” Anna said, getting up. “And, Magnus.” She was already standing in the door.
    “Yes?”
    “The wine’s turned.”
    The next day the white snow turned into brown mud. Anna asked Bertil if he had time to study math with her that afternoon. Gitta had a study date with Hennes.
    “Unfortunately not just Hennes,” she complained, “but some other people too … rats …”
    Abel came to school late and slept through geography class—they didn’t have literature that day. During break, Anna sat in the student lounge by herself. Through the window, she saw Abel talking to Knaake outside, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. All day she’d felt like she was swimming … her feet weren’t touching the ground and her head wasn’t in whatever she was doing.Somewhere on the steps of the old concrete tower block, she had lost her grip on reality, as if a veil of tears was streaming over everything she saw. Knaake took off his round glasses and scratched his head with them. A single snowflake fell onto his nearly gray beard. And suddenly, Anna sat up.
    The lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse keeper looked exactly like Knaake. The glasses, the dark blue woolen sweater, the beard—everything was right. Abel had written the literature teacher into his fairy tale. He’d come aboard to help the little queen. Knaake had promised